They continued their journey with all dispatch. Arsène rode as one possessed, as if attempting to flee from the sorrows and anxieties of the life that lay behind him. He paused long enough, the next day, to write a letter to Clarisse, full of affection, regret and grief, and imploring her to love and cherish their child with all her heart, forgetting the desertion of her husband, and remembering him with all charity. “Some day, perhaps, we shall meet again,” he wrote, “and I shall have the joy of embracing my little one.”
His heart was heavy, but he allowed himself little time in which to contemplate or regret. All his apprehension, now, was centered in the young Cecile, who never complained, nor sighed with weariness, despite her white face and the disability she must still have felt because of her recent dangerous illness. Little passed between them but silent and eloquent smiles, a touch of the hand, a courageous flash of the eye, but understanding was there and a passionate and undeviating love. Arsène marvelled at the steadfastness of this young female heart, that could face coming danger, and even death, with the single-minded fortitude of a noble man. It is the women who are the true fanatics, the truly dedicated, he would think. They lacked the prudence of the more realistic sex. They could give themselves up to martyrdom with joy and simplicity. Men who possessed this joy and simplicity had, in themselves, something of the essentially feminine nature, and, something of the hysteria and transports inherent in that nature. No man, he understood, approached martyrdom and immolation with passion and faith unless there was a femaleness in him. The complete man tended more to conservative battles and compromise.
He admitted that he, himself, did not possess this tender but invulnerable touch of femaleness, that only a supreme act of will, battling with caution and prudence, enabled him to go forward resolutely. Even in his resolution lingered doubts and hesitancies, and an enervating weariness. Finally, with some pride, he came to the conclusion that those who truly deserved the accolades were not the fanatics and the heroes, but the realists who faced death and danger without illusion, and only by the power of will and reason. They rode forward in a cold and bitter light, hearing no orisons, and harkening only to the chill and steely voice of a comfortless but necessary duty.
“Once,” the Abbé Mourion had said to him, “I tormented myself in conjecturing whether I loved God enough. Now I only torment myself with the conjecture whether I love men enough.”
In those words, to Arsène, was the very essence of true Protestantism. He knew that he had far to go, to awaken in himself a complete love for his fellows. Hampered by the traditions, hauteurs and contempts of his caste, the struggle was monumental. But he was cheered that he had at last discerned the shining shore of the far distance. Nor was he deluded that to love men it was necessary to idealize them, and believe that they were fair and noble creatures. An understanding of their rapacity, stupidity and cruelty did not, in the real lover of mankind, dim his love. It might arouse his anger, but it also aroused his pity, quickened his resolution to awaken other men to a knowledge of every man’s responsibility to his fellows.
Of all this, he could make only Cecile understand. His companions were impelled only by hatred of the religion which would limit their intelligence and their personal liberty, and would reduce them to mental serfs. The Marquis, with only dim perceptions of his own father’s passionate dedication, and vaguely tormented by conscience, accompanied his son from love and an inability to live without him.
Sometimes Arsène was depressed by all this. But slowly he realized that, in the beginning, it was only necessary that the leader understand. The followers trailed him blindly, listening to his leading footfalls. But at last the end would be accomplished, and the blind would see to what glory they had followed him.
They dared waste not even an hour, for they must not only overtake the Cardinal, travelling on the main road in slow pomp and circumstance, surrounded by banners and martial music, but must pass him and reach La Rochelle before he arrived there. They knew that at every town the Cardinal must wait impatiently for news of the vacillating King, to learn whether or not that personage had decided to follow. Half-way to La Rochelle, the welcome news arrived that Louis had finally determined to follow the Cardinal, jealous of any triumph which might come alone to that implacable man. He could not endure that the Cardinal accomplish the fall of La Rochelle, while he, Louis, lurked sulkily in Paris. So, the messenger came to Richelieu that he was to wait at Tours for him. The Cardinal, enraged and disappointed, fumed in silence, expressed his joy in public. He hoped that Madame would accompany the monarch, in his luxurious train, for then the ardors of the journey, and the campaign would be much alleviated.
That fool, he thought, referring to his King, is making of this campaign a holiday, a festival, a Roman triumph, travelling in splendor and music, and excitement, setting up his Court in the byways and the highways, noisy with revelry. He knew that every bravo and adventurer accompanied the King, and also a number of avaricious and dangerous priests.
Now the Cardinal frowned with real anxiety and anger. He thought of the Spanish Armada, filled with its thousands of priests and all manner of torture implements, attempting its famous invasion of England. God, or the devil, had intervened, and priests and their hellish implements had disappeared in the gray and boiling waters of the Channel. What if the deity had not intervened so advantageously? What frightful things might not have taken place in England, then! Moreover, the face of the world would have been changed. The Cardinal did not delude himself that the change would have been salubrious.
He thought of the Rochellais, and he grimly resolved that the priests would not have their way among the Huguenots. A Frenchman, first and always, he thought with impatient anger and sadness of the Frenchmen beseiged at La Rochelle. He must conquer them, for the sake of France. But, for the sake of France, he must reconcile them and make them understand that their duty lay in the attainment of a complete unity in France, against the threat of the Habsburgs, and Spain. Frenchmen, against all the world, and let the priests be hanged!
He had planned this campaign at the instigation and seductions of Madame, Anne of Austria. But now he went forward upon it with the sole purpose of welding Frenchmen, Catholic and Protestant alike, in a devotion to France alone. There were no limits to the glories and the powers of France if all Frenchmen served her with single-hearted love and determination. There must be no memory of a new civil war, of victory obtained by cruelty and torture. Such memories destroyed a nation.
While he waited, idly and angrily, at Tours, the entourage of Arsène de Richepin passed him on a distant and obscure road, hardly a cattle-pass, at midnight. By dawn, Arsène and his companions were leagues away. The Cardinal lying sleepless in his bed, thought he heard the far dim thunder of hoofs, but he finally decided it was only the wind. He was filled with his musings: Why could it not be possible for men, of one blood, to live in harmony though bedevilled by different creeds? And, carrying this further, why was it not possible for men of different races, as well as creeds, to live in peace together, owing a single devotion to one ideal, one political philosophy? Individuality was necessary to create a whole man. But to the common good all men should be dedicated, individuals though they were.
It is not possible, thought the Cardinal. But a strange prescience urged him that it was possible, and that, perhaps, some day, a great nation of men might live in harmony and peace together, dedicated to common good and common humanity, though composed individually of differing creeds and races. Was this not the essence of true Christianity? Without this essence, the world would be lost in a holocaust of wars and ruin.