It was impossible to write this book without relating from period to period, the last excepted, deeds of frightful injustice and of terrible cruelty; for that is the history itself of Protestantism from its origin down to the eve of the Revolution of 1789. No Christian population has been so long persecuted as the Reformed people of France. The duty of the historian must be fulfilled; but wherever the task was painful, we have striven to extenuate, by insisting upon the piety and perseverance of the proscribed, much more than upon the crimes of the proscribes. In the midst of massacres, in the face of the scaffold and the stake, in the bloody expeditions against the gatherings in the wilderness, we have only glanced at the oppressors, and our eyes have dwelt upon the victims. This restraint has been of twofold benefit to us, both as a precept of charity, and as a rule of literary composition. Every work, which excites the mind without elevating it, is bad. The old passions, besides, must be extinguished, not only among those whose forefathers underwent so many sufferings, but also in the heart of the men, who at the present time occupy the places of the most inveterate enemies of Protestantism. However the (Roman) Catholic clergy may declare itself immutable in its creeds and maxims, it is to be hoped that this immutability does not apply to the principle of persecution. The advance of public morals has penetrated more or less everywhere, and the sword of intolerance, which has, alas! in disastrous days recoiled upon the priest himself, would, doubtless, fail to find a hand to wield it again. The Reformers of France never would become in their country a Protestant Ireland. If they have too often stood apart from the great national family, this was their misfortune—not their fault. They did not separate themselves; they were driven forth; and each time the door has been opened, though it were but half way, they could, without betraying their sacred and inviolable obligations to God, return to the bosom of the nation, and they have done so with joy and sincerity. Now that the civil law is the same for all, they form in no sense, either near or afar off, a distinct political party, and they hold it as a point of honour to be confounded in that vast unity, which is the strength and the glory of France.