At last, in 1685, the fatal blow was struck which decimated the subjects of an irresponsible king.  The glorious edict which Henry IV. had granted, and which even Richelieu and Mazarin had respected, was repealed.  There was no political necessity for the crime.  It sprang from unalloyed religious intolerance; and it was as suicidal as it was uncalled for and cruel.  It was an immense political blunder, which no enlightened monarch would ever have committed, and which none but a cold and narrow woman would ever have encouraged.  There was no excuse or palliation for this abominable persecution any more than there was for the burning of John Huss.  It had not even as much to justify it as had the slaughter of St. Bartholomew, for the Huguenots were politically hostile and dangerous.  It was an act of wanton cruelty incited by religious bigotry.  I wonder how a woman so kind-hearted, so intelligent, and so politic as Madame de Maintenon doubtless was, could have encouraged the King to a measure which undermined his popularity, which cut the sinews of natural strength, and raised up implacable enemies in every Protestant country.  I can palliate her detestable bigotry only on the ground that she was the slave of an order of men who have ever proved themselves to be the inveterate foes of human freedom, and who marked their footsteps, wherever they went, by a trail of blood.  Louis was equally their blinded tool.  The Order—­the “Society of Jesus”—­was created to extirpate heresy, and in this instance it was carried out to the bitter end.  The persecution of the Protestants under Louis XIV. was the most cruel and successful of all known persecutions in ancient or modern times.  It annihilated the Protestants, so far as there were any left openly to defend their cause.  It drove out of France from two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand of her best people, and executed or confined to the galleys as many more, They died like sheep led to the slaughter; they died not with arms, but Bibles, in their hands.  I have already presented some details of that inglorious persecution in my lecture on Louis XIV., and will not repeat what I there said.  It was deemed by Madame de Maintenon a means of grace to the King,—­for in her way she always sought his conversion.  And when the bloody edict went forth for the slaughter of the best people in the land, she wrote that “the King was now beginning to think seriously of his salvation.  If God preserve him, there will be no longer but one religion in the kingdom.”  This foul stain on her character did not proceed from cruelty of disposition, but from mistaken zeal.  What a contrast her conduct was to the policy of Elizabeth!  Yet she was no worse than Le Tellier, La Chaise, and other fanatics.  Religious intolerance was one of the features of the age and of the Roman Catholic Church.

But religious bigotry is eternally odious to enlightened reason.  No matter how interesting a man or woman may be in most respects, if stained with cruel intolerance in religious opinions, he or she will be repulsive.  It left an indelible stain on the character of the most brilliant and gifted woman of her times, and makes us forget her many virtues.  With all her excellences, she goes down in history as a cold and intolerant woman whom we cannot love.  We cannot forget that in a great degree through her influence the Edict of Nantes was repealed.