CHAPTER XIV.
THE ATTACK.
Between where the mountains of the Cévennes rise in tumultuous
confusion, with, towering above them all, the gigantic Lozère and La
Manzerre whence springs the beauteous Loire; between this vast
mountainous region, which gives to the mind of him who beholds it the
idea of a world falling to ruin and perishing of its own worn-out
antiquity, and the Rhône, the road to the north winds through a
fertile valley--a valley where the meadows and the orchards and the
vineyards run down to the river on which the rafts and boats float
along until the stream empties itself into the Mediterranean at last;
boats from which are wafted the perfume of the new-mown hay, or the
fruits which they are conveying. A valley this in which are little
houses set in among the pear trees and the chestnuts, and covered with
bird-swarming ivy wherein the southern oriole builds its nest and
rears its young; houses in front of which the fair roses of Provence
grow in great clusters as they have grown there for centuries, and
over which the pigeons whirl in their flight.
Once, not twenty years before the period of this narrative, and before
a reformed wanton had urged a superstitious king (already then growing
old and shuddering at the phantoms that arose from his evil and
unclean past, as well as from the fear of what his enemies--the whole
world!--might wreak upon him in the shape of human vengeance) to wage
what he termed a holy war, this valley had been one of a thousand in
France where peace and contentment had reigned. Peace and contentment
coupled, it is true, with, in most cases, a simple humble life, yet
still a life free from care. An existence scarce disturbed by aught
more serious than some trifling ailments of the children who ran about
barefooted in the long lush grass, or plunged into the cool stream
that watered the land, or by the sound of the passing bell telling at
solemn intervals how one who had lived there all his days was going to
his rest. A life spent in the open air all through the summer time, or
by the blazing chestnut logs when the snows of winter kept all shut up
in their cottages, carding, weaving, combing, earning their living
thus as in the golden prime of July they earned it by gathering fruit,
or cutting the corn and sheaving it, or rearing the cattle.
Now all was changed, all but the beauty of the land. The red-roofed
houses on whose tiles the topmost boughs of the pear trees rested,
borne down with fruit, were closed; the wicker basket in which the
thrushes and blackbirds had sung so joyously, not deeming their lives
captivity, were empty; so, too, were the stalls where once the kine
had lowed and the horses trampled as daybreak stole over the mountain
tops. All were gone now. The old grandam who had looked after the
children; the children themselves; the stalwart fathers; the
dark-eyed, brown-bosomed women whose black tresses hung down their
backs and served as ropes for their babes to tug at.
Gone--but where?
Half of the men to the galleys, to toil until their hearts burst and
they died, worn to skeletons by belabourings and thrashings,
starvation and ill usage; the other half to the mountains, there to
meditate upon, and afterward to take, a hideous, black revenge on
those who had driven them from their homes. The old women gone also,
some to fester in the prison cellars of Nîmes, Uzès, Alais, Niort, and
Montpellier. The black-haired mothers to do the same, to groan in the
dungeons for water, even though it were but one drop to cool their
tongues; to shriek to God to take their lives, even though they were
sacrificed in the flames of the market place; to pray to their Creator
to let them die and join their slaughtered babes once more; see again
the husbands from whom the gibbet and the wheel had torn them forever
in this world.
Because they were Protestants, Reformés, Huguenots! That was their
crime! The crime that had roused the woman in Paris--_la femme célèbre
et fatale_--to urge on her husband the devastation of the Garden of
France.
Down this road now, which wound between the base of the Cévennes
and the banks of the rapid Rhône, upon a sunny afternoon in
September--when all the uncut corn (there being no one to gather it)
was bending on its stalks upon which, later, it would rot, past a
burned and ruined church, past, too, a wheel on which a dried,
half-mummified body was bound and left to shrivel--there came a
cortége. A cortége consisting first of a troop of dragoons of the
regiment of Hérault, their sabres drawn and flashing in the sun, their
musketoons slung ready at their backs, their glances wary and eager.
