The Persecution On The One Hand, The Febrile Enthusiasm On The
Other, Are Almost Equally Difficult To Understand In These Quiet Modern
Days, And With Our Easy Modern Beliefs And Disbeliefs.
The Protestants
were one and all beside their right minds with zeal and sorrow.
They
were all prophets and prophetesses. Children at the breast would exhort
their parents to good works. 'A child of fifteen months at Quissac spoke
from its mother's arms, agitated and sobbing, distinctly and with a loud
voice.' Marshal Villars has seen a town where all the women 'seemed
possessed by the devil,' and had trembling fits, and uttered prophecies
publicly upon the streets. A prophetess of Vivarais was hanged at
Montpellier because blood flowed from her eyes and nose, and she declared
that she was weeping tears of blood for the misfortunes of the
Protestants. And it was not only women and children. 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.
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