I 
 
 Si 
 by 
 
 THK1 
 Si 
 
 that 
 wit] 
 
 ln;t' 
 
 offio 
 of t 
 the 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 California State Library 
 
 si 
 
 any 
 
 th<' 
 
 X 
 mor 
 
 peri 
 
 TAKKN PROM THE LIBRARY AT ANY T1MK. — [Extract i'nuil the 
 
 Rules. 
 
 ' The foregoing Regulations will be strictly enforced.' i l
 
 THE 
 
 HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 By SARAH TYTLER, 
 
 AUTHOR OF CITOVSNNE JACQUELINE," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 1 R UKLIN SQU A 
 1868.
 
 J
 
 
 TO 
 
 E L S P E T H, 
 
 OF WHOM HER FRIENDS MUST THINK, 
 
 BECAUSE SHE DOES NOT 
 
 THINK OF HERSELF, 
 
 IN AFFECTIONATE ACNOW L ED G M E NT 
 
 OF ALL HER CARE AND KINDNESS 
 
 AND PURE SYMPATHY. 

 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GKA.ND'MERE DUPUT's OPINION OF THE ENGLISH. 
 
 " Yolande, my child, we must make friends with the peo- 
 ple about us. I am desolate here without my children, 
 my poor, who used to come to the chatelet and suffer them- 
 selves to be served on Saturday." 
 
 " If you are desolate, grand'niere, what are we ? Why, 
 you always remind me of the singing-birds which abound 
 in this England, one of the few good things Ave have come 
 so far to find." 
 
 There is nothing common and unclean, my impatient 
 grand-daughter; you ought to know better. 'Patient as 
 a Huguenot' is a proverb, and all is fair to those who have 
 the eyes to see it. As to the singing, I learned earlier 
 than any of you to sing in a cage, and to what music!" 
 
 " I know, grand'mere. It was to the sound of threats 
 and curses, and the volleys of the dragonnades. Yon \\ ere 
 one of the children imprisoned and tormented in order to 
 turn you from the faith, which you kept, good grand'm 
 because 'out of the mouths of babes and sucklings God 
 has perfected praise.' " 
 
 "Ah! the babes and sucklings know Little hettcr what 
 they are saying, and have no more merit of will and choice 
 than the Innocents. When they have will and choice, 
 how they falter and fall away, because the flesh is weak." 
 
 "But, grand'mere, I do not know, ami perhaps it is au- 
 dacious to say it, but it seems to me the hot persecution 
 which lasted but a moment, because no living creatures,
 
 6 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 in their nature, could endure it longer, was not so much 
 harder to bear than life — long exile and isolation among 
 strangers and foreigners who hate us and slander us, 
 grand'mere." 
 
 " They do not all hate us, little one, though their Defoe 
 has written 
 
 ' Two hundred thousand pairs of wooden shoes, 
 Who, God be thank'd, had nothing left to lose ;' 
 
 and 'no longer strangers and foreigners,' was once writ- 
 ten to men more hunted and despised than we or our fa- 
 thers have been. 'All things are easy,' but troubles are best 
 not talked of, at least they are talked of enough by your 
 mother, who did not live near enough to the worst of 
 them to feel that they could not really hurt — just as we 
 shall feel death can not hurt us one day, though it has 
 been our bete noire all our lives. Just so are troubles 
 when we look back and count what they have cost with- 
 out experiencing the blessing and the joy of the persecu- 
 ted. In the same way you would grudge to be still pay- 
 ing by instalments the price of my wedding-gown, of 
 which you never saw the beauty, and which was unpick- 
 ed, and cut down, and made anew into a mantle for my 
 son Hubert, forty years before you were born. But you 
 have not the excuse of your mother, Yolande ; you never 
 saw the sun of France, nor worshiped in a Temple, under 
 a pastor of your own people — a sufferer like yourself 
 among fellow-sufferers ; nor did you ever go a-marketing 
 in the old Place, or pull great gourds, red and yellow like 
 the sunset, or gather caper blossom, scented with vanille. 
 You have nothing to complain of; you are English-born, 
 and can speak the English tongue like a native j you are 
 a true Englishwoman." 
 
 " Never, grand'mere, I would rather be — Catholic." 
 " Hush ! I shall tell you what you are — a French Jew. 
 All the nationalities which think themselves better than 
 the other nationalities are Jewish, and all the Churches 
 which think themselves better than the other Churches 
 are Jewish. But at the same time I beg the pardon of 
 the poor Jews for the comparison. They had reason for 
 their exclusiveness, while the French and the English, 
 Roman Catholic or Reformed, have none, and even profess
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 7 
 
 to have none. For me, I love France ; I do not say how 
 I love France : I think of her every day; dream of her 
 every night, till I am tempted to be an idolatress, and to 
 imagine that Heaven will he like the native country. 
 And, indeed, so it will be in one sense, Yolande, for it is 
 the Father's house. The French know what that means 
 to a marvel, though one has told me that it is used as a 
 reproach against them, that they have no turn of phrase 
 save ' with myself,' or ' my household,' for what the En- 
 glish call ' sweet home.' The French have the Father's 
 house, at least. But as for me, I am charmed with En- 
 gland — it is so like Holland, and is so cool and fresh in this 
 bit of meadow land. "With the English rudeness and truth 
 also, which reminds me of the prickly bosquets of roses I 
 once reared in my garden, where M. Claude had walked. 
 These English have had their own way ever since they 
 killed their king, which was very wicked — indeed, quite 
 profane. The French have done nothing of the kind, 
 though the unhappy Charles, misled by his mother and his 
 brother, aud by Guise and Lorraine, fired from the Louvre 
 on his people on that night of despair, when our Coligni, 
 a very lion at bay, was slam ; and our Henry of Navarre 
 — Jeanne d'Albret's brave boy — was held a prisoner. The 
 ' religion' in its professors has always regarded it as one 
 of the most cruel and calumnious accusations brought 
 against ' the faithful' that they were not loyal. It is only 
 madmen' and assassins, like Clement and Ravaillac, who 
 would slay the Lord's anointed. But from that day to 
 this the English have had their own way; and have they 
 abused it? No. They have had a few thousands of 
 bread-rioters, breakers of our French machinery, and burn- 
 ers of the houses of Catholics, it is true ; but there will 
 always be doubtful characters in every class and nation. 
 The brave, patient people have been quiet and tolerant, 
 just and merciful. The English have been masters in 
 their parliaments and on their battle-fields, since the man 
 of the people, Oliver — not the barber, Yolande, the Imvm er, 
 and oh! such another brewer, a hero who spoke brave 
 words, mighty words for the oppressed Vaudois, our breth- 
 ren in Piedmont, and behold the honor ! The English have 
 kept their heads. They have nol been gasconaders, or 
 tyrants of the canaille, undoing themselves ami others.
 
 8 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 I believe that in their noble, savage way they have given 
 God the glory. I esteem, I honor, I salute the English, 
 not only for the shelter they afford us, poor driven dust 
 of emigrants, but for the example they present of possess- 
 ing their own big souls in patience." 
 
 " Well, grand'mere, I wish they returned the compli- 
 ment. I can not see, for my part, that the admiration and 
 the friendship should all be on one side." 
 
 " Ah ! then you do not see the well-spring of Christian 
 life which burst from the broken heart of the Divine 
 Founder. But this monopoly you speak of, as one would 
 of the salt-tax in France, is what I began our conversation 
 by scolding about. I don't want to limit the love of one's 
 neighbor to me and my house. Not at all. I want to 
 have it everywhere, like the good air we breathe ; but I 
 must show my good-will in order to win a sight of anoth- 
 er's good-will. I believe it is present even throughout the 
 universe, north and south, east and west, among great mul- 
 titudes of every kindred and tongue and nation, only it is 
 hidden from us ; and we traverse each the other's streets, 
 and rub each the other's clothes, not knowing each other 
 — bah ! — but elbowing each other and knitting our brows 
 at each other. Now, I desire that we should know each 
 other better here at Sedge Pond. We came here before 
 the buds were on the trees; at present they are in full leaf, 
 and I have not yet made a friend of a living creature in 
 the place, save the birds, the cats, and the dogs. I shall 
 pass over the sheep, the oxen, and the horses, and go on at 
 once to the poor, my children, at Toulouse, whom I have 
 missed more than the green leaves, and the warbling, purr- 
 ing, barking voices of friends in London. No; London is 
 not a modern Babylon, as your mother calls it, it is a great 
 Christian city, full of violence and excess and selfish lux- 
 ury, but also alive with brave battlings for truth and jus- 
 tice and noble wants, like our own Paris. It may be roll- 
 ed in blood and bathed in fire, but it is no more Babylon 
 than the Lord's Gospel is the law of Moses. Our Paris 
 and this London can not perish and be given over to ob- 
 scene beasts.; because they are redeemed with a price — in 
 Christ first, and then in all their righteous men, sublime 
 martyrs, and returned prodigals, in every century, follow- 
 ing afar oif, after Him, in endless conqueror's procession.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 9 
 
 The Christian cities will corne out pure as the gold, glad 
 as the light in their day But the question with us just 
 now is, not of great London, but of little Sedge Pond; and 
 the little one is not to he despised, since it may need us 
 the most. I shall set about learning to know the people, 
 or rather, for I natter myself I know them a little already, 
 teaching the people to know me, Grand' mere Dupuy, of 
 the Shottery Cottage, countrywoman and sister of good 
 Vincent de Paul, though he acknowledge me not ; and I 
 command you to help me, Yolande." 
 
 The speaker was a little old woman, dressed in a Lyons 
 silk gown, with the skirt drawn through the pocket holes. 
 She wore a mob cap of fine lace, had mittens on her 
 hands, and her neckerchief was fastened by a silver dove 
 instead of a cross. She was at that moment resting on a 
 staff, with a carved coral head, representing another little 
 old woman in scarlet. Her rustling silk, her cobweb lace, 
 her foreign accent, and her lovely old face might have 
 clearly told the on-looker that she belonged to the latter 
 part of the last century, and to that country which owns 
 at once the loveliest and the ugliest old women. The ac- 
 cessories, too, suited the main figure. The room had an 
 air of quiet, but was not without its ornaments. There 
 was an elaborately decorated and festooned bed in one 
 corner ; a curtain hung before the door ; a wood-fire was 
 on the hearth ; and there were on the walls a few foreign 
 prints, mostly of gaunt, care-worn men, in Geneva gowns 
 and skull-caps. Her companion Avas a tall, slender girl of 
 sixteen, in as rustling a silk gown and as heavy a quilted 
 petticoat as the old lady's. She had a little cap on her 
 head, which surmounted a roll of black-brown hair. The 
 girl's face was prematurely womanly, and delicately cut, 
 bearing a resemblance to her relative's, though with less 
 color, and more shaded and sharp than the old woman's 
 could ever have been ; but it Avas a sort of paraphrase of 
 the old Avoman's beauty, sicklied over, hollowed, and worn 
 betimes", by the fact of its having blossomed in the shade, 
 carrying, before it Avas able to carry it, a burden of 
 thought. The big eyes had taken a grave, far-withdrawn, 
 unfathomable look,£rom their striving to read the enigma 
 of a sinning, suffering world, without their owners having 
 got the key of faith, or while the key, still but a was 
 
 A 2
 
 10 ' THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 model, took, but did not retain, the shape of any obstacle 
 to which it was applied, in place of combating and over- 
 coming it. 
 
 CHAPTER rr. 
 
 grand'meee dupuy's attempt to make friends with 
 the people about hek. 
 
 Grand'meee Dupuy was a resolute, enthusiastic old 
 woman, and was no cipher, but a ruling spirit, though it 
 must be understood that she ruled with the old meta- 
 phorical ivory wand, draped in myrtle, in the house of 
 her married, middle-aged emigrant son. Accordingly, 
 that very afternoon, as she had said, she set about begin- 
 ning her attack upon what she had found the locked and 
 padlocked fortresses of Britons' hearts at Sedge Pond. 
 
 With innocent wile and womanly tact she said to Yo- 
 lande — 
 
 "These honest villagers hunger, though they do not 
 starve, as they did in poor France after its bloody wars 
 and ghastlier splendors. Yes, these Sedge Pond folk want 
 in the midst of plenty. They live, like the hogs, on sodden 
 bread, raw meat, and vegetables. They have the dys- 
 pepsia or the spleen. See how purple and tallow-faced 
 they are ; hear of their surfeits, their fevers, their wastes, 
 their pinings. They really know nothing of their own 
 word ' comfort,' save in connection with swilling and 
 smoking in the ale-house. That is not even a resting- 
 place for travelers, as with us — only a rendezvous for the 
 natives. When we are merry, it is under the walnut and 
 olive-trees, in the games. It may be giddiness and light- 
 mindedness, as your mother says : but it is not riot. But 
 when they are merry, it is in the ale-house — always the 
 ale-house. Even when they have the fair, what is it but 
 the whole streets filled, the stalls surrounded, the caravans 
 visited by the customers of the ale-house ? The marriage- 
 guests are borrowed from the ale-house ; their harvest- 
 feasts are kept in the ale-house, or are versions of the ale- 
 house feasts in granaries and barns. Fie ! I believe their 
 magistrates sit, their choristers practice, their clerks, per-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 11 
 
 haps even their ministers, relax themselves from their 
 cock-fighting and their execution of highwaymen in the 
 ale-house. In one word, comfort and amusement for the 
 peasants of England mean — the ale-house. My child, the 
 stomach has something to do with that ; the cooking, the 
 housekeeping at least, may be improved. I don't say that 
 we have not a great deal to learn ourselves, above all a 
 marmot, a flower of the cabbage like you, Yolande ; but 
 we will remember that wherever the French have settled 
 the leprosy and the scurvy have disappeared. We Avill 
 let the poor people taste our savory pot-d-feu, our cool 
 goUter of the sliced artichoke or the cucumber, our warm 
 ragoiU of the cutlets or the kidneys, our bland almond 
 milk and our sweet succory water. I wager they never 
 tasted any thing so nice, and will not care for the harsh 
 heady yeast after it. They will turn their backs on the 
 ale-house and its commodities. We will, go to-day to 
 Goody Gubbins; she is an incurable, and has only the 
 parish for her relations. I have seen the pastor's servants 
 carrying her greasy messes and niuddy slops, just a little 
 better than the evei'Listing beans and bacon and hunches 
 of bread and cheese of the ale-house. "Who knows but, 
 if the good God will bless the deed, we may work a Re- 
 formed miracle, and heal the sick ?" 
 
 Madame Dupuy's intentions were excellent and kindly, 
 though a little short-sighted and halting, as the most ex- 
 cellent intentions of fallible mortals are apt to be. But 
 she did not let the gi'ass grow beneath her ancient, trip- 
 ping, high-heeled, silver-buckled feet in executing them. 
 She had her own cooking apparatus and her own' stores: 
 ingenious though economical the one, and of an ample, 
 skillful range the other. She was never without her sim- 
 mering pot-d-feit, the materials for her summer or winter 
 gor&ter, or the glass in which her pebbles of sugar were 
 dissolving and sinking in a thick, luscious syrup to the 
 bottom of the clear spring water. »She had her pipkins, 
 her ewers, her trays — plain enough, for she had come from 
 among a people who were so stanch that not more than 
 a third of their number had succumbed in creed to a 
 lengthened era of fines, penalties, imprisonments, and law- 
 suits, which had converted their silver bo copper, and their 
 porcelain to earthenware. But all the utensils were dia-
 
 12 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 tinguisliecl by clever fitness for their end, by neatness of 
 form and gayety of tone, and when the austerity into which 
 the Himuenot Church has been driven did not forbid it, 
 even by an elegant simplicity of design. Nor did it de- 
 tract much from the elegant simplicity of Grand'mere Du- 
 puy's accompaniments that in practice she wore silk and 
 lace, or that in principle she was a Huguenot and bour- 
 geoise. M. Dupuy had been and was still connected in 
 trade with silk manufactures ; and no one, with any pre- 
 tensions to the position of a gentlewoman, dressed in other 
 materials at that date. On close inspection it might have 
 been seen that the silk had been very artistically scoured, 
 and the lace very artistically darned. And on minor mat- 
 ters again, Madame Dupuy was more of a French woman, 
 and still more of a human being, than any thing else. 
 
 After dinner Grand'mere Dupuy set out from the Shot- 
 tery Cottage with Yolande, who carried the pot-ci-feu in a 
 pipkin moulded from a gourd, with a gourd leaf and stalk 
 for the handle, and carried it very much as another girl 
 would have carried a basket of roses, or a casket of jewels ; 
 but still sombrely, distrustfully, reluctantly, for all her 
 air. Grand'mere walked slowly beside her Avith her coral- 
 headed staff, eagerly recounting, as she went, how she had 
 always taken it with her when she went to visit her sick 
 at Toulouse, until the peasants hailed it, made much of it, 
 named it the little red madame, Madame Rougeole. 
 
 The village of Sedge Pond at any period in the eight- 
 eenth century was by no means a model village. It was 
 situated between London and Norwich. All was misty, 
 flat, and monotonous about it ; but there was the perfec- 
 tion of verdure in marsh and meadow, broken only by 
 patches of yellow-bearded corn and red-flowered clover. 
 There was a sleepy, lulling motion in the slow river, with 
 its clumsy barges," and there was breadth in the blue dis- 
 tance. The roads, both high-road and by-road, were heav- 
 ily rutted in their yellow soil ; the lowlands were liable 
 to be flooded at particular seasons by the sluggish, stag- 
 nant brown water. There were rough, bristling, purple 
 and olive-colored bits of" wl'taste" to take in everywhere. 
 There was a castle — a mass of pretentious white masonry, 
 which had replaced a more picturesque, weather-stained, 
 crumbling tower, partly seen among the woods which rose
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 13 
 
 above the Dupuys' cottage ; and there was a rectory like 
 a chateau itself, steep-roofed, gabled, and pinnacled, and 
 with pleasure-grounds, and a wilderness. This latter had 
 the advantage of a constant tenant and a numerous, flour- 
 ishing household. There was not another good house in 
 the village, saving Shottery Cottage, which' was a remote 
 appendage of the castle, and the ale-house, which was a 
 place of public entertainment, and not of private conve- 
 nience. The other houses stood in irregular rows and 
 groups, and were dropsical, bulged-out, discolored Gottag< s, 
 covered with thatch, and in every stage of rottenness. 
 For that matter they were much indebted to the house- 
 leek, and here and there to a side growth of ivy, for hold- 
 ing them together; for nature was trying hard to em- 
 broider them over with some of her own leaf and flower- 
 work — wonderfully good embroidery, which makes men 
 forget the ruin in rapture at the tracery over it. There 
 were no spouts above, nor gutters below the cottages, 
 nothing to protect them from the prevailing wet except 
 narrow stone ledges, like eyelids without eyelashes, placed 
 above the never-opened windows, filled with small, thick, 
 diamond shaped panes of glass, where they were not 
 broken and boarded up, or stuffed with straw, grass, wool, 
 or any thing which had at the moment come to hand. 
 Beyond these ledges the moisture dripped, soaked, gath- 
 ered, and grew green-coated. The common was a pud- 
 dle, the wells were one or two open draw-wells, and before 
 each door there was a heap of fermenting, festering refuse. 
 Any gardens belonging to the cottagesVere like the vil- 
 lagers in this respect, that their good qualities were out 
 of sight. They lay in diminutive shaggy plots of pota- 
 toes, turnips, herbs, with occasionally a straggling, neg- 
 lected, and misused flower, hidden behind the houses. 
 Indeed, had it not been for the quiet, home-like landscape, 
 with its corn-fields in their cool fresh green, ripening and 
 whitening in strips and nooks among the pasture, and the 
 castle park thrusting forward and separating the more 
 rural scene with a woodland bluff or shoulder, dark with 
 tufts of chestnuts, oaks, and plane-trees, the village of 
 Sedge Pond would have been as uncomely a village as 
 ever housed refugees, and bred and fostered small-pox, 
 purple fever, and ague.
 
 14 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 The church was half a mile distant from the village, 
 which was thus out of the comfortable sight of its spire, 
 and of every thing but the faint sound of its hoarse bell, al- 
 though it was easily reached, down a short lane commu- 
 nicating by a private gate, about midway up the castle 
 avenue. The little church-yard, in one visitation of the 
 plague, had become full to the brim, and the oppressed 
 earth — crammed not by means of coffins, but by trenches 
 — had been forced up breast high with the wall, and was 
 left behind, to add its quota to the other disease-distilling 
 influences of Sed^e Pond. 
 
 In some eyes the ale-house atoned for all defects and 
 drawbacks. It was a low, wide, octagonal building, of 
 mellow red brick, with stone coping, and containing sev- 
 eral large, low-browed, brown rooms, with long tables, 
 wattled seats and benches, and in which there were fires 
 at every season, smouldering like carbuncles, or roaring 
 and blazing like furnaces. These were the chosen retreats 
 from the skittle-ground, the bowling-green, and the court 
 where the mains between the game-cocks were fought on 
 each side of the whitewashed porch. All the revelry and 
 debauchery of the neigborhood went on there ; and revelry 
 and debauchery were so much the gross habit of the day, 
 that the place set apart for them was not viewed with any 
 suspicion, but was actually invested with an influence and 
 respectability which absolved it from the necessity of be- 
 coming the " Castle Arms," or seeking such patronage as 
 any tavern, inn, or hostelry in the kingdom would now do. 
 If one takes into account, in addition, the white foam of 
 tankards, the light curling blue vapor of pipes, the cribbage- 
 boards, the soiled news-letters for those who desired other 
 stimulants and more intellectual influences, together with 
 the social intercourse, and occasionally the larger gather- 
 ings of a more festive character, where there was a mix- 
 ture of sexes, it is possible to understand how to the hob- 
 nailed, red-cloaked peasants of Sedge Pond, comfort and 
 amusement meant the ale-house. What Grand'mere Du- 
 puy had therefore to contend with, when she proposed to 
 supersede their staple good, with its black shadow of bru- 
 tality and crime, was something which would sorely task 
 her light, subtle French substitutes, unless she supple- 
 mented them by something infinitely better.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 15 
 
 Goody Gubbins's cottage was the worst in its row. 
 There, on straw and rags, with chronic damp chilling her 
 rheumatic, palsied limbs, and without day-light to cheer 
 her, her life was barely kept in by the Church's dole, 
 although otherwise she lay quite uncared for and unsol- 
 aced, her body begrimed and engrained with dirt, and 
 her grizzled hair matted beneath her filthy linen curch — 
 a wreck of humanity. 
 
 But Grand'mere Dupuy, of the Church under the Cross, 
 recognized humanity under any aspect, and had no quar- 
 rel with it. There was nothing in her but self-reproach- 
 fulness and self-forgetfulness, struggling for mastery, and, 
 overpowering both, a mother's and a sister's tenderness. 
 It was Yolande who revolted and shrank from the dis- 
 figured, disguised old woman, for the keen French analy- 
 sis, which records "how severe are the young," reads in 
 various ways. 
 
 " Good-day, my friend," began Grand'mere. " I am 
 afraid you are very ailing, but you will improve, and all 
 your ills will vanish by and by ; if not here, hereafter," 
 proceeded she, in her liquid, persuasive foreign accent, as 
 she nodded now and then emphatically. " We have taken 
 the liberty, and given ourselves the pleasure of bringing 
 you some soup," continued Grand'mere, coming to the 
 gist of her discourse, and gathering up her hooped skirt 
 cleverly as she advanced lightly (that is, lightly for her 
 fourscore years) to the side of the bed or lair, the better 
 to aid her pet of an old woman to receive her refreshment. 
 
 Goody had been dozing when the Dupuys invaded her 
 hovel, and in the dim light and the gathering mists of age, 
 ignorance, stupidity, and suffering, she might well have 
 looked scared as well as mazed when she was aroused to 
 the unwonted and unaccountable apparition. "Who be 
 you?" she gasped, clutching her torn coverlet, and star- 
 ing at her visitors in blind hostility as well as blank 
 wonder. "A dunna know you — you be seeking summal 
 of a poor lorn body. A's nought to give or to tell. How 
 should a?" she moaned out, her moaning mixed with a 
 loud whimper of protest. 
 
 The reception was not encouraging, but Grand'mere 
 was patient. 
 
 " We arc two of the French family at Shottery Cottag
 
 16 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 women like yourself, my good dame, and we have heard 
 of your infirmities. Ah, dear Lord ! — that they have been 
 sorely neglected so long. We have come to succor you 
 and ease them ; no to serve ourselves, save by serving you."- 
 
 Goody Gubbins had not heard of very many things, but 
 she had heard of the French, to fight against whom stout 
 village lads of her acquaintance had enlisted as soldiers 
 under Wolfe or Cornwallis, and marched from their vil- 
 lages, not one in ten of them ever to see their native land 
 again. Naturally she looked on the French as her mortal 
 enemies, and when she heard that the two women were 
 members of the French family who had penetrated into 
 the village, through the recklessness of the lords of the 
 castle, to get round her and entrap her, bedridden and 
 pauper as she was, she set up a screech of utmost dismay 
 and virulent opposition. 
 
 " Noa, noa ! Pearson ! Neebour Clay ! — help ! — help ! 
 A'm flayed ! a'm murdered ! though a never flapped, or 
 clemmed, or so much as set eye on French maid or man 
 before a took to my bed — not when a were the strapping- 
 est wife and wench in the parish. Alack-a-day !" 
 
 " You deceive yourself, you are in error ; rest quiet. 
 Try the soup, my dear." And Grand'mere, in the difficul- 
 ty, popped the uncovered pipkin right below Goody's nose. 
 
 Goocly Gubbins had not been called " my dear" since 
 the day when her good man was lying in intermittent 
 fever, induced by draughts of the over-ripe October of 
 which he died, thus paying the penalty of his eight-and- 
 forty hours' sojourn at the ale-house, drinking the health of 
 the German George, who had come to be king in the room 
 of good Queen Anne. She did not take well with the epi- 
 thet ; it made her grue just as when Giles Gubbins was 
 first " soft" with her, to get her harvest wages out of her 
 pocket, and the lawful means failing, then beat her black 
 and blue, and obtained his end unlawfully, save that it 
 \v:ts in his character of a husband. But the smell of this 
 rich omnium gatherum, which had boiled and bubbled till 
 it had refined itself of every thing but the very core of 
 good things, was more fragrant than the gales of Araby 
 the Blest to the stunted, blunted nostrils. She sniffed and 
 coughed, and sniffed again, and her patriotism and preju- 
 dices wavered.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 17 
 
 "There bean't snails in it?" she inquired, tremulously, 
 her toothless chops watering, her bleared eyes blinking 
 greedily. 
 
 " Not one. It is the very best of soups, my good wom- 
 an ; the true soup for an invalid, while you have been 
 swallowing — ouf! — hard roots, dry seeds of grain, grease 
 and water." 
 
 " The broth and the bit of flesh is none so bad as you 
 make it, be yourn what it like." Goody began to speak 
 up for her food, offended, like her betters, thatTher right of 
 grumbling should be appropriated by a stranger and for- 
 eigner. " If Pearson's Sam and Sally weren't so long 
 on the way, and didn't go to spill it at the stile, and have 
 their share of it off their long Angers. There bean't toads 
 in it ?" pausing with revived jealousy, after she had ven- 
 tured to taste and dwell on a mouthful. 
 
 "No, no; faith of Genevieve Dupuy. But why do you 
 object to the poor, soft, fat, white fellows of snails, when 
 you do not refuse to eat the raw bleeding flesh. The 
 mourgettes are very good for the sick," remonstrated 
 Madame, with rash innocence; "for the frogs, I can tell 
 you they are not so easy to get here," she reflected, pen- 
 sively. 
 
 "Lawks ! there would be if she could get 'cm !" declared 
 the old woman, stiffening like stone and dropping the 
 spoon. " Noa, noa, it's pisen, it's witches' broo ; the corns 
 of barley and the peas ne'er grit agin my single tooth ; a 
 did not taste ingens ; it's like nought on earth but balm 
 wine and the smell of the dogs' messes up at the castle. 
 Get ye gone! a wunna swallow another drop of the broo, 
 a've telled 'ee, a'll swound, a'll be throttled first!" cried 
 Goody, in a renewed paroxysm of terror and rage, and 
 thrust her rags into her mouth with .all the force which re- 
 mained to her claw-like hands. 
 
 So there was nothing for it but for Grand'mere to re- 
 treat before the misled maddened object of her charity 
 should fulfill her threat. 
 
 " You see, Grand'mere," observed Yolande significantly. 
 
 "She does not know what is good for her, the poor suspi- 
 cious, straitened heart. Yolande, you would not be so 
 mean and foolish as to resent what a poor miserable crea- 
 ture imagines to her injury," Grand'mere said, more re-
 
 18 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 proachfully than usual — indeed, almost with severity — to 
 her grand-daughter. Then she turned and began to blame 
 herself sharply, which was much more in her way, and a 
 safer course for reformers. " We are punished because 
 we have begun at the wrong end. We ought to have ad- 
 dressed ourselves to the little ones, and made friends of 
 them first. Look, they run wild, or they are toilers from 
 their cradles, poor broken-backed, gloomy-looking gamins 
 and cocottes, and they grow up totally without knowledge. 
 I do not believe there are six men and women anions: the 
 peasants of Sedge Pond can read and write. The school 
 of the pastor is for the sons and daughters of the farmers 
 who can pay, the little boys and girls in little coats and 
 collars, aprons and hoods — the country bourgeoisie, in fact. 
 The pastor himself does not encourage the little peasants 
 to come to the school ; he says it teaches them conceit and 
 disrespect to their superiors. I heard him say so in a ser- 
 mon on useless acquirements and false pretenses, at the 
 church. But what teaching must that have been ! Even 
 the Jesuit fathers and the convent sisters would have 
 taught better than that. My child, we will have a little 
 class. Betty Sykes, Teddy Jones, Pierce and Bab Frew 
 (I pick up the names as quickly as a magpie) will come, 
 and you will instruct them in English reading, and I shall 
 manage the writing and the figures, and we will make 
 them wise — not foolish, and modest — not insolent. We 
 will not tire of it, Butterfly, because it may not be so 
 charming the second day as the first. We will work and 
 weary, and work again, with the stolid little souls, because 
 it will be our sowing for the world's harvest ; and I tell 
 you, Yolande, we will have fetes and recompenses if your 
 mother does not forbid them as vain and worldly." 
 
 Yolande was not sanguine. Indeed there was no san- 
 guincness in the girl. All high hope was the portion of 
 the old woman, who had fathomed adversity and knew 
 how little it could hurt of itself, if men and women were 
 truly armed against it. But Yolande was docile, and fol- 
 lowed where Grand'mere led the way. So, with the 
 Lyons silk tucked up, and the' coral-headed staff, and with 
 the companion silk without staff, the two went picking 
 their way among the pools and the dirt-heaps, from door 
 to door of the village, heavy with dense dullness, or only
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 19 
 
 quickened here and there into rabid intolerance. They 
 found every double-leafed, cut-across door literally and 
 figuratively shut in their faces, and fared but poorly in 
 their canvass for the school. One woman wanted her 
 youngsters to watch the geese, feed the pig, break wood, 
 draw water, as she had done in her own young days, and 
 she thought they could not do better, or hope to master 
 any thing which would come more pat to their hands in 
 after-life. The woman had right on her side. Madame 
 assured her heartily these were very good things, admira- 
 ble things, which were referred to as virtues and excellen- 
 ces in the book of Proverbs ; but were they enough for 
 gaining the victory over sin, for enlightening the under- 
 standing and disciplining the heart? Say, then, were 
 they enough for that other life in the skies ? 
 
 "Anan," answered Grand'mere's opponent. " She left 
 all that to Pearson; that were his business, and weren't 
 he paid for doing it? Poor bodies had enough to do to 
 live, and fit their children to live, in these hard times." 
 
 Another speaker, a gruff man, who had been for years 
 employed hi the next manufacturing town, told Grand'- 
 niere that they wanted no creeping spies, nor crafty sedu- 
 cers, nor paid agents of the foreign cloth and silk weavers, 
 no gunpowder and glass makers, who now swarmed in the 
 land and preyed on it, and snatched the bite out of the 
 mouths of honest English artisans by their devil's work of 
 accursed machinery, replacing men's hands and brains. 
 
 "Not brains, my master," argued Madame mildly, 
 " when the machinery is the creature and the tool of man's 
 brains." 
 
 But the master had already retired into the farther end 
 of his cottage, growling ominously of the horse-pond i'<>v 
 man or woman who molested him with treacherous tricks 
 of kindness. 
 
 A third hearer put her fingers in her ears. 
 
 "I was brought up in the south lands. Fve seen the 
 towers and halls where the good bishops stood and choked 
 in the smoke rather than bring in the Pope to sit in sen- 
 let, put his foot on our necks, and wade in our Mood again. 
 Good-mother's grandfeyther was a Puritan in the wars — 
 could pray like a saint, as well as strike and stal> like a 
 man. She had his rusty blunderbuss, which was as g I
 
 20 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 as a cast horse-shoe for luck, above her chumley. I be not 
 your bargain, madam." 
 
 Here was an opening at last, which Grand'mere was 
 quick to perceive, and radiant in seeking to profit by. 
 
 " My good woman, we do not love the Pope of Rome 
 and the mass any more than you. We are Huguenots, 
 who have abandoned our houses, our temples, our native 
 country, for the truth. We have suffered like you. We 
 have bought your protection, confidence, and friendship, 
 by our sorrows and sufferings." 
 
 " I (Junna know that we suffered," observed the descend- 
 ant of the Fifth Monarchy-men, ungraciously and dogged- 
 ly. " Good-mother always says her grandfeyther won his 
 battles, as the truth is bound to win. And as to buying, 
 I'll maintain you've bought nought from me, neither good 
 nor bad. I'd traffic with none jof your breed, whether 
 Huggenies mean the brazen pack-men with rings in their 
 ears, under their curls, and French linen and brandy be- 
 neath the Irish linen and anise-seed water in their packs, 
 and who bowed their knees, crooked their fingers, and 
 kissed the broken cross at the Horse Troughs, where the 
 four roads meet, before they were shot by the red-coats." 
 
 " Alas, my poor Jacques ! The good God grant you saw 
 beyond the symbol," murmured Grand'mere, the moisture 
 dimming those clear, tender grey eyes of hers. 
 
 The speaker went on, rudely citing her unflattering ex- 
 amples — 
 
 " Or the idle, dissolute dogs, players on the French horns, 
 whom my lady brought down with her the last time to the 
 castle, who jabbei*ed their monkey-prayers to the pictures 
 in the picture-gallery." 
 
 The woman was so irritated and alarmed, that she her- 
 self pronounced a spell to protect her from the offenders — 
 a spell long current in Protestant England, and occasion- 
 ally lugged out of dark, superstitious lurking-holes to this 
 day— 
 
 "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 
 Bless the bed that I lie on." 
 
 This she sputtered, rather savagely than solemnly, in the 
 tingling, perplexed ears of Grand'mere Dupuy, whose 
 fal hers had renounced j)rayers to the saints before the bat- 
 tle of Pavia.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 21 
 
 Grand'mere was hard to be foiled, and was only braced 
 to another essay by these outbursts. She had the exhaust- 
 less application, industry, and good humor of her nation, 
 and the devoted principles of her sect. 
 
 "We will try neither the old nor the young this time, 
 my pigeon, but a girl like you — the girl Deborah Pott — 
 whom I have caught staring in at our door and windows 
 when she passes, and who once ran after me and restored 
 my sack when I dropped it, nearly knocking me down as 
 she did so. She is not pretty — she is an ugly, ungainly 
 creature; but I think she has what is better "than beauty, 
 and only second to grace and goodness — wit, mother-wit 
 they call it in England. But this lost child has no mother, 
 only a step-mother, who gives her the kindness of the law 
 — no more. Oh ! well, it is good that she gives her that. 
 She can not make a mother's heart for a child who is not 
 hers, and she may be so unfortunate as to forget to pray 
 for it. Our Priscille tells me Mother Pott is a poor widow 
 with a large family to rear, and no wonder she is sharp in 
 the tongue as steel or vinegar. Yet she shelters and feeds 
 this Deborah with what help she can get from the girl's 
 work in the fields, and without much hope of giving her 
 away in marriage. However, Deborah has a wise woman's 
 name, and if she has wit, we will give her a dowry — not 
 that we have money — ' silver and gold have we none,' my 
 little Yolande, save what my son can spare to Philippine 
 to keep the house and furnish the linen-presses and the 
 wardrobes afresh ; but we have our gifts and our accom- 
 plishments, though the country people here think so little 
 of them. Deborah, with the wise woman's name, will be a 
 doctoress. We will teach her our skill in the herbs, which 
 our family have had since Bernardo Romilly stanched the 
 wounds of the great Conde : that will be one dowry for 
 her; and the cambric-darning, the lace-mending, the work- 
 ing of clocks into hose, will be another. She may not get 
 a husband, for I have my suspicions that the English Lads 
 are not wise in their own interests; but it does not signi- 
 fy, my Deborah will be a mother in Sedge Pond, and she 
 will nurse the generations of the future. " 
 
 At first it seemed that Grand'mfcre Dupuy had finally 
 hit the mark. Great uncouth Deborah Potl had not been 
 SO used to preferment that she should scout this ; she had
 
 22 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 faced too many real evils in the bare cold lodging, which 
 was hardly a home, to recoil from the strange French- 
 woman as the rest of the villagers did. Moreover, Debo- 
 rah Pott was of an inquisitive, dauntless turn of mind, 
 which disposed her to venture on the opening of any oyster 
 which the world might present to her. 
 
 " My service, marm : I'd like to come and try, if moth- 
 er 'ud hear of it. She's wicious, mother is, when she's axed 
 aught, because, as she says, she's worritted enough with- 
 out that plague into the bargain ; but she comes round 
 most times after she's been wild a bit, and she allers said 
 she'd be main set up to be well rid of me." 
 
 This speech was delivered with many a bob of an origi- 
 nal, irregular courtesy by the fluttered, important Deborah, 
 whom Grand'mere and Yolande had waylaid as she was 
 returning from her field-work, with her long step, and short 
 petticoat and shorter gown stained with clay, and her 
 steeple-crowned hat, hardly browner than her brick-brown 
 face, and her hoe over her shoulder. 
 
 But the bright prospect of siiccess was soon dashed 
 when Deborah came running over to Shottery Cottage, 
 bellowing all the way like a lubberly boy. 
 
 " Here I be to tell you — I be never to come nigh hand 
 you, or to speak to you again. Mother swears I be the 
 pest of her life, and a tomboy of a lass that will stick to 
 her like a burdock ; but she'll claw me and whack me till 
 there's never a rag of skin on my bones or a whole bone in 
 my body, and she'll have the mischief shook out of me 
 (and I be right sure it never corned there till you put it 
 in, mistress) ; she'll never fee me to a wanton, play-acting, 
 crazy old French queen, as would have her base job out of 
 me, and mix me up in her vile plots, and leave me to hang 
 by the neck at Tyburn till I were ' dead, dead, dead,' like 
 Punch's Judy, when she were done with me. Lawk-a- 
 daisy ! lawk-a-daisy !" 
 
 Now Grand'mere knew the sum of the accusation 
 against her, and for a moment felt cut to the heart. That 
 she — a clever, provident, diligent woman in her day, proud 
 of her housekeeping, and her various arts in keeping ac- 
 counts, dispensing advice and assistance, rearing and train- 
 ing children, handmaids, and even apprentices and clerks, 
 as she had done in the old velouterie, with which the Du-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 23 
 
 puys had been connected for generations, should be re- 
 garded as an unpractical, hare-brained enthusiast, was most 
 mortifying. That she, the humblest, most grateful woman 
 in the world, should be branded as an interloper and a 
 supplanter of other workers, a filcher of their gains, made 
 her sigh deeply, — but that she, a Huguenot, traditionally 
 descended from the Albigenses, with their Champ de Sang 
 and Mas Calvi, educated in the most uncompromising an- 
 tagonism to the Roman hierarchy and the Roman Catholic 
 creed — that she, an exile for her faith, should be accused 
 of vile purposes and plots, brought tears to her grey eyes. 
 
 To be thus confounded with her persecutors and foes, 
 in spite of her loud^ protest, to be ranked with them in 
 their glaring errors by those who were very nearly as 
 groveling, degraded, and pagan as the lowest of the Cath- 
 olics they condemned, was a bitter drop in poor Grand'- 
 mere's cup. That she, an aged widow woman, living in 
 strict seclusion under her son's roof, and the adherent of a 
 Reformer whose followers, in their reaction from license, 
 profligacy, and infidelity, were staid even to moroseness, 
 and rigid to austerity, should be picked out and pointed 
 at as a light, cruel kidnapper and destroyer of younj,- 
 girls, was almost too much for her kindly nature. But 
 still she was able to bear the grievous misconstruction 
 without malice ; which was needful, for Yolande burst out 
 in a girl's vehement spite and scorn. 
 
 "But why do they abuse and slander us?" she urged, 
 bitterly. 
 
 " But why ?" echoed Grand'mere, meekly. " I know 
 not, unless they have forgotten, or never heard, how they 
 admired and applauded our first service in the crypt of 
 Canterbury Cathedral, and only recognize us to taunt and 
 deride us as we come out of the French chapel in Hog 
 Lane, at the Seven Dials." 
 
 In the singleness of heart, which is akin to second Bight, 
 Grand'mere did more than forbear; she arrived at a par- 
 tial comprehension of the cause of her failure. Her poor 
 — her children as she had called them — had been too much 
 children to her, as they are prone to be in those sloth and 
 languor-inspiring southern provinces so long subjected i" 
 the yoke. Saxon vigor could never stoop to such fostering 
 and to such helplessness ; it were to strike at it root and
 
 24 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 branch to attempt this. Reformation, to be effectual, must 
 work from within, not from without. The English, re- 
 formed by mandates of king and counsel, were not yet 
 quite sensible of what true reformation was; while as to 
 the French reformers, every one of them had had to go 
 for himself into the desert, and had thus become noble, 
 independent, and manly in his writhing agonies — protest- 
 ing and steadfast in every nerve and maimed limb. And 
 now the time was come for the two to meet and teach 
 each other. 
 
 Grand'mere had been hasty, puffed up, and rash ; she 
 told herself all that, and it was true in a degree ; but 
 Grand'mere' s faults were better than her neighbor's vir- 
 tiies, just as the doubts of Nicodemus and Martin Luther 
 were better than the faith of other doctors of the Sanhe- 
 drim, and other monks. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE DUPUY HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 The Dupuy household consisted of Monsieur and Mad- 
 ame Dupuy; Yolande, their only child; Grand'mere, 
 Monsieur's mother ; and Priscilla, or Priseille, or Prie, as 
 the French tongues variously named a club-footed, taci- 
 turn, elderly English maid-servant attached to their ser- 
 vice. The family was from Languedoc, which had been 
 the very heart of the great heretical movement from the 
 days of Richard of the Lion Heart. The people of that 
 province have some of the liveliness of their Gascon neigh- 
 bors, but it is crossed by Italian moodiness and passion. 
 
 The Dupuys had emigrated to England among the crowds 
 from Languedoc, Angoumois, Brittany, Picardy, Alsace, 
 Champagne, Auvergne, and Provence, where some of the 
 hereditary nobility still bore on their shields the emblem- 
 atic torches and stars of the Albigenses. They had been 
 forced to escape with their lives owing to the long-con- 
 tinued consequences of there vocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes. They suffered under political disabilities; then- 
 church services, and even their marriages, were illegal.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 25 
 
 Their pains and penalties were innumerable, and scorn and 
 contumely had been heaped upon them down even to the 
 days of Jean Jacques, and the gushing, fermenting religion 
 of nature. 
 
 So far as the Dupuys were concerned, the exodus had 
 taken place twenty years ago, three or four years before 
 Yolande was born. Silk manufacturers by hereditary 
 trade, they had at first settled in the colony of Spitalficbls. 
 As years wore on, however, M. Dupuy, by his busi- 
 ness qualifications, and notwithstanding difficulties, had 
 attained a certain amount of prosperity and means ; and 
 as Madame's health showed symptoms of failing, he with- 
 drew from greater interest in business than what was im- 
 plied in his braving the clangers of the road, and the gen- 
 tlemen of the road, in periodical coach journeys — quarter- 
 ly, or more frequently, as necessity demanded — between 
 London and Norwich. The family settled in the quiet 
 village of Sedge Pond, which presented at first sight to 
 tired, battered wayfarers like them as secure a place of 
 rest and shelter as deceitful appearances could offer. 
 
 There the Dupuys had dwelt from spring to summer in 
 complete isolation and seclusion, the sole interlude and in- 
 cident in their lives being Monsieur's departures and re- 
 turns, and the exciting risks by flood and field, from storms, 
 overturns, and horse-pistols of which His Majesty's high- 
 way then presented a bountiful supply. But Grand'mere 
 was kept active by other impulses; for notwithstanding 
 all her experience, she was unable to regard Christianity 
 — even Reformed Christianity, with its half-healed wounds 
 and rankling wrongs — as a religion requiring one to re- 
 tire, like an Englishman, into one's castle, raising the draw- 
 bridge and letting fall the portcullis. She did not under- 
 stand that to live in peace with all men was only to be at- 
 tained by living apart from all men — "neither making nor 
 meddling in their concerns." Therefore Grand'mere in- 
 stinctively tried the innocent wiles of her own pleasant 
 land; and from her sacred, sunny, hoary height of four- 
 score years she looked down full of hope, and vyas piteous 
 only when the wiles failed. 
 
 The Dupuys, not merely exiles, but withdrawn even from 
 their fellow-exiles, were thus thrown in upon themselves 
 with the force of their national, sectarian peculiarities left 
 
 B
 
 26 TIIE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 
 
 intact ; but they preserved their individual distinctions 
 so well that they bore no great family likeness. The cri- 
 sis, it is true, had worked powerfully on all the materials, 
 but the materials were widely and permanently affected 
 by sex, age, and personal history. The result was that 
 they presented such warp and woof of good and evil as 
 French Huguenots, English Puritans, and Scotch Cove- 
 nanters supply each in turn to the dispassionate and candid 
 observer. Monsieur was a Huguenot in name and politics, 
 just as. Praise-God Barebones was a Puritan or Erskine of 
 Grange a Calvinist ; he was on that account the more 
 tenacious in retaining the little he had left to make up for 
 the much he had lost. He was a zealous, energetic, influ- 
 ential member of that foreign society which has only 
 within late years been broadly recognized as a moving- 
 spring and leaven in English annals, and justly recorded 
 as such. But even in those days it found some manly, 
 generous defenders, and certain acts and clauses of acts 
 were wisely and liberally passed in the British Parliament 
 for its protection. But the defense was so ineffectual, and 
 so weakly were the protective clauses put in force, that 
 false prophets and revolutionists were taken as the expo- 
 nents and representatives of the refugees, and to pay them 
 back in fit coin they were caricatured and villifiecl even by 
 William Hogarth, who was gentle to the Methodists. 
 But there were more substantial outrages, too. Silk-mills, 
 like that of Derby, were set on fire, and the sluices of great 
 Yorkshire were undermined. It was an ordinary occur- 
 rence for foreign workmen to be felled with bludgeons ; 
 and households such as the Dupuys, were like small colo- 
 nies of ants in an empire of hornets. 
 
 Such a society had to fight hard for its existence, and 
 had to be united by all ties whether kindred or selfish. 
 The men who formed and cemented it, were certainly men 
 of tact and vigor ; and they have left proof of this in the 
 great French names which figure in England's story in the 
 succeeding generations. 
 
 But Monsieur Dupuy suffered the blight which the faith 
 of many men, especially Frenchmen, who are far more 
 speculative than emotional, suffers on the dissipation of 
 early illusions and prejudices. Coming out of a concen- 
 trated, narrowing atmosphere, where the views of life were
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 27 
 
 exaggerated and spasmodic, and having his eyes opened to 
 the falseness of many of the lights seen through the highly 
 colored, distorted medium, and to the retaliating aggression 
 and intolerance of some of the most cherished dogmas, he 
 gaveway to the reactionary feeling which has been ever only 
 too plentiful among such a society. Monsieur was a good 
 Huguenot in so far as he remained stanchly, consistently 
 mindful of his own wrongs as a Frenchman, and was stern- 
 ly opposed to the Roman Catholic Church. But he went 
 no farther than this, and was in every other sense unmis- 
 takably, undisguisedly, a man of the world. Madame, 
 his wife, who thought differently, never ceased, openly and 
 pointedly, to bemoan his declension, and to sit in judgment 
 on it with mingled gloom and asperity ; and though he 
 was too much of a bourgeois gentleman and French hus- 
 band to snap his fingers, he certainly did shrug his shoul- 
 ders at her. Grand'mere, with her great, sweet charily, 
 made allowance for his difficulties, temptations, and dangers, 
 and bore with him, believed in him, and hoped in him. 
 And the best thing in Monsieur was his conduct to his 
 mother. He was a provoking, jibing husband, an indiffer- 
 ent, careless father, but he was Grand'mere's stay and sup- 
 port in all duty and honor ; nay, he was more ; the sallow, 
 periwigged man of fifty was as deferential and as tender 
 in his tone to the grandmother of the family as when she 
 was the house-mistress, and he a chubby boy at her apron- 
 strinsj. 
 
 Madame Dupuy could not be called an unhappy woman. 
 for she was one of those who luxuriate in their woes ; but 
 hers was not a nature calculated to make others happy. 
 She was a woman of the closet, with the faults of the 
 closet opposed to the sins of the world. She was sincere, 
 constant, virtuous, and pious in her own way, but then that 
 was quite a French way. She was more respectful ami 
 submissive to her mother-in-law as a daughter than she 
 was to her husband as a wife; while as a mother herself 
 she exacted unqualified obedience, and was careful and 
 anxious, but not fond. She had been upward of twenty 
 years in England, which had served her so far as a haven 
 of refuge and an adopted country, but she had do1 « 1 i - - 
 covered a single merit in it! She had been six months at 
 Sedge Pond without crossing her door-step, except t" at-
 
 28 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 tend the English church-service, the only service within her 
 reach — the Lutheran form of which she not only deeply 
 lamented over, hut hitterly resented. She took no inter- 
 est in any thing in the wide world heyond her own family, 
 her fellow-exiles, her church, and her country — the latter 
 of which she had left to lying prophets and the destroyer. 
 She discoursed continually on one or other of these sub- 
 jects, dwelling particularly on the trials and persecutions 
 of Huguenot history, until they seemed to shadow with a 
 black pall all that grew and flourished, smiled and re- 
 joiced, on the face of the earth, and until her talk was like 
 a passionate protest against the government of the great 
 God and Father of all, whom she feared, and only feared. 
 When she spoke of her church and her country, she did 
 not dwell as Grand'mere did on fruits ripened under the 
 sharp frost of pain and anguish. She did not dilate with 
 delight on gallant endurance, on love stronger than death, 
 on patience, charity, purity, or heavenly-mindedness ; she 
 never credited or reported the remorse and ruth, the pity, 
 the kindness, the generous pleading, in the formidable face 
 of hostile despotism, of those who, like the Prince of She- 
 chem, were more noble than all the house of their fathers. 
 It was not of the Christian chivalry of Agrippa d'Au- 
 bigne in many a siege and battle-field, nor of the Christian 
 loyalty of Madame de la Force, that she waxed eloquent. 
 Not of the noble, half-mad prophetess, Marie Villiers ; not 
 of the common ground on which a Bossuet might meet a 
 Claude, or a Fenelon in his archicpiscopal chair a Paul 
 Rabaud in the desert, did she speak. It was of men hung 
 by the thumbs till the blood spurted from underneath 
 their nails, of women frightened into fits by hideous spec- 
 tacles, of drums beaten night and day to deprive the 
 wretched of the last human resource — the oblivion of 
 sleep; it was of desecrated temples and their dismal deso- 
 lation, of the galleys, the hurdle, and the hangman, that 
 she incessantly clamored. 
 
 No wonder then that Yolande Dupuy, with her mental 
 appetite fed on such a diet, should grow up sad, sombre, 
 and scornful, with a perplexed, scared look in the midst of 
 her youth and beauty. Had she been a lad, a young Han- 
 nibal, she might have been tempted to swear some deadly 
 heathen oath that she would live to be avenged on the
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 29 
 
 foes whom Christ tells us to forgive as we hope to be for- 
 given. Without Grand'mere, there is no saying how un- 
 girl-like Yolande might have been. She would certainly 
 have been more absorbed in the centuries-long injuries of 
 her sect and race ; more chilled by the dank, cold atmos- 
 phere of prisons and tombs ; more unsusceptible to those 
 sweet, balmy influences and bountiful consolations of God 
 in nature and humanity, which call upon all men, however 
 tried and however down-trodden, not simply to stifle then- 
 sobs and hide their wounds with the heroism of the an- 
 cient Stoic, but to take heart, look up and resume their 
 march, in the confidence of free-born sons and daughters 
 of the Lord Almighty, as knowing that their redemption 
 draweth nigh. For Yolande had no relief derived from 
 the robust, cheery presence of such a privileged, hearty, 
 confidential family servant as a French Fifine or Solaire 
 might have been. Priscille, thouo-h she had taken Yolande 
 as a new-born child into her arms, and was inseparably 
 identified and bound up with the family, was yet by tem- 
 per, infirmity, and circumstance, graver, more reserved 
 and taciturn, than any austere Huguenot born and bred. 
 She was a gruff woman with a temper, whose humor was 
 so dry that, like old wine, it required an old and disci- 
 plined palate to appreciate it ; and indeed, it was true that 
 old Grand'mere would nod and shake her neat, trim old 
 sides at Priscille's brevity and unpremeditated strokes of 
 sarcasm. 
 
 Grand'mere was the sole sunbeam in the family. She 
 was a living disproval of any notion which might have ex- 
 isted that it was tribulation in itself which had rendered 
 the family so still and severe. She had suffered more 
 tribulation than any of them — than all of them put to- 
 gether — for she had lived nearer the darkest, most cruel 
 days of blood and fire. Grand'mere had seen Huguenots, 
 whose only crime had been attending a religious uniting 
 of their own persuasion, walking behind a troop of infant- 
 ry, collars of iron around their necks, and heavy chains 
 linking them four to four and six to six, ami yet daring to 
 bare their brave heads, and sing one of Clement Marot's 
 psalms — 
 
 " Jamais ne cesserai 
 Dc magnifier lc Seigneur.''
 
 30 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Ay, her own elder brother, Blaise, had been one of the 
 men who with cramped limbs, swollen by the weight of 
 their fetters and the damp straw on which they had lain 
 the previous night, dragged themselves along, singing tri-' 
 umphantly as they went on their way to wanton insult, 
 wasting sickness, and an early deliverance by death. And 
 not only this — Grand'mere's husband not being a reformed 
 pastor, who was allowed the favor of taking on himself 
 without molestation the execution of his sentence of per- 
 petual banishment — had been caught in the act of escaping 
 from the country which condemned and abhorred him, and 
 had to work as a slave, fastened to a bench, under the al- 
 most tropical sun of Marseilles, where he had been flogged 
 and bastinadoed for three endless years. On obtaining 
 his release, through a singular act of clemency, he returned 
 to his home a bloodless skeleton, a harmless, light-brained, 
 mazed man, paralyzed not in body, but in heart. 
 
 Yet Grand'mere could laugh and sing now. It was not 
 from French levity, but because, in her day, she could 
 "cry with the best." These tremendous crosses and tor- 
 tures had not been without their blessed light and their 
 balm — not without their crushed fragrance of meekness, 
 their lofty consciousness of rectitude, their solemn tender 
 consolation of walking in the very footsteps of prophets, 
 apostles, martyrs, and even of the great Master himself; 
 else whence the force of the "Blessed are ye when all men 
 shall revile you and persecute you?" But it is not so 
 much in the actual endurance as in the after-thought of 
 great tribulation that flesh and blood cry out, nature re- 
 volts, and all the smaller, meaner passions come out to coil 
 and spring like a brood of snakes on their prey. To 
 GrancPmere these old sorrows were far away on the dim 
 and distant horizon, divided from her by more than one 
 life-time. Grand'mere was on those hills of Beulah near 
 to the land where there is nothing to hurt or destroy in all 
 God's holy mountain. 
 
 Thus the Huguenot household abode in the grey solid 
 little Shottery Cottage with its square casements and 
 hood-like porch. They were distinct and peculiar as any 
 Jewish household, while the old village of Sedge Pond lay 
 couchant in the attitude and temper of a sluttish, drowsy 
 mastiff. Passers-by could see through the cottage case-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 31 
 
 merits, ajar or wide open in summer, into the house ; and 
 through the glass-door or the wicket into the garden, 
 which occupied a corner of the castle-park, with its ter- 
 races, its pleached arbor, and its grotesque monster or two 
 in box or yew. But what most attracted the eye of the 
 villagers was the pond, which they declared was kept for 
 and stored with frogs, or the rapid growth of strange herbs 
 and vegetables — chicory, endive, brilliant scarlet beans, 
 which were regarded as being equally uncanny and unfa- 
 miliar. And then, too, figures were often to be seen mov- 
 ing among the flowers or seated in the rooms. Eyes were 
 perhaps apathetic in peering at first, but there was no 
 want of strength of disparagement in the owners when 
 once they looked, and stared at Monsieur, more flabby than 
 lean-fleshed, and not very remarkable in his rusty brown 
 suit, plain cravat, knee-breeches, and square shoes with 
 square buckles. Yet though he was more conformable in 
 gait and garment to English fashions than his womenkind, 
 he would seem odd enough to these stupid eyes as he led 
 Grand'niere by the tips of the fingers to her seat at table, 
 or from the pleached arbor to her room. "Well was it that 
 these villagers saw not all his graces of deportment, for he 
 would stand many minutes at the back of her chair as 
 courtly and insinuating as if he had been a prince and she 
 a princess, he a young lover and she his mistress. Then 
 the rest of the fiimily made up a curious picture. Madame 
 Dupuy, in the perpetual mourning which the later Hugue- 
 not women assumed, sat precise and cheerless, with more 
 wrinkles and furrows in her narrow forehead than con- 
 tracted Grand'mere's broad fair one, and her guzzled hair 
 as if in mourning, too, like the rest of her attire; while 
 Yolande, in dress, was a fac-simile of her grandmother, al- 
 though the two models were so very different — the one so 
 old, small, fair, sweet, and bright, the other so young, tall, 
 and grey-toned in contradiction to the firmer, fuller out- 
 lines. There was indeed a flavor of tartness about the 
 picture, and a permanent Rembrandtish gloom which was 
 not without its mystery and its charm. 
 
 The public rooms of the cottage wire not divided into 
 better and worse parlors, as in other English cottages and 
 middle class or small gentry's houses of the time, but into 
 the man's room and the women's room. The man's room
 
 32 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 was half study, half business room, crowded and cumbered 
 with heavy chests and boxes. A black cabinet, with nu- 
 merous shalloAV drawers and doors quaintly carved with 
 scenes from the life of King Solomon, stood in one corner,- 
 and escritoires, suggesting a lingering grasp of trade, and 
 hinting of reverential preservation of family and party 
 records and relics, in the other. The only visitors who had 
 yet appeared at Sedge Pond were received by Monsieur 
 before they were met and entertained by the general fami- 
 ly, and that with a hospitality staid and subdued, but 
 striking in its ungrudgingness, for it was the only outlay 
 which the strangers, economical to penuriousness in En- 
 glish eyes, did not grudge and stint themselves in. The 
 visitors were emigrants like themselves, more or less fresh 
 from France, or worn into foreign grooves. There were 
 agents of emigrants too, and with them occasionally came 
 Englishmen, so allied to them in business as to have got 
 over the salient points on which they and the emigrants 
 stood aloof from each other. Sometimes, 'also, there would 
 be a sprinkling of other foreigners — sputtering Swiss, bland 
 Italians, and phlegmatic Dutch, as they passed to and from 
 Norwich and London, in the interests of the newly-estab- 
 lished or renovated silk manufactures which were carried 
 on in small, dingy, and most inconvenient manufactories, 
 where the looms, still waiting for Jacquard, were so com- 
 plicated and so little adapted to the human shape and 
 movements that the canuts of Lyons, who had worked at 
 them for generations, were notoriously a crippled, dwarfed, 
 and diseased class. After all, it was an odd shaping of 
 circumstances which made a remote, thoroughly insular 
 village, not even on any of the great roads, become a chos- 
 en meeting-place and rendezvous of those who, to nine- 
 tenths of even enlightened Englishmen, figured, not with- 
 out reason, as very suspicious characters. 
 
 The women's room had its elaborate, monotonous, time- 
 consuming work — carpet -work, embroidery, and fine lace- 
 weaving, which Madame Dupuy did not disapprove of, 
 but considered a necessary element of strict discipline, and 
 praiseworthy in itself, however objectionable in its results. 
 The room had no harpsichord, nor hint of diversion, nor 
 suggestion of occupation beyond books of recipes and ac- 
 counts. There were one or two treasured volumes of fa-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 33 
 
 mous treatises and discourses by Reformed pastors, a work 
 of Jean Calvin himself, and a volume for which, in its sim- 
 plicity and purity, they had sacrificed, and well sacrificed, 
 country and people, credit, comfort, outward peace. Grand'- 
 mere's passion for birds and flowers, and indeed all living 
 things, was less artificially indulged than was common 
 with her country-women, and this rendered the women's 
 room barer, more rigidly matter of fact. Grand'mere's 
 own room, in spite of its great linen bed and curtained 
 doors, was perfectly simple, as became a Huguenot apart- 
 ment,' but she had her jardiniere in the window, in which 
 she grew spiked lavender and African marigolds, just like 
 those the women of Languedoc stick in their black hair 
 behind their ears ; and she would catch herself calling to 
 Yolande to shut the casement on a chill day, for fear of 
 the cutting mistral. Yes, here, where the old Avoman who 
 had suffered so much in the long past was to be met pecu- 
 liarly, there were to be found grace, fancy, dignity, and a 
 kind of refined bravery. 
 
 In the women's room the family, the members of which 
 did not meet for breakfast, but supped their messes of soup 
 stepping out of bed, or walking about the house, met for 
 the noon dinner, which was composed largely of vegeta- 
 bles and such fruit as Sedge Pond yielded — a diet before 
 which, as opposed to corned beef and stock-fish, it was 
 quite true, as Grand'mere had boasted, that scurvy and 
 leprosy disappeared. There they ate their equally tem- 
 perate supper, not drinking any thing so strong and sub- 
 stantial as home-brewed ale, or so spicy as elder-flower 
 wine, but unutterably mawkish and insipid milks and 
 waters of their own compounding, and, in rarer instances, 
 when they had visitors, their vinegar wine. Monsieur 
 pondered, wrote, and calculated, and waited on the mail 
 twice a week, just as busily and assiduously as if he were 
 still the head of a firm. And sometimes he would stroll 
 alone on the terraces or about the country roads, or shool 
 small birds with a fowling-piece, causing a lively struggle 
 in Grand'mere's mind between regret for the fate of the 
 birds and gratification at her sou's diversion. The women 
 worked everlastingly, keeping time to Madame's lamenta- 
 tions, or Grand'mere's praises and thanksgivings and 
 sparkling range of observation and anecdote. There was 
 
 B 2
 
 34 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 no smoking, drinking, dicing, or card-playing ; very little 
 even of the feasting which then went on elsewhere through- 
 out England among all classes, from ministers of state 
 down to plough-boys. Indeed the prejudiced people of 
 Sedge Pond esteemed this very sobriety as an important 
 tittle of evidence against the offenders, and often discussed 
 it in one or other of the great rooms of the ale-house as an 
 unmistakable proof that the French family were guilty of 
 far worse practices. 
 
 " A can not and a wunnot drink like my neebors, be- 
 cause when ale's in wit's out, and a can not afford to miss 
 wit for my gunpowder plots ;" so they would represent 
 them as saying. 
 
 CHAPTER IY. 
 
 THE RECTOR AND HIS HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 The Dupuys had now lived six months in Sedge Pond, 
 tolerated, but looked at askance, unmolested, but without 
 having received a word of welcome as Protestant refugees. 
 And yet there was, at the head of the church at Sedge 
 Pond, a stout spiritual captain who with reason reckoned 
 himself a good Christian and Protestant. Mr. Philip Rolle, 
 the rector of the parish, was one of the best and most in- 
 fluential of the clergy of his district. He was respected by 
 all, a little perhaps" because of his good birth, private for- 
 tune, and connection with the great Holies of the Castle, 
 but still more because of the manliness, independence, so- 
 briety, and morality of his life. And this was something 
 at a time when the Church often scandalized the world by 
 having in its ranks bishops, priests, and deacons who were 
 ministers to iniquity in high places, and time-servers as 
 loose and irregular in their lives as the grosser members of 
 their congregations. Such things, when they did not ex- 
 cite violent antipathy, were regarded with indolent indif- 
 ference. Indeed, the memory of good Bishop Ken and 
 holy George Herbert, and the priests of whom they were 
 the type, seemed to have died out. 
 
 Mr. Philip Rolle was a proud, opinionative lender, but at 
 the same time a conscientious, active, benevolent magis- 
 trate and clergyman, a brave, resolute gentleman, and a
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 35 
 
 generous man according to his light. He never missed 
 preaching sermons like military orders, and read the serv- 
 ice, whether well or ill, in winter's frost and summer's 
 sultriness. He rode into the thick of mobs and quelled 
 them, perhaps more by his undaunted aristocratic features 
 than his ready riding-whip, which, it must be confessed, he 
 was by no means slow to wield when any refractory sheep 
 was straying from the flock. He would undoubtedly have 
 refused to whistle the Word of God through a key-hole, as 
 he denounced and stormed at simony ; and his hands, hu- 
 manly speaking, were clean, and his heart pure. But he 
 was, notwithstanding all this, as fierce and fanatical as a 
 Pharisee, without a Pharisee's hypocrisy. He would have 
 objected to a dissenter and a democrat more than to an 
 unbeliever and a tyrant, for the one he regarded as a 
 masked, the other as an open enemy. 
 
 Thus the rector had been vexed when the Dupuys in- 
 vaded his parish and accomplished a settlement in it. He 
 was not ignorant, like many of his parishioners, of their 
 claims on his consideration and hospitality as fellow-Prot- 
 estants who had suffered in the cause of religious liberty. 
 But he ignored them as long as possible, for he looked 
 upon them as perilous neighbors and their views as dan- 
 gerous stuff. He was without doubt a Protestant, firmly 
 denying Roman Catholic supremacy, and boldly confessing 
 and abjuring Roman Catholic corruption and error. Had 
 he lived a little earlier, and had rectors gone to the Tower 
 with bishops, he would without fail have gone to the Tower. 
 But as it was, he had no regard for factious subjects, and 
 his gorge rose at the French, whether Protestant or Papist. 
 He classed the French refugees naturalized in England 
 with the receivers of the royal bounty who paid it back in 
 intrigue, conspiracy, and enthusiastic imposture. It was to 
 no purpose, so far as Mr. Philip Kolle and vehement En- 
 glishmen like him were concerned, that the French churches 
 in London and elsewhere denounced and repudiated such 
 evil courses, and mourned that the actors in them were 
 generally taken as the representatives of their sect and na- 
 tion. The rector was inclined to look on the Dupuys as 
 more distasteful and troublesome parishioners than his old 
 plagues, the meddling and leveling family of the Gages of 
 the Mall, who were at least the spawn of an English
 
 36 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 brood, and whose vices and errors were those of En- 
 
 gland 
 
 Mr. Philip Rolle, as was fitting in those republican times, 
 kept a great deal of state, including a family chariot and a- 
 black servant. He had been rather lucky in his matrimo- 
 nial venture, for Madam Rolle was a presentable woman, 
 fair and fat. She believed in her Bible, her husband, her 
 children, and " The County Chronicle." She was a good, 
 commonplace, shallow woman, who had known few cares 
 or sorrows, and was entirely overshadowed by the superior 
 intellect and will of her husband. True, she put forth her 
 whole energy, such as it was, and labored diligently in her 
 small calling, in order that nothing should be wanting in 
 her housewifery. Their family consisted of one son and 
 two daughters. Captain Philip Rolle, at the date of our 
 story, was in the army, and engaged in the American war. 
 He was the very idol of his lather's heart, and was report- 
 ed to be a gallant officer and a promising young man. 
 Madam Rolle, while she contrived that she should be the 
 most notable woman in the parish, seemed also to have de- 
 termined that her two grown-up daughters, Dorothy, and 
 Camilla, should never put their high-heeled feet to the 
 ground, or soil the rosy tips of their fingers, which their 
 mittens left exposed, save for their own special pleasure. 
 This mode of upbringing was, of course, expected to render 
 them all the better fitted for the certain, speedy, and high 
 promotion to which their transcendent merits entitled 
 them, and were sure to command for them. And since the 
 rector had a hand in the polemics of his day and a seat on 
 the bench, he was too busy a man to think the question of 
 women's education of so much consequence, that he should 
 interfere with the training of his daughters. Reprobate 
 parsons of the Lawrence Sterne stamp would interfere, and 
 be very much set on their Lyds speaking French and danc- 
 ing minuets, Avith the airs and graces of ma'mselles; but 
 righteous parsons, like Mr. Philip Rolle, left the reading 
 and the writing of their daughters, as well as the cooking 
 and the working, to their mothers and to nature. lie who 
 was a lion abroad was, in this respect, a lamb at home. 
 Thus Dorothy and Camilla had, perhaps, the best chance 
 in England, if it were not frustrated, under Providence, by 
 some sense and virtue in their own hearts, of being most
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 3 
 
 h 
 
 selfish, uncultivated girls, full of affectations, extravagances, 
 and passions, strong as in children. 
 
 The two girls, plump and cherry-cheeked, were puffed, 
 powdered, and patched after the best mode, and lolled and 
 yawned, with their lap-dogs on then* knees, while black 
 Jasper was actually employed to fan them in the hot 
 weather. But when the wind or their humor changed, 
 they would walk about with their riding-skirts, used as 
 wa Iking - dresses, and the long trains drawn through the 
 pocket-holes. And thus they would tramp through dust 
 and mire to the next market-town or the next country- 
 house, in search of adventure and diversion. They were 
 not over-particular as to the kind ; and sometimes they 
 would succeed in coaxing then- father to mount one or oth- 
 er on a chariot horse, while he would accompany them him- 
 self, seated erectly and stately on another, Black Jasper 
 riding behind, with his knees drawn up to the crown of 
 his head. For a whole dim October day, or white Febru- 
 ary one, they would go about thus, spurring and clattering. 
 
 Mr. Philip Rolle was not one of those men who fight un- 
 der women's colors. He did not even dream of using his 
 ladies as helpmeets in his office, though the practice Avas 
 ancient enough, and might have pleased a man who Avas 
 conservative and opposed to novelties. In his own indul- 
 gent, courteous, autocratical way he was strong on the phys- 
 ical and mental inferiority of women, and their inevitable 
 dependence upon man, and he enforced his notions by all 
 sound laws, human and divine. One of the innovations 
 which specially offended and disgusted him in the new doc- 
 trines which John Wesley and Fletcher of Madeley had giv- 
 en themselves over to spread, was that of women preaching 
 and teaching, and taking it upon them to judge tor them- 
 selves against the plain doctrines of revealed truth. 
 
 He did not employ Madam Rolle in parochial work be- 
 yond the superintendence of the making of a particular pos- 
 set, or the placing the contents of her larder at hi- disposal 
 for his respectable poor, whom he wished to feed and clothe 
 by rule and measure, though yet with a certain faithfulness 
 and liberality, for to the poor who had become so through 
 their own deeds and deserts he was a stem jailer and task- 
 master. Dorothy and Camilla might perhaps languishingly 
 or pertly distribute pence on days of doles or church i'esti-
 
 38 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 vals, but the rector scorned female assistance of any more 
 practical character. The idea of women, whom he acknowl- 
 edged as rational beings called to love and good works, 
 being employed in ministrations of education, enlighten-, 
 ment, or consolation in the best sense, would, in his idea, 
 have been simply to strike at the very root of Protestant- 
 ism. He would liave mourned over it as a return to the 
 ascetic sentimental sisterhoods of Roman Catholicism, with 
 their famished humanity and their spurious pietism, or, at 
 the best, as a drifting into the eccentric, unorthodox, lawless 
 by-roads of Methodism. But Dorothy and Camilla were 
 honest and modest, innocent in their ignorance and their 
 respectfulness to their father, and their affection to then- 
 mother. They did not wholly want parts ; at least they 
 could not contribute to the evening cheerfulness by song, 
 riddle, and game, and they knew the fashions sufficiently to 
 spoil their complexions and injure their health a little by 
 washes. What more could be expected of the frail things, 
 since it was taken for granted that they also went to 
 church when the weather was not too inclement, said their 
 prayers, and resisted temptation in the shape of private ac- 
 quaintance with profligate young Squire Thornhills, and 
 such-like scandalous company ? 
 
 The rectory women had so little fault to find with their 
 world and its* morals, that it never entered into the light 
 vaporish heads of Dorothy and Camilla that they were ex- 
 pected to be more than young ladies of breeding, of a little 
 beauty and some accomplishments. Time, if it hung heav- 
 ily on their hands, was to be got rid of as they could best 
 contrive for their own content, and the maintenance of 
 their very intermittent and wavering sprightliness, which, 
 as was the fashion then, alternated with fits of lowness and 
 spleen, when they would lie abed half-days at a time, and 
 fling their shoes at Black Jasper. But all this, of course, 
 was done in subordination to the great aim of their own 
 and their mother's lives, that in time they should make 
 good matches. The sun of fortune had shone upon their 
 horizon when their distant kinswoman and careless, capri- 
 cious patroness, Lady Rolle, held racket at the Castle ; and 
 their fondest hope and wish now was to be invited to spend 
 a season of frantic dissipation under her ladyship's game- 
 bird wing up in town.
 
 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 39 
 
 Nothing had more puzzled, astounded, and in a sort ag- 
 grieved Madam in the whole course of her sheltered, shal- 
 low life, than the disappointing experience she had had of 
 her old school-fellow and companion, Madam Gage, of the 
 Mall. While yet a woman of youth, beauty, parts, birth, 
 and fortune, this lady had risen up and resisted the impos- 
 ing array of custom and authority, which she had been 
 taught to hold in devoted esteem and veneration. She 
 had declared that there was a higher law and a greater 
 authority on her side, which she dared not gainsay or con- 
 tradict, and which commanded her to come out of her 
 family and circle, and follow her own course. Hardships, 
 reproaches, mockery, contumely, and condemnation had 
 not moved her. She had separated herself from her 
 " world," and stood alone, and, what was worse, she had 
 entered into alliance with men and women not of Madam 
 Rolle's kind, and who were unlike her in thought, speech, 
 and habit. Madam Gage had worn plain clothes, fed on 
 homely food, risen up early, lain down late, and had estab- 
 lished and maintained a household according to her own 
 strange independent rules. Yea, she had even gone 
 abroad, and labored like an ordained priest, except that 
 her labors were all among the poorest, most ignorant, and 
 most depraved, till she had wedded Mr. Gage, of the Mall, 
 one of the few persons of her rank infected with her craze. 
 She had lived and worked with him, called all things by 
 new names, and had founded every kind of unheard-of 
 and uncalled-for institution. The husband and wife had 
 stirred up the meanest working man and woman to try for 
 themselves this new version of religion, and to work it out 
 according to their circumstances and capacities — above all, 
 according to divine gifts profanely accorded to them. 
 These senseless and audacious subversions of duty ami 
 harmony had been thorns in the flesh of Mr. Rolle, and 
 had been carried on, to Madam Rolle's indignant marvel 
 and dismay, under the rector's very nose, and by individ- 
 uals still in communion with his Church. 
 
 Yet Madam Gage, apart from her lamentable " perver- 
 sion," did not fail in any of the relations of life, but was 
 so true a daughter, so kind a sister, and so considerate 
 and constant a friend and mistress, wife and mother, that 
 her kindred forgot and forgave the disgrace and injury she
 
 40 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 » 
 
 had done them by her new profession. They restored her 
 to their good graces, and re-installed her in the place of 
 the willing working member of the house, on whom, even 
 though married, all troublesome obligations fall, and are 
 cheerfully accepted, and patiently and faithfully fulfilled. 
 And to the day of her death Madam Gage had never ap- 
 peared to Madam Rolle with the bearing of a conscious 
 offender, or even of a presuming woman. In her stuff 
 gown, linen neckerchief, and muffling head-dress of frills 
 and bands, Madam Gage had looked the same grand, 
 handsome, frank, high-spirited woman she had looked 
 when she went, powdered as a marchioness, with brocade 
 over her hoop and a pearl drop at her throat. If there 
 was any change, it was a greater depth in her grey eyes, a 
 sweeter curve in her full, firm lip, as though peace and 
 rest had come out of the strife and toil she had chosen, 
 and had lent serenity to her beauty. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FLAG OF TRUCE, AND II0AV IT FARED. 
 
 I wish you to give me your company in paying a 
 visit," said Mr. Philip Rolle to his wife and daughters, one 
 day, as he entered the parlor with its Indian hangings, 
 worked chair-covers, and dragon china. Madam, in a 
 sack, sat poring over her recipe-book, and Dorothy and 
 Camilla sat with crossed hands and made faces in an oppo- 
 site mirror. 
 
 " Where to, papa ?" cried the girls in a breath, jumping 
 up. " You must tell us, that we may know what to wear. 
 Any kind of gadding is better than moping here." 
 
 "With all the pleasure in life, girls; we are delighted 
 to go abroad with papa," put in Madam, carefully. " Is 
 the chariot to be had out, sir ?" 
 
 It is to be noted that Madam did not stand in awe of 
 her husband. She loved him too well for what is gener- 
 ally understood by that phrase, and perfect love in this re- 
 lation, as in every other, casteth out fear. She compre- 
 hended his character so well by long, fond poring over 
 him, that she read what was in his mind as readily as a
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 41 
 
 much cleverer woman would have read it, and she set her- 
 self to humor him. She was aware that, great man as he 
 was, he was not superior to keeping his family in the dark 
 till the last moment as to his intentions, and thus exercis- 
 ing them in blind obedience. And he - now answered 
 briefly, " No, there is no need for the chariot ; the attend- 
 ance of Black Jasper will suffice." 
 
 "Surely you might tell its more, papa," implored the 
 girls, half whimpering. " We do not know whether we 
 ought to put on our gauzes and mantles, or our modes 
 and paduasoys." 
 
 " Either, my daughters ; the question is not worth a 
 wise woman's consideration. Granting that the wise 
 woman's clothing was silk and purple, I dare avow she 
 put it on at once and did not weigh it in the balance," as- 
 serted the provoking man, who yet hardly ever proposed 
 to his daughters any higher questions. 
 
 Madam Rolle hastened to step in to still the little fer- 
 ment and to dissipate the perplexity which was already 
 causing pouts and taps of the heels on the floor. " I am 
 certain my Dorothy and my Camilla will be charmed to 
 have an opportunity of seeing company with their papa 
 and me, whether they are to be in their mantles or their 
 paduasoys. I dare say, my dear, we have to go no farther 
 than the ale-house, to see some travelers who are baiting 
 their horses there, or have broken down, or fear to go on 
 and be benighted. Only, sir, if we are to offer them our 
 hospitality, I hope you will acquaint me in time, as I can 
 not be provided with what I need any nearer than Red- 
 ham. Surely my Lady Rolle and her sons can not have 
 come suddenly to the Castle without previous warning, or 
 without the girls seeing the coach and the riders, when 
 they have sat in the window there and diverted them- 
 selves counting every cart, wagon, and pack-horse that 
 has passed this morning." 
 
 "No, Lady Rolle is not at the Castle, that I have heard 
 of," her lord and master assured her, "and the object of 
 the call is none so pleasant that I should be in haste to an- 
 nounce it. I think it is ft we should wait on these 
 French cattle at Shottery Cottage." 
 
 "Where you think it right to go, my dear Philip, T am 
 ready and willing to attend you; but, sir, do you think it
 
 42 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 equally safe for the girls ?" hesitated Madam, for once in 
 her life doubtful of Mr. Philip Rolle's complete discretion. 
 
 " Why, there is no fear these people will kidnap our 
 idle lasses, and send them over the seas to convents to 
 learn to be useful there, especially when their own women 
 have preferred being put into penitentkories." 
 
 " Never mind papa, girls ; he has no real intention of 
 depreciating his own, or exalting foreigners over true 
 Britons." 
 
 " You are right there, Millie ; but if we are to do the 
 thing at all, we had better do it handsomely. These folk 
 have a chit like ours, whom we may as well notice if we 
 notice any of them ; it is probable she is the most harm- 
 less of the lot." 
 
 " If you please, sir, we have seen her," said Dorothy, 
 glibly; "a white-faced girl, who looks as if she had the 
 vapors every day. She sails abroad in silks ; and — what 
 do you think ? — carries porringers with her own hand, in 
 company with a little old witch, who has always a red- 
 headed stick — the same who threw Goody Gubbins into 
 fits with her sorceries." 
 
 " Never mind, child, she'll not bewitch you when I am 
 there to break the charm ; and she'll proselytize long be- 
 fore she proselytizes Goody Gubbins." Thus the rector 
 cut her short, objecting to petty gossip. 
 
 " I'm not affrighted," Camilla joined in, a little loftily. 
 " And I wish above all things to hear the French proph- 
 ets." 
 
 " What ! do you wish to hear them prophesy, Millie ?" 
 argued her mother in amazement. " I hope, sir, they'll do 
 nothing of the kind." 
 
 " I hope not," said Mr. Philip Rolle, quietly agreeing 
 with his wife ; " but you need be under no apprehension, 
 lor if they do I shall instantly leave the house," he con- 
 cluded, with an animation which sounded very much as if 
 it would be rather a relief than otherwise to shake the dust 
 from his feet against the strangers. 
 
 " I never stood and heard any offense of the sort," con- 
 tinued Madam, excited and flurried in her turn, " unless it 
 was Lucy Gage once, when she came off her pillion and ad- 
 dressed the crowd which Lady Rolle was going to treat to 
 a harvest supper. I was in the chariot, and Dapple had
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 43 
 
 cast a shoe, and I was detained in spite of myself. I'd lief- 
 er have walked home barefoot. All I could do was to turn 
 away my head and think to stop my ears when I saw a 
 gentlewoman so eaten up with pride and false religion as 
 to deliver a homily to rustics and gaping clowns in the 
 open road before Shn Hart's, the farrier's. Yet I protest 
 all I heard was no worse and no more untrue than that 
 there was One who gave them all things ; and that they 
 should remember his great harvest gathered in by the 
 angels, and should behave godly, righteously, and soberly 
 at their feast. But even if they forgot Him, there was 
 One who remembered them in pity, not in anger ; who was 
 ready to save them to the uttermost, and to pluck them 
 like brands from the burning, even at the last moment, if 
 they but willed Him to save them." 
 
 " Yes," said the rector, " and the laborers went out 
 of her sight and made themselves beastly drunk, and rioted, 
 and put a torch to Farmer Clere's stack-yard, excusing 
 themselves on the ground that he was not a vessel of grace 
 to be saved without works as they were ; and all because 
 a mad woman forgot huniilitv and restraint, and wrested 
 the Scriptures to her own and to her neighbors' destruc- 
 tion." 
 
 " Alake ! Dolly, Millie, hear what your good father says, 
 and take heed in time ; for I knew Lucy Gage when she 
 was as renowned for her modesty and sensibility as for her 
 brave spirit and temper. And now that she is dead and 
 gone, I doubt not, poor soul ! she meant no harm ; only she 
 was led away and blinded and besotted by wild views, as 
 her husband and her son are to this day." 
 
 The girls did not seem much impressed by this appeal, 
 but stood with round eyes of expectation and curiosity. 
 
 "I know why our Millie wants so much to hear the 
 French prophets," Dorothy said, putting herself forward 
 to communicate information. " We had it from Mrs. Trout- 
 beck, my lady's maid, when she was down at the Castle for 
 the catgut to make the bell-ribbons, that my lady bought 
 their blessing, and won a hundred guineas at faro, and 
 heard good news of Mr. Dick's ship within the month." 
 
 Mr. Philip Kolle frowned. He hated to speak evil of 
 dignities, and he was conservative ami aristocral to the 
 backbone. He loved the very name of Kolle, as Dr. John-
 
 44 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 son loved that of Beauclerc. He was not only a kinsman 
 of the. house, hut he had heen governor of my lady's sons, 
 who were his juniors, in the old days before he succeeded 
 to the living of Sedge Pond. He had sat at the Castle 
 hoard on a different footing from that of most governors, 
 having heen an honored friend of the clever, witty, and 
 witless lady of the Castle. The honor of the family was 
 thus doubly in his keeping, and was doubly dear to him, 
 but he could not let the intimation pass without an expres- 
 sion of his disapprobation. 
 
 " My lady will have her folly," he said, dryly ; " which 
 doth not concern us mucb, save that we would prefer that 
 it did not tamper with things sacred. When all is done, 
 it seemeth to me that it should be the part of honest peo- 
 ple, who hold that blood is thicker than water, not to prate 
 of servants' idle stories, and trumpet the follies of their 
 superiors." 
 
 Dorothy stood corrected like a naughty child, and, with 
 all her womanly growth and fine-ladyism, put her finger 
 into her mouth. 
 
 Again Madam interposed, and turned the conversation : 
 
 " Mr. Rolle, I am in a quandary about these French 
 neighbors. I did learn French, along with drilling and 
 the use of the globes, for a quarter or two at the Miss 
 Cromwells' school at Huntingdon ; but 'tis so long ago, 
 that I am under an apprehension I have forgotten every 
 word. Indeed, I shall not attempt to speak it, and I think 
 I had better tell you beforehand, lest you, who are such 
 a scholar yourself, should be disappointed and shamed with 
 
 me." 
 
 " I shall not be disappointed, dame, and shamed I need 
 not be, unless it be on my own account, since, though you 
 are good enough to call me a scholar, and though the lan- 
 guage was mightily affected at the Castle in my time, and 
 I did then acquire some skill in it, I doubt me much wheth- 
 er I could pass muster after so great an interval, unless 
 before such a connoisseur as you. But why distress our 
 selves with the supposed obligation, since we haA r e a couple 
 of daughters, new off the irons of polite accomplishment, 
 ready to relieve us, and show off lor us in all the languages 
 under the sun." 
 
 "Papa, papa !" cried Dorothy, "how can you propose
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 45 
 
 such a thing, when you know that last spring, when wc 
 rode into Redham, you forbade us to learn Italian because 
 old Madame Viol had been an opera-dancer, and you said 
 you did not affect the opera, and did not care for us pick- 
 ing up its jargon." 
 
 " And you took us away from Monsieur Delaine," chimed 
 in Camilla, "just when we were getting into the fairy tales, 
 and the contre-dances, because he sent Dolly such a set 
 of ribbons as she had longed for on her birthday, and in- 
 structed her to fib wdien you questioned her about it, and 
 lied directly when you taxed him with it." 
 
 Thus Dorothy and Camilla declined the appointment, 
 and vindicated their refusal. 
 
 " And suppose these Shottery Cottage gentry are also 
 among the prophets, and begin to prophesy in their own 
 language, it will be speaking in an unknown tongue to 
 you," suggested the rector. 
 
 The two girls looked blank at the self-evident proposi- 
 tion. 
 
 " Will my dear girls never be made sensible that their 
 papa loves to joke with them ?•" remonstrated Madam. 
 
 "And softly, Mistress Dorothy and Mistress Camilla, I 
 should as soon look to see Black Jasper do a turn of hard 
 work for his diet and his livery, as to find misses of any 
 kind prove that they had not picked their father's pockets 
 by putting into the simplest practice the lessons on which 
 he has spent a power of money." 
 
 The party started at last, and as they were complying 
 with a professional duty and form of society, they were 
 marshaled in order. His Reverence and Madam walked 
 first, she quite stately in her parson's wife's hood and pat- 
 tens, for the streets of the village were rarely passable even 
 in dry weather, and he stalking gravely, in his cauliflower 
 wig and black stockings. Dorothy and Camilla, having 
 barely got over the grievance of not being allowed time to 
 decide "between their mantles and their paduasoys, went 
 quarreling all the way as to the right of each to a single 
 extraordinary crimson parasol, such as Chinamen may be 
 seen to carry nowadays. It was a cast-off parasol of Lady 
 Rolle's, the only one in these parts, ami a great curiosity. 
 Behind them again came Black Jasper, to whom and to his 
 master it was a misfortune that he did every act of his life
 
 46 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 with exaggerated solemnity. He was a simple, timid, at- 
 tached fellow, with a great gaping mouth, rolling eyes, and 
 projecting ears which were like ebony handles to the ebony 
 casket of his body in its green and yellow livery. His ex- 
 cessive solemnity and nervous fear of Mr. Philip Rolle were 
 his chief faults. Why there should have been such an ele- 
 ment of the ludicrous in the profound gravity and impor- 
 tance with which Black Jasper stepped with long strides 
 while he carried Madam's Bible or her basket, or a cudgel 
 for the presumed defense of the ladies, it would be difficult 
 to say ; but there it was, and Mr. Philip Rolle, a sensitive 
 man, was keenly alive to it. But Black Jasper was an in- 
 stitution of the period, which could not be got rid of with- 
 out barbarous injury to the poor fellow, who was so far 
 from home, and so incapable of procuring his livelihood by 
 his own exertions. Black Jaspers were fixtures and heir- 
 looms then, and it was a lax and benevolent as well as a 
 vain element in men, which made them adopt them. Be- 
 sides, Black Jasper was Captain Philip's spoil, whom he 
 had brought home after one of his campaigns, and it would 
 have been a slight to the beloved phoenix of the house had 
 the family turned the negro adrift. Mr. Philip Rolle aimed 
 at being just to all men, and a connection with his son, 
 however slight, was the greatest claim to his regard. But 
 Black Jasper's inveterate, uncontrollable terror of his firm, 
 sharp face, his clear ringing voice, and his abrupt authori- 
 tative manner, irked and provoked him. The negro, all the 
 while, was like a docile, tender dog, and he but served his 
 " Massa's Massa" the more sedulously because of his des- 
 perate dread. 
 
 The Dupuys were all at home, the women being to- 
 gether in their room. Monsieur was sent for to receive 
 and meet the advances of the parish clergyman, and he at 
 once obeyed the summons. 
 
 Never, perhaps, Avas there a worse assorted company, 
 and Grand'mere alone of all its members was perfectly 
 composed and at her ease. Indeed, at the beginning of 
 the visit, she looked glad and gracious as well as grateful. 
 But there was little wonder that Madame Dupuy, distrust- 
 ing the English as she did, and bearing a grudge at all 
 mankind, in her gloomy pre-occupations over Huguenot 
 sufferings, should raise her neck out of the folds of her
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 47 
 
 fichu like a bundle of saffron bones, and look down stiffly 
 and sourly upon the visitors. And there was just as little 
 wonder that Yolande, though yearning painfully after 
 something like communion with companions such as her- 
 self, should draw shyly to her grandmother's side, and only 
 look sadly and strangely at the giddy, tricked-out, affected 
 figures of Dorothy and Camilla Kolle. They, on their part 
 again, glanced contemptuously round the bare, sombre 
 room, which every way contrasted with their ideas of 
 French luxury and gayety. But Monsieur, though bland 
 as a Frenchman, showed no pleasure at the sight of his 
 guests, nor gave any token of a wish to encourage and im- 
 prove their acquaintance. He was scrupulously civil, he 
 bowed low, and was more like a grand bourgeois, with his 
 noblesse des cloches, than ever, but he did not grasp Mr. 
 Philip Rolle's right hand of fellowship very cordially. On 
 the contrary, there was a covert tone of sarcasm and of- 
 fense in Monsieur's bearing, which the rector was not slow 
 to perceive and understand. 
 
 The conversation was conducted in fair English, so far 
 as Monsieur and Grand'mere were concerned. Yolande 
 was dumb. Madame Dupuy employed her broken English 
 in making harsh, scornful replies which quite annihilated 
 the simple phrases with which Madam Kolle thought to 
 make conversation at all times and places. And not only 
 this. To the still greater dismay and indignation of the 
 rector's lady, Madame was guilty of giving forth wither- 
 ing insinuations regarding the rector's latitudinarianism, 
 and so plain and direct were they, though in halting En- 
 glish, that even innocent Madam Kolle could not mistake- 
 them. 
 
 • When the rector, as a man of the world and a liberal 
 Protestant clergyman, attempted to engage Monsieur in a 
 discussion of French politics and the general prospects of 
 Protestantism in Europe, Monsieur answered with smiling 
 references to the exiled royal family, whom Mr. Kolle and 
 his college of Oxford were supposed to favor without hav- 
 ing risen and restored to them their kingdom. And then 
 he went on to speak of the great gulf between Calvinista 
 and Lutherans, which was so wide that the Roman Cath- 
 olic bishops who had presided over the ceremony of bring- 
 ing France to a unanimity of faith by the rough eonver- 
 
 -i
 
 48 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 sions of the dragonnades, had offered to overlook the mild 
 profession of the last, so that the first damnahle heresy 
 were abjured. 
 
 "Allans, then, Monsieur the rector," insisted Monsieur,- 
 with a willful misconception, "one can not tell whether to 
 reckon the Protestants in Europe by thousands or millions, 
 seeing that the Catholics bear no enmity to your pure 
 form and simple hierarchy — your altars and saints'-days 
 and lord bishops— that they regard you as brothers, in 
 
 fact." 
 
 At the same time Madame Dupuy and Madam Rolle 
 were at still greater cross-purposes, the one mortally of- 
 fending and horrifying the other. Madam Rolle had be- 
 gun by the simpering, unsuspicious inquiry how Madame 
 Dupuy had liked the rector's thesis on Sunday, and had 
 proceeded to remark that her good man was acknowledged 
 to be a fine scholar, though she should not say it. This 
 she would take it upon her to say, however, that he prac- 
 ticed what he preached, that there was not a better living 
 clergyman, or a more virtuous gentleman in England, and 
 she ought to know his private worth as well as another. 
 Moreover, Madam had reason to believe that the rector's 
 theses had been noted and admired in high quarters, and 
 that something would come of them, as something ought 
 to come, for certainly they were too pious and eloquent to 
 be wasted on an ordinary congregation like that of Sedge 
 Pond. And did not Madame think that the music of the 
 church would be much improved when the pipe and tabor 
 were replaced by an organ such as Mr. Handel played on ? 
 Lady Rolle and others of the quality had generously con- 
 sented to subscribe for it whenever they had time to get 
 up the subscription and could spare the cash, and all they 
 had now to do was to settle the dispute among themselves 
 as to which of them should superintend the building of the 
 instrument up in London. 
 
 In disposal of this prattle, Madame caused the hairs of 
 Madam Rolle's head to stand on end by the unheard-of 
 presumption and effrontery of the declaration that she did 
 not like the theses at all. They might be very clever, ah I 
 very clever, but she had not been accustomed to these the* 
 ses, which might have been heathen discourses. She had 
 abandoned her country, where the sun shone and one was
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 49 
 
 warm sometimes, for the sake of the preaching which bade 
 dying men flee to the shelter of the Cross. She did not 
 comprehend exactly what Madam Rolle wished to say of 
 her husband. As for the music of the church, she dared 
 say the pipe and song of Sedge Pond might be very good 
 music, she was no judge of music ; but she had not listen- 
 ed with pleasure to the praises of God since she heard the 
 sublime psalms of Beze swelling through the hearts of a 
 proscribed assembly, and awaking the echoes of the desert. 
 Having overthrown and trampled upon Madam Rolle, 
 Madame Dupuy crowned her enormities by intruding into 
 the tete-d-tete of Monsieur and the rector, frowning upon 
 Monsieur without ceremony. 
 
 " Old, oid, Monsieur, it is good to hear you on orthodoxy 
 of creed and simplicity of worship, you who have ceased 
 to condemn almost any deed short of fire and murder. 
 From necessity, my dear Grand'mere ? You are too good, 
 too good, for a mocker like Monsieur your son. Bah ! 
 necessity is another word for greed, and greed is sleeve to 
 sleeve with the god of a little country named Canaan, an 
 adorable god which called itself Moloch. All the men are 
 infidels nowadays. They do not deny their faith, for 
 why? They are too obstinate, too proud, that is all. 
 Which of them would die for it ? Which of them would 
 count all things but loss for it? Count all tilings but loss! 
 They, trade upon it, they gain money by it, they adopt 
 another country and another creed, they lament no more 
 on the anniversary of the Revocation ; they are consoled, 
 they are rich as the world was when the flood came, as 
 Sodom and Gomorrah were till the fire and brimstone 
 fell." 
 
 The woman was stark, staring mad: could there be 
 more unmistakable evidence than her loud railing at her 
 lawful husband, who Avas taking snuff, imperturbably ad- 
 dressing her as "my very good Philippine," and imploring 
 her, without empressement, not to agitate herself; while 
 she faithfully and gently paid her duty to the individual 
 whom Madam Rolle hesitatingly designated the "light- 
 headed, aged woman, dressed up like Madam's young 
 daughters," and all because the fine old Frenchwoman 
 was a thousand times more elegant than the clumsy young 
 English girls. It was far from safe company for them; 
 
 C
 
 50 THE UUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Madam Rolle wished she were well free of it, for she could 
 scarcely conceive that the French prophets could be more 
 immoral, though they might be more blasjihemous. And 
 then Dorothy and Camilla were there, swallowing every 
 word of the unseemly, scandalous defiance ; though Mad- 
 am herself allowed they were sometimes slow enough to 
 imbibe w r hat was good for them. 
 
 The joy of Grand'mere's hospitality was soon extin- 
 guished; but she commanded herself sufficiently to take 
 part in the conversation, and do her best to cover the rude- 
 ness of her daughter-in-law, and the but half-concealed cyn- 
 icism of her son, and to try, by her own sweet intelligence 
 and bright vivacity, to make some return to the natives 
 for their condescension, besides that of sullen recrimination 
 and bitter pleasantry. And here Monsieur her son, and 
 Madame her daughter-in-law, made room for her words, 
 gave them respectful attention, with just the faintest qualm 
 of Madame's self-righteousness, and the slightest hanging 
 of Monsieur's worldly-wise, scheming head. It was the 
 Rolles who regarded her as a second-rate, flighty character, 
 and put no weight on her gentle interposition. Even the 
 rector, who had sufficient parts and taste to discern that 
 the matter of her discourse was full of superior sense, and 
 the manner of it more exquisite than that of any of the 
 great ladies he had known and admired in his youth, failed 
 to give Grand'mere her due, for sturdy English prejudice, 
 which many regai'd as a grace, had blinded him. As for 
 Madam Rolle, she was so stupid and stolid as to the 
 qualities of the two women, and their claims, that when 
 Grand'mere, with tact and tenderness, introduced the topic 
 of the American War — in which all England was interest- 
 ed — the Rolles deeply interested, since their son and 
 brother was in the heat of it — and ventured a warm heart- 
 ed, quite sincere reference to the young hero of Sedge 
 Pond, who was then winning his laurels on the Susque- 
 hannah or the Potomac, and whom all the residents at 
 Sedge Pond delighted to honor, Madam Rolle, with her 
 one idea, made no softened response to breathing, feeling 
 Grand'mere, but chose to make instead a final appeal to 
 stony Madame Dupuy, asking her Avistfully if she was the 
 mother of a son as well as of a daughter. Then with a 
 heightened color Madam Rolle proceeded to the delicate
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 51 
 
 investigation as to whether Madame had any countrymen 
 engaged in the great war, for her Philip had mentioned 
 that Frenchmen were fighting in the campaign ; and though 
 it was on the wrong side of the quarrel, the grounds of it 
 were so far away, and they at Sedge Pond had so little to 
 do with the mother country's right to tax a dish of tea 
 in the colonies, that Madam had a dim impression that 
 they two women might forget that their young men were 
 enemies so long as they were not in personal conflict. 
 
 But Madame Dupuy knew nothing of the continent of 
 America, and cared nothing for it, unless in respect to the 
 Huguenot emigrants in the Carolinas. She did not even 
 know that there was a mighty struggle going on across 
 the Atlantic, by which men were being torn from their 
 peaceful homes and were going the length of engaging 
 say age Indians to come with their tomahawks and poison- 
 ed arrows to aid Christian and Saxon brothers against 
 each other ; and indeed England might have quarreled 
 with every one of her colonies, and driven them to the 
 same position as the Americas, for any thing Madame would 
 have minded. 
 
 Grand'mere, in her rare good-will and her good-breed- 
 ing, was cast into the shade and thrust to the Avail by the 
 Rolles. Despair, however, was so foreign to Grand'mere, 
 whatever she might aver to the contrary, in her vivid 
 French phrases, that she thought better of the situation, 
 and preferred to make the most of it, by addressing her- 
 self in the kindest manner to a humble neutral member of 
 the party. 
 
 According to the etiquette of the day, Black Jasper had 
 two ways of disposing of himself. He might repair to the 
 servants' hall, or he might remain in attendance on his 
 master and mistress. There happened to be no servants' 
 hall at the Shottery Cottage, and in the kitchen Priscilla 
 was as hard to make acquaintance with, and as fain to re- 
 buff raw candidates for her favor, as were the heads of the 
 house. Black Jasper had, therefore, after a full quarter of 
 an hour of uncertainty and waddling between the door of 
 the room and that of the kitchen, settled on the skirts of 
 the gentry, taking his chance of his master's vehemenl 
 impatience and scathing ridicule, and of the tricks and 
 tyranny of the two young madams.
 
 52 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Grand'mere roused herself from her little depression 
 at the sight of the sable face with its goggle eyes. She 
 did not laugh openly or secretly, though she possessed 
 naturally that merry heart which doeth good like medi- 
 cine and is health to the bones. Grand'mere did not 
 even need to restrain her guileless gayety from considerate 
 care for what might be Black Jasper's weakness on that 
 point. 
 
 From the background Grand'mere waved to Black Jas- 
 per, and he, glancing at his master the while, stumbled 
 toward her. Grand'mere not only dealt with Black Jas- 
 per as flesh and blood, but she pitied him as the black 
 child, oppressed, bought and sold, and yet toyed with by 
 the civilized white man and women. She wanted to do 
 what she could to make up to him. She asked anxiously 
 whether her good gargon had health and strength in the 
 cold north. She bestowed on him a small piece of money, 
 with an apology for its smallness, and an entreaty that he 
 would accept \t for the sake of the ideal Negro, who was 
 without doubt the type and pattern of many a generous, 
 devoted black man. She opened her particular cupboard, 
 and taking out some preserved fruit, recommended the 
 sweet-toothed black to try it, and to tell her whether it 
 resembled guavas or pines. And Black Jasper, totally 
 unused to such delicate attentions, grinned, scraped, dart- 
 ed furtive glances at his master, and without waiting for 
 an answer, obeyed his own instinct, and became on the 
 spot a bond slave, for the second time in his life, to " the 
 beauffle old Ma'am." 
 
 The rector had spirit enough to resent what was little 
 short of insult in his host's treatment, and more than 
 enough temper to show his resentment. 
 
 " I perceive, sir, that I have been under a misapprehen- 
 sion in intruding on you," he said, in a white heat of 
 ' wrath. " I may honestly say that I meant to do my duty 
 and confer a benefit. My parishioners attach some consid- 
 eration to the fact whether or not a stranger is known to 
 their clergyman. But if I mistake not, and read your face 
 aright, my absence would be better than my company, to 
 use a country phrase ; and you may depend upon it, I shall 
 force my acquaintance on no man." 
 
 " Aprbs votes, Monsieur the Rector, replied Monsieur, in
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 53 
 
 his sardonic French politeness ; " I beg to thank you for 
 your intended protection. All I shall say is, that I think 
 I can take care of my own head, and the heads of ray fam- 
 ily, my own self." And he bowed Mr. Rolle off*. 
 
 Thus the interview was a total failure. Mr. Philip Rolle 
 carried out his dignified presence haughtily, intending never 
 again to waste it on traitors and impostors. The women 
 of the Rolle family, for their part, were only conscious 
 that the visit had been a mistake and a blunder, and, in a 
 panic lest there should be more high words and violence, 
 even though Mr. Rolle was a clergyman, they huddled to- 
 gether, and mother and daughters jostled each other out. 
 Black Jasper, in the half-turned state of his head, was ob- 
 livious to all that had been passing, save his own deli- 
 cious treat ; but the noise of the ladies' exit aroused him, 
 and, throwing down Grand'mere's empty can, he started in 
 pursuit of his owners, turning back so often, however, to 
 make capering salutes to Grand'mere, that Mr. Philip 
 Rolle observed the pantomime, and called out loudly that 
 he would have his black rascal whipped if he did not be- 
 have like a rational creature — a line of conduct as impos- 
 sible to Black Jasper under certain influences as sight is 
 to the blind. 
 
 "Vbild! a good riddance," cried Madame. "Why 
 should they come here prying upon us, and Avasting our 
 time ? Yolande, child, to your lace. I shall finish the 
 Geneve account of Barbe Yot, who was imprisoned at 
 Aigues Mortez, and clothed in a foul hospital dress, from 
 which the dogs fled howling, and refreshed for farther 
 tortures by being plunged into the stagnant, slimy moat 
 till her breath went out ; and of her sister, Mesdeliees, 
 avIio was shipped among a hundred other young women in 
 a transport, to lie like rats in the hold till they, or rather 
 the ghostly skeletons of them, were landed, and put up by 
 the government, in lots for the convenience of the cotton- 
 planters of Guadaloupc and Martinique — that is whal I 
 could tell of their America and their Indies, but I would 
 not tell it to these popinjays." 
 
 But Grand'mere sat and looked ruefully after the re- 
 treating company, the only disinterested company which 
 had sought the Dupuys at the Shot t cry Cottage. 
 
 "I am afflicted that I have vexed you, my mother," said
 
 54 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 ' Monsieur, coming and bending coaxingly over the old 
 woman's chair ; " but it is true what Philippine says." 
 
 " Ah ! for once, for once," interpolated Philippine, with 
 great animation and asperity, as she courtesied to Mon- 
 sieur ; " though she is not of this world, it is her pride and 
 boast that she has not her part with the men of this world, 
 like you, Monsieur, if you do not repent." 
 
 "They are spies and despots," continued Monsieur, 
 quietly ignoring his wife. " They come to mock us — to 
 patronize and meddle with us. Why should we let them 
 come when we are sufficient for ourselves, and when we 
 dwell in peace here?" 
 
 " I know not if you are right, my son," argued Grand'- 
 mere, meekly. " But for me, I can not see why we should 
 not accept their visit as from a good heart. Whether 
 they mean it for good or not, I can not tell. Where is the 
 necessity or the advantage of living like owls," added 
 Grand'mere, with her accustomed shrewdness, " when no 
 one has offered to molest or persecute us for a long time ? 
 We are letting the child grow up more secluded and sol- 
 itary than if "she were behind the grating. I think we 
 should have taken an act of friendship as if it were friend- 
 ship, that therein also the saying of the Apostle to the 
 Gentiles might have been fulfilled ; and whether our fellow- 
 creatures mixed with us in simplicity or in guile, at least 
 they mixed with us, and for that we should rejoice. Who 
 knows whether our faith and love might not have changed 
 the base metals of fraud and falseness on their part into 
 the gold of true love ? Alas ! my son. But this, at least, 
 I pray you to accord me, my wayworn, cumbered Herbert, 
 do not poison the young girl's mind ; let her at least learn 
 to hope that there may~be some good in this poor old 
 world." 
 
 So Grand'mere was left to talk with Yolande of the 
 events of the day, to draw forth the girl's opinion, and re- 
 si>t ami refute single-handed the evil force of example. 
 
 "I am sorry that you have not made friends with the 
 English pastor's daughters, little one," says Grand'mere, 
 shaking her head, in the wise clear prevision of wisdom. 
 
 "So am not I, Grand'mere," retorts the girl, with her 
 latent repressed passion and scorn. "They are silly, these 
 English girls, as well as saucy, Grand'mere, with such sauce
 
 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 55 
 
 — insipid hot water -without strength or sweetness. Did 
 you see how they whispered and tittered till they ran 
 away ?" 
 
 " No, I did not see, I could not see for sighing over a 
 wet hen of a malpropir, distrait girl, who forgot to do 
 the honors of her own household, and of her bread and salt." 
 
 Yolande winced, and endeavored hastily to turn aside 
 this thrust by a pleasantry. 
 
 "Grand'mere, I saw no bread and salt going, except with 
 regard to the black miserable." 
 
 " Fie ! you are miserable yourself, Yolande, to call him 
 so," Grand'mere checked her favorite smartly ; " and if 
 you think silliness (if there is silliness, I have never said 
 so) is a bar to friendship, you are no better than one of 
 the foolish pedants of the Hotel Rambouillet, whom Mo- 
 lie re scourged. Silliness is a greatei-, more incurable mis- 
 fortune than being a cripple, or deaf and dumb. Shall we 
 not cherish the unfortunate ? What mean we then by the 
 terms, Maison de Dieu, Hotel de Dieu, for our hospitals 
 and our mad-houses, but that he who giveth to the poor 
 lendeth to the Lord. I tell you, Queen of Sheba silliness 
 on the-one side, and wisdom on the other, never prevented 
 either friendship or love worth the having. It is only 
 hardness and falseness of heart, godlessness and no love to 
 spare from one's self, that can dry and wither the heart, 
 else why do I care for you, poppet, or, in reverse, why do 
 you care for an out-of-date doting old woman?" 
 
 " Grand'mere ! Grand'mere !" 
 
 " Grand'mere me no more. Some have said that silli- 
 ness is an absolute requirement, that there can not be roy- 
 al condescension -without a big and a little soul. But I 
 don't say so ; for it is blessed to receive also, only less 
 blessed than to give. And you might have helped each 
 other, you young girls," Grand'mere went on; "you might 
 have bartered your best qualities, learned to understand 
 truth and nobleness in other natures and under other 
 names, and have grown more kind and tender, warmer at 
 heart, and more glad of spirit. It is a bad friend of your 
 age and station who is not better than no friend, my dear. 
 I love not the religion of restriction — 'Touch not, taste 
 not, handle not, which things all perish in the using.' Is 
 it not so, Yolandette ?"
 
