Two days later, La Rochelle surrendered. Hardly four thousand of the people remained alive.
The Cardinal and Père Joseph entered the city at the head of the singing and victorious troops. Père Joseph walked in his ragged habit, his russet head and russet beard catching the light of the dying sun so that they seemed to be imbued with a fanatical fire of their own. The Church had triumphed. The blasphemers were conquered! He saw visions of the future, when this Protestant heresy would be driven from the world forever, and Rome should, as of old, be the supreme arbiter of mankind, the servant of a victorious God.
The singing priests were jubilant. They looked at the haggard faces who watched them pass with evil anticipation, thinking of their tortures, their whips and other gentle persuaders. But there was no fear in the faces that watched them, no shrinking. They had looked too long on death. Now there was only pride in those quiet eyes, sunken so deeply in the bones of famished skulls.
The Duchesse de Rohan came herself to greet the Cardinal. She walked on foot. She had no carriage. But at the sight of her, the Cardinal alighted from his horse and approached her. He took her hand and kissed it passionately. For an instant she thought that those terrible eyes were clouded and moist. She stood before him proudly. Her lips parted. He, himself, could not speak, so moved was he.
“I trust,” she said, tranquilly, “that Monseigneur’s sleeplessness has been cured?”
He looked into her face, and he said, so low that no one else caught his words: “Madame, I shall never sleep again.”
He led her into the Hôtel de Rohan, and there he told her that he contemplated no punishment for her heroic people, “though others,” he added sardonically, thinking of the priests, “had urged otherwise.” Nor would the soldiers be allowed to loot or massacre. Death would be visited upon them if they did so.
“I have seen a strange vision,” said the Cardinal, in a peculiar voice. “For the sake of that vision, La Rochelle shall not suffer.”
He continued, telling her things which astonished her heart and blinded her sight with tears.
The Rochellais were to be pardoned. They were to continue to hold their property, and exercise freedom of worship.
“I ask,” and now his voice rang with sincerity, “only that the Rochellais shall be faithful to France.”
And now he looked full in her eyes: “Faithfulness, for unity of all Frenchmen. Until the end.”
“Until the end,” repeated the Duchesse.
And now the two old friends were silent, and they saw, without delusion, the end that was approaching Europe with the inexorable doom of a hurricane.
The next day the sick and gloomy Cardinal sang Mass in the ancient church of St. Margaret. The bells pealed joyfully. The Rochellais, fearing all horrors, remained in their homes. The sound of the bells shattered the sunlit air over empty and devastated streets.
The Duchesse attended that Mass, seated in a place of honor. She listened to the Cardinal’s faint voice, in which there was no note of triumph. She heard the rolling of the music, the surge of the choristers’ voices. She had come here at the urgent invitation of the Cardinal, and, understanding him, she had accepted that invitation. It was as if he had invited her to hear his cry of despair.
But, in truth, she heard neither Mass nor singers. It seemed to her that she was listening to the sound of wind in sails that were bearing Arsène, his wife, his son, and his unborn child into the future.
The voices of the choristers were the voices of unborn men, raised in hope and triumph, in victory and freedom, in everlasting conquest over the forces of darkness and evil, superstition, ignorance and fear and hatred.