Deposited by tlie
Linonian and Brothers Library
1908

W'

m

ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL.

, ^>rri.^*

« f; r ; V-

FRANCES MARTIN.

Macmillan

 M-

LONDON :
K. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.

PREFACE.

Angelique Arnauld is separated from us not only by the
manners, habits, and customs of her age, but by her position
and religious opinions. She was a Roman Catholic Abbess
who lived more than 200 years ago, at a time when Pope and
priest stood between the people and a God whom they feared
but did not love. The religious rites and ceremonials of her
Church formed then, as now, an almost impenetrable barrier
between the human soul and the supreme object of its wor
ship, and she was not free from the theoretical errors inci
dental to her condition. The struggles and suffering of her
life were crowned, not by victory, but defeat. Her work was
incorriplete, and it is doubtful whether it could have been
completed or whether she realized the direction in which her
efforts were tending.
All these facts are patent and are readily brought to light
by a superficial inquiiy. But if we look beneath the surface
we find that sublime virtues are associated with her errors,
there is something admirable in everything that she does, and
the study of her history leads to a continual enlargement of
our own range of thought and sympathy. Her devotion was
sincere, habitual, and profound ; her life was strengthened by
self-denial and sweetened by love, and we admire alike her
self-dependence and her selfdistrust Moreover, at the last
she dared to incur the disapprobation of her Church rather

vi PREFACE.
than disobey the dictates of conscience ; and she bequeathed
to a small band of faithful followers, not certainly freedom
from errors of dogma, but a love of truth and a holy zeal and
courage in the cause of truth, which enabled them to endure
persecution, affliction, and death rather than sin against it.
She differs from US' in creed, ritual, and observance; but
there is no diversity in the object of her worship and of ours,
nor in the faith and love which lead us to cast ourselves, as
she did, at the feet of Him who is the source of all virtue.
We shall gain something, nay, we shall gain much, if we
learn to look upon her with sympathy and love, if we acknow
ledge that she was faithful, earnest, and devout, and strive, in
the fuller light of a purer faith, to emulate the vhtues which
make Angelique Arnauld so noble and so great.

LIST OF SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS REFERRED
TO IN THIS VOLUME.
"Histoire generale de Port Royal." Par Dom Clemencet. lo vols.
1755-757. " Memoires historiques et chronologiques sur I'Abbaye de Port Royal
des Cliamps." Par I'Abbe Guilbert. 9 vols., 1755-1759.
"Memoires touchant la Vie de M. de Saint-Cyran." Par Lancelot.
2 vols., 1738. ,
"Memoires pour servir i THistoire de Port Royal." Par Fontaine.
2 vols., 1738.
"Memoires pour servir a I'Histoire de Port Royal." Par Du Fosse.
I vol., 1738.
"Memoires pour servir a I'Histoire de Port Royal." Utrecht, 3 vols.,
" Recueil de plusieurs Pieces pour servir i I'Histoire de Port Royal."
Utrecht, I vol., 1740.
"Lettres de la M^re Angelique." Utrecht, 3 vols., 1742-1744.
"Lettres de la MJreAgn^s." 1858. . /-f /-«
"Vies interessantes et edifiantes des Religieuses de Port Royal."
4 vols. , 1 750. " ¦'
"Port Royal." Par Sainte-Beuve. 6 vols., 1867.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER  I
CHAPTER I.
TWO FRENCH CHILDREN  9

CHAPTER II.
THE CHILD-ABBESS 

CHAPTER III.
FASTS AND VIGILS  34
CHAPTER IV.
ANGELIQUE THE REFORMER  43
CHAPTER V.
HONOUR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER .  53
CHAPTER VI.
WITHIN THE HOUSE  . . . 6l
CHAPTER VII.
THE SISTERS  73
CHAPTER VIII.
MAUBUISSON  85
CHAPTER IX.
ST._ FRANCIS DE SALES  . . . I05
CHAPTER X.
ST. FRANCIS AND THE ABBESS  120

viii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XL PAGE
BACK TO MAUBUISSON  . . . I3I
CHAPTER XIL
PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT  . . I44
CHAPTER XIIL
ANG]gHQUE's FALL  . 162
CHAPTER XIV.
ESCAPED AS A BIRD OUT OF THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER . . . I74
CHAPTER XV.
THE TWO FRIENDS  . . 184
CHAPTER XVI.
THE LITTLE COMMUNITY ... ....  1 94
CHAPTER XVII.
MARIE-CLAIRE AND THE ABBOT  .... 2o6
CHAPTER XVIII.
RESTORATION ... . . . . . . 21S
CHAPTER XIX.
MDME. LE MAITRE AND HER SONS ... ... 228
CHAPTER XX.
THE PRISONER OF VINCENNkS  . ... 243
CHAPTER XXI.
BESIDE THE STILL WATERS .... ... . . 260
CHAPTER XXII.
THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR .... ,,n
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE HOLY THORN  .,qq
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE END  ,

ANGELIQUE ARNAULD,

ABBESS OF PORT ROYAL.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
In the year 1202 Mathieu de Marli, of the noble house of
Montmorency, joined the crusade preached by Foulques de
Neuilly, and left France for the Holy Land. He gave in
charge to his wife, Mathilde de Garlande, a sum of money to
be devoted to some work of piety by which he hoped to obtain
Divine favour, and ensure the success of his under taking.
Mathilde, after consulting her kinsman Eudes de Sully, Bishop
of Paris and relative of Phuip Augustus, King of France, de
termined to estabUsh a monaotery — for the word 'convent' was
not then used — ^for nuns.
She purchased in 1204 the fief ol Porrois, or, as it was after
wards called, Port Royal, situated in a narrow valley near
Chevreuse, about eighteen miles west of Paris. A chapel
dedicated to St Laurence, which attracted a large number
of devout worshippers on the Saint's day, already existed
there. Some of the later historians of Port Royal claim Philip
Augustus as founder of the monastery and originator of its
name. They say that one day during the chase he wandered
away firom his companions and was lost in the woods, but was
at length discovered in this secluded valley close to the chapel
of St Laurence. He made a vow to build a church there
because the place had been a Port-Royal or royal refuge to
S.L. XIII. B

INTROD UCTION.

him. This story belongs to an age when royal founders were
in fashion, and cannot be reconciled with what we know of
the actual history of the monastery. The derivation given
by the Abb^ Leboeuf is most probably correct According to
him Port Royal has nothing to do with any royal visit, but
comes from Porrois, which is derived from the corrupt Latin
Porra or Borra, namely, a hollow overgrown with brambles, in
which there is stagnant water. The monastery erected by
Mathilde de Garlande stood in a hollow, surrounded by hills
covered with brushwood; a pool of water on a higher level
than the bottom of the valley often overflowed and converted
the place into a stagnant marsh. The filling up of this pool
was from time to time advocated and discussed, but it was not
done. The health of the nuns of Port Royal was always more
or less affected by the miasma of the valley, and from time
to time fever carried off many of them. The locality chosen
indicates the religious order which Mathilde had selected. Old
Latin verses tell that —
' Bernard loved the valleys and Benedict the hills,
St. Francis the towns and Ignatius the gi'eat cities. '
Accordingly, in 1208, we find that a few nuns of the Cis
tercian order, which had recently been reformed by St. Bernard,
entered the newly completed building. Their numbers increased
rapidly ; that which was at first a priory became an abbey, and
as early as 1233 was able to receive and support sixty nuns.
By that time also the church built by Robert de Luzarches,
architect of the cathedral at Amiens, was completed, and in
cluded in its precincts the sacred chapel of St. Laurence already
alluded to. We know very little of those early days, but since
this was a Cistercian monastery, in a wild and secluded spot,
established about fifty years after the death of St Bernard, and
when the reform inaugurated by him had reached its fullest
development, we are justified in assuming that the attractions
which it offered were poverty, and the humiliation and un
broken penance which those who measured sanctification by
suffering were anxiously seeking. The necrology of Port Royal
gives the names of fifteen ladies of noble birth who joined the
community in those early days. There were numerous monas
teries at that time in which they might have found wealth
ease, and comfort ; but they were doubtless among the more

INTRODUCTION. 3

ardent spirits who could be satisfied with nothing short of
absolute and total self-sacrifice. In the poverty and solitude
of Port Royal they hoped to attain Christian perfection, and
to procure by their prayers for those they loved what their
influence and example had been powerless to effect.
Port Royal was under the jurisdiction of three abbots:
the Abbot of Citeaux, who was the head of the Cistercian
order ; the Abbot of Vaux de Semai, who was what is called
the immediate father, namely, that Abbot of the Cistercian
order who lived nearest to Port Royal; and the Abbot ot
Savigny, because Vaux de Semai was an offshoot of Savigny.
The confessors of Port .Royal were chosen from among the
monks of Vaux de Semai, an abbey which wasffaptween four
and five miles distant Saint Thibault, the illustrious Abbot of
Vaux, and grandson of Mathilde de Garlande, was for twelve
years ecclesiastical superior of the nuns, and visited them
constantly. In later times a small isolated building was shown
in the outer court, which was known as St Thibault's Lodge.
It was the oldest building there except the church, and it was
the poorest.
St Louis and his Queen, Marguerite of Provence, were
among the benefactors of Port Royal, and before the King
started for the Holy Land, in 12 18, he eonfirmed, at Aigues-
Mortes, grants which had been made to the nuns ; and bestowed
on them an annual stipend, which was paid as late as the
seventeenth century.
Popes also increased the fame of the abbey by granting
it considerable privileges. Honorius III. by a Bull dated
January 3d, 1223, permitted the nuns of Port Royal to cele
brate Divine worship, even although the whole of France was
lying under an interdict. He forbade the Bishops to interfere
with the election of an Abbess or to depose one duly elected,
and he declared all excommunications against the nuns or their
dependants to be null and void, and excommunicated all those
who should trouble the monastery and seize its goods or retain
them. A more important privilege, as we shall hereafter see,
was the permission grari.ted to the nuns to offer a retreat to
persons who were disgusted with the world and wished to do
penance for their sins in a monastery without binding themselves
by vows. Moreover, when a nun took the veil, the Bishop who
celebrated mass and administered the Holy Sacrament con-
E 2

INTR OD UCTION.

secrated a large wafer, which he divided into eight portions.
She received one, and the other seven he placed in her right
hand and covered with a dominical, or small linen cloth, so
that she might partake of one daily for the first week after
her benediction. In a similar manner, priests administered
the Holy Sacrament to themselves during the first four days
of their ordination.
In those early times the community of Port Royal excited
extraordinary interest, and its rapid growth and development
indicate that it supplied a need which was strongly felt
Mortification of the flesh and harsh penance were not only
endured but sought after, and the abbey graduaUy acquired
a reputation which attracted to it noble ladies who endowed
it with their wealth. But as soon as the fatal element of wealth
is allowed to find its way into a monastic community, a gra
dual deterioration sets in, and poverty and self-denial give way
to ease and self-indulgence.
We have no means of tracing the history of the abbey from
that first impulse which led so many to flock thither and pray
for the safety of those whom they could help in no other way
than by prayer, to the point of degradation which it had
reached at the close of the sixteenth century. During the wars
with England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the
so-called religious wars ofthe sixteenth, the discipline of abbeys
which were too far from the great towns to receive protection,
was completely destroyed. Dom Clemencet says that in the
sixteenth century Port Royal was merely a secular institution ;
the Cistercian rule, which the nuns ought to have followed,
was unknown; and order and regularity were banished from
within its walls.
The annals of the monastery give a hst, probably incom
plete, of the names of abbesses, and of benefactors. Only two
of the former are in any way remarkable, and they are aunt and
niece, both named Jehanne de la Fin. The aunt was at the
head of the community from 1468 to 1513, and the niece from
1513 to 1558. They did nothing for the moral or spiritual
condition of the abbey ; but the aunt recovered alienated lands
and acquired new possessions, whilst the niece repaired and
rebuilt cloisters, dormitory, church and belfry, and placed
richly carved stalls in the choir. A document of the period
shows that she did not attempt any religious reform; no doubt

INTRODUCTION.

she did not think that it was necessary. But her work seemed
to her contemporaries to merit the flattering epitaph found
upon her tomb, ending in a manner characteristic of that
century, with a pun upon her name. The edge of this is how
ever lost in an English translation : —
' Finis coronal opus.'
[La Fin (The End) crowns the work.]
Guilbert in his historical memoirs of Port Royal has pre
served certain documents which show the condition of the
abbey at the beginning and end of the sixteenth century.
They are cartes de visite or reports made by the ecclesiastical
superior, the Abbot of Citeaux, after an inspection of the abbey,
and in a certain way they do give a portrait of it at that time.
Port Royal was inspected in 1504, during the life of the
first Jehanne de la Fin. In his carte de visite the Abbot
advises the nuns to recite the services slowly and carefully,
pausing between the verses, so that one maybe distinguished from
the other. They are also told to pronounce all the words and
syllables distinctly, and not to drawl out unmeaning sounds as
they had done when chanting before him. They are requested
to provide a clock, so that Divine Service may be performed
at stated and regular hours. The condition of the dormitory
is spoken of as unsatisfactory, rendering the seclusion of
the nuns impossible. The Abbot expressly desires that the
confessional shall in future be so arranged that the father con
fessor does not enter the cloistered part of the monastery. He
is to be in the church, and the penitent in the oratory, with a
wall of partition between them. The aperture in this wall,
through which the nun speaks, is to be filled by a closely fitting
trellis, covered with waxed cloth. The Abbess is forbidden
to receive or lodge male visitors in the guest chamber adjoin
ing the sleeping chamber of the nuns, and she is advised to
erect a building for such visitors outside the monastic precincts.
Many precautions are also suggested with regard to doors in
the outer walls, which sufficiently indicate the actual abuses
as well as possible dangers which had been brought under
the Abbot's notice. He reprimands the nuns severely because
the love of property had taken the place of the spirit of re
nunciation. They no longer held all things in common, but
every nun had her own furniture, her own little stock of money

INTROD UCTION.

and silver plate. They are informed that this is a great and
execrable vice, and are warned never again to make useof such
a wicked and damnable phrase as ' my robe,' ' my knife,' but
always to say ours. They are also forbidden to write or receive
letters or send messages without the knowledge of the Abbess,
^.nd are requested to keep away from the kitchen, and not
spend so much time in it as they had -been in the habit ot
doing. It appears from this earte de visite that Abbess and nuns had
adopted the wide hanging sleeves which were fashionable in
the sixteenth century, and were ridiculed in the sermons of
popular preachers. The Abbess is bidden to reduce these
sleeves, and to have them narrowed from the elbow downwards
so that they shall not be larger below than above. There
is every reason to suppose that this injunction was not obeyed.
Guilbert says that the second Jehanne de la Fin was repre
sented in effigy on her tomb as wearing a cowl or very large
hood which completely covered her arms, and it is supposed
that this had been adopted in order to conceal the prohibited
sleeves. The second carte de visite contains the report of a later
Abbot of Citeaux, after an inspection of Port Royal made by
him in 1572, when the second Jehanne de la Fm had been
succeeded by Catherine de la Vallfe. The irregularities com
plained of at the beginning of the century had increased instead
of diminishing, and the disapproval of the Abbot is very
strongly expressed. The nuns are requested to perform Divine
Service in a decent and becoming manner. They are to
partake of the Holy Sacrament every fortnight after confessing
to the father confessor of the abbey, and not to anyone else.
The Abbess is commanded to lock lie door of the dormitory
at night, and she is very strictly forbidden to leave the monas
tery herself, to allow the nuns to leave it, or to admit any male
person within the cloistered precincts on any pretence what
soever. The attention bestowed on dress and the manner of
arranging the hair are strongly censured, and the Abbess is
requested to pay more attention to the sick nuns, who seem to
have been neglected and insufficiently fed.
By this time the scandals of Port Royal must have been
notorious, for the Abbot took a very unusual step and returned
in sixteen months. He found that his previous admonitions

INTR OD UCTION.

and injunctions had been unheeded, and thereupon issued a
supplementary (Tflr/^ de visite,\n. which special reference is made
to the presence of a man named Blouin, whom the Abbess on
various pretexts insisted upon keeping in the abbey. She
is now threatened with excommunication if she does not obey
the commands of her ecclesiastical superior, which are sharp
and strict. She does not appear to have submitted, but shortiy
afterwards she left Port Royal and retired to another monastery.
In 1575 she was succeeded by Jeanne de Boulehart, who
did not attempt reform, but neither did she give occasion for
scandal. Her epitaph states that she never left the monastery,
that she took good care of her nuns, and fed them well. We
shall find sufficient reasons for supposing that, even on these
points, she deserves a moderate amount of praise, whilst the
very nature of it shows that the spiritual functions of an abbess
were at that time forgotten or -ignored, and that she fulfilled
her whole duty if she maintained an orderly and well-regulated
household. Jeanne de Boulehart died in 1602, and was succeeded by
Angelique Amauld, a child of eleven years old. The decadence
of religious houses was at that time an established fact, and
one that had even ceased to excite surprise. The Roman
Catholic Church had never before occupied so low a position
in France. Calvin and the Reformers seem not so much to
have purified as to have exhausted it, drawing off all that was
earnest and devout, and leaving a residuum of immorality and
irreligion. Faith and good works were hardly to be found in
the Church, and there seemed little possibility of leading a
holy hfe in the monasteries. The scandal of the monks' hves
had become almost too great to be endured, and that of the
nuns, if more carefully concealed, was none the less a terrible
reality. They arranged the hours for religious services so as
not to interfere with the night's rest or the day's pleasure ; they
modified and adjusted their dress so as to make it becoming
and as far as possible fashionable; they paid visits to their
friends, received their lovers at home, and educated their ille
gitimate children in the convent schools.
But the profligacy of priests, monks, and nuns was only a faint
reflex of a far deeper and more wide-spread national profligacy ;
whilst the national character had been degraded by civil wars in
which religion was a party cry and a watchword.

8 INTRODUCTION.

It is true that in the sixteenth century St. Theresa in
Spain and St. Charles Borromeo in Italy had done good
work, but it was partial and limited, and perhaps its most
striking result had been to show the necessity for the general
reform of the Roman Cathohc Church.
Ignatius Loyola, in the same century, desired to lead the
whole world into the Church, but his followers, the Jesuits, had
failed in the attempt, and were now trying to take the Church
into the world. Their efforts in that direction were more
successful, and they made religion easy and popular by drag
ging it down to the lowest level of immorality, dishonesty,
and vice.
At this time, to which we cannot look back without a feeling
akin to despair, the degeneracy of monks and nuns was sud
denly arrested. There was a movement in favour of reform
which attracted to itself so much that was good, true, and
noble, that at one time it seemed possible to hope for the rege
neration of the Catholic Church as well as of the monasteries.
And this attempted reform, which was only cmshed out and
trodden under foot after a century of heroic struggle, was
inaugurated by Angdlique Arnauld, shows its brightest lustre
in her life, and is associated with the name of the Monastery
of Port Royal.

CHAPTER I.

TWO FRENCH CHILDREN.

Nearly three hundred years ago, two littie French children
stood by their grandfather's side and listened to his plans and
wishes for their future life. They were only five and seven
years old, and yet he was gravely telling them that they would
have to enter a convent, whilst their eldest sister would marry
and go into society. Angelique Arnauld, the older of the two,
was a high-spirited child, ardent and eager, and her grandfather
saw*that the prospect of being a nun did not please her, so he
explained, ' I shall make you an abbess, the mistress of all the
others' She was somewhat consoled by this promise and said :
' Grandpapa, if you wish me to be a nun I will be a nun ;
but not unless you make me an abbess.'
' And I,' said Agnes, the child of five, ' I will be a nun,
too. Grandpapa, but I don't want to be an abbess.'
And then they left their grandfather, and Angdique ran oft
alone into a long gallery, crying with anger and vexation, and
saying to herself : ' Oh, how unlucky I am to be the second
daughter, for if I had been the eldest I should have been the
one to be married ! '
A few days later the children again visited their grandfather
in his study. Agnes spoke first :
' Grandpapa, I have quite made up my mind not to be an
abbess, for they say that an abbess has to answer to God for the
souls of her nuns, and I am sure that I shall have quite enough
to do to save my own.'
' But,' said Angdique, eagerly, ' I want to be an abbess,

10 TWO FRENCH CHILDREN. [chap.
and I shall take good care that my nuns do theh duty and
behave well.'
This conversation has been preserved in the voluminous
memoirs of the Amauld family, and the discussion was not
so premature as it now appears to us, for AngeHque entered
upon her noviciate a few months later, and became Abbess of
Port Royal at eleven years old ; whilst little Agnes, in spite
of her protest, was Abbess of St. Cyr at six.
These little girls were the daughters of M. Amauld, Pro-
cur eur- General to Catherine de Medicis, and of Catherine
Arnauld, his wife, who was the only daughter of M. Marion,
the French Avocat-General. AngdKque was bom in 1591, and
Agnes in 1593 ; and at the time of which we speak they had
a sister and a brother older than themselves, and two brothers
and two sisters younger.
Even at the close of the sixteenth centuiy the Church ot
Rome would not have openly sanctioned such a breach ot
ecclesiastical discipline as the appointment of a child to the
important post of abbess. But Mdme. Amauld's father did
not find the difficulties in his way insuperable. He was in
high favour with the King of France, and had great influence
at court. He wished to provide, during his own lifetime, for
some of his daughter's numerous children ; and when he had
obtained the presentations, he procured the requisite bulls
from Rome for the appointment of the littie abbesses by
means of false certificates of age. We shall see that this
matter gave him some trouble, and that the bulls had to be
renewed from time to time ; but there is no reason to suppose
that it was looked upon in any other light than as a pious
fraud, at which the King of France and the court of France
were very much amused, and the court of Rome not greatly
shocked. Mdme. Arnauld, the mother of the two little girls, was
bom in 1572, and at twelve years old she was betrothed to
M. Amauld, a young advocate whose ability and eloquence had
made such an impression upon her father, M. Marion, that
one day, after hearing him speak, he took him home to dinner,
and, before long, promised him his only daughter in marriage.
M. Arnauld belonged to the old noblesse of Provence, and
the family from which he was descended receives honourable
mention in the annals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

1.] TWO FRENCH CHILDREN. ii
His branch of it had settled in Auvergne, and, in 1340, one ot
his ancestors, Gracieux Arnauld, fought bravely in the army ot
Phihp of Valois. Another, Michael Amauld, lived to the age
of one hundred and four ; and had a soldier son, Henri, whose
courage was only equalled by his loyal devotion to the Con-
ndtable de Bourbon.
Antoine Arnauld, Seigneur de la Mothe, or, as he was
called, M. de la Mothe, was the paternal grandfather ot
Angelique and Agnes. He was a soldier as well as a lawyer.
In time of peace he was Procureur-General to Catherine de
Medicis, and in time of war he commanded a company ot
light horse. In the former capacity he opposed, on behalf ot
the Queen-mother, the claims of one of the French nobles to
lands said to have been granted by the king. He gained his
suit, and the king's gift was not confirmed. As he was about
to leave the court of justice the claimant asked him if he was
M. de la Mothe, and said that he was surprised he had ven
tured to oppose him, and would take good care to make him
repent the course he had adopted.
' I think you mistake the person whom you are addressing,'
answered Arnauld.
' How so ? Did you not tell me that you were M. de la
Mothe?' ' Yes ; but I wear a soldier's coat as well as a lawyer's
robe, and you dare not speak to me outside the court as you
have done here.'
By this time a gentleman in attendance had recognized Ar
nauld de la Mothe, and reminded the angry nobleman that he
was the same whom they had so often remarked at the head
of his company during the civil wars. Whereupon followed
apologies, explanation, and reconciliation. The story is charac
teristic of the Arnaulds and also of the French nobles of the
sixteenth century. It shows the steadfast courage of the one,
and the contempt of the other, not only for those who were not
soldiers or nobles, but for right and justice also.
Amauld de la Mothe was a Huguenot, though how or when he
became one we do not know. His descendants acknowledge
the fact, but do not enlarge upon it ' He was led away into
the error of Calvinism,' say the family annals, ' but after a
time God opened his eyes, though this cannot be said with
regard to several members of his family.'

