"How can they be recognized?"
"If they pa.s.s before the chapel without kneeling down at the feet of the Holy Virgin, and without dropping a piece of money into the purse of the mendicant monks, it is a proof that the painim are heretics--they are immediately set upon, they are slain, they are torn to shreds. Listen!
Do you hear that?"
Indeed, at that moment, piercing shrieks half drowned by an angry roar of many voices went up from the interior of the Cour-Dieu. As the turnstile allowed a pa.s.sage to only one person at a time, the approaches of the square were blocked by a crowd that swelled from moment to moment and that was swayed with the ardent desire to witness the _Test of the Lutherans_, as the process was called. Every time that the cries of a victim ceased, the clamor subsided, and the mob awaited the next execution. The butcher resumed:
"That painim has ceased to scream--his account is settled. May the fire of St. Anthony consume those laggards who are getting so slowly through the gate! I shall not be able to witness the killing of a single one of those accursed fellows!"
"My friend," said the mysterious companion of Christian to the butcher, "those Lutherans must be very great criminals, are they not? I ask you because I am a stranger here--"
A score of voices charitably hastened to answer the unknown man, who, together with Christian was so completely hemmed in by the crowd that they had no choice but patiently to wait for their turn at the turnstile.
"Poor man, where do you come from?" said some, addressing the unknown.
"What! You ask whether the Lutherans are criminals? Why, they are infamous brigands!"
And thereupon they vied with one another in citing the felonies that the reformers were guilty of:
"They read the Bible in French!"
"They do not confess!"
"They do not sing ma.s.s!"
"They believe neither in the Pope, nor the saints, nor in the virginity of Mary, nor in holy relics!"
"Nor in the blood of our Savior!--nor in the drop of milk of his holy mother!--nor in the miraculous tooth of St. Loup!"
"And what do those demons subst.i.tute for the holy ma.s.s? Abominable incantations and orgies!"
"Yes, yes--it is so!"
"I, who now speak to you, knew the son of a tailor who was once caught in the net of those ministers of the devil. I"ll tell you what he saw--he told me all about it the next day. The Lutherans a.s.sembled at night--at midnight--in a large cave, men, young girls and women to celebrate their _Luthery_. A rich bourgeois woman, who lived on the same street with the tailor attended the incantation with her two daughters.
When all the canting hypocrites were a.s.sembled, their priest donned a robe of goatskin with a headgear of spreading oxhorns; he then took a little child, spread the poor little fellow upon a table lighted by two tall wax candles, and, while the other heretics sang their psalms in French, interspersed with magical invocations, their priest cut the child"s throat!"
"The a.s.sa.s.sins! The monsters! The demons!"
"The priest of Lucifer thereupon gathered the child"s blood in a vase and sprinkled the a.s.sembly with the warm gore! He then tore out the child"s heart and ate it up! That closed the celebration of the Luthery."
"Holy St. James, and shall we not bleed these sons of Satan to the last man?" cried the butcher, carrying his hand to his knife, while the proscribed man exchanged significant glances with Christian and remarked to those standing near him:
"Can such monstrosities be possible? Could such things have happened?"
"Whether they are possible! Why, Brother St. Lawrence-on-the-gridiron, a reverend Carmelite who is my confessor, told me, Marotte, there never was an a.s.sembly of those heretics held without at least one or two little children being sacrificed."
"Jesus, G.o.d! Everybody knows that," pursued the first narrator; "the tailor"s son that I am talking about witnessed the heretical orgy; he saw everything with his own eyes; then, after the Lutherans had been sprinkled with the child"s blood as a sort of baptism, their priest spoke up and said: "Now, take off your clothes, and pray to G.o.d in our fashion. Long live h.e.l.l and the Luthery!" As soon as he said this, he put out the two wax candles, whereupon all the he and she canting hypocrites, with as much clothing on as Adam and Eve, men, women and young girls, all thrown helter-skelter in the dark--well, you understand--it is an abomination!"[9]
"What a horror! Malediction upon them!"
"Mercy! May G.o.d protect us from such heretics!"
"Confession! Such infamies portend the end of the world!"
"Brother St. Lawrence-on-the-gridiron, the reverend Carmelite friar, my confessor, told me, Marotte, that all the Lutheries closed in the same fashion. The good father felt so indignant that he gave me accurate details upon the devilish heretics; they were details that made my cheeks burn red and hot like a piece of coal."
