The Rebellion in the Cevennes, Volume II by Johann Ludwig Tieck

Edmond intended visiting the valleys under pretext of inquiring after and purchasing an estate and castle in the district, that were abandoned by the owner, and now for sale. He had become acquainted with an aged secular priest, who dwelt in a beautifully situated village of a charming valley, and his companion had under other pretences taken up his quarters in a neighbouring village. As Edmond wandered solitarily through the enchanting landscape, for the purpose of acquainting himself with its conveniences, his heart became oppressed as he struggled to know if the object, that led him hither might in itself be a good, whether it might be a justifiable one. "Shall I," said he to himself, "bring war into these peaceful valleys, where hitherto no noise of arms has ever resounded? Here the monsters still slumber, which we are going to awaken, in order to provide victims even in these communes for their grim jaws. " He quieted his perturbed feelings with the thought, that without his assistance the royalists would march hither, for the purpose of entangling and, if possible, extirpating his new brethren from this part of the country, which was almost wholly in the possession of Catholic inhabitants.

His host, the Catholic priest, was a very little grey-haired man, who, with just as old and amiable a housekeeper lived under the vines and olive trees, that shaded his dwelling so quietly and peaceably, that Edmond on his first entrance was involuntarily reminded of the fable of Philemon and Baucis. He could not divest himself of the idea, that in this habitation the earliest and dearest recollections of his childhood were hovering round him, he was confounded at himself, that his wrath, his burning, religious zeal seemed here nearly exhausted, he was almost obliged to confess that it was forgotten. He meditated and dreamed in the rustling of the trees, by the murmuring of the little waterfall, how softly his soul melted away, and his resolution, like that of Rinaldo's in the enchanted garden of Armida, lost all its strength. When he could not regain his former energy in his waking dreams, as he strolled by the side of the brook, he called it the stream of oblivion, where he now enjoyed the vernal gales and flower breathing elysium and in Lethe separating himself for ever from the world of strife and suffering.