eon and the stake. A merchant of La Torre, named Coupin,
Sebastian Basan, and Louis Malherbe, were added to the noble army of
Vaudois martyrs, besides scores who languished and died by secret violence
between the years 1601-1626.

The monks renewed their old game of kidnapping the children of the Vaudois.
An effort was made to establish convents all through the valleys by
Rorenco, prior of Lucerna. The only place they could succeed in was that of
La Torre, where evangelical worship was forbidden. After the invasion of
the French came the terrible plague in 1630. A brief interval of peace and
hope beamed upon the valleys with its smile; but, alas! it was but brief.
The restlessness of papal hostility soon awoke to new deeds of cruelty.

Two monks, in the month of May, 1636, appeared in the market-place at La
Torre with crucifix in hand, and by their abusive language tried to
exasperate the people. And even the noble fidelity of the Vaudois to their
young prince, Amadeus II. (only five years of age), at the death of his
father, against the attempt of his two uncles, supported by Spain, nor the
sufferings they endured at this time from the armies of the uncles, nor the
patriotic successes they achieved, seem to have obtained for them anything
beyond the most temporary respite. Their temples were again closed. Antonie
Leger, pastor of San Giovanni, was obliged to flee for his life. He settled
in Geneva as professor of theology and Oriental languages, having lived in
the service of the Dutch ambassador at Constantinople many years. And,
indeed, things were being put in train for that most furious, perhaps, of
all the tempests which the irrepressible pride and cruelty of Rome made to
lash its strong rage upon the heads and homes of those whose only fault
was--

"They would not leave that precious faith
For Rome's religion, false, impure;
No! no! they rather would endure
To lose their all, yea, even death."

FOOTNOTES:

[D] BOTTA, vol. ii. _Storia d'Italia_.

CHAPTER VIII.

The event to which allusion is made in the close of the foregoing chapter
recalls my thoughts and observation, as I stood in the streets of La Torre
on what was, as regards the ecclesiastical season, the very anniversary
period of that frightful tragedy perpetrated some 214 years before, and
remembered still as the "Bloody Pascha." The coincidence seemed to bring
home the remembrance of the awful event