horror; men are dizzy with amazement; heaven itself appears astonished with the cries of the dying, and the very earth to blush with the gore of so many innocent persons. Avenge not thyself, O God, for this mighty wickedness, this parricidal slaughter! Let thy blood, O Christ, wash out this blood!”[123] We have repeatedly mentioned the Castelluzzo in our narrative of this people and their many martyrdoms. It is closely connected with the Massacre of 1655, and as such kindled the muse of Milton. It stands at the entrance of the Valleys, its feet swathed in feathery woods; above which is a mass of _débris_ and fallen rocks, which countless tempests have gathered like a girdle round its middle. From amidst these the supreme column shoots up, pillar-like, and touches that white cloud which is floating past in mid-heaven. One can see a dark spot on the face of the cliff just below the crowning rocks of the summit. It would be taken for the shadow of a passing cloud upon the mountain, were it not that it is immovable. That is the mouth of a cave so roomy, it is said, as to be able to contain some hundreds. To this friendly chamber the Waldenses were wont to flee when the valley beneath was a perfect Pandemonium, glittering with steel, red with crime, and ringing with execrations and blasphemies. To this cave many of the Vaudois fled on occasion of the great massacre. But, alas! thither the persecutor tracked them, and dragging them forth rolled them down the awful precipice. The law that indissolubly links great crimes with the spot where they were perpetrated, has written the Massacre of 1655 on this mountain, and given it in eternal keeping to its rock. There is not another such martyrs’ monument in the whole world. While the Castelluzzo stands the memory of this great crime cannot die; through all the ages it will continue to cry, and that cry our sublimest poet has interpreted in his sublime sonnet:-- “Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones, Forget not: in Thy book record their groans Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roll’d Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven. Their martyr’d blood and ashes sow O’er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple tyrant; that from these may grow A hundredfold, who having learned Thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe.” CHAPTER XIV. EXPLOITS OF GIANAVELLO--MASSACRE AND PILLAGE OF RORA.