“We, Marechal de Villars, general in the armies of the king, etc., etc., have given permission to M. d’Aygaliers, nobleman and Protestant of the town of Uzes, and to fifty men chosen by him, to make war on the Camisards.

“(Signed) “Villars

“(Countersigned) “Moreton

“Given at Uzes, the 4th of May 1704”

Hardly had M. de Villars set out for Nimes than d’Aygaliers met with fresh difficulties.  The bishop, who could not forget that his episcopal palace had been turned into barracks for Huguenots, went from house to house threatening those who had promised to countenance d’Aygaliers’ plans, and strictly forbidding the captains of the town troops to deliver any weapons to the Protestants.  Fortunately, d’Aygaliers had not accomplished so much without having learned not to draw back when the road grew rough, so he also on his side went about confirming the strong and encouraging the feeble, and called on M. de Paratte to beg him to carry out the orders of M. de Villars.  De Paratte was happily an old soldier, whose one idea was that discipline should be maintained, so that he gave the guns and bayonets to d’Aygaliers on the spot, without a word of objection, and thus enabled the latter to start at five o’clock next morning with his little band.

Meantime de Baville and de Lalande had been reflecting what great influence d’Aygaliers would gain in the province should he succeed in his aims, and their jealousy had made them resolve to forestall him in his work, by themselves inducing Cavalier to abandon his present course.  They did not conceal from themselves that this would be difficult, but as they could command means of corruption which were not within the power of d’Aygaliers, they did not despair of success.

They therefore sent for a countryman called Lacombe, in order to enlist him on their side; for Cavalier, when a boy, had been his shepherd for two years, and both had remained friends ever since:  this man undertook to try and bring about a meeting between the two gentlemen and Cavalier—­an enterprise which would have been dangerous for anyone else.  He promised first of all to explain to Cavalier the offers of mm. de Baville and de Lalande.

Lacombe kept his word:  he set off the same day, and two days later appeared before Cavalier.  The first feeling of the young chief was astonishment, the second pleasure.  Lacombe could not have chosen a better moment to speak of peace to his former shepherd.

“Indeed,” says Cavalier in his Memoirs, “the loss which I had just sustained at Nages was doubly painful to me because it was irreparable.  I had lost at one blow not only a great number of weapons, all my ammunition, and all my money, but also a body of men, inured to danger and fatigue, and capable of any undertaking;—­besides all this, I had been robbed of my stores—­a loss which made itself felt more than all the others put together,