Huguenot

A Tale of the French Protestants

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• Publisher: The Floating Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781776583010
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Fiction
• Index: Literature

British novelist G. P. R. James gained acclaim on the strength of his sprawling historical epics that present a detailed account of what it was like to live during various tumultuous eras beset by conflict and change. In The Huguenot, James delves into the religious upheaval that gripped France in the 16th and 17th centuries as growing numbers of the population spurned the Catholic Church and embraced Protestantism.

VOLUME ONE

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Chapter I - The Hero, His Friend, and His Dwelling in the Seventeenth Century

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There is a small town in one of the remote provinces of France, about ten miles from the sea shore, and two or three hundred from the capital, on the appearance of which it may be as well to dwell for a short time; noticing not alone its houses and its streets as they appeared in the seventeenth century, but its inhabitants, their feelings, and their customs, at that period.

Were we not to make this formal sort of presentation, the reader would feel as if set down suddenly amidst a crowd of strangers with no one to introduce him, with no one to unpadlock the barrier which the cautious laws of society set up between man and man, to guard against the wild-beast propensities of the race of intellectual tigers to which we belong. Now, however, if we manage skilfully, the reader may become as familiar with the people of another day, and scenes of another land, as if they had been the playfellows of his childhood, and the haunts of his youth; and may go on calmly with those to whom he is thus introduced through the dark and painful events which are recorded in the pages that follow.

That part of France in which our scene is laid, presents features which differ very much from the dull and uninteresting aspect of the land from Calais to Paris, and from Paris to the mountains of Switzerland—the route generally pursued by our travelling countrymen, whether they go forth to make what is usually called the grand tour, or content themselves with idling away a long space of mispent time amongst the Helvetian mountains. In the district that I speak of, the face of the country, though it cannot perhaps be called mountainous, is richly varied, running up into occasional high and pointed hills, presenting frequent masses of rock and wood, diversified by a mile or two, here and there, of soft pasture and meadow; with innumerable streams—some calm and peaceful, some fierce and torrent-like, some sparkling and playful, giving an air of life and glad activity to the land through which they flow. These manifold streams shed also a hue of indescribable verdure, a fresh leafyness of aspect, that is most grateful to the eye; and though there is not there, as in our own land, the frequent hedge-row, with its sweet village associations, yet there is no want of high umbrageous trees scattered here and there, besides the thick woods that, in many places, occupy several leagues in extent, and the lesser copses that nest themselves in many a dell.

The district that we speak of is bright in its skies and warm in its sunshine, though it is not precisely in the region of the richest vine; and there are scarcely five days, during six months of the year, in which, on every stony bank or on the short soft turf above the large lizards may not be seen basking in their coats of green and gold. There are not, indeed, the cloudless skies of Italy, which, notwithstanding their splendid colouring, are insipid from their very cloudlessness: no, but wreathed in grand masses by the free air, sometimes drifting from the British channel, sometimes sweeping from the wide western ocean, the clouds and the sunshine sport together in the heaven, while the shadow and the light chase each other over the earth below, and ever and anon comes down a passing shower, refreshing the lands it lights upon, and leaving them brighter than before.

On the top of one of the tall rocky hills we have mentioned, in very remote feudal times,—for we find it mentioned in all the wars undertaken by the Edwards and the Henries in their vain endeavours to grasp a crown that did not belong to them,—a town had been built and fortified, circumscribed by large stone walls flanked by round towers, and crowned by the square keep of a castle, only one wall of which has been left, for now near a century and a half. This town was of small size, occupying nothing but the summit of the hill, and was strictly confined within the walls; and, indeed, below, on three sides, were such steep ascents—in some places showing precipitous spaces of rude rock, and in others covered with short, green, slippery turf—that it was scarcely possible for the inhabitants to have built beyond the walls, except on one side, even if they had been so inclined.

In such times of danger, however, it had been the object of those who possessed the town to keep that fourth side, by which the ascent was more easy, clear from all houses and buildings of any kind, so that the quarrels from the cross-bow, the arrows from the bow, or the balls from the cannon—as different ages brought different inventions—might sweep down unimpeded upon any approaching enemy, and that the eye might also have a free range to discover the approach of a foe. Thus that gentler slope was not even broken by a road till the end of the sixteenth century, the way up to the town from the valley below being constructed with great skill and care upon one of the steepest sides of the hill, by means of wide short platforms, each of which was defended by some particular fortification of its own, while the whole line of the valley and the lower part of the road were commanded by the cannon of the castle of St. Anne, a rude old fortress on an inferior hill, of little or no use to any persons but those who possessed the higher and more important works above. Through the valley and winding round the foot of the hill of St. Anne was a wide, clear, beautiful stream, navigable up to that spot, and falling into the sea at the distance of ten or twelve miles in a direct line, but which contrived to extend its course, by the tortuous path that it pursued amongst the hills, to a length of nearly twenty leagues.

