more effectually destroyed. Persons of rank
were heard to say in the public streets, "All the Huguenots must be
killed; this time their children must be killed, that none of the
accursed race may remain." Still, it is true, they were not murdered,
but cruelly treated, protestant children could no longer mix in the
sports of catholics, and were not even permitted to appear without their
parents. At dark their families shut themselves up in their apartments;
but even then stones were thrown against their windows. When they arose
in the morning, it was not uncommon to find gibbets drawn on their doors
or walls; and in the streets the catholics held cords already soaped
before their eyes, and pointed out the instruments by which they hoped
and designed to exterminate them. Small gallows or models were handed
about, and a man who lived opposite to one of the pastors, exhibited one
of these models in his window, and made signs sufficiently intelligible
when the minister passed. A figure representing a protestant preacher
was also hung up on a public crossway, and the most atrocious songs were
sung under his window. Towards the conclusion of the carnival, a plan
had even been formed to make a caricature of the four ministers of the
place, and burn them in effigy; but this was prevented by the mayor of
Nismes, a protestant. A dreadful song presented to the prefect, in the
country dialect, with a false translation, was printed by his approval,
and had a great run before he saw the extent of the error into which he
had been betrayed. The sixty-third regiment of the line was publicly
censured and insulted, for having, according to order, protected
protestants. In fact, the protestants seemed to be as sheep destined for
the slaughter.

_Napoleon's Return from the Isle of Elba._

Soon after this event, the duke d'Angouleme was at Nismes, and remained
there some time; but even his influence was insufficient to bring about
a reconciliation between the catholics and the protestants of that city.
During the hundred days betwixt Napoleon's return from the Isle of Elba,
and his final downfall, not a single life was lost in Nismes, not a
single house was pillaged; only four of the most notorious disturbers of
the peace were punished, or rather prevented from doing mischief, and
even this was not an act of the protestant but the _arrete_ of the
catholic prefect, announced every where with the utmost publicity. Some
time after, when M. B