The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 01Stevenson, Robert Louis
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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 01
Stevenson, Robert Louis
English literature -- 19th century
Of the five legions into which the Camisards were divided, it was the
oldest and the most obscure that had its magazines by Cassagnas. This
was the band of Spirit Seguier; men who had joined their voices with his
in the 68th Psalm as they marched down by night on the archpriest of the
Cevennes. Seguier, promoted to heaven, was succeeded by Salomon Couderc,
whom Cavalier treats in his memoirs as chaplain-general to the whole
army of the Camisards. He was a prophet; a great reader of the heart,
who admitted people to the sacrament, or refused them, by "intentively
viewing every man" between the eyes; and had the most of the Scriptures
off by rote. And this was surely happy; since in a surprise in August
1703, he lost his mule, his portfolios, and his Bible. It is only
strange that they were not surprised more often and more effectually;
for this legion of Cassagnas was truly patriarchal in its theory of war,
and camped without sentries, leaving that duty to the angels of the God
for whom they fought. This is a token, not only of their faith, but of
the trackless country where they harboured. M. de Caladon, taking a
stroll one fine day, walked without warning into their midst, as he
might have walked into "a flock of sheep in a plain," and found some
asleep and some awake and psalm-singing. A traitor had need of no
recommendation to insinuate himself among their ranks, beyond "his
faculty of singing psalms"; and even the prophet Salomon "took him into
a particular friendship." Thus, among their intricate hills, the rustic
troop subsisted; and history can attribute few exploits to them but
sacraments and ecstasies.
People of this tough and simple stock will not, as I have just been
saying, prove variable in religion; nor will they get nearer to apostasy
than a mere external conformity like that of Naaman in the house of
Rimmon. When Louis XVI., in the words of the edict, "convinced by the
uselessness of a century of persecutions, and rather from necessity than
sympathy," granted at last a royal grace of toleration, Cassagnas was
still Protestant; and to a man, it is so to this day. There is, indeed,
one family that is not Protestant, but neither is it Catholic. It is
that of a Catholic _cure_ in revolt, who has taken to his bosom a
schoolmistress. And his conduct, it is worth noting, is disapproved by
the Protestant villagers.
"It is a bad idea for a man," said one, "to go back from his
engagements."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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