THE GLORIOUS RETURN.

THE GLORIOUS RETURN

A Story of the Vaudois in 1689
BY
CRONA TEMPLE
Author of “The Last House in London,” etc.
T H E R E L I G I O U S T R A C T S O C I E T Y,
56, Paternoster Row; 65, St. Paul’s Churchyard,
and 164, Piccadilly.

PREFACE.

IT is nearly two hundred years since the long persecutions of the Church in the Alpine valleys ended in their ‘Glorious Return’ from exile, and their gain of liberty of conscience and freedom from the yoke of Rome. It is but right that in 1889 Protestant countries should unite in offering sympathy and brotherly help to the Waldensian Church in its time of commemoration. Two hundred years ago, Britain, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and the Protestants of France vied with each other in showing their generous love for these sorely-tried children of God. And in these happier times it is well to turn back the history page, to learn what it was that stirred the hearts of our forefathers; to learn what manner of woe it was that the Vaudois endured; to read how the God they served did not suffer them to be tempted beyond what they were able to bear, but—giving them the high honour of bearing witness to His truth, He comforted them at last with His gifts of freedom and of peace. It is in such memories that nations may learn their lessons of truest wisdom. Christianity should be national as well as individual: the Heavenly King demands service from nations as well as from hearts. And it is right that, though the Waldenses are foreigners, and a people of but small account on Europe’s muster-roll, their bi-centenary should waken echoes in England; such echoes as God wills that noble deeds should stir throughout all time.

THE GLORIOUS RETURN.

CHAPTER I.

THE sunlight was fading from the hills, and the pine-forests were growing grey in the creeping shadow.

A northerly breeze had been blowing from the mountains, but it had died down, as north winds do, with the sunsetting; a great stillness had fallen upon the valleys.

One could hear the torrent as it leapt from the snows above, rushing and gurgling in the gorge it had graven for itself on its way to the Pélice River. One could hear too, faint and far away, the cry of the ravens as they circled over a meadow; and one might catch the jarring call of a night-hawk as it woke from its daylight sleep.

But these sounds rather blended with than broke upon the silence. And there seemed besides no sign of life or motion in all the width of the valley.

There were traces of cultivation on the hill-sides where careful hands had terraced and tilled the stony soil, winning from the wilderness fields for pastures and for corn.

There were also buildings that had the semblance of cottages, a group of ruins here by the stream-side, and single ones standing yonder beyond the spurs of the pine-woods.

But in those fields were now neither flocks nor herds, nor any sign of corn; and from those broken chimneys no smoke-wreaths drifted to tell of human lives about the warm hearth-stones.

It was the year 1687, and the valley was the Valley of Luserna, in the Piedmontese Alps.

This was the country of the Vaudois, and it was indeed desolate after the bitter persecution which had followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Storms of cruelty and the bitterness of superstition had swept the valleys at various times, but never a storm so devastating and terrible as this. From Fenestrelle to Rora, from the Pra Pass to the plains of Piedmont, fire and sword had driven forth the remnant of the Vaudois. Hundreds had fallen, fighting for their faith and for their homes; hundreds had perished under the white pall of the winter snows; and hundreds more had died on the scaffold or in the prisons of the plain.

And the remnant, the poor harried and hunted souls, had gone forth to seek an asylum—if such there might be found—where they might worship their God according to His Word.

The sun sank lower yet; the line of light retreated farther up the mountain-peaks. The ravens sullenly stooped and settled on the rocks. The torrent kept its noisy way, charged with the blue snow-water that came glancing from the hills.

Suddenly a woman’s voice rose on the air, clear, and very sweet. It came through the sprays of creeping plants that veiled a crag so steep that one might marvel how human being could have climbed there. It was a haunt fit only for the chamois or the hill-sheep; and on either hand spread dense forests and ravines where the snow-wreaths lay yet unmelted.

The song rang forth. It was no wavering strain, no uncertain sound, but a chant of triumph that held also a note of defiance—

‘God’s Name is great!
He breaketh the arrow of the bow,
The shield, the sword and the battle.
Thou art of more honour and might than the mountains of prey.
Thou, even Thou art to be feared.
The earth trembled and was still when God arose
To help the meek upon the earth.
The fierceness of man shall turn to Thy praise,
And the fierceness of the violent shalt Thou restrain.
God shall refrain the spirit of princes.
The Lord our God is terrible unto the kings of the earth.’

The voice ceased; as the last note died away the last sun-shaft touched the highest peak. The day was done. Night had fallen on the Valley of Luserna.

Behind the ivy-sprays and the clinging rock plants there was a path on the face of the cliff widening as it rose, until—some fifty feet above the stream—it spread into a platform or tiny amphitheatre completely hidden from any prying eye that might search the cliff from below.

From above one might perhaps peer into its recesses; but then no living thing ever did look from above, save the falcons and the ravens, or perhaps a wild goat, tempted by the tufts of mountain flowers which bloomed against the edges of the snow.

Presently, far back in the hill-cleft, a small red flame leaped up, fed on dried grasses and fir-cones.

‘Rénée, Rénée,’ called a woman’s voice, ‘thou art too rash, dear child. May not that light betray us after all?’

‘Oh, no, mother! No one comes here now; we are safe, quite safe. And see where Tutu creeps forward to the blaze! Thou art cold, my poor Tutu? Then rest thee, none will harm thee here.’

A dormouse lifted its beadlike eyes to the speaker’s face, as if well understanding that it was loved and safe. It was a sort of friend to these poor refugees, here in their mountain hiding-place, a creature even more weak and helpless than themselves.

Again the woman’s voice was heard.

‘Dear child, be not stubborn. Have we endured so much only to perish now for lack of a little further patience? A fire even by daylight is rash, at night its glow is almost certain to be seen.’

The girl she addressed stood silent for a moment, the flicker of the fire fell on her slender figure and on the graceful lines of her head and throat. Then she stooped and flung earth upon the flame, treading out the scarcely kindled heap, and scattering the fir-cones till their brightened edges died into little rims and coils of grey.

Rénée Janavel had learnt how to obey and how to suffer, but to-night one word of pleading forced its way from her lips.

‘It is in the night,’ she said, ‘in the dark night that we need the cheer and the warmth. Oh, mother, I lit the fire to keep away my fear——’

The words sank in a broken whisper; it was strange for Rénée Janavel to speak of fear.

The woman paused in wonder.

Why should Rénée be afraid of aught but the danger which the blaze might bring—the danger of cruel men who were thirsting for their blood: men who had sworn that no remnant of the proscribed race should be left in the valleys, and who had swept the fields and forests again and again in their search for any Vaudois in hiding there? Rénée, child of the mountains as she was, why should she fear anything but this? The winter was past, and the prowling wolves had withdrawn themselves; the shy black bears that haunted the hills were not creatures to be greatly affrighted at. What ailed the girl?