 50 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 " Grand'mere !" exclaimed Yolande, coming out of a 
 brown study, " why does all the world hate us Hugue- 
 nots ?" 
 
 " That goes without saying, and ought we to break our 
 hearts for it ? Ought we not to rejoice a little because 
 of another sect which was everywhere spoken against 
 once, and which happened to be the salt of the earth, nev- 
 ertheless. In our case there are special causes. We were 
 a great power at the first. Conde, Coligni, Castelnau, 
 Mornay, Sully, Henry IV., all belonged to us. The Tre- 
 mouilles, the Rochefoucaulds, the Rohans, were on our 
 side. Catherine de' Medici and her women who knew 
 best, made a fashion of singing our psalms. Then we 
 were betrayed and betrayers, broken and crushed, and the 
 vulgar loved to tread on our heads. That is one expla- 
 nation, and we could not help that ; but we have our- 
 selves to blame as well as the four seasons, when we can 
 not count our brethren's hatred all joy, and when it is 
 necessary that we sing the penitential psalms for it. We 
 have been godly, rigidly righteous, and enduring ; but we 
 have been at the same time haughty, stern, unmerciful, 
 implacable in our judgments, at least when judgment was 
 all our possibility. We have been like the elder brother 
 of the prodigal son, my grandchild, who was very exem- 
 plary and very unkind. It is a marvel how many relig- 
 ious men are like him, considering who told his story, and 
 pointed out how ungenerous and unmanly he was, and 
 how unlike his father. But we had not all the good 
 things of this life ; thanks to God we were not like him 
 there. We had hard lines — too hard for a girl like you 
 to comprehend, mhjnonne. Consider, we were not allow- 
 ed to call ourselves in law husbands and wives; our little 
 children were taken from us, and given, with their share 
 of our goods, to pretended converts, who were no better 
 than traitors in our houses. We were forbidden to pray 
 for his majesty the king, Ave were so vile ; and when a 
 poor pastor strewed rosemary on his young daughter's 
 bier, and had her followed to the grave by young girls 
 like herself and you, he was arrested by the authorities, 
 condemned and punished for an impudent mimicry of the 
 holy church's rites." 
 
 "And the English pastor, too, who knows better!"
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 57 
 
 Yolande pursued her own disturbed indignant reflec- 
 tions. 
 
 " He knows better,"' Grand'mere repeated, emphatical- 
 ly ; and then, to Yolande's bewilderment, the old woman 
 finished unexpectedly, " I like that man. How he goes 
 against the grain when he believes it is demanded of him. 
 How he is honest and honorable ! I could trust him with 
 my life, could trust him better with my honor, better than 
 all w T ith my faith. He might detest me, but he would 
 not wrong me by a straw; he would put his right hand 
 into the flames first. He would sacrifice his Isaac, his 
 Joseph, his gallant young captain first ! He is righteous ; 
 he has a will like that! He is like Jean Calvin in bis 
 will ; he is not like Calvin in his burning heart and his 
 keen wit ; but he is like Calvin in his will." 
 
 Grand'mere, like all very womanly women, paid huge 
 homage to manliness ; and she, who was of the Church 
 the earthly origin of which is said to have been "Geneva, 
 Calvin, and persecution," comprehended Calvin. 
 
 "You speak of hatred, Yolande," descanted Grand'- 
 mere, in the enthusiasm which Calvin's name always 
 awoke in her ; " Calvin was hated. It is not good for 
 man or woman not to be hated, but they must be loved 
 also, yes, loved as men's own souls, by few it may be — 
 ah well ! sometimes the fewer the lovers the better. But 
 Calvin was not loved by few, or a little ; he was loved 
 by Beze, his wife — the poor widow, by his step-children, 
 by Geneva, by France, by Scotland. People will speak of 
 how he burned Servetus and clipped out a woman's hair. 
 Go ! They will not speak of how he held the hearts of a 
 city, a nation, in his brave hand, and moulded them under 
 God to religion and virtue. The great Englishman was 
 thought to be wise when he said that the ill that nun 
 did lived after them, the good was often buried with their 
 bones. When it is the very reverse, my child, then it will 
 be heaven." 
 
 C2
 
 58 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE TKUCE OF GOD. 
 
 The arrival and departure of the mail by the coaches 
 which ran between London and Norwich, only failed in 
 enthralling interest to those who, like the mass of the 
 Sedge Pond people, received no letters, or only such few 
 and far betAveen ones as made great incidents in their lives. 
 But even the Hodges and the Sams, the Jennies and the 
 Nans, who got no letters, and looked for none, hung about, 
 and never wearied of the chance of beholding the coach, 
 with its escort armed and mounted, its guard with his 
 sounding horn, and its sleepy or noisy passengers in night- 
 caps and cocked hats, who called for their dinner or for 
 tankards of lamb's-wool ale, or glasses of French brandy. 
 
 Monsieur Dupuy was a regular attendant in the white- 
 washed porch of the ale-house on such occasions. He- fre- 
 quently received letters of outlandish shape, addressed in 
 queer handwriting ; and those who would unhesitatingly 
 and adventurously strive to read them over his shoulder, 
 would see no more than two or three lines of Monsieur's 
 jargon, sometimes actually no more than a row of figures. 
 
 Mr. Philip Rolle was no less punctual in waiting for the 
 coach's arrival, to get the last news of the war in which 
 his son was engaged. When the news were very exciting, 
 particularly when they contained any mention of Captain 
 Philip, or when Captain Philip himself wrote or modestly 
 alluded to his own promotion or any credit his company 
 had gained, Mr. Philip Rolle would sit in state and read 
 the letter, and talk it over in the porch of the ale-house, 
 assiduously waited upon and looked up to by Master 
 Swinfen, mine portly, consequential, self-seeking host, and 
 his nimble, loose-tongued, cowed-in-vain partner. The 
 great man would be supplied with a toast and a tankard, 
 and a single pipe, for he would allow no more — neither to 
 himself nor to any other person. As he sat in state and 
 paid the lawing, he laid down the law and would answer 
 all inquiries after the young captain more patiently and
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 59 
 
 affably than any one who had seen his high head elsewhere 
 would have expected. Mr. Rolle would also wait on for 
 the news-letters and prints, for he was much interested in 
 what was taking place in London. He was always curi- 
 ous to know if "Mr. Wilkes had committed any fresh of- 
 fense, or Lord North's Ministry had become better liked. 
 But he would not discuss these questions on the ale-house 
 bench, though he had little opportunity of discussing them 
 in any other quarter, nor would he gossip of the floods or 
 the robberies, which were common occurrences. He liked 
 human statistics, like all clear-headed, active-minded men, 
 but it was only the subject of Captain Philip which could 
 unlock the flood-gates of Mr. Rolle's heart. Captain Phil- 
 ip's name, written in its core, was the one soft spot, to 
 touch which would cause the stout spiritual soldier to un- 
 bend, and betray him into prattling like a woman or a child. 
 
 The rector was thus standing one day with his ruffled 
 hands behind his back, his shovel hat shading his eyes from 
 the autumn sun and marking him out at once from the lusty 
 laborers and the coach passengers in their cocked hats, as 
 the last alighted to stretch their legs, examine the priming 
 of their pistols, and swallow a morsel while the horses were 
 being changed. Monsieur, for once, was not there. He 
 was from home on one of his journeys to London or Nor- 
 wich, but the usual knot of grooms, stable-boys, and tap- 
 sters were gathered round the body of the coach, as well 
 as Master Swinfen and his spouse, with the working men 
 and their wives and children, the rector forming a nucleus. 
 And the group was not bent on a passing diversion alone, 
 but was all alive and expectant of a generous entertain- 
 ment, eager for something to speak of over their broth cans 
 and groat bowls for weeks to come. 
 
 The village was already lying under the long low beams 
 of an October sun, which lighted with mellow lustre the 
 " Waaste" bristling brown, and the Castle woods burning 
 red and yellow in the fires of the first frosts. Important 
 mails were expected from the seal of war. It was know n 
 that the rebels had invaded Canada, and it was fully cred- 
 ited that they greatly outnumbered the English army. 
 Even though they did, however, it was confidently l>e- 
 lieved that they must have been beaten back with so sig- 
 nal a slaughter that the disaster al Bunker Hill would have
 
 60 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 been clean outweighed by a sure prospect of the Avar's 
 reaching a triumphant termination. 
 
 The rector was drawing himself up, as one towering by 
 anticipation in the reflected glory of his son. He was not 
 flurried ; Captain Philip had seen so much service in dif- 
 ferent parts of the world, and appeared to have borne so 
 charmed a life through it all, that it seemed as if nothing 
 so contemptible as the rusty sword or pistol of a ragged 
 American volunteer could harm him. Neither was Mr. 
 Rolle absorbed in his approaching exaltation, for he was 
 privately instructing Master Swinfen to broach a cask of 
 October, to have pipes laid out, and to make a dole of 
 black and white puddings to the women. The order was 
 overheard, and a whisper arose that the rector had already 
 received special intelligence, and that Captain Philip must 
 have won a colonel's epaulettes at least. Indeed the pop- 
 ulace Mould not have been much surprised although it had 
 been a general's white feathers. 
 
 At last, with the usual strain and sway, and immense 
 clatter and flourish, the " Royal Oak" appeared in sight, 
 and was hailed with as much acclamation as if it had never 
 been seen before. Way was made for it and its attendant 
 horsemen to draw up before the ale-house door. 
 
 "Aught for me, Will Guard?" cried the rector, break- 
 ing in on the landlord's usual inquiry as to what was doing 
 on the road. 
 
 " Ay, ay, summut, your worship ; you might set up a 
 dispatch-box or a private messenger," grumbled the guard, 
 presuming on the large, official-looking packet he was dis- 
 engaging from the boot. "It is word from the Americas. 
 We heard tell the Fulriocather was in port, but we were 
 off to catch the day-light before the town was up to their 
 sort. You may just let us he;ir, sir, whether the rebels 
 have laid down their arms. I have a brother's lad gone 
 out with Howe." 
 
 " With -all my heart, Will Guard, if the word is worth 
 the hearing," replied the rector, and, still standing in the 
 porch, he broke open the seals of the packet. It contained, 
 besides a number of papers, sundry small articles which 
 the sender had taken the opportunity of forwarding se- 
 curely — Captain Philip's old epaulettes, which he had worn 
 with such honor, and had now put off for still higher dis-
 
 THE IIUGUEXOT FAMILY. 61 
 
 tinction ; a pouch in Indian work, and a little box corded 
 and fastened — remembrances which the kind young cap- 
 tain might have sent home to his mother and his sisters, or 
 even to Black Jasper, who, coming along the street at that 
 moment on one of Madam's commissions, sidled up to the 
 others. 
 
 The rector cast a rapid glance over the first lines of the 
 letter, started, and put his hand to his breast, as though 
 he had been shot, then stepped back and lifted up a grey- 
 ghastly face. Without uttering a syllable to the hushed, 
 expectant company, the dullest face in which was awed 
 and struck, he made direct for the rectory gate, presided 
 over by its stone monsters. As he walked on, the people, 
 not daring to mingle themselves with his trouble as they 
 had mingled with his triumph, looked after him with 
 smothered sighs and groans, which at last swelled to a 
 clamor of lamentation. As he went on, looking neither 
 to left nor right, he stumbled over a stone in the road, and 
 the negro lad, stunned rather than rightly apprised of the 
 weight of the catastrophe — the great tragedy which had 
 been enacted last fall over the seas, and after many a delay 
 and detour had this day reached the quiet Sedge Pond 
 home — rushed forward obsequiously to remove the obstacle 
 from his master's path. Obeying an instinct, Mr. Philip 
 Rolle was pushing the intruder out of his way, when an- 
 other impulse seized him; he grasped the black servant's 
 shoulder with a strength which caused Jasper to writhe 
 and recoil, and communicated to the servant the misery 
 which was wringing his heart and convulsing his brain, 
 and which he must speak out or die. 
 
 "Black Jasper, Captain Philip's fellow, your 'massa' i- 
 dead, shot through the head last year when the rebels 
 took Ticonderoga. They have sent me his epaulettes 
 and his box as a token, I imagine. Do you hear, Black 
 Jasper?" the rector broke off, and went on repeating 
 his terrible statement, with his voice rising at length i" 
 a shout,"My son Philip,my only son Philip,is dead! is 
 dead!" 
 
 With that he broke down and hurst into weeping, an 
 awful sight to see — and so he entered at the rectory gate, 
 and walked through the clipped hollies and yews to the 
 house, while the shocked and appalled villagers gazed and
 
 G2 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 listened intently, and the touched travelers thought they 
 could hear a wail and a cry coining faintly, hut with 
 piercing acuteness, from beyond the pleasance. 
 
 That same October noon Grand'mere had been sunning - 
 herself in the Shottery Cottage arbor, which was then 
 hung round with tawny leaves and clusters of blue-black 
 berries. She was looking at the trouts, still occasionally 
 leaping in the pond which the villagers called the Stew, 
 and at the bees also sunning themselves after they had 
 laid up their competence of honey, and were resting, like 
 her, with their work done for the season ; and as she look- 
 ed she listened to the robin, which, like a sweet and virtu- 
 ous soul, only lifts up its song of trust and praise the more 
 cheerily and patiently when the whole world languishes in 
 decay and approaching death. In the autumn brightness 
 of the home scene, Grand'mere's fancy was spirited away 
 to her native land and the scenes of her youth. She was 
 describing to Yolande, who was plaiting straw on a stool 
 at her knee, how different from this England, now sodden 
 in its greenness, was her Languedoc and Provence. She 
 kindled up as she spoke of the glory of color there was in 
 the very salt lakes and marshes^in the arid limestone rocks, 
 and the bare heaths of the south, contrasted with the green 
 luxuriance of England, blanched by such dim light as fell 
 from the cold, pallid northern skies. And she grew elo- 
 quent as she told that there were distant snowy peaks and 
 blue defiles ; and that, for patches of corn, meadow, and 
 woodland, they in France had soft grey olive and deep 
 green and golden mulberry and orange gardens; and that 
 for honeysuckle and briony they at home had among the 
 grass scarlet anemones with the living blue of salvias and 
 the white of asphodel by the roadside, while there were 
 tall pink gladioli in the glades, and spreading pink daphne 
 on the uplands, and oleanders, jasmines, and bay-trees 
 breaking the hedges. The nightingale sang there over 
 April roses and November violets. It was such a land of 
 fertility and barrenness, passion and repose, as King David 
 ruled over, as the son of David walked in, saying, "Con- 
 sider the lilies, how they grow." 
 
 Grand'mere was interrupted by Priscille, in her cala- 
 manco petticoat, linen jacket, and linen cap, advancing 
 toward the pair. The maid had downcast, grudging, in-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. G3 
 
 troverted eyes, not because she was a suspicious character, 
 but because they had early had her club-foot perpetually 
 suspended before them, while at the same time they had 
 not cared to look at it ; and she walked with a heavy, 
 dogged lameness, and carried a basting-spoon in her hand, 
 as one who minded her business, notwithstanding that she 
 had an ancient quarrel with the world. 
 
 " Don't 'ee be overcome, old madam, don't 'ee," insisted 
 Priscille. 
 
 "I am not overcome, Priscille," declared Grand'rnere, 
 sedately, though her peachy complexion waned a little 
 waxen, and her grey eyes glanced up at her son's window. 
 " What is there that I should be ovei-come ?" 
 
 " Now, speak out, Prie," cried Yolande, jumping up like 
 a squirrel, and scattering her straws to the four corners of 
 the garden. " What is it ? The good God be praised, it 
 can be naught to Grand'mere. Oh, my heart ! what is it, 
 my woman ?" 
 
 " Did 'ee ever hear such a child, did 'ee ?" protested 
 Priscille, indignantly. " She'll be mum for days, and then 
 she'll break out chattering like a pie. An' she do have 
 littered the garden for a week, and me with the beet-root 
 and the carrots to lift at my own hand. If it isn that black 
 beetle from the rectory have come howling here. No, I 
 don't call no names; but he is liker a beetle than aught. 
 else in creation, an' it be not an ape, and the term came 
 to my tongue end. It is all wrong at the parson's. News 
 has come that the young captain's gone — gone to his rest, 
 madam, by a hard road. Parson is in a sad taking, for 
 though he may have preached as often as there are hairs 
 in his wig that ' all flesh is grass,' he can not abide that 
 his own grass should be cut down in its bloom any the 
 more for that. The young mistresses arc cowering and 
 gracing like turkey pouts, or screeching hoarse like the 
 bittern in the Waaste. Madam herself, she's lying :ii<>p 
 of her bed, where they laid her in a swound, and si nig- 
 gling to swallow down her mother heart, because shi' is 
 still a mother, though she choke and die \\\ the deed. The 
 maids trow she will, the short-sighted woman. Now, 
 madam, didn't 'ee promise not to be overcome?" cried 
 Priscille reproachfully, as Grand'mere wrung her hands, 
 and her tears — the transparent crystal tears <>f the aged
 
 64 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 — fell like rain, for she could still cry for others though 
 she had long ceased to cry for herself. 
 
 " My good Priscille, let sorrow and sympathy have their 
 way. Do not attempt to stifle the bitter spring like the 
 poor Madam up at the rectory, lest the soil be poisoned. 
 Alas ! and the sun is so warm even in England, and the 
 world is so fair, and men and women are in such trouble, 
 Priscille." 
 
 " What would you have, Madam ? It were always so," 
 argued Prie, dogmatically. 
 
 " No, big Prie," denied Grand'mere, recovering herself. 
 
 " And 'twill be always so," said Prie, still more obsti- 
 nately. 
 
 " Least of all, my Prie," negatived Grand'mere, decided- 
 ly brightening up and clasping her hands in silent hope. 
 "Have shame of yourself, a Christian woman, to sayso.'_' 
 
 " Leastways in your time and mine, Madam," maintain- 
 ed Prie, fighting for the last word, and illustrating it by a 
 jerk of her club foot. "And since we have gotten our 
 own stock, I do not see that we ought to take a burden of 
 other folks. That there bullering 'jackdaw, Black Jasper, 
 must see you, and you must go up to the rectory, accord- 
 ing to his story — a pretty story, when you have not been 
 within a strange door, or bidden to it, since you came to 
 Sedge Pond. If they forget me when they are glad, they 
 need not mind me when they are sad, say I." 
 
 " Oh, that poor Priscille !" exclaimed Grand'mere, as if 
 at a climax of vexation and disappointment. " Does she 
 not know that that is the greatest compliment of all ! A 
 brother is born for adversity. See you that a Christian 
 should recognize a brother through all disguises. # And 
 what care I, though they can manage their prosperity, to 
 which they invite their distant relations and their slight 
 acquaintances, without me. I — I love better to be the 
 brother." 
 
 After all, it was Black Jasper, and not the Holies, who 
 sought Grand'mere. In the extremity, the black boy had 
 gone so entirely out of himself, that he had acted on his 
 own responsibility. His philosophy had been simple 
 enough. Massa had told Black Jasper, Captain Philip's 
 fellow, of his loss first of all. That had made the most 
 profound impression, and Jasper Avas not without pride in
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 65 
 
 his sorrow when he thought of it. Then followed the plain 
 deduction that Captain Philip's fellow was bound to do 
 something in order to respond to the trust Captain Philip's 
 massa and his family had put in him in their distress. 
 Black Jasper could not cudgel his brains ; he could only 
 leap to a conclnsion. The Rolles had no near neighbors 
 their equals in rank — none with whom he was very familiar. 
 But a bright idea led him to except the French family at 
 the Shottery Cottage — though whether he had sufficient 
 powers of comparison and association to class persons so 
 different with himself, and incline to them as strangers 
 also, is doubtful. But the beautiful old French lady had 
 been good to Black Jasper, and he would go and ask her 
 to be good to Massa Rolle and his household in their calami- 
 ty, and to find something good for them which they might 
 eat and drink, and so break their doleful fast. 
 
 Boor Black Jasper in his childish appetites was not so 
 far behind the wisest sons of consolation. Grand'mere 
 was disposed to adopt Black Jasper's view in part. She 
 came from a country where guilds of charity and mercy 
 have long established a right to the sick and the sorrowful, 
 and take possession of them. The country people were 
 good, but they were dull or gross. Grand'mere called 
 them so without inyidiousness. They might miss doing 
 something which would soften the hard blow. These poor 
 Rolles, she felt, were too much hurt to bear malice. 
 Grand'mere reflected almost passionately, too, that they 
 should have come to the Dupuys in their good days, and 
 got nothing better from them than mockery and abuse. 
 As to power to work her will, Grand'mere was the mosl 
 independent lady m the land — she would never have 
 dreamt of asking Monsieur her son's consent to her expe- 
 dition even had he been at home, though she might have 
 made an appeal to his humanity. As to being compelled 
 to consult and come to one mind with Madame Dupuy, 
 there was not even the necessity of asking her leave to 
 carry Yolande along with her on her mis-ion. The rule 
 of the eldest was supreme at the Shottery Cottage; the 
 patriarchal, or parental form of governmenl dominated 
 there, and power was vested in the senior, and was no 
 more affected by her being an old woman than if the Salic 
 law had been abrogated first of all in France.
 
 06 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 " Quick, Yolande !" cried Grand'mere, " my capote and 
 Madame Rougeole. But alas ! the little red madame can 
 do nothing here ; on second thoughts, I think we will leave 
 her behind ; the color might remind them of the poor 
 young man's uniform or of his blood — broken hearts are 
 so ingenious. Now do you comprehend, proud little one, 
 what it would have been for you to have been friends with 
 these poor girls who are brotherlcss ?" 
 
 " I am very sorry, Grand'mere," said Yolande penitent- 
 ly. " I do not think I should like other girls to come near 
 me in my sorrow ; but then, you know, I am shy, though 
 not patient, as a Huguenot. I should have liked to have 
 been able to help them now. These girls loved their 
 brother, Grand'mere. I once heard them speaking of him 
 when they passed us in our walk — how brave and clever 
 and grand he was, and what he would do for his sisters 
 when he came back a general. I can guess how they hung 
 upon him, and exulted in his uniform, and walked abroad 
 with him in it, the last time he was at home." 
 
 " Tell them so, my dear ; ask them to describe him ; say 
 you never had a brother, but would like to hear of theirs. 
 They will vie with each other in showing what is their 
 loss, find it will relieve their poor hearts." 
 
 The rectory, which was usually the trimmest house in 
 the parish, from its china closet to its kitchen-garden, 
 already betrayed symptoms of that extraordinary distress 
 in which the ordinary business of life is arrested and lost 
 Bight of. Nobody had any duties left them now that Cap- 
 tain Philip had been killed last year at Ticonderoga. The 
 most sacred precincts of the house had become common 
 ground, always with the reservation of tlie rector's study, 
 into which he had locked himself. The servants were 
 wandering about everywhere, and doing nothing except 
 contributing to render this day wholly unlike any other 
 day even in its outwai'd symbols of wretchedness. 
 
 Grand'mere came, like an interested friend and house- 
 mistress, with the face and voice of restored discipline. 
 Her tact and discretions peedily and noiselessly removed 
 the overwhelming traces of disaster and dismay, restoring 
 order and harmony without provoking rebellion. 
 
 "The son of the house is dead, that is too true, but the 
 clothes must be laid away from the wash, and the mastiff
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. G7 
 
 must have his meal. There will still be clothes to be 
 worn, and you will not stint the dog for the man's loss 
 — or gain. The beast howls, truly, and why? Because 
 he hungers. You need not fear to do your work, my girls, 
 he will not be forgotten: and if you wish to remember 
 him particularly, you can still do it on the Day of the 
 Dead, with the living not neglected by you. What ! you 
 have no Day of the Dead in England ? Then you can re- 
 member him with the other blessed departed as you re- 
 member on your bed their Lord and yours, in whom they 
 still live, and you can meditate on them in the night 
 watches." 
 
 Poor Dorothy and Camilla, unfitted to cope with the 
 grim giant Care, were quite unable to control themselves, 
 left alone as they had been for the first time in their lives. 
 But in their horror and desolation they were sensible that 
 a friend had come to them, and they cast themselves with 
 full hearts on her protection. Grand'mere roused Dorothy 
 from the seat on which she sat shivering as with gnat 
 cold, and listening, with fixed eyes and curdling blood, to 
 a conclave of the elder servants. For sore sorrow, like 
 sore sickness, breaks down artificial distinctions, and drives 
 some men and women into the comj^any of their fellows, 
 as it drives others into the solitude of the wilderness. 
 
 And now each servant mysteriously and fanatically dc- 
 livered*her experience in the matter of corpse-candles, 
 death-spills, death-watches, taking note of what she had 
 observed lately, and comparing it with the result. Doro- 
 thy might have learned for all her life afterward to look on 
 death as a dark fate haunting her, hoveling over her in her 
 own person and in those of the friends she loved, and from 
 which she could by no means escape, not even by prayer 
 and fasting. She might have learned to look out for it in 
 dim prognostications, to watch for it, and anticipate its 
 cruel blows in incipient madness. 
 
 " Our Bibles say we know not the day nor the hour ; bul 
 He knows — that is enough," said Grand'mere, rebuking the 
 ancient heathen superstition; and she effectually shut the 
 mouths of the seers, at least till Dorothy \\;i< out of earshot. 
 
 Grand'mere calmed and soothed Camilla, too, and over- 
 came those wild hysterics which were shaking the poor 
 girl's body like a reed in the wind.
 
 08 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 But, in the depth of her pity and the height of her rev- 
 erence, she hesitated to approach the chief sufferers, and 
 almost drew back from them. Though she was acquainted 
 with some passages in the works of the great English poet 
 — in her day little known to French readers — it is not like- 
 ly she had heard of Constance commanding the kings and 
 princes to stand in her presence because of the supreme 
 majesty of her woe. But she had a fine realization of the 
 sentiment, and it was trembling on her lips, when she at 
 last entered Madam's chamber. 
 
 Madam, as she lay there to recover and master herself, 
 had just gasped out an odd wish, "I could desire that 
 Lucy Gage were alive and could come here now. They 
 say she was ever found in the house of mourning, and had 
 acquired the art of drying up tears, that they might not 
 drown the wit and flood the senses, I mean, alack-a-day ! 
 what will become of the rector's sermon, and to-morrow is 
 Sunday. Where are Dolly and Milly? — they are not af- 
 frighted of me still? Indeed, I must get up, good people, 
 for my head doth swim no longer as if I were seized with 
 the falling sickness. I shall have no need to be blooded ; 
 there was no call to bleed my boy when his head swam. 
 Oh ! Lord ! Lord ! — shot through the head ! — I can see 
 his wet clotted locks at this moment." 
 
 "Madam," said Grand'mfcre, "lam not come to comfort 
 you — I dare not. I sit at your feet instead. I hUe had 
 many afflictions ; I am an aged widow now, ending my 
 days in a country not my own. But I have never followed 
 the bier of a dead man, and he my only son. Madam, how 
 much the good Lord must have loved you and yours when 
 He chastened you so much." 
 
 Madam looked up, but closed her eyes again with a low 
 murmur, "Ah ! lam a poor creature. Do not tell my hus- 
 band, he has such heavy trouble, I shrink from such terri- 
 ble love." 
 
 "More than you, Madam, all men of themselves beat 
 their breasts and lie in the dusl to escape it, but still He 
 loves, as sure as the world moves. Ih; does not love us 
 because we love Him, either first or last." 
 
 "And can you believe lie loved my Philip when He call- 
 ed him to his account in a moment without warning or prep- 
 aration?" pleaded Madam, piteously. "lie was good, my
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 69 
 
 son," continued the quiet woman, growing vehement ; " he 
 had only a man's ability, and he had a man's falls, but he 
 was honest, dutiful, religious to our knowledge. Still, what 
 do we know ? He was in camp in time of war, and we shall 
 never hear if he was ready, and how he met his call." 
 
 " Again I say there is One who knows all that, my poor 
 Madam — knows all the young man's faith in His word, all 
 his seeking after Him, all his obedience to his father on 
 earth, and to his commander here, and all the sharpness and 
 suddenness of his mortal end. You trusted our Lord with 
 his life ; say, then, will you not trust Him with his death ?" 
 
 " Then I will, for I must," submitted Madam, meekly ; 
 " but French or no French — forgive me for saying it — you 
 are a good old soul to come and put it so to me. I wish 
 Mr. Rolle could hear you." 
 
 " And teach me nobler truth, as an ordained servant of 
 our Master — is it not so ?" asked Grand'mere. " Ah ! 
 Madam, when avc have crossed the river and thrown oft* 
 our rags for His raiment, shall we stop and ask each other 
 whether we are French or English, or — (you shudder, but 
 you can say it, good woman) — American ? No, nor even 
 whether we are Protestant or Catholic ; but only whether 
 we bear the name of the Cross-bearer who bore our sor- 
 rows as well as our sins." 
 
 " Mother — yes, I hope you will let me pay you the duty 
 and service I owe you to call you so, for I remember they 
 all called you mother, or grandmother, that day in summer, 
 long ago, when we spoke of him, and I was deceived and 
 believed myself a rich mother still; and he Avas moulder- 
 ing under the damp leaves of those great forests he used 
 to tell us of (for he served before in Canada, against your 
 people : you will not mind it now, you are too sorry for 
 us, and too kind); — he was so clever, almost as clever :is 
 his father, and the gallantest soldier in the British army; 
 he twice had the thanks of his regiment presentcMl to him, 
 it was writ to his father. He saved a fort from being sur- 
 
 frised in the East Indies, and nobody could save him— but 
 do not blame his comrades; he would not have blamed 
 them, for he loved them as brothers. T am a simple par- 
 son's wife, but I thank God I can remember all that. Yon 
 are old enough to be my mother — no offense, madam — and 
 I shall not forget your coming to us in our sorrow. What
 
 70 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 although you — no, not you, but your family — all but shut 
 the door in our faces when we went to see you? I dare 
 say you mistook us, or had some reason for your ill-behav- 
 ior. I declare you have done a great deal better than show 
 us the most finished politeness. I shall tell Mr. Ilollc when 
 he is able to hear it ; and he will thank you, and his thanks 
 are worth the having. I shall tell Lady Ilolle, our patron- 
 ess, when she comes down to the Castle, and she may do 
 something for your Spitalfields colony. Now, I am on no 
 ceremony with you, I am going to dismiss you, for I must 
 rise and go to Philip's father." 
 
 "But he will not receive you," said the rector, as he 
 walked into his Avife's room, " for Philip's father comes to 
 Philip's mother, because the woman is the weaker vessel, 
 and it is for the man to honor and cherish her — that is how 
 I read the text, Madame Dupuy." 
 
 He was white and shaken, a man who had aged ten years 
 in a day. He was a little fallen in the face yet when he 
 tried to smile, but his suit was in decent order — possibly 
 his head had been anointed, and his face washed also, and 
 all his resolution and manliness given back to him. He 
 had wrestled for that as well as for resignation, and his 
 Master Avas no niggard ; he had got all he sought. 
 
 " No," corrected Madam, " you name the younger, bitter 
 woman ; but I do not think any body will be bitter to us 
 again. Philip — ah me! the only Philip I have left! — this 
 is the old dame whom everybody called Grand'mere." 
 
 " I do not remember ; I believe my memory as well as 
 my faith faileth me. Don't contradict me, Millie; the 
 woman's place is to be silent and listen to the man. I 
 think even this old French madame — Madame Dupuy, mere, 
 be it — will not dispute that quite, in precept, whatever she 
 may do in example. I rated my dear son's promotion too 
 low, and that is why my faith failed me, and so I bore a 
 false testimony before my people. I was too low myself, 
 and too worldly-minded, though I am a priest. French 
 priests err in that way too sometimes, do they not, mad- 
 ame? My boy has his promotion, the very highest. He 
 died at his post, and I shall stand at mine. I pray God 
 that He may give me strength to stand at his altar to- 
 morrow, and bear a true testimony in returning thanks for 
 Philip's heavenly promotion. I would have celebrated his
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. i 1 
 
 earthly rise in the ale-house, but only God's house is fit 
 when the step is to the skies." 
 
 "Monsieur," cried Grand'mere, forgetting her English, 
 and her avoidance of all sectarian allusion at the same time, 
 " you speak nobly, you speak like Jean Calvin himself." 
 
 " Ha !" exclaimed Mr. Philip Rolle, with a faint gleam 
 of gratification, " you are too good, you do me too much 
 honor. I do not hold Calvin's tenets, but I respect the 
 man. He was no anarchist, no latitudinarian." 
 
 Thus it happened that in the days of bruised and broken 
 hearts there was a truce in the national and sectarian hos- 
 tilities. A compromise was effected, from which Monsieur 
 and Madame Dupuy simply stood aloof; but Grand'mere 
 Avas no longer a stranger to the Rolles, Yolande went to 
 the rectory, and was courteously and kindly received by 
 the rector and his wife ; Dorothy and Camilla came to the 
 Shottery Cottage, and were tolerated by Monsieur and 
 Madame — borne with, indulged, and indirectly taught by 
 Grand'mere. 
 
 About the same time that the neAvs came of the gallant 
 young Captain Philip Rolle's death in a land-fight, there 
 arrived also word of the death of one of Lady Rolle's 
 younger sons, a naval officer, in a sea-fight, in which the 
 renegade Paul Jones had a hand. But, though Sedo-e 
 Pond had a little pride in having contributed two heroes 
 and martyrs to English history, stirred thereto by the 
 Roman spirit of Mr. Philip Rolle, who would fain have felt 
 himself, and called on others to feel, a stern joy in the 
 noble sacrifice, all that Sedge Pond heard or saw of the 
 Rolle of the Castle's death was the messenger who hur- 
 ried down to hang up the hatchment on the wall. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SQUIRE GAGE, WHO RODE AND READ — THE YOUNG SQUIRE 
 WHO WALKED BY HIS FATHER'S BRIDLE — THE MINISTRY 
 OF WOMEN. 
 
 Visits, like misfortunes, come not singly. The Dupuys, 
 who had been six months at Sedge Pond without having 
 
 been waited on by a neighbor, were within a month alter
 
 72 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 
 
 the rector's demonstration required to throw open their 
 doors to a couple of country gentlemen, who had traveled 
 half a day's journey out of their direct road to call upon 
 the French family. They appeared in a guise so strange 
 as to puzzle and confound even Grand'mere's eyes, accus- 
 tomed though they were to many of the strange sights of 
 that strange time. 
 
 "Here be a Bedlamite and his keeper," said Priscille, 
 announcing the strangers. " They have got in at the gar- 
 den-door, and corned up the path, and now they be a- 
 pounding at the house-door." 
 
 The family were thus called in considerable tremor to 
 the lattice-windows. Happily Monsieur was at home this 
 time, and the moment he looked out he dissipated all fears. 
 
 " Oh! £«, they are harmless. I know them. They are 
 enthusiasts, like some of our own people, and spoken 
 against everywhere, too. You will like to know them, 
 mother ; and though you were to offend them to-morrow, 
 and even sin against their fine laws, as so many English- 
 men themselves do, they are so enamored of peace, these 
 brave people, that they would not cite you to their courts 
 of justice." 
 
 Monsieur had been either misinformed or had made a 
 mistake between the Quakers and Methodists. 
 
 " Let them come in, Priscille," he continued. 
 
 The chief peculiarities of dress and gait which had 
 struck the Dupuy household were in the elder man. He 
 was stout and middle-aged, with a capacious forehead and 
 violet eyes, in which there was a wonderful mixture of 
 observation and meditation. He had a good composite 
 English irose, a full, flexible mouth, and a double chin, 
 which was yet nowise gross. He wore his own black hair, 
 which hung down on each side of his face till it reached 
 his collarless coat and his cravat, and was abundantly 
 spi'inkled with grey, but without any trace of powder. 
 lie had on a broad-brimmed hat, like a parson's, but the 
 rest of his dress did not correspond, being of homely, well- 
 worn velveteen — coat, vest, and breeches, the latter with 
 leathern gaiters. There Avasnot one item of adornment in 
 his costume, neither lace nor braid, shoe-buckle nor cravat- 
 brooch, yet it was unmistakably the costume of a gentle- 
 man. Nay, the " grand simple" in style, after which some
 
 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 73 
 
 of the finest gentlemen of the day had the taste to 
 hanker, did something to bring out the unconscious manly 
 dignity of a figure which was in itself heavy and clumsy ; 
 and the perpetual pondering on the highest themes had 
 taken away from the expression of the beautiful eyes what 
 might have been the egotism and coarse rusticity of a self- 
 taught country squire. 
 
 The strange gentleman had ridden a grey cob as stout, 
 middle-aged, and apparently as studiously-inclined as him- 
 self. As he had ridden, he had read hi a large book, with 
 brown calf binding, which lay open across his horse's neck, 
 and ambling along sedately, he had come upon an interest- 
 ing passage just as he had reached the gate. Priscille's 
 wonderment and scorn had been roused by his sitting stock- 
 still like a statue for a few minutes to finish it before alight- 
 ing, apparently with the consent of his beast, too, while 
 his companion fastened the horse-bridle in the ring at the 
 garden-door. 
 
 The younger man was common-looking in comparison, 
 though he was a comely lad, perhaps a little over twenty, 
 and bio- and broad-shouldered for his aije. One could have 
 seen that he was the old man's son, though he appeared so 
 different, for he had his father's nose, mouth, and chin, along 
 with a square, compact forehead of his own, and eyes in- 
 clining more to the steady blue than the changing violet. 
 He was in the dress of his years and station: buckskin 
 breeches, riding-boots, a red vest, and large shining buttons 
 on his coat, while his hat had one of the numerous cocks 
 which in turn was given to that important piece of apparel. 
 But though the younger had all the advantage of di 
 which the elder wanted— though he had youth and the 
 grace of youth on his side, he nevertheless failed in the 
 special traits which marked the other. His face indicated 
 breeding, fair parts, spirit, sense, modesty, kindliness, and 
 was indeed a singularly fresh, honest, and healthful young 
 face, among the many faces then prematurely wasted and 
 polluted with the hot flush of passion and vice. It was a 
 face, too, in which goodliness seemed to be progressive, like 
 the slow growth of many a bounteous, fruitful tree; but 
 one which, on account of this very slowness, would the 
 more readily recommend itself to English hearts. Still, it 
 was without either the dazzling gleam and glory of genius, 
 
 I)
 
 74 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 or suggestions of individual and searching experiences, such 
 as excited the curiosity and commanded the interest of 
 every one who looked upon the elder man. 
 
 The father and son were journeying together in such ' 
 cordial good-fellowship as many a parent and child might 
 have envied, though the one was on horseback and the 
 other on foot, and the one studying in nnpropitious circum- 
 stances a volume of which the other did not care to con- 
 strue a line now that his school tasks were finished. That 
 other was studying the clouds, the flights of birds, the ef- 
 fects of soils in their growth, the rearing of colts and heif- 
 ers ; and he had not merely a quick eye to what was nota- 
 ble and picturesque in these details, for he had inherited 
 that side of his father's temperament, but had also along 
 with it a practical knowledge, love, and assiduity such as 
 Squire Gage of the Mall, with all his wit, book-lore, and 
 earnestness, had never pretended to. 
 
 As Squire Gage passed under the roof of the Shottery 
 Cottage, he raised his hat, and said, so low and solemnly 
 that it seemed a movement of the man's soul, and not a 
 form of words from his lips : " Peace be to this house !" 
 while his companion took off his hat and bowed his head 
 reverently. 
 
 " You are welcome, gentlemen," said Monsieur, with his 
 natural urbanity, as he came forward, while the women 
 made their courtesies ; " you are welcome the more that I 
 can not for my life tell to what I am to attribute the honor 
 of this visit." 
 
 " You are to take it, and our most hearty service, sir," 
 announced Squire Gage, in a deep-toned, full, melodious 
 voice, such as with the early Methodist leaders was a direct 
 personal qualification for their work; "they form a very 
 small acknowledgment of the great debt we owe to a dear 
 Mend of ours, and a countryman of yours, who fell asleep 
 too early for his parish, his circuit, England, and Christen- 
 dom — Fletcher of Madeley. I would fain hope I may hit 
 on some precious memorial of my brother's, early friends 
 and his first youth among his Protestant countrymen." 
 
 Monsieur taxed his memory in vain. Even Grand'mere 
 could not recall such a one among all the Elechiers she had 
 known or heard of, even although one of them had been a 
 famous orator, a Elechier who was a 6oldier in his youth.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 75 
 
 had quitted the army, studied for the Church, emigrated 
 to England, and settled there, and had come forward in 
 the van of the beleaguering host of the Methodists, the he- 
 loved friend of its choicest spirits, the truest gentleman, 
 and most faithful servant of his Master, England had ever 
 received into her Church's ranks. 
 
 But it did Squire Gage good even to speak of Fletcher 
 of Madeley, and of those rough but brave days when he 
 had known well-born gentlemen, famous scholars, impas- 
 sioned, meek Christians, lodging in outhouses and barns, 
 without fire or candle, when they trudged along the dan- 
 gerous roads with their saddle-bags strapped on their 
 backs, brushed each other's shoes and washed each other's 
 potatoes, preached forty hours in a week, and prayed in 
 every house they entered, from five of the clock in the bit- 
 ter winter mornings till past midnight. Ay, he remem- 
 bered those days, and loved to think of them too, when 
 they were set upon by bull-dogs, pelted with paving-stones, 
 and drummed out of towns by the public drummer. It did 
 Squire Gage good to speak of the gallant campaign in 
 which he had borne his part, and it warmed his heart to 
 hear the French tongues and to see the French faces. So 
 Fletcher of Madeley had spoken and felt, when he struggled 
 with his consumptive cough to address his people for the 
 last time ; so he had looked when he took otf his hat to his 
 pew-opener ; and when he plucked the cushion from his 
 pony-chaise and presented it that the fractured limb of the 
 savage yeoman, who had been his greatest enemy, might 
 rest upon it. 
 
 There was a freemasonry between the old Methodist and 
 the old Huguenots, though they differed in many impor- 
 tant particulars. 
 
 Squire Gage spoke of the rise of Methodism, eagerly but 
 simply. The deeds done had been devoted, gentle, gener- 
 ous deeds, yet there had been nothing wonderful in them 
 save the grace of God vouchsafed by his Son, and reflected 
 faintly in the. lives of men whose faces, when they were 
 looked upon by the sympathetic eyes of their generation, 
 seemed as though they had been the faces of angels. Such 
 men were the two great brothers, Mr. John ami Mr. 
 Charles Wesley, Fletcher, and Whitfield. For all that, 
 the last Squire Gage had opposed Whitfield, and taken his
 
 76 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 stand on the Arminian side of the famous controversy. 
 But our squire had learned the broadest of charity from a 
 broad experience. He had dealt with publicans and sin- 
 ners of the first water, with Sadducees of all grades, from 
 the heartless negatives of Lord Chesterfield, delivered in 
 Louis Quinze French, and interrupted by incomparable 
 liftings of his hat and takings of snuff", down to the bully- 
 ing, blustering, blaspheming rodomontade of some Billy 
 Blue, broken in upon by fierce squirts of tobacco-juice and 
 defiant hitches of his trowsers belt. He had encountered 
 Pharisees of every rank and shade, from those whose gain 
 was a bishop's mitre down to squalid, railing men, whose 
 temptation was the miserable three-pounds-a-quarter pit- 
 tance of the traveling Methodist preacher. He had known, 
 too, Israelites without guile, whose mark had to stand for 
 a signature ; and Israelites who burnt their Platos and 
 Livys lest their books should tempt them into intellectual 
 pride, or withdraw them from the narrow way in which 
 alone they could walk, and save then- own and their fellow- 
 creatures' souls. And Squire Gage was not like Ignatius 
 Loyola, who vowed himself to the Virgin, and banished 
 women from the roll of his order; for he had known Maries 
 who had washed and mended their rags in order that they 
 might do all things decently ; or had laid aside their bro- 
 cades and pearl drops, and appeared forever afterward in 
 homely calamanco and muslin. He had known some who 
 had set their diamonds in the unplastercd walls of primi- 
 tive chapels, who had given up their cards for hymn-books, 
 and announced their auctions that they might provide 
 houses of refuge for the poverty-stricken, the Bick, and the 
 sinful. Squire Gage had made many such friends in the 
 dens of great cities, in the wilds of America, on shipboard, 
 and at Moorfields. 
 
 The squire's nature was so liberal, generous, and finely 
 attuned to sympathy, that he made little of his own claims 
 and much of his neighbors', and so he addressed the Du- 
 puys with a deferential wave of the hand and a manly 
 apology for taking up the time of the interview. " I am 
 advised not to detain you farther with my poor personal 
 narratives; an elderly man waxes both heavy and garru- 
 lous, :iml therefore Mr. John warned his preachers not to 
 suffer the devil to tempt them into long sermona But
 
 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 77 
 
 may I beg the favor of a few fresh particulars of your hon- 
 orable history ? Indeed, I am credibly informed that you 
 have been most blessed martyrs." 
 
 " Yes, indeed, martyrs %>ar-ci and martyrs par-Id ; but I 
 leave the question of the martyrs," declared Monsieur, in- 
 differently. " I say we have been honest men stripped of 
 our rights and privileges, and brutally pillaged and out- 
 raged, and that if we pay our enemies back in their own 
 money, they have worked for their wages — that is all." 
 
 "That is to leave the question of the martyrs, sure 
 enough," answered Squire Gage, gravely ; " for martyrs, 
 and for that matter, brave, true patriots, do not avenge 
 themselves. My dear sir, I pray you think better of it." 
 
 "Ta, ta, ta, my dear Monsieur Gage ; it is my own busi- 
 
 ness." 
 
 "I deny that," asserted the squire, eagerly; "I deny 
 that any man's business is his own if it be likely to injure 
 or ruin him, and if it is granted that he is one of many 
 brethren." 
 
 "Say it to him, Monsieur," adjured Madame Dupuy, 
 " when the cats run on the roof the mice dance on the 
 planks. Ah well ! yes, the famine drives the wolves out 
 of the forest. My husband will ask permission to blow his 
 nose on the one hand, and he will persist in following his 
 worldly, reckless courses on the other. All men are De- 
 mases in these degenerate days." 
 
 "Madam!"' responded Squire Gage, turning round in 
 mild astonishment and deprecation upon the narrow, dark 
 face, with the rage of the contest forever burning fiercely 
 in it ; and, true to his Methodist principles, he rebuked the 
 error. "I also am a man, and I have yet to learn that 
 these days in which we live are degenerate days. T fancy 
 they are a mighty deal better than those in which Mary 
 burnt the bishops, or Elizabeth fined the Puritans, or Anne 
 thought of bringing back the Pope and the Pretender, or 
 your Charles and Catherine massacred your fathers, or 
 your Louis sold them as slaves ; only I conclude there has 
 been some good in all events and at all Times, else <;<><1 
 would not have suffered them, any more than the world. 
 Moreover, I have read, both in the law and the Gospel, 
 that the man is the head of his house; therefore, even al- 
 though the head were as far wrong as you say, I see not
 
 78 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY 
 
 that the tail would have any call to rise up and lash its 
 own natural sovereign." 
 
 " But they tell me that your sect allows the public min- 
 istry of women ?" questioned Grand'mere, partly to pro- 
 vide for the subsiding of any offense which might have 
 arisen from the plain-speaking of Mr. Gage. Such plain- 
 speaking was but small offense to her, when there was 
 nothing in it of the " stand aside, I am holier than thou." 
 At the same time, Grand'mere had a vehement prejudice 
 against the public ministry of women. Like other French- 
 women whose social influence was immense, she was in- 
 clined to hold in aversion every independent influence ex- 
 erted by women. 
 
 " Yes, my dear old dame," confirmed the squire, bend- 
 ing gladly to the benign foreign face which was least 
 strange to him, since it reminded him most of the face of 
 Fletcher of Madeley ; " and we are minded to say, though 
 it is not a gallant saying, that if an ass rebuked Balaam, 
 and a cock rebuked Peter, surely a woman may rebuke 
 sin." 
 
 " Certes ! that is not putting the similes too high," ac- 
 knowledged Grand'mere, with her silvery laugh ; " still, 
 you see, I have heard of a certain epistle called Corin- 
 thians, and in the epistle premier there is a certain chap- 
 ter numero xiv., verses 34 and 35, where we read some- 
 thing on the jDreaching and the teaching of women ; now, 
 what of that, sir ?" 
 
 " We opine, madam, that the verses refer to church gov- 
 ernment and discipline, and we ordain not, nor do our 
 women presume that they should settle the disputes in 
 our conferences, or control the management of our cir- 
 cuits. But to what purpose have you women your tender 
 logic of the heart, compared with which ours is so tough 
 and dry ? For the use of your husbands and children 
 only ? Why, that is selfish at the best. And what if 
 your husbands and children do not want it ? What if yen 
 have neither husbands nor children ? You will confess 
 that Deborah, and not Lapidoth, judged Israel, and Anna 
 spoke of the child to all who looked for his coming. That 
 was before the days of the great Apostle Paul, I grant 
 you ; but methinks he would not have shut the mouths 
 of those women. When I was so happy, and my dame so
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 79 
 
 much less happy than she is now, in that she still abode 
 ■with me, I used to find that when I spoke to a crowd of 
 fellow-sinners, more by token when they were poor, work- 
 worn, dull, or distraught men and women, and I was apt 
 to fly far over their heads, my good woman never came 
 after me but she went straight to their hearts. Ah ! I 
 wish you could have heard her. If you had done so, you 
 would never have controverted women speaking in the 
 cause of their Lord again. She had Chrysostom's golden 
 mouth, and could lull and disarm the most raging opposi- 
 tion of the natural man, could overcome the most tor- 
 menting, gnawing worldly care, and turn the sneer of 
 the profane into the worship of the devout, and melt even 
 a heart of stone ! This her son, who is not one of our 
 preachers, having no gift that way, and who, like you, 
 doth not much affect the ministry of women, can tell you 
 what her preaching was like ; and I will say for him, that 
 he is too sterling a lad to overpraise beyond his judg- 
 ment even the good mother that bore him." 
 
 Thus appealed to, the young man spoke, without hesita- 
 tion and reluctance, and, as it seemed, without favor. " It 
 is true what my father says. My mother's sermons were 
 most sweet and suitable. I have known few weary of her 
 discourse, and few who were not the better for it. Oth- 
 er women appear to me to wax weak and distempered, 
 and to utter frothy matter, or to repeat themselves ; but 
 my mother was more reasonable, collected, and concise, as 
 well as more earnest, genuine, and heavenly-minded, when 
 she was carried away with her theme, than any speaker I 
 have ever heard; unless it be one "whom truth and not 
 flattery compels me to except — yourself, sir, in your happy 
 moments ; for you know I have not lived long enough to 
 have ever heard Mr. John Wesley, or Fletcher, or Whit- 
 field, or any of those you term our Boanerge-.*' 
 
 " No, boy. But I fall far short of your mother ; I conir 
 not near her. though I have had so many more years of 
 grace given me, and so many more years of the practice of 
 preaching, and though you, 'being her boy as well as mine, 
 and s], oiled by her in that respect, wise as -lie was. are 
 too prone to exalt me." 
 
 "And yet, with two such qualified progenitors, you do 
 not attempt the public speaking yourself, my young sir,*'
 
 80 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 speculated Monsieur, a little mockingly ; " 'tis a rare con- 
 tinence." 
 
 "I am not fit for it," declared the young squire, with a 
 straightforwardness which wholly disarmed supercilious- 
 ness ; " I do not wear the Methodists' dress because it would 
 be hypocrisy in me, who have not come out of the world 
 as they have done, nor, indeed, am persuaded that their 
 peculiar separation from the world ought to be mine also. 
 I am good for nothing but to take care of my father's beast 
 when he forgets that he carries a student and a preacher, 
 and is like to stumble and throw his rider; or to knock 
 down any man who lays a rough hand on a godly, benefi- 
 cent man, be he a squire like my father, or a poor journey- 
 man shoe-maker, a brother of St. Crispin, as my father call- 
 eth him, which so many of our traveling preachers are — 
 whether there be Methodism in the smell of the leather, or 
 any other provoking cause, I wot not." 
 
 " My lad, let not the devil cause thee to bear false wit- 
 ness, even though it be in decrying thyself. Thou art eyes 
 to the blind, and feet to the lame, for my eyes were never 
 good for much but poring over brown books, or peering 
 closely into men's faces, or scanning far off the vague vast 
 of the sky ; and my feet hath my father's old punishment 
 of gout in them." 
 
 " Though you gave up tea and coffee as too stimulating 
 and pampering, along with my mother and Mr. John Wes- 
 ley, a score of years agone," commented the son. 
 
 " And you profess to keep the farming of the old Mall 
 within bounds, when you pretend that the agriculture of 
 Virgil is wrong ?" 
 
 " So it is, sir," argued the young squire ; " when you 
 apply what was written for Northern Italy, under the Ko- 
 mans, to Midland England under the house of Brunswick." 
 
 " Do you not read Virgil also, my young sir ?" inquired 
 Grand'mere, inquisitively. 
 
 " No, madam, I am too thick of the head, and have too 
 much to occupy and divert me at present. Perhaps I shall 
 turn to it when my brains have grown with use, or when 
 other trades fail; when I am disabled for the active duties 
 and diversions for which I am persuaded I am designed at 
 present, which my father doth not forbid, and in which I 
 do not see any harm."
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 81 
 
 " Yea ; let every man be fully persuaded in his own 
 mind," murmured Caleb Gage the elder, " for there are di- 
 vers operations, but the same Spirit." 
 
 In the .mean time young Caleb Gage had been trying to 
 make himself agreeable to the Dupuys, and to improve the 
 acquaintance of Yolande Dupuy, just as he would have 
 done with a companion of his sisters, had he had sisters. 
 He had tried it in various ways, and had at last retired 
 foiled from the effort. He had got, in reply to his queries, 
 which should have interested any ordinary young girl, the 
 briefest monosyllables. Whether she liked Sedge Pond 
 and its neighborhood ? — Whether she had been in the Cas- 
 tle Gardens ? — Whether she were given to the rearing and 
 teaching of tame birds, as he had heard tell French women 
 were, and in that case whether she would care to have birds 
 snared for her? or whether she were minded to have the 
 pond dredged ? These, and such as these, were the ques- 
 tions with which Caleb Gage plied Yolande unsuccessfully. 
 But he was left utterly uncertain whether Ma'mselle was 
 a stone statue of a proper young gentlewoman, as she sat 
 there in her silk sack and her great bow of rose ribbon on 
 her cap, a tinge of rose coming into her white cheeks for a 
 second, and then leaving them again, just to show that she 
 was really living flesh, and not dead marble ; or whether in 
 her superior learning she scorned him. 
 
 The truth was that Yolande, as Grand'mere had seen, 
 was more ignorant of the world, more strange to its ways, 
 and more at a loss what to say and do than any girl just 
 out of her convent. She had hardly seen or spoken to any 
 man save her father's associates in trade, who had not 
 treated her as an equal, but as a child. She was certainly 
 glad enough that any body should think so kindly of tin 'in 
 as to visit them. But she did not know what to make of 
 the young squire's rank freedom; and could not tell 
 whether it was right for him to address her as he did, or 
 whether he would presume to address Dorothy and Camilla 
 Rolle with such ease, and whether they would suffer it. 
 
 The visitors were invited to share in a meal with the in- 
 mates of the Cottage, and this invitation they accepted 
 with polite alacrity, and without any objections, save that 
 Squire Gage quietly declined to drink healths, saying that 
 he had prayed for the company already, and would pray for 
 
 D 2
 
 82 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 and with them again whenever they liked, but that neither 
 he nor any other Methodist would pledge a bumper, any 
 more than they would pour out a libation. Shortly after 
 the meal was over, father and son took their departure. 
 . The Gages had inspired a sentiment in the inmates of 
 the Cottage more akin to good-will than the Rolles had 
 been able to do on first acquaintance. Grand'mere was 
 especially pleased with them, and was not guiltless of 
 forming her own projects and building her own castles in 
 the air, even on so short an acquaintance — projects in 
 which the Gages, father and son, figured largely. 
 
 " Grand'mere," interrupted Yolande, " did you observe 
 Mr. Gage's eyes, which are short-sighted ? They are like 
 nothing but the evening star when the dew is falling." 
 
 " Yes, little one, and I have seen eyes like them in the 
 long past ; eyes with a short sight for the present, and a 
 far sight for the future. No marvel that they are both 
 unfathomable and effulgent, for they have done as great 
 things as the Italian who went down into the Inferno — 
 they have looked into eternity, these eyes, and it is re- 
 flected in their glance." 
 
 CHAPTER Vm. 
 
 GRAND'MERE TURNS MISER — AN EMBASSY TO THE MALL 
 
 SORTES BIBLIC.E. 
 
 Grand'mere, with all her inward peace, had a care on 
 her mind, the more imperative that it was tender. But 
 after the Gages had introduced themselves at the Shottery 
 Cottage, she did not so much shake off the care as find 
 that the solution of the problem took a tangible shape, and 
 became to her sanguine temper and ardent imagination 
 more and more practicable and probable. 
 
 Then Grand'mere sought with some formality a special 
 interview with Monsieur, her son, and communicated her 
 intentions to him. 
 
 Monsieur laughed a little, even at his mother, in this 
 case, for Grand'mere's care bulked so slightly in his mind, 
 that it appeared a very bagatelle, weighed in the scale 
 against his obligations. But he admitted there was some
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 83 
 
 foundation for her concern, and he gave his mother carte 
 blanche to do what she could to remove the cause. 
 
 "I leave it to you, ma mere; it is your affair. I be- 
 lieve these are honest people, and the liaison may be 
 agreeable to them (since there is no inequality of fortune, 
 when they have wasted the better part of their patrimony 
 on alms-deeds) for the sake of you, little mother, and their 
 hero — this Monsieur, I do not know who — Flechier. 
 As to the tourterelle, she may do as. well with them as 
 with others. She abuses the English, that poor child ; 
 but she has not even the debonnairete of these droles the 
 pastor's daughters. Psch! Yolande's blood is cold, and 
 her color grey, like the English climate and sky, which I 
 do not abuse ; she has the spleen, the unfortunate ! the 
 English form of the excellent mother's faith — tristesse, 
 chagrin. Is it not true, my mother ?" 
 
 " All the waters run to the river my son." replied 
 Grand'mei'e, with a shade of impatience and indignation. 
 "Whom should the child resemble unless her near rela- 
 tions ? But she is a good child, a noble child, word of mine, 
 Hubert. There are men and women who know their kind, 
 that would give more for the truth, and for the earnest- 
 ness, all sombre as yet, of our Yolande, than for the light, 
 treacherous frivolity, and the natures all egotism and all 
 passion, of the girls of the world." 
 
 "Ouais! She is severe. I have never heard her called 
 so before. The nursling is very near thy heart, Grand'- 
 mere." 
 
 " Because you have a diamond, and you do not know it, 
 papa Dupuy. You embark what remains of your good 
 head and heart in ventures and schemes alone. The good 
 Philippine is not altogether wrung. Yet you have bread, 
 and/W^e also, already. You are better off than most of 
 our emigres, and you can not even spare time to get a 
 glimpse of your diamond, though you are aware that it is 
 the pure and precious diamond, which is rough and dark 
 in the mine, till it is brought to the light and cut, ready 
 to be set in the crown of a king." 
 
 "I have had a diamond all my days, my old woman, cut 
 and polishe dbefore I ever looked upon it ; and it is not 
 true that I have not noticed it. and valued it, when it 
 alone had sent radiance into the dark places thousands of
 
 84 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 times. But I am too old, too bourgeois, and have yet too 
 many rivals to overcome in trade, which is my calling, to 
 want another diamond, or to cut it off for myself; and you 
 women, born religieuses, will not understand such things. 
 I shall take it on trust, if you please, and I shall leave you 
 to dispose of it, to bestow it to shine (poor little diamond ! 
 the sun to it, with all my heart) in another house, and 
 show myself the son of my mother in this liberality — and 
 I can not help that defect altogether, since I happen to be 
 one of the rude, hard, worldly betes of men whom poor 
 Philippine rails at. Go ! let her rail, if it does her good, 
 what does it signify ?" 
 
 Grand'niere bade Yolande go and aid big Priscille, as 
 she wished to speak with her mother ; and she consulted 
 Madame so soon as Monsieur had retired to his study, or 
 rather his business-room. 
 
 And Madame said she did not love the English ; she did 
 not trust them ; she would rather see the mortal remains 
 of Yolande in English earth than that the immortal spirit 
 of the child should forget and forsake the faith of the 
 French soil, for which her ancestors had watered the land 
 with their best blood. As to Lutheranism, it was a tan- 
 tamarre of Protestantism; Methodism might be better 
 but she did not like the tree on which the fruit grew. At 
 the same time, it was true that a girl could not be left 
 alone to face the dangers and the temptations of the 
 world. There were no French parents who would not 
 seek in good time the protection of another's house and 
 home for a young maiden. Monsieur would bring them 
 all to the Bastille of England, or to the horse-pond, some 
 day. Ah ! she begged Grand'niere's pardon for speak- 
 ing disrespectfully of her son. She had forgotten for the 
 moment that her husband was Grand'mere's son, and^xj^'te 
 mere should not go to the Bastille. She was too venera- 
 ble, too near the saints. Petite mere should go with Yo- 
 lande. Monsieur would not allow it otherwise, and she 
 would not allow it ; for it would be undutiful and unkind 
 to the dear old mother. No, she alone would accompany 
 Monsieur, and perhaps the sooner the better, if it brought 
 him to a right mind, to faith and repentance. 
 
 " My Philippine, thou art honorable and devout to the 
 finger-tips; but thou art not a trooper. No! thou art
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 85 
 
 weak as water, with the throes of passion, like many anoth- 
 er poor woman, my child. If thon wouldst only have 
 faith in the good God, and fervent charity toward men," 
 adjured Grand'mere, with commiseration. " But never- 
 theless chagrin is in the humors of the blood, my love, I 
 believe it well ; and we when judge harshly, very often we 
 should do better to have great pity." 
 
 Madame would have infinitely preferred to transplant 
 Yolande into a French household, but at Sedge Pond the 
 Dupuys were isolated from their countrymen, save in the 
 case of those business men whom Madame looked upon as 
 denaturalized renegades, the accomplices of Monsieur's 
 Mammon - worship and plotting ambition. Then there 
 was just enough of the bourgeoise in Madame to be sensi- 
 ble of the disadvantage of having bread without fripe, as 
 was true of the mass of the Huguenot emigres, and the 
 consequent temptation when bread andfripe were offered 
 to. them to lick the frlpe on their own account, and, so far 
 as faithful regard and abiding friendship were concerned, 
 leave the bread to take its own chance, and to be trampled 
 under foot in the crowd of other relations and interests. 
 Thus while Madame groaned in spirit, as she did over 
 most proposals which were made to her, she saw no reason 
 for treating what had the great weight of Grand'mere's 
 wish as rank apostasy and villainy. 
 
 Thus Grand'mere, in her sweet cracked voice, began to 
 sinsr, over her cookinsr, distillino:, lace-weaving, not Clement 
 Marot's psalms alone, though she sang them oftenest and 
 with most satisfaction, but old ballads and folk-songs, 
 which were like drops of the nation's heart, that she had 
 never despised and never forgotten, and which now came 
 to her, in green, misty England, with touches of the varied 
 colors and wafts of the sweet odors of the south. 
 
 Grand'mere also suddenly developed a passion for coins, 
 especially for gold pieces — canary birds as she called 
 them. She was evidently making a collection of them, 
 and hoarding as many sovereigns as she could come by. 
 When Yolande sought the reason of this, Gran<Tmere put 
 her off with the pleasantry that she was becoming avari- 
 cious in her old age, and was scraping together a "little 
 fortune to leave Yolande an heiress." 
 
 But Grand'mere made a bad miser, for Prisoille came in
 
 86 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 and told her a sad story of a poor spendthrift prodigal 
 gentleman, a stranger, who had come with his wife, a for- 
 lorn fine lady, and hidden their heads from the shame of 
 witnessing an execution in their own house, under the 
 roof of the ale-house of Sedge Pond. They were not able 
 to go any farther, or try any new mode of life, because 
 they had not the money to pay for their entertainment, 
 and they were now in such a strait that the gentleman 
 had threatened to hang or drown himself. Then Grand'- 
 mere stole secretly out, with the help of Madame Rouge- 
 ole, solicited the honor of being allowed to wait on the 
 couple, and proposed, in a roundabout, ingenious way, to 
 offer them a little loan, as if it were an agreeable scheme 
 of putting out at interest a portion of her thousands of 
 spare francs and crowns. On the strength of this loan she 
 was privileged to see the helpless couple go away in the 
 coach, to throw themselves on the much-tried mercy of 
 such older, wiser, and better supplied friends as might be 
 left to them, but with small prospect to Grand'mere of 
 ever seeing her canary birds again. 
 
 Grand'mere's indemnification was the half-affronted rec- 
 ollection of how the theatrical, fine gentleman, with his 
 unpowdered hair hanging like candle-wicks over his face, 
 and his velvet coat stained and soiled, had wished to 
 kneel to her, and she had quickly prevented him : 
 
 " No, sir, kneel to your God." 
 
 And when he had stared, looked foolish, and shrugged 
 his shoulders, she had been compelled to cry — 
 
 " Do you not know Him ? Have you never kneeled to 
 Him? What marvel that every thing has gone wrong 
 with you, even till you have come to perish with hunger?" 
 
 Afterward the felloAV had insisted on kissing Grand'- 
 mere's hand, and vowed that as she had done more for him 
 than all his friends among the quality, for her sake he 
 would never bet, or game, or race, or swear more, strike 
 him dead if he would. 
 
 And Grand'mere stopped her ears, put her hand on his 
 bold mouth, and cried dolefully to the prodigal, who was 
 not yet five-and-twenty — 
 
 " If thou canst not keep thyself from sin for God's sake 
 and thine own, how thinkest thou that thou canst have 
 strength to do it for the sake of an old Huguenot ? Nay,
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 87 
 
 leave off these big promises, and look to thy wife, whom 
 thou hast taught to game and bet as furiously as thyself. 
 Behold the cards and spadille hidden in thy cuff, as if that 
 were thy chief care and the work for thy last moments; 
 and I heard her wagering the lace of her cap against the 
 braid of your coat that I was the hostess come to crave 
 you again, as I mounted the stairs. She is frightened to 
 contradict you, I see it in her eyes, but she shrinks from 
 starvation and infamy, and from lawless violence. Oh ! 
 do you not, my pauvrette ? Then go, my mirliflore of a 
 debtor, and promise to me not at all, but perform a little 
 to save that lost child whom thou hast helped to drag to 
 the brink of the precipice. Yet, not even for her, no, not 
 even for her, wilt thou pause and think, and play the man 
 until it is too late, unless thou canst arise and go to thy 
 Father." 
 
 The sinner went at last, his head hanging a little. It 
 was exceedingly doubtful, however, whether, unless in the 
 exhaustless hopefulness of Grand'mere, he would not be 
 sneering at her before he had turned the corner. " But 
 what of that ?" Grand'mere would have asked. " Behold 
 the dark silent night, when he may think better of it. 
 Behold the moments of trial, anguish, terror, alas ! alas ! 
 coming thick and fast on such as he, when, while there is 
 still mercy for him, he may recall even so poor a lesson." 
 
 Grand'mere returned to the Shottery Cottage, and look- 
 ed a little ruefully at her empty purse, the canaries all tied 
 from it. Eventually she consoled herself with the simple 
 reflection that money was one thing, and men and women 
 another; and that failing the gold there was always the 
 copper, which was only a metal a little redder in color and 
 heavier in weight. If Yolande could not have a dozen louis 
 in her pocket one day, she might have a dozen of dozen of 
 sous, which would be a great deal grander in point of num- 
 ber, for the sake of her dear old France and its discreet, 
 economical country customs. 
 
 Yolande, girl as" she was, had her thoughts and suspi- 
 cions in the middle of her constant questioning, pondering, 
 and disputing; but they were single-hearted, submissive, 
 and child-like. And when the crisis arrived for Grand'- 
 mere to make known her intention of going alone on an 
 expedition to the Mall, to return the \ i-it of Squire Gage,
 
 88 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Yolande cast down her eyes, shrank a little more into her- 
 self, looked colder and graver in tone, and more nervous 
 and timid, a new phase of her quietness and gravity ; but 
 she did not dream of so much as suggesting opposition to 
 Grand'mere's enterprise. There would have been indeli- 
 cacy and insubordination, even according to Grand'mere's 
 standard, in such a step on Yolande's part. 
 
 Grand'mere had had so few opportunities of visiting, and 
 had so seldom availed herself of them for many years, that 
 she declared it made her old head light, when she started 
 on one of the rector's horses, which was borrowed for the 
 occasion. Madame Rolle had offered the use of her char- 
 ion, but Grand'mere had that honorable pride which would 
 have nothing to do with what was out of keeping with her 
 real position. She was an old bourgeoise Huguenot ; her 
 pride, so far as it was permissible, lay in that distinction. 
 She did not care -to be rolling, or rather bumping heavily 
 along the bad roads, like the quality. She accepted the 
 attendance of Black Jasper, however, because she wanted 
 a man to walk by her horse. She thought it would be a 
 mutual advantage, and a kind of treat to the poor fellow, 
 who wore a bit of crape for Captain Philip round his arm 
 soldier- wise, which he had begged one of the rectory still- 
 maids to sew on for him ; and he never passed the rector 
 without trying to cover it clumsily with his hand, or his 
 hat, or his napkin, as if that would cover a father's grief. 
 He never glanced at it himself without his rolling eyes get- 
 ting dim. But if Grand'mere was as elated as a child at 
 her new circumstances, she had a child's generosity in seek- 
 ing to share them with her neighbors. She desired to do 
 Priscille's business and the business of every other house- 
 wile who would trust her, at the wheel-wright's and the 
 miller's on the road. She sat equipped for starting full ten 
 minutes, to allow Black Jasper to enjoy the spectacle of a 
 man and an ape performing before the ale-house porch. 
 
 At last Grand'mere set out to ride her six miles and 
 back. On she went by the Waiiste, past an occasional 
 windmill, which struck her as being the likest feature to 
 France in the landscape ; on by another rural village much 
 in the style of Sedge Pond. She passed farm-houses, con- 
 fused masses of out-buildings, only a little less sluttish than 
 the villages, forsaken by their occupants for the harvest-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 89 
 
 work in the fields. She got gleams of the great white 
 stuccoed arcade of the Rolles' castle, which carried the 
 rampant imagination of Grand'mere to the Louvre at the 
 least. And always journeying with her there was the same 
 slow, sleepy river, like a canal, bearing a barge or two, 
 bound for Norwich. 
 
 Grand'mere and Black Jasper traveled in the greatest 
 harmony. They were not without annoyances, however. 
 The children of the strange village, who had never seen a 
 black servant before, but who had, nevertheless, arrived at 
 the conclusion that his name was Black-a-more, came out 
 and stared, pointed their fingers, screamed, and mocked at 
 Black Jasper, who was naturally oppressed by these atten- 
 tions ; and the little gall that was in him being roused, he 
 made faces, and threatened the small fry in hurried, im- 
 pressive pantomime. 
 
 " Seest thou not, my son, that it is of no use ? Thou at- 
 tractest them only the more. Heed them not. If they 
 did not stare and shout at thee, they would stare and 
 shout at me — at my French tongue, at the fashion of my 
 grey hair, and the cut of my mantua." 
 
 Black Jasper ruminated on the beautiful old lady's call- 
 ing him her son, and comparing him to herself; and be- 
 came so inflated with conceit, that the next time he Avas 
 assailed by his too ardent admirers, he raised his cocked 
 hat, made a low bow, and then spreading out his sable 
 fingers on his white shirt, saluted their tips till the chil- 
 dren cried, " Boo ! boo! lulliberoo !" more loudly and fran- 
 tically than ever, and Grand'mere, it must be confessed, 
 was slightly scandalized at her train. 
 
 The Mall was a square building of red brick with white 
 facings, like a soldier's uniform of scarlet cloth and pipe- 
 clay. It had not only done good private service in iis 
 day— had not only held in its oak and cedar parlors whole 
 generations of the Gages from the reign of Anne, and had 
 hidden priests of all denominations in the hole behind the 
 chimney of the dining-hall, which was a fragmenl of an 
 older building — but it had seen public service lately. It 
 was an old seat in the modest rank <>f English country 
 mansions, and it was a Methodist establishment, combining 
 college (on the principle of Kings wood), orphanage, hospice 
 for belated travelers, hospital for the helpless sick, and
 
 90 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 house of refuge for the homeless poor. All its buildings 
 and pleasure-grounds, which were not absolutely required 
 in the economy of its large household, were transformed 
 from their original aims, and pressed into the use of a mot- 
 ley regiment. The hall was a meeting-house and class- 
 room, where preachers and teachers lectured and taught; 
 the stable was almost stripped of its stalls, while the loft 
 above was fitted up into humble dormitories. The coach- 
 house was the hospital, and an old berline which still stood 
 in a corner served as the refractory ward for an occasional 
 violent patient. The kennels were workshops, in which 
 traveling tailors, shoe-makers, and basket-makers made 
 periodical sojourns, and found apprentices ready to their 
 hands ; while a company of young girls was distributed, 
 under capable, vigilant matrons, over the kitchen, the 
 wash-house, the bake-house, the dairy, and the housekeep- 
 er's room. In addition to the Methodist preachers, in every 
 degree of training, whom Squire Gage housed, fed, clad, 
 sent out and followed with never-failing interest into their 
 circuits of evangelization, the Mall was well stocked with 
 poor relations, who chose to make it their head-quarters 
 on the right of charity's beginning at home. The only 
 stipulation with them was that they should attend the ex- 
 ercises, comply with the regulations of the house, and con- 
 duct themselves with propriety while they were under its 
 roof. Along with the regular pensioners Squire Gage took 
 in an irre^iilar band. Any number of chance wayfarers, 
 who preferred a dish of groats and a crust with a grace 
 said to it, clean straw, and the shelter of a roof, to the 
 highway, a grudged shed, and the pence demanded for the 
 humblest supper and bed at the ale-house, were also taken 
 in at the Mall and made welcome. 
 
 Thus Grand'mere did not find the country house, bask- 
 ing sluggishly in the afternoon sun, solitary, save for its 
 two masters and their domestics; on the contrary, it over- 
 flowed with life in all ranks and at all stages. From a 
 wagon before the porch, two little boys, in corduroys and 
 knee-breeches, were just alighting. They had rusty bands 
 of crape round their bonnets, and were very thin-faced and 
 watery-eyed — a consignment a brother Methodist in the 
 next large town had sent to fill up two vacancies in Brother 
 ( l-age'fl orphanage. There was a figure wrapped in a blan-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 91 
 
 ket, and taken straight to the hospital, as like to be a 
 patient in small-pox as any thing else. There was a halt 
 man in a frieze coat ; a blind woman in a duffle cloak, with 
 the hood drawn over her head ; and a scarecrow of an old 
 gentlewoman, in a gipsy bonnet and a roquelaure, claim- 
 ing i - emote kindred with Squire Gage, and cumbered with 
 so many trunks and bandboxes that she certainly meant 
 to push her claim to the extent of spending the remainder 
 of her days at the Mall, while she looked sourly at the halt 
 and the blind, as if dreading that there- might not be bread 
 enough and to spare for her and for them. There were 
 all imaginable noises, the sound of planes, saws, resined 
 strings, and voices from the workshop. 
 
 Elderly women and half-grown girls, precise, and only 
 curbed in their sauciness, were moving to and fro in the 
 porch, at the windows of the house, and on the landing- 
 places of the outside stairs, engaged in scouring, mending, 
 preparing meals, attending to the dumb animals, and wait- 
 ing on those who could not wait on themselves. A beggar 
 was examining his wallet ; a hawker sorting his stock of 
 ballads; an okl soldier was airing his patched and laded 
 uniform, a scar on his wrinkled forehead. But each was 
 at his ease, and exhibited an inclination to growl at and 
 grudge elbow-room to his neighbor in the ivied court. 
 Itinerant preachers, in the elevation of their calling, were 
 studying, by the help of books and papers, apart from the 
 throng, or discussing together for the most part doctrines, 
 creeds, and experiences, sometimes with a Avar of words 
 rising, ebbing, raging, falling. Students and disputants 
 paced up and down, and rested in the walks, arbors, and 
 summer-houses of what had once been the gardens in which 
 the ladies of the Mall had taken delight, while the men had 
 rejoiced in their hunters and harriers, their hunting break- 
 fasts and coursing dinners. The late Dame Gage, though 
 she had loved flowers with the best flower-lovers among 
 her predecessors, had voluntarily and cheerfully given o^ ti- 
 ller garden to pass into the commonest of kitchen and of 
 physic gardens, for the behoof of the greal family at the 
 .Mali. Only here and there, a tiger-lily or a nectarine \» I 
 struggled into stately gorgeous flower or Luscious fruit, like 
 plants of another age and region, among coarse beans and 
 cabbages, chamomiles and hoarhound, gnarled orabs and
 
 92 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 plums. And Grand'mere bailed a huge walnut-tree, which 
 
 continued to shade one corner ; and she hung over the 
 straggling tendrils and leaves of a wilding vine, for it was 
 such as she had known grow trim and fair and fruitful in 
 hundreds of tender green, olive, and straw-colored saplings 
 in her vineyard in Languedoc. 
 
 She looked round without misgiving, and with sympa- 
 thetic interest in the extraordinary colony. "When Squire 
 Gage was apprised of her arrival, he hastened to welcome 
 her with the warmest cordiality, and received her with the 
 greatest honor. He, however, had no other apartment to 
 which to conduct her, save the kitchen and parlor in one, 
 where elm-wood dresser, birch-wood settles, cherry-wood 
 cupboards, pewter flagons, box-wood bowls, and dishes of 
 coarsest earthenware, did duty for fine furniture, and 
 which was the only company - room left at the Mall. 
 Grand'mere looked round her with more than perfect ac- 
 quiescence — with glad approval. She trod like a queen on 
 a progress, when Mr. Gage led her, after she had rested, 
 over his wonderful human laboratory. She went with 
 him into what he called the aeademicia, into the porticoes, 
 the hall, and the garden, and heard him help aspiring boys, 
 sons of poor Nonconformist ministers and school-masters, 
 to construe Sallust and solve Euclid, as they had begun to 
 do in the intervals of " lashing" out the corn on the shell- 
 ing hill, and walking in the farrow of the plough at their 
 homes. She saw him pull the locks of others, and bid 
 them not smuggle away their " Seven Champions" and 
 " Iiobinson Crusoes," for his good brother Adam Clarke 
 had demonstrated beyond contradiction that from nursery 
 fairy-tales and school-boy legends he had learnt what had 
 served to help his faith in the invisible, and to teach him 
 to endure hardness %s a good soldier of the greatest and 
 best of Lords. lie took Grand'mere from workshoj) to 
 hospital, charming her by his unconscious power of wis- 
 dom and love in their management ; and she delighted 
 him by disarming the hostility of the crowd of performers 
 whom his hand — practiced in blessing — ruled harmonious- 
 ly, bat who were liable to prove unruly and contentious 
 under any other leader, and to resent keenly the suspicion of 
 an interloper. But Grand'mere praisedright and (eft in all 
 good-will, first frankly acknowledging the merits of sor-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 93 
 
 rel salve and elderberry wine, of goose pie and blackber- 
 ry pudding, and then she presented a box of French un- 
 guent for wounds and bruises, and a case of cassia ; finally 
 she begged a saucepan, six beaten eggs, six bits of butter 
 the size of a nut (telling them the French cook's proverb 
 was, " Spare neither butter nor care"), a little shredded basil 
 and thyme, and a little grated ham, a pinch of pepper and 
 salt, and tossed in a trice before their eyes that "omelette 
 aux fines herbes" the very naming of which is sufficient 
 to improvise an appetite hi the sickliest of convalescents. 
 
 But there were other relics of the original gentle estate 
 and destination of the Mall, beyond its stone and wood 
 work. The principal of these w*ere the books of its mas- 
 ter's library, in the ancient dignity of vellum and calf- 
 skin, still stored in book-cases at one end of the kitchen ; 
 and the family pictures, which yet looked strangely down, 
 in the pink of proud and affected attitudes and attire, from 
 a high whitewashed open gallery running round the room, 
 on the bustle below. 
 
 Squire Gage explained that he had once entertained se- 
 rious thoughts of burning his books, as the hearers of the 
 Apostle Paul did theirs ; or at least, of selling them like 
 other luxuries, for what money they would bring into the 
 treasury of the establishment. But then, again, he had 
 considered that his old friends and faithful companions 
 contained no magical arts, and he had spared them, as he 
 was thankful for afterward. The longer lie lived, the more 
 fully he was assured that a man should be thoroughly fur- 
 nished to every good work, and that there was no famish- 
 ing, after the inspiration of the Spirit and the teaching of 
 Holy Scripture, which was to be compared with the clouded, 
 corrupted wisdom of the ancients, so that a man's eye was 
 purged to see through the dimness of their vision. And 
 if a man's eye remained without light, why then both the 
 wisdom and the folly of the ancients and them oderns would 
 be all one to him in his darkness. His lad, indeed, did not 
 at present affect the classics, nor yet, save in a modified 
 degree, the English authors themselves. Bui what of 
 that? — one man's meat was another man's poison; there 
 were other lads to whom he could lay open his library, and 
 to whom Caleb would never grudge the beauty and the 
 wealth of his father's grand old books.
 
 94 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 As to the pictures, there were brethren who remonstra- 
 ted with Squire Gage for keeping them in their bare can- 
 vas, in the manner in which they had hung since his dame 
 freed them from their frames, which she had dispatched, 
 along with what plate, tapestry, ebony, ivory, silk and fine 
 linen there had been at the Mall, to be disposed of in Lon- 
 don, to help the funds for the systematic relief of one small 
 fraction of the poor and needy. These strict brethren 
 were apprehensive lest the poor painted faces, love-locks, 
 top-knots, sword-hilts and citherns should serve to produce 
 pride of birth and race in their possessor. But though the 
 squire protested gravely that he did not think it was ask- 
 ed of him, or of any man, to sit in judgment on the sins of 
 his forefathers, and " improve" them, he was of opinion 
 that there was as much humility as pride to be got from 
 the honest study of those lingering shadows on the wall. 
 And the squire, as he spoke, glanced at a truculent old 
 Gage who had done great execution in the Civil Wars, 
 and a vain, light woman who had wedded and abandoned 
 him. 
 
 " But tell me, my Monsieur," asked Grand'mere, thought- 
 fully, as she inspected his labors, " will this gracious house 
 last ? Is it that you have founded it in perpetuity, or that 
 the benevolent will keep it up by a succession of donations 
 and dedications, as in the French houses of charity and 
 mercy ? Pardon me, Monsieur, that I am a Lot's wife of 
 doubt and distrust, and fear that the Mall house may be 
 abused like other houses in other hands, and in other gen- 
 erations. How will you guard and fence it when even the 
 brave young Monsieur is done with carrying out his fa- 
 ther's intentions ?" 
 
 Squire Gage smiled gently, and shook his head. " It is 
 one good of imperfection, madam, that it wants not fencing 
 and guarding. And that this poor scheme of mine is im- 
 perfect, I and my dame knew from the beginning. But 
 what would you have ? There was a crying need for some 
 refornfation, some commencement of a good work. We 
 made our trial, and did our best — for our day. My dear 
 madam, a future day is not mine, and I am not called upon 
 to provide for it, or meddle with it. No, I shall not be- 
 queath the rents which may yet come in to me to Gage's 
 Hospital. Why should I? God has raised a natural bar-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 95 
 
 rier. My lad is as much a messenger from Him, and the 
 messenger who comes first and nearest to me, as my poor- 
 est fellow-creature." 
 
 "And Monsieur Caleb, will he not wash the disciples' 
 feet also ?" 
 
 " Not in his father's and mother's way. Why should 
 he ? There is no call upon him to walk in their footsteps. 
 He may go his own way. Any other conclusion savoreth 
 of an automaton and a martinet, since my son is not of the 
 stuff which hypocrites are made of. No, he may go his 
 own way, so that he follow in Another's footsteps ; and 
 how far and wide they diverge, on how many soils, by how 
 many paths, blessed be God, do these divinely human foot- 
 steps travel ! I go thus far, that I have not, in my opin- 
 ion, made Caleb a poorer man in the long run, because I 
 have spent the savings of my minority, besides some fur- 
 nishings and personal belongings, and sold a farm or two, 
 which might have fallen to him. He will have enough for 
 a gentleman farmer. He may take in land, rear stock, 
 buy and sell, build up the house anew, extend its borders, 
 for he is shrewd and prudent, and skillful in business, as 
 well as generous and modest. He may break up the 
 Waaste, drain the Mall Deep, cut down the old coppice, 
 erect wool-mills and corn-mills just as. the first Gage of 
 the Mall drew the first furrow between this and Sedge 
 Pond. It is in the kind, and in the sample, and thence we 
 have been distinguished as namesakes of the son of Jephun- 
 neh, who had the hill-country of Hebron for his portion, 
 and the expulsion of the sons of Anak for his reward. 
 Nay, but forgive this foolish boasting ; it is an old man's 
 garrulity. Caleb will not continue the establishment ; but 
 I have confidence in my son that he will let it go down 
 slowly and gently, and that he will not be minded to turn 
 the last of its inmates adrift ; not though he wen' the most 
 troublesome and ingrained black sheep. He will honor 
 the Methodist body that far, and none the less esteem it 
 that he hath never belonged to it ; and he will not be in 
 any haste to remove his father and mother's landmarks." 
 
 "It is true, my friend," replied Grand'mere, "that there 
 are Christians, and Christians; and I confess it does seem 
 tome that the early Christians selling their land, laying 
 the money at the Apostles' feet, and having all their goods
 
 96 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 in common, reads like practices designed for the exigen- 
 cies of their country and age, not as a pattern for all 
 time." 
 
 " Without doubt, my dear madam ; and young eyes see 
 flaws in goodly robes which their predecessors wore with 
 exultation and thankfulness. Why not ? What were the 
 clearness and sunshine of the present given them for, if not 
 to correct what is cumbrous and obsolete, unfit and mis- 
 shapen in the cloak or gown, though it served its turn 
 in days gone by, when no fault was seen in it and it 
 sheltered its wearer from the mists and storms of the win- 
 ter of the past. I have always thought it one of the in- 
 consistencies and eccentricities of your Michel de Mon- 
 taigne that he would 20 abroad in his father's old cloak 
 because it was his father's. Caleb doth not choose to vex 
 me, but I know he thinks my large family can not last long 
 (inasmuch as it is an arbitrary institution, and not God's 
 ordinance of blood and kindred), when there is no supreme 
 necessity for it, without breeding and fostering jealousies, 
 strife, and violence, as in the religious houses of all sects, 
 after a lapse of time. The boy hath had before now to 
 help me to put down differences and divisions, even be- 
 tween preachers and teachers, with a high hand, and once 
 we had to call in the civil power against a poor rogue of 
 a tinker who had reminded me of a certain illustrious 
 dreamer, but who was unlike John Bunyan in this respect, 
 that he was so left to himself as to take all he could get 
 and give the worst word on his entertainment, annoy and 
 insult his fellow-lodgers, and drive them from receivinc: 
 
 CD t O 
 
 profit from the exercises. At last he sunk to the low pitch 
 of lusting after the very homely trenchers and porringers 
 out of which he had eaten his meals, and of secreting them 
 with the purpose of removing them, My good dame, he 
 struck and kicked the man who detected him in his ini- 
 quity so forcibly, that murder might have been done had 
 not Caleb, in his young strength and natural lira very, gone 
 between and sundered the combatants. Yet, if you will 
 believe it, that poor sinner wepl abundantly when he made 
 full confession to me in Keedham Jail, and declared, what 
 I have no reason to discredit, that he was never so near 
 grace as in his earlier sojourn at the Mall. Therefore, why 
 Bhould not grace surprise some oilier wretched wayfarer
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 97 
 
 any day before I draw my last breath at the Mall — come 
 upon him like a strong man, take from him his goods and 
 deprive him of his armor wherein he trusted, and leave him 
 not with the dismal wail ' almost,' but the jubilant shout, 
 ' altogether a Christian ?' " 
 
 " Monsieur," cried Grand'mere, impulsively, as she raised 
 her grey eyes to his violet eyes, " I am older than you, 
 but I am a weak, foolish woman ; grant me a favor — give 
 me your blessing." 
 
 " All the blessings of the heaven above and the earth 
 beneath!" responded Squire Gage, fervently; "though 
 they are called down by an unworthy brother on a true 
 sister. Rather, I should beg a Huguenot's prayers for me 
 and mine, and for my work, which is nearly ended. Shall 
 we pray together, madam?" 
 
 _ In this manner two Christian enthusiasts pondered on 
 Christian ethics, compared notes on good Avorks, and 
 thought no shame of reverently approaching their Father 
 in heaven. 
 
 The squire was solicitous, with a country gentleman's 
 imperative hospitality, to entertain Grand'mere as became 
 both her and him. With a delicate tenderness of respect 
 he had even striven to recall old memories, and to send his 
 usual habits to the wall for the occasion, so that the meal 
 served at one end of the kitchen, with its fruit, white wine, 
 and the nosegay of all the autumn flowers then blowing in 
 Dame Lucy's disenfranchised parterres, should be as like 
 as possible to the French feast which he had once seen 
 served up, in an English parsonage, by the quick instincts 
 of a soul as generous as his own. 
 
 Grand'mere received every gracious attention with a 
 gratitude and a gratification still nunc gracious. 
 
 "Monsieur," she exclaimed, in her lively, metaphorical 
 way, looking round on the tankards, the books, the pict- 
 ures, and the banquet, with eyes which would aever grow 
 too dim to sparkle, " iffis as if you had got cray-fish from 
 Montfaucon, wild boars from Ardennes, fierce bears from 
 the Pyrenees. It is as if you had received an intimation 
 that the three Magi were coming to \i-it yon, and hail 
 made your preparations accordingly." 
 
 The young squire was from home, which was only a par- 
 tial disappointment to G rand' me re, since it was one pari 
 
 E
 
 98 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 of her intention to make the most searching, interested in- 
 quiries, which her perfect politeness would permit, respect- 
 ing the disposition and inclination of Monsieur Caleb. 
 
 In truth, very little importunity was needed in order to 
 obtain the desired information, for here " the old man elo- 
 quent" was full of very pardonable fatherly garrulity. 
 His son Caleb was his first and last born — his only child, 
 the son of Rachel, the prop of his old age, the desire of his 
 fading eyes. He christened him without fear as the gift 
 of God, and beheld in their relationship, not only the op- 
 portunity for the lawful indulgence of his natural affections, 
 but the type of all that is tender and true, loyal and sa- 
 cred, binding the creature to the Creator, the manifold 
 children to the universal Father. 
 
 It sounded as if the father and the son were not only 
 filial, but fraternal in their regard, as if they were a pair 
 of close friends, such as two good men living alone togeth- 
 er in a circle of dependents might well become. Yet this 
 freedom and familiarity disturbed Grand'mere's calcula- 
 tions a little. Squire Gage not only expatiated contented- 
 ly on the assistance which his son rendered him, and the 
 confidence which he rejsosed in him; but he recounted 
 gleefully the vigorous, stubborn mental encounters the 
 two had on the subjects wherein they differed ; the lessons 
 they gave each other in opposite sciences, and the news 
 with which they twitted each other on their fin lures. 
 Grand'mere was actually tempted to hold up her hands 
 and cry halt. She could hardly fathom such a relation- 
 ship ; she had been accustomed to playful as well as ten- 
 der friendship between mother and son, but between father 
 and son, even where there was devoted affection, she had 
 witnessed no such liberty. It required Grand'mere's for- 
 bearance and her liking lor the family at the Mall to look 
 over this dangerous license, and make her attribute it to 
 English air and English institutions alone. 
 
 Having subdued this single scrupre, Grand'mere came at 
 last to the object, of her mission, not without finesse and 
 circumlocution; because, though her character was in es- 
 sent ials clear as crystal, it included in its elements delicate 
 French tact, and ingenuity. The substance of the errand 
 was quite simple: Grand'mere had a graBd-daughter, 
 Squire Gage had a son, and the promising young man and
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 99 
 
 young woman, both moderately endowed with the goods 
 of fortune, were contemporaries and neighbors : was there 
 no significance, no suitability in these things? Grand'- 
 mere made a proposal of a treaty of marriage between the 
 Squire's son and her grand-daughter, Yolande Dupuy. 
 She had no notion that she was doing any thing but con- 
 ferring the highest honor by the overture, while it was a 
 matter of course that it should come from her. She Mas 
 fully persuaded that the squire and she were the persons 
 strictly entitled to settle the preliminaries of any matri- 
 monial alliance entered into by their children, and that no 
 one, not even the principals, could be more deeply inter- 
 ested or more sensible of the importance of the step sug- 
 gested. Grand'mere, therefore, spoke with quiet dignity 
 and with a due consciousness of her authority in the mat- 
 ter. 
 
 The squire was somewhat taken aback as Grand'mere, 
 in fairness to her grandchild, fluently, but without exag- 
 geration, summed up briefly the advantages of the match, 
 dwelling on Yolande's good qualities, her virtue and wis- 
 dom, her truth to her parents, and her sweetness to her 
 Grand'mere. The comparatively innocent seclusion in 
 which she had grown up, the fitting instruction she had 
 received, the personal attractions (though these were but 
 a bagatelle) that she possessed, and the modest but respect- 
 able dowry which her father was able and willing to give 
 her, all these were faithfully touched on. Then Grand'- 
 mere went nimbly over to the other side of the question, 
 and dwelt nobly, liberally, and at far greater length, on the 
 merits of the young squire, in his reputation, his family, 
 his menage. Yolande's father and mother would do their 
 utmost to meet the young man's gifts with their Yolande's 
 goodness. They wished to marry their daughter while 
 they could still choose for her in marriage, and give her 
 hand where there was least, risk of a fatal error. And 
 Squire Gage, who was a father, would not blame them or 
 scorn them because they were foreigners and French. 
 
 The squire was not altogether so confounded as a mod- 
 ern, learned, and devout squire — did such exist — mighl 
 be nowadays. Marriages continued frequently to be 
 family alliances in houses far below the rank of those of 
 dukes and earls. Squire Gage's father had found his wit e
 
 100 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 
 
 selected, sought out, and all but married to him by an 
 obliging and active-minded kinswoman, and the squire 
 had never had any reason to regret his father and mother 
 as other than a well-matched, well-satisfied couple. The 
 early Methodists were accustomed to view wedlock with a 
 strong reference to the interests of the society. In this 
 light influential members, without hesitation or fear, ar- 
 ranged and carried through marriages for the good of the 
 meeting-house or chapel first, the individuals' claims and 
 characters being glanced at afterward. Some of the ob- 
 scurer conferences might even occasionally decide them 
 by lot, like the Moravians. Squire Gage remembered that 
 it had been an obstacle to his own union, and regarded as 
 a serious difficulty and danger, that it had taken its rise 
 in the motions of carnal affection and the promptings of 
 the natural man, and not in a single eye to the evangel- 
 ization of the world, and a profound respect for the exten- 
 sion of Christianity. 
 
 So Squire Gage was not inclined to silence or scout 
 Grand'mere's mission, even if his goodness had suffered him 
 to be hasty in condemning and deriding what had been 
 undertaken m good faith and sober earnestness. He con- 
 sented to take the proposal into mature consideration 
 without a thought of doing any wrong to his friend and 
 son. He freely admitted that he would rejoice to have a 
 young gentlewoman at the Mall again, particularly if she 
 were of Grand'mere's race and rearing. He was not such 
 a miserable bigot, either to his nation or to his Method- 
 ism, as to undervalue the whole French people and the 
 noble band of Huguenot exiles. He confessed there was 
 some call for another mistress at the Mall, though the 
 mention of it brought the rheum to the eyes which had 
 seen its last mistress. But Madam could comprehend and 
 make allowance for that. One who would deal kindly 
 with his infirmities, and would manage the women, among 
 whom he and Caleb could not enter and hector to the ex- 
 lent of lending a rough lick to an incorrigible malcontent, 
 would be a great blessing to them. The greatest scolds 
 among the women, poor creatures, were always mild ncga- 
 1i'>ns to him, but there was more than a suspicion that 
 they were apt to employ their leisure in idle bickerings 
 and petty feuds, which though not serious, were not seem-
 
 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 101 
 
 ly or comfortable to their faith. They would mind a mis- 
 tress, especially if she were like his old dame, a dove 
 among barn-door fowls. Certainly, for that and for other 
 reasons Squire Gage would gladly hail his son's early en- 
 trance into marriage, which was honorable in all men; 
 but his healthy instinct impelled him to add, gently, in 
 the end, " Nevertheless, my good madam, doth it not strike 
 you that our theme savoreth alarmingly of a manage de 
 convenance f n 
 
 " Of what else, Monsieur ? and of what can you make 
 a better market than of the noblest sort of convenance — fit- 
 ness, obedience to parents, dutifulness — not of fancy and 
 passion ?" demanded Grand'mere, warmly. "Ah! trust 
 me, my Monsieur, when the good choice has been made 
 with prayer and blessing by the careful parents, sacred, 
 chaste, sweet wedded love (all the purer and higher that 
 it is born of duty, and not of desire) will follow without fail 
 in those good and honest hearts on which, and not on their 
 memories alone, is written the substance of their catechism, 
 ' Quelle est la principale fin cle la vief and ' Quel est le souv- 
 erain Men des hommesf Fie ! Monsieur, would you rath- 
 er have the boys and the girls madly pursuing, and setting 
 their weak seals blemished to their idle, wandering imagi- 
 nations ?" exclaimed Grand'mere, in such unfeigned horror, 
 that under her empressement Squire Gage felt all but con- 
 victed of impropriety and indiscretion. " You are English 
 — and the English, the best of them, love their own wills 
 in the affections," continued Grand'mere, more temperate- 
 ly ; "but when every great point is gained, is it that you 
 would cast fancy and passion into the opposite panier, and 
 suffer it to weigh down the ass, Monsieur ? The marriages 
 of Isaac and Rebekah, of Boaz and Ruth — say what were 
 they but the noblest sort of manages de convenanci /" 
 
 Squire Gage had been slipping his fingers into his great 
 family Bible to find the entry of his son's birth and l>a|>- 
 tism in order to show it to Grand'mere, in return for the 
 sight of the certificate of the Protestant baptism ofYo- 
 lande Dupuy, with which he had been favored. As he 
 did so he was tempted to have recourse to a practice in 
 favor with the old Methodists — even with Mr. John him- 
 self—which was not engaged in lightly, far less irreverent- 
 ly, but which nevertheless had a strange resemblance to
 
 102 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 the heathen art of divination, christened by a Christian 
 name. 
 
 " What think you of the Sortes Biblicce, madam ? Shall 
 we try a verse of Holy Scripture, to ascertain what we are 
 patting our hands to ?" 
 
 Grand'mere acquiesced readily. She was not farther 
 before her age than good Squire Gage, and she 4iad her 
 superstitions as well as her French prejudices. She clasp- 
 ed her hands and leaned forward breathlessly, while the 
 squire put his hand darkly into the closed Book on an un- 
 seen verse, and opening it read aloud — 
 
 " My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither 
 be weary of his correction." 
 
 " "Well, that is plain sailing," declared Squire Gage, sub- 
 missively, and even cheerfully, seeing Grand'mere's ex- 
 pressive face fall at the indication. " Whatever may come 
 of our communing — and take note this admonition doth 
 not iinpugn its good ending — patience is a virtue like to be 
 in request for all concerned. I confess I have always been 
 over-fain to seek relief from present evils. If you please,, 
 we will take the matter quietly, dear dame, and permit 
 the young people's hearts to speak, though it were but 
 one word. I do not fear that they will speak forwardly. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TnE SECRET OF THE RLDE TO THE MALL — A WOMAN DESPISED 
 
 IN HER YOUTH. 
 
 Grand'mere returned in good heart to the Shottery Cot- 
 tage. Her ride to the Mall had only been the commence- 
 ment of the preliminaries. She had never dreamed of set- 
 tling the affair in a single interview; that would not have 
 been according to her notions of discretion. She was 
 pleased with all she had seen at the Mall; with the devo- 
 tion and charity on a Luge scale her heart was full. But 
 though Grand'mere talked to Yolande by the hour on the 
 veritable hospice she had visited, ami on the beauty of 
 character she saw in its founders, not a word did she say 
 which could make the girl cast down her shy eyes in per- 
 plexity and confusion. Grand'mere could, without com-
 
 TIIE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 103 
 
 punction, institute a treaty of marriage for her grand- 
 daughter, but she would have thought herself the most 
 indelicate of women had she breathed a syllable to the 
 girl, who had her suspicions; and this notwithstanding 
 that they were incessantly together, and full of fond con- 
 fidences. 
 
 Unfortunately she was not so reticent elsewhere. With- 
 out a thought of any unwomanliness in her act, Grand' - 
 mere considered it but neighborly to whisper it to Madam 
 Rolle of the rectory. With all her hopes and cares for 
 her daughters, Madam Rolle had never imagined any thing 
 so barefaced as this flagrant instance of French fashions 
 and French morals, and was almost staggered in her esteem 
 for the old Grand'mere who had tried to break the storm 
 of her own calamity to her. As Madam Rolle kept noth- 
 ing from the rector, she immediately imparted to him this 
 startling bit of news ; and in return he asked her to what 
 young men he should propose Dolly and Milly? They 
 must not, however, be ranters and Jacobins, who con- 
 sorted with blaspheming, foul-mouthed, filthy shoe-makers 
 and weavers, compared%ith whom honest chimney-sweeps 
 were finished gentlemen; for he had made up his mind 
 never to ask a favor from these, not even to rid him of his 
 daughters. 
 
 Madam Rolle, like many another madam, was at a loss 
 what to make of her husband's irony, and look refuge in 
 the sympathy and indignation of her daughters. She set 
 them up against their young French friend, who was 
 taking such Impudent means to get the better of them, and 
 seltlelierself, before either of them was suited with a hus- 
 band and an establishment. 
 
 Yolande, poor girl, could not understand why all of a 
 sudden the rectory girls began, in French parlance, "to 
 lift their noses at her," to speak at her, to twit her with 
 what she could not help, and to which she was not as vet 
 formally privy. In the end there wasgreal mischief done ; 
 so bad, that it was all lmt irremediable. 
 
 Young Caleb Gage had little or no intercourse with the 
 Rolles. The greatest hardship and danger of his position 
 was, that it wholly isolated him from those of his fellows 
 and eimals who were not of his father's way of thinking, 
 li mattered little that Caleb the younger differed in bis
 
 104 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 conclusions from Caleb the elder. Unless the young squire 
 had been prepared to place himself in utter antagonism 
 to the old father whom he venerated so deeply and loved, 
 so dearly, his own moderation and his reaction in favor 
 of general Church standards would have profited him 
 nothing. 
 
 Men and women of the present day know little of Meth- 
 odism, if they do not understand that it was the burden 
 of a world lying in the grossest wickedness, riot, and wan- 
 tonness, which drove into vehement protest so many good 
 and honest hearts — drove them into the extravagances of 
 enthusiasm and the excesses of zeal, if, indeed, they were 
 extravagances and excesses. For, to judge correctly of 
 such so-called extravagances and excesses, it is necessary 
 to contrast a house like the Mall — its voluntary relinquish- 
 ment of the state and attributes of gentle station — with 
 houses where notorious wickedness was daily committed, 
 where the same card-party sat, ate, slept, and woke again, 
 while they gambled away their fathers 1 lands, their chil- 
 dren's bread, and even their wretched wives, for twenty 
 or thirty hours at a stretch. In those days women died 
 prematurely, in agonizing pangs, from the poison of white 
 paint ; while men were found guilty of forgery and high- 
 way robbery, and spirits went into the outer darkness for 
 a set of French tapestry, or Indian paper-hangings, a china 
 baby, or a piece of velvet of a rarely pretty device. If 
 Wfi faithfully compare the free reception and wholesale 
 housing of the indigent and outcast at the Mall with the 
 bitter penury and terrible struggles of men and women 
 ruined by the infamous bubble schemes of the era, or by 
 wildly striving to raise themselves out of their low estate 
 of barbarous ignorance and base depravity, then we will, 
 perhaps, forma fair estimate of the influence of Methodism, 
 not only on the corrupt refinement of men of the world, 
 but on the densely stupid, fatuous, sensual animalism of 
 the poor colliers and pottery-men, down whose grimy faces 
 the tears of penitence, purer than dew -drops and brighter 
 than diamonds, " washed the white channels" of a new and 
 better nature at the pleadings, and strivings, and wrest- 
 lings in prayer of Whitfield and his brethren. Do not 
 shrink from thinking of that dissolute world, I beseech you, 
 if you would be simply just to the Methodists, and neither
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 105 
 
 exaggerate their Christianity and their heroism, nor ex- 
 tenuate their mysticism and their lapses from the ortho- 
 doxy of this or that great creed. After all, one may be 
 permitted to doubt whether the decided position which 
 the early Methodist leaders took up, and the passionate 
 nature of their testimony, were exaggerated and excessive, 
 in view of the crying evils and the barren latitudinarian- 
 ism with which they waged war. 
 
 These sentences are written in the old sense of apology 
 for what needs no apology in the modern meaning of the 
 word, and in feeble illustration of the causes of the pecul- 
 iarities of Methodism. Little do modern men and women, 
 for the most part, know of the brand which the early Meth- 
 odists bore, when their strenuous efforts at reform were 
 looked upon as the most uncalled-for and insupportable 
 acts of aggression; when they were shunned as men 
 stricken with the pest would have been ; when they were 
 accused of the most incredible fanaticism and socialism, 
 and bemoaned by their friends and neighbors as being 
 more left to themselves than drunkards, gamesters, or 
 common thieves. Save the early Christians, no religious 
 sect — not even the Reformers, whether Lollard or Luther- 
 an — excited such a storm of hostility, or were so univers- 
 ally despised, detested, and reviled as were the followers 
 of Wesley. 
 
 The young squire of the Mall was so neglected and 
 foresworn by his brother squires and the families of the 
 better classes in the neighborhood, that had it not been 
 for his healthy, independent nature, and his great friend- 
 ship for his father, he might have been driven into the low 
 company to which Methodism was then generally belie\ ed 
 to incline. 
 
 Old Squire Gage had been fortified against the deleteri- 
 ous and destructive consequences of such an atmosphere 
 by such airs from heaven as visit few men'- souls. L is 
 not asserted here, however, that it had not injured him, 
 developed oddities in him, sapped ever so little his sim- 
 plicity and energy, and made him, notwithstanding all bis 
 benevolent projects, more of an abstract thinker and 
 dreamer than a practical man. 
 
 But young Caleb Gage could hardly expect the Bame 
 immunity: and it was well for ldm that he was not equally 
 
 E 2
 
 106 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 tried. In the public places which his principles did not 
 forbid him to frequent, and in one or two neighboring 
 houses which, for ancient alliances' sake, still offered an 
 open door to a Gage of the Mall, Caleb had some inter- 
 course with his class, and was not so entirely proscribed, 
 denounced, and doomed to live down his differences of 
 creed and life as his father had been. 
 
 Thus it chanced that, happening to attend the yearly 
 fair at Reedham, Caleb Gage supped and stayed for the 
 night at the house of a tolerant Keedham physician, who 
 had been his father's worthy doctor for the last half cen- 
 tury. Doctor Humphrey was no Methodist himself, 
 though he had accorded his evidence : 
 
 " Ilike to attend your patients at the Mall, squire ; for 
 the most part they're patient as well as patients ; and I'd 
 liever wait on their death-beds than those of most others, 
 for, however sorrily they live, they make up for it by dying 
 well, they do — yes, your Methodists die well." 
 
 At Dr. Humphrey's, on this occasion, Caleb met, among 
 other young people, Mr. Philip Rolle's daughters ; and in 
 the intervals between the games and the songs he had to 
 submit to be stared at and tittered over, and viewed as a 
 curiosity ahnost as great as the wild beasts they had visited 
 at the shows hi the afternoon. Mr. Caleb Gage had him- 
 self visited the wild beasts, and he had also gone and list- 
 ened for a time to the Methodist preacher, whose stage was 
 competing with the dancing booths, and had joined heartily 
 in the hymn-singing ; and when there had been a threaten- 
 ing demonstration in the crowd in that quarter, he had 
 sprung up on the stage, and prepared to use his personal 
 influence to ward off violence, and take his chance with 
 the preacher and his friends. 
 
 Caleb was not without something of what Grand'mere 
 would have called la beaute du diable — the morbid attrac- 
 tion of forbidden fruit to his detractors and assailants ; 
 and he had himself a half-amused perception of the fact, 
 while lie had no great inclination to return the convpliment. 
 The Methodist home was a different school of manners, to 
 say the least of it; and these vaporing, swaggering young 
 men, and swimming, bridling young women, appeared 
 ruder-tempered and emptier-headed to Caleb than they 
 would have appeared to his father, because Caleb as yet
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 107 
 
 judged largely by the surface ; while the old squire had a 
 poet's and a prophet's plumb-line to fathom many feet 
 deeper into human nature. 
 
 There was one gibe constantly recurring on the least 
 provocation in sentiment, or forfeit, or game of the Trav- 
 eler, and this was Caleb's supposed attachment to French 
 fashions. The gibe was followed by taunting assertions 
 that somebody's troth might have been sold in his cradle, 
 and that he might have exchanged the pap-boat for the 
 wedding-ring, so tame-spirited was he. 
 
 " My head is somewhat thick," admitted Caleb Gage to 
 Dolly Rolle, at a crisis of the by-play. " I must confess 
 that you distance me in your merriment. I can not think 
 what you are all driving at. When did I discover a pal- 
 ate for foreign kickshaws ? (It is as clear as the sun that 
 it is me you mean, so none need go to deny it.) As far 
 as I can tell, my tastes are all English ; for that matter, I 
 have no chance of gratifying them otherwise, since I have 
 not so much as the entrance to any strange circle, unless it 
 be that of the French Huguenot family at the Shottery Cot- 
 tage in Sedge Pond, which my father esteems so highly." 
 
