Marie Durand

She was famously imprisoned in the Tour de Constance (Aigues-Mortes) from 25 August 1730 for attending a Huguenot assembly with her mother,[1] or perhaps because her brother, Pierre Durand, was a well-known preacher,[2] or perhaps because of her marriage.

The word "RESISTER" scratched by her, or by one or others of her cellmates with a knitting needle into the stonework serves as an expression of her Protestant faith.

These include letters to her niece, Anne in Geneva who, "who, in the end, recanted in order to marry a rich catholic many years her senior."

She also wrote, in 1740, on behalf of other prisoners like the nine women from Vivarais complaining that ‘ During the ten years we have been here, nothing has ever been sent to us from Vivarais.’ She added: ‘Charity is the true principle of our religion, and they ’ — meaning the people in Vivarais — ‘ do not profess it.’ She also wrote to Paul Rabaut, a Huguenot pastor in Nîmes who looked after the prisoners.

[8] Jean Louis Bridel quotes some sections of her letters to her pastor for example: Marie Durand was released on 14 April 1768; she returned to her childhood home.