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When the snow had melted sufficiently to enable Brousson to escape from the district of Dauphiny, near the High Alps, where he had been concealed, he made his way across the country to the Viverais, where he laboured for some time. Here he heard of the martyrdom of the third of the brothers Du Plans, broken on the wheel and executed like the others on the Peyrou at Montpellier.
Very different was the position of the young man who tried to undo all that Louis XIV., under the influence of his mistress De Maintenon, and his Jesuit confessor, Père la Chase, had been trying all his life to accomplish. He was an intelligent youth, the son of Huguenot parents in Viverais, of comparatively poor and humble condition.
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.
Court once wrote to Pierre Durand, at a time when the latter was restoring order and organization in Viverais: "Sound and examine well the persons offering themselves for your approval, before permitting them to enter on this glorious employment. Secure good, virtuous men, full of zeal for the cause of truth. It is piety only that inspires nobility and greatness of soul.
Felix de Châteauneuf, in Viverais, who had been condemned for life for having given shelter to a pastor, was released in 1765, at the age of sixty-seven, after being chained at the galleys for twenty-five years. Jean Raymond, of Fangères, the father of six children, who had been a galley-slave for thirteen years, was liberated in 1767.
"Nothing," said Saint-Florentin to the commandant of La Devese, "can produce more impression than hanging a preacher; and it is very desirable that you should immediately take steps to arrest one of them." The commandant obeyed orders, and apprehended Pierre Durand. He was on his way to baptize the child of one of his congregation, who lived on a farm in Viverais.
The war was wasting Languedoc, Viverais, and Rouergue; the Dukes of Montmorency and Ventadour, under the orders of the Prince of Conde, were pursuing the troops of Rohan in every direction; the burgesses of Montauban had declared for the Reformers, and were ravaging the lands of their Catholic neighbors in return for the frightful ruin everywhere caused by the royal troops.
But the sight of the bodies of their brethren hung on the nearest trees, and the heads of their pastors rolling on the scaffold, did not deter them from continuing to hold religious meetings in solitary places, more especially in Languedoc, Viverais, and the provinces in the south-east of France.
Various meetings were accordingly held, in the following month of July, in the Cevennes and Viverais. At St. Hypolite, where the temple of the Protestants had been destroyed, about four thousand persons met in a field near the town, when the minister preached to them from the text "Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things which are God's."
But let us take the single instance of Homel, formerly pastor of the church at Soyon. Homel was taken prisoner, and found guilty of preaching to his flock after his temple had been destroyed. For this offence he was sentenced to be broken to death upon the wheel. To receive this punishment he was conducted to Tournon, in Viverais, where the Jesuits had a college.
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