‘Misérable butor, vous avez fait une belle cacade’—‘Blockhead, you have made a pretty mess of it’—was Charles Emmanuel’s greeting to d’Albigni when he heard the truth; and with that he mounted his horse and rode away to Turin, without even troubling to hear the fate of his prisoners. These, it should be added, were all beheaded in the course of the next day; while the heads of those who had been killed were collected and spiked, as an ornament to the ramparts and a terror to evil-doers.
M. de Bèze, who was now an old man and very deaf, had slept through the fighting undisturbed, and knew nothing of it until his friends told him the story the next morning. Though he had now retired from the active duties of the pastorate, he dressed himself and went down to the Cathedral of St. Pierre, where he mounted the pulpit stairs and called upon the congregation to sing Psalm cxxiv.—the Psalm which begins:
‘If the Lord Himself had not been on our side, now may Israel say: if the Lord Himself had not been on our side, when men rose up against us.’
The Psalm which ends:
‘Our soul is escaped, even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler: the snare is broken, and we are delivered.
‘Our help standeth in the name of the Lord: who hath made heaven and earth.’
It was the old Reformer’s last public appearance—and a fitting one, giving as it does the last dramatic touch to the most dramatic incident in Genevan annals. He lived until 1605, but he was growing feebler and feebler. He suffered from no actual malady, but it was obvious to all that the light was flickering out. His intellect, however, was clear until the last, and the picture of his last days, drawn by his biographer, Antoine La Faye, recalls Bunyan’s picture of the Christian pilgrims waiting in the Land of Beulah for their summons to cross the river to the shining city.
The Venerable Company of Pastors in conclave resolved that no day should be allowed to pass without at least two of their number paying him a visit. For the rest he found his pleasure in reading grave and pious colloquies and sermons, and particularly in those words of Augustine: ‘Long have I lived; long have I sinned. Blessed be the name of the Lord!’ And, at the last, ‘without pain, and without a struggle, all his senses, as it seemed, failing him simultaneously, in one single instant, he gave back his soul to God, his bodily pilgrimage having lasted eighty-six years, three months, and nine days, and forty of his years having been spent in the holy office of the ministry.’
‘M. de Bèze,’ La Faye continues, ‘was a man of sturdy build, conspicuous beauty, and health so vigorous that he often said that he did not know the meaning of a headache. He displayed high talents, accurate judgment, a tenacious memory, and remarkable eloquence, while in courtesy of manner he was second to no one. In view of the great gifts thus recited, and his great age (though these are things less to be regarded than his learning and his piety), many used to speak of M. de Bèze as the Phœnix of his time.’