3 182;? 01098 0241 LIB'? ' 3Y UNIVtRSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 3 1822 01098 0241 ' It is for the love of Christ that I am here and speak to you." PAGE 218. IN HIS NAME. A STORT OF THE WALDENSES, SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS AGO. BY E. E. JJALE. BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1903 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by PROPRIETORS OF " OLD AND NEW," In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Copyright, 1887, BY ROBERTS BROTHERS. Copyright, iqoi, BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE. UNIVERSITY PRESS: JOHN WILSON & SON, CAMBRIDGE. CONTENTS CHAP. I. FELICIE 5 II. JEAN WALDO 21 III. THE FLORENTINE 32 IV. UP TO THE HILLS 60 V. LOST AND FOUND 80 VI. THE CHARCOAL-BURNER ..... 89 VII. JOHN OF LUGIO 103 VIII. THE TROUBADOUR 144 IX. CHRISTMAS EVE ........ 196 X. CHRISTMAS DAWNS ....... 228 XI. TWELFTH NIGHT 246 XII. THE WHOLE STORY 259 APPENDIX 267 IN HIS NAME. CHAPTER L FELICIE. FiLiciE was the daughter of Jean Waldo. She was the joy of her father's life, and the joy of the life of Madame Gabrielle, his wife. She was well named Felicie ; for she was happy herself, and she made everybody happy. She was a sunbeam in the house, in the workshops, in the court-yard, and among all the neighbors. Her father and mother were waked in the morning by her singing ; and many a time, when Jean Waldo was driving a hard bargain with some spinner from the country, the mere sight of his pretty daughter as she crossed the court-yard, and the sound of her voice as she sang a scrap of a hymn or of a crusading song, would turn his attention from his barter, and he would relax his hold on the odd sols and deniers 6 IN HIS NAME. as if he had never clung to them. By the same spells she was the joy of the neighborhood. The beggars loved her, the weavers loved her, she could come and go as she chose even among the fullers and dyers, though they were rough fellows; and there was nothing she could not say or do with their wives and children. When the country spin ners came in with their yarn, or the weavers with their webs, they would wait, on one excuse or another, really to get a word with her ; and many was the rich farm in the valley to which Fe'licie went in the summer or autumn to make a long visit as she chose. Fe'licie was queen of her fath er's household and of all around. On one of the last days in December, Fe'licie was making a pilgrimage, after her own fashion, to the church of St. Thomas of Fourvibres. The hill of Fourvieres is a bold height, rising almost from the heart of the old city of Lyons. And Fd- Ucie liked nothing better than a brisk scramble to the top, where, as she said, she might see some thing. This was her almost daily " pilgrimage." She gave it this name in sport, not irreverent For, as she went, she always passed by old women IN HIS NAME. 7 who were making a pilgrimage, as they do to this hour, to the church of St. Thomas (now tLe church of " Our Lady "), which was supposed, and is sup posed, to have great power in saving from misfor tune those who offer their prayers there. Feli- cie in passing always looked into the little church, and crossed herself with holy water, and fell on her knees at an altar in a little chapel where was a picture of St. Fe'licie lying on the ground, with a vision of Our Lady above. The Fe'licie who was not a saint would say " Ave Maria " here, and " Our Father who art in heaven," and would wait a minute upon her knees to " see if her Father had any thing to say to her ; " and then would cross herself again, and, as she passed the great altar, would kneel once more, and so would be out in the fresh air again. This was almost an every-day occurrence. On this day Fe'licie waited a little longer. Among a thousand votive offerings in the church, hung there by those who were grateful for an answer to their prayers, she saw to-day two which she had never seen before. They were pictures, not, to tell the truth, very well painted. But to 8 IN HIS NAME. the finer or coarser art was a matter of very little account. Each of them represented a scene of preservation in danger. In one of them, a young girl, hardly older than Felicie herself, was to be seen, as she safely floated from a river which bore the ruins of a broken bridge ; in the other, a young knight on horseback received unhurt the blows of five terrible Saracens. The Holy Mother could be seen in the clouds with a staff on her arm, turning off the lances of the Paynim. Fdlicie looked a moment at this picture, but long, very long, at the other. The disaster which it represented was one which the girl had seen herself, and which had made upon her an impression for her life. Only the year before, Richard the Lion-hearted and Philip Augustus of France had come to Lyons to gether, each with a splendid retinue of knights and other soldiers, on their way to the crusade. The Archbishop of Lyons was then really an in dependent prince, and with all the dignity of an independent prince he had received the two kings. There had been much feasting. There had been a splendid ceremony of high mass in the cathedral, IN HIS NAME. 9 and at last, when the two armies had recruited themselves, it was announced that they were to take up their march to the Holy City. Of course all Lyons was on the watch to see the display. Some were in boats upon the river; some were waiting to see them cross the bridge ; some walked far out on the road. Girls with flowers threw them before the horse of the handsome English king, and priests in splendid robes carried the banners of the churches and sang anthems as they went. And all Lyons, young and old, was sure that in two or three short months this famous host would be in the City of our Lord ! Alas, and alas ! Hardly had the two kings themselves crossed the bridge, and a few of their immediate attendants with them, when, as the great crowd of towns-people pressed in upon the men- at-arms, all eager to see the show, they felt beneath their feet a horrid tremor for one mo ment, and then first one length of the bridge, and then, in