Because of conscience

by Amy Ella Blanchard

Michelle made no answer. She stood still with her arms clasped around the web of homespun linen which had been bleaching on the grass. Her eyes wandered over the fair fields to the spires of Rouen in the distance, and then to the chateau closer at hand, showing dimly gray through the trees. She shook her head, but turned with a smile to the girl at her side. “Come in, my Alainette,” she said; “it grows late and I have a loaf in the oven. There is no need to be angered by the words of your cousin, he did but tease; and should your father not return to-night, there is no doubt some good reason for his staying.” And Alaine, accustomed as she had been from babyhood to accept Michelle’s adjustments of her difficulties, forgot her late quarrel with her cousin and ran on ahead to satisfy her youthful appetite with the fresh sweet loaf that no one knew better than Michelle how to bake.

The days were over when the Huguenots were an influence, or were at all formidable in politics. They pursued amiably and tranquilly their various avocations. The massacre of St. Bartholomew had occurred over a century before; La Rochelle had fallen more than half a century back, and Protestant subjects were so faithful in their allegiance to the throne that even the reigning sovereign, Louis XIV., acknowledged that his Huguenot servitors had proved their devotion; he had, moreover, promised that the provisions of the Edict of Nantes should be faithfully maintained, yet at this very time a decree was issued fixing the age of seven as that when children were to be allowed to declare their religious preferences, and forbidding parents to send their children out of the country to be educated. In consequence, it was a common thing for children to be enticed from their parents to be placed in the hands of the clergy, or to be persuaded by rewards or coerced by threats to attend mass, and then to be claimed by the Church. One by one the Protestant seats of learning were suppressed, and the consternation of the Huguenots was great.

Beyond this the system of dragonnades had done much toward terrorizing and impoverishing the Protestants, so that again numbers were fleeing the country through every possible means. The times were ripe for the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Of all these things Alaine Hervieu was passingly aware. The horizon of her little world was bounded by Rouen, beyond whose borders she dwelt, spending a quiet and joyous existence with Michelle, her foster-mother and her chief guardian: Michelle with her fund of reminiscences, too often those thrilling and horrifying tales of massacres and persecutions. When Michelle waxed too fierce and terrifying Alaine would fly to her father for diversion, but, to her credit be it said, she never laid the cause of her frights upon her nurse, but rather complained of loneliness and begged that dear papa would tell her tales of his boyhood; of her sainted mother she was quite ready to hear, but of other saints she heard more than enough from Father Bisset, she declared. Something rousing and merry she preferred; and her father, taking her on his knee, would tell her of the Fête des Rois, and would show her the basket of wax fruit won upon one of those festive occasions. Or he would sing her some old song, such as

“Gloria patri ma mere a petri

Elle a faict une gallette,

Houppegay, Houppegay, j’ay bu du cidre Alotel.”

And he would tell her of the time when the Boise of St. Nicaise was dragged away and burned by the young men of St. Godard.

Alaine herself had more than once been taken to the Fête St. Anne to see, running about the streets, the boys dressed as angels and the girls as Virgins, and at Easter Eve she had watched the children when they mocked and hooted at the now scorned herring while the boys pitched barrels and fish-barrows into the river.

But of late it was of other things he told her; of brave resistance by those who fought for freedom of thought; of the loss of position by those who refused to conform to the requirements of state and church; and sometimes he would sing to her in a low voice, from a small book, some of those psalms which Michelle, too, sang.