Presently the door of the hovel was pushed open, and a bent, withered, white-haired old woman came in. “Mother,” Berthelier said to her, “here is another guest for thee.” He spoke to her in the Savoyard patois, having previously been talking French to Norbert, to whom he whispered in that tongue: She lives alone; her husband was killed in battle, her son in a fray with robbers. Her grandson has gone away, she knows not whither.”
Seeing a lady’s robe in the dark, the poor old creature murmured, “Alack, the fine young lady,” then turned up the smoldering fire, fed it with sticks, and set a pot upon it.
“Poor soul,” Berthelier said, “she is nearly as ignorant as thy steed — by the way, where hast thou left him all this time?”
“Tied to a tree out yonder. I forgot him in the surprise of seeing you. What can I do with him?”
“Do you ask “What ought I to do?” Is there a moon?”
“Not yet. I think “twill rise about midnight.”
“No doubt your steed is tired, and yourself — yet, M. Norbert, I would pray of you to mount again this night, and ride, whip and spur, to Geneva.”
“To Geneva!” He could not keep out of his voice the dismay that filled him at the thought.
“Even so.”
“But the very way I do not know. I must have wandered far out of it yesterday. Where are we now, Master Berthelier?”
“Close to the lake. I thought to go by water from Pregny to Geneva, but the rascally fisherman who undertook to bring me landed me here instead. And you -you must have wandered far. Yet, after all, a three hours” ride or so will bring you home.”
“Master Berthelier, if you came here by boat all the way from Pregny, how chanced it you were robbed and wounded?”
“Norbert, thou art in some ways a wise lad. Canst give that greatest proof of wisdom — the holding of thy tongue?”
“I think so.”
“Then hearken. It is my earnest wish, it may be my last wish, that none should know how I came by this wound. Not thyself even. And I pray thee, if any ask of thee, just say, “He fell among thieves.”“
“I understand. But I pray you, master, do not talk of last wishes.”
Here their poor old hostess broke in upon their talk. She placed before Berthelier a shallow wooden bowl, not too clean, into which she had poured a steaming portion of the contents of the pot all feu-a kind of thick pottage made of roots, chiefly of parsnips-then giving him a clumsy wooden spoon, she prayed him to eat, with genuine good-will. Norbert she beckoned to the table, in the center of which a hollow had been scooped out that served at once for dish and platter. She had already filled it with the pottage, and having supplied her guest with a spoon wherewith to eat it, had fulfilled, to the utmost of her power, the duties of hospitality. He, on his part, was far too hungry not to do justice to the fare, homely though it was. When he thought they had finished, he asked his hostess if he might have something also for his horse.
She assented willingly. It was quite in accordance with her ideas that the horses of gentlefolk should eat the food of poor Christians, and Norbert accordingly was able to bring the palfrey a fair equivalent for the warm mash of a modern stableman. He then fastened him securely for the night to a post near the cabin.
While he was thus engaged, Berthelier explained to old Babet that the boy was from Geneva, and was a friend of his; that he had dressed himself, for a frolic, in the clothes of a young maid, but that he would now lend him his, and let him go home. The boy, in return would tell his friends where he was, and get them to send and fetch him.
Babet was very dull, very ignorant; yet in her “dimly-lighted soul” there was one little window, through which a ray of light stole in. She was always trying to do kindnesses. She could never see a need or a pain without at least an effort to help and soothe it. She had the vaguest idea who hex guests might be — and if they had tried to tell her she would not have understood — but she understood quite well that they were hungry, so they should have food; they were weary, so they should rest.
Norbert, at least, was thoroughly weary. He told Berthelier that if he were to set out for Geneva at midnight, when the moon was up, he might chance to drop off his horse from fatigue. But even suppose he came safely, to what use? He would be too early to do any good. Besides, his horse had cast a shoe.
This was decisive. Berthelier bade him sleep till daybreak, then he would arouse him, and he could take the palfrey to a forge, not far distant, and ride on from that to Geneva.
“In the morning I will give you a message to the syndics,” he said. “You must see them at once.”
