"We cannot do otherwise brother," said Roland, "we are too often put to the test by spies in various forms; therefore, the Lord, decides among us, He, who cannot be deceived."
"It is good for me to be among you and to look upon the faces of all these, honoured men: but where is Cavalier, the hero, whose name resounds throughout the whole country? my soul burns to know him and to fold him in my arms."
"Yonder he comes with his troop in wonderful array."
A multitude of Camisards, clad in pillaged uniforms, marched up the mountain shouting with joy, at their head rode their commander, mounted on a little horse, one feather in his large hat, a richly embroidered uniform hung wide and loosely on his little thin body. He sprang from his horse, and while Edmond was making his way up to him, impressed with the almost ludicrous appearance of the unbecoming attire, the so justly renowned Cavalier advanced towards him, and Edmond, in terror and in deep confusion, stepped back, for the young hero was no other than that miller-lad, whom he had a short time before in his father's house treated with so much contempt, nay even with cutting bitterness.
CHAPTER IX.
The young commander first cast a lengthened look of astonishment on Edmond, then approached nearer and kindly offered him his hand. "You are one of us," exclaimed he, "the Lord had so ordained, accept the assurance of my brotherly love."--
Edmond seized the hand of the young man, held it long between his own, and then said with great emotion: "What have I not to thank you for at a time, when I neither knew, nor loved you; you it was who saved our house, myself, my sister and my beloved father! The veil has fallen from my eyes, and I shall now honour and love you, and all these heroes of the faith, as brothers."
A circle had been formed and Roland now stepped with solemn demeanour into the middle of it. "We are assembled," commenced he, greatly affected, "in order to pass judgment upon a friend, who is to me one of the dearest among the most valiant of the fraternity, and in the work of the Lord a distinguished zealot. Here stands Catinat, the man at whose name all our foes tremble. You are all here present, Cavalier, thou Ravanel, Castanet, Duplant, and Salomon, Clary, Abraham Mazel is also arrived here. I have often spoken on this point already, my dear friends, and wished to make known to you my opinion, and my sentiments, that in this war, in which we are fighting for the Lord, we should refrain from shedding blood as much as possible. No, my beloved friends, we will not therein follow the example of our adversaries, that we may excel them in their emulation for murder, incendiarism and all their works of darkness. Let the enemy, who comes armed against us, be given up to the sword, the villain, who betrays us and belies the Lord, let him fall a sacrifice to his own malice, but the harmless labourer, the helpless priest, the defenceless woman, the child under age, let them be spared, what have they done to us? what can they accomplish against us? we have certainly always struggled to put our enemies to shame and to convince them by Christian charity, that our course is a just one; but here, Catinat has again acted in opposition to my express command, in his expedition he has set fire to three churches with his own hands, he has massacred two priests, his troop according to his orders has reduced villages to ashes, and women and children have been murdered and burned in the most terrible manner. Their lamentations, the cries of the orphans, the wailings of the parents rise up to heaven, and arouse and call upon the enduring goodness of the Lord to thrust and to fling us in his wrath far away from him, like useless vessels. If we ourselves act in this manner, wherefore should we complain, when the enemies open wide the jaws of cruelty and show less compassion than the wolf in the wilderness, or the beast of prey of the mountains, then, with justice, their stakes blaze threateningly to meet us! why are we angered, when their barbarous executioners, with greedy looks, grin up towards our mountains, and in malicious joy whet their instruments of death? then fight brute against brute, and devil against Belzebub! By what then shall the good cause be recognised? I will also remind you, my beloved brethren, that these deeds alienate the best people in the country from us; not only the Catholic, but such as are in their hearts our brothers, will desert us, as well as those newly converted ones, who would willingly help us. Have you then forgotten, how pious men of foreign lands, priests and leaders of armies, have warned us not to stain our hands with innocent blood, and our holy cause with firebrands and cruelty? all pious minds in distant lands who turn looks of love upon us will be mistaken, and will surely think, that innate cruelty and savage nature must be alleged for these proceedings, and not our conscience and the cause of the Lord that we fight for. It is misfortune enough, that we should be compelled to stand in arms against our lawful king, who wanted to rob us of our God; let this misfortune suffice, let us do no more than our conscience demands. Finally, I will remind you, that by your unanimous consent I am your leader since the glorious death of my uncle, my command must be held inviolable, and therefore, he whom I send out and who wilfully and maliciously transgresses my orders, must be considered a rebel to me, yourselves, and your holy undertaking. You know, that a like fault would be punished with death yonder among the royal party; far be it from me to wish to punish so severely a brother and hero of the faith on account of his disobedience to me, a weak and miserable instrument of the Lord, but I propose depriving him of his command, because none should command who cannot also obey. Now take counsel among yourselves, my valiant and enlightened friends, whether you will confirm my sentence? once more I repeat my fear, that by these transgressions of individuals, our great cause will go to ruin."
Roland retired from the circle and all were silent. "We will hear what Catinat says for himself," said the broad, stout Mazel, and Ravanel, a little swarthy man with dark looks and wild appearance advanced towards the gigantic man and cried: "speak brother, you know how I love you, I am yours, unto death, and do not believe that you can ever be in the wrong, for in your fist is the sword of the Lord!"
