LEX TALIONIS.

Over all Languedoc there was an awful terror at this time--the terror that is born of successful rebellion, and that rebellion the outcome of a religious strife.

An awful terror which filled now the breasts of those who had erstwhile been the persecutors, even as, not long before, it had filled the breasts of those whom they had persecuted.

In truth there were none in all that fair province, none--from those who dwelt on its southern borders washed by the sapphire-hued waters of the Mediterranean, to those who, on its northern boundary, gazed toward the fertile provinces of Linois and Auvergne, or, looking west, saw the rich rolling lands of golden Guienne stretched out before them--but felt, and feeling, dreaded, the threatening horror that at any moment might engulf them. For now no longer were the dungeons of the cities filled with Protestants moaning for water, food, or air; no longer did Huguenot women offer their jailers the few miserable coins they had about them so that their babes might taste a drop of milk; no longer did men of the Reformed Faith offer their little bags of secreted livres and tournois to their warders, so that thereby they might be allowed to sleep one hour--only one little hour!--without disturbance; without horns being blown at their dungeon doors to awaken them, or blank charges fired from musketoons and fusils with a like intent; without their bodies being pricked and stirred up by point of lance or sword at the moment that a heartbroken slumber fell upon them.

A change had come! Some of the jails were emptied now; in the smaller towns and villages they existed no longer. Some of those towns and villages were themselves erased from off the face of the earth. Down from their mountain homes the Camisards had stolen, creeping like phantoms through the night, like panthers on the trail of those whom they track to their doom, like adders gliding through the grass. One by one these men of vengeance mustered outside doomed bourgs or hamlets till all were assembled in a compact mass, sometimes to lay violent and open siege to the places, sometimes to be admitted silently at dead of night, or in early dawn, by those who, disguised, had already stolen in. Then the massacre took place, the jails gave up their victims who were not already dead, the hateful gibbets and the iron-bound wheels helped to light the fires that consumed the villages, and in the morning there was no sign left either of avenger or of victim. Of the former, all had stolen back into their impenetrable fastnesses; of the latter, nothing remained but burning houses and crumbling walls, a church destroyed, an altar shattered, and at its base a slaughtered priest.

Even in the greater cities--in Montpellier and N?mes, Alais and Uzès--the haunting fear, the terror, the horror was there, even though those cities were fortified and garrisoned, full of soldiers and milices. Yet of what use were these? Of what use dragoons who had fought in close ranks and knee to knee against William of Orange's own English and Dutch troopers? Of what use infantry who had stood a solid phalanx of steel under Bouflers and Luxembourg? Of what use a homely militia, when the enemy was unseen and intangible--an enemy which crept in man by man through gates and barriers, disguised as peasant and farmer bringing in produce, or sometimes, in bitter mockery of their foes, as Catholic priest or Catholic seigneur? It was not strange that against such a foe as this all Baville's plans were unavailing, all Julien's military knowledge helpless. And the question which every man asked his neighbour was, Would Montrevel, the new field marshal now on his way from Paris with an enormous army, be able to succeed against such crafty and resolute enemies any better than his predecessors had done?

Baville asked himself the same question now, as he sat where he had sat a month or two before, on that morning when across the room had fallen the shadow of Urbaine as she came in from the garden, her hands full of freshly gathered, dew-sprinkled flowers--his loved Urbaine. Yet he told himself, even as thus he meditated and doubted, that if force could do it, it should be done.

Upon his face as he sat alone in his cabinet there was a look which none could perhaps have interpreted, yet which none could have failed to observe; a look that had brought an appearance of age to his face which his fifty years of life should not have placed there; also a look of deep, fierce determination which, cruel as he had ever been, had not hitherto been perceptible upon his handsome features. On the table before him there lay a great chart of the whole Cévennes district; attached to the chart by a silken string was a paper referring to it; on the back of that chart was written in a bold, sprawling hand, the words, "Mon plan pour la grande battue des attroupés que je projete," and signed "Julien."

"Bah," Baville exclaimed, after throwing down these papers angrily, "sa grande battue! Son plan! What will come of it? What? Nothing. These dogs are as slippery as snakes. No battue will surround, entrap them. And--and--even though they, though this swashbuckler, who thinks more of the bouquet of his Celestin or the aroma of his white Frontignan than of our province's safety, should prevail, it will not bring her back to me."

And Baville, on whose soul there lay heavy the slaughter of countless innocent women--their only fault their faith--buried his face in his hands and moaned. "Urbaine, Urbaine," he whispered, "Ma mignonne, ma petite rose blanche, to think of you in their hands, you whom we have nurtured so soft and warm, you who, I swore to your father, should be my life's charge, the star of my existence! Fool! fool! fool! to ever let you go thus. Though God he knows," he whispered still, "I did it for the best; did it, knowing the dangers that threatened, that were surely coming, that must above all else strike at Baville and his. Deemed I could save you, send you away to peace and safety."

And still he sat on there, his head in his hands, while from between his fingers the tears trickled as he muttered still, "Urbaine, Urbaine!"

"She is dead," he said after a pause. "She must be dead. Of all, they would not spare her--my lamb. That is enough--to belong to me! O God!" he cried, springing from his chair and clasping his hands above his head, "nothing can give her back to me. Yet one thing thou canst give me: Vengeance! vengeance! vengeance! On him, above all, on that treacherous Huguenot, that viper who, when there was still a chance left, dragged her from the carriage, gave her up to his accursed brethren. Give me that! Place him but once in my hands and I ask no more. Urbaine can never come back, but at least she shall lie in her grave--where is it?"--and he shuddered--"lie in her grave avenged. Why did I ever trust him--kinsman of the de Rochebazons as he is--why not execute him that night at Montvert?"

After the rout of Poul's escort and of De Broglie's soldiers in an adjacent place by the Camisards, some half dozen of the dragoons of Hérault had managed to escape from the former slaughter, as well as many more from the latter. As has been said, they fled to N?mes, where Baville was at the time, bringing with them the full account of what had happened to both detachments, and in their dismay and confusion making the disaster none the less in the telling. Now, among those who had thus escaped was one, a young porte-guidon, or cornet, who had by chance ridden also with De Peyre's detachment to Montvert when in at............