Some cause there surely was. Political and religious strife raged fast and hotly. From the outset—that is, at least, as far back as the time when the Calvinists banded together to resist the Catholics—it was not a question alone of reform or of change in religious conviction. It could not have remained at that: the whole framework of government would have been shaken to its foundation had the Reformed party ultimately triumphed; but the passing of a century had wrought startling changes. There were many of the Catholic nobility whose policy was as much to side with the Huguenot party, as it had been the wisdom of the Protestant Henri IV. to adopt the Catholic creed. Richelieu, in conquering Rochelle, showed the vanquished Huguenots so much leniency, that public clamour nicknamed him “the Cardinal of Rochelle,” and “the Protestant Pope,” and he laughed, and said that there was more such scandal ahead; since he intended to achieve a marriage between the king’s sister, Henrietta Maria, and the non-Roman Catholic king, Charles I. of England. To hedge his country from the encroachment of Spain was the life-long aim and endeavour of Richelieu, and he was ruthless in the means. The eastern and northern frontiers of France were constantly menaced and invaded by Austria and Spain and their allies, and to and fro to Paris came the great captains and soldiers engaged in the constant warfare against the enemy—men of long lineage, brave, skilful in arms, dauntless in action, and certainly no laggards in love when opportunity afforded; and they returned loaded with honour, covered with glory, and often seriously wounded, to be welcomed and made much of in the salons of noble and titled women, like the Duchesse de Rambouillet, and other _réunions_ scarcely less celebrated and brilliant, where the fine art of wit, and the _culte_ of poetry and belles-lettres, mingled with a vast amount of love-making, and at least as much exquisite imitation of it, were assiduously conducted. It was the hall-mark of good society, a virtue indispensable, and to be assumed if it did not really exist, and too greatly valued for other virtues to be set great store by. So that the line of demarcation between women of unimpeachable repute, and those following a wider primrose path grew to be so very thinly defined as sometimes to be invisible and disregarded. Notably in the refined and elegant salon of Ninon de L’Enclos were to be counted many ladies of distinction and modes of life untouched by the faintest breath of scandal, who loved her and sought her friendship, as there were men who were quite content to worship from afar, and to hold themselves her friends pure and simple to life’s end.