CHAPTER I.

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS.

I WAS born in the year of grace 1660, at the Tour d'Antin, a château not very far from the little village of Sartilly in Normandy.

My father was the Chevalier d'Antin, a younger son of the Provençal family of De Fayrolles.

My mother was an English lady, daughter of a very ancient Devonshire family. Her name was Margaret Corbet, and the branch of that tribe to which she belonged had settled in Cornwall. I remember her as a very beautiful woman, with crispy waved blonde hair and a clear white skin more like alabaster than marble, and no tinge of color in her cheeks. I never saw any other person so pale as she, though her lips were always red. She had beautiful gray eyes, with long black lashes, and clearly defined arched eyebrows meeting above her nose, which gave a very serious and even solemn expression to her face. This expression accorded well with her character, which was grave and thoughtful and very deeply religious. I never saw any person whose faith was so much like sight as hers. Nevertheless, she could smile very sweetly, and even laugh merrily at times, but not very often. For a shadow hung over our house from my earliest years—the same shadow which darkened so many other French families at that time.

My father was a pleasant, lively, kindhearted gentleman, who worshipped his beautiful wife, and treated her as if she were indeed some fragile statue of alabaster which might be broken by rough usage.

He was, as I have said, a younger son. His elder brother lived far-away in Provence—at least his grand château was there; but he and his wife spent most of their time at court, where they both held offices about the king and queen. By some family arrangement which I never understood, our own Tour d'Antin came to my father, thus putting him in a much more comfortable position than that of most younger brothers, as there was a large and productive domain and certain houses at Granville which brought good rents. Besides, there were dues of fowls and so forth from the tenants and small farmers. Indeed, my father, with his simple country tastes, was far richer than his elder brother, and that though my father's purse was always open to the poor, especially those of our own household of faith.

The Tour d'Antin was a large building of reddish stone, partly fortress, partly château. I suspect it had some time been a convent also, for there was a paved court surrounded by a cloister, and a small Gothic chapel which was a good deal dilapidated, and never used in my time. The fortress part of the house was very old. It consisted of a square and a round tower, connected by a kind of gallery. The walls were immensely thick, and so covered with lichens and wall plants that one could hardly tell what they were made of.

In the square tower my mother had her own private apartment, consisting of a parlor and an anteroom, and an oratory, or closet, as we should call it in England, the last being formed partly in the thickness of the wall, partly by a projecting turret. It seemed an odd choice, as the new part of the house was so light and cheerful, but there was a reason for this choice which I came to understand afterward.

The rooms communicated by a gallery with the newer part of the house, where was a saloon, my father's special study and business room, and various lodging rooms. This same gallery, as I have said, led to the oldest part of the château—the round tower, which was somewhat ruinous, and where nobody lived but the bats and owls, and, if the servants were to be credited, the ghosts of a certain chevalier and his unhappy wife, about whom there was a terribly tragical legend. There was a steep stone staircase leading to the top of the round tower, from whence one could see a very little bit of the sea and the great monastery and fortress of St. Michael.

There was no view of the sea from any other part of the house, which lay in a sort of dell or depression quite sheltered from the winds, but from the hill behind us, one could see the whole extent of the sands which lay between Granville and the Mont St. Michel, and the mount itself, a glorious vision in a clear bright day, and a gloomy sight when it lowered huge and dark through the mists of November.

We young ones used to look at it with sensations of awe, for we knew that inside those high frowning walls, shut deep from light and air, were horrible dungeons, in which some of "the Religion" had perished in lingering misery, and others might, for all we knew, be pining there still. Formerly, we were told, the pinnacle of the fortress was crowned by a mighty gilded angel, an image of the patron saint of the place, but it did not exist in my day.

The wide expanse of sand of which I have spoken was and is called the Grève, and was no less an object of terror to us than the fortress itself. It is a dreary and desolate plain, abounding in shifting and fathomless quicksands, which stretch on every hand and often change their places, so that the most experienced guide cannot be sure of safety. Not a year passes without many victims being swallowed up by the Grève, and these accidents are especially frequent about the time of the feast of St. Michael, on the 29th of September, when crowds of pilgrims flock to the mount from all over France. On the eve of All Souls' Day—that is, on the 2d of November—as all good Catholics in La Manche believe, there rises from the sands a thick mist, and this mist is made up of the souls of those unfortunates—pilgrims, fishermen, and smugglers—who have from time to time found a horrible and living grave in its treacherous depths, and who, having died without the sacraments, are in at least a questionable position.

