They had built and plenished their future home in the simple fashion of the valley folk. Rénée was already stitching at the wedding gear, and Madeleine Botta had proudly piled the homespun linen which was to be her marriage gift to the girl who was already as her dear daughter.
And then—
But the tale is dark in the telling. One must go back some way in Europe’s history to understand how such deeds came to be done, how such devastation fell ever and again on the devoted people of the Vaudois valleys.
CHAPTER II.
THERE are sad pages in all histories: there are tales in every land the telling of which must awaken deep feelings of horror. Man’s inhumanity to man has always been the dark stain upon God’s earth.
But no cruelties of the ancient days—not even the ghastly enormities of Nero or the evil deeds of the ‘dark ages’—can exceed the terror and trouble, the fiendish works, the rage and oppression which have reigned in the Vaudois valleys.