Two priests of Gren.o.ble, disgusted at what they believed to be an imposition, accused a young person of the neighbourhood, one Mdlle. de Lamerliere, as being the real author of the pretended miracle, on which she commenced an action against them for defamation of character. She brought the celebrated advocate Jules Favre from Paris to plead her cause, but the verdict was given in favour of the two priests. The "miracle" was an imposture!
Notwithstanding this circ.u.mstance, the miracle came to be generally believed in the neighbourhood. The number of persons who resorted to the place with money in their pockets steadily increased. The question was then taken up by the local priests, who vouched for the authenticity of the miracle seen by the two children. The miracle was next accepted by Rome.[100] A church was built on the spot by means of the contributions of the visitors--L"eglise de la Salette--and thither pilgrims annually resort in great numbers, the more devout climbing the hill, from station to station, on their knees. As many as four thousand persons of both s.e.xes, and of various ages, have been known to climb the hill in one day--on the anniversary of the appearance of the apparition--notwithstanding the extreme steepness and difficulties of the ascent.
[Footnote 100: An authorised account was prepared by Cardinal Wiseman for English readers, ent.i.tled "Manual of the a.s.sociation of our Lady of Reconciliation of La Salette," and published as a tract by Burns, 17, Portman Street, in 1853.
Since I pa.s.sed through the country in 1869, the Germans have invaded France, the surrender has occurred at Sedan, the Commune has been defeated at Paris, but Our Lady of La Salette is greater than ever. A temple of enormous dimensions has risen in her honour; the pilgrims number over 100,000 yearly, and the sale of the water from the Holy Well, said to have sprung from the Virgin"s tears, realises more than 12,000. Since the success of La Salette, the Virgin has been making repeated appearances in France. Her last appearance was in a part of Alsace which is strictly Catholic. The Virgin appeared, as usual, to a boy of the mature age of six, "dressed in black, floating in the air, her hands bound with chains,"--a pretty strong religio-political hint. When a party of the 5th Bavarian Cavalry was posted in Bettweiler, the Virgin ceased to make her appearance.]
As a pendant to this story, another may be given of an entirely different character, relating to the inhabitants of another commune in the same valley, about midway between La Salette and Gren.o.ble. In 1860, while the discussion about the miracle at La Salette was still in progress, the inhabitants of Notre-Dame-de-Comiers, dissatisfied with the conduct of their cure, invited M. Fermaud, pastor of the Protestant church at Gren.o.ble, to come over and preach to them, as they were desirous of embracing Protestantism. The pastor, supposing that they were influenced by merely temporary irritation against their cure, cautioned the deputation that waited upon him as to the gravity of their decision in such a matter, and asked them to reflect further upon it.
For several years M. Fermaud continued to maintain the same att.i.tude, until, in 1865, a formal pet.i.tion was delivered to him by the mayor of the place, signed by forty-three heads of families, and by nine out of the ten members of the council of the commune, urging him to send them over a minister of the evangelical religion. Even then he hesitated, and recommended the memorialists to appeal to the bishop of the diocese for redress of the wrongs of which he knew they complained, but in vain, until at length, in the beginning of 1868, with the sanction of the consistory of Gren.o.ble a minister was sent over to Comiers to perform the first acts of Protestant worship, including baptism and marriage; and it was not until October in the same year that Pastor Fermaud himself went thither to administer the sacrament to the new church.
The service was conducted in the public hall of the commune, and was attended by a large number of persons belonging to the town and neighbourhood. The local clergy tried in vain to check the movement.
Quite recently, when the cure entered one of the schools to inscribe the names of the children who were to attend their first ma.s.s, out of fifteen of the proper age eleven answered to the interrogatory of the priest, "Monsieur, nous sommes Protestantes." The movement has also extended into the neighbouring communes, helped by the zeal of the new converts, one of whom is known in the neighbourhood as "Pere la Bible," and it is possible that before long it may even extend to La Salette itself.
The route from Vizille up the valley of the Romanche continues hemmed in by rugged mountains, in some places almost overhanging the river.
At Sechilienne it opens out sufficiently to afford s.p.a.ce for a terraced garden, amidst which stands a handsome chateau, flanked by two ma.s.sive towers, commanding a beautiful prospect down the valley.