12 TWO FRENCH CHILDREN. [chap.
As a matter of fact his eyes were opened by the massacre
of St. Bartholomew, when, whatever he may have thought of
the truth of his religion, he certainly found that it was unsafe.
However, his courage and ability made him so valuable to
the Queen-mother, that she saved his life on that terrible night.
His house was surrounded and attacked, and at the head of
his servants he attempted to defend himself and his children.
Defeat and death were before him, when a safe-conduct arrived
from the Queen, and the whole family was spared. Imme
diately after the massacre, Arnauld de la Mothe and several
— but not all — of his children 'abjured the errors of Cal
vinism,' so say the annals, and retumed to the Church of
Rome. The fact is stated without comment or explanation,
and at the present time it is in vain to seek them.
His youngest son, Pierre, was a soldier. He was present
at the siege of Rochelle, and had to defend an unfinished
fortress. He completed it almost entirely at his own expense
and in such an admirable manner that he was afterwards
known as Arnauld du Fort His soldiers did not approve of
being employed as bricklayers, carpenters, and masons, and
took no pains to conceal their discontent. Pierre Amauld was
well aware of it, but he was silent and bided his time. One
day a good-natured civiKan, the body servant of an officer in
the garrison, joined the working party, and had a hod on his
shoulder when M. Arnauld passed by. He stopped and asked
who this strange man might be, and on hearing that he was a
servant stmck him with his cane, saying: 'Do you mean to
tell me that you are nothing but a valet, and yet you presume
to undertake the work not only of a soldier, but of a prince,
for no prince would be ashamed of a soldier's work ! '
This story was repeated throughout the fortress, and so
kindled the enthusiasm of the garrison that there was no more
grumbhng at hard tasks, and the building went on apace. All
the Arnaulds had this fervent zeal, and whether their mission
was to build a fortress or reform a monastery they devoted
themselves entirely to the work, thought it the noblest in the
world, and had the power of calling out the same entiiusiasm
of devotion in others.
Pierre Araauld du Fort was Agnes and Angdlique's uncle.
Their father, Antoine Amauld, was born in 1560, and was
twelve years old at the date of the massacre in 1572 He

I.] TWO FRENCH CHILDREN. 13
was one of those who ' abjured his errors,' and so apparently
did his younger brothers. But there were ' Protestant aunts '
of whom we shall hear afterwards, and who must have been
v6ry young, if not unborn, at this time. The Arnaulds were
always suspected, and often accused of a leaning towards Pro
testantism, and doubtless there was some influence in M. de
la Mothe's family favourable to it. We must bear this in mind,
since it modified the conduct of his children and*grandchildren ;
but it seems impossible now to trace it to its source.
Antoine was remarkable as a boy |^ his abihty and in
dustry, and his progress was so rapid that at seventeen he
began the study of law. He was sent to Bourges, where he
was a pupil of the learned Cujas, whose esteem and affection
for him led to tiie formation of a lasting friendship. At Bourges
he studied fifteen or sixteen hours a day, and for fear of not
waking early, hired a man to call him every moming at three
o'clock. On his return to Paris when he was nineteen, it was arranged
that he should travel in Italy with friends carefully chosen by
his father. He had two hundred crowns for a six months' tour,
and was as diligent about his pleasure as he had been in his
work. He never wasted an hour, saw all that was remarkable,
and kept notes of all that he saw, so that he was said to know
Italy better than most Italians. He managed his money so
well that, although he was liberal on the journey, and brought
home a number of curiosities, he had cash to spare at the end
of his tour, which, as his biographer justly remarks, was a very
extraordinary thing for a man of his age.
He was successful at the bar, as in most other things that
he undertook, and the favourable impression produced on
M. Marion won him his wife.
His father had often urged him to marry, but he was not
attracted by any of the wealthy brides suggested to him, and
said he would marry no one but the daughter of the Avocat-
General. He had not seen her, but a friend of his father's
offered to propose him to Mdme. Marion as a suitor for her
daughter. When the matter was broached, that lady, however,
put an end to the conversation by saying that her daughter was
only eleven years old, too young to marry; and probably
Arnauld's name was not even mentioned at this time. A year
later Arnauld, a young man of good family, already popular,

,4 TWO FRENCH CHILDREN. [cHAi-.

and sure to make his way in the worid, attracted the notice of
the Avocat-Ghiiral and seems to have lost no time-in urging
his own suit, for when he was twenty-four and Mademoiselle
Marion twelve years old they were betrothed, and in the fol
lowing year, 1585, they were married. During the interval
between the betrothal and the marriage, M. Amauld's father
died suddenly, leaving one son by his first marriage, and seven
sons, of whom the young advocate was the eldest, and four
daughters by his second wife. He left also an unfinished law
suit, involving no less^a sum than 100,000 francs, his whole
fortune, and at that time a very large one. M. Amauld did all
in his power to comfort and console his mother, and he worked
day and night until he had brought the lawsuit to a successful
termination. Friends suggested to M. Marion that as the burden of so
large a family had fallen upon M. Arnauld, the marriage had
better be broken off; but he answered, that he was glad of
the opportunity of showing his future son-in-law that he es
teemed him for his own merits ; and that this esteem was not
diminished but increased by his present position, so that he
should give him his daughter's hand with even more plea
sure and confidence than if Amauld de la Mothe had been
alive. And so they were married; and in 1587, when Mdme.
Arnauld was fifteen, her first child was born, and in 161 2, when
she was thirty-nine, she gave birth to her twentieth aud last,
Antoine, known as the Great Arnauld. Ten of these children
died young, but four sons and six daughters lived to make the
name of their . family illustrious, and to immortalize it by their
earnest faith, great courage, and undying constancy.
French marriages in the sixteenth century were not unlike
those of the nineteenth, and were based upon other motives
tiian the love of the contracting parties; but in this case
there was esteem on both sides which ripened into affection,
and the virtue and discretion of the young wife ensured her
husband's respect. From the first he did not treat her as if
she had been a child ; whilst her behaviour towards him,
his mother, and the numerous brothers and sisters, was
that of ' a person of five and twenty.' Her biographers say
that even in her earhest youth, which one is rather puzzled to
look back for, she had never had any trace of levity or

t.] TWO FRENCH CHILDREN. 15
affectation. At eighteen she discarded all superfluous ornament,
and from, that time wore none but simple and plain dresses.
Her household was a model of purity and sobriety, and in the
forty years during which she was its head no scandal ever at
tached to any member of it. She was especially strict with
the women, and as a matron of thirteen years old she boxed
the ears of a maid of twenty, who had allowed a man to
kiss her.
Mdme. Arnauld was a woman of large heart, and her love
and charity extended far and wide round the sacred centre of
home. Her husband and children were the first objects of her
solicitude ; after them came her household, then the poor of
her husband's estate of Andilly, in which none needed to beg
their bread, all who could work were well paid, and the old
and sick were provided for ; next foUowed the poor of the
neighbouring vUlage of St Merri, and lastly the indigent
and sick wherever she found and could help them. Her
husband approved of her good works, and was always ready
to promote them by helping the poor with loans or gifts of
money on unfinished work, and by forbearance and consider
ation in all his transactions.
' My wife does not make a brave show,' he used to say,
' but I would much rather she gave her money to the poor
than spent it on gewgaws.'
After her marriage Mdme. Arnauld passed her spare time
with her invalid mother, taking no interest in the pleasures to
which her age and position would have entitled her. Her own
health was not good, and even if it had been we can well believe
that the mother of twenty children had not much opportunity
or inclination for the pleasures of society. When she was
twenty-five she had eight children living, four sons and four
daughters ; and it was this which caused her father to decide
that Angelique and Agnes, the third and fourth, must take
the veil, so as to weed out the family, and leave the way clear
for the marriage of Catherine, the eldest girl. Mdme. Arnauld
regretted this decision, on the ground that young children
could not have a vocation for the convent ; but she did not
venture to oppose her father's wis-h, more especially as her
husband, though with some repugnance, had also consented
to part with his children.
M. Arnauld succeeded his father as Procureur-General to

.i6 TWO FRENCH CHILDREN. [chap.

Catherine de Medicis, a post which he held until the Queen's
death in 1589. After that he devoted himself entirely to the
bar, at which he achieved great success. Princes, princesses,
and nobles came to him for advice, and in retum offered him
patronage and promotion. He might have succeeded his
father-in-law, the Avocat-General, or even have held the
great seals of the kingdom and become, Chancellor of France,^
but he was faithful to his first choice, and would seek no
greater honour than that which his profession offered ; perhaps
it would be more correct to say that he believed no greater
honour was to be found.
He was looked upon as one of the most eloquent speakers
of his time, a very Demosthenes of France. The eloquence
of that age is not appreciated, one might almost say not ap
preciable in our own ; and' the speeches by which M. Arnauld
obtained his reputation are very dreary reading. They are
pompous and pedantic, with an occasional outburst of violence
and' objurgation, 'sound and fury, signif3dng nothing,' as we
are apt to think ; but we must not forget that in the sixteenth
century classical allusions had a freshness and interest which .
they have now lost. At that time when a leamed member of
the bar conducted the prosecution of a man accused of theft,
he would cite the siege of Troy and quote the oracle of Apollo,
appeal to Telephus the son of Hercules, allude to the wounds
of Achilles, and compare his own words to the unheeded
shrieks of Cassandra. And the judges who listened to him
' vibrated with emotion,' and ' could not restrain their mtumurs
of admiration and astonishment.'
M. Arnauld took part in one trial, which must not be
overlooked. Pierre Baxrifere made an attempt on the life of
Henri IV. in 1593, and M. Amauld, on behalf of the Uni
versity of Paris, asked the Parlement'^ to expel the Jesuits
from France on the ground that they had instigated the crime.
Witty French writers have called this the ' original sin ' of the
Arnaulds, and we shall see that it was remembered against
them by the Jesuits and avenged in the next generation. The
Jesuits possessed sufficient interest to ensure the case being
heard vdth closed doors, but there were crowds outside trying
1 The French Parlement at this time was not a representative assembly
but a court of justice, attended on important occasions by the royal princes,
and the dukes and peers of the realm.

1.] TWO FRENCH CHILDREN. 17
in vain to listen, and waiting eagerly for the report of those
who had been fortunate enough to secure admission. M.
Amauld does not appear to have begun nearer home than
Pharsalia ; he discoursed largely of Catihne, of the Arsacidse,
of Satan in hell, and of Henri III. in heaven, but he was
intelligible to everyone when he accused the Jesuits of being
the authors of every assassination in Europe, either attempted
or executed, during the previous forty years. Many of his
contemporaries, and even those who shared his views, thought
that the violence of his attack helped to defeat its aim ; and
indeed it was not until some months later, and after the
attempt of Jean Chatel to assassinate the king, that the Jesuits
were expelled from France. But it is certaiij that they always
attributed their banishment to Arnauld's influence, and that
the University of Paris considered him as its triumphant cham
pion, and offered him a large, sum of money, which he declined
to accept An extraordinary meeting of the members of the
University was then convened, and a vote of thanks passed
unanimously, expressing their gratitude and obligation towards
M. Arnauld. Nine years later, in 1602, we find him addres
sing 'a frank and truthful discourse' to the king, in which he
urges that the Jesuits shall not be permitted to retum to
France. On the whole it seems that his early Protestant training and
the massacre of St Bartholomew were not without effect on
him, although he was too much a man of the world to allow
his feelings to lead him in one direction if his interests ap
peared to indicate another. Here, however, they coincided,
and when he urged the expulsion of the Jesuits he advocated
the popular cause.
Wealthy, prosperous, and popular he seems to have been
throughout his whole life ; he had influence at court, and royal
as well as noble patrons, so that he had no fear that the little
children who came year after year would lack suitable provision.
He was a good husband and an affectionate father, and his
wife was a pure, noble, unselfish woman. We can judge of
their home by the love which the children felt for it, and the
influence which home Hfe exercised over them.
The Arnaulds passed the summer and autumn in the country
at Andilly. In the winter they livtd in Paris, where their house
adjoined that of Mdme. Arnauld's father. There was a door
S.L. xiii c

i8 TWO FRENCH CHILDREN. [chap.

of communication between the gardens, and the children used
to mn to and fro between the two houses. Angdhque says
that she was no favourite with her mother, and was sent daily
to her grandfather in order to be out of the way. To avenge
herself on the sisters and brothers who were, as she imagined,
preferred by her mother, she always locked the garden door
after her ; she was resolved that they should have no share in
her grandfather's affection, and if they got in she would drive
them away, sajring : 'Go home about your business, this is my
house, and not yours.' She spent the day in her grandfather's
bed-room and study, and followed him wherever he went, hold
ing by one of the long loose sleeves of his dressing gown. It
was the knowledge of her character which he acquired at this
time which made him say, ' You shall be an abbess, the mistress
of all the others'
There seems to be nothing to justify us in assuming that
her mother disliked her; but she was a high-spirited chUd,
ardent and eager, not easily ruled, and she must needs be first,
so that the mother would find it a relief to send her to fhe
shrewd kindly grandfather, whom she interested and amused.
In later years she often lamented the death of a brother of three
years old, a chUd of remarkable beauty and intelUgence.
'His affection was a great support to me at that time,' she
says quite gravely. Another of her childish reminiscences
relates to her first confession at seven years old. When she
had recounted her faults she was told by the father confessor
to go and ask God's pardon for them. She understood him
literally, and having heard that God is in heaven she went out
to the court-yard of the house, knelt down in the midst of it,
and with clasped hands, looking up to the sky, she asked God's
pardon so earnestly, and with such reverence, that in after-
times she regarded this as her first intelligent action. Not
long after, she went to Vespers on Whitsunday. During the
service she was giddy and inattentive, and on her retum a cer
tain Mdme. Pichotel, who had charge of her, whipped her,
saying : ' I intend to caU your attention to your fault, and to
make you remember aU your hfe that you were whipped on
Whitsunday for inattention and irreverence in church.' Fifty
years afterwards she told the story, and said that she had never
once forgotten the whipping when the day came round.
When it was decided that Angdique and Agnes should enter

I.] TWO FRENCH CHILDREN. 19
a convent their grandfather determined to provide handsomely
for them. He had no difficulty in finding friends to further
his views. The Abbot of Citeaux was glad to oblige the
Avocat-General, and in 1599 persuaded Jeanne de Boulehart,
Abbess of Port Royal, who was elderly and infirm, to accept
Angdlique Amauld as coadjutrix. The Abbess had two nieces
who were nuns, but she had refused to nominate either of
them. It is related as a prophecy that after she had con
sented to make Angelique her successor, for the coadjutrix
succeeded the Abbess in her charge, she said that the nuns
did not know what a good thing she had been arranging
for them. It is not necessary, however, to fall back upon
prophetic insight as having dictated this speech. The Abbess
was an invalid, but she did not know and others did not think
that she was dying. She preferred, however, the prospect of the
ultimate succession of a young child, to that of a niece who
was, to say the least, quite ready to step into her shoes at any
moment ; and she justified her choice, which was open to criti
cism, by an allusion to prospective benefits which no one was
in a position to disprove.
In the same year, Agnes became Abbess of St Cyr, and
took the veil before she was seven. It was arranged, however,
that one of the nuns of St Cyr — Dame des Portes — should
take the title and perform the duties of abbess untU the child
was twenty. No similar provision was made in the case of
Angdique, because, although the Abbess of Port Royal was in
ill-health, she was expected to live for many years.
The two abbeys were, no doubt, selected by M. Marion in
order that he might keep his grandchildren within easy reach
of home, their parents, and each other. Port Royal was at no
great distance from VersaiUes, and St Cyr about six mUes from
Port Royal.
AngeHque entered upon her noviciate before she was eight
years old. The ceremony took place in the church of St.
.Antoine at Paris, the Abbot of Citeaux presiding; it was very
briUiant, and the chUd's vanity was fully gratified when she
found that the gay party was in her honour. The friends and
the child novice retumed to her father's house where there were
festivities and rejoicings. The step taken was not considered
at aU a solemn one for girls with such prospects as the Arnaulds,
and relations and friends thought that the children were now
c 2

20 TWO FRENCH CHILDREN. [chap.
sure of making the best of both worlds. Angehque remained
for a few days with her parents, and then, after six weeks spent
in the convent of St. Antoine, she joined Agnes, who was
already at St Cyr, and they passed eight months together. It
was a happy time for both, and we find frequent references to
it in their memoirs. Agnes did not resemble Angdique. She
was delicate and sensitive, and shrank instinctively from any
prominent position, she did not wish to be an abbess just
because it would make her mistress. As a woman she mourned
over the faults of her childhood with the keen sorrow which
St. Augustine shows in his confessions ; and she attached what
we are inclined to think an exaggerated importance to them.
Angdlique was ardent, strong, and practical. Agnes was a
spiritualist and mystic even from childhood. Angelique as
serted, and easUy maintained, her ascendancy over Agnes;
sometimes, however, Agnes would remind her that St. Cyr was
her abbey, Angelique had no business in it, and she could
send her away if she liked. But repentance for these out
bursts came quickly, and lasted long, and Agnes never re
called her petulant speeches without keen sorrow. She was a
studious and pious child, delighting in religious ceremonies and
divine service, and before she was nine, she knew the whole
Psalter and all the chants by heart. No doubt it had been the
intention of their parents that Angdlique and Agnes should not
be separated during childhood ; but the abbeys belonged to dif
ferent orders. Port Royal to the Cistercian, and St. Cyr to the
Benedictine, and it was found necessary to educate Angelique
in a Cistejcian abbey. As there were no companions of her
own age at Port Royal, she completed her noviciate in the
neighbouring Cistercian abbey of Maubuisson, of which Mdme.
Angelique d'Estr^es, sister of the celebrated GabrieUe, was at
that time abbess. Here she was confirmed and took the veil,
and with it the name of Angdique,! chosen in compUment to
her abbess. As the requisite pipal bulls had been refused to
so young a novice, those which appointed her coadjutrix of
Port Royal were asked for under a new name. When she
took the veil there was a brilliant assembly at Maubuisson,
1 Her name was Jacqueline Marie and her sister Jeanne Catherine, but
as they entered the convent and took nsw names at such an early age it
has been deemed unnecessary to retain the Jacqueline and Jeanne oftheir
infancy. -^

I.] TWO FRENCH CHILDREN. 21
and Angdlique, radiant with delight, overheard the compas
sionate whispers of those around her : —
' Poor child, she little knows what she is doing !'
' It made me so angry,' she exclaims in telling the story,
' for I said to myself, " they must think me quite silly, if they
suppose I don't know what I am doing ; indeed, I know per
fectly weU!"'
She stayed more than two years at Maubuisson. When she
was ten years old. Jeanne de Boulehart died suddenly, and the
coadjutrix became Child-abbess of Port Royal.
Fresh intrigue and deception were necessary before she
could be installed, for by the decree of the Council of Trent
an abbess must be forty years old. The bulls that were re
quisite were on this occasion asked for a young lady of
seventeen. Even this was an exceptional demand, and they
were not granted and the abbess instaUed until after long and
tedious negotiation.
As soon as her parents heard that the life of Jeanne de
Boulehart was in danger, Angelique had been despatched to
Port Royal, so that she might be on the spot to assert her rights.
When everything was arranged for her succession, she went
back to take formal leave of the nuns of Maubuisson, whom
she had left so hastily. They were very fond of her, and parted
from her with great regret. They did not foresee a day on
which she would retum once again, take the place of their
scandalous abbess, and purify and reform the convent

THE CHILD ABBESS. [chap.

CHAPTER IL

the CHILD-ABBESS.

Angelique was installed Abbess of Port Royal in 1602, before
she was eleven years old. She had previously spent eight
months at St. Cyr with her sister Agnes, and nearly two years
and a half at Maubuisson, so that she had passed direct from
the nursery to the convent
It would be natural to suppose that as she was dedicated to
the service of the Church her parents had endeavoured to
prepare her for a life of self-denial and rehgious observance,
but she cannot have even heard them spoken of at Maubuisson.
The Abbess, AngdUque d'Estr^es, was a woman of most hcen
tious life. Her sister, the notorious Gabrielle d'Estrees, resided
with her, and the nuns of Maubuisson had no more respect
for morality or religion than their Abbess.
AngdHque was too young and of a nature too pure to receive
any taint from the influences around her. But the bright, clever
child, who was everybody's pet and plaything, could not fail to
perceive that her vocation offered many opportunities for
self-indulgence and pleasure. The King of France, Henri IV.,
was a frequent visitor at Maubuisson. Convent life was en-
Hvened by music and dancing, and long moonlight walks with
gay cavaliers, and there was no sense of wrongdoing to over
shadow its pleasure. If the parents wished to make a nun's life
attractive to their child, and this is the only motive which we
can attribute to them, they succeeded. But at this point
Mdme. Amauld paused. She had no desire to see the im
morality of Maubuisson repeated at Port Royal. Angdlique,
from whose memoirs we derive the accounts of these early

CHAP. ii.J THE CHILD-ABBESS.

23

times, teUs us that her mother loved the world, but she also
feared God. She had not learnt to love Him, but the fear
of God made her very anxious that her children should not
fall into sm. In addition to this it seems probable from what
we know of Mdme. Amauld's life and character, which were
free from shadow of suspicion or blame, that she was not aware
of the profligacy of Maubuisson when she placed Angdhque
there, and that her subsequent precautions arose from abhorrence
of the evUs which she could not fail to discover. M. Amauld
was a kind and affectionate father, but a man of the world.
He accepted society, morality, and religion as he found them,
and was not prepared to attempt any modifications. He
could not give adequate dowries to all his daughters; therefore,
though he regretted it deeply, some of them must enter a
convent It was a hard necessity, and he would have preferred
to see children and grandchildren around him ; still he could
keep the little nuns near home, obtain comfortable establish
ments for them, watch over their interest, and secure their
welfare. Mdme. Arnauld accompanied Angelique to Port
Royal, to look after the temporal affairs of the Abbey, super
intend the repairs which it required, and regulate the household
of which her child was to be the head. There were twelve
nuns in the abbey, three of whom were insane. In later times,
when Angdlique knew more about the condition of rehgious
houses than any other, woman in France, she speaks of it as
quite an exceptional circumstance that only the eldest of these
nuns, who was thirty-three, had been guilty of gross immo
rality, though all had been exposed to great temptation.
The time had gone by when such sins were punished, but
Mdme. Arnauld insisted on having the offender removed to
another monastery. She also obtained permission to place
Port Royal and its young Abbess under the supervision of
Mdme. de Jumeauville, a discreet and trastworthy member
of the community of St Cyr, who had previously acted as
Ang^hque's governess. When all necessary arrangements were
made to secure order and comfort, Mdme. Amauld retumed
to Paris. She was well aware of the necessity for constant
vigUance, and used to visit Port Royal frequently, at unex
pected times, in order to ascertain that all was going on
well. In spite of the laudatory epitaph on Mdme. de Boulehart,

24

THE CHILD-ABBESS. [chap.

her nuns had been pooriy fed and badly lodged. They appre
ciated therefore the care of M. and Mdme. Amauld for their
comfort, and forgave the restriction of their liberty in con
sideration • of the kindness by which it was accompanied.
The parents gained the hearts of the nuns by their liberality,
whilst Angdlique's nature and disposition attracted them, and
she not only easily won, but was able to keep their love.
We hear of her at this time buying candles in secret for the
maid who waited on her, because Mdme. de JumeauviUe,
from economy, would not allow her to have them ; she gave
her own white bread to this girl who did not like brown, and
in all things found her pleasure in pleasing others. A story
is told of her at twelve years old which recalls the anecdote
of Mdme. Arnauld boxing the ears of her maid. It was the
custom at Port Royal for the sacristans to go into the sacristy,
a room behind the altar, after mass was over, and fold and put
away the linen which had been used. Angdique was informed
that a monk who lived in the house was in the habit ot
meeting the nuns there and gossiping with them, and that he
was at that time in the sacristy. She went thither immedi
ately, turned the key, and locked them all in. After a time
she opened the door and allowing her prisoners to pass out,
reprimanded them in such a grave and earnest manner that
they said she spoke like an Abbess, not a child.
Another anecdote has its place here.
In 1602 Henri IV. was hunting in the neighbourhood of
Port Royal, and as he knew that M. Amauld was on a visit to
his daughter, he alighted, and entered the abbey. He was re
ceived by the child- abbess at the head of her nuns, bearing in
her hands the crozier which bespoke her dignity, and mounted
on such high pattens that the king remarked she was very tall
for her age, and he had been told she was very short He
left with a promise to come again which he did not fulfil ;
but on the morrow as he rode through the high grounds over
looking the abbey he caUed out merrily, ' The king kisses the
hands of the Reverend Mother ! '
There was a carriage at Port Royal which had belonged to
Jeanne de Boulehart, and from time to time Angelique sent
it to St. Cyr, to fetch Agnes and their younger sister Anne,
who had been placed in the convent school as a companion
for her. The Abbesses were very happy together, and little

n.] TIIE CHILD-ABBESS. 25
Anne was a favourite with both of them. When it was time
to recite one of the services of the Church, Agnes would
leave her sisters and go through it in a grave and earnest
manner. She was greatly troubled to find that Angelique
neglected her religious duties, and one day she ventured to
say very gently that this made her unhappy, and she thought
Angdlique was not doing right The elder child begged her
not to give herself any trouble, for as she was not a nun
but an Abbess, she had nothing to do with such things. But
whatever Angelique may have thought of her duty to God, she
did not neglect her duty to her neighbour. In the midst of the
merriest games she would pause and say, ' I must go and say
good-night to Dame Prieure (the Prioress), I shall be back
directly.' The General of the Order inspected the abbey in 1605, when
Angelique was fourteen. He states in the carte de visite that
all the rules are observed, and the only suggestion he makes is
that the number of nuns shall be increased from twelve to
sixteen. Angdique in after time used to point out how little
there was to deserve his commendation, since they were merely
a well-ordered secular community, reciting the services at due
hours, with the exception of matins, which were said at four
o'clock in the morning, so as not to disturb the nuns too early.
In this same year, 1605, M. Arnauld's eldest daughter, Cathe
rine, was married to M. le Maitre. She was only fifteen, one year
older than Angelique, and her marriage which at once took her
into society and the world from which Angdlique was debarred,
would naturally call the attention of the young Abbess to the
very different position which she occupied.
Years passed on, and Angelique spent her time in occupations
and amusements suited to her age. Childish sports gave way
to social pleasures ; she was permitted and even commanded
to walk with the nuns in the abbey grounds, and enjoyed these
long rambles with her friends and companions. On ,wet days
she read Roman history and novels, and every summei her
parents came to Port Royal, bringing with them some of the
littie brothers and sisters; and her grave young sister the
Abbess Agnes visited her and talked of St. Theresa, of fasts,
and visions, and religious austerities. But her happy chUdhood,
her innocent enjoyment, her unconsciousness of the contra
diction between her actual life and the ideal of her vocation

26

THE CHILD-ABBESS. [chap.

were drawing to a close ; with dawning womanhood she began
to see that a yoke was fastened upon her, andshehatedjt. For
a time she attempted to conceal her feelings ; bufsome part of
the truth must have been discovered, for she tells us it was
j suggested to her that she might renounce her caUing if she
\ chose, since it was impossible she could be bound by vows
\which she had taken before she could understand their meaning.
(To this suggestion coming we know not whence unless from
/Protestant relatives, she replied that nothing could release her
¦from her obligation to God, and that he had done her a great
honour in accepting her for His service. She teUs us that she
does not know how she acquired a notion of the sanctity of her
vocation, for she had never heard anyone speak of it, nor how
she learnt that the daily routine through which she passed was
not a fulfilment of her duties. And yet she began to think that
perhaps some day there ought to be a change, and that pos
sibly it might be necessary for her to repent and lead a new life ;
but she tried to put away these reflections, and to stUl the
, aching of her heart, and silence the voice of conscience. She
; distrusted her present hfe with its ease and pleasure, but she
shrank stiU more from that future in which she discerned duties
that she did not dare to recognize and did not wish to fulfil.
She endeavoured to divert her mind by the amusements in
which other abbesses indulged. Accompanied by two or three
of the nuns, she paid visits to her neighbours, and even went
so far as to receive friends at home. Mdme. Amauld was
immediately informed of this by Mdme. de JumeauviUe, and
she knew that it was the first step in a wrong direction. She
hastened in great distress to Port Royal, and Angdlique was
deeply moved by her mother's earnest entreaties and tears.
She saw that two paths were open to her ; one, so far as she
could see, was pleasant and bright enough, but her parents dis
liked it, and would be deeply grieved if she persisted in follow
ing it The other, of which they approved, seemed to her
dreary and lifeless. But she had that instinctive preference for
self-denial over self-indulgence which is characteristic of a noble
nature. Her mother was urging her to give up her own plea
sures, not because they could not be reconciled with her duties,
but from far lower motives; and Angdlique yielded; asked
pardon for the anxiety she had caused, promised amendment,
and resolved to follow the course which her parents approved.