These s.n.a.t.c.hes of reports, that summed up the stupid and atrocious calumnies spread about by the monks against the reformers, were interrupted by new shrieks and vociferations that went up from the Cour-Dieu. Listening with secret disgust and silent indignation to the calumnious indignities that were huckstered about by an ignorant and credulous populace, Christian and the unknown man in his charge had followed the stream of the crowd, and presently found themselves under the vault of the gate that led to the square, whence they could take in at a glance what was happening there. A sort of altar lighted with wax candles rose in front of the main entrance to the Franciscan Convent; a life-sized statue of the Virgin wrought in wood and gorgeously attired in a robe of gold brocade and with her face painted like a picture, surmounted the altar. Several Franciscan monks, among whom Christian recognized Fra Girard were stationed near the lighted chapel. Two of them, holding large velvet purses in their hands, were posted one on either side of the statue. A large crowd of tattered men and women, of cynical, repulsive or brutal countenances, all armed with clubs and grouped near the door of the convent, stood waiting for the moment when, at a signal from the monks, they were to rush upon the ill-starred pa.s.ser-by who was designated as suspected of heresy. Each pa.s.ser-by had inevitably to cross the square at only a slight distance from the statue of the Virgin. If they knelt down before it and dropped their alms into the purse of the mendicant friars, no danger threatened them. But if they failed to fulfil this act of devotion, the ferocious band that stood in waiting would be let loose at the signal from the monks, and would rush upon the Lutheran, beat him with their sticks, and not infrequently leave him lying dead upon the square. All the persons who were just ahead of Christian and the unknown man proceeded straight to the altar, and either out of fear or out of piety knelt down before the image of the Virgin and then rose and deposited their offerings in the purse held out by the Franciscans. A man, still young but frail and short of stature, behind whom Christian stood, said to himself in an undertone just as he was about to thread the turnstile and emerge into the square:
"I am a Catholic, but by the blood of G.o.d! I prefer to be cut to pieces rather than submit to such extortion. May the devil take the monks!"
"You will be wrong," said Christian to him in a low voice. "I revolt as much as you at the indignity. But what is to be done against force?
Submit to the ignominy."
"I shall protest at the peril of my life! Such excesses dishonor religion," the man answered Christian, and stepping out of the gate into the square with a firm step, he crossed the place without turning his head in the direction of the altar. Hardly, however, had he pa.s.sed by when the tattered mob who stood near the monks, ready at the latters"
beck, rushed forward in pursuit of the unhappy fellow; they overtook him, surrounded, and bawled at him: "Heretic!" "Lutheran!" "He insults the image of the mother of the Savior!" "Down on your knees!" "The canting hypocrite!" "Down on your knees!" "Death to the heretic!"
While these fanatics surrounded their victim, Christian said to his companion:
"Let us profit by the tumult to escape from these ferocious beasts; unfortunately it were idle to seek to s.n.a.t.c.h that senseless but stout-hearted man from the clutches of his a.s.sailants."
Christian and the unknown man in turn stepped out of the gate into the square and were hurriedly walking towards the opposite issue without stopping at the altar when, being caught sight of by the monks, the latter cried out:
"There go two other heretics! They are trying to escape without kneeling before the holy Virgin! Stop them! Bring them back and make them empty their purses!"
The voices of the Franciscans did not reach the ears of the demoniac pack, greedy as it was for its prey; they emitted savage yells as they beat to death, not a heretic, but a Catholic, whose sin consisted in refusing to submit to an adoration imposed upon him in a brutal manner, and which he otherwise would cheerfully have complied with. After the unhappy fellow had bravely defended himself with his cane, the only weapon that he carried, he was finally overwhelmed by numbers and fell livid, bleeding, and almost unconscious upon the pavement. A horrid-looking shrew seized him by the hair and while she dragged the almost lifeless body towards the altar other dastards from the dregs of the mob struck him in the face with their feet.
"Mercy!" cried the unhappy fellow in a faint voice. "Jesus!--My G.o.d!--Have pity upon me!--They are murdering a good Catholic!"
These were the brave fellow"s last words. His voice was soon heard no more. The butcher with whom Christian had exchanged a few words ran towards and joined the a.s.sa.s.sin mob. He piously knelt down before the statue of the Virgin, then rose, drew his knife, and brandishing it in the air cried:
"St. James! Let me bleed the d.a.m.ned Lutheran! It will be worth an indulgence to me! You know, bleeding is my profession!"
The sanguinary sally was received with loud outbursts of laughter; room was made for the butcher near the bleeding body; he squatted upon its still palpitating chest, slashed his knife through the prostrate man"s throat, cut the head from the trunk, seized it by the hair, and, holding up the shocking trophy to the gaze of the mob, he cried with wild ecstasy:
"The heretic dog would not bow down before the mother of the Savior--he shall now plant his forehead on the pavement at her feet!"
So said, so done. Followed by the demented band at his heels, the butcher ran back to the altar, holding the livid head in his hands, red and streaming with the warm blood of the victim; he knelt down himself, and slammed the head face down upon the ground at the feet of Mary, amidst the savage acclaim of his fellow a.s.sa.s.sins, all of whom piously threw themselves down upon their knees like himself.
"Oh, monsieur, this is frightful!" murmured Christian suffocating for breath as his companion and he stepped out of the square. "To think that such horrors are perpetrated in the name of the benign mother of Christ!
Oh, the wretches, as stupid as they are bloodthirsty!"
"Ignorance, misery and fanaticism!--that is their excuse. Let us not blame these unhappy people; they are what the monks have made them,"
answered the unknown with a bitter and desolate smile. "Oh, these monks, these monks! When will society be finally purged of the infernal breed!"
Christian and his companion hastened their steps towards the artisan"s house, nor dared they to turn and look behind.
CHAPTER V.