And a few days later, at Alais—­“I no longer know what to do with the troops, for the places in which I had meant to, post them get converted all in a body, and this goes on so quickly that all the men can do is to sleep for a night at the localities to which I send them.  It is certain that you may add very nearly a third to the estimate given you of the people of the religion, amounting to the number of a hundred and eighty-two thousand men, and, when I asked you to give me until the, 25th of next month for their complete conversion, I took too long a term, for I believe that by the end of the month all will be settled.  I will not, however, omit to tell you that all we have done in these conversions will be nothing but useless, if the king do not oblige the bishops to send good priests to instruct the people who want to hear the gospel preached.  But I fear that the king will be worse obeyed in that respect by the priests than by the religionists.  I do not tell you this without grounds.”  “There is not a courier who does not bring the king great causes for joy,” writes Madame de Maintenon, “that is to say, conversions by thousands.  I can quite believe that all these conversions are not sincere, but God makes use of all ways of bringing back heretics.  Their children, at any rate, will be Catholics; their outward reunion places them within reach of the truth; pray God to enlighten them all; there is nothing the king has more at heart.”

In the month of August, 1684, she said, “The king has a design of laboring for the entire conversion of the heretics.  He often has conferences about it with M. Le Tellier and M. de Chateauneuf, whereat I was given to understand that I should not be one too many.  M. de Chateauneuf proposed measures which are not expedient.  There must be no precipitation; it must be conversion, not persecution.  M. de Louvois was for gentleness, which is not in accordance with his nature and his eagerness to see matters ended.  The king is ready to do what is thought most likely to conduce to the good of religion.  Such an achievement will cover him with glory before God and before men.  He will have brought back all his subjects into the bosom of the church, and will have destroyed the heresy which his predecessors could not vanquish.”

The king’s glory was about to be complete; the gentleness of Louvois had prevailed; he had found himself obliged to moderate the zeal of his superintendents; “nothing remained but to weed out the religionists of the small towns and villages;” by stretching a point the process had been carried into the principality of Orange, which still belonged to the house of Nassau, on the pretext that the people of that district had received in their chapels the king’s subjects.  The Count of Tesse, who had charge of the expedition, wrote to Louvois, “Not only, on one and the same day, did the whole town of Orange become converted, but the state took the same resolution, and the members of the Parliament,