CHILDREN OF BELIAL.
The elderly Huguenot had stood silent after his repulse by the king,
with his eyes cast moodily downwards, and a face in which doubt, sorrow,
and anger contended for the mastery. He was a very large, gaunt man,
raw-boned and haggard, with a wide forehead, a large, fleshy nose, and a
powerful chin. He wore neither wig nor powder, but Nature had put her
own silvering upon his thick grizzled locks, and the thousand puckers
which clustered round the edges of his eyes, or drew at the corners of
his mouth, gave a set gravity to his face which needed no device of the
barber to increase it. Yet in spite of his mature years, the swift
anger with which he had sprung up when the king refused his plaint, and
the keen fiery glance which he had shot at the royal court as they filed
past him with many a scornful smile and whispered gibe at his expense,
all showed that he had still preserved something of the strength and of
the spirit of his youth. He was dressed as became his rank, plainly and
yet well, in a sad-coloured brown kersey coat with silver-plated
buttons, knee-breeches of the same, and white woollen stockings, ending
in broad-toed black leather shoes cut across with a great steel buckle.
In one hand he carried his low felt hat, trimmed with gold edging, and
in the other a little cylinder of paper containing a recital of his
wrongs, which he had hoped to leave in the hands of the king's
secretary.
His doubts as to what his next step should be were soon resolved for him
in a very summary fashion. These were days when, if the Huguenot was
not absolutely forbidden in France, he was at least looked upon as a
man who existed upon sufferance, and who was unshielded by the laws
which protected his Catholic fellow-subjects. For twenty years the
stringency of the persecution had increased until there was no weapon
which bigotry could employ, short of absolute expulsion, which had not
been turned against him. He was impeded in his business, elbowed out of
all public employment, his house filled with troops, his children
encouraged to rebel against him, and all redress refused him for the
insults and assaults to which he was subjected. Every rascal who wished
to gratify his personal spite, or to gain favour with his bigoted
superiors, might do his worst upon him without fear of the law. Yet, in
spite of all, these men clung to the land which disowned them, and, full
of the love for their native soil which lies so deep in a Frenchman's
heart, preferred insult and contumely at home to the welcome which would
await them beyond the seas. Already, however, the shadow of those days
was falling upon them when the choice should no longer be theirs.
Two of the king's big blue-coated guardsmen were on duty at that side of
the palace, and had been witnesses to his unsuccessful appeal. Now they
tramped across together to where he was standing, and broke brutally
into the current of his thoughts.
"Now, Hymn-books," said one gruffly, "get off again about your
business."
"You're not a very pretty ornament to the king's pathway," cried the
other, with a hideous oath. "Who are you, to turn up your nose at the
king's religion, curse you?"
The old Huguenot shot a glance of anger and contempt at them, and was
turning to go, when one of them thrust at his ribs with the butt end of
his halberd.
"Take that, you dog!" he cried. "Would you dare to look like that at
the king's guard?"
"Children of Belial," cried the old man, with his hand pressed to his
side, "were I twenty years younger you would not have dared to use me
so."
"Ha! you would still spit your venom, would you? That is enough, Andre!
He has threatened the king's guard. Let us seize him and drag him to
the guard-room."
The two soldiers dropped their halberds and rushed upon the old man,
but, tall and strong as they were, they found it no easy matter to
secure him. With his long sinewy arms and his wiry frame, he shook
himself clear of them again and again, and it was only when his breath
had failed him that the two, torn and panting, were able to twist round
his wrists, and so secure him. They had hardly won their pitiful
victory, however, before a stern voice and a sword flashing before their
eyes, compelled them to release their prisoner once more.
It was Captain de Catinat, who, his morning duties over, had strolled
out on to the terrace, and had come upon this sudden scene of outrage.
At the sight of the old man's face he gave a violent start, and drawing
his sword, had rushed forward with such fury that the two guardsmen not
only dropped their victim, but, staggering back from the threatening
sword-point, one of them slipped and the other rolled over him, a
revolving mass of blue coat and white kersey.
"Villains!" roared De Catinat. "What is the meaning of this?"
The two had stumbled on to their feet again, very shamefaced and
ruffled.
"If you please, captain," said one, saluting, "this is a Huguenot who
abused the royal guard."
