Kitabı oku: «The Scourge of God», sayfa 5

History repeats itself; also events in one part of the world resemble those occurring in the other. Even as in the old times before them, the people of God had fled into the deserts of the East to escape the tyranny of Pharaoh and of Ahab, even as the Covenanters had fled into the Pentland Hills, so now the Protestants of the Cévennes fled into their mountains to escape the persecutions of him whom they called the Scourge of God.

Peaceful, law-abiding men and women, asking only to be allowed to worship their Maker in their own way, or, failing that, to depart for other lands where they might do so unmolested, the refusal had turned them at last into rebels, if not against the king, at least against his local representatives-rebels who, having suffered long under the cruelties of their persecutors, had now become cruel themselves.

For the torch of rebellion was lighted at last in all Languedoc, and ere long it flamed fiercely. The "Holy War" had begun.

CHAPTER IX
"BAVILLE! UN MAGISTRAT DONT LES EPOUVANTABLES RIGUEURS DOIVENT ÊTRE SIGNALÉES À L'HORREUR DE LA POSTÉRITÉ." – SISMONDI

Night was near at hand again and all were gone-all except Martin Ashurst and the pastor, both of whom sat now upon the bridge of Montvert, their eyes fixed always on the crest of the hill which rose between the little town and the larger one of Alais. For it was from that situation that they expected to see at last the flash of sabres carried by the dragoons of de Broglie and the foot soldiers of de Peyre, Lieutenant General of the Province, to observe the rays of the setting sun flicker on their embrowned musketoon and fusil barrels, and to hear the ring of bridle chain and stirrup iron. That they would come on the instant that the intelligence reached Baville of what had been done in Montvert over night it was impossible to doubt. And then-well, then, possibly, since there were no human beings left to be destroyed except these two men waiting there, the village would itself be demolished, burned to the ground. Such vengeance had been taken only a week ago on a similarly deserted bourg from which the inhabitants had fled, though silently and without revolt. It might be expected that the same would happen here.

All were gone, the men, the women and children; the old, the feeble, and the babes being carried by the stronger ones, or conveyed on the backs of mules and asses. Also the cattle were removed-they would be priceless in the mountain fastnesses; even the dogs had followed at their masters' heels; upon those masters' shoulders and upon the backs of the animals the household gods, the little gifts that had come to them on marriage days and feast days, on christenings and anniversaries, had been transported.

The place was deserted except for those two men who sat there wondering what would be their lot.

That vengeance would be taken on them neither deemed likely; but that both would be haled before Baville they both felt sure. Buscarlet was known to be one of the Protestant pastors who, from the day when the Revocation of Nantes was promulgated seventeen years before, had fought strongly against his congregation attending the Romish masses as the Government had ordered them to do. He was a man in evil odour, though against him until the present time no overt act could be charged. But now-now after the events of the past night, with those dead Things lying there behind the hedge, what might he not be accused of?

"Yet," said Martin, as he leaned over the parapet of the bridge, glancing sometimes up at the ridge which rose between Montvert and Alais, expecting every moment to see the soldiers approaching, and sometimes watching the long weeds in the river as they bent beneath its swift flow, "yet of what can you be accused? You interceded for him," and he directed his eyes in the direction of the dead abbé, where he lay covered by a cloth, "besought them to show mercy, to return evil for good. Also those men, those attroupés, were not of this village nor of your flock. As well call you to account for the invasion of a hostile army or foreign levy."

But again Buscarlet only shook his head, then answered:

"No, not of this village, nor of my congregation, but of the same faith-Protestants! Therefore accursed in Baville's and his master's eyes. That is enough."

As he spoke, from far up in the heights toward Alais they heard the blare of a trumpet ring loudly and clearly on the soft evening air; a moment later and, on the white road that ran like a thread through the green slopes, they saw the scarlet coats of the horsemen gleaming; saw, too, a guidon blown out as its rider came forward against the wind; caught the muffled sound of innumerable horses' hoofs. Then, next, heard orders shouted, and a moment later saw a large body of dragoons winding down the hillside slowly, while behind them on foot came the milices of the province.

"You see?" Martin said as he watched them. "Be calm. They can do you no harm."

And he leaned over the bridge again and continued to observe the oncomers.