The abundant water which rushes down from the mountain behind is partly collected in a reservoir, and employed to feed a _jet d"eau_ which rises in a lofty column under the castle windows. Further up, the valley again contracts, until the Gorge de Loiret is pa.s.sed. The road then crosses to the left bank, and used to be continued along it, but the terrible torrent of 1868 washed it away for miles, and it has not yet been reconstructed. Temporary bridges enable the route to be pursued by the old road on the right bank, and after pa.s.sing through several hamlets of little interest, we arrive at length at the cultivated plain hemmed in by lofty mountains, in the midst of which Bourg d"Oisans lies seated.
This little plain was formerly occupied by the lake of St. Laurent, formed by the barrier of rocks and debris which had tumbled down from the flank of the Pet.i.te Voudene, a precipitous mountain escarpment overhanging the river. At this place, the strata are laid completely bare, and may be read like a book. For some distance along the valley they exhibit the most extraordinary contortions and dislocations, impressing the mind with the enormous natural forces that must have been at work to occasion such tremendous upheavings and disruptions.
Elie de Beaumont, the French geologist, who has carefully examined the district, says that at the Montagne d"Oisans he found the granite in some places resting upon the limestone, cutting through the Calcareous beds, rising like a wall and lapping over them.
On arriving at Bourg d"Oisans, we put up at the Hotel de Milan close by the bridge; but though dignified with the name of hotel, it is only a common roadside inn. Still, it is tolerably clean, and in summer the want of carpets is not missed. The people were civil and attentive, their bread wholesome, their pottage and bouilli good--being such fare as the people of the locality contrive to live and thrive upon. The accommodation of the place is, indeed, quite equal to the demand; for very few travellers accustomed to a better style of living pa.s.s that way. When the landlady was asked if many tourists had pa.s.sed this year, she replied, "Tourists! We rarely see such travellers here. You are the first this season, and perhaps you may be the last."
Yet these valleys are well worthy of a visit, and an influx of tourists would doubtless have the same effect that it has already had in Switzerland and elsewhere, of greatly improving the hotel accommodation throughout the district. There are many domestic arrangements, costing very little money, but greatly ministering to cleanliness and comfort, which might very readily be provided. But the people themselves are indifferent to them, and they need the requisite stimulus of "pressure from without." One of the most prominent defects--common to all the inns of Dauphiny--having been brought under the notice of the landlady, she replied, "C"est vrai, monsieur; mais--il laisse quelque chose a desirer!" How neatly evaded! The very defect was itself an advantage! What would life be--what would hotels be--if there were not "something left to be desired!"
The view from the inn at the bridge is really charming. The little river which runs down the valley, and becomes lost in the distance, is finally fringed with trees--alder, birch, and chestnut. Ridge upon ridge of mountain rises up behind on the right hand and the left, the lower clothed with patches of green larch, and the upper with dark pine. Above all are ranges of jagged and grey rocks, shooting up in many places into lofty peaks. The setting sun, shining across the face of the mountain opposite, brings out the prominent ma.s.ses in bold relief, while the valley beneath hovers between light and shadow, changing almost from one second to another as the sun goes down. In the cool of the evening, we walked through the fields across the plain, to see the torrent, visible from the village, which rushes from the rocky gorge on the mountain-side to join its waters to the Romanche. All along the valleys, water abounds--sometimes bounding from the heights, in jets, in rivulets, in ma.s.ses, leaping from rock to rock, and reaching the ground only in white clouds of spray, or, as in the case of the little river which flows alongside the inn at the bridge, bursting directly from the ground in a continuous spring; these waterfalls, and streams, and springs being fed all the year through by the immense glaciers that fill the hollows of the mountains on either side the valley.
Though the scenery of Bourg d"Oisans is not, as its eulogists allege, equal to that of Switzerland, it will at least stand a comparison with that of Savoy. Its mountains are more precipitous and abrupt, its peaks more jagged, and its aspect more savage and wild. The scenery of Mont Pelvoux, which is best approached from Bourg d"Oisans, is especially grand and sublime, though of a wild and desolate character.
The road from Bourg d"Oisans to Briancon also presents some magnificent scenery; and there is one part of it that is not perhaps surpa.s.sed even by the famous Via Mala leading up to the Splugen. It is about three miles above Bourg d"Oisans, from which we started early next morning. There the road leaves the plain and enters the wild gorge of Freney, climbing by a steep road up the Rampe des Commieres.