"His petition had been rejected by the king, captain, and yet he refused
to go."
De Catinat was white with fury. "And so, when a French citizen has come
to have a word with the great master of his country, he must be harassed
by two Swiss dogs like you?" he cried. "By my faith, we shall soon see
about that!"
He drew a little silver whistle from his pocket, and at the shrill
summons an old sergeant and half a dozen soldiers came running from the
guard-room.
"Your names?" asked the captain sternly.
"Andre Meunier."
"And yours?"
"Nicholas Klopper."
"Sergeant, you will arrest these men, Meunier and Klopper."
"Certainly, captain," said the sergeant, a dark grizzled old soldier of
Conde and Turenne.
"See that they are tried to-day."
"And on what charge, captain?"
"For assaulting an aged and respected citizen who had come on business
to the king."
"He was a Huguenot on his own confession," cried the culprits together.
"Hum!" The sergeant pulled doubtfully at his long moustache. "Shall we
put the charge in that form, captain? Just as the captain pleases."
He gave a little shrug of his epauletted shoulders to signify his doubt
whether any good could arise from it.
"No," said De Catinat, with a sudden happy thought. "I charge them with
laying their halberds down while on duty, and with having their uniforms
dirty and disarranged."
"That is better," answered the sergeant, with the freedom of a
privileged veteran. "Thunder of God, but you have disgraced the guards!
An hour on the wooden horse with a musket at either foot may teach you
that halberds were made for a soldier's hand, and not for the king's
grass-plot. Seize them! Attention! Right half turn! March!"
And away went the little clump of guardsmen with the sergeant in the
rear.
The Huguenot had stood in the background, grave and composed, without
any sign of exultation, during this sudden reversal of fortune; but when
the soldiers were gone, he and the young officer turned warmly upon each
other.
"Amory, I had not hoped to see you!"
"Nor I you, uncle. What, in the name of wonder, brings you to
Versailles?"
"My wrongs, Amory. The hand of the wicked is heavy upon us, and whom
can we turn to save only the king?"
The young officer shook his head. "The king is at heart a good man,"
said he. "But he can only see the world through the glasses which are
held before him. You have nothing to hope from him."
"He spurned me from his presence."
"Did he ask your name?"
"He did, and I gave it."
The young guardsman whistled. "Let us walk to the gate," said he.
"By my faith, if my kinsmen are to come and bandy arguments with the
king, it may not be long before my company finds itself without its
captain."
"The king would not couple us together. But indeed, nephew, it is
strange to me how you can live in this house of Baal and yet bow down to
no false gods."
"I keep my belief in my own heart."
The older man shook his head gravely.
"Your ways lie along a very narrow path," said he, "with temptation and
danger ever at your feet. It is hard for you to walk with the Lord,
Amory, and yet go hand in hand with the persecutors of His people."
"Tut, uncle!" said the young man impatiently. "I am a soldier of the
king's, and I am willing to let the black gown and the white surplice
settle these matters between them. Let me live in honour and die in my
duty, and I am content to wait to know the rest."
"Content, too, to live in palaces, and eat from fine linen," said the
Huguenot bitterly, "when the hands of the wicked are heavy upon your
kinsfolk, and there is a breaking of phials, and a pouring forth of
tribulation, and a wailing and a weeping throughout the land."
"What is amiss, then?" asked the young soldier, who was somewhat
mystified by the scriptural language in use among the French Calvinists
of the day.
"Twenty men of Moab have been quartered upon me, with one Dalbert, their
captain, who has long been a scourge to Israel."
"Captain Claude Dalbert, of the Languedoc Dragoons? I have already some
small score to settle with him."
"Ay, and the scattered remnant has also a score against this murderous
dog and self-seeking Ziphite."
"What has he done, then?"
"His men are over my house like moths in a cloth bale. No place is free
from them. He sits in the room which should be mine, his great boots on
my Spanish leather chairs, his pipe in his mouth, his wine-pot at his
elbow, and his talk a hissing and an abomination. He has beaten old
Pierre of the warehouse."
"Ha!"
"And thrust me into the cellar."
"Ha!"
"Because I have dragged him back when in his drunken love he would have
thrown his arms about your cousin Adele."
