of France, and in that case you might have found your vocation of
a Huguenot minister as full of danger as that of a soldier."

"It would have been much worse," Hector said, "for it would not
have been a question of fighting, but of being massacred. I know
nothing of either religious disputes or of politics. In the regiment
these things were never talked about, either among the men or the
officers; all were for the king. But at the same time, as it seemed
to them that it was the cardinal who had stopped the persecution
of the Huguenots, and who had now gone to war with the Austrians
to prevent the Protestant princes of Germany being altogether
subjugated by the Imperialists, they felt grateful to him; for of
course Scotchmen are all on the side of the princes, and nigh half
the army of Gustavus Adolphus was composed of my countrymen."

"I do not suppose," Chavigny laughed, "that the cardinal would have
cared very much for the destruction of all the Protestant princes
of Germany, had it not been that their ruin would make Austria
more formidable than ever. As long as Gustavus lived and the
Swedes were able to hold their own against the Imperialists, France
troubled herself in no way in the matter; but when the Swedes were
finally routed at Nordlingen, and it seemed that the Imperialists
would triumph everywhere -- for most of the Protestant princes
were leaving the Confederacy and trying to make the best terms
they could for themselves -- Richelieu stepped in; and now we see
France, which for the past hundred years has been trying to stamp
out Protestantism, uniting with Protestant Holland and Sweden
to uphold the Protestant princes of Germany, and this under the
direction of a cardinal of the Church of Rome. And here are we
riding behind a Huguenot general, who perhaps more than any other