terrible succession, two others, gave way, and the whole multitude soldiers, horses, men, women, and children were plunged into the Rhone below. The torrent was fast, and 10 IN HIS swept the ruin of timbers and the mass of strug gling people and beasts down in horrible confusion. The boatmen on the river did their best to rescue one and another, but were themselves in danger almost equal to that of those who were struggling in the water. The kings turned their horses and rode to the shore, but were as powerless as chil dren to help or even to command. And so, in one short hour, this day of glory and of victory was shrouded as in clouds of darkness. It seemed a miracle, indeed, that only a few. were drowned in the chaos ; but of those who were rescued, many were maimed for life, and there was not a house in Lyons but had its own tale of dan ger and suffering. The picture which Fe'licie stopped to look at in the church of St. Thomas represented this calam ity, and the preservation, by what was called miracle, of Gabrielle L'Estrange, a god-child of Fe'licie's mother. For herself, Fe'licie had seen the breaking of the bridge from the safe distance of her eyry on the mountain. The girl had wisely seen that even her father's good-will could not do much for a child like her in the crowd She had IN HIS NAME. II declared her determination to see the whole ; and while others went into the streets to see the ar dies pass them, Fe'licie had perched herself on the very top of the hill Fourvieres, where she could see every company join in the cortege, where she could hear the blast of music come up to her from the plain. As she sat here, as the army began to cross the river, the girl had been instantly conscious of the great disaster. She could see the companies in the rear break their ranks and rush towards the stream. She could see the dust of the ruin rise above the river, and could hear the hoarse shout ing of people screaming and commanding. She had guessed what the calamity was, and had hurried home to meet only too many stories of personal sorrow. Before night they had known how Gabrielle had been nearly lost, and how she had been saved. And all the mingled memories of that day of glory and of grief came back to Fe' licie again, now that she saw the picture of her playmate's preservation. She left the little church, crossing herself again with the holy water, a little more thoughtful than 12 IN HIS NAME. she entered it The " problem of evil " crossed her mind j and she asked herself why the Virgin should interpose to save Gabrielle, when others were left to perish. But she did not ask this with bitterness. She knew there was answer some where. And as she climbed yet higher up the hill, and came out on the glories of her eyry, the wonders of the winter prospect more beau tiful than ever, as she thought swept away all memories of death or sorrow or doubt ; and the child wrapped her thick shawl round her, as she sat beneath the shelter of a friendly wall, with the full sunlight blazing on her, to wonder for the thousandth time on the beauty of the panorama beyond and below. There are who say that no view in France can equal it ; and I am sure I do not wonder. At her feet the cheerful city lay between the rivers Saone and Rhone, which meet here, just below her. The spires and towers of the cathedral and the churches, even the tallest columns of smoke, as they rose in the still air, were all far, far below the girl on her eyry. Beyond, she could see at first large farms with their granges, their immense IN HIS NAME. 13 bay- stacks, their barns, and their orchards. She could pick out and name one and another where at the vintage and at harvest she had made pleas ant visits this very year. Further, all became brown and purple and blue and gray. Sometimes on a hill she could make out a white church-tower, or the long walls of a castle, just some sign that men and women and happy girls like herself lived there. But Felicie's eye did not rest so long on these. Far above and still beyond oh, how far beyond ! was her " old friend," as the girl called Mont Blanc. And to-day he had his rosy face, she said. The sunset behind her was making the snow of the mountain blush with beauty. And nothing can be conceived more dreamy and more lovely than this "vision," as Felicie called it, which even she did not see five times in a year from her eyry; and which many a lazy canon and abbot, and many a prosperous weaver like her father, and many a thrifty merchant in the town, had never seen at all. " Good-evening, dear old friend," said the girl, laughing, as if the mountain could hear her ninety miles away, "good-evening, dear old friend 14 IN HIS NAME. You are lovely to-night in your evening dress. Will you not come to my Christmas party ? Thank you, old friend, for coming out to-night to see me I should have been very lonely without you, deai old friend. There's a kiss for you ! and there's another! and there's a feather for you, and there's another ! " And she threw into the west wind two bits of down, and pleased herself with watching them as they floated high and quick towards the mountain in the east. "Good-by, dear old friend, good-by. Mamma says I must be home at sunset Won't you speak to me ? no matter ; all the same I know you love me. Good- by ! good-by ! " And so she tripped down, think- .ng to herself as she went that everybody and every thing did love her, which was very true , thinking that for her, indeed, God's kingdom seemed to have come, and his will to be done on earth as it was in heaven. And the shadow, if it may be called a shadow, of the horrors depicted in the church of St. Thomas was all swept away. Down she tripped again by the open church, and one after another beggar at the door blessed her as she said, "God bless you." Down she IN HIb NAME. I $ tapped by the convent walls, and wondered how the gardens within could be half as beautiful as the world without. And she wondered if the sis ters here climbed up the bell-tower and looked off on the eastern horizon to see her old friend, and whether they knew how friendly he was to those