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Huguenot: A Tale of the French Protestants

<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2><h3>THE DEATH OF THE PERSECUTED.</h3> When the flight had been conducted for about two miles in the midst of the perfect darkness which surrounded the whole scene--for the lights and torches which had appeared in the town had been extinguished with the exception of one or two, on leaving it--the voice which had before addressed Clémence de Marly again spoke nearer, apparently giving command, as some one in authority over the others. "Where is the litter?" he exclaimed.--"Where is the litter that was brought for the good minister? Bring it hither: he will be more easy in that." Clémence had kept as near as she could to the spot where Claude de l'Estang was carried, and she now heard him answer in a faint and feeble voice,-- "Do not move me: in pity do not move me. My limbs are so strained and dislocated by the rack, that the slightest movement pains me. Carry me as I am, if you will; but move me not from this bed." "Well, then, place these two ladies in the litter," said the same voice. "We shall go faster then." Without asking her consent, Clémence de Marly was placed in the small hand-litter which had been brought for the pastor; her maid took the place by her side, and, lifted on the shoulders of four men, she was carried on more quickly, gaining a faint and indistinct view of what was passing around, from the more elevated situation in which she now was. They were mounting slowly the side of the hill, about two miles from the town of Thouars, and she could catch a distant view of the dark towers and masses of the town as it then existed, rising above the objects around. From thence, as far as her eye was able to distinguish, a stream of people was flowing on all along the road to the very spot where she was, and several detached parties were seen here and there, crossing the different eminences on either side, so that the force assembled must have been very considerable. She listened eagerly for any sound from the direction of Thouars, apprehensive at every moment that she would hear the firing renewed; for she knew, or at least she believed she knew, that Albert of Morseiul, with the better disciplined band which he seemed to command, would be the last to leave the city he had so boldly entered. Nothing, however, confirmed her expectation. There was a reddish light over the town, as if there were either fires in the streets, or that the houses were generally lighted up; but all was silent, except a dull distant murmur, heard when the sound of the marching feet ceased from any cause for a moment. Few words passed between Clémence and her attendant; for though Maria was a woman of a calm determined spirit in moments of immediate danger, and possessed with a degree of religious zeal, which was a strong support in times of peril and difficulty, yet the scenes in the prison and the dungeon, the horrors which she had only dreamt of before brought actually before her eyes, had not precisely unnerved, but had rendered her thoughtful and silent. The only sentence which she ventured to address to her mistress, without being spoken to, was,-- "Oh, Madam, is the young Count so much to blame, after all?" "Alas, Maria," replied Clémence, in the same low tone, "I think that all are to blame, more or less. Deep provocation has certainly been given; but I do think that Albert ought to have acted differently. He had not these scenes before his eyes when he fled to put himself at the head of the insurgents; and ere he did so, he certainly owed something to me and something to the King. Nevertheless, since I have seen what I have seen, and heard what I have heard, I can make excuses which I could not make before." The attendant made no reply, and the conversation dropped. The march continued rapidly for three or four hours, till at length there was a short halt; and a brief consultation seemed to take place between two or three of the leaders on horseback. The principal part of the men on foot, exhausted as it appeared by great exertion, sat or lay down by the road side; but ere the conference had gone on for above five minutes, a cavalier, followed by several other men on horseback, came up at the full gallop; and again the deep mellow tones of that remarkable voice struck the ear of Clémence de Marly, and made her whole frame thrill. His words, or as they appeared commands, were but few; and, without either approaching the side of Claude de l'Estang or herself, he rode back again in haste, and the march was renewed. Ere long a fine cold rain began to fall, chilling those it lighted on to the very heart; and Clémence thought she perceived that as they advanced the number of people gradually fell away. At length, after a long and fatiguing march through the night, as the faint grey of the dawn began to appear, she found that, at the very utmost, there were not above a hundred of the armed Protestants around her. The party was evidently under the command of a short but powerfully made man, on horseback, whom she recognised as the person who had carried the unfortunate novice Claire in his arms to the house of Claude de l'Estang. He rode on constantly by the side of the bed in which the good pastor was carried on men's shoulders, and bowing down his head from time to time, he spoke to him with what seemed words of comfort and hope. They were now on a part of the road from Thouars towards Nantes, that passed through the midst of one of those wide sandy tracts called in France landes, across which a sort of causeway had been made by felled trees, rough and painful of passage even to the common carts of the