 Caleb did not observe, or else he paid no heed to Dolly's 
 smiles, nods, and winks at his unlucky allusion. 
 
 " As to marriage," Caleb went on stoutly, " I presume 
 I should have some inkling, if I were ever so little started 
 on the road to the church on that solemn business ; where- 
 as, mistress, I have as little thought of marrying till I cut 
 my wisdom-teeth as the black fellow behind your chair 
 has of taking a white wife." 
 
 " If you speak so fast," answered Dolly, pertly, *' I shall 
 either think that it is part of your Methodist religion to 
 swear down one's throat white is black; or else that yon 
 are the most deceived, misused young man who has ever 
 been chosen a bridegroom without his consent asked. ' 
 
 "Think nothing of the kind, madam," replied Caleb, an- 
 noyed and indignant at her folly; "but tell me right out, 
 if your high-church religion have the courage and the hon- 
 esty to do so — which, to be sure, I doubt not," he corrected 
 himself, already ashamed of his recrimination. ' \\ hat do 
 people say of me? They must needs have little to busy 
 themselves about when they tell cock-and-bull stories on 
 so trumpery a subject?"
 
 108 THE HUGUENOT FAillLY. 
 
 " They do say extraordinary things of you, good young 
 sir," asserted Dolly, with a toss of her head ; " they say, 
 of a verity, that you are right-down affianced to your 
 white-faced, moon-struck neighbor, Ma'mselle Yolande Du- 
 puy, who, if she be not a Papist, is certainly a mystic, so 
 unlike is she to the rest of her sex — even to her wise 
 Grand'mere, to whose apron- string she is pinned. I'd 
 rather have had Grand'mere, sir ; but you'll be pinned to 
 her likewise all the same, if she and your cracked father 
 have courted for you, and engaged you without so much as 
 saying, ' By your leave.' But I suppose they hold you so 
 good a psalm-singing boy that you have no mind or will 
 of your own in the matter ? But surely in common justice 
 they will let you know before the banns be published, that 
 you may not look sheep-faced or grow Avhite about the 
 gills before the whole parish. To have gotten the sack 
 were nought to it." 
 
 Dolly had been crammed and prompted by sharper and 
 more malicious rustic wits than her own, or she never 
 could have accomplished all these smart hits ; but the 
 sense of this only galled and fired Caleb Gage's manliness 
 and spirit the more. 
 
 " It is all an untruth, an absolute untruth, Mistress 
 Rolle," he declared, cpiickly and positively, " so manifest 
 and ridiculous a fabrication, that it puzzles me reasonable 
 people should combine — not to credit it — that they can 
 not do — but to circulate it." 
 
 But even while he spoke there flashed across his mem- 
 ory the coincidences, not only that his father had that very 
 morning sounded him as to his opinion of every member 
 of the family at the fShottery Cottage, and had pressed 
 him when his answers were careless and vague, hut that 
 the squire had repeatedly of late taken occasion to recom- 
 mend him to unite himself with another, and had dwelt 
 wistfully on his own happiness in the wife whom he had 
 lost, and endeavored to ascertain how Caleb stood affect- 
 ed to such a change of condition. The young man had 
 naturally thought t lie discussion uncalled for and prema- 
 ture, and had parried it, or been restive under it, as his 
 temper led him. But now that these recollections flashed 
 across his mind inopportunely, Caleb's brown face flushed, 
 and he contracted his square brow and bit his lip-.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 109 
 
 " You are not angry with me, Mr. Caleb I" cried Dolly, 
 shrugging her shoulders, and adding slyly, " Men arc not 
 angry at mere idle reports, and this one is no faialt of mine ; 
 I did not raise it. I had it from my mother, and she had 
 it from head-quarters — from old Madam Dupuy, upon my 
 life. Xow, be as angry with me as you like ; nobody can 
 say that I can help it." 
 
 The result of the spiteful treachery committed at Dr. 
 Humphrey's was that Caleb Gage was tempted for twenty- 
 four hours to think that his lather and the Methodists 
 were right in abjuring worldly society, and that he, for 
 one, would never enter it again. More than that, on the 
 next occasion that Caleb passed through Sedge Pond, and 
 conveyed a letter from his father to Grand'mere, he refused 
 obstinately to alight and partake of a second breakfast, 
 or even to sit for a moment and exchange greetings at the 
 garden gate. And when, in course of time, Caleb encoun- 
 tered Grand'mere and Yolande at some little distance near 
 the door of the parish church, he did all he could to avoid 
 the encounter, turned his head, looked another way, and 
 behaved in all respects like a person deeply affronted. 
 
 " Somebody has growed high and mighty all of a sud- 
 dent," remarked Priscille, decisively; "I lay the young 
 squire of the Mall have got a flea in his ear. Sirrah! 
 quotha, if that be your Methody humility in taking the 
 first word of scolding, I woidd not give my head for the 
 article ; it seems to me it do come out of the same put as 
 ourn and parson's at the rectory, after all." 
 
 "Adieu paniers, vintages are done with," murmured 
 Grand'mere, soiTowfully. She was not so much offended 
 as hurt at the smart received in the house of a friend, at 
 trying in a wearisome struggle to dissever the wrong from 
 the wrong-doer, to count old Squire Gage blameless, and 
 to make allowance for the willfulness and perversity of the 
 young man. Grand'mere felt that she had made a griev- 
 ous blunder ; not in the step she had taken — that was quite 
 in accordance with her best light and the customs of her 
 fathers — but in the direction into which the step had car- 
 ried her. She had been rash, inconsiderate of English 
 habits and tones of thought. At the same time she trust- 
 ed with all her good heart that this brave garpon, who had 
 slighted her child, been offended by their gracious prefer-
 
 110 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 ence, and returned it with what in French eyes was little 
 less than brutal rudeness and marked insult, might not, 
 after all, prove reprobate. But she feared much that her 
 early deprecation of the free footing on which he stood with 
 his father was correct, and that the young man was in the 
 first stage toward the blasted ruin of lawlessness and infi- 
 delity. 
 
 Yolande endured for a longer season the changing moods 
 of the Rolle girls, who soon began to condole with her on 
 the failure of her match, and this, too, in accents widely 
 removed from the spirit of their unusual contentment with 
 their own present lot and confident anticipations of good 
 fortune hi the future. Then Yolande went to Grand'mere 
 in her room, stood before her, and looking up in her 
 face, said — 
 
 " Grand'mere, I am yours to do with what you will. 
 Nothing can alter that. You will always know it is so. 
 It is our French interpretation of a child's obedience and 
 devotion, and any thing else to us is mockery. But tell 
 me, Grand'mere, and do not call me insolent for asking it 
 (because, see you, I have been brought up in this harsh En- 
 gland, and you yourself have bidden me consort with loud- 
 spoken English girls), you have offered me to this young 
 man, and he has rejected me — is it not so ?" 
 
 Yolande spoke with scorn, but it sounded as if it was 
 scorn of herself, and of no other. 
 
 " You put it in hard words, Yolande, which is to pour 
 the drug into an ugly glass," remonstrated Grand'mere, 
 mildly. " It suffices that there was a project of marriage 
 thought of for you by your friends, which on thinking over 
 a second time they have abandoned by mutual consent — 
 yes, I will say that now. Does that harm you ?" 
 
 "I do not know, I can not tell," hesitated Yolande. 
 " You had the right — you would serve me with your own 
 dear grey hairs. But oh ! Grand'mere," burst out Yolande, 
 hiding her'face in a paroxysm of distress, " why would you 
 marry me if you risked shaming me ? Why would you 
 many me at all, thrusting me on some man who docs not 
 want me, to whom I should be a burden and a bugbear? 
 Oli, Grand'mere ! it feels like shame, hot shame, and cruel 
 wrong." 
 
 "But, surely, this is morbid," Grand'mere rebuked her
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. Ill 
 
 child, in a little displeasure and a great deal more anguish 
 and dismay. "This is English spleen and mad pride, of 
 which I used to accuse you in jest — foolish jest. Your 
 mother was given in marriage ; your grandmother before 
 her. Think you not that their fathers and mothers looked 
 about them and made false starts, coUte que coute, before 
 they fell on the right parti? Are you so much better 
 than they ?" 
 
 " I am no better, Grand'niere, I am not half so good. 
 But why must you have me married ?" 
 
 " You may be left alone any day, you must be one day ; 
 then what would become of you, my child ? You would 
 have bread enough to eat, that is true, but would the 
 world leave you to eat it in peace ? Would it not abuse 
 and betray you ? There are no retreats for the Huguenots 
 even in France, there never was any but aigue morte and 
 the prisons. Women may live single in England without 
 injury or scandal ; but I have not seen it — it is not the 
 way in our country. It is only that I have been a stupid 
 old woman hi your interests, Jifille, and I am very sorry 
 for it." 
 
 "Do not say that, Grand'mere. It is a trifle, a tuft of 
 thistle-down, I mock at it. There, I toss it from me and 
 catch it again for my own amusement, don't you see ? A 
 man is free to have his choice, and his refusal breaks neither 
 my neck nor my heart, though it throws a stone at me. 
 Rest tranquil, Grand'mere. Let us return to our sheep, 
 our lace, to what you were telling me of your pigeons, your 
 herbs at home in Languedoc." 
 
 "It is well," said Grand'mere to herself; " it is but the 
 girl's spirit which is wounded, her heart is mute like a lit- 
 tle fish, sleeps as a sabot — and so it should, till it wake up 
 by her husband's side. Who would rouse and force it into 
 lift' sooner ?" 
 
 Ah! short-sighted Grarid'mere, if Yolande's had been a 
 nuan, jealous, grasping temper, you might have been se- 
 cure; Caleb Gage's repudiation and aversion would have 
 done its work. But with the small value Xolande Bet 
 upon herself, and the large value you taught her to put 
 on Caleb Gage, teaching all the more effectual that it had 
 no direct personal reference; the impressions which you 
 had labored to give to her of the young squire's manliness,
 
 112 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 liberality, truth, and tenderness — impressions made on a 
 surface altogether blank, and capable of lightly and rapid- 
 ly receiving them, and weaving them into a young girl's 
 pure, graceful dreams; — it seemed no more than natural 
 to Yolande that Caleb Gage should have nothing to say 
 to her, there was no flaw in his nobility on that ac- 
 count, since he had not made a single advance from which 
 he had drawn back. It was just, it was almost right that 
 he should not find her worthy, he would not be less a hero 
 in the girl's magnanimous eyes because of that. And she 
 felt, with a throb of generous thankfulness, that she was 
 not so unworthy as that came to, though he might have 
 pained and humiliated her, and mingled a single strain of 
 loving despair in the original gravity and thoughtfulness 
 of her youth. 
 
 Days passed over the cottage, and Grand'mere watched 
 Yolande covertly and incessantly, and saw, under the fair 
 front which the young girl was sedulous to preserve, that 
 she was still abstracted, and only fitfully interested hi 
 what was passing around her. She was liable to flashes 
 of feverish restlessness and flushes of bitter mortification, 
 and she sighed long and sorely when she thought nobody 
 heard her drawing those deep, sad breaths, which, it is not 
 altogether a figure to say, drain the life blood from the 
 heart. Grand'mere believed it was high time to interfere 
 and speak to Yolande, to seek to probe the wound which 
 she had helped to inflict, with purer fingers. 
 
 " Yolandette," she addressed the girl, lying wide awake 
 in the hush of night, with no light upon her but that of 
 the pale moon and the dim lamp, " hide nothing from me ; 
 it is my due, for I have nursed you in my bosom, and if I 
 have hurt you I have a double right to know all." 
 
 " To what good, Grand'mere ?" pleaded Yolande ; " you 
 will but widen the breach between me and my old self, 
 and increase the scandal." 
 
 " I will not ; I, an old mother, will show you what is 
 worth all the sorrow, and will bring you consolation." 
 
 " J low can you, Grand'mere ?" objected Yolande, incred- 
 ulously and desperately. " There is consolation for great, 
 splendid griefs, but not for a girl's weak, vain delusions, 
 though they cause her to fret and pine for them. Conso- 
 lation does not demean itself to such poor, common, child-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 113 
 
 ish trials as these. Let me be, Grand'mere ; let me rather 
 crush them down, beat them like a stone under my feet. 
 Trust me, I am wiser than my elder in this." 
 
 "N"o, no, that is a villainous mode — a heathen mode. 
 Consolation is heavenly; if it were not so, I grunt you it 
 would not stoop so low ; and yet, without that royal con- 
 descension to the least and the silliest soul, it would not 
 be big enough even for earth. Listen to me, Yolande : 
 dost thou feel womanly betimes, and as the heavy price 
 of thy womanliness, dost thou recognize thyself in the 
 morning of thy day as ' a woman forsaken,' despised in thy 
 youth? So thou art called, in the words of the Bible, 
 which were not spoken to a low-born, tormented, embit- 
 tered woman truly, but to the true Israel, the spiritual 
 Church. Notwithstanding, there are the words and the 
 figures, and what will you— that it was the sympathy of 
 the stern old prophet which breathed through their mar- 
 velous tenderness, or that it was Another who put them 
 into Isaiah's wild imagination and on the burning lips 
 which the live coal had touched — Another, the Friend of 
 publicans and sinners, and of weak women as well as strong 
 
 men." 
 
 " Are there such words, Grand'mere ?" whispered Yo- 
 lande, stirred and softened with awe and emotion. "1 
 have read the Bible every morning and every evening, 
 like other Huguenot girls, but I never discovered them 
 or took them to myself." 
 
 "Xay, nor do we ever, ma rnie, till Ave want them, or 
 the Spirit shine upon them, because the well of Scripture 
 is deep; still, truth is at the bottom of the well, Yolande, 
 waiting for us wdien we need it, if we will have it. Listen 
 better, Yolande." The lamp was trimmed; Grand'mere 
 took out her Rochelle Bible from beneath the pillow, fixed 
 her glasses, and with her shrunk ivory finger turned over 
 the yellow pages and pointed to the spot, producing more 
 convincing effect, and one more in keeping with moral and 
 spiritual powers than when she and Squire Gage had re- 
 course to thi> S'u'tcs Biblicce. 
 
 "Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be 
 thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for 
 thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not i. - 
 member the reproach of thy widowhood any more.
 
 114 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 " For thy Maker is thine husband ; The Lord of Hosts 
 is his name ; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel ; 
 The God of the whole earth shall he be called. 
 
 " For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken 
 and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast 
 refused, saith thy God." 
 
 " Grand'mere," said Yolande, quivering with eagerness, 
 " the remembrance is, oh ! so sweet from the great Bride- 
 groom. I shall hold up my head again; I shall look him 
 in the face again, Grand'mere. I shall not mind how I am 
 laughed at and lightly esteemed ; I shall think that I am 
 good for something since my foolish yearning heart is read 
 by Him who numbereth the stars and calleth the roll of 
 prophets and martyrs, and ordereth the march of empires 
 and worlds." 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE EOLLES OF THE CASTLE. 
 
 Reedham was one of those old-fashioned towns in which 
 the jail was the central ornament. The shops were low- 
 browed, and not much better than hucksters' stalls ; but 
 there was the beauty of irregularity about the better class 
 of houses, advancing and retreating as they did on the 
 causeway, and showing genuine antique oriel windows and 
 balconies, with occasional vines festooning and tinting 
 afresh the red brick. 
 
 One day in early spring the rector of Sedge Pond had 
 occasion to ride into Reedham. Approaching the market 
 cross, he could not help uttering an exclamation as he saw 
 a large printed placard posted there, signed "Audrey 
 Rolle." A considerable gathering of rustics and towns- 
 people gaped round it. 
 
 " Hath my lady put the crown on her vagaries and her 
 usurpation of a man's place by proposing to sit in Parlia- 
 ment herself?" mused the rector. "indeed, there re-. 
 mains only this, that she and the like of her have not tried ; 
 and, by my word, if they set their minds on it, neither 
 king nor constitution will balk them. Alake ! alake !
 
 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 115 
 
 what waste of high spirit and high heart is there, and 
 what might not my Lady Rolle have been and done, had 
 she been born a man, and been set down in the shoes of 
 Cornwallis, or Burgoyne, or Rodney, or Anson, or Sir 
 Robert, or the Duke of Newcastle, or even of the Bishop 
 of London, or he of Bath and Wells ? As it is, all her wit 
 doth not serve to keep her at home, abiding by her still- 
 room and her needle, ruling her maids, and saying her 
 prayers, like my simple wife and maids, who will be all 
 agog at the mere thought of their patroness being in the 
 country again." 
 
 The rector was somewhat relieved, however, when he 
 found that the address only called on the men of Reed- 
 ham to be early at the poll, and vote for the Honorable 
 George Rolle. It concluded with the words : " As a 
 mother who has already given a son to her country, and 
 as the just price of her loss, I call upon my friends and 
 neighbors to elect his brother, my next son, as their fitting 
 representative in Parliament." 
 
 " Glad am I that it is the Honorable George, and not 
 herself, whom my lady proposes, though she is a great 
 deal better man than he is," thought the rector. " And 
 so she makes gain of her poor hero, even for the honor and 
 ad vantage of the bouse and of her remaining sons. "Would 
 I thus make gain of the pure memory of my Philip ? -Nay, 
 perish the thought of all that was earthly in our connec- 
 tion. Let him henceforth shine as a star in the firmament 
 for me; and let me obey my Master's orders, look up to 
 Him, and covet earnestly to die in harness, fulfilling the 
 measure of my duty as my boy fulfilled his, and following 
 the Captain of our salvation. Nevertheless, I am a Rolle ; 
 and I owe my best duty to my lady, who has been good 
 and kind to me according to her light, and my supporl to 
 the Honorable George, who I am assured will never set 
 the Thames on fire, save by dawdling between London 
 and Paris, and heaping together pretty things like a vain 
 Avoman. Still, how these puny fine gentlemen do shake 
 off their affectations and follies, and strip and fight like 
 men in the senate, bailing out and forcing back the roar- 
 ing tide of loathsome bilge-water — anarchy, infidelity, and 
 horrible confusion, like what has fallen out in His Majesty's 
 colony of America, which threatens to become the grave
 
 11G THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 of true loyalty and virtue, in spite of hecatombs of corpses 
 and rivers of gore poured into it, my Philip's gallant body 
 and generous blood among the rest." 
 
 The first sight Grand'mere and Yolande had of Lady 
 Rolle was in the obscurity of a whirlwind of dust raised 
 by her chariot and that of her son, as they drove past 
 Sedge Pond to the castle. But when once the family 
 were lodged in their proper quarters, there was no longer 
 any dimness or uncertainty about the fact of their pres- 
 ence. Every thing was turned upside down for them, and 
 every movement Was thenceforth directed toward them. 
 They were like the sun in the sky, drinking in and absorb- 
 ing all the exhalations, and in their central power controll- 
 ing the growth and progress of every living creature around 
 them. From the rector in his surplice to Deborah Pott 
 between her water-pitchers, no one was exempt from the 
 influence of the quality. 
 
 Grand'mere at first tried to resist the spell, and in a fit 
 of national spirit talked of the great peers of France, the 
 provincial parliaments, the lieutenants of the king, and the 
 governors of provinces, compared with whom this English 
 family were mere titled gentry, with mortgaged acres, and 
 no power except that derived from their seats in Parlia- 
 ment, where they most undauntedly voted to each other 
 sinecure upon sinecure. 
 
 But Grand'mere changed her mind after she had wit- 
 nessed the Rolles' rule for a week, and seen the dem- 
 onstrations at the village in the little church. The church 
 was situated witli a manifest respect to persons, inasmuch 
 as it forced upon the village Christians a weary trudge 
 through a miry by-way; while the castle Christians, who 
 were not at the castle above once in two years, and only 
 filled two pews when they were all at home, commanded 
 an easy road by a side door from the park. There was 
 such a scene there as Grand'mere had never witnessed in 
 Roman Catholic France, where the great dignitaries of the 
 Church, which aspires to rule the earth, exacted homage 
 and humility from rival dignitaries, temporal princes, and 
 peers, and did not often brook any claims save their own 
 :it the gates of either their noblest cathedrals or their sim- 
 ple parish churches. It was another mutter when Lady 
 Rolle appeared in the porch of the church at Sedge Pond.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 117 
 
 She was attended by her maid, chaplain, physician, butler, 
 and sometimes by one of her sons, who with his bodily eye 
 would stare at the scraps of stained glass which he had 
 often seen before, instead of looking with his mental eyes 
 into Heaven, to which it was doubtful if his imagination 
 had ever taken flight. Nay, he would audibly remark on 
 a rusty iron sword on the monument of one of his fore- 
 fathers, which would never pink armor or slash buff coat 
 more, at the very moment when the priest was praying 
 for the sword of the Spirit to pierce the souls of those pres- 
 ent, and that of the son among them. Wlien the castle 
 party issued from their own particular door, the worship- 
 ers, who had flocked out before them, divided right and 
 left, uncovered their heads, and bowed down as before 
 divinities ; while the rector in his cassock, and his wife 
 and daughters in their sacks and hats, hastened to show 
 a proper example of reverence to superiors. At that 
 crowning testimony Grand'mere grew very thoughtful, and 
 in place of undervaluing the Rolles of the castle any longer, 
 she called them a great institution, an ordinance of God, 
 for good or for evil, according as it was used or abused. 
 
 Monsieur — an avowed time-server, notwithstanding his 
 irony — bowed low before the men of the castle when 
 they came down to the village to see a cock-fight, or play 
 a game at skittles, or make trial of then- horses entered 
 for Newmarket, in the presence of a crowd of obsequious 
 helpers and hangers-on. These Rolles were not mere roys- 
 tering country quality — not men of many glaring sins 
 and a few redeeming virtues, like the publicans and sin- 
 ners of old. They were more dangerous and difficult 
 subjects to deal with — men of the court and the town, 
 men of wit and fashion, of taste and refinement. They were 
 not so much men of strong passions as of overweening 
 vanity, and its complement, cynicism. In their small hats 
 and wigs, plain black ribbons or white ties, they Lounged, 
 as if half asleep, in the approaches to the castle, and only 
 roused themselves to pick their slippered steps, and carry 
 their little French poodles and Italian greyhounds care- 
 fully over the puddles; while they stood, took pinches of 
 snuff, betted, laughed, swore, and contemplated enjoyably 
 two barges running foul of each other on the river; for, 
 just as the degenerate Romans patted and petted their
 
 118 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 gladiators, these affectedly squeamish, womanish men were 
 very fond of supping on horrors. 
 
 Monsieur bowed still lower before my lady, who, as 
 distinguished from my lord, swept along in such piled-up 
 tissues, jewels, powder, and plumes as only the great ones 
 of the earth could compass. She looked, as if she had 
 been born to wear them; and she never rested day or 
 night, but, with her marvelously fine fretted features and 
 falcon look, was forever pursuing some aim with head- 
 long, devouring intentness, and the moment it was attain- 
 ed, setting out after some other objects, no matter what, 
 so that it was hers to be sought after and gained. 
 
 Madame, Yolande's mother, looked darkly at those priv- 
 ileged players in a pageant, and called them Ahabs and 
 Jezebels, Herods and Herodiases, and poured forth denun- 
 ciations of " baldness in place of well-set hair, and burning 
 for beauty." Yolande, too, looking with open, unconscious 
 eyes at the new and striking figures on the stage of her 
 life, and shrinking from the mocking, irreverent, unbeliev- 
 ing light alike in the soft, sleepy eyes of the men, and the 
 ardent eyes of the woman, was tempted to say to Grand'- 
 mere — 
 
 "Are they not like Vashti, grown old and worn, but 
 never weary ? Do these unflinching spirits ever weary, 
 Grand'mere ? or do they only wear and wear, until the 
 good God break them, and take them brokenly to Him- 
 self, and make of them the spirits which constitute heroes 
 and martyrs ? And the men, Grand'mere, are they not so 
 many Absaloms? I like them not. I like my lady, who 
 is eager to make us fear her — so eager, that she would 
 tread over the necks and the hearts of the people, and her 
 own also, Grand'mere — her own also. The men are false 
 and cruel in their sleekness ; they would sacrifice others, 
 but save themselves, such as they are ; I know it — I feel it." 
 
 " Yes, until to-morrow with your knowledge and feel- 
 ings," reproved Grand'mere, soberly and sadly. " Who 
 made you a judge between this woman and these men, or 
 between them and yourself? Better shut you up in a port- 
 folio at once, Mademoiselle my judge, than suffer you to 
 look abroad with rash, harsh eyes and tongue. ' By then- 
 fruits ye shall know them?' Yes, truly; but these are 
 the brethren ; even an Apostle had nought to do hi judg-
 
 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 119 
 
 ing those who were without. And what fruits have you 
 gathered of this great Rolle family ?" 
 
 " Well, Grand'mere, I see enough of then mincing airs 
 every day ; I can scarce look at them when I see them in 
 the walks." 
 
 "Ah! my heart, do you believe the Lord, when He tells 
 how hard it is to be rich ? Do you ever — I do not say 
 thank the Lord that you are not of the haute noblesse — 
 that were the Pharisee's prayer — pray to Him on behalf 
 of those poor souls of whom He said that it was as easy 
 for a camel to go through the eye of a needle as for them 
 to enter his kingdom ? But when they do go through the 
 eye of a needle, think you not they are such as are made 
 rulers over ten cities ? But we are as silly and selfish as 
 the little birds toward the cats : we are unbelievers ; and 
 instead of praying for the rich and helping them, we envy 
 them and o-o on hating and maligning them." 
 
 " Oh, Grand'mere !" cried Yolande, with a sharp, pained 
 voice. 
 
 "Alas! it is true, my child, and the harsher our judg- 
 ments the greater will be our condemnation! Ma mie, I 
 think of a chapter in my Bible, and I try to show you a 
 better way in which to regard these messieurs. See you 
 how they stand to look at and admire a group of trees in 
 the park, a herd of deer, the tower of the church from one 
 point, and their own arcade from another. Nay, they can 
 admire a pretty child of the village, so that she be clean 
 washed for their inspection, and put not her finger hi her 
 mouth, or whimper and hint that she is thinly clad and 
 coarsely fed, and so rub against their skins, and, as they 
 say, dispel the illusion." 
 
 "Ah ! yes, that is true; I have seen them," responded 
 Eolande, thoughtfully. 
 
 "They have the sense of beauty, Yolande, and beauty is 
 the gift of God. See you again how they caress their little 
 dogs, and niourn when the Rosines and the Rosettes hang 
 their heads or droop their tails. But that is unworthy of 
 men who have the whole world of men and women to care 
 for, you will tell me. Well, I can not say as to that ; for 
 the great God cares for the brutes as well as for men and 
 women, and so I do not understand that branch of the 
 argument."
 
 120 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 " But it seems only a waste of tenderness, Grand'niere." 
 " Yes, yes, I admit it is a waste of tenderness in those 
 who have little of the commodity to spare. Still it is ten- 
 derness, and that is a nobler gift of God than beauty.- 
 And now I will tell you something that you see not (may 
 you never see it !), but what the common voice says of the 
 strange gentlemen. In their conduct to their women they 
 are alternately savage and sweet. The most terrible 
 wrongs, the most barbarous outrages, have been commit- 
 ted by strong brothers against weak sisters, as if the strong- 
 were demons ; and then, again, they act as if the pitying 
 angels had dispossessed the demons, and had not disdain- 
 ed to take up their abode for a season in the dishonored 
 dwellings. My simple one, it is not that this man or that 
 woman is a sinner above all other sinners, but that the 
 foundations of the world are out of order, and that all our 
 pleasant springs are poisoned, our good gifts marred. We 
 are all sinners, great and small, as opportunities have en- 
 abled us or grace prevented us. We are all sinners, and 
 — God be praised! — one is our Saviour. Leave Him to 
 judge, and judge thou no more." 
 
 Lady Rolle had only a faint impression of the Dupuys 
 as being the foreign tenants of the Shottery Cottage. 
 Madame Rolle of the rectory and her girls spoke of them 
 to the great lady, but, sooth to say, the great lady paid 
 little heed to such speech, calling it, in her sarcastic phrase, 
 the cackle of ignorant country geese. But Lady Rolle, 
 when the living book was in her hands, read a man better 
 than most readers, and esteemed Mr. Philip, her friend and 
 kinsman, more than any man alive, though it must be con- 
 fessed she showed it quite as often by vexing as by pleas- 
 ing him. And when he actually spoke of the Dupuys not 
 unfavorably, her ladyship took it into her head to pay 
 them a visit. She had, of course, no notion but that she 
 could do any thing she liked at Sedge Pond, and be every- 
 where humbly received and meekly deferred to ; and so 
 she went about deranging every thing like some powerful, 
 semi-malignant fairy. Her ladyship walked straight into 
 the Shottery Cottage one day — right into the sombre par- 
 lor, and sat down, in Madame Dupuy's chair, without in- 
 vitation or leave. She caught a glimpse of Grand'mere as 
 she was looking round her, quite prepared to domineer and
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 121 
 
 to find fault before she should make up for her bad be- 
 havior by showering upon the occupants her prodigal 
 money and favors. She jumped up instantly, begged 
 Grand'mere's pardon, and craved permission to call her, 
 on the spot, a dear old friend. From that fresh starting- 
 point Lady Rolle poured her winning, wonderfully idio- 
 matic, though broken French into her listener's credulous 
 ears, and conducted herself toward Grand'mere as an 
 amiable fine lady, unique and exquisite in her amiability, 
 no less than in her humors and vices. 
 
 Not that Lady Rolle ceased to be herself: she reflected 
 on Grand'mere's family just a little of her bland good-will. 
 She said distinctly to Madame — 
 
 " My good creature, you detest me at first sight. Have 
 I such a bad taste, then, in a recluse's mouth ? So much 
 the worse for you, because I can really do without your 
 liking, unless you put my dear old friend here up against 
 me ; whereas I might have been of some service to you, 
 and been at ease in offering you the run of the castle gar- 
 dens, dairy, dove-cote, and farm, all the year round ; in put- 
 ting a stop to the hobnailed louts molesting you, and com- 
 pelling the county to be civil to you. Reflect what you 
 have lost by finding in me your bete noire, your croqucml- 
 taine.' 1 '' Addressing herself coolly to Monsieur, she went 
 on : " Sir, I shall have no scruple in being useful to you. 
 If I mistake not, you understand the commerce of society. 
 What will you take in exchange for permitting me to be 
 intimate with your mother and your daughter ? Do I not 
 know that you will receive no injury from the words of a 
 plain Englishwoman ? You are too wise a man of the 
 world. Is it not so ?" 
 
 "Precisely, my lady; you comprehend perfectly the 
 character of the boiirg ■eois who is dying with the wish to 
 make a market of every thing, without the exception of 
 mother and child. I shall ask my price — when I want it." 
 So Monsieur met her challenge, raising his shoulders and 
 showing his teeth. 
 
 And Lady Rolle told Yolandc: " Child, I could be vast- 
 ly fond of you, and carry you oft* will he, nill he, to take 
 the place of my last scarlet spider; for 1 am getting up a 
 collection of monsters to outshine Margaret Cavendish's. 
 I warn you, my good mother, that I worry all my friends' 
 
 F
 
 122 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 hearts out of their bodies to help me with strange beasts, 
 now that I have done with Greek marbles. But, child, 
 you are not all your grandmother. I spy your mother in 
 your face ; and, as you see, she and I no more take to each 
 other than plaguey teeth to gritting sand. There, don't 
 take the pet, you little fool; perhaps hers is all the hon- 
 ester nature for not agreeing with mine. After sinners 
 themselves, only saints and angels can put up with sinners ; 
 don't you know that ? Be thankful, at least, that your 
 mother is not a sinner of the same stuff as the French 
 mothers whom I have known were made of. What were 
 they like ? Bah ! Painted goddesses, ready to tear out 
 the eyes of their own daughters, making frights of them, 
 outraging them, to keep them from stepping on the tapis 
 with themselves. I thank my stars that I have only long 
 lazybones and grinning buffoons of sons, lest I should have 
 seen rivals in my daughters, and bitten and devoured my 
 own flesh and blood. But if the mothers were no better 
 than they should be, how did it happen that the grandames 
 were too good for this bad world ? Sure I can not tell. 
 My wise head will not crack riddles like nuts. Grand'- 
 mere, you are not vexed with me ? Nay, then, I shall con- 
 fess that I have been only in ill company, that to the gad- 
 flies all the poor midges figure as gadflies. Yes, yes, that 
 is it; and the French mothers are without reproach, 
 like the old mesdames — like channing, wise, witty De Se- 
 vigne, whom Ave all dote upon, down to that snarling dog, 
 Rolle. You are her marrow, my dear, beautiful old goody ! 
 only what a pity that you are bourgeoise and Huguenot. 
 Could you not be at least orthodox Catholic here, where 
 it would not be a feather in your cap — quite the contrary ; 
 so that you would still have the comfort of contradicting 
 everybody and continuing a martyr?" 
 
 "Pity that she is a, Huguenot ! — Be a Catholic !" gasp- 
 ed Madame. " Why does not the earth open and swal- 
 low her up? Mon ma/ri, you stand by and hear your 
 mother insulted, the faith mocked! Go ; I had not thought 
 you so wicked. Who is this scaramouche of a He Sevigne ? 
 I know her not ; I abjure her, for the company she keeps." 
 
 " Ah ! be quiet, my good woman," enjoined Lady Rolle, 
 tranquilly; "I do not mind you, He Sevigne" does not 
 mind you. Alas ! she has only existed for us in her like-
 
 T1IE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 123 
 
 ness this half century and more. But it is refreshing to 
 find man or woman who helieves any thing, and who is 
 not to say rude in her faith." 
 
 Lady Kolle courtesied politely to Madame (who turned 
 her back with an exasperated mow), tapped the reluctant 
 Yolande under the chin, kissed the hand of Grand'mere, 
 and presented her own hand to Monsieur, with the most 
 ineffable air of condescension, to be led to her chariot, 
 which was standing there in its empty splendor, mobbed 
 by the people of Sedge Pond. 
 
 That very afternoon Lady Rolle sent her own serving- 
 man and woman with hampers of red Burgundy and white 
 Hermitage, baked meats, and fruits, along with the last 
 fashions and working-materials, to Grand'mere ; thus over- 
 powering the least mercenary but the most grateful spirit 
 in the world. Madame, however, put her hands doggedly 
 behind her back, and refused to touch the unclean thing. 
 With the hampers came a little note, which began with 
 an apology for her handwriting (she never could write, 
 my lady said), and requesting permission to wait upon 
 Grand'mere, and to bring her dish of tea with her, any 
 time she could spare from the great business of the elec- 
 tion, which she was to set agoing the next week. Stic 
 Avas shocking bad company herself, and was but poorly 
 supplied with any other up at the castle; she had no 
 stomach for the dull, conceited country gentry, though she 
 would not have said that for a jjension just then. What 
 she would like, would be to gossip by the hour about her 
 dear, delightful Madame de Sevigne. 
 
 Madame de Sevigne was the key to Grand'mere's charm 
 for Lady Kolle, just as Fletcher of Madeley had been the 
 key to her attraction for the old squire of the Mall. In 
 the teeth of the old, bitter grudge against the French, 
 which the middle and the lower classes were given to 
 cherish as being patriotic, the quality had not only the 
 strong tendency to Gallic fashions of which young Caleb 
 Gage was unjustly accused, but they had a greal rage for 
 one wonderfully endowed woman, whose Christian virtues 
 and heathen insensibility, in the midst of the depravityof 
 the court air she breathed, they were equally incapable 
 of measuring and appreciating. Nevertheless, Lea Roc- 
 hers, the Tour de Sevigm', the 'hotel al Paris, the chateau
 
 124 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 in Provence, were household words ; the stately and pict- 
 uresque figures which had once moved there were treas- 
 ured shapes ; while the unapproachable tender grace and 
 naivete, the keen shrewdness and ripe knowledge of the 
 world — all indeed but the fervent, devout heart which the 
 touch of moral pitch could not defile — were in that gen- 
 eration laboriously and affectedly mimicked in the mere- 
 tricious correspondence of supercilious critics, arrogant 
 men of letters, and statesmen as venal as they were pow- 
 erful. 
 
 Grand'rnere's world was infinitely wider, fresher, and 
 more wholesome than that of her daughter-in-law. Grand'- 
 mere knew and eagerly acknowledged the sweet though 
 strangely siirrounded flower of French quality. At the 
 same time, Grand'mere paid the penalty of her freer range. 
 She did not see so clearly as Madame Dupuy did within 
 her narrow limits. The elder woman was somewhat mys- 
 tified and carried away by the homage offered — not to 
 herself, but to her representative country-woman. And 
 she, in her turn, began to descant to Yolande on Madame 
 de Sevigne. She talked with enthusiasm of the bright, 
 beautiful, loving, charitable, pious grandame, who, in the 
 midst of abounding iniquity, remained faithful at every 
 stage of her long life — true wife, fond mother, devoted 
 friend; who retired to solitude, and prayed in lowly 
 abasement, who succored the poor with her own gentle 
 hands, and who, in running from all the stilted glory and 
 stereotyped gayety among which her lot was cast, retired 
 not merely to her hay-fields, her bouquets of roses, and her 
 portraits of her daughter, but to sick-beds, from which 
 direly infectious and deadly maladies drove craven priests 
 and doctors, where she nursed the bodies and ministered 
 to the souls of suffering humanity, till the last sufferer who 
 was to be relieved by her rose from bed, and saw the 
 honored, aged kinswoman take her place and die in her 
 stead. Grand'mere called Madame de Sevigne the Gama- 
 liel who stood between the Jews and the Christians; and, 
 had she been well acquainted with English history, she 
 might have called her heroine the John Evelyn who formed 
 the link between the Cavaliers and the Puritans.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 125 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 LADY EOLLE's ADVANCES TO THE METHODISTS. 
 
 But Lady Rolle had not buried herself in the country, 
 even in the pleasant spring-time, for the whim of ruraliz- 
 ing with an old Frenchwoman whom she discovered to he 
 a bourgeoise counterpart of Madame de Sevigne. She had 
 come for a much more serious affair, which tasked even 
 her energies — to carry the election of her second son, who 
 was opposed by one of the new men just then creating a 
 scandal by quitting the aristocratic ranks, as the Fabian 
 house quitted old Rome. Debouching boldly on the out- 
 skirts of the people, these new men sought to inaugurate a 
 more modest and more magnanimous form of government, 
 and entered passionate protests against the policy, com- 
 mon in its glaring selfishness, of Montagues, Newcastle, 
 Sandwiches, Hollands, Stanhopes, and Townshends — de- 
 claiming loudly against the gross excesses and the mean 
 rapacity of the governing families. 
 
 Lady Rolle was a woman to live and die by her order. 
 She could not conceive another state of matters, or another 
 set of sympathies ; and while her candidate dawdled and 
 dozed over patterns of brocade and chintz, and shapes of 
 tea-cups and footstools, without animation and interest 
 enough to attempt more than the vulgar exposure and 
 trouble of his nomination, Lady Rolle drove about day 
 and night in her laced head, her velvet hat, her diamond 
 stomacher, and her lutestring train. 
 
 "Never show face without your colors, my wenches," 
 she would advise her attendants, affably ; "so you would 
 awe the people, silence sauciness, and win the day. If 
 I had stood in Queen Jezebel's Bhoes, I, too, would have 
 tired my hair and rouged my cheeks. But, look, thai is 
 what beats me and my parade hollow," she would end, 
 candidly pointing to Grand'mere, with her silver hair and 
 benign smile, her scoured and darned Lyons silk. "There 
 goes one of nature's ladies — God Almighty's gentlewomen.
 
 ]2G TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 He makes a few such in a century, and, sinner though I 
 am, I know and honor them when I see them." 
 
 Lady Rolle cajoled, bullied, bribed, and dispensed her 
 threats, her promises, and her gifts. Even golden guineas 
 slid into every convenient aperture, not to say impartially, 
 but with little regard to expense. 
 
 "It is a dirty world," she assured Mr. Philip Rolle, in 
 answer to his remonstrances. " Keep your hands clean of 
 it, Philip, if you will; but we who rule by main force, by 
 our mouldering monuments, crumbling charters, lands, 
 moneys, and the left-handed grace of kings — we must dab 
 our fingers in the dirt to clutch our rights, or let them go ; 
 and if we only dab our fingers deep enough, by spending 
 a score of thousands on our elections, like the Fitzwillianis 
 and the Chandoses, aren't we as proud as peacocks of our 
 dirt ? Better let go our seignorial rights than keep them 
 at such a cost ? No, sir, your cloth don't above half think 
 any thing so unearthly. You leave that and other vaga- 
 ries to my grand-uncle, the venerable archdeacon; and I 
 warn you in time it just caused the poor dear old man to 
 escape being made a bishop. And with the men who deny 
 the bishops — the Methodists whom I've heard on the road 
 to Tyburn as I've visited the French prophets in Soho — I 
 mean to try every thing till I find them all a-wanting. If 
 you have grown mealy-mouthed yourself, Philij), I'm sorry ; 
 but I shan't give in to you. You are my cousin, my old 
 friend, and spiritual director in a way : I don't dispute it ; 
 but I snap my fingers at you in any other light ; for what 
 on earth have elections got to do with church services, and 
 sermons, and poor-boxes '? If you can not be a man of the 
 world, and aid me, pray mind your own business, sir. I 
 shall fight my indifferent son's battles with the weapons 
 which come to my hand, and those arc coaxing, coercion, 
 corruption if you please. None but a Rolle shall repre- 
 sent Reedham in the country's parliament while there is 
 breath in my body, or a man of the name above-ground to 
 fill the seat," 
 
 The rector fumed and fretted, and ate out his stubborn, 
 loyal heart, or flung it down lor those jays, Lord Rolle and 
 his hrothor, to hold their heads on one side, strut over, and 
 deride: But Mr. Philip Rolle did not dream of forbidding 
 his wife, and Dolly, and Milly to give their company and
 
 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 127 
 
 assistance to Lady Rolle in her close canvass. Ignorant 
 innocents like them could know and understand nothing 
 of political purity, civic claims, and the cowardlinesses and 
 basenesses of men. 
 
 My lady would have taken up Yolande Dupuy also, and 
 traded with her quaint seriousness and simplicity, and 
 classic-like beauty, and her foreign words and ways, as she 
 traded with the buxom, rampant rectory girls ; but happi- 
 ly, or unhappily, an instinct rather than Madame Dupuy's 
 furious face, or Yolande's own recoil, arrested the propos- 
 al which, with its refusal, would have served betimes to 
 break a spell ; for Lady Rolle was as incapable as a child 
 of brooking contradiction, and Grand'more would as soon 
 have sentenced her child to the public pillory as have con- 
 sented to such an exposure. 
 
 " What ! send a young girl to knot ribbons, embroider 
 scarfs, and pin them on parson and publican, to drink 
 healths and be toasted back, bandy fairings, wheedle, im- 
 portune ? No, not to have transferred the triple crown, in 
 figure, to the wasted brows of Jean Calvin." 
 
 " But la !" cried Dolly and Milly, with crimson cheeks 
 and flashing eyes, " whatever are you frighted for ? We 
 are safe when we are in my lady's good company, even 
 though we be followed and pulled sleeves for. The other 
 side can do no more to trounce us, than groan at our 
 bravery. Our very fellow, Black Jasper, doesn't turn up 
 the whites of his eyes one bit. It is not as if it were a fire 
 or an earthquake ; but, indeed, my lady tells us the pretty 
 women up in London have caps made express to appear in 
 at the street fires. And so small do they hold the earth- 
 quakes, which we two turned slug-a-beds for each time our 
 papa read about them in the news prints, that a mad wag 
 went about t'other morning rapping like thunder with all 
 the knockers, and bawling 'Three o'clock, and a monstrous 
 fine earthquake !'" 
 
 The ferment extended to Sedge Pond, and what with 
 ringing of bells, galloping to and fro of messengers, water- 
 ing of horses at the ale-house troughs, and the quenching 
 of men's thirst at the ale-house barrels, the drowsy, miry, 
 surly little village stirred and stretched itself. 
 
 "What a bruit! Grand'mere, can any thing on the 
 earth be worth all this when the question is not of the
 
 128 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 world's jubilee? Goes it well with creatures who have 
 souls to be saved to act as gensdarmes about estates and 
 chambers ? Parliaments ! What miracles have parlia- 
 ments wrought that men should make such ado about their, 
 own miserable voices in them?" asked Yolande, with a 
 girl's audacious, vague austerity. 
 
 " Listen to the little fool !" cried Grand'mere, in lively 
 impatience. " This melee may be unworthy, but all is 
 worth which God gives man or woman to do, and among 
 worthy deeds none is worthier than that which belongs to 
 the father-land. I tell you, Yolande, that because even 
 good women are often sceptical and irreligious on the sub- 
 ject of the consciences of the men in politics and the govern- 
 ment, the mothers and wives do much to render sons and 
 husbands knaves and villains to the country. Ah ! women 
 do not comprehend politics ; government is not their prov- 
 ince. But to help in honesty of view, in soundness of con- 
 viction, and uprightness of life in the men — that is the 
 province of the women, as it ought to be their pride. 
 Hold ! the women will weep and break their hearts over 
 the men's hardness, insensibility, and contumaciousness 
 toward the outward constitution of a church, and the same 
 women will be callous to mock at, and even try wickedly 
 to subvert, the men's sincerity to the Spirit of God with- 
 in them, in truth and devotion to their country. It is a 
 case of ' This ought ye to have done, and not to have left 
 the other iindone.' " 
 
 " But what have men done in parliaments ?" asked Yo- 
 lande. 
 
 " They have done all, child — brought the freedom to 
 worship God and to live at peace with men, and have 
 broken the rod of the oppressor both in Church and State. 
 Learn to condemn and despise nothing but sin, my little 
 one, far less the most sacred and the least selfish call to 
 the righteousness, the wisdom, and the courage of the men. 
 The sun of Ivry will shine like ten suns on that day — I do 
 not say when no more fine ladies will drive their chariots 
 over men's heads and hearts in what they call carrying 
 the elections — but when the men will approach solemnly, 
 reverently, earnestly, to give their votes, as though they 
 were to take the Holy Sacrament ; and when the women 
 will look on with their hearts in their eyes, and pray humbly
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 129 
 
 the while that the men may not be time-servers, double- 
 dealers, hypocrites." 
 
 The election was so far imperiled, though my lady 
 would not allow it to be whispered, that she found it ad- 
 visable to address herself to Squire Gage, who was out of 
 the immediate neighborhood, and had no direct voice in 
 the matter, but whose influence — not territorial or com- 
 mercial, but personal and moral — was understood to be 
 great. 
 
 Lady Rolle wrote what she called one of her scrawls, 
 singularly characteristic hi its handwriting, and very com- 
 manding in its solicitation. She craved permission to pay 
 Squire Gage a visit at the Mall, that she might have the 
 privilege of inspecting his princely charities as well as 
 transacting a little business with him ; she begged him to 
 set the time and promised that his time would be hers, 
 but suggested that Tuesday, at three o'clock afternoon, 
 would suit her best. 
 
 Squire Gage wrote back that he would be highly hon- 
 ored by her ladyship's token of good neighborhood, and by 
 the condescension of her inspection of his poor premises; 
 but he was far from princely in his housekeeping, whether 
 in entertaining strangers or aught else. And because he 
 hesitated to entrap her ladyship's goodness under false 
 pretenses, he must take leave to inform her, lest she should 
 be incorrect in her judgment, that none of his property 
 lay in Tynwald, and that therefore he was not in a con- 
 dition to vote for her son; nay, in strict honesty he must 
 tell her, at the risk even of losing her esteem, that, if he 
 had been qualified, his sentiments would have constrained 
 him to support the opposite candidate, Mr. Weatherhead. 
 
 "The rude old Methodist looks upon me as a liar, and 
 says as much, and not in a very roundabout fashion either," 
 commented Lady Rolle. "I shall lie no more to him, at 
 any rate !" 
 
 And she sat down and indited another scrawl, in which 
 she simply made out, in the name of her son. Lord Rolle, 
 a gift in perpetuity, without charge or duty, of a piece of 
 groundin the centre of Sedge Pond, with Liberty to build 
 thereon a Methodist chapel and Methodisl preacher's house, 
 such as could not be had for love or money nearer than 
 the Mall. 
 
 F 2
 
 130 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 The paper was returned by Lady Rolle's private mes- 
 senger, with the words " Canceled by mutual consent" 
 written at the end, and with a slip of paper to the effect 
 that Squire Gage was sorry to be compelled to decline her 
 ladyship's liberality, but if he would not sell his political 
 conscience for his own sake, surely her ladyship would not 
 dishonor him, or any Gage of the Mall, by supposing that 
 he should pretend to do it for God's sake. 
 
 "What! does the crazy old hunks pretend to be as 
 pure as an angel ?" cried my lady in a rage. " Folk used 
 to call pretty witty Lucy Nenthorn, at whose feet my 
 Lord Babington laid his coronet, a divine angel, until she 
 took it into her quick head that we were profane, and 
 would have us call her a miserable sinner instead, and then 
 she went off, like Selina Ferrars, as stark staring mad as 
 this man whom she wedded. Well-a-day ! they must 
 have made a rare couple, a man and a woman like the 
 rich young man in the parable — only that they did not go 
 away sorrowful, but went and sold all that they had, gave 
 to the poor, and followed their Master as they thought 
 they were bid. Had they their price, I wonder? Were 
 they never sorrowful after that sale? I'll be bound he 
 would swear — Never. But the old fellow is as mad as St. 
 Paul, and we are not many of us called to be saints, any 
 more than angels. What do you say to it, Grand'mere 
 Dupuy?" inquired Lady Rolle in the Shottery Cottage. 
 
 " I say that we are called to a higher calling, my lady," 
 answered Grand'mere, unexpectedly. " I read in my Bible, 
 ' Be ye perfect as your Father which is in heaven is per- 
 fect.' " 
 
 " Ah ! you are another of the saints," exclaimed Lady 
 Rolle, with a groan ; " and, I confess to you frankly, my 
 dear old Granny, that very likely I could not bear you and 
 your extravagant goodness either — though I was once 
 used to it from my dear, great, guileless old archdeacon, 
 but that was an age agone — were it not that you are also 
 French, and have a nice flavor of that saintly woman of 
 the world, Do Scvigne. Squire Gage is not at all of my 
 sort, however ; and I shall have nothing more to do with 
 him." 
 
 Notwithstanding this assertion, before the election was 
 over Lady Rolle found herself in danger of being indebted
 
 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 131 
 
 to the good offices of Squire Gage without the opportunity 
 of repaying them. 
 
 A disorderly rabble was likely to be at Reedham on 
 the day of the poll, vindicating their intuitive apprehension 
 for their champion, and doing him and themselves the 
 greatest disservice in their power by resorting to violence 
 against the castle party, and abusing their constituents. 
 Lady Rolle, forewarned, could of course have procured the 
 presence and protection of a detachment of soldiers from 
 the next garrison town. But her pride revolted at the ad- 
 mission of her weakness in the very stronghold of the 
 Rolles ; her native courage rose single-handed to the con- 
 test. Like Maria Theresa, she was minded to trust to the 
 mere sight of her, their liege lady, to quell all disturbance. 
 Neither were Lord Rolle and his brother deficient in 
 valor, and its better part, discretion. It seemed to be- 
 long to the generation, with all its fearful temptations, 
 that such men should fear nothing. And if they were 
 pelted with dead cats, or even cut by stones, it would 
 afford a little relief to the wearisome chairing and feasting 
 — not an agreeable variety, perhaps, but still it was a 
 change on the programme. And if the brutal rioters should 
 be convicted and brought to justice — if any thing like a 
 murder had come to be committed, and any thing like a 
 hanging of the wretches took place, the suffering and doom 
 would, of course, be their own business and their proper 
 wages, but there would be a little interest and speculation 
 for the witnesses. In the mean time, the Rolles rode with 
 their pencils in their hands, ready to sketch any good 
 effect of bridge or ruin which they might catch, their dice- 
 boxes in their pockets, so that they might throw a cast, 
 and thus pass away an interval. 
 
 At this crisis Squire Gage volunteered a courteous, 
 earnest assurance to Lady Rolle that he would come hound 
 for her safety and comfort, as far as his poor means could 
 extend. He would send his son to Reedham on the day 
 of the election, to exert all his family and Methodist in- 
 terest to keep the peace. 
 
 Lady Rolle had again looked in on Grand 'mere, and was 
 sitting* with her in the arbor when the message reached 
 her 
 
 "Now, I say that Squire Gage is ready to lie like the
 
 132 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 rest, in order to keep himself, his son and heir, and his low 
 fanatical body, out of a scrape," cried Lady Rolle ; " and 
 the best of it is, what will you bet but that he will fail us 
 at a pinch ?" 
 
 " I bet not, my lady," answered Grand'rnere, with spirit ; 
 " but I have so little fear that the good old Squire of the 
 Mall, M. Flechier's friend and mine, will break his parole, 
 that I engage to be there to see him keep it." 
 
 " Done, my dear Goody," said Lady Rolle. So she made 
 it a bargain, for she sought to swell her train by every art 
 and element. 
 
 But Grand'mere only went to Reedham in a family party, 
 with Yolande and Monsieur, and, from the windows of a 
 mercer w T ith whom the silk-weavers did business, she saw 
 what took place in a quiet way. 
 
 Grand'mere had beheld before now displays of popular 
 feeling, inconsiderate, unprincipled, dangerous, brutal ; but 
 never had she witnessed any thing so unblushingly gross 
 as the details of this national ceremony. 
 
 There were the men in smock-frocks and great-coats, 
 and the women in rustic hats, torn caps, red mantles, green 
 aprons, all jostling each other, gesticulating, reeling, and 
 rolling in the mire, with their banners, colors, and blud- 
 geons, shouting till they Avere hoarse, blaspheming, squall- 
 ing, and even braying. 
 
 On the outside Avas a ragged fringe of rioting and fight- 
 ing soldiers and sailors who had been just discharged, 
 squalid beggars, and the base scum of jails. Then there 
 were the central figures of the rival candidates, and the 
 gentlemen on each side of the hustings making their 
 speeches, (with the uproar outside for a fitting accompani- 
 ment), swaggering, waving their glasses, laughing, yawn- 
 ing, dealing each other ruffianly blows, and exchanging car- 
 tels on the spot. There were the sheriff, the attorneys, 
 and the clerks, having wigs, bags, and writs for their 
 proper weapons, pouncing with craft and quibbles, but 
 without disguise, on the voters, and plying them Avith all 
 sorts of cajoleries and bribes. But like the household at 
 the Mall, the voter's roll included the blind, the lame, the 
 fatuous, even the dead among its members, for there AA r ere 
 not AA-anting brazen perjurers, Avho Avere caught holding 
 up their hands and sAvearing to names the old OAvners of
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 133 
 
 which were gone to answer to the roll-call of another assem- 
 bly. At a conspicuous point was the castle chariot, where 
 my Lady Rolle sat, dominant and unmoved ; and when a 
 scowling face or an insolent finger approached her too 
 closely, she faced it and caused it to shrink back before 
 the sheer haughty majesty of her presence. On the seat 
 opposite Lady Rolle, with their backs to the horses, were 
 Dolly and Milly Rolle, fluttering their ribbons, playing 
 their fans, and tittering ; in the excitement of the moment 
 they hailed their acquaintances in the street and at the 
 windows near them (overwhelming Yolande Dupuy in the 
 process), and never doubted the honor and the profit of the 
 exaltation they conferred. They had no more thought of 
 the mass of their fellow-creatures swarming round them 
 than of the flies which the chariot wheels crushed in the 
 dust. They were more insensible than Black Jasper, who 
 glared about him in the seat with Lady Rolle's Basque, 
 to whom he crept for fellowship and protection, in spite of 
 the jealous, sullen temper of the flute-playing, half savage 
 mountaineer, whom neither the salons of Paris nor the 
 gracious wiles of Grand'mere could propitiate and tame. 
 
 Grand'mere shut her eyes for a moment, shocked at that 
 Reedhani election, which was a grim and a grievous piece 
 of satire for a Christian moralist to study ; not the less 
 grim and grievous that it was lighted up by streaks of 
 splendor and grotesqueness. But the next moment Grand'- 
 mere opened her eyes again, and looked abroad resolutely, 
 wistfully, her grey eyes growing larger and larger, more 
 tolerant and more pitiful. 
 
 " Galop, time !" she murmured and thought, " it is not 
 just to judge the gait by it, not to take as the bouillon the 
 mere boiling over of the pot. The pastor is there, though 
 I see him not; erect as he is, less upright men bow and 
 bend and hide him. There are other honest men, besides 
 the pastor and Squire Gage, in the province — oh yes, hun- 
 dreds of them, whose honesty will always be honesty, and 
 not politeness, as it too often is. Yes, and their industry 
 is labor, never intrigue. But they strike the clods with 
 their vices, else 1 should not have to say to myself, Go, 
 old Genevieve, there are dozens of brave, pure .Methodists 
 down there unperceived in the mM'ee. 1 1: 1 1 1 ! the vilest sin- 
 ner there is a brother, whom a true .Methodist would own.
 
 134 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Did I not say that the haute noblesse have their virtues also ? 
 They all love Madame de Sevigne, and each loves the 
 friend of his heart fervently and faithfully, if they love 
 not each other. For, alas ! they say these poor great Rolles 
 — my lord and my lady, and my lord and my lord's broth- 
 er — do hate, not love each other, though they hold together 
 when the common cause is in peril. Ah ! well, that is 
 something — the skeleton framework of regard, perhaps. 
 And see, Master George spoke like a man once in his ad- 
 dress, though he spoke the most of it so languidly, like a 
 woman. It was — I know not at what, but he looked like 
 a man and a gallant noble at the instant, and all the men 
 on both sides held up their heads and hurrahed at the 
 same time. That was magnanimous — that was fine — a 
 redeeming touch, which showed that they were not quite 
 apes an4 satyrs. Morbleu ! probably it was a defiance of 
 us, poor dear French, in politics, though not in fashions, 
 and an allusion to the French frigate on the slippery deck 
 of which the sailor brother of the future member fell. Did 
 these two brothers love each other in life, I wonder ? Fie, 
 fie ! Genevieve, to put so cruel a question. Well under- 
 stood ! the Rolles are not vindictive ; they are generous 
 enemies to me and mine. At last, and on the whole, one 
 must have much faith to meet such an experience as this 
 at the market cross at Reedham. I am afflicted that I 
 brought the child ; yet, again, to ignore the wrong is not 
 to efface it ; far better to think of curing the mortal mal- 
 ady. So many centuries of Christianity, which was to 
 make the world free indeed, and yet to be no nearer noble 
 patriots, good citizens ! Misericorde ! shall it not be better 
 for the Greeks and the Romans, who never heard the 
 name of Christ, than for the French and the English ? 
 What, after all these centuries, no higher motives, no 
 sweeter manners, no gentler tastes ! But it is necessary 
 to watch and pray, that we maybe able to tell them better 
 things at Sedge Pond, to cleanse the floors of the ale-house, 
 and to dethrone the beast which reigns thci*e." 
 
 Yolande was standing by the side of Grand'mere, star- 
 ing aghast, and still only half comprehending what she 
 saw. All at once she blenched, flushed up, and drew 
 back behind her protectress. A hoarser murmur and a 
 rougher surge were rising and spreading over the mob,
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 135 
 
 and Caleb Gage was visible all at once on foot, conspicuous 
 in the middle of it from his velvet coat, shining buttons, 
 and laced hat. He was alone there, so far as his class and 
 his party were concerned, and should the tiger humor 
 which lurks in every riotous mob forget the merciful, kindly 
 charity of the Mall, the squire's son would be in greater 
 danger than any man or woman present. He was not do- 
 ing much, only turning a frank, open face in every direc- 
 tion, and elbowing his way here and there, speaking softly 
 a quieting word now and then, and testifying how fully 
 he trusted his neighbor. 
 
 While Caleb sought, by means so simple that a child 
 could have used them, to curb the excited passions and 
 calm the troubled spirits around him, an impulse was twice 
 given to the brooding madness and crime which placed 
 the peace-maker first of all in imminent jeopardy. His 
 hat was knocked off by one of the rude and reckless hands 
 always tingling to deal the initiatory blow in a fight — a 
 fellow-hand to those the Gages had filled liberally in their 
 day ; and a watch-word was coined and circulated, red-hot 
 and hissing from the primitive mint, " Trip up the spy, the 
 furncoat !" But before the signal could be followed, and 
 the tumult deepen into an uproar — while the girl whose 
 heart the young man had stolen unawares did not guess by 
 any instinct of woman's love the crisis through which 
 they were passing, and while Grand'mere clasped Yolande's 
 hand and prayed impetuously — Caleb Gage's blue^ eyes 
 darted glances on every side like lightning, till they fell on 
 welcome, homely features which he knew ; and as he 
 laughed in the forbidding faces of the raging crew who 
 jostled against him, he challenged his man loudly and 
 clearly : 
 
 "You, Toby, I know you wear a plaid night-cap below 
 your fur cap, for I've seen it many a night when we've 
 given you lodging at the Mall; lend a hand with your 
 beaver here, till I can reach the mercer's." 
 
 " Loife and fortcn, yes, tneaster, and the night-cap t'orby," 
 Toby responded, loyally. 
 
 A'falsc demagogue, whose breath was abuse and mockery, 
 foreseeimj; the effect of the good office, tried to prevent it. 
 
 "You mean vermin !" he assailed the grateful Toby, by 
 trade a traveling tailor: "didn't he ask you to say your
 
 136 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 prayers afore he granted you and your goose a night's 
 lodging ?" 
 
 " And could I ask him a better thing ?" Caleb appealed 
 sharply to his audience ; " unless you, masters and mis- 
 tresses, are all infidels together. If I had asked him to say 
 his prayer to me, or eve-n for me, Tap-room Teddy might 
 have had some cause to find fault." 
 
 There came a half-doubtful growl of acquiescence, rising 
 into a louder, more decided growl of condemnation of the 
 men who were molesting one of the Gages of the Mall, 
 who, although they had the misfortune to be gentry, were 
 genuine friends of the people, notwithstanding that they 
 were strait-laced, psalm-singing Methodists. Let every 
 man do what he had a mind to, was the rough and ready 
 gospel of the Reedharu election crowd, and it was not al- 
 together un-English, nor altogether untrue, turbid as was 
 its source. So that crisis was safely got over. 
 
 Ten minutes later, when the people had time to breathe 
 again, an irregular skirmish of throwing filth and stones, 
 possibly more offensive than formidable, was begun by 
 what might be considered the marauders and skirmishers 
 of both armies. But some gentlemen on the Rolles' side 
 were rash and desperate enough to fire their pistols from 
 a window of the inn, wounding a guilty ringleader and an 
 innocent baby in a hapless woman's arms. On the hit- 
 ting of the baby there was a roar from the crowd like that 
 of the wind in a hurricane ; and a rush so great was made 
 toward Lady Rolle's chariot, that it swayed from side to 
 side like a boat on the waves. The spirited horses struck 
 out wildly ; Dolly and Milly Rolle were smitten with sense- 
 less consternation, and would have leaped out, to certain 
 destruction, had they not been forcibly held back by friends 
 without. Black Jasper rolled his tongue like a mad dog, 
 but did not attempt to copy his mistresses' example ; while 
 his comrade, the Basque, half opened his heavy eyes and 
 mouth with a faint expression of gratification. 
 
 Caleb Gage, active and strong, fought his way to the step 
 of the chariot, and stood between Lady Rolle and her as- 
 sailants, before any gentleman could spring to her aid from 
 the hustings. 
 
 But my lady rose to her feet, and exposing herself to 
 friends and foes, turned a grandly firm, white face on them
 
 THE HUGUEX0T FAMILY. 137 
 
 both. " I command that firing to cease ; I shall hold that 
 the next man who fires aims at me. Mob! do you hear 
 that ?" 
 
 " Ay, ay, we hear !" burst, as if irresistibly, from the mass. 
 " You may be a Jezebel, but you are not the worst of your 
 set, and they shannot make a scapegoat of you." And the 
 fit of fury ebbed as rapidly as it had flowed. Then, tak- 
 ing advantage of its fall, the state of the poll was declared, 
 and the Honorable George Rolle elected and chaired with- 
 out farther opposition. 
 
 " Ah ! God be praised, there is one hero !" cried Grand'- 
 mere, moved beyond control. " Shall we grudge his hero- 
 ism and disown it because he is nothing to us? We are 
 not so poor and miserable, and we too will be at peace, and 
 claim the blessing of the men of peace." 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE ROLLES AT THE CASTLE. 
 
 Lady Rolle, having seen her son securely established in 
 his hereditary seat, found herself in urgent want of a fresh 
 object to work for, or a new cup and balls to play with. 
 In the dearth of more exciting employments, she became 
 gradually captivated with the dreamy foreign graces of Yo- 
 lande Dupuy. At length she set her heart on having the 
 girl in her own hands, to mould after her capricious notions, 
 and to show about wherever she went. Such patronage of 
 young girls was then the fashion. My Lady Burlington and 
 another fine lady had already electrified London with the 
 attractions of the Italian girl Violante, and with their fierce 
 contentions as to which of them had the right to set off her 
 fine house with the poor spoiled protege. 
 
 Lady Rolle had similar inclinations and ambitions. She 
 would supplement her own ascendancy over the great world, 
 and amuse her own jaded sensations, by producing the dig- 
 nified Huguenot beauty, and by watching the effect she 
 would produce on the men and women who spent their 
 days in seeking for some new thing, but ended them by flip- 
 pantly proclaiming the doleful conclusion of Solomon, that
 
 138 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 there was nothing new under the sun, with the addition 
 that neither was there any thing high or holy, pure or true. 
 She would see for herself what effect the corruption and in- 
 fidelity of her world would have on a girl apparently so un- 
 worldly in nature and nurture as Yolande, and how far 
 Grand'mere's teaching would enable her devoted pupil to 
 stand the test of temptation ? And who knows but such 
 treatment on such a subject would end in developing an- 
 other unapproachable Delany or De Sevigne? And should 
 this be the result, surely society and posterity would owe 
 gratitude to Lady Rolle for having brought to light, and 
 drawn from a state of cloister-like seclusion, a nature so rich 
 and so calculated to shine aud to aid others. 
 
 Lady Rolle had a craving appetite to see the fruits of bit- 
 ter knowledge. But along with this vain, tormenting curi- 
 osity, might there not be a better feeling, a yearning of the 
 restless spirit for rest, a desperate impulse to recover what 
 had been lost ? 
 
 Proud as Lady Rolle was, and in a general way above 
 disguise and subterfuge, she was yet forced to admit the ex- 
 istence of some obstacles to her will in the pursuit of Yo- 
 lande, and also to acknowledge some obligation to overcome 
 them by lawful effort, some demand for stratagem and wa- 
 riness in her advance to her goal. The abduction of a French 
 Huguenot girl, for the girl's own good, might not sound a 
 very alarming accusation against a woman of her rank. 
 And she was shielded from some risks by her position as a 
 peeress. But she was too wise to take any step that might 
 lead to unnecessary scandal. Besides, Lady Rollc's fondness 
 for Grand'mere, extremely fanciful as it was at first sight, did 
 not prove on that account incapable of influencing her. So 
 she commenced her operations with wonderful mildness 
 and moderation, setting herself at once to captivate the 
 occupants of the Shottery Cottage. 
 
 One individual there, however, resisted all Lady Rolle's 
 superb arts. Grand'mere, Monsieur, Yolande, and even 
 brusque Priscille, succumbed one after another in a greater 
 or less degree. Madame, and Madame alone, though she 
 saw so short a way and with so concentrated a light, stood 
 out, and declared war to the knife against her powerful and 
 insidious antagonist, refusing absolutely to touch her gifts. 
 Grand'mere contemplated the stanchness of her daughter-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 139 
 
 in-law with that mixture of reprobation and respect charac- 
 teristic of the old woman. 
 
 Lady Rolle said nothing at first of her intention of car- 
 rying off Yolande from what she termed the living burial 
 of a village life, and the wretched company (always except- 
 ing Grand'mere) of the refugee family. She did not breathe 
 a whisper of her notion of training and tutoring the girl to 
 become a young woman of the world. The great lady only 
 languished over the impossibility of transplanting Grand'- 
 mere to the castle, and bemoaned the form and circumstance 
 of her own high station. She was all for nature herself, but 
 she was one of the haute noblesse, and must, therefore, sub- 
 mit to the destiny which had become a second nature to 
 her. But her life was many a day a burden to her up at 
 the castle. Would not Grand'mere allow the petite to help 
 her sometimes with her shell-work and embroidery, and 
 keep company with her and her young country cousins 
 Dolly and Milly Rolle, who were not overwise, and who 
 distressed her often by their bouncing ways, but who meant 
 no harm, and were virtuous young women, to whom she had 
 a mind to do a good turn for the sake of their name and 
 her old friend their father ? But indeed to please herself 
 she would far liefer do a good turn to Yolandette. And 
 she would take the greatest care of the dear innocent child, 
 who would be as safe as if she were under lock and key at 
 the castle. And her sons were men of honor, who would 
 hold their mother's protection sacred and sure; and then, 
 too, they had a huge admiration for Madame de Sevigne, 
 and intended a brotherly kindness to Yolande. 
 
 Now these persuasions of Lady Rolle, aimed as they were 
 at Grand'mere's weakness, had their due effect. Grand'- 
 mere was daring from the absence of suspicion rather than 
 timid from the presence of caution. She tenaciously held 
 to the noble dogma, "To the pure all things arc pure." 
 She Avas to some extent mystified and bewildered between 
 the different customs of France and England. She loved 
 the customs of her dear France, but then she was reason- 
 able and sensible, and was willing that concessions should 
 be made to the standard and practices of the country which 
 had adopted her, and in which her descendants would be 
 naturalized. She had always held it desirable for Yolande 
 that she should have companions of her own age and con-
 
 140 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 dition, and had already promoted her grandchild's familiar- 
 ity with the rector's daughters. She did not think that 
 great people who could be so kind as to entertain such a 
 just preference for Yolande could be very wicked. 
 
 It was from no servile homage to rank, then, but rather 
 from the excess of faith and charity, and from the confusion 
 of conflicting impressions, that Grand'mere was led off her 
 feet by my lady. She was not only above every thing mean 
 and sordid, but by temperament was decidedly i'oma?iesque, 
 and she had at the same time the safeguard of having all 
 her antecedents, traditions, and tendencies thoroughly bour- 
 geoise and Huguenot. 
 
 As «, climax, there was the furor into which Grand'mere 
 had suffered herself to be worked about Madame de Se- 
 vigen so that she actually came to see in Lady Rolle, not a 
 woman devoured by ambition, and living in pleasure and self- 
 gratification, at once unstable, relentless, and fickle, but a can- 
 did tender-hearted Madame de Sevigne, who, in her compul- 
 sory worldliness and parched thirsting after better things, 
 would receive an innocent, devout young girl as a stream in 
 the desert, as an angel of light. What wonder that Grand'- 
 mere, in her enthusiasm and her tendency to self-sacrifice, 
 authorized Yolande's going to the castle. 
 
 For Monsieur, he promptly enjoined that Yolande should 
 wait on the great lady whenever the great lady wished it ; 
 and in France a father's will was always regarded as law. 
 
 There remained then only poor Madame in a weak mi- 
 nority. She was violently disgusted at the intercourse be- 
 tween the cottage and the castle, as she had been at that 
 between the cottage and the rectory. And she was too 
 much of a Cassandra to do any thing except to prophesy in- 
 evitable evil. She was always barking, but did not bite. 
 Like many violent women, she was undone by her own vio- 
 lence ; for, after all, she exerted less rule over her own fam- 
 ily than most meek-tempered, quiet-spirited women do. She 
 had no talent for classifying offenses, or for tracing their 
 relative consequences. Rude and blustering, she rolled 
 them all together, and hopelessly massed and confounded 
 them. Her daughter's going to London into the great 
 world might have opened her eyes as with a shock, but Yo- 
 lande's going a mile's distance to the castle was but another 
 version of the apostasy of her being permitted to visit at the
 
 TIIE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 141 
 
 parsonage. Madame saw in both the same danger to Yo- 
 lande's state of perfect tutelage and to her French Calvin- 
 ism ; and nothing farther. 
 
 So Lady Rolle succeeded in making the first breach in 
 her assault on the stronghold of the Dupuys. 
 
 Yolande went up to the castle in the early spring, while 
 the surly east winds were nipping the blood which had its 
 source in hearts that had been accustomed to beat full and 
 free under the warm southern sun. She went before even 
 the primroses, which Grand'mere herself acknowledged 
 were the color and shape of the stars, began to bud in yel- 
 low lustre in the miry lanes. Had these fresh and dewy 
 primroses been conveyed to Covent Garden — not the hon- 
 est market, but the glaring, dishonest threshold of the foot- 
 lights — they would not have undergone so great a transi- 
 tion as was in store for Yolande. 
 
 It is hard for us, in these days, to realize the extent of 
 the change. Times are altered, the tone of the world is 
 modified, and over the old hideous heartlessness and in- 
 fidelity, where they still continue to exist, a decent cloak is 
 drawn. 
 
 It was not that poor Yolande became a scared eye-wit- 
 ness of crimes. The boorish folks of Sedge Pond, whose 
 dull imaginations required strong figures to be reflected in 
 their stagnant waters, mumbled of ghastly crimes which 
 had been committed at the castle of the Holies ; but if these 
 sluggish mediums had not returned enlarged and distorted 
 images of the facts, Yolande only saw life at the castle in 
 its normal condition, and that was simply bad. 
 
 In fine, Yolande was removed from the Shottery Cottage, 
 where there was suffering for conscience' sake, involving its 
 degree of nobility, and what remained of its lofty principle ; 
 where every body " made the amiable" save Madame, and 
 every body else bore with Madame, and recognized that her 
 feverish fretting and gusts of passion had their origin in 
 duty. Even in its outer courts, where its spirit had sus- 
 tained the greatest eclipse, the Huguenot family retained 
 the lingering stamp of much that was honorable and excel- 
 lent. Hut Yolande had been privileged to abide in the in- 
 ner court, spirit to spirit with the beautiful nature of an old 
 Christian gentlewoman, whose heart had been mellowed, 
 sobered, and rendered sacred by age, and who was at once
 
 142 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 high and humble, wise and simple — yet wonderfully pene- 
 trating, clear, and resolute, as well as large-minded. 
 
 And so with the print of Grand'mere's character inpress- 
 ed upon her, and Grandmere's fragrance hovering about her 
 distinct individuality, and promising for it a benign summer 
 and autumn, Yolande went up to the castle, sharing in the 
 generous, gentle delusion of meeting the representative of 
 Madame de Sevigne. She was something wholly fresh and 
 piquant there. And she thrilled and palpitated, not so 
 much like a young candidate of forgotten chivalry, or an art- 
 student of what was one of art's seasons of enthrallment 
 and degradation, as like a neophyte of the one church invis- 
 ible, intrepid in the sublime anticipation of saving souls and 
 in the charity which covers a multitude of sins. In the 
 great white castle, with its vast front and its outworks of 
 pillars, she encountered, with only a mile of park between 
 her and the Shottery Cottage, the great castle giants. 
 
 We must hear a little more in detail what Yolande went 
 up and met. We may despair of quite understanding the 
 position ; at the same time, we ought to thank God that we 
 can no longer breathe so unhallowed an atmosphere. 
 
 Yolande found a great, splendid house, swarming with 
 idle retainers and spoiled servants, where there was neither 
 fear of God nor devil, though there was in it a poor, trod- 
 den-down clergyman, Mr. Hoadley, who, as domestic chap- 
 lain, read prayers and preached when he was requested, just 
 as he would cut up a haunch of venison, or hold a hand at 
 piquet. Cards and dice were not, in the view of the castle 
 grandees, the mere tickets and dominoes with which Mon- 
 sieur and Grand'mere would wage an elaborate Avar in or- 
 der to be social, and to entertain each other. They were the 
 promissory notes and stakes of sums great and small; for 
 gambling Avas the one common interest inside the castle, as 
 horseflesh Avas with the men, and, to a certain extent, with 
 the Avomen, outside the castle. No rank of the occupants, 
 no story of the building made any difference. Cards Averc 
 the main object, and from the great drawing-room doAvn 
 through the servants' hall to the scullery, all Avas set out for 
 play. 
 
 Yolande saw, too, the most senseless waste of victuals, 
 batches of bread, blue and green with mould, being tossed 
 into the red gulfs of the kitchen fire. And what Grand'-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 143 
 
 mere would have called " the poor dear innocent pigs," were 
 fed on roast chicken and blanc-mangcr • while Lord Rolle 
 was in such chronic distress for money, that each rent-day 
 his agent had no choice but to distrain for rent even in the 
 saddest circumstances. 
 
 And Yolande saw the company that came to the castle : 
 magnificent fine ladies, only more elaborate, and more coun- 
 tryfied in their magnificence than my lady ; and gentlemen 
 of repute, less finished than my lady's sons, but heartier in 
 their coarseness. And unless the visits chanced to be in the 
 form of morning call, the company uniformly fell into the 
 family ways of gross eating, hard drinking, and high play. 
 
 The conversation at the castle exhibited in perfection a 
 dilettantism without either heart or soul, a half real, half 
 feigned foppishness and squeamishness, a fidgety, conceited 
 fondness for spurious art, and such vile insinuations, that it 
 was happily impossible for good people even so much as to 
 comprehend the double-cntendres. All over the castle such 
 conversation was more or less current, down even to Dolly 
 and Milly Rolle, w T ho attempted to harden themselves in or- 
 der not to blush at broad inuendoes or wanton insults, and 
 even tried to retail them with their own foolish lips. It must 
 be understood, however, that life at the castle had gone from 
 bad to worse since the rector's youth, and that, not caring 
 to spend much of his time there in later days, he Avas unin- 
 formed of the extent and the nature of the degeneracy. Had 
 it been otherwise, he would surely not, even in spite of his 
 feudal allegiance and by-gone kindness for my lady, have 
 taken the moths to the candle, and placed his facile daugh- 
 ters in the sounding halls and corridors. 
 
 Yolande could not discover, listen how she might, in all 
 the willful trifling, in all the malignant talk misnamed shrewd- 
 ness, in all the poor faded mimicry of the naivete of Madame 
 de Sevigm', that any man or woman at the castle believed 
 in any thing, or trusted in any body, or had any God in the 
 wide universe but his or her own pampered, disappointed, 
 pigmy self. None of them could look backward to sweet 
 wholesome memories, or forward to brighter, better hopes, 
 but must cleave to and batten in their fool's paradise. 
 
 Brought up in the strictest school of discipline and duty, 
 and as ardently attached to Grand'mere as a lover to his 
 mistress, Yolande was perplexed beyond measure to find that
 
 144 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 the great Rolle family had now reached that pitch of repro- 
 bateness recorded against the Romans of his time by no 
 less a judge thau St. Paul when he said that they were 
 " without natural affection." Lady Rolle had brought her- 
 self to look on her son and heir, Lord Rolle, who had been 
 her suckling child, as her rival and enemy ; my lord regard- 
 ed his mother sullenly as an interloper and incubus ; and each 
 entertained toward the other jealous suspicion and cruel 
 hostility, which they did not trouble themselves to hide, and 
 which, like consuming lava streams, were continually burst- 
 ing through the icy coating of their ceremonious politeness. 
 
 As to the frank and fond kinship of brothers, it was un- 
 known at the castle. The Honorable George Rolle bore a 
 bitter spite against my lord ; while he returned the favor 
 by grudging his cadet every advantage which he could not 
 prevent him from obtaining, and by repaying himself in 
 pinching George so far as he dared in his birthright, and 
 playing him false whenever an opportunity presented itself. 
 The great link between the two brothers was the necessity 
 for combining against the domineering spirit and eccen- 
 tricities of their mother. What their cunning selfishness 
 told them was a benefit to both, and an aid to their common 
 bent in luxurious effeminacy and savage insensibility, they 
 readily enough combined to gain ; but there was no sweet 
 affection, no patience, no trace of real esteem or self-denial 
 in their relationship. 
 
 In theory, Yolande went to the castle to lighten the great 
 lady's pomp, strife, and weariness by faith, love, and peace ; 
 to nestle near her, look up to her, and wait upon her with 
 such reverential pity and tender devotion that the wasted 
 heart might be won back to God, and to good dispositions 
 and good works. 
 
 But in reality Yolande went there to help Dolly and Mil- 
 ly Rolle to keep my lady company. She was seated at the 
 foot of the table or the draughty side of it, and helped last 
 at dinner and supper, along with Mr. Iloadley and Dr. Spiers, 
 the chaplain and the physician. She was expected to with- 
 draw into window recesses and vestibules, or to betake her- 
 self to the housekeeper's room, and the society of Mrs. 
 Mann and Mrs. Sally, when more suitable company offered 
 itself. 
 
 Yolande found the troops of servants saucy and insolent ;
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 145 
 
 they lied to her, and they attempted to filch from her the 
 few precious things she owned — such as Grand'mere's minia- 
 ture in enamel, and one of those doves in gold which the 
 Huguenot women substituted for the crosses of the Roman 
 Catholics. This, to the confounded, grieved girl, who had 
 known nothing but the kind scolding, the blunt truthful- 
 ness, and the loving care of lynx-eyed Priscille, was in itself 
 a jDerplexity and a pain. 
 
 Mr. Hoadley, in or out of his cassock, and Dr. Spiers in 
 his green spectacles, did not work any harm to Yolande, 
 save what came from the sight of the troubles and hard- 
 ships which engrossed them. But Dolly and Milly Rolle 
 were now wofully changed toward her. Their capricious 
 friendliness to her had become coldness and dislike ; and 
 no wonder, for they were mortally jealous of Yolande's join- 
 ing them as a companion to my lady. They persecuted her, 
 stealthily and stingingly ; they misconstrued every thing 
 she did, every early walk she took in the park, every lily or 
 carnation she sewed in my lady's embroidery, every psalm 
 of Marot's she sung at Lady Rolle's request to lull her 
 asleep. The very details of Yolande's unchanged dress — 
 the long-waisted, sage-colored Lyons silk, and the cap, which 
 was chiefly a bow of ribbon above the roll of hair, so sober 
 and sedate in its one bit of bright color — afforded ground 
 for their raillery. The sisters winked at her, whispered 
 about her, and spoke of her in gibing, bitter, speeches. _ In- 
 deed, they were rapidly advancing t$ plot her destruction, 
 and to consummate her disgrace and expulsion. 
 
 Lord Rolle and his brother were not such strangers to a 
 gentleman's code of honor, worthlessly elastic as it was then, 
 as not to hold their mother's house in some sort a sanctuary 
 to girls like the Rolles of the rectory and Yolande. They 
 only startled and distressed Yolande by calling her to her 
 face " little Dupuy," and saint this and saint that, and by 
 attempting to hoax her as egregiously as they hoaxed the 
 Rolle girls on the last court "fashions. Afterward they 
 would laugh inordinately in spite of their habitual languor, 
 and proclaim the girl's credulity in every company when 
 the imposture was detected. They affronted the shy French 
 girl by, at one moment, claiming small services at her hand, 
 and by carelessly neglecting to pay her small services in 
 return at the next. "They horrified her by asking her to
 
 146 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 remember them in her prayers, and by affording the clear- 
 est evidence that they were scoffing at all prayer, and at 
 the great Prayer Hearer. 
 
 So there remained only Lady Rolle to atone for these out- 
 rages on Yolande's principles and feelings ; but that unhap- 
 py, infatuated woman, after having with the utmost solici- 
 tude enticed and decoyed Grand'mere's child into her power 
 with some faint thought of, and longing after, better things, 
 only made matters worse. In her country-house, away 
 from such distractions as she clamored for, and with her vices 
 and her tyranny goading what was capricious in her, her 
 revengeful excesses broke out in their native deformity. 
 
 The rectory girls could look on at my lady's gluttony and 
 its appropriate qualifications of doses and drops, and her 
 furious card-playing. They could listen to her conversation 
 when it waxed most scurrilous. Nay, left to themselves, they 
 would learn to fish for tidbits, to borrow Mrs. Sally's drops 
 in order to comfort their own oppressed stomachs, to stake 
 their last half-guinea of pocket-money, and to withdraw into 
 retirement, when they could be spared, to employ their time 
 in vain attempts at concocting the washes and paints of a 
 fine lady. They could even harden themselves to endure 
 taunts and abuse, when Lady Rolle, who with all her knowl- 
 edge and high breeding was more ignorant than a savage 
 of the obligations of hospitality, turned upon them in sheer 
 weariness and frowardness. They could think it all made 
 up by the honor of appearing in public as Lady Rolle's kins- 
 women, by receiving copies of the fashions from her maid, 
 or a set of ribbons, or "a head," or a habit, from her scorn- 
 ful prodigality. 
 
 Yolande Dupuy bore all this for three days and nights, 
 and on the fourth morning she rose before it was break of 
 day and fled back to the Shottery Cottage for the life of 
 her soul. 
 
 She appeared like a ghost in Grand'mere's room as the 
 old woman, in her pelisse d capuchwi, was placidly watch- 
 ing her morning fire in a braiser on a tripod, and perhaps 
 pensively wondering whether her child, rising to the splen- 
 dor of such a life as that of Marlcy or Chantilly, was at 
 that moment donning her armor and unfurling her banner 
 faithfully, like another Pucelle ; or whether she was read- 
 ing her Huguenot lesson, which had been oflener read in eel-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 14V 
 
 lavs and garrets, in prisons and marshes, than in halls and 
 castles. 
 
 " Grand'mere, take me into shelter again," Yolande began 
 to implore in disjointed petitions. " The world is too much 
 for me. But I know well what you will say : ' Judge not, 
 presumptuous one ; are there not seven thousand who have 
 not bowed the knee to Baal! And how will the good salt 
 the earth, if they dwell for their own profit and pleasure in 
 the desert?' There are no retreats for the Huguenots. I 
 know it well. But ma mbre, I am a silly, feeble child, and 
 not a wise, valiant woman ; I dare not longer abide in Sod- 
 om. Ah ! pardon me, pardon me, I did not mean to judge 
 and condemn. Mamma had reason to fear for me. If it 
 has not made me wicked, it has tortured me, and shaken 
 my faith in God and man. It is necessary that I say this, 
 and then I will be deaf and dumb ; for I did not go up 
 among the strange quality at the castle, who are good to you, 
 and who thought to be good to us, to be a spy and a trait- 
 ress in the camp. But what will you ? I should love better 
 to be the dogs of the gentlemen than of the dame ; for the 
 sacrilegous men can be more just than the great lady, 
 though, alas ! she loathes herself above all in the world." 
 
 " I beat my breast, I tear my grey hairs, I die with shame 
 for my folly !" And Grand'mere fell back, almost suiting the 
 action to the word. " Ilein ! what is the price of my grey 
 hairs, that I should put them in the panier? Is the time 
 come when the child shall lead the lion, and the lamb put its 
 hand on the cockatrice's den, without mortal injury ? What 
 are to me the risks and the errors of Madame de Sevigne" ? 
 Away with her! she is at home; her body sleeps, these 
 fifty years, in the vault of her chapel, her spirit is with hev 
 God. And it is for her phantom, her shadow, that I expose 
 my little daughter, the daughter of my son. I have been a 
 weak, vain old sinner to venture Yolande where I could not 
 go and spy the land for her. She scorns the spies in her 
 innocence; but there are righteous spies, as there are right- 
 eous executioners. The punishment is my portion, my de- 
 sert; let me only suffer it. Grant, good Lord, that it be to 
 me alone ; as for this sheep, save that she is of my house, 
 and the ewe lamb of my old age, and hath obeyed me, what 
 hath she done? And the fine lady, whose impulses v. 
 not all ignoble I believe, the unhappy woman who has work-
 
 148 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 ed nothing but mischief — shall we not pray for her also, 
 that there may be room found for her repentance — we who 
 so much need repentance ourselves ?" 
 
 " Grand'mere," said Yolaude, hanging her head and speak- 
 ing below her breath, " why is it that the men and the wom- 
 en for whom our Saviour died are left to believe nothing, 
 to hope for nothing and care for nothing, like these mock- 
 ing gentlemen and that poor raging lady ?" 
 
 " It is a mystery," answered Grand'mere, solemnly and 
 pitifully ; " and it is the more awful that they have willful- 
 ly and desperately shut themselves out. But the hand of 
 the Lord can burst even their locks and bars, and show 
 them a grand contrast — the twelve gates of heaven, which 
 are not shut either by day or by night, because there is 
 no night there." 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 HIS REVERENCE MR. HOADLEY AND HIS HONOR MR. LUSH- 
 
 INGTON. 
 
 Yolande's flight from the castle was followed by no do- 
 mestic results beyond the penitence of Grand'mere. Mon- 
 sieur was at the time absent on one of his periodical visits 
 to London : and as for Madame, she did not deign to ac- 
 knowledge the return of the wanderer by any thing farther 
 than — 
 
 " Child, you are come back ; you did not find it so good 
 to be wrapped up in furs and fed on blan&manger without 
 the blessing of the Lord. For that you may thank your 
 Huguenot ancestors, your catechism, your Grand'mere and 
 me, who have taught you better." 
 
 Then she retired into her closet and thanked God with 
 passionate fervor for her daughter's escape from the snare 
 of the fowler. 
 
 Priscille only limped grumblingly after Ma'mselle, who had 
 come back as white as a jasmine for all her feasting. What 
 chiefly vexed her now that Yolande had returned was, that 
 the clear-starched neckerchiefs and aprons she had got up 
 with so much care that Ma'mselle might not be behind the 
 rectory girls, had been unused and wasted, and not only
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 149 
 
 that, but she was ready to go bound that her work had been 
 lost, or leut to these very madams. There was not a whis- 
 per of Ma'mselle's having been plagued out of her life by 
 the admiration of the Mohocks of fine gentlemen, though 
 Priscille had no doubt it was from them" that Yolande had 
 run away. It served the cocks of the quality right, she 
 thought, to have their combs cut a bit. Indeed Priscille 
 would have thought herself indemnified for her trouble if 
 she had but heard the fine compliments which my lord and 
 his set must have paid Ma'mselle, and the splendid offers of 
 carriages and six, and marriages in Fleet Street, which they 
 must have been driven to make her. She would then have 
 had the satisfaction of telling the girl that they were rank 
 lies and base plots. And although she could not tell whence 
 was to come Ma'mselle's share in the nettle-soup and gilt 
 chicken that day, she looked straighter forward out of her 
 near-set eyes than she had lately done, and thought, without 
 admitting it to herself, that Madame was like herself again, 
 and would not any longer pine away in her brightness and 
 sweetness. Having now recovered her little bird, to incline 
 its head and trill fitfully in its pensive, intensely-earnest 
 youth, among the ass's pepper and spiked lavender of her 
 garden, Priscille felt that Grand'mere would live twenty 
 years longer. The Shottery Cottage was more like itself 
 to Priscille again, with youth in all its inexperience and im- 
 patience, going about finding fault, wondering why wrong 
 existed, and when it would be righted, and indeed making 
 farther wrong by its rash enthusiasm and half-frantic efforts 
 at the world's reformation. Gruff, practical Priscille would 
 do just as she had done before. She would scold, turn into 
 derision, and lay up and cherish in her heart the wayward- 
 ness of her young mistress. And so she resumed the charge 
 of Yolande's little wardrobe, and beseeched and bullied 
 Grand'mere for the daintiest fripe in her cupboards for 
 Ma'mselle's bread. 
 
 But if there were no results at the cottage, there certain- 
 ly were at the castle. Even before my lady,alittle stunned 
 with incredulity at the independence and ingratitude of her 
 protegee, had swiftly recovered herself, and before Lord 
 Polle and the honorable George had looked up from their 
 study of bric-a-brac and heraldry, basset and ombre, two 
 emissaries arrived at the Shottery Cottage to learn what
 
 150 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 mischief was in the wind, and to give Mademoiselle Dupuy 
 and her friends a more or less disinterested hint in time. 
 
 The first-comer was my lord's chaplain, Mr. Iloadley, who 
 looked np a quotation or a learned authority, rode a Bpare 
 hunter, and took a hand in a round game, as well as said 
 grace when he was allowed, and read the service on a rainy 
 Sunday, or on a morning or evening when it pleased my 
 lady to get out of bed, or go to it, with the blessing of the 
 Church upon her head. When Mr. Hoadley was out of his 
 cassock he was no more like a clergyman than Lord Rolle, 
 and lie was in reality what the dregs of his private con- 
 science and the remains of public decency left him. He 
 was a man under thirty years of age, was dressed in a shab- 
 by brocade coat, with shorts and rolled stockings, and the 
 ordinary triangular little hat. His face, which was clean 
 shaven, would not have been ill-looking, if it had only been 
 as open and clear as it was soft and delicate. He entered 
 the women's room at the Shottery Cottage, with a fine show 
 of conceit and affectation, and a well got-np strut and ogle, 
 after having himself been squinted at disparagingly by 
 Priscille, all the way from the garden gate. With the spas- 
 modic effort of a man by nature shy, and accustomed to be 
 put down, he announced that he was come to wait upon 
 Mademoiselle Dupuy, and pay his humble respects to her 
 and any of her family who might be at home, and to ask, 
 in the name of all that was prudent, why she had bolted 
 from my lady's gracious protection. 
 
 Goaded out of her self-conscious reserve, Yolande answer- 
 ed, " I have my reasons, which I am sure you could not 
 comprehend, Mr. Iloadley. Pardon me ; I know quite well 
 what I am about. Have the goodness to render my duty 
 to my lady, and tell her that I will always do what she 
 wishes in the embroidery and the psalms here, but that I 
 will never return to the castle." 
 
 His reverence was so unclerical as to whistle a bar of 
 " Nancy Dawson" at Yolande's answer, and so unmanly as 
 not to pay the smallest heed to it. 
 
 " What do you say to the chit's contumacy, madam ?" 
 He addressed Yolande's mother, who was scowling at him 
 with a fierceness, compared with which l'riscille's squint was 
 mild and kindly. 
 
 " I say that my daughter shall not return to the habita-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 151 
 
 tion of wickedness and idolatry, unless she have a desire to 
 make a holy triad with Mesdames Delilah and Jezebel," re- 
 turned Madame, with the air of having triumphantly dis- 
 posed of her adversary. 
 
 "Marry, come up !" exclaimed the self-constituted ambas- 
 sador, by no means discomfited by the attack, effeminate and 
 irritable though he was. Madame's passion, as was its 
 wont, had outshot its mark and rebounded with the baffled 
 absurdity of a spent ball. " Mademoiselle was so obliging 
 as to tell me that I do not comprehend the mighty offense ; 
 and truly I do not. I am such a poor creature in my good 
 nature that I could not help looking in upon you to warn 
 you that if a nest of foreigners persist in being humorsorne 
 to my worshipful patrons, they may find themselves turned 
 adrift without being fledged ; that is all. And methought 
 you French were more attentive to the opinions of your 
 priests, Catholic and Protestant, than our English are to 
 us." 
 
 With that Grand'mere rose, and with all the dignity of 
 her years and experience, courtesied to the young man in such 
 a manner as forced him to rise up from where he had been 
 lolling upon the settee, to make her a sprawling bow in re- 
 turn. 
 
 " Yes," said Grand'mere, " we honor our pastors, and that 
 is well, for they are the shepherds and we the sheep ; and it 
 is true that our pastors have not failed in following the Good 
 Shepherd. Monsieur must at least have heard that our pas- 
 tors have died with their sheep, and have sealed their 'I be- 
 lieve' with their blood. But, Yolande, why did you not tell 
 us that Monsieur was a priest ? How good it is of Mon- 
 sieur to come out after a little strange lamb as he has done. 
 Philippine, there is a sleeve of the coat of a true pastor. 
 Not true, say you ? Can you not see it, my love, although 
 it is not the wing of a Geneva cloak." 
 
 " Eh V" questioned Philippine, gloomily. " In zflandrin, 
 a damoiseau? Believe it not, ma m&rt ; there is a serpent 
 hid under the rock." 
 
 " Never mind her, Monsieur," explained Grand'mere, plac- 
 idly, " she is honorable to the tips of her fingers ; and if she 
 can not sec the comparison she will nut say she sees it, and 
 so she scolds, but her scolding is wholesome as the bracing 
 wind. It is for me to explain and thank you, Monsieur my
 
 152 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 pastor, when we can offer you no recompense, for Yoland- 
 ette is nobody — a rude lamb who bounds to her dam, shak- 
 ing her tail and bleating pitifully. Ah ! my young pastor, 
 Yolande is but a silly lamb, only wise in knowing that in 
 her simplicity and weakness she might stray quite out of 
 the fold. She is not, like you, a consecrated, ordained 
 young servant of God, to resist and rebuke evil and dwell 
 among it unscathed; and so she beats a retreat, and lets 
 her just fears chase her out of that Vanity Fair of which 
 your great English Fenelon, Bunyan, has written so well. 
 Is it not so, Monsieur ? And are you not proud of your Pil- 
 grim ? " 
 
 Mr. Hoadley stared at Grand'mere, his hollow black eyes 
 wide and his mouth open. 
 
 " Consider what unpardonable wrong I should do,"con- 
 tinued Grand'mere, " what giddiness and folly an old wom- 
 an of fourscore years would be guilty of, if I sent her alone 
 with her roll back to the Vanity Fair from which her ances- 
 tors a century ago fought their way in blood and fire. Con- 
 sider it, my generous young pastor, you who had some care 
 for the strange lamb. I am sure that you will be glad the 
 scared little creature had the discretion left to take oppor- 
 tunity by the forelock and leap the city wall, and that you 
 will no longer seek to catch her and carry her back." 
 
 "Sure, you mock me, madam," Mr. Hoadley stam- 
 mered. 
 
 "Monsieur le Pasteur!" exclaimed Grand'mere, in unmis- 
 takable surprise and pain, and for the first time taking a 
 step back from the visitor. •• 
 
 " Then what do you take me for?" he inquired hastily. 
 
 " For a young Timothy, please God," declared Grand'- 
 mere, wistfully ; and then she added, in a lower tone and 
 with exquisite tenderness, " Had he not his youth, which he 
 was to permit no man to despise ? Ah ! that had been a 
 difficult charge had he not been the scholar of an inspired 
 sago. He had his infirmities of body, too, and I fear that 
 you suffer also, my son." 
 
 "I suffer in my soul and conscience," cried the young 
 man with trembling, passionate lips. " I am no such vile 
 hypocrite as to lend myself to an act of imposture. Made- 
 moiselle here must have told you that I am a miserable 
 wretch, a priest all but forsworn ; and wherefore do you
 
 THE nUGUEXOT FAMILY. 153 
 
 thus convict and crush me with the shame of a false charac- 
 ter?" 
 
 "It rests with you if it be false," remonstrated Grand'- 
 rnere, gently. " Go, you came not to me with a false pur- 
 pose," she argued, with penetrating charity in her motherly 
 grey eyes. 
 
 " No, upon my life !" he said, eagerly confirming her as- 
 sertion. " I had an honest thought of doing a good turn to 
 the modest Mademoiselle, who is very different from the 
 foreign gentry I have known at the castle. God help me, for 
 I might have seen farther. But I say now you are perfectly 
 right, Madame. Keep your innocent maiden out of the gar- 
 ish light yonder, out of the awful selfishness and desperation, 
 though you should have to lock her up with ten locks and 
 keys, and even though my lady should turn you out of 
 house and hold. She is a bountiful patroness, but her ' ten- 
 der mercies are cruel,' " he ended, with a spasm on his 
 white face, as he took up his little hat. 
 
 But Grand'mere, by her sympatheic words and soft ques- 
 tions, constrained him to sit down again, and caused him to 
 cover his face with his hands, and to betray his black eyes 
 moist as well as hollow when he removed his lingers. lie 
 kissed Grand'mere's hand ; the wonder was that he did not 
 fall on his knees before her. 
 
 Mr. Iloadley's greatest sin was that he was a moral cow- 
 ard ; and he was no worse than his class, except that such 
 cowardice in a man who held his office was more degrading 
 than in any other. His life had been a hard and corrupting 
 one, and there was even some room for marvel in the fact 
 that he had been saved from utter destruction and down- 
 right infidelity. A clever but weakly excitable man, he was 
 very ready to receive impressions and take on hues from the 
 men and women around him. Curbed and generally kept 
 down, on the smallest encouragement he fell naturally into 
 the noisy candor of the period. He reproached himself in 
 presence of the three women, two of whom had never seen 
 his face before; he confessed his errors; and he told his 
 history. 
 
 But after all it was only to one benevolent, godly old 
 women — reverent in her age, godliness, and benevolence — 
 that Mr. Hoadley spoke. Madame Dupuy did not under- 
 stand more than one out of a dozen words lie said, so di>- 
 
 <; 2
 
 154 TIIE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 
 
 missing him from her thoughts she wove her lace and re- 
 turned to her habitual meditated refrain on the sorrows of 
 the Huguenots and the hardened worldliuess of Monsieur. 
 Yolande, after Mr. Hoadley's first personal allusions were 
 made, slipped out of the room, and took refuge with grum- 
 bling Priscille, feeling no regret for the loss of a tale which 
 she was tempted to undervalue. Pity is akin to scorn as 
 well as to another quality ; and Mr. Hoadley was too men- 
 dacious in soliciting pity, and too much occupied with his 
 own troubles, to attract either light or lofty-hearted girls. 
 Only Grand'mcre listened to his narrative with unwearied 
 patience, relieved by occasional pinches of Spanish snuff. 
 In meeting his avowals, she guarded his self-respect more 
 jealously than he himself did, and soothed his hurt feelings 
 and wounded vanity while she faithfully probed his con- 
 science and enjoined amendment at any cost. 
 
 Mr. Hoadley, in place of being related to the famous 
 bishop of the name, was the son of a poor clergyman who 
 had barely managed to educate his son for the Church. Just 
 as his university career was ended and he had taken orders, 
 his father died, leaving a widow dependent on her son's 
 exertions. There were but three fields open for him — to 
 starve in a Grub Street garret, to be an usher in a school, 
 or a chaplain in a great family. Mr. Hoadley chose the 
 latter, as affording most remuneration for the present, and 
 the greatest hope of preferment for the future. When he 
 had subjected himself to this bondage, and lived long enough 
 in it not only for the iron to enter his soul, but to become 
 comparatively disqualified for any other mode of life, his 
 mother, whose comfort had influenced him in his choice, 
 died and left him alone in the world. He Avas neither a sot 
 nor a confirmed gambler ; he was a passive witness of his 
 master's delinquencies, but not yet an active promoter of 
 them. This was the most favorable account which could 
 be given of him ; all his higher aspirations, his purer hopes, 
 had shrunk and withered, and were near to perishing, when 
 he encountered Grand'mere. 
 
 "I say nothing of the glory of God and the usefulness to 
 man of your choice, my pastor and son," said Grand'mere, 
 with her usual large and merciful allowances, "because you 
 say you did it to provide for your mother ; and is it not said 
 that he who providcth not for his own house is worse than
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 155 
 
 an infidel? But in the name of God what hinders you now 
 from leaving that unhappy castle, and shaking the dust from 
 off your feet against it ?" 
 
 Grand'mere paused, but getting no reply she proceeded: 
 " The pastors of the Huguenots quitted their father-land and 
 the scenes of their youth, they broke the dearest ties and 
 wandered abroad to struggle for daily bread under a foreign 
 sky; or they stayed and ministered in their own France, 
 and were imprisoned, fined, led to the halter, or shot in the 
 market-place. Ah ! Monsieur, if it is great and noble in 
 any man, assuredly it is the prerogative of the priest to be 
 great in suffering, that he may help the people — to descend 
 into the pit himself, if so be he may rescue one of them." 
 
 "But I am a poor, sneaking, despicable fellow," lamented 
 Mr. Hoadley. " I am not like your stern and saintly Hugue- 
 not pastors, reared in the wilds to the rattle of the dragon- 
 nades I read of when a boy. Would to God I were a boy 
 ao-ain, madanie, to becrin life anew ! But I have lain in the 
 lap of luxury, and am as full of disgusts and aversions as 
 Rolle, and as full of vapors and nerves as my lady. I'll lay 
 you a bet my mind is going. I could not study an hour on 
 a stretch for a pension. Certainly my health is broken ; I 
 had an attack of ascue in the fall, and at intervals I shake 
 and sweat by turns to this hour. 
 
 Grand'mere looked into the worn face, and some tears fell 
 quietly from her old eyes. 
 
 "I dare not go up to London to rot in the Bench or the 
 Marshalsea, or fill a cell in Bedlam. I am not free from scots 
 as it is, and the Reedham Jail or a neighboring ditch may 
 serve my turn. I have made my bed, and I must lie upon 
 it; but is there no hope here, dearest madarae? Is there 
 no atonement for such a caitiff as I am ?" 
 
 Grand'mere clasped the young pastor's thin hands, kissed 
 him on the forehead, and told him of hundreds and thou- 
 sands of her persuasion in France whom De Missy, Bourdil- 
 lon, above all Saurin,had reproached and condemned for not 
 coming out of the country, proclaiming their creed, and 
 casting in their lot with the exiles. But for herself — slit- 
 did not know — she was a simple old woman, only she trust- 
 ed that her God would not break the bruised reed, nor 
 quench the smoking flax. She had read of lifting up the 
 hands which hang down, and strengthening the feeble
 
 156 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 knees. She thought if a situation were not morally wrong 
 in itself, the wrong in it belonged chiefly, if not entirely, 
 to the wrong-doer. Great loss might be suffered — greater 
 in the main and in the end than any loss which could not 
 be contemplated or consented to, in abandoning the situa- 
 tion ; but she could never, never think it would be perdition. 
 Salvation might be as by fire to such as escaped from dan- 
 gers like these, but she fully believed it would be salvation. 
 Truly, there was work for a pastor in the castle ; and if he 
 wrestled and resisted, he might do something to bear a good 
 testimony, and to stem the tide of evil. But if he were dis- 
 missed ? Ah ! well, perhaps that would be the best thing 
 that could happen him, and the Lord would be his provider. 
 She counseled him to consult the pastor of Sedge Pond, and 
 to be guided by him, his superior according to the govern- 
 ment of his Church, notwithstanding that the young man 
 shrank from Mr. Philip's searching scrutiny and severe repri- 
 mand. Finally, Mr. Hoadley and Grand'mere parted friends. 
 
 Thus it came about that Mr. Hoadley was constantly drop- 
 ping into the Shottery Cottage, to be entertained with a lit- 
 tle chocolate and an unlimited amount of succory water. 
 Being a very excitable man, quick at borrowing and throw- 
 ing back the characters and tastes of the company that sur- 
 rounded him, he came to discover that Grand'mere's child, 
 who hardly looked at him, and was very scaut in her kind- 
 ness to him, was not only fair, but " good, and true, and 
 wise," a genuine descendant of Grand'mere's, and fit to be 
 coveted for her own sake, as well as for that of her venera- 
 ble kinswoman. 
 
 Between Mr. Hoadley and the next visitor at the Shottery 
 Cottage there was a great difference, both in the original 
 constitution of the men and in their social position. The 
 second visitor did not wear the coat of a gentleman, and ho 
 stood behind Lord Rolle at table, in place of sitting at the 
 foot of it. But it was a grand coat which he wore, and an 
 important station which he occupied. Regarded as "his 
 honor" at Sedge Pond, he was condescending to the farmers 
 and small clergy in the vicinity. He was a man of more 
 substance and consideration than the poor chaplain; and 
 while Lord Rolle would address the latter as Parson Hoad- 
 ley, or by any other idle, insolent name which came to hand, 
 he never addressed his butler by any term more disrespect-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 157 
 
 ful than " my good fellow." Sometimes, in the height of 
 urbanity and affectation, ho would even preface a request 
 with " my child." It was said that my lord deigned on 
 occasions to borrow gold guineas from Mr. Lushington, and 
 to accomodate himself with Mr. Lushington's name on pa- 
 per. Perhaps Mr. Lushington was, on the whole, the most 
 respectable institution at the castle, for he was a man verg- 
 ing on sixty, and had served my loi'd's father. Nay, he had 
 been born in the Holies' service, as his father had been 
 before him ; and in the midst of the wanton waste and j til- 
 lage in high places, he did what he could to preserve the 
 honor of the family, and to look after their interest before 
 his own. He was a portly man, who set oifhis lace, the scar- 
 let of his livery, and his silk stockings, and wo v e his cauli- 
 flower wig when he went abroad. A portly man and a pur- 
 sy, with around snub nose, somewhat copper-colored, sharp 
 twinkling eyes, fat cheeks, and a polished ball of a chin ; a 
 man bristling over with prejudices, and with choler if these 
 were assailed. Little as they deserved it, he had an immense 
 respect for his family ; he called them his, as if he had the on- 
 erous task and the great misfortune to be their progenitor. 
 To cover their misdemeanors and vindicate them from re- 
 proach and injury, he fumed, stormed, and perspired at every 
 pore ; and he happened to have an intense hatred to scare- 
 crows of Jesuitical, papistical French. He bounced right 
 into the parlor at the Shottery Cottage, without heeding the 
 " Tiens ! Rabshakeh !" of Madame, and without waiting 
 for the heavy march of Priscille, who stood in awe of him, if 
 she stood in awe of any body. It was not that Mr. Lush- 
 ington had the most distant wish to recover "my lady's 
 trapesing prodigy; but then what right had she to scud 
 off as if she had taken pisen,when her victuals had been 
 as good as quality junketing?" He himself had filled her 
 glass with such old Bordeaux as he would warrant she had 
 never tasted in her fine France. Yes, she must be rated 
 soundly,for it was not for the honor of the castle to stand 
 such doings. It made him mad to think of such notice being 
 wasted on a slothful outlandish pack, when there were fam- 
 ilies and families of honest liritons who would have worked 
 hard to deserve it. 
 
