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 OF THE 
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 Of 1LL1 NOIS 
 
 623 
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 1867 
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 Return this book on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. 
 
 University of Illinois Library 
 
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 L161— H41
 
 
 k 
 
 I
 
 THE 
 
 HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 THE 
 
 HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 BY 
 
 SARAH TYTLER 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "CITOYENNE JACQUELINE," 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 1867. 
 
 The right of Translation is reserved
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRnrRD BY MACDONALD AND TUGWELL, BLENHEIM HOISK. 
 
 BUvNHEIM STREET, OXFORD STREET.
 
 *> 
 
 NO 
 
 
 < 
 
 
 82,3 
 
 TO 
 
 ** Clspttlj 
 
 OF WHOM HER FRIENDS MUST THINK 
 
 BECAUSE SHE DOES NOT 
 
 THINK OF HERSELF 
 
 IN AFFECTIONATE ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 OF ALL HER CARE AND KINDNESS 
 
 AND PURE SYMPATHY.
 
 THE 
 
 HUGUENOT FAMILY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GrancVmere Dupuys opinion of the English. 
 
 OLANDE, my child, we must make 
 friends with the people about us. 
 I am desolate here without my children, my 
 poor, who used to come to the chatelet and 
 suffer themselves to be served on Saturday." 
 
 "If you are desolate, grand'mere, what 
 are we ? Why, you always remind me of 
 the singing-birds which abound in this Eng- 
 land, one of the few good things we have 
 come so far to find." 
 
 "There is nothing common and unclean, 
 my impatient grand-daughter ; you ought to 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 know better. ' Patient as a Huguenot ' is a 
 proverb, and all is fair to those who have 
 the eyes to see it. As to the singing, I 
 learned earlier than any of you to sing in a 
 cage, and to what music !" 
 
 " I know, grand'mere. It was to the sound 
 of threats and curses, and the volleys of the 
 draormnades. You were one of the children 
 imprisoned and tormented in order to turn 
 you from the faith, which you kept, good 
 grand'mere, because i out of the mouths of 
 babes and sucklings God has perfected praise." 
 
 " Ah ! the babes and sucklings know little 
 better what they are saving, and have 
 no more merit of will and choice than the 
 Innocents. When they have will and choice, 
 how they falter and fall away, because the 
 flesh is weak." 
 
 " But, grand'mere, I do not know, and 
 perhaps it is audacious to say it. but it seems 
 to me the hot persecution which lasted but
 
 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 3 
 
 a moment, because no living creatures, in 
 their nature, could endure it longer, was not 
 so much harder to bear than life — long exile 
 and isolation among strangers and foreigners 
 who hate us and slander us, grand'mere." 
 
 "They do not all hate us, little one, 
 though their Defoe has written, 
 
 ' Two hundred thousand pairs of wooden shoes, 
 Who, God be thank'd, had nothing left to lose ;' 
 
 and ■ no longer strangers and foreigners,' 
 was once written to men more hunted and 
 despised than ever we or our fathers have 
 been. 'All things are easy,' but troubles 
 are best not talked of, at least they are 
 talked of enough by your mother, who did 
 not live near enough to the worst of them 
 to feel that they could not really hurt — just 
 as we shall feel death cannot hurt us one 
 day, though it has been our bete noire all our 
 lives. Just so are troubles when we look 
 back and count what they have cost without 
 
 b 2
 
 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 experiencing the blessing and the joy of the 
 persecuted. In the same way you would 
 grudge to be still paying by instalments the 
 price of my wedding gown, of which you 
 never saw the beauty, and which was un- 
 picked, and cut down, and made anew into 
 a mantle for my son Hubert, forty years 
 before you were born. But you have not 
 the excuse of your mother, Yolande ; you 
 never saw the sun of France, nor worshipped 
 in a Temple, under a pastor of your own 
 people — a sufferer like yourself among fellow 
 sufferers ; nor did you ever go a-marketing 
 in the old Place, or pull great gourds, red 
 and yellow like the sunset, or gather caper 
 blossom, scented with vanille. You have 
 nothing to complain of; you are English 
 born, and can speak the English tongue like 
 a native; you are a true Englishwoman.* 1 
 
 "Never, grand'mciv. I would rather be — 
 Catholic."
 
 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 " Hush ! I shall tell you what you are — a 
 French Jew. All the nationalities which 
 think themselves better than the other 
 nationalities are Jewish, and all the Churches 
 which think themselves better than the other 
 Churches are Jewish. But at the same time 
 I beg the pardon of the poor Jews for the 
 comparison. They had reason for their exclu- 
 siveness, while the French and the English, 
 Roman Catholic or Reformed, have none, and 
 even profess to have none. For me, I love 
 France ; I do not say how I love France : I 
 think of her every day, dream of her every 
 night, till I am tempted to be an idolatress, 
 and to imagine that Heaven will be like the 
 native country. And, indeed, so it will be 
 in one sense, Yolande, for it is the Fathers 
 house. The French know what that means 
 to a marvel, though one has told me that it 
 is used as a reproach against them, that they 
 have no turn of phrase save ' with myself,'
 
 6 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 or 'my household/ for what the English 
 call ' sweet home.' The French have the 
 Father's house, at least. But as for me, I 
 am charmed with England — it is so like 
 Holland, and is so cool and fresh in this 
 bit of meadow land. With the English 
 rudeness and truth also, which reminds me 
 of the prickly bosquets of roses I once 
 reared in my garden, where M. Claude had 
 walked. These English have had their own 
 way ever since they killed their king, which 
 was very wicked — indeed, quite profane. 
 The French have done nothing of the kind, 
 though the unhappy Charles, misled by his 
 mother and his brother, and by Guise and 
 Lorraine, fired from the Louvre on his 
 people on that night of despair, when our 
 Coligni, a very lion at bay, was slain ; and 
 our Henry of Navarre — Jeanne d'Albret's 
 brave boy — was held a prisoner. The 
 'religion' in its professors has always re-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 garded it as one of the most cruel and 
 calumnious accusations brought against ' the 
 faithful ' that they were not loyal. It is 
 only madmen and assassins, like Clement 
 and Ravaillac, who would slay the Lord's 
 anointed. But from that day to this the 
 English have had their own way ; and have 
 they abused it? No. They have had a 
 few thousands of bread-rioters, breakers of 
 our French machinery, and burners of the 
 houses of Catholics, it is true ; but there 
 will always be doubtful characters in every 
 class and nation. The brave, patient people 
 have been quiet and tolerant, just and mer- 
 ciful. The English have been masters in 
 their parliaments and on their battle-fields, 
 since the man of the people, Oliver — not 
 the barber, Yolande, the brewer, and oh ! 
 such another brewer, a hero who spoke 
 brave words, mighty words for the op- 
 pressed Vaudois, our brethren in Piedmont,
 
 <s The Huguenot Family. 
 
 and behold the honour ! The English ha 
 
 kept their heads. They have not been «_ 
 conaders, or tyrants of the canaille, undoii 
 themselves and others. I believe that in 
 their noble, savage way they have given 
 God the glory. I esteem, I honour, I salute 
 the English, not only for the shelter they 
 afford us, poor driven dust of emigrants, but 
 for the example they present of possessing 
 thek own big souls in patience." 
 
 " Well, grand'mere, I wish they returned 
 the compliment. I cannot see, for my part, 
 that the admiration and the friendship should 
 all be on one side." 
 
 "Ah! then you do not see the well- 
 spring of Christian life which burst from 
 the broken heart of the Divine Founder. 
 But this monopoly you speak of, as one 
 would of the salt-tax in France, is what I 
 began our conversation by scolding about. 
 I don't want to limit the love of one's
 
 The Huguenot Family. 9 
 
 neighbour to me and my house. Not at 
 all. I want to have it everywhere, like the 
 good air we breathe ; but I must show my 
 good- will in order to win a sight of another's 
 good-will. I believe it is present even 
 throughout the universe, north and south, 
 east and west, among great multitudes of 
 every kindred and tongue and nation, only 
 it is hidden from us ; and we traverse each 
 the other's streets, and rub each the other's 
 clothes, not knowing each other — bah ! — 
 but elbowing each other and knitting our 
 brows at each other. Now, I desire that 
 we should know each other better here at 
 Sedge Pond. We came here before the 
 buds were on the trees ; at present they are 
 in full leaf, and I have not yet made a friend 
 of a living creature in the place, save the 
 birds, the cats, and the dogs. I shall pass 
 over the sheep, the oxen, and the horses, 
 and go on at once to the poor, my children, 

 
 10 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 at Toulouse, whom I have missed more than 
 the green leaves, and the warbling, purring, 
 barking voices of friends in London. No ; 
 London is not a modern Babylon, as your 
 mother calls it, it is a great Christian city, 
 full of violence and excess and selfish luxury, 
 but also alive with brave battlings for truth 
 and justice and noble wants, like our own 
 Paris. It may be rolled in blood and 
 bathed in fire, but it is no more Babylon 
 than the Lord's gospel is the law of 
 Moses. Our Paris and this London cannot 
 perish and be given over to obscene 
 beasts ; because they are redeemed with a 
 price — in Christ first, and then in all their 
 righteous men, sublime martyrs, and re- 
 turned prodigals, in every century, following 
 afar off, after Him, in endless conqueror- 
 procession. The Christian cities will come 
 out pure as the gold, glad as the light in their 
 day. But the question with us just now is,
 
 The Huguenot Family. 1 1 
 
 not of great London, but of little Sedge 
 Pond ; and the little one is not to be de- 
 spised, since it may need us tlie most. I 
 shall set about learning to know the people, 
 or rather, for I flatter myself I know them a 
 little already, teaching the people to know 
 me, Grand'mere Dupuy, of the Shottery 
 Cottage, countrywoman and sister of good 
 Vincent de Paul, though he acknowledge 
 me not ; and I command you to help me, 
 Yolande." 
 
 The speaker was a little old woman, 
 dressed in a Lyons silk gown, with the skirt 
 drawn through the pocket holes. She wore 
 a mob cap of fine lace, had mittens on her 
 hands, and her neckerchief was fastened by 
 a silver dove instead of a cross. She was 
 at that moment resting on a staff, with a 
 carved coral head, representing another 
 little old woman in scarlet. Her rustling 
 silk, her cobweb lace, her foreign accent, and
 
 12 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 and her lovely old face might have clearly 
 told the onlooker that she belonged to the 
 latter part of the last century, and to that 
 country which owns at once the loveliest 
 and the ugliest old women. The accessories, 
 too, suited the main figure. The room had 
 an air of quiet, but was not without its orna- 
 ments. There was an elaborately decorated 
 
 ■r 
 
 and festooned bed in one corner ; a curtain 
 hung before the door ; a wood-fire was on 
 the hearth ; and there were on the walls a 
 few foreign prints, mostly of gaunt, care- 
 worn men, in Geneva gowns and skull-caps. 
 Her companion was a tall, slender girl of 
 sixteen, in as rustling a silk gown and as 
 heavy a quilted petticoat as the old lady's. 
 She had a little cap on her head, which sur- 
 mounted a roll of black-brown hair. The 
 girl's face was prematurely womanly, and 
 delicately cut, bearing a resemblance to her 
 relative's, though with less colour, and more
 
 The Huguenot Family. 1 3 
 
 shaded and sharp than the old woman's 
 could ever have been ; but it was a sort of 
 paraphrase of the old woman's beauty, sick- 
 lied over, hollowed, and worn betimes, by 
 the fact of its having blossomed in the shade, 
 carrying, before it was able to carry it, a 
 burden of thought. The big eyes had taken 
 a grave, far-withdrawn, unfathomable look, 
 from their striving to read the enigma of a 
 sinning, suffering world, without their 
 owner's having got the key of faith, or while 
 the key, still but a wax model, took, but did 
 not retain, the shape of any obstacle to which 
 it was applied, in place of combating and 
 overcoming it.
 
 14 The Hwjuenot Fanuhj. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Grand! mere Dupuys attempt to make friends 
 with the people about her. 
 
 RAND'MERE DUPUY was a reso- 
 lute, enthusiastic old woman, and 
 was no cipher, but a ruling spirit, though it 
 must be understood that she ruled with the 
 old metaphorical ivory wand, draped in 
 myrtle, in the house of her married, middle- 
 aged emigrant son. Accordingly, that very 
 afternoon, as she had said, she Bet about 
 beginning her attack upon what she had 
 found the locked and padlocked fortresses 
 of Britons' hearts at Sedge Pond. 
 
 "With innocent wile and womanly tact she 
 said to Yolande,
 
 The Huguenot Family. 1 5 
 
 " These honest villagers hunger, though 
 they do not starve, as they did in poor 
 France after its bloody wars and ghastlier 
 splendours. Yes, these Sedge Pond folk 
 want in the midst of plenty. They live, like 
 the hogs, on sodden bread, raw meat, and 
 vegetables. They have the dyspepsia or the 
 spleen. See how purple and tallow-faced 
 they are ; hear of their surfeits, their fevers, 
 their wastes, their pinings. They really 
 know nothing of their own word - comfort,' 
 save in connection with swilling and smoking 
 in the ale-house. That is not even a resting- 
 place for travellers, as with us, — only a 
 rendezvous for the natives. When we are 
 merry, it is under the walnut and olive-trees, 
 in the games. It may be giddiness and 
 light-mindedness, as your mother says ; but 
 it is not riot. But when they are merry, it 
 is in the ale-house — always the ale-house. 
 Even when they have the fair, what is it but
 
 16 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 the whole streets filled, the stalls surrounded, 
 the caravans visited by the customers of the 
 ale-house ? The marriage -guests are bor- 
 rowed from the ale-house ; their harvest- 
 feasts are kept in the ale-house, or are ver- 
 sions of the ale-house feasts in granaries and 
 barns. Fie ! I believe their magistrates 
 sit, their choristers practise, their clerks, 
 perhaps even their ministers, relax them- 
 selves from their cock-fighting and their 
 execution of highwaymen in the ale-house. 
 In one word, comfort and amusement for 
 the peasants of England mean — the ale- 
 house. My child, the stomach has some- 
 thing to do with that ; the cooking, the 
 house-kreping at least, may be improved. 
 I don't say that we have not a great dual to 
 learn ourselves, above all a marmot, a Sower 
 of the cabbage like you, Yolande ; but we 
 will remember that wherever the French 
 have settled the leprosy and the scurvy hav« •
 
 The Huguenot Family. 1 7 
 
 disappeared. We will let the poor people 
 taste our savoury pot-h-feu, our cool goiiter 
 of the sliced artichoke or the cucumber, our 
 warm ragout of the cutlets or the kidneys, 
 our bland almond milk and our sweet suc- 
 cory water. I wager they never tasted any- 
 thing so nice, and will not care for the harsh 
 heady yeast after it. They will turn their 
 backs on the ale-house and its commodities. 
 We will go to-day to Goody Gubbins ; she is 
 an incurable, and has only the parish for her 
 relations. I have seen the pastor's servants 
 carrying her greasy messes and muddy 
 slops, just a little better than the everlasting 
 beans and bacon and hunches of bread and 
 cheese of the ale-house. Who knows but, 
 if the good God will bless the deed, we 
 may work a Reformed miracle, and heal the 
 sick?" 
 
 Madame Dupuy's intentions were excellent 
 and kindly, though a little short-sighted and 
 
 VOL. I. C
 
 18 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 halting, as the most excellent intentions of 
 fallible mortals are apt to be. But she did 
 not let the grass grow beneath her ancient, 
 tripping, high-heeled, silver-buckled feet in 
 executing them. She had her own cooking 
 apparatus and her own stores : ingenious 
 though economical the one, and of an ample, 
 skilful range the other. She was never 
 without her simmering pot-a-feu, the mate- 
 rials for her summer or winter gouter, or 
 the glass in which her pebbles of sugar were 
 dissolving and sinking in a thick, luscious 
 syrup to the bottom of the clear spring 
 water. She had her pipkins, her ewers, her 
 trays — plain enough, for she had come from 
 among a people who were so staunch that 
 not more than a third of their number had 
 succumbed in creed to a lengthened era of 
 fines, penalties, imprisonments, and law-suits, 
 which had converted their silver to oopper, 
 and their porcelain to earthenware. But
 
 The Huguenot Family. 19 
 
 all the utensils were distinguished by clever 
 fitness for their end, by neatness of form 
 and gaiety of tone, and when the austerity 
 into which the Huguenot Church has been 
 driven did not forbid it, even by an elegant 
 simplicity of design. Nor did it detract 
 much from the elegant simplicity of Grand' - 
 mere Dupuy's accompaniments that in prac- 
 tice she wore silk and lace, or that in prin- 
 ciple she was a Huguenot and bourgeoise. 
 M. Dupuy had been and was still connected 
 in trade with silk manufactures ; and no one, 
 with any pretensions to the position of a 
 gentlewoman, dressed in other materials at 
 that date. On close inspection it might have 
 been seen that the silk had been very artisti- 
 cally scoured, and the lace very artistically 
 darned. And on minor matters a^ain, 
 Madame Dupuy was more of a French wo- 
 man, and still more of a human being, than 
 
 anvthing else. 
 
 c2
 
 20 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 After dinner Grand/mere Dupuy set out 
 from the Shottery Cottage with Yolande, 
 who carried the pot-a-feu in a pipkin 
 moulded from a gourd, with a gourd leaf 
 and stalk for the handle, and carried it very 
 much as another girl would have carried a 
 basket of roses, or a casket of jewels ; but 
 still sombrely, distrustfully, reluctantly, for 
 all her air. Grand'mere walked slowly be- 
 side her with her coral-headed staff, eagerly 
 recounting, as she went, how she had always 
 taken it with her when she went to visit her 
 sick at Toulouse, until the peasants hailed 
 it, made much of it, named it the little red 
 madame, Madame Rougeole. 
 
 The village of Sedge Pond at any period 
 in the eighteenth century was by no means 
 a model village. It was situated between 
 London and Norwich. All was misty, Hat, 
 and monotonous about it ; but there was 
 the perfection of verdure in marsh and
 
 The Huguenot Family. 21 
 
 meadow, broken only by patches of yellow- 
 bearded corn and red-flowered clover. There 
 was a sleepy, lulling motion in the slow 
 river, with its clumsy barges, and there was 
 breadth m the blue distance. The roads, 
 both high-road and by-road, were heavily 
 rutted in their yellow soil ; the low-lands 
 were liable to be flooded at particular sea- 
 sons by the sluggish, stagnant brown water. 
 There were rough, bristling, purple and 
 olive-coloured bits of " waaste ' to take in 
 everywhere. There was a castle — a mass 
 of pretentious white masonry, which had 
 replaced a more picturesque, weather-stained, 
 crumbling tower, partly seen among the 
 woods which rose above the Dupuys' cot- 
 tage ; and there was a rectory like a chateau 
 itself, steep-roofed, gabled, and pinnacled, 
 and with pleasure-grounds, and a wilderness. 
 This latter had the advantage of a constant 
 tenant and a numerous, flourishing house-
 
 22 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 hold. There was not another good hou- 
 in the village, saving Shottery Cottage, 
 which was a remote appendage of the castle, 
 and the ale-house, which was a place of 
 public entertainment, and not of private con- 
 venience. The other houses stood in ir- 
 regular rows and groups, and were dropsical, 
 bulged-out, discoloured cottages, covered 
 with thatch, and in every stage of rotten- 
 ness. For that matter they were much in- 
 debted to the house-leek, and here and there 
 to a side growth of ivy, for holding them 
 together ; for nature was trying hard to em- 
 broider them over with some of her own 
 leaf and flower-work — wonderfully good 
 embroidery, which makes men forget the 
 ruin in rapture at the tracery over it. There 
 were no spouts above, nor gutters below the 
 cottages, nothing to protect them from the 
 prevailing wet except narrow stone ledges, 
 like eyelids without eyelashes, placed above
 
 The Huguenot Family. 23 
 
 the never-opened windows, filled with small, 
 thick, diamond-shaped panes of glass, where 
 they were not broken and boarded up, or 
 stuffed with straw, grass, wool, or anything 
 which had at the moment come to hand. 
 Beyond these ledges the moisture dripped, 
 soaked, gathered, and grew green-coated. 
 The common was a puddle, the wells were 
 one or two open draw-wells, and before 
 each door there was a heap of fermenting, 
 festering refuse. Any gardens belonging to 
 the cottages were like the villagers in this 
 respect, that their good qualities were out 
 of sight. They lay in diminutive shaggy 
 plots of potatoes, turnips, herbs, with occa- 
 sionally a straggling, neglected, and misused 
 flower, hidden behind the houses. Indeed, 
 had it not been for the quiet, home-like 
 landscape, with its corn-fields in their cool 
 fresh green, ripening and whitening in strips 
 and nooks among the pasture, and the castle
 
 24 The Hwjuenot Family. 
 
 park thrusting forward and separating the 
 more rural scene with a woodland bluff or 
 shoulder, dark with tufts of chestnuts, oaks, 
 and plane-trees, the village of Sedge Pond 
 would have been as uncomely a village as 
 ever housed refugees, and bred and fostered 
 small-pox, purple fever, and ague. 
 
 The church was half a mile distant from 
 the village, which was thus out of the com- 
 fortable sight of its spire, and of everything 
 but the faint sound of its hoarse bell, al- 
 though it was easily reached, down a short 
 lane communicating by a private gate, about 
 midway up the castle avenue. The little 
 churchyard, in one visitation of the plague, 
 had become full to the brim, and the op- 
 pressed earth — crammed not by means of 
 coffins, but by trenches — had been forced 
 up breast high with the wall, ami was left 
 behind, to add its quota to the other disease- 
 distilling influences of Sedge Pond.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 25 
 
 . In some eyes the ale-house atoned for all 
 defects and drawbacks. It was a low, wide, 
 octagonal building of mellow red brick, with 
 stone coping, and containing several large, 
 low-browed, brown rooms, with long tables, 
 wattled seats and benches, and in which 
 there were fires at every season, smoulder- 
 ing like carbuncles, or roaring and blazing 
 like furnaces. These were the chosen re- 
 treats from the skittle-ground, the bowling- 
 green, and the court where the mains be- 
 tween the game-cocks were fought on each 
 side of the white-washed porch. All the 
 revelry and debauchery of the neighbour- 
 hood went on there ; and revelry and de- 
 bauchery were so much the gross habit of 
 the day, that the place set apart for them 
 was not viewed with any suspicion, but was 
 actually invested with an influence and re- 
 spectability which absolved it from the 
 necessity of becoming the " Castle Arms,"
 
 26 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 or seeking such patronage as any tavern, 
 inn, or hostelry in the kingdom would now 
 do. If one takes into account, in addition, 
 the white foam of tankards, the light curl- 
 ing blue vapour of pipes, the cribbage 
 boards, the soiled newsletters for those who 
 desired other stimulants and more intellec- 
 tual influences, together with the social 
 intercourse, and occasionally the larger 
 gatherings of a more festive character, where 
 there was a mixture of sexes, it is possible 
 to understand how to the hob-nailed, red- 
 cloaked peasants of Sedge Pond, comfort 
 and amusement meant the ale-house. What 
 Grand'mere Dupuy had therefore to contend 
 with, when she proposed to supersede their 
 staple good, with its black shadow of brutal- 
 ity and crime, was something which would 
 sorely task her light, subtle French substi- 
 tutes, unless she supplemented them by 
 something infinitely better.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 27 
 
 Goody Gubbins' cottage was the worst in 
 its row. There, on straw and rags, with 
 chronic damp chilling her rheumatic, palsied 
 limbs, and without daylight to cheer her, 
 her life was barely kept in by the Church's 
 dole, although otherwise she lay quite un- 
 cared for and unsolaced, her body begrimed 
 and engrained with dirt, and her grizzled 
 hair matted beneath her filthy linen curch — 
 a wreck of humanity. 
 
 But Grand'mere Dupuy, of the Church 
 under the Cross, recognised humanity under 
 any aspect, and had no quarrel with it. 
 There was nothing in her but self-reproach- 
 fulness and self-forge tfuln ess, struggling for 
 mastery, and, overpowering both, a mother's 
 and a sister's tenderness. It was Yolande 
 who revolted and shrank from the disfigured, 
 disguised old woman, for the keen French 
 analysis, which records " how severe are the 
 young," reads in various ways.
 
 28 The Huyuenot Family. 
 
 "Good day, my friend," began Grand'- 
 mere, "I am afraid you are very ailing, but 
 you will improve, and all your ills will 
 vanish by-and-bye; if not here, hereafter," 
 proceeded she, in her liquid, persuasive 
 foreign accent, as she nodded now and then 
 emphatically. " We have taken the liberty, 
 and given ourselves the pleasure of bringing 
 you some soup," continued Grandmere, com- 
 ing to the gist of her discourse, and gather- 
 ing up her hooped skirt cleverly as she ad- 
 vanced lightly (that is, lightly for her four- 
 score years) to the side of the bed or lair, 
 the better to aid her pet of an old woman to 
 receive her refreshment. 
 
 Goody had been dosing when the Dupuya 
 invaded her hovel, and in the dim light and 
 the gathering mists of age, ignorance, stu- 
 pidity, and suffering, she might well have 
 looked scared as well as mazed when she 
 was aroused to the unwonted and unac-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 29 
 
 countable apparition. " AVho be you ? " 
 she gasped, clutching her torn coverlet, 
 and staring at her visitors in blind hos- 
 tility as well as blank wonder. " A dunna 
 know you — you be seeking suinmat of a 
 poor lorn body. A's nought togive or to 
 tell. How should a ? ' she moaned out, 
 her moaning mixed with a loud whimper 
 of protest. 
 
 The reception was not encouraging, but 
 Grand'mere was patient. 
 
 " We are two of the French family at 
 Shottery Cottage, women like yourself, my 
 good dame, and we have heard of your 
 infirmities. Ah, dear Lord ! — that they 
 have been sorely neglected so long. We 
 have come to succour you and ease them ; 
 not to serve ourselves, save by serving 
 you." 
 
 Goody Gubbins had not heard of very 
 many things, but she had heard of the
 
 30 The Hwjuenot Family. 
 
 French, to fight against whom stout village 
 lads of her acquaintance had enlisted as 
 soldiers under Wolfe or Cornwallis, and 
 marched from their villages, not one in ten 
 of them ever to see their native land again. 
 Naturallv she looked on the French as her 
 mortal enemies, and when she heard that 
 the two women were members of the 
 French family who had penetrated into the 
 village, through the recklessness of the 
 lords of the castle, to get round her and 
 entrap her, bedridden and pauper as she 
 was, she set up a screech of utmost dismay 
 and virulent opposition. 
 
 " Noa, noa ! Pearson ! Neebour Clay ! 
 — help ! — help ! A'm flayed ! a'm murder- 
 ed! though a never flapped, or clemmed, 
 or so much as set eve on French maid or 
 man before a took to my bed-^— not when a 
 were the strappingest wife and wench in the 
 parish. Alack-a-day !"
 
 The Huguenot Family. 31 
 
 " You deceive yourself, you are in error ; 
 rest quiet. Try the soup, my dear." And 
 Grand'mere, in the difficulty, popped the 
 uncovered pipkin right below Goody's 
 nose. 
 
 Goody Gubbins had not been called " my 
 dear ' since the day when her good man 
 was lying in intermittent fever, induced by 
 draughts of the over-ripe October of which 
 he died, thus paying the penalty of his 
 eight-and-forty hours' sojourn at the ale- 
 house, drinking the health of the German 
 George, who had come to be king in the 
 room of good Queen Anne. She did not 
 take well with the epithet ; it made her 
 grue just as when Giles Gubbins was first 
 " soft " with her, to get her harvest wages 
 out of her pocket, and the lawful means 
 failing, then beat her black and blue, and 
 obtained his end unlawfully, save that it 
 was in his character of a husband. But the
 
 32 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 smell of this rich omnium gatherum, which 
 had boiled and bubbled till it had refined 
 itself of everything but the very core of 
 good things, was more fragrant than the 
 gales of Araby the Blest to the stunted, 
 blunted nostrils. She sniffed and coughed, 
 and sniffed again, and her patriotism and 
 prejudices wavered. 
 
 " There bean't snails in it ?" she inquired, 
 tremulously, her toothless chops watering, 
 her bleared eyes blinking greedily. 
 
 " Not one. It is the very best of sou})-, 
 my good woman ; the true soup for an 
 invalid, while you have been swallowing — 
 ouf ! — hard roots, dry seeds of grain, grease 
 and water." 
 
 " The broth and the bit of flesh is none 
 so bad as you make it, be yourn what it 
 like." Goody began to speak up for her 
 food, offended, like her betters, that her 
 right of grumbling should be appropriated
 
 The Huguenot Family. 33 
 
 by a stranger and foreigner. " If Pearson's 
 Sam and Sally weren't so long on the way, 
 and didn't go to spill it at the stile, and 
 have their share of it off their lone fingers. 
 There bean't toads in it ?" pausing with 
 revived jealousy, after she had ventured to 
 taste and dwell on a mouthful. 
 
 "No, no; faith of Genevieve Dupuy. But 
 why do you object to the poor, soft, fat, 
 white fellows of snails, when you do not re- 
 fuse to eat the raw bleeding flesh. The 
 mourgettes are very good for the sick," 
 remonstrated Madame, with rash innocence; 
 " for the frogs, I can tell you they are not 
 so easy to get here," she reflected, pen- 
 sively. 
 
 " Lawks ! there would be if she could get 
 em!" declared the old woman, stiffening 
 like stone and dropping the spoon. " Noa, 
 noa, it's pisen, it's witches' broo ; the corns 
 of barley and the peas ne'er grit agin my 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 The Hwjuenot Family. 
 
 single tooth ; a did not taste ingens; it's like 
 nought on earth but balm wine and the 
 smell of the dogs' messes up at the castle. 
 Get ye gone ! a wunna swallow another 
 drop of the broo, a've telled'ee, all swound, 
 all be throttled first !" cried Goody, in a re- 
 newed paroxysm of terror and rage, and 
 thrust her rags into her mouth with all the 
 force which remained to her claw-like hand-. 
 
 So there was nothing for it but for 
 Grand'mere to retreat before the misled 
 maddened object of her charity should fulfil 
 her threat. 
 
 " You see, Grand'mere," observed Y 
 lande significantly. 
 
 " She does not know what is good for her, 
 the poor suspicious, straitened heart Yb- 
 lande, you would not be so mean and foolish 
 as to resent what a poor miserable creature 
 imagines to her injury," Grand'mere said, 
 more reproachfully than usual — indeed, al-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 35 
 
 most with severity — to her grand-daughter. 
 Then she turned and began to blame herself 
 sharply, which was much more in her way, 
 and a safer course for reformers. a We are 
 punished because we have begun at the 
 wrong end. We ought to have addressed 
 ourselves to the little ones, and made friends 
 of them first. Look, they run wild, or they 
 are toilers from their cradles, poor bro- 
 ken-backed, gloomy-looking gamins and 
 cocottes, and they grow up totally without 
 knowledge. I do not believe there are six 
 men and women among the peasants of Sedge 
 Pond can read and write. The school of the 
 pastor is for the sons and daughters of the 
 farmers who can pay, the little boys and girls 
 in little coats and collars, aprons and hoods 
 — the country bourgeoisie, in fact. The pastor 
 himself does not encourage the little peasants 
 to come to the school; he says it teaches 
 them conceit and disrespect to their su- 
 
 d2
 
 36 The Hw/uenot Fa nub/. 
 
 periors. I heard him say so in a sermon on 
 useless acquirements and false pretences, at 
 the church. But what teaching must that 
 have been! Even the Jesuit fathers and 
 the convent sisters would have taught better 
 than that. My child, we will have a little 
 class. Betty Sykes, Teddy Jones, Pierce and 
 Bab Frew (I pick up the names as quickly 
 as a magpie), will come, and you will in- 
 struct them in English reading, and I shall 
 manage the writing and the figures, and 
 we will make them wise — not foolish, and 
 modest — not insolent. We will not tire of 
 it, Butterfly, because it may not be so charm- 
 ing the second day as the first. We will 
 work and weary, and work again, with the 
 stolid little souls, because it will be our sow- 
 ing for the world's harvest ; and I tell you, 
 Yolande, we will have fetes and recom- 
 penses if your mother does not forbid them 
 as vain and worldly."
 
 The Huguenot Family. 37 
 
 Yolancle was not sanguine. Indeed there 
 was no sanguineness in the girl. All high 
 hope was the portion of the old woman, 
 who had fathomed adversity and knew how 
 little it could hurt of itself, if men and 
 women were truly armed against it. But 
 Yolande was docile, and followed where 
 Grand'mere led the way. So, with the 
 Lyons silk tucked up, and the coral-headed 
 staff, and with the companion silk without 
 staff, the two went picking their way among 
 the pools and the dirt-heaps, from door to 
 door of the village, heavy with dense dulness, 
 or only quickened here and there into rabid 
 intolerance. They found every double-leafed, 
 cut-across door literally and figuratively shut 
 in their faces, and fared but poorly in their 
 canvass for the school. One woman wanted 
 her youngsters to watch the geese, feed the 
 pig, break wood, draw water, as she had 
 done in her own young days, and she
 
 38 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 thought they could not do better, or hope to 
 master anything which would come more pat 
 to their hands in after-life. The woman had 
 right on her side. Madame assured her 
 heartily these were very good things, ad- 
 mirable things, which were referred to as 
 virtues and excellences in the book of 
 Proverbs ; but were they enough for gaining 
 the victory over sin, for enlightening the un- 
 derstanding and disciplining the heart? Say, 
 then, were they enough for that other life 
 in the skies? 
 
 " Anan," answered Grand'mere's oppo- 
 nent. " She left all that to Pearson ; that 
 were his business, and weren't he paid for 
 doing it? Poor bodies had enough to do 
 to live, and fit their children to live, in these 
 hard times." 
 
 Another speaker, a gruff man, who had 
 been for years employed in the next manu- 
 facturing town, told Grand'mere that they
 
 The Huguenot Family. 39 
 
 wanted no creeping spies, nor crafty sedu- 
 cers, nor paid agents of the foreign cloth 
 and silk weavers, no gunpowder and glass 
 makers, who now swarmed in the land and 
 preyed on it, and snatched the bite out of 
 the mouths of honest English artizans by 
 their devil's work of accursed machinery, 
 replacing men's hands and brains. 
 
 u Not brains, my master," argued Madame 
 mildly, "when the machinery is the creature 
 and the tool of man's brains." 
 
 But the master had already retired into 
 the farther end of his cottage, growling omi- 
 nously of the horse-pond for man or woman 
 who molested him with treacherous tricks 
 of kindness. 
 
 A third hearer put her fingers in her ears. 
 
