The very pious Madame de Maintenon (whom some folks make quite a saint of nowadays) availed herself of this infamous law to a great extent, and many of the pupils at her famous school of St. Cyr were of this class. Thus she took both his children from her cousin, the Marquis de Villette, because the poor gentleman would not yield to her arguments, but made fun of them. * * "Souvenirs de la Marquise de Caylus," quoted by Félise. Any one who thinks Madame de Maintenon a pattern would do well not to read memoirs of her own days. As my mother had said to Simon Sablot, there was no redress. We of the Religion had no chance of justice, even in a merely civil suit, much more in a case like the present. It was openly said in the courts, when a man complained of an unrighteous judgment, "Ah, well, the remedy is in your hands. Why do you not become Catholic?" All new converts were permitted to put off the payment of their debts for three years, and were exempted from many taxes which fell heavily upon their brethren. In short, we were oppressed and trodden down always. There were those, however, even of our enemies, who raised their voices against these infamous laws. Certain bishops, especially those inclined to Jansenism, protested against the Protestants being absolutely driven to commit sacrilege, by coming to the mass in an unfit frame of mind. Fénelon afterward wrote a most indignant letter to the king on the subject. The Bishop of Orleans absolutely refused to allow the quartering of dragoons on his people. More than one kind old curé or parish priest was exiled from the presbytery, where he had spent all his days, and sent to languish in some dreary place among the marshes or in the desolate sands, for omitting to give notice of some heretic who had died without the sacraments, or for warning his poor neighbors of the approach of the dragoons. The very Franciscans who had charge of some of those dreadful prisons where poor women were shut up, after trying their best to convert their charges, would relent, and, ceasing to persecute them, would comfort them as well as they could by reading the Psalms and praying with them, smuggling in biscuits and fruit and other little dainties in their snuffy old pockets, and even, it was said, introducing now and then a Bible in the same way. * * See the affecting story of the Tower of Constancy, told in many authors, and well repeated in Bungener's "The Priest and the Huguenot," vol II, a book not half appreciated. The Franciscans have always been the most humane of all the regular orders. But again I am wandering a long way from my story. However, I shall not apologize for these digressions. They are absolutely needful to make any reader understand what was the state of things in France at that time. [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. THE LONELY GRANGE.