 Yolande knew that Mr. Lushington was a great authority 
 in the castle, that he was a foe of another calibre from the
 
 158 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY 
 
 chaplain, and that perhaps, she had never seen so magnificent 
 and autocratical a personage in her life as he who now stood 
 there, all swelling in his purple and scarlet. Still, she took 
 his rating bravely. 
 
 But though Yolande was brave enough to present a cold, 
 stiff front to the enemy, she did not attempt to defend herself. 
 She no more dreamed of warming, and melting, and mak- 
 ing an appeal to the generosity, the fairness, or the human- 
 ity of her assailant, than of appealing to one of Lady Rolle's 
 snorting coach-horses, or to a bellowing bull in the park. 
 It was Grand' mere who took rapid measure of Mr. Lushing- 
 ton's massive proportions and made the attack ; and she did 
 it with manifest zest and enjoyment, becoming for the 
 nonce more quaintly proverbial, more fluent, more graphic 
 than ever. 
 
 " Ca, you will surely not speak to our backs, Maitre Bon- 
 homme, and we only thi'ee rags of women ? You are a 
 brave man. We also know what bravery is. We had our 
 Schomburg, our Ruvigny, and you English heard of them 
 too, and helped yourselves to their bravery at the Boyne 
 and at Oudenarde. And we are all baked with the same 
 flour, though we were from the side of St. Louis. Ah ! 
 there is still a quarter of your London which you call Petty 
 France, and what would you do for water-gilding, clock- 
 making, sign-painting, hair-dressing, and perfumery without 
 its inhabitants ? What would you do for silk-weaving 
 without Spitalfields ? We are not lizards to bask in the sun 
 (if we had the sun to bask in), as you say. We are good cit- 
 izens, peaceful and diligent. We do not drink, nor do we 
 swear ; none of us waylay and stab, save Gardelle and Guis- 
 carde, who are the only two miserable criminals among us. 
 You remember all these things at present, and you begin to 
 respect us a little for our patience, our endurance, our inge- 
 nuity. All that is true, Maitre Lushington, and you compre- 
 hend it because you are one of the English who could be as 
 patient and enduring, though not as ingenious, in adversity. 
 You can not save yourselves from a suspicion of esteem, 
 even while you ' humph ! humph !' and thrust your hands 
 into your breeches' pockets, while you look at our skips 
 and our shrugs or listen to our chatter." 
 
 " Antic fiddlers, mountebanks !" growled his honor, with 
 a shade of shame on his broad visage.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 159 
 
 " Alas ! I fear we vex you horribly," continued Grand'- 
 mere. " Still, you harbor us, you serve yourselves with us, 
 and, in spite of the national antipathy, you esteem those of 
 the more who have renounced our fatherland for what we 
 us call duty, freedom, and purity. What ! we disobeyed our 
 Louis, as you disobeyed your Charles and your James, only 
 we were not fire-eaters ; we have not gone above the houses 
 like you. These hands must grow more like claws with 
 emptiness, and redder with desperation, unbound by law or 
 gospel, before they tear down the sacred majesty of kings. 
 It is in the nature of the French, Romanist and Reformed, 
 to be loyal as the lilies are white." 
 
 " If you are so loyal, why did not the girl bide in her serv- 
 ice ?" interposed Mr. Lushington. " A fig for her loyalty, 
 to break the bargain and run off like an ill-doer! The flag- 
 ons and scones, my lord's and Mr. George's nick-nacks, my 
 lady's rings, are all to the fore" — so he did not mean to 
 bring any accusation on that score. 
 
 "My little daughter entered the service of my lady — 
 good," said Grand'mere, emphatically ; " she quitted it 
 again without the ceremony of asking leave to do so — bad. 
 Have you a daughter of your own, Maitre Lushington ?" 
 
 The butler shook his ambrosial curls and smiled grimly 
 in the negative. "No, nor ever a dame, I'm thankful to 
 say, mistress." 
 
 " Ah, well, I compassiouate you," said Grand'mere, throw- 
 ing in her gracious pity with a wave of her hand. " But 
 you had a good mother once. Suppose she had entered the 
 service of the old seigneur." 
 
 " She !" interrupted the butler in a towering passion. " She 
 were a good mother and that bean't a likely or a sightly 
 supposing. Mother were as honest a woman as ever step- 
 ped ; she could not taste a cool tankard, let alone sack-whey 
 or burnt brandy. She would not have known a card from a 
 wagon-ticket. She could spell a chapter in the Bible, for 
 she was a scholard, but she read nought besides except the 
 tallies and the trades' tokens. My sisters, Cherry and Moll, 
 were such likes. I can tell you, feythcr's woman had no 
 trade with the castle." 
 
 " And if they had once entered it by one great mistake and 
 misfortune, say you, would you never have forgiveD them if 
 they had found their way out again as quickly as possible ?"
 
 100 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 "I have nought to say in answer to such a question," re- 
 plied Mr. Lushington, shortly and surlily, after a pause, dur- 
 ing which he had fingered a wart on his round chin as if he 
 had meant to pluck it off by main force. " Things are not 
 consorts, as my brother the sailor, who licked the French 
 under the great Admiral Benbow, was wont to say." 
 
 "And found them difficult, very difficult, to lick, Maitre 
 Lushington," maintained Grand'mere, with imperturbable 
 good-humor. " You will admit that, for the sake of your 
 brother." 
 
 " Wounds ! you have me there, madame," granted Mr. 
 Lushington, unable to resist making the admission. 
 
 "And are there not some things still that Maitre Lush- 
 ington would not give up to his masters — would count more 
 precious than their favor, and which he would not wish to 
 persecute and destroy poor strangers for seeking to spare ?" 
 
 Mr. Lushington marched out of the Shottery Cottage 
 without another word. He came back again, however, to 
 tell Grand'mere, in his bluff fashion, that nobody from the 
 castle, with his consent, would trouble her on hers. 
 
 The first result of this interview was a messenger with 
 his honor's respects and a bunch of English sweet herbs to 
 the old French madam. And this was followed by the 
 same messenger, bearing in succession the same respects, 
 and a string of hog's puddings, a pitcher of clotted cream, 
 and a basket of what were left of the-winter's pippins. 
 
 Grand'mere met all the respects and the gifts with the 
 most enthusiastic compliments to "the noble donor," her 
 "very excellent and most honorable friend, Maitre Lushing- 
 ton," from his " highly obliged and deeply-indebted servi- 
 teur, Genevieve Dupuy." 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE MAN OF THE WORLD AND THE WOMAN OF THE CLOSET. 
 
 Monsieur returned to Sedge Pond even more bland and 
 polite than he had set out, expecting to surpass the hopes 
 and desires of his woman. He had brought a top-knot for 
 Yolande ; and had procured through a compatriot, not with- 
 out trouble and expense, a real live orange-tree, grander than
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY, 101 
 
 any of the Italian pines and. Guernsey lilies of the famous 
 castle gardens, to lend the true French air to Grand'mure's 
 jardiniere. And he had shown a desire to suit the tastes of 
 each, for he presented to Madame a memoir in which the de- 
 tails of the watch of St. Barthelemi and of the galleys were 
 set down with more ghastly precision than ever. To her 
 such details lent a strong relish to life, keener than Graud'- 
 mere's fragrant orange-tree could lend. 
 
 And Monsieur, selfish as he was, did not cease to be mind- 
 ful of the inclinations of his wife, though he received only 
 groans and taunts in return for his little cares. He was by 
 no means deficient in the courtesies and charities of life, but 
 he was inscrutable at once in constitution and conduct, not- 
 withstanding his having been set down as only a shabby, 
 disreputable plotter in the mind of Lady Rolle. He sat in 
 his cabinet and pored over commercial bills and weavers' fig- 
 ures, or he waited on for the mail, overwhelming Mr. Hoad- 
 ley and Mr. Lushington with civility every time they cross- 
 ed his path. Yet somehow the poor chaplain and the sub- 
 stantial butler agreed on one point — they both entertained 
 entire distrust of the sallow foreign gentleman. 
 
 Monsieur, in the intervals of his absorbing preoccupation, 
 played the lover to Grand'mere (who brightened afresh as 
 a French mother brightens at a French son's redeeming ten- 
 derness), treated his wife with bourgeois good-breeding and 
 carelessness, and dealt to Yolande a modified version of the 
 same, perhaps with a shade less deference and a shade more 
 interest. Going out one day he chanced to encounter my 
 lady's coach, and lilting his hat clean off his peruke, he first 
 received in return a haughty stare, and then an imperious 
 wave to the coach door, where he stood and conversed for 
 ten minutes. 
 
 The effect of that ten minutes conversation was soon man- 
 ifested. Monsieur returned to the cottage, went up to \ 0- 
 lande, pinched her cheek, and said to her lightly enough — 
 
 " What is this, my child ? Art thou of years enough to 
 make rules ?" 
 
 lie then announced to Grand'mere and Madame that his 
 daughter was next day to go back to the castle, to the gra- 
 cious protection of mv lad v. 
 
 " Oh, father ! for pity's sake," plead Yolande, so agitated 
 that her words were nearly inarticulate.
 
 162 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 " The affair is settled," he answered her, coolly. ' " Is not 
 the first principle obedience to parents, my well-instructed 
 fifiUe r 
 
 Now, unless in the utmost extremity, Grand'mere shrank 
 from opposing her son. The worldly-minded, cynical, 
 scheming man was so devoted to her, and so fond of her, 
 and Grand'mere's sense of filial duty, like every body else's 
 to whom duty has any meaning, was immoderately high. 
 Grand'mere thought that if she entreated her son he would 
 yield his most fixed determination, his most cherished wish, 
 and even forego his dearest advantage. But just because 
 her influence over Monsieur was unbounded, Grand'mere 
 was loth to exert it even on behalf of her darling. So she 
 endured an agony of doubt while she hung back and let 
 Madame oppose her husband's project. And Madame, who 
 in the moroseness and recklessness of her fierce fanaticism 
 was at last roused to the difference between Yolande's 
 drinking tea and supping at the rectory, and her dining and 
 turning night into day and day into night at the castle, at 
 last spoke her mind : 
 
 " My husband," she said, following Monsieur to the thresh- 
 old of his den, " I must have a word with you. Some 
 words are no more welcome than hail showers in May ; but 
 the peach-trees have to bear the one, and the men ought to 
 bear the other." 
 
 " A bushel of stones and of words, my good Philippine," 
 acquiesced Monsieur, leading his panting wife jauntily 
 through the narrow lane made by chests and packing 
 boxes. 
 
 " Bah ! words arc easily said," protested the incorrigible 
 woman, as she sat in the leather-covered chair. " It is good 
 deeds which show that men are pious and pure, and not the 
 deeds of a worldling, a traitor, my fine Monsieur." 
 
 " If one snivels let him blow his nose," reflected Monsieur, 
 composedly, " but I do not snivel ; and, pardon me, but I am 
 astonished that a woman so wise and so diligent, and whom 
 I have the felicity to name my wife, should break in upon 
 business to tell me an incontestable truth ; but out of place 
 — without doubt out of place." 
 
 So Monsieur calmly assured Madame, as he stood there 
 with one hand in his breast, while with the long yellow fin- 
 gers of the other he rapped on the table.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 1G3 
 
 " You give up all for business," said Madame hotly. 
 " What hours are left you for meditation ?" 
 
 "Perhaps I believe that my Philippine spends enough of 
 time in that to serve both. Perhaps on Huguenot princi- 
 ples, my dear, I decline to render, even to my wife, an ac- 
 count of my soul, as to a father confessor." 
 
 " Father of Yolande !" — Madame apostrophized him in 
 strange dramatic form, not without power in its complete 
 concentrated earnestness — " the castle of the English quality 
 is full of men and women who are bold, corrupt, and 
 wicked !" 
 
 " Mother of Yolande, I know all that," answered Mon- 
 sieur, emphatically ; " but a woman of the haute noblesse 
 has given me her word of honor that not a hair of the child's 
 head shall be injured, and not a spot shall come upon her 
 reputation." 
 
 "I crack my fingers at her ladyship's head, and at her 
 reputation. It is Yolande's faith in God, Monsieur, her im- 
 mortal soul, that I care for." 
 
 But it would have been easier to remove a mountain than 
 to shake Monsieur's philosophy by such blows as these. 
 
 " Yes," answered Monsieur^ with polite acquiescence, 
 " but her faith to be faith must be tested ; her soul if im- 
 mortal can not be hurt by all the adverse forces in the world. 
 You believe that, Madame ? My mother believes it, and 
 you believe too, that the soul is in good keeping. Fl.fi, done ! 
 what can the greatest reprobate of a father — and I assure 
 you that there are fathers worse than I — do against the soul 
 of a daughter ? Do you ask me to teach you the catechism 
 at this time of day ?" 
 
 "You can do nothing, nothing against the soul of the 
 child save cast it into the fires of temptation. The good 
 God be praised for that! But you will not do that, my 
 husband?" wept Madame, with a persistency the more 
 pathetic as it softened and waxed more womanly, but nev- 
 er wavered. 
 
 " To harden it ? Perhaps yes. But I do not deceive you, 
 Philippine, whatever you may think. I am very sorry to 
 refuse you a true request, but I must do it. You oblige me 
 to tell you that you arc an enthusiast, a devotee, like the 
 dear old woman. I acknowledge, I appreciate your good 
 intentions, though you arc unfortunate enough to have a
 
 164 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 sombre humor, my poor, unreasonable Philippine. But 
 never mind. I understand it ; it does not hurt me at all." 
 
 So Monsieur encouraged his wife, not unkindly, in the 
 midst of his discipline and defiance. 
 
 " Not one of you knows a straw of the world in which 
 you live, the actual world of fools, knaves, despots, and 
 slaves," he went on with the calm assurance of superiority. 
 " You exaggerate horribly, and you teach Yolande to exag- 
 gerate. It matters not for you, but it may matter a great 
 deal for her. For the rest, in Catholic families, even the 
 most rigid, where one member has a vocation, that is held 
 to be enough. Must all my women have vocations because 
 we are Huguenots? The grande dame condescends to 
 fifille, and promises to make her fortune. In the mean time 
 fifille is fastidious, impertinent, and ungrateful to a marvel. 
 Ah, well ! flfille must go back, beg my lady's pardon, re-enter 
 her service, and thank me that I say, with the great Henry, 
 ' Paris is worth more than a mass,' to the end of her life." 
 
 " And from beyond the tomb ?" questioned Madame, fix- 
 edly. 
 
 " One can not tell what she will say from beyond the 
 tomb, my dear Madame," Monsieur urged, with the utmost 
 affability. 
 
 " My husband, you are a sceptic, a Turk, a heathen ! — 
 you are no Huguenot, save as regards your miserable poli- 
 tics." 
 
 " I have the honor to salute you, my wife. If you say so, 
 I shall not be so rude as to contradict you ; besides, you 
 ought to know best." 
 
 " What devil has you in his hold, that you should send a 
 young girl, even though she were not yours, to destruction ?" 
 urged Madame, goaded to a kind of despair. 
 
 " I have never seen the destruction ; and, for one thing, 
 I have no wish to find Ji/ille promoted to dress St. Cathe- 
 rine's hair." 
 
 " Oh ! the equivocation," exclaimed Madame, scornfully ; 
 " there is something more than that." 
 
 " There is something more than that," granted Monsieur ; 
 " it is for my well-being and that of my countrymen, for my 
 safety and yours, that I do what is possible, and that Yoland- 
 ette accepts the role of Esther without ceremony. What 
 will you do if on next fair-day the peasants cease shouting
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 165 
 
 at the old women who grin through the horse-collars, and 
 at the dancing bears, and commence to pelt the Shottery 
 Cottage Avith big stones, and fire en face, as the English 
 Jacquerie pelted and fired like demons during the Iteedham 
 elections ?" 
 
 " Let them do so," boasted Madame, proudly. " I have 
 no fear. I give my body with the other bodies to be burn- 
 ed for the good of the souls." 
 
 " Truly !" Monsieur submitted mildly ; " but though it 
 would be the folly of the cross, against which as a mere 
 mortal I say nothing, it would not be at all pleasant, my 
 Philippine, to a mere mortal. Go ! you are an ancient, and 
 I a modern Huguenot, which are quite different things. For 
 me, I think that the Huguenots have already been martyrs' 
 enough, for all the harvest they have reaped, or all the effect 
 they have had on the world, to my knowledge." 
 
 "Monsieur, I forbid my daughter to go to the castle 
 again !" said Madame, vehemently. 
 
 "Madame, I forbid my wife to forbid my child to do 
 what I command. Art thou not my wife ?" asked Monsieur, 
 quietly. 
 
 " Alas ! yes," lamented Madame openly, as incapable of 
 denying a true impeachment as she was of the smallest self- 
 restraint and concealment. " But it is over my body that 
 you will take Yolande from this house." 
 
 " By no means. Your body is my property. I shall not 
 let it lie where it will sustain the least damage; you may 
 depend upon that, my excellent Philippine." 
 
 Madame had done her little to defend her daughter — 
 there was nothing for it now but that Grand'mere should 
 enter the lists and beseech her son's clemency. 
 
 " My son, the little one did not like the castle," whispered 
 the old woman to the mature man hanging over her. 
 
 "The little one knows not what is good for her. You 
 have spoiled her, my mother, as you spoiled your doubtful 
 character of a son, before her." 
 
 " Say you, then, that I have spoiled you, Hubert ?" 
 
 " Yes, but by your supreme goodness, my mother." 
 
 "The little one fears the great wild castle, Hubert. If 
 you could feel her heart, you would discover that at the 
 thought of the castle it beats like the heart of one of my 
 birds'."
 
 1G6 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 "What! a poltroon, not a heroine, descended from the 
 mother and you, as well from myself! How trying ! But 
 Ave have all sprung from the side of Adam, and that, well 
 understood, explains it all. The women love the beatings' 
 of the heart ; one of your birds has said that to my cap. 
 But your heart beats not ; it has too much of the serenity 
 of heaven, good mother. As for that of my Philippine, it 
 beats not neither — not even like a drum or an alarm-clock — 
 no, indeed ! for it bounds and whizzes like a gigantic ma- 
 chine." 
 
 " Do you count it a great affair for you, my son, that the 
 child of my age should leave me and my white hairs, to keep 
 company with the dissolute quality of the godless world ?" 
 • " A great affair," answered Monsieur, very gravely ; 
 "needs ma mh°e to ask that? It insures my success in a 
 large venture ; the quality have as much in their power in 
 trade as in other things. You know I am born bourgeois 
 and tradesman, and I can not quit trade till I quit life. The 
 patronage of Lady Rolle for Yolande, and through Yolande 
 for the family, for the weavers, the emigres, keeps me in 
 shelter, and gives me confidence — it makes the way easy for 
 me." 
 
 "My son," said Grand'mere, softly and sadly, as she turn- 
 ed away her head, " will you let the way be difficult for my 
 sake ?" 
 
 " That suffices, mother, if you will it. Poor little mother, 
 youknow not — But you will it. The darling of Grand'mere 
 stays and marries the Methodist preaching squire, who cer- 
 tainly flings not his handkerchief to her, or the poor dinner- 
 table priest, or else she remains an old maid, to be robbed on 
 all sides, and at last murdered in her bed for her night-cap 
 and the bed-pan, who knows ? Since I came to this En- 
 gland I have seen a servant burned with faggots for the mur- 
 der of her mistress ; but Yolande is the child of Grand'mere, 
 as I am the child of Grand'nicre, and Grand'mere does 
 what she wills with both her children." 
 
 Then Monsieur kissed Grand'mere's hand and left her, and 
 when he was out of her sight he struck his forehead and 
 gnawed his nails in bitter disappointment and sore vexa- 
 tion.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 1G' 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 AUDREY THROCKMORTON. 
 
 Spring had come to Sedge Pond at last. But it was not 
 the spring of biting winds, blinding dust, and stinging hail ; 
 it was the spring that is page and usher to the summer, and 
 is so young, tender, and graceful that the man in his strength 
 who is to follow after is hardly thought of or desired. A 
 spring unerringly acknowledged by all living and even by all 
 inanimate things : by the ring-dove and the lapwing, the hum- 
 ble-bee and the dragon-fly ; in the woods now bursting into 
 a flush of delicate green brushed with fruitful brown ; on the 
 Waaste with yellow trails of golden gorse ; by the water 
 with the white ranunculus budding among the still sere flags 
 and rushes. Grand'rnere was at once like ring-dove and lap- 
 wing, like the hoariest old oak in the castle park and the 
 stiflest old hound in the castle kennel. She had a heart still 
 green, which awoke throbbing obediently to God's signal in 
 the gentle breath of his south wind, as it had done for four- 
 score years. All personal trouble, loss, and infirmity wore 
 put on one side as she smiled back to God's smile on the face 
 of the earth, rejoicing like the angels that in spite of confu- 
 sion, perplexity, sin, suflering, aud death, all was indeed "very 
 good. 
 
 One morning in May, Grand'rnere, by the help of Yolande 
 and Madame Rougeole, had made the tour of her alky, 
 her terrace, her fish-pond, and had reached her arbor. 
 Although her voice was cracked she cried out first, and most 
 sweetly, at the sight of dusky violet and dainty jonquille. 
 
 It was here in the arbor that Lady Rolle had been so lain 
 to sit with her old friend, to make the illusion of a French 
 pastoral complete. To farther this she would not have mind- 
 ed forcing Yolande into the character of Clil<>^, and .Air. 
 Hoadley, or any other hired servant, into that of Corydon, 
 so that she might the better trifie with the seasons, and make 
 believe that March was May, even at the risk of consigning 
 rGrand'inere to the torments of rheumatism, or to a fatal 
 quinsy or pleurisy. My lady would havethe small gratifica-
 
 168 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 tion of beholding and forming one in such a group, even 
 though it should fall to pieces in her hands and its members 
 should perish in the fragments. 
 
 But now May was come, and Grand'mere thought of the 
 great lady pensively, and with many excuses. Of what was 
 frank as the day in Lady Rolle, of her dauntlessncss, her 
 stauclmess, and her kindness, Grand'mere was fully appre- 
 ciative. Sitting framed in periwinkle and ivy, she was,a pict- 
 ure of faith and meekness, at once balmy and beautiful. 
 But she could not help hankering after the troubled spirit of 
 the great lady, and owning to herself that the vindictive ha- 
 tred which Yolande's abandonment of the castle, and the 
 Dupuys' rejection of all overtures from the Rolles, had call- 
 ed forth, would have power to wound her in spite of the 
 deep experiences of her long pilgrimage. Still, Lady Rolle' s 
 sweeping accusations of heartlessness and insolence, her re- 
 vilings and her blazing resentment, would cut Grand'mere to 
 the very heart — that heart which age could neither benumb 
 nor petrify. It Avas only in looking back at the past, with 
 its tribulation ended and its mercy alone undying, that 
 Grand'mere dwelt on the clear, shining hills of Beulah, above 
 the mists of distraction and the thunderbolts of suffering. 
 So she sat and spent a sigh on the great lady, who was im- 
 measurably farther from Madame de Sevigne than was 
 Grand'mere herself, though Grand'mere did not see it. 
 
 Without prelude or preparation, without the roll of her 
 chariot wheels, or the tramp of the horses' hoofs, the honey- 
 suckle, periwinkle, and ivy seemed to part as by the wave of 
 Merlin's wand, and my lady, in her superb train, and jewels, 
 and shepherdess's hat, stood in the opening among the soft 
 shadowy leaves, scorching Grand'mere herself a little, and 
 causing Yolande to shrivel up in a corner in something like 
 an ecstasy of dismay, for my lady's face was more than ever 
 like an illuminated mask, behind which burned pride and 
 passion. But, as if wholly to balk anticipation, Lady Rolle 
 showed no sense of the discord between her and the Dupuys, 
 nor did she display any animosity even to the chief culprit, 
 beyond shaking her finger at her, and crying out: 
 
 " Child, you've been prodigious naughty ! you've almost 
 forced me to have words with my good old jMadame. 
 Mighty line, indeed, when chicks like you are to take alarm, 
 and fly off ina hurry-scurry, without even a note to the old
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 169 
 
 bird whose cluck has offended their delicate ears. But go 
 to roost, or where you will now, child, for I want to speak to 
 Grand'niere's sober ears alone." 
 
 Yolande gladly tripped off to the house, while Lady Rolle 
 sat down beside Graud'mere. She spread herself out on the 
 seat, and put up her fan, but soon forgot it again, and let it 
 drop in her lap in the heat of her conversation : 
 
 " Goody, I've come to tell you my story — ladies of quality 
 have told a vast deal worse ones in far more discreditable 
 quarters before now. I wish to enlighten you as to my in- 
 tentions, that you may no longer thwart me, and stand in a 
 peevish baby's light." 
 
 My lady began at the very beginning. 
 
 " Ah !" she said, " dear Goody, I guess my early days 
 were very different from yours, and I vow the chances and 
 changes I have known would astonish you. I was mother- 
 less as a child in the house of my father, a wild living, bro- 
 ken-down country justice. It was a coarse, rough, riotous 
 life that was led in our house, and our notion of the whole 
 duty of woman was that she should be able to work frills, 
 to keep accounts by an effort of genius, to ride on Dobbin 
 when allowed, and to dance cotillions when possible. One 
 great point in my duty was to keep out of sight and sound 
 of those orgies which left my father so morose and madden- 
 ed in humor that he would not speak to me for mouths at 
 a time, but would go about burning the books in his library, 
 and smashing what furniture was still left him to break. 
 When I was an ignorant and helpless, but not overinnocent 
 child of fifteen — and I was never troubled with dullness or 
 innocence — I was called from spelling out a dream-book, 
 and playing with a litter of puppies in the alcove above the 
 bee-hives in the garden, to the side of my father's chair, 
 where, suffering from gout, he sat like a chained bear. I 
 was to be presented to my future husband, Lord Rolle, who 
 had won me, the best part of the prize, and the inheritance 
 of my father's acres, at the hazard-table the previous night. 
 Ah ! dear Goody, that was scarcely the way to make a lov- 
 ing pair of us. To this day I confess to you I hate the 
 marriage and the bridegroom, not because my lord was old, 
 and had the worst character, as well as the highest posi- 
 tion in the county, not because he was a widower. \vl 
 usage of his first wife, according to rumor, had been shamc- 
 
 H
 
 170 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 ful, but because be had a splay foot, a nose reddened with 
 wine, and was altogether so bloated and ugly, that the chil- 
 dren of Sedge Pond screamed when his muff and night-cap 
 appeared at his coach window." 
 
 Lady Rolle saw that Grand'mere shuddered at her plain 
 speech, and stopped for a moment, expecting her to speak ; 
 but Grand'mere remaining silent, she went on to tell in de- 
 tail of the wicked mockery of her wooing, and the barbar- 
 ous persecution which she had had to undergo, and the fran- 
 tic struggles she had made to free herself. 
 
 " I can tell you I nearly destroyed my fine plumes — cer- 
 tainly I soiled them — in my mad struggle to escape. Only 
 bethink you of a mere chick of a girl going disguised as a 
 farm-servant in a wagon to London, where she had not a 
 friend, and where the chances were that, in place of good 
 Samaritans, she would meet with thieves viler than those 
 that plied their trade between Jerusalem and Jericho. But 
 I could dare that and more, good Grand'mere. I was soon 
 followed and brought back, however; and I was so mad 
 with disappointment and vexation that I stuffed my long 
 hair into my throat to make way with myself, till my father 
 had it clipped as bare as shears would clip it, and would not 
 suffer me even to cover the deformity with. a w r ig. And 
 then, when I was so ashamed by the fright they had made 
 me, and by the cackles of the servants about me, that I 
 would have given in to marrying a man witW a calf's head, 
 or even the ' Cock Lane Ghost,' my dear old archdeacon 
 came, and would have saved me if I had been to be saved. 
 The archdeacon was my dead mother's uncle, who had lived 
 all his life in the midst of his learning and preferment, in 
 what she called the odor of sanctity. He had heard of 
 my miserable plight, and traveled all the way from his re- 
 tired, dignified residence in an episcopal town, to interfere 
 in my behalf." 
 
 And here the sharp, domineering, high-set voice of Lady 
 Rolle involuntarily softened ; for the hardly-used girl, who 
 had lived to have her revenge as a woman, always felt a 
 tender pride when she thought of the good archdeacon's 
 having taken that journey. 
 
 "Ah!" said Grand'mere, "there are priests and priests; 
 he must have been a pearl among the dust. You have had 
 some men like that in England too."
 
 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 171 
 
 "I never met such another as my clear archdeacon," Lady 
 Rolle went on, apparently not noticing Grand'rnere's last 
 remark; "he would have sacrificed half his living for me, 
 I do believe. He pledged himself to Lord Rolle as securi- 
 ty for the sums my father had lost at the gaming-table. He 
 put the two archconspirators against me to shame by his 
 manliness, his generosity, and his patience ; and he carried 
 away his poor prize in triumph, to dwell under the shelter 
 of his honorable roof and his unblemished character." 
 
 With vivid power and clearness of recollection, Lady Rolle 
 desci'ibed to Grand'mere the peaceful life among the Church 
 dignitaries, until she could see the noble cathedral aisles, 
 handed down from other ages, and hear the solemn chant- 
 ing and the sweet singing of the evening hymn — the wom- 
 en at their work-tables, and the men at their side read- 
 ing aloud, and among them, like a branded sheep, the young 
 girl with the bare clipped head. 
 
 " Bat it was not to be, Grand'mere," Lady Rolle inform- 
 ed her listener, with a look of haunting remorse, which was 
 very different from repentance ; " I tired of being good in 
 no time. I was not pretty behaved, either by nature or 
 education ; I believe badness was in my blood, and at last 
 the seven devils so got possession of me, that I began to 
 hate the quiet women and the sober men, and even the 
 very scent of the lavender." 
 
 " Oh !" said Grand'mere, unconsciously, as she sighed 
 and looked, if possible, more pitifully at Lady Rolle. 
 
 " But yes, that is plain truth, I hate the very scent of 
 lavender, for the archdeacon was very fond of lavender, like 
 that in your window ; and I vow a waft of it comes across 
 me strangely to this day. He grew great beds of it under 
 the bow-windows, and it was always associated in my mind 
 with the dullness of the place, which I soon came to hate 
 even more than I hated Lord Rolle and the evil odor of sin 
 and violence. What did I do, quotha? I gave my wor- 
 shipful father to know that I had grown a good girl in the 
 good company I had kept, and was ready to do his bid- 
 ding ! And I let the archdeacon learn what a thankful task 
 it was to attempt the reformation of a sinner. So the old 
 man, mazed, sick, and disappointed, bowed his head which 
 was as white as yours, Grand'mc-rc ; but he could not 
 persist in interfering to prevent a dutiful daughter's obey-
 
 172 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 ing her father when she was so minded. And he did not 
 reproach me, though he would not marry me to my lord, and 
 set his hand to the deed. A bishop of Lady Yarmouth's 
 throning did me that service. Well-a-day, I had my fill of 
 stir and noise, feasting and brawling, and was able to tell 
 how much worse was a brutal tyrant of a husband than a 
 tyrant of a father." 
 
 Whether or not Lord Rolle had beaten his first wife black 
 and blue like a butcher, he had certainly dragged his second 
 wife out of bed by the hair of her head, and had caused 
 her to stand — her teeth chattering with cold, and her limbs 
 ready to sink with weariness — from the dead of the night 
 to the broad day by the fauteuil to which he had recourse 
 when he could not coax or compel sleep, and all out of the 
 sheerest wantonness. And he had grudged my lady her 
 pocket-money, her clothes, and even her food, when his 
 low niggardly fit succeeded to his prodigal one. 
 
 Lord Rolle had insulted his wife equally by his infidelity 
 and his jealousy. 
 
 "And yet, and yet" — my lady suddenly stopped in her 
 vehement recital of unsurpassed wrongs to look Grand'mere 
 in the face with her native sincerity, and to say regretfully 
 — " it was not always heathendom in our house ; we* were 
 not always tormenting each other like savages. My lord, 
 laid down with the small-pox, was crying what would be- 
 come of him, for his very servants would no longer put a 
 cup of cold water into his hand, and I said, 'I will, my 
 lord ; ' and I stayed with him night and day, and risked 
 my life, and what I cared more for than it, Madame, you 
 may believe it — my beauty, which all the fools raved about, 
 and hundreds mobbed my chair to catch a glimpse of. " 
 
 " My lady, you did well — you did well in that, " said 
 Grand'mere ; " and surely that trial and that tendance made 
 a closer bond between you ?" 
 
 "You shall hear," said Lady Rolle. "I was spared the 
 small-pox, and my lord recovered, and begged my jjardon 
 on his bended knees the first time he could go down on 
 them. He swore never to abuse me again, and he kept his 
 word — till the illness was six months out of his head, and I 
 had provoked him beyond measure. Yes, we had our 
 chances, if we had been resolved to be good, and our blood 
 had not been corrupt. Then Rolle was borne, a cross and
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 173 
 
 a plague from his birth — and my lord began to fret and 
 pester me with care for his heir, which came ill off his hand, 
 that had not been overkiud to his former children. Why, 
 what now, Grand'mere? What ails you?" she interjected 
 sharply, for Grand'mere had involuntarily held up her pure, 
 tender hands. "You need not cry out. It was in Paris 
 that I picked up the charming plan your French madames 
 followed — that of banishing their sprigs from their hotels 
 to the cottages of peasant women who were fit to rear them, 
 and who could spare time to look after them, divine Nature 
 being their best mother — that was the jargon — and no more 
 trouble with the brats was given to the mothers in the rank 
 above being mothers, till the children were old enough to 
 be amusing, if that ever happened, or till they wanted to 
 be taught the manners of ladies and gentlemen. Our men 
 sometimes professed to like the little ladies as well as their 
 dogs; but I never heard of them caring for the little lords. 
 And if they left that fancy to the women, we certainly did 
 not take it up, as we did rock crystal vases and cream- 
 ware tea-pots. I protest I found the French fashion the 
 most natural in the world, and I did what I could to bring 
 it into vogue, and to get my lord to endure it." 
 
 " Ah ! how the miserable French dames and you strip- 
 ped yourselves of the crown of your womanhood," said 
 Grand'mere, bearing open and pitying testimony to her op- 
 posite experience. Then she uttered a passionate apostro- 
 phe — " O Lord ! Thou knowest that Thou loadedst me 
 with mercies more than my tongue could tell, and addedst 
 but a few numbered chastisements ; but the blessings which 
 made my tongue sing for joy when I was a young woman, 
 and made me young again when I was grown old and my 
 arms were waxing empty, were when I held my Hubert 
 upon my knees, and when the women said to me as they 
 said to Xaorni of old, ' There is a daughter born to Gene- 
 vieve,' and I took Yolande and laid her in my arms and be- 
 came a nurse to her." 
 
 " Yes, yes," nodded her ladyship in acquiescence, " I 
 said at the first my life had been mighty unlike yours, 
 Grand'mere, but I have known solitude :is well as yon. 
 When Lord Rolle was at last struck with his death-blow, 
 he took me out of the world and shut me up with him in 
 the castle. And I can tell you his death was like a new life
 
 174 TUE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 to me, for it was an unmistakable relief and restoration of 
 liberty and personal safety." 
 
 According to herself, Lady Rolle had made the most of 
 it, after the fashion of King Solomon. She too had reigned 
 like a queen for a season, had said to herself, " Lo, I am 
 come to great estate," and in her goodliness of person, in 
 her wit, rank, and wealth, had given her heart to know 
 wisdom and to know madness and folly. She too had made 
 her great works, builded her houses, got her servants, her 
 men-singers and her women-singers, and was great and in- 
 creased more than all that were before her, and whatsoever 
 her eyes desired she kept not from them, and withheld not 
 her heart from any joy. With the same inevitable result, 
 too, she had looked at last on all the works that her hands 
 had wrought, and on the labor that she had labored to do, 
 and came now and told of it in the spring garden. And 
 her hearer was an aged widow, who had "been oppressed 
 and afflicted, who had been brought up in the wilderness, 
 and was to make her grave among strangers, and who was 
 yet sunning herself in the light of God's'bounty and faith- 
 fulness, and taking pleasure in the daisies, the lambs, and 
 her child Yolande, and thinking pleasantly of the heaven 
 where the river was a water of life, the leaves of the tree 
 for the healing of the nations, and where there was a lamb 
 like as it had been slain. And behold that other woman, 
 forty years younger, who had dwelt among her own peo- 
 ple, with her very sons in their manhood dependent upon 
 her power, and hardly yet past the zenith of her splendor, 
 come out of her way to tell Grand'mere that " all was van- 
 ity and vexation of spirit, and that there was no profit 
 under the sun." 
 
 And the particular vanity under which my lady was now 
 writhing had its root in him who should have been the be- 
 ginning of her strength and the excellency of her dignity, 
 and of whom, in their mutual failure, she spoke with her 
 face growing livid. She complained bitterly of the trifling 
 character of her eldest son. 
 
 " lie is so engrossed in his selfish enjoyments — in his 
 h'orse, his betting, his gambling, and his pictures, that he 
 has novel- had a thought to spare even for his brothers, not 
 to speak of his mother," she said. "He has never had any 
 consideration for me, though I have taken care that he has
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 175 
 
 not been able to afford to quarrel with me. But now he 
 is proceeding to crown all his evil doings, and is laying him- 
 self out maliciously and with deep design to humble me ; 
 and you know, Grand'mere, it is hard to be humbled by 
 one's own son. But you have been happier; you don't 
 knoAV what that is, my good old soul." 
 
 " It is dark in some corners though the sun shines," said 
 Grand'mere, "but it is a heavy burden to the mother's 
 heart to be shut out from the son's." 
 
 " And the worst of it is," Lady Rolle went on, intent on 
 her own grievances, " Rolle will never marry, he is too 
 much of a petit-maUve, a man about town ; he could not 
 suffer the restraint, the clog it would be upon his actions. 
 Though he is selfish, and idle, and sneering, he can enjoy 
 good-fellowship, and is welcome wherever he goes. So 
 you see, good mother, it is the more necessary that George 
 should marry. He would have done it ere now, dangler 
 and shuffler though he be, if I had not stood in the way. 
 You must know that he went and took a fancy to one of 
 the Leicestershire Lowndeses, and would have been off and 
 married her all in a breath, had I not stopped all that very 
 quickly." 
 
 " And do you not believe it is well for the young folks 
 to marry?" asked Grand'mere with all her simple earnest- 
 ness. 
 
 " Ah ! yes surely," said my lady, " but we have learned, 
 among other things from France, that the parents should 
 have some say in that matter. I have an old score against 
 these Lowndeses, and that's not the way I wish to clear it 
 off. The mother of Gatty Lowndes once slandered and in- 
 jured me, and my son shall not marry Gatty Lowndes, even 
 though she was fairer than I was, a greater fortune, and in 
 every other respect a vast deal too good for him. I tell 
 you I would sooner give him over to the bailiffs ; for I 
 might do the minx an injury if she were so silly as to come 
 within my reach. Rolle knew my mind about that too, and 
 yet he had the face to go and be a party to it secretly, in 
 order to punish and affront his own mother. And they 
 have laid a deep scheme. The Lowndeses are at Tun- 
 bridge, and Rolle has taken rooms for himself on tire Parade 
 there, and he wishes George to join him, though in general 
 the one suits the other very much as my cat Fatima suits
 
 176 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 the clog Fluff. But I smelled the rat, and I shall yet get the 
 better of both the wretches ; I shall see them undone at 
 any sacrifice, even if I have to marry George to a ballet- 
 dancer or the daughter of a chimney-sweep." 
 
 "Ah! but surely they will listen to their mother's word 
 at the last, to save her from pain," said Grand'mere, in a 
 hopeful tone. 
 
 " They will listen when they are outwitted and befooled," 
 said Lady Rolle ; " but you must aid me in this, Grand'- 
 mere, and lend me Miss Pendry ; it would be no loss to you 
 to oblige me in this business. George often noticed^ little 
 Dupuy, and in his own lazy way spoke of her approvingly. 
 He was greatly tickled by her running away, and _ even 
 wished that he might catch her and tame her. But if Yo- 
 lande were carried to the Wells — as I would do with your 
 consent — a truce to your thanks — and brought into contact 
 with George in private, and at the rooms, in such a way as 
 would not be the least ungenteel to the girl, George, who 
 is so vain that any body could flatter his vanity to the top 
 of his bent, might be fooled into the rash and reckless step 
 of marrying an obscure girl, if she played her cards well. 
 And I myself would teach the chit how to do this ; while 
 all the time George would judge, as he had every reason, 
 that his mother would be furious at the mesalliance. And 
 I confess to you, Grand'mere, I have always lived in dread 
 of such a marriage by means of a curtain ring, and Hoadley 
 or some hedge priest. The marriage once over, however, 
 Rolle would be got the better of; Gatty Lowndes would 
 be thrown out, and Yolandc Dupuy would be young Mis- 
 tress Rolle— Lady Rolle, in her turn ; and not even her 
 present ladyship's self, however much she might regret her 
 desperate quits, would be able to tamper with them." 
 
 " Madam !" — gasped, Grand'mere, flushing with the scant 
 blood of fourscore, and' hot and trembling even in the fresh 
 spring day among her flowers and leaves — " is thy servant 
 a dog, that she should do such a thing ?" 
 
 "But, my dear old woman, you are clean mistaken," 
 argued Lady Rolle, mystified, with all her quick wit, at the 
 quiver of indignation with which her condescension was 
 received, and not refraining from stamping her foot at such 
 an unexpected obstacle to her mad will. "The child, as 
 one of us, would be completely sheltered from blame and
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 177 
 
 exposure. The fact is, madam, when we can not get rid of 
 her, we must make the best of her. I dare say I should be 
 forced to do as much in the end by Gatty Lowndes, sup- 
 posing I could not shake her off, and if I did not pinch her 
 black and blue, or push her down stairs on our first intro- 
 duction — and I am only a woman — and Rolle himself is one 
 of the first gentlemen in England, and a nobleman. You 
 forget — sure, you forget, Grand'mere." 
 
 " I forget not — I shall never forget, to my shame and 
 sorrow. What enormity have I committed that a woman 
 such as you should ask me to betray the child of the saints 
 and martyrs of the galleys ? The Bourbons are good no- 
 bility, but there are better — my own dear little one, so 
 obedient, loving, and confiding!" cried Grand'mere, tried 
 even beyond her patience, and weeping, and wringing her 
 hands, and shaking as if she had seen a spectre, because she 
 had been taken unawares in the credulity of her faith. 
 
 Lady Rolle stared, gathered up her train, and said — 
 
 "I make you a thousand apologies. I thought that I had 
 heard of such things as manages cle convenance, and all 
 that ; I must have been wrong advised, but, as I said be- 
 fore, I fancied the good fashion, like the getting rid of the 
 bantlings, came from France." 
 
 " Whatever you may have heard, madamc," protested 
 Grand'mere, in sad and solemn earnest, " whatever wrong 
 tnariages de convenance may have to answer for, no honest, 
 righteous man or woman in France, or out of it, has ever 
 employed the parental authority and the right of choice to 
 accomplish a villainous barter and fraud." 
 
 Lady Rolle stared once more with flaming eyes, and 
 flounced with stately step out of the arbor. She never 
 sought Grand'mere, and never spoke to her again ; only once 
 more in all their lives did she address her, and that was in 
 two written lines. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE SEDGE POND SORE THROAT. — Till-: WHITE CRUSADE. 
 
 Thus there was reprieve to Tolande from the craft and 
 force of the offended quality. The Rolles quitted the cas- 
 tle for Tunbridge in coaches and six, chariots, and wagons, 
 
 H2
 
 178 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 exporting, as they had imported, the surfeit of self-indul- 
 gence, the icy glitter of wordly wit, and the furious conten- 
 tions of unbridled wills. Mr. Hoadley alone remained be- 
 hind, like a crow in the mist, to pursue some researches in the 
 castle library for my lord, who was not disinclined to have 
 a reputation for scholarship acquired at second-hand. The 
 chaplain cheered his solitude by cultivating the friendship 
 of the good women of the Shottery Cottage, until Madame 
 herself thawed a little toward the young man, who listened 
 so respectfully to her diatribes. Yolande, in her girlish se- 
 verity, ceased to despise the weak young chaplain, whose 
 weakness was no longer apparent in his fretful murmurs 
 against his patrons and his slavish submission to them. 
 
 Dolly and Milly Rolle felt it a dreadful change to be 
 thrown back on their old, idle home-life at the rectory, Lady 
 Rolle not having invited either of them, as they had fondly 
 hoped, to pass the season with her at the Wells and in town. 
 And though luckily no little bird whispered to their caps 
 the proposal which had so enraged Grand'ruere, the great 
 lady, while she could not offend, had grievously disappoint- 
 ed them. 
 
 In their extreme ennui, the rectory girls were so ill-off 
 for social intercourse, that they set about taking up Yo- 
 lande and the old Madame at the Shottery Cottage again. 
 They were the more led to this perhaps that Mr. Hordley 
 had taken them up, though he hardly ever came to the 
 rectory, and theu only to sit with their papa in his study, 
 and to go back like a whining school-boy to his tasks. Then 
 their papa would come into the parlor, and say to Madam, 
 their mother, in their hearing — 
 
 "My life, what a contrast there is between this foolish 
 young jackanapes and our manly Philip ! Was that one of 
 the reasons of the boy's going so soon ? AVas he early ripe, 
 and needed no growing old ?" 
 
 And Madam would wipe her eyes, and answer meek- 
 ly- 
 
 " His Father knows best." 
 
 But whining school-boy and foolish jackanapes though he 
 was, Mr. Hoadley's face was worth seeing, when all the fine 
 folk were gone, and there was no other face to see. Mr. 
 Hoadley was always least lackadaisical, and most sensible 
 and spirited when beside Grand'mere, though Grand'mere's
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 179 
 
 presence involved that of Yolande, to whom the crack-brain- 
 ed fellow affected to pay a sort of moon-struck, distant court, 
 because he wanted a subject for his poor verses. The 
 girls could see that with half an eye ; and little Dupuy (the 
 rectory girls had borrowed the term, along with many a 
 worse trick, from the castle) was a simpleton and a hypo- 
 crite to permit it. 
 
 In one respect Yolande would not allow herself to be 
 taken up by Dolly and Milly again; but as Grand'mere 
 said — 
 
 " What will you ? While we are in the world we must 
 have neighbors, and we must love our neighbors and be 
 at peace with them, and make the best of them, covering 
 over their faults, condoning their offenses, and accepting 
 their advances when they choose to make them — that is, in 
 so far as integrity and self-respect permit, for we may not 
 attempt the destructive impossibility of paying equal regard 
 to truth and falsehood, and loving with the same tepid, in- 
 discriminating love, friends real and counterfeit, indiffer- 
 ent strangers and actual foes. But they and we must 
 struggle to live together in the faint reflection of the divine 
 benevolence." 
 
 No one was so quick to recognize this truth as Grand'- 
 mere. She therefore received and welcomed back the pas- 
 tor's daughters, though she was not blind to their fickleness 
 and did not think the ignorant, conceited, flippant girls im- 
 proved by their temporary association with the Eolle fam- 
 ily. Where would be the chance of the improvement of 
 such as they, if the old, the wise, the better-gifted and 
 taught, all took the pet at them, and cast off' the poor, 
 crawling, fluttering butterflies on the least provocation, and 
 did not see and acknowledge in them, as in every other hu- 
 man being, the glorious promise of infinitely better and no- 
 bler things — a transformation such as the grub to the butter- 
 fly is but poor in comparison with? 
 
 The summer was hot, and from the slow river and the 
 water standing in more than one slimy pond on the borders 
 of the Waiiste, a yellow mist rose and hovered over the vil- 
 lage. Grand'mere remarked it, and pointed it out gravely 
 to Yolande. 
 
 "It is the incense of the devil, which ascends :is from the 
 sulphur and brimstone wrecks of whole burnt-offerings of
 
 180 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 sloth and sin. Watch and pray, my little one, that it may 
 be changed into the sweet savor of God, which comes from 
 heroic souls going down into the depths to save their breth- 
 ren." 
 
 The rector had seen it before, and knew it too well. He 
 therefore made preparations for it by arranging to send 
 away his womenkind to cousins of his on the east coast ; on 
 learning which arrangement Dolly and Milly literally jump- 
 ed for joy. Of what good were his timid, formal Madam, 
 and his silly lasses in a calamity? They could only hang 
 upon him and harass him. 
 
 Old Caleb Gage, too, had the sign pointed out to him by 
 his friend the doctor in Reedham, and had his orphanage 
 and his infirmary set in order. He added to his prayers 
 every night an extra petition — that men might learn wisdom 
 from chastisement, and that laborers might be sent for that 
 harvest which grows white in a day — that harvest of life-in- 
 death which is unspeakably precious and unspeakably awful 
 in its supernatural growth and perfection. All the while the 
 old squire talked more to young Caleb than he had ever done 
 before, of the first Caleb Gage, who had driven the earliest 
 plough into the wide Waaste, which then extended from 
 Sedge Pond to Reedham, and how men had the wilderness 
 earth given them to make it into a great garden of Eden. 
 Young Caleb, he urged, should do this part of the great com- 
 mission ; but he would at once set about raising money by 
 mortgage for the work. lie took shame to himself that he 
 had always postponed the draining, trenching, quarrying, 
 and building operations on the estate till the time when his 
 son should take possession of it. But, God helping him, by 
 the next fall the bringing in of the land should be begun. 
 
 Now that the English summer was in its prime, and so 
 far admitted indulgence in southern habits, Grand'mere 
 loved best to take her meals in the open air. The rude vil- 
 lagers, spying through the garden-gate, or over the wall, 
 where the branches of a spreading mulberry-tree screened 
 them from the party within, could see a table set in the cot- 
 tage porch, or in the arbor where cream-colored roses, in 
 clusters, drooping with their own weight, had taken the 
 place of the cold, blue-grey, scentless periwinkles. There 
 were bronzed, shining beetles and earwigs in the roses, but 
 Grand'mere could never dissever these insects from the rest
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 181 
 
 of God's creatures, and so she only brushed them softly 
 away while Dolly and Milly screeched at the sight of them, 
 and stamped the lives out of them with their high-heeled 
 shoes. When it was any body's fete — and Grand'mere held 
 that every body must have a fete, and that they and their 
 friends were bound to celebrate it — Mr. Hoadlcy would have 
 his flageolet, on which he could play fairly, and the girls 
 would sing by turns with their simple skill, and Grand'mere 
 would be as gay as a girl of twenty. When it was Grand'- 
 mere's own fete, Monsieur joined for once in the gayety, 
 and uncorked the Medoc ; and Madame, sombre under cen- 
 turies of party spirit and sectarian wrong, fried the chickens 
 and smipoudrait the strawberries, and looked on without a 
 particle of offense at the little Mother's happiness ; while 
 big Prie waited stumpily, in a wonderful neckerchief and 
 hood, in token that she was in the open air, and was a Brit- 
 ish islander. 
 
 But one day in June the weather was so oppressive, that 
 Grand'mere and her children were forced to abide languid- 
 ly in the darkest corners of the parlor, though the villagers 
 of Sedge Pond, condemned to work for their daily bread, 
 were out making hay in the meadows by the river, as they 
 had been all the week. She had lamented the obligation of 
 the hay-making twenty times that day, and, taking the ex- 
 posure of the people to heart, had been heavy over it in a 
 way not customary with her. Yolande was almost thankful 
 that Grand'mere must have forgotten the poor laborers, 
 when the old woman broke a pause by exclaiming ab- 
 ruptly— 
 
 " Oh, that we had the thunder, though the peals split the 
 stones, and the showers, though it rained horned cattle." 
 
 " La ! how can you wish such horrid things ?" protested 
 Dolly Rollc ; "Milly and me are main frightened at thun- 
 der ; we should go into fits at the first crack." 
 
 " Oh,jioja!" Grand'mere put her off a little impatiently, 
 " I should engage to bring you out of them again. I should 
 bear all your maladies on the thumb — at least, I hope so, my 
 dears. If Ave had the thunder and the showers, they might 
 not be too late to cool and wash the reeking, engrained 
 earth." 
 
 " Why, madam, wherc's the reek and the engrainedness?" 
 demanded the Holies, pouting ; " we never thought to hear
 
 182 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 you call the place such shocking bad names as it puts us in 
 a twitter to hear. The village smells, as it does in summer 
 mostly, but what of that ?" 
 
 " Pho ! pho ! my good lady, your imagination or your 
 nerves are running away with you," even Mr. Hoadley remon- 
 strated. " Haven't you felt heat before, and what it breeds 
 in a sluttish village ? I own I am too much of a slave to 
 my nose, but I could not quite reconcile myself to wishing 
 for a thunder-storm, not even though we have to thank the 
 great Mr. Pope for one incident in a storm which is very 
 pretty," he ended, with a profound sigh, wasted like his al- 
 lusion, which nobody present comprehended. 
 
 " I tell you what is worse than the heat or even than the 
 thunder," announced Milly Rolle, sapiently ; " it is these 
 poor folks sending tor our papa every time they are taken 
 with their infectious disorders, as if there was no chance of 
 his being taken with them, and every other body at the 
 rectory, and no end to the pother. I declare I think it is 
 monstrous silly and unkind in them, after all our papa has 
 done for them, and the doles which we dispense at Christmas 
 and at Easter, though they are common villagers and do 
 not know how to behave genteel to us. What do you say, 
 Mr. Hoadley ? — would you read prayers to them ?" 
 
 " I would if I were asked, miss," answered the young 
 man, coloring and hesitating for a moment, but speaking at 
 last with decision, and in forgetfulness of the great Mr. Pope 
 and his moving incident. 
 
 " To the hangman with being asked !" cried «Grand'ruere, 
 excitedly; "who suffers in the village? What is the mal- 
 ady ?" 
 
 "How should we know?" Dolly and Milly Rolle thus 
 excused themselves in a breath from any farther acquaint- 
 ance with disagreeable facts. " We'd have the dumps in 
 no time if we took up our heads with whoever was laid 
 down. Besides, we're to set out this day se'ennight ; we 
 are up to our eyes in business, and have only come out for 
 an airing. Yes, indeed, Grand'mere, you may believe us or 
 not, but we've to spur on Patty Brierley to finish our tam- 
 bored gowns in time. We've to keep our mother in mind 
 of all the clothes we must take with us, and we've to ride 
 with Black Jasper to Reedham for what the packman forgot 
 at his last call. It was only by chance that we learned that
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 183 
 
 there had been as good as three or four messages for our 
 papa to attend sick-beds yesterday, and Doll was on the 
 steps just before we came out, and heard another delivered 
 about Mother Pott, who had been brought in from the hay- 
 cocks with her throat as bad and her head as lischt as the 
 rest. 
 
 "Ah !" said Grand'inere, " the thief discovers himself, and 
 he is an old enemy ;" and she named an epidemic which was 
 then called putrid fever, that broke out in England toward 
 the close of the last century, and mowed down whole fam- 
 ilies of the nobility as well as of their vilely-housed farm- 
 laborers. " \Ve must do what we can to arrest the terrible 
 thief. I have met him before, and struggled to take his 
 booty from him — alas! not always with success. Now who 
 is with me to cry ' stop thief,' and do what the good God 
 wills to snatch from the villain the living prey which, ah ! 
 the ?nisere, is delivered gagged and bound into his greedy 
 clutches?" 
 
 At that moment the dismal sound of the passing bell stole 
 out with a sullen clangor on the thick and loaded air. The 
 Rolles fell back with their fingers in their ears, but before 
 the first dull vibration had ceased, " I'm with you, Grand'- 
 mere," said Yolande,with a swelling breast and shining eyes. 
 
 " Oh ! dear, what has come to you Dupuys ?" complained 
 the Rolles, in shrill discomfiture and exasperation. " You 
 don't mean to tell us that you are so crazy as to wait upon 
 the poor bodies that are sick ? A fig for them, if that is to 
 be the way of it, for we can't come here again for any more 
 confabs if you go near stricken persons, Ave promise you 
 that; and little Dupuy, who gives herself the airs of a prin- 
 cess or a nun, will never make so bold, and be so free. We 
 were told the people themselves shut the doors in each 
 other's faces, and won't lend a hand to nurse the living or 
 bury the dead. And you are not clergy — no, nor even doc- 
 tors." 
 
 "Pardon," said Grand'inere, rising to the occasion, and 
 speaking quite cheerily, " every woman finds herself a little 
 of the ono and a little of the other so soon as she is tried, or 
 she is no true woman and handmaid of the Great Physician 
 and Heavenly Priest. Besides, we have had the gift of the 
 knowledge of herbs in our family since Bernardo Komilly 
 stanched the wounds of the Conde. Have I never told
 
 184 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 you that ? If the rest of the village shut the door, the 
 better reason that I an old woman should open and enter 
 where fear and pain are all the company. De grace, they will 
 not keep me out now." 
 
 " Madame," said Mr. Hoadley, in great excitement, " I 
 have not spoken, but I trust that you do not doubt I am 
 your servant, to go on whatever errand you like to send me 
 among the poor. If it become your gown, all the more 
 must it become my cloth. I cry Heaven's mercy and yours 
 that I have not seen it so before, and I am thankful that my 
 patrons are not here to forbid me doing my duty when my 
 eyes are open. But, my dear old Madame, you are not so 
 reckless as to run so frightful a risk as permit another and 
 altogether unsuitable attendant — though the Bible has rec- 
 ords of ministering angels," ended the chaplain, hurriedly, 
 with a signifiant glance at Yolande, who accepted the impli- 
 cation and repudiated the objection with the coolest indif- 
 ference, if not the liveliest indignation. 
 
 "Monsieur, Grand'mere and I never part. If there is a 
 task which she, old and feeble as she is, can undertake, why 
 should I, who am young and strong, not be capable of it ? 
 If the question is one of worthiness and unworthiness, I com- 
 prehend Monsieur ; but if not, I do not comprehend at all. 
 But, young girl as I am, Mr. Hoadley, Grand'mere thinks 
 me neither too bad nor too foolish to work with her in 
 nursing the sick and serving God, who will pardon my un- 
 worthiness, and teach and help my weakness and folly." 
 
 Poor Mr. Hoadley was confounded. 
 
 But Grand'mere was not so hard upon Mr. Hoadley and 
 his motives ; her days of girlish severity aud sauciness had 
 long been past, yet she, too, was against him. 
 
 " My friend, you do not know the French. Vincent de 
 Paul introduced another fashion among us an age ago. 
 There are girls by hundreds no older than Yolande among 
 the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of Mercy. The peas- 
 ants began to shame the nobles. We are only bourgeoisie, 
 but the nobles shamed the peasants and us by forming the 
 beguines of Bruxelles ; and there is many a noble girl in 
 Vincent de Paul's blessed family at this hour. Assuredly, 
 though we are Huguenots, and sing each year on the anni- 
 versary of the Revocation, ' By Babel's streams we sat and 
 wept,' yet we are not lost to charity, and we fear not for our
 
 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 185 
 
 daughters, though their vows are silent and secret, and 
 known only to themselves and their God. Go ! there is 
 nothing to fear. Can we best keep off the wolf by flying 
 from him, or by going to meet him, hatchet in hand? As 
 for the contagion and Jhe infection, I know them not, save 
 as being still the finger and the breath of the living God 
 that only reach as he wills. No journeys, no closed doors 
 and bolted windows, will chase them away any more than 
 they will chase away death. Truly, we want swift feet and 
 iron barriers to escape from the King of Terrors, my son ; 
 and I have never heard that he strikes the sister, the doctor, 
 or the priest more than another. When he does," added 
 Grand'mere, quailing a little, not for herself, but as she felt 
 the contact of Yolande's warm young hand with her own 
 chill and withered one, " some men and women ought to 
 be the bravest of the brave ; some soldiers ought to lead the 
 van, and God be praised, the French women are brave. 
 Have you not heard of our heroic cantini&res? Neverthe- 
 less, I shall not take my young recruit into the battle with- 
 out her father's and mother's consent." 
 
 Madame came forward on the spot. She did not know 
 what the bruit was about, or why Grand'mere should act 
 the good marquise or baronne to the strange country peo- 
 ple. But without doubt, if she chose to do so, Yolancle 
 should help her. She should die with vexation and shame 
 at the idea of sparing a child of hers when the old mother 
 made the venture. As to danger and to death, they were 
 old comrades of the Huguenots, who knew what heavenly 
 treasures and indestructible jewels to snatch from them. 
 
 "Thou good Philippine!'' exclaimed Grand'mere, with 
 .enthusiasm. "She has hands like that! our Philippine. 
 She can make a salad; she can make a cataplasme! We 
 are betes beside her when she throws her sonl into the oil- 
 cruet, the camomile bouquet." 
 
 But no ; Madame's Christian charity was only for Grand'- 
 mere and the Huguenots: it began and ended with them, 
 and by no means "extended to perfidious strangers, English 
 and Lutheran. All the worse for Madame, since from this 
 time when she sent off Grand'mere ami Yolande on their 
 universal mission, and refused to have part or lot in the mat- 
 ter, the sternness and narrowness of her galled spirit fetter- 
 ed and cramped her tenfold.
 
 186 THE HUGUENOT FAMTLY. 
 
 " Hey-day !" Dolly aud Milly had been forced to utter, in 
 final protest ; " you're all mad together at the Shottery Cot- 
 tage this afternoon — as mad as the Methodies and the Bed- 
 lamites. And since Parson Hoadley is smitten, we can not 
 be too glad that we're a-going, lest we should be the next ; 
 though we were never used to vagaries, nor brought up to 
 them." 
 
 And thus Grand'mere at last found an entrance to the 
 people, and Madame Rougeole once more tapped her way, 
 and rested confidingly by sick-beds. Mother Pott was the 
 first whom she visited. She found the door shut and the 
 window stuffed with rags. In the stifling darkness the wom- 
 an's children, already ranged in a ragged row, were wailing 
 like mourners hired for a wake. They had a dim notion of 
 comforting and paying respect to their poor mother, who 
 had toiled for them like a beast of burden, and borne them 
 on her rough but sound and gallant heart, even when she 
 " melled" them and " flyted" over them. Deb was clanking 
 about in her haymaker's hat and clogs, the last put on for 
 the house-floor, as " t'were aye weet a bit, unless the weath- 
 er were main dry for a long spell ;" and telling the little 
 ones in solemn seriousness, and with a rude pathos, to sob 
 away, and not bide to seek t'supper, for a craving stomach 
 were one thing and an orphant hap-another. Sure they 'ud 
 get more suppers if they tramped and begged for them ; 
 but no tramping, and no begging, and no working would 
 get them more mothers. A middle-aged, weak-minded 
 neighbor, as uncouth as Deborah, was holding down Mother 
 Pott's gaunt arms, which were instinctively struggling to 
 tear off the old clothes heaped upon her, and to raise her 
 tossing head and swollen purple face, that she might not be 
 suffocated in the first stage of her disease. 
 
 "Don't'ee, now, don't'ee," the neighbor was enjoining 
 plainly, " or a'll have to slap and punch'ee. There's nought 
 but the sweat for'ee. What ud'ee hold up t'heed like a hen 
 going to drink for? Heed mini be happed, t'must, lass. 
 Nobut t'hour's come, Mother Pott, and ee'll gang, but a'd 
 have'ee to gang peaceably, and not like an ill-doer. Ee's 
 been nash all thy life, 'ooman ; 'ee might take a telling in 
 the end, and show 'ee can behave sen afore the childrer i' t' 
 deed-thraw." 
 
 Deb made such an outcry when she saw Grand'mere, with
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 187 
 
 Yolande at her back, that even the sick woman's ears, filled 
 by the wild music of delirium, were pierced by the sound, 
 and she desisted from her frantic movements for a moment, 
 and turned her glaring eyes toward the door. 
 
 Had it not been that Mr. Hoadley followed Grand'mere 
 and Yolande, and that Deb recognized him, and bobbed her 
 courtesy to him as being one of the gentlefolks of the castle, 
 she would have tried with all her might — and she had the 
 making of an Amazon in her — to drive out Grand'mere by 
 force. As it was, she stood before the bed, and threw up 
 her lank girlish arms in a desperate appeal. 
 
 " Mother, mother, it's the French quean, with her plots 
 and cantrips. She be come for me as soon as you're laid 
 down. Her's a witch, mother, and her's laid'ee down, 
 m'appen, 'cause, if 'ee called me a burdock, and drubbed me, 
 'ee kept a roof aboon my heed and a bite in my mouth, and 
 brought me up honest." 
 
 Deborah Pott had reason to remember that speech long 
 afterward. 
 
 Mother Pott's nurse, Sukey Frew, on hearing this, fled, 
 with her teeth chattering in her head, from the contamina- 
 tion of foreigners and witchcraft combined. 
 
 But Mother Pott herself was unable to comprehend the 
 situation, or to do more than raise her head with a jerk, and 
 gabble hoarsely of Deb's being " a burdock and a tomboy, 
 but feether's child, and a ud do a's dooty by her, though t' 
 little ones ud clem for it." 
 
 " Wench !" — Mr. Hoadley would have put aside Deb in- 
 dignantly — " do you not know your betters, when Madame, 
 heaven preserve her ! has done you the grace to come here 
 at the risk of her life ?" 
 
 But Grand'mere interrupted him, beseeching, apologizing, 
 and explaining, as though it had been her who received the 
 grace. 
 
 "My poor girl, will you not permit me to aid you? I 
 ask your pardon that I intrude ; I would never have done 
 it, but for the extremity. Look you, I can go and leave you 
 to suffer — misericonlt , how you sutler! — if you will, which 
 is your right. I will torment you no more by my Btrange 
 looks and ways, unless you say, 'Stay, my old 'Madame,' 
 when once I have relieved the sick. But yes, 1 can ease if 
 I can not cure, and I may save others. I pray you, Deborah,
 
 ] 88 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 allow me at least, before I go, to open the window and door, 
 and give the sick a breath of air. It is God's air, my child, 
 which he made for us all, for high and low, and for all the 
 beasts of the field, great and small, that you know and love. 
 I am sure of that. Then why have you such fear of the good 
 air — the sweet air ? The beasts of the field, do they fear it ? 
 No, they are wiser — taught by God their Father alone — 
 they drink it in, they rejoice in it." 
 
 Poor Deb stared, listened, and gave up all active opposi- 
 tion, looking like one spell-bound and fascinated. 
 
 " Yes, since Monsieur has held open the door and Yolande 
 unfastened the window," continued Grand'mere, striking 
 when the iron was hot, " the poor woman breathes more 
 softly — rests tranquil by comparison. Have pity upon her ; 
 she had pity on you even in seeking to save you from us, 
 whom she knew not — whom she mistook. But judge for 
 yourself, Deborah ; you are not a little child — you are a big 
 girl ; have we not returned good for evil ? No, we do not 
 hurt any one if we can help it ; we only heal, if we can, as 
 you would do in your turn, my girl. Is it not so ? Mon- 
 sieur the pastor is with us ; he believes us, and that would 
 re-assure mother if she could hear and see. We will find a 
 pillow for her, and prop up her head. Make one of thine 
 arm, meantime, my child, until we can find another. The 
 arm is not full fleshed, but it is firm, and round, and soft 
 as the down compared with the wooden block ; the unworn 
 young arm is a good rest for the worn old head. Now, we 
 will try if she can swallow this balsam ; she was in the hay- 
 field so recently as this sun-rise, poor diligent one, and, God 
 willing, she may hear and see again." 
 
 But Mother Pott never heard and saw clearly in this 
 world again ; never understood distinctly, or knew any 
 thing farther than that her mortal anguish was alleviated, in 
 the degree in which wisdom and mercy could alleviate it. 
 By a twist of the mind which was not without its moral 
 beauty, she attributed all the poor solaces so unexpected 
 and unfamiliar to her, to her step-daughter, and regarded 
 them as the recompense, not only of her just dealing toward 
 the girl, but of the rating which she had administered to her 
 heavy handful. 
 
 " A's made a woman of 'ec, Deb," was her last broken 
 murmur ; " and now, sin'ee can make a syllabus lik© the
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 189 
 
 mistress at the hale-'ouse, and read like pearson, ye'll hang 
 on a's hands no longer ; ee's be no more a burdock, lass, but 
 a new ha'penny, stamped to be changed. A's miss you, Deb, 
 a and the childer." 
 
 Five orphans were transmitted at once to the Mall or- 
 phanage ; but Grand'mere took the stunned and sorrow-lad- 
 en Deborah home to Priscille, and braved and conquered 
 the righteous wrath of that sovereign in her own domain at 
 the unsightly importation. 
 
 " Old Madame," began Priscille, " I've served you and the 
 family this score of years, the same as if I were all straight, 
 and you had not been furrin. I've nought to say against the 
 furrin ways ; leastways, I've put up with them ; but to have 
 a young hussy and slut brought under my nose, and into 
 my very kitchen, that I can't and won't abide." 
 
 " Prie, Prie, the Dord Jesus Christ had not where to lay 
 his head once in his life, and as this poor child is like him in 
 that respect, know you not that when you take her in you 
 take Him ? He said it Himself. Oh ! the privilege, the 
 blessing to Shottery Cottage, to me, and to you, big 
 Prie !" 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 grand'mere and yolande gain allies in the crusade, 
 which turns out to be for the deliverance of souls 
 as well as bodies. 
 
 Mr. Hoadley, having once joined the crusade to please 
 Grand'mere and Yolande, remained on his own account, 
 finding it such a school of humanity and divinity as he had 
 never dreamed of in his University course, or in his chaplain's 
 service at the castle. The poetaster now got his first expe- 
 rience of nature in the rough, and the amateur priest first 
 saw and sympathized with the real woes and wants of the 
 poor. These woes and wants suggested the existence of a 
 gulf which startled and appalled the young man, and almost 
 drove him out of the field with despair at the thought of 
 how long he had been a consenting party to them by his 
 selfish obliviousness and sloth. He blamed himself for nev- 
 er having lifted up a finger to protest against them or to 
 lighten them, while all the time he was crying out and be-
 
 190 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 moaning himself for his patrons' tyranny, corruption, and 
 worldliness. 
 
 While the quality at the Wells or in town were attitu- 
 dinizing, swearing, squabbling, drinking, and gambling their 
 lives away, such villages as Sedge Pond were wallowing in 
 the dregs of the quality's vices, and committing brutalities 
 which would have shamed the heathen. The difference be- 
 tween the practices of the two classes was as Bartholomew 
 Fair to Ranelagh. With the one there were matches at 
 single-stick, wrestling, and'boxing, with gouging out of eyes 
 into the bargain ; with the other, there were studies of dress 
 and cookery, exchanges of pistol-shots and sword play. 
 
 Sedge Pond was rural, but it was the reverse of innocent; 
 its rurality indeed only seemed to add grossness to its guilt. 
 When, therefore, the summer scourge was laid on the inhab- 
 itants, pricked to the heart by remorse and dread of the hell 
 of which they had the foretaste within them, they took to 
 frenzied confession and abject submission. Mr. Hoadlcy 
 was tempted to think that the catalogue of their misdeeds 
 went near to exhausting the Newgate Calendar. It almost 
 turned him sick with disgust and aversion to hear a hoary 
 sinner proclaiming that in his youth he had committed 
 highway robbery for which another man had swung in 
 chains, and that he had gone and looked on at the execution. 
 There were sons who had struck mothers in their blind 
 fury ; fathers who had turned out daughters into the dark- 
 ness of night. There were brothers who had not ex- 
 changed friendly words for scores of years, but had lived 
 railing at and reviling each other ; while there were sisters 
 who combined to plunder fathers and mothers on their 
 death-beds, and to defraud nephews and neices while their 
 natural protectors were laid in their coffins. There were 
 men who had not slept sober in other men's remembrance, 
 and women who went to the ale-house tap as regularly as 
 the horses went to the watering trough. A wild, dissolute 
 set of country people, of whom the purer-living were nar- 
 row and griping as a vice and hard as a stone. The rector 
 had done his best for them. He had shown them the life 
 of a God-fearing, righteous, stern man, so that instead of 
 mocking and scoffing at it, they respected and shrunk away 
 from it. lie had rescued and trained the most of those who 
 stood upright, but there was a link wanting between him
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 191 
 
 and the reprobates ; and this Avant lay, not so much in the 
 present, perhaps, as in the past ; but it was in the past that 
 the grooves had been fitted in, on which the wheels of the 
 pastor's and people's lives ran, and from which it was hard 
 to dislodge them. 
 
 These were the men and women among whom Grand'- 
 mere and Yolande went day after day, not only without 
 fear, but without loathing. To the pure all things are pure, 
 and these evangelists and ministrants bore about with them 
 charmed natures as well as charmed lives. 
 
 "How can you do it, Madame?" cried Mr. Hoadley, 
 aghast at the inhumanity, brutishness, and villainy which 
 he found had been festering and smoldering beneath his 
 steps ; " how can you do it, Madame?" he cried, as Grand'- 
 mere moistened the lips of a man whose wife had fled out of 
 ear-shot of his blasphemies, while Yolande bathed the bra- 
 zen, branded brow of a mother, but no wife, and received 
 into her arms an outcast of a child. 
 
 " What is it, my pastor ? I have not gone and preached 
 to the spirits that are in prison ; yet it is written that my 
 Master and yours did this. What are these but lost sheep, 
 fallen, soiled, covered with bruises and wounds ? And what 
 am I, my Monsieur, save a wandering sheep whom the Good 
 Shepherd took pity upon and brought back into the fold ? 
 There is but one heart and one brain in humanity, if you 
 knew it. You will know it, my poor friend, when your own 
 heart is rent and broken, and pierced and wrung, and when 
 it can only bleed inwardly for itself, while outwardly it wipes 
 its own tears off the cheeks of others, and binds up its ach- 
 ing wounds in the stabs and gashes which are all around 
 it." 
 
 "And has she, too, suffered so much ?" inquired Mr. Hoad- 
 ley, with a gape of bewilderment, as he pointed to Yolande. 
 
 "Certainly no," Grand'mere corrected him. "She will 
 suffer yet, poor little one, for it is her destiny. In waiting 
 she has great faith ; and know you not, Monsieur, that faith 
 removes mountains ?" 
 
 When old Caleb Gage, called as promptly by the tolling 
 of the death-bell at Sedge Pond as a soldier by the bugle 
 call, came across from the Mall, Mr. Hoadley witnessed 
 another marvel. The old Methodist entered in among these 
 groaning, writhing, cursing men and women, and drew aside
 
 192 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 the curtain which divided them, not from hell, but from 
 heaven. He showed them the Prince of Life, with the marks 
 of his cross upon Him, bending down from the Father's right 
 hand, as if saying, "Look up, I have suffered and travailed 
 for you ; and now both the work and the warfare is finish- 
 ed. There is nothing left for you to do but to look up. 
 Only believe, and your pains and sorrows and evil behavior 
 are all past and done with. There remain for you but the 
 Father's kiss, the best robe, the ring for your hand, and the 
 shoes for your feet, for to-day you shall be with me in 
 Paradise." 
 
 Caleb Gage knew no other gospel than that gospel of 
 freest, fullest salvation. He had announced it along with 
 Mr. Charles Wesley as freely and fully at the foot of the 
 gallows-tree at Tyburn as elsewhere. And when the con- 
 demned criminals passed one after the other to death, with 
 strange meltings of their hardness and hope dawning in 
 their faces, he, too, had counted the hours he had spent with 
 them as among the happiest, most glorious hours of his life. 
 
 Mr. Hoadley, in after days, declared solemnly that he had 
 seen miracles of ffrace wrought at this time. Before the 
 persuasions and the wrestlings in prayer of Grand'mere, and 
 the perfect assurance of Caleb Gage, he had seen the chief 
 of sinners receive the Gospel like little children ; the igno- 
 rant and the out-of-the-way drink in the glad tidings ; the 
 scales fall off eyes long spiritually blind ; the dead heart and 
 conscience come back to life in a day — in an hour. He had 
 seen faces of every type of coarseness and forbidding repul- 
 siveness change in the twinkling of an eye, and wear traits 
 of conrpunction, gratitude, and devotion, which they had nev- 
 er worn before — at least, not since they had rested on moth- 
 ers' bosoms or fathers' knees. Mouths which had foamed 
 forth profanity and obscenity when he first came within 
 reach, now poured forth praises of God and blessings of men. 
 And although not all of those to whom Grand'mere and Ca- 
 leb Gage came responded to the call — some being steeped in 
 grudging stupidity, rancor, and despair to the last — yet 
 enough did so for Mr. Hoadley to have witnessed the aw- 
 fully glorious harvest of life-in-dcath. 
 
 Grand'mere, old Squire Gage, and even Yolandc took the 
 scenes to a certain extent as matters of course — rejoicing or 
 sorrowful as they were moved, but never thunderstruck or
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 193 
 
 shaken to the centre of their being. But on Mr. Hoadley 
 the effect was remarkable. He beheld, wondered, doubted, 
 questioned, and believed. At last came an occasion when he 
 went home and shut himself up in his room in the castle for 
 hours, and was found by a servant faint and bathed in sweat, 
 as though he had recovered from a trance, but with his face 
 bright and shining; and though he forbade the servant to 
 speak of it, he never denied that he had returned to the 
 world a new man. He went that moment, and stood by one 
 of the dying-beds which Mr. Gage could not attend ; he held 
 up the cross which another had carried, and the crown im- 
 mortal aud eternal which another wore. Thus he shed light 
 into the deep gloom of a dark soul, and sped it to a realm of 
 light. 
 
 " There is nothing worth but the saving of souls, Grand'- 
 mere," vowed the impulsive young man ; " henceforth I ded- 
 icate myself to the work to which I was unworthily conse- 
 crated." 
 
 " The good God register your vow in the archives of 
 Heaven, my son, and the Holy Ghost lend you strength to 
 keep it !" exclaimed Grand'mere, weeping over him, and 
 kissing him on each cheek as a son indeed. 
 
 " The Lord will not forsake the good work which He has 
 begun," declared the young man with solemn confidence. 
 
 " Only remember always, my friend, that it is God and not 
 man who saves souls, that He saves them in a thousand ways, 
 and that his ways are not as our ways," Grand'mere caution- 
 ed him, earnestly. 
 
 Thenceforth Mr. Hoadley worked with Grand'mere and 
 Yolande incessantly, was their right-hand man, their fellow- 
 soldier, their son and brother in the good fight. Meantime, 
 the shyness between Squire Gage and the women passed 
 away. It had been somewhat indefinite and intangible on 
 both sides; but there it had been, and only such common 
 works of loving-kindness as they were now engaged in could 
 have dispersed it. And Squire Gage, seeing the youngpriest 
 with his new commissions, which invested his sensitive, in- 
 tellectual face with new nobility and manliness, thanked God 
 and took courage. But sometimes he would sigh for the Mall 
 and his son as he watched the young man and the girl in such 
 constant association. Not that either ol* them, above all the 
 girl, betrayed much consciousness of their close communion 
 
 I
 
 194 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 in the engrossing anxiety and interest of the mortal sickness 
 and desolation at Sedge Pond. Still, the squire could not 
 help observing and summing-up Yolande's fine qualities — 
 her soft touch, her light foot, her womanly endurance, intel-' 
 ligence, and resource, as well as her buoyance and cheerful- 
 ness under actual difficulties, which were beginning to rise 
 and relieve her habitual gravity. His eyes would turn to- 
 ward the young girl as she delivered her report to Mr. Hoad- 
 ley, as she entrusted him with commissions, and took him 
 to task for their execution, as she shared with him the rose- 
 mary, sweet majoram, and thyme, which were then held po- 
 tent against infection from the most terrible of epidemics ; 
 and he bethought him of Lucy Gage, who had made himself 
 thrice blessed, and sighed over young Caleb's loss. 
 
 Young Caleb did not absent himself from the strife be- 
 tween the great forces of physical and moral good and evil. 
 Bat he came ostensibly to support his father, in reality to tire 
 out his good horse, and put his shoulder to the wheel for 
 every one needing help, doing more in his own way in an 
 hour than Mr. Hoadley could do in three. In another re- 
 spect, young Caleb Gage stood dumb before the chaplain, be- 
 cause the young squire's turn was not for preaching and 
 teaching. 
 
 "Though," he said one day to his father, " I trust, sir, I 
 could do and die." 
 
 But Grand'mere's natural French overture, which had 
 proved such a complete failure on English soil, had erected 
 an insurmountable barrier between young Caleb and Yo- 
 lande. The mutual affront had sunk so deep that the breach 
 was too wide for any hope of its being repaired. The 
 young man, indeed, might look with a certain curiosity at 
 the girl whom, on their first introduction, he had fancied so 
 proud and learned as to look askance on a country fellow 
 like him ; and he could not choose but admire one who had 
 not her equal in those parts, and might even speculate with 
 the faintest instinct of regret on what might have been if 
 she had not been offered to him. But now of course Ma- 
 demoiselle Dupuy was destined for Parson Hoadley, to 
 •whom he only took as yet in a modified way, since their 
 temperaments differed widely, and in youth differences of 
 temperament rarely exist without corresponding jars. This 
 was true without Caleb's having any suspicion of the chap-
 
 THE IIUGUEXOT FAMILY. 195 
 
 Iain's sudden goodness ; he was too good and candid him- 
 self for that. Nor, thick-headed as he called himself, would 
 he have denied Mr. Iloadley's lately awakened eloquence, 
 for the young squire had too much sense and feeling not to 
 appreciate a natural orator when he heard him. 
 
 And if Caleb Gage remained utterly estranged from Yo- 
 lando, with no chance whatever of familiar intercourse, the 
 relations between him and Grand'mere were infinitely worse. 
 He had a positive pique against his father's ally and dear 
 friend, who had done only one thing to offend him, and 
 who, though she kept away from him now with a kind of 
 meek, pathetic dignity, bore him no ill-will in return. So 
 far as Caleb Gage the younger could entertain active dis- 
 like agaiust a woman old enough to be his grandmother, he 
 entertained it against her. He said to himself, as Madam 
 at the rectory had said, on her first acquaintance with 
 Grand'mere, that her dress, her beauty, her sensibility, and 
 the graphic emphasis which she could not help putting 
 into most things, were attributes unbecoming a woman of 
 her age and situation, and savored of flightiness and eccen- 
 tricity. He would have had Grand'mere theoretically 
 clothed in sackcloth and ashes, such as Madame her daugh- 
 ter-in-law wore, although he had not liked Madame Dupuy 
 particularly in their slight acquaintance. The young squire, 
 remembering Mr. Fletcher of'Madeley, did not quarrel with 
 his father for being the old Madame's sworn champion. 
 But as for Iloadley's veneration and enthusiasm for the old 
 Frenchwoman, he could only regard these as means to an 
 end. 
 
 Thus it happened that when Grand'merc's popularity was 
 at its height at Sedge Pond, and when the villagers were 
 murmuring blunt acknowledgments of their offense in hav- 
 ing rejected her because of her foreign nation, and were 
 muttering blessings on her as she ministered to them, there 
 was one dissentient voice. And it came from a quarter 
 which would have been perfectly incredible to Folande, 
 and which, if she could have credited it, would have been 
 apt to overwhelm her acquired tranquillity with a flood of 
 bitterness and doubts of her kind. 
 
 The rector was at his post without fail, and met the work- 
 ers in his parish at every corner. He took their service 
 more patiently than he was wont to do — nay. he even toler-
 
 J96 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 ated it as a co-operation permissible in an extraordinary 
 strait, and excusable by the license due to a stranger like 
 Grand'rnere, and by the presence of a churchman and cleri- 
 cal brother, Mr. Hoadley. But notwithstanding this con- 
 cession, the rector feared that his old bugbear, the imprac- 
 ticable methodistic Whig, Squire Gage of the Mall, and 
 Grand'rnere Dupuy, with her extravagant, rebellious bias 
 as a Frenchwoman and a Huguenot, were seducing and per- 
 verting the dabbling, sentimental lad of a chaplain, who had 
 gone oft* on a new tack, and was traveling fifty times faster 
 by it than even the quondam captain of a slaver, Newton 
 of Olney, or the bred grazier, Scott of Weston, thus prepar- 
 ing work for the bishops by and by. 
 
 The rector could not go in with their doings, though he 
 could not and would not, in the present crisis, stop them by 
 force. He had his own views of faith and repentance, and 
 he could make them agree with Scripture according to his 
 logic. He would pray and read the service with such as 
 would accept his offices, and he w r as far from refusing grace 
 to any man. But the direct addresses, impassioned repre- 
 sentations, sublime dogmas, and swift changes of the Meth- 
 odists, with their agonies and their transports, were not in 
 the line of the reserved, orderly, formal rector, any more 
 than lay preaching and the public ministration of women 
 were. He had no disposition to cavil at the doctrine of 
 original and abounding sin ; but that application of it which 
 reduced all men to one level, and placed in the same rank 
 his honest, faithful, gallant hero, laid to rest where his colors 
 had been planted, on the plains of the far West, with the 
 greatest thief, liar, and craven vagabond in Sedge Pond, 
 was all but hateful to Mr. Philip liolle. Yet, if the rector 
 could not understand, he would not persecute — nay, he 
 rather looked on with thrills of sympathy in the midst of 
 his strong objections, and granted magnanimously that it 
 were no wonder thoughthc whole world went after the per- 
 formance.
 
 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 197 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 MADAM KOLLE'S CALENDAR. 
 
 Me. Philip Rolle's summary of the duty of women was 
 that they should keep house, obey their hausbnds, and bring 
 up children. His aversion to engaging in any public 
 service was not decreased by seeing the uncouth wench, 
 Deborah Pott, after having had a brush with the enemy 
 on her own account, creeping out of the Shottery Cot- 
 tage, hanging on the skirts of Grand'mere and Yolande, 
 and beginning to give very awkward assistance. Deborah 
 somehow reminded the rector of Black Jasper, and he 
 could not help feeling that if these new-fangled liberties 
 continued, he would have his "fellow" mounting the pulpit 
 and giving out the psalm at least once a day over his mas- 
 ter's head. Mr. Rolle retired to his rectory, now empty of 
 his particular womankind, and he set himself to bring vivid- 
 ly before his mind a sweeter, more womanly, and more ex- 
 cellent way. 
 
 In the quiet night, when all the rectory servants were 
 asleep, the rector sat in his room. He could not rest, so he 
 went to Madam's little Tunbridge box and opened it, for he 
 had the key of it, as he had the key of her heart, there be- 
 ing no corner in all her domain, or in all her thoughts, which 
 Madam kept close from the rector. There was something 
 in itself suggestive in seeing so manly a man tenderly hand- 
 ling and turning over a woman's hoards ; and yet it is men 
 like the rector, autocratic, imperious, and stoical, who prize 
 above all things the softness, even the helplessness, of wom- 
 en, and who, in their relations to women, have an inex- 
 haustible well-spring of tenderness, forming a striking con- 
 trast to the rock from which it issues. "With jealous care 
 and delicate reverence Mr. Rollc disarranged his wife's 
 treasures in order to find what he sought. Yet they were 
 valueless treasures in all save kindred eyes, and he knew 
 them all well. Chief among them were a pair of worn 
 fringed gloves, which had been his first gift when he had
 
 198 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 chosen her out of a country-house full of girls for his part- 
 ner, on that Twelfth Night long past, and a yellow copy 
 of exceedingly stilted verses, written on a similar occasion. 
 He pshawed at the verses as his own boyish rubbish, but 
 Madam valued them as highly as ever, and was often as 
 near angry w T ith him as she could be for willfully depreciat- 
 ing what she kept so carefully preserved in a pouucet box. 
 There were two or three letters on journeys before and 
 immediately after their marriage, containing elaborate ad- 
 vices for the improvement of her mind, and even of her 
 spelling, with dictatorial directions as to what she Avas to 
 read, think, and believe; and these struck him at this time 
 of day as strangely pragmatical. The laboriously prepared 
 sermon which he had delivered before an erudite bishop, 
 and his favorite homily, which he had got put into print 
 with some small detriment to his purse, he found carefully 
 folded, with rose leaves laid between the pages to scent 
 them. And he came on locks of hair of their three chil- 
 dren. Two of them were Captain Philip's ; a yellow curl, 
 the companion rings of which had met no rougher touch 
 than the pat of the rector's hand and the kiss of Madam's 
 lips; and a dark brown lock, the fellows of which Madam 
 had seen, in vision, dank with death-sweat and glued togeth- 
 er with life blood. There were also two cockades, one 
 which Captain Philip had worn when a baby to distinguish 
 him as the rector's boy, for Madam had " been so mad" 
 when he was mistaken for a girl ; and another which the 
 young officer had carried through fire and smoke, as a 
 political and regimental badge. In fellowship with these 
 were Captain Philip's letters to his mother, tattered with 
 much reading, most of them ending with the loving assur- 
 ance, "till I see you again." 
 
 But it was none of these the rector was in search of. It 
 was something of a slightly different character, which ho 
 knew was among the papers. It was a sort of private cal- 
 endar which Madam had made of the Psalms in the Prayer- 
 book that she had used since she was a girl. Passages had 
 been marked, and little slips of paper inserted, of different 
 dates and different stages of handwriting. They were the 
 shy, simple, devout records ol a modest, purely domestic 
 life. At length the rector found it, and read in it here and 
 there what touched the core of his manly heart: —
 
 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 199 
 
 "Psalm 23d. — My earliest remembrance is being kept 
 out of bed by old nurse Simmons, in order to astonish mother 
 on her coming back from evening service, by my childish 
 proficiency in this psalm. As it was my earliest, so may it 
 be my latest study." 
 
 " Psalm 119th. — In my youthful years I was so given up 
 to ambition and self-conceit as to undertake to say this 
 whole psalm by heart to Grandfather Horner, who was to 
 give me a silver crown-piece in return. I need not say that 
 pride got a fill and I lost my crown-piece, for I wearied of 
 my task, and my memory broke down before I was half 
 done. Mem. — To ask the rector whether Grandfather Hor- 
 ner acted judiciously in setting me such a hard task, thus 
 stirring up my spirit of emulation, since Sister Betty and 
 Brother Joe tried too. For long it was only by a mighty 
 effort that I got over a dislike to that jewel of the experi- 
 mental psalms ; and I am sorry to say Brother Joe avers 
 that he dislikes it to this day." 
 
 "Psalm 1st. — In preparing for my confirmation, my 
 clergyman, Mr. Moultrie, hath hoped that I shall prove 
 ' like a tree planted by the water-side.' I fear me 'twill be 
 but such a crooked sapling as that which we have 1 all laughed 
 at in the cherry orchard. Yet may not God be tender of 
 what men laugh at ?" 
 
 "Psalm 4th. — 'Thou hast put gladness in my heart since 
 the time that the corn and wine, and oil increased.' Word 
 is come that father hath lost the Hurstpierpoint suit. So 
 that though he is still a gentleman of moderate substance, 
 me and my sisters have no longer a chance of being heiresses. 
 We have made up our minds to our loss more easily than we 
 thought to do, and will not grudge the property to our 
 cousins Hep worth. We made quite merry last night on 
 being spinsters, and livingon narrow incomes like AuntPolly, 
 who mother affirms is the grig of her family. Father hath 
 not been so little humorsomc for a long time as during this 
 week, because he says he can endure certainty, like a man 
 of spirit as he always was; and indeed his temper was ruf- 
 fled by waiting, and by what he called lawyers" quibbles. 
 In addition. Brother Joe has given up all thought of going 
 to town to si udy in the Temple and learn to be a fine gentle- 
 man. lie tells me that he minds not the deprivation, for 
 he always preferred country folk and the green fields, which
 
 200 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 will make home so much less lonesome this winter than if 
 we had been rich." 
 
 " Psalm 39th. — Our Betty hath sunk into a decline, and 
 passed away from our arms. How can I write it ? The last 
 time the parson was with her he read this psalm — 'twas 
 the last one Betty heard, when her beauty was consumed 
 away, ' like as it were a moth fretting a garment.' Father 
 said, had we gotten Hurstpierpoint, the removal to moister 
 air might have stayed the waste, or he might have carried 
 his darling to the court physicians ; but she opened not her 
 mouth to murmur or complain, because she followed One 
 who was obedient unto death. And I, too, will become 
 dumb, for it is His doing." 
 
 " Psalm 24th. — Mr. Philip Rolle, who is a distant kins- 
 man of father's, and who came to see us this "Whitsuntide, 
 did say that the verse, ' The earth is the Lord's and all that 
 therein is; the compass of the world, and they that dwell 
 therein,' would form a fine inscription for trades halls and 
 halls of commerce, not forgetting the Houses of Parliament, 
 He is a great historian, and he said also, of the 48th Psalm, 
 that the verse, ' Thou shalt break the ships of the sea through 
 the east wind,' would have made as good a motto as that 
 chosen for the medal our Queen Elizabeth struck to com- 
 memorate the defeat of the Armada. Mr. Philip Rolle's 
 opinion must be worth recording, as he is already in holy 
 orders, and is said to be a young man of uncommon parts 
 and promise, for so fine a gentleman." 
 
 "Psalm 0th. — 'My beauty is gone for very trouble, and 
 worn away because of all mine enemies.' This day se'en- 
 night was the first day Dolly and me and Anne Ventnor 
 were permitted to get up and see ourselves after the modi- 
 fied pox, which we need not have had but that my cousins 
 Mapleton would not keep away from the Hall when they 
 had a case of the natural pox at the Great House. At last 
 they took the alarm, and then they insisted on mother hav- 
 ing all of us inoculated who had not been already done. I 
 was not in a fit state for it, as I had suffered lately from 
 sick-headaches, brought on by cousins Mapleton making 
 mischief between Brother Joe and father, and leaving us to 
 bear the brunt of it. The inoculation has gone worst with 
 me, so that I have almost had as bad a bout as if I had been 
 afflicted with the original disease, and have eome out as thin
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 201 
 
 as a whipping-post, and with my face all scarred and swol- 
 len like a marred turnip. Somebody will not know me 
 again when he comes back to the neighborhood, and I 
 don't mean to help his memory. The worst of it is (and it 
 made me cry like a baby last night), that cousins take the 
 credit to themselves for getting me inoculated, and say my 
 sufferings show how virulent the real malady would have 
 been with me, had I ever caught it, which was not likely 
 unless busybodies had brought it to me. In the same man- 
 ner they take credit for getting poor Joe in grief, professing 
 that it will l>e a lesson to him not to take his game off his 
 elders and betters in future. Cousins Mapleton never see 
 that they do any thing wrong. I have not forgotten our 
 Betty and how lovely and pleasant she was, and how very 
 meek under God's hand ; but then it was God's hand, 
 while this only seems the hand of cousins Mapleton." 
 
 Below this entry was added, in the comparatively recent 
 angular hand in which Madam copied out her recipes, and 
 occasionally, with a touch of pride, wrote extracts from the 
 Fathers for the rector's use: "What a peevish, vain fool 
 of a lass I must have been to make so solemn an application 
 appropriate to such a trifle, though I do remember it seem- 
 ed no trifle to me in those days. I wonder why Mr. Ilolle 
 had aught to do with me, as if he would have demeaned 
 himself to mind a painted skin (not that I ever touched a 
 paint pot in ray life — I'd liefer touch pitch, and for all my 
 outcry I was as plump and fair as ever in three months 
 time). Cousins Mapleton were perfectly right; as I have 
 reason to be thankful, since there are constantly cases of 
 small-pox occurring in Sedge Pond. I have brought my- 
 self to take the same precaution with the completest success 
 in the case of my lad and ray little lasses. Even about 
 Brother Joe I can trace his becoming solid, putting away 
 childish things, and showing himself mother's besl stay and 
 chief support in her widowhood, to his being forced to ap- 
 pease father's wrath at the outrages committed on my 
 cousins Maplcton's credulity and nerves by new alarms of 
 the Scotch rebels, and mock thefts of jugged hare from the 
 larder." 
 
 "Psalm 45th. — 'Hearken, () daughter, and consider, in- 
 cline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy la- 
 ther's house.' Philip hath not chosen that verse, or* any 
 
 12
 
 202 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 part of it, for my posy ring ; not that he reckons it would 
 be profaning the psalm, which, he says, was an epithalami- 
 um or nuptial song, like the Song of Solomon in its clay ; 
 but that he considers it, while a fit, inspired figure for a 
 state of nature which ought to be forsaken for a state of 
 grace, at the same time an Eastern sentiment, and not to be 
 taken too literally. He is not afraid of any rival in the 
 oldest, dearest friend I have, but gives me leave to cherish 
 them to the utmost. I wot he has no cause to fear any of 
 them." 
 
 "Psalm 41st. — 'Blessed is he that considcreth the poor 
 and needy: the Lord shall deliver him in the time of 
 trouble.' Mr. Rolle hath very discreetly reproved a sinner 
 of high rank by causing to be laid on his escritoire a copy 
 of this verse, though the upshot is that the sinner (follow- 
 ing my husband's good example — I shall mention no names) 
 hath crushed up the writing, trampled it under foot, called 
 the writer an intolerable, meddling jackanapes, and ruined 
 the poor man without delay. But my husband has played 
 his part, and it is only because his conscience is tender that 
 it pricks him, and tempts him to declare that he was an in- 
 tolerable, meddling jackanapes — leastways, a Avcak, coward- 
 ly fool, to hit on so shallow and underhand a plan ; he will 
 never do so again, and he will indemnify the poor man for 
 the injury out of his own pocket; which is like my good 
 man, both the taking the blame upon himself, and the in- 
 demnification." 
 
 " Psalm 13th. — ' Consider and hear me, O Lord my God ; 
 lighten mine eyes, that I sleep not in death.' If it be thy 
 will, good Lord, deal mercifully with me, and spare me to 
 the best and noblest of husbands, to whom I think I am 
 with thy consent a little needful, and to my unborn babe, 
 when my pangs come upon me." 
 
 " Psalm lGth. — 'The lot is fallen to me in a fair ground : 
 yea, I have a goodly heritage.' Make me thankful and 
 humble of heart, my Lord and Saviour, in that I have 
 been kept to see this day, when good old Mr. Butler hath 
 made a Christian of my boy, giving him the name of his 
 worthy father, my Lady Rolle and Brother Joe standing 
 for sponsors." 
 
 " Psalm 56th. — 'They daily mistake my words: all that 
 they imagine is to do mo evil.' If it were but my poor
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 203 
 
 words, I should not mind ; but the rector's own wise and 
 righteous words! I could not have thought it of Lucy 
 Gage ; it is all along of that Whig and Methodist squire to 
 say that Philip Rolle's sermons narrow and shame the 
 grand comprehensive scheme of salvation ! Pray, who 
 should know how to deliver doctrine, give his testimony 
 against heresy, and hold the oracles of God for the people, 
 if not a good priest, trained for and faithful to his work, a 
 gently-born, just, learned, and consecrated man? What 
 insubordination to bring into the parish ! What ingrati- 
 tude for all the rector has done and suffered for them! 
 Well-a-day ! the world is a wicked and weary world, not 
 one whit better than in the days of King David." 
 
 "Psalm 104th. — 'Men's flint echo of the song of the 
 morning stars, and the shout of the sons of God, when the 
 great Creator made this ravishing world. Surely it will 
 always be very good, in spite of all the lying lips and sharp 
 tongues speaking vanity.' MetTiinks so on this May morn- 
 ing, when the rector has stepped out from his study win- 
 dow on to the lawn and paddock, bareheaded, and called 
 me from my housewifery to look at the promise of the 
 apple-blossoms, and to listen to the thrush in the lilac-bush ; 
 and little Philip can stretch out his hands ior the daisies. 
 The world is very good still. It is men who are bad ; but 
 even they will grow good at last, and then the true Golden 
 Age will have come, the rector says." 
 
 ""Psalm 45th. — ' Gird thee with thy sword upon thy thigh, 
 O thou most mighty, according to thy worship and renown.' 
 My soldier hath marked this verse in the psalter in ac- 
 knowledgment of the Captain of his salvation. May he be 
 a shield "over his soldier's head in the day of battle, and 
 acknowledge him in the field of Armageddon." 
 
 "Psalm 21st. — 'He asked life of thee, and thou gavesj; 
 him a long life, even for ever and ever.' My boy, it was 
 not the life for ever and ever that I asked tor you then, 
 nor did you ask it for yourself, my Phillip, for in our short 
 sight you had much to live for. You were much wanted 
 here, my son, my son. But the crown of pure gold yonder 
 will make up for all the crowns of brass and iron here, and 
 the felicity which is everlasting will atom. 1 a thousandfold 
 for all the sweet human t i c-s untimely blighted and nipped 
 in the bud. The joy of His countenance, which maketh you
 
 204 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 glad, my dear, dear lad — what sun on earth could shine like 
 that smile of the Master's face? What king's, or conquer- 
 or's, or bridegroom's bliss could approach to the gladness 
 of the royal, loving servant raised to that full light ? Your 
 mother would not grudge it to you, but that she is at once 
 that strongest and weakest thing on earth — a mother." 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE last kelic of the galleys. 
 
 The epidemic was abating at Sedge Pond, and Grand'- 
 mere had consented for a little space to rest and be 
 thankful. She had sent Yolande abroad one evening to 
 gather the herbs which were in the season of drying, while 
 she herself dozed in her great chair. Suddenly she started 
 up and rubbed her eyes. 'Her expression became one of 
 mingled endurance, resolution, and triumphant faith, which 
 made her features look young again with their air of early 
 heroism. 
 
 " What is it, Philippine ?" she asked quickly. " Have I 
 dreamed. I could have sworn I heard the shots of the drag- 
 onnades once more — saw my brother Blaise led off with the 
 rest of the gang, and received all that was left to me of 
 the father of Hubert from the galleys." 
 
 " What wonder, Maruan ?" protested Philippine. " I am 
 always thinking of those cruel mockings andscourgings, and 
 of the sainted martyrs." 
 
 " But, my girl, I did not think I heard and saw the 
 things with which I was familiar before you were born. 
 What can it mean, my friend ? Is it that my time is come, 
 think you? Would God the little one were come home, 
 that I might bless her with my last breath, if it be His 
 will." 
 
 " Xo, no, thou wilt not leave us, memh'e" besought Phi- 
 lippine; "thou art all that is left us now of the good old 
 times, and they were good in spite of their woes — when we 
 were a spectacle to men and to angels, and the devil could 
 find no fault in us. And now that we have left our first 
 love, and cast in our lot with this Sodom of an England, 
 thou wilt not abandon us and carry away all that we
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 205 
 
 still have of the faithful and the patrie at the bottom of our 
 groaning hearts ?" 
 
 " Ah ! I have it," cried Grand'mere, springing up, almost as 
 light of foot as a maiden ; " console yourself, my Philippine, 
 I may live to grow a babe again. It is not the nearness of 
 death which is unlocking the closed chambers of memory ; 
 it is the face of my dear old M. Denis Landre, in the porch. 
 Say not that I alone am left you, when, if he will deign to 
 turn back his frills, you will see on the worn bones of eighty 
 what ate into the tender flesh of sixteen. He is the last Re- 
 formed of the oars. He was chained to the benches for eight- 
 een weary years. But he was young, kept his reason, aud, 
 escaping at last, came to this peaceful court of England, where 
 he hath dwelt and labored nearly half a century. He is on 
 his summer round to watch the habits of God's creatures, 
 and win models from them for his art, and if you ever did 
 honor to a hero, my reverent Philippine — if you would en- 
 tertain, not the three Magi, but a soul come out of great 
 tribulation, I tell you this will be the day for it." 
 
 By the time Yolande returned, Monsieur Landre had gone 
 out with Monsieur Dupuy to make some arrangements for 
 pursuing his studies in the neighborhood during the next 
 week. It was in his absence that the girl heard the great 
 news of his arrival. Her expectation had thus an interval 
 in which to rise to the highest pitch before he re-appeared, 
 and she should be presented in a tumult of awe and de- 
 light to the last living French Huguenot who, for con- 
 science' sake, had undergone the burning, fiery furnace of 
 the galleys, and had come out without a hair of his head in- 
 jured. 
 
 To Yolande's intense amazement, and all but utter disap- 
 pointment, Grand'more's beau ideal was a little grey rabbit 
 of a man, dressed punctiliously in a blue coat and laced red 
 vest with flapped pockets, the latter bulging out incongru- 
 ously with the stones, leaves, twigs, and Bkewered moths 
 and beetles preserved in little boxes, for which he had a 
 penchant. He pounced upon her before she had been well 
 named to him, and charged her a little austerely with blind 
 blundering in bringing a wrong herb to Grand'mere. 
 
 "That," said he, "is the Lady-glove, gant <A. I<i dai . 
 mise, and a campanule, with which you have nothing to 
 do. And you have gone and mistaken a great Marguerite
 
 206 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 for a souci. Ouf! where are your eyes, then ? Iu your 
 pocket, or at the back of your hat, he P" 
 
 Yolande, on her part, was almost disposed to ask him — 
 Did the three Hebrew children not differ more from other 
 Hebrews? Did they so outlive their supreme test and 
 miraculous deliverance that they became only the foremost 
 husbandmen, and builders of houses, and planters of vine- 
 yards, the foremost statesmen, and warriors, and bards of 
 all the tribes throughout the strange land of Babylon ? As 
 for Monsieur Landre, he was absolutely silentf when Mad- 
 ame Dupuy met him with a sounding apostrophe tremulous 
 in its sincerity. 
 
 " It is thou, Monsieur, who hast defied the tyrant, whom 
 the pains of hell could not turn from the truth, who prefer- 
 redst the taskmaster's whip and the fires of the noonday 
 sun to abjuring the Word. What are we that thou art 
 come under this poor roof, among those who have done 
 nothing, and who refuse any longer to believe any thing ? 
 What can I do to make you more welcome, Monsieur ? 
 Permit me to salute the hem of thy redingote, and lay the 
 hairs of my head in thy path." 
 
 He remained blank to all direct appeals to his old experi- 
 ence, and put aside every bold attempt to enlist his convinc- 
 ing eloquence as the last survivor and eye-witness of the 
 tortures linked with the dismal tragedy of the galleys, for 
 the purpose of satisfying the craving curiosity and breath- 
 less interest of another generation. But he would dis- 
 course by the hour, and pour out hard words by the bushel, 
 till his voice grew husky with the burden, on the most min- 
 ute specimen of wall-rue, and the most insignificant fly 
 curling up a cylinder for itself out of a rose-leaf. Or he 
 and Grand'merc, with the tears in their eyes, would recall 
 the noble old French Cathedrals, from which their faith ex- 
 cluded them, though their fathers had built them. They 
 would speak, till the listeners grew weary, of the balconies 
 with screens of carved leaves and flowers, second only to 
 nature's festoons and garlands, which alternated with shields 
 of armorial bearings before thehotels of the nobility in the 
 cities and provincial towns. 
 
 Monsieur Landre was a quaint little savant and artist, lu- 
 dicrously solemn and absorbed in his studies, without any 
 of Monsieur's blandness, Madame's passion, Grand'mere's
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 207 
 
 imagination and fine sense, or Yolande's enthusiasm. A 
 gruff, abrupt little man, with an exaggeration of self-respect 
 and stoicism about him ; in fact, the most difficult man in 
 the world to conceive chained to a bench and stripped to the 
 waist, a blackened skeleton among rows of blackened skele- 
 tons, bending mechanically to the oar in a sickening drudg- 
 ery of degraded toil, varied by a sharp encounter with the 
 English frigates when the galley-slave's flesh was torn, and 
 the lite which he was driven to hate was let out by the En- 
 glish shot ; or if he escaped this, and was carried to the 
 hospital a sorely-wounded man, he was still fettered to the 
 bed on which he lay, because his stout heart could not be- 
 lieve in the celebration of the mass, and he would not bow 
 his gaunt head at the elevation of the host. 
 
 When Yolande, after the two had retired to rest, com- 
 plained to Grand'mere of the anomaly which the girl found 
 in Monsieur Landre, Grand'mere tried to bring it within 
 her comprehension. 
 
 " Denuis Angre Landre," she explained, " was never a 
 saver, but a doer ; and a breach as wide as the Red Sea lies 
 between the two. For as many years as you have lived, 
 my child, he was an exile in the foul mouths of harbors, and 
 lying out on the same everlasting sea — birds and gross-eat- 
 ing fish soaring and swimming around him, and no change 
 meeting him from day to day, and year to year, but the 
 changing of the clouds, and of his harsh masters, the drop- 
 ping off of his comrades, and the replacing of them by other 
 worn faces." 
 
 " Yes, good Grand'mere ; but should such suffering not 
 have put him above such trifles?" asked Yolande. 
 
 " Ouais! I must finish, lie makes his escape at last by 
 a miracle of steadfastness and desperation, and hears that 
 he has long been left an orphan without near kindred, and 
 has lost all that he ever possessed of worldly goods. There 
 is nothing left him here below but the ereon earth of God 
 with its myriads of creatures, and the power of copying 
 them, to which he had been in training when he was car- 
 ried away. And Yolandctte lilts her nose and wonders 
 that he throws himself into the study of these things, and 
 clings to them with the devotion of a lover to his mistress ! 
 Denis Landre came back like a wild Orson, an outlaw. 
 There were others who came back wilder still, their reason
 
 208 THE HUGUENOT FAMLY. 
 
 lost, memory dead, and faith only feebly flickering and feel- 
 ing after its object, until it should be changed into sight. 
 Go! You are a pretty girl to ask why such a one, poor, 
 and true, and keenly sensitive to all the defects and priva- 
 tions of these endless years, should desire to remedy them 
 — not by a woman's moans, and pets, and sour grapes, but 
 by seeking anxiously to acquire and employ the habits and 
 practices of civilized life, even to the wearing of a perruque 
 and a cane. What would you have instead? Do men's 
 tongues wag when the iron has entered into their souls ? 
 Do they not set their teeth, and are they not dumb for the 
 rest of their days ? In after years will they not shudder 
 still, and turn their backs on the horrors of the past, as 
 though on the ghastly croquemort of a dream ? My word ! 
 the petite has gone to sleep on her woman's wit, to need 
 such explanations. Why should she give herself the air 
 of a sick cat because a great, good man — one of the best, 
 bravest, and most modest I have known — is not a trumpet- 
 er of Gascony, a hero of the spectacle to please her ? She 
 does not know life, the sabotP 
 
 " Yes, Grand'mere, that is all true. I was a spoiled child, 
 giving myself the air of buying sugar-plums at least. But 
 tell me, had not Monsieur lloadley right on his side, when 
 he said there was nothing worth on earth but the saving of 
 souls ? These poor ones in the village here do but recover 
 their stifled, poisoned breath, and turn their dim distorted 
 eyes back to the world, when behold there comes a man 
 who went through calamities which lasted a score of dreary 
 years, to which theirs were light as straws. Do you tell 
 me he survived these, and succeeded in leaving them all be- 
 hind him, in order to give himself up to bagatelles of club- 
 mosses and midges ?" 
 