 "I was brought up in the south lands. 
 I've seen the towers and halls where the 
 good bishops stood and choked in the smoke 
 rather than bring in the Pope to sit in scar-
 
 40 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 let, put his foot on our necks, and wade in 
 our blood again. Good-mother's grandfev- 
 ther was a Puritan in the wars — could pray 
 like a saint, as well as strike and stab like a 
 man. She had his rusty blunderbuss, which 
 was as good as a cast horse-shoe for luck, 
 above her chumley. I be not your bargain, 
 madam." 
 
 Here was an opening at last, which 
 Grand'mere was quick to perceive, and ra- 
 diant in seeking to profit by. 
 
 " My good woman, we do not love the 
 Pope of Rome and the mass any more than 
 you. We are Huguenots, who have aban- 
 doned our houses, our temples, our native 
 country, for the truth. We have suffered 
 like you. We have bought your protection, 
 confidence, and friendship, by our sorrows 
 and sufferings." 
 
 " I dunna know that we suffered," ob- 
 served the descendant of the Fifth-mon-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 41 
 
 archy-men, ungraciously and doggedly. 
 "Good-mother always says her grandfeyther 
 won his battles, as the truth is bound to 
 win. And as to buying, I'll maintain you've 
 bought nought from me, neither good nor 
 bad. I'd traffic with none of your breed, 
 whether Huggenies mean the brazen pack- 
 men with rings in their ears, under their 
 curls, and French linen and brandy beneath 
 the Irish linen and anise-seed water in 
 their packs, and who bowed their knees, 
 crooked their fingers, and kissed the broken 
 cross at the Horse Troughs, where the four 
 roads meet, before they were shot by the 
 red-coats." 
 
 " Alas, my poor Jacques ! The good God 
 grant you saw beyond the symbol," mur- 
 mured Grand'mere, the moisture dimming 
 those clear, tender grey eyes of hers. 
 
 The speaker went on, rudely citing her 
 unflattering examples : —
 
 42 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 " Or the idle, dissolute dogs, players on 
 the French horns, whom my lady brought 
 down with her the last time to the castle, 
 who jabbered their monkey-prayers to the 
 pictures in the picture-gallery." 
 
 The woman was so irritated and alarmed, 
 that she herself pronounced a spell to pro- 
 tect her from the offenders — a spell long 
 current in Protestant England, and occa- 
 sionally lugged out of dark, superstitious 
 lurking-holes to this day : — 
 
 " Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 
 Bless the bed that I lie on." 
 
 This she sputtered, rather savagely than 
 solemnly, in the tingling, perplexed ears of 
 Grand'mere Dupuy, whose fathers had 
 renounced prayers to the saints before the 
 battle of Pavia. 
 
 Grand'mere was hard to be foiled, and 
 was only braced to another essay by these 
 outbursts. She had the exhaustions appli-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 43 
 
 cation, industry, and good-humour of her 
 nation, and the devoted principles of her 
 sect. 
 
 "We will try neither the old nor the 
 young this time, my pigeon, but a girl like 
 you — the girl Deborah Pott — whom I have 
 caught staring in at our door and windows 
 when she passes, and who once ran after me 
 and restored my sack when I dropped it, 
 nearly knocking me down as she did so. 
 She is not pretty — she is an ugly, ungainly 
 creature ; but I think she has what is better 
 than beauty, and only second to grace and 
 goodness — wit, mother-wit they call it in 
 England. But this lost child has no mother, 
 only a stepmother, who gives her the kind- 
 ness of the law — no more. Oh ! well, it is 
 good that she gives her that. She cannot 
 make a mother's heart for a child who is not 
 hers, and she may be so unfortunate as to 
 forget to pray for it. Our Priscille tells me
 
 44 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 Mother Pott is a poor widow with a large 
 family to rear, and no wonder she is sharp 
 in the tongue as steel or vinegar. Yet she 
 shelters and feeds this Deborah with what 
 help she can get from the girl's work in the 
 fields, and without much hope of giving her 
 away in marriage. However, Deborah has 
 a wise woman's name, and if she has wit, 
 we will give her a dowry — not that we have 
 money — l silver and gold have we none,' my 
 little Yolande, save what my son can spare 
 to Philippine to keep the house and furnish 
 the linen-presses and the wardrobes afresh ; 
 but we have our gifts and our accomplish- 
 ments, though the country people here 
 think so little of them. Deborah, witli the 
 wise woman's name, will be a doctoress. 
 We will teach her our skill in the herbs, 
 which our family have had since Bernardo 
 Romilly stanched the wounds of the great 
 Conde : that will be one dowry for her ; and
 
 The Huguenot Family. 45 
 
 the cambric-darning, the lace-mending, the 
 working of clocks into hose, will be another. 
 She may not get a husband, for I have my 
 suspicions that the English lads are not wise 
 in their own interests; but it does not 
 signify, my Deborah will be a mother in 
 Sedge Pond, and she will nurse the gene- 
 rations of the future." 
 
 At first it seemed that Grand'mere Dupuy 
 had finally hit the mark. Great uncouth 
 Deborah Pott had not been so used to pre- 
 ferment that she should scout this ; she had 
 faced too many real evils in the bare cold 
 lodging, which was hardly a home, to recoil 
 from the strange Frenchwoman as the rest 
 of the villagers did. Moreover, Deborah 
 Pott was of an inquisitive, dauntless turn of 
 mind, which disposed her to venture on the 
 opening of any oyster which the world 
 might present to her. 
 
 " My service, marm ; I'd like to come and
 
 46 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 try, if mother 'ud hear of it. She's wicious, 
 mother is, when she's axecl aught, because, 
 as she says, she's worritted enough without 
 that plague into the bargain ; but she comes 
 round most times after she's been wild a 
 bit, and she's allers said she'd be main set 
 up to be well rid of me." 
 
 This speech was delivered with many a 
 bob of an original, irregular curtsey by the 
 fluttered, important Deborah, whom Grand- 
 'mere and Yolande had waylaid as she was 
 returning from her field-work, with her long 
 step, and short petticoat and shorter gown 
 stained with clay, and her steeple-crowned 
 hat, hardly browner than her brick-brown 
 face, and her hoe over her shoulder. 
 
 But the bright prospect of success was 
 soon dashed when Deborah came running 
 over to Shottery Cottage, bellowing all the 
 way like a lubberly boy. 
 
 " Here I be, to tell you — I be never to
 
 The Huguenot Family. 47 
 
 come nigh hand you, or to speak to you 
 again. Mother swears I be the pest of her 
 life, and a tomboy of a lass that will stick to 
 her like a burdock ; but she'll claw me and 
 whack me till there's never a rag of skin on 
 my bones or a whole bone in my body, and 
 she'll have the mischief shook out of me 
 (and I be right sure it never coined there 
 till you put it in, mistress) ; she'll never fee 
 me to a wanton, play-acting, crazy old 
 French quean, as would have her base job 
 out of me, and mix me up in her vile plots, 
 and leave me to hang by the neck at Tyburn 
 till I were ' dead, dead, dead,' like Punch's 
 Judy, when she were done with me. Lawk- 
 a-daisy ! lawk-a-daisy !" 
 
 Now Grand'mere knew the sum of the 
 accusation against her, and for a moment 
 felt cut to the heart. That she — a clever, 
 provident, diligent woman in her day, proud 
 of her house-keeping, and her various arts
 
 48 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 in keeping accounts, dispensing advice and 
 assistance, rearing and training children, 
 handmaids, and even apprentices and clerks, 
 as she had done in the old velouterie, with 
 which the Dupuys had been connected for 
 generations, should be regarded as an un- 
 practical, harebrained enthusiast, was most 
 mortifying. That she, the humblest, most 
 grateful woman in the world, should be 
 branded as an interloper and a supplanter of 
 other workers, a filcher of their gains, made 
 her sigh deeply, — but that she, a Huguenot, 
 traditionally descended from the Albigenses, 
 with their Champs de Sang and Mas Calvi, 
 educated in the most uncompromising an- 
 tagonism to the Roman hierarchy and the 
 Roman Catholic creed — that she, an exile 
 for her faith, should be accused of vile pur- 
 poses and plots, brought tears to her grey 
 eyes. 
 To be thus confounded with her persecutors
 
 
 The Huguenot Family. A\) 
 
 and foes, in spite of her loud protest, to be 
 ranked with them in their glaring errors by 
 those who were very nearly as grovelling, 
 degraded, and pagan as the lowest of the 
 Catholics they condemned, was a bitter drop 
 in poor Grand'mere's cup. That she, an aged 
 widow woman, living in strict seclusion under 
 her son's roof, and the adherent of a Re- 
 former whose followers, in their reaction 
 from license, profligacy, and infidelity, were 
 staid even to moroseness, and rigid to aus- 
 terity, should be picked out and pointed at 
 as a light, cruel kidnapper and destroyer of 
 young girls, was almost too much for her 
 kindly nature. But still she was able to bear 
 the grievous misconstruction without malice ; 
 which was needful, for Yolande burst out in 
 a girl's vehement spite and scorn. 
 
 " But why do they abuse and slander us ?" 
 she urged, bitterly. 
 
 "But why?" echoed Grand'mere, meekly. 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 " I know not, unless they have forgotten, or 
 never heard, how they admired aud ap- 
 plauded our first service in the crypt of Can- 
 terbury Cathedral, and only recognise us to 
 taunt and deride us as we come out of the 
 French chapel in Hog Lane, at the Seven 
 Dials." 
 
 In the singleness of heart, which is akin 
 to second sight, Grand'mere did more than 
 forbear; she arrived at a partial compre- 
 hension of the cause of her failure. Her 
 poor — her children as she had called them 
 — had been too much children to her, as 
 they are prone to be in those sloth and 
 languor-inspiring southern provinces so long 
 subjected to the yoke. Saxon vigour could 
 never stoop to such fostering and to such 
 helplessness; it were to strike at it root and 
 branch to attempt this. Reformation, to be 
 effectual, must work from within, not from 
 without. The English, reformed by man-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 51 
 
 dates of king and counsel, were not yet quite 
 sensible of what true reformation was ; while 
 as to the French reformers, every one of 
 them had had to go for himself into the 
 desert, and had thus become noble, inde- 
 pendent, and manly in his writhing agonies 
 — protesting and steadfast in every nerve 
 and maimed limb. And now the time was 
 come for the two to meet and teach each 
 other. 
 
 Grand'mere had been hasty, puffed up, 
 and rash ; she told herself all that, and it 
 was true in a degree ; but Grand'mere's faults 
 were better than her neighbours' virtues, 
 just as the doubts of Nicodemus and Martin 
 Luther were better than the faith of other 
 doctors of the Sanhedrim, and other monks. 
 
 e 2 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
 
 ,52 I 1 he Huguenot Fa rm fly. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Dupuy Household. 
 
 HE Dupuy household consisted of 
 Monsieur and Madame Dupuy; Yo- 
 1 ancle, their only child; Grand mere, Mon- 
 sieur's mother ; and Priscilla, or Priscille, or 
 Prie, as the French tongues variously named 
 a club-footed, taciturn, elderly English maid- 
 servant attached to their service. The family 
 was from Languedoc, which had been the 
 very heart of the great heretical movement 
 from the days of Richard of the Lion Heart. 
 The people of that province have some of 
 the liveliness of their Gascon neighbours, 
 but it is crossed by Italian moodiness and 
 passion.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 53 
 
 The Dupuys had emigrated to England 
 among the crowds from Languedoc, Angou- 
 mois, Brittany, Pieardy, Alsace, Champagne, 
 Auvergne, and Provence, where some of the 
 hereditary nobility still bore on their shields 
 the emblematic torches and stars of the Albi- 
 genses. They had been forced to escape 
 with their lives owing to the long-continued 
 consequences of the revocation of the edict 
 of Nantes. They suffered under political 
 disabilities ; their church services, and even 
 their marriages, were illegal. Their pains 
 and penalties were innumerable, and scorn 
 and contumely had been heaped upon them 
 down even to the days of Jean Jacques, and 
 the gushing, fermenting religion of nature. 
 
 So far as the Dupuys were concerned, the 
 exodus had taken place twenty years ago, 
 three or four years before Yolande was born. 
 Silk manufacturers by hereditary trade, they 
 had at first settled in the colony of Spital-
 
 54 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 fields. As years wore on, however, M. 
 Dupuy, by his business qualifications, and 
 notwithstanding difficulties, had attained a 
 certain amount of prosperity and means ; 
 and as Madame's health showed symptoms of 
 failing, he withdrew from greater interest 
 in business than what was implied in his 
 braving the dangers of the road, and the 
 gentlemen of the road, in periodical coach 
 journeys — quarterly, or more frequently, as 
 necessity demanded — between London and 
 Norwich. The family settled in the quiet 
 village of Sedge Pond, which presented at 
 first sight to tired, battered wayfarers like 
 them as secure a place of rest and shelter 
 as deceitfnl appearances could offer. 
 
 There the Dupuys had dwelt from spring 
 to summer in complete isolation and se- 
 clusion, the sole interlude and incident in 
 their lives being Monsieur's departures and 
 returns, and the exciting risks by flood and
 
 The Huguenot Family. 55 
 
 field, from storms, overturns, and horse- 
 pistols of which His Majesty's highway then 
 presented a bountiful supply. But Grand'- 
 mere was kept active by other impulses ; for 
 notwithstanding all her experience, she was 
 unable to regard Christianity — even Re- 
 formed Christianity, with its half-healed, 
 wounds and rankling wrongs — as a religion 
 requiring one to retire, like an Englishman, 
 into one's castle, raising the drawbridge and 
 letting fall the portcullis. She did not 
 understand that to live in peace with all men 
 was only to be attained by living apart from 
 all men — " neither making nor meddling in 
 their concerns." Therefore Grand'mere in- 
 stinctively tried the innocent wiles of her own 
 pleasant land; and from her sacred, sunny, 
 hoary height of fourscore years she looked 
 down full of hope, and was piteous only 
 when the wiles failed. 
 
 The Dupuys, not merely exiles, but with-
 
 56 The Hwjuenot Family. 
 
 drawn even from their fellow-exiles, were 
 thus thrown in upon themselves with the 
 force of their national, sectarian peculiarities 
 left intact; but they preserved their indi- 
 vidual distinctions so well that they bore no 
 great family likeness. The crisis, it is true, 
 had worked powerfully on all the materials, 
 but the materials were widely and per- 
 manently affected by sex, age, and personal 
 history. The result was that they presented 
 such warp and woof of good and evil as 
 French Huguenots, English Puritans, and 
 Scotch Covenanters supply each in turn to 
 the dispassionate and candid observer. Mon- 
 sieur was a Huguenot in name and politico 
 just as Praise-God Barebones was a Puritan 
 or Erskine of Grange a Calvinist ; he was an 
 that account the more tenacious in retaining 
 the little he had left to make up for the 
 much he had lost. He was a zealous, ener- 
 getic, influential member of that foreign
 
 The Huguenot Family. 57 
 
 society which has only within late years 
 been broadly recognized as a moving-spring 
 and leaven in English annals, and justly re- 
 corded as such. But even in those days it 
 found some manly, generous defenders, and 
 certain acts and clauses of acts were wisely 
 and liberally passed in the British Par- 
 liament for its protection. But the defence 
 was so ineffectual, and so weakly were the 
 protective clauses put in force, that false 
 prophets and revolutionists were taken as 
 the exponents and representatives of the 
 refugees, and to pay them back in fit coin 
 they were caricatured and vilified even by 
 William Hogarth, who was gentle to the 
 Methodists. But there were more sub- 
 stantial outrages, too. Silk-mills, like that 
 of Derby, were set on fire, and the sluices of 
 great Yorkshire wears undermined. It was 
 an ordinary occurrence for foreign workmen 
 to be felled with bludgeons ; and households
 
 58 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 such as the Dupuys, were like small colonies 
 of ants in an empire of hornets. 
 
 Such a society had to fight hard for its ex- 
 istence, and had to be united by all ties 
 whether kindred or selfish. The men who 
 formed and cemented it, were certainly men 
 of tact and vigour ; and they have left proof 
 of this in the great French names which 
 figure in England's story in the succeeding 
 generations. 
 
 But Monsieur Dupuy suffered the blight 
 which the faith of many men, especially 
 Frenchmen, who are far more speculative 
 than emotional, suffers on the dissipation of 
 early illusions and prejudices. Coming out 
 of a concentrated, narrowing atmospheiv. 
 where the views of life were exaggerated and 
 spasmodic, and having his eyes opened to the 
 falseness of many of the lights seen through 
 the highly coloured, distorted medium, and 
 to the retaliating aggression and intolerance
 
 The Huguenot Family. 59 
 
 of some of the most cherished dogmas, he 
 gave way to the reactionary feeling which 
 has been ever only too plentiful among such 
 a society. Monsieur was a good Huguenot 
 in so far as he remained stanchlv, consist- 
 ently mindful of his own wrongs as a French- 
 man, and was sternly opposed to the Roman 
 Catholic Church. But he went no farther 
 than this, and was in every other sense un- 
 mistakeably, undisguisedly, a man of the 
 world. Madame, his wife, who thought 
 differently, never ceased, openly and point- 
 edly, to bemoan his declension, and to sit in 
 judgment on it with mingled gloom and 
 asperity ; and though he was too much of a 
 bourgeois gentleman and French husband to 
 snap his fingers, he certainly did shrug his 
 shoulders at her. Grand'mere, with her 
 great, sweet charity, made allowance for his 
 difficulties, temptations, and dangers, and 
 bore with him, believed in him, and hoped
 
 00 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 in him. And the best thing in Monsieur was 
 
 his conduct to his mother. He was a pr< »- 
 voking, jibing husband, an indifferent, care- 
 less father, but he was Grand'mere's stay and 
 support in all duty and honour ; nay, he was 
 more; the sallow, periwigged man of fifty 
 was as deferential and as tender in his tone 
 to the grandmother of the family as when 
 she was the house-mistress, and he a chubby 
 boy at her apron-string. 
 
 Madame Dupuy could not be called an 
 unhappy woman, for she was one of those 
 who luxuriate in their woes ; but hers was 
 not a nature calculated to make others 
 happy. She was a woman of the closet, 
 with the faults of the closet opposed to the 
 sins of the world. She was sincere, constant, 
 virtuous, and pious in her own way, but then 
 that was quite a French way. She was more 
 respectful and submissive to her mother-in- 
 law as a daughter than she was to her hus-
 
 The Huguenot Family. Gl 
 
 band as a wife ; while as a mother herself 
 she exacted unqualified obedience, and was 
 careful and anxious, but not fond. She had 
 been upwards of twenty years in England, 
 which had served her so far as a haven of 
 refuge and an adopted country, but she had 
 not discovered a single merit in it ! She 
 had been six months at Sedge Pond with- 
 out crossing her door-step, except to attend 
 the English church-service, the only service 
 within her reach — the Lutheran form of 
 which she not only deeply lamented over, 
 but bitterly resented. She took no interest 
 in anything in the wide world beyond her 
 own family, her fellow-exiles, her church, 
 and her country — the latter of which she 
 had left to lying prophets and the destroyer. 
 She discoursed continually on one or 
 other of these subjects, dwelling particularly 
 on the trials and persecutions of Huguenot 
 history, until they seemed to shadow witli a
 
 62 lite Hnyuenot luuinhf. 
 
 black pall all that grew and flourished, 
 
 smiled and rejoiced, on the face of the 
 earth, and until her talk was like a passion- 
 ate protest against the government of the 
 great God and Father of all, whom she 
 feared, and only feared. When she spoke 
 of her church and her country, she did not 
 dwell as Grand'mere did on fruits ripened 
 under the sharp frost of pain and anguish. 
 She did not dilate with delight on gallant 
 endurance, on love stronger than death, on 
 patience, charity, purity, or heavenly-minded- 
 ness ; she never credited or reported the re- 
 morse and ruth, the pity, the kindness, the 
 generous pleading, in the formidable fare of 
 hostile despotism, of those who, like the 
 Prince of Shechem, were more noble than 
 all the house of their fathers. It was not 
 of the Christian chivalry of Agrippa d'Au- 
 bignd in many a siege and battle-field, nor 
 of tin 1 Christian loyalty of Madame de la
 
 The Huguenot Family. 63 
 
 Force, that she waxed eloquent. Not of the 
 noble, half-mad prophetess, Marie Villiers ; 
 not of the common ground on which a 
 Bossuet might meet a Claude, or a Fenelon 
 in his archiepiscopal chair a Paul Rabaud 
 in the desert, did she speak. It was of 
 men hung by the thumbs till the blood 
 spurted from underneath their nails, of wo- 
 men frightened into fits by hideous specta- 
 cles, of drums beaten night and day to de- 
 prive the wretched of the last human re- 
 source — the oblivion of sleep ; it was of 
 desecrated temples and their dismal desola- 
 tion, of the galleys, the hurdle, and the 
 hangman, that she incessantly clamoured. 
 
 No wonder then that Yolande Dupuy, 
 with her mental appetite fed on such a diet, 
 should grow up sad, sombre, and scornful, 
 with a perplexed, scared look in the midst of 
 her youth and beauty. Had she been a lad, 
 a young Hannibal, she might have been
 
 04 The Huguenot Family, 
 
 tempted to swear some deadly heathen oath 
 that she would live to be avenged on the 
 foes whom Christ tells us to forgive as we 
 hope to be forgiven. Without Grand'mei 
 there is no saying how ungirl-like Yolande 
 might have been. She would certainly ha\ 
 been more absorbed in the centuries-long 
 injuries of her sect and race ; more chilled 
 by the dank, cold atmosphere of prisons and 
 tombs ; more unsusceptible to those sweet, 
 balmy influences and bountiful consolations 
 of God in nature and humanity, which call 
 upon all men, however tried and h< rwever 
 down-trodden, not simply to stifle their sobs 
 and hide their wounds with the heroism of 
 the ancient Stoic, but to take heart, look up 
 and resume their march, in the confidenc 
 of free-born sons and daughters of the Lord 
 Almighty, as knowing that their redemption 
 draweth nidi. For Yolande had no relief 
 derived from the robust, cheery presence
 
 The Huguenot Family. 65 
 
 of such a privileged, hearty, confidential 
 family servant as a French Fifine or Solaire 
 might have been. Priscille, though she had 
 taken Yolande as a new-born child into her 
 arms, and was inseparably identified and 
 bound up with the family, was yet by tem- 
 per, infirmity, and circumstance, graver, 
 more reserved and taciturn, than any austere 
 Huguenot born and bred. She was a gruff 
 woman with a temper, whose humour was 
 so dry that, like old wine, it required an 
 old and disciplined palate to appreciate it ; 
 and indeed, it was true that old Grand'mere 
 would nod and shake her neat, trim old sides 
 at Priscille's brevity and unpremeditated 
 strokes of sarcasm. 
 
 Grand'mere was the sole sunbeam in the 
 family. She was a living disproval of any 
 notion which might have existed that it was 
 tribulation in itself which had rendered the 
 family so still and severe. She had suffered 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 more tribulation than any of them — than 
 all of them put together — for she had lived 
 nearer the darkest, most cruel days of blood 
 and fire. Grand'mere had seen Huguenots, 
 whose only crime had been attending a 
 religious meeting of their own persuasion, 
 walking behind a troop of infantry, collars 
 of iron round their necks, and heavy chains 
 linking them four to four and six to six. 
 and yet daring to bare their brave heads, 
 and sing* one of Clement Marot's psalms: — 
 
 " Jamais ne cesserai 
 De magnifier le Seigneur." 
 
 Ay, her own elder brother, Blaise, had been 
 one of the men who with cramped limbs, 
 swollen by the weight of their fetters and 
 the damp straw on which they had lain the 
 previous night, dragged themselves along, 
 singing triumphantly as they went on their 
 way to wanton insult, wasting sickness, and 
 an early deliverance by death. And not
 
 The Huguenot Family. 67 
 
 only this — Grand'mere's husband not being 
 a Reformed pastor, who was allowed the 
 favour of taking on himself without moles- 
 tation the execution of his sentence of per- 
 petual banishment — had been caught in the 
 act of escaping from the country which con- 
 demned and abhorred him, and had to work 
 as a slave, fastened to a bench, under the 
 almost tropical sun of Marseilles, where he 
 had been flogged and bastinadoed for three 
 endless years. On obtaining his* release, 
 through a singular act of clemency, he re- 
 turned to his home a bloodless skeleton, a 
 harmless, light-brained, mazed man, para- 
 lysed not in body, but in heart. 
 
 Yet Grand'mere could laugh and sing 
 now. It was not from French levity, but 
 because, in her day, she could " cry with the 
 best." These tremendous crosses and tor- 
 tures had not been without their blessed 
 light and their balm — not without their 
 
 f2
 
 68 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 crushed fragrance of meekness, their lofty 
 consciousness of rectitude, their solemn 
 tender consolation of walking in the very 
 footsteps of prophets, apostles, martyrs, and 
 even of the great Master himself ; else 
 whence the force of the "Blessed are ye 
 when all men shall revile you and persecute 
 you?" But it is not so much in the actual 
 endurance as in the after-thought of great 
 tribulation that flesh and blood cry out, 
 nature revolts, and all the smaller, meaner 
 passions come out to coil and spring like a 
 brood of snakes on their prey. To Grand'- 
 mere these old sorrows were far away on 
 the dim and distant horizon, divided from 
 her bv more than one life-time. Grand'mere 
 was on those hills of Beulah near to the 
 land where there is nothing to hurt or de- 
 stroy in all God's holy mountain. 
 
 Thus the Hmmmot household abode in 
 the grey solid little Shottery Cottage with
 
 The Huguenot Family. 69 
 
 its square casements and hood-like porch. 
 They were distinct and peculiar as any Jew- 
 ish household, while the old village of Sedge 
 Pond lay couchant in the attitude and 
 temper of a sluttish, drowsy mastiff. Passers- 
 bv could see through the cottage casements 
 ajar or wide open in summer, into the 
 house; and through the glass-door or the 
 wicket into the garden, which occupied a 
 corner of the castle-park, with its terraces, 
 its pleached arbour, and its grotesque 
 monster or two in box or yew. But what 
 most attracted the eye of the villagers was 
 the pond, which they declared was kept for 
 and stored with frogs, or the rapid growth 
 of strange herbs and vegetables — chicory, 
 endive, brilliant scarlet beans, which were 
 regarded as being equally uncanny and un- 
 familiar. And then, too, figures were often 
 to be seen moving among the flowers or 
 seated in the rooms. Eyes were perhaps
 
 70 The Huguenot Family, 
 
 apathetic in peering at first, but there was n< > 
 want of strength of disparagement in the 
 owners when once they looked, and stared 
 at Monsieur, more flabby than lean-fleshed, 
 and not very remarkable in his rusty brown 
 suit, plain cravat, knee-breeches, and square 
 shoes with square buckles. Yet though he 
 was more conformable in gait and garment 
 to English fashions than his womenkind, he 
 would seem odd enough to these stupid ey 
 as he led Grand mere by the tips of the 
 fingers to her seat at table, or from the 
 pleached arbour to her room. Well was it 
 that these villagers saw not all his graces 
 of deportment, for he would stand many 
 minutes at the back of her chair as courtly 
 and insinuating as if he had been a prince 
 and she a princess, he a yotmg lover and Bhe 
 his mistress. Then the rest of the family 
 made up a curious picture. Madame Dupuy, 
 in the perpetual mourning which the later
 
 The Huguenot Family. 71 
 
 Huguenot women assumed, sat precise and 
 cheerless, with more wrinkles and furrows 
 in her narrow forehead than contracted 
 Grand'mere's broad fair one, and her grizzled 
 hair as if in mourning, too, like the rest of 
 her attire ; while Yolande, in dress, was a 
 facsimile of her grandmother, although the 
 two models were so very different — the one 
 so old, small, fair, sweet, and bright, the 
 other so young, tall, and grey-toned in con- 
 tradiction to the firmer, fuller outlines. 
 There was indeed a flavour of tartness about 
 the picture, and a permanent Rembrandtish 
 gloom which was not without its mystery 
 and its charm. 
 
 The public rooms of the cottage were not 
 divided into better and worse parlours, as in 
 other English cottages and middle class or 
 small gentry's houses of the time, but into 
 the man's room and the women's room. 
 The man's room was half study, half business
 
 72 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 room, crowded and cumbered with heavy 
 chests and boxes. A black cabinet, with 
 numerous shallow drawers and doors quaint- 
 ly carved with scenes from the life of King 
 Solomon, stood in one corner, and escritoires, 
 suggesting a lingering grasp of trade, and 
 hinting of reverential preservation of family 
 and party records and relics, in the other. 
 The only visitors who had yet appeared at 
 Sedge Pond were received bv Monsieur 
 before they were met and entertained by the 
 general family, and that with a hospitality 
 staid and subdued, but striking in its un- 
 grudgingness, for it was the only outlay 
 which the strangers, economical to penuri- 
 ousness in English eyes, did not grudge and 
 stint themselves in. The visitors were emi- 
 grants like themselves, more or less fresh 
 from France, or worn into foreign grooves. 
 There were agents of emigrants too, and 
 with them occasionally came Englishmen, bo.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 73 
 
 allied to them in business as to have got 
 over the salient points on which they and 
 the emigrants stood aloof from each other. 
 Sometimes, also, there would be a sprinkling 
 of other foreigners — sputtering Swiss, bland 
 Italians, and phlegmatic Dutch, as they 
 passed to and from Norwich and London, in 
 the interests of the newly-established or re- 
 novated silk manufactures which were car- 
 ried on in small, dingy, and most incon- 
 venient manufactories, where the looms, still 
 waiting for Jacquard, were so complicated 
 and so little adapted to the human shape 
 and movements that the canuts of Lyons, 
 who had worked at them for generations, 
 were notoriously a crippled, dwarfed, and 
 diseased class. After all, it was an odd 
 shaping of circumstances which made a re- 
 mote, thoroughly insular village, not even 
 on any of the great roads, become a chosen 
 meeting-place and rendezvous of those who,
 
 74 The Huguenot F<n a il;/. 
 
 to nine-tenths of even enlightened English- 
 men, figured, not without reason, as very 
 suspicious characters. 
 
 The women's room had its elaborate, 
 monotonous, time-consuming work — carpet 
 work, embroidery, and fine lace- weaving, 
 which Madame Dupuy did not disapprove 
 of, but considered a necessary element of 
 strict discipline, and praiseworthy in itself, 
 however objectionable in its results. The 
 room had no harpsichord, nor hint of diver- 
 sion, nor suggestion of occupation beyond 
 books of recipes and accounts. There were 
 one or two treasured volumes of famous 
 treatises and discourses by Reformed pastor-. 
 a work of Jean Calvin himself, and a volume 
 for which, in its simplicity and purity, they 
 had sacrificed, and well sacrificed, country 
 and people, credit, comfort, outward peace. 
 Grand'inere's passion for birds and Sowers, 
 and indeed all living things, was less artifici-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 75 
 
 ally indulged than was common with her 
 country-women, and this rendered the wo- 
 men's room barer, more rigidly matter of 
 fact. Grand'mere's own room, in spite of 
 its great linen bed and curtained doors, was 
 perfectly simple, as became a Huguenot 
 apartment, but she had her jardiniere in the 
 window, in which she grew spiked lavender 
 and African marigolds, just like those the 
 women ofLanomedoc stick in their black 
 hair behind their ears ; and she would catch 
 herself calling to Yolande to shut the case- 
 ment on a chill day, for fear of the cutting 
 mistral. Yes, here, where the old woman 
 who had suffered so much in the long past 
 was to be met peculiarly, there were to be 
 found grace, fancy, dignity, and a kind of 
 refined bravery. 
 
 . In the women's room the family, the 
 members of which did not meet for break- 
 fast, but supped their messes of soup step-
 
 76 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 ping out of bed, or walking about the house, 
 met for the noon dinner, which was com- 
 posed largely of vegetables and such fruit as 
 Sedge Pond yielded — a diet before which, 
 as opposed to corned beef and stock-fish, it 
 was quite true, as Grand'mere had boasted, 
 that scurvy and leprosy disappeared. There 
 they ate their equally temperate supper, not 
 drinking anything so strong and substantial 
 as home-brewed ale, or so spicy as elder- 
 flower wine, but unutterably mawkish and 
 insipid milks and waters of their own com- 
 pounding, and, in rarer instances, when 
 they had visitors, their vinegar wine. Mon- 
 sieur pondered, wrote, and calculated, and 
 waited on the mail twice a week, just as 
 busily and assiduously as if he were still the 
 head of a firm. And sometimes he would 
 stroll alone on the terraces or about the 
 country roads, or shoot small birds with a 
 fowling-piece, causing a lively struggle in
 
 The Huguenot Family. 77 
 
 Grand'mere's mind between regret for the 
 fate of the birds and gratification at her 
 son's diversion. The women worked ever- 
 lastingly, keeping time to Madame's lamen- 
 tations, or Grand'mere's praises and thanks- 
 givings and sparkling range of observation 
 and anecdote. There was no smoking, 
 drinking, dicing, or card-playing ; very little 
 even of the feasting which then went on 
 elsewhere throughout England among all 
 classes, from ministers of state down to 
 plough-boys. Indeed the prejudiced people 
 of Sedge Pond esteemed this very sobriety 
 as an important tittle of evidence against 
 the offenders, and often discussed it in 
 one or other of the great rooms of the 
 ale-house as an unmistakable proof that 
 the French family were guilty of far worse 
 practices. 
 
 " A cannot and a wunnot drink like my 
 neebours, because when ale's in wit's out,
 
 7S The Hugueix'i Family. 
 
 and a cannot afford to miss wit for my gun- 
 powder plots ;" so they would represent 
 them as saying.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 79 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Rector and his Household. 
 
 HE Dupuys had now lived six 
 months in Sedge Pond, tolerated, 
 but looked at askance, unmolested, but 
 without having received a word of wel- 
 come as Protestant refugees. And yet there, 
 was, at the head of the church at Sedge 
 Pond, a stout spiritual captain who with 
 reason reckoned himself a good Christian 
 and Protestant. Mr. Philip Rolle, the Rector 
 of the parish, was one of the best and 
 most influential of the clergy of his district. 
 He was respected by all, a little perhaps 
 because of his good birth, private fortune, 
 and connection with the great Rolles of the
 
 80 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 Castle, but still more because of the manli- 
 ness, independence, sobriety, and morality 
 of his life. And this was something at a 
 time when the Church often scandalised 
 the world by having in its ranks bishops, 
 priests, and deacons who were ministers t< > 
 iniquity in high places, and time-servers as 
 loose and irregular in their lives as the 
 grosser members of their congregations. 
 Such things, when they did not excite violent 
 antipathy, were regarded with indolent in- 
 difference. Indeed, the memory of good 
 Bishop Ken and holy George Herbert, and 
 the priests of whom they were the typ 
 seemed to have died out. 
 
