But she was so happy with her father, and reigned so absolutely in the little château he had given her by way of dowry, that she felt in no manner of haste to enter the marriage state a second time. Was she not called _madame_? And is not the childish desire to be so called one of the most potent reasons which induce young girls to marry?--that and the gifts and the fêtes and the wedding trousseau? "I have already had all the joys and all the sorrows of married life," Lauriane would say artlessly. And yet, although he had a considerable fortune, managed by him with great prudence, to which his retired life enabled him to add materially, Monsieur de Beuvre did not find it a simple matter to arrange a second marriage for his daughter. He had embraced the cause of the Reformed religion at the moment that that cause, drained of men and of money, had no other alternative in our provinces than to keep in the shadow and obtain toleration. Everybody in his neighborhood was a Catholic, or pretended to be; for, in Berry, Calvinism had only a single moment of power and a single real stronghold. But _The year fifteen sixty-two_ when _Bourges lacked priests and beggars too_, was already far away, and Sancerre, the _troublesome mountain_, had its walls razed to the ground. The Berrichon character naturally inclines neither to persecution nor fanaticism; and, after a moment of surprise and agitation, when the passions of those outside their borders had intoxicated the common people and the bourgeoisie, they had fallen back under the influence of that fear of the great, which is the unchanging foundation of the politics of that province. The great men, for their part, had sold their submission, in accordance with their invariable custom. Condé had become a zealous Catholic. Monsieur de Beuvre, who had first served the father, then lost his own son-in-law in the son's cause, was, naturally enough, altogether in disgrace, and appeared no more at Bourges. Jesuits had been sent to him by the prince, to urge him to make solemn abjuration. De Beuvre was no fanatic in religious matters. He had yielded to political passions when he embraced the Lutheran faith, and he realized that he had made a mistake so far as his fortunes were concerned. He was too recent a convert to make it worth their while to purchase him. They contented themselves with attempting to intimidate him, and it had been hinted to him most adroitly that he could not find a husband for his daughter in the province if he persisted in his heresy. Having held his head proudly erect before their threats, he had felt somewhat shaken at the idea of Lauriane remaining a widow and her patrimony falling to another branch of the family. But Lauriane had prevented him from giving way. Reared by him as a very lukewarm adherent of the Protestant religion, she was only partially instructed in its doctrines, and freely mingled the ceremonies and prayers of both forms of worship in her heart.