The Pocket Bible or Christian the Printer Part 61

"Let us flee!" said Cornelia to her father and her betrothed, after responding to their demonstrations of tenderness. "The monk's cries reached the hall of the guards at the head of the corridor. I hear them coming. Do you hear those steps? The sound of those approaching voices?"

"We have nothing to fear. Your presence of mind, my dear girl, has insured our safe retreat. They will find it no easy task to enter the cell. The door is thick, the bolt solid," remarked the Franc-Taupin, examining and fastening more tightly the bolt with imperturbable calmness. "Cornelia, Antonicq, and you, Captain Mirant, descend to the aqueduct quickly, and wait for me just this side of the mine that I planted in the underground pa.s.sage, and near which Master Barbot and the sailors are waiting for our signal."

Turning to Serpentin, the apprentice, who also came in after Captain Mirant the Franc-Taupin said:

"Come here, my gay fellow--bring me the little machine and implements.

We shall serve up a peppery broth to the royalists."

Cornelia, her father and Antonicq hastened to descend the stairs of the underground pa.s.sage that the trap door masked. Hardly had they disappeared, leaving the Franc-Taupin and the apprentice behind in Fra Herve's cell, when they heard violent knocks given at the door, and a confused noise of voices calling out:

"Fra Herve! Fra Herve!"

The Marquis of Montbar was heard saying: "A minute ago he cried: 'Help!

Treason!' He now makes no answer. The witch may have strangled the reverend Father!"

And the voices outside continued to cry tumultuously: "Fra Herve! Fra Herve! We can not get in! The door is bolted from within. The devil take it! Open to us, Fra Herve! We come to help you!"

"Quick! Bring levers and an axe--or, better yet, let us break in the door!" the voice of the Marquis of Montbar was again heard to say. "Run for a company of my soldiers! We shall wait here. Hurry up!"

"Oh! Oh!" observed the Franc-Taupin, after silently listening to the observations from the other side of the door, to which he had glued his ears. "The royalists are inviting themselves in large numbers to the banquet that I am preparing for them! And why not? When there is broth for five guests, there is enough for ten, if the housekeeper is economical. Just wait, my friends! My broth is cooking! It is so toothsome that a single spoonful will do the work for twenty or thirty persons."

"Master Josephin, here are the implements and the little machine," said Serpentin in a low voice, as he drew out of a bag that he brought suspended from his shoulders and handed over to the Franc-Taupin a heavy iron box about one foot long and six inches high and wide. The box, filled full with powder, was pierced in the center by a narrow slit through which a sulphured fuse was inserted. The Franc-Taupin took in his hands the redoubtable petard, examined the structure of the door minutely, and after a moment's reflection inserted the iron box with no little difficulty under the lower hinge. The Franc-Taupin then rose, and patting the apprentice upon the cheek said to him in a low voice:

"Tell me, my lad, why do I place the little machine so tightly between the floor and the hinge?"

Serpentin reflected for a moment, scratched his ear, and then reeled off his answer after the fashion of a boy who recites his lesson:

"Master, you place the little machine in that way in order that, when it blows up, it may tear up the door along with the hinge; the torn up hinge will tear up the masonry in which it is fastened; the torn up masonry will tear up a part of the wall; and the torn up wall will bring down the ceiling. As a result of all this the debris will roll down upon the St. Bartholomew lambkins, whose flesh will have been scratched by the flying fragments of the little machine which will have been hurled in all directions, and will have whistled and ricocheted like artillery b.a.l.l.s."

"Wise--wise answer, my lad," observed the Franc-Taupin pinching the apprentice's ear with a satisfied look. "Continue to profit by my lessons in this manner, and you will become an accomplished miner, and you then will be able to contribute handsomely towards the scattering into fragments of a goodly number of papists and royalists. Now, off with you, hurry down the stone steps, and wait for me at the bottom."

