es, Matthew Desubas, a young pastor
accused before the superintendent of Languedoc, Lenain, said with
high-spirited modesty, "The ministers preach nothing but patience and
fidelity to the king." I am aware of it, sir," answered the
superintendent. The pastors were hanged or burned, the faithful flock
dragged to the galleys and the Tower of Constance. Prayers for the
king, nevertheless, were sent up from the proscribed assemblies in the
desert, whilst the pulpit of Saurin at the Hague resounded with his
anathemas against Louis XIV., and the regiments of emigrant Huguenots
were marching against the king's troops under the flags of England or
Holland.

The peace of Ryswick had not brought the Protestants the hoped-for
alleviation of their woes. Louis XIV. haughtily rejected the petition of
the English and Dutch plenipotentiaries on behalf of "those in affliction
who ought to have their share in the happiness of Europe." The
persecution everywhere continued,--with determination and legality in the
north, with violence and passion in the south, abandoned to the tyranny
of M. de Lamoignon de Baville, a crafty and cold-bloodedly cruel
politician, without the excuse of any zealous religious conviction. The
execution of several ministers who had remained in hiding in the
Cevennes, or had returned from exile to instruct and comfort their
flocks, raised to the highest pitch the enthusiasm of the Reformers of
Languedoc. Deprived of their highly-prized assemblies and of their
pastors' guidance, men and women, graybeards and children, all at once
fancied themselves animated by the spirit of prophecy. Young girls had
celestial visions; the little peasant lasses poured out their utterances
in French, sometimes in the language and with the sublime eloquence of
the Bible, sole source of their religious knowledge. The rumor of these
marvels ran from village to village; meetings were held to hear the
inspired maidens, in contempt of edicts, the galleys, and the stake. A
gentleman glass-worker, named Abraham de la Serre, was, as it were, the
Samuel of this new school of prophets. In vain did M. de Baville have
three hundred children imprisoned at Uzes, and then send them to the
galleys; the religious contagion was too strong for the punishments.
"Women found themselves in a single day husbandless, childless,
houseless, and penniless," says Court; they remained immovable in their
pious ecstasy; the assemblies multiplied; the troop