the main
street of the village. The inhabitants had barricaded themselves in
their houses, being in a state of great fear lest they should be
implicated in the murder of the archpriest. But Seguier and his
followers made no further halt in Pont-de-Montvert, but passed along,
still singing psalms, towards the hamlet of Frugeres, a little further
up the valley of the Tarn.

Seguier has been characterised as "the Danton of the Cevennes." This
fierce and iron-willed man was of great stature--bony and
dark-visaged, without upper teeth, his hair hanging loose over his
shoulders--and of a wild and mystic appearance, occasioned probably by
the fits of ecstasy to which he was subject, and the wandering life he
had for so many years led as a prophet-preacher in the Desert. This
terrible man had resolved upon a general massacre of the priests, and
he now threw himself upon Frugeres for the purpose of carrying out the
enterprise begun by him at Pont-de-Montvert. The cure of the hamlet,
who had already heard of Chayla's murder, fled from his house at sound
of the approaching psalm-singers, and took refuge in an adjoining
rye-field. He was speedily tracked thither, and brought down by a
musket-ball; and a list of twenty of his parishioners, whom he had
denounced to the archpriest, was found under his cassock.

From Frugeres the prophet and his band marched on to St. Maurice de
Ventalong, so called because of the winds which at certain seasons
blow so furiously along the narrow valley in which it is situated; but
the prior of the convent, having been warned of the outbreak, had
already mounted his horse and taken to flight. Here Seguier was
informed of the approach of a body of militia who were on his trail;
but he avoided them by taking refuge on a neighbouring mountain-side,
where he spent the night with his companions in a thicket.

Next morning, at daybreak, he descended the mountain, crossed the
track of his pursuers, and directed himself upon St. Andre de Lanceze.
The whole country was by this time in a state of alarm; and the cure
of the place, being on the outlook, mounted the clock-tower and rang
the tocsin. But his parishioners having joined the insurgents, the
cure was pursued, captured in the belfry, and thrown from its highest
window. The insurgents then proceeded to gut the church, pull down the
crosses, and destroy all the emblems of Romanism on which they could
lay their hands.

Seguier and his band next hurried