 Mr. Philip Eolle was a proud, opinion- 
 ative leader, but at the same time a con- 
 scientious, active, benevolent magistrate and 
 clergyman, a bravo, resolute gentleman, and 
 a generous man according to his light. He 
 never missed preaching sermons like military
 
 The Huguenot Family. 81 
 
 orders, and read the service, whether well 
 or ill, in winter's frost and summer's sultri- 
 ness. He rode into the thick of mobs and 
 quelled them, perhaps more by his un- 
 daunted aristocratic features than his ready 
 riding-whip, which, it must be confessed, he 
 was by no means slow to wield when any 
 refractory sheep was straying from the flock. 
 He would undoubtedly have refused to 
 whistle the Word of God through a key- 
 hole, as he denounced and stormed at 
 simony ; and his hands, humanly speaking, 
 were clean, and his heart pure. But he 
 was, notwithstanding all this, as fierce and 
 fanatical as a Pharisee, without a Pharisee's 
 hypocrisy. He would have objected to a 
 dissenter and a democrat more than to 
 an unbeliever and a tyrant, for the one he 
 regarded as a masked, the other as an open 
 enemy. 
 
 Thus the Rector had been vexed when 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 the Dupuys invaded his parish and accom- 
 plished a settlement in it. He was not 
 
 ignorant, like many of his parishioners, of 
 their claims on his consideration and hospi- 
 tality as fellow-Protestants who had suffered 
 in the cause of religious liberty. But he 
 ignored them as long as possible, for he 
 looked upon them as perilous neighbours 
 and their views as dangerous stuff. He was 
 without doubt a Protestant, firmly denying 
 Roman Catholic supremacy, and boldly con- 
 fessing and abjuring Roman Catholic cor- 
 ruption and error. Had he lived a little 
 earlier, and had rectors gone to the Tower 
 with bishops, he would without fail have 
 gone to the Tower. But as it was, he had 
 no regard for factious subjects, and hisgorg 
 rose at the French, whether Protestant or 
 Papist. He classed the French refuge 
 naturalised in England with the receivers of 
 the royal bounty who paid it back in in-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 83 
 
 trigue, conspiracy, and enthusiastic imposture. 
 It was to no purpose, so far as Mr. Philip 
 Rolle and vehement Englishmen like him 
 were concerned, that the French churches 
 in London and elsewhere denounced and 
 repudiated such evil courses, and mourned 
 that the actors in them were generally taken 
 as the representatives of their sect and na- 
 tion. The Rector was inclined to look on 
 the Dupuys as more distasteful and trouble- 
 some parishioners than his old plagues, the 
 meddling and levelling family of the Gages 
 of the Mall, who were at least the spawn of 
 an English brood, and whose vices and 
 errors were those of England. 
 
 Mr. Philip Rolle, as was fitting in those 
 republican times, kept a great deal of state, 
 including a family chariot and a black ser- 
 vant. He had been rather lucky in his 
 matrimonial venture, for Madame Rolle was 
 a presentable woman, fair and fat. She be- 
 
 g2
 
 84 Tlte Huguenot Fa i iu I >f. 
 
 lieved in her Bible, her husband, her chil- 
 dren, and " The County Chronicle." She 
 was a good, common-place, shallow woman, 
 who had known few cares or sorrows, and 
 was entirely overshadowed by the superior 
 intellect and will of her husband. True, she 
 put forth her whole energy, such as it was, 
 and laboured diligently in her small calling, 
 in order that nothing should be wanting in 
 her housewifery. Their family consisted of 
 one son and two daughters. Captain Philip 
 Rolle, at the date of our story, was in the 
 army, and engaged in the American War. 
 He was the very idol of his father's heart, 
 and was reported to be a gallant officer and 
 a promising young man. Madam Rolle, 
 while she contrived that she should be the 
 most notable woman in the parish, seemed 
 also to have determined that her two grown- 
 up daughters, Dorothy and Camilla, should 
 never put their high-heeled feet to the
 
 The Huguenot Family. 85 
 
 ground, or soil the rosy tips of their fingers, 
 which their mittens left exposed, save for 
 their own special pleasure. This mode of 
 upbringing was, of course, expected to render 
 them all the better fitted for the certain, 
 speedy, and high promotion to which their 
 transcendent merits entitled them, and were 
 sure to command for them. And since the 
 Rector had a hand in the polemics of his 
 day and a seat on the bench, he was too 
 busy a man to think the question of women's 
 education of so much consequence, that he 
 should interfere with the training of his 
 daughters. Reprobate parsons of the Law- 
 rence Sterne stamp would interfere, and be 
 very much set on their Lyds speaking 
 French and dancing minuets, with the airs 
 and graces of ma'mselles; but righteous par- 
 sons, like Mr. Philip Rolle, left the reading 
 and the writing of their daughters, as well 
 as the cooking and the working, to their
 
 86 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 mothers and to nature. He who was a lion 
 abroad was, in this respect, a lamb at home. 
 Thus Dorothy and Camilla had, perhaps, 
 the best chance in England, if it were not 
 frustrated, under Providence, by some sense 
 and virtue in their own hearts, of being most 
 selfish, uncultivated girls, full of affecta- 
 tions, extravagances, and passions, strong as 
 in children. 
 
 The two girls, plump and cherry-cheeked, 
 were puffed, powdered, and patched after 
 the best mode, and lolled and yawned, with 
 their lap-dogs on their knees, while black 
 Jasper was actually employed to fan them 
 in the hot weather. But when the wind or 
 their humour changed they would walk 
 about with their riding-skirts, used as walk- 
 ing-dresses, and the long trains drawn 
 through the pocket-holes. And thus they 
 would tramp through dust and mire to the 
 next market-town or the next country-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 87 
 
 house, in search of adventure and diversion. 
 They were not over-particular as to the 
 kind ; and sometimes they would succeed in 
 coaxing their father to mount one or other 
 on a chariot horse, while he would accom- 
 pany them himself, seated erectly and 
 stately on another, Black Jasper riding be- 
 hind, with his knees drawn up to the crown 
 of his head. For a whole dim October nay, 
 or white February one, they would go about 
 thus, spurring and clattering. 
 
 Mr. Philip Rolle was not one of those men 
 who fight under women's colours. He did 
 not even dream of using his ladies as help- 
 meets in his office, though the practice was 
 ancient enough, and might have pleased a 
 man who was conservative and opposed to 
 novelties. In his own indulgent, courteous, 
 autocratical way he was strong on the phy- 
 sical and mental inferiority of women, and 
 their inevitable dependence upon man, and
 
 88 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 he enforced his notions by all sound laws, 
 human and divine. One of the innovations 
 which specially offended and disgusted him 
 in the new doctrines which John Wesley 
 and Fletcher of Madeley had given them- 
 selves over to spread, was that of women 
 preaching and teaching, and taking it upon 
 them to judge for themselves against the 
 plain doctrines of revealed truth. 
 
 He did not employ Madam Rolle in 
 parochial work beyond the superintendence 
 of the making of a particular posset, or the 
 placing the contents of her larder at his dis- 
 posal for his respectable poor, whom he 
 wished to feed and clothe by rule and mea- 
 sure, though yet with a certain faithfulness 
 and liberality, for to the poor who had be- 
 come so through their own deeds and 
 deserts he was a stern gaoler and task-mas- 
 ter. Dorothy and Camilla might perhaps 
 languishingly or pertly distribute pence on
 
 The Huguenot Family. 89 
 
 davs of doles or church festivals, but the 
 Rector scorued female assistance of any 
 more practical character. The idea of wo- 
 men, whom he acknowledged as rational 
 beings called to love and good works, being 
 employed in ministrations of education, en- 
 lightenment, or consolation in the best 
 sense, would, in his idea, have been simply 
 to strike at the very root of Protestant- 
 ism. He would have mourned over it as a 
 return to the ascetic sentimental sisterhoods 
 of Roman Catholicism, with their famished 
 humanity and their spurious pietism, or, at 
 the best, as a drifting into the eccentric, un- 
 orthodox, lawless by-roads of Methodism. 
 But Dorothy and Camilla were honest and 
 modest, innocent in their ignorance and 
 their respectfulness to their father, and their 
 affection to their mother. They did not 
 wholly want parts ; at least they could not 
 contribute to the evening cheerfulness by
 
 90 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 song, riddle, and game, and they knew the 
 fashions sufficiently to spoil their complex- 
 ions and injure their health a little by washes. 
 What more could be expected of the frail 
 things, since it was taken for granted that 
 they also went to church when the weather 
 was not too inclement, said their prayers, 
 and resisted temptation in the shape of 
 private acquaintance with profligate young 
 Squire Thornhills, and such-like scandalous 
 company ? 
 
 The Rectory women had so little fault to 
 find with their world and its morals, that it 
 never entered into the light vapourish heads 
 of Dorothy and Camilla that they were ex- 
 pected to be more than young ladies <>i" 
 breeding, of a little beauty and some accom- 
 plishments. Time, if it hung heavily on 
 their hands, was to be got rid of as tin 
 could best contrive for their own content, 
 and the maintenance oi % their very intermit-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 91 
 
 tent and wavering sprightliness, which, as 
 was the fashion then, alternated with fits of 
 lowness and spleen, when they would lie 
 a-bed half days at a time, and fling their shoes 
 at Black Jasper. But all this, of course, 
 was done in subordination to the great aim of 
 their own and their mother's lives, that in 
 time they should make good matches. The 
 sun of fortune had shone upon their horizon 
 when their distant kinswoman and careless, 
 capricious patroness, Lady Rolle, held 
 racket at the Castle; and their fondest hope 
 and wish now was to be invited to spend a 
 season of frantic dissipation under her lady- 
 ship's game-bird wing up in town. 
 
 Nothing had more puzzled, astounded, 
 and in a sort aggrieved Madam in the whole 
 course of her sheltered, shallow life, than 
 the disappointing experience she had had of 
 her old schoolfellow and companion, Madam 
 Gage, of the Mall. While yet a woman of
 
 92 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 youth, beauty, parts, birth, and fortune, this 
 lady had risen up and resisted the imposing 
 array of custom and authority, which she had 
 been taught to hold in devoted esteem and 
 veneration. She had declared that there 
 was a higher law and a greater authority on 
 her side, which she dared not gainsay or 
 contradict, and which commanded her to 
 come out of her family and circle, and fol- 
 low her own course. Hardships, reproaches, 
 mockery, contumely, and condemnation had 
 not moved her. She had separated herself 
 from her "world," and stood alone, and, 
 what was worse, she had entered into alli- 
 ance with men and women not of Madam 
 Rolle's kind, and who were unlike her in 
 thought, speech, and habit. Madam Gage 
 had worn plain clothes, fed on homely food, 
 risen up early, lain down late, and had 
 established and maintained a household ac- 
 cording to her own strange independent
 
 The Huguenot Family. 93 
 
 rules. Yea, she had even gone abroad, 
 and laboured like an ordained priest, except 
 that her labours were all among the poorest, 
 most ignorant, and most depraved, till she 
 had wedded Mr. Gage, of the Mall, one of 
 the few persons of her rank infected with 
 her craze. She had lived and worked with 
 him, called all things by new names, and 
 had founded every kind of unheard-of and 
 uncalled-for institution. The husband and 
 wife had stirred up the meanest working 
 man and woman to try for themselves this 
 new version of religion, and to work it out 
 according to their circumstances and capa- 
 cities, — above all, according to divine gifts 
 profanely accorded to them. These sense- 
 less and audacious subversions of duty and 
 harmony had been thorns in the flesh of 
 Mr. Rolle, and had been carried on, to 
 Madam Rolle's indignant marvel and 
 dismay, under the Rector's very nose, and
 
 94 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 by individuals still in communion with his 
 
 Church. 
 
 Yet Madam Gage, apart from her lament- 
 able " perversion," did not fail in any of the 
 relations of life, but was so true a daughter, 
 so kind a sister, and so considerate and con- 
 stant a friend and mistress, wife and mother, 
 that her kindred forgot and forgave the 
 disgrace and injury she had done them by 
 her new profession. They restored her to 
 their good graces, and reinstalled her in the 
 place of the willing working member of the 
 house, on whom, even though married, all 
 troublesome obligations fall, and are cheer- 
 fully accepted, and patiently and faithfully 
 fulfilled. And to the day of her death 
 Madam Gage had never appeared to Madam 
 Rolle with the bearing of a conscious 
 offender, or even of a presuming woman. 
 In her stuff gown, linen neckerchief, and 
 muffling head-dress of frills and bands,
 
 The Huguenot Family. 95 
 
 Madam Gage had looked the same grand, 
 handsome, frank, high-spirited woman she 
 had looked when she went, powdered as a 
 marchioness, with brocade over her hoop 
 and a pearl drop at her throat. If there 
 was any change, it was a greater depth in her 
 grey eyes, a sweeter curve in her full, firm 
 lip, as though peace and rest had come out 
 of the strife and toil she had chosen, and 
 had lent serenity to her beauty.
 
 96 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Flag of Truce, and how it Fared. 
 
 WISH you to give me your 
 company in paying a visit," said 
 Mr. Philip Rolle to his wife and daugh- 
 ters, one day, as he entered the parlour 
 with its Indian hangings, worked chair- 
 covers, and dragon china. Madam, in a 
 sacque, sat poring over her recipe-book, 
 and Dorothy and Camilla sat with crossed 
 hands and made faces in an opposite miner. 
 " Where to, papa ?" cried the girls in a 
 breath, jumping up. " You must toll us, 
 that we may know what to wear. Any 
 kind of gadding is bettor than moping 
 here."
 
 The Huguenot Family. 97 
 
 "With all the pleasure in life, girls ; we 
 are delighted to go abroad with papa," put 
 in Madam, carefully. " Is the chariot to be 
 had out, sir ?" 
 
 It is to be noted that Madam did not stand 
 in awe of her husband. She loved him too 
 well for what is generally understood by 
 that phrase, and perfect love in this relation, 
 as in every other, casteth out fear. She 
 comprehended his character so well by long, 
 fond poring over him, that she read what 
 was .in his mind as readily as a much clever- 
 er woman would have read it, and she set 
 herself to humour him. She was aware 
 that, great man as he was, he was not supe- 
 rior to keeping his family in the dark till the 
 last moment as to his intentions, and thus 
 exercising them in blind obedience. And 
 he now answered briefly, " No, there is no 
 need for the chariot ; the attendance of 
 I>lack Jasper will suffice." 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 9 8 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 " Surely you might tell us more, papa," 
 implored the girls, half whimpering. "We 
 do not know whether we ought to put on 
 our gauzes and mantles, or our modes and 
 paduasoys." 
 
 " Either, my daughters ; the question is 
 not worth a wise woman's consideration. 
 Granting that the wise woman's clothing 
 was silk and purple, I dare avow she put it 
 on at once and did not weigh it in the bal- 
 ance," asserted the provoking man, who yet 
 hardly ever proposed to his daughters any 
 higher questions. 
 
 Madam Rolle hastened to step in to still 
 the little ferment and to dissipate the per- 
 plexity which was already causing pouts 
 and taps of the heels on the floor. " I am 
 certain my Dorothy and my Camilla will be 
 charmed to have an opportunity of seeing 
 company with their papa and me, whether 
 they are to be in their mantles or their pad-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 99 
 
 uasoys. I daresay, my dear, we have to go 
 no farther than the alehouse, to see some 
 travellers who are baiting their horses there, 
 or have broken down, or fear to go on 
 and be benighted. Only, sir, if we are to 
 offer them our hospitality, 1 hope you will 
 acquaint me in time, as I cannot be provid- 
 ed with what I need any nearer than Red- 
 ham. Surely my Lady Rolle and her sons 
 cannot have come suddenly to the Castle 
 without previous warning, or without the 
 girls seeing the coach and the riders, when 
 they have sat in the window there and di- 
 verted themselves counting every cart, wag- 
 gon, and pack-horse that has passed this 
 morning." 
 
 "No, Lady Rolle is not at the Castle, that 
 I have heard of," her lord and master assur- 
 ed her, " and the object of the call is none 
 so pleasant that I should be in haste to an- 
 nounce it. I think it is fit we should wait 
 
 h2
 
 100 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 on these French cattle at Shottery Cottag 
 
 "Where you think it right to go, my dear 
 Philip, I am ready and willing to attend you ; 
 but, sir, do you think it equally safe for the 
 girls ?" hesitated Madam, for once in her life 
 doubtful of Mr. Philip Rolle's complete dis- 
 cretion. 
 
 "Why, there is no fear these people will 
 kidnap our idle lasses, and send them over 
 the seas to convents to learn to be useful 
 there, especially when their own women 
 have preferred being put into penitentiaries." 
 
 "Never mind papa, girls ; he has no real 
 intention of depreciating his own, or exalting 
 foreigners over true Britons." 
 
 "You are right there, Millie; but if we 
 are to do the thing at all, we had better do 
 it handsomely. These folk haw a chit like 
 ours, whom we may as well notice if we no- 
 tice any of them ; it is probable she is the 
 most harmless o( the lot."
 
 The Huguenot Family. 101 
 
 - " If you please, sir, we have seen her," 
 said Dorothy, glibly; "a white-faced girl, 
 who looks as if she had the vapours every 
 day. She sails abroad in silks; and — what do 
 you think ? — carries porringers with her own 
 hand, in company with a little old witch, who 
 has always a red-headed stick — the same who 
 threw Goody Gubbins into fits with her sor- 
 ceries." 
 
 " Never mind, child, she'll not bewitch you 
 when I am there to break the charm ; and 
 she'll proselytise long before she proselytises 
 Goody Gubbins." Thus the Rector cut her 
 short, objecting to petty gossip. 
 
 "I'm not affrighted," Camilla joined in, a 
 little loftily. " And I wish above all things 
 to hear the French prophets." 
 
 " What ! do you wish to hear them pro- 
 phesy, Millie ?" argued her mother in amaze- 
 ment. " I hope, sir, they'll do nothing of 
 the kind."
 
 102 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 " I hope not," said Mr. Philip Rolle, 
 quietly agreeing with his wife ; " but you 
 need be under no apprehension, for if they 
 do I shall instantly leave the house," he con- 
 cluded, with an animation which sounded 
 very much as if it would be rather a relief 
 than otherwise to shake the dust from his 
 feet against the strangers. 
 
 " I never stood and heard any offence of 
 the sort," continued Madam, excited and 
 flurried in her turn, " unless it was Lucy 
 Gage once, when she came off her pillion and 
 addressed the crowd which Lady Rolle was 
 going to treat to a harvest supper. I was in 
 the chariot, and Dapple had cast a shoe, and 
 I was detained in spite of myself. I'd liefer 
 have walked home barefoot. All I could do 
 was to turn away my head and think to stop 
 my ears when I saw a gentlewoman so eaten 
 up with pride and false religion as todeliver 
 a homily to rustics and gaping clowns in the
 
 The Huguenot Family. 103 
 
 open road before Sim Hart's, the farrier's. 
 Yet I protest all I heard was no worse and 
 no more untrue than that there was One 
 who gave them all things ; and that they 
 should remember his great harvest gathered 
 in by the angels, and should behave godly, 
 righteously, and soberly at their feast. But 
 even if they forgot Him, there was One who 
 remembered them in pity, not in anger; who 
 was ready to save them to the uttermost, 
 and to pluck them like brands from the 
 burning, even at the last moment, if they 
 but willed Him to save them." 
 
 " Yes," said the Rector, " and the labour- 
 ers went out of her sight and made them- 
 selves beastly drunk, and rioted, and put a 
 torch to Farmer Clere's stackyard, excusing 
 themselves on the ground that he was not a 
 vessel of grace to be saved without works as 
 they were ; and all because a mad woman 
 forgot humility and restraint, and wrested
 
 104 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 the Scriptures to her own and to her neigh- 
 bours' destruction." 
 
 "Alake ! Dolly, Millie, hear what your 
 good father says, and take heed in time ; 
 for I knew Lucy Gage when she was as 
 renowned for her modesty and sensibility as 
 for her brave spirit and temper. And now 
 that she is dead and gone, I doubt not, poor 
 soul ! she meant no harm ; only she was 
 led away and blinded and besotted by wild 
 views, as her husband and her son are to this 
 day." 
 
 The girls did not seem much impressed 
 by this appeal, but stood with round eyes of 
 expectation and curiosity. 
 
 " I know why our Millie wants so much 
 to hear the French prophets," Dorothy said, 
 putting herself forward to communicate in- 
 formation. "We had it from Mrs. Trout- 
 beck, my lady's maid, when she was down 
 at the Castle for the catgut to make the bell-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 105 
 
 o? 
 
 ribands, that my lady bought their blessing, 
 and won a hundred guineas at faro, and 
 heard good news of Mr. Dick's ship within 
 the month." 
 
 Mr. Philip Rolle frowned. He hated to 
 speak evil of dignities, and he was conser- 
 vative and aristocrat to the back-bone. He 
 loved the very name of Rolle, as Dr. John- 
 son loved that of Beauclerc. He was not 
 only a kinsman of the house, but he had been 
 governor of my lady's sons, who were his 
 juniors, in the old days before he succeeded 
 to the living of Sedge Pond. He had sat at 
 the Castle board on a different footing from 
 that of most governors, having been an hon- 
 oured friend of the clever, witty, and witless 
 lady of the Castle. The honour of the family 
 was thus doubly in his keeping, and was 
 doubly dear to him, but he could not let 
 the intimation pass without an expression of 
 his disapprobation.
 
 lOf) The Huguenot Family. 
 
 " My lady will have her folly," he said, 
 dryly ; " which doth not concern us much, 
 save that we would prefer that it did not 
 tamper with things sacred. When all is 
 done, it seemeth to me that it should be the 
 part of honest people, who hold that blood 
 is thicker than water, not to prate of ser- 
 vants' idle stories, and trumpet the follies of 
 their superiors." 
 
 Dorothy stood corrected like a naughty 
 child, and, with all her womanly growth and 
 fine-ladyism, put her finger into her mouth. 
 
 Again Madam interposed, and turned the 
 conversation : 
 
 " Mr. Rolle, I am in a quandary about 
 these French neighbours. I did learn French, 
 along with drilling and the use of the globes, 
 for a quarter or two at the Miss Cro m wells' 
 school at Huntingdon ; but 'tis so long ag< >. 
 that I am under an apprehension I have for- 
 gotten every word. Indeed, I shall not
 
 The Huguenot Family. 107 
 
 attempt to speak it, and I think I had better 
 tell you beforehand, lest you, who are such 
 a scholar yourself, should be disappointed 
 and shamed with me." 
 
 " I shall not be disappointed, dame, and 
 shamed I need not be, unless it be on my 
 own account, since, though you are good 
 enough to call me a scholar, and though the 
 language was mightily affected at the Castle 
 in my time, and I did then acquire some 
 skill in it, I doubt me much whether I 
 could pass muster after so great an interval, 
 unless before such a connoisseur as you. But 
 why distress ourselves with the supposed 
 obligation, since we have a couple of daugh- 
 ters, new off the irons of polite accomplish- 
 ment, ready to relieve us, and show off for 
 us in all the languages under the sun." 
 
 " Papa, papa!" cried Dorothy, "how can 
 you propose such a thing, when you know 
 that last spring, when we rode into Redham,
 
 108 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 you forbade us to learn Italian beeause obi 
 Madame Viol had been an opera-dancer, and 
 you said you did not affect the opera, and 
 did not care for us picking up its jargon."' 
 
 "And you took us away from Monsieur 
 Delaine," chimed hi Camilla, "just when we 
 were getting into the fairy tales, and the 
 contre-dances, because he sent Dolly such a 
 set of ribands as she had longed for on her 
 birthday, and instructed her to fib when you 
 questioned her about it, and lied directly 
 when you taxed him with it." 
 
 Thus Dorothy and Camilla declined the 
 appointment, and vindicated their refusal. 
 
 "And suppose these Shottery Cottage 
 gentry are also among the prophets, and 
 begin to prophesy in their own language, it 
 will be speaking in an unknown tongue to 
 you," suggested the Rector. 
 
 The two girls looked blank at the self- 
 evident proposition.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 109 
 
 " Will my dear girls never be made sen- 
 sible that their papa loves to joke with 
 them ?" remonstrated Madam. 
 
 "And softly, Mistress Dorothy and Mis- 
 tress Camilla, I should as soon look to see 
 Black Jasper do a turn of hard work for his 
 diet and his livery, as to find misses of any 
 kind prove that they had not picked their 
 father's pockets by putting into the simplest 
 practice the lessons on which he has spent a 
 power of money." 
 
 The party started at last, and as they were 
 complying with a professional duty and 
 form of society, they were marshalled in 
 order. His Reverence and Madam walked 
 first, she quite stately in her parson's wife's 
 hood and pattens, for the streets of the 
 village were rarely passable even in dry 
 weather, and he stalking gravely, in his 
 cauliflower wig and black stockings. Don >- 
 thy and Camilla, having barely got over the
 
 1 10 The Huyuenot Family. 
 
 grievance of not being allowed time to de- 
 cide between their mantles and their padua- 
 soys, went quarrelling all the way as to the 
 right of each to a single extraordinary crim- 
 son parasol, such as Chinamen may be seen 
 to carry now-a-days. It was a cast-off 
 parasol of Lady Rolle's, the only one in 
 these parts, and a great curiosity. Behind 
 them again came Black Jasper, to whom 
 and to his master it was a misfortune that 
 he did every act of his life with exaggerated 
 solemnity. He was a simple, timid, attached 
 fellow, with a great gaping mouth, rolling 
 eyes, and projecting ears which were like 
 ebony handles to the ebony casket of his 
 body in its green and yellow livery. His 
 excessive solemnity and nervous fear of Mr. 
 Philip Rolle were his chief faults. Why 
 there should have been such an element of 
 the ludicrous in the profound gravity and 
 importance with which Black Jasper stepped
 
 The Huguenot Family. Ill 
 
 with long strides while he carried Madam's 
 Bible or her basket, or a cudgel for the 
 presumed defence of the ladies, it would be 
 difficult to say; but there it was, and Mr. 
 Philip Rolle, a sensitive man, was keenly- 
 alive to it. But Black Jasper was an insti- 
 tution of the period, which could not be got 
 rid of without barbarous injury to the poor 
 fellow, who was so far from home, and so 
 incapable of procuring his livelihood by 
 his own exertions. Black Jaspers were 
 fixtures and heirlooms then, and it was a 
 lax and benevolent as well as a vain element 
 in men, which made them adopt them. Be- 
 sides, Black Jasper was Captain Philip's 
 spoil, whom he had brought home after 
 one of his campaigns, and it would have 
 been a slight to the beloved phoenix of the 
 house had the family turned the negro 
 adrift. Mr. Philip Rolle aimed at being 
 just to all men, and a connection with his
 
 112 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 son, however slight, was the greatest claim 
 to his regard. But Black Jasper's inveter- 
 ate, uncontrollable terror of his firm, sharp 
 face, his clear ringing voice, and his abrupt 
 authoritative manner, irked and provoked 
 him. The negro, all the while, was like a 
 docile, tender dog, and he but served his 
 " Massa's Massa " the more sedulously be- 
 cause of his desperate dread. 
 
 The Dupuys were all at home, the women 
 being together in their room. Monsieur was 
 sent for to receive and meet the advances of 
 the parish clergyman, and he at once obeyed 
 the summons. 
 
 Never, perhaps, was there a worse as- 
 sorted company, and Grand'mere alone of 
 all its members was perfectly composed and 
 at her ease. Indeed, at the beginning of 
 the visit, she looked edad and gracious as 
 
 7 DO 
 
 well as grateful. But there was little won-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 113 
 
 der that Madame Dupuy, distrusting the 
 English as she did, and bearing a grudge at 
 all mankind, in her gloomy pre-occupations 
 over Huguenot sufferings, should raise her 
 neck out of the folds of her fichu like a 
 bundle of saffron bones, and look down 
 stiffly and sourly upon the visitors. And 
 there was just as little wonder that Yolande, 
 though yearning painfully after something- 
 like communion with companions such as 
 herself, should draw shyly to her grand- 
 mother's side, and only look sadly and 
 strangely at the giddy, tricked-out, 
 affected figures of Dorothy and Camilla 
 Rolle. They, on their part again, glanced 
 contemptuously round the bare, sombre 
 room, which every way contrasted with 
 their ideas of French luxury and gaiety. 
 But Monsieur, though bland as a French- 
 man, showed no pleasure at the sight of his 
 guests, nor gave any token of a wish to en- 
 
 VOL. 1. I
 
 114 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 courage and improve their acquaintance. 
 He was scrupulously civil, he bowed low, 
 and was more like a grand bourgeois, with 
 his noblesse des cloches, than ever, but he 
 did not grasp Mr. Philip Rolle's right 
 hand of fellowship very cordially. On 
 the contrary, there was a covert tone of 
 sarcasm and offence in Monsieur's bearing, 
 which the Rector was not slow to perceive 
 and understand. 
 
 The conversation was conducted in fair 
 English, so far as Monsieur and Grand'mere 
 were concerned. Yolande was dumb. Ma- 
 dame Dupuy employed her broken English 
 in making harsh, scornful replies which 
 quite annihilated the simple phrases with 
 which Madam Rolle thought to make con- 
 versation at all times and places. And not 
 only this. To the still greater dismay and 
 indignation of the Rector's lady, Madame 
 was guilty of giving forth withering insinua-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 115 
 
 tions regarding the Rector's latitudinarianism, 
 and so plain and direct were they, though 
 in halting English, that even innocent Madam 
 Rolle could not mistake them. 
 
 When the Rector, as a man of the world 
 and a liberal Protestant clergyman, attempt- 
 ed to engage Monsieur in a discussion of 
 French politics and the general prospects of 
 Protestantism in Europe, Monsieur answered 
 with smiling references to the exiled royal 
 family, whom Mr. Rolle and his college of 
 Oxford were supposed to favour without 
 having risen and restored to them their 
 kingdom. And then he went on to speak 
 of the great gulf between Calvinists and 
 Lutherans, which was so wide that the 
 Romam Catholic bishops who had presided 
 over the ceremony of bringing France to a 
 unanimity of faith by the rough conversions 
 of the dragonnades, had offered to overlook 
 
 i2
 
 116 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 the mild profession of the last, so that the 
 first damnable heresy were abjured. 
 
 " Allons, then, Monsieur the Rector," in- 
 sisted Monsieur, with a wilful misconception, 
 "one cannot tell whether to reckon the 
 Protestants in Europe by thousands or mil- 
 lions, seeing that the Catholics bear no 
 enmity to your pure form and simple hier- 
 archy — your altars and saints'-days and lord 
 bishops — that they regard you as brothers, 
 in fact." 
 
 At the same time Madame Dupuy and 
 Madam Rolle were at still greater cross- 
 purposes, the one mortally offending and 
 horrifying the other. Madam Rolle had 
 begun by the simpering, unsuspicious in- 
 quiry how Madame Dupuy had liked the 
 Rector's thesis on Sunday, and had proceed- 
 ed to remark that her good man was ac- 
 knowledged to be a fine scholar, though 
 she should not say it. This she would take
 
 The Huguenot Family. 117 
 
 it upon her to say, however, that he prac- 
 tised what he preached, that there was not 
 a better living clergyman, or a more virtu- 
 ous gentleman in England, and she ought 
 to know his private worth as well as an- 
 other. Moreover, Madam had reason to 
 believe that the Rector's theses had been 
 noted and admired in high quarters, and 
 that something would come of them, as 
 something ought to come, for certainly they 
 were too pious and eloquent to be wasted 
 on an ordinary congregation like that of 
 Sedge Pond. And did not Madame think 
 that the music of the church would be much 
 improved when the pipe and tabor were 
 replaced by an organ such as Mr. Handel 
 played on ? Lady Rolle and others of the 
 quality had generously consented to sub- 
 scribe for it whenever they had time to get 
 up the subscription and could spare the 
 cash, and all they had now to do was to
 
 118 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 settle the dispute among themselves as to 
 which of them should superintend the build- 
 ing of the instrument up in London. 
 
 In disposal of this prattle, Madame caused 
 the hairs of Madam Rolle's head to stand on 
 end by the unheard-of presumption and 
 effrontery of the declaration that she did 
 not like the theses at all. They might be 
 very clever, ah ! very clever, but she had 
 not been accustomed to these theses, which 
 might have been heathen discourses. She 
 had abandoned her country, where the sun 
 shone and one was warm sometimes, for the 
 sake of the preaching which bade dying men 
 flee to the shelter of the Cross. She did 
 not comprehend exactly what Madam Rolle 
 wished to say of her husband. As for the 
 music of the church, she dared say the pipe 
 and song of Sedge Pond might be very 
 good music, she was no judge of music ; but 
 she had not listened with pleasure to the
 
 The Huguenot Family. 119 
 
 praises of God since she heard the sublime 
 psalms of Beze swelling through the hearts 
 of a proscribed assembly, and awaking the 
 echoes of the desert. Having overthrown 
 and trampled upon Madam Rolle, Madame 
 Dupuy crowned her enormities by intruding 
 into the tete-a-tete of Monsieur and the 
 Rector, frowning upon Monsieur without 
 ceremony. 
 
 " Oui, oui, Monsieur, it is good to hear 
 you on orthodoxy of creed and simplicity of 
 worship, you who have ceased to condemn 
 almost any deed short of fire and murder. 
 From necessity, my dear Grand mere ? You 
 are too good, too good, for a mocker like 
 Monsieur your son. Bah ! necessity is an- 
 other word for greed, and greed is sleeve to 
 sleeve with the god of a little country 
 named Canaan, an adorable god which 
 called itself Moloch. All the men are infi- 
 dels now-a-days. They do not deny their
 
 1 20 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 faith, for why? They are too obstinate, 
 too proud, that is all. Which of them would 
 die for it? Which of them would count all 
 things but loss for it ? Count all things but 
 loss ! They trade upon it, they gain money 
 by it, they adopt another country and an- 
 other creed, they lament no more on the 
 anniversary of the Revocation ; they are con- 
 soled, they are rich as the world was when 
 the flood came, as Sodom and Gomorrah 
 were till the fire and brimstone fell." 
 
 The woman was stark, staring mad: could 
 there be more unmistakable evidence than her 
 loud railing at her lawful husband, who was 
 taking snuff, imperturbably addressing her as 
 " my very good Philippine," and imploring 
 her, without empressement, not to agitate 
 herself; while she faithfully and gently paid 
 her duty to the individual whom Madam 
 Rolle hesitatingly designated the " light- 
 headed, aged woman, dressed up like Ma-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 121 
 
 dam's young daughters," and all because the 
 fine old Frenchwoman was a thousand times 
 more elegant than the clumsy young Eng- 
 lish girls. It was far from safe company 
 for them ; Madam Rolle wished she were 
 well free of it, for she could scarcely con- 
 ceive that the French prophets could be 
 more immoral, though they might be more 
 blasphemous. And then Dorothy and 
 Camilla were there, swallowing every word 
 of the unseemly, scandalous defiance ; 
 though Madam herself allowed they were 
 sometimes slow enough to imbibe what was 
 good for them. 
 
