him the reversion.  All business passed into the hands of Louvois.  Le Tellier had been chancellor since 1677; peace still reigned; the all-powerful minister occupied himself in building Trianon, bringing the River Eure to Versailles, and establishing unity of religion in France.  “The counsel of constraining the Huguenots by violent means to become Catholics was given and carried out by the Marquis of Louvois,” says an anonymous letter of the time.  “He thought he could manage consciences and control religion by those harsh measures which, in spite of his wisdom, his violent nature suggests to him almost in everything.”  Louvois was the inventor, of the dragonnades; it was his father, Michael le Tellier, who put the seals to the revocation of the edict of Nantes; and, a few days before he died, full of joy at his last work, he piously sang the canticle of Simeon.  Louis XIV. and his ministers believed in good faith that Protestantism was stamped out.  “The king,” wrote Madame de Maintenon, “is very pleased to have put the last touch to the great work of the reunion of the heretics with the church.  Father la Chaise, the king’s confessor, promised that it would not cost a drop of blood, and M. de Louvois said the same thing.”  Emigration in mass, the revolt of the Camisards, and the long-continued punishments, were a painful surprise for the courtiers accustomed to bend beneath the will of Louis XIV.; they did not understand that “anybody should obstinately remain of a religion which was displeasing to the king.”  The Huguenots paid the penalty for their obstinacy.  The intelligent and acute biographer of Louvois, M. Camille Rousset, could not defend him from the charge of violence in their case.  On the 10th of June, 1686, he wrote to the superintendent of Languedoc, “On my representation to the king of the little heed paid by the women of the district in which you are to the penalties ordained against those who are found at assemblies, his Majesty orders that those who are not demoiselles (that is, noble) shall be sentenced by M. de Baville to be whipped, and branded with the fleur-de-lis.”  He adds, on the 22d of July, “The king having thought proper to have a declaration sent out on the 15th of this month, whereby his Majesty orders that all those who are henceforth found at such assemblies shall be punished by death, M. de Baville will take no notice of the decree I sent you relating to the women, as it becomes useless by reason of this declaration.”  The king’s declaration was carried out, as the sentences of the victims prove:—­Condemned to the galleys, or condemned to death—­for the crime of assemblies.”  This was the language of the Roman emperors.  Seventeen centuries of Christianity had not sufficed to make men comprehend the sacred rights of conscience.  The refined and moderate mind of Madame de Sevigne did not prevent her from writing to M. de Bussy on the 28th of October, 1685, “You have, no doubt, seen the edict by