During this time, taking advantage of the truce to hostilities and the impartial protection meted out to all without distinction by the Constable Damville, the Carmelites and Capuchins, the Jesuits and monks of all orders and colours, began by degrees to return to Nines; without any display, it is true, rather in a surreptitious manner, preferring darkness to daylight; but however this may be, in the course of three or four years they had all regained foothold in the town; only now they were in the position in which the Protestants had been formerly, they were without churches, as their enemies were in possession of all the places of worship.  It also happened that a Jesuit high in authority, named Pere Coston, preached with such success that the Protestants, not wishing to be beaten, but desirous of giving word for word, summoned to their aid the Rev. Jeremie Ferrier, of Alais, who at the moment was regarded as the most eloquent preacher they had.  Needless to say, Alais was situated in the mountains, that inexhaustible source of Huguenot eloquence.  At once the controversial spirit was aroused; it did not as yet amount to war, but still less could it be called peace:  people were no longer assassinated, but they were anathematised; the body was safe, but the soul was consigned to damnation:  the days as they passed were used by both sides to keep their hand in, in readiness for the moment when the massacres should again begin.

CHAPTER II

The death of Henri iv led to new conflicts, in which although at first success was on the side of the Protestants it by degrees went over to the Catholics; for with the accession of Louis xiii Richelieu had taken possession of the throne:  beside the king sat the cardinal; under the purple mantle gleamed the red robe.  It was at this crisis that Henri de Rohan rose to eminence in the South.  He was one of the most illustrious representatives of that great race which, allied as it was to the royal houses of Scotland, France, Savoy, and Lorraine; had taken as their device, “Be king I cannot, prince I will not, Rohan I am.”

Henri de Rohan was at this time about forty years of age, in the prime of life.  In his youth, in order to perfect his education, he had visited England, Scotland, and Italy.  In England Elizabeth had called him her knight; in Scotland James vi had asked him to stand godfather to his son, afterwards Charles I; in Italy he had been so deep in the confidence of the leaders of men, and so thoroughly initiated into the politics of the principal cities, that it was commonly said that, after Machiavel, he was the greatest authority in these matters.  He had returned to France in the lifetime of Henry iv, and had married the daughter of Sully, and after Henri’s death had commanded the Swiss and the Grison regiments—­at the siege of Juliers.  This was the man whom the king was so imprudent as to offend by refusing him the reversion of the office of governor of Poitou, which was then held by Sully, his father-in-law.  In order to revenge himself for the neglect he met with at court, as he states in his Memoires with military ingenuousness, he espoused the cause of Conde with all his heart, being also drawn in this direction by his liking for Conde’s brother and his consequent desire to help those of Conde’s religion.