Chapter X: Troyes—her Saint and Her Salvation

The siege of Orleans was raised. But it was some time before any feeling of security could be restored to the city; before the rescued citizens could feel sure that the flying squadrons of the nimble Tartar horsemen were not merely wheeling away in some of their bewildering manœuvres, to dash back with redoubled force against the walls.

All that night, therefore, there was anxious watching kept from rampart and tower. Between the almost incredible joy of rescue, and the moans of the wounded and dying, there was little sleep in Orleans that night.

Baithene kept guard near one of the breaches of the shattered walls, and gradually the silence of the deserted fields, so lately the camping-ground of a nation, flowed over him with a sense of deliverance and peace. For some time there was a distant sound of the multitudinous movements of a retreating host; but the sounds were like those of an ebbing tide, growing fainter and fainter and more broken, till they died away altogether, and he felt that the foe was really gone.

Joyful and solemn was the early Eucharist in the cathedral the next morning. Baithene met Ethne at the portal. Bishop Anianus and all the clergy were there. The church was full, and every prayer and anthem went up with the throb of a great multitude. But again in the moment of triumph, as in the moment of anguish, the Eucharistic hymns rose up beyond the moment. Deep in every heart was thanksgiving for rescue from ravage and ruin; but deeper and higher still flowed the eternal tide of joy in the rescue and redemption of the world, not for a moment but for ever, not by a victorious army but by a willing Victim, not through the triumph of force but through the weakness of the Cross. As through the anguish of suspense had risen the Eucharistic song, “_We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee_,” so through the triumph flowed the tenderness of the Eternal Sacrifice, the love that was perpetually giving itself.

Roman and Gothic soldiers knelt together. Ethne’s head was bowed, and her eyes, when she lifted them, were full of tears. Perhaps alone among that exulting multitude, in her prayers the vanquished and retreating enemy had a share. The ugly brown head of the dying boy so near her brother’s age, his feeble, grateful smile, his groans of pain, were in her heart. Perhaps in that worshipping multitude there were few besides who felt as she did how far the tide of redeeming love might reach from the heart of “the Lamb of God, Who taketh away the sins of the world.”

As they left the church, at the door they met once more the young Roman officer who had watched them from his horse while the Tartar boy was dying. He evidently recognized them, and respectfully made way for them.

The city was full of joy. Every house in it for the moment seemed like a side-chapel of a cathedral, so deeply had the intercessions of Bishop Anianus with God and man, with the Roman general and the Gothic king, day and night in the church, in the streets, and on the ramparts, moved every heart.

Ethne and Baithene had already many friends in Orleans, and began to feel at home there in a community of brethren. They would gladly have stayed there, but Eleazar was restless to depart, and, to the dismay of Miriam, nothing would dissuade him from going northward in the track of the retreating army. He had fellow-countrymen and commercial relations in Troyes. The city of Troyes was a great commercial emporium, the central point of a network of Roman roads, and once there, he thought he could make his way whither he would. The second morning after the raising of the siege, the little party therefore started from one of the gates of Orleans. They had hired of a citizen two strong mules, which were to accompany them to the nearest point on the river Seine, by which Eleazar had determined to reach Troyes. Danger was everywhere, but he felt safe and less likely to be observed in a boat on a river. As they went through the gate, the young Roman officer was there, commanding the guard. He saw them at once, and this time came forward and asked if he could render them any assistance.

“Surely,” he said, “you are not going forth on the track of the enemy across this waste land?”

Eleazar was disposed to resent any interference with his private affairs, but he dared not refuse to state whither and on what errand they were going.

“We must needs go hence without delay,” he said; “but we are only poor folk, and our poverty will be our best protection against plunder. In a short time we hope to be safe amongst friends.”

Marius, the young Roman, felt he had no right to inquire further. Besides, what protection had he to offer? Already a portion of the Roman and Gothic armies had left in pursuit of the retreating Huns, and that day the rest were to follow, leaving Orleans to repair her own walls and defend herself. Therefore, though with a sore heart, and much perplexed as to the relations between the fair-haired youth and maiden and the dark, Oriental-looking old man, he let the little company pass on. To direct attention to them might, he felt, only increase their peril, but he watched them far across the desolate plain, until the little band disappeared from his sight on the edge of a forest.

