IN EXITU ISRAEL.
[Illustration: (Colophon)]
IN EXITU ISRAEL
_AN HISTORICAL NOVEL_
BY
S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.
Author of ‘_Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_,’
‘_Origin and Development of Religious Belief_,’
‘_The Silver Store_,’ _&c._, _&c._
VOL. I
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1870
OXFORD:
BY T. COMBE, M.A., E. B. GARDNER, E. P. HALL, AND H. LATHAM, M.A.,
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
DEDICATED
TO
THE MEMORY OF THE LATE
COUNT CHARLES DE MONTALEMBERT
BY
ONE WHO, FROM A DISTANCE, HAS LOVED AND ADMIRED HIS LIFE,
HIS PRINCIPLES, AND HIS WRITINGS.
CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE. vii
CHAPTER I. 1
CHAPTER II. 20
CHAPTER III. 34
CHAPTER IV. 51
CHAPTER V. 65
CHAPTER VI. 79
CHAPTER VII. 96
CHAPTER VIII. 110
CHAPTER IX. 122
CHAPTER X. 138
CHAPTER XI. 150
CHAPTER XII. 163
CHAPTER XIII. 179
CHAPTER XIV. 183
CHAPTER XV. 197
CHAPTER XVI. 210
CHAPTER XVII. 232
CHAPTER XVIII. 244
CHAPTER XIX. 260
CHAPTER XX. 275
PREFACE.
There is a side to the History of the French Revolution which is too
generally overlooked--its ecclesiastical side.
Under the _ancien régime_, the disadvantages of an Establishment
produced a strong party of liberal Catholics prepared for a radical
change in the relations between Church and State.
It was this party which organized that remarkable Constitutional
Church, at once Republican and Catholic, which sustained Religion
through the Reign of Terror, and which Pope Pius VII and Napoleon I
combined to overthrow.
My object in writing this story is to illustrate the currents of
feeling in the State and Church of France in 1789, currents not
altogether unlike those now circulating in our own. It was my good
fortune, during a recent visit to Normandy, to collect materials for
a history of a representative character of that eventful period,--one
Thomas Lindet, parish priest of Bernay. In writing his story, I do
not present him to the reader as a model. He had great faults; but
one can forgive much on account of his enthusiastic love of justice,
and faith in his cause.
That my story may be taken to convey a moral, is possible. But let
me disclaim any intention of preaching a lesson to the aristocracy;
I believe that they do not need it. In France, the crown supported
the nobility; in England, the nobility support the crown. The
French aristocracy was a privileged class, exempt from the burden
of taxation. In England, the heaviest burden falls on the holders
of landed property. With us, the privileged class is that of the
manufacturer and trader. The French nobility never made common cause
with the people against the encroachments of the royal prerogative.
The English barons wrung Magna Charta from reluctant John. Henry VIII
would never have been able to consolidate the power in his despotic
hands, had not the civil wars of the Roses broken the strength of the
aristocracy. Since then the nobility have made the cause of right
and liberty their own, and a limited monarchy is the result.
The moral, if moral there must be, is this: In times when the
relations between Church and State are precarious, coercive measures
are certain to force on a rupture.
Of late, repression has been employed freely on a portion of the
community, and this has suddenly created a liberation party which
three years ago scarcely existed within the Church and the ranks of
the clergy.
The English curate is as much at the mercy of the Bishop as was, and
is still, the French curé; and this he has been made painfully aware
of.
In the Wesleyan revival, a body of earnest men who moved for a
relaxation of the icy bonds of Establishmentarianism were thrust
forth into schism. The first Tractarians were driven to Rome by the
hardness of their spiritual rulers. At present, a party, peculiarly
narrow, and rapidly dying, by means of a packed Privy Council, are
engaged in hunting out and repressing the most active section of the
Church.
Worship is the language of conviction. To a large and rapidly
increasing body of Anglicans, Christ is not, as He is to Protestants,
a mere historical personage, the founder of Christianity, but is the
centre of a religious system, the ever-present object of adoration
for His people. A passionate love of Christ has floreated into
splendour of worship. To curtail liberty of worship is to touch the
rights of conscience; and to interfere with them has ever led to
disastrous consequences--such is the verdict of History.
