"Alas, unhappy man!" exclaimed Buscarlet, still firm in his speech now, and undaunted before the distracted marquis, who had already torn his sword from its scabbard and stood before them gesticulating like a madman in his grief and rage. "What use to destroy empty houses, barren walls? Besides ourselves there is no living soul left in all Montvert."
"What!" the two other men exclaimed together in their surprise. "What! All gone? None left?"
And now on the Intendant's face there came another look, also the return of his dark colour, as he said:
"Gone, yet you proclaim their innocence. Tell us in one breath that they are guiltless, in another that they have fled. Do the innocent flee?"
"They feared your cruelty. They knew that your Church spares not the innocent; that it punishes them alike with the guilty."
"Blasphemer!" Baville exclaimed, though still his voice was low and calm, belying the terrible accusation which lay beneath this word. Terrible anywhere in France--now pious by law!--but doubly so in the Cévennes.
"I blaspheme not," Buscarlet said, waxing even bolder. "Pause. Look back. Twenty-seven Protestants have been done to death by you in the past month----"
"Silence!" the other ordered, still in his unruffled voice, yet uttering words enough to affright the boldest, "or I will have you gagged; if that suffices not, strung up there," and he pointed to the lamp.
Then turning to the marquis, he said:
"Be sure your uncle shall be avenged. Let them flee to the mountains, yet we will have them. Extirpate them like rats in a granary. Julien, the field marshal, has left Paris to assist in the holy work. Meanwhile, de Peyre, send your men into every house in the place; see if this abandonment is true. If not, if you find any, bring them before me. As for you, and you," directing a glance at the pastor and Martin, "you will sleep to-night in Alais. To-morrow a court will be held." Then he added, under his breath, as though talking to himself: