De Basville, the chief agent in this tyranny, a calm, methodic, hard man, totally unaffected by religious zeal, opposed to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, secured his position as Intendant of Languedoc by oppressing the Protestants with more relentless fury than even the Government required. For thirty-three years this frightful man ruled Languedoc, and his own estimate of the number who suffered in that province alone was a hundred thousand persons, the tenth part of whom ended their days at the stake, on the gallows, or by the wheel.*

Under this reign of terror a condition of the public mind supervened which has rarely been paralleled, a condition so very different from ordinary experience that it will be well first to state the nature of the testimony upon which our knowledge concerning it is founded. Special details are of course dependent on particular testimonies, but on the main outlines of the movement all the authorities, however antagonistic the spirit of their statements, are agreed. Flechier, Bishop of Nimes, thought worthy to be numbered with Bossuet, Fenelon, and Massillon, as their four statues on the Place Saint Sulpice in Paris testify,-Flechier is the first authority on the Catholic side. He was nominated to the See of Nîmes in 1687. In his "Lettres Choisies" are several references to the fanatics of the Cevennes, and Letter cxxvii. affords a complete endorsement of all the salient features of the first outbreak. Next comes a work, in three volumes, "Histoire du Fanatisme de nôtre temps," written by D. A. de Brueys, a native of Provence. De Brueys, born a Protestant, was converted to Roman Catholicism and inducted into the ecclesiastical state by Bossuet. The first portion of this work, specially relating the first outbreak, was published in 1692, within four years of the events. De Brueys was a clever literary man, who achieved a permanent niche among French play-writers. His work is full of details, some of which he evidently got from Jurieu's Pastoral Letters. The third Catholic authority is the Père Louvreleuil, a priest of the Christian doctrine, whose work, "Fanatisme renouvelé," appeared before 1704, and treats of the second outburst which took place between 1700-1702. His work was republished at Avignon in 1868, as an apparently Roman Catholic version of these remarkable events.

The Protestant authority for the first period is Pierre Jurieu: the grand Jurieu, as Michelet sympathetically calls him. He began to publish his Pastoral Letters in 1688; they were a kind of weekly or fortnightly journal, containing communications from the friends of the Huguenot cause, especially from those suffering persecution in France. The seventh letter contains a great number of testimonies to the sounds and voices heard in the air during September and

Sismondi: "Histoire des Français," vol. xxv. p. 522.

October, 1686; and he has also given a very full account of Isabeau Vincent. For the second period we have most complete details in the collection now known as the "Théâtre Sacré des Cevennes." The editor, François Maximilien Misson, was a Protestant, holding the office of conseiller de Parlement at Paris, but who emigrated to England at the Revocation, and became tutor to the Earl of Arran. He was the author of a book that had a great success at the time, "Nouveau Voyage d'Italie, 1691," and of another, "Memoires et observations faites par un voyageur en Angleterre, 1698." In 1707 he published the "Théâtre Sacré," and in the same year a translation in English appeared entitled " A Cry from the Desart." Both consist, for the main part, of the testimonies of twenty-six of the refugees from the Cevennes, who came to England after the Camisard war. Twelve of these persons took oath before two Masters in Chancery that their depositions were true. And the greater part of the testimonies were made in the presence of M. Misson and the English editor, the latter affirming that the utmost care was taken not to draw out wonderful statements, but that the witnesses were urged to be most circumspect, not to state anything of which they were not fully assured, and that in the familiar intercourse held with the deponents he never perceived anything contrary to the facts as stated in the collection published. There was every reason at the time for this caution, for the matter was regarded with little sympathy by the Huguenot emigrants in London and elsewhere.

II.

The Cevennes, the Vivarais, the Dauphiny compose a district worthy the scene of an epic grand as the Arthurian or the Carlovingian Romances. The Cevennes, with the mountains of Auvergne, form as it were the crown of France, and contain all kinds of natural wonders. Italy and the Holy Land, Algeria and the sweet pastorals. of our native country, all find there some representative scene. A land of surprises, of contrasts, its inhabitants are homogeneous with the country. Under the Cross for generations, the Revocation had wrought their passionate natures to an intensity of feeling seldom equalled in history.

The first signs of the coming spiritual eruption was that people everywhere began to hear strange sounds in the air: the sound of a trumpet and a harmony of voices. They did not doubt that this music was celestial. It was the note of coming war, the song of the angelic hosts, who, seeing the worship of the poor Cevennols overthrown, offered it up on their behalf. So the pious thought, and wrote their solemn testimony to their friends in Holland and Switzerland.

But a greater wonder was in store, of which this was but the

prelude. Suddenly, in various places, many persons, especially the young, were smitten with something which the historians call "ecstasy." They swooned, appeared without any feeling, then broke out into exhortations-fervent, eloquent, correct, well-chosen, appropriate, mostly in good French, which was not the language they ordinarily spoke, but which they knew through their Bibles and religious services.

Isabeau Vincent, a shepherdess, who could neither read nor write, was the daughter of a weaver who had forsaken his religion for a bribe, and who gave proof of his fidelity to the bargain by forcing his daughter to church by blows. At ten years of age she had seen a great horror: women and children sabred by cavalry, a temple set on fire while the congregation were at worship—so that the column of flame and the melody of the psalm ascended to heaven at the same moment. Poor and ill-treated, she fled to the house of her godfather. One day the ecstasy came upon her-the exact date has been preserved-February 12, 1688. On the first occasion it was a kind of stupor, but on the second no means would arouse her; she was insensible to pain and her eyes were closed. Nevertheless, she spoke, and that in a most fervent and edifying manner, calling on those present to repent, referring especially to her father and all who as he, had Judas-like sold their Lord for money. Her first sermons were in her native tongue, but as her audience began to include persons who knew and spoke French, she spoke in that language and in the most correct manner. What she said was rarely peculiar; she sometimes repeated portions of the Mass in Latin, and then refuted what she had recited. Physicians came to see her, but they found her pulse quite normal and every sign of bodily health. She never complained of being tired, even when she had been talking three, or even five, hours during the night, but went to her labour in the ordinary way. She was arrested, and after being led about in different places was confined in a convent. They shaved her head, took away her clothes, lest they were enchanted, and the priests came to exorcise her. According to De Brueys, she was converted to the Catholic faith, and led a pious life, but it must be always remembered that De Brueys was a dramatist by nature.