A feverish eagerness to dissever Church and State has broken out
among clergy and laity, and a schism would be the result, were the
chain uniting Church and State indissoluble; but, as events of late
years have made it clear, that with a little concerted energy the
old rust-eaten links can be snapped, there will be no schism, but a
united effort will be made by a body of resolute spirits within the
Church to tear asunder crown and mitre. The disestablishment of the
English Church will present a future absent from that of the Irish
Church. In the latter case, there was an unanimous opposition to the
measure by all within it; but, in the event of the severance of the
union in England, it will take place amid the joyous acclamations of
no inconsiderable section of its best and truest sons.
If, from the following pages, it appears that my sympathies are with
the National Assembly, and those who upset the _ancien régime_, it
does not follow that they are with the Revolution in its excesses.
The true principles of the Revolution are embodied in the famous
Declaration of the Rights of Man. ‘Write at the head of that
Declaration the name of God’ said Grégoire; ‘or you establish rights
without duties, which is but another thing for proclaiming force to
be supreme.’ The Assembly refused. Grégoire was right.
Robespierre, Danton, and his clique made force supreme--as supreme as
in the days of the Monarchy, and trampled on the rights, to protect
which they had been raised into power.
A Republic is one thing: the despotism of an Autocracy or of a
Democracy is another thing.
I propose following up this historical romance by a life of the Abbé
Grégoire, which will illustrate the position of the Constitutional
Church, of which he was the soul.
I have chosen the form of fiction for this sketch, as it best enables
me to exhibit the state of feeling in France in 1788 and 1789. That
is no fiction; the incidents related and the characters introduced
are, for the most part, true to History.
S. B-G.
DALTON, THIRSK,
_March 25th, 1870_.
IN EXITU ISRAEL.
CHAPTER I.
The forests that at the present day cover such a considerable portion
of the department of Eure, and which supply the great manufacturing
cities on the Seine with fuel, were of much greater extent in the
eighteenth century. The fragments of forest which now extend from
Montfort to Breteuil were then united, and stretched in one almost
unbroken green zone from the Seine to the Arve, following the course
of the little river Rille. A spur struck off at Serquigny, and traced
the confluent Charentonne upwards as far as Broglie.
The little town of Bernay is no longer hemmed in by woods. The
heights and the valley of the Charentonne are still well timbered,
and green with copse and grove; the landscape is park-like; here and
there a fine old oak with rugged bark and expanded arms proclaims
itself a relic of the _ancien régime_; but the upstart poplars
whitening in the wind along the river course spire above these
venerable trees. The roads lie between wheat and potato fields, and
the names of hamlets, such as Bosc, Le Taillis, Le Buisson, Bocage,
La Couture, &c., alone proclaim that once they lay embedded in forest
foliage.
On the eve of the Great French Revolution, Bernay was a manufacturing
town, that had gradually sprung up during the middle ages, around
the walls of the great Benedictine Abbey which the Duchess Judith
of Brittany had founded in 1013, and endowed with nearly all the
surrounding forest. The town was unhealthy. It lay in a hollow, and
the monks had dammed up the little stream Cogney, which there met the
Charentonne, to turn their mill wheel, and had converted a portion
of the valley into a marsh, in which the frogs croaked loudly and
incessantly.
When the abbot was resident, the townsfolk were required to beat the
rushes and silence the noisy reptiles every summer night; but now
that the Superior resided at Dax, this requirement was not pressed.
After a heavy downfall of rain, the rivulet was wanting to swell
into a torrent, overflow the dam, and flood the streets of Bernay,
carrying with it such an amount of peat that every house into which
the water penetrated was left, after its retreat, plastered with
black soil, and, in spring, smeared with frog-spawn.
The mill was privileged. No other was permitted in the neighborhood.
