the courtiers. Madame de Maintenon
wrote to the Duc de Noailles, "The soldiers are killing numbers of the
fanatics--they hope soon to free Languedoc of them."

That picquante letter-writer, Madame de Sevigne, often referred to the
Huguenots. She seems to have classed them with criminals or wild
beasts. When residing in Low Brittany during a revolt against the
Gabelle, a friend wrote to her, "How dull you must be!" "No," replied
Madame de Sevigne, "we are not so dull--hanging is quite a refreshment
to me! They have just taken twenty-four or thirty of these men, and
are going to throw them off."

A few days after the Edict had been revoked, she wrote to her cousin
Bussy, at Paris: "You have doubtless seen the Edict by which the King
revokes that of Nantes. There is nothing so fine as that which it
contains, and never has any King done, or ever will do, a more
memorable act." Bussy replied to her: "I immensely admire the conduct
of the King in destroying the Huguenots. The wars which have been
waged against them, and the St. Bartholomew, have given some
reputation to the sect. His Majesty has gradually undermined it; and
the edict he has just published, maintained by the dragoons and by
Bourdaloue,[3] will soon give them the _coup de grace_."

[Footnote 3: Bourdaloue had just been sent from the Jesuit
Church of St. Louis at Paris, to Montpellier, to aid the
dragoons in converting the Protestants, and bringing them
back to the Church.]

In a future letter to Count Bussy, Madame de Sevigne informed him of
"a dreadfully fatiguing journey which her son-in-law M. de Grignan had
made in the mountains of Dauphiny, to pursue and punish the miserable
Huguenots, who issued from their holes, and vanished like ghosts to
avoid extermination."

De Baville, however, the Lieutenant of Languedoc, kept her in good
heart. In one of his letters, he said, "I have this morning condemned
seventy-six of these wretches (Huguenots), and sent them to the
galleys." All this was very pleasant to Madame de Sevigne.

Madame de Scuderi, also, more moderately rejoiced in the Act of
Revocation. "The King," she wrote to Bussy, "has worked great marvels
against the Huguenots; and the authority which he has employed to
unite them to the Church will be most salutary to themselves and to
their children, who will be educated in the purity of the faith; all
this will bring upon him the benedictions of Heaven."

Even t