“On my word, father,” said Louis, glancing with a bitter smile at his Jesuit confessor, “I shall have to pick the cadets of the household from your seminary, since my officers have turned casuists and theologians.  So, for the last time, you refuse to obey my request?”

“Oh, sire—­” De Catinat took a step forward with outstretched hands and tears in his eyes.

But the king checked him with a gesture.  “I desire no protestations,” said he.  “I judge a man by his acts.  Do you abjure or not?”

“I cannot, sire.”

“You see,” said Louis, turning again to the Jesuit, “it will not be as easy as you think.”

“This man is obstinate, it is true, but many others will be more yielding.”

The king shook his head.  “I would that I knew what to do,” said he.  “Madame, I know that you, at least, will ever give me the best advice.  You have heard all that has been said.  What do you recommend?”

She kept her eyes still fixed upon her tapestry, but her voice was firm and clear as she answered:—­

“You have yourself said that you are the eldest son of the Church.  If the eldest son desert her, then who will do her bidding?  And there is truth, too, in what the holy abbe has said.  You may imperil your own soul by condoning this sin of heresy.  It grows and flourishes, and if it be not rooted out now, it may choke the truth as weeds and briers choke the wheat.”

“There are districts in France now,” said Bossuet, “where a church is not to be seen in a day’s journey, and where all the folk, from the nobles to the peasants, are of the same accursed faith.  So it is in the Cevennes, where the people are as fierce and rugged as their own mountains.  Heaven guard the priests who have to bring them back from their errors.”

“Whom should I send on so perilous a task?” asked Louis.

The Abbe du Chayla was down in a instant upon his knees with his gaunt hands outstretched.  “Send me, sire!  Me!” he cried.  “I have never asked a favour of you, and never will again.  But I am the man who could break this people.  Send me with your message to the people of the Cevennes.”

“God help the people of the Cevennes!” muttered Louis, as he looked with mingled respect and loathing at the emaciated face and fiery eyes of the fanatic.  “Very well, abbe,” he added aloud; “you shall go to the Cevennes.”

Perhaps for an instant there came upon the stern priest some premonition of that dreadful morning when, as he crouched in a corner of ’his burning home, fifty daggers were to rasp against each other in his body.  He sunk his face in his hands, and a shudder passed over his gaunt frame.  Then he rose, and folding his arms, he resumed his impassive attitude.  Louis took up the pen from the table, and drew the paper towards him.

“I have the same counsel, then, from all of you,” said he,—­“from you, bishop; from you, father; from you, madame; from you, abbe; and from you, Louvois.  Well, if ill come from it, may it not be visited upon me!  But what is this?”