When M. Chauvin erected a windmill on the hill of Bouffey, the monks
brought an action against him, and made him dismantle it. All the
corn that grew within five miles was ground at the Abbey mill, and
every tenth bag was taken by the Fathers in payment for grinding the
corn indifferently and at their leisure. At certain seasons, more
wheat was brought to the mill than the mill could grind, because the
water had run short, or the stones were out of repair, consequently
many thousands of hungry people had to wait in patience till the
Cogney filled, or till the mill-stones had been re-picked, whilst the
gutted windmill of M. Chauvin stood in compulsory inaction.
The great and little tithes of Bernay went to the Abbey; and out
of them the monks defrayed the expense of a curate for the parish
church of S. Cross. This church had been built by the town in 1372,
by permission of the Abbey, on condition that the parish should bear
the charge of its erection, and the abbot should appoint the curate;
that the parish should be responsible for the repair of the fabric
and the conduct of divine service, and that the Abbey should pay to
the incumbent the _portion congrue_ of the tithes. The incumbent of
Bernay was, throughout the middle ages and down to the suppression of
the monastery, a salaried curate only, without independent position,
and receiving from the Abbey a sum which amounts in modern English
money to about fifty pounds, and out of this he was required to
pay at least two curates or _vicaires_. This sorry pittance would
have been miserable enough, had the curé been provided with a
parsonage-house rent free; but with this the Abbey did not furnish
him, and he was obliged to lodge where he could, and live as best he
could on the crumbs that fell from the abbot’s table.
The parishioners of Bernay had made several attempts to free their
church from its dependence, but in vain. The monks refused to cede
their rights, and every lawsuit in which the town engaged with them
terminated disastrously for the citizens. The people of Bernay
were severely taxed. Beside the intolerable burdens imposed on
them by the State, they paid tithes on all they possessed to the
monks, who assessed them as they thought proper, and against whose
assessment there was no appeal, as the abbot of Bernay exercised
legal jurisdiction in the place, and every question affecting
ecclesiastical dues was heard in his own court. The corn was tithed
in the field, and tithed again at the mill. The Abbey had rights of
_corvée_, that is, of claiming so many days’ work from every man in
the place, and on its farms, free of expense. The townsfolk, who were
above the rank of day labourers, escaped the humiliation only by
paying men out of their own pockets, to take their places and work
for the Fathers.
It was hard for the citizens, after having been thus taxed by the
Church, to have to expend additional money to provide themselves with
religious privileges. Bernay might have been a far more prosperous
town but for the Abbey, which, like a huge tumour, ate up the
strength and resources of the place, and gave nothing in return.
The Abbey was also _en commende_; in other words, it was a donative
of the Crown. Whom he would, the king made superior of the monks of
S. Benedict at Bernay,--superior only in name, and for the purpose
of drawing its revenues, for he was not a monk, nor indeed was he in
other than minor orders. Louis XV, whose eye for beauty was satisfied
with a Du Barry, having been fascinated by the plump charms of Madame
Poudens, wife of a rich jeweler at Versailles, attempted to seduce
her. The lady estimated her virtue at a rich abbey, and finally
parted with it for that of Bernay, which was made over _in commendam_
to a son, whether by Poudens or Louis was not clearly known, but who,
at the age of seven, in defiance of the concordat of Francis I with
the Pope, was made abbé of Bernay, father superior of Benedictine
monks, and entitled to draw an income of fifty-seven thousand livres
per annum, left by Duchess Judith to God and the poor. The case was
by no means uncommon, Charles of Valois, bastard of Charles IX and
Marie Fouchet, at the age of thirteen was invested with the revenues
of Chaise-Dieu, and Henry IV bartered an abbey for a mistress.
Thomas Lindet was curé of S. Cross.
The introduction of the power loom from England had produced much
want and discontent in Normandy, and in Bernay many hands were thrown
out of work. The sickness and famine which had periodically afflicted
that town of late years became permanent, and the poor priest was
condemned to minister in the presence of want and disease, without
the power of alleviating either, whilst the revenues of the Church
were drained to fill the purse of the non-resident abbé, and by him
to be squandered on luxuries and vanities.
