"I have thought all through the night, even while I watched that man's house burned beneath him as he hid on the roof; while I saw him done to death. And, thus thinking, became resolved. Henceforth no power on earth, no horror of awful death, of mutilation after death, can make me disguise, keep back the acknowledgment of the form of faith I belong to----"
"Alas, alas! it will bring death."
"It may do so. If it does it must be borne. Yet, at the worst, I will not think it can come to that. I am a Protestant; here, in your own land, a Huguenot. Yet I am not one of those who slew the abbé. Shall never imbrue my hands in blood. Ask only to be left in peace."
"Alas," Buscarlet exclaimed again, "that is all that we have asked--all! Yet you see the end. The woman who dominates Louis allows no free thought, no religion other than her own; has dragooned Huguenots into Roman Catholicism since the day the Revocation was pronounced, has hung and burned and broken those who refuse to change. How, then, can you hope to escape--you who were among the crowd that performed last night's work?"
"I took no part in his murder. Would have saved him if I could----"
"That will not save you. Martin, you must flee from here at once. Escape out of France. Be gone while there is yet time."
"And de Rochebazon! His children's heritage! What of that?"
Even as he uttered the words his determination to remain here at all costs and in deadly peril seemed to act upon the old man's mind, to clear his brain so clouded with the awful events of the past night, to bring back to him the power of speaking and reasoning clearly, for slowly yet weightily he answered:
"As that heritage has done before, so it must do now. Must wait, remain in abeyance. This is no time to prosecute your search. No sense of justice on your part toward a distant kinsman can demand that you should sacrifice your own life, at the least your liberty. Moreover, remember, he or his descendants may not be here in Languedoc; may be leagues away, in remote lands, for aught you know; even in your own country, the home of the oppressed since James fell."
"They said at Geneva it was beyond all doubt that he who was rightly the de Rochebazon came here."