It Lies Terraced
Across A Steep Slope In The Midst Of Mighty Chestnuts.
The Protestant
chapel stands below upon a shoulder; in the midst of the town is the
quaint old Catholic church.
It was here that poor Du Chayla, the Christian martyr, kept his library
and held a court of missionaries; here he had built his tomb, thinking to
lie among a grateful population whom he had redeemed from error; and
hither on the morrow of his death they brought the body, pierced with two-
and-fifty wounds, to be interred. Clad in his priestly robes, he was
laid out in state in the church. The cure, taking his text from Second
Samuel, twentieth chapter and twelfth verse, 'And Amasa wallowed in his
blood in the highway,' preached a rousing 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.
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