Ahead of the main body, consisting of some hundred of cavalry and an even larger number of Languedoc milice or train bands, there rode three men abreast. In the middle was one clad in a sober riding dress of dark gray; the others on either side of him were rich in scarlet coats much guarded with galloon, the evening sun flickering on the lace and causing it to sparkle like burnished gold, and with large laced three-cornered hats in which also their gold cockades shone, while he on the left wore the rich justaucorps à brevet, a sure sign not of a soldier of France alone, but of a soldier of high social rank and standing.

"He in the middle," said Buscarlet, "is Baville, the Scourge of the Scourge. Be sure that when he comes with the soldiery the worst is to be dreaded. That he deems his presence is necessary to insure fitting vengeance being taken."

"Fear not," said Martin. "They can not execute us here to-night; afterward, inquiry will show that we have done nothing to deserve their vengeance. Be calm."

Amid clouds of dust from the road on which no rain had fallen for many days the cavalcade came onward, reaching at last the farther end of the bridge from where these two men stood side by side; then the officer on the right gave the orders for all following to halt, and slowly he with the other two rode on to the bridge itself and up the slope to where Buscarlet and Martin stood.

"It is the Lieutenant General, de Peyre," Buscarlet whispered. "The other is the Marquis du Chaila, the dead man's nephew. O God! what a sight for him to see!"

"What has been done here?" said Baville, looking down at the two men on foot who stood close by where they had halted their horses, though not until he and his companions had turned their eyes to the burned house, from which little spiral wreaths of smoke rose vertically in the calm evening air. "What? And who, messieurs, are you?"

The quiet tones of his full rich voice, the absence of all harshness in it, almost startled Martin Ashurst. Was this the man, he wondered-or could the pastor have been mistaken? – of whose cruelty to the Protestants as well as his fierce and overbearing nature not only all the province rang, but also other parts of the land far remote from here? The man whose name was known and mentioned with loathing by the refugees in Holland and Switzerland, in Canterbury and Spitalfields?

"Who are you, messieurs?" he repeated quietly, "though I think I should know you, at least," and he directed his glance to the pastor. "Monsieur André Buscarlet, prédicateur of the-the-so-called Reformed Religion, if I am not mistaken."

"André Buscarlet," the old man replied, looking up at him; and now, Martin observed, he trembled no more, but answered fearlessly, "Protestant minister of Montvert and-"

"Where," exclaimed the young Marquis du Chaila, "my uncle has been barbarously murdered by you and your brood. Oh, fear not, you shall pay dearly for it. Where, vagabond, is his body?"

"Sir," said Martin, speaking for the first time, "your grief carries you into violent extremes. This gentleman whom you term 'vagabond' has had no part nor share in your uncle's murder. Neither has his flock. The deed was done by the refugees from the mountains. Monsieur Buscarlet attempted in vain to prevent it."

"Bah!" exclaimed the marquis. "You are another Protestant, I should suppose. Valuable testimony! Who are you?"

"One who at least is not answerable to you. Suffice it that no person in this village had any hand in the abbé's murder, that it was done by the men of whom the pastor speaks."

"To me, monsieur, at least all persons are answerable," Baville interposed. "I am the king's Intendant. I must demand your name and standing."

"My name is-" he began, yet ere he could tell it a shout from the foremost dragoons who had dismounted startled all on the bridge. Some of these men had been engaged in tethering their horses close by the hedge, several of the animals indeed had already begun to crop the dusty grass that grew beneath it, and they had found the bodies.

"My God, my God!" the marquis almost shrieked as he bent over the abbé's form, the soldiers having led him to where it lay after he had hastily quitted the saddle. "Oh, my God! my father's brother slaughtered thus. Devils!" he exclaimed, turning round and glancing up the long street, imagining probably that the inhabitants were all within their houses. "Devils! was not his death enough, that you must glut your rage with such butchery as this? See, Baville-see, de Peyre, the wounds in his body. Enough to kill twenty men."

Looking down from their saddles at the murdered man's form, which they could observe very plainly over the hedge from the elevation at which they were, the Intendant and the leader of the troops shuddered, the former turning white beneath the clear olive of his complexion. Yet, even as Martin observed him blench, he wondered why he should do so. Countless men and feeble women and children had gone to the gibbet, the fire, the wheel, and the rack, as well as to the galleys and the lash, at this man's orders, unless all Languedoc and every Huguenot tongue lied. Why should he pale now, except it was because this retaliation, this shifting of murder from the one side to the other, told of a day of reckoning that had begun, of a Nemesis that had been awakened?