Rénée came to her side, and hid her face against the woman’s knee.

‘It is so lonely,’ she murmured brokenly. ‘Lately, at night, I have thought over many things, terrible things—and I have been frightened even to turn my head, too frightened to call to you. Oh, mother, mother dear! will these days never have an end? Shall we never be happy again, Gaspard and you and I?

‘I know that it is cowardly,’ she went on in pathetic appeal. ‘But, mother, you are well now, almost quite strong again: could we not creep away and gain the Swiss country where the rest are gone; and see the dear friendly faces, and sleep in peace, afraid of no man?’

She stopped, for her throat was full of sobbing, and her head sank lower yet upon the trembling hands.

Just then some remaining spark of fire was kindled into blaze by the wind that swept into the cave, and the dried grass leapt into a red flame that threw dancing gleams and shadows on the rocks around, and touched the trunk of a pine overhanging the place with a glow as of deepest orange. Little Tutu, the dormouse, curled himself up in soft satisfaction, a nut which Rénée had given him held tight in his tiny paws.

The woman looked at the fire, but she did not again ask that it should be extinguished.

‘Rénée,’ she said, ‘it is out of all possibility that I should climb the hill passes. I can never see the Swiss country. And, indeed, here in mine own land I would choose to stay, that my last earthly look should rest on the valley I love so well. And for yourself, dear child, how could you go all that long and dangerous way? It was for my sake that you stayed, Rénée. But now—I would not keep you, child, if it were possible for you to gain safety, to reach friends, there in the land where one may worship the good God in peace. But as it is——’

‘Mother! do not speak so! Never, never can I desert you! You know I will not leave you while life holds us together.’

She rose to her feet. One might see the stateliness of her figure as she stood betwixt the fire-glow and the twilight, her head erect, her face full of the strength of love and trust.

‘Sing it again, mother,’ she said, ‘the hymn that you sang just now. And forget that Rénée has been afraid of shadows.’

The woman took her hand and held it tenderly between her own.

‘Tell me, Rénée,’ she said, ‘why were you frightened? Has any new thing chanced?’

‘No, no; it is the long weariness, the uncertainty, the remembering—oh, it is just everything! Whilst you were ill, mother, I had no time to be frightened; but now, when we sit and watch the sun go down, I remember all that has happened, and I turn sick at my very heart.’

She shuddered. They had passed, those two women, through terror enough to try any mortal nerves, and privations sufficient to exhaust the strongest frame. It was small marvel that Rénée trembled as she remembered the past.

‘Sing, mother,’ she said again; ‘Gaspard was always wont to say that your songs uplifted his courage.’

So ‘The Psalm of Strong Confidence’ was chanted once more, the notes of the woman’s voice filling the place with its rich volume of sound. The quick blaze had died down, and the dark shades fell across the cavern. But without, beyond the stooping pines, the sky was brightening. The stars stole out on the deep vault of blue, those glittering stars which tell through all speech and language that the statutes of the Lord are true, and that in keeping of them there is great reward.

And the two women sat, hand in hand, serene in spite of trouble; content, although they were homeless and hunted on the earth. Nay, just now they were more than ‘content!’ they could rejoice that they, like their martyred ancestors, were found worthy to bear the cross of suffering for their Master’s sake.

Rénée Janavel was an orphan. Madeleine Botta, the woman she called ‘mother,’ was bound to her not by ties of blood, but by the stronger ties of love and gratitude. She had inherited a name which was known throughout the length and breadth of the valleys. Her grandfather, ‘the hero of Rora,’ Joshua Janavel, had led the patriot bands who battled against enormous odds in the persecution of 1655 and the few following years. Her father had been sentenced by the Inquisition, and if he were not dead, his miserable existence, chained to an oar as a galley-slave, was worse a hundred times for him than death itself.

Her young mother had perished in the prisons of Turin, and Rénée, a mere child when the Duke of Savoy stopped for a time those terrible deeds of blood, had lived always at Rora with the Bottas.

Madeleine Botta had lost her own daughter, and she had taken Rénée to her heart instead, loving and cherishing her until the desolate child almost forgot that Madeleine was not in very truth what she always called her, ‘her mother.’ And was she not Gaspard’s mother? and were not Gaspard’s people to be her people? his life, her life? She would have been Gaspard’s wife at Easter-tide, had not this new time of death and danger come upon the valleys. Now he was swept off with the fighting men, none exactly could tell whither; and she was here, hidden in the rock-ledges, seeking shelter with Madeleine from the ravaging hordes that had sworn to ‘exterminate the heretics as they would exterminate all other sorts of noxious beasts.’

The home at Rora was a heap of ashes; the peaceful days when Rénée drove the goats down the hill in the shadowy afternoon, or sat busily spinning the flax at Madeleine’s knee, were gone for ever. There had been troubles then, of course, but troubles so tiny that now in comparison they seemed to be positive pleasures.

Henri Botta, the house-master, was a hard-featured man, whose rare words were sometimes wont to be hard; he looked on the world as a vale of sighing, a place where evil reigned, and no man should desire to be happy. Rénée used to shrink from his warning words, and strive to avoid his grim glances. Now how glad she would have been to have heard the sound of his voice, or to have seen the outline of his rugged face!

Then there was Emile, the eldest son, almost as hard and silent as his father; and even Gaspard had a trick of shutting his lips tightly together and frowning till his black brows met, when the talk was of the future or the past.

But Gaspard had never been hard to Rénée—never. He had been to Turin learning his trade, a carpenter he was, and the best carpenter, as Rénée proudly said, in all the commune. He was away for years, for such delicate work as his is not learned in a hurry, and on his return he found the child Rénée grown into a fair and gracious maiden, the realisation of the dreams which had haunted his young manhood.

And so he loved her, and wooed her, and won her; learning from her gentleness to unbend his sternness, teaching her girlish heart to be staunch and earnest.

They had built and plenished their future home in the simple fashion of the valley folk. Rénée was already stitching at the wedding gear, and Madeleine Botta had proudly piled the homespun linen which was to be her marriage gift to the girl who was already as her dear daughter.

And then—

But the tale is dark in the telling. One must go back some way in Europe’s history to understand how such deeds came to be done, how such devastation fell ever and again on the devoted people of the Vaudois valleys.

CHAPTER II.

THERE are sad pages in all histories: there are tales in every land the telling of which must awaken deep feelings of horror. Man’s inhumanity to man has always been the dark stain upon God’s earth.

But no cruelties of the ancient days—not even the ghastly enormities of Nero or the evil deeds of the ‘dark ages’—can exceed the terror and trouble, the fiendish works, the rage and oppression which have reigned in the Vaudois valleys.

