The Blacksmith's Hammer; or, The Peasant Code: A Tale of the Grand Monarch

by Eugène Sue

  EPILOGUE.

  Bertha and Nominoe live at this hour, body and soul, spirit and matter,in those starry worlds where none of us on earth has been, where we allwill go--after having accomplished our mission on earth.

  My son believed I was dead, having, indeed been left for dead at Nantesby the soldiers against whom I defended myself to the utmost. Even myhost took me for dead. He was engaged in procuring my burial when amovement that I made revealed to him that I still lived. Nursed by myfriend with fraternal care, I recovered from my wounds and remainedconcealed in my place of refuge until the day when I embarked secretlyat Nantes on an English vessel that took me to London. From there Icrossed over into Holland, where a shipowner entrusted me with one ofhis vessels. Finding myself exiled from France, I requested my relativeat Vannes, with whom the narratives and relics of my family were leftfor safe-keeping, to forward them to me by a Breton vessel. I found therelics increased by Tankeru's blacksmith's hammer and the archives bythe sheets of paper left by Nominoe. With the aid of the letter and ofmy own recollections, I, Salaun Lebrenn, completed the preceding story,which I joined to those left to me by my ancestors, and which I shalltransmit to my descendants.

  Alas! Perhaps I must blame myself for the death of my son. I neglectedto fortify his mind against suicide by teaching him that it is notallowed to us to forestall the hour of our deliverance, and that thosewho endeavor to escape the trials of this life are punished by Godeither by separating them, if they expected to be united after death, orby condemning them to reincarnation on earth.

  Alas! my expiation of the negligence has continued during these manyyears of exile. May the trials that I underwent disarm the just anger ofGod, and soften the punishment reserved for my son, before his finalunion in the spirit world with her who loved him to the point of dyingwith him.

  We are now in the year 1715, and I in the ninety-first year of my life,after having resided here in Holland since the year 1675, and where, in1680, I married Wilhelmina Vandael, the widow of the shipowner in whoseemploy I was. In this year Louis XIV, the execrable King of France,died. His reign continued to the end a veritable scourge to the nation.Insurrections followed insurrections, and were smothered in their ownblood. Religious persecutions followed upon religious persecutions. TheEdict of Nantes by which Henry IV put an end to the religious wars thatlasted half a century, was revoked, and the country was again a prey todesolating religious intolerance.

  The death of Louis XIV will certainly put an end to the religiouspersecutions; at least will mitigate them. Thousands of Protestants,banished from France by the reign of terror, will, no doubt, now returnto their own country. That pleasure will not be mine. I am too feeblewith years to undertake such a voyage. But if, happier than myself, you,my son Alain, should ever return to the cradle of your race, never losesight of the fact that our family has everything to fear from theSociety of Jesus, whose influence seems to be on the ascendant in almostevery country.

  To you, my son Alain--the son of my old age and my exile--I now bequeaththese legends and relics of our family. I bequeath them to you, theyounger brother of my son Nominoe, ever lamented, ever wept. Even now myeyes are blurred with tears when I recollect the double suicide ofhimself and Bertha of Plouernel.

  May you, my son Alain, be able to transmit these legends and relics toyour descendants! May you soon be able to leave the Republic of Holland,the asylum and refuge of exiles, and return to France. May you witnessthe realization of the prophecy of Victoria the Great--the downfall ofthe monarchy, the liberation of Gaul!

  May you, son of Joel, live to see the dawn of the day when our country,casting off the foreign name imposed upon her by the Frankish conquest,will re-assume her old name--the _Republic of the Gauls_, and willshelter herself under the glorious folds of her own ancient red flag,surmounted by the Gallic cock!--Commune and Federation!

  Finally, in the event that, having no children, you may be unable totransmit the plebeian legends of our family to your direct descendants,you shall bequeath them to one of the two surviving branches of ourfamily.

  The first is that of the Renneponts, an ancestor of whom married at LaRochelle, towards the end of the Sixteenth Century, the daughter ofOdelin the armorer, son of Christian the printer. I have had no newsfrom the Rennepont branch of our family for many long years. You willhave to inquire after it in La Rochelle, where, until the end of lastcentury I knew them to reside.

  The other branch of our family is that of the Gerolsteins, sovereignPrinces in Germany, and descendants of Gaelo the pirate, the grandson ofour ancestor Vortigern, who met our ancestor Eidiol, the dean of theParisian skippers, in the Tenth Century, on the occasion of the siege ofParis by the Northmans. The Princes of Gerolstein continue to reign inGermany, and have remained faithful to the Protestant religion since thetime when it was embraced by Prince Charles of Gerolstein, who was thefriend of Coligny, and whose son fought at the battle of Roche-la-Belleby the side of our ancestor Odelin, the armorer of La Rochelle.

  Either to the Gerolsteins or the Renneponts our family archives andrelics will be left by you, in the event of your not living onward inyour posterity.

  Along with these legends, I bequeath to you and your descendants ourfamily hatred for the Church and for Royalty.

  THE END.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [1] All attribute to themselves the glory of success; reverses theyimpute to only one.

  [2] The above details of the torture of Cornelius De Witt, who had thefortitude to recite this strophe in the midst of atrocious sufferings,are scrupulously exact. See Basnage, _History of the United Provinces_,vol. II, p. 171.

  [3] For letters written by eye-witnesses of these atrocities, seeBasnage, _History of the United Provinces; Events of the Campaign of1672_, published at The Hague, 1675: _The Cry of the Martyrs_, publishedin the same city, 1673; etc., etc.

  [4] It is simply impossible to give the shocking details of theirdisfigurement.

  [5] Facts like these would seem incredible by their savage barbarity,did not authentic witnesses confirm them, almost daily, under the reignof the Grand Monarch. "The military constraint arrived in the town tothe sound of bell and drum; then was furnished the melancholy spectacleof the house being demolished, the stones, the beams, the lumber, theiron publicly sold, because the owner had failed to pay his tax, etc.,etc."--_Vauban, La Dime Royale_, vol. 1, chap. X. See also the _New Codeof Taxes_, or the _Collected Ordinances_, Paris, 1761, article onMilitary Constraints; Forbonnais, _Researches in Finance, etc._

  [6] Even at the end of the Eighteenth Century women among the nobilitystill often wore masks, especially in the country, to preserve thefreshness of their color from the tan.

  [7] In the Sixteenth Century, all the chemists who were engaged in thesearch for the philosopher's stone, a myth then much in vogue, weredubbed "blowers," because of the continual play of their bellows in theoperation of fusing metals.