3. CHAPTER III.
The fates had the blinded Ribault in their keeping. He was
ferried across the stream for the last time, by the grim ferryman
vouchsafed him; and the trophies which he first laid at the feet
of the adelantado consisted of his own armor, a dagger, a casque
of gold, curiously and beautifully wrought; his buckler, his pistolet,
and a secret commission which he had received at the hands
of Admiral Coligny himself. The standards of France and of
the Admiral were then lowered at the feet of the Spaniard, then
the banners of companies, and finally the sword of the Huguenot
general. Never was submission more complete and shameful.
The spirit of the veteran was utterly broken and gone. But this
degradation was not thus to end. Melendez gave orders that he
and the companions he had brought with him, eight in number,
should be tied with their hands behind their backs. The indignity
brought the blush with tenfold warmth into the cheeks of the
old warrior. He foresaw the inevitable doom before him, but he
felt the shame only.
“Have I lived for this? Is it thus, Monsieur Melendez, that
you treat a warrior and a Christian?”
“God forbid that I should treat a Christian after this fashion.
But are you a Christian, señor?”
“Of the Reformed Church, I am!” was the reply.
“I do not hold yours, señor, to be a church of Christ, but of
Satan. Bind him, my comrades, and take him hence.”
A significant wave of the fatal staff, which had prescribed the
line upon the spot of earth selected as the chosen place of sacrifice—the
scene of a new auto-da-fé as fearful as the preceding—
finished his instructions, and as the guards led the veteran away,
he commenced, in the well-known spirit of the time, to sing aloud
the psalm “
Domine, memento mei, &c.,” in that fearful moment
well conceiving that there was left him now but one source of consolation,
and none of present hope. He addressed no words of
expostulation to his murderer; but as they led him away, he
calmly remarked—“From the earth we came, to the earth we
must return; soon or late, it is all the same; such must have
been the fate. It is not what we would, but what we must.”
He renewed his psalm, the sounds of which grated offensively
on the bigot ears of Melendez, falling from such lips, and he impatiently
made the signal to his men to expedite the affair. The
Huguenot general was led off singing. One of the accounts before
us—for there is a Spanish and a French version of the history,
differing in several minute, but really unimportant particulars
—describes the last scene of Ribault's career, in a brief but
striking manner. The eight which constituted this party had
each his assassin assigned him. Among the companions of Ribault
at the moment of execution, was Lieutenant Ottigny, of
whom we have heard more than once before in the history of La
Caroline. They were led into the woods, out of sight and hearing
of the French on the opposite side of the bay, all of whom
were to be brought over, ten by ten, to the same place of sacrifice.
The soldier to whom Ribault had been confided, when they had
reached the spot strewn thickly with the corses of his murdered
people, said to him—
“Señor, you are the general of the French?”
“I am!”
“You have always been accustomed to exact obedience, without
question, from all the people under your command?”
“Without doubt!” replied Ribault, somewhat wondering at
the question.
“Deem it not strange, then, señor,” continued the soldier, “that
I execute faithfully the orders I have received from my commandant!”
And, speaking these words, he drove his poignard into the heart
of the victim, who fell upon his face, in death, without uttering a
groan. Ottigny and the others perished in like manner, and with
no farther preliminaries. Why pursue the details with the rest?
In this mannner each unconscious band of the Huguenots, thus
surrendering to the clemency of Melendez, was simply ferried
across the river to execution. And still the boat returned for and
with its little compliment of ten—it was only a proper precaution
that denied that more should be brought—and the succeeding
voyagers dreamed not, even as they sped, their comrades were
sinking one by one under the hands of their butchers. More than
a hundred perished on this occasion, but four of the number
avowing themselves to be of the Roman Catholic Church, and being
spared accordingly.
