, the spirit
conducts thee through the world, and puts thee on a coat of mail that
armies grow out of the ground, and horses and riders, and thousands
sent by kings with the thunder of artillery, were not able to make the
little world as quiet and small as it lay formerly in the solitary
cottage. Praised be the Lord!"

He prayed inwardly, and then continued: "In the meantime, people became
older and wiser but certainly more obstinate, I already began to think
no more of my former faith, nor had the new one either much effect on
my heart. I was an ass between two hayricks, and ate of neither.

"A man of the name of Beoussan, a man of God, lived first at Nismes,
and afterwards at Toulouse. He was a reformer and a lawyer, who always,
and when the people were poor, gratuitously took up the cause of his
companions of the faith: His was a spirit full of gentleness and
goodness. He went into foreign countries, became a priest in
Switzerland, preached there and in Holland, and edified thousands. Him
did the spirit and his native land lead back into our country and then
the Lord conducted me to him in the wilderness. My wife was dead at
that time, and lonely and childless, as I then was, my whole heart that
had lain so long untilled, was again enabled to bear genuine fruit. It
was, as if I began from that time to imbibe again a portion of heavenly
comfort in my cottage. Thus things went on. I was no longer in
ignorance, but I was not yet happy. This would not last, hail-showers
sometimes destroyed my seed, and when I often lay in wait with the best
dispositions, and with an open and acute mind, loaded and ready to
shoot, there came no game, no animal sprang up in the wilderness of my
heart. Ah, we totter on thus pitiably for years, and time passes as a
dream and intoxication. I glanced round me, I had become old. How!
thought I, when the Lord looks down, he will see furrows on thy old
skin and thou art still neither hot, nor cold. Than came the late Mr.
Beoussan, the holy master, among us. An impulse of the spirit, as he
said, led him to us. He was well and comfortable at home, but, pious
bird of the forest! he wished to visit once more his beloved mountains,
dells, the clear brooks, and to pour so thrillingly, fully, and
affectionately into our hearts the tones of the sweet nightingale, that
burst from his breast, that he must die from the effort.--Amen!--"

He stopped again, and Edmond said: "I often saw this pious Beoussan