ousing sermon, and exhorted his
brethren to die each at his post, like their unhappy and illustrious
superior. In the midst of this eloquence there came a breeze that
Spirit Seguier was near at hand; and behold! all the assembly took to
their horses' heels, some east, some west, and the _cure_ himself as far
as Alais.

Strange was the position of this little Catholic metropolis, a
thimbleful of Rome, in such a wild and contrary neighbourhood. On the
one hand, the legion of Salomon overlooked it from Cassagnas; on the
other, it was cut off from assistance by the legion of Roland at Mialet.
The _cure_, Louvrelenil, although he took a panic at the arch-priest's
funeral, and so hurriedly decamped to Alais, stood well by his isolated
pulpit, and thence uttered fulminations against the crimes of the
Protestants. Salomon besieged the village for an hour and a half, but
was beaten back. The militiamen, on guard before the _cure's_ door,
could be heard, in the black hours, singing Protestant psalms and
holding friendly talk with the insurgents. And in the morning, although
not a shot had been fired, there would not be a round of powder in their
flasks. Where was it gone? All handed over to the Camisards for a
consideration. Untrusty guardians for an isolated priest!

That these continual stirs were once busy in St. Germain de Calberte,
the imagination with difficulty receives; all is now so quiet, the pulse
of human life now beats so low and still in this hamlet of the
mountains. Boys followed me a great way off, like a timid sort of
lion-hunters; and people turned round to have a second look, or came out
of their houses, as I went by. My passage was the first event, you would
have fancied, since the Camisards. There was nothing rude or forward in
this observation; it was but a pleased and wondering scrutiny, like that
of oxen or the human infant; yet it wearied my spirits, and soon drove
me from the street.

I took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted with
sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable attitudes of
the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. Ever and again a
little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all around me, with a light
and dull sound, upon the sward. The noise was as of a thin fall of
great hailstones; but there went with it a cheerful human sentiment of
an approaching harvest and farmers rejoicing in their gains. Looking up,
I could see the brown nut peering th