It was very early, not yet five o’clock, on a dull and cloudy August morning, in the old city of Geneva, more than three centuries and a half ago. Already a crowd had gathered about the stately gateway that led to the convent of the nuns of St. Claire. There were a few sober citizens, in gowns or doublets of good serge, who lent to the rest an air of respectability they much needed, being mostly the lowest of the people, rough men, and idle street boys who were jesting, shouting and playing pranks on each other and on the bystanders after the manner of their kind. But amidst their discordant and often meaningless cries was one which ever rose above the rest, “Down with the Mass!”
“Hold thy peace, malapert urchin!” said a man in a cassock, administering to one of the shouters a sound box on the ear. ‘Tis little thou knowest.” Down with the Mass “means” up with the School. And may thy master never spoil thee by sparing the rod!”
“Take that for your blow!” the boy retorted, pulling off his assailant’s round cap and flinging it into the gutter.
“Prithee, stand you back!” cried a third speaker. “Let us see the fair faces of the ladies as they pass out. The council hath dealt with them better than they deserve, giving them courteous leave to depart whither they would, and a covered wagon for the infirm.”
“A covered wagon, forsooth! A bath in the lake would have served them better,” said another. We are well rid of them and of all their pestilent brood. Curse them!”
The cassock wearer turned on him indignantly. What did the nuns of St. Claire to thee or thine, that thou shouldest curse them? Look to thyself, heretic. Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.”
“Hush! no brawling here,” spake the voice of authority, as the crowd fell back before one of the syndics, or chief magistrates of the town. “Stand back — stand back! The ladies are coming forth. For our honor, children of Geneva, let them not hear an ill word among us.”
The peremptory voice of the syndic secured obedience; and the people stood in momentary silence, looking at the great gate which so long had been closed upon the world outside. They knew what it had shut out — but what had it shut in, all those years?
As they looked the gate trembled, shook, as if about to be opened from within. Twice, thrice, it seemed ready to give way, yet still its fastenings held. Perhaps the hands of the aged porter, who was trying to open it, trembled too much for his task. For indeed it was a sad one. The nuns of St. Claire were going forth forever from the ancient house of their order — to some of them the only home they had ever known. Geneva had accepted the Reformation; and the religious houses were to be transformed into schools or hospitals. Their inmates, however, were free to remain in the city, or to leave it, as they pleased. In either case no one would molest them. The nuns of St. Claire had chosen to leave. They were going to another house of their order, at Annecy.
While the crowd stood waiting, a white-haired, feeble-looking man made his way to the front. He was very lame, leaning heavily on a staff, and his long threadbare coat hung loose on his wasted frame. His face was worn and his cheeks hollow, but his eyes were bright and keen, and burning with eager expectation. The crowd made way for him with a kind of respect, and the man of authority gave him place to stand beside him. While he murmured a word of thanks, there was a general movement. All eyes turned to the great gate as at last it swung wide open.
Two and two, in mournful silence, holding each others’ hands, the black-robed, close-veiled nuns came forth. At the head of the sad procession walked the aged lady superior, bent and trembling, her head bowed low, and her tottering footsteps supported by the stronger arm of the prioress, a tall and stately personage, who marched on, erect and steady, holding a crucifix aloft and chanting in a firm voice the Salve, Regina. She knew that the prayer to the Queen of Heaven was blasphemy to her hearers. So much the worse for them!
A piercing cry stopped the chant. “Claudine! Claudine! My sister!”
The white-haired man had flung himself upon one of the nuns who was following the prioress. She had been walking with bowed head, weeping quietly behind her veil, which now, in surprise and terror, she flung partially aside. Her face was sweet and pleasant to look upon, though perhaps it had never been beautiful, not even in youth. Her soft brown hair was still untouched with gray, and her brow and cheek still unwrinkled. It seemed as though life had dealt gently with her, and so, after one great agony, in truth it had. She listened with troubled looks to the pleading voice of her brother. “Come with me, my sister, come with me, I need you!” he went on not aloud, but in a low, intense, half-choking whisper.
She shrank away from him in bewildered terror. “No, no,” she faltered. “Oh no, I am the bride of Christ.”
Still he clung to her. “Look at me, Claudine, only look at me,” he pleaded. “I am Ami, your brother, whom you loved so in the old, old days. Do you not remember?”
Then she looked at him, looked earnestly, wistfully; and a new light dawned in her dim blue eyes. “Yes, I remember,” she said dreamily. “The old days! — But they are past, so long past — I am dead to the world. Let me go!”
Still he held her fast. “Claudine,” he pleaded, “look on me yet again.”
She looked again. “But you are not Ami. You are an old man, a stranger,” she said, doubt shadowing her face. Then, in an altered tone, And I cannot talk with you. See, we are stopping the way. I must go.”
“You shall not go, Claudine! Hear me! By the memory of our orphaned childhood, when I was father and mother both to thee — ”
Here the prioress turned and spoke. “What means this unmannerly interruption?” she asked sternly. “Was it not covenanted we should go in peace, without let or hindrance? Is this your heretic faith-keeping? Man, stand back! Touch not the holy sister, the bride of Christ.” Then, in the voice of unquestioned authority, “Sister Agatha, come on.”
The frail form of the broken man seemed to dilate, and he spoke with a kind of majesty, “She whom you call Sister Agatha is my sister, Claudine Berthelier. She is coming home with me.”