II.] THE CHILD-ABBESS. 27

Her mother went back to Paris, and the Abbess turned, in
her sorrow, to Plutarch's Lives, and tried, by a course of hard,
steady reading, to stifle all longings for life and interest outside
the walls of Port Royal.
In vain ! The old craving came back again stronger than
ever. She was now sixteen years old, handsome and clever,
with boundless energy, aspiration, ambition, ability. The
world would have appreciated her, and she would not haye
been contented with a mere life of pleasure and self-indulgence, ¦
but would have found work to do for others in whatever station
she had been placed.
She considered herself bound by the promise to her mother,
and resolved not to seek consolation, as other nuns did, in the
disregard of her vows ; she would be faithful and resign herself
to the prison in which she was not to end life, but to begin it
And then came a new form of temptation. There were
Huguenot aunts at Rochelle, sisters of M. Amauld, who had
escaped conversion after the massacre of St Bartholomew :
should she run away from the convent and join them? She
was at that time in correspondence with her aunts, for she says
that they begged her to read the Epistle to the Romans, in
which she would find a condemnation of the Roman Catholic
faith. She read it, and found 'quite the reverse;' but then
she had no misgivings as to the truth of her religion, and
was not tormented by any spiritual doubt or distrust She
was pining for the free life of the outer world, from which
she found that she was shut out for ever; and when the tempta
tion came to escape from Port Royal and go to her aunts at
Rochelle, it was not strengthened by any scepticism as to the
doctrines of her Church. Very probably the earher suggestion
that she could not be bound by vows imposed upon her in
infancy came from these aunts, and her certainty that they
would befriend her, shows that, although they may not have
interposed on her behalf, she had no doubt as to the
course they were likely to adopt Angdique knew that they
would not give her up if she could but reach them, and that
she would then be free, could marry, and the world, with all
its interests, occupations^ and eiljoyments, would be open to her.
We hear the echo of the chUd's cry : ' Oh, how unlucky I am
to be the second daughter, for if I had been the eldest, I should '
have been the one to be married.'

28 THE CHILD-ABBESS. [chap.
For two months the struggle lasted, and then in the summer
of 1607 the poor girl fell ill of fever. Her parents, who cannot
have been ignorant of the cause of her illness, were greatiy
alarmed. M. Arnauld could not bear to think of his sick child
so far from home and friends, and sent a litter to Port Royal
in which she was conveyed to Paris. A bed was placed for
her in Mdme. Arnauld's room, and Angdlique says that if she
asked for anything, her mother was always the first by her side, '
although the nurse sat close to the bed. When she was some
what better, numerous friends and relatives visited her in her
sick room. She says : ' I had no thought of God in my illviess,
and there was no one who spoke a single word to me about
Him. But all the news of Paris and the court were discussed at
my bedside, for I had usually a great many -visitors.'
It seems that the fine dresses, the velvets and sarins of her
mother's friends, and the pleasant talk of her uncles, among
whom we must not forget Arnauld du Fort, were not without
effect upon her ; as soon as she began to recover, she had a
'whalebone corset' made secretly, in order to improve her figure.
Mdme. Arnauld wished to rouse her daughter from the ex
treme depression and listlessness which had preceded her fever,
and to give her what she doubtless considered an innocent
interest in society. But she was alarmed at Angelique's ex
treme vivacity, and the eager interest which she displayed in
all that concerned the hfe from which she was excluded. She
was afraid that a love-affair was the cause of her illness and
dislike of her vocation. It was not at all improbable, for
among the visitors to Port Royal who had excited Mdme.
Arnauld's apprehensions, there were gentlemen from Paris and
the neighbourhood of the abbey. Moreover, tiie monks from
the neighbouring monasteries used to amuse the young Abbess
and her nuns with foolish talk, and many stories of what they
called ' the good old customs ' of their order.
M. Arnauld had more confidence in his daughter than her
mother had, or he may have wished to soften an impending
blow ; one day, sitting by her bedside, he told her that she was
so young, open-hearted, and free that her mother was rather
alarmed about her, and had gone to Port Royal to search her
papers for love-letters. Angdlique laughed, and said : ' Then
she will have her journey for nothing.' She adds that as a girl
her fear of death and of God preserved her frona great sins,

il] THE CHILD-ABBESS. 29
and that she had an instinctive reverence for honour and purity
which was strengthened by the example of all her family.
She never was tempted through her affections ; and although
she wished for a married life it was not for the sake of any
particular partner with whom she desired to share it, btit:
because of all that belonged to marriage — dress, society, anay
above all, liberty.
- M. Arnauld's fears pointed in another direction. He was
afraid lest his daughter should abandon her vocation, and throw
away the position and dignity he had taken so much pains to j
procure. One day he took a badly written paper to her bedside,'
and said carelessly and as if it was a matter of no consequence :
' My child, just sign this paper.'
She took the pen and did as she was told.
'Obedience and respect' forbade her to ask any questions,
but, as she was writing her name, she caught sight of a few
words, and saw that the paper contained a voluntary renewal
of her vows ! She was ' ready to burst ' with anger and dis
gust, and yet she thanks God that affection and respect kept
her sUent, and even enabled her to find excuses for her father's
conduct. ' My Ulness,' she says, ' was of great use to- me. ' The ten
derness and affection of my parents made me resolve to carry
out their wishes — to remain a nun, and live soberly as a nun
ought to live. But my thoughts did not go beyond this,
and never onfce turned towards my duty to God. However, ¦
I went back cheerfully to Port Royal, and the sisters received
me with great joy. They showed more affection for me than
they had ever done before, and I felt more for them.'
When Angdlique returned to Port Royal, M. Arnauld sent
with her Marie, his fifth daughter, born in 1600, -and at that
time seven years old. He expected that the pleasure and
importance of this charge would soften the regret of the young
Abbess at leaving home, and that the education of her little
sister would occupy her time and thoughts. Angelique was stiU
weak in consequence of her recent illness, and for a time
Marie's presence and the affection of the nuns soothed and
comforted her. Buf with returning strength came back the old
trouble, the old discontent wdth her lot and craving for a change.
At the same time she' recognized that she was and must always
remain the Bride of Christ ; that her vows were not a gift which

3°

7HE CHILD-ABBESS. [chap.

she had offered to God, but an honour which He had conferred
upon her and which she dared not reject
An incident which occurred at this time called her attention
to the duties of her position. The vow of poverty taken by
a nun was understood to mean not that she was forbidden
to have money, furniture, plate or jewels of her own, but that
she must not keep them ¦¦without the permission of tJie Abbess,
to whom she was bound to give an account of all that she
received and the manner in which she employed it. A certain
nun spent money without the knowledge of her Abbess, and
when she confessed at Easter the priest refused absolution until
she had complied with the rules. The nun would not submit,
and as she had not received absolution, she could not partake
of the Holy Sacrament at Easter. When she found that the
confessor would not overlook her fault, she began to feel some
' compunction for it, and took an opportunity of explaining all
jthe circumstances to her Abbess. Angdique heard the story,
land it filled her with horror to think that 'an immortal soul
had been placed in such peril ; ' to her practical mind it was
clear that if the vow of poverty had been literally obeyed and
the nun had possessed nothing of her own, she would not have
been exposed to this temptation.
Carnival was a time of rejoicing in all monasteries, and in
some convents the nuns acted plays before a mixed audience
consisting of friends, abbots, monks, and their own com
munity. But Angdlique was faithful to her resolution, the
carnival of 1608 was kept privately at Port Royal, and no
secular friends were admitted to the abbey. When Lent came,
the young girl's health was almost re-established; something
beyond the mere dull routine of conventual hfe she must have;
and she bethought herself of her unfinished course of study and
Plutarch's Lives. But alas ! she could not now read a secular
book_ in Lent, for she intended to live as a nun ought to live,
and in Lent a nun must read nothing but books of devotion.
Now books of devotion Angdlique did not like. She talked
the matter over with one of the nuns, who told her that a
Capuchin monk who had preached at Port Royal had left a
.volume oi Meditations, which she had read and thought very
beautiful, would the Reverend Mother look at them ?
Angehque took the littie volume ; she does not tell us what
it was, says it was unlike any other book she had ever seen,

il] the CHILD-ABBESS.

31

very simple and direct, it touched her heart, and she found
comfort in it.
A few days later, as the evening was closing in, she was
walking in the abbey gardens when she was informed that
F3XheiuEaaiJUaȣIaBXlf.hiiJ,.fxia,r, had arrived, and wanted to know
if she would aUow him to preach to the sisters of Port Royal.
At first Angelique said that it was too late, she could not grant
permission at that hour; but she repented of the refusal almost
as soon as it was given, and recalled it ; for she liked sermons.
In those days preaching was a novelty, and during tiie previous
tiiirty years not more than five or six sermons had been heard
at Port Royal.
So in the twilight the Abbess and her nuns entered the church
and sat listening to the friar as he told them of the Saviour's
humility and self-denial. Even at the time when the impression
produced by the sermon was strongest, Angdlique used to say
that she could not remember much about it. But as she listened,
that great and apparently sudden change which we have learnt
to call conversion came upon her. ' By God's mercy,' she says,
' I felt more happiness at the thought that I was a nun than I
had ever before felt unhappiness, and I knew there was nothing
I could not do for the love of God, if He did but continue to
grant me the grace I then felt' The conversion of Angehque
was a change of direction in all her hopes and aims. She had
longed for active life in the world, and she sees that active
life in the cloister is her portion. Her rebellion ceases, and she
is reconciled to her lot when she finds there is something she
can do for the love of God.
When the service was ended, she thought for one moment of
appealing to the preacher, opening her heart to him, and asking
his help and advice. But even the early ardour and excite
ment of new feelings did not destroy the discrimination and
powerpf self-restiaint, for which she was afterwSrSs so remark
able. ""sEFdlsrmsted the preacher who was a young man, and
remembering that she was not yet seventeen, she withheld her
confidence; accompanied by a nun she went to thank him,
and then retired. She had great reason to be thankful for
her prudence; as she leamed afterwards that he was a man
of dissolute habits, and had been the cause of grave scandal
in many convents.
Once more she is alone, the sermon ended, the Meditations

32 THE CHILD-ABBESS. [chap.
finished, and the dull conventual life going on as usual. But
to a noble nature there is no turning back from a contest once
entered upon or work once begun. Angdlique had seen as in
a vision another world and a new life ; she could not return to
the old and beaten track, the cold extemal devotion, the
twilight walks in the abbey gardens, the gossip of the nuns,
and a course of Roman history. It was not enough to renounce
the world merely because it was the wish of kind parents whom
she did not desire to grieve. Those words that came to her
out of a gloom like the darkness of her own soul had shown
her in the life of Christ all that her own life was' and might
become. A long period of mental struggle commenced,
through which she gradually made her way from fear to faith,
and from doubt to certainty. She had begun by thinking that
perhaps there might be such a life for a nun as had never
seemed possible in any convent that she had seen or heard
of; a life of good works, a devout and religious life ofthe kind
that had faded out of view altogether at that period. She
now saw that such a life was not only possible but imperative,
and that she must lead it At first it was not the reform of
her monastery that slie was aiming at, it was her nwrj refftYm^
for it was her own defects which troubled her.
We stand, however, on the threshold of a change, not for
Angdlique and her littie community only, but for monasticism
in France. We can measure the strength of her influence by
the opposition she caUed forth and the reaction against her teach
ing, and we shall see that she exercised it in the manner we
think highest for a woman and most womanly. It was no
intellectual difficulty which tormented Angdique, and made
rest impossible whilst work remained to be done. She eluci
dated no dogma, and was not prepared to take any part in
a strife of words. Even in the contest which is so closely
alhed with the name of Port Royal, her part is negative, and
she declines to enter into a theological discussion with which
she considers that nuns have nothing to do. The one thought
which gradually becomes clear to her is that her own life and
the life of every nun must be pure, holy, and occupied with
good works.
All that was noblest in her nature was kindled by the words •
of the sermon she listened to in the twilight. Self-renunciation,
obedience, poverty, humility, these were realities, and not mere

11.] THE CHILD-ABBESS. 33
words. The Son of God had shown them forth in His life, and
she was caUed to follow in His steps. Hitherto she had groaned
under the burden of His cross laid upon her, now we shall see
her take it up and bear it, not with resignation, but with gratitude
and exulting joy. We shaU follow her through difficulties
which are inseparable from her position; uncertainty in her
own heart, hesitation in the hearts of those around her, and
opposition which is strongest from those who are dearest
to her.

S.L. XIIL

CHAPTER III.

fasts AND VIGILS.

Angelique's task was a very hard one. There was no com-
sciousness of wrong in those with whom she had to deal, and
she was trying to bring not sinners, but those who were righteous
in their own esteem, to repentance. We can follow her efforts
almost in her own words, for her autobiography is clear and fuU,
and any gaps in it are supplied by the memoirs of nuns who
either lived with her at this early period of her life or had
often heard her speak of it.
She desired to serve God but had very little light^ to guide
her efforts, and could only pray ' as well as she could and as
much as she could.' She would often rise in the night and go
up to an attic to pray, so as to escape the notice of the nun
who slept in her room. Gradually she learnt to feel a great
horror of her position as Abbess, in which her awakened
conscience showed her that there were three crimes : ' first,
the ambition of my grandfather, who desired to see two of us
abbesses ; secondly, I had taken the veil at nine years old,
and had been consecrated at eleven against all the laws of
the Church ; and thirdly, a lie had been told to the Pope to
induce him to grant the bulls, and I had been represented as
seventeen.' At Whitsuntide another Capuchin preacher visited Port Royal,
Father Bernard, a very grave and stern old man. AngdUque
thought he was the guide she needed, and opened her heart
to him. Years had not brought the old man discretion, for he
not only encouraged her fasts and vigils, but he lectured the

CHAP. III.] FASTS AND VIGILS.

35

nuns, and attacked them with such severity that all the well-
disposed rose up against him. At the head of these was the
Prioress, a good and pmdent woman, who had always obeyed
the rules of the house, and did not therefore acknowledge that
there was any special need of reform in the abbey. She re
monstrated with Angehque, saying that Father Bemard was
inducing her to undertake work for which she was too young
and inexperienced. She would faU, or grow tired of it, and
then the community would fall into greater irregularities than
ever. Angdhque urged that they were not keeping their vows ;
there was the vow of poverty for example, which no one
obeyed, for every nun had her own private property. But the
Prioress answered that their interpretation of the vow was a
very good one, as nuns were careful of what was their own,
whilst they were wasteful and extravagant with the common
property ; and that in this and other cases if one fault was
removed two which were greater would be introduced.
Angelique was not convinced, but she acknowledged the
force of the objections urged against her, especially of those
that referred to her own unfitness for the task which had de
volved upon her. She was beginning to hate her position as
Abbess, and the influence and authority which it gave her, and
to long to escape from it and hide herself from parents, rela
tions, and friends, so that she might live a humble, hidden
life, with no other witness of it than God, and no one to please
or think of except God. She does not seem to have been
oppressed by any sense of personal unworthiness ; on the con
trary, she writes : ' ATEeflny conversion I thought that I should
never go to the confessional again because I should never do
wrong, and therefore I should have nothing to confess.'
Sanguine and fearless as she was, we cannot, however, wonder
that in so difficult a position her first impulse was to throw
up her post as Abbess, and become a nun, or even a lay-sister,
in some other community. She had not yet discerned what her
work was to be as a reformer, but she saw that her actual life
must be made to harmonize with her convictions. ' I said to
myself, I know my duty well enough now, and although I may
go into an ill-regulated convent that wUl not prevent me from
doing what i.s right. I shall continue poor and obedient and
patient, and there will be the more merit in it because I shall
meet with great opposition and have few good examples.' At this

36 FASTS AND VIGILS. [CHAP,
time, when she was so young and ardent that, fasts and vigus
were a pastime to her, and the intense consciousness of her
rectitude of purpose made her think that she could never sin
again, at this yery time there fell upon her a great fear of de
lusions, so that she used to pray to God by day and night to
deUver her from them. At seventy years old she was able to
add that her prayers had been heard, and that she had never
seen any vision or heard any voices by day or when she was
awake, and that as to, what she might have seen or heard in
the night she knew they were dreams.
Meanwhile Father Bernard was so much elated with the
success of his visits to Port Royal that he took with him Father
Pacifique, who was also greatly interested in Angdlique. No
doubt the worthy fathers would have been delighted if they
could have educated the young Abbess into a saint; but
when they found that she was very much inclined to take her
own way, and was already contemplating the renunciation of
her abbey, they were alarmed, for M. Arnauld was not a man
to be trifled with. The more practical Father Bemard said that
he should at once make known her plan ; and as obedience to
her parents was the first and highest duty which Angehque re
cognized she was frightened at the threat. She used to express
astonishment in later years that although Father Pacifique was
more spiritual than his companion, and had more sympatiiy
v^ith her views, yet it was the more worldly Father Bemard
who spoke the wiU of God when he told her to remain where
she was and try to do good to those around her.
Father Bernard appears to have drawn up a strict set of rules
for the guidance of Port Royal, which he submitted to the
Abbot of Morimond, Grand Vicar of the Cistercian order.
The Abbot took them to M. Amauld, and asked his opinion
of them. M. Amauld did not approve of strict rules and
projected reform, nor did the Grand Vicar, and they decided
that the visits of the Capuchin friars should cease, and Ange
lique should see no more of Father Bernard. The Grand
Vicar's decision is not surprising. A few years previously, in
1594 or 1 595, he had been a well-pleased spectator of a
tragedy performed by nuns known as ' The Ladies of Saint-
Antoine,' whose Abbess was Mdme. de Thou, sister to the
First President De Thou, and aunt of the historian. They
performed a tragedy of Garnier's, called Cleopatra, in which

III.] FASTS AND VIGILS.

37

all the male characters were played by nuns in suitable cos
tume. The Abbot of Citeaux was present, and also the four
principal abbots in the Cistercian order, namely those of Clair-
vaux, Morimond, Pontigny, and la Fert^.
The summer of 1608 passed on, and in the autumn Angehque
was again attacked by fever, which was endemic at Port Royal.
M. Arnauld had heard from Mdme. de Jumeauville a full and
somewhat alarming account of his daughter's condition, and
was glad- to have an excuse for taking her to Andilly, where
he hoped that all these troublesome cobwebs would soon be
swept from her brain. Her younger sisters, Agnes and Anne,
came from St. Cyr to join her. She took little Marie with
her, and the four girls went home together for the vintage.
At Andilly Angelique was placed under close supervision ; for
ramoured asceticism had reached the parents' ears, with which
they had little sympathy. It was obvious .enough that lace and
fine linen and the ' whalebone corset ' had been abandoned, and
before long the maid who waited upon her reported that the
Reverend Mother wore no stockings, that she slept at night in
the woollen dress and cloth boots which she wore throughout the
day, and swarmed with the vermin so dear to mediaeval saints.
This was too bad I The whole household assailed her ! Did
she consider that dirt and devotion were synonymous ? Could
she not see that she was too young to attempt any innovations,
and was only being led into foolish extremes !
M. Arnauld had a great horror of the Capuchin friars : he
. pointed out to his child that she would destroy her health and
weaken her faculties by the austerities which they advocated,
and that this was precisely what they were aiming at in order
to obtain influence over her and gain a footing in the monastery.
They would then exact incessant contributions, and make Port
Royal an excellent farm for themselves. M. Arnauld was ill at
the time, and in his anger he told his daughter that if he died,
his death would lie at her door.
Angelique felt that she was very unfortunate, and that the
world was cmel and unjust When she was too young to be
capable of choice, she had been placed in a position in which
her parents must surely have known that she could not be
happy. And now that God in His mercy had made amends
for their fault and given her a love for her vocation, they op
posed her and would not allow her to do her duty.

38 FASTS AND VIGILS. [chap.
But once again filial affection triumphed. She found it
impossible to grieve her father, and therefore she resolved to
wait and see if God would show her any way out of her troubles.
All her hopes were shattered. The beauty of Andilly and
the pleasant home life could not compensate for the loss ot
high aims and aspirations. Still in after years, when she spoke
of her summer visits, she used to wonder how people could
buUd houses in the country and scarcely ever live in them,
saying that she thought Andilly so delightful and beautiful that
she would have been glad never to leave it.
M. Amauld liked to have his children with him, and his
eldest daughter Catherine lived at home for three years after
her marriage. She was at Andilly this summer with her first
baby Antoine, who had been born in the spring. Magdalen,
the youngest of the six Arnauld girls, was twelve months old,
and there were boys of all ages; noticeable among them are
Robert, the eldest, then nineteen ; Henry, who was afterwards
Bishop of Angers ; and Simon, a clever little fellow of five, the
pet and plaything of his elder sisters.
It is no wonder that home life seemed bright and happy to
the young giris home from the convent, and that the world
attracted them when it was represented by a generous, affec
tionate father, and a woman of such large sympathies and
universal benevolence as their mother. Anne did not return
to St Cyr with Agnes, but was told that she was to stay at
home and go into society. M. Arnauld was sorry to separate
the sisters who had passed their childhood happUy togetiier,
but Anne was now fourteen, and it was time to thmk of
providing a suitable settiement for her.
Angdlique's disappointment and the prospect of a blank and
dreary future brought on another attack of fever, and when she
had somewhat recovered she was sent back to her monastery
accompanied by littie Marie. She retumed with a heavy heart'
determined to serve God as well as she could and not vex her
father. At the festival of All Samts, M. Arnauld and the Abbd
de.Morimond sent a preacher of their own choice to Port Royal
a perfectiy safe man as they thought It was a vain precaul
tion, for all fuel feeds the flame of an awakened conscience.
By this time the whole convent was interested in the con
dition of the Abbess, and when the text was given out • ' Blessed
are they who suffer persecution for righteousness"^ sake ' it

III.] FASTS AND VIGILS.

39

impressed all who heard it. After the sermon was ended,
a girl who waited on Angehque said : ' Madam, if you like,
you may be one of those who suffer for righteousness' sake.'
The Abbess rebuked her maid for the presumption of this
speech, nevertheless the words sank into her heart, and
from thenceforward she began to consider seriously whether
she ought not to place duty to God above duty to her
father. One day a nun asked her if the Capuchin friars would come
again, assigning as a reason for her question that she should
like to see Port Royal reformed. Anglhque was so touched by
this mark of sympathy that she threw her arms round the
Sister's neck and kissed her, and from thenceforward to the
end of her life she loved her dearly, and never forgot how her
heart leapt up when she heard this question.
Advent was at hand, and she prepared for it by a general
confession such as she had never yet made, resolving hence
forward to lead a new life. But how was it to be done, and
how was she to induce others to join her?
Help came from whence she least expected it. Carefully as
she had tried to conceal her fasts, vigils, and flagellations, and
the scars left by burning wax which she had dropped on
her arms, they had been discovered. In after time she opposed
similar practices, and refused either to sanction or tolerate
them ; and when she was reminded of her own example she
smiled and answered, ' Ah ! yes ; anything seemed good in
those early days.'
The nuns of Port Royal were convinced that she was in
earnest, and had discovered that no selfish desires had power
over her pure, brave nature. Their hearts were touched
by the sorrow of the grave, pale girl, who went about amongst
them watchful and anxious. ' I was very unhappy,' she says,
speaking of this time, ' for I did not know how to win over
the Prioress, and the elder nuns.' And then one day in Lent,
1609, the good and prudent Prioress, who ' loved Angdlique and
feared God but did not see any necessity for a change,' asked
for an interview with her and told her that it grieved the whole
sisterhood to see her so sad, and they begged to know why it
was. Angdique replied that she could not reform the monastery.
The Prioress answered there was nothing they would not do
rather than see her unhappy ; she was commissioned to sp^^ak

40

FASTS AND VIGILS. [chap.

for the community and to offer to do whatever their Abbess
might desire.
-i Angdlique, with that marvellous tact, that combination of
f self-restraint and sympathetic insight which we shall hereafter
see as the secret of her influence, did not pour out all her griefs
and all her hopes, but asked merely that a day might be fixed
'when their vow of poverty should be fulfilled, and they should
; have all things in common.
Her own attention had been called to the neglect of this
vow by the case ofthe nun who was refused absolution because
she would not acknowledge the right of her Abbess to control
her expenditure. No doubt the subject had been already dis
cussed among the Sisters ; some of them would side witii the
Abbess when she said that if the nun had possessed nothing
of her own she could not have fallen into sin, and others with
the Prioress, who urged that if they had aU things in common
nuns would be wasteful and exacting. When the Prioress, there
fore, whose influence was only second to that of Angehque,
had yielded, the first step was made very easy. A meeting of the
Chapter was held, and the nuns decided in favour of the literal
interpretation of their vow of poverty. They appointed a day
on which they would surrender their little treasures, everything
that they had been accustomed to consider their very own. One
amongst them was deaf and dumb, but she understood by signs
what- was going forward, and brought all that she possessed to
be added to the common stock. Angehque was radiant with
joy, and when the nuns gave up their pretty beads and httle
ornaments, she thanked them for the act of renunciation as if
it had been a personal gratification.
But there was one who stood aloof from the movement. She
had been compeUed to take the veil against her wUl, and in
spite of all the efforts of her companions,' she maintained an
attitude of stubborn resistance. The Abbess reasoned with
her, and showed great tenderness and forbearance, but could
not bring her to a sense of duty. She remained cold, hard,
and unyielding, and was ultimately removed to another monas
tery, where she died.
The oldest nun in Port Royal was Sister Morel. She sub
mitted reluctantly to the innovation with regard to her property,
and finally drew back,, and would not give up the key of a little
garden which she allowed no one to enter. Her companions

IIL] FASTS AND VIGILS. 41
were grieved, and tried to remonstrate with her; but this
threw her into a violent passion, so they desisted, and she
kept her key. The Abbess did not reprove or punish the re
fractory nun, she waited patiently, and before long her gentie-
ness and sweetness prevaUed. Sister Morel repented, and one
day she put the key of her little garden into a letter and sent it
to the Abbess. There was great rejoicing at this act, for, with
the exception alluded to. Port Royal was now united, and we
shall henceforth foUow them in the path which the Abbess
had sought from conviction, and along which the nuns con
sented to follow her though not vrithout reluctance.
As they had agreed to have all things in common, Ange
lique was specially anxious to provide everything that was
necessary, and to let them see that she took upon herself the
care of their well-being a;id comfort. She abounded in deeds
of kindness, and often carried wood with her own hands to the
dormitory fiire when the weather was cold. Meanwhile she had
but one rule for herseU — to take the worst of everything, the
shabbiest gown, the poorest food, and the meanest accommoda
tion. There was nothing in the house that she considered her
Own, and no work which she acknowledged to be menial. Her
room was shared with the sick and infirm, and her own bed
given up to them whilst she slept on the floor. Every moment
which was not occupied by other duties she passed alone on her
knees in prayer. Only one companion knew all the secrets of
this time, for in after years she never alluded to them, and
neither encouraged in others nor justified in herself the austerities
which she then practised. She fasted so strictly during the whole
of Lent, that, weakened as she was by intermittent fever, her
health suffered severely. Meat of course was forbidden, but
she would not touch fish, and, in spite of the permission of the
Church and the commands of her doctor, she refused to eat
eggs. Mdme. de JumeauvUle became anxious, and wrote to
her father, and, as he had no intention of allowing his daughter
to starve herself to death, he sent an apothecary from Paris,
M. de Sainte-Beuve, with orders that the Abbess was to eat'
an egg in his presence. She could not disobey her father, and
immediately complied with his command. She discovered with
regret, that whereas she had generally such a dislike to eggs
that it was something of a penance to eat one, this egg seemed
particularly nice, and she couldn't help enjoying it

43 FASTS AND VIGILS. [cH.Ar.' in.
The incident, however, opened Angelique's eyes to mc fact
that Mdme. de Jumeauville was a spy, and reported to her
parents everything that transpired in the abbey. She made
no complaint to them, but asked aid of Father Basil the
preacher, whom M. Amauld and the Abbe de Morimond had
sent to Port Royal at Advent
Father Basil was about eight and twenty, and his antece
dents had not led M. Arnauld to expect that he would adopt
Angelique's views ; but her influence was beginning to make
itself felt by all around her, and the man who was sent to
discourage her desire for reform remained to foster it. With
his help Mdme. de JumeauviUe was recalled to St Cyr. He
first of all remonstrated with her for leaving her convent in
order to act as governess to a nun, and then represented to the
Abbess of St. Cyr that she ought not to allow a member ot
her community to be absent for so many years. The result
was that the Abbess recalled Mdme. de Jumeauville, almost at
her own request and certainly in accordance with her wish.