From primitive times those valleys in the Savoy Alps have been the refuge of Christians who only asked to be allowed to live, harmless and insignificant, tending their mulberry trees, their vineyards and their corn; with liberty to serve God according to the simple faith which had been handed down to them from their fathers. They had books which they greatly prized,—portions of God’s Word, poems, commentaries, and their own Noble Lesson. This celebrated book was written or compiled about the year 1100, in the Romance language,—and in this language they also possessed the text of the Psalms and several books of the Old and New Testaments.

They themselves declared that it was the persecutions of the Roman emperors which had driven the first Christian settlers to the valleys; and if it were so the little Church, born of persecution and nourished by martyrdom, had learned from the first to endure all things as good soldiers of its Master, Christ.

From the earliest times there have always been faithful hearts humbly following the steps of the Lord, seeking, above earthly wealth and weal, to know and to do God’s will. And such there will ever be until the Master comes again. Evil may seem triumphant, and pride and arrogance lift prosperous fronts, but the Lord knoweth them that are His, and there shall never lack a remnant to watch and wait for Him.

It is not needful to trace in this story the growth of the pomp and power of the Bishop of Rome, nor to tell at length how the ‘successor’ of St. Peter ceased to be either humble or faithful. The Empire of the West had crumbled away, the ancient seat of the Cæsars was empty, and gradually the bishop became the most important person in the city, claiming one thread of power after another until the ‘Sovereign Pontiff’ asserted rule and right over the length and breadth of Christendom.

It was strange that such pretensions could be based on the Gospel of Him who took on Himself the form of a servant, and whose first words of teaching were a blessing on the ‘poor in spirit.’ Perhaps it was partly a dim consciousness of this that made pope and cardinals wish the people not to read the writings of the apostles and the words of the Lord.

But reading in those days was no easy matter.

Books were scarce and costly. Learning was difficult. The bulk of the people only heard God’s Word through the mouths of those whose gain it was to suppress and distort its simple teaching. Men and women lived and died believing that pope and priest could forgive sins and wipe off all offences, and that a handful of gold pieces could purchase their entrance into paradise.

It was through these dark days that the Light of the Truth burned clear in the hearts and homes of the simple race dwelling on the confines of Savoy, where the frontier lines of Switzerland and France met on the white-hill peaks. And this race it was, this ‘nest of heretics,’ that the Roman power resolved to crush and kill.

The first persecution that was regularly organised to destroy them root and branch took place at the end of the twelfth century. In addition to those slain outright, the number of those carried into captivity was so great that the Archbishop of Avignon declared that he had ‘so many prisoners it is impossible not only to defray the charge of their nourishment, but to get enough lime and stone to build prisons for them.’

From this time onwards the history of valleys is one long tale of persecution. The intervals when ‘the churches had rest, and were edified,’ were so short that the accounts of suffering and martyrdom must have been handed down verbally from father to son. Thirty-two invasions were endured, invasions of troops filled with the remorseless rage of religious fanaticism.

But it was in the year 1650 that the bitterest storm broke over them. It was a time of extraordinary ‘religious’ feeling, and councils were established in Turin and other cities, having for their object the spread of the Romish faith and the utter extirpation of heretics. The plan on which they worked was just the old barbarous way of force and fire, and the worst weapon of all, treachery.

Once again the Vaudois fled before the soldiers hired to butcher them. The caves and dens of the rocks, the mountain passes filled with snows that April suns had no power to melt, the natural fastnesses and citadels of the hills—these were the places to which the villagers escaped. And as they went they were lighted by the blaze of their burning homesteads, and followed by the shrieks and groans of the weak and their helpless defenders, whom the ruthless murderers overtook, tortured and slew.

It was then that Janavel of Rora came to the front. He had but six men with him when he first made a stand on the heights above Villaro, where the mountain track leads over the Collina di Rabbi to Rora. He lay in ambush, resolved to do what he could to stop the foreign soldiers from ravaging his home, and in his desperate mood he had no thought save to sell his life as dearly as he could: what could seven men do against hundreds?

But in that narrow place seven men could do much. The simultaneous discharge of their muskets threw the soldiers into confusion. No enemy was to be seen; the troops could not be sure that those rocks and trees did not shelter scores of Vaudois. They faltered, then fell back.

Again the musket-balls came crashing from the hill-side. It was more than hired courage could stand! The troops of Savoy turned and fled, leaving sixty or seventy of their number dead on the ground.

They fled only to return. The next day six hundred picked men ascended the mountain by the Cassutee, a wider, more practicable path. But here also Janavel was ready for them. He had now gathered eighteen herdsmen, some armed with muskets and pistols, but the greater number having only slings and flint stones, which they knew very well how to use. Their ambush was well chosen. The column advanced, only to be assailed flank and front with a shower of balls and stones. Again this invisible foe was too much for them to stand. They thought only of escaping from the fatal defile; once more Janavel was victorious.

The Marquis of Pianezza, the Savoy leader, was furious at these repulses. He hastily collected his whole force, sending for his lieutenant, the impetuous and cruel Mario, to bring up the rear-guard, together with some bands of Irish mercenaries, who were specially fit for dashing and dangerous service. Rora should surely be carried this time! Every soul there should rue the hour in which they had dared to oppose Pianezza!

But Janavel and his heroes were armed with a strength on which the foe had little calculated. For the third time victory rested with the weak. For the third time the soldiers were driven down the mountain-slopes, hurling one another to destruction in their mad flight.

But this could not last for ever. Eight thousand soldiers and two thousand popish peasants were marched on Rora, and this time the work of death was done.

Janavel and his friends, who had been decoyed to a distance from the village, escaped with their lives, and for many weeks they carried on the struggle, only to be beaten at last, overpowered by numbers. But the name of Janavel was reverenced far and wide as that of a good man, ‘bold as a lion, meek as a lamb,’ rendering to God alone the praise of his victories, dauntless in his faith and love, while tried as few are tried. His wife and daughter had fallen into the hands of Pianezza,—spared for the time from the massacre at Rora; a letter from the general reached Janavel, offering him his life, and their lives, if he would abjure his heresy, but threatening him with death and his dear ones with being burnt alive if he persisted in his resistance. ‘We are in God’s hands,’ answered Janavel; ‘our bodies may die by your means, but our souls will serve Him by the grace that He gives to us. Tempt me no more.’

And much the same he wrote thirty years after, when he and Pastor Arnaud planned the Glorious Return.

It was no marvel that Rénée, Gaspard Botta’s betrothed wife, blushed as she spoke of fear. The blood of her heroic grandsire ran in her veins. She too could trust in God, and for His sake endure.

There was a time of peace after that terrible persecution. The whole of Protestant Europe had remonstrated against the cruelties and horrors that had taken place. Oliver Cromwell, then governing England, sent an ambassador to Turin to enforce, if possible, his indignant demand for mercy. Holland, Switzerland, the German Protestant powers, and even a large number of French subjects, all sent messengers to the Duke of Savoy. And they sent also large sums—more than a million francs—to relieve the most pressing necessities of the homeless and the destitute.

