The Rebellion in the Cevennes, an Historical Novel Volume I Part 4

"Is it not true," said Christine pa.s.sionately while she stood in the middle of the room, "that such conduct is great, heroic and n.o.ble? have our enlightened times come, that we should experience such things? oh, monster! dare you mention the words friendship and love? have you the arrogance to wish to pa.s.s for estimable and benevolent? yes, you are also a contemptible creature like your despicable a.s.sociates, yet you must have felt, seen, or in your dreams at least experienced what a dark destiny poverty, sorrow, necessity, and holy compa.s.sion is, these dest.i.tute parents, these hungry children; the mother, who with scanty and meagre food entered her hut, how their eyes sought hers imploringly; how her glance of consolation shone in the eyes of her children; how the small supply spread a heaven of tranquil abundance and mutual love! Had you but the eye of an imprisoned swallow; had you only understood your dog when he begs some crumbs from you: you would have trampled your cross of honour under foot rather than have done that deed. Man only can sink so low; the beast which tears itself is gentle and innocent; a spark of ancient heaven shines still brighter in its savage state than in our more degenerate nature. There are tales for children in which a timid girl is made to kiss a scaly dragon in order to disenchant him; but I could caress the tiger, extend my hand and offer my lips to the hideous hyena, rather than polute myself by being friendly towards you, for I should fear from a woman to be transformed into a dragon. And yet,--as they pa.s.sed here, exchanging farewell glances, these children, who yet knew nothing of life, and were slaughtered at this tender age--it was indeed as if the last judgment with all its terrors burst upon my heart; behold, I could have kissed the dust from your and your executioner's shoes in the public streets, only to have saved them! I flew to you, I found you not. Yes, most a.s.suredly, all that was felt in those bitter moments by these wretched creatures is now changed for them into peace and blessedness; yes, they have forgotten this life and you, if we do not madly pray to a tyrant instead of to the G.o.d of goodness."

"You are mad yourself, miserable woman," exclaimed the Marshal vehemently, "to forget yourself thus--by heaven! you should be shut up in a madhouse. But, by my honour, you shall never see me again."

"Never! never!" cried Christine, with flashing eyes, "Oh, already this is happiness and gain! no, great hero, never, or if you should feel a desire to come, a large vessel filled with salt shall be upset at your feet, as people strew salt over the places where the cursed have dwelt."

The Marshal trembled so violently with rage, that he was not able to gird on his sword; he took it under his arm and left the house without uttering a single word. The captain had already slipped away, when the conversation took this unexpected turn; the aunts curtesied, mutually embarra.s.sed, and retired also, as their niece paid no attention to them; the latter made a sign to the servants to withdraw, and released and exhausted, she fell prostrate on the ground, while tears burst from her eyes so unrestrainedly, as if she would thus weeping pa.s.s away and expire.

Edmond, much embarra.s.sed, drew near, she saw him not, he spoke a few words, but she heard him not. "Dearest," he exclaimed at length, "you kill me, you kill yourself! these powerful shocks will destroy your const.i.tution." "And were it not as well?" said she in a feeble voice, without restraining her tears, "look on me, here on the ground, weep with me; all good men should now perish." "Rise, lady," said Edmond, while he a.s.sisted her, "if I must not believe that your reason has deserted you."

"It has certainly suffered," said she somewhat tranquillised, while she stood by him, and continued, "otherwise would I have seen and endured these things as others do: it is even so, I have had a glance of the sorrows of the world and of the enormity of mankind and can never more jest and smile with them as formerly, I am awakened from the mock existence and therefore you consider me mad; but you, Edmond, you, among so many, should have known me better!"

"I am yet as in a dream," said Edmond, "how could you thus give way to your grief, how so rudely wound the feelings of the Marshal, even though you were in the right? I no longer recognise you, although I am acquainted with you for more than a year. You were never thus."

"Always Edmond," sobbed she, "never otherwise, only that my grief has burst out too violently. Why do you not understand me? Is your heart incased in some hard metal that no feeling can penetrate it? Do not believe that, on that account, I have neglected my ma.s.s or vesper to implore the G.o.d of mercy to enlighten these wretches and to succour these poor persecuted creatures, and that he may also strengthen myself? Mark me, Edmond, although I do not belong to the community of Huguenots, but if all these murderers were extirpated in a second by one tremendous blow, our church should inst.i.tute a festival of thanksgiving that this stigma was removed from her, and her holy banner would be no more dishonoured."

"I understand you now," said Edmond.--They had stepped into the antechamber, "by heaven, I shall soon give up all society and rather hold communion with stones than with men." He took his gun indignantly from the wall, "How wild, Edmond, how obstinate," said she softly, "is it then not permitted that men should understand, in love at least, their confused Babilonean language? disembodied spirits only love--and you say indeed that I have a place in your heart!"