CHAPTER IV.
ANGiLIQUE THE REFOR.MER.
The young Abbesses of St Cyr and Port Royal were friends
and companions, and although Agnes did not pass through the
same spiritual conflict as Angdlique, she sympathised deeply
with her sister. When they left Andilly together in the au
tumn of 1608, and returned to their respective abbeys, Agnes
was alone, but Angelique still had little Marie. Before long the
two elder sisters wished to be together. Angehque longed to
have Agnes with her, and told her father that she was sure
Agnes, who was ill, was pining for Port Royal. Angelique's
health and mental condition were causing her parents great
uneasiness, and there was no Mdme. de Jumeauville to watch
over her. They doubtless thought that as Agnes was quite
resigned to her position, her influence over the more active and
ardent temperament of Angehque would be very valuable.
It is difficult to follow the tangled threads of the transaction
and to find how far compassion and affection and to what
extent worldly motives influenced M. Amauld, but the result
was that he permitted Agnes to give up the Abbey of St Cyr,
and become a novice of Port Royal. Probably he did not at
that time suspect that he was carrying out Ange'lique's plan,
aud that it was her influence and not that of Agnes which
he ought to take into consideration. The elder sister writes : —
' Agnes went with me to stay at our father's house, and I
left her at St Cyr on my way home. Soon afterwards she
came to stay with me at Port Royal, for she was quite Ul. I
had grown more and more anxious to do the will of God, and

44 ANGELIQUE THE REFORMER. [chap.
He had inspired me with the wish to_ draw her to Him also.
I found this very difficult, for she was warmly attached to the
Benedictine order, and stUl more, I fancy, to her future position
as Abbess. I tried to win her heart, and by degrees the love
of prayer, for which she was always remarkable, increased so
much that though she was weak and ill, she contrived to crawl
to church, where she would remain in prayer for hours together.
She was drawn in opposite directions by her love for me and
her love for the Benedictines and her own abbey. My father
came to see us, and found her ill and out of spirits. I told
him that it all arose from melancholy, and that she would be
quite happy if he would allow her to give up St. Cyr and come
to me. I said that because I was very anxious that my father's
conscience should not be burdened with the responsibility of
holding that abbey in charge for her. My father was convinced
tiiat her illness arose from the cause I had assigned, so he said
that he only wished to see her happy, and that if she desired
to remain at Port Royal she might do so. Agnes was surprised,
but she would not contradict what I had said.'
Angdlique disaiTns criticism by her frank confession. She
did not tell the whole truth, but she acted as she thought for
the best, and secured an end that was desirable by ' means
that were unjustifiable. She saw her sister undecided and un
happy, and having no doubt as to the best thing to be done,
she does it. Agnes is surprised, but she acquiesces. Hence
forward, though for some years she wears the dress of a Bene'
dictine novice, she belongs to Port Royal. She did not like the
rough serge worn by the Cistercians, and was fond of her littie
white cape, which was always clean and carefully arranged. She
retained also a small gold cross attached to her chaplet, which
was a mark of her office as Abbess. Angelique did not in
terfere, and her toleration for things which she beheved to be
faults but saw that it was not the time to remedy, gained over
many of those who were most opposed to her.
She was very gentie with Agnes, allowing her to foUow her
inchnation and give up aU her time to her devotions. Both
sisters felt that they were called by God, both were trying to
serve Him. Agnes was contented with her position so long
as it afforded facUity for the development of her own personal
piety ; but the more active intellect of Angdique could not
rest satisfied wdth this. She also was converted, but her prac-

IV.] ANGELIQUE THE REFORMER. 43'
tical nature made her ask what were her duties towards God
and man, and how she could best fulfil them.
Perhaps our surprise that her inquiries did not extend some
what further is legitimate. She had originality and power,
great courage and no lack of intellectual vigour. She held
to her convictions when she believed them to be right,
though Pope and priests were against them. ' If we are
right,' she said once, ' God is on our side, and we may trust
Him to defend us against the Pope or anyone else.' We
should expect such a woman to be led or driven from her
Church, but she remained a devout Roman Cathohc to
the end.
She wanted at this time to find out what an abbess ought
to do, and not what an abbess ought to be. She made herself
familiar wdth the details of the Cistercian rule and the edicts
that affected her position, and resolved to sweep away inno
vations and abuses, and realize the ideal of conventual life.
No doubt if she had founded the order instead of reformed
it, she would have asked herself of many things if they were
right, wise, and desirable. She would have been saved from
many errors and many blunders. But, with the characteristic ¦
loyalty of the Arnaulds, having accepted a position she
accepted all the duties that it entailed.
She was like her uncle du Fort, and would have thought it
quite as much the duty of her soldiers to plaster a waU as to
defend a fortress. As a girl she protested that her fate was
hard and unjust; but after her conversion her vocation was
her own choice, and she preferred it to anything and every
thing that the world could offer. She was the ' bride of Christ,'
she was the chosen of God, she had attained the highest
honour that could be conferred upon woman.
Agnes took the same view of her vocation, but she was ab
sorbed in the contemplation of religious mysteries, whUst the
conversion of Angehque had more practical results. It opened
her eyes to her actual condition. She was a nun, bound by
certain vows, everyone of which she was neglecting, or might
neglect She was an abbess, responsible for her nuns, and
she and they violated aU the rales which they had solemnly
vowed to obey. She could know neither peace nor rest until
she had reconcUed then: profession with their actual Ufe. She
looked back to the cartes de visite of the preceding century,

46 ANGELIQUE THE REFORMER. [chap.
and saw there protests against abuses which had now become
customs of the order. She remarked the absence of religious
feeling, and saw that the spiritual life of the community must
have been even then extinct , With an awakened conscience
she read the rules of her order, and resolved that poverty,
chastity, obedience, humUity, self-denial, and charity, should
be reahties for herself and her nuns. We cannot fail to re
cognize and regret her many mistakes, but we must also
acknowledge that she did train to the full exercise of these
virtues a very brave and noble band, not only of women, bat
of men also.
In order to estimate the difficulty of her task we must glance
backwards to the origin of the Benedictines and Cistercians,
and turn our attention to the strict rules which had long ceased
to be obeyed, and which she now attempted to re-establish.
The rale of St Benedict was written about the year 530, and
it shows what monastic life was at that time in the West St
Benedict did not consider it a perfect rule, but only a feeble
attempt towards attaining the perfection of preceding centuries.
It is enough for our purpose to state that the three virtues
which constituted the sum of the Benedictine disciphne were :
Silence, Humility, and Obedience.
SUence could only be acquired in solitude and seclusion, and
the Benedictines were isolated from their fellows, although they
were members of the same community, ate at a common table,
and slept in the common dormitory.
; HumUity implied self-renunciation and poverty. The idea
and even the name of separate or exclusive possession was to
be abjured, and they were forbidden to use such expressions as'
my book, my cloak, my sleeve.
The Obedience required was absolute and unquestioning,
and was shown by blind submission to the commands of the
i Abbot or Abbess, even if they were ridiculous or wicked.
The three duties which were inculcated by the rule were the
Worship of God, Reading, and Manual Labour.
The early Benedictine monks and nuns led in absolute
silence a life of the most abject poverty. They were poorly
lodged and clad, and worse fed. Abstinence from meat was
perpetual, and their ordinary food was vegetable broth, with
bread and a small measure of wine twice every day, but they
were allowed the occasional use of fowls and fish. The nuns

rv;] ANGELIQUE TIIE REFORMER. 47
never left the cloistered precincts. The monks were strictly
forbidden to partake of food outside the convent walls, and
when a monk was compelled to be absent during the whole
day he was enjoined to fast rather than to eat abroad. The
monks laboured ih the fields, and during harvest-time or when
ever there was any particular work to be done, they did not
retum to the house at the hours for divine service, but knelt
and performed it out of doors. They were roused at mid
night for prayers, retired again, and then rose at 2 a.m. for
matins, after which they did not return to bed, and the long
day was divided between labour, meditation, reading, and
prayer. Between three and four hundred years later, the Benedictines
found that they were very far from an exact observance of
their rule. Their monasteries were spread all over the west,
were independent of each other, and had insensibly acquired
different customs as to food and clothing, whilst none of them
obeyed their rule with regard to manual labour. It was true,
they said, that Benedict had set apart seven hours in the day
for it, but this was to avoid idleness, which they escaped by
occupying themselves in prayer, reading, and singing psalms.
Wealthy benefactors and large bequests of land and money had
banished poverty from their houses. They lived in luxury and
ease, the abbots travelled in grand equipages with many horses
and a great retinue, and it was a Benedictine abbot who said,
' My vow of poverty has given me 100,000 crowns a year, my
vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign
prince.' The letter of the Benedictine rule, however, remained un
changed ; and as it was read aloud daily in Chapter, from time
to time, some monk remembered that it had a meaning and
he had sworn to obey it. Such a man would inaugurate reform,
in the order if possible, if not in his own monastery. The
foundation of Clugni in the year '9 10 owed its origin to an
attempted reform of the Benedictiue rule, and Clugni gained
the esteem and affection of kings, princes, and emperors. In
their gratitude they overwhelmed it with wealth, and then the
rich monks grew proud, and despised poor communities and
mendicant orders. Each monk wanted to haye his siiare of the
wealth of the house, and to be as weU fed, clothed, and lodged
as his order would allow, and sometimes better.

48 ANGELIQUE THE REFORMER. [chap.
Two hundred years after the foundation of Clugni, the
founders of Citeaux (in Latin Cistercium) again attempted tp
reform their order, and bring back the spirit of the Benedictine
rule. It was St Bemard, Abbot of Citeaux, who rendered the
Cistercian order famous.
Bernard approved of manual labour and re-estabhshed it;
but he introduced a novelty which grew into an abuse, namely,
the distinction between monks and lay-brothers. His reason
for this was that laymen, namely aU those who had not been
educated for the priesthood, were unable to read, and ignorant
of Latin. As they could not read they could not leam the
psalter by heart, and as they knew no Latin they could not
profit by Divine service.
These uneducated lay-brothers were therefore to perform all
the manual labour connected with the monastery, whilst their
religious duties were confined to reciting a number of Paters at
the canonical hours. In order to assist their memory, they
carried grains threaded on a string, which are the earliest form
of chaplets.
Before long there were lay-brothers in all religious orders, and
as every change made by the monks was reflected faithfully by
the nuns, this innovation reached them also. They had lay-
sisters and choir-sisters, although there was no reason for the
distinction, as the latter knew no more Latin than the former.
This became a fruitful source of evil ; monks and nuns looked
upon lay-brothers and sisters as ignorant inferiors, destined to
serve them. With a sense of their own superiority, and the
wealth of thek order, for Citeaux was soon as rich as Clugni,
all the worldliness and vice which Bernard had tried to banish
crept back again.
In the thirteenth century the Cistercian order had degene
rated so much that the monks left their monastery without per
mission, stayed with secular friends in the towns, they took
their meals with them, had their own property, borrowed money
for themselves, or became security for others in their own
names, ate meat, wore linen, and had separate apartments.
The degeneracy extended to tiie nuns, just as the reform of
the Cistercian order had also affected them.
In 1148 Gilbert of Sempringham asked the Chapter of
Citeaux to take charge of a congregation which he had formed,
consisting of seven nuns. They were shut up in the church of

IV.] ANGELIQUE THE REFORMER. 49
St. Andre, and were to live in perpetual seclusion, receiving
their necessary food through the windows. Before his death
Gilbert had formed thirteen simUar monasteries, four for monks,
and nine for nuns. In the same year another reformer, Stephen
of Obasine, converted many men and women of noble birth.
At first the women lived apart from the men, but were not
strictly secluded. When, however, their number reached a
hundred and fifty they were removed to a monastery that had
been prepared for them, and which they were never on any
account to leave. The east end of their church, containing the
chancel, was walled off, and had an outer door, by which the
monks entered to say mass. The wall which separated priests
and altar from the congregation had a window in it, with
a grating, which was covered by a thick curtain. Through this
window the nuns received the communion, and even those who
were sick and dying had to be carried to it, for the monks were
to render them all kinds of spiritual service, but never to enter the
cloistered part of the monastery. The rule for the seclusion of
nuns in Cistercian monasteries was more strict than that of
monks. They were never to leave the cloistered part of the
monastery, to be seen in public, or to have any intercourse with
the world. Their rule prescribed coarse woollen clothing, no
meat, scanty food of poor quality, and hard labour ; silence and
seclusion untU death, and after death burial without the minis
tration of a priest. The Abbess possessed supreme power over
her nuns, and they iaddressed her kneeling. The Council of
Trent ordained that she must be forty years old, and must
have been a professed nun eight years, and that under no
circumstances should an abbess be elected who was not thirty
years old.
But the monasteries for nuns relaxed the severity of their rules
as much as those for nibjiks. In the beginning of the fifteenth
centuiy there were abbesses in Spain, who gave the veil to
their nuns, received confessions, and preached and read the
Bible in public. In the sixteenth century, Gregory XIII. tried
to check the abuses which were attributed to the perpetuity of
the offices of abbess and prioress, and issued a bull in 1585,
by which he ordained that these offices should be triennial,
according to the decrees of the Council of Trent. He gives
as a reason for this, that if the superiors knew that after three
years they would be called upon to give an account of their
S.L. XIII. E

50 ANGELIQUE THE REFORMER. [chap.
administration, they would be more careful in the govemment
of their houses. This measure appUed only to Italy and SicUy,
and would have been too revolutionary for France.
A French convent at the close of the sixteenth century was
a place in which unmarried and unmarriageable women of noble
and gentle birth lived together, wearing a distipctive dress,
and obeying within what seemed to them reasonable limits the
rules of certain religious orders. Their Abbess administered
considerable funds, and often managed large estates. It was
desirable that the lives of these ladies should be outwardly
decorous, and that there should be some security for such
defenceless communities in stormy and unsettled times, and
therefore certain traditions of the past which reflected upon
them the self-denial and sanctity of a previous age were
still adhered to, and were not altogether without effect upon
the people whom they were intended to influence. But
upon the nuns themselves their vows sat very lightly ; in the
majority of cases they had been placed in a monastery with
out any reference to their own wishes on the subject They
were the superfluous women in a family; this fact at least
was patent, and they must submit to the consequences of it
It was soon found that, after all, the life of a nun was not of
necessity a complete sacrifice of all enjoyment and pleasure.
Founders' wishes grew obsolete, and no one imagined them
to be binding under changed conditions and in a different
state of society. The religious aspect of conventual Ufe was
gradually lost sight of, and its social aspect tended to change
with the views of the age. If society was dissolute, so were
the religious communities ; in fact they did not lead or stand
apart from the world around them ; they foUowed it, repre
sented all its crimes and all its vices. We look into them as
into an old-fashioned mirror with a border cut in many facets,
in each of which you see an image of the room and aU the
persons in it, only they are infinitely littie. The lives and the
quarrels of the nuns were the infinitely littie repetitions of aU
that was going on around them. The Abbess, if she was of
royal or noble birth, kept her state in a small way, and
snubbed her neighbours whenever she had the opportunity ; and
the nuns intrigued for the high places of the convent, and had
disputes and quarrels within their own walls and their feuds
with other religious houses. They made friends at court.

nr.] ANGELIQUE THE REFORMER. 51
and got as much of this worid and its good things as they
possibly could. A good abbess meant one who had not impo
verished her house by receiving portionless women, who had
always looked after the loaves and fishes, had taken care that
money should come to the convent, but should not go from it ;
that her nuns ate and drank every day of the best, and dressed
as well, that is, as fashionably as they could, in spite of
those absurd sumptuary regulations by which they were
bound. These were not so absolutely stringent that they
could not be evaded; lace and fine linen and soft cloth,
material of the best and most expensive could be chosen ; and
cap and hood, collar and sleeve, could be so adjusted that
the dress was made very becoming if not absolutely fashionable.
And thus the convents became luxurious homes in which
kind parents were contented to know that their daughters were
settled, and brothers who had been enriched by the portions
of their sisters saw that they had not lost the good things of
life, but only taken them under peculiar and sometimes irritating
conditions; whilst kings looked upon the monasteries as an
appanage of the crown, and bestowed them upon whomsoever
they would. Louis XIII. gave the Abbey of St Germain des
Prfes to the widow of the Duke of Lorraine, which is ' much
as though the mastership of Trinity CoUege, Cambridge, had
been given to the widow of the Elector Palatine.'^ The
morality of these houses was the morality of the age, and
if to the public it seemed somewhat higher, it was because
the concealment of immorality was very easy. And the re
ligion was the religion of the age ; that is to say, it wc_
banished altogether from this world and this life, and rele
gated to the next But throughout the whole of France
Qiere was at that time a strong and almost unquestioning
belief in the life of the world to come. The most profligate
and irreligious did not doubt that a time would certainly come
when they must make amends to God for the past, and prepare
for a new order of things in the future.
The Catholic Church had laid down an elaborate map of
the next world. It was not only definite and distinct, but its
accuracy was undoubted. The Church asserted that communi-
ration between earth and heaven had been unbroken for many
1 Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, by Sir James Stephen.
£ 2

52 ANGELIQUE THE REFORMER. [chap. iv.

centuries; saints and martyrs were constantly showing that
their interest in this worid was undiminished, and their influence
in the next was never questioned. Some time then before
death these potentates must be propitiated. They were not
inexorable ; certain rules had to be observed, certain forms
to be gone through, there was a certain manner in which they
must be approached, and certain persons through whom they
must be appealed to ; provided this was done the forgiveness
of sins and the life of the world to come were open to all
men. Thus in spite of the degradation of the priesthood
and the monastic orders in France, they were looked upon as
¦s'aluable machinery which might be set in motion for the
public good.

CHAPTER V.

honour thy father and thy mother.
Angelique was now free from restraint The vow of
poverty was fulfilled, but when she looked back to the cartes
de visite she saw that the vow of chastity involved obedience
to many rules now neglected, and that it necessitated the strict
seclusion of the nuns in the cloistered part of the abbey. Iri
fact, fulfilm.ent of this vow implied closing the doors of the
abbey against father and mother, relations and friends. Ange
lique did not, so far as we know, ask herself whether this was
right; but when her conscience was awakened, the practical
bent of her mind led her to resolve that she would obey
literally all the rules of her order, and she believed this to
be the only means of avoiding the flagrant immorality of other
convents. She told the community, many of whom now sympathised
warmly with her, that she proposed to re-establish strict seclu
sion ofthe nuns and strict exclusion of all friends and relatives
from the cloistered precincts ; that for the future the Sisters
would communicate with the outer world through a small
window opening into a parlour built outside the abbey walls.
She added that there would be no exception to this rule, and
that it would apply to her own family as well as to others.
This stopped the mouths of all who were inclined to object,
or rather they said : ' Wait tiU M. and Mdme. Arnauld come,
and then we shall see.'
The first opportunity for enforcing the rale occurred when a
novice took the veU shortiy after Easter. Many friends were

54 HONOUR THY FATHER [cHAt.
present at the ceremony, and they were all entertained outside
the cloistered precincts instead of inside, as formerly. Several
of the guests protested against this innovation, and those who
knew M. Arnauld said that his daughter wOuld never dare to
refuse him admission.
The charge of innovation was now often heard. The Cister
cian monks said Angelique was a schismatic and an innovator,
who was destroying all their good old customs ; they called her
an infatuated girl, and tried to induce the nuns to rebel against
her rale. There is no doubt that strict exclusion and seclusion
did introduce many changes, and the nuns in their ignorance
thought that Angelique was inventing new rules, when she
was merely re-asserting the old. As the nuns were neither to
pay visits nor receive them, there was not much difficulty in
inducing them to give up the use of starch and gloves and
masks, although they had hitherto taken as much care of their
muslins, their hands, and complexions, as young ladies in
society. They ceased to do so when, in addition to being
reminded that it was contrary to their rules, no one saw the
result of their attention bestowed upon their personal appear
ance. That elaborate dressing of the hair for which they
had even endured ecclesiastical reproof, their fashionable
sleeves and the dainty material for their robes — all were re
nounced. The monks who still had access to the parlour pro
tested, for they knew that modesty and simplicity were not
virtues which they had much interest in cultivating.
t But Angehque had Father Basil on her side. His zeal was
that of a new convert, and fanned the flame which Angelique
had kindled, so that she met with no open opposition within
the abbey waUs. Her parents received no reports now that
Mdme. JumeauvUle had left, and they did not know that there
was anything to caU for their interference.
M. Arnauld was, as usual, applying to the Pope for fresh
bulls. There was always danger lest it should be convenient
to discover and punish the fraud by which they had been ob
tained for Angehque when she was nine, and again when she
was eleven years old. She was now nearly eighteen, and her
father thought that the time had come for teUing the trath,
asking pardon, and securing her future position. He ex
perienced some difficulty in this matter, for it was concluded
that he had been farming tiie abbey for his own advantage,

v.] AND THY MOTHER. 55
and restitution of all the proceeds was demanded from him.
He was, however, able to prove that far from receiving any
thing, the house was so poor and dUapidated that it had cost
him large sums to repair and support it. And then he pleaded
the reform undertaken by his chUd, and urged that although
she was so young, the blessing of God had rested upon her
work, and would no doubt prosper it It is said that the
Pope expressed great satisfaction at Angelique's conduct, and
granted the bulls without further expense to M. Arnauld. Her
first profession was declared null and void, and in order to
remain nun and Abbess she was to renew her vows within six
months. She heard of this, and prayed that her father might
forget the time, and then she would be free, and could join
some strict society or even become a lay-sister.
Meanwhile summer was drawing on. When term time was
over and the vacations came her father would visit her ; what
was she to do ?
' Obey your rale literally,' said Father Basil ; ' write and
inform your father that your conscience will not allow you to
receive him, and that if he should resolve on visiting you after
receiving this your humble prayer, you must exercise your
authority as Abbess and close the doors against him.'
These were hard words. Hitherto the love of parents and
her sense of duty towards them had influenced AngeUque more
strongly than any other motive. In later years she used to
regret having followed Father Basil's advice, because she
thought she might have attained her object without causing
her parents so much pain, and with far less suffering to herself
But in this early stage of her life she saw no other way than
literal obedience to advice when it pointed to the path of duty.
Still when the time came she could not write this terrible
letter either to father or mother; so she addressed her sister,
Mdme. le Maitre, and asked her, at a fitting opportunity, to
explain to her parents that, by the grace of God, she had
begun to reform Port Royal and had re-estabhshed the strict'
seclusion of the nuns. She implored them not to put any
obstacle in her way, and if they proposed to honour her
with a visit during the ensuing vacation, she hoped they
would not be offended if she received them in the parlour^,
as she did other visitors. If they would not consent to ±is
exclusion she must beg them to deprive her of the honour

56 HONOUR. THY FATHER- [chap.
of their presence, for she thought it right to inform them that
her conscience compelled her to refuse to admit them.
Mdme. le Maitre showed the letter to her mother, and
asked what they should do about teUing M. Amauld. His
wife rephed that she knew Angehque, and was not at aU afraid
she would play her father such a trick, and that it was of no
use to speak to him and make him angry about a thing which
would never come to pass.
MeanwhUe Angelique, and those who were aware of her
intention spent much time in prayer for a good issue to the
undertaking. At length the impending visit was announced,
and on the appointed day the large traveUing carriage of the
Arnaulds left Paris for Port Royal. It contained the parents,
with their eldest son Robert, or d'Andilly, as he was called,
who was twenty-one ; Mdme. le Maitre also accompanied
them, and Anne, the fifth in the carriage, who had been
at home for a year and was now fifteen.
Angelique appears to have known her parents rather better
than they knew her; and she asked for the keys of all the
cloistered parts of the monastery and took them into her own
charge. The Arnaulds arrived at dinner-time. The nuns were in
the refectory, but the Abbess was in the church alone, kneeling
before the altar, and asking help for the trial that was at hand.
She heard the carriage arrive, and went to the cloister door and
waited whilst they all got out. Her father knocked, and she
then opened a wicket, and begged him to go into a smaU
parlour near the gate, where she could speak to him through
the grating.
If ever man was surprised it was M. Arnauld. He argued,
persuaded, commanded, and at length growing angry knocked
louder and louder, insisting that the door should be opened.
For all answer Angehque continued humbly to beg him to
enter the parlour, where she would have the honour of explain
ing her conduct to him. Mdme. Arnauld now came forward
and addressed Angelique as her ungrateful child; whilst
d'AndUly, whose anger knew no bounds at seeing his father,
and indeed the whole family, set at defiance by a girl of
eighteen, addressed her with passionate invective, called her a
monster of ingratitude, a parricide, who would have to answer
to God for the death of her father, and entreated the nuns

v.] ¦ AND THY MOTHER. 57
not to allow their benefactor to be driven with insult from
their doors.
The sound of angry voices reached the refectory, and those
who were on Angelique's side looked at each other in silence
and prayed God to strengthen her heart But good old Dame
Morel, who had probably not then given up the key of her little
garden, went into the courtyard to find the nun who kept the
key of the gate, saying angrily that it was a shame to keep out
M. Arnauld. Many nuns said the same, and even the men
and women at work in the abbey and employed and fed by the
Abbess's bounty, exclaimed that she must have a hard unfeel
ing heart since she treated her father in such a manner, and
a father who was so generous to the poor and had done so
much good in those parts for her sake.
Before long there was a tumult on both sides of the Abbess,
but she had the keys in her own keeping, and her resolution
did not falter. Her father saw this, and, changing his tactics,
he demanded his two daughters, Agnes, who had not yet taken
the veil, and Marie, who was nine years old.
Angehque divined his intention. He had a right to claim
them, and when the door was opened for their exit, he expected
to force his way in, and settle the difficulty by taking his usual
place in the abbey. Her presence of mind did not forsake her.
She assented to his demand, and gave the key of a side door in
the church to a nun on whom she could rely, bidding her send
the two sisters out that way. It was done so quietly that M.
Arnauld suspected nothing, and so quickly that his daughters
were at his side before he knew from whence they had
come. Their brother assailed them with bitter complaints of Ange
lique's conduct, but Agnes, in her grave and yet simple manner,
replied that her sister was not wrong ; she had done what her
conscience dictated and the Council of Trent approved.
Whereupon d'Andilly angrily interrapted her, ' Come, come ! '
said he, ' this is too much. Here is another with her Canons
and her Councils 1 '
Mdme. le Maitre and Anne Amauld stood aloof and said
nothing. They felt for their father, but they knew how much
Angelique must also be suffering, and compassion for her, not
unmixed with admiration, kept them silent.
When M. Arnauld saw that Angelique was not to be moved,

