“The voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent’s fall.”
RENÉ PLANS fulfilled with honor and profit his career as a student in he Seminary of Lausanne, instituted for the express purpose of training ministers for the Desert Church of France. The instructions of the venerable Antoine Court, and of the professors found willing to aid him in his labor of faith and love, supplemented the teaching he had received, in the first instance, from the lips of his father, then from those of Annette Meniet. After an absence of three years, he set out upon the perilous journey back to his native land, his mind well stored with the learning needful to interpret and illustrate Holy Scripture, and his heart burning with zeal to devote soul and body to the service of “the Church under the cross.”
He arrived in safety, and received the imposition of hands, which constituted his regular ordination, under the vault of heaven, in a rocky valley of the Vivarais. A young brother of the martyred minister, Louis Rang, was ordained with him; and the officiating pastor, Pierre Peyrot, addressed them both, in words of simple but fervid eloquence, from the appropriate text, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” His sermon may still be read by the curious; but such relics of the past are dried flowers, from which the fragrance has died away with the sun and the wind of the far-away summers that matured them. We should need, not only the influences of time and place―the wild and rocky landscape, the eager listening thousands―but the edicts of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. suspended over us, to understand the emotions that thrilled those two young hearts at the preacher’s concluding appeal: “It is only too certain that we are sheep in the midst of wolves. What does this demand? You feel it! A sacred deposit is confided to you; you ought to keep it. A crown is placed on your head; suffer no man to take it from you.”
If further commentary were needed on the words of the text, it was supplied by the conversation the young “proposants” heard afterward, as with Pierre Peyrot, and two other pastors who had taken part in the ceremony, they partook of their simple meal under the shelter of a rock.
The persecution continued to rage with unabated fury; and many stories were told of fines, confiscations, imprisonments, and worse than all, of the forcible and often wholesale separation of Protestant children from their parents. In some parts of the country there had been actual dragonnades.
Peyrot, with his friend and colleague, the heroic Michel Viala, mourned over these dismal scenes, and seemed almost disposed to ask, with the Psalmist, “Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies forever?”
But the other pastor, a stranger in the district, inclined to more hopeful views. He was a man of distinguished appearance, with a good figure and a pleasant face, shaded by chestnut locks, over which he wore a small brown bonnet, matching his brown overcoat. The uninitiated called him the Chevalier de Briga, and in his bearing and character there was an “élan,” a noble frankness and daring, that suited the aristocratic name it pleased him to assume. But the churches of the Desert knew him as Étienne Différe, the indefatigable evangelist of Béarn, the enthusiastic friend of Paul Rabaut, the “coal of fire,” as with much truth he styled himself, candidly admitting and lamenting his deficiency in the cooler virtues of prudence and discretion.
“My dear friends, take courage,” he said, stretching out the “beautiful hand” specially noticed in the “signalement” of the police. “It is true our brethren suffer; but when was that not true? Instead of weeping and lamenting we ought to thank God for his grace given unto them so abundantly. Our forcats are kept in faith and patience, and even their outward condition has undergone a change for the better. You know, brethren, how they were made to suffer in former days. I need not recall those tales of horror, so fresh in your memories. Then the red jacket, the badge of the Huguenot forgat, drew upon its wearer every imaginable torture and insult. Now it is absolutely becoming a protection. ‘Forcats pour la foi’ are really treated with more kindness and consideration than thieves and murderers. Besides, the suppression of the galleys has been a manifest boon to them. Never again can forced labor be so cruel, or prisons so hateful, as were those floating hells.’”
“Have you seen M. Lafond, lately?―the pastor who ministers to our forcats,” Peyrot asked.
“I have. I was entreated not to go to Toulon, the risk was so great; but―” he paused, and shrugged his shoulders expressively, while a smile passed round the group.
