The red cockade

by Stanley John Weyman

Their stupid complacency nearly drove me mad; but to what purpose? "After all, you are very well here," the first speaker would say, shrugging his shoulders. "You are very well here."

"Better than under the hay!" the man who had pricked my leg was wont to answer.

And on that--this was a nightly joke--a general laugh would follow, and with another admonition to be patient, the Committee would take its leave.

Or sometimes the argument in the kitchen took a harsher and more dangerous turn; and one and another would recall for my benefit old tales of the dragooning, and Villars, and Berwick; tales, at which the blood crept, of horrible cruelties done and suffered, of stern mountain men and brave women who faced the worst that Kings could do, for the fate that they had chosen; of a great cause crushed but not destroyed, of a whole people trodden down in dust and blood, and yet living and growing strong.

"And do you think that after this," the speaker would cry when he had told me these things with flashing eyes, these things that his grandfathers had done and suffered--"do you think that after this we are not concerned in this business? Do you think that now, Monsieur, when, after all these years, vengeance is in our hand and our persecutors are tottering, we will sit still and see them set up again? Bishops and captains, canons and cardinals, where are they now? Where are the lands they stole from us? Gone from them! Where are the tithes they took with blood? Taken from them! Where is St. Etienne, whose father they persecuted? With his foot on their necks! And, after this, do you think that with all their processions and their idols and their Corpus Christi, they shall defy us and set up their rule again? No, Monsieur, no."

"But there is no question of that!" I said mildly.

"There is great question of that," was the stern answer. "In Nîmes and Montauban, at Avignon, and at Arles! We who live in the mountains have too often heard the storm gathering in the plain to be mistaken. These preachings and processions, and weeping virgins, this cry of Blasphemy--what do they mean, Monsieur? Blood! Blood! Blood! It has been so a score of times, it is so now! But this time blood will not be shed on one side only!"

And I listened and marvelled. I began to understand that the same word meant one thing in one man's mouth, and in another man's mouth another thing; and that that which worked easily and smoothly in the north might in the south roll hideously through fire and blood. In Quercy we had lost two or three châteaux, and a handful of lives, and for a few hours the mob had got out of hand--all with little enthusiasm. But here--here I seemed to stand on the brink of a great furnace under which the fires of persecution still smouldered; I felt the scorching breath of passion on my cheek, and saw through the white-hot scum old enmities seething with new and fiercer ambitions, old factions with new bigotries. I had heard Froment, now I heard these; it remained only to be seen whether Froment had his followers.

In the meantime, pent up in this place, I found little comfort in such predictions; I lived on my heart, and the better part of a fortnight went by. The woman at the inn was well satisfied to keep me; I paid, and guests were rare. And the Committee took pride in me; I was a living, walking token of their powers, and of the importance of their village. Now to the mingled misery and absurdity of my position, the anxiety on Mademoiselle's account, which this news of Nîmes caused me, added the last intolerable touch, and I determined at all risks to escape.

That I had no horse, and that at Suméne or Ganges I should inevitably be detained, had hitherto held me back from the attempt; now I could bear the position no longer, and after weighing all the chances, I determined to slip away some evening at sunset, and make my way on foot to Milhau. The villagers would be sure to pursue me in the direction of Nîmes, whither they knew that I was bound; and even if a party took the other road, I should have many chances of escape in the darkness. I counted on reaching Milhau soon after daybreak, and there, if the Mayor stood my friend, I might regain my horse, and with credentials travel to Nîmes by the same or another road.