S8 HONOUR THY FATHER [chap.
he gave orders that the carriage should be prepared for im
mediate return to Paris.
He consented before his departure to grant the request that
his daughter urged with such persistent humiUty, and to enter
the little parlour built outside the abbey wall. Angelique went
into the corresponding parlour on the inner side and opened
the wicket of communication, so that they saw each other for
the first time that day. M. Arnauld was deeply agitated ; he
spoke in a low tone and as briefly as possible ; reminded Ange
lique how tenderly he loved her, how dear her happiness and
her welfare had been to him, so that everything which con
cemed her had taken precedence of his own affairs. She
had now made it impossible for him to give her any further
proofs of his affection, but he should never cease to love
her. He should not see her again, but at this last meet
ing he made one request, urged one petition, and it was that
for his sake she would not sacrifice health and life in her
indiscreet zeal.
Up to this time Angelique's courage and fortitude had not
failed. Her father's reproaches, the anger of her mother and
brother, had affected but not overwhelmed her. But her
father's grief and the half-broken sentences which he had
difficulty in uttering were too much : she could bear no more,
and for all answer to his tender words she fainted and fell
insensible to the ground. In a moment everything was changed.
M. Arnauld only saw that his child was dead, for so he thought
when he saw her still white face, and that he could not get to
her. He shouted for help, but the nuns ran from, instead of
towards, his voice. Her mother and brother knocked at the
convent door and implored the nuns to come quickly, but they
thought this was a last attempt to force an entrance, and kept
out of the way. At last some one distinguished d'Andilly's
words, and heard that he was entreating them to go to their
Abbess, who was dying or dead in the parlour.
They hurried in, and found her rigid and insensible. When
they had succeeded in restoring her 'to consciousness she
slowly opened her eyes and turned them to the wicket through
which the poor father was watching her. With great difficulty
she spoke and asked him 'just one favour' — that he would
not go away that day.
He was ready to promise whatever his child cared to ask.

v.] AND THY MOTHER. 59
and the Abbess was carried to her own room until a couch
was prepared for her near the wicket. When she was some
what better they brought her down and placed her on the
couch ; and father, mother, brother, and sisters, who were all
now in the outer parlour, watched her through the small
opening. The whole family was united by such strong bonds of love
that their anger was but transient ; and in their hearts there
was a considerable amount of admiration for the young girl's
courage. They talked quietly, and listened calmly and even
respectfully whilst she explained her conduct and motives ;
and M. Arnauld was convinced, or at any rate he yielded
in every particular to her wishes.
And now Father BasU, who had prudently kept out of the
way whilst the storm was raging, thought this was a favourable
moment for coming forward to acknowledge and justify his
advice, and give his reasons for it. Never was man so mis
taken. They all assailed him, and if he did not regret his
conduct he had good reason to regret his attempt to justify it
Angelique was very sorry for him ; she respected him, and
believed that his advice had been conscientiously given, but
she could not help seeing that his judgment was at fault He
had told her that she would be guilty of mortal sin if she did
not obey him and exclude her parents ; she obeyed, and yet
obedience did not satisfy her conscience. She thought the
end she had attained was right, but regretted the means used,
and felt that her own judgment, directed by filial affection,
would have been a safer guide than the priest. No doubt it
was of great advantage to her to learn this lesson so early,
although what she suffered on that day very nearly cost her
her life.
M. Amauld and his family stayed at Port Royal until the
following morning, and were entertained in the guest chamber
outside the cloister walls. Agnes and little Marie were quietly
sent back again without any explanation on either side. It
was arranged that henceforth M. Arnauld was free to enter all
except the cloistered parts of the convent, and to visit out-
buUdings, chapel, and gardens, and give orders concerning
them as he had hitherto done; whilst Mdme. Arnauld and
her daughters were to be received whenever they wished to
stay at Port Royal.

6o HONOUR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER, [ch. v.
But the breach between mother and daughter was not so
easily healed. Mdme. Arnauld in the first moment of anger
had taken an oath never to revisit Port Royal, and she did
not dare to break it. More than a year afterwards she heard
a sermon in which it was stated that oaths evil in them
selves and taken in anger were not binding. She was greatly
excited, went home, ordered the carriage immediately, drove
to Port Royal, and had a happy interview with her daughter.
Angelique was so delighted that she never forgot the anniver
sary of this day on which the reconcUiation with her famUy
was completed.
In November 1609 M. Amauld received the bulls from
Rome, which had been granted on condition that his daughter
should renew her vows, within six months. He thought it
desirable to be sUent about them, and as May approached
Angelique hoped that the limitation as to time had been for
gotten, or else that her father intended to grant her wish and
aUow her to resign her charge. This was not the case. M.
Amauld's plan was once more to surprise his daughter into
acquiescence. He heard that the Abbot of Clairvaux was in
the neighbourhood of Port Royal, and begged him to go im-
expectedly and request the renewal of his daughter's vows.
The Abbot arrived in the evening, and Angelique, seeing no
way of escape, prepared to obey. She sat up all night making
herself a new dress, for the nuns protested that it was im
possible their Reverend Mother could wear her old, shabby,
every-day gown on such a solemn occasion. She yielded to
their wishes, but selected the coarsest serge for her new dress
which could be procured.
On the 7th of May, 16 10, she renewed her vows, but
she thought it permissible to do so with considerable mental
reserve. She resolved to keep the three important vows of
poverty, chastity, and obedience, but not to bind herself to
her own order or her own monastery, for she intended to
leave them at the earhest opportunity.

CHAPTER VI.

WITHIN THE HOUSE.

It is impossible to foUow the memoirs in then: diffuse detaUs
of the years that follow this memorable 1609, and we must
be contented with an outline of the work done and the pro
gress made, until we reach another important landmark.
Angelique saw that although her father submitted to her
views, he did not adopt them, nor did he approve of her design
of thorough and complete reform in the monastery. She re
solved therefore, for the future, not to ask him for the supplies
which he had hitherto so wUhngly granted, but to be contented
with what the abbey provided. The poverty of the nuns
became at once a reahty, they saw that there must be restric
tions in the matter of food and clothing, and that with a
diminished income they must find means of giving more instead
of less to the poor. Angelique sold all the silver vessels
belonging to the abbey and spent the money, but even then
they were pinched. By degrees furniture, clothes, and food
were reduced to the barest necessaries of life. The nuns bore
all privations cheerfully, nay joyfully. Their numbers increased,
and the accommodation which the house afforded was neces
sarily more and more restricted. There were only twelve cells
in the dormitory. The infirmary was low, and as damp as
a cellar, and it was always full. 'The new-comers,' says
Angelique simply, ' were nearly always ill, but even that did
not disgust them.' Many good and pious nuns, hearing of the
movement set on foot by Angehque, obtained permission to
join the community at Port Royal ; for good is contagious like
evU, and attracts also that which is of its own nature. They

62 WITHIN THE HOUSE. [chap.
were seldom wanted in their own monastery, and an abbess
attached to the ' good old customs of the order ' was glad to
send away dangerous innovators. At Port Royal they doubt
less experienced many discomforts ; but in these early days
there was an ardour and enthusiasm of charity, submission,
and faith, which lifted them into new and higher regions of
existence. Port Royal was poor; but the poverty of the nuns was nothing
compared to the poverty they saw on all sides among peasants
who found no demand for their labour, no means of tiUing the
ground or obtaining food. Angelique's practical mind had
already decided that she and her nuns must fast, not on
account of some benefit to accrae to themselves from fasting,
but that they might have something to give away. She also
resolved to find work for the poor and pay them for it, as she
feared that alms would make them idle mendicants, who would
no longer give themselves any trouble to obtain work. No doubt
in this she was guided by what she had seen of the management
of the poor on her father's estate. He gave employment to aU,
but alms only to the sick and aged. Probably by his advice,
and certainly with his assistance, a few years later a large
number of poor men, women, and children were employed to
rebuild the cloister walls, which were in a very dilapidated
condition. They received small wages and their daUy food.
Soup, meat, and bread were prepared in the kitchen of Port
Royal, and taken in barrows to the garden, where they were
served out with a measure of wine to each person. The
Abbess and some of the Sisters presided and distributed the
food, and the labourers were very well behaved whUst they
were eathig. Angelique, to whom all that related to the body
was but a type of the far higher needs of the soul, used to set
up a littie boy in their midst who had been taught by the nuns,
and he read aloud from ' a spiritual book suited to their capa
city, so that body and soul might derive benefit at the same
time.' One day when the chUd was reading, a labourer made
some irreverent remark : the Abbess could not answer, but she
looked at him and burst into tears.
She used to say that the troubles of this hfe only affected her
on account of their influence over the soul, and because they
induced rebellion against God. No doubt she did always look
beyond the immediate present to a future life and an unseen

VI.] WITHIN THE HOUSE. 63
world, but she had a warm, tender heart, and sympathetic
nature, to which her own words do scanty justice. She could
never look unmoved on human suffering, but must try to relieve
it at any cost to herself; her helpful charity was a matter of
instinct, which was encouraged by reflection, and justified by
her convictions.
When she entered the infirmary the sick seemed to grow
suddenly well, and even believed that they were cured of
disease, because the joy of seeing her made them forget their
sufferings. Her charity was not merely lip-service, but was
ready to show itself in performing the most menial acts for the*
poorest and meanest in the community.
In order to be of more use she added surgery to her other 1
acquirements, and was especially expert in blood-letting. It
was a favourite remedy in the sixteenth century, but cannot
have been well suited to the ailments of women enfeebled by
ague and low fever. Angelique seems to have used the lancet
with considerable vigour. We hear of a nun with a sore
foot which defied the unguents of Port Royal, and had to be
treated by a surgeon from Paris. He said the cause of her
suffering was that the membrane surrounding the bones had
been punctured when she was bled.
On another occasion we hear of Angelique kneeling before a
nun whom she is trying to bleed, and holding the foot in warm
water for two hours untU she is weak and weary, and the great
drops of perspiration start from her brow.
Or we find her in the infirmary where there is a nun shiver
ing so violently in a fit of ague that she cannot keep the bed
clothes on her narrow couch. The Abbess says ' merrily ' that
they are not heavy enough, and lies down across the bed over
the sick woman's feet ; and there, after some hours' search, she
is found consoling and comforting her.
Very often when she was wanted in the parlour or for important
matters she would be found in a comer of the kitchen, sitting
on an upturned basket and talking to a lay-sister who had asked
for her, and whom she had gone to seek so as not to interrupt
her work. A novice once told her with many tears that she
had a wound in the leg, which she had not spoken of, because
she was afraid that if the Sisters knew it they would not receive
her into the community. It had now become so much worse
that concealment was no longer possible.

64 WITHIN THE HOUSE. [chap.
Angelique's compassion and sympathy were at once aroused.
She said the matter should remain a secret which they would
both keep faithfully. She undertook the surgical treatment of
the case, and as one of the nuns was suffering in a similar
manner was able to obtain the necessary remedies without
applying for them in the dispensary. The sore leg was soon
made sound by her care and judicious treatment, the novice
took the veil in 1613, and as Sister Garnier was one of the
most devoted nuns in Port Royal, ready to follow her Abbess
whithersoever she might lead.
The memoirs of the nuns of Port Royal abound in anec
dotes which show that it was at this time that the foundation
of Angelique's influence was laid, and that she obtained it
by her love and tender care for the bodies as well the souls of
those around her. We see growing up under her hands the
ftugal, weU-ordered household, in which there is no waste and
no extravagance, something to spare for the poor and needy,
and above all peace and goodwUl. She was very open-handed,
and always wished the abbey guests to be treated hospitably,
but with the simphcity that befitted their entertainers. She
gave the best fare to the Capuchin friars and poor monks who
were not accustomed to receive it ; when it was urged that they
did not get such good living in their own monasteries, she re
plied that as they had plenty of opportunities for mortifying
the flesh, it might be well for them sometimes to receive thank-
,'Offerings. Nevertheless she was by no means pleased when
these same guests, as was often the case, asked for and expected
the best of everything.
Her first care had been to set her house in order, to remove
abuses which had crept in, to re-establish the rules of poverty
and strict seclusion, and to prepare her nuns for that absolute
surrender of self, which the Cistercian order requires. She
:said that every tie, every affection, every appetite ought to
be shaken off by those who had renounced the world, and
could not therefore understand the true monk or nun thinking
of what they should eat, what they should drink, or where
withal they should be clothed. She desired to see their souls
enriched by Divine love and sacred poverty, by humiUty and
ardent charity, and thought everything around them should
be poor and mean, so that they themselves might be Uving
temples • for the most High God. Churches and vestments

vi.] WITHIN THE HOUSE. ' 65
she considered as the mere externals of religion and matters
of no importance.
By degrees she induced the nuns to make all the changes
required by the Cistercian rale. Silence was enforced, fasts
were observed, matins were chanted at 2 a.m., and nuns shared
with lay-sisters the menial work of the infirmary, the garden, and
the kitchen. The ardour of those early times affected even
the young chUdren in the convent school. They also tried to
find opportunities for mortification and penance, and for over
coming their likes and dislikes. It occurred to two of these
chUdren that an excellent method of attaining this end would
be to gather something very nasty out of the garden, make it
into tisane or herb tea, and drink it So they collected their
materials, taking, among other things, a number of berries of the
deadly nightshade, which, doubtless, they had been told were
very nasty indeed. In accordance with the example of the
Sisters they felt that the ' act of mortification ' must be accom
panied by an 'act of charity'; so they told Marie Arnauld,
who was then between nine and ten years old, and gave her
permission to drink with them.
She was a very dainty little creature, whose fanciful ap
petite occasioned her sister, the Abbess, considerable trouble,
and she would certainly not haye ' discovered this form ot
mortification if left to herself; but she was quite as eagei
as her companions to follow the example of the nuns, and
acceded at once to the proposal that she should drink the
tisane. As she sat watching the others whilst they con
cocted it, a nun fortunately entered the room and saw
that something was amiss, for little Marie was pale and
trembling. She would not at first tell what was going on ;
but finally yielded to the persuasion of the Sister, and v/as
immediately dispensed from the fulfilment of her promise,
whilst her companions received a slight reprimand for their
indiscreet zeal.
Before the renewal of Angelique's vows, and when her
whole thoughts were occupied with plans for leaving Port
Royal and retiring to the solitude of some remote monastery,
she used constantly to talk to the children, especially to littie
Marie, of this life in the desert, where she would spend all
"her time in prayer to God. Indeed throughout the whole of
her active and usefiil life the contemplation of this impos-
S.L. XIIL I'

66 WITHIN THE HOUSE. [chap.
sible future of solitude and prayer gave her the greatest joy.
Littie Marie was very fond of her sister, and made Angelique
promise to take her into the desert also. Angelique, with her
practical turn of mind, at once took advantage of this to check
the child's dainty habits, telling her that she could not think of
taking her where there would be nothing but roots and vege
tables. And thus she taught the little one to overcome her likes
and dislikes, and in later years to surpass all others in self-
denial and contentment with the humblest and poorest fare.
The story deserves mention as explaining the secret of
Angelique's success. Visionary and impossible as some of
her aims may have been, there was always a practical applica
tion of them, and she seized on every sign of grace, every
touch of relenting in those around her, to lead them onward
in the difficult path of self-denial and self-sacrifice.
We have said that she did not think it right to accept
assistance from her father until he .approved of her design
of reforming the monastety, and that in consequence of the
supplies being cut off, which were at that time necessary to
supplement their income, she and her nuns often suffered
privation. She taught them to bear it joyfully, sapng that
poverty does not deserve its name unless it make us suffer.
She had moreover an absolute certainty of conviction that
God would provide all things necessary. It cost her no
effort whatever to leave the future in His hands, and in the
present she accepted everything, either privation or plenty,
as from Him.
At that time it was very difficult for a portionless woman to
obtain admission to a convent, for the dowjy of the nuns
increased the wealth of a rich house, or paid the debts of a
poor one. Angelique always had a great dislike to the bar
gaining which went on between an abbess and the friends
of a candidate, in which each tried to overreach the other,
the abbess to get as much, and the friends to give as littie
as possible. She attributes this to her pride — courage humain
— as she caUs it, which made her think the traffic shamefiil
and mean.
A Capuchin friar who preached at Port Royal found that
only one or two of the nuns had been confirmed, and that
not one of them knew the meaning of Confirmation or under
stood that it was one of the Sacraments of the Church. He

VI.] WITHIN THE HOUSE.' 67
explained it to them and begged the Archbishop, M. d'Auch,
to go to Port Royal and confirm them. This was done ; and
the prelate, in his conversation with the young Abbess who
was so anxious to leam her duty as well as wiUing to do it,
told her that it was simony, the crime of Simon Magus, to
exact payment for the reception of a nun. She had always felt
it was disgraceful, and now she found it to be a sin. Many
reverend fathers tried to convince her that this very incon
venient doctrine was a mistake ; but her instinctive dislike to
what was mean was strengthened by religious principle, and
she was inflexible in her resolve never again to entertain the
question of dowry, but to receive or refuse a candidate accord
ing to her fitness for the vocation. She would neither accept
nor reject any one on account of money.
In those early days, when the poverty of the community
must have sorely tried her father's kind and generous heart,
many girls, daughters of wealthy parents, applied for ad
mission to Port Royal. M. Arnauld may have used his
influence in the matter, and have hoped indirectly to remove
the pressure of poverty ; but the Abbess very rarely approved
of any of the candidates. She had suffered so much herselt
that she understood how grave an evil it is to compel a person
to enter a monastery who is not attracted to the life.
A friend of her father's had, in spite of protests and entreaties,
compelled his youngest son to enter the Church at twelve years
old. One day when the poor boy was hunting, he was thrown
from his horse and killed. Angelique was told of this and
said : ' God loved his mother too much to' let her fault go
unpunished. She had allowed her son to hold benefices, and
he had no vocation for the Church.'
One day she was sitting in the parlour with a nun, when
four candidates were ushered in. They came from Chartres ;
three of them had wealthy parents, who were prepared to give
each daughter a handsome portion ; the fourth was the daughter
of an advocate, a man of good family, but very poor and with
many children. He had nothing to give his giris, and there
fore no chance of placing them in an ordinary monastery, but
had been advised to send his Marie with the other three to
Port Royal. As they entered the room the Abbess watched
them closely, and whispered to the nun who sat by her :
' That littie one at the back is the only one that will stay.'
F 2

68 WITHIN THE HOUSE. [chap.
And she did stay, whilst the others after due probation were
sent home to their parents. She was Sister Marie des Anges,
Of whom we have more to hear. Angelique used to say : ' I
saw at a glance her piety, modesty, and sweet humihty ; her
face showed them, and indeed on that first day she was in
those respects exactly what she is now.'
It so happened once that a Sister who had taken the veil,
brought with her a dowry which paid all the debts of the
household and provided for their immediate wants ; just at the
same time Angelique received payment for the sale of timber
belonging to the abbey. She did not know what to do with
so much money, and laughed at herself for her uneasiness,
saying, God had done well to keep her poor, since a little
money gave her so much anxiety.-
The Cistercian rule enjoins the use of serge under garments,
and Angelique desired to substitute them for Unen, but the
Prioress objected. She said that serge was dirty, and fostered
vermin ; it would be far better to have coarse linen, so coarse
that it would be even rougher than serge. Angelique replied
that the want of cleanliness could be remedied by frequent
washing, and as for linen, however rough it might be at first,
it became soft with age. When her father heard of the pro
posed change he thought it arose from poverty, and therefore
made her a present of linen for under garments, but she would
not use it. And gradually by persuasion, enforced by that
strongest of all arguments, her own example, she induced
all the household to consent to this 'mortification of the
flesh.' On the point of total abstinence from meat she knew that
she would have to encounter far more serious opposition.
Already fast days were observed strictly, and, meat was eaten
only three times a week. Many of the Sisters strongly pro-
tesf;ed against any additional restrictions, and M. Arnauld,
who feared for his daughter's health, offered to supply all the
meat required if she proposed to give it up on the score ot
economy. But this was not the case. The Abbot of Charmoye told
her in 1612 that abstinence from meat was still wanting to
complete the reform she had inaugurated. She saw at that
time that such a step could not be attempted with any chance
of success, so she waited for two years, and then with her

VL] . WITHIN THE HOUSE. 69
usual unselfish zeal tried the experiment first of all upon
herself. Everyday a small portion of omelette covered over
with a thin slice of mutton was served in the refectory, so
that the good Prioress who came at that time to pay her
respects to the Abbess, discovered no change in her diet;
Angehque ate the omelette and left the mutton. Night and
morning this was her repast for some months, until she had
convinced herself that she required nothing more. When she
had done so she found no difficulty in establishing abstinence
from meat throughout the monastery. The Prioress reproach
fully said that she had been imposed upon, but Angelique
replied that she could not ask others to consent to a thing
. which she had not tried fairly for herself, and that she would
have had great difficulty in making the experiment if the
Sisters had disapproved of it The rule of total abstinence
in' regard to meat was never broken after 16 14 except by
the doctor's orders, and in consequence of failing health or
advancing age.
One of the chief difficulties of this time was that of finding
a resident confessor and priest for the abbey. The old man
who had acted in that capacity for many years left as soon as
reforai was established, saying that he was no longer fitted to
direct the nuns. As he could not translate the Pater into
French, opened no book except his breviary, and spent his
time hunting, he was doubtless right He was succeeded by
Father Basil, who was young and rash, and who, after the
memorable scene with M. Arnauld already referred to, was
withdrawn from Port Royal. 'After that an aunt of Cardinal
de Retz told M. Arnauld of a certain Englishman of the house
of Pembroke, Father Archangel, a refugee who had become a
C'apuchin monk. He was now an old man, wise, good, and
of great repute. M. Arnauld consented to his appointment as
director, and Angelique was well pleased with him.
She says thit if he had not been ' imbued with the writings
of the casuists ' he would have been a perfect monk, but these
works had done him much harm. He gave her, however,
' the most useful advice she ever received,' namely, never, on
any consideration, to allow the nuns to speak to a monk,
not even to a Capuchin, and not although he preached like
an angel. Father Archangel rarely visited Port Royal. When
he used to appear riding on an ass, the only manner in which

70 WITHIN THE HOUSE. [chap..
he would consent to travel when he grew old and infirm, there
was great rejoicing in the community. Angelique and the old
man were very good friends, and he appears to have told her
many scandalous stories of Queen Elizabeth, which go far to
prove the wisdom of his own advice that nuns and monks
ought not to gossip together. When he was travelling from
place to place Angelique often sent him supplies of bread and
meat ; and on one of these occasions he said, ' It is a mis
nomer to call you Madame de Pott Royal, your true name is
\ Madame de Cceur Royal, royal hearted; ' and the old English
man was right. He asked Angelique to ally with him Father
Gallot and Father Eustace de St Paul, which she did; and
these three visited Port Royal, preached there, and in those
early days guided and directed the Abbess. She was too young,
ardent, and practical to follow them in their casuistry or to be
much affected by it, but they explained to her the rules of her
order, told her of holy, lives and bright examples, and unfolded
to her the possibility of leading a pure, useful, and unselfish
life. She and her nuns were all equally ignorant ; we have
already seen that they did not know the meaning of Confirma
tion ; neither did any one of them know their Catechism.
From time to time therefore M. Gallot went to Port Royal
ostensibly to teach and explain the Catechism to the pupils in
the convent school. The Abbess and nuns were present, and
derived great advantage from these lessons.
Still the difficulty of finding an ordinary resident confessor
was not solved, and Angelique says that she was always in
quiring for a good confessor, and whenever she heard of one
she applied at once to her ecclesiastical superior and he was
despatched to Port Royal. But monks who were weak and
foolish, and monks who were wicked, wrought her constant
disappointment. Their immorality was well known, and had
to be guarded against ; or rather a scandal in one monastety
was the signal for removing the confessor from rt and placing
him elsewhere, whUst he was replaced by another as depraved
as himself.
It will be remembered that at Port Royal Angelique gravely
reproved the monk and nuns when she was twelve years old,
and that she was on her guard against the young preacher
whose sermon had so greatly excited her when she was seven
teen. When she was twenty the community was exposed to

VI.] WITHIN THE HOUSE. 71
great danger from the confessor, but his intrigues were dis
covered, and she dismissed him with a stern rebuke,
'Ask God to forgive your sins,' she said, 'and know that
so long as you live you shall never enter within these walls.
We know you now. Go, I will never see you again.'
She found that what she calls that ' curious ' passion, avarice,
which was' characteristic of nuns as well as monks, was en
couraged by the priests. They spoke of ' spoUing the
Egyptians,' and said that it was a service done to God to
obtain wealth for Him which would otherwise be squandered
in extravagant living and the keeping of dogs and horses. But
Angelique could not see that the wealth of religious houses
was spent in any better manner, or that rich vestments and
lavish expenditure in the monastery was a more legitimate
excess than that practised in the world. She discovered that
there was as much emulation in the Church with regard
to ornaments and vestments as there was in society as to
dress and jewels ; abbots and abbesses were as anxious to
obtain new chants and keep them for the exclusive use of
their own convent as art collectors 'were to obtain a
masterpiece. Angelique says that she cared nothing for any of these
things, and that her indifference did not arise from religion
or piety, but because they seemed to her so trivial. But she
saw that the priests profited by them, and had every reason to
promote the relaxation of rules which she was striving to
restore to their primitive severity, and to foster the sphit of
self-indulgence and self-gratification which she was trying to
subdue. She therefore opposed them upon principle and in
practice, and they were bitter in their denunciations of the
' infatuated girl,' and the nuns whom she had ' bewitched.'
Some years later, she wrote : ' I want to- show what assistance
and advice nuns may expect to receive from monks, and I
will only point out where they fail to lead us aright, choosing
to be silent as to those darker ways by which they lead us to
evil. When an abbess is proud the confessor is her lacquey.
I have seen one at work in the garden of an abbess, laying
out the beds and borders in devices to represent her monogram
and arms. I have seen another bearing the train of a proud
abbess's robe as a lacquey bears that of a great lady. And
then if an abbess is humble and respects the priestly office,

72 WITHIN THE HOUSE. [chap. vi.
the confessor becomes a master and tyrant, so that she dare
do nothing without his orders, which are ///>-orders.'
She goes on to say how anxious the monks are to involve
monasteries in lawsuits, as it is a sure means of gratifying
themselves by a journey to Paris, which is as pernicious to their
own souls as it is to the welfare of the monastery ; how they
ridicule all notions of reform, and laugh at the nuns for giving
up the use of masks and gloves and starched frills ; how they
liave their own private pecidium or property, buy and sell, rent
farms, spend their time at the chase, and so on. She continues :
' I will not speak of the expense which they entaU, for although
their theory is that priests whom they csX\. secular, receive much
Ingher salary than monks who ask for nothing but food and
clothing, my own experience is quite the reverse. Because
not only does the food and clothing of the confessor amount
to just whatever he pleases, but there is a continual influx of
monks to the convent, so that dozens at a time come to par
take of our hospitality, and the confessor's table is a very good
table d'hote. Bachelors of art are sent to us, and we must bear
the expense of procuring their degree as doctors of divinity.
And then there are the confessor's nephews who must be
provided for, and in short so many other things that if they
were written down they would astonish all honest people.
'There is a celebrated abbey belonging to our order in
Flanders, and when the babies in that neighbourhood cry,
their mothers say, "Hush, baby, hush, and you shall be a Pater
at Flyne." ... A person who had been there assured me
that in the confessional he had counted as many as seventeen
little pillows, with which the confessor made himself comfort
able.' She proceeds to tell of a certain wicked old abbot who
always shed tears at the benediction of an abbess if the sum
of money presented to him on the occasion was less than he
expected, and who was such a miser that he died with his
purse in his hand.
We must bear in mind that .Angelique could not discover an
abuse without trying to remove it and we shall not be surprised
to find that the experience gained in her youth influenced her
strongly and made her ultimately resort to the only measure
which seemed to ofier a remedy for all these evils.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SISTERS.

