Page:The Rebellion in the Cevennes (Volume 1).djvu/227

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to be brought up as Catholics, how the mothers never saw them more and how those under age, who then remained faithful to the Gospel, were ill—used, suffered martyrdom, or were doomed to languish in a dungeon? All then has escaped your recollection, what those priests of the pulpit and the altar have uttered against us, and the ban and the curse, and that we are no men and unworthy of commiseration, when we were still constrained to attend their mass? and is it even permitted that gentleness, virtue, consideration, humanity and pity, should be observed towards these bloodhounds? No, verily, we are ruined if we do not pay them in their own coin, return evil for evil, blood for blood, death for death, rage and fury for their inflexibility and severity. As they have been mild and compassionate towards us, let us respond to it; let the Christianity that they preach, fall burning down upon their own heads, let us dive into their hearts and entrails, to see where they have concealed pity