The Refugees by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — Read

The elderly Huguenot had stood silent after his repulse by the king, / with his eyes cast moodily downwards, and a face in which doubt, sorrow, / and anger contended for the mastery. He was a very large, gaunt man, / raw-boned and haggard, with a wide forehead, a large, fleshy nose, and a / powerful chin. He wore neither wig nor powder, but Nature had put her / own silvering upon his thick grizzled locks, and the thousand puckers / which clustered round the edges of his eyes, or drew at the corners of / his mouth, gave a set gravity to his face which needed no device of the / barber to increase it. Yet in spite of his mature years, the swift / anger with which he had sprung up when the king refused his plaint, and / the keen fiery glance which he had shot at the royal court as they filed / past him with many a scornful smile and whispered gibe at his expense, / all showed that he had still preserved something of the strength and of / the spirit of his youth. He was dressed as became his rank, plainly and / yet well, in a sad-coloured brown kersey coat with silver-plated / buttons, knee-breeches of the same, and white woollen stockings, ending / in broad-toed black leather shoes cut across with a great steel buckle. / In one hand he carried his low felt hat, trimmed with gold edging, and / in the other a little cylinder of paper containing a recital of his / wrongs, which he had hoped to leave in the hands of the king's / secretary.

His doubts as to what his next step should be were soon resolved for him / in a very summary fashion. These were days when, if the Huguenot was / not absolutely forbidden in France, he was at least looked upon as a / man who existed upon sufferance, and who was unshielded by the laws / which protected his Catholic fellow-subjects. For twenty years the / stringency of the persecution had increased until there was no weapon / which bigotry could employ, short of absolute expulsion, which had not / been turned against him. He was impeded in his business, elbowed out of / all public employment, his house filled with troops, his children / encouraged to rebel against him, and all redress refused him for the / insults and assaults to which he was subjected. Every rascal who wished / to gratify his personal spite, or to gain favour with his bigoted / superiors, might do his worst upon him without fear of the law. Yet, in / spite of all, these men clung to the land which disowned them, and, full / of the love for their native soil which lies so deep in a Frenchman's / heart, preferred insult and contumely at home to the welcome which would / await them beyond the seas. Already, however, the shadow of those days / was falling upon them when the choice should no longer be theirs.