When Agnes resigned the Abbey of St. Cjrr in order to join
Angelique she retained her dress as a Benedictine novice, but
in 1 612 she tpok the veil at Port Royal, and thus became
a member of the Cistercian order. She had desired to take
this step sooner, but Angelique would not accede to her
request, for she thought that although her sister's nature was
pure and good thare were no signs of grace about her.
Agnes was devout, but she was also proud and ambitious.
She asked God why she had not been born a Princess of France^
and despised as well as disliked the humiliations and penance
which were deemed essential in the training of a novice. Before
she entered on her probation Angelique asked her whether she
could submit to the punishment that would be inflicted upon
her if, for example, she w:as late at church or in the refectory ;
she answered coldly and proudly that she should not be late.
The two sisters were very unlike in character; Angelique
large-hearted, clear-headed, and strongly attracted by practical
work. Agnes reserved, proud, find in these early years self-
engrossed. Angelique, as we have seen, turned to Plutarch's
Lives for interest and amusement, but Agnes to the Life of
St Theresa. She was deeply tinged with mysticism, longed
for a hfe of prayer, and had a strong tendency towards asce
ticism. When she was fourteen Father Archangel said that she
would become one of the most illustrious nuns in France ;
Angelique had faith in this prediction, and resolved to try and
remove every defect which might mar the perfection of her
sister's character.

74 1'HE SISTERS. [chap.
One day when Agnes was carrying a can of oil to clean the
choir lamps she spilt it over her dress and on the steps of the
church. Any other novice would have been greatly troubled
at such an accident, but to the lips of Agnes rose the words,
' Thy name is as oil poured forth ' ; for visible things were only
an image of the spiritual truths on which she was always medi
tating. However she did what she could to remedy the disaster
by wiping up the oil, and then she went to her abbess sister,
and very gravely confessed a fault whigh did not particularly
affect her. Angehque, who also looked beyond the imme
diate present, thought this an excellent opportunity ' to make
the virgin's lamp burn the brighter for the loss of the oU,'
so she said that the greasy dress must be worn unwashed untU,
the due time came for changing it She knew that .this would
be the severest punishment she could inflict on the young ghl ;
for she was very fastidious, and yet so scrupulous and atten
tive to all her duties that it had hitherto been impossible
to check or punish what the Abbess considered a grievous
fault in a nun. For six weeks Agnes wore the dress by day
and slept in it at night ; ' it was a horrible mortification to
her,' says Angehque, which we can well believe.
Angehque thought it an imperfetiion in Agnes that she had
a tendency to work beyond her strength, for she saw that
although this arose partly from the ardour of her nature there
was also a touch of pride in it which made her shrink from
the possibUity of being rebuked for duty unfulfiUed. She saw
also that prayer and fasting were in danger of leading her
away from the practical work for which they ought to have
prepared her.
One day as a ' mortification ' the Abbess sent for her when
she was in church, and she went out 'weeping bitterly.' Many
years afterwards Angelique said, ' Ah, Mother Abbess, do you
remember the day when I fetched you \\'eeping from the choir,
because you cared for nothing but prayer ? It is forty years
ago, but I am sure that if I were to keep you away from
church now you would weep as bitterly as you did then.- Cer
tainly there is no cure for our old diseases.'
As she was a delicate giri Angelique would not always aUow
her to attend matins, which were chanted at 2 a.m., and this
jirivation always cost her many tears.
She did not, however, neglect any duty assigned to her, and

VIL] THE SISTERS. ' 75

looked upon all work as sacred, doing it 'with her might'
She would scour the kitchen pans with such energy that her
fingers were blistered, and was so much respected by the
novices that she was appointed their Mistress whilst she was
herself a novice. She fulfilled her duties admirably; and
trained her pupils to habits of obedience, industry, charity, and
piety, so that not one of the nuns resented the appointment
or felt that it had been ill-bestowed. In 16 12, when she was
nineteen, she took the veil, and henceforward was a fellow-
worker with her sister.
AVhen Mdme. des Portes was placed in charge of the
Abbey of St Cyr, which she was to hold until Agnes was
twenty, M. Amauld stipulated that she should maintain and
educate the little Abbess elect and one of her sisters ;
the sister chosen was Anne, bom in 1594, and one year
younger than Agnes. Anne is the little girl who used to go
with Agnes to Port Royal to play with Angelique; like Agnes,
she was brought up to the strict observance of forms and
ceremonies, and was shocked to find that their sister thought
that as she was an Abbess she need not pay any attention
to them. Anne was attracted by monastic life, or rather
she says that she was very fond of her sister Angelique, and
at thirteen she expressed a wish to be a nun and live at Port
Royal. Her father did not approve of this proposal, and said
that he would never consent to it. He had yielded to the
wish of his father-in-law, M. Marion, with regard to Angehque
and Agnes, and was not sorry to see two of his daughters hold
ing abbeys. Matters, however, were not so prosperous as he
had expected they would have been, for at that time Angehque
had begun to cause them great anxiety. When, therefore, in
1608, Anne went to Andilly for the vintage with AngeUque,
Agnes, and Marie, she was not allowed to retum to St Cyr;
indeed the pleasant countty life very soon made the thought
of a convent distasteful. She was at once introduced into
society, and at fourteen was amusing herself with the pleasures
and vanities of the world, and had forgotten the pious resolves
of her childhood.
Anne, Uke Angdlique, had at one time some idea of be
coming a Huguenot. But the motives guiding the two sisters
were not alike. Angehque wished to escape from the monastery
and enter the world. Anne, who was in the worid, found her

76 THE SISTERS. [chap.
Catholic* friends most 'lamentably ignorant of all that con
cemed Christian piety,' and thought that her Huguenot rela
tions had a monopoly of all the Christian virtues. This made
her doubt which of the two could be the true faith, and she
had almost come to the conclusion that it must be what was
called the heresy, and had begun to reflect on what it would
cost her to leave the Catholic Church ; but in 1613 she was
attacked by small-pox, she expected to die, was tormented by
fear of the wrath of God, and in her anguish vowed to serve
Him absolutely and entirely in whichever was the true religion.
She recovered, and seems to have thought no more of Pro
testantism. Probably it was at Port E.oyal, whither she had
gone as soon as she was convalescent, that she learned to
believe she had already found the true faith, and need make no
further inquiry. Next there was a project of marriage with a
gentleman for whom she seems to have felt some affection.
But her father broke off the negotiation. Angelique told him
she was sorry he had done so, for she believed Anne's affec
tions were engaged. Upon this the father sent his eldest son
d' Andilly to say that if Anne wished it the affair should go on;
but she, weeping, begged that no further steps might be taken.
The world, of which she had seen so little, was growing dis
tasteful to her.
She returned to Paris in 1615 after a long absence, and
found it in a panic because the Prince de Conde's army was
expected to lay siege to the city, and reduce it by famine and
fire. She thought then of the peace of those who had left the
world, and who had no fear of death before their eyes.
Her father spoke to her again of maixiage, but tiiis time she
answered :
' I assure you, dear father, that if your M. de Guise could
and would marry me, who am only 3. petite demoiselle, I would not
accept him. I must be the bride of a greater than he.'
Her mother first heard of her wish to be a nun from Ange
lique, and exclaimed : ' Impossible ! How wUl she ever make
up her mind to obey you, when she finds it so difficult to obey
her father and me ? Truly one may say that religion works
miracles if it ever comes to pass ! '
Application was next made to M. Arnauld for his permission,
which was refused. In -his usual formal and roundabout manner
he desired Mdme. le Maitre to tell Anne that he would never

Vir.] THE SISTERS.

77

give his consent to such a step whilst he lived, but that after
his death she should be free to do as she pleased; that mean
while he would not urge her to marry, but would simply inform
her ofthe various suitors for her hand ; neither would he compel
her to take any part in the pleas«res of the worid if she dis
liked to do 'so, but would leave her absolutely free in every
respect and at full liberty to see any of the religious ladies who
did her the honour of taking an interest in her welfare.
Father Archangel was consulted, and he told Anne that, since
her father demanded nothing that could be detrimental to her
vocation, he should advise her to remain at home and follow
her usual pursuits for twelve months. Anne accepted the
advice, and acted upon it. For twelve months she remained
'in the world,' taking part in its pleasures, but longing for the
time when she should join Angelique and Agnes arid little
Marie at Port Royal.
Still she said afterwards that it was a happy time, and she
enjoyed this year very much. She visited convents and
churches, and was a devout spectator of religious ceremonies
and services, her heart dancing within her as she thought how
soon these would be all in all to her. Before long whatever
she saw or heard called up an image of this future life that
filled her soul, and even a ballet which was performed before
the Princesses of France transported her 'with joy, and seemed
a foreshadowing of the ineffable beauties of Paradise.
Her father's opposition died out before this enthusiasm ; but
when he found that she had scruples about going to Port
Royal because 'she feared the love of her sisters was drawing
her thither, and that she had some thought of joining the
Carmelites, he was very angry, and said if she must be a nun
she should go to Port Royal and Port Royal only. Then she
urged that the abbey was in the King's gift, and if Angehque
died it would pass into other hands, and there would be an
end of the reform, which was its great attraction. Numerous
conferences ensued, at which Father Archangel was present ;
all the members of the family made long speeches, but they
did not address any one in particular or say exactly what
they meant
, One day Anne left the room, and joined Mdme. le Maitre.
Her father noticed it, and, . thinking she would speak her
mind more freely to her sister, followed her and listened at

78 THE SISTERS. [chap.
the door. Anne saw him there arid showed herself equal to
the occasion. She said at once that she had finally resolved to
do whatever should be most pleasing to her dear father. Where
upon the proud and happy man rashed into the room and
drew from hi.", pocket a Brevet du Roi or deed by which^ in
case of Angelique's death, the abbey was secured to Anne.
Poor man, his business faculty never deserted him, but a
more unsatisfactory set of children to plot and plan for no
father ever had.
After many delays, for giving up Anne cost him a consider
able struggle, she was aUowed to go to Port Royal and commence
her noviciate in October 1616. Her sisters and the nuns received
her with great joy. Agnes, who was Mistress of the Novices,
told her, laughing, that if they followed the rule of St. Benedict,
they ought to greet her with insult and abuse in order to try
if her vocation was real ; but still, although she had not called
her a fool, she intended to treat her as one, and to teach her
humility and implicit obedience.
On the following day her father left 'without seeing her,
for he could not bear the pain of saying good-bye"; and then
Anne bade farewell to her mother and eldest sister, Mdme.
le Maitre. Her father was told that she had shed tears at
parting, and he returned instantly to seek her and beg her to
go back to Paris with him. She entreated him to leave her,
but was so undecided and agitated on that day that she was
afraid she would not have courage to persevere.
When she retired to her bare little cell at night she covered
the small table with a clean white cloth, and seems, as far as
she was able, to have made such preparations for her toUette
as she would have done at home. The Abbess, who entered
and saw it, says that she ' laughed in her' heart,' but said
nothing that night. On the morrow all Anne's dainty httle
appointments were removed ; she did not know the reason of
it, and when at night she again found her cell quite bare she
spread a clean white handkerchief over the table. But Ange
lique was inexorable; everything must go, and Anne must
learn to understand ' the mystery of the poverty of Christ'
Up to that time the postulants, or candidates who were
upon approval, had retained their secular dress; but when
Anne came Angelique designed a simple garment for them,
which was henceforward worn. It was a loose grey robe cut

Vll.] THE SISTERS. 79
on the cross, fastened round the throat, and hanging to the feet.
All kinds of work could be done in it, and this Anne found
when she cleaned the fowl-house, the first office to which she
was appointed.
She had not been long at Port Royal when Father Suffren
came from Paris to see her. She was at work in the kitchen,
and was told to go immediately to the parlour. So she ap
peared before him in her long straight gown, over which was
tied a large black apron ; a knife was hanging by her side, and
she had such hands as might be expected from the fact that
her last occupation had been to scour the saucepans.
The good father exclaimed : 'Verily, MademoiseUe, I never
saw you so adorned ; but don't you want some unguents for
your hands?'
Now care of her pretty white hands, and procuring rare
ointments and washes for them, had been one of Anne's chief
vanities. But she laughed merrily, and said the water in which
she washed the saucepans would do very well, and she wanted
nothing more.
Among the numerous memoirs which form the material for
a history of this period, there is one written by Anne herself,
gi-ving an account of the impression which conventual life pro
duced on her at that time.
She says the first thing which struck her was the solitude of
Port Royal; and that after Paris it seemed to her like the
deserts of the Thebaid, and she Uked it for that reason. And
there was not only the solitude which it owed to its position,
remote from towns or cities, there was also a solitude within
the monastery, and God made them love this separation from
the world, fulfilling His words : ' I will allure her, and bring
her into the -wilderness and speak comfortably unto her.'
And there was great simplicity in the community. Looking
back upon this period after many years had passed, Anne
writes :
' It was the simplicity of childhood. We loved the books
that were given to us to read because they were given to us,
and we received them as the gift of God.
' Sister Agnes taught us to pray, not in any set and fixed
manner, but according to the way in which she saw that God
had touched our hearts. She saw how much I longed to know
God and to be near Him ; and' she taught me when I prayed,

So THE SISTERS. [chap. '

to say: "The meditation of my heart is always in Thy
presence.'' ' When I first entered Port Royal I felt, as it were, a great
void in my soul, which made me very unhappy. I told Sister
Agnes, and she said that I must not be surprised at this, for
I had given up everything upon earth and had not yet been
consoled by God ; so that I was, as it were, between heaven
and earth. About a year afterwards I felt that this void was
fiUed up.
' Also in the first year my mind was troubled by a great fear
of the wrath of God, and by doubt and disbelief. .Father GaUot
advised them to let me read the life of St. Theresa written by
herself, and this consoled and helped me, so that I knew the
book had been sent to me by God.'
The last remark is characteristic of Anne Amauld. She
always prayed to God to help those from whom she asked
advice, and entreated Him to guide them by His spirit ; and
she always returned thanks to God and not to man. She
never said, ' I received great help from such a one ;' but always,
' God helped me greatly through such a one.'
' All the novices,' she says, ' were very anxious to improve,
and all were animated by love for the duties of their vocation.
We rose at two to say matins, and did not go to bed again after
that time. The church was very cold, but no one complained
of it, and our clothing was not much warmer in winter than in
summer. We used to go into the kitchen by turns for a week
together. There we were placed under a lay-sister, whom we
obeyed as if she had been a nun. We liked hard work of
all kinds, and I was particularly fond of sweeping the floors,
remembering that St Theresa took great pleasure in it In
the summer mornings we used to go into the garden and dig
in silence and with great zeal. ^
' Port Royal is situkted in a deep valley, and might well
have seemed desolate and lonely, but, instead of that, when I
looked up at the sky through the dormitory windows I used
to fancy that it was more serene than anywhere else. Every
thing consoled me. 1 remember once, when I was sad, that
I was comforted by seeing the stars ; and another time I was
made glad by hearing our three bells chiming and making a
sweet harmony.
' The nuns went into the ' refectory before entering the

VII.] TIIE SISTERS.

church, and there began chanting the Benedicite and thanks
givings, which they continued in procession and ended in
the church. It was so beautiful that the first time I heard it
it made me think of Paradise. Moreover, I especially liked
the reading aloud at meal-times ; and when one thinks of the
manner in which meals are eaten in the world, this seems to
me one of the most valuable of observances.
'Whilst I was a. no vice a lay-sister died. M. de Charmoye
was present at her death and burial, and I think that the
funeral ceremony of Henri IV., which I saw, was not nearly
so beautiful or so devout.
' There was at that time, a young nun named Claire Martine
at Port Royal, who was really perfect ; and when I heard the
lives of the saints read aloud I used to think that she had all
their virtues. I was in the infirmary at the same time that she
, was, and used to watch her, and she was so pure and good
that to judge from her Hfe one would have thought that Adam
had not fallen. ... - She had a special love for the poor, and
delight in labour done for them ; and this love of the poor and
of almsgiving was characteristic of all the Sisters.
' After I had taken the veil I was filled with such gladness
to think I was a nun that once, when I was alone, I could not
help dancing for joy; and vi^hen I saw a nun with a sad
countenance, I thought she need only look at her black veU.
to be sad no more.'
.Henceforward Anne Arnauld is Sister Anne Eugenie de
I'lncarnation, and we leave her for the present and return
to her younger sister, that little Marie, M. Arnauld's twelfth
child, whom he allowed Angelique to take back with her
from Andilly, in the hope that the child would cheer and
console her.
Marie was bom in Paris in 1600, and was a little prodigy of
wit and beauty. We are told that she spoke distinctiy ' before
she was weaned,' .md that in society every one noticed aud
petted the baby girl as the prettiest thing that could be seen.
She had been named after the Virgin, to whom she looked as
her protectress, and her biographers see the germs of her
later piety in the devotion to the Virgin which she showed as
a chUd of three years old. In driving through Paris, when
ever a picture or statue of the Virgin was passed, she insisted
on having the carriage stopped and her mask taken off— for
S.L. XIIL G

^2 THE SISTERS. [chap.
young children as well as nuns and fine ladies wore masks to
preserve their complexion — and she would then stand at the
carriage door and make a curtsey to the Virgin.
Her beauty was short-lived. She had the smaU-pox before
she was four years old, and as her parents were very anxious
that her face should not be marked, she was smeared with
some kind of plaster which was supposed to be an infaUible
remedy against disfigurement. But a few hours afterwards
she became delirious, and the fever ran so high that Mdme.
Arnauld was afraid that in trying to preserve her beauty
she ran great risk of losing her child, and insisted that, at
any cost, the plaster should be removed. This was done,
but the skin was terribly lacerated and the child's face not
only marked but changed ; after she recovered whenever
she passed a mirror the poor little coquette would put her
tiny hand before her face, and say : ' Ce n'est plus moi,' ' That's
not Marie.' '•
Perhaps the loss of her beauty may account for M. Amauld's
wiUingness to allow her to go to Port Royal.
When Angelique was sixteen and Marie seven, the littie
one was sent to divert the young Abbess, and, except for the
few moments when he angrily demanded that Agnes and Marie
should be given up, her father seems to have had no serious
thought of withdrawing her from the monastery whilst she
was a child, but he did not expect she would become a nun.
He had witnessed Angelique's despair at finding herself chained
to a vocation which she had not chosen ; there had been
good reason to fear that she might resign her abbey and even
incur the disgrace of becoming a Huguenot. He had pur
chased obedience to his will and submission to her fate at a
high price. It had cost the Abbey of St. Cyr, which he had
allowed Agnes to resign so that she might be a companion to
her sister, and he had also given up the younger child as a
plaything. He was an affectionate man, who really loved his
children, and tried to do well for them. He had procured
for two of them the rank of abbess, state and power and
an easy pleasant life. And they had renounced it all, had
chosen hard work and poor fare, poverty and humihation.
He had provided for them the highest seats at the festival,
and they had begun with shame to go down and take the
lowest places. When other sisters wished to foUow their

VII.] THE SISTERS. 83
example he hesitated ; did not yield until he believed the
vocation was freely chosen. At the last moment, as the reader
will remember, he would have taken Anne back with him to
Paris if she would have consented to return, and he now found
it very difficult to give up all hope of having Marie home
some day.
She spent three or four months every summer with her
parents, but returned to Port Royal as her home. When she
was eleven years old she began to have a taste for the world,
and to enjoy the pleasant country hfe at Andilly; and that
year for the first time she shed tears when she was going back
to Port Royal. She was questioned about it, but gave an
evasive answer, for if her father had discovered the truth he
would not have allowed her to retum.
Angelique soon found that an enemy ' had sown tares among
the wheat,' but she was afraid ' lest she should destroy the good
seed with the bad'; so she was patient, bore with Marie's
peevish temper and changed manner and indifference to all
that had formerly interested her, until the child's heart turned
again to this noble, gentle sister with her high aspirations,
saintly life, and tenderness to all around her.
Marie was always specially Angelique's child, trained by her
to habits of self-denial and obedience. It was Marie who
learnt to eat simple food in order that she might accompany
her sister to the desert, and she was taught that she was not
merely to receive but to choose everything that was poor arid
mean. With her natural love of neat and pretty things she is
to be dressed in shabbier clothes than anyone else, and to be
able to laugh when her schoolfellows tease her about her old
gown and say she does not care. She must learn to like
menial work, cooking and washing and scrabbingthe floors, and
this was easy enough to her as it is to most girls. She had also
to go into the dispensary, which she particularly disliked. She
undertook this office from obedience, and when she found that
it was distasteful she devoted herself specially to that work
for the rest of her life. Not that she was actually always at
work in the dispensary, but she was vety often there, superin
tended all the assistants and gave orders for everything that was
prepared. The post was no sinecure, for as we have said the
infirmary was always full.
She is the little child who waited trembling for thr poisonous
G 2

THE SISTERS. [chap, vii.'

tisane, which she was ready to drink for a ' mortification ; ' and
through life she often waited trembling, but she never shrank
from any duty, or neglected any work because it was unpleasant.
She learnt in early life that she was to overcome 'likes and
dislikes,' and the lesson was never forgotten.
Angelique's love for the child was of the highest and noblest
kind, and was shown in her efforts to make Marie pure and
holy. At twelve years old she entered upon her noviciate,
and in 1616, before she was seventeen, she took the
veil. Young as she was, at this critical period she was the
leading spirit among the novices. She had the earnest and
enthusiastic nature of the Arnaulds and their power of in
fluencing others. She had learnt to be obedient, humble,
patient, loving, and silent She was always striving to improve,
and she led the other novices by her example. They followed
her in a path along which she used to say no one could walk,
for the feeble souls who thought they were getting on fast
enough were already far behind. This again is characteristic of
the Arnaulds. None of them can walk in the right path,
they must all ran.
There are now four sisters in Port Royal. The Abbess has
begun to find that reform is no easy task ; the world is against
her, the priests are against her, and the nuns seldom yield
without opposition and resistance. All her hopes therefore
rest on the novices, who may be trained to become her feUow-
workers. ; She has recraited largely from her own family.
Agnes, having resigned her abbey, is Mistress of the Novices,
and Marie is the novice whom all the others look up to and
try to imitate ; Anne, the fashionable young lady from Paris,
is in the first fervour of her conversion, and at present is
absorbed and self engrossed, longing for communion with God,
and attracted chiefly by the sUence and sohtude of monastic
life. Everything indicates preparation, waiting for work to be done
and the girding on of armour for the fray.

CHAPTER VIII.

MAUBUISSON.

The monks of Citeaux used to speak of the Good Women
(bourgeoises) of St Antoine des Champs, the Ladies of
Maubuisson, and the Nuns of Port 'Royal. These Ladies of
Maubuisson had as Abbess Angelique d'Estrees, originally
Abbess of Bertancourt, in the diocese of Amiens. Her sister
Gabrielle d'Estrees, who resided with her at Bertancourt, thought
she was at too great a distance from Paris and Henri IV. She
therefore induced him to bestow the Abbey of Maubuisson
upon Mdme. Angelique, and he did so, after obtaining pos- '
session of it by a very disreputable trick. Maubuisson was
only a few miles from Paris ; the King and the court passed
much of their time there, and it was a fashionable retreat for
women of good family who were compelled to take the veil
and were not deterred by the flagrant immorality of the
inmates of the convent
In 1616 Gabrielle and her royal lover were dead. Henri ,
IV. had been succeeded by his son Louis XIIL But Mau
buisson was unchanged, and the scandalous lives of the Abbess
and her nuns were beginning to be considered as an outrage ,
upon public morality.
The Abbess had twelve children ; four grown-up daughters
attendedTher as maids of honour ; doubtless in chUdhood they
had been Angelique Arnauld's companions (it will be remem
bered that she passed her noviciate at Maubuisson, and took
the veU there at nine years old). The Abbess was preparing
her )''oungest child, who was the daughter of a nobleman, to
succeed her as Abbess of Maubuisson. The others were

86 MAUBUISSON. [chap.
educated and treated in accordance with the rank of their
respective fathers.
It is said that it was Louis XIII. himself who desired the Abbot
of Citeaux to investigate the charges brought against Mdme.
d'Estrees and her nuns. The result of the first inquiry was
to compel her to resign the Abbey of Bertancourt, which. for
twenty-five years she had held in addition to that of Maubuis
son. The Abbot then sent word that he proposed to visit and
inspect Maubuisson. It is scarcely necessary to say that there
had been no inspection in Mdme. d'Estrees' time. She received
the two monks who were the Abbot's messengers mth angry
reproaches, caused them to be imprisoned and kept without
food, and added many further indignities. When she thought
they had received a sufficient lesson she sent them back to
their superior.
She relied on her influential friends and relatives to hush up
the inquiry, and expected the matter to go no further. Very
probably they suggested that it would be well to silence oppo
sition by an assumed appearance of submission and refomi.
In 1616, when she was on her way to Chartres, she -visited
her former novice, Angelique, now Abbess of Port Royal, and
asked her advice. She said that she should verymuch like to
reform Maubuisson, but that it would be a difficult thing to do,
and she should require the co-operation of some good and ex
perienced woman to bring the matter to a successful termination.
Angelique did not doubt her sincerity, and as she retained a
warm affection for the house where she had been child-novice
and nun she said that if she could be of any use she would
gladly leave Port Royal and go to Maubuisson as Mdme.
d'Estrees' prioress, and there do everything in her power to
further her designs.' Perhaps as the Ladies of Maubuisson had
known her as a child they might feel more affection for her
than for a stranger.
Mdme. d'Estrees did not close with this offer ; but she had
obtained all that she wanted. Her visit to Port Royal would
be talked of by the Arnaulds in Paris and at court ; the Abbot
of Citeaux would wait in the hope that she would 'reheve him
of the necessity of undertakmg a difficult and painful task ;
and the Ladies of Maubuisson, for they were never spoken of
as nuns, would rally round and support her at the mere suo'ges-
tion of reform under the auspices of Mdme. de Port Royal -•

VIIL] MAUBUISSON. si 87
No further steps were taken for two years, and then the
Abbot was again assailed by remonstrance and protests, and he
therefore despatched a Commissioner to Maubuisson to demand
an audience in his name, and inquire into the conduct of the
Abbess. But the Abbess suspected his mission, excused herself
for that day on the plea of illness, and the Commissioner an<'
his suite were conducted to one of the towers of the abbey,
where doubtless they expected to be hospitably entertained.
As soon as they had all entered the outer door was fastened,
and they found that they were prisoners. They were kept for
four days on bread and water, and very little even of that, and
the Commissioner was flogged daily. They believed that the
Abbess intended to starve them to death, and on the fourth
day contrived to escape from a window and make their way
back to the Abbot. ,
By this time he was convinced that he must resort to more
active measures, so he went to Paris, and saw Cardinal de
Sourdis, cousin of the Abbess, and Marshal d'Estrees her
brother. He found that at length she had committed a fault
which her relations could not pardon, and they were willing
to withdraw their protection, and allow the Abbot to take such
steps as he might see fit One of her younger sisters was a
novice at Maubuisson, and without the consent or knowledge
of any other relative, she had given her in marriage to the
Count de Sanzi, one of her own disreputable companions.
The marriage had been solemnized in the abbey church, and it
was considered so disgraceful that for a time Mdme. d'Estrees
was forsaken by all her friends.
At the close of the year 1617 the Abbot commenced his
joumey to Maubuisson. He sent word that he was on his way,
so that the Abbess might have time for consideration. He ex
pected that she would now submit, and quite hoped to convince
her of the necessity of adopting his advice and following his
plans. She told his messenger that she would neither receive
his visit nor listen to his proposals. The Abbot, however, had
gone too far to retreat ; he continued his journey, and on his
arrival went to the chapterhouse, and there convened a meet
ing of the whole community. According to the custom on such
occasions he then saw the nuns alone, one by one, questioned
them, and afterwards re-assembled the Chapter and again sum
moned the Abbess.