Babet, already settling for the night, showed Norbert a warm corner where he might lie down. Before he did so, however, he asked Berthelier” “Can I not do something to make you comfortable? I might change, perhaps, the bandage on your wound.”
“It need not. Babet is a good enough barber-surgeon for me — still, if you could fetch me a little clear water from the stream outside, and leave it beside me — ”
Norbert did so, then lay down in his corner, with Gabrielle’s fur-trimmed robe for blanket and coverlet. The next moment, as he thought, he heard Berthelier calling him. He sprang to his feet, rubbed his eyes, looked about him, and felt ready for whatever fate might send.
It seemed better to him, on reflection, to retain the dress he wore, though Berthelier offered to lend him his. He thought his friend might be placed in great difficulty, perhaps in danger, by the want of it; whilst he would enter the town very early, go home at once, and put on his own clothes before any one saw him, except the town watch. He told Berthelier he would send him help as speedily as he could.
“That matters little,” was the answer. “Don’t let them run any risk. But stoop down, that I may give you my message for the syndics.”
There was no fear of listeners; for old Babet, at the farther end of the hovel, was fast asleep. Perhaps it was to save his own voice that Berthelier spoke low into Norbert’s ear. Or perhaps he was ashamed, bitterly ashamed, of the tale he had to tell, ashamed likewise of the name he bore — that name of which heretofore he had been so proud. A listener, had such been there, might save caught the names, Philibert, Daniel, Comparet, Hubert d”Audriol. Then a mention of the Evȇshé, and a word about the boatmen, and their heavy two-handed swords. “Now, boy, you understand, you will remember?” said Berthelier anxiously at the close.
“Depend on me, sir,” said Norbert, evidently much impressed. “The thing is too strange and too terrible to forget, especially for a French exile, and the son of one who has received the freedom of the city.”
“I am giving Daniel up to the hangman, though the same blood flows in these veins,” said Berthelier with emotion. “Can you marvel, Norbert, that I care not greatly to go home? Nor shall it grieve me much if death find me here.”
“Master Berthelier, you must not talk so. Think of Mademoiselle Gabrielle.”
“I do think of her. After this it may be best she should call herself Gabrielle — or Olive — de Castelar. After all, it is her name. But we must think now — of Geneva. You understand all? There is not a moment to lose. You will go straight to the syndics and the Council, and tell them my tale, word for word.”
“Trust me, master. And see, here be three crowns, your own money too, laid ready in the purse of mademoiselle. These smaller coins will pay the smith and get me some bread by the way.”
“Thanks, I am glad of somewhat to give our hostess. Go, and God speed thee. Farewell.”
“Not farewell, for I will return,” said Norbert to himself as he passed out.
Berthelier lay still and listened, until the sound of the palfrey’s hoofs had died away. “Bless the lad!” he thought. “What a marvelous thing he has done! The conception wonderful! The execution, in its daring and audacity, past belief. But what will Master Calvin — what will the syndics say? And young Lormayeur, what a fool he must have been, not to look better to his bargain! Had that old fox, his father, been there, the cheat would not have been so easy. But it saved Gabrielle — and I may see her again!” “Ere he knew it the tears were in his eyes — were falling.
Then his thoughts reverted to himself; all that happened since he left Geneva came back upon his mind, and passed before it in due order and succession. He recalled the courteous and even cordial reception of Philibert Berthelier and his friend and host Ami Perrin, with Philibert’s ready consent to find for him the funds he needed. “So that is what you want, my good cousin?” said the chief of the Libertines.
““Money,” quoth he “money,” like all the rest of the world. Well, I have it not. When, I pray you, had a Berthelier so much as a spare crown in his purse? But then, I have some little credit; and my good friend Master Perrin has more. Between us, doubt not we shall send your pretty dove forth upon her flight with her wings well gilded. I shall see to the matter at once, and it shall be put through before supper, when thou and I shall empty a flute of the best wine of Beaume to the health and happiness of the fair traveler. Who talks of repayment? The young lady may pay us when she comes into her inheritance.”
