This inquiry examines, over a long period of clandestineness for French Protestantism, the mysteries of the spiritual resistance of a religious community battling with the absolutism of the kingdom and its demand for religious unity. The analysis deals with the appeals and the concealed practices used by Calvinists to confound the Catholic dogma imposed on them. The vivifying role of this faith that is forced to be silent – whose Desert, born out of oppression, echoes the biblical metaphor in regards to ordeal and insubordination – will be examined alongside the complex role of secrecy through hidden practices and coded languages coming up against the Christian requirement to confess one’s faith publicly.