who loved him. Down she tripped by one zigzag path and another, known to her and to the goats and to none beside ; and so, before the sun was fairly down, she had nodded to Pierre the weaver, and had stopped and spoken to Ronet the dyer, and had caught up and kissed the twin babies who could hardly tottle along the road, whom Marguerite the wife of young Stephen was leading along ; she had said a merry word to half the workmen and half their wives, and had come into the court-yard, and had pushed back the stately heavy oak door, and stood in the hall of Jean Waldo's comfortable house. Her mother came running out from the kitchen wing to meet the girL And Felicie ran up to kiss her as she entered, as was her pretty way. And Mistress Gabrielle thought, as she had thought a thousand times, that nobody in the world was a* 16 IN HIS NAME. pretty as Fe'licie, and also that Fe'licie never had looked as pretty as she did at that very moment This also had Madame Gabrielle thought a thou sand times before. The girl's tightly-fitting tunic was of fine white woollen. But the cape, as in those days the mantle began to be called, also of woollen, was of the brightest scarlet, and, as she had wound it round and round her head, she be came a Red Riding-hood indeed. Her cheeks glowed with life and health as she came running in from the frosty air, and the sharp contrast of her dress was none too bold for a complexion so brilliant It was the very impersonation of life and joy. " Fe'licie, my child, I have been asking for you. It is St. Victoria's night, you know, and I am giving to them all their Christmas medicine." " Medicine for me, my dear mother ! " And truly the child seemed to need medicine as little as the larks. " Of course, dear Fe'licie. Has there been a midsummer or a Christmas since you were born in which I did not give you your medicine ? And go is it, thanks to the blessed Virgin and to St IN HIS NAME 17 Fe'licie, that you are so fresh and so well. I have given to your father and to all the men their gentian. I have given to all the women their St. Johnswort, and here is a nice new bottle of the mixture of lavender and rosemary, which I brewed for you when you were away with the Landrys. I have it all waiting." Fe'licie knew by long experience that there was no good in argument Indeed the child was too much used to doing what her mother bade to make argument at any time. This was but a gulp o* two of a disagreeable taste, and she knew there would be waiting a honey-cake and an orange after it. So she kissed her mother, ran upstairs and put away cape and wimple and girdle, and came downstairs singing : My lady came down from her pretty gay room, In the hall my lady sat down ; Her apron was heaped with the roses in bloom, And her fingers braided a crown, crown, crown 1 And her lingers braided a crown t "But, mamma! how much there is of it I uever had so much before ! " " Darling, you are older now. You have passed 2 1 8 TN HIS NAME. your second climacteric." Mistress Gabriellfc could be learned when she chose. "But, mamma, it tastes horridly. It nevei tasted so badly before." " Dear child, drink it right down. Here is your orange, to take the taste away. Perhaps it is a little stronger than we have made it The leaves were the very best I ever saw." And the dear child made a laughing face of disgust, and then gulped down the bitter mixture as she was bidden. But then all light faded from her face. With agony such as her mother never saw there, she screamed, " O mamma, dear mamma ! it burns me, it burns me ! you never hurt your darling BO before!" And with sobs she could not re press, she hid her face in her mother's bosom, crying out, " Oh, how it burns, how it burns 1 " Mistress Gabrielle was frightened indeed. She tore open the orange, but there was little comfort there. She sent for oils and for snow, and for cold water from the very bottom of the well. But the child's agony seemed hardly checked; and though with a resolute will she would choke dowr IN HIS NAME. 19 her groans that she might not terrify her mothei, it was impossible for her to check the quivering from head to foot, which was a sign of the torture of mouth and throat and stomach. Mistress Gabrielle called for Jeanne and Marie, and they carried the poor child to her bed. They put hot cloths upon her. They warmed her feet and her hands. They made smokes of gums and barks for her to breathe. They tried all the simple and all the complicated arts of the household. One and another neighbor was hurried in, and each contradicted the other, and each advised. One or other of the more powerful applications would give a moment's relief, but only a moment's. Tears which she could not check would roll dowo Fe'licie's cheek to show her inward torture, and that terrible quiver which Mistress Gabrielle learned to dread so horribly would come in with every third or fourth minute. Once and again she had sent for Jean Waldo, her husband. But none of the lads could find him. Night had closed dark around them, and he did not return. It was then that she took the responsibility which she had never taken before, and sent for tho 20 IN HIS NAME. young Florentine doctor, whose shop, next th* cathedral, attracted the wonder and superstition of all the neighborhood. " Bid him come, Adrian, on the moment 1 Tell him that my daughter is dying, and that he has not a moment to lose. For the love of Christ, beg him to come on the instant." Dying' The word struck new terror in the whole panic-swayed household. Everybody had been in distress, but no one had dared think or say that the darling of them all, but just now so strong and so happy, could die 1 Least of all had Mistress Gabrielle permitted herself to think it. But now all her pride of simples and com pounds has gone, all the scorn with which she had defied one or another leech as she walked by them in the street Niobe before Apollo was not more prostrate. She knew that it the Florentine was to render any help, it must be rendered right soon. And so, with a calmness of despair at which she wondered herself, she sent word to him that her daughter