Philibert’s look, as he spoke thus, reminded Ami Berthelier of his illustrious father, to whom in the old days he had been as Jonathan to David. And now that he lay there, thinking over the past, it turned his tears to “ sparks of fire,” to know that his cousin all the time had been playing on his weakness, because he needed just such an emissary to concert his treasonable designs with his accomplices in Geneva.
Then came the banquet, the carouse. Ami Berthelier wondered if he, in his youth, had actually taken part in such scenes, and enjoyed them. Had he drained his wine glass — far more often than he cared to remember — to the very last drop, then poured that drop out to make “a ruby on the nail?” Had he honored the toasts — and often such toasts — with uproarious shouts and noisy rappings on the table with his knife handle? Had he seasoned his drafts with oath, and song, and jest that he blushed to think of now — he that had made himself the guardian of Gabrielle’s innocent youth? Now he found the whole scene quite as abhorrent to his taste as to his principles.
When the strong wine had circulated freely, they drank to the Liberties of Geneva, and Philibert said he knew how heartily his cousin would honor that toast. But he explained that he meant her true liberties, not the sham ones, which only meant a change of tyrants. How were ministers better than priests and bishops? Then the others all chimed in, denouncing the utter detestableness of the new order of things. Curses — in this case not deep, perhaps, but certainly loud — were hurled upon Master Calvin, or “ Cain,” as they called him, and all his aiders and abettors. Then followed nods and winks, vague hints and mysterious whispers. “ A time is coming, friends; oh yes, a time is coming. We shall soon see great changes; “with much more of the same kind. “ But we must be prudent,” suggested some one, a shade more sober than the rest, with a warning glance in Ami’s direction. At which Philibert, who had drowned in the wine-cup the little caution he ever possessed, laid a friendly hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “Never fear him,” he said. “Is he not a Berthelier? He is our good friend, who is going to help us.”
Then “ “twixt the wine-cup and the wine,” there was unfolded to Ami Berthelier the part he was expected to play, and the message he was to carry back to Geneva. Philibert would return, and lead the fishermen and boatmen once more. Daniel and the other captives were to break prison, and join them. Together they would raise the town, kill or drive away the French, and make an end of the reign of the saints. Even the reckless Philibert, in his sober senses, would not have unmasked his designs so soon or so utterly.
Ami Berthelier listened with horror. He had, with much difficulty, avoided actual excess, yet the unaccustomed strength of the wine he had been obliged to drink stirred his blood and heated his brain. When the son of the hero and martyr of Geneva found words to ask him — him, who had shared his sufferings — to betray Geneva and destroy her, his soul straightway went on fire. With indignant scorn, which he took no pains to measure or to soften, he flung back the base proposal. It was no wonder that rage answered scorn, for his words, though he knew it not, seared and burned like vitriol. Angry tones were heard, threatening hands were laid upon sword hilts. Presently a foolish young Libertine, quite intoxicated, threw a glass of wine in his face. But another checked him, saying, “That’s too bad, Jacquot. If M. Ami Berthelier asks for satisfaction, he is within his rights.”
“Doubtless the young gentleman knows I cannot fight, being lame,” said Ami Berthelier, as he rose and, with a courteous gesture of farewell to M. Perrin their host, turned to the door.
“Stop him! stop him!” was the general cry. All sprang to their feet, saying, some one thing, some another, but the meaning of all was this: “He must not go, he knows too much.” Philibert intercepted him, the others crowding round. He raised his arm to put his cousin aside, Philibert’s sword flashed out, and in another moment was red with the blood of Ami. A scuffle ensued. Ami, nigh to fainting, could not tell what happened, save that he thought he was being pulled to pieces. But at last some one — it was the young man who had reproved Jacquot — tore the door open, saying: Go — go — or they will kill you!”
