at the galleys,
in the dungeons: for all those evils she blamed our sins only, and
called all to penitence. Then, starting anew, she spoke angelically of
the Divine goodness."

Boucher, the intendant of the province, had her apprehended and
examined. She would not renounce. "You may take my life," she said,
"but God will raise up others to speak better things than I have
done." She was at last imprisoned at Grenoble, and afterwards in the
Tower of Constance.

As Isabel Vincent had predicted, many prophets followed in her steps,
but they did not prophesy as divinely as she. They denounced "Woe,
woe" upon their persecutors. They reviled Babylon as the oppressor of
the House of Israel. They preached the most violent declamations
against Rome, drawn from the most lugubrious of the prophets, and
stirred the minds of their hearers into the most furious indignation.

The rapidity with which the contagion of convulsive prophesying spread
was extraordinary. The adherents were all of the poorer classes, who
read nothing but the Bible, and had it nearly by heart. It spread from
Dauphiny to Viverais, and from thence into the Cevennes. "I have
seen," said Marshal Villars, "things that I could never have believed
if they had not passed under my own eyes--an entire city, in which all
the women and girls, without exception, appeared possessed by the
devil; they quaked and prophesied publicly in the streets."[35]

[Footnote 35: "Vie du Marechal de Villars," i. 125.]

Flottard says there were eight thousand persons in one province who
had inspiration. All were not, however, equally inspired. There were
four degrees of ecstasy: first, the being called; next, the
inspiration; then, the prophesy; and, lastly, the gift, which was the
inspiration in the highest degree.

All this may appear ludicrous to some. And yet the school of credulity
is a very wide one. Even in these enlightened times in which we live,
we hear of tables turning, spelling out words, and "prophesying" in
their own way. There are even philosophers, men of science, and
literati who believe in spiritualists that rise on sofas and float
about in the air, who project themselves suddenly out of one window
and enter by another, and do many other remarkable things. And though
our spiritual table-rapping and floating about may seem to be of no
possible use, the "prophesying" of the Camisards was all but essential
to the existence of the movement in which they were