him, but he feared that Oliver would hire the Protestant Swiss to take part against the Duke of Savoy, and that all thought of fighting the Spaniards in Italy would have to be laid aside for that year. Communications passed between Paris and Turin, and the Duke of Savoy issued his pardon--such was the term employed--to the surviving Vaudois. Milton's sonnet marks well this highest point of the Protector's action upon Continental States:-- Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones Forget not: in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow A hundred fold, who having learnt thy way Early may fly the Babylonian woe. In championing the Vaudois, Oliver's Puritanism had served the noblest interests of humanity. With somewhat of the poet's fervour Milton saw in the defence of the oppressed victims of the Duke of Savoy a challenge to the spiritual tyranny of Papal Rome. It made Oliver, we may be sure, more ready to take up the challenge of Spain, and to come to terms with the French Government which had spoken on the side of tolerance. Yet, enthusiastically Puritan as he was, he could not deal with the external affairs of England from a merely or even a mainly religious point of view. His position would not allow it--nor his character. The mingling of spiritual with worldly motives might produce strange results. At one time it elevated and ennobled action. At another time the two motives might clash together, the one frustrating the other. In the stand taken by Oliver on behalf of the Vaudois, the spiritual had predominated over the material aim. In the breach with Spain, his belief in the predominance of the religious motive burnt strongly in Oliver's own mind: it was less conspicuous to onlookers.