In the open air his senses came back to him, and he sat down and considered what to do. But, as he was thinking where to find his horse, and how he could manage, wounded as he was, to ride back to Geneva, the door shook, and he fancied the revelers inside were going to open it. In the strength of his fear he rose and walked on towards the little town of Pregny. On his way he met a peasant who worked on Perrin’s estate. He told him he was a Genevan who had come on business to his master, but that he had met with an accident, and was now anxious to return home by the lake. The man took him to his cottage, bound up his wound in rough fashion, and told him that his brother, who was a fisherman, was actually going to Geneva that very night: would his worthiness be able, with help, to walk down to the beach and get on board the fishing-smack? All Berthelier’s longing was to get to Geneva and tell his tale — if he died for it the next hour. So his soul held his body strengthened for the work. All the more bitter was his disappointment when the fisherman, meeting comrades he wished to join, broke his bargain, and set his passenger down on Savoyard territory, scarcely nearer to the town than Pregny. Ill feverish, and in much suffering from his wound, he made his way somehow to the hovel of Babet, and was glad to lie down on her wretched bed, as he said to himself, to die.
Yet it was life, not death, which surged through his soul that dim morning hour when Norbert left him. Once more he felt himself alone; for poor Babet’s presence was no disturbance, while perhaps it lent him a shadow of human companionship, which kept loneliness from being desolation. Besides, she might sleep for hours, for it was yet but the breaking of the day.
His thoughts went back to the old times in the dungeon of Peney, where he had lain, as he lay now, in weakness, weariness, and pain. Better then than now, for then, though faith in many things had failed, faith in one thing was left him still — he believed in liberty. It still seemed worthwhile to him to suffer and to die that Geneva might be free — and how much the better for it, after all? Did freedom mean the rule of the consistory — a band of fanatical pastors and elders, all at the beck and call of one ambitious, clever Frenchman who had shaken off the yoke of Rome to put his own instead of it? He knew, however, what freedom did not mean. Not the overthrow of Calvin and the saints, and the substitution of Philibert Berthelier and the Libertines. No; that last error would be worse than the first. “I have given my life to prevent it,” he thought. “And I do not regret it.”
“What, then, of all the past do I regret?” was his next thought. “Nothing — absolutely nothing perhaps by itself — but the whole, as a whole. What good has my life been to myself, or to any one else? When I am judged, the most that can be said for me is this: “Twice over in his life he might have done harm, and refused, at some cost to himself.” What is that to stand out, as the best of a man’s record upon earth?”
“When I am judged.” Was there then such a thing, after all, as a judgment to come? Berthelier felt sure that, if there were, his place would be with the condemned. And yet he longed for it, cried out for it, with his whole heart and soul and strength! It was far more intolerable to think that right should never be vindicated, that wrong should triumph always, than that he, a unit amongst millions, should stand convicted as the failure he knew he was. He had had his chances; it was his own fault if he lost them. He had lived his life; and in his retrospect now, that life was not all bitter. Had he not the memories of his youth, of the years before the Deluge — the glad, strong, eager years when everything seemed possible to him? The years when he hoped, waited, dreamed — and, more than all, when he loved? True, they were soon over. Soon hope had vanished, trust was betrayed, dreams were shattered, love itself was quenched in the grave. All was gone. What matter? he himself was going too. Out of darkness all came, into darkness all went again. That was the end.
Yet in his day he had tried to do something which might count as a man’s work in the world, which might not perish all. His soul had gone out in the patriot’s passion, which meant, for him, devotion to the city that was his fatherland. Was it all, indeed, for Geneva’s dear sake? Had he not ambitions of his own? Used he not to think often of the great citizens of Greece and Rome, and to dream of a name like theirs, a name that Geneva at least would not willingly let die? Though quite ready, in the young enthusiasm of his hero worship, to stand in the shadow of his great kinsman, still he hoped to be the second Berthelier, the worthy friend and helper of the first.
But now the noble name of Berthelier was stained, past repair. Philibert and Daniel Berthelier were traitors; the one was in prison, and the other in exile; not, like their father, for a good cause, but for a very bad one. Whilst he himself stood alone, an outcast from both parties, contrary to all men,” despised and rejected.
