O ye, wha are sae guid yourself,
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye’ve naught to do but mark and tell
Your neebour’s fauts and folly.
--BURNS
The old city of Montauban, once famous as the home of Ariosto’s Rinaldo
and his brethren, known to French romance as ‘_Les Quatre Fils Aymon_,’
acquired in later times a very diverse species of fame,--that, namely,
of being one of the chief strong-holds of the Reformed. The Bishop Jean
de Lettes, after leading a scandalous life, had professed a sort of
Calvinism, had married, and retired to Geneva, and his successor had
not found it possible to live at Montauban from the enmity of the
inhabitants. Strongly situated, with a peculiar municipal constitution
of its own, and used to Provencal independence both of thought and
deed, the inhabitants had been so unanimous in their Calvinism, and
had offered such efficient resistance, as to have wrung from Government
reluctant sanction for the open observance of the Reformed worship, and
for the maintenance of a college for the education of their ministry.
There then was convoked the National Synod, answering to the Scottish
General Assembly, excepting that the persecuted French Presbyterians met
in a different place every year. Delegated pastors there gathered from
every quarter. From Northern France came men used to live in constant
hazard of their lives; from Paris, confessors such as Merlin, the
chaplain who, leaving Coligny’s bedside, had been hidden for three days
in a hayloft, feeding on the eggs that a hen daily laid beside him;
army-chaplains were there who had passionately led battle-psalms ere
their colleagues charged the foe, and had striven with vain endeavours
to render their soldiers saints; while other pastors came from Pyrenean
villages where their generation had never seen flames lighted against
heresy, nor knew what it was to disperse a congregation in haste and
secrecy for hear of the enemy.
The audience was large and sympathizing. Montauban had become the refuge
of many Huguenot families who could nowhere else profess their faith
without constant danger; and a large proportion of these were ladies,
wives of gentlemen in the army kept up by La Noue, or widows who feared
that their children might be taken from them to be brought up by their
Catholic relations, elderly dames who longed for tranquillity after
having lost husbands or sons by civil war. Thickly they lodged in
the strangely named _gasches_ and _vertiers_, as the divisions and
subdivisions of the city were termed, occupying floors or apartments
of the tall old houses; walking abroad in the streets in grave attire,
stiff hat, crimped ruff, and huge fan, and forming a society in
themselves, close-packed, punctilious and dignified, rigidly devout
but strictly censorious, and altogether as unlike their typical country
folks of Paris as if they had belonged to a different nation. And the
sourest and most severe of all were such as had lived farthest south,
and personally suffered the least peril and alarm.
Dancing was unheard-of enormity; cards and dice were prohibited; and
stronger expletive than the elegant ones invented for the special use
of the King of Navarre was expiated either by the purse or the skin;
Marot’s psalmody was the only music, black or sad colour the only
wear; and, a few years later, the wife of one of the most distinguished
statesmen and councilors of Henri of Navarre was excommunicated for the
enormity of wearing her hair curled.
To such a community it was a delightful festival to receive a national
assembly of ministers ready to regale them on daily sermons for a whole
month, and to retail in private the points of discipline debated in
the public assembly; and, apart from mere eagerness for novelty, many a
discreet heart beat with gladness at the meeting with the hunted pastor
of her native home, who had been the first to strike the spiritual
chord, and awake her mind to religion.
Every family had their honoured guest, every reception-room was in turn
the scene of some pious little assembly that drank _eau sucree_, and
rejoiced in its favourite pastor; and each little congress indulged in
gentle scandal against its rival coterie. But there was one point on
which all the ladies agreed,--namely, that good Maitre Isaac Gardon had
fallen into an almost doting state of blindness to the vanities of his
daughter-in-law, and that she was a disgrace to the community, and ought
to be publicly reprimanded.
Isaac Gardon, long reported to have been martyred--some said at
Paris, others averred at La Sablerie--had indeed been welcomed with
enthusiastic joy and veneration, when he made his appearance at
Montauban, pale, aged, bent, leaning on a staff, and showing the dire
effect of the rheumatic fever which had prostrated him after the night
of drenching and exposure during the escape from La Sablerie. Crowded as
the city was, there was a perfect competition among the tradesfolk for
the honour of entertaining him and the young widow and child of a St.
Bartholomew martyr. A cordwainer of the street of the Soubirous Hauts
obtained this honour, and the wife, though speaking only the sweet
Provencal tongue, soon established the most friendly relations with M.
Gardon’s daughter-in-law.
