“Christ has left us on the outposts dim
As sentinels to watch with him.
We would have sooner died than sleep
The little time we vigil had to keep.”
It was no false alarm. Two Huguenots had indeed been stabbed by two Catholics. One was dead, the other seriously wounded.
A large body of Huguenots stationed themselves outside the Hotel de Ville, while four of their number went into the Council Chamber to tell what had befallen.
The Bernese Ambassador was already there, warning the Council that a massacre was about to begin.
The arrival of the four Huguenots corroborated his tidings. The Council immediately despatched officers to arrest the two murderers.
But they had vanished.
“No doubt they are hidden in the Bishop's Palace," was the general opinion; "he is most likely at the bottom of the plot.”
Thither the officers were sent next.
At the magistrate's command the Palace doors were opened, and the search began. But though every corner was ransacked, high and low, no trace of the men was to be found. But the magistrate in leaving to continue the search elsewhere ordered a guard of Huguenot soldiers to remain behind. Amongst them, to his great disappointment, was Gerard. Boy-like he would greatly have preferred the excitement of the search; it seemed very tame to be cooped up there within four walls, while who could say what scenes of excitement and peril, what doughty deeds, were taking place outside.
He could not help contrasting it with the previous occasion that he had been within those walls. Then all was stir and tumult, now nothing to do but to keep watch.
The hours seemed very long. Some of the men were chatting and joking with the Bishop's servants. Gerard sat a little aloof carelessly carving a dog's head from a fragment of the big stack of wood that supplied the huge fire blazing on the hearth.
The dancing flames lit up the great entrance hall, making fantastic shadows, and throwing here and there a picture, a suit of armor, or a stand of arms into high relief. Outside, the darkness of night was upon the streets of the city. A low call from without presently arrested Gerard's attention. He went to the door and put his ear to the keyhole, and as he straightened himself again he found his officer at his side.
“What is it, Gramont?" he demanded.
“Someone calling one of the maids, my Captain," the boy said, saluting.
“Let him think she is here," said the officer curtly, "and see what you can discover.”
Gerard addressed himself to the keyhole obediently.
“What do you want," he demanded, in the best imitation of a woman's voice that he knew how to achieve. "Ulric should be here,” he thought to himself, with a smile. "This would suit him better than me.”
But the answer that reached him banished any thought of amusement.
“I want some keys," said the unseen speaker. "I want them for Portier and Claude Pennet.”
Portier was the Bishop's secretary, who had stabbed the young man in the Cathedral on Good Friday, a year ago. Claude Pennet was one of the murderers of that morning.
“What will you do with them?" asked Gerard, feeling he was on the brink of a great discovery.
“I shall take them to St. Peter's Church, where they are hidden," replied the voice.
“Wait there, till I can get them," Gerard whispered back through the keyhole.
It took him but a moment to put his Captain in possession of what he had heard. The door was flung open, and a priest was found standing without. One horrified glance at the armed men, where he had imagined a maid, was enough; he vanished in the darkness, and the Captain dispatched an orderly to the Hotel de Ville with news of the discovery.
Gerard heard afterward of the search that followed. The magistrates themselves went to St. Peter's Cathedral and led the quest. He could picture it all to himself, the officers with uplifted torches threading their way through the great Cathedral, searching in vain its transepts, its galleries, its vestries, its side chapels.
Three hours the examination lasted, but without result.
Were they after all on a false scent?
Then someone suggested the tower.
The officer, who was the first to reach the top of the winding stair, that only one man could climb at a time, saw the glare of his torch reflected back from human irises. There in an obscure corner, the two hunted men were crouching.
The boy was always thankful after that he had not been there to see them led away to their prison in the Hotel de Ville, which they only left to die, Portier on the scaffold, Claude Pennet on the gibbet.
But for the present he knew nothing of what was happening at the Cathedral. The Captain had withdrawn once more to the antechamber; Gerard returned to his carving, he would give it to Mignonne, and a little group of servants, put to flight by the officer's appearance, had reappeared and were talking and laughing with the soldiers. Some of their talk drifted over to him.
“Indeed," Gerard heard in rather indignant tones. "Portier is not such a nobody as you suppose; he has confidential letters from my Lord the Bishop; yea, and from his Highness the Duke of Savoy himself.”
The name of their arch-enemy roused the laughing men to grim and instant attention.
“Indeed," they said, with assumed incredulity, "you don't mean us to believe that such great people trouble themselves to write to Portier. You must have dreamed it.”
“There are letters in his cupboard," asserted the servants. "If you don't believe us, we should only have to get the cupboard open and you would see them, with the Dukes' great seal, too.”
Gerard had forgotten his carving; he sprang to his feet, and followed the others across the room. The soldiers' light badinage was transformed as by magic into grim earnest. It was the work of a moment to break open the cupboard, and to gather together the mass of correspondence for the Council's examination The next day all Geneva knew that the Bishop had betrayed them and that they had been standing unwittingly on the brink of a veritable abyss.
There were letters appointing a Governor who was to have absolute power in Geneva, with no law but his own will. He was to be answerable to no one but the Bishop, and was given full power of life and death.
And further than, this, to carry out his designs, the Bishop had not scrupled to betray the city to their bitterest enemy, the Duke of Savoy, The two had entered into a compact to put down the Gospel, and to take possession—no longer rivals but allies.
