as the head of the work which Court had begun. Antoine Court! Paul
Rabaut! The one restored Protestantism in France, the other rooted and
established it.

Rabaut's enthusiasm may be gathered from the following extract of a
letter which he wrote to a friend at Geneva: "When I fix my attention
upon the divine fire with which, I will not say Jesus Christ and the
Apostles, but the Reformed and their immediate successors, burned for
the salvation of souls, it seems to me that, in comparison with them,
we are ice. Their immense works astound me, and at the same time cover
me with confusion. What would I not give to resemble them in
everything laudable!"

Rabaut had the same privations, perils, and difficulties to undergo as
the rest of the pastors in the Desert. He had to assume all sorts of
names and disguises while he travelled through the country, in order
to preach at the appointed places. He went by the names of M. Paul, M.
Denis, M. Pastourel, and M. Theophile; and he travelled under the
disguises of a common labourer, a trader, a journeyman, and a baker.

He was condemned to death, as a pastor who preached in defiance of the
law; but his disguises were so well prepared, and the people for whom
he ministered were so faithful to him, that the priests and other
spies never succeeded in apprehending him. Singularly enough, he was
in all other respects in favour of the recognition of legal authority,
and strongly urged his brethren never to adopt any means whatever of
forcibly resisting the King's orders.

Many of the military commanders were becoming disgusted with the
despicable and cowardly business which the priests called upon them to
do. Thus, on one occasion, a number of Protestants had assembled at
the house of Paul Rabaut at Nismes, and, while they were on their
knees, the door was suddenly burst open, when a man, muffled up,
presented himself, and throwing open his cloak, discovered the
military commandant of the town. "My friends," he said, "you have Paul
Rabaut with you; in a quarter of an hour I shall be here with my
soldiers, accompanied by Father ----, who has just laid the
information against you." When the soldiers arrived, headed by the
commandant and the father, of course no Paul Rabaut was to be found.

"For more than thirty years," says one of Paul Rabaut's biographers,
"caverns and huts, whence he was unearthed like a wild animal, were
his only habitation. For a long time he dwelt in a safe hiding