The Scourge of God

"A thought!" he exclaimed, his face brightening. "A thought! What thought? Yet what can a thousand thoughts avail? She is Baville's. That dooms her."

"Mon mari, suppose-only suppose-they have not slain her-nay, deny me not," as her husband made an impatient movement, "suppose they have not slain her yet. Remember, she would be a great hostage, and they, these rebels, boast they seek not warfare, but only peace-concessions; offer to lay down their arms if-if-all they ask for their unhappy, mistaken religion is granted."

"Well," Baville replied, yet looking eagerly at her, "well, what then?"

"To bring about a truce, obtain those concessions. They may have spared her life, if only for a time, if only for a time," she repeated, sobbing now.

"Even though they have done so," her husband replied, "concessions are impossible, though I myself desired them. Julien is maddened at his total failure; he will grant none. Montrevel comes full of pride at gaining his long-desired bâton. It is not to make peace, grant concessions, that he is on his way. Rather to cause more slaughter, extermination. And for her-there," and his eyes wandered toward the direction where, hundreds of leagues away, Paris and the great white palace of Versailles lay, "will she grant any?"

Madame l'Intendante knew well enough to whom he referred-to la femme funeste et terrible-and shook her head sadly, while Baville continued:

"She bars all, blocks all, Alice," and he lowered his voice instinctively. "Alice, it is she who has lit this torch of rebellion through all Languedoc. Chamillart writes me that Louis has known nothing until now of what has been happening. She has kept him in ignorance until forced by my demand for a great army and the services of Montrevel to tell him."

"My God! What duplicity!"

"It is true. She holds him in the hollow of her hand, winds him round her finger as a child winds a silken thread. Will she grant concessions, do you think?"

"But, Nicole, listen. If she, Urbaine, lives, there may be still time. Montrevel is not yet here. His great army moves slowly. Time, still."

"For what?"

"Have you forgotten? Her real father-that friend of yours-Monsieur Ducaire-have you not often told me he was himself of their faith-a Huguenot?"

"Mon Dieu!" Baville exclaimed, "it is so. He was. Yet, again, what then?"

"If-if she does still live, and it could be communicated to them, they would perhaps spare her. Surely, among the old of those refugees-even among those who are now but elderly-there may be some who would remember her father, could recall this Monsieur Ducaire-"

She paused, alarmed at the strange effect of her words, for Baville's face had turned an ashen hue as she spoke. Almost it seemed to his wife as though his handsome features were convulsed with pain as he, repeating those words, whispered:

"Recall Ducaire? Remember her father? Oh! Dieu des Dieux, if they should do that, if there should be one among those who surround her, if she still lives, who could do so! If there is but one who should tell her-"

"What, Baville?"

"No, no, no!" he whispered. "No, no! If so-yet it can not be! – but if it is, if there is any still living to tell her that, then better she be dead. Better dead than bear it."

"Husband," Madame l'Intendante said, "I know now, something tells me-alas! alas! ever have I suspected it, feared it," and she wrung her hands; "you have deceived me, trifled with me from the first. Baville, is it you? Are you in solemn truth her father? Is Ducaire another name, known once in the far-off past, for Baville? Would she be better dead than alive to learn that? Answer me."

"No," he said, "no; you do not understand, can not understand; must not know yet. But I am innocent of that wrong to you. I swear it. And Alice, my wife," he continued as he bent over her and kissed her brow, "Alice, my love, if you knew all you would pity me. Alice, I swear it to you-swear that it is not what you think."

Then, as again he kissed her, he murmured the old French proverb:

"Tout savoir c'est tout pardonner," adding, "Oh, believe in me, counsel me, my wife."

CHAPTER XX

WHAT IS THIS MYSTERY?

The swallows were gone-a month earlier in this mountainous region than in the rest of the golden south of France. Below, the corn had fallen ungathered from its stalks, since of those who remained in the valleys, and faithful to the iron rule of Baville, none dared reap it, for fear that, while doing so, from its midst might spring up a body of the dreaded Camisards. Already, too, high up in the mountains, the first flurries of snow had sprinkled the ground; autumn had come. And still Baville was no nearer to finding Urbaine, or to gathering news of whether she was alive or dead, than he had been before. Neither did he know what had become of the man who, he deemed, had betrayed her into his enemies' hands; who, he believed, had sent her to her death.

