ch. A great mission surely that is to be called
wherein all the safety and hope of many poor people is
comprehended--their sole hope lying in the chance that they shall
be able, by all their loyalty, obedience, and most humble prayers,
to mollify and appease the minds of your Royal Highnesses, now
irritated against them. In behalf of these poor people, whose cause
pity itself may seem to make its own, the Most Serene Protector of
England also comes as an intercessor, and most earnestly requests
and beseeches your Royal Highnesses to deign to extend your mercy
to these your very poor and most outcast subjects--those, I mean,
who, inhabiting the roots of the Alps and certain valleys in your
dominion, have professed nominally the Religion of the Protestants.
For he has heard (what no one can say has been done by the will of
your Royal Highnesses) that those wretched creatures have been
partly killed by your forces, partly expelled by violence and
driven from their home and country, so that they are now wandering,
with their wives and children, houseless, roofless, poor, and
destitute of all resource, through rugged and inhospitable spots
and over snow-covered mountains. And, through the days of this
transaction, if only the things are true that fame at present
reports everywhere (would that Fame were proved a liar!), what was
not dared and attempted against them? Houses smoking everywhere,
torn limbs, the ground bloody! Ay, and virgins, ravished and
hideously abused, breathed their last miserably; and old men and
persons labouring under illness were committed to the flames; and
some infants were dashed against the rocks, and the brains of
others were cooked and eaten. Atrocity horrible and before unheard
of, savagery such that, good God, were all the Neros of all times
and ages to come to life again, what a shame they would feel at
having contrived nothing equally inhuman! Verily, verily, Angels
are horrorstruck, men are amazed; heaven itself seems to be
astounded by these cries, and the earth itself to blush with the
shed blood of so many innocent men. Do not, great God, do not seek
the revenge due to this iniquity. May thy blood, Christ, wash away
this stain!--But it is not for me to relate these things in order
as they happened, or to dwell longer upon them; and what my Most
Serene Master requests from your Royal Highnesses you will
understand bet