was dying. IN HIS NAMh. 21 CHAPTER IL JEAN WALDO. Git LIO, the Florentine doctor, came down the street with the boy who had been sent for him, and with a blackamoor who bore a great hamper which contained his medicines and his instru ments. As they rapidly approached the doorway they overtook Jean Waldo himself, slowly walking the same way. Till they spoke to him, the father was wholly unconscious of the calamity which had fallen on his child. If you had told Jean Waldo that afternoon, as he sat in the Treasurer's seat at the guild -meet ing, that, in after times, his name of Waldo would be best known to all people, in all lands, because his kinsman, Pierre Waldo, bore it, he would have been much amazed, and would have taken you for a fool. Kinsmen they were, there was no doubt of that. Nobody could look on their faces nay, even 32 IN HIS NAME. on their eyes or their beards, or on the shape of then hands or their finger-nails, and not see that there was near kindred between them. " We are both from the valley of Vaud," Jean Waldo used to say when people questioned him. But he was not pleased to have them question him. He had taken good care not to mix himself up with Pierre Waldo's heresies. " Why does he want to trouble himself about the priests?" said Jean Waldo. "Why does he not do as I do ? I take care of myself, and I let other people take care of themselves. Why cannot Pierre Waldo, my kinsman, if he is my kinsman, do as I do ? " And so Jean Waldo went on in his prosperous way. He squeezed down the spinners who brought yarn to him. He squeezed the weavers who brought him webs. He kept a good company of the best workmen in his shops, and he had forty looms of his own, with his own weavers. He put up linen cloths for market more neatly and handsomely, the traders said, than any man in Lyons, and so he prospered exceedingly. "This is what comes," he said, " of minding your own business, and letting othel people's business alone." IN HIS NAME. 23 Pierre Waldo, the kinsman of whom Jean spoke with such contempt, and who is now remembered in all the world where the Christian religion is known, had been a prosperous merchant in Lyons. But Pierre Waldo was not one of those who went to mass only because the priests bade him. He went to the mass because God had been good to him and to his, and he wanted to express his thanks. He was glad to express thanks as other people did and where they did. He had always had a passion for reading, for in his boyhood his mother had taught him to read. And when, one day, a parchment book came in his way, which proved to be an Evangelistary, or copy of the Four Gos pels, in Latin, Pierre Waldo began to try to read this, and with wonder and delight which cannot be told. Father John of Lugio, the priest whom he knew best, an honest man and an humble priest, was willing to help Pierre as he could about the Latin. And there was not so much difference in those days between Latin and the Romance language which half Pierre Waldo's customers used, that he should find it hard to B-.ake out the language in which the book was 24 IN HIS NAME. written that so excited him. When Father John saw how much pleasure Pierre Waldo took in such reading, he was glad to show to him, in the church and in the vestry, other parchments, in which were Paul's letters and the Book ot the Revelation. And at last Pierre had seen the whole of the Old Testament also, and he and the good priest had read some parts of the Old Law. Who shall say whether this knowledge of the Bible could ever have come to any thing with Pierre Waldo, but for a terrible incident which made its mark on his whole life ? He and the other merchants of his section of the town used to meet each other very often at little feasts, in which they showed their hospitality and wealth at the same time, in the elegance of the service, the richness of the food, and in the choice of the good old wine. A party of them were together one night at such a feast in the house of Robert the Gascon. They had eaten a hearty supper. The wine had passed freely, and one of the company, favorite v/ith all of them, had sung a love song such as the romances of the day were full ofc IN HIS NAME. 2$ The glasses clattered in the applause, and one and another of the guests bade him sing it again. But for some reason Walter, the singer, declined. The moment he said " No," William JaL an ol and near friend of Pierre Waldo, who was sitting at his side at the table, rose and said, with a loud laugh, " You shall sing it, Walter ! " And he brought his fist down on the table, and with this terrible oath he went on, " By God, you shall sing it, Walter, or I will nevei taste wine again ! " Hardly had the awful words left his mouth when the expression of his face changed in sudden agony. He seemed to try to balance himself at the table for an instant, and then fell dead upon the floor. From that moment Pierre Waldo was a new man. In the night of horror which followed this scene of mockery and revel, in his wretched efforts to comfort the widow to whom they carried the cold corpse home, and the poor children who were waked from their beds to look upon it, in that night: of horror Pierre Waldo had chance to look forward and to look backward. And ha 26 IN HIS NAME. did so. From that time forward his reading of the Gospel was no mere literary amusement He copied it for his own use ; he translated it for his neighbors' use. He found that other men, anx ious and pious, had already felt as he began to feel, that all the people had a right to parable, to psalm, and to the words of the blessed Master. One after another of his customers brought him, from one and another town where they travelled, bits of Paul or Matthew or Luke which had been translated into the vulgar language. Pierre Waldo's home and his warehouse became the centre of those who sought a purer and simpler life. For himself, after that dreadful night with the fatherless children and their mother, Pierre Waldo said he would give all he had to the poor. Whoever was in need in Lyons or in the country round came to him for advice and for help, and they