n between Catholics and Huguenots. The Huguenots, guessing how
that would end, resolved to settle the question for themselves. They
rose in one city after another, sacked the churches, destroyed the
images, put down by main force superstitious processions and dances; and
did many things only to be excused by the exasperation caused by thirty
years of cruelty. At Montpellier there was hard fighting, murders--so
say the Catholic historians--of priests and monks, sack of the new
cathedral, destruction of the noble convents which lay in a ring round
Montpellier. The city and the university were in the hands of the
Huguenots, and Montpellier became Protestant on the spot.

Next year came the counter-blow. There were heavy battles with the
Catholics all round the neighbourhood, destruction of the suburbs,
threatened siege and sack, and years of misery and poverty for
Montpellier and all who were therein.

Horrible was the state of France in those times of the wars of religion
which began in 1562; the times which are spoken of usually as "The
Troubles," as if men did not wish to allude to them too openly. Then,
and afterwards in the wars of the League, deeds were done for which
language has no name. The population decreased. The land lay untilled.
The fair face of France was blackened with burnt homesteads and ruined
towns. Ghastly corpses dangled in rows upon the trees, or floated down
the blood-stained streams. Law and order were at an end. Bands of
robbers prowled in open day, and bands of wolves likewise. But all
through the horrors of the troubles we catch sight of the little fat
doctor riding all unarmed to see his patients throughout Languedoc; going
vast distances, his biographers say, by means of regular relays of
horses, till he too broke down. Well, for him, perhaps, that he broke
down when he did; for capture and recapture, massacre and pestilence,
were the fate of Montpellier and the surrounding country, till the better
times of Henry IV. and the Edict of Nantes in 1598, when liberty of
worship was given to the Protestants for awhile.

In the burning summer of 1566, Rondelet went a long journey to Toulouse,
seemingly upon an errand of charity, to settle some law affairs for his
relations. The sanitary state of the southern cities is bad enough
still. It must have been horrible in those days of barbarism and
misrule. Dysentery was epidemic at Toulouse then, and Rondelet took it.
He knew from the f