when
Bourges lacked priests and beggars too,
was already far away, and Sancerre, the troublesome mountain, had its walls razed to the ground.
The Berrichon character naturally inclines neither to persecution nor fanaticism; and, after a moment of surprise and agitation, when the passions of those outside their borders had intoxicated the common people and the bourgeoisie, they had fallen back under the influence of that fear of the great, which is the unchanging foundation of the politics of that province.
The great men, for their part, had sold their submission, in accordance with their invariable custom. Condé had become a zealous Catholic. Monsieur de Beuvre, who had first served the father, then lost his own son-in-law in the son's cause, was, naturally enough, altogether in disgrace, and appeared no more at Bourges. Jesuits had been sent to him by the prince, to urge him to make solemn abjuration.
De Beuvre was no fanatic in religious matters. He had yielded to political passions when he embraced the Lutheran faith, and he realized that he had made a mistake so far as his fortunes were concerned. He was too recent a convert to make it worth their while to purchase him. They contented themselves with attempting to intimidate him, and it had been hinted to him most adroitly that he could not find a husband for his daughter in the province if he persisted in his heresy. Having held his head proudly erect before their threats, he had felt somewhat shaken at the idea of Lauriane remaining a widow and her patrimony falling to another branch of the family.
But Lauriane had prevented him from giving way. Reared by him as a very lukewarm adherent of the Protestant religion, she was only partially instructed in its doctrines, and freely mingled the ceremonies and prayers of both forms of worship in her heart.
She did not go to the meeting-house over the long, wretched roads at Issoudun or Linières, and when she passed a Catholic church, she did not leap with indignation at the sound of the bell. But she sometimes displayed beneath her smiling, childlike sweetness the germs of an intense pride; and when she saw how her father suffered at the humiliating thought of public abjuration, she came to his assistance with surprising energy, saying to the Jesuits from Bourges:
"It is of no use for you to seek to convert me with the bait of a handsome Catholic husband, for I have sworn in my heart that I will rather belong to a detestable husband of my own communion."
[5]Louise Borgia, afterward married to Louis de Trémouille, and later to Philippe de Bourbon-Busset.