The view from the height when gained is really superb, commanding an extremely bold and picturesque valley, hemmed in by mountains. The ledges on the hillsides spread out in some places so as to afford sufficient breadths for cultivation; occasional hamlets appear amidst the fields and pine-woods; and far up, between you and the sky, an occasional church spire peeps up, indicating still loftier settlements, though how the people contrive to climb up to those heights is a wonder to the spectator who views them from below.
The route follows the profile of the mountain, winding in and out along its rugged face, scarped and blasted so as to form the road. At one place it pa.s.ses along a gallery about six hundred feet in length, cut through a precipitous rock overhanging the river, which dashes, roaring and foaming, more than a thousand feet below, through the rocky abyss of the Gorge de l"Infernet. Perhaps there is nothing to be seen in Switzerland finer of its kind than the succession of charming landscapes which meet the eye in descending this pa.s.s.
Beyond the village of Freney we enter another defile, so narrow that in places there is room only for the river and the road; and in winter the river sometimes plays sad havoc with the engineer"s constructions.
Above this gorge, the Romanche is joined by the Ferrand, an impetuous torrent which comes down from the glaciers of the Grand Rousses.
Immediately over their point of confluence, seated on a lofty promontory, is the village of Mizoen--a place which, because of the outlook it commands, as well as because of its natural strength, was one of the places in which the Vaudois were accustomed to take refuge in the times of the persecutions. Further on, we pa.s.s through another gallery in the rock, then across the little green valley of Chambon to Le Dauphin, after which the scenery becomes wilder, the valley--here called the Combe de Malaval (the "Cursed Valley")--rocky and sterile, the only feature to enliven it being the Cascade de la p.i.s.se, which falls from a height of over six hundred feet, first in one jet, then becomes split by a projecting rock into two, and finally reaches the ground in a shower of spray. Shortly after we pa.s.s another cascade, that of the Riftort, which also joins the Romanche, and marks the boundary between the department of the Isere and that of the Hautes Alpes, which we now enter.
More waterfalls--the Sau de la Pucelle, which falls from a height of some two hundred and fifty feet, resembling the Staubbach--besides rivulets without number, running down the mountain-sides like silver threads; until we arrive at La Grave, a village about five thousand feet above the sea-level, directly opposite the grand glaciers of Tabuchet, Pacave, and Vallon, which almost overhang the Romanche, descending from the steep slopes of the gigantic Aiguille du Midi, the highest mountain in the French Alps,--being over 13,200 feet above the level of the sea.
After resting some two hours at La Grave, we proceeded by the two tunnels under the hamlet of Ventelong--one of which is 650 and the other 1,800 feet long--to the village of Villard d"Arene, which, though some five thousand feet above the level of the sea, is so surrounded by lofty mountains that for months together the sun never shines on it. From thence a gradual ascent leads up to the summit of the Col de Lauteret, which divides the valley of the Romanche from that of the Guisanne. The pastures along the mountain-side are of the richest verdure; and so many rare and beautiful plants are found growing there that M. Rousillon has described it as a "very botanical Eden." Here Jean Jacques Rousseau delighted to herborize, and here the celebrated botanist Mathonnet, originally a customs officer, born at the haggard village of Villard d"Arene, which we have just pa.s.sed, cultivated his taste for natural history, and laid the foundations of his European reputation. The variety of temperature which exists along the mountain-side, from the bottom to the summit, its exposure to the full rays of the sun in some places, and its sheltered aspect in others, facilitate the growth of an extraordinary variety of beautiful plants and wild flowers. In the low grounds meridional plants flourish; on the middle slopes those of genial climates; while on the summit are found specimens of the flora of Lapland and Greenland. Thus almost every variety of flowers is represented in this brilliant natural garden--orchids, cruciferae, leguminae, rosaceae, caryophyllae, lilies of various kinds, saxifrages, anemones, ranunculuses, swertia, primula, varieties of the sedum, some of which are peculiar to this mountain, and are elsewhere unknown.