 The joy of Grand'mere's hospitality was 
 soon extinguished ; but she commanded her- 
 self sufficiently to take part in the conversa- 
 tion, and do her best to cover the rudeness 
 of her daughter-in-law, and the but half-con- 
 cealed cynicism of her son, and to try, by 
 her own sweet intelligence and bright viva-
 
 122 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 city, to make some return to the natives for 
 their condescension, besides that of sullen 
 recrimination and bitter pleasantry. And 
 here Monsieur her son, and Madame her 
 daughter-in-law, made room for her words, 
 gave them respectful attention, with just the 
 faintest qualm of Madame's self-righteous- 
 ness, and the slightest hanging of Monsieur's 
 worldly-wise, scheming head. It was the 
 Rolles who regarded her as a second-rate, 
 flighty character, and put no weight on her 
 gentle interposition. Even the Rector, who 
 had sufficient parts and taste to discern that 
 the matter of her discourse was full of superior 
 sense, and the manner of it more exquisite 
 than that of any of the great ladies he had 
 known and admired in his youth, failed to 
 give Grand'mere her due, for sturdy English 
 prejudice, which many regard as a grace, 
 had blinded him. As for Madam Rolle, 
 she was so stupid and stolid as to the quali-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 123 
 
 ties of the two women and their claims, that 
 when Grand'mere, with tact and tenderness, 
 introduced the topic of the American War, 
 — in which all England was interested, — the 
 Rolles deeply interested, since their son and 
 brother was in the heat of it, — and ventured 
 a warm-hearted, quite sincere reference to 
 the young hero of Sedge Pond, who was 
 then winning his laurels on the Susquehan- 
 nah or the Potomac, and whom all the resi- 
 dents at Sedge Pond delighted to honour, 
 Madam Rolle, with her one idea, made no 
 softened response to breathing, feeling 
 Grand'mere, but chose to make instead a 
 final appeal to stony Madame Dupuy, asking 
 her wistfully if she was the mother of a son 
 as well as of a daughter. Then with a 
 heightened colour Madam Rolle proceeded 
 to the delicate investigation as to whether 
 Madame had any countrymen engaged in 
 the great war, for her Philip had mentioned
 
 124 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 that Frenchmen were fighting in the cam- 
 paign ; and though it was on the wrong side 
 of the quarrel, the grounds of it were so far 
 away, and they at Sedge Pond had so little 
 to do with the mother country's right to tax 
 a dish of tea in the colonies, that Madam 
 had a dim impression that they two women 
 might forget that their young men were 
 enemies so long as they were not in personal 
 conflict. 
 
 But Madame Dupuy knew nothing of the 
 continent of America, and cared nothing for 
 it, unless in respect to the Huguenot emi- 
 grants in the Carolinas. She did not even 
 know that there was a mighty struggle going 
 on across the Atlantic, by which men were 
 being torn from their peaceful homes and were 
 going the length of engaging savage Indians 
 to come with their tomahawks and poisoned 
 arrows to aid Christian and Saxon brothers 
 against each other; and indeed England
 
 The Huguenot Family. 125 
 
 might have quarrelled with every one of her 
 colonies, and driven them to the same po- 
 sition as the Americas, for anything Madame 
 would have minded. 
 
 Grand'mere, in her rare good-will and 
 her good breeding, was cast into the shade 
 and thrust to the wall by the Rolles. De- 
 spair, however, was so foreign to Grand'mere, 
 whatever she might aver to the contrary, in 
 her vivid French phrases, that she thought 
 better of the situation, and preferred to 
 make the most of it, by addressing herself in 
 the kindest manner to a humble neutral 
 member of the party. 
 
 According to the etiquette of the day, 
 Black Jasper had two ways of disposing of 
 himself. He might repair to the servants' 
 hall, or he might remain in attendance on 
 his master and mistress. There happened to 
 be no servants' hall at the Shottery Cottage, 
 and in the kitchen Priscilla was as hard to
 
 126 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 make acquaintance with, and as fain to re- 
 buff raw candidates for her favour, as were 
 the heads of the house. Black Jasper had, 
 therefore, after a full quarter of an hour of 
 uncertainty and waddling between the door 
 of the room and that of the kitchen, settled 
 on the skirts of the gentry, taking his chance 
 of his master's vehement impatience and 
 scathing ridicule, and of the tricks and 
 tyranny of the two young madams. 
 
 Grand'mere roused herself from her little 
 depression at the sight of the sable face with 
 its goggle eyes. She did not laugh openly 
 or secretly, though she possessed naturally 
 that merry heart which doeth good like 
 medicine and is health to the bones. Grand'- 
 mere did not even need to restrain her guile- 
 less gaiety from considerate care for what 
 might be Black Jaspers weakness on that 
 point. 
 
 From the background Grand'mere waved
 
 The Huguenot Family. 127 
 
 to Black Jasper, and he, glancing at his 
 master the while, stumbled towards her. 
 Grand'mere not only dealt with Black Jas- 
 per as flesh and blood, but she pitied him as 
 the black child, oppressed, bought and sold, 
 and yet toyed with by the civilized white 
 man and women. She wanted to do what 
 she could to make up to him. She asked 
 anxiously whether her good garqon had 
 health and strength in the cold north. She 
 bestowed on him a small piece of money, 
 with an apology for its smallness, and an en- 
 treaty that he would accept it for the sake 
 of the ideal Negro, who was without doubt 
 the type and pattern of many a generous, 
 devoted black man. She opened her par- 
 ticular cupboard, and taking out some pre- 
 served fruit, recommended the sweet-toothed 
 black to try it, and to tell her whether it re- 
 sembled guavas or pines. And Black Jasper, 
 totally unused to such delicate attentions,
 
 128 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 grinned, scraped, darted furtive glances at 
 his master, and without waiting for an 
 answer, obeyed his own instinct, and became 
 on the spot a bond slave, for the second time 
 in his life, to " the beauffle old Ma'am." 
 
 The Rector had spirit enough to resent 
 what was little short of insult in his host's 
 treatment, and more than enough temper to 
 show his resentment. 
 
 U I perceive, sir, that I have been under a 
 misapprehension in intruding on you," he 
 said, in a white heat of wrath. " I may 
 honestly say that I meant to do my duty 
 and confer a benefit. My parishioners at- 
 tach some consideration to the fact whether 
 or not a stranger is known to their clergy- 
 man. But if I mistake not, and read your 
 face aright, my absence would be better than 
 my company, to use a country phrase ; and 
 you may depend upon it, I shall force my 
 acquaintance on no man."
 
 The Huguenot Family. 129 
 
 " Apres vous, Monsieur the Rector," 
 replied Monsieur, in his sardonic French 
 politeness ; "I beg to thank you for your 
 intended protection. All I shall say is, that 
 I think I can take care of my own head, 
 and the heads of my family, my own self." 
 And he bowed Mr. Rolle off. 
 
 Thus the interview was a total failure. 
 Mr. Philip Rolle carried out his dignified 
 presence haughtily, intending never again 
 to waste it on traitors and impostors. The 
 women of the Rolle family, for their part, 
 were only conscious that the visit had been 
 a mistake and a blunder, and, in a panic 
 lest there should be more high words and 
 violence, even though Mr. Rolle was a 
 clergyman, they huddled together, and 
 mother and daughters jostled each other 
 out. Black Jasper, in the half-turned state 
 of his head, was oblivious to all that had 
 been passing, save his own delicious treat ; 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 but the noise of the ladies' exit aroused him, 
 and, throwing down Grand'mere's empty 
 can, he started in pursuit of his owners, 
 turning back so often, however, to make 
 capering salutes to Grand'mere, that Mr. 
 Philip Rolle observed the pantomime, and 
 called out loudly that he would have his 
 black rascal whipped if he did not behave 
 like a rational creature — a line of conduct 
 as impossible to Black Jasper under certain 
 influences as sight is to the blind. 
 
 " Voila! a good riddance," cried Madame. 
 " Why should they come here prying upon 
 us, and wasting our time ? Yolande, child, 
 to your lace. I shall finish the Geneve 
 account of Barbe Yot, who was imprisoned 
 at Aigues Mortez, and clothed in a foul 
 hospital dress, from which the dogs fled 
 howling, and refreshed for further tortures 
 by being plunged into the stagnant, slimy 
 moat till her breath went out ; and of her
 
 The Huguenot Family. 131 
 
 sister, Mesdelices, who was shipped among 
 a hundred other young women in a trans- 
 port, to lie like rats in the hold till they, or 
 rather the ghostly skeletons of them, were 
 landed, and put up by the government, in 
 lots for the convenience of the cotton- 
 planters of Guadaloupe and Martinique — 
 that is what I could tell of their America 
 and their Indies, but I would not tell it to 
 these popinjays." 
 
 But Grand'mere sat and looked ruefully 
 after the retreating company, the only disin- 
 terested company which had sought the 
 Dupuys at the Shottery Cottage. 
 
 " I am afflicted that I have vexed you, 
 my mother," said Monsieur, coming and 
 bending coaxingly over the old woman's 
 chair ; " but it is true what Philippine 
 says." 
 
 " Ah ! for once, for once," interpolated 
 Philippine, with great animation and aspe- 
 ns
 
 132 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 rity, as she curtseyed to Monsieur ; " though 
 she is not of this world, it is her pride ami 
 boast that she has not her part with the 
 men of this world, like you, Monsieur, if 
 you do not repent." 
 
 " They are spies and despots," continued 
 Monsieur, quietly ignoring his wife. " They 
 come to mock us — to patronize and meddle 
 with us. Why should we let them come 
 when we are sufficient for ourselves, and 
 when Ave dwell in peace here ?" 
 
 " I know not if you are right, my son." 
 argued Grand'mere, meekly. "But for me, 
 I cannot see why we should not accept their 
 visit as from a good heart. Whether they 
 mean it for good or not, I cannot tell. 
 Where is the necessity or the advantage of 
 living like owls," added Grand'mere, with 
 her accustomed shrewdness, " when no one 
 has offered to molest or persecute us for a 
 
 long time? We are letting the child grow
 
 The Huguenot Family. 133 
 
 up more secluded and solitary than if she 
 were behind the grating. I think we 
 should have taken an act of friendship as if 
 it were friendship, that therein also the 
 saying of the Apostle to the Gentiles might 
 have been fulfilled ; and whether our 
 fellow-creatures mixed with us in simplicity 
 or in guile, at least they mixed with us, and 
 for that we should rejoice. Who knows 
 whether our faith and love might not have 
 changed the base metals of fraud and false- 
 ness on their part into the gold of true 
 love ? Alas ! my son. But this, at least, 
 I pray you to accord me, my wayworn, 
 cumbered Herbert, do not poison the young 
 girl's mind ; let her at least learn to hope 
 that there may be some good in this poor 
 old world." 
 
 So Grand'mere was left to talk with 
 Yolande of the events of the day, to draw 
 forth the girl's opinion, and resist and
 
 134 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 refute single-handed the evil force of ex- 
 ample. 
 
 " I am sorry that you have not made 
 friends with the English pastor's daugh- 
 ters, little one," says Grand'mere, shaking 
 her head, in the wise clear prevision of 
 wisdom. 
 
 " So am not I, Grand'mere," retorts the 
 girl, with her latent repressed passion and 
 scorn. " They are silly, these English girls, 
 as well as saucy, Grand'mere, with such 
 sauce — insipid hot water without strength 
 or sweetness. Did you see how they whis- 
 pered and tittered till they ran away ?" 
 
 " No, I did not see, I could not see for 
 sighing over a wet hen of a malpropre, dis- 
 trait girl, who forgot to do the honours of 
 her own household, and of her bread and 
 salt." 
 
 Yolande winced, and endeavoured hastily 
 to turn aside this thrust by a pleasantry.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 135 
 
 " Grand'mere, I saw no bread and salt 
 going, except with regard to the black 
 miserable." 
 
 " Fie ! you are miserable yourself, Yo- 
 lande, to call him so," Grand'mere checked 
 her favourite smartly; "and if you think 
 silliness (if there is silliness, I have never 
 said so) is a bar to friendship, you are no 
 better than one of the foolish pedants of the 
 Hotel Rambouillet, whom Moliere scourged. 
 Silliness is a greater, more incurable misfor- 
 tune than being a cripple, or deaf and 
 dumb. Shall we not cherish the unfortu- 
 nate ? What mean we then by the terms, 
 Maison de Dieu, Hotel de Dieu, for our 
 hospitals and our madhouses, but that he 
 who giveth to the poor lendeth to the 
 Lord. I tell you, Queen of Sheba silliness on 
 the one side, and wisdom on the other, never 
 prevented either friendship or love worth 
 the having. It is only hardness and false-
 
 136 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 ness of heart, godlessness and no love to 
 spare from one's-self, that can dry and 
 wither the heart, else why do I care for 
 you, poppet, or, in reverse, why do you 
 care for an out-of-date doting old woman ?"' 
 
 " Grand'mere ! Grand'mere !" 
 
 " Grand'mere me no more. Some have 
 said that silliness is an absolute requirement, 
 that there cannot be royal condescension 
 without a big and a little soul. But I don't 
 say so ; for it is blessed to receive also, only 
 less blessed than to give. And you might 
 have helped each other, you young girls," 
 Grand'mere went on; "you might have 
 bartered your best qualties, learned to 
 understand truth and nobleness in other 
 natures and under other nanus, and have 
 grown more kind and tender, wanner at 
 heart, and more glad of spirit. It is a bad 
 friend of your age and station who is nol 
 better than no friend, my dear. I love not
 
 The Huguenot Family. 137 
 
 the religion of restriction — 'Touch not, taste 
 not, handle not, which things all perish in 
 the using.' Is it not so, Yolandette ?" 
 
 " Granci'mere !" exclaimed Yolande, com- 
 ing out of a brown study, " why does all the 
 world hate us Huguenots ?" 
 
 " That goes without saying, and ought we 
 to break our hearts for it ? Ought we not 
 to rejoice a little because of another sect 
 which was everywhere spoken against once, 
 and which happened to be the salt of the 
 earth, nevertheless. In our case there are 
 special causes. We were a great power at 
 the first. Conde, Coligni, Castelnau, Mornay, 
 Sully, Henry IV., all belonged to us. The 
 Tremouilles, the Rochefoucaulds, the Rohans, 
 were on our side. Catherine de' Medici and 
 her women who knew best, made a fashion 
 of singing our psalms. Then we were be- 
 trayed and betrayers, broken and crushed, 
 and the vulgar loved to tread on our heads.
 
 138 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 That is one explanation, and we could not 
 help that ; but we have ourselves to blame 
 as well as the four seasons, when we cannot 
 count our brethren's hatred all joy, and 
 when it is necessary that we sing the peni- 
 tential psalms for it. We have been godly, 
 rigidly righteous, and enduring; but we 
 have been at the same time haughty, stern, 
 unmerciful, implacable in our judgments, at 
 least when judgment was all our possibility. 
 We have been like the elder brother of the 
 prodigal son, my grandchild, who was very 
 exemplary and very unkind. It is a marvel 
 how many religious men are like him, con- 
 sidering who told his story, and pointed out 
 how ungenerous and unmanly he was. and 
 how unlike his father. But we had not all 
 the good things of this life ; thanks to God 
 we were not like him there. We had hard 
 lines — too hard for a girl like you to com- 
 prehend, mignonne. Consider, we were not
 
 The Hugueyiot Family. 139 
 
 allowed to call ourselves in law husbands 
 and wives ; our little children were taken 
 from us, and given, with their share of our 
 goods, to pretended converts, who were no 
 better than traitors in our houses. We were 
 forbidden to pray for his majesty the king, 
 we were so vile ; and when a poor pastor 
 strewed rosemary on his young daughter's 
 bier, and had her followed to the grave by 
 young girls like herself and you, he was 
 arrested by the authorities, condemned and 
 punished for an impudent mimicry of the 
 holy church's rites." 
 
 " And the English pastor, too, who knows 
 better !" Yolande pursued her own dis- 
 turbed indignant reflections. 
 
 " He knows better," Grand'mere repeated, 
 emphatically; and then, to Yolande's be- 
 wilderment, the old woman finished unex- 
 pectedly, " I like that man. How he goes 
 against the grain when he believes it is de-
 
 1 40 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 manded of him. How he is honest and 
 honourable ! I could trust him with my 
 life, could trust him better with my honour, 
 better than all with my faith. He might 
 detest me, but he would not wrong me by 
 a straw ; he would put his right hand into 
 the flames first. He would sacrifice his 
 Isaac, his Joseph, his gallant young Captain 
 first ! He is righteous ; he has a will 
 like that! He is like Jean Calvin in his 
 will ; he is not like Calvin in his burning 
 heart and his keen wit ; but he is like Calvin 
 in his will." 
 
 Grand'mere, like all very womanly wo- 
 men, paid huge homage to manliness ; and 
 she, who was of the Church the earthlv 
 origin of which is said to have been 
 Geneva, Calvin, and persecution, ,, compre- 
 hended Calvin. 
 
 " You speak of hatred, Yolande," dee- 
 canted Grand'mere, in the enthusiasm which
 
 The Huguenot Family. 141 
 
 Calvin's name always awoke in her ; "Cal- 
 vin was hated. It is not good for man or 
 woman not to be hated, but they must be 
 loved also, yes, loved as men's own souls, 
 by few it may be, — ah well ! sometimes the 
 fewer the lovers the better. But Calvin 
 was not loved by few, or a little ; he was 
 loved by Beze, his wife — the poor widow, 
 by his step-children, by Geneva, by France, 
 by Scotland. People will speak of how he 
 burned Servetus and clipped out a woman's 
 hair. Go ! They will not speak of how he 
 held the hearts of a city, a nation, in his 
 brave hand, and moulded them under God 
 to religion and virtue. The great English- 
 man was thought to be wise when he said 
 that the ill that men did lived after them, 
 the good was often buried with their bones. 
 When it is the very reverse, my child, then 
 it will be heaven."
 
 142 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Truce of God. 
 
 HE arrival and departure of the mail 
 by the coaches which ran between 
 London and Norwich, only failed in en- 
 thralling interest to those who, like the 
 mass of the Sedge Pond people, received 
 no letters, or only such few and far between 
 ones as made great incidents in then lives. 
 But even the Hodges and the Sams, the 
 Jennies and the Nans, who got no letters, 
 and looked for none, humx about, and 
 never wearied of the chance of beholding 
 the coach, with its escort armed and mount- 
 ed, its guard with his sounding horn, and 
 its sleepy or noisy passengers in nightcaps
 
 The Huguenot Family. 143 
 
 and cocked hats, who called for their dinner 
 or for tankards of lamb's-wool ale, or glasses 
 of French brandy. 
 
 Monsieur Dupuy was a regular attendant 
 in the whitewashed porch of the alehouse 
 on such occasions. He frequently received 
 letters of outlandish shape, addressed in 
 queer handwriting ; and those who would 
 unhesitatingly and adventurously strive to 
 read them over his shoulder, would see no 
 more than two or three lines of Monsieur's 
 jargon, sometimes actually no more than a 
 row of figures. 
 
 Mr. Philip Rolle was no less punctual in 
 waiting for the coach's arrival, to get the 
 last news of the war in which his son was 
 engaged. When the news were very excit- 
 ing, particularly when they contained any 
 mention of Captain Philip, or when Captain 
 Philip himself wrote or modestly alluded to 
 his own promotion or any credit his com-
 
 144 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 pany had gained, Mr. Philip Rolle would 
 sit in state and read the letter, and talk it 
 over in the porch -of the alehouse, assiduously 
 waited upon and looked up to by Master 
 Swinfen, mine portly, consequential, self- 
 seeking host, and his nimble, loose-tongued, 
 cowed-in-vain partner. The great man 
 would be supplied with a toast and a 
 tankard, and a single pipe, for he would 
 allow no more — neither to himself nor to 
 any other person. As he sat in state and 
 paid the lawing, he laid down the law and 
 would answer all inquiries after the young 
 Captain more patiently and affably than any 
 one who had seen his high head elsewhere 
 would have expected. Mr. Rolle would 
 also wait on for the news-letters and prints, 
 for he was much interested in what was 
 taking place in London. He was al way- 
 curious to know if Mr. Wilkes had com- 
 mitted any fresh offence, or Lord North's
 
 The Huguenot Family. 145 
 
 Ministry had become better liked. But he 
 would not discuss these questions on the 
 alehouse bench, though he had little oppor- 
 tunity of discussing them in any other 
 quarter, nor would he gossip of the floods 
 or the robberies, which were common oc- 
 currences. He liked human statistics, like 
 all clear-headed, active-minded men, but it 
 was only the subject of Captain Philip which 
 could unlock the flood-gates of Mr. Rolle's 
 heart. Captain Philip's name, written in 
 its core, was the one soft spot, to touch 
 which would cause the stout spiritual soldier 
 to unbend, and betray him into prattling like 
 a woman or a child. 
 
 The Rector was thus standing one day 
 with his ruffled hands behind his back, his 
 shovel hat shading his eyes from the autumn 
 sun and marking him out at once from the 
 lusty labourers and the coach passengers in 
 their cocked hats, as the last alighted to 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 The Huguenot Family, ■ 
 
 stretch their legs, examine the priming of 
 their pistols, and swallow a morsel while 
 the horses were being changed. Monsieur, 
 for once, was not there. He was from 
 home on one of his journeys to Lon- 
 don or Norwich, but the usual knot of 
 grooms, stable-boys, and tapsters were 
 gathered round the body of the coach, as 
 well as Master Swinfen and his spouse, with 
 the working men and their wives and chil- 
 dren, the Rector forming a nucleus. And 
 the group was not bent on a passing diver- 
 sion alone, but was all alive and expectant 
 of a generous entertainment, eager for s< >i no- 
 thing to speak of over their broth cans and 
 groat bowls for weeks to come. 
 
 The village was alreadv Lying under the 
 long low beams of an October sun, which 
 lighted with mellow lustre the "Waaste' 
 bristling brown, and the Castle woods burn- 
 ing red and yellow in the fires of the first
 
 The Huguenot Family. 147 
 
 frosts. Important mails were expected from 
 the seat of war. It was known that the 
 rebels had invaded Canada, and it was 
 fully credited that they greatly outnumbered 
 the English army. Even though they did, 
 however, it was confidently believed that 
 they must have been beaten back with so 
 signal a slaughter that the disaster at 
 Bunker's Hill would have been clean out- 
 weighed by a sure prospect of the war's 
 reaching a triumphant termination. 
 
 The Rector was drawing himself up, as 
 one towering by anticipation in the reflected 
 glory of his son. He was not flurried ; 
 Captain Philip had seen so much service in 
 different parts of the world, and appeared 
 to have borne so charmed a life through it 
 all, that it seemed as if nothing so con- 
 temptible as the rusty sword or pistol of a 
 ragged American volunteer could harm him. 
 Neither was Mr. Rolle absorbed in his ap- 
 
 l2
 
 148 The Huyuenot Family. 
 
 proaching exaltation, for he was privately 
 instructing Master Swinfen to broach a cask 
 
 of October, to have pipes laid out, and to 
 make a dole of black and white puddings to 
 the women. The order was overheard, and 
 a whisper arose that the Rector had already 
 received special intelligence, and that Cap- 
 tain Philip must have won a colonel's epau- 
 lettes at least. Indeed the populace would 
 not have been much surprised although it 
 had been a general's white feathers. 
 
 At last, with the usual strain and sway, 
 and immense clatter and flourish, the "Royal 
 Oak " appeared in sight, and was hailed with 
 as much acclamation as if it had never been 
 seen before. Way was made for it and its 
 attendant horsemen to draw up before the 
 alehouse door. 
 
 " Aught for me, Will Guard?" cried the 
 Hector, breaking in 00 the landlord's usual 
 inquiry as to what was doing on the road.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 149 
 
 " Ay, ay, summut, your worship ; you 
 might set up a dispatch-box or a private 
 messenger," grumbled the guard, presuming 
 on the large, official-looking packet he was 
 disengaging from the boot. "It is word 
 from the Americas. We heard tell the 
 Fairweather was in port, but we were off to 
 catch the daylight before the town was up 
 to their sort. You may just let us hear, sir, 
 whether the rebels have laid down their 
 arms. I have a brother's lad gone out with 
 Howe." 
 
 " With all my heart, Will Guard, if the 
 word is worth the hearing," replied the 
 Rector, and, still standing in the porch, he 
 broke open the seals of the packet. It con- 
 tained, besides a number of papers, sundry 
 small articles which the sender had taken 
 the opportunity of forwarding securely — 
 Captain Philip's old epaulettes, which he 
 had worn with such honour, and had now
 
 150 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 put off for still higher distinction ; a pouch 
 in Indian work, and a little box corded and 
 fastened — remembrances which the kind 
 young Captain might have sent home to his 
 mother and his sisters, or even to Black 
 Jasper, who, coming along the street at that 
 moment on one of Madam's commissions, 
 sidled up to the others. 
 
 The Rector cast a rapid glance over the 
 first lines of the letter, started, and put his 
 hand to his breast, as though he had been 
 shot, then stepped back and lifted up a grey 
 ghastly face. Without uttering a syllable to 
 the hushed, expectant company, the dullest 
 face in which was awed and struck, he made 
 direct for the Rectory gate, presided over bj 
 its stone monsters. As he walked on, the 
 people, not daring to mingle themselves 
 with his trouble as they had mingled with 
 his triumph, looked after him with smothered 
 sighs and groans, which at last swelled to a
 
 The Huguenot Family. 151 
 
 clamour of lamentation. As he went on, 
 looking neither to left nor right, he stumbled 
 over a stone in the road, and the negro lad, 
 stunned rather than rightly apprised of the 
 weight of the catastrophe — the great tragedy 
 which had been enacted last fall over the 
 seas, and after many a delay and detour had 
 this day reached the quiet Sedge Pond home 
 — rushed forward obsequiously to remove 
 the obstacle from his master's path. Obey- 
 ing an instinct, Mr. Philip Rolle was push- 
 ing the intruder out of his way, when 
 another impulse seized him ; he grasped the 
 black servant's shoulder with a strength 
 which caused Jasper to writhe and recoil, 
 and communicated to the servant the miserv 
 which was wringing his heart and convulsing 
 his brain, and which he must speak out or 
 die. 
 
 " Black Jasper, Captain Philip's fellow, 
 your ' massa ' is dead, shot through the head
 
 152 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 last year when the rebels took Ticonderoga. 
 They have sent me his epaulettes and his 
 box as a token, I imagine. Do you hear, 
 Black Jasper?" the Rector broke off, and 
 went on repeating his terrible statement, 
 with his voice rising at length to a shout. 
 u My son Philip, my only son Philip, is dead! 
 is dead !" 
 
 With that he broke down and burst into 
 weeping, an awful sight to see — and so 
 he entered at the Rectory gate, and walked 
 through the clipped hollies and yews to the 
 house, while the shocked and appalled vil- 
 lagers gazed and listened intently, and the 
 touched travellers thought they could hear 
 a wail and a cry coming faintly, but with 
 piercing acuteness, from beyond the plea- 
 sance. 
 
 That same October noon Grand'mere had 
 been sunning herself in the Shottery Cot- 
 tage arbour, which was then hung round
 
 The Huguenot Family. 1 53 
 
 with tawny leaves and clusters of blue-black 
 berries. She was looking at the trouts, still 
 occasionally leaping in the pond which the 
 villagers called the Stew, and at the bees 
 also sunning themselves after they had laid 
 up their competence of honey, and were 
 resting, like her, with their work done for 
 the season ; and as she looked she listened 
 to the robin, which, like a sweet and virtu- 
 ous soul, only lifts up its song of trust and 
 praise the more cheerily and patiently when 
 the whole world languishes in decay and 
 approaching death. In the autumn bright- 
 ness of the home scene, Grand'mere's fancy 
 was spirited away to her native land and 
 the scenes of her youth. She was describing 
 to Yolande, who was plaiting straw on a 
 stool at her knee, how different from this 
 England, now sodden in its greenness, was 
 her Languedoc and Provence. She kindled 
 up as she spoke of the glory of colour there
 
 154 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 was in the very salt lakes and marshes, in 
 the arid limestone rocks, and the bare 
 heaths of the south, contrasted with the 
 green luxuriance of England, blanched by 
 such dim light as fell from the cold, pallid 
 northern skies. And she grew eloquent 
 as she told that there were distant snowy 
 peaks and blue denies ; and that, for patches 
 of corn, meadow, and woodland, they in 
 France had soft grey olive and deep green 
 and golden mulberry and orange gardens ; 
 and that for honeysuckle and briony they at 
 home had among the grass scarlet anemones 
 with the living blue of salvias and the white 
 of asphodel by the roadside, while there 
 were tall pink gladioli in the glades, and 
 spreading pink daphne on the uplands, and 
 oleanders, jasmines, and bay-trees breaking 
 the hedges. The nightingale sane there 
 over April roses and November violeta It 
 was such a land of fertility and barrenness,
 
 The Huguenot Family. 155 
 
 passion and repose, as King David ruled 
 over, as the son of David walked in, 
 saying, " Consider the lilies, how they 
 grow." 
 
 Grand'mere was interrupted by Priscille, 
 in her calamanco petticoat, linen jacket, and 
 linen cap, advancing towards the pair. The 
 maid had downcast, grudging, introverted 
 eyes, not because she was a suspicious char- 
 acter, but because they had early had her 
 club-foot perpetually suspended before them, 
 while at the same time they had not cared 
 to look at it ; and she walked with a heavy, 
 dogged lameness, and carried a basting spoon 
 in her hand, as one who minded her busi- 
 ness, notwithstanding that she had an ancient 
 quarrel with the world. 
 
 " Don't 'ee be overcome, old madam, don't 
 'ee," insisted Priscille. 
 
 " I am not overcome, Priscille," declared 
 Grand'mere, sedately, though her peachy
 
 156 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 complexion waned a little waxen, and 
 her grey eyes glanced up at her son's win- 
 dow. "What is there that I should be over- 
 come ?" 
 
 " Now, speak out, Prie," cried Yolande, 
 jumping up like a squirrel, and scattering 
 her straws to the four corners of the garden. 
 " What is it ? The good God be praised, it 
 can be naught to Grand'mere. Oh, my heart ! 
 what is it, my woman ?" 
 
 " Did 'ee ever hear such a child, did 'ee ?" 
 protested Priscille, indignantly. " She'll be 
 mum for days, and then she'll break out 
 chattering like a pie. An' she do have lit- 
 tered the garden for a week, and me with 
 the beet-root and the carrots to lift at mv 
 own hand. If it isn that black beetle from 
 the Rectory have come howling here. No, I 
 don't call no names; but he is liker a beetle 
 than aught else in creation, an' it be not an 
 ape, and the term came to my tongue end.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 157 
 
 It is all wrong at the parson's. News has 
 come that the young Captain's gone — gone 
 to his rest, madam, by a hard road. Parson 
 is in a sad taking, for though he may have 
 preached as often as there are hairs in his 
 wig that ' all flesh is grass,' he cannot abide 
 that his own grass should be cut down in its 
 bloom any the more for that. The young 
 mistresses are cowering and grueing like 
 turkey pouts, or screeching hoarse like the 
 bittern in the Waaste. Madam herself, she's 
 lying a-top of her bed, where they laid her 
 in a swound, and struggling to swallow 
 down her mother heart, because she is still 
 a mother, though she choke and die in the 
 deed. The maids trow she will, the short- 
 sighted woman. Now, madam, didn't 'ee 
 promise not to be overcome ?" cried Priscille 
 reproachfully, as Grand'mere wrung her 
 hands, and her tears — the transparent crys- 
 tal tears of the aged — fell like rain, for she
 
 158 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 could still cry for others though she had 
 
 long ceased to cry for herself. 
 
 "My good Priscille, let sorrow and sym- 
 pathy have their way. Do not attempt to 
 stifle the bitter spring like the poor Madam 
 up at the Rectory, lest the soil be poisoned. 
 Alas! and the sun is so warm even in En 
 land, and the world is so fair, and men and 
 women are in such trouble, Priscille." 
 
 " What would you have, Madam ? It were 
 always so," argued Prie, dogmatically. 
 
 " No, big Prie," denied Grand'mere, re- 
 covering herself. 
 
 "And 'twill be always so," said Prie, still 
 
 more obstinately. 
 
 "Least of all, my Prie," negatived Grand'- 
 mere, decidedly brightening up and clasping 
 her hands in silent hope. "Have shame of 
 yourself, a Christian woman, to say so.'' 
 
 "Leastways in your time and mine, Ma- 
 dam," maintained Prie, lighting for the last
 
 The Huguenot Family. 159 
 
 word, and illustrating it by a jerk of her 
 club foot. "And since we have gotten our 
 own stock, I do not see that we ought to 
 take a burden of other folks. That there 
 bullering jackdaw, Black Jasper, must see 
 you, and you must go up to the Rectory, ac- 
 cording to his story — a pretty story, when 
 you have not been within a strange door, or 
 bidden to it, since you came to Sedge Pond. 
 If they forget me when they are glad, 
 they need not mind me when they are sad, 
 say I." 
 
 " Oh, that poor Priscille ! ' exclaimed 
 Grand'mere, as if at a climax of vexation 
 and disappointment. "Does she not know 
 that that is the greatest compliment of all ! 
 A brother is born for adversity. See you 
 that a Christian should recognise a brother 
 through all disguises. And what care I, 
 though they can manage their prosperity, to 
 which they invite their distant relations and
 
 1 60 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 their slight acquaintances, without me. I — 
 I love better to be the brother." 
 
 After all, it was Black Jasper, and not the 
 Rolles, who sought Grand'mere. In the ex- 
 tremity, the black boy had gone so entirely 
 out of himself, that he had acted on his own 
 responsibility. His philosophy had been 
 simple enough. Massa had told Black Jas- 
 per, Captain Philip's fellow, of his loss first 
 of all. That had made the most profound 
 impression, and Jasper was not without 
 pride in his sorrow when he thought of it. 
 Then followed the plain deduction that 
 Captain Philip's fellow was bound to do 
 something in order to respond to the trust 
 Captain Philip's massa and his family had 
 put in him in their distress. Black Jasper 
 could not cudgel his brains ; he could only 
 leap to a conclusion. The Rolles had no 
 near neighbours their equals in rank — none 
 with whom he was very familiar. But a
 
 The Huguenot Family. 161 
 
 bright idea led him to except the French 
 family at the Shottery Cottage, — though 
 whether he had sufficient powers of compa- 
 rison and association to class persons so 
 different with himself, and incline to them as 
 strangers also, is doubtful. But the beauti- 
 ful old French lady had been good to Black 
 Jasper, and he would go and ask her to be 
 good to Massa Rolle and his household in 
 their calamity, and to find something good 
 for them which they might eat and drink, 
 and so break their doleful fast. 
 
