rapid succession. Boys and girls were torn from their parents and
sent to be educated in convents. All Calvinistic ministers were
commanded either to abjure their religion or to quit their
country within a fortnight. The other professors of the reformed
faith were forbidden to leave the kingdom; and, in order to
prevent them from making their escape, the outports and frontiers
were strictly guarded. It was thought that the flocks, thus
separated from the evil shepherds, would soon return to the true
fold. But in spite of all the vigilance of the military police
there was a vast emigration. It was calculated that, in a few
months, fifty thousand families quitted France for ever. Nor were
the refugees such as a country can well spare. They were
generally persons of intelligent minds, of industrious habits,
and of austere morals. In the list are to be found names eminent
in war, in science, in literature, and in art. Some of the exiles
offered their swords to William of Orange, and distinguished
themselves by the fury with which they fought against their
persecutor. Others avenged themselves with weapons still more
formidable, and, by means of the presses of Holland, England, and
Germany, inflamed, during thirty years, the public mind of Europe
against the French government. A more peaceful class erected silk
manufactories in the eastern suburb of London. One detachment of
emigrants taught the Saxons to make the stuffs and hats of which
France had hitherto enjoyed a monopoly. Another planted the first
vines in the neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope.12

In ordinary circumstances the courts of Spain and of Rome would
have eagerly applauded a prince who had made vigorous war on
heresy. But such was the hatred inspired by the injustice and
haughtiness of Lewis that, when he became a persecutor, the