 " That depends. Is nothing in the universe of God 
 worth considering save men and their souls ? But agreed 
 that men are best worth men's consideration ; is there only 
 one way of saving souls ? Is there any thing common or 
 unclean which God has put around man for the purpose of 
 instructing him? Common or unclean ! when every sylla- 
 ble on every page of God's book of nature reaches upward 
 to a marvel of rarity, purity, and excellence? For what? 
 The satisfaction of its Maker, since He regards all, and 
 counts nothing beneath His notice? No more than this?
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 209 
 
 They do not exist that He may he known in His works, 
 that they may bear witness of Him, and that His saints 
 maybe perfected through them? How do you know that 
 the growth of a flower or the life of the tiniest of God's 
 creatures is not helpful for the growth of souls and the 
 life of their life ?" 
 
 " But to paint them upon plates and jugs, ma mdre" 
 argued Yolande; "to design little groups of cows drinking 
 in a stream or lying lazily under a spreading tree for but- 
 ter-dishes, and to paint shepherds and shepherdesses on 
 vases, with garlands of oak-leaves studded with beetles to 
 encircle them ; to bend over the work, busy himself with 
 it, and dream of it for days and days together — is it not a 
 kind of idolati'y, as Monsieur Hoadley says, and base and 
 unworthy trifling for the last of the galley-slaves to demean 
 himself with ? Fiji done ! I cry with vexation, even but 
 to think of it." 
 
 " Cry for yourself, my fine girl, a thousand times," pro- 
 tested Grand'mere; "as for Monsieur my young pastor ami 
 you, you are two very high and noble personages to be so 
 far above the plates and the dishes ! One of you has not 
 been so long removed from the bric-d-brac ; but that is the 
 way of the brouille, and I am an ungenerous old tttemontee 
 to speak of it. For me, I believe that the doing of a thing 
 well or ill, and not the special sanctity of the deed, is the 
 proof of the hero, the saint, and, above all, the Huguenot; 
 and that the question is not so much whether he erects a 
 temple, or shapes a pair of pantaloons, as the world and 
 the Church of Rome will have it. Let the potter turn but 
 one cup in fair proportion, or let the painter re-produce one 
 true image, and the world of homely men and women is so 
 much the better for him. And what is a stanch, battered 
 galley-slave, that he should despise small gains, so that tinw- 
 are honest and good, and won by the best exercise of his 
 faculties? Ma mie, if you will see the day of great dei ds, 
 you must not despise the day of small things, whether firsl 
 or last. There have been Avorse things than galleys ; there 
 have been scaffolds. And who mounted them V Preachers 
 and teachers alone? Not at all — workmen, laborers, men 
 and women, skilled like Bezaleel in the weaving of tapestry 
 and the executing of jewelers' work. It is true that Palissj 
 only quitted the fountains in the Italian's garden to languish
 
 210 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 in the Bastille, but Goujon went straight from the torso in 
 his atelier, to leave his own headless trunk stretched by the 
 block." 
 
 " Say, then, Grand'mere, why Monsieur Hoadley, who 
 used to be idle and vain himself among the goitilhommes, 
 is to-day laborious as an ox and sei-ious as the moon?" 
 
 " Can I tell you why Yolande is young ?" answered 
 Grand'mere, with a smile. " Monsieur the pastor is young 
 also, and he M-orks in the dashing spirit of re-action and re- 
 formation. He is a new broom, and sweeps clean : by and by 
 he will be older and smoother, and will no longer tear both 
 himself and the carpet. He will then give every one 
 more of his due, be more tolerant, more charitable. And 
 what then ? The world will cry, ' Voild ! Monsieur the 
 pastor has grown weary, he has changed his mind once 
 more.' Believe it not, his camarade. He was sick and 
 sorry with all his heart, and he took an oath, from which 
 the good God will not let him go back. He will be a man 
 in his Christianity yet — though not so mellow a man as 
 Monsieur Gage, or so strong a man as Monsieur Philip 
 Itolle — but a man in his own fashion," Grand'mere went on, 
 after considering within herself, " a little with tinged sever- 
 ity, perhaps because of his early slackness and sin, which 
 found him out always — not a dragon as now." 
 
 " And I also am a dragon, Grand'mere ?" demanded Yo- 
 lande, with mock courtesy and a relieved smile ; "I humbly 
 beg pardon of Monsieur Landre, but will he never tell us what 
 it was to be a martyr, and what the galleys were like? for 
 otherwise I see not that we are any better of them." 
 
 " Have patience, my daughter," cried Grand'mere. 
 
 Then Yolande had patience, and consented to look no 
 longer for a demi-crod in Monsieur Landre, but rather to re- 
 gnrd him as a poor, tried human being, who had suffered the 
 loss of all things here, although he had fought the good fight 
 and kept the faith ; and who, in place of being infinitely 
 raised above men's weaknesses, was full of the eccentricities, 
 oddities, and cross-grainedness of isolated men. Then the 
 girl was ready to admit that the passion of the old galley- 
 slave for nature and art was child-like, self-forgetful, and not 
 without its greatness. She saw that he was full of choice 
 information as well as of zealous devotion to his studies, and 
 that what he could impart was pleasant information to re-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 211 
 
 ceive, and good to act upon, while one dwelt in this creation 
 of the Great Worker, who sees " now a sparrow fall and 
 now a world." She could detect that the reverent, painstak- 
 ing student was filled with interest manifold in God's broad 
 Book, therefore he never tired of turning over the leaves 
 and of heartily copying in his materials what he had got at 
 first hand. 
 
 And when Monsieur Landre was no longer, as it appeared 
 to him, rudely pressed and impertinently assailed on his in- 
 human agonies and sorrows, he would allude to them briefly, 
 but naturally, of his own accord, in a dreamy, abstracted, or 
 a solemn, somewhat weird way, which made the slightest 
 reference more impressive than the amplest details. " I have 
 a stiffness here, Madame Dupuy mdre" he said, touching 
 his throat ; " but no, I was not born with a crick in the 
 neck. We were neck-chained once in the hospital at Dun- 
 kerque, and I could not turn my head for a month, though 
 there was a pot with vanille in the window just beyond me. 
 I smelled it, and, tvte-bleu! how I wished to see it, and the 
 swallows which I heard in the eaves. I saw them — never, 
 psch ! The pot was knocked down and broken, and the 
 swallows took their flight to Africa the day before we were 
 removed." 
 
 " Gangrene, madame ?" he exclaimed. " Oui-da, we had 
 enough of the gangrenes when the argousins would only 
 remove the chains iVom the senseless bodies which they cast 
 into the sea. We would have given — heaven and earth, 
 I was going to say; but no, not heaven, all but heaven, 
 my friends — to have been senseless for one day, one hour, 
 when we carried tons weight of iron on bleeding, fractured 
 limbs." 
 
 " Little dogs, mU'e? he told Yolande, with a shade of dry 
 humor, "I love the little dogs. I am very happy that they 
 were well-treated at your castle. Their name was once 
 mine, and we are brothers, the little dogs and me. ' Dogs 
 of Huguenots,' so they named us when one slave or another, 
 educated by misery, got so clever under his education that 
 he gave the slip to the chain and the bench, or when he 
 grew mad and broke all his bones by leaping sheer over 
 the bastion, ami all the fellow-slaves on the benches nearest 
 him were bastinadoed as no dog would have been." 
 
 "Oh! how cruel!" said Yolande, thoughtfully.
 
 212 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 " Bah ! rest tranquil : the dogs who did it could not help 
 themselves, they were made monsters of by the officers in 
 authority over them, and they again by the great nobles and. 
 the ministers of state ; and the priests told them all — and 
 believed it themselves for the most part— that they were 
 torturing us to save us, or at. least other contumacious fel- 
 lows like us, from perdition. It was a lie, but they believed 
 it, and what would you have ? If you were so unhappy as 
 to believe that bastinadoing a man black and blue, or roast- 
 ing him to a cinder, would save the undying soul of him for 
 ever and ever, would you not try it? Faith of Denis Lan- 
 dre! I believe he would try it fast enough. Forgive? I 
 have nothing to forgive. Do not speak of that, Madame ; it 
 was all a horrible mistake, and it is over — at least for us Hu- 
 guenots. Often the guards and officers were sorry for us, 
 and helped us with rags and water and wholesome food, as 
 far as their discipline would permit. One of them, a Turk 
 — positively a turbaned Mahomedan— remembered me, 
 caught a rare mirliflore of a bird for me, dried and stuffed it 
 of himself, and after keeping it for quite ten months, brought 
 it and in full day slipped it along with a cluster of figs into 
 my sleeve, gravely nodding his proud head and long beard 
 as he did so, in the port of Marseilles." 
 
 Doubtless what helped Yolande to a more correct estima- 
 tion of Monsieur Landre, was the circumstance of young 
 Caleb Gage's coming across the Frenchman in his rambling 
 exploration of the country. Though Mr. Hoadley had hasti- 
 ly and austerely condemned the old man, judging that his 
 mind had become light and weak at the very least, Caleb 
 Gage, on the contrary, struck up a friendship with him, 
 Frenchman though he was ; and conceiving an immense re- 
 spect and admiration for the man of science, the skilled 
 modeler and mechanician, waxed loud in his praise. And 
 young Caleb had another, and for the moment a bigger, 
 blacker crow to pluck with Grand'mere for excluding him 
 from the Shottery Cottage, by her foolish Frenchwoman's 
 schemes, when a man was there who could have taught him 
 so much, and from whom he would have been delighted to 
 learn. Whether the world would ever honor Monsieur 
 Landre as he deserved to be honored, or not, he had not 
 only maintained his views of the right through worse than 
 death, but Caleb felt the Frenchman would leave Ins mark
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 213 
 
 in another form on the world's treasures, and contribute 
 another lesson to its store-house of testimonies. 
 
 Yolande, with her subtle instincts, apprehended Caleb 
 Gage's appreciation oi Monsieur Landre, and his inclination 
 toward the savant ; and it not only caused the girl, who 
 secretly admired and reverenced the young squire, to be- 
 come a docile, intelligent, eager disciple of the naturalist, 
 who, like all right noble teachers, valued a docile, intelligent 
 disciple, and exerted himself to meet her wants and pour 
 into her thirsting mind rivulets from his own stream of 
 knowledge ; but it caused her to take a simple, pure, wom- 
 anly pride in her association with Monsieur Landre, and 
 in his friendship for her, the true child of Grand'mere. 
 And Caleb Gage would have given his riding-whip and his 
 hunting-boots, his fowling-piece and his fishing-rod, to have 
 been the privileged partaker of the trouble Monsieur took 
 with her, and of the acquisitions she was making in the 
 branches of knowledge. Monsieur Landre, who was mas- 
 ter in so much which the young squire prized, did not scorn 
 the head and the heart which the tyro had rejected. 
 Whether the day should ever come that Yolande would 
 meet Caleb Gage on his own and Monsieur Landre's ground 
 as an equal and more, was very doubtful ; but come or come 
 not, Grand'mere, Monsieur Landre, France, and womanhood 
 should have no reason to blush for their child. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 FADING. 
 
 " And now all the people love Grand'mere." So Yolande 
 ended an enthusiatic account of the doings of Grand'mere in 
 a conversation which she had with Monsieur Landre, close 
 upon their parting. 
 
 " Not oil the people, my mademoiselle." 
 
 " Yes, yes, Monsieur, all ; for Grand'mere served all," re- 
 peated Yolande proudly. 
 
 " The very worst motive for fickle people to act upon," 
 muttered Monsieur Landre. "Had it been because the 
 people served Madame the Grand'mere, I should have bad 
 less fear."
 
 214 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 " Fear, Monsieur !" exclaimed Yolande making large eyes. 
 "How fear?" 
 
 "I can not tell, but I love not popular emeutes either of 
 wrath or gratitude. I mean that I trust them not. Grati-' 
 tude — yes, that is a quality honorable and lovely — in a 
 heart which knows its why and wherefore, wholesome as 
 bread ; but it is apt to be a simple Jureur, like heady wine, 
 given to ferment, in the unthinking and unstable heart of a 
 crowd. It is in the tail of the mob which shouts ' hosanna' 
 that the venom lies perdu. But I have done wrong to 
 speak of such things when they can not be prevented. Be- 
 hold, enough of them. Let us wait upon Providence, and 
 the fortunes of France may come in. Who knows ?" 
 
 Yolande was not satisfied, but felt uneasy. Monsieur 
 Land re had set her thinking, and had shaken her faith in 
 the regard felt by the villagers of Sedge Pond, which had 
 been born and bred of favors' all on one side. She knew 
 that some of them had been brutal in their former lives, and 
 she saw not a few of them returning, almost before the 
 plague had flown, to their old evil habits. They w T ere 
 growing shy, too, of Grand'mere, and sulky, even to bear- 
 ing a grudge against her who was a silent reproach to them, 
 while she hardly ever spoke to find fault with any of those 
 whom she had succored. She trusted, hoped, and waited 
 for the fruit which might hang white and heavy, in place 
 of the mildewed, poverty-stricken seed of her experience, 
 when the place which knew her should know her no more. 
 " If we but take a few hostages we have done well," cried 
 the high-hearted old woman, cheerily, as she looked at the 
 uncouth Deborah Pott and a few others. But the young 
 woman was cruelly disappointed at the revival of the irrev- 
 erent wakes, the bloody fights, the hard-drinking bouts, 
 and also at the coolness and hostile feeling between the 
 Shottery Cottage and its neighbors, now embittered by the 
 blinding shadow of a wrong. 
 
 This disappointment to a nature like Yolande's, at once 
 impulsive and introverted, the warning of Monsieur Landre, 
 and the cessation of the pleasant and healthful lessons which 
 she had got from him, either preyed on her health, or else a 
 sudden failure of strength developed all the fear, distrust 
 ami dismay which were at the root of the girl's heart. This 
 was the last linu-erincr case of the illness bred of the sum-
 
 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 215 
 
 mer's heat. It came on after the briony berries were hang- 
 ing ripe in the hedges, and the leaves were crimson, orange, 
 and grey by the wayside. Taking the individual forms of 
 nervous prostration, wasting feverish fits, and aguish chills, 
 Yolande's sickness was of a dangerous kind. 
 
 At its commencement, Yolande, who as yet had known 
 nothing of disease, whose pure, pale cheek had been until 
 now as perfectly healthful as the buxom red-rose faces of 
 Milly and Dolly Rolle, was keenly alive to every sinking 
 power and strange new pang ; and while she showed a 
 woman's endurance and meekness, she yet, with the swift- 
 ness of her age, sex, and simplicity, made up her mind that 
 she should die. 
 
 It was hard to go away even to the good God and Father 
 — to the blessed Saviour and Elder Brother, even though 
 her childhood and youth had been passed in the shade of 
 exile, among fugitives in a foreign country. Notwithstand- 
 ing that her opening womanhood had received a blow which 
 still thrilled it with a sense of tribulation, vague pain, and 
 inextinguishable yearning, and though every other pulse of 
 being was beating low, yet life was very sweet to her, as 
 to other young creatures. It was hard to quit the fields 
 she knew and the living things that dwelt in them just 
 when she was learning every day to understand and prize 
 them more and more; hard even to leave the villagers who 
 would not abandon their shocking, shameful sins, although 
 they had been saved by a great deliverance. 
 
 She felt it hard to part even from Deb, whose elaborate 
 ministrations and their collapses made her still laugh weak- 
 ly ; and from Prie, whose softened harshness now made her 
 cry. She thought with pensive tenderness of Monsieur, 
 who would not miss her greatly, so long as he had the dear 
 old mother, but who looked astonished and somewhat 
 troubled at her coming before him in this matter of pre- 
 maturely fading away. As for Madame, it grieved her to 
 see her child ; the mother's set face said little and much ; 
 her strung faculties seemed to need neither rest nor refresh- 
 ment, and she scouted at sleep and food for herself, remain- 
 ing a grim watcher and dumb suppliant against Death, 
 who approached with the crashing step of a conqueror over 
 what was mortal, though Christ had died, yea, was risen 
 again.
 
 216 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Ah ! and the tears rose to Yolande's eyes as she looked 
 on Grand'mere, tender and true, bright with a tremulous 
 brightness. For why should Grand'mere give way ? Who 
 should sustain the drooping spirit of her darling, if not she ?' 
 "Who should uphold, fan, and cherish the nickering name 
 of life till it revived, if not she ? And should she be doom- 
 ed to mourn for a short but awfully sharp separation, the 
 time for mourning would come all too soon. But now, she 
 would not sin against the long-suffering delicacy and mod- 
 esty of true womanhood by untamed bursts of passion and 
 the abandonment of anguish ; she would not thus cloud the 
 close of the young days, which might be running out faster 
 than the river to the sea, nor rudely shake the golden sands 
 of life by her sorrowing. 
 
 At first Yolancle was full of pathetic care and longing 
 sorrow for Grand'mere's chastened grief. " What will 
 you do, Grand'mere? — what will you do?" was the con- 
 stant cry, varied by fond, anxious plans of how Prie was 
 to water the jardotidre, and Deb to sleep on the mattress 
 on the floor. Membre was to read other books than 
 the Huguenot mem-oirs ; Monsieur was to go no more 
 journeys to London and Norwich ; and Yolaude would 
 be almost satisfied if there could only be found an or- 
 phan child of the emu/res of Spitalfields or Canterbury for 
 Grand'mere to call ' Yolandette,' to lead by the hand, ca- 
 ress, and bless. Then she would utter waking, startling 
 cries : 
 
 "Oh, heavens! she is standing there still — is it not so? 
 Why does no one bring the fav&euU? Sit down, dear 
 Grand'mere; lay your cheek on the cushion, Id, Id; she 
 has had no gofiter. Why does no one mix the salad and 
 pour out the almond milk ? Eat and drink, Grand'mere; go 
 into the garden, my heart, and see if the jasmine-tree is still 
 powdered like a marquis, and if the walnuts are as big as 
 beans, and if the Reiue Claudes are blushing, as they used 
 to do in France." 
 
 So long as the excitement lasted, no fervent, steady, assur- 
 ance of Grand'mere's could quiet the disorder of the earnest 
 alfections. She would say, "I shall do well, little one. I 
 lean on t\\c fauteuil \ I eat and I drink. Shall I bring you 
 a sprig of the jasmine, and lay it on your pillow ? Fie ! let 
 not your cheeks shame it ; let them grow less white, let
 
 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 217 
 
 them grow round as a periwinkle, and pink as a Daphne, 
 ray girl." 
 
 But Yolande of herself soon drifted gradually into that 
 second stage of illness when God's finger-touch calms the 
 ruffled feelings, quiets the loving cares, and replaces them 
 by passive submission so perfect that it might be taken for 
 apathy, but for the conscious, deliberate surrender of re- 
 sponsibility, the transfer of trust to another, and the rever- 
 ent appeal to God for all, save the bodily ailment — a sub- 
 mission which lifts the sufferer above the world. 
 
 And thus Yolande lay, removed from her friends, as all in 
 sore sickness are, except from those who hover and cling 
 round them, in the altogether unnatural and exceptional life 
 of the sick-room, Avhere prevails permanent twilight — some- 
 thing between the last sunset and the new day. All sounds 
 are muffled and dull there, and all interests are concentra- 
 ted in the spring which issues from one personality — a per- 
 sonality to all appearance fast ebbing and receding from 
 the grasp of kindred personalities, like the last wave of a 
 low sea in spring tide. Yolande lay thus, waiting till the 
 question of life or death, which she had already answered 
 for herself, should be decided by another tribunal where she 
 had no voice. 
 
 The world without heard and apprehended that the 
 young Frenchwoman of the Shottery Cottage lay a-dying. 
 Regret was no doubt felt by some that they might never 
 more see her forming a figure in the Watteau groups in 
 the garden-bower, in the cottage-porch, or in the dark par- 
 lor, at which they had so often pointed clumsy fingers and 
 scurrilously jeered. Some remorse would seize them as 
 they thought of her relation to the past ; for had not Yo- 
 lande gone in and out among the people, and had she not 
 caught the malady while minding their sick — though folk 
 did say it had taken rather a queer turn in the foreigner, 
 and was neither the falling sickness nor the putrid fever. 
 Well-a-day, they were sorry for Mademzelle, that were they ; 
 she was so young to be taken, though she was most likely 
 a Jesuit or a spy, at any price. Yes, Yolande had her 
 mourners among the rough villagers; and as there is noth- 
 ing like death for condoning offenses, magnifying merits, 
 and crowning the wearer with a very nimbus of glory, it is 
 more than probable that had Yolande died now she would 
 
 K
 
 218 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 have escaped the tumult of sudden love subsiding and re- 
 bounding as suddenly into old deep-rooted aversion and dis- 
 gust, and would have lived in the popular memory spirit- 
 ualized as rude minds might have spiritualized her into the 
 pale pitiful ghost of a young dead girl who had made up for 
 being French by passing betimes to the great congress of 
 nations, where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, Greek nor 
 Scythian. Nay, her very memory might have been a medi- 
 um for reconciling the enmity which had existed between her 
 people and the people of Sedge Pond, having gone, with the 
 good deeds towai^d her neighbors in her hand, straight to 
 Him of whom the parson preached that his command ever 
 was, " Love your enemies." 
 
 The sister of the brazen woman whose child Yolande had 
 taken into her pure arms one day sauntered up to the Shot- 
 tery Cottage gate, and defied the virtuous indignation of 
 Priscille by persevering in her question as to how the 
 young Madame was — a faint blush on her bold brow the 
 while. The fellow of the bad man whose curses Grand'- 
 mere had not feared, and who cursed no more, but contin- 
 ued to cry mightily for a blessing upon her, so completely 
 forgot himself and his horror of everlasting woe, that he 
 went into the autumn fields to gather poppy-seeds and hop- 
 berries to form a pillow, in order to procure an hour's sleep 
 for the sick girl's restless head. Even at the ale-house, 
 where the greatest jealousy existed against the frog-eating, 
 grimacing foreigner, who, instead of contributing to the 
 custom of the place, rather damaged it, fierce accusations 
 and foul jests were for the time silenced. Indeed, the uni- 
 versal sentiment was — " Sin' the lass lies a-dying, we'll say 
 nought again' them for the present. Let 'em a-be ; we say, 
 let 'em a-be; happen it may be our own turn next. We 
 raun be decent, lads and lasses, in our nagging. Death wipes 
 out the heaviest score." 
 
 Madame at the rectory, leaving her cherished solitude, 
 came home from her sea-side refuge, and would have watch- 
 ed like a mother over Yolande for the sake of the old wom- 
 an who had wept over Madam's Philip in his prime. She 
 was scared, however, by the grim mother of Yolande, who 
 would suffer no interloper by the bed where she stood 
 sentry. 
 
 Milly and Dolly, those arrant cowards, not without an
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. . 219 
 
 overpowering horror of Yolande's ghost haunting them if 
 they failed in their attention, ventured near the cottage 
 armed with fever water, civets' tails, and camphor bags ; 
 but once on the spot they threw away the civets' tails and 
 the camphor bags, and, seated on the outer stair, looked up 
 at the darkened window and bemoaned Yolande like the 
 companions of Jephtha's daughter. Notwithstanding this, 
 however, Milly and Dolly kept Black Jasper riding to and 
 fro between the rectory and Reedham, and Madame was 
 at her wit's end with false alarms about attacks of the epidem- 
 ic shown in tangible and bewildering symptoms for days 
 and days together. 
 
 Mr. Lushiugton, with his cauliflower wig and noble calves, 
 his person drooping and slouching in its gorgeous peach 
 and scarlet, appeared at the Shottery Cottage, no longer 
 with gifts of pigs' puddings and crab-apples, but shaking his 
 powdered head ruefully, and holding his empty hands behind 
 his back, saying huskily, "Who'd e'er have thought it? 
 God have mercy on her! She's beyond we at this date, I 
 take it." 
 
 But Yolande was not beyond the recognition of his voice, 
 sonorous in its whisper ; and she sent him a very girlish 
 message, the glitter of her eye on fire, as she spoke, with the 
 inward-burning fever. 
 
 Old Caleb Gage bent over Grand'mere's hand with the 
 strangest and most wistful half-apology, not merely for him- 
 self, but for his God. " I am but a man, my dear old Mad- 
 ame. I can not tell a mother's heart, but my Lucy used to 
 remind me that He whom we ignorantly worship is the 
 great Father. In the name of the poorest and worst fa- 
 ther here, I bid you remember that I love my boy not less, 
 but more, when I elect him to a post of difficulty and danger, 
 and bid him keep it, and suffer great things at it in his Fa- 
 ther's name, and for his brethren's sake. And were God to 
 bid him come up at once to his own mother, because there 
 were far greater things for him to do with her yonder than 
 any poor failures which he could make with me here, I w ould 
 pray that, though I should die, I might not deny the right 
 of Caleb's God and its wisdom and justice." 
 
 Grand'mere did not lose her meekness and faith then, 
 although she shook and tottered on the brink of the grave 
 herself. "Go, my Mend, and pray that my faith fail not
 
 220 THE IIUGUENOT FA1IILY. 
 
 also," she urged ; and, like Joseph among his brethren, con- 
 tained herself till all should be over. 
 
 But there was a change upon her when Mr. Hoadley, 
 with a faint tap at the door in the dead of night, came to 
 her Avith the appearance of having been torn by wild horses 
 or by seven devils. He described himself as having been 
 engaged in fighting the " old man within him," and he had 
 gone without either food or sleep as long as Madame had 
 done ; but what a weak woman can do with comparative 
 impunity drives many a strong man beside himself. Mr. 
 Hoadley, by no means a strong man, had become possessed 
 by an idea, grand enough in itself, for it Avas unearthly and 
 devoted ; but he Avas the more tempted on that account to 
 make a horrible Moloch of it, and, in grim and ghastly 
 offering, to slay before it all his natural affections. Pie had 
 been sleeping, so far as he had slept, and Avaking, in his par- 
 son's clothes during the crisis of Yolande's illness ; he had 
 wrestled in prayer and paced over miles of road, trying 
 desperately to Avalk doAvn his doubts. But he received no 
 comfort, because the honest love Avhich had led him back 
 to duty and to God he miscalled idolatrous and unregener- 
 ate. Thus slandering and stamping upon it, he was scorched 
 to the bone with its struggling flames, and besprinkled with 
 the ashes of its humiliation. No Avonder, then, that he 
 looked like a crazy creature Avhen he found his Avay to Grand'- 
 mere, and addressed her with an unstiflcd groan. 
 
 " Woe to us, Madame," he began, " for avc have made for 
 ourselves an idol, and it shall be broken. I call upon you to 
 repent, as I seek to repent, in the depths of my misery. I 
 call upon you, her Graud'mere, to join with me in giving her 
 up lest she should be spared to arise and Avork her oavu and 
 our destruction, and to cover us with the degradation and 
 shame of our idolatry. Behold the Bridegroom cometh ! 
 let us go out with our virgin to meet Him." 
 
 Graud'mere stood up before Mr. Hoadley, and for almost 
 the first time in her life forgot the mortal agony of another 
 in her own sufferings. She denied the charge, and declared 
 it was he Avho dishonored his God, and not she or her child. 
 
 " She Avas my child, and not my idol, man. God Avho has 
 a father's heart, gave her to me, and Ave together returned 
 our thanks to Him. He bade me love and not hate her. 
 He even deigned to compare his love to mine. If you tell
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 221 
 
 me that I have not loved her sufficiently, I will believe you. 
 If you say her God and Saviour want their little one, then 
 I answer that I understand that, for I want her also ; but it 
 is right and necessary that my want should yield to theirs, 
 though I should be bereft indeed. I see the necessity, and 
 I will still cleave to the Giver and Taker, because in a very 
 little time He will give back to an old woman the gift which 
 was his originally, and which He counted so precious. But 
 if you tell me she is an idol, and not an angel, and that she 
 is smitten in order that I may be smitten, that I may be 
 better by being mutilated, then I tell you, man, you speak 
 the devil's lie, and not God's truth ; you bear false witness 
 against your God." 
 
 So with her feeble hands the old woman put the young 
 man, the most confounded of the two, out of her presence 
 and away from the sacred precincts of the sick-house. 
 
 Young Caleb Gage came not all through Yolande's griev- 
 ous illness ; and while she had little or no sense of the tor- 
 ture which would neither let Mr. Hoadley go nor stay, she 
 had an abiding sense of Caleb Gage's absence. She was 
 not, however, heavily offended, Grand'merc having long ago 
 plucked the cankering sting of shame out of the girl's heart. 
 Caleb had not met her friends' choice with his choice, and it 
 was inevitable that he should stay away ; only his staying 
 away made death, as it had made life, all the wearier and 
 drearier for the obligation. He went about his ordinary 
 occupations and amusements. He was still his father's 
 right-hand man, and superintended the draining and trench- 
 ing at the Mall which had been recently begun ; and he 
 rode to market, and hunted and fished and shot as usual. 
 But sometimes, on these days of brooding stillness, he would 
 lie for hours and hours among the ling on the Waaste in the 
 silence and solitude, or take shelter there amid the storms 
 which in the woods herald the fall of the leaf. There was 
 nothing to break in upon his engrossed senses save the 
 drone of the bee ; the crack and whirr of the grasshoppers 
 among the bristling wild grass, the furze, and rag-wort; or 
 the wail of the plover in the grey distance. There was no 
 sight to force itself on his abstracted c\ e >a\ e lonely savage 
 nature which had not yet acknowledged man for its master. 
 
 It was not because the young squire was an intense lov- 
 er and student of Nature that he withdrew at this time into
 
 222 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 her retreats. He did not much care whether he meditated 
 in a well-beloved resort like the Sedge Pond Waiiste, or 
 within barren stone walls. It was more endurable for him 
 at intervals to go aside and confront the spectre which 
 haunted him, saying plainly, " Here I am, do your worst ; I 
 shall stand it and seek no reprieve." What harm had he 
 done, then? He had been led a dogged dance of sulky 
 protest by a superannuated, fantastic old Frenchwoman, 
 and that was all. Nay, he could abuse and make light of 
 Grand'mere no longer, not even in the safe secrecy of his 
 own thoughts, when he knew that the poor old soul was 
 hanging over the death-bed of her darling. 
 
 As for that figure which rose up before him in the most 
 unlikely places, haunting and harassing him in the half for- 
 eign elegance and daintiness of the sober brocade, in the 
 stately sweep of the train which never encumbered the youth- 
 ful trip of the feet, and the dark hair and eyes, the pearly 
 cheek, and the meditative mouth, Caleb Gage could make 
 nothing of it. Only this he knew, he could not go on bearing 
 malice against such unmistakable gifts and graces, because of 
 a bad and impertinent French precedent. lie had insisted 
 upon resolutely turning his back upon beauty of person and 
 character, while now it seemed these were doomed to shrivel 
 up and wither in their bud more speedily than even the 
 grass of the field. How could he help asking himself, like 
 the rest of the besotted world of Sedge Pond, Why had it 
 come to this? Was there no help for it? How would it 
 have been if the event had been different ? Had his young 
 wife or his plighted bride been wasting and waning like this 
 harvest moon, how would it have affected him ? And this 
 Eolande had never seen her full lustre, but was dying out in 
 her first quarter. He wished now that he had not been so 
 hasty and ungenerous — that he had been wise enough not to 
 have taken the overture at the first word, overwhelming the 
 friendly contracting parties with confusion and consterna- 
 tion. Of course he was not called upon to marry when and 
 whom his father — good and reasonable though he was — and 
 the old Madame, who had pitifully burned her fingers, thought 
 fit ; but then he might have gone more graciously about his 
 objections. What did Yolande think of his contumely? 
 Had it hurt her in her sweetness; for they said, and he be- 
 lieved, that she was sweet ? Had she in her superiority cared
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 223 
 
 for him the least, been inclined to stoop to such a snarling 
 lout as he, who could not be so magnanimous as to make al- 
 lowances for foreign ways and manners, but must needs ap- 
 pear to impugn the perfect modesty and delicacy which the 
 greatest boor she had tended at Sedge Pond would have 
 guarded as he would a lily in its sheath ? Indeed he would 
 far liefer have been the veriest boor of them all, than have 
 so wronged any woman. And now had the very flower of 
 womankind regarded him, not as a matter of expediency, but 
 softly and kindly in her coyness, her French maidenliness, 
 and been so rewarded ? Where was the use of his asking ? 
 He should never know what had been worth the world to 
 know, if he had not been ill-conditioned, and other people, 
 the best of them, had not bungled and blundered. Where 
 was the use of his contrition? She would never know ; she 
 was dying in her chamber in the Shottery Cottage, minister- 
 ed to by Parson Hoadley, who had valued her; and the 
 death of the noblest, sweetest woman in the world would 
 lie at his door, even though he would willingly have died to 
 save her. 
 
 So the days went on, till the day of thanksgiving and re- 
 joicing, when in the little world of Sedge Pond it seemed as 
 if the sun all at once broke through a dense dark mist, dis- 
 pelling the doleful shadows. More than one man and wom- 
 an woke up as from a bad dream. They went out and shook 
 themselves like Samson, not thinking that the Spirit of the 
 Lord might have departed from them, but rather wondering 
 and smiling at their melancholy and their folly, returning 
 with a will to former lines of conduct. Yolande, too, raised 
 herself, very weak and faint, a very atom of a girl ; but with 
 all the difference between death and life in her looks and 
 speech, and with earthly hope re-kindled in her languid eye. 
 
 "But I do think I am better, Grand'mere," whispered the 
 girl. " I shall walk abroad with you again, after all ; I who 
 thought never to do it more. Petite mere, I am glad, and 
 you also, all of you are glad. And you, who are not only 
 wiser and purer, but stronger than I, do you render thanks 
 to God for me to-day, and we shall pay our vows together 
 when my sicknesses and infirmities are all -one." 
 
 Grand'mere, in her own mode, rendered thanks in her inner- 
 most chamber. She broke down utterly, and beat upon her 
 breast at last, with a passionate protest :
 
 224 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 " What am I, unworthy wretch, to receive so many great 
 mercies, when others cry in vain, and stretch out their hands 
 all day long, and still death breaks down their barrier and 
 bears away the heart of their hearts to the dark grave and the 
 unseen spirit world ? Lord, Thy presence-chamber is yonder, 
 but Thy creatures are here, and they love their fellow-crea- 
 tures whom Thou hast given them ; and when Thou takest 
 them away without ruth or stay, poor human hearts would die 
 within them were it not that there is One who Avas lost and 
 is found again. And He was no prodigal son, but the true 
 bien-aime of the Father. So they will go to their lost, and find 
 them in the end, though their lost will not come back to 
 them. My God, did the widow of Sarepta stand silent be- 
 fore the other widows whose sons and daughters came no 
 more into their bosoms, abase herself because of them, and 
 weep sore for them ? Lord, if I ever forget that those whom 
 Thou hast smitten are among the apples of Thine eye, be- 
 cause even the sinful human mother's heart yearns most 
 over her suffering child — then, Lord, forget me in my need. 
 When we wish to hang our dogs we say they are mad ; and 
 when we wish to justify Thy mysterious ways to men, and 
 to trade upon them for our own base profit, we slander Thy 
 afflicted, and try to get our own of retaliation and revenge 
 out of them. But thou dost not want our villainous justify- 
 ing, and Thou hatest our cruel kindness. Lord, if I am ever 
 spiteful, malicious, and harsh toward Thy wounded ones — if 
 I presume to treat with a high hand their groaning impa- 
 tience, their sick waywardness, their sore desperation as the 
 false friends of Job dealt with the woes of Thy servant of 
 old — if I count up their offenses and think to visit them on 
 the offenders, and cause them to pay double for their sins in 
 the day of their trouble, because their God is stripping and 
 making them poor, that He may make them and many more 
 rich — if I dare to sit in judgment on Thy miserables — 
 then Lord, smite me and strip me, before I lose altogether 
 the image of my Maker, and go into a place of sterner pun- 
 ishment."
 
 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 225 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 THE HONORABLE GEORGE'S TRAVELING CHARIOT. 
 
 The dusky green of July and August had waxed and 
 waned into the ruddy brown of October. The leaf-fingers 
 of the chestnut, like the fists of a miser, were yellowing and 
 shriveling round the rich mahogany-tinted nuts ; the beech- 
 trees were masses of crimson and scarlet in the low slanting 
 sunbeams ; while the few corn-fields among the pasture- 
 lands, now reduced to stubble, were crackling under the feet 
 of sportsmen. These effects of color were dazzling and gar- 
 ish to Grand'mere, whose eyes had been early trained to the 
 cool darkness of the pine and the dim blueness of the olive; 
 but Yolande, with the affluence and elasticity of young life, 
 was able to go abroad again, and even to face the slight 
 sting of frost which made healthful the mellow air. 
 
 There was little inward change iu the girl, save that with 
 the enthusiasm of a prisoner or an invalid on his return to 
 the free open world, she had a double relish for hardy out- 
 door life and simple country pursuits. There was greater 
 outward change. The blood, beginning to course afresh in 
 the thin white cheeks, flushed them with a quickness and ar- 
 dor, and tinged them with a brilliance which had not before 
 lit up the subdued tone of her complexion. The formal roll 
 of hair, in the fashion of Grand'mere's silver roll, had given 
 place to the short, dark clusters which were all the fever 
 had left on the shapely head. No round-eared cap with 
 dominant, imposing ribbon bow (though Yolande had added 
 to this portion of her dress a starched ruff and tucker) could 
 accord to these clusters the old, becoming air of sober wisdom 
 and dignity. And what, indeed, if Yolande, grave and shy 
 as she used to be, Avas a little thoughtless in the intoxication 
 of her release from heavy discipline, and the thankfulness and 
 cheerfulness of her convalescence ! She was pretty sure to 
 come to her senses speedily, and to go on more sedately 
 than ever, with only a little more humility and a little more 
 forbearance for others — a brighter checker in her humor for 
 all time to come, because of this short season of mirth of 
 
 K2
 
 226 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 spirit which was like to verge on giddiness. Neither Grand'- 
 mere, nor even Madame herself, could find it in her heart to 
 check Yolaude sharply, and to put a stop to what was ben- 
 eficial for the confirmation of her health before the severe 
 gloomy English winter set in. Indeed, the older women at 
 the Shottery Cottage were shaken out of their bland and 
 austere rigidity by the dispensation of sickness. They 
 would let the younger woman run oif out of their sight on 
 long walks and varied excursions, into the lanes for black- 
 berries, among the hazels for filberts, and along sandy tracts 
 of the Waaste for wild liquorice-roots, in no better company 
 and with no greater protection than that of Milly Rolle, 
 who had struck up a devoted friendship for Mademoiselle 
 on her restoration to Sedge Pond society. Not even the 
 return and brief sojourn of the family at the castle could 
 shake Milly's sudden passion for a bosom friend, by recall- 
 ing her to her sworn allegiance to my lady. So Dolly, with 
 the occasional assistance of Madam at the rectory, was 
 left alone to serve Lady Rolle, who never looked near the 
 Shottery Cottage, conducting herself as if her tenants there 
 had been entirely brushed from her mind. " And a mighty 
 good thing they were so, and not turned out of the cottage 
 at twelve o'clock some stormy night, right into the sloppy 
 village street," his honor, Mr. Lushington, was heard to 
 cogitate. 
 
 Grand'mere was touched by the late-come fancy of one of 
 the rectory girls for a Dup'uy. 
 
 " The poor red and white thing," she would soliloquize, 
 " she grows up tender as that dear duck of a girl Deb, and 
 that kind black dog Jasper. I love them all ; and my 
 Yolande loves, and is loved by them also, and becomes so 
 much more human and sweet, so much less of a reserved, 
 ascetic Protestant nun. For me, I like good ordinary 
 girls, unassuming and unconscious, even with the faults 
 of girls, like primroses and daisies with earth-stains upon 
 them, and not spoiled nuns, with pinched poverty of na- 
 ture here, and rank passions there, like the twisted mon- 
 strous cacti of Mexico. As all the waters run together, and 
 meet in the river, so girls ought to run together, and meet 
 in the humanity which grows and grows till its top reach 
 the skies. There will be no confusion of tongues to break 
 in upon and scatter it again, because of one tongue which
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 227 
 
 spake as never man spake, and speaking once, speaks forever. 
 Neither will it be a perfect humanity of atoms and entities, 
 but of all the families of the earth, where the girls will be 
 girls, and the old women old women. I believe it, I hope 
 it. It is not the usage of France, but for me I have not 
 much more fear of the promenades of the fillettes than of the 
 horse-gallop of the gargon. I ought to have less when the 
 last is often a grand gallop to the hospital. The girls will 
 card and color each other as the French calico weavers on 
 the Thames and at Bromley Hall bend their threads of flax, to 
 form one fair pattern. Go ! beat the parquet with the truth, 
 unless it is reflected in the mirror of a fellow-face. The 
 red and white Milly is more interesting, and yet more dis- 
 trait, than she used to be — she is not such a mere spoiled 
 child. The petite, again, is more of a child growing down- 
 ward or backward, instead of upward. But truly she can 
 afford that, the wise child, and the price pays the piper. 
 Better to spread out bushy and strong than to spring up 
 into a maypole. Ld, Id, old Genevieve, thou kuowest it 
 well. Chase away nature tripping on two feet, and behold 
 she will come back racing on four." 
 
 But Grand'mere was more than dissatisfied, she was dis- 
 pleased and apprehensive, when she learned from Yolande, 
 who was discomfited and troubled in her turn, that when the 
 two younger women were out in their mantles and capu- 
 chins, their little baskets over their gloved arms, they were 
 apt to meet Mr. George, from the castle, in the most unex- 
 pected ways, and in the most opposite, unlikely directions. 
 At least they were unlikely directions for a gentleman who, 
 when at the castle on former occasions, had been wont only 
 to stroll in sleepy elegance toward the bridge about sunset, 
 for the laudable purpose of affording the modicum of exer- 
 cise necessary to his small friend and dog, or to saunter 
 down, earlier in the day, to make the frequenters of the ale- 
 house proud by looking on, and laying a bet on bowls and 
 balls, to keep up his skill. 
 
 "You make no more promenades, whatever English 
 modes may be," cried Grand'mere, decisively, and some- 
 what tartly for her. 
 
 "But he is at present quite respectful and gentle, Grand'- 
 mere," protested Yolande, puzzled and almosl affronted. 
 " Monsieur from the castle says no longer ' little Dupuy,'
 
 228 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 but ' my very good mademoiselle.' He no longer picks up 
 the trains — he carries only the baskets ; though, do you 
 know," she went on, whispering mysteriously, and with 
 bashful importance, " he is the friend of Milly, as I think." 
 
 " A friend in truth ! exclaimed Grand'mere in increased 
 indignation, under which she veiled her alarm. " I tell you 
 that you make no more promenades, and I go to speak to 
 the rector about the friend of his daughter." 
 
 " Oh, what have I done ?" urged Yolaude in lively dis- 
 tress. " Milly will be in anguish, and so will I, because I 
 shall have told tales on her, who has begun to have so 
 much kindness toward me. They are tales, if not fancies, 
 for she denies that she has any thing to do with milord, and 
 she promises, if I am afraid, that she will never speak to him, 
 nor let him come near us again, till he ask the permission 
 of Monsieur the rector. Do you understand, my good 
 Grand'mere? It will be an afternoon of misfortune if you 
 do not, and go and make your naughty child a pie of a tell- 
 tale and slanderer of her friend. Trust to Milly, Grand'mere 
 — you who are so full of trust and generosity. You have 
 suffered me to go about the village with that Monsieur 
 Richard — that young pastor," she added, with a little sar- 
 castic emphasis ; " where, then, is the diiference, when Milly 
 has been brought up with Mr. George, as one may say, and 
 when my lady his mother is her patroness and kinswoman ? 
 She is the next person who will be offended. Misericorde! 
 I shall speak to Milly myself, if you wish it ; I shall not 
 cross the threshold of the cottage, but shall watch my poor 
 friend from the window of the garret, if that will do any 
 good, and if you will not inform Monsieur, the Spartan fa- 
 ther, Avhom Milly fears so terribly, though she loves him 
 dearly." 
 
 Grand'mere saw that there was some reason in Yolande's 
 remonstrance, and at the same time the old Frenchwoman 
 had a modest sense that she could not be a perfect judge of 
 manners in England. She let her better wit sleep, and re- 
 frained from farther interference in the matter, except what 
 had to do with keeping her own child at home till the 
 great Rolles should be off the tapis. 
 
 Grand'mere was confirmed in her forbearance by knowing 
 that Milly ltolle was either prudently confining herself 
 within the bounds of the rectory, or was content to dawdle
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 229 
 
 away her time and hang disconsolately with Yolande over 
 their samplers in the porch of the Shottery Cottage. When 
 they were not thus engaged they paced with arms inter- 
 twined, round and round the narrow walk by the fish-pond. 
 Grand'mere songht rather to warn the girls indirectly, 
 while she amused them by queer proverbs, and by the in- 
 variable French legend of a wandering, impossibly beauti- 
 ful, and benevolent princess, beset for the nonce by troops 
 of wolves, each wolf taking the form of a light-headed, re- 
 gardless fine gentleman. 
 
 Notwithstanding this, Grand'mere in her own person had 
 something of the fool of quality, and was easily persuaded 
 to discredit the existence of evil unless there was proof 
 positive of the grievous fact. When Mr. George wound up 
 his supposed meditation of mischief by paying unexpected- 
 ly a ceremonious visit to Grand'mere, the infatuated Hugue- 
 not bourgeois and Christian gentlewoman could not yet re- 
 gard it as a piece of effrontery and an undue liberty, but 
 took it for what he did not even pretend it to be — an 
 atoning duty to wipe out his mother's desertion and condem- 
 nation. It would not have signified much what face 
 Grand'mere had put on Mr. George's attention, unless her 
 obstinate single-heartedness could have worked a miracle 
 in piercing the thick skin of overweening vanity in the man. 
 In defense of Grand'mere's security, it may be said that so 
 far as Mr. George's doportment and conversation during his 
 visit went, he might have hoodwinked Solomon himself, 
 from the perfect inoffensiveness of his bearing and his top- 
 ics, though they did not range so far as from sleave-silk to 
 predestinations, but merely from chip hats to tambour nee- 
 dles. 
 
 Grand'mere looking at and listening to the easy good- 
 breeding of the slim, polished speaker, was inspired with 
 the ambition of showing herself a genuine lady of the 
 essence of Huguenotism and Christianity, since she repre- 
 sented the Household, Monsieur being shut up in his cabi- 
 net, Yolande sent out of sight, and Madame's hostility hav- 
 ing become more and more of a mania. She could not 
 think that there could be much in the dibonnaire compan- 
 ionship any more than that force dwelt in the delicate 
 hands with the five-pound rutlles fluttering over the knuck- 
 les. As the hands tapped the jeweled snulf-box, its very
 
 230 TI1E HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 lid conveyed a prettily-concocted pinch of flattery, for it 
 bore the choice miniature in enamel of the Duchess de 
 Longueville, Grand'mere's loveliest countrywoman, who 
 became a Jansenist, if not a Huguenot. Grand'mere could 
 have descanted by the hour on the poor storm-torn rose of 
 the Fronde wars; and when the enthusiastic old woman 
 found that Mr. George was making a rare collection of 
 such miniatures to hand him down to future generations as 
 an exquisite virtuoso, she readily undertook to procure him 
 a priceless likeness of a Magdalene in a king's court, in 
 Louise la Valliere. George Rolle would take " the goose," 
 with Grand'mere's own ewe lamb to the bargain, if with 
 all his idle prowling he could beguile to destruction a silly 
 little animal. And Grand'mere was assailed on her weak 
 side, and all her suspicions were lulled to sleep. As the 
 best of us are apt to do in similar cases, she forgot that 
 there was evidence — awful overwhelming evidence — that 
 these fine hands would grip like claws, for the individ- 
 ual, and for the order, insolently and relentlessly, without 
 stint or measure. These were the hands of languid, fantas- 
 tic, corrupt giants, not of puny dwarfs, as some have im- 
 agined. 
 
 At length the happy day arrived when the Holies took 
 their departure from the great arrogant white blot of a cas- 
 tle till the next election. My lady, the ruling passion 
 strong in her leave-taking, chose to turn over her coaches 
 to her sons for the present journey, and to make the jour- 
 ney herself by slow stages in her chair; for to be borne all 
 the way to town, not by horses, but by men, was something 
 novel, and fell in with her ladyship's mood. 
 
 Grand'mere had certainly a lucid interval in the delusion 
 which was on the eve of receiving its death-blow ; she 
 breathed more freely "when she heard that the progress of 
 the quality was past and gone ; she hummed " Marlbrook" 
 in her shaking voice, and granted Yolande carte blanche to 
 run out with Milly Hollo beyond the Shottery Cottage 
 garden-gate and the Sedge Pond village street. 
 
 That evening she went herself to call the children to sup- 
 per, and walked as far as the garden-gate, to which old 
 Squire Gage had come reading, as ho rode, escorted by his 
 goodly son, a summer agone. The scene recalled to Grand'- 
 mere's mind, as freely as yesterday, the group which had at
 
 THE UUGUEXOT FAMILY. 231 
 
 first taken her fancy, and, as she paced up and down the 
 short walk, she considered the disastrous blunder which she 
 had made. Not, that Grand'mere recognized the blunder ; 
 on the contrary, "It was the marriage the most convenable, 
 the couple the most felicitous. I never had a happier idea," 
 pondered the innocent offender. 
 
 The girls loitered, but Grand'mere did not weary. It was 
 their time to loiter, as it was that of the last quinces to fall, 
 the beet-root leaves to change to a purple-black, and the 
 brown autumn wall-flower and pale lilac and white leafless 
 crocuses to offer rich, heavy floral incense, or wistful floral 
 weeds for the year which was a-dyiug. 
 
 Grand'mere had a heart to hold all the seasons, though 
 she loved the spring best, and looked a little pensively and 
 shrinkingly on the autumn, because of the coming winter, 
 with its nipping blasts, stark frosts, and winding-sheet of 
 snow. For the old, however meek and resigned, Avant the 
 images of life, and not those of death, and turn instinctively 
 from the cold to the heat, from the shadow for which there 
 is no longer need, to the sunshine which can not bask broad- 
 ly enough for them. Cut Grand'mere perfectly understood 
 and submitted to the fact that, while the budding hope of 
 spring was for her consolation, Yolande in her own spring 
 must be unsympathetic, and must stretch after the distant 
 and unknown, delighting in fulfilled bounty and brooding 
 repose. She could pace the garden road contentedly with 
 Madame Rougeole as a safe recipient for an occasional so- 
 liloquy. She did not wonder that the empty harvest-fields, 
 with their purpose now finished and forsaken, had no sad- 
 ness for Yolande, and that she could stay and chatter with 
 Milly Rolle, as the mist rose from the slow river, carrying 
 hoariness to the very uplands of the Waiiste, and bearing 
 nothing but the seeded stalks of heath-flowers, inasmuch as 
 her foot had trod swiftly among the cuckoo-flowers and the 
 oxslips where they wafted the sweeter breath, and Avere the 
 more richly golden for pearls of May deAv. Grand'mere'a 
 thoughts Avere all tranquil and happy. Even when they 
 turned to the spread supper-table within the house, it Avas 
 with a pleasant recognition of the security, sufficiency, and 
 domestic joy which Avere associated with the homely images 
 of strings of roasted birds and rows of fried trout, and such 
 Medoc as could be got in England, to replace indifferently
 
 232 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 the brown ale ; with the jauntiness of Monsieur and the 
 sombreuess of Madame both tempered to Grand'mere by the 
 strongest, simplest devotion, and with the light of Yo- 
 lande's young face and the sociality of Milly Rolle's rattling 
 tongue. 
 
 A hurried tap came to the garden-door, and Grand'mere 
 cried gayly, " Who goes there ? Enter the grand Mad- 
 emoiselle," though she knew the shuffling step was only that 
 of Deborah Pott, who had cojtne seeking Mademoiselle Yo- 
 lande to look over her task of burnishing the pewter ves- 
 sels in the house before they should be submitted to the 
 lynx eyes of Prie. Indeed, to relieve Deb's oppression and 
 anxiety more than her own, Grand'mere had dispatched the 
 girl to look out for her young mistress. 
 
 But when Deborah appeared with all her new garments fly- 
 ing behind her, her very hair standing on end and streaming 
 back from, her shock head under her loosened cap, with her 
 ungainly arms swinging, her splay feet clattering, her teeth 
 chattering, and the horror of her news bursting from her fix- 
 ed eyes as well as her quivering lips, Grand'mere was arrest- 
 ed and petrified. 
 
 " Murder ! — murder ! old Madame !" struggled out Deb, 
 in explanation ; " young madam — both the young madams 
 be carried away and undone." 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE SIIOTTERY COTTAGE AT BAY. 
 
 " A see'd them with my own eyes," Deb went on to ac- 
 count for her wild statement, " a-walking and a-talking and 
 a-laughing like childer, coining down Pedlar's Lane with 
 their hands full o' trash. When right a'foot o' the lane, there 
 was summut under the split elm, what a' took for a wagon, 
 but it proved no wagon, nobbut a charyot. And out of it 
 sprang a tall man as thof he were awaiting for the young 
 mistresses, and he spread out his arms and stopped the pas- 
 sengers. Hey ! but they fell a-cryin' and a-tryin' to pass 
 him, leastways our young madam, as put out her bits of 
 hands and pushed him back, a' ne'er thought she had such 
 force." 
 
 " Tims /" cried Grand'mere, with a flash from her grey
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 233 
 
 eyes; " and you did not fly to her, and fight for her! She 
 went to you, my big girl." 
 
 " A'd a gone as sure as deeth," protested Deb, " thof a'd 
 a-been smashed and brained and hanged and quartered ; but 
 with that, driver and postboys came swarming out from the 
 charyot and the. elm. One 'hind and the rest afore, and 
 closed the lasses round, while my gentleman lifted and drag- 
 ged them intil charyot. And off they drove afore a poor 
 body would say, ' By your leave.' You believe me, Madam 
 Grand'mere? "More by token an' a' had not bidden still, 
 there would have been none to run with the bad news and 
 give the alarm." 
 
 Grand'mere took no comfort from the conclusion, and fail- 
 ed to commend Deb for her discretion. She forgot every 
 thing in her deadly sickness at this greatest calamity which 
 had befallen her — a calamity to which death itself would have 
 been light. 
 
 " The Monsieur, the gentleman ! Speak, child, and kill me ! 
 It was some stranger, some audacious traveler for a frolic. 
 Ouidd, the girls will be free again before this ; they will be 
 skipping home to us now. But it was a bad jest, without 
 doubt, still only a jest ; it was not — " 
 
 " Dunnot take on so," besought the commiserating Deb. 
 " Now, I'se tell you all, and not keep you waiting. It were 
 one of our own quality, more's the pity, as left the castle yes- 
 terday. T'were Mr. George hissen. A' know'd him by's 
 clean-scraped cheeks, like a black-a-vised wench's, by the 
 color of s sodgering coat, and the black ribbon round's neck ; 
 t'other's older and stouter, and wears a cravat, and a' know'd 
 him by's own man Master Harry, as wears the two watches 
 and — waly ! is the loosest liver in the parish — after my lord, 
 and my lord's brother." 
 
 " A place of dragons !" cried poor Grand'mere, putting 
 out her hand, and feeling her way back to the house, as if 
 she had been sun-struck in the cool autumn sunset. " Go, 
 girl," she continued, "go to the rectory — and tell the pas- 
 tor his daughter is gone, how, and with whom. lie is not 
 an^old woman, a stranger and a foreigner like me; he may 
 load a pursuit, and my son will follow when he returns 
 from the vcloutiire—z\\\ what say IV— from the Waaste, 
 where he went to shoot the little birds, lie will feel fa- 
 therly now that his stock is smitten at the core He has his
 
 234 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 honor, his human feeling, under his scheming trader's and 
 emigre's skin. And my little bird, saved from the bolt of 
 the destroyer only to fall into the snare of the fowler, and 
 to die twice over, dishonored and murdered ! Did I keep- 
 the child cruelly for this ? My selfish greed of her, is it 
 thus heavily punished ? Would to God I had died for 
 thee, Yolandette ! "Would to God thou hadst died singly, 
 securely, in the house of thy father, tended by thy 
 mother !" 
 
 Bear in mind that these " good old times" which Wesley 
 and Whitfield, and at a later date Wilberforce, troubled, as 
 the prophet Elijah troubled Israel, were times when the 
 carrying off of women, and the hiding of them in lonely 
 houses and remote inns, were crimes actually possible and 
 occasionally practiced in England. Single acts of barbar- 
 ous unrighteousness and brutality remained to impress 
 upon men how gradual is the civilization and Christianiza- 
 tion of a nation — how men may hang up their broadswords 
 and stab with walking-rapiers, how great towns may be 
 taken and not put to a general sack, and solitary weak 
 women may be decoyed or lifted away by foi*ce from the 
 seclusion of paneled parlors and the publicity of tea- 
 gardens, to be cast out at last like dogs. It was a far more 
 frightful blow for an honest man and Avoman to hear that a 
 young daughter had been seized by the violence of man 
 and whirled oft* in a chariot, than that she had quietly sick- 
 ened and died by the visitation of God. If she had been 
 stopped on a lonely by-way, a rescue was hardly to be ex- 
 pected ; if on a frequented high-road, a hundred idle 
 tongues would be set a-wagging, and would babble away 
 the good name and the fair fame, which a breath could 
 sully, past redemption in this world. At the best, when 
 the last unspeakable wrong was escaped, it was with the 
 bloom and the dew of what should have been a sacred 
 frankness and fearlessness of girlhood gone forever. No 
 lot was left to the victim but either to hang her head and 
 pine for her misfortune, or to brazen out its disgrace until 
 the ill name hanged the poor dog driven desperate, or ^e 
 brand ate into and tainted the soul itself, and what had 
 begun in harsh slander ended in actual wickedness. Soon- 
 er would the fondest father and mother, not sold to the 
 vile tampering with evil and the base time-serving which
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 235 
 
 characterized the "good old times" on their "worst side — 
 sooner would they have consented to see the favorite 
 daughter, the house-pet, lying a stony figure on her bier. 
 
 France was not so different from England in this respect 
 that Grand'mere did not comprehend the full bearing of 
 the truth. She could not but cry, " Would to God I had 
 died, or Yolande had been suffered to die when the inno- 
 cent death of girlhood was at the door, rather than have 
 lived to awaken the cruel fancy of a fine gentleman !" 
 
 When the awful news spread, it was not Monsieur, but 
 the rector, who was found to be from home. He was 
 away preaching an assize sermon, thirty miles off, at the 
 nick of time when one of his cherished daughters had be- 
 come the prey of worse than a highwayman. Her sister 
 Dolly was hardly more astounded, incredulous, helpless, and 
 hysterical than was Madam her mother, when the primitive 
 messenger rushed past Black Jasper with his solemn mar- 
 shaling, and without pause or preparation did her best to 
 drop a shell into the rectory parlor, where Madam was no 
 more appropriately occupied than seeking to win Dolly 
 from a lit of moping by a dish of chocolate. 
 
 " An it please you, Pearson's Madam — and I'se warrant 
 it will please none of you," began Deb, with an ominous 
 shake to her unruly apron and voluminous cap — " Mistress 
 Milly, as is thick with our young madam at the Shottery 
 Cottage, be run off with, along with t'other, this here 
 blessed sundown, a'foot o' Pedlar's Lane, and I be sent to 
 tell you." 
 
 " Alake ! alake ! my Milly, and papa from home ; but 
 sit you quiet, my Dolly," got out poor Madam, distract- 
 edly. " What harm have the horses done the girls ? I 
 have cordials and linen at hand. Conduct me to my child, 
 my good girl ; this faiutuess will go as soon as I have set 
 eyes on her." 
 
 "Anan! There be no horse in the play, saving the 
 horses in the charyot, and they were druve by worser than 
 horses, marm — by wicked men. Mr. George from the 
 castle, he had a hand in the running oil' with the young 
 madams. A's take my Bible oath on what a' sce'd. Bat 
 as to leading you to the hiding hole — it were not the 
 castle — he knowed a better trick than that, and he bade 
 driver take the opposite road. To find that's the pother,
 
 230 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Madam; and that's what we are in the pickle about to- 
 night at the Shottery Cottage. Old madam had howped as 
 how Pearson were the man to raise the hue and cry — his 
 own daughter being gone and done for." 
 
 Milly to be run off with by Mr. George, on her return from 
 the most ordinary country tramp ! — this was a new and 
 thoroughly bewildering light thrown on an accident. 
 Surely, if the story were true, it could only be in the way 
 of the noblest promotion to Milly, though the banns had not 
 been published, and my lady would cut the rash couple dead, 
 and not hesitate to implicate, in the unjustest manner, and 
 thenceforth to hate and persecute cruelly, the whole rectory 
 family. 
 
 Notwithstanding these depressing considerations, the 
 devoted, silly woman — good and gentle as she was — was 
 ready to plume herself on her daughter's runaway match 
 with a member of the proudest quality. But there were 
 drawbacks to this conviction. It was odd and incongruous 
 somehow to think of Mr. George as one of a passionate, im- 
 prudent young couple. Madam at the rectory was not 
 slow in believing the most extravagant compliment to her 
 daughter's charms ; but Mr. George had not been any way 
 conspicuous in his languid mocking attentions to his rustic 
 kinswoman, unless whispering to her once or twice in cor- 
 ners during his last visit to the castle were to take the place 
 of the elaborate courtships Madam had been accustomed to. 
 Then what of little Dupuy, the French ma'mselle, whose 
 concern in the scandal Madam had at first forgotten, but 
 whose presence, when she recalled it, was an additional 
 stumbling-block to a satisfactory explanation of the mys- 
 tery ? What was to be made of her ? Was it necessary 
 to spirit her from the scene, create a greater sensation, 
 and complicate the matter for the mere purpose of doing 
 honor to Milly's foolish liking for her by electing her to be 
 witness and best maid on the interesting occasion, in room 
 of the pouting, flouncing Dolly ? And, oh dear ! if Milly 
 were mad enough, and the Honorable George bad enough, 
 simply to drive about the country to show themselves to 
 the public, without any more proper protector and compan- 
 ion than Milly's French friend ! In this light the calamity 
 was infinitely worse than the failure in the summer dish of 
 gooseberry fool, or the tearing of the rector's surplice. It
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 237 
 
 would be beyond Madam's power, even if it came within 
 her duty, to conceal this scrape from the rector. For once 
 in her life the timid, distraught, ignorant lady would sound- 
 ly rate her dear girl, Milly, had she but her tongue on her 
 again. 
 
 At the Shottery Cottage the dreadful disaster which had 
 befallen the Dupuy family worked in the peculiar way ad- 
 versity sometimes works in turning the world of character 
 upside down, and doing away with previous impressions. 
 
 To begin with the kitchen. Big Prie, having resisted 
 the first frantic inclination to set out after the most monstrous 
 of robbers, subsided tamely into a shocked, appalled elderly 
 woman, shaking all over, and even whimpering feebly for the 
 loss of generous, guileles young Madame. She left it to 
 the young blood of the raw Deb Pott to rise to the occa- 
 sion, and show a genius not only for open-eyed observation, 
 but for staunch adherence to a trail, and daring excursions 
 right and left to authenticate it. If Deb did not rise like a 
 phoenix, certainly in one single hour she was drawn from 
 her slough of brutal ignorance into an uncouth but very 
 genuine woman ; the orphan and drudge was transplanted 
 into the solid if somewhat rough ground-work of a good, 
 faithful, rudely-sagacious creature. Prie, who in her gaunt 
 grufthess could not bend or mold to new requirements, or 
 create resources for unthought-of necessities, at once, by 
 the law of nature, succumbed and deferred. But it must 
 be said she was too miserable about the daughter of the 
 house to be jealous of the elevation of her subordinate. 
 She only dully wondered at " her as couldn't ha' telled her 
 right hand from her left, or a farthing candle from a four- 
 penny mold, growing so spry all of a suddent." Now and 
 then she would give a fling of aimless, peevish rage when 
 Deb, who was stolid and coarse though honest, and had the 
 making of a noble woman in her, dared, with gross want of 
 delicate tact, to compare their pure, kidnapped, concealed 
 ma'mselle to the wretched women (and Deb had heard of 
 many of them even in her short life) who, with scant cere- 
 mony and charity, were sentenced to a fatally blighted 
 life. 
 
 Madame Dupuy was passive, and stricken dumb in her 
 insulted and outraged womanhood. Her thunder had been 
 all spent in the fine weather, so that there was no strength
 
 238 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 left in her for the storm ; she did not reproach Grand'mere 
 with short-sighted magnanimity, she did not even denounce 
 the perfidious English and the licentious quality: she re- 
 viled the world and reflected on Providence no more. 
 
 It was Monsieur, the man of the world, the cynical phi- 
 losopher, whose sallow cheek grew green, grew black, who 
 stormed and foamed and turned his back, and wept hot tears 
 like sparks of fire. " The mother's child, the old woman's 
 darling, her picture if we lost her — and I was not there to 
 save the little one ! But I will have justice coute que cotite. 
 I know, though I am a roturier of a Huguenot tradesman, 
 that there is one justice for the quality and another for the 
 commonalty in this fine country of England. But there is 
 justice, such as it is, and the quality are left to themselves 
 sometimes, and cry halte Id I at each other's sins, and hold 
 them up to open punishment." 
 
 It was Grand'mere, the sweet-tempered, buoyant-spirited 
 old gentlewoman, whose brave heart failed her, whose ten- 
 der conscience told her terrible things, whose firm faith 
 reeled under the shock. Grand'mere took cognizance of 
 all her own confiding rashness which had set at nought the 
 mother's jealous foresight and stern precaution, what she call- 
 ed her romanesque folly, which had brought ruin to her family. 
 She knew that Monsieur could not be silent on his injury, 
 but was forced to make grievous explanations and furious 
 inquiries, and with her quick wit she saw that the world of 
 Sedge Pond did him monstrous wrong. Because he was 
 yellow and sodden in his heaviness, instead of bluff and 
 hearty, because his expletives were safely strange and incom- 
 prehensible, and his best English accent worse than that of 
 any Welshman or Scotchman, because his spluttering frenzy 
 was in as great a contrast to what would have been a John 
 Bull's choking dignity as it was to his own wonted half- 
 sardonic blandness — because of all this, the villagers thrust 
 their tongues into their cheeks, and derided the unhappy 
 man. With a brutal irreverence for human nature and in- 
 fidelity to it, they called the Avhole story a French manoeu- 
 vre ; and for Yolande, who had been their sister of chari- 
 ty, and over whom, when they thought her on her death- 
 bed, they had shaken their heads with some stupid approach 
 to awe and tendernoss, they now called her a French slut ; 
 and the only person to be pitied in their view of the affair
 
 THE UUGUENOT FAMILY. 239 
 
 was the idle, set-up hussy, the parson's daughter, who would 
 go gadding in indifferent company. 
 
 This wanton misconception filled Grand'mere with dis- 
 may. True, the object of it was to the world only a mid- 
 dle-aged, scheming man, with the doubtfulness of a cloud 
 over his interests and engagements ; but he was to her a 
 son, her only son, who had been devoted and dutiful — too 
 loyal, indeed, to breathe a whisper of Grand'mere's fro- 
 ward interposition for the purpose of opposing his and my 
 Lady Rolle's sovereign will, which had it been accomplished 
 would have at least placed Yolande under powerful protec- 
 tion. 
 
 Grand'mere contemplated" her Hubert setting out single- 
 handed, in the darkness of the unprovoked deadly destruc- 
 tion of the family peace, to search for a lost daughter, his 
 only child. She had a lamentable vision of Yolande, her 
 shy, modest, sensitive child, brought in a moment to a crisis 
 of fear, grief, and shame, quaking and quivering, and wild 
 with distraction of unbelief. 
 
 "My daughter-in-law," besought Grand'mere, creeping 
 and clinging to Madame, with her voice broken and shiver- 
 ed to a vibrating shrillness, " chide me, accuse me, that my 
 God may spare me, and be spared to me. I had sooner know 
 myself a miserable culprit, aud consent to lay down my grey 
 hairs in a coflin of infamy, than think that He had forsaken 
 the child who trusted in Him. My God ! keep her from 
 thinking so. For the dark places of the earth are full of 
 horrible cruelty, and Thou knowest and sufferest it. Inno- 
 cent women have been foully maltreated and barbarously 
 done to death ere now in Thy sight and hearing, and Thou 
 hast not interfered and opened the earth to swallow up their 
 persecutors and murderers. What can we do? Hearest 
 thou, Philippine ! Blame me, condemn me ! lest I or the 
 child curse God and die !" 
 
 But Madame remained true to her faith, her instinct and 
 education ; her trust in God and her homage to the old 
 mother forming an oasis of docility and gentleness in the 
 arrogance and violent antagonism of her nature. In its in- 
 spiration Madame could even argue and plead with the 
 guileless guile of love : " No, no, little mother, thou wert al- 
 ways our good angel, hers and ours. Not true, ma m&re ; 
 if the wolves had not found one way of eating us up, they
 
 240 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 would have found another. Courage, Grand'mere, call back 
 thy forces under the good God. Poor, miserable ones that 
 we are, we hang upon thee. Thy son, thy daughter Yo- 
 lande — more yours than my husband's and mine — who will 
 cure her hurt and wash away her stain, if she survive and 
 return to us, save the wise, tender old woman? Thou 
 knowest that I am but a rod in pickle at the best." Sus- 
 tained and raised on the strong tower of devotion and duty, 
 Madame in the hour of trial thus re-assured and comforted 
 Grand'mere : " ' The w r rath of man shall praise him' — shall 
 a Huguenot doubt it ? In the a'igues-mortes our women 
 suffered the utmost, but it was only their bodies, which the 
 Apostle called vile in the beginning. After it would have 
 been all over with the women of the world, who have no 
 souls to speak of, the souls of our saints soared away out of 
 great tribulation, with wings as of eagles, like snow-birds 
 washed white in the stream of His blood, to hover round 
 the great white throne. The soul of Yolandette ! how can 
 the caitiff so much as smirch it with a finger-spot, Grand'- 
 mere ?" 
 
 Monsieur had driven away from the ale-house in one of 
 the high yellow gigs of the time, so crazy an equipage that 
 there was more danger of its being tilted up, dashing Mon- 
 sieur out, and leaving his busy brains on the highway, than 
 of his overtaking the chariot. 
 
 After the night of misfortune had drawn a veil of autumn 
 darkness over the confusion and dismay which prevailed, 
 and another day had risen, Grand'mere received several 
 acknowledgments of the evil which had befallen her. The 
 first was a card from Lady Rolle, who had not more than 
 reached the first country-house on the line of her magnifi- 
 cently slow and troublesome progress. It contained only 
 the lines — 
 
 " You would not accept my proposal, Madam, and you see 
 what has come of your insolent integrity. I wash my hands 
 of the business. My son has merely done what might have 
 been looked for from him to you, and I suppose now you 
 expect me to interfere and remedy the mischief; but you 
 will find yourself mightily mistaken. As you and the hura- 
 bled minx have made your bed, so you can lie on't. I have 
 told you I wash my hands of the business. I have to add
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 241 
 
 that I never repent of my decisions. Your obedient ser- 
 vant, Audrey Rolle." 
 
 Finely strung and keenly susceptible as Grand'mere's tem- 
 perament was, she had no pained resentment to spare for 
 this vindictive taunt. 
 
 "God have pity on you, miladi, who thus trample upon 
 me, who am cast down," she said, dismissing the subject ; 
 " for the great Lord God repents Him sometimes of the 
 misery whieh sinners bring upon themselves." 
 
 Then Mr. Lushington was shown into the Shottery Cot- 
 tage parlor, his very brow under his curls suffused with 
 warm red, and at the same time beaded with cold perspira- 
 tion. His round eyes, bedded in fat, were struggling in 
 their tight sockets for the first time in the course of their 
 existence ; his firm calves were shaking like jelly : he stood 
 there an honest man in the grievous awkwardness and gen- 
 uine distress of having been betrayed and shamed by those 
 whom he had delighted to honor, and whose representative 
 he had been proud to be. 
 
 " Madam," he said, retreating instead of advancing when 
 he saw that Grand'mere did not look angrily at him, but 
 looked only a pitiably-stricken woman, " I'd as lief touch a 
 live coal as take your hand. Couldn't, raley, Madam ; it ud 
 burn me to the bone. Law ! to think our family should 
 have been so left to themselves as to put a finger on Ma'm- 
 sello that my lady our own mother noticed and had up at 
 the castle. But Ma'mselle were too good for our rackets, 
 and we're more left to ourselves than ever. It is my solemn 
 conviction, old Madame Dupuy, that we are going right 
 out of hand to perdition. Sharp's the word, and here's the 
 sign. The last time I was here, you mind, I was apolo- 
 gizing profoundly for evening the lass to the likes of my 
 company, and her too good for this world and fit for the 
 company of the angels. Yet the modest saint bethought 
 herself of me, and sent me a kind, sweet wench's mes- 
 sage, 'I wish with all my heart I were his little daughter,' 
 And I wish the same, miss, answer I, though I am not 
 worthy. God sen' she may not want a friend. Bat I af- 
 fright you, Madam, as I honestly credit, without cause. 
 I crave your pardon ; and I came here with another in- 
 tention." 
 
 T.
 
 242 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 "You help me by your kindness of heart, Maitre Lush- 
 ington, for I trust your goodness," said Grand'mere. 
 
 " I only came here to tell you that our Mr. George, let 
 him be a selfish sneering rake, though I should not say it,, 
 and have never said it before, is not a devil outright to 
 abuse his ill-gotten power to the worst. There is proof of 
 it in his carrying away young Madam from the rectory along 
 with your lass to keep her company and blindfold the pub- 
 lic. Rolle, who provokes t'other as a mastiff worries a bull 
 terrier, has been twitting him with Ma'mselle's fine scorn 
 and independence, and what not, when he tried on his 
 game in forgathering with her and Parson Philip's gay mad- 
 am, and he has snatched her beyond reach to play it out at 
 closer quarters. But he is not a brute or a devil, is Mr. 
 George ; he and his order are light of mind at this time of 
 day ; the whole set be never clean in earnest unless on the 
 rights of the quality and the English." 
 
 "It is always the English for the English, my good 
 friend," put in Grand'mere, to fill up a pause occasioned by 
 the superabundence of her visitor's fat. 
 
 " Yes, by the Billy, if you will believe it, Mr. George 
 himself fires finely on that. A proud fool have I been to 
 hear him and Rolle speak up in Parliament, at 'lections, and 
 when they were trouncing the French — no offense — doing 
 honor to the old stock. I'm fain to own it were all the hon- 
 or they did it, for I care nought, not I, for their squalling 
 farrin singers, no better than they should be, their bits 
 of brass and rags of tapestry, and their cracked brown pict- 
 ers in ship-loads, with ne'er a red and white cheek, a blue 
 sky, or a cornicoper of gold in the lot. I leave that to a 
 polished, knavish blackguard like my lord's Tony, or an. 
 impudent scoundrel like Mr. George's Harry, who pretends 
 to be as thick in the plot for rickety furniture and rusty iron 
 as his master. The dickens! when I think of the power of 
 grand sticks of trees and heavy stacks of corn they've cost 
 my lady, and how they and the desperate evil of play are at 
 the bottom of the orders to sell out every back-going tenant 
 and press every yeoman who will pay with his last groat 
 afore he will quit the fields where his childer have been 
 born and their feyther afore them, I could find it in my 
 heart to smash and burn the toys." 
 
 " Oh," said Grand'mere, more to herself than to her com-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FA3IILY. 243 
 
 panion, " how these qnality sacrifice their peace of mind for 
 draughts of pleasure that burn but never satisfy." 
 
 4< Howsomever," Master Lushington went on, " you have 
 heard what Mr. George is — a petty mater in your native 
 tongue, as I've heard often enough gabbled to little profit, 
 and no reflection on you, old Madam. This adventure is 
 but a piece of wicked play to him, and there being a couple 
 of ladies, you may depend upon it he's gone no farrer than 
 to a friend's empty house, or to a quiet country inn, within 
 a circuit of ten miles. Well, but Ma'mselle has sense and 
 spirit, as well as beauty and honesty, and will resist our 
 gentleman's becks and bows, and gifts of smuggled silks 
 and jewelery, by way of atonement and peace-offering. 
 So, cheer up, for while she is amusing him with the stubborn- 
 ness of her virtuous resentment, she will get a letter sent by 
 a safe hand, or succeed in screeching out of a winder, or 
 waving a kerchief to a friend. What will remain then but 
 the fright and the fine word of being run away with ?" 
 
 "Ah, but the fright is the smallest part of the evil, Maitre 
 Lushington," broke in Grand'mere. 
 
 " Nay, but my tongue butters no parsnips," added he, 
 bluntly ; " I own candidly it is none of a fine, but a very 
 ugly word ; let that satisfy you that I speak the truth. Yet 
 I can tell you this — that plain folk know the quality and 
 our family, and will not come down thumping hard on a 
 brush as might not be escaped. One thing I'm woundy 
 glad of — that I could not make up my mind to give our fam- 
 ily the go-by, and leave it to shift for itself, after a life's serv- 
 ice, till the last moment. For so it have left me the coat 
 which will get me a hearing and an entrance at a hunder 
 turns, to which Monseer dare not set his nose, or come back 
 blooded in that ere feater. Wear the Rolle livery, in order 
 to ferret out a Rolle and his misdeed ? Not a doubt of it, 
 Madame Dupuy. I wish to goodness I had allers done it 
 as much credit. Moreover, by your leave, I may come down 
 lighter than another, for all our sakes, on the sinner — say 
 than Monseer might be frantic enough to do, when he came 
 to small-swords or pocket-pistols with Mr. Georg< — he's a 
 clever man at that practice — if Monseev's life were worth a 
 farden's purchase, whether he won or lost the dool. But 
 there is no chance of such a meeting, old .Madam — nut the 
 least in the world ; and as for danger to an old soldier o\' a
 
 244 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 
 
 butler like me, hoity-toity ! there is a lining to this coat" — 
 and Mr. Lushington fingered some papers in his pocket im- 
 pressively — " which it dunnot become me to mention, but in 
 consideration of them dirty papers, my lady herself, in her 
 worst tantrums, will not have me arrested, or caned, or set 
 in the stocks, neither for contempt of authority, default of 
 service, or misuse of livery. Pay no heed, madam." 
 
 The effect of worthy Mr. Lushington's weighty practical 
 arguments, delivered with much elaboration and expense of 
 wind, was a happy one on Grand'mere. The strait was a 
 sore one, but even one such stanch friend was not to be 
 despised. 
 
 Mr. Hoadley's ardent friendship actuated him in an oppo- 
 site fashion. He renounced Lord Rolle's chaplaincy, or was 
 dismissed from it, he could not be quite sure which, the mo- 
 ment that the news of the escapade found Lord Rolle, per- 
 force, escorting his mother, with a shocking bad grace, to 
 town, having commanded the attendance of both chaplain 
 and physician to share the burden of my lady's tempers and 
 whims. 
 
 Mr. Hoadley had walked unsummoned and unannounced 
 into the library of the great house at which my lady had 
 stopped, where in studious affectation of study, and in night- 
 gown and slippers, Lord Rolle was to be seen immersed and 
 engrossed in the contents of an ebony cabinet full of inven- 
 tories, household books, and recipes which he was privileged 
 to examine. 
 
 ' ; My lord, I have come to tell you, as a mau and a Chris- 
 tian — " burst out Mr. Hoadley. 
 
 " My good fellow," interrupted Lord Rolle, quickly, while 
 he carefully marked his place with his tooth-pick, " as a man 
 and a Christian, I have seen for some time that we don't 
 suit. There is a check for your salary. Say no more about 
 it. Don't bore me, and oh ! pray, don't bore Fidele. You 
 know, Fiddle can not forgive a brutal entrance. See how 
 she snuffs and snarls," pointing to his weasel-faced satellite 
 in her basket. " I doubt if she would ever have taken you 
 into favor again, and I can't abide any of my people failing 
 to be on good terms with my dog of dogs. But before you 
 go, you who have not sat so late, reverend sir, or tried your 
 poor eyes so prodigiously with polite society — though you 
 used to be fond enough of a spare seat at the faro-table,
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 245 
 
 till the rhino failed, or you thought to try the pious dodge 
 — hey ! Parson Hoadley ! — lend me your aid to make out 
 this word ' consumed — consummate coxcomb.' ' 
 
 " ' Consomme of cockscombs,' my lord ; I was not aware 
 that your eyes were so affected. I take leave to inform 
 you that I shall go before the next justice and depose to 
 what I know of this infamous act of treachery and violence, 
 and compel him — yes, my lord, compel him to take steps 
 to bring the atrocious perpetrator — were he the Duke of 
 York or of Gloucester — under the law's dreadest penalty 
 for a detestable crime." 
 
 " Softly, my man," said Rolle, quite sweetly, drawing his 
 fingers through his scratch wig, then letting them drop in a 
 pose among the lace of his cravat. " Don't you think a 
 magistrate who would send one of the royal dukes to swing 
 at Tyburn would be a rarer monster even than Sir William 
 Gascoigne ? ' Consomme,' was it ? ' consomme of cocks- 
 combs' — a charming disb, I am sure. "What a ridiculous 
 mistake I had gone near to perpetrate ; ha ! ha ! ha ! it tick- 
 les me to think of it — appropriate too. ' Consumed cox- 
 comb,' ha! ha! yaw! yaw! Good-day to you, Parson 
 Hoadley ; I have the honor to wish you a very good-day, 
 
 sir." 
 
 Parson Hoadley did not credit that his blood was boiling 
 when he told Grand'mere, in the poor fellow's magnilo- 
 quence, that he had not called down the vengeance of Heav- 
 en on his patrons, but that in obedience to His orders he 
 had prayed for his mortal enemies. Also he declared that 
 he would go to the world's end armed with the Word of 
 God alone, to reclaim and restore the victim, however in- 
 fatuated and perverted, whom he would not trust himself to 
 name. 
 
 Yet virtually he named her, and the question remains 
 whether it was characterisitic of Mr. Hoadley's tempera- 
 ment or of the views which he had imbibed and held man- 
 fully ever afterward, that while he had loved Yolande 
 Dupuy with as true a fervor of man's love as ever at once 
 troubled and dignified a face now keen, now li>tlo>s, he 
 could yet term her a victim, while his honor Mr. Lushington 
 would not name her, and could infer infatuation and per- 
 version on her part, and reclaiming and recovery on his 
 own.
 
 246 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Grand'mere loved this young man, and understood him 
 better than he understood himself. She was sunk under 
 her torture, but she could not stand this tone, bred of con- 
 ceit, irritability, weakness, and faithlessness to human na- 
 ture. She could have stamped with her high-heeled shoe, 
 and cried, " Go, then, give her up. Be the first to doubt 
 and turn upon her, under pretense of righteousness and char- 
 ity. It was always the way with the poet, with the priest, 
 and the Levite." 
 
 And now there were only the Gages of the Mall to en- 
 counter. The Gages were at too great a distance to be 
 roused and appalled by the earliest report of the Dupuys' 
 calamity ; but the old squire would doubtless take the 
 trouble to ride over to the Shottery Cottage, and condole 
 from the bottom of his heart with the distracted family. 
 
 Grand'mere could not refrain from reflecting a little bitter- 
 ly on the Gages, and weaving unpalatable, unwholesome 
 fancies concerning them. The father and the son might 
 have saved the Dupuys a world of terror, sorrow, and hu- 
 miliation by meeting, as frankly as it had been made, what 
 was in Grand'mere's eyes her perfectly modest, discreet, 
 suitable plan of disposing of Yolande. Had the bowls been 
 permitted to roll fairly, long ere this a gracious affection, a 
 pure and honorable love, would have sprung Tip and flour- 
 ished under the most serene and sacred countenance and 
 shield, and united the young pair in indissoluble bonds. 
 Not even a llolle of the castle would have ventured to dis- 
 turb the peace, and trespass on the dignity of young Mad- 
 am Gage of the Mall, nay, of the contracted wife of young 
 Squire Gage — a different person in the neighborhood from 
 Ma'mselle, the French silk-weaver's daughter at the Shot- 
 tery Cottage. 
 
 Again, Squire Gage and his son, good as they were, might 
 in their English surliness hold themselves excused for feel- 
 ing thankful that they had resisted a temptation, and been 
 saved from a pitfall. How could they be supposed to be 
 nobler than the young pastor in exalting the goods which 
 they had been the first to decry by their rejection ? Would 
 they not rather twitch the collars of their coats, rub their 
 hands, and talk of foreign fashions, and their being well quit 
 of them ? Few men or women in the world were more free 
 from spite and rancor than Grand'mere, but in the mystery,
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 247 
 
 mortification, and misery of Yolande's forced elopement, she 
 did bear a grudge against the Gages, against Fletcher of 
 Madeley's friend, the devout, charitable old squire of the 
 
 Mall. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE DEMOLITION OF A CHAISE AND A PLOT. 
 
 " La ! Ma'mselle, don't you see Mr. George is only play- 
 ing a prank ?" protested Milly Rolle, as she crossed her 
 arms, leaned back in the chariot, and took the matter very 
 coolly. 
 
 " It is no pleasantry to me," plead Yolande. " Arrest the 
 horses, Monsieur; let us go. It is necessary that I return 
 to Grand'mere within the hour ; she will not sit down to the 
 little supper without me. I do not comprehend how you 
 can take us away in this manner, malgr'e nous. But I ask 
 you, as a great favor, that you put me down this moment, 
 and I shall walk home without difficulty." 
 
 " I am vastly sorry to refuse you a favor," professed Mr. 
 George, with a great show of courtesy ; " 'pon my honor I 
 am ; but you see I have been at the trouble to contrive and 
 carry out this adventure in order to get better acquainted 
 with so charming a mademoiselle as you are, and with my 
 kinswoman Miss Milly. I should lose my end entirely if I 
 gave in to your polite request. So come now, little Dupuy, 
 ask any other favor, and, by George, you shall have it even to 
 my whole stock of tabac cV etrennes and orange-flower bou- 
 quet, were it only to prove how gallant I can be when I have 
 the opportunity. At the same time consider how I have 
 flattered you two young ladies, for I tell you a false step in 
 this affair may land me in Newgate; therefore I pray you 
 propose to your humble servant something more reasonable." 
 
 u Oh, lie! you naughty man, to speak of yourself and 
 Newgate in the same breath," said Milly, fanning away the 
 idea with her pocket-handkerchief, lor she had made im- 
 mense progress in the art of fashionable conversation and 
 its attendant airs. 
 
 "I am as serious as a parson, Madam," answered Mr. 
 George, carelessly ; " can't you sec Tin dressed for a 6ght?" 
 
 Mr. George was aware that there was some risk in his be-
 
 248 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 ing caught sight of, besides that of his amusement being Sftis- 
 pected and interfered with, at a little distance from home ; 
 and that he rnisjht have a chance of bein^ confounded with 
 some of the wild officers of the period he wore a suit in which 
 he only appeared on special occasions in the country — a mil- 
 itia uniform of red, with buff vest and gold buttons. These 
 so dazzled the eyes of silly, susceptible Milly Rolle, that she 
 fancied she could go to the world's end and share danger 
 and adversity with so splendid a gentleman, who was at the 
 same time so elegant and pleasaut. He was like her poor 
 dear brother Philip in his regimentals, only Philip was sol- 
 id and tiresomely in earnest for so young a man, and, though 
 fond of his sisters, was given to contradicting them flatly. 
 And Mr. George was a mighty different man from poor papa 
 in his rusty gown and cassock and old-fashioned bands. Still 
 her papa would miss her when he came back from the assize, 
 were it only in the way of catching up her words and — not 
 snarling at them, her papa was too clever and good to snarl 
 — taking her off and looking down on her intellectually, as 
 Milly had quite wit enough to see that he did. Indeed she 
 did not love the disparaging treatment even when the rec- 
 tor played most condescendingly with his lasses, and dealt 
 out the lordliest indulgence to them. 
 
 "If your Newgate is for the men who lie in wait for the 
 poor, and spread the net for the simple ones — " Yolande be- 
 gan, swelling with the generous scorn which combated cra- 
 ven fear; but Milly interrupted her by bouncing up and put- 
 ting her plump hand on her mouth. 
 
 " How can you go into such a huff and be so saucy to Mr. 
 George, Ma'mselle? Do make allowance for her, sir; it 
 must be her French breeding which renders her so shy and 
 savage, as she laughs and declares she is, when the black 
 dog is not on her back," explained Milly in something like 
 artlessness. " Now, little Dupuy, come down from your high 
 horse, and don't look at me as if you would take a bite of me : 
 it ain't no use. Why, I've known all along," she continued, 
 triumphantly, " Mr. George had it in his head to give us a 
 bit of pleasure, in the only way he could with all our folks 
 so straight-laced and tyrannical over us. I can tell you I've 
 had my work to decoy you abroad to such a safe distance 
 :is to enable this gentleman to put his purpose into executioiic 
 Many a time I've had to say ' Plague take that granny of
 
 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 249 
 
 yours, who was always in the way.' " In tins fashion giddy, 
 deluded, incorrigible Milly gloried in what should have been 
 her shame. 
 
 Yolande lost every particle of her fitful bloom, and paled 
 to a stonier grey than ever, with her mobile mouth set hard, 
 though perhaps she cried as she had not yet cried in thefost 
 falling shadows. Some natures breakdown more. surely at 
 the falsehood and ingratitude of a friend than at any personal 
 danger and suffering. 
 
 Yolande would not continue a struggle which was useless 
 from the moment she was lifted into the carriage. Happily 
 for the Honorable George and his gentility, it was not nec- 
 essary to put the mufflers which had been provided for her 
 hands and mouth into requisition. She sat in the gathering 
 darkness, giving no farther token, though her consciousness 
 of her position was morbidly keen. The approaching night, 
 the increasing distauce from Sedge Pond, the treachery and 
 absence of trustworthiness in Milly Rolle, the insolent auda- 
 city and defiance of her will by Mr. George, came over her 
 strongly. She dared not trust herself to think, lest she should 
 break down, for no Huguenot girl could bear the thought of 
 being overcome by tribulation. She could not allow her- 
 self to conjure up the amazement and consternation which 
 her absence would excite in the isolated emigre household 
 at the Shottery Cottage, or what she believed would be 
 Grand'mere's piteous patience, and the sore check the old 
 woman would put upon herself, that she in her age might 
 sustain and minister to the middle-aged man and woman, 
 Avho remained her children still as much as young Yolande. 
 She knitted her soft brows, pressed her tender lips together, 
 and clenched her weak hands, to keep herself from wasting 
 her small strength in a fruitless outcry against the violence 
 which had been done to her. After all, it was something to 
 be a Huguenot even in a strait quite removed from the old 
 Huguenot trials. Just as Madame was reminding Grarid'- 
 mere, in the desolated domesticity of the Shottery Cottage, 
 that it was not for nothing the Huguenot women had en- 
 dured unspeakable indignities and burning wrongs in the 
 a"i<jues-mortes and the convents, Yolande was reasoning with 
 herself whether she was so degenerate a daughter of her 
 people that she could not take up her share of the universal 
 trouble, however panic-stricken and mortifying her peculiar 
 
 L 2
 
 250 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 experience. "Was the God of the noble old Huguenot wom- 
 en too lofty and far-off to deign to heed a poor girl's distress, 
 in the imminent risk of her good name ? 
 
 In the mean time Mr. George was beguiling the time by 
 taking snuff out of the Duchesse-de-Longueville box which 
 poor, unsuspicious Grand'mere had admired. As he did so 
 he chattered to Milly Rolle, and introduced into the chatter 
 all sorts of languid, frivolous baits and lures to reconcile Yo- 
 lande to her fate. He promised the girls the sight of a pro- 
 vincial Ranelagh, under the vague protection of other ladies 
 of his acquaintance — a hint sufficient to make Milly jump 
 with joy and cry breathlessly, " Oh, sir, will there be Chinese 
 lanterns, such as one hears of in town ? Will there be 
 boats to sail and sing in without the fear of being drowned ? 
 Alleys to run away and dance in with any fine partner who 
 offers ? And real boxes where one may sit with one's party, 
 drink real tea, munch real cakes, and quiz all the other box- 
 fuls ? Oh, you ninny, Ma'mselle, why ain' you delighted ?" 
 
 But Yolande was only the more affronted and indignant. 
 "To think that I would be pleased with such things — the 
 colored glass, the cakes, the monde as wicked as this cruel 
 man, with his smooth, smiling face, which is hard like a rock, 
 while my father and my mother are in despair, and Grand'- 
 mere crying out sorrowfully for me ! My heart, what do 
 they take me for ? Dream they that I shall be kept still as 
 a sabot by the talk of Hoods, bull-dogs at farms, or herds of 
 cattle going to market? I am a poltronne, but not com- 
 me pa. On the contrary, I shall watch like a mouse till I 
 can gnaw and creep through all these obstacles, and not for a 
 quarter of an hour, but a quarter of a year, though I wade, 
 swim even, and hazard being worried and gored by horned 
 cattle the whole way home. But, behold, it is all over with 
 him and his family, all over ! But when was it ever begun, 
 save in i\\<z mode Franpaise, which he found detestable, thou 
 silly, slighted, dragged-through-the-mire Yolande ? Still I 
 was worthy of him in a sense before, now I am unworthy 
 of him or any man. The dear Grand'mere may essay 
 to console as she will, she can not undo this day's work ; and 
 she has told me already that the French girls are never seen or 
 heard of out of their families and those of their intimes till 
 they are married and under the protection of their husbands, 
 because a word, a breath of scandal, a letter or a rendezvous,
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 251 
 
 sullies a young girl beyond an honest man's count. Tout 
 beau! what would they think of afuite like this." 
 
 Mr. George's chariot, with its four long-tailed castle-breds, 
 was struggling along a frightful by-road, where no four 
 horses except those to the manner born could have kept to 
 their traces. They made so little progress, however, that 
 their master took the precaution of sending on all his spare 
 fellows before to bespeak refreshments and accommodation 
 for the party at the first inn they should come to. " I can 
 not trust these rascals," represented Mr. George, " and to 
 sup on a raw rasher and sleep in a damp bed would be the 
 death of me for certain ; and though you, little Dupuy, with 
 your flinty heart, would not mind that, I have an objection 
 to having it recorded, ' Here lies George Rolle, dead of vile 
 cookery and a shocking catarrh caught in the service of 
 women who were ungrateful to the unlucky dog.' " 
 
 "Dear! dear! Mr. George !" deprecated Milly, in a gen- 
 uine flutter; "what tempts you to speak so of Newgate, 
 and tombstones, and such-like dismals, in connection with 
 yourself? It is as bad an omen as having one's chamber- 
 
 pr< 
 
 treating her concern for him cavalierly, as he crossed his 
 booted leg and pointed his toe, "since Harry the rogue can 
 dress a kidney, and make a bed when he chooses, with any 
 Moll cook or Nancy still-maid of the lot." 
 
 Milly ventured to pursue the agreeable associations thus 
 suggested, by inquiring, with interest, if Master Harry could 
 do any thing to friars'-chicken or cherry-pie, which she 
 must own were hertid-bits. Mr. George vouched with un- 
 blushing confidence for Harry's compounding both on the 
 spur of the moment, and Milly rewarded her grand, all-pow- 
 erful cousin for his ready attention to her wishes, by brid- 
 ling still more, and disclosing that the nighl air was giving 
 her such a prodigious appetite that she seemed to palate 
 the dainties already. 
 
 " And what will you have, my dear Mademoiselle ? Now 
 don't look so contemptuous, since you have not supped. I 
 bee; and implore that yon will not "turn yourshoulder to me 
 and stare out of the opposite window there. It i< not becom- 
 ing, it is not genteel, it is not pretty, little Dupuy." So Mr.
 
 252 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 George persecuted the object of his vagrant affections, and 
 pressed his flagrant suit. "I have an immense deal more 
 experience than you, as to how young women should behave. 
 I have made it my study; and granted that a coquette who 
 piques a gentleman into opening his eyes is something, yet 
 the style will only work if the creature is of the first water; 
 and a man soon gets sick of contradiction and defiance when 
 a reasonable amount of complacency would attach him for 
 life — for a year and a day at least. Think of it in time. 
 Take an example by Cousin Milly, and deign to indicate to 
 your slave what you might prefer by way of gross material 
 food and drink during the indefinite period between the hour 
 of noonday, when you last took dinner, and that in which it 
 will be possible for him to live without the adorable com- 
 pany of his two witches." 
 
 " That must be main soon," put in Milly, smartly, notwith- 
 standing the dubious condemnation of coquetry, " else my 
 papa and mamma will never forgive me this frolic, though 
 it is so mortal dull at the rectory when your family, sir, is 
 not at the castle. I believe- the old people think that Doll 
 and me should be content to play all our lives with daisies, 
 kittens, and Black Jasper, as we did when we were chil- 
 dren." 
 
 "I have not the roc's egg" admitted Mr. George, candid- 
 ly, maintaining his cross fire ; " but if little Dupuy will only 
 oblige me by stating her wishes, however nice they are, 
 however hard she is to please, if they are attainable by man 
 doubly, madly enamored, I engage they shall be fulfilled." 
 
 "Ma'mselle, do you hear Cousin Kollc?" remonstrated 
 the provoked Milly. " Do what Cousin Rolle bids you, or 
 I'll not be fit to hold my hands from boxing your cars." 
 
 The aggrieved, insulted Yolande, thus turned upon by 
 one who had been her friend, had nothing to say to her, 
 but to him — " Monsieur I want only bread and water to 
 keep me from dying of hunger and thirst. And I do not 
 want it too much, for if I die, I die — that is not much to a 
 Huguenot ; we are used to it, the dying under persecution — 
 indeed, we have called it, glorifying God when He asked it 
 of us in the times past; and I suppose He asks it besides 
 of all his poor ones with bent heads and broken hearts. If 
 you do not kill me, I return to Grand'mere over deep seas 
 or roads strewn with flints."
 
 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 253 
 
 " Farce, my child," Mr. George negatived, from such a 
 tremendous height of conceit and patronage, that to have 
 brought him to a sense of his base, unmanly trifling would 
 have been as much as to perform a miracle. " Such doings, 
 monstrous uncomfortable ones, went out with King Arthur, 
 if they ever were in. Did you ever hear of demoiselle or 
 grisette turning up nowadays, on the back of an abduction, 
 in the guise of a beggar-maid ? I should think not. If you 
 ever show your divine face again in such a wretched hole 
 as Sedge Pond, which was altogether unfit for you, I lay a 
 bet of my last hundred, and Mistress Milly here will be um- 
 pire, that it will be seen riding in a cOach no worse than 
 this one, though it is just possible my venerable old friend 
 may forget how well De Sevigne was broken in to behave 
 on such occasions, and refuseflike a mean, old, cross-patch, 
 to receive you." 
 
 " Is it that God receives as well as avenges ?" said Yo- 
 laude, sticking to her point, with her great steadfast grey 
 eyes, so different from Milly's twinkling hazel ones. " I do 
 not ask Him to avenge me. I leave his vengeance to him- 
 self, according to his word. But as God is perfect, Grand'- 
 mere will try to be perfect. I laugh at disgracing Grand'- 
 mere. Can you stain the lily, Monsieur, or soil the moon, 
 though the hands with which you do your devoir are as 
 ink, and the clouds as pitch ? For me, you can not carry 
 me out of God's sight and reach ; with all your boldness, 
 you do not mean that. If I am to glorify Him by suffering, 
 as my people have done, He will permit me to die, or teach 
 me to live. Ah ! with Him darkness is light and death is 
 life, and so I rest your serviteitr, Monsieur." 
 
 "Mr. George," remonstrated Milly, vehemently, " I won- 
 der you have so much to say with Ma'mselle ; I wonder you 
 go on discording with her. I am advised she is an out- 
 and-out Methody of the French stamp. Did you ever hear 
 such a naughty girl, to say all these good Bible words, as 
 if this was Sunday, and she were composing one of my 
 papa's imposing homilies? To apply them to herself too. 
 in such a trumpery affair as being run away with by an 
 overgallant gentleman, which I'll go bound she would 
 have given her ears to have been long since. She daunts 
 me. I have to poke my fingers into my ears, for I can't 
 abide to hear a slut of a woman preaching, like Satan
 
 254 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 reproving sin, no more than my mother could listen to a ser- 
 mon, once delivered, pity on us ! by Madam Gage of the 
 Mall. Have done with your rhapsodizing and your quot- 
 ing of the Bible, Ma'msellc; you forget that I'm a cler- 
 gyman's daughter. Be more modest, for, in spite of all our 
 regard and confabs, I must tell you plainly that I'm black 
 ashamed of you." 
 
 But Milly got something else to daunt her very soon. 
 The October night had drawn its white moist veil, scented 
 with the subtle, melancholy perfume of decaying vegeta- 
 tion, over the earth, close enough to mask faces of misery, 
 and every act and actor which called on the light of day to 
 expose them. What of the wind and water-mills which 
 had at first shown distinct in the dense red gold of sunset 
 was blotted out along with the millers' houses, for which 
 Yolande searched vigilantly, as well as for the square-neck- 
 ed, sloping-shouldered red churches and hamlets which 
 burst out impetuously here and there like the attempts at 
 riot and rebellion with which the political world was 
 primed. But these were always at too great a distance for 
 a scream to reach. Miller, or bell-ringer, or busy mother- 
 ly woman, carrying water from the draw-well for her good- 
 man's supper, or, taking advantage of the last light of day, 
 sitting on the door-step working with the bobbins or the 
 straw which won bread for her bairns, were alike beyond 
 Yolande's reach. It was very likely neither gaffer nor 
 gammer would have been so disinterested, or so much at lei- 
 sure, as to have paid respect of the kind desired, to a faint, 
 stifled scream issuing from a muddy chariot. One or other 
 would rather have gaped, told himself, or herself in abject 
 admiration, " that be a charyot and lower," and then taken 
 refuge in the cautious, self-satisfied reflection, " folks mun 
 mind their own business, and let their neebors light theirs 
 out for theirsens. But mappen the gentry be none the better 
 agreed, or the freer from trouble, than the bondagers. In 
 troth, that squeel sounded as if yon were some poor body 
 going a road with main ill-will." 
 
 As it. was, Mr. George had no call to use the muffler, and 
 it served him for a trifle to toy with, as a mad doctor trifles 
 with a strait waistcoat so long as the patient, at whom he 
 is glancing out of the corner of his eye, is not refractory 
 and furious. And the notable thing, in either case, Mould
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 255 
 
 be that Yolande, or the patient, would remain perfectly- 
 quiet and demure as cats, while it would be Mr. George, 
 or the mad doctor, who would be guilty of unrebuked 
 and unsuspected folly, of all sorts of antics with the muffler 
 and the waistcoat — hanging it over their heads or round 
 their shoulders, or dressing their lingers in it like a com- 
 pany of puppets. 
 
 The carriage lights, with which Mr. George ought to 
 have been provided, had been neglected. The hunter's 
 moon threw only such a 'struggling, fitful light between 
 banks of clouds as caused single farm-houses and detached 
 cottages, seen by its dim, chill beams, to look awfully lonely 
 and miserably poverty-stricken. The deep ruts in the 
 heavy loam of the by-road, now no longer visible to the 
 coachman, made the horses flounder in their toil, and the 
 chariot to rock ominously, like a ship on a stormy sea, 
 every moment driven more and more among the breakers. 
 
 It was in vain that Mr. George stuck his head out of the 
 window and delivered angry commands and counter-com- 
 mands, accompanied by mouthfuls of blasphemous oaths, 
 and a feint of drawing his walking-sword and "pinking," 
 or murdering the driver, as the only natural and justifiable 
 mode of dealing with a difficulty and the servant who 
 could not cope with it. 
 
 The levity of Mistress Milly's chatter was jolted out of 
 her. She became white about the rosy gills, and began to. 
 add to the din by screaming as piercingly as she had 
 screamed when the hostile mob threatened my lady's car- 
 riage in the market-place of Reedham, and by Hinging her- 
 self frantically from side to side, and clinging desperately 
 now to Yolande's shoulder, now to Mr. George's. 
 
 " Monsieur," said Yolande, her voice clear and audible in 
 its liquid foreign articulation, and sounding like the sud- 
 den peal of a little bell, " is there the semblance of an over- 
 throw ?" 
 
 " You have hit the mark exactly, Mademoiselle. And 
 how does such a heroine as you are like danger when it is 
 near ?" said Mr. George, who had all the coolness to mako 
 the investigation with a sneer. 
 
 " I don't like it," answered Yolande, quite truthfully ; 
 " nevertheless, I believe Grand'ni&re prays for us, and I am 
 sure her prayers will be heard before your curses. But,
 
 256 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Monsieur, the poor trembling, tired beasts are overdriven, 
 and thus they stumble at every step." 
 
 " Hang me, but raving devotee of a Mademoiselle though 
 you be, you are right," acknowledged Mr. George, not a 
 coward on his own account, and not so great a fool as to re- 
 fuse to admit and correct a mistake when it was pointed 
 out to him — a mistake, too, which his knowledge of horse- 
 flesh, about equal to that of vertu, would have prevented 
 had it not been for what he inherited of his mother's insane- 
 ly impatient and imperious temper, which had been excited 
 by opposition, and ruffled beforehand by the encounter he 
 had undergone with what struck him as the superhuman 
 courage and constancy of the French girl. 
 
 But before Mr. George's fume could abate sufficiently to 
 allow him to arrest the reckless spurring and whipping of 
 the horses, with a last lurch, a wilder scream from Milly, a 
 more frightful imprecation from Mr. George, and a half 
 breathed murmur from Yolande, the chariot toppled over 
 Avith a stunning impetus and a shiver of glass. There was 
 a snort of horses' breath, a rattle of horses' feet, and the 
 chariot lay right across the road, hanging into the ditch 
 which bordered it. Happily for the occupants of the car- 
 riage the tormented, terrified horses broke the traces with 
 one bound, struggled to their feet, those of them that could 
 still muster strength for flight, and scampered off, clattering 
 .and plunging along the rough road, while those that were 
 dead-beat stood and shook at a few yards distance. 
 
 Mr. George was no coward, as has been said, neither was 
 an overturn so rare and improbable an incident in his an- 
 nals that he had no precedent in his experience, no resources 
 for the occasion. But though he was not left insensible 
 by the accident, he was so far bruised and disabled, and so 
 hemmed in by the cracked and split framework of the char- 
 iot, that he was unable to extricate himself, far less to aid 
 others. The situation once proved, he accepted it with 
 sang-froid, made an effort to reach his snuff-box, and not be- 
 ing able to attain that iHtimatum^ leaned his elbows in their 
 splendid militia uniform on the panel which imprisoned him, 
 and contemplated the wreck around with as much ease as 
 he could command. 
 
 Mistress Milly Rolle was not killed, or nearly killed, though 
 she was crying with all her might that she was. It was
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 257 
 
 self-evident that no one could be half killed and make the 
 row Mistress Milly was making, not only in wagging her 
 tongue, but in beating with her feet on the boards, and 
 pushing with her hands in all directions, though she made 
 no attempt to rise. 
 
 Mr. George was not so sure of Mademoiselle. As far as he 
 could distinguish, while he peered through the darkness, 
 she was stretched without motion for a minute or two, and 
 his callous heart gave a throb of remorse ; then she stirred, 
 slowly at first, more rapidly afterwai'd, until soon she got 
 up as if nothing had happened, -and ran to Milly. 
 
 ''Art thou much hurt, Milly? Where is the pain? 
 Raise thyself up, lean on me. Softly, softly, my friend, else 
 the nerves will become masters, and they are horrible ty- 
 rants, the nerves." 
 
 All the honest indignation against the unutterable re- 
 proach of Milly was gone from Yolande's voice, and instead 
 there was the pity of a strong angel for a weak girl. 
 
 But Milly Rolle declined Yolande's overtures rudely, and 
 Avith a querulous and disconsolate Avail. 
 
 " Go away, Ma'mselle; you are at the bottom of this mis- 
 chief. Mr. George would not have moved in it, had it not 
 been to get the better of your prudery and nonsense, and my 
 death will be at your door. Oh ! indeed, do you think I 
 would let a chit like you put a finger on me — and every bone 
 of me broken already — to finish my business entirely. Alake ! 
 my papa, why are you not here, to call people to account 
 for the scrape they have got me into ? My mamma, Avhy do 
 you not come to take care of your poor girl?" 
 
 "Mistress Milly," Mr. George startled the girls by say- 
 ing, as quietly as if they Avere all seated at the castle supper- 
 table. When they looked round, and tried to discover him, 
 a struggling moonbeam gave them a glimpse of his smooth 
 sallow face, rendered grotesquely horrible by a huge splash 
 of mud on it, and by his scratch Avig having been displaced 
 in the shock, so that his head looked like a lunatie 1 s in his 
 primitive bareness, as it nodded to them with imperturba- 
 ble good-breeding over the broken panel — "Mistress Milly, 
 I beg you to have some mercy on your own lungs, cousin, 
 if not on our ears, and those of the owls and the bats; the 
 tympanums of the latter may recover, but I implore you to 
 consider that it is the former which will be the greatest sul-
 
 258 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 ferers in this contretemps, if you persist in exerting them to 
 so tremendous an extent. My good creature, be reasonable; 
 we are all in the same mess ; and though little Dupuy 
 seems provided with wings for this and every other catas-< 
 trophe, I, for my part, have come off but poorly. Allow me 
 to mention that I have had the small misfortune to lose an 
 eye. I am convinced that one of my eyes has been knocked 
 out in rough contact with this detestable pale," asserted the 
 Honorable George, affording a wonderful example of phi- 
 losophy in his own person, as he put up his hand with sim- 
 ple ruefulness, and touched a cold wet mass in the socket 
 of his eye. 
 
