Stanley John Weyman

“ We stiffly acknowledged his salute—the priest taking no notice of us—and followed the servant from the room; going along a corridor and up a steep flight of stairs, and seeing enough by the way to be sure that resistance was hopeless. Doors opened silently as we passed, and grim fellows, in corslets and padded coats, peered out. The clank of arms and murmur of voices sounded continuously about us; and as we passed a window the jingle of bits, and the hollow clang of a restless hoof on the flags below, told us that the great house was for the time a fortress. ”

“ But his joy and relief, when he heard the mystery of Louis de Pavannes' marriage explained, were so great that they swallowed up all other feelings. He could not say enough about it. He pictured Louis again and again as Kit's lover, as our old friend, our companion; as true, staunch, brave without fear, without reproach: and it was long before his eyes ceased to sparkle, his tongue to run merrily, the colour to mantle in his cheeks—long that is as time is counted by minutes. But presently the remembrance of Louis' danger and our own position returned more vividly. ”

“ Rare and sweet indeed are those few days in life, when it seems that all creation lives only that we may have pleasure in it, and thank God for it. It is well that we should make the most of them, as we surely did of that day.
It was nightfall when we reached the edge of the uplands, and looked down on Caylus. The last rays of the sun lingered with us, but the valley below was dark; so dark that even the rock about which our homes clustered would have been invisible save for the half-dozen lights that were beginning to twinkle into being on its summit. ”

“ We must fend for ourselves and for Kit.
That was my justification. I leaned from my saddle towards Croisette—I was riding by his side—and muttered, as I felt my horse's head and settled myself firmly in the stirrups, "You remember what I said? Are you ready?"
He looked at me in a startled way, with a face showing white in the shadow: and from me to the one solitary figure seated like a pillar a score of paces in front with no one between us and it. "There need be but two of us," I muttered, loosening my sword. "Shall it be you or Marie? ”

“ But for all that, I knew her—knew her, shuddering for the woman whose badges I was even now wearing, whose gift I bore at my side; and I remembered the priest's vaunt of a few hours before, made in her presence, "There is no man in Paris shall thwart me to-night!"
It had been a vain boast indeed! No hand in all that host of thousands was more feeble than his now: for good or ill! No brain more dull, no voice less heeded. A righteous retribution indeed had overtaken him. He had died by the sword he had drawn—died, a priest, by violence! ”

“ Suddenly the din and tumult flashed to a louder note; as when hounds on the scent give tongue at sight. I turned quickly from the house, recalled to a sense of the position and peril. The iron bar was yielding to the pressure. Slowly the left wing of the gate was sinking inwards. Through the widening chasm I caught a glimpse of wild, grimy faces and bloodshot eyes, and heard above the noise a sharp cry from Croisette—a cry of terror. Then I turned and ran, with a defiant gesture and an answering yell, right across the forecourt and up the steps to the door. ”

“ And there was a silence, a long silence, while the murmur of the crowd came almost cheerfully through the window, and the sparrows under the eaves chirped and twittered, and the heart that throbbed least painfully was, I do believe, Louis de Pavannes'!
At last Bezers broke the silence.
"M. de Pavannes!" he began, speaking hoarsely, yet concealing all passion under a cynical smile and a mock politeness, "M. de Pavannes, I hold the king's commission to put to death all the Huguenots within my province of Quercy. Have you anything to say, I beg, why I should not begin with you? ”

“ Croisette plucked my sleeve before I could answer, and pointed to the box-bed with its scanty curtains. "If they see us in the room," he urged softly, "while they are half in and half out, they will give the alarm. Let us hide ourselves yonder. When they are inside—you understand?"
He laid his hand on his dagger. The muscles of the lad's face grew tense. I did understand him. "Madame," I said quickly, "you will not betray us?"
She shook her head. The colour returned to her cheek, and the brightness to her eyes. She was a true woman. ”

“ I knew that Kit seeing him thus would gladly have died with him; and I thanked God she did not see him. Yet there was a quietness in his fortitude which made a great difference between his air and that of Bezers. He lacked, as became one looking unarmed on certain death, the sneer and smile of the giant beside him.
What was the Vidame about to do? I shuddered as I asked myself. Not surrender him, not fling him bodily to the people? No not that: I felt sure he would let no others share his vengeance that his pride would not suffer that. ”

“ We found ourselves then in the mouth of an obscure alley which my companion whispered would bring us to his house; and here we paused to take breath and look back. The sky was red behind us, the air full of the clash and din of the tocsin, and the flood of sounds which poured from every tower and steeple. From the eastward came the rattle of drums and random shots, and shrieks of "A BAS COLIGNY!" "A BAS LES HUGUENOTS!" Meanwhile the city was rising as one man, pale at this dread awakening. ”

