She had some suspicions; but, while her father did not swear that he exaggerated nothing, he could at least give her his word of honor that he had proposed their betrothal to the marquis, and that he had evaded the proposal on the pretext that Mario was still too young to have the idea of love suggested to him. Lauriane was too pure to realize the risks she might have run by returning to Briantes. She remembered that, at the moment of parting from her, Mario, who was said to be ill, had shrugged his shoulders and turned his head away, saying: "You make too much ado about a little cramp. I have no pain now." So she said again to her father what she had said to him with all sincerity some time before, that she had never looked upon that marriage as a possibility; and she encouraged him to go away, as he desired to do, promising him that she would marry any suitable aspirant who did not inspire aversion in her. But such an aspirant did not appear. All those whom Madame de la Trémouille presented to her failed to please her. She found in them the positivism which had invaded her father like a passion, but she found it in the form of cold and somewhat cynical selfishness. The halcyon days of the Reformation were passing away, like the social structure of the preceding century. The Reformed religion was heroic only under cruel persecution, and Richelieu, crushing the remains of the party by the inevitable logic of events, bore no resemblance to a persecutor. France said to the Protestants by his mouth: "Confine yourselves to religious liberty; let politics alone. Turn your faces with us against the enemies without the realm!"--The Protestants proposed to become a republic; they became a Vendée. Save the French Puritans--that redoubtable, heroic, indomitable party, which stood at bay and immolated itself at La Rochelle two years later--all French Protestants were at this time inclined to adhere to the principle of French unity; but many had determined not to give in their adhesion until after a victory which should secure favorable and lasting terms for their party. Now, among those who reasoned well, but who were about to be led on to reason ill and to choose between a foreign alliance and final extermination, the nobility were generally speaking less pure in their purposes than the bourgeoisie and the common people. They made reservations in their own interest; those most highly placed insisted upon being purchased, and translated their craving for religious liberty into a craving for offices and money.