The swallows were gone--a month earlier in this mountainous region than in the rest of the golden south of France. Below, the corn had fallen ungathered from its stalks, since of those who remained in the valleys, and faithful to the iron rule of Baville, none dared reap it, for fear that, while doing so, from its midst might spring up a body of the dreaded1 Camisards. Already, too, high up in the mountains, the first flurries of snow had sprinkled the ground; autumn had come. And still Baville was no nearer to finding Urbaine, or to gathering2 news of whether she was alive or dead, than he had been before. Neither did he know what had become of the man who, he deemed, had betrayed her into his enemies' hands; who, he believed, had sent her to her death.
Meanwhile, Montrevel had arrived. Montrevel, the general and newly created field marshal, second only to Tallard, who next year lost Blenheim, and to Villars, who was ordained3 later to bring peace to the distracted land. Montrevel, of whom it was said that he fought like a Paladin of old, made love like a Troubadour, and had the air of a hero of the stage or the leader of a chorus in the newly invented operas.
With him came a vast army--one which, to any other rebels but the all-triumphant Protestants, harbouring defiantly4 in the mountain deserts on high and in the inaccessible5 caverns7, would have brought fear and terror. To them, however, this army brought none. "Nous sommes les rochers que les vents8 combattants en vaine," they cried, and even as they so taunted9 their late persecutors they stole down by night and by unknown paths, sacked a fresh village, provided themselves with fresh food, more arms and more ammunition11, seized on costly12 uniforms and laces, and, when possible, horses and cattle, while once more like phantoms13 they vanished quietly afterward14 from human sight. Vanished as the crawling Indians whom some of their adversaries16 had encountered on the Mississippee or the St. Lawrence; vanished, after devastating17 lonely settlements and townships; disappeared as disappears the snowflake which falls on the bosom18 of the ocean, is seen a moment, and then is gone forever.
In that army, sent to destroy the men whose retaliation19 of half a century's persecution20 was now so terrible, came soldiers who had never yet known defeat. From Italy the Marquis de Firmacon brought back the men of a regiment21 of cuirassiers who had fought like victorious22 tigers at Cremona and had even driven back the fiery23 Eugene and his soldiers before their rush; in that army also were the guards of Tarnaud, De Saulx, and Royal Comtois; marines who had faced Russel's and Shovel's squadrons; dragoons of Saint-Sernin who had seen Marlborough ride all along the line giving orders to the great English force to advance, and had observed, but a year or two before, the consumptive invalid24, William of England and Holland, stand undismayed beneath a hailstorm of bullets while superintending the siege of some great fortress25 in the Netherlands. Also there came the brigade of Lajonquiére which had followed Turenne in victory and defeat, and that of Marsilly which had stood shoulder to shoulder awaiting the orders of Condé to charge. And still there were others who might have struck more terror to any mountain rebels than these trained battalions26; a regiment of men, themselves mountaineers, whose fierceness and brutality27 were a byword through all the South.
These were the Miquelets, a body of six hundred Pyrenean soldiers under the command of a rough one-armed free lance named De Palmerolles. From sunny Roussillon and Foix these men came, their faces burned black, their bodies half clad in red shirts and trousers, resembling sailors' slops in vastness, espardillos, or shoes of twisted cord, upon their feet, in their belts two pistols on one side, a scimitar dagger28 on the other, while in their hands they bore the long-barrelled gyspe peculiar29 to the Pyrenean. Also, to render greater Montrevel's chance of defeating those who were termed rebels to the king, he brought with him twenty large brass30 cannons31, five thousand bullets, four thousand muskets32, and fifty thousand pounds of powder--enough, in truth, to defeat all the rebels in the Cévennes, if they could only be got at.
From far up on the height of La Lozère, sheltered in a small copse of wind-swept firs, Jean Cavalier, looking down on the road which wound from Genoillac to Alais, laughed lightly as he turned to the companions by his side--his comrade, Roland, and his prisoner, Martin Ashurst.
"In truth," he said, "'tis a brave array of men. Yet what will they do against us? They can never get up here in spite of Baville's recently constructed roads, while as for us we can get down and back again as we choose." Then, turning to Martin, he said politely, and with that attempt at gracious ease and condescension33 which he never forgot to assume:
"Monsieur, I know we are safe with you. When you and your charge, Mademoiselle Ducaire, have left us you will betray no secrets."
"No more," replied Martin, "than I should betray any of Monsieur Baville's to you. You know now that, though I am of your religion, I am no partisan34 of either side. I pray God the day may come when all of our faith may be free, happy."
"We pray so, too," both chiefs answered, while Cavalier continued:
"'Tis what we seek. Peace--peace above all! And we are no rebels to the king. Let him but give us leave to worship in our own way and unmolested, earn our bread undisturbed, pay no taxes that go to support his own Romish church--the other taxes we will willingly pay--and he will find he has no more loyal subjects than the Cévenoles. Nay35, have we not offered our services to him against his enemies, offered to furnish a Protestant regiment to aid him in Spain against the Austrian claimant, to fight against all his foes36 except the English, our brother Protestants? Yet he will not consent that it shall be so, or, rather, those who dominate him in his old age will not let him listen to us."
