BEWITCHED -c JAMESM GRAHAM CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE DATE DUE w --' " - '.' " - -fv. __ ^ ,j J.': GAYLORD PRINTED IN U S.A. Cornell University Library PR6013.R142W9 A world bewitched. 3 1924 013 619 683 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013619683 A WORLD BEWITCHED By falsities and lies the greatest part Of mankind they corrupted to forsake God their Creator, .... And devils to adore for deities. ****** First Moloch, horrid king, besmear'd with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears, Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud Their children's cries unheard, that pass'd through fire To his grim idol. Pa/radise Lost. A WOELD BEWITCHED BT JAMES M. GRAHAM Author of " The Son of the Czar " LONDON AND NEW YORK HARPER AND BROTHERS 45, Albemaele SteeeTj W. 1898 CONTENTS PAGE Chap, I. The Reward of Zeal 1 II. Vexilla Begis Prodeunt Inferni ... 19 III. A Promise op Vengeance 43 IV. Defiances and Warnings 53 V. The Witch-finder Bewitched .... 68 VI. Mother and Son Separated 81 VII. Hbneiettb de Parthenay 95 VIII. In the Vallet 108 IX. Evidence 118 X. The Ordeal bt Water 130 XI. Explanations 142 XII. Still Plating with Fire 154 XIII. Pere Eustache 174 XIV. A Visitor from Paris 192 XV. A Rescue 207 XVI. Preparations for Flight 231 XVII. Arrested 248 XVIII. A Last Bdrnt-Offeeing 278 XIX. On the Heights 307 XX. The " Father " of his People .... 328 ■>3 A WORLD BEWITCHED CHAPTER I The Rewaed of Zeal THE Sieur Mornat was not the oldest of the prominent dwellers in the neighbourhood of Eochefendue. But he seemed the only man among them who could claim active experience of the times of Henri le Belliqueux. Though advanced in life, he had kept off the grasp of decay so feared by him. Born towards the end of the reign of Francois I., and with sixty years passing over his head and leaving it white indeed, he retained a clearness of eye, an energy of frame, a smoothness of skin, which most men of forty might have envied him. It was an early evening in June. Mornat had been out of doors all day. He looked fresh and even gay, however : being clad with as much care as if he were going to, or coming from, some festival. Yet the path taken by him, and the vigour with which he strode onward, or climbed, or descended, seemed designedly chosen for making an extreme call on his powers of endurance. And once, on reaching a certain height in the irregular track, he paused, and looked upward and to right and left of him, and then downward. 2 A WOELD BEWITCHED More than half a league to north-west, in a valley a thousand feet below where he stood, was that ancient city of Rochefendue, from whose level he had thus far mounted. From the north rolled a line of vast plains, communicating south-eastward with a cluster of little hills. Many of these hills were encumbered with vines. The cream-coloured towers of the windmills rising on the borders of the lower cascades, and the hues of orchard and garden in the near south, stood forth livelier against the green and brown gloom of a throng of trees not far behind. These trees formed the outer ranks of a forest, the vanguard of a host of giants, heavy-laden with their frondose armour, grouped more densely south-westward; and there, drawn up in an array which covered several thousands of feet of the base and sides of one of the largest mountains in the range of the High Pyrenees. But rising from a chasm in the nearest plain, and connect- ing the low hills, in their panoply of purple vines, with the loftier mountains of the south-east, was a strange, irregular pathway by which Mornat had mainly achieved his ascent. It was a slope, worn by time into the vague semblance of a Stepway, through the gradations of a multitude of slabs of rock, which climbed at more or less equal interlinks — now and again broken by deep gaps — to a bewildering height. Descending from the surface of the plain, the slabs, here and there carpeted with moss, ran to the edge of a mass of furious waves and stubborn rocks; a flood, or rather a wild expanse of foam, whose waters had partly under- A WORLD BEWITCHED 3 mined, and partly been imprisoned by, the foundations of the mightier hills. For, though the bosom of the torrent panted and throbbed under its load of rocks, the waters, unrestrained elsewhere, rushed in triumph through the openings left by the loosened fragments of stone, and vanished along the labyrinthine excava- tions under the mountains, in myriads of tiny streams, to distances immeasurable. In their resumed ascent from the line of the plain, the steps reached the vicinity of a multitude of waterfalls which roared down from the breaks in the chain of sublime peaks to depths of four and five hundred feet, and then swept in silence under arches of snow. But still the granite stairs continued their ascension, till they disappeared finally in the realms of changeless frost. Mornat, in coming to a stand, had reached a spot level eastward with a house a hundred yards ofiFj westward, with the nearer sum- mits of four square walls of rock, a thousand feet high. This rampart of crags looked down on a lake oval in form, and, measured from the centre east to west, about a mile in length, its greatest width being some twelve hundred yards ; while immediately hemming in this lake, which was approached by many apertures in the overhanging walls, was a continuous bank whose irre- gular outline gave to the sheet of water its peculiar formation. And from the crest of the southern wall there poured a cataract unequalled for fantastic beauty in the entire mountain range. In streaming from the summit, it met with its first hindrance half way down the wall : there, a broad jagged rock darted suddenly 4 A WOELD BEWITCHED forth, intercepting the volume of water, and whirling it into a wilderness of spray. But a little further below, the spray reformed into numbers of slender cascades, painted by the sunlight in all imaginable colours ; and continuing its career through these cascades, like a giant serpent surrounded by its brood, the main cataract still rolled down. To anyone commencing his journey, as this man had done, from the uttermost depths of the landscape, few things might have seemed more entrancing than the combination of foam-white river, of bordering vale, with its intensely vivid green enamelled with innumer- able flowers, of granite Stepway measured throughout its elevation not by yards but by miles, of multiform, never-slumbering, ever-singing waterfalls, of emerald lake diademed with silver foam and environed by battlements of rose-brown rock, of immemorial forest on background of blue hill slope, of ice-mantled, snow- crested mountains towering far above, and of round gold sun in the western sky flaming over all. But the climber, though come to a halt, and busy enough with his eyes, had, in his manner, more than the usual unconcern born of familiarity with the splendours of the scenery surrounding him. His gaze was bent first on the city, from a certain point of which there had been rising for hours, a faintly dis- tinguishable column of smoke. The earlier blackness and density of the smoke had grown transcoloured and thinned by the cleansing sun to the semblance of a multitude of white fans which flashed and fluttered A WORLD BEWITCHED 5 and whirled aloft, to add feathers to the swan-like clouds that moved calmly above Rochefendue. There came over the gazer's visage a smile which rather intensified than softened the hardness of his mouth and the grim fire of his eyes. But in the next moment he turned and looked straight below him. A few yards down, emerging from an angle of the irregular Stepway, was a young man of the peasant class, but apparently with little of the humility of his order about him. At sight of the gentleman standing above, he set up a shout of gay relief, and darting up a few steps, came to a pause. His figure was a remarkable one, tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with a pic- turesque poverty of garb that set oflf to advantage an athletic form and a handsome face ; yet with a wildness of eye and a restlessness of manner ill cal- culated to reassure a strange beholder. "You are a good climber, Seigneur Mornat," he cried in a cheerful, ringing voice ; " I have been crawling after you for nearly an hour, but you have outstripped me." The gentleman looked down in surprise, yet with tolerance. " Been following me, Fernando ? " " From the ravine. You had a good place in front to see the ashes of those wretches flung into the water. But I was not far behind. I saw you drop this box." He handed Mornat a plain little box of wood with a movable tin lid : " I picked it up, but could not get near enough to give it to you : and when I tore myself 6 A WORLD BEWITCHED out of the crowd at last, you were half way up here." "And of course you opened the box on the way ? " Fernando laughed : " It is true, seigneur. And I was punished for being curious : there are only three bits of glass inside. But, good or bad, they are your own, seigneur." "You are an honest lad." " Never thank me, seigneur. And now I must be gone. Besides," he added, glancing toward the house eastward, " I see a handkerchief waving from a window yonder. She expects you." Mornat smiled. " You are given to curiosity, as you said just now. You can hardly guess what trouble you may get into by knowing too much and checking yourself too little." " How, seigneur ? " A strange and abrupt intensity of fanaticism came into Mornat's tone and look as he explained : " At the burning of one of those devil's paramours last week, her daughter came clamouring to the scaffold." " Yes, her little daughter," " The daughter was taken over the Basque frontier a few hours after the mother's death." " Yes ? " 'People say that Fernando Vergara accompanied her- " Well ? " " And Fernando cannot know too soon how dan- A WORLD BEWITCHED 7 gerous it is to put sucli creatures beyond the grasp of justice." Fernando glanced aside and downward on a woman close at hand ascending the staircasOj then he said composedly, " Even a child of seven ? " " You are not to blame for being ignorant, my poor Fernando. Bat your ignorance will be a bad defence if you are ever again found snatching criminals from due punishment. That child of seven, let me inform you, may be the offspring of the Archfiend himself, and therefore as well armed for the work of hell as any witch that ever went to the stake." Fernando drew nearer to Momat. " Seigneur Momat, you wanted to thank me a minute ago for a small thing. The best thanks you can give me will be to mark what I now say." Mornat darted a look at the ascending woman, who had reached the step on a line with the two men, and had paused, in grave and frank curiosity, and well within hearing. The elder man smiled and raised his voice : "I'll listen patiently." " I am poor and ignorant ; but I'd astonish you if I told you all I've learned of quarrels long since be- tween Frenchmen and Basques, and of who got the best of those quarrels." "You Basques have hundreds of these old wives' tales by heart," said Mornat, hastily. " I hope you are not going to repeat them now." "Three witches," continued Fernando sedately. 8 A WORLD BEWITCHED " have been burned to-day ; making, between wizards and witches, twenty this month; nearly a hundred this half year." " You keep good count." " Ay, seigneur, and good watch in other ways." " How ? " " I've seldom been far away from you at these burnings. Anyone that saw you down yonder, as I did this day, one out of many a score of such days, could tell that in your eyes the loveliest thing in all these parts is the smoke curling up from yonder scaffold. It's a sight you never tire of." " If I do not tire of it " " A last moment, seigneur. Among these hundred victims there has been no one of my country. Your words will not be forgotten by me ; I humbly ask you not to forget mine. Think twice, think ten times twice, before you count a Basque among your victims." And the ragged, barefooted young man tapped Mornat on the breast with unembarrassed familiarity to em- phasize the caution, turned from him with a nod, and went further up the Stepway, giving forth a sonorous irrinzi, or Basque war-whoop. " Mademoiselle Erezuma has heard the warning addressed to me ? " said Mornat, approaching with a smile the still observant woman. " Yes." " And if it came from anyone more responsible, would she think it wise ? " " In these days I never think it wise to warn an A WORLD BEWITCHED 9 enemy." And the speaker moved upward in the direction taken by Fernando Vergara. Mornat moved off the Stepway and walked east- ward some fifty paces over a slightly inclined plot of greenj till he came to a small castellated structure, seemingly hewn out of the rock whose enormous piles composed its background. The front, pierced by numerous Gothic windows, faced the north, the aper- tures being fewer and narrower to east and west. The building, by nature inaccessible from the rear, had some pretence of resistance to intrusion elsewhere. The three approachable sides were fenced in by a moat about ten feet deep, spanned northward by a shattered and seldom lifted drawbridge that led to the main entrance. As Mornat drew near, the gate opened, as at a signal from within, and a few moments later he found himself in an apartment whose long single window looked down on the valley to the north. His eyes were turned to the door, when there entered a lady of perhaps thirty-five years old. She was tall and well formed ; her width of shoulder and fullness of bosom moulded in easy harmony with her round slender waist, displaying, indeed, a figure whose grace and softness of outline could not bo marred even by the monstrous, wheel-shaped farthingale worn by her. Her face, while devoid of angularity, was rather square than oval; her lips were closed mildly over what seemed a large mouth ; her somewhat short nose came nearly straight from a high and broad forehead ; 10 A WORLD BEWITCHED her hair was black, and she had a complexion of southern darkness, but her eyes were blue. On the whole, there was that in her face, form, and move- ments, which is more frequently than truly associated with the word majesty. At this moment, howerer, the graces only of majesty were in her countenance, and the most charming of smiles accompanied the most musically murmured of words in her welcome to her visitor. "The day's work, then, is over ? " said she, when they were both seated. " And satisfactorily over. I should have been here sooner, empty-handed and shamefaced, bnt for a fortunate detention." " And what was your business with Fernando Vergara ? " " Ay, he said your eyes were on us." " And with Violante Erezuma ? " " What can escape your notice ? But of that presently. First, let me pay what I owe.'' He opened the box restored to him by Fernando, and displayed three diamonds. These he placed caressingly one by one in the lady's palm, then, shutting her hand, kissed it. " I am overtaxing your bounty," she said. " Do not believe it. They are better earned than were ever jewels of the kind by a champion in a tournament." " Tou are even more generous to think so." " And," he continued, with gravity, " they are A WORLD BEWITCHED 11 offered as reverently as at the shrine of a saint. Yes, of a saint whose intercession helps one of the worst of sinners to make his peace with God." " You were about to say something of that light- headed Basque vagrant; or was it of his country- woman who joined you at the last moment ? " For a few seconds Mornat toyed in silence with the empty box in hia hand ; then he told of what had passed between himself and Fernando and the woman Erezuma. And while he spoke his watchful hearer took note of the downcast eyes and of the heavily scowling forehead, and of the voice waning gradually hoarse. At the end of his narrative Mornat raised his head and resumed : " There 's one thing I am curious about, and perhaps you can enlighten me." "At your orders, monsieur." " What has really become of the witch's brood that this fellow is understood to have secreted ? " " You have an impression of your own ? " " The rascal is poor. Yet while most others of his vile race cross the frontier to their own mountains for the winter, he remains in these parts the whole year." " They leave him behind to guard such of their houses as may be spared by the avalanches." " He gives his time to nothing else ? " " He is a hardy beggar, much encouraged by Madame de Bellerive and her friends." " I suspect him of more than beggary." " Of what, then ? I fear you take him too seriously." 12 A WORLD BEWITCHED " I have learned from yourself, my fair teacher, how frequently Satan chooses the most contemptible in- struments for his work; and I believe that if this vagabond were shod for once in his life, if he had the 'Boot' put on one of those nimble feet of his, we should hear " " Hear what ? " " That the wretch, so long supposed to live on alms, whether from his own countrymen or the charitable in Eochefendue, assumes at times the form of a wolf, and feeds on children." The lady sat silent for nearly a minute ; then she rejoined, with grave composure ; " Be in no haste to secure the confession. So you chafe at the dream of being held back from the good work by such an ex- crescence of humanity as this ? " " I am burning with shame even while I confess how so slight a thing has moved me." " It shall not be passed over, though we must avoid rashness in deciding as to where the punishment should fall. Meanwhile we may be sure that for his part the knave will not be idle. He is a babbler. His defiance, witless though it be, will be taken up in all seriousness by his fellow Basques. I make no doubt that he would eventually have been joined by the woman," " They were mounting the steps together as I lost sight of them." " They would first go to the cottage of Violante's elder sister." " The recluse Dolores ? " A WORLD BEWITCHED 13 " Yes : not the most dangerous of the three sisters, perhaps ; but the one whom it will be safest to make an example of. For you will need to strike the first blow; a blow, remember, that may lead to a decisive local war." " All the better." " You are prepared for it, then ? So am I. Your cause I make my own. You were anxious to know what had become of the rescued child. There, too, you shall be satisfied. Leave all to me." " With my usual confidence." He bent over and kissed her hand once more ; and, as he raised his head, whispered something in her ear. " To-morrow night," she answered, in tones whose icy distinctness of decision contrasted strangely with the smile of bewildering sweetness that she turned on him. He rose with a sigh and left her. She stood at the window till she saw him moving slowly down the granite Stepway without. Her attention was drawn away by the entrance of a manservant. " M. Raoul is waiting still, then ? " she asked him. " Yes, madame, and I notice a change in him." " In what way ? " " Madame has always bidden us watch him while he is in the house, and leave nothing of worth within his reach. I left him for a few minutes while madame was with M. Mornat. Soon I bethought me of two silver cupa which had been standing on a table 14 A WOELD BEWITCHED near the fireplace. I ran back ; but the cups were safe, and M. Eaoul made no sign as I took them away with me." The lady listened with interest, almost with gravity, and, after a pause, directed the servant to say that she was ready to receive M. de Therigny. In a few seconds there hastened into the room a man upwards of thirty years old, of middle height and heavy build. His features, while harmonious enough to be termed handsome, were marked by a peculiarly blended expression of sullenness and fawn- ing, of timidity and fierceness, which made the face a repellent one ; and his dress, though in fashion, with its black cloak, its pourpoint of grey cloth, its gloves of flesh-coloured velvet, and its vast boots of Russia leather, was characterized by a slovenliness of arrange- ment which did not add to the courtliness of his appearance. With sword jingling against his hip, gloves on, and hat with black plumes fingered rest- lessly, he flung himself uninvited on a chair, " I have kept you waiting,'^ said the lady, in what seemed a propitiatory tone. " I could have afi'orded to wait longer for what I am here to say," was the dry rejoinder. "That 's remarkable for a man of such an engrossing occupation as yours. And M. de Therigny looks for something advantageous out of this visit ? " " Madame de Mercalme shall hear. You remind me of my occupation. It 'a a hard one ; and, should I grow rich by it, I may, when my hair turns white. A WORLD BEWITCHED 15 and the time comes for me to patch this tattered soul of mine for heaven, ask ladies to believe that I gained my wealth in the wars. But it is too soon for me to deny that, like many a more fortunate man, I live by robbery." " I hope you do not mean to kill my interest in what you say by needless revelations." " It 's a way of life which, naturally, does not shock you. The practisers of it have so often yielded you tribute." "What more?" " Well, other people, however they might take the news that the veteran who has just left you earned his treasures by lightening travellers' purses, would start if they learned to what ends he now devotes his wealth." " And this they could learn from you ? " " Do not tempt me to prove what I know of your dealings with him." The lady caught his rather shifty eye and held it. " So, I am in your power ? Then, think of your manhood. Consider to what an extremity you reduce me. I am a forlorn woman, with no lawful helper in the world. I should have to rely on my own wits for self-defence. I should be compelled to apply to our local Parliament, perhaps to some close coun- sellor of the king himself, denounce you as one of the most pestilent of malefactors, and have you degraded, hanged, broken on the wheel, in order to rid myself of one who has such a hold on me." 16 A WOELD BEWITCHED Th^rigny had changed colour from the first words of this discourse. "No doubt we could harm each other," he said faintly. " Ko doubt. While the executioner was putting the cord round your neck, or giving a turn to the wheel, you might make a confession of my sins, as well as of your own, to the world. I should be fore- warned, but you would be suffering your doom." " Well, well " " That being so, you would not object to an under- standing between us ? " " I should be glad to hear what you propose," was the sullen answer. " First, let me touch on what you came here for. You have learned that I am interested in the trials for witchcraft which have taken place during the past few months." " That in itself is no secret." " Clearly not, since it has reached your ears. You know of M. Mornat's ardour in seeing enchanters, magicians, werewolves and witches brought to justice. And you have a suspicion that, for what services I may render in securing the punishment of such ver- min, M. Mornat is pleased to reward me." " There 's more than this. I admit, as we all do, that the devil has his own agents in all parts of the world ; and no one can blame you for helping to un- mask them. But when I see how deeply you are interested in hunting down the wretches, it is impos- A. WORLD BEWITCHED 17 sible for me to be blind to the ease with which these trials may be arranged." " My own dear, good Raoul, I am so anxious about your welfare " " What '3 coming now ? " "But no: my alarm is needless. You have too much sense to tread on ground which may open under your feet and engulf you. You have just hinted that you could never think of impeaching the justice of the tribunals and mating yourself a defender of sorcery.'" " Ah Why not set this down as the basis of an accusation, and get paid for adding me to the number of your victims ? " " I'll not do that. Neither will I corrupt such an honest champion of the persecuted by inviting him to share the gains of one of the oppressors. Come, I have a warm feeling towards you, as you know. You have been my lover." " One of many." " True : if ungallant. But when we wrenched our- selves from one another's arms, and swore an eternal passion asunder, I provided you with a substitute : in that spirit of unselfishness which is one of my charac- teristic virtues." " I believe you clearly foresaw how I should be chained to a wife who is my curse." " When the immediate pleasure of wresting her from her betrothed was at an end, you naturally tired of her. But hear me. Keep, for the present — in so far at least, as you may — to your wife. Keep to your c 18 A WORLD BEWITCHED profession ; (you were unwise not to pick up those two silver cups in the next room) . And, of all things, be more orthodox in your view of practisers in witch- craft. You do not deserve all this thoughtfulness on my part. But I am weak where you are concerned. In short, I have persuaded you to share my views in many things. You may have reason to congratulate yourself on taking my advice now." CHAPTER II Vexilla Regis Peodeunt Inferni FIFTY yards from the border of the ravine that roared and struggled with myriads of volutions in and out of the bases of the hills, half a mile from the eastern gate of Rochefendue, in a spot that seemed among the fairest of the plain, stood a white-walled inn. On a line with the southern margin of the plain was a natural stone bridge that spanned the ravine and communicated with the Stepway in the angle eastward. Thence the plain rolled northward, between the wall of the city on its left, and a wilderness of boulders on its right : colossal boulders, the down- fallen wreck of some mountain convulsed by earthquake, untold centuries ago; rocks on whose far wandered fragments Rochefendue itself was understood to have been founded. A crescent of beech trees, with horns pointing to the north, usually served the inn as a protection from the fiercer fires of the sun. This morning, however, the whole sky was inlaid by a dome of many-coloured clouds through which the sun had not yet pierced. It was with less than the usual discomfort, then, that four guests had re- mained outside tho inn for nearly an hour of this 20 A WORLD BEWITCHED midsummer day, confronting the mountains. One, indeed, who seemed the youngest of the four, had strayed to the far side of the semicircle of beeches, and stood, leaning against one of the trees, with eyes raised eastward towards where the ascending degrees of the Stepway had vanished in the clouds. The three others of the party sat with their backs to the white wall of the inn. The one seated in the centre was a man just under fifty years of age : broad of shoulder, deep of chest, with kindly eyes, and features noble and grave, with- out austerity. The two men on either side of him might have been respectively fifteen and twenty years younger; while their comrade in the distance had clearly not long emerged from boyhood. All four, though wearing swords, and having the air of persona of quality, were dressed in somewhat uncourtly fashion; or, more literally, their garments, while not ill-fitting, were of such coarse material as must have been either the customary wear of dwellers in mountain regions, or the special choice of individuals equipped for some rude enterprise. In front of the three seated men was a square table, holding glasses and a bottle of scarcely tasted Jurancon wine. The eldest of the party, with eyes fixed on his youngest companion, was joining half abstractedly in the conversation of the other two. "But you will not listen," said his friend on the right ; " one would think you had lost your natural hardness of belief, and were filled with some horrible foreboding." ■ * A WORLD BEWITCHED 21 " And I must encourage you, as a diversion, to tear a charming woman's name to shreds ? " " Come, Martignac, who knows better than you ? " " Though I praise your discretion, my dear Trecart, in only touching on the subject while the lad is out of hearing." " Neither the lad nor anyone belonging to his house has much to learn on the point. What do you say, La Faille ? " " From him, at least, I gathered enough to be glad that she is away from our neighbourhood even for three days." " I wish I could hope she has been idle during those three days,'' mused Martignac. "You look forward to something decisive, then ? " " I cannot explain, even to myself. I'll merely say that I am not sorry I told you to be prepared." " I never saw you this way before," said Trecart. " Look up and lay the blame on the sky. The day is a heavy one, and is constantly suggestive of some- thing baleful. I laugh, and yet I shall sigh with re- lief, at the end of this day, if we have nothing worse to look back upon than the storm that seems to be brew- ing in the clouds over us. However, we shall soon know. Anything new, Bellerive ? " he cried, standing up. The young man thus named had moved further beyond the beeches. " Come this way," he replied, without looking round ; and his friends at once joined him. 22 A WORLD BEWITCHED That part of the curtain of clouds which hid the uppel- flights of the great stone Stepway had, that moment, been burst through, and a man was hurrying down. Not many minutes later, as the man halted before the group at the inn, he proved to be Fernando Vergara. He was panting, — almost voiceless, — yet he was the first to speak. " Madame de Mercalme has come home . . . M. Mornat is with her ... I saw them together as I came down," " M. de Th^rigny ? " asked La Faille, softly. "Not to be seen up there, seigneur." " Dolores Erezuma ? " said Martignac. "Gone to mass." " And your mind '& at ease ? " " Would to God it were, seigneur." " What more troubles you ? " " Just the thought of the hags prowling near Dolores' cottage, and doing their utmost to keep me off." " How ? " " By thrusting their lies upon me as to her where- abouts. I only got the truth at last from a country- man of my own." "But these hags ? " " I have often seen them coming out of Madame de Mercalme's gate." Bellerive looked abruptly westward. Even a minute or two before Fernando's arrival among the gentle- men, a dull murmur had been rising from the city. A "WORLD BEWITCHED 23 The murmur swelled into a roar ; and soon the eastern gate was flung open, and there came rolling through it a violently disordered procession. First came a number of boys clad in surplices^ and bearing sacred banners. The dull morning light helped the eye but faintly to discern the helmets and firearms of the arquebusiers, and the weapons of the halberdiers who followed. To the right and a little to the rear of these was plainlier visible a priest in full canonicals. Behind the seeming leaders there struggled through the gate masses of men, women and children, who broadened out and poured over the plain in one huge flood. Gradually stealing to the front of all, like a fringe of foam, swept a semicircle of bright-faced boys, who glanced continually round as at some point of attraction, but stumbled onward still, Fernando, anxious and alert from the first sound, had never taken his eyes off the advancing throng. He had, after a while, caught a glimpse of something that rendered him speechless, motionless. He looked no more at the gentlemen near him ; but all at once, with a slight sigh, sped away to meet the oncomers. " Our host may chance to have more company than he^ll care for," observed Martignac. " We must warn him." " We are doomed to enjoy no wine this morning," said Tr^cart. " Plourens ! " shouted La Faille. A man with a long, thin body, but with a full face whose brown skin was plentifully besprinkled with 24 A WORLD BEWITCHED spots of red, appeared at the inn door. Martignac pointed in silence to the crowd. The host growled a single inelegant word, and, needing no explanation, hurriedly removed the wine, the table and the chairs, and proceeded to bolt and bar his doors. A moment later the figure of a bottle sustained in a horizontal position was vaguely definable amid the shadows of a private room of the inn. " The wine will not be wasted," said young Bellerive. " No,'' assented Trecart ; " Flourens is a man of short speeches and long drinks." In about five minutes more, Fernando, speeding back from the front of the concourse, was again jimong the friends at the beeches. '' My dream, M. Victor ! " he gasped, with wild eyes and haggard cheeks turned towards Bellerive. "How?" " Look there 1 Dolores Erezuma ! Seized for witch- craft ; charged with being a werewolf; a kidnapper and eater of little children. What else I do not know." " Why do they bring her this way ? " " The proofs against her, they say, are in her own cottage far up there ; and they mean to face her with them." " What new madness is this ? " murmured Martignac. " Nothing but enthusiasm in the good cause ; " remarked La Faille, ''willing to mount thousands of feet in order to gain evidence. Nothing could be more praiseworthy." A WORLD BEWITCHED 25 " There will be many a weary limb over the search," said Martignac, "but we, at least, shall join in it." " Oh, M. Victor," exclaimed Fernando, " what will madame say to this ? " " My mother's foster-sister, eh ! " mused Bellerive. At this remark Trecart and La Faille looked hurriedly at one another ; but remained silent. " They've kept their word, they've commenced ; they've struck at a Basque ! " vociferated Fernando. " Well, we'll see what the end shall be." By this time the foremost part of the throng had come to within twenty yards of the inn. The van of the formal procession, consisting of the aforenamed banner-bearing choristers, was followed by twelve halberdiers in three rows, four abreast. At a set distance behind these came, in equal number and like order, a band of arquebusiers. In the space between the armed men was a figure that seemed to draw most eyes to itself. It was the figure of a woman no longer young, yet with little or no sign of the inroads of years upon her face and form. The lividness that overlaid her visage like a mask, and seemed to drain the blood from her lips themselves, had no power to disguise the firm beauty of her features, or to quench the sombre flame of her eyes. When she drew within eyeshot of the four gentlemen, her gaze rested on Bellerive. For an instant the blood mounted to her cheeks and temples, a softness came into her looks, and, with a slight and graceful movement, she bent her head. Next moment she relifted it, and with eyes 26 A WORLD BEWITCHED fixed before her, walked on, apparently deaf alike to the reproachful admonitions of the priest at her side, and the hurricane of execrations from the men and women around her. But high even above this clamour rose at times the screaming of a woman who walked, partly supported by four men, immediately behind the arquebusiers. This woman was declared to have been for the last two days a victim of the maleficent arts of Dolores Brezuma. " Of course," observed Trecart, " our indefatigable friend, the woman Fadeau." "Readiest of cup-bearers to our local drinkers of blood," said La Faille. The woman, it seemed, had been of service in giving important, indeed fatal, evidence in nine-tenths of the trials for witchcraft during the last six months. At this moment she was qualifying for the first time as a victim tormented by demons. "If I understand Dolores," remarked Trecart, with an attentive look at the prisoner, " it '& well that she and her accuser are kept asunder. Have you thought of anyone near in blood to the woman denounced as a witness ? " "If I had not," answered La; Faille, with a face turned suddenly white, " I should be reminded of it by seeing Th^rigny among those foul-mouthed wretches." Meanwhile Martignac had been otherwise engaged. When Dolores, catching sight of Bellerive, had be- stowed on him her forlorn recognition, the young A WORLD BEWITCHED 27 man's first impulse of compassionate frenzy had been to dart forward, sword in hand. He was held fast by Martignac. " What would you do ? Kill half a dozen of yonder wolves, and be torn in pieces by the remainder ? " " Let them try it " " I can hazard my life as well as you. But I must have some hope of gain by the risk." "And are we to stand by and see her slaughtered at the word of a foul, blood-reeking liar ? " " Let us be wise — God grant that she, above all, may be so ! — and there 's not a butcher among them but shall be disappointed. — Come, come. La Faille and Trecart, and you, Fernando. We must go to the front." The four gentlemen and their humble follower left the plain, and, while keeping not too far ahead of the procession, were first to cross the ravine bridge and begin the ascent of the Stepway. It was known that a height of no fewer than three thousand feet in all must be scaled before the accused woman's cottage was reached. The toil of making an ascent which could not fail to occupy hours caused a general intermittence of the hostile cries. But the victim and accuser, who found herself unable to mount the stairs, and who had to be borne in the arms of assistants, kept up with something of methodical energy her own lugubrious uproar. Martignac and Bellerive, side by side, and foremost of the climbers, had passed high above the point 28 A WORLD BEWITCHED opposite to Madame de Mercalme's house, and had left the plain about fifteen hundred feet beneath them, when they entered the threshold of the clouds. First they became wrapped round in lazily rolling volumes of a greyish black. These were gradually transcoloured and transformed into rugged passes and gorges of deep violet. As the friends and their followers continued the ascent, they toiled through roads festooned with purple hangings and suffused with gauze of crimson ; while through the diaphanous maze there began to hover the vague first glimpse of sunlight. For a thousand feet higher, the way led to galleries of fiery vermilion, or avenues to which the moss-grown humid stairs had lent their own lustre of gleaming emerald ; or corridors of brown, or halls and chambers of gold. And at length, passing beneath the sem- blance of a myriad coloured arch, with mouldings beside whose involutions the most fantastic of ara- besques might have seemed but simple tracery, the climbers, disentangled from the clouds, came to a large flat rock, under a sky of translucent azure, ruled over by the unveiled flaming sun. The men and women and boys of the neighbourhood were nearly all good mountaineers, and of some two thousand persons who had come up from Rochefendue to witness what might chance, not more than three hundred had been left behind. The few that defied interference from the men-at-arms kept near the cottage of Dolores Erezuma, which rose eastward of the Stepway, and was not more than ten yards from the A WORLD BEWITCHED 29 vast rock westward on which Martignac and his comrades had taken their stand. The less favoured of the crowd, as they reached the halting-place, had small difficulty in finding places of advantage on the still ascending steps, or among the boulders, the trunks of pines torn down by avalanches, or other ruins in the storm-ravaged heights. As the chiefs in the original procession drew up near the little cottage, the four friends had the leisure for identification of them which they had been hitherto denied. The fully-robed ecclesiastic was M. le Chanoine Billault, of the Cathedral of Rochefendue. He had, it seemed, while readily securing from Laure Fadeau a denunciation of the enchantress, failed, in the mass just celebrated by him, to relieve the demoniac herself. It was mysteriously hoped that when the ally of Satan was confronted, as now proposed, by unanswerable proofs of her guilt, there would be less difficulty in expelling the fiend from the tormented woman. Beside the canon stood the greffier, Jules Dervaulx, a small, spare, elderly man, with wrinkles past numbering in his hard face. On a line with these two, but some yards from them, was a younger man than either. He was a priest, not more than twenty-five years of age, tall and thin. The height and breadth of his forehead were not concealed by his biretta ; his eyes were large, black, and bright ; he had a long nose and a prominent chin ; and, altogether, his face was more a powerful than a handsome one. He, too, was attached to the Cathedral, and his name was Eustache Gontaut. To 30 A WORLD BEWITCHED his right, but hemmed in by the halberdiers, was Dolores Erezuma. Nearer to Billault's left hand was Laure Fadeau, still guarded by her supporters, but now standing, and with the light of the sun falling sideways on her meagre frame and keen swarthy visage. The two priests and the greffier had scarcely taken their places when they were joined by Mornat and Raoul de Th^rigny. The greffier was drawing the canon's attention to the four gentlemen and their Basque follower, when Martignac stepped off the rock and advanced. "You have found another victim for the stake, messieurs ? How every eye near me sparkles at the prospect ! " " M. de Martignac," said Billault, " if you mean to interfere " " ni ask one question." " I pray you to be brief." " Will you, for nearly the hundredth time, connive at the horrible death of a fellow-creature, and that on the word of a wretch who has hitherto worked for gain, and whose avarice is now sharpened by vindic- tiveness ? " " It is thus," interposed Dervaulx, " that Seigneur de Martignac always belies those who are engaged in furthering the ends of justice." " Yourself, for instance, M. le Greffier ? " "Yes." " I have always referred to you as a scoundrel, Sieur Dervaulx. I declare you to be equally noted as A WORLD BEWITCHED 31 a liar, a coward, and a thirster for innocent blood. I consider that no man could in honesty speak a good word of you. But in saying this I do not belie you." " M. Dervaulx," observed Billault, " is a servant of the law, and is consequently used to harsh language from those who would spread the principles of anarchy on all sides. For the rest, seigneur, you know whether it becomes you to extend your charges to an unfor- tunate and defenceless woman.^' "M. le Ohanoine, I have made it my business to inquire about the woman who has earned your com- passion, the creature whom you and other purveyors of the hangman find so serviceable, and I have learned to speak plainly about her " " This is intolerable " " Thus far, unhappily for her victims, this person has been too well protected, and is therefore entitled to the notice of disgust and abhorrence. We^U see how much longer the scandal shall last of having such a miscreant inspired and paid to fill the gaols and feed the pubUo fires of Rochefendue with mangled and murdered innocents." "Tou speak plainly, monsieur; 111 imitate you. This is not the first time you have uttered the senti- ments of an atheist, mocked at the forms of justice, derided Jesus Christ's own mandate, wherein he says, ' Ye shall cast out devils.' " "M. Billault, I suggest that we avoid if possible the danger of looking ridiculous. Meanwhile, let it be agreed that you and I reverduce, as we deem fit, the 32 A WORLD BEWITCHED spirits of another world. The difference between us is that you fear Satan, I fear God." " M. de Martignac " " Enough, monsieur. Go on with the mysterious purpose that has brought you up here. But remember that there are eyes upon you which will not sleep where wrong may be detected." The greffier muttered to Billault that it might be necessary for them to make a more striking example than any yet fixed upon. The canon assented with a grim nod, and Dervaulx, raising his voice, declared that it was now proposed to enter the cottage of the accused woman. Billault, Mornat, Th^rigny, Pere Gontaut, and the greffier accordingly moved thither, followed by Martignac, his three friends, and Fernando Vergara. The key of the cottage being asked for, and produced from the pocket of Dolores Brezuma, the door was opened. The eyes of four of the company were at once turned to the table, and from these four there came a remarkably united groan of horror. On that table lay the left hand of a child. Fastened round the wrist, by a red ribbon passed midway through the fingers, was a cluster of dark brown curls. It was known to all standing there that among the Basques a child's left hand, if severed during sleep, served as a powerful amulet, a sure preventive against all danger to the wearer. " That was not here when I left home to go to mass," declared Dolores. " We can believe it," said the greffier ; " if you A WORLD BEWITCHED 33 had had this devil's preservative about you even in churchj we might have found it less easy to bring your villainy to light." Martignac, who had entered the cottage with his friends, was examining one of the windows. On a sudden he addressed Dolores : " Were these two panes of glass broken when you left the house this morning ? " " No, seigneur." " What then, M. de Martignac f " demanded Billault. " I say," was the reply, " that your confederates have blundered in the most clownish manner. There are practised hands at thieving amongst them, as I know. Could they not have filched the door-key from the woman while she was in the Cathedral, or on the way to it, and have turned back here, instead of breaking her windows in order to fling that little hand on the table ? " Mornat moved towards the interrupter and said, in a low voice, " You speak well on behalf of evil- doers, monsieur." " I have no such gift. If I had, there are at least three men under this roof whose infamies would indeed make me eloquent." At this point there came a cry from Fernando Vergara. He had raised the hand and was examin- ing it. " I know this hand. Here 'a a burn on the palm. I tried to cure it." D 34 A WORLD BEWITCHED "But the child to whom the hand belonged?" inquired Martignac. " Four days ago I left her alive at Fuenterrabia. She has been murdered." " Precisely/' said Billault, " and we know by whom." " Then bring the murderer here/' shouted FemandOj " for Dolores Erezuma has not been out of this neigh- bourhood for the last month." " As more than one here can testify/' said Mar- tignac. "What answer have you to that, M. le Chanoine ? " Billault stared at his questioner, and gave a shrug of the shoulders, " M. de Martignac, I thought it would have been needless to explain with what ease an ally of Satan " " There, there, we know what's coming. An ally of Satan can travel round the world in a single night, and so forth. But to return to plain sense ; who was this child, Fernando ? " While the question was being asked, Momat, who had left the room for a few seconds, returned and stood beside the canon. " One moment, M. de Martignac," said Billault, " the creature whom you honour with your advocacy had no need to travel round the world. She went no further than the Basque frontier, where the child to whom this hand belongs," continued the speaker with emotion, " was taken sleeping from beside her mother and murdered." Here Mornat whispered hurriedly A WORLD BEWITCHED 35 into the ear of Billault, who, stifling at once his tender feelings, frowned, and turned a deep red. Martignac had watched this incident and smiled: "Now, Fernando," he repeated, "who was this child ?'' " The daughter of Annette Larive, who was burned last week." "And this is the child who was taken from be- side her mother in bed ? " said Martignac. " Mes- sieurs, your story has not been well rehearsed. M. le Chanoine, your emotion has been uncalled for." " It has indeed been uncalled for ! " exclaimed Der- vaulx, carrying the matter off with uncontrolled effrontery. " The daughter of a sorceress ! One who would, in any case, haye met in time with the fate of her mother ! " " M. Billault," said Martignac, " now that we find the child not to have been butchered in presence of the mother, now that she is pronounced to have been consecrated to the work of hell, I will ask a question. Is it usual for witches, being under the discipline of the devil, to murder one another ? " " M. de Martignac," was the sullen rejoinder, " it is not I who am under trial,and subject to interrogatory," " No, but the fatal course you have entered upon, the passions which you are helping to let loose on all sides, may some day bring your own deeds under review. Then, M, le Chanoine, let it be seen whether you wiU maintain your present reserve in regard to inconvenient questions." " M. le Chanoine," interposed Dervaulx, " there 36 A WORLD BEWITCHED are many instances where the flesh and blood of a witch or of her child have been found serviceable for the composition of philtres : and naturally the wretches have no scruple in sacrificing each other for the sake of such horrible treasures." "Enough," said Billault, with recovered equanimity, " this can be investigated elsewhere. For the present satisfaction of all hearers, I ask M. le GreflBer whether he persists in his charge against Dolores Erezuma of having killed and devoured this child ? " " I do." " Saving this hand, reserved for an amulet ? " " Yes." " His witness is Laure Fadean ? " " The same," assented Dervaulx ; and the woman named gave a confirmatory shriek. " And when did this murder and cannibalism take place ? " " Last Friday." " Flesh meat on a Friday ! " said the scandalized Mornat. " I now ask this woman if she stands to the denial of guilt made by her in the Cathedral ? " The prisoner, still kept apart from Laure Fadeau and with eyes fixed on the floor (in consultation with her ally the devil, as Mornat suggested), turned a ghastly but resolute face towards her questioner, " I am not a witch." " And this amulet ? " " I know nothing of it." A WORLD BEWITCHED 37 " We must have a better answer than that." " Then do not question me. Ask those about youj who have set their wits to destroy me." " You will reply, as others have done, in a diflferent tone when you are in the hands of the torturers." "We shall see." " M. le Greffier, I think you have what 's needed to support your accusations ? " Dervaulx, who had seized upon the child's hand, intimated his assent, and the party left the cottage. The four men in attendance on Laure Fadeau were meanwhile finding it less and less easy to control their charge. Their difficulty seemed to arouse the com- passion of M. Mornat, who turned to the greffier, and said in a half aside : " This is not all we came up here for. The people outside are impatient, and will expect something else." " And on them we must rely should Martignac and his gang attempt a rescue. Come, then " " The exorcism at the Cathedral has failed," con- tinued Mornafc, raising his voice, " and it makes one's heart bleed to see this woman in such suflfering, when other ways are at hand of relieving her." " To what will his bleeding heart prompt him ? " mused Martignac. " What do you suggest, M. Mornat ? " asked Der- vaulx, with the manner, somehow, of one taking up his cue in a previously acquired part. " That the woman who has bewitched her should 38 A WORLD BEWITCHED be called upon to expel the fiends that still torment her victim." " There are precedents for it/' admitted the greffier. " Such a proposal is degrading and offensiye to the authority of the Church," said Billault. " And how are you to know," said Gontaut, inter- vening for the first time, " that the woman whom you credit with such power may not use it to escape from your hands ? " " Credit with such power ? " repeated Mornat, Meanwhile the greflBer had drawn nearer to Billault and whispered : " Pere Gontaut believes in the woman's innocence. He does not want her to confess. But her assent to our proposal, if we can secure it, will be in itself an admission of her guilt." Billault nodded his approval. " What does Dolores Brezuma say ? " he demanded. " Will she so far help to repair the wrong done by her ? " Dolores, who had been listening with an interest wholly absorbed by this new suggestion, seemed to fall back into her previous apathy when addressed by Billault. " I cannot say that I have yet done wrong," she said in a constrained voice, " but I am wilUng to do all in my power to end this woman's pain." Martignac here advanced; "You will surely not agree to this, Dolores ? " " I must : I have no other resource," was the hur- ried answer. " It is meant as a trap for you ." A WORLD BEWITCHED 39 " May be soj" she said with a strange smile, " but I'll not shun it." "You are lost." For an instant there came into her face an expres- sion of such unspeakable despair as brought the tears upspringing to Martignac's eyes. " Lost indeed ! " she murmured. Then her visage became hardened and smoothed over with a sombre calmness. " You are willing, then ? " demanded Billault in violent impatience. "lam." Mornat and Dervaulx smiled, and it seemed as if the woman Fadeau suspended her contortions and outcries to exchange glances of intelligence with these two. " But on one condition," resumed Dolores. " Name it," said Billault, after a pause. " That this woman and I be left alone together, no one coming within ten yards of us." Those around looked in renewed silence at each other. " Of course you will remain in sight of all here ? " suggested Dervaulx. "Yes." "\ do not like this," declared Gontaut, "The good P^re Gontaut," muttered Dervaulx to Mornat, " ia jealous of his order, and does not like to see the devil forced into the service of God." " Your condition is agreed to," said BiUault. Dolores bowed and smiled, then fixed her eyes 40 A WORLD BEWITCHED upon Laure Fadeau^ who returned the gaze, by no means to the astonishment of the bystanders, with a shuddering fascination. " Bring her to where I shall stop," said Dolores, " then let her go." She moved towards the rock on which Martignac and his friends had been standing j and, when she had reached the centre of it, turned and faced the cottage. Dervaulx and Mornat were meanwhile once more in consultation with Billault ; and the result was apparently seen in a re-organization of what might be called the oflScial group. The boys with the sacred banners marched on to the rock, followed by the two priests, who, together with Mornat, Dervaulx and Th&igny, took up a position with their backs to the mountains. The twelve halberdiers and the twelve arquebusiers formed respectively to east and west of the prisoner on the rock ; and thus the fear of a rescue was effectually guarded against. To the immediate north was a huge gap, some four miles in length from the Stepway westward, half a mile in breadth, and quite three thousand feet in depth. Its bottom, in fact, was on a level with the far down banks of the ravine below the plain : and many branches of the same ravine ran winding through the gap. It was a valley hemmed in by granite crags, and bristling with sharp rocks. But its vast depth, and the features which made it formidable at other times were now concealed. For, only a few feet beneath the rock on which Dolores and her captors A WORLD BEWITCHED 41 were stationed, over the entire surface of the gap, and for countless miles beyond it, lay a bed of clouds that blazed beneath the sun like a moveless yet uneven river of gold ; and the eyes of many in the assemblage, resting for a moment on the vision, turned away dazzled, blinded. Dolores had taken her stand about eight feet from the edge of the chasm, whereon she did not, as others had done, bestow a glance. Her eyes turned at first towards the group consisting of the priests and the brown-faced boys holding the banners. These banners were confined to representations of Christ, the Apostles, and holy men of after ages, casting out devils. No- where was there a memorial of the loftier labours and sufiferings and triumphs of the world^s Redeemer. Even the crucifixes worn by the two priests were in this moment concealed. Dolores turned hastily from the banners, and awaited the approach of the woman who should be given into her hands for this irregular exorcism. But the approach was delayed. The eflforts of the men holding Laure Fadeau had been child's play to what was now demanded of them. Those who had found something of pretence in the woman's cries and struggles heretofore, could have no doubt of he*' sincerity at this moment. But her evidences of dismay and her frantic denunciations of Dolores were dis- regarded. At a signal from Dervaulx, some of the halberdiers went forward to help, Laure was placed within reach of Dolores : the men tore themselves from her ; and the two women were left alone. 42 A WORLD BEWITCHED Dolores had seized Laure at once round the waist, and whether by her own strength or by the exhaustion of the accuser, held her powerless. Then commenced a dialogue conducted with extreme rapidity. " Let me go," gasped Laure. " No : I have undertaken that you shall never more in this world be troubled by devils." " Help, help ! — Forgive me. They set me on. I will withdraw everything." " You have belied me, then ? " "But I'll make all the amends I can." " I'll see to that." " Let me go." " I must keep my word." " Help ! Murder ! " shrieked Laure Fadeau. She was lifted from her feet. Cries of sudden be- wilderment and dismay burst from the bystanders, and there was a rush forward. But Dolores had darted like an arrow to the edge of the abyss. There was a final commingling of a groan of despair, and a cry of ferocious exultation. And the two women were swallowed up in the river of gold. CHAPTER III A Peomise op Vengeance OVER the scattered throng there fell a silence which lasted nearly a minute. Then, by a sadden impulse, and with the manner of people cajoled and wronged, the differenb groups converged in a sullen cataract toward the Stepway, and became drawn down in the many-coloured vortex of cloud. The gaol of Rochefendue was empty. There had not been a burning for a week. And those honest citizens who had, in anticipation of ultimate reward, lent their presence to the preliminaries now closed with such grotesque abortiveness, felt that they had been cheated of a performance in their favourite style of entertainment. Some few, in hastening down, suggested that the bodies of the two women should be searched for. The proposal was received with laughter, since it was pointed out that the witch must have taken flight to some region prepared by the devil for such contingencies, leaving no trace of herself or her victim. And they who so believed had the satisfaction of being confirmed in their faith by what followed. On due investigation it was found, indeed, that a 44 A WORLD BEWITCHED pinnacle of rock overhanging the ravine had been broken away. On the other hand, there were no stains of blood ; and certain it was that the bodies were never seen again. Further hints that the blood had been washed away by the subsequent rains, and that the bodies had been borne under the foundations of the hills, were received with a fierceness of derision which proved to the doubters that they had passed all reason- able limits in their scepticism. Mornat, Billault, Therigny, and the greffier lingered on the eastern side of the Stepway ; Pere Gontaut and Fernando had hurried away in separate directions ; Martignac and his friends remained, an agitated group, a little southward of the great rock. Billault and the greflBer were the first to start from the stupor into which the catastrophe had plunged all onlookers, and were busy in a conversation illustrated by frequent glances at the four gentlemen. The colloquy was ended by Dervaulx approaching Martignac with a mixture of hesitation and effrontery, and standing before him : " Seigneur de Martignac, the honour of a word with you." Martignac stared at him : " Well ? " " I speak on behalf of M. le Chanoine Billault." "Then let M. le Chanoine's mouthpiece be brief." " Seigneur, no doubt you can bear witness that M. Billault gave a reluctant assent to the proceedings which have had so evil an end ? " "I can witness that he was your accomplice in driving an innocent woman to despair " A WORLD BEWITCHED 45 " A woman stained with murder and self-slaughter and worse, innocent I " "I am only grieved that the well-deserved vengeance wreaked by her on another accomplice of yours has in- volved the sacrifice of her own life." " Then, monsieur, it would be hopeless to ask you to admit that had it not been for your open encourage- ment of the witch " " Sieur Dervaulx," said Martignac persuasively, " we have just had evidence that there are more ways than one of reaching the foot of these rocks. I offer you ten seconds in which to choose the safest means of getting down." The greffier withdrew, and he and M. Billault, without more words, turned to descend the Stepway. Th^rigny was moving after them when he was con- fronted by Bellerive. " M. de Therigny, a comrade of yours has just been desired to hurry away from here. It 's incredible what a liking IVe taken to your society, and I ask you to remain." Therigny glanced at the others, not far off, who included Mornat, in addition, of course, to Bellerive's comrades. Then he answered, with a look of morose keenness, " Explain your business with me.''' " Well, — say that I find fault with your share in the hideous work just ended." " And that having expressed your disapproval you will let me pass ? " Bellerive looked athimin momentary embarrassment. 