“ It was a tall house, immediately fronting the street, and every window in it was broken. The door hung forlornly on one hinge, glaring cracks in its surface showing where the axe had splintered it. Fragments of glass and ware, hung out and shattered in sheer wantonness, strewed the steps: and down one corner of the latter a dark red stream trickled—to curdle by and by in the gutter. Whence came the stream? Alas! there was something more to be seen yet, something our eyes instinctively sought last of all. The body of a man. ”

“ Croisette pulled horrible faces behind his back. We looked hotly at him; but could find nothing to say.
"You grow red!" he went on, pleasantly—the wretch!—playing with us as a cat does with mice. "It offends your dignity, perhaps, that I bid Mademoiselle set you spinning? I now would spin at Mademoiselle's bidding, and think it happiness!"
"We are not girls!" I blurted out, with the flush and tremor of a boy's passion. "You had not called my godfather, Anne de Montmorenci a girl, M. le Vidame!" ”

“ It was paved too with faces—human faces, yet scarcely human—all looking one way, all looking upward; and the noise, as from time to time this immense crowd groaned or howled in unison, like a wild beast in its fury, was so appalling, that I clutched Pavannes' arm and clung to him in momentary terror. I do not wonder now that I quailed, though sometimes I have heard that sound since. For there is nothing in the world so dreadful as that brute beast we call the CANAILLE, when the chain is off and its cowardly soul is roused. ”

“ I looked back at Paris—at the cloud of smoke which hung over the towers and roofs; and it seemed to me the canopy of hell itself. I fancied that my head still rang with the cries and screams and curses, the sounds of death. In very fact, I could hear the dull reports of firearms near the Louvre, and the jangle of the bells. Country-folk were congregated at the cross-roads, and in the villages, listening and gazing; asking timid questions of the more good-natured among us, and showing that the rumour of the dreadful work doing in the town had somehow spread abroad. ”

“ Men are odd. The moment he gave way to me I repented of my words. It was almost with reluctance that I followed the servant to the lower part of the table. More than this, mingled with the hatred I felt for the Vidame, there was now a strange sentiment towards him—almost of admiration; that had its birth I think in the moment, when I held his life in my hand, and he had not flinched.
We ate in silence; even after Croisette by grasping my hand under the table had begged me not to judge him hastily. ”

“ For a Huguenot we knew he must be.
"The Baron de Rosny," he answered; adding with a sneer, "He is a careful man! If they were all like him, with eyes on both sides of his head and a dag by his candle—well, my lord, there would be one more king in France—or one less! But they are a blind lot: as blind as bats." He muttered something farther in which I caught the word "to-night." But I did not hear it all; or understand any of it.
"Your lordships are going to Paris?" he resumed in a different tone. When I said that we were, he looked at me in a shamefaced way, half timid, half arrogant. ”

“ If you kill him, you kill her!"
The Vidame was silent, seeming to glower on the boy. The priest sneered. "Hearts are soon mended—especially women's," he said.
"But not Kit's!" Croisette said passionately—otherwise ignoring him. "Not Kit's! You do not know her, Vidame! Indeed you do not!"
The remark was ill-timed. I saw a spasm of anger distort Bezers' face. "Get up, boy!" he snarled, "I wrote to Mademoiselle what I would do, and that I shall do! A Bezers keeps his word. By the God above us—if there be a God, and in the devil's name I doubt it to-night!—I shall keep mine! Go!" ”

“ No less than to go to Paris—the unknown city so far beyond the hills—and seek out M. de Pavannes, and warn him. It would be a race between the Vidame and ourselves; a race for the life of Kit's suitor. Could we reach Paris first, or even within twenty-four hours of Bezers' arrival, we should in all probability be in time, and be able to put Pavannes on his guard. It had been the first thought of all of us, to take such men as we could get together and fall upon Bezers wherever we found him, making it our simple object to kill him. ”

“ There will be no honour, no faith, no quarter, and no peace! And for the Valois who has done this, the sword will never depart from his house! I believe it! I do believe it!"
How truly he spoke we know now. For two-and-twenty years after that twenty-fourth of August, 1572, the sword was scarcely laid aside in France for a single month. In the streets of Paris, at Arques, and Coutras, and Ivry, blood flowed like water that the blood of the St. Bartholomew might be forgotten—that blood which, by the grace of God, Navarre saw fall from the dice box on the eve of the massacre. ”