Serpentin obeyed. The Franc-Taupin knelt down at the threshold of the door, took from his belt a horn of powder and spilt along the floor a sufficient quant.i.ty to quite cover up the fuse. Thereupon, retreating on his knees, he laid down a long train of powder. The train skirted Fra Herve's corpse and ended at the opening of the trap door, down which he descended. Josephin stopped on the stair so that only his head appeared above the level of the flooring. Listening in the direction of the door, behind which he could hear a confused noise of voices, he said to himself: "The Catholic vermin is swarming behind the door, but I still have time to cut my _twenty-fifth_ notch."

He took the little stick which he habitually carried hung on a string from a b.u.t.tonhole of his jacket, pulled out his dagger, and cutting into the wood, the aged soldier said:

"Hena, my sister's daughter, was plunged twenty-five times into the flames by the priests of the Church of Rome. I have just put to death my twenty-fifth Roman Catholic and Apostolic priest!"

As he murmured these words to himself, Josephin contemplated the corpse of Fra Herve, stretched out upon his back in a pool of blood, with stiffened arms, clenched fists and half bent knees. The light from the lamp shed its pale l.u.s.ter upon the monk's face upon which the agony of death was still stamped. The jaws were close set; foam oozed out at the lips; the corpse's gla.s.sy and fixed eyes still seemed to preserve their threatening aspect from the depth of their cavities.

"Oh!" exclaimed the Franc-Taupin with a terrible sigh, "How many times, alas! how very many times, seated at the hearth of my poor sister, when the unfortunate being who lies there dead and still foaming at his mouth with rage was a little boy, how often I took him and his younger brother Odelin upon my knees! caressed their little blonde heads! kissed their plump cheeks! Joining in their infantine amus.e.m.e.nts, I entertained them, I gladdened them with my Franc-Taupin songs! In those days Herve equalled his brother in the gentleness of his character and the kindness of his heart. The two were the joy, the pride, the hope of my sister and of Christian! But one day a monk, a demon, Fra Girard, took possession of the mind of unhappy Herve, dominated it, led it astray, corrupted it, and debased it forever! Oh! priests of Rome! priests of Rome! A curse upon you! Alas! out of the sweet boy, whom I loved so dearly, you made a bloodthirsty fanatic, a wrathful madman, a fratricide--and it became my duty to smite him with my dagger--him--him--my own sister's child!"

The Franc-Taupin was drawn from his revery by the ringing sound of blows struck with maces and the b.u.t.ts of arquebuses against the door from without, and splintering its woodwork, while, rising above the tumult, the voice of the Marquis of Montbar was heard crying: "To work! Strike hard! Harder still! Break in the door!"

"Well! The hour has come for the St. Bartholomew lambkins to dance in the air!" said the Franc-Taupin. Without hurrying, without losing his calmness, he pulled from his pocket a tinder box, a wick and a flint and steel. Striking upon the flint with the iron, he hummed between his teeth the old song that the memories of Odelin's and Herve's infancy had recalled to his mind:

"A Franc-Taupin had an ash-tree bow, All eaten with worms, and all knotted its cord; His arrow was made out of paper, and plumed, And tipped at the end with a capon's spur.

_Derideron, vignette on vignon! Derideron!_"

During the song of the old soldier, who calmly continued to strike at the flint, the blows aimed at the door redoubled in violence. Presently it was heard to crack, yield, break, and one of its fragments fell inside the apartment. Immediately thereupon Josephin applied the lighted wick to the train of powder and vanished underground letting down the heavy trap door over his head. The train of powder took fire, shot along its course as rapid as a flash of lightning, and reached the fuse of the petard, which exploded with a great crash at the very moment when the door, finally broken through, offered a pa.s.sage to the Marquis of Montbar, closely followed by his henchmen. Like himself, they were blown up, mutilated or killed by the fragments of the iron box which flew into pieces. The masonry of the door, being torn down by the explosion, ripped the rest of the wall after it, bringing down the ceiling which fell in a heap upon the heads of the royalists.

