Page:A book of the Cevennes (-1907-).djvu/302

 The micocoulier, or nettle tree (Celtis Anstralis), is much grown around Quissac. This tree flourishes along the south of Europe bordering on the Mediterranean, in Italy, Greece, on the coast of Asia Minor, and stretches to the south of the Caspian. The tree is at home also in Algeria and Tunis. It is grown here for making whip-handles and for pitchforks. For the latter purpose it is suffered to have but two or three shoots at the top, and pains are taken to give the stem the utmost regularity, as that is to serve as the handle to the fork. Of the wood is also made the yokes for the oxen. The wood is heated in an oven, and given the desired bend or shape when hot.

Sauve bears for its arms argent a mountain, on top of which grows a plant of sage (sauve), and in chief the words Sal-Sal, that stand for Salvia Salvatrix. Originally the town occupied the height where is now the ruined castle, but the inhabitants drifted down to the abbey, which was below. In the religious wars, Sauve was taken by the Huguenots, and remained a stronghold of the Calvinists till 1629. In the war of the Camisards the Protestants of the upper town offered to open the gates to them disguised in the uniform of the royal soldiery, but the plot was detected, and in resentment the Camisards set fire to the abbey church and monastic buildings, murdered the old prior, aged ninety-one, and the curé, aged seventy. They swept together forty of the parish priests of the neighbourhood and mutilated them in the most horrible manner.

The country-house of the abbots of the fourteenth century has the inscription on it: "In urbe omnibus, in deserto mihi." (In the town I am at everybody's beck and call, in the desert I belong to myself only.)