Ahead of them rode their captain, a man tall and muscular, burned
black almost from constant exposure to the sun and by taking part in
many campaigns from his youth, commencing in Germany and Austria. This
was Poul, a Carcassonnais, who, since the outbreak of the Cévennes
rising, had been distinguished as one of the most determined opponents
of the _attroupés_. Also he was a marked man, doomed to death by them,
and he knew it. But over his midnight draughts of Hermitage he had
sworn often that, ere his fate overtook him, many of the _canaille_
should also meet theirs.
Behind his troop of dragoons, numbering thirty-five men, there came a
travelling carriage, large, roomy, and much ornamented, and drawn by
four horses. In it there sat Urbaine Ducaire on her way to Langogne,
the first stage on the road to Paris. By her side was seated a
middle-aged _gouvernante_ or companion, whom Baville had told off to
accompany her until she reached Avignon, where she would be safe
outside the troubles of Languedoc and where she was to continue her
journey under the protection of the Duchess d'Uzès. Above the carriage
was piled up her valises and portmanteaux; also upon it were three
footmen armed with fusils, all of which were ready to their hands;
also a waiting maid who was always in attendance upon Urbaine. To
complete her guard, behind the great carriage marched a company of the
fusileers of Barre and Pompidon, headed by a mounted officer.
Passing the broken and mutilated corpse upon the wheel, Poul pointed
to it with his glove and laughed; then, reining back his horse until
the dragoons had gone by, he looked in at the great window and
remarked to Urbaine:
"Mademoiselle perceives the _canaille_ are not always triumphant. As
it is with that crushed rat there, so it will be with all. Time! Time!
Our vengeance will come."
But the girl, after casting one horrified glance at the thing which
was shrivelling in the broiling September sun, had shrunk back
affrighted into the depths of the great travelling carriage and thrown
up her hands before her eyes while the _gouvernante_, addressing Poul,
said:
"Monsieur le Capitaine, why call our attention to that? It is no
pleasing sight even to a devout Catholic, moreover a bitter one when
we remember the fearful retaliation that has been exacted. Have you
forgotten the Abbé du Chaila, the curé of Frugéres?"
"Forgotten!" exclaimed the rough Carcassonnais, "forgotten! _Ventre
bleu!_ I have forgotten nothing. Else why am I here? Beautiful as is
the freight of this carriage," and he made a rough bow "it needs no
Capitaine Poul to command the dragoons who escort it in safety. Any
_porte drapeau_, or unfledged lieutenant, could do that. Nay, it is in
hopes that we may meet some of these singing, snivel-nosed Calvinists
that I ride with you to-day. Oh, for the chance!"
"Send him away," whispered Urbaine; "he terrifies me. Would that my
father had chosen some other officer."
Ere, however, her companion could do as she requested, Poul had turned
his wrist and ridden again to the head of his troops, a fierce look of
eagerness on his face, a gleam in his coal-black eyes. For from ahead
of where the cavalcade had now arrived--a shady part of the road, on
one side of which there rose precipitously some rocks crowned with
bushes, while on the other was a meadow--he heard a sound which told
him his wish was very likely to be granted.
A sound of singing, of many voices in unison. Voices uttering words
which reached the ears of all, causing the dragoons and fusileers to
look to their arms and the women and footmen to turn white with
apprehension.
A sound of singing that rose and fell upon the soft afternoon air as
though somewhere a conventicle was being held. And these the words
they sung:
Dieu! que Juda connait: Dieu! qu' Israel adore
Salem est ta demeure et Sion ton autel!
Ton bras de nos tyrans a rompu Tare sonore,
La glaive qui dévore
Et le combat mortel.
"Ha!" called out Poul, his dark face now more suffused with rage than
before, "they are near at hand. Swords out, _mes dragons, avancez--en
double ligne de Colonne_; here is more garbage for the wheel. _En
avance les fusiliers_--the carriage behind. _Tambours battants. En
avant!_"
And while the women screamed, Urbaine burying her fair head for a
moment on the _gouvernante's_ shoulder, the dragoons fell into double
line, and the fusileers of Barre and Pompidon, passing swiftly on on
either side of the great carriage formed up behind them, their drums
beating scornfully.
