From Caen to Rotterdam, Chapter V [pp. 105-113]

FROM CAEN TO ROTTERDA4M.
for his old grand-parents, for his uncle
Jean, the wife and children,-as also for
the unknowIn ones, buried in conventlife among their bigoted Roman Catholic
guardians.
Suzanne and Madeleine both preserved
wdithl pious reverence their family peculiarities, and the elder had not quite renounced her fancy for converting her
neighbors. She wrote to her brother
Jean, and sent by the hand of Pitre:
"Never was surprise or grief greater than
ours at this moment, when the boy Pitre
is about to leave us. But of this wve will
not speak.
"You told us, along time ago, that your
son was learning mathematics. The sciences are always a good thing to know,
although I do not believe they add much
to one's capacity for earning a livelihood.
And when his course is finished, then
will he not go over to the Jesuits? Ought
you to suffer it?
"If he takes this step, it will surely
lead to another still worse, and to us it
will prove a fresh heart-sorrow; for he is
our nephew, as near to us by blood as
Pitre.
"Happily, this latter, who brings you
my letter, can have no occasion to go
into situations so dangerous in order to
learn his calling; for the Jesuits, wise as
as they profess to be, have not half the
knowledge of different languages as your
nephew, and it is by this acquirement
we hope he may soon be able to find a
good l osition. We recommend him to
your kind care, and to that of our sisterin-law, to whom he is charged to deliver
the spiced bread and Holland gin which
we send to her with our love.
"MADELEINE."
Pitre was commissioned, at the same
time, to present durable stuff for a coat,
destined for young Claas Baserat, whom
his aunts affectionately bore in mind,
spite of the crime he had committed, in
their eyes, of studying mathematics with
the Jesuits. From the time he was seven
years old, the little boy Claas had kept
the books of commercial correspondence
for his father, and was now applying his
mind to a more complicated branch of
business, in the hope of bringing to the
firm a new and more useful department.
"Claas is more steady, and thinks
deeper at seven years of age, than Hans
will when he gets to be twenty!" wrote
Jean Basirat to his sisters, in his usual
querulous way.
Strange as it may seem, these Norman
children all bore foreign names, having
had their godfathers and mothers selected forlthem from their relatives living
in Holland. It was, nevertheless, essential, in order to make the children French
citizens, to baptize the newly born, according to Roman Catholic forms, vlwhich,
however, they assured the Reformers,
was considered simply a civic ordinance.
On such occasions, the Church substituted Catholic servants, living in the families of the Reformers, or they even called
in two straggling mnendicants that might
happen to stand at the door of the cathedral.
Every time that Gillome learned by
letter of the birth of a child among her
relatives in Caen, she looked with loving
gratitude at her last daughter, the young
Rachel, who had been baptized bly the good
pastor M. de Bosq, with free, untrammeled
hands, and pure heart that knew no fear.
"If we have the misfortune to live far
away firom our dear kinsmen in Caen,
and are in exile as well, we are at liberty
to walk in the truth as we see it," often
soliloquized the pious woman. At the
bottom of her heart, warm as her attachmelit had never ceased to be toward
her native land, there lay a secret blame,
almost contempt, for those who had not
summoned courage enough to break the
links that bound them to France, for conscience' sake.
Then Gillome would reproach herself
for what she considered a hard judgment
of others, anddalackof Christian charity,her spiritual pride, as she was pleased to
call it, though in truth never was soul
more lowly!
On the next sailing day, after these inward murmurings at her absent kinsfolk,
the ship would leave port, conveying
1876.]
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