Catinat shook him by the hand, then raised his eyes and glanced with a calm and penetrating look round the circle, and said: "My valiant brethren, my fault is evident and undeniable, it consists in transgression against subordination, and as I have been as good a soldier as brother Roland, I know well that nothing can be said to extenuate it. If you speak in accordance with the letter of the law, I am then condemned, and I will lay down my command as obediently as I accepted it from Roland. But I again ask you here openly, as I have already expressed my opinion privately on this point, can we, the immediate instruments of the Most High, penetrated with his spirit, measure commands and quietly follow them? shall we, are we permitted to pursue this war as with men like ourselves, and may we obstinately withdraw the holy zeal, when the spirit descends upon us, and rules the sword in our hand, and hurls the burning brand into the idolatrous temples? Where then is truth, confidence, and faith, if I am not allowed to do what the Lord himself designs to exact from me. No my friends, my inspired brethren! let other self-sufficient, self-willed men then, who fight without heaven be your soldiers, I can never be such. Roland and Cavalier pardon the prisoners we make, send them back comforted, refresh and succour their wounded, and hope by their well-meaning kindness to arouse the hearts of the villains, that they may feel humane and brotherly towards us. But no such thing! they mock at this our weakness and call it folly, nay, they publicly term it cowardice and say, that we dare not act otherwise, for we are only rebels and outlaws. Assuredly we are a reproach to men, and when they catch, or wound us, they show us less compassion than they would testify to a dog, even if it had torn their dearest child to pieces. Is it then necessary to remind you of the barbarities they have practised upon our brethren, who have struggled and died for the faith? I will only recall to your recollection the holy father Brusson, who gloriously won the crown of martyrdom at Montpellier, the pious man, who preached the gospel to us poor abandoned flocks in the wilderness, and then took leave of us, drew no sword, lighted no torch, lived and died in the spirit of peace, and who only came once more to take a last farewell of the old mountains, and of the brethren, whom the faith had collected around him as his own children, with the gospel in his pocket, and with the bread of tears he wished to return to the strange land, which had become to him as his native country; and when they caught him, of what avail was his quiet, peaceable spirit to him? Under martyrdom, at which the imagination shudders, he was forced to resign his soul into the hands of the Creator. Need I remind you of the noble spirit of Seguier, how heroically he died and only scorned the cruel ingenuity of the executioner? But how then do you forget the wholly innocent people, who often assembled in the fields to worship God in secret and were put down by the faithful, as they call themselves, or, as it often happened, massacred, women and children not excepted? And you no longer remember, how parents who were suspected had their children torn from them to be brought up as Catholics, how the mothers never saw them more and how those under age, who then remained faithful to the Gospel, were ill-used, suffered martyrdom, or were doomed to languish in a dungeon? All then has escaped your recollection, what those priests of the pulpit and the altar have uttered against us, and the ban and the curse, and that we are no men and unworthy of commiseration, when we were still constrained to attend their mass? and is it even permitted that gentleness, virtue, consideration, humanity and pity, should be observed towards these bloodhounds? No, verily, we are ruined if we do not pay them in their own coin, return evil for evil, blood for blood, death for death, rage and fury for their inflexibility and severity. As they have been mild and compassionate towards us, let us respond to it; let the Christianity that they preach, fall burning down upon their own heads, let us dive into their hearts and entrails, to see where they have concealed pity and the feelings of humanity. Wherever our name resounds, they must turn pale, and when we set all against all, we shall then be able to know whether we lose, or win, we shall extirpate them, or they us; and if we cease to exist, so may the wasted wilderness, the depopulated land, the ruined palaces, and burnt-down temples and horror and desolation, announce to the after-world what we have suffered and done. What are a priest, country or king in comparison to my faith, in comparison to the fire that kindles through all my veins and burns in every fibre? Do you think you are permitted to reason and be men of the ordinary world? This is precisely what makes our adversaries strong and prepares so many defeats for us, because we still turn our looks back upon the world and its wisdom. Here stand our prophets, arrest then the spirit, exorcise it when it rushes through your souls like a hurricane, like a flash of lightening and burst forth from their consecrated mouths the words of the Eternal on the wings of the spirit. You know that this miraculous gift is denied to me, to Roland and to many, as in our Duplant, Cavalier, or Salomon, when all recollection vanishes and every ordinary human feeling becomes extinct, in the same manner does it happen to me, when we at length fight in the tumult, or pass by triumphantly the churches of our foes: from every dumb brick their scorn grins at me, from every beam the blood of our martyrs so arrogantly shed cries out to me; then, when the malignant followers of their priests sneak up to me with feigned supplications, then indeed, something roars within me for revenge, like a lion if he has once tasted blood, the sword and dagger pierce through their breasts as they kneel before me, my whole heart bounds, when the laughing flames rise up triumphantly through the edifice, when in the blaze the beams are consumed and fall down and bury women and children in the red glow. This then is no human fancy that gladdened me, but the true spirit of the Almighty that impels me onward, and the bishop, the king himself, even our prophets may advance threateningly and imploringly towards me in vain in these highly consecrated moments, nay should an angel descend from heaven and call out to me to desist, I would not listen to it. Thus I am brethren, and I neither can nor will be otherwise, this I swear here, by the Eternal God!"