Despised and rejected? “The words were familiar. Of whom had he heard them said? He thought for a moment. Then he remembered. They were in the Bible; part of a text such as Master Calvin would preach from, using long words, like election, predestination, justification. To him these were dreary abstractions without meaning. Still, the words haunted him. They ran thus: He was despised and rejected of men,” as if spoken of a man whose portion, like his own, had been contempt and failure.
Gradually, as he pondered, there rose up and took shape within him the conception of the human Christ. He was used to think of Socrates and other great heathens as men like himself — why not the Man of Nazareth? And yet the thought was new, startling, wonderful. Because — so he put it to himself — his mind all his life had been confused by the nonsense which Papists and Reformed alike were wont to talk. He did not believe, with them, that Christ was a strange, mysterious Being, whom one could not think about with any reasonableness, save just as part of a system, that clever system which Master Calvin had explained with such great perspicuity in the Institutes of the Christian Religion. One could not believe all that; but one might, and could, and must believe that there was once a Man called Jesus Christ, who tried in His day to do good to men — and failed.
The thought was soothing and helpful. It was as if, in his loneliness, someone had come to be with him, to stand by him. Perhaps, in the rest it gave him, a slight slumber stole over his senses, for the consciousness of a Presence grew and grew, till it seemed to fill all the room. He saw nothing, heard nothing, yet he knew it was there. Or rather, One was there, who had been despised and rejected, yet was now — What was He now? The question woke him up thoroughly; he tried to think it out. Yes, he remembered the history, which he had never thought of before as a man’s history, only as part of a Church’s creed. He had failed, for the Jews would not believe in Him: He came to His own, and His own received Him not.” And then, at last, He was crucified, and by the very people He had tried to help. How crushed, disappointed, how bitter of soul He must have been! Indeed,” pursued Berthelier, if I remember right, I think He said so: “My soul is sorrowful exceedingly,” or words like that. But was that the end? How did He come to think of it all afterward?
“If I could speak to Him, and ask — but there, to be sure men do speak to Him every day, for they believe that He sits at God’s right hand, is God Himself indeed. And they prayed. I do not know. I know nothing; I am a wanderer in the dark whose candle has gone out. But it, at least, so much as this one might believe, might hope, that “despised, rejected, crucified,” did not end all the story — that these were but a dark passage into light beyond — why, then, for others too there might be light.
“But then,” thought Berthelier, “His failure, His rejection, was quite undeserved.” He tried to remember all He could of the story of that life and death, which presently he summed up: Yes, He deserved success and victory, if man ever did. He never sinned against His own nature, fell short of cleaving to His purpose. On that white robe of His there was blood indeed, but no stain of sin. It was good to think that One at least had proved Himself worthy of all trust and all honor. Perhaps men were right in thinking that such an one had not perished, could not perish. Could He? That was the question; everything turned upon that. If His defeat were final, if all ended there, then is evil stronger than good, and it will prevail.”
Berthelier could not believe it, any more than he could believe that the sun which set the night before would never rise again upon the world. No; all Christendom must be right in saying that He lived, that even now He sat a Victor in heaven. But if so, Christendom was right also in saying that men might speak to Him, and ask — but what should he ask? What was it that he had longed so to ask of Him? All the longing passed from him, it melted away in the very joy, the great, wonderful joy of believing He really was. He lived; He was somewhere in the world, to be admired, loved, trusted. Perhaps even He might teach others the secret of His victory, that they, after pain and failure like that which He had suffered — perhaps after mistakes too which He had not made — should also gain the victory. Yet for that, at least for his own possible share in it, he was not anxious. Enough if right had triumphed — and Christ.
Just then the first rays of the rising run stole in through the little window. “The sun has risen,” said Berthelier to himself. Old Babet stirred in her corner, and the next moment was on her knees, muttering a Pater Noster.
“Pater Noster — Our Father,” Berthelier thought; “that is the prayer of Christ. It was He who taught men to say to the Infinite and the Everlasting, Our Father! He knew what He said, and told men no falsehoods. What if this was true? What if, at the center of everything, there was the heart of the Father, and that He, the Son, came to reveal it?”