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But after all, man is a worse enemy to man than any of the brute forces of nature: and a more terrible scourge than mistral or tempest swept over this land six hundred years ago, when it was, perhaps, the happiest and the most civilized portion of Europe. This was the scene of the Albigense Crusade: a tragedy of which the true history will never, perhaps, be written. It was not merely a persecution of real or supposed heretics; it was a national war, embittered by the ancient jealousies of race, between the Frank aristocracy of the north and the Gothic aristocracy of the south, who had perhaps acquired, with their half-Roman, half-Saracen civilization, mixtures both of Roman and of Saracen blood. As “Aquitanians,” “Provencaux,”–Roman Provincials, as they proudly called themselves, speaking the Langue d’Oc, and looking down on the northerners who spoke the Langue d’Oil as barbarians, they were in those days guilty of the capital crime of being foreigners; and as foreigners they were exterminated. What their religious tenets were, we shall never know. With the Vaudois, Waldenses, “poor men of Lyons,” they must not be for a moment confounded. Their creed remains to us only in the calumnies of their enemies. The confessions in the archives of the Tolosan Inquisition, as elicited either under torture or fear of torture, deserve no confidence whatsoever. And as for the licentiousness of their poetry–which has been alleged as proof of their profligacy–I can only say, that it is no more licentious than the fabliaux of their French conquerors, while it is far more delicate and refined. Humanity, at least, has done justice to the Troubadours of the south; and confessed, even in the Middle Age, that to them the races of the north owed grace of expression, delicacy of sentiment, and that respect for women which soon was named chivalry; which looks on woman, not with suspicion and contempt, but with trust and adoration; and is not ashamed to obey her as “mistress,” instead of treating her as a slave.

But these Albigenses must have had something in their hearts for which it was worth while to die. 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. The massacres of 1562 were not as horrible as those of the Albigense Crusade, though committed–which the former were not–under severe provocation. The massacres of 1793–in spite of all that has been said–were far less horrible than those of 1562, though they were the outpouring of centuries of pardonable fury and indignation. The crimes of the Terreur Blanche, at the Restoration–though ugly things were done in the south, especially in Nismes–were far less horrible again; though they were, for the most part, acts of direct personal retaliation on the republicans of 1793. And since then the French heart has softened fast. The irritating sense of hereditary wrong has passed away. The Frenchman conceives that justice is done to him, according to his own notions thereof. He has his share of the soil, without which no Celtic populace will ever be content. He has fair play in the battle of life; and a ‘Carriere ouverte aux talens.’ He has equal law and justice between man and man. And he is content; and under the sunshine of contentment and self-respect, his native good-nature expands; and he shows himself what he is, not merely a valiant and capable, but an honest, kindly, charitable man.