arry near Nismes, long the seat of secret Protestant worship. But
the troops surrounded the meeting suddenly, and the whole were taken.
The women were sent for life to the Tour de Constance, and the men,
chained in gangs, were sent all through France to La Rochelle, to be
imprisoned in the galleys there. The ambassador of England made
intercession for the prisoners, and their sentence was commuted into
one of perpetual banishment from France. They were accordingly
transported to New Orleans on the Mississippi, to populate the rising
French colony in that quarter of North America.

Thus crimes abounded, and cruelty when practised upon Huguenots was
never investigated. The seizure and violation of women was common.
Fathers knew the probable consequence when their daughters were
seized. The daughter of a Huguenot was seized at Uzes, in 1733, when
the father immediately died of grief. Two sisters were seized at the
same place to be "converted," and their immediate relations were
thrown into gaol in the meantime. This was a common proceeding. The
Tour de Constance was always filling, and kept full.

The dying were tortured. If they refused the viaticum they were
treated as "damned persons." When Jean de Molenes of Cahors died,
making a profession of Protestantism, his body was denounced as
damned, and it was abandoned without sepulture. A woman who addressed
some words of consolation to Joseph Martin when dying was condemned to
pay a fine of six thousand livres, and be imprisoned in the castle of
Beauregard; and as for Martin, his memory was declared to be damned
for ever. Many such outrages to the living and dead were constantly
occurring.[56] Gaolers were accustomed to earn money by exhibiting the
corpses of Huguenot women at fairs, inviting those who paid for
admission, to walk up and "see the corpse of a damned person."[57]

[Footnote 56: Edmund Hughes, "Histoire de la Restauration du
Protestantisme en France," ii. 94.]

[Footnote 57: Benoit, "Edit de Nantes," v. 987.]

Notwithstanding all these cruelties, Protestantism was making
considerable progress, both in Languedoc and Dauphiny. In reorganizing
the Church, the whole country had been divided into districts, and
preachers and pastors endeavoured to visit the whole of their members
with as much regularity as possible. Thus Languedoc was divided into
seven districts, and to each of those a _proposant_ or probationary
preacher was appoint