YOUTHFUL DAYS.
I MUST now pass somewhat rapidly over four or five years of my life.
These years were spent quietly at home with my dear father and mother
at the Tour d'Antin.
I was my mother's constant companion, and she instructed me herself in
all that she thought it desirable for me to know, which was much more
than was considered necessary for demoiselles in general. I learned to
read and write both English and Italian, and I read many books in the
former language which my mother had brought from home, or which had
been sent to her from England since her marriage. These books would
hardly have passed any French custom-house, for a very sharp lookout
was kept at these places for heretical publications; but there were two
or three vessels sailing from small ports on the coast, and commanded
by persons of the Religion, by means of which, at rare intervals, my
mother used to receive a package or letter from her friends in England.
Thus she become possessed of a copy of that most excellent book, "The
Whole Duty of Man," which I read till I knew it almost by heart; "The
Practice of Piety," Mr. Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying," and other
excellent religious books of which that age, dissolute as it was,
produced a great many. Sometimes my mother received other books and
pamphlets, which she would not allow me even to look at, and many of
which she burned with her own hands. These were plays and stories
written by such authors as were in favor at the court of King Charles
II.
The greatest disgrace I ever fell into with my parents came from
stealing one of these books, and hiding myself away in the old tower to
read it. It was a very witty play, and I was at first delighted with
it, but my conscience soon made me aware that it was a wicked book;
for, though of course I did not half understand it, I could see how
profane it was, and how lightly and wickedly the most sacred name was
used. My mother missed the book when she came to put away the contents
of the package, and asked me whether I had seen it.
"No, maman," I answered; but I was not used to lying, and my face
betrayed me. I was forced to confess and bring back the book. My
mother's stern anger was all the more dreadful to me that she was
usually so gentle. She would hear of no excuse or palliation.
"You have deceived me!" said she. "My daughter, whom I trusted, has
lied to me. To gain a few moments of guilty pleasure, she has disobeyed
her mother, and shamefully lied to conceal her disobedience. I want no
words. I must quiet my own spirit before I talk with you. Go to your
own room, and remain till you have permission to leave it. Think what
you have done, and ask pardon of Him whom you have offended, and who
abhors a lie."
I did as I was bid; but in no humble spirit. On the contrary, my heart
was full of wrath and rebellion. In my own mind, I accused my mother of
harsh unkindness in making, as I said to myself, such a fuss about such
a little matter. Always inclined to be hard and stubborn under reproof,
I was determined to justify myself in my own eyes. I said to myself
that I was unjustly treated, that there was no such harm in reading a
story-book, and so forth, and I set myself to remember all I possibly
could of the play, and to form in my own mind an image of the world
which it described.
Oh, if I could only live in a great city—in London or Paris—instead
of such a lonely old place as the Tour d'Antin! But by degrees my
conscience made itself heard. I remembered how kind and good my mother
had always been to me: how she had laid aside her own employments to
amuse me that I might not feel the want of companions of my own age;
in short, when my mother came to me at bedtime, I was as penitent and
humble as she could desire. She forgave me, and talked to me very
kindly of my fault.
"Never, never, read a bad book, my child," she said. "You thereby do
yourself an incalculable injury. We have not the power of forgetting
anything. However deeply our impressions may be covered by others,
they are still in existence, and likely to be revived at any time. No
man can touch pitch and not be defiled, and no one can read and take
pleasure in a bad book without being led into sin. You become like what
your mind dwells upon. 'As a man thinketh, so is he.' Thus by thinking
of and meditating upon the deeds of good men, and more especially those
of our dear Lord, we are made like them, and are changed into the
same image. This caution in reading is especially needful to you, my
Vevette, as you are by nature facile and easily impressed."
"But, maman, why does my uncle send such books?" I ventured to ask.
My mother sighed.
"Your uncle, my love, does not think of such things as I do. He lives
in the world of the court, where these things which your father and I
consider all-important are but little regarded, or, if thought of at
all, are considered as subjects for mockery."
"But, maman, I thought all English people were of the Religion. I
thought they used the beautiful prayers in your prayer-book."
My mother sighed again.
"That is true, my child, but it is possible to hold the truth in
unrighteousness. Here, where to be of the Religion is to put one's
neck into the halter, there is no temptation to the careless and
dissolute to join our numbers. Yet even here, under the very cross of
persecution, the church is far from perfect. But we will talk more
another time."
