tain we already beheld the houses
demolished; the axes resounded, the cattle lowed, and the mountains
groaningly repeated the melancholy echo. As it proceeded too slowly for
the monsters, we soon saw flames too flaring up; like greedy jaws, like
thirsty tongues, did the fire lick up our beloved old dwellings and
swallowed them in flames. The trees before the houses were consumed
with them. Yes, Roland, the district, the dear villages, the hospitable
houses, which so often and so amicably received you and yours, these
are in a brief space reduced to a desert, and in future I shall not be
able perhaps to find a trace of where I lived with my parents, where I
sat with them before the door, and played in the spring, where I became
acquainted with my wife, where she bore me her first son. The stork
will never again familiarly and confidingly take up his lodging on the
roof of my barn, no swallow will again announce to me there the warmth
of spring, and twitter with her young before my window. Oh! and my own
children. Man indeed has no childhood, when he is deprived of his
country. The poor women! how well known to us, how dear was each bush
and running brook. Now we know, for the first time, how we loved our
old cottages and the seats inherited from our great grandfathers. All
that we there in devotion, thought, and prayed, all the delightful
Easter and Whitsuntide festivals, the pleasing solitude of the long
winter evenings, and the exemplary conversations of the old men, all,
all is vanished in this hideous fire."

"No more! no more!" shrieked the women, and the children wept aloud.

"All this," continued the speaker, "happened to us, dear Roland, on
your account alone, for they know well, the persecutors! that we have
in our hearts been with you, so many of your bravest men are from among
us. They extirpate us, especially because our valleys and mountains
border on the district of Vivares, and through our country Catinat and
Cavalier attempted to penetrate. Friend, brother! here we are now, and
assuredly many more active men from other districts will run to you,
for they will not suffer what will be required of them. Come, lead us
on, thrust us into the thicket of the fight, when thousands stand close
in front of their cannons, and with swords, sicles, hatchets, and
cudgels we will fall upon them, nay without weapons, with these hands,
with these teeth we will tear them to pieces! Life and pleasure now
consist only in de