The Duke of Savoy died, and under the rule of his son, Victor Amadeus II., the Vaudois had some years of peace. They showed their gratitude for this forbearance by loyally defending the frontier against the Genoese, and by eagerly helping to quell the banditti infesting the mountain passes. They sought to prove, with a devotion that borders upon pathos, that they also could be good subjects, that their allegiance to their God only heightened their loyalty to their sovereign.

It was then that Rénée Janavel sang as she sewed the long seams in the linen store that her foster-mother had spun. It was then that Gaspard would whistle as his plane cut through the white plank, and the shavings fell, silky and shining, about his feet.

Even the grim house-master would let the suspicion of a smile lurk under the straight moustache of iron-grey that almost hid his lips. He could remember the times of terror—oh, yes, he could remember them only too well!—but ferns and wreaths of mauve auricula were now growing about the ruins that had then been made so fearsome; and the mulberries were flourishing again; and it was a comfort to see Mother Madeleine about and well after her sharp attack of fever a year or two ago; and Emile and Gaspard had grown sturdy and strong—the finest young men in all Rora; and Rénée—the child—was always singing when she was not laughing: what a gay, sweet heart it was, to be sure! And, all things considered, it was no marvel that Henri Botta now and then forgot all the ghastly doings of the past, and let a smile dawn upon his lips or glimmer in his eyes.

‘Shall it be in the spring time, dear?’ Gaspard said, as he stood in the house that his hands had builded for his bride, and let his glance rest lovingly on her bright face. ‘Say, dear, shall we light our fire on this hearth when the snows melt on Mount Friolent, and the flowers bloom under the hedges yonder?’

If she did not answer him in words, he was nevertheless well contented. And it was settled that so it should be: for not even the neighbours could disapprove of such a marriage. Were not the two born for each other? he so strong and dark and staunch, and she so fair and sweet! And was not Gaspard the best workman in the commune, with his earnings all safely saved since he came back from Turin?

Why should there not be a marriage procession along the stream-side to the little white-walled church when the flowers bloomed? Why not, indeed? And wide and long should be the festive wreaths woven of those very flowers to do honour to the grandchild of the hero Janavel.

It was the close of the year 1685. There had been twenty years of freedom in the valleys—twenty calm years of liberty and peace. The horrid sounds of massacre had died away before Rénée was old enough to remember, before Gaspard was old enough to understand. And so they looked into one another’s eyes, and thought that life and love and earth and heaven were smiling on their troth.

But far away, beyond the French Alps, beyond the vineyards of Burgundy and the Lyonais, an old man sat in his splendid palace, a wretched and restless man, who had something to say to the plans and the promises of the simple folk in the Savoy valleys.

For he was King Louis XIV., Louis, surnamed the Great, Louis, the husband of the bigot Françoise de Maintenon, trying in his old age of repentance to atone for the guilt of a misspent life. Madame de Maintenon hated heretics as her cold, calculating heart hated nothing else; and she loved the approval and the flattery of her courtier priests far more than she loved the king.

‘Revoke the edicts giving liberty to the Protestants, sire,’ she said to her husband. ‘Crush heresy, and so purchase your peace with God.’

Louis listened. He was aged and ailing; his sons were dead; his friends—such friends as he had—were dead too. He also must soon appear before the Throne that was greater even than the glories of his own. It was time he hearkened to the promptings of the Church. Popes and priests must know best about these things; he would do their bidding, and do it thoroughly, as a king should!

So the edicts were revoked throughout the land of France. All the civil rights of his subjects belonging to the Reformed faith were taken away. The heretics must be converted, or go, or die.

Thus he ordered.

And even then, not quite content, he forced his neighbour, the young Duke of Savoy, to do likewise. To the valleys also the persecution should extend.

. . . . . . . .

And Gaspard set his teeth hard as he brightened up his father’s sword; and Rénée’s tears fell fast as she folded away the snowy linen she had bleached so fair.

When the violets bloomed in the hedges long processions passed that were different indeed from marriage-trains. Trumpet-calls and the tramp of troops echoed from the hills and rocks; and the white walls of the church had been splashed with crimson, and were now blackened with fire.

Once more Rome had sent her ‘terror’ to the valleys. Once more faith was to be tried to the death, and steadfast souls to win their martyr crowns.

CHAPTER III.

VICTOR AMADEUS did not obey King Louis without a struggle. He was content with his Vaudois subjects; they were industrious and law-abiding, and they were a valuable defence against invasion from the west, and a check upon the bandits of the Alps. Why should he harry and hunt them forth to soothe the sore conscience of that tyrannical old man in Versailles?

But the French ambassador put the matter in a light which speedily convinced Victor Amadeus. His master, he said, King Louis, had resolved that heresy should be stamped utterly out. He would send an army to the Savoy valleys, an army quite strong enough to accomplish the purpose. The Duke of Savoy need not trouble himself at all. The work should be done, and thoroughly done, by the French alone, but—and the addition had a strong and grave significance—but the King of France would retain the Piedmont valleys for his trouble!

What could Duke Victor say? These Vaudois, after all, were heretics; his own father had done exactly what King Louis was now urging upon him to do; hesitation might be another name for lukewarmness in a holy cause. And at all risks he must avoid giving Louis an excuse for making good his footing on the soil of Savoy.

Therefore the proclamation was signed.

A terrible proclamation it was. It ordained complete cessation of every religious service, save that of the Romish faith; the immediate destruction of the churches; the banishment of the pastors, and the baptism of every child by Romish priests, who were henceforth to educate and control all young people.

The punishment for disobeying or evading this edict was death.

Dismay entered all hearts. Rome was once more to whet her savage sword. And the mountaineers, helpless, defenceless, could only die, since submission to such edicts could not be.

They remembered 1655, and the way in which a handful of men had beaten back Pianezza and his hordes.

The courage that had nerved Janavel and his heroes was still alight in the valleys. They too would fight for their homes and their churches, for the honour of their wives, for the faith of their little ones.

So entrenchments were thrown up in the ravines, and turf and rough stones piled up on every point of vantage; stores were hastily collected, and the corn-stacks were threshed out. The women did their part; even the children were busy as bees.

Henri Botta heard the careless laughter of a string of boys and girls as they ran up the steps of the mill, carrying each one a burden of wheat or rye, and his grave face grew sterner still as he harkened.

‘Little they know! little they know!’ he muttered in his beard. ‘Laugh! ‘tis the last laughter that will sound in Luserna for many and many a day.’

The horrors of the months that followed cannot here be told. Is it not an awful thing that men have committed atrocities of which one cannot speak—that living bodies and tortured souls have borne what our ears cannot suffer to hear—what our minds cannot endure to conceive? Frail women, modest and gentle girls, the babies too young to know the terror of the sword that slew them, the old men whose white hairs were but signals for scoff and insult—all these helpless ones were the butt and playthings of the brutal soldiers, whose most merciful dealing was death. Aye, happy were those whose doom was only death!

