Part 28 (2/2)
One evening, while this frightful persecution was still raging, Gabriel happened to be detained unusually late at the cottage of Perrine's father. He had lately spent much of his time at the farm house; it was his only refuge now from that place of suffering, of silence, and of secret shame, which he had once called home! Just as he had taken leave of Perrine for the night, and was about to open the farmhouse door, her father stopped him, and pointed to a chair in the chimney-corner.
”Leave us alone, my dear,” said the old man to his daughter; ”I want to speak to Gabriel. You can go to your mother in the next room.”
The words which Pere Bonan--as he was called by the neighbors--had now to say in private were destined to lead to very unexpected events. After referring to the alteration which had appeared of late in Gabriel's manner, the old man began by asking him, sorrowfully but not suspiciously, whether he still preserved his old affection for Perrine.
On receiving an eager answer in the affirmative, Pere Bonan then referred to the persecution still raging through the country, and to the consequent possibility that he, like others of his countrymen, might yet be called to suffer, and perhaps to die, for the cause of his religion.
If this last act of self-sacrifice were required of him, Perrine would be left unprotected, unless her affianced husband performed his promise to her, and a.s.sumed, without delay, the position of her lawful guardian.
”Let me know that you will do this,” concluded the old man; ”I shall be resigned to all that may be required of me, if I can only know that I shall not die leaving Perrine unprotected.” Gabriel gave the promise--gave it with his whole heart. As he took leave of Pere Bonan, the old man said to him:
”Come here to-morrow; I shall know more then than I know now--I shall be able to fix with certainty the day for the fulfillment of your engagement with Perrine.”
Why did Gabriel hesitate at the farmhouse door, looking back on Pere Bonan as though he would fain say something, and yet not speaking a word? Why, after he had gone out and had walked onward several paces, did he suddenly stop, return quickly to the farmhouse, stand irresolute before the gate, and then retrace his steps, sighing heavily as he went, but never pausing again on his homeward way? Because the torment of his horrible secret had grown harder to bear than ever, since he had given the promise that had been required of him. Because, while a strong impulse moved him frankly to lay bare his hidden dread and doubt to the father whose beloved daughter was soon to be his wife, there was a yet stronger pa.s.sive influence which paralyzed on his lips the terrible confession that he knew not whether he was the son of an honest man, or the son of an a.s.sa.s.sin, and a robber. Made desperate by his situation, he determined, while he hastened homeward, to risk the worst, and ask that fatal question of his father in plain words. But this supreme trial for parent and child was not to be. When he entered the cottage, Francois was absent. He had told the younger children that he should not be home again before noon on the next day.
Early in the morning Gabriel repaired to the farmhouse, as he had been bidden. Influenced, by his love for Perrine, blindly confiding in the faint hope (which, in despite of heart and conscience, he still forced himself to cherish) that his father might be innocent, he now preserved the appearance at least of perfect calmness. ”If I tell my secret to Perrine's father, I risk disturbing in him that confidence in the future safety of his child for which I am his present and only warrant.”
Something like this thought was in Gabriel's mind, as he took the hand of Pere Bonan, and waited anxiously to hear what was required of him on that day.
”We have a short respite from danger, Gabriel,” said the old man. ”News has come to me that the spoilers of our churches and the murderers of our congregations have been stopped on their way hitherward by tidings which have reached them from another district. This interval of peace and safety will be a short one--we must take advantage of it while it is yet ours. My name is among the names on the list of the denounced. If the soldiers of the Republic find me here--but we will say nothing more of this; it is of Perrine and of you that I must now speak. On this very evening your marriage may be solemnized with all the wonted rites of our holy religion, and the blessing may be p.r.o.nounced over you by the lips of a priest. This evening, therefore, Gabriel, you must become the husband and the protector of Perrine. Listen to me attentively, and I will tell you how.”
This was the substance of what Gabriel now heard from Pere Bonan:
Not very long before the persecutions broke out in Brittany, a priest, known generally by the name of Father Paul, was appointed to a curacy in one of the northern districts of the province. He fulfilled all the duties of his station in such a manner as to win the confidence and affection of every member of his congregation, and was often spoken of with respect, even in parts of the country distant from the scene of his labors. It was not, however, until the troubles broke out, and the destruction and bloodshed began, that he became renowned far and wide, from one end of Brittany to another. From the date of the very first persecutions the name of Father Paul was a rallying-cry of the hunted peasantry; he was their great encouragement under oppression, their example in danger, their last and only consoler in the hour of death.