"Baville," the young man cried again, "Baville! Vengeance! Vengeance! He has died slaughtered at his post, as he knew he would die. But last week, at our house in Montpelier, he spoke of how he was doomed because he served God. Baville! – de Peyre! give the orders to fall on, to destroy all. Otherwise I make my way to the king of the north and cry on my knees for vengeance on these accursed heretics, these bloodthirsty Protestants, as they term themselves. Burn down their hovels, I say; slaughter them, exterminate."

"Alas, unhappy man!" exclaimed Buscarlet, still firm in his speech now, and undaunted before the distracted marquis, who had already torn his sword from its scabbard and stood before them gesticulating like a madman in his grief and rage. "What use to destroy empty houses, barren walls? Besides ourselves there is no living soul left in all Montvert."

"What!" the two other men exclaimed together in their surprise. "What! All gone? None left?"

And now on the Intendant's face there came another look, also the return of his dark colour, as he said:

"Gone, yet you proclaim their innocence. Tell us in one breath that they are guiltless, in another that they have fled. Do the innocent flee?"

"They feared your cruelty. They knew that your Church spares not the innocent; that it punishes them alike with the guilty."

"Blasphemer!" Baville exclaimed, though still his voice was low and calm, belying the terrible accusation which lay beneath this word. Terrible anywhere in France-now pious by law! – but doubly so in the Cévennes.

"I blaspheme not," Buscarlet said, waxing even bolder. "Pause. Look back. Twenty-seven Protestants have been done to death by you in the past month-"

"Silence!" the other ordered, still in his unruffled voice, yet uttering words enough to affright the boldest, "or I will have you gagged; if that suffices not, strung up there," and he pointed to the lamp.

Then turning to the marquis, he said:

"Be sure your uncle shall be avenged. Let them flee to the mountains, yet we will have them. Extirpate them like rats in a granary. Julien, the field marshal, has left Paris to assist in the holy work. Meanwhile, de Peyre, send your men into every house in the place; see if this abandonment is true. If not, if you find any, bring them before me. As for you, and you," directing a glance at the pastor and Martin, "you will sleep to-night in Alais. To-morrow a court will be held." Then he added, under his breath, as though talking to himself:

"You must be bold men. Otherwise you would have decamped too."

"Or innocent ones," Martin replied, hearing his words, low as they were. "You yourself have said it. Asked but now, 'Do the innocent flee?'"

The Intendant bit his lips; the riposte had gone fairly home. Then, while de Peyre gave his orders and told off some of the dragoons to enter and search every house in the village, and the marquis, who was in command of the milices, bade them take up the bodies carefully and cover them decently with their capes, Baville glanced down at Martin, saying:

"Monsieur, I do not know you. You are not, I think, of this locality. Yet I observe you are of the better classes. Where is your property?"

"In La Somme, department of the Ile de France. I am a proprietor; the property of Duplan La Rose is mine, such as it is."

Had he not in truth been the owner of this property he would have scorned to shelter himself beneath a falsehood. Had he been asked his faith it was his fixed resolve to declare it, as, had it been possible for Baville to recognise that he was an Englishman-which, after his earliest years being spent in France, was not so-he had determined to avow his nationality, no matter what the consequences might be. But so far the truth alone was necessary.

When his father waited long and eagerly for the time to come for the Stuart Restoration-as no follower of the Stuarts ever doubted it would come, sooner or later-he, hating Paris and all its garish dissipations under the then young and immoral king (the king now so old and self-righteous!), purchased this property from the Baron Duplan La Rose, a man himself broken and ruined by his participation in the outbreaks of the Fronde. Purchased it because all the Ile de France and the Pas de Calais were full of English refugees waiting like himself for happier days to come; also because, when the time did come, it would be near to England. And he dying, it became Martin's property.

Baville touched his hat as an acknowledgment of Martin's explanation, perhaps also as an acknowledgment of his position, since he was a great believer in les propriétaires as men who were almost always opposed to the murmurings and discontents of the canaille and les ordres bas, such as the wretches belonged to who had massacred the abbé and the others. And as he did so he said:

"Monsieur is therefore a visitor here only-to-perhaps" – and his eyes rested piercingly on Martin-"Monsieur Buscarlet?"

