He opened the volume before him and read: —
“I could wish you would take this also into consideration, that what we say is really for your own good; for it is in our power at any time to escape your torments by denying the faith, when you question us about it: but we scorn to purchase life at the expense of a lie; for our souls are winged with a desire of a life of eternal duration and purity, of an immediate conversation with God, the Father and Maker of all things. We are in haste to be confessing and finishing our faith; being fully persuaded that we shall arrive at this blessed state, if we approve ourselves to God by our works, and by our obedience express our passion for that divine life which is never interrupted by any clashing evil.”
The Catholic and the Huguenot reasoned long and earnestly together; but they reasoned in vain. Each was firm in his belief; and they parted to meet no more on earth.
On the following day, Du Bourg was summoned before his judges to receive his final sentence. He heard it unmoved, and with a prayer to God that he would pardon those who had condemned him according to their consciences. He then addressed his judges in an oration full of power and eloquence. It closed with these words: —
“And now, ye judges, if, indeed, you hold the sword of God as ministers of his wrath, to take vengeance upon those who do evil, beware, I charge you, beware how you condemn us. Consider well what evil we have done; and, before all things, decide whether it be just that we should listen unto you rather than unto God. Are you so drunken with the wine-cup of the great sorceress, that you drink poison for nourishment? Are you not those who make the people sin, by turning them away from the service of God? And if you regard more the opinion of men than that of Heaven, in what esteem are you held by other nations, and principalities, and powers, for the martyrdoms you have caused in obedience to this blood-stained Phalaris? God grant, thou cruel tyrant, that by thy miserable death thou mayst put an end to our groans!
“Why weep ye? What means this delay? Your hearts are heavy within you, — your consciences are haunted by the judgment of God. And thus it is that the condemned rejoice in the fires you have kindled, and think they never live better than in the midst of consuming flames. Torments affright them not, — insults enfeeble them not; their honor is redeemed by death, — he that dies is the conqueror, and the conquered he that mourns.
“No! whatever snares are spread for us, whatever suffering we endure, you cannot separate us from the love of Christ. Strike, then, — slay, — grind us to powder! Those that die in the Lord shall live again; we shall all be raised together. Condemn me as you will, — I am a Christian; yes, I am a Christian, and am ready to die for the glory of our Lord, — for the truth of the Evangelists.
“Quench, then, your fires! Let the wicked abandon his way, and return unto the Lord, and he will have compassion on him. Live, — be happy, — and meditate on God, ye judges! As for me, I go rejoicing to my death. What wait ye for? Lead me to the scaffold!”
They bound the prisoner’s hands, and, leading him forth from the council-chamber, placed him upon the cart that was to bear him to the Place de Grève. Before and behind marched a guard of five hundred soldiers; for Du Bourg was beloved by the people, and a popular tumult was apprehended. The day was overcast and sad; and ever and anon the sound of the tolling bell mingled its dismal clang with the solemn notes of the funeral march. They soon reached the place of execution, which was already filled with a dense and silent crowd. In the centre stood the gallows, with a pile of fagots beneath it, and the hangman with a burning torch in his hand. But this funeral apparel inspired no terror in the heart of Du Bourg. A look of triumph beamed from his eye, and his countenance shone like that of an angel. With his own hands he divested himself of his outer garments, and, gazing round upon the breathless and sympathizing crowd, exclaimed; —
“My friends, I come not hither as a thief or a murderer; but it is for the Gospel’s sake!”
A cord was then fastened round his wTaist, and he was drawn up into the air. At the same moment the burning torch of the executioner was applied to the fagots beneath, and the thick volumes of smoke concealed the martyr from the horror-stricken crowd. One stifled groan arose from all that vast multitude, like the moan of the sea, and all was hushed again; save the crackling of the fagots, and at intervals the funeral knell, that smote the very soul. The quivering flames darted upward and around; and an agonizing cry broke from the murky cloud,— “My God! my God! forsake me not, that I forsake not thee!”