46 A WORLD BEWITCHED " Is it possible that I have not made myself under- stood ? " "I think you had better stand aside, unless " " Unless I can give you stronger reason for remain- ing?" "Yes." Bellerive took off his right-hand glove, and struck his interlocutor in the face with it. Th^rigny flushed, then turned, not pale, but green, and with a convul- sive double movement drew both sword and dagger. Bellerive imitated the action, and led the way to the flat rock. " One moment," said Martignac. " No, do not think I mean to baulk you, Bellerive. But come, M. Mornat, shall the rest of us be onlookers ? " " Why do you appeal to me, monsieur ? " " You and I are of an age. What say you if we keep our juniors in countenance ? " There was a flattery in the argument which swept the scowl from Mornat's forehead. "You shall have your wish," he said, complacently. The two elderly champions moved to the rock whereon Bellerive and Therigny were already facing each other, whilst Tr^cart looked disconsolately at La Faille : " We are to stand idle, then ? " " So it seems." Trecart, not observing the moody manner of this assent, went on with a profound groan ; " Where are the two judges ? What can have kept them from this day's pretty work ? Lord God, I'd readily forfeit a A WOELD BEWITCHED 47 tooth, or even an eye, to have the two scoundrels before us, Boisseo at your disposal, Pinard at mine." The four combatants, with daggers in the left hand, swords in the right, had meanwhile flung themselves upon each other. The struggle between Bellerive and his opponent was neither sanguinary nor prolonged. Th^rigny was not a bad swordsman. For about three minutes, in default of an opportunity for attack, he defended himself, if not with calmness, at least with vigilance. But the increasing fury and swiftness of the thrusts he had to turn aside seemed gradually to confuse him. He gave ground, and on a sudden measured his length upon the rock. He had not been hit, as was known to Bellerive, who waited in silent irritation for him to rise. The impatiently suppressed wish was not to be complied with in a moment. Th^rigny began to breathe heavily, and at last, in a faint voice, avowed, " I am at your mercy." Bellerive stared down at him. " I have not hurt you." " The advantage is yours," was the grumbled re- joinder ; " make what use you please of it." There was a pause, during which the young man remained contemplating him. " You are strong enough, at least, to take yourself from my sight." " I'll help him," said Trecart. " Permit me," interposed La Faille. The prostrate man would have risen and moved 48 A WORLD BEWITCHED away with whatever of suffering stateliness he could assume. But La Faille dragged him to his feet with no ceremony, led him toward the Stepway, and thus took leave of him : " M, de Therigny, you have been a fortunate man this day." " Monsieur " " And your luck stands in rare contrast with that of the man who speaks to you ; the man who has been forestalled by his friend, or who would otherwise have found such pleasure in paying the debt he owes you." At this moment there came a cry from the rocky platform. Mornat had received a cut in the shoulder. He was not insensible; still, he could not keep his feet without help, and Therigny was called upon with little deference to return. At the same time hand- kerchiefs were proffered chivalrously by Martignac and his friends for the binding up of the wound, at which they even assisted. Mornat was then left to the charge of Therigny, as to the one man in the company who had any claim to intimacy with him. The two associates in defeat moved painfully down the Stepway, and had no sooner disappeared than Martignac smiled in Bellerive's face : " My son, should M. de Therigny ever again offend you, leave the punishment of him to your lackeys." The speaker then, without pause, invited his com- rades to turn with him further along the rocks toward the west. La Faille and Bellerive walked together A WORLD BEWITCHED 49 behind; but there weighed for a few seconds a burthen of constraint upon both. "Victor," said La Faille at last, in a hoarse voice, " I have wondered within the past minute or so whether a time could ever come for me to say that I am not grateful to you." Bellerive stood motionless. "For God's love, Henri, do not say that," he faltered. " Why did you come between that man and me ? " " I'll explain in a few words ; and if I have seemed intrusive, offensive in my forwardness, try still to forgive me, like the brother you have always been to me." « But " " Listen. There is a woman most dear to you, of whom you have been robbed — again, pardon me — and for her sake alone it seems to me impossible that that man should fall by your hand " " Then you have discovered " " But by no revelations from others." " And for my sake — and hers — you stood up against the villain ? " " I had some thought of trying to beat back these miseries that seem to be closing over us all of late. If I have undertaken a duty that you cannot look upon as mine, I again ask your forgiveness.'^ The answer which La Faille strove to utter did not come. With a convulsive movement his hand sought that of Bellerive, and there were tears in the eyes of 50 A WORLD BEWITCHED both young men, as they gazed in full frankness at each other, then strode vigorously on. When the four were again together, Martignao was questioned as to his reason for choosing this path. His answer was that he had observed Fernando rush away in this direction the instant after Dolores had made the fatal plunge with her destroyer and victim. He suspected Pernando's purpose ; he meant to remove all doubt. He added, by the way, that it would be unwise of them at present to go down the hills. Unless he was mistaken, a storm would soon burst under them. "Therigny and Mornat wiU not have so far to go," said Tr^oart; "they will find a welcome halt- ing and plotting place at Madame de Mercalme's house." " What of the old man's wound ? " mused La Faille. " Oh ! " rejoined Tr^cart, " Mornat's adviser and helper, the devil, has much work still for him to do, and will surely watch over him in the downward journey." They had been walking for nearly an hour in a fitfully interrupted silence when there travelled to- wards them on the rising breeze a sound of lamenta- tion. They tm'ned round an abutment of rock, and were brought within sight of some scattered groups numbering perhaps a hundred persons. These be- longed to a colony of the poorest and most helpless of Basques, living at heights which, in summer itself, A WORLD BEWITCHED 51 often enfolded them in a temperature rigorous as that of an early spring in northern climes. They had received hints only that morning to be prepared for immediate flight over the frontier; and Fernando Vergara^ from whom the caution had indi- rectly comOj was now among them^ busy with counsel, encouragement, and help. Here and there were mules awkwardly laden with bedding and furniture, while the most portable of other household goods were carried by the fugitives. Men, women, and children stood outside the abandoned cottages, where some even of those fairly advanced in life had been born. The signal for departure had not yet been given, and Fernando, a favourite with them all, was moving from one to the other, caressing the children, appeasing the younger men with promises of a reckoning for that day^s work, receiving with reverence the blessings of the women and the elders, when Martignac and his friends drew up among them. " This is what you have decided upon, Fernando ? " said BeUerive. " Unless they are to serve as fuel for more fires, M. Victor," was the reply, given in French, like the question. " You know that they could, every one, find shelter within the walls of my mother's house, and that I, her son, would protect them." Fernando made no attempt to conceal the tears that sprang to his eyes. "It cannot be, M. Victor. They will be safe 52 A WORLD BEWITCHED where they are bound for. They must not bring trouble to you. But those who could not understand what you have said shall know of it in good time." Martignac drew Fernando aside. " You go with them across the frontier ? " " I do, seigneur." "Take this," and he placed a purse in the young fellow's hand. Five minutes later the wanderers had fixed their last looks on the abandoned cottages, and had directed their footsteps toward the south ; the four gentlemen watching till they were out of sight. Martignac was the first to turn away, and to look from west to north, and thence to east. The enor- mous crescent thus commanded by his gaze was filled with a gulf of cloud whose billows, though fashioned in shapes and semblances of a multiformity expanding to infinitude, had remained till now unmoved as a desert of ice. But through this upper sun-fused air the gradually strengthening breeze began to sweep over the summits of the gold and silver waves, and to stir them from their lethargy. Soon there mingled with the dazzling yet restful radiance of the gulf a fiercer and more abrupt splendour. It was the light- ning. Contrasted with the blaze of white and yellow vapour through which it darted constantly, it seemed of a faint violet hue. It was followed by a groan and a crash. The unimprisoned clouds were trampling the air with their tread of thunder. Slowly the shin- ing towerd and pinnacles, the spires and battlements, A WORLD BEWITCHED 53 the palaces and globes of cloud, trembled, were con- vulsed, split asunder. And from the crests and surfaces to the far depths of the gaps thus made, the colours varied with magic swiftness from the lustre of silver and gold to red and soberer brown, to dull grey and purple and black. The rents in the clouds widened, and far down were the forest tops, the plains, the rocks, the streams, the tiny specks of the mills and scattered hamlets, the more closely joined patch of colouring which represented Rochefendue, all dimly discernible through screens of diamond rain. For two hours the storm lasted. It was furious but rapid. When it was over, the remnants of cloud sank, and were condensed into a golden fringe, with myriads of spires pointing from all parts of the visible horizon toward the cupola in whose very centre blazed the sun. The friends, retracing their steps on the rugged pathway by which they had come, were now at the Stepway, when Tr^cart drew the attention of the others to some one moving inside the cottage of Dolores Brezama. In a few moments a tall figure came out and faced them. " Violante ! " exclaimed Bellerive, as the woman moved towards them and paused. It was in the calmest of tones that she spoke, looking from one to the other : " You were all at the death of Dolores ? " Martignac, alone of the four, trusted himself to answer, " Yes." 54 A WORLD BEWITCHED The woman, whose dress was seen to be saturated, glanced down upon the valley wherein lay Roche- f endue. " The others, those who were disappointed of see- ing her burned, haye gone to the Cathedral to conjure the storm which was hanging over them, prepared to burst, should they let the witch escape. I came away from their midst. I found relief in ascending to this height, in daring the worst that rain and lightning and thunder might do to me, in coming to this very spot. For I have been here to implore God that He might yet put it into my power to make some of the villains yonder rue their work of this day.'' " You did not let them see you ? " said Tr^cart, hastily. '' I mean to care for my safety in view of the mission before me." " What mission ? " again inquired Tr^cart. " If there is anyone here inclined to help me," she said, looking away, " let him change his purpose. I should only be an ally who would fill him with horror. I, who was never guilty of falsehood, cruelty, or baseness, will change my nature till the work is over which I have set myself to do. There is no artifice, no treachery, no bloodshed from which I will hence- forth shrink in order to bring home to my sister's murderers a dear retribution." She hastened down the Stepway, and in a few moments was lost to sight. CHAPTER IV Defiances and Waeninqs NEXT mornings under a heaven whose mists had been absorbed by the earliest fires of the sun, the air gleamed with a vivid pureness in every inter- space of the valley of Eochefendue, and from base to summit of the mountains. It was half-past nine o'clock. The third morning mass at the Cathedral was ended, and among those about to leave the building was Madame de Bellerive. She had come to render thanks for her son's escape from harm in the duel with Therigny, whereof she had only heard late on the previous night. In walking to the central door of the southern aisle, her gaze was fixed on the ground. She had not, therefore, ob- served a woman in advance, a woman slightly younger than herself, who watched for her coming amid the shadows of the cool and sombre edifice, and who offered her Holy Water from the font beside the door. Madame de Bellerive, still but slightly raising her eyes, took the water from the other's fingers, and made the sign of the Gross ; nor was it until both women had emerged into the sun-blaze that the elder of them recognized to whom she had been indebted 56 A WORLD BEWITCHED for the courtesy within. After one steady look she was walking away in silence, when the object of her evident repulsion moved to her side, and kept pace to pace with her. The elder lady stopped and turned : "I think Madame de Mercalme and I do not go in the same direction ? " The person addressed in this uncompromising manner smiled patiently : " I would have gone further out of my way in the hope of speaking to you." Madame de Bellerive shrugged her shoulders : "I'll save you needless trouble." " You are willing to hear me, then ? " " With what forbearance I may." " Forbearance ? " "At the best of times there could be few other than jarring notes in a conversation between you and me. You can best imagine the need I have for self- control as I face you now." Madame de Mercalme looked deliberately round : " There is no one near us, and whatever hard words I may hear from you, whatever warning you may re- ceive from me, can be exchanged without interference." " Warning ? You begin badly." "I assume a tone, then, which would come more fittingly from your own lips ? " " If I could ever have thought of seeking you out, indeed, it would be to dwell upon the danger of your work of yesterday." " Yon have come, of your own will, to the business A WORLD BEWITCHED 57 which led me to throw myself in your way. You refer to the murder and self-slaughter by Dolores Brezuma ? Those who aimed at bringing Madame de Bellerive's foster-sister to justice must beware of the vengeance overhanging them for laying their hands upon a Basque ? — Lift your eyes to the mountain westward, and see to what extent the warning has proved effective." Madame de Bellerive looked in the direction in- dicated. At a point that seemed immediately under the snow-line, there rose against the background of purple rock a number of columns of fire. Madame de Bellerive gazed long at these ; then glanced eastward. Bordering the eastern side of the granite Stepway, there mounted a solitary shaft of mingled smoke and flame. The gazer spent but a few moments on this part of the spectacle ; then turned with a hardening face to the woman beside her : "I understand. The sightseers of Rochefendue have missed their prey ? The creatures always at the orders of your confederates, having lost the chance of seeing the tenants of those cottages burned in public for their delight, wreak their malice on the deserted hamlets ? And I am asked to think that the fugitives, themselves unscathed, alive, goaded with the un- banishable remembrance of injuries, will be for ever powerless to take vengeance on their wrongers ? " " If the foster-sister of the dead witch and murderess who was the most infamous of them all, can com- municate with the survivors, we may, of course, look for reprisals." 58 A WORLD BEWITCHED " Poor Dolores needed only one advantage to stand out more lovable and honourable than ever in my eyes, and that ia the distinction of being maligned by you." " Good. I simply renew my words of warning, lest the sympathy of Madame de Bellerive for. the escaped criminals may lead her too far in encourag- ing them to a war of outrage." " I am of course listening to a champion of the law as it is practised by the guides of the rabble in Roche- fendue : where those who fly from lunatics, incen- diaries and assassins, are looked upon as criminals ? " '' And yet you were never in more danger than in continuing this combative tone." " I am in the presence of a defender of religion, of honour, of pure living ? The antecedents of the cham- pion certainly entitle her to advise or warn me." " I'll no longer do either. Advice or warning would be of no avail in a contest with madness : a madness apparently as conspicuous on your own side as on that of your son." " My son ? Why do you dare to name him ? " " One so self-willed can need no help from me to guess the reason." " So the advice and warning are supplanted by the odious effrontery of threats on me and mine ? Do you suppose that one who owes me obedience and affection, would find his love or reverence increased if I checked myself through terror of you ? Who is it that affects to place a bridle on my lips, or who, in doing so, chooses words most calculated to make even A WORLD BEWITCHED 59 my unchangeable horror and loathing yield to defiance and scorn ? I am looking at one who^ when a maid of honour to Queen Marguerite, left far behind her, in the competition of foulness of speech, the most shame- less of her companions. At one so brutishly unre- strained in her desires, that she filled with repugnance many of the most practised libertines of the court. At one whom I, at least, shall never shrink from charging with the poisoning of her own husband, that she might be without restraint in her hopes of gratify- ing the pleasure of the king himself. At one who best remembers how the king, while knowing of the deed done by her, and rescuing her from the law, shrank with horror from the advances of the com- plaisant murderess. And this is the creature who is foremost in bringing others to justice ? This is the one before whom such as I am to tremble ? " Madame de Mercalme turned away without another wordj but her face was lit up by a smile; and the woman whom she had left noticed the smile. About half an hour later, Madame de Bellerive sat in her home, a vast and irregular pile, its three turrets hung with little bells looking from the centre south- ward, its two heavier towers east and west closing the frontward line of battlements, its largest tower of all rising in the rear to the north, nearly on the crest of the low hill whereon the castle had been founded. The masonry, with its combination of blue, purple, and green-veined rock, its red brick, and its variegated stream-washed pebbles, formed a kind of ponderous 60 A WORLD BEWITCHED mosaic. This building, one of the most fantastic, yet not least picturesque, examples of the architecture of the preceding century, was reached from Rochefendue by the city's northern gate. It was here that Eleonore de Bellerive had lived from the earliest days of her married life. She was now thirty-eight years old ; and though left a widow when less than thirty, and with no few cares weighing upon her, she might easily have passed for the sister of the son who had been born to her in her seventeenth year. She had not been five minutes back from the Cathedral this morning, when Victor, who had left the castle before her, and who had now returned accompanied by a visitor, asked permission to wait upon her. The visi- tor proved to be Pere Eustache, who was welcomed now, as at all times, with respectful cordiality by the lady. His visit, he premised, would not be long. He could not stay to breakfast. He had elsewhere to go that morning. "I am here to ask you a few questions, madame ; and for sufficient reasons I will ask them in presence of M. Victor. You come from the nine o'clock mass ? " " Yes." " And when the service was over, you were followed and accosted by Madame de Mercalme ? " "Yes." " And the interview, I believe, was not a pleasing one ? " " You are well informed." A WORLD BEWITCHED 61 " Do not take me for a spy upon your movements. I have simply heard that which my regard for you would not allow me to shut my ears to, I wish to know nothing of what passed between you and Madame de Mercalme. Did any other worshippers attract your notice ? " "None." " Then, madame, further names need not be men- tioned. Yet I claim the right to give a word of counsel to my two present listeners." "Your counselj father, has never been otherwise than discreet and kind." " I hope it may seem equally well meant now. I know/' he interjected with a smile, " that any appeal to the fears of my present auditors would be vain ; and yet the boldest of mortals have not thought it beneath them at times to accept the guidance of the most peaceful. You, my son, have given offence of late by a triumph which, if achieved at all, I could wish had been gained over some other antagonist. You, daughter, let me say in presence of your son, are a true child of the south. No one need tell me how you, in the violence of first impulse, under the control of sudden passion, with tingling flesh, fast- rushing blood and flaming eyes, must have answered the calculated insults of Madame de Mercalme. I have spoken with some lightness ; I end seriously. I will not directly say that a trap has been laid for the one and the other of you ; but with my heart's whole earnestness I would entreat you both to be 62 A WORLD BEWITCHED careful of your goings in and coinings out for the present." " Of whom can he have heard as being among the other worshippers ? " asked Victor of his mother, when the priest had gone. " It would have been useless to question him on that. We'll dismiss the topic. Let us to breakfast." Meanwhile Pere Eustache was returning to Eochc- fendue. As he left the castle, his face had altered its expression of grave suavity, and he walked with a step that showed him to be bent on some determined pur- pose. He turned towards a street within a minute's walk of the northern gate : a street unpaved, foul, not more than eight feet wide, yet containing houses of some pretentiousness. These houses were lofty, and the black gables of their summits bent towards each other almost in an arch, leaving only a thin line of the blue heaven visible far above. P^re Eustache had but entered this thoroughfare, when he quickened his already rapid pace. A score of yards in front of him was a man who had that moment issued from one of the houses. The priest's footfall was light, and his approach was unsuspected, till the sound of his almost whispered voice fell upon the startled ears of the man in front. " M. de Therigny is restless. He is out again earlier than I had expected." Therigny turned sharply. " Are you the director of my movements ? " " Only an observer, thus far." A WORLD BEWITCHED 63 " Why do you follow me now ? " A gleam of ominous humour came into the priest's eyes. " My explanation can be offered anywhere. It rests with you whether you should be the only listener." Therigny glanced upward to where a dozen of brown-shouldered, red-capped women leaned from windows right and left over himself and his com- panion. He hissed an oath, turned back abruptly to the lodging he had come from, entered it, and was followed by the priest. And in the green- walled room, containing two chairs and a table, to which Therigny introduced his visitor, the two men re- mained standing throughout the conversation that followed : " M. de Therigny, I told you just now that I was an observer of your movements." " You have long been so. When did your interest in me revive ? " " Less than a week since. On the morning when you accompanied Madame de Mercalme to mass at the Cathedral. Of late you have been a zealous attendant at the sacrifice." " Is this interview likely to be long ? " " I must request your patience." " I shall do nothing to lengthen it, you may be sure." " I may need, before quitting you, to go into a little history." 64 A WORLD BEWITCHED " You best know your programme,^' " Your religious fervour^ I was about to say, has attracted notice, monsieur. It has been observed that your attendances at mass are timed strangely with those of a more constant worshipper. I am pleased that you already seem interested in what I say." " You flatter yourself prematurely. The only point which interests me is as to the length of time I am likely to be detained.'' " The worshipper by whose example you have been so influenced is Mademoiselle de Parthenay, and your devotion, if confined in the proper channel, would have been worthy of all praise. Unhappily, that devotion seems too easily transferable. Complaints are made of your having followed Mademoiselle de Parthenay for three mornings in succession, and forced your presence upon her." " I warn you that my patience is about exhausted, good father." " You wrong yourself," was the reply, uttered with cold deliberation. "I believe it to be suflBciently enduring to enable you to listen to every word I choose to say." Th&igny looked steadily at the priest, then laid a trembling hand on the back of a chair, and sat down in silence. " I make no excuse for saying that your attentions are as unwelcome to their object as they are in other ways undesirable. This morning I found it necessary. A WORLD BEWITCHED 65 with my knowledge of your real aims, to send for the lady's attendants to accompany her home." " To you, then, I am indebted for that ? " " And to me you shall be indebted for more decisive acts of interference. Tou are free to style me a reverend go-between, a saintly Love's Mes- senger; but 1^11 recall to you in plain language my reasons for this intervention. Less than a year since, a young Basque girl became the promised bride of the man of her choice. Tou hated the man. Tou set on foot a scheme for foiling his marriage. It was a scheme to the last degree clumsy and crude, yet in its dulness there was a glimmer of craft sufficient to ensnare a wholly innocent girl. In anticipation of a meeting with her betrothed, in answer to a lying message traceable to you, this girl left her home at nightfall. She was instantly seized and taken to a house frequented by the vilest creatures of both sexes. One object which had suggested this entrapment was not achieved. The girl had somehow contrived to secure a poniard. She remained sleepless, watchful, the whole night, and the man who was beaten and humiliated so recently as yesterday by M, de Bellerive did not dare to come too near this armed girl. The kid- napper, then, was foiled in his more infamous aim. Still, by forcing the girl to remain under the same roof with him for a night, he had accomplished his paramount purpose of degrading her. In the morning he let her depart. But before the day was many 66 A WORLD BEWITCHED hours older, lie Lad suborned scoundrels to put the filthiest construction on his victim's conduct. Her lover heard all, and might have killed the chief criminal, but could not thereby have stopped the mouths of the army of slanderers whom that criminal had organized. I was consulted, and a means out of the difficulty was devised which the betrayer had not anticipated, but which the girl and her betrayed lover, though with hearts almost breaking, deemed unavoid- able in the interests of honour. The kidnapper and his victim were married by me, but the marriage was to be kept secret. Moreover, the girl had stipulated in her heart that never again should her unwelcome husband be under the same roof with her. She has kept her determination. And thus it is, M, de Th^rigny, that though your hatred for Carmen Erezuma is cordially returned, yet you have suc- ceeded in your plan of depriving her of her promised husband, M. de La Faille ; you and she are man and wife. And should you forget your duty, such as it is, towards her, there is at least one man who, in the interest of fresh victims, will stand unmovingly in your path." " I may yet find a means, good father, of easing the burden which weighs upon the lady and myself." "And I'll not fail to pay strict attention to the means you may hit upon." At this moment they were interrupted by a great uproar of men's and women's voices from below. Therigny opened the window, and cries of " Witch ! A WOELD BEWITCHED 67 Witch ! " resounded with more fiercely reiterated violence. " Ah ! " exclaimed Th^rigny. He had glanced below, then turned with a strange smile towards Pere Eustache. " Reverend father, we still find wretches chargeable with the crimes for which my wife's dead sister should have suffered." The priest turned pale, and gazing at him with a new light of loathing and horror, approached the window with hesitation. He looked down. Two women, protected with difficulty by halberdiers from the terrified and enraged mob, had been torn out of their houses under the accusations grown familiar, and were being hurried away to prison. Among the officials of the law present was the chief executioner. At sight of the too well-known face of this man, Pere Eustache drew back from the window with looks of unutterable abhorrence. He remained pacing the room for some moments ; remained until the clamour below had subsided with the evident disappearance of the throng. Then, without the bestowal of another word or look on his mockingly watchful companion, he went away. CHAPTER V The Witch-findee Bewitched ON the departure of the priest, Therigny quitted his lodging and turned leftward. A quarter of an hour's hurrying in and out of a maze of narrow streets led him to the extreme south of Eochefendue, in face of a building that served at once as the Hall of Justice and the gaol of the town. Hardly a score of those who had thus far accom- panied the two witches lingered outside the edifice. The mere arrest and dragging to prison of such offenders had grown too common to arouse more than a fleeting interest. Besides, reserve was usual in the admission of onlookers to any proceedings before the court. There was no exclusiveness in the case of Therigny. The halberdiers made way; the heavily ironed gate they had been guarding opened, and The- rigny, taken across a roughly paved courtyard, and thence along a number of grim corridors, found him- self among the few privileged assistants at the pre- liminary investigation. The officials present comprised the provost Boissec, the lieutenant-provost Pinard, and the greffier, Der- vaulx. The two prisoners appeared almost of an age. A WOELD BEWITCHED 69 neither being less than seventy ; thin-framed^ scant- hairedj toothless, fleshless, with skins of a grimy brown and livid and green patchwork, like withered leaves unconthly sewn together; with eyes lustreless, hopeless, unwinking in an almost maniac fixity ; human shells which disease and misery might seem to have long marked out and seized upon wherein to hold grisly revel, till death, of which they were the handmaids, came to relieve them and to assume final sway. Until now, the belief among the unwary was that these two creatures had barely contrived to ward off starvation through the alms doled out to them. But there were eyes in the neighbourhood too keen in piercing through the toils of Satan to be for ever blinded. A good thought, partly inspired by Madame de Mercalme, had come to M. Billault within the last twelve hours. The storm of the previous day, result- ing, as it seemed, in the death of three persons by lightning, had obviously been the outcome of sorcery. The two prisoners, invited to the Cathedral early that morning, to receive alms and food, had been stealthily scrutinized by M. Billault. The mark of the devil, the semblance of an unmistakable hare's foot, had been found on each, on the neck of one, on the brow of the other. Pending communication with the secular authorities, the miscreants had been allowed to return home ; but, even before their arrest, the conviction had become irresistible that to them alone was due the fatal thun- derstorm. They had brought it on in revenge for 70 A WORLD BEWITCHED the treatment of their fellow-witch, Dolores Erezama. Their examination before the judges had not lasted an hour, no more than a whisper had been breathed within their hearing of the word " torture," when it became clear, from hints of their own, that they were two of the most crafty and powerful agents of the devil. In fact, the older of them was not long in making a half admission, stammered forth with a hideously faint glimmering of self-complacency, that she was the favoured paramour of a certain evil spirit named Jolivert. And the course of the trial pointed already to a conclusion so gratifying, that Th^rigny left before the end of the day's proceedings, to volun- teer a report to Madame de Mercalme. On his arrival at the lady's house he was greeted with startling news. Madame had, since her return from Mass that morn- ing, been in struggles with a distemper which The- rigny's informant, the steward, described as terrible, though, sad to say, not uncommon in these times. The speaker would enter upon no details, but would lead monsieur at once to the presence of his mistress. Therigny was taken to a room where the first person he beheld was Mornat, who had passed the night in the house, and who did not seem greatly the worse for his recent hurt at the hands of Martignac. Madame de Mercalme stood in the centre of the room, beyond the reach of the lighter furniture, whereof she had broken several articles during the day. Half sur- rounding her were five of her own people, who had A WORLD BEWITCHED 71 apparently relaxed their hold of her in consequence of an interlude of calm in her seizure. On the entrance of Th^rigny the lady motioned him to take a chair on a line with that of Mornat, and herself sat down be- tween them. Then, for upwards of an hour, her changes of mood followed on each other with bewildering rapidity. She wept like a child; her tears became suddenly staunched, her voice deepened, and she growled like a wild beast. They touched upon themes hitherto pleasing to her ; she commanded them to be silent. She contradicted, insulted, complained of, those present, and was fretful that not one of them showed impatience. Then she grew low-spirited, found fault with herself, proclaimed her own worthlessness, and flew into a rage when they thought to flatter or console her. She called upon everyone to quit the room. They proceeded to obey. Then she avowed with tears that she could not bear to be left alone. They came back, and she scoSed at their submissiveness. They said not a word; she commented irascibly on their silence. They began to converse in low tones; on the instant she accused them of speaking against her. They raised their voices and indulged in lively chatter ; she asked them whether they meant to make her deaf, and thanked them for contriving to be so gay while she was in misery. They became serious; their gloom she interpreted as a reflection on her trying ways. They smiled reassuringly ; she started from her seat and denounced them for laughing at her. 72 A WORLD BEWITCHED At the end of the hour these fantasies gave place to a renewal of the graver symptoms of her affliction. She had been pacing the room with fierce, quick strides for some seconds when, with a shock, she came to a stand. For a few seconds more she remained still, except for the panting with which her bosom heaved. On a sudden, flashing into another of her ever-changing attitudes, with a harsh laugh she flung abroad her arms, and crashed heavily to the ground. They ran to her help and partly raised her. Her muscles were contracted, stiffened ; her neck had swollen ; her face had turned of a bluish colour, and for a full minute was distorted with a succession of frightful grimaces ; her arms bent, her fists closed, and shot out with occasional force and precision into the faces of those who grappled with her ; her whole frame grew ani- mated with convulsive tremblings which at first in- creased in violence, then sank slowly into an almost lifeless calm. Her muscles, worn out by the tension, had become relaxed. She was laid on a number of cushions arranged for the purpose. There came over her a sleep which seemed likely to be profound and prolonged. And Mornat whispered to Th^rigny with the quiet conviction of a physician treating of an obvious case : " Bewitched, as we see. You could not do better than go down to the city and see M. Billault." " She must be exorcised ? " "Assuredly. In addition to the canon, it may be wise to take the two judges into confidence. They are A WORLD BEWITCHED 73 likely to make their complaints heard should there be any further neglect to consult with them." The evening was advanced before Therigny had ended his interviews with Boissec^ Pinard, Dervaulx, and Billault. As a result of further going backward and forwardj in course of which the person last named had an audience of the bishop^ it was agreed that the two judges, the greffier and the canon should meet Momat and Therigny at midnight in the house of Madame de Mercalme ; and secrecy was enjoined upon all. Twelve o'clock of the sanie night had come. M. Billault had been much distressed by Madame de Mercalme's condition. At the earliest moment when he could lawfully assist her, he was by her side ; and there was no one in Roohefendue, or perhaps for scores of leagues around it, whose ministrations could be more effectual in this juncture. He was about to solemnize midnight Mass, and to join with the sacrifice the dread ceremony of exorcism. M. le Chanoine's fame as an exorcist was far-spread, and in nowise affected by his recent failure with Dolores Brezuma. Among the wonders worked by him of late years, three were often spoken of. He had disenchanted and brought back to health an apple tree, which, fair enough to look at, as became the sinister plant grown from the seed of the Tree of Knowledge, was really swarming with the germs of death, in consequence of the nightly presence of Satan in its branches. 74 A WORLD BEWITCHED A stone which certain church builders could not move, yielded to the holy indignation of M. Billault summoning the devil to depart from it; and fell into its place in the edifice of which it formed a portion. Most momentous of all, the sun itself, the sun in the heaven, having one day become bewitched, and burnt away the shadows of several young men and girls, M. Billault was called upon. At his prayers, the Prince of Demons, who had filled the sun with fires from hell, was driven out ; the orb's natural heat was restored to it, and the youths and maidens received back their shadows. As a matter of minor import- ance, it was claimed for M. le Chanoine that he had been instrumental in bringing to the stake three witches who had cast their spells respectively over the apple tree, the church stone, and the sun. This midnight, then, M. Billault stood in full canonicals before the altar in the dainty chapel of Madame de Mercalme's house, in pursuance of his holy function. The patient had been led into the chapel by her own attendants, who, after leaving her in charge of Boissec,Pinard and Therigny, had retired. Dervaulx took the part of servitor to the celebrant. The stupor of sleep in which Therigny first left Madame de Mercalme in the afternoon, had lasted only five minutes. But it had been followed by many like intervals of rest, and, until the coming of the exorcist and his companions, the state of the sufferer had called for comparatively little watchfulness. On her entrance into the chapel, however, there was a A WORLD BEWITCHED 75 renewal of the more terrible of her earlier symptoms, and the confined space in which the outbreaks occurred greatly increased the difficulty of controlling her. Her first act, on finding herself in the hands of Therigny and the two judges, was to set herself free by a series of prodigious, and by no means graceful, bounds in the air. Then she threw herself prostrate, and raising her body from the waist, bent backward in such a way that her feet and head alone rested on the ground. The ghastly grimaces recommenced j the features being drawn in every direction. Repeatedly was the poor lady held back just in time from scratching her face, pulling out her hair, and rending her clothes ; though she succeeded in biting more than one of those around her. Again and again she started to a sitting pos- ture, freed her arms, jerked them on all sides, drew up her legs to her chin, shot them out again, shook her head from side to side like a violently oscillating pendulum ; all the time uttering hoarse little yelpings which gradually swelled into heart-quaking screams. M. Billault, with his back to the altar, gazed for a moment in compassion on her ; she sprang to her feet, rushed forward with the growl of a she -bear, kicked him, and spat in his face. Dervaulx, with respectful calm- ness, wiped away the spittle, the priest raised his hand in blessing over the woman; she was drawn to the furthest corner from the altar, and the Mass commenced. The sufiferer was quiet, except for an occasional 76 A WORLD BEWITCHED short sharp cry and a grimace, until, after the oblation of the Host, the celebrant turned sideways from the altar, and made the sign of the Cross in her direction. At once her yells and the contortions of her visage became more petrifying than ever. At the oblation of the chalice, the priest went through the same form : the writhing and uproar of the woman remaining un- subdued. She grew a little more calm when, after the blessing of the Bread and Wine, the canon blessed herself. At the adoration of the Host and the chalice respectively, her screeches and grimaces became once again uncontrollable. But now the celebrant, having recited the Dominical prayer, placed the Host upon the paten, and with in- creased solemnity of manner, drew near the demoniac. He held the paten with great difficulty on her head and spoke aloud in these terms : " thou that hast usurped the body of this hapless creature and made it thy un- lawful dwelling-place ; execrable and damned monster, behold ! Behold Him who conceals Himself in this humble form of bread, and whom thou dost yet re- cognize with trembling as the Eternal Monarch of the Universe, as thy Judge, as the Sovereign Power before whom all creatures bow down in Heaven, on earth, and in hell ! Make resistance to this thy Master if thou darest, miserable fiend ! Defy, if thou canst. Him who being ready to suffer death upon the Cross for our salvation, said to His disciples that the princes of the inferior world should be cast out and trampled underfoot ! Behold this Divine Body, which sprang A WORLD BEWITCHED 77 from the most pure blood of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, the Body of Him who was nailed to the Cross ; who lay in the sepulchre, who rose from the dead on the third day, who mounted into Heaven before the eyes of His disciples ! shameless and abominable demon, I speak to thee in the name of that Great God ! Yea, and by virtue of the Almighty Power whose terrors thou hast best reason to know, I command thee to depart forthwith from the body of this unhappy servant of God, and not to be so bold as to re-enter therein evermore." This address came with a mingled impression of crashing appalment and hopeful expectation on the ears of the men who were present. And although it had not passed without interruption from the clamour and violence of the demoniac, even she seemed cowed at last. The canon returned to the altar, and went on with the Mass. The Sacred Host was broken and exhibited, in its fractured state, to Madame de Mercalme, who had now grown silent. M. Billault duly pronounced the final blessing, and granted leave to the little con- gregation to go, for that the Mass was ended. Then, to the unspeakable edification of all onlookers, the lady, gently releasing her right hand, made the sign of the Cross herself ; thus proving that the fiend had quite departed from her, and testifying to the irresist- ible power of the Holy Sacrament. As the canon and the grefiler left the altar to pro- ceed to the closet which served as a vestry, Madame 78 A WOELD BEWITCHED de Mercalme caught the eye of the former. She left the chapel, surrounded by her congratulating guests, and waited till the priest, having put off his vest- ments, came out into the passage, accompanied by Dervaulx. " You have something to tell me ? " said Billault. "Yes, Monsieur le Chanoine." " Under the seal of confession ? " " No. Yet I shall speak it in your ears alone. You shall then decide as to the others who should hear of it." " May I venture to say openly that it concerns the ally of Satan who bewitched you ? " " It must be known far and wide soon. And there is no one who will learn the name without amazement." " My daughter, so many wonders follow on each other during this war between God and his arch- enemy, that one ceases to stare at the strangeness of each new event. But come aside with me." Madame de Mercalme, not moving away from the watchful eyes of the others, whispered briefly to the canon. He had repudiated the idea of being astonished at what he might be told. Yet he was clearly startled and even alarmed at the revelation now made to him. " Can this be true ? " he faltered aloud. " I could wish it were not.'^ " God, that searchest into the hearts of the most cunning of criminals, forgive us all ! " he exclaimed with a shudder, as he crossed himself. "You will understand, M. le Chanoine," she re- A WOELD BEWITCHED 79 sumed, in her whispering tones, "that I cannot be left without further religious help to-night ? " He turned away his flushed face and gleaming eyeSj and she moved towards the others. Let her not seem inhospitable, she said, after such a trial as had visited her : she must avail herself of the presence of one who could sustain her with his holy offices. Those whom she addressed would soon be admitted to full con- fidence. For the present she needed not only rest, but the willingly offered prayers and consolations of the good man who would remain in the house for the night. Her hearers, including Mornat, went away murmuring their good wishes. A little more than five hours later, about six o'clock of the same morning, Pere Gontaut, whose mood often led him out of doors when he was reading his breviary, found himself on the Stepway, just below the path that led to Madame de Mercalme's house. He had been climbing with the vigour and ease of a true mountaineer, making little or no use of the heavy cudgel in his right hand, when he stopped like an athlete steadied by a blow. From a few yards above him sounded these words in a lady's laughing voice : " No one can persuade you, then, to believe in the devil ? " " You less than anyone." "I'll neither flatter myself, nor slight you by guessing what you mean." " Tet you understand me, and you force me to be frank : and to say that, a thousand times within the 80 A WORLD BEWITCHED last half year, since I first really knew you, the devil might have had my soul on condition of making me twenty years younger." P^re Eustache again walked upward, and came on a line with Madame de Mercalme and M. Billault. He glanced from one to the other. The smile did not leave the woman's eyes ; the canon was livid ; yet in the same instant a dull smile came over his visage also. The young priest turned in silence to the reading of his breviary, and resumed his climbing of the Stepway. CHAPTER VI Mother and Son Sepaeated THE members of Madame de Meroalme's house- hold were fairly numerous and far from discreet. The incidents of their lady's bewitchment and exor- cism 'were soon noised abroad, and did not fail to arouse conjecture and uneasiness in more circles than one. For reasons not too obscure there were certain Basque families of good condition who, acting upon hints from Madame de Bellerive, determined to cross the frontier and take refuge for awhile among rela- tives in Gruipuzcoa j and at the further suggestion of their adviser, they were accompanied with readiness by MartignaCj Trecart and La Faille. On the following Sunday afternoon Madame de Bellerive sat at home with Victor. There was much playfulness and almost unlimited confidence between the young gentleman and his youthful mother, and it was with an absence of ceremony usual between them that the former said : " Does my little mother still keep to her position of dark reserve ? " " How ? " 82 A WORLD BEWITCHED " Still refuse to say why I should not have joined Martignac and the others ? " " It was M. de Martignac himself who thought you were better here. But there was no dream of making a mystery of it." " I feel sure that Martignac's reason would be a good one. Had it anything to do with your keen looking about you as we went to Mass and came from it this morning ? " " Take care. I am going to try whether the explanation will make ypu change colour. I am about to mention names." " Well ? " " I hoped to have seen Mademoiselle de Parthenay. There is reason for thinking that Violante and her sister Carmen are closely pursued, and are still in the neighbourhood. By whom they are being hunted down we'll not affect to wonder. This house will always be open to them, as they understand." ''It's an offer of which they 'U never avail themselves." " I'm sorry you think so, for you make it hardly worth my while to go on." " Still, let me hear." " I had some idea of making a compact with Mademoiselle de Parthenay. As the fugitives would meet with open doors if they came to me, I had hoped they might find shelter if they were driven in her direction. And as there is no chance of my seeing her personally to-day, I had fixed upon you as my A WORLD BEWITCHED 83 She smiled as her son pursed his lips and bent his head sagely. He glanced up at her almost immediately and laughed. "I'll not change colour, but I will be your messenger. Should it be at the Cathedral to-night ? May she not come to vespers ? " " Before night it must be, and at her own house." About seven o'clock that evening Eaoul de Therigny was moving at a measured pace, a stealthy pace, up a rock-flanked gorge whose first break to the right overlooked the wooded slope of a hill a mile and a half to the south of Rochefendue. The slope spread westward, and in this hour the full fires of the descending sun glared down upon it; every wave in the enormous cataract of light was massed together to force a way through the vault of the trees ; and the stems and branches and the undergrowth seemed less to be mantled with shadows than enfolded in a luminous veil. The very air in the gorge through which Therigny mounted seemed to become con- densed, visible, tangible in its warm blue radiance. Therigny was within a few yards of the gap in the rocks when there rose towards him sounds other than those from the birds that thronged the wood. He fell back and listened. Slowly the flush brought on by the toil of the ascent left his cheek ; still he smiled . Of the voices one was a woman's, earnest yet calm. The other was a man's, and less under control. Despite a stillness in the air, which was little broken by the clamour of the nightingales, no words of the 84 A WORLD BEWITCHED speakers came to the listener's ears. After awhile he gave up the attempt to hear, with some relief. He contented himself, and that in a kind of reluctant absorption, with watching ; first guarding, with some pains, against the chances of detection. The lady was the farther of the two from him, and her demeanour was the more plainly observable through her frequent turning to her companion. In her gestures, in the lights and shadows on her face, in the tones of her voice, there was playfulness, there was ease, there was a familiarity verging on tender- ness. As to her companion, his attitude of merry courtesy, the attunement of his voice — whose words were yet inaudible — his every look and movement, gave forth a consistent reflection of triumph. The pair moved to leftward of the point from which Th^rigny looked down on them. They turned south- eastward, and took a pathway ending in a low hill beyond the wood. They mounted lingeringly, the girl yielding with a gay indolence to the eager help of her companion. For a few moments they remained on the summit of the hill, looking around them, then at one another. They disappeared. And still Th^rigny waited. His hand caressed alternately the sheath of his poniard and the hilt of his rapier. But gradually his eyes became fastened with a curious intensity on certain fragments of stone, none of them more than ten pounds in weight, at his feet. So motionless was he that the lizards peeping through the crevices in the rocks were encouraged to climb to the summits A WORLD BEWITCHED 85 of the granite walls, and revel in such heat as the sinking sun had yet to give. The silence of the forest and the mountain thrilled with welcome to the harmony of the birds and the more monotonous chaunting of the locusts and the grasshoppers. In half an hour the young man whose movements had been under such close observation reappeared on the crest of the hill, and descended into the wood. He walked slowly under the sunlit veil of the trees, and on coming to within a few yards of the aperture in the gorge, turned full round with his face to the west. In a moment there sprang before his eyes an eruption of fierce flames, there rolled over his brain such a chaos of noises as may often rive the senses of a drowning swimmer. Two minutes passed while a man behind remained standing motionless, and hold- ing a second and a heavier stone than that with which he had struck Bellerive down. For Th^rigny's face had become whitened with a new expression, and he was gazing into the eyes of a woman who had stolen unheard to the spot. " Why did you keep up the mystery till now ? " he inquired distractedly, in answer to something she had said. " Tou deserve to be taken into confidence, do you not ? Some such rash folly as this I had expected, and had set a watch upon you. All day, however, yon have kept out of sight, and here's the result. But let us go from here. No ; you shall not strike him again," 86 A WORLD BEWITCHED " Better say that your heart softens as you look down on him." " Better for you to lose no time in brainless jeering. Let anyone that may^ seek him out and help him. Leave it to chance whether he shall be reserved for something worse than the shallow vengeance which you had marked out for him. Come away ! " "You have something for me to do?" said The- rigny, as they went together down the incline of the gorge. " You make anyone lose heart that has to rely on yoM," was the rejoinder. " However, you shall not re-enter the city. A horse is ready saddled for you outside the southern gate. Join your comrades where- ever you have left them. Take the way to Roncesvalles. Be on the watch for Martignac, Tr^cart and La Faille as they return from Vizcaya. And should you risk the loss of half your band, prevent those three men from entering Rochefendue — for a week to come." " A week — or longer ? " " Well, well " " You know that with such men " " The alternative is letting them escape and silencing them for ever. At your choice. You'll want money ? " " Can you ask ? " " You have misused your opportunities most shame- fully. The Basques who went away from here on Friday carried at least ten thousand pistoles with them. But I am once more called upon for self-sacrifice in your behalf. Find your horse and meet me on the far side A WORLD BEWITCHED 87 of the western bridge. I shall have ready what you need. But I must first see you on the way." And Th^rigny and Madame de Mercalme turned for the moment in different directions. The darkness of the same evening had long set in. It was near midnight. Madame de Bellerive was alone in a favourite sitting-room on the first floor of the castle. She sat by a closed window and gazed with only a vague fixity on the small chapel attached to the house, on that side of the chapel which was now immersed in gloom. The night had grown suddenly and unseasonably wild. Since ten o'clock a strong wind had been sweeping down from the hillsj and the air had turned cold. Clouds which, a few hours ago, had been gleaming like motionless volumes of silver under the light of the moon — at this moment stationed just above the snows of one of the tallest mountains — were changed in hue to an uncomely paleness. Continually forming and reforming in the heavens, they were now torn in shreds, like the most unsubstantial of winding sheets ; now more suddenly dissolved, like the wraiths of departed spirits. The moon itself, seeming again and again to be angrily rending the veils of mist from before its own face and form, stared with distracted earnestness on the castle, whereon the wind meanwhile blew stronglier than ever, fluttering the mantle of ivy that hung around the western and southern walls, forcing a way through certain shivered window panes in one of the ground-floor passages, and waking, in 88 A WORLD BEWITCHED many a lonely chamber, mournful harmonies as from pipes of some phantasmal organ. And the same wind screamed and roared round the chapel, and, rushing up into the belfry, startled an owl which had been hooting its dismal psalm from a little after sundown. Whether from choice or forgetfulness in the lady, there was neither lamp nor candle where she sat, and the irregular radiance of the moon, streaming through the diamond panes and working mosaic patterns on Madame de Bellerive herself, and on the floor beyond her feet, contrasted vividly with the blackness in the rest of the apartment. To the lady there seemed a uniform weirdness in her surroundings to-night. At one time a bat would lift itself out of the gloom swathing the chapel, and flap startlingly, however in- dolently, athwart her eyes. Again, the whistler and the screech owl would burst through the intervals of silence round her with their shrill wailings. Or a raven from over her window would send its harsh monotone along the wings of the blast. But all at once there came from a sumptuous clock in the room, a little to the right of the lady's arm- chair, the first note of the hour of twelve. One after another the strokes rang out from the bronze lungs of the time-piece in a lingering, solemn, and extremely musical sequence of chords. Then chime of clock bell, screech of night bird, roar of wind, stopped simultaneously, with a suddenness that might have suggested magic ; there followed for several minutes a silence as though the springs of sound had become A WORLD BEWITCHED 89 frozen j and the lady leaned further back, and placing a hand over her closed eyes, effectually shut out the flare of the moonlight. She was roused from a brief rest by the opening and shutting of a door below. She listened with eyes and ears on the alert, but with a calm face. Of course it was her belated son, just returned. A minute passed, and she wondered why he did not come up. She was about to rise and call him when the door behind her was dashed open ; there was an inrush of many feet ; she was grasped by rough hands before she could turn her head, and her feet were swept from under her. " Feet clearly off the ground ? " cried a voice. " Yes, monsieur le greffier." " God be praised for it. Had she retouched the floor she would have melted into air, and our trouble would have been vain." " Eyes fast sealed up, too, monsieur." " Good J not one of my precepts neglected." "There you are wrong, M. Dervaulx," said another voice. " How, monsieur ? " " It is well for them, indeed, that the precept last men- tioned was followed. But they ran a great risk " " Under the circumstances " "Yes — you were obliged to make use of them, though some are new to the work. One at least was not careful to enter the room backward." " Her own servant. He knew no better." 