Botta and his two sons fought at the barricade which crossed the road above Casiana. Emile was amongst the first to fall. His father saw him stagger, and rushed forward to his help; but, as he reached upwards to where Emile lay on the ridge of the earthwork, a second ball crashed into the prostrate figure. The boy was shot through the heart.

‘Let him lie there,’ muttered Botta, with a quietude more sad than tears. ‘Let him lie there, on the crest of the barricade. Even in death he shall defend the valleys.’

Yet the heroism and devotion so lavishly poured out in those days and weeks of struggle were in vain. Once more the valleys were swept from north to south, from the Palavas Alps to the Po River—once more the red flames raged and triumphed above the cottage roofs; and over the fields, and by the swift torrent water, the flying people were hunted down and slain.

It was the end of April, 1686. The home of the Bottas was a blackened heap of ruin; the orchards, where the tufts of pink apple-blossom should be already showing, were hacked and hewed away, and the down-trodden vines lay in long trailing lines amid the wrecks of the village.

A few soldiers lounged and laughed in their encampments hard by; they were roasting a goat that they had shot for their supper, and their rude jokes as they did so roused noisy mirth. Their task of blood and cruelty had brutalized them to a degree hard to believe, did not one know how low human nature can fall when riot and licence cut away the cords of gentleness and justice, and the blood-thirst is awakened—that thirst which men share with the tigers.

Henri, the house-master, was gone from Rora; where, none could tell, for the Vaudois troops had been scattered like clouds before the tempest. Gaspard had come back alone, creeping up the passes in the night, hiding, and groping his dangerous way, to find out what had befallen his mother and Rénée.

He knew every nook and crevice of the ridges that rose grim and almost inaccessible between the ravine and Villaro; somewhere hereabouts he hoped to find them, unless—indeed——

And the young man’s haggard eyes gleamed with the look that it is ill to see on mortal face as he counted out what that ‘unless’ might mean.

His search was long, and his heart grew heavier hour by hour. Perhaps they had already been driven off to prison in Turin; or, perhaps—and if he were not to find them Gaspard knew that he ought to pray that it might be so—perhaps they had already joined Emile in the land where fighting and desolation and death is over for ever, where God Himself will give comfort and the calmness of His peace.

The dawn was breaking, the glad, sweet dawn of the spring morning, and Gaspard slowly dragged himself beneath the shelter of the pines. He must not stand there, exposed, under those shafts of clear, keen light, unless he were willing to take his chance of a musket-ball from the duke’s soldiers, whose orders were to clear the country as a broom sweeps over a floor.

There was a cavern here, up under the cliff, a place where he might lie and rest, and eat the crust of bread he carried in his wallet. Rest—food—they were sorely needed, yet he felt as though rest were impossible, and food would choke him.

He lifted the ivy trails and stood a moment, peering into the dimness. These mountain caves held strange creatures now and then.

From out of the darkness came a sudden cry.

‘O Gaspard, O Gaspard! is it thou?’

He staggered. He was worn and faint, and just at that moment the hope was dim of finding those he sought. His brain whirled round; he put his hand to his eyes, bewildered.

Then a woman’s arms reached out to him, and confused words, and little cries of joy, and short sobs came in broken gusts and silences.

‘Gaspard! Oh, thanks be to God! Thou art living then, Gaspard! Mother, mother, awake! here is he, our Gaspard.’ And Rénée clung to him and hid her face against his breast.

They were safe then, as yet! And his voice came back to him as he knelt to kiss his mother’s hand and cheek. Ah, the swords of the duke were sharp, the desolation of the valleys was drear, the house-father was an exile, and Emile lay in his gory grave; but an offering of heartfelt praise went up to God’s throne as the re-united ones held each other’s hands and thanked the Lord that day.

There was much to hear on either side, and the women’s faces grew very grave when Gaspard told them what had happened in the valleys of Luserna and Angrogna. Cannon and cavalry had been too much for the mountaineers in the villages and on the roads, and treachery had beguiled them from the entrenchments on the heights to which they had fled. The Savoy general had offered, in the duke’s name, safe and honourable treatment for themselves, their wives, and children, if they would throw themselves on their conquerer’s clemency. The words were fair, the terms all they dared expect. They trusted the promise and laid down their arms.

How their trust was betrayed is a long and shameful tale. Some were led in chains to the fortresses of the plains, some were executed then and there, many were destroyed by the brutal soldiers, and two thousand little children were handed over to Roman Catholic families to be trained in that religion.

Thus it was that Victor Amadeus conquered—for the same thing had occurred in all the valleys, although Gaspard only knew what had happened near at home. Perosa and San Martino had been treated with like barbarity and deceit. The scenes at the rocks of Vadolin were to the full as heart-rending as what Gaspard could describe.

‘And thy father?’ Madeleine’s eyes asked the question which her lips could scarcely frame. ‘Thy father, what of him?’

Gaspard rose to his feet and leant against the rock where the dark cave-shadow almost hid his countenance.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I have been well-nigh torn in twain betwixt my desire to find you, to know that thou and Rénée were out of the clutches of yon——’

‘Name them not, my son,’ said Madeleine; ‘hard words hurt only the heart from which they come.’

‘Words? Aye, it is not with words I would meet them!’ the young man said between his teeth.

‘And thy father?’

‘He is wounded. He was thrust at with a lance when trying to defend Marie Rozel. You remember old Marie? the widow who gave us goat’s milk when we were lost in the hill-mist long ago, Emile and I, and Rénée—thou wert a tiny child then, Rénée. They—well, they killed her at last, in spite of all that my father could do.’

‘Where is he?’ Madeleine Botta had come close to her son and was holding his arm. ‘Oh, Gaspard, ill, wounded as he is, surely he is not alone? Let us go to him.’

‘Mother, to cross the valley, to go down by the river in broad daylight—it is death, certain death, or worse. Nay, I will creep back to him, and bring him word how you fare. He will revive when once he knows that you and Rénée are safe. It was to get news for him that I am come. But how have you lived here? Have you food? fire?’

So they showed him their store, the bag of rye-bread Rénée had stolen down to Rora to fetch from a secret hiding-place; the dried grapes, the chestnuts, the flour—which last was useless, since they dared not light a fire; and then, stepping forward, the girl called softly once and again. Presently two or three goats came pushing their way through the ivy, rustling beneath the glossy leaves, and nodding their sage sharp heads as they came.

‘The others have been killed, I suppose,’ said Rénée sadly; ‘but these give us milk enough and to spare.’

Gaspard watched her as she stroked the creatures that were pressing against her knees. All dumb things seemed ready to love Rénée, and it was no wonder.

Madeleine sat silently. Her heart was full; her lips were quivering; the iron was entering her very soul. God had required much from her—her happy home, the quiet contentment of her failing years; then the life of Emile, her eldest born; and now Henri, the husband of her youth, her strong Henri, was stricken. Was his life to be taken too?

