The guests separated and quiet reigned once more at the château of Briantes.
The marquis thereupon began to think seriously of his son's education. But if he had been left to himself, amid the preoccupations concerning dress which filled so much space in his life, his heir might very well have forgotten what Abbé Anjorrant had taught him, to acquire valuable notions concerning the art of the tailor, bootmaker, armorer and decorator. Luckily, Lucilio was there, and he was able to steal a few hours every day from those trivial pursuits.
He too, the loving heart, grew to be ardently attached to his friend's child, not only because of the friend, but also because of the child himself, who, by virtue of his affectionate docility and the keenness of his intellect, made the task of tutor, ordinarily so unpleasant and wearing, most pleasurable.
And yet Lucilio's task was not an easy one. He felt that he had charge of a soul, and of an infinitely pure and precious soul. He strove, first of all, to protect that youthful conscience with a fortress of beliefs and convictions against all the tempests of the future. The times they lived in were so unsettled!
Certainly there was no lack of enlightenment or of most excellent progressive ideas. It was the age of novelties, people said: detestable novelties according to some, providential according to others. Discussion was rife everywhere and among all classes; and then, just as to-day and yesterday and always, vulgar minds believed that they had discovered infallible truths.
But the world of intellect had lost its unity. Calm and impartial minds sought justice, sometimes in one camp, sometimes in the other; and as in both camps intolerance, error and cruelty were of common occurrence, scepticism found its profit in folding its arms and asserting the incurable blindness and weakness of the human race.
It was a period just subsequent to the bloody conflicts between the Gomarists and Arminians. Arminius was no more; but Barneveldt had just mounted the scaffold. Hugo Grotius had been sentenced to imprisonment for life, and was meditating in prison his noble Theory of the Law of Nations. The Reformers were widely at variance on the question of predestination. Calvinism, with its appalling fatalistic doctrine, was doomed in the consciences of right-minded men. The French Lutherans, imitating Melancthon's return to the truth, and abandoning Luther's deplorable doctrines concerning free will, now upheld divine justice and human liberty.
But right-minded men are scarce at all periods. The Calvinist sect and its fervent ministers protested in a large part of France against what they called a return to the heresy of Rome.
The events that took place in our Southern provinces, the frenzied meetings determining upon a resistance that had become anti-French, the republican spirit, ill understood, seconding by obstinacy and ignorance the deplorable projects of the Austro-Spanish policy, which aimed at kindling civil war in France; the glorious but regrettable resistance at Montauban; so much blood shed, so much heroism expended to perpetuate the struggle which Rome and Austria found to their advantage, proved plainly enough that the light of intelligence was behind a cloud, and that no liberal mind could say to itself: "I will go into this church, I will go into this army, and there I shall find unadulterated the best social truths of my time."
It was not advisable therefore to pay too much heed to facts, and when one was well-informed and intelligent, to believe in any special truth above all those which were preached throughout the world, since the sword, the halter, the stake, murder, rape and pillage were the methods of conversion used by the opposing parties in dealing with one another.