"Oh!" The young man's colour had been rising and his brows knitted at
each successive charge, but at this last his anger boiled over, and he
hurried forward with fury in his face, dragging his elderly companion by
the elbow. They had been passing through one of those winding paths,
bordered by high hedges, which thinned away every here and there to give
a glimpse of some prowling faun or weary nymph who slumbered in marble
amid the foliage. The few courtiers who met them gazed with surprise at
so ill-assorted a pair of companions. But the young soldier was too
full of his own plans to waste a thought upon their speculations. Still
hurrying on, he followed a crescent path which led past a dozen stone
dolphins shooting water out of their mouths over a group of Tritons, and
so through an avenue of great trees which looked as if they had grown
there for centuries, and yet had in truth been carried over that very
year by incredible labour from St. Germain and Fontainebleau. Beyond
this point a small gate led out of the grounds, and it was through it
that the two passed, the elder man puffing and panting with this unusual
haste.
"How did you come, uncle?"
"In a caleche."
"Where is it?"
"That is it, beyond the auberge."
"Come, let us make for it."
"And you, Amory, are you coming?"
"My faith, it is time that I came, from what you tell me. There is room
for a man with a sword at his side in this establishment of yours."
"But what would you do?"
"I would have a word with this Captain Dalbert."
"Then I have wronged you, nephew, when I said even now that you were not
whole-hearted towards Israel."
"I know not about Israel," cried De Catinat impatiently. "I only know
that if my Adele chose to worship the thunder like an Abenaqui squaw, or
turned her innocent prayers to the Mitche Manitou, I should like to set
eyes upon the man who would dare to lay a hand upon her. Ha, here comes
our caleche! Whip up, driver, and five livres to you if you pass the
gate of the Invalides within the hour."
It was no light matter to drive fast in an age of springless carriages
and deeply rutted roads, but the driver lashed at his two rough
unclipped horses, and the caleche jolted and clattered upon its way. As
they sped on, with the road-side trees dancing past the narrow windows,
and the white dust streaming behind them, the guardsman drummed his
fingers upon his knees, and fidgeted in his seat with impatience,
shooting an occasional question across at his grim companion.
"When was all this, then?"
"It was yesterday night."
"And where is Adele now?"
"She is at home."
"And this Dalbert?"
"Oh, he is there also!"
"What! you have left her in his power while you came away to
Versailles?"
"She is locked in her room."
"Pah! what is a lock?" The young man raved with his hands in the air at
the thought of his own impotence.
"And Pierre is there?"
"He is useless."
"And Amos Green."
"Ah, that is better. He is a man, by the look of him."
"His mother was one of our own folk from Staten Island, near Manhattan.
She was one of those scattered lambs who fled early before the wolves,
when first it was seen that the king's hand waxed heavy upon Israel.
He speaks French, and yet he is neither French to the eye, nor are his
ways like our ways."
"He has chosen an evil time for his visit."
"Some wise purpose may lie hid in it."
"And you have left him in the house?"
"Yes; he was sat with this Dalbert, smoking with him, and telling him
strange tales."
"What guard could he be? He is a stranger in a strange land. You did
ill to leave Adele thus, uncle."
"She is in God's hands, Amory."
"I trust so. Oh, I am on fire to be there!"
He thrust his head through the cloud of dust which rose from the wheels,
and craned his neck to look upon the long curving river and broad-spread
city, which was already visible before them, half hid by a thin blue
haze, through which shot the double tower of Notre Dame, with the high
spire of St. Jacques and a forest of other steeples and minarets, the
monuments of eight hundred years of devotion. Soon, as the road curved
down to the river-bank, the city wall grew nearer and nearer, until they
had passed the southern gate, and were rattling over the stony causeway,
leaving the broad Luxembourg upon their right, and Colbert's last work,
the Invalides, upon their left. A sharp turn brought them on to the
river quays, and crossing over the Pont Neuf, they skirted the stately
Louvre, and plunged into the labyrinth of narrow but important streets
which extended to the northward. The young officer had his head still
thrust out of the window, but his view was obscured by a broad gilded
carriage which lumbered heavily along in front of them. As the road
broadened, however, it swerved to one side, and he was able to catch a
glimpse of the house to which they were making.
It was surrounded on every side by an immense crowd.