The Blacksmith's Hammer; or, The Peasant Code: A Tale of the Grand Monarch

"What sort of a hammer is that? It carries, cut into the iron head the Breton words Ez-Libr."

"They mean To Be Free. It was the device of Tankeru the blacksmith. He used this hammer as his weapon during the insurrection. I arrived this morning before dawn in the forest of Mezlean, feeling greatly alarmed over the fate of Tina's father. I went to his house early this morning. I calculated upon waiting there for nightfall, not daring to draw near Mezlean by daylight. I found at Tankeru's house only his desolate old mother. Tankeru had been arrested. Distracted with despair she informed me of her son's execution. My eyes alighted upon his hammer which lay near his extinct forge. I took its iron head. The blacksmith's hammer shall be joined to our symbolic relics. The manuscripts and the relic are to be forwarded to a relative, an artisan at Vannes, who will transmit them to his children. One of them will, perhaps, continue our plebeian annals by writing the history of Mademoiselle Plouernel and Nominoë Lebrenn."

Nominoë then proceeded to write and to read as he wrote:

"I, Nominoë Lebrenn, write this on the 17th of July, 1675, at the manor of Mezlean, one hour before dawn. Bertha of Plouernel is standing beside me. In a few minutes we shall leave the manor, which is surrounded by soldiers. The passage that leads from the close to the orchard runs under the road along which the sentries are on watch."

Nominoë stopped writing and asked Bertha:

"I understand it will be easy for us to reach the fields and the seashore after we are in the orchard?"

"Very easy, my friend. The owners of this manor had the vaulted passage dug under the road in order not to have to cross it every time they wished to go to the garden. The high walls that surround it will shelter us from the sight of the soldiers. The door that leads to the fields can be easily opened."

"When we leave the orchard," Nominoë proceeded to write, "we shall hasten to the seashore. The stones of Karnak rise there. The night is clear; the moon shines. Guided by the mellow light of the planet, Bertha and I, holding each other's hands, will climb the stairs of the ancient rock consecrated to the sacrifices, the druid trysting place, where ran the blood of Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen. When Bertha and I shall have reached the platform of the granite rock, then, in the presence of the immensity of the sky and the ocean, the illimitable expanses of which will spread before our eyes, we shall kneel down, and joining our voices, say to the God of justice:

"'We could not be joined in this world – we decided to be joined in death! in death, the mysterious dawn of our eternal re-birth! This expiatory union of a daughter of the conquering Franks with a son of the subjugated Gauls being impossible in the sight of man, we consecrate it before Thee. Our two souls are merged into one. May it please Thee, Oh, Almighty! that it may be likewise henceforth with our two races which have so long been enemies! May it please Thee to cause the one to regret the iniquities it has committed for these many centuries, and the other to pardon them! May it please Thee to cause this revolt, to which the oppressed were driven by an excess of hardships, to be a lesson to the vanquishers. May it please Thee so to ordain it that this shall be the last time blood is shed in these impious conflicts! May it please Thee that in the future the children, whether of the conquerors or the conquered, be forever equal in rights, equal in duties, equal in justice, and be like brothers in a broad humanity, Oh, God our Father! Freedom, equality, fraternity – the Universal Republic!'

"Having finished our prayer, Bertha and I – "

"Your pen, my friend!" said Mademoiselle Plouernel. "Give me your pen!"

And leaning over the table she wrote at the bottom of the page which Nominoë had begun:

"I, Bertha of Plouernel, close the narrative of what is to happen in a few minutes. Our prayer being finished, Nominoë and I, both upon our knees and filled with confident joy, will approach our lips to the magic philter which is to give us admission to the starry spheres; we shall soon thereupon feel our souls untrammeling themselves from their terrestrial wrappage, and fly radiant towards the Infinite. Death is but the separation of the body from the soul."

As Bertha was tracing these last lines the clock of the manor struck three in the morning.

