Another writer, Henri de Corvie, describes them as men descended from "an ancient race, inhabiting the Alps, and have been always attached to ancient customs." Voltaire, an impartial witness, speaks of the Waldenses as "the remains of the first Christians of Gaul." If it be asked for documentary proof, in the possession of the Waldensians themselves, it should be remembered that Leger, the historian, collected together all that he could find, and that these were taken from him when he was imprisoned in Turin, A.D. 1655. Still, documents of great value and antiquity have been preserved, and among these must be enumerated "The Noble Lesson," a didactic poem of about five hundred lines. Three MSS. of this poem are preserved in the libraries of the Universities of Cambridge, Geneva, and Dublin, and the date assigned is _early_ in the twelfth century. The dialect in which it is written is also considered by some as an unquestionable proof of the high antiquity of the document. For example, the eminent philologist, M. Renouard, writing as a philologist, and not as an historian, remarks that "_the dialect of the Vaudois is an idiom intermediate between the decomposition of the language of the Romans and the establishment of a new grammatical system_." This philological circumstance shows the extreme earliness of the period at which the Waldenses must have betaken themselves to the Cottian Alps, inasmuch as it proves that they left the Italian plains before the establishment of the new grammatical system referred to by M. Renouard. This is the opinion of Mr. Faber, who contends that "the primevally Latin Vaudois must have retired from the lowlands of Italy to the valleys of Piedmont in the very days of primitive Christianity, and _before_ the breaking up of the Roman empire by the incursions of the Teutonic nations." And this leads to another question. Why did these people leave their homes in the fertile plains and betake themselves to the less temperate climate and the rugged soil of a mountainous region? Plainly there must have been some very urgent cause, and that cause may be readily perceived in the record of the persecutions against the Christians under the Pagan emperors during the second, third, and fourth centuries. FOOTNOTES: [A] E.G.--In a memorial to Philibert Emmanuel, A.D. 1559, they say, "This religion which we profess is not only ours ... but it was the religion of our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and other yet more ancient predecessors of ours, and of the blessed martyrs, confessors, prophets, and apostles; _and if any can prove the contrary, we are ready to subscribe and yield thereunto_." CHAPTER IV.