Eleazar was well versed in making his way through perils. They rather avoided the imperial roads, and crept along through by-ways. As it happened, their present peril was rather from hunger than from robbery, so thoroughly had the Huns ravaged the land and massacred or hunted away the inhabitants. By day they travelled miles without seeing a human being. The green corn had been cut down for the cattle; the vineyards were a tangle of scarred and broken stems; the husbandmen and vine-dressers had fled no one knew whither. The June sunshine shone down on a broad waste of trampled desert. All along the way, moreover, there were ghastlier traces of the invasion; unburied corpses lying by the wayside in heaps, or one by one, smitten down in their flight; and at night, when they sought shelter behind the walls of some burnt village, only the dogs gathered round them—cowed, lean, hungry dogs, whom the Irish deer-hound for the most part frightened away—poor famished dogs, finding terrible food in the human bones scattered around the ruined homes.

Only one night did they happen to find any traces of the inhabitants. It was the last day before they reached the banks of the Seine. They had encamped for the night on the edge of a forest, and spread their rugs and garments on the ground inside the ruined walls of a hovel. In the middle was a hole full of ashes, and on these still lay some charred chestnuts. Outside was a stone trough by a little spring, which bubbled up and trickled into it; a broken pitcher had been left beside it. In a corner of the little ruined home Ethne discovered a rude wooden cradle and a child’s rattle. When she saw it she burst into an uncontrollable fit of weeping. When Miriam tried to comfort her in this rare burst of emotion, “Where, where is the poor mother?” was all she could say, “and the little child?”

When she recovered, and had begun with Baithene to gather chips for the fire among the trees near at hand, they heard a faint hushed wail near them, as if some one were trying to soothe the cries of a child. Creeping softly on into the forest, they came on a little family group, an old man and a young woman, with two children crying for hunger. Something in Ethne’s face and voice always made people trust her, and to her delight she found she understood what they were saying to each other.

“They are of the Bagaudæ!” she said to Baithene. “The poor oppressed peasants of our own race!” and she insisted on bringing them all to the hovel.

Eleazar was not altogether pleased at this addition to the family circle; but Miriam welcomed them as her father Abraham might of old. The fire was lit, and cakes of flour were laid on it, and shared with the hungry peasants. The children were evidently quite at home. They ran up to the cradle, and for the moment all their sorrows were blotted out at the discovery of their own lost toys; and soon all slept, except Ethne and the mother, who held a whispered conversation.

“What will you do to-morrow night?” Ethne asked, a royal instinct of providing for others always deep in her heart.

“Perhaps we may creep back home again,” the woman said.

At first she seemed afraid to say more; but no one could hesitate long to confide in Ethne. And soon her story came out.

“The Huns are gone,” Ethne said, “and the Romans and Goths are pursuing them.”

But that scarcely seemed to comfort the poor mother. She explained that though the Huns were their worst enemies, as they destroyed their crops and burnt their homes, still, whoever ruled, they, the peasants, were always slaves, sure to be compelled to work as hard and live on as little as possible, whether the masters were Goths or Romans; and it seemed that in some respects the Roman tax-gatherers were the worst oppressors of all, because they understood best how to wring out the last farthing.

Then, seeing Ethne’s sympathetic distress, she took to comforting her in turn, and confided to her that her husband and the men of the family were in hiding not far off, and that they had little secret storehouses of fruits and grain. She told her also of a wonderful old man, who lived alone in a cave of the forest, and spoke of the good Lord and Saviour, and baptized the little ones and taught them, and sometimes gathered them together for the Holy Eucharist. And so Ethne was comforted.

At last they reached the river Seine, and found a few frightened boatmen willing to row them up to Troyes, which they reached in safety on the fourth evening after they left Orleans. There Eleazar found his friends, but received a scant welcome.

“Why came you hither?” they said. “Of what use is it to be at the meeting-place of roads going in every direction, when the stations on all the roads are abandoned, and many of the roads themselves broken up? The Huns are pushing on through the country. Some of their horsemen galloped past the town yesterday, and to-morrow we may be overwhelmed by the whole flying host.”

The wilful old man was convinced for once that he had made a mistake, but he said—

“Who can say which way is the worst? Southward are the Romans and Goths, victorious; here are the Huns, defeated. The victorious Romans are as bad for us to encounter as the defeated Tartars. Little choice for us between heathen vanquished and Christian victors. What will the citizens of Troyes do?”

