“The martyr’s God has looked kindly down
On the martyr’s orphan son.”
UNNUMBERED times had René heard the truths which the wandering Pastor of the Desert told him beside his father’s grave. In earliest childhood he had learned by rote, if not by heart, that matchless revelation of Divine love we call the parable of the prodigal son. Yet now its message came to him fresh from the finger of God, as if sent from heaven for no eye, no heart, save his. For myriad years may the beams of a distant sun have traveled through space, yet not till the moment they reach the remote planet which is the world to us does the child of earth exclaim, “Behold God has made a new star in the sky.”
The solitary journey to Mazel gave René leisure to ponder what he had heard. The good seed had fallen into deep furrows, plowed by the first sorrow of his heart; nor was there wanting the dew from heaven, which alone could make it fruitful.
As the November day closed over him, he found himself at the open gate of the comfortable, substantial farmhouse of Mazel. Nestling amidst its fields and orchards, it seemed the abode of peace and plenty―even of rural wealth and luxury.
Several laborers were lingering about the spacious yard, and a well-dressed man, broad-shouldered and loud-voiced, with a frank, open countenance, was taking one of them to task, in no measured words, for some neglect or oversight.
“Is that M. Meniet?” René asked a farm lad, who replied by an affirmative nod.
René, waiting till he had done, approached him, and in a low voice said, “M. Meniet, I have the honor to be the bearer of a message for you.”
“Well, my boy, out with it!” the farmer returned, not lowering his voice.
“I had rather speak with you in another place,” said René.
“Oh, very well! Come indoors.”
As René accompanied Meniet into the house, he said, in an under tone, “My errand is from your brother-in-law, M. le Pasteur.”
Meniet’s open, good-humored countenance suddenly assumed a changed appearance, and beamed on René with affectionate delight. Then, with one great hand grasping that of the boy, and the other laid upon his shoulder, he half led, half drew him into the family room.
“He is safe―is he?” he said, softly and inquiringly.
“Safe, monsieur,” was the answer.
Then, closing the door carefully behind him, Meniet said to those in the room, “Here is a lad Majal has sent to us with tidings. Speak out, my boy; we are all friends.”
René found himself in a room, comfortable and well-furnished. A large fire, heaped with heavy logs of wood, burned in the open grate, and some cooking operation was going forward. Beside the fire sat a gray-haired woman, with keen dark eyes, and a sharp, intelligent face; a spinning wheel was before her, and a little girl, some ten years old, was helping her to fasten fresh yarn upon it. A boy, much younger―a handsome miniature of his father was on the ground, sitting before the fire, and playing with a dog. But René’s eyes rested longest on the sweet thoughtful face of Meniet’s wife, which bore a striking resemblance to that of her brother, the Pastor of the Desert. She was several years his senior; but his life of toil and hardship had aged him, so that this was not apparent.
“Do you bring any token from him?” she inquired, as she rose to meet René.
“Yes, madame; his watchword, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd!’”
Confidence was at once established. On hearing the words, the little girl came forward with a beaming face to René, and looked up at him with deep blue eyes, like, the pastor’s. The little boy gained courage also, and joined the group.
René’s message was delivered, and he was forthwith overwhelmed with questions.
What did the pastor say to him? How did he look? Where had they met? with many such like.
Some of these he answered directly; but many things he withheld; for they belonged to himself alone. And having satisfied the anxieties of those who questioned him as far as he could, he added, “He spoke little of himself; but much of God, and of his truth.”
“Ah!” said Annette. “Even so. You could not better have described my brother than by these words.”
“We owe you a great debt, monsieur, though we do not yet know even your name,” said Meniet.
“I am René Plans.”
They had heard the story of the elder’s death; and their hearts warmed to his orphan son. The kindest hospitality was shown him. For Jean Meniet, as Majal said, loved to entertain strangers; and the stranger who brought welcome tidings surely deserved a double welcome. The best the farmhouse contained was produced, and the resources of a well-managed farm in the South of France might entertain a king, not unworthily.
Sorrowful though René’s heart had been, it could not but expand into cheerfulness in such a genial atmosphere. The last three weeks, which seemed as long as all his former life together, were for the time almost forgotten, as he sat with little Claude on his knee, and Madeleine beside him, telling all he knew to M. Meniet, and listening to his inexhaustible stories of the daring exploits, and hairbreadth escapes, and the holy, self-denying ministrations of him whom they called Majal. This was, properly speaking, a surname; but, according to the custom of the district, it was used even in family intercourse. The pride and joy of the whole household seemed to center in Majal. Meanwhile, Annette Meniet moved in and out; preparing René’s chamber, waiting upon everyone, and now and then contributing to the conversation a few quiet words which bore evidence of thoughts and feelings deeper than those of her husband.
She was assisted in the duties of the ménage by an elderly woman, of plain appearance, evidently much beloved by the children, who called her Babette. Though treated in every respect as an equal, she was a domestic in fact―not in name, for the Protestants were forbidden by the cruel laves to receive into their houses servants of their own faith.