After pa.s.sing the Hospice near the summit of the Col, the valley of the Guisanne comes in sight, showing a line of bare and rugged mountains on the right hand and on the left, with a narrow strip of land in the bottom, in many parts strewn with stones carried down by the avalanches from the cliffs above. Shortly we come in sight of the distant ramparts of Briancon, apparently closing in the valley, the snow-clad peak of Monte Viso rising in the distance. Halfway between the Col and Briancon we pa.s.s through the village of Monestier, where, being a saint"s day, the bulk of the population are in the street, holding festival. The place was originally a Roman station, and the people still give indications of their origin, being extremely swarthy, black-haired, and large-eyed, evidently much more Italian than French.
But though the villagers of Monestier were taking holiday, no one can reproach them with idleness. Never was there a more hard-working people than the peasantry of these valleys. Every little patch of ground that the plough or spade can be got into is turned to account.
The piles of stone and rock collected by the sides of the fields testify to the industry of the people in clearing the soil for culture. And their farming is carried on in the face of difficulties and discouragements of no ordinary character, for sometimes the soil of many of the little farms will be swept away in a night by an avalanche of snow in winter or of stones in spring. The wrecks of fields are visible all along the valley, especially at its upper part.
Lower down it widens, and affords greater room for culture; the sides of the mountains become better wooded; and, as we approach the fortress of Briancon, with its battlements seemingly piled one over the other up the mountain-sides, the landscape becomes exceedingly bold and picturesque.
When pa.s.sing the village of Villeneuve la Salle, a few miles from Briancon, we were pointed to a spot on the opposite mountain-side, over the pathway leading to the Col de l"Echuada, where a cavern was discovered a few years since, which, upon examination, was found to contain a considerable quant.i.ty of human bones. It was one of the caves in which the hunted Vaudois were accustomed to take refuge during the persecutions; and it continued to be called by the peasantry "La Roche armee"--the name being thus perpetuated, though the circ.u.mstances in which it originated had been forgotten.
The fortress of Briancon, which we entered by a narrow winding roadway round the western rampart, is the frontier fortress which guards the pa.s.s from Italy into France by the road over Mont Genevre. It must always have been a strong place by nature, overlooking as it does the valley of the Durance on the one hand, and the mountain road from Italy on the other, while the river Clairee, running in a deep defile, cuts it off from the high ground to the south and east. The highest part of the town is the citadel, or Fort du Chateau, built upon a peak of rock on the site of the ancient castle. It was doubtless the nucleus round which the early town became cl.u.s.tered, until it filled the lower plateau to the verge of the walls and battlements. There being no room for the town to expand, the houses are closely packed together and squeezed up, as it were, so as to occupy the smallest possible s.p.a.ce. The streets are narrow, dark, gloomy, and steep, being altogether impa.s.sable for carriages. The liveliest sight in the place is a stream of pure water, that rushes down an open conduit in the middle of the princ.i.p.al street, which is exceedingly steep and narrow.
The town is sacrificed to the fortifications, which dominate everywhere. With the increasing range and power of cannon, they have been extended in all directions, until they occupy the flanks of the adjoining mountains and many of their summits, so that the original castle now forms but a comparatively insignificant part of the fortress. The most important part of the population is the soldiery--the red-trousered missionaries of "civilisation," according to the gospel of Louis Napoleon, published a short time before our visit.
Other missionaries, are, however, at work in the town and neighbourhood; and both at Briancon and Villeneuve Protestant stations have been recently established, under the auspices of the Protestant Society of Lyons. In former times, the population of Briancon included a large number of Protestants. In the year 1575, three years after the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew, they were so numerous and wealthy as to be able to build a handsome temple, almost alongside the cathedral, and it still stands there in the street called Rue du Temple, with the motto over the entrance, in old French, "Cerches et vos troveres." But at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the temple was seized by the King and converted into a granary, and the Protestants of the place were either executed, banished, or forced to conform to the Papal religion. Since then the voice of Protestantism has been mute in Briancon until within the last few years, during which a mission has been in operation. Some of the leading persons in the town have embraced the Reform faith, amongst others the professor of literature in the public college; but he had no sooner acknowledged to the authorities the fact of his conversion, than he was dismissed from his office, though he has since been appointed to a more important profession at Nice. The number of members is, however, as yet very small, and the mission has to contend with limited means, and to carry on its operations in the face of many obstructions and difficulties.
What are the prospects of the extension of Protestantism in France?
Various answers have been given to the question. Some think that the prevailing dissensions among French Protestants interpose a serious barrier in the way of progress. Others, more hopeful, think, that these divisions are only the indications of renewed life and vigour, of the friction of mind with mind, which evinces earnestness, and cannot fail to lead to increased activity and effort. The observations of a young Protestant pastor on this point are worth repeating.
