Night, with fold on fold of ragged purple, with wide obliterating hand,

came roughly down upon the ancient city of Rochelle, which seemed

slowly to draw itself together and assume the proportions of a huge,

menacing rock. Of the roof lines, but lately of many hues and reaches,

there now remained only a long series of grotesque black profiles which

zigzagged from north to south, from ruined wall to ruined wall. The

last dull silver gleam of day trembled a moment on the far careening

horizon, then vanished; and presently the storm which had threatened

all through the day broke forth, doubly furious. A silent stinging

snow whipped in from the sea, and the lordly voices of the surges rose

to inharmonious thunders in the straits of Antioch, or burst in rugged

chorus against the rock-bound coasts of the gloomy promontory and the

isles of Ré and Oléron. As the vigor of the storm increased, the

harbor towers Saint Nicholas and the Chain, looming in the blur like

suppliant arms, and the sea walls began gradually to waver and recede

in the accumulating haze, while across the dim yellow flame in the

tower of the Lantern the snow flurried in grey, shapeless, interminable

shadows. Hither and thither the wind rushed, bold and blusterous,

sometimes carrying landward the intermittent crashing of the surf as it

fell, wrathful yet impotent, on the great dike by which, twenty-odd

years before, the immortal Richelieu had snuffed the last heroic spark

of the Reformists.

The little ships, the great ships, the fisherman's sloop, the king's

corvette, and the merchantman, all lay anchored in the basin and

harbor, their prows boring into the gale, their crude hulls rising and

falling, tossing and plunging, tugging like living things at their

hempen cables. The snow fell upon them, changing them into phantoms,

all seemingly eager to join in the mad revel of the storm. And the

lights at the mastheads, swooping now downward, now upward, now from

side to side, dappled the troubled waters with sickly gold. A desert

of marshes behind it, a limitless sea before it, gave to this brave old

city an isolation at once splendid and melancholy; and thrice

melancholy it stood this wild March night, witnessing as it did the

final travail of winter, pregnant with spring.

At seven o'clock the ice-clad packet from Dieppe entered the harbor and

dropped anchor. Among those who disembarked were two Jesuit priests

and an Iroquois Indian, who immediately set out for the episcopal

palace. They passed unobserved through the streets, for the blinding,

whirling snow turned them into shadow-shapes, or effaced them totally

from sight. Besides, wayfarers were few and the hardy mariners had by

this time sought the warm chimney in the favorite inn. For well they

knew that there were times when God wished to be alone with His sea;

and he was either a poor Catholic or a bad Huguenot who refused to be

convinced that the Master had contrived the sea and the storm for His

own especial pastime.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024