This woman had come of a race of martyrs: she had been cradled in terror, and reared amongst dangers and blood-spilling. She knew, none better, what it meant to take up Christ’s cross and follow Him along the path that leads to where the shadow lies across the shining Threshold. Her nature was brave, as befitted a child of the hills; her soul was filled with a high and sacred faith that had been lighted by God’s Gospel and nourished by His grace.

But now, there, in the cavern, the grief, the pity, the despair of it well-nigh overcame her.

‘O Lord, how long, how long? Must Thy people be outcasts for ever? for ever down-trodden and slain? Canst Thou not hear in heaven Thy dwelling-place, and when Thou hearest wilt Thou not aid?’

Just now, in her hour of agony and sore dismay, she was too near to pain to see its glorious crown, too close to the shadow of death to behold the shining gate. Not only for her and hers that crown and shining should be, but for ever unto the uttermost ages the Church of Christ is fairer for what then the Vaudois bore! Not a tear nor drop of martyr blood fell then unmarked, for not only on earth but in heaven is the death of God’s saints held ‘right dear.’

CHAPTER IV.

RENEE, if God gives me life, I will return; I will return here to thee.’

So said Gaspard Botta as he parted from his promised wife in the cavern on the cliff.

He had stayed long enough to gather them a store of wood and firing. He had even crept down in the darkness to the ruined home, and, with the silent hunter-craft of his nation, had managed to evade the Savoy soldiers while he loaded himself with things which he knew his mother and Rénée must need.

A dangerous service—yes, but existence was just one long course of danger in those months to the Vaudois.

Madeleine had urged him to go back to his father. She herself would have chosen to dare all things, and go also. To stay in that cliff-cage, hiding in silence, with no knowledge of how it fared with her nearest and dearest, would be a terrible strain and trial; the risks of crossing the Luserna valley and the heights of Roussina and Mount Vandalin, watched as they were by the duke’s troops, would be as nothing compared with the waiting and the longing for news there in the cave.

But Gaspard, who had threaded the passes and forded the torrents swelled with melting snows, who had doubled and dived and scrambled like the hunted thing that he was, implored her to stay in the comparative safety of their hiding-place.

‘It is far to where I left him,’ he said; ‘out there below La Vachère. And if thou didst reach him, mother, they would but tear thee from his side. The men were driven off in gangs to Luserna, and the women——’ He paused, and the dark look came again into his face. ‘The women were taken too, some of them, and the little ones—— Oh, mother, be satisfied! rest here, thou and Rénée, and if God pleases to hear my prayer I will come again, and bring my father, should I carry him on my shoulders.’

And so he left them; and for days, and yet again for days, they watched and waited for his coming back across the torrent, and round by the huge rocks that rose sharp and sheer from the water to the fringes of the pines. But they waited in vain.

And as the time wore on they saw from their point of vantage that the soldiers had left Rora, or only scoured the land at intervals; and Rénée ventured down from time to time to the desolated village, filling her basket with such fruits and food that the ruthless robbers had chanced to spare. Seeking, too, if there might be other fugitives perhaps more helpless and terror-stricken than themselves—to whom Madeleine and she could give a word of cheer or hand of help.

And so the spring deepened into summer, and the skies were stainless blue above them; and the sunlight of many blossoms shone over the grass; the pines shook their yellow dust in clouds into the scented air; and the brooms opened their dry seed-pods with sharp reports, as of fairy artillery.

It was hard to believe that only so few weeks ago human lives had been sobbed out in agony—there in that beautiful world—and that rage and cruelty had wrought their worst wickedness in the sacred name of Christ.

So quiet was it, that at last the two women went back to Rora, finding shelter amongst the ruins of what had once been their home. One or two other hunted and bereaved ones crept back also, like them waiting for news, hoping still in their faithful hearts that better times would come, and those so dear to them would be delivered from the jaws of death.

Rénée would look wistfully northward and westward, where the great violet peaks rose into the summer sky. Would Gaspard come that day? the next? Deferred hope that maketh the heart sick was heavy upon her; she longed to find her way down the valley to the outer world, and learn for herself what had befallen. Inaction and waiting were the hardest of trials to this girl, child of the mountain as she was.

Patience, Rénée! The time for doing will come. The blood of heroes does not flow uselessly in your young veins; ‘to do’ comes by nature to hearts like yours; ‘to wait’ is a lesson taught by care Divine.

Some stray reports penetrated even to the far recesses of this valley, the most southern of all the Vaudois dwelling-places. Some wandering folk would come from Vigne or Villaro, outcasts like themselves, whom they might question. Any well-to-do traveller, any body of men, any strangers who looked happy and well-fed, must be avoided and hidden from, for they would certainly prove to be enemies, who considered all the Vaudois to be under the ban of the Church, and therefore to be driven to a Luserna prison, or hunted down and slain.

But from one and another the story was brokenly gathered—the story of what had chanced beyond the hills, and what sort of measure the duke had dealt to his conquered people.

Exile. That had been the final decree.

The Vaudois were to be driven out; their hills should harbour heretics no more. Once and for all Savoy should be cleared from them and their doctrine. As Louis had purified the soil of France, so Victor Amadeus would purge Piedmont.

The prisons were to be emptied. The twelve thousand men, women, and children shut up in the several fortresses must go. To Switzerland, since the Swiss would receive them—but across the Alps, and out of the valleys at any cost, and any whither.

Twelve thousand? Could there really be so many? Henri Botta and his son Gustave were amongst that great and dreary company.

The sentence fell on the hearts of those two women like a leaden weight.

They, too, must go to Switzerland.

That was the resolve that grew strong in each before they dared to say the words one to the other. They were silently counting the miles, the mountains, the dangers that lay between them and the country where their dear ones had been driven. And each dreaded the objections which the other might urge.

‘But, Rénée,’ Madeleine Botta held out her withered hands imploringly, and her sunken eyes were moist as she spoke—‘Rénée, we must go to them, since it may not be that they can come to us.’

The girl’s face shone with the swift up-leaping of the hope that was strong in her.

‘Yes, mother, we will go; and God will lead us safely through!’ was her answer, spoken with the fervent simple faith that had sprung strongly up in Vaudois hearts under that red-rain of martyr blood.

But not yet was the ‘leading’ to come.

CHAPTER V.

THEY set out, their bundles on their shoulders, walking openly in the daylight without attempt at disguise; seeking, it is true, the less frequented paths, and avoiding observation as much as possible. They were so inoffensive, so insignificant, this woman and her foster-child; surely few would notice them or hinder them—now that the bitterness of the persecution had died down.

Sorrowfully were they mistaken.

They had not lost sight of the white ridge of Mount Friolent, nor crested the pass leading toward Villaro, before they were stopped and questioned by a band of preaching friars who were busy establishing their churches and schools in the country whence ‘the heretics’ had been driven.