country. This causeway, however, was soon quitted by command of Armand Herval. One party took its way through the sands to the right; and the rest, following the litters, bent their course across the country, towards a spot where a dark heavy line bounded the portion of the landes within sight, and seemed to denote a large wood of the deep black pine, which grows better than any other tree in that sandy soil. It was near an hour before they reached the wood; and even underneath its shadow the shifting sand continued, only diversified a little by a few thin blades of green grass, sufficient to feed the scanty flocks of sheep, which form the only riches of that tract. In the midst of the wood--where they had found or formed a little oasis around them--were two shepherds' cottages; and to these the party commanded by Armand Herval at once directed its course. An old man and two boys came out as they approached, but with no signs of surprise; and Claude de l'Estang was carried to one of the cottages, into which Clémence followed. She had caught a sight of the good man's face as they bore him past her, and she saw that there was another sad and painful task before her, for which she nerved her mind. "Now, good Antoine," said Armand Herval, speaking to one of the shepherds, "lead out the sheep with all speed, and take them over all the tracks of men and horses that you may meet with. You will do it carefully, I know. We have delivered the good man, as you see; but I fear--I fear much that we have after all come too late, for the butchers have put him to the question, and almost torn him limb from limb. God knows I made what speed I could, and so did the Count." The old shepherd to whom he spoke made no reply, but listened, gazing in his face with a look of deep melancholy. One of the younger men who stood by, however, said, "We heard the firing. I suppose they strove hard to keep him." "That they assuredly did!" replied Herval, his brows knitting as he spoke; "and if we had not been commanded by such a man, they would not only have kept him, but us too. One half of our people failed us. Boursault was not there. Kerac and his band never came. We were full seven hundred short, and then the petard went off too soon, and did no good, but brought the whole town upon us. They had dragoons, too, from Niort; and tried first to drive us back, then to take us in flank by the tower-street, then to barricade the way behind us; but they found they had to do with a Count de Morseiul, and they were met every where, and every where defeated. Yet, after all," continued the man, "he will ruin us from his fear of shedding any blood but his own. But I must go in and see after the good man; and then speed to the woods. We shall be close round about, and one sound of a conch[3] will bring a couple of hundred to help you, good Antoine." Thus saying, he went into the cottage, where Clémence had already taken her place by the side of the unhappy pastor's bed; and, on the approach of Herval, she raised her finger gently to indicate that he slept. He had, indeed, fallen into momentary slumber, utterly exhausted by suffering and fatigue; but the fallen temples--the sharpened features--the pale ashy hue of the countenance, showed to the eyes of Clémence, at least, that the sleep was not that from which he would wake refreshed and better. Herval, less acute in his perceptions, judged differently; and, after assuring Clémence in a whisper that she was quite in safety there, as the woods round were filled with the band, he left her, promising to return ere night. Clémence would fain have asked after Albert of Morseiul, and might, perhaps, have expressed a wish to see him; but there were strange feelings of timidity in her heart which kept her silent till the man was gone, and then she regretted that she had not spoken, and accused herself of weakness. During the time that she now sat watching by the pastor's side, she had matter enough for thought in her own situation. What was now to become of her, was a question that frequently addressed itself to her heart; and, more than once, as she thus sat and pondered, the warm ingenuous blood rushed up into her cheek at thoughts which naturally arose in her bosom from the consideration of the strange position in which she was placed. Albert of Morseiul had not seen her, she knew. He could not even divine or imagine that she was at Thouars at all, much less in the prison itself; but yet she felt somewhat reproachfully towards him, as if he should have divined that it was she whom he saw borne along, not far from the unhappy pastor. Though she acknowledged, too, in her own heart, that there were great excuses to be made for the decided part which her lover had taken in the insurrection of that part of the country, still she was not satisfied, altogether, with his having done so; still she called him, in her own heart, both rash and ungrateful. On the other hand, she remembered, that she had written to him in haste, and in some degree of anger, or, at least, of bitter disappointment; that she had refused, without explaining all the circumstances which prevented her, to share his flight as she had previously promised; that, hurried and confused, she had neither told him that, at the very time she was writing, the Duchess de Rouvré waited to accompany her to the court, and that to fly at such a moment was impossible; nor that, during the whole of the following day, she was to remain at Versailles, where the eyes of every one would be upon her, more especially attracted towards her by the news of her lover's flight, which must, by that time, be generally known. She feared, too, that in that letter she had expressed herself harshly, even