102

THE ALPINE REGIONS.

flocks and herds, and provisions for two years. The narrowpath leading to its mouth was blocked up with rocks, and theytoo hastily deemed themselves secure. La Palud, seeing thatan attack from below was almost hopeless, led round a troopby a circuitous route over the rocks and upper pastures of thePelvoux, and reached the brow of the cliff above the cave.Thence he let down a number of men by ropes to the entrance.A panic seems to have seized upon the Waldenses at this un-expected appearance of their persecutors; some threw them-selves over the cliffs ; a few were cut down on the spot, andthe rest fled into the recesses of the cavern. La Palud fearedto let his men follow them; so he piled up all the wood 1 thatlie could collect before the entrance, lighted it, and awaited theresult. A few miserable wretches charged desperately throughthe flames, only to die by the weapons of their merciless foes;the rest remained within, and before long everything was quitequiet. It is said that when the smoke cleared away and thesoldiers entered, they found the corpses of four hundred infants,and that altogether more than three thousand persons weremassacred. Probably the numbers may be somewhat exagge-rated, but I fear that there is no doubt that the details aresubstantially correct; and that this was the mode in which theChurch of Rome of the fifteenth century interpreted her Master’sinjunction—“Anew commandment I give unto you, that ye loveone another 2 .”

Cold draughts of air, of course, generally issue from thesecaverns in warm weather, and if the opening be small, the forceof the current is often considerable. To these ‘ blow'-lioles ’ thename of unndloch is given. The cause of their existence is ob-viously the difference of temperature between the air within

1 It was probably juniper; for this is the only shrub that now grows there,the smoke of which is peculiarly pungent and suffocating, as I know from expe-rience in this very neighbourhood.

a S. John xiii. 34,