mont) at
Cambridge in 1658, and is quoted by Jean Leger in his History
of the Vaudois Churches.]

What the execution of the Inquisitor's office meant, is, alas! but too
well known. Bonds and imprisonment, scourgings and burnings at Embrun.
The poor people appealed to the King of France for help against their
persecutors, but in vain. In 1498 the inhabitants of Fressinieres
appeared by a procurator at Paris, on the occasion of the new
sovereign, Louis XII., ascending the throne. But as the King was then
seeking the favour of a divorce from his wife, Anne of Brittany, from
Pope Alexander VI., he turned a deaf ear to their petition for mercy.
On the contrary, Louis confirmed all the decisions of the clergy, and
in return for the divorce which he obtained, he granted to the Pope's
son, the infamous Caesar Borgia, that very part of Dauphiny inhabited
by the Vaudois, together with the title of Duke of Valentinois. They
had appealed, as it were, to the tiger for mercy, and they were
referred to the vulture.

The persecution of the people of the valleys thus suffered no
relaxation, and all that remained for them was flight into the
mountains, to places where they were most likely to remain unmolested.
Hence they fled up to the very edge of the glaciers, and formed their
settlements at almost the farthest limits of vegetation. There the
barrenness of the soil, the inhospitality of the climate, and the
comparative inaccessibility of their villages, proved their security.
Of them it might be truly said, that they "wandered about in
sheepskins and goat-skins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of
whom the world was not worthy); they wandered in deserts and in
mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth." Yet the character of
these poor peasants was altogether irreproachable. Even Louis XII.
said of them, "Would to God that I were as good a Christian as the
worst of these people!" The wonder is that, in the face of their
long-continued persecutions, extending over so many centuries, any
remnant of the original population of the valleys should have been
preserved. Long after the time of Louis XII. and Caesar Borgia, the
French historian, De Thou (writing in 1556), thus describes the people
of Val Fressinieres: "Notwithstanding their squalidness, it is
surprising that they are very far from being uncultivated in their
morals. They almost all understand Latin; and are able to write fairly
enough. They underst