somewhat peculiar form of compliment, to the blameless conduct of his heretical prisoners. I am very glad,' he said, 'to have this occasion of showing you the respect I feel for you and those of your religion, for you have done no wrong to any one, and if you are to be damned for your religion, you will have punishment enough in the next world.' Not long afterwards it happened that De Langeron, his captain, was in want of a secretary, and Marteilhe, through the recommendation of this same comite, was appointed to the situation, in which he gained the entire confidence of that officer, and received good food and lenient treatment for nearly four years of his term of captivity.

This respite was, however, succeeded by a season of terrible suffering to himself and his co-religionists. In 1712 the peace of Utrecht was made; and it was one of the stipulations of that treaty that the fortifications of Dunkirk should be razed, and the harbour blocked up, and that the town should be placed, meanwhile, in the hands of the English. In consequence an English governor and a force of 4000 or 5000 men were established in the place. It was permitted, however, to the French Government to keep their galleys for a time in the harbour until the demolition of the works had begun, and in consequence Marteilhe and his Protestant brethren remained there to witness the arrival of the English detachment. The galleys in the harbour became naturally an object of interest to the new comers. Both officers and men were permitted to go on board; and it followed naturally enough that the sympathies of both alike were warmly excited on behalf of their persecuted fellow Protestants whom they found groaning under such cruel bondage. The English officers testified the warmest interest on their behalf, and paid them frequent visits; but the indignation of the soldiers was roused to such a pitch at the barbarous treatment sustained by these innocent men, that it was apprehended that some violent attempt would be made on their part to rescue the prisoners. To guard against such an outbreak the French commander resolved to place his prisoners beyond the reach of deliverance, and accordingly he smuggled them away suddenly by night in a small vessel, and carried them off to Calais. From thence they were marched in chains to Havre, and after a stay there of some days, during which they received many testimonies of sympathy from their co-religionists in that city, they proceeded by way of Rouen, where also they found numerous friends, to Paris.

Our space will not permit us to notice further the adventures which befel them by the way. Arrived at the capital, they were consigned to the prison of La Tournelle, once a Royal residence, but then turned into an entrepôt for condemned criminals

destined

destined for the galleys. The aspect of the vast and dismal dungeon to which they were now consigned, shook for a moment even the well-tried fortitude of Marteilhe and his brethren. 'I acknowledge,' he says, that, inured as I had been to prisons, chains, fetters, and other engines which tyranny or crime have devised, I could not overcome the shuddering that seized me, and the terror with which I was struck when I first saw this place.' He describes it as a vast cavern traversed from end to end by thick beams of timber riveted to the floor. To each of these beams, at a distance of two feet apart, the convicts were secured by a chain a foot and a half long, attached to an iron collar, encircling their necks. The beam rising about two and a half feet from the floor, the position of the convict was such that he could neither lie down, nor sit, nor stand upright, but was kept constantly in a half-lying, half-sitting posture, with his head against the beam. The sight of the wretched beings, of whom no less than 500 were thus kept chained down day and night, of whom some were aged, others suffering from pain and sickness, as they writhed in the torture of their constrained position, was distressing beyond description. Many sunk under the weight of their misery, others endured anguish difficult to be imagined. Groans and cries enough to melt the most savage. heart arose from this den of horrors, but even these expressions of a misery which could not be endured were repressed as far as possible by their merciless overseers, who punished all such infractions of discipline with the whip. For three days and nights Marteilhe and his brother Hugonots had to endure this dreadful treatment; after that time the friendly offices of a wealthy Protestant merchant in Paris procured for them, by means of a present to the governor of the prison, a release from the frightful position in which they had been placed, their chain being transferred from the neck to the leg, and in this state they remained about a month, until the time came for dispatching them to Marseilles.

The journey from Paris to that port, which was made towards the end of December, 1712, was signalised by a treatment of these unhappy galley slaves more barbarous than any before related, insomuch that Marteilhe declares that in the whole of his previous twelve years of bondage and misery, he had never undergone so great a trial of fortitude. The prisoners were marched in double file, heavily chained, one chain connecting each couple, another passing transversely through rings placed in the centre of the coupling chains, and so fastening the whole gang together. Thus entrammelled they had to march each day a distance of ten or twelve miles, being usually lodged in stables