“We have no defence,” was the grim reply. “Troyes has no walls.”

“Why then,” said Eleazar, “do you not all take flight at once?”

“Troyes has a Bishop,” was the reply; “a great saint, who is clothed in rough raiment, and lives on nothing, they say, like our Elijah. He is called Lupus. The people believe in him; they believe the city is walled around by his prayers.”

“Another Anianus! another living saint!” murmured Ethne, turning with shining eyes on her brother. “We shall be saved, but I wonder how!”

Eleazar’s acquaintance resumed—

“It is strange; it makes one think of our old histories in spite of oneself. It is like Elisha and his wall of fire.”

Miriam’s face quivered with emotion.

“The God of Elisha is living,” she sighed, “and surely He is never far off.”

Eleazar made no reply but a despairing groan, and went out to find a safe hiding-place for his chests. But when Miriam and he were alone together again he said reproachfully—

“Thinkest thou the angels of God will build walls of fire around these Gentiles? As they have done unto us so shall it be done unto them.”

“I know not,” was Miriam’s reply. “I was thinking of the old words, ‘Should I not spare Nineveh, the great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle?’”

“But that,” said Eleazar, “is in the Book of Jonah, a wonderful and mysterious apologue, which it is dangerous for the people who know not the law, especially for women, to interpret.”

That evening Ethne reminded Baithene that a monk of Tours had given them on the second tablet a letter to Lupus, Bishop of Troyes—the very man whose prayers, as Eleazar’s acquaintance had said, made a wall of fire round the city.

Eleazar had found the introduction to Bishop Anianus of Orleans too satisfactory for him to refuse that the captives should make use of this second tablet. The next morning, therefore, Ethne and Baithene went to the church to present their introduction. The good, aged Bishop himself lay prostrate before the altar in sackcloth and ashes. After a time he rose, lifted his hands in benediction, and went forth through the streets at the head of a procession of clergy and people, also in penitential robes of sackcloth, with ashes on their heads, chanting litanies. Ethne and Baithene followed. They had been impressed by the power and light in the sunken eyes and on the worn and hollow face of the Bishop; but they had little hope of getting near the holy man himself, until, as he entered his own door, they saw him pause on the threshold, that the poor mothers might draw near for him to lay his hands on their children and bless them. Then Ethne and Baithene ventured to press near, and present him with the old monk’s tablet. It was at once accepted with a gracious welcome, and the brother and sister were led into the house, and committed to the care of an aged priest.

“Alas! my children,” he said, “I fear you have come to the very den of the lion. Attila and the Huns are at our doors; walls and gates we have none. This very morning the tramp of the host has been heard, and the Bishop is to lead us forth in solemn procession to plead with Attila for mercy. Perhaps you will help us more by your prayers than we can help you.”

It was indeed too true. The savage cries of the horsemen, the heavy grind of the wagons, all the signs of the advance of the savage horde, with which they had grown so terribly familiar during the siege of Orleans, were around them again, growing louder and louder, nearer and nearer, every hour. And there was absolutely no defence; no walls, no garrison, nothing but a multitude of unwarlike citizens, with the women and children; absolutely no defence but faith and prayer.

When the brother and sister returned to Eleazar, they found him far more gentle than usual, and reproaching himself.

“Miriam, my wife,” he said, “I have brought you all into this den of lions, and I am no Daniel; and I had no command to come!”

As he spoke, a procession of clergy drew near in white robes, and at the head the aged Bishop in full sacerdotal vestments. Slowly they advanced, chanting the psalms of Eleazar’s own people, in Latin, David’s familiar Miserere, “_In the multitude of Thy mercies, blot out my iniquities_.” And the old Jew reverently bent his head, swept away on the tide of prayer. It seemed also as if some individual arrow had pierced his own conscience, for as the captives followed the procession, and he was left alone with his wife, he said to her—

“I had no call to come hither; no call to make slaves of these children! Miriam, _what_ is driving me hither and thither through the earth? Surely there _is_ the child; we _shall_ find her; we _will_ ransom her and make her all a child of our house has a right to be. It is for her I am striving and bargaining, and wandering like Cain to and fro through the earth. But is it of the Lord? Or can it be that the Adversary is hunting me hither and thither by his enchantments?”