Lindet had more than once expressed his opinion upon the abuses
regnant in the Church. In 1781, in a discourse addressed by him to
the general assembly of his parish, he had said:--‘We desire that
justice should be brought to bear upon these abuses, which outrage
common sense and common right, at once. But is there any hope in the
future of an accomplishment of our desires? At present, all is dark;
but never let us despair. We groan under oppression. But be sure
of this,--wrong-doing revenges itself in the long run. We wish to
abolish the intolerable privileges which burden some, that others may
trip lightly through life. Alas! the privileged classes are jealous
of our jealousy of them. They scarce permit us to pray the advent of
a rectification of abuses, which will prove as glorious to religion
as it will prove beneficial to society. Who will put salt upon the
leeches, and make them disgorge the blood of the poor?’
For having used this language the curé had been severely reprimanded
by his bishop; for bishops were then, as they are frequently now, the
champions of abuses.
At the present date, Lindet was again in trouble with his diocesan.
For three days in succession the sanctuary lamp in his church had
remained unlighted. The reason was, that the curé’s cruse of oil was
empty; and not the cruse only, but his purse as well. He had neither
oil by him, nor money wherewith to buy any; the lamp therefore
remained dark. Lindet hoped that some of his parishioners would come
forward, and furnish the sacramental light with a supply of oil, and
this eventually took place; but, in the meantime, three days and
nights of violation of the rubric had elapsed. The _officiel_ or
inquisitor of the bishop heard of this, and called on Thomas Lindet,
the day before the opening of this tale, to inform him that it was at
his option to pay down twenty-five livres for the misdemeanour, or to
be thrown into the ecclesiastical court.
Under the _ancien régime_, a large portion of a bishop’s revenues was
derived from ecclesiastical fines imposed by his court, and into this
court cases of immorality, heresy and sacrilege among the laity, and
of infringement of rubrical exactness, and breach of discipline among
the clergy, were brought. As the prosecutor was also virtually the
judge, it may be supposed that judgment was usually given against the
defendant, who might appeal to the archbishop, or from him to the
pope,--all interested judges, but who was debarred from carrying his
wrong before a secular tribunal.
The sun was declining behind the pines, and was painting with saffron
the boles of the trees, and striping with orange and purple the
forest paths, as Thomas Lindet prepared to part from his friend Jean
Lebertre, curé of the pilgrimage shrine of Notre Dame de la Couture,
at the brow of the hill where the path to the Couture forked off from
the main road to Bernay. At this point the trees fell away towards
the valley, and the shrine was visible, lit in the last lights of
evening which turned the grey stone walls into walls of gold.
La Couture is a singularly picturesque church, with lofty choir
rising high above the nave roof, and with numerous chapels clustered
about the chancel apse. The spire of lead with pinnacled turrets, in
that setting glare, seemed a pyramid of flames.
The priest of Bernay was a tall thin man of forty-five, with
colourless face, sunken cheeks, and restless, very brilliant eyes.
His face, though far from handsome, was interesting and attractive.
It beamed with intelligence and earnestness. His long hair,
flowing to his shoulders, was grizzled with care rather than with
age,--the care inseparable from poverty, and that arising from the
responsibilities attending on the charge of a number of souls. His
brow was slightly retreating and wanted breadth, his cheek-bones
were high. The nose and mouth were well moulded, the latter was
peculiarly delicate and flexible. The thin lips were full of
expression, and trembled with every emotion of the heart.
Lindet’s hands were also singularly beautiful--they were narrow and
small; a lady would have envied the taper fingers and well-shaped
nails. Malicious people declared that the priest was conscious of
the perfection of his hands, and that he took pains to exhibit it;
but this was most untrue. No man was more free from vanity, and had
a greater contempt for it, than Thomas Lindet. He had contracted
a habit of using his right hand whilst speaking, in giving force
to his words by gesture, and whilst thinking, in plucking at the
cassock-buttons on his breast, but this trick was symptomatic of a
highly-strung nervous temperament, and was in no degree attributable
to personal vanity.
