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Poor persecuted little thing! the uncertain hope of her existence seemed really the only thread that still bound Berenger to life. He had spent eighteen months in hope deferred, and constant bodily pain; and when the frightful disappointment met him at La Sablerie, it was not wonder that his heart and hope seemed buried in the black scorched ruins where all he cared for had perished.
They were well known at La Sablerie as sailors belonging to a ship of the fleet of the Count de Montgomery, the unfortunate knight whose lance had caused the death of King Henry II., and who, proscribed by the mortal hatred of Catherine de Medicis, had become the admiral of a piratical fleet in the Calvinist interest, so far winked at the Queen Elizabeth that it had its head-quarters in the Channel Islands, and thence was a most formidable foe to merchant vessels on the northern and eastern coasts of France; and often indulged in descents on the coast, when the sailors being in general the scum of the nation were apt to comport themselves more like American buccaneers than like champions of any form of religion.
'I cannot justly say, sir, returned Master Hobbs, without taking his gaze off the coast, 'but by yonder banks and creeks this should be the Sables d'Olonne; and I do not see the steeple of La Sablerie, which has always been the landmark for the harbour of St. Julien. 'What do you understand by that? asked Berenger, more struck by his manner than his words.
Meetings were rare now and then Madame de Selinville would appear at dinner or at supper as her father's guest; and more rarely, the Chevalier would turn his horse's head in the direction of Bellaise, and the three gentlemen would be received in the unpartitioned parlour, and there treated to such lemon cakes as had been the ruin of La Sablerie; but in general the castle and the convent had little intercourse, or only just enough to whet the appetite of the prisoners for what constituted their only variety.
We went to La Sablerie, and he broke off. 'I understand. Ah! let us say no more! It rends the heart; and again she wiped away tear. 'And now
I may be lightning, to be sure; or the Protestants may have had it down for Popery; but methinks they would have too much Christian regard for poor mariners than to knock down the only landmark on this coast till you come to Nissard spire. Then he hailed the man at the mast-head, demanding if he saw the steeple of La Sablerie.
A faithful servant saved my life, but I have lain sick in England till now, when her letter to my mother brought me to La Sablerie, to find to find THIS. Oh, sir, have pity on me! Tell me if you know anything of her, or if you can give me her child. 'The orphans I was able to save are the boys at nurse here, the girls with the good nuns at Lucon, said the priest, with infinite pity in his look.
The Huguenots had been so predominant at La Sablerie as to have engrossed the building, and it had therefore shared the general destruction, and lay in utter, desolate ruin, a mere shell, and the once noble spire, the mariner's guiding star, blown up with gun-cruel that ever desolated the country. Beyond lay the burial-ground, in unspeakable dreariness.
Adderley and some of my Lady's women by sea, under the charge of Master Hobbs, a shipmaster at Weymouth, who traded with Bordeaux for wine, and could easily put in near La Sablerie, and bring off the lady and child, and, if she wished it, the pastor to whom such a debt of gratitude was owing.
It would have been mere madness to think of trusting the lady in such hands; and, without a word to each other, Gardon and Mericour resolved to give no hint even that she and her jewels were in La Sablerie.
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