nd.]
When Brousson visited the place, the remaining Protestants resided
chiefly in the suburban villages of Givonne and Daigny. He visited
them in their families, and also held several private meetings, after
which he was induced to preach in a secluded place near Sedan at
night.
This assembly, however, was reported to the authorities, who
immediately proceeded to make search for the heretic preacher. A party
of soldiers, informed by the spies, next morning invested the house in
which Brousson slept. They first apprehended Bruman, the guide, and
thought that in him they had secured the pastor. They next rummaged
the house, in order to find the preacher's books. But Brousson,
hearing them coming in, hid himself behind the door, which, being
small, hardly concealed his person.
After setting a guard all round the house, ransacking every room in
it, and turning everything upside down, they left it; but two of the
children, seeing Brousson's feet under the door, one of them ran after
the officer of the party, and exclaimed to him, pointing back, "Here,
sir, here!" But the officer, not understanding what the child meant,
went away with his soldiers, and Brousson's life was, for the time,
saved.
The same evening, Brousson changed his disguise to that of a
wool-comber, and carrying a parcel on his shoulder, he set out on the
same evening with another guide. He visited many places in which
Protestants were to be found--in Champagne, Picardy, Normandy,
Nevernois, and Burgundy. He also visited several of his friends in the
neighbourhood of Paris.
We have not many details of his perils and experiences during his
journey. But the following passage is extracted from a letter
addressed by him to a friend in Holland: "I assure you that in every
place through which I passed, I witnessed the poor people truly
repenting their fault (_i.e._ of having gone to Mass), weeping day and
night, and imploring the grace and consolations of the Gospel in their
distress. Their persecutors daily oppress them, and burden them with
taxes and imposts; but the more discerning of the Roman Catholics
acknowledge that the cruelties and injustice done towards so many
innocent persons, draw down misery and distress upon the kingdom. And
truly it is to be apprehended that God will abandon its inhabitants to
their wickedness, that he may afterwards pour down his most terrible
judgments upon that ungrateful and vaunting country, which has
rejected hi
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