De Catinat kissed the hand which the monarch held out to him.

“May I be worthy of your kindness, sire!”

“You would do what you could to serve me, would you not?”

“My life is yours, sire.”

“Very good.  Then I shall put your fidelity to the proof.”

“I am ready for any proof.”

“It is not a very severe one.  You see this paper upon the table.  It is an order that all the Huguenots in my dominions shall give up their errors, under pain of banishment or captivity.  Now I have hopes that there are many of my faithful subjects who are at fault in this matter, but who will abjure it when they learn that it is my clearly expressed wish that they should do so.  It would be a great joy to me to find that it was so, for it would be a pain to me to use force against any man who bears the name of Frenchman.  Do you follow me?”

“Yes, sire.”  The young man had turned deadly pale, and he shifted his feet, and opened and clasped his hands.  He had faced death a dozen times and under many different forms, but never had he felt such a sinking of the heart as came over him now.

“You are yourself a Huguenot, I understand.  I would gladly have you, then, as the first-fruit of this great measure.  Let us hear from your own lips that you, for one, are ready to follow the lead of your king in this as in other things.”

The young guardsman still hesitated, though his doubts were rather as to how he should frame his reply than as to what its substance should be.  He felt that in an instant Fortune had wiped out all the good turns which she had done him during his past life, and that now, far from being in her debt, he held a heavy score against her.  The king arched his eyebrows and drummed his fingers impatiently as he glanced at the downcast face and dejected bearing.

“Why all this thought?” he cried.  “You are a man whom I have raised and whom I will raise.  He who has a major’s epaulettes at thirty may carry a marshal’s baton at fifty.  Your past is mine, and your future shall be no less so.  What other hopes have you?”

“I have none, sire, outside your service.”

“Why this silence, then?  Why do you not give the assurance which I demand?”

“I cannot do it, sire.”

“You cannot do it!”

“It is impossible.  I should have no more peace in my mind, or respect for myself, if I knew that for the sake of position or wealth I had given up the faith of my fathers.”

“Man, you are surely mad!  There is all that a man could covet upon one side, and what is there upon the other?”

“There is my honour.”

“And is it, then, a dishonour to embrace my religion?”

“It would be a dishonour to me to embrace it for the sake of gain without believing in it.”

“Then believe it.”

“Alas, sire, a man cannot force himself to believe.  Belief is a thing which must come to him, not he to it.”