Meanwhile, Montrevel had arrived. Montrevel, the general and newly created field marshal, second only to Tallard, who next year lost Blenheim, and to Villars, who was ordained later to bring peace to the distracted land. Montrevel, of whom it was said that he fought like a Paladin of old, made love like a Troubadour, and had the air of a hero of the stage or the leader of a chorus in the newly invented operas.

With him came a vast army-one which, to any other rebels but the all-triumphant Protestants, harbouring defiantly in the mountain deserts on high and in the inaccessible caverns, would have brought fear and terror. To them, however, this army brought none. "Nous sommes les rochers que les vents combattants en vaine," they cried, and even as they so taunted their late persecutors they stole down by night and by unknown paths, sacked a fresh village, provided themselves with fresh food, more arms and more ammunition, seized on costly uniforms and laces, and, when possible, horses and cattle, while once more like phantoms they vanished quietly afterward from human sight. Vanished as the crawling Indians whom some of their adversaries had encountered on the Mississippee or the St. Lawrence; vanished, after devastating lonely settlements and townships; disappeared as disappears the snowflake which falls on the bosom of the ocean, is seen a moment, and then is gone forever.

In that army, sent to destroy the men whose retaliation of half a century's persecution was now so terrible, came soldiers who had never yet known defeat. From Italy the Marquis de Firmacon brought back the men of a regiment of cuirassiers who had fought like victorious tigers at Cremona and had even driven back the fiery Eugene and his soldiers before their rush; in that army also were the guards of Tarnaud, De Saulx, and Royal Comtois; marines who had faced Russel's and Shovel's squadrons; dragoons of Saint-Sernin who had seen Marlborough ride all along the line giving orders to the great English force to advance, and had observed, but a year or two before, the consumptive invalid, William of England and Holland, stand undismayed beneath a hailstorm of bullets while superintending the siege of some great fortress in the Netherlands. Also there came the brigade of Lajonquiére which had followed Turenne in victory and defeat, and that of Marsilly which had stood shoulder to shoulder awaiting the orders of Condé to charge. And still there were others who might have struck more terror to any mountain rebels than these trained battalions; a regiment of men, themselves mountaineers, whose fierceness and brutality were a byword through all the South.

These were the Miquelets, a body of six hundred Pyrenean soldiers under the command of a rough one-armed free lance named De Palmerolles. From sunny Roussillon and Foix these men came, their faces burned black, their bodies half clad in red shirts and trousers, resembling sailors' slops in vastness, espardillos, or shoes of twisted cord, upon their feet, in their belts two pistols on one side, a scimitar dagger on the other, while in their hands they bore the long-barrelled gyspe peculiar to the Pyrenean. Also, to render greater Montrevel's chance of defeating those who were termed rebels to the king, he brought with him twenty large brass cannons, five thousand bullets, four thousand muskets, and fifty thousand pounds of powder-enough, in truth, to defeat all the rebels in the Cévennes, if they could only be got at.

From far up on the height of La Lozère, sheltered in a small copse of wind-swept firs, Jean Cavalier, looking down on the road which wound from Genoillac to Alais, laughed lightly as he turned to the companions by his side-his comrade, Roland, and his prisoner, Martin Ashurst.

"In truth," he said, "'tis a brave array of men. Yet what will they do against us? They can never get up here in spite of Baville's recently constructed roads, while as for us we can get down and back again as we choose." Then, turning to Martin, he said politely, and with that attempt at gracious ease and condescension which he never forgot to assume:

"Monsieur, I know we are safe with you. When you and your charge, Mademoiselle Ducaire, have left us you will betray no secrets."

"No more," replied Martin, "than I should betray any of Monsieur Baville's to you. You know now that, though I am of your religion, I am no partisan of either side. I pray God the day may come when all of our faith may be free, happy."

"We pray so, too," both chiefs answered, while Cavalier continued:

"'Tis what we seek. Peace-peace above all! And we are no rebels to the king. Let him but give us leave to worship in our own way and unmolested, earn our bread undisturbed, pay no taxes that go to support his own Romish church-the other taxes we will willingly pay-and he will find he has no more loyal subjects than the Cévenoles. Nay, have we not offered our services to him against his enemies, offered to furnish a Protestant regiment to aid him in Spain against the Austrian claimant, to fight against all his foes except the English, our brother Protestants? Yet he will not consent that it shall be so, or, rather, those who dominate him in his old age will not let him listen to us."