Wherever havoc and ruin raged most fiercely, wherever the pursuit was hottest and the slaughter most cruel, there the intrepid priest was sure to be seen pursuing his sacred duties in defiance of every peril. His hair-breadth escapes from death; his extraordinary re-appearances in parts of the country where no one ever expected to see him again, were regarded by the poorer cla.s.ses with superst.i.tious awe. Wherever Father Paul appeared, with his black dress, his calm face, and the ivory crucifix which he always carried in his hand, the people reverenced him as more than mortal; and grew at last to believe, that, single-handed, he would successfully defend his religion against the armies of the Republic. But their simple confidence in his powers of resistance was soon destined to be shaken. Fresh re-enforcements arrived in Brittany, and overran the whole province from one end to the other. One morning, after celebrating service in a dismantled church, and after narrowly escaping with his life from those who pursued him, the priest disappeared. Secret inquiries were made after him in all directions; but he was heard of no more.
Many weary days had pa.s.sed, and the dispirited peasantry had already mourned him as dead, when some fishermen on the northern coast observed a s.h.i.+p of light burden in the offing, making signals to the sh.o.r.e. They put off to her in their boats; and on reaching the deck saw standing before them the well-remembered figure of Father Paul.
The priest had returned to his congregations, and had founded the new altar that they were to wors.h.i.+p at on the deck of the s.h.i.+p! Razed from the face of the earth, their church had not been destroyed--for Father Paul and the priests who acted with him had given that church a refuge on the sea. Henceforth, their children could still be baptized, their sons and daughters could still be married, the burial of their dead could still be solemnized, under the sanction of the old religion for which, not vainly, they had suffered so patiently and so long.
Throughout the remaining time of trouble the services were uninterrupted on board the s.h.i.+p. A code of signals was established by which those on sh.o.r.e were always enabled to direct their brethren at sea toward such parts of the coast as happened to be uninfested by the enemies of their wors.h.i.+p. On the morning of Gabriel's visit to the farmhouse these signals had shaped the course of the s.h.i.+p toward the extremity of the peninsula of Quiberon. The people of the district were all prepared to expect the appearance of the vessel some time in the evening, and had their boats ready at a moment's notice to put off, and attend the service. At the conclusion of this service Pere Bonan had arranged that the marriage of his daughter and Gabriel was to take place.
They waited for evening at the farmhouse. A little before sunset the s.h.i.+p was signaled as in sight; and then Pere Bonan and his wife, followed by Gabriel and Perrine, set forth over the heath to the beach.
With the solitary exception of Francois Sarzeau, the whole population of the neighborhood was already a.s.sembled there, Gabriel's brother and sisters being among the number.
It was the calmest evening that had been known for months. There was not a cloud in the l.u.s.trous sky--not a ripple on the still surface of the sea. The smallest children were suffered by their mothers to stray down on the beach as they pleased; for the waves of the great ocean slept as tenderly and noiselessly on their sandy bed as if they had been changed into the waters of an inland lake. Slow, almost imperceptible, was the approach of the s.h.i.+p--there was hardly a breath of wind to carry her on--she was just drifting gently with the landward set of the tide at that hour, while her sails hung idly against the masts. Long after the sun had gone down, the congregation still waited and watched on the beach. The moon and stars were arrayed in their glory of the night before the s.h.i.+p dropped anchor. Then the m.u.f.fled tolling of a bell came solemnly across the quiet waters; and then, from every creek along the sh.o.r.e, as far as the eye could reach, the black forms of the fishermen's boats shot out swift and stealthy into the s.h.i.+ning sea.
By the time the boats had arrived alongside of the s.h.i.+p, the lamp had been kindled before the altar, and its flame was gleaming red and dull in the radiant moonlight. Two of the priests on board were clothed in their robes of office, and were waiting in their appointed places to begin the service. But there was a third, dressed only in the ordinary attire of his calling, who mingled with the congregation, and spoke a few words to each of the persons composing it, as, one by one, they mounted the sides of the s.h.i.+p. Those who had never seen him before knew by the famous ivory crucifix in his hand that the priest who received them was Father Paul. Gabriel looked at this man, whom he now beheld for the first time, with a mixture of astonishment and awe; for he saw that the renowned chief of the Christians of Brittany was, to all appearance, but little older than himself.
