The Scourge of God

"Why send me away, father? I do not wish to go. I desire to stay here by your side. By my mother's, too. Let me remain," and she bent forward and kissed his forehead.

"Nay," he answered, "nay, Montpellier is no place for you now. You are best away from it. At present all is not well. Urbaine, these rebels are stronger than we thought. Julien has been here a month, and what has he done? Nothing, except sustain defeat. Now we must have more troops from Paris. Montrevel, they say, will come; yet ere he does so much may happen. Nîmes, even Montpellier, may fall into their hands. Urbaine, I will not have you here to-to-fall into their hands also."

"Surely they will not hurt women. They say they attack none but soldiers-and-and priests; that, rough and fierce as they are, no woman has ever suffered at their hands. We of our side," and she sighed, "can scarcely say as much."

"Who has told you this, child? Perhaps your new friend, Monsieur Martin. Nay, I see by your blush it is so. Urbaine, you must not believe all he says. Remember, he is a Huguenot too."

"He has never spoken to me on such themes, or, speaking, has said nothing you could disapprove of. He says this uprising is wicked, unlawful; is not the way to gain their ends. Also he has told me that the murder of the Abbé Du Chaila was revolting to him; that he would have saved him had he not been powerless."

"Where is he now?" Baville asked, without making any remark on what she told him as to Martin Ashurst's sentiments. "I have not seen him for some days."

"I do not know," the girl said; "neither have I seen him. Yet he spoke of going to Alais to see his friend the pastor."

"Urbaine," Baville said, "you must speak to him before you set out for Paris. He may listen to words from you which he will not hear from me. You must warn him to leave Languedoc, to return to the north."

"To leave Languedoc! Return to the north!" she repeated. And it seemed to the sharp eyes of the Intendant as though her colour changed again.

"Ay, child, he is in deadly peril here. Can you not understand?"

"No," Urbaine replied, "no. What has he done?"

"Actively, he has done nothing. Yet he is a doomed man, because of his religion. My dear one, ere long the king will be roused to awful fury by this rebellion; there will not be a réformé left in France. And those who are passive will suffer the same as those who take up arms-in the Midi-here-at least. Even I shall not be able to shield him. Nay, more, how can I shield one and destroy all the rest?"

"Can there be no peace?"

"None! Peace! How can there be peace when none will make it? These Protestant rebels are the aggressors this time. Ask for no peace. It is war, a war which means extermination. A month ago I should have said extermination of them alone; now God knows who, which side, is to be exterminated. Louis is weakened by these attacks from without, from every side; all over Europe there is a coalition against France. And half her enemies are of the Reformed faith, as they term it. It is said that the old religion is to be destroyed, abolished. Yet Louis, France, will not fail without one effort; dying, we shall drag to destruction numberless foes. Urbaine, if we do not suppress these Camisards we have an internal foe to deal with as well. Do you think one Protestant will be spared?"

"I may not see him again ere I set out for Versailles," the girl whispered, terrified at his words.

"Then he must take his chance. At best he is but a quixotic fool."

"Let me remain here; if there is danger let me share it."

"Never!" Baville said. "The nobility are threatened, the 'Intendant' above all. Your place must be in safety. Oh, that your mother would go too! Yet," he added reflectively, "her place is by my side."

"And mine is not? Do you say that?" And she touched his face caressingly with her hand.

"Your place is where I can best shield you from the least threat of danger, my loved one; where danger can never come near you." And beneath his breath he added the word "again."

Speaking thus to the girl upon his knee, a girl scarce better than a child, seeing she was now but seventeen years old, Baville-of whom the greatest of French diarists has said that il en étoit la terreur er l'horreur de Languedoc-was at his best. For if he loved any creature more than another on this earth-more than Madame l'Intendante, more even than his own son-that creature was Urbaine.

She was not in truth his daughter, was of no blood relationship to him, yet he cared for her dearly and fondly and the love was returned. As the history of this girl was known to many in the province, so it shall be told here.

Early in his Intendancy, when Baville (already known as an esprit fort by the ministers round Louis) had been appointed to this distant Government, with, to console him, an absolute authority, he had returned one winter night from a raid that he had been making on a village in the Cévennes which, to use his own words, "reeked of Calvinism" and was full of persons who refused to comply with the new orders that were brought into force by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was then but newly married to a sister of Gourville, the colonel of a local regiment of dragoons, and his wife's welcome to him was somewhat cooled by the announcement which he made to her that an intimate friend of his had perished in the raid, leaving behind a motherless child of whom he proposed to constitute himself the guardian.

