self organised the
persecutions against the Vaudois of Piedmont; and he formed and
directed his pupil, Francois de Sales, to gain by his address the
Protestants of Savoy.

Ought I to speak of this terrible history of the Vaudois, or pass it
over in silence? Speak of it! It is far too cruel--no one will relate
it without his pen hesitating, and his words being blotted by his
tears.[3] If, however, I did not speak of it, we should never behold
the most odious part of the system, that artful policy which employed
the very opposite means in precisely the same cases; here ferocity,
there an unnatural mildness. One word, and I leave the sad story. The
most implacable butchers were women, the penitents of the Jesuits of
Turin. The victims were children! They destroyed them in the
sixteenth century: there were four hundred children burnt at one time
in a cavern. In the seventeenth century they kidnapped them. The
edict of pacification, granted to the Vaudois in 1655, promises, as a
singular favour, that their children under twelve years of age shall no
longer be stolen from them; above that age it is still lawful to seize
them.

This new sort of persecution, more cruel than massacres, characterises
the period when the Jesuits undertook to make themselves universally
masters of the education of children. These pitiless plagiarists[4],
who dragged them away from their mothers, wanted only to bring them up
in their fashion, make them abjure their faith, hate their family, and
arm them against their brethren.

It was, as I have said, a Jesuit professor, Possevino, who renewed the
persecution about the time at which we are now arrived. The same,
while teaching at Padua, had for his pupil young Francois de Sales, who
had already passed a year in Paris, at the college of Clermont. He
belonged to one of those families of Savoy, as much distinguished by
their devotion as by their valour, who carried on wars long against
Geneva. He was endowed with all the qualities requisite for the war of
seduction, which they then desired to commence--a gentle and sincere
devotion, a lively and earnest speech, and a singular charm of
goodness, beauty, and gentleness. Who has not remarked this charm in
the smile of the children of Savoy, who are so natural, yet so
circumspect?

Every favour of Heaven must, we certainly believe, have been showered
upon him, since in this bad age, bad taste, and bad party, among the
cunning and false