"Love!" exclaimed Edmond, "accursed word! execrable equivocation and madness of mankind! this old misunderstanding, love, this detestable riddle of the sphynx, that no one has unriddled and for which thousands have bled--d.a.m.nation!" He gnashed his teeth and dashed his gun on the ground, so that it went off and the shot pa.s.sed through the ceiling.

The women and servants of the Lady Christine hastened towards her; he looked at her, she was not injured and smiled at him sorrowfully as he rushed out of the door and to his parting salute only answered by a strange shake of the head, so that her dark tresses were loosened and shaded her face. She pressed them to her weeping eyes and went silently to the garden and out into the fresh night air.

CHAPTER III.

The Lord of Beauvais was walking up and down in his garden conversing on various subjects with his friend; as often as they pa.s.sed the little open summer house, Eveline called out to them and directed their attention to the building, which she was trying to imitate with cards.

The Counsellor of Parliament was violently struggling with his feelings, and his friend was trying in vain to tranquillise him.

"I have never yet seen you so obstinate," said the latter, at length, almost impatiently; "what is it then at last, Edmond is a young man like many others, let him exhaust his ardour, at a later period he will afford you satisfaction, for do we not recognise in him strength, character, and a n.o.ble heart, and these must certainly produce something good hereafter."

"It is only towards you that I am so communicative," answered the father, "I control my impatience in the presence of others and especially before my son, but much as I must love him, I cannot partic.i.p.ate in your hopes. Were he only hasty and inconsiderate, all might be well for I have been so too, I would even look favourably upon his extravagant, overstrained religious zeal and all connected with it; for early in life my own heart singularly experienced these feelings; if with all this deep-rooted self will, this violent excess in every thing, he would only add an inclination to activity, if he would but instruct himself, if he would occupy himself in any way. I feel too well that he presents but a disfigured resemblance of a part of my own youth, but inwardly he is most unlike me, and in some measure inimically opposed to me; thus unhappily is the neglected education of his childhood avenged. You know well my old friend how much and almost how culpably he was beloved by my deceased wife, how extravagantly she admired every idea, impulse and peculiarity of the child, and that Abbe his tutor also, who only excited his imagination and nourished it with legends and miracles; his youthful mind was thus dazzled and rendered incapable of discerning truth and reality, it accustomed him to indulge freely in all the emotions of his heart and to consider them unerring and most exalted. Imperceptibly a contempt for all, who did not coincide with him, crept into his mind, he looked upon them as cold and perverse, and in his zealous hatred, he believed himself infinitely superior to them. I was too weak, too irresolute to remedy the evil while it was yet time, I flattered myself, that it would not take root so easily, and when at last my suffering wife, whose feelings I ever feared to distress, died in giving birth to my youngest child, it was too late."

"All that may be true," rejoined his friend, "but not so bad however as you consider it, stupidity and madness are alone incurable; a vein of good runs through all really excitable natures, and the life of these irritable and violent men is spent in continual struggles between good and evil, so that the best part may be extracted and shine forth glorified."

"You speak," said the Counsellor, "like a physician and chemist, you deny that the soul can appropriate to itself immutable perversities which afterwards const.i.tute its life."

"So long as a man is young," rejoined the former, "I despair of nothing and still less of your son, for he has never given himself up to dissipation. This only and bad company ruin a man entirely, and the exhaustion is not confined to the body, it also causes vacuity of mind, it closes up every avenue to the heart, so that, finally, neither reason nor understanding, nor any feeling for morality or honour remains. Those are such as are incurable. You reproach yourself for the indulgent education you have given him, it is not in that alone, however, my old friend, that you have neglected it; you complain of your son's want of activity, but you have yourself excluded him from every means of exercising it. When he had grown up, he was destined to follow your profession; he had, however, an antipathy to become a lawyer, and then declared he would rather be shorn and become a monk. I cannot censure him for this, forgive me, if I am too frank. He desired to go to sea, you were inflexibly opposed to it: then he wished to try his fortune in the army, our efforts to win your approbation to this were equally ineffectual. I pity the young man; it is terrible for a hair-brained fellow to be irrecoverably destined to sit behind a table, poring over acts and processes. If you have been too indulgent formerly, you are now a great deal too severe towards him."

"You do me wrong, infatuated man," exclaimed the Counsellor vehemently; "it was not exacting too much to require of him to pursue my profession, in which I have been so useful myself, it is an honourable and benevolent one to mankind and corresponds with the n.o.ble freedom of our sentiments; sufficient time remained to stroll about, to read, to make verses and to indulge his pa.s.sion for the chase. I was then convinced that naval and military service were only chosen by him, that he might escape from my paternal eye. I could not persuade myself that he chose them as his profession with foresight and reasonable will. It grieved me to lose him entirely; only too often ill-advised youths seek these pretexts to sink into a busy idleness: for what is the soldier in peace? At that time we had no war. I agree with you in what you say about the dissipated life of our young men; but, perhaps, you will laugh, when I a.s.sert that this pa.s.sion for hunting is equally insupportable to me. As soon as I perceived this rising within him, I considered him as almost lost, for all young people, that I have ever yet seen, entirely devoted to this occupation, are idlers, who cannot again settle to any business; this seeming occupation with its exertions and sacrifices teaches them to despise time, they dream away their lives until the hour, that calls them up again to follow the hare and the woodc.o.c.k. And besides the penchant he has to rove about the mountains, he frequently does not return for three or four days together, he then walks about the house without rest or quiet, opens a dozen books, begins a letter, or a stanza, scolds the servants and then rushes out again; and thus pa.s.ses day after day, and week after week."

The doctor looked at him, smiled, and then, after a pause, said: "Let him alone, he will soon become tame, I have no fears on that account, and why do you make yourself uneasy, my good friend? you are quite rich enough; and even if he earns nothing, if he only learns to take care of his fortune, to enjoy with moderation his income and to do good to others, for it often occurs that useful occupations are perilous undertakings. I understand perfectly all that you represent to me, and am only surprised that you do not understand it yourself. Give him the lady of Castelnau, and both will become reasonable, you will be a grandfather and obtain another toy to amuse you."

"Never!" exclaimed the Counsellor of Parliament with the utmost vehemence, "shall that take place as long as I live; it is she, who bewilders him, who torments him, and yet nourishes all his prejudices.

Never speak to me of that again."

"You do the girl injustice," said the doctor, "strange she is, indeed, but good, and out of the two excentricities a tolerable understanding would arise." At this moment the garden-gate was closed violently, Edmond entered, and the conversation ended. They saluted one another, and seated themselves in the summerhouse with the little girl.

"Brother," cried Eveline, "it is all your fault, that my beautiful house is knocked down. He causes nothing but misfortune." Edmond was in a kindly mood, and said: "build it up again, my sister, and you will have so much the more to do."--"Yes," answered she, "if I were allowed to be as idle as you, it would matter very little, but I have yet to sew to-day, and then to write and cipher, but you have nothing to care for, and that is why you give so much trouble to people."

"What have I done besides upsetting your splendid card-house?" asked Edmond.

"Look papa," cried the child, "he has already forgotten that he shot dead his lady love; Oh, he will kill us all soon, and when he has done that, he will be satisfied."

Edmond frowned; the father reprimanded the child's rudeness and the doctor gave a different turn to the conversation. "Now, dear Edmond,"

said he, addressing the young man, "what do you say to the news, that the Camisards, in spite of their late defeat, still hold out against the king's troops, that they are masters of the plain, that an English fleet will land in Getta, that a battle is said to have been lost in Germany, and that, if only the half of all this be true, we are thinking how we shall make friends with the rebels, that they may not put an end to us."

"Do not jest," said Edmond, "our country has never yet been in such danger, so long however as such gentle proceedings are used towards these rebels, we are really standing on a precipice, if the foreign foe should succeed in landing even a small army and ally itself with them."

"Do you call their treatment mild?" asked the Counsellor.

"I do not speak," continued the son, "of the executions, the ill-treatment and all these cruelties against individuals, they are severe enough; that even women and children are not spared is enough to inspire all mankind with horror. I mean the dreadful manner in which the war is carried on, so that already a royal army has been destroyed without being able to arrive at the root of the evil itself. Their warfare consists in skirmishes, in the mountains where the strange soldier is almost always more easily entrapped; the rebels are succoured by the mountaineers, who provide them with troops and provisions, by the war these rude men learn to make war, and although they cannot succeed in repeating these attacks in full force, and from all points, at the same time, with military skill and discipline, yet it is evident that the evil will rage still longer and perhaps they may finally conquer."

"You appear to have changed your mind about your Marshal," said the Lord of Beauvais.

"My Marshal?" resumed the son, "he is the King's-marshal, and under this t.i.tle he serves as a representative of his majesty to us all, although the better part of the people desire that it should not be so."

"Would to heaven," said the doctor, "that he only belonged to one of us; I at least would make a vigourous attack upon him with pills and rhubarb, so that he would soon make room for us; he is the only man against whom I have ever before felt a grudge. Has he not in the s.p.a.ce of eight months sentenced to death more men than all the doctors in the province would have been able to do. All those yonder in the mountains, Cavalier and Roland included, he considers merely as his future patients, and like an ignorant empiric he invariably prescribes one and the same remedy for the most opposite const.i.tutions. Yesterday, he again caused twelve prophets to be hanged, who all affirmed, with their latest breath, that a term would be soon put to his power. What is your opinion, Ned, about this gift of prophecy, of these ecstasies and convulsions?"