Then, after some hesitation, Miriam ventured to say, in a voice quivering with emotion—

“Have you not told me, my beloved, that there is an idol, an enchantment, an enchanter, a thing, a demon, called Mammon?”

“It may be,” he replied, with a startled look of horror, as one half-waking from a nightmare. “But however that may be, this Bishop has the look of an Elijah. Let us go in and pray!”

Slowly the procession moved on with the Bishop at its head, and closely following him, a young deacon called Nemorius, clasping to his breast the book of the Gospels bound in gold. Numbers of the townspeople were following. Ethne returned to Miriam, but Baithene was swept on in the tide.

Close on the outskirts of the town they encountered the advance-guard of the host pressing on to the plunder of the city. The nimble brown men with the swift horses, which were as part of themselves, wheeled around them. Javelins were raised to hurl at them, spears were pointed, with the fierce howls and cries which seemed to have caught the tone of the wild beasts of the desert. Nor were these aimless, unmeaning menaces. Even while the procession advanced towards the enemy, Attila had given the order to cut them all down. Nemorius the young deacon fell pierced to death, with his golden Gospels still clasped to his breast; and many sank wounded or dead beside him. It seemed as if there would be a general massacre. But still the old Bishop Lupus pressed on, until he reached Attila; and then, something in the venerable figure and the worn, aged face, with its fire undimmed by the seventy years, something in the man himself, seemed suddenly to impress the fierce and haughty conqueror who had insulted emperors without fear, and had destroyed cities and devastated provinces without mercy.

Attila gave order for the carnage to cease, and at a nod, at a look from him, javelins were lowered, spears were couched, the eager war-horses were held in check, and the procession with the white-haired Bishop in his priestly robes stood still, surrounded by the checked host of foes, confronting the Desolator of nations.

It was as if a raging sea had been arrested at full tide, each foaming wave frozen into stillness in the curve of its breaking.

What was said in that wonderful interview can scarcely be known. Few who could understand were near enough to hear.

It was rumoured afterwards that Attila himself claimed to be “the Scourge of God,” and that the Bishop with lofty meekness replied—

“If thou art the Scourge of God, chasten us as much as the Hand that holds thee permits.”

Probably this was merely a dramatic echo in words of the deed done. Whatever was said, what was felt and done cannot be denied.

Troyes was no Rome guarded by the glory of centuries and the magic of a great name. It was an unhistorical, unwalled town, such as Attila had burned and sacked by scores. The Bishop bore no great title such as he could have heard of; it was simply the man, the saint, the man of God that moved him,—moved him not merely to turn aside from an intended enterprise, but to curb his fierce hosts in the full career of plunder and slaughter; a host that was not composed only of his own people, but of the fiercer and more lawless elements of the Gothic tribes, and of Alans and Vandals. One stipulation only the leader of that savage host made; and the stipulation was almost a greater tribute to the Bishop’s character and influence than the granting of his request. Attila said he would spare the city on one condition, that the aged Bishop should leave it and accompany him and his hordes to the Rhone. Perhaps he meant it as a test of the saint’s courage and sincerity. If so, they stood the test. The old man yielded himself up to Attila, and the procession, with the grateful citizens, returned to the rescued city. Perhaps some of them felt that they owed their deliverance to a double sacrifice: the aged Bishop, who offered up his life amidst the perils of the hostile army; and the young deacon, who had laid it down pierced by their spears.

Silently Baithene re-entered the dwelling where his sister awaited him with Eleazar and Miriam.

“Has anything come of this bearding of the lion?” Eleazar asked.

“_Everything_,” Baithene replied. “The Bishop has given himself up to the Huns, and the city is saved.”

“_In_ the lion’s den!” said Eleazar, bowing his head and hiding his face.

“With Him Who can stop the mouths of the lions,” murmured Miriam.

“With the Creator of the lions!” said Ethne. “He made everything _good_, they told us in Ireland. Even the lions! Even Attila is not _only_ a destroyer.”

Afterwards, when they were alone, she said to Baithene—

“Who can tell what even Attila might have been if the Christians he met had all been saints!”

“He seems to have a wonderful eye for a saint,” Baithene admitted. “But we must pray hard for the Bishop.”

“I do not believe Attila will hurt a hair of his head,” rejoined Ethne. “He is, after all, nothing worse than a Hun, and I cannot forget the poor ugly brown head that I had to hold, or the kind dying eyes that looked into mine.”