Stalwart dangerous
fellows, used to swing the sickle or to wield the forest axe, were
likewise shaken with strange paroxysms, and spoke oracles with sobs and
streaming tears.
A persecution unsurpassed in violence had lasted near a
score of years, and this was the result upon the persecuted; hanging,
burning, breaking on the wheel, had been in vain; the dragoons had left
their hoof-marks over all the countryside; there were men rowing in the
galleys, and women pining in the prisons of the Church; and not a thought
was changed in the heart of any upright Protestant.
Now the head and forefront of the persecution - after Lamoignon de
Bavile - Francois de Langlade du Chayla (pronounce Cheila), Archpriest of
the Cevennes and Inspector of Missions in the same country, had a house
in which he sometimes dwelt in the town of Pont de Montvert. He was a
conscientious person, who seems to have been intended by nature for a
pirate, and now fifty-five, an age by which a man has learned all the
moderation of which he is capable. A missionary in his youth in China,
he there suffered martyrdom, was left for dead, and only succoured and
brought back to life by the charity of a pariah. We must suppose the
pariah devoid of second-sight, and not purposely malicious in this act.
Such an experience, it might be thought, would have cured a man of the
desire to persecute; but the human spirit is a thing strangely put
together; and, having been a Christian martyr, Du Chayla became a
Christian persecutor. The Work of the Propagation of the Faith went
roundly forward in his hands. His house in Pont de Montvert served him
as a prison. There he closed the hands of his prisoners upon live coal,
and plucked out the hairs of their beards, to convince them that they
were deceived in their opinions. And yet had not he himself tried and
proved the inefficacy of these carnal arguments among the Buddhists in
China?
Not only was life made intolerable in Languedoc, but flight was rigidly
forbidden. One Massip, a muleteer, and well acquainted with the mountain-
paths, had already guided several troops of fugitives in safety to
Geneva; and on him, with another convoy, consisting mostly of women
dressed as men, Du Chayla, in an evil hour for himself, laid his hands.
The Sunday following, there was a conventicle of Protestants in the woods
of Altefage upon Mount Bouges; where there stood up one Seguier - Spirit
Seguier, as his companions called him - a wool-carder, tall, black-faced,
and toothless, but a man full of prophecy. He declared, in the name of
God, that the time for submission had gone by, and they must betake
themselves to arms for the deliverance of their brethren and the
destruction of the priests.
The next night, 24th July 1702, a sound disturbed the Inspector of
Missions as he sat in his prison-house at Pont de Montvert:
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