INTRODUCTION.
Thirty-four years have elapsed since the martyrdom of Hena Lebrenn, Ernest Rennepont and the other heretics who were burned alive before the parvise of Notre Dame, in the presence of King Francis I and his court on January 21, 1535. To-day, I, Antonicq Lebrenn, son of Odelin and grandson of Christian the printer, proceed with the narrative broken off above.
Safely established at La Rochelle, Christian was joined in that city by his son Odelin and Josephin, the Franc-Taupin. Already shattered in body on account of the profound sorrow caused by the death of his wife Bridget and the revelation concerning the incestuous attempt made by his son Hervé, the news of the frightful death of his daughter Hena overwhelmed my grandfather. He did not long survive that last blow. He languished about a year longer, wrote the narrative of which the following one is the sequel, and died on December 17 of the same year at La Rochelle, where he exercised his printer's trade at the establishment of Master Auger, a friend of Robert Estienne. The latter himself ended his days in exile at Geneva.
Odelin Lebrenn, my father, devoted himself, as in his youth, to the armorer's trade. He worked in the establishment of Master Raimbaud, who also settled down in La Rochelle in 1535. The old armorer drove a lucrative trade in his beautiful arms, with England. Thanks to their energy and their municipal franchises, the Rochelois, partisans of the Reformation by an overwhelming majority, and protected by the well-nigh impregnable position of their city, experienced but slightly the persecutions that dyed red the other provinces of Gaul until the day when the Protestants took up arms against their oppressors. The hour of revolt having sounded, the Rochelois were bound to be the first to take the field. Having married in 1545 Marcienne, the sister of Captain Mirant, one of the ablest and most daring sailors of La Rochelle, my father had three children from this marriage—Theresa, born in 1546; me, Antonicq, born in 1549; and Marguerite, born in 1551. I embraced the profession of my father, who, upon the death of Master Raimbaud, deceased without heirs, succeeded to the latter's business.
About four years ago, the hardship of the times brought to La Rochelle, where, together with other Protestants he sought refuge, Louis Rennepont, a nephew of Brother St. Ernest-Martyr, the bridegroom of Hena, who was burned together with her. Informed by his father of the tragic death of the Augustinian monk, Louis Rennepont conceived a horror for the creed of Rome, in whose name such atrocities were committed, and after his father's death he entered the Evangelical church. An advocate in the parliament of Paris, and indicted for heresy, he escaped the stake by his flight to La Rochelle. One day, as he strolled along the quay before our house, my father's sign—Odelin Lebrenn, Armorer—caught his eye. He stepped in to inquire into our relationship with Hena Lebrenn. From us he gathered the information that Hena was his uncle's wife, married to him by a Reformed pastor. Louis Rennepont, from that time almost a relative of ours, continued to visit the house. He soon seemed smitten with the grace and virtues of my sister Theresa. His love was reciprocated. He was a young man of noble heart, and of a modest and industrious disposition. Stripped of his patrimony by the sentence of heresy, he earned his living at La Rochelle with his profession of advocate. My father appreciated the merits of Louis Rennepont, and granted him my sister Theresa. They were married in 1568. Their happiness justifies my father's hopes.
My youngest sister Marguerite disappeared from the paternal home at the age of eight, under rather mysterious circumstances which I shall here state.
Since his establishment at La Rochelle, my father was animated by a lively desire to take us all—mother, sisters and myself—to Brittany, on a kind of pious pilgrimage to the scene of our family's origin, near the sacred stones of Karnak. The journey by land was short, but the religious war included in those days Brittany also in its ravages. My father feared to risk himself and family among the warring factions. His brother-in-law Mirant, the sailor, having to cross from La Rochelle to Dover, proposed that my father take ship with him on his brigantine. The vessel was to touch at Vannes, the port nearest Karnak. Our pilgrimage accomplished, we were to set sail for Dover, whither my father frequently consigned arms, and where he would have the opportunity of a personal interview with his correspondent in that place. After that, my uncle Mirant was to return to France with a cargo of merchandise. Our absence would not exceed three weeks. My father accepted the proposition with joy. Shortly before the day of our departure my sister Marguerite was taken sick. The distemper was not dangerous, but it prevented her from joining in the trip, the day for which was set and could not be postponed. My parents left her behind in the charge of her god-mother, an excellent woman, the wife of John Barbot, a master copper-smith. We departed for Vannes on board the brigantine of Captain Mirant. My sister Marguerite recovered soon after. Her god-mother frequently took her out for a walk beyond the ramparts. One day the child was playing with other little girls near a clump of trees, and strayed away from Dame Barbot. When her god-mother looked for her to take her home, the child was nowhere to be found. The most diligent searches, instituted for weeks and months after the occurrence, were all in vain. The child had been abducted; the kidnappers remained undiscovered. Marguerite was wept and her loss grieved over by us all.
Our pilgrimage to Karnak, the cradle of the family of Joel, left a profound, an indelible impression upon me. I shall later return to some of the consequences of that trip. Captain Mirant, my mother's brother, a widower after only a few years' marriage, had a daughter named Cornelia. I loved her from early infancy as a sister. As we grew up our affection for each other waxed warmer. Our parents expected to see us man and wife. Cornelia gave promise by her virtue and bravery of resembling one of those women belonging to the heroic age of Gaul, and of approving herself worthy of her ancestry. Having lost her mother when still a child, my cousin occasionally accompanied her father on his rough sea voyages. The character of the young girl, like her beauty, presented a mixture of virility, grace and strength. At the time when this narrative commences, Cornelia was sixteen years of age, myself twenty. We were betrothed, and our families had decided that we were to be united in wedlock three or four years later.
My grand-uncle the Franc-Taupin yielded, shortly after his arrival at La Rochelle, to the solicitations of my grandfather Christian, who, feeling his approaching dissolution, entreated the brave soldier of adventure not to separate himself from his nephew, soon surely to be an orphan. The Franc-Taupin adjourned the execution of his resolution to avenge the death of Bridget and Hena. He remained near my father Odelin and enrolled himself with the archers of the city. As a consequence of our family sorrows, he gave up his former disorderly life. The guardianship of his nephew, then still a lad, brought him new duties. He earned by his merit the post of sergeant of the city militia. But when the massacre of Vassy caused the Protestants to rise from one end of Gaul to the other, and these finally ran to arms, the Franc-Taupin departed to join the insurgents. He was elected the chief of his band, and proved himself pitiless in his acts of reprisal. He had sworn to revenge the papist atrocities committed upon his sister and niece. The provinces of Anjou and Saintonge took a large part in the religious ware that broke out. My father, although married several years before, left his establishment to enlist himself among the volunteers of the Protestant army, and deported himself bravely under the orders of Coligny, Condé, Lanoüe and Dandelot. He was twice wounded. I accompanied him in the second armed uprising of 1568, when, alas! I had the misfortune of losing him. I took the field at his side as a volunteer, leaving in La Rochelle my mother, my sister Theresa, then the wife of Louis Rennepont, and my cousin Cornelia, who desired to join her father, Captain Mirant, on a cruise against the royal ships, while I was to combat on land in the army of Coligny.