LA DIVINéRESSE.
The violets and the primroses grow in the chestnut woods that fringe the base of La Lozère, yet disappear as the roads wind up to the summit, giving place to the wild foxglove and heather which, in their turn, disappear as still the ascent continues. Also, the chestnuts themselves become more sparse and infrequent, until at last the woods cease altogether, and the mountaineer trends only on the soft, crisp brown grass that, lying warm beneath the winter's snows, springs but into existence to be consumed later by the fierce southern sun that beats on it.
Finally, with far beneath his feet the valleys basking in the warm sun, the wanderer stands upon a dreary upland with, around him, the mountain tops of the Cévennes huddled in wild confusion, as though thrown down from the palm of some great giant. A confusion of barren crags in some places, of, in others, great hills clothed with forests or upland pasturages, or, in a few cases, plots of cereals--a confusion over which in summer sweeps, without warning, a torrent of hail, or amidst which rise fogs that envelope all; that in winter is buried in snow over which the tempests howl. Here, too, wherever the eye turns, torrents are seen that, when Spring unlocks their floods and turns the frozen snow to water, leap down and hurl themselves over boulders and, in some cases, precipices until at last they reach the rivers beneath. Here also are bare walls of rock in which are the caverns that sheltered the Camisards whom Louis and Louvois, Chamillart and De Maintenon had driven forth into the mountain deserts. Yet not only Louis, le Dieudonné and his myrmidons, but, before him, that other Louis, his father, surnamed "The Just," who had, under the sword of the brutal Marshal de Thémines, also driven countless Huguenots to take refuge in these wild, stony citadels, and had forced them to fortify their mountains against their persecutors. To close their caverns with bronze doors secretly conveyed to them by Jeanne d'Albret, Protestant Queen of Navarre.
It was in one of these vast caves, a week after the Chateau de Servas had been burnt to the ground by the orders of Jean Cavalier (of how the garrison was put to death, none being spared, the peasants still tell nightly to all who care to hear), that there was gathered a vast company of men and women. A company assembled to sit in judgment on another man and woman who were in their power, to say whether the hour had come for the death of those captives or was still to be postponed. Postponed, not abandoned! For they were Catholics, persecutors. And, therefore, doomed, sooner or later. But first the prophets and the prophetesses had to speak. On them depended much; a swift doom that night or one that might be reserved for another day.
"You understand, mademoiselle?" the man said to his companion, seated by his side; "you understand? Our sentence depends on those gathered together round Cavalier. After they have spoken we shall know whether 'tis now or later."
"I understand," Urbaine Ducaire answered, the cold tone in which he spoke causing more grief to her heart than the awful import of his words. "I understand." Then her eyes sought his, met them, and were swiftly withdrawn.
They had been here a week, being treated well, allowed to roam about the vast caverns unmolested, yet never once allowed to form the most illusory hopes that there could be but one end to their captivity. The knowledge had been conveyed to them by now and then a word from one or from another, by a look from a third, by even a glance from Cavalier himself or from Roland, that for some of the Protestant men and women slaughtered by the Papists they were to furnish an expiation--a retaliation--as many other Catholics had already done who had fallen into their captors' hands.
Yet it was not the crowds of fierce Camisards who now surrounded them in this great cavern, lit by torches at its farthest end, and by the rays of the October sun which streamed in from where the great antique bronze doors, placed there a hundred years ago, stood at the hither end; nor the unpitying, cruel glances cast by the prophetesses at the girl, which caused the grief she felt. That came from another cause; from the cold disdain of the man by her side--the man to whom she owed it that she had not been slain in the attack made upon her escort. Disdain for the words she had uttered against him that night in the passage outside the banqueting hall of the Chateau St. Servas, for the manner in which she had misjudged him. Misjudged him as she had recognised well from that night itself, from the moment when, being himself a Protestant, he had refused to profit by the fact, but, instead, had remained silent when accused of being one of their captors' enemies. And his reason for doing so was certain; not to be doubted. So that he might still be by her side, still near to protect her, still near, if any chance should arise, to aid her escape. And now the time was at hand when their doom was to be determined, and yet he continued to hold his peace, would be ready to share her fate, and, she told herself, to despise her to the end.
"You are very noble," she had said to him that morning when they had been brought into the great cavern from the cells which each had had assigned to them, "and I, oh, God, how base! I wish the world had ended on that night, ere I uttered the words I did."
"It matters not," he said; "is worth no thought. You misjudged me, that is all."
She bowed her head before him, meaning thereby to acknowledge how utterly she had indeed misjudged him. Then she said, her eyes fixed on his:
"Yet--yet you will not let them continue in their ignorance of what you are? If--if they decide to slay, you will announce your fellowship with them? Is it not so?"
But to this he would make no answer, turning away his head from her.
"It needs but one word," she continued, "and you are free--free to go in peace."
He knew as well as she that it needed but one word; nay, he knew more. It needed but another word--the statement that he was an Englishman--to make him something more than free, to cause him to be received with acclamation by their captors, welcomed as a friend. For England was Louis' bitterest foe and the most powerful; a force slowly crushing the life out of France and her king, as she had been doing since first she shattered his great fleet at Barfleur and La Hogue. Also she was the home of every outlawed refugee and Huguenot; her people supplied them with help and succour; even to this remote spot money and arms were often secretly sent. And, further, 'twas whispered among the Protestants that an attack was to be made ere long on France's Mediterranean coast by one of England's admirals, after which there would not remain one frontier or border of the land that did not bristle with Protestant enemies.
It did indeed need but the words "I am an Englishman" for his safety to be assured. Yet he had sworn to himself that he would die at his captors' hands ere he uttered them or made the statement that he was of their faith, ere he would go forth and leave this girl here, alone and doomed.
"I do not desire," he said, "to earn my release by proclaiming myself a Protestant. I pity them for what they have suffered; yet--yet I am not in sympathy with their retaliation. I shall not proclaim myself."
But now the hum of voices from the crowd near them became hushed; from their midst one of the prophets, or, as they called them, "Les Extasés," was speaking. "Mes Frères," they heard him say, "the God of Battles fights on our side, even as once he fought upon the side of Joshua. Also he has inspired me to read the future. I see," he went on, extending his ............