s
Christ, we do; we believe Him to be the Eternal Son of God, the Redeemer
of the world; the maxims of our morality are of so great purity that none
dare gainsay them; we respect the king; we are good subjects, good
citizens; we are Frenchmen as much as we are Reformed Christians." Jurieu
had a right to speak of the respect for the king which animated the
French Reformers. There was no trace left of that political leaven which
formerly animated the old Huguenots, and made Duke Henry de Rohan say,
"You are all republicans; I would rather have to do with a pack of wolves
than an assembly of parsons." "The king is hood winked," the Protestants
declared; and all their efforts were to get at him and tell his Majesty
of their sufferings. The army remained open to them, though without hope
of promotion; and the gentlemen showed alacrity in serving the king.
"What a position is ours!" they would say; if we make any resistance, we
are treated as rebels; if we are obedient, they pretend we are converted,
and they hoodwink the king by means of our very submission."

[Illustration: The Torture of the Huguenots---552]

The misfortunes were redoubling. From Poitou the persecution had
extended through all the provinces. Superintendent Foucauld obtained the
conversion in mass of the province of Bearn. He egged on the soldiers to
torture the inhabitants of the houses they were quartered in, commanding
them to keep awake all those who would not give in to other tortures.
The dragoons relieved one another so as not to succumb themselves to the
punishment they were making others undergo. Beating of drums,
blasphemies, shouts, the crash of furniture which they hurled from side
to side, commotion in which they kept these poor people in order to force
them to be on their feet and hold their eyes open, were the means they
employed to deprive them of rest. To pinch, prick, and haul them about,
to lay them upon burning coals, and a hundred other cruelties, were the
sport of these butchers. All they thought most about was how to find
tortures which should be painful without being deadly, reducing their
hosts thereby to such a state that they knew not what they were doing,
and promised anything that was wanted of them in order to escape from
those barbarous bands. Languedoc, Guienne, Angoumois, Saintonge, all the
provinces in which the Reformers were numerous, underwent the same fate.
The self-restraining character of the Norman people,