By some pretended magic mirror's lore
That still he lived, a gentleman of Spain,--
And the dread flood rolled onward to the shore!

XIV

THE FACE OF THE TERROR

"Paris is no place in these times for a Huguenot lad from Navarre," said
Dominic de Gourgues, of Mont-de-Marsan in Gascony. "His father, Francois
Debre, did me good service in the Spanish Indies. One of these days,
Philip and his bloodhounds will be pulled down by these young terriers
they have orphaned."

"If the Jesuits have their way all Huguenots will be exterminated, men,
women and children," said Laudonniere, with a gleam of melancholy
sarcasm in his dark pensive eyes. "Life to a Jesuit is quite simple."

"My faith," said Gascon, twisting his mustache, "they may find in that
case, that other people can be simple too. But I must be off. I thank
you for making a place for Pierre."

In consequence of this conversation, when Ribault's fleet anchored near
the River of May, on June 25, 1564, Pierre Debre was hanging to the
collars of two of Laudonniere's deerhounds and gazing in silent wonder
at the strange and beautiful land.

"The fairest, fruitfullest and pleasantest land in all the world," Jean
Ribault had said in his report two years before to Coligny the Great
Admiral of France. Live-oaks and cedars untouched for a thousand years
were draped in luxuriant grape-vines or wreathed with the mossy gray
festoons of "old men's beard." Cypress and pine mingled with the
shining foliage of magnolia and palm. From the marsh arose on sudden
startled wings multitudes of water-fowl. The dogs tugged and whined
eagerly as if they knew that in these vast hunting-forests there was an
abundance of game. In this rich land, thus far neglected by the Spanish
conquistadores because it yielded neither gold nor silver, surely the
Huguenots might find prosperity and peace. Coligny was a Huguenot and a
powerful friend, and if the French Protestants now hunted into the
mountains or driven to take refuge in England, could be transplanted to
America, France might be spared the horrors of religious civil war.

Pierre was thirteen and looked at least three years older. He could not
remember when his people and their Huguenot neighbors had not lived in
dread of prison, exile or death. When he was not more than ten years old
he had guided their old pastor to safety in a mountain cave, and seen
men die, singing, for their faith. After the death of his father