90 A WOELD BEWITCHED " We owe him much, and it is for his advantage I speak. Had he met her eye to eye ; had she glared into the face of any man here, that face, under the power of her infernal charms, would have become swollen and bleached beyond recognition; that man would have gone from here a cureless leper." At the entrance of these visitors the lady's first feeling had been one of mere alarm. The act of lifting her bodily from the ground had struck upon her with more indignation than terror. The times were lawless, and ladies had often to defend themselves from strange violence with a spirit in which there was little of sur- prise. In the confusion of voices there was one very familiar to Madame de Bellerive ; and over her sud- denly crimsoned face there had come an expression almost of relief; but at the sound of the third voice, the blood vanished from her cheeks and lips, and she felt as if her heart would stop beating. A silence fell upon the intruders ; they seemed, from their muttering, to be in expectation of someone ; and there was a pause, uninterrupted for a few seconds, till the blindfolded woman murmured half to herself, " Where can Victor be ! " There was no answer. " M. Mornat," she resumed, with a wrathful be- wilderment which no hint in the doings of the night had so far lessened, " your presence I recognize. You are the companion of these ruffians, perhaps their leader. I give you joy on being able to take part in this enterprise, despite your recent wound." A WORLD BEWITCHED 91 "Very good, madame/' "You claim to be wronged by friends of mine. But I hope that malice will not prevent you from giving me an explanation of this outrage." " Will you have the explanation now, or when you are in prison ? " " In prison ? " " Certainly." " But, good God! " cried Madame de Bellerive, still more in anger than in dismay, " is no one on my side in this company ? I gather that one of my servants hopes to thrive as a traitor ; where are the rest ? Is the spirit of manliness dead in all who hear me ? Is there no man with heart or honour among you ? " " I'll answer you on one point. With the excep- tion of the loyal fellow maligned by you, those of your servants who have not fled lie downstairs gagged and helpless." " But, my son ? " " I can say nothing of him, except that he is fortu- nate for a time in being out of reach, since we had brought ample force to deal with the entire house- hold. No more chafing, madame. All is done by authority." " By what authority ? " Here another voice broke in, a voice recognized by all hearers as that of M. Billault. " The authority of the Supreme Ruler of Heaven. Wretched woman, in the name of God we arrest you as a confederate of demons, a practiser of witchcraft, 92 A WORLD BEWITCHED an infamous abuser of mankind. Your dwelling place to-night shall be a dungeon. And let me hope, for the sake of other creatures liable to be afflicted by you, that your son, accursed offspring, as he is, of a sorceress, may before long be seized, flung into con- finement in the same dungeon, and made to share your fate." At the first words of this address the lady had almost laughed aloud. But she remembered the acts and words which here at length found their explana- tion. The laughter died in her throat, and the hair stiffened on her head. " Lord have mercy on my boy ! " was her whispered prayer. Torches were now brought into the apartment. Her captors had obtained a litter, whereon they placed her, she being not once allowed to touch the floor, and still having her eyes bandaged. In this manner she was borne down the oak staircase, past the sombre splendours of armorial emblazonry which covered the walls, and so from the castle. The air cut with steel-like coldness and keenness across her upturned face. Her carriers tramped over plots of grass whose tufts were touzled and tangled by the rough wind ; or strode more hastily between rows of trees that surged and strained and bent as if they would split asunder and bury the passers by in their fall; or, on reaching the city at length, began to stumble heavily through streets that seemed as in- terminable as they were iil-paven. Not a word was A WOELD BEWITCHED 93 uttered around her. The sounds that smote on her ears were the groaning of the wind, the scream or croak or hoot of the more ominous of night-birds, the rocking of an oak or a pine, the flutter and shriek of leaves whirled past her. The soul of loneliness, or grimness in all things in the timeless fury of the summer night, made tumultuous harmony with the thoughts that rolled through her brain. The most that could be said for her was that she had thus far kept her senses. But not all her comparative calm- ness could help her in confronting steadily the gro- tesque yet too reasonably dreaded charge hanging over her. Within half an hour of the time of her being torn from home, she had reached that part of the Hall of Justice devoted to the immurement of prisoners. At a signal exchanged between those within and without the dungeon, the portals were drawn back, and Madame de Bellerive and her captors entered. She was conveyed along a passage whose gloom was rendered none the less funereal from the glimmer of a lantern wherewith one of the gaolers lit up her pro- gress. At the end of the corridor the bandage was removed from her eyes, and she was made to stand. Instantly a chill seemed to strike through her feet, and dart up into every vein of her body. She found herself in front of a rusty iron door, which was at once opened. The dull glow of the lantern, held for a moment above her head by the gaoler, (shrinking like the rest from the terrors of her eyes,) revealed to her 94 A WORLD BEWITCHED a narrow cell, without windows, without bed, heavy aired, putrescent as a long tenanted, freshly opened tomb. Into this hole she was rudely thrust, and the door was locked and barred on her. Then the flickering remnant of her self-control became swallowed up in the blackness and forlornness that environed her, and she fell senseless on the floor of the dungeon. CHAPTER VII Hbneiette de Paethbnat THE young lady to whom Victor de Bellerive had borne the message from his mother belonged to a race with which the Bellerives themselves were allied. Henriette de Parthenay-L'Archeveque was one of the few living members of a family which traced its origin to the house of Lusignan. She was a niece of Catherine de Parthenay, who, by a second marriage, had become the mother of Henri, first Due de Rohan. Of that dreamy and solemn Catherine who gave up her days to the study of Mathematics and Philosophy, who lived surrounded by cats, whose pen seldom left her hand, even at meals, and who contrived to add a new grimness to death by the composition of the most appalHng elegies on one after another of her departed friends. The day was to come when she could not be satisfied with the issue of Ravaillac's enterprise, but must enrol Henri Quatre among the victims of her muse. Henriette' s blood, then, enabled her to claim kins- manship alike with the Princes of the house of Rohan, and with the King of France himself. It was a claim she advanced with a tempered enthusiasm. She was never 96 A WORLD BEWITCHED seen at Court. She Had little taste for scandal ; yet there was a piece of gossip often quoted by her, which, while affording a glimpse of her own simple freedom of manner, illustrated her private view of the king's character. It referred to the time when her cousin, Catherine de Rohan, being asked by his Majesty the way to her bedroom, answered briefly : " Through the Church." Moreover, her visits to one or other of the ill- governed houses of Madame de Rohan, or the reception of her relatives under her own roof, had usually ended in calls on her purse from a family which was never out of debt. Yet again, the stern Calvinism of the aunt, and the inflexible Catholicism of the niece, united in forming the most serious of all obstacles to a hearty understanding between them. The exchange of visits had, therefore, been gradually broken off j though the austere young Henri de Rohan (recently married to the daughter of the Due de Sully), still claimed an informal guardianship over his cousin. A guardian- ship involving no questions of pecuniary interest, and offered with a chivalry on the one hand as grave and pure, as the frankness with which it was accepted on the other. So Henriette de Parthenay, heiress, virtual mistress of her own actions, bred a mountaineer like her neighbours, like the King of Prance himself, lived at ease in her large house looking toward the south- west. She had a private chaplain ; her retainers were numerous j yet the management of her household was as little characterized by ostentation as by meanness. A WORLD BEWITCHED 97 Her own way of living was frugal and hardy. She ate little ; no more, indeed, than her habits of strenuous exercise demanded to keep her from faintness. Her only drink was water. She had from childhood ac- customed herself to sleep little. Her day began at six in the morning, and ended at midnight. She was up still, then, close upon the time of the doings at Madame de Bellerive's house. The room wherein she sat was on an upper floor of a tower facing the east ; and the wind that shook the casements brought with it sounds that for some moments had fixed the lady's attention. The chaplain entered, and Henriette turned to him with a listening inquiry in her look. " Do you hear anything ? " " Only the wind." " I wonder if all the dogs are in. I feel sure that 's M6dore's voice." " Where ? " " Outside." " It 's the wind that mocks you.^' " Fm not so easily deceived. For the last half hour it has been going through my ears : now far to the left, now right under my window." "Let us kneel to prayers, daughter." "I could not say them without distraction." She touched a bell. Inquiry proved that the mastiff named was not with the rest of the dogs, and still sounds other than the winds travelled to and fro without. The young lady was thoughtful and silent ; but only for a few seconds. Among the servants present at H 98 A WORLD BEWITCHED her summons was the steward. Him she briefly ordered to prepare a search party, which she would herself accompany. There were many circumstances which made the command seem a strange one. But Henriette had early established among those around her such a character for discretion and decision alike, as made it no light matter to gainsay her, and it was with not a word of reply that the steward went about his lady's behest. Within a few minutes, five men armed with swords and pistols, and two torch-bearers, on a line with their heavily cloaked and veiled mistress, issued from the main entrance to the castle, and turned eastward. One of the torches was blown out the instant the party had passed the gate. The other, saved from extinction by the cloak of the bearer, shot out a startling flare, which was more a hindrance than a help to the com- pany. The light, thus irregularly scattered, served at times to transform the overhanging branches of trees into the semblances of elves and gnomes ; or it combined with the equally fitful moonbeams to make the succeeding shadows look like ghosts on the track of the night-farers. Henriette had by degrees moved to the front. Her followers threw scared glances hither and thither, and often crossed themselves, while breathing heavily. She walked on, looking about her no less restlessly, but more carefully, than the others. They had proceeded thus for about five minutes, had crossed the low hill eastward, and entered the wood beyond, when the A WORLD BEWITCHED 99 remaining torch, after sending forth a strong burst of lightj was blown out. But nearly in the same moment the moon broke away from a cloud, and shone over all things with a more prolonged radiance than hereto- fore. In that instant there came towards the party a sort of glad growl and a rushing noise. A dark body leaped on to Henriette, then dashed out of sight again. The two men holding the extinguished torches turned and fled. But Henriette had recognized the object which had touched her, and, following it with her gaze, noticed it halting under a tree to the left. And she, too, halted for a moment, then struggled forward with a staggering haste, and sank on her knees among the grass, with her eyes fastened on the livid face of Victor de Bellerive. She glanced at a stain on his right shoulder and clasped her hands con- vulsively. But no outcry came from her; and she rose at once to cut short the helpless uproar of her servants. " Take him up," she said, with startling calmness, " we have neither torches nor torch-bearers ; but the moon will guide us till we reach the house." The men disposed their weapons conveniently, and, with an added burden, they retraced their steps home- wards, Henriette again preceding them. Fresh lamps were trimmed, and the fire was lit ; the bed was hurriedly yet carefully made in a suitable room on the ground floor, and the motionless form was left on the bed in the care of the lady and her chaplain. The blood had congealed on the whole of the young 100 A WORLD BEWITCHED man's head, and had covered it with a crimson hark. Henriette would trust no one but herself to wash, and, where necessary, to cut the clotted locks. Enough of these were cut to enable her to feel the skull, when she found to her joy that the bone was not broken. She continued with increased gentleness to cleanse the curls, and finally, at the base of the skull, exposed a large round swelling, to the right of which the flesh had been burst, raw and jagged for the length of three inches. Again there was a special washing of the wound. An effort was made to reduce the swelling, a balsam was applied to the affected parts, and the head was bound up. A consultation ensued between Henriette and the chaplain as to whether or not word should be sent to Madame de Bellerive of her son's whereabouts ; and it was eventually decided to postpone any such message till morning. The rigid torpor in which the young man had lain from before sundown subsided soon after midnight into a c-elm, even sleep. The sleep lasted till eight o'clock in the morning, half an hour after the chaplain had set out on his mission to Madame de Bellerive. Victor awoke to break forth into a storm of raving. Long before the hour named Henriette was at his bedside. The sufferer was at the height of his frenzy when the chaplain, with white visage and shaking limbs, came back. He darted a hasty look at Victor, to whose wanderings, however, he listened with a scared A WOELD BEWITCHED 101 interest for some seconds. Then he crossed himself, and invited Henriette to go with him from the sick room. They remained in conference for a full hour, daring which Henriette's place beside the patient was occupied by an elderly waiting-woman. The young lady returned alone. Her face was paler than the chaplain's had been ; but the expression upon it was different. The shrinking attitude of the priest as he glanced at Bellerive, or listened to him, had not escaped the wondering and displeased notice of Mademoiselle de Parthenay. As Henriette approached the young man once more, resumed her seat close to him, looked in his working face, and remained with ears patiently open to his incoherent utterances, there was in all her ways a calmer and tenderer watchfulness than before. Her eyes at times glistened, though tearless, with a more unrestrained sweetness of sorrow ; her countenance glowed, even through her pallor, with something else than compassion ; her features trembled and grew exalted with what seemed a defiant saintli- ness of guardianship. The chaplain in his turn came back. The waiting- woman left the room . Henriette glanced at the priest, who had once more crossed himself on entering, and who had been careful not to encounter the eyes of the bed-ridden youth. "My daughter," he said in a quavering voice, "I trust I made myself understood just now ? " " Dismiss all doubts of that, father." " Then my news ? " 102 A WOBLD BEWITCHED " Was of a kind not easily forgotten," " Yet it makes no impression on you ? " '' Not such as you hope for." The priest paused, and shook his head: "I still cannot think you have a clear conception " Henriette stood up and faced him : " Shall I go over it all to prove that I have not lost my power of understanding ? " "My dear child " " Listen, father, and stop me if I am mistaken. Madame de Bellerive has been arrested — I incline to think by monstrous treachery — as a witch. Her son, struck down, it may be, by one of the villains in the twofold plot, is liable, if captured, to share what- ever miseries befall the mother. I have taken this young gentleman, the son of an accused sorceress, into my house, I am acting as his protectress. For shielding him I run in danger of sharing his fate. And yet, father, it is my purpose to defend him by every means in my power." The priest looked at her with an expression com- bined of terror, admiration, and affection, and changed the subject a little awkwardly : " You thought of writing ? " " Yes, and then I must persuade you to help me with advice worthy of yourself." " Who are your correspondents ? " " The Due de Rohan and Monsieur de Martignac." The part of protectress chosen in the present in- stance by Henriette was one she had assumed with A WORLD BEWITCHED 103 something of stem pride and joy. She -would have con- gratulated herself with even more earnestness had she realized the full extent of the miseries from which Victor had been saved, and to which hia mother seemed now doomed. Two days went by, and Madame de Bellerive remained in the cell where she had been flung on the night of her capture. The den occupied by her was one of those designedly set apart for persons accused of sorcery. In these caves not a glimmer of Hght could enter. Never could the prisoner know if it were night or day. No breath of air came from above. What wind or air served to ward off premature suf- focation in such caverns rose from beneath the cracked flooring. It was permeated with the most horrible of odours from passages unseen. The ground, the walls, the roofs were a-swarm with crawling animals of name- less kinds, numbers of which were venomous, all of which were unutterably loathsome. There were times in the year when, through all the filth encumbering the floors, a frosty current rushed up and struck to the marrow of a prisoner's bones. Familiar were the tales of the sufferings endured by the devil's paramours from this cause of cold alone. In the very cell where Madame de Bellerive now lay, the flesh and bones of captives had been so smitten with the combined cold and dirt, that their toes, and, in some cases, their entire feet, had first frozen, then mortified, and at last rotted off. And the prisoners, even if spared from after destruction by strangulation 104 A WORLD BEWITCHED or fire, remained hopeless cripples until death. Forty- eight hours, then, had Madame de Bellerive been in the dungeon. She was crushed with weariness. For not one minute of the two foregoing nights and days had she slept. The turnkeys, acting on special in- structions, had relieved each other from beginning to end of the time in the duty of sustaining a ceaseless uproar outside the cell of their victim. Their con- versatioji, designed, no doubt, as a variation to other attractions of the place, consisted of strongly-seasoned jests meant for her ears alone. Scanty scraps of food had been placed before her. Mouldy bread, and brackish water that dogs might have loathed, had been the victuals almost flung into her cell once a day. They had been left untouched. Her thirst had remained unquenched, her fast had not been broken, since her captors had torn her from her home. She was heavily chained. Her fetters, fastened to a ring in the wall behind her, were short, and left her little more than two feet of room to stir in any direction. She was barefooted. The sandal shoes worn by her usually in an evening had been removed while she lay senseless on the ground after her first entrance into the dungeon. The bonds had been rivetted upon her in the moment of her awaking from the trance. At ever recurrent intervals, reptiles and toads crawled about her body, and leapt on her. Vermin were creeping over her face, rats were biting at her unprotected feet. It was in the midst of accumulated pangs like these, parched by thirst, gnawed by hunger — since the food A WORLD BEWITCHED 105 rejected; and afterwards momentarily longed for by her, had always been removed without delay — weighed down by want of sleep, her brain reeling before the hideous panorama of the future set in movement by her imagination, that, on the third night of her con- finement, the voices of her turnkeys outside her cell were hushed, her door was quietly unbolted and un- barred, the light of a lamp raised on a sudden, though seemingly with no intentional abruptness by its holder, struck with searing sharpness across the eyeballs of the prisoner ; and there stood in the dismal threshold some one other than the gaol servants who had given her such grim witness of their presence during the last few days. There was a silence of a minute, then, " Tou may go," said the newcomer, apparently to a warder. Madame de Bellerive lifted her heavy, suflfering eyes, and met the gaze of the Provost Boissec fixed with a curious interest upon her. The sober dress he wore on the rare occasions of her having seen him was re- placed by a costume bright coloured, rich, gallant. The face peering over the lamp was healthful and even handsome, and the lady, though in the presence of a man to whom she had never spoken, while reddening at her own weakness, lowered her eyes under an im- pulse of feminine shame at her unfitness to be seen. By another quick revulsion of feeling, however, she regained the firmness which had partly abandoned her. " A sad meeting," began the Provost. " I speak 106 A WORLD BEWITCHED for the first time to Madame de BelleriTe tinder amaz- ing conditions." " Is this meant as an interrogatory, monsieur ? " " Let me explain." " If you choose this time and place for confronting me in your office as judge, you add to the strangeness of this first meeting." " I am here in no official capacity." " Shall I thank you, then, for bringing no one here to listen to your exultation over my misery ? " "I hope to deserve heartier thanks. Again you mistake me." Madame de Bellerive looked up at him ; he had spoken in a hoarse, hurried voice, his face was flushed and wore an expression of discomfort. She silently invited him to go on, and he obeyed her look. " I have little to say. My colleague — my sub- ordinate — ^will be here soon. We may be interrupted." ''What then?" " In the briefest terms, madame, you have ruin, you have death in a dreadful form hanging over you, and it is in my power to save you." Madame de Bellerive had clasped her hands as well as her chains would permit, and for an instant an im- mense joy lit up her face. But she looked at her visitor more closely, and the light in her eyes became more tempered. " You can save me ? " she said composedly. " I can help you to escape. But — but," he stam- mered. '' I am selfish. The risk I run " A WORLD BEWITCHED 107 " Must have its reward/* assented the lady with a renewal of eagerness. "1 have a son;" she said, " he will help me to make a return worthy of your acceptance, and, at my request he will even forget all bygones." " Stay, madame," said the Provost, growing cool, it might almost be said flippant, in his turn, " Better be clear in our explanations, that there may be no outcry afterwards," " Well, monsieur," " There are many ways by which you might leave this prison. I was thinking only of one. ... I have an extra lodging set aside for me here, and your most con- venient way out will be through — through my private rooms — I — think you are not attending, madame.*' " I am." " You understand then ? " " Perfectly.*' "And your decision? " " Your visit has done me good. I am surrounded by swarms of what I had hitherto thought the most hideous of God's creatures. The feeling I have had for them will henceforth be one of resignation, of more, of pleasure, compared with my loathing for the man who stands in that doorway." CHAPTER VIII In the Valley MARTIGNAC was not a self-sufficient man, yet he had fulfilled to his own satisfaction the task entrusted to him by Madame de Bellerive, and was anticipating with a secret pleasure the thanks never stinted by her for a good work done. He was now returning with Tr^cart and La Faille to Eoche- fendue. They had come nearly a day on the homeward journey, and had entered a road whose alternations of rock and of mountain torrent made travelling on horse- back toilsome and dangerous, when they were over- taken by two foot passengers. One of these was Fernando Vergara ; the other, a stranger, was a figure of a different kind. A little less tall than Fernando, he was as vigorous and well made. Perhaps the neater style of his dress made him appear more grace- ful in carriage, though he did not appear in a much better condition of life. But what seemed worthiest of remark about him was the contrast between his face and head, and the litheness and sinewy strength of his frame. His hair was grey, and he had a skin of Moorish darkness, wrinkled and furrowed in a A WORLD BEWITCHED 109 manner that betokened extreme old age, or a life crowded with hardships. He was vaguely introduced by Fernando as a Basque long resident in Spain, and a fugitive from the Inquisition. He himself was most reserved, shaking his head hopelessly when addressed in French, and answering in harsh monosyllables when spoken to in either Spanish or Buskaran. The friends, however, soon found cause to be grate- ful for the meeting with their two companions. Both were familiar with the country, and the horsemen were speedily guided into less rugged paths, though they still kept to a walking pace. Fernando, too, thought proper to atone for the morosenesa of the stranger by an attempt to enliven the journey with scraps of Basque legend or versions, after his own fashion, of historical incident. And herein he was encouraged by Martignao. To Fernando's ears the music of the winds in the mountains overshadowing them came from the voices of Basques in heaven praying for their descendants. The sighs of Basques, aa they dreamed of the glories of the past, formed clouds which enfolded the spirits of ancient heroes — the spirits who sent down dews and rains to make bright and fruitful the land still loved by them. The light that filled the plains and encircled the mountain paths at sunfall, was the reflex of the crowns of gold worn in Paradise by the soldiers and saints who had died for their country and their God. Fernando mentioned the name of Hannibal ; and Mar- tignac, doubtful if he had heard aright, stopped him. 110 A WORLD BEWITCHED " What can you tell me of Hannibal ? " The young Basque smiled shrewdly. " Ah, seigneur, you think the men of Vizcaya do not know the name of Hannibal ? Every child in my country has heard of Hannibal and the battle of Cannas." "Very good." " Ay, and sings of the battle. For the Basques were in the vanguard of the army that won it." " Their descendants have a right to be proud of that." "Yes," continued Fernando, warming with his theme, " and won against odds, too. A week before- hand, our Holy Father the Pope was asked by the Romans to excommunicate Hannibal and all his army, for they were marching on to the city to take it. And the Pope said he would do it, though he did not like, for the Basques had always been good Christians. Then Hannibal heard of what was passing at Rome, and he sent word asking the Holy Father not to ex- communicate him, and he would offer a statue of gold to Santa Maria de Begofia ; and, above all, he would never try to take Rome. And the Holy Father agreed to that, and we won the battle, and Hannibal was asked by his own men to go on to Rome ; but he said he had promised the Pope he would not do it, and he must keep his word." "Tou have solved an historical riddle, Fernando. La Faille ! " "Yes?" A WORLD BEWITCHED 111 " Tour eyes are younger than mine. I thought I saw the fluttering of a mantle just now/' " Where ? " " A hundred yards in fronts immediately to the right." " Shall I go forward ? " " With caution. So your countrymen have had the better of the Romans in days gone by, Fernando?" " Ay, seigneur. But sometimes we were unfortu- nate. Their Emperor Augusto took hundreds of our young men prisoners and crucified them on Mount Kuruceta. But the Basques laughed as they were on the cross, and died insulting their enemies. And the Romans fell back afraid of them even then." " And at Roncevaulx we Frenchmen had nothing to boast of in the end." " Seigneur, at Roncesvalles it was all God's work. First Roldan and the other peers killed a hundred thousand Moors, then they killed three hundred thousand men of King Marsilio's army. But then — then, seigneur, it is true they had to pass through my country. And our mountains were filled with Basques under Count Lobo. Then came the rolling down of the rocks on the heads of Roldan and his men. Then Roldan cut the mountain in two with his great sword Durandal; then he sounded his bugle horn, and the sound was heard thirty leagues off; and his emperor answered with sixty thousand hautbois; then the arrow came that pierced Roldan' s breast, and all was over." 112 A WORLD BEWITCHED " What 'a this ? " mused Martignao, looking ahead. La Faille was returning accompanied by someone mounted on a mule. The friends drew near each other, and the rider of the mule proved to be a woman. She was young, large eyed, and her features had the faultless harmony of outline characteristic of Basque beauty in all its grave and sombre perfection. " Carmen," murmured Trecart. It was indeed the youngest sister of Dolores Brezuma. " The bearer of a letter to you," said La Faille to Martignac, " From Mademoiselle de Parthenay," added Car- men, producing a sealed paper. Martignac opened it in some surprise. He had read but six lines when a mortal paleness covered his face, and he almost reeled from his horse. Trecart and La Faille drew towards him, and he handed them the letter in silence. " Victor struck down by a murderous dastard ! " exclaimed La Faille. " Madame de Bellerive arrested as a witch ! " faltered Trecart. Fernando stared at one and the other of the speakers, and there came through his clenched teeth a struggling of inarticulate sounds, as from a man seized by lockjaw. Simultaneously there had burst forth a short, sharp cry, which drew every eye. Carmen's keenest of all, on Fernando's reserved comrade. It seemed, however, that this cry could only have been caused by the A WORLD BEWITCHED 113 movements of Martignac's horse, which, free for a moment from the restraining hand of its master, had grown restless. The stranger stepped out of the reach of peril, and at once recovered his air of calm and gloom. In answer to questions Carmen explained the choice of herself as a messenger. " Madame de Bellerive — God's choicest blessing on her ! — -had been uneasy as to what might happen to Violante and myself, after the fate of our sister Dolores. Violante had not been seen since the day when she parted from me to go up to our dead one's cottage. But I was within reach, and it was agreed that if Violante or I chanced to be hard pressed, we should find shelter either with Mademoiselle de Parthenay or with Madame de Bellerive. On Sunday last I was close to Pierresbleues when I caught sight of some one — whom I thought proper to avoid. I hurried away, returned at nightfall, and was welcomed by Mademoiselle de Parthenay. Next morning she called me aside, told me of what had passed, and showed me the letter meant for M. de Martignac. I spoke of my knowledge of these parts, and was glad when she thought me worthy to be her messenger." " Fernando, you are taking us by the nearest way ? " "The direct way, seigneur." " When are we likely to reach a road where we may put our horses to a gallop ? " " In four hours, if we travel without stop, seigneur." " We must think of some plan by which no one shall be left behind. But let it be clear to all that 114 A WORLD BEWITCHED we must push on with as little halt as possible, even for sleep." Before the end of another hour darkness had set in. Rathepj the warm gold of the afternoon had given place to an atmosphere of pearl grey, of rare pellucid- ness, and with little or none of the chill that night usually brought with it in such regions. The travellers had entered a vale which they must continue to traverse at a walking pace. A vale quite straight and of vast length. It had something of the semblance of a cathedral, with floor uneven, indeed, yet worked into a fair mosaic by interjunctions of green turf, granite rock, and silver stream ; with pine trees a hundred feet high ascending like rows of pillars to right and left ; with framework of mountains running parallel, like stupendous walls worthy to sustain the roof of heaven with its multitudinous adornment of stars. And those who now entered this natural temple might have been assumed, from their silence, at least, to be reverent worshippers. Martignac was well to the front, moving not in im- patience, and yet with convulsive haste. He had come to the narrowest part of the vale, his eyes fixed in feverish earnestness before him, when he abruptly reined in his horse, and, without looking round, lifted his hand for the others to stop. But meanwhile Fernando had glided up to him, had gazed steadily forward for a few moments, had hurried back, had whispered a word or two in the ear of his taciturn companion; and both had sprung up the hill sides, A WORLD BEWITCHED 115 and disappeared among the plants and rocks, one to the right, the other to the left of the valley. At this moment there rang out the report of a musket. A ball struck a loose rock immediately in front of Martignac's horse and bounded harmlessly away. " Dismount at once," cried Martignac. Carmen was helped off her mule by La Faille, and the four, still under Martignac's guidance, led their animals up the hill to the right, and soon were in the shelter of the trees and boulders. Their action had apparently been guessed at, for a shout of triumph arose from ten throats at least, some fifty feet away. A rush of feet and a confusion of voices followed. " I cannot understand the disappearance of Fer- nando," said Martignac composedly. "No matter. We shall be discovered : we must face odds — but we'll at least lead them to imagine that we have help at hand." He set to his lips a little hunting horn and blew a loud clear note. Almost on the instant there came a yet more startling uproar from a different direction. The confined vale seemed to resound with thunders. The onrushing men were seen to look about them, then to come to a stand. But they had halted at an unlucky moment. Immediately there crashed right in their midst a number of fragments of rock, evidently dislodged from the hill sides, quickly following each other, and forcing one another down in a headlong violence of speed by their own weight. Three of 116 A WORLD BEWITCHED those who had come as assailants were struck; two of the three limped away ; the third remained flat and moveless under the increasing downpour of rocks. The others recoiledj looked backward, looked forward, and fled straight before them. In less than a minute Fernando came down, with a wild laugh, from the right, and was quickly followed by his ever silent companion from the hill to the left. " It was you two, then," said Martignac, " that rolled the stones on them ? " " But we had another to help us." " Another ? " " Ah, seigneur, it was not for nothing I was to tell you of what the Basques did in days gone by. Did you hear the horn ? " " Certainly. What of it ? " " That was Roldan's bugle horn. Whenever any- thing happens to remind him of his great defeat by Count Lobo, he starts from his grave, and wanders about these mountains, and blows his horn, and the rocks hardly need to be touched to roll down and crush everything in their way." " Good. — But now we must not, if possible, give those villains time to rally. The victory is more yours than the horn's, Fernando, but we must follow it up." They drew their animals down into the vale and approached the prostrate man. He was either dead or crushed beyond remedy.^ " Spurs on his boots," remarked La Faille. " Just what we wanted to know," said Martignac. A WORLD BEWITCHED 117 " Other horses, eh ? Follow on with our own, Fer- nando. Let us make haste." The gentlemen hurried forward pistol in hand, glancing hither and thither with keen eyes. They had not gone fifty paces when they noticed a move- ment of shadows in a clump of trees upon the right. They climbed a few feet up the hill, found seven horses tied to the trees, unfastened them, and led them into the valley. Fernando, Carmen, and the stranger were by this time close at hand. ''Now, Fernando," said Martignac, " you and your comrade can have a horse each. You, Carmen, may have your choice of horse or mule. And the brutes we do not use must be brought on to foil pursuers." In less than two hours they had issued from the rocky vale. They reached unmolested a plain over which they could gallop at full speed. The un- mounted horses followed readily. And Fernando listened with modest pleasure to praises which sug- gested comparisons between his own recent exploit, and the overwhelming of Roland and the other peers of Charlemagne in the valley of Roncevaulx. CHAPTER IX Evidence THE arrest of Madame de Bellerive had aroused mingled feelings in Rochefendjie. People of condition, after a first explosion of surprise and rage, became subdued and began to inquire of one another, rather by looks than by words, as to who among them was now safe. Humbler folk discussed the matter with more complacency, welcoming it as a proof that the law was no respecter of persons. But representa- tives of all classes united in active eagerness to be present at the prisoner's trial, which was appointed to begin on the Wednesday following her capture. There was complaint in some quarters of this tardiness in the commencement of proceedings. The ministers of justice, however, were able to vindicate themselves with ease by pointing to the fact that the executioner had meanwhile not been idle. The courts and apartments connected with the prison of Rochefendue were numerous and of varied construction. And from these a special room was chosen for the trial of this morning. It was a circular hall, whose very roof was underground, whose walls had no windows, and whose means of ventilation came. A WOELD BEWITCHED 119 on the one hand, from an inclined passage ascending to the yard within the main portal ; on the other hand, from a door left open, with sinister purpose, on occasions like the present. It was one of the many doors that led to the torture room. So dark was the haU that it required to be lit by candles even in full day. The western half moon of the chamber was de- signed for the accommodation of general onlookers. The far centre of the semicircle eastward displayed a gallery which was reserved for a more carefully chosen audience. Below and a little outward from the gallery was a table or desk, at which were seated the provost, and the lieutenant : Boissec and Pinard. Confronting her judges, at a distance of six yards away, was Madame de Bellerive. Her chains were off; but, by way of neutralizing so dangerous an indulgence, the ground she stood upon had been plentifully besprinkled with holy water. Hemming her in from a distance of three paces to eastward of the spectators behind, but leaving her under the free inspection of those in front who dared to look at her, were six arquebusiers, each wearing a crucifix on his breast. A little beyond this living but almost moveless crescent, four yards to the right of the prisoner, was a pulpit, raised but a single step from the floor ; and at this pulpit the first wit- ness was now standing. It was a woman. Almost on a line with her was Jules Dervaulx. His functions appeared to be of a manifold nature. He had the general direction of the order of procedure. He was frequently consulted by the judges. He wrote down 120 A WORLD BEWITCHED the particulars elicited in evidence; and it was under his personal examination^ rather than that of Boissec or Pinard, that each witness was to give testimony. At his invitation, then, the deponent was about to tell what she knew, in her own fashion. " Celestine Durant. Yes, that is my name. I live with my husband, as everyone knows. Yes. In a cottage a hundred yards from the Bellerive gate. I have known Madame de Bellerive since her marriage. Her sorceries and devil's badness ? Where must I begin ? Ah, true ! My cows. Good ! Two years ago was the first time ; in July. She was passing by my cottage one day, when she let fall a knife, and it stuck in the ground. She stooped to pick it up ; then I heard her say something in a strange tongue. The next day I could get no milk from either of my cows. And both had to be slaughtered eight days afterwards." " Did nothing happen when the accused spoke in the strange language ? " "Without doubt, seigneur. In the same minute a large brinded cat ran out of the chateau gate, and came up to her, and began to frisk and purr all about her." " And then ? " " Then I threw up my hands and cried, ' Jesus, Mary and Joseph, help me ! ' And the cat sprang around, and it looked at me with great eyes, and then it dived through the ground." " And you knew it was the devil ? " " Assuredly, seigneur." A WORLD BEWITCHED 121 The judges glanced at each other with scared faces, and there was a murmur of agitation in the assembly. The witness, gratified at the impression she had made, resumed : " Another time, in the late autumn, I saw her coming from the chateau with her son, and they stopped close to where I stood, and she said, ' There will be hail before long.' And surely there came down hail that very night, and the corn was blighted for a league around Rochefendue." At the close of the witness's evidence the presiding judge said : " When all the testimony has been given, the accused shall be examined in turn, and let it be seen whether she confirms or denies what she is charged with." He added with a burst of uneasiness which was readily interpreted by those present : " Let an arquebusier stand in front of her. She does not cease to fix her evil eyes upon me." The first witness left the pulpit, and was followed by the servant by whose connivance Madame de Bellerive had been arrested. This man commenced with a declaration that for years he had known Madame de Bellerive to assume the forms of various animals. He had seen her running about the castle in the shape of a black dog. He had watched her playing with a big red spider that used to crawl up and down the walk inside the garden. There were times when she was nowhere to be found, and then it was noticed that the red spider was accompanied by a black one, and 122 A WORLD BEWITCHED both would disappear into Madame de Bellerive's rooni. It was known to all in the chateau that she would never allow a spider to be killed. She was gentle with toads also ; and the witness knew of her having driven away a crowd of boys who had caught a large toad beyond the castle entrance, and who had made all preparations for roasting it to death. "I have heard madame talk in quite a loving way," said the witness, " to spiders and toads." Here the greffier observed that he hardly thought it necessary to remind the judges that, after the goat, the spider and the toad were perhaps the favourite forms assumed by the Evil One and his ministers. Though some authorities gave a preference to the wolf. Here he glanced in the direction of the pulpit. " Ah ! " exclaimed the witness. " Ton have more to say ? " suggested Dervaulx. " Yes, and worse than all. — I went out one day to cut some wood. I had an axe over my shoulder. I made for the forest, and had hardly gone ten yards into it when I nearly stumbled onto a wolf. It was eating the remains of a child j it growled at being disturbed, and made a rush at me. Then I made a blow at it with my axe, and struck oflf its right forepaw. And it howled in a voice like a woman's and limped away." " What next ? " " Madame de Bellerive had been out all that day. She came back at night, and I saw that her arm was wrapped up in a great cloth stained with blood. She A WORLD BEWITCHED 123 hurried to her roonij and would allow none of us to come near her. But when all the rest of the servants had gone to bed, I went to her room, and peeped through the hole of a broken panel. She had re- moved the large cloth, and I saw that her right arm from below the elbow was cut off; but it was lying in the bloody cloth. She went to a desk, unlocked it, and took out a book with her left hand. Then she spoke a few words. Then all at once the castle shook and the room was filled with smoke and flame. Then I heard a strange voice in the midst of the flame, and madame answered in a strange language. I was half dead, for I was thinking all the while of the wolf whose paw I had cut off in the forest. I could not say how long I had knelt at the door. But at last the smoke cleared away, I looked again, and madame was alone in the room." " And her arm — the right arm that had been cut off?" " It was whole and sound." " Nothing to show that it had been injured ? " " Not a mark." Amid the gasps and long-drawn groans of horror that followed these revelations, the grefiBer made him- self with difficulty heard calling for the next witness. This was a man of small and meagre frame, with a funereal solemnity of visage. He united in his person the avocations of chief perfumer and apothecary of the town. There was an increase of attention as he took part in the following interrogatory : 124 A WORLD BEWITCHED " You were lately called in to attend a cliild suffer- ing from distemper ? " " Yes, Antoinette Bonneherbe, living in the Rue de la Colombe." " Tell what occurred when you came into her presence." " She laughed and wept in the same moment, and gave other tokens of being bewitched. But I had heard enough beforehand to make me prepared for this, I ordered her limbs and head to be held fast and her mouth to be opened wide. Then I poured down her throat a medicine of my own mixture de- signed for expelling the unclean spirit from the body in which it may be lodged," " What is this compound ? " "The properties are equal portions of quick-set vine in pepper-wort, seed of agnus-castus, hart's horn, camel seed, absynthium, asphaltum; marjoram, Ethiopia cumin, aniseed, castor oil, scented rose- leaf, cedria, and liquid pitch." " How did the potion act ? " " I am here as a witness of truth. I grieve to say that the unholy struggles of the demon were victorious, and the remedy was rejected," " The child must have bad the stomach of a hyaena otherwise," exclaimed someone among the spectators. There was a confused and timid ripple of laughter at this, and the judges looked up with scandalized faces. " I shall be happy to trust that my ears have de- ceived me," said Boissec in a voice of dignified emo- A WORLD BEWITCHED 125 tion, "and to believe that no one in this assembly can have been guilty of the heathenish wickedness of making a mockery of this investigation." " Anybody offending in this way had better realize that the law has its hold upon him, that he will be charged with an endeavour to bring justice into de- rision," said Pinard. " And may find his place," added Boissec, " in company with the agents of the arch-mocker Belial." " I believe you next proceeded to exorcise the child ? " insinuated Dervaulx, " In that I took the privilege not denied to any Christian layman." "We shall not dispute that. But tell us the manner of the exorcism." " I caused the possessed child to be held faster than before to the ground. Then I cried aloud : ' thou impure spirit, rebellious founder of the monarchy of hell, leader of the armies of the damned angels, insati- able in cruelty and in all crime, ever torturing the bodies and hungering for the souls of men, I conjure thee by the Almighty Being who is no less thy God than mine, I conjure thee in the name of the Controller of the Universe, of that Supreme Lord to whom, before time was, thou didst minister, among the brightest of His archangels, I command thee to depart from this afflicted creature of the God whom thou hast tempted so grievously. Be thou lost among the trees of some forest far away, begone into the desert, plunge into the ocean, or ascend into the entrails of a cloud 126 A WORLD BEWITCHED pregnant with storms, therein to be racked by the whirlwindj confounded by the thunder, blasted by the lightning, so that thou mayst nevermore be seen of men. Away, venomous and accursed serpent, thou that didst cause our first parents to be driven from Paradise ; away, and on leaving this creature return not to earth, but remain in the unsoundable depths of hell until the day of judgment.' " The speaker ended by wiping the sweat from his forehead. " In this method of exorcism," said Boissec, after a pause, ''there are some things I miss. Did you sprinkle the child with holy water ? " " No, seigneur.'' " Nor make the sign of the cross ? " inquired Pinard. "No, seigneur," repeated the witness with an energetic shake of the head. " Have you a reason for such omissions ? " " You are a stranger to the honourable judges," interposed Dervaulx, " but answer freely. You will be protected." " I am a Calvinist," explained the witness. "As our good King Henri formerly was," added the greffier, " and as many of his Majesty's relations are to this hour." "I am a Calvinist," reiterated the apothecary with an increase of firmness j "in such matters I never allow myself to be led away by weak credulity — I am above it; and, of all things, my religion teaches me that the observances mentioned are but vanity and A WORLD BEWITCHED 127 superstition, and of no true avail for the expulsion of the Evil One." The greffier, aware of some murmuring among the spectators, coughed with much vigour, and abruptly asked the witness : " What answer did the fiend make to your exhorta- tion ? " " The Lord was with me, and I prevailed, I ordered those who surrounded the little one to loosen their hold ; and she covered her face with her hands and melted in tears. But soon again her mouth opened, and there issued from it a flood of black matter." " Some of the compound you had administered to her ? '' suggested Pinard incautiously. The witness gazed at him in respectful rebuke, and continued : " This dark compound became solidified. It clad itself with bone and flesh and hair, and took the shape of a black and white dog, which vanished through the wall of the house and was nevermore seen. The tormentor having thus departed, the child sat down composed and well conducted on a chair beside me. I asked her by whom she had been bewitched. Her answer was, ' Madame de Bellerive.' " With something of an efi'ort, the provost, signalling to the arquebusiers to stand aside, looked at the prisoner, "What can you say to all that has been urged against you ? " " Nothing." 128 A WORLD BEWITCHED " How ? You admit it to be true, then ? " Madame de Bellerive eyed tim with an expression which caused him to stammer out an uneasy and irrit- able repetition of his question. Then she retorted with contemptuous reluctance : "Every word of it is as false and foolish as you know it to be, monsieur. I cannot speak more de- cisively than that." " Well, well, you deny it ? " There was no answer. " You refuse to acknowledge that you are a witch ? " said Pinard, with a significant side look at the torture room. " Do your worst," was the rejoinder to the look. " If I am to find no help elsewhere, it would be profane of me not to believe that God will avenge me." Not another word did she speak in reply to the continued demands for a confession. Dervaulx moved forward to the two judges and entered into a whisper- ing conference with them. And some such comments as these were exchanged : "I should prefer to see her blood flow. The executioner is at hand." " Water first, fire afterwards, I say." " Whether by torture, drowning, or burning, we are warned by Madame de Mercalme to lose no time." At the close of five minutes, Dervaulx returned to his place, there was a proclamation of silence, and the provost announced, that the accused, El^onore de Bellerive, having obstinately and blasphemously defied A WOELD BEWITCHED 129 this lawfully appointed court, by refusing to avow her manifesb guilt as a sorceress, must prepare forthwith to be subjected to the ordeal by water. At this there was a hum of glad excitement in most parts of the hall. A few only of the laziest members of the throng grumbled at the knowledge that it was usual for such experiments to take place at a spot a thousand feet above the level of the city, at the fair lake among the hills, with its high walls and cascades, partly overlooked from Madame de Mercalme's house. A signal was made to the arquebusiers. They hemmed in the prisoner more closely than before. The judges rose, and the spectators rushed through the corridors, and, pouring into the street, halted and turned, to await the sequence of events. CHAPTER X The Oedeal by Water AT once the arquebusiera surrounded Madame de Bellerive. Instantly there arose a more than commonly loud uproar of execration, and a larger number than usual of the crowd started back and covered their eyes with their hands, to resist the blighting effect of the witch's gaze. The clamour swelled menacingly ; there were obvious preparations for a rush from the more unbridled members of the rabble ; but the gUttering circle of arquebusiers that fenced in the prisoner seemed men not to be trifled with, and she advanced without molestation. The two judges, preceded by the greffier, came after her. Something there was in the attitude of her armed escort which did not please Dervaulx, and his manner of addressing them as to the route that should be taken contrasted sharply with the smoothness of his tones in enlarging on the matter to those of the mob who were within hail, and in directing them to close in behind. The recipients of his urbane confidence fell into a quickly formed procession, and relieved themselves throughout the ensuing march by a sus- A WORLD BEWITCHED 131 tained chorus of ribaldry, no small share of which fell to the lot of the arquebusiers. At a hint from the two judges it was arranged, much to the impatience of the greffier, that they should proceed by a more elaborate circuit than usual, possibly with the design of subjecting the well-born prisoner to as much humiliation as possible under the eyes of the citizens, whose dwellings they would pass. In- stead, therefore, of turning to the near south, and reaching the granite Stepway by way of the ravine, they moved northward at first, until they had gone half the length of Eochefendue ; then they wheeled to the right, marched through the most frequented streets, and issuing from the town by the central eastern gate, swept south-eastward over the plain. They had walked at a steady pace down the Rue des Armuriers, and, crossing the Place des Templiers, had ascended more slowly the Rue des Neiges. At every house passed by them the windows, and in some cases the roofs, had been crowded with wild-eyed and vo- ciferating onlookers. When the eastern gate was near, it seemed as if all the dwellers in the city and neighbourhood had come forth to join in the procession. Of those who set themselves to climb the Stepway, and to reach the necessaryheight, the number could not have been far short of four thousand. These, following the judges, the escort, and the prisoner, and accom- panied by an increased body of armed men, streamed through the gaps in the rocks that overhung the lake, whose bank they lined on all four sides. There were 132 A WORLD BEWITCHED even a score or so of them who took their place on a shelf of rock that ran southward — the centre of it veiled by the waterfall — at a height of twenty feet above the bank. So transparent were the mountain waters, that even from this height the pebbles at the bottom of the deep lake might be separately dis- tinguished. What was now to take place had evidently been provided for; and not a moment was wasted in com- mencing the ordeal. By the eastern bank was moored a large boat, in which nine halberdiers were ordered to take their seats. They were at once rowed to the southern bank, on which they landed ; four stationing themselves at convenient interspaces on the left of the waterfall, five on the right. Nine more halberdiers had meanwhile taken their stand in somewhat similar formation on the northern shore. Close to these, in an irregular group, that still surrounded Madame de Bellerive, were the arquebusiers. The eastern bank was completely walled in by an uniform surface of rock. In the wall at the western end was a gap that led to a number of dangerous chasms, beyond which frowned the black bulk of a forest. The boat, manned by six oarsmen, returned to the northern bank, and the prisoner was placed in it. The manner of the ordeal, aa revised by the au- thorities of Rochefendue, was this. A person suspected of sorcery was taken to the deepest part of the water, and thrown in. If he did not regain the surface alive. A WORLD BEWITCHED 133 a proclamation was published of his innocence. There- after he was admitted to the honours of burial, with unmaimed rites. If he swam, or kept afloat by any means, for a quarter of an hour, he was clearly a wizard. Yet there were occasions when, to prevent such a climax, and to save the victim from the pangs of torture and ultimate burning, the law was not without its merciful provisions. That the accused might have every facility for drowning before the end of the appointed time, he was brought out for the experiment on a day as unfavourable as the season would admit of. He was cast into the water with his full clothing on. The halberdiers or other guards placed on the shore, were there to warn him off, and, if necessary, to pierce him with their weapons, lest he should be urged by panic to seek a landing pre- maturely. Moreover, in everything that tended to ensure a fatal result, the officers of justice could rely at need upon the help of the public lining the banks. This Wednesday, then, on the afternoon of a day when the winds arisen on the foregoing Sunday had not ceased to blow, Madame de Bellerive, hemmed round in the boat by six tall strong men, was rowed to the middle of the lake. There the lumbering craft stopped. A signal was made from the shore by Jules Dervaulx. The prisoner was grasped by the legs and arms, and amidst a hurricane of laughing cheers, was dashed into the water. Word had passed round with incredible rapidity that the criminal was not to come 134 A WOELD BEWITCHED out of the water alive ; and thougli there was a linger- ing regrefr at her not being reserved for the stake, the spectators were on the whole in excellent good humour. The sun had reached a point in the heaven from which it garmented the blue lake in a broidery of gold. But the southern sun itself could not burn up the un- seasonable keenness of the air ; and the water, in pur- suance of anticipation, was very cold. So when the victim came to the top, she gasped like one battling against asphyxiation. But the weakness passed away soon. Like many of her class, at a period when violent exercises of all kinds were habitual to men and women, this lady was an expert swimmer. On recovering breath, indeed, and steadying herself in the water, she debated hurriedly within her heart whether it were not best for her to sink at once and bring to a close her otherwise unavoidable miseries. But besides the love of life, which she felt to be without hope for her, the sentiment of religion, that must make her recoil from a listlessness equivalent to self-murder, was effectual at least in sustaining her energies for the time. She was facing westward, and she glanced from the northern to the southern shore. Apart from the dangers of the whirlpool formed by the cataract, she was hemmed in by an easily movable wall, a double- fronted phalanx of men, whose glistening arms menaced her with a bloody end to her efforts, if she sought safety to the right or left. She looked before her. A WORLD BEWITCHED 135 There are creatures that struggle and start into life from things which are dead ; and so there sprang within her a hope arisen from hopelessness. The boat seemed to have drifted, or to have been rowed several yards ahead. The prisoner struck out for it with energy ; and though her