CHAPTER XXIII.
THE FALL OF THE CATINATS.
Two days after Madame de Maintenon's marriage to the king there was held within the humble walls of her little room a meeting which was destined to cause untold misery to many hundreds of thousands of people, and yet, in the wisdom of Providence, to be an instrument in carrying French arts and French ingenuity and French sprightliness among those heavier Teutonic peoples who have been the stronger and the better ever since for the leaven which they then received.

For in history great evils have sometimes arisen from a virtue, and most beneficent results have often followed hard upon a crime.
The time had come when the Church was to claim her promise from madame, and her pale cheek and sad eyes showed how vain it had been for her to try and drown the pleadings of her tender heart by the arguments of the bigots around her.

She knew the Huguenots of France.

Who could know them better, seeing that she was herself from their stock, and had been brought up in their faith?
She knew their patience, their nobility, their independence, their tenacity.

What chance was there that they would conform to the king's wish?
A few great nobles might, but the others would laugh at the galleys, the jail, or even the gallows when the faith of their fathers was at stake.