the proclamations published by General Lagarde when he assumed the position of commandant of the town.  He had indeed been sure that the disturbances in Nimes were over, when they burst out with redoubled fury on the 16th of October; on the morning of the 17th he was working quietly at home at his trade of a silk weaver, when, alarmed by the shouts of a parcel of cut-throats outside his house, he tried to escape.  He succeeded in reaching the “Coupe d’Or,” but the ruffians followed him, and the first who came up thrust him through the thigh with his bayonet.  In consequence of this wound he fell from top to bottom of the staircase, was seized and dragged to the stables, where the assassins left him for dead, with seven wounds in his body.

This was, however, the only murder committed that day in the town, thanks to the vigilance and courage of General Lagarde.

The next day a considerable crowd gathered, and a noisy deputation went to General Lagarde’s quarters and insolently demanded that Trestaillons should be set at liberty.  The general ordered them to disperse, but no attention was paid to this command, whereupon he ordered his soldiers to charge, and in a moment force accomplished what long-continued persuasion had failed to effect.  Several of the ringleaders were arrested and taken to prison.

Thus, as we shall see, the struggle assumed a new phase:  resistance to the royal power was made in the name of the royal power, and both those who broke or those who tried to maintain the public peace used the same cry, “Long live the king!”

The firm attitude assumed by General Lagarde restored Nimes to a state of superficial peace, beneath which, however, the old enmities were fermenting.  An occult power, which betrayed itself by a kind of passive resistance, neutralised the effect of the measures taken by the military commandant.  He soon became cognisant of the fact that the essence of this sanguinary political strife was an hereditary religious animosity, and in order to strike a last blow at this, he resolved, after having received permission from the king, to grant the general request of the Protestants by reopening their places of worship, which had been closed for more than four months, and allowing the public exercise of the Protestant religion, which had been entirely suspended in the city for the same length of time.

Formerly there had been six Protestant pastors resident in Nimes, but four of them, had fled; the two who remained were mm.  Juillerat and Olivier Desmonts, the first a young man, twenty-eight years of age, the second an old man of seventy.