At Aviguonet, that little grey town
on the crag above the railway, they burst into the place, maddened by
the cruelties of the Inquisitor (an archdeacon, if I recollect
rightly, from Toulouse), and slew him then and there. They were shut
up in the town, and withstood heroically a long and miserable siege.
At last they were starved out. The conquerors offered them their
lives--so say the French stories--if they would recant. But they
would not. They were thrust together into one of those stone-walled
enclosures below the town, heaped over with vine-twigs and maize-
stalks, and burned alive; and among them a young lady of the highest
rank, who had passed through all the horrors of the siege, and was
offered life, wealth, and honour, if she would turn.
Surely profligate infidels do not so die; and these poor souls,
whatever were their sins or their confusions, must be numbered among
the heroes of the human race.
But the world has mended since then, and so has the French character.
Even before the Revolution of 1793, it was softening fast.
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