Cornelia, Antonicq, Master Barbot, Captain Mirant and six resolute mariners who accompanied him but whose help was not needed, were soon joined at the bottom of the aqueduct by the apprentice and the Franc-Taupin. Josephin forthwith blew up the mine that he had laid at that place in order completely to obstruct the pa.s.sage of the royalists in case they attempted to pursue the fugitives. The whole party soon arrived safe and sound at La Roch.e.l.le, where they met Louis Rennepont and his wife, a prey to mortal anxiety upon the issue of the enterprise, which had that morning been planned, upon Theresa's bringing back from the beach the news of Cornelia's capture and reservation for the Duke of Anjou.

The b.l.o.o.d.y defeat, sustained by the royalists at the a.s.sault of the Bastion of the Evangelium, was the presage of the raising of the siege of La Roch.e.l.le. After two other stubbornly contested encounters, at which the royalist forces were again repulsed, the Duke of Anjou commissioned several seigneurs as parliamentarians to the Rochelois with propositions of peace. The majority of the City Council took the stand that the Huguenots refused to lay down arms until a new royal edict consecrated their rights and their liberty. The minority of the City Council, aware of the worthlessness of all royal edicts, favored breaking with royalty for all time. The view of the majority prevailed.

Commissioners were appointed by both sides, to agree upon the bases of a new edict. The Catholic commissioners were the Seigneur of La Vauguyon, Rene of Villequier, Francis of La Baume, the Count of Suze, the Seigneur of Malicorne, Marshal Montluc, Armand of Gontaut-Biron, and the Count of Retz. The Rochelois commissioners were two bourgeois, Morrisson the Mayor, and Captain Gargouillaud. The reformers stoutly maintained their position, and stipulated for the same, not in the name of their own city only, but in the name of all the reformers of the Protestant Republican Union. These stipulations were subsequently rejected by the Union, so soon as they became known, upon the just ground of the rest of the Union's not having been consulted, and of its declining to recognize the royal authority. Thus, thanks to their bold insurrection and their heroic resistance the Rochelois imposed upon Charles IX the new edict of July 15, 1573. This edict consecrated and extended all the rights previously conquered by the reformers. A clause in this edict, which was a crushing doc.u.ment to the Catholic party, provided: "That all armed insurrections which took place AFTER THE NIGHT OF AUGUST 23, 1572, are amnestied." Thus Charles IX was made to admit that the reformers had justly drawn the sword to avenge the crime of St. Bartholomew's night!

Thus the siege of La Roch.e.l.le was disgracefully raised by the Catholic army. This expedition cost the King immense sums of money, and he lost in the course of the several a.s.saults upon the city, and also from sickness, about twenty-two thousand men. Among the seigneurs and captains killed during the siege were the Duke of Aumale, Clermont, Tallard, Cosseins, Du Guast, etc., besides over three hundred subaltern officers.

Thus you see, Oh, sons of Joel! the glorious issue to the Rochelois of the siege of their city once more consecrates this truth, so often inscribed in the annals of our plebeian family: "Never falter! Let us struggle, let us battle without flagging. It is fatedly decreed that, only and ever through force, arms in hand, through INSURRECTION, we can conquer our freedom and our rights, which are ever denied to us, ignored and violated by our eternal foes--ROYALTY AND THE CHURCH OF ROME."

EPILOGUE.

On this day, the 29th of September, 1609, I, Antonicq Lebrenn, now in my sixty-first year, close, on our farm of Karnak, this legend of our family, which is the continuation of the narrative written and bequeathed to us by my grandfather Christian the printer and friend of Robert Estienne.