"Therefore," said Roland, "let him look to himself. See-hearken to those Miquelets who tread the plains now, shrieking their barbaric songs. Do you know what their war-cry is? 'Tis 'war to the knife.' So be it; 'tis ours too. And ere we cease to shout it Louis will have given in to us. While one Protestant remains in these mountains we shall never yield. The king may conquer Europe, drive back all his enemies; us he will never conquer."

* * * * * * *

After La Grande Marie had uttered these words of hers, "Those whom you would slay are of our faith," there had fallen a great silence on all within the vast vaulted cavern-a silence begotten of wonderment, yet a wonderment which had in it no element of disbelief; for of all the prophetesses, she it was who was most believed in by the Camisards, her inspiration the one which they had never yet known to be at fault. She had advised the descent to Montvert, fortelling how, on that night, the abbé should atone for his crimes at their avenging hands in spite of their not seeking his death. She also it was who had bidden them attack the convoy of Urbaine under the hated command of Poul, and the detachment under the equally hated command of De Broglie. Had prophesied, too, that in that convoy should be found one whose capture and death would wring the heartstrings of the tyrant Baville as nothing else could wring them, would beat him down to misery, might even force him in his despair to abandon all further cruelties toward those of his creed.

And what she had prophesied had all come to pass. Baville's daughter, as most of them supposed Urbaine to be, was in their hands, her death assured. Therefore now, also, they believed her prophetic visions and utterances, though, in believing, a victim thereby escaped them. Even the women-whose bitterness, born of the horrors practised on their own helpless babes and their old back-bowed mothers and fathers, as well as on themselves, was more intense than that of the men who, in their hearts, felt for the white delicate girl who stood a prisoner before them-even the women paused, wondering, amazed.

"Of our faith," they muttered, "of our faith. Yet the wolf's own cub, the persecutor's own blood. Marie, sister, think again of what you say. Pause and reflect."

"I know what I say," La Grande Marie murmured, the misty eyes still fixed upon the girl before her, her hand half raised. "God has entered my heart, given me the power of divination. She and he, this man by her side, are of our faith. Is it not so, little one?" and she leaned forward to a child near her upon whom also the gift of prophecy was reported to have fallen.

"It is so, Marie," the child lisped.[3 - Among the inspired prophets of the Cévennes, none were supposed to be more penetrated with this gift than the youngest children. In their histories there are recorded instances, or perhaps I should say beliefs, of babes at their mothers' breasts who had received it, and were by signs and motions supposed to direct the actions of their seniors.]

"What is the mystery?" Cavalier asked, standing before Urbaine, his voice expressing the surprise he felt at the turn matters had assumed, expressing also his awe, for he, too, was sometimes visited with the impulse of prophecy. "In God's name explain, mademoiselle."

"There is no explanation to offer. Your prophetess is wrong. Since my father adopted me I have known no faith but the true one."

"Adopted you!" he repeated, while all round them stood listening eagerly. "Ah! yes, I have heard; remember you said such was the case at the Château de Servas, yet had forgotten. Mademoiselle, what is your name since it can not be Baville?"

"Urbaine Ducaire."

"Ducaire?" he repeated, "Ducaire? There is no name such as that in the lists of our unhappy brethren. Mademoiselle, was your father of our religion?"

"I know not," the girl replied, while in her manner, in her eyes, too, was the haughty indifference to her captor which had surprised Cavalier from the first. "I know not. Yet, since he was M. de Baville's friend, it scarce seems possible he should have been."

"Listen," cried the Camisard chief, addressing all those who stood around, "listen, my brethren. Among you are many no longer young, many who can cast their memories back to the years ere this-this demoiselle-could have been born. Some, too, who come from far and wide, from where the waters of the sea lap our southern shores; from where, also, Guienne on one side, Dauphiné on the other, touch our border. Heard ever any of you of a Huguenot named Ducaire?" and as he spoke he cast his eyes around all within the cavern.

But there came no affirmative answer. Only the repetition of that name and the shaking of heads, and glances from eyes to eyes as each looked interrogatively at the other.