"I forgot," she whispered, her voice unsteady, "I forgot. In this instance the case is reversed. They are all of my faith--you--you--would be sacrificed. They are infuriated with these rebels. Alas!" she almost wailed, "they would not spare you. It is not to be dreamed on. Anywhere but there."
"Nay," he said, "nay. It must in truth be there. And for me fear not. I have saved the daughter of his Excellency for them. Even though they know I am this accursed thing in their eyes, a Protestant, they would scarcely repay me cruelly for that."
"They must never know it. By silence you are safe. Oh, let us attempt to reach it. It is but two or, at most, three leagues. I have been there with my father. He will bless you, worship you for saving me."
"Three leagues! three leagues!" he repeated, "three leagues! For me, nothing. Yet for you, a delicate woman!"
"The very thought, the hope of safety, inspires me. I am strong again. Come, monsieur, come, I beseech you, for both our sakes. For yours, for you who have saved me, above all."
"Not so," he said. "I am a man who has ventured into the tiger's jaws and must take my chance. I am of poor account."
And now they prepared to set forth to reach this place of refuge, yet both knew what dangers might well be expected ere they got there, if ever. For during the time which had elapsed since the Camisards, as at this time they began to be called, had risen and commenced their resistance by the slaughter of the Abbé Du Chaila, all Languedoc had been overrun with them and was in a state of terror. Also the flight of the inhabitants had become entirely reversed. It was the Catholics and the Catholic priests who were rushing out of the province as fast as they could go, while from their mountain homes the revolted Protestants who had taken up arms were pouring down in hundreds. Already, too, the cities were in a state of siege and the inhabitants fortifying themselves within the walls. That very night, although neither Martin nor Urbaine knew of it, the ancient city of Nîmes, the Rome of France, expected to be besieged, put to sword ere dawn; for by the time that they were hoping to accomplish their night journey to the Château de Servas the few dragoons who had escaped the slaughter which had fallen on Poul's detachment, as well as the fusileers and another band of cavalry and infantry who had been routed close by while under the command of De Broglie, had ridden pell-mell into Nîmes, their weapons broken or lost, their heads covered with blood, themselves and their horses wounded. Rode in the bearers of awful tidings as to how the fanatics were led by two persons, one a lad of sixteen named Cavalier, the other a man a few years older named Roland; rode in and told how women fought on their side as the Amazons of old had fought; how men preached and encouraged them and sang canticles as they did so; of how they spared none; had beheaded Poul; had captured Baville's daughter and slain her, if not worse. Described also, with white quivering lips, how the tocsins were ringing from half a hundred churches in flames; told of priests flung across their own altars and done to death, of soldiers mutilated ere slain--all by bands of men who seemed to vanish into the air the moment after their deeds were accomplished.
Meantime Baville's daughter and her rescuer were threading their course through the meadows and pastures that fringed the wayside, because thus her feet were more eased by the long, cool grass on which now the dews of night had fallen, or slowly finding a path through chestnut woods. Sometimes, too--leaving the river behind them and knowing they were going aright since its distant hum became fainter and fainter, and since, ever before them, yet afar off, the summits of La Lozère and Bouquet stood out more clear against the heavens--they passed vineyards on which the black grapes hung in clusters, when, pausing, they moistened their lips with the soft, luscious fruit. Yet went on and on, resting at intervals, and then forward again, the girl leaning on the arm of her companion--the arm of the man whose faith she had been taught to despise and execrate.
But once they had to stop for another reason than her fatigue, to pause in a great chestnut wood where the grass which grew at the feet of the trees was as soft and silky as thistle-down, and where the deer stared at them with wide-open, startled eyes; to pause because they heard a hundred yards away the voices of a band of men which passed along the wide road.
"It is they," she whispered, trembling. "It is they. Whom do they seek?"