"Never; I should like to have a glimpse of him some day."
"I never have, and I hope I never shall."
"Do you think so badly of him, Patient?"
"They call him The Great: methinks they might fitly give the same title to the Devil. He is a man with neither heart nor conscience. God forbid that I should judge any man: yet 'tis written, 'By their fruits ye shall know them,'[[7]] and the fruits of this King are truly dreadful. It doth look as if the Lord had given him 'over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.'[[8]] Privately, he is a man of very evil life; and publicly—you will hear shortly, Madam, what he is. 'Tis now, methinks, nigh upon twenty years since what they called the Edict of Nantes[[9]] was done away with. That decree, passed by some former King of this country,[[10]] did permit all the Protestants to hold their own worship, and to be visited in sickness by their chosen ministers. This, being too gentle for this King, he therefore swept away. His dragoons were sent into every place throughout France, with orders to force the the poor Protestants to go unto the wicked mass, and to harry them in all manner of ways, saving only to avoid danger of their lives. One Sabbath thereto appointed, they drave all in every place to mass at the point of their swords, goading and pricking on such as lagged, or showed ill-will thereto. I saw one crowd so driven, from a window—for my Lady being a Papist, kept safe them in her house: or else it was that I was not counted worthy of the Lord to have that great honor of suffering for His sake. Poor souls! white-headed men there were, and tender women, and little, innocent, frightened children. It was a sight to move any human heart. I heard many a tale of worse things they did. Breaking into the houses, destroying and burning the household furniture, binding and beating the men, yea, even the women; drumming with hellish noise in the chambers of the sick, until they swooned away or were like to die; burning the houses of some and the workshops of others: all this we heard, and more."
"Patient, how dreadful!" said Celia. "Why, 'tis near what they did in the days of Queen Mary."
"They only went a little further then on the same road—that was all, methinks," answered Patient, calmly. "When the Lord readeth in the Books before men and angels the stories of the persecutions in England and in Scotland, He will scarce forget the Dragonnades of France."
"I did not know that there had been any persecution in Scotland, Patient—except what King Charles did; I suppose that was a sort of persecution."
"Did you not, Madam?" asked Patient, quietly turning down a hem. "I was not thinking of King Charles, but of the earlier days, when tender women like Helen Stirk and Margaret Wilson perished in the waters, and when the bloody Cardinal brent Master George Wishart, that true servant of God and the Evangel, in his devil's-fire at St. Andrews."
"I never heard of all those people, Patient."
"Ay, perchance so, Madam. I dare say their names and their sufferings scarce went beyond their own land," replied Patient, in a constrained voice, as if her heart were a little stirred at last. "But the Lord heard of them; and Scotland heard of them, and rose and bared her arm, and drave forth the men of blood from off her soil. The Lord is their Avenger, at times, in this life—beyond this life, always."