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'I might have killed them, for it seemed ominous,' he confessed.

'Indeed it was,' the clergyman said. 'You're in great peril, De Pre. The soldiers are interrogating your boys to trick them into saying something against our religion or in favor of theirs. One word, and the soldiers will take your boys away forever, claiming that they said they wanted to be Catholics but that you prevented their conversion.'

It happened in several homes. Children were tricked into saying things of which they could have had no understanding, and away they went, to another town, in another districtand they would never be heard of again. 'You warn your sons to be careful,' the minister said, and then came the anguished nights when mother and father secretly instructed their sons what to say.

'Do your parents lecture you at night?' one of the soldiers would ask the boys.

'No,' he must say.

'Did they ever take away pictures of the saints that you loved?'

'No.'

'Wouldn't you like to attend Mass with other boys and girls?'

'We go to our own church.'

Now nights became sacred, for when the family was alone in their part of the house, and the soldiers rioting in theirs, Paul took out his Geneva Bible and patiently read from the Book of Psalms those five or six special songs of joy and dedication which the Huguenots had taken to their hearts:

'As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?'

And the elder De Pres drilled their sons in how to avoid the peril which menaced them: 'Our lives would end if you were taken from us. Be careful, be careful what you say.'

In 1685 the axe which had been hanging over the Huguenots fell. King Louis XIV, judging himself to be impregnable, decided to rid himself of Protestants forever. With grandiloquent flourishes he revoked all concessions made to them by the Edict of Nantes and announced that henceforth France was a Catholic country with no place for Huguenots. Dragoons were dispatched to Languedoc, that ancient hiding place for heresy, and whole towns were depopulated. The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day might have been reenacted across France, except that Louis did not want to inherit the moral stain of his forefathers.

Instead, a series of harsh decrees altered French life: 'All Protestant books, especially Bibles in the vernacular, to be burned. No artisan to work anywhere in France without a certificate proving him to be a good Catholic. Every Huguenot clergyman to quit France within fifteen days and forever, on pain of death if he return. All marriages conducted in the Protestant faith declared null and all children therefrom designated bastards. Protestant washerwomen not to work at the banks of the river, lest they sully the waters.'

And there was another regulation which the De Pres simply could not accept: 'All children of Protestant families must convert immediately to the true faith, and any father who attempts to spirit his children out of France shall spend the rest of his life on the oar-benches of our galleys.'

What did these extraordinary laws mean in a village like Caix, where the population was mainly Huguenot? Since it had long been an orderly place, it did not panic. The pastor summoned the elders, and when the deacons assembled, a large percentage of the adult males were present. 'First,' said the minister, 'we must ascertain if the rumor be true. Probably a lie, because four kings have assured us our freedom.'

But in due course official papers arrived, proving that the new laws were in effect, and a few families converted on the spot, parents and children noisily embracing the traditional faith. Other families met in conclave, and fathers swore that they would die with their infants rather than surrender them to Catholicism. 'We'll walk to the ends of the earth till we find refuge,' Paul de Pre cried flamboyantly, and when the pastor reminded