The revocation of the edict of Nantes, without the slightest pretext or necessity, and the various proscriptions that followed it, were the fruits of a frightful plot, in which the new spouse was one of the chief conspirators, and which depopulated a quarter of the realm, ruined its commerce, weakened it in every direction, gave it up for a long time to the public and avowed pillage of the dragoons, authorised torments and punishments by which so many innocent people of both sexes were killed by thousands; ruined a numerous class; tore in pieces a world of families; armed relatives against relatives, so as to seize their property and leave them to die of hunger; banished our manufactures to foreign lands, made those lands flourish and overflow at the expense of France, and enabled them to build new cities; gave to the world the spectacle of a prodigious population proscribed, stripped, fugitive, wandering, without crime, and seeking shelter far from its country; sent to the galleys, nobles, rich old men, people much esteemed for their piety, learning, and virtue, people well off, weak, delicate, and solely on account of religion; in fact, to heap up the measure of horror, filled all the realm with perjury and sacrilege, in the midst of the echoed cries of these unfortunate victims of error, while so many others sacrificed their conscience to their wealth and their repose, and purchased both by simulated abjuration, from which without pause they were dragged to adore what they did not believe in, and to receive the divine body of the Saint of Saints whilst remaining persuaded that they were only eating bread which they ought to abhor!  Such was the general abomination born of flattery and cruelty.  From torture to abjuration, and from that to the communion, there was often only twenty-four hours’ distance; and executioners were the conductors of the converts and their witnesses.  Those who in the end appeared to have been reconciled, more at leisure did not fail by their flight, or their behaviour, to contradict their pretended conversion.

[Illustration:  The Edict Of Nantes—­Painted by Jules Girardet—­front2]

The King received from all sides news and details of these persecutions and of these conversions.  It was by thousands that those who had abjured and taken the communion were counted; ten thousand in one place; six thousand in another—­all at once and instantly.  The King congratulated himself on his power and his piety.  He believed himself to have renewed the days of the preaching of the Apostles, and attributed to himself all the honour.  The bishops wrote panegyrics of him, the Jesuits made the pulpit resound with his praises.  All France was filled with horror and confusion; and yet there never was so much triumph and joy—­never such profusion of laudations!  The monarch doubted not of the sincerity of this crowd of conversions; the converters took good care to persuade him of it and to beatify him beforehand.  He swallowed their