“ The Vidame, free from this drawback, was some way along the gallery before they had set foot on it.
How I prayed—amid a scene of the wildest uproar and excitement—that the mob might be first! Let there be only a short conflict between Bezers' men and the people, and in the confusion Pavannes might yet escape. Hope awoke in the turmoil. Above the yells of the crowd a score of deep voices about me thundered "a Wolf! a Wolf!" And I too, lost my head, and drew my sword, and screamed at the top of my voice, "a Caylus! a Caylus!" with the maddest. ”

“ I had some time before communicated to Croisette the desperate design I had formed—to fall upon Bezers and kill him in the midst of his men in the last resort. Now the time had come if the thing was ever to be done: if we had not left it too long already. And I looked about me. There was some confusion and jostling as we halted on the brow of the hill, while two men were despatched ahead to announce the governor's arrival, and Bure, with half a dozen spears, rode out as an advanced guard.
The road where we stood was narrow, a shallow cutting winding down the declivity of the hills. ”

“ Few as were the troopers who had followed him—a mere handful—they fell without hesitation on the foremost of the crowd, who were already in confusion, stumbling and falling over their leader's body; and hurled them back pell-mell along the gallery. The throng below had no firearms, and could give no aid at the moment; the stage was narrow; in two minutes the Vidame's people had swept it clear of the crowd and were in possession of it. A tall fellow took up the priest's body, dead or alive, I do not know which, and flung it as if it had been a sack of corn over the rail. ”

“ The sun had not yet risen above the hills when we three with a single servant behind us drew rein at the end of the valley; and easing our horses on the ascent, turned in the saddle to take a last look at Caylus—at the huddled grey town, and the towers above it. A little thoughtful we all were, I think. The times were rough and our errand was serious. But youth and early morning are fine dispellers of care; and once on the uplands we trotted gaily forward, now passing through wide glades in the sparse oak forest, where the trees all leaned one way, now over bare, wind-swept downs ”

“ The exhaustion we had felt a moment before when all seemed lost be it remembered that we had not been to bed or tasted food for many hours—fell from us on the instant, and was clean gone and forgotten in the joy of this respite. Louis was living and for the moment had escaped.
Escaped! But for how long? We soon had our answer. The moment we turned the corner by the river-side, the murmur of a multitude not loud but continuous, struck our ears, even as the breeze off the water swept our cheeks. Across the river lay the thousand roofs of the Ile de la Cite, all sparkling in the sunshine. ”

“ I was too weary with riding to go entirely without sleep. And moreover it is anxiety and the tremor of excitement which make the pillow sleepless, not, heaven be thanked, sorrow. God made man to lie awake and hope: but never to lie awake and grieve. An hour or two before daybreak I fell asleep, utterly worn out. When I awoke, the sun was high, and shining slantwise on our window. The room was gay with the morning rays, and soft with the morning freshness, and I lay a while, my cheek on my hand, drinking in the cheerful influence as I had done many and many a day in our room at Caylus. ”

“ And yet how dreadful it was to stand still among the cruel, thoughtless mob and see our friend, the touch of whose hand we knew so well, done to death for their sport! Done to death as the old woman had said like any rat, not a soul save ourselves pitying him! Not a soul to turn sick at his cry of agony, or shudder at the glance of his dying eyes. It was dreadful indeed.
"Ah, well," muttered a woman beside me to her companion—there were many women in the crowd—"it is down with the Huguenots, say I! It is Lorraine is the fine man! But after all yon is a bonny fellow and a proper, Margot! ”

“ Begone, M. de Pavannes, begone!"
"But, M. de Bezers," Louis persisted, "hear me. It takes two to—"
"Begone! begone! before we do one another a mischief!" cried the Vidame furiously. "Every word you say in that strain is an injury to me. It robs me of my vengeance. Go! in God's name!" ”

“ Will nothing provoke you? If you call yourself a gentleman, draw!"
He shook his head; he was still smiling, still unmoved. "I do not do my own dirty work," he said quietly, "nor stint my footmen of their sport, boy."
"Very well!" I retorted. And with the words I drew my sword, and sprang as quick as lightning to the curtain by which he had entered. "Very well, we will kill you first!" I cried wrathfully, my eye on his eye, and every savage passion in my breast aroused, "and take our chance with the lackeys afterwards! Marie! Croisette!" ”

“ Not here, surely, where each minute a child, a woman died silently, a man snarling like a wolf—happy if he had snatched his weapon and got his back to the wall: where foul corpses dammed the very blood that ran down the kennel, and children—little children—played with them!
I was at Cahors in 1580 in the great street fight; and there women were killed, I was with Chatillon nine years later, when he rode through the Faubourgs of Paris, with this very day and his father Coligny in his mind, and gave no quarter. ”