"Neither can anything render your fate worse than it will be, reprobates," howled the Cordelier, "when the whole pack of you, to the very last one, will be hurled into the pit of everlasting flames!"
"By my sister's death!" the Franc-Taupin answered. "You make a mistake to mention 'flames.' You remind me of what I never forget—the fate of my niece, who, poor innocent creature, was plunged twenty-five times into the burning pyre. Brothers, instruct the tonsured fellow upon our reasons for enrolling ourselves in the corps of the Avengers of Israel, and why we are pitiless."
Accordingly, while the Franc-Taupin continued to whet his dagger, one of the Huguenot soldiers thus addressed the monk:
"Monk, listen! In full peace, after the Edict of Orleans, my house was invaded during my absence by a band of fanatics. The vicar of the parish led them. My old and blind father, who remained at home in my house, was strangled to death. It is to avenge my father that I enrolled myself with the militia of the Avengers of Israel. Therefore, death to the papist Church! Death to all the tonsured felons!"
"Marshal Montluc held command in Guyenne," continued a second Huguenot. "Six soldiers, attached to his ordnance company, lodged at our farm-house. One day they forced the cellar door, drank themselves drunk, and violated my brother's wife. Wounded with cutlass cuts in his endeavor to defend her, he dragged himself bleeding to the headquarters of Marshal Montluc to demand justice. Montluc ordered him to be hanged! Monk, I have sworn to avenge my brother! Death to the papists!"
"I also am from Guyenne, like my companion," came from another Huguenot. "One Sunday, relying upon the Edict of Longjumeau, I attended services with my mother and sister. A company of Marshal Montluc's swashbucklers, led by a chaplain, invaded the temple, chased out the women, locked up the men in the building, and set it on fire. There were sixty-five of us inside, all without arms. Nine succeeded in making their escape from the flames. The rest, burned, smothered by the smoke, or crushed under the falling roof, all perished. The women and young girls were dragged to a nearby enclosure; they were stripped to the skin; they were then compelled at the point of pikes to dance naked before the papist soldiers; and were finally forced to submit to the lechery of their persecutors. My mother was killed in her endeavor to save my sister from that crowning outrage; nine months later my sister died in childbed of the fruit of her rape. Monk, I swore to avenge my sister! I swore to avenge my mother! Death to the papist seigneurs and nobles!"
"I come from Montaland, near Limoges," a fourth Huguenot proceeded. "Three months after the new edict, I attended services with my young son. A band of peasants, led by two Carmelites and one Dominican, rushed into the temple. My poor boy's head—he was not yet fifteen—was cut off with a scythe, and stuck upon a pole. Monk, I swore to avenge my son! Death to the whole monastic vermin!"
"Was it I, perchance, who committed the acts that you are seeking to avenge?" howled the Cordelier. "Cowardly felons!"
At this the Franc-Taupin interrupted the sharpening of his dagger, cast a sardonic look at the monk, and cried: "Oh! Oh! This is the seventeenth time I hear that identical remark—you being the seventeenth tonsured gentleman whom I sentence. Do you see this little stick? I cut a notch in it at each reprisal. When I shall have reached twenty-five the bill will be settled—my sister's daughter was plunged twenty-five times into the furnace, at the order of the Catholic priests, the agents of the Pope.
"Monk, it stands written in the Bible: 'Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.'[66] Well, now, instead of burning you, as should be done, I purpose to make you a Cardinal."