Laporte. One of these was his nephew Roland, a man of about thirty,
pock-marked, fair, thin, cold, and reserved; he was not tall, but very
strong, and of inflexible courage. The other, Henri Castanet of
Massevaques, was a keeper from the mountain of Laygoal, whose skill as a
marksman was so well known that it was said he never missed a shot. Each
of these lieutenants had fifty men under him.

Prophets and prophetesses too increased apace, so that hardly a day
passed without reports being heard of fresh ones who were rousing whole
villages by their ravings.

In the meantime a great meeting of the Protestants of Languedoc had been
held in the fields of Vauvert, at which it had been resolved to join
forces with the rebels of the Cevennes, and to send a messenger thither
to make this resolution known.

Laporte had just returned from La Vaunage, where he had been making
recruits, when this good news arrived; he at once sent his nephew Roland
to the new allies with power to pledge his word in return for theirs, and
to describe to them, in order to attract them, the country which he had
chosen as the theatre of the coming war, and which, thanks to its
hamlets, its woods, its defiles, its valleys, its precipices, and its
caves, was capable of affording cover to as many bands of insurgents as
might be employed, would be a good rallying-ground after repulse, and
contained suitable positions for ambuscades. Roland was so successful in
his mission that these new "soldiers of the Lord," as they called
themselves, on learning that he had once been a dragoon, offered him the
post of leader, which he accepted, and returned to his uncle at the head
of an army.