Two or three more pastors likewise lodged in the same house, and ready
aid was given by Mademoiselle Gardon, as all called Eustacie, in
the domestic cares thus entailed, while her filial attention to her
father-in-law and her sweet tenderness to her child struck all this home
circle with admiration. Children of that age were seldom seen at home
among the better classes in towns. Then, as now, they were universally
consigned to country nurses, who only brought them home at three or four
years old, fresh from a squalid, neglected cottage life: and Eustacie’s
little moonbeam, _la petite Rayonette_, as she loved to call her, was
quite an unusual spectacle; and from having lived entirely with grown
people, and enjoyed the most tender and dainty care, she was intelligent
and brightly docile to a degree that appeared marvellous to those who
only saw children stupefied by a contrary system. She was a lovely
little thing, exquisitely fair, and her plump white limbs small but
perfectly moulded; she was always happy, because always healthy, and
living in an atmosphere of love; and she was the pet and wonder of all
the household, from the grinning apprentice to the grave young candidate
who hoped to be elected pastor to the Duke de Quinet’s village in the
Cevennes.
And yet it was _la petite Rayonette_ who first brought her mother into
trouble. Since her emancipation from swaddling clothes she had been
equipped in a little gray woolen frock, such as Eustacie had learnt to
knit among the peasants, and varied with broad while stripes which gave
it something of the moonbeam effect; but the mother had not been able to
resist the pleasure of drawing up the bosom and tying it with a knot of
the very carnation colour that Berenger used to call her own. That knot
was discussed all up and down the Rue Soubirous Hauts, and even through
the Carriera Major! The widow of an old friend of Maitre Gardon had
remonstrated on the improprieties of such gay vanities, and Mdlle.
Gardon had actually replied, reddening with insolences, that her husband
had loved to see her wear the colour.
Now, if the brethren at Paris had indulged their daughters in such
backslidings, see what had come of it! But that poor Theodore Gardon
should have admired his bride in such unhallowed adornments, was an
evident calumny; and many a head was shaken over it in grave and pious
assembly.
Worse still; when she had been invited to a supper at the excellent
Madame Fargeau’s, the presumptuous little _bourgeoise_ had evidently not
known her place, but had seated herself as if she were a noble lady,
a _fille de qualite_, instead of a mere minister’s widow and a
watchmaker’s daughter. Pretend ignorance that precedence was to be here
observed! That was another Parisian piece of impudence, above all in
one who showed such ridiculous airs as to wipe her face with her own
handkerchief instead of the table-cloth, and to be reluctant to help
herself from the genera dish of _potage_ with her own spoon. Even that
might have been overlooked if she would have regaled them with a full
and particular account of her own rescue from the massacre at Paris;
but she merely coloured up, and said that she had been so ill as to
know scarcely anything about it; and when they pressed her further,
she shortly said, ‘They locked me up;’ and, before she could be
cross-examined as to who was this ‘they,’ Maitre Gardon interfered,
saying that she had suffered so much that he requested the subject might
never be mentioned to her. Nor would he be more explicit, and there
was evidently some mystery, and he was becoming blindly indulgent and
besotted by the blandishments of an artful woman.
Eustacie was saved from hearing the gossip by her ignorance of the
Provencal, which was the only languages of all but the highest and most
cultivated classes, the hostess had very little _langue d’oui_, and
never ventured on any complicated discourse; and Isaac Gardon, who could
speak both the _oc_ and _oui_, was not a person whom it was easy to
beset with mere hearsay or petty remonstrance, but enough reached him
at last to make him one day say mildly, ‘My dear child, might not the
little one dispense with her ribbon while we are here?’
‘Eh, father? At the bidding of those impertinents?’
‘Take care, daughter; you were perfect with the tradesfolk and peasants,
but you cannot comport yourself as successfully with this _petite
noblesse_, or the pastors’ wives.’
‘They are insolent, father. I, in my own true person, would treat no
one as these petty dames treat me,’ said Eustacie. ‘I would not meddle
between a peasant woman and her child, nor ask questions that must needs
wring her heart.’
‘Ah, child! humility is a bitter lesson; and even this world needs it
now from you. We shall have suspicions; and I heard to-day that the King
is in Dauphiny, and with him M. de Nid de Merle. Be not alarmed; he
has no force with him, and the peace still subsists; but we must avoid
suspicion. There is a _preche_ at the Moustier to-day, in French; it
would be well if you were to attend it.’
‘I understand as little of French sermons as of Provencal,’ murmured
Eustacie; but it was only a murmur.
