Page:The Rebellion in the Cevennes (Volume 1).djvu/66

Rh girl hunger and she will soon forget to prophecy.' 'All that has been tried, reverend sir,' groaned the old man, 'and more than my conscience will justify; the child is ill from my ill—treatment, for as soon as she begins to prophecy, or to sing psalms, which she has never heard from me, I have chastised her severely; I have not given her a morsel of bread for three days, yet she does not give up, but goes on still worse. Come, I pray, to my house and see yourself; if she is possessed by a devil, you can conjure, is it any thing else, you can exhort.' I had never seen such prophecying creatures, I went therefore out of curiosity with the old man. As we entered the house, the child was sitting at a spinning wheel, she was pale and thin, and seemed half silly, she complained of hunger and pain. 'I can see nothing in the child,' said I, 'oh, if she was always reasonable like that,' exclaimed the peasant. Presently the worm was seized with a sobbing in the throat: 'there we have the gift,' said the old