ong temper which characterize the inhabitants of the South of
France, they are probably, on the whole, more grave and staid than
Frenchmen generally, and are thought to be more urbane and
intelligent; and though they are unmanageable by force, they are
remarkably accessible to kindness and moral suasion.

Such, in a few words, are the more prominent characteristics of the
country and people of the Cevennes.

* * * * *

When the popular worship of the mountain district of Languedoc--in
which the Protestants constituted the majority of the population--was
suppressed, great dismay fell upon the people; but they made no signs
of resistance to the royal authority. For a time they remained
comparatively passive, and it was at first thought they were
indifferent. Their astonished enemies derisively spoke of them as
displaying "the patience of a Huguenot,"--the words having passed into
a proverb.

But their persecutors did not know the stuff of which these
mountaineers were made. They had seen their temples demolished one
after another, and their pastors banished, leaving them "like poor
starved sheep looking for the pasture of life." Next they heard that
such of their pastors as had been apprehended for venturing to
minister to them in "the Desert" had been taken to Nismes and
Montpellier and hanged. Then they began to feel excited and indignant.
For they could not shake off their own belief and embrace another
man's, even though that man was their king. If Louis XIV. had ordered
them to believe that two and two make six, they could not possibly
believe, though they might pretend to do so, that it made any other
number than four. And so it was with the King's order to them to
profess a faith which they could not bring their minds to believe in.

These poor people entertained the conviction that they possessed
certain paramount rights as men. Of these they held the right of
conscience to be one of the principal. They were willing to give unto
Caesar the things that were Caesar's; but they could not give him those
which belonged unto God. And if they were forced to make a choice,
then they must rather disobey their King than the King of kings.

Though deprived of their leaders and pastors, the dispossessed
Huguenots emerged by degrees from their obscurity, and began to
recognise each other openly. If their temples were destroyed, there
remained the woods and fields and mountain pastures, whe