evil. He is a Catholic, a
Protestant, or a Plymouth Brother, in the same indefeasible sense that a
man is not a woman, or a woman not a man. For he could not vary from his
faith, unless he could eradicate all memory of the past, and, in a
strict and not a conventional meaning, change his mind.

THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY

I was now drawing near to Cassagnas, a cluster of black roofs upon the
hillside, in this wild valley, among chestnut gardens, and looked upon
in the clear air by many rocky peaks. The road along the Mimente is yet
new, nor have the mountaineers recovered their surprise when the first
cart arrived at Cassagnas. But although it lay thus apart from the
current of men's business, this hamlet had already made a figure in the
history of France. Hard by, in caverns of the mountain, was one of the
five arsenals of the Camisards; where they laid up clothes and corn and
arms against necessity, forged bayonets and sabres, and made themselves
gunpowder with willow charcoal and saltpetre boiled in kettles. To the
same caves, amid this multifarious industry, the sick and wounded were
brought up to heal; and there they were visited by the two surgeons,
Chabrier and Tavan, and secretly nursed by women of the neighbourhood.

Of the five legions into which the Camisards were divided, it was the
oldest and the most obscure that had its magazines by Cassagnas. This
was the band of Spirit Seguier; men who had joined their voices with his
in the 68th Psalm as they marched down by night on the archpriest of the
Cevennes. Seguier, promoted to heaven, was succeeded by Salomon Couderc,
whom Cavalier treats in his memoirs as chaplain-general to the whole
army of the Camisards. He was a prophet; a great reader of the heart,
who admitted people to the sacrament, or refused them, by "intentively
viewing every man" between the eyes; and had the most of the Scriptures
off by rote. And this was surely happy; since in a surprise in August
1703, he lost his mule, his portfolios, and his Bible. It is only
strange that they were not surprised more often and more effectually;
for this legion of Cassagnas was truly patriarchal in its theory of war,
and camped without sentries, leaving that duty to the angels of the God
for whom they fought. This is a token, not only of their faith, but of
the trackless country where they harboured. M. de Caladon, taking a
stroll one fine day, walked without warning into their midst, as he
might have