gained it. If they came for food, they had food, always they found a friend. Almost all the company of merchants who were with Pierre on that night joined him in this service of those that were in need. The company of them began to be called, and called themselves, IN HIS NAME. 27 the "Poor Men of Lyons." They had no new religion. Their religion was what they found in the Saviour's words to the young nobleman, to Peter the fisherman, and to Mary Magdalene. And so taken were they with these words, that they read them to all who came for help to them, and were eager to copy them out in the people's language, and give the copies to all who would carry them into the country. Almost at the same time, Francisco of Assis* was moved in much the same way to give up all he had to the poor, and to preach the gospel of poverty. If these two men had come together 1 But it does not appear that they ever heard each other's names. No ! At that time Lyons was governed wholly by the great religious corporation which was known as the Chapter of St. John, under the Archbishop, who was in fact a prince, and as a prince governed the city and the country at his will. When he found that the merchants were entering on the business of distributing the Script' ures aud reading them to the people, the Arch bishop and the Chapter forbade it. The " Pool 28 IN HIS NAME. Men of Lyons " must leave that business to th* clergy. Pierre and his friends were amazed. They went to the Holy Father at Rome, and told him what their work was. He was well pleased with it, gave them his approval, but told them they must not preach without the permission of the Archbishop and Chapter. This permission those great men would not grant to the " Poor Men.' They refused it squarely. Refused permission to make the words of the Lord Jesus known ! It was at this point that Pierre Waldo and the Poor Men of Lyons broke away from the priests and the Pope. " They have abandoned the faith," he said ; " and we ought to obey God rather than man." This was the signal on which the Archbishop and the Chapter drove Pierre Waldo out from Lyons, and all those who followed him. His house and his warehouses, all his books that they could find, they seized, and he and his had to take flight into the mountains. This was the reason why the prosperous Jean Waldo, the master-weaver, the father of the pretty IN HIS NAME. 29 F^licie, was not well pleased when men asked him if he ar.d Pierre Waldo were kinsmen or no. He did not want to be mixed up with any " Poor Men of Lyons." Not he. He was not one of the poor men of Lyons, and he did not mean to be. Pierre Waldo was in a good business, he said ; there was not a merchant in Lyons with better prospects before him, when he took up with his reading and writing, his beggars, his ministers, and all the rest of their crew. And so Jean Waldo would come out, again and again, with his favorite motto : " I take care of myself, let them take care of themselves. If Pierre would have stuck to his own business, he would not be hiding in the mountains there." Such was the man who, as he slowly walked uj the hill just now, thought himself above all need of asking a service from any man in this world. He would not have recognized Giulio the Floren tine this very afternoon, if they had passed each other, though he knew the man's face perfectly well. If you had asked him why he did not salute such a man, or even show a consciousness of his existence, Jean Waldo would have said, 30 IN HIS NAME. " I take care of myself ; let the Florentine take care of himself. My business is not his, and his is not mine." But now, as has been said, in the narrow street, the Florentine and his servant, and the boy Adrian, who had been sent to summon him in hot haste, overtook the dignified master-weaver, as he walked home slowly and complacently. The Flor entine had no little pride, and he might have passed the Treasurer of the Weavers' Guild with as little sign of recognition as when they passed on the morning of that very day. But the boy Adrian recognized his master, and in an instant told him the sad news. With some difficulty J can Waldo was made to understand that his treasure and delight, his own F&icie, who only at dinner-time had been so happy and so lovely, was dying, or seemed to be dying, in the home he left so little while before. After this it was not Jean Waldo who walked slowly in that party. He seized the great basket which the black servant bore, and fairly compelled him in his energy to go faster. He poured ques tion upon question out as to what had happened IN HIS NAME. 31 upon the Florentine, who was of course wholly unable to answer him. And thus the breathless party arrived together, under the heavy archway of the court-yard of Jean Waldo's house. 32 IN HIS NAME. CHAPTER in. THE FLORENTINE. THE young physician whom Madame Gabrielle had summoned to the rescue, was a native of the city of Florence, and he had not been so long a resident of Lyons but that he was still called " the Florentine." At that time the profession of a physician, as a distinct calling among men, was scarcely known. The clergy were expected to know something of the cure of disease, and in some instances they really attained remarkable skill in its treatment But with the knowledge of Eastern art which had come in with the first and second crusades, and with the persistent study of those naturalists whom we call alchemists, a wider and more scien tific knowledge of the human frame and its mala dies was beginning to take the place of old superstitions and other delusions. And thus it IN HIS NAME. 33 happenecr that here and there was a man who, without being a priest on the one hand or a barber on the other, had gained the repute of understand ing disease and of the power of keeping death at bay. Such a man was Giulio the Florentine. He moved quickly and with a decided step. He spoke little, and always after a moment's pause, if he were questioned. It seemed as if he spoke by some sort of machinery, which could not be adjusted without an instant's delay. What he said was crisp and decided, as were his steps