Page:The Rebellion in the Cevennes (Volume 1).djvu/244

Rh here from the commune of Melière, we, who have often lent you our help, all in secret attached to you, and who have daily put up our prayers for you to heaven. You also know our persecutors; why need I name them to you. But our calamity is still new to you, and truly one must live in our days to deem it possible. It is now some months ago, that the Intendant and the Marshal caused whole communities to be carried off from the middle of the Cevennes, as well as from Mialet; women, children, and fathers were thrown into their prisons, merely because they were suspected by them. Out of one-and-twenty parishes, three hundred young men were seized from the district of Nismes alone, besides whole families and are shut up in the dungeons and fortresses of the level country and of the mountains. The inhuman Intendant trusts no one, and how can the subject be tranquil and faithful to the king, when the tyrant in his cold-blooded intrigues only meditates how to make the people wretched?