hen received. For in history great evils
have sometimes arisen from a virtue, and most beneficent results have
often followed hard upon a crime.

The time had come when the Church was to claim her promise from madame,
and her pale cheek and sad eyes showed how vain it had been for her to
try and drown the pleadings of her tender heart by the arguments of the
bigots around her. She knew the Huguenots of France. Who could know
them better, seeing that she was herself from their stock, and had been
brought up in their faith? She knew their patience, their nobility,
their independence, their tenacity. What chance was there that they
would conform to the king's wish? A few great nobles might, but the
others would laugh at the galleys, the jail, or even the gallows when
the faith of their fathers was at stake. If their creed were no longer
tolerated, then, and if they remained true to it, they must either fly
from the country or spend a living death tugging at an oar or working in
a chain-gang upon the roads. It was a dreadful alternative to present
to a people who were so numerous that they made a small nation in
themselves. And most dreadful of all, that she who was of their own
blood should cast her voice against them. And yet her promise had been
given, and now the time had come when it must be redeemed.

The eloquent Bishop Bossuet was there, with Louvois, the minister of
war, and the famous Jesuit, Father la Chaise, each piling argument upon
argument to overcome the reluctance of the king. Beside them stood
another priest, so thin and so pale that he might have risen from his
bed of death, but with a fierce light burning in his large dark eyes,
and with a terrible resolution in his drawn brows and in the set of his
grim, lanky jaw. Madame bent over her tapestry and weaved her coloured
silks in silence, while the king leaned upon his hand and listened with
the face of a man who knows that he is driven, and yet can hardly turn
against the goads. On the low table lay a paper, with pen and ink
beside it. It was the order for the revocation, and it only needed the
king's signature to make it the law of the land.

"And so, father, you are of opinion that if I stamp out heresy in this
fashion I shall assure my own salvation in the next world?" he asked.

"You will have merited a reward."

"And you think so too, Monsieur Bishop?"

"Assuredly, sire."

"And you. Abbe du Chayla?"

The emaciated priest spoke