"Monsieur is," Martin replied, "a visitor here seeking for a lost person. A connection by marriage. A man who has been wronged, has partly wronged himself. Monsieur has lodged with Monsieur Buscarlet before."

"May I demand the name of the lost man?"

"Alas, monsieur, I do not know it. He discarded his own over forty years ago. That which he has adopted I can not tell you. Also he may be dead and my quest in vain."

"Would he be," and again his eyes stared fixedly into the eyes of the other man, "would he be, do you think, of-of-well-of Monsieur Buscarlet's religious faith?"

"He would."

"I hope you will find him, sir. If you do so, use your utmost endeavours to persuade him to abjure that faith. Otherwise the province of Languedoc will be no pleasant refuge for him henceforth, even though he has been here for the forty years you speak of. Now, sir," and he left this subject to speak of that which had brought him to Montvert, "I must beg you will accompany us to Alais. As a visitor to the neighbourhood and, as I suppose, a person not interested in our unhappy local troubles, you can give us much information as to how last night's murder was perpetrated. You are, I presume, willing to do so?"

"I am willing to speak as truthfully as I can on the matter. To speak as I do now, when I tell you that neither Monsieur Buscarlet nor any of the inhabitants of this place had any hand whatever in last night's doings."

"I shall-the Court will be-glad to be assured of that," Baville replied.

CHAPTER X
THE LIGHTED TORCH

The night had come, and, with the exception of one troop of dragoons and one company of the milices, also with the exception of the Marquis du Chaila, who had remained behind with the intention of having his uncle's body properly interred, all were on their way to Alais.

And behind Baville and de Peyre rode Martin and Buscarlet, the former on his own horse, the pastor on one which had belonged to the dead man.

It was a night such as those who dwell in the south-in Languedoc, or Provence, or Dauphiné-in the height of its summer know well. A night when, up from the Mediterranean, but a few leagues away, there come the cool breezes that sunset invariably brings, and when, from the caps of the purple mountains, the soft evening air descends, passing over cornfields and meadows and woods after it has left the sterile and basaltic summits until, when it reaches the valleys, its breath is perfumed and odorous. Summer nights so calm and soft that here the nightingale remains later than is its wont in other spots and sings sometimes far into August and September, the throats of hundreds of birds making the whole valley musical.

Now, however, their trills were drowned by the clank of sabres against the flanks of the horses bestridden by the dragoons, by the rattle of chain and bridle, the occasional neigh of the animals, and by various orders given as all went forward. Also by the hum of conversation as the men talked to one another.

Suddenly upon the night air, however, there came now another sound, silencing and deadening all else-a sound that subdued and deadened even the clatter of harness and accoutrements, the voices of the men, the songs of the birds of night. The sound of the deep booming of a bell not far off which swelled and rose in the summer calm, as sometimes it rang violently and sometimes slowly and intermittently, sometimes ceased, too, and then began again, with sharp, hurried clangs, as though rung by some frightened, terror-stricken hand.

"It is the tocsin," one hoarse-throated dragoon called out, who rode in the troop behind the leaders, "the tocsin from some village church. Is more murder being done? Are more abbés being slaughtered?"

"The fellow speaks truly," de Peyre said, then roared himself at the top of his voice: "Who among you knows the locality? What village is near?"

From twenty mouths the answer came at once: "It is Frugéres. The place is close at hand. The steeple is the highest for miles around."

Even as these men spoke, their voices were in their turn silenced or drowned by still more numerous shouts from others in the cavalcade.

"See, see!" those other voices yelled. "There is a fire-a church that burns. Behold!"

"My God!" Martin heard Baville whisper to himself, though not so low but that the words were distinguishable. "The fanatics have attacked another priest, another church. This is no riot, but a rebellion."

Then he turned at once to de Peyre and said hurriedly but authoritatively:

"Order all forward. They are there. We may be in time to save some. Also to trap these mountain wolves. Forward, I say! Give the word of command."

From de Peyre that word went forth, harsh and raucous as bellowed from the lips of the rough soldier who had fought at Senef and Ensisheim and had himself taken orders from Turenne and Condé. A moment later every man who was mounted was spurring toward the thin streak of flame that rose in the night air half a mile ahead, while the milice followed on foot as fast as they were able.

