s fallen
from my eyes, and I shall now honour and love you, and all these heroes
of the faith, as brothers."

A circle had been formed and Roland now stepped with solemn demeanour
into the middle of it. "We are assembled," commenced he, greatly
affected, "in order to pass judgment upon a friend, who is to me one of
the dearest among the most valiant of the fraternity, and in the work
of the Lord a distinguished zealot. Here stands Catinat, the man at
whose name all our foes tremble. You are all here present, Cavalier,
thou Ravanel, Castanet, Duplant, and Salomon, Clary, Abraham Mazel is
also arrived here. I have often spoken on this point already, my dear
friends, and wished to make known to you my opinion, and my sentiments,
that in this war, in which we are fighting for the Lord, we should
refrain from shedding blood as much as possible. No, my beloved
friends, we will not therein follow the example of our adversaries,
that we may excel them in their emulation for murder, incendiarism and
all their works of darkness. Let the enemy, who comes armed against us,
be given up to the sword, the villain, who betrays us and belies the
Lord, let him fall a sacrifice to his own malice, but the harmless
labourer, the helpless priest, the defenceless woman, the child under
age, let them be spared, what have they done to us? what can they
accomplish against us? we have certainly always struggled to put our
enemies to shame and to convince them by Christian charity, that our
course is a just one; but here, Catinat has again acted in opposition
to my express command, in his expedition he has set fire to three
churches with his own hands, he has massacred two priests, his troop
according to his orders has reduced villages to ashes, and women and
children have been murdered and burned in the most terrible manner.
Their lamentations, the cries of the orphans, the wailings of the
parents rise up to heaven, and arouse and call upon the enduring
goodness of the Lord to thrust and to fling us in his wrath far away
from him, like useless vessels. If we ourselves act in this manner,
wherefore should we complain, when the enemies open wide the jaws of
cruelty and show less compassion than the wolf in the wilderness, or
the beast of prey of the mountains, then, with justice, their stakes
blaze threateningly to meet us! why are we angered, when their
barbarous executioners, with greedy looks, grin up towards our
mountains, and in malicious joy