The object of this bank was naturally to procure conversions at the lowest figure: they cost from five to six livres, sometimes one or two pistoles, and, in extraordinary cases, from eighty to one hundred francs. There is a curious letter on this subject from Pellisson extant, which is the circular of a consummate merchant. “Although you may go to the extent of a hundred francs,” [he writes,] “you are not thereby to understand that this sum is to be always given, since it is requisite that the utmost economy should be observed; first, in order that this beneficent dew may be dispersed over the greatest number of persons; and secondly, because, if a hundred francs is given to persons of low rank without any family following them, those who have ever so little position, or draw after them a number of children, will demand much larger sums. This will not, however, prevent, where important strokes may be effected, on my being first advised thereof, larger remittances to be furnished, accordingly as his majesty shall, on representation made to him, think proper.” (June 12th, 1677.)
Pellisson regularly presented lists of six and eight hundred converts with the certificates to the king, and caused his miracles to be inserted in the Gazette. He took care, however, not to publish that they were nearly all folks belonging to the dregs of the people, or rogues who made a trade of their consciences, or wretches who took the money that they might have the wherewithal to buy a piece of bread, without any intention of renouncing their religion. The king was greatly astonished at his conquests; the prelates applauded; the Jesuits triumphed; but sensible people put no faith in them.
In effect, frauds multiplied to such an extent, that it could no longer be concealed from the king. Instead, however, of giving up this unworthy traffic, he published, through his council, in the month of March, 1679, a law of greater severity against those who relapsed. “We have been informed,” he says in the preamble, “that in several provinces of our kingdom, there are many persons, who, after having abjured the pretended Reformed religion, in the hope of participating in the sums that we have caused to be distributed to the new converts, return to it again.” And the law pronounced against them, besides the former penalty of banishment for life, was that of public recantation and forfeiture of property.
What a mass of injustice and contradictions! In buying souls it could not but be supposed that they believed in nothing, and after having bought them, they were punished for changing anew,—as if they had believed in anything. What should so degraded a devotion inspire in the minds of all respectable people? Is it pity or contempt? It is both the one and the other.
The peace of Nimeguen, concluded with all the powers of Europe in 1679, was the apogee of the fortunes of Louis XIV. He [then] received the surname of “the Great.” Courtiers and men of letters were profuse in [offering] the most humble adulations, and treated him as a demigod. This incense completed his intoxication—he regarded himself really as the sole and rightful owner of all the territory of his kingdom, the sole legislator and supreme judge, the living impersonation of the whole state! He ended by thinking that the minds of his subjects were as much his slaves as their bodies, and considered every conscientious opposition to his sovereign will to be a crime of high treason. Unfortunate prince! He never so debased himself as when he carried the excess of his pretensions so high.
Madame de Maintenon [now] began to assume a stronger dominion over him. The grand-daughter of Agrippa d’Aubigné, one of the firmest defenders of the Calvinist faith, and herself deeply devoted to her religion in childhood, she had abandoned it in 1651, when sixteen years of age. When the Reformed saw her growing in the confidence and intimacy of Louis XIV., they imagined that she would remember the communion of her grandfather, and use her influence to protect it. But having been “born ambitious,” as she confesses in one of her letters, she felt, even more than Pellisson, the necessity of causing her heretic origin to be forgotten, and hoped to retain the king’s heart by fostering in him a strict devotion.
Gifted with much cleverness and still more tact, she had easily discovered Louis XIV.’s profound repugnance for the heretics, and tried to conform herself to it. It appears, nevertheless, that she had some compunctions of pity for the oppressed. We read in the Memorial of Saint Cyr, that the king said to her one day: “I fear, madam, that the moderation you would have me display for the heretics arises from some remains of affection for your old religion.” And she writes elsewhere: “Ruvigny is intractable; he has told the king that I was born a Calvinist, and that I was one until my coming to court. This compels me to approve of things quite opposite to my sentiments.”
This avowal is the clue to her conduct. Madame de Maintenon, if left to herself, would have employed only mildness and charity, as she recommended to her brother; but being desirous above all things of pleasing Louis XIV., she joined with Father La Chaise in devising every means for the ruin of heresy.
The plan of destruction became systematic and invariable after the peace of Nimeguen. Governors, commandants, intendants, soldiers, lawyers, finding that Louis had finally decided upon the extirpation of the Huguenots, became animated with a great desire for proselytism, and undertook in their turn to become missionaries and converters. Their chief care was to despatch long lists of abjurations to the court, or at least reports of worship interdicted, of places of worship razed, and of flocks dispersed. The privy council was sometimes alarmed at so much zeal; notwithstanding which it dared not arrest it, lest the victims might be encouraged in their resistance; and soon, itself drawn along by the force of circumstances, it transformed into a general declaration what it had blamed at first.
Whenever a councillor or a magistrate more humane than the others, deplored these extreme measures, the only answer was, “God uses all means for His ends.”