A far more important member of the household was Madame Larachette, Meniet’s aged mother. The habits of French society, which differ somewhat from our own, sanctioned her retaining, over the women and children of the family, the full measure of authority she had possessed during her husband’s life, and exacting great obedience and deference from them. She seemed to find the office of the lawgiver and the functions of the critic particularly congenial, and was very unsparing in their exercise. René thought her something more, when he heard her venture to blame even Majal, who, she said, had more than once been sadly imprudent, and owed his escape solely to Providence. She advised Annette, admonished the children, made Madeleine apply herself to her knitting, restricted Claude’s consumption of “nougat” within reasonable limits, and told his father that he “would ruin that boy with his over-indulgence,” which did not seem wholly improbable.
At last she insisted, much to Rene’s regret, upon breaking up the family party at a comparatively early hour, quoting an old French proverb, to the effect that “he who goes to bed at nine will live to ninety years and fine.” In obedience to a sign from her grandmother, little Madeleine brought Ostervald’s Bible, and laid it before her father, who read a chapter from the New Testament, with a short, but earnest and reverent prayer; then, with united voices, they sang one of the psalms so dear to the French Protestants.
René was thankful afterward for that early dismissal. Madame Meniet led him to the guest chamber; a spacious, comfortable room, with a great four-post bed (itself almost a chamber), hung with arras; the furniture was of dark oak, very solid, and included a carved armchair, a cabinet, and a large mirror.
“Does M. Majal sleep here when he comes to you?” René asked.
“Oh, no! We dare not risk that. This room is too well known, too easy of access, and too difficult to escape from unobserved. Come with me, if you will, and I will show you our cachette.”
She led René up a flight of stairs, and to the end of a long passage. Then she touched a panel in the wall, apparently not different from the rest; it opened by means of a secret spring, and they entered a small apartment, dimly lighted from above. This prophet’s chamber had nearly the same furniture as the Shunamite’s, with one addition―a well-filled bookshelf, concealed by the canopy of the simple bed, which Annette pushed aside that René might examine the minister’s library.
It contained, besides some books of psalms and sacred songs, the works of Drelincourt and Ostervald, the more learned treatises of Placette and Jaquelot, the eloquent sermons of Claude, and an early volume of Saurin’s burning addresses to his fellow exiles at the Hague. One Catholic book, the Port Royal edition of “Les Pensées dé Pascal,” had a place in that library, not unfitly, for doubtless its author shall one day sit down with the confessors and martyrs of the Desert at the marriage supper of the Lamb. Her brother’s Greek Testament and Hebrew Psalter, Annette explained, he always carried about his person.
René, whose acquirements were very slender, gazed with admiration and awe upon such a store of learning.
“Madame,” he said, “may I ask if you also, as well as M. Majal, have read all these learned books?”
“I have read them,” she answered. “Some to please myself, the greater number to please him; for he likes to talk with me of what he reads.”
She replaced the books, once more concealing them with the bedstead.
“You must not suppose, René,” she continued, “that this cachette was made for my brother. It was contrived long ago, in the dark days that immediately followed the Revocation, and has sheltered many of Christ’s persecuted servants. On one occasion the holy martyr, Claude Brousson, slept here. He baptized the little child of my husband’s grandfather, giving him, at his request, his own name, and there has been a Claude in the family ever since. In more recent days, M. Antoine Court took shelter here, when the soldiers were on his track, and a reward of ten thousand crowns was offered for his apprehension. M. Durand, too, and others, have found this a refuge in their time of need.”
René looked around him with interest. “How many prayers these walls must have echoed!” he remarked. “Madame, I should like to say mine here.”
“To what purpose, my son? Do you think the prayers of those good men stayed in these walls to make them holy? My brother says they went up straight to God’s presence chamber, whence already some have come back laden with blessings, whilst others yet stand waiting, with patient pleading hands stretched out to Him, until He send them down with an answer of peace. Of such are the many prayers for the deliverance of our Zion, for our country, and for oar king, the anointed of God.”
“Madame,” René asked, “does God ever answer prayers years after they are offered―when those who offered them are in their graves?”
Annette’s answer need not be recorded. The heart of the motherless boy turned to her trustingly, as it had turned to her brother beside his father’s grave. He talked to her freely, as though he had known her for years. Kindly, sympathizing questions led him to speak of his home, of his, sister, of their dear unforgotten mother, and even, though with trembling lips, of the father lost so recently. And then “as one whom his mother comforteth,” so did she comfort him with words fitly spoken, words not learned, nor wise with worldly wisdom, but full of the wisdom of the heart, which is love, and rich in the learning of the kingdom of heaven, where philosophy stops at the threshold, while faith enters, like a little child, into its Father’s dwelling.
That night René lay down to sleep in Madame Meniet’s guest chamber with a happier heart than had been his in the gayest hours of his childhood, now gone forever. Childhood and youth are not, after all, the best part of life. René already began to see in the future high aims and holy purposes sufficient to outweigh, not the idle pleasures of youth alone, but the brightest honors the world has in store for the successful exertion of maturer years.