in walking. It was impossible to see his manner even of crossing the room, or of arranging his pa tient's head upon the pillow, without feeling confi dence in him. " I felt as if there were a prophe* in the house," said Mathilde, one of the maid-ser vants, who had been sent for hot water into the kitchen, and in that minute took occasion to re peat her hasty observations to the excited party assembled there. When he entered the sick-room, it was more than an hour after Felicie had drained to the bot tom the beaker which Madame Gabrielle had filled full of the bitter decoction. The burning 8 34 IN HIS NAME. pain of the first draught had passed away or had been relieved by some of the palliatives which had been given. But the second stage was if possible more terrible than that of the agony of the begin ning. On the pretty bed where they had laid her, in the chamber which the child had decorated with the various treasures which she had acquired in her wanderings, she would lie for a few minutes as if insensible, and then would spring up in the most violent convulsions. She threw herself from side to side without knowing any of those who tried to soothe her, and who were forced to hold her. A few minutes of this violence would be followed by renewed insensibility which seemed almost as terrible. Just after one of these paroxysms, her mother was wiping away the frothy blood which burst from the poor child's nostrils, when the Florentine entered the room. She made place for him, in a moment, by the bed ; and, with that firm hand of the prophet, which struck Mathilde with such awe, be felt his patient's forehead and then the pulse in her wrist. Then he examined, one by one, the simples which the mother and her neighbors IN HIS NAME. 35 had been administering by way of emetic and of antidote. From his own hamper, with the aid of the blackamoor, he supplied the places of these with tinctures of which the use in medicine wa then almost wholly new of which he knew the force and on the results of which he could rely. He applied and continued the external applications which the eager women were making to the poor child's body. But having noted, in about two minutes, which of these various assistants had a head, and never spoke, he then banished from the room, with a kind dignity that nothing could resist, all the others, except the poor mother. He crossed to the window, and, though the night was so cold, he admitted a breath of the winter air. Then he came back to the bedside, and, with the courtesy of a monarch, asked Madame to tell him all she could of the tragedy. With the courtesy of a monarch he listened to her rambling story, still keeping his hand on the forehead or on the pulse of his patient. Madame Gabrielle, with the tears running down her cheeks, plunged into the account of what had happened; and to all she said he gave careful heed, never once attempting 36 IN HIS NAME to check her, even in the wildest excursions which she made to the right or to the left, into " dit- elle " and " dit-il " and "je disais" " says he " and "says she" and "says I." He seemed to know that with all her tackings, even if she "missed stays " sometimes, she would come by her own course best to her voyage's end. It was not till this whole story was over that he asked to see the diet-drink, as Madame called it, which had worked all this misery. But at that moment his poor patient started in another spasm of these terrible convulsions. Then was it that the balance and steadiness of the " prophet " showed itself as it had not shown itself till now. He seemed to control even her almost by a word, as none of the chattering or beseeching of those whom he had sent away had done. When he held her, he held her indeed, so that she did not even struggle against his grasp ; when he bade her open her mouth to swallow the sedative which the black brought him at his direc tion, the poor delirious child obeyed him as she would obey a God ; and under such control the crisis passed, her mother said, much more easily IN HIS NAME. 37 and quickly than that of half an hour before. Still there was the same bloody froth upon her Ups and nostrils, there was the same deadly pal or as of a corpse ; and the haggard aspect which came at once over the face seemed to Madam* Gabrielle and her two waiting women more terri ble than ever. The Florentine noted the pulse igain, as the exhausted child sank back, and counted the rapidity of her breathing. Then for the first time he began his examination of the poison. He tasted it, once and again, as fearlessly as it it had been water or wine. If he were puzzled, or if he were distressed by what he learned, he did not show it in any glance of those black eyes, or in the least change of any other feature. He turned to Madame Gabrielle again to ask her when it was brewed, and where she had obtained the materials. The answer was as voluble as before, and was not, alas, very helpful. The good dame's custom, for years upon years, ever since she was a mar ried woman indeed, had been to go on St. John's Day and on St. Margaret's Day and on the 38 IN HIS NAME. Eve of the Assumption and on Halloween, to col lect the various ingredients which were necessary (or the different home medicines of a household so large as hers. Rosemary, wild lavender, Mary's lavender, tansey, rue, herb-saffron, herb-dittany, motherwort, spearwort, maid's-wort, and St. John's- wort, herb-of-heaven, herb-of-winter, poison-kill, and feverfew, she named them all glibly. And tf the expert shuddered within as he thought of 'die principles which were hidden under these names, repeated so recklessly by an ignorant woman, he did not show his anger or vexation. And this year, as usual, she said she had gone out on the Eve of St. John's Day, surely he knew that spearwort and herb-of-heaven and herb-dit tany were never so strong as when you gathered them on the Eve of St. John's Day, if the moon were at the full, and again she went out, with the two bay horses on the St. Margaret's Day at e'en, and came back with three large baskets full of simples. So she did on Assumption Eve. But