To the south and south-east of the Tour d'Antin lay wide apple orchards, laden with fruit in good years, and seldom failing altogether in bad ones. There was also a small vineyard, but we made no wine, for Normandy is not a wine country. The very children in arms drink cider as English children drink milk, and it does not seem to hurt them. We had a garden for herbs and vegetables—mostly salads, carrots, and various kinds of pulse. Potatoes, which are growing very common in England now, and were cultivated to some extent even then, were unknown in France till long afterward, and are not in use at present except as a rare luxury.

My mother had a flower-garden—very small, and carefully tended by her own hands. At the end of our garden stood a small unpretending stone building, not the least like a church, which was nevertheless the only place of worship of the Protestants for some miles around. For the domain d'Antin was a kind of Protestant colony in the midst of Catholics. All our own tenants were of "the Religion," and there were a few of the same way of thinking, both in Granville and Sartilly, who came to the "Temple," as it was called, on the rare occasions when we had a visit from a pastor.

On such occasions, we had sometimes as many as fifty worshippers. When I recall the aspect of that little congregation, with their solemn earnest faces, their blue eyes fixed on the preacher, the old men and women with their heads bent forward not to lose a word, the very children in arms hushed and silent, and then look round on our English congregation, with half the men asleep, the old clerk nodding in his desk, or droning out the Amens, as my naughty Walter says, like a dumbledore under a hat—when I contrast the two, I sometimes wonder whether a little persecution would not be good for the church on this side of the water. It seems a poor way of praising the Lord for all his benefits to go to sleep over them.

As I have said, the domain d'Antin was a kind of Protestant colony in the midst of Roman Catholics—only we did not use the word Protestant at that time. We were among ourselves "the Reformed," or "the Religion;" among our enemies the "Heretics," "the religion pretended to be reformed," and so forth. Our family had belonged to this party ever since there had been any "Reformed" in France, and even before.

For our ancestors had come into Provence from among the Vaudois, of whom it was and is the boast that they had never accepted the Romish corruptions of the true Gospel, and therefore needed no reformation. For some hundreds of years after their emigration, these people had lived in peace with their neighbors. They had found Provence a wilderness, all but abandoned to the wolves. They made it a smiling garden. Vineyards and olive orchards, fruit and grain sprung up where they trod. They were considered as odd people, eccentric, perhaps a little mad, who would not swear nor drink to excess, nor sing indecent songs, nor frequent companies where such things were done; but then they were quiet and peaceable, full of compassion for those who needed help, paying dues to State and Church without a murmur, and if they did not attend mass or confession, the quiet old parish curés winked with both eyes, for the most part, or contented themselves with mild admonitions to such as came in their way.

But in the year 1540 all this was changed, and a tempest fell on the peaceable inhabitants of Provence—a tempest as unexpected by most of them as a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. The preaching of the true Gospel, which was begun about the year 1521 by Farel and Le Fevre, spread like wildfire all over the kingdom. Crowds attended everywhere on the ministrations of the reformed preachers, and in many places, the parish priests were left to say mass to the bare walls.

It seemed at first as if France would soon break away from Rome, as Germany had done. But the fair dawn was soon overclouded. Persecution arose because of the word, and many were offended and returned to their former observances.

The Vaudois settlers in Provence were the greatest sufferers. They were true to the faith of their forefathers, and no menaces could shake them. Two of their villages—Merindol and Cabrières—were burned to the ground. In the former only one person was left alive—a poor idiot who had given to a soldier two crowns for a ransom. The commander of the expedition, d'Oppide, gave the soldier two crowns from his own purse, and then caused the poor idiot to be bound to a tree and shot. The men of Cabrières being promised their lives and the lives of their families, laid down their arms, and were cut in pieces on the spot. Women and children were burned in their houses, others fled to the mountains and woods to perish of want and cold, and the name of Vaudois was almost extinguished in Provence. * Almost, but not altogether.

