Page:The Rebellion in the Cevennes (Volume 1).djvu/41

Rh ,—now his conscience awakes, he thinks to be able to conquer heaven and fortune, by suffering Catholic subjects only to call him king. He sends with inconceivable blindness—converting ministers into these mountains; and threats, compulsion, massacre and pillage are the exhortations employed towards this unfortunate people; now we have witnessed these horrors in our very neighbourhood; however zealous you may be for your party, my son, I know that your humane heart has been agonised more than once by these proceedings. Suddenly—could he do it, ask yourself if he might? the king revokes that edict and voluntarily absolves himself from his oath, without at the same time consulting that of his predecessors, of the parliament, and of all the states in the kingdom; he himself destroys, in his religious madness, that which binds him to the citizen, that attaches the subject to him, the sacred palladium, the undefilable is profaned and annihilated, and the wretched inhabitants