when it came to Halloween she confessed that she was kept at home, watching the conservation of some peaches. The accident for accident of IN HIS NAME. 39 course there was must have happened then. She had sent out Goodwife Prudhon, who certainly ought to know. If any one knew any thing about the simples of the valley, it was Goodwife Prud hon. It was she who brought in the bark and the roots of the autumn, which the dame herself had not collected. And for the brewing itself, Oh ! that was on St. Elizabeth's Day and St. Cecile'a Day. The posset indeed was mixed of decoctions which were not six weeks old. Could she bring him any of the roots or bark which Madame Prudhon brought her, or had she used them all. Oh ! Madame Gabrielle was quite sure she had not used them all ; and she retired, to search for what might be left, to her own sanctuary, not sorry, perhaps, thus to avoid for the moment the presence of her wretched husband. He had been Bent away from the room on some errand which had been made for him by the ingenuity of the Florentine, and it was only at this moment that he returned. So in poor Fe*licie's next paroxysm of convul sions it was Jean Waldo who obeyed the Floren 40 IN HIS NAME. tine's orders. And in that crisis the Florentine took his measure also, and learned what manner of man he was. The father was as firm as the physician. He knew his place too, and he obeyed every direction to a letter. It was piteous to see how he sought for a recognition from his daughter, which she would not give. But whether he hoped or despaired, the poor man could obey. He brought what the Florentine bade him bring. He stood where he bade him stand. With a hand as firm as the physician's, he dropped the drops of the sedative from the silver flask in which it was kept. And with a hand and arm as steady he supported the pillow on which she was to fah back after she had taken it. The paroxysm was shorter and less vehement than those before it. t it seemed to be checked, rather from the ex haustion of the patient, than from any relaxation of the disease. Jean Waldo himself knew that flesh and blood could not long abide racking so jerrible. As she sank back to rest, the Florentine counted her pulsations and the rate of her breath ing as carefully as he did before. He took from his TN HIS NAME. 41 pocket a silver ball, opened it by a screw, and drew from the interior a long silken cord, one end of which was attached to it. At the other end was a small silver hook, and this the Florentine fastened high in the curtains of the room opposite to where he was sitting. He had thus made a pendulum, sev eral ells in length, and he set it to swinging sol emnly. He returned to the child's bedside, and, with his hand upon her heart, noted the wiry, stubborn pulsations, and compared their number with the vibrations of the ball he had set in motion. Once and again he bade Jean Waldo strike the ball for him, when its original motion was in part exhausted. While they were thus occupied, poor Madame Gabrielle, the guilty or guiltless author of so much wretchedness, returned. Her apron was full of herbs, barks, powders, and roots, tied up in separate parcels, and each parcel carefully labelled. The Florentine took them, one by one, tasted each, and made a note of the name of each, the blackamoor holding his inkhorn for him that he might do so. The mother by this time was twed into silence, and never spoke till she was 42 IN HIS NAME. spoken to ; but when she was asked, she was con fident in her replies. They were able without the least doubt to lay out upon the table the bark, the two parcels of leaves, and the white roots which had been steeped and soaked, boiled and brewed, in the preparation of the " diet-drink." As if he had to adjust his speaking apparatus with a little " click," or as if he disliked to speak at all, the Florentine said to the father and the mother, " Here was the Goodwife Prudhon's blunder. She thought that she had here the root of Spanish maidenwort. She did not see the leaves; I suppose they had dried up and were gone. But it is the root of hemlock-leaved cenanthe, what the peasants call snake-bane. Juba, bring me the parcel of cenanthe." H<; showed to the father and mother that Goodwifo Prudhon's maidenwort was, in fact, the most dreaded poison in his repertory. "And is there no antidote?" asked the fathei, BO eagerly. "The antidote," said the physician, kindly, "w to do what your wife has tried to do, to throw uut from the dear child's body what by such mi* IN HIS NAME. 43 fortune has been put in." And he said one word to comfort the poor blunderer. "Well for her that she was at home, and that her mother was at hand." Then he added, reverently, "God only knows how much is left in her stomach of this 'decoction ; but she drank enough of it to have killed us all, had not her mother's promptness compelled her stomach to throw off the most part of the poison." And this was all that he seemed disposed to say. The father and the mother weie both in too much awe of him to dare to question him. With the lapse of every half-hour he would bid one or the other of them set his silver pendulum in mo tion, and he would note carefully the pulse of the girl, entering on his note-book a memorandum of his observation. But neither Jean Waldo nor his wife dared ask if there were improvement or decline. He renewed from time to tune the applications which had been made to the child's feet and legs and stomach. From time to time she started again in the terrible convulsions. But these were shorter and shorter, and more and suure infrequent, either from the power ot his 44 IN HIS NAME. medicines, or from some change in the action ol the poison. Jean Waldo thought that the physi cian regarded the reaction from the paroxysm as more alarming than the struggle itself. But who could tell what that man of iron thought, or did not think; felt, or did not feel? The poor father knew that very probably he was but imag ining that the Florentine showed his own anxie ties. And who was he to ask him ? At midnight the girl started up in one of these spasms of agony ; and at