garments clung to her like the folds of metal drapery around a statue of bronze, gradually she moved forward. She came up to within a yard of the rudder. One more stroke. She shot her right hand convulsively forth, and grasped the hindmost edge of the boat. A dozen black hands caught her by the arms, the clothes, the hair, and flung her back. Looking up, she was confronted by a throng of visages distorted with rage, hatred and fear, bending over her. But simultaneously there pealed across the lake, and rang distinctly in her ear, the wild sobbing tones of a woman^s voice that, even in her present overwhelming distraction, she seemed to know : " Out upon you, wretches, curs ! Nay, more base than the vilest of brutes : and so I cannot ask if there is a man among you. Villains, dastards, murderers, eternal shame upon you ! " It was the Yoice of Henriette de Parthenay, and she stood near the two judges and the greffier, whom she was openly addressing. There was a pause. Then Boissec answered in a hoarse voice, and with a flushed face : " Madame, such language as this is not safe ■" " What, you slave ! Is your palate grown so dainty that you thirst for royal blood ? Hangman that you 136 A WORLD BEWITCHED are, do you long to be at the throat of a cousin of your king ? " She was interrupted. For some minutes back, four men in uncouth dress, with huge beards and ferocious looks, had been standing by. One of them went up to her, and said, in the harshest of voices : " Do not insult the judge." Henriette started and drew back. The rough man followed her, and began muttering in a low, rapid, and, apparently, threatening voice. The young lady's face flushed. Without answering a word she hurried from the spot. The man who had addressed her re- turned, and received with complacency the laughing compliments of Boissec on the ease with which he had silenced the descendant of kings. But at that moment Pinard interrupted his colleague to draw attention to Madame de Mercalme, M. Momat, and M. Billault, who were approaching. Meanwhile the boat, still moving westward, had shot far beyond Madame de Bellerive's reach. She turned her mournful eyes toward the banks. The hal- berds gleamed still against the background of purple rocks, and dazzled her with worse than the terrors of lightning. She threw herself in the restlessness of despair on her back, floated for some seconds with gaze fixed on the wandering clouds in the heavens, then rolled on to her bosom again, and began to glide down the lake, still westward. Madame de Mercalme had now come up to the two judges, and she smiled. A WORLD BEWITCHED 137 " Let her go on, if she can hold out. The arque- busiers will know how to deal with her." Boissec frowned heavily. " There comes another annoyance for us ! ' " What do you mean ? " asked Billault. " Wait, M. le Chanoine, till your worthy subordinate passes by. Did you know of the presence of P^re Gontaut ? " "It does not interest me. What of the arque- busiers ? " " Their leader, when asked to be prepared if Madame de Bellerive should land near him, declared in the bluntest fashion that he would not let his men fire on a drowning woman." " Their conduct has been suspicious ever since the arrest of the witch," interposed the greffier. " It 's a relief that others know their duty," growled Mornat, glancing towards the halberdiers. Yells of warning derision, addressed to the prisoner in the water, had been rising from the banks, and the halberdiers, moving from their station on the northern shore, kept ominous pace with her. She had been in the water twelve minutes. Through all her efforts, not a sound of woe or dismay, not a syllable of appeal for help or mercy, had passed her lips. Any such outcry would have been interpreted as a confession, and she was guarded even in her hopelessness. But her limbs were growing benumbed. She was chilled to the heart. Her strokes had become feeble and irregular. She flung out her arms with the usual 138 A WORLD BEWITCHED convulsiveness of a drowning swimmer, and her arms obeyed her with the effect of beating the smooth surface of the lake into foam. For, though near the southern bank, she was now far beyond the line of ripples made by the cataract. Her head sank forward. A deluge of water seemed to overwhelm her. Yet once more did she strive in desperation, in frenzy, with her trembling limbs ; and once more the water sparkled and hissed and foamed around her. The halberdiers, followed by the company of which Madame de Mercalme was the smiling centre, and of which the four black-bearded men made themselves a part, continued to keep pace with the swimmer in her wild struggle onward. All at once there was a commotion to the south of the lake. The head of a tall figure was observed passing rapidly behind the line of sightseers on the shelf of rock above the narrow bank. The figure was veiled from sight for an instant by the cataract ; but it emerged again. The further row of onlookers became divided shudderingly, as though a blazing aerolite had torn its way through them, and a man leaped forward above the throng of spectators on the bank, above the array of halberdiers, clear into the lake. A dozen strokes of great power, little, if at all impeded by his clothing, brought him near the woman, who kept up her blind battle against death. A face of frantic hope was turned towards him ; a pair of drowning arms were darted forth to fasten on him. Those arms the advancing swimmer eluded, and he A WORLD BEWITCHED V69 moved round the lady. She was throwing up her head and arms in the climax of a dying struggle, when the man shot out a sure hand and seized her by the hair. The uproar, great on all sides at this intrusion, became fiercest in the party encircling Madame de Mercalme ; but the four men with the thick beards overpowered all voices near in the ferocity of their indignation : " Rescue a witch ! " " Against the law ! " " In. the presence of the judge ? " " Come, let us be ready to meet them when they land, and cut them both to pieces." The four men drew their swords, and hastened from the spot, with the eyes of Madame de Mercalme fol- lowing them curiously. The boat, being only moved about to be kept beyond the reach of the prisoner, was now resting against the southern shore. Its occupants had shared in the general anger and amaze- ment at the help given to the witch, and they quickly set about making the rescuer rue his interference. They pushed from the side, and, rowing to within twenty yards of the western boundary of the lake, rested on their oars. They were at a spot from which they could bar the way to the swimmer and hia now senseless burthen. A minute previously the four large-bearded men had reached the middle of the western shore, when one of them turned aside to the gap in the wall, and disappeared. The three others, with their backs to the gap, stood unimpeded, those on the 140 A WORLD BEWITCHED edge of the lake having heard their threatening from far off, and having made way for them with all the gladness of anticipation. The rescuer was at this moment forty yards off. He continued to swim with vigour and ease, notwith- standing the weight that encumbered his left arm. He was within ten yards of the boat, when one of the men in it stood up ; in his hand was a heavy oar. " Ay," rose a savage yell on all sides, " beat their skulls in, both man and woman.''' His grimy face glowed at the encoaragement, and he raised the oar high. In that second of time the air about him seemed rent as by a flash of lightning, A violent shock convulsed him from head to foot ; a mortal lividness overspread his face. The oar slipped harmlessly from his grasp into the water behind him, as, with an arrow driven two inches deep into his temple, he sank back dead in the boat. From those on the western bank who could partly understand what had passed, there went up a roar of execration, above which, however, rang the cry of one of the black-bearded strangers. "Leave the accursed witch and her rescuer to us I" The three grasped their swords more fiercely than ever, while the bystanders recoiled in trembling ap- proval. On came the swimmer. The three men were too impatient to wait till he had scrambled up. They leaned forward and dragged him ashore. With looks A WORLD BEWITCHED 141 of murder and swords raised they surrounded him. They drew him with the woman in his arms out of the crush and away to the gap. " Heads whipped off and bodies dashed down to the rocks," was the gleeful prophecy of one enthusiast. But the four men with the insensible woman hurried deeper into the gap, turned sharp to the right, and were seen a minute afterwards entering the forest be- yond — and the onlookers began to turn and look at each other in stupefaction. Then it was that Eustache Gontaut, with a smile, forced himself out of the thick- ening crowd and came face to face with Madame de Mercalme. " Yes, father," said the lady, with looks as radiant as his own, " the rescue has been well planned. She has escaped, and you have a right to laugh at the way in which all the rest of us have been fooled." The young priest bent his head slightly, and moved on his way without uttering a word, though he con- tinued to smile. CHAPTER XI Explanations VICTOR DB BELLERIVB^S wound had been at no time dangerous, but the shock to him had been great. And when the delirium had abated, and let him sleep rather than dream, his visions night and day had been scarce less exhausting than the ravings that kept him prostrate. They were visions in which the air over him and the ground under him were per- petually hot with fire ; and the strange garments rolled around him from forehead to foot were heavy with blood, and clung to him with a more enfeebling oppres- siveness than the strongest of chains. On the Wed- nesday morning after his hurt, however, he made a wild struggle which set him free at once from sleep and delirium, and he looked up with almost a sob of wonder to find the pitying countenance of Henriette de Parthenay bent over him. He stared around him, clutched at his bedclothes, then gazed once more into the lady's brightening face. " Is it possible ? " he whispered. She drew a chair close to his bedside, and sitting down, took him with her own pure frankness by the hand. A WORLD BEWITCHED 143 " You are better, I think." He smiled still in a wondering way. " I have had frightfal dreams. But I would gladly have borne in earnest a few of the horrors that racked me in fancy to be rewarded like this.'' " You are stronger to-day than you have been. Still you must not agitate yourself." " To-day ? " he repeated with a start. " What's the matter ? How long have I been here ? " Henriette hesitated for an instant only. Then she told him of the circumstances under which he had been foundj of the necessity to save him from perishing in the night air, and of his immediate transportation to where he now lay. "Madame de Bellerive," she hastened to add, "could not think of chiding us for what we have done." " You speak lightly of her debt and mine to you. No doubt she has been here to thank yon for her part. It seems more than a dream in which I saw her. My debt is owing still." "If you feel indebted to me," faltered Henriette, " you will best repay me by lying down again." He was more than wakeful, and questions crowded to his lips ; rather in obedience than from weariness, therefore, he let his head fall back on the pillow. She remained by him till she thought he was asleep ; and gradually the calmness assumed by her became broken. She rose and stole hurriedly from the room. " His mother ! " she said to herself, with a face of anguish. " Even I could never tell him of that." 144 A WORLD BEWITCHED There was an abrupt opening and shutting of an outer door not far oflF, and a moment later the chaplain stood before her. He had come from the court. She drew him further along the passage in which they were ; and, not trusting her voice, invited him by an inclination of her head to say what had passed. He was brief. " Evidence has been given — especially by a blas- phemous Huguenot — which I cannot believe. She re- fuses to confess. The ordeal by water has been decided upon, and they are now on their way to the lake with her." " Then not a moment must be lost," said Henriette, with a bloodless face. " But stay ; you see that accusation and arrest do not of themselves make a prisoner a witch ? " " I believe her to be innocent." " Then you will fear no longer to sit at her son's bedside ? " " I will not," answered the chaplain, stoutly. A faint smile parted the young lady's lips, but she went on rapidly : " Go in there. Be gentle with him ; teach him in your kindliest way to be firm. A great sorrow may be hanging over him." Within another minute Henriette had given direc- tions for fresh horses to be at hand in the now remote event of Martignac's arrival, and had left the chateau. She passed through the wood to the east of Pierres- bleues, thence through a crossing in the gorge that A WORLD BEWITCHED 146 rose from the ravine^ plunged into an avenue of the further forest, ran down, or scaled, the precipices beyond, entered the western gap in the walls of rock, and stood on the shores of the lake, while the judges were yet mounting the Stepway with their prisoner. As the time ran, and the measures for conducting the ordeal proceeded, she had glanced on all sides with an agony of eagerness, then, in the uncontrolled savagery of her despair, had poured forth her execrations on the bystanders as gloating accomplices in a murder. But never was interruption more welcome to a de- nouncer than that which struck the girl dumb in the height of her rage. In the gruff championship of those arraigned by her, in the harsh greeting of herself, she had been quick to recognize the voice of one she trusted. Nor was the reassurance that rapidly followed in undertones needed to make her quit the spot on the instant lest she should betray, not surprise, but con- fident joy. She had hurried to the gap, and there had waited in watchfulness and concealment. She had seen the plunge from the shelf of rocks into the lake, had stood close to the right arm which had winged the fatal arrow, had received the rescuers at the first bend of the gap, had led them with combined prudence and daring through all the dangers of the chasm to the least exposed entrance of the forest, had found that the horses of the deliverers themselves were at hand, and had taken one of the horses to speed in advance to the chateau. On her arrival she learned that Victor was up and L 146 A WORLD BEWITCHED dressed. He spoke in a way which proved that the truth had not been made known to him. He had heard a whisper that his three friends were back in Roche- fendue, and no doubt he must anticipate visits, to the further inconvenience of his hostess. ''Perhaps you thought of venturing to your own home to receive them ? " suggested Henriette. " I have no right to be " " To be my prisoner any longer ? Yet you must remain so. As to your friends, no beings on earth shall be more heartily welcome than they in this house. But I must leave you again for awhile." She sent a message to Eustache Gontaut, desiring his immediate presence at Pierresbleues. Then she walked down to the gate to meet the cavalcade arriving from eastward. She had not long to wait. The four men who had made themselves conspicuous on the shores of the lake in their somewhat wild cos- tumes, their paint-seamed visages, their long hair and their huge beards, had hastened to pluck off their superabundance of hair, and to smooth out, in part at least, the false creases in their skins. The man who, in the simpler, though perhaps more effectual, semblance of a Venetian squire, was the con- triver and chief agent in the rescue, had so rearranged his disguise as to discover the features of M. de Martignac. Three of his associates in the scheme were recognizable, through all the daubing of their triumphant faces, as Trecart, La Faille and Fernando Vergara. A fourth was pointed out as Fernando's A WORLD BEWITCHED 147 taciturn comrade, Ramon Zulueta. Yet others knew the face, undisguised from the first, of Carmen Erezuma, under whose care the horses had been left in the forest, into whose arms Henriette, on setting out for Pierresbleues, had resigned Madame de Bellerive ; so that the lady, on recovering consciousness, had found none but familiar or kindly faces bending over her. When all had dismounted, Henriette comprised the deliverers in a gracious reverence : " We shall find many another time than this for compliments and thanks. All here are my guests. But now I must see to our suflferer." They entered the chateau. The three gentlemen, accompanied by Fernando and Ramon, and still to a certain extent playing a part, were soon in the presence of Victor and the chaplain. Madame de Bellerive was taken to Henriette's own room, where she slept till sundown. At that time P^re Gontaut, who had mean- while called unavailingly and returned to Rochefendue, was again at Pierresbleues. It was made convenient for him to see mother and son together. For an hour ho was alone with them. Through his firm yet gentle agency they learned the sorrows endured by each, the thanks due from both to those who were now under the same roof as themselves. Madame de Bellerive and her young hostess, at the latter's prayer, were to sleep in the same bed that night, and would no doubt pour into each other's hearts the feelings prompted by what had passed. But Victor could not lie down again until he had 148 A WORLD BEWITCHED sought Martignac. He was not only able to reach his friend's room unassisted, but had become inspired on the way with language strong and clear enough to convey, though still with conscious inadequacy, some sense of what was due from him. On coming into Martignac's presence, however, he could do no more than sink silently on his knees, as before a being that claimed worship ; and when raised, with something of affectionate alarm, he could only sob, speechless, help- less, on his friend's bosom. Here they were found half an hour later by Pere Gontaut and the chaplain ; and the last named took Victor peremptorily away, leaving Martignac and the young priest together. The two gazed at each other for some seconds in silence ; then Gontaut suddenly took Martignac's two hands. " My heart has been bursting with what is on it," he said, with a restrained energy that shook him from head to foot. " It may be long before you know the full value of what you have done. Meanwhile, I thank God for making such a man — ^you brave, true soul." Martignac smiled through the tears that sprang to his own eyes. " You call me a man, father ; I think you are here with a more gracious object than to make a woman of me." " I have indeed something more to say. You are unaware, perhaps, that Madame de Bellerive cannot return home just now, even if she would." " What 's to prevent her ? " A WORLD BEWITCHED 149 " Her house is in the hands of a city guard, by order of the mayor. He has been asked already to send another force to demand her surrender, for she is known to be here." " What then ? " " This he has refused, and has furthermore deter- mined to withdraw the guard from Bellerive to-morrow." "And may I not suspect that P^re Bustache has encouraged him in this purpose ? " " Well ! But the trouble will not be ended with the removal of the guard." " Explain." "■ I hear much talk of which I can only guess the meaning. But I think I am right in anticipating another blow against Madame de Bellerive, whether at her own house or here." " And would those rascally judges dare " " Not openly, but through the rabble whom they delight in goading on to such work." " I understand." " I need not urge you to be at hand for the present, wherever this lady or her son may go. Be prepared for another tax on your patience before long. Mean- while we may hope, under God's favour, to have earned a night's rest. I must leave you." After the incident on the lake, Madame de Mer- calme had gone up the Stepway to her house, and had remained alone all the evening. At nine o'clock a servant entered her room and announced the names of two visitors who had called within a few seconds of 150 A WORLD BEWITCHED each other, and who hoped to see her. She answered that she would receive them separately. She gave orders for the admittance of the first comer, and a moment afterwards her eyes were taking note of the expression of mingled effrontery and embarrassment on the face of Raoul de Th^rigny. " I allow nothing to surprise me," she said, after a pause, " but I think you might have put off confront- ing me till some other day than this ; the day which witnesses the outcome of your skill and daring." " Will you let me explain? " " Can there be anything fresh in your apologies ? Explain ? As you explained, perhaps, your sagacity in lying under the heel and imploring mercy at the hands of the boy whose brains you afterwards tried to daah out." "If you think that anything is gained by vilify- ing me " " Listen. The mystery of Madame de Bellerive's escape this afternoon is already cleared up. It is known who the men were that not only foiled your attack in the Navarre mountains, but took your own horses from you, and outstripped you on your way back to Eochefendue. The person who took the message harrying them home was your own loving Carmen." " For that news at least I thank you." " The men themselves, among whom were, of course, Martignac, Tr^cart and La Faille, had such an easy task with you, so much time in hand, that they were A WORLD BEWITCHED 151 able to get full disguises from Basque confederates on the way. In those disguises they appeared on the lake. To be brief, the manner in which they have outwitted everyone of us, from first to last, has been very properly noised abroad with laughter by the humblest of their helpers — poor Fernando Vergara." " It may be so " " Vilification ! Did you expect praise for a collapse which is wholly traceable to you? " " No, and there at least you shall be answered." "How?" " I looked for no praise, neither shall I sit dumb while the whole fault is put down as mine. You are good at wearing a mask; but there are things you cannot hide from me. Every drop of your blood has turned to gall because this woman has contrived to slip through your hands. There 's nothing you'll leave undone, whether to fasten your hold on her again, or to wreak vengeance on all who are to blame that she is beyond your reach. Let others defend themselves; listen to the difficulties that I've met with from the outset. On leaving you last Sunday, I put myself in touch with my men. Twenty- four hours afterwards I was at the place fixed for our coming together. All thirty were there to meet me. I had a reception which caused me to look from one to the other; and I knew that something was amiss. One of them made himself spokesman for the rest. He began by referring to a matter of sentiment which, if left to itself, I might have laughed out of considera- 152 A WORLD BEWITCHED tion. In the burning of the Basque cottages it seems that one cottage had been left untouched. Those who had occupied it heard of this and came back. They made up a family of nine persons. Two days after- wards my fellowSj wandering in the neighbourhood, found the whole nine lying in and out of the cottage, partly eaten by the dogs that had been left behind. The cause of their death was unknown ; but near one of the bodies lay a letter which the spokesman knew well to have been written by Dervaulx, and in that letter your name was mentioned." " What more ? " " The second matter bore upon the arrest of Madame de Bellerive." '' Were their hearts wrung at that, too ? " " Not in the least. This time there was no senti- ment in the grievance ; yet there was more passion. The spokesman declared that while the lady was being carried away, some of those who had entered the house remained behind, discovered a strong box, and laid hands upon it. I was informed further that two thousand pistoles found their way within the same hour to Madame de Mercalme's house. I was asked if I knew anything of this. I was forced to answer in the negative. It was then pointed out that I had clearly been got out of the way so as to be deprived of a share in the spoil. In short, the spokesman played his part so well that at a final word twenty of my best men refused to submit any longer to my order ; I was left with ten of the most worthless. I led them to A WORLD BEWITCHED 153 the attack on the appearance of Martignac and the others. We were opposed ; I could make nothing of my wretches " " And so you joined enthusiastically in their flight. Well, Raoul, you have given me overwhelming proof within the last week or two that you are becoming less and less useful to me. I may yet try you at some- thing else. Meanwhile, I have for your sake kept M. Dervaulx waiting. I fear I must sacrifice the en- joyment of your company any further to-night. By the way, was the spokesman you refer to uncompro- mising in his opposition to you ? Have you told me all ? " " I had better leave you." " Was he base enough to refuse to do you justice over your duel with M. de Bellerive ? " Therigny tore from the room without another word. He scarcely raised his eyes as he crossed the greffier just outside the door. But he gazed with full delibera- tion, and with a changed colour, at another man lin- gering in a more remote passage. It was the spokes- man of the robbers who had revolted against him. CHAPTER XII Still Plating with Fire THE next morning passed quietly enough in Rochefendue. The only man who appeared busy, and indeed busy out of his usual course, was the greffier, Dervaulx. Before noon he had visited, separately, Billanlt, Mornat, Therigny, Boisseo, and Pinard. The last private visit paid by him was to Madame de Mercalme. He had left her and was coming down the Stepway when, in one of its narrowest windings, he was brought to a halt by a figure that seemed for the moment not inclined to stand aside for him. A figure of average height, well knit, even graceful, but with a strangely seamed and withered face. He carried in his left hand a bow, and around his neck hung a quiver filled with arrows. " You are having a recreation, M. Dervaulx." The greflBer stared, and the stranger continued in a harsh voice and with a strong Basque accent : " And no one with a heart can blame you, even though the cells in the gaol down there are well filled at present." Dervaulx, whose impulse, after the first surprise, had been to force his way downward in irritable silence, A WORLD BEWITCHED 155 suddenly looked with more attentiveness at his in- terrupter. " I saw you for the first time yesterday," he said, " you were in a different disguise, and were not alone." " Nothing can escape your eyes, M. le Greffier." " You had then kept your bow and arrows in a safe place until it was time for you to use them ? " " Then your confederate in the boat was not struck down by witchcraft, M. Dervaulx ?" The greffier was by no means at ease in listening to the grim mockery of the stranger. He looked around him hurriedly. " We keep each other waiting," he muttered, stealing more than one involuntary glance at the bow and arrows. " Be comforted, monsieur," said the archer. " I do not deal in witchcraft, as you seem already to be aware ; yet I predict that whether you die soon or late, yours will be a different death from that of the boat- man we know of." " What do you mean ? " " Something tells me that your day for trying witches is over, M. Dervaulx." "Whoever you may be " " Come, monsieur, we are in each other's way, as you have remarked. You shall go where you will. For myself, I'U say frankly where I am going — higher up, and to the right. To the cottage of the family you were compassionate enough to send food to the other day, M. Dervaulx." 156 A WORLD BEWITCHED He moved upward while speaking. But Dervaulx's cheeks had grown all at once of an ashen hue. A sudden darkness for a time seemed to have shut out everything from his vision, and he needed to pause yet longer before resuming his journey down the Stepway. Henriette, her chaplain, and Madame de Bellerive were seated together in one of the daintiest rooms of Pierresbleues. The elder lady, from the instant of her coming, had remained in nearly unbroken silence. It seemed as if she could not bear to let go her hostess's hand. She held it in her own or raised it to her lips for the thousandth time, while the tears ever started to her eyes, and the chaplain, without misgiving, indeed, wholly won back to her, did not cease to pour in her ears words of comfort and blessing. Night had set in, candles had been brought, when Carmen Erezuma, with a look invited Henriette from the room. Awaiting them in the passage was Martignao. " You have more than one room here, madame,'' he said, " which commands a view to the north-east ? " Henriette walked to a door a few paces off, opened it, and was on the point of calling for lights. To her astonishment, however, the numerous windows of the almost unfurnished room displayed by her were ablaze with the reflection of what was clearly a distant fire. From a point beyond and above Rochefendue, flames rolled and swayed to a vast height, and a glance through a semicircular window showed that these A WORLD BEWITCHED 157 flamea were kindling into many-coloured horror and splendour even the rocks, the chasms, and forests, the waterfalls, the snows and glaciers of the far moun- tains to the south. Henriette had not gazed long when she started. " Is it possible ? " she half whispered. " The roof that has covered the family of this unfortunate lady for centuries ? " " You realize, madame, that this is not the work of chance ? " " True ! — The dastards, the unutterable mis- creants ! " " But, dear lady," said Carmen hesitatingly, " even that may not be the worst." Henriette flashed round in silence. " Yes," agreed Martignac, " enough has passed before us of late to show that there is no vandalism, no atrocity for which we must not be prepared." " They will come here," mused Henriette, " and I have been sluggard enough not to foresee something of the kind. Well, the arms and wits of everyone in this castle must now be at call for the general safety." " Ten Basques armed with muskets came to the gate a few minutes ago," said Carmen. "Accompanied by Ramon and Fernando," added Martignac, "and I took it upon myself to admit them." " Good ! " " Then M. de Tr^cart immediately followed on with six well-armed comrades from Rochefendue." "And if you fall short of arms and ammunition," 158 A WORLD BEWITCHED added Henrietfce with fiery eagernessj " I'll show you that we have here a reserve of all that's required." It had of course been soon noised everywhere that Madame de Bellerive and her son were in the house of Mademoiselle de Parthenay. The emissaries active in spreading the informatioUj made it equally their business to hound on the most unspeakable of the scum of Rochefendue in seeking vengeance against the horrible witch, and on those who were sheltering her. They had collected a throng of ruffians, number- ing nearly five hundred persons, provided with torches and armed with whatever weapons could be gathered for them, to whom they first of all marshalled the way to the castle of Bellerive. Dervaulx and Mornat were their leaders, and these were accompanied by no less respectable an ally than M. le Chanoine Billault. The town guard had been withdrawn by order of the mayor, and some of the servants had wandered back. The same servants had not been long in their familiar quarters, when hints reached them, well calculated to renew their uneasiness. They fled precipitately while the body of the rioters was heaving in sight. So when those in the van came up they found the gates open and no sign of life about the building. On the instant there was a rush forward, and the castle ground became filled. There was a pause. Then at a smothered laugh, and a nod of invitation from one of the boldest of the throng, the rush was continued into the house itself. The nod had been interpreted as a signal for plunder, and the man who gave it, the A WORLD BEWITCHED 169 leader in the rush, was identified by several who surged after him as a professional robber. At least a hundred of the invaders were provided with torches, and it was not long before these torch-bearers began to reappear, among the rest, laden with objects of value. Others who had lingered in the castle yard, dashed forward to share in the spoil. It chanced that some of those who had to choose between lighting the way for rival plunderers and bearing off their own booty more at ease, had dropped their torches here and there in the house. Very soon thin clouds of smoke began to curl through the win- dows. Cries of alarm, addressed to those in the build- ing, rose high. The warnings were heeded by some, unheard, or scorned by others. Rapidly there shot out from nearly the whole of the windows, and from the rents and orifices in the walls and roofs of the castle, volumes of smoke, more dense and more defined in shape and hue ; purple and green, yellow and grey^ with intermingled bands of black, while through the smoke, there pierced myriads of slips of fleshlike flame, giving the appearance of tongues darting from the mouths of innumerable serpents. At once the shouts of alarm and warning increased in loudness. This time the plunderers and incendiaries poured into the yard and through the gates in wild precipitation. They took with them the lighter portables of value, and it was believed that not one man was left behind in the building. The tongues of fire became larger. The flames, 160 A WOELD BEWITCHED alternating, by means of the shadows, into hues of azure and violet, crimson and gold, burst through the trans- colouring smoke, and blazed in a uniform blinding white. Unspotted reptiles of dazzling flame were seen licking the inside walls, which had gradually turned to a blood-red. Large beams and heavy stones either crumbled away in ashes, or thundered down, red hot from the roofs and topmost walls. A burning river, lashed by the wind, rolled from room to room. As the minutes hastened and swelled to hours, as the walls of apartments fell inward, and the floors crashed down, the river grew transformed into a whirlpool of fire that filled the whole of the gap, scooped out by the sunken corridors and chambers. At last, the roof itself, with its turrets and pinnacles intersected and sheathed with dull veins and slabs, now molten into shining cascades, of lead, fell with a dismal, shrieking uproar on to the other pile of ruins. There rolled up first a yellow cloud. This vanished, and in its wake sprang a monstrous fountain of sparks, purple, crimson, gold, silver. These in turn dissolved in ashes or air. The red walls alone stood up in glaring devastation. A low murmuring passed from one to the other of the spectators; the murmuring swelled into a roar of triumph, and the throng, avoiding the northern gate of Eochefendue, rolled along the western wall to southward. Martignac and his fellow-defenders, among whom, by his own unchangeable resolution, was young Bellerive, were stationed in the hall that faced from A WORLD BEWITCHED 161 Pierresbleues to the north. All the windows to the front, except one, had been quickly but securely pro- tected against firearms. At the one unguarded window which immediately overlooked the northern gate and the pathway leading thereto, stood Martignac alone. He and his fellow-defenders numbered in all twenty- two. The rioters continued in a shambling advance till their foremost line was about thirty yards from the gate. There, in obedience to what seemed an unex- pected signal, they halted. A sudden gathering to the front of those who had some semblance of authority over them, showed that there was hesitation on their side. They frequently turned towards the central window, on which the moonlight fell and displayed Martignac standing watchfully alone, his companions being concealed within the chamber. At last, M. Billault, invested with alb and chasuble, but bare- headed, and holding on high a large crucifix, walked from the midst of the deliberators, accompanied by a man bearing in one hand a torch, in the other a white kerchief fastened to a pike. They came to a stand at a point where they were not concealed from view, or placed beyond earshot, of Martignac^s window. Then Billault, in a shaking voice, yet with a somewhat lofty manner, commenced : " I speak to M. de Martignac ? " "Tes, monsieur." " I bless you, and all in this house to whom God's blessing may be profitable." " M. Billault, tell me whether I must address you in M 162 A WORLD BEWITCHED your religious character, or give you joy on your pro- motion to the office of ambassador of the company I see behind you ? " " M. de Martignac, I speak without a trace of menace in asking you to lower your tone. Those at whom you seem inclined to scofif are within hearing/' " Let me know the message yonder scoundrels have intrusted you with," said Martignao, in a louder voice than before. ''Very well, monsieur. I am deputed to ask you to deliver up one Bl^onore de Bellerive, an accused witch, escaped from justice yesterday." " What if we refuse to obey ? " " Neither I nor anyone else will be able to keep the men behind me from beating down this gate, firing the house, and putting to death every creature within it." " But you have an alternative ? " " Oh, if you are reasonable " " Well ? " " You shall be absolved from your reprehensible action in shielding the criminal we seek.'' " We are fortunate in being deemed worthy of the clemency of those who are hot-handed from burning the castle of Bellerive." " M. de Martignac " " Well, reverend ambassador, here is our answer. We are proud to be thought worthy of protecting her whom your profane lips describe as a criminal : to give up our lives, if called for, in defending her against the incendiary and murderous rabble behind you " A WOELD. BEWITCHED 163 " Monsieur !- " — Goaded on as they are, by the deadlier mis- creants, your accomplices, who have filled yonder city with fire and slaughter for months past." M. Billault did not need to announce this plainly audible defiance. He was merely ordered by the impatient leaders of the crowd to stand aside ; and he was not slow to withdraw to one of the numer- ous places of safety afforded by the rocks to the west. Marfcignac withdrew from the casement, which was then closed up, like the other windows, with an in- geniously loop-holed shutter, fronted with sheet iron and backed with wood. A number of lamps were so placed as to cast a special light on each of the shutters. On a table in the centre of the room were a score of muskets, loaded and ready for use when those now held by every man of the defenders might be dis- charged. Beside the table stood Henriette. " Did any of you observe the men that sent M. Billault on his errand ? " inquired Martignac. " I saw people like them in the Basque mountains the other day, seigneur," answered Fernando. " Of course," assented Tr^cart, "Therigny's gang." " Quite so," said Martignac. " Well, as I talked, I counted eighteen of them. Let them begin the attack ; and when I give the word let us mark those men specially." " Not spare a bullet for Dervaulx ? " exclaimed La Faille. "1 saw the rascal among them." 164 A WORLD BEWITCHED " Let anyone who chooses make a target of him," rejoined Martignac. " And now " He was interrupted by a volley of musketry, a shower of broken glass, a rattling of bullets against the iron-plated shutters. The defenders at once ad- vanced to the loopholes, and awaited a further sign from Martignac. A second discharge came from without. A third was almost drowned in a roar of exultation from the hitherto unanswered assailants. " Bellerive, Trecart, La Faille, Fernando, Ramon, be ready, as I am. — Fire ! " Six muskets went off. The smoke lifted. Four men were seen lying motionless on the road. Every shot had told, but at least one man had been wounded twice. There came no return fire : already there were symptoms of wavering among the assailants. " Those of you who can point your muzzles upward, fire in the air," said Martignac. He was obeyed. There was one answering shot from without. Then, amidst cries of dismay, the mob turned. " None of you fired downward that time ? " inquired Martignac. There was a unanimous denial. " Yet one of them fell." " The shot did not come from here, seigneur," said Fernando. " Not from here," echoed the strange voice of Ramon. " Some of us may do well to go down," said Martignac, "and see if any stragglers are about." A WORLD BEWITCHED 165 Trecart and La Faille volunteered on this work. They were accompanied by Ramonj Fernandoj and the re- maining ten Basques. They went through the gate, Tr6cart having requested and obtained from the steward two lanterns, one of which he gave to Eamon. La Faille noticed the fluttering of a robe from behind a large rock to the left. With drawn sword he turned to the spot, then invited Trecart to approach. Within a cleft of the rock, with body bent nearly double, was M. Billault. " Fernando," said La Faille, " look further about. We have one prize. Come, M. le Chanoine, the castle gates are at least open to you now.'' Fernando, Eamon and their fellows did not go much further before finding work calculated to absorb their own attention. At the moment of La Faille's discovery, Fernando had observed a small man rise from over a recumbent figure, and vanish among some crags to the right. Fernando had disappeared after him, and Ramon had hastened forward. A noise of scuffling was audible in some unseen spot. In a few moments the little man, moving awkwardly, held by the shoulder, in the grasp of Fernando, reappeared in the road. His hands were tied behind him, and he was gagged. Eamon, with a cautionary wave of the hand to the other Basques now approaching, held the lamp closer to the individual. Amid mutterings of inex- pressible import, they all recognized the face of Jules Dervaulx. " You will find plenty of torches along the road. 166 A WORLD BEWITCHED We can re-light them from the lamp. No, M. Der- vaulx," said Fernando, interrupting himself, " we are not going to set fire to you. And yet our business with you to-night is very serious indeed," The ten Basques had gathered about a dozen torches, which had fallen from the hands of the fugitive rioters and lay strewn about the pathway. The com- pany proceeded through a rock-paven pass. Thence they were led to a vale, whose floor shone fair, coloured under the bands of moonlight which the impending crags allowed to enter it. At the end of the vale rose a structure of rock with rounded roof, some ten yards high, and sides extending to a distance of forty feet. The silent procession skirted the southern sides, and, turning to the right, stopped before a cavern whose mouth opened westward. Ten torches were lit from the lamp, and displayed a rude apartment with a sandy floor, and a roof which the outer massiveness of the rocks left no more than ten feet high. Fernando and Ramon entered the cavern with Dervaubc between them. Six Basques followed and ranged themselves, three on the right, three on the left, wall. The other four Basques, holding torches like their comrades, remained at the mouth of the cavern. '' M. Dervaulx," said Fernando, " 1^11 now unbind you and take the gag from your mouth. I like re- lating stories. I am going to tell one which con- cerns you, and if you find anything in it to call for remark, it is only right that you should be free to speak." A WORLD BEWITCHED 167 " What do you mean to do with me ? " gasped the greffier. "M. Deryaulx, you pay me a bad compliment. You do not care to listen to my story. However, I'll not lose heart. It is not my business, M. le GreflEier, to say anything about your hunting down of witches. To find a real witch, and to burn her without mercy, is a good act in the sight of God and His Holy Mother. And it might have been well for you, standing among ns in your last hour, if you could have laid your hand upon your heart, and sworn to God that they were all real witches you had destroyed." " My last hour ! " exclaimed Dervaulx. '' Yes, M. le Greffier, for as God 'a in heaven, I believe you'll not go out of this cavern alive." Dervaulx sent up a wild shriek for help. He was answered by a resounding chorus of laughter. " If you think your voice can pierce through roofs and walls twenty feet thick, or be heard out there where there are only naked rocks and the bay be- yond, shout again. But believe me, you had better use what time you have left in learning why you were brought here. First of all then, though we have nothing to do with your work in witch-finding, yet my story begins from the day when you, like a liar, seized a good and true woman as a witch, and forced her to her death. On the day of Dolores Erezuma's death, scores of Basque families on the hiUs out there felt that their own time might come for going to the stake if they stayed longer in these parts. They fled 168 A WORLD BEWITCHED over the frontier. When their flight was known, a swarm of scoundrels hurried up the hills, and spent the night in setting fire to the houses of those who had gone away. But, acting under advice, they spared one house; the house of a family named Zulueta. The Zuluetas numbered nine persons ; one was an old man of eighty, two were children under four years of age. The Zuluetas were cousins of the Brezumas, and no one could understand why their house was let alone. Listen, all of you, to what follows, for only two persons here, besides myself, know the full truth. Before the outcasts reached the frontier, a messenger came with a letter for the Zuluetas. Why had they fled, risking the lives of the poor old head of the family and his grandchildren ? One of the old man's daughters had indeed said strange things lately about Madame de Mercalme. But all that was overlooked, forgotten. Others might have reason to be afraid; they had none. Let them come back, and they would find themselves not only objects of the forgiveness, but of the bounty, of Madame de Mercalme. The Zuluetas handed the letter to me ; although I then knew nothing of the revenge taken on the Basques for their flight, I implored the Zuluetas not to go back. I knew the writer of the letter asking them to return. I was not listened to. The Zuluetas loved their house. They would die there and nowhere else. They little knew how soon. ''Well, they returned. As they neared the hills looking down on Rochefendue, they saw that the A WORLD BEWITCHED 169 Basque houses^ one after the other, were heaps of burnt ruins. But when they came to their own cottage they found it quite untouched. Par more than that, looking in, they saw, to their wonder, a table before them laid out and covered with meat and drink. And now," continued Fernando, in a voice that suddenly broke, while his frame trembled, and a raging fire shone through the tears in his eyes, " in what words am I to say the rest ? How can I make those who do not know, believe that what I have to tell is not a deed done in the very madness of crime by devils hot from hell ? " " It was not my doing," interrupted Dervanlx, wildly. " Aha ! " said Fernando, " you know what I am going to say. Well, our wanderers, old and young, rushed into their cottage. They were famished. They sat down ; they ate ; they drank. The old man . . . was helped to his food. The little ones . . . were fed from their mother's fingers. In a few minutes they all changed colour. They looked into each others' eyes. They rose, and a few of them struggled to the door, with some idea of calling for help. They did not go far. One after the other fell down dying. The food they had been eating was poisoned." The torch-bearers at the entrance to the cave began, with a simultaneous, convulsive movement, to cross each other in walking up and down. Some of the strong men at the sides found it necessary to lean against the walls for support. Not one of them had. 170 A WORLD BEWITCHED so far, said a word. Fernando resumed : " A robber coming that way an hour afterwards found one of the women still alive. She lived long enough to tell him what had passed. He took the letter which had caused the family tb come back. He went with it to Madame de Mercalme, not to reproach her, but to force money from her, by proving that he had her in his power. The lady sent him away with sweet words and sweeter looks, as a beginning. Then she sent for the man who had written the letter. The robber was not lost sight of. He was one of the wretches that burned down Bellerive and attacked Pierresbleues to-night. He was killed, but not by us. He was shot down from behind by one of his own allies. The man that wrote the letter to the Zuluetas, and the man that followed the robber, ay, and murdered and robbed him of the letter within this hour, are one and the same person. That person is M. le Greffier Dervaulx." There came from the torch-bearers a burst of con- fused cries, and there seemed likely to be a rush forward. But Fernando stood before the prisoner, and turned from one to the other of his countrymen with something of command in his looks and tones : "You promised to be still, no matter what news I had for you. Yet I will ask you what should be done with this man ? " " Burn him alive in this cavern." " Press him to death under rocks." " Make our knives meet and hack each other in carving his body to slices." A WORLD BEWITCHED 171 "No," interposed a voice that made everyone in the cavern, except Fernando, start, " he has promised to deliver the letter to Madame de Mercalme. He must keep his ■word/' The voice came from Ramon Zulueta. The harsh- ness had gone, and was replaced by tones of strange and somewhat ironical softness. Dervaulx turned sharply in the instant of an agitation that almost overpowered him, stared at the speaker, and even looked a little less dismayed. But in the next moment his attention was once more fully appropriated by Fernando. "Yes, M. Dervaulx, the letter which I had the pleasure of receiving from you when you had stolen it from the robber, shall be delivered by you to Madame de Mercalme ; but perhaps not in the way you seem to think. You have heard how my comrades would like to serve you ; but neither shall they have their way of you. For my part I think that the best treatment of you would be to put you in the clutch of the hangman. Yet I'll not press even that, M. Dervaulx, you have not been brought here to be murdered " " What then ? " " Still you'll have to fight for your life against one of us." " And what is that but murder ? " said the greffier, glancing from one to the other of the stalwart figures that held the torches. "You shall choose the man you are to fight with. But remember, M. le GreflBer," added Fernando severely. 172 A WORLD BEWITCHED " that if you get the better of your opponent you shall still be handed over to the law." Dervaulx again started and held down his head to conceal a smile on his lips. But Fernando was keenly watchful of him, and smiled also. Then Dervaulx looked up and fixed his eyes on Ramon, who bowed ; and from the once more softened voice came the words, " You choose me ? " ''Yes." " With knives," observed Fernando. " Yours Ernesto, and yours, Pepito." Ramon, with a sign, directed that the two long knives now brought forward should be dropped on the sand ; with a second sign he invited Dervaulx to make his choice of the weapons. And next moment the combatants faced each other. Dervaulx, though a man of peace, was not unskilled in athletic exercises. Like most natives of a district bordering on Spain, he had no slight dexterity in the handling of the knife ; and he seemed to have found some reason for measur- ing himself confidently with his antagonist. A few seconds of play with the weapons, however, suflBced to make him wear a less complacent look. Dervaulx's lightness of foot and quickness of hand were far from despicable. But they were encountered by a tiger-like agility and ferocity on the part of his opponent. Again and again he felt Ramon's knife almost touch his face, his neck, his breast ; and his heart sank with the fatal conviction that he was being played with. The combat lasted five minutes. Then A WORLD BEWITCHED 173 Ramon seemed to tire of the grim comedy. He drew suddenly backj leaving his opponent to stare at him with a face on which was printed the helpless know- ledge of oncoming doom. In a moment there was a rush forward, a plunging stroke ; and the torch-bearers came round and gazed upon the prostrate greffier, and the blood that gushed from a frightful wound in his neck. Next morning Madame de Mercalme was up early. She could at any time view from the front of her house and grounds the pile of Bellerive castle ; and in order to see what was left of it she was walking down the garden towards the low wall that fenced her grounds from the granite Stepway. Something just within the wall attracted her attention. She hastened forward. On a piece of moss-covered rock lay the dead body of a man. It was Dervaulx. She stooped and picked up a letter crumpled in his rigid right hand ; a letter which had been written at her dictation, which had fallen into unfriendly hands, and which the greffier had undertaken to bring back to her at all costs. He had kept his word. CHAPTER XIII PilEE EUSTACHE MBILLAULT was a man of easier temper than , might have been supposed by those who knew him in his functions of witch-hunter and exorcist. He found it necessary to add terrors to his voice and face when confronted with ministers of Satan. But the anxieties and sufferings of others were borne by him with uniform serenity. Indeed, nothing but a menace to his personal safety, or a serious interference with his bodily comfort, had ever been known to shake his composure. He had not slept well on the night of his being taken for shelter into Pierresbleues. Early next morning he asked leave to write a message to the bishop explaining where he was, and leave was granted. Soon afterwards Henriette came into the pleasant apartment in which he sat, and greeted him with grave courtesy. Her chaplain, while declining to see him, would yet keep clear of responsibility for any breach of religious duty on the part of a fellow priest, and would therefore offer him the use of the chapel of Pierresbleues in which to say Mass. M. Billault dis- pensed himself from the office that day. He agreed to A WORLD BEWITCHED 175 the alternative of being supplied with breakfast ; and fell to work with prodigious enthusiasm on four boiled eggs, a plate of venison, two good pounds of boar's flesh, part of a Bayonne ham, and some cakes of home-made bread ; the ; whole being made easier of digestion by several cups of Peralta and Juranfon wines. When dishes and cups had been removed, Hen- riette returned. " I think," she said, " that you will soon have an answer to your message. It must have been a relief to you to put your friends out of pain on your account." " Most kind of you, daughter, to interest yourself thus in my feelings. My sleep has been a broken one." " No doubt," said Henriette drily, " it has been a trying night for us all." A knock came to the door, and Bustache Gontant was admitted. He looked at Henriette with respectful tenderness and compassion, and bowed. "I thank God," he said, "that the miscreants of last night had not all their way ; that not a stone of this house has been displaced ; that no man or woman has been driven in terror from under this roof." " Tou have heard, then, of our safety, at least ? " " I have already seen Fernando Vergara this morn- ing, and have learned strange things. But of that another time. I have a letter here," he said, opening out a paper in his hand, and casting for the first time 176 A WORLD BEWITCHED a careless glance at Billault, respondent of the bishop. I will read it : '" MoNSEiGNEUE, — Your saint-likc mercy is known to us all. I entreat you to exercise it now. I am held prisoner by the agents of a lady whose relatives are heretical Calvinists and other infidels. Worse : I am under the same roof with a creature who is banned by the laws of God and man as a foul sorceress, a creature through whose connivance with the devil many lives were lost last night. If your lordship would not have me fall a prey to atheists, witches, and murderers, I im- plore you to use your authority in rescuing me from my present condition. ' AUGUSTE BlLLATJLT.' " "1 have not opposed the reading of that letter,'' said Billault. "Then you have nothing to protest against," re- joined Bustache. Billault turned to Henriette : " But I have to explain." "Well?" " My daughter, in referring to atheists and heretics I had no thought of including you." " Then, perhaps," was the rejoinder, " I may take courage to suppose that my protection of Madame de Bellerive does not make me an accomplice in the sins charged against her ? " " There you may rely upon absolution," " You have nothing more to explain ? " A WORLD BEWITCHED 177 "Nothing, daughter." Henriette's face had hitherto worn a smile. Her look changed now. " You have given me plenty of cause for wonder and sorrow," she said. " You seem to have no thought of blushing for the house-burners and assassins whom you accompanied here last night ; before whom, indeed, you, the worthy standard-bearer of such miscreants, blasphemously bore the image of our Eedeemer, as if in sanctification of their crimes. It is painful, for one of my sex and age, apart from my position as a hostess, to pronounce condemnation, to look with loathing on a consecrated minister of Christ. But let me come nearer to the point — you forget the relations between myself and the lady referred to in that letter; you assume a right to bestow upon me a title which, even in the spiritual sense, I repudiate. To the lady who has escaped from her enemies I am proud to regard myself as a daughter ; from you, whose best notion of serving God is to slander that lady without shame, to thirst for her life-blood, without remorse, I withhold the title of father. To end the matter, I renounce all intercourse with you from this day forth." As M. Billault went back to Rochefendue after this dismissal, it was clear that his equanimity had not been affected. For five minutes, it is true, not a word passed between himself and Eustache, who walked slightly apart from him, and who was reading. At last the elder priest, in a sort of amiable protest against further silence, turned to his companion : N 178 A WORLD BEWITCHED " Your breviary, no doubt. I hope I do not dis- turb you?" " It is not my breviary." " A volume of lives of the saints ? " " Nor that. In short it is a profane book." " Profane in the sense of ? " " In the sense of a work which has no bearing on the subject nearest to your heart. Monsieur le Ohanoine. Neither here nor elsewhere have I a single volume fitted for the guidance of witchseekers. No ' Malleus Maleficarum/ no 'Dialogues upon Lamias and Py- thonesses/ no ' Scourge of Demons/ no ' Treatises on Conjurations/ no ' Manual of Exorcists ; ' not one of the beneficent works of Sprenger, Nider, Del Rio, Bodin, Boguet or Le Loyer." " The book in your hand, in short, is one of those pagan compositions which you are known to delight in ? " persisted Billault. " Exactly. It is by Titus Livius. It treats of the Second Punic War. Prodigies were declared to have taken place in those times throughout the Roman Re- public. A staff which a knight held in his hands burst spontaneously into flames ; a number of shields exuded blood ; burning stones fell from the sky ; the sun fought in mid heavens with the moon ; and lastly a hen was changed into a cock and a cock into a hen " " But my good Eustache " " Wait, Monsieur le Chanoine. Mark what these benighted pagans did to avert such prodigies. They A WORLD BEWITCHED 179 decreed that larger and smaller victims, in the shape of bulla and heifers, must be sacrificed j that a three days' prayer should be held at the shrines of all the gods of Rome, that a golden thunderbolt should be dedicated to Jupiter, and that a holiday should be held on a certain day, and kept for ever." " Why am I entertained with all this heathen lore ? " " To show the contrast, M. le Chanoine, between worshippers of idols and such enlightened champions of the Christian faith as yourself. You would have had a sovereign contempt for such tame proceedings as the slaughter of dumb animals or the dedication of rich offerings to the heavenly powers. A far more sacred duty in your eyes would have been to appease the powers of the infernal world. You would have sought out men or women on whom to fasten blame as authors of the marvels. You would have accused those hope- less wretches of witchcraft, have had them racked, lacer- ated, drained of blood, worn to the point of death with torments, until they stammered forth a confession, when you would have had the culminating joy of seeing them burned to ashes, to the greater glory of the King of hell." " I am sorry," said Billault, after a pause, " that monseigneur could not have fixed upon another envoy to release me from where I was. But now that you and I are together, it may be as well for us not to part this morning until we have had a few more words together." " I am ready." " But not here. Your looks and gestures have 180 A WORLD BEWITCHED already attracted the notice of the few people who have passed us. We shall soon be at the Cathedral." " Then," said Eustaohoj " let us choose a spot where there may be no violation either of sacred surround- ings or of the obligations upon host and guest. I foresee that I may have to address you in plainer language than I have yet used." "I'll give you the opportunity," was the calm re- joinder. At the end of half an hour they came to a seldom used barn within the precincts of the Cathedral. They entered a dusty room from which their presence drove a score of rats. The room contained two seats ; a vast arm-chair upholstered in ragged leather, and a wooden stool. Billault with a fretful shudder sank into the arm-chair. " It is well I have breakfasted," observed he " other- wise, fitted as the room is for our purposes, and com- placent as I am, we should have had to postpone our interview." " I gather," said Bustache, who remained standing, " that you wish to question me. I am ready to answer yon." Billault composed himself in the chair with such ease as the circumstances would admit of. " Was my letter to the bishop intercepted ? " *'I know nothing of that. He put it into my hands, and deigned to ask my advice. I expressed a conviction that there was not one word of truth in what you had written " A WORLD BEWITCHED 181 "You are keeping your word." " He would not take back the letter, but left me to act as I pleased." " No doubt there are many such confidences between you. I may yet find an occasion for exciting his interest in what is remarkable about yourself.