the distance.

Pont-de-Montvert is the centre of a series of hamlets, the inhabitants
of which were in former times almost exclusively Protestant, as they
are now; and where meetings in the Desert were of the most frequent
occurrence. Strong detachments of troops were accordingly stationed
there and at Florac for the purpose of preventing the meetings and
overawing the population. Besides soldiers, the authorities also
established missions throughout the Cevennes, and the principal
inspector of these missions was the archpriest Chayla. The house in
which he resided at Pont-de-Montvert is still pointed out. It is
situated near the north end of the bridge over the Tarn; but though
the lower part of the building remains as it was in his time, the
upper portion has been for the most part rebuilt.

Chayla was a man of great force of character--zealous, laborious, and
indefatigable--but pitiless, relentless, and cruel. He had no bowels
of compassion. He was deaf to all appeals for mercy. With him the
penalty of non-belief in the faith of Rome was imprisonment, torture,
death. Eight young priests lived with him, whose labours he directed;
and great was his annoyance to find that the people would not attend
his ministrations, but continued to flock after their own
prophet-preachers in the Desert.

Moral means having failed, he next tried physical. He converted the
arched cellars of his dwelling into dungeons, where he shut up those
guilty of contumacy; and day by day he put them to torture. It seems
like a satire on religion to say that, in his attempt to convert
souls, this vehement missionary made it one of his principal studies
to find out what amount of agony the bodies of those who differed from
him would bear short of actual death. He put hot coals into their
hands, which they were then made to clench; wrapped round their
fingers cotton steeped in oil, which was then set on fire; besides
practising upon them the more ordinary and commonplace tortures. No
wonder that the archpriest came to be detested by the inhabitants of
Pont-de-Montvert.

At length, a number of people in the district, in order to get beyond
reach of Chayla's cruelty, determined to emigrate from France and take
refuge in Geneva. They assembled one morning secretly, a cavalcade of
men and women, and set out under the direction of a guide who knew the
mountain paths towards the east. When they had travelled a few hours,
they fell into an ambuscade of