“She shall not! Sister Agatha, remember yourself and your vows. Pass on! Master syndic, fulfill your promise, and bid them clear the way.”
The man of authority cleared his throat and looked irresolute. “If the lady will — ” he began.
“She will keep her vows. Come, sister.”
Claudine’s bewildered eyes turned piteously from one to the other. Her color came and went, she looked about to faint. But she did not stir, and made no movement to shake off her brother’s grasp.
Then, at last, the lady superior interposed. “Let Sister Agatha choose,” she said, in the weak, quavering voice of old age. “Sister, what wouldest thou?”
“Yes, choose,” said the prioress sternly. “Come with us, and keep thy vows; or go back to the world thou past renounced, and lost thy soul forever.”
“If God give thee not repentance,” the lady superior said. “But choose, Sister Agatha, for we must go.”
Claudine trembled exceedingly. Like a flood, the days of her youth swept back upon her. But then, there was the habit of half a life-time, there were her vows, there was what she thought her duty to God. She had no power to decide.
Ami’s strong will decided for her. He placed his arm in hers, and with gentle force he drew her away. It was time: too long already they had stopped the way. The lady superior turned from her with a sad “Fare you well;” the prioress with a stern, “God forgive you,” which might have been rendered, “I believe He never will.”
Ami led his sister through the throng, for the most part silent and respectful, save for the jeers of a few impudent street boys at the runaway nun. When they got into a quiet street he said, “We have something of a walk before us, for I dwell beyond the bridge, in the Rue Cornavin. My lodging is poor, but comfortable, and I have had a chamber prepared for you. I knew you would come to me.”
She had walked on with him mechanically, as one amazed. Or rather, in such bewilderment as one transplanted suddenly into another world might feel. Streets, houses, passers-by — all were a marvel. The boys who jeered at her were not a marvel only, but a horror. Even the ground beneath her feet gave her a sense of unreality, with which there mingled strangely a feeling of wrong-doing. She was where she had no right to be — and where she had no place. So many houses, so many people, so many faces — and all unknown to her.
But hearing her brother speak, she tried to rouse herself. In her bewildered brain the instincts of gentle birth and breeding asserted their sway. She made courteous effort to respond, though scarce understanding his words. “You live alone, then?”
“There is always Marguerite.”
Claudine’s dazed, perplexed face showed absolutely a gleam of pleasure. “The dear old nurse!” she said. “But no — it cannot be. She would be a hundred years old.”
A dim smile hovered round Berthelier’s firm, clear-cut lips. “She is just sixty-three,” he said. “It is but sixteen years since we parted, and she was not old then, save to you and me.”
“Sixteen years? I had thought it scarce so long. In Religion, hours are long, but years are short.”
“I had thought it far longer. Besides Marguerite, there is the child.”
“What child?” with a faint accent of surprise.
“A few years ago, when we feared an attack from the Savoyards and the League, we laid waste our own suburbs, by way of defense. You heard of it, of course?”
But Claudine shook her head.
“The people came into the city for shelter, even from St. Gervais. Marguerite and I came too, though the Rue Cornavin was not destroyed. We gave refuge in our lodging to peasants from the country, a man and a woman, who died there of the fever, leaving this little babe. Marguerite must needs tend and feed her, and — what would you have? Could I put the babe out upon the door-step?”
“You could have brought it to a convent.”
Berthelier shrugged his shoulders, and was silent. Presently he resumed, “Marguerite took good care of the babe, but now the child grows and — I want you.”
“For her?” with a sense of disappointment she did not herself understand.
“More for myself.”
Silence followed; until at last Claudine, whose senses seemed slowly returning to her, ventured a question, “Brother, what has made you white-haired, and so lame? “I thought you knew. The dungeon and the pulley. But they got nothing out of me. And I have had my revenge. What we fought for has been won, though not by us, nor in our way.”
“I do not understand,” said Claudine. After a pause she added, “But I hope, brother, you have not forsaken the Faith, and become a heretic like the rest. Your soul would be lost forever.”
The dim smile came again. “I do not believe as you,” he said. “But take comfort; for as little do I believe the new doctrines of Master William Farrel and Master John Calvin. And perchance at bottom I hold these gentlemen no better than the priests. Still, they have done our work for us.”
“I do not understand,” Claudine said again this time rather piteously.
“One of the many things I want you for, my sister,” Ami added kindly, “is to teach little Gabrielle her prayers, for Marguerite in her old age must needs go after the new doctrine, while I think the old — if not so good for strong men — far meeter for little maids. But at last here we are.”
“This house, with the bookbinder’s sign?”
“No, the next. But cross yourself, Claudine, as you pass; for there has just come to live Master Calvin’s own brother, who binds his books for him.”
As Berthelier approached his own door a beautiful little girl, dark eyed and dark-haired, sprang out and flung herself upon him with a rapturous, overflowing welcome. “Softly — softly!” said he. “Beware of my staff and my lame leg. Gabrielle, this is my dear sister, and your good Aunt Claudine, who is coming to live with us, and take care of you and me. Go to her, kiss her hand, and ask her to love you.”
The child hung back, pouting. “I don’t like her clothes,” she said, “and I don’t want anyone to love me but you and Marguerite.”
Berthelier looked at his sister. “You see already that you are needed here,” he said. “Neither Marguerite nor I know aught that should be done for a child, except to love it. But come in, my sister. Welcome to my home, or rather, to your own.”