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“My welcome and blessing to you, Colas!” said M. Etienne, laying his hand upon my head; “I will be your father.”

Then arose Mdme. Etienne, who offered me her hand, and said, “I will be your mother.”

My heart was much moved by this kindness. I wept, and kissed the hands of my new parents, without being able to utter a word. Now their three daughters surrounded me, and said, “Do not weep, Colas, we will be your sisters.” From this hour I was as much accustomed to my new home as if I had never been a stranger to it. I fancied myself living in a family of quiet angels, of whom my father had often told me. I became as pious as they all were, and yet I never could surpass them in piety.

I was sent to school. After the lapse of half-a-year, M. Etienne told me one day, with a very kind look, “Colas, you are poor, but God has blessed you with superior talents; your masters praise your industry, and say how wonderfully you surpass all your fellow-scholars in learning. I therefore have come to the resolution that you shall devote yourself to study. When you have completed your term at Nismes, I will send you to the academy of Montpellier. You shall study the law, which will enable you to become a defender of our oppressed church. I behold in you an instrument of God for our salvation, and for the protection of the Protestant faith against the cruelty and violence of the Papists.”

M. Etienne was secretly a Protestant, as also were several thousands in Nismes, and in the places surrounding it. He initiated me into the doctrines of his faith. The Protestants were laborious, quiet, and benevolent citizens; but the hatred of the people and the fury of the priests persecuted these unfortunate individuals even to the interior of their homes. They lived in continual fear; yet this kept up the ardour of piety more alive in the hearts of all. By compulsion, and for the sake of appearance, we frequented the churches of the Catholics, celebrated their holy days, and kept the images of their saints in our rooms. But neither this compliance, nor the practical piety of the persecuted, could appease the hatred of the persecutors.

Wavering between two different persuasions, to one of which I belonged publicly, to the other secretly, a daily witness of the bitter quarrels of both parties; and how much more pride, hatred, and selfishness, than conviction and piety, flocked to the standards of the belligerent churches, I became, without knowing it, a hypocrite and a disbeliever to both. The grounds upon which each attacked the contested doctrinal points of the other, were better weighed, more subtle and effective than those upon which, the value of that, which was thus attacked, was defended. This raised within me a distrust against all tenets; only those that never had been attacked retained a lasting sway in my eyes. Yet I concealed my inward thoughts from all, that I might not be an abomination to all.

Thus my mind isolated itself early. God and His creation were, in my leisure hours, the objects of my contemplation. I had a horror for the frensy of men, with which they persecuted one another on account of a changing opinion, a tract of country, or a title of princes. Early I felt the hardness of my fate in living among beings who, in every thing, judged differently from myself. I saw myself surrounded by barbarians or half-savages, not yet much more humanised than those, at whose sacrifices of men we are struck with horror. If the ancient Celts, or the Brahmins, or the savages of the wilds of America butcher human beings at the altars of their gods, were they in this more monstrous than the modern Europeans, who, at the altars of their gods (since opinions are the gods of mortals) butcher, in their pious zeal, thousands of their brethren? I lamented over the atrocities of the age I lived in, and saw no means that could remove the general ferocity of nations. The animal nature of man is everywhere the prevailing one. Food, concupiscence, and greediness for power are, as in every species of animals, the most powerful provocatives to activity; they are the sources of harmony as well as of discord, of the rise and fall of nations. Disinterested virtue, eternal right, and incontrovertible truth, are more felt than recognised and encouraged. Their names are proclaimed in the schools, while their essence does not, at all times, pervade the teachers themselves. And whoever should, with a pious zeal, profess them, would soon become the laughing-stock of those surrounding him, and the victim of the general frensy.