my
vicarage and that I am now making a tour here in Camargue, Nismes, and
Montpellier in order to obtain another appointment."

"How is that sir?" enquired the Counsellor, "mind your own business! as
the saying is, but we do not always follow this wise maxim," replied
the former, "for hot blood and passion, but to often master our reason.
You know that some time since a sort of crusade was preached against
the Camisards in the Cevennes; the young men in Nismes and in the
surrounding country have enlisted as volunteers and lie in wait for the
rebels wherever they can; the hermit of the Cevennes, an old captain,
has taken the field with a troop of rash, desperate fellows and fights
like a Samson; but it is reported that he is very impartial, for, when
an opportunity offers, he treats friends and foes alike, and has
already plundered many an old Catholic, or stretched him in the
trenches. Now, if such things occur, when all the energies are excited
in the melee, it is not so much to be wondered at, though they may
happen a little too frequently; verily he has more deliberately counted
over his rosary than he can now the number of murders he commits. It is
curious enough, that a hermit, who had intended to renounce the world
so entirely, should embark again in such adventures; his old military
ardour is probably aroused within him. I too, retired in my solitary
village in the mountains, when I heard of these proceedings was fired,
or inspired with them, and formed the resolution of also rendering my
poor services to God and the king, my parishoners would not hear of it:
by Jove! they have no heroism in them, they have an antipathy to wounds
and death, or they have secret dealings with the Camisards, as I have
always suspected that satan's brood of it, for much as I have loudly
and zealously harangued them in the pulpit, they almost invariably
slept during my sermon: that they were thus insensible to my loud
exhortations, is alone a proof, that they must have been possessed by
the devil. In pursuance of my design, I assembled some people together,
two Spanish deserters, three Savoyards, five fellows who had escaped
from prison, and two prodigiously bold tinkers. It was at the time,
when Cavalier had so incomprehensively taken the town of Sauve in the
middle of the mountains and laid it under contribution. We marched
directly against them, passing St. Hipolite, for I received intelligence
that this rebel commander had abandon