CLIFF REFUGES
preaching or psalm-singing. But it is also quite possible that they served as refuges as well to the Catholics, when the Calvinists had the upper hand; as, indeed, they had for long. Their attempts at proselytising was not with velvet gloves, but with fire-brand, sword, and the hangman's rope. In that horrible period, exceeding far in barbarity that of the routiers in the Hundred Years' War, it is hard to decide on which side the worst atrocities were committed.
Later still, in the Reign of Terror, the grottoes may have harboured priests and nobles hiding for their lives. But now they shelter none but the peaceful dreamer, who sits there at eventide looking out over the yellow waters of the Gironde, ever agitated by the tide, at the setting sun that sends shafts of fire into these recesses—and sets him wishing that the light would reveal the details of tragic stories connected with these caves.
In the department of Ariège are a vast number of natural caverns, many of which have served as places of retreat for the Albigenses. Between Tarascon and Cabannes are some that were defended by crenellated walls, and are supposed to date from the Wars of Religion, but probably go back beyond the time of the English occupation. It is also said that the Huguenots met in them for their assemblies. In the country they go by the name of gleizetos, or petites eglises. They are found on the left bank of the Ariege. In the fourth century the Priscillianist heretics expelled from Spain settled in the mountains on the north slope of the Pyrenees, and propagated their doctrines throughout the country and among the population more than half pagan, and this explains the spread of Albigensian Manichæism later. In 407 the Vandals, Suevi and Alani, during three years in succession swept the country, committing frightful ravages, as they passed on their way into Spain; and no doubt can be entertained that at this
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