ition, Henri
II was forced to confer the office of president of the Presidial Court on
William de Calviere, a Protestant. At last a decision of the senior
judge having declared that it was the duty of the consuls to sanction the
execution of heretics by their presence, the magistrates of the city
protested against this decision, and the power of the Crown was
insufficient to carry it out.

Henri II dying, Catherine de Medicis and the Guises took possession of
the throne in the name of Francois II. There is a moment when nations
can always draw a long breath, it is while their kings are awaiting
burial; and Nimes took advantage of this moment on the death of Henri II,
and on September 29th, 1559, Guillaume Moget founded the first Protestant
community.

Guillaume Moget came from Geneva. He was the spiritual son of Calvin,
and came to Nimes with the firm purpose of converting all the remaining
Catholics or of being hanged. As he was eloquent, spirited, and wily,
too wise to be violent, ever ready to give and take in the matter of
concessions, luck was on his side, and Guillaume Moget escaped hanging.

The moment a rising sect ceases to be downtrodden it becomes a queen, and
heresy, already mistress of three-fourths of the city, began to hold up
its head with boldness in the streets. A householder called Guillaume
Raymond opened his house to the Calvinist missionary, and allowed him to
preach in it regularly to all who came, and the wavering were thus
confirmed in the new faith. Soon the house became too narrow to contain
the crowds which flocked thither to imbibe the poison of the
revolutionary doctrine, and impatient glances fell on the churches.

Meanwhile the Vicomte de Joyeuse, who had just been appointed governor of
Languedoc in the place of M. de Villars, grew uneasy at the rapid
progress made by the Protestants, who so far from trying to conceal it
boasted of it; so he summoned the consuls before him, admonished them
sharply in the king's name, and threatened to quarter a garrison in the
town which would soon put an end to these disorders. The consuls
promised to stop the evil without the aid of outside help, and to carry
out their promise doubled the patrol and appointed a captain of the town
whose sole duty was to keep order in the streets. Now this captain whose
office had been created solely for the repression of heresy, happened to
be Captain Bouillargues, the most inveterate Huguenot who ever exist