As his conscience became more sensitive to the claims of the Church, he felt more than he had done before the scandal of his quarrel with the Holy See, he realised more than before the duties of his position as the first Catholic power of Europe. Probably had Madame de Maintenon lived out the rest of her life in poverty as the widow of Scarron, Louis would still have revoked the Edict of Nantes, have made up his quarrel with the Pope, and have persecuted the community of Port Royal. Still, it is none the less true that he was impelled to that policy by the knowledge that it was approved of by her mind, and strengthened in it by the sense of duty which he had imbibed from her society. [Sidenote: =Disabilities placed upon the Huguenots. Encouragement of conversions, 1681.=] Impelled then by his fondness for uniformity, anxious to prove his orthodoxy in spite of his difficulties with Rome, and believing that the Huguenots themselves were ripe for conversion, Louis began his repressive policy in 1681 by excluding all Huguenots from public employment. They were to be marked by the law, as Roman Catholics were marked in England, as people who were unfitted by their religion to hold positions of trust. But repression was only one side of his policy. While those who obstinately adhered to their independence and their religion were stamped as persons unworthy of trust, those who would listen to reason, and be obedient to the wishes of their lord and father, were covered with benefits and rewarded with pensions. In 1682 missions were held throughout France to convert the heretics. Bossuet devoted himself to the work with incredible zeal and success. An office was established in Paris under a convert named Pelisson to organise the work of conversion. Converts received their rewards in the best of government posts, and the receipt of government pensions. So numerous were they that Louis thought that he might safely proceed to the next step and destroy heresy at its root. Edicts were issued closing the Huguenot churches and schools and making it a penal offence for a Huguenot pastor to preach. It soon appeared that he was wrong. Among the middle classes in the south and centre of France there were thousands to whom their religion was of far more moment to them than their property or even their lives. [Sidenote: =Emigration of the Huguenots and popular risings, 1682–1683.=] In 1682 numbers of the best and most industrious of the artisans of France began to leave their country rather than abandon their religion. Louis at once forbade emigration under pain of the galleys. There was but one resource left to the poor Huguenots, deprived of all honourable employment in their own country and prevented from seeking it in another. In desperation the mountaineers in the Cevennes rose in tumult rather than revolt in 1683. Stifled almost in its birth by the royal troops it was made the excuse of inhuman barbarities. [Sidenote: =The ‘Dragonades,’