PAR LE FER ET PAR LE FEU.

He made his way in.

Entered by the Porte des Carmes, to find himself in the midst of a seething mass of people who shouted and gesticulated while pushing each other to and fro, some doing so in their anxiety to escape from out the city, others endeavouring to force themselves farther into it and toward the Canal de la Gau, which was near the gate. A mass of people who seemed infuriated, beyond the bounds of reason, to frenzy, who shouted and screamed, "Au glaive, au glaive avec les héritéques. Kill all! Burn all! Now is the time." While others shrieked, "To the mill, to the mill!" as onward they went in the direction of the canal.

He had put his horse up in a stall behind the gate, tethering it to a peg alongside one or two other animals which, by their trappings, evidently belonged to some dragoons; and now, borne on by the crowd, Martin went the same way, keeping his feet with difficulty yet still progressing, progressing toward where he saw the flames ascending, darting through dense masses of black smoke, roaring as a vast furnace roars. Toward the mill that, all said, was the place which was on fire; the mill in which there were three hundred people--women, children, and old, decrepit, useless men, old, aged Protestants who could not take to the mountains--being burned to death; the mill in which they had been worshipping God in their own fashion.

"Tell me," Martin besought a bystander, big, brawny, and muscular, whom he found by his side and who, in spite of his splendidly developed manhood, wept, dashing the tears fiercely away from his eyes every moment. "Tell me what has happened. Tell me, I beg you."

"Murder! Butchery! A crime that will ring down the ages. Montrevel is burning three hundred helpless ones in Mercier's mill." Then he paused, casting his eyes over Martin's riding dress (stained now with the dust of his long rides) and upon his lace at breast and throat, smirched and dirty from continued wear. Paused to say: "What are you? a seigneur, I see. But of which side? The butchers or the slaughtered?"

"I am of the Reformed faith."

"Of N?mes?" the man asked. "If so, God help you. Your mother or your babe may be burning there and you powerless to succour them. Montrevel's wolves surround the mill. He is there too, mad with wine and lust of blood. If there is any woman or child you love in N?mes at this moment, God help you."

"She whom I love is not here. But, alas! can we do nothing? You wear a sword as I do? We can strike a blow----"

"Do! What can we do? There are two hundred dragoons there. What will our blades avail, though we were the best ferrailleurs in France?" Then suddenly he cried, "See, there is the slaughter-house!"

He spoke truly. The burning mill was before them.

A sight to freeze one's blood, to turn that blood to ice even beneath the sky of brass, even before the hot flames that darted forth, licking up, devouring all.

It stood, an ancient building of stone foundations and wooden superstructure. They said the former dated back to C?sar's day, the latter to that of Charles le Bel, upon the banks of the canal as it would never stand again, since now it was nothing but a mass of burning fuel. Also a human hecatomb, there being within it the ashes of three hundred human beings whose bodies had that morning been consumed. And Martin blessed God that he had not been there to hear their piercing shrieks, their cries for mercy and their supplications.

Around the nearly destroyed mill, except on one side where it adjoined an inn, "La Rose de Provence," the front of which was all singed and scarred, he saw the executioners, the men who had been soldiers, fierce yet valiant, until this morning, but who were now worthy of no nobler name than that of cowardly murderers. Dragoons, Croatian Cravates, now Prance's most bloody swashbucklers with one exception, the Miquelets, those fierce Pyrenean tigers, as well as chevaux-légers and countless numbers of the milice. And near them, his sword drawn, his face inflamed with drink and fury, his breast a mass of ribbons and orders, was Montrevel upon his horse, a scandal to the baton he had lately gained.

"Murderer! Assassin! Brave butcher of women and babes," howled many in the crowd, one half of which was Protestant, "noble papist! you have done your work well. Yet beware of Cavalier and Roland!"

And even as they so shouted, from more than one window high up in the roofs there came little puffs of smoke and spits of flame, showing that he was aimed at. Only the devil protected him. His time was not yet come. He was mad now with fury or drink, or thirst for human blood. Mad, stung to frenzy by resistance and contempt, even in spite of all that he had done that morning, of having glutted his ire on the helpless, which should have sufficed, all heard him roar:

"Finissons! N?mes is heretic to the core. Make an end of it. Avancez, mes soldats. Burn, destroy, slaughter. Kill all." And he turned his horse toward where the crowd was thickest and bade the carnage begin, marshalling his troops into companies the better to distribute them about the doomed city.

But now there stepped forth one--Sandricourt, Governor of N?mes--who forbade him to do that which he threatened; warned him that if one more house or street was injured he would himself that night set forth for Paris, and tell Louis that Montrevel was unworthy of the command he held in this distracted province.

"Ha! Sandricourt, 'tis Sandricourt," whispered one in a knot of Protestants standing near to where Martin and the man he had accosted were. "He is the best, he and Fléchier, bishop though he is. If all were like them--if Baville were--then--then we might live in peace, not see nor know the awful terrors we have seen this day. Oh, the horror of it! the horror of it!" and he buried his face in his hands as though to hide some sight that he feared might blast him.

Baville! The name recalled the man to Martin's memory. Nay, it did more, far more than that. Recalled his love, Urbaine. Set him wondering, too, if by any chance this holocaust had taken place at the Intendant's suggestion; if this was a vengeance on those who had destroyed her. For he must deem her dead by now; weeks had passed since she disappeared. Had he set the shambles fresh running with blood to avenge her loss?

He must see Baville at once, must tell him she was safe. Thereby, perhaps, more slaughter might be averted.

"Where is Baville?" he asked, turning to the group of terrified Protestants by his side. "Is he in this carnage?"

"God, he knows," one replied. "Yet he has not appeared. Not since this commenced. Were you here at the beginning?"

"Nay, I arrived but now. Is it true, can it be true there are three hundred destroyed within that?" and he glanced toward............