^' Gontaut smiled : " I should then have the eKperience of many who have earned your evil wishes. God grant that the slanderers and enemies of myself and of those whom I esteem may always be such men as you." Billault looked with anxiety at a rat which was peeping through a hole in the corner of the room. He coughed vigorously j the rat vanished, and the canon turned with a sigh of relief to the young priest : " I am getting on slowly with my questions to you. I ask, why it is that for a long time past, in any functions where you should be associated with me, you have been fertile in excuses for avoiding the duty ? To raise no other point : on three occasions when I was deacon, and it fell on you to take the office of sub- deacon, you resolutely declined to act with me. Once for all, I ask, how am I to take this ? Have you con- sulted with monseigneur in this also ? " "I have not." " Still it is intentional ? " " M. Billault, in the case of almost any one but the person before me, I should hope and believe, for the credit of average human nature, that what I have to say would bring the crimson of shame to his cheek. In 182 A WORLD BEWITCHED your case the answer, which I am called upon to give a little earlier than I had anticipated, will, of course, not bow down your head, or alter the smile of languid self-contentment on your face. Why have I refused to join with you in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass ? Imagine one of the disciples being aware, before the last supper, of the character of Judas, and his intended betrayal ; then supply to yourself the answer." " Must the name of Judas, for the millionth time in a day " "You are right. It is monstrous that one fault, punished by self-inflicted murder and damnation, should bring even upon Judas the insult of comparison with villains guilty of myriads of crimes year after year. Why, again, do I refuse to assist you at Mass ? Be- cause ni never be a participant in one of the most atrocious of sacrileges. You are forcing me, for the first and last time, to paint your picture as it appears in my eyes. And no one now should stop me." " I would not, for one." " If the devil had risen to earth and become a can- didate for the priesthood, I might at one time have thought of him profaning the office exactly as you have done for years. But, of late, imagination has failed me, and my darkest conceptions of the arch- fiend himself grow pale beside the hideous reality that starts before me day after day. We ^re com- manded to love our neighbours. But there are surely strange and terrible instances where the abhorrence we feel for a man must arise from the conviction that A WORLD BEWITCHED 183 Satan walks on earth in the guise of that man. The falsehoods in your letter of this morning were im- measurably superfluous to stamp you as the most front- less liar I have ever heard of. The fact that you passed the night a week ago with Madame de Mer- calmOj after your appalling parody of midnight Mass and exorcism^ in her housej added but little to my familiarity with your unbounded licentiousness. The manner in which, last night, you gloated over the burning of Bellerive, thence proceeded to demand the surrender of Pierresbleues, under threats of murder to everyone beneath the roof, and finally were found almost paralyzed with terror behind concealing rocks ; all this again was needless to hold you up to me as unsurpassable in your several qualities of cowardice, cruelty, and joy in the calamities of others. But when a man masks his foulest passions with a smooth temper, uses an amiable manner to penetrate prisons, wins to his arms, under promises of pardon, desperate maidens accused of witchcraft, and then coins the evi- dence that seals their doom ; when he finds the savour of human blood in a torture chamber, or the fumes from a body burning at the stake, as relishable as the most toothsome of dishes at a banquet; when a man rejoicing in these attributes of coward, liar, traitor, ravisher, sacrilegist, blood drinker, murderer, is, to crown all, a minister ordained to the service of Jesus Christ, then, M. le Chanoine, it will be understood why I do not consider that I am in my fit place in assisting at the altar of God with such a man.^' 184 A WORLD BEWITCHED The speaker bowed and seemed to wait for an an- swer J but none came from the man still seated, smiling, and without a change of colour, on the great arm- chair. And the young priest went away. He had to make a sick call. He stopped at his lodgings near the Cathedral to get the great oak stick which he usually carried when scaling the heights ; and then he set out for the granite Stepway. He had not mounted more than a hundred yards, which was about half way, when he met Fernando Vergara coming down. " You have been there again ? " inquired the priest. " I have not come straight from there, father," an- swered Fernando, removing his hatj "the good lady, Carmen Erezuma, would go with me ; there were eyes upon us, we came by the ravine, and I thought it well to see her back to Pierresbleues by way of the lake." " Carmen should not be out of doors," observed Eustache with an uneasy look. " God's mercy on anyone who touched her while she was with me, reverend seigneur. But nothing could keep her back ; and the poor sick girl is never done praising and blessing her for her goodness." " The girl is better, then ?" " But she earnestly waits for your coming." " Tell me, Fernando, did you keep a copy of the letter written by this wretched greffier ? " " We keep the real letter. The copy was put into the hands of the dead man." " An ill-advised piece of work, Fernando, that carry- A WORLD BEWITCHED 185 ing the dead body up yonder. Ghastly child's play which can do no good to anyone. But there ! God for- give me for feeling that the man has met his deserts." " We wished to punish the abominable woman who has employed him so long. And already while hover- ing about up there and listening, I heard a whisper that she is beginning to lose heart." " Let me warn you to be more careful than ever when she lets people think that. Who were the men who went with you to the Red Cave last night ? " " They were all cousins of mine. Ignacio Echever- riagaray, Pepito Ybiniagiabetia, Ernesto Garteizgoeoe- chea, Juan Baptista Arrechedenta, Inocencio Zumal- acarregui " ''Enough, Fernando," said the priest, hurriedly. " The hour will soon be up. I must go. You will still keep your cousins in hand ? " " Trust me for that, reverend seigneur." Eustache soon reached the point of the Stepway from the right of which he must branch off to come to his destination. There were two houses only on the line of rocks by which he was going. The first of these, a cottage of grey granite, had been long deserted ; yet, strangely enough, the small garden in front of it showed signs of care. The priest lingered for a moment before this house, then passed on. A hundred feet further ahead was another cottage of more notable appearance. The stones of which it was built were covered with plaster, painted in dull red. The rough door of oak was also red. Here, too, spread a taste- 186 A WORLD BEWITCHED fully cultivated garden. Cleanliness was conspicuous in the whole exterior of the place. A little dog, clearly belonging to the house, appeared to respect the pre- vailing orderliness, and sat at least ten feet from the garden enclosure, engaged in a frugal but hearty meal on the remains of a lady's head-dress. Here Eustache came to a deliberate stand. He had been looked for with apparent eagerness. In the open doorway stood a man of good height and strong frame, dressed in a costume of reddish brown cloth. In his deeply bronzed face there was an expression which could not be called forbidding, yet it conveyed a sense of inexplicable forlornness. He stood bowing in the doorway with a kind of rough and sombre humility. The young priest gazed at him for a few seconds in silence, then advanced. He was led through a neat kitchen, among whose articles of furniture was a table, containing an inkhorn and some scraps of paper with writing on. Thence he passed into an equally neat sleeping room, where a young girl lay on a bed. She was well featured, and the gloom in the visage of the russet clad man, who had gone to the foot of the bed and stood watching her, was inherited and etherealized in her face to an expression of unchangeable sorrow. The man of the house was the public executioner of Rochefendue. The girl in bed was his daughter. " Well, Georgette," said the priest, with an effort to be cheerful, " I am pleasantly deceived ; you will soon be out of doors again." The girl turned her largo sad eyes upon him : A WORLD BEWITCHED 187 " It is more than we had hoped for, father, that you should come here." " You are not hurt, I understand ? " " Nothing but fright and ill-boding, father. Her heart is faint." "Tell me, daughter," resumed the priest, "your own tale of what passed." " I have little to say. I had cried much after hear- ing of Madame de Bellerive's arrest. I avoided all questions for fear of learning something dreadful about her J yet I went up to the lake with the others to see the ordeal. When the great miracle took place that put her out of danger, I heard you, reverend father> thanking God. Then, as I turned away I could not help saying aloud: 'Most loving Virgin Mary, be blessed and praised for this.' Suddenly I found Madame de Mercalme's eyes fastened on mine; she had heard my words, and I felt my heart die within me. I moved away. But in another moment I was forced near her again by the crowd. She was looking at me still, and smiling, and I heard her say to M. Dervaulx, ' Pity to have an executioner do justice on his own child ; he would have to be changed in such a case.' I got free from the crush ; I ran down the Stepway, made my way here, fell senseless on the floor of the kitchen the instant I came into the house ; and so was found by my father." The priest remained for nearly an hour by the bed- side, untiring in words of comfort and of hope, till something almost of brightness mingled with the 188 A WORLD BEWITCHED shadow of ineffaceable moumfulness on the girl's face. Then he arose and drew the man into the kitchen. " You have heard that the greffier is dead ? " " Yes, reverend seigneur, his deputy is already acting in his stead." " Have you any duty — anything that will call you from home to-night ? " " Nothing." " I should have had the house watched in any case from sundown. Meanwhile do not leave the spot for one moment during the next twenty-four hours. To- morrow night your daughter must be removed from here." " How, seigneur ? " "You shall know in time. And now," he said in a lower tone, as he picked up one of the papers from the table, "you remarked awhile since that your daughter's heart is weak. Listen to this : " ' Time and outlay of M. I'ex^cuteur, in having put and applied to the torture on three consecutive days, the late Marie Dupin, 9 francs. " ' To rightful labours and expenses in having burnt and reduced to ashes the body of the said sieure Dupin, 3 francs.' " Is that the kind of reading likely to amuse and ease a weak-hearted daughter ? " " I was wrong to leave such papers about," faltered the man. A WORLD BEWITCHED 189 " Then she does not make up your accounts ? " " Never, seigneur. I have been taught to read and write." Eustaohe looked at him curiouslyj then went away. He hurried down the Stepway at^ his usual swift pace, and crossed the plain toward the city. A few yards past the western gate two women ran out of a side street and stopped him. " For the love of the Holy Mother, come this way." " Eeverend seigneur, come this way. You can give the best help." "What's the matter?" " A man bewitched, reverence." "And the fiend torments him without pity. For the love of God, come." " Ah, poor M. Pigache." The priest had been moving away in silence. He now stood and stared. " What name did you say ? " " Jean Baptiste Pigache." " Lately in the service of ? " " Of the horrible witch Bellerive, seigneur." " Take me to him at once," cried Eustache, He was led to a room in the basement of a house within a stone's throw of where he had been stopped. On the floor, held by three men whe panted with the task assumed by them, was the servant who had be- trayed Madame de Bellerive. He foamed at the mouth, roared, yelped, and made incessant efforts to kick and bite those who grappled with him. 190 A WOELD BEWITCHED " In the name of heaven be quick, reverend father," cried one of the three kneeling men. " Get up, you three. Leave me to deal with him," said the priest, placing his oaken stick in a corner, removing his cassock, and baring his arms to the elbows. " He'll tear you to pieces, father," gasped another of the men. " Get up at once, I say. I warrant he'll be quiet enough when I have exorcised him." Indeed the demoniac, within one minute of the priest's entrance, had become more subdued. "Ay, cast the devil out of him, father," said a woman, " and God will reward you." The men arose. Pigache sprang to his feet, and made a rush for the door. But the priest seized him by the collar with the left hand, and drew him back till he was able to catch up the stick with the right. Then came a storm of blows on the arms, the back, the breast, the legs of the servant, struggling hope- lessly now in the grasp of this one man. " Ahi ! ahi ! Monsieur le cur^, ahi ! ahi ! For the love of heaven, let me go, do not destroy me." But the blows continued for a long five minutes, until the stick broke, and the informer was dashed by the strong young arm to the floor. " Now, wretch," cried the priest in a ringing voice, "is the devil of lying expelled from you ? " " Ahi ! ahi ! monsieur le cure," groaned the pro- strate man. A WORLD BEWITCHED 191 " Bat answer me truly. Whom did you intend to accuse of having bewitched you ? " " Oh, monsieur le cur^. Oh, my God ! " " Answer at once, or expect another exorcism." " Mademoiselle de Parthenay." " One more question. This fit into which you fell was a pretence, a lie ? " « Yes." Eustache put on his cassock, and moved to the door. " My children," he said, " when that man is be- witched again, send for me. Meanwhile I leave him those two pieces of stick in remembrance of his exorcist." CHAPTER XIV A Visitor from Paris TWELVE days passed by. During that time there had been no more than five burnings for witchcraft in Eochefendue. There was a revival of scandal to M. Mornat and others, owing to the fact that three of the criminals had withdrawn, in the midst of the flames, the confessions previously extorted from them. Happily for the interests of justice, the other two wretches had been too much crippled and worn out by torture in prison to be able to speak a word when at the scaffold. It was a fair morning of July. Mademoiselle de Parthenay had not long returned from the Cathedral, and had just glanced out of her room on to the road that led to the gate of Pierresbleues, when she started in glad excitement. Two horsemen, one a little in, advance of the other, had just ridden within the shadow of the castle walls. Henriette was down- stairs, and on the edge of the portico facing the gate, in time to see a man leap from his horse and leave it in charge of the mounted retainer who had accom- panied him. The lady of the house had called out hurried orders while descending the stairs ; the yard A WORLD BEWITCHED 193 was quickly filled with attendants, who led the retainer and the two horses away; and the cavalier on whom Henriette had fixed her welcoming eyes approached her. He was young, several years under thirty. His frame was powerful and well-knit. He was dressed with care, though without any special richness. In his eyes there was a union of thoughtfulness, vigilance, and habit of command. Something of an austere grace in his countenance and carriage seemed to denote the man who was familiar with courts and camps alike, but whose preferences were rather for the trade of war than for the elegances acceptable in ladies' chambers. Yet at sight of the girl in the portico his grave demeanour had changed, and no smile could have been franker and kindlier than his as he took her by the hands and kissed her on both cheeks. They went together to her own withdrawing room ; and the news soon spread through the house that the young chatelaine' s cousin Henri, Prince and Due de Rohan, had arrived, " Now, child, you know my way," said the Prince. " Time is limited with me " " How long can you stay ? " " Not over to-morrow night." " I could have wished to keep you longer. Still, I must not lose precious moments by asking you to change your mind. You like to get to the heart of a thing at once. There are details which you must learn from others. I'll tell you meanwhile what I know." Avoiding repetitions of what she had stated in the letter to her cousin, she gave him a general account of o 194 A WORLD BEWITCHED what had passed from the time of the death of Dolores Erezuma until now. He had listened without alteration of his rather gloomy composure, and at the end he desired to see Madame de Bellerive and Victor. These he greeted with grave tenderness, with the affection in- deed due to those who claimed kindred with him. Mar- tignaCj whom he had other cause for knowing, he saw alone, and to him he entrusted the task of securing the presence of Billault and Mornat forthwith. " Monseigneur will not, as I understand, see those two men under this roof ? " said Martignac. " You are right," answered the Prince, in stern assent. " When you have brought them to within twenty yards of the castle gate, I '11 go out to them. Then again, there 'a this remarkable young priest." " Tour highness would like to see him, too ? " '' But apart from the men referred to, and without their knowledge." Martignac left the castle, and Rohan returned to his private conference with Henriette. " You seem to be kept in a state of siege here," he said, " with these voluntary men-at-arms. But now, as to Madame de Mercalme. She is clearly a monster j yet while this infernal enginery of crime seems to be set in movement by her, she keeps out of all entangle- ment. For one thing, whatever she may be said to dictate, not a scrap of her own writing can be brought against her." " She dictates, as you say j she writes no letters herself." A WORLD BEWITCHED 195 " Then, she never appears at these trials." " They say that she had meant to give evidence against Madame de Bellerive, but that the delay in hearing from one of her accomplices caused her to force on matters by means of the ordeal up at the lake. Our cousin was never meant to be taken from the water alive ; and I should still consider that I was committing murder if I let her stir from this house except under strong guard.'" " I must see this woman." " Madame de Mercalme ? " exclaimed Henriette, in surprise. " Yes." " Then it had better be in the presence of witnesses." " What do you mean ? " " I scarce know what I mean," answered the young lady, flushing, and laughing a little nervously. " She would set her murderers on me, I suppose ? " Henriette laughed with less restraint. " My dear Henri, you have not the least malice in the world ; but let us turn away our talk from this woman." " I would soon have done so. Seriously, child, I have not paid great attention in my time to this matter of demoniac possession. But in these trials you seem to reserve all your anger for. those who endeavour to bring witches to justice j you shut your eyes to the possibility of a prisoner's guilt. Eemember, the Holy Gospel teaches us that there are witches." 196 A WORLD BEWITCHED " For every real witch in Rochefendue, there have been at least ten perjured tongues to send innocent persons to the stake. I bear an even mind. I do not deny the harm that may be caused elsewhere by the skilful piactiser of magic in league with Satan. But no such practiser have I heard of in this town. The people who really do the devil's work are, I maintain, those who have such a raging thirst for human blood, or whose nostrils are so delighted with the scent from the broiling bodies of their fellow creatures." " I still fear you are rash in underrating the power of the devil in human affairs. It is a perilous thing for you, my pretty one, to make light of opinions held by men of great wit and scholarship, by mighty princes even, seated on ancient thrones " " For example, the King of Scotland, or, as he is now, the King of Great Britain. Yes, my aunt de Rohan has never tired of showing me the journal you addressed to her, the journal in which we are edified by your stories of King James, who graciously styled you his cousin ; who asked you to be godfather to his little son, Charles ; whose public and private manner of life you admire so much ; whose morals, intellect, learning and eloquence, you praise to the heavens; and who, as a consummation to his many perfections, has written a profound book on Demonology, in which we are all taught how to catch and burn witches " " There, there, little one " " This is the same man whom another holder of a throne styles the most learned idiot in Europe." A WORLD BEWITCHED 197 " Oar good King Henri says many sucli things to myself, to tease me." " More likely to bring you to your senses, Henri. You do not often set us wondering, but I confess I have been more than once dismayed at the remem- brance that this pitiful Scotch king should ever have turned such a well-poised head as yours." " Well," said Rohan, good humouredly, " I shall not quote King James as an authority on witchcraft." " Nor anyone else under present conditions, I hope. To be very serious indeed, cousin, you have sent for two of the worst offenders in the late series of villainies. If you enter into a discussion with them on the merits of witchcraft, they will ask for nothing better. They will not only seize the opportunity of confirming you in your belief, but will find plenty of arguments to justify their own worst deeds." " No doubt." " And remember what some of those deeds are. I pass over the burning of the Basque cottages, with the concurrent horrors ; the destruction of Bellerive ; the attack on this house. I go to these broadcast charges of wizardry, and ask who will set a bound to the perjuries of the accusers, when the cell to which cousin de Bellerive did not return was meant to shelter me if I could have been conveniently seized upon." " How ? " cried Rohan, with a darkening face ; " charge you with witchcraft ? " " I see," replied Henriette. " Monsieur de Mar- tignac, out of his revelations to you, has left that for 198 A WORLD BEWITCHED me to tell." She went on to relate the incident — as it had been given to her by one of her own servants, a bystander — of the witchcraft and exorcism of the serving man, Pigache. " It will not astonish you to hear," she concluded, " that since the day spoken of, two attempts have been made on the life of the priest." "Ah," said Eohan, wearily, "you have indeed fallen into a den of miscreants. Let us change the subject. In letters previous to the one I last had from you, the Bellerives have often been mentioned. Now I have never needed to pray you to answer me candidly. Is there more than cousinship in your interest in this family?" "Yes." "Good. Shall I press you further ? " " You have just given me credit for being always frank with you." " Then I must take it that the son is in the case. Well, the lad is handsome and spirited, and the knock on the head does not seem to have shaken the good sense out of him. In honest truth, from what I have seen of him before, from what I saw of him just now, he attracts me. But is he " Henriette laughed, through the heightening colour on her face : " He is not one of those rare creatures who appear once in every fifth generation or so. He would never dream, I suppose, of inviting the world to look upon him as a man meant for great things. He has not. A WORLD BEWITCHED 199 like a certain cousin of mine, of whom I am very fond, chosen for his eternal models through life, Epaminon- das and Scipio and Caesar. He does not, like this cousin of mine, when he looks up at yonder mountains, forget that they are rather beautiful, and think only of how he might cross them, in the style of Hannibal, at the head of an army ; and yet, Henri " " Come, child, you know that no brother, no father, could ever have a more tender respect, a purer love for you than I have. Give me a single sentence, a hint that this young man knows the value of what he aims at." " I know him! I love him!" said Henriette, rising. Eohan also stood up. There was a kindly radiance in his face. " That is, indeed, an answer to be understood. Now I know that your choice cannot be an unworthy one." And he kissed her on the forehead. A servant came to the door. Martignac, it seemed, had sent in a message that MM. Billault and Mornat were outside the gate, and awaited the further pleasure of the Prince-Due de Rohan. " Cousin," whispered Henriette, with profound gravity, " I am sure you will be equal to this crisis. You will speak to those two men with aU. the authority attaching to the weight of your twenty-seven years. For all that " " You seem determined that I shall not keep my countenance," rejoined Rohan. " However, you think that M, de Martignac should be present ? " 200 A WORLD BEWITCHED " Something tells me that you will be none the worse pleased by such an arrangement." Martignao had brought the ecclesiastic and the converted brigand to a stand at about the spot where Billault had halted for a parley on the night of the attack on Pierresbleues. Rohan, on coming out to the three men, preserved a rigid haughtiness of attitude in answer to the fawning obeisance of the priest. But he bestowed more than a passing attention on the way, apparently, in which Mornat seemed to shrink from before the young favourite and kinsman of the sove- reign of Prance. " It may be well," began Rohan, " that there should not be too many eyes upon us during the little business that we have together,'' " I can lead monseigneur to a sheltered place," observed Martignac. " It is a place with which M. le Chanoine became familiar on the night of the gallant assault on Pierresbleues." They went to the hollow of concealing rocks from which Billault had been dragged on the occasion re- ferred to, and Rohan instantly turned to Martignac : " Monsieur, before we come to the immediate subject that brought us here, I ask if I am right in my recognition of one in this company whom you pointed out to me in Paris three years ago ? " "Monseigneur is nob mistaken." " We have lighted unexpectedly on an embarrassing matter. There are reasons, mainly of religion, which command me to hold my tongue. So it may better A WOELD BEWITCHED 201 become you, M. de Martignac, to tell at once, more plainly, without thought of the grotesque, painful and indelicate memories you may revive, the reasons you gave me for remembering this man." " If I bring a blush to the cheek of the holy man who is present, I trust he will forgive me." Billault shifted uneasily, and Martignac, with eyes fixed on Mornat resumed : " My brief story goes back to the year 1572, to the night of the feast of St. Barthelemy. I was then a page to the Due d'Alen9on ; M. Mornat, at that time bearing the name of Martin Dreux, had the honour to be in the service of the Queen-mother, Catherine de MMicis, as assistant in the royal kitchen. Among the Calvinists marked out for destruction on that ghastly night was Charles de Quellenec, Baron du Pont-en-Bretagne. He was married — pardon me, monseigneur — to the lady who is now Duchess- Dowager de Rohan. Among the inexplicable scandals that went round the court, was one that the Baron du Pont was personally unsuited to the wedded state, and that his mother-in-law was about to have his marriage with her daughter annulled. The divorce came sooner than was anticipated. The signal for the massacre was given. One of the earliest shots fired came from the royal kitchen. It struck the Baron du Pont, and stretched him dead, close to the palace. Other shots were fired from the same direction, and each time with a fatal result. After a while the Queen- mother sent for the successful marksman. He proved 202 A WORLD BEWITCHED to be a man employed in washing culinary utensils ; but he was now armed with an arquebus. He received the compliments of the Queen-mother. Frenzied by the honour he grew bold, and declared that he had something to show for the amusement of her Majesty. He had killed the Baron du Pont ; the body was now stripped and lying in the kitchen, and those who pleased might satisfy themselves whether there were good grounds for the action of divorce against him. And what was the answer of the majestic lady thus accosted? Amid the atrocities of that night, while the royal assassin, her own son, was employed in strewing the banks of the Seine with corpses, the Queen-mother found an appropriate relaxation in the spectacle ofifered by this worthy showman. She went down to the kitchen with her laughing ladies. The feast of murder of which these furies had tasted was followed by an orgie of gross and nameless mockery of the dead. The valiant scullion was rewarded by the Queen with the garments of those whom he had slain. There was enough money in the spoils to make it worth his while to quit the royal service. He became a robber on the public roads. Later still he developed from M. Dreux into M. Mornat ; and the humble kitchen hand, the slayer of Calvinists, the appropriator of purses on the highway, has become an honoured associate of M. Billault and others in the torturing and burning of people accused of witchcraft.'' "I have little to add to M. de Martignac's tale," said Rohan, glancing at Mornat's downcast head. " I A WOELD BEWITCHED 203 see who are the real authors of the prosecutions which have moved saintly girls to incredulity. For you, reverend father, I have no right to ask whether it is the proper course for a pastor to spill the blood of his flock at every available moment, instead of being ready to lay down his life for the sheep committed to his care " " Monseigneur, there is much exaggeration " "Enough^ monsieur. One warning I have to give you and your fellows. The evil passions aroused by you in this neighbourhood, the manner in which you have set one class against another, and goaded all ranks to madness, may be witnessed in the destruction of the cottages on yonder heights, and the hideous poisoning of a whole family ; in the atrocious audacity of your seizure of Madame deBellerive, of your destruc- tion of her home, of your assault on this castle, of your lunatic and murderous aim to have its mistress arrested as a witch. Let me hear again of your attacks on such victims, and you shall have a less enviable fate than that which befell your agent, the greffier. Meanwhile, what you have done shall be reported to the King." " Monseigneur ! " stammered Billault. " There ! I have seen too much of you both. Your presence is not agreeable to me. Come in, Martignac." That evening Henriette gave a banquet rather in the honour, than to the taste, of her cousin. He whose memory lived with delight among the more spotless heroes of antiquity, whose pure morals were unique at a court where even his father-in-law. 204 A WORLD BEWITCHED the grave Sally, had taken to himself a mistress ; he who had set himself almost from childhood to become frugal, indefatigable, master over all his inclinations; he who hardened his body by constant hunting, de- liberately passed nights without sleep, days without food ; was often in a distress which excited the secret amusement of observers when he was placed in the midst of lively ladies, before tables covered with rich meats and strong wines. On the present occasion it was a relief to him that the ladies were those of his own blood, that their conversation was refined, their mirth restrained and innocent. But he ate sparingly : as for wines, Prontignac, Jurancon, Peralta passed by him untasted ; now, as always, he would drink nothing but water. Among the guests at the banquet was Eastache Gontaut. He sat at some distance from Rohan, and it seemed to be not entirely from a sympathy with his ascetic tastes that the Duke's attention was frequently centred on him. " Whom do you make him oat to be ? " whispered Rohan to Martignac. " The priest ? " " Yes." " There is a conjecture, which I do not share, that he is . . . connected with the house of Chatillon." Rohan looked again towards Eustache, and shook his head. When the meal was over, and the guests became divided, he took the young priest apart. " You join in the bear hunt now and then, I hear ? " A WORLD BEWITCHED 205 " I have done so, monseigneur." " I am in your debt for some things ; and if it were only in recognition of your powers as an exorcist, I must ask you, before you go away this evening, to accept from me a hunting knife. Come, I'll take no denial." " I'll keep it always about me in remembrance of your highness. I could wish things of the kind were less needed about here." Rohan turned away with a clouded brow. " I have heard of the attempts upon your life. There 's a matter that shall not be forgotten either." At six o'clock next morning, much to the surprise of both Duke and priest, they met again in a strange place. It was opposite the deserted house, and care- fully tended garden, not far from the executioner's cottage. Bustache had just come from the back of the house, which he had been examining with delibera- tion, when the Duke raised his head. " We are fellow visitors here, too ? " " I am really bound for the next house, monseigneur, I often pause here." " And, strangely enough, I am taking a lily from this garden, of all others in the world, for a friend of mine in Paris." The priest looked at him without saying a word. And each went on his way. That afternoon Rohan went up, on a visit, previously announced, to Madame de Mercalme. He came away in a hurried manner, and with flushed face, after a 206 A WORLD BEWITCHED stay of only three minutes. On his return to Pierres- bleues, he asked his retainer for a certain volume, a translation of his favourite Plutarch, without which he seldom travelled. He read with an interest more fresh and vivid than usual the interview between Octavian and Cleopatra. An hour afterwards he left for Paris. Before night Fernando Vergara was able to inform Martignac that one of Madame de Mercalme's most faithful servants had fled from her house. CHAPTER XV A Rescue NEITHER Billault nor his exposed and degraded accomplice, Mornatj failed to realize the sig- nificance of the Duo de Rohan's action. Hitherto, the straightforward fanaticism of the layman, ever mindful of his own sordid beginnings, had been flattered by association, on what seemed equal terms, with pro- minent villains, more shameless and blackhearted, but not more cruel, than himself. It is true that, thus far, out of the complexities of universal sin (held back merely by the influences of cowardice and baseness) on the part of the priest, there had emerged, with an harmonious culmination of atrocity, a pure delight in evil beyond Mornat's conception. But the mere ghastly intoxication from joy in the misery of others was common to both men. When in company with their equally unbridled accomplice, Madame de Mer- calme, they had literally raved, in that special drunken- ness from the draught of blood, which is only found among choice experts in depravity, and at rare periods, even in the history of crime. Signs of remonstrance from others had been recalled by them with an im- patient stupefaction ; and their fury and amazement 208 A WORLD BEWITCHED had found vent in malignant virulence, followed up by something more than the vengeance of slander, against those who sought to break up their banquet of death. The visit of Rohan brought them, for a time at least, to a state of sullen soberness. They knew too well the weight attaching to his name, wherever it was uttered. But there were circumstances which made his interference under surrounding conditions especi- ally formidable. Rochefendue was in the land of the B^arnais. Had Henri Quatre and his sister, the Duchesse de Bar, been without children, Rohan would have had an undisputed title to the throne of Navarre. A claim so remote as this, even had it been dwelt upon by himself, scarcely required such adjuncts as his own hardy and heroic nature, and the truly fatherlike affection of his cousin, the reigning sovereign, to make the young Duke's influence in these parts almost overwhelming. Boissec and Pinard heard of his presence at Pierres- bleues on the morning of his arrival, and thought of taking refuge over the Spanish frontier within the same day. They were restrained by a verbal message, couched in no soft language, from Madame de Mer- calme. There was an humble person, who, having small reason to dread M. de Rohan, was yet prompted by circumstances connected with the momentous visit to make good his flight from Rochefendue. This was one of Madame de Mercalme's own servants. He came to Pierresbleues two hours after Rohan's de- A WORLD BEWITCHED 209 parturej and asked to see Seigneur de Martignac. The same man was led towards Guipuzcoa, before dawn on the following day, by two of Pernando's comrades, and placed in safe quarters in a house mid- way. Martignac was questioned by Tr^cart as to the coming and going of the man, and he smiled a little awkwardly. He gave hints indeed, but could not be induced to share too liberally the revelations forced on himself: " Since I have been under this roof, and have been allowed to join in the freedom, the gaiety, and yet the perfect purity of the conversation here, I begin to stand aghast." "How?" " The dismay I feel is not altogether depressing. But I look back at the experiences of a life which is not too short. I remember the talk that used to be bandied about in my very presence by the maids of honour, from the days of Catherine de M^dicis onward. Then I'm seized with an unutterable loathing for what at one time filled me with convulsions of laughter.' ' " You allow me to understand that this has a bear- ing on what I asked you about ? " " My dear Trecart, I'll say something for your guidance. Think of the manner in which M. de Eohan came back here yesterday afternoon, his face flushed with something more than the heat of the day; the looks of almost girlish reserve and shyness (half ridi- culous as we thought at the time) which he cast at one and the other of us." 210 A WORLD BEWITCHED "It flashed upon me at the moment that he had never showed such a lack of self-command in the fiercest battle ever fought by him." " Think of any stories of saints and martyrs you may have read in your boyish days ; of the baits that were employed to make men renounce their faith ; of women who appeared before them in the most ravishing guise to disarm and destroy them. Remember that Madame de Mercalme had full notice of the visit ; give a free reign to your ideas as to what she is capable of; re- flect that the poor Duke will never, except in the last resort, expose the shame of others. Then, my friend, draw your own conclusions, and let us both be silent about the aSair — at least while we are under the same roof with our hostess and her companion." Rohan had been gone from Pierresbleues nearly flve weeks. During that time the aspect of Roche- fendue was marvellously changed; the epidemic of witch-hunting seemed to have abated ; the prison had only its normal complement of such minor offenders as thieves and assassins ; the town enjoyed a peace to which it had not been accustomed for a twelvemonth. Madame de Bellerive, with spirits and health restored, went almost every morning with Mademoiselle de Parthenay to hear Mass at the Cathedral. Sometimes they were accompanied by Victor, more rarely by one of his three friends ; often they went without escort. And on none of these occasions was M. Billault visible about the church. Martignac had of late been frequently away from A WORLD BEWITCHED 211 the neighbourhood. He was pricked apparently by some scrapie about taxing Mademoiselle de Par- thenay's kindness too much; and he was putting in order, for the reception of such friends as chose to avail themselves of it, a small estate of his own a few leagues ofif. Early one morning he came back after a night spent alone on this estate, and was riding towards Pierres- bleues. He was approaching the outskirts of Roche- fendue, when a man stepped from the shadow of the western wall and bowed to him. It was Mornat. After a keen look, and a moment of deliberation, Martignac reined in his horse, and Mornat bowed again. " M. de Martignac, I have been hoping for upwards of a month to meet you, and to say what's on my mind. I'll not keep you long." " Very good." " You and I have already crossed rapiers. I'll gladly be at your service once more." Martignac looked at him from head to foot ; then quietly dismounted. "Thank you, monsieur," said Mornat with some- thing of stateliness in his manner. " No, no," laughed Martignac, " you mistake. M. Martin Dreux, there is a service you might do me, for I'm hungry at this moment ; but perhaps you are out of practice." Mornat made a snatch at his weapon. " I'll not ask your permission now," he growled. 212 A WORLD BEWITCHED Bat his hands were instantly held till they were almost black with congested blood, and the rapier did not leave the scabbard. " M. Dreux de Mornat," said Martignao, " when I did you the favour to which you refer, I was moved by a caprice of strained courtesy. Your exploits before you settled here were known to me ; but they did not make me hesitate. I am indebted to gentlemen of the kitchen, and I have a high regard for their vocation. Again, there are many of my acquaintances who, in time of peace, have made a praiseworthy living by plunder. Your past career, therefore, as cook and robber, did not fill me with dismay j nor yet again was I more appalled at you than at your fellow witch- hunters ; but you have suddenly sprouted into an in- cendiary and assassin on a high scale, and our ways part. Meet me, indeed, you may, in your capacity of murderer. Then I'll be prepared for you, and shall treat you as I might a wolf or a bear." He let the powerless hands fall from his grasp, remounted his horse, and rode on without further stoppage. That evening as M. Billault sat at supper in M. Mornat's house on the southern bank of the ravine, he remarked to his host : " We hear nothing further of M. de Rohan's visit." Mornat passed a trembling hand over his brow. " We've been silent so far about that visit and all connected with it. I hope we'll keep so." " You do not understand " A WORLD BEWITCHED 213 " I understand tbat I've had a good deal of shame and insult over that visit, even to this day." " How ? Anything more from that quarter ? " " Ay, of course you could not choose but remember what the Duke's lying mouthpiece thought fit to say about me." "M. de Martignac ? " " My curse on his name ! " yelled Momat. " How- ever, you may as well know what else has taken place." He then gave a version of his own of the interview between Martignac and himself that morning. At the end of the narrative Billault looked long at him, and said with much gravity : " Your adversary is a coward." " What else are we to think ? " exclaimed Mornat, with a fiercely complacent shrug of the shoulders. " He has kept out of my way for the last month." "1 was coming to what has occurred within the same month. M. de Rohan was to have struck us all to our knees. The king's authority was to have been invoked. There was to have been an end to our find- ing and punishing of witches. Or, if witches were discoverable, P^re Bustache Gontaut was proclaimed by the jesters of Rochefendue to be the only legitimate exorcist. What are the consequences ? Witches, and the sons and sisters of witches, move freely to and fro. Martignac and his fellow cut-throats do not even think it worth while to keep watch on us. No word comes from Paris. And the main result of the Due de 214 A WORLD BEWITCHED Rohan's much-vaunted visit is that your enemies and mine have the cheapest bargain ever known of making us their sport." " You speak of the sisters of witches," observed Mornat, after a pause. " One of them," was the ready rejoinder, " has been a constant visitor at the Convent des Ursulines." " And the object of her concern is the daughter of the executioner ? " " Quite so : she was admitted to that refuge through the influence of my colleague, Pere Gontaut." " Of the illustrious house of Chatillon, eh ? " Billault laughed, but made no answer. " But this visitor," resumed Mornat; " who recog- nized her ? " " Boissec J Pinard, and, not least interested , Th^rigny ." " And the dozen or so of Basque villains have gone away from Pierresbleues ? " mused Mornat. " Yes ; and Martignac, Tr^cart and La Faille will, no doubt, soon follow them. But remember that it will be superlative to try another attack upon anyone in that direction. The two men looked steadily at each other. Then Billault stood up, smiling. " I must hurry, monsieur, to compline." " And I must shut myself up to think over all this," vowed Mornat. The night was unclouded and not far advanced^ and Billault thought fit to pay a visit to one of his penitents up the heights. Having no desire to be A WORLD BEWITCHED 215 seen from Mornat's house, he went by roundabout paths toward the Stepway. He mounted with an energy not much impeded by the supper he had taken, and was emerging from the angle of a break in the steps, when he saw Mornat pass through the wicket leading to Madame de Mercalme's house. The priest with a sigh turned back down the Step- way, reached home, and gave much trouble to the butler of the canonry till very late that night. At about dawn of the next day M. Mornat re-entered his own house. He went at once to his bedroom, sank on his knees, and remained for an hour in ardent prayer. He then went to a cupboard and took forth a discipline. He stripped himself to the waist, and for nearly a quarter of an hour he proceeded to avenge his evidently outraged conscience by a resolute applica- tion of the scourge to his back and shoulders. In the course of the ensuing ten days events were few and of no startling importance. Tr^cart, La Faille and Bellerive had accompanied Martignac on a visit to the house of the last named. Fernando Vergara and Ramon Zulueta, with their ten Basque followers, had drawn up once more within reach of Pierresbleues. Three women, two of them aged, a third comparatively young, had been tried, condemned and held over for execution as witches. One night Henriette and Madame de Bellerive sat in a central room of the castle; it was a night in September, the eve of the day fixed for the death of the three women. The ladies were commenting on the 216 A WOELD BEWITCHED tardiness in the arrival of news from Paris. Henrietta was convinced that the fault did not rest with Rohan. He did not forget. He was prompt and faithful in commissions intrusted to him. The insatiability of these drinkers of blood had revolted him. " But the king ! " continued Henriette, raising her eyebrows. '' He is noble and generous, too," agreed Madame de Bellerive. " Not a sweeter nature in the world, when his heart is really touched. And yet, speaking to one who has a little share in his blood, as I have, I '11 say that there are times, even apart from the necessities of war, when our good King Henri gives proof of very little care for human life." " Consider his hard bringing up, his temptations, his difficulties, my dear." " And consider, too, whether any trials can excuse the following trait in his character. The gaols of Normandy were some years ago filled with prisoners who could not pay the salt tax. They rotted in their dungeons at such a rate, that as many as one hundred and twenty dead bodies were dragged out at a time and cast to the dogs and birds of prey. The Parliament of Rouen implored the king to have pity on the people. He knew, however, that a large income was derived from the tax, he declared that it must be paid, and for the stories of misery and death he had nothing but derision." "That is bad, indeed." A WORLD BEWITCHED 217 " Bad ! I think of that and other pretty rascalities of his at timesj and I feel as if I could pierce his heart all over with pins. Then, again^ all the good things he has done are sure to come back to me, and make me own that I deserve to hang myself in remorse for thinking ill of him at all." The ladies were interrupted by a muttering of voices in confusion and distress ; the door behind them was flung open J they arose and turned. In the corridor stood a number of Basques and members of the household, forming a sort of rear-guard to two figures who had advanced a little beyond the threshold. Of the two figures, one was that of a girl of delicate frame, with disordered hair, haggard face, and stream- ing eyes. The other was the figure of Ramon Zulueta. " Georgette ! " exclaimed Mademoiselle de Par- thenay to the panting girl. It was indeed the daughter of the executioner. She sank to her knees, and clasped her hands. " She has run all the way from the convent," ex- plained Ramon who was trembling, and watching her with intense earnestness. " We could get nothing from her." " Let her have time to speak," advised Madame de Bellerive. "Pardon me, noble ladies," gasped Georgette, " but my kind protectress. Mademoiselle Erezuma " " Carmen ? " murmured Madame de Bellerive. "What of her?" demanded Henriette in a shudder- ing whisper. 218 A WORLD BEWITCHED " She had just ended her visit to me. The door of the convent had closed on her . . . M. de Therigny . . . stepped ... up to her. He was with . . . MM. . . . Pinard and . . . and Boissec. Four arque- busiers accompanied them. She was denounced by M. de Therigny ... as the sister . . . of a "witch. The arquebusiers drew near , . . and hurried her away. She is now in prison." Mutterings of anxiety and dismay had been rising in comment, like the responses of some lugubrious litany, to each sentence of this recital. The climax to these utterances came in such a cry of agony and rage as put every other voice to silence. The cry was from Ramon Zulueta. Henriette was the first to recover speech. " Is Fernando there ? " The young man came forward. The young lady glanced at his feet ; she saw with satisfaction that he wore a pair of boots with spurs, a gift from herself. " Go to the stables," continued Henriette ; " there you will find a horse ready saddled, you know the way to M. de Martignac's house. Ride to him. Bring him and his friends back at once.'' Fernando bowed with a rude grace, cast a hurried look at the still kneeling Georgette, and set off at once. " The rest of our kind defenders," resumed Hen- riette, speaking in the Basque language, " I leave to act as they please to-night. I have never found them at a loss for what is best to do." She thus dismissed A WORLD BEWITCHED 219 them. Then, turning her face, dark with passion, to- wards Madame do Bellerive, she said : " The tide of battle again comes near home." " There need be no hope of truce with the conspira- tors," was the reply. " It is war against monsters only heard of in fable." " And it means annihilation for one side or the other. Well, the agents in the arrest of to-night are mere tools j of course they must be punished promptly. But 111 set mj own wits to workj and if I can do nothing else, Fll offer up my soul's choicest prayers and blessings for whoever will take my place in bringing down destruction on this Mercalme wretch and her accomplices, Mornat and Billault. Such de- struction as may for years appal any imaginable imitators." "Madame," said a grating voice, made more in- articulate with an increased hoarseness. " Ramon ! " exclaimed Henriette with a start. " I thought you had gone with the others." " I have asked them to wait. We must take this girl back to the convent," said Ramon, who seemed to have made much progress of late in the French language. "A word or two more, madame. Stay your own kind and noble hand in the work you are eager for ; but pray to God to bless, or it maybe to forgive, those who will do their utmost to crown your hopes." Georgette was left safely in the convent by Ramon and his comrades, who then moved toward the prison. One lighted torch served as a beacon for them. The 220 A WOELD BEWITCHED group had only wheeled to the left from the street in which the convent was when Ramonj who was in front, beside the torch-bearer, stopped, breathed a stifled murmur of exultation, and uttered two words. His companions hastened forward and coiled round a man who had stumbled upon them. The individual looked from one to the other, and seemed on the point of making a noisy effort to free himself from this unwel- come meeting, when Ramon held up a warning hand. " M. de Therigny," he said, " a group of twelve is conspicuous enough. After you have heard what I have to say you will judge whether it will be wise to draw more attention to us." " Who are you ? " faltered Therigny. " Some day you may know that. Meanwhile, listen. You are in the midst of those who bear no good-will towards you, but who will do you no more harm than they can help. You shall go with us out of the western gate ; you are with desperate men. Attempt to draw a weapon, or utter a cry, and you will have given the signal for your own instant death." It was not yet the hour for closing the gates, and they passed beyond the walls with little notice. They went to the cavern to which Dervaulx had been taken on the night of the defeated assault on Pierresbleues. " Ernesto," said Ramon to the man with the torch, " you will take care of this man until further advised." " Trust me," was the reply. " Food shall be sent to you within an hour, and at proper intervals afterwards. M. de Therigny, you A WORLD BEWITCHED 221 caused the arrest of a woman to-night. If you are in the habit of praying, and if you love life, you will be wise to offer up your heartiest prayers to God for the safety of that woman." Mademoiselle de Parthenay and her guest slept little that night, and it was in harrowing suspense that they saw noon of the next day go by without a hint of the result of Fernando's mission. At half- past three a servant, sent out for possible news, came back with the information that he had been to the Great Square, that the burning of the witches had taken place, and that one of them appeared to be dead before the execution. Henriette angrily ordered the newsbearer out of her presence, and was about to summon a more discreet messenger when visitors were announced. She glanced toward the gate j it swung open, and, to her joy, Martignacj Victor, Trecart, La Faille and Fernando rode into the yard. They had merely come to make known their presence, and to leave their horses. They must go into Rochefendue at once, and it was likely that their return to the castle would be late. Kind wishes were lavished upon them by the two ladies in view of the unknown difficulties before them, and Henriette, by a sign, summoned Victor aside. She looked at him for a moment in silence, leaned towards Madame de Bellerive, kissed her, then turned to him again. " We do not ask you to be careful. We believe that, if called upon, you will bear yourself nobly. 