ollowing ordinance: "We wish that our subjects of the pretended
Reformed religion, both male and female, having attained the age of
seven years, may, and it is hereby made lawful for them to embrace the
Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion, and that to this effect they be
allowed to abjure the pretended Reformed religion, without their
fathers and mothers and other kinsmen being allowed to offer them the
least hinderance, under any pretext whatever."

The effect of this law was terrible. Any malignant person, even a
servant, could go into a court of justice and testify that a certain
child had made the sign of the cross, or kissed an image of the
Virgin, or had expressed a desire to enter the Catholic Church, and
that child was immediately taken from its parents, shut up in a
convent, and the parents were compelled to pay the expenses of its
education. Even Madame de Maintenon availed herself of this law in
wresting from her relative, the Marquis de Vilette, his children.

A decree was then issued that all Protestants who should become
Catholics might defer the payment of their debts for three years, and
for two years be exempt from taxation, and from the burden of having
soldiers quartered upon them. To save the treasury from loss, a double
burden of taxation and a double quartering of soldiers was imposed
upon those Protestants who refused to abjure their faith.

If any Protestant was sick, officers were appointed whose duty it was
to visit the sick-bed, and strive to convert the sufferer to the
Catholic faith. Any physician who should neglect to give notice of
such sickness was punished by a severe fine. The pastors were
forbidden to make any allusions whatever in their sermons to these
decrees of the court. Following this decree came the announcement that
if any convert from Catholicism should be received into a Protestant
Church, his property should be confiscated, he should be banished, and
the privilege of public worship should no longer be enjoyed by that
Church. Under this law several church edifices were utterly
demolished.

One of the severest measures adopted against the Protestants was
quartering brutal and ferocious soldiers in their families. In March,
1681, Louvois wrote to the governor of Poitou that he intended to send
a regiment of cavalry into that province.

"His majesty," he said, "has learned with much satisfaction the great
number of persons who are becoming converts in your province. He
d