The Huguenot Part 44

This is indeed a blessing and a comfort; a blessing to see that there are some faithful even to the last, a comfort and a joy to find that she on whose truth and steadfastness I had fixed such hopes, has not deceived me;--and yet," he exclaimed, while Clemence gazed upon him with the tears rolling rapidly over her cheeks, and the sobs struggling hard for utterance, "and yet, why, oh why have you come here? why have you risked so much, my child, to soothe the few short hours that to-morrow's noon shall see at an end?"

"Oh, dear friend," said Clemence, kneeling down beside the pallet, "could I do otherwise, when I was in this very town, than strive to see you, my guide, my instructor, my teacher in right, my warner of the path that I ought to shun? Could I do otherwise, when I thought that there was none to soothe, that there was none to console you, that in the darkness and the agony of these awful hours there was not one voice to speak comfort, or to say one word of sympathy?"

"My child, you are mistaken," replied the old man, striving to raise himself upon his arm, and sinking back again with a low groan. "There has been one to comfort, there has been one to support me. He, to whom I go, has never abandoned me: neither in the midst of insult and degradation; no, nor in the moment of agony and torture, nor in those long and weary hours that have pa.s.sed since they bore these ancient limbs from the rack on which they had bound them, and cast them down here to endure the time in darkness, in pain, and in utter helplessness, till at noon to-morrow the work will be accomplished on the b.l.o.o.d.y wheel, and the prisoner in this ruined clay will receive a joyful summons to fly far to his Redeemer's throne."

The tears rained down from the eyes of Clemence de Marly like the drops of a summer shower; but she dared not trust herself to speak: and after pausing to take breath, which came evidently with difficulty, the old man went on, "But still I say, Clemence, still I say, why have you come hither? You know not the danger, you know not the peril in which you are."

"What!" cried Clemence, "should I fear danger, should I fear peril in such a case as this? Let them do to me what they will, let them do to me what G.o.d permits them to do. To have knelt here beside you, to have spoken one word of comfort to you, to have wiped the drops from that venerable brow in this awful moment, would be a sufficient recompense to Clemence de Marly for all that she could suffer."

"G.o.d forbid," cried the pastor, "that they should make you suffer as they can. You know not what it is, my child--you know not what it is!

If it were possible that an immortal spirit, armed with G.o.d's truth, should consent unto a lie, that torture might well produce so awful a falling off! But you recall me, my child, to what I was saying. I have not been alone, I have not been uncomforted even here. The word of G.o.d has been with me in my heart, the Spirit of G.o.d has sustained my spirit, the sufferings of my Saviour have drowned my sufferings, the hope of immortality has made me bear the utmost pains of earth. When they had taken away the printed words from before mine eyes, when they had shut out the light of heaven, so that I could not have seen, even if the holy book had been left, they thought they had deprived me of my solace. But they forgot that every word thereof was in my heart; that it was written there, with the bright memories of my early days; that it was traced there with the calm recollections of my manhood; that it was printed there with sufferings and with tears; that it was graven there with smiles and joys; that with every act of my life, and thought of my past being, those words of the revealed will of G.o.d were mingled, and never could be separated; and it came back to me even here, and blessed me in the dungeon; it came back to me before the tribunal of my enemies, and gave me a mouth and wisdom; it came back to me on the torturing rack, and gave me strength to endure without a groan; it came back to me even as I was lying mangled here, and made the wheel of to-morrow seem a blessed resting-place."

"Alas, alas!" cried Clemence, "when I see you here; when I see you thus suffering; when I see you thus the sport of cruelty and persecution, I feel that I have judged too harshly of poor Albert, in regard to his taking arms against the oppressors; I feel that perhaps, like him, I should have thus acted, even though I called the charge of ingrat.i.tude upon my head."

"And is he free, then? is he free?" demanded the pastor, eagerly.

"He is free," replied Clemence, "and, as we hear, in arms against the King."

"Oh, entreat him to lay them down," exclaimed the pastor; "beseech him not to attempt it Tell him that ruin and death can be the only consequences: tell him that the Protestant church is at an end in France: tell him that flight to lands where the pure faith is known and loved is the only hope: tell him that resistance is destruction to him, and to all others. Tell him so, my child, tell him so from me: tell him so--but, hark!" he continued, "what awful sound is that?" for even while he was speaking, and apparently close to the spot where the dungeon was situated, a sharp explosion took place, followed by a mult.i.tude of heavy blows given with the most extraordinary rapidity.

No voices were distinguished for some minutes; and the blows continued without a moment's cessation, thundering one upon the other with a vehemence and force which seemed to shake the whole building.

"It is surely," said Clemence, "somebody attacking the prison door.

Perhaps, oh Heaven! perhaps it is some one trying to deliver you."

