oget Miraman, La Bergerie, and
Larnac--all near St. Gilies and Manduel. "They stopped travellers on the
highways," says Louvreloeil, "and by way of finding out whether they were
Catholic or not, made them say in Latin the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria,
the Symbol of the Faith, and the General Confession, and those who were
unable to do this were put to the sword. In Dions nine corpses were
found supposed to have been killed by their hands, and when the body of a
shepherd who had been in the service of the Sieur de Roussiere, a former
minister, was found hanging to a tree, no one doubted who were the
murderers. At last they went so far that one of their bands meeting the
Abbe de Saint Gilles on the road, ordered him to deliver up to them one
of his servants, a new convert, in order to put him to death. It was in
vain that the abbe remonstrated with them, telling them it was a shame to
put such an affront on a man of his birth and rank; they persisted none
the less in their determination, till at last the abbe threw his arms
round his servant and presented his own body to the blows directed at the
other."

The author of The Troubles in the Cevennes relates something surpassing
all this which took place at Montelus on the 22nd February "There were a
few Protestants in the place," he says, "but they were far outnumbered by
the Catholics; these being roused by a Capuchin from Bergerac, formed
themselves into a body of 'Cadets of the Cross,' and hastened to serve
their apprenticeship to the work of assassination at the cost of their
countrymen. They therefore entered the house of one Jean Bernoin, cut
off his ears and further mutilated him, and then bled him to death like a
pig. On coming out of this house they met Jacques Clas, and shot him in
the abdomen, so that his intestines obtruded; pushing them back, he
reached his house in a terrible condition, to the great alarm of his
wife, who was near her confinement, and her children, who hastened to the
help of husband and father. But the murderers appeared on the threshold,
and, unmoved by the cries and tears of the unfortunate wife and the poor
little children, they finished the wounded man, and as the wife made an
effort to prevent them, they murdered her also, treating her dead body,
when they discovered her condition, in a manner too revolting for
description; while a neighbour, called Marie Silliot, who tried to rescue
the children, was shot dead; but in her case the