* All these details and many more may be found in de Félice's "Histoire des Protestants de France," and in many Catholic writers as well.

A hidden seed still remained among the poor and lowly, and some great houses still openly professed their faith and protected their immediate dependents. Among these was the family to which my grandfather belonged. Through all the troubles and wars of the League—through the fearful days of St. Bartholomew, when France ran blood from one end to the other—the family of my ancestors kept their heads above the flood without ever denying their faith. It remained for my uncle, the head of our family, to sully our noble name by real or pretended conversion, in order to curry court favor from Louis XIV. He has left no descendant to perpetuate his shame. That branch of the family is extinct, the last son being killed in a disgraceful duel.

It was before this disgrace fell upon us that my father, in consequence of the family arrangement I have spoken of, took possession of the domain in Normandy. He was not a very young man when, in a visit he made to Jersey, he met and married my mother, who had also gone thither on a visit.

We could see the island of Jersey on a clear day, like a blue cloud on the horizon, and used to look at it with great interest as a part of England, which we pictured to ourselves as a land of all sorts of marvels.

From the time of the execution of the Edict of Nantes in 1598 to the death of Henry IV., those of the Religion in France enjoyed a good degree of peace, and their temples (which they were not allowed even then to call churches) multiplied all over the land. But the Bearnois, as the people loved to call him, was hardly cold in his grave before his successor began his attempts to undo what his great progenitor had done, and from that time to the final revocation of our great charter in 1685, every year—nay, almost every month—brought down new persecutions, new edicts on the heads of the "so-called Reformed." These edicts were such as touched the honor, the safety, the very life of every Protestant. I shall have to speak very largely of these edicts as I proceed, for some of them had a direct effect on my own destiny.

I have given a description of the Tour d'Antin as my birthplace, but in truth my earliest recollections are of a very different dwelling. For a long time after my birth, my mother was in very delicate health and quite unable to nurse me herself, so I was given over to the care of a former servant of our family named Jeanne Sablot, who had lately lost a young infant. Jeanne took me home to her own house, and I only saw my dear mother at intervals of a month or two till I was ten years old. Jeanne had two children of her own, David and Lucille, both older than I, and my sworn friends and protectors on all occasions. Jeanne's parents had come from Provence, and she was like an Italian, both in looks and ways. Her husband, Simon Sablot, was a tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired Norman, somewhat heavy and slow both in mind and ways, a devout Christian man, respected even by his Roman Catholic neighbors for his just dealings and generous hand.

But indeed we all lived in peace in those days. Catholics and Protestants were neighborly together in the exchange of good offices. Even the old curé did not hesitate to exchange a kindly greeting with one of his heretical parishioners, or to accept a seat and a drink of sparkling cider in his dwelling. The great wave of persecution which was sweeping over France had hardly reached our obscure harbor, though we began to hear its roar at a distance.

The old farm-house in which my foster-parents lived was roomy enough and very fairly neat, though the walls and beams were black as ebony, and varnished with the smoke of wood fires. I can see at this moment the row of polished brass pans shining like gold in the firelight, the tall drinking-glasses on the shelf, the oddly carved cabinet with bright steel hinges, which Jeanne called a "bahut," and cherished with pride because it had come down from her Vaudois ancestors, and the round brass jar used for milking, and into whose narrow neck it required some skill to direct the stream from the udder aright.

I can see my foster-father seated in his great chair in the chimney corner, and my good nurse baking on the griddle cakes of sarrasin, which the English call buckwheat. These cakes were very good when they came hot and crisp from the griddle; but it was and is the custom to bake up a huge pile of them, enough sometimes to last several weeks, and it cannot be denied that toward the end, one needed to be very hungry to relish them. We had corn bread also, for Simon cultivated one of the best of the small farms into which the domain was divided; but we ate it as a great treat, as English children eat plum-cake.

We lived somewhat more luxuriously than most of our neighbors, for Jeanne had been cook at the great house like her mother before her, and Simon was wont to boast that his wife could dress him a dish of eggs in as many different ways as there are days in a month. Still we lived very plainly, and I fared like the rest. I learned to read from Jeanne, who was a good scholar and spoke very pure French, and she also taught me to sew, to spin, and to knit, for the Norman women are famous knitters. Besides these lessons, which were my tasks and strictly exacted, I learned to milk and churn, to make hay and plant beans, and, in short, to do all that Lucille did.