I was so penitent and so humbled in my own eyes that I made no
objection when my mother deprived me of my two grand sources of
amusement, the "Arcadia" of Sir Philip Sidney, and Mr. Edmund Spenser's
"The Faerie Queene," telling me that she should not let me have them
again for a month.
I am somewhat inclined to doubt the wisdom of this measure. I know
it threw me back upon myself for amusement in the hours when I was
deprived of my mother's society, and left me more time to meditate, or
rather, I should say, to dream of that fairy-land to which the volume
of plays had introduced me.
However, I had them back again at the end of a fortnight, and with them
a new book—a great quarto volume of voyages and travels, with several
historical pieces, collected by Mr. Hackluyt, formerly a preacher to
Queen Elizabeth. This gave a new turn to my thoughts. I rejoiced in
the destruction of the great Armada, and wept while I exulted over the
glorious death of Sir Richard Greville, and travelled to the Indies and
the New World and dreamed over their marvels.
When I went, as I did now and then, to visit my old friends at the
farm, I entertained David with these tales by the hour together, and
even Lucille forgot her jealousy to listen. What castles in the air
we built on the margins of those great rivers, and what colonies we
planted in those unknown lands—colonies where those of the Religion
were to find a peaceful refuge, and from which all the evils incident
to humanity were to be excluded! They were harmless dreams at the
least, and served to amuse us for many a long hour. I have seen some of
these colonies since then, and have learned that wherever man goes his
three great foes—the world, the flesh, and the devil—go also.
Our new neighbors at the hospital of St. Jacques—St. James indeed! I
should like to hear what he would have said to them—gave us little
trouble for some time. Indeed, they had troubles enough of their
own. They were hardly settled in their new abode before a dreadful
pestilential fever broke out among them, and several of the nuns died,
while others were so reduced that there were not enough of well to tend
the sick.
The French country people have a great dread of infection, so that
nobody would go near them; and I don't know but they would have starved
only that my father himself on one or two occasions carried them
provisions, wine, and comforts for the sick.
There was great talk about the sickness, and those of the Religion did
not hesitate to ascribe it to the pestiferous air of the cellars and
vaults, which were known to be very extensive, and in which several
persons had died after long confinement.
"It is the avenging ghost of poor Denise Amblot, who perished there
with her infant," said old Marie, our cook.
"Not so, my Marie," answered my mother. "Denise has long been in
paradise, if indeed she did perish as reported, and is happily in
better employments than avenging herself on these poor creatures. Yet
it may well be that the bad air of the vaults so long used as prisons
may have poisoned those living over them."
After the fever came a fire, which broke out mysteriously and consumed
all the fuel and provisions which the nuns had laid up for winter;
and, to crown all, a sort of reservoir or pond, supposed by some to
be artificial, which supplied a stream running through the convent
grounds, burst its barriers one night after a heavy storm of rain. The
muddy torrent, bearing everything before it—trees, walls, and even the
very rocks in its course—swept through the garden and washed away the
soil itself, besides filling the church with mud and debris half way
up to the roof. Whether the hand of man had anything to do with these
disasters I do not know, but it is not impossible.
At any rate, the two or three nuns who were left returned to Avranches,
from whence they had come, and the place was again abandoned to the
owls and other doleful creatures which haunt deserted buildings.
Meantime all over France the tide of persecution was rising and
spreading, carrying ruin and devastation far and wide. There was no
more any safety for those of the Religion. From all sides came the
story of terror, of bereavement, of oppression, of flight. Every day
brought new infringements of the edict, new encroachments on our rights
and liberties.
The very sick and dying—nay, they more than any others—were objects
of attack. Every physician was ordered, on pain of a heavy fine at
the least, to give notice to the mayor and the priest of the parish
whenever he was called upon to visit one of the Religion. Then the
sick man was besieged with arguments, with threats, and horrible
representations of the present and the future. If he yielded, which
was seldom the case, his conversion was trumpeted as a triumph of the
faith. If he persevered, as ninety-nine out of a hundred did, he was
left to perish without help or medicine, and his dead body was cast out
like a dog's in the next ditch.