Madeleine’s courage rose with the first hint of danger. She had no idea of softening or disguising anything, and answered back so dauntlessly that Rénée’s cheeks grew white as she listened; though the girl herself had no lack of truth nor of courage. Words are in these nineteenth-century days little else than easily stirred air; to those defenceless ones just then they meant all the difference betwixt life and death.

The friars consulted together and shook their cowled heads, looking not unlike birds of prey gloating over some poor trapped wild thing. They said that the women were firebrands, and far too dangerous to be allowed to go through the land—that the duke allowed none of the so-called Reformed religion to dwell or pass in Piedmont; and that Mistress Botta and the girl must travel in their company to Luserna, ‘where further decisions would be arrived at.’

That night the two women found means of escape. They gained the open air, the hills, the steep and intricate ways known only to the people of the valleys; and presently, after some days of wandering, they found themselves once more in their cavern. The tears rolled down Rénée’s cheeks as she entered—it was present safety, indeed, but must they still wait there, and watch for the footsteps that might never come—for the news which seemed further from them than ever?

Then Madeleine fell sick. Some slow fever consumed her; and for days and nights she lay so ill that Rénée could find no place in her thoughts for aught but ‘mother.’ And when at last she seemed to revive somewhat, and her wandering reason returned to her, she was so exceeding weak and frail that the girl feared she would die from very weariness.

It was hard to get necessaries, harder still to obtain the food fitted for a sick woman’s needs, but Rénée never flagged nor faltered all through that terrible time.

She drove the straying goats from the mountain, that her mother might have draughts of their milk; she managed to make charcoal of her store of dry wood, and that so carefully that no volume of smoke or flame could betray their hiding-place. She ran down to the valley for the few bunches of grapes which might yet be left on the broken and neglected vines; and once, but only once, she dared to enter the village of Rumero, where she bartered her own long silver chain for a warm coverlet for Madeleine.

And the autumn came, and the winter. And the icicles had been hung across their cave, and the raging winds had careered there, while the avalanches thundered amongst the higher Alps, and the sunsets lay crimson on the bosom of the snows. Then came the creeping warmth and the blessing of the spring, and the sick woman revived, as did the flowers where the sunshine made glory on the springing grass.

Madeleine Botta rose from her rock bed almost as hale as ever, and her voice had scarcely lost anything of its fulness when she sang that evening hymn, the ‘Psalm of Strong Confidence.’

But Rénée, as the light grew longer and the sweet benediction of the year stole over the frost-held earth, as the swollen streams leapt laughing down amongst the flowers, and the song-birds called in music one to the other, Rénée grew silent and sad.

Life would be easier now. Her mother was in no danger of death or suffering. There would be little to do up there in their cliff cave. Little to do but to wait.

Ah, and the waiting time is the hardest time to such hearts as that of Rénée Janavel.

CHAPTER VI.

GASPARD BOTTA was not one to be easily baffled or beaten; he was young, with muscles of iron and thews as of steel, and he had, moreover, the caution and resource of a hunter, the endurance and the keen eyesight of a mountaineer.

His faith was the faith of his fathers, and for it he would die, readily, unshrinkingly, as his fathers died in the terrible days of the past, and as he had himself seen his countrymen die here, in every hamlet, and by every hearth and home.

But of the actual love of God he knew but very little.

He had meant to do his duty. He had prayed a soldier’s prayers, and he had trusted that help Divine would come to him, as it had done to others; to such men as Janavel, and Laurene, and Jayer, men who had gloriously fought in defence of the valleys, and whose names would live while Vaudois hearts yet beat.

But some glimpse of a faith better than this came to him as he left his mother and Rénée in the cave that day.

He could not have put the feeling into words; he scarcely knew when or why, but as he took his lonely way towards the mountains of Angrogna, a sense of God’s presence came over him—a searching, demanding presence—a power and a gentleness that asked, not only for his life, but also for his love.

There was the hoarse note of pain ringing through the valleys, the boundless pain of desolation and distress. Why, then, should such thoughts come to him, one of those smitten ones who had suffered, and who yet must suffer? Gentleness—love? surely here on the south slopes of the Alps there was in those terrible years more evidence of the outpouring of God’s wrath!

But into the young man’s soul there stole some glimpse of the Light that shineth in darkness, of the Love that is behind all wrath, of the Joy that is greater than pain. Not suddenly, but softly and sweetly, even as the spring-time comes upon the coldness and dumbness of the winter-world. He was only a herdsman’s son, and his carpentering trade had left him little leisure even for such poor scholarly lore as penetrated to the valleys, but he had heard of One who had also been an outcast, hunted, and done to death; of One whose days were days of suffering, and whose nights were spent in lonely watchings beneath the stars.

And the remembrance of that One came to him now in his own lonely vigil. The Master who had wandered on the Syrian hills, who had stood silent before murderous men; and in heaven, from the great white height of His glorious throne, He yet feels for His brethren who, through great tribulation, are pressing to His feet.

Gaspard understood things better now. There was love, and there was gentleness, in spite of the sharpness of that cry of human pain. And Gaspard knelt mute upon the hill-side, with a look upon his face that had never before rested there, a look too full of love for fear, and yet which was too near to awe to take the semblance of gladness.

It seemed to him as though he knelt with his whole soul bare before the glance of God.

The days that followed were full of excitement, anxiety, and trouble. His father had been taken to Luserna, together with all the rest of the valley folk, and there Gaspard followed. It was rather like a lamb searching the den of a wolf, this going into the very stronghold of the Papists; but Gaspard had no thought of evading the duke’s troops now. His first duty was to find his father, to tend him, if so it might be; and to carry to him the news of the safety of those two women—news which would go far, so Gaspard guessed, to calm the fever left by that Savoyard lance-thrust.

It was easy to find a way to the interior of the prison, for Gaspard had only to declare that he too was a Vaudois when he was seized and flung into the fortress already full to overflowing with his wretched countrymen; and amongst that pitiful host was his father.

The horrors of that imprisonment will never be fully known now. An old writer says that the Vaudois perished by hundreds of hunger, thirst, and the festering of neglected wounds. Their bread was rough and filled with rubbish, their water was impure and insufficient. The places of the dead—numbers dying every day—were filled with fresh prisoners; the intense heat of summer, the throng of sick and suffering ones, and the crowded state of every corner of the dungeons, made a mass of evil too horrible for recital.

Was not this harder to be borne than were the savage swords of the soldiery, than the fighting at the barricades, than even the brutal insults of victorious foes? For in the past there had at least been the clear air of heaven, and the heart-stirring of struggle; now there seemed only the blankness of noisome despair.

What was it that Henri Botta’s parched lips were murmuring as he lay in uneasy sleep across Gaspard’s knees? The young man bent to listen, and the broken words he caught were of peace and of beauty, of rest for the weary ones, of the waters of comfort, and the loving-kindness of God.

