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Updated: June 8, 2025
"You seem to have all the texts on this particular head at the tips of your fingers. Did you learn them for this particular purpose?" "My dear mother used to repeat to me a text every night, and expect me to repeat it to her the next day." "An excellent plan," said La Croissette, whipping his horse. And he hummed a tune. When we reached Montauban, he said,
"But what if I have earned another, and a good bowl of milk?" rejoined La Croissette, producing both as he spoke. "There, sit up and eat your fill; I've had my share in the house." "Where are we?" said I, readily obeying his instructions. "At a wayside farm-house, where the honest people have given my horse a good feed, and you and me a good breakfast." "How did you earn it, then?"
"Truly, our case is hard," said my mother, looking wistfully at my father. "It is so, my dear wife," replied he; "and I do not see my way clearly. Let us ask God to make it a little clearer to us." La Croissette looked amazed when he saw the whole family kneel down, and made a movement to go, but paused at the entrance and looked back on us.
Suddenly, some one at the entrance of our dungeon wishing us "Bon jour," made us start violently and look towards him in alarm. "You need not shrink from me," said La Croissette, advancing among us when he had looked around. "I may not be as good as yourselves, or I may be that's neither here nor there. I'm not quite a bad fellow, I believe, though at times I am driven to keep indifferent company.
We had scarcely drawn up under the trees, which were thinning of leaves, when we heard a distant hollow sound gradually growing louder as it approached. "The dragoons," said La Croissette, in a low voice. "I trust we shall escape their notice." They passed by like a whirlwind, taking the direction we had just left, and we congratulated ourselves on having quitted their path.
I cannot dwell on the terrible scenes we saw in crossing the country. Sometimes La Croissette did some trifling act of kindness, but the evils demanded more potent remedies. "This unfits me for my calling," said he, one day, as he scrambled into the cart and drove off. "How can one play the merry-andrew under such circumstances?
"No! did he, though?" said La Croissette, suddenly checking his horse. At the same moment, a woman sprang from the hedge and laid her hand on the shaft, saying: "Good sir, save us! we perish!" "What is the matter?" said he, starting. "We are fugitives from Nismes; we were beaten, we were burnt, we were pillaged." "My poor good woman, there are numbers in like case."
I cannot patter Ave Marias with a Catholic, nor sing interminable psalms like a Huguenot, but neither can I endure the ways the Catholics are taking to compel the Huguenots to submission. I take my own way, d'ye see, and am fettered by nobody. No one would molest La Croissette the needle-seller, not even a dragoon.
So many people are worse than we think them, that it is a comfort when some prove better than we think them. Worthy La Croissette! I have thy tall, meagre form and lantern jaws now before me. Many a showy professor might be bettered by having as true a heart. When he was gone, my father said, "Let us join once more in family worship, and then get a little sleep before our night-journey begins."
Our blessed Lord had more reason, humanly speaking, to trust Judas, than we to trust La Croissette; but you see this man was honest; you could not have tempted him to sell us for thirty pieces of silver. When he went forth, though, after supper, my mind misgave me for a while, thinking, "What if he be gone to betray us?" I wronged his worthy heart.
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