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.