Like all follies, it was conditioned by the attitudes and beliefs and politics of the time, and like some, if not all, it was unnecessary, an activist policy when doing nothing would have served as well. The force of the old religious schism and of Calvinist doctrinal ferocity was fading; the Huguenots, who numbered fewer than two million or about one-tenth of the population, were loyal hard-working citizens, too hard-working for Catholic comfort. That was the rub. Since Huguenots kept only the Sabbath as against more than a hundred saints’ days and holy days kept by the Catholics, they were
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