In the silversmith’s house in the dark Geneva street, groups gathered evening after evening to talk with Janavel. He was, as was natural, a sort of rallying-point for his countrymen. His elbow-chair was the centre of elaborate plannings, fluctuating hopes and fears, and audacious ideas. Here differing ways and means were discussed endlessly; here all men spoke their minds.
And Janavel, who himself could never again strike a blow for country or for faith, was the most eager and hopeful of all.
‘Our land is the Lord’s,’ he would say; ‘and in the Lord’s good time it shall be restored to our trust.’
. . . . . . . .
It was in July, 1687, that the first attempt at return was made. Two or three hundred impatient ones gathered at Ouchy, on the shores of the lake, full of ardour and hope. But that enterprise was promptly nipped in the bud. The Swiss had pledged their honour to the Duke of Savoy, and considered themselves responsible for the good behaviour of the Vaudois. They could not allow the exiles to cross the frontier with the avowed intention of regaining their country by force of arms, so the expedition was stopped at its very outsetting, and the two or three hundred men sent back to the places from whence they had gathered themselves. So the first effort, small and ill-advised as it was, came to an untimely end.
On the next occasion things were altered. Events marched quickly in those troublous times. In July, 1687, James II. was on the English throne, a bigoted Papist, whose sympathies were all with the extermination of what he called heresy. And in 1687 Louis of France had ample leisure to listen to all priestly plans for crushing the ‘new religion.’
In 1689 William of Orange was King of England, a prince wholly devoted to the cause of Protestantism, and King Louis had his hands full to overflowing with wars against the Germans and the Dutch.
And—a fact more important to them than affairs of foreign kings and potentates—the exiles had found what they had hitherto so sorely lacked—a leader. He was one Henri Arnaud, a simple pastor of the valleys, a man trained in the school of hardship, just one of themselves. But he was, in spite of this, a really great man, one not only like Joshua Janavel, but like that other and far greater Joshua, the Hebrew captain of old; for in his heart burnt the holy fire of God’s faith and fear, and on his lips was the old battle-cry of the Hebrews, ‘Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.’