The expression on the pale, calm face of the priest was so gentle and kind, that children just able to walk tottered up to him, and held familiarly by the skirts of his black gown, whenever his clear blue eyes rested on theirs, while he beckoned them to his side. No one would ever have guessed from the countenance of Father Paul what deadly perils he had confronted, but for the scar of a saber-wound, as yet hardly healed, which ran across his forehead. That wound had been dealt while he was kneeling before the altar in the last church in Brittany which had escaped spoliation. He would have died where he knelt, but for the peasants who were praying with him, and who, unarmed as they were, threw themselves like tigers on the soldiery, and at awful sacrifice of their own lives saved the life of their priest. There was not a man now on board the s.h.i.+p who would have hesitated, had the occasion called for it again, to have rescued him in the same way.
The service began. Since the days when the primitive Christians wors.h.i.+ped amid the caverns of the earth, can any service be imagined n.o.bler in itself, or sublimer in the circ.u.mstances surrounding it, than that which was now offered up? Here was no artificial pomp, no gaudy profusion of ornament, no attendant grandeur of man's creation. All around this church spread the hushed and awful majesty of the tranquil sea. The roof of this cathedral was the immeasurable heaven, the pure moon its one great light, the countless glories of the stars its only adornment. Here were no hired singers or rich priest-princes; no curious sight-seers, or careless lovers of sweet sounds. This congregation and they who had gathered it together, were all poor alike, all persecuted alike, all wors.h.i.+ping alike, to the overthrow of their worldly interests, and at the imminent peril of their lives. How brightly and tenderly the moonlight shone upon the altar and the people before it! how solemnly and divinely the deep harmonies, as they chanted the penitential Psalms, mingled with the hoa.r.s.e singing of the freshening night breeze in the rigging of the s.h.i.+p! how sweetly the still rus.h.i.+ng murmur of many voices, as they uttered the responses together, now died away, and now rose again softly into the mysterious night!
Of all the members of the congregation--young or old--there was but one over whom that impressive service exercised no influence of consolation or of peace; that one was Gabriel. Often, throughout the day, his reproaching conscience had spoken within him again and again. Often when he joined the little a.s.sembly on the beach, he turned away his face in secret shame and apprehension from Perrine and her father. Vainly, after gaining the deck of the s.h.i.+p, did he try to meet the eye of Father Paul as frankly, as readily, and as affectionately as others met it. The burden of concealment seemed too heavy to be borne in the presence of the priest--and yet, torment as it was, he still bore it! But when he knelt with the rest of the congregation and saw Perrine kneeling by his side--when he felt the calmness of the solemn night and the still sea filling his heart--when the sounds of the first prayers spoke with a dread spiritual language of their own to his soul--then the remembrance of the confession which he had neglected, and the terror of receiving unprepared the sacrament which he knew would be offered to him--grew too vivid to be endured; the sense that he merited no longer, though once worthy of it, the confidence in his perfect truth and candor placed in him by the woman with whom he was soon to stand before the altar, overwhelmed him with shame: the mere act of kneeling among that congregation, the pa.s.sive accomplice by his silence and secrecy, for aught he knew to the contrary, of a crime which it was his bounden duty to denounce, appalled him as if he had already committed sacrilege that could never be forgiven. Tears flowed down his cheeks, though he strove to repress them: sobs burst from him, though he tried to stifle them. He knew that others besides Perrine were looking at him in astonishment and alarm; but he could neither control himself, nor move to leave his place, nor raise his eyes even--until suddenly he felt a hand laid on his shoulder. That touch, slight as it was, ran through him instantly. He looked up, and saw Father Paul standing by his side.
Beckoning him to follow, and signing to the congregation not to suspend their devotions, he led Gabriel out of the a.s.sembly--then paused for a moment, reflecting--then beckoning him again, took him into the cabin of the s.h.i.+p, and closed the door carefully.
”You have something on your mind,” he said, simply and quietly, taking the young man by the hand. ”I may be able to relieve you, if you tell me what it is.”
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