We all had our daily tasks of Scripture to learn by heart, according to the admirable custom of the French reformers, and we also learned and sang Clement Marot's hymns and psalms. I have still in my possession an old French Bible with these psalms bound in the same volume. The index is curious: certain psalms are distinguished as "To be sung when the church is under affliction and oppression; when one is prevented from the exercise of worship; when one is forced to the combat; to be sung on the scaffold." Such are some of its divisions—very significant, certainly.

On Sundays we learned the Catechism, and the "Noble Lesson" which had come to us from our Vaudois ancestors, read the stories in the Bible, and took quiet walks in the fields and lanes. Our Roman Catholic neighbors used to assemble after mass on the village green for dancing and other sports, but none of the Reformed were ever seen at these gatherings.

Once, when David was about fourteen, he ran away from home and went to Granville to see the great procession on the feast of St. Michael, which fell that year on a Sunday. Lucille did not know where he had gone, but I did, for he had told me his intention, and I had vainly tried to dissuade him. I did not mean to tell, but I was forced to do so. I shall never forget the horror of his mother nor the stern anger of his father.

"The boy is lost to us—lost forever!" I heard Jeanne say to her husband.

"No, no, ma bonne!" answered Simon soothingly. "The boy has done wrong, no doubt, but he will return—he will repent—all will be well."

"Ah, you do not know!" returned Jeanne in a shrill accent of horror. "There are monks at Granville—missionaries. He will be betrayed into some rash act of worship—a reverence to the image—an entry into the church. They will call it an act of catholicity—they will take him away—he will never return to us. Or if he should refuse them, they will accuse him of blaspheming the Virgin and St. Michael."

Jeanne threw herself down in her seat and covered her eyes, and Simon's calm face was clouded with grave anxiety; but he spoke in the same reassuring tone.

"Little mother, you are borrowing trouble. Is not our Lord at Granville as well as here, and can he not take care of our son? I trust he will be betrayed into no rashness; though the idle curiosity of a child has taken him in the way of danger."

"But, Father Simon, will God take care of David now that he has been a naughty boy?" I ventured to ask.

Simon smiled.

"Ah, my little one, what would become of the best of us if God did not take better care of us than we do of ourselves. Nevertheless, to run into needless danger is a sin of presumption. There are dangers enough hanging over our heads, let us be as careful as we may."

I had lived, so to speak, in an atmosphere of danger all my life, but I think I now realized it for the first time.

"What do you mean by an act of catholicity?" I asked. "Is it anything wicked?"

Simon and his wife looked at each other, and then my foster-father put out his hand and drew me to his side.

"Listen to me, little Vevette!" said he, laying his hand on my head and turning my face toward his. "It is hard to sadden thy young life with such a shadow, but it is needful. Yes, the shadow of the cross, which God hath laid on his church, falls also on the little ones. Attend, my child! Thou must never, never," he repeated, with some sternness in his voice, "on any pretext, or on any persuasion, no matter from whom it comes, enter a church or bow thy head to any image, or kiss any image or picture, or make the sign of the cross, or sing any hymns so-called, or canticle to the Virgin or the saints. If thou dost any such thing, the priests will perhaps come and take thee away from thy parents to shut thee up in a convent, where thou wilt never more see one of thy friends, and from which thou wilt never escape with life except by renouncing thy God and thy religion!"

"I will never renounce my religion!" I cried with vehemence. "My uncle did so, and my father says he has disgraced his ancient name."

"Alas, poor man, if that were all!" said Simon. "But now wilt thou remember these things, my child?"

"I will try," said I humbly; for I remembered that only yesterday I had been humming the air of a hymn to the Virgin which had struck my fancy. "But oh, Father Simon, do you think they will take David away and shut him up in the monastery yonder?"

"I trust not," said Simon, and then he added, with vehemence, "I would rather he were sunk before my eyes in the deepest sands of the Grève."

"I think Vevette is as bad as David," said Lucille, who had not before spoken. "She knew he was going, and she did not prevent him. If I had known, I should have told mother directly."

