The Chevalier's daughter

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

"May God console you, my poor friends," said my mother. "Do not give up praying for the strayed lamb. It may be that she will be brought home to the fold at last."

I suppose no Protestant here in England in these quiet days can have any idea of the feelings with which such an act as Lucille's was regarded by those of the Religion at that time. It seems even strange to myself, till I bring back by reflection the atmosphere in which we lived. That some should be led, through terror and torture, to deny their faith was to be expected. Many did thus conform, so far as outside appearances went—that is, they went to mass, even to communion, made the sign of the cross, and bowed their heads to the wayside images. These were looked upon with pity by the more steadfast brethren, and always received back into the church, on repentance and confession.

But such a step as this of Lucille's was almost unheard-of, and it produced a great commotion in our little Protestant community. It was not only a forsaking of the faith of her fathers, but a deliberate going over to the side of our treacherous oppressors—of those who made us to serve with cruel and hard bondage, who despoiled and tortured us, and trampled us into the very mire. And there was no remedy. The law declared that girls were able to become "Catholics," such was the phrase of these arrogant oppressors, at twelve years old. Should one do so, she was to be taken from the custody of her parents, who were nevertheless obliged to support her. Later, matters were even worse. Little children of five and six years old, who could be deluded into kissing a wax doll, or looking into a church, or bowing the head to an image, were carried off, never to be heard of again. Often they were kidnapped without any such ceremony.

The very pious Madame de Maintenon (whom some folks make quite a saint of nowadays) availed herself of this infamous law to a great extent, and many of the pupils at her famous school of St. Cyr were of this class. Thus she took both his children from her cousin, the Marquis de Villette, because the poor gentleman would not yield to her arguments, but made fun of them. *

* "Souvenirs de la Marquise de Caylus," quoted by Félise. Any one who thinks Madame de Maintenon a pattern would do well not to read memoirs of her own days.

As my mother had said to Simon Sablot, there was no redress. We of the Religion had no chance of justice, even in a merely civil suit, much more in a case like the present. It was openly said in the courts, when a man complained of an unrighteous judgment, "Ah, well, the remedy is in your hands. Why do you not become Catholic?" All new converts were permitted to put off the payment of their debts for three years, and were exempted from many taxes which fell heavily upon their brethren. In short, we were oppressed and trodden down always.

There were those, however, even of our enemies, who raised their voices against these infamous laws. Certain bishops, especially those inclined to Jansenism, protested against the Protestants being absolutely driven to commit sacrilege, by coming to the mass in an unfit frame of mind. Fénelon afterward wrote a most indignant letter to the king on the subject.

The Bishop of Orleans absolutely refused to allow the quartering of dragoons on his people. More than one kind old curé or parish priest was exiled from the presbytery, where he had spent all his days, and sent to languish in some dreary place among the marshes or in the desolate sands, for omitting to give notice of some heretic who had died without the sacraments, or for warning his poor neighbors of the approach of the dragoons.

The very Franciscans who had charge of some of those dreadful prisons where poor women were shut up, after trying their best to convert their charges, would relent, and, ceasing to persecute them, would comfort them as well as they could by reading the Psalms and praying with them, smuggling in biscuits and fruit and other little dainties in their snuffy old pockets, and even, it was said, introducing now and then a Bible in the same way. *

* See the affecting story of the Tower of Constancy, told in many authors, and well repeated in Bungener's "The Priest and the Huguenot," vol II, a book not half appreciated.