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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
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