times shown his hatred for him and his family, he decided to address
himself to him.

In consequence, the next day, to the great astonishment of M. de
Baville, d'Aygaliers paid him a visit. The intendant received him coldly
but politely, asked him to sit down, and when he was seated begged to
know the motive which had brought him. "Sir," replied the baron, "you
have given my family and me such cause of offence that I had come to
the firm resolution never to ask a favour of you, and as perhaps you may
have remarked during the journey we have taken with M. le marechal, I
would rather have died of thirst than accept a glass of water from you.
But I have come here to-day not upon any private matter, to obtain my
own ends, but upon a matter which concerns the welfare of the State. I
therefore beg you to put out of your mind the dislike which you have to
me and mine, and I do this the more earnestly that your dislike can
only have been caused by the fact that our religion is different from
yours--a thing which could neither have been foreseen nor prevented. My
entreaty is that you do not try to set M. le marechal against the course
which I have proposed to him, which I am convinced would bring the
disorders in our province to an end, stop the occurrence of the many
unfortunate events which I am sure you look on with regret, and spare
you much trouble and embarrassment."

The intendant was much touched by this calm speech, and above all by the
confidence which M. d'Aygaliers had shown him, and replied that he had
only offered opposition to the plan of pacification because he believed
it to be impracticable. M. d'Aygaliers then warmly pressed him to try it
before rejecting it for ever, and in the end M. de Baville withdrew his
opposition.

M, d'Aygaliers hastened to the marechal, who finding himself no longer
alone in his favourable opinion, made no further delay, but told the
baron to call together that very day all the people whom he thought
suitable for the required service, and desired that they should be
presented to him the next morning before he set out for Nimes.

The next day, instead of the fifty men whom the marachal had thought
could be gathered together, d'Aygaliers came to him followed by eighty,
who were almost all of good and many of noble family. The meeting took
place, by the wish of the baron, in the courtyard of the episcopal
palace. "This palace," says the baron in his Memoirs, "which was
of great mag