Isabeau Vincent was not alone. The ecstasy seized everybody. Between the month of June, 1688, and the end of February following, there arose in the Dauphiny, and then in the Vivarais, five or six hundred prophets of both sexes. The enthusiasm spread like a flood, or like a prairie on fire; every village, every hamlet, every gathering had its prophet. Few old people received the gift, it fell mostly on young men and maidens, and frequently on boys and even little girls. Three shepherd boys, Bompat, Mazet, and Pascalin,

respectively eight, fifteen, and twenty years of age, met just as the pastors at Geneva, and examined penitents, who on their knees confessed their apostasy.

But the most striking figure in this first outburst, after la belle Ysabeau, was Gabriel Astier, a labourer, twenty-two years of age. On receiving the gift, his first efforts were to communicate it to his own relatives and friends. But, thanks partly to the persecution he endured, his followers became so numerous that he withdrew to Boutières, a wild district. The people gathered here from all parts, settling on the crests of the mountains and in the deep valleys like. immense flocks of birds. Their assemblies for worship sometimes numbered three or four thousand persons. Pursued into this retreat by four companies of soldiers, General de Broglie and the Intendant de Basville had themselves to come and raise all the Catholic militia in the neighbourhood before these Huguenot peasants could be dislodged. Animated by Gabriel and the other prophets, who described their martyred pastors: Homel and Brunièr, as looking down upon them, the first assembly attacked made a vigorous resistance, three hundred peasants being left dead on the field, while only fifty were taken prisoners. On the peaks of the mountains where they had worshipped, the people now saw the corpses of their friends standing out like black spots on the deep blue sky.

Gabriel was broken alive on the 2nd of April, 1690, and on the 4th of November, 1695, the noble-hearted Brousson, almost the only pastor who came to the help of the people, was hanged about sunset at Montpellier. Behind the gallows was a magnificent horizon which stretched away to the sea, and the story of the execution became a sacred legend which was repeated nightly in the cabins of the Huguenot peasants.

The prophetic fire had been stamped upon, but not extinguished. In 1700 it burst out afresh, and soon again becoming universal, was as much distinguished as in 1688, for the extreme youth of its subjects. According to several of the testimonies made in London in 1707, many children between the ages of three and twelve were among the prophets. Guillaume Brugière saw a little boy, three years old, seized by the spirit, fall on the ground, strike his breast, saying it was his mother's sins that thus caused him to suffer; then he exhorted the bystanders to fight the good fight of faith, and repent of their sins, for these were the last times. Jacques du Bois had seen sixty children, between three and twelve, who thus prophesied. Durand Fage heard one night a little girl of eleven pray and preach a sermon three-quarters of an hour long. And the word of these young prophets had all the power that has ever attended analogous movements. Jean Cavalier, cousin of the famous Camisard chief, a youth between fifteen and sixteen years of age, went to a meeting in a barn from

au

curiosity. Several boys prophesied, each one piercing the young man's conscience more and more sharply. He resisted, striving to get out of the place, praying inwardly that God would fill him with horror for these things if they were not true. But all in vain : when the third little preacher took for his text the well-known evangelic invitation, "Ho! every one that thirsteth," the whole assembly were in tears, and Cavalier among the rest. "I was ravished," he relates, "when this inspired boy said that the least and the most simple were of great price before God, that it was the most indigent who He wished to enrich; only it was necessary to feel one's misery, to know one's spiritual poverty, to be hungry and thirsty, to be admitted to this banquet." The sermon over, he felt as if he had been struck on the breast with a hammer, which set all his blood on fire. He fainted and fell. As he rose he was struck a second time, and his prayers now were intermingled with sighs. After a short calm his agitation recommenced, and he was wholly occupied with the thought of his sins. The little minister called the young man before him, and spoke to him in a way that showed him that he knew all he was feeling. "The boldness of the young boy astonished me," he exclaims. "It was indeed a marvel to see an ignorant and timid child undertake to teach the people, to preach in a language he was incapable of speaking another time, of expressing himself magnificently, and presiding like a bishop in an assembly of Christians." "little sorcerer was his first epithet, now it is "this good little minister of Jesus Christ."

The

Not only children, but childish men and women displayed the prophetic power. Thus Claude Arnassan relates that a shepherd who was regarded as incapable of instruction, and who had moreover never attended divine worship, being taken to a meeting was on his return seized in the usual way and began to prophesy. A similar case is given by Jacques Mazel, and in a third a woman, considered almost idiotic, uttered discourses of so elevated a character, and in such good French, that her hearers said, "This ass of Balaam has a mouth of gold."

Two things have to be noted-first, that these prophesyings rarely meant more than preaching as their pastors would have done, and in occasional intimations of the approach of friends or enemies, or of other dangers which menaced them; second, that the inspiration was not at command, but came in answer to prayer, and always commenced with the words "Mon enfant."

The less cultivated among the priests were not a little troubled, for the whole movement appealed to a mysticism which played a great part in their own religion; the upper clergy and the fashionable abbés spoke of it with contempt, their pure minds for ever connecting it with scenes of libertinism. But the hardest and most impassive of men was in authority, and De Basville without more