The Long Night | Page 2

overflowing with good nature: he must speak to
some one. "If you had not been in front," he began, "I----"
But the tailor also cut him short--frowning and laying his finger to his
lip and pointing mysteriously to the ground. The stranger stooped to
look more closely, but saw nothing: and it was only when the others
dropped on their knees that he understood the hint and hastened to
follow the example. The soldiers bent their heads while the sergeant
recited a prayer for the safety of the city. He did this reverently, while
the evening light--which fell grey between walls and sobered those who
had that moment left the open sky and the open country--cast its
solemn mantle about the party.

Such was the pious usage observed in that age at the opening and the
closing of the gates of Geneva: nor had it yet sunk to a form. The
nearness of the frontier and the shadow of those clutching arms, ever
extended to smother the free State, gave a reality to the faith of those
who opened and shut, and with arms in their hands looked back on ten
years of constant warfare. Many a night during those ten years had
Geneva gazed from her watch-towers on burning farms and
smouldering homesteads; many a day seen the smoke of Chablais
hamlets float a dark trail across her lake. What wonder if, when none
knew what a night might bring forth, and the fury of Antwerp was still
a new tale in men's ears, the Genevese held Providence higher and His
workings more near than men are prone to hold them in happier times?
Whether the stranger's reverent bearing during the prayer gained the
sergeant's favour, or the sword tied to his bundle and the bulging
corners of squat books which stuffed out the cloak gave a new notion of
his condition, it is certain that the officer eyed him more kindly when
all rose from their knees. "You can pass in now, young sir," he said
nodding. "But another time remember, if you please, the earlier here the
warmer welcome!"
"I will bear it in mind," the young traveller answered, smiling. "Perhaps
you can tell me where I can get a night's lodging?"
"You come to study, perhaps?" The sergeant puffed himself out as he
spoke, for the fame of Geneva's college and its great professor,
Theodore Beza, was a source of glory to all within the city walls.
Learning, too, was a thing in high repute in that day. The learned
tongues still lived and were passports opening all countries to scholars.
The names of Erasmus and Scaliger were still in the mouths of men.
"Yes," the youth answered, "and I have the name of a lodging in which
I hope to place myself. But for to-night it is late, and an inn were more
convenient."
"Go then to the 'Bible and Hand,'" the sergeant answered. "It is a decent
house, as are all in Geneva. If you think to find here a roistering,
drinking, swearing tavern, such as you'd find in Dijon----"

"I come to study, not to drink," the young man answered eagerly.
"Well, the 'Bible and Hand,' then! It will answer your purpose well.
Cross the bridge and go straight on. It is in the Bourg du Four."
The youth thanked him with a pleased air, and turning his back on the
gate proceeded briskly towards the heart of the city. Though it was not
Sunday the inhabitants were pouring out from the evening preaching as
plentifully as if it had been the first day of the week; and as he scanned
their grave and thoughtful faces--faces not seldom touched with
sternness or the scars of war--as he passed between the gabled
steep-roofed houses and marked their order and cleanliness, as he saw
above him and above them the two great towers of the cathedral, he felt
a youthful fervour and an enthusiasm not to be comprehended in our
age.
To many of us the name and memory of Geneva stand for anything but
freedom. But to the Huguenot of that generation and day, the name of
Geneva stood for freedom; for a fighting aggressive freedom, a full
freedom in the State, a sober measured freedom in the Church. The city
was the outpost, southwards, of the Reformed religion and the
Reformed learning; it sowed its ministers over half Europe, and where
they went, they spread abroad not only its doctrines but its praise and
its honour. If, even to the men of that day there appeared at times a
something too stiff in its attitude, a something too near the Papal in its
decrees, they knew with what foes and against what odds it fought, and
how little consistent with the ferocity of that struggle