this time she spoke with more connection of ideas than any of them had been able to trace before : " This way 1 this way ! Gabrielle, dear Gabrielle, do you not hear me, my child ? It is Fdlicie, your own pet, Gabri elle 1 Never fear! Never fearl I have spoken to Our Mother, to Our Lady, you know! That is brave, my own little cousin, that is brave. Care 1 Care ! See that heavy timber ! Oh how good 1 Oh how good ! She is quite right, quite right. All safe, all safe." And as she sighed out these words, she rested from the most violent and passionate exertion, as if she had been hard at work in some effort, which the Florentine did v>t in the least understand. IN HIS NAME. 45 It was the first time that he ever seemed to make any inquiry regarding her symptoms, and he looked his curiosity rather than expressed it Madame Waldo was relieved at having a fair opportunity to speak. " Gabrielle is her cousin, my sister Margaret's oldest daughter, if you please. Fe'licie is fond Oh, so fond of Gabrielle. And she thinks Gabrielle is in danger. Oh yes ! Oh yes ! See, she thinks the bridge is breaking, and that Gabrielle is in the water. Your reverence remembers, perhaps, that the Holy Mother saved Gabrielle and so many more when the bridge went down." But by this time the physician, only bowing civilly as he acknowledged her volu ble explanations, was counting the pulse-beats again, and by a motion directed Jean Waldo to renew the vibration of the pendulum. Was he perhaps a little more satisfied with his count and comparison than he had been before ? Who can tell ? for none of the foui attendants in the darkened room dared to ask him. And then he sent Jean Waldo away. The wretched father begged that he might stay, but the Florentine was as flint Madame Gabrielle 46 IN HIS NAMh. and one of her maids would give him all the assistance he wanted besides what his own man could render him, and more. Indeed, he would send her away also, he said, in an aside, but that he knew it would kill her to go. At last he pitied the poor beseeching father so much that he prom ised to let him come in, an hour before daybreak, and take his wife's place at the bedside of his child. Jean Waldo went because he was bidden. His strong, selfish will gave way before the strong, unseLish will of this stranger. Prophet indeed ! This prophet worked the miracle of commanding Jean Waldo, and he saw that he obeyed him. Long before it was light, however, the heart broken father, who had slept not a wink in the dreary hours between, came to claim the right of taking his turn. And now he and the Florentine sent Madame Gabrielle away, weak as she now was from her wretchedness and her watching and her anxiety. Yes ! The night had given but little of encouragement. The paroxysms of convulsion were, it is true, more and more seldom ; but the prostration after them was more and more terri ble. It seemed too clear now to the mother that IN HIS NAME. 47 the child was too weak for nature to rally from the struggle of the paroxysm. Nor did she in the least regain her consciousness The black feat ures and strange look of the servant did not sui prise her, nor did her mother's familiar face call the least look of recognition. In the intervals of rest, her rest was absolute. She saw nothing, said nothing, and seemed to hear nothing then. When she roused to these horrid battles the delusion was now one thing and now another. She saw the sinking bridge, or she was talking to some lame beggar woman so fast that they could hardly catch her words, or she was throwing kisses and waving her hand to her dear mountain far away, or she wa ? running down the side of the hill of Fourvieres that she might be sure to arrive at home in time to meet her father when she came down to supper. In these delusions the wise physician humored her. But she seemed to have no knowledge of him nor of any of them, nor any consciousness of their presence. The phantoms before her -were all she saw or heard. And they vanished as strangely and as suddenly as they came. In the midst of one of these quick ha rangues to them, she would sink back on the 48 IN HIS NAME. pillow, which the black held ready for her, as if she were too completely exhausted and prostrate with the exertion to utter another syllable. It was just after one of these visions, and the paroxysm accompanying it, that Jean Waldo re turned, and that his wife was sent away. It seemed that the resolute man had been nursing resolution in his night-watch in the passage-way, and that he was resolved to know the best or the worst ; that he would command the young man to tell him all that he could tell him. He set the pendulum in motion as he was bidden ; he filled with hotter water a jar for the child's feet to rest upon, and exchanged for it that which was on the bed ; he spread the napkin at her mouth, as the Florentine fed her from an elixir, which, as Jean Waldo saw, was not the same which they used at mi'dnight. Then when she rested and all was still, he said, firmly, "Tell me the worst, sir. Is the child dying 01 living? I am not a fool." The Florentine looked up and said, after the moment of preparation, " If I thought you were a fool, you would not be in the room with my patient. You know all that I know, because you have eye? IN HIS NAME. 49 to see. These paroxysms of agony are less fie- quent The last interval was nearly twice as long as the first was, I should think. She is wholly free from pain too, and her pulse, though it beats so quick, beats with a more reasonable edge than when I came in. But her strength is failing all the same. Her breath is quicker ; and if the in terval is longer, it is because nerve and muscle and life, whatever that is, cannot rally to the struggle as they did in the evening. She is at the omnipotent age, and her life has been strong and pure as an angel's. Were it not for that she would have been dead before now." And the silent man paused, but paused as if he would like to say something more. For this "something more" the distressed father waited ; he thought he waited an eternity but it did not come. " Can you not say any thin