 Poor Black Jasper in his childish appe- 
 tites was not so far behind the wisest sons 
 of consolation. Grand'mere was disposed 
 to adopt Black Jasper's view in part. She 
 came from a country where guilds of cha- 
 rity and mercy have long established a 
 right to the sick and the sorrowful, and 
 take possession of them. The country 
 people were good, but they were dull or 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 gross. Grand'mere called them so without 
 invidiousness. They might miss doing 
 something which would soften the hard 
 blow. These poor Rolles, she felt, were 
 too much hurt to hear malice. Grand'mere 
 reflected almost passionately, too, that they 
 should have come to the Dupuys in their 
 good days, and got nothing better from 
 them than mockery and abuse. As to 
 power to work her will, Grand'mere was 
 the most independent lady in the land — she 
 would never have dreamt of asking Mon- 
 sieur her son's consent to her expedition 
 even had he been at home, though she 
 might have made an appeal to his human- 
 ity. As to being compelled to consult and 
 come to one mind with Madame Dupuy, 
 there was not even the necessity of asking 
 her leave to carry Yolande along with her 
 on her mission. The rule of the eldest was 
 supreme at the Shottery Cottage ; the patri-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 163 
 
 archal, or parental form of government 
 dominated there, and power was vested in 
 the senior, and was no more affected by her 
 being an old woman than if the Salic law 
 had been abrogated first of all in France. 
 
 " Quick, Yolande !" cried Grand'mere, 
 " my capote and Madame Rougeole. But 
 alas ! the little red madame can do nothing 
 here ; on second thoughts, I think we will 
 leave her behind ; the colour might 
 remind them of the poor young man's 
 uniform or of his blood — broken hearts are 
 so ingenious. Now do you comprehend, 
 proud little one, what it would have been 
 for you to have been friends with these 
 poor girls who are brotherless ?" 
 
 "I am very sorry, Grand'mere," said 
 Yolande, penitently. "I do not think I 
 should like other girls to come near me in 
 my sorrow ; but then, you know, I am shy, 
 though not patient, as a Huguenot. I 
 
 m 2
 
 164 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 should have liked to have been able to help 
 them now. These girls loved their brother, 
 Grand'mere. I once heard them speaking 
 of him when they passed us in our walk, — 
 how brave and clever and grand he was, 
 and what he would do for his sisters when 
 he came back a general. I can guess how 
 they hung upon him, and exulted in his 
 uniform, and walked abroad with him in it, 
 the last time he was at home." 
 
 " Tell them so, my dear ; ask them to 
 describe him ; say you never had a brother, 
 but would like to hear of theirs. They 
 will vie with each other in showing what 
 is their loss, and it will relieve their poor 
 hearts." 
 
 The Rectory, which was usually the trim- 
 mest house in the parish, from its china 
 closet to its kitchen-garden, already betrayed 
 symptoms of that extraordinary distress in 
 which the ordinary business of life is ar-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 165 
 
 rested and lost sight of. Nobody had any 
 duties left them now that Captain Philip 
 had been killed last year at Ticonderoga. 
 The most sacred precincts of the house had 
 become common ground, always with the 
 reservation of the Rector's study, into which 
 he had locked himself. The servants were 
 wandering about everywhere, and doing no- 
 thing except contributing to render this day 
 wholly unlike any other day even in its out- 
 ward symbols of wretchedness. . 
 
 Grand'mere came, like an interested friend 
 and house-mistress, with the face and voice 
 of restored discipline. Her tact and discre- 
 tion speedily and noiselessly removed the 
 overwhelming traces of disaster and dismay, 
 restoring order and harmony without pro- 
 voking rebellion. 
 
 "The son of the house is dead, that is too 
 true, but the clothes must be laid away from 
 the wash, and the mastiff must have his
 
 lf)(; The Hwjvenot Vaniihj. 
 
 meal. There will still be clot lies to be 
 worn, and you will not stint the dog for the 
 man's loss — or gain. The beast howl-, 
 truly, and why? Because he hungers. 
 You need not fear to do your work, my 
 girls, he will not be forgotten : and if you 
 wish to remember him particularly, you can 
 still do it on the Day of the Dead, with the 
 living not neglected by you. What ! you 
 have no Day of the Dead in England? 
 Then you can remember him with the other 
 blessed departed as you remember on your 
 bed their Lord and vours, in whom they 
 still live, and you can meditate on them in 
 the night watches." 
 
 Poor Dorothy and Camilla, unfitted to 
 cope with the grim giant Care, wore quite 
 unable to control themselves, left alone as 
 they had been for the first time in their 
 lives. But in their horror and desolation 
 they were sensible that a friend had come
 
 The Huguenot Family. 167 
 
 to them, and they cast themselves with full 
 hearts on her protection. Grand'mere roused 
 Dorothy from the seat on which she sat shi- 
 vering as with great cold, and listening, 
 with fixed eyes and curdling blood, to a 
 conclave of the elder servants. For sore 
 sorrow, like sore sickness, breaks down arti- 
 ficial distinctions, and drives some men and 
 women into the company of their fellows, as 
 it drives others into the solitude of the wil- 
 derness. 
 
 And now each servant mysteriously and 
 fanatically delivered her experience in the 
 matter of corpse-candles, death-spills, death- 
 watches, takinsr note of what she had ob- 
 served lately, and comparing it with the 
 result. Dorothy might have learned for 
 all her life afterwards to look on death as a 
 dark fate haunting her, hovering over her 
 in her own person and in those of the 
 friends she loved, and from which she could
 
 168 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 by no means escape, not even by prayer 
 and fasting. She might have learned to 
 look out for it in dim prognostications, to 
 watch for it, and anticipate its cruel blows 
 in incipient madness. 
 
 " Our Bibles say we know not the day 
 nor the hour ; but He knows — that is 
 enough," said Grand'mere, rebuking the an- 
 cient heathen superstition ; and she effectu- 
 ally shut the mouths of the seers, at least 
 till Dorothy was out of earshot. 
 
 Grand'mere calmed and soothed Camilla, 
 too, and overcame those wild hysterics which 
 were shaking the poor girl's body like a reed 
 in the wind. 
 
 But, in the depth of her pity and the 
 height of her reverence, she hesitated to ap- 
 proach the chief sufferers, and almost drew 
 back from them. Though she was ac- 
 quainted with some passages in the works 
 of the great English poet — in her day little
 
 The Huguenot Family. 169 
 
 known to French readers — it is not likely 
 she had heard of Constance commanding 
 the kings and princes to stand in her pre- 
 sence because of the supreme majesty of her 
 woe. But she had a fine realization of the 
 sentiment, and it was trembling on her lips, 
 when she at last entered Madam's chamber. 
 Madam, as she lay there to recover and 
 master herself, had just gasped out an odd 
 wish, " I could desire that Lucy Gage were 
 alive and could come here now. They say 
 she was ever found in the house of mourn- 
 ing, and had acquired the art of drying up 
 tears, that they might not drown the wit 
 and flood the senses, I mean, alack-a-day! 
 what will become of the Rector's sermon, 
 and to-morrow is Sunday. Where are Dolly 
 and Milly ? — they are not affrighted of me 
 still ? Indeed, I must get up, good people, 
 for my head doth swim no longer as if I 
 were seized with the falling sickness. I
 
 170 The HiKjuenot Family. 
 
 shall have no need to be blooded ; there 
 was no call to bleed my boy when his head 
 swam. Oh ! Lord ! Lord ! — shot through 
 the head ! — I can see his wet clotted locks 
 at this moment." 
 
 "Madam," said Grand'mere, "I am not 
 come to comfort you — I dare not. I sit at 
 your feet instead. I have had many afflic- 
 tions ; I am an aged widow now, ending my 
 days in a country not my own. But I have 
 never followed the bier of a dead man, and 
 he my only son. Madam, how much the 
 good Lord must have loved you and yours 
 when He chastened you so much." 
 
 Madam looked up, but closed her eyes 
 a^ain with a low murmur, "Ah! I am a 
 poor creature. Do not tell my husband, he 
 has such heavy trouble, I shrink from such 
 terrible love." 
 
 " More than you, Madam, all men of 
 tliei n selves beat their breasts and lie in the
 
 The Huguenot Family. 171 
 
 dust to escape it, but still He loves, as sure 
 as the world moves. He does not love us 
 because we love Him, either first or last." 
 
 "And can you believe He loved my 
 Philip when He called him to his account 
 in a moment without warnmg or prepara- 
 tion?" pled Madam, piteously. "He was 
 good, my son," continued the quiet woman, 
 growing vehement ; "he had only a man's 
 ability, and he had a man's falls, but he 
 was honest, dutiful, religious to our know- 
 ledge. Still, what do we know ? He was 
 in camp in time of war, and we shall never 
 hear if he was ready, and how he met his 
 call." 
 
 "Again I say there is One who knows all 
 that, my poor Madam — knows all the young 
 man's faith in His word, all his seeking after 
 Him, all his obedience to his father on 
 earth, and to his commander here, and all 
 the sharpness and suddenness of his mortal
 
 172 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 end. You trusted our Lord with his life ; 
 say, then, will you not trust Him with his 
 death ?" 
 
 " Then I will, for I must," submitted 
 Madam, meekly ; " but French or no French 
 — forgive me for saying it — you are a good 
 old soul to come and put it so to me. I 
 wish Mr. Rolle could hear you." 
 
 " And teach me nobler truth, as an or- 
 dained servant of our Master, — is it not 
 so ? ' asked Grandmere. " Ah ! Madam, 
 when we have crossed the river and thrown 
 off our rags for His raiment, shall we stop 
 and ask each other whether we are French 
 or English, or — (you shudder, but you can 
 say it, good woman) — American ? No, nor 
 even whether we are Protestant or Catholic ; 
 but only whether we bear the name of the 
 Cross-bearer who bore our sorrows as well 
 as our sins." 
 
 " Mother — yes, I hope you will let me
 
 The Huguenot Family. 173 
 
 pay you the duty and service I owe you to 
 call you so, for I remember they all called 
 you mother, or grandmother, that day in 
 summer, long ago, when we spoke of him, 
 and I was deceived and believed myself a 
 rich mother still ; and he was mouldering 
 under the damp leaves of those great forests 
 he used to tell us of (for he served before in 
 Canada, against your people : you will not 
 mind it now, you are too sorry for us, and 
 too kind) ; — he was so clever, almost as 
 clever as his father, and the gallantest sol- 
 dier in the British army ; he twice had the 
 thanks of his regiment presented to him, it 
 was writ to his father. He saved a fort 
 from being surprised in the East Indies, and 
 nobody could save him, — but I do not blame 
 his comrades; he would not have blamed 
 them, for he loved them as brothers. I 
 am a simple parson's wife, but I thank God 
 I can remember all that. You are old
 
 1 74 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 enough to be my mother — no offence, 
 madam — and I shall not forget your coming 
 to us in our sorrow. What although you — 
 no, not you, but your family — all but shut 
 the door hi our faces when we went to see 
 you? I daresay you mistook us, or had 
 some reason for your ill-behaviour. I de- 
 clare you have done a great deal better than 
 show us the most finished politeness. I 
 shall tell Mr. Rolle when he is able to hear 
 it ; and he will thank you, and his thanks 
 are worth the having. I shall tell Lady 
 Rolle, our patroness, when she comes down 
 to the Castle, and she may do something for 
 your Spitalfields colony. Now, I am on no 
 ceremony with you, I am going to dismiss 
 you, for I must rise and go to Philip's father." 
 " But he will not receive vou " said the 
 Rector, as he walked into his wife's room, 
 " for Philip's father comes to Philip's mother, 
 because the woman is the weaker vessel, and
 
 The Huguenot Family. 175 
 
 it is for the man to honour and cherish her 
 — that is how I read the text, Madame 
 Dupuy." 
 
 He was white and shaken, a man who 
 had aged ten years in a day. He was a 
 little fallen in the face yet when he tried 
 to smile, but his suit was in decent order — 
 possibly his head had been anointed, and 
 his face washed also, and all his resolution 
 and manliness given back to him. He had 
 wrestled for that as well as for resignation, 
 and his Master was no niggard ; he had got 
 all he sought. 
 
 " No," corrected Madam, a you name the 
 younger, bitter woman ; but I do not think 
 anybody will be bitter to us again. Philip — 
 ah me ! the only Philip I have left ! — this 
 is the old dame whom everybody called 
 Grand'mere." 
 
 "I do not remember ; I believe my 
 memory as well as my faith faileth me.
 
 176 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 Don't contradict me, Millie; the woman's 
 place is to be silent and listen to the man. 
 I think even this old French madam e — 
 Madame Dupuy, mere, be it — will not dis- 
 pute that quite, in precept, whatever she 
 may do in example. I rated my dear son's 
 promotion too low, and that is why my faith 
 failed me, and so I bore a false testimony 
 before my people. I was too low myself, 
 and too worldly-minded, though I am a 
 priest. French priests err in that way too 
 sometimes, do they not, madame ? My boy 
 has his promotion, the very highest. He 
 died at his post, and I shall stand at mine. 
 I pray God that He may give me strength 
 to stand at his altar to-morrow, and bear a 
 true testimony in returning thanks for 
 Philip's heavenly promotion. I would have 
 celebrated his earthly rise in the ale-house, 
 but only God's house is fit when the step 
 is to the skies."
 
 The Huguenot Family. 177 
 
 "Monsieur," cried Grand'mere, forgetting 
 her English, and her avoidance of all sec- 
 tarian allusion at the same time, " you speak 
 nobly, you speak like Jean Calvin himself." 
 
 "Ha!" exclaimed Mr. Philip Rolle, with 
 a faint gleam of gratification, " you are too 
 good, you do me too much honour. I do 
 not hold Calvin's tenets, but I respect the 
 man. He was no anarchist, no latitudi- 
 narian." 
 
 Thus it happened that in the days of 
 bruised and broken hearts there was a truce 
 in the national and sectarian hostilities. A 
 compromise was effected, from which Mon- 
 sieur and Madame Dupuy simply stood 
 aloof; but Grand'mere was no longer a 
 stranger to the Rolles, Yolande went to the 
 Rectory, and was courteously and kindly re- 
 ceived by the Rector and his wife ; Dorothy 
 and Camilla came to the Shottery Cottage, 
 and were tolerated by Monsieur and Madame 
 
 VOL. I. n
 
 178 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 — borne with, indulged, and indirectly taught 
 by Grand'mere. 
 
 About the same time that the news came 
 of the gallant young Captain Philip Rolle's 
 death in a land-fight, there arrived also word 
 of the death of one of Lady Rolle's younger 
 sons, a naval officer, in a sea-fight, in which 
 the renegade Paul Jones had a hand. But, 
 though Sedge Pond had a little pride in 
 having contributed two heroes and martyrs 
 to English history, stirred thereto by the 
 Roman spirit of Mr. Philip Rolle, who 
 would fain have felt himself, and called on 
 others to feel, a stern joy in the noble sacri- 
 fice, all that Sedge Pond heard or saw of 
 the Rolle of the Castle's death was the 
 messenger who hurried down to hang up the 
 hatchment on the wall.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 179 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Squire Gage, who Bode and Bead — The 
 Young Squire who walked by his Fathers 
 Bridle — The Ministry of Women. 
 
 ISITS, like misfortunes, come not 
 singly. The Dupuys, who had 
 been six months at Sedge Pond without 
 having been waited on by a neighbour, 
 were within a month after the Rector's 
 demonstration required to throw open their 
 doors to a couple of country gentlemen, 
 who had travelled half a day's journey out 
 of their direct road to call upon the French 
 family. They appeared in a guise so 
 strange as to puzzle and confound even 
 
 n 2
 
 180 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 Grand'niere's eyes, accustomed though they 
 were to many of the strange sights of that 
 strange time. 
 
 " Here be a Bedlamite and his keeper," 
 said Priscille, announcing the strangers. 
 " They have got in at the garden-door, and 
 corned up the path, and now they be ex- 
 pounding at the house-door." 
 
 The family were thus called in considera- 
 ble tremor to the lattice-windows. Happily 
 Monsieur was at home this time, and the 
 moment he looked out he dissipated all 
 fears. 
 
 " Oh ! qa, they are harmless. I know 
 them. They are enthusiasts, like some of 
 our own people, and spoken against every- 
 where, too. You will like to know them, 
 mother ; and though you were to offend 
 them to-morrow, and even sin against their 
 line laws, as so man)' Englishmen them- 
 selves do, they are so enamoured of peace,
 
 The Huguenot Family. 181 
 
 these brave people, that they would not cite 
 you to their courts of justice." 
 
 Monsieur had been either misinformed or 
 had made a mistake between the Quakers 
 and the Methodists. 
 
 " Let them come in, Priscille," he con- 
 tinued. 
 
 The chief peculiarities of dress and gait 
 which had struck the Dupuy household 
 were in the elder man. He was stout and 
 middle-aged, with a capacious forehead and 
 violet eves, in which there was a wonderful 
 mixture of observation and meditation. 
 He had a good composite English nose, a 
 full, flexible mouth, and a double chin, 
 which was yet nowise gross. He wore his 
 own black hair, which hung down on each 
 side of his face till it reached his collarless 
 coat and his cravat, and was abundantly 
 sprinkled with grey, but without any 
 trace of powder. He had on a broad-
 
 182 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 brimmed hat, like a parson's, but the rest 
 of his dress did not correspond, being of 
 homely, well-worn velveteen — coat, vest, 
 and breeches, the latter with leathern 
 gaiters. There was not one item of adorn- 
 ment in his costume, neither lace nor braid, 
 shoe-buckle nor cravat-brooch, yet it was 
 unmistakably the costume of a gentleman. 
 Nay, the " grand simple ' in style, after 
 which some of the finest gentlemen of the 
 day had the taste to hanker, did something 
 to bring out the unconscious manly dignity 
 of a figure which was in itself heavy and 
 clumsy ; and the perpetual pondering on 
 the highest themes had taken away from 
 the expression of the beautiful eyes what 
 might have been the egotism and coarse 
 rusticity of a self-taught country squire. 
 
 The strange gentleman had ridden a grey 
 cob as stout, middle-aged, and apparently 
 as studiously-inclined as himself. As he
 
 The Huguenot Family. 183 
 
 had ridden, he had read in a large book, 
 with brown calf binding, which lay open 
 across his horse's neck, and ambling along 
 sedately, he had come upon an interesting 
 passage just as he had reached the gate. 
 Priscille's wonderment and scorn had been 
 roused by his sitting stock-still like a statue 
 for a few minutes to finish it before alight- 
 ing, apparently with the consent of his beast, 
 too, while his companion fastened the horse- 
 bridle in the ring at the garden-door. 
 
 The younger man was common-looking 
 in comparison, though he was a comely lad, 
 perhaps a little over twenty, and big and 
 broad-shouldered for his age. One could 
 have seen that he was the old man's son, 
 though he appeared so different, for he had 
 his father's nose, mouth, and chin, along 
 with a square, compact forehead of his own, 
 and eyes inclining more to the steady blue 
 than the changing violet. He was in the
 
 184 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 dress of his vears and station : buckskin 
 breeches, riding-boots, a red vest, and large 
 shining buttons on his coat, while his hat 
 had one of the numerous cocks which in 
 turn was given to that important piece of 
 apparel. But though the younger had all 
 the advantage of dress which the elder 
 wanted — though he had youth and the 
 grace of youth on his side, he nevertheless 
 failed in the special traits which marked the 
 other. His face indicated breeding, fair 
 parts, spirit, sense, modesty, kindliness, and 
 was indeed a singularly fresh, honest, and 
 healthful young face, among the many faces 
 then prematurely wasted and polluted with 
 the hot flush of passion and vice. It was a 
 face, too, in which goodliness seemed to be 
 progressive, like the slow growth of many a 
 bounteous, fruitful tree ; but one which, on 
 account of this very slowness, would the 
 more readily recommend itself to English
 
 The Huguenot Family, 185 
 
 hearts. Still, it was without either the daz- 
 zling gleam and glory of genius, or sugges- 
 tions of individual and searching experiences, 
 such as excited the curiosity and commanded 
 the interest of every one who looked upon 
 the elder man. 
 
 The father and son ^yere journeying to- 
 gether in such cordial good-fellowship as 
 many a parent and child might have envied, 
 though the one was on horseback and the 
 other on foot, and the one studying in un- 
 propitious circumstances a volume of which 
 the other did not care to construe a line 
 now that his school tasks were finished. 
 That other was studying the clouds, the 
 nights of birds, the effects of soils in' their 
 growth, the rearing of colts and heifers ; 
 and he had not merely a quick eye to what 
 was notable and picturesque in these details, 
 for he had inherited that side of his father s 
 temperament, but had also along with it a
 
 186 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 practical knowledge, love, and assiduity 
 such as Squire Gage of the Mall, with all 
 his wit, book-lore, and earnestness, had never 
 pretended to. 
 
 As Squire Gage passed under the roof of 
 the Shottery Cottage, he raised his hat, and 
 said, so low and solemnlv that it seemed a 
 movement of the man's soul, and not a form 
 of words from his lips : " Peace be to this 
 house I" while his companion took off his 
 hat and bowed his head reverently. 
 
 " You are welcome, gentlemen," said 
 Monsieur, with his natural urbanity, as he 
 came forward, while the women made their 
 curtseys ; " you are welcome the more that 
 I cannot for my life tell to what I am to at- 
 tribute the honour of this visit/' 
 
 " You are to take it, and our most hearty 
 service, sir," announced Squire Gage, in a 
 deep-toned, full, melodious voice, such as 
 with the early Methodist leaders was a di-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 187 
 
 rect personal qualification for their work ; 
 " they form a very small acknowledgment 
 of the great debt we owe to a dear friend 
 of ours, and a countryman of yours, who 
 fell asleep too early for his parish, his cir- 
 cuit, England, and Christendom, — Fletcher 
 of Madeley. I would fain hope I may hit 
 on some precious memorial of my brother's 
 early friends and his first youth among his 
 Protestant countrymen." 
 
 Monsieur taxed his memory in vain. 
 Even Grand'mere could not recall such a 
 one among all the Flechiers she had known 
 or heard of, even although one of them had 
 been a famous orator, a Flechier who was a 
 soldier in his youth, had quitted the army, 
 studied for the Church, emigrated to Eng- 
 land, and settled there, and had come for- 
 ward in the van of the beleaguering host of 
 the Methodists, the beloved friend of its 
 choicest spirits, the truest gentleman and
 
 188 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 most faithful servant of his Master Eng- 
 land had ever received into her Church's 
 ranks. 
 
 But it did Squire Gage good even to 
 speak of Fletcher of Madeley, and of those 
 rough but brave days when he had known 
 well-born gentlemen, famous scholars, im- 
 passioned, meek Christians, lodging in out- 
 houses and barns, without fire or candle, 
 when they trudged along the dangerous 
 roads with their saddle-bags strapped on 
 their backs, brushed each other's shoes and 
 washed each other's potatoes, preached forty 
 hours in a week, and prayed in every house 
 they entered, from five of the clock in the 
 bitter winter mornings till past midnight 
 Ay, he remembered those days, and loved 
 to think of them too, when they were Bet 
 upon by bull-dogs, pelted with paving-stones, 
 and drummed out of towns by the public 
 <1 rummer. It did Squire Gage good to
 
 The Huguenot Family. 189 
 
 speak of the gallant campaign in which he 
 had borne his part, and it warmed his heart 
 to hear the French tongues and to see the 
 French faces. So Fletcher of Madeley had 
 spoken and felt, when he struggled with his 
 consumptive cough to address his people for 
 the last time ; so he had looked when he 
 took off his hat to his pew-opener ; and when 
 he plucked the cushion from his pony-chaise 
 and presented it that the fractured limb of 
 the savage yeoman, who had been his greatest 
 enemy, migh rest upon it. 
 
 There was a freemasonry between the 
 old Methodist and the old Husmenots, 
 though they differed in many important par- 
 ticulars. 
 
 Squire Gage spoke of the rise of Method- 
 ism, eagerly but simply. The deeds done 
 had been devoted, gentle, generous deeds, 
 yet there had been nothing wonderful in 
 them save the grace of God vouchsafed by
 
 190 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 his Son, and reflected faintly in the lives of 
 men whose faces, when they were looked 
 upon by the sympathetic eyes of their 
 generation, seemed as though they had been 
 the faces of angels. Such men were the 
 two great brothers, Mr. John and Mr. 
 Charles Wesley, Fletcher, and Whitfield. 
 For all that, the last Squire Gage had op- 
 posed Whitfield, and taken his stand on the 
 Arminian side of the famous controversy. 
 But our Suire had learnt the broadest of 
 charity from a broad experience. He had 
 dealt with publicans and sinners of the first 
 water, with Sadducees of all grades, from 
 the heartless negatives of Lord Chesterfield, 
 delivered in Louis Quinze French, and in- 
 terrupted by incomparable liftings of his 
 hat and takings of snuff, down to the bully- 
 ing, blustering, blaspheming rodomontade 
 of some Billy Blue, broken in upon by 
 fierce squirts of tobacco-juice and defiant
 
 The Huguenot Family. 191 
 
 hitches of his trowsers' belt. He had en- 
 countered Pharisees of every rank and shade, 
 from those whose gain was a bishop's mitre 
 down to squalid, railing men, whose temp- 
 tation was the miserable three-pounds-a-quar- 
 ter pittance of the travelling Methodist 
 preacher. He had known, too, Israelites 
 without guile, whose mark had to stand for 
 a signature ; and Israelites who burnt their 
 Platos and Livys lest their books should 
 tempt them into intellectual pride, or with- 
 draw them from the narrow way in which 
 alone they could walk, and save their own 
 and their fellow-creatures' souls. And 
 Squire Gage was not like Ignatius Loyola, 
 who vowed himself to the Virgin, and ban- 
 ished women from the roll of his order ; for 
 he had known Maries who had washed and 
 mended their rags in order that they might 
 do all things decently; or had laid aside 
 their brocades and pearl drops, and appeared
 
 192 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 for ever afterwards in homely calirnanco 
 and muslin. He had known some who had 
 set their diamonds in the unplastered walls 
 of primitive chapels, who had given up their 
 cards for hymn-books, and announced their 
 auctions that they might provide houses 
 of refuge for the poverty-stricken, the sick, 
 and the sinful. Squire Gage had made 
 many such friends in the dens of great cities. 
 in the wilds of America, on shipboard, and 
 at Moorfields. 
 
 The Squire's nature was so liberal, gener- 
 ous, and finely attuned to sympathy, that 
 he made little of his own claims and much 
 of his neighbours', and so he addressed the 
 Dupuys with a deferential wave of the hand 
 and a manly apology for taking up the time 
 of the interview. "I am advised not to de- 
 tain you further with my poor personal nar- 
 ratives ; an elderly man waxes both heavy 
 and garrulous, and therefore Mr. John warned
 
 The Huguenot Family. 193 
 
 his preachers not to suffer the devil to tempt 
 them into long sermons. But may I beg the 
 favour of a few fresh particulars of your hon- 
 ourable history? Indeed, I am credibly 
 informed that you have been most blessed 
 martyrs." 
 
 "Yes, indeed, martyrs par-ci and martyrs 
 par-la; but I leave the question of the martyrs," 
 declared Monsieur, indifferently. " I say we 
 have been honest men stripped of our rights 
 and privileges, and brutally pillaged and 
 outraged, and that if we pay our enemies 
 back in their own money, they have worked 
 for their wages, — that is all." 
 
 " That is to leave the question of the 
 martyrs, sure enough," answered Squire 
 Gage, gravely ; " for martyrs, and for that 
 matter, brave, true patriots, do not avenge 
 themselves. My dear sir, I pray you think 
 better of it." 
 
 vol. i. o
 
 194 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 u Ta, ta, ta, my dear Monsieur Gage ; it 
 is my own business." 
 
 " I deny that," asserted the Squire, eager- 
 ly ; "I deny that any man's business is his 
 own if it be likely to injure or ruin him, and 
 if it is granted that he is one of many bre- 
 thren." 
 
 " Say it to him, Monsieur," adjured Ma- 
 dame Dupuy, "when the cats run on the 
 roof the mice dance on the planks. Ah 
 well ! yes, the famine drives the wolves out 
 of the forest. My husband will ask permis- 
 sion to blow his nose on the one hand, and 
 he will persist in following his worldly, 
 reckless courses on the other. All men 
 are Demases in these degenerate days." 
 
 "Madam!" responded Squire Gage, turn- 
 ing round in mild astonishment and depre- 
 cation upon the narrow, dark face, witli the 
 rage of the contest for ever burning fiercely 
 in it \ and, true to his Methodist principles,
 
 The Huguenot Family. 195 
 
 he rebuked the error. " I also am a man, 
 and I have yet to learn that these days in 
 which we live are degenerate pays. I fancy 
 they are a mighty deal better than those in 
 which Mary burnt the bishops, or Elizabeth 
 fined the Puritans, or Anne thought of 
 bringing back the Pope and the Pretender, 
 or your Charles and Catherine massacred 
 your fathers, or your Louis sold them as 
 slaves ; only I conclude there has been 
 some good in all events and at all times, 
 else God would not have suffered them, any 
 more than the world. Moreover, I have 
 read, both in the law and the Gospel, that 
 the man is the head of his house ; therefore, 
 even although the head were as far wrong 
 as you say, I see not that the tail would 
 have any call to rise up and lash its own 
 natural sovereign." 
 
 " But they tell me that your sect allows 
 the public ministry of women ?" questioned 
 
 o2
 
 196 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 i - ■ - — iMaaaaMi 
 
 Grand'mere, partly to provide for the sub- 
 siding of any offence which might have 
 arisen from the plain speaking of Mr. Gage. 
 Such plain speaking was but small offence 
 to her, when there was nothing in it of the 
 " stand aside, I am holier than thou." At 
 the same time, Grand'mere had a vehement 
 prejudice against the public ministry of 
 women. Like other Frenchwomen whose 
 social influence was immense, she was in- 
 clined to hold in aversion every independent 
 influence exerted by women. 
 
 " Yes, my dear old dame," confirmed the 
 Squire, bending gladly to the benign for- 
 eign face which was least strange to him, 
 since it reminded him most of the face of 
 Fletcher of Madeley ; " and we are minded 
 to say, though it is not a gallant saying, that 
 if an ass rebuked Balaam, and a cock re- 
 buked Peter, surely a woman may rebuke 
 sm.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 197 
 
 " Certes ! that is not putting the similes 
 too high," acknowledged Grand'mere, with 
 her silvery laugh; "still, you see, I have 
 heard of a certain epistle called Corinthians, 
 and in the epistle premier there is a certain 
 chapter numero xiv., verses 34 and 35, 
 where we read something on the preaching 
 and the teaching of women ; now, what of 
 that, sir?" 
 
 "We opine, madam, that the verses refer 
 to church government and discipline, and 
 we ordain not, nor do our women presume 
 that they should settle the disputes in our 
 conferences, or control the management of 
 our circuits. But to what purpose have you 
 women your tender logic of the heart, com- 
 pared with which ours is so tough and dry ? 
 For the use of your husbands and children 
 only ? Why, that is selfish at the best. And 
 what if your husbands and children do not 
 want it ? What if you have neither husbands
 
 198 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 nor children? You will confess that De- 
 borah, and not Lapidoth, judged Israel, and 
 Anna spoke of the child to all who looked 
 for his coining. That was before the days 
 of the great Apostle Paul, I grant you ; but 
 methinks he would not have shut the mouths 
 of those women. When I was so happy, and 
 my dame so much less happy than she is 
 now, in that she still abode with me, I used 
 to find that when I spoke to a crowd of fel- 
 low-sinners, more by token when they were 
 poor, work-worn, dull, or distraught men 
 and women, and I was apt to fly far over 
 their heads, my good woman never came 
 after me but she went straight to their 
 hearts. Ah ! I wish you could have heard 
 her. If you had done so, you would never 
 have controverted women speaking in the 
 cause of their Lord again. She had Chry- 
 sostom's golden mouth, and could lull and 
 disarm the most raging opposition of the
 
 The Huguenot Family. 199 
 
 natural man, could overcome the most tor- 
 menting, gnawing worldly care, and turn the 
 sneer of the profane into the worship of the 
 devout, and melt even a heart of stone ! 
 This her son, who is not one of our preachers, 
 having no gift that way, and who, like you, 
 doth not much affect the ministry of women, 
 can tell you what her preaching was like ; 
 and I will say for him, that he is too sterling 
 a lad to overpraise beyond his judgment 
 even the good mother who bore him." 
 
 Thus appealed to, the young man spoke 
 without hesitation and reluctance, and, as it 
 seemed, without favour. "It is true what 
 my father says. \ My mother's sermons were 
 most sweet and suitable. I have known few 
 weary of her discourse, and few who were 
 not the better for it. Other women appear 
 to me to wax weak and distempered, and to 
 utter frothy matter, or to repeat themselves ; 
 but my mother was more reasonable, col-
 
 200 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 lected, and concise, as well as more earnest, 
 genuine, and heavenly-minded, when she 
 was carried away with her theme, than any 
 speaker I have ever heard ; unless it be one 
 whom truth and not flattery compels me to 
 except — yourself, sir, in your happy mo- 
 ments ; for you know I have not lived long 
 enough to have ever heard Mr. John Wesley, 
 or Fletcher, or Whitfield, or any of those 
 you term our Boanerges." 
 
 "No, boy. But I fall far short of your 
 mother ; I come not near her, though I have 
 had so many more years of grace given me, 
 and so many more years of the practice of 
 preaching, and though you, being her boy 
 as well as mine, and spoilt by her in that 
 respect, wise as she was, are too prone to 
 exalt me." 
 
 "And yet, with two such qualified pro- 
 genitors, you do not attempt the public 
 speaking yourself, my young sir," speculated
 
 The Huguenot Family. 201 
 
 Monsieur, a little mockingly; "'tis a rare 
 continence." 
 
 "lam not fit for it," declared the young 
 Squire, with a straightforwardness which 
 wholly disarmed superciliousness ; "I do 
 not wear the Methodists' dress because it 
 would be hypocrisy in me, who have not 
 come out of the world as they have done, nor, 
 indeed, am persuaded that their peculiar sepa- 
 ration from the world ought to be mine also. 
 I am good for nothing but to take care of my 
 father's beast when he forgets that he 
 carries a student and a preacher, and is 
 like to stumble and throw his rider ; or to 
 knock down any man who lays a rough 
 hand on a godly, beneficent man, be he a 
 squire like my father, or a poor journeyman 
 shoemaker, a brother of St. Crispin, as my 
 father calleth him, which so many of our 
 travelling preachers are — whether there be 
 Methodism in the smell of the leather, or
 
 202 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 any other provoking cause, I wot not." 
 
