It had been calculated that many of the pastors would abjure; there were, however, but very few recantations; for even those ministers, who had yielded in the first movement of stupor and fear, almost all returned to their ancient faith. Old men of eighty and ninety years of age were seen bent on devoting the few remaining days of their life to distant journeys, and more than one died before he could reach an asylum where he might rest his wayworn feet and aching head. The arrival of these pastors produced an inexpressible sensation in the foreign countries to which they went. On all sides people hastened, with indignant and pitying hearts, and tearful eyes, to salute these venerable confessors of the Gospel, who, leaning on their traveller’s staff, came ahungered and in rags, weeping for their children and their flocks, left in the hands of the persecutors, to sit beside the hearth of hospitality. A loud and fearful cry rose throughout all Protestant Christendom against Louis XIV., and even the (Roman) Catholics of those lands felt the flush of burning shame mantle upon their foreheads as they thought of their dishonoured church. The faithful followed their leaders in crowds. It was in vain that laws, increasing in cruelty, condemned the men who tried to flee from their native soil, to perpetual imprisonment at the galleys, the women to seclusion for life, and both to forfeiture of goods; it was in vain they sentenced those to the same penalties, and shortly afterwards to death, who gave them assistance; it was in vain that a part of the victims’ spoils were promised to the informer. Emigration spread from province to province, and foiled the despotism of Louis. We cannot in our times form any conception of such cruel laws; for, in short, if the king would endure but one religion in France, he ought at least to have sanctioned the departure from the realm, of those who were not, or refused to be, of it. This is so elementary a principle of natural justice, that even the Spanish Inquisition and the League had always permitted a choice between banishment and abjuration. Louis XIV. by an unheard-of abuse of power, would not permit it. He regarded his compromised _glory_ alone, and did not see that no one compromised it so much as he did himself. The language of these ordinances is as inconceivable as their grounds. Words assumed a monstrous meaning. Thus, we read that flight to foreign parts became “_criminal disobedience_,” as if it were a crime to abandon everything rather than deny one’s faith! Again, we read that the fugitives were guilty of ingratitude for not having profited by the permission to return to France, as if there had not been imposed as the absolute condition of their return, the necessity of rebelling against the God of their conscience. To such a depth did Louis descend under the twofold prompting of his pride and Father La Chaise!