“M. Lafond’s work, if possible, deepens in interest,” he continued. “He has obtained, of late, most efficient aid in solacing his suffering flock. The wife of one of our confessors obtained leave to visit her husband during a severe illness; and she has contrived to arrange a plan of communication with him, and through him, with others. She resides with one of the prison officials, who has the contract for supplying the convicts with food, and she makes herself so useful to the women of the family, who manage the business, that the kind offices she performs for the prisoners are permitted or overlooked. It is said, moreover, that she has a powerful protector in an officer of high rank, a connection of M. L’Intendant. She is, indeed, a crown to her husband, and many beside her children will rise up and call her blessed; but for the present, her name and her work should remain hidden, not from the world alone, but even from the Church. The least indiscretion would peril everything.”
Viala and Peyrot were both aware that their colleague’s own share of discretion was not large; nor were they anxious to press him to further disclosures in the presence of the young proposants. But one of these thought he knew what Diffère had not told. René remembered that Madame Meniet, in the hours when her heart was open, had sometimes betrayed her longing to minister to her Lord in his suffering members. So great was his anxiety to hear more, that when the repast was over he ventured to draw M. Diffère aside, and after due apologies for an inquiry which his age and position scarcely gave him a right to make, he said, “I do not ask you, Monsieur le Pasteur, to name the lady of whom you spoke just now, only to tell me whether she is not the near relative of an honored martyr, whose praise is in all the churches.”
“She is,” said the frank Diffère. “His sister; and worthy of him.”
“One word more, M. le Pasteur. Is her family―are her children―with her at Toulon?”
“Certainly not. It would never have answered. They are sale in the Cévennol mountains, with their friends.”
René thanked him, and turned away; but the warmhearted pastor of Béarn would not let the young proposant depart without a word of counsel and blessing. He took a paper from his wallet, and showed it to René.
“Do you know what that represents, my young friend?” he asked.
It was a carefully-executed drawing of a seal or medallion, on which was engraved a frail barque tossed upon a stormy sea―the sails torn, the masts shivered, the mariners kneeling with helpless hands clasped in prayer, while beneath was inscribed the legend, “Lord, save, or we perish!”
“You have there,” said Diffère, without waiting for an answer, “the arms and cognizance of the Desert Church, as engraved upon the seal affixed to our Synodal Acts.”
René gave him back the paper with a smile. “I thank God, who has given me the honor to be enrolled this day among those kneeling mariners,” he said.
“You do well,” Diffère answered, with a warm grasp of the young man’s hand. “For they are of those who shall stand hereafter on the sea of glass, having the harps of God;―if they be found faithful. But remember, my young brother, thou and I have no strength for faithfulness, save that we gain by cleaving to our faithful God and Saviour.”
Had René, sought his own pleasure, he would have taken staff in hand that day, and made his way over hill and valley to the mountain cottage of Trou. But he was ordained a pastor of the Desert Church, that he might follow in the steps of One who “pleased not Himself.” Therefore months passed away before he found himself free to revisit the place of his birth.
At first he accompanied M. Peyrot, then he made a missionary tour by himself over the Coiron, and through the wild, inaccessible region where “Les Boutilres” raise their volcano-shattered heads. He traveled always on foot, often through rain, sleet, and snow, by the lonely and perilous pathways which the simple mountaineers still point out as having been made beautiful, in the days of persecution, by the feet of those who brought glad tidings and published peace. Sometimes he slept in the huts of the faithful, oftener in a cavern or beneath a rock, with dried leaves for his bed and a stone for his pillow. He shrank, not without reason, from exposing his friends to danger; moreover, he was young and strong, and at this stage of his experience, tempted rather to court hardship and peril than to avoid them.
So keen was the persecution at that time, that he was unable to convene any public assembly. For the six or eight months that succeeded his ordination his work consisted in visiting from house to house, and holding, under great precautions, small semi-private meetings for prayer and exhortation. But when Spring smiled once more upon the fertile valley of the Eyrieu, it fell to René’s lot, at last, to address a great assembly, gathered on the slope of one of its romantic vine-clad hills.