"Yes, thou art only too ready to tell," replied her mother. "Take care that no one has to tell of thee."

"And remember that spiritual pride is as great a sin as disobedience, and goes before a fall as often, my Loulou," added her father.

"I did not know what to do," said I. "Mother Jeanne does not like to have us tell tales;" which was true.

"Thine was an error in judgment, my little one. I am not angry with you, my children. Another time, you will both be wiser, and David also I trust. Nov run up to the top of the hill and see if you can see him."

We went out together, but not hand in hand as usual. A drizzling rain was falling, but we were too hardy to mind that. Our sabots or wooden shoes were impervious to wet, and our thick homespun frocks almost as much so. No sooner were we out of hearing of the elders, than Loulou overwhelmed me with a torrent of reproaches mingled with tears.

"It is you—you, Vevette, who have sent my brother away," she cried. "You knew he was going, and you did not try to stop him."

"That is not true," said I calmly. I was as angry as herself, but it was always a way of mine that the more excited I was, the quieter I grew. "I said everything I could."

"Yes, you said everything; why did not you do something. If he had told me—but no! Everything is for Vevette, forsooth, because she is a demoiselle. His poor sister is nothing and nobody. You try every way to separate him from me, and make him despise me. I wish—" but a burst of angry sobs choked her voice.

"Yes, I know what you wish, and you shall have your wish," said I, for I was now at a white heat.

Loulou began to be scared, and, as usual, as I grew angry, she began to cool down.

"Well, I think you ought to have told, but to be sure you are only a little girl," she added condescendingly. "As father says, when you are older you will know better."

This put the climax. Nobody likes to be called "only a little girl."

I did not say a word, but I fumed and walked away from her. I had had a glimpse of a figure coming up the hollow lane, and I was determined to meet David before his sister did.

"Vevette, where are you going?" called Loulou. "Come back; you will be wet through."

I paid no attention to her, but, quickening my steps, I passed a turn in the lane, and as I did so, David caught me in his arms.

"Vevette! What are you doing here, and what makes you so pale? Is your heart beating again?" For I was subject to palpitations which, though probably not dangerous, were alarming. "Here, sit down a moment. What frightened you?"

"You—you did," I gasped, as soon as I could speak. "I thought they would carry you off—that we should never see you again."

"Was that all? There was no danger," said David, with an odd little smile. "I did not go near them."

"Did not go near them!" repeated Lucille, who had now come up with us. "Why not?"

"I did not think it right," answered David manfully. "I meant to go when I set out, but Vevette's words kept ringing in my ears: 'It is mean and cowardly to pain thy mother's heart just for a pleasure.' So I turned aside and went to sit a while with Jean Laroche, who is laid up still with his sprained ankle."

"Then you never went near the procession at all—you never saw it," said Lucille, in a tone of disappointment, as David shook his head. "I thought you would at least have something to tell us. What are you laughing at, mademoiselle, if I may be so bold as to ask?"

"At you," I answered with perfect frankness. "At first you are enraged enough to kill me because I did not keep David from going, and now you are vexed at him because he did not go."

"But you did keep me, and I should have come home at once, only the poor Mother Laroche asked me so earnestly to come in and amuse Jean a little. But I must hurry home. Come, girls."

Lucille and I did not go into the house, but into the granary, which was one of our places of retirement. I took up an old psalm-book and began turning over the leaves. Lucille stood looking out of the door. At last she spoke.

"So you did hinder him, after all?"

"Yes, what a pity!" I answered mischievously. "Else he might have something to tell us. But I am only a little girl, you know. When I am older I shall know better. But there, we won't quarrel," I added. I could afford to be magnanimous, seeing how decidedly I had the best of it. "It is worse to be cross on Sunday than to go to see processions. Come, let us kiss and be friends."

Lucille yielded, but not very graciously. In fact, she was always rather jealous of me. She said I set her father and mother up against her, which certainly was not true, and that David liked me the best, which might have been the case, for she was always lecturing him and assuming airs of superiority, which irritated him, good-tempered as he was. I do not think she was very sorry when it was decided that I should leave the cottage and go home for good.

I have dwelt more lengthily on this childish affair because it was the first thing which made me at all sensible of the atmosphere of constant danger and persecution in which we lived even then.

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