 " My lad, let not the devil cause thee to 
 bear false witness, even though it be in 
 decrying thyself. Thou art eyes to the 
 blind, and feet to the lame, for my eves 
 were never good for much but poring over 
 brown books, or peering closely into men's 
 faces, or scanning far off the vague vast of 
 the sky ; and my feet hath my fathers old 
 punishment of gout in them." 
 
 " Though you gave up tea and coffee as 
 too stimulating and pampering, along with 
 my mother and Mr. John Wesley, a score 
 of years agone," commented the son. 
 
 "And you profess to keep the farming of 
 the old Mall within bounds, when you 
 pretend that the agriculture of Virgil is 
 wrong ?" 
 
 "So it is, sir," argued the young Squire, 
 stoutly ; " when you apply what was written 
 for Northern Italy, under the Romans, to
 
 The Huguenot Family. 203 
 
 Midland England under the house of Bruns- 
 wick." 
 
 " Do not you read Virgil also, my young 
 sir ?" inquired Grand'mere, inquisitively. 
 
 " No, madam, I am too thick of the head, 
 and have too much to occupy and divert me 
 at present. Perhaps I shall turn to it when 
 my brains have grown with use, or when 
 other trades fail ; when I am disabled for 
 the active duties and diversions for which I 
 am persuaded I am designed at present, 
 which my father doth not forbid, and hi 
 which I do not see any harm." 
 
 " Yea; let every man be fully persuaded 
 in his own mind," murmured Caleb Gage 
 the elder, " for there are divers operations, 
 but the same Spirit." 
 
 In the meantime young Caleb Gage had 
 been trying to make himself agreeable to 
 the Dupuys, and to improve the acquaint- 
 ance of Yolande Dupuy, just as he would
 
 204 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 have done with a companion of his sisters, 
 had he had sisters. He had tried it in 
 various ways, and had at last retired foiled 
 from the effort. He had got, in reply to 
 his queries, which should have interested 
 any ordinary young girl, the briefest mono- 
 syllables. Whether she liked Sedge Pond 
 and its neighbourhood ? — Whether she had 
 been in the Castle Gardens ? — Whether she 
 were given to the rearing and teaching of 
 tame birds, as he had heard tell French 
 women were, and in that case whether she 
 would care to have birds snared for her? 
 or whether she were minded to have the 
 pond dredged? These, and such as these, 
 were the questions with which Caleb Gage 
 plied Yolande unsuccessfully. But he was 
 left utterly uncertain whether Ma'mselle was 
 a stone statue of a proper young gentle- 
 woman, as she sat there in her silk sacque 
 and her great bow of rose riband on her
 
 The Huguenot Family. 205 
 
 cap, a tinge of rose coming into her white 
 cheeks for a second, and then leaving them 
 again, just to show that she was really 
 living flesh, and not dead marble ; or 
 whether in her superior learning she scorned 
 him. 
 
 The truth was that Yolande, as Grand'- 
 mere had seen, was more ignorant of the 
 world, more strange to its ways, and more 
 at a loss what to say and do than any girl 
 just out of her convent. She had hardly 
 seen or spoken to any man save her father's 
 associates in trade, who had not treated her 
 as an equal, but as a child. She was cer- 
 tainly glad enough that anybody should 
 think so kindly of them as to visit them. 
 But she did not know what to make of the 
 young Squire's rank freedom ; and could 
 not tell whether it was right for him to ad- 
 dress her as he did, or whether he would 
 presume to address Dorothy and Camilla
 
 206 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 Rolle with such ease, and whether they 
 would suffer it. 
 
 The visitors were invited to share in a 
 meal with the inmates of the Cottage, and 
 this invitation they accepted with polite 
 alacrity, and without any objections, save 
 that Squire Gage quietly declined to drink 
 healths, saying that he had prayed for the 
 company already, and would pray for and 
 with them again whenever they liked, but 
 that neither he nor any other Methodist 
 would pledge a bumper, any more than 
 they would pour out a libation. Shortly 
 after the meal was over, father and son 
 took their departure. 
 
 The Gages had inspired a sentiment in 
 the inmates of the Cottage more akin to 
 good will than the Rolles had been able to 
 do on first acquaintance. Grand'mere was 
 especially pleased with them, and was not 
 guiltless of forming her own projects and
 
 The Huguenot Family. 207 
 
 building her own castles in the air, even on 
 so short an acquaintance — projects in which 
 the Gages, father and son, figured largely. 
 
 " Grand'niere," interrupted Yolande, 
 " did you observe Mr. Gage's eyes, which 
 are short-sighted? They are like nothing 
 but the evening star when the dew is 
 falling." 
 
 u Yes, little one, and I have seen eyes 
 like them in the long past ; eyes with a 
 short sight for the present, and a far sight 
 for the future. No marvel that they are 
 both unfathomable and effulgent, for they 
 have done as great things as the Italian who 
 went down into the Inferno — they have 
 looked into eternity, these eyes, and it is 
 reflected in their glance."
 
 208 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Grand "'mere turns Miser — An Embassy to the 
 Mall — Sortes Biblicoz. 
 
 IRAND'MERE, with all her inward 
 peace, had a care on her mind, the 
 more imperative that it was tender. But 
 after the Gages had introduced themselves 
 at the Shottery Cottage, she did not so 
 much shake off the care as find that the 
 solution of the problem took a tangible 
 shape, and became to her sanguine temper 
 and ardent imagination more and more 
 practicable and probable. 
 
 Then Grand'mere sought with some for- 
 mality a special interview with Monsieur.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 209 
 
 her son, and communicated her intentions 
 to him. 
 
 Monsieur laughed a little, even at his 
 mother, in this case, for Grand'mere's care 
 bulked so slightly in his mind, that it 
 appeared a very bagatelle, weighed in the 
 scale against his obligations. But he ad- 
 mitted there was some foundation for her 
 concern, and he gave his mother carte 
 blanche to do what she could to remove the 
 cause. 
 
 " I leave it to you, ma mere ; it is your 
 affair. I believe these are honest people, 
 and the liaison may be agreeable to them 
 (since there is no inequality of fortune, 
 when they have wasted the better part of 
 their patrimony on alms-deeds) for the sake 
 of you, little mother, and their hero — this 
 Monsieur, I do not know who — Flechier. 
 As to the tourterelle, she may do as well 
 with them as with others. She abuses the 
 
 VOL. T. p
 
 210 The Huguenot Fam ily. 
 
 English, that poor child ; but she has not 
 even the debonnairete of these drdles the 
 pastor's daughters. Psch ! Yolande's blood 
 is cold, and her colour grey, like the Eng- 
 lish climate and sky, which I do not abuse ; 
 she has the spleen, the unfortunate ! the 
 English form of the excellent mother's 
 faith — tristesse, chagrin. Is it not true, my 
 mother ?" 
 
 " All the waters run to the river, my 
 son," replied Grand'mere, with a shade of 
 impatience and indignation. " Whom 
 should the child resemble unless her near 
 relations ? But she is a good child, a noble 
 child, word of mine, Hubert. There are 
 men and women who know their kind, that 
 would give more for the truth, and foT the 
 earnestness, all sombre as yet, of our 
 Yolandc, than for the light, treacherous 
 frivolity, and the natures all egotism and 
 all passion, of the girls of the world."
 
 The Huguenot Family. 211 
 
 " Ouais ! She is severe. I have never 
 heard her called so before. The nursling 
 is very near thy heart, Grand'mere." 
 
 " Because you have a diamond, and you 
 do not know it, papa Dupuy. You embark 
 what remains of your good head and heart 
 in ventures and schemes alone. The good 
 Philippine is not altogether wrong. Yet 
 you have bread, and fripe also, already. 
 You are better off than most of our emigres, 
 and you cannot even spare time to get a 
 glimpse of your diamond, though you are 
 aware that it is the pure and precious dia- 
 mond, which is rough and dark in the mine, 
 till it is brought to the light and cut, ready 
 to be set in the crown of the king." 
 
 " I have had a diamond all my days, my 
 old woman, cut and polished before I ever 
 looked upon it ; and it is not true that I 
 have not noticed it, and valued it, when it 
 alone had sent radiance into the dark places 
 
 p2
 
 212 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 thousands of times. But I am too old, too 
 bourgeois, and have yet too many rivals to 
 overcome in trade, which is my calling, to 
 want another diamond, or to cut it for 
 myself; and you women, born religieuses, 
 will not understand such things. I shall 
 take it on trust, if you please, and I shall 
 leave you to dispose of it, to bestow it to 
 shine (poor little diamond ! the sun to it, 
 with all my heart) in another house, and 
 show myself the son of my mother in this 
 liberality — and I cannot help that defect 
 altogether, since I happen to be one of 
 the rude, hard, worldly betes of men whom 
 poor Philippine rails at. Go ! let her rail, if 
 it does her good, what does it signify ?" 
 
 Grand'mere bade Yolande go and aid big 
 Priscille, as she wished to speak with her 
 mother; and she consulted Madame so soon 
 as Monsieur had retired to his study, or 
 rather his business-room.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 213 
 
 And Madame said she did not love the 
 English ; she did not trust them ; she would 
 rather see the mortal remains of Yolande in 
 English earth than that the immortal spirit 
 of the child should forget and forsake the 
 faith of the French soil, for which her an- 
 cestors had watered the land with their best 
 blood. As to Lutheranism, it was a tan- 
 tamarre of Protestantism ; Methodism might 
 be better, but she did not like the tree on 
 which the fruit grew. At the same time, 
 it was true that a girl could not be left alone 
 to face the dangers and the temptations of 
 the world. There were no French parents 
 who would not seek in good time the pro- 
 tection of another's house and home for a 
 young maiden. Monsieur would bring them 
 all to the Bastille of England, or to the 
 horse-pond, some day. Ah ! she begged 
 Grand'mere's pardon for speaking disre- 
 spectfully of her son. She had forgotten
 
 214 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 for the moment that her husband was GrancT- 
 mere's son, and petite mere should not go to 
 the Bastille. She was too venerable, too 
 near the saints. Petite mere should go with 
 Yolande. Monsieur would not allow it 
 otherwise, and she would not allow it ; for 
 it would be undutiful and unkind to the 
 dear old mother. No, she alone would ac- 
 company Monsieur, and perhaps the sooner 
 the better, if it brought him to a right mind. 
 tD faith and repentance. 
 
 " My Philippine, thou art honourable and 
 devout to the finger tips ; but thou art not a 
 trooper. No ! thou art weak as water, with 
 the throes of passion, like many another poor 
 woman, my child. If thou wouldst only 
 have faith in the good God, and fervent 
 charity towards men," adjured Grand'mere, 
 with commiseration. " But nevertheless 
 chagrin is in the humours of the blood, my 
 love, I believe it well ; and when we judge
 
 The Huguenot Family. 215 
 
 harshly, very often we should do better to 
 have great pity." 
 
 Madame would have infinitely preferred 
 to transplant Yolande into a French house- 
 hold, but at Sedge Pond the Dupuys were 
 isolated from their countrymen, save in the 
 case of those business men whom Madame 
 looked upon as denaturalised renegades, the 
 accomplices of Monsieur's Mammon-worship 
 and plotting ambition. Then there was just 
 enough of the bourgeoise in Madame to be 
 sensible of the disadvantage of having bread 
 without fripe, as was true of the mass of the 
 Huguenot emigres ', and the consequent temp- 
 tation when bread and fripe were offered to 
 them to lick the fripe on their own account, 
 and, so far as faithful regard and abiding 
 friendship were concerned, leave the bread 
 to take its own chance, and to be trampled 
 under foot in the crowd of other relations 
 and interests. Thus while Madame groaned
 
 216 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 in spirit, as she did over most proposals 
 which were made to her, she saw no reason 
 for treating what had the great weight of 
 Grand'inere's wish as rank apostasy and 
 villainy. 
 
 Thus Grand'mere, in her sweet cracked 
 voice, began to sing, over her cooking, dis- 
 tilling, lace-weaving, not Clement Marot's 
 psalms alone, though she sang them oftenest 
 and with most satisfaction, but old ballads 
 and folk-songs, which were like drops of the 
 nation's heart, that she had never despised 
 and never forgotten, and which now came 
 to her, in green, misty England, with touches 
 of the varied colours and wafts of the sweet 
 odours of the south. 
 
 Grand'mere also suddenly developed a 
 passion for coins, especially for gold pieces — 
 canary birds, as she called them. She was 
 evidently making a collection of them, and 
 hoarding as many sovereigns as she could
 
 The Huguenot Family. 217 
 
 come by. When Yolande sought the reason 
 of this, Grand'mere put her off with the 
 pleasantry that she was becoming avaricious 
 in her old age, and was scraping together a 
 " little fortune to leave Yolande an heiress." 
 But Grand'mere made a bad miser, for 
 Priscille came in and told her a sad story of a 
 poor spendthrift prodigal gentleman, a stran- 
 ger, who had come with his wife, a forlorn 
 fine lady, and hidden their heads from the 
 shame of witnessing an execution in their 
 own house, under the roof of the ale-house 
 of Sedge Pond. They were not able to go 
 any further, or try any new mode of life, 
 because they had not the money to pay for 
 their entertainment, and they were now 
 in such a strait that the gentleman had 
 threatened to hang or drown himself. Then 
 Grand'mere stole secretly out, with the help 
 of Madame Rougeole, solicited the honour 
 of being allowed to wait on the couple, and
 
 218 The Hwjuenot Fam Uy. 
 
 proposed, in a roundabout, ingenious way, 
 to offer them a little loan, as if it were an 
 agreeable scheme of putting out at interest 
 a portion of her thousands of spare francs 
 and crowns. On the strength of this loan 
 she was privileged to see the helpless couple 
 go away in the coach, to throw themselves 
 on the much-tried mercy of such older, 
 wiser, and better supplied friends as might 
 be left to them, but with small prospect to 
 Grand'mere of ever seeing her canary birds 
 again. 
 
 Grand'mere's indemnification was the half- 
 affronted recollection of how the theatrical, 
 fine gentleman, with his unpowdered hair 
 hanmiw like candle-wicks over his face, and 
 his velvet coat stained and soiled, had wished 
 to kneel to her, and she had quickly pre- 
 vented him : 
 
 "No, sir, kneel to your God." 
 
 And when he had stared, looked foolish,
 
 The Huguenot Family. 219 
 
 and shrugged his shoulders, she had been 
 
 CO I 
 
 compelled to cry, 
 
 " Do you not know him ? Have you 
 never kneeled to Him ? What marvel that 
 everything has gone wrong with you, even 
 till you have come to perish with hunger ?" 
 
 Afterwards the fellow had insisted on 
 kissing Grand'mere's hand, and vowed that 
 as she had done more for him than all his 
 friends among the quality, for her sake he 
 would never bet, or game, or race, or swear 
 more, strike him dead if he would. 
 
 And Grand'mere stopped her ears, put 
 her hand on his bold mouth, and cried 
 dolefully to the prodigal, who was not yet 
 five-and-twenty — 
 
 " If thou canst not keep thyself from sin 
 for God's sake and thine own, how thinkest 
 thou that thou canst have strength to do it 
 for the sake of an old Huguenot ? Nay, 
 leave off these big promises, and look to thy
 
 220 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 wife, whom thou hast taught to game and 
 bet as furiously as thyself. Behold the 
 cards and spadille hidden in thy cuff, as if 
 that were thy chief care and the work for 
 thy last moments ; and I heard her wager- 
 ing the lace of her cap against the braid of 
 your coat that I was the hostess come to 
 crave you again, as I mounted the stairs. 
 She is frightened to contradict you, I see it 
 in her eyes, but she shrinks from starvation 
 and infamy, and from lawless violence. Oh ! 
 do you not, my pauvrette ? Then go, my 
 mirlifiore of a debtor, and promise to me 
 not at all, but perform a little to save that 
 lost child whom thou hast helped to drag to 
 the brink of the precipice. Yet, not even 
 for her, no, not even for her, wilt thou 
 pause and think, and play the man before it 
 is too late, unless thou canst arise and go to 
 thy Father." 
 
 The sinner went at last, his head hanging
 
 The Huguenot Family. 221 
 
 a little. It was exceedingly doubtful, how- 
 ever, whether, unless in the exhaustless 
 hopefulness of Grand'mere, he would not be 
 sneering at her before he had turned the 
 corner. "But what of that?" Grand'mere 
 would have asked. " Behold the dark 
 silent night, when he may think better of it. 
 Behold the moments of trial, anguish, terror, 
 alas ! alas ! coming thick and fast on such 
 as he, when, while there is still mercy for 
 him, he may recall even so poor a lesson." 
 
 Grand'mere returned to the Shottery Cot- 
 tage, and looked a little ruefullv at her 
 empty purse, the canaries all fled from it. 
 Eventually she consoled herself with the 
 simple reflection that money was one thing, 
 and men and women another ; and that 
 failing the gold there was always the copper, 
 which was only a metal a little redder in 
 colour and heavier in weight. If Yolande 
 could not have a dozen louis in her pocket
 
 222 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 one day, she might have a dozen of dozen 
 of sous, which would be a great deal grander 
 
 in point of number, for the sake of her 
 dear old France and its discreet, economical 
 country customs. 
 
 Yolande, girl as she was, had her thoughts 
 
 7 O 7 <_ 
 
 and suspicions in the middle of her constant 
 questioning, pondering, and disputing ; but 
 they were single-hearted, submissive, and 
 child-like. And when the crisis arrived for 
 Grand'mere to make known her intention of 
 going alone on an expedition to the Mall, 
 to return the visit of Squire Gage, Yolande 
 cast down her eyes, shrank a little more 
 into herself, looked colder and graver in 
 tone, and more nervous and timid, a new 
 phase of her quietness and gravity ; but she 
 did not dream of so much as suggesting op- 
 position to Grand'm&re'a enterprise. There 
 would have been indelicacy and insub- 
 ordination, even according to Grand men
 
 The Huguenot Family. 223 
 
 standard, in such a step on Yolande's part. 
 Grand'mere had had so few opportunities 
 of visiting, and had so seldom availed her- 
 self of them for many years, that she de- 
 clared it made her old head light, when she 
 started on one of the Rector's horses, which 
 was borrowed for the occasion. Madame 
 Rolle had offered the use of her chariot, but 
 Grand'mere had that honourable pride 
 which would have nothing to do with 
 what was out of keeping with her real 
 position. She was an old bourgeoise Hugue- 
 not ; her pride, so far as it was permissible, 
 lay in that distinction. She did not care to 
 be rolling, or rather bumping heavily along 
 the bad roads, like the quality. She ac- 
 cepted the attendance of Black Jasper, how- 
 ever, because she wanted a man to walk by 
 her horse. She thought it would be a mu- 
 tual advantage, and a kind of treat to the 
 poor fellow, who wore a bit of crape for
 
 224 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 Captain Philip round his arm soldier- wise, 
 which he had begged one of the Rectory 
 still-maids to sew on for him ; and he never 
 passed the Rector without trying to cover it 
 clumsily with his hand, or his hat, or his 
 napkin, as if that would cover a father's 
 grief. He never glanced at it himself with- 
 out his rolling eyes getting dim. But if 
 Grand'mere was as elated as a child at her 
 new circumstances, she had a child's genero- 
 sity in seeking to share them with her neigh- 
 bours. She desired to do Priscille's business 
 and the business of every other house-wife 
 who would trust her, at the wheel-Wright's 
 and the miller's on the road. She sat 
 equipped for starting full ten minutes, to 
 allow Black Jasper to enjoy the spectacle 
 of a man and an ape performing before the 
 ale-house porch. 
 
 At last Grand'mere set out to ride her six 
 miles, and back. On she went by the
 
 The Huguenot Family. 225 
 
 Waaste, past an occasional windmill, which 
 struck her as being the likest feature to 
 France in the landscape ; on by another 
 rural village much in the style of Sedge 
 Pond. She passed farm-houses, confused 
 masses of out-buildings, only a little less 
 sluttish than the villages, forsaken by their 
 occupants for the harvest-work in the fields. 
 She got gleams of the great white stuccoed 
 arcade of the Rolles' castle, which carried 
 the rampant imagination of Grand'mere to 
 the Louvre at the least. And always jour- 
 neying with her there was the same slow, 
 sleepy river, like a canal, bearing a barge 
 or two, bound for Norwich. 
 
 Grand'mere and Black Jasper travelled in 
 the greatest harmony. They were not with- 
 out annoyances, however. The children of 
 the strange village, who had never seen a 
 black servant before, but who had, never- 
 theless, arrived at the conclusion that his 
 
 • VOL. I. Q
 
 226 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 name was Black-a-more, came out and 
 stared, pointed their fingers, screamed, and 
 mocked at Black Jasper, who was naturally 
 oppressed by these attentions ; and the little 
 gall that was in him being roused, he made 
 faces, and threatened the small fry in hur- 
 ried, hnpressive pantomime. 
 
 " Seest thou not, my son, that it is of no 
 use ? Thou attractest them only the more. 
 Heed them not. If they did not stare and 
 and shout at thee, they would stare and 
 shout at me — at my French tongue, at the 
 fashion of my grey hair, and the cut of my 
 mantua." 
 
 Black Jasper ruminated on the beautiful 
 old lady's calling him her son, and compar- 
 ing him to herself; and became so inflated 
 with conceit, that the next time he was 
 sailed by his too ardent admirers, he raised 
 his cocked hat, made a low bow, and then 
 spreading out his sable lingers on his white
 
 The Huguenot Family. 227 
 
 shirt, saluted their tips till the children 
 cried, " Boo ! boo ! lulliberoo !" more loudly 
 and frantically than ever, and Grand'mere, 
 it must be confessed, was slightly scan- 
 dalized at her train. 
 
 The Mall was a square building of red 
 brick with white facings, like a soldier's uni- 
 form of scarlet cloth and pipe-clay. It had 
 not only done good private service in its 
 day — had not only held in its oak and cedar 
 parlours whole generations of the Gages 
 from the reign of Anne, and had hidden 
 priests of all denominations in the hole be- 
 hind the chimney of the dining-hall, which 
 was a fragment of an older building — but 
 it had seen public service lately. It was an 
 old seat in the modest rank of English 
 country mansions, and it was a Methodist 
 establishment, combining college (on the 
 principle of Kingswood), orphanage, hospice 
 
 for belated travellers, hospital for the help- 
 
 Q2
 
 228 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 less sick, and house of refuge for the home- 
 less poor. All its buildings and pleasure- 
 grounds, which were not absolutely required 
 in the economy of its large household, were 
 transformed from their original aims, and 
 pressed into the use of a motley regiment. 
 The hall was a meeting-house and class-room, 
 where preachers and teachers lectured and 
 taught ; the stable was almost stripped of its 
 stalls, while the loft above was fitted up 
 into humble dormitories. The coach-house 
 was the hospital, and an old berline which 
 still stood in a corner served as the refractory 
 ward for an occasional violent patient. The 
 kennels were workshops, in which travelling 
 tailors, shoemakers, and basket-makers made 
 periodical sojourns, and found apprentices 
 ready to their hands ; while a company of 
 young girls was distributed, under capable, 
 vigilant matrons, over the kitchen, the 
 wash-house, the bake-house, the dairy, and
 
 \ 
 
 The Huguenot Family. 229 
 
 the housekeeper's room. In addition to the 
 Methodist preachers, in every degree of 
 training, whom Squire Gage housed, fed, 
 clad, sent out and followed with never- 
 failing interest into their circuits of evan- 
 gelisation, the Mall was well stocked 
 with poor relations, who chose to make it 
 their head-quarters on the right of charity's 
 beginning at home. The only stipulation 
 with them was that they should attend the 
 exercises, comply with the regulations of the 
 house, and conduct themselves with pro- 
 priety while they were under its roof. 
 Along with the regular pensioners Squire 
 Gage took in an irregular band. Any 
 number of chance wayfarers, who preferred 
 a dish of groats and a crust with a grace 
 said to it, clean straw, and the shelter of a 
 roof, to the highway, a grudged shed, and 
 the pence demanded for the humblest 
 supper and bed at the ale-house, were also
 
 230 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 taken in at the Mall and made welcome. 
 Thus Grand'mere did not find the country 
 house, basking sluggishly in the afternoon 
 sun, solitary, save for its two masters and 
 their domestics ; on the contrary, it over- 
 flowed with life in all ranks and at all stages. 
 From a waggon before the porch, two little 
 boys, in corduroys and knee-breeches, were 
 just alighting. They had rusty bands of 
 crape round their bonnets, and were very 
 thin-faced and watery-eyed — a consignment a 
 brother Methodist in the next lanye town 
 had sent to fill up two vacancies in Brother 
 Gage's orphanage. There was a figure wrap- 
 ped in a blanket, and taken straight to the 
 hospital, as like to be a patient in small-pox 
 as anything else. There was a halt man in 
 a frieze coat ; a blind woman in a duffle 
 cloak, with the hood drawn over her head ; 
 and a scarecrow of an old gentlewoman, in 
 a gipsy bonnet and a roquchiure, claiming re-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 231 
 
 mote kindred with Squire Gage, and cum- 
 bered with so many trunks and band-boxes 
 that she certainly meant to push her claim 
 to the extent of spending the remainder of 
 her days at the Mall, while she looked 
 sourly at the halt and the blind, as if 
 dreading that there might not be bread 
 enough and to spare for her and for them. 
 There were all imaginable noises, the sound 
 of planes, saws, resined strings, and voices 
 from the workshop. 
 
 Elderly women and half-grown girls, pre- 
 cise, and only curbed in their sauciness, 
 were moving to and fro in the porch, at the 
 windows of the house, and on the landing- 
 places of the outside stairs, engaged in scour- 
 ing, mending, preparing meals, attending to 
 the dumb animals, and waiting on those who 
 could not wait on themselves. A beggar 
 was examining his wallet ; a hawker sorting 
 his stock of ballads ; an old soldier was air-
 
 232 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 ing his patched and faded uniform, a scar on 
 his wrinkled forehead. But each was at his 
 ease, and exhibited an inclination to growl 
 at and grudge elbow-room to his neighbour 
 in the ivied court. Itinerant preachers, in 
 the elevation of their calling, were studying, 
 by the help of books and papers, apart from 
 the throng, or discussing together for the 
 most part doctrines, creeds, and experi- 
 ences, sometimes with a war of words rising, 
 ebbing, raging, falling. Students and dis- 
 putants paced up and down, and rested in 
 the walks, arbours, and summer-houses of 
 what had once been the gardens in which 
 the ladies of the Mall had taken delight, 
 while the men had rejoiced in their hunters 
 and harriers, their hunting breakfasts and 
 coursing dinners. The late Dame Gage, 
 though she had loved flowers with the best 
 flower-lovers among her predecessors, had 
 voluntarily and cheerfully given over her
 
 The Huguenot Family. 233 
 
 garden to pass into the commonest of kitchen 
 and of physic gardens, for the behoof of 
 the great family at the Mall. Only here 
 and there, a tiger-lily or a nectarine yet 
 struggled into stately gorgeous flower or 
 luscious fruit, like plants of another age and 
 region, among coarse beans and cabbages, 
 chamomiles and horehound, gnarled crabs 
 and plums. And Grand'mere hailed a huge 
 walnut-tree, which continued to shade one 
 corner ; and she hung over the straggling 
 tendrils and leaves of a wilding vine, for it 
 was such as she had known grow trim and 
 fair and fruitful in hundreds of tender green, 
 olive, and straw-coloured saplings in her 
 vineyard in Languedoc. 
 
 She looked round without misgiving, and 
 with sympathetic interest in the extraordin- 
 ary colony. When Squire Gage was apprised 
 of her arrival, he hastened to welcome her 
 with the warmest cordiality, and received
 
 234 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 her with the greatest honour. He, however, 
 had no other apartment to which to con- 
 duct her, save kitchen and parlour in one, 
 where elm-wood dresser, birch-wood settles, 
 cherry-wood cupboards, pewter flagons, box- 
 wood bowls, and dishes of coarsest earthen- 
 were, did duty for fine furniture, and which 
 was the only company room left at the Mall. 
 Grand'mere looked round her with more 
 than perfect acquiescence — with glad ap- 
 proval. She trod like a queen on a progress, 
 when Mr. Gage led her, after she had rested, 
 over his wonderful human laboratory. She 
 went with him into what he called the 
 academicia, into the porticoes, the hall, and 
 the garden, and heard him help aspiring 
 boys, sons of poor Nonconformist ministers 
 and schoolmasters, to construe Sallust and 
 solve Euclid, as they had begun to do in the 
 intervals of " lashing " out the com on the 
 shelling hill, and walking in the furrow of
 
 The Huguenot Family. 235 
 
 the plough at their homes. She saw him 
 pull the locks of others, and bid them not 
 smuggle away their " Seven Champions ' 
 and " Robinson Crusoes," for his good bro- 
 ther Adam Clarke had demonstrated beyond 
 contradiction that from nursery fairy tales 
 and school-boy legends he had learnt what 
 had served to help his faith in the invisible, 
 and to teach him to endure hardness as a 
 good soldier of the greatest and best of 
 Lords. He took Grand'mere from work- 
 shop to hospital, charming her by his un- 
 conscious power of wisdom and love in their 
 management ; and she delighted him by 
 disarming the hostility of the crowd of per- 
 formers whom his hand — practised in bless- 
 ing — ruled harmoniously, but who were 
 liable to prove unruly and contentious under 
 any other leader, and to resent keenly the 
 suspicion of an interloper. But Grand'mere 
 praised right and left in all good will, first
 
 236 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 frankly acknowledging the merits of sorrel 
 salve and elderberry wine, of goose pie and 
 blackberry pudding, and then she presented 
 a box of French unguent for wounds and 
 bruises, and a case of cassia ; finally she 
 begged a saucepan, six beaten eggs, six bits 
 of butter the size of a nut (telling them the 
 French cook's proverb was, u Spare neither 
 butter nor care "), a little shredded basil and 
 thyme, and a little grated ham, a pinch of 
 pepper and salt, and tossed in a trice be- 
 fore their eyes that " omelette aux fines 
 heroes" the very naming of which is sufficient 
 to improvise an appetite in the sickliest of 
 convalescents. 
 
 But there were other relics of the original 
 gentle estate and destination of the Mall, 
 beyond its stone and wood work. The prin- 
 cipal of these were the books of its master's 
 library, in the ancient dignity of vellum and 
 calfs-skin, still stored in book-cases at one
 
 The Huguenot Family. 237 
 
 end of the kitchen ; and the family pictures, 
 which yet looked strangely down, in the 
 pink of proud and affected attitudes and 
 attire, from a high white-washed open gal- 
 lery running round the room, on the bustle 
 below. 
 
 Squire Gage explained that he had once 
 entertained serious thoughts of burning. his 
 books, as the hearers of the Apostle Paul 
 did theirs ; or, at least, of selling them like 
 other luxuries, for what money they would 
 bring into the treasury of the establishment. 
 But then, again, he had considered that his 
 old friends and faithful companions con- 
 tained no magical arts, and he had spared 
 them, as he was thankful for afterwards. 
 The longer he lived, the more fully he was 
 assured that a man should be thoroughly 
 furnished to every good work, and that 
 there was no furnishing, after the inspiration 
 of the Spirit and the teaching of Holy Scrip-
 
 238 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 ture, which was to .be compared with the 
 clouded, corrupted wisdom of the ancients, 
 so that a man's eye was purged to see 
 through the dimness of their vision. And 
 if a man's eye remained without light, why 
 then both the wisdom and the folly of the 
 ancients and the moderns would be all one 
 to him in his darkness. His lad, indeed, did 
 not at present affect the classics, nor yet, 
 save in a modified degree, the English 
 authors themselves. But what of that ? — 
 one man's meat was another man's poison ; 
 there were other lads to whom he could 
 lay open his library, and to whom Caleb 
 would never grudge the beauty and the 
 wealth of his father's grand old books. 
 
 As to the pictures, there were brethren 
 who remonstrated witli Squire Gage for 
 keeping them in their bare canvas, in the 
 manner in which they had hung since his 
 dame freed them from their frames, which
 
 The Huguenot Family. 239 
 
 she had dispatched, along with what plate, 
 tapestry, ebony, ivory, silk and fine linen 
 there had been at the Mall, to be disposed 
 of in London, to help the funds for the sys- 
 tematic relief of one small fraction of the 
 poor and needy. These strict brethren were 
 apprehensive lest the poor painted faces, love- 
 locks, top-knots, sword-hilts and citherns 
 should serve to produce pride of birth and 
 race in their possessor. But though the 
 Squire protested gravely that he did not 
 think it was asked of him, or of any man, 
 to sit in judgment on the sins of his fore- 
 fathers, and " improve r them, he was of 
 opinion that there was as much humility as 
 pride to be got from the honest study of 
 those lingering shadows on the wall. And 
 the Squire, as he spoke, glanced at a trucu- 
 lent old Gage who had done great execution 
 in the Civil Wars, and a vain, light woman 
 who had wedded and abandoned him.
 
 240 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 " But tell me, .my Monsieur," asked 
 Grand'mere, thoughtfully, as she inspect* «1 
 his labours, " will this gracious house last ? 
 Is it that you have founded it in perpetuity, 
 or that the benevolent will keep it up by 
 a succession of donations and dedications, as 
 in the French houses of charity and mercy ? 
 Pardon me, Monsieur, that I am a Lot's wife 
 of doubt and distrust, and fear that the Mall 
 house may be abused like other houses in 
 other hands, and in other generations. How 
 will you guard and fence it when even the 
 brave young Monsieur is done with earning 
 out his father's intentions ? ' 
 
 Squire Gage smiled gently, and shook his 
 head. " It is one good of imperfection, ma- 
 dam, that it wants not fencing and guarding. 
 And that this poor scheme of mine is imper- 
 fect, I and my dame knew from the begin- 
 ning. But what would you have ? There 
 was a crying need for some reformation,
 
 The Huguenot Family. 241 
 
 some commencement of a good work. We 
 made our trial, and did our best — for our 
 day. My dear madam, a future day is not 
 mine, and I am not called upon to provide for 
 it, or meddle with it. No, I shall not be- 
 queath the rents which may yet come in to 
 me to Gage's Hospital. Why should I ? God 
 has raised a natural barrier. My lad is as 
 much a messenger from Him, and the mess- 
 enger who comes first and nearest to me, 
 as my poorest fellow-creature." 
 