The wind lifted the reddening smoke like a veil, and the form of the martyr was seen to fall into the fire beneath. In a moment it rose again, its garments all in flame; and again the faint, half-smothered cry of agony was heard,— “My God! my God! forsake me not, that I forsake not thee!”
Once more the quivering body descended into the flames; and once more it was lifted into the air, a blackened, burning cinder. Again and again this fiendish mockery of baptism was repeated; till the martyr, with a despairing, suffocating voice, exclaimed,— “O God! I cannot die!” The chief executioner came forward, and, either in mercy to the dying man or through fear of the populace, threw a noose over his neck, and strangled the almost lifeless victim. At the same moment the cord which held the body was loosened, and it fell into the fire to rise no more. And thus was consummated the martyrdom of the Baptism of Fire.
COQ-À-L’NE.
My brain, methinks, is like an hour-glass,
Wherein my imaginations run like sands,
Filling up time; but then are turned, and turned,
So that I know not what to stay upon,
And less to put in art.
BEN JONSON.
A RAINY and gloomy winter was just drawing to its close, when I left Paris for the South of France. We started at sunrise; and as we passed along the solitary streets of the vast and silent metropolis, drowsily one by one its clanging horologes chimed the hour of six. Beyond the city-gates the wide landscape was covered with a silvery network of frost; a wreath of vapor overhung the windings of the Seine; and every twig and shrub, with its sheath of crystal, flashed in the level rays of the rising sun. The sharp, frosty air seemed to quicken the sluggish blood of the old postilion and his horses; — a fresh team stood ready in harness at each stage; and notwithstanding the slippery pavement of the causeway, the long and tedious climbing the hillside upward, and the equally long and tedious descent with chained wheels and the drag, just after nightfall the lumbering’ vehicle of Vincent Caillard stopped at the gateway of the “Three Emperors,” in the famous city of Orléans.
I cannot pride myself much upon being a good travelling-companion, for the rocking of a coach always lulls me into forgetfulness of the present; and no sooner does the hollow, monotonous rumbling of the wheels reach my ear, than, like Nick Bottom, “I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.” It is not, however, the deep, sonorous slumber of a laborer, “stuffed with distressful bread,” but a kind of day-dream, wherein the creations of fancy seem realities, and the real world, which swims dizzily before the half-shut, drowsy eye, becomes mingled with the imaginary world within. This is doubtless a very great failing in a traveller; and I confess, with all humility, that at times the line of demarkation between truth and fiction is rendered thereby so indefinite and indistinct, that I cannot always determine, with unerring certainty, whether an event really happened to me, or whether I only dreamed it.
On this account I shall not attempt a detailed description of my journey from Paris to Bordeaux. I was travelling like a bird of passage; and five weary days and four weary nights I was on the way. The diligence stopped only to change horses, and for the travellers to take their meals; and by night I slept with my head under my wing in a snug corner of the coach.
Strange as it may appear to some of my readers, this night-travelling is at times far from being disagreeable; nay, if the country is flat and uninteresting, and you are favored with a moon, it may be very pleasant. As the night advances, the conversation around you gradu
ally dies away, and is imperceptibly given up to some garrulous traveller who finds himself belated in the midst of a long story; and when at length he puts out his feelers in the form of a question, discovers, by the silence around him, that the breathless attention of his audience is owing to their being asleep. All is now silent. You let down the window of the carriage, and the fresh night-air cools your flushed and burning cheek. The landscape, though in reality dull and uninteresting, seems beautiful as it floats by in the soft moonshine. Every ruined hovel is changed by the magic of night to a trim cottage, every straggling and dilapidated hamlet becomes as beautiful as those we read of in poetry and romance. Over the lowland hangs a silver mist; over the hills peep the twinkling stars. The keen night-air is a spur to the postilion and his horses. In the words of the German ballad, —
“Halloo! halloo! away they go,
Unheeding wet or dry,
And horse and rider snort and blow,
And sparkling pebbles fly.