Apprised of the fact that Ducaire was the name of the intimate friend, Madame l'Intendante shrugged her shoulders and contented herself with saying that it was the first time she had ever heard of him.

Later, after reflection, she laughed a little, quoted some words of M. de Voiture as to les secrets de la comédie which were no secrets either to actors or audience, and, in the course of the next two or three days, uttered pointed remarks to the effect that if politics failed at any future time, doubtless M. l'Intendant might earn a pleasant livelihood as a weaver of romances and of plots for plays.

"En vérité" she said, with her little laugh, "Jean de la Fontaine is old, also Racine; profitez vous de l'occasion, mon ami. Profitez vous."

Then, because they were alone in Madame's boudoir, Baville rose and stood before his wife and, speaking seriously, bade her cease her badinage forever.

And after the conversation which ensued, after, also, the story which Baville told her, Madame did cease her flippancy, and henceforth had no further qualms of jealousy.

In truth, as the child grew up, she too came to love it, to pet it as much as her husband did, to-because she was an honest, tender-hearted woman who, beneath all her pride for Baville's great position, had still many feminine qualities in her breast-weep over it.

"Pauvrette!" she would sometimes whisper to little Urbaine, long ere the child had come to understanding, "pauvre petite. Neither mother nor father either. Ah, well! Ah, well! they shall never be wanting while we live-say, Baville, shall they?"

And the Intendant, the man of "horror and terror" to all around, looking down upon the babe as she slept in her little bed, would answer before God that they should never be wanting.

Both kept their word. Urbaine Ducaire grew up, petted, caressed, beloved, the light of the Intendant's home, the flower, as he told her sometimes, of his life; a thing far, far more precious to him than the son, who, instead of being any comfort to them, was revelling in the impurities of Paris.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ATTACK

Between where the mountains of the Cévennes rise in tumultuous confusion, with, towering above them all, the gigantic Lozère and La Manzerre whence springs the beauteous Loire; between this vast mountainous region, which gives to the mind of him who beholds it the idea of a world falling to ruin and perishing of its own worn-out antiquity, and the Rhône, the road to the north winds through a fertile valley-a valley where the meadows and the orchards and the vineyards run down to the river on which the rafts and boats float along until the stream empties itself into the Mediterranean at last; boats from which are wafted the perfume of the new-mown hay, or the fruits which they are conveying. A valley this in which are little houses set in among the pear trees and the chestnuts, and covered with bird-swarming ivy wherein the southern oriole builds its nest and rears its young; houses in front of which the fair roses of Provence grow in great clusters as they have grown there for centuries, and over which the pigeons whirl in their flight.

Once, not twenty years before the period of this narrative, and before a reformed wanton had urged a superstitious king (already then growing old and shuddering at the phantoms that arose from his evil and unclean past, as well as from the fear of what his enemies-the whole world! – might wreak upon him in the shape of human vengeance) to wage what he termed a holy war, this valley had been one of a thousand in France where peace and contentment had reigned. Peace and contentment coupled, it is true, with, in most cases, a simple humble life, yet still a life free from care. An existence scarce disturbed by aught more serious than some trifling ailments of the children who ran about barefooted in the long lush grass, or plunged into the cool stream that watered the land, or by the sound of the passing bell telling at solemn intervals how one who had lived there all his days was going to his rest. A life spent in the open air all through the summer time, or by the blazing chestnut logs when the snows of winter kept all shut up in their cottages, carding, weaving, combing, earning their living thus as in the golden prime of July they earned it by gathering fruit, or cutting the corn and sheaving it, or rearing the cattle.

Now all was changed, all but the beauty of the land. The red-roofed houses on whose tiles the topmost boughs of the pear trees rested, borne down with fruit, were closed; the wicker basket in which the thrushes and blackbirds had sung so joyously, not deeming their lives captivity, were empty; so, too, were the stalls where once the kine had lowed and the horses trampled as daybreak stole over the mountain tops. All were gone now. The old grandam who had looked after the children; the children themselves; the stalwart fathers; the dark-eyed, brown-bosomed women whose black tresses hung down their backs and served as ropes for their babes to tug at.

Gone-but where?

