 as to learn from her in return what had
brought her into her present situation.

Then it was that she recollected that it had been he who, at her cousin
Diane's call, had seized her when she was rushing out of the palace
in her first frenzy of grief, and had carried her back to the women's
apartments.

'It was that day which brought me here,' he said.

And he told how, bred up in his own distant province, by a pious and
excellent tutor, he had devoutly believed in the extreme wickedness of
the Reformers; but in his seclusion he had been trained to such purity
of faith and morals, that, when his brother summoned him to court to
solicit a benefice, he had been appalled at the aspect of vice, and had,
at the same time, been struck by the pure lives of the Huguenots; for
truly, as things then were at the French court, crime seemed to have
arrayed itself on the side of the orthodox party, all virtue on that of
the schismatics.

De Mericour consulted spiritual advisers, who told him that none but
Catholics could be truly holy, and that what he admired were merely
heathen virtues that the devil permitted the Huguenots to display in
order to delude the unwary. With this explanation he had striven to be
satisfied, though eyes unblended by guilt and a pure heart continued to
be revolted at the practices which his Church, scared at the evil
times, and forgetful of her own true strength, left undenounced in her
partisans. And the more that the Huguenot gentlemen thronged the court,
and the young Abbe was thrown into intercourse with them, and the more
he perplexed himself how the truth, the faith, the uprightness, the
forbearance, the purity that they evinced could indeed be wanting in
the zeal that made them acceptable. Then came the frightful morning when
carnage reigned in every street, and the men who had been treated as
favourite boon companions were hunted down like wild beasts in every
street. He had endeavoured to save life, but would have speedily been
slaughtered himself except for his soutane; and in all good fai