MAUBUISSON. [chap.

She refused fo attend, sax'ing that she was ill.
He despatched a still more urgent message, imploring her
out of consideration to her own interest to obey him. It was
in vain ; and so were the formal and peremptory commands
which he next issued, and which she treated with contempt.
Ill her absence, he drew up a report, or carte de visite, and
returned to Paris, going, it is said, direct to the King a'nd
informing him of all that had passed.
The disclosures made by the nuns showed the existence of
evUs of such magnitude that they could not be hushed up ;
and the Abbess clearly was resolved to persevere in her wicked
ways. It was therefore decided that she should be removed
and imprisoned, and the monastery governed by commission.
Early in February 1618 the Abbot of Citeaux was again on his
way to Maubuisson, and this time he was armed with authority
to convey the Abbess to the Filles Peiiitentes at Paris ; and he
had with him a company of archers, as they continued to be.
called, although the)' were armed wiih muskets and swords,
and resembled the modern gens-d'armes.
As he still hoped that extreme measures would be unneces
sary, he left the archers and their captain in the neighbouring
town of Pontoise, and arrived at Maubuisson without mihtary
escort The Abbess had been warned of her danger and urged
to escape if she valued her liberty, unless she intended to
comply with the demand of M. de Citeaux,, and reform the
abbey. But she laughed, and said there was no danger while
she had such good friends to protect her, and again she pre
pared to set the Superior at defiance.
She refused to see him, once more urging the plea of Ul-
health ; for two days he waited patientiy, whUst first one and
then another of her companions entreated her to submit, and
come to terms with him. She was inflexible ; so on the third
day he sent to Pontoise for the archers.
When they arrived all the doors wi. re closed against them,
and, after a vain appeal for admission in the king's name, they.
broke open doors and windows, forced their way in, and two
hundred and fifty men took possession of the abbey.
The Abbess was now convinced that matters were desperat'e ;
she hastily tore off aU her clothes, rushed out of her own apart
ments, and concealed herself in the bed of a nun on whom she
could rely. Throughout the wliole day the archers searched

VIII. ] MA UB UISSON.

for her in every part of the house. Each room was closely
guarded, and towards evening it was discovered that some
thing \yas moving in one of the apparently unoccupied beds ;
on examination this proved to be the Abbess. But a new
difficulty arose ; she was quite naked, and she refused to clothe
herself As she was absolutely unapproachable she seemed
likely after all to remain master of the situation. The captain
of the troop of archers was summoned, and he expostulated
and argued, but with no result ; at length he lost temper and
patience, called four archers, told them to take each a corner
of the mattrass, carry bed and Abbess into the courtyard, put
them into the carriage which was waiting, and drive with all
speed to Paris.
One of the nuns was sent with her, and she was safely
lodged in the Filles Penitentes.
The Abbot had kept out of the way while the archers were
at Maubuisson, but as soon as Mdme. d'Estrees had 'been re
moved he entered, summoned the whole community, informed
them that the convent would now be governed by commission,
and offered them the choice of three abbesses of the Cistercian
order, of whom Angelique Arnauld was one.
They asked time for consideration, and passed the whole night
in anxious thought They had a pleasant recollection of the
sweet bright child whom they had nearly all known, but were
afraid of her reforms, which were already talked about. Still
the elder nuns, trusting to their own influence to modify her
views, were strongly incUned to select her; but the others would
not consent, nor could they agree in the choice of any one to
replace Mdme. d'Estrdes. At length they hit upon what they
considered a happy expedient, and in the morning humbly
entreated the Abbot not to place a stranger over them, but to
let them be governed by one of their own community, and to
allow them to leave the selection of the fitting person entirely
in his hands.
He com-plied at once, and expressed great satisfaction at
their decision. He remembered what had escaped their minds,
namely, that Angelique had taken the veil at Maubuisson, and
was consequently one of their own community.
He returned well pleased to Paris, but found it no easy
matter to persuade M. Arnauld to allow Angehque to undertake
so difficult a task as the one that he had resolved to entrust

90 MAUBUISSON. [chap.
to her. Her father knew the zeal -with which she would throw
herself into the reform of Maubuisson, but feared for her
health, if not her life, in the labour and anxiety it would entail
StiU father, mother, Isrothers, and sisters were all now on her
side, were convinced of the value and importance of the work
she had begun, and glad to promote it as best they could. M.
Arnauld's objections were at length overborne ; he consented,
though with reluctance ; and went himself to Port Royal to tell
his daughter of the proposal. There was in AngeUque's nature
the ardour, love of adventure, trae piety, and capacity for
self-sacrifice which impel to missionar}- work ; she said this
was just what she longed for, a trae labour of lOve, and if it
entailed real hardship and great difficulty, why so much the
better. Before her father left it was arranged that the Abbot
of Citeaux should go to Port Soyal on the 17th of February,
1 618, that on the i8th Anne Amauld should take the veil,
and on the 1 9th the Abbess and those companions whom she
might select should go to her father's house in Paris under the
escort of the Abbot, and from thence to Maubuisson.
Port Royal was to be governed in her absence by the Prior
ess, whose fidelity had never wavered ; whUst Agnes Arnauld
was to fill the post of sub-prioress.
Angelique, who was now twenty-six years old, decided that
three nuns should accompany her. Doubtless M. Arnauld
had enlightened her as to the nature and difficulty of the task
before her, and the character of Mdme. d'Estrees and her com
panions. Her choice shows her practical wisdom and tact
She took the Mfere de la Croix, one of the oldest nuns in
Port Royal, who had accompanied her when she returned, after
her consecration as Abbess, to say good-bye to the Ladies of
Maubuisson. The Mfere de la Croix had been her faithful
ally at Port Royal, and had been instrumental in winning over
the elder nuns to consent to the reformation of the convent
Her co-operation at this critical time would be most valuable ;
but Angelique saw also the necessity of zeal and enthusiasm"
to kindle the dull and darkened hearts of those with whom
she would have to deal.
Her second associate was therefore her young sister Marie,
not yet eighteen, or Marie-Claire as we must now caU her, and
the third was Isabelle-Agnes, nineteen years old, one of the
portionless giris who had been rejected elsewhere and wel

VIIL] MAUBUISSON. 91
comed at Port Royal. Isabelle-Agnes had already been three
years novice and nun, and Angelique had taken special pains
to train her for future work ; she was to be Mistress of the
Novices at Maubuisson, the post which Marie-Claire had lately
held at Port Royal.
Angelique told these two young nuns that when they had
dedicated themselves to God they had offered to spend their
lives in His service ; that hitherto they had received no visible
sign of the acceptance of their .offering, but that now this
mission was a sign ; they must accept it with a determina
tion to sacrifice health and strength and even life if they could
hope thereby to help those who were in great need. Up to
this time she said that she had imposed upon them a rule of
discretion in all that they did, but now she removed it and
imposed only a rule of extreme charity, which should make them
forget themselves, their own interests, and their own wishes,
so that they might be instrumental in promoting the salvation
of souls. Then she tumed to Marie-Claire and said that know
ing the delicacy of her constitution, and not doubting that if she
did not lose her life she would certainly sacrifice her health,
she had already selected a spot in the infirmary where her bed
would be placed when she returned, and she led the young girl
to look at it
It was not, however, Marie-Claire who died, but Isabelle-
Agnes, who a few years later succumbed to the hardships and
anxiety of her mission work. Marie-Claire lived on for twenty
years, but she used to say that she had never known a day's
health after her return from Maubuisson.
The little community bade adieu to their Abbess with many
tears ; they had been trying to understand the meaning of
union -with God, and to learn submission to His will, but
they had not foreseen this early separation from their teacher
and guide. Agnes, who felt it more keenly than anyone else,
entered the church as soon as they had' left, and threw her
self at the foot of the cross, sobbing, ' Ecce nos reliquimus
omnia,' and repeating the omnia, omnia, as if her heart was
broken. There is perhaps nothing more beautiful in the
story of Port Royal than the love of these Arnauld sisters
and their loyalty and fidelity to Angelique.
But Anne Arnauld was unmoved ; when she was reproached
with coldness, she reminded her companions that she had

92 MAUBUISSON. [chap.
received her veil on the previous day. ' I had too much joy
yesterday to be able to weep to-diy.' She is the nun who
' danced for joy' when she was alone.
For a few days Angelique and her three companions stayed
at M. Arnauld's house in Paris, where they were joined by the
nun who had accompanied Mdme. d'Estrees to the Filles
Penitentes, and now wished to return to Maubuisson.
It was thought desirable to prepare the Ladies for what
was in store for them, therefore M. de Citeaux sent word that
he was making every effort to fulfil his promise, and hoped to
induce Mdme. de Port Koyal, who had passed her noviciate
and taken the veil at Maubuisson, to undertake the charge of
tneir abbey ; in which case he would conduct her thither in
the cour.ie of a few days.
The Ladies were filled with dismay, but they saw that the
thing was done ; opposition would be useless, and they mufet
submit, A few days were allowed for preparation, and then
the Abbess set out to take possession of her new domain.
"When she arrived the nuns were chanting in the chapel, but
so discordant were the sounds uttered, that the effect produced
was that they were quarrelling. However when the service was
ended they came out to receive the Abbot and Mdme. de Port
Royal with due respect, though very coldly.
Angelique met them with her characteristic frankness and
had a kind word for every one. She saw among them a certain
Mdme. Desmarests, whom she had formerly known, and called
her great friend. She recognized her immediately and kissed
her, saying, ' Bon jour, nia grande amie,' as she used to do
when a child. The Ladies were charmed by her cheerfulness
and simplicity, and began to think that perhaps theh fears
were unfounded.
The Chapter was next assembled, and Angelique solemnly
installed in the place of Mdme. d'Estrees, with full power to
order and dispose all things spiritual and temporal as she
should think desirable for the welfare of the abbey. The
Abbot then left her and returned to Paris, well pleased no
doubt at the conclusion of his task.
It was a difficult position for an Abbess of twenty-six,
supported by one elderiy nun and two girls of eighteen and
nineteen years old ; and in the midst of a large hostUe com
munity, aU eyeing them with suspicion I

VIIL] MAUBUISSON. 93
The first few days passed quietly enough ; Angelique showed
a very conciliatory, spirit ; she spent her time in renewing old
acquaintances and forming new ones. The Sister who had
formerly been her governess was now blind, and infinite ten
derness to all forms of human suffering led her to show great
attention and affection to the lonely woman, to whom she
paid a daily visit In the midst of this luxurious household her
own dinner throughout Lent consisted of a large piece of com
mon household bread — for that use.", in the refectory was too
fine for her — and a few leaves of salad without oil or vinegar.
She would not have it brought on a plate, a hole was made in
the bread, the salad put into it, and she ate it by the side of
her blind friend.
The first feeling of Maubuisson was one of unfeigned astonish
ment at Angelique and her -companions. Their piety, humiUty,
and modesty were strange phenomena within those walls, and
the lay-sisters used to make appointments to meet where they
could stand and watch them.
There were at this time twenty-two nuns in an abbey in
tended to receive a hundred, and thus they were able to live in
great luxury, and had lay-sisters to wait on them, and numerous
attendants and servants. Nearly all of the nuns had been
compelled to take the veil against their will, and their subse
quent life had never borne the slightest relation to the duties of;
their vocation. They did not even know these duties by name,
were ignorant of the very elements of Christianity, and unmind
ful of all religious ceremonies.
A monk of St. Bemard was their confessor, and it is said
that he did not bear the name in vain, for as they did not know
how to confess for themselves he used to go through a list of
the sins which he thought it probable they would have committed,
and they answered yes or no to hisquestions; upon which he gave
them absolution without further inquiry. But as he often
reproached them for their ignorance they resolved to remedy it,
so with much labour they drew up three forms of confession,
one for Saints' days, one for Sundays, and one for week-days.
These they wrote in a book, which was passed from one to the
other, and from which they read as they went one after the
other to the confessional. They certainly did chant all the
services from the first note of matins to the last of complines,
but they did so at the hours most convenient to them, and so

5^ MAUBUISSON. [cha?.

fast and out of tune that h was impossible to distinguish a single
word, and difficult to believe that the horrible din was produced
by human voices. In all other respects the abbey was like the
countty seat of a nobleman, it was always fllled with guests, and
there were theatrical performances in which the nuns took
the chief parts, ^nd dancing parties. Many of them had
private gardens and pavUions, in which they gave choice col
lations to a favoured few. In the summer-time vespers and
comphnes were chanted eariy in the afternoon, one after the
other, and then the Prioress and nuns walked out on the Paris
road towards the fish-ponds, where the monks of St. Martin le
Pontoise used to meet them and dance whh them. The thing
was done quite openly, as if no one could disapprove of it
It is unnecessary to dweU upon the darker shades of the picture.
The reader may be sure that they existed, and that Mdme.
d'Estrees was no more alone in her vices than in her pleasures.
Angelique found it no easy task to induce the Ladies to
renounce what they considered their 'liberty and privileges;'
but they could not resist her authority, and therefore by the
advice of the elder nuns they submitted for the time being.
Before long the rule of strict seclusion was established, the
entrance of secular persons forbidden, parlours buUt and
gratings interposed, and there was extemal propriety through
out Maubuisson.
But when after such opposition and with such difficulty as
we may well imagine, the first steps had been taken, Angelique
found that she could make no further progress. The habits
and vices of a lifetime were ineradicable, and it was not
possible to reform the Ladies of Maubuisson. Of course she
could put an end to scandalous impropriety and shut them up
within the cloister walls ; she could, with more or less diffi
culty, compel them to submit to rules which they saw she had
the power to enforce, but she could not make them love virtue
and holiness. They were irreligious, unreasonable, discon
tented, mutinous, and irreverent, and Angelique found that
she had no influence whatever over them. But she did not
despair ; she saw yet another chance, and took immediate
advantage of it, as it offered an opportunity for carrying out
one of her favourite plans. She would select and train a band
of portionless novices who might pass into the ranks of the
nuns, and by degrees modify or replace them.

vm.] MAUUBISSON. 95-
, The Abbot of Citeaux acceded to her request and autho
rized the reception of forty ladies, to be chosen for their piety
and virtue. As soon as it was known that this wealthy house
was receiving novices gratuitously a large number of candi
dates came forward. But the majority were influenced by
the desire of securing a comfortable home, and obtaining
admission to a fashionable monastery. Angelique soon
discovered these moti-ves, and out of all who presented
themselves she selected no more than thirty-two.
Sister Isabelle-Agnes of Port Royal was mistress of these
novices, who were separated from the nuns. They lived in
a different part of the abbey, and used a different refectoty.
But the whole community met in church, and there the nuns
chanted with their usual indifference andirreverence.
It was in vain that Angehque drilled her novices, teaching
them the value of every word, every syllable, evety note. In
vain she tried to drown the harsh discordant voices of the nuns
with the sweet, clear ringing notes of the young girls. The
struggle lasted five years, and left the ancients as victors on
the field. And yet Angelique used to say it was not all in
vain ; certainly the elders did not improve, but the young ones
learnt patience, charity, and humility.
During these five years Angelique never once alluded to
the pain which the chanting of the nuns gave her. They
were thin-skinned, and impatient of reproof and suggestion ; it
would have been impossible to live in peace with them if she
had possessed less tact and self-control. She found she could
not teach them, but she could leam from them, and could
practise the virtues which there was no hope of inculcating.
In addition to the time devoted to worship and the pre
paration for it, Angelique was always present with her novices
during the hours appointed for the manual labour enjoined
by the Cistercian rule. They carried wood for the kitchen
fire and all other fires throughout the abbey ; swept the pas
sages, church, dormitories, and cloisters ; scoured the kitchen
utensils, hung out the clothes to dry, dug the garden, and
did all as if these were the greatest pleasures life had to
bestow. Angelique not only took her own share of the work,
but went from one to the other with just the word of en
couragement that each one needed. She would remind some
of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ upon earth, which they

96: MAUBUISSON. [chap.
were permitted to imitate; some she would exhort to foUow the
example of the holy Fathers; , whilst there were others upon
whom she impressed the necessity for humility and sel -,
mortification. She knew not only the spiritual needs but the
physical powers of every novice, and the tasks were so
judiciously appointed that each one could do what was required
of her; in this manner absolute silence was maintained, and
there was no chattering and gossiping over the work.
The novices waited on the nuns, and treated them with
respect and attention. It was no easy duty. Doubtiess
they needed the encouragement and frequent exiiortations
which we read that the Abbess gave them, for the elders
must have made large demands upon their forbearance. The
example of Angelique was more powerful even than her pre
cepts, and she practised greater self-denial than shepreached.
No word of reproach or complaint escaped her lips. She was
cheerful and patient with the Ladies, and the worst cell in
the dormitory, the oldest dress in the house, the poorest scraps
of food left by the novices from their scanty meals she still
chose for herself She had taken possession of a Small dark
chamber, hitherto used by lay-sisters and servants ; she says
it was her ' greatest consolation,' for when she was in it she
seemed to be in the small stable at Bethlehem, of which
Jesus Christ was the only light
Thus we see on the one hand a band of young and pious
women, earnest and self-denying, trying, as best they could, to
lead a holy life ; and on the other a number of women no longer
young, bound by the same vows, dwelling under the same
roof, but selfindulgent, vicious, and irreligious. No fusion of
the two was possible, and Angehque again saw that she had
failed, and that she must for the present be content with external
propriety which she could enforce, and peace which she was
able to maintain by removing all legitimate ground for complaint.
But even her brave heart was sometimes dismayed at the
difficulties with which she had to contend ; and, just when she
most needed it, God sent her, as she used to say, St. Francis de
Sales as friend and counsellor. He visited Maubuisson for the
first time at Easter 1619, and for the last in the September of
the same year. When he said farewell Angelique had reached
the point of deepest depression. She-had hoped that his influence
would have had some effect upon the Ladies, and that his

vni.J MAUBUISSON. 97
prayers and exhortations would have brought them back to
God and the paths of righteousness. With him she lost that
hope. He was leaving, and the Ladies were unchanged. He
tried to encourage her, told her that this was only the seed
time, and that some day she would look upon the harvest, a
prediction which she gratefully accepted. We must recur to
St. Francis in a subsequent chapter, but one incident con
nected with his visit has its place here.
He was once accompanied to Maubuisson by his brother, M.
de Boisy, who took special notice of a nun, remarkable even
at Maubuisson for vanity and affectation, the peculiarity of her
dress, and her desire of attracting attention. She was called
Mdme. de la Serre. M. de Boisy found that she was proud
and worldly but at the same time inteUigent. He thought it
would be a great triumph to win her over to the side of Ange
lique and the novices, and therefore had several long conver
sations with her. No doubt she found the attempt to convert
her more interesting than the quiet life she was then leading,
and at first promised amendment, nay even consented to give
up her fanciful dress. She did not fulfil her promise, and
after ttying in vain to induce her to take this first step in the
right direction, M. de Boisy threatened her with God's anger
if she neglected his waming. But his threat had no more
effect than his exhortations, and he left her unchanged in heart
and appearance.
A few days after St Francis had said farewell to Maubuisson,
Mdme. d'Estrees the imprisoned Abbess returned.
By the help of her brother-in-law, the Count de Sanzi, and
some other nobles she had made her escape from the Filles
Penitentes, and she reached the abbey with an armed escort about
six o'clock in the morning. They demanded admission at the
door in the courtyard near the fish-ponds, which the porter re
fused. They then broke open the door and threatened to throw
him into the water. He called for help and was heard in the
church which was near this gate; but only one person knew
the meaning of the cries, this was Mdme. de la Serre, who ad
vanced to a side door and waited for a further signal. The
porter did not dare to alarm the house. Mdme. d'Estrees
was in the courtyard, and he was so terrified at her threats
arid violence that he thought it best to escape and make his
way to Paris and M. Amaiild. , Mdme. d'Estrees therefore
S.L. XIIL H

M4 US UISSON. [chap.

went on unopposed to the church, and was admitted by
Mdme. de la Serie, who had been forewarned of the attempt,
and had procured false keys, with which she opened the doors.
At the moment when the old Abbess entered the church
Angelique was coming out of a confessional near the door, and
the two met face to face. Mdme. d'Estrees exclaimed, in
great excitement :
'Madam, you have been quite long enough in my place;
I have now come back to my own house, and you must go out
of it at once.'
Angelique very calmly repUed : ' I am quite ready to do so,
madam, when those who placed me here give me permission
to leave.'
Mdme. d'Estrees angrily repeated that she should go, and
go at once. But Angelique made no further answer, and
quietly conducted the Abbess from the church to her own
apartments in the abbey. Now these had been occupied by
Angelique ; which means that she had considered them as
common property, and had placed in them novices who were
ill and required care. There were mattrasses on the floor, and
the rooms had been converted into an infirmary. Mdme.
d'Estrees looked around, and then said, contemptuously :
' Take all this dirt out of my rooms. What is the meaning
of this disgusting mess ? '
' Madam,' replied Angelique, coldly, ' if your rooms are
not in good order the fault is pardonable ; we had no reason
to expect you here.'
The young Abbess left the room and went to the kitchen,
where she ordered a particularly good dinner for the old one,
and afterwards summoned her novices, told them what had
happened and what she should expect of them.
Undoubtedly the spirits of Angelique would rise at this
crisis; others were anxious and apprehensive, but she was
calm. Both Abbesses were present at the nine o'clock service.
Tierces, and grand mass was solemnly chanted by the novices.
Mdme. d'Estrees did not enter the chohr, and Angehque, as
usual, occupied the Abbess's throne.
'What presumption!' exclaimed Mdme. d'Esfarees; 'my
pupU actually takes my place in my presence !'
But this step produced considerable effect on the nuns.

VIIL] MAUBUISSON. 99
They had seen the humility and charity of Angelique, her
patience and forbearance, and had despised her for them.
Now they were to see this other side of her character, which
they were better able to appreciate. She and her novices
partook of the Holy Communion after mass, so that they
might be prepared ^for whatever it should please God to send
them, and then they went to their household work as usual.
MeanwhUe Mdme. d'Estrees -visited every part of the
abbey,. and saw all her old friends and former companions.
She paid special attention to the two nuns who had charge of
the keys, and in the presence of Angelique asked to have
them restored to her. She found that this demand had been
forestalled ; the keys had already been given up to Mdme. de
Port Royal.
When dinner-time came, Angelique saw that Mdme. d'Estrees
was duly served, and then joined the novices in the refectory.
They were sad and heavy at heart, for all the nuns had rallied
round their old Abbess, and the new comers felt that they
were lonely and friendless. They seated themselves in silence
at the refectoty table, and then Angelique said :
' My sisters, we cannot foresee what 'will happen to us on
this day, but all things are in the harids of God, and we can
trust ourselves to Him. Perhaps we may have to leave this
house. We must be prepared for whatsoever may happen,
and our duty now is to eat, so that we may be strong and
able to endure whatever it is the will of God that we should
suffer.' Then she took her seat : they dined, read, and chanted grace
as usual, although they knew that Mdme. d'Estrees could hear
them from her room, overhead, and would ridicule them.
After dinner, Dom Sabatier, the confessor who had been
appointed by the Abbot of Citeaux, sent for Angelique to the
parlour, and she found that- he had gone over to Mdme.
d'Estrees. He endeavoured to persuade her to leave the
abbey quietly, and not expose herself to the violence of which
the Count de Sanzi and his followers were capable ; and tried
to frighten her by repeating and exaggerating their threats.
But AngiUque was immoveable. She must submit to force,
she said, but short of that nothing should make her faithless
to her trust
Whem Dom Sabatier ceased speaking, Mdme. d'Estrees,
h 2

MAUBUISSON. [chap.

who had entered the room, again tried to induce her to leave
Maubuisson. Finding that her words were of no avail, and
being determined to gain her end by fraud or force, she asked
Angelique to accompany her to the church.
' Certainly, madam,' answered Angelique ; ' we could not
be in a better place.'
Followed by the novices and her faithful nuns from Port
Royal, she entered the church and knelt to implore the help
of God. Mdme. d'Estrees was accompanied by the Ladies of
Maubuisson, and went from one to the other, urging them to
remove her rival by force. This, whether from respect or fear
of the consequences, possibly an admixture of both motives,
they refused to do ; but they consented to remain as passive
spectators of the scene that followed.
Mdme. d'Estrees advanced to Angelique, and in a loud and
angry tone desired her to go out of the abbey ; receiving the
answer so often previously given, she seized and tried to drag her
to the church door and push her out. The faithful novices and
nuns, all except Anne Amauld,^ who knelt in prayer, gathered
round her and in the struggle which ensued, Mdme. d'Estrees
snatched off AngeUque's veil; upon this a young and lusty
novice, indignant at the outrage offered to her beloved Abbess,
knocked down Mdme. d'Estrees, tore off her veU and head
dress, and threw them away. Mdme. d'Estrees screamed for
help, but the nuns stood aloof; she then called out, 'Help,
brother, help ; they are killing me ! '
This was the signal for which the nun with the false keys was
waiting. She immediately opened the church-door, and the
Count de Sanzi and his foUowers rushed in with their swords
drawn ; some of them even fired off pistols to produce a panic.
The Count de Sanzi and Mdme. d'Estrees seized upon Ange
lique and dragged her towards the door; the novices held
her back ; the struggle went on for some time, untU,
thoroughly exhausted, she entreated the novices to yield, and
she was carried into the courtyard and placed in a coach which
was in readiness. Mdme. de la Serre tried to prevent any of
her adherents from leaving the church, but this was impossible,
they forced their way out, filled the coach, scrambled on the
coach-box, clung to the wheels, and hung on to the imperial.
' She had joined her sisters at Maubuisson a few weeks previously.

