rudence,
and devotedness, above all praise. His return furnished abundant and
incontestible proof of a shameful persecution, materials for an appeal
to the British Parliament, and a printed report which was circulated
through the continent, and which first conveyed correct information to
the inhabitants of France.

Foreign interference was now found eminently useful; and the
declarations of tolerance which it elicited from the French government,
as well as the more cautious march of the catholic persecutors, operated
as decisive and involuntary acknowledgments of the importance of that
interference, which some persons at first censured and despised but
though the stern voice of public opinion in England and elsewhere
produced a reluctant suspension of massacre and pillage, the murderers
and plunderers were still left unpunished, and even caressed and
rewarded for their crimes; and whilst protestants in France suffered the
most cruel and degrading pains and penalties for alleged trifling
crimes, _catholics_, covered with blood, and guilty of numerous and
horrid murders, were acquitted.

Perhaps the virtuous indignation expressed by some of the more
enlightened catholics against these abominable proceedings, had no small
share in restraining them. Many innocent protestants had been condemned
to the galleys and otherwise punished, for supposed crimes, upon the
oaths of wretches the most unprincipled and abandoned. M. Madier de
Montgau, judge of the _cour royale_ of Nismes, and president of the
_cour d'assizes_ of the Gard and Vaucluse, upon one occasion felt
himself compelled to break up the court, rather than take the deposition
of that notorious and sanguinary monster Truphemy: "In a hall," says he,
"of the Palace of Justice, opposite that in which I sat, several
unfortunate persons persecuted by the faction were upon trial, every
deposition tending to their crimination was applauded with the cries of
'_Vive le Roi_.' Three times the explosion of this atrocious joy became
so terrible, that it was necessary to send for reinforcements from the
barracks, and two hundred soldiers were often unable to restrain the
people. On a sudden the shouts and cries of '_Vive le Roi_' redoubled: a
man arrives, caressed, applauded, borne in triumph--it is the horrible
Truphemy; he approaches the tribunal--he comes to depose against the
prisoners--he is admitted as a witness--he raises his hand to take the
oath! Seized with horror at the