"Pray God, no more horrors are being perpetrated," Buscarlet muttered as he rode by Martin's side down the dusty road. Then murmured: "God forgive them. God forgive them. They are mad."

"He may forgive them," said Baville, who had caught his words, and paraphrasing unconsciously as he spoke the words of one by whose side he would have been accounted obscure and humble. "He may. I never will. Oh, that Julien arrives ere long! Then-then-then-they shall know what it is to outrage Languedoc thus."

The flames grew more furious as all neared the tower whence they issued. It was the tower of the church at Frugéres; behind those flames rose the thick white smoke from the burning material below. Also great pieces of the copings were falling from the summit, and sometimes a pinnacle or gargoyle fell too. And once as they drew near there came a smothered clang, followed a moment later by a deep sonorous clash, and those approaching rapidly knew that the great bell had fallen from its beam, probably by now burned through, and had been hurled far down below.

Upon the air as this happened there rose a psalm, a hymn of praise, telling how the false priests of Baal had been consumed by the flames of God's wrath in ages long since past, also the shouts and cries of many voices. Yet none of those shouts were derisive, none scornful or contemptuous. Instead, the shouts and cries of avengers who testified to justice being done on sinners; who approved of the justice, yet saw no reason for adding rejoicing to that approval.

"See," cried Baville, "they are there. Behold! They move below the tower. We have them. De Peyre, give the order to charge. At them, among them, spare none."

The belief in witchcraft was not yet dead in the world. People still believed in sorcery and enchantment. What wonder, then, that the dragoons thought there was some necromancy in the fact that, as they tore down the dusty road, their blades gleaming in the light cast by the flames, all against whom they rode vanished suddenly? Were there one moment, gone the next. It seemed incredible. Half a hundred men had been before them when they were five minutes' distance off; now that they had reached the burning church, not a living soul was to be seen. Truly it savoured of the miraculous. Yet, ere many months had passed-indeed, but a few weeks-these soldiers, and others too who were soon to join them, learned that no foe against whom they had ever been opposed possessed so thoroughly the art of sudden disappearance as did these fanatics, known later as the Camisards. For, trained in their mountain homes to every physical feat-to leaping great chasms, climbing dizzy heights unaided by aught but their strong and agile feet and hands, descending giddy precipices as easily as their own goats-they could disappear, disperse, as quickly and as thoroughly as the snow wreath under the spring sun. Could lure on bodies of their enemies to sports fraught with danger to all but themselves, into quagmires and morasses, lonely mountain passes and fatal hilltops, then themselves vanish and be no more seen.

It was so now upon this second night of their uprising.

As the dragoons charged down upon the paved, open place outside the church of Frugéres they charged upon empty space alone, encountered nothing that offered resistance either to their onrush or their gleaming blades. Nothing but the dead body of a man, a priest, lying on those stones beneath the tower, the head broken in, the limbs twisted and contorted.

"Grand Dieu! what are we dealing with?" exclaimed the Lieutenant General, wiping the sweat from his face as his men pulled up around him, while some rushed into the church on foot, their long swords in their hands, ready to be thrust through any breast that they encountered, and others to the presbytery, thinking the attroupés might be hiding there. "With human beings or devils?"

"Nay," said Baville, "with the children of the desert and the mountains. Yet also the children of the devil. They escape but for a time, however. Even these jugglers can not disappear when they are surrounded. And," he added, striking one white-gloved hand into the palm of another, "they shall be surrounded by such a fast-closing circle that ere long not one shall escape. I swear it here before this murdered man."

Easy to swear such an oath. More difficult to keep it. As, at last, Baville found.

"Who is he?" Martin asked. Then added in a whisper to Buscarlet: "This is murder, not justice. Cruelty, not retribution. See, he is an old man."

"You are right, sir," Baville replied, whose ears nothing ever escaped. "Yet be sure their time will come." Then, looking down at the dead priest, he also asked, "Who is he?"

"It is the reverend curé," one of the dragoons said, regarding the old man and wiping from his face at the same time the beads of perspiration, even as his leader had done a moment before. "I know him well; am of the next parish. He has thrown himself from the tower. As well have staid for the flames as perished thus, broken all to pieces."

All gazed down also as the man uttered these words, and as they did so, none speaking, they recognised that they were face to face with an awakened fury, with a vengeance that had slumbered but which now awoke even as the baited lion awakes and turns at last to rend its foes.