or

or other similar buildings at night, but without any straw allowed to them, very scantily fed, and exposed to all the severities of the weather. At Charenton the gang halted the first night after their march from Paris. The weather was bitterly cold, for it was freezing hard, and the wind blew keenly from the north-east. They arrived heated and exhausted with walking under the weight of their chains. After being shut up for some time in a stable to rest, they were all drawn up on one side of a large yard, enclosed, but open to the weather, and ordered to strip themselves of all they had on, and leaving their clothes there on the ground, to march to the opposite side of the yard. In this condition they were kept standing in the freezing air of that inclement night for two long hours, the guards during that time making a pretence of searching their clothes to see if they had any knives or other instrument which might be used as means of escape. After having been kept so long perishing in the cold, the convicts were ordered to walk back to the spot where they had deposited their clothes. But, O cruel sight!' says Marteilhe, the greater part of these unfortunates were so stiff with cold as to be quite unable to walk even that short distance to their clothes. Then it was that blows of sticks and strokes of the whip rained down upon them, and this horrid treatment failing to animate their poor bodies, frozen as they were with cold, some of them stretched stiff in death, others dying, these barbarous soldiers dragged them along by the collar round their necks like dogs, their limbs streaming with blood from the blows they had received. That night and the next day no less than eighteen of the party died.' Marteilhe attributes the saving of his own life and that of his co-religionist to their having embedded themselves in the warm dung of the stable, where horses had been recently kept, in which they passed the remainder of the night. Many of the survivors were so ill the next day from the effect of that terrible night that it became necessary to hire carts to carry them, though none were allowed this indulgence until it had been proved by the ordeal of the whip that they were really unable to walk. Upon the weakest of these, cold, blows, and sickness soon did their work, and reduced their numbers greatly before the gang reached Marseilles. But the abominable cruelty of the officer in charge was not the effect of mere wantonness; he had a cogent reason for thus thinning out the weaker members of his gang. By his contract with the Government he was to receive a certain sum per head for the convicts delivered at Marseilles. But he was bound himself to pay all charges, and the cost of hiring carts for conveying those who were too ill or weak to walk would not have been covered by the head-money paid

for

for them. He therefore saved the expense both of their food and carriage by letting them perish on the way.

With the arrival of Marteilhe and his companions at Marseilles, where they found a large body of their Protestant brethren on board the galleys, the worst part of those sufferings which they had so heroically endured came to a close, and their day of deliverance, long vainly expected, began to dawn. The negotiations which were concluded in the peace of Utrecht had raised their hopes; but when they learned that in that arrangement no mention had been made of their deliverance, they ceased to look to any human power for relief. But they were not aware at that time of the efforts that were being made to interest the Queen of England on their behalf. Meanwhile the Jesuits, who were better informed, and who feared that Louis might be induced to yield to the solicitations of Anne in favour of the Protestants, renewed their efforts to induce Marteilhe and his companions to make their submission to the Church. They left no means of insinuation or seduction untried, striving by fair language and specious promises to undermine the faith which had resisted the worst assaults of violence and cruelty. Having invited a deputation of the recusants to an amicable conference on board one of the galleys, the wily Fathers used all their ingenuity to prove to them that they were mistaken in supposing that the punishment they suffered was inflicted on account of their religion, or that it in any way lay at the door of the Church. The following may be instanced as a good specimen of the logic of persecution:

"Why," said Father Garcia to me, are you now at the galleys, and for what offence were you sentenced?" I answered, that being persecuted in my own country I wished to leave the kingdom, in order that I might profess my religion in freedom; and that having been arrested at the frontiers, I was condemned to the galleys. "Do. not you see, then," said he, "what I just now told you, that you do not know what persecution means. Let me explain to you, then, that it consists in this: when you suffer ill-treatment in order to oblige you to renounce the religion which you profess. Now in your case religion has had nothing to do with the matter, and the proof is this. The King had forbidden his subjects to leave his kingdom without leave. You chose to do so, and you are punished for transgressing the King's orders. This concerns the police of the country, not the church nor religion." He then turned to another of our brethren who was present, asking the cause of his condemnation to the galleys. "It was because I took part in a mecting for the worship of God," answered he. "Another breach of the King's orders," rejoined the father. "The King had forbidden his subjects to meet

anywhere

anywhere for public worship except in their parish or other churches. You did the contrary, and you are punished for disobedience to the King's commands." Another brother said that, "being sick, the curate came to his bedside to receive his declaration, whether he wished to live and die in the reformed religion or in the Roman Catholic; to which he answered, 'in the reformed.' Upon his recovery he was arrested and sentenced to the galleys." "Another violation of his Majesty's decrees!" said father Garcia. "It is the King's pleasure that all his subjects should live and die in the Roman Church. You declared that you would do the contrary; that is a transgression of the King's orders. Thus you see," he continued, "each one of you has been guilty of disobedience to the King's authority. The Church has had no part in the matter. She interfered in no way in the proceedings against you; in fact, all was done, as it were, behind her back, and without her cognisance.""

This flimsy sophistry was at once dispelled by two simple questions, which Marteilhe, as spokesman for his companions, addressed to the father:

"Suppose," he asked, with an air of well-feigned simplicity, "we should require time to satisfy our minds on some scruples we still entertain, might we meanwhile be restored to liberty before making abjuration?" "Assuredly not," answered the priest. "You will never quit the galleys unless you have first abjured with all formalitics." "And if we made the abjuration required, might we then hope to be released speedily?" "Within fifteen days afterwards on the word of a priest," replied Garcia. "You have the King's own word for it."

Confuted out of his own mouth, and reproached with his equivocation, the priest broke up the conference in disgust.

While these poor confessors, though without any earthly hope of deliverance, thus clung firmly to their faith, agencies unknown to them were working in their behalf. The Marquis de Rochegude, an aged French refugee, who had already made many efforts on behalf of his co-religionists, undertook a mission of his own accord to the principal Protestant courts of Europe, and obtained from the kings of Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, and other powers, letters to the queen of England, recommending the cause of the persecuted Protestants to her powerful intercession. Armed with these credentials the Marquis came to England, and requested the minister, Lord Oxford, to procure him an audience of his royal mistress. Having placed himself in St. James's-park when the Queen was to pass by, he succeeded in attracting her notice. Ordering him to be called to her, she said, M. de Rochegude, I request you to let these poor men in

the