222 A WORLD BEWITCHED There, there," she said, with a smile, though her lips trembled, "do not tell us how many lives you are ready to lay down for us. God be with you. Good- bye." Martignac had meanwhile held a brief conversation with Fernando Vergara, who thereupon left the Castle, went along the bank of the ravine, and, mounting the Stepway, walked toward the bouse of the executioner. An hour later he reappeared among the gentlemen, who had gone to a strange-looking edifice in the Rue des Armuriers. It was a one-storied house, bought a year back by Martignac, who had cut away several rooms into which the large ground floor was formerly partitioned, and had replaced them by a single hall, used by himself and his intimates for fencing. Bellerive and La Faille were practising with rapiers as Fernando entered. " You have seen him ? " inquired Martignac, draw- ing the Basque aside. " I have, seigneur. As I guessed, he was not at the execution to-day. They have not turned him away, but most of his work is done by an assistant." " And has he no right of entry to the prison ? " " He has, and he means to be there to-night." " For any special reason ? " " Seigneur, let us move a little further away from Seigneur de La Faille. There ! They put her under a private examination this morning, and to-night they mean to put her to the torture." Martignac drew in hia breath. A WORLD BEWITCHED 223 " What of this assistant ? " " He is a savage madmarij seigneur. My heart is sick at what I heard up there." " How ? " " In connection with one of the women that was burned to-day. She had been promised a way out of the prison if she gave a hundred pistoles to M. Pinard. Her friends were written to, and he got the money ; then he wanted something else, and she saw that she was being fooled, and she scorned him, and said she would go to the stake, but would withdraw her con- fession when there, and tell all the people that M. Pinard had not only made beggars of her friends in selling a mercy she never got, but that he wanted to ruin her soul. Then M. Pinard asked her if this meant a denial that she was a witch ; and she answered ' Yes.' He warned her that she would have to be tortured again ; she was firm. Then he set this assistant executioner to work upon her. And ... my God ! seigneur, think of that martyr ! The bones of her right leg were smashed by hammers j both her breasts were shorn off by red-hot scythes ; she never spoke again. And it was a dead body fastened to a pole in the cart, and covered with a veil, that was burned this afternoon." " Were the two judges present at this torture ? " asked Martignac in a hollow voice. "Ay, and M. Mornat and M. Billault; and they will all be there to-night again." " At what time ? " 224 A WORLD BEWITCHED " At nine o'clock ; and there 's another thing, seig- neur, that I did not know of." " Well ? " " When going at night to the prison they are guarded by four arquebusiers." " I think I have heard something of that." " And these four arquebusiers lodge with M, Elourens." " I believe they are strangers to Rochefendue, Is this so ? " " Yes, they are strangers." Half an hour later Martignac suggested that the two fencers had had enough practice. He invited them to accompany him for a little refreshment. They went through the eastern gate to the inn on the plain. The arquebusiers were drinking at the tables on the grass outside. Martignac and his friends entered the inn. The landlord came forward with the grave respect habitual to him in presence of these visitors, and took their orders in silence. Martignac sipped a little of the Juran9on set before him ; then went over to the recess where his host sat. " You have new guests out there, M. Plourens ? " " Guests whom I could dispense with, seigneur." " They seem to be frank, honest fellows." " Honest fellows who will drink as much as others will pay for." " Equally prudent and affable. They seem sober." " If they keep their heads for what they have to do in two hours' time, I shall be astonished." A WORLD BEWITCHED 226 " I think you are a little hard on them. But what have they to do ? " " They are the judges' escort." " The brave men from Toulouse ! " exclaimed Mar- tignac, with a sudden look of pleasure. " The same, seigneur." " My good M. "FlourenSj you could not imagine how much this interests me, Tou referred just now to the men's amiable social gifts. I must show my appreciation. I do not wish to make myself known to them. Besides, I can leave a thing like this fully to your discretion. What are they drinking ? " " Frontignac." " Then you will place eight bottles of Frontignac at their immediate disposal and at my expense." The innkeeper clearly did not think it became him to show surprise. The money was accepted in silence ; the wine was produced ; and, in the moment when Martignac and his friends were leaving the inn, M. Plourens was in the heat of an explanation with his delighted guests, the arquebusiers. " Fernando," said Martignac, " you shall go to Pierresbleues and inquire of Ramon how he means to dispose of your fellow countrymen to-night." " Seigneur, will you wait ? " asked Fernando. His eyes were turned in the direction of the ravine towards M. Mornat's house. He ran towards the bridge that joined the Stepway to the plain; he turned sharply to the right, and soon was observed in Q 226 A WORLD BEWITCHED conference with some strange figures on the further bank of the ravine. " I have learned something, seigneur," began Fernando, when he rejoined Martignac ten minutes later. " Madame de Mercalme was to have been present with MM. Mornat and Billault at the torture ; but there will be a disappointment for them all. At each of the three houses three Basques are stationed, and Pd not give much for the lives of the lady and her two old gallants if they attempt to move out of doors to-night. '' At half-past eight o'clock the four gentlemen went down with Fernando to the inn. They were met at the door by Flourens ; he was in great agitation, and he begged Martignac to step aside. " Seigneur," he commenced, with a rueful visage, " I am in a sore difficulty. The arquebusiers are completely helpless, lying about the kitchen floor. They can never move out of doors to-night." " Is it possible ? " " Ah, seigneur, forgive me. But — that extra wine — that extra wine." Martignac followed the landlord in, and looked for an instant in silence at the objects of the innkeeper^s disquietude, then he raised his head. " Flourens, you are right,^' he avowed frankly. " I must not shrink from blame which I justly deserve. But," he added, with cordial energy, "it shall never be said that you have sufiered through my imprudence." A WORLD BEWITCHED 227 Martignac thereupon made a proposal which caused the innkeeper to open his bloodshot eyes in astonish- ment. The proposal, however, was agreed to. The four friends went into the kitchen, and Fernando, whose assistance was necessary, accompanied them. It was ten minutes to nine when four arquebusiers walked up to the judges' lodging in the Rue des Neiges. Two men came out. The escort formed two before, and two behind ; and the six men marched down to the prison. They were admitted, to the astonishment of the judges, by the chief execu- tioner. " Is M. Billault here? " demanded Boisseo. " There are no visitors here, M.le Prevost," replied the executioner, turning a stealthy flash of his lantern on one of the members of the escort. " Where is our prisoner ? " " I will take you to her." They walked in and out of the various passages for more than a minute, "You are not taking us to her cell." "No," said the executioner, stopping at an iron door ; " to the torture room." There was a rustling of arms behind the judges, and Pinard turned somewhat fretfully to the escort : " You need not have come so far with us, and that I thought you knew." Then to the executioner, who had now opened the door : " So she is here ? " "She is here." 228 A WORLD BEWITCHED ' ' And your assistant ? " "I'm afraid you must expect no help from Mm. There will be no torture to-night." "What's the meaning of this?" growled the prevost. "The meaning is, M. Boissec, the meaning is M. Pinard," said one of the arquebusiers, advancing, " that if either of you two scoundrels utters a word above breath, the brains of both shall be scattered about these walls." " M. de Martignao ! " groaned Pinard. " Not a syllable more. We have every appliance for gagging you ; but we prefer that you shall have all your strength for what is before you to-night. La Faille, I think I see someone in there who will be glad of a word of comfort from you." La Faille darted in. There was a low cry, a cry of mingled stupefaction, tearfulness and joy; and the light of the lantern fell upon the livid face of Carmen tottering to the door. The executioner picked up and threw aside an axe that seemed to be dripping with blood. She bent upon him a look of shuddering thankfulness, and came forth supported by La Faille. In less than two minutes judges, arquebusiers, prisoner and executioner, were outside the walls of the gaol. " Seigneur," whispered the executioner to Martig- nac, "I have a daughter: unless I wish her to go mad, I must tell her that the lady is safe." " Go, my good fellow, by all means." The executioner hurried away. The others, without A WORLD BEWITCHED 229 loss of time, arrived at the hall in the Rue dee Ar- muriers, where they were received with uproarious exultation by Fernando Vergara. Carmen wished to go to the neighbouring church of Sainte Marie du Saore Ccsur. She could not sleep without kneeling before the image of the Holy Virgin, and oflfering up thanks for her miraculous deliverance. She went forth under the sure guidance of La Faille ; and the door was locked on the remainder of the company. Torches were lit and fastened to niches in the walls, then Mar- tignac looked round on those present, and the two judges looked at him in return, despairingly. " Our business here shall be brief," said Martignac. " Sieurs Boissec and Pinard, I'll not touch needlessly on what is known against you both. Tour crimes are so execrable, so far beyond the reach of condemnation in words, that a difficulty has arisen among us as to how you should be treated. Two at least of us might be tempted to pit themselves against you sword in hand, might stifle their loathing so far as to deprive the hangman of his dues, and stretch you dead with- out more words. But you are removed by nothing else than boundlessness from the pale of honour. You cannot be treated as human beings ; monsters combining the worst attributes of the wolf, the vulture, the shark, and the tiger, deserve more consideration than you. And so you shall find. In this place you shall both remain as hostages. If there is another arrest in Rochefendue promoted by your confederates, the work of retribution shall commence upon you. The 230 A WORLD BEWITCHED relatives of some of your victims will be only too pleased to have you in their hands. To them you shall be left, and blood for blood, torture for torture, death for death, you shall pay." Fernando was left on guard over the two prostrate men till morning. The three friends went down to the inn and resumed their own clothes before calling at the church for Carmen and La Faille, and all five proceeded without further interruption to Pierres- bleues. CHAPTER XVI Peepaeations lOE Flight THERIGNY remained in confinement some thirty- six hours in the Red Cave, Four several guardsmen had relieved each other in maintaining an easy watch over him. On the morning after the second sleepless night he had thus passed, Ramon Zulneta quietly entered the cavern. " M. de Th&igny," was the greeting, " I give you joy." Raoul struggled up from the reclining posture into which he had sunk. He looked feverishly at the newcomer : " I hope this is not a fresh turn of mockery." " Far from it. I think, seriously, that your guardian angel has been busy on your behalf " " Then in mercy put me out of my misery ? " "Tou know how it became you, of all men, to denounce Carmen, and deliver her up to torture and death. You little calculated how dear you might have bought the gratification of your malignity. If a drop of her blood had been spilled, if a cry of pain had been wrung from her, you would not have lived 232 A WORLD BEWITCHED to laugh over it with the accomplices that are left to you/' Therigny looked up inquiringly. Eamon continued : " I mean of those who may have power to do further mischief. For the present, Boissec and Pinard have had their claws wrenched oflf. If that girl had suffered in the way you meant, a plan was already marked out for putting you to such a death as no judge or exe- cutioner of Eochefendue can ever have dreamed of. But you are fortunate, I say." ''Then ?" " You guess it : fear and impatience make you a little less thick-witted than usual. Carmen Brezuma has been rescued ; therefore you are free. The feel- ing that makes vengeance upon hateful creatures a sacrament celebrated in honour of God, can have no concern with you. You may go, M. de Therigny, and I have charity enough to hope that you may never faU short of people who will find you as contemptible as I do." That afternoon Martignao came back from a visit to the Mayor of Eochefendue. He found Henriette, Madame de Bellerive and Carmen in a grotto of the park of Pierresbleues. " I was not aware,'' he said, " that I should have had such a sensible man to deal with. He was not tempestuously staggered by the capture of Boissec and Pinard. The assurance of their being held over for the attention of the king was received by him with relief. With a relief in which there mingled a con- A WORLD BEWITCHED 233 viction that the men had met with kindlier treatment than their deserts. He hoped we should soon see the end of such law-givers." " Is he not a native of Bordeaux?" asked Henriette. "YeSj mademoiselle, and like all Bordelais he is devoted to the memory of Michel de Montaigne. He could not refrain from quoting to me a passage from the good seigneur in which the prodigies of witchcraft are discussed with petrifying irreverence. I left him the key of my old shed in the Rue des Armuriers. He promised secrecy, yet avowed his readiness to assume his own share of responsibility should com- plaints be made." The ladies expressed their satisfaction at this turn of afiairs, and Martignac continued : " But he raised a point upon which I was at a loss to help him . . . and on which one of you ladies may possibly be able to throw light. Pardon me if I suggest a strain on nerves already sorely tried ; but the point is connected with the disappearance of the under executioner last night." Carmen changed colour. " There," said Martignac, looking at her in a kindly manner, " I had no right to enter on the matter." " I am only thinking of Mademoiselle de Parthenay and of madame," said Carmen. "I think," said Henriette, catching Madame de Bellerive's eye, "that we have seen and heard enough of horrors to be hardened." " If what you have to reveal can do good, Carmen, 234 A WORLD BEWITCHED there will be no need to consider us/' added Madame de Bellerive, " It may save from unnecessary suspicion a man who is in no euTiable case at the best." " The chief executioner ? " cried Carmen. " Then I must have no hesitation." She went on to say that the whole of the night before last she had been forced to lie awake and Hsten to the most horrid reminiscences of torture and crime, detailed at the door of her cell by the assistant exe- cutioner and a drunken warder. She felt glad now that she had experienced such a time of suffering ; she could not have borne to think in days to come that she had not shared, to some little extent, in the sorrows of her dear, kind Madame de Bellerive. Yesterday morning her private interrogatory took place, and, at the close of it, she was warned to be prepared for torture that night. In the afternoon, the assistant executioner had to go to his ghastly work in the Great Square. Thus, during so many hours, that, with all allowance for her mental exaggeration of the slowness of time, she felt night had come, she was left to such comfort as might be gained by her from loneliness, and reliance on the Mother of Mercies, " On a sudden," proceeded Carmen, " my cell door was opened, the light of a torch struck like a lash across my eyes, I heard the single word ' Courage ! ' I started and looked up. I just managed to see the face of the chief executioner, when the door was very softly drawn to again. I heard a faint chime that sounded, I A WORLD BEWITCHED 235 thoughtj as coming from the Cathedral. Pear, perhaps, made me guess that it was close upon nine o'clock, the hour fixed for my torture. A second time the door of my cell was opened, but this time with harsh clamour. Rough hands were placed upon me ; I was dragged out and hurried off in the darkness. Suddenly the way was blocked to me and to the person who forced me along ; a torch-bearer stood against an iron door. It was the chief executioner, Georges Coillard, and the man who held me was his assistant, Ringot. "'What are you about to do?' was the question addressed to Ringot. ' I am going to serve as groom of the chamber to this pretty lady,' was the answer. I caught a glance from Coillard's eyes which brought back the hope I had clung to from that one word of his a few minutes earlier. However, he struck open the door, bade us enter, and I found myself in the place which I felt from description to be the torture room. Two furnaces were burning j a number of dreadful instruments were lying about the floor ; a noise of rushing waters rose to my ears ; and I looked towards a gap, of which I had heard strange tales ; a wide, slanting gap, cut out between the juncture of the floor and the wall, and communicating with an arm of the ravine. We had no sooner entered than the chief barred the door. He then fastened his torch in a cleft of an upright stick near the wall. Meanwhile the hideous guide who had dragged me there, laid his hand once more upon me. He was instantly caught by the shoulders and swung away. The things which 236 A WORLD BEWITCHED then took place, though clear to my vision, were like the wildest and most abrupt changes in a dream. Words fierce and rapid seemed to burst through gnashing teeth ; yet I heard nothing of them. All at once two grim figures confronted each other with axes in their hands. There was a rushing forward, a re- treating, a rising and descending flash of steel, with a red glimmer on the brightness of the blades. I was in the height of the horrible fascination that kept my eyes rivetted on the two shapes darting to and fro, and sweeping round and round, when one of the shapes reeled to the floor. My God ! was it Coillard ? There was a terrible lifting, a more terrible downrush, of an axe. Then it seemed to me that a headless trunk was borne away and swallowed down the gap in the wall. Then my benumbed senses deserted me, till I was partly aroused by a loud knocking at the outer gate. I was just conscious that the victorious executioner, Coillard, had been tending me in my helplessness with the gentleness of a woman, when he hurried to the door : two minutes later I was listening with unutterable ecstasy to voices that 1 knew. I was yet in a kind of trance as I was hurried from the loathsome prison. My full senses were restored to me, as I knelt at the shrine of the Sacre Cceur, and opened out my heart to the Lady of Miracles, the Holy Mother of God." There was a profound silence after this narrative, Martignac, especially, seeming lost in thought. '•' One cannot help feeling a little pride, a little hope," said Madame de Bellerive at length, after A WORLD BEWITCHED 237 drawing Carmen towards her, " that, in these times of suffering and horror, we meet with examples of a sort of wild chivalry even in creatures of the most degraded walk of life." " Strange, madame, that what you say should remind me of something else which leans to virtue on the part of this very Coillard, the executioner." " Is it so ? Then you have been interested in him before ? " " It ^s of an event dating far back ; and from the surroundings I feel that I'm right in crediting the poor fellow with a goodness of heart appreciated for not the first time." " If you knew his daughter " murmured Car- men. " True, such a creature could not have come from an entirely bad source. But we interrupt you, monsieur," said Henriette. " It refers to a time when I could claim to be young. Upwards of twenty years ago I was in Toulouse ; I felt a morbid interest in one of those performances with which recent occurrences have nauseated me. I stood in the Place du Capitole, in the front of a throng, near a scafibld on which a woman, whose age could not have been seventeen, was about to die as a sorceress. Beauty of a rare order was hers ; nobility of mind, amiability, were depicted in her face. I observed a single tear in her eye ; the child must have felt it hard to go out of life so young. As I looked at her my imagination was on fire, and I dared even to think 238 A WORLD BEWITCHED of the grandest heroine the world has ever seen, the peerless girl whose name alone would suffice to make Prance illustrious, our own divine Jeanne d'Arc. All things were ready for the torches to light the pyre, when I observed one of the assistants of the executioner seemingly engaged at something that required him to be on his knees. The victim turned to him and smiled. Then there passed rapidly between the two this little dialogue, which I have not forgotten. It was in the Bearnais dialect. " ' It is you ? ' " ' Do you forgive me ? ' " ' Forgive you ? I have found you my one friend in the hour of death. I know you will remember your charge.' " ' To the last hour of my life.' " 'I pray God to bless you.' " I took note of the man as he rose from his knees ; his face was firm, but the blood seemed to have left it, and I remarked that he took no share in the execution. That man was Coillard, the present executioner of Rochefendue." " Do you remember the girl's name, M. de Martignac ? " asked Madame de Bellerive. " Am^lie Godard." They were interrupted by the approach of Tr^cart. He seemed agitated. " Pardon me, mesdames. Another turn of events." " Pray sit down," said Henriette. " I have to tell you that there have been commotions A WORLD BEWITCHED 239 at the houses of Madame de Mercalme and M. Mornat. The servants, from first to last, have fled from the households. Again, M. Billault's brother canons have refused to stay under the same roof with him ; and he has been consigned to other quarters within the Cathedral precincts." " Then surely there must be a general opening of eyes about those three ? " said Madame de Bellerive. " No, madame. But a warning to those concerned last night was conveyed, without the least obscurity. It was to this effect. The possibility of disaster to Mademoiselle Carmen was taken into account, and retribution should be exacted for it. But leaving that aside : if any injury came upon the humblest creature protected by Madame de Bellerive or Mademoiselle de Parthenay, the houses of Billault, Mornat, and Madame de Mercalme should be set fire to, and not a soul sheltered by them should escape." " This we owe to our Basques, eh ? " said Henriette with a hard smile. " And what's the reply of the threatened ones ? " " Mornat is making preparations for flight." "And Billault?" " He and his fellow canons were in a turmoil for hours. At nine o'clock he sternly declared that no mercy should be shown to witches. At ten he received news of the rescue of Mademoiselle Carmen. At eleven he was protesting all over the canonry that he had never in his heart been in favour of severity towards these unfortunate creatures." 240 A WORLD BEWITCHED Henriette still smiled : " I thought that man's cruelty and lying power could not be equalled j they are surpassed, I find, by his baseness " " And Madame de Mercalme ? " inquired Martignac, after greeting Bellerive and La Faille, who at that moment entered the grotto. " She has come down to the city, and is displaying here and there an interest in the whereabouts of a certain Ramon Zulueta." " And the result of these inquiries ? " asked Henriette. " The result, mademoiselle, is that Ramon Zulueta can nowhere be found." Madame de Bellerive started, and looked at Carmen, who only smiled, " But," said Bellerive, producing a letter and giving it to his mother, " Ramon has left behind something which may ease anxiety about his absence." Madame de Bellerive scanned the letter, and, after looking a second time at Carmen, handed it to Tr^cart. He read it with eagerness, and the clouds cleared from his troubled forehead. A little later the company left the grotto, and Martignac walked beside Madame de Bellerive. " I am glad," he said, " that your alarm about our trusty Ramon has been dispelled so soon. By the way^ what a musical name that gruff fellow has." The lady smiled and sighed. " It startled me when first I heard it. The name A WORLD BEWITCHED 241 most like it that a woman can bear will always live in my remembrance." " With sadness, I fear." " Deep sadness ; and yet more deep perplexity." " I have touched unwittingly on a painful theme." " Ramona Zulueta ! " continued Madame de Bellerive musingly ; " the ideal of goodness and beauty such as a critical maiden of thirteen may form to herself! That was my age when I last saw her, and twenty-five years have gone since then." " She was a relative, I presume." " She was nearly related to my foster-sisters, but of an entirely different and superior branch from the Zuluetas murdered on the heights yonder. She was a little older than poor Dolores. Never did she tire of showing kindness to us. Twenty-five years ago she gave us three, Dolores, Violante, and myself, an Agnus Dei each, similar to one she had had blessed for herself. They were holy, simple gifts, yet few of our belongings, from childhood, girlhood, on to womanhood, have been so treasured by us. On the day we received them from her, she bade us all three a very loving, but very hurried, farewell. We never saw her again.'" That day and the next were spent by Madame de Mercalme in varied kinds of activity j in one matter, among others, more commonplace than her un- doubtedly sinister cariosity about Ramon Zulueta ; she must have a servant. But the humblest inhabitants of Rochefendue listened to her with grave shrinking, and were deaf to her promises of reward. R 242 A WORLD BEWITCHED The evening of her second day of fruitless inquiry had come. She had crossed the ravine, and was on the Step- way mounting homeward, when she turned to the right, and in a few minutes was admitted to the house of the lonely Mornat. He led her with familiar hospitality to a daintier room than that in which he was accustomed to receive Billault and others ; he placed her on a chair, and, kissing her, sat in a tremor of joy by her side. " I watched you coming over the field and begin- ning to climb the Stepway. You would have passed without seeing me, and you know that we cannot remain here long." " We cannot. If we stay beyond three days, even I, in whom you have such confidence, could not answer for your life or mine. My resources are at an end in this place." " And though we leave the neighbourhood on the same day, our ways go difi'erently j we shall see each other no more. It's you that will have it so." " On that point I thought I would turn out of my way and question you." " What do you mean ? " " A very short questioning." " Say on, if I am to have any hope." " After midnight of Sunday next, to state the precise hour, our lives must be lived apart unless I promise to marry you ? " " I cannot say otherwise. You have been gracious to me, but I must think of my soul." A WORLD BEWITCHED 243 " As I must of mine/' " How ? " " This life of never satisfied, lawless delight fills me with terror " " Can you mean " " I mean to prove that I do not undervalue a heart like yours." " Ohj bless you, my darling ! " " You must expect nothing decisive from me to- day. We were really not to have seen each other after Saturday. Expect me on Sunday night. Does that sound well ? " " Heaven's choicest blessings on you ! How I have prayed for this ! " " On Sunday, before midnight, you '11 have an answer that shall decide both our fates. Now I must go." " And the prayers and praises of all the saints and angels go with you." On arriving at the garden of her house Madame de Mercalme saw M. Billault pacing to and fro. He scarcely looked up on her entrance through the wicket, but walked towards the house beside her. " I knew you were at Mornat's, and I thought I would wait for you up here." " And I am sorry that it will be out of my power to invite you in." " Then you have made your choice ? " " M, Billault, it is for me to conduct the interroga- 244 A WORLD BEWITCHED tory. Can you find no more than the sum you have — saved ? " "I cannot." " You propose to break your vows of celibacy, and to follow me round the world with a few thousand pistoles. I have to observe that the world is a large place, and in spite of the vigour with which we should set out upon our way, and the ecstatic fidelity with which we should cling to each other, we might run a danger of starving before we had reached our journey's end." " Putting mockery aside, how do you suggest that I should increase my store ? " " Suggest ! Then you want advice, or rather en- couragement, in some scheme already originated by you ? I have little time ; the air is chilly, and I have no means of being hospitable to you." " You can offer a hint " " Well, I '11 be your accomplice. M. Billault, you have almost unexampled treasures in relics at the Cathedral. Among other things, you have an inch and a half square of the garment used by Shem and Japhet to cover their father Noe on a certain occasion ; you have a beak of one of the ravens that fed the prophet Blias near the brook Cherith. You have — but there, enough of the Old Testament. As for the New, I can scarcely make a choice. You have part of the comb of the cock that crew when Peter had forgotten himself; you have, of course, one of the authentic pictures of the Virgin, painted by that indefatigable artist, St. Luke the Evangelist. With A WORLD BEWITCHED 245 none of these could I be profane enough to suggest that you should meddle. You have, on the other hand, some attractive reliquaries ; unhappily they are not portable. But there is an oratory, before which you and I have sometimes lingered " " Ah ! " " There is a statue of Our Lady, around whose neck hangs a necklace of bright stones " " When and where shall I meet you again ? " asked Billault in a hoarse voice. " Here, after vespers, on Sunday. You still hold to the interview with the bishop concerning Pere Eustache ? " " I do," shouted Billault. " I curse myself for not having acted sooner." He moved away as he spoke ; his hand was on the wicket, when he started from before the figure of an old woman who had dragged herself up thus far, and who lay in weariness on one of the broad granite slabs outside the garden. Billault glanced at her, came forth, heard with a sigh of relief, but with no other response, her faltering appeal for alms, and hurried down the Stepway. Madame de Mercalme had meanwhile passed into her house over the dismantled drawbridge. She pro- ceeded to a small room furnished with a table and two great arm-chairs ; in the centre of the table was a lamp whose light fell upon the face of Raoul de Therigny ; and the lady leaned slightly against one of the chairs, and looked at him. 246 A WORLD BEWITCHED " Wellj you have now had a night and a day," she saidj "to consider my proposal. What is the result?" " I have thought it over " "Before you answer, take brief note of what is required of you. It cannot be said that you run any stupendous risk. You have to deal with two old men ; one of them is a coward. There 's an advantage in itself that should stir your blood : there need be no violence. You seize one and take what spoil he has, when he comes up here ; then you come down to the house of the other. To outwit that other you'll have me as a helper. What he has will be at our disposal. We quit Rochefendue, and are made for life. Why, I'm leading you the way to Paradise." " I'll do it," was the stout answer. They were interrupted by a knock at the outer door. " What can that be ? " said Th^rigny, starting up in alarm. Madame de Mercalme smiled and took up the lamp. " You have come to a valorous decision ; accustom yourself to it in the dark for a moment." She went to the door. The strained ears of Th^rigny caught a muttering of voices. Then the lady came back to the little room, ushering in a very aged woman, whose hooded cloak of grey woollen covered her head and body, leaving only her dark face and fierce wolf-like eyes visible. " From Toulouse you say ? " inquired Madame de Mercalme. A WOELD BEWITCHED 247 " I have walked all the way," was the answer in a thin but distinct voice. "And you were sent here to offer me your services, you say ? " " Yes, madame, ihey told me down there that you had been looking for a servant." " Eemember, it will only be for three days.^' " I ask for no more." " You have been used to work ? " " To hard work, madame." " Come with me, then." CHAPTER XVII Arrested THE zeal of MM. Boissec and Pinard in the war upon sorcery had received a check. Among those who pondered over the result, no one, as already intimated by Martignac, felt a more grim satisfaction than the Mayor of Eochefendue. Yet within a few hours of the announcement of the disappearance of the judges, there arrived at the Capitole, or Hotel de Ville, of Eochefendue, a company of respectable bur- gesses who appealed alike to the mayor, and the pre- sident of bhe small local parliament, pointed with terror to the undiminished prevalence of sorcery, and insisted on the vacancies being immediately filled. The mayor, being left to his own resources by the president, determined to seek elsewhere for assist- ance, and before the end of the week a king's coun- sellor, with full powers, arrived from the Parliament of Bordeaux, He was followed speedily by a new executioner. The first of the trials contemplated by the new judge was not to end in a vindication of law and order. Three hardened offenders had been seized by the suc- cessor of the late esteemed greflBer, M. Dervaulx. A WORLD BEWITCHED 249 Germaine Barri had thrown a live coal near the face of Lolla Marimonj who was about to be confined. Lolla was that night overtaken with the pangs of premature child-birth j and for such a clear case of enchantment, Germaine was at once haled to prison. Constance Loisel, being asked the way to the Cathedral by certain strangers to RochefenduCj gave directions which caused the inquirers to be late for Mass. This had been obviously done by connivance with the devil. Constance was arrested. Madelon Goulard, when passing a house, perceived a boy at a window above. Madelon, in her maleficence, held up a cako which was in her hand ; the child stretched out his arms, over- balanced himself, fell, and fractured a rib. There were spectators who admitted that Madelon had rushed forward, broken the child's headlong fall, and probably saved his life. The new greflSer was not to be deceived by the witch's false compassion, and Madelon was warned, even before she had reached the gaol, to look forward to the usual punishment for such a crime as hers. There were others than the spectators of Madelon's achievement whose interest was quickened in these matters. The greflBer, anxious to recommend himself to the new judge, had arrested Madelon, Constance, and Germaine on the same day. Towards evening a hint was conveyed to the grefl&er that the prison would not be a safe place for the detention of the three women, and it was recommended that they should be conveyed to the Hotel de Ville, and put under the 250 A WORLD BEWITCHED responsible guardianship of the mayor. The sugges- tion was acted upon. The escort was overpowered on the way ; the prisoners disappeared, and the greffier, seeking, with much artfulness, to elicit from the mayor an opinion as to the agency of the rescue, was briefly referred to the devil himself. The day after this deliverance was Saturday. In the early afternoon of that day, a holiday of obligation, when the various masses at the Cathedral were over, Eustache Gontaut called at the palace by request of the bishop, and was ushered into the library. Monseigneur, known as an omnivorous and almost incessant reader, sat thoughtfully by a table whereon were scattered a number of books, not one of which was open. He was an old man, with clear cut features, and his face, habitually calm, was overcast by what seemed an expression of profound pity. Eustache advanced, sank on one knee, and kissed the ring on monseigneur's finger. " Take a seat," said the bishop. " You keep to your purpose of preaching to-morrow night ? " The young priest looked surprised. " It is announced, monseigneur." "And you will preach on these trials for witch- craft ? " " Without fail." " Tell me, have you received any warnings or threats as to your intended sermon ? " Gontaut smiled. " I had a message from M. Billault three days ago. A WORLD BEWITCHED 251 It was to the effect that he had delayed retorting upon me for certain language I had used towards him two months ago." " On the morning after his night of captivity at Pierresbleues ? " " Quite so, monseigneur. But that I should digest his answer as well as I could on the night of my sermon in the Cathedral." " Nothing more definite ? " " It was in writing. I have destroyed the paper. It ended, as vaguely as it began, with a warlike declara- tion that the battle between him and me should be decided before midnight on Sunday." " My son, endeavour, with me, to look more seriously on that message from M. Billault." " Then you, too, monseigneur " " I, too, have been approached by him whom I must, with God's forgiveness, call a bad man. I can never have enough blame heaped upon me for having been blind so long to his real nature j or, when I knew him as he is, for having shrunk from the creation of a scandal by exposing him. I sent for him three days ago. I dwelt upon what I had heard. His answer was to break forth in denunciation of you, whom he named as his traducer. I told him he was mistaken, but that the attitude assumed by him confirmed me in my purpose to suspend him from offering up the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Meanwhile that I purposed journeying to Toulouse and calling at the archbishop's palace in connection with further measures regarding 252 A WORLD BEWITCHED Mm. He remained defiant. In very shame for him- self I ordered him from my presence. He would not obey. He said before going he would leave in my possession certain papers having reference to Pere Eustache Gontaut " " To me ? " " Bearing on the intimate life of one whose origin it had been the custom to speak of with such rever- ential mystery." "What can he have meant ?" '• I read the papers when he had gone. The first I took up was concerned with your early training and education for the office of the priesthood. The other paper " "Well, monseigneur." " My son, in dedicating yourself to your present life you undertook to abandon worldly pride, to tread in the footsteps of the Divine Redeemer, who taught humility to us all." " Monseigneur, I have always received evidences of your kindly interest in me. You must surely have strong reasons for this caution in making your reve- lations.'" " The other paper is of an earlier date," continued the bishop. The young priest's heart beat a little more rapidly than usual. Still, he held out a firm enough hand for the papers reluctantly offered to him. He glanced from one part to another of the longer document with some perplexity. He looked at the second paper. A WORLD BEWITCHED. 253 containing particulars of his birth, baptism and parentage, and the warm colour faded from his cheeks and lips, and a dimness came over his eyes. " Is this information true ? " he inquired, in a low voice. " Considering from whom it has been obtained, and whose interest it was to strike you the basest of blows, you may well put such a question. Indeed, from the taunting challenge thrown down to me when I received the papers, I had my own doubts. But I would take no one into confidence. I went to Toulouse, os- tensibly to see the archbishop. I inspected the regis- ters of St. Sernin, and — the particulars are correct." Gontaut stood up. The healthy blood had returned to his face, the light of his black eyes was clear and keen as ever. " Then, monseigneur, I find that, instead of having my origin dubiously connected with such names as Montmorency, Chatillon, Mortemart and the like, I am the son of humble parents joined together in honest wedlock." The bishop in turn stood up and gazed at the young man through eyes filled with sudden tears. " Oh, my son, my son, take my blessing; yes, and the assurance, with the utmost earnestness my heart can give to words, that you are higher than all the love and praise I have from the first bestowed upon you. And you will preach in the face of all ? " "With more heart than ever." Bustache, on leaving the palace, went to his little 264 A WORLD BEWITCHED lodging. He gave up an hour to the revision of his forthcoming sermon ; then he wrote a short letter, which he sealed and took with him when he set out on his daily ramble on the heights. Sunday evening came. Close upon a thousand people had assembled in the Cathedral to hear their favourite preacher, Pere Eustache. Besides, it was a local festival day, the anniversary of the reception of a large piece of the wood of the true Cross, the chief treasure among the relics of the shrine. It was late in September ; the night had fallen early. Before the time fixed for the beginning of the usual service, the relic had to be borne in solemn procession round the outer walls of the Cathedral ; and in this procession, bishop, canons, priests and servitors were joined by the whole of the assembled worshippers. The sacred wood had been fashioned into a crucifix ; it was encased in a reliquary of gold, adorned with gems, and was carried by the bishop himself. Three times was the circuit of the Cathedral made under a sky thronged with stars and reigned over by the moon. While the choir sang a hymn commencing with the words, "Ave verum Crucis lignum," thurifers filled the calm air with incense, the wax tapers held by each member of the congregation, peasant, burgess or noble, mingled with the moon rays in throwing light on smooth olive cheeks and dark eyes, on great scarlet hoods, on corsages of silver and violet silk embroidery, on yellow shawls bordered with copper-g;ilt fringes, on black petticoats and gaiters of white wool ; on manlier A WORLD BEWITCHED 255 faces more deeply browned by the sun, on orange vests and green or purple gaskins ; or, finally, on the soberer colours, the richer costumes, the arms and jewels of men and women of higher rank. The outdoor procession came to an end. Clergy and congregation, with tapers extinguished in the portals, entered the Cathedral, now luminous with torches, lamps and candles. The bishop went alone to the left of the great altar, and passed through a pair of deep red velvet curtains into a chamber darkened by hangings of the same hue. Here he found a receptacle for the crucifix. But looking into the less dimly-lit Oratory of the Virgin beyond, he saw a man in the attitude of prayer before the little altar. The bishop, with a perplexed face, withdrew from the crimson gloom of that part of the sanctuary, and mounted his throne. Of the humbler burgesses and peasants, the males knelt in the right aisle, the females in the left. Men and women of higher condition might arrange them- selves promiscuously in the nave, and here the chairs and benches had been taken possession of with eager- ness. There was one row of chairs, however, in the centre of the nave, from which members of the con- gregation, after looking in startled silence at each other, had shrunk away. Only one seat in it was occupied, and the occupant was Coillard, the super- seded executioner of Rochefendue. But the bishop was yet moving towards his throne, when an old woman, wearing a large hooded cloak of white wool. 256 A WOELD BEWITCHED advanced up the middle of the nave. She was whis- peringly identified by a few as Madame de Mercalme's one servant. She walked deliberately to the row of chairs where the executioner sat alone, and took a place not far from him . The service proceeded ; vespers came to a close ; and at the due moment P^re Eustache came down from the altar and ascended the pulpit. He was pale, but self-possessed ; he bent a glance on Coillard, who seemed in physical pain; then he looked round the congregation. It was known to most of them, he trusted, on what theme he meant to discourse. He had never felt so certain as within the past two days how fitting it was for himself, of all men, to treat such a theme. He commenced by touching generally on the trials for sorcery which had taken place in Rochefendue throughout the last twelve months. During that time it had not been the law of humanity, it had not been the will of the King of Prance, it had not been the commands of God, which had claimed their obe- dience. Their rulers had been rebels against order and law, in heaven and on earth. One would think that the Creator had no longer a part in the coun- selling and ruling of his creatures. To the eyes of a contemplator from this their home, the Almighty's place in the empyrean knew Him no more; His kingdom over the universe was at an end ; the in- vasion from the infernal realms had been crowned with triumph. Yes, God and His Messiah had been unseated from their thrones ; the saints and angels A WOELD BEWITCHED 257 and archangels had been flung out of their celestial pleasure domesj and their places had been usurped by Satan and his fiends from hell. These demons had wandered over the earth in search of fit places for the adoration exacted by them ; and in these our days, and beneath our eyes, one of the loveliest of all earth's gems of nature had been lighted upon for the worship of the most hideous and remorseless of Satan's demi- gods. In days of old, the valley of Hinnom and the groves of Topheth, with their fair streams and gardens and rooks, had received the children who were to pass in blood and fire to the idol of the Ammonites. Those places, enshrined in renown by prophetic tongues, were not lovelier than this vale of Rochefendue, than this town, in the neighbourhood of whose foaming ravines and vine-clad slopes, and steep-down cataracts, and singing rivulets, and calm, clear lakes, and moun- tains garmented in stainless and eternal snows, our modern witch-finders maintain the rites of torture and burning and death — the sacrifices claimed still by the grim god they have invited up from hell, their vora- cious and murderous Moloch. The hypocrisies, the villainies, the multifarious horrors of these trials for witchcraft, were familiar to his hearers as to himself. But before he ended, he might convince them that not one in that church, not one in the vicinity, had more reason to regard these monstrous d eeds with shame, with grief, nay, with a compunction border- ing on despair, than the man who now addressed them. He paused. Many gazed towards the pulpit 258 A WOELD BEWITCHED curiously ; but on no one's face was there so strained an expression of wonder and anxiety as on that of the executioner. The preacher resumed. "A few at least of them were aware of the manner in which these trials for witchcraft had been organized. It was hardly a secret from any of them now, that by a ghastly compact, made a year ago, one inhabitant of Eochefendue had received from another payment in money or in jewellery for every witch convicted and brought to execution. There, as would be seen, was one method whereby men and women, sunk in a de- praved sloth, might be roused to a malignant activity in craft, falsehood and barbarity. Such, in brief, were some of the providers of this prolonged holocaust. What, again, of those before whom the accused were brought? It was known that ministers of the law, sworn in the holiest of names to do justice between God and man, had accepted, had extorted, bribes from prisoners. But these men, with their fronts of brass and their hearts of stone, had not rested content with this form of corruption. By the use of threats, they had forced the same prisoners to surrender the price- less jewel of their chastity ; then, the avarice and lust of the law-givers being gratified, the plundered and outraged victims, having nothing more to give, were delivered up to the torturer and the hangman. "And these justices had their abettors and accom- plices. In the rapture of an atrocious harmony, these men had assembled in the gaol of Eochefendue, and had come together to the scaffold to gloat over the A WORLD BEWITCHED 259 agonies and death of their victims. And what was it that they saWj as preludes to the fiery martyrdom at the stake ? Let his hearers recall some description of the pangs of hell ; then think, if they pleased, that he was about to describe the vengeance of damned spirits wreaked upon the damned, and not the tor- ments inflicted by human beings one upon another. These companionable men were in the habit of seeing women with clothes torn off and hair shaved, that they might be pierced from head to foot with the stylet for the discovery of the mark of the devil ; women sus- pended by the shoulders, with heavy weights attached to their feet, while floods of iced water were dashed over their naked bodies, causing them to shake in convulsions, and so increasing their pains ; women fastened to the estrapade, that their limbs might be dislocated, or invested with the iron collar, gradually tightened with new cords, to the point of strangulation. These were the 'benevolent^ tortures, in accordance with the rules of the ' ordinary question.' " If such failed to elicit confession, our onlooking ghouls assisted at the ' extraordinary question,' where feet were bound with ropes, and wedges of wood were inserted between the cord and the flesh ; or arms were roasted at a slow fire ; or articulations were disjointed one by one, making the body a helpless mass; or thighs were pounded and shattered with heavy hammers, till the marrow, bursting from the bones, mingled with the blood that spurted from every vein of the mangled limbs ; or the breasts of tender women. 260 A WOELD BEWITCHED who had known the sacred joys of motherhood, were torn off by red hot pincers." These details given with all the emphasis that passion of gesture and ferocity of utterance could lend them, had been heard almost to the close, with a corresponding savagery of interest peculiar to such listeners. Only here and there came a faint moan, suggestive of more gentle feeling. Toward the last sentence of this division of the sermon, however, the speaker's voice broke, and a sudden spring of tears rolled down his inflamed cheeks. Then, indeed, there began to arise a chorus of gasps and groans, in which a first faltering evidence of pain and concern for the preacher himself, seemed rapidly to give place to a dismayed absorption in his theme. Coillard's head sank on his breast, and there were some of those present, sufficiently attentive to his movements to notice that he trembled. Even the white- cloaked woman, in the same row of chairs, seemed to shake off much of the lethargy of her age. Her head was thrown back, her body became erect. She cast a hurried glance at Coillard, then raised and rivetted her eyes, with an absolute frenzy of excitement, on the pulpit. Pere Eustache, with self control regained, went on : "Thousands of years ago, for wickedness foul enough, indeed, Sodom and Gomorrah, and their sister towns near the Jordan, were consumed by fire sent down from Heaven by an angry God. Later, again, but still under the Old Law, Hinnom, the A WORLD BEWITCHED 261 valley of idolatries, waa defiled and turned into a place which men likened unto hell. " Coming to what immediately concerns ourselves," he went on, " we are told that centuries ago, by a shock of earthquake, two mountains near these parts were forced together in conflict. The crash burst them asunder in simultaneous ruin; and from some few of the fragments rose the city of Rochefendue. Is there no fear among us lest we, in turn, should be marked out for punishment by the hand of the Lord of vengeance ? Does no one here tremble, lest, for infamies out-blackening the darkest crimes done in the cities of the plain, or the valley of Hinnom, the hills by which we are surrounded should again clash over our heads in appalling battle and bury us beneath their ruins ? " But no : we live under the New Law. We exult in it ; yet we are not thankful. We are aware that no more such dreadful visitations are for us j and we boast of it ; for we are cowards in our faith. We avail ourselves of the help of the King of Mercies; and, when we are safe from peril, we bite at the hand that delivered us, and laugh at the Rescuer, The men among us guilty of the monstrous acts I have named are Christians : they are redeemed, by the promises of Christ, from the damnation due to original sin. Christians ? There is one of them to whom I have spoken face to face with fierce harshness ; and who is an ordained servant of Christ. And may God forgive me if it did not become me to condemn that man. 262 A WORLD BEWITCHED However justly. For can I, even I, the denouncer of these atrocities, claim entire absolution from shame and guilt ? To my unutterable misery, I say no." For a second time he paused. There was more than one bewildered face now turned towards him ; while, with cheeks again grown pale, but with increased firmness of look and voice, he resumed : " I am one of the humblest servants of that ever adorable Jesus who came down to earth to ease us of all our burthens, to soften all our pains. That son of the Most Merciful God, and of the Queen of Martyrs, cast out devils; but he did not make use of his measureless wisdom to discover imaginary magicians, whom he might deliver up to torments and death. Other workers of marvels in the Old Testament and the New spread plague, and devastation, and mortal calamity around them. Our incomparable Jesus put forth His gift of almightiness only to feed the hungry, to cleanse the leper, to care the sick, to raise the dead to life, and, as a climax of His love for us, to march to a terrible and shameful death, that we might be saved from suffering. Again, I ask, am I a worthy minister of such a God? Mark these words, the last words, perhaps, that I shall ever speak from this pulpit." He had to pause again ; to wait several moments, that the murmur of stupefaction aroused by this intimation might subside. " I'll keep you but a little longer," he proceeded, rapidly but distinctly. " There are some who might not think this a fit place for the announcement I shall A WORLD BEWITCHED 263 herewith make. I have dared to act for myself in that. Many among my hearers have chosen to credit me with belonging to this or that exalted house. Let all present, and others elsewhere who may bestow a thought upon me, know me henceforth for what I am. In the devilries of which I have spoken with execration to-night, I can never afterwards disclaim my share. In my veins flows the blood of one who for nearly thirty years, I learn, has been the humble but active instrument in this work, here and elsewhere. I am the son of the man who was, until last week, the public executioner of Eochefendue." The emotions which had for some minutes threatened to culminate in an outburst of disorder, fell away in the stillness of an assemblage unanimously confounded. The preacher, closing his discourse with an abrupt and stifled prayer, came down from the pulpit. In the next moment a haggard face rose over the throng ; it was the face of the executioner; he held his right hand to his breast. " Wait," he said. Eustache remained standing on the bottom step of the pulpit. " This is not true," said Coillard. There were smothered remonstrances, and priests were seen approaching from the altar. " I tell you I'll not be silenced," exclaimed the executioner, in tones hoarse at once with passion and with seeming weakness. "I shall be heard. Pere Eustache has not the shame to be my son. His father 264 A WORLD BEWITCHED bears a name that might make everyone even in this building tremble. His mother . . . his mother , . . Oh, God ! . . ." The speaker stretched out both his arms as if in a struggle with the air ; a small red stain which grew larger appeared on his vest; and he fell crashing among the chairs to the floor. Gontaut darted hasty, humble glances toward three men who had risen to their feet not far behind Coillard. They were Bellerive, Trecart and La Faille. They advanced on the instant, took up the body, and bore it toward the vestry ; Gontaut, on the way, wildly tearing his own surplice to staunch the flow of blood from the breast of the miserable man. The bishop, allowing but a semblance of grave perplexity to appear on his face, knelt down, and the Benediction commenced. But the devotions of the clergy and congregation seemed not destined to proceed without further dis- traction. The old woman in the white-hooded cloak had, towards the end of the sermon, given many signs of an uncontrollable agitation. The paramount interest excited by the declaration from the pulpit had alone diverted attention from her. On the disappearance of Coillard in the vestry, however, the woman's grimaces, abrupt changes of attitude, and alternations of subdued laughter and painful groans, caused a general turning of heads and a craning of necks before and behind her. The speedy and obvious conclusion was passed from mouth to mouth : A WORLD BEWITCHED 265 " Possessed ! " " Bewitohed ! " Those nearest the altar caught up the whispered cry, and a man came down from the front and took a seat near the woman, on a chair specially vacated for him. This man was Pierre de Lancre, the new judge from Bordeaux. He had listened with amazement and indignation to the sermon; and now, with a reaction of gloomy relief, he felt that the time had come for him to show his authority. The bishop must be com- municated with. The devil must be ejected from the woman, with the usual sacred ceremonial. No better opportunity than the present could be chosen for the purpose. One of those within hearing went up to the altar, immediately after the singing of the " Salutaris,'' and explained matters to a priest who had advanced to meet him. The priest, after an extremely short colloquy with the bishop, came down the centre of the nave. His approach was accompanied by the gratified looks of men and women, who prepared themselves to witness the ceremony of exorcism amid such surround- ings as the singing of the most impressive hymns, the solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and the triumphant expulsion of the demon by the Bishop of Rochefendue himself. " Monseigneur," said the priest in a low voice to the judge, " cannot permit the holy rite of the Bene- diction to be unnecessarily disturbed." " But the exorcism " 266 A WORLD BEWITCHED " He refuses decisively to perform it." " Then monseigneur's help can be dispensed with/' retorted the judge, " a layman shall take the duty upon himself." "Good," said the priest, composedly. "But the layman shall undertake the duty elsewhere than in this Cathedral." The enraged de Lancre made no reply, and the priest returned to the altar. The Litany of the Blessed Virgin had commenced. Tr^cart, La Faille and Bellerive had returned to the Cathedral after having carried Coillard from the vestry to P^re Bustache's lodging, close at hand. The dis- turbance occasioned by the white-cloaked servant did not fail to attract some notice from the three friends. There was a brief exchange of whispers among them ; but they resumed their places quietly. At length the judge nodded to one and another of those who had come with him to vespers. Then he stood up and touched the possessed woman on the shoulder. When she turned, he fixed a commanding look upon her, and she at once arose and followed him as if fascinated; and some fifty others of the congregation went out of the building with them. These marched forthwith to the quarters assigned to de Lancre. Twelve of them, including the tormented woman and the judge himself, passed into the house. The others moved disconsolately away. Trecart and his two friends remained till the close A WORLD BEWITCHED 267 of the Benediction. But they were among the first of the congregation to leave the Cathedral. At the suggestion of Trecart they turned towards the judge's residence, in whose windows plentiful lights were burning. " You two," said Trecart, as they passed on, " would mark the significance of the identity of the demoniac inside there ? " " Madame de Mercalme's new servant has soon pro- fited by her teaching," remarked La Faille. " Then we may look for more denunciations ! " ex- claimed Bellerive. "It is within my absolute knowledge," asserted Trecart, " that since the coming of de Lancre, this Mercalme woman has regained her devilish audacity ; and that she will make some effort to revive earlier charges." "And in de Lancre she will find an accomplice to her heart, no doubt," added La Faille. " Did you notice how uncomfortable he was during the sermon ? If he could only have had the preacher in his hands ! " " Ay, Madame de Mercalme knows her man," said Trecart; "he's one of the most bestial reprobates among all our furred law-cats. No pretty woman, entering a court of justice, could think herself safe from the rufiian. He is quite capable of keeping Boissec and Pinard in countenance in their most damnable excesses." " Then he'll meet with more summary treatment than theirs if I have my way," said Bellerive. " Let 268 A WORLD BEWITCHED him be connected with anything further against people we know, and I'll make more holes in him than you'd find in a kitchen strainer." " Victor, that 's a threat that might have been learnt in the school of the redoubtable M. Mornat." " Come," urged Tr^cart, " we shall have more to tell them at Pierresbleues than they could have looked for. They'll be sorry they were not with us." An hour after the three friends had passed, two men came out of the judge's lodging. Their manner was agitated ; but they spoke in subdued voices ; and with equal haste and caution they directed their steps towards a building hard by, where, at the suggestion of de Lancre, the local arquebusiers had taken up their quarters. There were others than Madame de Bellerive and Henriette de Parthenay who might have found reason for sorrow that they had missed vespers this night. One at least of these was Madame de Mercalme. But she was conscious, no doubt, that she could spend her time to more advantage. She readily gave permission to her old servant to go to the Cathedral, with the inward assurance, indeed, that they would never see each other again. On being left alone she made a careful collection of her portable objects of value, and adjusted them safely and easily about her person. She had no heirlooms on which to bestow parting regrets. Her wardrobe was purposely limited to the travelling dress which she wore. She left the entrance to the house arranged so as to afford ingress to Billault and A WORLD BEWITCHED 269 Th^rigny. She passed into the