of the Tarn and the people whom I met at La Vernede not only
explain to me this passage, but the twenty years of suffering which
those, who were so stiff and so bloody when once they betook themselves
to war, endured with the meekness of children and the constancy of
saints and peasants.

FLORAC

On a branch of the Tarn stands Florac, the seat of a sub-prefecture with
an old castle, an alley of planes, many quaint street-corners, and a
live fountain welling from the hill. It is notable, besides, for
handsome women, and as one of the two capitals, Alais being the other,
of the country of the Camisards.

The landlord of the inn took me, after I had eaten, to an adjoining
cafe, where I, or rather my journey, became the topic of the afternoon.
Every one had some suggestion for my guidance; and the sub-prefectorial
map was fetched from the sub-prefecture itself, and much thumbed among
coffee-cups and glasses of liqueur. Most of these kind advisers were
Protestant, though I observed that Protestant and Catholic intermingled
in a very easy manner; and it surprised me to see what a lively memory
still subsisted of the religious war. Among the hills of the south-west,
by Mauchline, Cumnock, or Carsphairn, in isolated farms or in the manse,
serious Presbyterian people still recall the days of the great
persecution, and the graves of local martyrs are still piously regarded.
But in towns and among the so-called better classes, I fear that these
old doings have become an idle tale. If you met a mixed company in the
King's Arms at Wigtown, it is not likely that the talk would run on
Covenanters. Nay, at Muirkirk of Glenluce, I found the beadle's wife had
not so much as heard of Prophet Peden. But these Cevenols were proud of
their ancestors in quite another sense; the war was their chosen topic;
its exploits were their own patent of nobility; and where a man or a
race has had but one adventure, and that heroic, we must expect and
pardon some prolixity of reference. They told me the country was still
full of legends hitherto uncollected; I heard from them about Cavalier's
descendants--not direct descendants, be it understood, but only cousins
or nephews--who were still prosperous people in the scene of the
boy-general's exploits; and one farmer had seen the bones of old
combatants dug up into the air of an afternoon in the nineteenth
century, in a field where the ancestors had fought, and the
great-grandchildren were peace