"Nominoë," said Mademoiselle Plouernel, "let us make haste; it will not be long before daylight. Place this paper and the iron hammer head in your traveling wallet. We shall leave them upon the table, addressed to the person that you may designate. My old servant will forward it to him, as I shall instruct him by a last word from my hand," she added, as she wrote the instructions to Du Buisson.

While Nominoë placed the papers and the iron hammer head in his wallet, Bertha opened her casket, took from it a little flask filled with a bluish liquid, hid the same in her bosom, wrapped herself in a silk mantle, and reaching out her hand to Nominoë, said with a celestial smile:

"Come, my friend, let us depart for those mysterious worlds that none knows – and which we shall know at the hour of our re-birth!"

"Let us depart, Bertha!"

Mademoiselle Plouernel and Nominoë Lebrenn left the hall of the manor of Mezlean to descend into the underground passage.

The sky above is beautifully serene. The dew of night impregnates the atmosphere of this delightful summer's night with a delicate freshness. The approaching dawn is paling the stars, and tingeing the eastern horizon purple. The silence of the solitude is alone disturbed by the imposing murmur of the sea, calmly and sonorously rolling upon the shore where rise the stones of Karnak, sacred stones of ancient Gaul! gigantic pillars of a temple that has the firmament for its dome! Their ten long avenues converge towards the colossal sacrificial altar. Glory to the God of Gaul!

The horizon is reddened by the first fires of day. The crests of the long stretched waves of the azure ocean become transparently ruddy. The sands of the beach glisten like golden dust. The sun flares up; its rays seem to envelop the sacrificial altar with a dazzling aureola; above, the birds are singing their morning symphony.

On the altar, lifeless, close to each other, their arms interlaced in a supreme and chaste embrace, lie Bertha of Plouernel and Nominoë Lebrenn. Their beauty survives their death throes. With a smile upon their lips and their eyes half shut, they seem to slumber wrapped in peaceful repose. Their immortal soul has left their earthly bodies; it has fled to reincarnate itself in a new body, a body appropriate to the world that is to be their dwelling place, like the traveler who dons lighter clothing when journeying in a milder climate.

EPILOGUE

Bertha and Nominoë live at this hour, body and soul, spirit and matter, in those starry worlds where none of us on earth has been, where we all will go – after having accomplished our mission on earth.

My son believed I was dead, having, indeed been left for dead at Nantes by the soldiers against whom I defended myself to the utmost. Even my host took me for dead. He was engaged in procuring my burial when a movement that I made revealed to him that I still lived. Nursed by my friend with fraternal care, I recovered from my wounds and remained concealed in my place of refuge until the day when I embarked secretly at Nantes on an English vessel that took me to London. From there I crossed over into Holland, where a shipowner entrusted me with one of his vessels. Finding myself exiled from France, I requested my relative at Vannes, with whom the narratives and relics of my family were left for safe-keeping, to forward them to me by a Breton vessel. I found the relics increased by Tankeru's blacksmith's hammer and the archives by the sheets of paper left by Nominoë. With the aid of the letter and of my own recollections, I, Salaun Lebrenn, completed the preceding story, which I joined to those left to me by my ancestors, and which I shall transmit to my descendants.

Alas! Perhaps I must blame myself for the death of my son. I neglected to fortify his mind against suicide by teaching him that it is not allowed to us to forestall the hour of our deliverance, and that those who endeavor to escape the trials of this life are punished by God either by separating them, if they expected to be united after death, or by condemning them to reincarnation on earth.

Alas! my expiation of the negligence has continued during these many years of exile. May the trials that I underwent disarm the just anger of God, and soften the punishment reserved for my son, before his final union in the spirit world with her who loved him to the point of dying with him.

We are now in the year 1715, and I in the ninety-first year of my life, after having resided here in Holland since the year 1675, and where, in 1680, I married Wilhelmina Vandael, the widow of the shipowner in whose employ I was. In this year Louis XIV, the execrable King of France, died. His reign continued to the end a veritable scourge to the nation. Insurrections followed insurrections, and were smothered in their own blood. Religious persecutions followed upon religious persecutions. The Edict of Nantes by which Henry IV put an end to the religious wars that lasted half a century, was revoked, and the country was again a prey to desolating religious intolerance.

