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. S

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.




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