At first they saw no enemy, scarce expected to see any, since all knew
by now that these mountaineers fought on the system of those dreaded
Indians whom some of this force had already encountered on the shores
of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi--namely, by sheltering
themselves behind every available tree or rock, or even shrub, from
which they fired on their foes with deadly effect. But they heard
them. Heard again the solemn hymn they sang in the hour of battle, of
death, and of vengeance:
Aux éclairs de ta foudre, à sa fumante trombe
Le c[oe]ur manque an vaillant, le bras échappé au fort
Le char d'airain se brise, et le coursier succombe,
Et le guerrier qui tombe
S'assoupit dans la mort!
Then a moment later they saw their foes, or some of them.
Upon the summit of the rock sixty feet above their heads, amid the
stunted trees and bushes that grew thereon, they saw appear a strange
crowd. Men, tall and swarthy, some old, some almost boys, while there
was one of the latter whose fantastic attire--a vest of bleached
Holland garnished with silver buttons, _culottes_ of chamois leather,
gold-gallooned, ivory-hilted sword, scarlet mantle and black felt hat,
with long white ostrich feather--would better have become one of
Luxembourg's dandy cavaliers than an _attroupé_ of the mountains. Also
three men, venerable-looking, yet fierce and stern, two having beards
that flowed over their chests, all of whom joined in the hymn that was
being sung by a larger body that was ahead of the place where the
Royalist troops were--ahead, yet advancing toward those who had been
caught in the snare, advancing singing and firing. And by the side of
these three, who were Prophets--_Inspirés_--there stood a girl, black
and swarthy, too, a bracelet on her arm and in her hands a musketoon,
which she raised and, aiming at the carriage below, fired.
With a shriek the _gouvernante_ fell back on to the cushions dead;
with another, Urbaine flung her arms about her, moaning, while now,
from all around, the sound of firing was heard, and, pealing high,
above all else, the voice of Poul, howling orders, yelling curses,
laughing defiantly. Yet why he laughed none knew, for already the
saddles of the dragoons were being emptied rapidly; the ground was
strewn, too, with the bodies of the fusileers of Barre and Pompidon,
those who still lived being driven back.
Fear paralyzes sometimes; sometimes also inspires with a terrible and
desperate courage. It was thus with Urbaine Ducaire at this moment.
She screamed and moaned no more, let the poor dead woman's body lie
back in the carriage, put out her hand to the door that was farthest
away from the rock on which the visible portion of the enemy was, and
endeavoured to turn the handle.
Yet, ere she did so, she saw a sight that might well have unnerved
her, have struck her dead with horror.
Upon the rock-side of the vehicle she saw Poul fighting like a demon
possessed, or, better, like a doomed brave man. She saw his sabre dart
through one fanatic's throat, then through another's breast; she heard
his hoarse, triumphant shouts and terrible oaths, also his words of
bitter scorn and hatred of the _canaille_ as he thrust at them, then
nearly fainted at what she saw next: A lad standing by the side of the
girl armed with the musketoon, while still she fired as fast as she
could load it--a lad who adjusted a huge stone in a sling, and then,
watching his opportunity and whirling the latter round his head,
discharged the missile, which crashed with fatal effect full on Poul's
forehead. And as the brave, rough soldier, with a cry of hideous,
awful agony, fell to the earth, the youth, shouting in his rough
_patois_ that the soul of David had descended through countless ages
to enter his body, leaped down the crags of the rock, fell upon the
unhappy man, and, seizing his sword, began to hack his head off.
"I can bear no more," Urbaine murmured, "no more! Pray God the next
bullet fired enters my heart! Otherwise I must die of horror." And she
sank to the bottom of the carriage, her head on the dead woman's
knees, sank back and lay there in a stupor.
Whereby she knew not that, even as she did so, across the meadow a man
had ridden on a rawboned horse as fast as he could urge it, had gained
the road, and, swiftly dismounting amid the rain of bullets and stones
from above, had wrenched open the carriage door and lifted her out in
his arms. Knew not that in his strength he had tossed her on to the
neck of the horse and quickly remounted, having but one hand to use in
doing so, and that, amid a storm of more bullets, he had carried her
off from where the carnage still raged, while in his ears he heard
more than once the cry--
"_Voilà ton Poul!_ He is well trussed. Eat him!"