�y��vlog

“It had been vital, at first, that he be sheltered, as her sister hadn’t been. Only after a while it seemed to her that, living in plenty and in peace, he should be fine. Yet he was not. There were totalitarians always ascendant. Fools and demagogues. And her son would not lift a hand against them.”

And he had said it and meant it: “If I lift a hand against you, friend, may God strike me dead.”

“Well, I was crying, and I went up to Win and I took him by the shoulder and I said, ‘Win, so help me, if I ever lift a hand against you, may God strike me dead.’”

Only two years before he had quelled Rochelle; only a few months before he had crushed the great insurrection in Languedoc: and though the south, stripped of its old privileges, still seethed with discontent, no one in this year 1630 dared lift a hand against him--openly, at any rate.

The prince, who, after I had succeeded in calming his father, gave me an account of what had happened, told me that it was wholly out of regard to me, as Thompson was my father, that his life had been spared, for that if any one of the tribe should dare to lift a hand against him in anger, he would most certainly be put to death.