city,
it was provided that the first consul of Nimes should always be taken
from among 'the advocates graduated and versed in the law,' the second
consulate only being left open to 'citizens, merchants, and graduated
physicians.'

As the fifteenth century is commonly admitted to have been a 'feudal'
century, this provision attests the power of the robe as against the
sword in a very interesting way, and at an interesting point in French
history. The local nobility felt the slight put upon them very strongly,
and made great efforts to have the system changed. These efforts were
not successful till the end of the sixteenth century. In 1588 the Duc de
Montmorency, Governor of Languedoc, issued a decree convoking the
Council-General to consider the subject, and this assembly, after a
stormy session, decided that 'the noblemen and gentlemen of the province
should hold the first consulate alternately with the advocates.' The
first nobleman of Languedoc who profited by this decision was Louis de
Montcalm, an ancestor of the illustrious defender of Quebec. He became
first consul of Nimes in 1589, the year after the defeat of the great
Spanish Armada against England. He was a Huguenot, and Nimes in the days
of the great Religious Wars had become a Protestant stronghold after its
capture by the Huguenots on November 15, 1569. The Huguenot de Calviere,
Baron de St.-Cosme, who took a leading part in that military adventure,
was made Governor of Nimes and a gentleman of the King's bedchamber by
Henry of Navarre.

As a Protestant and as an advocate, the father of M. Guizot naturally
inclined to the Republican theory of Government in 1789. He very soon
and as naturally opened his eyes to the abominations of the Republican
practice, and in due course came to the guillotine under the Terror. To
the day of her death his widow wore the deepest mourning for him, and
his son, like the son of the murdered Victor Charles de Broglie,
honoured his memory by an inflexible loyalty to the principles of
justice and of liberty for which his father had died.

I was not surprised, therefore, to find M. Guillaume Guizot, the
Protestant son of the great Protestant statesman, at his pleasant rural
home near Uzes as earnest and active in the summer of 1889 in organizing
the monarchical party for the Legislative elections, as the staunchest
Catholics of the Morbihan or of Champagne. Uzes, which gives a ducal
title to the family of Crussol, is a picture