"Protestantism," said he, "is based on individualism: it recognises the free action of the human mind; and so long as the mind acts freely there will be controversy. The end of controversy is death. True, there is much incredulity abroad; but the incredulity is occasioned by the incredibilities of Popery. Let the ground once be cleared by free inquiry, and our Church will rise up amidst the ruins of superst.i.tion and unbelief, for man _must_ have religion; only it must be consistent with reason on the one hand, and with Divine revelation on the other.
I for one do not fear the fullest and freest inquiry, having the most perfect confidence in the triumph of the truth."
It is alleged by others that the bald form in which Protestantism is for the most part presented abroad, is not conformable with the "genius" of the men of Celtic and Latin race. However this may be, it is too generally the case that where Frenchmen, like Italians and Spaniards, throw off Roman Catholicism, they do not stop at rejecting its superst.i.tions, but reject religion itself. They find no intermediate standpoint in Protestantism, but fly off into the void of utter unbelief. The same tendency characterizes them in politics. They seem to oscillate between Caesarism and Red Republicanism; aiming not at reform so much as revolution. They are averse to any _via media_.
When they have tried const.i.tutionalism, they have broken down. So it has been with Protestantism, the const.i.tutionalism of Christianity.
The Huguenots at one time const.i.tuted a great power in France; but despotism in politics and religion proved too strong for them, and they were persecuted, banished, and stamped for a time out of existence, or at least out of sight.
Protestantism was more successful in Germany. Was it because it was more conformable to the "genius" of its people? When the Germans "protested" against the prevailing corruptions in the Church, they did not seek to destroy it, but to reform it. They "stood upon the old ways," and sought to make them broader, straighter, and purer. They have pursued the same course in politics. Cooler and less impulsive than their Gallican neighbours, they have avoided revolutions, but are constantly seeking reforms. Of this course England itself furnishes a notable example.
It is certainly a remarkable fact, that the stronghold of Protestantism in France was recently to be found among the population of Germanic origin seated along the valley of the Rhine; whereas in the western districts Protestantism is split up by the two irreconcilable parties of Evangelicals and Rationalists. At the same time it should be borne in mind that Alsace did not become part of France until the year 1715, and that the Lutherans of that province were never exposed to the ferocious persecutions to which the Evangelical Protestants of Old France were subjected, before as well as after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
In Languedoc, in Dauphiny, and in the southern provinces generally, men and women who professed Protestantism were liable to be hanged or sent to the galleys, down to nearly the end of the last century. A Protestant pastor who exercised his vocation did so at the daily peril of his life. Nothing in the shape of a Protestant congregation was permitted to exist, and if Protestants worshipped together, it was in secret, in caves, in woods, among the hills, or in the "Desert." Yet Protestantism nevertheless contrived to exist through this long dark period of persecution, and even to increase. And when at length it became tolerated, towards the close of the last century, the numbers of its adherents appeared surprising to those who had imagined it to be altogether extinct.
Indeed, looking at the persistent efforts made by Louis XIV. to exterminate the Huguenots, and to the fact that many hundred thousand of the best of them emigrated into foreign countries, while an equal number are supposed to have perished in prison, on the scaffold, at the galleys, and in their attempts to escape, it may almost be regarded as matter of wonder that the eglise Reformee--the Church of the old Huguenots--should at the present day number about a thousand congregations, besides the five hundred Lutheran congregations of Alsatia, and that the Protestants of France should amount, in the whole, to about two millions of souls.
CHAPTER III.
VAL LOUISE--HISTORY OF FELIX NEFF.
Some eight miles south of Briancon, on the road to Fort Dauphin, a little river called the Gyronde comes down from the glaciers of Mont Pelvoux, and falls into the Durance nearly opposite the village of La Bessie. This river flows through Val Louise, the entrance into which can be discerned towards the northwest. Near the junction of the rivers, the ruins of an embattled wall, with entrenchments, are observed extending across the valley of the Durance, a little below the narrow pa.s.s called the "Pertuis-Rostan," evidently designed to close it against an army advancing from the south. The country people still call those ruins the "Walls of the Vaudois;"[101] and according to tradition a great Vaudois battle was fought there; but of any such battle history makes no mention.