And all on which the moon doth shine
Behind them flees afar,
And backward sped, scud overhead,
The sky and every star.”
Anon you stop at the relay. The drowsy hostler crawls out of the stable-yard; a few gruff words and strange oaths pass between him and the postilion, — then there is a coarse joke in patois, of which you understand the ribaldry only, and which is followed by a husky laugh, a sound between a hiss and a growl; — and then you are off again in a crack. Occasionally a way-traveller is uncaged, and a new-comer takes the vacant perch at your elbo.- Meanwhile your busy fancy speculates upon all these things, and you fall asleep amid its thousand vagaries. Soon you wake again, and snuff the morning air. It was but a moment, and yet the night is gone. The gray of twilight steals into the window, and gives a ghastly look to the countenances of the sleeping group around you. One sits bolt upright in a corner, offending none, and stiff and motionless as an Egyptian mummy; another sits equally straight and immovable, but snores like a priest; the head of a third is dangling over his shoulder, and the tassel of his nightcap tickles his neighbour’s ear; a fourth has lost his hat, — his wig is awry, and his under-lip hangs lolling about like an idiot’s. The whole scene is a living caricature of man, presenting human nature in some of the grotesque attitudes she assumes, when that pragmatical schoolmaster, propriety, has fallen asleep in his chair, and the unruly members of his charge are freed from the thraldom of the rod.
On leaving Orléans, instead of following the great western mail-route through Tours, Poitiers, and Angoulême, and thence on to Bordeaux, I struck across the departments of the Indre, the Haute-Vienne, and the Dordogne, passing through the provincial capitals of Chateauroux, Limoges, and Périgueux. South of the Loire the country assumes a more mountainous aspect, and the landscape is broken by long sweeping hills and fertile valleys. Many a fair scene invites the traveller’s foot to pause; and his eye roves with delight over the picturesque landscape of the valley of the Creuse, and the beautiful highland scenery near Périgueux. There are also many objects of art and antiquity which arrest his attention. Argenton boasts its Roman amphitheatre, and the ruins of an old castle built by King Pepin; at Chalus the tower beneath which Richard Cceur-de-Lion was slain is still pointed out to the curious traveller; and Périgueux is full of crumbling monuments of the Middle Ages.
Scenes like these, and the constant chatter of my fellow-travellers, served to enliven the tedium of a long and fatiguing journey. The French are preëminently a talking people; and every new object afforded a topic for light and animated discussion. The affairs of church and state were, however, the themes oftenest touched upon. The bill for the suppression of the liberty of the press was then under discussion in the Chamber of Peers, and excited the most lively interest through the whole kingdom. Of course it was a subject not likely to be forgotten in a stage-coach.
“Ah! mon Dieu!” said a brisk little man, with snow-white hair and a blazing red face, at the same time drawing up his shoulders to a level with his ears; “the ministry are determined to carry their point at all events. They mean to break down the liberty of the press, cost what it will.”
“If they succeed,” added the person who sat opposite, “we may thank the Jesuits for it. It is all their work. They rule the mind of our imbecile monarch, and it is their miserable policy to keep the people in darkness.”
“No doubt of that,” rejoined the first speaker. “Why, no longer ago than yesterday I read in the Figaro that a printer had been prosecuted for publishing the moral lessons of the Evangelists without the miracles.”
“Is it possible?” said I. “And are the people so stupid as thus patiently to offer their shoulders to the pack-saddle?”
“Most certainly not! We shall have another revolution.”
“If history speaks true, you have had révolutions enough, during the last century or two, to satisfy the most mercurial nation on earth. You have hardly been quiet a moment since the day of the Barricades and the memorable war of the pots-de-chambre in the times of the Grand Condé.”