unkindly; she feared that those very words might have driven the Count into the desperate course which he had adopted, and she asked herself, with feelings such as she had never experienced before, when contemplating a meeting with Albert of Morseiul, how would he receive her? In short, in thinking of the Count, she felt that she had been somewhat in the wrong in regard to her conduct towards him. But she felt, also, at the same time, that he had been likewise in the wrong, and, therefore, what she had first to anticipate were the words of mutual reproach, rather than the words of mutual affection. Such was one painful theme of thought, and how she was to shape her own immediate conduct was another. To return to the house of the Duc de Rouvré seemed utterly out of the question. She had been found in the prison of Claude de l'Estang. Her religious feelings could no longer be concealed; her renunciation of the Catholic faith was sure, at that time, to be looked upon as nothing short of treason; and death or eternal imprisonment was the only fate that would befall her, if she were once cast into the hands of the Roman Catholic party. What then was she to do? Was she to throw herself at once upon the protection of Albert of Morseiul? Was she to bind her fate to his for ever, at the very moment when painful points of difference had arisen between them? Was she to cast herself upon his bounty as a suppliant, instead of holding the same proud situation she had formerly held,--instead of being enabled to confer upon him that which he would consider an inestimable benefit, while she herself enhanced its value beyond all price, by the sacrifice of all and every thing for him? Was she now, on the contrary,--when it seemed as if she had refused to make that sacrifice for his sake,--to come to him, as a fugitive, claiming his protection, to demand his bounty and his support, and to supplicate permission to share the fate in which he might think she had shown a disinclination to participate, till she was compelled to do so? The heart of Clémence de Marly was wrung at the thought. She knew that Albert of Morseiul was generous, noble, kind-hearted. She felt that, very likely, he might view the case in much brighter hues than she herself depicted it to her own mind; she felt that, if she were a suppliant to him, no reproach would ever spring to his lips; no cold averted look would ever tell her that he thought she had treated him ill. But she asked herself whether those reproaches would not be in his heart; and the pride, which might have taken arms and supported her under any distinct and open charge, gave way at the thought of being condemned, and yet cherished. How should she act, then? how should she act? she asked herself; and as Clémence de Marly was far from one of those perfect creatures who always act right from the first impulse, the struggle between contending feelings was long and terrible, and mingled with some tears. Her determination, however, was right at length. "I will tell him all I have felt, and all I think," she said. "I will utter no reproach: I will say not one word to wound him: I will let him see once more, how deeply and truly I love him. I will hear, without either pride or anger, any thing that Albert of Morseiul will say to me, and then, having done so, I will trust to his generosity to do the rest. I need not fear! Surely, I need not fear!" and, with this resolution, she became more composed, the surest and the strongest proof that it was right. But, to say the truth, since the perils of the night just passed, since she had beheld him she loved in a new character; since, with her own eyes, she had seen him commanding in the strife of men, and every thing seeming to yield to the will of his powerful and intrepid mind, new feelings had mingled with her love for him, of which, what she had experienced when he rode beside her at the hunting party at Poitiers, had been but, as it were, a type. It was not fear, but it was some degree of awe. She felt that, with all her own strength of mind, with all her own brightness of intellect and self-possession, there were mightier qualities in his character to which she must bow down: that she, in fact, was woman, altogether woman, in his presence. As she thus thought, a slight motion on the bed where Claude de l'Estang was laid made her turn her eyes thither. The old man had awoke from his short slumber, and his eyes, still bright and intelligent, notwithstanding the approach of death and the exhaustion of his shattered frame, were turned towards her with an earnest and a melancholy expression. "I hope you feel refreshed," said Clémence, bending over him. "You have had some sleep; and I trust it has done you good." "Do not deceive yourself, my dear child," replied the old man. "No sleep can do me good, but that deep powerful one which is soon coming. I wait but God's will, Clémence, and I trust that he will soon give the spirit liberty. It will be in mercy, Clémence, that he sends death; for were life to be prolonged, think what it would be to this torn and mangled frame. Neither hand nor foot can I move, nor were it possible to give back strength to my limbs or ease to my body. Every hour that I remain, I look upon but as a trial of patience and of faith, and I will not murmur: no, Clémence, not even in thought, against His almighty will, who bids me drag on the weary minutes longer. But yet, when the last of those minutes has come, oh! how gladly shall I feel the summons that others dread and fly from! I would fain, my child," he said, "I would fain hear: and from your lips: some of that blessed word which the misguided persecutors of our church deny unmutilated to the blind followers of their