Maitre Gardon had soon found out that his charge had not head enough to
be made a thorough-going controversial Calvinist. Clever, intelligent,
and full of resources as she was, she had no capacity for argument, and
could not enter into theoretical religion. Circumstances had driven her
from her original Church and alienated her from those who had practiced
such personal cruelties on her and hers, but the mould of her mind
remained what it had been previously; she clung to the Huguenots
because they protected her from those who would have forced an abhorrent
marriage on her and snatched her child from her; and, personally, she
loved and venerated Isaac Gardon with ardent, self-sacrificing filial
love and gratitude, accepted as truth all that came from his lips, read
the Scriptures, sang and prayed with him, and obeyed him as dutifully as
ever the true Esperance could have done; but, except the merest external
objections against the grossest and most palpable popular corruptions
and fallacies, she really never entered into the matter. She had been
left too ignorant of her own system to perceive its true clams upon
her; and though she could not help preferring High Mass to a Calvinist
assembly, and shrinking with instinctive pain and horror at the many
profanations she witnessed, the really spiritual leadings of her own
individual father-like leader had opened so much that was new and
precious to her, so full of truth, so full of comfort, giving so much
moral strength, that, unaware that all the foundations had been laid
by Mere Monique, the resolute, high-spirited little thing, out of sheer
constancy and constitutional courage, would have laid down her life as a
Calvinist martyr, in profound ignorance that she was not in the least a
Calvinist all the time.
Hitherto, her wandering life amid the persecuted Huguenots of the West
had prevented her from hearing any preaching but good Isaac’s own,
which had been rather in the way of comfort and encouragement than of
controversy, but in this great gathering it was impossible that there
should not be plenty of vehement polemical oratory, such as was sue to
fly over that weary little head. After a specimen or two, the chances
of the sermon being in Provencal, and the necessity of attending to her
child, had been Eustacie’s excuse for usually offering to attend to the
_menage_, and set her hostess free to be present at the preachings.
However, Rayonette was considered as no valid excuse; for did not whole
circles of black-eyed children sit on the floor in sleepy stolidity at
the feet of their mothers or nurses, and was it not a mere worldly
folly to pretend that a child of sixteen months could not be brought
to church? It was another instance of the mother’s frivolity and the
grandfather’s idolatry.
The Moustier, or minster, the monastic church of Montauban, built on
Mont Auriol in honour of St. Theodore, had, twelve years before,
been plundered and sacked by the Calvinists, not only out of zeal for
iconoclasm, but from long-standing hatred and jealousy against the
monks. Catherine de Medicis had, in 1546, carried off two of the jasper
columns from its chief door-way to the Louvre; and, after some years
more, it was entirely destroyed. The grounds of the Auriol Mountain
Monastery have been desolate down to the present day, when they have
been formed into public gardens. When Eustacie walked through them,
carrying her little girl in her arms, a rose in her bosom to console
her for the loss of her bright breast-knot, they were in raw fresh
dreariness, with tottering, blackened cloisters, garden flowers run
wild, images that she had never ceased to regard as sacred lying broken
and defiled among the grass and weeds.
Up the broad path was pacing the municipal procession, headed by the
three Consuls, each with a serjeant bearing a white rod in front and
a scarlet mantle, and the Consuls themselves in long robes with wide
sleeves of quartered black and scarlet, followed by six halberdiers,
likewise in scarlet, blazoned with the shield of the city--gules, a
golden willow-tree, pollarded and shedding its branches, a chief azure
with the three _fleur-de-lys_ of royalty. As little Rayonette gleefully
pointed at the brilliant pageant, Eustacie could not help saying, rather
bitterly, that these _messieurs_ seemed to wish to engross all the gay
colours from heaven and earth from themselves; and Maitre Isaac could
not help thinking she had some right on her side as he entered the
church once gorgeous with jasper, marbles, and mosaics, glowing with
painted glass, resplendent with gold and jewels, rich with paintings
and draperies of the most brilliant dyes; but now, all that was, soiled,
dulled, defaced; the whole building, even up to the end of the
chancel, was closely fitted with benches occupied by the ‘sad-coloured’
congregation. Isaac was obliged by a strenuous effort of memory to
recall ‘Ne-hushtan’ and the golden calves, before he could clear from
his mind, ‘Now they break down all the carved work thereof with axes
and with hammers.’ But, then, did not the thorough going Reformers think
Master Isaac a very weak and back-sliding brother?
Nevertheless, in right of his age, his former reputation, and his
sufferings, his place was full in the midst of the square-capped,
black-robed ministers who sat herded on a sort of platform together,
to address the Almighty and the congregation in prayers and discourses,
interspersed with psalms sung by the whole assembly. There was no
want of piety, depth, force, or fervour. These were men refined by
persecution, who had struggled to the light that had been darkened by
the popular system, and, having once been forced into foregoing their
scruples as to breaking the unity of the Church, regarded themselves
even as apostles of the truth. Listening to them, Isaac Gardon felt
himself rapt into the hopes of cleansing the aspirations of universal
re-integration that had shone before his early youth, ere the Church
had shown herself deaf, and the Reformers in losing patience had lost
purity, and disappointment had crushed him into an aged man.