"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed the old man; "Heaven forbid that they should madly rush to such an attempt for the purpose of saving, for a few short hours, this wretched frame from that death which will be a relief. Hark, do you not hear cries and shouts?"

Clemence listened, and she distinctly heard many voices apparently elevated, but at a distance, while the sound of the blows continued thundering upon what was evidently the door of the prison, and a low murmur, as if of persons speaking round, joined with the s.p.a.ce to make the farther cries indistinct. A pause succeeded for a moment or two; but then came the sound of galloping horse, and then a sharp discharge of musketry, instantly followed by the loud report of fire-arms from a spot immediately adjacent to the building. Clemence clasped her hands in terror, while her attendant Maria, filled with the dangerous situation in which they were placed, ran and pushed the door of the dungeon, idly endeavouring to force it open.

In the mean while, for two or three minutes nothing was heard but shouts and cries, with two or three musket shots; then came a volley, then another, then two or three more shots, then the charging of horse mingled with cries, and shouts, and screams, while still the thundering blows continued, and at length a loud and tremendous crash was heard shaking the whole building. A momentary pause succeeded, the blows were no longer heard, and the next sound was the rush of many feet. A moment of doubt and apprehension, of anxiety, nay of terror, followed. Clemence was joyful at the thought of the pastor's deliverance; but what, she asked herself, was to be her own fate, even if the purpose of those who approached was the good man's liberation.

Another volley from without broke in upon the other sounds; but in an instant after the rushing of the feet approached the door where they were, and manifold voices were heard speaking.

"It is locked," cried one; "where can the villain be with the keys?"

"Get back," cried another loud voice; "give me but a fair stroke at it."

A blow like thunder followed; and, seeming to fall upon the locks and bolts of the door, dashed them at once to pieces, driving a part of the wood-work into the dungeon itself. Two more blows cast the whole ma.s.s wrenched from its hinges to the ground. A mult.i.tude of people rushed in, some of them bearing lights, all armed to the teeth, some b.l.o.o.d.y, some begrimed with smoke and gunpowder; fierce excitement flashing from every eye, and eager energy upon every face.

"He is here, he is here," they shouted to the others without. "Make way, make way, let us bring him out."

"But who are these women?" cried another voice.

"Friends, friends, dear friends, come to comfort me," cried the pastor.

"Blessings on the tongue that so often has taught us," cried other voices, while several ran forward and kissed his hands with tears; "blessings on the heart that has guided and directed us."

"Stand back, my friends, stand back," cried a gigantic man, with an immense sledge-hammer in his hand, "let me break the chain;" and at a single blow he dashed the strong links to atoms.

"Now bring them all along!" he cried, "now bring them all along! Take up the good man on the bed, and carry him out."

"Bring them all along! bring them all along!" cried a thousand voices, and without being listened to in any thing that she had to say, Clemence, clinging as closely as she could to her attendant, was hurried out along the narrow pa.s.sages of the prison, which were now flashing with manifold lights, into the dark little square which was found filled with people. Mult.i.tudes of lights were in all the windows round, and, covering the prison, a strong band of men were drawn up facing the opposite street. A number of persons on horseback were in front of the band, and, by the lights which were flashing from the torches in the street, one commanding figure appeared to the eyes of Clemence at the very moment she was brought forth from the doors of the prison, stretching out his hand towards the men behind him, and shouting, in a voice that she could never forget, though now that voice was raised into tones of loud command, such as she had never heard it use. "Hold! hold! the man that fires a shot dies! Not one unnecessary shot, not one unnecessary blow!"

Clemence strove to turn that way, and to fly towards the hotel where Monsieur de Rouvre lodged; but she was borne away by the stream, which seemed to be now retreating from the town. At the same moment an armed man laid gently hold of her cloak, seeing her efforts to free herself, and said,--

"This way, lady, this way. It is madness for you to think to go back now. You are with friends. You are with one who will protect you with his life, for your kindness to the murdered and the lost."

She turned round to gaze upon him, not recollecting his voice; and his face, in the indistinct light, seemed to her like a face remembered in a dream, connected with the awful scene of the preaching on the moor, and the dark piece of water, and the dying girl killed by the shot of the dragoons. Ere she could ask any questions, however, the stream of people hurried her on, and in a few minutes she was out of Thouars, and in the midst of the open country round.

CHAPTER VII.

THE DEATH OF THE PERSECUTED.

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 Clemence 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."

Clemence 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, Clemence 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 pa.s.sing 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 ma.s.ses 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 a.s.sembled 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 pa.s.sed between Clemence 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 Clemence, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Clemence 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 Clemence 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage 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 gra.s.s, 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 Clemence 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. G.o.d 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 a.s.suredly 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."