Clad In His Priestly Robes, He Was
Laid Out In State In The Church.
The cure, taking his text from Second
Samuel, twentieth chapter and twelfth verse, 'And Amasa wallowed in his
blood in the highway,' preached a rousing sermon, and exhorted his
brethren to die each at his post, like their unhappy and illustrious
superior.
In the midst of this eloquence there came a breeze that Spirit
Seguier was near at hand; and behold! all the assembly took to their
horses' heels, some east, some west, and the cure himself as far as
Alais.
Strange was the position of this little Catholic metropolis, a thimbleful
of Rome, in such a wild and contrary neighbourhood. On the one hand, the
legion of Salomon overlooked it from Cassagnas; on the other, it was cut
off from assistance by the legion of Roland at Mialet. The cure,
Louvrelenil, although he took a panic at the arch-priest's funeral, and
so hurriedly decamped to Alais, stood well by his isolated pulpit, and
thence uttered fulminations against the crimes of the Protestants.
Salomon besieged the village for an hour and a half, but was beaten back.
The militiamen, on guard before the cure's door, could be heard, in the
black hours, singing Protestant psalms and holding friendly talk with the
insurgents. And in the morning, although not a shot had been fired,
there would not be a round of powder in their flasks. Where was it gone?
All handed over to the Camisards for a consideration. Untrusty guardians
for an isolated priest!
That these continual stirs were once busy in St. Germain de Calberte, the
imagination with difficulty receives; all is now so quiet, the pulse of
human life now beats so low and still in this hamlet of the mountains.
Boys followed me a great way off, like a timid sort of lion-hunters; and
people turned round to have a second look, or came out of their houses,
as I went by. My passage was the first event, you would have fancied,
since the Camisards. There was nothing rude or forward in this
observation; it was but a pleased and wondering scrutiny, like that of
oxen or the human infant; yet it wearied my spirits, and soon drove me
from the street.
I took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted with
sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable attitudes of the
chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. Ever and again a
little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all around me, with a light and
dull sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of a thin fall of great
hailstones; but there went with it a cheerful human sentiment of an
approaching harvest and farmers rejoicing in their gains. Looking up, I
could see the brown nut peering through the husk, which was already
gaping; and between the stems the eye embraced an amphitheatre of hill,
sunlit and green with leaves.
I have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. I moved in an atmosphere
of pleasure, and felt light and quiet and content. But perhaps it was
not the place alone that so disposed my spirit. Perhaps some one was
thinking of me in another country; or perhaps some thought of my own had
come and gone unnoticed, and yet done me good. For some thoughts, which
sure would be the most beautiful, vanish before we can rightly scan their
features; as though a god, travelling by our green highways, should but
ope the door, give one smiling look into the house, and go again for
ever. Was it Apollo, or Mercury, or Love with folded wings? Who shall
say? But we go the lighter about our business, and feel peace and
pleasure in our hearts.
I dined with a pair of Catholics. They agreed in the condemnation of a
young man, a Catholic, who had married a Protestant girl and gone over to
the religion of his wife. A Protestant born they could understand and
respect; indeed, they seemed to be of the mind of an old Catholic woman,
who told me that same day there was no difference between the two sects,
save that 'wrong was more wrong for the Catholic,' who had more light and
guidance; but this of a man's desertion filled them with contempt.
'It is a bad idea for a man to change,' said one.
It may have been accidental, but you see how this phrase pursued me; and
for myself, I believe it is the current philosophy in these parts. I
have some difficulty in imagining a better. It's not only a great flight
of confidence for a man to change his creed and go out of his family for
heaven's sake; but the odds are - nay, and the hope is - that, with all
this great transition in the eyes of man, he has not changed himself a
hairbreadth to the eyes of God. Honour to those who do so, for the
wrench is sore. But it argues something narrow, whether of strength or
weakness, whether of the prophet or the fool, in those who can take a
sufficient interest in such infinitesimal and human operations, or who
can quit a friendship for a doubtful process of the mind. And I think I
should not leave my old creed for another, changing only words for other
words; but by some brave reading, embrace it in spirit and truth, and
find wrong as wrong for me as for the best of other communions.
The phylloxera was in the neighbourhood; and instead of wine we drank at
dinner a more economical juice of the grape - La Parisienne, they call it.
It is made by putting the fruit whole into a cask with water; one by one
the berries ferment and burst; what is drunk during the day is supplied
at night in water: so, with ever another pitcher from the well, and ever
another grape exploding and giving out its strength, one cask of
Parisienne may last a family till spring.
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