Lebertre was somewhat of a contrast to Lindet. He was a middle-sized,
well-built man, with a face of an olive hue, hazel eyes, large,
as earnest as those of his friend, but not like them in their
restlessness; they were deep, calm wells, which seemed incapable of
being ruffled by anger, or clouded with envy. His black hair was
flowing and glossy, without a speck in it of grey. ‘I would not do
so,’ said he, holding Lindet’s arm; ‘you should bear meekly, and
suffer patiently.’
‘Bear and suffer!’ repeated the curé of S. Cross, his eyes lightening
and his lips quivering; ‘True. “Suffering is the badge of all our
tribe.” What the English poet puts into the mouth of a Jew is a motto
meet for a French curé. But, my brother, tell me--are not wrongs and
sufferings crushing us, destroying our self-reliance, ruining our
independence, and obliterating our self-respect? How can a priest be
respected by his flock when he does not respect himself; and how can
he respect himself when he is trodden like dirt under the feet of his
spiritual superiors?’
‘Bearing wrongs and suffering injustice without a murmur is the badge
of a Christian; above all, of a priest. He who suffers and endures
uncomplainingly is certain to obtain respect and reverence.’
‘A pretty world this has become,’ exclaimed Lindet; ‘the poor are
ground to powder, and at each turn of the wheel we are bidden preach
them Christian submission. They look around, and see everywhere
labour taxed, and idleness go free. Toil then like a Christian, and
pay, pay, pay, that the king may make fountains for his garden, the
nobles may stake high at cards, and the bishops and canons may salary
expensive cooks. Say the little farmer has a hundred francs. Out of
this he is obliged to pay twenty-five for the taille, sixteen for
the accessories, fifteen for his capitation, eleven for tithe. What
remains to him for the support of his family, after he has paid his
rent? Truly of this world may be said what is said of hell: “_Nullus
ordo, sempiternus horror inhabitat_”’
Lebertre did not answer. With the steadfastness of purpose that was
his characteristic, he returned to his point, and refused to be led
into digression by his vehement and volatile companion. ‘You must not
go to Évreux, as you propose,’ he said.
‘I shall go to the bishop,’ returned Lindet; ‘and I shall give him
the money into his hand. I shall have the joy, the satisfaction, may
be, of seeing, for once in my life, a bishop’s cheek burn with shame.’
‘Is this a Christian temper?’
‘Is it the part of a Christian bishop to consume his clergy with
exactions and with persecutions, and to torture them with insults?
Our bishop neglects his diocese. He receives some four hundred and
fifty thousand livres per annum, and can only visit Bernay, with five
thousand souls in it, once in three years, to confirm the young and
to meet the clergy. When he comes amongst us on these rare occasions
he takes up his abode at the Abbey, and receives us, the priests who
seek advice and assistance, at a formal interview of ten minutes,
into which we must condense our complaints; and then we are dismissed
without sympathy and without redress.’
Lindet took a few steps along the path to La Couture. ‘I will
accompany you, Jean,’ he said; ‘and I will tell you how I was treated
when last I had access to Monseigneur. He sat at a little table;
on it was a newspaper and a hand-bell, and his large gold watch.
He signed to me to stand before him; I did so, holding my hands
behind my back like a boy who is about to be scolded. He asked me
some trifling question about my health, which I did not answer. I
could not afford to waste one out of my ten minutes thus; so I broke
out into an account of our troubles here. I told him there was no
school for the children; that I had no parsonage house. God knows! I
would teach the poor children myself if they could be crowded into
my garret, but the good woman with whom I lodge will not permit
it. I told him of the want and misery here, of the exactions under
which the poor are bowed. I spoke to him of the hollow-eyed hungry
workmen, and of the women hugging their starving babes to their empty
breasts.’ The priest stopped, gasping for an instant, his trembling
white hand working in the air, and expressing his agitation with mute
eloquence. ‘All the while I talked, his eye was on the newspaper; I
saw that he was reading, and was not attending to me. What he read
was an account of a fête at Versailles, from which, alas! he was
absent. Then he touched his bell. “Your time is up,” he said; and I
was bowed out.’