garden, went quietly down the Stepway, and at seven o'clock arrived at Mornat's house. Her coming was welcomed with a feverish rap- ture. " You are prepared; " said her elderly lover, " so am I. What suspense I have been in ! Thank God it's over," " You appear to have nothing to regret in your choice of a wife ! " "Do not laugh at me. I can only think of one thing: how impossible it is for me to realize the surety of the happiness that you offer me." " As a wife who will still look regretfully behind her on account of vengeance unachieved." " Ah, I cannot hope that there 's anything in my devotion which will make you forget all that. Indeed I share your regret, and I shall not be slow to help you even yet in your aim." " I do not aim high. I have done with the Belle- rive and Pierresbleues women. But there's one of their creatures whom I yet must hope to have within my reach." " Martignac, no doubt." "No. What do you say to the creature these Basques call Ramon Zulueta ? " " You have said that you did not aim high. But tell me how it is possible for this tool of all others to be in your mind at a moment like this ? " " You surely know the pain I have been at to trace 270 A WORLD BEWITCHED him, and the certainty I have that he has taken the alarm and fled ? " "Yes. But certainly yoa can afford to laugh, if fear has made him a little more cunning than you ex- pected." " I see you do not quite know the person I wish to deprive once for all of the power of doing harm. This Ramon Zulueta is the very archer who shot the boat- man dead on the lake." " This is news." " At the hands of Ramon Zulueta, our readiest in- strument, Jules Dervaulx lost his life. I pass over the constant activity shown by this creature in thwarting us. You shall, in a word, know who this Ramon Zulueta is." " You send quite a thrill through me, my dear. Who, then, is the fellow ? " " Violante Erezuma." " Surely I am mad to suppose I hear you correctly." " You have your senses ; and keep them in order that you may remember that Violante Erezuma is the sister of a woman plainly convicted of witchcraft, and that in spite of the risk she ran, she has gone freely to and fro, mortifying and outwitting us all." "That's enough. If money and diligence can serve, she shall yet burn at the stake that was meant for her sister. And now you have something else to say ? " " I have someone to whom I promised to say good- bye." A WOELD BEWITCHED 271 " I think I can name hinij" said Mornat, his face clouding. " If you take my frank avowal in that way, if you have no confidence in me, I shall remain silent/' " Of course it is Th^rigny ? " " It is. I have promised to receive him here in order that I may give him a plain proof as to where my inclinations lie." Mornat's face brightened. " Forgive me — with regard to him — and tell me — that you have no regrets." " There, there, I was to have bidden him a final good-bye here ; but when he comes I shall shut the door in his face." " No, no. My dear one, what have I been thinking of ? Am I so mean as to have no faith in you ? When he comes, you shall receive him with all kind- ness ; alone, if you choose. Afterwards he shall be my guest, and we three shall sup together for the last time." " You have supper laid out then ? " "Yes, my own. It is all ready in the next room. Trout, venison, wild boar, jellies ; and for wines, good yellow Peralta, crimson Tudela, Frontignac, Jurancon, and Burgundy. I was hoping against hope j and so I had made ready." " There's a step at the door now. It will be your guest," said Madame de Mercalme, whose ears had been on the alert. It was Therigny, and he was welcomed with hearti- 272 A WOELD BEWITCHED ness by Mornat. After a few moments of constrained talk, madame and the two gentlemen proceeded almost at once to the next room, and sat down to supper. All three ate and drank with the relish of good livers. But Therigny's manner was more constrained even than usual, and he avoided the eyes of Madame de Mercalme. At the end of half an hour the lady turned openly to Mornat, who sat beside her, and said playfully : " Go upstairs, dear, and say a prayer for our pros- perous journey to-night." Mornat, flushing with joy, rose at once and said : " I shall be down again in a quarter of an hour." " Now," began Madame de Mercalme, when she was alone with Th^rigny ; " what 's the meaning of these more than usually shifty looks ? What has happened ? " " We had better talk of that another time." " You shall talk of it now or not at all." " As you please." " If you give me another answer like that I'U call to the man upstairs, and make him fling you out of the door." " You will ? " " Take care, now. If he dashes you into the ravine, I shall not hold him back." " Call him, and I'll tell him of our compact ; the division of his goods that you and I propose to make." A WORLD BEWITCHED 273 A change came over Madame de Mercalme's face. Therigny and she had been speaking in rapid under- tones. In a more soothing voice she rejoined : " Wellj Raoulj this quarrelling of ours is very sad work. It rests with you whether this rupture shall be our last. Come, have you seen M. Billault ? " " I have." " Up at the house ? " " Yes. But I'll have to explain " " Oh ! . . . Then there 's an explanation ? " " A very short one. He was already at the house when I got there. ... I drew a knife, and called upon him to deliver up that which he had taken from the Lady Chapel at the Cathedral. . . . He staggered back. . . . I advanced. . . . But, all at once, he drew a pistol. ... I was not provided with firearms " Madame de Mercalme leant over the table and burst into a long, low laugh. Then raising her head and shrugging her shoulders she said : " Raoul, I must really make a confession to you once for all : I'm afraid I have a liking for bold men." " If you mean that as a hint for me to go away from you tamely " " Stay : you are too hasty. I mean it as leading up to a hint that I'll put you to one more test. We'll say no more of Billault. But you must surely know that when I invited you here to help me in out- manoeuvring the old man upstairs, I proposed what was neither a work of stupendous diflficulty nor a piece of absolute child's play." T 274 A WOELD BEWITCHED " I'm willing to run some risk." " Very good. Listen : for the man upstairSj I feel, as you know, the most unutterable abhorrence. Again, as you know, I am fond of you, though I laugh at you a little. Now, for the reasons touched upon : that we may both be rid of this man. . . . What measure of risk are you willing to run ? " " Put me on equal terms with him, and it shall not be a matter of conscience that shall stand in my way." " Shall I hold you to that ? " said Madame de Mercalme, slowly. " Try me," was the answer given in a panting voice. The lady, looking hard at him, drew a phial from her bosom. " I'll be bold with yon. In this bottle is a poison. If drunk with wine it stops the breath instantly, prevents the least outcry, and brings on death in one minute." " Well ! " faltered Th^rigny. " Your glass and his are empty. There, I fill yours , . . and leave a sufficient measure of his unfilled . . . to allow you to fill up the remainder from the phial." The blood vanished from Therigny's cheeks and lips as he watched her action. "1 hear him moving," continued the lady; " he is coming down." " Could . . . could you not pour it in ? . . . I share the responsibility " Madame de Mercalme smiled, and, without a word, poured the contents of the phial into Mornat's glass. A WORLD BEWITCHED 275 " I — I — had rather not be at hand while he drinks." " Go into this roonij then. I'll come for you shortly." He went into the roonij the door of which she held open. She closed it after him, and the next moment Mornat entered the supper room, and resumed his place. He looked at Madame de Mercalme in some alarm ; her face was apparently convulsed with emo- tion. He raised his glass. On the instant she rushed towards him, held him firmly by the wrist with the left hand, pointed with her right to the next room, and directed him silently to put the glass down. " Hush ! " whispered she in his ear, while she held up the empty phial in her hand ; " that man came here to destroy you. He wanted to make me his confederate in the murder. I can never forgive him. And now — think as you may of what I am about to do — and remember in whose defence I do it." She altered the position of the glasses, placing the poisoned drink by where Th^rigny would sit. Then she opened the dividing door, and said : " M. Mornat wishes to drink prosperity to you." Therigny, with a colourless face, re-entered the supper room, and saw seated at the table a visage as livid as his own. "I had forgotten, M. de Therigny," said Mornat, speaking in a very hoarse voice, and glancing at his glass, from which he had taken a sip. " I was going to drink alone, but I cannot do so while I have a guest in the house. Your health, monsieur ! " He drained his glass and set it down. Therigny lifted his 276 A WORLD BEWITCHED own glass at the same instant^ and swallowed half its contents. He drank no more. The glass dropped from his fingers to the table, and he himself fell with a crash to the ground. His face became a deep purple, I'ather as with strange fire than with returning blood. He made frightful efforts to speak. He was able to point wildly with his hand at each of those who regarded him. His eyes glimmered with an equal malignity upon both ; but in less than a minute every vestige of expression faded out of his visage. He sank back a corpse. There was a pause. The upstanding man and woman looked long and hard at each other. Madame de Mercalme was the first to break the silence ; and she spoke now with peremptory haste. " He cannot be left here. Quick ! the ravine ! " Momat roused himself with a desperate effort, opened the door, dragged the body out; there was a faint splash amid the roar of the ravine ; and he came back still in silence. " You said you were prepared," said the lady, after awhile. " I am. But you will let me rest for a few minutes. No, not in there," said he, glancing toward the supper room. Madame de Mercalme placed her hand lightly in his. He kissed it with a fierce tenderness, then sank back in his chair. Ten minutes later he arose. He would remove part of his belongings now ; the re- mainder at midnight. And, as he spoke, he turned to go upstairs. A WORLD BEWITCHED 277 Suddenly the outer door was burst open. A man bearing a crucifix entered first, and the room became filled with men-at-arms. " What's the meaning of this ? " demanded Madame de Mercalme. "We arrest you both by magistrate's warrant," declared an arquebusier. " On what charge ? " gasped Mornat. " On charges of witchcraft, preferred by one Barbara Monod, in temporary service with Madame de Mercalme." CHAPTER XVIII A Last Buent-Opfeeinq THE three other persons implicated with Madame de Mercalme and Mornat in the charges of wizardry were Boissec, Billault and Pinard. The cap- tures were skilfully arranged. The exorcised denouncer had been- able to give precise information as to the whereabouts of each of the accused. In dealing with such crafty allies of Satan it was needful to preclude the danger of a transmission of warnings from one to the other. At a given hour, therefore^ three distinct escorts of arquebusiers had appeared severally at Madame de Mercalme's house on the heights, at Mornat's dwelling on the bank of the ravine, and at Martignac's old shed in the Rue des Armuriers. ;^n the first-named house, Billault, scared this time out of all thought of resistance, was found alone ; Mornat and Madame de Mercalme, in the second, were surprised in the midst of their preparations for flight ; in the third, Boissec and Pinard were confronted with a gloomier climax to their terrors than the worst forebodings had built up for them. The five criminals were fast in gaol before midnight. A WORLD BEWITCHED 279 Meanwhile, neither Madame de Mercalme's house nor Mornat's was left without protection that night. Ten Basques, in two divisions, kept guard upon each until nine o'clock next morning ; then, as a result of an early interview between the mayor and Martignac, the guards were relieved by a number of neighbour- ing yeomanry, when, strangely enough, the Basques deemed it necessary to transfer their watchfulness to the gaol of Rochefendue. The trial of the prisoners was to commence on Tuesday morning. In the interval de Lancre was not idle ; he was early in communication with the mayor of the city, the deputies of the local parliament, the gaol authorities, and the accused persons themselves. He was informed that Th^rigny's body had been found wedged hard in the hollow of a rock of the ravine, that it had been recovered, that there were circum- stances, apart from the appearance of the corpse, which suggested that death had been caused neither by accident nor by self-drowning, and that certain of the prisoners might, with advantage, be appealed to for an explanation of the matter, De Lancre was not specially startled by this news ; he told his informants that he had come to Rochefendue to investigate charges of witchcraft, that points of evidence confined to these charges would be welcomed by him, if forwarded to his residence, where he was now going, and where he proposed to remain till late in the afternoon. Towards evening he would return to the gaol, and make a private examination of the prisoners with a view to 280 A WOELD BEWITCHED discovering upon them the mark of the devil. He purposed, in addition, to make a search in the dwellings of the accused. His experience would teach him where to look for serviceable testimony. No pains on his part should be spared that might guide him to a just course. He made these announcements in the prison, within a few feet of the cells of Madame de Mercalme and Mornat, which had been pointed out to him. He then departed, and a few minutes afterwards the governor, to whom he had been speaking, and who had only returned to his duty after several months of illness, left the gaol, and set out for the Hotel de Ville. Later on a warder stole hurriedly out of a side entrance to the prison, and was traced to the lodging of the judge. He was admitted, on the instant, to the presence of de Lancre, in whose hands he placed a packet ; then returned without a word. Being alone, the king's counsellor tore off the wrappings of the parcel. He bent first, with keen eyes, over a diamond ring; next he handled, with undiminished eagerness, a purse which proved to be filled with gold. He finally opened a letter, which he read with eyes that sparkled more than ever. Before noon the possessed woman of the previous night, the denouncer, who had remained for more than twelve hours under strict watch at the judge's residence, was permitted to go out. She did not return, and de Lancre, being uneasily reminded of the fact more than once during the day, was indulgent A WORLD BEWITCHED 281 enough to betray no indignation at the woman's prolonged absence. The goTernor of the gaol returned from the Hotel de Ville within an hour. On nearing the prison gate he was accosted by a Basque, with whom he remained in conversation for some five minutes. Not long after the governor's entrance, the prisoners were informed that they would be required to change their clothing. They were at liberty to send to their own houses for the necessary wardrobe ; or such limited supplies as the prison afforded would be placed at their disposal ; it being intended that as little inconvenience as possible should be occasioned to such distinguished inmates. The gentlemen would be assisted at their toilets by the gaol warders ; while the lady would have the services of members of her own sex. Half an hour later the warder who had proved so welcome a messenger to M. de Lancre was once more observed stealing towards the private egress. He was instantly seized and searched, and was then shut fast in one of the vacant cells. Towards nightfall de Lancre, on issuing from his house, was met almost on the threshold by the mayor. The two men had been acquaintances in Bordeaux, of which city both were natives. The mayor had come to carry off his fellow-townsman to the Hotel de Ville, to a banquet arranged suddenly, it might be, but specially, in honour of M. le Conseiller Eoyal. No ; the mayor would take no refusal. Time was of im- portance, no doubt, to M. de Lancre ; but this 282 A WORLD BEWITCHED business did not call for his attention till to-morrow. The banquet was ready, and those who had been in- vited were only waiting for the chief guest and the host. De Lancre was a good liver and a man of pleasure. He thought for a moment of the intentions he had confided to the governor of the gaol j but after events had made the fulfilment of those intentions not quite so urgent. Repressing, therefore, only a small measure of uneasiness, de Lancre turned affably with the mayor towards the Hotel de Ville. Nine o'clock next morning beheld the court of justice at the prison crowded beyond comparison with previous throngs. The judge was promptly in his canopied seat ; but he seemed tired and out of temper. The five prisoners were introduced, and placed in front of a strong body of halberdiers. Madame de Mercalme and Mornat were no longer in their travelling costumes. M. Billault's clothing difi'ered slightly from that in which he had been captured ; while Boissec and Pinard, seemingly exempted by revised instructions from the necessity of change, appeared in the garments worn by them night and day for nearly a week. The faces of the four male prisoners were marked by varying expressions of haggard terror, of fanatical defiance and despair, of ever unsubdued bewilderment. The serenity which long self- training had enabled Madame de Mercalme to stamp at will upon her countenance, was there on this day. Before the beginning of statements and interroga- tories, the governor of the prison hastened into court A WORLD BEWITCHED 283 and craved permission to address M. le Conseillor du Roi. He had been assured from a certain quarter^ he said, glancing towards the group of prisoners, that information was at the disposal of the court which would be highly conducive to the interests of justice. Might he make known without delay where this information was procurable ? " Assuredly," said the judge. The governor drew from within his hat four papers ; they were rather crumpled — notes addressed to himself by Billault, Boissec, Pinard and Mornat, to be com- municated at once to M. de Lancre. The notes were read one after the other by the governor with much impressiveness. In each document the writer bound himself solemnly, in exchange for a guarantee of pardon, to give evidence which would prove beyond question the guilt of his fellow prisoners. The governor, after leaving the papers on the judge^s desk, retired with a grave bow ; and the four male prisoners gazed in front of them, and added their distracted smiles to the merriment evoked by the disclosure. At the best of times de Lancre had an austere and unbending rule never to allow laughter in court, ex- cept at his own jokes. To-day he was in no jesting humour. He swept the four notes furiously off his desk, roared a threatening demand for order, and called testily upon the king's advocate to open the trial. The amount of evidence partly gathered by the 284 A WORLD BEWITCHED energetic greffier, partly pressed upon him, within less than thirty-six hours, was great and varied. He was familiar with the dialects of the neighbourhood, and lent a willing ear alike to the peasants of the valleys, the shepherds of the mountains, and even the mariners of the Vizeayan coasts, who had more or less reason to know the prisoners now under examination. The greffier was further able to interpret between the judge and some of the witnesses, among others the Basques, de Lancre being ignorant of the Euskaran language. The first evidence came from a group of witnesses whose appearance caused a thrill among spectators and prisoners alike. These were the fugitive servants from the household of Madame de Mercalme. By the previous prompting of the greffier, and under the guidance of the king's advocate, not one of these witnesses presumed to stray beyond a succinct state- ment of direct experience. The declarations thus arranged, while free from any profusion of colouring, combined to form an amazing picture of the economy of the fair house on the heights: the barbaric superfineness of profligacy in the mistress ; the varying traits of brutishness, avarice, fanaticism, irreverence, hypocrisy, falsehood, dishonesty, treachery — omniferous depravity, in short — of men who were at once her guests, her agents in villainy, and her con- genial lovers ; the successful horrors boasted of, the new and deadlier schemes of badness brought to birth 5 the atmosphere of crime and terror which morning, noon A WORLD BEWITCHED 285 and night, pervaded the household. The ferocious hunger for human lives, and the combined levity and eagerness with which fresh victims were privately marked down for death, were only equalled by the blasphemous claim put forth in public that each atro- city was committed for the advancement of religion. There was not a servant in the house but felt, as it were, the knife at his throat, or seemed to be tied to a scaffold, with the faggots burning under his feet. Not one of them could know whose turn might come next ; and so, after the flight of Madame's chief servant, the rest determined not to remain long behind. These revelations aroused mingled emotions among the audience. The impression received from them by the judge was of a more simple kind, and less favour- able to the witnesses. De Lancre would not avail himself of the right to question the prisoners upon such evidence. He made a splenetic allusion to a dis- course delivered in the Cathedral two nights ago, in which the assailants of witchcraft had been held up to execration as monsters. The preacher had claimed to be the son of the dismissed executioner of Rochefendue : but the executioner had significantly repudiated the parentage, and had strangely enough referred to the real father as one capable of causing everyone among them to tremble. The problem as to who was the cause of most terror and trembling in this world would be left by the judge to the solution of gentlemen of the church themselves j who often described a certain being as going about like a raging lion, seeking whom 286 A WORLD BEWITCHED he might devour ; a being, many of whose children, begotten upon witches, were still met with upon earth. However, de Lancre would not push too closely his dark surmise as to the real origin of the preacher in question. He returned to the evidence thus far adduced. The servants who had so basely abandoned their mistress, were, clearly, apt pupils, and perhaps from the same motives of interested alarm, of the priest who had denounced witch-finders. To conclude, he, the judge, must call for evidence telling more directly against the persons accused. Hearing this, the four male prisoners began to look a little less haggard. The king's advocate and the greffier whispered. Soon there was a movement among certain Basque sailors in court, and there came a new order of evidence, in which the greffier' s talent as an interpreter had to be exercised. Madame de Mercalme was distinctly identified as having been seen in Puenterrabia on a given day in June last. She had been noticed in company with a child. The child was afterwards found stabbed, dead, and partially devoured by wolves, and with its left hand cut ofi". A left hand, identified at the time by Fernando Vergara as belong- ing to the same child, had been discovered in the cottage of Dolores Brezuma, evidently placed there by order of the real murderess. Dolores had been falsely accused of witchcraft, and had died in despair, dragging down her accuser, who,in the moment of death,admitted having brought a false charge against her. The judge displayed some interest in this evidence. A WORLD BEWITCHED 287 questioning the witnesses^ and taking notes. Could anyone of them say that Madame de Mercalme herself had devoured the child, that she was, in short, a were- wolf? In answer to this a mariner came forward and de- clared, that last summer he had wandered to the foot of the mountain of Ahunemendi. Darkness came on. It was midnight. He saw the forms of two women. One was Madame de Mercalme; the other he recognized, from a description, as being the Maitagarri, or Fairy Queen of the Lakes among the Pyrenees. The Maitagarri made a signal. A table rose from under- ground. On the table stood a little child, and she was alive. The Maitagarri produced a gold-handled knife, and Madame de Mercalme first cut off the little one's left hand, then stabbed it to the heart. The women sat down on chairs of rock covered with moss, and began to eat the child. But soon they saw that they were watched. They looked towards the tree that sheltered witness. Then he was afraid, and he drew from his breast a scapular, dedicated to Our Lady of Aranzanzu, and kissed it ; and at once everything vanished and he found himself in his own home. De Lancre darted a pained glance at Madame de Mercalme, and took more notes. The next evidence was from some of the arquebusiers who had been sent to arrest M. Mornat and Madame de Mercalme. When on the side of the ravine farthest from Mornat's house, they had seen the door open, and Mornat in the torchlight standing over a body. He dragged the 288 A WOELD BEWITCHED body down the slope and flung it into the ravine. The body of M. de Th^rigny had afterwards been found hard by, and it was known that he had died from poison. This testimony was listened to with revived im- patience on the part of the judge. At an intimation from him a pause took place, that he might consult his notes. He then delivered a long and sagacious argu- mentj the main point of which was that he had been troubled with a mass of irrelevances. That the one grave and tangible piece of evidence brought before him had been the narrative of the Basque sailor con- cerning the connection of the prisoner Mercalme with the Evil Fairy of the Pyrenean lakes. That was a matter, again, in which the Basque authorities might claim jurisdiction. Meanwhile he would adjourn pro- ceedings for half an hour, in the hope that something more applicable to the issue might be brought before him. He rose from his chair, and turned to a room on his right, used for disrobing. No one was there; but from a room immediately beyond there came the sound of voices. The door of the room was not closed. He pushed it farther open, and found himself in the pre- sence of the Bishop of Rochefendue, M. de Martignac, "Victor de Bellerive, and the governor of the gaol. All four had their eyes turned towards a table, on which lay some small heaps of gold money, a quantity of superbly set articles of jewellery, and a still more numerous array of unmounted sapphires, diamonds. A WORLD BEWITCHED 289 rubies and emeralds. On the entrance of de Lancre, the governor bowed : " M. le Conseiller, you will now understand what I meant in saying that you would have found it impos- sible yesterday to search for the devil's mark on Madame de Mercalme. She had worked the greater part of these trinkets into a most costly breastplate for herself." The judge breathed hard as he looked at the table. " Were all these things taken from the prisoners ? " he inquired. " AUj monsieur." " You have done your duty, no doubt. Yet you may find that you have given yourself unnecessary trouble." " Will you tell me how, monsieur ? I have been so long away from here that I fear I have grown for- getful on points of discretion." At this moment the greffier entered. " These are questions," continued the judge, " in which you have only a secondary interest. It is enough to say that the charges against the prisoners are drawn up in a very unsatisfactory way. I find nothing to detain me over them." " Two, at least, are charged with murder." " And I came here to try them for witchcraft, of which little or no evidence is forthcoming. In short, it is likely that these jewels will have to be restored to those from whom you have taken them, M. le Gouverneur." u 290 A WOELD BEWITCHED " There, at least/' interposed the bishop, " I shall have something to say. I observe here a necklace stolen within the last two days from a statue of the Holy Virgin in the Cathedral." " And 1," said Victor, " must put in a claim to certain objects here which I recognize as belonging to Madame de Bellerive." "And in respect of the proposed search at the houses of M. Mornat and Madame de Mercalme," observed Martignac, "I am happy to say that M, de Lancre need give himself no uneasiness. The search has been made by order of the Mayor of Rochefendne, and whatever M. le Conseiller may desire to see in the interests of justice will be open to his inspection at the Hdtel de Ville." ''And may I venture to say in all humility," in- tervened the greffier, ''that M. le Conseiller du Roi has not heard the whole of the evidence in support of the charges of witchcraft ? " "Unless you have some strange witness in re- serve " " No stranger, M. de Lancre," answered the greffier; "no one whose appearance need surprise you." He went back to the robing-room, through which he had a minute previously passed, and returned almost immediately, ushering in Fernando Vergara, and the old servant in the white cloak. "Perhaps you will explain," said the greffier to Fernando. " This is M. de Lancre." " Oh, I am not ashamed to know M. de Lancre," A WORLD BEWITCHED 291 asserted the young maiij " I have seen him in Bayonne. He burned eighty people in four months. M. de Lancre works hard." " Be good enough to explain," urged the greffier. " Well, monseigneur and messieurs, this old woman stopped me in the street yesterday afternoon; a paper was in her hand. She does not know how to read, though she speaks well. Indeed she spoke to me like one of our bards of the Basque Mountains in telling me what she saw whilst with her last mistress. Well, she asked me to read the paper. I read it for her. It only said these words : ' You will set out at once for Bordeaux; and on calling at 15, Rue du St. Sauveur you will receive a second purse containing the same amount.' " " Here is the purse," added the old woman, ad- vancing; " it contains twenty pistoles. The last time I saw it was on Sunday. It was then in Madame de Mercalme's hand. I'll leave it on the table among these other bright things." " I cannot waste time in listening to the gossip of a dotard," exclaimed de Lancre, turning with a ma- lignant look towards the greffier. "If you have further evidence, bring it forward, and let me be gone from this pestiferous place." " I need not remind you, Monsieur le Conseiller," persisted the greffier, " that this is our most important witness, our only remaining witness, indeed. If she had not been forthcoming, the prisoners would merely have had to be put back on charges of murder and 292 A WORLD BEWITCHED sacrilege. I trust that nothing which has passed may prevent the witness from being heard." De Lancre made no reply : he had listened with sullen thoughtfulness. However, he returned in a more subdued manner to court, and the greffier followed him. The male prisoners had watched in a frenzy of impatience for the coming of the judge. They turned their faces towards him in hope of a renewal of the glances of something like reassurance which he had hitherto cast in their direction. They beheld only a flushed, discomfited visage, bent in gloomy absorption on a desk strewn with papers ; a visage from which those prisoners were never again to draw hope or con- solation. " Barbara Monod ! " cried the greffier. Madame de Mercalme smiled. The name was that of the servant whose brief engagement had proved so disastrous to her mistress. " Prepare to confess. Monsieur le Chanoine," whis- pered Madame de Mercalme to Billault, who was be- side her. The priest flashed upon her a look of haggard misery and rage, and gasped a curse. All other eyes were fixed upon the door to the right of the judge. The aged servant entered, and took her place in the little pulpit for witnesses. At first Barbara Monod's voice caused a few of the more light-hearted members of the audience to stare at one another. It was a voice weak, yet clear, in ordinary conversation ; but it was now subjected to a novel strain, and its abrupt rising and falling, in one moment to a child's treble, in A WORLD BEWITCHED 293 the next to an almost manly bass, called forth not a little subdued laughter. But even the limited im- pression made by this quaintness of enunciation soon wore off. The attention of the majority of the listeners was enchained from the beginning. And throughout the revelations now delivered, the judge in especial never lost his look of appalling gravity. And this was Barbara's tale : " It was on the third night of my presence in Madame de Mercalme's house. I was asleep in the little room she had set apart for me. She awoke me, and bade me come with her. We went down the Stepway, and reached the bridge of the ravine. There we found six animals which had the semblance of rams. Beside the rams were four men, MM. Billault, Mornat, Boissec and Pinard. It was close upon twelve o'clock, and Madame de Mercalme, turning to me, said that we were all going to the Black Sabbath." "No, no," exclaimed Mornat, in frenzied horror; "never in my Hfe have I been to that infernal gathering." " Nor I." "Nor I," stammered Boissec and Pinard with livid lips. " God ! — God ! " groaned Billault, " I am lost." The interrupters were sternly commanded to be silent, and the witness resumed : " The Cathedral bell sounded midnight. Madame de Mercalme mounted her own ram ; we imitated her example, and we all rose into the air. The sky was 294 A WORLD BEWITCHED clear and spangled all over with stars, and the moon was in its full round, and very bright. We rode above the lakes, above the tall pines, above the glaciers, above the snows on the tops of the highest peaks. We came to a valley in the midst of twelve mountains, and there we flew down, and leaped from the rams. We found ourselves in the company of perhaps five thousand persons, of all countries, of all sexes, of all ages. We had scarcely dismounted when there arose a sweet murmuring sound. It was the sound of golden wings fluttering, and of small bells chiming. And the wings and the bells were on the forms of a great number of fine creatures who mingled among us in the valley, and whom I knew to be fairies. "But not another moment had passed when the moon and the stars, which had until now been bright- ening the vale, were robbed of their fires, blotted out as if struck from heaven, and we seemed to be in the noon of a fair day. We lifted our eyes to the south, and saw nearing us, over the summits of the hills, a throng of spirits of large stature and of exceeding beauty. They moved in their flight towards a throne which had sprung up on the highest of the mountains, and he who seemed their commander ascended the throne. He looked down upon us ; and there came strange beams from his eyes, and his golden hair itself was brighter than the throne he sat upon. I could not sustain the lightning of his glances : yet I wanted to ask my mistress who this might be." " And who was it ? " inquired the judge eagerly. A WORLD BEWITCHED 295 "Who could it be, M. de Lancre," said a voice beKind the witnesa pulpit^ " but the arch-enemyj Satan himself?" " Silence ! " yelled the judge. Barbara turned to the interrupter. It was the Huguenot apothecary, who had given evidence in the proceedings against Madame de Bellerive. "It was Belial/' said the witness, addressing the judge. " I thought so," cried de Lancre with a gaze of blighting derision at the apothecary. " My experience of descriptions of the Grand Foe gives an entirely different impression of him. Continue, my good Barbara. I am pleased that you and I are under- standing each other better." Barbara made a reverence, and went on. " The chief spirit's ministers all stood at either side of him, on the crags that led up to his throne. He raised his voice, and every word he said could be heard down in the valley, and also, I was told, from point to point of the chain of mountains. He made excuses for the absence of Satan, who was, he explained, frequently over in England, helping the king there in a Calvinistic translation of the Bible." Here there was a groan of dismay from behind the witness. " He then said that he would call upon those who had done service to the powers of hell. The first name he cried aloud was 'Arnoulette de Mercalme,' and my mistress left my side, and was carried up by tall 296 A WORLD BEWITCHED shining demons to the throne. She gave an acoouni of what she had done during the past week, and ended by saying that she proposed to begin the next week with a murder." " And she kept her word," said the judge. " She was commended for her zeal and good inten- tions, and MM. Mornat, Billault, Pinard and Boissec were called up to receive their share of praise. Then Madame de Mercalme was presented with a golden goblet filled from a cauldron near the Demon's throne." "Did you hear what were the ingredients of this cauldron ? " inquired the judge. " The limbs and hearts of unbaptized children, the bodies of hanged murderers, cut down from the gibbet, carrion of tigers, of vultures, and of sharks, multitudes of vipers and toads, and phials of mandragora, bella- donna, and aqua Tofana." " Exactly," assented the judge. " The usual con- tents." " The four male prisoners received similar goblets. With these they are able to excite storms, to cast down towers, palaces and churches, to destroy harvests with hail, to transport themselves to the ends of the earth, to change men into beasts, or stones, plants, trees, into animals and men ; and finally to pull down the stars themselves from their places in the skies." " Then these prisoners are all high in favour with the infernal power ? " "All. But chiefly Madame de Mercalme, who is A WORLD BEWITCHED 297 known as Belial's paramour, and the Queen of Enchantresses." " I could have sworn it," said de Lancre. " Besides the goblet, she received a flaming sword, and with it led a dance of spirits through the air. Then she directed a concert of wonderful music, the demons playing golden harps and timbrels, and singing while in flight above the mountains. Again she struck with her sword one after the other of the eleven hills that surrounded the great throne-topped height ; at once fire broke out from the summits ; the snow and ice melted, and a palace with roofs and walls of gold, and pillars of diamond, spread over the vale from peak to peak of the circle of mountains. Of this palace the throne of Belial now became the central point. All present walked at will through the pleasure dome, and enjoyed its wonders. Lastly a rare banquet was spread, Madame de Mercalme was called up to sit beside Belial on his throne, and devils with shining wings flew about to attend on each guest." " You did not partake of this banquet ? " inquired the judge hastily. " I did not, seigneur. It was noticed that I put away everything; and Belial spoke to Madame de Mercalme. She said that I had not yet been made a witch; but that she had brought me to be received to-night. Then he looked down on me, and I shut my eyes, and shrank under the fatal majesty of his counten- ance. He told me to come forward at once, and swear allegiance to Satan. I kept my eyes closed, sank upon 298 A WORLD BEWITCHED my kneesj and made the sign of the cross. When I looked up again, everything had vanished." Barbara's tale was not tested on behalf of the prisoners.. No one accused of witchcraft could claim legal aid in his defence. A Bull of Pope Innocent VIII. had freed witch destroyers from the strepitu advo- catorum. The most fantastic stories were detailed by witnesses, pressed home with fanatical energy by the representatives of the crown, the prisoner was calmly enjoined to admit the truth of every statement made against himj and if he disputed a single particular in the charges, there were always means in readi- ness to bring home to him the wisdom of submis- sion. Boissec and Pinard were questioned first upon the testimony just given. It was with sinking hearts that they fell back upon their own experience, in the endeavour to fence with the interrogatories. They received an ominous hint that the questioning would be resumed in another form. Billault sobbed an inarticulate appeal for mercy. Mornat clamorously averred his innocence, and de Lancre turned with a sinister smile from them to Madame de Mercalme. " What have you to say, madame ? " " I confess," was the reply, delivered instantly, and without preamble, amidst murmurs of mingled relief and dismay from the entire audience. Madame de Mercalme had shown that she realized the hopelessness of defying the torturers. A WORLD BEWITCHED 299 "That's well. You admit, then, that you are BeliaVs " "Pardon me, Monsieur le Oonseiller. The state- ment of the witness has been fully taken down by M. le Greffier. You may draw up your sentence on the basis of that statement. I must die. Let that con- tent you.'' These words were delivered in the quietest of tones, and Barbara Monod, who had withdrawn from her place in the witness pulpit, was observed to raise her head hurriedly, and to lower it again in a thoughtful manner. But the statement had more potent results. It caused the whole of the male prisoners to burst forth into simultaneous admissions of guilt. " Why," said de Lancre, almost laughing in his fretful wonder at their hesitation, "there could not be a clearer case. No fair-minded person listening to that woman's evidence, could venture to deny a single word she has uttered." The sentences were pronounced, the death warrants were drawn up before night, and the execution was fixed for Thursday at noon. But the scaffold was not to be erected in the square before the Hotel de Ville. By an ingenious device of de Lancre for striking terror into evildoers, the burning was to take place in a spot resembling as closely as might be the locality where the Sabbath described by Barbara Monod had been held. It was a large fair vale, with few rocks on its oval surface. 300 A WORLD BEWITCHED almost entirely encircled by seven hills, and witt a slender brook singing at its northern end. It lay a mile to the south of Pierresbleues, Towards noon of Thursday, on a clear day of October, the eyes of fully three thousand persons, who stood or sat at different points of vantage among the hills over the vale, were turned upon an object strange amid such surroundings. It was a wooden platform twelve feet square, and raised four feet from the ground. In the hollow beneath lay masses of fuel, heaps of faggots, and a number of barrels of tar. Arranged in the centre of the platform, from east to west, were five masts, each backed by a broad sheet of iron. The platform, the masts, and the iron shutters were draped in black; and bound by chains to the masts were four men and one woman. Surrounding the platform stood a company of halberdiers; while, to the north, facing the victims, were a number of spectators, among whom might be recognized Bastache Gontaut, Trecart, Fernando Vergara, and the witness, Barbara Monod. It is doubtful whether the eyes of many onlookers, however interested in the other sufferers, remained long withdrawn from the figure of the woman. The last costume Madame de Mercalme was to wear, had been specially designed by M. de Lancre. It was a black robe wholly saturated with pitch, and rudely ornamented with crimson tongues of fiame. Around her neck was a large red kerchief, whose folds appeared to be made firm to the mast behind her, yet without A WORLD BEWITCHED 301 causing any hindrance to the movements of her head. On her bosom, in the centre of a ground of fiery tongues, was a crown of black horns, and on a band of flame colour under the crown was the inscription " Queen of Enchantresses." On her head was a black mitre, across which were painted the words : " Blas- phemer, Sorceress, Idolatress." The masses of her black hair were loosened, and they flowed all the more heavily down upon her shoulders from having been drenched, like her garments, with pitch. The condemned men were attired in almost similar fashion ; but with the marked absence of the crown of horns and the regal title with which their fair comrade in death had been distinguished. The usual form of sentence in recent years had been gagging, strangling and burning. The first part of the sentence owed its origin, naturally, to the incon- venience caused by the outcries, and retractations of confession, of culprits on the scafibld. In Rochefendue, the gagging had been almost invariably omitted ; and Boissec and Pinard, who possessed in common a taste for music, had contrived to drown the clamours of sufferers by the arrangement of a concert of drums and trumpets performed close to the funeral pyre. This day the strangling was to be omitted in every case, and only one of the five was gagged ; this was Billault. The reverend criminal's confession had been more elaborate than that of any of his colleagues. He had, among other abominations, frequently invited Satan to midnight supper in the Cathedral, where the 302 A WOELD BEWITCHED altar itself had served for a banqueting table. Billault bad, also, never omitted to secrete tbe Sacred Host at Mass J and the daily portions of tbe Eucharist thus reserved had been collected at the end of the week, to be taken to the Black Sabbath, and devoured by demons and magicians amidst unanimous mockery and blasphemy. Since Billault' s confession, however, his frenzy, his horror, his unspeakable despair, had aroused the alarm and uneasiness of everyone in charge of him. The bishop himself had been driven away by him with execrations ; had then been recalled, and had finally been deafened and confounded with wild reproaches, and suggestions of appeal to the Archbishop of Tou- louse, the King of France, and the Pope. Under these conditions it had been deemed prudent to gag M. le Chanoine Billault. Otherwise, no difference had been made in the arrangement whereby each of the condemned was to endure the unrelieved torment of burning. Until nearly twelve o'clock Madame de Mercalme had been looking here and there about her, with no ostentation of coolness, but with a simple, grave serenity. On the appearance of Barbara Monod, the lady had smiled ; and now kept her eyes almost con- stantly fixed on the hooded white cloak, and the thick brown veil of her betrayer. The minutes wore on, and many of the mountaineers glanced at certain points of the rocks ; and they knew from the change in the shadows that the hour of noon had come. The chief A WORLD BEWITCHED 303 executioner's preparations were ended, and he had withdrawn from under the platform. At that instant Barbara Monod, standing unimpeded in front of the scaffold, slowly raised her veil, and looked full at Madame de Mercalme. The condemned woman's face changed. There was a nearly imper- ceptible falling asunder of her firm lips, while a slight haggardness came round the lids of her eyes. In the woman confronting her she had recognized Violante Erezuma. For hardly more than a second did the ghastliness dwell upon the gazer's visage. Back to her lips and eyes came a smile usual with her, but softened ; and she bowed her head with a quiet grace, as in acknowledgment of an overwhelming and final defeat. In the next moment her eyes turned along the fore- most lines of spectators, and fastened upon a figure immediately behind two halberdiers. It was the figure of Bustache Gontaut. There seemed no deliberate invitation or earnest longing in the woman's look, yet there was an in- effable sublimity in her passiveness. The priest tore through the halberdiers, vaulted on to the platform, and stood beside her, while the exe- cutioners and other assistants exclaimed in alarm : " Come down, come down, M. le Cure ! " From beneath his feet was audible a sullen crack- ling ; and wreaths of pale smoke, intermingled with thin blades of fire, ascended, winding and curling through the crevices of the planks. " I could not see you in the prison," said Eustache 304 A WORLD BEWITCHED hurriedly. "You wish at last to end this unhappy war against God ? " " I do." A smile of more triumphant tenderness can never have been seen on human countenance than that which the young priest turned for an instant heavenward. Then he took from his breast a crucifix, and held it to her lips, and she kissed it. ■ " God bless you," she said. " Now think of your- self. Get down at once." " Recife, recipe animam suam," recited the priest with tears in his eyes, " dulcis Jesu, Fili Marice." " Go down," repeated the dying woman. Eustache leaped from the platform; but her eyes followed him : " Look to him," she cried, in tones, for the first time, of terror and excitement ; " his cassock is on fire ! Save him ! Save him ! " Twenty eager hands were forthcoming to put out the flame which had caught the garment of the most deeply loved priest in Rochefendue; andMadame de Mercalme smiled, and closed her eyes, and nevermore opened them in this world. " She was brave and noble, after all," said a woman, who just then rose with streaming eyes from her knees. " I have seen enough, good Fernando; take me away." " FIl go with you," said a hoarse voice. The woman turned with a start j and her face, with all its agony of shame and grief and remorse, was con- fronted by that of Tr^oart. Violante Erezuma bent A WORLD BEWITCHED 305 her headj and the two walked silently away togethei'j while Fernando remained behind. The smoke had by this time grown dense and black ; and the face and garments of the untrembling woman in the middle of the platform became entirely enveloped and barred from view. Then a wind which had suddenly arisen, a commencement of one of the hurri- canes of the Pyrenees, fought with the smoke and drove it off; and there burst up through the platform a roar of flame, which flashed on the figures of the men, but lit up with a special luridness of glory, the tranquil figure with closed eyes, chained to the central mast. The burning straw and faggots caught the garments. All around the scaffold blossoms of flame, as from an infernal garden, had been springing up in monstrous efflorescence ; and these rushed together and joined in a whirlwind of fire that shot up to the tar-drenched hair of the woman and encircled her once darkly radiant head. For a few seconds the countenance glowed with an appalling splendour through the awful aureole of blazing hair which environed it. Then the head sank with helpless heaviness. Higher and higher still darted the serpent-like flames, devouring the tall masts, making red-hot the chains around the bodies of the five victims. Bright eyes became bloodshot and sore, fair faces became grimy, brains became dizzy, with the rolling smoke and the furious blaze. Every inch of the platform was now on fire. Part of it gave way, and exposed a furnace from which the X 306 A WORLD BEWITCHED flames rushed up with tenfold fierceness. The top- most portions of the masts cracked and split, one by one, and bounded off the platform. The remnants of the masts, the sheets of iron, the planking, the form- less heaps coiled round by the white-hot chains, re- mained upright for some moments. Then there was a crash, and all plunged together into the volcano beneath. CHAPTER XIX On the Heights THE old year, with many of its worst forebodings accomplished, and its various glooms and alarms faded away, was at an end. A decree sketched and signed by the king, and filled in by Sully, had been received by the authorities of Rochefendue a week after the condemnation of the five prisoners by de Lancre. The document suspended trials for witchcraft, and, in a general way, discouraged the preternatural activity shown throughout the year in the exposure and destruction of seers, diviners, magicians, wizards, geomancers, and the like offenders. In answer to this decree there went back to Paris an energetic remonstrance from certain deputies of Rochefendue, unsigned, however, by the president of the local assembly or the mayor of the town. In the remon- strance there were copious references to the authority of Scripture, and the usage of all nations, in pronounc- ing the penalties of torture and death against practisers of sorcery. From the times of Gregory of Tours until now such a claim had never been disputed, and the appellants ended with a passionate protest against the 308 A WORLD BEWITCHED threatened deprivation of their privileges, and of their right to enforce respect for the law. A rejoinder came from Sully in which he expressed his pleasure that the point had been raised of constraining people to respect the law. The king might eventually have something to say with regard to the burning of private houses by frenzied mobs, the perfidious murder of families whole- sale, apparently organized by salaried officials now dead, and other deeds by which the deputies and people of Rochefendue had drawn attention to their city. Violante Brezuma had gone away before darkness fell upon the day of the burning and the scattering to the winds and waters of the ashes of Madame de Mercalme and her comrades in crime. Violante had not found courage to say more than a few words to Trecart on that day. She was less than a quarter of an hour with him after they had turned together from the place of execution. She left him abruptly, yet her trembling reserve of manner, the broken harmony of her voice, the gentleness in her eyes, drove away something of an agitated shyness which had marked his own attitude. ''You must go, then ? " he said. " It is better that I should," she faltered, " for a time, at least. Try to think the best of me." " You need not make that request, Violante." " Now that it is all over, now that I need no longer play the mountebank . . . ," she said, panting, and with eyes overflowing, " I feel bowed to the dust under A WORLD BEWITCHED 309 your feet. I never realized more surely than within this half hour how shallow and mean and vain all vengeance is. You will be wise, perhaps ... to give no more of your confidence to one so unworthy of it." Trecart smiled. "I know all, or I guess all," he said; "and I say with emphasis that I have seen nothing likely to cool the feeling I have towards you." She gave him her hand hurriedly, and turned from him. Violante''s way, on that momentous afternoon, had lain towards the Cathedral. She had found Bustache Gontaut there before her. In a conversation between them he had strenuously opposed a decision as to her future whereon she had consulted him. He had invited her to see him again at the end of three months. And that same night she had set. out for Fuenterrabia. Carmen, in her description of the combat between the two executioners, was unaware that Coillard had been wounded seriously in the breast. He had main- tained a complete silence about the fact. His agitation in the Cathedral had caused a deep cut, ill bound up by himself, to break out afresh. He had not been allowed to leave Pere Gontaut's lodging until danger from the hurt was over. He had then gone back to his own house on the heights, and his daughter had accom- panied him. Three months, then, had passed by. It was the 310 A WORLD BEWITCHED middle of January. The winter had been a hard one, its rigour was by no means gone, and the distress occasioned by the frost had been severer, perhaps, than usual. Yet there was a general opinion that, for years, no such happy faces had been seen as at present in Rochefendue. Fair women went to and fro, or sat peacefully in their arm-chairs, without darting haggard eyes on either hand as they walked along, without dreading to be seized in their very homes, and dragged away to dungeons, as practitioners of magic. Hearts that might, in times past, have been temperate in their emotions at a season like this, now expanded with a more fervent joy than they had known at the melting of the heaviest of snow falls, at the most prodigal blooming of early flowers, at the utmost bounty and loveliness and splendour that the spring had ever brought with it. Madame de Bellerive and Victor sat one evening in a small withdrawing-room of a house which they had taken in the Rue des Neiges. The difficulties which had so long faced them through the destruction of their house beyond the city walls had been recently obviated in a manner hardly foreseen by them. The young man's grand-uncle, a childless old soldier, had died before the end of the year, leaving them con- siderable hoards gained by fighting, pillage, and general adventure, in the wars of the bygone century. Victor had this day returned from a visit to Mar- tignao in the country, and had, in fact, only within the last hour changed his travelling dress. A WORLD BEWITCHED 311 " Then, M. de Trecart did not come back -with you ? " said Hs mother. " He will be here to-morrow with Martignac. When I left them this morning they were on the way to Toulouse ; they seemed interested in certain antiquities of the town — or rather, Martignac did." " Antiquities ? " " Well, local history or legend of a quarter of a century ago. Martignac spoke of his curiosity having been revived of late about a poor girl who had been burned for witchcraft about that time. I forget the name. He said he had told the tale to you." " Am^lie Godard ? " " That 'b it. Tour memory 's better than mine." " The unfortunate girl seems to have made a strong impression on M. de Martignac," mused Madame de Bellerive. The room in which mother and son sat was not well lighted. Behind them was a single torch of hemp-rope and resin, suspended by a thin chain of brass from an iron ring in the ceiling. The log-fire on the hearth before them had been but recently enkindled, and had not yet sprung to a full blaze; and still, through the intermittent gleams, the young man had been able to watch his mother's face during her last remark ; and he compressed his lips, and a merry sparkle was in his eyes. " For reasons which I cannot make out," he said, " Martignac is undoubtedly interested in the fate of that girl; but I think, mother, we should not be in 312 A WORLD BEWITCHED too much haste to put a meaning of our own on his action. Whether Martignac has gone through life with a heart unscathed up to now, I cannot say . . . and I have no right to inquire ; yet you may take my word for it that in the present case there is no ques- tion of sentiment in his motive/' Victor, while speaking, had still occasionally watched his mother, and again he smiled as he observed that the thoughtfulness of a few moments earlier had cleared from her brow. " Well," she said, " I am waiting to hear what other news you have for me." " My other news will bring back memories which we must gradually do our utmost to forget. I cannot say that what I have learnt is of great importance ; it is rather likely to strengthen suspicions already formed than to awaken surprise by novelty. For several weeks past Martignac has been approached by the discharged servants of Madame de Mercalme ; they were suffering from hardships, they were anxious for employment. He questioned them, relieved them, but could not venture to take to himself, or recommend to other people, men who, though truthful, no doubt, were on their own showing such confirmed and shameless eavesdroppers." " They would have had something to say of Th^rigny, no doubt ? " " He was the laughing stock of the entire house- hold. The mistress knew him to be a poltroon, a traitor, a liar; ghe often expressed her wonder and A WORLD BEWITCHED 313 amusement at such a man having devoted himself to robbery as a profession ; she reviled and ridiculed him for his constant blunders in every mission intrusted to him ; yet she never failed to make use of him in her various undertakings." " Her aimj clearly, was to bring the greater humilia- tion on those against whom she had a grudge, by set- ting up that unfortunate man, with all his despicable qualities, as their antagonist. He was, of course, pushed into the betrayal of Carmen ; and in the insane scheme of following up Henriette — of which she knows nothing herself up to this day — his bewilderment must have quite equalled his malice in being forced into such rivalry. By the way, it was he, of course, who struck you down in the wood at Pierresbleues, was it not ? " " Yes, and singularly enough, I owed to the lady herself my