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, the endurance and the keen eyesight of a mountaineer.

His faith was the faith of his fathers, and for it he would die, readily, unshrinkingly, as his fathers died in the terrible days of the past, and as he had himself seen his countrymen die here, in every hamlet, and by every hearth and home.

But of the actual love of God he knew but very little.

He had meant to do his duty. He had prayed a soldier’s prayers, and he had trusted that help Divine would come to him, as it had done to others; to such men as Janavel, and Laurene, and Jayer, men who had gloriously fought in defence of the valleys, and whose names would live while Vaudois hearts yet beat.

But some glimpse of a faith better than this came to him as he left his mother and Rénée in the cave that day.

He could not have put the feeling into words; he scarcely knew when or why, but as he took his lonely way towards the mountains of Angrogna, a sense of God’s presence came over him--a searching, demanding presence--a power and a gentleness that asked, not only for his life, but also for his love.

There was the hoarse note of pain ringing through the valleys, the boundless pain of desolation and distress. Why, then, should such thoughts come to him, one of those smitten ones who had suffered, and who yet must suffer? Gentleness--love? surely here on the south slopes of the Alps there was in those terrible years more evidence of the outpouring of God’s wrath!

But into the young man’s soul there stole some glimpse of the Light that shineth in darkness, of the Love that is behind all wrath, of the Joy that is greater than pain. Not suddenly, but softly and sweetly, even as the spring-time comes upon the coldness and dumbness of the winter-world. He was only a herdsman’s son, and his carpentering trade had left him little leisure even for such poor scholarly lore as penetrated to the valleys, but he had heard of One who had also been an outcast, hunted, and done to death; of One whose days were days of suffering, and whose nights were spent in lonely watchings beneath the stars.

And the remembrance of that One came to him now in his own lonely vigil. The Master who had wandered on the Syrian hills, who had stood silent before murderous men; and in heaven, from the great white height of His glorious throne, He yet feels for His brethren who, through great tribulation, are pressing to His feet.

Gaspard understood things better now. There _was_ love, and there was gentleness, in spite of the sharpness of that cry of human pain. And Gaspard knelt mute upon the hill-side, with a look upon his face that had never before rested there, a look too full of love for fear, and yet which was too near to awe to take the semblance of gladness.

It seemed to him as though he knelt with his whole soul bare before the glance of God.

The days that followed were full of excitement, anxiety, and trouble. His father had been taken to Luserna, together with all the rest of the valley folk, and there Gaspard followed. It was rather like a lamb searching the den of a wolf, this going into the very stronghold of the Papists; but Gaspard had no thought of evading the duke’s troops now. His first duty was to find his father, to tend him, if so it might be; and to carry to him the news of the safety of those two women--news which would go far, so Gaspard guessed, to calm the fever left by that Savoyard lance-thrust.

It was easy to find a way to the interior of the prison, for Gaspard had only to declare that he too was a Vaudois when he was seized and flung into the fortress already full to overflowing with his wretched countrymen; and amongst that pitiful host was his father.

The horrors of that imprisonment will never be fully known now. An old writer says that the Vaudois perished by hundreds of hunger, thirst, and the festering of neglected wounds. Their bread was rough and filled with rubbish, their water was impure and insufficient. The places of the dead--numbers dying every day--were filled with fresh prisoners; the intense heat of summer, the throng of sick and suffering ones, and the crowded state of every corner of the dungeons, made a mass of evil too horrible for recital.

Was not this harder to be borne than were the savage swords of the soldiery, than the fighting at the barricades, than even the brutal insults of victorious foes? For in the past there had at least been the clear air of heaven, and the heart-stirring of struggle; now there seemed only the blankness of noisome despair.

What was it that Henri Botta’s parched lips were murmuring as he lay in uneasy sleep across Gaspard’s knees? The young man bent to listen, and the broken words he caught were of peace and of beauty, of rest for the weary ones, of the waters of comfort, and the loving-kindness of God.

The old herdsman’s rugged nature had also found some trace of gentleness and love amid all this chaos of dismay.

‘It must be that the Lord Himself is pitiful,’ thought Gaspard, ‘and He Himself sends comfort to such as are sore stricken.’

Over and over again did that thought return as he watched frail women rise triumphant above the power of pain, and men--just the rude and untaught peasants of the hills--meeting insult with dignity, and outrage with a smile.

‘Be of good cheer, my children,’ said one, an aged pastor from Angrogna, ‘our Master bore shame and death for our sakes, and shall we shrink from sharing the glory of His cross? Rather thank Him that such as we, the simple valley-folk, are reckoned worthy to follow where He trod!’

They counted twelve thousand captives that were held in the vile durance of the gaols; if it were so, death had opened the prison gates to hundreds upon hundreds of the suffering souls, for it was but three or four thousand men, women, and children whom the Duke of Savoy at last set free. Did he call it ‘freedom’?

They were free to leave Piedmont, to take their wretched lives and their precious faith to other lands, but they were not free to return to the valleys. Homeless exiles, ruined wanderers, they might go north or south, east or west; but their homes on the hill-sides should know them no more.