 Yolande ran to him at that word. " Can I do any thing 
 for you, Monsieur ? Can I bind up the wound ? We have 
 had the art of stanching wounds since Bernarde Romilly 
 stanched the wounds of the great Conde. Allow me' to ex- 
 tricate you from the barricade." 
 
 Monsieur stared fixedly at that proposal. The girl, who 
 had held him at arm's length, and contrived to discomfit him 
 when he had her at his mercy, now, when there had been 
 what the Methodists would have called a signal interposi- 
 tion of Providence in her behalf, neither triumphed in his 
 downfall, nor left him to his fate, nor seized the opportunity 
 to run away to the Grand'mere she thought so much of. 
 She bent over him with a charity which knew no bounds, 
 suggesting the new idea to a man of his calibre that one of 
 the creatures of women, whom he made at the best his poor 
 playthings and at the worst his abominable tools, might have 
 a devotedness which soared above his stoicism in the season 
 of calamity, and was able to afford him support and succor 
 instead of requiring it from him. "I thank you humbly, 
 Madam ; I am afraid it is beyond your power to liberate 
 me," said Mr. George, with more sincere respect than he had 
 yet addressed Yolande, or possibly any woman, in the whole 
 course of his existence, not excepting my lady his mother. 
 
 "Some hob-nailed lout of a plough-boy, or carter, I make 
 no question, will come up soon ; or my fellows, tired of wait- 
 ing for us, will have the grace to return and scour the road 
 for our bones any time between this and Christmas." 
 However, he submitted with something like meekness to 
 Yolande's attempt to examine his eye, to see whether his 
 hasty conclusion was correct. And he did not fly out in a
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 25 9 
 
 rage and decline to entertain her correction of his state- 
 ment in the anonncement that the eye was there, apple and 
 all, and that he must have mistaken for a much more serious 
 and irretrievable misfortune the sudden darkening and 
 smarting produced by the bath of mud in his face. When 
 it was carefully and tenderly wiped away — and Mademoi- 
 selle was wiping it with her own foulard — the blessing of 
 full vision would be restored unimpaired. 
 
 "I crave your pardon, Mademoiselle," Mr. George exclaim- 
 ed quickly, and still more gravely and earnestly, "for having 
 spread so exaggerated a report of my own misadventure, and 
 making myself out in as bad a pickle as Miss Milly will 
 have herself to be in. I trust you don't credit me an out- 
 and-out dastard for my silly error. Stay," continued Mr. 
 George, recovering himself from his momentary vexation, 
 "I think it must be my rascal of a coachman, who took the 
 liberty of putting us down in this unceremonious style,who is 
 beginning to groan so dismally on t'other side of me that, 
 zounds ! I suspect it must have been he who has been killed 
 all along, and not my Cousin Milly and me." 
 
 It was terribly like it. The coachman who had brought 
 Mr. George's expedition to grief in the first stage, had come 
 to great grief himself, and was the person who was making 
 the least sign. Yolande found him sobbing his breath away 
 from a mortal stroke in the chest. And when she had prop- 
 ped him up and procured water in his cocked hat from the 
 ditch to bathe his drooping head and moisten his dry lips, he 
 spoke to her with that awful, unerring instinct of quieUiess 
 which waits on the height of bodily and mental anguish: 
 
 " I be done for in the last of our bad jobs. My breast- 
 bone be stove in. The beastses as I drove so long, and as 
 I cut, faix ! overdeep the night, have turned on me and 
 done it. Yes, there's the wife as oue;ht to be thought 
 on, spoke about, purwided for, 'cause there's no good flop- 
 ping and thinking of kingdom-come at this time of the 
 night. Pearson's kin^dom-comc's none for the likes of me, 
 and there's ne'er a Methody to be found by the side of a 
 road, to flop with one, even if their kingdom would have a 
 gift at the last gasp of a battered rip of a castle coachman 
 — not my lady's head coachman, only a under, and 'pointed 
 to serve Lord Kolle and Mr. George's pleasure." 
 
 Yolande hurried back to where Mr. George was, by com-
 
 2G0 TIIE UUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 parison, lightly crippled. " Milord," she told him, tripping 
 in her eager speech, " your domestic is, without doubt, a dy- 
 ing man. I have seen death, though I am only a girl, and I 
 know the meagre face. Milord, Monsieur, though you can 
 not rise, and I can not pull you out, if you turn your head 
 and lean on your elbow, you will see the domestic, and can 
 say what you may to enlighten and sustain him. He has a 
 poor wife, and she is at the heart of him, he looks for the 
 first time to the other world, to which he is going with long 
 strides. Have I need to say there is not a moment to be 
 lost ?" 
 
 Mr. George shrugged his shoulders and waved his hand 
 decidedly, declining the commission. "Assure the poor 
 wretch that I commiserate him, if that will do him any 
 good ; and tell him that I shall count myself bound to look aft- 
 er his wife, although probably he knows as well as I do where 
 I am to get a penny to put into her purse, and how much 
 good being looked after by a man like me will do her. Let 
 that be. For the rest I keep no account with the Church, 
 it is out of my line. I am fain to add, Mademoiselle, that 
 though I do not fear death in this sorry carcase of mine, I 
 have no taste for looking it in the face when other people, 
 with whom I am by no means connected, are concerned. 
 I never can make out what sends some of us poking at 
 corpses lying in state, or prowling round coffins moldering 
 in vaults. Bah ! the spectacle is not only an impolite re- 
 minder, but a disagreeable reality, and breeds disagreeable 
 dreams. My gospel is to turn my back, when consistent 
 with honor, on whatever is disagreeable, doleful, and nasty. 
 'Pon my word, I reckon it a bounden duty. Go and preach 
 to the miserable sinner so long as his breath and yours last, 
 my Mademoiselle, but be pleased to hold me excused from 
 the service." 
 
 Yolande was foiled, and in her perplexity cast a thought 
 on Milly, since Milly's very ungovernable paroxysm of lam- 
 entation and scolding had become hushed before that one 
 strange word of death. Milly had gathered herself up and 
 was crouching, sick and shuddering, in the shelter of the 
 bank. " Milly, I had forgotten, you are the daughter of a 
 good pastor and the sister of Captain Philip, who drew his 
 last sigh on a battle-field. Will you say a prayer of your 
 Church, which he knows and can follow, to the dying man,
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 261 
 
 while I take his head on my lap, that he may die more easi- 
 ly. There is no black thrush in his mouth and throat, there 
 can be no infection here save that of mortality." 
 
 "How could you be so hardened as to propose such a 
 shockiug thing, Ma'mselle ?" cried Milly Rolle, rousing her- 
 self to a vehement refusal, "when Mr. George himself 
 can not look on the sorry sight of his servant dying a 
 violent death? Me, who have never set eyes on a dead 
 man ! And it is so bad to begin now in a dark night, by 
 a roadside, that if I do not wink with all my might, and 
 duck my head to keep out all sight and sound, I shall 
 go stark, staring mad before morning; I know I shall. 
 I am not in orders that I should dare to read church pray- 
 ers; none but a Methody would make so bold. As to 
 your twitting me with poor Brother Philip's death in a 
 wood or a marsh instead of in his bed, I can only say it 
 is monstrous unkind of you, and I can not tell what you 
 mean by it." 
 
 "Imean no harm," Yolande maintained sadly, "and 
 the sight is not so bad as you and Monsieur think — oh ! 
 not near so bad, since our Lord died where every body 
 could see. Ah! if Grand'mcre were here! But what 
 would I? God is always here, and what do I and the 
 dying want more ?" 
 
 When Yolande had the castle coachman's head in her 
 lap, far gone as he was he recognized her, and remonstrated 
 hoarsely, "You are good to me, miss, you whom I went for 
 to trap ! Who knows but it was the wust of my wust 
 deeds ?" 
 
 " Don't speak of it," negatived Yolande, with Grand'mere 
 and Monsieur Landre's way of forgiving their enemies — 
 so fine a way that it sounded as if the forgiveness were 
 full, and as if it changed the name and the character which 
 ordinary men and women give it, as they either brandish or 
 dole it out, and made it large-hearted forbearance, tender 
 brotherly kindness, sweet true love. 
 
 "There was a sinner who was in condemnation, as we all 
 are, my coachman, who cried out that he had received the 
 just reward of his deeds, and yet he asked a King who was 
 waiting by him to remember him graciously when lie cqme 
 to His kingdom." Yolande told the story of the Dying thief 
 to ears which grew greedy as they grew dull; and the
 
 262 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 hearer was still capable of receiving the news and ap- 
 plying it to a parallel case, for he objected doubtfully. 
 
 " But so be, miss, there is an odds in this here pass, for it 
 be I alone who am fair punished. Harry and Will, little 
 Hal, and Martin Reeves, most of all Master George, as is 
 not guiltless, nay, but whose bidding we did, and for whose 
 pleasure we did it — they all go scot-free — scot-free, and I 
 be done for at one dang," he repeated, wistfully. 
 
 "That is true," assented Yolande simply; "but must 
 you be punished, and punished alone, when God is just, and 
 his Son, our brother, says, ' Repent, my coachman, for the 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand?' What if you be taken 
 away to keep you from heavier sin, and your fellows and 
 your master spai'ed to give them greater time for repent- 
 ance? How know you their needs or their degree of guilt, 
 or that you may not be the chosen, the favored, to be sum- 
 moned first by a summons which, if He will, can not be too 
 short ?" 
 
 " Anan ! You're beyond me, clear or muddled. But you 
 are good, and mappen they're gooder aloft yonder. There 
 may be mercy in the dang, I dunnot know, I howpe so, and 
 I know I never so much as howped the like before ; for, 
 Lord, I repent — I repent, help my repentance, and sain my 
 soul." 
 
 The victim of Mr. George's orders and his own obedience 
 to them, spoke no more. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 TnE RIDER, AND THE RIDE HOME AS IT SHOULD NOT 
 
 HAVE BEEN. 
 
 Yolande reverently covered the dead man's face with 
 her handkerchief. In life the poor rough-living coachman 
 would not have excited the slightest interest in Milly and Mr. 
 George ; but Yolande was struck with the fact that now he 
 was armed with qualities which made him an object of con- 
 siderable-speculation to the one, and of lively apprehension 
 to the other. In the mean time the plight of the party was 
 getting more grievous. The moon was setting, and there 
 would yet be a long interval before the October dawn.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 263 
 
 Mr. George, closely wedged in, was stiffening in his bruises. 
 Milly's shivers were running through her convulsively, 
 and with aguish chattering of the teeth. But there was 
 no word yet of Mr. George's Harry heading an exploring 
 expedition from the " Barley Mow" or the " Waggon Rest," 
 or of any laborers trudging homeward and lending them a 
 lift, or conveying speedy intelligence of their distress to a 
 quarter whence help could come, before they were all dead 
 from exposure and want. Yolande would have wandered 
 alone in search of aid, and Mr. George could have trusted 
 her, but Milly threatened to go into fits if Yolande left her 
 for a moment "with that — you know what I mean, though 
 you have no sensibility, Ma'mselle, not a particle — lying so 
 near me. Oh ! I declare it is moving, Ma'mselle !" 
 
 " Would that it were," answered Yolande, sadly, " though 
 it may be a selfish wish, for this place is another than par- 
 adise. Yet what can be said to the wife who may be listen- 
 ing for his step and voice ere this hour to-morrow ? How, 
 Milly ! what harm can the clay do when there was not even 
 the black thrush in the poor still throat before the breath 
 quitted it ?" 
 
 " Oh ! don't speak of it, you strange, stony creature, or 
 else you'll frighten me next yourself. But I don't give you 
 leave to stir from the spot — that's poz — unless you take me 
 with you, and as I can't move, or even stand, you must 
 carry me on your back." 
 
 Then Yolande, listening intently to a faint noise in the dis- 
 tance, was certain that a flight of birds like lapwings had 
 suddenly risen several fields off, and had uttered one or two 
 cries as an announcement that they had been disturbed by 
 an unexpected intrusion on their privacy and repose. Mon- 
 sieur Landre had taught her to interpret the sounds she 
 heard thus far, and to know that it was not the neighbor- 
 hood of Mr. George and his companions which had roused 
 and offended the birds' sense of propriety. Something 
 must be stirring nearer them. Listening intently, Yolande 
 believed that she detected the flap of bridle reins, the ring 
 of stirrups, and the heavy motion of a well-trained horse 
 feeling its way over broken ground. 
 
 Disregarding Milly's frantic opposition, Yolande set off at 
 once toward the point whence the sounds came. Mr. 
 George, on seeing her movement, indulged in some char-
 
 264 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 acteristic commentary loud enough to be beard by the run- 
 ning Yolande. " 'Fore George, you are a complete Ama- 
 zon, little Dupuy. You were a French Puritan and mystic 
 ten minutes agone, now you are preparing to clear a hedge 
 like the Fair Huntress, instead of la Belle Jardin icre. How 
 many characters have you, if it is fair to ask ? As many 
 as the Montespan, or the Maintenon, Scarron's widow ?" 
 But Yolande, heeding not, scrambled up the bank to the 
 left of them, tore her way through a hedge, toiled across 
 the corner of a pasture field, and crying out at the pitch of 
 her voice, " Hold ! hold ! to the right ! help ! help !" made 
 an opening through another hedge, and all but fell exhausted, 
 in the utmost disorder, at the feet of a man guiding a horse 
 toward her. 
 
 " "What has happened, Mademoiselle Dupuy ?" demand- 
 ed young Caleb Gage, catching hold of her, too agitated 
 himself to mind his words. " You need not go any farther. 
 Now what an adventure for a girl who has just come out 
 of a bad sickness ! What cau have befallen your friends 
 that they suffer you to run like this over the fields, and at 
 night too ?" 
 
 Without being aware of it, Caleb Gage spoke like a man 
 aggrieved, and it did not require his. impatient, indignant 
 manner to cause Yolande's tongue to cleave to the roof of 
 her mouth. The shock of the unknown helper turning out 
 to be the young squire of the Mall, and the concern as to 
 what he would think of her, and how he would look on 
 her trouble, were quite sufficient to reduce Yolande to the 
 lowest ebb of distress and humiliation, without the amaze- 
 ment and vexation in his voice. Again, the consciousness 
 that he or any man could thus move her without holding, or 
 seeking to hold, any claim upon her, filled her with shame 
 and dismay. 
 
 " That it should bo he ! He will think me bold, lost to 
 all modesty and dignity ! What will he not think of me ? 
 And if he thinks the worst — shall not I, who am a sheep at 
 the best, be punished for caring what he thinks ?" All this 
 passed through Yolande's mind in her pain and mortification, 
 before she gasped, " There has been an accident, Monsieur 
 — :i carriage overturned en route, and a man killed." 
 
 The brief communication served for the moment. It was 
 of a grave enough character to warrant the manner of Yo-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 265 
 
 lande's appearance. The uncertainity who the man was that 
 had been killed, combined with a horror that the victim 
 might be Monsieur Dupuy himself, made Caleb feel an addi- 
 tional delicacy in questioning Yolaude. So he turned with 
 her, and rather then cross-examine her, he preferred to 
 explain how he had been riding home to the Mall a good 
 three quarters of an hour ago, by a road a good three 
 quarters of a mile distant, when he had been startled in the 
 quietness of the scene and the season by what he was cer- 
 tain were cries of distress uttered in a female voice. In his 
 turn he had attempted to trace the sound, and it was with 
 great difficulty he had found a footing for his horse and 
 reached the spot were she had accosted him ; for the cries 
 had ceased for some time to guide his ear. 
 
 Lapsing into silence, in which throbbing hearts could be 
 the better felt, Caleb Gage and Yolande traversed the short 
 distance back to where Monsieur and Milly lay. But Yo- 
 lande found the whole aspect of things changed. The valet 
 Harry and the other servants had at last turned out from 
 the inn, provided with lights and ropes. Under the smoky 
 gleam and the flare of lanterns and torch-wood, half a 
 dozen busy pairs of hands were raising the broken chariot. 
 They were doing all they could to release the Honorable 
 George, and had secured such of the horses as were not 
 miles on their way to the castle stables. 
 
 Yolande had another pang of regret. Caleb Gage's pres- 
 ence was no longer wanted, and without her intervention 
 he might have passed them, and she might thus have escap- 
 ed being seen by him in her miserably equivocal position. 
 
 As for Caleb, he stood confounded at the sight of George 
 Rolle, in his cynical, dissolute elegance forming the central 
 figure in the group. He paid no heed to the salutation of 
 Milly Rolle whose spirits were beginning to revive, and 
 who cried out with a giddy giggle and a childish insensi- 
 bility to the world's opinion of her situation — 
 
 "Good-day to you, Mr. Caleb Gage. Arc yon going to 
 join us in our little junketing, if the old squire anil the 
 preachers of your body will allow you? I vow you are 
 the properest, most obedient fellow I know. Bui only for 
 once, by way of frolic, Master Gage. And little Dupuy 
 with us too, with regard to whom we all know that your 
 father and her granny had intentions. Why, it happens 
 
 M
 
 266 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 quite pat that you two should foregather to-night. Who 
 knows what the lucky coincidence may lead to ? La ! it is 
 too pat when one conies to think who it was that flew off 
 in the thick of our hobble, and lit upon you and your horse 
 at the nick of time. For my part, I consider Ma'mselle is 
 hugely sly." 
 
 Caleb Gage, at the risk of being asked why lie "cut" 
 a gentleman, and being accused of insulting him, did not so 
 much as acknowledge Mr. George's approved raising of his 
 hat to greet the new-comer. He did not take a step until 
 it was forced upon his notice that, with none but servants 
 who had been employing their spare time in drinking dog's- 
 nose at the inn, and who were farther flustered by the rat- 
 ing which had beeft administered to them on their first ar- 
 rival, he was more likely to suffer than to benefit by the 
 clumsy efforts made on his behalf. For the workers were 
 only jamming his limbs still tighter, and aggravating be- 
 yond bearing their master's dislocated collar-bone and 
 sprained wrist. 
 
 Caleb Gage went forward then and exerted his skill and 
 strength in the business. He said no word, however, until 
 Mr. George, on being extricated, observed, without a shade 
 of change in his nonchalance, "I suppose I need not thank 
 you, sir? you will have none of my thanks; but, at least, 
 allow me to explain that your lending me your valuable as- 
 sistance has saved you, as a clergyman's cloth saves him, 
 from any obligation on my part to resent your appearance 
 and what seems your uncalled-for disapprobation." 
 
 " I deny seeking to save myself from any result of this 
 encounter, Mr. Rolle," answered Caleb, " though it may be 
 convenient for you to leap to that conclusion, and equally 
 so in the present case to hold that a clergyman's cloth shel- 
 ters him from your defense of your deeds. I make bold to 
 remind you that neither that, nor kinsmanship, has been a 
 shelter from the deed itself. I can not tell how your cousin, 
 Mr. Philip Rolle, may act under such monstrous provocation. 
 As for myself, although I little guessed the spectacle I was 
 doing my poor endeavors to figure in, instead of standing 
 aloof, as you clearly expect, and seeing a great wrong con- 
 summated, I have to say to those misguided young ladies 
 who are traveling under what you, sir, are well aware is 
 worse than no protection, that if they will suffer me to con-
 
 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 267 
 
 duct them back to their families, nothing on earth will hin- 
 der me from being at their service. And if you, Mr. George 
 Rolle, or your servants, offer resistance to their return, 
 which I beg and implore them, by all they have ever held 
 dear and sacred, to set about, you will find that the small 
 aid I have been able to render you need by no means stand 
 in the way ; and that only what I am sorry to see are your 
 bodily injuries must interpose between us." 
 
 Times and manners have changed since Huguenot fami- 
 lies sought shelter in England, and the English gave it them, 
 and a royal bounty besides, not without adding their quota 
 of persecution to the gift ; so that a note of explanation may 
 be here called for. Mr. George's speech implied that an act 
 of charity or humanity on Caleb Gage's part had redeemed 
 him from the penalty due to his mere presence there, acci- 
 dental and passive as it had been till now. Mr. "George 
 would neither take the initiative in aceusation, and " post" 
 the Methodist squire's son as a liar and scoundrel on the 
 church-yard gate at Sedge Pond, or in the market-place at 
 Reedham ; nor would he go out to waylay and attack him 
 with a horsewhip, because men educated like young Gage 
 had a conscientious objection to the commonest use of pock- 
 et-pistols. Caleb understood the speech and the sarcasm 
 perfectly, and it sufficiently galled the strong, independent 
 young man, Avho was accustomed to consider his strength 
 and comparative impartiality as constituting him a natural 
 safeguard and protection, not to his father and his father's 
 friends only, but to all those whose backs were at the wall. 
 He had taken a frank, honest satisfaction in such a partisan- 
 ship, single-hearted and modest, Avhich was something dif- 
 ferent, yet in many respects the same as the old fantastic 
 generosity of the knight who believed in and meant to keep 
 his vow of chivalry. To be taunted with his own exemp- 
 tion in the evil and bitter experience to which he had unex- 
 pectedly become privy, was more than the young man's spirit 
 could stand. Already he had witnessed his standard of ex- 
 cellence shamefully torn down, his religions loyalty and pu- 
 rity brought into totally unlooked-for contact with what he 
 was not able to regard as other than the grievous wanton- 
 ness and wickedness of the world. Caleb did not require 
 the Honorable George's swagger to cause his heart to burn 
 within him in sorrow and anger. He had only to look in
 
 268 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 despair at the shrinking, averted, delicate face of Yolande, 
 and listen to the folly and coarseness of Milly Rolle's chal- 
 lenge, to drive him almost mad. So he had spoken in 
 a towering passion, and succeeded in bringing some of the 
 bad blood to George Rolle's cheek. The people clearing 
 the road, and collecting the remains of the chariot, brought 
 their occupation to an abrupt stop. Divided between the 
 pugnacity produced by liquor, and the morbid appetite of 
 vice, they stood shouldering each other, and waiting for an 
 intimation from Mr. George to set upon the single man, who, 
 in entire command of his youthful prime, vigor, and agility, 
 was not yet altogether overmatched. Milly Rolle tossed 
 her head, flounced, and called out — 
 
 " Did you ever hearken to such a conceited, strait-laced 
 pedagogue of a bumpkin ? Punish him, Ma'mselle, by nev- 
 er letting on that you hear the insolent wretch." 
 
 But Yolande spoke with quivering lips and a dry voice. 
 
 " I have the honor to accept your escort, Monsieur. It 
 was not with my wish that I came here." She could say 
 no more. Courageously as Yolande could assert herself to 
 a scoffing, unscrupulous sinner like George Rolle, there was 
 some people to whom, if circumstances were against her, 
 she could not defend herself, and Caleb Gage was one of 
 them. 
 
 " Oh ! little Dupuy, you heartless Madam, is that your 
 French fashion of iidelity, to leave us in the lurch, and to 
 think of deserting Mr. George when he has fallen into a 
 doleful plight?" said Milly Rolle, not scrupling to refn'oach 
 Yolande, who remained quite dumb. 
 
 Mr. George hesitated. Though he piqued himself on be- 
 ing a philosopher, it Avas gall and wormwood to him, as it 
 would have been to his mother had she been in his place, to 
 submit to be foiled in the most discreditable of his schemes. 
 On the other hand, he was a man of the world, and in many 
 respects a shrewd one. He knew that ho had failed in his 
 little adventure already. He was not in a condition to pros- 
 ecute it farther, however much amusement it might have af- 
 forded him, and however delightfully precarious and uncer- 
 l.iin its termination. He should be glad of his fellow Har- 
 ry's arm, and it would be the worse for the rascal afterward 
 if he could not time his steps to walk evenly so as to enable 
 his master to drag himself to the promised inn, where he
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 269 
 
 might have his hurts seen to, and procure the refreshment 
 and rest of which he was so much in want. So far as his 
 own comfort was concerned, he would be glad if Mistress 
 Milly Rolle would take it into her feather "head to follow 
 Mademoiselle's example, and give him the slip on the first 
 opportunity. He was getting sick of the exploit, and even 
 without this odious denouement it was proving too much 
 for him. It might be very well by way of change to rave 
 and rant a little about 
 
 "A pensive nun, devout and pure, 
 Sober, steadfast, and demure," 
 
 and to feel a mild curiosity, such as his mother had felt be- 
 fore him, to try whether he could not shake her out of her 
 propriety and rout her heroics. But the experiment had 
 not turned out to his satisfaction. The Huguenot had 
 contrived to wound his vanity, and, particularly after this 
 overturn, to deal hits which touched what softness was in 
 him, and which he did not at all relish. By this plaguy in- 
 tervention of young Hopeful from the Methodist nest at the 
 Mall, the business would be blown over the neighborhood, 
 and if Mr. George persevered in carrying it out by main 
 force, the scrape might be serious. 
 
 Writhing, wincing, and making faces from pain of body 
 as well as the sharp taste of humble pie, Mr. George could 
 not, therefore, be so dignified and lazily debonnaire and au- 
 dacious as he was wont to be. It was with something like 
 an ugly grin and an impotent gnash of his teeth that he 
 said to Caleb, " My dear sir, I am not astonished that the 
 role of a gentleman is not altogether known to you. I am 
 deeply grieved that I am not at present in circumstances to 
 teach it you. Perhaps at some future time I may have that 
 happiness. In the mean time I must inform you that I pro- 
 fess to be the ardent admirer and humble servant of the la- 
 dies in general, and of those two ladies in particular ; there- 
 fore you must see that I can not contradict Mademoiselle 
 Dupuy's wishes, openly expressed (let me observe aside, 
 my dear young lady, that there was no occasion for so de- 
 cided and sweeping a statement), however they may take 
 me by surprise, and inflict on me a cruel disappointment. 
 So far from so ungallant and ungentlemanlike a course, my 
 good young Mr. Jephunneh, if my dear cousin from the
 
 270 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 rectory like to leave me to my fate also, and trudge away 
 with you and Mademoiselle on your Rosinante, in the style 
 of the tinker, the tinker's wife, and his apprentice, she may 
 do so, unless you will please to wait till I send for another 
 of my carriages ? Pray allow me — I do not think all the 
 set are done for ; but she has my free permission and my 
 best wishes, as well as the other goddess." 
 
 " Oh dear, no, Mr. George," cried Milly, obstinately. 
 " I would not forsake you for the universe ; I have not the 
 heart to do it ; I leave that to a fickle friend like Ma'mselle ; 
 let her go, faugh ! she's no loss." 
 
 Mr. George was so thoroughly, basely selfish, that he put 
 no weight on Milly's going or staying, except in reference 
 to his own wayward inclinations ; and it was not on his 
 cards to take guilt to himself by advising her to accompany 
 Yolande, and by forcing Milly to leave him in spite of her- 
 self. He preferred doing Milly and her father, the rector of 
 Sedge Pond, his cousin and his mother's friend, the deadly 
 injury of taking the girl at her word, and keeping her with 
 him. 
 
 Caleb Gage was not sufficiently acquainted with the truth, 
 and was too bent on rescuing Yolande from degradation 
 and ruin, to stand by poor infatuated Milly, as he might 
 otherwise have done. Yolande too was sinking under the 
 burden of shame which she had not deserved. She was 
 overwhelmed with strange reproach, wounded tenderness, 
 and outraged virtue ; but yet she held out her hands pit- 
 eously to Milly, as though it would be craven in her to quit 
 her companion and give her up to her own willful, crazy 
 choice. 
 
 " Am I to go back alone, Milly ? All is not lost yet, 
 my friend. The past can still be undone. Have pity on 
 yourself — on your parents." 
 
 Milly only answered with senseless recrimination and 
 abuse, and Mr. George begged Mademoiselle not to pro- 
 tract her adieux, as he took Harry's arm and called out 
 " bon voyage" 
 
 Here came out the miserable meanness of the man, which 
 could exist, iii company with some faint sparks of valor and 
 some dying embers of liberality — making a partial display 
 of the rags and tatters of nobility. Mr. George could suf- 
 fer the French girl, whom he had insulted and abused as
 
 TIIE huguenot: family. 271 
 
 far as he dared, and who, as far as she could, had repaid 
 him good for evil, to go without a word of explanation, 
 without a sentence in vindication of the innocence which 
 he and Milly Rolle had conspired to cloud and asperse. 
 
 But Mr. George did one good thing. His bearing, with 
 its mannerly refinement and unshaken self-conceit, restrain- 
 ed his people from any expression of rude license or out- 
 break of hostility. So when Caleb Gage had taken Yo- 
 lande's cold hand and lifted her on his horse, arranging a 
 pillion for her, and mounting before her as men and women 
 were then accustomed to ride to church and market, he 
 successfully extricated himself from the rubbish and the tur- 
 moil, passed the still and silent figure with the face still 
 hidden by the handkerchief, and rode away into the night. 
 
 Yolande had not the slightest doubt of her deliverer ; she 
 did not even distrust his wearied horse — because it was 
 Caleb Gage's. She was going back to Grand'mere swiftly, 
 surely, and far sooner than she had any title to expect ; but 
 for all that, Yolande thought she would have died where 
 she sat. 
 
 Caleb was her deliverer, but not her champion. He was 
 her friend, because he was " a kindly man among his kind," 
 like his father before him, but he was without any faith in 
 her perfect righteousness in this matter. Her lover he had 
 never been, her husband he had refused to be; but it was 
 hard that she should suffer this lowest depth of humiliation. 
 Yolande did not suppose she could have suffered it but for 
 what had gone before it — the si<j;ht she had seen, the words 
 she had spoken that night. When she thought of these 
 things she felt it would be the same a hundred years hence, 
 whether she was honored or defamed now. What was 
 mortal man's praise and blame to the spirit which the com- 
 mon tragedy of death had placed in so new and solemn a 
 light, that even Mr. George and Milly Rolle had been af- 
 fected by it? Why should she make so much ado about 
 the chances of this life, which was so brief at the longest, 
 and at all times so pathetically uncertain, that she should 
 be unable to survive this shame ? Still, she could not ap- 
 peal to Caleb Gage, remonstrate with him, tell her story, 
 and plead not guilty. To him her tongue was tied — would 
 be tied, though she were to ride, not for a night, but for a 
 life, behind him.
 
 272 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Caleb was desperately calm and gentle -with Yolande, 
 and all the more that his heart was very sore, with a sore- 
 ness for which he saw no healing. His first thought had 
 been to take her straight to Shottery Cottage and to 
 Grand'rnere, some eight miles distant. But his horse fail- 
 ed more and more, as Yolande's voice, answering his in- 
 quiries in monosyllables, sounded more sick at heart and 
 weary, and the touch of her hand felt chiller. He feared 
 that she would not be able to keep up, and would faint ere 
 they reached her home. Then he considered the reception 
 she might meet with, and that having so lamentably de- 
 parted from her duty, her people might be harsh to her. 
 The austere mother, the worldly father, and possibly even 
 the pietist of a youthful-minded, foolish old woman might 
 be bitter in proportion to the love which they had borne to 
 the sole child of the house, who would be its pride no more, 
 and for whom it could do little else than take her in and 
 hide her. He was sorry for these Huguenots, more sorry 
 than he could have fancied he would have been for those an 
 alliance with whom he had rejected, and whose society he 
 had repudiated. Notwithstanding, it was not for him to 
 subject a girl, however justly she had offended, to any but 
 merciful treatment. There might be more hope of mercy 
 — at least the danger of the shock, with the unrestrained 
 lamentations and reproaches to which he must be a listener, 
 would be averted if he left room for preparation. 
 
 To save Yolande from breaking down under his charge, 
 and to defend her from the wrath of those who had a right 
 to chide, but who might be tempted to abuse the right, 
 Caleb Gage decided on taking Yolande first to the IMall, 
 which was nearer than Sedge Pond, and which often served 
 as a hospice for travelers. His father's presence Avould re- 
 move all objection to her lodging there for the rest of the 
 night. Somo one of his second cousins might be persuaded 
 into showing womanly attention and sympathy to this ex- 
 traordinary claimant of" the Mall's charity, so that she should 
 not feel forlorn and forsaken in her repentance. For that 
 she had repented was proved by her consenting to turn 
 with him at the moment of his proposal. But oh! he 
 thought, these light Gallic natures, so shallow-hearted, and 
 quick to rue because quick to err ! He had believed her 
 the pattern of all maidenhood, only too wise and severe in
 
 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 273 
 
 her devotion to God and her Grand'mere, and to the per- 
 formance of good works, and the acquisition of knowledge; 
 whereas, woe to him ! there was ground for Milly Kolle's 
 loud complaint that Ma'mselle had deserted the man who 
 had beguiled her (and for whom she had previously desert- 
 ed faith, home, credit) the instant he was in distress and 
 there was word of exposure. In this light, indeed, she 
 seemed to add cunning calculation to hot passion. 
 
 Caleb therefore put before Yolande, in measured, studi- 
 ously softened tones, the desirability of their having re- 
 course to the hospitality of the Mall. She neither offered 
 resistance nor demurred, but submitted at once. Indeed, 
 she was the most docile of charges, like a bird which is 
 quiet and still because its wing is broken, or a little shot 
 has pierced its breast, and blood-red drops are noiselessly 
 eddying out over its speckled feathers. She had not even 
 strength or wit enough left to descry that if her heart was 
 breaking, her plight had the power to break the spirit of 
 the man beside her; although it was her unbearable misery 
 to think that she had no power over 'him, except to excite 
 his humanity into combat with his hardly checked aversion. 
 Another person might have seen that it was.a bitter expe- 
 rience for Caleb Gage thus to bring Yolande Dupuy to the 
 Mall, where he had refused to bring her in tender distinc- 
 tion — refused, and in his soul retracted his refusal, accusing 
 himself of all blindness and prejudice. He had judged Yo- 
 lande as far above him as the stars to which she had seem- 
 ed fitly bound ; and now that he had her in his keeping, to 
 carry her to his home as a vain moth whose wings had been 
 singed, a poor victim of George Rolle's cruel kindness, it 
 was enough to make him believe that he was not only him- 
 self guilty of woeful misconception and mistake, but that 
 life itself was a huge blunder and failure. The pregnant 
 blow of this one great evil was enough to crush the high 
 hope and splendid trust of young manhood, so that they 
 should never altogether recover their terrible fall. To the 
 Samson whose wife betrayed him all women were from that 
 moment so many Delilahs. Caleb Gage's dismal disen- 
 chantment might prove the turning-point from which the 
 young squire should start gradually but progressively on a 
 new experience, until what was sweet in him should be 
 leavened with sourness, and what was gentle trampled hard 
 
 M 2
 
 274 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 and callous ; unless indeed he stood true to liis religion in 
 its manliness as in its godliness, and his religion stood true 
 to him. The falseness of man or woman to the divine ideal 
 of manhood, and in it of womanhood, is no light wrong 
 against a fellow-creature, nor is it to be lightly treated. It 
 is the most disastrous misfortune, short of individual false- 
 ness to early promise and native light, which can happen to 
 him or her who has taken the original for heroine or hero. 
 Indeed, it is too often the precursor to such falseness, thus 
 working twice death. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 PITY WHICH STINGS AND BITES — GRANd'mERE GRANTING AN 
 
 AUDIENCE. 
 
 Caleb Gage, with Yolande, arrived at the red-and-white 
 house of the Mall. He summoned in the two women — 
 his father's trusted housekeeper, Lihbie Larkins, and his 
 ancient cousin Hephzibah — to lead Yolande through the 
 dining-hall, which was only a deserted meeting-house and 
 class-room, now that the evening exercise and the supper 
 were long by. Their footsteps echoed along the stone 
 passages as they passed the stripped pictures conspicuous 
 in their elevation in the gallery, out of which looked 
 female faces in every variety of head-gear, as if they had 
 never even heard of such a thing as a distressed damsel 
 like her who was now brought into their honorable com- 
 pany of sister shadows. Yolande was conducted to one of 
 the primitive dormitories, and there waited upon, and fed, 
 and watched over with due consideration and regard. 
 
 Caleb could not suspect either of the women of failing 
 in the duties which he required, or in the instincts which 
 were natural to them. Libbie was a stout, matronly, mid- 
 dle-aged widow, with activity and notability marked upon 
 her as the efflorescence of her methodistical Christianity, not- 
 withstanding that the early Methodists were inclined to hold 
 creature-comforts cheap. But certainly nobody underval- 
 ued or ran down her own gifts more than Libbie Larkins, 
 so that she remained humble and affable amid her many at- 
 tainments. She at once recognized Yolande as the grand- 
 daughter of the gracious old French madam who had
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 275 
 
 praised her goose pie and blackberry pudding, and had given 
 her a valued lesson in tossing an omelette: so highly-prized, 
 indeed, that even now she itched to ask whether the young 
 madam carried any recipes in her pockets or at the tip of 
 her tongue. But Libbie feared that she herself was a hard- 
 ened sinner, so given up to fleshly lusts aud gross appetites 
 as not to be worthy of any ecstatic visions when she could 
 think of any thing so common as dishes and diets instead of 
 calls and convictions — subjects which she felt were better 
 suited to this young woman of the world, who had allowed 
 herself to be betrayed into a scandal. The young squire 
 had not said what had brought Yolande to the Mall, but 
 had explained that this was a young mistress with whose 
 family the old squire was on friendly terms, as Libbie very 
 well knew, and that she had taken fright at the first word of 
 warning, and had hastened to accept his invitation to be 
 restored to her friends. Libbie would know how to deal 
 with a young lady who had allowed herself to go so far in 
 undutifulness and imprudence, and yet not hurt or humble 
 her. If it had been fair-time, Libbie would have conjec- 
 tured that Ma'mselle had been to Reedham fair without 
 leave ; as it was, she saw that she must have been mixed 
 up with some other giddy doings. 
 
 Mistress Hephzibah Gage was the model of an old maid- 
 en of sixty. She was slim, where Libbie was buxom ; and 
 shy, where Libbie, in spite of her Methodism, was free- 
 spoken and demonstrative. She was a creature of the most 
 limited experience and the most one-sided information. 
 Having led an utterly secluded youth, and having dwelt 
 for a long time by herself on a narrow income before coming 
 to the Mall, she had a crystal simplicity ami purity about 
 her graces, and a pensive, elevated unworldliness in her 
 character, which impressed all who came in contact witii 
 her; and, above all others, Libbie Larkins, who did not 
 know any quality or acquirement which struck her more 
 powerfully than blessed Mistress Hephzibah's combination 
 of innocence, ignorance, and enthusiasm. She had been 
 converted to Methodism on her Grsl \i>it to her brother and 
 his wife, and had then joined the society, and been identified 
 with it ever since. 
 
 Neither Libbie Larkins nor Mistress Hephzibah wore of 
 the kind of women to be exacting with other woraeD, though
 
 276 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 both, in very different styles, were intolerant to themselves. 
 Thus it befell that though their faith was noble, their in- 
 stincts, purified by their faith, in general stood them in 
 better stead than their principles. But the circumstances 
 of this case warped their instincts. It was true, they saw 
 and admitted, that the unfortunate young lady was not an 
 undaunted offender. Her foreign speech, little as there was 
 of it, was sweet in its gratitude ; and just because she was 
 a gentlewoman in undreamed-of straits, she was careful not 
 to put any body about or to engross too much attention. 
 Libbie Larkins and Mistress Hephzibah would have been 
 the last women on earth to visit a first transgression with 
 heavy punishment. The one woman was too near spotless- 
 ness herself to shrink from contamination with the spots in 
 others ; while the other was too large-hearted, too much 
 given to serving, not to have room and pity for every cul- 
 prit. But both women were jealous in the interest of a man 
 connected with them. The young squire was their chief 
 favorite. To Libbie it was sufficient that he was her young 
 master; to Mistress Hephzibah, that he was her young kins- 
 man. Still they had not attained to such Christian stature 
 that they could cast out fear either in their love or in their 
 charity, like the old squire or Grand'mere. They did not 
 like that the young squire should be disturbed, as he mani- 
 festly was, by an unfortunate young lady. " What call had 
 she," Libbie would say to herself indignantly — " a young 
 hussy no better than she should be, after all, and a lover of 
 pleasure — to trouble Master Caleb so ?" Mistress Hephzi- 
 bah, on the other hand, would be fearful of Yolande's mov- 
 ing young Caleb by look, word, or gesture. 
 
 So it came about that Mistress Hephzibah, surprised in 
 the middle of the night, and called to appear in nothing less 
 maidenly than a high-cauled cap towering above her fine 
 but meagre features, and a starched neckerchief folded 
 round her wizened throat, and Libbie, in her petticoat and 
 colored handkerchief, knotted round her head, were both 
 somewhat frozen and official in their friendly offices, even 
 when Libbie proposed, "Don'tee think I had better heat 
 some elderberry to warm the poor heart of her, Mistress 
 Ilepzie?" and when Mistress Hephzibah, thinking that a 
 poor young body might be too frightened to lie all alone in 
 a strange room and a strange house, more by token after
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 277 
 
 she had been doing wrong, went to fetch her "Songs of 
 Zion," that she might lull her to sleep even as a child. The 
 two women were a little like the Pope of Home washing the 
 twelve beggars' feet, inasmuch as their beneficence had 
 something in it of supererogatory good works, done more 
 for their own sakes than for that of the recipient. They 
 pitied her like Christians, and ministered to her like Chris- 
 tians, but they could not heartily take to her, believe in 
 her, or hope in her. The elderberry wine seemed to scald 
 Yolande's throat, and the hymns, plaintive or ardent, which 
 the cracked voice gave as a cradle song, caused bitterer 
 tears to flow beneath her closed eyelids than the girl had 
 ever shed before. 
 
 Caleb, having given over his charge, went to see his 
 father, to tell him what he had done, and to take counsel 
 with him as to the conveyance of Yolande to the Shottery 
 Cottage. 
 
 The time had been when the old squire's motto was the 
 brave Methodist injunction, " Study yourself to death, and 
 then pray yourself to life again ;" but age, with its dimin- 
 ished powers and advancing infirmities, demanded another 
 regimen — one of temperate study, early hours, and sunset 
 rest. Caleb had, therefore, to go to his father's room and 
 awake him from an old man's fitful dozing slumber, that he 
 might listen to his story. There, as in the great kitchen 
 where the squire's chair stood in the chimney-corner, the 
 only ornaments, w T ith the single exception of a woman's 
 inlaid work-table, were books. There was even a shelf of 
 books within the bed over the pillow, so that the squire 
 slept under the mighty shades of his Homer and Virgil, his 
 Plato and Plutarch, and of a Hero divine in an infinitely 
 higher sense than all who had gone before Him — He who, 
 rising from his pillow, could rule the winds and the waves, 
 and who, rising from his bed of death, could open a new 
 world. There were a few maps, not only of England, but 
 of America, with blue and red lines traced on some of them, 
 marking out the circuits on which many a time the squire 
 had himself ridden, with his wile Lucy on a pillion behind 
 him. And there were black-bordered, black-lettered cards 
 of Methodist conferences, more quaint and suggestive than 
 ornamental in those days, and rather calls to duty than 
 pieces of self-indulgence, with their set times and sel
 
 278 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 subjects appointed for meditation and prayer ; as -well 
 as lists, in the sqaire's own handwriting, of objects for 
 his bounty, and liberal undertakings to be attempted by 
 him. 
 
 Among these homely surroundings, old Caleb Gage sat 
 up in his tasseled night-cap, and heard the narrative which 
 his son, sitting on the front of the bed, delivered to him. 
 The good squire was great enough to bear being disturbed, 
 and was almost as well accustomed to receiving dispatches 
 at all hours as a commander-in-chief or a cabinet minister. 
 But though he could collect his Avits rapidly, and with the 
 instinct of genius get at the truth of a communication, he 
 could make little of Caleb's incoherent account. His fine 
 eyes, which Yolande had asserted saw into heaven, looked 
 away farther than ever as they clouded over with wonder 
 and perplexity ; and all the help the squire gave his son was 
 to go on arguing — 
 
 " Is there no mistake, lad ? Art sure you mistook not 
 some other poor Ma'mselle for Yolande, the time being 
 night, and you having small acquaintance with the rare 
 child of old Madame Dupuy ? Did she give her name, my 
 boy ? How did she answer for having to do with what is 
 so far removed from what I took her for — the wretched 
 trick of running off? You never asked! Why not? It 
 would have given her a chance for an explanation. It 
 passes my poor brain, sou Caleb. I can compass the 
 i*ector's daughter's deficiency — though Philip Rolle is an 
 honorable man, and no mere dead dog of a watchman, 
 whatever the body may say to the contrary, and from my 
 soul I pity him on account of this stab from his kinsman ; 
 but for that child, Madame Dupuy's daughter, whom I saw 
 in her reverence standing and waiting in the background 
 of her mother's parlor, only coming forward when there 
 was danger to be faced and work to be done, at the dying- 
 beds in the hovels of Sedge Pond, as a right hand of her 
 grandmother, I confess, it beats me quite. If I did not 
 know you better, I should say that you were blind with 
 prejudice and rancor to even think of her as running off 
 with George Rolle. The mystery of iniquity shall work; 
 but if it begins to work in such quarters, among the green 
 boughs planted by the river, it is more than I have witness- 
 ed yet of its corruption; and, my son Caleb, it strikcth me
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 279 
 
 the world must be coming to an end, and perhaps the soon- 
 er the better." 
 
 The old squire's rooted incredulity sustained a sharp 
 assault from his son's repeated excited assertions that it 
 was Ma'mselle from the Shottery Cottage, and no other; 
 that she had been with George Rolle and Milly Kolle in the 
 chariot of the former, with a suspicious muster of Rolle's 
 servants ; that the party, after sustaining an overturn, 
 were found, as dark night was coming on, ten miles from 
 Sedge Pond ; and that any defense Ma'mselle had vouch- 
 safed to plead was a single sorry sentence, which, he must 
 say, was contradicted by all the presumptive evidence, and 
 by the testimony of her companions — that she was not 
 there by her own wish. " Why, seeing was believing, was 
 it not, sir?" Caleb ended, conclusively. 
 
 When at last Squire Gage's obstinate unbelief yielded to 
 the force of facts, he gave one of the deepest groans he had 
 ever uttered. 
 
 " Poor soul ! I could not have thought it. How she 
 must have been tried ; ay, and got the better of at last by 
 some black villainy !" 
 
 Young Caleb could stand the scene no longer, and left 
 the room with even scantier ceremony than Grand'mere had 
 taken exception to, in her mission, an age before. 
 
 But the squire did not dream of taking offense — would 
 have laughed at the bare idea of disrespect on the part of 
 his trusty, faithful son. To doubt his son's entire regard, 
 pent up in one channel till the attachment had acquired a 
 womanly fondness and playfulness, would have been to re- 
 ceive still more conclusive proof than the withdrawal of 
 Yolande Dupuy from the ranks of the noble and the true, 
 that the solid earth was slipping from beneath his feet. 
 
 However, the squire did perceive some singularity in his 
 lad's restiveness in dealing with a scandal which, as events 
 had happened, was no concern of his, unless as a matter of 
 common humanity. 
 
 "Like his mother before him," reflected the squire, "the 
 lad had always magnanimity, and to spare. I am afraid I 
 hurt him by my scurvy hint otherwise. If my dame ever 
 spoke a spiteful word of any human being — and being a 
 woman, and a sprightly one by nature, it stands to reason 
 that she sometimes fell into one of the special transgressions
 
 280 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 
 
 of her sex — yet give her a cause of personal provocation, 
 and you shut her mouth close, where another woman would 
 open hers wide. Caleb is of the same humor. In place of 
 crowing over the indiscretion and the disgrace of the young 
 French girl who went against his grain at the first' — he- 
 cause, according to our different customs, it was as if poor 
 old Madame had thrown her at his head when he had no incli- 
 nation toward her, and when the gadding gossips who knew 
 no better twitted him with the advance, and caused it to 
 rankle deeper than it should have done — now, he is vexed 
 for the end. Being a chip of the old block — on his mother's 
 side — it shames his irked independence and saucy pride. 
 And well it may, when I had fancied the lass was a youth- 
 ful foreign copy of his own mother — such a virtuous young 
 lady as John Milton painted in black and white, and John 
 Dryden writ of as Mistress Anne Killigrew. I have never 
 been tainted with the Pelagian heresy, or doubted that the 
 old Adam in us was both deceitful and ill to eradicate, yet 
 I profess I can not get to the bottom of Grand'mere 
 Dupuy's virtuous young lady being made out no better 
 than a vain court madam." 
 
 Yolande meantime lay wide awake in one of the little 
 guest-chambers like pilgrims' cells. Long after the solemn, 
 sweet quaver and fervent ring of the Methodist hymns had 
 sunk in silence, and Mistress Hcphzibah had departed, trust- 
 ing that the misguided young woman had gone to sleep 
 with something better in her mind than she was accustom- 
 ed to have there, Yolande lay and thought painful thoughts. 
 She had borne the first brush of misfortune gallantly, and 
 made a good defense while she was still in the thick of the 
 fight. Now that the worst was escaped, and there might 
 at least have been a breathing space for a rally of her forces, 
 she only debated whether she should not ask to be led into 
 the presence of the old squire, and make a declaration of 
 her innocence to him, even though she should fall down on 
 her knees and beseech him to believe her. But he was the 
 father of the man she loved, and exculpating herself to the 
 one was like seeking indirectly to excuse herself to the other. 
 She felt the words would die upon her lips. She would 
 rather go out wronged and maligned in the judgments she 
 most cared for than have recourse to such means to alter 
 them. Before the air of the Mall, which was so refreshing
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 281 
 
 to others, should stifle her, or its hospitable roof crush her, 
 she would be goue back forever to her poor home and her 
 own Grand'mere. But then how should she face the rector 
 and Madame Rolle, who had been kind to her, now that 
 Milly was miserably gone ? Milly being the principal suf- 
 ferer by her own folly, Yolande had ceased to think of her- 
 self and her own wrong, having been trained up by Grand'- 
 mere to believe that she was her brother's keeper. 
 
 In the morning it was settled that young Caleb Gage 
 should start at once for the Shottery Cottage, to solicit a 
 private interview with the family, and communicate, what 
 they would doubtless be thankful to hear, the comparative 
 honor and safety of the daughter of the house. Yolande 
 herself would set out under the more proper wing of Mis- 
 tress Hephzibah or Libbie, and arrive in time to confirm Ca- 
 leb's statement, and throw herself on the mercy of the friends 
 whose friendship she had spurned. 
 
 The old squire, urged by his benevolence and his regard 
 for Grand'mere, would have journeyed himself on the er- 
 rand, painful though it was, but he was not the eye-witness 
 of what his son had need to set forth plainly ; and Squire 
 Gage's relations with the head of the Huguenot family in 
 the person of Grand'mere had been so much more intimate, 
 that it seemed there would be greater delicacy in the young 
 man's discharging the unwelcome task. Besides, the squire 
 had been for some time, with a little pain, perhaps, but a 
 great deal more pleasure, withdrawing himself and putting 
 forward his successor in the more active duties belonging 
 to his station, with which this neighborly office might be 
 classed. 
 
 Caleb rode along by the pastures and the edge of the 
 Waliste in a wild, windy, rainy morning, only partially re- 
 covered from his disorder of the previous evening by the 
 tossings of a sleepless night. As he proceeded, he felt some- 
 thing of a wild man's savage satisfaction in the weather, in 
 the landscape which he loved being blurred and blotted out, 
 because he was deadly sick at heart. Yet it would not have 
 signified to Caleb though all the haunts of bird and beast, 
 and all the tokens of man's dominion over them, had been 
 spread out in their freedom and fineness of detail before 
 him. The broad whole, which was a glorious marvel, and 
 every individual part of it which was a wonder, would not
 
 282 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 have arrested and occupied him at the moment, for all his 
 inclination would have been to shake his fist, and hold up 
 his hand to Heaven against the dominant white blot of the 
 Rolles 1 castle, which lay like a treacherous spider's web in 
 his path. 
 
 But what if old Madame Dupuy should not believe him 
 against the Rolles, who had nattered and befooled the 
 Frenchwoman at one time or another, as lie had heard ? 
 What if she should suspect him of feigning the character of 
 mediator, and of having himself been an actor in the run- 
 ning off he had pretended to have come upon ? "What if 
 she should fancy that he had become the inventor of a ma- 
 licious falsehood, in order to turn away suspicion from him- 
 self and cloak his own guilt ? Such guile was not without 
 its parallel any more than the deed of violence which it 
 would seek to screen. Grand'mere knew the Rolles better 
 than she knew him ; and while they had been her professed 
 friends, he had been all but her declared enemy, and from 
 what she had learned of his sullen pride and resentful vin- 
 dictiveness, she might suppose him capable of a base, coward- 
 ly, cruel retaliation on her involuntary offense. These dis- 
 quieting thoughts occurred to Caleb, and kept time with his 
 gallop. 
 
 When Caleb reached Sedge Pond he heard that Monsieur 
 had not yet returned, and, from his having taken exactly 
 the opposite road to that which he ought to have pursued, 
 he argued that Monsieur's return would not be a speedy 
 one. He had set out in full chase, with a flourish of the 
 trumpets of his woe ; and although Caleb should have ac- 
 knowledged that the poor fardgr'e tradesman had shown more 
 human nature in the proceeding than in others which had 
 gone before it, yet, in his distempered condition, he only 
 writhed anew at the fresh publicity which had thus been 
 given to Yolande's offense. 
 
 Finding himself at the garden-gate, which he had not en- 
 tered for more than twelve months, Caleb hammered at it 
 till two porteresses rushed at once to let him in. Prie, with 
 her head swathed in a huge roll of flannel resembling a 
 sh.iko, appeared in breathless haste ; but she Avas outrun 
 by Deb, who in one night had shot up, like the bean-stalk 
 of the redoubtable Jack, to the stature, both bodily and 
 mental, of a giantess. Her clumsy, massive features were
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 283 
 
 now positively grand, as they were set in stanch resolution, 
 or worked with slow but sleuth-hound sagacity. Both 
 reached the gate and assailed the unlucky new-comer: 
 " What news, master ? Where be the child ? What ha' 
 they done with her ?" 
 
 Caleb Gage was reduced to such a state of suppressed 
 passion that he did what no Gage for a generation before 
 him had done — he shook off his fellow-creatures in distress, 
 and refused to relieve their anxiety. He bade them send 
 the old Madame to him on the instant, and strode on before 
 them, refusing to take any notice of them, though Deb kept 
 up with him, and plied him with questions, trying even to 
 tempt him with counter information. " Pearson he corned 
 home late last night, and when he heered one of his darters 
 were gone, and how and with whom, as old Madame here 
 bade him be informed fust thing, well, he did just nothink 
 at all. But fust he went into a towering temper, he did, and 
 he called up all the servants as weren't gone to bed on 
 account of the family misfortune, from Harper's Sally to 
 Black Jasper, and bade them never mention Mistress Milly's 
 name in the house again, as they valued their places, and to 
 stop all search for her, because her were not worth it, and 
 he forbade it. If she came back of her own accord, loike 
 prodigal son did, then he would remember, to his sorrow 
 and shame (Madam swouuded dead oif at them words), he 
 were her fcyther; but not till then. Howsomever, old 
 Madame said that were not the way of the Good Shepcrd 
 — not with the lost sheep, and her charge were with the ewe 
 lamb." 
 
 But Caleb Gage thought to himself that the rector of 
 Sedge Pond knew best, and was he called upon to expatiate 
 to the servants on YolandeDupuy's delinquencies? It was 
 bad enough to have to explain what he had seen and done 
 to those who were entitled to the information at his hands. 
 So, silently and haughtily, he went to await Grand' nure, in 
 the cottage parlor. Once within the Shottery Cottage, there 
 came a revulsion in Caleb's mood. The dark and sombre 
 parlor forced itself on his dazzled eyes, shining with the re- 
 flection of love and duty. To another its wants of embel- 
 lishment, and complete absence of any evidence of recrea- 
 tion or diversion, might have told of a cramped, chilled, 
 stunted life — its deprivations almost a warrant for outrage
 
 284 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 against authority. But Caleb Gage's healthy, genial soul 
 did not understand such an argument, with God's sun over- 
 head, and his green earth around, and down in the depths 
 of the human heart such exhaustless treasures of affection 
 ready to spend themselves on every living thing. Though 
 stupid, and smarting under a blow, he could not shut out 
 what he saw and remembered of that room. There were 
 the pillow and bobbin, and the tapestry frame with the tasks 
 half finished, lying as Yolande had left them, reminding him 
 that the Huguenot women worked boxes full of lace and 
 tapestry for Monsieur's trade stores. But Grand'mere was 
 fourscore,' and Madame was the house mother, and was too 
 much of a demagogue and declaimcr to speak with her fin- 
 gei - s. It was by Yolande's unfailing application that the 
 task was accomplished. And Caleb knew that there is no 
 discipline short of suffering equal to" the noble, self-denying 
 discipline of honest work — all the nobler when it is work in 
 an intelligent and a skillful craft — a trained yet voluntary 
 contribution to the great prayer-offering of labor. The 
 temptation which would prevail over an undisciplined va- 
 grant-willed, idly-disposed being like one of the rectory girls, 
 must be widely removed from that of a dutiful, meek, close- 
 ly-employed daughter like Yolande. AYith the rectory 
 girls, home pursuits and entertainments were all mixed up 
 with beads, spangles, and tinsel, powders and washes, and 
 not with long spells of work. Their heaviest labor had 
 been to hang gaudy, incongruous patches about their stom- 
 achers and trains, making them more like peacocks than 
 ever, till they cried out for the spots on their tails to be 
 changed. The most humanizing occupations the rectory 
 girls had were teasing Black Jasper and fondling their lap- 
 dogs. But when Yolande had a brief holiday, as in the 
 days after her illness, it was given to weed and water, prune 
 and guide the flowers in Grand'mere's jardiniere, to note 
 even the commonest wayside plant, or to make friends 
 with the homeliest animal that breathed. And there still 
 lay her silver weeds, the broken-winged sparrow she had 
 saved from the hawk, and the crippled field-mouse she had 
 come upon in the furrow. To Caleb Gage the works of God 
 were another Word, and these simple tokens so many com- 
 mandments to reverence and purity, so that to quit their 
 devout study, and indulge in levity and recklessness, seemed
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 285 
 
 to him well-nigh incredible. " Will a man leave the snow 
 of Lebanon which cometh from the rock of the field ? or 
 shall the cold flowing waters that come from another place 
 be forsaken ?" 
 
 Then there thronged back on Caleb's mind all Yolande's 
 antecedents, which gave the lie to her frailty. Monsieur, 
 he felt, was only a degenerate scion of his sect, and he had 
 not appreciated Grand'mere ; but he had grown to fancy 
 that all the old Huguenot nobleness, sincerity, earnestness 
 and tenderness had revived and culminated in Yolande, of 
 whom a colt like him would have none, when she was put 
 by a miracle within his grasp. Was this the stuff that 
 slight women are made of? Was this the girl who had run 
 off with the Honorable George Rolle and his cousin Milly ? 
 More baffled than ever, though less utterly miserable, Caleb 
 waited for Grand'mere. 
 
 At last Grand'mere entered in a Lyons silk gown, mob 
 cap and mittens, a silver dove in her breast, and a staff, like a 
 cherry with a cherry-stalk, in her hand. It struck Caleb 
 Gage that the old Frenchwoman, who had been his bete 
 noire, had something of the queen about her — something of 
 the Berthas and Mauds, mothers of their people. He could 
 not help feeling abashed before the old Madame, who in the 
 midst of her trouble was neither impulsive nor extravagant 
 in her welcome of him, as he had expected. She was se- 
 date, with a quiet dignity, in the keenness of her intelligence 
 and her mobility of expression, which would not break out 
 freely now, because its owner could rule her own fine spir- 
 it. 
 
 But Grand'mere was not alone. Her dark satellite of a 
 daughter-in-law followed, and not only Madame, but Prie 
 and Deb with the freedom accorded in old French house- 
 holds trod on each other's heels in the doorway, in order 
 to hear whatever concerned the family. And Caleb was 
 called upon to deliver himself of his detestable mission in the 
 hearing of the whole household! It was all over with Yo- 
 lande so far as hiding her fault went, but Grand'mere might 
 not be aware how nearly his tidings affected her child, and 
 it was barbarous to make him spread them. So after his 
 low bow to old Madame's low courtesy, he said — 
 
 " Madame, I sought to speak with you alone." 
 
 Caleb's head hung down a little as he spoke, and he pluck-
 
 286 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 
 
 ed at the button of his hat and the naps of his waistcoat, be- 
 traying that lie was grievously perturbed. 
 
 <; Monsieur, there can not be too much linen in a house- 
 hold," replied Grand'mere, with deliberate and as it sound- 
 ed, mocking sententiousness. " I kiss the hand to him who 
 will not speak in a high voice before ray people." 
 
 " As you will," yielded Caleb, in indignant despair. " I 
 have come to tell you that Mademoiselle is found." 
 
 " God be praised !" cried Madame, the mother, in her 
 sonorous voice, which had uttered only jeremiads for many 
 a day. 
 
 " The Lor' — but He do be good !" burst in Deb, with an 
 estasy of satisfaction at the conviction which redeemed the 
 dishonoring doubt the sentence implied. 
 
 " Let's go to the chile. You imperent, ignorant babby, 
 Deb Potts, get out of my way now," insisted Priscille, put- 
 ting her best foot foremost, and plunging with her head aft- 
 er it, in a manner which threatened to land her in the cen- 
 tre of the circle, by way of taking a step to Ma'mselle. 
 
 But Grand'mere, with her high spirit, chastened at it had 
 been, let no sign break from her, save the loveliest pink 
 blush, like that of a maiden, in her withered cheek, and the 
 glow, as of golden fire, in her grey eyes. She would not 
 show what had been her faithlessness by praising her God 
 now ; she would not compromise her child by confessing 
 to that young man what her terror for Yolande had been ; 
 for he had made himself strangest of the strange toward 
 them. Grand'mere knew what the odium of a mariage 
 manque was in France, and how hard it would have been to 
 bear for her Yolande there ; but the brutal discourtesy with 
 which this young man in England had added insult to injury, 
 along with the errand on which he now came, was more 
 than Grand'mere's flesh and blood could stand, and she 
 told herself she did well to let him feel his strangeness now. 
 
 " Oui-da, I looked for the discovery. It must have come 
 sooner or later," she observed, composedly. " What then, 
 Monsieur Caleb ?" 
 
 " I have the profound grief — " Caleb hurried on, more in- 
 clined than ever to break down in ungovernable passion, un- 
 called-for as the paroxysm would be beside Grand'mere's 
 stony insensibility. 
 
 She swerved from her firmness as he hesitated to pro-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 287 
 
 ceed. " You do not say a young Sainton earth Las escaped 
 from men and devils to be the youngest saint in heav- 
 en ?" she asked, with a quick fluttering of her heart, but 
 without altogether losing her composure even at that idea. 
 
 "I do not know how that may be, Madame," answered 
 Caleb Gage, losing his self-command entirely. "If it had 
 been a young saint of mine, I should have taken care to 
 guard her with soul and body ; as for yours, she intercept- 
 ed me last night after nightfall, while I was on my way 
 to the Mall. She was running for aid for her associates 
 and friends, Mr. George Rolle from the castle, and one of 
 the young Mistress Rolles from the rectory, with whom she 
 had been driving to destruction, as far as my dull Avits could 
 cope with the circumstances, when they were overturned in 
 the Whitecates Road, and the ditch adjoining." 
 
 " Serve' em right, if Ma'msclle lighted on her feet !" 
 exclaimed Deb emphatically. 
 
 " An' weren't none of her tender bones broken, be'st sure, 
 young squire?" Prie urged, recalling him to the important 
 point sternly. 
 
 .But Grand'mere only smiled brightly. " The little one 
 ran for aid ? Good ! I have no reason to doubt what 
 you say, Monsieur ; I doubt it not. Pardon me, but the act 
 alproves that Avas the little one all over." 
 
 Caleb stared blankly. Was there ever such reception 
 of such tidings ? Were all the Avits of the Shottery Cot- 
 tage household gone wool-gathering, and was all feeling 
 gone after them ? 
 
 Instead of answering his silent protest, Grand'mere inclin- 
 ed her head as if listening to the distant sound of wheels, 
 though he could not hear them. 
 
 " duals" she cried, " Yolandette is here ! But stay, I 
 pray you, until she comes, my Monsieur, and Avesee how the 
 culprit looks." 
 
 The Mall had lent Yolande its farm-wagon, since she did 
 not chance to ride Darby and Joan fashion with Caleb or 
 his father. ' Libbie Larkins sat beside her, gravely mindful 
 of her comfort, and gravely watchful, lest a naughty young 
 creature Avho had been within a hair's-breadth of the sad 
 end of naughtiness, should precipitate herself from the foot 
 of the wagon, and run away again at the last moment. 
 But within an incredible time for a wagon to draw up and
 
 288 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 its passengers to be lifted down, Yolande came flying along 
 the garden path, leaving Libbie Larkins as bewildered as 
 her young master under the flash of new light, while she 
 panted and toiled behind her. 
 
 Into the door, into the parlor, without a word of pardon, 
 a thought of shame, ran Yolande. She hugged Grand'mere, 
 embraced her people all round, and sobbed and laughed at 
 last, though it was no laughing matter. " 3Iemdre, I have 
 got back to you. Were you frightened out of your mind ? 
 But little Deb saw us taken prisoners. Mafoi ! we call her 
 little because she is great every way, that Deb. But what 
 a game, Grand'mere ! It was worse than the four corners 
 for the children, and we no longer children, and the month 
 October, and not April, to make fish of us ! Ah, what a mis- 
 erable game and fooling for the poor Milly ! But I begin at 
 the end. Behold me, Grand'mere, and all you who can not 
 help believing me. I am back ; no one suspects me, no one 
 shames me. Ah ! my heart, how happy I am 1" 
 
 "Chut! peronnelle" remonstrated Madame. "Grace 
 of God, Yolande !" she reminded the girl in solemn exulta- 
 tion, " the good God of the Huguenots faileth never." 
 
 " If little Deb had been bigger, as big as some folk a' 
 know," declared Deb, sniffing significantly, " some other folk 
 'ud ha' smarted for putting so much as a finger on Ma'm- 
 selle." 
 
 " Nay, now, Ma'mselle," grumbled Prie, " you've been and 
 smirched your wrapper; and who be to clean you, a'd like 
 know, when the great wash be long done ? You be a pret- 
 ty young 'un to get into damage, and have we in a frenzy for 
 you, and let your body-clothes be done to sticks to boot." 
 
 Grand'mere almost laughed in Caleb's white, melted, avert- 
 ed face. Then something of her natural graciousness, dash- 
 ed with a shade of scorn, returned to her face and voice. 
 
 " Monsieur, my young Samaritan, you and yours are truly 
 good Samaritans. A thousand thanks and praises for that, 
 and for your succoring the child in her need. But she was 
 not a thief, though she fell among thieves. What ! my 
 friend, was it necessary that you should be told that ? Where 
 were your eyes, your heart ? Bah ! Monsieur George, her 
 heartless, heedless assailant, knew better than that." 
 
 " Tt is true, Madame," answered Caleb, with bitter morti- 
 fication, though there was such a flood of sweet satisfaction
 
 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 289 
 
 at the bottom of his heart, that it welled up through all his 
 hate and rage agaiust himself. " I will not have one word 
 of thanks or praise. No, there is nothing too bad to say of 
 me for my blindness and grossness." 
 
 And Caleb, went away, knowing that Yolande was saying, 
 " Don't be hard upon him, Grand'mere ; he showed he was 
 my neighbor ; though he was so mad, he must needs believe 
 his eyes against me — me, Grand'mere, and the God who 
 made me," and saying it with the sweetness of her restora- 
 tion to unsullied innocence and crystal truth. To Caleb it 
 was like a restoration to Paradise, for a blessed vision was 
 swimming before his eyes, and a blessed harmony sounding 
 in his ears, comforting him for his harshness. 
 
 CHAPTER XXYI. 
 
 THE SEEVICE REQUIRED OF THE OLD SQUIRE. 
 
 " My son, I am mightily thankful for this solution," said 
 old Caleb Gage. He and his son sat together in the chim- 
 ney-corner, the only spot sacred to them in their own roomy 
 mansion, at that hour of the twenty-four — the hour of setting 
 the large establishment in order for the evening exercise, 
 when the big house-place and kitchen were vacant of other 
 company. 
 
 The squire was seated in his great chair, the back of which 
 rose in a high oaken peak, like the canopy of a throne. As 
 he sat he gazed, with the thoughtful pleasure of long use and 
 wont, on what were in themselves not disagreeable objects 
 to contemplate, or at least not less attractive than the spin- 
 dle-legged furniture and fantastic japanned-work ornaments 
 of the best parlors of the day. On a sharp, gusty October 
 night, few sights could be more welcome than the great 
 glowing hearth — the hereditary post of the ma>till*s. terriers, 
 and colleys, lying curled or stretched around it in basking 
 luxury. In keeping with the hearth were the settles, only 
 less black and polished than the rafters, together with Lib- 
 bie Larkins's cluster of flitches and wreaths of pot-herl>s. 
 The burnished copper and pewter reflected the warmth and 
 brightness quite as well as silver and china would have done ; 
 while the squire's favorite books, with the rich tan and deep 
 
 N 

 
 290 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 brown of their calf-skin, were not a whit more out of place 
 as silent witnesses to the traffic of a kitchen, than as solitary 
 occupants of a library, with its state prepared for them alone. 
 They lent the power and grace of culture to narrowness and 
 rudeness, the honor of high thinking to the homeliness of 
 plain living. 
 
 The young squire looked less in love with his position. 
 There was all the difference between the young squire and 
 the old, that is commonly recognized between the flower of 
 men and of women. The young squire had a man's share of 
 sedateness and clearness, and of that coolness which is not 
 cold, but genial and fruitful as the climate and soil of the 
 temperate regions of the earth ; and the old squire had a 
 woman's generous enthusiasm and fine instinct, with her 
 wonderful power of self-abnegation and devotion. And on 
 these qualities in his father, young Caleb Gage was inclined 
 to lookw T ith tender and reverent respect. 
 
 Yet young Caleb glanced around him with an expression 
 akin to disgust, as he sat in the settle, and fretted in gloom 
 and vexation, while bearing his father company. But for all 
 his sense of incongruity between his wishes and his surround- 
 ings, Caleb, in his uprightness and manly broad-shouldered 
 figure, presented a less striking and distinguished personali- 
 ty than the squire, with the stoop of age and its rugged fur- 
 rows, even his eyes being robbed of their beaming by that 
 other world's approaching so near as to cast its shadow 
 across them. 
 
 " I am mightily thankful for the clearing of Ma'mselle," 
 repeated the squire ; "it was. a dog's trick of George Rolle, 
 and silly people will continue to tattle of what they can't know 
 the rights of, there's the worst of it; but no generous tongue 
 ■will bring the misadventure up against the young woman. 
 It would have been the queerest, most distressing trans- 
 formation of a lamb into a goat, or a dove into a crow — and 
 you know the contrary natures of the creatures, son Caleb 
 — had a Huguenot indeed, of old Madame's rearing, been 
 found to aid and abet a fine gentleman. I don't believe in 
 any confusion in human nature, any more than in the animal 
 kingdom, beyond what sin breeds ; and here grace abound- 
 ed to conquer sin. And I protest I was slow to believe in 
 poor modest Ma'msellc's delinquency all of a sudden. Now 
 that I come to think of it, I am astonished that you could, sir.
 
 THE IIUGUEXOT FAMILY. 291 
 
 As her bated, provoked, true-spirited grandmother demand- 
 ed, where were your eyes, where was your heart, young 
 man ?" 
 
 "You know, father, I was always a stupid dog, a dolt, an 
 idiot ; but for all that, you ought to make the best of me," 
 half groaned, half grumbled Caleb, divided between discon- 
 tent Avith himself, and a general quarrel with the world. 
 
 " I do make the best of you, my boy," answered old Ca- 
 leb, demurely, " particularly as you are not quite such an ill- 
 conditioned oaf as it is your pleasure to represent yourself. 
 And after all, Mr. George and that foolish infatuated lass 
 of the rector's may not have undone themselves, either, 
 so clean as we are inclined to conclude," he ended more 
 gravely. 
 
 But young Caleb, awkward and uncomfortable as he was, 
 had his own reasons for not letting the conversation drop, 
 or suffering it to diverge to the desperate circumstances of 
 Mr. George and Mistress Milly. 
 
 " So you marvel, sir, at my setting down Mademoiselle 
 Dupuy as an accomplice in her elopement, when she made 
 neither complaint nor defense to me worth speaking of, to 
 account for her situation ?" returned Caleb, staring at the 
 wall opposite him, as if he were viewing the facts of the 
 case inscribed there altogether in the abstract. 
 
 "The depredators were already punished, the havoc they 
 were working was like to stop," argued his father. " You 
 did not ask the girl a single word to warrant her in at- 
 tempting to exculpate herself. Your behavior, by your own, 
 account, was considerably stronger evidence of your ill-will 
 and rancor toward an unfortunate Huguenot family, than I 
 could have believed you capable of," ended the squire a 
 little testily, owing to the pain it gave him to speak severe- 
 ly to his son. But he returned almost immediately to his 
 usual frank, trustful tones: "You see I deal plainly with 
 you, lad, as the kindest mode in the long run." 
 
 "I want you to deal plainly with me, whether kind or 
 unkind; you could not be unkind to me — of course that is 
 nonsense, sir. But you really think that I condemned 
 Yolande unheard, and that I bear a rascally ill-will to her 
 and her family ?" 
 
 "Softly; I did not say rascally," objected the squire, a 
 ffood deal vexed and puzzled. " By the bye,"' he went on, in-
 
 292 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY 
 
 terrupting himself, " draw a pitcher of claret for yourself, 
 if you care for it." He fancied that the grimly spoken 
 words, which he could not understand, came out of a dry 
 throat, and he did not seek to confine his son to the iced 
 water he had himself taken to when he and Mr. John Wes- 
 ley were students together, and thought tea too stimulating. 
 " Let your discourse be seasoned with salt — that is, not the 
 Attic salt of pungent wit and keenness in controversy, but 
 the Christian salt of strict truth, moderation, and as much 
 amiability as an Englishman can muster. Ah, lad ! if thou 
 hadst but known my old comrade, William Fletcher of 
 Madeley, with every look and tone as benign as it was firm. 
 But I have put my foot into it, haven't I ?" asked the squire, 
 arresting himself with a mixture of consternation and lurk- 
 ing fun — " treated you to a hair of the dog which bit you, 
 by way of a profitable lecture on good manners. Seriously, 
 Caleb, I opine that there is an obliquity in your vision where 
 these French folks are concerned. Such an affection doth 
 trouble many a man who is otherwise liberal and affable in 
 his walk and conversation. It works on you in this way, 
 that it causeth you to rise off your wrong side, and be in 
 your wrong mind and mood whenever this subject is broach- 
 ed, though you are not crabbed or churlish on other sub- 
 jects," concluded the squire anxiously. 
 
 Young Caleb laughed a short laugh. "Why, father, I 
 thought you were a wise man — deemed an oracle, indeed, in 
 the society." 
 
 " I don't know that I ever pretended to be a sage" — old 
 Caleb defended himself from the new attack with crcat com- 
 posure and coolness — " but neither am I aware that I have 
 said or done any thing so silly on the present occasion that 
 my own flesh and blood should twit me with weakness." 
 
 " Oh ! but you have commtited a signal error this time, if 
 you never made one before in your life," protested young 
 Gage, rising and looking at the dogs, and stirring them with 
 his foot. " Look at Beaver, father, how ragged his ears arc, 
 and that young lurcher is getting his wisdom teeth. What 
 do you call yourself when both you and your friends at the 
 Shottery Cottage mistake love for hatred ?" 
 
 " You don't mean to say that, Caleb ?" exclaimed Squire 
 ( lage, laying down the pipe he had been smoking and rising 
 to his feet in sheer amazement.
 
 THE UUGUENOT FAMILY. 293 
 
 " I do mean to say it," Caleb took the word out of his 
 father's mouth. "And, more, I hold that too many cooks 
 have spoiled this as well as other kail — the worse luck to 
 the supper," he finished ruefully. 
 
 "No, but you must have been as perverse and peevish as 
 a woman," remonstrated the squire, " and I reckoned you 
 such a reasonable, sensible lad. If any young man was safe 
 to know his own mind, I thought it was you, who are like 
 a rock for steadiness and solidity. Oh, dear ! I have been 
 mistaken in you, Caleb." 
 
 "I am sorry for it, sir," Caleb confessed. "I always 
 knew myself to be good for nothing, and something of a 
 hypocrite ; not that I lent myself to regular imposition, 
 but I was only quiet because I am such a slow, stolid 
 mule, and you offered me no pretext for breaking out ; 
 you were too good to me, and affronted me into my best 
 behavior ; and see how ill I have behaved on the first prov- 
 ocation." 
 
 " But I don't know that you have behaved so ill," the 
 squire said, quickly relenting ; " your conduct in a woman 
 would have been counted only natural indecision and insta- 
 bility — but you of all men !" 
 
 "Don't shame women by the comparison," Caleb said 
 impatiently ; " don't, for the sake of my mother." 
 
 " If your mother had lived," the squire proceeded, soft- 
 ening into still greater tenderness, " she would have made a 
 better handling of this business than I and my fine old 
 Madame have done. Not that Madame Dupuy is a clumsy 
 fool, or that I had no experience of her management, bad as 
 English usage was against it. The old country gentry have 
 entered into family alliances often enough, and the leaders 
 of the society of Methodists have proposed marriages for 
 their members — only Ave called them marriages in the Lord, 
 and not manages de conveyance / and I have lived long 
 enough to know that there is a great deal in a name. You 
 take away my breath, Caleb, but don't let us get into anoth- 
 er monstrous misapprehension. You have taken a late fan- 
 cy to this Mademoiselle, whom I always thought to be 
 charming, bidding fair to be 'good, and fair, and learned,' 
 eh ? — as that other she I loved from the first moment I saw 
 her — but who, when she was first proposed to you, you de- 
 clined."
 
 294 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 " Don't be hard upon me, father," pleaded the young 
 
 man. 
 
 "Am I hard? But what if you should change your 
 mind again? What if you don't know it even yet, my 
 lad ? What if this be compassion, contrition, a genteel 
 amends^ to the poor young creature who has been badly 
 dealt with by a rogue of quality, as any man with the name 
 and feeling of a man would grant ? I would not be against 
 any fellow's being generous to a girl on a pinch ; but this 
 is being overgenerous." 
 
 " Of course I can not convince you, if even you choose to 
 doubt it," asserted Caleb, while he walked up and down ; 
 "but if you will only think to what I subject myself by 
 this confession, and the way in which my hopes of success 
 have been diminished by my own thickness of head and 
 hotness of temper, you will see that it is not at all probable 
 that I should talk myself into the vainest of passions, or get 
 up an attachment almost certain to cover me with chagrin 
 in the end. Is it not more credible that I should fight 
 against it as long as I was able, and only give way to 
 it when I co»ld no longer keep it down, and when I 
 judged that it was but honest to myself, and no more than 
 her due, to say it was all my fault, and bear the penalty?" 
 
 "Yes, there is some reason in what you say," candidly 
 admitted the squire. 
 
 "Consider, father, that whatever motive of despair or 
 distrust might close her mouth, it could only be because 
 jealousy and doubt conspired to put me beside myself, 
 that I was driven to do what you called condemning her 
 unheard." 
 
 "I stand corrected, Caleb," said the squire gently ; "not- 
 withstanding I can not get rid of my own impressions on 
 the matter, and they don't altogether tally with your con- 
 clusions, man. But then what do you propose to do ?" 
 
 Before Caleb could answer, a detachment of the Mall 
 company bustled in with batches of bread and pots of po- 
 tatoes. 
 
 " Never mind, my lad," his father hastened to console 
 him. "The air, even though it be somewhat boisterous, is 
 refreshing, and before turning in for the night, I like to step 
 across the threshold and look at the sky the last thing, 
 were it only on account of the patriarchs standing in their
 
 TLTE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 295 
 
 tent doors and worshiping in the sudden death of an east- 
 ern day and the glorious moon of an eastern night. We 
 have plenty of time to settle your affair before the evening 
 exercise, Caleb. I do not think I have forgotten that my 
 blood was young once, and prickled as yours does now." 
 
 Caleb was reconciled to the interruption. Like most 
 men, he could speak more freely as he strolled with his fa- 
 ther in the court or on the terrace, or as they stood with 
 their backs to the gable of the porch, seeing each other's 
 faces dimly in the wavering starlight. Besides, the neces- 
 sity of giving his father the support of his arm under the 
 force of the gusty wind drew the two so closely together in 
 their old affectionate relation that Caleb did not hesitate 
 to come out with another grievance which was troubling 
 even his small amount of expectation of a happy issue to 
 the impeded course of his true love. 
 
 " We have nothing worth offering her at the best, father. 
 You do not suspect me of reflecting on your plan of life 
 when I say so ; what was good enough for my mother 
 should be good enough for your son's wife. Still we can 
 not count on a stranger, a delicate, accomplished young 
 woman, however good, having any stomach for becoming 
 head-schoolmistress, housekeeper of a poor-house, nurse and 
 what not. It would not be fit to ask her to fare as we can 
 fare. Though, to make a clean breast of it, it seems the 
 only honorable step that is left to me. Mayhap I had bet- 
 ter drop it rather than mock her with such an offer." 
 
 " Mayhap you had better, my son," acquiesced the squire, 
 more merrily than he had yet spoken, clinging to the care- 
 laden Caleb, keeping his feet and piloting himself along the 
 terrace in the wake of his son, "if she do not think your 
 offer a worthy one after her own granddame and guardian 
 made choice of you ; if a Huguenot's daughter can not fare 
 as the jewel of the Nenthorns of Stavely was proud and 
 happy to fare, and to till the offices which she filled well — 
 then, in the name of common sense, call quits with the 
 scheme." 
 
 " But, really, do you think it was ever a practical scheme, 
 sir? Do you think it would still be possible to renew the 
 broken-off attempt at an alliance?" 
 
 "As for that, I always understood that it was you your- 
 self, my friend, who stood as stiff as a halberdier, and form-
 
 29G THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 ed the insurmountable obstacle. You must give me a little 
 time to collect my scattered thoughts ; for if I made one 
 master-blunder, it is like I fell into a dozen anent the ques- 
 tion, which I might pass to you as lights and guides." 
 
 " No, no, father," insisted Caleb, " tell me what you 
 thought, and let me judge as to the blunders." 
 
 " An humble suitor ! I like not to do it, lad, for pamper- 
 ing your besotted vanity," the squire said quickly, having 
 committed himself by a rash hint, and feeling the necessity 
 of fighting off from an explanation. 
 
 "The vanity being so mortal already, a truce to it. You 
 must speak out to me, sir, since you are my sole adviser," 
 enjoined the young squire, with eyes the sparkling of which 
 was hidden by night. 
 
 " Good lack ! it is a fine office," protested the squire, still 
 reluctant to express his convictions. "Much thanks I am 
 like to get when she avenges herself by giving you the 
 sack without remedy. No, no, Caleb, don't believe that ; 
 but, in troth, I am affrighted I may mislead you." 
 
 " It strikes me, sir, that it is somewhat late in the day for 
 that apprehension. Come," out with your conjecture or 
 cogitation, whatever it was." 
 
 " I ought not to betray a tender lass," alleged the squire, 
 becoming himself as confused as a girl. 
 
 "What have you to betray? Unless, in good earnest, 
 you have betrayed yourself already. I can give you no 
 peace until you follow up your intimation." 
 
 " As if you were giving me peace, you young rebel," 
 groaned the squire; "and my breath a'most gone with these 
 scuds. Come into the porch again, Caleb. Well, it comes 
 to this, that I did think the fine young Frenchwoman — fine 
 by nature, not by art — was inclined in the beginning to look 
 as sweet as her shyness and her self-respect would let her 
 on my bumpkin ; " and it went to my heart to see her balked 
 of her innocent maidenly faucy by no fault that I was free 
 to charge upon any body, but by one of those mischances 
 of this world, the foundations of which are out of course. 
 However, as I also imagined that you, sir, looked as surly 
 as the east wind on her pretty homage, I would not have 
 you give a fig for my idle guess." 
 
 " At least, you never let me know of the suspicion," sug- 
 gested Caleb, with confusion burning in his brown cheek,
 
 THE HUGUENOT FxUIILY. 297 
 
 to which his father's was light ; " not when you sounded 
 me on my views as to marriage, and my feelings for the 
 family at the Shottery Cottage." 
 
 " No, Caleb Gage, no more than she spoke up for herself 
 when you wronged her; and I trust you do me the justice 
 to credit that I would have died sooner than make such a 
 communication to my own son, if he had not spoken to me 
 as he has done to-night," affirmed the old man with dig- 
 nity. 
 
 "Not to make me happy, father?" murmured Caleb, 
 pressing up to him. 
 
 " You silly lad, there would have been no question of 
 making you happy then ; but only of causing a young lass, 
 who was too good for you, to hang her head foolishly." 
 
 Then old Caleb Gage let out his satisfaction, amounting 
 to exultation, in his son's having come round heartily to en- 
 tering on the proposal of early wedlock with Grand mere's 
 child, on which he had looked favorably from the first. 
 With all the squire's charity, he was not able to hold in 
 very high esteem squires' daughters like Milly and Dolly 
 Rolle, and though he doubted not that they might grow 
 into tolerable wives and mothers at the end of a score of 
 years, he had rather that they did not serve their appren- 
 ticeship for that period at the Mall. Such young women 
 as they might consent to do it, balancing all young Caleb's 
 bodily and mental endowments, and the future disenfran- 
 chisement of the Mall, against their horror of Methodism. 
 But the struggle of warring tastes and tempers which would 
 ensue could not be an agreeable or profitable experience, 
 especially to the old squire, with regard to whom the most 
 he could hope for from one of these daughters-in-law was 
 that she should humor and tolerate the master of the house 
 as half a dotard and half a fanatic. And young Caleb was 
 too loosely attached to the Methodist body not to have of- 
 fended its leading members, so as to render it improbable 
 that he should marry into the society. His father had 
 therefore been sometimes visited with concern on his son's 
 account, lest he had erred in his philanthropy, and proved 
 improvident and inconsistent to the extent o( being less 
 than kind to his own flesh and blood, by rendering it a pre- 
 carious venture for the young squire to marry, if he re- 
 solved to do so, in his own rank of life. But Mademoiselle 
 
 N 2
 
 298 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 and her tidy little dowry solved every difficulty now, when 
 a solitary, eccentric life had begun to loom as an imminent 
 danger for the son of the man who held a noble woman as 
 God's best gift, and which, granted, made every toil and 
 sacrifice possible and easy. 
 
 True, it was uncertain whether the influential old mother 
 who represented the Dupuys would consent to take up 
 afresh and renew the contract at the point where the Gages 
 had offensively stopped short. There might be a rigid 
 French code of propriety against such fickleness. The 
 Dupuys might have formed other projects for Yolande, and 
 kept them private because one of their own countrymen 
 figured as principal in them. Or, in spite of the late out- 
 rage, the household at the Shottery Cottage might now feel 
 themselves more settled down at Sedge Pond, and in less 
 urgent need of allies. In their ignorance, they might not 
 appreciate the damage done to Yolande by the little frolic 
 of Mr. George Rolle ; and Grand'm6re, the old squire felt, 
 was the last woman in the world to seek to hush it up and 
 mend it by hurrying Yolande into the formerly talked-of 
 marriage with Caleb Gage. And lastly, even the manly 
 part which Caleb had played in the outrage, carried out as 
 it was under a miserable and mortifying misconception, was 
 not calculated to recommend him to tender-spirited and 
 high-minded women like Grand'mere and Yolande. 
 
 But old Caleb Gage was nevertheless sanguine. He was 
 ready to throw himself into the breach and bear the burden 
 of another's conceits and vagaries. To do this for his son, 
 who was ordinarily so wise and reasonable, that his late 
 temper and conduct could only be accounted for by a love- 
 disturbed brain, with its heady fumes, would give him the 
 purest delight. He would have out his nag and saddle- 
 bags the first thing in the morning, and ride across to Sedge 
 Pond, and be himself the bearer of the regret and repent- 
 ance, the confession of hastiness and willfulness. He would 
 at the same time solicit and plead for the restoration of the 
 terms which had already been laid down and shabbily 
 treated. 
 
 In the mean time, standing in the porch in the fitful star- 
 light, he forgot the cold and the gloom, and expounded to 
 itching, half-amused ears what he called the "illustrious 
 gain" which the presence of a gentle, refined, intelligent,
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 299 
 
 godly woman was to a family, and the pinching loss it had 
 been to him and Caleb to be confined for so many years, 
 even to the best of the Libbie Larkins and the Mistress 
 Hephzibahs among womankind. Not that the good crea- 
 tures were not true women in their best features, but they 
 wanted the tact, the discrimination, the rich sympathy and 
 wide charity of his dame, and were no more to be compared 
 to her "than clambering peas to mantling vines." The 
 squire by intuition and deduction ranked Yolande among 
 these fair, wise, virtuous women, and prophesied her em- 
 inence and the rare gift that her presence would be to the 
 Mall, until it almost sounded as if he looked for the return 
 of his Lucy, who had gone from him so early. In his ex- 
 citement he even called Yolande by the name of Lucy, and 
 spoke eagerly of the improvements which would be made 
 and the progress which would be attained when Lucy 
 should be with them. 
 
 The great bell clanged for the exercise, and the conversa- 
 tion of the squire and his son was abruptly brought to a ter- 
 mination. The two went in with the rest of the big motley 
 family, and sat among the company of preachers, licensed 
 and unlicensed, the widow and the orphan, the maimed, the 
 halt, and the blind. The squire did not conduct the serv- 
 ices, but only took his turn with the others as Brother 
 Gage. But this chanced to be his night to preside. ITe 
 read as his passage of Scripture the last chapter of Job, 
 and to the marvel and mystification of many of his hearers, 
 he returned thanks in his prayer for a treasure which had 
 been taken away from the Mall, and of the return of which 
 there was good hope. 
 
 The last words the squire said to Caleb before retiring 
 were still full of the past and the future : 
 
 " Lad, I have bethought me of something that was your 
 mother's to give to Yolande. I mean her work-table. She 
 kept that when she disposed of every thing else that be- 
 longed to her, even to her harpsichord. I think she might 
 have kept that when I kept my books, for sure noble verse 
 is made to be wedded to sweet music, and methinks string- 
 ed instruments were constructed to compass the union, that 
 it might sound its best to praise God withal. Hut my dame 
 had not a tuneful ear, though she was in all else as many- 
 sidedly tuneful as the wind or the waters. But sec now, her
 
 300 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Huguenot daughter might have brought the harmony of 
 Clement Mariot's psalms from the dumb wood and ivory, for 
 these foreigners have a skill of their own in harmony. How- 
 ever, Lucy could put her table to use in the making of coats 
 and garments, like Dorcas — the end to which she was thence- 
 forth to devote her needle. Here is the key, I have kept it 
 at my watch-guard till now, when I deliver it up to you 
 until the day when you can make free to hand it to your 
 dame that is to be. Had this been July, and not October, 
 I might, French fashion, have taken a posy in my hand from 
 you to her to-morrow, and sent you no farther than the 
 hedges to gather it, for those women, with a right down 
 love of flowers — and, bless you, I like the sign — don't mind 
 though they be scarcer or no more scented than hawthorn 
 or honeysuckle." 
 
 The next morning, when the good squire was called be- 
 times to set out on a bridal errand for his son, he was found 
 lying solemn and serene on his widowed bed, having de- 
 parted overnight on a sudden journey, with the gift of the 
 faithful remembrance and the tender admiration of his brave 
 manhood and age in his hand, wherewith to greet his wife 
 in the city from which there is no going out. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE SQUIRE'S LAST FEAST. 
 
 The news that he who had been squire of the Mall no 
 longer dispensed its bounty and charity, caused no little ex- 
 citement in Sedge Pond and the neighborhood. Those who 
 had not cared to acknowledge his acquaintanceship since he 
 had changed his religion, as well as those who had profited 
 by his Methodism and its institutions, regarded this as an 
 occasion which could not be missed for repairing to the 
 Mall to join the funeral gathering. Crowds congregated 
 in the court and on the terrace, and streamed through all 
 the doors, which on this day had been thrown wide open. 
 They wandered over the house, and wondered at the trans- 
 formations upon it, and passed below the denuded pictures, 
 where painted eyes, incapable of new light, seemed from their 
 cold exultation to challenge the crowd as they pressed along
 
 TUE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 301 
 
 below. But the most hostile ancestral figures did not hinder 
 the humblest of the mourners from penetrating into the room 
 where the coflin rested on its trestles, ready for removal, 
 nor from reading the name and the age of the old squire, 
 though both were well enough known to his contemporaries. 
 Afterward they visited the Academicia, now bereft of its 
 patron and restored to its old use. Long boards had been 
 set in the low-roofed, dark-paneled room, to bear refresh- 
 ments ; and the guests walked up to murmur a word of con- 
 dolence, or silently to take the hand of the new squire, the 
 central figure in the gloom, as he sat there in his mourning- 
 cloak, the representative of the house and the master of the 
 feast. 
 
 In those days, when roads were bad and traveling difficult, 
 when old neighbors, and even near relations, sometimes did 
 not meet for years, the protracted ceremony, with its attend- 
 ant hospitality, was reckoned a simple act of respect to the 
 dead, and of consideration for the living, which no person, 
 whatever his religious or political opinions, was warranted 
 in neglecting. People of both sexes and of all classes and 
 ages attended such gatherings, sometimes from a mixture 
 of motives. To some it was an opportunity for meeting 
 company ; others regarded it as a concession to the prior 
 claims of the Great Debtor; and perhaps more viewed it as 
 a good occasion for paying early court to the rising sun — 
 the squire who was to be, whose character as squire was 
 still to be made, and who, if he had offended any of the 
 prejudices of his fellows as squire-apparent, had it yet in his 
 power to make amends by reforming the errors and rem- 
 edying the abuses which had existed under the old regime. 
 
 Various other impulses actuated the huge assemblies 
 which gathered at funeral feasts in those days. Not the 
 least of these was a sense of obligation to close, if possible, 
 a generation's feud, and thus set at rest the qualms of con- 
 science awakened by an old opponent's having passed ir- 
 revocably beyond the old circle of friend and foe. 
 
 And special circumstances combined to render the gath- 
 ering at old Caleb Gage's burial a curiously large and mot- 
 ley one. The untoward state of the weather, the sudden 
 showers of snow, fast heralding winter, did not diminish 
 it, though it promised to render the pall and the new-made 
 grave whiter than " the white flowers of a blameless life,"
 
 302 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 which the dead man had worn. The old squire who, in 
 his life, had been pointed at as a fifth monarchy-man out of 
 season, a seditious revolutionist, a canting, blaspheming 
 Methodist, like many another chief, received an ovation now, 
 when he was no longer here either to profit or to be spoiled 
 by it. Had the Apostle Paul died when he was called 
 mad by the Governor Festus, he might have had a notable 
 funeral, attended not only by the empty chariots of his 
 judges, but by some of the august magnates themselves — 
 King Agrippa and Queen Bernice winding up the proces- 
 sion in the very state with which they came to hear his ac- 
 cusation and defense. Men of every shade felt at last that 
 there had been something in a high sense noteworthy and 
 true in Caleb Gage's life of fervent faith and entire conse- 
 cration to deeds of benevolence, though, in its course, it 
 had been seen only in glimpses and fragments, and had ap- 
 peared to them full of paradoxes, failures, and absurdities. 
 Men who had never set a foot within Caleb Gage's house, or 
 looked on his living face, traveled a dozen miles to witness 
 Ins institutions, now that the testing seal of death was 
 stamped upon them. It was as though a wonder of his 
 age was being removed from their midst. Few near 
 Sedge Pond knew, or could have known, of another and 
 even greater man protesting against the racket, the hard 
 worldliness, and worse than pagan unbelief which then 
 prevailed — the simple sailor, Captain Coram, who at that 
 very time was inaugurating charities more extensive than 
 princes had founded,, and dedicating to the best service of 
 God and of humanity the gallant life which had been 
 spared in battle. It was not only the eager, fervent Meth- 
 odists who believed that there would be a harvest from 
 that funeral feast, and that Caleb Gage, like Samson, 
 would slay the Philistines in his death as in his life, and 
 possibly more in the last than in the first, because it is an 
 eternal law that the seed can not be quickened unless it 
 die. If there is any higher element in humanity, any pow- 
 er of receiving the Divine leaven, it was not unreasonable 
 to hope that some who came to the Mall to scoff might re- 
 main to pray. 
 
 To not a few tenants of the Mall, Caleb Gage's funeral 
 day was the celebration of a long farewell to the old home. 
 True, the old squire himself could not have been more in-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 303 
 
 capable than was young Caleb, of roughly dismissing an- 
 cient guests, or having recourse to any but the most grad- 
 ual method of change, since it affected those for whom his 
 father had so labored and suffered. But it was impossible 
 that the Mall could continue the rallying-ground and train- 
 ing-school of the sect which it had materially helped to 
 form. The yeoman-like preachers, who were even now 
 falling into knots to discuss the late squire's interpretation 
 of the little horn of Daniel, or the seventh vial of the 
 Apocalypse, must come to more practical matters, and 
 choose a new interpreter and leader. 
 
 ( And as much the squire's charge, and as liable to be 
 scattered by his death, were the young apprentice boys 
 and girls who, set idle for the day, were half tempted to 
 think it a holiday, since it was not in reason to expect that 
 their round, ruddy faces could be sobered to meet the re- 
 quirements of the occasion. But even here and there 
 among them were thoughtful brows and tearful eyes. 
 
 The patient incurables — most patient of all the sick in 
 the squire's hospital, and the most permanently established 
 of his family — were limping and shuffling and groping 
 about among the company, so accustomed to human suffer- 
 ing and the reverses of earth, that it did not seem. there 
 could be a calamity or bereavement on which they would 
 not turn placid, almost smiling faces. There was another 
 class of invalids — bronzed soldiers and sailors, with their 
 wounds and their scars, half subsisting on their pensions, 
 and half on the feats of their dogs, and on their stories of 
 land and sea fights, foreign countries, and great hurricanes. 
 There were traveling tailors, saddlers, tinkers, glaziers, and 
 pedlars, who ought to have been men of substance and re- 
 pute, but who had lost caste, and were discarded by their 
 more prosperous brethren. Following on their heels came 
 the privileged beggars, the more privileged if they happen- 
 ed to be crazy — down to the very gipsy whose camp was 
 pitched on the Waiiste, and who, whatever his origin, was 
 still the Canaanite among the lowest of the Israelites. But 
 the most touching and comforting of the pictures in the 
 rag-fair were the poor outcasts whom the squire had been 
 able to draw from the kennel, and had left behind him, 
 cleansed, clothed, and in their right minds. As to the Al- 
 chemy by which he did it, one might be content with refer-
 
 304 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 
 
 ring to certain chapters in the Bible, in which it is record- 
 ed how one sat at His feet washing them with her tears, 
 and wiping them with the hair of her head, until He said, 
 " Thy sins are forgiven thee ;" and how another was 
 brought before Him by her Jewish accusers, to whom He 
 turned and declared, " Neither do I condemn thee; go, and 
 sin no more." 
 
 Thus were met old and young, rich and poor, man and 
 maid, as well as matrons carrying little children, that they 
 might be able to say in after years they had been present 
 at the Mall on the occasion of the great funeral feast of the 
 good squire, whom in his day their mothers had heard 
 called mad. Most of the people wore mourning, either in 
 their whole attire or in rusty scraps and small touches. A 
 favorite costume with the women was black scarfs, and 
 white gowns, emulating the snow on the ground outside, 
 and the shroud within the coffin, as well as being significant 
 of the hardy stoicism and determined endurance of the 
 age. 
 
 There were two little family groups which kept some- 
 what sedulously apart, and yet could not quite withdraw 
 their eyes and their thoughts from each other. At the 
 head of the first was the rector, grown grey suddenly as it 
 seemed, who had been heard saying shortly and sharply 
 that he would not have missed this funeral feast at any 
 price, or for any excuse. With him was Madam, wan and 
 woe-begone in her old comely fairness and stoutness. She 
 had dragged her feet into company and forced back her 
 heavy tears, even on the convenient occurrence of a funer- 
 al, because it was her Philip's will to brave out and live 
 down the dreadful misfortune which had befallen them. 
 Dolly came after her father and mother, looking cowed 
 and deserted, and causing the spectators to rub their eyes 
 at sight of the familiar mantua and hat without the other 
 mantua and hat which were wont to accompany them. 
 The whole of the Holies were distinguished by the absence 
 in their dress of the mourning so generally worn. Black 
 Jasper walked last ; he was easily moved to tears, and he 
 improved the opportunity by crying copiously. He only 
 intermitted the operation when a hymn was raised. Then 
 he would wipe his eyes, hold up his head, and sing with 
 great sweetness, and no diminution of zeal and fervor, for
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 305 
 
 the trifling objection that he was unacquainted with either 
 words or tune. His indignant master would face round 
 upon him and order him to stop — now that blubbering, 
 now that bellowing; and Jasper would duck his woolly 
 head and try hard to obey, but the force of a gushing and 
 musical temperament was too much for him, and before any 
 time had passed Black Jasper was oif again either into sob- 
 bing or singing. 
 
 The other group consisted of Grand'mere, Yolande, Mon- 
 sieur (who had returned, and shrugged his shoulders at Ins 
 vain pursuit of his daughter), and "Mr. Hoadley, who had 
 escaped for a moment from his hard work in moral sinks 
 and sewers. Mr. Hoadley did work hard and unremitting- 
 ly now, in a desperate attempt to make up for his former 
 latitudinarianism, though Grand'mere would have it that 
 he must leave the past yesterday, with its neglected duties 
 and its many offenses, as he must leave the future to-mor- 
 row, with its anticipated cares and toils, to him who alone 
 is sufficient for these things. Grand'mere's party was 
 wound up by Deb Potts, Avho, arrayed in a huge black 
 hood of Frio's, looked well about her, and took "in every 
 thing around her. The men soon left the women — Mon- 
 sieur to go on other errands, and Mr. Hoadley to join the 
 rectory family. Mr. Hoadley was some comfort" and of 
 some consequence to his brother churchman. He carried 
 another flag of truce into the Methodist muster, .and acted 
 as an escort to the depressed and affronted Dolly, damaged 
 by her sister's having gone lamentably astray. It was not 
 that Mr. Hoadley did not rejoice like a man, and thank 
 God like a Christian, for Yolande's deliverance, though she 
 owed it not to him, but to another. But the fact of the 
 young squire of the Mall, and not Parson Hoadlcy's having 
 compassed Yolande's rescue, was not without its effect in 
 raising another barrier between her and her slighted lover. 
 Mr. Hoadley had not been privileged to do any thing for 
 her sake but to throw up the chaplaincy, which he ought 
 to have resigned long before for his own'. A sense of fail- 
 ure and incompetency where she was concerned, began to 
 haunt and chafe him. Where was the use of his continuing 
 to hang on the skirts of Grand'mere and 5Tolande 5 when 
 Grand'mere herself overlooked him at the Mall, and Yo- 
 lande's manner gave the impression that she did not turn
 
 30G TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 her back upon him because she had no more heart or spirit 
 to turn her back upon her greatest bane ? But to Mr. 
 Hoadley's sensitive vanity, her meek endurance "was even 
 worse than her sauciness — a tiling that his honorable inten- 
 tions were not fit to stand any more than his abused pas- 
 sion and his bigoted intolerance. 
 
 Neither Grand'mere nor Yolande so much as observed 
 Mr. Hoadley's dejection that day ; only Yolande had a pass- 
 ing sense that the yoke on her neck was slightly tightened. 
 She was at the Mall again, happily lost in the obscurity of 
 a crowd, but she recalled her past acquaintance with the 
 place with a sick shudder. The very hymns — songs of Zion 
 — which Mistress Hephzibah had sung to put her to sleep 
 on the night of her disgrace, fell on her ear full of painful 
 associations. But those who had so sedulously entertained 
 her before were not able to pay much heed to her now. 
 Libbie Larkins, inconsolable because she could even so much 
 as think of baked meats, was too much engaged. Mistress 
 Hephzibah, in her serener atmosphere, barely noticed the 
 young Frenchwoman, and tha.t more out of charity than 
 any thing else, little guessing how near she had been to 
 having her for an honored young kinswoman. 
 
 With reverent tender regard for the trying solitude of 
 Caleb Gage's position, and with a flood of compunction for 
 her bearing toward him on the last occasion they had met, 
 Grand'mere followed the stream and approached the chief 
 mourner. With sore grief for his grief, with yearning pity 
 that was all the more pitiful that she did not think to offer 
 it nor dream that he would care to accept it, Yolande glided 
 like a shadow after Grand'mere. 
 
 "We are so sorry, Monsieur, we can not say how sorry," 
 declared GraiuVmere, earnestly. "He was a gentleman as 
 there ought to be — gentle. Wc saw him only so many 
 times, but he was our true friend. If he had tarried here a 
 little longer, Yolande would have sought to kiss his hands 
 for his house's roof; but the roof which became him was 
 the cloudless canopy of the vault of heaven. Monsieur, you 
 are his son — what is our knowledge of him or our loss in 
 him compared with yours? I presume not to lament with 
 you." 
 
 Caleb lifted up his grave, mournful eyes, and looked on 
 the pair. If any thought at variance with his situation in-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 307 
 
 truded itself upon him be hated himself for it, and thrust it 
 away from him. True, his father had rejoiced in his slow 
 and sure passion ; but in the sudden rending of the first ties 
 of nature, Caleb had suffered the natural revulsion from later 
 ties which had been asserting their sovereignty over him 
 and superseding the first. In the keen awakening to all 
 that he had lost, the jealousy of bereaved affection and its 
 generous remorse for the smallest shortcoming, Caleb, mod- 
 est and singlehearted in his manliness, took himself to task 
 for his failures in duty and love to such a father. He in- 
 wardly accused himself of having been engrossed with his 
 willful inclination and selfish personal interests, and with 
 having overlooked and neglected symptoms of decay in the 
 old squire. He had denied his father his society and sym- 
 pathy on many a day during this summer and autumn, 
 though at the very last there had been an explanation, and 
 full confidence had been restored between them. Caleb be- 
 longed to his dead father in the early pangs of separation, 
 and his dull eyes could not sparkle even for Yolaude. His 
 tongue stumbled stiffly as he said that every friend of his 
 father's was welcome at the Mall, and more welcome now 
 than ever. He was sure Madame Dupuy was the squire's 
 friend (no, he could not call him the late squire) ; it was 
 kind of her to do him a grace ; and he begged her to excuse 
 his poor courtesy. The very touch of his hand was cold, 
 and he said to himself it was well that he was dead to other 
 emotions, which read like vanities now that he was father- 
 less, even while he had a conviction that he was cutting 
 himself off from complete reconciliation with theDupuys, and 
 with his own hands destroying the remnant of an intercourse 
 which, without the squire's ready, gracious intervention, it 
 would be doubly hard to renew. On the other hand, if Yo- 
 lande had entertained the faintest suspicion of what had 
 been purposed, if the true love between the young man and 
 the girl had been a happy, admitted love, with its course 
 running smoothly, she would have asked nothing from him, 
 but would have respected the oblivion in which he cast him- 
 self and his happiness together with her and hers — would 
 have counted herself delicately complimented by the associa- 
 tion — would have patiently Mailed and waited until she 
 could softly recall him to his own and her claims. 
 
 As it was, Grand'mere observed, sorrowfully, " Lc pauvre
 
 308 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Jils ! We can do nothing for him. He needs us no more 
 than if we were croquemorts." And Yolaude's heart died 
 within her, and only revived that she might tell herself that 
 she was a selfish, vain, light-minded, worldly creature. And 
 when she had succeeded in stretching, laying out, and bury- 
 ing her love for the time, she could turn and listen to Charles 
 Wesley's soaring hymn, and be inspired and borne away on 
 its strains. 
 
 " When from flesh the spirit free, 
 Hastens homeward to return, 
 Mortals cry, 'A man is dead!" 
 Angels sing, ' A child is born !' " 
 
 The Dupuys rode home to Sedge Pond, market-fashion, 
 on a wall-eyed, spavined horse, hired from the ale-house, 
 with Deb, shouldering Madame Rougeole, walking along- 
 side, in case the beast should take to prancing and bolting 
 under its burden. Yolande said to Grand'mere as they 
 went — 
 
 " Grand'mere, it is white there above, and white there 
 below, and it is we who are like black flies crawling between. 
 Does nothing whiten us? It has been a journey of mis- 
 fortune this to the Mall, ma mere/ we ought never to have 
 made it. Petite mh*e, do you think that mistakes commit- 
 ted on earth are cleared up in heaven ? His father, saint 
 and sage as he was, died believing me to be black, and lie 
 believes it, for he believes his father." 
 
 "Ma toute bonne" replied Grand'mere, "leave not only 
 vengeance, but justice, to the Lord. Oh ! 9a, the brightest 
 thing about heaven is that we will see clearly there. Seest 
 thou not thy father and mother here ? They have lived 
 together more than all thy life, and they understand one 
 another not a bit more than they did the first day they 
 came together. They are like planets with different orbits, 
 the planes of which never cross. You and I, we think avc 
 understand each other, cocotte ; and yet, if one of us were 
 to die to-morrow, the other would be in anguish like the 
 gars yonder, to find how many nooks in her own heart she 
 had kept shut up, and how many places in her friend's she 
 had never so much as sought to enter. Every one liveth to 
 himself, and every one dieth to himself in that sense; and 
 mil. foil -we shiver, we grow bad, we grow mad in the soli- 
 tude, long before we pass the great portal, if the Father bo
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 309 
 
 not with ns. But there — above, Yolandette, we know and 
 are known ; and as the disciples of the Master would know 
 Him no more after the flesh once they bad known Him in 
 the spirit, so shall we only begin to know our people cm 
 fond, and laugh at the ignorance which we called knowledge 
 in this dim cramped menage of earth, when we are free, and 
 are no longer self-blinded, in the house of the Father." 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 A LIVING SORROW. 
 