[Footnote 101: A gap in the mountain-wall to the left, nearly over La Bessie, is still known as "La Porte de Hannibal,"
through which, it is conjectured, that general led his army.
But opinion, which is much divided as to the route he took, is more generally in favour of his marching up the Isere, and pa.s.sing into Italy by the Little St. Bernard.]
Indeed, so far as can be ascertained, the Vaudois of Dauphiny rarely if ever fought battles. They were too few in number, too much scattered among the mountains, and too poor and ill-armed, to be able to contend against the ma.s.ses of disciplined soldiery that were occasionally sent into the valleys. All that they did was to watch, from their mountain look-outs, their enemies" approach, and hide themselves in caves; or flee up to the foot of the glaciers till they had pa.s.sed by. The att.i.tude of the French Vaudois was thus for the most part pa.s.sive; and they very rarely, like the Italian Vaudois, offered any determined or organized resistance to persecution. Hence they have no such heroic story to tell of battles and sieges and victories. Their heroism was displayed in patience, steadfastness, and long-suffering, rather than in resisting force by force; and they were usually ready to endure death in its most frightful forms rather than prove false to their faith.
The ancient people of these valleys formed part of the flock of the Archbishop of Embrun. But history exhibits him as a very cruel shepherd. Thus, in 1335, there appears this remarkable entry in the accounts current of the bailli of Embrun: "Item, for persecuting the Vaudois, eight sols and thirty deniers of gold," as if the persecution of the Vaudois had become a regular department of the public service.
What was done with the Vaudois when they were seized and tried at Embrun further appears from the records of the diocese. In 1348, twelve of the inhabitants of Val Louise were strangled at Embrun by the public executioner; and in 1393, a hundred and fifty inhabitants of the same valley were burned alive at the same place by order of the Inquisitor Borelli. But the most fatal of all the events that befell the inhabitants of Val Louise was that which occurred about a century later, in 1488, when nearly the whole of the remaining population of the valley were destroyed in a cavern near the foot of Mont Pelvoux.
This dreadful ma.s.sacre was perpetrated by a French army, under the direction of Albert Catanee, the papal legate. The army had been sent into Piedmont with the object of subjugating or destroying the Vaudois on the Italian side of the Alps, but had returned discomfited to Briancon, unable to effect their object. The legate then determined to take his revenge by an a.s.sault upon the helpless and unarmed French Vaudois, and suddenly directed his soldiers upon the valleys of Fressinieres and Louise. The inhabitants of the latter valley, surprised, and unable to resist an army of some twenty thousand men, abandoned their dwellings, and made for the mountains with all haste, accompanied by their families, and driving their flocks before them.
On the slope of Mont Pelvoux, about a third of the way up, there was formerly a great cavern, on the combe of Capescure, called La Balme-Chapelle--though now nearly worn away by the disintegration of the mountain-side--in which the poor hunted people contrived to find shelter. They built up the approaches to the cavern, filled the entrance with rocks, and considered themselves to be safe. But their confidence proved fatal to them. The Count La Palud, who was in command of the troops, seeing that it was impossible to force the entrance, sent his men up the mountain provided with ropes; and fixing them so that they should hang over the mouth of the cavern, a number of the soldiers slid down in full equipment, landing on the ledge right in front of the concealed Vaudois. Seized with a sudden panic, and being unarmed, many of them precipitated themselves over the rocks and were killed. The soldiers slaughtered all whom they could reach, after which they proceeded to heap up wood at the cavern mouth which they set on fire, and thus suffocated the remainder. Perrin says four hundred children were afterwards found in the cavern, stifled, in the arms of their dead mothers, and that not fewer than three thousand persons were thus ruthlessly destroyed. The little property of the slaughtered peasants was ordered by the Pope"s legate to be divided amongst the vagabonds who had carried out his savage orders. The population having been thus exterminated, the district was settled anew some years later, in the reign of Louis XII., who gave his name to the valley; and a number of "good and true Catholics," including many goitres and idiots,[102] occupied the dwellings and possessed the lands of the slaughtered Vaudois. There is an old saying that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," but a.s.suredly it does not apply to Val Louise, where the primitive Christian Church has been completely extinguished.
[Footnote 102: It has been noted that these unfortunates abound most in the villages occupied by the new settlers.