oon to become his lieutenants, was
the famous Jean Cavalier.

Jean Cavalier was then a young man of twenty-three, of less than medium
height, but of great strength. His face was oval, with regular features,
his eyes sparkling and beautiful; he had long chestnut hair falling on
his shoulders, and an expression of remarkable sweetness. He was born in
1680 at Ribaute, a village in the diocese of Alais, where his father had
rented a small farm, which he gave up when his son was about fifteen,
coming to live at the farm of St. Andeol, near Mende.

Young Cavalier, who was only a peasant and the son of a peasant, began
life as a shepherd at the Sieur de Lacombe's, a citizen of Vezenobre,
but as the lonely life dissatisfied a young man who was eager for
pleasure, Jean gave it up, and apprenticed himself to a baker of Anduze.

There he developed a great love for everything connected with the
military; he spent all his free time watching the soldiers at their
drill, and soon became intimate with some of them, amongst others with
a fencing-master who gave him lessons, and a dragoon who taught him to
ride.

On a certain Sunday, as he was taking a walk with his sweetheart on his
arm, the young girl was insulted by a dragoon of the Marquis de Florae's
regiment. Jean boxed the dragoon's ears, who drew his sword. Cavalier
seized a sword from one of the bystanders, but the combatants were
prevented from fighting by Jean's friends. Hearing of the quarrel, an
officer hurried up: it was the Marquis de Florae himself, captain of the
regiment which bore his name; but when he arrived on the scene he found,
not the arrogant peasant who had dared to attack a soldier of the
king, but only the young girl, who had fainted, the townspeople having
persuaded her lover to decamp.

The young girl was so beautiful that she was commonly called la belle
Isabeau, and the Marquis de Florac, instead of pursuing Jean Cavalier,
occupied himself in reviving Isabeau.

As it was, however, a serious affair, and as the entire regiment had
sworn Cavalier's death, his friends advised him to leave the country for
a time. La belle Isabeau, trembling for the safety of her lover, joined
her entreaties to those of his friends, and Jean Cavalier yielded. The
young girl promised him inviolable fidelity, and he, relying on this
promise, went to Geneva.

There he made the acquaintance of a Protestant gentleman called Du
Serre, who having glass-works at the Mas Arritas