It was at the peril of life that a mother repeated to her dying child,
or a child to its parent, a few comforting texts of Scripture or a
hymn. The alms collected among the Reformed for the solace of their own
poor were seized upon and used for the maintenance of the so-called
hospitals, which were simply prisons where young people and women were
shut up, and every effort made, both by threats and cajolery, to induce
them "to return to the bosom of their tender and gentle mother the
Church," that was the favorite phrase. A few gave way and were set at
liberty, but of these, the most part sooner or later recanted their
recantations, with bitter tears of penitence and shame.
But those mothers and fathers who knew that their dead were dead,
and entered into the rest of their Lord, were happy in comparison
with others, whose sons were in the galleys chained to the oar with
the vilest of the vile, with felons and murderers, sleeping on their
benches if at sea, driven by the lash like brute cattle to pestiferous
dungeons if on land, and liable at any time to be condemned to
perpetual imprisonment or shot down and cast to the waves. And even
these had not the worst of it.
There were hundreds of mothers who were entirely in the dark as to the
fate of their daughters. The convents all over the land were filled
with such girls, seduced from their homes on any or no pretext, and
dragged away, never to be seen again. Whether they recanted and were
made nuns, whether they remained firm and suffered imprisonment and a
horrible death, their fate was equally unknown to their friends. In
some of the convents, no doubt, were conscientious women, who did their
duty according to their lights, and were as kind to their prisoners as
circumstances permitted; but there were others who sought to augment
their treasure of good works and win heaven, as they say, by exercising
every severity, and trampling upon any natural feelings of compassion
which might arise in their breasts.
Worse still, many convents were known to be schools of worldliness and
vice, where the most dissolute manners prevailed. This was notably the
case with the rich houses near Paris, where the superiors were often
appointed by the king's mistress for the time being, and the convent
was a resort for the young gentlemen of the court.
But it was upon the pastors that the vials of wrath were most lavishly
poured out. Some, whose flocks were already scattered, escaped to
foreign lands, but many remained behind to comfort their afflicted
brethren. These were never for one moment in security. They journeyed
from place to place in all sorts of disguises. They slept in dens and
caves of the earth, or under the open sky; holding a midnight meeting
here, comforting a dying person or a bereaved parent there; now
celebrating the Lord's Supper, in some lonely grange or barn, to those
of the faithful who had risked everything to break together the bread
of life once more; now baptizing a babe, perhaps by the bedside of its
dying mother, or uniting some loving and faithful pair of lovers who
wished to meet the evils of life together. *
* See any collection of Huguenot memoirs.
Hunted down like wild beasts, they were condemned, if captured, to the
gallows or the wheel, without even the pretence of a trial, after all
temptations of pardons and rewards had failed to shake their faith.
Now and then—very rarely—some one abjured; but, as I have said, these
usually abjured their abjuration at the first opportunity, or died in
agonies of remorse and despair.
As I have remarked before, our narrow corner of the world had hitherto
got off easily, and we lived in comparative safety and in friendship
with our neighbors. But the time was coming, and close at hand, when
the storm was to reach alike the lofty aerie and the lowly nest.
My mother, I believe, would have been glad to emigrate at once. She
thought with longings inexpressible of her quiet English home in the
valley of Tre Madoc, of the old red stone house overhung with trees,
where dwelt peace and quietness, with none to molest or make afraid; of
the little gray church on the moor, with its tall tower, which served
as a beacon to the wandering sailor, where the pure word of God was
preached, and the old people and little children came every Sunday.
My mother always loved the English Church. She kept her prayer-book by
her, and used to read it every day. She taught me many precious lessons
out of it, so that when I was twelve years old, I knew it almost by
heart. This love of hers for the English Church was in some degree
shared by my father, and, as I heard afterward, was a reason for his
being looked coldly upon by some of the Religion, to whom the very
name of bishop was an abomination; and no wonder, since with them it
was another name for oppressor and persecutor. But they found, when
the trial came, that the Chevalier d'Antin and his gentle lady were as
ready to put all to hazard for their faith as the best of them.
As I have said, my mother was desirous of emigrating, as so many others
had done. But my father would not consent to forsake his poor tenants
and peasants, many of whom had come with him from Provence. He thought
himself in some sort their shepherd, and responsible for their welfare.
This was a very different estimation from that in which some of our
neighbors held their people. There were three or four large estates
about Avranches and St. Lo, the owners of which lived in Paris the year
round, or followed the court in its movements, and left their lands
and people to the care of agents, taking no thought for them except to
extract from them as much money as possible.
