He had much to occupy his thoughts at that time, for there were rumours of renewed persecutions of the Protestants by command of bishops and clergy. Not contented with refusing them the legal registration of marriage and the certificate of death, it was said that a general confiscation of property was ordered, and that recantation or death by fire and sword might once more be the doom of the sectaries. Anton Dormeur was frequently at Alais with Bartholde, and the people there whispered that it would go hard with the manufacturer when the dragoons came. He had already made some preparations, however. Always in communication with the refugees who had settled in Spitalfields and Coventry, he held money in England. This was pretty well understood; but what few people knew was, that for weeks before the blow fell he had had a ship ready, and that some of his most valuable effects and merchandise were stowed among the cargo. This very cup was hidden away in a case, surrounded by silk brocade and velvet, clothes, and lace. For days the vessel swung with the tide, waiting for Anton Dormeur, who sought to bring his daughter Mathilde and her husband, with their child, to be his companions in flight. But Bartholde delayed, loath to part from the farms and land that were his birthright. He and his little boy—the first and only child—were on a visit to the old lonely house and its grave master, when a messenger, his horse covered with blood and foam, came thundering at the door, with the fearful intelligence that the alarm was ringing at Alais, and that the persecutions of the Protestants had begun.
Bartholde was in the saddle in a minute.
"Stay for nothing, but bring my daughter. Come on straight for your lives to Saint Jean," cried the old man. "There will be post-horses there, and I will order relays along the road where the people know me. Meantime I will take the boy; he will be safe with me."
They never met again in this world. Bartholde died fighting on his own threshold; his wife, the beautiful Mathilde, perished, perhaps, in the flames. At all events, a wild figure was seen at an upper window just before the great leaden roof of the château curled and fell. Fire and sword spread in a widening circle round that district; the house of Anton Dormeur was sacked. Achille Dufarge and his wife, the lovely Sara, were in Paris, where no word reached them till long after, and then only by a stranger, an old workman of the factory in Languedoc; so the months went by, and then came the awful revolution that put an end to the royal family, and enthroned the guillotine. Then the revolution passed out of the hands of men, and the destinies of France seemed to be in the keeping of murderers like Robespierre and Couthon. By that time the old man and his grandson were in England; the boy having grown to be a tall and handsome youth.
. . . . . .
On the door-posts of a tall gaunt-looking house in a street of that strange part of London lying between Spitalfields and Norton Folgate, and known as "The Liberty of the Old Artillery Ground," might be seen the words "A. Dormeur, Silk Manufacturer."
It was a dim-looking place enough, where the yellow blinds were nearly always drawn over the front windows, and the summer's dust collected in the corners of the high flight of steps, and was blown round and round in little eddies, along with bits of string and snippings of patterns or shreds of silk and cotton. The front door stood open every day from ten till five, to give buyers access to the warehouse, in which Anton Dormeur—old, withered, slightly bent, and with a set look upon his face which even his rare smile failed to disturb—unrolled pieces of silk, made bargains, examined with a critical eye and with the aid of a magnifying glass the fabrics brought in by the weavers, and in fact carried on his trade as though he had for ever been separated from the tragedy which befel him in Languedoc nearly fourteen years before.
And yet that heavy affliction darkened his mind as he rolled and unrolled his silks, or carefully matched the skeins that came from the dyers. The sun was shining through the windows, the lower panes of which were dulled in order to obtain a clear high light; but the cloud upon his puckered brow was not lifted. Hour by hour the warehouse clock ticked away the afternoon. Customers departed; the sound of the scale and the clatter of reels and bobbins, in another warehouse beyond the long passage, had ceased since midday.
Presently some passing thought too bitter for absolute self-control, crossed the old man's mind, and he bowed down his gray head for a moment upon his folded hands; but the next instant glanced round with the half-startled look of a man who fears he has betrayed himself. He was busy over his patterns again as he noted that a young man at the other end of the room was regarding him with a wistful, pitying look.
"Come, Antoine," he said, "you have had a long day's work, and we dined early; it is time you had finished your ledger for the day. Come and help me put up these pieces, and then get you into the fresh air. Would that I could make the old house more cheerful for thee, boy; but remember it is all thine own one day, and do not add to the sorrows of the past, anxiety for the future!"