The old herdsman’s rugged nature had also found some trace of gentleness and love amid all this chaos of dismay.

‘It must be that the Lord Himself is pitiful,’ thought Gaspard, ‘and He Himself sends comfort to such as are sore stricken.’

Over and over again did that thought return as he watched frail women rise triumphant above the power of pain, and men—just the rude and untaught peasants of the hills—meeting insult with dignity, and outrage with a smile.

‘Be of good cheer, my children,’ said one, an aged pastor from Angrogna, ‘our Master bore shame and death for our sakes, and shall we shrink from sharing the glory of His cross? Rather thank Him that such as we, the simple valley-folk, are reckoned worthy to follow where He trod!’

They counted twelve thousand captives that were held in the vile durance of the gaols; if it were so, death had opened the prison gates to hundreds upon hundreds of the suffering souls, for it was but three or four thousand men, women, and children whom the Duke of Savoy at last set free. Did he call it ‘freedom’?

They were free to leave Piedmont, to take their wretched lives and their precious faith to other lands, but they were not free to return to the valleys. Homeless exiles, ruined wanderers, they might go north or south, east or west; but their homes on the hill-sides should know them no more.

CHAPTER VII.

THE autumn had come, the snow already whitened the Alpine passes; soon the glittering mantle would lie thick on all the hills, and the whirling winds would form deep drifts, and the avalanches come thundering down, and the passage of the Alps would be dangerous exceedingly.

But the order came, imperious, unevadable—the Vaudois were to go.

They would rather trust themselves to their own mountains, to the ice and snow, than stay in those fated prisons; but disease had enfeebled them, imprisonment and bad air had poisoned those whom death had spared. It was a woeful company that set out upon that long and dangerous road.

One of their own historians[A] writes thus of that terrible journey:—

[A] Monastier. Translated from the French.

‘The Vaudois travelled in companies, escorted by the soldiers of the duke. They had been promised clothing, but only a small number of jackets and socks were served out to them. It was five o’clock

in the afternoon, at Christmas-tide, when their liberation was announced, with the addition that if they did not set out forthwith it would be out of their power to leave at all, for the order was to be revoked next day. Fearful of losing the chance of liberty, these unfortunate persons, wasted by sickness, set out on their march that very night. There were old men amongst them, worn down by sufferings as well as by years, besides women and children of the tenderest age. That night they marched three or four leagues through the snow, in the most intense frost.’

This first march cost the lives of a hundred and fifty of them. Was it wonderful that these died?

A few days later on at Novalèse, at the foot of Mount Cenis, a troop of the prisoners noticed that a storm was rising on the mountain; they knew well what mountain snow-storms were, and they begged the officer who was in charge to let them stay at Novalèse for a while, out of pity for the weak that were to be found in their ranks. If their request caused delay, they said, they would not ask for food; there was less danger in going without food than in travelling in the face of the storm. The officer refused. The company was forced to proceed on its march, and eighty-six sank in the drifted snow; they were the aged, the worn out, women, and some little children. The bands that followed days after saw the bodies lying frozen on the snow, the mothers still pressing their children in their arms.

Henri Botta would never have survived that journey of toil and horror, had his son Gaspard’s arm been less strong and his heart less brave.

Gaspard devoted himself to his father with the whole force of his silent nature; it seemed as though his love for Rénée, pent up and baffled as it was, sought an outlet in this older, less selfish love, and touched it with an enthusiasm which was glorious to behold.

No fatigue seemed to weary the young elastic frame, no privation had power to damp the calm courage which was always ready to cheer and brighten the dark hours of trial.

He had made friends with one of the guards, a soldier whose people he had known in Turin, and from him he managed to get now and then an extra bit of bread, a blanket, and some handfuls of roasted chestnuts—poor and pitiful provision for such a weary way, but to Henri Botta it made, perhaps, the difference between life and death.

Down the steep hill-passes the Vaudois came, troops of gaunt and toil-worn men, large-eyed, weary women, and children who had already learnt the lesson, so strange for childhood—to suffer and be silent. Down on the shores of the Geneva lake, where the winter sun was shining on the ripples until they flashed again like liquid diamonds. Along the ancient roads where many an army had passed before them, but never one so disconsolate and poor; and up to the gates of the town, whence the citizens came hurrying with eager welcome.

They were generous in their kindness, these people of Geneva. Not only welcoming words, but help, food, rest, comfort were freely given to the outcast children of the Alps. Company after company came winding down the mountain sides, but instead of being frightened at such claims upon their charity, the Swiss contended among themselves for the honour of aiding these, their persecuted brethren.

Once more we translate from the Vaudois historian, for the simple statement is more eloquent than modern words can be:—

‘Two thousand six hundred Vaudois were received within the walls of Geneva, the feeble remnant of a population of from fourteen to sixteen thousand. Moreover, they were either sick or worn out with fatigue and anxiety, and but ill protected from the rigours of winter by the old garments they had worn in prison. Some there were whose lives ended the very moment their liberty began; these expired between the two gates of the city, too weak to bear the strange sense of joy. But in proportion as the wounds to be dressed were deep, the loving-kindness of the Genevese rose high. They contended with one another who should take home the most destitute; if the invalids and sufferers had any difficulty in walking, men carried them in their arms into their houses. The heavy charge to the state and the people was cheerfully accepted. From the time they had heard of the cruelty of Louis XIV., and of the edicts of the Duke of Savoy, the Swiss had been preparing to offer aid; and when they knew that the Vaudois were to be exiled, and coming to Switzerland, these preparations were redoubled. Five thousand ells of linen were made into garments, and an equal quantity of the woollen stuffs of Oberland. Hundreds of pairs of shoes were laid up in depots. The different cantons distributed the refugees amongst them in a fixed proportion, and the liberality and compassion knew no bounds.’

There was a letter written in July, 1688, signed in the name of the Vaudois by Daniel Forneron and Jean Jalla, a letter yet existing in the archives of Berne. ‘We have no language strong enough,’ it runs, ‘to express our gratitude for your favours; our hearts, penetrated with all your acts of kindness, will publish in distant parts the unbounded charity with which you have refreshed us and supplied all our need. We shall take care to inform our children and our children’s children, that all our posterity may know, that, next to God, whose tender mercies have preserved us from being entirely consumed, we are indebted to you alone for life and liberty.’

. . . . . . . .

In Geneva, in the early days of 1688, there were aching hearts as well as those that were joyous and thankful. It was delightful to be at rest, to see the sun rise and set, to feel the pure air, and to wander free beneath God’s sky. It was strangely sweet to meet together in the churches to sing the praises of the God who had helped and delivered, to hear His Word read in the tongue the people could understand, and know that at last they might worship Him without fear or hindrance.

But the pain that mingled with the gladness was very sharp.