The Huguenot: A Tale of the French Protestants. Volumes I-III

by G. P. R. James

"It is accomplished!" cried the pastor, as he gazed upon the destruction of the spire. "It is accomplished! Oh, Albert, how natural is weakness and superstition to the human heart! Can we see the fall of that building in which for many a long year our pure faith has offered up its prayers, unmingled with the vanities of a false creed, and not feel as if the will of God were against us--as if that were a sign unto us that his favour had past from us, at least in this land--as if it were a warning for us to gird ourselves, and, shaking off the dust of our feet, to seek another place of abiding?"

He paused not while he spoke, however, but rode on quickly, in order to aid and direct in saving any part of the building that yet remained; but as they went he still continued to pour forth many a sorrowful ejaculation, mingling, with personal grief for the destruction of an object which had for long years been familiar with his eye, and associated with every feeling of home, and peace, and of happy dwelling amongst his own people, and of high duties well performed, vague feelings of awe, and perhaps of superstition, as he read in that sight a warning, and a sign, and a shadowing forth of the Almighty will, that the church whereof he was a member was destined to destruction also.

Before the party reached the village, the spire had been completely consumed; but the peasantry had fortunately succeeded in preventing the fire from reaching the body of the building, and the rain was now pouring down in torrents, as the tears of an angel of wrath over the accomplishment of his painful mission; so that all that remained was to ascertain what damage had been done. Both the clergyman and the Count remarked several strangers standing round the church offering no assistance to any one, and only communing together occasionally in a low voice on the proceedings of the Protestant population. Albert of Morseiul gazed upon them with some surprise, and at length said, "I think, gentlemen, you might have given some little aid and assistance in this matter."

"What!" cried one of the men, "aid in upholding a temple of heretics! What, keep from the destruction with which God has marked it, a building which man should long ago have pulled down!"

"I did not know you, gentlemen," replied the Count. "There are some circumstances in which people may be expected to remember that they are fellow-men and fellow-Christians, before they think of sects or denominations."

Thus saying, he turned and left them, accompanying Claude de l'Estang to his dwelling.

"Never mind them, Albert, never mind them," said the pastor as they walked along. "These are the men who are engaged daily in seducing my flock. I have seen them more than once as I have been going hither and thither amongst the people; but I have heeded them not, nor ever spoken to them. Those who can sell themselves for gold--and gold is the means of persuasion that they are now adopting--are not steadfast or faithful in any religion, and are more likely to corrupt others, and to lead to great defection by falling away in a moment of need, than to serve or prop the cause to which they pretend to be attached. I trust that God's grace will reach them in time; but in a moment of increasing danger like this, I would rather that they showed themselves at once. I would rather, if they are to sell themselves either for safety or for gold, that they should sell themselves at once, and let us know them before the fiery ordeal comes. I would rather have to say, they went forth from us, because they were not of us, than think them children of light, and find them children of darkness."

"I fear," said the Count in a low voice, "I fear that they are waging the war against us, my good friend, in a manner which will deprive us of all unanimity. It is no longer what it was in former times, when the persecuting sword was all we had to fear and to resist. We have now the artful tongues of oily and deceitful disputants. We have all the hellish cunning of a sect which allows every means to be admissible, every falsehood, every misstatement, every perversion, every deceit, to be just, and right, and righteous, so that the object to be obtained is the promotion of their own creed. Thus the great mass of the weak or the ill-informed may be affected by their teachers; while at the same time gold is held out to allure the covetous--the deprivation of rank, station, office, and emolument, is employed to drive the ambitious, the slothful, and the indifferent--and threats of greater severity of persecution, mental torture, insult, indignity, and even death itself, are held over the heads of the coward and the fearful."

They thus conversed as they went along, and the opinion of each but served to depress the hopes of the other more and more. Both were well acquainted with the spirit of doubt and disunion that reigned amongst the Protestants of France, a spirit of disunion which had been planted, fostered, and encouraged by every art that a body of cunning and unscrupulous men could employ to weaken the power of their adversaries. On arriving at the house of Claude de l'Estang, the pastor put into the hands of his young friend the petition to the King which he had drawn up, and which perfectly meeting his views, was immediately sent off for general signature, in order to be transmitted to Paris, and presented to the monarch. Long before it reached him, however, the final and decisive blow had been struck, and, therefore, we shall notice that paper no more.

A long conversation ensued between the pastor and his young friend; and it was evident to the Count de Morseiul, that the opinions of Claude de l'Estang himself, stern and fervent as they had been in youth, now rendered milder by age, and perhaps by sorrow, tended directly to general and unquestioning submission, rather than to resistance: not indeed to the abandonment of any religious principle, not to the slightest sacrifice of faith, not to the slightest conformity of what he deemed a false religion. No; he proposed and he advised to suffer in patience for the creed that he held; to see even the temples of the reformed church destroyed, if such an extreme should be adopted; to see persons of the purer faith excluded from offices and dignity, and rank and emoluments; even to suffer, should it be necessary, plunder, oppression, and imprisonment itself, without yielding one religious doctrine; but at the same time without offering any resistance to the royal authority.