faith, though every word therein speaks hope, and consolation, and counsel, and direction to the heart of man." "Alas! good father," replied Clémence, "the Bible which I always carry with me, was left behind when I came to see you in prison, and I know not where to find one here." "The people in this, or the neighbouring cottage, have one," said the pastor. "They are good honest souls, whom I have often visited in former days." As the good woman of the cottage had gone out, almost immediately after the arrival of the party, to procure some herbs, which she declared would soothe the pastor greatly, Clémence proceeded to the other cottage, where she found an old man with a Bible in his hand, busily reading a portion thereof to a little boy who stood near. He looked up, and gave her the book as soon as she told him the purpose for which she came, and then, following into the cottage where the pastor lay, he and the boy stood by, and listened attentively while she read such chapters as Claude de l'Estang expressed a wish to hear. Those chapters were not, in general, such as might have been supposed. They were not those which hold out the glorious promises of everlasting life to men who suffer for their faith in this state of being. They were not such as pourtray to us, in its real and spiritual character, that other world, to which the footsteps of all are tending. It seemed as if, of such things, the mind of the pastor was so fully convinced, so intimately and perfectly sure, that they were as parts of his own being. But the passages that he selected were those in which our Redeemer lays down all the bright, perfect, and unchangeable precepts for the rule and governance of man's own conduct, which form the only code of law and philosophy that can indeed be called divine. And in that last hour it seemed the greatest hope and consolation which the dying man could receive, to ponder upon those proofs of divine love and wisdom which nothing but the Spirit of God himself could have dictated. Thus passed the whole of the day. From time to time Clémence paused, and the pastor spoke a few words to those who surrounded him: words of humble comment on what was read, or pious exhortation. At other times, when his fair companion was tired, the attendant Maria would take the book and read. No noises, no visit from without, disturbed the calm. It seemed as if their persecutors were at fault; and though from time to time one of the different members of those shepherd families passed in or out, no other persons were seen moving upon the face of the landes; no sounds were heard but their own low voices throughout the short light of a November day. To one fresh from the buzz of cities, and the busy activity of man, the contrast of the stillness and the solitude was strange; but doubly strange and exceeding solemn were they to the mind of her who came, fresh from the perturbed and fevered visions of the preceding night, and saw that day lapse away like a long and quiet sleep. Towards the dusk of the evening, however, her attendant laid her hand upon her arm as she was still reading, saying, "There is a change coming;" and Clémence paused and gazed down upon the old man's countenance. It looked very grey; but whether from the shadows of the evening, or from the loss of whatever hue of living health remained, she could hardly tell. But the difference was not so great in the colour as in the expression. The look of pain and suffering which, notwithstanding all his efforts to bear his fate with tranquillity, had still marked that fine expressive countenance, was gone, and a calm and tranquil aspect had succeeded, although the features were extremely sharpened, the eye sunk, and the temples hollow. It was the look of a body and a spirit at peace; and, for a moment, as the eyes were turned up towards the sky, Clémence imagined that the spirit was gone: but the next moment he looked round towards her, as if inquiring why she stopped. "How are you, Sir?" she said. "You seem more at ease." "I am quite at ease, Clémence," replied the old man. "All pain has left me. I am somewhat cold, but that is natural; and for the last half hour the remains of yesterday's agony have been wearing away, as I have seen snow upon a hill's side melt in the April sunshine. It is strange, and scarcely to be believed, that death should be so pleasant; for this is death, my child, and I go away from this world of care and pain with a foretaste of the mercies of the next. It is very slow, but still it is coming, Clémence, and bringing healing on its wings. Death, the messenger of God's will, to one that trusts in his mercy, is indeed the harbinger of that peace of God which passes all understanding." He paused a little, and his voice had grown considerably weaker, even while he spoke. "God forgive my enemies," he said at length, "and the mistaken men who persecute others for their soul's sake. God forgive them, and yield them a better light; for, oh how I wish that all men could feel death only as I feel it!" Such were the last words of Claude de l'Estang. They were perfectly audible and distinct to every one present, and they were spoken with the usual calm sweet simplicity of manner which had characterised all the latter part of his life. But after he had again paused for two or three minutes, he opened his lips as if to say something more, but no sound was heard. He instantly felt that such was the case, and ceased; but he feebly stretched forth his hand toward Clémence, who bent her head over it, and dewed it with her tears. When she raised her eyes, they fell upon the face of the dead. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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