nced his professional career about the time when Louis XIV.
began to issue his oppressive edicts against the Huguenots. Protestant
advocates were not yet forbidden to practise, but they already
laboured under many disabilities. He continued, however, for some time
to exercise his profession, with much ability, at Castres,
Castelnaudry, and Toulouse. He was frequently employed in defending
Protestant pastors, and in contesting the measures for suppressing
their congregations and levelling their churches under existing
edicts, some time before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had
been finally resolved upon.

Thus, in 1682, he was engaged in disputing the process instituted
against the ministers and elders of the church at Nismes, with the
view of obtaining an order for the demolition of the remaining
Protestant temple of that city.[20] The pretext for suppressing this
church was, that a servant girl from the country, being a Catholic,
had attended worship and received the sacrament from the hands of M.
Peyrol, one of the ministers.

[Footnote 20: John Locke passed through Nismes about this
time. "The Protestants at Nismes," he said, "have now but one
temple, the other being pulled down by the King's order about
four years since. The Protestants had built themselves an
hospital for the sick, but that is taken from them; a chamber
in it is left for the sick, but never used, because the
priests trouble them when there. Notwithstanding these
discouragements [this was in 1676, _before_ the Revocation],
I do not find many go over; one of them told me, when I asked
them the question, that the Papists did nothing but by force
or by money."--KING'S _Life of Locke_, i. 100.]

Brousson defended the case, observing, at the conclusion of his
speech, that the number of Protestants was very great at Nismes; that
the ministers could not be personally acquainted with all the people,
and especially with occasional visitors and strangers; that the
ministers were quite unacquainted with the girl, or that she professed
the Roman Catholic religion: "facts which rendered it probable that
she was sent to the temple for the purpose of furnishing an occasion
for the prosecution." Sentence was for the present suspended.

Another process was instituted during the same year for the
suppression of the Protestant church at Uzes, and another for t