Page:The Rebellion in the Cevennes (Volume 1).djvu/226

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lighted no torch, lived and died in the spirit of peace, and who only came once more to take a last farewell of the old mountains, and of the brethren, whom the faith had collected around him as his own children, with the gospel in his pocket, and with the bread of tears he wished to return to the strange land, which had become to him as his native country; and when they caught him, of what avail was his quiet, peaceable spirit to him? Under martyrdom, at which the imagination shudders, he was forced to resign his soul into the hands of the Creator. Need I remind you of the noble spirit of Seguier, how heroically he died and only scorned the cruel ingenuity of the executioner? But how then do you forget the wholly innocent people, who often assembled in the fields to worship God in secret and were put down by the faithful, as they call themselves, or, as it often happened, massacred, women and children not excepted? And you no longer remember, how parents who were suspected had their children torn from them