Half of the men to the galleys, to toil until their hearts burst and they died, worn to skeletons by belabourings and thrashings, starvation and ill usage; the other half to the mountains, there to meditate upon, and afterward to take, a hideous, black revenge on those who had driven them from their homes. The old women gone also, some to fester in the prison cellars of Nîmes, Uzès, Alais, Niort, and Montpellier. The black-haired mothers to do the same, to groan in the dungeons for water, even though it were but one drop to cool their tongues; to shriek to God to take their lives, even though they were sacrificed in the flames of the market place; to pray to their Creator to let them die and join their slaughtered babes once more; see again the husbands from whom the gibbet and the wheel had torn them forever in this world.

Because they were Protestants, Reformés, Huguenots! That was their crime! The crime that had roused the woman in Paris-la femme célèbre et fatale-to urge on her husband the devastation of the Garden of France.

Down this road now, which wound between the base of the Cévennes and the banks of the rapid Rhône, upon a sunny afternoon in September-when all the uncut corn (there being no one to gather it) was bending on its stalks upon which, later, it would rot, past a burned and ruined church, past, too, a wheel on which a dried, half-mummified body was bound and left to shrivel-there came a cortége. A cortége consisting first of a troop of dragoons of the regiment of Hérault, their sabres drawn and flashing in the sun, their musketoons slung ready at their backs, their glances wary and eager. Ahead of them rode their captain, a man tall and muscular, burned black almost from constant exposure to the sun and by taking part in many campaigns from his youth, commencing in Germany and Austria. This was Poul, a Carcassonnais, who, since the outbreak of the Cévennes rising, had been distinguished as one of the most determined opponents of the attroupés. Also he was a marked man, doomed to death by them, and he knew it. But over his midnight draughts of Hermitage he had sworn often that, ere his fate overtook him, many of the canaille should also meet theirs.

Behind his troop of dragoons, numbering thirty-five men, there came a travelling carriage, large, roomy, and much ornamented, and drawn by four horses. In it there sat Urbaine Ducaire on her way to Langogne, the first stage on the road to Paris. By her side was seated a middle-aged gouvernante or companion, whom Baville had told off to accompany her until she reached Avignon, where she would be safe outside the troubles of Languedoc and where she was to continue her journey under the protection of the Duchess d'Uzès. Above the carriage was piled up her valises and portmanteaux; also upon it were three footmen armed with fusils, all of which were ready to their hands; also a waiting maid who was always in attendance upon Urbaine. To complete her guard, behind the great carriage marched a company of the fusileers of Barre and Pompidon, headed by a mounted officer.

Passing the broken and mutilated corpse upon the wheel, Poul pointed to it with his glove and laughed; then, reining back his horse until the dragoons had gone by, he looked in at the great window and remarked to Urbaine:

"Mademoiselle perceives the canaille are not always triumphant. As it is with that crushed rat there, so it will be with all. Time! Time! Our vengeance will come."

But the girl, after casting one horrified glance at the thing which was shrivelling in the broiling September sun, had shrunk back affrighted into the depths of the great travelling carriage and thrown up her hands before her eyes while the gouvernante, addressing Poul, said:

"Monsieur le Capitaine, why call our attention to that? It is no pleasing sight even to a devout Catholic, moreover a bitter one when we remember the fearful retaliation that has been exacted. Have you forgotten the Abbé du Chaila, the curé of Frugéres?"

"Forgotten!" exclaimed the rough Carcassonnais, "forgotten! Ventre bleu! I have forgotten nothing. Else why am I here? Beautiful as is the freight of this carriage," and he made a rough bow "it needs no Capitaine Poul to command the dragoons who escort it in safety. Any porte drapeau, or unfledged lieutenant, could do that. Nay, it is in hopes that we may meet some of these singing, snivel-nosed Calvinists that I ride with you to-day. Oh, for the chance!"

"Send him away," whispered Urbaine; "he terrifies me. Would that my father had chosen some other officer."

Ere, however, her companion could do as she requested, Poul had turned his wrist and ridden again to the head of his troops, a fierce look of eagerness on his face, a gleam in his coal-black eyes. For from ahead of where the cavalcade had now arrived-a shady part of the road, on one side of which there rose precipitously some rocks crowned with bushes, while on the other was a meadow-he heard a sound which told him his wish was very likely to be granted.

A sound of singing, of many voices in unison. Voices uttering words which reached the ears of all, causing the dragoons and fusileers to look to their arms and the women and footmen to turn white with apprehension.