but to weed out the religionists of
the small towns and villages;" by stretching a point the process had been
carried into the principality of Orange, which still belonged to the
house of Nassau, on the pretext that the people of that district had
received in their chapels the king's subjects. The Count of Tesse, who
had charge of the expedition, wrote to Louvois, "Not only, on one and the
same day, did the whole town of Orange become converted, but the state
took the same resolution, and the members of the Parliament, who were
minded to distinguish themselves by a little more stubbornness, adopted
the same course twenty-four hours afterwards. All this was done gently,
without violence or disorder. There is only a parson named Chambrun,
patriarch of the district, who persists in refusing to listen to reason;
for the president, who did aspire to the honor of martyrdom, would, as
well as the rest of the Parliament, have turned Mohammedan, if I had
desired it. You would not believe how infatuated all these people were,
and are still, about the Prince of Orange, his authority, Holland,
England, and the Protestants of Germany. I should never end if I were to
recount all the foolish and impertinent proposals they have made to me."
M. de Tesse did not tell Louvois that he was obliged to have the pastors
of Orange seized and carried off. They were kept twelve years in prison
at Pierre-Encise; none but M. de Chambrun, who had been taken to Valence,
managed to escape and take refuge in Holland, bemoaning to the end of his
days a moment's weakness. "I was quite exhausted by torture, and I let
fall this unhappy expression: 'Very well, then, I will be reconciled.'
This sin has brought me down as it were into hell itself, and I have
looked upon myself as a dastardly soldier who turned his back on the day
of battle, and as an unfaithful servant who betrayed the interests of his
master."

The king assembled his council. The lists of converts were so long that
there could scarcely remain in the kingdom more than a few thousand
recalcitrants. "His Majesty proposed to take an ultimate resolution as
regarded the Edict of Nantes," writes the Duke of Burgundy in a
memorandum found amongst his papers. "Monseigneur represented that,
according to an anonymous letter he had received the day before, the
Huguenots had some expectation of what was coming upon them, that there
was perhaps some reason to fear that they would take up arms, re