"Therefore," said Roland, "let him look to himself. See--hearken to those Miquelets who tread the plains now, shrieking37 their barbaric songs. Do you know what their war-cry is? 'Tis 'war to the knife.' So be it; 'tis ours too. And ere we cease to shout it Louis will have given in to us. While one Protestant remains38 in these mountains we shall never yield. The king may conquer Europe, drive back all his enemies; us he will never conquer."
* * * * * * *
After La Grande Marie had uttered these words of hers, "Those whom you would slay39 are of our faith," there had fallen a great silence on all within the vast vaulted40 cavern6--a silence begotten41 of wonderment, yet a wonderment which had in it no element of disbelief; for of all the prophetesses, she it was who was most believed in by the Camisards, her inspiration the one which they had never yet known to be at fault. She had advised the descent to Montvert, fortelling how, on that night, the abbé should atone42 for his crimes at their avenging43 hands in spite of their not seeking his death. She also it was who had bidden them attack the convoy44 of Urbaine under the hated command of Poul, and the detachment under the equally hated command of De Broglie. Had prophesied45, too, that in that convoy should be found one whose capture and death would wring46 the heartstrings of the tyrant47 Baville as nothing else could wring them, would beat him down to misery48, might even force him in his despair to abandon all further cruelties toward those of his creed49.
And what she had prophesied had all come to pass. Baville's daughter, as most of them supposed Urbaine to be, was in their hands, her death assured. Therefore now, also, they believed her prophetic visions and utterances50, though, in believing, a victim thereby51 escaped them. Even the women--whose bitterness, born of the horrors practised on their own helpless babes and their old back-bowed mothers and fathers, as well as on themselves, was more intense than that of the men who, in their hearts, felt for the white delicate girl who stood a prisoner before them--even the women paused, wondering, amazed.
"Of our faith," they muttered, "of our faith. Yet the wolf's own cub52, the persecutor10's own blood. Marie, sister, think again of what you say. Pause and reflect."
"I know what I say," La Grande Marie murmured, the misty53 eyes still fixed54 upon the girl before her, her hand half raised. "God has entered my heart, given me the power of divination55. She and he, this man by her side, are of our faith. Is it not so, little one?" and she leaned forward to a child near her upon whom also the gift of prophecy was reported to have fallen.
"It is so, Marie," the child lisped.[3]
"What is the mystery?" Cavalier asked, standing56 before Urbaine, his voice expressing the surprise he felt at the turn matters had assumed, expressing also his awe57, for he, too, was sometimes visited with the impulse of prophecy. "In God's name explain, mademoiselle."
"There is no explanation to offer. Your prophetess is wrong. Since my father adopted me I have known no faith but the true one."
"Adopted you!" he repeated, while all round them stood listening eagerly. "Ah! yes, I have heard; remember you said such was the case at the Chateau58 de Servas, yet had forgotten. Mademoiselle, what is your name since it can not be Baville?"
"Urbaine Ducaire."
"Ducaire?" he repeated, "Ducaire? There is no name such as that in the lists of our unhappy brethren. Mademoiselle, was your father of our religion?"
"I know not," the girl replied, while in her manner, in her eyes, too, was the haughty59 indifference60 to her captor which had surprised Cavalier from the first. "I know not. Yet, since he was M. de Baville's friend, it scarce seems possible he should have been."
"Listen," cried the Camisard chief, addressing all those who stood around, "listen, my brethren. Among you are many no longer young, many who can cast their memories back to the years ere this--this demoiselle--could have been born. Some, too, who come from far and wide, from where the waters of the sea lap our southern shores; from where, also, Guienne on one side, Dauphiné on the other, touch our border. Heard ever any of you of a Huguenot named Ducaire?" and as he spoke61 he cast his eyes around all within the cavern.
But there came no affirmative answer. Only the repetition of that name and the shaking of heads, and glances from eyes to eyes as each looked interrogatively at the other.
"There must be some who, at least, have heard this name if--if La Grande Marie divines truly--if this lady is in truth of our faith. Yet--yet--the gift may have failed her now, have misled her."
"Test that gift, Cavalier," La Grande Marie exclaimed from where she stood now among the others, and speaking in a clear voice, while her filmy eyes, which seemed ordinarily to be peering into far-off space, rested on him. "Test that gift. The woman is not the only one named as being of our faith. Ask of the man."
As she spoke the eyes of Urbaine and Martin met, the minds of each filled with the same thought. The knowledge that whereas hitherto to have declared himself of their captors' faith would have led to his being set free and no longer able to share her doom62, his doing so now would almost beyond all doubt prevent that doom from falling on her.
The acknowledgment that La Grande Marie had divined justly in his case would cause them to believe that she had also done so in Urbaine's.
And knowing this--as she too, he felt, must know it--he did not hesitate.
