Then taking up the paper on which the sovereign seal was not yet fixed, he delivered it to the French ambassador, saying somewhat haughtily, “Take it back to your monarch, and tell him that Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, rejects the treaty, until the King of France, and his prime minister, shall pledge their assistance in succoring the persecuted Protestants of Piedmont! Until such pledge shall be given, our negotiations are ended.”
Bordeaux reddened with resentment as he folded the rejected paper. “The war is then inevitable,” he muttered. “Shall I say, sire, that you refuse the treaty?”
“Say I will wage war with all Europe but this persecution of Christians shall cease!”
“But the King of France can do nothing, my lord,” persisted Bordeaux. “The Duke of Savoy may make laws for his subjects as independently as your highness; and no foreign force can be brought to bear upon them in those mountain wilds.”
Cromwell stamped his foot with impatience. “My word has gone forth, and ‘the ships of England shall sail over the Alps,’ sooner than another hair of their heads shall perish! Tell both your masters that this is my decree.”
The Frenchman was indignant at this speech of the Lord Protector, for although every Frenchman understood that Mazarin, the prime minister, was the real monarch, they could not endure to have it thus thrown in their teeth, and he angrily asked permission to retire, which was readily granted; and the parliament was soon after adjourned.
That same evening young Francois Waldo—for that was the name of the Vaudois youth—sat in the palace of Whitehall, with the Protector and his family; and though but a simple peasant-boy, he looked with a calm indifference upon the courtly splendor that surrounded him; for he had been bred amid the wild magnificence of the snow-capped Alps, and they pictured to his youthful imagination the “everlasting hills,” of which he had early been taught to sing, as he sat with the pious shepherds tending their flocks in the evening starlight.
It was a sad story he told of his poor, persecuted people, how, in the very heart of winter, six stout Catholic regiments had broken in upon their quiet homes, to overpower and destroy; how the innocent children had been dashed from the icy pinnacles—the fathers and mothers beheaded—their villages burned to the ground—and those who fled for safely to the mountain-caverns, were hunted like wild beasts by the Pope’s minions; and Cromwell—the lion warrior and the dauntless regicide—the unflinching patriot, and the powerful sovereign, clasped the poor fugitive to his heart, and loudly bewailed the fate of these martyred Christians.
“Had you parents, and were they victims of this terrible slaughter?” weepingly inquired Mary Cromwell, one of the Protector’s daughters.
“Yes, lady—parents; and a sweet little blue-eyed sister, like the little girl by your side;” and he pointed to a beautiful child that had been listening with a sorrowful face, and eyes brimfull, to his sad recital. “We called her our mountain violet; but in one night I was left alone—for they burned our cottage, and slew both parents and child. I was away, but came next morning and sat awhile by the mouldering embers of my home, and then rose up determined to seek the shores of Christian England, and plead for succor. I hid myself among the rocks and cliffs by day, and at night wandered, hungry and alone, until I reached the sea-coast, lest I should fall into the hands of the soldiers, and none escape to carry aid to my suffering nation.”