‘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.