Such as we have described was the situation, in feudal times, of the small town that we shall call Morseiul; but ere the commencement of our tale those feudal times had passed away. Even during the wars of the League the town had remained in tranquillity and repose. It was remote from the general scene of strife; and although it had sent out many who aided, and not insignificantly, in upholding the throne of Henry IV., there was but one occasion on which the tide of war flowed near its walls, and then speedily retreated, and left it unassailed.

Under these circumstances fortifications were soon neglected—precautions were no longer taken—the cannon for half a century remained upon the walls unused—rust and honeycomb began to gnaw into the heart of the iron—sheds were erected in the embrasures—houses succeeded—gardens were laid out in the round towers—the castle of St. Anne fell utterly into ruins—and some of the patriotic and compassionate inhabitants thought it a hard tax upon the sinews of the horses, who in those days carried from place to place the merchandise of the country, to be forced to climb the zizgag path of one of the more precipitous sides of the hill. Thus in the early part of the reign of Louis XIII. a petition was addressed by the inhabitants to their count, who still retained all his feudal rights and privileges, beseeching him to construct or permit the construction of a gate upon the southern side of the town, and a road down the easier descent.

The count, who was a good-humoured man, a nobleman of the school of Henry IV., and as fond of the people of the good town as they were of him, was quite willing to gratify them in any reasonable desire; but he was the more moved to do what they wished in the present instance, inasmuch as some ten or fifteen years before he had himself broken through the old rules and regulations established in the commune, and not only built himself a château beyond the walls of that very side, but laid out a space of two or three acres of ground in such a manner as to give him shade when he wanted it, and sunshine when the shade was not agreeable.

Of the château we shall speak hereafter: but it is only here necessary to say, that in building this dwelling beyond the walls, the Count de Morseiul of that day had forgotten altogether the possibility of carrying a road down that side of the hill. He had constructed a way for himself into the town by enlarging an old postern in the walls, which he caused to open into his garden, and by this postern, whenever he sought to issue forth into the country beyond, he took his way into the town, traversed the square, and followed the old zigzag road down the steep side of the hill. The peasantry, indeed, had not failed to think of that which their lord had overlooked, and when they had a dozen or two of pigeons, or a pair of fowls, or a fat calf to present to the seigneur, they almost invariably brought it by the slope up the hill. A path had thus been worn from the valley below in the precise direction which was best fitted for the road, and whenever the good townsmen presented their petition to the count, it instantly struck him how very convenient such a road would be to himself as well as to them.

Now the count was neither a cunning nor an ungenerous man; and the moment he saw that the advantage to be derived would be to himself, he determined to open the gate, and make the road at his own expense without subjecting the commune or the peasantry to corvée or fine. He told the inhabitants so at once, and they, as they well might be, were grateful to him in consequence. He made the road, and a handsome one it was; and he threw down a part of the wall, and erected a splendid gate in its place. He gave no name, indeed, to either; but the people immediately and universally bestowed a name on both, and called them the Count's Gate, and the Count's Road, so that the act was perpetuated by the grateful memory of those whom it benefited.

As, following the example of the earth on which we live, every thing upon its surface moves forward, or perhaps we may say appears to move forward, while very likely it is going but in a circle, the opening of the gate and the making of the road was speedily followed by another step, which was the building of houses by the road-side; so that, at the period when our tale commences, the whole aspect, appearance, and construction of the town was altered. A long street, with gardens at the back of the houses, extended all the way down the gentle slope of the hill; the gate had been widened, the summit had been cleared of a great number of small houses, and a view was opened straight up into a fine gay-looking market square at the top, with the ruined wall of the old keep, raising its high head covered with ivy on the western side, and to the north the little church, with its tall thin-slated spire rising high, not only above the buildings of the town itself, but the whole of the country round, and forming a remarkable object, which was seen for many leagues at sea.