The scene was too solemn, the associations it awakened too thrilling, for those minor embarrassments which so often distract the thoughts of him who raises his voice for the first time in the presence of his brethren and fathers.
He read aloud from the book that had been Jean Desjours’s dying gift the words of his text: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Throughout the long hours of the previous night had he wrestled with his God, pleading for this boon―that the faces which crowded round him, summoned by the strong spell of those words, might not obscure the one Face he desired to see himself, and to manifest to others. His prayer was heard. If he spoke in thrilling words of a “good man” known to all, for whom some had nobly shown they could dare to die, but who had chosen instead to die for them, it was to commend the love of Him who gave His life, not for friends, but for enemies, that. He might make them brethren, sons of God, and heirs of eternal life.
All were moved by the eloquence of the young pastor, who himself had not a thought whether he was eloquent or no. Many wept; but a group near him showed a degree of emotion that particularly attracted his attention. There were two men advanced in years, and several women, amongst them a girl, who kept her face hidden, but whose slight frame, convulsed with sobs, betrayed the feelings she sought to conceal. When the service was over, one of the men joined the throng that surrounded the pastor, and stood awaiting his turn to speak with him.
But René, recognizing Étienne Lorin, came to his side at once with affectionate greetings and inquiries. Yes, his wife was well. And his daughters? Jacqueline was married, and settled in Vernoux; Marie was with them still. His brother Pierre had come to the prêche; thank God, they were all more earnest about religion since that sad time, six years ago. Surely M. le Pasteur would do them the favor to come home with them René hesitated, unwilling to expose them to danger. But Étienne insisted, and he yielded. Before they joined the family he took occasion to inquire, “Did you receive my letter from Montpellier, telling of our dear friend Desjours?”
“We did, M. le Pasteur. Marie keeps it still―will keep it always, I think. Poor child 1 she believes him a martyr. Perhaps she is scarcely wrong.”
“This I know, Père Lorin―we might all gladly be where he is now.”
But Lorin turned hastily from the subject, as he saw the women come forward to greet the pastor. “Rachel, Marie,” he said, “let your hearts be glad today; M. le Pasteur will honor our home with his presence. Brother Pierre, you must come with us, too, and we will talk of old times together.”
“Then you must call the boy, to whom you showed so much kindness, by the name he bore in the old times,” said René, shaking hands with the women and with Pierre Lorin.
And thus, once more, he spent a night in the hut of the forester, Étienne Lorin. The communion they held together, if a little tinged with sadness, was hopeful and refreshing to all the party. They “strengthened each other’s hands in God.”
But just as they were about to separate for the night, René heard tidings, from the lips of Pierre Lorin, which could not but cause him deep sorrow. His late wandering life had prevented his learning, until now, the arrest of two pastors―Francois Bénezet, a young proposant, the pupil and friend of Rabaut, and Molines, accounted one of the most eloquent preachers of the Desert, and popularly called Fléchier, from a supposed likeness to the celebrated bishop and orator of that name.
“You have more to tell?” René said, after a mournful pause. “Doubtless both have joined their brethren—with the souls under the altar?”
“M. Bénezet is at rest; he died bravely. But Molinesoh, M. le Pasteur, there are worse things than death!”
“What, my friend? Do you mean that he―he―has denied his Lord? I cannot believe it!” cried René, with a start and a look of horror.
“Too true, monsieur. The gibbet is a grim reality. When Molines stood face to face with that, his courage failed.”
René covered his face and groaned aloud. Shame and anguish thrilled every nerve. It was the fall of a standard bearer, and he seemed to see the honored standard trailed in blood and mire. Who, after this, could dare to say again, “Though I should die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee?”
Étienne Lorin broke the silence. “He strengthened his companion,” he said, “and then, afterward, failed himself. Poor M. Bénezet, his was a bitter cup! He was but six-and-twenty, and he leaves a young wife and orphan babe to mourn for him.”
