The Huguenot: A Tale of the French Protestants. Volumes I-III

by G. P. R. James

"We shall all be indeed glad to see you, my dear Albert," he said, "for we have very great need of your return on every account. Besides all these grievous and iniquitous proceedings against the Protestants, we have in our own bosom men who I hear had the impudence even to attack you; but who have since committed various other outrages of a marked and peculiar character. One man, I learn, has been shot dead upon the spot, another has been wounded severely, a third has been robbed and maltreated. But I cannot discover that any one has met with harshness, except such as are distinguished for a somewhat inordinate zeal in favour of the Catholic faith. Not a Protestant has been attacked, which marks the matter more particularly, and the peasantry themselves are beginning to notice the fact, so that it will not be long before their priests take notice of it, and the eyes of the state will be turned angrily upon us."

"I fear indeed that it will be so," replied the Count; "but whether the result will or will not be evil, God in his wisdom only knows."

"How is this, my dear Albert?" exclaimed the clergyman. "You sent to me to ask that I should draw up a humble petition to the King, representing the Protestants as peaceful, humble, obedient subjects, and surely we must take every measure that we may not by our own actions give the lie to our own words."

"I will certainly, my dear friend," replied the Count, "take every measure that it is possible for man to take, to put down this evil system of plunder and violence, whether it be carried on by Protestants or Catholics. There is a notorious violation of the law, and I am determined to put it down if it be possible, without any regard whatsoever to distinction between the two religions. The petition to the King was necessary when I wrote about it, and is so still, for it was then our only hope, and it may now be taken as a proof that even to the last moment we were willing to show ourselves humble, devoted, and loyal. I expect nothing from it but that result; but that result itself is something."

"I fear, my son," said the old man, "that you have heard bad news since you wrote to me."

"The worst," replied the Count, with a melancholy shake of the head, "the very worst that can be given. They intend, I understand from authority that cannot be doubted, to suppress entirely the free exercise of our religion in France, and to revoke the edict of our good King Henry which secured it to us."

The old man dropped the reins upon his mule's neck, and raised his eyes appealingly to heaven. "Terrible, indeed!" he said; "but I can scarcely credit it."

"It is but too true--but too certain!" replied the Count; "and yet terrible as this is--horrible, infamous, detestable as is the cruelty and tyranny of the act itself, the means by which it is to be carried into execution are still more cruel, tyrannical, and detestable."

The old man gazed in his face as if he had hardly voice to demand what those means were; but after a brief pause the Count went on: "To sum up all in one word, they intend to take the Protestant children from the Protestant mother, from the father, from the brother, and forbidding all intercourse, to place them in the hands of the enemies of our faith, to be educated in the superstitions that we abhor."

"God will avert it!" said the old man; "it cannot be that even the sins and the follies of him who now sits upon the throne of France should deserve the signal punishment of being thus utterly given up and abandoned by the spirit of God to the tyrannical and brutal foolishness of his own heart. I cannot believe that it will ever be executed. I cannot believe that it will ever be attempted. I doubt not they will go on as they have begun; that they will send smooth-faced priests with cunning devices, as they have done indeed since you went hence, to bribe and buy to the domination of Satan the weak and wavering of our flocks, and send lists of them to the King, to swell his heart with the pride of having made converts. I can easily conceive that they will be permitted to take from us places and dignities, to drive us by every sort of annoyance, so that the gold may be purified from the dross, the corn may be winnowed from the chaff. All this they will do, for all this undoubtedly we sinners have deserved. But I do not believe that they will be permitted to do more, and my trust is not in man but in God. For the sins that we have committed, for the weakness we have displayed, for murmurs and rebellion against his will, for sinful doubts and apprehensions of his mercy, from the earthliness of our thoughts, and the want of purity in all our dealings, God may permit us to be smitten severely, terribly; but the fiery sword of his vengeance will not go out against his people beyond a certain point. He has built his church upon a rock, and there shall it stand; nor will I ever believe that the reformed church of France shall be extinguished in the land, nor that the people who have sought God with sincerity shall be left desolate. We will trust in him, my son! We will trust in him!"