The Vaudois had lived from generation to generation a life described by
a modern writer as one of absolute seclusion, ‘without thought or
forethought of foreign help or parsimonious store;’ drinking draughts
from their own grape-clusters and saving of last year’s harvest only
seed enough for the next. They had the serenity given them by God and by
Nature, with thanks for the good and submission for the evil; they
persisted through better and worse in their fathers’ ways, in the use of
their fathers’ tools, and in holding to their fathers’ fields as
faithfully as the trees to their roots or the lichens to their rocks.
It was this simplicity, this serenity, and persistency, that carried
them forward now. A regular army would have been hampered by a hundred
needs and cares and strategies. Arnaud and his men went from Nyon to
Sallenches, from Mont Blanc to Mont Cenis, from the Arve to the Doire,
stepping forward with the confidence of children and the ‘foolishness’
of the saints.
Some opposition they had already overcome. They avoided the French
garrison of Exilles, but they could not avoid the Marquis de Larrey, who
with two thousand five hundred soldiers kept the passage of the Doire at
Salabertrand.
They had hurried past Exilles, hoping to win this bridge as they had won
the bridge over the Arve, but the night was falling as they came within
sight of the place, and they were forced to halt at a village to snatch
rest and a meal. They asked if they could buy bread. The answer,
significantly spoken, sounded threatening.
‘Come on to the river, you will get there all you want; they are
preparing excellent suppers for you.’
It was Gaspard Botta to whom those words were said, and he reported them
at once to Arnaud. The chief shared his fears as to what they might
mean, but there was no room for hesitation in Arnaud’s heart. He
gathered his men for the usual evening prayer; perhaps his words were
more intensely fervent, higher in their note of faith than they had been
before, and the ‘Amen’ that rose from the tightened bearded lips was fit
echo to such petitions.
The darkness was lying on the world unbroken by moon or star; only the
snow-gleam and the pale line below the western clouds gave light enough
to see the strongly-rushing river, white here and there with broken
water, and the dark span of the wooden arches stemming the torrent.
The tramp of their feet provoked the sharp challenge--
‘Who goes there?’
‘Friends,’ cried Arnaud; ‘all we ask is----’
But the answer came in a tempest of bullets, and wild cries of ‘Kill!
kill!’ The mountaineers flung themselves on their faces, and the deadly
hail flew almost harmless above their heads. Then when the French
muskets were empty Arnaud dashed on.
‘Courage,’ he called. ‘Forward, Vaudois! the bridge is won!’
And it was even so! The fierce onslaught of the desperate men confused
and shattered the enemy’s lines. Ten or twelve wounded, fourteen or
fifteen killed, was the Vaudois loss--and their gain was the passage of
the Doire, the open door to their valleys!
The French had fled. The town was at the mercy of its captors. They
seized what military stores they needed, and blew up what ammunition
they could not carry away. They did sup well that night; the threat had
turned to a prophecy.
The next day they reached the summit of the mountain of Sci. It is a
high crest overlooking the Valley of Clusone, fearful enough when
howling with the gales of winter and dark with the shadow of
snow-clouds; but to-day the sun bathed it in warm light, and the sky
shone over it, fair as a shield of silver. Arnaud halted his army there
on the brow, and silently pointed to the scene before them.
There were the well-known landmarks; there the sharp horizon-line of
their own mountains, the hills of their native land. Before their eyes
it lay, bright in the sunshine, the country of the Vaudois--the home for
which they had hungered--the land for which they had longed. The very
wind as it blew from off it seemed charged as with breath of blessing.
They knelt reverently, with one accord, lifting moist eyes to the blue
sky-depths, while Arnaud, their captain and their minister, poured out
thanksgiving and praise for the help that had brought them thus far.
‘The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Turn again
our captivity, O Lord, that they that sow in tears may reap in joy.
Though we walk in the midst of trouble, Thou wilt revive us. Thou shalt
stretch forth Thine hand against the wrath of our enemies, and Thy right
hand shall save us.’
Those Hebrew psalms came to their lips in the day of toil and
suffering, and they come still to all Christian souls, fitting all
needs, singing as they do of human sins and failures, of Divine
forgiveness, and God’s triumphant glory; they stir the innermost hearts
of men as they echo down through the ages, as true and real now as when
first sung by the sweet singers of Israel.
Each day increased the difficulties gathering about the devoted band.
The news of their approach had reached Piedmont, and troops were on the
alert to intercept their march. The valleys were not to be gained
without a deadly struggle; and Arnaud knew it.
Eleven days after leaving Geneva they set foot in the first Vaudois
village, Balsille, in the Vale of St. Martino. It was empty; the new
inhabitants had fled down the river-bank towards Le Perrier, where a
strong force of Piedmontese soldiers were forming across the valley.
But the Vaudois avoided the force they could scarcely hope to defeat.
Arnaud turned to the south-westward, up the gorge of Prali, intending to
reach the Valley of Luserna by the Guliano Pass, leaving Le Perrier and
its garrison on his left.
There was utter peace up this mountain valley, the peace of the great
hills in the warmth and hush of the summer. The church--the ‘Temple of
Prals, as they had used to call it--was still standing; it had been
transformed into a place for Romish worship, but the white walls raised
by Vaudois hands were there, and the roof-tree that had echoed to the
people’s prayers for generations.
Henri Botta bared his head as he entered it. He gave small heed to the
movements and exclamations of his comrades, who were sternly removing
all superstitious ornaments and popish adornments; his heart had gone
back to the old days when he had come here from Rora to woo Madeleine,
who had lived in yonder farm-stead all her girlish years--one could see
it yet, the broken gable rising sharp above the tufted chestnut grove;
and there in that humble cottage by the foot-bridge, the heroic pastor
Leydat had lived--Leydat, who had been martyred in 1686, seized while
singing psalms with his hunted flock in a cave below the mighty crest of
Mont Cournan. Henri Botta almost thought he could yet hear his
well-known voice as he read from the great Bible chained on the desk by
the further arch; a voice easily to be held in memory, with its deep
cadences and rolling utterance.
Leydat was dead--blessedly dead among God’s saints in God’s keeping; the
farm-stead was wrecked; the great Bible and its clasps torn away--and
Madeleine--who could say what had befallen her since they parted at the
entrenchments across the Rora Valley? How long ago it seemed!
[Illustration: THE CHAINED BIBLE.]
And the house-master held his own withered hand before his eyes, gazing
at it curiously, evidence as it was of his age and infirmity. Such a
shaking, knotted, feeble old hand! A marvel, is it not, that one so aged
and broken as he should have managed to live through the days of their
daring march hence from Switzerland?
‘God has been my helper,’ he murmured. ‘He, and His gift to me, my boy
Gaspard.’