After this youthful servant of the Gospel, died the veteran of the assemblies of the wilderness, Jacques Roger—who had restored the churches with Antoine Court—an aged minister, seventy years old. He was taken in the neighbourhood of Crest. “Who are you?” demanded the officer of the patrol. “I am,” he answered, “he whom you have long sought for, and it is time that you should find me.” Like Ignatius of Antioch, Jacques Roger sighed for the crown of martyrdom.
Confined with other Protestant prisoners, he exhorted them to remain firm in the faith. When the executioner came to summon him, he exclaimed: “This is the blessed day, this is the glad moment I have so long yearned for. Let us rejoice, my soul, for this is the happy day when thou shalt enter into the joy of thy Lord.”
He beseeched the Jesuits, who importuned him, to cease from troubling his mind in its repose, and walked to the scaffold in the midst of the crash of the drums that were continually beaten. “There was no one,” says Armand de la Chapelle, “who did not read upon the countenance of this holy confessor, the profound calmness, the sincere piety, and the ardent zeal of his soul. Even the Jesuits spoke of him with praise, and many persons of the Romish communion could not refrain from showing how much they were touched. When he had prayed on his knees at the foot of the ladder, he mounted the steps with the same air of modest confidence, which he had all along displayed.” His body was thrown into the Isère, after it had been suspended twenty-four hours on the gibbet.
The third victim, who excited the warmest sympathy, was executed on the 2nd of February, 1746. His name was Matthieu Majal, and he bore, according to the custom of the desert pastors, the surname of Désubas. His age also was twenty-six.
Having been surprised at Saint Agrève, in Vivarais, he was taken to Vernoux. The news of his arrest spread universal grief. When he passed through a village on the way, some unarmed peasants supplicated the commanding officer to release their pastor; and one of them, throwing himself upon Désubas, closely embraced him, imploring his liberty. The only reply was an order to fire upon the peasants, and six were slain.
The next day—one of religious service—a more numerous gathering, but similarly unarmed, penetrated into the town of Vernoux. The officer, who dreaded a rising, ordered his soldiers to fire from the houses against this crowd, whose wailings and prayers were their only weapons. Thirty of these unfortunates fell dead, and two or three hundred were wounded.
Then the mountaineers of Vivarais flew to arms, and prepared to avenge the murder of their brethren. Fortunately the pastors hastened to intercede, and to beseech them, in the name of their faith, their families, their country, in the name of their common salvation, to refrain. “It is only on this condition,” said the most revered of these pastors to them, “that I will continue my ministry among you.”
Désubas himself wrote this note from his prison. “I implore you, gentlemen, to retire. The king’s people are here in strong numbers; and too much blood has been spilled already. I am calm, and entirely resigned to the Divine will.”
The peasants yielded, and threw their arms away. But along the road by which the pastor passed, from Vernoux to Montpellier, they stood grief-stricken and indignant, with difficulty repressing the promptings of their desire to rescue him. All their ministers were there, hidden in the multitude, and striving to appease it with the sacred words of the Evangelist.
Désubas reached Montpellier at the time of holding the States. The whole body of the clergy hastened around him, soliciting but one word, one single word of abjuration. Vain efforts! The pastor of the desert was more firm before the seductions of his persecutors than before the tears of his people: he had long devoted himself to death.