 At Sedge Pond rectory this autumn life was sombre and 
 shaded, notwithstanding that Mr. Philip Rolle vehemently 
 and imperiously insisted that he and the remaining members 
 of his family had nothing to do with his lost daughter, and 
 should neither be held responsible for her folly nor regarded 
 as sharers in her punishment. Stung to the quick by what 
 he of all men could least bear with any show of equanimity 
 — undutifulness, levity, and vice on the part of one of the 
 daughters he had cherished, and treachery and ingratitude 
 on the part of one of the Rolles, whom, next to his own 
 children, he had loved, and whose sins he had failed to de- 
 nounce — the rector, with all his efforts at serenity, evenness 
 of temper, and sociability, was sterner and more austere 
 than his household had ever known him. 
 
 The loss of Captain Philip had not so affected him. 
 There was a tender pride in that dead sorrow, a loyal 
 submission which brought out all that was most generous in 
 the man and mostclevated in his Christianity; but this 
 wanton dishonor of a living sorrow put an iron mask on his 
 face and a heart of stone in his breast. 
 
 Madam, who for a quarter of a century had been the 
 most dutiful and reverent of wives, as well as the fondest of 
 mothers, was all at once drawn different ways by the ruling 
 passions of her being. Sometimes she was tempted to 
 think that the rector was a merciless tyrant, and again 
 that her miserable Milly had never been any thing but a 
 wicked baggage. And she would indulge in such thoughts 
 until she fell into a chronically hysterical state, when she was 
 no longer lit fur her housekeeping and cookery, hut wan-
 
 310 THE HUGUE3TOT FAMILY. 
 
 derecl about pale as a ghost, putting her handkerchief to her 
 eyes, and wringing her hands whenever she got into a snug 
 corner. 
 
 As for Dolly, she had never had such a fit of the dumpj3 
 in all her life. Jn the first place, she had now some cause 
 to be in the dumps. She deeply felt the loss of her play- 
 fellow. It was lonesome and drear for her to be day and 
 night the only young person at the rectory, unless, indeed, 
 Mr. Hoadley had compassion upon her. She felt it all the 
 more that she was forbidden to complain. Nor was this 
 surprising. She had grown up to womanhood without any 
 training in self-control or discretion. Now she was sud- 
 denly gagged and frightened into trembling silence and 
 whimpering obedience by her father's single display of in- 
 dignation, and his instantaneous renunciation of the ofiend- 
 er^Milly. And, moreover, there was no hope of an end to 
 Dolly's lowness, for let her be sick, or in as pretty a passion 
 against Black Jasper or the maids as she chose, her mam- 
 ma hardly noticed her, unless, indeed, to take fitsof hugging 
 her and crying over her, which was but poor diversion for 
 Dolly. If she so mueh as dared to hint at going on a visit 
 to a neighbor, or a ride to Reedham, or across the country 
 after the hounds, her papa, who perhaps had forced her 
 abroad with him only the day before, would stare^contraet 
 his brows, and answer her sharply in the negative, lie 
 would then walk up and down the room with dreadful 
 heavy steps, and watch her jealously, till she quaked again 
 lest he should denounce her as he had denounced Milly. 
 These were dull days of fog and fall to Dolly ; and though 
 she was not on the brink of spasmodic rebellion like her 
 mother, her dullness was embittered by a sullen sense of in- 
 justice. How could she help Milly turning out ill, when 
 Milly had not taken her into her counsel, but had chosen to 
 keep company with Ma'mselle, who had managed to get 
 clean out of the scrape, Dolly being cut off from Ma'mselle's 
 society also for that escape ? Was she to be punished by a 
 life of suspicion, tight discipline, and harsh gloom, for Milly's 
 going off with Mr. George Rolle ? 
 
 The very servants at the rectory went about their Mar- 
 tinmas work with the consciousness of an unspoken calam- 
 ity which had befallen the house, and continued to hang 
 <.\ er it. " For, see now," as they said, " cruel, good, clev-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 311 
 
 er, and determined as the rector be, can he destroy an evil 
 deed and its evil work by merely bidding every mother's 
 son or daughter hold his or her tongue about it, and forget 
 that it has happened ? Can he make Mistress Milly be as 
 if she had ne'er been, by declaring that as he has no son on 
 earth — and he were right down thankful for it this day, 
 for he would not have had his young heir smitten with 
 shame, or burning to avenge a sister's stained name — so he 
 has but one daughter now, for Mistress Milly be his daugh- 
 ter no more ?" But could he bring that about ? Could 
 Madam's mother's heart, yearning after her child be brought 
 to admit that there could be an extremity which would 
 warrant such cold-blooded wisdom ? True, simple folks 
 were bidden keep the broken from the whole — a doctrine 
 the rector was forever touching; on in his sermons at this 
 time ; and, as the Sedge Pond people said, " It were like 
 Mistress Milly was no longer a fit companion and example 
 for Mistress Dolly, to whom she used to be as much the 
 marrow as two new pins, and the girls as inseparable as 
 any pair of dame's geese, while, lawk ! their lives were to 
 run in opposite directions now, the one to light the other 
 to darkness. Leastways, so Pearson would have it. But 
 to say the poor erring sinner were to be stamped into 
 nought, as well as given over to destruction, by her own 
 kith and kin, was less than kindness — indeed were main 
 malicious and vindictive of Pearson in plain bodies' eyes ; 
 might be the way of gentle folks, but was one of those 
 forced, unnatural ways which the commonalty could not 
 understand." 
 
 No, the rector might pack his skeleton into his closet, 
 and shut and lock the closet door before his household's 
 blinking eyes, but he could not insure that the door would 
 not open of itself some day when he least expected it, or 
 that Mistress Milly would not return like the prodigal son, 
 in which ease he had pledged himself to receive her. Nev- 
 ertheless, judging by his present conduct, it was a sorry 
 reception which he was preparing for her; ;is unlike iis 
 possible to that of the prodigal. At the same time those' 
 servants of the rector's who, after the fashion of other ser- 
 vants, sat in judgment on their master, and condemned 
 him without hesitation, were impressed by his calm front, 
 :i- the firmness and self-mastery ofa superior nature and :i
 
 312 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 superior nurture will always command respect, if not love, 
 and compel the mass, with its ill-regulated and demonstra- 
 tive passions, to follow and defer to it. 
 
 Black Jasper was the most intractable and ungovernable 
 of the rector's troop under the new order of things, not- 
 vithstanding that the fellow had all the docility and fidel- 
 ity of his race. He could not comprehend that his Massa's 
 sister, and his Massa's Massa's daughter was become an 
 outcast and an alien. He would incidentally allude to her 
 with the utmost innocence, while beside the family, half a 
 dozen times a day. He was constantly-making prepara- 
 tions which had reference to her return. He would come in 
 with his goggle eyes and his imperturbable composure, and 
 ask Madam whether he had not better air the cane-room 
 for Mistress Dolly lying in it again with her sister ; wheth- 
 er he might go up to Farmer Spud's and seek after a pet 
 lamb " against the young mistress's" appearance, in order 
 to surprise her, or go out and cut rushes to stuff" her church 
 hassock with them, for she was wont to -complain of it, and 
 it was unused in the mean time. 
 
 The rector's eyes would sparkle at these things, and in 
 one sense they quite burned up Black Jasper, causing him 
 to jump from the spot on which he stood every time they 
 flashed upon him. But they were powerless to stop his oblig- 
 ing mal-d-jirojios proposals. So the rector in despair gave 
 up attempting to cut Black Jasper short, or to show him 
 the door in the middle of his speeches. 
 
 The rector afforded another contradiction. Behind backs 
 Dolly rated the stolid Black Jasper soundly for his doltish- 
 ness, and .Madam cried out fractiously, " How can you bring 
 forward that wretched young lady m your speeches, boy ? 
 Have you no judgment or no mercy ? You may see, if you 
 like to look, that I can not stand it." But the rector was 
 rather gentler to Black Jasper, and less nettled by his so- 
 lemnity and cowardice than formerly, and now indulged 
 him more frequently by speaking to him of Captain Philip. 
 
 The frost-wind of adversity was blowing into the shrink- 
 ing breast of this poor family ; while the frost-wind of na- 
 ture was turning black the garish heads of the great sun- 
 flowers in the rectory garden, and causing them to dangle 
 dismally on their nipped stalks. The lime for the sun- 
 flowers was over, and nothing could save them ; and for
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 313 
 
 the family there was little shelter in the narrow cloak of 
 pride, resolution, and stoical endurance. There was little 
 shelter anywhere, indeed, save in the wide mantle of strong 
 faith and meek charity, which lies waiting the use of ev- 
 ery pilgrim, but not till his wandering foot has carried him 
 within " the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." 
 
 Madam would have tried to win and wear that mantle, 
 but she was foiled and outraged by her husband's severity. 
 The rector could do no wrong, and yet he bade the weep- 
 ing blood of a mother freeze within her breast, or turn to 
 rankest poison. What could she do ? How was she to 
 maintain her double bond to the husband whom she had 
 called her lord and master, and to the child she had borne, 
 suckled, and reared ? Poor wives and mothers thus rent 
 asunder, and called by warning voices, each as loud as 
 their own natures, to go different ways, what is left them 
 in such tumult but to quit the hopeless, endless strife, to 
 die and go where all feuds are reconciled, where, under the 
 rainbow round the throne of the Great Father, all claims 
 are blended, satisfied, and set at rest ? 
 
 But Madam did not die yet. She did what she could 
 never have believed she had the bold spirit to do ; she in- 
 truded on her own husband, in his study, during study 
 hours, causing him to lay down his thesis to listen to her, 
 when she addressed him with a challenge that was almost 
 a defiance. 
 
 " Philip, do you mean that T am to give up my child ?" 
 (she no longer said "our child.") " I can not tell whether 
 your meaning is so bad as that, but I am come 1<> say that 
 I can not — I can not. I have let her go for a whole month, 
 unfeeling, reckless mother that I am ! Why, the beasts of 
 the field and the birds of the air would have risen v.\> to 
 succor ami deliver their young. But lean not lie so un- 
 natural any longer; so you may lock me up, or tie me 
 hand and foot, if you want to keep me quiet, for your word 
 has no more power to do it. 1 warn you of that, Philip." 
 
 He raised himself and looked at her with the wonder, 
 compunction, and consternation with which one regards a 
 perfectly harmless, pacific nature at hay — a sheep daring 
 the dogs lor its land i, a dore ruffling its feathers, screaming 
 and circling between its nestlings and the hawk. "Com- 
 pose yourself, Milly," said the rector, trying to re-assure 
 1 o
 
 314 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Madam, and addressing her by her Christian name, which 
 he had not taken within his lips lately, choosing to employ 
 instead the terms " wife," " dame," " mistress," and with a 
 little irony, " lovey," and even that title of " mother," 
 " mamma," which he was lending the force of his absolute, 
 intolerant man's will to make a crown of piercing thorns to 
 her. " If it will be any comfort to you to know," he pro- 
 ceeded, " that I have not let our lost child go without 
 some poor security for her, or been able to let slip entirely 
 what it is no longer any thing but misery to remember — 
 stay, I did not want to wound you afresh — here is a note 
 which I had at the outset from my lady, and she will keep 
 her word ; I never knew her fail in that, either for good or 
 evil." He finished with a groan, and taking a crumplcd- 
 up note from his pocket-book, spread it out on the table 
 and drew Madam forward to read it over his shoulder. 
 
 " Philip," the note ran, " I do not come near you in this 
 horrible misfortune with an utterance of my grief, disgust, 
 and wrath — far less with apologies and excuses, which 
 would only be so many gross insults. But I come to re- 
 mind you that the villain is my son, though I say it to my 
 undying confusion. You know, thanks to my late lord's 
 remorse, that I can buy and sell this fellow where he stands, 
 strip him of his lollypops of art and fashion, and send him 
 to rot in jail. He shall cither stop short in this henious of- 
 fense against you, and undo it, if it be possible, or he shall 
 repair it with the best he has to give. You may rely on 
 me, Philip, as sure as my name is Audrey Rolle." 
 
 " Oh ! why did you not show me that before ?" remon- 
 strated poor .Madam, in excited, quavering accents. " Why 
 was I not told that my lady's powerful interest was en- 
 gaged for my child ?" 
 
 " I crave your pardon, Milly," answered the rector, still 
 without anger at his unlimited authority being thus suddenly 
 called in question. " I fancy I thought there were no bounds 
 to your trust in me. I hated to speak of the calamity : it is 
 like touching the withers of a galled, snorting horse — re- 
 member that, mamma. And it Avas no such comfort either, 
 ll was not like the Shottery Cottage folk having the glad 
 assurance of their lass back, uninjured, within an hour or 
 tw<>, the moment she could shake herself free — nothing of 
 the sort. Our wrong-headed, abandoned girl would not
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 315 
 
 accept salvation. What can my lady do, though her will 
 were ten times as all-powerful and unwavering ? Patch up 
 a flawed and cracked worldly credit — which I am not con- 
 vinced I am playing the honestest and manliest part, the 
 part most becoming a Christian and a clergyman, in even 
 passively consenting to." 
 
 Madam was easily appeased for any wrong done to her 
 own rights, and almost as easily buoyed up by a slight flut- 
 ter of hope for Milly. Besides, she had a pledge of her 
 own, lying in her pocket, and about to be brought to light, 
 the receipt of which, the day before, had stirred her up to 
 make her unprecedented attack upon the rector. 
 
 "Do you know, papa," asserted Madam, in a little willful 
 delusion, and with a little spite, perhaps pardonable in the 
 circumstances, "I can not think that girl from the Shottery 
 Cottage was so little to blame as they make her out to be ? 
 They have so much guile, after ah, the best of these foreign- 
 ers ; they can slip put of scrapes, and leave simple, silly lass- 
 es, like my poor Milly, whom their French fashions have 
 misled in the first place, to bear all the brunt. I have had 
 a letter, too, from Mr. Lushington, letting me know where 
 the unhappy child has taken refuge. Don't be angry with 
 me, Philip, for withholding it twenty-four hours, since I 
 dared not show it you till now." 
 
 His honor gave honor where honor was due, so that his 
 pothooks started with the words "Honored Madam." He 
 then proceeded in no dishonorable or unfriendly spirit to 
 say he was happy to inform her, now she was in trouble 
 about her daughter, that Mistress Milly had sustained no 
 serious wrong, and was in safe keeping. He could speak 
 with authority, for, knowing "our Mr. George's stages," he 
 had himself gone early on a day following a night that she 
 wotted of straight to the Barley Mow, on the White Cotes 
 Road, and there he had found " my gentleman" not able to 
 stir for his bruises and broken bones, from the place where 
 he had been laid down by his body-servant Harry, and 
 "there were ne'er a word of one madam, let alone two," 
 but Mr. George was crying like mad the moment he heard 
 tell of the butler's arrival. Mr. Lushington should but bide 
 a stirrup-cup, and then start post-haste to take Mr. George's 
 reply to three billets which had come to him at the inn. 
 They were all marked " speed," and all "required an an-
 
 316 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 swer." The first Avas from Rolle, to give his brother note 
 that a certain fine lady, a bird of Mr. George's own feather, 
 for whom he would give all the country cousins and foreign 
 traders' daughters that ever stepped, was to be at a certain 
 great house on a certain day ; and our " Mr. George," he 
 would neither be to hold nor bind, if he were not up and 
 about again in time to join her, especially if she got word 
 of what had kept him. Mr. Lushiugtou was to vow for 
 Mr. George that, sure as the clock, he was to be there. 
 
 The second letter was delivered by a groom of Colonel 
 Berkeley's, who was riding home from the Norwich boxing 
 match, and had dropped in to drink a cool tankard, and 
 leave a line to say that my Lord Coke's man, the bruiser 
 on whom Mr. George had bet, had grown dizzy and drop- 
 ped in the first round, affording some fresh sport in bets as 
 to whether he were fairly done for, or only floored for that 
 fight, to decide which properly no doctor had been allowed 
 by the gentlemen to touch the man for a full quarter of an 
 hour. However, Colonel Berkeley would thank Mr. George 
 to settle his little aflair by the bearer, or as soon as ever 
 he could make it convenient, for the colonel had his own 
 book to square. 
 
 Lastly, as it never rains but it pours, Mr. George had a 
 reminder from my lady that she left him alone to deal with 
 the French Ma'mselle and her friends as he thought fit, 
 though it did not seem a mighty gallant exploit to wage 
 Mar with two psalm-singing women. It was no business 
 of hers, and she had already taken them all to witness that 
 she washed her hands of it. But if lie did not conduct his in- 
 sulted kinswoman, Milly Rolle, back to the rectory in all 
 honor, without the loss of an hour, or else procure a license, 
 summon some fellow in orders, and be married to his cousin 
 on the spot, she should not allow him to darken her doors 
 again, nor should he have a farthing of her money. If he 
 should venture into her presence, without her leave, to ap- 
 peal against her sentence, she would go that very day be- 
 fore a magistrate, demand protection from her own son, 
 and swear that her purse, plate, and jewels, if not her life 
 itself, were in more danger from him than from any house- 
 breaker or highwayman, and George Rolle knew whether 
 or not she would be as good as her word. 
 
 I »ut of all the contents of the epistle, for which Mr. Lush-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 317 
 
 iugton craved Madam's pardon — admitting ingenuously that 
 it was as heavy a spell for her to have read thus far as for 
 him to have writ — what concerned Madam and his rev- 
 erence most was, that they at the rectory were not keener 
 to get their young lady safe, and without notice, out of 
 Mr. George's keeping, than he, Mr. George, was to be quit 
 of her. Madam would understand that Mr. George had 
 paid his cousin every respect, for Mr. Lushington would 
 say, though it might sound a contradiction in terms, that 
 if a Rolle had gone nearer to ruin a woman, he would have 
 stood firmer by her ; if he had been a world cruder, he 
 would have been a deal kinder : but pity him for such kind- 
 ness ! Now Mr. George would not rest till he had sent 
 Mr. Lushington helter-skelter after my lady to inform her 
 of his accident, and to swear that Mistress Milly was under 
 the care of an honest landlady till Mr. George should ap- 
 prise the Miss that he had grown discreet for her sake, and 
 declined the honor of her company any farther, being mind- 
 ed to dispatch her home by any mode she might prefer. 
 
 At the first brunt of the offense the young mistress was 
 afeared to face the friends whom she had deeply affronted, 
 and begged to be forwarded instead to the family of an 
 old school-fellow fifty miles on the other side of lleedham, 
 to which she was sent with all care; Mr. Lushington hav- 
 ing to plead ignorance that, in her selfish, childish panic, 
 she had not consulted with any of her friends on this step. 
 She had made out her story so as to meet and explain away 
 the surprise felt by the family at her sudden visit. They 
 had been satisfied at first, but a week later they had got an 
 inkling of the mischief into which Mistress Milly had run, 
 and from which she had come fresh to them. Indignant 
 at the deception which had been practiced upon them, and 
 at the odium they might have incurred from receiving a 
 compromised guest, they had refused thenceforth to believe 
 any part of Mistress Milly's stoiy, and with very little cere- 
 mony had bundled her off as far as lieedham. There the 
 culprit, more sensible than she had yet been of the error 
 which she had committed, and more alarmed than ever at 
 the idea of meeting her papa, had bethought herself of de- 
 ferring the evil day while her little stock of pocket-money 
 lasted, and of seeking quarters at the "Uolle Arms," of 
 which Mr. Lushington, in pursuance of an old intention,
 
 318 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 had become mine host. The end of it was that Madam and 
 the rector might depend upon Miss being seen to, quietly 
 and " very genteel," till they should claim her, or make 
 known their will concerning her. 
 
 " And why on earth, Milly, did you not instantly make 
 known the receipt of this information ?" cried the rector, 
 even more moved by Madam's missive than she had been 
 by his. " It is of the first consequence," he went on ; " like 
 a reprieve from capital punishment. Did you not think, 
 woman, that it would be the gladdest news I had ever 
 heard ?" 
 
 " I did not know that you would be so much pleased to 
 hear that the child had been treated as the Hancocks have 
 thought fit to treat her;" and here Madam hesitated with 
 an accent of reproach — " and my news is not four-and-twen- 
 ty hours old, Philip, while yours is six weeks of such lan- 
 guishing as I hope never to live through again." 
 
 The rector made a gesture of impatience. 
 
 " What a jumble of guilt, and the consequences of guilt, 
 you women make, that you could fail of such knowledge! 
 — that you could confound the appearance with the reality, 
 and the mortal pain which the last inflicted ! Is it ignorance 
 or innocence, as the man says ? Or is it from a foreshadow- 
 ing of the divine pity, which is ready to condone all offenses 
 for the sake of the offender? It doth pass my comprehen- 
 sion, Milly ; but this statement, which neither we nor the 
 world have any reason to doubt, blessedly alters the whole 
 matter." 
 
 "Then we will at once have the poor, infatuated, forsaken 
 thing back among us again, Philip. My poor dear girl, 
 think how she must have suffered ! I dare swear she made 
 no false representation, or told so much as a fib, to these 
 Hancocks, of whom she was always overfond — to trust them 
 before me ! But she could not tell what she was doing, and 
 the mean, pitiful wretches rejoiced over her downfall, and 
 were fain to persecute and cast out my unhappy darling." 
 
 The rector looked up from a brown study into which he 
 had fallen, with a startled, offended, stern face once more. 
 
 " No more of this, dame ; don't go to abuse innocent folk, 
 in good truth abused enough already. Have done with 
 such weakness, and selfishness, and crying injustice, when 
 your own child is concerned. The girl has gone grievously
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 319 
 
 astray in will if not in deed ; in sheer folly, it may be, but 
 that is the more reason she should be brought to a sense 
 of her folly. Had the worst that could have happened be- 
 fallen her, she would not have wanted the lesson from us 
 so much; for, sure, the lamentable sin and degradation 
 would have brought its own bitter punishment. But now, 
 after working scandal in a clergyman's household, and bring- 
 ing herself to the very brink of shame, she will think she 
 has done no harm, and be not a whit abashed nor a whit 
 improved, but go on to compass more giddy romping and 
 gross imprudence. I tell you I will not have it. Bring 
 her back to the rectory at once, and scot-free, quotha? A 
 pretty instance of discipline to set before my parishioners, 
 and before that little goose of ours, her sister Dolly ! How 
 comes it, I wonder, that we have so much more senseless chil- 
 dren than other people's ? Ah, I am aware Philip was a 
 pear of another tree, but he grew as he hung, out in the 
 world, far from our espaliers, which is no compliment to our 
 training. But bring this extremely wrong-headed and reck- 
 less young woman — whose greater reproach for her improp- 
 er behavior is that she is a daughter of mine — under this 
 roof again without her undergoing a sharp probation, and 
 affording security for her modesty and obedience in future 
 — no, verily," the rector went on, indignantly, but, seeing 
 his wife's blank disappointment and vexation, he turned, 
 took her hand, and said kindly, " nevertheless, Milly, let us 
 not cease to be everlasting grateful that redemption is possi- 
 ble." However chagrined and mortified Madam was, she 
 could not find it in her heart to contend any longer with 
 the rector, even had she not returned on the instant to all her 
 old allegiance, believed the rector must be right, and been 
 convinced that farther contention was not only useless but 
 impossible. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 AN UNFORTUNATE YOUNG LADY 
 
 TnE affair ended in Milly's undergoing a species of rusti- 
 cation not uncommon when girls were treated like naughty 
 children, and children were put into corners and locked into
 
 320 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 dark closets. Milly was not allowed to come within six 
 miles of home. She was boarded with an old nurse, who 
 had married Farmer Spud, at Comer Farm, on the edge of 
 the Waiiste. Until she should prove that she was sorry for . 
 her bold trick, and was prepared to be quiet and careful 
 in future, she should not be allowed to enjoy the dignity 
 and comfort of home and the society of Dolly. But Milly 
 did not arrive very readily at this becoming frame of mind. 
 The rector had conjectured shrewdly as to the effect of her 
 bad conduct on her mind, and took care that in the arrange- 
 ment for disposing of her on trial she should have no per- 
 sonal interview with any member of her family. She got 
 into a pet at the way in which she was treated, and let them 
 know plainly that she wanted to see none of them, till they 
 should choose to put her on equal terms with them again. 
 She would not have her sister Doll come to Corner Farm 
 to crow over her, and look down upon her. "What had she 
 done except have a bit of frolic, such as any body would 
 enjoy if they cou'ld, and such as any body but her severe 
 papa would have passed over lightly, more particularly as it 
 had come to nothing ? She would hold her head as high 
 as any of them yet. 
 
 The rector, or at least Madam, fondly hoped that a few 
 weeks' banishment in mid-winter, to the humble, homely 
 Coventry of Corner Farm, Avould break Milly's refractory 
 spirit, tame her iVoward temper, and teach her to gratefully 
 accept her father's grace on any terms. In the mean time, 
 both the rector and" Madam could depend upon Dame Spud 
 and her yeoman husband as being trustworthy jailers, sens- 
 ible and reasonably kind people of their rank ; while Madam 
 relieved her yearning love, and helped to defeat her own 
 purpose, by surreptitiously supplying the owners of the 
 farm with a hundred comforts and delicacies. These Milly 
 took sullenly, without observation or acknowledgment ; in- 
 deed, she grumbled loudly at the absence of others, which 
 were not within Madam's power to lend out. 
 
 Grand'mere all the while looked askance at the English 
 practice of forgiveness, coupled with such an ordeal. 
 
 "Said I not the pastor was like Jean Calvin? Si I but 
 such an act as this was not in the politics of Jean Calvin; 
 this is 'from the Turk to the Moor.' Jean Calvin locked 
 up a woman for wearing the hair en boucles, and a man for
 
 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 321 
 
 reading romances! Yes! but the culprits were malcon- 
 tents ; they refused to desist ; it was not without seeking to 
 bring them to renouuee their offenses, when the legislator 
 would have pardoned them as freely as the summer wind 
 blows about the corn. Not a man on earth was more <jen- 
 erous to a penitent than Calvin. But this English half-and- 
 half mode, this saying, on the right side, ' Seest thou, I 
 grant that thou art risen and gone from the post of rebel- 
 lion, or that thou wishest well to do so, and I pardon ;' and 
 on the left, ' It is true, thy sword is thrown down, and 
 thou art at my feet, but still I dare not trust thee until I 
 punish' — it answers not ; it serves only to harden ; the 
 game is not worth the candle, while simply to cancel the 
 debt might awaken compunction and win devotion. Ah ! my 
 child, dost thou remember the beautiful story of the lord who 
 frankly forgave his servant all the debt that he owed him? 
 This version is as if the lord had said, ' I frankly forgave 
 the one-half, but for the other, thou must bear the conse- 
 quences, and I shall deal them out in what will seem like a 
 lurking grudge against thee.' People must be the one 
 thing or the other — judges to condemn, or kings to confer 
 mercy, and not a part of both, with both parts spoiled ; un- 
 less, indeed, it be as the pastor preaches, that the broken 
 must be kept from the whole. Truly, that is a solemn 
 truth, which, the broken, who are also broken in spirit, as 
 well as the whole, who preserve their purity in meek fear 
 and trembling, will never deny. But God be praised, here 
 is no question of broken, but of a foolish, spoiled child, happi- 
 ly rescued, in His mercy, from the imminent peril into which 
 she had run." 
 
 At last Madam from the rectory compelled her sore 
 mother's heart to submit to circumstances. She lowered 
 her colors, made an errand to the Shottery Cottage, and 
 sought a private conversation with Madame Dupuy, mere. 
 She begged her to go and see the culprit, comfort her in 
 the first place, and remonstrate with her in the second. 
 "Do, dear old Grand'mere ; Philip will not be angry with 
 you for going, you do not come within his forbidden family. 
 I'm sure he'd liefer you went than stayed. It ain't so far, 
 and I'll lend the coach fur the ride any day. Think what a 
 pleasure it will be for the poor soul to see a face she knows, 
 shut up as she is yonder at Farmer Spud's in the depth of 
 
 <) 2
 
 322 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 winter. If it Lad been summer, there might have been 
 cowslip-picking, and hay-making, and ' the hole,' and the 
 rustics might have been better borne with, though even 
 then my Milly had no turn for country pleasures, that I 
 could ever find out, unless as an excuse for junketing with 
 young people like herself. Oh me ! to think of what my in- 
 nocent love and darling hath come to — for she is innocent, 
 Graud'mere, of every thing but willfulness and heedlessness, 
 and perhaps a spice of vanity, in going with Mr. George — 
 a villain to make so light of her! It seems just the other 
 day that she was such a pretty baby in a robe and cap, 
 which I was so proud to work for her, though they ate up 
 three months of my precious time ; but the rector did not 
 think it wasted, not he. He said if a bride Avas permitted 
 to delight herself in her jewels, much more a mother in 
 making her child dainty by her deft and patient fingers, so 
 that she did not forget and neglect other poor children ; and 
 Philip, my brave little boy, w T as so fond of his pretty little 
 sister ; and now all that is mortal of him lies moldering in 
 an American wilderness, and she is sent away in disgrace 
 to Farmer Spud's. The rector says Ave ought to praise God 
 that she is in no worse quarters; but I do not always see 
 how that may be, for I can hardly credit that any Mr. 
 George among them could have been monster enough to 
 harm Milly farther than by playing on her fine spirit, and 
 on the giddiness of chits like her — one sees them grow sober 
 and steady enough before long — but few are so good as the 
 rector. However, you are not under a good-man's con- 
 trol, my dear old Madame — that is, your worshipful son, 
 though he has come to middle age, and may be regarded as 
 the head of the house, doth not seem ever to contradict 
 you. I do not understand it, for I have always been accus- 
 tomed to men of masterful minds ; but by your leave I 
 crave to take advantage of it, since I do not hear tidings of 
 my unhappy girl from other than Molly Spud, who sees 
 nought but that she ain't starving herself to death, and 
 don't sit up or walk about of nights. That is mighty fine 
 news ; but, bless you, it is not all, and if I don't hear more, 
 I vow my heart-strings will crack." 
 
 "A thousand times ; I shall go this evening, or to-morrow 
 morning — when you will," said Grand'mere, with the flush 
 of her abounding goodness kindling up her face. "Yes, it
 
 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 323 
 
 is true, my Hubert does not contradict me ; he trusts me 
 like that ! It is not good that the hen should crow before 
 the cock, but it is the fashion of French sons to hang the 
 sword to the crook where the mothers are concerned, and 
 when hard words are spoken of menages de Paris, it is but 
 what you call fair, Madam, that this mode of the sons should 
 be remembered in their favor." 
 
 " And may I come, Grand'mere ?" asked Yolande, half 
 pleadingly, half deprecatingly, as the old woman was pre- 
 paring for her visit. " You can not ride without me, ma 
 mere. Is it not so ? You will have ache of the tongue 
 with keeping it still when you see all the novelties of the 
 road ; or you will forget, and begin to talk like a mill to the 
 crows and the leverets, and the coachman will think you a 
 pecque. You know all that, ma mere with the golden 
 mouth, quite fine! Grand'mere, but I will not have it that 
 the golden mouth should be mute as a mitaine on a rare 
 ride, or be mistaken for the mouth of a poor senseless mon- 
 ster of a folle. Then that poor Milly, Grand'mere, what 
 think you ? Will she wish to see me ? Will she think I 
 come to triumph over her for my superior wisdom ? Will 
 she believe I stay away to show her my contempt ? Which 
 do you think ?" 
 
 " Plain pied, donzelle, I believe it is wc who will suffer 
 in the interview, and not poor Milly. The child is not 
 wise, is no better than she can help ; she is not tender, nor 
 thin-skinned, save where the question is of her pride, her 
 will, her pleasure. The hand of man has not humbled her, 
 and, mark me, it will need the hand of God to do that. 
 They speak much of the hardness, the coarseness, and the 
 spiritual selfishness of the Pharisee ; and that is well. They 
 speak much of the softness, the delicacy, and the unselfish- 
 ness of the sinner; and I think that is not well. It is the 
 Israelite indeed who is mild, noble, and generous, but the 
 sinner only a little morsel more so than the Pharisee. Do 
 1 not love the sinner ? My God help me ! I am a sinner 
 myself — a great sinner for my years, my opportunities, my 
 lessons. But because I would love the sinner, it is neces- 
 sary that it be for her proper In any guts that I see her 
 exactly as she is, hard, coarse, seliish in all ranks, condi- 
 tions, and degrees of sin. You will see. We will visit 
 Miss Milly — you will redden as the lire, and for me, I shall
 
 324 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 redden as the turkey-cock ; tiens ! she will not have more 
 pink than the rose. You will weep like a cascade, and I 
 shall blow my nose, while she will be as dry as the great 
 road on a day in summer, and as cool as a carrefour in one 
 of our forests, or as the well of St. Benoite. You will be' 
 timid as a wet hen, she will be brave to the three hairs. 
 Ah, well! she will be a great deal the sorrier spectacle, and 
 the more to be pitied, if it be with her as it has been or- 
 dinarily with the sinners whom I have known before, than 
 if she reddened and wept. Then she might not need us, 
 and we should only be in the way if she had already opened 
 the door to the great and good guest, the Master, the 
 King, who had come in to sup with her, and her alone." 
 
 So Yolande went with Grand'mere in the winter after- 
 noon. They left their coach on a by-road, which threaten- 
 ed the younger with a repetition of her overturn, and the 
 elder with a general fracture of her bones, brittle with age. 
 As it was, there was urgent demand both for Yolande's 
 arm and the assistance of Madame Rougeole before Grand'- 
 mere could climb the rugged path from the Waiiste, the 
 only road to Corner Farm, slippery with ice. 
 
 Corner Farm was a humble house, built of unhewn stones, 
 with a thatch roof, and windows four panes square, which 
 looked into a cattle-shed, a sheep-pen, and a pig-sty — a place 
 at which a girl like Milly llolle, if she had ridden across to 
 it, to call for her old nurse, would, the moment Dame 
 Spud's back had been turned, have held up her hands and 
 cast up her eyes in horror. At the same time she would 
 have exercised her lungs every time she had crossed the 
 threshold by screeching in imitation of the plovers and 
 snipes on the Waiiste, at every colt and heifer she had en- 
 countered, and she could not have gone far without meet- 
 ing specimens of Farmer Spud's stock, in the centre of 
 which he lived, like an ancient patriarch or a modern squat- 
 ter. Even Grand'mere, who had been accustomed to 
 southern cottages in their own luxuriant, mellow-toned 
 home-growth of maize, vines, gourds, and almond-trees, 
 shrank a little from the bleakness and desolation of this 
 moorland farm. As Madam at the rectory had said, it might 
 in summer have had some homely attractions, with the cow- 
 slips and hay faintly struggling for existence among gorse 
 and heather. But in midwinter the Waiiste was a howl-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 325 
 
 ing wilderness, and the few cultivated fields were Waastes 
 in their turn, while the cattle, sheep, and pigs were hud- 
 dled together in the yard, foddered with rotting straw and 
 rushes, and fed on half-gnawed turnips and house refuse. 
 The steep road was a miry trail of black mud, or a succes- 
 sion of jagged impressions of hob-nailed shoes as hard as 
 iron, like a new class of fossils. Corner Farm at this season 
 was not far from being as bad as Siberia to a pampered, 
 empty-headed, and weak girl. Yet it was not without its 
 substantial advantages. It was weather-tight, and as clean 
 within as scrubbing could make it; and it was held health- 
 ful when the breath of cattle was counted not a poisoner 
 but a sweetener of air. Farmer Spud and his wife were 
 well-to-do people in their line. There was no want of the 
 necessaries of life, of native wooden chairs, stools, and bed- 
 frames, checked draperies and coarse linen, as well as of 
 plenty of plaiding and carpet bed-furnishings, deep yellow 
 and red earthenware, besides the surreptitious and supple- 
 mentary contributions from the rectory. And at that time, 
 many a vicarage and parsonage was not much better sup- 
 plied. 
 
 Yolande, with Grand'mere on her arm, knocked long and 
 loud at the solid oaken door, and had plenty of time to in- 
 spect the stock, divided from them only by hurdles, and 
 sometimes not by that. Dame Spud was in the back prem- i 
 ises, where her clatter among pots and pans, and her deaf- 
 ness, combined to prevent her hearing them. The visitors, 
 however, could distinguish Milly sitting opposite them, be- 
 fore one of the little windows. She remained like a statue, 
 without offering to move, in order to greet them, or to let 
 them in. At last, Farmer Spud, an elderly man, fresh- 
 colored like a winter apple, and arrayed in a long vest and 
 knee-breeches, issued from a shed. lie pulled his forelock 
 and said to Grand'mere and Yolande, "Ye be come to see 
 the young leddy, and welcome." But to every word they 
 answered, he said "Anan,"only adding an assurance that 
 "t' good wife 'ud trade with them." He then ushered 
 them into the house, calling in lusty tones, "Moll, Moll, ye 
 wench ; ye be right down wanted by gentlefolks of young 
 Madam's litter." Molly appeared hastily, with her lace 
 withered and yellow, in her llannel ho<>d. She wiped her 
 hands on her striped woolen apron, and the moment she
 
 326 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 entered Miles went out, as if he were but a companion 
 weather-cock, no longer wanted on the stage. Molly, in 
 the character of an old nurse and confidential servant, was 
 not unskilled in cautious reserves and judicious asides. 
 She chose to treat her former young mistress as having 
 been in a general way ailing, so as to have had a change 
 of scene resorted to by her friends, on her behalf, as part 
 of her cure. All Molly's speeches were doubles entendres, 
 bearing apparently on Milly's bodily health, but really on 
 her mental mood. "Mistress Milly be getting stout again, 
 that she be ; but Norwich weren't built on one day ; noa, 
 noa, she will not stir to the door yet — not to see the milk- 
 ing, which she were fond of looking at as a babby — but 
 that will come in time. She is able to divert herself most 
 days with her thread-papers, as Madam, her mother, will 
 be mighty glad to learn, for the head and the heart ain't 
 none of them over-bad when a miss can settle to make 
 thread-papers." 
 
 Milly was in the act of making her thread-papers — cut- 
 ting down strips of gaudy card-board, painted with staring 
 flowers, birds, and butterflies, and pasting them together 
 in the requisite shape. She was even more elaborately 
 dressed than usual. She had long gloves and a fan lying 
 beside her, while her slippered feet rested on a square of 
 rag carpet, and a leathern screen stood at her back. She 
 rose and executed a dignified courtesy — such a salut dejeime 
 fllle as Grand'mere had never beheld before — without 
 blushing in face or trembling in figure, and said " Good-day 
 to you, ladies," in a confident, careless tone. 
 
 Grand'mere was excited, fatigued, and ready to drop 
 into the chair which Dame Spud offered her. Yolande had 
 known so few friends that she could not forget this Milly, 
 now in a sort of solitary confinement, doing penance for 
 her delinquency. But Milly seemed to have forgotten the 
 former friendship, or not to recognize that there had been 
 happier times. She was bent on putting a bold face on mat- 
 ters, and carrying them with a high hand, while she did not 
 lend herself in the least to Dame Spud's manoeuvre, but pro- 
 claimed loudly, with a taunt in her accent, that she had nev- 
 er been bettor in her life, and that she was as strong as a dai- 
 ry-maid. She stared Grand'mere and Yolande full in their 
 disturbed, confused faces. She laughed and talked noisily,
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 327 
 
 though she took care not to drop a syllable which bore 
 upon the rector, Madam, or Dolly. So far from Grand'- 
 mere having "to make conversation on the point of 
 a needle," she could barely get in a word to tell Milly 
 how M. Landre, and many French men and women, tint- 
 ed thread-papers, and made a decent livelihood by it. 
 Milly did not really care for thread-paper flowers and but- 
 terflies, any more than for the originals. The only symp- 
 tom, if it could be called a symptom, of consciousness 
 which she gave, was sundry little snarls and snaps at 
 the singleness of heart which had rendered Yolande her 
 dupe, and at the presence of mind and intrepidity which 
 had enabled Yolande to free herself from the plot which, 
 falling to pieces, had brought grief to Milly. " You need 
 not be so glib in giving your opinion, Ma'mselle" (Yo- 
 lande was not giving it); "you know you can not see 
 for your nose the very road you are traveling. You are 
 not so much a girl of parts as of prodigious luck, when 
 you can ride away, at a moment's notice, in the middle 
 of the night, with young Squire Gage, and not a dog wag 
 its tail at you for it." 
 
 Yolande was confounded and altogether dispirited by 
 her visit. " Graud'mere," she protested, the moment the 
 two were in the coach, " did you ever see such a change ? 
 It might have been tie coq-d-Fdne with Milly when she was 
 simply young and gay, but now it is from brass to ada- 
 mant." 
 
 " Until the next time, my dear," nodded Grand'inere, re- 
 assuring Yolande. " She is what I expected. I have seen 
 characters much worse than a poor foolish girl braving her 
 folly out without a smile of the heart, but with crispations 
 of the nerves to keep up the role which she is overacting 
 furiously. I have seen a sinner comme Ufaut, gentiile, a 
 penitent by design and premeditation, as our women of 
 quality were wont to wind all up, according to rule, by be- 
 coming, on a set day, devonee. Oh, Yolandctte, profession 
 is so abominably easy — above all, when it is to profit the 
 professor — that even the professor may cheat himself. I 
 say not, reject him; for who art thou that judgest? But 
 shall thy heart tremble to its core for a fellow-mortal? 
 Shalt thou, if love divine were not an abiding miracle, give 
 up such a one in despair? Let it be then when thou list-
 
 328 THE HUGUESJOT FAMILY. 
 
 enest to an easy penitent, a fluent confessor and abjurer of 
 his sins, a huge promiser of reformation !" 
 
 That visit was the first of many visits which Grand'mere 
 and Yolande paid to Milly during her exile at the Corner 
 Farm. For a time there seemed no door of the girl's heart 
 which was not locked and barred against both them and 
 her kindred, the more surely that her own fault was the 
 great bolt and barrier. Her reception of them was brava- 
 do ; she would not let them come to close quarters with 
 her, would not let Grand'mere say "her say." " Ma jille, 
 we are all sorry and suffering in your sufferings. We all 
 forgive as we hope to be forgiven. Will you not be recon- 
 ciled to us, as we all trust to be reconciled to God ?" 
 Milly would not let Yolande cry, "Milly, we were happy 
 once, when we only liked each other a little, when we had 
 only a little gayety, good-humor, and girlishness between 
 us. At present we have wrong, strife, sadness between lis. 
 Alas ! that it should be so ! But shall we not love each 
 other much, and be as happy as the angels, if we put all 
 these things away from us, without asking any questions, 
 and be Milly and Yolande again, beginning anew by being 
 good girls, and helping each other to be better ?" 
 
 In the end, as Grand'mere kept firmly to her resolution 
 not to preach until Milly would be preached to, Milly grad- 
 ually dropped her mask, and showed herself wounded, re- 
 sentful, wretched. She had " run with the footmen," and 
 they had wearied her, how then could she " contend with 
 the horses?" And if in "the land of peace," wherein she 
 had trusted, they had wearied her, then how would she do 
 in "the swelling of Jordan ?" Milly had sense to know 
 that she had made the change in her lot for herself; and 
 that she had been restless and discontented even when she 
 was a petted child, a flattered young mistress, with Dolly 
 for a companion princess, and Madam their mother for their 
 first subject, with fair prospects and a fine prince to be met, 
 either at the castle or at the Holies' town house, for her 
 portion in the future. Now she was sent away from home 
 to a miserable hovel, as Milly in her indignation called 
 Corner Farm, with no company save a goodman and his 
 wile. Nobody came near her except the French family, 
 whom she had cheated, but who had got the better of her 
 at last. Her fair prospects were spoiled, her fine prince
 
 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 329 
 
 ■would not have a gift of her — rather had ridden away, and 
 dismissed her with scant ceremony after she had served his 
 whim. And she had brought all her reverses upon herself. 
 Her papa might never receive her at home again, or if he 
 did, she might not be taken out into co.inpany, so that his 
 reception would not signify very much. She could not run 
 off .any more, for the very good reason that she had nobody 
 to run off with ; neither was she a good hand to plan and 
 carry througluan elopement. Mr. George had managed it 
 all before, and her friends "had taken good care that she 
 should not have so much as half a guinea to keep her pocket 
 with." 
 
 Milly tossed her thread-papers into the fire, and sat 
 twirling her thumbs in dire monotonous gloom, like any 
 helpless doting old man or woman, until Grand'mere began 
 to fear for her reason, and set Dame Spud and her good- 
 man to watch their charge by turns night and day, because 
 of those dismal tragedies of horse-ponds and trees, and ly- 
 ing down to sleep the last sleep in solitudes like the 
 Waiiste, which were then often enough heard of. 
 
 One day, as Grand'mere was parting from Milly, she 
 cried for a boon, though it was only that her little dog 
 Pickle might come to her. " He will not think shame of 
 me : I have not hurt him. Let me have something near 
 me that I used to care for, and that cared for me, before 
 my friends gave me up." 
 
 So Pickle was sent to her ; and Milly fondled and spoke 
 to the little creature as he crept into her lap, licked her 
 hands, and whined with joy for the re-union ; and every 
 sight and touch of him did her good. " Only a silly little 
 dog," Molly often heard her murmur ; " it knows no bet- 
 ter ; it is no wiser than I — to reproach, despise, shun, and 
 forget me. It is mighty fine, but mighty foolish of you, 
 Pickle, to behave so very genteelly to your old mistress, 
 who has lost her title even to a little wretch of a lap-dog's 
 regard. 
 
 The next time Grand'mere came Milly flung herself on 
 the old woman's shoulder, and opened the very llood-gates 
 of her heart. 
 
 "Oh! Grand'mere, why am I punished so much more 
 than other girls who have behaved no better than I?" 
 
 " You find ? How bitter that is!" sympathized Grand'-
 
 330 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 more, with the utmost compassion. " My child, it is not 
 the being more punished, it is not that you have not done 
 worse than other girls ; life was wrong before you commit- 
 ted this trespass, these ten, twenty years, since you were 
 born. You have not been a happy girl, Milly — not so hap- 
 py as you might have been — not so happy as my Yolande, 
 aud she is an exile like myself; and we have our cares and 
 troubles — yes, indeed, our cares and troubles. You could 
 not die to-morrow, and say farewell to the world in peace, 
 as Yolande could." 
 
 "I wish I could. Oh! mercy! Grand'inere, I almost 
 wish I could." 
 
 "But no, you can not, unless you say, This suffices. 
 What am I but a poor, ignorant, sinful girl ? And it is 
 not that I have not sinned to be punished, but that I have 
 done nothing save sin since I came into the world, and de- 
 serve nothing save punishment at Thy hands. Mon Dieti, 
 is this the reason why our Lord and Saviour did and suffer- 
 ed Thy will ? If I believe that, I shall have a load lifted 
 from my heart — I shall bow down in adoration — I shall 
 look up and smile aud sing. More than that, I shall say, 
 ' Thy will be done for all my small suffering.' More than 
 that, I shall say, ' Lord, with the help of Thy Holy Spirit, 
 I, even I, who have lived for nothing but myself and vani- 
 ty, and the flesh and the devil, I shall do Thy will.' " 
 
 " Oh, Grand'mere, I will try. I have done with myself; 
 I am sick of serving myself. If I sought to serve another, 
 and that other — oh, Grand'mere ! — God himself — would 
 lie help me? would He do it for Christ's sake, who died 
 for sinners ? I have not to be taught that, Grand'mere. 
 Sure, I am a Christian, and my papa is a good clergyman ; 
 but I want something to make me free to live and die a 
 life and death worth having. "Will you teach me, Grand'- 
 mere ? You shake your head. Yolande, then ; though 
 she can not be so wise as you ? No ! "Who ?" 
 
 " God himself will teach his silly, wayward, sinful child ; 
 He will lead her, and bear with her. Christ will carry her 
 case before the throne, as He carried her offenses in His 
 body on the tree. The Holy Spirit will come down and 
 dwell with her, and make her frail body the temple of the 
 Holy Ghost; and all if Milly Rolle will only ask for it. 
 Milly may have heaven from God for the asking."
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 331 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 " STONE WALLS DO NOT A PRISON MAKE." 
 
 Milly had opened her heart to a new influence, very 
 different from any that had been in it before. And this 
 influence worked like all other influences which are of God, 
 whether it be the quickening and growth of a seed of grain, 
 or the call and obedience of a human heart. In the case 
 of Milly Rolle there was not the same striking outward 
 manifestation of grace as in the case of the rough livers of 
 Sedge Pond. Their conversion took place at a great crisis 
 — a time of trial and refreshing ; and so their transforma- 
 tion from brutal indulgences and the brutal expression of 
 foul thoughts to something higher and purer was very ap- 
 parent. They were men and women existing in the primi- 
 tive state and of the primitive stuff" which melts like the 
 rock before the fire, and, cleansed as by fire, comes out of 
 the furnace strangely clean and soft, and pours itself out in 
 floods of elevation and ecstacies of thanksgiving. The con- 
 version of Milly Rolle from self-will to God, from frivolous 
 worldliness to spending her life for her Father and her 
 brethren, was as real, but it could not in the nature of 
 things be so conspicuous or so demonstrative. She was 
 conscious of her want, nay, more, she was contrite for her 
 waste, and she earnestly wished and hoped to do better. 
 She believed with all her heart that one reason why the 
 Lord and Saviour of men had died, was simply to bear her 
 penalty, and to enable her to do better. And all this be- 
 cause God's love had shone upon her in her desolation, and 
 shown her how good, wise, and tender He was, and how 
 bad, foolish, and regardless of Him she had been. There- 
 fore she came to Him now, and cried unto Him, because 
 He was her earliest, her latest Friend, her Creator and her 
 Father, the beginning of her life and the end of her being. 
 
 But with all these faint quiverings and pulsations of a 
 new life beyond herself and yel within herself, Milly was 
 the old Milly still. She was still weak, and not over wise,
 
 332 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 and encumbered with old ignorances and affectations, 
 which had become a second nature to her. She began to 
 be sorry, and in her sorrow to have some hope, faith, and 
 charity. She began to pray, and to feel inclined to ask 
 her father's and mother's forgiveness in place of refusing 
 to forgive them. She was even inclined to be a little grate- 
 ful to Farmer Spud and his dame, .for their cordial good- 
 will and assiduous services, as well as to be kind to Grand'- 
 mere and Yolande, and glad to welcome them to Corner 
 Farm. And she gave the best proof of all by taking Grand'- 
 mere's advice, and trying to work a little, and to be inter- 
 ested in her work, whether it were at thread-papers or 
 helping Molly with her coarse patching and darning. She 
 took some pleasure in praying, and in going through a 
 chapter of the Bible. 
 
 But it is the. will of God to rear and train men and 
 women, as he rears and trains animals and plants, by slow 
 degrees and by successive stages. The Corner Farm life 
 was still the extreme of dullness and mortification to Milly 
 Rolle. She could not help moping and writhing, though now 
 only at intervals, and not without calling herself to account 
 for it, and struggling against it. The rector was a tena- 
 cious man, who patiently carried out his purposes, and ex- 
 acted from himself every jot and tittle of their fulfillment, 
 else he would have put an end to Milly's probation on the 
 first symptom of her amendment. As it was, he kept her 
 at the Corner Farm till the expiry of the term which he 
 had fixed upon for her banishment, and till the scandal of 
 her running away had blown over in the parish and neigh- 
 borhood, lie did not trust himself to go near her, lest he 
 should be overcome.' lie only relaxed so far as to allow 
 Dolly to go to her sister. Dolly stared shyly at first, and 
 then sat hand in hand with Milly longer than they had ever 
 sat before. Then the culprit had interviews with Madam, 
 when she ran into her mother's arms and lay there. Mr. 
 Iloadley, in his new life of a devoted priest caring for all 
 his flock, overlooked not this young member who had stum- 
 bled and gone out of the way, whose knees were feeble, 
 ami whose hands hung down. Nor was he interdicted in 
 hi- ministry when he solemnly asked the rector's permis- 
 sion to exercise it upon the wanderer. At first she shrank 
 from Mr. Iloadley's counsel as being a fresh humiliation,
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 333 
 
 but afterward she thought better of it, and not only ac- 
 cepted it as a part of her penalty, but, recognizing by a 
 new instinct the young man's sincerity, she was affected 
 and encouraged by her old companion's teaching. 
 
 But Milly Rolle had great natural disqualifications, com- 
 pared with Yolande Dupuy, for profiting by such an expe- 
 rience as that of Corner Farm. Yolande was profound, 
 and Milly shallow ; Yolande was refined, and Milly rude ; 
 Yolande was reserved, and Milly accessible. Yet for all 
 that, Yolande would have been at home in an English Si- 
 beria, and would have found a thousand objects of interest 
 and observation a life-time before Milly Rolle. Yolande 
 would have learned to talk to Dame Spud and her good 
 man, and discovered topics in common with them. She 
 would have made herself acquainted with the local names 
 and the rural annals — with all the bad snow-storms, floods, 
 and blights, and the lives lost in the Waaste. And this 
 she would have done even though the northern side of it 
 had not " marched" with the farms of the Mall, and the 
 Mall itself had not been " most Waaste" in Farmer Spud's 
 grandfather's day. In return Yolande would have given 
 Grand'mere's ample chronicle of all the country eras of 
 vine crops and silk-worms. She would have made friends 
 with the whole stock at Corner Farm, till the great mild 
 Juno eyes of the oxen would have looked into hers with 
 a familiar greeting, and the plaintive bleat of the sheep 
 would have become an appeal for sympathy, instead of an 
 utterance of terror. She would have gone wild to coax the 
 Norfolk hawk' from the " holt" of ash and alder, the bittern 
 from the " lode," the gulls and terns from the nearest 
 " broad." She could no more have confined her regards 
 to a dog with a silver spoon in its mouth, like Fickle, than 
 Monsieur Landre and Caleb Gage could have limited theirs. 
 So when Yolande came at last to lighten a heavy week of 
 Milly's enforced seclusion, safe in the surveillance of hum- 
 ble friends like the Spuds, and when the freedom and good- 
 will of girlish intercourse — more in earnest and better 
 worth now — were fully restored between them, she be- 
 came cognizant of a hundred novelties in the homely lonely 
 farm-house, and a hundred attractions and delights for her 
 there. 
 
 She began with helping In break the icicles that hung
 
 334 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 from the low eaves and the water-trough, which stood in 
 the centre of the yard like the fountain in the centre of a 
 French village ; and when she got a lesson from Dame Spud 
 in milking her favorite cow, her lessons did not end with* 
 that. She was annoyed at Milly's apathy, and tried to 
 rouse her mind to the solaces and gratifications to which 
 she was both blind aud deaf. 
 
 "My child," remonstrated Yolande, "I do not hate this 
 place, oh pa ! not at all. I should love it if Grand'mere 
 were but here, and spring and summer come again, with the 
 calves and the lambs, the cry of the lapwing, and the bud- 
 ding of the sallow. As it is, I kiss my hand to all the grave, 
 sober, grown-up company of steers and heifers, rams and 
 ewes. I make love to Jacques the house-dog, my gallant, 
 who would not think twice of eating me up, if he did not 
 know my halting French tongue and my grey French face. 
 I cajole Mother Spud into giving me grain for the starving 
 little beggars of wheat-ears and titmice. But I can not 
 feed the great sea-eagle — only, I think of it," broke off Yo- 
 lande, in excitement, "he comes as far as the "Waaste in 
 hard seasons. Without a doubt I must write a poulet — a 
 little chicken of a note — to my dear Monsieur Landre, that 
 he may come here next summer." 
 
 " But who is this Mr. Landre of whom you talk so often ?" 
 asked Milly, her curiosity stirred. 
 
 "Don't you know Monsieur Landre? Ah! to be sure 
 you do not know him," answered Yolande. "He is ravish- 
 ing, that man ; he has ferocious merits : he is as old as 
 Grand'mere, and he was at the galleys for the faith, only 
 think of it ! and he has survived the awful galleys ! Seest 
 thou, Milly ? It is not all bad here. Try it for yourself, 
 my life." 
 
 " Never, Yolande," protested Milly gloomily ; " I could 
 never be content with so wretched an abode and such low 
 diversions when my papa is a clergyman of the rank of a 
 rector. I have been brought up so differently, Avith every 
 tiling handsome and genteel about me. My goodness! 
 Ma'raselle, don't you know that we have fourteen rooms in 
 the rectory, besides a china-closet and a still-room, and that 
 there are not such peach wails and holly hedges for ten 
 miles, out of the castle gardens, as we have ? And you bid 
 me be comfortable in a pig-sty ! Not that Molly ain't
 
 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILV. 335 
 
 cleanly," Milly quickly corrected herself; ' ; my mamma 
 made her that, but this is like a pig-sty to what I have 
 been accustomed to ; yet you call on me to admire when 
 summer comes. Summer is not here ;" and here Milly inter- 
 rupted herself again to moralize : " Summer is six months 
 awa y — w ho knows what may happen before summer comes ! 
 But though summer were here, what have I to admire but 
 a herd of wild cattle frightening me out of my wits, a half- 
 reclaimed field or two with ugly roots and bad herbs stick- 
 ing through the grass and the corn, and the coarse weeds 
 of the black and brown Waaste, which my papa says is the 
 reproach of the country ?." 
 
 "Eh bien, Milly, there are some things for which I love 
 the lande more than either your garden or ours ; I should 
 be a suspicion sorry if it were all broken up and cultivated 
 to-morrow, though I should be bite if I were so. It is so fresh, 
 as if it had just come direct from God's hands, and were 
 given to the wild creatures which He feeds, and no man 
 tames. When man needs it indeed, good ! let him take it 
 and conquer it ; the world was made for man, and he is 
 right to exercise his dominion over it, and to rejoice in his do- 
 minion. But until then, is it not also good that there should 
 be No Man's Land, where all men, rich and poor alike, are 
 free to go out in the cool of the day, and to walk, each by 
 himself, with God ? It is thus in the depths of our forests, 
 which I never saw, and on the heights of the everlasting 
 mountains." 
 
 Milly yawned. " I can not understand you, Yolaude ; 
 you are such a strange girl," she added, amending her con- 
 fession with dignity; "sure, savage forests and mountains 
 must be horrible and shocking; and no civilized being in 
 her senses would go near them if she could help it, to be de- 
 voured by she-bears and hooded crows. I'll tell you what 
 I admire — the castle park and the gardens, and the town 
 meadows at Reedham, where some of the townspeople who 
 have their gardens in that direction have laid out bowers 
 and summer-houses and hermitages and grottoes, with for- 
 eign shrubs, and artificial rocks and shell-work ; and they 
 have the water diverted from the river into mimic cascades 
 and sweet little lakes. All that is mighty fine, and I affect 
 it, for I am a person of taste; but I am like my lady. 
 Ma'msellc, who says she can only admire nature orni, not
 
 33G THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 nature in dishabille, with her hair in curl-papers. I believe 
 it is the polite sentiment of the day ; and therefore it is no 
 wonder, and nobody can blame you, that you are not up 
 to it. After all, it don't matter, when we are vile sinners, 
 and at the worst get much better than we deserve. If we 
 were like the angels, Ave would not, as Mr. Hoadley 
 tells us, look about for lilies and gillyflowers to w T aste our 
 precious time upon them, but see a world lying in wicked- 
 ness, and make haste to escape, like Lot out of Sodom, and 
 draw our neighbors after us, as brands snatched from the 
 burning." 
 
 " For me, I do not think the angels refuse to look on the 
 works of God," replied Yolande, musingly. " Why, Milly, 
 they are the very sons of God who shouted aloud for joy 
 when the great frame-work of the world was complete. And 
 the fiercest of His creatures also praise Him — hail, snow, and 
 vapor, and stormy wind fulfilling His word. How much 
 more, then, the still, small lilies breathing only purity and 
 peace, which the Master himself bade us consider. Mon- 
 sieur Hoadley does wrong, great wrong, in slandering and 
 denouncing God's flowers and God's world." 
 
 Milly drew back offended. " Yon must be very wise, 
 Yolande, to know better than your teachers. Much good 
 the silly, senseless flowers ever did a vain, worldly girl like 
 me!" 
 
 " Pardon me Milly," begged Yolande, quickly, " I did not 
 mean to judge the pastor. I have known other teachers — 
 Grand'mere, old Monsieur Landre, and others — who thought 
 quite otherwise, and who loved the world, as being a slop 
 to God's throne, and all its creatures as His subjects. The 
 most of them are more loyal and more faithful than we are. 
 But I did not mean that they spoke to all alike, or that all 
 could hear God's voice and see God's face in them ; and 
 where that is wanting, that desperate word vanity is Avrit- 
 ten on them all — silly, senseless flowers, as you call them, 
 greedy or cruel animals, fit only for the bouquet, the child's 
 lap, the essence-vat, the game-bag, or to serve as a meal for 
 your hooded crow. But, Milly, even then, the fault is in 
 the eyes, and not in the flowers and the animals." 
 
 " Ah, there, you are at your flights again, Ma'mselle. 
 
 I 'lion my word, you require taking down; and here conies 
 
 1 Mr. Hoadley on our mare Blackberry, just in the nick
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 337 
 
 of time to do it, and to put us on some more improving dis- 
 
 course." 
 
 And Mr. Hoadley it was, who had ridden through the 
 sludge and the chill of midwinter to study the spiritual 
 condition which he was interested in, and to do his best to 
 rouse still farther from its hardening slough of selfishness, fri- 
 volity, and impenitence the soul of his rector's stray daughter, 
 who was come to a sense of her error. He went about his 
 business the more ardently that he had himself been a sinner 
 of the same order, with less excuse and with greater con- 
 demnation, for he had not merely higher faculties, but he 
 had received a commission, and been consecrated a priest. 
 He had neglected his commission, and well-nigh forgotten 
 his consecration ; but he was in earnest at last to bid Milly 
 enter with him and all the other w r orkers into the vineyard, 
 and to work manfully and womanfully for what remained 
 of the day, till each should receive the penny, the common 
 token of the Master's gracious acknowledgment of repent- 
 ance and obedience, whether late or early. 
 
 Full of his purpose, which was noble, Mr. Hoadley came 
 and sat with the girls in Dame Spud's kitchen. He missed 
 none of the accessories which in other circumstances he 
 would have been inclined to overvalue as much as Milly. 
 He had brushed aside whatever detained him in his new 
 line of action — the poetasting and the mooning of those 
 years which he had lived to plainly term his unregenerate 
 days. He treated the tastes which had then occupied him 
 as petty, irrelevant trifles, if not as insidious snares. 
 
 To Mr. Hoadley was propounded the question in dispute : 
 " Sir, will you tell us if you think immortal souls are war- 
 ranted in being engaged — not to say engrossed — with mor- 
 tal things, and not only with fine furniture and fine clothes, 
 savory food, such as friar's chicken and cherry pie, but 
 with posies and garden-knots, and such poor tiny creatures 
 as wagtails and bumblebees V for Ma'mselle here and some 
 of her friends pass over none of these, which also, good 
 lack! perish in the using/' 
 
 With bis own evil experience staring him full in the face, 
 Mr. Hoadley could give no other answer than the impassion- 
 ed decree, "As for your word ' warrant,' Madam, I can nol 
 reply to it. But I dare to say, as the creature i< subjecl to 
 vanity — the poor verses, lor example, in which I used to
 
 338 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 dabble, thinking it no shame to waste more time on polish- 
 ing their prettinesses than might have served to preach a 
 couple of sermons in different villages, ten miles apart — I 
 am of the mind, with regard to belles-lettres, pictures, 
 pieces of statuary, and profane music, that since they may 
 become such stumbling-blocks to half-crazy fools who hanker 
 after them, they .had better be curbed, clipped, and kept in 
 their own places, and these very poor places too, or else re- 
 jected altogether along with the vile horses and cards on 
 which madmen lay their lives and their deaths." 
 
 " Do you hear that, Ma'mselle ? Ain't you floored ?" 
 cried Milly, triumphantly. 
 
 But Yolande, though she did not argue with Mr. Hoadley, 
 said to herself in her French fashion, "IPimporte, Yolande ; 
 never mind, my child. Judge not by appearances, but 
 judge righteous judgment — but when will men, even the 
 best of them, do that ? Ah ! when will they not judge by 
 what is expedient, judicious, convenable — by how men 
 will judge of them, and whether or not their followers will 
 be offended ? As if the Lord did not offend his followers, 
 and many of them walked no more with Him ; but lie did 
 not on that account humor and cheat their prejudices. No, 
 no. Why will they fear the truth, the whole truth-, and 
 nothing but the truth, as these English say, when God is 
 true, and loves truth on the lip as well as in the inner man ? 
 The abuse of a matter is not to rule the use, even in horses 
 and cards. That is the righteous judgment — I am certain 
 of it. And as to the least little plant — the hyssop that 
 sprmgeth from the Avail, and the midges of animals — these 
 are among the little ones whom we are not to offend, and 
 who are sent to us to teach us and make us better, if we 
 will only learn and grow good. I know that, and am cer- 
 tain of it also." 
 
 Nevertheless Yolande was pleased when Mr. Hoadley, 
 with an inspiration which carried him far beyond his old, 
 affected, fractious self, told the girls of what he was doing 
 among the vice, misery, and inconceivable ignorance of 
 Sedge Pond. He craved their sympathy for the poor wom- 
 an, over whose heavy wooden cradle, which held her twin 
 ten-days-old children, her husband and her eldest son had 
 fought and fallen at the christening feast, kicking over the 
 ••radio in their struggle, and casting one child beneath their
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 339 
 
 feet, where its spark of light was stamped out before the reel- 
 ing, raging, unconscious murderers could be dragged off its 
 small body, and injuring the other so heavily that there was 
 great danger of its growing up a helpless cripple. And he so- 
 licited their solace for the patriarch of the village, a hoary 
 old man of ninety, whose children, past the vigor but not 
 past the lusts of life, were so full of their own riots and 
 bawls, that they elbowed aside and forgot the gaunt relic of 
 the past, and savagely taunted and mocked him when they 
 were reminded of him. 
 
 Yolande thought it was good to see Milly's blue saucer 
 eyes grow deeper and darker, and fill with tears at such re- 
 citals, while she nervously stroked Pickle's white curls, and 
 looked into the dog's liquid eyes. She also thought it was 
 good when Mr. Hoadley read to them from Christiana's 
 progress in the great pilgrimage, and Milly, who had never 
 really cared for or comprehended a reading higher or nearer 
 to her than the dry bones of history, a mock pastoral, a lan- 
 guishing or farcical song, or the broadsheet confession of a 
 hanged highwayman, had new faculties aroused within her 
 while she listened breathlessly to such difficulties and strug- 
 gles as had till now fallen flat on deaf ears and a deaf heart. 
 She was greatly impressed and edified when Mr. Hoad- 
 ley's explanation and application proved the struggles 
 to be her very own, and was so full of Christiana as 
 the representative of herself, of Madam, of Dolly, of Yolande, 
 and of every woman she had ever known, that she ceased 
 to see her present wounded, disgraced self, or Pickle, or Yo- 
 lande, or Mr. Hoadley, or the Spuds' far-m, but hung alone 
 on the dream and its interpretation. 
 
 Yolande called the scenes with Mr. Hoadley good, though 
 she was a little shy of her own share of his visits to the Cor- 
 ner Farm, until she received a smart lesson, teaching her 
 that a long memory is not always an advantage, and that 
 girlish vanity is the height of folly. When she returned to 
 Grand'mere, Yolande made a strange request. "Beat 
 me, ma m&re, before it be too late," she demanded val- 
 iantly, 
 
 "And why should I beat you at this stroke of the dock, 
 petite ?" answered Grand'mere, with twinkling i j 
 
 " To beat the naughtiness and giddiness out of me, < irand'- 
 niere," asserted Yolande, shaking her head.
 
 340 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 " That would require so thick a stick that I could not wield 
 it ; I leave that till I marry thee, Yolandette, when I trust, 
 from thy own tale, that thy husband may have a stouter arm. 
 But what is the tale, fifille f n 
 
 " Well, Grand'mere, I have great shame of it ; for my 
 scornfulness is too bad when the young pastor is so good 
 now, and when Milly is a changed girl, as sober and earnest 
 as a judge in her affair, and her affair is repentance and be- 
 ginning life anew like a ransomed, dutiful child. How 
 should I sit in the seat of the scorner, Grand'mere, besides 
 being ttte montee, to think that Monsieur Hoadley likes to 
 look at Milly to-day, as well as to lecture her! He has 
 thought over her history till he has taken it to himself, and 
 can not separate it from his own, and dreams and knows not 
 what will be the next chapter, until he forgets what he was 
 going to say, and is on the eve of saying something to Milly 
 in quite a different role. For Milly, she knows only that 
 Monsieur, at whom she was wont to laugh for his Methodism, 
 has too much goodness, wisdom, and kindness for her ; and 
 the more of kindness he has, the more of contrition andbro- 
 kenness of heart has Milly. 
 
 " Go, Yolande !" cried Grand'mere, as she waved off the 
 announcement, incredulous, and even a little indignant, and 
 altogether unable to receive it. " You deceive yourself, with 
 your historiettes of the man who could not hear the word of 
 evil against you without giving you up as fast as the young 
 squire of the Mall gave you up. Now, don't grow red and 
 white, Yolande ; it was no fault of yours that two men had 
 evil minds to judge evil of a girl on a word or a look — 
 the look of an affair. Bah ! I would not have given my old 
 squire, the friend of the Frenchman, for all the young bears 
 in the Pyrenees. But the young pastor spoke of reclaiming 
 you, as the young squire did not presume to do. Caleb 
 Gage, t /?/s, made public recantation and renunciation of his 
 error in a manner which Monsieur the Pastor has not thought 
 fit to do. He has not come to me, and said, 'Grand'mere, I 
 made one great, proud, uncharitable, miserable mistake,' as 
 he ought to have done." 
 
 " Grand'mere," interrupted Yolande, " the young pastor 
 has weightier matters to think of — good, great work, I as- 
 sure you." 
 
 " Weightier matters than to do justice ! Say, then, would
 
 TIIE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 341 
 
 it not help instead of hinder his good work if he saw how 
 to do justice, and did it, even in the bagatelle of an old wom- 
 an's feelings ? He thought enough of my feelings once upon 
 a time, did he not ? And behold the young pastor, whom 
 you bid me contemplate as haviug a penchant for a girl who 
 has not the word but the deed of evil, in so far as having 
 been indelicate, imprudent, and undutiful was concerned — 
 what have I to do with such an inconsistent young pastor ? 
 Go to the wars with such a pastor ! I hope you do not grow 
 a coquette, Yolandette." 
 
 "I hope not, Grand'mere," said Yolande, laughing. "I 
 tell you I have no reason because of your friend the pastor. 
 I shall dress the hair of St. Catherine for him. Believe 
 me, Grand'mere, he does not thmk me at present a 
 hundredth part so interesting as Milly, and not worthy to 
 hold a candle to her, let her have been ever so naughty. It 
 is a frightful misfortune for me, but I will do my utmost to 
 survive the mortification." 
 
 Grand'mere was always appeased and coaxed'by her child's 
 gayety, and when she thought over the report, and brought 
 to bear upon it the stores of her experience, she came to re- 
 gard it in quite another light, though it took some time to 
 reconcile her to it. 
 
 " Oh, violins of the village ! that a pastor who had ad- 
 mired a swan should turn to a goose, though a disappoint- 
 ment in an affaire cle cceur causes the victim either to be 
 blind or to see double for nine days, and during the precari- 
 ous interval he may marry his grandmother or the fade of 
 the village. But why should I beat the pie, the parrot ?" con- 
 tinued Grand'mere, tapping Yolande's check and detaining 
 the girl by her side. " She has quick eyes and a quick tongue, 
 but it is the nature of her sex, and I know that Yolande has 
 less of a pie and a parrot than any woman save the good 
 Philippine. Extremes meet, one can not deny it, and there 
 is a generosity and a generosity — a generosity which is vain, 
 and a generosity which is humble. Monsieur the Pastor's 
 generosity is a little touched with vanity. Not true, hi ? 
 Well, why should we grudge it to him ? It is a world bet- 
 ter than churlishness. And why should I beat you or any 
 one else, cocotte, because the good God has helped these t wo 
 young persons by putting a mutual understanding and af- 
 fection into their hearts, which may make their growth in
 
 342 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 grace and their future lives easier? Shall I say that their 
 desire for God is not pure because they have learned through 
 it to desire each other? Say it who will, I say it not. If, 
 Ave love not our brother whom we have seen, how shall we 
 love our Father whom we have not seen ? God, is He not 
 the God of the heart as well as of the conscience? What 
 am I that I should judge others? Nay, my daughter, the 
 rector, whom thou hast called a Spartan father, will not be 
 harsh here. When the young pastor will go to him and say, 
 with sudden insubordination and indignation, ' Monsieur my 
 Rector, thou are too severe to thine own flesh and blood. I 
 see it, and I will tell you so ; for I .have formed an attach- 
 ment to your daughter Milly, into which her Utile faux pas 
 does not enter, or if it enters, I love her only the better 
 for it, now that she is sorry for it, and I can shelter her from 
 the consequences, and put it out of sight and mind. Mon- 
 sieur my Rector, I ask your daughter in marriage with the 
 blessing of God — to end her probation and mine, and to be- 
 gin a joint life of service in His Church and at His altar.' 
 Think you that the Spartan father will be incensed or implac- 
 able at that discourse? I say, no. He will be amazed, though 
 he might have seen it all along. Perhaps — for this rector is 
 honest and cutting as a knife — he will reply at first, ' Mon- 
 sieur my Cure, think well what you are about; my daughter 
 has not been so discreet as I would have wished, and if in- 
 discretion is bad in a pastor's daughter, it is worse in a pas- 
 tor's wife.' On that the young pastor will protest manfully, 
 'I have no fear; Milly will never be foolish again, and the 
 grace of God is with us to help us.' What then ? The rec- 
 tor will smile and frown, and talk of starving on a curate's 
 salary, and mean it not at all, but begin to think what he can 
 save and spare for the young couple, and take his cure's arm 
 while they consult, and lean on it as he has not leaned on it 
 before. As for Madam, she will fall on the young pastor's 
 neck, and say she has again found a son ; and then the rec- 
 tor will smile more sadly, and say to himself, ' A son comme 
 'I /'<>>//, hut a different son from my Captain Philip' — voikl 
 tout!" 
 
 And ( Srand'mere abruptly ended her little drama triumph- 
 antly. 
 
 Grand'mere was light to a hair's-breadth. It was only 
 Dolly who pouted and cried out in objection, and Grand'-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 343 
 
 more was required to take her to task and bring her to or- 
 der. "Didn't our Milly run away and make a fool of her- 
 self, and wasn't our papa mortal angry at her? and now she 
 is to have a husband and a house before me. It looks as if 
 it were just because she fell into disgrace, for I'm main sure 
 he never thought of looking at her before. I grant you, it 
 is no great sort of a man and a house she will have — I would 
 not have had a gift of them ; still, it is the name of them, 
 and it ain't right that Milly should have even the name of 
 preferment before me now, after what is come and gone; I 
 tell you, I do not like it, Grand'mere Dupuy." 
 
 " Paper bag ! my little girl, you must take the world as 
 you find it. There is no right such as you think of in the 
 world ; it would be a worse world than it is if there were. 
 As to the big preference, I know none that the good God 
 gives us for being virtuous, or faithful, or devout, except 
 what is contained in the saying, ' See how great things he 
 or she must suffer for my sake.' That is true, Dolly, and 
 I would not be the sacrilegious wretch to throw a stone at 
 the afflicted, because I believe that they are, veritably, the 
 anointed of the Lord." 
 
 But the queerest turn which events and opinions took, was 
 with regard to the lonely, homely Corner Farm itself. Dame 
 Spud and her good man were growing old, and had already 
 had thoughts of retiring from the leadership of the van of 
 civilization against the Waaste,to spend the remnant of their 
 days by the hearth of a married daughter in the snugness 
 and sociality of Sedge Pond, where it would bo an easy 
 walk for Dame Spud to go up every day to the rectory, with 
 wool and yarn knitted hose, to wish her old mistress good- 
 morning, and taste her cakes and cream-cheese. 
 
 So the farm, with its field or two of thin corn and rushy 
 pasture, and its stock, was to be let to a new tenant. 
 Houses were not plentiful in- the neighborhood of Sedge 
 Pond, and the income of a curacy, on which brave and res- 
 olute women, as good ladies and gentlemen as their descend- 
 ants, married on the right hand and on the left, was so small, 
 that most curates' parsonages were not a whit better than 
 the Corner Farm-house could be rendered by a little paper- 
 ing and painting, cherry-tree wood and chintz. And the 
 honest, simple mode of eking out a living by undertaking, 
 with the help of an experienced farm-servant, to cultivate a
 
 344 THE UUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 few acres, was reckoned a resource by no means unbecoming 
 a gentleman and a priest. It was the lot finally fixed on 
 for Mr. Richard Hoadley and Mistress Milly Rolle. 
 
 " Ah ! that poor Milly," reflected Yolande in dismay when- 
 she heard of it; "what banishment for life! What exile 
 must it be, with the sentiments of Milly ! She will pine 
 away and perish, even with the consolations of religion and 
 the company of the young pastor, in that poor Corner 
 Farm." 
 
 " Tiens ! the wind has changed," alleged Grand'mere. 
 And so it had ; for when Yolande went to visit Milly at the 
 rectory, where she was reinstalled in the creditable, sedate 
 responsibility and grave dignity of the rector's eldest daugh- 
 ter, just about to be married to his trusty curate, she found, 
 to her bewilderment, and to the soft tinkle of Grand'mere's 
 laughter, that Milly's tastes in reference to Corner Farm had 
 undergone a complete revolution. At this later date she 
 'was all for the charms of a humble rustic home, for spinning- 
 wheels — though she could not spin a stroke — for pet lambs 
 and calves, notwithstanding that she had always run away 
 from the merest foal, and declined to say bo to a goose, for 
 making bands and mending cassocks ; and, though she had 
 not done a stitch of useful work in her life, she took the 
 whole task of it on her shoulders without a moment's hesita- 
 tion. She was quite full of gathering plovers' eggs and 
 picking mushrooms, and preparing the early supper and serv- 
 ing it to the tired curate, who had been laboring all day 
 among the poor and needy, and who would not disdain to 
 bring home the stranger and the wanderer to share the 
 shelter and the hospitality of a lowly, but for that very rea- 
 son a freer, as well as a more bountiful roof. So Milly's 
 ditty rang — an echo of Mr. Iloadley's. She even went so 
 far as to remind Yolande of a crystal rill, which she declared 
 trickled over a mossy bed close by the farm, and which Yo- 
 lande could not at all remember ; and she waxed enthusiast- 
 ic about a peep of a grove, where she and Mr. Hoadley 
 might erect a seat, which, as the grove consisted of three 
 ami a half bent, blasted, superannuated ash-trees, out of place 
 en the Waiiste, and only making its desolation more felt, 
 Yolande could not help regarding as the most forlorn objects 
 breaking the horizon. 
 
 " How tired I am of all this pomp and show !" — Milly
 
 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 345 
 
 confided to the puzzled, diverted Tolande — "not that I 
 blame ray papa and my mamma and Doll, for they have never 
 known any thing else, nor been brought face to face with 
 Nature to fall in love with her. How I long to get back to 
 my dear modest farm-house, with its thatch and its house- 
 leek — Richard says there must be a house-leek — and its de- 
 lightful dumb cattle all among the wilds. Of course I know 
 that these are vanities too, Ma'mselle, and that I must not 
 make idols of them any more than of cedars, and ebony 
 chairs, and brocade gowns. I have not learned to know my 
 Mr. Hoadley so Avell, and to be in his confidence, without 
 having heard that needful warning. But one can not help 
 being mightily taken with Nature when one has come to 
 love her, and to lose taste for art and finery, with all their 
 poor pretense " 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE GATHERING OF THE STORM. 
 
 The spring awoke at Sedge Pond. But it came intermit- 
 tently with bars of warm brooding sunshine, in which buds 
 swelled and grass stirred amid gentle pipings of song. 
 The dull, dead winter air was alive again for an hour or 
 two, and there were bright fieldlets of blue sky, in which 
 white mountains were piled up gloriously like Islands of the 
 Blest. But all was checkered before the day was done by 
 the scowl of low gvey clouds, and the shrieks of the piercing 
 north-east wind, which carried in its train the sting of cut- 
 ting hail and dash of drenching rain. And by some secret 
 sympathy the social and the moral world seemed to reflect 
 the fitful spring weather. 
 
 The old squire of the Mall had left his son with great dis- 
 cretionary power in the final settlement of his affairs. The 
 young man was much engaged during the winter and early 
 spring in fitly executing, to the best of his belief, his father's 
 will, and in journeying into neighboring counties to consult 
 with relations who were united with him in his trust. 
 
 Peace and gladness prevailed in Sedge Pond and at the 
 Shottery Cottage. There was talk of an early seed-time, a 
 fresh brilliant summer, and a fruitful harvest, intersprinkled 
 
 P2
 
 346 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 with remarks about the fine doings at Mistress Milly Rolle's 
 marriage with good young Mr. Hoadley. 
 
 But a change soon came over the people one and all, from 
 the ale-house to the Shottery Cottage. There began to be - 
 rer-lless, dissatisfied, gloomy prophecies of a backward sea- 
 son, a cold rainy summer, and a bad harvest. Fainter mut- 
 terings of national grievances and injuries reached the sod- 
 den, distorted, rankly-overgrown minds of Sedge Pond. 
 Late in reaching, they only entered the more firmly, and 
 threatened a terrible crop of blind, furious prejudice "when 
 they sprang and ripened. And so the villagers came to 
 judge that if there were failures in the wars, and mistaken 
 foreign policy in government, resulting in heavier taxes and 
 damage to trade, and jn'indin^ still harder the hard-ground 
 faces of laborers and small farmers, nothing was to blame 
 for it but the wanton truckling to foreigners for pieces of 
 velvet, sets of lace, china babies, and pug dogs, which fine 
 gentlemen like Lord Rolle and his brother could not live 
 without. But the gentry were dependent on foreigners for 
 other supplies than these. They could not get up their 
 screeching Italian operas, their dishes which no plain En- 
 glishmen could name, nor their evil domestic vices, which 
 polluted and corrupted the country, without the help of 
 some Madame, or Ma'mselle, or Senora. It was high time 
 the country were well rid of such cattle, and if it were true 
 that prices were to be high and food scarce, it stood to rea- 
 son that the people should put useless mouths out of their 
 quarters, more especially when they were the mouths of 
 villainous spies, gabbling treason and plotting treachery 
 against their foolish hosts and entertainers. The natives of 
 Sedge Pond could, of course, much better understand a 
 strong instance of such folly immediately before their eyes, 
 than the complicated sources of maladministration and abuse 
 of public interest and public funds, which were removed to 
 a distance from them. Old hairs to pluck with the Hugue- 
 nots, state crimes, some as good as a century old, were re- 
 vived and bruited about as matters of yesterday in Sedge 
 Pond, and, above all, over the tables in the ale-house. Mut- 
 terings of the monstrous bounty which the king in his infat- 
 uation paid to these old enemies and false allies, while his 
 own loyal and straightforward subjects were working and 
 starving on scant wages, served like the wind to stir up
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 347 
 
 and kindle into a flame the smoldering brands of grudging 
 indignation. 
 
 Even the refugees who at this time passed through Sedge 
 Pond oftener than usual, men whose brown or blue suits 
 were for the most part only remarkable for being punc- 
 tiliously long in the skirts and high at the ears, but not a 
 bit less threadbare than those of their neighbors, were 
 nervously conscious of suspicion and spite dogging their 
 footsteps. For this and for other reasons, Monsieur con- 
 fined himself and his friends more closely to his private room, 
 where they interchanged and examined trade parcels and 
 Huguenot papei-s until far into the night, leaving little time 
 for social entertainment, and hardly so much as an oppor- 
 tunity for the visitors to greet so venerable a mother among 
 the Huguenots as Grand'mere. He bundled away the stran- 
 gers with the coach next morning, and stood guard upon 
 them till the last moment. 
 
 " Grand'mere," observed Yolande, " my father must be 
 very busy with so many customers and agents constantly 
 coming to him. Besides, he has his journeys to London 
 and Norwich, which I observe he has doubled this last year. 
 I do believe it, he must be growing rich, and I shall be a great 
 heiress, and shall found a charity one fine day like that of 
 the Mall, or a hall in a college like that of Sedan and Sau- 
 mur, where your relative was professor. Is it not so? For 
 all the boxes with my poor work lie powdered with dust, 
 never sent away since the day of the year. I should like 
 well enough to be an heiress, but, Grand'mere, I do not like 
 my poor work to be forgotten, and must I still work to 
 have more of it packed up, powdered, and left staring me 
 in the face beside the commode and the medics every time 
 I go into my father's room ?" 
 
 "You must work still, my little work-woman," said 
 Grand'mere, somewhat absently, and with a little worry in 
 her placid face as she bent over the caraways and helio- 
 tropes in her window. " We must all work* in faith, our 
 whole lives long, and we must not think too much of bein<^ 
 heiresses!, not even of the kingdom of heaven, though that 
 is an inheritance incorruptible, undcfiled, and that fadeth not 
 away, where there is no moth, nor rust, nor thief, no, nor 
 contrabandist nor plotter — I believe it well. It is necessary 
 that we think of God who works, and of how work is T>od
 
 348 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 in itself, and duty good in itself. All things are very good, 
 petite, and we may need the help of the least of them yet. I 
 tell you, Yolande, as I told Dolly yesterday, that on this crum- 
 bling bit of earth there is no rest or prosperity promised to us. , 
 No, truly, there is strife and tribulation, and no promotion 
 save that of suffering. Nothing is sure but death. If we 
 march under our Leader's orders and carry His cross, which 
 was His ensign, it is necessary that the battle rage loudest 
 and longest round us, that we become a spectacle to men and 
 to angels, and it does not seem to me that this can be helped 
 any more than His agony and passion. Yes, it is sad and ter- 
 rible, Yolande, though not so much so to you as to me; for 
 you are one of the recruits, who are all for the prison and 
 the death, of which, like Peter, you know nothing ; but I 
 know a little of what the prison and the death are — a living 
 grave and a grinning skeleton, except for the light which 
 shines above and beyond them ; and it is that which must 
 fill our eyes." 
 
 Yolande wondered why Grand'mere should answer her 
 so solemnly when she herself had spoken lightly, almost 
 jestingly. She was farther perplexed that Grand'mere 
 should put her off when she attempted to investigate what 
 was passing around, and puzzle her by wide, homely, signif- 
 icant phrases. 
 
 " If your little finger tell you a secret," insisted Grand'- 
 mere, " repeat it not to your thumb — it is a prying, meddle- 
 some, seditious rogue, that thumb. Women and girls are 
 made to be seen, and not heard, where the affairs of men 
 and fathers are concerned. There was once a clever woman 
 who could not be still as a mouse, who could not wait like 
 a statue, and the consequence was that she woke up one 
 morning and found herself an executioner ; and, horror of 
 horrors! she had been the Monsieur Paris to her own fam- 
 ily. She had meant no harm, she had not known what she 
 Mas about, but she had not been still. Ah ! yes, stillness 
 is a great virtue, though Solomon did not speak so much 
 of it as of strength and honor. But I think a greater than 
 Solomon praised it when He praised the better part 
 which should not be taken away from — a woman. And, 
 oli ! the marvel, how He praised the weak women — this 
 one for her faith, that one for her generosity, and that 
 oilier for her meek reverence. Ought we then to shrink
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 349 
 
 from meeting the fire, and standing in the breach when lie 
 wills it ?" 
 
 But sometimes Grand'mere herself escaped from the 
 thraldom of anxiety, doubt, and apprehension which had 
 laid hold of her. Her suspicions and fears would then ap- 
 pear to her as chimeras bred of the past troubles of her long 
 and changeful life. She would prattle with the blithest 
 about the spring, for which the old tenderly yearn, and 
 about the summer which was coming, and about the young 
 couple whose fortunes lay all before them, and to whom she 
 had been a friend indeed, and with regard to whom, there- 
 fore, she was entitled to have the grace of loving. 
 
 At last, in the most ungenial mood of the spring, before 
 the teeming world of herbs and insects could make more 
 than a cold, shy response to its ardent wooer, there arrived 
 at the Shottery Cottage the little, gruff, reserved, grey rab- 
 bit of a savant, who had worked in the galleys, but now 
 appeared in a new stock with a buckle, and cuffs reaching 
 to his elbows. He received every thing like attention and 
 honor as cavalierly as ever, and was not much more com- 
 municative on his present purposes and plans than on his 
 old history. 
 
 But when Monsieur Landre was sitting with the Dupuys 
 over his cafe noir, on the very afternoon of his arrival, he 
 suddenly propounded a hair-brained scheme. The whole 
 family at the Shottery Cottage, he proposed, should quit 
 Sedge Pond, carrying their household gods with them. He 
 advised that they should start with him for London, where 
 he would get lodgings for them near his own, in Soho, and en- 
 gagements in his manufactory, if they wished it. The great 
 Mr. Beutley, he said, was partial to emigres among his de- 
 signers and colorists, and rewarded them liberally for their 
 services, besides affording them the satisfaction of seeing a 
 most ancient and honorable art restored to its merited as- 
 cendancy. 
 
 The Huguenots, in their time, had been well accustomed 
 to hasty fiights and unexpected exoduses. That time was 
 gone by now, however, and this movement seemed on called 
 for, and in a great measure inexplicable. But Monsieur 
 Landre would not be put past his proposal either by gloria 
 or coupeaux, but stirred his cup vehemently, and poked out 
 his head, showing, as he attempted to peer with his scorch-
 
 350 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 ed contracted eyes into the face of Monsieur and Grand'mere, 
 that he had adopted a pigtail. 
 
 Yolaude first gaped incredulously, unable to realize the 
 possibility of such a step, then turned round wistfully, and 
 hung breathlessly on Grand'mere's reply. 
 
 Monsieur shrugged his shoulders, and cried, " Ta, ta, ta ! 
 Farce ! The hangman! To France sooner." 
 
 But at this the pigtail only wagged more impetuously and 
 imperiously, insisting, in dumb show, that there were weigh- 
 ty reasons for its possessor's startling words, and asking a 
 more serious consideration of his invitation and a more de- 
 cided answer to it. 
 
 Grand'mere looked at her son, as he stuck his thumbs, 
 English-fashion, in his vest, and planted his feet firmly on 
 the floor, smiling re-assurance at her, while at the same time 
 he raised his eyebrows at the panic of poor Monsieur Lan- 
 dre, who had been rendered eccentric — tete bleu ! quite un- 
 hinged — by his early adversity. 
 
 " My very good friend Landre, the geese will cackle — 
 when have they not cackled? but, for the term of my life, I 
 stir not from this delectable spot, where I have pitched my 
 tent and planted my vine — in a figure, for, ouf! tents would 
 have much cold here, and vines, alas ! would not grow, un- 
 less in frames of glass." 
 
 "Monsieur, I have read in the classics — theDelphin classics 
 — a longtime ago, when I was a little boy, that one time the 
 geese they cackled, and the people they heard and minded, 
 and what happened ? The Roman capitol was saved," con- 
 tinued Monsieur Landre, with marked emphasis. 
 
 "The historiette,'m order to be well applied, has need of 
 two things," criticised Monsieur, carelessly : " a capitol and a 
 foe. That is what I say as a man, but the women may 
 judge differently. For aught that I know they may be dy- 
 ing with the wish to see the town again. What say you, 
 my mother ?" 
 
 Grand'mere looked at Yolande, and caught the extreme 
 reluctance, the piteous entreaty which spoke in the girl's 
 eyes. To have gone up and seen the great town and the 
 settlements of Huguenots there, would have been very well, 
 and Yolande, girl-like, might have welcomed the novelty 
 and the excitement; but it was a cruel shock to hear the 
 talk of bidding good-bye, a long good-bye, to the home
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 351 
 
 where Yolande's heart had grown up, where it had gone 
 out on its own venture, and where it had been met and 
 driven back, and all but wrecked, by storms. 
 
 Grand'mere bent forward and took the empty cup from 
 Monsieur Landre's hand, then took the baud itself, where 
 the deep shadow of his cuff hid the weals worn and seared 
 into his boyish flesh three-fourths of a century before. " A 
 thousand thanks, my friend," she said, " but we will stay 
 with our man here. It is not worth while that the women 
 risk life by themselves. What can harm the child and me 
 and Philippine — the daughter, the mother, the wife of Hu- 
 bert ? We go where Hubert goes, and dwell where he 
 dwells. What would you, my old man? Is not that 
 right." 
 
 The pigtail shook again, but more slowly, sadly this time. 
 " Si, si fait, Madame." Monsieur Landre acquiesced, as if 
 in a looked-for, almost an inevitable defeat. 
 
 Yolande was not blind or deaf, or totally incurious and 
 unalarmed, though she had not the experience of the others 
 to forewarn her, and though she had been brought up in the 
 total passiveness of a French girl. She had profited suffi- 
 ciently by the inspiration of her Huguenot origin, her life 
 on English soil, and the ties she had formed here, to have 
 laid within her heart the foundation of principles of inde- 
 pendence and energy. She was therefore shaken to the 
 centre by the vaguest hint of evil to Grand'mere. Yolande, 
 under pretext of presenting Monsieur Landre with the petit 
 verve of a traveler, contrived, previous to his departure, 
 which Monsieur was expediting as usual, to have an inter- 
 view with the flimily friend. And Yolande tried, as far as 
 a girl like her dared to try Avith a man who was not a mem- 
 ber of her family, but who had been her friend and teacher, 
 to get an explanation of his mission, just as she had sought 
 enlightenment when his wary contradiction and reluctant 
 qualification of her delight in the extravagant popularity of 
 Grand'mere after the Sedge Pond sore throat had first vex- 
 ed and disquieted her. 
 
 But Monsieur Landre, like the great majority of the 
 French, believed a girl a notably unsuitable recipient of a se- 
 cret of any kind, much more of an important and dangerous 
 secret. Either this or the unutterable loathing with which 
 he recoiled from expatiating on the frightful barbarities of
 
 352 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 the galleys, had rendered him incorrigible in his reticence, 
 and made him a man of mystery to the end. " There is 
 nothing, my child, nothing." Monsieur Landre withdrew 
 into himself as he took snuff, and assured Yolande that there 
 was "nothing to which you could say Men entendu. All 
 the world knows that we are Huguenots, and dwell among 
 people who accord us shelter and a bounty — not always at 
 the best market. But I do not pity myself, tout-pi and 
 tout-pa, yet I have had more to pity myself for, word of Den- 
 is Landre ! The English have been good to me, only it is 
 necessary that we French and Huguenots hold together for 
 the nation and the faith, even if we do not agree on other 
 things. Your father will tell you that. So, Mademoiselle, 
 if you have ever any desire to change your abode, to come 
 to London and make a little money — and the girls of the 
 bourgeoisie often have trades or serve as book-keepers to 
 their fathers and uncles in France — you will find a friend in 
 me. To be a silk-weaver in Languedoc or Dauphine before 
 the Revocation, and to be the same at Spitalfields or Nor- 
 wich, is quite another thing. Therefore, if you come to 
 have envy of my aid in London, Mise, here is my address, 
 near to Soho. If you will come, I shall show you my gar- 
 den on the roof, such as there is not another in London, and 
 my menagerie, and you will become my little pupil again. 
 Is it not so ? And, enfin, I may have the honor of introduc- 
 ing you to the great Mr. Bentley." 
 
 Monsieur Landre left his address also with Grand'mere, 
 of whom he took an elaborate farewell, going up for the 
 purpose to her room, where, in her white embroidered cap 
 and peignoir, she sat up in her great bed to receive him, 
 while it was still the raw, chill early morning. Monsieur 
 Landre kissed Grand'mere's hand, and Grand'mere kissed 
 her old friend on both cheeks, " for all the world as if them 
 two were ne'er to meet again here below," as Prie blurted 
 out, Avhile Deb began to rebuke her elder for the words 
 the moment the two had retired to their kitchen. 
 
 " As bold as a hatchet, then," said Prie, wrathfully de- 
 scribing the liberty. 
 
 " What for could you ever go and say that, Prie ?" re- 
 monstrated Deb, " and old Madame fourscore, and old Mon- 
 sieur beatin' Methusalem ? It is as like as blades o' grass 
 that they'll .never see one another alive again, Prie; but
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 353 
 
 how ever could you go and be so 'ard 'carted as even 'em 
 to it ?" 
 
 " 'Ard 'earted to even an old man and 'ooman whose feet 
 is a-treacling on the brink of the grave, that mappen they're 
 saying farewell to one another, and to right-down turmoil 
 and misery for time, that they may be free to say good-clay 
 to dozens of friends of their youth, and to pure peace and 
 blessedness, for eternity ?" So Prie protested indignantly. 
 " 'Ard 'earted be it ? But if ever an impudent swatch of a 
 babby like you, Deb Pott, evens old Madam's friends to 
 Methusalem, and old Madam hersen to being fourscore and 
 not long for this world — what have you to do with that, 
 a'd like to hear ? And haven't you knowed and seed that 
 the young go afore the old as often as not ? If you say a 
 word agin it, it is the back of the door you'll see yet, as 
 sure as a've been christened Prie." 
 
 " Hoadley, do you observe any thing strange in the con- 
 duct of these parish gentry of ours to the family at the 
 Shottery Cottage ?" anxiously questioned the rector one 
 day. " Manners are not what we may pride ourselves on 
 at Sedge Pond. Though the people behave genteel enough 
 to me, I confess I do not like the way in which they've 
 begun once more to stare into the cottage windows and 
 hang about the garden gate, as if they were taking observa- 
 tions of the foreigners. And the men, I notice, gather in 
 knots after work hours, and one fellow harangues the rest, 
 as if they had all a common grievance which he expounded 
 to them. Does it strike you that there is any thing out of 
 the common in the villagers' behavior — any thing danger- 
 ous ? You know the Sedge Pondians are rough diamonds." 
 
 " No, sir ; I have noticed nothing. Do the people meet, 
 sir? May it not be to talk of some of the warnings and 
 awakenings which they have had lately ? I do believe some 
 of them are savingly impressed." 
 
 " I hope so. There is room," responded the rector, 
 briefly ; " but I wish Mr. Lushington had not taken this time 
 to go up to town to settle accounts with the family's new 
 butler. lie ought to be familiar with the signs of the place, 
 and I should have liked to have heai'd lii^ opinion," the 
 rector reflected, as if he did not find his intended son-in-law 
 very practical. 
 
 "I do not think there is the slightest fear of the villagers
 
 354 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 being guilty of any thing so foolish and brutal as mischief to 
 the Dupuys, who were very good to them in their need ; 
 you surely forget, sir," the curate continued, to assure the 
 rector, who shook his head. 
 
 Mr. Hoadley was essentially a man of few ideas. His 
 first idea had been himself; his second, what great things 
 he should do for his Master and his fellow-men. He was 
 not unkind nor ungrateful ; he was any thing but spiteful, 
 for his own heart was satisfied, though his prospects were 
 different from what he had pictured to himself. With all 
 his graces, and the last best grace of Heaven among them, 
 he was as incapable of wide apprehension and sympathy as 
 his Mistress Milly. 
 
 The rector was older and wiser, but he still flattered him- 
 self, as on the occasion of the election (in spite of its lesson), 
 that he could overawe and master his people — that he could 
 chain and gag the wild beast in them, the wild beast which 
 lurks in every mob. He had ridden in among his parish- 
 ioners and quelled them when they were in the very open 
 act of violence, ere now, and he had faith that he could do 
 so again. Thus, by the heedlessness of one watchman and 
 the pride of another, by the confidence of Grand'mere and 
 the mingled craftiness and recklessness of Monsieur, chances 
 were lost, and time passed until the fate which, in the great 
 march of events, Providence held in store, was at hand. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 THE STORM BURST. 
 
 "My son, you must go," said Grand'mere, when the 
 storm burst at last, and Monsieur was made aware, through 
 some of his agents, that a warrant of State had been issued 
 against him, and that an officer had been sent from London 
 to apprehend him. 
 
 Monsieur had dabbled in intrigues all his life, and they 
 came to him almost as naturally as silk-weaving. On the 
 whole, they had been for Protestantism, in its aspect of po- 
 litical freedom, as he recognized it. The public acknowl- 
 edgment of the rights of the Huguenots, and their restora- 
 tion to their native land, were the ends he had had in
 
 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 355 
 
 view; and for the promotion of these he desired the estab- 
 lishment and prosperity of the Whig party, and the confu- 
 sion of the Tory. But it is hard to touch pitch and not be 
 defiled. If Monsieur's personal interests intruded into and 
 defiled his schemes, that is not, on the whole, surprising. 
 If he introduced a little smuggling into his enterprises in 
 silks, laces, and other commodities, and was in the habit of 
 communicating such private information very impartially, 
 either from France to England, or from England to France, 
 as did not bear on his main projects, it was a course from 
 which the philosophy of Rochefoucauld and St. Simon by 
 no means excluded him. All honest, God-fearing men, how- 
 ever, called it public treachery — treachery, at once, to the 
 country which had adopted him, and the country which had 
 born him. 
 
 Monsieur, certainly not a coward by physical organization, 
 had been rendered still more regardless by long immunity 
 from punishment. Thus he had been led to deride Mon- 
 sieur Landre's desperate attempt to win him, at the last 
 moment, from the volcano on which he was standing. 
 When the crisis came at last, and exposure and retribution 
 stared him in the face, the middle-aged, double-minded, 
 plausible Monsieur of Sedge Pond went, as he might have 
 done forty years before when he had broken but a few 
 branches in his father's vineyard, and confessed all to his 
 mother. He poured into her true, tried ear the full tale of 
 his sin and trouble, and waited for her counsel and com- 
 mands with as full faith in her as though she had been a 
 superior being, and in as entire submission to her will as if 
 he still lived in the innocence of the past. 
 
 Grand'mere did not say to him that he might have 
 thought of the long lessons, the tender yearnings, and the 
 fervent prayers which she had bestowed on him through- 
 out the labyrinth of his wanderings ; nor did she say that 
 he need not have lapsed so far from the spirit of these, to 
 come to her at last for comfort after he had gone near to 
 break her heart. She might chide, and she had often chid- 
 den, though she did not know how to rebuke her devoted 
 son sharply. But to reproach him, to make the bitterness 
 of his fall more bitter to him, was not in Grand'mere. On 
 the contrary, God's pity for Hubert was to be reflected in 
 his mother's face. It was to be the most loving considera-
 
 35G THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 tion for his suffering, and the most anxious summoning up 
 of all her energies for the lightening of his burden. His es- 
 cape must be contrived, justice too must be satisfied, but there 
 was no law, human or divine, that required Monsieur's old 
 mother to give him up to the State which he had offended. 
 
 Happily, from Monsieur's early training as a scout, his 
 business connection, and his familiarity with more or less 
 unauthorized modes of transport, his escape, so soon as he 
 should be beyond the immediate neighborhood, became, com- 
 paratively, a practicable matter even to trembling women. 
 
 "But I go to-night, that is certain, and how will you be 
 ready, my old woman ?" asked Monsieur, careful of his 
 mother as ever ; " or shall I risk waiting at Yarmouth or 
 Harwich, so that you can follow with the delay which is 
 necessary for your years ? No, that will not do. I can not 
 fix on either port till I am on the way, and have heard more 
 news by the first post. I may have to change my route 
 altogether, and, after all, I do not think I could trust you 
 alone on the road. Nay, my good mother, the jockeys 
 would shake your grey head off with the jolting. The En- 
 glish dogs' weather would freeze you to the coach seat or 
 the pillion. Ah ! that will be all remedied when we get 
 to the Carolinas in America — that refuge of the Huguenots. 
 But for the present, what shall we do, ma mbre f n 
 
 " I shall remain here, my son ; I am too old a horse to 
 travel," replied Graud'mere, with a sickly smile. " A new 
 half of the globe is more than half a world farther off than 
 the little chamber of the grave to a woman of fourscore 
 who has seen nearly all her contemporaries housed before 
 her. No, I say not that — I eat my words ; but I can not 
 encumber your retreat. Go, Hubert, make a new home 
 across the great waves of the Atlantic among the colony of 
 our people in the Carolinas ; and if there is still breath in 
 this rag of a body, I shall go to you, my gar$on ; but I can 
 not accompany you — it is impossible, you must see it." 
 
 " Peste ! it is more impossible for me to abandon you," 
 persisted Monsieur, with the swollen veins of a mortal 
 struggle rising on his forehead. Here was his Nemesis, or 
 was it, 1 1 is God in controversy with him ? Every Huguenot 
 knew the saying of Agrippa D'Aubigne to Henry of Na- 
 varre when the incorruptible Protestant saw the wound in 
 the lip which the rcnouncer of Protestantism had sustained
 
 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 357 
 
 from an assassin's dagger : " Sire, hitherto you have denied 
 God with your lips, and God has been contented with pierc- 
 ing your lips ; but when you shall deny Him with your 
 heart, then shall God pierce your heart." 
 
 Were God's arrows now indeed in Monsieur's heart ? 
 His mother had never ceased to be the pride of his heart, 
 the apple of his eye. 
 
 "You abandon me not, my son; I stay by my own 
 choice — that is to say, by my own judgment and God's 
 will. I can not do more than is possible for me. I stay 
 only till better days come, when, if I am not gone where 
 you will follow, Hubert, you will reclaim me." 
 
 " But they will revenge themselves on you, little mother," 
 cried Monsieur, with tears as he rose up. "Alas! they will 
 visit my offenses on my mother, and I must save myself 
 from that extremity of wickedness and misery. A thousand 
 times rather I would stay and brave all. What are their 
 prisons, their Old Baileys, their Tyburns, when it comes 
 to her cherished head ?" 
 
 " You must not stay, my son. You must have care for 
 your mother's heart as well as her head. I will not have 
 you to stay, I have said it. And you are not reasonable, 
 Hubert, my poor old gars. The English Government is just, 
 is honorable, is merciful for that. You have abused its in- 
 dulgence — alas ! it is true, I can not deny it — but it would 
 scorn so poor a prey as an old woman in her son's stead. 
 The English Government will not touch me, and I shall not 
 be left alone ; I shall have Yolaudc and Philippine, and the 
 good girls, Prie and Deb, to bear me company. Tiens! 
 we will be — no, not merry as grigs, that may not be, but 
 safe as bats." 
 
 " I shall go or stay as you and my father wish it, Grand'- 
 mere," submitted Yolande, with a great gulp of terror and 
 distress, recalling now with consternation and remorse how 
 she had thought and looked when the question had been of 
 the Avhole Huguenot family turning their backs on Sedge 
 Pond for London. 
 
 " Of course, 2^ctite, you will do as you ought," Monsieur 
 accepted Yolande's offer with something that sounded like 
 supreme indifference after what had gone before it. " But 
 how with my wife ?" 
 
 "For me, T go with my husband," declared Madame
 
 358 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 with some severity, taking every body by surprise, though 
 in reality nothing could be plainer or more likely than her 
 behavior when her friends had time to reflect on it. It was 
 Madame's duty as a wife, and Madame had always been 
 devoured with a desire to do her duty, as she reckoned it. 
 She believed she would have gone into the a'lgues mortes, 
 have suffered a dragonnade in her own person, sooner than 
 knowingly fail in her duty. She had almost longed for the 
 test, she had half envied the persecutions of the Huguenots 
 before her. She had taken so little interest in the country 
 where her lot for many years had been cast, that she did 
 not altogether comprehend wherein lay the difference be- 
 tween Monsieur's tribulation and the old woes of the faith- 
 ful. She did not give him entire credit for being persecuted 
 for righteousness's sake ; she had too keen an appreciation 
 of him as a man of the Avorld for that. She judged that 
 the strait was occasioned by some question belonging to the 
 Huguenot alliance with perfidious England ; but undoubted- 
 ly Monsieur had risen in Madame's estimation by having 
 come under the grasp of the law of the land, and she pre- 
 pared with gloomy zest and dignity to share his risks 
 and hardship. 
 
 Monsieur had always been bourgeois enough to pay 
 scrupulous respect to the rights of his wife, and he agreed 
 to Madame's will with that indefinable mixture of compla- 
 cence and imperturbability which marked him in all his re- 
 lations with her. He might be painfully, even dangerously 
 cumbered by Madame's journeying Avith him, or he might 
 be in urgent need of a woman's cares in the personal details 
 and domestic management for which he had all his life de- 
 pended on Avomen. It was hard to tell. There remains 
 only to record that Madame decided to depart with him, 
 ami Madame had a clear title to dispose of herself as she 
 wished. Monsieur bowed over the bony hand ready to be 
 put in his, and there was no more to be said. 
 
 At the height of the Huguenot movement and the 
 Huguenot trials, the sudden breaking up of households had 
 been a common occurrence, and partings of members of 
 families for indefinite periods to enter on new and untried 
 phases of life the normal experience of the people. Grand'- 
 mere had known these days, but she had been separated 
 from them by a great interval of years and events. In spite
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 359 
 
 of her cares and fears, she had not expected to know them 
 again, and however they might come to her daughter-in-law, 
 they came to her with the dismal odds between suffering 
 for conscience's sake and suffering for wrong-doing. When 
 the feet totter and the hands tremble, when the grasshopper 
 becomes a burden to the weary heart and brain Avhich cry 
 out at their own distorted shadows, the effects of a social 
 earthquake, tearing them from the supports to which they 
 had clung, are very hard to bear. But Grand'mere bore 
 every thing because it was for Hubert's sake, because it 
 was her cross laid upon her by a truer, tenderer friend than 
 Hubert. 
 
 It was a terrible sentence that came to Monsieur. Cut- 
 ting off his right hand and plucking out his right eye would 
 have been easier than what was demanded of him. It was 
 like giving his heart from his bosom to resign his mother ; 
 and it was the fruit of his own devices, the bed he had 
 made for himself. 
 