We are in this account supposing the reader to be looking up the street, which was turned towards the south, and was consequently full of sunshine towards the middle of the day. It would, indeed, have been intolerably hot in the summer, had it not been that the blessed irregularity of the houses contrived to give some shade at every hour of the four and twenty. But from the bottom of that street almost up to the top was to be seen, upon the left hand, rising above the buildings of the street itself, the weathercocks, and round turrets, and pointed roofs and loop-holes, and windows innumerable, which marked the château built by the count who had constructed the road; while here and there, too, were also seen the tops of the tall limes and elms with which he had shaded his gardens, and which had now grown up into tall splendid trees, flourishing in the years which had brought him to decay and death.

Into the little town of Morseiul had been early introduced the doctrines of Calvin, and the inhabitants clung to those doctrines with peculiar pertinacity. They had constantly sent volunteers to the protestant army; they had bestirred themselves in aid of La Rochelle, and had even despatched succour to the protestants of the far south. The weak, bigotted, and treacherous Louis XIII. had declared that they were the most obstinate heretics in his dominions, and had threatened against them many things, which the wisdom of his great minister had prevented him from performing. But the counts of Morseiul themselves had at all times rendered great services to the state: they had proved themselves on all occasions gallant and determined soldiers and skilful politicians; and, though they too held firm by the religion of their ancestors, and set equally at defiance both threats and seductions—which conduct formed the strongest link between them and their people—Richelieu had judged that it would be hazardous to drive them into open resistance to the crown. We may indeed surmise that he judged it unnecessary also, inasmuch as there can be no doubt that in his dealings with the Huguenots he treated them solely as a political party, and not as a religious sect.

Such being the case, though somewhat courting the persecutions of the times, the town of Morseiul had been left unmolested in the exercise of its religious tenets, and had enjoyed not only all the liberty which was granted to the protestants of France by the edict of Nantes, but various other privileges, obtained perhaps by a little encroachment, and retained by right of prescription.

The inhabitants were a hardy and determined race, frank and good-humoured, and possessing from various points in their position a great degree of simplicity in manners and character, mingled with much religious fervour. They had, indeed, of late years, been somewhat polished, or perhaps one might call it, corrupted. They had acquired more wants and more wishes from the increasing luxuriousness of the day; had heard with wonder, and not perhaps without some longing, of the splendours and the marvels and the gaieties of the court of Louis XIV., then in the bright and butterfly days of its youthful ostentation; and they felt strongly and beneficially the general impulse given to every sort of commerce by the genius of Colbert, and applied themselves to derive the utmost advantage therefrom, by pursuing with skill, activity, and perseverance, various manufactures, in which they displayed no small ingenuity. A good number of them had become wealthy, and all of them indeed were well off in the station of life in which they were placed. The artisan was rich for an artisan, as well as the burgess for a burgess; but they were all simple in their habits, not without their little pride, or without their luxuries on a holyday; but frugal and thoughtful as they were industrious. Such was the town of Morseiul and its inhabitants in the year 168—.

We must now turn to the château of the count, and to its denizens at the time of the opening of our tale. The château was built, as we have said, on the outside of the walls of the town, and was one of those odd buildings of which many a specimen has come down to us. It seemed to have been built by detached impulses, and upon no general plan, though, to admit nothing but the truth, the construction was attributable all to one person. The great hall was along, wide-spreading piece of architecture, with a high roof, and a row of windows turned to the south side, which was the front of the château. Then came two or three square masses of stone-work on either side of the hall, with the gables projecting to the front, no two of them of the same height and size; and many of them separated either by a tall round tower, with loopholes all the way up, like button-holes in the front of a waistcoat, or broken towards the roof by a turret stuck on and projecting from the rest of the building. On the western side of the château was a large square tower, with numerous windows, placed with some degree of regularity; and on the eastern, was an octangular tower containing a separate entrance of a somewhat Gothic character. Two large wings projected behind towards the town on which the château unceremoniously turned its back, and the large open space of ground thus enclosed, was again divided into two by a heavy transverse mass of building, as irregular as the external parts of the whole. The mansion was completed by the stables and offices for the servants and retainers, and the whole was pitched in the centre of a platform, which had formerly been one of the bastions of the town.