For more than sixteen years the affectés, the New Religionists, the Heretics, had bowed their heads beneath the yoke of him whom they called the Scourge of God, as well as of the priests and the De Maintenon, the woman whom Louvois and La Chaise had once used as an instrument to work on her lover's intolerance, but who, since she had become that lover's wife, had herself carried on the system. Born a Protestant, she had seen that the king's mind became more sunken in superstition as he grew near his end, and that, to keep that mind under her subjection, the surest way was to persecute those whom she had deserted and whom she hated. Therefore she revelled in their suppression, therefore she boasted to her sister bigot, the Princesse des Ursins, that in twenty years, if Louis' life was spared, there would be no more Huguenots in France.

Meanwhile her orders were carried out strenuously wherever Protestants harboured, especially so in the Midi. "Saccagez ces chiens des Huguenots, saccagez les, c'est la volonté du roi," her minister, Louvois, wrote. "Drive out ce monstre de l'hérésie, ces chaires de pestilence, ces synagogues de Satan," exclaimed the priest. And it was done.

Swiftly to all the jails in the warm south, to the galleys waiting at Marseilles for their victims, to the lamp-posts on the town and village bridges, to the fuel in the market places, to the axe, the wheel and the rope, the Protestants were hurried.

Also the dragonnades began. The dragoons, les cravats, were quartered in houses, sometimes in Protestant churches. Wives and daughters were so treated that, to hide the bitterness of their shame and to escape the horror of ever meeting their father's or brother's glances again, they took their own lives. They need not have feared those glances, for, the jails being soon full to overflowing, hundreds of male Protestants were huddled off in crazy brigs and tartans and snows to the Mississippi and New France generally, where, if they were not drowned on the way, they mostly perished from the effects of the climate or by the hands of the Natchez.

For sixteen years it had gone on. By the end of that time the Protestant churches were all closed and the Protestant ministers forbidden to perform their services under pain of death; scores, indeed, had been executed for doing to, while still scores more, at the risk of death, performed those services and held Divine worship in the mountains and woods. Also none were allowed to quit the land who could be prevented from doing so, though a hundred thousand did manage to escape to other countries, high-born women and girls being disguised in most cases as muleteer's boys; high-born men of the oldest blood in France-such men as Ruvigny and Duquesne-driving pigs and asses toward the frontier, or disguised as pilgrim monks, or pushing handcarts full of fruit and vegetables or Nîmes serges, which they pretended they were desirous of selling. But these were people of wealth, people who left behind them in their flight the châteaux in which countless generations of their race had been born, left also their rich furniture and equipages and costly plate and silks and satins, and the woods and forests and vineyards to which they had been born the heirs and to the enjoyment of which they had looked forward for the rest of their lives. Or they were skilled mechanics and artisans who could gain a livelihood wherever they found themselves. But for the poorer sort there was no flight possible; if they left France they must die of hunger in other lands. They had no money, could speak no tongue but their own, often knew no trade by which they could earn their bread; understood nothing beyond the breeding of cattle and the arts of husbandry. Yet they, too, fled from persecution, though in a different manner. High up in the gloomy and, to strangers, inaccessible plateaux of the Cévennes-a region of sterile mountains on which for six months in the year the snow sometimes falls unceasingly, while for the other six the heat is almost the heat of the tropics-they sought a refuge. Here in this mountainous region, which covers an extent of one hundred and twenty miles, they found a home, here worshipped God in their own fashion and unmolested, which was all they asked, yet saw with horror, when disguised they ventured down into the plains, the misery that was still overwhelming those of their own faith. Also they knew that plans were being formed for their extermination; that from Paris was coming an army under Julien, a bloodthirsty soldier who had once been a Protestant like themselves, but who was now a convert possessing all the tigerish fury of the convert against those whom he had deserted; knew that Du Chaila was the most brutal of all priests as Baville was the most cruel of all rulers. No wonder that they groaned over the ferocities inflicted on any of their number who were caught below in the plains. The capture of the girl Fleurette and of the guide Masip ignited the flame of revenge which had long been smouldering. But even then, when they descended to Montvert, it was more with the desire of rescuing the victims than aught else. In their hearts there had been at first no intention of murdering either the abbé or the curé of Frugéres. Moreover, it was not against Louis that they rebelled but against his Church and the priests of that Church.