“You are pleased to speak lightly of our revolutions, Sir,” rejoined the politician, growing warm. “You must, however, confess that each successive one has brought us nearer to our object. Old institutions, whose foundations lie deep in the prejudices of a great nation, are not to be toppled down by the springing of a single mine. You must confess, too, that our national character is much improved since the days you speak of. The youth of the present century are not so frivolous as those of the last. They have no longer that unbounded levity and light-heartedness so generally ascribed to them. From this circumstance we have every thing to hope. Our revolutions, likewise, must necessarily change their character, and secure to us more solid advantages than heretofore.”
“Luck makes pluck, as the Germans say. You go on bravely; but it gives me pain to see religion and the church so disregarded.”
“Superstition and the church, you mean,”
said the gray-headed man. “Why, Sir, the church is nothing now-a-days but a tumble-down, dilapidated tower for rooks and daws, and such silly birds, to build their nests in!”
It was now very evident that I had unearthed a radical; and there is no knowing when his harangue would have ended, had not his voice been drowned by the noise of the wheels, as we entered the paved street of the city of Limoges.
A breakfast of boiled capon stuffed with truffles, and accompanied by a pâté de Périgueux, a dish well known to French gourmands, restored us all to good-humor. While we were at breakfast, a personage stalked into the room, whose strange appearance arrested my attention, and gave subject for future conversation to our party. He was a tall, thin figure, armed with a long whip, brass spurs, and black whiskers. He wore a bell-crowned, varnished hat, a blue frock-coat with standing collar, a red waistcoat, a pair of yellow leather breeches, and boots that reached to the knees. I at first took him for a postilion, or a private courier; but, upon inquiry, I found that he was only the son of a notary public, and that he dressed in this strange fashion to please his own fancy.
As soon as we were comfortably seated in the diligence, I made some remark on the singular costume of the personage whom I had just seen at the tavern.
“These things are so common with us,” said the politician, “that we hardly notice them.”
“What you want in liberty of speech, then, you make up in liberty of dress?”
“Yes; in this, at least, we are a free people.”
“I had not been long in France, before I discovered that a man may dress as he pleases, without being stared at. The most opposite styles of dress seem to be in vogue at the same moment. No strange garment nor desperate hat excites either ridicule or surprise. French fashions are known and imitated all the world over.”
“Very true, indeed,” said a little man in gosling-green. “We give fashions to all other nations.”
“Fashions!” said the politician, with a kind of growl,— “fashions! Yes, Sir, an
d some of us are simple enough to boast of it, as if we were a nation of tailors.”
Here the little man in gosling-green pulled up the horns of his cotton shirt-collar.
“I recollect,” said I, “that your Madame de Pompadour in one of her letters says something to this effect,— ‘We furnish our enemies with hair-dressers, ribands, and fashions; and they furnish us with laws.’”
“That is not the only silly thing she said in her lifetime. Ah! Sir, these Pompadours, and Maintenons, and Montespans were the authors of much woe to France. Their follies and extravagances exhausted the public treasury, and made the nation poor. They built palaces, and covered themselves with jewels, and ate from golden plate while the people who toiled for them had hardly a crust to keep their own children from starvation! And yet they preach to us the divine right of kings!”
My radical had got upon his high horse again; and I know not whither it would have carried him, had not a thin man with a black, seedy coat, who sat at his elbow, at that moment crossed his path, by one of those abrupt and sudden transitions which leave you aghast at the strange association of ideas in the speaker’s mind.
“Apropos de bottes!” exclaimed he, “speaking of boots, and notaries public, and such matters, — excuse me for interrupting you, Sir, — a little story has just popped into my head which may amuse the company; and as I am not very fond of political discussions, — no offence, Sir, — T will tell it, for the sake of changing the conversation.”
Whereupon, without further preamble or apology, he proceeded to tell his story in, as nearly as may be, the following words.
NOTARY OF PÉRIGUEUX.
Do not trust thy body with a physician. He’ll make thy foolish bones go without flesh in a fortnight, and thy soul walk without a body a sennight after.
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 190
