Page:The Rebellion in the Cevennes (Volume 2).djvu/54

tion is no longer to be thought of, instruction profits not, and whoever wishes to step in coolly and moderately between them is a horror to both parties. You see indeed all the pills, that you, my honoured Lord Marshal cause to be turned and moulded and which the thousand surgeons press upon the perverted, have not purged them of the evil, nor even ameliorated it. What does it profit then that the busy men so diligently assist with their bayonets, nor do these lances, nor the incisions of the gentlemen dragoons improve the blood. Also your imprisonments and executions in the public places have no success. What can your reasoning, your cold, calm persuasions effect, that the whole country, frankly speaking, stands like a great, disbanded madhouse, where the lunatics with their dogmas rage against one another, and like dogs, set on to fight, gnash with their teeth. I think the air is infectuous, and renders insane, and thus it has happened to young Edmond and my poor