g, the people began to destroy, and this phase lasted a long
time, it being less fatiguing to throw stones about than corpses. All
the convents, all the monasteries, all the houses of the priests and
canons were attacked in turn; nothing was spared except the cathedral,
before which axes and crowbars seemed to lose their power, and the
church of Ste. Eugenie, which was turned into a powder-magazine. The day
of the great butchery was called "La Michelade," because it took place
the day after Michaelmas, and as all this happened in the year 1567 the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew must be regarded as a plagiarism.

At last, however, with the help of M. Damville; the Catholics again got
the upper hand, and it was the turn of the Protestants to fly. They took
refuge in the Cevennes. From the beginning of the troubles the Cevennes
had been the asylum of those who suffered for the Protestant faith;
and still the plains are Papist, and the mountains Protestant. When
the Catholic party is in the ascendant at Nimes, the plain seeks the
mountain; when the Protestants come into power, the mountain comes down
into the plain.

However, vanquished and fugitive though they were, the Calvinists did
not lose courage: in exile one day, they felt sure their luck would turn
the next; and while the Catholics were burning or hanging them in effigy
for contumacy, they were before a notary, dividing the property of their
executioners.

But it was not enough for them to buy or sell this property amongst each
other, they wanted to enter into possession; they thought of nothing
else, and in 1569--that is, in the eighteenth month of their exile--they
attained their wish in the following manner:

One day the exiles perceived a carpenter belonging to a little village
called Cauvisson approaching their place of refuge. He desired to speak
to M. Nicolas de Calviere, seigneur de St. Cosme, and brother of the
president, who was known to be a very enterprising man. To him the
carpenter, whose name was Maduron, made the following proposition:

In the moat of Nimes, close to the Gate of the Carmelites, there was a
grating through which the waters from the fountain found vent. Maduron
offered to file through the bars of this grating in such a manner that
some fine night it could be lifted out so as to allow a band of armed
Protestants to gain access to the city. Nicolas de Calviere approving
of this plan, desired that it should be carried out at once; but t