Behind the château, and between the building and the walls, were numerous trees, giving that space the name of the bocage, and through this lay the little walk that led to the postern, which was originally the only exit from the château. In front was a tolerably wide esplanade, extending to the edge of the bastion, and from the edge of the terrace descended a flight of steps to the slope below, on which had been laid out a flower-garden, separated from the rest of the ground by a stone wall, surmounted by flower-pots in the shape of vases. The remaining portion of the space enclosed was planted, according to the taste of that day, with straight rows of trees, on the beauties of which it is unnecessary to dwell.

The interior of the castle was fitted up in the taste of the reign of Henry IV. and Louis XIII., few changes having taken place since the time it was first furnished, immediately after it was built. Some of the rooms, indeed, contained the furniture of the older castle formerly inhabited by the counts, which furniture was of a much more remote age, and had been condemned, by scornful posterity, to the dusty oblivion which we so fondly pile upon our ancestors. It may be as well, however, to conduct the reader into one of the rooms of that château, and, telling him that we have ourselves sat therein, furnished exactly as it was then furnished, and looking exactly as it then looked, endeavour to make him see it as the glass of memory now gives it back to us.

It was a large oblong room, with a vaulted roof: not dome-shaped, indeed, for it was flat at the top; but from the walls towards the centre, it sloped for a considerable way before it received the flattened form which we mention. It was indeed a four-sided vault, with the top of the arches cut off. On two sides were windows, or perhaps we should call them casements, with the glass set in leaden frames, and opening only in part. The hearth and chimney were of enormous dimensions, with a seat on either side of the fire-place, which was a sort of raised platform of brick-work, ornamented with two large andirons grinning with lions' heads, for the reception of the fuel.

Over the chimney again was a wide slab of marble, supported by two marble scrolls; and a tablet, on which was recorded, with very tolerable latinity, that that château had been built by Francis Count of Morseiul, in the year of grace one thousand five hundred and ninety. Above this marble, far blacker than the dark oak panelling which supported it, hung an immense ebony frame, carved with a thousand curious figures, and containing a large round mirror of polished metal, reflecting, though in a different size, all the objects that the room contained. On the two sides of the chamber were one or two fine portraits by Rubens and Vandyke, also in ebony frames, but cursed with an internal border of gold. A multitude of high-backed chairs, only fitted for men in armour, and ladies with whalebone bodices; four cabinets of ebony, chequered with small lines of inlaid ivory, with immense locks, marked out by heavy, but not inelegant, silver shields; and two or three round tables, much too small for the size of the room, made up the rest of the furniture of the apartment, if we except some curious specimens of porcelain, and one or two curiosities brought by different members of the family from foreign lands. There was also a lute upon one of the tables, and ten long glasses, with a vein of gold in their taper stalks, ranged in battle array upon the mantelpiece.

The moment at which we shall begin our tale was about the h...

Table of contents

• THE HUGUENOT
• Contents
• Dedication
• VOLUME ONE
• Chapter I - The Hero, His Friend, and His Dwelling in the Seventeenth Century
• Chapter II - The Valet—The Townspeople—The Proclamation
• Chapter III - The Pastor
• Chapter IV - Unexpected Companions
• Chapter V - The Journey, and Some of its Events
• Chapter VI - The Lady and Her Lovers
• Chapter VII - The Growth of Love
• Chapter VIII - The Meeting and the Chase
• Chapter IX - The Discovery
• Chapter X - The Recall
• VOLUME TWO
• Chapter I - The Explanations
• Chapter II - The Return
• Chapter III - New Acquaintances
• Chapter IV - The Preaching in the Desert
• Chapter V - The Revenge
• Chapter VI - The Court
• Chapter VII - The Clouds and the Sunshine
• Chapter VIII - The Hour of Happiness
• Chapter IX - The Unknown Peril
• Chapter X - The Decision
• Chapter XI - The King's Closet
• VOLUME THREE
• Chapter I - The Unforeseen Blow
• Chapter II - The Conspirators
• Chapter III - The Execution
• Chapter IV - The Woman's Judgment
• Chapter V - The Escape
• Chapter VI - The Pastor's Prison
• Chapter VII - The Death of the Persecuted
• Chapter VIII - The Discovery of Error
• Chapter IX - The Battle and the Retreat
• Chapter X - The Lover's Reunion
• Chapter XI - The Night Attack
• Chapter XII - The Royalist Camp
• Chapter XIII - The Last Efforts
• Chapter XIV - The Bitter Parting
• Chapter XV - The End
• Endnotes