Immediately upon the raising of the siege of La Roch.e.l.le I married Cornelia Mirant. Shortly after I put into execution a project that I had long been fondly nursing--that of moving to Brittany and establishing myself in the neighborhood of the cradle of my family. Before leaving La Roch.e.l.le, Colonel Plouernel, who recovered from his wounds sustained in the siege, renewed his offer of leasing out to me a farm belonging to the seigniorial estate of Mezlean, a patrimony of his wife's father, and known as the Karnak farm by reason of its being in the close neighborhood of the druid stones that bear that name. These stones are still extant, ranged in wide avenues, as they stood in the days of Julius Caesar, when our ancestress Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen, offered herself to the G.o.ds as a holocaust, in the hope of causing them to render the arms of the Gauls victorious in their impending struggle for independence. I accepted Colonel Plouernel's offer, an offer that also pleased Cornelia and her father, who, as he continued almost constantly to travel by water between La Roch.e.l.le and Vannes, a port located near Karnak, foresaw, as happened in fact, that he would spend near us all the time that he did not spend aboard ship. I sold my armorer's shop. Leaving my sister Theresa and her husband Louis Rennepont at La Roch.e.l.le, where the latter practiced the profession of law, and taking with us my uncle the Franc-Taupin, who promised to himself the pleasure of rocking our children on his knees and singing to them his Franc-Taupin songs, as he had done to my father Odelin, my ill-starred aunt Hena, and my uncle Herve of sad memory, we departed from La Roch.e.l.le and settled down on our farm of Karnak on October 20 of the year 1573.

My sister Theresa and her husband Louis Rennepont still reside in the old Protestant city. Every year they come to see us. Thanks to the numerous trips that his profession compelled him to make to Paris, my brother-in-law came in contact with several Huguenots who were well informed on current events. His conversations with them, together with extracts from several books that were published concerning leading public men and important occurrences, furnished him with copious materials which he left with me. These materials enable me here to make a summary sketch of the leading events since the siege of La Roch.e.l.le was raised:

The edict of pacification of La Roch.e.l.le was not wholly satisfactory to the Huguenots of the other provinces. The example of the Low Countries, then in successful revolt against the monarchic-clerical power of Spain, and organized upon the republican pattern, inspired their brothers in France to renewed efforts. The "Politicals" gained new recruits every day. The Prince of Conde, ashamed of his act of desertion, fled the court and issued a manifesto from Strasburg repudiating his abjuration.

Measures were in train to renew the war, and to overthrow Charles IX, when his death gave a new turn to affairs.

The monster expired in 1574, barely twenty-four years of age and haunted by his b.l.o.o.d.y deeds. "Oh! nurse, nurse!" he would cry in agonies of terror; "Oh! nurse, how much blood--it is St. Bartholomew's blood! Oh!

how many murders--how many victims struggling to escape under the sword.

I see them--Oh! what wicked councillors I had! Oh, G.o.d! Oh, G.o.d! have mercy upon me!"[85]

Charles IX was followed by his brother the Duke of Anjou, who, in the meantime, had been elected King of Poland. Apprized by his mother of his brother's decease, he fled his Polish kingdom, and mounted the French throne under the name of Henry III. True to his family traditions, Henry III sought at first to violate the Edict of La Roch.e.l.le. Finding this act of treachery unfeasible, he vacillated between extreme reaction and progress. This course earned for him the suspicion of the Catholic clergy and he was a.s.sa.s.sinated by a Dominican monk, James Clement, in 1589.

War again broke out, with Henry of Bearn now at the head of the Huguenots, to whom he returned during the reign of Henry III. Henry of Bearn now claimed the crown by inheritance as Henry IV, besieged Paris, and was finally crowned, but not until he once more abjured Protestantism. His reign was benign and favorable to the Reformation. In 1598 the Edict of Nantes was signed, granting the Huguenots absolute freedom of conscience. The policy of Henry IV enraged the priesthood, and he also fell a victim to the a.s.sa.s.sin's knife. The a.s.sa.s.sin's name was Francis Ravaillac. "Nine days after the death of Henry IV, on Tuesday, May 23, 1610, an altercation took place between Monsieur Leomenie and Father Cotton in full council. Leomenie said to the Jesuit that it was he _and his Society of Jesus that murdered the King_. On that same day, Ravaillac, being interrogated by the commission, answered _in accordance with the maxims of the Jesuits Mariana, Beca.n.u.s and others, whose writings recommend the killing of a tyrant_."

