While "The Arm and the Darkness" by Taylor Caldwell is primarily a long narrative of the physical and spiritual struggles of a young nobleman during the conflicts between the Catholic reaction and the Huguenots in France in the time of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, it is also an adumbration of the emergence of the Common Man into history and his opening battles for liberty, enlightenment and justice. The real villain of this novel is the corrupt hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and the real hero is that urge toward liberation that expressed itself in the Huguenot movement. Of course, the line between good and evil is not drawn quite so definitely as that, for Miss Caldwell makes it plain that there were good Catholics and corrupt Huguenots; but, all the same, the protagonists are reaction and progress and their other names were Rome and Luther. To...