The massacres went on during the whole of the second day, though towards evening the search for victims relaxed somewhat; but still many isolated acts of murder took place during the night.  On the morrow, being tired of killing, the people began to destroy, and this phase lasted a long time, it being less fatiguing to throw stones about than corpses.  All the convents, all the monasteries, all the houses of the priests and canons were attacked in turn; nothing was spared except the cathedral, before which axes and crowbars seemed to lose their power, and the church of Ste. Eugenie, which was turned into a powder-magazine.  The day of the great butchery was called “La Michelade,” because it took place the day after Michaelmas, and as all this happened in the year 1567 the Massacre of St. Bartholomew must be regarded as a plagiarism.

At last, however, with the help of M. Damville; the Catholics again got the upper hand, and it was the turn of the Protestants to fly.  They took refuge in the Cevennes.  From the beginning of the troubles the Cevennes had been the asylum of those who suffered for the Protestant faith; and still the plains are Papist, and the mountains Protestant.  When the Catholic party is in the ascendant at Nimes, the plain seeks the mountain; when the Protestants come into power, the mountain comes down into the plain.

However, vanquished and fugitive though they were, the Calvinists did not lose courage:  in exile one day, they felt sure their luck would turn the next; and while the Catholics were burning or hanging them in effigy for contumacy, they were before a notary, dividing the property of their executioners.

But it was not enough for them to buy or sell this property amongst each other, they wanted to enter into possession; they thought of nothing else, and in 1569—­that is, in the eighteenth month of their exile—­they attained their wish in the following manner: 

One day the exiles perceived a carpenter belonging to a little village called Cauvisson approaching their place of refuge.  He desired to speak to M. Nicolas de Calviere, seigneur de St. Cosme, and brother of the president, who was known to be a very enterprising man.  To him the carpenter, whose name was Maduron, made the following proposition: 

In the moat of Nimes, close to the Gate of the Carmelites, there was a grating through which the waters from the fountain found vent.  Maduron offered to file through the bars of this grating in such a manner that some fine night it could be lifted out so as to allow a band of armed Protestants to gain access to the city.  Nicolas de Calviere approving of this plan, desired that it should be carried out at once; but the carpenter pointed out that it would be necessary to wait for stormy weather, when the waters swollen by the rain would by their noise drown the sound of the file.  This precaution was doubly necessary as the box of the sentry was almost exactly above the grating.  M. de Calviere tried to make Maduron give way; but the latter, who was risking more than anyone else, was firm.  So whether they liked it or not, de Calviere and the rest had to await his good pleasure.