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.