There, A Hundred And Eighty Years
Ago, Was The Chivalrous Roland, 'Count And Lord Roland, Generalissimo Of
The Protestants In France,' Grave, Silent, Imperious, Pock-Marked
Ex-Dragoon, Whom A Lady Followed In His Wanderings Out Of Love.
There
was Cavalier, a baker's apprentice with a genius for war, elected
brigadier of Camisards at seventeen, to die at fifty-five the English
governor of Jersey.
There again was Castanet, a partisan leader in a
voluminous peruke and with a taste for controversial divinity. Strange
generals, who moved apart to take counsel with the God of Hosts, and fled
or offered battle, set sentinels or slept in an unguarded camp, as the
Spirit whispered to their hearts! And there, to follow these and other
leaders, was the rank and file of prophets and disciples, bold, patient,
indefatigable, hardy to run upon the mountains, cheering their rough life
with psalms, eager to fight, eager to pray, listening devoutly to the
oracles of brain-sick children, and mystically putting a grain of wheat
among the pewter balls with which they charged their muskets.
I had travelled hitherto through a dull district, and in the track of
nothing more notable than the child-eating beast of Gevaudan, the
Napoleon Bonaparte of wolves. But now I was to go down into the scene of
a romantic chapter - or, better, a romantic footnote in the history of the
world. What was left of all this bygone dust and heroism? I was told
that Protestantism still survived in this head seat of Protestant
resistance; so much the priest himself had told me in the monastery
parlour.
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