preservation from outright stoning to death; though there again I was less indebted to her humanity than to her urgency in packing off the assassin on an errand calculated most effectually to bring about your ruin and mine." " Well, she tired of employing him at last," " In that matter also these gossiping runagates have their surmises ready. Mornat's confession was, no doubt, literally correct ; but they refuse to believe that Madame de Mercalme had any other intention than to kill Mornat himself. They think it was a callous afterthought that made her slay Th^rigny. She may have meant, after all, to entice Billault, the greatest villain by far of the three men, into destroy- 314 A WOELD BEWITCHED ing her accoinjalice in the murder of the youngest of them." " Then/' said Madame de Bellerivej gloomily, " she would have trusted to herself to kill the last survivor. And Billault — had they much to say of him ? " " They claim reasons for assuming that he had been a witch-hunter many years before the outbreak here ; that he had begun the pastime in Toulouse at least a quarter of a century ago. There you have my dismal record. And now what have you to tell me ? " " Only what you may learn in a few words. Carmen tells me that she expects Violante to-night. They, too, have had an access of fortune from friends in Tolosa." " La Faille will be sorry, in a way, for that. He was trusting that good news would come from his side alone " " Then have all of us treasures falling from the clouds at our feet ? " " No. La Faille has merely received a lieutenancy in the King's Musketeers. But I am interrupting you." " Our good Fernando is to be married to Georgette Coillard, and I have insisted on paying the girl's dowry." " And if ever they want a roof over their heads, may I be reduced to beggary myself ! " said Victor. Here a servant entered the room and gave a note to Madame de Bellerive. " From Mademoiselle de Parthenay-L' Arehev^que," he said. A WORLD BEWITCHED 316 His mistress glanced through the paper^ and turned to him. " Tell the messenger we shall answer this in person." " It seems brief/' said Victor. " Here it is : * I have intelligence, conveyed in a mysterious way, that the king is within ten leagues of our neighbourhood. Should he call at Pierresbleuea, I hope you will be here to keep me in countenance.' " " And you answer this in person ? " said Victor, eagerly. Madame de Bellerive laughed. " Does not this repay you for my neglect to tell you anything about her ? " " What had you to tell me ? " " She has been with me, or I have been with her, every day for the last week, and I have been wearied to death with talk of the perfections of some one who was absent from here. There, make ready at once to accompany me." Martignac and Trecart arrived from Toulouse not many hours after Bellerive, and spent the evening at the house of the Mayor of Rochefendue, A little after nine o'clock next morning Trecart was passing by the western portal of the Cathedral when he heard his name called in a voice that made him turn gladly. At the back of the portico, with his hand resting on the half-open little door that was fashioned into the large gate, stood P^re Gontaut. Trecart hastened forward, and greeted him with the 316 A WORLD BEWITCHED geniality and affectionate respect which had known no wavering in his intercourse with Pere Eustache. " I have a penitent in here/' explained the priest^ " to whom I am repeating the same advice that I offered three months ago. I can do no more ; the rest, M. Tr^cart, I leave to you." Tr^cart's face flushed. The little door was pushed further back, and Violante Erezuma stood on the threshold. Trecart raised his hat in silence, and with visible emotion, to the priest, took Violante's unresisting hand, and led her out of the portico. " May I guess what the advice was that our good Eustache gave you, Violante ? " said Trecart. " I have had many sharp words from him, both in his conversation and in his letters. But I have not been sorry. From first to last he has given me great comfort." " So you felt remorse for what you had done, and you thought of going into a convent ? " " I noticed certain things on the day of the trial which made me doubt whether that unfortunate woman was wholly bad. However, when I went out to the Valley of the Seven Hills, on the day of her execution, I still clung to the purpose, which I had long cherished, of revealing myself to her, while she stood bound to the stake, of glorying in the shame, and misery, and annihilation of all hope, of her dying hour. This I literally did. And what was the result ? She gave me one look, a frank, mournful look, such as A WORLD BEWITCHED 317 a soldier might give when he surrenders his well-tried sword after a last battle. In a moment her position and mine were reversed. The patient cruelty with which I had woven my nets around her, the remorse- less treachery with which I had blackened my soul with lies to murder her, the whole inexpressible sordidnesa of my triumph became clear to me. T, in my turn, recognized that she was the conqueror, that I was the vanquished. She who stood there, chained and help- less, had struck me to her feet, and I shrank from before her." " My poor Violante, it could never, at the worst, be a mean spirit that would view the matter in this light. For the rest, you should remember a very old adage. It is one of the rules of war that each antagonist should be fought with his own arts." " An adage that never was out of my head in those days. But it afforded me small comfort at that moment ; and what followed made it seem more hollow and pitiful than ever. She who had been so long hard-natured became subdued and tender. Her final haste to be at peace with the good Saviour might have worn, at first, the usual likeness of selfish repentance in the hour of death. But in that same hour she had become thought- ful for others. Her visage, so long schooled against the betrayal of emotion, was now agitated with generous fear on behalf of another ; at such a moment she could raise her voice in piteous alarm and anxiety for the danger threatening Pere Gontaut; the last smile of the woman who was perishing by one of the 318 A WORLD BEWITCHED most frightful of deaths was one of thankfalness at the escape from harm of a fellow creature. Then, at what I had heard, at what I had seen, I, who had come there, in the tigerish voracity of revenge, to remain and see that very woman's ashes flung to the winds, I, the traitor, the spy, the liar, the murderess, who had brought about her death : I sank in the dust. I felt that I had nothing before me but to take my shamed eyes and crushed heart away from the world, and to give up what life was left to me in imploring the mercy of God." Trecart bent his head, the tears falling from his eyes. " I am not sorry to have heard this," he said, after a pause. " But I must place this contest, so strangely entered upon by you, in a different light than that in which you view it. Not to pain you, I shall choose no name for special remark out of the five persons who have suffered. I take them in their concerted power for wickedness. It would be monstrous to say there is no sincerity anywhere in these trials for witchcraft. There are witnesses and judges who are passionately sincere, madly sincere. The persons against whom you fought were not sincere. Theirs was an engine of deliberate crime j a calm selection of every shade in the blackness of evil that could unite to make up a combination of universal infamy. To break up this deviUsh machinery, you came forward with your life in your hands. I see in you the heroine who, in many a critical moment, stood ready to beat A WORLD BEWITCHED 319 down dastardly foes, to save loyal friends, to avenge a sister's death, to save another sister from a worse death. There must have been uncountable times when a slight negligence in the completeness of your disguises, an unguarded look, a momentary loss of the control of your voice, could not have failed to betray you to im- mediate ruin. And if you kept your wits from first to last, so much the worse for the scoundrels who dared you to the struggle." They had wandered round the cloisters, and another pause here ensued. Then Tr6cart resumed : "And so we get back to the advice which Pere Eustache gave you, when you proposed to enter a convent." ''He stood out resolutely against the notion. He said that those who withheld happiness which they had power to confer on others . . . were often as much to blame as deliberate workers of evil." " And what more ? May I be encouraged to thank the young priest for so excellent a maxim ? " " He gave me three months to consider whether I could go into the cloister with an undivided heart." " And the three months are ended, Violante ? " " They ended last night, and I gave him my answer this morning." " Was the answer yes or no ? " " It was no." " Will you give me a hint ... as to the one whose 320 A WOELD BEWITCHED happiness you care for — ia whose favour you renounce this life of loneliness ? " he continued. " If you can ever forgive me " she faltered. " No, I will not hear that," said Trecart firmly. " If you think I can make you happy " " My own Violante," cried Trecart. " This is the answer I have longed for since first I saw your face. Let others think as they please, whatever need you may have through life of defence, of consolation, of love, you will find to the last supplied in my heart." Eustache Gontaut had watched the two with a smile as they moved away from the portico. Then he had re-entered the Cathedral and gone to the vestry. He came out soon in a costume sometimes worn by him in the winter ; a shortened cassock, that left the movements of the legs free in toiling through the snow. He had scarcely passed beyond the portico when a verger hastened after him. ''Pardon, M. Gontaut, are you not going up the hills ? " " I am, Veuillot." " Will you please to take your hunting knife ? Here it is." " What should I do with it ? " inquired Eustache in smiling surprise. " The wolves have come down lower than usual, and monseigneur blamed us last week for letting you go without some kind of weapon. I shall fetch an arquebuse, if you please." A WORLD BEWITCHED 321 " No, no ; this will do, Veuillot. FU so far save you from further trouble with monseigneur." And he took the knife and went on his way. Though the frost had been sharp this winter, the snow was perhaps less deep than usual upon the mountains, and the sure-footed priest was little more inconvenienced than in the summer in passing reach after reach of the great Stepway. He paused at the first distinct break in the ascent, and looked to the right along the pathway that led to two houses. One was the untenanted, yet not uncared-for, house which had often attracted his notice. The other was the home of Coillard, Eustache thought of his public confession in the Cathedral and of the interference which had made the revelation abortive, and had enfolded the mystery of his origin in thicker darkness than ever. For the executioner, after his recovery, could not be persuaded to add anything to his dis- claimer at the end of the sermon. The priest lingered but for a moment's contempla- tion of the two houses, then he resumed his journey. He passed, with eyes lowered, the abandoned house of Madame de Mercalme ; and so far the silence around him had remained unbroken. But as he continued the ascent, there came to his ears a yelling and baying of mastiffs and bloodhounds, an occasional grunting of other animals, a glad, excited clamour of men's voices, and all the confusion of sounds likely to proceed from a hunting party among the frost-bound hills. Eustache was no sluggard in the chase, and his y 322 A WORLD BEWITCHED pursuit of the deer and the wild boar had often resulted in the weloome addition of rare haunches of venison and huge quarters of ham to the supply of the Cathedral refectory. He was now truly glad that he had accepted the knife from the verger, and he mended his pace in the hope of joining the hunts- men. But on nearing the spot where the solitary house of Dolores Brezuma had stood, he became aware of less joyful sounds than those which had first fallen upon his ears. There had burst forth, almost in the same moment, a shout of dismay, a cry of half hu- morous vexation, a sort of triumphant growl, and a slight crackling noise, as from the inefiectual firing of a gun. The priest hastened up to the level of the burnt cottage, and turned his gaze to the right. On the flat rock by the edge of the chasm stood a huntsman without a weapon. Five paces nearer to the precipice lay another man, with a musket evidently struck beyond his grasp. And approaching the man on the ground, and already within six feet of him, was a large brown bear. Eustache needed no explanation. With a reassur- ing wave of the hand to the unarmed man, he bounded forward. In a moment he was bestriding the prostrate huntsman, and confronting the bear. He waited till it had come within reach of his knife, then he slashed it slightly across the muzzle. The blow was evidently intended to divert the full vengeance of the animal towards himself. With a roar in which surprise appeared to mingle with its ferocity and pain, the A WORLD BEWITCHED 323 creature shifted ground. It moved aside, and stood with back to the north, and with hind feet less than two yards from the edge of the gap. On the instant Gontaut calmly swung his left foot from over the fallen man, and advanced with unfaltering deliberation towards the bear. He was within a yard of it, when, with a growl of exultation the animal stood up on its hind legs in readiness for a secure and fatal clutch. Eustache darted his right hand forward, his knife was buried up to the handle in the broad breast before him J and the bear tottered back, and rolled down the tremendous chasm. The incident, from the time of the priest's appear- ance, had not occupied more than a minute. The man who had slipped was now on his feet. He was of middle height ; his hat, which had fallen, lefb dis- played a broad forehead and hair almost entirely white. He had a healthy florid complexion, eyes of great vivacity, a large aquiline nose, a firm yet good- humoured mouth, and a prominent chin. " So," said this man, looking earnestly at Gontaut, "you care for bodies and souls alike, Monsieur le Cur^." The other man now came forward with a hat in his hand, which he gave to the person who had spoken. " Allow me," he then said, " to congratulate M. Gontaut on the excellent use he makes of gifts from friends." " M. de Eohan ! " exclaimed the priest. " Ah, you know each other ? " said the first speaker. " Then I must not be the one stranger in company. 324 A WORLD BEWITCHED Accept, Monsieur le Cure, the grateful acknowledg- ments of the King of France." Gontaut shot a quick, confused glance at Rohan's pleased face, then sank on his knees, and kissed the hand which the king had held out to him. The two distinguished huntsmen had evidently be- come separated from the main party, several of whose members now hove in sight. " Will they have seen anything, cousin ? " inquired the sovereign. " They have only this instant come round the high cliff, your majesty." " Send them back, and give no explanation." A few minutes later, the king, the duke and the priest were going together down the Stepway. " I have not offered you my own warm thanks," whispered Rohan to Gontaut, when they became separated from the monarch in the intricacies of the descent, " I shall find a better time than the present. His majesty and I have to make a call hereabouts." " Can I be of use to you as a guide, monseigneur ? " " We have not far to go. The first turning to the left. Tou and I have met there before." " Not the abandoned cottage ? " " The same. Tou remember the flower I gathered to take to a friend ? " " I do. I have thought of that since, monseigneur." " My friend was the king," When they came to a halt below, the king turned to the priest. A WORLD BEWITCHED 325 " Does your way take you in the direction of Pierresbleuea ? " " It shall do so. I hope your majesty will do me the honour to command me in all things necessary." "Tell my cousin. Mademoiselle de Parthenay to look for the coming of the Due de Rohan and myself to-night." " Willingly, sire." " If I thought my cousin would forget to invite my messenger, I would add something to the commission." " May it please your majesty, I had been requested by Mademoiselle de Parthenay to call at Pierresbleues this evening." "That 'swell." The priest went down the Stepway, and the king stood gazing after him. " As I looked into his face," he observed to Rohan, " I found it needless to hope that he would let me have the grace of telling others what I owe to him." " Tour majesty is right, he is no braggart." " Well," said the king, with a sigh, "let me see this house again. The first time for twenty-five years." The good King Henri supped with royal heartiness that evening at Pierresbleues, and did not scruple to draw attention to the fact himself. "Mesdames," he said to his young hostess and to Madame de Bellerive, " I have inherited this appetite from far back ancestors. Gluttony was the original sin of our first parents, and I fear that I am proving myself to be a deplorable sinner to-night." 326 A WORLD BEWITCHED After supper a letter was brought to Martignao, who was of the party. Soon afterwards he and the Dae de Rohan craved permission to retire for an hour or so. They came back at the end of two hours, and Henriette led the way to the chief withdrawing-roomj and turning almost at once to the king, said : "May I now remind your majesty of the tale of adventure which you promised us ? " " Say, rather, the tale with which I threatened you, cousin, for I fear it will lose in the telling." He narrated Bustache Gontaut's exploits, however, with something of a vivid enthusiasm that greatly moved his hearers, of whom the young priest was not one at that moment, he having been called out of hearing by Martignao. "I am not a boaster," concluded the king, "yet respect for truth compels me to admit that I behaved with exemplary patience and coolness under circum- stances of the most exhausting inactivity. What do you say, de Rohan ? There 's my cousin, de Rohan, who requires a signal as from a trumpet call to laugh at my most admirable jokes." When the company broke up for the night, Martignao found that he was going part of the way with Bustache Gontaut, and the two went out to- gether. As Rohan led the king to his room in the chateau, his majesty turned full to him at the door, and said : " You are really more grave than usual to-night, Henri." A WORLD BEWITCHED 327 Rohan's manner was agitated, though marked with a respectful kindliness. " I shall have something of importance to tell your majesty to-morrow," he said. And the king turned thoughtfully into his room. CHAPTER XX The "Pathee" of his People NEXT morning M. de Tr^oart and Pere Bustaclie came out together from the young priest's lodging in the Cathedral precincts. It was a modest lodging, no more than a single cell, with a floor of stone, and a very small window. Its movables con- sisted of an arm-chair, which served at night as a bed, two chairs, a table with a few books, a sand-glass, an image of the Virgin Mother, and a crucifix. " I had my tale out, father,'' said Tr^cart, in a kind tone, ''before I noticed that something must have disturbed you. At such a time, we worldlings feel selfish." Eustache did not seem to have had a good night's rest ; and there were traces of tears in his eyes. " My dear M. de Tr^cart," he said with an effort at cheeriness, " have no thought for me. Keep to your ideas of any way in which my poor efforts may be of service to you. I am asked to perform this marriage. My time shall be regulated by yours." " Tou can guess the kind of explanation she and I have had." " Much of what I heard from herself," replied the A WORLD BEWITCHED 329 priest gently, " was under the seal of a sacred con- fidence, and can, of course, form no subject of discussion even with you, who love her so dearly. StiU there are outside circumstances which permit me to guess." " You did not recognize her up at the execution three months ago f " " I did not. All my senses were filled with the knowledge that one sinner who stood there, had, no matter under what inspiration, given her heart up to God in the moment of death. Had I suspected the truth, it is possible that I would have done what lay in my power to stop the execution even at that last moment.^' " And no one could have blamed you." " Remember, however, that my interference would have been in the interests of stern and loyal justice ; not of free pardon. We who have . . . they who have Basque blood in their veins, have, rightly or wrongly, shown from time almost beyond record, how fatally those enemies are likely to rue it who challenge them to a rivalry of vengeance. The Basques would not have been cheated of their lawful satisfaction. A mass of evidence had been slowly accumulating, which would perhaps have insured to those five persons an even more lingering death than that which brought to an end their career of outrage against God and man." " And poor Violante knew that while such evidence was being thus deliberately gathered, false witness, torture, murder, went on almost without interruption.'^ "Of all things, M. de Tr^cart," said Eustache 330 A WORLD BEWITCHED hastily, " never think that what I am saying is meant to dishearten you or Violante. You love her, and I distinctly say, in face of what has passed, that she de- serves to be loved. Let me put the matter with extreme plainness. Violante has been guilty of artful lying, of perjury. She has taken a leaf out of the books of hundreds, of thousands of liars, who for centuries have scattered misery and death by their words in courts of justice. Their victims have been blameless. Hers were among the most unparalleled villains my imagination or experience, of devils or men, can possibly make me acquainted with. Other wit- nesses go about vaunting of the innocent blood they have drunk, and thirsting for more. She came to lay down at the feet of Christ a heart broken beneath its weight of shame and sorrow; she proposed to expiate her guilt by a life of lonely penitence. The grief for what she has done is in her heart, and will remain there." " I can testify to that." " If a stain, constantly cleansed by tears of remorse, must continue to be viewed with horror and execration, who among us would be encouraged to repentance ? " " How glad ... I am ... to have come to you this morning ..." faltered Trecart. " If she had been hard, implacable, exultant in the crowning triumph of her vengeance, I think you would still have loved her, M. de Trdcart," said the young priest with a smile. " For she is like Judith, who ensnared Holofernes and slew him : she is of a goodly A WORLD BEWITCHED 331 countenance, and very beautiful to behold. But, my friend, she is more than that. If she has deviated from the right way, it has been that she might over- take, and crush, the spirit of badness. Wicked lives have been lost through her; good lives have been saved. From first to last, in her championship of the weak, in her fierceness, in her openness to the impulses of mercy, she has proved herself a true woman. I say again that you are right in loving her, and my prayers and blessings will be with you both, through all your future." Treoart grasped the priest's hand and wrung it, without being able to utter a word. They had walked away from the Cathedral boundaries, westward. They were about to pass the Hotel de Ville, when a man, hastening down the steps of that building, cut short their progress, and deliberately stood before them. He was a stout, well-preserved man of fifty-five, somewhat more richly dressed than accorded with the fashion of the time, and having the air of one ill at ease, yet not sorry to be seen, in such finery. He was a man who held a rather prominent position in the local affairs of Rochefendue, and with more than the average assurance of people of his class. An ardent believer in all the prodigies of witchcraft, he had been greatly distressed at the overthrow of the witch-finders three months back. Though he would not be daring enough to dispute the evidence as to the Black Sabbath, he had a vague and grave doubt as to whether, on the whole, there had not been a mis- 332 A WORLD BEWITCHED direction of justice. He remained, in secret, a special eulogist of the virtues of the late M. Billault, and a mourner of that champion of the church and the law. " Messieurs," said this person, " I grieve to stop you. My excuse is that I am urged to do so by good- will towards M. Gontaut." Tr^cart and the priest looked in silence at each other. " To me, monsieur ? " said Eustache. "I believe you are a frequent visitor at Pierres- bleues ? " Eustache smiled. " There are, no doubt, many things which you believe, monsieur. I shall be far more edified if you will explain." " You will be wiser if you receive the explanation alone.'" " Tour language is extraordinary, monsieur. But, unless M. de Tr^cart has matters of importance to attend to, I know of no secrets between you and me that he should not share." " I will stand by with pleasure," said Tr^cart, " on condition that this gentleman, whose name I do not know, behaves in a civilized manner." " My name is Motteux, and I require no lessons from anyone on questions of propriety." " We shall see." " Come, M. Motteux, we are waiting, "urged Gontaut. " May I ask if you are going to Pierresbleues now ? " inquired Motteux. A WORLD BEWITCHED 333 " I am going there." " One thing more, before I come to my business with you. Have you heard of any special visitors being now at the castle ? " "Visitors are there, certainly." " Do you know/' said Motteux, in thrilling tones, " that his majesty the king is there? " " I know it. But your explanation ? " " Well, sieur cur^, I will give it." " Sieur bourgeois," cried Tr^eart, " I have warned you already." " What of your warnings ? My business is with the cure, and I know of no right of yours to interfere," " It ■'s a right Til take," retorted Trecart, while ominous fires concentrated in his eyes. "You shall not receive another warning. Should you again prove that you are unable to control your native brutishness, I'll strike you to this gentleman's feet and trample on you." The colour left the fat man's cheeks. " Monsieur, . . ." he stammered, " you do not understand to whom you . . ." " Come, Monsieur Gontaut," said Trecart with a contemptuous laugh, " this is a most foolish mystery. You are undoubtedly too good-natured to spend more time over it." "Wait," said the intruder, after a pause, during which self-importance and dismay struggled through the pallid malignity of his visage ; " the explanation I have to give may cause M. de Trecart to regret having 334 A WORLD BEWITCHED treated me in this manner. It is in regard to the sus- pension of trials for witchcraft in Rochefendue. His majesty has been graciously pleased to consent to re- ceive this day, at Pierreshleues, a deputation of those interested in opposing the suspension. I am appointed to head the deputation/' He paused to note the effect of his words ; then resumed : " It has long been notoriouSj M. le Cur^, who has been most anxious to deprive Rochefendue of its privileges in this respect." " I hope they are privileges that will never be re- stored," said the priest, calmly. " Exactly," retorted Motteux, with a grin of rage ; " and it is now known what interest you, above all men, have in opposing our rights." Gontaut could not suppress a start, and the speaker went on with increasing confidence : " Yes, Monsieur le Cur^, things are coming to light. The revelation with which you ended your sermon on a certain memorable evening in October last will be completed this day. A paper found in the cell of M. Billault after his death, but only made known to us by the mayor last night, conveyed a suspicion of grave interest to yourself, Monsieur . . . Monsieur Gontaut. That suspicion has been confirmed this very morning by the dismissed executioner, Coillard. The knowledge thus acquired I shall have the honour to communicate to his majesty this day. The horror with which you have always regarded trials for witch- A WOELD BEWITCHED 335 craftj the heartiness of loathing and hatred with which you have condemned the witch-finderj shall no longer be left unexplained. The danger which you rauj if a truth hidden for a quarter of a century were known, shall be made clear. The mother " " Stop ! " cried Eustache. His face had turned a deadly white ; his lips quivered ; an almost super- natural lustre blazed in his eyes. He spoke in a rapid, suffocated voice ; " I am an ordained priest of God . I shall do what I can to stifle my passion j but I tell you plainly, that if you are wise — nay, I will say it — if you value your life . . . you will tempt me no further.'" The man cowered from before the spectre of wrath thus evoked by him, and, with a remnant of baffled spite in his manner, turned away. The two friends walked on together in silence till they had passed the west gate of the town, Trecart stealing an occasional side glance at Gontaut. After awhile a tear gathered in the young priest's eye, and Trecart immediately faced him. " My dear, dear Eustache," he said in a trembling voice, " what is this ? You who comfort others, will you allow no one to share your sorrow ? " " It is too soon for me to go to Pierresbleues. Can you spare time to take a walk with me ? " " My full time is at your disposal." " Come then. We shall afterwards call at Pierres- bleues together." A little after eleven o'clock that morning the king came out of his rooms at Pierresbleues arm-in-arm 336 A WOELD BEWITCHED with the Due de Eohan, wto had been helping him to dress. His majesty, careless in general about matters of costume, seemed this day to have taken a freak of showing his person to such advantage as his wardrobe would permit of. His ruffs and rebatoes were spotless ; his long russia leather boots and stiffened-out trunk hose were not more ungainly than usual; while his pourpoint of white satin had acquired an additional richness from the large gold cross hung over it. " Make no excuses, my dear Henri," said he, ''A predecessor of mine made a companion and favourite of a hangman who was in active service. Why should I not spend a few minutes in the society of one who has quitted the profession ? " " Your majesty is aware," said Rohan, hesitatingly, "that what I have to say is calculated to give you pain ? " " And my cousin would warn me not to approach the matter in a light spirit ? " rejoined the king, with a deep sigh. " For the last twenty-four hours I have had ill forebodings and worse dreams. The adventure on the heights, the visit to the cottage, the face of the priest haunting me from first to last. . . . But there, let me not drag the young man into things that can only concern myself. Come, cousin, I am prepared." The company in which King Henri found himself a few minutes later was a strangely consorted one. He sat at the head of a table in a small reception room with two doors. On his right were the Due de Rohan and the Bishop of Rochefendue j on his left were Martignac A WORLD BEWITCHED 337 and an old canon of the Cathedral of Toulouse ; in a shaded corner of one of the doors was Ooillard, the deposed executioner. By command of the king all, even to the hangman, were seated. Each had taken his place in silence. Hardly one ventured to look at his neighbour. The king's bright eyes alone ranged freely, but with crossing fires of hopeless uneasiness and suspense, from one to the other. An air of mournfulness, of portentous gloom, seemed to have come in with the assistants, that it might rudely cling to the chief space in the confined chamber, and weigh down upon the spirits of all present, Rohan was the first to break the silence :. " Your majesty will graciously understand that if I accept the part of spokesman here, I only act upon information from others, and I look to those with whom I have ventured to come before you, to correct or confirm, where needful, what I have to say. With so much of introduction, I proceed. — My story begins from rather more than twenty-five years back. About that time there lived in these parts a Basque family of ancient origin — a small family, of a mother, a father, and one daughter. The daughter was remarkable for her beauty, her gifts of mind, her brave, generous heart. There were many who loved her ; she could not be persuaded to look with favour on a single one of the suitors whom her parents presented to her. When the daughter was fifteen her mother died, leaving to the girl, in her own right, a fortune in money, jewels and land, and, among other property. 338 A WORLD BEWITCHED a house on the lower peaks overlooking Rochefendue. One year more went by, when there appeared in the neighbourhood for a time a man who became acquainted with the girl. He attached himself to her, and it may be said that within the first day of her setting eyes on him she felt the measureless difference between him and all other lovers who had ever appeared before her. They met in secret. She had full control of the house on the heights : there she received her lover j there she listened in a rapture of pride to his promise of marriage. A night or two afterwards, with her brain on fire, with her heart drawn out of her and laid at her lover's feet, yet with enthusiastic confidence in his honour, she gave him the last and dearest pledge of her love. Then, only then, he told her that fulfilment of the promise of marriage was dependent on a divorce from a woman to whom he was married, and whom he found unworthy. At this revelation the girl smiled. I have often heard, though I did not until lately know the true reference, that never before or since did the lover behold earthly sorrow conveyed more vividly in looks than by that smiling face. His own heart, a great and noble heart, became on the instant torn with remorse and shame. He revealed to her his true rank. Her first mournful sense of a loss of pride in him gave way to unspeakable amazement, speedily fol- lowed by anxiety — anxiety only for him. He asked permission to see her again. She could not have borne to look on the pain which her direct refusal would have given him. She was vague in her answers. A WOELD BEWITCHED 339 He was uneasyj but not discouragedj as he left her. That night the lover had looked his last in this world on Ramona Zulueta." The king leaned his elbow on the table, and passed a trembling hand repeatedly over his forehead. " The story shifts to Toulouse, and is occupied with a young lady bearing a different name. A week after the events narrated, a penitent appeared one evening in the Cathedral of Toulouse to confess herself. She was requested by the priest to whom she knelt to come later. She obeyed ; something in the priest's manner surprised and displeased her. She left him without having commenced the sacrament of penance, and went to another confessor. The mortified priest had watched her movements. He followed her from the Cathedral, traced her to her lodging, and found her name to be Amelie Godard. From that time onward, through the days and the nights, and the weeks and the months, he did not cease to throw himself across her path. She did not complain, but his conduct was watched, and she was protected. Thenceforward, for several weeks, her follower seemed to have abandoned the pursuit. But suddenly he became seized with a fresh interest in her. He observed her with a studied closeness. There grew upon him a conviction that she who passed him by in silent wonder and scorn, she who was constantly in church, who seemed retired from things of this world, had, after all, a lover. He was gnawn and made desperate by a jealous rage. He contrived to obtain an interview with her. His violent 340 A WOELD BEWITCHED reproaches were OTerheard. The matter was revealed to the archbishop. At once the priest took his own course. He threw himself directly into the hands of the civil authorities, declared that he was a victim of witchcraft, denounced Amelie Godard as the culprit, and caused her to be arrested. She remained in prison for three weeks, without being disturbed. During that time she had attracted the pity of one poor man. He was a man who filled the duties of under gaoler and assistant executioner. He watched her narrowly. One night he secretly introduced his own wife into the cell of the prisoner. That night Amelie Godard was delivered of a boy. All attention was paid to the mother ; while the child was taken out of the prison before daylight, and put into a safe place. Night after night, the under gaoler and his wife devoted their cares to the young mother. They even ran the risk of taking the child to her dungeon, and allowing her to fondle it. A fortnight of suspense went by. On a sudden Amelie was called to appear for trial. Her despised and vindictive lover, the priest, gave such overwhelming evidence against her, that she at once knew herself to be doomed. Her lips muttered a confession which her heart recalled then, and which was withdrawn at the last " " But tell me," interrupted the king, with a face grown very white, " this Amelie Godard " " She was condemned to die as a sorceress. On the night before the carrying out of the sentence, the assistant executioner brought the child in to her and A WORLD BEWITCHED 341 let her kiss it for tlie last time. Then to this poor maitj her one remaining friend on earth, she made certain revelations. Next day she was led out to die. M. de Martignac was near the scaffold when she suffered — and, sire . . . my royal master . . . May God have mercy on us all ! . . . but Am^lie Godard and Eamona Zulueta were one and the same person." The king had risen immediately after his last in- terruption. He remained upright, panting, staring for some moments after Rohan had finished speaking. Then there went up from his breast one of the most heartrending sounds that ever found vent through human lips, a cry that forced a sob from the throat, and made tears gush from the eyes, of every man who sat there. He sank into his chair, and remained with face buried in his hands. " And the child ? " he inquired, after a long pause. " It was taken into the house of the under exe- cutioner and his wife, was christened as their own, and was for a time looked after by them with all possible care." " Then it did not long survive this hard entrance into the world ? " faltered the king. " On the contrary, sire, it thrived. But the exe- cutioner and his wife did not consider that it should remain too long under their roof. They shared their secret with the good priest who had christened the infant. He gave it another name, had it educated, and brought up to a noble and vigorous manhood." 342 A WOELD BEWITCHED " And was no effort made to approach the father of the boy ? " " The name of the child's father was revealed by the mother on the night before her death. But she laid it down as. her last wish that the father should never be appealed to, except the child ran in danger of his life." " How in danger ? " " Through liability of being burned to death as the son of a sorceress. Furthermore, your majesty . . . there was always a fear that the father would not recognize the child." " Did the mother leave no direct message for the father ? " questioned the king in a low voice. " More than one message, sire. A garland of lilies, grown in the garden of the little house on the heights, was always forwarded to the father on the festival of St. Louis." " More than one message, you say ? " " The man to whom the child owed its life, perhaps — the man, at least, to whom the mother and child owed their few moments of mutual joy together in this world — that man is here, and will deliver a second message." Coillard, at a sign from Rohan, stood up. " Majesty," he said, trembling very much, " while the father and mother of the child were once together in Eochefendue, they had their portraits painted by a young man of the city. The night before her death, the unhappy lady gave me the portrait. I was never to A WOELD BEWITCHED 343 let it go out of my hands until the day came when her child should be recognized by its father." " Let me see," said the king. Coillard fell on his knees, and took from an inner pocket of his coat a small case, which he handed to the sovereign. Henri opened the case, and gazed with working features at the miniature portrait inclosed in it. The portrait of a girl's face, large eyed, beautiful ; of a man's face, intelligent, pleasing, and strong; a man's face that made the gazer start, so strangely did it resemble another face which had been much in his thoughts of recent hours. " Tell me," he said as he turned in his chair and looked down at the kneeling man, " as to the educa- tion and bringing up of this boy, who supplied what was needed ? " " Majesty," said Coillard, looking up, " the young lady gave me the key of her house on the heights. Her father had died soon after she had gone away, and the money and jewels and titles to land which came to her from her father and mother were found by me in the house, in a secret place which the poor lady described to me. She gave me power to use all for the good of the child. I was to look after the house, never to let it, not to allow her son himself to know his right to it. Then if a day should ever come that the boy was acknowledged, the house was to be given up to him as a home." " I may add," said Rohan, " that this poor man made known the secret of the treasure and property 344 A WOELD BEWITCHED to tte priest wlio had christened the child. Soon afterwards this good Ooillard was appointed to the post he held until lately in Rochefendue. With some little money of his wife's — not gained from his call- ing — he built a cottage near the house he was to look after. The priest in whom he confided would not interfere with the powers given to him by the dying girl. Last night, with the priest to help us, we examined the accounts; and with the necessary subtraction of moneys for the bringing up of the lad, we found everything, to the last denier, correct." " I wish to say," said Coillard hurriedly, " that not one denier from my calling ever went to the keep of the child. It all came from his mother." The king continued to look at the speaker for some moments in silence, then, standing up, raised the man from his knees. " I feel," he said, " that you might claim to have been a better father to that child than the man to whom he owed his birth. But," he added, in distinct tones, "with regard to this portrait, you have kept your promise to the mother in letting it go out of your hands for the first time to-day." Coillard bowed low, and in not too awkward a fashion, and drew back. "Now," said the sovereign, resuming his chair, "as to the good priest who was the friend and confessor of the mother, and who christened the child ? " " M. le Chanoine Morlac, of Toulouse Cathedral," A WORLD BEWITCHED 345 explained Roharij nodding courteously to the clergy- man on the other side of the table. " Next as to the insulter, the traitor, the murderer of Ramona Zulueta ? " " Your majesty, like a true Christian prince/' observed the Bishop of Rochefendue, " thinks last of all of those whose deeds call for resentment. The man you speak of is beyond earthly vengeance. We can only leave him to the justice of God. The last sounds he was heard to utter were cries of blasphemy. He died the very death of the young lady who was the first, I believe, among many scores of his victims. He was appointed a canon of our Cathedral by my predecessor. His name was Billault." " Of whom I have heard so much from SuUy. I had a passing wonder if anything could be conceived which would add to the superlative infamy of that man. Well, let us put away the thought of such carrion. And there, monaeigneur, you were mistaken in supposing that this man would be last in my mind. I wish to know the whereabouts of the child of whom we have spoken." " He has given himself to a noble and sacred call- ing," answered the bishop, ''in which, God bless him, his worthiness has been an example to hundreds of men older than himself." " His majesty has already had some proof of what he is," remarked Rohan. The king started up in the midst of a gentle knock- ing at the principal door. 346 A WOELD BEWITCHED "Henri," he stammered, "do you mean to make me mad with joy by telling me that " "Will your majesty come this way?" interrupted Rohan, glancing significantly towards where the knock- ing had come from, then leading the sovereign to the little door to the right. This door he opened, allowed the king to pass in ; then closed it after him. In a moment there came from beyond that little door a strange half hysterical cry, followed by voices that mingled their utterances with a wholly inarticulate rapidity. "No wonder," said one voice, with some approach to clearness at last, " that my inmost heart . . . that . . . that every drop of blood in my veins thrilled . . . whenever I looked at you . . . when . , . whenever I thought of you." The voice was answered by another, an unsteady voice also, yet one in which there was a tone of re- spectful tenderness and comfort. Rohan had meanwhile gone to the principal door and opened it. Standing there was Mademoiselle de Parthenay, and he went out to her. "The deputation of firemen has come," she said. " Of firemen ? " repeated the duke. " Of men," said the young lady impatiently, " who will pine, and grow green and yellow with despair, if they are not allowed to roast their neighbours alive." " Oh," laughed Rohan, "where do you mean to put them ? " "I had thought of the kitchen yard, where the faggots are kept. They would be most inspired there. A WORLD BEWITCHED 347 They could harangue the king as he stood at one of the windows above. " My dear girl/'' said Rohan, with a soothing smile, " you shall receive them with all civility." " But the gross intrusiveness," protested Henriette, " the taking up of so much time. You will be gone within two hours. Why could they not have written to your father-in-law ? ■" " We know what provincial bodies are if they can get princes within their reach. You shall set apart your best withdrawing-room, place a comfortable arm- chair on the dais for the king, let the men be intro- duced, and let them have their say.^' A quarter of an hour later the largest room in the chateau was occupied by a company consisting of some twenty persons. Among these were the king, seated on a low carpeted platform, with the Due de Rohan and Marfcignac standing on either side of him ; Madame de Bellerive, Henriette de Parthenay, Vio- lante and Carmen Erezuma seated lower down the chamber, to the right hand of the sovereign ; Bellerive, La Faille, Tr^cart and the Bishop of Rochefendue to his left ; while ten feet away from the platform, and facing the monarch, stood four notables of the city of Rochefendue, the chief of whom was M. Motteux. It had been privately hinted to the deputation that his majesty was fatigued, and that, furthermore, he had a long journey before him. It would be most convenient, therefore, if one only of the deputation spoke, and if he compressed his remarks into the 348 A WOELD BEWITCHED briefest possible space. As all four deputies had pre- pared orations of considerable length, they received this proposal with dismay. One of them suggested the drawing of lots ; but M. Motteux, as the originally appointed chief spokesman, clung inexorably to his rights. All being in readiness, he raised himself to his full height to address the king, and his three com- panions, making heroic efforts to look resigned, stood a little in his rear. " When Moses was journeying through the wilder- ness " began M. Motteux. He was immediately interrupted by the king, who pointed out that Moses had had forty years allowed him for his journey ; whereas his majesty's time was far more limited. M. Motteux was compelled to sacrifice a number of Scriptural references to divination, beginning with the Pentateuch and ending with the Apocalypse. He also abandoned with sighs a rich cargo of metaphors, and found himself landed abruptly in Rochefendue, amid the events of the past twelve months. He was per- mitted to roam at large among these events. He dwelt on the good that had been done by the exposure of workers of magic all over the country ; he pre- dicted the ruin of Prance if trials for witchcraft were abolished. He was in the midst of his ninth perora- tion, when the king held up his hand, and leant forward in his chair. " I shall put a few questions to you," said his majesty, "and I expect frank answers." A WORLD BEWITCHED 349 Mofcteux asked for nothing better than this, and he summoned up all his energies to help him in a debating duel with the sovereign of France. " I am at the disposal of your gracious majesty," he said. " I understand, from the composition of this deputa- tion, that you represent a large body of your fellow- townsmen ? " " On that point, your gracious majesty, I would not ask for a better witness than the Bishop of Roche- fendue, who is present." " Well, monseigneur ? " said the king, turning to the bishop. " I must give a qualified answer. People are hap- pier generally in the town since the suspension of these trials. On the other hand, the opposition to those who would bring about the former state of things is confined to few persons." " And to what do you attribute the general apathy ? " continued the monarch. "To a conviction that, through your majesty's wis- dom and mercy, the present freedom from the reign of atrocity may become permanent." "Tour majesty may now see, in part," observed Motteux, " where the opposition to our just claim comes from." " The witness called by yourself, monsieur, certainly testifies against you." " True, sire, and the Bishop of Rochefendue is not our only antagonist in this crisis." 350 A WORLD BEWITCHED " Who else is evil-minded enough to harass you ? " " The most active, the most offensive, the most malignant adversary of them all, is one who is also a priest, sire. Happily, the reason for his hatred and terror of us are known at last ; he is delivered into our hands ; he will yet rue the day that he defied and slandered the upholders of the law." " And who is this monstrous enemy ? " " He is protected and favoured by the Bishop of Rochefendue. It remains to be seen how far such countenance will be of service to him." " His name, monsieur, his name ? " said the king, a little impatiently. " Pardon me, your gracious majesty. He goes by the name of Bustache Gontaut." " Goes by the name ? " " Sire, he is nameless." " Indeed ! " " But his true origin is fast being made known ; and before long, before this very night sets in, it may be as much as his life is worth to venture about the streets of Rochefendue," said Motteux, in a voice growing stronger with the energy of fanaticism. " What's that ? what '& that ? " said the king slowly, his kind-tempered face becoming ominously overcast. " From an upholder of the law, too ! " " Forgive me, your gracious majesty, if my zeal against criminals leads me too far." " Criminals ! " muttered Henriette de Parthenay. " Let me explain, your majesty " A WORLD BEWITCHED 351 " 'Not yet. I have a care, M. MotteuXj for the lives of my subjects. It is as well that this priest should know the danger he is in ; but he must hear it from your own lips, monsieur." The king nodded in answer to an eager look from MartignaCj who at once left the dais. " Monsieur Motteux," continued the sovereigUj " you have more than once mentioned the name of M. Billault. He was extremely active in sending people to the stake. Did he not himself perish at the hands of the executioner ? " " Yes, your majesty, but " " Enough, monsieur." At this moment Martignac and Gontaut entered. The priest turned his eyes towards the dais. In answer to a glance from the king, he hastened for- ward, stepped on to the platform, and stood to the left of the arm-chair. Martignac, meanwhile, crossed the room, and re- mained beside Madame de Bellerive. " M. Motteux," resumed the king, " you will now, perhaps, explain the danger which M. Gontaut will run if he once more ventures about the streets of Rochefendue." " My explanation is at once brief and comprehen- sive, sire " " An excellent combination." " I charge the said M. Gontaut with being the son of a sorceress." " The son of ? " 352 A WORLD BEWITCHED " The son of a woman who was burned to death for the crime of witchcraft." A spasm crossed the young priest's face, and he lowered his head ; while the four women looked aghast at each other. " Have you the name of the woman ? " continued the king. " Her name was Amelie Godard." Madame de Bellerive started, and looked up at Martignac; but his eyes were turned to the ground. " And your proof of this ? " " A note, your gracious majesty, found in the cell of the late M. Billault after his death, and confirmed this morning by Georges Coillard, the dismissed execu- tioner of our city." " What follows, M. Motteux ? " " It follows, your royal majesty, that the son of a condemned witch is himself liable to seizure and trial, with the inevitable penalty of death for witchcraft." Henriette de Parthenay and Madame de Bellerive sprang up together, with trembling frames and agitated countenances. " Royal Henri ! — ^your majesty ..." stammered Henriette, " you , . , you will remember that the priest so strangely menaced is, at least, the saviour of your own life." The three hindmost members of the deputation stared at each other, and expressions of anxiety began to steal over their faces. Motteux retained his abso- lute frenzy of stubbornness. A WORLD BEWITCHED 353 " Your majesty might also reflect," pleaded Madame de Bellerive, " that the good father has been the source of consolation to hundreds, to thousands, of men, women and children in Rochefendue during the darkest hours of the last twelve months." " I regret to say, royal Henri," declared Motteux, who had caught at Henriette's cousinly address, and was not sorry to receive a hint in court manners, " that that last interposition comes from one who must be regarded still as a fugitive from justice." " M. de Bellerive," said the king, biting his lip, while controlling with a look a fierce gesture on the part of Victor, " you will not be sorry to leave this matter in my hands. Cousin Henriette, I must not seem ungracious with regard to your reminder j but I am fortunate in possessing many subjects who are willing to risk their lives for mine. I am endeavour- ing to ascertain whether M. Gontaut has no other claim upon me. Now, M. Motteux, I take it that if the privilege of burning your neighbours were restored to you, the priest who stands on this platform would be among your first victims ? " " Pardon me, your gracious majesty, I merely go by the law. In the interests of justice, the man could not be allowed to escape." " Tell me, are you aware who it was that denounced Am^lie Godard and brought about her death ? " " It was M. Billault, your majesty." " And his parting shaft before death was to seek to bring the same fate upon her son ! Such is the man A A 354 A WORLD BEWITCHED with whose praise your discourse is filled ! You that carry on the work fallen from that man's dying grasp, and still aim at the lives of those whom he failed to destroy — you that seem already to have set afloat reports in Rochefendue in order to secure this young man's doom, either by the tongue of the perjured witness, or by the hand of the stealthy assassin ! " " Tour gracious majesty," persisted the still hardy spokesman, " I humbly implore pardon ; but perjury and assassination could never be weapons of mine. I and others have endured insults and slanders from one whom we all know to be a nameless and father- less adventurer. He is discovered to us at last as the reputable offspring of a creature whose abominations justly brought her to the scaffold. Yet we ask no more than that he should be treated in accordance with the law of the land." The priest's face had become very white during this utterance, but with uncontrollable rage and scorn ; and he glanced in wild haste at the king. His majesty, however, merely continued to regard the speaker with a curious interest. " You have shown admirable firmness, M. Motteux," said he ; " FU now try your consistency." The deputy looked hard at the king j a mist seemed to disperse from before his eyes, and he began to give symptoms of an altogether new attentiveness. " Your knowledge,'' resumed the king, rising with deliberation, " is marvellously true in many particulars, but it is not complete." A WORLD BEWITCHED 355 He stood beside the young priest, and most of those present looked at the two faces thus close together ; then turned to each other with uneasy glances, and with half-murmured exclamations, which were in- stantly laughed away in a feverish embarrassment and wonder. " The girl who died," said Henri, " at the hands of the exemplar of all liars, assassins and misereants, Billault, was not named Amelie Godard." " Tour gracious majesty ..." said Motteux, fal- tering for the first time. " By those who knew her in her girlhood she was called Ramona Zulueta." Madame de Bellerive clasped her hands ; and she and Violante Brezuma turned with panting breath and colourless faces to each other. "As for him whom you call fatherless, nameless," went on the king, with flaming eyes and ringing tones. " Tour majesty 1 . . . " exclaimed Motteux, recoiling. "His name is Bustache de Bourbon, and he is the son of the reigning King of Prance." A confusion of sounds of dismay and anguish, of wonder, of joy, broke forth in the room. Motteux and his companions fell upon their knees. " Messieurs," said the king in conclusion, " I have no more to say than that I am not glad to have seen you." The members of the deputation went out of the room as best they could. 356 A WORLD BEWITCHED " M. de Martignac," said the king hurriedly, after a pause, " go after them. Say that they need look for no worse result to themselves: there is death in their faces." His majesty had little more than an hour to stay ; but even in that time there came a messenger, riding post-haste with despatches. One was from England. "From our brother James," observed the king, "the sapient James, the accomplished James, James the Good. What a delight he would have taken in last year's proceedings in Rochefendue ! How fitting it is that he should rejoice in the burning of men, women, and children — he who cannot bear to look at a drawn sword ! — Well, monseigneur, M. de Sully shall receive instruc- tions from me to deprive Rochefendue for ever of the powers it has used so infamously. Madame deBellerive, the money left by this Dreux-Mornat, who nearly shot me on the night of St. Barth61emy, shall be employed to rebuild your house and the houses of the Basques which were burnt. Have no scruple about the money being the outcome of robbery. When I was Kjng of Navarre only, and was hard pressed for money, my loving subjects were filled with compassion for me. They would set upon the travellers crossing the Pyrenees, ease them of their purses, then come forward to me and pay their taxes like honest men." Daring the minutes that fled away the king thus passed from one to the other, chatting idly, and was at one time seen in a high state of merriment with the bishop. La Faille, who had been shamelessly eaves- A WORLD BEWITCHED 857 dropping, joined Trfecart and Bellerive, and was asked for an explanation. " The royal old scapegrace," was the answer, " is laughing at the idea of a son of his performing the marriage ceremony." " Well," said Bellerive, " Pere Eustache de Bourbon will have his hands full enough with the claims upon him. We three and " He looked up, and his friends followed the direction of his eyes, which were fixed upon Martignac and Madame de Bellerive. The king, after a final consultation with Rohan as to the future of Coillard, the deposed executioner, turned at length to go. " If my cousin Henriette," he said, " will not think me too troublesome a guest, I shall be here again when Lent is over, when the snows are higher up the mountains, and the bears do not stray so far down." He had pleasant looks and words for all until the moment he had mounted his horse ; but his last glance was turned upon the son of Ramona Zulueta. THE END. CHISWICK PRESS :— C. WHimNOHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANK.