The Scourge of God. John Bloundelle-Burton

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СКАЧАТЬ the midst of the Camisards, screaming to them to show mercy, begging them to desist, imploring them to forget their own sufferings in the past, and to save the abbé and all within the house. Yet his appeal touched not one single heart.

      "Away, old man," said one of the inspired prophets, "away to your bed and out of this. The hour for mercy is gone; the servants of the Lord have arisen. Go preach to women and babes; leave us, the priests of men, to deal with men," and as he spoke he dragged Buscarlet out of the crowd, telling Martin also to beware lest he interfered.

      The latter was nigh doing so now. Protestant as he was, with, in his heart, a hatred for the cruelties which he knew the Papists practised here in Languedoc-cruelties condemned, indeed, by many of their brother Roman Catholics, so terrible were they-he could yet scarce keep his hand from his sword hilt, scarce forbear rushing into that burning house and endeavouring to save Du Chaila's life.

      For now the end was very near. If the man was not saved soon his final hope was gone. The soldiers had fired their last shots, their powder-horns and cartouches were empty, they were endeavouring to escape, some leaping from the lower windows at which they, fortunately for themselves, had been stationed, and plunging into the little river and across it; some rushing out into the crowd of fierce Cévenoles, only to be cut down to the earth by reaping hooks and scythes, or, more happily, to escape with wounds alone. There were none left now in the burning house but the abbé and his man-servant. On the former all eyes were fixed, the crowd drawing farther back from the dwelling to get a fairer view of the roof on which they could see him still crouched, or moving on to the bridge, thereby the better to observe his fate. And they gloated over it-these miserable peasants who had turned at last, these human downtrodden worms who had not been allowed to practise their religion in peace in their own land, nor permitted to emigrate to others where they might do so; they fed themselves full with revenge on this the first night of their uprising. One, a marksman, raised his carabine and covered Du Chaila as he clung to the roof-maybe his heart was not yet entirely warped nor turned to the deepest tinge of cruelty, and he wished to end the wretch's sufferings-but it was knocked up by half a dozen strong arms. A dozen voices cried fiercely:

      "Help him not, assist him to no easy death. Remember our brothers' dooms, our fathers in the flames, our girls' backs raw and bleeding. Observe Fleurette lying there at your feet; let him expiate all. Then, after him, the others. There are more to suffer too. Baville-ho, Baville! -le Roi de Languedoc, as he is termed-the prior of St. Maurice-the priest of Frugéres-it is their turn to-morrow."

      And above the roar of the flames these louder roars of threatened vengeance rose; above all else their psalms were heard telling how Jehoshaphat exhorted the people, how Jahaziel prophesied, and how the God of Battles had delivered the enemy into their hands.

      The end was near.

      Du Chaila, the cruellest priest in the Cévennes-the man who, under the office of Inspector of Roman Catholic Missions in Languedoc, had for sixteen years perpetrated cruelties on the Protestants which, it was said in the district, he could have only learned while a missionary in Siam-was about to expiate his merciless rigour on others.

      Part of the eaves overhanging the garden had by now fallen away in great masses of charred straw. One of two things alone could happen soon: either he must perish in the flames when the roof fell in, as it would do in a few moments, or he must escape from that roof. It was the latter which he prepared to attempt, hoping perhaps that even now he might do so without his intentions being known.

      Slowly, therefore, he crept away from the spot where he had crouched so long. They could see his hands and feet thrust deep into the thatch at each move he made. He disappeared from their sight, yet for a moment only; for as he left the side of the house where the rioters were, so those rioters followed below in the road. Compactly, in a mass, all went together, and silently. Their voices, their hymns had ceased; but for their footfalls there was naught to tell of how they were tracking the man from beneath as he himself moved above. Like sleuth-hounds who make no noise as they follow their trail, yet follow it unerringly, these human sleuth-hounds followed him.

      They passed round the house, they stood upon the slope leading to the bridge. Between them and the house itself there ran a thick-set privet hedge, separating the latter from the road and shielding the lower rooms on that side from the dusts of summer and the snows of winter. Now, on this July night, convolvuli and roses and honeysuckle twined about it, dotting the deep green with many a delicate blossom and emitting sweet perfumes on the air. And above this hedge, between it and the roof, the doomed man was hanging at this time, clinging to a rope made of twisted bedclothes, wrenched, doubtless, from the beds of the upper rooms.

      None spoke in all that crowd, no hymn was sung. Save for the sobs of Buscarlet and the moans of Fleurette, who lay in her sister's arms, no sound broke the silence-none until, a second later, while all their eyes were turned up to that frantic figure and while the moon's rays glistened on their eyeballs, a piercing shriek broke the stillness and the abbé fell headlong some thirty feet into the hedge, bounding off from one of the stakes, that supported it at intervals, into the dusty road; then lay there groaning. The roughly and hastily constructed rope had given way, and in his fall, as was soon seen, his leg was broken.

      "Spare me!" he moaned-he who had never yet spared one, man, woman, or child-"spare me!"

      At first none answered him, none spoke. Then amid the silence, from the lips of Pierre Esprit, the chief of the three prophets, the words fell:

      "You are lost-your body in this world, your soul in the next."

      "Alas!" he wailed, "even though I have damned myself, will you too do the same thing by murdering me?"

      His words were the signal for his doom.

      They rushed at him as he lay there and plunged their knives into his body, one man exclaiming, "This for my mother, burned at Nîmes," another, "This for my father, broken at Anduse"; a third, "This for my brother, sent to the galley, 'Le Réquin'"; a fourth, "This for my sister, Fleurette, lying here."

      When his nephew, Le Marquis du Chaila, afterward recovered his body from where they left it, it was pierced by fifty-two wounds, of which twenty-four were mortal.

      "The beginning has been made," Pierre Esprit exclaimed. "There must be no backsliding. Henceforth each man's hand to guard each man's life. Now for the prior of St. Maurice, next for the priest of Frugéres. While for those who have been rescued from that man's clutches, away with them to the mountains and safety. Come, let us sing unto the Lord."

      And up the slopes and pastures of the purple hills encircling the little village rose once more the chant of the army of Jehoshaphat.

      Soon none were left in the blood-stained road but the pastor, Buscarlet, lying where he had fainted, and Martin Ashurst, white to the lips and endeavouring to arrange the dead man's limbs into something resembling humanity.

      CHAPTER VIII

      AN EXODUS

      In the coming dawn, when the stars had paled and died away, and when far off, where the Basses Alpes lifted their heads eastward, the gray light turned into daffodil and told that the day was at hand, Martin carried the pastor back into his little house.

      "Rest," he said, "rest, and endeavour to sleep. I pray Heaven you may do so, after this night of horror."

      "Horror indeed!" Buscarlet said, sinking into the old leather-covered fauteuil that for years he had sat in so calmly and happily, though solitary. "Horror undreamed of!" Then, a moment later, he went on: "I thought-nay, I knew-that they would rise at last and throw off the hideous yoke under which they bowed. Yet I deemed it would but be to release those of our religion who suffered, to prevent others from suffering too; to demand СКАЧАТЬ