“God pity the widow! hers is the sorest martyrdom,” said Madame Lorin. “But, my husband, our dear René (since he will be called so), looks tired to death; and no marvel. Ask him to lead our evening prayer, and let us go to rest.”
Yet was it long before René slept. He rose from the comfortable bed prepared for him, and sat beside the hearth, where he and Desjours had talked together of Majal’s heroic life. There was a great conflict in the young man’s soul that night. Cased in armor of proof though he seemed to be against the perils of the lot he had chosen, a keen shaft had found a joint in the harness, and pierced him to the heart. There was another side to martyrdom―a shadow to the glory. It was well with Majal; it was well, too, with Bénezet― he walked with Christ in white garments―but how was it, the while, with Bénezet’s heartbroken widow? That pale young face haunted René, and “held his eyes from sleep.” He had never seen it; yet, to his fancy, it wore familiar features. Whose were those deep blue eyes, that pure and candid brow, still wearing the grace of childhood, though touched with a yet more potent charm, the dawning light of womanhood? Once more he found himself at Mazel, once more he held a small hand in his, and heard a low voice murmur, “I must comfort my mother.” Then the scene changed to the elder’s cottage at Trou; he stood beneath the old chestnut tree, he trod the little path to the village, he climbed the mountain heights. But that form was always beside him; of that presence he never for a moment ceased to be conscious. It was infinitely dearer to him than aught else on earth.
It had been so for six long years; though unaccustomed to “think about thinking, and feel about feeling,” he had never tom up the roots of his soul to ascertain from What soil they drew their nourishment. But pain is a great revealer of secrets. His tears fell fast that night―less for Molines’s apostasy than for the agony that could make even such baseness conceivable; less for Bénezet’s young widow than for one to whom love had no better thing to offer than the chance of such a fate.
The trust and the tenderness of love were at strife within him. If one voice cried aloud, “Spare the loved one hardship, peril, anguish; let her be shielded from all!” the other answered promptly, “Ay, but she has a heroic heart. Hers is the right, in God’s sight and man’s, to choose her own lot.” René’s strong heart vibrated between the two, like steel between two magnets.
But since it is the strongest love that ever trusts the most, he might have decided to “put his fortune to the touch,” had not considerations that appealed to manly honor and generosity made themselves heard on the other side. Madeleine’s father was a captive, her mother was far away. Practically she was an orphan, and unprotected; and the roof that sheltered her, the bread she ate, were in reality―his! His bronzed cheek grew crimson in the darkness, as he remembered this. The cottage home, which for three years he had longed day and night to see once more, suddenly acquired a repellent power. He knew not how he should ever go thither again. He would rather go to the ends of the earth.
Accustomed to find prayer his refuge and his solace, he sought it now, and not altogether in vain. It quieted the tempest within him; and then, at last, near the breaking of the day, his healthy physical nature claimed the refreshment of slumber, for the fatigues of the previous day had been excessive. When he awoke the sun was up, and all the world astir.
Almost the first object that greeted his eye was a letter from M. Peyrot, brought by one of the secret accredited agents of the Church. As his missionary tour in the Vivarais was now ended, it was thought that his native province, the Hautes Cévennes, had more urgent need of his services; and he was therefore requested to repair thither, and put himself at the disposal of his old friend and pastor, M. Roux.
He drew a long sigh of surprise and perplexity. “So, after all, it must be,” he mused. “Trou lies in my path; cannot be avoided, for many reasons. God guide me!―I know not what to do. This is a great misfortune.”
Perhaps he thought so; but, if he did, he bore it with remarkable fortitude. From his beaming eye, his glowing countenance, and his elastic step, the Lorins inferred that he had heard good tidings, and began to congratulate him. He did not, or could not, undeceive them; but he asked their prayers (they would have been his without the asking), and, after an affectionate parting, set out on his journey.