ncise. Thus those who were
amateurs in executions had a sufficient choice.

However, Moise Bonnet saved himself by becoming Catholic, but Pierre
Nouvel and Esprit Seguier died as martyrs, making profession of the new
faith and praising God.

Two days after the sentence on Esprit Seguier had been carried out, the
body disappeared from the gallows. A nephew of Laporte named Roland had
audaciously carried it off, leaving behind a writing nailed to the
gibbet. This was a challenge from Laporte to Poul, and was dated from
the "Camp of the Eternal God, in the desert of Cevennes," Laporte signing
himself "Colonel of the children of God who seek liberty of conscience."
Poul was about to accept the challenge when he learned that the
insurrection was spreading on every side. A young man of Vieljeu,
twenty-six years of age, named Solomon Couderc, had succeeded Esprit
Seguier in the office of prophet, and two young lieutenants had joined
Laporte. One of these was his nephew Roland, a man of about thirty,
pock-marked, fair, thin, cold, and reserved; he was not tall, but very
strong, and of inflexible courage. The other, Henri Castanet of
Massevaques, was a keeper from the mountain of Laygoal, whose skill as a
marksman was so well known that it was said he never missed a shot. Each
of these lieutenants had fifty men under him.

Prophets and prophetesses too increased apace, so that hardly a day
passed without reports being heard of fresh ones who were rousing whole
villages by their ravings.

In the meantime a great meeting of the Protestants of Languedoc had been
held in the fields of Vauvert, at which it had been resolved to join
forces with the rebels of the Cevennes, and to send a messenger thither
to make this resolution known.

Laporte had just returned from La Vaunage, where he had been making
recruits, when this good news arrived; he at once sent his nephew Roland
to the new allies with power to pledge his word in return for theirs, and
to describe to them, in order to attract them, the country which he had
chosen as the theatre of the coming war, and which, thanks to its
hamlets, its woods, its defiles, its valleys, its precipices, and its
caves, was capable of affording cover to as many bands of insurgents as
might be employed, would be a good rallying-ground after repulse, and
contained suitable positions for ambuscades. Roland was so successful in
his mission that these new "soldiers of the Lord," as they cal