THE BOOK OF ADVENTURE AND PERIL. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. STORY OF A HUGUENOT GALLEY-SLAVE. I was born at Bergerac, a small | town in the province of Perigord, in the year 1684. My parents were in trade. By the grace of God they had always maintained, even unto death, the doctrines of the true reformed religion; their conduct was such as never to draw down any reproach upon these doctrines. They brought up their children in the fear of God, continually instructing them in the principles of true religion, and in aversion to the errors of Popery. I will not weary my reader by relating the events of my childhood up to the year 1700, when persecution tore me from the bosom of my family, forced me to fly from my country, and to expose myself, notwithstanding my tender age, to the perils of a journey of two hundred leagues, which I made in order to seek a refuge in the United Provinces of the Netherlands. I shall only relate briefly, and in simple truth, what has happened to me since my sorrowful separation from my parents, whom I left enduring the most cruel persecution. Before detailing the story of my flight from my dear country, it is necessary to speak of what occasioned it, and kindled the most inhuman persecution in my native province. During the war which was terminated by the Peace of Ryswick, the Jesuits and priests had not been able to indulge in the pleasure of dragooning the reformed in France, because the king had all his troops upon the frontiers of his kingdom; but no sooner was peace concluded, than they wished to indemnify themselves for the repose they had been obliged to give us during the war. These pitiless and inveterate persecutors then made their rage felt in all the provinces of France, wherever there were any of the reformed faith. shall confine myself to detailing A I some of the best authenticated facts which took place in Perigord. success, and to terminate his enterprise in a manner worthy of the motives and counsels which had caused him thus to act, he celebrated public rejoic where his castle was situated, and made a bonfire of a magnificent library, composed of the pious books of the reformed religion, which his ancestors had carefully collected. The town of Bergerac this time was exempt from persecution, as well as several other towns in the neighbourhood; but this repose was only a calm, which was to be followed by the most terrible tempest. In the year 1699, the Duke de la Force, who proved that he by no means shared the senti-ings in the village of La Force, ments of his illustrious ancestors with regard to the reformed religion, at the instigation of the Jesuits, requested permission to go to his estates in Perigord, in order, as he expressed it, to convert the Huguenots. In doing this he flattered the views and principles of the court too well not to obtain such an honourable and worthy employment. So he set out from Paris, accompanied by four Jesuits, a few guards, and his servants. Arrived at his castle of La Force, about a league distant from Bergerac, he began, in order to give an idea of the gentleness of his mission and the spirit of his counsellors, to exercise unheard of cruelties against those of his vassals who belonged to the reformed faith, carrying off daily, peasants of every age and of both sexes, and making them suffer in his presence, and without any form of trial, the most frightful tortures, continued upon some till they died,-to compel them to abjure their religion upon the spot, without any reason but his own will. Then, by means as diabolical, he obliged all these poor wretches to take the most fearful oaths to remain inviolably attached to the Roman religion. To testify the joy and satisfaction which he felt at his happy The Duke de la Force, proud of the fine conversions which he had made, went to give an account of them to the court. We can easily judge whether he and his Jesuits exaggerated the effect which their mission had produced. However that might be, in the year 1700, to con. vert, by means of a pitiless dragoonade, the Huguenots in the royal towns of that province, he came then to Bergerac, where he took up his residence, accompanied by the same four Jesuits, and by a regiment of dragoons, whose cruel mission-for they were allowed full licence among the townspeople-made a great many more converts than the exhortations of the Jesuits. There were no conceivable cruelties which these booted and spurred missionaries did not exercise to oblige the poor citizens to go |