We lived somewhat more luxuriously than most of our neighbors, for Jeanne had been cook at the great house like her mother before her, and Simon was wont to boast that his wife could dress him a dish of eggs in as many different ways as there are days in a month. Still we lived very plainly, and I fared like the rest. I learned to read from Jeanne, who was a good scholar and spoke very pure French, and she also taught me to sew, to spin, and to knit, for the Norman women are famous knitters. Besides these lessons, which were my tasks and strictly exacted, I learned to milk and churn, to make hay and plant beans, and, in short, to do all that Lucille did.
We all had our daily tasks of Scripture to learn by heart, according to the admirable custom of the French reformers, and we also learned and sang Clement Marot's hymns and psalms. I have still in my possession an old French Bible with these psalms bound in the same volume. The index is curious: certain psalms are distinguished as "To be sung when the church is under affliction and oppression; when one is prevented from the exercise of worship; when one is forced to the combat; to be sung on the scaffold." Such are some of its divisions—very significant, certainly.
On Sundays we learned the Catechism, and the "Noble Lesson" which had come to us from our Vaudois ancestors, read the stories in the Bible, and took quiet walks in the fields and lanes. Our Roman Catholic neighbors used to assemble after mass on the village green for dancing and other sports, but none of the Reformed were ever seen at these gatherings.
Once, when David was about fourteen, he ran away from home and went to Granville to see the great procession on the feast of St. Michael, which fell that year on a Sunday. Lucille did not know where he had gone, but I did, for he had told me his intention, and I had vainly tried to dissuade him. I did not mean to tell, but I was forced to do so. I shall never forget the horror of his mother nor the stern anger of his father.
"The boy is lost to us—lost forever!" I heard Jeanne say to her husband.
"No, no, ma bonne!" answered Simon soothingly. "The boy has done wrong, no doubt, but he will return—he will repent—all will be well."
"Ah, you do not know!" returned Jeanne in a shrill accent of horror. "There are monks at Granville—missionaries. He will be betrayed into some rash act of worship—a reverence to the image—an entry into the church. They will call it an act of catholicity—they will take him away—he will never return to us. Or if he should refuse them, they will accuse him of blaspheming the Virgin and St. Michael."
Jeanne threw herself down in her seat and covered her eyes, and Simon's calm face was clouded with grave anxiety; but he spoke in the same reassuring tone.
"Little mother, you are borrowing trouble. Is not our Lord at Granville as well as here, and can he not take care of our son? I trust he will be betrayed into no rashness; though the idle curiosity of a child has taken him in the way of danger."
"But, Father Simon, will God take care of David now that he has been a naughty boy?" I ventured to ask.