Yet, sweet as was the sense of that freedom, sweet, too, as was the hope that ere many more hours would be passed he and Urbaine would have met once more never again to part, he could not but reflect upon the heartbrokenness of Baville as he bid him Godspeed.
"Save her, save her," he whispered as they stood at the Great Gate, "save her from France, above all from the knowledge of what happened so long ago. Fly with her to Switzerland and thence to your own land; there you can live happily. And--and--tell me ere you go that from your lips she shall never know aught. Grant me that prayer at the last."
"Out of my love for her, out of the hopes that in all the years which I pray God to let me spend with her, no sorrow may come near her, I promise. If it rests with me you shall be always the same in her memory as you have been in actual life. I promise. And perhaps when happier days shall dawn, you and your wife and she may all meet again."
"Perhaps," Baville replied, "perhaps." Then from the breast of this man whose name was execrated in every land to which French Protestants had fled for asylum, this man of whom all said that his heart, if heart he had, was formed of marble, there issued a deep sob ere he moaned: "Be good to her. Shield her from harm, I implore you. She was all we had to love. Almost the only thing on earth that loved me. Farewell!"
[CHAPTER XXX.]
FREE.
The mountains again! And Martin free! Happy, too, because, as the cold blast swept down from their summits to him as he rode swiftly through the valley toward the commencement of the ascent, he knew that it came from where, high up, Urbaine waited for her freedom and for his return. Knew it beyond all thought and doubt; knew, divined that daily those clear, pure eyes looked for him to be restored to her, was sure that nightly, ere she sought her bed, she prayed upon her knees for him and his safety. Had she not said it, promised it, ere they parted? Was not that enough? Enough to make him turn in his wrist another inch upon his horse's rein, press that horse's flanks once more, urge it onward to where she was?
Yet though he travelled with Baville's pass in his pocket, though he went toward where the Camisards were, who would receive him with shouts of exaltation and welcome, he knew that again he rode with his life in his hands as, but a night or so before, he had thus ridden from the seacoast to Nîmes. For there were those abroad now who would be like enough to tear Baville's pass up and fling it in his face if he were caught, soldiers who served Montrevel and Montrevel alone, men whose swords would be through his heart or the bullets from their musketoons embedded in his brain, if he but fell into their hands. For on this very night the great bravo had broken with the Intendant ere he had quit Nîmes to march toward the Cévennes and make one more attack upon the strongholds of the "rebels"; had sworn that ere Villars arrived, who was now on the way from Paris to supersede Julien, he would wipe out those rebels so that, when Louis' principal soldier should appear on the scene, he would find none to crush.
Also he had sent forward on the very road which Martin now followed a captain named Planque (a swashbuckler like himself) and a lieutenant named Tournaud, in command of three thousand men, all of whom had declared with many an oath that they took their orders from their commander and from no governor or intendant who ever ruled.
At first Martin had not known this, would indeed not have known it at all, had not his suspicions been aroused by finding that, as he rode on swiftly toward where the principal ascent to the mountains began, near Alais, he was following a vast body of men, among whom were numbers of the hated Pyrenean Miquelets; men who marched singing their hideous mountain songs and croons, such as in many a fray had overborne the shrieks of the dead and dying.