‘You forget that the time of a prelate is precious.’
‘I grant you that,’ answered Lindet, with quivering voice; ‘too
precious to be spent amidst a crowd of lackeys in dancing attendance
on royalty; too precious to be wasted on fêtes and dinners to all
the lordlings that Monseigneur can gather about his table in the
hopes that they may shed some lustre on his own new-fledged nobility.’
‘I will not hear you, my friend,’ said Lebertre, turning from him;
‘you are too bitter, too vindictive. You would tear our bishops from
their seats, and strip them of their purple.’
‘Of their purple and fine linen and sumptuous faring every day, that
Lazarus may be clothed and fed!’ interrupted Lindet, passionately.
‘You would abolish the episcopacy and convert the Church to
presbyterianism,’ said the curé of La Couture with a slight tone of
sarcasm.
‘Never,’ answered the priest of S. Cross; his voice instantly
becoming calm, and acquiring a depth and musical tone like that in
which he was wont to chant. ‘No, Lebertre, never. I would preserve
the ancient constitution of the Church, but I would divest it of all
its State-given position and pomp. I would have our bishops to be our
pastors and overseers, and not our lords and tyrants. I reverence
authority, but I abhor autocracy. David went forth in the might of
God to fight the Philistine; Saul lent him his gilded armour, but the
shepherd put it off him--he could not go in that cumbrous painted
harness. With his shepherd’s staff and sling he slew the giant. Woe
be it! the Church has donned the golden armour wherewith royalty has
invested her, and crushed beneath the weight, it lies prostrate at
the feet of the enemy.’
Lindet walked on fast, weaving his fingers together and then shaking
them apart.
‘But let me continue what I had to tell you of the bishop’s visit
here,’ he said. ‘I was walking down the Rue des Jardins an hour after
my reception, with my head sunk on my bosom, and--I am not ashamed
to add--with my tears flowing. I wept, for I was humbled myself,
and ashamed for the Church. Then suddenly I felt a sting across my
shoulders, as I heard a shout. I started from my reverie to find
myself almost under the feet of the horses of a magnificent carriage
with postilions and outriders in livery, that dashed past in a cloud
of dust. I stood aside and saw my bishop roll by in conversation
with M. Berthier, laughing like a fool. My shoulders tingled for an
hour with the lash of the post-boy’s whip, but the wound cut that
day into my heart is quivering and bleeding still.’ As he spoke, he
and his friend came suddenly upon a wayside crucifix which had been
erected at the confines of the parish as a station for pilgrims, in a
patch of clearing. The pines rose as a purple wall behind it, but the
setting sun bathed the figure of the Saviour in light, and turned to
scarlet the mat of crimson pinks which had rooted themselves in the
pedestal.
Lebertre pressed the hand of his agitated companion, and pointed up
at the Christ, whilst an expression of faith and devotion brightened
his own countenance. He designed to lead the thoughts of Lindet to
the great Exemplar of patient suffering, but the curé of S. Cross
mistook his meaning. He stood as one transfixed, before the tall
gaunt crucifix, looking up at the illumined figure. Then, extending
his arms, he cried, ‘Oh Jesus Christ! truly Thou wast martyred by
the bishops and aristocrats of Thy day; smitten, insulted, condemned
to death by Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests, and by Pilate, the
imperial governor. Verily, Thy body the Church bleeds at the present
day, sentenced and tortured by their successors in Church and State.’
Before the words had escaped his lips, a cry, piercing and full of
agony, thrilled through the forest.
Lindet and Lebertre held their breath. In another instant, from
a footpath over which the bushes closed, burst a peasant girl,
parting the branches, and darting to the crucifix, she flung herself
before it, clasping her arms around the trunk, and in so doing
overturning a flower-basket on her arm, and strewing the pedestal and
kneeling-bench with bunches of roses.
