Category: Historical Novels
One could hear the torrent as it leapt from the snows above, rushing and gurgling in the gorge it had graven for itself on its way to the Pélice River. One could hear too, faint and far away, the cry of the ravens as they circled over a meadow; and one might catch the jarring...
The siege for weeks went on--uselessly. And then, as the days grew cold and dark, the French retired to seek winter quarters. They flung a jibing message to the Vaudois, bidding...
2. CHAPTER II.There are sad pages in all histories: there are tales in every land the telling of which must awaken deep feelings of horror. Man’s inhumanity to man has always been the dark st...
1. CHAPTER I.One could hear the torrent as it leapt from the snows above, rushing and gurgling in the gorge it had graven for itself on its way to the Pélice River. One could hear too, faint...
3. CHAPTER III.Victor Amadeus did not obey King Louis without a struggle. He was content with his Vaudois subjects; they were industrious and law-abiding, and they were a valuable defence agai...
9. CHAPTER IX.Arnaud’s first care was to gather up the scattered threads of the Vaudois powers, and to unite them, as far as might be, into one cord--a cord which should be firm enough to hol...
8. CHAPTER VIII.In a Geneva street, where the steep red roofs almost met across the way, in a tall house with a silversmith’s sign swinging above the door, lived a Vaudois who had been exiled y...
15. CHAPTER XV.The two women could give Arnaud very full and important information as to the whereabouts of the enemy. Madeleine, who knew every yard of the ground, could explain just where a...
14. CHAPTER XIV.Once clear of the defile, with its perils, the two women hurried onwards, each turn of the hills revealing some well-remembered scene to Madeleine. There, below, was Prali, wher...
7. CHAPTER VII.The autumn had come, the snow already whitened the Alpine passes; soon the glittering mantle would lie thick on all the hills, and the whirling winds would form deep drifts, and...
12. CHAPTER XII.The Vaudois had lived from generation to generation a life described by a modern writer as one of absolute seclusion, ‘without thought or forethought of foreign help or parsimon...
13. CHAPTER XIII.Botta could see Gaspard from where he stood, and his eyes kindled and grew luminous as he watched the athletic figure bending under its load of forage. The young carpenter had p...
6. CHAPTER VI.Gaspard Botta was not one to be easily baffled or beaten; he was young, with muscles of iron and thews as of steel, and he had, moreover, the caution and resource of a hunter, t...
4. CHAPTER IV.He had stayed long enough to gather them a store of wood and firing. He had even crept down in the darkness to the ruined home, and, with the silent hunter-craft of his nation,...
10. CHAPTER X.Two women walking northward through the quiet air of the summer-time, carrying modest bundles on their shoulders, their arms laden with osier-baskets, which they offered in exch...
11. CHAPTER XI.The Vaudois troops (if the word ‘troops’ can be applied to the nine hundred followers of Henri Arnaud) crossed Lake Leman on the 18th of August, and at once pressed southwards t...
5. CHAPTER V.They set out, their bundles on their shoulders, walking openly in the daylight without attempt at disguise; seeking, it is true, the less frequented paths, and avoiding observat...