He was recalled by the echo of a gay, little inarticulate cry--those
baby tones that had become such music to his ears that he hardly
realized that they were not indeed from his grandchild. In a moment’s
glance he saw how it was. A little bird had flown in at one of the empty
window, and was fluttering over the heads of the congregation, and a
small, plump, white arm and hand was stretched out and pointing--a rosy,
fair, smiling face upturned; a little gray figure had scrambled up
on the knee of one of the still, black-hooded women; and the shout of
irrepressible delight was breaking on the decorum of the congregation,
in spite of hushes, in spite of the uplifted rod of a scarlet serjeant
on his way down the aisle to quell the disturbance; nay, as the bird
came nearer, the exulting voice, proud of the achievement of a new word,
shouted ‘_Moineau, moineau_.’ Angered by defiance to authority, down
came the rod, not indeed with great force, but with enough to make the
arms clasp round the mother’s neck, the face hide itself on in, a loud,
terrified wail ring through the church, and tempestuous sobbing follow
it up. Then uprose the black-hooded figure, the child tightly clasped,
and her mantle drawn round it, while the other hand motioned the
official aside, and down the aisle, even to the door, she swept with
the lofty carriage, high-drawn neck, and swelling bosom of an offended
princess.
Maitre Gardon heard little more of the discourse, indeed he would have
followed at once had he not feared to increase the sensation and the
scandal. He came home to find Rayonette’s tears long ago dried, but her
mother furious. She would leave Montauban that minute, she would never
set foot in a heretic conventicle again, to have her fatherless child,
daughter of all the Ribaumonts, struck by base _canaille_. Even her
uncle could not have done worse; he at least would have respected her
blood.
Maitre Gardon did not know that his charge could be in such a passion,
as, her eyes flashing through tears, she insisted on being taken away at
once. No, she would hear nothing. She seemed to fell resentment due to
the honour of all the Ribaumonts, and he was obliged peremptorily
to refuse to quit Montauban till his business at the Synod should
be completed, and then to leave her in a flood of angry tears and
reproaches for exposing her child to such usage, and approving it.
Poor little thing, he found her meek and penitent for her unjust anger
towards himself. Whatever he desired she would do, she would stay or go
with him anywhere except to a sermon at the Moustier, and she did not
think that in her heart her good father desired little infants to be
beaten--least of all Berenger’s little one. And with Rayonette already
on his knee, stealing his spectacles, peace was made.
Peace with him, but not with the congregation! Were people to stalk out
of church in a rage, and make no reparation? Was Maitre Isaac to talk
of orphans, only children, and maternal love, as if weak human affection
did not need chastisement? Was this saucy Parisienne to play the
offended, and say that if the child were not suffered at church she must
stay at home with it? The ladies agitated to have the obnoxious young
widow reprimanded in open Synod, but, to their still greater disgust,
not a pastor would consent to perform the office. Some said that Maitre
Gardon ought to rule his own household, others that they respected him
too much to interfere, and there were others abandoned enough to assert
that if any one needed a reprimand it was the serjeant.
Of these was the young candidate, Samuel Mace, who had been educated
at the expense of the Dowager Duchess de Quinet, and hoped that her
influence would obtain his election to the pastorate of a certain
peaceful little village deep in the Cevennes. She had intimated that
what he wanted was a wife to teach and improve the wives of the peasant
farmers, and where could a more eligible one be found than Esperance
Gardon? Her cookery he tasted, her industry he saw, her tenderness to
her child, her attention to her father, were his daily admiration; and
her soft velvet eyes and sweet smile went so deep in his heart that he
would have bought her ells upon ells of pink ribbon, when once out of
sight of the old ladies; would have given a father’s love to her little
daughter, and a son’s duty and veneration to Isaac Gardon.
His patroness did not deny her approval. The gossip had indeed reached
her, but she had a high esteem for Isaac Gardon, believed in Samuel
Mace’s good sense, and heeded Montauban scandal very little. Her
_protege_ would be much better married to a spirited woman who had seen
the world, than to a mere farmer’s daughter who had never looked beyond
her cheese. Old Gardon would be an admirable adviser, and if he were
taken into the _menage_ she would add to the endowment another arable
field, and grass for two more cows. If she liked the young woman on
inspection, the marriage should take place in her own august presence.
What! had Maitre Gardon refused? Forbidden that the subject should be
mentioned to his daughter? Impossible! Either Mace had managed matters
foolishly, or the old man had some doubt of him which she could remove,
or else it was foolish reluctance to part with his daughter-in-law.
Or the gossips were right after all, and he knew her to be too
light-minded, if not worse, to be the wife of any pious young minister.
Or there was some mystery. Any way, Madame la Duchesse would see him,
and bring him to his senses, make him give the girl a good husband
if she were worthy, or devote her to condign punishment if she were
unworthy.