But such was not my father's idea. He held that every large landowner
was a steward under God, responsible for the welfare of those placed
under his charge, and that he had no right to use his estate merely for
his own enriching or aggrandizement. One who did so, he held for an
unfaithful servant, who, would be called to a strict account whenever
his Lord should return, and who could expect nothing else for his
reward than outer darkness and gnashing of teeth.
I have seen something of great landowners since that day, and I fear
this idea of duty is very far from common among them. Certainly I have
never known one, unless it is my husband, who fulfilled it as my father
did. He was not always dictating or patronizing. He did not regard his
tenants and workpeople either as little children or as dumb beasts, but
as rational, accountable creatures.
Of course, he met with plenty of hindrance and opposition. The Norman
is a slow thinker, and very conservative. That "our fathers did so"
is reason enough for them to do so also, and they are as full of
prejudice and superstition as any people in France, except perhaps
their neighbors of Brittany. But they are good honest folk, sober for
the most part, except on some special occasions, very industrious,
and extremely domestic and frugal in their habits. Their houses are
generally comfortable, according to French ideas, and they often
have a great deal of wealth laid by in the shape of fine linen, gold
ornaments, and furniture. Oh, how I should like to see the inside of a
Norman farm-house once more! Those very cakes of sarrasin, which I used
to hate, would taste like ambrosia. But I am wandering again, in the
fashion of old people.
My father, holding these ideas, did not feel at liberty to seek safety
himself and leave his poor people as sheep without a shepherd. He would
gladly have sent my mother and myself to a place of safety, but my
mother would not hear of leaving him, nor did they see their way clear
to part with me. So we remained together till I was fourteen years
old. My mother instructed me in all sorts of womanly accomplishments,
and from Mrs. Grace, I learned to do wonderful feats of needlework,
especially in darning, cut work, and satin stitch, which in my turn, I
taught to Lucille, with my mother's full approbation, for she said I
learned in teaching. And besides, in these days of flight and exile, it
behoved every one to practise those arts by which they might earn their
bread in a strange land.
These lessons were sometimes very pleasant to both of us; at others
they were disturbed by that spirit of jealousy which had always been
Lucille's bane, and which, as she did not strive to conquer it,
increased upon her. She was always vexed that I should do anything
which she could not, and if she could not almost directly equal or
excel the pattern I set before her, she would abandon the work in
disgust, sometimes with expressions of contempt, sometimes with an
outburst of temper which made me fairly afraid of her for the time.
But we always made up our quarrels again, for she was really anxious to
learn, and besides that I think she truly loved me at that time. Poor
Lucille! David I seldom saw. He had gone, with the full approbation of
his father and mine, to learn the trade of a ship-carpenter at Dieppe,
where he soon distinguished himself by his skill. His holidays, which
were few and far between, he always spent at home, and he never came
without bringing presents to his family, and some little product of
his skill and ingenuity—a reel, a little casket inlaid with ivory or
precious woods, or a small frame for my embroidery. I have one or two
of these things still.
My own temptations did not lie toward jealousy, which was one reason
perhaps that I had so much patience with Lucille; for I have observed
that people usually have the least toleration for the faults most
resembling their own. I was always, from my earliest years, a dreamy,
imaginative child. I heard but little of the world—that world in which
my uncle and aunt lived at court. But now and then I got a peep at it
through the medium of the plays and tales which my other uncle would
persist in sending—for I am sorry to say that I had more than once
repeated the offence of stealing and studying some of these books—and
this same world had great charms for me.
I had been less with my mother than usual for some months, for she and
my father had many private consultations from which I was excluded. I
used to take my work to the top of the old tower or out in the orchard,
and while my fingers were busy with my stocking or my pattern, my fancy
was making me a grand demoiselle, and leading me to balls and gardens
and all the scenes of the English court.
Of the English court, I say, for my wildest dreams at that time never
led me to the court of Louis XIV. That was too closely associated
with the dangers and inconveniences of our condition for me to think
of it with anything but horror. Thus I spent many hours worse than
unprofitably. Then my conscience would be aroused by some Bible reading
with my mother or some tale of suffering heroism from my father, and
I would cast aside my dreams and return to those religious duties
which at other times were utterly distasteful to me. In short, I was
double-minded, and as such was unstable in all my ways.
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