The Duke had sent blank warrants with his seal attached; and citizens might be seized in his name and dealt with according to the pleasure of the Bishop.
But the plot had come to light in time. Aghast at the treachery so opportunely discovered, the citizens stood horrified, appalled, at the pit which yawned at their feet—but from which they were saved.
Dr. Morand returned from the Council meeting, to which the leading citizens had been admitted, with a thankful heart.
“It is, indeed, of God's mercy that the conspiracy got no farther," he said, as he told the elder ones of the danger averted. "He has sent His people a great deliverance. Not Gospelers only but Geneva itself has had a wonderful escape. The letters that have been seized show that plainly. And by the way, Béril," he added, suddenly, "I must not forget that I have something here that affects you.”
He produced a sealed and folded parchment. Written across it she read, "For my daughter, Béril de Vigne.”
White to the very lips, Béril held out her hand for it. Her surroundings, seemed to fade away; she was once more an awed and, trembling child, kneeling by her father's dying bed, and a faint voice was saying with agonizing earnestness, "This will tell you all you have to do. Promise me, Béril.”
“I promise, father," she had said.
Was her promise at length to be redeemed?
She carried the parchment away to her own room, and when, hours later, Greta sought her out, she found her with traces of past tears, but a very calm and steadfast little face.
“Greta, I have something very wonderful to tell your father first of all," she said; “and next to him, Gerard Gramont, for unless I mistake, it touches him very nearly. But I must ask your father first, and see if his judgment agrees with mine.”
So fully did Dr. Morand's judgment tally with Béril's, when he had read the document, that he sent at once for Gerard.
“Wilt tell me, my lad, the rank and name of your father?" he said, when the young soldier appeared.
“Gerard de Gramont, lord of Ennecy," Gerard answered, glancing in some bewilderment from the Doctor to Béril, who with Bruno was the only other occupant of the room.
“Then it is even as we supposed,” said the physician. "And mademoiselle has something of great moment to unfold.”
The boy stood silent, while Béril, very simply, and with the courage that seemed a little pathetic to both her listeners, told of her father's confession the night before he died, of his charge to her, and the promise she hadgiven: then how the written confession had vanished, and she had been unable to do the least thing to redeem her promise.
“But now the confession is found," the girl went on. "Dr. Morand says it must have been taken by the Confessor for some reason we may never fully understand; but it has, come to light with many other documents, from the Bishop's Palace, and he saw my name upon it and asked the Council for it—and—it seems that the man my father so wronged was—your father, Gerard!”
“Do you mean, mademoiselle," he panted, "that you hold there the proof of my father's innocence— the vindication of his honor?”
“My father said so," Béril answered, gently. "And Dr. Morand says it is undoubtedly so.”
“Then if he is still living, he may be released," the boy said, dizzily.
“'Exactly. I have written to my guardian, Comte de la Tour, to take the matter in hand with all speed," she said. "And to do all he can to get an immediate release.”
Gerard stood like one stunned.
“I know not how to believe it," he said, at: last. "It is what I have prayed for, yet scarcely dared to hope. Mademoiselle, how can I ever thank you?”
Hot tears sprang to the girl's eyes.
“Ah, Gerard, you forget," she said, wistfully. "It was my father that brought all this sorrow and shame and suffering on you. It is I that have to beg your forgiveness.”
But Gerard would not let her go on.
“Mademoiselle, we shall never remember aught but that he repented," he said, “and would have done anything to undo the past. And you might have kept silence, but instead have taken all this shame and care upon yourself. All my life I shall thank God first, and then you. Perhaps ere long my father will thank you also.”
Indeed, sooner than they had dared to hope, the father was given back to his children. The Comte de la Tour was not a man for half measures when once convinced that Béril's story was no dream, but a reality. He had influence, too, which he brought to bear upon the right quarters, so not only were the prison doors opened, but the prisoner was restored to his old estate on the banks of Lake Geneva.
But alas there was much that no repentance could restore. The mother who had been the center of the home life was gone; the debonnaire young knight of Mignonne's memories was gone, and in his place was a bent, embittered, prematurely aged man. "He is a Catholic," Gerard said to Dr. Morand. "But, indeed, I fear he gets little joy or comfort from his religion.”
“It may be yours to lead him into the truth," the Doctor said.
“Or Mignonne's," Gerard returned. "She hath won his heart. He says she is my mother over again. She can say far more to him than I.”
The Doctor looked thoughtfully into the boy's face. It was Gerard's first visit since he had gone with the Comte de la Tour to Chillon Castle with the order for release. He had been ever since with his father and Mignonne at the Castle at Ennecy.
“Gerard, you have been sent to another post on the battlefield," he said, at length, “but you are still a soldier, and the foe is still the same, though he may meet you with another face. Courage, dear lad, and go forward. It is no march over, but a grim fight. And we have but begun. We have not even met the full fury of the attack. The enemy has yet to draw on his reserves. We are on the outpost it seems to me in these days, and we do not know how the fight will end. But our Leader knows. He chose outposts for us. 'Who goeth a warfare at his own charges?' It may be lonely on the outpost, but He will not forget. The relief will come, we have only to hold our post. An outpost need not be a brilliant soldier, but he must be a faithful one.”
“Even unto death," Gerard said, slowly.
“Even unto death," the physician said, in a voice that rang like a trumpet call. "For we may die, but the Truth lives on, and to die for Christ is not death but life—even life for evermore.”
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