The death of Henry IV conjured away the danger that Rome, the Empire and Spain saw themselves threatened with--the Christian Republic and the perpetual peace of Europe. The fresh murder, also committed at the instigation of the disciples of Loyola, had fatal consequences. But sooner or later Right triumphs over Wrong, Justice over Iniquity.

Therefore, Oh, sons of Joel! no faltering. Some day the Universal Republic will unfurl the red banner of freedom, and will break the yoke both of the Roman Church and of this royalty that has oppressed Gaul for so many centuries.

As to our own family, Cornelia Mirant with whom I have now been married thirty-seven years, gave me after twenty years of our wedded life, a son whom I have named Stephan. We have lived on our farm near the sacred stones of Karnak, and not far from Craigh, the high hill upon which, according to our family traditions, stood the house of our ancestor Joel in the days of Julius Caesar. My uncle the Franc-Taupin remained with us to the end of his long and eventful life. He died on the 12th of November, 1589.

My brother-in-law Louis Rennepont continues to exercise his profession at La Roch.e.l.le. The youngest of his sons, Marius Rennepont, embraced the career of merchant mariner and sailed away, when still very young, on board a merchant vessel commanded by one of Captain Mirant's friends.

Captain Mirant died in 1593. That same year we lost our old friend Master Barbot, the boilermaker of the isle of Rhe.

I preserved amicable relations to the end with Colonel Plouernel, since the battle of Roche-la-Belle the head of his house. Shortly before his death we visited upon his invitation the old Castle of Plouernel, where our ancestor Den-Brao the mason was buried alive together with other serfs in the donjon constructed by themselves, and out of which Fergan the Quarryman, Den-Brao's son, rescued his own child, a poor boy whose blood was to a.s.sist the incantations of Azenor the Pale, the mistress of Neroweg VI. Nothing is left to-day of that feudal edifice but imposing ruins. Its place is now taken by a magnificent castle built in the style of the Renaissance, and raised at the foot of the mountain. Colonel Plouernel's son remained faithful to the Reformed religion, but, after his death, his son abjured Protestantism and took up his residence at the court of Louis XIII, the successor of Henry IV, with whom he became a favorite. The new head of the family never returned to his own castle, which, together with the vast domains attached to it, is ruled by the bailiffs of the seigniories of Plouernel and Mezlean.

Once, on the occasion of a trip to the port of Vannes, I met a traveler just arrived from Germany, who informed me of the death of Prince Charles of Gerolstein, a descendant of one of the branches of our plebeian family whose ancestor was Gaelo, one of the companions of old Rolf, the chief of the Northman pirates. Prince Charles left a son behind, heir of his princ.i.p.ality, who remains faithful to the Reformed religion.

Our life has run peaceful and happy at this place. We cultivate our fields, and they satisfy our wants. My son Stephan, now sixteen years of age, helps me in my field labors. He is of a kind, timid and diffident disposition, although born of so intrepid a mother as Cornelia. He will, I hope, live peacefully here, unless the civil discords, which already begin to threaten the minority of Louis XIII, should extend into Brittany.

I shall here close this narrative which my grandfather Christian the printer began under the reign of Francis I. I shall join it to the archives and relics of our family together with the pocket Bible printed by my grandfather, and which his daughter Hena, baptized in religion Sister St. Frances-in-the-Tomb, held in her hands before she was plunged twenty-five times into the flames on the 21st of January, 1535, under the eyes of King Francis I, to the greater glory of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.