Huguenot, lying trampled
under foot of the "Most Christian King."

The Peyrou was thus laid out and ornamented in the reign of his
successor, Louis XV., "the Well-beloved," during which the same policy
for which Louis XIV. was here glorified by an equestrian statue and a
triumphal arch continued to be persevered in--of imprisoning,
banishing, hanging, or sending to the galleys such of the citizens of
France as were not of "the King's religion."

But during the reign of Louis XIV. himself, the Peyrou was anything
but a pleasure-ground. It was the infamous place of the city--the
_place de Greve_--a desert, barren, blasted table-land, where
sometimes half-a-dozen decaying corpses might be seen swinging from
the gibbets on which they had been hung. It was specially reserved,
because of its infamy, for the execution of heretics against Rome; and
here, accordingly, hundreds of Huguenot martyrs--whom power, honour,
and wealth failed to bribe or to convert--were called upon to seal
their faith with their blood.

Brousson was executed at this place on the 4th of November, 1698. It
was towards evening, while the sun was slowly sinking behind the
western mountains, that an immense multitude assembled on the Peyrou
to witness the martyrdom of the devoted pastor. Not fewer than twenty
thousand persons were there, including the principal nobility of the
city and province, besides many inhabitants of the adjoining mountain
district of the Cevennes, some of whom had come from a great distance
to be present. In the centre of the plateau, near where the equestrian
statue of the great King now stands, was a scaffold, strongly
surrounded by troops to keep off the crowd. Two battalions, drawn up
in two lines facing each other, formed an avenue of bayonets between
the citadel, near at hand, and the place of execution.

A commotion stirred the throng; and the object of the breathless
interest excited shortly appeared in the person of a middle-sized,
middle-aged man, spare, grave, and dignified in appearance, dressed in
the ordinary garb of a pastor, who walked slowly towards the
scaffold, engaged in earnest prayer, his eyes and hands lifted towards
heaven. On mounting the platform, he stood forward to say a few last
words to the people, and give to many of his friends, whom he knew to
be in the crowd, his parting benediction. But his voice was instantly
stifled by the roll of twenty drums, which continued to beat a quick
march until the