s,
had the wounds filled up with quicklime, and perished thus in agony at
Penile; Daniel Michelini had his tongue torn out at Bobbo for having
praised God; James Baridari perished covered with sulphurous matches
which had been forced into his flesh under the nails, between the
fingers, in the nostrils, in the lips, and all over the body, and then
lighted; Daniel Rovelli had his mouth filled with gunpowder, which,
being lighted, blew his head to pieces;... Sara Rostignol was slit
open from the legs to the bosom, and left so to perish on the road
between Eyral and Lucerna; Anna Charbonnier was impaled, and carried
thus on a pike from San Giovanni to La Torre."[2]

_Und dergleicken mehr_! In 1630 the plague swept away one-half of the
Vaudois population, including fifteen of their seventeen pastors. The
places of these were supplied from Geneva and Dauphiny, and {49} the
whole Vaudois people learned French in order to follow their services.
More than once their number fell, by unremitting persecution, from the
normal standard of twenty-five thousand to about four thousand. In
1686 the Duke of Savoy ordered the three thousand that remained to give
up their faith or leave the country. Refusing, they fought the French
and Piedmontese armies till only eighty of their fighting men remained
alive or uncaptured, when they gave up, and were sent in a body to
Switzerland. But in 1689, encouraged by William of Orange and led by
one of their pastor-captains, between eight hundred and nine hundred of
them returned to conquer their old homes again. They fought their way
to Bobi, reduced to four hundred men in the first half year, and met
every force sent against them, until at last the Duke of Savoy, giving
up his alliance with that abomination of desolation, Louis XIV.,
restored them to comparative freedom,--since which time they have
increased and multiplied in their barren Alpine valleys to this day.

What are our woes and sufferance compared with these? Does not the
recital of such a fight so obstinately waged against such odds fill us
with resolution against our petty powers of darkness,--machine
politicians, spoilsmen, and the rest? Life is worth living, no matter
what it bring, if only such combats may be carried to successful
terminations and one's heel set on the tyrant's throat. To the
suicide, then, in his supposed world of multifarious and immoral
nature, you can appeal--and appeal in the name of the very evils