The death of Louis XIV will certainly put an end to the religious persecutions; at least will mitigate them. Thousands of Protestants, banished from France by the reign of terror, will, no doubt, now return to their own country. That pleasure will not be mine. I am too feeble with years to undertake such a voyage. But if, happier than myself, you, my son Alain, should ever return to the cradle of your race, never lose sight of the fact that our family has everything to fear from the Society of Jesus, whose influence seems to be on the ascendant in almost every country.

To you, my son Alain – the son of my old age and my exile – I now bequeath these legends and relics of our family. I bequeath them to you, the younger brother of my son Nominoë, ever lamented, ever wept. Even now my eyes are blurred with tears when I recollect the double suicide of himself and Bertha of Plouernel.

May you, my son Alain, be able to transmit these legends and relics to your descendants! May you soon be able to leave the Republic of Holland, the asylum and refuge of exiles, and return to France. May you witness the realization of the prophecy of Victoria the Great – the downfall of the monarchy, the liberation of Gaul!

May you, son of Joel, live to see the dawn of the day when our country, casting off the foreign name imposed upon her by the Frankish conquest, will re-assume her old name – the Republic of the Gauls, and will shelter herself under the glorious folds of her own ancient red flag, surmounted by the Gallic cock! – Commune and Federation!

Finally, in the event that, having no children, you may be unable to transmit the plebeian legends of our family to your direct descendants, you shall bequeath them to one of the two surviving branches of our family.

The first is that of the Renneponts, an ancestor of whom married at La Rochelle, towards the end of the Sixteenth Century, the daughter of Odelin the armorer, son of Christian the printer. I have had no news from the Rennepont branch of our family for many long years. You will have to inquire after it in La Rochelle, where, until the end of last century I knew them to reside.

The other branch of our family is that of the Gerolsteins, sovereign Princes in Germany, and descendants of Gaëlo the pirate, the grandson of our ancestor Vortigern, who met our ancestor Eidiol, the dean of the Parisian skippers, in the Tenth Century, on the occasion of the siege of Paris by the Northmans. The Princes of Gerolstein continue to reign in Germany, and have remained faithful to the Protestant religion since the time when it was embraced by Prince Charles of Gerolstein, who was the friend of Coligny, and whose son fought at the battle of Roche-la-Belle by the side of our ancestor Odelin, the armorer of La Rochelle.

Either to the Gerolsteins or the Renneponts our family archives and relics will be left by you, in the event of your not living onward in your posterity.

Along with these legends, I bequeath to you and your descendants our family hatred for the Church and for Royalty.

THE END

notes

1

All attribute to themselves the glory of success; reverses they impute to only one.

2

The above details of the torture of Cornelius De Witt, who had the fortitude to recite this strophe in the midst of atrocious sufferings, are scrupulously exact. See Basnage, History of the United Provinces, vol. II, p. 171.

3

For letters written by eye-witnesses of these atrocities, see Basnage, History of the United Provinces; Events of the Campaign of 1672, published at The Hague, 1675: The Cry of the Martyrs, published in the same city, 1673; etc., etc.

4

It is simply impossible to give the shocking details of their disfigurement.

5

Facts like these would seem incredible by their savage barbarity, did not authentic witnesses confirm them, almost daily, under the reign of the Grand Monarch. "The military constraint arrived in the town to the sound of bell and drum; then was furnished the melancholy spectacle of the house being demolished, the stones, the beams, the lumber, the iron publicly sold, because the owner had failed to pay his tax, etc., etc." —Vauban, La Dime Royale, vol. 1, chap. X. See also the New Code of Taxes, or the Collected Ordinances, Paris, 1761, article on Military Constraints; Forbonnais, Researches in Finance, etc.

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