he churches, and that at the following
Easter celebrations there were only half as many communicants as the
preceding year.

Such a state of licence, which threatened to spread farther and farther,
awoke the religious solicitude of Messire Francois Langlade de Duchayla,
Prior of Laval, Inspector of Missions of Gevaudan, and Arch-priest of
the Cevennes. He therefore resolved to leave his residence at Mende and
to visit the parishes in which heresy had taken the strongest hold, in
order to oppose it by every mean's which God and the king had put in his
power.

The Abbe Duchayla was a younger son of the noble house of Langlade, and
by the circumstances of his birth, in spite of his soldierly instincts,
had been obliged to leave epaulet and sword to his elder brother, and
himself assume cassock and stole. On leaving the seminary, he espoused
the cause of the Church militant with all the ardour of his temperament.
Perils to encounter; foes to fight, a religion to force on others, were
necessities to this fiery character, and as everything at the moment was
quiet in France, he had embarked for India with the fervent resolution
of a martyr.

On reaching his destination, the young missionary had found himself
surrounded by circumstances which were wonderfully in harmony with his
celestial longings: some of his predecessors had been carried so far by
religious zeal that the King of Siam had put several to death by torture
and had forbidden any more missionaries to enter his dominions; but
this, as we can easily imagine, only excited still more the abbe's
missionary fervour; evading the watchfulness of the military, and
regardless of the terrible penalties imposed by the king, he crossed the
frontier, and began to preach the Catholic religion to the heathen, many
of whom were converted.

One day he was surprised by a party of soldiers in a little village in
which he had been living for three months, and in which nearly all the
inhabitants had abjured their false faith, and was brought before
the governor of Bankan, where instead of denying his faith, he nobly
defended Christianity and magnified the name of God. He was handed over
to the executioners to be subjected to torture, and suffered at their
hands with resignation everything that a human body can endure while yet
retaining life, till at length his patience exhausted their rage;
and seeing him become unconscious, they thought he was dead, and with
mutilated hands, his