The Scourge of God: A Romance of Religious Persecution

It was midnight when all rode into Alais, and the iron shoes of the horses clattering on the cobble-stones of the street woke from their beds the few who were asleep.

In the coming dawn, when the stars had paled and died away, and when far off, where the Basses Alpes lifted their heads eastward, the gray light turned into daffodil and told th...

Through the fair, sweet land known as the _Département Hérault_ Martin rode north, toward where the mountains lay, in the darkness of the autumn night, like purple shadows hover...

"Come," said Martin to the trembling pastor, "come. We may do something, avert some awful calamity. You are of their faith. They will listen to you," and he arranged his _porte...

Once more the day was drawing to a close. Already across the plain the sun's rays were slanting horizontally. Soon the sun itself would have dipped behind the mountains and be g...

Night was near at hand again and all were gone--all except Martin Ashurst and the pastor, both of whom sat now upon the bridge of Montvert, their eyes fixed always on the crest...

From the Mediterranean the warm, luscious breezes of the south sweep up to where Montpellier stands ere they pass the city and waft to the summits of the Cévennes the perfume of...

Looking down upon her as she lay in the great bed whereon had reposed so many of the de Rochebazons for generations--when they had been the head of the house--Martin Ashurst tol...

With the rapidity of wildfire the news had run over all Languedoc at this time--was known, too, and shared by Catholics as well as Protestants--that the English, who once they d...

It was October in the year 1701 when she who had borne the title for so long of Princesse de Rochebazon was laid in the family vault in the Church of St. Sépulcre. It was July o...

Remembering that his horse (which he would require ere long to carry him to the mountains, since although, as he had thanked God again and again, Urbaine was in no danger, Bavil...

The night had come, and, with the exception of one troop of dragoons and one company of the _milices_, also with the exception of the Marquis du Chaila, who had remained behind...

When Martin Ashurst bent over her who had borne for over forty years the title of Princesse de Rochebazon, and saw that, at last, the light had gone out of her eyes forever, he...

The violets and the primroses grow in the chestnut woods that fringe the base of La Lozère, yet disappear as the roads wind up to the summit, giving place to the wild foxglove a...

An hour later the meeting in the Hôtel de Ville had broken up, yet not before Buscarlet had said words such as he had better have bitten out his tongue than have uttered; for, a...

That night as darkness fell upon the earth, and while, high up in the heavens, the bonfires burned which the _attroupés_ lit regularly on the tops of the Cévennes in the hopes o...

"When you and your charge, Mademoiselle Ducaire, have left us you will betray no secrets," Cavalier had said to Martin, as they stood side by side watching the army of Montrevel...

As one racks his brain to call up some circumstance or surrounding in connection with a face that puzzles him, to recollect some action associated with that face which shall ass...

It was in a great hall, or chamber, of the Hôtel de Ville that Baville now sat, splendidly apparelled, as was ever his custom when assisting at any great public function. Once m...

An awful terror which filled now the breasts of those who had erstwhile been the persecutors, even as, not long before, it had filled the breasts of those whom they had persecuted.

Urbaine and Martin sat together on that night which followed the sunny afternoon when they had been alone together on the promontory, in one of the smaller caverns that opened o...

A great _Berline à quatre chevaux_ halted at the North Gate outside Paris, and the young man seated within the carriage let down the window and prepared to once more answer all...

With all the pomp and ceremony that should accompany the dying hours of a great lady of France, the Princesse de Rochebazon--Marquise du Gast d'Ançilly, Comtesse de Montrachet,...

Once past Versailles, and St. Cyr was almost reached, the horse which Martin Ashurst had ordered to be made ready for him that morning bearing its rider easily and pleasantly al...

The mountains again! And Martin free! Happy, too, because, as the cold blast swept down from their summits to him as he rode swiftly through the valley toward the commencement o...

Between where the mountains of the Cévennes rise in tumultuous confusion, with, towering above them all, the gigantic Lozère and La Manzerre whence springs the beauteous Loire;...

They had met again. Were together, never more to part unless parted by one thing, Death! Death that was imminent at any moment, that might overtake them that very night, or to-m...

From that old, dismantled farmhouse, built on to the tower, there sloped down, toward where a small stream ran some four hundred yards away, a long stretch of bare land, covered...

Entered by the Porte des Carmes, to find himself in the midst of a seething mass of people who shouted and gesticulated while pushing each other to and fro, some doing so in the...

The swallows were gone--a month earlier in this mountainous region than in the rest of the golden south of France. Below, the corn had fallen ungathered from its stalks, since o...

"I have not yet decided," Baville said that night to Beauplan as they sat together in the new citadel, "when the sentence will be carried out. Have my doubts as to whether I sha...

There was a hush over the Court. Yet a hush broken and disturbed by many sounds. By the sobs of more than one woman, by the shuffling of many feet, by muttered ejaculations from...

Coming to himself, Martin, lying there, wondered where he was. He felt no pain in the wounded shoulder, only, instead, an awful weakness. Also he felt no cold. Knew too that aro...