She was followed closely by a large man, richly dressed, who sprang
towards her, cast his arms round her waist, and attempted to drag
her from her hold. ‘Sacré! you sweet little wench. If persuasion and
flattery fail, why, force must succeed.’ And he wrenched one of her
bare brown arms from the cross. She cast a despairing look upward
at the thorn-crowned head which bowed over her and the seducer, and
uttered another piteous wail for help.
At the same moment, the sun passed behind some bars of fog on the
horizon, and the light it flung changed instantly from yellow to
blood-red. The figure of the Christ was a miserable work of art, of
the offensive style prevalent at the period, contorted with pain,
the face drawn, and studded with huge clots of blood. In the scarlet
light it shone down on those below as though it were carved out of
flame, and menaced wrathfully.
The girl still clung to the cross with one arm. She was dressed in a
short blue woollen skirt that left unimpeded her ankles and feet, a
black bodice laced in front, exposing the coarse linen sleeves and
shift gathered over the bosom about the throat. Her white frilled
Normandy cap, with its broad flaps, was disturbed, and some locks of
raven hair fell from beneath it over her slender polished neck. The
oval sun-browned face was exquisitely beautiful. The large dark eyes
were distended with terror, and the lips were parted.
‘Mon Dieu! do you think that those frail arms can battle with mine?’
asked the pursuer with mocking composure, as he drew the other arm
from the stem of the cross, and holding both at the wrists, pressed
them back at the girl’s side so as to force her to face him.
‘Look at me,’ he said, in the same bantering tone; ‘can your
pestilent little village produce so wealthy and promising a lover as
me? Your Jacques and Jeans have but a few liards in their purses, and
can only offer you a pinchbeck ring; but I’--he disengaged one hand,
whilst he felt in his pocket and produced a purse; ‘whilst I--Ha!
listen to the chink, chink, chink! You do not know the language of
money, do you? Well, I will interpret; chink, chink--that means silk
dresses, satin shoes, dainty meats, and sweet bonbons. Now then!’ he
exclaimed, as she made a struggle to escape.
‘Now then,’ repeated Thomas Lindet, who, quick as thought, strode
between the man and his prey. He released the child; and placing her
beside him, with a lip that curled with scorn, he removed his huge
shovel hat, and bowing almost double, with a sweep of the hat, said,
‘M. Berthier! the little one and I bid you good evening!’
Then he drew back, extending his arm and hat as an ægis over the girl.
The gentleman stood as if petrified, and looked at them. He was a
tall man, largely made, very big-boned, with his hair powdered and
fastened behind by a black silk bow. His face was closely shaven,
the nose short, the upper lip very long and arched. But the most
conspicuous feature of his face were his eyes, set in red and raw
sockets. As he stood and looked at the priest, he mechanically drew
a handkerchief from his pocket, and proceeded with a corner of it to
wipe the tender lids.
His coat was of maroon velvet edged and frogged with gold braid, his
waistcoat was of white satin, and his hat was three-cornered and
covered with lace. He wore a rapier at his side; and he was evidently
a man of distinction.
‘Come, Lebertre, my friend,’ said Lindet, cheerfully, without taking
any more notice of the gentleman; ‘I will accompany you and help to
protect this damsel.’ The girl had lost one of her sabots, but in the
excess of her fear she walked along unconscious of her loss. The curé
of La Couture strode on one side of her, and the priest of Bernay
paced on the other, supporting her with their hands, for her limbs
shook with agitation, and, if unassisted, she would have fallen.
‘I know her,’ said Lebertre to his friend, ‘she is little Gabrielle
André, and lives down by the river with her father, who is a farmer
of the Abbey.’
Lindet looked across at his companion, with a glad light dancing in
his eyes, and raising one hand heavenwards he exclaimed: ‘Did I not
say that the Church in all her members suffers and bleeds? Would,
dear friend, that, as we have rescued this poor child out of the
hands of a betrayer, we might also rescue the poor Church from her
seducers!’
Lebertre did not answer; but after a while he said solemnly, and with
an air of deep conviction: ‘Lindet! did you mark how, at the cry of
the child, the head of the Christ shook and frowned?’