The firm attitude assumed by General Lagarde restored Nimes to a state of
superficial peace, beneath which, however, the old enmities were
fermenting. An occult power, which betrayed itself by a kind of passive
resistance, neutralised the effect of the measures taken by the military
commandant. He soon became cognisant of the fact that the essence of
this sanguinary political strife was an hereditary religious animosity,
and in order to strike a last blow at this, he resolved, after having
received permission from the king, to grant the general request of the
Protestants by reopening their places of worship, which had been closed
for more than four months, and allowing the public exercise of the
Protestant religion, which had been entirely suspended in the city for
the same length of time.

Formerly there had been six Protestant pastors resident in Nimes, but
four of them, had fled; the two who remained were MM. Juillerat and
Olivier Desmonts, the first a young man, twenty-eight years of age, the
second an old man of seventy.

The entire weight of the ministry had fallen during this period of
proscription on M. Juillerat, who had accepted the task and religiously
fulfilled it. It seemed as if a special providence had miraculously
protected him in the midst of the many perils which beset his path.
Although the other pastor, M. Desmonts, was president of the Consistory,
his life was in much less danger; for, first, he had reached an age which
almost everywhere commands respect, and then he had a son who was a
lieutenant in, one of the royal corps levied at Beaucaire, who protected
him by his name when he could not do so by his presence. M. Desmonts had
therefore little cause for anxiety as to his safety either in the streets
of Nimes or on the road between that and his country house.