In the county of Poix, the Protestants had opened schools: they were suppressed. At Nismes, they carried seats to the places of service, and went thither in bodies: this was forbidden them. These unworthy molestations were the last breath of expiring intolerance.
The last religious meeting, said to have been surprised and attacked, was one near Orange, in 1767. Eight Protestants of respectable station allowed themselves to be sensed, and held responsible for the remainder. The officer who arrested them was more embarrassed than his captives, and offered the opportunity of evasion. They answered, however, “No; it is for the public authorities to liberate us.” They were released at the expiration of two months.
The pastor Berenger was also condemned to capital punishment in the same year, 1767, by the Parliament of Grenoble, as contumacious. He was executed in effigy in the town of Mens. Lastly, two pastors were arrested in Brie in 1774, and thrown into prison. One died there at the end of nine days; the other was set at liberty, but sent to Guienne by a lettre de cachet.
There were Protestant convicts confined at Toulon so late as 1769; exemplifying the shocking contradiction of people detained in chains for acts, which the government had ceased to punish. This was in the end understood, and they were all liberated. At the same time, too, the old tower of Constance, at Argues-Mortes, was set open. Some of the women confined there had reached extreme old age, and had passed more than half their lives in this confinement.
But the treasury was the most difficult oppressor to overcome. If there were no longer imprisonments, it was still compulsory to pay heavy fines, and suffer ruinous extortions. The religionists were squeezed at one time by the judiciary bodies, at another by the administrative power, and paid in a manner double taxes, of which a very small proportion found its way into the treasury.
Many flocks, unknown until this time, because they hid themselves in the sanctuary of the domestic roof; began to show themselves. Lyons and Marseilles had their pastors. Sancerre, Orleans, Nanteuil en Brie, Asnières, and the Protestants of Picardy and Artois, endeavoured to reconstitute their respective churches.
Normandy was more advanced. It possessed two or three pastors, Louis Campredon, Jean Godefroy, and a minister of Dauphiny, Alexandre Ranc, who established himself in the province for a couple of years. The little town of Bolbec was the centre of this Protestant population. It would appear that the abduction of young girls continued there after the year 1760; for we read in a petition of the inhabitants of Bolbec, to whom Louis XV. had granted an exemption from taxes, to help them to rebuild their town, which had been destroyed by fire: “Sire, to what purpose shall we build houses, if we are not sure of dwelling in them with our families?” (1763.)
At Paris, the Reformed attended the service of the Dutch chapel, a neutral ground, which enabled them to discharge their duties towards God, without openly contravening the ordinances.
The Protestants maintained at their common charge one or two general agents in Paris, whose official character was not, indeed, and could not be recognised by the ministers of state, but their intervention was publicly accepted, and they proffered their advice in all important affairs. This mission was confided, in 1763, to Court de Gébelin, son of the pastor Antoine Court.
He inherited from his father a great devotion for the cause of the Reformed churches. Upright, laborious, intimately connected with men of letters, and known for his philological works, he brought to the service of his co-religionists an indefatigable activity and numerous social relations. He was esteemed at court; he was sought after in the world; and if he died too soon to witness the abolition of the edicts of Louis XIV., he contributed powerfully to their abandonment.