“O for one moment of the past,
To kneel and say, ‘Forgive!’”
THE weeping group who stood around the couch of death had no time to waste in idle lamentations. They must act, and without delay. For the iron hand of persecution reached even the dead. Those blessed words, “after that, they have no more that they can do,” were true of the ransomed spirit, not of the earthly tenement. It was a small thing to refuse the Protestants a resting-place for their dead in consecrated ground. They would have been well content to lay those precious remains in woods, in gardens, in desert places, in the cellars of their houses, could they have preserved them, even thus, from insult and profanation. But over the deathbed of every person out of communion with the Romish Church there hovered the dark shadow of a “process against the memory of the deceased.” If the result proved unfavorable, the survivors were reduced to penury, and the dead exposed to outrages from which the heart recoils.
In a voice broken by emotion, the aged Brissac told Jeannette and René that their friends thought it best to lay their precious treasure near to the spot where he fell—but not adding why.
Both yielded a passive assent, and the mournful task was soon performed. A brief and solemn prayer, offered by Brissac, while tears of genuine sorrow fell from all, formed the only funeral rite. Then “they left the sleeper with his God to rest,” and went slowly and sadly home.
Some time elapsed before the Protestant villagers of Trou could ascertain how their friends from other places fared that night. Their own “casualties,” not including Paul Plans, were six wounded (half of whom were women) and three prisoners, amongst them Guillaume Vérien, the sentinel. Another sentinel was killed, who belonged to a neighboring village. The attack had been well planned and skillfully executed; and the approach of the soldiery was not discovered in time to give the alarm. Yet the Protestants knew they could not have been thus surprised, had they not been betrayed; and they feared some member of their own community had been the informer. As yet, however, suspicion only floated vaguely, without settling upon any one with special fixedness.
Sympathy in its warmest, tenderest, and most practical form was shown to the orphan children. The Brissacs took them to their own home, and the old man was as a father to them. Not long afterward, however, he one day drew René aside, and said, “My son, I would not add to your sorrow, yet you should know that the curé has been making inquiry about your age, and your sister’s also.”
“My age, M. Brissac? What concern is that of his?”
“You are past fourteen, are you not?”
“I am past fifteen.”
“That might not hinder him, or protect you, suppose it entered his head to trouble you. Besides, as you were not baptized in the church, you have no mean of proving that you are not still underage, and liable to be treated as being so.”
“Do you mean, monsieur, liable to be taken by force, and sent―I to some Jesuit college, and Jeannette to a convent?” asked René, with evident fear.
“I do,” said M. Brissac. “There are more edicts than one which may be brought to bear upon your case. Your attendance at the assembly would in itself be sufficient to warrant your arrest. Young as you are, you can recall many instances of those who have thus been carried forcibly away.”
“How dreadful―for Jeannette!” said René.
“Well-nigh as dreadful for you, my son.”
“They should never send me to a Jesuit college, M. Brissac. My arm is quite strong enough to earn me a place at the oar,” said René, an ominous light in his dark eyes.
“My poor boy, you have much to learn still,” Brissac answered, with a sigh.
Yet René was aroused, by this new alarm, out of a despairing lethargy which seemed settling over him.
“I see,” he said, with earnestness and warmth, “I see what we ought to do. I look seventeen, and I am strong. We ought both of us to return home and live together. Our cottage is a lonely one―” (His voice trembled a little.) “There we will be hid, and our enemies may forget to seek for us. Or, if they do, they will find a man and woman, whom they may well despair of forcing into the faith of those that killed their father.”
“My son, I believe you are right. We will all help you in the tillage of your field, and any other labor to which your strength may be unequal.”
The return to their cottage was a relief to both the orphans. Jeannette was glad to weep undisturbed in the home where every object recalled her father, and brought her some memory of his care and tenderness. Her grief was deep, but “stayed in peace with God and man;” for her nature, though tender and loving, was not passionate, and her faith was simple and strong. Life seemed short, and eternity near, as it often does to the young in days of sorrow: her thoughts dwelt with resignation, even with joy, on the Christian’s hope beyond
“That gulf of death, which is not wide.”
With René it was otherwise. He did not weep or lament, but he cherished, deep in his heart, a passionate, despairing sorrow, largely mingled with remorse. He exaggerated his offenses, especially the last―that loitering on the homeward way from Privas, for which he could never now receive forgiveness. Often he said within himself, “If only he had spoken to me, I could have borne it.” But he sought no counsel or comfort, and therefore none was given him. It seemed as though one night had changed the thoughtless boy into a sombre, self-contained man, silent and determined; going about his daily work with manly forethought, but utterly without the spring and energy that should belong to youth.