 " And Monsieur Caleb, will he not wash 
 the disciples' feet also ? " 
 
 " Not in his father's and mother's way. 
 Why should he? There is no call upon 
 him to walk in their footsteps. He may g< > 
 his own way. Any other conclusion savour- 
 eth of an automaton and a martinet, since 
 my son is not of the stuff which hypocrites 
 are made of. No, he may go his own 
 way, so that he follow in Another's foot* 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 The Huguenot F< \m Uy. 
 
 steps ; and how far and wide they di- 
 verge, on how many soils, by how many 
 paths, blessed be God, do these divinely 
 human footsteps travel ! I go thus far, that 
 I have not, in my opinion, made Caleb a 
 poorer man in the long run, because I have 
 spent the savings of my minority, besides 
 some furnishings and personal belongings, 
 and sold a farm or two, which might have 
 fallen to him. He will have enough for a 
 gentleman farmer. He may take in land, 
 rear stock, buy and sell, build up the house 
 anew, extend its borders, for he is shrewd 
 and prudent, and skilful in business, as well 
 as generous and modest. He may break up 
 the Waaste, drain the Mall Deep, cut down 
 the old coppice, erect woolmills and corn- 
 mills just as the first Gage of the Mall drew 
 the first furrow between this and Sedge 
 Pond. It is in the kind, and in the sample, 
 and thence we have been distinguished as
 
 The Huguenot Family. 243 
 
 namesakes of the son of Jephunneh, who 
 had the hill -country of Hebron for his 
 portion, and the expulsion of the sons of 
 Anak for his reward. Nay, but forgive this 
 foolish boasting ; it is an old man's garrulity. 
 Caleb will not continue the establishment ; 
 but I have confidence in mv son that he will 
 let it go down slowly and gently, and that he 
 will not be minded to turn the last of its in- 
 mates adrift ; not though he were the most 
 troublesome and ingrained black sheep. He 
 will honour the Methodist body that far, 
 and none the less esteem it that he hath 
 never belonged to it ; and he will not be in 
 any haste to remove his father and mother's 
 landmarks." 
 
 "It is true, my friend," replied Grand'- 
 mere, " that there are Christians, and 
 Christians ; and I confess it does seem to 
 me that the early Christians selling their 
 land, laying the money at the Apostles' feet, 
 
 b 2
 
 244 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 and having all their goods in common, reads 
 like practices designed for the exigencies of 
 their country and age, not as a pattern for 
 all time." 
 
 " Without doubt, my dear madam ; and 
 young eyes see flaws in goodly robes which 
 their predecessors wore with exultation and 
 thankfulness. Why not ? What were the 
 clearness and sunshine of the present given 
 them for, if not to correct what is cumbrous 
 and obsolete, unfit and misshapen in the 
 cloak or gown, though it served its turn in 
 days gone by, when no fault was seen in it 
 and it sheltered its wearer from the mists 
 and storms of the winter of the past. I have 
 always thought it one of the inconsistencies 
 and eccentricities of your Michel de Mon- 
 taigne that he would go abroad in his fathers 
 old cloak because it was his lather's. Caleb 
 • loth not choose to vex me, but I know he 
 thinks my large family cannot last long
 
 The Huguenot Family. 245 
 
 (inasmuch as it is an arbitrary institution, 
 and not God's ordinance of blood and kin- 
 dred), when there is no supreme necessity 
 for it, without breeding and fostering jeal- 
 ousies, strife, and violence, as in the religious 
 houses of all sects, after a lapse of time. 
 The boy hath had before now to help me 
 to put down differ ences and divisions, even 
 between preachers and teachers, with a high 
 hand, and once we had to call in the civil 
 power against a poor rogue of a tinker who 
 had reminded me of a certain illustrious 
 dreamer, but who was unlike John Bunyan 
 in this respect, that he was so left to himself 
 as to take all he could get and give the 
 worst word on his entertainment, annoy and 
 insult his fellow-lodgers, and drive them 
 from receiving profit from the exercises. 
 At last he sunk to the low pitch of lusting 
 after the very homely trenchers and por- 
 ringers out of which he had eaten his meals,
 
 246 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 and of secreting them with the purpose of 
 removing them. My good dame, he struck 
 and kicked the man who detected him in 
 his iniquity so forcibly, that murder might 
 have been done had not Caleb, in his young 
 strength and natural bravery, gone between 
 and sundered the combatants. Yet, if you 
 will believe it, that poor sinner wept abun- 
 dantly when he made full confession to me 
 in Reedham Gaol, and declared, what I have 
 no reason to discredit, that he was never so 
 near grace as in his earlier sojourn at the 
 Mall. Therefore, why should not grace 
 surprise some other wretched wayfarer any 
 day before I draw my last breath at the 
 Mall — come upon him like a strong man, 
 take from him his goods and deprive him of 
 his armour wherein he trusted, and Leave 
 him not with the dismal Avail * almost/ 
 but the jubilant shout, ' altogether a Chris- 
 tian ?' 
 
 »' »
 
 The Huguenot Family. 247 
 
 " Monsieur," cried Grand'mere, impulsive- 
 ly, as she raised her grey eyes to his violet 
 eyes, "I am older than you, but I am a 
 weak, foolish woman; grant me a favour, — 
 give me your blessing." 
 
 "All the blessings of the heaven above" 
 and the earth beneath !" responded Squire 
 Gage, fervently ; " though they are called 
 down by an unworthy brother on a true 
 sister. Rather, I should beg a Huguenot's 
 prayers for me and mine, and for my work, 
 which is nearly ended. Shall we pray to- 
 gether, madam ?" 
 
 In this manner two Christian enthusiasts 
 pondered on Christian ethics, compared 
 notes on good works, and thought no 
 shame of reverently approaching their Father 
 in heaven. 
 
 The Squire was solicitous, with a country 
 gentleman's imperative hospitality, to enter- 
 tain Grand'mere as became both her and
 
 248 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 him. With a delicate tenderness of respect 
 he had even striven to recall old memories 
 and to send his usual habits to the wall for 
 the occasion, so that the meal served at one 
 end of the kitchen, with its fruit, white wine, 
 and the nosegay of all the autumn flowers 
 then blowing in Dame Lucy's disenfran- 
 chised parterres, should be as like as possi- 
 ble to the French feast which he had once 
 seen served up, in an English parsonage, by 
 the quick instincts of a soul as generous as 
 his own. 
 
 Grand'mere received every gracious atten- 
 tion with a gratitude and a gratification still 
 more gracious. 
 
 " Monsieur," she exclaimed, in her lively, 
 metaphorical way, looking round on the 
 tankards, the books, the pictures, and the 
 banquet, with eyes which would never grow 
 too dim to sparkle, "it is as if you had got 
 cray-fish from Montfaucon, wild boars from
 
 The Huguenot Family. 249 
 
 Ardennes, fierce bears from the Pyrenees. It 
 is as if you had received an intimation that 
 the three Magi were coming to visit you, 
 and had made your preparations accord- 
 ingly." 
 
 The young Squire was from home, which 
 was only a partial disappointment to Grand'- 
 mere, since it was one part of her intention 
 to make the most searching, interested in- 
 quiries, which her perfect politeness would 
 permit, respecting the disposition and in- 
 clination of Monsieur Caleb. 
 
 In truth, very little importunity was 
 needed in order to obtain the desired infor- 
 mation, for here " the old man eloquent ' 
 was full of very pardonable fatherly gar- 
 rulity. His son Caleb was his first and last 
 born — his only child, the son of Rachel, the 
 prop of his old age, the desire of his fading 
 eyes. He christened him without fear as 
 the gift of God, and beheld in their relation-
 
 250 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 ship, not only the opportunity for the lawful 
 indulgence of his natural affections, but the 
 type of all that is tender and true, loyal 
 and sacred, binding the creature to the 
 Creator, the manifold children to the uni- 
 versal Father. 
 
 It sounded as if the father and the son 
 were not only filial, but fraternal in their 
 regard, as if they were a pair of close 
 friends, such as two good men living alone 
 together in a circle of dependents might 
 well become. Yet this freedom and famil- 
 iarity disturbed Grandmere's calculations a 
 little. Squire Gage not only expatiated 
 contentedly on the assistance which his son 
 rendered him, and the confidence which he 
 reposed in him; but he recounted gleefully 
 the vigorous, stubborn mental encounters 
 the two had on the subjects wherein they 
 difFered ; the lessons they gave each other 
 in opposite sciences, and the news with
 
 The Hugueyiot Family. 251 
 
 which they twitted each other on their 
 failures. Grand'mere was actually tempted 
 to hold up her hands and cry halt. She 
 could hardly fathom such a relationship ; 
 she had been accustomed to playful as well 
 as tender friendship between mother and 
 son, but between father and son, even where 
 there was devoted affection, she had wit- 
 nessed no such liberty. It required Grand'- 
 mere's forbearance and her liking for the 
 family at the Mall to look over this danger- 
 ous license, and make her attribute it to 
 English air and English institutions alone. 
 
 Having subdued this single scruple, 
 Grand'mere came at last to the object of 
 her mission, not without finesse and circum- 
 locution ; because, though her character was 
 in essentials clear as crystal, it included in 
 its elements delicate French tact and inge- 
 nuity. The substance of the errand was quite 
 simple : Grand'mere had a grand-daughter,
 
 252 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 Squire Gage had a son, and the promis- 
 ing young man and young woman, both 
 moderately endowed with the goods of for- 
 tune, were contemporaries and neighbours : 
 was there no significance, no suitability in 
 these things? Grand'mere made a proposal 
 of a treaty of marriage between the Squire's 
 son and her grand-daughter, Yolande Du- 
 puy. She had no notion that she was doing 
 anything but conferring the highest honour 
 by the overture, while it was a matter of 
 course that it should come from her. She 
 was fully persuaded that the Squire and 
 she were the persons strictly entitled to 
 settle the preliminaries of any matrimonial 
 alliance entered into by their children, 
 and that no one, not even the principals, 
 could be more deeply interested or more 
 sensible of the importance of the step 
 suggested. Grand'mere, therefore, spoke 
 with quiet dignity and with a due eon-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 253 
 
 sciousness of her authority in the matter. 
 The Squire was somewhat taken aback as 
 Grand'mere; in fairness to her grand-child, 
 fluently, but without exaggeration, summed 
 up briefly the advantages of the match, 
 dwelling on Yolande's good qualities, her 
 virtue and wisdom, her truth to her parents, 
 and her sweetness to her Grand'mere. The 
 comparatively innocent seclusion in which 
 she had grown up, the fitting instruction 
 she had received, the personal attractions 
 (though these were but a bagatelle) that she 
 possessed, and the modest but respectable 
 dowry which her father was able and will- 
 ing to give her, all these were faithfully 
 touched on. Then Grand'mere went nimbly 
 over to the other side of the question, and 
 dwelt nobly, liberally, and at far greater 
 length, on the merits of the young Squire, 
 in his reputation, his family, his menage. 
 Yolande's father and mother would do their
 
 254 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 utmost to meet the young man's gifts with 
 their Yolancle's goodness. They wished to 
 marry their daughter while they could still 
 choose for her in marriage, and give her 
 hand where there was least risk of a fatal 
 error. And Squire Gage, who was a father, 
 would not blame them or scorn them be- 
 cause they were foreigners and French. 
 
 The Squire was not altogether so con- 
 founded as a modern, learned, and devout 
 squire — did such exist — might be nowa- 
 days. Marriages continued frequently to be 
 family alliances in houses far below the rank 
 of those of dukes and earls. Squire Gage's 
 father had found his wife selected, sought 
 out, and all but married to him by an 
 obliging and active-minded kinswoman, and 
 the Squire had never had any reason to re- 
 gard his father and mother as other than a 
 well matched, well satisfied couple. The 
 early Methodists were accustomed to view
 
 The Huguenot Family. 255 
 
 wedlock with a strong reference to the 
 interests of the society. In this light influ- 
 ential members, without hesitation or fear, 
 arranged and carried through marriages for 
 the good of the meeting-house or chapel 
 first, the individuals' claims and characters 
 being glanced at afterwards. Some of the 
 obscurer conferences might even occasion- 
 ally decide them by lot, like the Moravians. 
 Squire Gage remembered that it had been 
 an obstacle to his own union, and regarded 
 as a serious difficulty and danger, that it had 
 taken its rise in the motions of carnal 
 affection and the promptings of the natural 
 man, and not in a single eye to the evange- 
 lisation of the world, and a profound respect 
 for the extension of Christianity. 
 
 So Squire Gage was not inclined to silence 
 or scout Grand'mere's mission, even if his 
 goodness had suffered him to be hasty in 
 condemning and deriding what had been
 
 256 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 undertaken in good faith and sober earnest- 
 ness. He consented to take the proposal 
 into mature consideration without a thought 
 of doing any wrong to his friend and son. 
 He freely admitted that he would rejoice 
 to have a young gentlewoman at the Mall 
 again, particularly if she were of Grand'- 
 mere's race and rearing. He was not such 
 a miserable bigot, either to his nation or to 
 his Methodism, as to undervalue the whole 
 French people and the noble band of 
 Huguenot exiles. He confessed there was 
 some call for another mistress at the Mall, 
 
 though the mention of it brought the rheum 
 to the eyes which had seen its last mistress. 
 But Madam could comprehend and make 
 allowance for that. One who would deal 
 kindly with his infirmities, and would 
 manage the women, amongst whom he and 
 Caleb could not enter and hector to the 
 extent of lending a rough lick to an in-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 257 
 
 corrigible malcontent, would be a great 
 blessing to them. The greatest scolds 
 among the women, poor creatures, were 
 always mild negations to him, but there 
 was more than a suspicion that they were 
 apt to employ their leisure in idle bickerings 
 and petty feuds, which, though not serious, 
 were not seemly or conformable to their 
 faith. They would mind a mistress, espe- 
 cially if she were like his old dame, a dove 
 among barndoor fowls. Certainly, for that 
 and for other reasons Squire Gage would 
 gladly hail his son's early entrance into 
 marriage, which was honourable in all men ; 
 but his healthy instinct impelled him to add, 
 gently, in the end, "Nevertheless, my good 
 madam, doth it not strike you that our 
 theme savour eth alarmingly of a mariage 
 de convenance ?" 
 
 "Of what else, Monsieur? and of what 
 can you make a better market than of the 
 
 vol. i. s
 
 258 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 noblest sort of convenance — fitness, obedi- 
 ence to parents, dutifulness — not of fan< 
 and passion?" demanded Grandm&re, warm- 
 ly. "Ah! trust me, my Monsieur, when 
 the good choice has been made with prayer 
 and blessing by the careful parents, sacred, 
 chaste, sweet wedded love (all the purer 
 and higher that it is born of duty, and not 
 of desire) will follow without fail in those 
 sood and honest hearts on which, and not 
 on their memories alone, is written the 
 substance of their catechism, ' Quelle est la 
 jmncipale fin de la vie V and L Quel est le sou- 
 verain Men des homines? Fie! Monsieur, 
 would you rather have the boys and tin- 
 girls madly pursuing, and sotting their weak 
 seals blemished to their idle, wanderii 
 imaginations?" exclaimed Grand'm&re, in 
 such unfeigned horror, that under her em- 
 pressement Squire Gage felt all but convicted 
 of impropriety and indiscretion. " You arc
 
 The Huguenot Family. 251) 
 
 English — and the English, the best of them, 
 love their own wills in the affections," con- 
 tinued Grand'mere, more temperately; "but 
 when every great point is gained, is it that 
 you would cast fancy and passion into the 
 opposite panier, and suffer it to weigh down 
 the ass, Monsieur ? The marriages of Isaac 
 and Rebekah, of Boaz and Ruth — say what 
 were they but the noblest sort of manages 
 de convenance ? " 
 
 Squire Gage had been slipping his fingers 
 into his great family Bible to find the entry 
 of his son's birth and baptism in order to 
 show it to Grand'mere, in return for the 
 sight of the certificate of the Protestant 
 baptism of Yolande Dupuy, with which he 
 had been favoured. As he did so he was 
 tempted to have recourse to a practice in 
 favour with the old Methodists — even-twith 
 Mr. John himself — which was not engaged 
 in lightly, far less irreverently, but which 
 
 s2
 
 260 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 nevertheless had a strange resemblance to 
 the heathen art of divination, christened by 
 a Christian name. 
 
 "What think you of the Sortes Biblicce, 
 madam? Shall we try a verse of Holy 
 Scripture, to ascertain what we are putting 
 our hands to ?" 
 
 Grand'mere acquiesced readily. She was 
 not farther before her age than good Squire 
 Gage, and she had her superstitions as well 
 as her French prejudices. She clasped her 
 hands and leant forward breathlessly, while 
 the Squire put his hand darkly into the 
 closed Book on an unseen verse, and open- 
 ing it read aloud, 
 
 " ' My son, despise not the chastening 
 
 of the Lord, neither be weary of his correc- 
 
 « 
 
 tion. 1 
 
 "iVell, that is plain sailing," declared 
 Squire Gage, submissively, and even cheer- 
 fully, seeing Grand'mere's expressive ia>
 
 The Huguenot Family. 261 
 
 fall at the indication. "Whatever may 
 come of our communing — and take note this 
 admonition doth not impugn its good ending 
 — patience is a virtue like to be in request 
 for all concerned. I confess I have always 
 been over-fain to seek relief from present 
 evils. If you please, we will take the 
 matter quietty, dear dame, and permit the 
 young people's hearts to speak, though it 
 were but one word. I do not fear that they 
 will speak forwardly.
 
 262 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Secret of the Ride to the Mall — A Woman 
 Despised in her Youth. 
 
 RAKD'MERE returned in good heart 
 
 to the Shottery Cottage. Her ride 
 to the Mall had only been the commence- 
 ment of the preliminaries. She had never 
 dreamt of settling the affair in a single inter- 
 view; that would not have been according to 
 her notions of discretion. She was pleased 
 with all she had seen at the Mall ; with the 
 devotion and charity on a large scale her 
 heart was full. But though Grand'mere talk- 
 ed to Yolande by the hour on the veritable 
 hospice she had visited, and on the beauty
 
 The Huguenot Family. 263 
 
 of character she saw in its founders, not a 
 word did she say which could make the 
 girl cast down her shy eyes in perplexity 
 and confusion. Grand'mere could, without 
 compunction, institute a treaty of marriage 
 for her grand-daughter, but she would have 
 thought herself the most indelicate of wo- 
 men had she breathed a syllable to the 
 girl, who had her suspicions ; and this not- 
 withstanding that they were incessantly to- 
 gether, and full of fond confidences. 
 
 Unfortunately she was not so reticent 
 elsewhere. Without a thought of any un- 
 womanliness in her act, Grand'mere con- 
 sidered it but neighbourly to whisper it to 
 Madam Rolle of the Rectory. With all her 
 hopes and cares for her daughters, Madam 
 Rolle had never imagined anything so bare- 
 faced as this flagrant instance of French 
 fashions and French morals, and was almost 
 staggered in her esteem for the old Grand-
 
 264 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 mere who had tried to break the storm of 
 her own calamity to her. As Madam Rolle 
 kept nothing from the Rector, she immedi- 
 ately imparted to him this startling bit of 
 news ; and in return he asked her to what 
 young men he should propose Dolly and 
 Milly ? They must not, however, be ranters 
 and Jacobins, who consorted with blasphem- 
 ing, foul-mouthed, filthy shoemakers and 
 weavers, compared with whom honest chim- 
 ney-sweeps were finished gentlemen ; for 
 he had made up his mind never to ask a 
 favour from these, not even to rid him of 
 his daughters. 
 
 Madam Rolle, like many another madam, 
 was at a loss what to make of her husband's 
 irony, and took refuge in the sympathy and 
 indignation of her daughters. She set them 
 up against their young French friend, who 
 was taking such impudent moans to get the 
 better of them, and settle herself, before
 
 The Huguenot Family. 265 
 
 either of tlieni was suited with a husband 
 and an establishment. 
 
 Yolande, poor girl, could not understand 
 why all of a sudden the Rectory girls began, 
 in French parlance, " to lift their noses at 
 her," to speak at her, to twit her with what 
 she could not help, and to which she was 
 not as yet formally privy. In the end there 
 was great mischief done ; so bad, that it was 
 all but irremediable. 
 
 Young Caleb Gage had little or no inter- 
 course with the Rolles. The greatest hard- 
 ship and danger of his position was, that it 
 wholly isolated him from those of his 
 fellows and equals who were not of his 
 father's way of thinking. It mattered little 
 that Caleb the younger differed in his con- 
 clusions from Caleb the elder. Unless the 
 young Squire had been prepared to place 
 himself in utter antagonism to the old 
 father whom he venerated so deeply and
 
 266 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 loved so dearly, his own moderation and 
 
 his reaction in favour of general Church 
 standards would have profited him not h in 
 
 Men and women of the present day know 
 little of Methodism, if they do not under- 
 stand that it was the burthen of a world 
 lying in the grossest wickedness, riot, and 
 wantonness, which drove into vehement 
 protest so many good and honest hearts — 
 drove them into the extravagances of 
 enthusiasm and the excesses of zeal, if, 
 indeed, they were extravagances and ex- 
 cesses. For, to judge correctly of such so- 
 called extravagances and exce — . it is 
 necessarv to contrast a house like the Mall 
 — its voluntary relinquishment of the state 
 and attributes of gentle station — with 
 houses where notorious wickedness was 
 daily committed, where the same card-party 
 sat, ate, slept, and woke again, while they 
 gambled away their fathers' lands, their
 
 The Huguenot Fam ihj. 267 
 
 children's bread, and even their wretched 
 wives, for twenty or thirty hours at a 
 stretch. In those days women died prema- 
 turely, in agonising pangs, from the poison 
 of white paint ; while men were found 
 guilty of forgery and highway robbery, and 
 spirits went into the outer darkness for a 
 set of French tapestry, or Indian paper- 
 hangings, a china baby, or a piece of velvet 
 of a rarely pretty device. If we faithfully 
 compare the free reception and wholesale 
 housing of the indigent and outcast at the 
 Mall with the bitter penury and terrible 
 struggles of men and women ruined by the 
 infamous bubble schemes of the era, or by 
 wildly striving to raise themselves out of 
 their low estate of barbarous ignorance and 
 base depravity, then we will, perhaps, form 
 a fair estimate of the influence of Method- 
 ism, not only on the corrupt refinement of 
 men of the world, but on the densely
 
 268 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 stupid, fatuous, sensual animalism of the 
 poor colliers and pottery -men, down whose 
 grimy faces the tears of penitence, purer 
 than dew-drops and brighter than diamonds, 
 " washed the white channels " of a new and 
 better nature at the pleadings, and strivings, 
 and wrestlings in prayer of Whitfield and 
 his brethren. Do not shrink from thinking 
 of that dissolute world, I beseech you, if 
 you would be simply just to the Methodists, 
 and neither exaggerate their Christianity 
 and their heroism, nor extenuate their 
 mysticism and their lapses from the ortho- 
 doxy of this or that great creed. After all, 
 one may be permitted to doubt whether the 
 decided position which the early Methodist 
 leaders took up, and the passionate nature 
 of their testimony, were exaggerated and 
 excessive, in view of the crying evils and 
 the barren latitudinarianism with which thev 
 
 ■ 
 
 waged war.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 269 
 
 These sentences are written in the old 
 sense of apology for what needs no apology 
 in the modern meaning of the word, and in 
 feeble illustration of the causes of the 
 peculiarities of Methodism. Little do 
 modern men and women, for the most part, 
 know of the brand which the early Metho- 
 dists bore, when their strenuous efforts at 
 reform were looked upon as the most un- 
 called-for and insupportable acts of aggres- 
 sion ; when they were shunned as men 
 stricken with the pest would have been ; 
 when they were accused of the most incre- 
 dible fanaticism and socialism, and bemoan- 
 ed by their friends and neighbours as being 
 more left to themselves than drunkards, 
 gamesters, or common thieves. Save the 
 early Christians, no religious sect — not even 
 the Reformers, whether Lollard or Luthe- 
 ran — excited such a storm of hostility, or 
 were so universally despised, detested, and
 
 270 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 revile*! as were the followers of Wesley. 
 
 The young Squire of the Mall w, 
 lected and forsworn by his brother squires 
 
 and the families of the better cl ■ in 
 the neighbourhood, that had it not been for 
 his healthy, independent nature, and his 
 great friendship for his father, he might 
 have been driven into the low company to 
 which Methodism w T as then generally be- 
 lieved to incline. 
 
 Old Squire Gage had been fortified against 
 the deleterious and destructive consequences 
 of such an atmosphere by such airs from 
 heaven as visit few men's sou' It is not 
 serted here, however, that it had not injured 
 him, developed oddities in him, sapped ever 
 so little his simplicity and energy, and made 
 him, notwithstanding all his benevolent pro- 
 jects, more of an abstract thinker and 
 dreamer than a practical man. 
 
 But young Caleb Gage could hardly ex 
 
 V-
 
 The Huguenot Fan i ihj. 271 
 
 pect the same immunity ; and it was well 
 for him that he was not equally tried. In 
 the public places which his principles did 
 not forbid him to frequent, and in one or 
 two neighbouring; houses which, for ancient 
 alliances' sake, still offered an open door to 
 a Gage of the Mall, Caleb had some inter- 
 course with his class, and was not so en- 
 tirely proscribed, denounced, and doomed 
 to live down his differences of creed and 
 life as his father had been. 
 
 Thus it chanced that, happening to at- 
 tend the yearly fair at Reedham, Caleb Gage 
 supped and stayed for the night at the house 
 of a tolerant Reedham physician, who had 
 been his fathers worthy doctor for the last 
 half century. Doctor Humphrey was no 
 Methodist himself, though he had accorded 
 his evidence : 
 
 " I like to attend your patients at the 
 Mall, Squire 1 ; for the most part they're
 
 272 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 patient as well as patients ; and Fd liever 
 wait on their cleath-beds than those of most 
 others, for, however sorrily they live, they 
 make up for it by dying well, they do — yes, 
 your Methodists die well." 
 
 At Dr. Humphrey's, on this occasion, 
 Caleb met, among other young people, Mr. 
 Philip Rolle's daughters ; and in the inter- 
 vals between the games and the songs he- 
 had to submit to be stared at and tittered 
 over, and viewed as a curiosity almost as 
 great as the wild beasts they had visited at the 
 shows in the afternoon. Mr. Caleb Gasre had 
 himself visited the wild beasts, and he had also 
 gone and listened for a time to the Metho- 
 dist preacher, whose stage was competing 
 with the dancing booths, and had joined 
 heartily in the hymn-singing ; and when 
 there had been a threatening demonstration 
 in the crowd in that quarter, lie had sprung 
 up on the stage, and prepared to use his
 
 The Huguenot Family. 273 
 
 personal influence to ward off violence, and 
 take his chance with the preacher and his 
 friends. 
 
 Caleb was not without something of what 
 Grand'mere would have called la beaute du 
 diable — the morbid attraction of forbidden 
 fruit to his detractors and assailants ; and he 
 had himself a half- amused perception of the 
 fact, while he had no great inclination to 
 return the compliment. The Methodist 
 home was a different school of manners, to 
 say the least of it ; and these vapouring, 
 swaggering young men, and swimming, 
 bridling young women, appeared ruder- 
 tempered and emptier-headed to Caleb than 
 they would have appeared to his father, be- 
 cause Caleb as yet judged largely by the 
 surface ; while the old Squire had a poet's 
 and a prophet's plumb-line to fathom many 
 feet deeper into human nature. 
 
 There was one gibe constantly recurring 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 The Huguenot Family, 
 
 on the least provocation in sentiment, or 
 forfeit, or game of the Traveller, and this 
 was Caleb's supposed attachment to French 
 fashions. The gibe was followed by taunt- 
 ing assertions that somebody's troth might 
 have been sold in his cradle, and that he 
 might have exchanged the pap-boat for the 
 wedding-ring, so tame-spirited was he. 
 
 " My head is somewhat thick," admitted 
 Caleb Gage to Dolly Rolle, at a crisis of 
 the by-play. " I must confess that you dis- 
 tance me in your merriment. I cannot 
 think what you are all driving at When 
 did I discover a palate for foreign kick- 
 shaws ? (It is as clear as the sun that it is 
 me you mean, so none need go to deny it.) 
 As far as I can tell, my tastes are all Eng- 
 lish ; for that matter, I have no chance of 
 gratifying them otherwise, since I have not 
 so much as the entrance to any Btrang 
 circle, unless it be that oi the French
 
 The Huguenot Family. 275 
 
 Huguenot family at the Shottery Cottage 
 in Sedge Pond, which my father esteems so 
 highly." 
 
 Caleb did not observe, or else he paid no 
 heed to Dolly's smiles, nods, and winks at 
 his unlucky allusion. 
 
 " As to marriage," Caleb went on 
 stoutly, " I presume I should have some ink- 
 ling, if I were ever so little started on the 
 road to the church on that solemn business; 
 whereas, mistress, I have as little thought of 
 marrying till I cut my wisdom-teeth as the 
 black fellow behind your chair has of taking 
 a white wife." 
 
 " If you speak so fast," answered Dolly, 
 pertly, " I shall either think that it is part 
 of your Methodist religion to swear down 
 one's throat white is black ; or else that you 
 are the most deceived, misused young man 
 who has ever been chosen a bridegroom 
 without his consent asked." 
 
 t 2
 
 276 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 u Think nothing of the kind, madam," re- 
 plied Caleb, annoyed and indignant at her 
 folly; "but tell me right out, if your 
 high-church religion have the courage and 
 the honesty to do so, — which, to be sure, I 
 doubt not," he corrected himself, already 
 ashamed of his recrimination. " What 
 do people say of me ? They must needs 
 have little to busy themselves about when 
 they tell cock-and-bull stories on so trum- 
 pery a subject ?" 
 
 " They do say extraordinary things of you, 
 good young sir," asserted Dolly, with a toss 
 of her head ; " they say, of a verity, that 
 you are right-down affianced to your white- 
 faced, moon-struck neighbour, Ma'mselle 
 Yolande Dupuy, who, if she be not a Pa- 
 pist, is certainly a mystic, so unlike is she t< > 
 the rest of her sex, — even to her wise 
 Grand'mere, to whose apron-string she is 
 pinned. I'd rather have had Grand'm&re,
 
 The Huguenot Family. 211 
 
 sir ; but you'll be pinned to her likewise all 
 the same, if she and your cracked father 
 have courted for you, and engaged you 
 without so much as saying, 'By your' leave.' 
 But I suppose they hold you so good a psalm- 
 singing boy that you have no mind or will 
 of your own in the matter ? But, surely, in 
 common justice they will let you know be- 
 fore the banns be published, that you may 
 not look sheep-faced or grow white about 
 the gills before the whole parish. To have 
 gotten the sack were nought to it." 
 
 Dolly had been crammed and prompted 
 by sharper and more malicious rustic wits 
 than her own, or she never could have ac- 
 complished all these smart hits ; but the 
 sense of this only galled and fired Caleb 
 Gage's manliness and spirit the more. 
 
 " It is all an untruth, an absolute untruth, 
 Mistress Rolle," he declared, quickly and 
 positively, "so manifest and ridiculous a
 
 278 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 fabrication, that it puzzles me reasonable 
 people should combine — not to credit it 
 — that they cannot do — but to circulate 
 it. 
 
 But even while he spoke there flashed 
 across his memory the coincidences, not 
 only that his father had that very morning 
 sounded him as to his opinion of every 
 member of the family at the Shottery Cot- 
 tage, and had pressed him when his answers 
 were careless and vague, but that the Squire 
 had repeatedly of late taken occasion to 
 recommend him to unite himself with an- 
 other, and had dwelt wistfully on his own 
 happiness in the wife whom he had lost, and 
 endeavoured to ascertain how Caleb stood 
 affected to such a change of condition. The 
 young man had naturally thought the dis- 
 cussion uncalled for and premature, and had 
 parried it, or been restive under it. as his 
 temper led him, But now that these recol-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 279 
 
 lections flashed across his mind inopportune- 
 ly, Caleb's brown face flushed, and he con- 
 tracted his square brow and bit his lips. 
 
 "You are not angry with me, Mr. Caleb!" 
 cried Dolly, shrugging her shoulders, and 
 adding slily, " Men are not angry at mere 
 idle reports, and this one is no fault of 
 mine ; I did not raise it. I had it from my 
 mother, and she had it from head-quarters 
 — from old Madam Dupuy, upon my life. 
 Now, be as angry with me as you like ; no- 
 body can say that I can help it." 
 
 The result of the spiteful treachery com- 
 mitted at Dr. Humphrey's was that Caleb 
 Gage was tempted for twenty-four hours to 
 think that his father and the Methodists 
 were right in abjuring worldly society, and 
 that he, for one, would never enter it 
 again. More than ;that, on the next occa- 
 sion that Caleb passed through Sedge 
 Pond, and conveyed a letter from his father
 
 280 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 to Grand'mere, he refused obstinately to 
 alight and partake of a second breakfast, or 
 even to sit for a moment and exchange 
 greetings at the garden gate. And when, 
 in course of time, Caleb encountered 
 Grand'mere and Yolande at some little 
 distance near the door of the parish church, 
 he did all he could to avoid the encounter, 
 turned his head, looked another way, and 
 behaved in all respects like a person deeply 
 affronted. 
 
 " Somebody has growed high and mighty 
 all of a suddent," remarked Priscille, deci- 
 sively; " I lay the young Squire of the Mall 
 have got a flea in his ear. Sirrah ! quotha, 
 if that be your Methody humility in taking 
 the first word of scolding, I would not give 
 my head for the article ; it seems to me it 
 do come out of the same pot as ourn and 
 parson's at the Rectory, after all." 
 
 " Adieu panzers, vintages are done with,"
 
 The Huguenot Family. 281 
 
 murmured Grand'mere, sorrowfully. She 
 was not so much offended as hurt at the 
 smart received in the house of a friend, at 
 trying in a wearisome struggle to dissever 
 the wrong from the wrong-doer, to count 
 old Squire Gage blameless, and to make 
 allowance for the wilfulness and perversity 
 of the young man. Grand'mere felt that 
 she had made a grievous blunder ; not in 
 the step she had taken — that was quite in 
 accordance with her best light and the cus- 
 toms of her fathers — but in the direction 
 into which the step had carried her. She 
 had been rash, inconsiderate of English 
 habits and tones of thought. At the same 
 time she trusted with all her good heart 
 that this brave garqon, who had slighted 
 her child, been offended by their gracious 
 preference, and returned it with what in 
 French eyes was little less than brutal rude- 
 ness and marked insult, might not, after all,
 
 282 The Huguenot Family, 
 
 prove reprobate. But she feared much 
 that her early deprecation of the free foot- 
 ing on which he stood with his father wj 
 correct, and that the young man was in the 
 first stage towards the blasted ruin of law- 
 lessness and infidelity. 
 