"She has pronounced justly," he said. "I am of the Reformed faith. A Protestant."
Amid the murmurs63 that arose from all who surrounded those two prisoners, amid their cries, in some cases exultant64 ones, that La Grande Marie had never yet been mistaken and was not, could not be so now; amid, too, their strongly expressed opinion that, since she had been right as regards the man, therefore also she must be so as regards the woman, Cavalier exclaimed:
"In heaven's name why not say so before? Also why risk your life as you have done at the Chateau de Servas and here?"
"She was alone and defenceless," Martin exclaimed. "I desired to protect her."
"Knowing that she too is a Protestant, by birth at least?"
"Nay, knowing only that she was a woman."
"Yet Baville's cherished ward15?"
"Yes, his cherished ward."
Cavalier shrugged65 his shoulders and turned away. Perhaps the bitter sufferings of all of his, of their, faith were too present to his mind to make that mind, young as it was--he being not twenty--capable of understanding such magnanimity. Also he did not know that the man before him belonged to a land where, for now nearly fifteen years, none had suffered for their religious opinions as over all France they suffered horribly and were to suffer for still some years to come, and that, consequently, he could not feel as strongly as they themselves felt.
Whatever Cavalier might think, however, of the motives66 which had prompted a man who avowed67 himself a Protestant to protect the worshipped idol68 of the Protestant's greatest persecutor in the most persecuted69 part of France, one thing was very certain: neither would be put to death--the one because he was undoubtedly70 of their faith, the other because, not being the actual child of Baville, she might in truth have been born a Huguenot, as La Grande Marie had had revealed to her. La Grande Marie! in whose auguries71 and predictions they believed for the simple reason that, until now, all that she had foretold72, all that she had uttered as prophetic inspiration, had come to pass.
They were safe so far!
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1
dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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ordained
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| v.任命（某人）为牧师( ordain的过去式和过去分词 )；授予（某人）圣职；（上帝、法律等）命令；判定 | |
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defiantly
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| adv.挑战地，大胆对抗地 | |
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5
inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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cavern
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| n.洞穴，大山洞 | |
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caverns
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| 大山洞，大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
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8
vents
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| （气体、液体等进出的）孔、口( vent的名词复数 )； （鸟、鱼、爬行动物或小哺乳动物的）肛门； 大衣等的)衩口； 开衩 | |
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9
taunted
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| 嘲讽( taunt的过去式和过去分词 )； 嘲弄； 辱骂； 奚落 | |
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10
persecutor
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| n. 迫害者 | |
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ammunition
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| n.军火，弹药 | |
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12
costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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13
phantoms
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| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
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14
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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16
adversaries
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| n.对手，敌手( adversary的名词复数 ) | |
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17
devastating
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| adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的 | |
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18
bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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retaliation
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| n.报复，反击 | |
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persecution
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| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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fortress
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| n.堡垒，防御工事 | |
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battalions
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| n.（陆军的）一营（大约有一千兵士）( battalion的名词复数 )；协同作战的部队；军队；（组织在一起工作的）队伍 | |
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brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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dagger
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| n.匕首，短剑，剑号 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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cannons
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| n.加农炮，大炮，火炮( cannon的名词复数 ) | |
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32
muskets
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| n.火枪，（尤指）滑膛枪( musket的名词复数 ) | |
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33
condescension
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| n.自以为高人一等，贬低(别人) | |
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34
partisan
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| adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒 | |
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35
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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36
foes
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| 敌人，仇敌( foe的名词复数 ) | |
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37
shrieking
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| v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 ) | |
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38
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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39
slay
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| v.杀死，宰杀，杀戮 | |
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40
vaulted
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| adj.拱状的 | |
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41
begotten
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| v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 )；产生，引起 | |
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42
atone
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| v.赎罪，补偿 | |
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43
avenging
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| adj.报仇的，复仇的v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的现在分词 )；为…报复 | |
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44
convoy
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| vt.护送，护卫，护航；n.护送；护送队 | |
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45
prophesied
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| v.预告，预言( prophesy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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46
wring
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| n.扭绞；v.拧，绞出，扭 | |
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47
tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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48
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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49
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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50
utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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51
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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52
cub
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| n.幼兽，年轻无经验的人 | |
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53
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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54
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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55
divination
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| n.占卜，预测 | |
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56
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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57
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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58
chateau
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| n.城堡，别墅 | |
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59
haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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60
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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61
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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62
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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63
murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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64
exultant
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| adj.欢腾的，狂欢的，大喜的 | |
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65
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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66
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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67
avowed
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| adj.公开声明的，承认的v.公开声明，承认( avow的过去式和过去分词) | |
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68
idol
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| n.偶像，红人，宠儿 | |
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69
persecuted
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| （尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的过去式和过去分词 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人 | |
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70
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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71
auguries
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| n.（古罗马）占卜术，占卜仪式( augury的名词复数 )；预兆 | |
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72
foretold
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| v.预言，预示( foretell的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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