 " I have been a bad character, ma m&re, in spite of every 
 thing," he groaned aloud at the moment when he was to go 
 from her — " a selfish wretch, a reckless villain." 
 
 " Not true, my son," she contradicted him ; " but you 
 will do one thing more for the love of the old woman," she 
 pled, holding him fast. "You will believe in more than 
 her when she is no longer with you, that you may love and 
 trust still when she is gone from your sight, my friend — 
 that we may hold communion together when our bodies 
 are parted — ah ! my child, that Ave may hold communion 
 together forever." 
 
 "I will try, my mother — and you — you will pray for 
 your faithless son." 
 
 And surely there is hope for such men as Monsieur when, 
 with all their corruption, they retain in their right hand a 
 jewel of the first water — filial tenderness, the reverence 
 unsurpassed, all but unapproached, for weak Avomanhood in 
 its holiest form of motherhood. 
 
 Madame broke down also, at the instant of action. She 
 had spoken and read so much of persecutions that she had 
 almost persuaded herself that she had been in the thick of 
 them. She had learned to think of them as a croAvn of dis- 
 tinction and glory reserved for the salt of the earth, and 
 quite endurable by her, at least. Madame lived to find,fcke
 
 360 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 many another perfectly sincere Christian, that talking and 
 doing are operations standing far enough apart from each 
 other ; nay, that to do the first, however fast and with all 
 the warmth in the world, is not the hest preparation for the 
 second. 
 
 " I am a furious poltronne" cried the honest woman, 
 " when it comes to leaving the corner of the fire. I recoil 
 from it, have palpitations of the heart. I know not how I 
 shall pass over the common roads, through the strange 
 inns, by the malhonnttes gendarmes of the ports, how I shall 
 survive, even, the mal de mer, which a child of a traveler 
 has to encounter. How it can be that before the turn of 
 the clock I shall say, '•Adieu, adieu, petite mere,'' 'Until we 
 meet again, Yolandette,' " wept Madame; " quoif I 
 know nothing, I know not myself. I feel I should be afraid 
 to remain, to be among women alone all the day, like a con- 
 vent of nuns without the breastwork of the grating, in the 
 middle of the canaille. Me, I can not tell now why I went 
 not out into the midst of the village with Grand'mere and 
 Yolande to nurse the sick when the sickness was here. 
 Was it, in truth, hard apathy ? — or was it low skulking from 
 the beggar of contagion ? Allons, I know not myself any 
 longer, and from what I do know I despise and hate myself. 
 To the Lutherans, the Catholics, the executioner — though I 
 shall screech and struggle in his hands, I am certain of it — 
 with this cheat and traitress of myself!" 
 
 "My true, my honorable Philippine," Grand'mere con- 
 soled Madame with fond fervor, " thou wilt know thyself 
 again better than ever ; and even if thou shouldst never 
 know thyself again, there is One who knows thee and 
 judges righteous, yes, merciful judgment." 
 
 Thus it happened that on one of those reluctant, sullen 
 spring evenings, when the twilight seemed to scowl and 
 hide its face from the drooping buds, which withered be- 
 fore their time, Monsieur handed out Madame, and waved 
 his hat to make up for neglecting to kiss his hand to the 
 remaining inmates of the cottage, who did not venture to 
 follow the couple farther than the door — the sight sending 
 a jealous hue and cry through Sedge Pond. The travelers 
 carried only a few packages, as if they were going no far- 
 ther than Reedham, or at the most Norwich, on a rare bit 
 of "pleasure. They did not set out in the great mail-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 361 
 
 coach, which, whether it went or came, carried always with 
 it a strong flavor of London aud London news, but in a 
 post-chaise, the grandeur of which was a parting offense and 
 •insult to the villagers. Nobody dreamed of riding post be- 
 low the rank of the rector and his lady. Even young Par- 
 son and Madam Hoadley would be counted mad should 
 they pretend to any such fine doings when they were 
 "buckled." The houseful of women, old aud young, was 
 left, as Madame had said, without even the barrier, long im- 
 pregnable, of the grille, on the hostile soil of Sedge Pond, 
 where enmity had resisted so many friendly overtures that 
 it might be considered to have prevailed, aud to be flourish- 
 ing pure and undefiled. 
 
 Within less than a week after this event, the metropoli- 
 tan officer who had Monsieur for his object, arrived at 
 Sedge Pond, traveling post in his turn. He brought the 
 great hue and cry to the villagers' itching ears, that Mon- 
 sieur Dupuy, who had dwelt so long among them, making 
 a handle of the little village on the great road, had been an 
 offender and impostor all along, a paid agent of their 
 natural foes across the channel, transmitting the intelligence 
 which their coach became a vehicle to carry. When men 
 could be hanged for a single act of smuggling, and when 
 strings of men had been lodged in Dover and York Castles, 
 aud brought out and executed in batches for being mixed 
 up in small risings and riotings under a paternal govern- 
 ment, Monsieur seemed to deserve not simply to be hanged, 
 but to be quartered, and every creature belonging to him 
 to be hooted aud hounded as sinks and snares, out of de- 
 cent villagers' company. 
 
 Not to say that the officer proceeded on those bloody- 
 minded principles. He was a man of the abounding good- 
 humor which flows from one who is at once pompous and 
 boisterous. He ruffled it a little like a justice, stared at 
 Yolande, but was reasonably civil to Grand'mere. He ate 
 what was set before him with wonderful condescension, and, 
 as if that were not enough honor, cast sheep's eyes upon 
 some of Grand'mere's treasures, and threw out broad hints 
 for them. Finally, he carried away, as a triumphant tribute 
 to his rendering himself agreeable to the ladies, an antique 
 carved flacon, and a timbale en vermeil^ which he was so good 
 as to call two outlandish Toby Fillpots. He had made an 
 
 Q
 
 362 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 
 
 examination of the premises previously, and had not been 
 very particular after he had discovered traces on the hearth 
 in Monsieur's cabinet of an extensive conflagration of pa- 
 pers. He took himself off without farther delay or injury, 
 tut unquestionably he cared not at all that he left Sedge 
 Pond behind him in a ferment. 
 
 In the ale-house gossip the Royal Bounty to the French 
 intruders rose rapidly from fifteen to fifty thousand, and 
 then up to a million, all wrung from the sweat of the brow 
 of overtasked, abused native subjects. And yet Mounseer, 
 not content with ruining the credit of the army and the 
 navy in countless battles past, present, and to come, was 
 guilty of false charges on illicit information — how obtained, 
 or for what purpose, nobody paused to ascertain — against ev- 
 ery individual, great and small, in Sedge Pond. And the 
 effect of all was that at last the presence of even a dog be- 
 longing to the Dupnys at the Shottery Cottage was looked 
 upon as a monstrous affront and scandal. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 SCAPE-GOATS. 
 
 Gka^d'mere and Yolande were profoundly ignorant of 
 the state of public feeling at Sedge Pond. Grief swallow- 
 ed up apprehension. The two women had kept close with- 
 in doors since the revelation of Monsieur's delinquency, 
 and were waiting and watching intently for tidings of the 
 fugitives. 
 
 Deb was the herald of the villagers' malice. " If so be 
 you be able to bear it, old Madam — you do be the only Mad- 
 am as is left to us — don'tee miss Madam proper's rare la- 
 ments on we and the wicked world ? Her bark were worse 
 than her bite, it were ; and the house do be main dull and 
 dozened without her melancholic ditties ; sure she would 
 have enjoyed a stramash, and her up to the mast-head on't, 
 to cry, ' Come on.' But a' div think us ought to tell 'ee, old 
 Madam — you do be old," Deb went off again, frank as she 
 was, fain to beat about the bush; "though big Prie dared 
 me to even the likes of 'ee to hoary heads, and though there 
 been't a younger Madam here-away now. For that matter,
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 363 
 
 Madam as were here weren't young, were of the kind that 
 ain't ever young, like a plant of southernwood. Prie and 
 me, we be pinted at, and cried to, and fouled with dirt, 
 whenever Ave enters the street." 
 
 " Chickens will be chickens, and children children, my 
 best Deb," answered Grand'mere, composedly. u Hein ! 
 wert thou not a child once, thy wise self?" 
 
 " There been't no childer in the business. There be men 
 with slouching shoulders, and beards on their chins, as 
 wern't never childer in my time. One of them shied a 
 stone into the garden gate, last time a' passed, as had brain- 
 ed a child, and been its monument forby. It was the same 
 man as taunted Prie with being refugees' spawn, sold to 
 the Devil, and showing the cloven hoof for a sign. A' man 
 at no price go out into the street, nor you, Madam, nor 
 Ma'mselle, till the ill blood be spilt." 
 
 "I go out this afternoon, Deb ; I go where I have gone 
 before. I wish to ask for the little child who has the fract- 
 ured limbs, and for the old woman who has the cramps. I 
 crave pardon for not having asked before these days ; I have 
 been very selfish. Yolande carries the tisane bienvenue! 
 The men know us well ; they have been rejoiced to see us 
 ere now ; they will call no names to us, but have shame, 
 compunction. Behold all !" 
 
 The men had some shame: they drew back and shrank 
 out of sight when the old woman sallied out among them, 
 with no armor but the benefits she had rendered to them, 
 and the good-will she bore them. But Grand'mere found 
 every door once more shut in her face by hands which had 
 been stretched out to her in their extremity — hands that 
 she had grasped ; while blood-shot eyes, which had looked 
 into her dove-grey eyes with an agony of appeal, and had 
 not looked in vain, now covertly watched her rejection with- 
 out a sign of relenting. 
 
 Discomfited, Grand'mere returned home, curbing her in- 
 dignation, and resolutely resisting the dread and sinking of 
 the heart which stole over her. She only looked wistfully 
 in Yolande's face, and whispered, " They will know us better 
 some day, paximettQ ; it is we who are poor miserables to- 
 day — but they will live to know us better — at last." 
 
 That night stones were thrown, and not ^at the garden 
 uate alone. A volley rattled against the diamond-shaped
 
 364 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 windows of the cottage, and shivered them ; and toward 
 dusk an instalment of a disorderly mob which had collected, 
 kindled a bonfire in the street, in dangerous proximity to 
 the thatch roofs, and not a hundred yards from the gable 
 of the Shottery Cottage. In the childishness of folly and 
 violence, the men shouted and gesticulated round it, and 
 ended by giving a display of small puppets, hastily manufact- 
 ured of straw and rags, and having a far-fetched resem- 
 blance to a man and several women, arrayed in cloaks, hats, 
 hoods, jackets, and caps. These rude symbols were persist- 
 ently jerked and danced with frantic fervor in the light of 
 the flames which flashed on the broken windows, until, with 
 oaths and cries, they were hustled and flung into the heart 
 of the fire, which consumed them forthwith. 
 
 Grand'mere acted like a vraie chdtelaine — with spirit and 
 sense. She allowed no lights within doors, and made the 
 shutters fast, to exclude as far as possible the light without. 
 But she would not hear Prie's dry suggestion : " There be 
 oceans of hot water, Madam, in the great kettle, so be they 
 come underneath the wall, a-clambering to the winders. 
 And the wench Deb, she be right-down confident that she 
 could fire Mouuseer's fowling-piece, as would send a bird- 
 shot or two into the faces of the ringleaders." 
 
 Notwithstanding, there was no sleep for the household 
 of the Shottery Cottage that night, as they sat with nerves 
 on the stretch. Small spurts of rage and valor came and 
 went, but soon waned for want of expression. And it was 
 with the increasing fear of beings defenseless and timid by 
 nature, that they waited and prayed for the ashy grey of the 
 spring morning. 
 
 Long before morning, both fire and mob died away. 
 But it was peculiar to the slow, stealthy, brooding village 
 nature, that its blind wrath rose and fell and rose again, and 
 that there was no security in its temporary lull, for it always 
 returned to the charge, and step by step advanced to its end. 
 The rector had some knowledge of this characteristic of the 
 villagers. He went himself to the Shottery Cottage, early 
 on tlie following day, for the first time since he had received 
 the account of Monsieur's true character and flight. His 
 purpose was to request Grand'mere on no account to at- 
 tempt to cross the threshold, or to suffer any of her family 
 to go out till he gave her leave. At the same time he wish-
 
 THE 1IUGUEN0T FAMILY. <3b5 
 
 ed to comfort her with the assurance that, if the village 
 reallv rose and threatened to molest her, he would be on the 
 spot to put an end to the proceedings without so much as a 
 necessity of reading the Riot Act- 
 By noon the village was re-enforced by stragglers who 
 had crone to their work in the morniner and had come home 
 for dinner. They brought with them country recruits mad 
 with the information of the mighty favors which had been 
 lavished on foreigners by a false government, and the poor 
 return which had been paid for it, as proved by the base 
 betrayal of Sedge Pond by the Dupuy family. The popu- 
 lation in the neighborhood was not strictly agricultural. It 
 included an unsettled, semi-lawless class, some of whom 
 were engaged as goose-herds, and others as snipe-shooters 
 and cockle-gatherers from the coasts. They formed fit 
 audience for such a rumor, and were well calculated to im- 
 prove the occasion of its delivery. 
 
 When the shadows began to lengthen, the village and 
 its allies rose, and presented a ragged regiment of smock- 
 frocks and soiled caps. Their hearts were filled with black 
 envy and rancor, their fists were equal to hammers, and 
 there were bludgeons bristling here and there, more than 
 enough to cow and scatter like small dust the frail troop 
 of women opposed to them, even though every woman had 
 possessed the bones and sinews of young Deb Potts. 
 
 In the ragged regiment, there were women, too, who 
 wore red cloaks, or were in their house attire. They were 
 stolid and sullen, or light-headed and giddy slatterns, who 
 had come out to egg on the men. 
 
 The Shottery Cottage was in a state of siege. There 
 was no longer room to doubt the fact, and the malice of 
 the besiegers was momentarily growing, like the surge and 
 swell of the sea in a storm. 
 
 The rector arrived to redeem his pledge, and addressed 
 the people in the tone of an undaunted, indignant gentle- 
 man : — " My men, what do you mean by this un-English 
 work? Are you aware that you are simply molesting a 
 houseful of women — ladies, my friends, and their servants? 
 If you have any grudge against Monsieur — he is a single 
 man, still he is a man — wait till he turn up, and then settle 
 it with him lawfully ; but don't bully women, else I'll think 
 you a greater set of curs than I took you for. Come, you
 
 3GG THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 rascals, disperse, and have done with this ugly mockery, 
 or it will be the worse for you." 
 
 To the rector's dismay, his remonstrance and sharp rep-; 
 rimand produced no effect, except in the way of calling forth 
 dogged growls, squaring of backs, setting shoulder to 
 shoulder, and at last a low roar of recrimination — "Have 
 done yoursen, Pearson. Mind your own business — this 
 here be none of yourn. You be took in yoursen, with the 
 rest of the gentry, by the French scum. Remember your 
 darter, good young Mr. Hoadley's wife as is to be, and how 
 nigh hand she were debauched by the slyboots here, as 
 quiet as a May puddock, with her charity and her religion. 
 Go home, and be thankful that your lass has escaped, and 
 let us a-be to root out the nest of hornets, and save our 
 lasses." 
 
 It was to no purpose that Mr. Philip Rolle kept his 
 ground — nay, forced his person into the closely-wedged 
 mass — that he singled out individuals to call them by name, 
 and abated his dignity to shout and threaten in his turn. 
 lie was under the disadvantage of not towering on horse- 
 back, having neither riding-whip nor spurs to cleave the 
 ranks, and lash and stamp down resistance. He had not 
 the Riot Act in his pocket to pull out and read, summoning 
 the people, under the pains and penalties of the law, to 
 break up and withdraw to their own homes. And even 
 although he had possessed both aids, the tide by this time 
 was running too strong against him. All the weight of his 
 cloth, character, and family only served to protect his own 
 head from the passion and prejudice of the people. 
 
 The rector was the one man in the crowd to give in — 
 and it was for the first time in his life. He retreated to 
 the rectory, but it was to lose no time. In grief and horror 
 he recalled that there was no justice nearer than young 
 Gage of the Mall. He quickly resolved to mount his old 
 hunter, My Lady, and gallop to the Mall, to secure the 
 squire's concurrence. Then from the Mall he would ride 
 1o Ueedham, to see if there was a corps of yeomanry on 
 drill at the market-town, and to beg the chief magistrate 
 and i lie commanding officer to give him the support he re- 
 quired. lie knew that it would be night-fall before he 
 could bring a regular force to Sedge Pond, relieve Grand'- 
 merc, and put down the riot. But he was not a man to
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 367 
 
 succumb to despair in the shape of difficulties, or to leave a 
 stone unturned when there were deeds to accomplish. He 
 calculated on the wholesome effect of the honest light of 
 day, and expected that no over-act of violence greater than 
 the insults of last night would be committed without re- 
 peated adjournments to the ale-house. He might be in 
 time after all. 
 
 In the meanwhile he dispatched another message to 
 Grand'mere, giving special instructions to the messenger 
 that he should procure admission to the cottage, and re-as- 
 sure the poor Frenchwomen by informing them of his 
 plans. The messenger was Black Jasper, and he attained 
 his object. Massa's imperative orders, and the irritating 
 treatment which he himself received from many of his or- 
 dinary acquaintance in his progress, urged him on. For 
 the rabble of Sedge Pond were in that fitful, excitable, and 
 exacting humor when small provocation was needed to 
 raise their gorges. Black Jasper's color, coupled with some 
 inkling of his errand, which they were not so far gone in 
 their work as to stop, was the grievance in this case. 
 
 " Another strange crow — a black beetle who mappen had 
 his venom, like the rest of them, for all his pretended soft- 
 ness. He had been mortal quick in taking up with the 
 cottage cattle, and had run at the beck of the old witch 
 every time he had seed her, as gin she had been Pearson's 
 son. To the wall with the grinning blackamoor — whack 
 him out of the village after his friend Mounseer !" 
 
 Black Jasper entered the Shottery Cottage in a bath of 
 sweat, and his woolly hair on end in mingled fury and fear. 
 It was clear that he must perforce remain, the only man 
 garrisoning the cottage. He could not face a return to the 
 rectory, even to obey Massa. 
 
 The rector heard of this detention as he was mounting 
 his horse, and had to quiet Madam and his daughters as 
 he best could; for Mr. Hoadley chanced to be at- the other 
 end of the parish, whither he had been summoned to attend 
 a death-bed. The rector told himself that it was well, for 
 he would never be able to convince Mr. Hoadley that the 
 assembly was not a congregation got together without any 
 exertion, and to which he would declaim till the yells of 
 the mob drowned his text and murder was committed. 
 The Huguenot women would not be much the stronger for
 
 368 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 Jasper's manhood, but the fellow was Philip's fellow, and 
 as blindly faithful as any dumb animal. He had obeyed 
 his master at least. But what if Philip's Jasper, one of the. 
 few relics of his young captain, came to grief! The rector 
 dashed off at the thought more like a dragoon than a black- 
 coat, setting his teeth to keep down his emotion. 
 
 Nothing worse happened as yet, but even that was omi- 
 nous. The lounging, grumbling men suddenly shook them- 
 selves up, took the garden gate off its hinges, and poured 
 into the garden with a wild whoop. They then set them- 
 selves to all manner of mischief about the pond, the bower, 
 and the small miniature alleys aud oseraie, as if that were 
 all their purpose. This, however, might serve to detain 
 them opportunely till other than moral force was brought 
 to bear upon them ; for Monsieur, in pursuance of his own 
 game, had taken care that the Shottery Cottage had mas- 
 sive shutters and strong bolts and bars. So if its occupants 
 would only sit like hares on their form, it could offer as 
 good passive resistance to attack as places of far greater im- 
 portance. 
 
 But the performance of the Sedge Pond villagers was 
 not in itself cheering as beheld by the owners of the garden. 
 The bleak spring weather had taken a turn for the better 
 that day ; the wind had veered from north-east to south- 
 west, and, blowing softly, was wooing a hundred unsus- 
 pected allies — bud and leaflet, and little wakeful tomtit and 
 willow-wren and field-mouse — to come forth and show them- 
 selves. It was such a sweet, hopeful spring day as might 
 make an old woman young again, and such had made 
 Grand'mere young when she had gone abroad and cried 
 out with joy at the sight of the first jonquille and violet, 
 and had sat in the arbor, framed by the periwinkle and ivy, 
 and held the interview with Lady Rolle. The cold, blue- 
 grey periwinkle flowers were in blossom again, and hands, 
 the grime of which Grand'mere had ever respected, were 
 rudely tearing down greenery and frame-work, while ruth- 
 less feet were trampling willfully among the plants of the 
 strange little colony of caraway, endive, and chicory with 
 which the emigrants had tried to cheat themselves into the 
 belief that their garden was a French garden. 
 
 Yolande, peeping sorrowfully out, and Avitnessing the 
 havoc, was engrossed by it, the more so that in her igno-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 369 
 
 ranee she did not feel much fear, till Grand'mere recalled 
 her. Grand'mere had seen such ruin, and worse, of which 
 this apprentice job was but the precursor. But she did not 
 wish to see it again. Besides, she had work to do ; and 
 Grand'mere's spirit had flashed up to meet the occasion. 
 She moved about in the darkened house as nimble as a girl. 
 She gathered round her in the parlor, under one pretense or 
 another, the whole camp — and how small it looked ! Staid, 
 surly Prie tossed her head a little, as she had done when 
 Mr. George from the castle ran away with Ma'mselle. Deb 
 Potts, no more than stimulated by the skirmishing she had 
 engaged in, was eager to seize the rolling-pin or the tongs 
 from the stove, in lieu of Monsieur's fowling-piece, which 
 she was forbidden to handle. Black Jasper — not so much 
 tossing his head like Prie, as staggering unsteadily under 
 the influence of a kind of Dutch courage which kept him 
 up in the mean time — was the most hysterical of the house- 
 hold. Last of all, Yolande stood sad and scornful, for she 
 w T as at the age when principles are lofty, and faith in human 
 kind has a dash of splendor, in contemplation of jealous mis- 
 understanding, vile ingratitude, and dastardly outrage. 
 
 Grand'mere took her cue, and began to speak of her own 
 old experience — the experience of her sect and nation in 
 wrong and suffering, which Madame her daughter-in-law 
 had so loved to record. She told how Madame de la Force, 
 of the haute noblesse, had been shut up for years in a com- 
 mon prison sooner than renounce her creed ; how carefully- 
 nurtured young girls of the bourgeoisie had lain festering in 
 the hold of a slave-ship bound for the Barbadoes, when a word 
 would have set them free, and restored them to their coun- 
 try and their friends ; how Judith Maingault, who had been 
 among the first Huguenot settlers in America, had subsisted 
 six months without bread, enduring hardships under which 
 strong men had fainted and fallen. Most of the company 
 had often before heard the stories, but to a different accom- 
 paniment. They had a new meaning from Grand'mere's lips 
 at this season. They caused the shouts of contumely ring- 
 ing round the Shottery Cottage to sink into a confused mur- 
 mur, or to change into something like plaudits, when Grand'- 
 mere wound up her narrative with the words — 
 
 " Yes, my children, we want an evangel for scenes like 
 these, and folk like these, more than we want one that will 
 
 Q2
 
 370 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 take in the persecutors. If a philosophy can be found to 
 serve the spiritiielle and the gracious, let them keep it. I 
 believe not in it ; but that goes for nothing. What it is 
 that I want is an evangel for one and all — silly, rude, hard- 
 ened, gross, cruel ; for, see you, though they kill me, I am 
 not so unlike them — not so blameless, noble, sage, tender — 
 that I can not claim kindred with the offenders, that I can 
 not call to mind offenses of mine which I have committed in 
 my day, little brothers and sisters of their offenses." 
 
 " Well-a-day, then, us wants such an evangel a power 
 more than you do, Madame," chimed in Deb Potts in the 
 name of the convicted listeners. 
 
 The afternoon was wearing on. Longer shadows were 
 barring the pure, sweet light falling so strangely on the big 
 men transformed into senseless, reckless children, and invest- 
 ed with a power which they abused to work mischief. 
 The question was whether the emeute would exhaust itself 
 in the trifling demonstration, or whether the taste for de- 
 struction, like the taste for blood, would increase with indul- 
 gence. There was one of those pauses of hesitation or de- 
 bate with better and manlier instincts which had character- 
 ized the tumult all along ; and the household thus marked 
 out and tormented, as they looked and saw the wasted 
 spring-garden half deserted, began to lift up their heads and 
 think their trial was past. But when a fresh band of smock- 
 frocks and towering faces hurried in on the little green 
 stage before the cottage, and a hoarser, more brutal shout 
 than any which had yet been raised, called for the old 
 witch — 
 
 " We want the old witch as bewitches all who come 
 near her, Pearson, and Pearson's daughter, and Deb Potts. 
 Han't Deb hersen said 'twere witchcraft, and her good 
 mother bade her ware of it, afore her were taken, and Deb 
 were sold under the spell? We will be bewitched next 
 oursens ; there will be ill among our beasteses ; there be't 
 already. Jack Bar's cow had a turn hinder night. Sam 
 Hart's colt flung in stable and broke his grey mare's leg. 
 Lance Gill's gander thrust his neck into a cranny on Cliff- 
 beck and were strangled. Let us see whether the old witch 
 will pretend to cure them. We wunnot abide no more of 
 her doings ; we will have her, and her stick with her, and^ 
 see whether her will sink or swim, that will we — "
 
 THE IIUGUENOT FAMILY. 3 71 
 
 Yolande threw herself before Grand'mere, and aghast 
 with impotent anger and terror clung to her, determined 
 that she herself should be seized first, and that nothing 
 should separate the two. 
 
 Prie muttered, " They do be in a frenzy," and stared trans- 
 fixed. Black Jasper gave a great womanish sob, and Deb 
 came forward towering in her height, purple with passion, 
 her teeth set desperately, " A'se go out t6 them, madam, and 
 eat my words. Dear heart, a' wull. A'se not be forbidden, 
 though they catch and duck me ower and ower. An ill tongue 
 suld be torn out by the roots, Scriptur do say ; and a' had an ill 
 tongue that day, but a' kno wed no better, as mother kuowed 
 no better. The Lord he do have forgiven her for her igno- 
 rance, so you'll forgive me, old Madam, and a'se bear my pun- 
 ishment. Nay, now, it been't by a heap so bad to go out and 
 say, ' You raging tykes, as fact as death a' leed yon time, a tell- 
 ecfa clean idle lie, that you, Ma'mselle, as took me in out of the 
 sickness, and took care o' me, and made a 'oman of me, which 
 mother owned with her last breath, and Prie that bore with 
 me, and even this blubbering, engrained thing of a man, 
 should go for to think a' were a beast goin' back to my 
 beastesness, to stand and hear my own wicked words raked 
 up agin you, and not to go out and cast them in the bil- 
 lies' teeth, and gasp out round denials of them, were vil- 
 lagers to ram the denials down the throat o' me." 
 
 "Softly, softly," said Grand'mere, in her paleness, seeking 
 to calm Deb. " No, my girl, you shall not go. Nobody 
 will put herself in peril for me. I say it, and I have been 
 accustomed to be obeyed all my life. Ah me, there are few 
 left to obey me, but you are one of the few, my Debtore, and 
 you will not stir a finger to disabuse the marauders. What 
 will you, when they accuse even a poor stick like Madame 
 Rougeole — the poor, dear Madame, who won her name by 
 the little children's beds, and with whom they were wont 
 to play ? But names are not stones, fifille, they break no 
 bones. For that matter, the revilings and the caresses are 
 alike in this respect, that one must bestow them, and one 
 must receive them, while the world lasts. 'There is one 
 who kisses, and one who extends the cheek.' Is it not 
 so?" - 
 
 Deb was forced to submit, but she was discontented and 
 restless, while whistles and vociferated demands for the
 
 372 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 old witch continued to sound under the very window. 
 In her discomfiture she flew up, fell upon Black Jasper, and 
 snubbed him severely for his disconsolate wail, and the pros- 
 tration it implied : 
 
 " Gin ye do not give ower that bellering, as is making 
 of my head split, my black babby, that we 'omen be to stand 
 round and fight for, a'se be rid of that, at least, for a'se march 
 ye out of the outer door straight." 
 
 " Oh, mercy, Miss Deb ! I can not help it," protested 
 Black jasper, wild with a new panic, " no more than you 
 can help your bad words. Forgive me, Miss Deb, that I 
 take the liberty of mentioning them, since you mentioned 
 them fust yourself, and Black Jasper allers follows where the 
 ladies leads. I ain't a-funning now, Miss Deb, I give my 
 word of honor ; and I dunnot know a bit what I'm doing 
 for the clatter of that crew. Them tears aire in my consti- 
 tootion, I s'pose. They will come — allers, aud the giggling 
 alongst with them ; though I han't much to laugh at, lawks ! 
 you knows that as well as I, 'cept it be that my own massa 
 is gone home before me, and p'r'aps he sees that I am here 
 for obeying of his massa ; and so he stoop down and say, as 
 he used to speak cheerily afore the furious, bloody battles, 
 ' Courage, Jasper. Why, you oughtn't to have been a boy 
 at all, but a girl; you aire so chicken-hearted. Still we 
 know who is true and kind, eh, lad ? It will all be over 
 soon, and the day is ours.' Cap'n Philip may stoop to say 
 that when they're tearing down the house about our ears ; 
 and then I'll hold my puffing and panting, though my liver 
 is white, as the whole rectory kitchen says — queer that, 
 Miss Deb, when the rest of me is black. I'll stretch a pint 
 and make out to answer, ' Look here, Cap'n Philip : though 
 I was chicken-hearted, I han't ever failed you, have I? or 
 your massa, or the old lady, not when I could sarve you. 
 So you go quick, Cap'n Philip, and report me to the Gen'r'l.' 
 I'll be precious spent with the fit, Miss Deb, if I don't make 
 out to say that much." 
 
 " Tout doucement" Grand'mere, who had been silent and 
 thoughtful, had to say again. " It is necessary that a house 
 be not divided against itself either in peace or in war. Valid 
 you had your own faults to answer for a few minutes ago, 
 my brave Deb. Leave the boy alone. And you, my gay, 
 who were the willing, quaking messenger of Monsieur the
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 373 
 
 Pastor, who does not know what the quakes say ? Go ! I 
 have another halm for your woes aud your quarrels, though 
 I am not a witch. On the contrary, I have read this in my 
 Bible ; and since it is for reading my Bible that I am in 
 this England, it is good that I remember its least little les- 
 son. Not true? After a great saint and apostle, Paul, 
 with his fellow-voyagers, had been exceedingly tossed by a 
 tempest during many days, he besought his companions 
 that they should take meat, assuring them that not a hair 
 should fall from the head of any one of them. Let us also 
 break bread and hope in God. But you are young, my 
 children and I am old — old even by comparison with Big 
 Prie ; for I was an anxious woman when she lay smiling in her 
 cradle. There is one advantage which the grey-headed can 
 claim — they have fasted from so many things in their lives, 
 that their sluggish blood and feeble pulses need less renew- 
 ing than the swift stream in the throbbing veins which 
 nourish the black and brown heads that are still erect and 
 stately. Hein, Prie, think of something more available 
 than the madness of the world. Return thanks for your 
 pot-d-feic, my fine woman, when your wits and all in the 
 cuisine have gone a wool-gathering. I shall watch a little 
 longer here while the rest of the troop, every one, and Yo- 
 lande, the first in order, show the example, and go to the 
 kitchen at the back of the house, out of the sound of the din, 
 and sup the bouillon as so many hungry children. I will 
 have it so. I have told you I am always obeyed, and no- 
 body is to begin contradicting me now. What can happen to 
 me ? You are all within hearing. I do not dote ; I am 
 not infirm ; but a capable old woman of my years, the good 
 God be praised for it! I will not be watched or guarded. 
 Chut ! It is not polite — it is an intrusion, when you know 
 as well as I that the blessed oaken shutters would keep out 
 a cannon-ball. Leave me to my own thoughts ; they and I 
 are not so ill-acquainted that I should feel shy of being left 
 alone with them.'' 
 
 But eager as Grand'mere showed herself to dismiss her 
 circle for rest ami refreshment, however slight, Bhe had a 
 special word to say to each in the act. "My Lame," she 
 detained Prie a moment, " often have you served the bouil- 
 lon for me; you would have gone hungry yourself, mUU 
 fbt8 t that it might be strong and rich tor me, as I taught
 
 3f 4 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 you to make it, and the omelettes en chemise, and the frotte- 
 ment and the cirage of the floors ; I taught you them all. 
 Oh, del ! they were happy lessons these, and one of them 
 will refresh your own heart to-day, and you will live long 
 yet to refresh others. Why, Prie, you are a young girl to 
 me, and I shall leave you in charge of Yolande one of these 
 days. — My Deb" — Grand'mere caught up the remorseful 
 Deb — " my Deb with the tongue — it is a savage beast, that 
 tongue, which no man can tame. Nevertheless, the fear of 
 God in a good heart will tame it. — My boy, fear must not 
 master us, for whether white or black, we have one Master, 
 even Christ, so it is we who ought to master fear, whether 
 it be a sin or a weakness, for He cai-ries both our trans- 
 gressions and our infirmities. — Yolandette," Grand'mere 
 turned wistfully, " you do not grudge that you have let 
 father and mother go unhurt and stayed with me, to meet 
 the retribution? Grudge it never, petite — take it for your 
 consolation. It is nearly over now." 
 
 Left alone, Grand'mere remained perfectly still for a few 
 moments, with nothing save her lips moving. Then she 
 began to peep out into the garden and to listen, as she 
 herself would have said, like a lynx, with her head turned 
 toward the back of the cottage and the kitchen. At last 
 she heard the sound she waited for. She got up quietly, 
 and took Madame Rougeole. " They shall have the old 
 witch, Madame and all," she said to herself. " Madame 
 Rougeole was my mother's. These carved, red-headed 
 sticks wei*e the fashion in her province. Madame Rou- 
 geole, in her little coral dress, has been in our family for 
 generations. But the people will not be defrauded of her 
 that the children may go free — they would not long go 
 free otherwise. I spied a ladder and an axe deposited at 
 the corner of the house. My old eyes arc quick to discern 
 such tools ; and they may well be so, for they early learned 
 the look of them, and we return always to our first fear as 
 to our first love. It is better that Madame Rougeole should 
 go with me, for if it come to the worst, the sight of her 
 would only torture Yolandette's poor broken heart. My 
 God, bind up this broken heart ; bid these stones rise up 
 and be friends to her; be Thou her friend, and she will 
 want no other." 
 
 Grand'mere was making her preparations all the time
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 375 
 
 that she thus murmured to herself and to her God. When 
 they were finished, she stole past the passage which led to 
 the* kitchen, and by the withdrawal of a bolt, slipped out 
 into a small out-building attached to the cottage. In it 
 she found an old duflie cloak belonging to Prie, and, on the 
 spur of the moment, put it on, hood and all. It was much 
 too large for her, and she had to gather it round her, and 
 hold it up like a beggar in a cast garment that had not 
 been made to fit heiC But for that reason it was the more 
 appropriate for her purpose, and muffled her more com- 
 pletely. There was no back entrance from the street, back 
 entrances being among the superfluities of the age. She 
 must make her way out by the one little yawning gate-way 
 from the garden, if she was determined to break the rec- 
 tor's prohibition. She did mean this, and she had availed 
 herself of the moment when the foes were clustered like 
 bees hi the porch, those who remained without being strag- 
 glers engaged in putting the last touch to the demolition 
 of the young plum and peach trees already powdered with 
 blossom. If she moved quickly in the shadow of the wall, 
 and did not stop for breath, or falter and look back, she 
 might slip out when all heads were turned in an opposite di- 
 rection, and get fused and melted among other grey cloaks 
 worn by hangers-on on the outskirts hi the village streets. 
 
 The bravedd woman accomplished her end, and found 
 herself, unsuspected, among the motley smock-frocks, tat- 
 tered aprons, and disreputable false sailors' jackets. What 
 refuge should she aim at? The rectory? It was at the 
 other end of the village, and she could not hope to pass so 
 far without being remarked upon, accosted, and detected. 
 And she would carry a fire-brand to the rectory in the ab- 
 sence of its master, while she would be leaving so many 
 sheep — her own sheep — among the wolves. Nay, she had 
 not quitted her own household in ruins to carry ruin to 
 another ; she had not deceived her people and l olande, 
 and broken faith with them, for such an end. She had not 
 so learned motherhood, Huguenotism, and Christianity. 
 She made for the ale-house itself 
 
 "If I give myself up," Grand'mere reasoned, "the vil- 
 lagers will span' my child and my servant-. At least there 
 will be delay; and the pastor will return with forces in 
 time to save them. If I give myself up, the villager- may
 
 376 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 relent, and think what have I done to make them hate me 
 so. If not, it is but the pouring out of the last drop of a 
 mortal life from which the flavor is gone, since my son was 
 compelled to leave me. And it is to ransom my darling, 
 though it break her tender heart to begin with." 
 
 Happily Grand'mere knew thoroughly every step of the 
 littered way, every bend that it took past sluttish sodden 
 cottages, every ascent to manure heaps, and descent to 
 draw-wells ; her old feet could have trodden it comfortably 
 had she been blindfolded. The hubbub and confusion of 
 the unusual concourse were in her favor, for while on any 
 ordinary occasion she could not have traversed the same 
 distance on a spring afternoon without being remarked as 
 a stranger in her old cloak, as it was, she was sufficiently 
 mistress of herself to abstain from any act hi flagrant dis- 
 cord with her general appearance. She took a circuit of 
 Deb Potts's mother's house, and other hovels where she 
 had fought the Sedge Pond sore throat, and at length ar- 
 rived opposite the overgrown blooming red-brick building, 
 Avith every avenue thrown wide open. Skittle-ground, 
 bowling-green, and cockpit were deserted on this day, with 
 its first promise of summer. The objects to be seen at the 
 end of the outlets were sloppy tables, surrounded with 
 lolling, loud-tongued men, scarcely less hot, and consumed 
 by their own heat, than the great blazing fires which light- 
 ed up each brown room, and flickered fantastically on the 
 faces of each company of besotted conspirators. 
 
 Grand'mere was looking about for a side door by which 
 she had entered Avhen she had on a former occasion visited 
 the ale-house. She stood still, for the first time doubtful 
 where to go, but not without taking the precaution to 
 draw herself away into the shelter of the beech hedge of 
 the forsaken skittle-ground, when a hand was laid on her 
 cloak from behind. 
 
 She gave a great start at the arresting touch, followed 
 by a greater start, and then an audible misericorde / but 
 there was none to hear her save the arrester. 
 
 It was Tolande, who, quick to penetrate Grand'mei-e's 
 plot, had run at her kinswoman's heels with only the dark 
 skirt of her gown drawn over her head to hide her identity. 
 Grave and pale, Yolande flushed like a child, almost exult- 
 ant at not having been left behind and outdone.
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 377 
 
 " You could not cheat me, you could not get away from 
 me, Grand'mere. What should I have said to my father 
 and my mother if you had gone without me ? Bah ! I am 
 your young recruit, ma jn&re, whom you enlisted an age 
 ago, and what have I done that you should try to get rid 
 of me ? — that you should think me a %)oltronne to hold back 
 when you lead the way ?" 
 
 For once in her life Grand'mere wrung her hands at the 
 disobedience of Yolande. 
 
 " What is it that you have done, unfortunate one ? Is 
 there to be no young hostage recovered from the wreck for 
 the poor fugitives who were persuaded to go ? My heart 
 bleeds for them, for Hubert, for Philippine." 
 
 But even while Grand'mere spoke, it became evident 
 that remonstrance and return were too late for Yolande. 
 An indefinite intuition, a vague doubt was working itself 
 into a certainty, and changing into the muttering of baffled 
 exasperation. There would be no farther protraction of 
 the business, or any lingering for dusk to veil the cruelty 
 and shame of its completion. Pricked on, feet and hands 
 would plant the ladder and wield the axe in the provoca- 
 tion of the revenge which was to have been so sweet — the 
 perpetrators feeling that, in their clumsy tardiness, revenge 
 and prey were alike slipping through their fingers. There 
 would be brief bandying of rough words with the women- 
 servants and Black Jasper, ere the three were gagged and 
 tied to buffet and bed-post, with the doors double locked 
 upon them, and the full stream of the riot surging on the 
 track of Grand'mere and Yolande. 
 
 "I meant to give an old, travel-stained, worn-out offer- 
 ing," confessed Grand'mere; "but it was not worthy, there 
 must be another — the best we have to present of the youth 
 and the flower of the stock. I thought to buy life for my 
 child, but God says, 'No, it must be death,' for that is 
 purer and sweeter with an immortal purity and Bweetness, 
 and God knows best. Ah! well, Folande, we will go in 
 and announce ourselves and deliver ourselves together. 
 There is one thing, see you, we will purge those floors for- 
 ever of their rude grossness; they will nut have the heart 
 for it, they will have the fear of it, after the glory of what 
 we will do."
 
 378 THE 1IUGUEN0T FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 SEDGE POND'S LOVE TO GEAND'mEEE. 
 
 The turmoil in the village street was concentrated in 
 the passages of the ale-house. The motliest parties of 
 -women, as well as of men, were tugging and tearing their 
 way there. But even there, opportune little lanes opened 
 occasionally. Taking one of these at the moment it pre- 
 sented itself, Grand'mere and Yolande, half walking and 
 half borne on by the pressure around them, struggled up 
 the very centre of the kitchen before their entrance was 
 called in question. 
 
 "Messieurs," said Grand'mere, suddenly, in quavering 
 but gallant accents, which broke like a thunder-clap 
 through the brawling and blustering of the conspirators, 
 " hei'e I - am, and my granddaughter Yolande, and my 
 stick, as you sought. It is better that I should come into 
 the midst of you of my own will, than that you should bat- 
 ter the Shottery Cottage to the ground, to the anger of my 
 lady and the loss of a new tenant, and only have my body, 
 after all, like that of a crushed rat from under the stones. 
 Here I am, to give an account of myself, with all that in- 
 timately belongs to me ; for you would not abuse your- 
 selves to punish the poor domestics, your own country- 
 women, the lacquey of Monsieur, your rector. What is 
 your will, my friends, who call yourselves my enemies ?" 
 
 Silence followed Grand'mere's appeal, broken but by the 
 rattling of mugs and cans, as foot nudged foot, and elbow 
 jogged elbow, and by the rustling of shagged heads, and 
 nodding of flushed faces, and the blast of many breaths 
 dra wn simultaneously. 
 
 " Dickens," even Master Swinfen, the bragging, unscru- 
 pulous landlord, found nothing farther to splutter out 
 " who'd e'er ha'e thought it? What can ha'e brought the 
 women here, unless they knowed that I'd like no hand laid 
 on them on the premises? It aint in my power to say 
 more ; but I shan't go for to offer them seats."
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 379 
 
 "They've knowed that you'd not like no wiolence in 
 the house, Mat" — his wife stuck out her scraggy neck, and 
 distilled her drops of vinegar. " They seek to som on 
 your protection, the cunning Jews ; but they've' been a-long 
 of coming, they and the whole race of them — tell 'em that." 
 
 "Nay, now," what a speerit be in the witch," burst out 
 a countryman, in sheer extremity of wonder, " to think 
 she be a'dame like another, and as old as Grandmother ! 
 The speerit of Sarten hissen mun be in her." 
 
 " Go !" Grand'mere answered the observation with quick 
 wit. " I show you your yellow beak. You read your 
 Scriptures ill. ' Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,' 
 your Scriptures say — is it not so ? On the contrary, you 
 have resisted me, and behold I am come among you." 
 
 As yet no hand had been put on Grand'mere and 
 Yolancle, and no challenge addressed to them. It seemed 
 as if this boldness and innocence would, by a master-stroke 
 of daring and confidence, disarm their antagonists, and win 
 the day. 
 
 Grand'mere thought so, and her Gallic spirit rose high- 
 er, and her Gallic tongue shaped its words anew into 
 ready, shrewd, epigrammatic sentences, not suspecting that 
 they were so many pearls of speech cast before swine. 
 " But why have you gone to surround me, messieurs, my 
 friends? What is it that you have to say to me? It is 
 necessary that I do not tap my mule in vain. Let us clear 
 up the difference — let us examine into the ground of dis- 
 pute. Here I am, waiting, dying of the wish and the hope 
 to remove it — pack it up, and send it away across the 
 seas. We may dispense with the four beggars of conver- 
 sation — the wind, the rain, the sun, the moon — in such cir- 
 cumstances, and strike to the heart of the matter at once. 
 What have I done ?" 
 
 "What ha'e ye not done?" the growl arose, as the swine 
 turned upon her to rend her, in that deceptive slowness of 
 thought, ami speech, and action, which first crawled, and 
 then leaped, at their conclusion — " You and the man of you 
 ha'e used us as decoys and blinds — ha'e robbed and abused 
 us. Where be bur king's bounty, that ye ha'e battened 
 on with your courts and stews, your coaches, your bro- 
 cards, and taffities, while we and the loikes of we ha'e been 
 morling and starving on gi-oats and in drugget? Good
 
 380 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 enough for the loikcs of we, my measters ; while furrin 
 trash, as could never meet us in fair fight, were a-riding 
 ower our heads, and a-kicking up their heels, and a-mock- 
 ing of us ! And that were not all ; but ye niun poke and 
 worm into our willage, and castle, and rectory — nobbut our 
 pig-stys, and larn all we ha'e and all we do for to tell 
 tales to base adventurers, loike your sons and swag- 
 gering land and sea captains. And as that were not all, 
 neither, and more by a deal than honest flesh and blood 
 could stand, but ye niun seek to pizen and play your can- 
 trips on us and on our beasteses with your possets and 
 your plaisters, and your cussed wags and winks." 
 
 With each additional charge, the clenched hands rang 
 louder on the table ; the eyes, as they stared at Grand'- 
 mere and Yolande, widened and widened, until the speak- 
 ers half rose, bent and swayed nearer to the two women. 
 
 Grand'mere looked from one blinded, besotted face to 
 another, completely taken aback. " Do you believe this ?" 
 she remonstrated at last. "Me who wished only to do 
 you good ? I swear it. But how I have deceived my- 
 self!" Her words were unheard, unheeded. There was a 
 rush, a sweep of hulking giants, muddled with beer, fired 
 with gin, smarting under the galling burden of huge wrong, 
 villi which they had loaded themselves. If some of their 
 own number had not stumbled and tripped up others, they 
 would have borne down Grand'mere and Yolande, and 
 trodden them under their iron heels on the spot. There 
 was a scuffle, a shriek, but there was time to think of 
 treating Grand'mere and Yolande in the orthodox fash- 
 ion. "Drive 'em alongst the street where they flaunted, 
 drive 'em loike the cattle they be, pluck their borrowed 
 plumes off their false backs, duck 'em among the newt 
 and the fish they arc so fond on, in their own stew — an 
 old harridan — a dulciny — hussies — thieves — traitors — 
 furriners !" 
 
 Grand'mere and Yolande were caught, hustled, and 
 dragged toward the door. Master Swinfen interposed no 
 farther to keep the peace than to call out in hypocritical 
 solemnity, "I takes all good people to witness that them 
 French Madames came into this here house will he,nillhe, 
 and that they depart without thanks to me for their dis- 
 missal."
 
 THE UL'GUEXOT FAMILY. 381 
 
 " Amen," responded Mistress Swinfen officiously, in the 
 character of a clerk. 
 
 Grand'mere prayed one imploring prayer to her perse- 
 cutors, " Are there no fathers and mothers here to have 
 pity on a young girl? You men and women, whose 
 daughters I — yes, I saved you — is there not one to save my 
 child ?" 
 
 And Yolande, in an agony, urged in ttirn, " Spare 
 Grand'mere — the grey-headed woman. We go with you, 
 we do not think to refuse, hut force her not to move so 
 fast, she can not walk like that. Have you no old women 
 of your own ? Think you not to grow old yourselves, the 
 youngest and strongest of you?" 
 
 There was no retreating. There were only taunts of 
 " Where he your own man, your Mounseer, the plunderer, 
 smuggler, gallows-hird, as cut and run and left you to 
 your deserts? — sure he knew your price. Where he his 
 honor Master Lushington, and his worship Master Hoad- 
 ley, as you beguiled for a season, and my lady's son, and 
 Master George, and the rectory family, as you had de- 
 bauched an' you could ? Your grand friends bad as lief 
 not be by, the day." The rough ribaldry of the men was 
 hideously travestied by the women and the children. If 
 there were any of the inhabitants of Sedge Pond who 
 thought better of what the devil had tempted them to, 
 and drew back into their houses, and looked out scared 
 and horrified at the extent of their outrage, they were too 
 late to do any good by their change of mind, and they 
 shrank from the odium of expressing the change. 
 
 The two women spoke no more, save to each other. 
 
 "The gutter is low, Yolande, but Heaven is high." 
 
 "Yes, Grand'mere, it is very high — would that it were 
 not so high !" 
 
 "It will soon be near, poor petite," 
 
 They prayed no more, save to Him who can hear in the 
 roar of the street rabble as in the peace of the best oratory 
 on a mountain side — among ruthless assailants as among 
 rapt fellow-worshipers. 
 
 After all, it was only the mobbing, or, at the worst, the 
 ducking of two Huguenot women, left behind by their nat- 
 ural protector, about the time when prime ministers — 
 Lord North for one — were rolled in the London mud.
 
 382 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 There was nothing grand, lurid, or ghastly, hardly any 
 thing picturesque, in the crime and its accessories. The 
 squalid village street, the stupid, besotted smock-frocks, with 
 the individual figures of Grand'mere and Yolande soon lost 
 in the mass, and over all the quiet, pale, misty English 
 light, made up the picture. The whole affair was like one 
 of those commonplace, e very-day, drudging lives, which we 
 have all along slighted, till a test is suddenly applied, and 
 we start back self-condemned, self-abased, and a little 
 awed, because we had been so near holy ground, and did 
 not so much as guess it. For what we called common- 
 place and every-day — that was our humanity, the drudgery 
 was devotion, and the unobtrusive stillness and cool color- 
 ing were as the effect of the moon's rays when it calms and 
 tones down, as well as purifies and glorifies the loud, 
 glaring earth. And the test which opened our sealed eyes 
 was the unexpected ending of the unvalued lives, the 
 deaths endured steadfastly, and for duty's sake. 
 
 And, alas ! though Yolande could make the stormy prog- 
 ress, and hold the young life which still abounded in its 
 strength within her, the old life, which had come through 
 much, and borne a brave and bright front to this day, was 
 running out and sinking low, by the time she was pulled, 
 jostled, and thrust back to Shottery Cottage, its entrance 
 gatelcss now, its garden spoiled, and its pond a pool. 
 
 Hours before all this, the rector had ridden to the Mall 
 and found that the young squire had gone on business to 
 Reedham, where he followed, and overtook Mr. Gage in 
 the market-place. 
 
 " I have been across to the Mall to see you, squire," an- 
 nounced the rector. 
 
 And Caleb expressed his regret at having missed the 
 visit, wondering in his private mind to what cause he 
 should attribute the honor of so special a call. 
 
 "I must have your concurrence to get a detachment of 
 yeomen to gallop over to Sedge Pond. The village is in 
 an uproar, and I am no longer able to bring the country 
 people to reason single-handed," proceeded the rector. 
 
 The season for burning ricks was not come, but an in- 
 disl incl v ision of doggedly local frays between village and 
 village presented itself to Caleb Gage's imagination, and 
 he thought of his father's object in life, and the power of
 
 TUB HUGUENOT FAMILY. 383 
 
 his nieniory in these parts, and fancied the remedy dis- 
 proportionate to the evil. He was inclined to try other 
 means and personal venture before proceeding to desperate 
 blood-letting and putting hi irons. 
 
 " Had we not better ride over together, and try a little 
 expostulation first? If we give the wild set a little 
 time to cool down, and not come so hard and fast upon 
 them, would it not be better ?" suggested the young man. 
 
 " I don't know what you call coming hard and fast upon 
 them, sir, or how much time you mean to give to a wild 
 set to wreak then- heathen savageness," protested the rec- 
 tor in bitter impatience, as he recalled his own .delusion of 
 saying "back" to the flood of ignorant prejudice and in- 
 temperate rage, and expecting to see the proud waves re- 
 cede at his bidding before his prouder eyes. "They are 
 my parishioners, and I should know them. If we do not 
 look sharp, I tell you, a pack of curs will worry and throt- 
 tle a few harmless sheep in the person of the fine old 
 French Madame and her family." 
 
 The rector had no farther need to stir up his hearer. 
 The words sent Caleb Gage, the whiter and sterner of the 
 two, to demand the yeomen to be put under the command 
 of the rector and him. Nay, Caleb Gage did not wish to 
 wait for the astonished farmers and clothworkers to put 
 themselves into their accoutrements, so that they might 
 start with their jingling spurs and ringing bridles — he 
 would have gone off like the wind himself to cope with the 
 mob alone. It was all that the rector could do to detain 
 his coadjutor under assurances of the comparative immu- 
 nity of Grand'mere and her household within Shottery 
 Cottage till night-fall. The rector wanted the weight of 
 the squire of the Mall's support to stimulate the zeal of the 
 patriotic yeomen now called out to redress a public wrong, 
 for this was no case of smashed machinery and invaded 
 barns — with which native clothworkers and farmers could 
 mutually sympathize. It was a mere brush at a nest of 
 rascally foreigners, who had already conic under the ban 
 of the government ; so that these English beef-eaters, half 
 informed and hugely indifferent, would have been quite 
 inclined to leave the Sedge Pond villagers to finish their 
 work without any troublesome interference on their part. 
 What helped the rector was that the question was not •
 
 384 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 of marauders who might be left to defend themselves, but 
 of a handful of women ; and though British gorges could 
 swallow a good deal in the shape of devastation where 
 foreigners were concerned, the most bull-headed among 
 them revolted at this mean morsel. 
 
 Toward sunset, while the low beams of the sun still fell 
 broad on Sedge Pond, the rector and Caleb Gage, with 
 their company of yeomen, clattered into the empty street. 
 The normal state of the village was so sluttish and squalid 
 that no additional mark of ill-doing and disorder made 
 much impression upon it. But the vacation of the place 
 even by women and children was suspicious. "There is 
 some mischief afloat at the jcottage," cried the rector, 
 excitedly, while Caleb Gage's pale face flushed fiery red, 
 " but it is impossible they can have gone to extremity." 
 The gap where the garden gate had stood was discovered 
 the moment the force came in sight of the Shottery Cot- 
 tage, but the cottage itself, save for its shattered windows 
 and closed shutters, which the rector had seen in the 
 morning, presented no change and offered no sign. If the 
 convulsive sobs of Black Jasper, the gushing sighs and the 
 hollow groans of Prie, and the denunciations and vocifera- 
 tions of Deb to be let out to eat her words and fight fran- 
 tically for her old Madame and her young Ma'mselle, were 
 resounding within the walls, they did not reach the ears 
 of the coming rescuers. 
 
 But when the riders looked over the garden wall, they 
 s;i\\ r a repulsive sight enough. The little garden lay 
 before them swarming with smock-frocks, not pressing 
 toward the house, but standing round the fish-pond. Its 
 stone margin Avas shattered, its waters troubled, and it 
 was covered with circles and bells of foam. The crowd 
 was startled by the measured beat of the horses' feet. 
 The clink and clash of the riders' arms were sounds not 
 totally unfamiliar. Some of the countrymen present had 
 beard the ominous interlude when the smoke from the 
 smouldering cocks of hay and sheaves of corn was pollut- 
 ing the fresh fields. The gang, actors and spectators, 
 Btopped the occupation on which they had been intent, 
 and presented to the yeomen and their leaders a small sea 
 of rabid faces. But the foremost figures did not* let go 
 their two prisoners. Two women, with their clothes torn
 
 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 385 
 
 and dripping, were seen standing and sinking down in the 
 mud. Murder might, ere now, have been committed on 
 the principal offender, if one fierce and stalwart man had 
 taken upon him the execution of the deed. But when a 
 crowd of delirious men tried it all at once, so that the 
 criminal, whose venerable, feeble limbs had bent so often 
 to her God, and to no other, had to go down several times 
 into the water to receive her last baptism of humiliation 
 and death, the business was neither so mercifully brief nor 
 thorough. 
 
 Caleb Gage at once sprang from his horse, but the rec- 
 tor sat at the head of his yeomen and waved his hand, 
 delivering his orders, " Let go these ladies ; stop this work, 
 I say, or, as sure as I am a man of peace, and an ordained 
 priest, and you the barbarians I have been accustomed to 
 call my people, the yeomen behind me shall ride in and 
 cut down every man of you!" 
 
 The scum of the Sedge Pond villagers were as far from 
 cowards as from saints. But the instinctive shrinking of 
 all disorderly masses, from any thing like a trained band, 
 governed by law and duty, soon showed itself. The 
 square towers of yeomen, sitting there, with frowning 
 brows under their helmets, and their hands clenched in 
 their gauntlets, when they were brought to close quarter 
 with so villainous a job as this, held the sway of masters 
 over laborers. 
 
 The smock-frocks fell back a little with a grim, surly 
 awkwardness of concession ; their staring, blood-shot eyes 
 blinking uneasily at the speaker. But before the people 
 could do more, before the piercing cry of Yolande, " Mon- 
 sieur Caleb ! Caleb Gage ! for my sake, save Grand'mere !" 
 could reach Caleb, Grand'mere herself had heard the voice 
 of a friend, and raising herself on the arms of her jailers 
 and executioners, who were forced to hold her still that 
 she might slide to the ground, announced eagerly in 
 accents audible enough for those around her to hear, 
 "Monsieur the rector, I am here, neither killed nor wound- 
 ed ; slay nobody for me." 
 
 They were the last coherent words which Grand'mere 
 ever spoke, she fell back after the efforl and sank into 
 unconsciousness. Her strength ebbed rapidly away during 
 the hours that she survived, notwithstanding that help of 
 
 R
 
 386 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 every sort was at hand. All that remorseful pity and ten- 
 derness, all that friendship and devotion, could do, was 
 done. Carried into her own house, laid on her home bed, 
 she was lovingly waited on by her people and her child. 
 The leech-craft of a country clergyman like the rector and 
 a young squire, bred as Caleb Gage had been, was at her 
 service. The old squire's friend, the good Reedham doc- 
 tor, who liked to attend by the sick-beds of the Methodists 
 because they died well, was brought over, but he could 
 only shake his head and say that he could do nothing. A 
 mighty deal more than he could do had been done for so 
 brave and sweet a martyr. Madam from the rectory 
 came to watch by her, and Milly and Dolly Rolle to weep 
 their eyes out for her ; and Mr. Iloadley was here too, the 
 great tears diminishing the light of his own big black eyes, 
 with the injunction, " Weep not for the blessed dead, but 
 the miserable living," on his tongue. The old Frenchwom- 
 an in her last moments was looked on with more yearn- 
 ing and reverence than any lady or queen could have 
 been, notwithstanding that she died of the maltreatment 
 dealt to the lowest of her kind, and awarded to her by the 
 men and women among whom she had dwelt, and whom 
 she had served with her best. 
 
 After sense was gone, and while speech remained, 
 Grand'mere rambled characteristically. Now her imagi- 
 nation was full of one of the great hunts in her native for- 
 ests, and of the halili resounding through the glades for a 
 royal boar. Again she was comforting her son for her 
 fate, " I suffered it with all my heart for you, Hubert ; only 
 be you ready for me." Then she was recalling and sum- 
 ming up promise after promise to which she had clung, 
 and as if they had never failed her — an escape from the 
 windy storm and tempest, a tabernacle to be hidden in 
 from the strife of tongues, the hills to which she would lift 
 her eyes and from whence should come her aid. Grand'- 
 m6re's last words were to Yolande, " But, paumette, it is 
 well — w T ait."
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 387 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 MEN'S WATS AND GOD'S WAYS. 
 
 Every body was sorry for Yolande. Every body was 
 good to her. It was as if the electricity long latent in a 
 sultry atmosphere had exhausted itself in a great storm, 
 and the air was not only clear and fresh at last, but the 
 sun, and the south wind, and the soft rain were all fain to 
 lift up, refresh, and restore the beaten-down, broken herb- 
 age. It was as if the world had suddenly become aware 
 of a great debt incumbent on it to pay, and Yolande the 
 sole creditor — a great amends to make, and she the only 
 receiver. 
 
 True, there were hulking, creeping figures of men and 
 women, who turned into their houses, and skulked behind 
 their doors in the summer sunshine, when Yolande passed 
 along. There were men and women who removed from 
 Sedge Pond, and betook themselves to other localities, un- 
 able to bear the silent reproach of the simple presence of 
 one who was more forlorn than an orphan among them. 
 And these whilom villagers, carrying their consciences full 
 of perilous stuff, went from bad to worse, and waxed rep- 
 robate. But, as a rule, the remorse of Sedge Pond for the 
 consummation of wrong to the Dupuys, took the turn of 
 repentance. 
 
 " Nay, them weren't so bad as they were called, not by 
 along chalk," the village worthies assured each other, lirst 
 sneakingly and then boldly, with rueful shakes of the head 
 and compunctious groans. "They wouldn'1 ha'e been so 
 game when they came to be mauled. We're tree to bet 
 they be of the right sort as h:is that kind of might of pa- 
 tience — ne'er a squale nor a curse atween the two. Nay, 
 but eh ! Lord ! her as was done for bath' Pearson hold yeo- 
 men's Bwords. Heard ye that, lads? And it were gospel 
 that her were cruel kind to we in the sickness Long Bince. 
 How could we go to try what we did? We oughl to be 
 black ashamed of ourselves, forever and a day ;" and deep
 
 38S THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 shame, softened by a wish to do better, broke the hard 
 hearts of the villagers. 
 
 The old autocracy of the ale-house came rapidly down, 
 until the ale-house itself reformed, and its worst features 
 were blotted out by universal consent. 
 
 AVith the family at the rectory Yolande in her desolation 
 found a temporary shelter, and Madam coddled her as a 
 child of her own ; for Grand'mere had been good to 
 Madam's Milly in her trouble, the Milly who had come well 
 through it all, and was soon to be the honored wife of a 
 young clergyman. The couple were preparing to set up 
 house together at the Corner Farm, and would fain have 
 begged, borrowed, or stolen Yolande as a guest, to whom 
 hospitality was a sacred duty, and the entertainment of 
 whom would bring a blessing with it ; while the squire of 
 the Mall would have given his life to have afforded her 
 another and a lasting refuge. And seeing that Milly and 
 Mr. Hoadley were showing other young people so good an 
 example, it did not seem as if it would have been unnatural 
 or unbecoming in the circumstances, had Yolande Dupuy, 
 submitting to what were at last the well-known and ac- 
 credited wishes of the squire, laid aside her mourning, for 
 one day, and made one visit to the Sedge Pond church, 
 thus providing two sweet and serious-minded brides in- 
 stead of one. In this case it was judged correctly that 
 Monsieur and Madame, from their remote Huguenot refuge 
 in the Americas, compelled as they were to bow to the 
 most terrible blow which could have befallen them, would 
 acquiesce thankfully in the completion of the settlement 
 which Grand'mere had herself proposed for her child. 
 
 Prie and Deb, persuaded that they had received a last 
 commission to this effect from Grand'mere, were proposing 
 to follow Yolande's fortunes wherever her wandering foot- 
 steps might lead her. Even Black Jasper, holding always 
 his main duty to the rectory family, hovered, like a mem- 
 ber of Yolande's staff — far from unattached in the sense 
 of the affections — round the grandchild of the beautiful 
 old lady who had noticed him and been kind to him, and 
 a\ hose name he could no more mention without a copious 
 effusion of grateful and enthusiastic tears, than he could 
 mention thai of Captain Philip without the characteristic 
 tribute. And there was this other point of union between
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 389 
 
 Black Jasper and Tolande, that while the soft fellow had 
 picked up an acquired taste for a quality at the moral an- 
 tipodes to his own — the severe criticism of Deb Potts — he 
 had at the same time an immense sympathy with Ma'mselle, 
 whom he regarded as under a perpetual exposure to this 
 rasping, ruffling influence. 
 
 Yolande was made more of than she had ever been be- 
 fore. The very weather petted her, for the tardy, fitful 
 spring burst into a serenely beautiful summer, with a ra- 
 diance and exuberance tempered as if to meet the needs of 
 aching hearts and weary eyes. Yet, underlying all the 
 loving-kindness which God and man lavished upon her, 
 there was a piteousness, which Yolande put away from her 
 sometimes, wringing her hands because it only gave her a 
 deeper realization, a fuller comprehension of the extent of 
 her loss. 
 
 " Oh ! my friends, do not have such pity for me ! Xeg- 
 lect, thwart, blame me as formerly, and then I shall not, 
 on all sides, in every beating of my heart, feel that Grand'- 
 mere is gone forever from this world. You are very good, 
 but none of you, nor the earth, nor the sky, is Grand'mere. 
 Yes, I know it well, she is a glorified spirit ; but I — I am, 
 and maybe for as long a time as she was in the body, only 
 a poor, weak, sinful, mortal woman. I did every thing with 
 Grand'mere — I was always with Grand'mere. You can 
 not think, you good people, who live simply for God and 
 your fellow-creatures, and are otherwise sen-sufficing and 
 independent, or who have your hearts spread over many 
 friends — how I shiver in my loneliness, and shriek in my 
 mutilation, even though He be with us in His grace alway 
 to the end of the world." 
 
 Yes, Yolande needed every solace to bring her back to 
 life, for was she not bereft indeed ? It bcl< mged I < i her na- 
 ture that in the comparative negation of a French girl's 
 personality, she had been bound up in Grand'mere — that. 
 she had lived a dual and not a single life — that in almosl 
 every thing she had been associated and identified with 
 the noble and sweet old woman who was gone to kindred 
 spirits; and that not even her attachment to Caleh Gage, 
 visionary and romantic as it had been, had broken the 
 union. Therefore, though 5Tolande was godly, reverent, 
 true, tender, a fair scholar in Grand'mere's school of meek-
 
 390 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 ness, and a daughter and heiress of Grand'mere's in the 
 gii't of wide sympathy and inexhaustible hopefulness, she 
 could not help feeling as if part of her nature was at once 
 buried in the earth and flown to the skies — as if there was 
 a yawning chasm always open before her feet, with the 
 blue distance a complete blank. She sickened in spirit, 
 and drooped in heart and mind, and wore black in soul as 
 well as in body for the earthly, human deprivation of 
 Grand'niere until her friends feared for her, that she would 
 not recover from the blow and loss, but would wither un- 
 der them, if not die, a martyr to natural affection, which is 
 liable to weakness and morbidness in its anguish, for the 
 very reason that it is less than divine ; and so men, not 
 God (thank Heaven, never God!), call it idolatry. 
 
 " After all that has been said, to make no farther way — 
 it is very disheartening. I declare, I am afraid it is a bad 
 job." 
 
 "Then, sir, I conclude you think I had better give it 
 up ?" 
 
 The speakers were the rector and Squire Gage, who had 
 fraternized to such an extent lately, that the rector had 
 just arrested the squire, a little against his will, on his 
 road to the rectory, and set him down at the table which, 
 in line weather, stood over against the holly-hedge, where 
 the rector was wont to smoke his afternoon pipe, and drink 
 his glass of claret or Madeira, and study his fortnightly 
 newspaper and his correspondence. And here Madam 
 would bring her fine stitching, and be informed and en- 
 lightened by her lord and master on whatever matters of 
 public or parish interest he should judge to be within her 
 capacity. This was the age for men reading to women; 
 and whatever ideas, outside the women's private experi- 
 ence, gol into their heads, and simmered and made little 
 ebullitions from these thinly-tenanted settlements, they 
 had the men to thank or to blame for them. 
 
 It a\;i^ Buch a day as that on which Grand'mere and the 
 Sedge Pond villagers had had their last encounter, and put 
 tin- final seal to their intercourse. Only the silvery light 
 of spring had become the golden light of summer. For 
 dim, blue, scentless periwinkles in dark green ivy, there 
 were now vivid roses, heavy with all sweetness in the rich 
 ■ i of their l< orange flame of lilies, ripe oaten
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 391 
 
 straws and honeysuckle, and nothing cold but the blos- 
 soms of the jessamine, which show among companion 
 flowers like stars seen by day, and which need a back- 
 ground of night or age to bring out their purity, peaceful- 
 ness, trustfulness. 
 
 All over the meads and the uplands, the castle woods 
 and the very Waaste — which Caleb Gage knew and loved 
 with a power and intensity of appreciation which is like an 
 additional faculty of soul and charm of existence to some 
 men and women — there were the same seasonable efflores- 
 cence and bounty for beast, and bird, and insect. Herds 
 standing in the river lowed, and flocks on the wing war- 
 bled and sang, and bees hummed, filling the great plain 
 and the whole row of hives with the murmur of the sea, 
 as if all nature united, and did well to unite, and say, that 
 the winter was gone and the summer was come, and it de- 
 pended on God to repair the breaches of the past, and give 
 back what was lost in the future. For though Captain 
 Philip had been shot at Ticonderoga, and Grand mere done 
 to death in the village street, they but slept the sleep of 
 the justified, to awake and rise again in the fullness of life, 
 at the restitution and fruition of all things. It was inani- 
 mate nature, and nature in the lower animals, which were 
 first resigned to this travail, and afterward content, even 
 ravished. Humanity came last, where it was resigned at 
 all. As for the rector's words, which had rather been a re- 
 flection spoken aloud, than a speech addressed to his friend, 
 they sounded nearer pettish despair. Mr. Philip Rolle 
 Btarted at their instant application, and laughed a little. 
 
 " I did not mean your suit," he exclaimed, " I meant the 
 spiritual condition of my parish — mine, which if any man 
 invaded during the last* five-and-twenty years, I held him 
 as a moral and spiritual poacher, an unauthorized social 
 depredator. And the end on't is, that after holding forth 
 in the church for a good quarter of a century, baptizing, 
 marrying, burying, 1 have lived to lead a detachment of 
 yeomanry to put down — too late to prevent — the most 
 craven atrocity perpetrated in my time." 
 
 "I Suppose all men are alike in doing their work after 
 fashions which they lit tie expected \<> follow ?" replied Ca- 
 leb-, with a smothered sigh of relief "Who would have 
 said to John Wesley — Mr. John, as my father used to call
 
 392 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 
 
 him — when he was the honored Fellow of an Oxford col- 
 lege, or to his father before him, when he was one of the 
 most loyal clergymen of the Church of England, that the 
 day would come when, standing on his father's tombstone, 
 because the son was forbidden admittance to the church 
 where his own brother-in-law officiated, the learned scholar 
 and punctilious priest should exhort thousands of lawless 
 disciples ?" 
 
 " I should not have said it, certainly," accorded Mr. Phil- 
 ip Rolle, a little stiffly, and hastened to go on. " And I 
 suppose my dear old Madame could never have guessed 
 the ignominy and cruelty which we had in store for her, 
 else she would have gone with her precious son. Now 
 that we have made an end of her, and see her and her 
 task in the clearness of a history that is finished — good 
 Lord ! what a devout, generous soul ! what a magnani- 
 mous, gentle life was hers ! If Lushington vows in the 
 open market that the horrid crime is enough to make him 
 shut the ' Rolle Arms,' what can I do with the church 
 here ?" 
 
 " "What will you think of me, sir," asked Caleb Gage in 
 return, in the sternness of self-condemnation, " when I tell 
 you that in spite of my father's remonstrances, I saw noth- 
 ing in old Madame Dupuy but the traces of a meddle- 
 some, affected, fantastic old woman, till I had offended her 
 so grievously that I could not presume to intrude into her 
 presence. I can believe, now, how like Yolande she was." 
 
 " Or, rather, where Yolande got her fine qualities from," 
 the rector corrected him. "You were hugely wrong in 
 your first opinion. In spite of Grand'mere's French acute- 
 ness and fineness of tact, she was the most gnileless old 
 Avoman I ever knew. She could not credit the bitter bad- 
 ness df evil — witness how the quality- of my kindred, to 
 their shame be it spoken, had her undone; she was the 
 <!<verest of the set — cleverer even than my lady; but they 
 go1 the better of her whenever they sought to do it, and 
 always would, in a way. This moan for her is easily made, 
 too" — and the rector, in his exasperation, took a letter of 
 my lady's from his pocket, and read out a passage of it — 
 
 •So the bourgeoisie De Sevigne has been mobbed and 
 trodden ou1 of this world. I may be wrong, but I think 
 the original was better bred, and would have stood more
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. ' 393 
 
 misusage. I should like to see the mob who would mal- 
 treat me. But I don't deny that it was a monstrously 
 shocking end. How could the Sedge Pond villagers bring 
 it about to the beautiful old woman ? Only, you know, 
 Philip, that she went in for being an enthusiast and a saint, 
 which was working for the persecution that befell her." 
 The rector crumpled up the letter, and read no farther, 
 although Lady Rolle had written on boldly, " Whatever 
 punishment I may meet, I never pretended to be any better 
 than my neighbors. And I am growing an old woman now, 
 with my very sons turning upon me. There's George on 
 the top of his marriage with that woman, Gerty Lowndes, 
 though he knows that I'll never speak to one or t'other 
 of them after it. For the fox and wolf, Heneage, he would 
 fain rout me out of the shoes he wants to fill; but he shan't 
 while there is breath in my body, and I'll keep it there as 
 long as I can, to spite my dutiful son. These are my 
 wages, and Grand'mere, poor wretch, had hers ; that is all 
 there is to be said." 
 
 In the mean time, the rector was re-filling his pipe, and 
 making an apology, " I beg your pardon, my good fellow, 
 if I don't seem to sympathize with your contrition. I 
 must say that your lamentable mistake is rather a consol- 
 atory fact to a hot-headed, high-handed old sinner like my- 
 self, being, as it is, a crying instance of how good people 
 misread and villify each other's credentials. We musl 
 wait for the light of another world to spell them out cor- 
 rectly, and to consent freely to range ourselves in the same 
 company. Even death, opening the door for a moment, 
 helps us," echoed the rector, pricked in his conscience by 
 the recollection of how long the good squire of the Mall 
 had been to him as a heathen, and how he bad needed, he- 
 fore he could feel his obstinate hostility melting away, to 
 go to the squire's funeral feast, see with his own eyes the 
 good works which should follow the dead man. where no 
 other possessions could rind a place; hear the widow-, the 
 orphans, and the outcast weeping, and telling \\ hal Squire 
 Gage had done for them; grasp the hand of the chief 
 mourner, and think of his own son Philip, who was spared 
 mourning for him. 
 
 "But you had as lief keep your own counsel <>n this lit- 
 tle matter," added the rector after a pause. " It is a niar- 
 
 R 2
 
 394 ' THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 vol that poor Yolande can abide the sight of any of us, or 
 of the very houses and fields even. For her sake, as well 
 as yours, my friend, I should be right glad to speed your 
 
 mig." 
 
 " I believe you would ; and I am more obliged for that 
 than for any other token of your regard," acknowledged 
 Caleb ; " but I must tell you I mean to tell every thing to 
 Yolande," he declared steadily. 
 
 The rector looked askance at the step. 
 
 " What ! wound a poor thhig wounded already, in what 
 looks like mere wantonness and fatality — damage your 
 own cause, for no purpose but to satisfy some overstrain- 
 ed scruple, selfish in its origin and effect. Pardon me, 
 squire, I thought you had more common sense and self- 
 mastery. However, you are at liberty to manage your 
 own affair as you think proper. You ought to know, and 
 I dare say the women would say that I was a sorry ad- 
 viser in such a case," he broke off, with a shrug of his 
 shoulders. 
 
 " You have given me good advice before now ; you have 
 been a good friend to me and to Yolande, which is far 
 more, sir. But I can not help telling her every thing. It 
 may have been my father's way with my mother; or I may 
 have learned the trick from long listening to what he never 
 passed a day without alluding to. No one could live with 
 my father and not hear of his first and best friend. I don't 
 think I have much chance. I fancy Yolande is only wait- 
 ing for the opportunity of joining her father and her moth- 
 er, and not caring much even for that. I know it is not 
 quite right in her, but only consider how fond she was of 
 the old woman whom you describe as a saint as well as a 
 martyr, and how she was deprived of her. Yet I don't sup- 
 pose Yolande hates any of us — least of all the place where 
 her friend's body is laid to rest. And though she cares for 
 the dust, she could leave it, because, as it was put into the 
 garner without will and power of hers, so it can not suffer 
 farther desecration or be lost, though it should be scatter- 
 ed to the four winds. Yolande will never have any man 
 for her husband, or consent to fill any relation in life for 
 which Bhe does not care ; and she has no feeling except wea- 
 riness. Bui even though I ran ten times more risk, I can 
 not help it — I must confess to Yolande my brutal preju-
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 395 
 
 dice, dullness, and doggedness, and what they cost me. 
 Perhaps," he added, with a desperate sigh, " after she hears 
 me, she will not wonder so much that there were caitiffs 
 and murderers in Sedge Pond who could lift their hands 
 against such women ; and for our very lowness and loss 
 she may pity us." 
 
 " You are infected, man," represented the rector. " I 
 don't mean to say that you are not upright and honorable, 
 a very good neighbor and squire, and a member of my 
 church of whom I may be proud, and from whom I may re- 
 ceive a lesson ; but I protest all the same that you are in- 
 fected with ultra-liberal and Quixotic notions. Madam 
 Gage — if you get her — will be lifted clean out of her 
 sphere, and have her head turned — luckily it is a notably 
 reasonable head for a woman, like that of her poor blessed 
 Grand'mere. As you are determined to cut your own 
 throat, as the saying is, the next thing is to provide you 
 with as many occasions for the deed as possible, and send 
 you at once to the silly girls in the garden — hey ?" sug- 
 gested the rector, not much shaken in his conviction that 
 Caleb, in his infatuation, was going the road to ruin his 
 prospects with Yolande — provoked at it, too, sorry for it, 
 yet somehow feeling called upon, as the kindest of human 
 creatures feel in their neighbors' concerns of this descrip- 
 tion, to turn round and make a joke of this alone of all 
 troubles. 
 
 Caleb could not see the propriety of the joke, but he ac- 
 cepted the rector's invitation, and went to seek the girls 
 and his fate in the rectory garden. 
 
 Caleb Gage had become more familiar with girls than 
 when he sat first with Yolande in the Shottcry Cottage 
 parlor, and mistook her shyness for pride, her fine intelli- 
 gence and natural attainments for pedantry and French 
 polish. But he had not lost, and would never lose his habit 
 of thinking of girls as his sisters, who might have grown tip 
 with him, and brightened and beautified indefinitely wh.it 
 had not been an unhappy and unsocial youth at the Mall. 
 He could not help remarking now how the rectory girls he- 
 came the rectory garden, and seemed to fall into their prop- 
 er places among its sunny sloping strawberry banks, its 
 shady miniature orchards, its aromatic herb-beds, and its 
 tufts of honest, sweet old English flowers, with character-
 
 396 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 istic English names, from Sweet "William to heart's-ease, 
 which, instead of disdaining their humble surroundings, 
 flourished amazingly in them. Caleb built a castle in the, 
 air of the restoration of the Mall garden, and then thought 
 how not only one corner formally set apart for an Eden, 
 but the whole Mall would prove a wilderness if he did not 
 win the Eve he sought. 
 
 Milly and Dolly Kolle were superintending Black Jas- 
 per pulling cherries — cherries themselves, the two girls, in 
 their buxom bloom; while Black Jasper, on his ladder, 
 Avas like a huge black plum. The girls stood at the foot 
 of the tree, and every riper, more tempting bunch than an- 
 other, Milly confiscated for the best-behaved children in 
 Mr. Hoadley's new school ; and if any regard for Mr. 
 Hoadley's gratification and gratitude was included in the 
 gift, Grand mere would not have held that its merit was 
 therefore impaired, Dolly contented herself with a heap 
 of rose leaves, and a sheaf of lavender to add to Madam's 
 stores. 
 
 Yolande had not spirit or strength even for such light 
 employments, and had crept aAvay to the mossy alcove in 
 the wall, where, leaning back against the dank, hoary 
 stones, she looked as fair and pale as the chaste glimmer 
 of the jasmine stars amid the gloom of their setting of 
 leaves, while her once busy hands, crossed listlessly in her 
 lap, showed as shady in their slenderness, as if they were 
 bathed in moonshine. 
 
 Caleb Gage did not join Yolande to chide her — to re- 
 mind her that there was still work in the world for her to 
 do — to call her to account for questioning the decrees of 
 God, and resisting His will, lie did not understand in 
 this sense "a time to mourn" with Yolande, when she was 
 stricken in the tenderest affections which had grown with 
 her growth. Besides, Mr. Iloadley took this mission on 
 himself, and although Yolande invariably recognized his 
 excellent intentions, and would grant to him at the end of 
 his lectures, "Yes, I am egoiste, or my heart would not 
 ache so; but it is my heart and my sorrow, and I can not 
 make them other than they are. You — you were Grand'- 
 mere's friend — that contains all; you are good to speak 
 thus to me, and I am here to listen." 
 
 But it did not seem that Yolande was much benefited
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 397 
 
 in other respects by Mr. Hoadley's eagerness in undertak- 
 ing to enter into every heart's bitterness, and to reconcile 
 the whole world in tribulation to the extent of its depriva- 
 tions. 
 
 Caleb Gage was not impatient of Yolande's grief; he 
 did not wish to sap the tender fidelity in friendship of the 
 woman he cared for by seeking to put it away from her. 
 By his own experience he would have judged that the 
 most dishonoring to God and to her of all the modes which 
 even good people have invented of dealing with sorrow. 
 "Sorrow not without hope" — that he could say; and 
 Yolande did not sorrow without hope, in the dreary vast 
 void of unbelief, or the ghostly death-in-life of despair. 
 Neither did she refuse to say, " It is the Lord, let Him do 
 what seemeth to Him good !" Only she could not see why 
 He . did it, and the deed, in its mystery of righteousness 
 and mercy, was none the less a deed of anguish. And she 
 did sorrow. Grand'mere had been brother and sister, as 
 well as old mother to her, and without her sorrow she 
 would have been faithless alike to Grand'mere and herself. 
 And Grand'mere was violently taken from her by that 
 stroke with which, at its gentlest, no repetition makes 
 us familiar; which is still as awful a miracle as when it si- 
 lenced the tongue, stiffened the limbs, and reft the soul 
 from Abel, carrying it into that unseen, unheard, unfelt 
 world, before the unfathomableness of which, had not the 
 Son of Man returned from it, and had not the dim fore- 
 shadowing of His return stretched through all the ages be- 
 fore Him, as the narrative of His return, written in letters 
 of heavenly fire, illuminates the darkness after Him — hearts 
 must have hardened into stone, or groveled in brutality. 
 
 Caleb wanted to share Yolande's sorrow, to cherish it, 
 train it, lift it to endure, for time and eternity, a brighter 
 and holier joy. He was welcome to sit with her and talk 
 to her of Grand'mere — more welcome and more prized 
 than, in her present state, she could comprehend; and she 
 only marked the fact by being a little less outwardly 
 grateful to him than to others, a little Less careful of tres- 
 passing on his kindness. 
 
 "This time last year Grand'mere and me, we did such a 
 thing together, Monsieur" — Yolande was making her moan 
 — "and it is not only that we shall never t]o the sa
 
 398 THE HUGUEXOT FAMILY. 
 
 thing again, "but that all the occasions on which we did it 
 before seem somehow shivered in their reality, and steeped 
 in tears, so that I can not sometimes quite believe that 
 such events happened at all — that I did not dream them, 
 as I dream of Grand'rnere now, and wake and find her 
 image a dream ; or that she and I conld ever have been 
 joyous and full of confidence together, when we knew al- 
 ways that one day we must part, and might walk asunder 
 in different worlds, for long years. It is not only the fu- 
 ture which is taken from me, but the past also. Monsieur, 
 I feel myself not only a shattered wreck of what I was, 
 but a phantom among other phantoms, whose blindness is 
 such that we do not know till the crash comes, and the in- 
 conceivable change has passed over our circle, that we are 
 no more than so many phantoms." 
 
 "There was one who dwelt among us," Caleb told the 
 sorrow-laden girl, "who went and came again on that 
 journey from which none of us comes back, and His com- 
 mand was to touch Him, and feel that He had flesh and 
 bones as we have. He was not a phantom first or last ; 
 and neither are we spectres, whether we exist body and 
 spirit, or in the spirit alone. It is all reality there as well 
 as here. Now, you doubt the reality of the latter, because 
 you can no longer demonstrate to yourself the reality of 
 the former. If you reasoned by an inverse and truer proc- 
 ess, what you have known should prove to you what you 
 do not know. But, Mademoiselle Yolande, while you 
 grieve for Grand'mere, with whom you had such com- 
 munion as I think I can understand, do you never think 
 what it would have been had you lived like a stranger to 
 her? — had you shown her no regard, and had no happiness 
 in which she had borne a part, till you discovered too late 
 what you two might have been to each other?" 
 
 " Oh ! you do not know !" cried Yolande brokenly, think- 
 ing of the day when Grand'mere had said to her, "Even 
 you and I, petite, when we shall be separated, we shall see 
 chambers in cadi other's hearts which we did not enter, 
 doors which we did not open, vows which w r e did not pay." 
 
 "But I do know," Caleb Gage interrupted her hastily; 
 "I misunderstood, undervalued Grand'mere. You must 
 have known this, and condemned me for it, Yolande." 
 
 Yolande looked at him and shook her head. " How could
 
 THE HUGUENOT FAMILY. 399 
 
 I, when she did not condemn you? Sans doutef it -was 
 quite another thing from your misunderstanding and un- 
 dervaluing me ; but still Grand'mere and I, we were one, 
 and she did not condemn you. But what a loss you had !" 
 
 "Ay, what a loss ! But for my father, I could not have 
 formed a notion of my mother, and your Grand'mere might 
 have been mine ; and see, I have lost her also !" 
 
 " I will tell you about her, Monsieur Caleb," volunteered 
 Yolande impulsively. 
 
 "Will you? That will be indeed like Grand'mere's 
 child." 
 
 " Yes, Grand'mere would have made it all up to you, 
 uiiUefois. She would have rejoiced to render you rich 
 with her best blessing, which, when you knew no better, 
 for a little moment you despised — and she is gone, like the 
 good squire your father !" 
 
 "Like my father," repeated Caleb, "who thought to 
 make you his daughter, and died smiling in the thought." 
 
 " And he left you alone with what remains of his good 
 people at the Mall," Yolande interposed, restlessly, but 
 wistfully. 
 
 "Because you will not come to me, Yolande." 
 
 " I will come — I will come !" yielded Yolande sudden- 
 ly, weeping in generous abandonment. " I have been un- 
 like Grand'mere — what she would not have had me to be. 
 I have forgotten you. "What could hold me back from 
 you ?" 
 
 i ii i: EXD,
 
 Mr. Motley, the American historian of the United Netherlands— we owe him 
 English homage. — London Times. 
 
 "As interesting as a romance, and as reliable as a jiroposition of Euclid.'''' 
 
 History of 
 
 The United Netherlands. 
 
 FEOM THE DEATH OF WILLIA-M THE SILENT TO THE TWELVE YEAES' TBUCE. 
 
 WITH A FULL VIEW OF THE ENGLISH-DUTCH 6TEUGGLE AGAINST 
 
 SPAIN, AND OF THE ORIGIN AND DESTRUCTION 
 
 OF THE SPANISH AEilADA. 
 
 By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, LL.D., D.C.L., 
 
 Corresponding Member of the Institute of France, Author of "The Rise of the 
 
 Dutch Republic." 
 
 With Portraits and Map. 
 
 4 vols. Svo, Muslin, $14 00. 
 
 Critical Notices. 
 
 His living and truthful picture of events.— Quarterly Review (London), Jan., 
 1861. 
 
 Fertile as the present ag^ has been in historical works of the highest merit 
 none of them can be ranked above these volumes in the grand qnalities of inu n st, 
 accuracy, and truth. — Edinburgh Quarterly Review, Jan., 1861. 
 
 This noble work — Westminster Review (London). 
 
 One of the most fascinating a3 well as important histories of the century Cor. 
 
 y. Y. Evening Post 
 
 The careful' study of these volumes will infallibly afford a feast both rich and 
 rare. — lialtirnore Republican. 
 
 Already takes a rank among standard works of history. — London Critic. 
 
 Mr. Motley's prose epic — London Spectator. 
 
 Its pages are pregnant with instruction.— London Literary Gazette. 
 
 We may profit by almost ivory page of his narrative. All the topics which ngi. 
 tate us now are more or less vividly presented in the History of the United Nether- 
 lands. — New York Times. 
 
 Bears on eveiy page marks of the same vigorous mind that produced "The Rise 
 of the Dutch Republic;" but the new work is riper, mellower, and though equally 
 racy of the soil, softer flavored. The inspiring idea which breathes through Mr. 
 Motley's histories and colors the whole t' xture of his narrative, is the grandeur of 
 that memorable struggle in the 16th century by which the human mind broke the 
 thraldom of religious intolerance and achieved its independence The World, -V. )'. 
 
 The name of Motley now stands in the very front rank of living historians. His 
 Dutch Republic took the world by surprise ; but the favorable verdict then given 
 is now only the more deliberately confirmed on the publication uf the continued 
 Btory under the title of the Eistoryof the United Netherlands. All the nerve, 
 and power, and substance of juicy life are there, lending a charm to every page. — 
 Church Journal, N. Y. 
 
 Motley, indeed, has produced a prose opio. and his fighting scenes are as real, 
 spirited, and life-liki mbats in the Iliad The Press (Phila.). 
 
 His history i- as interesting a* a romance and as reliable as a proposition of 
 did. Clio never had a more faithful disciple. We advise every reader whose 
 means will permit to become the owner ol iringhim 
 
 that he will never r, grot the investment Christian Intelligencer, S. Y. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, 
 
 Franklin Square, New York. 
 
 W Harper S.- I?n<vrnrr.s will nil th i Above Wi rk by Mail, p^tftire pro. pail 
 [for any distance in the United States under 8000 mil fi M n y.
 
 • Tney do honor to American Literature, and would do 
 
 honor to the Literature of any Country in the World." 
 
 THE RISE OF 
 
 THE DUTCH REPUBLIC. 
 
 By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 
 
 New Edition. With a Portrait of "William of Orange. 3 vols. 
 8vo, Muslin, $10 50. 
 
 We regard tliis work as the best contribution to modem history that has yet 
 been made by an American.— Methodist Quarterly Review. 
 
 The "History, of the Dutch Republic" is a great gift to us; but the heart and 
 earnestness that heat through all its pages are greater, for they give us most 
 timely inspiration to vindicate the true ideas of our country, and to compose an 
 able history of our own.— Christian Examiner (Boston). 
 
 This work bears on its face the evidences of scholarship and research. Tha 
 arrangement is clear and effective; the style energetic, lively, and often brilliant 
 
 • * * Mr. Motley's instructive volumes will, we trust, have a circulation commen- 
 surate with their interest and value.— Protestant Episcopal Quarterly Review. 
 
 To the illustration of this most interesting period Mr. Motley has brought the 
 matured powers of a vigorous and brilliant mind, and the abundant fruits of pa- 
 tient and judicious study and deep reflection. The result is, one of the most 
 important contributions to historical literature that have been made in this coun- 
 try. — North American Review. 
 
 We would conclude this notice by earnestly recommending our readers to pro- 
 cure for themselves this truly great and admirable work, by the production of 
 which the auther has conferred no less honor upon his country than he has won 
 praise and fame for himself, and than which, we can assure them, they can find 
 nothing more attractive or interesting within the compass of modern literature. 
 — Evangelical Review. 
 
 It is not often that we have the pleasure of commending to the attention of the 
 lover of books a work of such extraordinary aud unexceptionable excellence as 
 this one. — Universalist Quarterly Review. 
 
 There are an elevation and a classic polish in these volumes, and a felicity of 
 grouping and of portraiture, which invest Ihe subject with the attractions of a 
 living and stirring episode in the grand historic drama.— Southern Methodist 
 Quarterly Review. 
 
 The author writes with a genial glow and love of his subject. — Presbyterian 
 Quarterly Review. 
 
 Mr. Motley is a sturdy Republican and a hearty Protestant. IPs style is live- 
 ly and picturesque, and his work is an honor and an important accession to our 
 national literature. — Church Review. 
 
 Mr. Motley's work is an important one, the result of profound research, sincere; 
 convictions, sound principles, and manly sentiments; and even those who are 
 most familiar with the history of the period will find in it a fresh and vivid ad- 
 dition to their previous knowledge. It does honor to American literature, and 
 T/ould do honor to the literature of any country in the world. — Edinburgh Re- 
 view. 
 
 A serious chasm in English historical literature has been (by this book) very 
 remarkably filled. * * * A history as complete as industry and genius can make 
 it now lies before us, of the first twenty years of the revolt of the Tnited Prov- 
 inces. * * * All the essentials of a great writer Mr. Motley eminently possesses. 
 His mind is broad, his industry unwearied. In power of dramatic description 
 no modern historian, except, perhaps, Mr. Carlyle, su masses him, and in analy- 
 •au of oliaractcr lie is elaborate and distinct — Westminster Review.
 
 t MOTLEY'S RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC 
 
 It is a work of real historical value, the result of accurate criticism, written 
 in a liberal spirit, and from first to last deeply interesting. — Athenaeum. 
 
 The style is excellent, clear, vivid, eloquent; and the industry with which 
 original sources have been investigated, and through which new light has been 
 6hed over perplexed incidents and characters, entitles Mr. Motley to a high rank 
 in the literature of an age peculiarly ricli in history. — North British Review. 
 
 It abounds iir'new information, and, as a first work, commands a very cordial 
 recognition, not merely of the promise it gives, but of the extent and importance 
 of the labor actually performed on it. — London Examiner. 
 
 Mr. Motley's "History" is a work of which any country might be proud. 
 
 Press (London). 
 
 Mr. Motley's History will be a standard book of reference in historical litera- 
 ture. — London Literary Gazette. 
 
 Mr. Motley has searched the whole range of historical documents necessary to 
 the composition of his work. — London Leader. 
 
 This is really a great work. It belongs to the class of books in which we 
 range our Grotes, Milmans, Merivales, and Macaulays, as the glories of English 
 literature in the department of history. * * * Mr. Motley's gifts as a historical 
 writer are among the highest and rarest. — Nonconformist (London). 
 
 Mr. Motley's volumes will well repay perusal. * * * For his learning, his liberal 
 tone, and his generous enthusiasm, we heartily commend him, and bid him good 
 6peed for the remainer of his interesting and heroic narrative. — Saturday Review. 
 
 The story is a noble one, and is worthily treated. * * * Mr. Motley has had the 
 patience to unravel, with unfailing perseverance, the thousand intricate plots of 
 the adversaries of the Prince of Orange; but the details and the literal extracts 
 which he has derived from original documents, and transferred to his pages, 
 give a truthful color and a picturesque effect, which are especially charming. — 
 London Daily News. 
 
 M. Lothrop Motley dans son magnifique tableau de la formation de notre B&- 
 publique. — G. Geoen Van Pei>steeee. 
 
 Our accomplished countryman, Mr. J. Lothrop Motley, who, during the last 
 five years, for the better prosecution of his labors, has established his residence 
 in the neighborhood of the scenes of his narrative. No one acquainted with the 
 fine powers of mind possessed by this scholar, and the earnestness with which he 
 has devoted himself to the task, can doubt that he will do full justice to his im- 
 portant but difficult subject — W. H. Prescott. 
 
 The production of such a work as this astonishes, while it gratifies the pride 
 of the American reader. — N. Y. Observer. 
 
 The "Rise of the Dutch Republic" at once, and by acclamation, takes its 
 place by the " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," as a work which, wheth- 
 er for research, substance, or style, will never be superseded. — N. Y. Albion. 
 
 A work upon which all who read the English language may congratulate 
 themselves. — New Yorker LTandels Zeitung. 
 
 Mr. Motley's place is now (alluding to this book) with nallam and Lord Ma- 
 te, Alison and Macaulay in the Old Country, and with Washington Irving, 
 Prescott, and Bancroft in this. — N. Y. Times. 
 
 The authority, in the English tongue, for the history of the period and people 
 to which it refers. — N. Y. Courier and Enquirer. 
 
 This work at once places the author on the list of American historians which 
 has been so signally illustrated by the names of Irving, Prescott, Bancroft, and 
 Hildreth. — Boston Times. 
 
 The work is a noble one, and a most desirable acquisition to our historical lit- 
 erature. — Mobile Advertiser. 
 
 Such a work is an honor to its author, to his country, and to the age in which 
 it was written. — Ohio Farmer. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, 
 
 Franklin Square^ S • York, 
 
 IIabveb & B-ROTHETis will send the above Work by Mail (postage paid (for any 
 distance in the United States under oOOO miles), on receipt of the Money.
 
 By George Eliot. 
 
 ADAM BEDE. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 
 
 FELIX IIOLT, THE RADICAL. 8vo, Paper, 75 cents. 
 A Library Edition, 12mo, Cloth, $1 75. 
 
 THE MILL ON THE ELOSS. 12mo, Cloth, SI 50 ; 8vo, Paper, 
 75 cents. 
 
 ROMOLA. With Illustrations. Svo, Cloth, $2 00; Paper, $1 50. 
 
 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. Svo, Paper, 75 cents. 
 
 SILAS MARNER, THE WEAVER OF RAVELOE. 12mo, Cloth, 
 $1 50. 
 
 It was once said of a very charming and high-minded woman that to know her 
 was in itself a liberal education ; and we are inclined to set an almost equally 
 high value on an acquaintance with the writings of "George Eliot." For those 
 who read them aright they possess the faculty of educating in its highest sense, 
 of invigorating the intellect, giving a healthy tone to the taste, appealing to the 
 nobler feelings of the heart, training its impulses aright, and awakening or de- 
 veloping in every mind the consciousness of a craving for something higher than 
 the pleasures and rewards of that life which only the senses realize, the belief in 
 a destiny of a nobler nature than can be grasped by experience or demonstrated 
 by argument. On those readers who are able to appreciate a lofty independence 
 of thought, a rare nobility of feeling, and an exquisite sympathy with the joys 
 and sorrows of human nature, "George Eliot's" writings can not "fail to exert an 
 invigorating and purifying influence, the good effects of which leaves behind it 
 a lasting impression. — London Review. 
 
 " George Eliot," or whoever he or she may be, has a wonderful power in giv- 
 ing an air of intense reality to whatever scene is presented, whatever character 
 is portrayed. — Worcester Palladium. 
 
 She resembles Shakspeare in her power of delineation. It is from this char- 
 acteristic action on the part of each of the members of the dramatis persona- that 
 we feel not only an interest, even and consistent throughout but also an admira- 
 tion for "George Eliot" above all other writers. — PhilacU Iphta Evening Telegraph. 
 
 Few women -no living woman indeed — have so much strength as "George 
 
 Eliot," and, more than that, she never allows it to degenerate into coarseness. 
 
 With all her so-called "masculine" vigor, she has a feminine tenderness, which 
 
 is nowhere shown more plainly than in her descriptions of children. — Bonton 
 
 li/it. 
 
 She looks out upon the world with the most entire enjovment of all the good 
 that there is in it to enjoy, and with an enlarged compass'ion for all the ill that 
 there is in it to pity. But she never either whimpers over the sorrowful lot of 
 man, or snarls and chuckles over his follies and littlenesses and impotence.— 
 Saturday Review. 
 
 Her acquaintance with dilTerent phases of outward lifo, and the power of an- 
 alyzing feeling and the working of the mind, are alike wonderful.— .Reader. 
 
 "George Eliot's" novels belong to the enduring literature of our country — 
 durable, not for the fashionableness of its pattern, but for the texture of its stiifl'. 
 — Examin >■. 
 
 I\r.usui:i> bt IIARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 Haxfeb & Brothers mil send any of the abore works by Mail, postage prepaid, to 
 any part of the United States, on receipt of the price.
 
 H 
 
 T 
 
 O 
 
 By Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 * 
 
 ISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II. OF PRUSSIA, CALL- 
 ED FREDERICK THE GREAT. By Thomas 
 
 Carlyle. Six volumes, with Portrait, Maps, and 
 Plans. 1 2mo, Cloth, 82 00 per volume. 
 
 HE FRENCH REVOLUTION. A History. By 
 
 Thomas Carlyle. Newly Revised. With Portrait 
 of Author. 2 vols. l2mo, Cloth, $3 50. 
 
 LIVER CROMWELL'S LETTERS AND SPEECH- 
 ES. Including Supplement to the First Edition. With 
 Elucidations. By Thomas Carlyle. Portraits. 2 
 vols. i2mo, Cloth, $3 50. 
 
 DAST AND PRESENT, CHARTISM, AND SAR- 
 r TOR RESARTUS. By Thomas Carlyle. New 
 Edition. One vol. l2mo, Cloth, $1 75. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle is about the only living writer whose opinions are 
 of value, even when it is impossible to agree with them. No one 
 is more fond than he of paradox, but few men's paradoxes hint at 
 so important truths. No one with a more autocratic dogmatism 
 sets up strong men as heroes, or condemns the hapless possessors 
 of pot-bellies to infamy ; but then his judgments, even where they 
 can not be confirmed, always enforce some weighty principle which 
 we were in danger of forgetting. And if it sometimes happens 
 that neither the hero nor the principles commend themselves, still 
 the thoroughness of the execution and the fire with which all his 
 writings arc instinct, never fail to make a great work. — London Re- 
 
 view. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 Franklin Square, N. Y. 
 
 B^" Sent hr Mail, postage prepaid (for any di?tance in the 1'nited States under 
 15(h) mile?), on receipt of the Price.
 
 COMPLETION OF GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE. 
 
 A HISTORY OF GREECE 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE CLOSE OF THE GENERA- 
 TION CONTEMPORARY WITH ALEXANDER THE GREAT- 
 
 BY GEORGE GROTE, ESQ. 
 
 Vol. XII. contains Portrait, Maps, and Index. Complete in 12 vols. 12mo, 
 Muslin, $18 00. 
 
 It is not often that a work of such magnitude is undertaken ; more seldom still 
 is such a work so perseveringly carried on, and so soon and yet so worthily ac- 
 complished. Mr. Grote has illustrated and invested with an entirely new signifi- 
 cance a portion of the past history of humanity, which he, perhaps, thinks the most 
 splendid that has been, and which all allow to have been very splendid. He has made 
 great Greeks live again before us, and has enabled us to realize Greek modes of think- 
 ing. He has added a great historical work to the language, taking its place with 
 other great histories, and yet not like any of them in the special combination of 
 merits which it exhibits : scholarship and learning such as we have been ac- 
 customed to demand only in Germans ; an art of grouping and narration different 
 from that of Hume, different from that of Gibbon, and yet producing the effect of 
 sustained charm and pleasure ; a peculiarly keen interest in events of the political 
 order, and a wide knowledge of the business of politics ; and, finally, harmonizing 
 all, a spirit of sober philosophical generalization always tending to view facts 
 collectively in their speculative bearing as well as to record them individually. 
 It is at once an ample and detailed narrative of the history of Greece, and a lucid 
 philosophy of Grecian history. — London Athenaeum, March 8, 1856. 
 
 Mr. Grote will be emphatically the historian of the people of Greece. — Dublin 
 University Magazine. 
 
 The acute intelligence, the discipline, faculty of intellect, and the excellent eru- 
 dition every one would look for from Mr. Grote ; but they will here also find the 
 element which harmonizes these, and without which, on such a theme, an orderly 
 and solid work could not have been written. — Examiner. 
 
 A work second to that of Gibbon alone in English historical literature. Mr. 
 Grote gives the philosophy as well as the facts ot history, and it would be difficult 
 to find an author combining in the same degree the accurate learning of the schol- 
 ar with tlie experience of a practical statesman. The completion of this great 
 work may well be hailed with some degree of national pride and satisfaction. — 
 Literary Gazette, March 8, 1856. 
 
 The better acquainted any one is with Grecian history, and with the manner in 
 which that history has heretofore been written, the higher will be his estimation 
 of this work. Mr. Grote's familiarity both with the gnat highways and the ob- 
 scurest by-paths of Grecian literature and antiquity has seldom been equaled, and 
 not often approached, in unlearned England ; while those Germans who have ri- 
 valed it have seldom possessed the quality which eminently characterizes Mr. 
 Grote, of keeping historical imagination severely under the restraints of evidence. 
 The great charm of Mr. Grote's history has been throughout the cordial admira- 
 tion he feels for the people whose acts and fortunes he has to relate. * * We bid 
 Mr. Grote farewell ; heartily congratulating him on the conclusion of a work which 
 is a monument of English learning, of English clear-sightedness, and of English 
 love of freedom and the characters it produces. — Spectator. 
 
 Endeavor to become acquainted with Mr. Grote, who is engaged on a Greek 
 History. I expect a great deal from this production. — Niebuhr, the Historian, 
 t» Professor Lieber.. 
 
 The author has now incontestably won for himself the title, not merely of a 
 historian, but of the historian of Greece.— Quarterly Review. 
 
 Mr. Grote is, beyond all question, the historian of Greece, unrivaled, so far as 
 we know, in the erudition and genius with which he has revived the picture of a 
 distant past, and brought home every part and feature of its history to our intel- 
 lects and our hearts.— London Times. 
 
 For becoming dignity of style, unforced adaptation of results to principles, care- 
 ful verification of theory by fact, and impregnation of fact by theory — for extensive 
 and well-weighed learning, employed with intelligence and taste, we have seen no 
 histoneal work of modern times which we would place above Mr. Grote's histo- 
 ry. — Morning Chronicle. 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE, N. Y.
 
 By Mrs. Gaskell< 
 
 CRANFORD. i6mo, Cloth, 61 25. 
 
 COUSIN PHILLIS. 8vo, Paper, 25 cents. 
 
 A DARK NIGHT'S WORK. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 
 
 MARY BARTON. A Tale of Manchester Life. 8vo, 
 Paper, 50 cents. 
 
 THE MOORLAND COTTAGE. i6mo, Cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 MY LADY LUDLOW. 8vo, Paper, 25 cents. 
 
 NORTH AND SOUTH. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 
 
 RIGHT AT LAST, and Other Tales. 1 2mo, Cloth, $1 50. 
 
 SYLVIA'S LOVERS. 8vo, Paper, 75 cents. 
 
 WIVES AND DAUGHTERS. With Illustrations. 8vo, 
 Cloth, 62 00; Paper, 81 50. 
 
 From the London Examiner. 
 
 That tender pathos, which could sink so deep— that gentle humor, which could 
 soar so lightly — that delicate perception, which nothing could escape — that wide 
 sympathy, which ranged so far — those sweet moralities, which rang so true : it 
 is indeed hard and sad to feel that these must be silent for us henceforth forever. 
 
 Let us be grateful, however, that we have still those writings of hers which 
 England will not willingly let die, and that she has given us no less an example 
 of conscientious work and careful pains, by which we all alike may profit. For 
 Mrs. Gaskell had not only genius of a high order, but she had also the true feel- 
 ing of the artist, that grows impatient at whatever is unfinished or imperfect. 
 Whether describing with touching skill the charities of poor to poor, or painting', 
 with an art which Miss Austin might have envied, the daily round of common 
 life, or merely telling, in her graphic way, some wild or simple tale : whatever 
 the work, she did it with all her power, sparing nothing, scarcely sparing her- 
 self enough, if only the work were well and completely done. 
 
 From the New York Evening Post. 
 It is said that George Sand remarked to an English friend : " Mrs. Gaskell 
 has done what neither I nor other female writers in France can accomplish— sho 
 lia-< written novels which excite the deepest interest in men of the world, and 
 which every girl will be the better for reading." 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 P7- Sent by Mail to any part of the United States, postage free, on receipt ofth 
 
 Price.
 
 By Miss Mulock. 
 
 [Mrs. CRAIK.] 
 
 These novels form a most admirable series of popular fiction. They are marked by 
 their faithful delineation of character, their naturalness and purity of sentiment, the 
 dramatic interest of their plots, their beauty and force of expression, and their elevated 
 moral tone. No current novels can be more highly recommended for the family library, 
 while their brilliancy and vivacity will make them welcome to every reader of cultivated 
 taste. 
 
 TWO MARRIAGES, nmo, Cloth, ?i 50. 
 
 A NOBLE LIFE, izmo, Cloth, $1 50. 
 
 CHRISTIAN'S MISTAKE. i2mo, 
 Cloth, £i 50. 
 
 JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN. 
 8vo, Paper, 75 cents; Library Edition, 
 i2mo, Cloth, £1 50. 
 
 A LIFE FOR A LIFE. Library Edition, 
 i2mo, Cloth, ?i 50 ; 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 
 
 A HERO, AND OTHER TALES. A 
 Hero, Bread upon the Waters, and Alice 
 Learmont. i2mo, Cloth, $1 50. 
 
 OLIVE. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 
 
 OUR YEAR: A Child's Book in Prose 
 and Verse. Illustrated by Clarence 
 Dobell. i6mo, Cloth, Gilt Edges, $1 00. 
 
 THE FAIRY BOOK. The Best Popu- 
 lar Fairy Stories selected and rendered 
 anew. Engravings. i6mo, Cloth, Si 50. 
 
 THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY. 
 Paper, 75 cents. 
 
 8vo, 
 
 MISTRESS AND MAID. A House- 
 Hold Story. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 
 
 NOTHING NEW. Tales. Svo, Paper, 
 50 cents. 
 
 THE OGILVIES. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 
 
 AGATHA'S HUSBAND. Svo, Paper, 
 50 cents. 
 
 STUDIES FROM LIFE, iimo, Cloth, 
 $1 25. 
 
 AVILLION, AND OTHER TALES. 
 8vo, Paper, $1 25. 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 CJT" Sent by Mail, postage free, to any part of the United Statss, on receipt of the price.

 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-32m-8,'57(,C8680s4)444
 
 iKti™ «EG'ONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 ""'I lllll Hill mil iiiii 
 
 AA 000 367 029 
 
 PR 
 K237h
 
 
 -