"Avignon and the Comtat had been declared, by the assembly, united to France. Jourdan, surnamed _Coup-tête_, was at Avignon with his banditti. The unfortunate persons shut up in the prisons were devoted by him to death. An immense pit was opened to serve as their grave, and loads of sand were carried thither to cover the bodies. There were six hundred prisoners in the castle: the hour was fixed for putting them to death and throwing them, one after the other, into the pit. There was, at Avignon, a virtuous priest, one of those men for whom we feel, on earth, a veneration, like that paid to the saints in heaven. His name was Nolhac; he had formerly been rector of the noviciat of the Jesuits at Thoulouse, and was now eighty years old. For thirty years he had been the parish priest of St. Symphorien, a parish, which he had taken in preference, from its being that of the poor. During all these years, spent in the town, he had been the father and refuge of the indigent, the consoler of the afflicted, the adviser and friend of the {169} inhabitants, and he would not listen to their entreaties, to quit the place, on the arrival of the jacobins with Jourdan and his banditti. He could never resolve to leave his parishoners, deprived of their minister, in the beginning of the troubles of the schism, and far less to leave them, deprived of the consolations of religion, while under the tyranny of the banditti. Martyrdom, the glory of shedding his blood for Jesus Christ, for his church, or for the faithful, were, to him, but the accomplishment of desires and wishes, which, all his life, had been formed in his soul, and with which he knew how to inspire his disciples, when he was directing them in the paths _of perfection_. His life itself had been but a martyrdom, concealed by a countenance always serene, and always beaming angelic joy, with peace of conscience. His body, clothed with the hair-shirt, had needed the strong constitution, with which nature had endowed him, to support him under the mortifications, watchings, and fasts he endured, through all the activity of a minister and the austerity of {170} an anchorite. Daily at prayer and meditation long before light; daily visiting the sick and the poor, whom he never left without administering, together with spiritual consolations, temporal comforts, confided to his hands by the faithful; always poor as to himself, but rich for others, it was at length time to consummate the sacrifice of a life wholly devoted to charity and to his God.