 Yolande endured for a longer season the 
 changing moods of the Rolle girls, who 
 soon began to condole with her on the 
 failure of her match, and this, too, in 
 accents widely removed from the spirit of 
 their unusual contentment with their own 
 present lot and confident anticipations of 
 good fortune in the future. Then Yolande 
 went to Grand'mere in her room, stood 
 before her, and looking up in her lace, 
 said, 
 
 " Grand'mere, I am yours to do with 
 what you will. Nothing can alter that. 
 You will always know it is so. It is our 
 French interpretation of a child's obedience
 
 The Huguenot Family. 283 
 
 and devotion, and anything else to us is 
 mockery. But tell me, Grand'mere, and 
 do not call me insolent for asking it (be- 
 cause, see you, I have been brought up in 
 this harsh England, and you yourself have 
 bidden me consort with loud-spoken Eng- 
 lish girls), you have offered me to this 
 young man, and he has rejected me — is it 
 not so ?" 
 
 Yolande spoke with scorn, but it sound- 
 ed as if it was scorn of herself, and of no 
 other. 
 
 " You put it in hard words, Yolande, 
 which is to pour the drug into an ugly 
 glass," remonstrated Grand'mere, mildly. 
 " It suffices that there was a project of 
 marriage thought of for you by your friends, 
 which on thinking over a second time they 
 have abandoned by mutual consent — yes, 
 I will say that now. Does that harm 
 you?
 
 284 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 " I do not know, I cannot tell," hesitated 
 Yolande. " You had the right, — you would 
 serve me with your own dear grey hairs. 
 But oh ! Grand'mere," burst out Yolande, 
 hiding her face in a paroxysm of distress, 
 " why would you marry me if you risked 
 shaming me ? Why would you marry me 
 at allj thrusting me on some man who 
 does not want me, to whom I should be 
 a burden and a bugbear? Oh, Grand'- 
 mere ! it feels like shame, hot shame, and 
 cruel wrong." 
 
 " But, surely, this is morbid," Grand'mere 
 rebuked her child, in a little displeasure and 
 a great deal more anguish and dismay. 
 " This is English spleen and mad pride, of 
 which I used to accuse you in jest — foolish 
 jest. Your mother was given in marriage ; 
 your grandmother before her. Think you not 
 that their fathers and mothers looked about 
 them and made false starts, coute que coute y
 
 The Huguenot Family. 285 
 
 before they fell on the right parti ? Are you 
 so much better than they ?" 
 
 " I am no better, Grand'mere, I am not 
 half so good. But why must you have me 
 married ?" 
 
 " You may be left alone any day, you 
 must be one day ; then what would become 
 of you, my child ? You would have bread 
 enough to eat, that is true, but would the 
 world leave you to eat it in peace ? Would 
 it not abuse and betray you ? There are no 
 retreats for the Huguenots even in France, 
 there never was any but aigue morte and the 
 prisons. Women may live single in Eng- 
 land without injury or scandal ; but I have 
 not seen it, — it is not the way in our coun- 
 try. It is only that I have been a stupid old 
 woman in your interests, fijille, and I am 
 very sorry for it." 
 
 " Do not say that, Grand'mere. It is a 
 trifle, a tuft of thistle-down, I mock at it.
 
 286 The Huguenot Family* 
 
 There, I toss it from me and catch it again 
 for my own amusement, don't you Bee ? A 
 man is free to have his choice, and his 
 refusal breaks neither my neck nor my 
 heart, though it throws a stone at me. 
 Rest tranquil, Grand'mere. Let us return 
 to our sheep, our lace, to what you were 
 telling me of your pigeons, your herbs at 
 home in Lamruedoc." 
 
 " It is well," said Grand'mere to herself; 
 " it is but the girl's spirit which is wounded. 
 her heart is mute like a little fish, sleeps aa 
 a sabot, — and so it should, till it wake up 
 by her husband's side. Who would rouse 
 and force it into life sooner ?" 
 
 Ah ! short-sighted Grand'mere, if Yo- 
 lande's had been a mean, jealous, grasping 
 temper, you might have been secure ; Caleb 
 Gage's repudiation ami aversion would have 
 done its work But with the small value 
 Yolande set upon herself, and the large
 
 The Huguenot Family. 287 
 
 value you taught her to put on Caleb Gage, 
 teaching all the more effectual that it had no 
 direct personal reference ; the impressions 
 which you had laboured to give to her of the 
 young Squire's manliness, liberality, truth, 
 and tenderness — impressions made on a sur- 
 face altogether blank, and capable of lightly 
 and rapidly receiving them, and weaving 
 them into a young girl's pure, graceful 
 dreams ; — it seemed no more than natural 
 to Yolande that Caleb Gage should have 
 nothing to say to her, there was no flaw in 
 his nobility on that account, since he had 
 not made a single advance from which he 
 had drawn back. It was just, it was almost 
 right that he should not find her worthy, he 
 would not be less a hero in the girl's mag- 
 nanimous eyes because of that. And she 
 felt, with a throb of generous thankfulness, 
 that she was not so unworthy as that caine 
 to, though he might have pained and hu-
 
 288 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 miliated her, and mingled a single strain of 
 loving despair in the original gravity and 
 thoughtfulness of her youth. 
 
 Days passed over the Cottage, and GrancT- 
 mere watched Yolande covertly and inces- 
 santly, and saw, under the fair front which 
 the young girl was sedulous to preserve, 
 that she was still abstracted, and only fitfully 
 interested in what was passing around her. 
 She was liable to flashes of feverish restless- 
 ness and flushes of bitter mortification, and 
 she sighed long and sorely when she thought 
 nobody heard her drawing those deep, sad 
 breaths, which, it is not altogether a figure 
 to say, drain the life blood from the heart. 
 Grand mere believed it was high time to 
 interfere and speak to Yolande, to seek to 
 probe the wound which she had helped to 
 inflict, with purer fingers. 
 
 " Yolandette," she addressed the girl. 
 lying wide awake in the hush of the night,
 
 The Huguenot Family. 289 
 
 with no light upon her but that of the pale 
 moon and the dim lamp, "hide nothing from 
 me ; it is my due, for I have nursed you in 
 my bosom, and if I have hurt you I have a 
 double right to know all." 
 
 "To what good, Grand'mere?" pleaded 
 Yolande; "you will but widen the breach 
 between me and my old self, and increase 
 the scandal." 
 
 " I will not ; I, an old mother, will show 
 you what is worth all the sorrow, and will 
 bring you consolation." 
 
 "How can you, Grand'mere?" objected 
 Yolande, incredulously and desperately. 
 "There is consolation for great, splendid 
 griefs, but not for a girl's weak, vain delu- 
 sions, though they cause her to fret and 
 pine for them. Consolation does not demean 
 itself to such poor, common, childish trials 
 as these. Let me be, Grand'mere ; let me 
 rather crush them down, beat them like a 
 
 vol. i. u
 
 290 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 stone under my feet. Trust me. I am wie 
 than my elder in this." 
 
 "No, no, that is a villainous mode — a 
 heathen mode. Consolation is heavenly ; if 
 it were not so, I grant you it would not 
 stoop so low ; and yet, without that r< >yal 
 condescension to the least and the silliest 
 soul, it would not be big enough even for 
 earth. Listen to me, Yolande: dost thou 
 feel womanly betimes, and as the heavy 
 price of thy womanliness, dost thou recognise 
 thyself in the morning of thy day as { a 
 woman forsaken,' despised in thy youth ? 
 So thou art called, in the words of the 
 Bible, which were not spoken to a low-bom, 
 tormented, embittered worn an truly, hut to 
 the true Israel, the spiritual Church. Not- 
 withstanding, there arc the words and the 
 liimres, and what will you — that it was the 
 sympathy of the stern old prophet which 
 breathed through their marvellous tender-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 291 
 
 ness, or that it was Another who put them 
 into Isaiah's wild imagination and on the 
 burning lips which the live coal had touched 
 — Another, the Friend of publicans and 
 sinners, and of weak women as well as 
 strong men." 
 
 u Are there such words, Grand'mere ?" 
 whispered Yolande, stirred and softened with 
 awe and emotion. " I have read the Bible 
 every morning and every evening, like other 
 Huguenot girls, but I never discovered them 
 or took them to myself." 
 
 "Nay, nor do we ever, ma mie, till we 
 want them, or the Spirit shine upon them, 
 because the well of Scripture is deep ; still, 
 truth is at the bottom of the well, Yolande, 
 waiting for us when we need it, if we will 
 have it. Listen better, Yolande." The lamp 
 was trimmed; Grand'mere took out her 
 Rochelle Bible from beneath the pillow, 
 fixed her glasses, and with her shrunk ivory 
 
 u2
 
 292 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 finger turned over the yellow pages and 
 pointed to the spot, producing more con- 
 vincing effect, and one more in keeping with 
 moral and spiritual powers than when she 
 and Squire Gage had recourse to the Sori> .< 
 Biblicce. 
 
 " Fear not ; for thou shalt not be ashamed: 
 neither be thou confounded ; for thou shalt 
 not be put to shame : for thou shalt forget 
 the shame of thy youth, and shalt not re- 
 member the reproach of thy widowhood 
 any more. 
 
 "For thy Maker is thine husband; The 
 Lord of Hosts is his name; and thy Re- 
 deemer the Holy One of Israel; The God 
 of the whole earth shall he be called. 
 
 "For the Lord hath called thee as a 
 woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a 
 wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith 
 thy God." 
 
 " Grandmeiv." said Yolande, quivering
 
 The Huguenot Family. 293 
 
 with eagerness, " the remembrance is, oh ! 
 so sweet from the great Bridegroom. I shall 
 hold up my head again ; I shall look him in 
 the face again, Grand'mere. I shall not 
 mind how I am laughed at and lightly 
 esteemed ; I shall think that I am good for 
 something since my foolish yearning heart is 
 read by Him who number eth the stars and 
 calleth the roll of prophets and martyrs, and 
 ordereth the march of empires and worlds."'
 
 294 The Hwjuenot Fam'thf. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Rolles of the Castle. 
 
 EEDHAM was one of those old- 
 fashioned towns in which the gaol 
 was the central ornament. The shops were 
 low-browed, and not much better than 
 hucksters' stalls ; but there was the beaut v 
 of irregularity about the better class of 
 houses, advancing and retreating as they 
 did on the causeway, and showing genuine 
 antique oriel windows and balconies, with 
 occasional vines festooning and tinting 
 afresh the red brick. 
 
 One day in early spring the Hector of 
 Sedge Pond had occasion to ride into Reed- 
 ham. Approaching the market cross, he
 
 The Huguenot Family. 295 
 
 could not help uttering an exclamation as 
 he saw a large printed placard posted there, 
 signed " Audrey Rolle." A considerable 
 gathering of rustics and townspeople gaped 
 round it. 
 
 " Hath my lady put the crown on her 
 vagaries and her usurpation of a man's place 
 by proposing to sit in Parliament herself?" 
 mused the Rector. " Indeed, there remains 
 onlv this, that she and the like of her have 
 not tried ; and, by my word, if they set 
 their minds on it, neither king nor constitu- 
 tion will balk them. Alake ! alake ! what 
 waste of high spirit and high heart is there, 
 and what might not my lady Rolle have 
 been and done, had she been born a man, 
 and been set down in the shoes of Corn- 
 wallis, or Burgoyne, or Rodney, or Anson, 
 or Sir Robert, or the Duke of Newcastle, 
 or even of the Bishop of London, or he of 
 Bath and Wells ? As it is, all her wit doth
 
 296 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 not serve to keep her at home, abiding by 
 her still-room and her needle, ruling her 
 maids, and saying her prayers, like my 
 simple wife and maids, who will be all ag> 
 at the mere thought of their patroness being 
 in the country again." 
 
 The Rector was somewhat relieved, how- 
 ever, when he found that the address only 
 called on the men of Reedham to be earlv 
 at the poll, and vote for the Honourable 
 George Rolle. It concluded with the 
 words: " As a mother who has already 
 given a son to her country, and as the just 
 price of her loss, I call upon my friends and 
 neighbours to elect his brother, my next 
 -<>n, as their fitting representative in Parlia- 
 ment." 
 
 " Glad am I that it is the Honourable 
 George, and not herself, whom my lady 
 proposes, though she is a great deal better 
 man than lie is," thought the Rector.
 
 The Huguenot Family. 297 
 
 " And so she makes gain of her poor hero, 
 even for the honour and advantage of the 
 house and of her remaining sons. Would I 
 thus make gain of the pure memory of my 
 Philip ? Nay, perish the thought of all 
 that was earthly in our connection. Let 
 him henceforth shine as a star in the firma- 
 ment for me ; and let me obey my Master's 
 orders, look up to Him, and covet earnestly 
 to die in harness, fulfilling the measure of 
 my duty as my boy fulfilled his, and follow- 
 ing the Captain of our salvation. Never- 
 theless, I am a Rolle ; and I owe my best 
 duty to my lady, who has been good and 
 kind to me according to her light, and my 
 support to the Honourable George, who I 
 am assured will never set the Thames on 
 fire, save by dawdling between London and 
 Paris, and heaping together pretty things 
 like a vain woman. Still, how these puny 
 fine gentlemen do shake off their affecta-
 
 298 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 tions and follies, and strip and fight like 
 men in the senate, baling ont and forcing 
 back the roaring tide of loathsome bilg 
 water — anarchy, infidelity, and horrible 
 confusion, like what has fallen out in His 
 Majesty's colony of America, which 
 threatens to become the grave of true 
 loyalty and virtue, in spite of hecatombs of 
 corpses and rivers of gore poured into it, 
 my Philip's gallant body and generous 
 blood anion" the rest." 
 
 The first sight Grand'mere and Yolande 
 had of Lady Rolle was in the obscurity of a 
 whirlwind of dust raised by her chariot and 
 that of her son, as they drove past Sedge 
 Pond to the Castle But when once the 
 family were lodged in their proper quarters, 
 there was no longer any dimness or oncer- 
 tainty about the fact \^ their presence. 
 Everything was turned upside down for 
 them, and every movement wad thenceforth
 
 The Huguenot Family. 299 
 
 directed towards them. They were like the 
 sun in the sky, drinking in and absorbing 
 all the exhalations, and in their central 
 power controlling the growth and pro- 
 gress of every living creature around them. 
 From the Rector in his surplice to De- 
 borah Pott between her water-pitchers, no 
 one was exempt from the influence of the 
 Quality. 
 
 Grand'mere at first tried to resist the 
 spell, and in a fit of national spirit talked of 
 the great peers of France, the provincial 
 parliaments, the lieutenants of the king, and 
 the governors of provinces, compared with 
 whom this English family were mere titled 
 gentry, with mortgaged acres, and no power 
 except that derived from their seats in 
 Parliament, where they most undauntedly 
 voted to each other sinecure upon sinecure. 
 
 But Grand'mere changed her mind after 
 she had witnessed the Rolles' rule for a
 
 300 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 week, and seen the demonstrations at the 
 village and in the little church. The church 
 was situated with a manifest respect to per- 
 sons, inasmuch as it forced upon the village 
 Christians a weary trudge through a miry by- 
 way; while the Castle Christians, who were 
 not at the Castle above once in two years, 
 and only filled two pews when they were 
 all at home, commanded an easy road by a 
 side door from the park. There was such a 
 scene there as Grand'mere had never wit- 
 nessed in Roman Catholic France, where 
 the great dignitaries of the Church, which 
 aspires to rule the earth, exacted homage 
 and humility from rival dignitaries, temporal 
 princes, and peers, and did not often brook 
 any claims save their own at the gates of 
 either their noblest cathedrals or their 
 simple parish churches. It was another 
 matter when Lady Rolle appeared in the 
 porch of the church at Sedge Pond. She
 
 The Huguenot Family. 301 
 
 was attended by her maid, chaplain, physi- 
 cian, butler, and sometimes by one of her 
 sons, who with his bodily eye would stare 
 at the scraps of stained glass which he had 
 often seen before, instead of looking with 
 his mental eyes into Heaven, to which it 
 was doubtful if his imagination had ever 
 taken flight. Nay, he would audibly remark 
 on a rusty iron sword on the monument of 
 one of his forefathers, which would never 
 pink armour or slash buff coat more, at the 
 very moment when the priest was praying 
 for the sword of the Spirit to pierce the 
 souls of those present, and that of the son 
 among them. When the Castle party issued 
 from their own particular door, the wor- 
 shippers, who had flocked out before them, 
 divided right and left, uncovered their 
 1 leads, and bowed down as before divinities ; 
 while the Rector in his cassock, and his wife 
 and daughters in their sacques and hats,
 
 302 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 hastened to show a proper example of re- 
 verence to superiors. At that crowning 
 testimony Grand m&re grew very thought* 
 ful, and in place of undervaluing the Rolles 
 of the Castle any longer, she called them 
 a great institution, an ordinance of God, for 
 good or for evil, according as it was used 
 or abused. 
 
 Monsieur — an avowed time-server, not- 
 withstanding his irony — bowed low before 
 the men of the Castle when they came 
 down to the village to see a cock-fight, or 
 play a game at skittles, or make trial 
 their horses entered for Newmarket, in the 
 presence of a crowd of obsequious helpers 
 and hangers-on. These Rolles were not 
 mere roystering country Quality — not men 
 of many glaring sins and a few redeeming 
 virtues, like the publicans and sinners of 
 old. They were more dangerous and diffi- 
 cult subjects to deal with — men of the court
 
 The Huguenot Family. 303 
 
 and the town, men of wit and fashion, of 
 taste and refinement. They were not so 
 much men of strong passions as of over- 
 weening vanity, and its complement, cyni- 
 cism. In their small hats and wigs, plain 
 black ribands or white ties, they lounged, 
 as if half asleep, in the approaches to the 
 Castle, and only roused themselves to pick 
 then slippered steps, and carry their little 
 French poodles and Italian greyhounds 
 carefully over the puddles ; while they 
 stood, took pinches of snuff, betted, laugh- 
 ed, swore, and contemplated enjoy ably two 
 barges running foul of each other on the 
 river ; for, just as the degenerate Romans 
 patted and petted their gladiators, these 
 affectedly squeamish, womanish men were 
 very fond of supping on horrors. 
 
 Monsieur bowed still lower before my 
 lady, who, as distinguished from my lord, 
 swept along in such piled-up tissues, jewels,
 
 304 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 powder, and plumes as only the great ones 
 of the earth could compass. She looked as 
 if she had been born to wear them ; and 
 she never rested day or night, but with 
 her marvellously fine fretted features and 
 falcon look, was for ever pursuing some aim 
 with headlong, devouring intentness, and 
 the moment it was attained, setting out 
 after some other object, no matter what, so 
 that it was hers to be sought after and 
 gained. 
 
 Madame, Yolande's mother, looked dark- 
 ly at those privileged players in a pageant, 
 and called them Ahabs and Jezebels, 
 Herods and Herodiases, and poured forth 
 denunciations of " baldness in place of well- 
 Bet hair, and burning for beauty." Yo- 
 lande, too, looking with open, unconscious 
 eyes at the new and striking figures on the 
 stage of her life, and shrinking from the 
 mocking, irreverent, unbelieving light alike
 
 The Huguenot Family. 305 
 
 iii the soft, sleepy eyes of the men, and the 
 ardent eyes of the woman, was tempted to 
 say to Grand'mere — 
 
 " Are they not like Vashti, grown old 
 and worn, but never weary ? Do these 
 unflinching spirits ever weary, Grand'mere ? 
 or do they only wear and wear, until the 
 good God break them, and take them 
 brokenly to Himself, and make of them 
 the spirits which constitute heroes and 
 martyrs ? And the men, Grand'mere, are 
 they not so many Absaloms ? I like them 
 not. I like my lady, who is eager to make 
 us fear her — so eager, that she would tread 
 over the necks and the hearts of the people, 
 and her own also, Grand'mere — her own 
 also. The men are false and cruel in their 
 sleekness ; they would sacrifice others, but 
 save themselves, such as they are ; I know 
 it — I feel it." 
 
 " Yes, until to-morrow with your know- 
 vol. i. x
 
 3 6 The Huguenot Ft im Uy. 
 
 ledge and feelings," reproved Grand'mere, 
 soberly and sadly. " Who made you a 
 judge between this woman and these men, 
 or between them and yourself? Better 
 shut you up in a portfolio at once, Made- 
 moiselle my judge, than suffer you to look 
 abroad with rash, harsh eyes and tongue. 
 ' By their fruits ye shall know them ?' 
 Yes, truly ; but these are the brethren ; 
 even an Apostle had nought to do in judg- 
 ing those who were without. And what 
 fruits have you gathered of this great Rolle 
 family?" 
 
 "Well, Grand'mere, I see enough of 
 their mincing airs everyday; I can scar* 
 look at them when I see them in the 
 walks." 
 
 " Ah ! my heart, do you believe the Lord. 
 when He tells how hard it is to be rich ? 
 Do you ever — I do not say thank the Lord 
 that you are not of the haute noblesse — that
 
 The Huguenot Family. 307 
 
 were the Pharisee's prayer — pray to Him on 
 behalf of those poor souls of whom He said 
 that it was as easy for a camel to go through 
 the eye of a needle as for them to enter his 
 kingdom ? But when they do go through 
 the eye of a needle, think you not they 
 are such as are made rulers over ten cities ? 
 But we are as sillv and selfish as the little 
 birds towards the cats : we are unbelievers ; 
 and instead of praying for the rich and help- 
 ing them, we envy them and go on hating 
 and maligning them." 
 
 " Oh, Grand'mere !" cried Yolande, with 
 a sharp, pained voice. 
 
 "Alas! it is true, my child, and the 
 harsher our judgments the greater will be 
 our condemnation ! Ma mie, I think of a 
 chapter in my Bible, and I try to show you 
 a better way in which to regard these mes- 
 sieurs. See you how they stand to ]<>•>'<: 
 at and admire a group of trees in the 
 
 x 2
 
 308 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 park, a herd of deer, the tower of the 
 church from one point, and their own arcade 
 from another. Nay, they can admire a 
 pretty child of the village, so that she 1 k • 
 clean washed for their inspection, and put 
 not her finger in her mouth, or whimper 
 and hint that she is thinly clad and coarsely 
 fed, and so rub against their skins, and, 
 as they say, dispel the illusion." 
 
 " Ah ! yes, that is true ; I have seen 
 them," responded Yolande, thoughtfully. 
 
 "They have the sense of beauty, Yolande, 
 and beauty is the gift of God. See you 
 again how they caress their little dogs, and 
 mourn when the Rosines and the Rosett< 
 hang their heads or droop their tails. But 
 that is unworthy of men who have the whole 
 world of men and women to care for. von 
 will tell me. Well, I cannot say as to 
 that ; for the great God cares for the brutes 
 as well as for men and women, and so 1
 
 The Huguenot Family. 309 
 
 do not understand that branch of the anni- 
 merit." 
 
 " But it seems only a waste of tender- 
 ness, Grand'mere." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I admit it is a waste of tender- 
 ness in those who have little of the commo- 
 dity to spare. Still it is tenderness, and 
 that is a nobler gift of God than beauty. 
 And now I will tell you something that you 
 see not (may you never see it!), but what the 
 common t voice says of the strange gentle- 
 men. In their conduct to their women they 
 are alternately savage and sweet. The 
 most terrible wrongs, the most barbarous 
 outrages, have been committed by strong 
 brothers against weak sisters, as if the strong 
 were demons ; and then, again, they act as 
 if the pitying angels had dispossessed the 
 demons, and had not disdained to take up 
 their abode for a season in the dishonoured 
 dwellings. My simple one, it is not that
 
 ?) 1 The Hiujuenot F<nn ily. 
 
 this man or that woman is a sinner above 
 all other sinners, bnt that the foundations of 
 the world are out of order, and that all our 
 pleasant springs are poisoned, our good gifts 
 marred. We are all sinners, great and small, 
 as opportunities have enabled us or grace 
 prevented us. We are all shiners, and — 
 God be praised ! — one is our Saviour. Leave 
 Him to judge, and judge thou no more." 
 
 Lady Rolle had only a faint impression < >f 
 the Dupuys as being the foreign tenants of 
 the Shotterv Cottage. Madame Rolle of 
 the Rectory and her girls spoke of them to 
 the great lady, but, sooth to say, the great 
 lady paid little heed to such speech, calling 
 it, in her sarcastic phrase, the cackle <'t" 
 ignorant country geese. But Lady Rolle, 
 when the living book was in her hands, 
 read a man better than most readers, and 
 esteemed Mr. Philip, her friend and kins-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 311 
 
 man, more than any man alive, though it 
 must be confessed she showed it quite as 
 often by vexing as by pleasing him. And 
 when he actually spoke of the Dupuys not 
 unfavourably, her ladyship took it into her 
 head to pay them a visit. She had, of 
 course, no notion but that she could do 
 anything she liked at Sedge Pond, and be 
 everywhere humbly received and meekly 
 deferred to ; and so she went about deran^- 
 mg everything like some powerful, semi- 
 malignant fairy. Her ladyship walked 
 straight into the Shottery Cottage one day 
 — right into the sombre parlour, and sat 
 down, in Madame Dupuy's chair, without 
 invitation or leave. She caught a glimpse 
 of Grand' mere as she was looking round 
 her, quite prepared to domineer and to find 
 fault before she should make up for her 
 bad behaviour by showering upon the 
 occupants her prodigal money and favours.
 
 312 The Hwjuenoi Family. 
 
 She jumped up instantly, begged Grand'- 
 mere's pardon, and craved permission to 
 call her, on the spot, a dear old friend. 
 From that fresh starting-point Lady Rolle 
 poured her winning, wonderfully idiomatic, 
 though broken French into her listener's 
 credulous ears, and conducted herself to- 
 wards Grand mere as an amiable fine lady, 
 unique and exquisite in her amiability, no 
 less than in her humours and vices. 
 
 Not that Lady Rolle ceased to be herself: 
 she reflected on Grandmere's family just a 
 little of her bland good- will. She said dis- 
 tinctly to Madame, 
 
 " My good creature, you detest me at 
 first sight. Have I such a bad taste, then, 
 in a recluse's mouth ? So much the worse 
 for you, because I can really do without 
 your liking, unless you put my dear old 
 friend here up against me ; whereas 1 might 
 have been of some service to you. and been
 
 • 
 
 The Huguenot Family. 313 
 
 at ease in offering you the run of the Castle 
 gardens, dairy, dove-cot, and farm, all the 
 year round ; in putting a stop to the hob- 
 nailed louts molesting you, and compelling 
 the county to be civil to you. Reflect what 
 you have lost by finding in me your bite 
 noire, your croquemitaineJ Addressing 
 herself coolly to Monsieur, she went on : 
 u Sir, I shall have no scruple in being use- 
 ful to you. If I mistake not, you under- 
 stand the commerce of society. What will 
 you take in exchange for permitting me to 
 be intimate with your mother and your 
 daughter ? Do I not know that you will 
 receive no injury from the words of a plain 
 Englishwoman ? You are too wise a man 
 of the world. Is it not so ?" 
 
 " Precisely, my lady ; you comprehend 
 perfectly the character of the bourgeois who 
 is dying with the wish to make a market of 
 everything, without the exception of mo-
 
 314 The Huguenot Fam Uy. 
 
 ther and child. I shall ask my price- 
 
 when I want it." So Monsieur met her 
 challenge, raising his shoulders and showing 
 his teeth. 
 
 And Lady Rolle told Yolande : " Child, 
 I could be vastly fond of you, and carry 
 you off, will he, nill he, to take the place of 
 my last scarlet spider ; for I am getting up 
 a collection of monsters to outshine Mar- 
 garet Cavendish's. I warn you, my good 
 mother, that I worry all my friends' hearts 
 out of their bodies to help me with strange 
 beasts, now that I have done with Greek 
 marbles. But, child, you are not all your 
 grandmother. I spy your mother in your 
 face; and, as you see, she and I no more 
 take to each other than plaguey teeth to 
 gritting sand. There, don't take the pet, you 
 little fool ; perhaps hers is all the honester 
 nature for not agreeing with mine. After 
 sinners themselves, only saints and angels
 
 The Huguenot Family. 315 
 
 - a , . . . ......... ■ ■ ■ , — ■■■—■■-■■■ 
 
 can put up with sinners ; don't you know 
 that ? Be thankful, at least, that your mo- 
 ther is not a sinner of the same stuff as the 
 French mothers whom I have known were 
 made of. What were they like ? Bah ! 
 Painted goddesses, ready to tear out the 
 eyes of their own daughters, making frights 
 of them, outraging them, to keep them from 
 stepping on the tapis with themselves. I 
 thank my stars that I have only long lazy- 
 bones and grinning buffoons of sons, lest I 
 should have seen rivals in my daughters, 
 and bitten and devoured my own flesh and 
 blood. But if the mothers were no better 
 than they should be, how did it happen 
 that the grandames were too good for this 
 bad world ? Sure I cannot tell. My wise 
 head will not crack riddles like nuts. 
 Grand'mere, you are not vexed with me? 
 Nay, then, I shall confess that I have been 
 only in ill company, that to the gadflies all
 
 316 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 the poor midges figure as gadflie-. Yes, 
 yes, that is it ; and the French mothers are 
 without reproach, like the old mesdames — 
 like charming, wise, witty De Sevigne, whom 
 we all dote upon, down to that snarling 
 dog, Rolle. You are her marrow, my dear, 
 beautiful old goody ! only what a pity that 
 you are bourgeoise and Huguenot. Could 
 you not be at least orthodox Catholic here, 
 where it would not be a feather in your cap 
 — quite the contrary ; so that you would still 
 have the comfort of contradicting everybody 
 and continuing a martyr ?" 
 
 " Pity that she is a Huguenot ! — Be a 
 Catholic I" gasped Madame. " Why does 
 not the earth open and swallow her up ? 
 Mon marij you stand by and hear your 
 mother insulted, the faith mocked! Go; I 
 had not thought you so wicked. Who is this 
 scaramouche of a De Sevkrne? I know her 
 not; I abjure her, for the company she keeps. 11
 
 The Huguenot Family. 317 
 
 " All ! be quiet, my good woman," en- 
 joined Lady Rolle, tranquilly ; " I do not 
 mind you, De Sevigne does not mind you. 
 Alas ! she has only existed for us in her like- 
 ness this half century and more. But it is 
 refreshing to find man or woman who be- 
 lieves anything, and who is not to say rude 
 in her faith." 
 
 Lady Rolle curtseyed politely to Madame 
 (who turned her back with an exasperated 
 mow), tapped the reluctant Yolande under 
 the chin, kissed the hand of Grand'mere, 
 and presented her own hand to Monsieur, 
 with the most ineffable air of condescension, 
 to be led to her chariot, which was standing 
 there in its empty splendour, mobbed by the 
 people of Sedge Pond. 
 
 That very afternoon Lady Rolle sent her 
 own serving-man and woman with hampers 
 of red Burgundy and white Hermitage, 
 baked meats, and fruits, along with the last
 
 318 The Huguenot Family. 
 
 fashions and working-materials, to Grand'- 
 mere ; thus overpowering the least mercen- 
 narybut the most grateful spirit in the,wo rid. 
 Madame, however, put her hands doggedly 
 behind her back, and refused to touch the 
 unclean tiling. With the hampers came a 
 little note, which began with an apology for 
 her handwriting (she never could write, my 
 lady said), and requesting permission to 
 wait upon Grand'mere, and to bring her 
 dish of tea with her, any time she could 
 spare from the great business of the electi< >n. 
 which she was to set agoing the next week. 
 She was shocking bad company herself, and 
 was but poorly supplied with any other up 
 at the Castle ; she had no stomach for the 
 dull, conceited country gentry, though she 
 would not have said that for a pension just 
 then. What she would like, would be to 
 gossip by the hour about her dear, delightful 
 Madame de Sevign&
 
 The Huguenot Family. 319 
 
 Madame de Sevigne was the key to 
 Grand'mere's charm for Lady Rolle, just as 
 Fletcher of Madeley had been the key to 
 her attraction for the old Squire of the Mall. 
 In the teeth of the old, bitter grudge against 
 the French, which the middle and the lower 
 classes were given to cherish as being 
 patriotic, the Quality had not only the strong 
 tendency to Gallic fashions of which young 
 Caleb Gage was unjustly accused, but they 
 had a great rage for one wonderfully en- 
 dowed woman, whose Christian virtues and 
 heathen insensibility, in the midst of the de- 
 pravity of the Court air she breathed, they 
 were equally incapable of measuring and 
 appreciating. Nevertheless, Les Rochers, the 
 Tour de Sevigne, the hotel at Paris, the 
 chateau in Provence, were household words; 
 the stately and picturesque figures which 
 had once moved there were treasure I 
 shapes; while the unapproachable tender
 
 3 2 27*£ Hugueno t Fain Uy. 
 
 grace and naivete, the keen shrewdness and 
 ripe knowledge of the world — all indeed 
 but the fervent, devout heart which the 
 touch of moral pitch could not defile — were 
 in that generation laboriously and affected- 
 ly mimicked in the meretricious correspond- 
 ence of supercilious critics, arrogant men 
 of letters, and statesmen as venal as they 
 were powerful. 
 
 Grand'mere's world was infinitely wider, 
 fresher, and more wholesome than that of 
 her daughter-in-law. Grand'mere knew 
 and eagerly acknowledged the sweet 
 though strangely surrounded flower of 
 French quality. At the same time, Grand'- 
 mere paid the penalty of her freer range. 
 She did not see so clearly as Madame 
 Dupuy did within her narrow limits. Tin* 
 elder woman was somewhat mystified and 
 carried away by the homage offered — not 
 to herself, but to her representative country-
 
 The Huguenot Family. 321 
 
 woman. And she, in her turn, began to 
 descant to Yolande on Madame de Sevigne. 
 She talked with enthusiasm of the bright, 
 beautiful, loving, charitable, pious gran- 
 dame, who, in the midst of abounding 
 iniquity, remained faithful at every stage of 
 her long life — true wife, fond mother, 
 devoted friend ; who retired to solitude, 
 and prayed in lowly abasement, who suc- 
 coured the poor with her own gentle hands, 
 and who, in running from all the stilted 
 glory and stereotyped gaiety among which 
 her lot was cast, retired not merely to her 
 hayfields, her bouquets of roses, and her 
 portraits of her daughter, but to sick-beds, 
 from which direly infectious and deadly 
 maladies drove craven priests and doctors, 
 where she nursed the bodies and ministered 
 to the souls of suffering humanity, till tin 
 last sufferer who was to be relieved by In 1 
 rose from bed, and saw the honoured, aged 
 vol. i. v
 
 322 The Hugu&not Family. 
 
 — . — — . . . _ — _ ,_ . _, — . r — — ._ 
 
 kinswoman take her place and die in 
 stead. -Grand'mere called Madame de 
 Se.vigne the Gamaliel who stood between 
 the Jews and the Christians ; and, had she 
 
 * 
 
 been well acquainted with English history, 
 she might have called her heroine the John 
 Evelyn who formed the link between the 
 Cavaliers and the Puritans. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON : TRINTED BY MACDONaLD AND TUGWELL, BLENHEIM HOUSE.