"It will not be believed in foreign lands," said the latter, "that such things are practised, that many reasonable men speak of them as of a mystery, and that our calender dates 1703."

"Let it date!" said Vila, "it seems then, my child, that you understand the affair, inform me a little on the subject, for I do not understand it at all, or, at least, I cannot express in appropriate words that which has from time to time pa.s.sed through my mind."

"What is there to understand in it?" said the young man impetuously, "the grossest and most absurd deception that has ever ventured to present itself to the mind."

"Not though in the sense in which you take it," said the doctor, "I have observed many in the prisons, they are very unlike one another and merit truly a serious consideration. I have never yet been in any of their a.s.semblies in the open air; or in barns; but I am resolved to a.s.sist at their service yonder there at St. Hilaire, and if you give me a kind word Ned, you shall have permission to accompany me. I have brought some peasants clothing in my carriage, so that no one may recognise us."

"I will accompany you, my good sir," said Edmond, "to make you ashamed of having considered these people of any kind of importance. We shall then be able to be more of one mind concerning this ridiculous deception."

"You shall not go my son," said the father, "what can this curiosity avail? I do not understand you, my friend; are not these unfortunate men miserable enough? must idle curiosity and petulant caprice also make a mockery of them? and what, if the oppressed should be betrayed, or arrested, as it has already so frequently happened, and all ma.s.sacred without distinction, who then will have been the dupe to have slyly insinuated himself among them? or should they recognise or entertain suspicions of you?

"Does not the old patron himself talk already like a Camisard?" said the doctor, laughing, "in short, do you not verily believe that the prophets would recognise and denounce us as G.o.dless people to the mult.i.tude? but tranquillise yourself, my cautious friend, a troop of the rebels is here in the neighbourhood, on that account the soldiers dare not trust themselves in the mountains, knowing that they have these good friends in their rear. I wish, for once, however, to be in the right, and you Edmond shall learn something; these are indeed a very singular sort of schools, and information is fetched with difficulty and in small quant.i.ties from over the mountains and rocks; all men cannot be wholesale dealers like you. In reality, however, it is my son who has persuaded me to this, and made me promise to bring you, Edmond, too."

"Your son?" exclaimed Edmond, with great vivacity, "the friend of my childhood, is he here again?"

"And you mention this to us now for the first time?" said the Lord of Beauvais.

"You learn it now quite time enough," replied the doctor in his phlegmatical humour; "yes, indeed, the vagabond is returned after many years, he has had some experience, the hair-brained fellow. He has studied in foreign universities, has seen Holland, England, and Scotland, has wandered among the various tribes of India and now he is at length returned suddenly and to my great satisfaction just as mad and wild as ever, but well informed. He has heard wonders related of our prophets in this country. He has seen many plants and animals of this species in Asia, and seems as if fallen from the clouds, that, as he turned his back upon them, a much more extraordinary plant should have shot up in his own country close on the threshold of his native home, than any he had observed in tropical climates, nor has he left me a moments peace, until I promised to set out with him accompanied by you too. 'But why did he not come here immediately with you?' cried Edmond.

"His mother, his cousins, his acquaintances," answered Vila, "The whole town of St. Hypolite would not let him go so quickly, he is obliged to narrate until his throat is dry, he now waits to embrace you in the little inn in the wood, and will then set out with you on your chivalrous expedition.--Now my old friend, make no objections, grant this pleasure to the young people."

"Well, be mad then," said the Counsellor of Parliament, "but there is something in my breast that disapproves of this step. May heaven guide you my son!"--They took leave, the carriage drew up, they ascended into it in order to get over the first few miles.

Scarcely had they departed, when the servant entered hastily from the garden. "A brilliant equipage is advancing on the road from Nismes, I think a visit is intended for you, my Lord."

The Counsellor of Parliament hurried into the hall. "How," exclaimed he astonished, "it is the Intendant himself, the Lord of Basville."--The carriage stopped and a tall grave looking man, advanced in years, descended and approached the master of the house with solemn steps.

They saluted each other and after a short pause the intendant began: "You are doubtlessly surprised, my Lord Counsellor, to see me here, but a matter of importance has led me to you, it appeared to me more courteous to visit you myself than to request your presence at Nismes, where, perhaps our conversation would not have been permitted to go on so uninterruptedly and familiarly." The Counsellor, astonished at this prelude to the conference, begged that he would immediately disclose what had procured him the honour of a visit.

"You are slandered sir," said the Intendant, as he looked at him fixedly; "I am not so fortunate as to be one of your friends, yet I a.s.sert boldly and safely that they are abominable calumnies which are brought against you, but which, when all the circ.u.mstances are joined together, might obtain a semblance of veracity with some credulous people." "Who dares attack my name?" said the Counsellor of Parliament.