me, and whom by the grace of God I can bestow on you. Approach
and receive this gift in a kiss.' At these words the unknown kissed the
young man on the mouth, pressed his hand and disappeared, leaving the
other trembling in his turn; for the spirit of God was in him, and being
inspired he spread the word abroad."

A third fanatic, a prophetess, raved about the parishes of St. Andeol de
Clerguemont and St. Frazal de Vantalon, but she addressed herself
principally to recent converts, to whom she preached concerning the
Eucharist that in swallowing the consecrated wafer they had swallowed a
poison as venomous as the head of the basilisk, that they had bent the
knee to Baal, and that no penitence on their part could be great enough
to save them. These doctrines inspired such profound terror that the
Rev. Father Louvreloeil himself tells us that Satan by his efforts
succeeded in nearly emptying the churches, and that at the following
Easter celebrations there were only half as many communicants as the
preceding year.

Such a state of licence, which threatened to spread farther and farther,
awoke the religious solicitude of Messire Francois Langlade de Duchayla,
Prior of Laval, Inspector of Missions of Gevaudan, and Arch-priest of the
Cevennes. He therefore resolved to leave his residence at Mende and to
visit the parishes in which heresy had taken the strongest hold, in order
to oppose it by every mean's which God and the king had put in his power.

The Abbe Duchayla was a younger son of the noble house of Langlade, and
by the circumstances of his birth, in spite of his soldierly instincts,
had been obliged to leave epaulet and sword to his elder brother, and
himself assume cassock and stole. On leaving the seminary, he espoused
the cause of the Church militant with all the ardour of his temperament.
Perils to encounter; foes to fight, a religion to force on others, were
necessities to this fiery character, and as everything at the moment was
quiet in France, he had embarked for India with the fervent resolution of
a martyr.

On reaching his destination, the young missionary had found himself
surrounded by circumstances which were wonderfully in harmony with his
celestial longings: some of his predecessors had been carried so far by
religious zeal that the King of Siam had put several to death by torture
and had forbidden any more missionaries to enter his dominions; but this,
as we can easily imagine, only excited