VIIL] MAUBUISSON.

It was of no use for the Count de Sanzi to draw his sword and
pretend that he was about to strike ; they would not give way,
and he was obliged to tell the coachman to stop, or some of
them would have been killed.
There was a moment's pause, and one of the nuns said to
Angelique : ' Whither are we going, my mother ? ' Immediately
it flashed upon AngeUque's mind that she was not safe iri the
hands of these men, and did not know where they would take
her or what indignity they might be capable of inflicting. She
sprang out of the coach, and once more was surrounded by
her faithful followers. Mdme. d'Estrees, surprised and amazed,
saw that she must try other means. She placed one of her
men-servants at the outer door of the abbey, told him to allow
Angehque and the four nuns from Port Royal to go out, but
no one else, and then returned, and partly by force and partly
because Angelique was too weary to resist she led and pushed
her out of the gate.
But the novices suspected the design, and one amongst
them, who was both brave and strong, went up to the man at
the door and told him in a resolute tone that if he attempted
to prevent them from going out, they would certainly crash him
to death behind the door. A companion, in order to show
that this was no idle threat, pushed the door back and gave him
a terrible squeeze between it and the wall ; she then passed
through and seized Mdme. d'Estrees who was outside, took her
round the waist and seated her on the grass ; holding her there
in spite of her struggles until the Sisterhood had all joined Ange
lique. They hurried through the open door, behind which the
unfortunate man was tightly wedged, and by way of reminding
him to be quiet each one squeezed 'the door against him as she
passed. The Count de Sanzi does not appear to have interfered
further, and probably thought his work was ended when Ange
lique was ejected from the church.
One novice was left behind. She was busy with her duties
in the dairy, and knew nothing of what had taken place until she
returned and found her Abbess and companions gone. She in
sisted on following them, and as the novices must by this time
have gained considerable reputation by their prowess, no one
was inclined to oppose her, and the doors were opened.
The unseemly contest was ended, the abbey doors closed

MA UB UISSON. [CHAP.

against them, and Angelique and her followers were alone on
the high road. They knelt in prayer together, and then
Angehque resolved to go to the neighbouring town of Pon
toise; the plague was there, so she stopped at an outlying
vUlage and procured cordial waters, of which they all partook.
She arranged her little procession in due order, first the
postulants, then the novices and ntms, and last of all herself.
But they had no veUs, how were they to enter a town ! Ange
lique was never at a loss, she walked up to one of the postulants
and, without a word on either side, clipped her long black skirt
round the waist, tore it into small veils and distributed them.
They entered Pontoise, say the memoirs, 'with a modesty
and piety which were traly edifying.' The inhabitants marvelled
greatly at this stiange procession, headed by a postulant in a
black bodice and green petticoat, and walking through the
streets as quietly and in as perfect order as if they had been in
their cloisters. The retum of Mdme. d'Estrees had already
transpired, and soon the rumour ran : ' This is the good Mdme.
de Port Royal; the wicked Abbess has come back and turned
her out.'
The httle band entered the first church they came to, and
knelt in prayer, waiting to see what God would send them.
The news of their arrival spread rapidly, and before long the
Grand Vicar and M. Duval, a doctor, went to Angehque and
offered assistance ; the Carmelite convent begged for the nuns,
whUst the UrsuUnes asked for eleven novices, and the Hotel
Dieu said they could receive the whole party. Angelique vety
humbly thanked them, but thought it best to accept tiie vicarage,
which the Grand Vicar had placed at her disposal, because they
would not only be together, but would thus put themselves
under the protection of the Bishop.
Before leaving the church they chanted vespers, and then
walked in procession to the vicarage. The streets through
which they passed were crowded with spectators, many of whom
knelt as Angelique went by.
The Grand Vicar installed them in his house, had a pri-vate
chapel prepared in which they might hear mass, and then left
them. Charitable persons sent beds, bedding and food, and
two gave money which AngeUque needed, for she had brought
none from Maubuisson. She says that it made her vety happy
to think that she was so poor as to be really in want of alms.

VIII.] MAUBUISSON. 103
When the novice who had been in the daity reached Pontoise
late at night, she brought with her a gold coin which she had
found on a windov/-sill. Angelique received it as the gift of
God, and said that it ' did her good.'
The novices were so well trained that there was no difficulty
in maintaining order and sUence, they went about their ordinaty
work just as if they had b^en at Maubuisson. Anne Arnauld,
Marie-Claire, and Isabelle-Agnes were with their sister and
Abbess, and were doubtless of great service at this time. On
the folio-wing day mass was said in the chapel, and when vespers
were chanted in the aftemoon many persons were present, and
all were impressed by the sweet voices and devout demeanour
of the nuns.
At Maubuisson there was a very different scene, and one
which it is not pleasant to dwell upon. Dom Sabatier wrote to
M. de Citeaux on behalf of the Abbess, saying that as she
had succeeded in regaining possession of the abbey and had
such very influential friends, it would surely be better to let
bygones be bygones and come round to her side.
Now the porter who had started for Paris when Mdme.
d'Estrees forced her way into the abbey, lost no time in ap
prizing the Amaulds of Angelique's danger. On the foUow
ing day an order was obtained to arrest and bring Mdme.
d'Estrees back to Paris, and reinstate Angelique; and Mau
buisson was again surrounded by archers and closely guarded.
Mdme. d'Estrees had been warned of her danger, and dis
guised as a servant she escaped by a secret door which she
had often used. The nobles who accompanied her found
themselves in an awkward position, and sought safety in flight
before the arrival of the archers ; whilst Dom Sabatier jumped
over the abbey wall. Mdme. de la Serre had not time to
escape, so she took some important papers which the Abbess
had been unable to carry off with her, and hid herself in a high
cupboard, the entrance to which was concealed by tapestry.
She got up by means of a ladder, and did not forget to take
a store of provisions with her.
Archers were stationed in evcty room, for the officer in com
mand thought that some of those he had orders to arrest must
still be in the house. Towards morning the guards in the
empty dormitoty heard a noise, as of some one 'blowing her
nose after she had been crying;' they examined the walls and

IC4 MAUBUISSON. [chap, vol]
discovered the hiding-place of Mdme. de la Serre. But she would
not allow herself to be tstken, and threw down ladder and man
on it when they tried to reach her. There was no alternative
but to order her to come down in the king's name, and threaten
to shoot her if she did not comply. Whereupon she gave her
self up, and together with an accomplice was removed and im
prisoned. Mdme. d'Estrees was not discovered for six months ; she was
then taken back to the Filles Penitentes. She frequently made
her escape, but was recaptured, and never again reached
Maubuisson. At one time she was a prisoner in the Chi,telet,
and Pfere Bernard relates how he found her there in bed with
a bottle of wine and a plate of sausages by her side. She spent
all- her income in successive lawsuits for the recovery of her
abbey, and at length died in a small house near Paris, poor,
wretched, and abandoned by all her friends.
She had intended to make her youngest daughter her coad
jutor and successor, and the Ladies kept the child with them
for some years in the hope that her wishes might be carried
out ; but when it was evident that Maubuisson would never be
restored to her family, the father of the chUd removed her and
placed her elsewhere.
At ten o'clock on the night after that on which Mdme.
d'Estrees had been expelled from Maubuisson, a company of
soldiers arrived at Pontoise to inform Angelique that she could
return whenever she pleased. ' At once then,' she rephed, and
told the good news to the Sisters. They needed no time for
preparation, and in a few minutes the solemn, silent band were
on their way back to Maubuisson. Clergy and laity crowded
into the streets and accompanied them for some distance, and
they were escorted by mounted soldiers who carried torches.
On their arrival Angelique despatched a considerable number
to the kitchen, where they passed the night in preparing food
for the soldiers.
Fifty archers were stationed at Maubuisson for six months.
The abbey was not considered safe whUst Mdme. d'Estrees
was at large, for her friends were resolved to frighten Angelique
away, and they watched the house and fired guns through the
windows whenever they found an opportunity. But even this
persecution ceased after a time ; at Angelique's request the
guard was withdrawn, and all things resumed their old aspect

CHAPTER IX.

ST. FRANCIS DE SALES.

Francis de Sales was born at the Chateau de Sales, in Savoy,
in 1567. He was the eldest son of good and pious parents,
and before his birth his mother vowed to dedicate him fo the
ser-vice of God. His father was a Seigneur de Nouvelles, who,
after his marriage with the heiress of the house of Boisy, was
known as the Seigneur de Boigy. The family, which was one
of the oldest and best in Savoy, did not at that time take any
title from the estate of Sales, which was made a barony in
1613, and a marquisate in 1664. Francis received the ton
sure when he was eleven years old, and was sent to the Jesuit
college at Paris, where he devoted a considerable part of his
time to theological studies.
The condition of France at that time was one which could
scarcely fail to impress a sensitive and thoughtful boy. The
country had been devastated by civil and religious wars during
the reigns of Francis II. and Charles IX., and they were con-*
tinned with unabated fury under Henry III. Four Catholic,
opposed by four Huguenot armies had overrun the finest
provinces of France ; and the League, which was then in pro
cess of formation, threatened to introduce a third party,
opposed to both the others. Cities were taken and retaken,
pillaged, and left in ruins. Churches were destroyed, the old
religion was entirely banished from one part of France, and
not firmly established in the other. Discord and division
reigned not only in the State, but in the family, where father
was opposed to son, and brother to brother. There were as
hiany tyrants in a province as there were nobles ; the king was

io6 ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. [chap.
despised by some of his subjects, and hated by others, and the
laws were openly violated. The love of God seemed to have
no place in men's hearts, and in its stead there was fear ; some
fear of God and still more of everlasting punishment
Francis, who was keenly alive to all influences around him,
did not escape this one, and when he was a young man, a great
fear of hell fell upon him. But his nature was tender and pure,
and he had too much Courage to fear it as a place of mere
physical torment. His terror lay in deeper and darker depths :
to him, heU embodied a more awful doom, for he believed that
he should be there destined to hate and blaspheme God through
out eternity. The thought weighed on him continuaUy, and
threw him into a state of profound melancholy. He felt that
he was a predestined reprobate, and that nothing in this life
could compensate for an eternity without God. One day he
entered a church in Paris where there was a picture of the
Virgin, kneeling before which, when he first came to Paris, he
had made a vow of perpetual chastity. Once again he fell on
his knees and, moved by a sudden impulse, implored that
if he was so -wretched as to be destined to hate God eternally
after death, he might at least love Hitti with all his heart during
life. In a moment his peace of mind was restored ; he rose
from his knees tranquil and re-assured. The dark fear had
vanished, and it retumed no more.
He left Paris to study law in the University of Padua,- and
after taking his doctor's degree, returned to the Chateau de
Sales, at twenty-six years old. His mother had forgotten her
vow, or perhaps thought that her son's pure life and spotless
reputation were the fulfilment of it His father's plans opened
out a briUiant and happy future before him. A seat in the
Senate of Chambcty had been already secured, and a noble
and beautiful bride awaited him. He could not at once
oppose the wishes of his parents, and so, with a perplexed and
heavy heart, he entered upon his public duties, and began to
pay his addresses to the lady. But everytiiing within and
around him reminded him of the work he was neglecting, and
the service of God which ought to be his first duty and chief
pleasure. Riding through a wood, he was thrown from his
horse : his sword leapt from the scabbard, and sword and
scabbard formed a cross. Three times the same accident
happened : three times his eye fell upon the same symbol

IX.] ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. 107
He had no misgiving as to his vocation ; but his extreme
docility, his sweet temper, and sympathetic, kindly nature,
made it very hard for him to oppose his parents. And they,
when they looked upon their handsome son, richly endowed,
well educated, excelling in all manly exercises, with his fine
voice and fine manners, could not relinquish the hope of
seeing him take the place that ought to be filled by the heir
to the family honours and estates.
His cousin, Louis de Sales, who was a canon of Geneva,
espoused his cause, pleaded with the parents, and convinced
them by getting Francis appointed Provost of the Chapter of
Geneva. He was a layman when he was elected to this post
of high ecclesiastical honour ; but within the course of a few
months the various orders of the Catholic Church were con
ferred on him, in spite of his earnest petition to wait the
appointed time before recei-ving them. He was twenty-four
years older than Ai^geiique Amauld, and just at the time when
her grandfather had begun to think of providing her with an
/ibbey, Francis de Sales had obtained a dignity which placed
him at the head of the Chapter of Geneva. One appoint
ment was as irregular as the other, and at that time as common.
The Bishop of Geneva had been compelled by the Protes
tants to abandon the city in 1533, and had chosen Annecy, on
the southern side of the lake, as the capital of his diocese.
Annecy was, therefore, the scene ofthe early labours of Francis.
He used to preach and teach in the neighbouring vUlages, and
wherever he went, his eloquent words stirred the hearts of his
hearers and made them desire to turn to God. He says that
he constantly had before him the words, ' He was a buming
and a shining light' In order that he might shine he desired
to bum, bum with love to God and zeal for the salvation of
souls ; he, therefore, prepared for his sermons not so much by
study as by fervent prayer. But his success as a preacher was
due quite as much to his practical beneficence as to his eloquent
words. He was infinitely generous and tender, loved to give
money, sympathy, help of aU kinds. Seeing how impossible it
was for the clergy to cope with the destitution around them,
he established a secular fraternity called the Brotherhood
of the Cross, the members of which visited the poor, instructed
the ignorant, assisted the needy, buried ' the dead, consoled
prisoners, and endeavoured to adjust disputes without lawsuits.

lo8 ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. [chap.
The result of his legal studies at Padua seems to have been,
that next to sin he dreaded law. The Brethren of the Cross
were to act as arbitrators in disputes, and to spare no pains
necessary to enable them to form a just decision on the merits
of cases submitted to them, and to reconcile adversaries. They
were not to forget that true piety does not exclude the virtues
of a good citizen, and the observances that help to make life
agreeable. Devout Christians, he said, need not be dirty,
brusque, and rude. On the contrary, if they wish to win
others to religion, they must teach them to love it ; and must
show that gloom and despondency are not trae piety. God
has taught us to call Him Father, in order that we may place
filial confidence in Him. And thus, by deeds and words,
Francis won many hearts.
During the war between Francis I. and the Duke of Savoy,
in 1535, the Swiss had seized the Duchy of Chablais, and the
baiUwicks of Ternier and Gaillard, and the inhabitants had
been converted to the reformed religion. Twenty-nine years later,
the Duke's son and successor regained possession of many of
the provinces lost by his father, and among others, of those,
taken, by the Swiss. But in the treaty by which they were
ceded, a clause was inserted to the effect that the Catholic
rehgion should not be re-established. The terms of the treaty
were respected until 1589, when the Swiss made an ineffectual
attempt to regain the Chabl.ais. The Duke thereupon said
that he was no longer bound by this clause in the agree
ment ; and that as he could not rely upon the fidelity of Pro
testant subjects, he should take means to extirpate their heresy.
In 1594 he requested the Bishop of Geneva to organize a
mission for the conversi9n of the Protestants. The task was
not an easy one. The reformed religion had been established
for sixty years, and the inhabitants of the district were so
hostUe to the Catholics, that when the Bishop read the letter
which he had received from the Duke to the clergy of his dio
cese, there were only two volunteers for the missionary worL
They were Francis and his cousin Louis de Sales. In vain
M. and Mdme. de Boisy implored their son not to risk his life
m so hazardous an enterprize. He would not hsten to their
prognostications of danger and defeat, and the cousins set out
upon their mission alone and on foot
When they reached AUinges, the Govemor of the Chablais

IX.] ST. FRANCIS DE SALE.S. 109
showed them the garrison under arms, and a park of artiUery
witii which he was prepared to co-operate in the conversion of
the heretics. But Francis believed that he should have no
need of assistance from the temporal power, and that his
preaching was all that would be required. In this he was
mistaken ;, the inhabitants would not meet him, would not
listen to him, would not receive him into their houses. But
in spite of many hardships and even dangers, he persevered
through a most inclement winter, walking many miles daily,
arguing and pleading wherever he could obtain a hearing, and
in time he made some converts. The accounts of his mis
sion are all derived from Catholic sources, and the dangers
he incurred are no less exaggerated than the successes which
he achieved. We hear of ' innumerable attempts at assassina
tion, of hundreds of Calvinists converted by a single sermon,
and of Caivinist ministers who do not venture to fulfil their
engagements and meet him in public. These, doubtless, are
fables ; for at the end of two years, the Duke of Savoy and the
Bishop of Geneva were so little satisfied with his success, that
he was summoned to Turin, to confer with the Duke on the
necessity of adopting harsher measures. ,
The Duke's motive was exclusively political, and that of
Francis was religious, but each was wUling to give and take ;
and it was Francis who dictated and secured the adoption of
measures by which a violent political pressure was put upon
the Calvinists, so that they had to choose between expatria
tion and apostasy.
The Duke's ultimatum, drawn up by Francis, set forth that
Caivinist ministers were to be banished from the States of Savoy;
that all public offices and dignities should be taken from Cal
vinists and given to Catholics ; that the ecclesiastical revenues,
which had been usurped by the heretics, should be refunded
and employed in repairing churches, and providing for the
maintenance of Catholic priests and missionaries ; that a
Jesuit college should be forthwith established at Thonon ;
and that no public worship should be allowed in the Chablais
and the bailiwicks, except that of the Catholic Church.
This decree was promulgated ; the inhabitants who would
not abjure their religion were expelled ; those who remained
were presumed to be Catholics, and were not allowed to profess
any other faith.

J 10 ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. [chap.
It is impossible and unnecessary to attempt to justify the
conduct of Francis de Sales, or to caU attention to the readi-
-ness with which he threw away spiritual weapons and had
recourse to the temporal power, exercised in its most aggres
sive and overbearing manner. He did precisely what others,
Cathohc and Protestant, were doing at that time ; and therein
lies his blame.
The Duke of Savoy was greatly impressed by his astuteness ;
so much so, that he always afterwards suspected him of poli
tical intrigues, chiefly with France, and manifested his sus
picions in ill-wiU and harsh restrictions which affected Francis
and also other members of his family ; and therein lies a part
of his punishment.
It was thus that the Chablais was brought back to the
Catholic faith, and thus that Francis converted the 72,000
heretics of whom we are told in the act of canonization.
Personally, he was never intolerant or harsh. He passed
through his pro-vince preaching, teaching, ministering to the sick
and needy, taking no thought of his own life and health, and
abounding in manifestations of love and goodwill. His friends
entreated him to show some consideration to himself as well as
others. ' It is not necessary that I should live,' he replied,
' but it is necessary that the Church should be served.'
A Caivinist once raised his hand, and said, ' If I smite you
on the right cheek, will you turn the other also, as the Gospel
¦commands you?' 'I don't know if I shall do it,'- said
Francis ; ' but I know that I ought to do it.' And the gentle
tone and unfeigned humility of the reply convinced his oppo
nent that he was at any rate no hypocrite, who could be
startled out of his assumed character and made to show his
true nature.
There can be no doubt that, as a missionary, Francis placed
Catholicism in its most favourable light He was face to face
with a_ hostUe majority, and could not have maintained
his position if his life had not been pure, and his words
gentle and persuasive. But when the Duke's edict reduced
the riiajority to submission, Francis was unchanged ; or, if
changed, it was only because his humUity, charity, and purity
burnt with a clearer, brighter flame. 'We cannot faU to be
struck with the lofty mor^ impulses, the enthusiasm and sym
pathy, which are characteristic of him ; but, at the same time.

ix.] ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. iii
we see that a conscience originally sensitive, and sensitive stUl
on many points, had been seared by his early training. His
Christianity was not free from a taint of worldliness. He
visited the celebrated Beza, Calvin's friend and biographer,
and held many conversations with him. We have no trust
worthy report of these conversations, and have reason to doubt
whether Francis was as convincing and overwhelming in argu
ment with the great Caivinist theologian as Catholic biogra
phers are inclined to think. But it is certain that he did not
shrink from attempting to bribe a man who was as earnest
and scrapulously conscientious as he was himself. He was
entrasted by Clement VIII. with a secret mission to Beza, and
was empowered to offer him an honourable retreat in any
place he might select, and a pension of four thousand crowns in
gold, if he would return to the fold ofthe Roman Church. This
is told by his Catholic biographers, and not by his opponents.
Indeed, Francis never doubted the influence of worldly motives
upon Christians. He made use of them in the so-called conver
sion ofthe Chablais, urging that 'many would escape banishment
from Paradise because of their desire to escape banishment
from their country.' He thought it possible to corrupt Beza.
Throughout life he conciUated the world and attempted to
link together Christian motive and worldly act He thought
ill, and had reason to think ill, of the Duke of Savoy ; but he
wrote lofty panegyrics, praising him as a man and a Christian.
He thought ill, and had still more reason to think ill, of the
Church of Rome ; and he spoke well of it He was of a
gentle, peaceful, and affectionate disposition, an enemy to
strife and discord, wUling, in fact, to purchase peace at any
price ; and in order to obtain it, he made concessions unworthy
of an honourable man. But it must be acknowledged that he
never sought his own advantage, or was actuated by any dis
creditable personal motive. The Bishop of Geneva selected
him as his coadjutor, and there can be little doubt that,
although he allowed his objections to be overruled, he sincerely
wished to refuse the honour forced upon him. He subse
quently declined much higher preferment, which was more
than once offered to him.
As the result of a war between the King of France and the
Duke of Savoy, in 1599, the baUiwick of Gex, in the diocese
of Geneva, was ceded to France, and the Protestant inhabi-

112 ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. [chap.
tants hoped to escape the conversion which had befallen their
neighbours of the Chablais, by appealing to the provisions of
the Edict of Nantes. But the Catholic clergy of the diocese
resolved,' if possible, to 'bring them back to the mother Church,'
and sent Francis, whose efforts had hitherto been crowned
with success, on a mission to the King of France. He was
very favourably received by Henri IV., who offered him a
pension, and a French bishopric of much greater value than
that of Geneva. His Lent sermons in Paris were listened to by
a fashionable crowd. We may be sure that M. Arnauld was not
absent on these occasions. He appreciated the eloquence of
the pulpit as much as that of the bar, and was attracted by
things noble as well as by things of good report. Francis
met with a brilliant social success, but his political mission was
a failure : the King of France was neither able nor wilhng
to break faith 'with his Protestant subjects, and informed him
that he must rely on spiritual measures alone ; rather a poor
prospect, as Francis well knew. And with this answer, he,
was on his way home, when he heard of the death of his
colleague, and was greeted as Bishop of Geneva.
Perhaps the most noticeable fact connected -with this visit
to Paris is, that we owe to it the ' Introduction to a Devout
Life,' a work of which there were no less than forty editions
during the first fifty years after it was pubUshed ; which was
done into English, ' painfulUe, for the benefit of many soules
in our poore distressed countrie,' says the translator ; and had
reached a third edition in 1614, whilst in 1637, in the thirteenth
year of Charles I., a royal proclamation was issued, command
ing it to be called in and publicly burnt, on account of the
' divers passages tending to popery,' which the King could not
tolerate, 'out of his pious and constant care to uphold and
maintain the Religion professed in the Church of England in
its purity, without error or corruption.' Francis is said to
have been impelled to the work in consequence of a wish
expressed by Henri IV., that some one would write a book to
show that those who were obliged to live in the world might
StiU lead a Christian Ufe. It is possible that the suggestion
came from the King, although it seems an unlikely one for him
to have made ; certainly no one was better fitted to cany
it out than Francis. He did not believe in the separation of
the Church and the world, or in the necessity of privation and

IX.] ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. 113
austerity. He was orthodox of the orthodox in Catholic
dogma and theory, but in practice he was incUned to depart
from many hitherto received notions. His Brotherhood of the
Cross was a lay society, and his original plan for the Order of
the Visitation was to make it a lay society of women. He
believed that king, courtier, soldier, and priest might all lead
a devout life : God's grace was open to all, and man's nature
inclined him to tum towards God. It may be that the
Bishop's hostility to Calvinism induced him to take up a posi
tion which entitled him to contradict the Calvinistic state
ments as to nature and grace, and certainly his own tender and
sympathetic nature made him look kindly upon humanity,
tolerate weakness, and excuse faults.
The world around him fumished analogies, which he seized
eagerly, to show that God was acting in one and the selfsame
manner throughout the universe, and that the attitude of the
soul towards God ought to be that expressed in the maxim
constantly on his lips, 'Ask nothing, desire nothing, refuse
nothing.' In his ' Introduction to a Devout Life ^ ' he says, ' As
the mother pearles do live in the sea, not taking one drop
of salt water into their shells, and towards the Cheledonian
Islands there be fountains of sweet water in the midst of the
brackish sea, and a small kind of fly called Pyraustes born
and bred in hot burning ovens and furnaces flies in the
flames without scorching her wings, so a vigorous and constant
heart may live in the world, and not participate in the vaine
humours of the world, find orit fresh springs of devotion
in the midst of the brinish waters of temporal affairs, arid
may flie without harme among the flames of earthly occu
pation,, and yet not burn the wings of holy desire.' And
he tells how temporal burdens may be 'as the bundles
of cinnamon which, with sweet and recreative odour, com-
forteth those that carry them through the boiling sands ot
Arabia.' The thoughts contained in the work are addressed
to PhUotheus, or a Lover of God. The Bishop begins, ' My
dear reader : I beseeche thee to reade this preface for thy satis
faction and myhe. . . . The Paynim historians report of a
mayden caUed Glycera, greatly delighted in making of nose
gays, who could so fitly and properly varie and change the,
* English edition of 1614.
S.L. XIIL I

1 14 ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. [chap.
dispositions and mingling of the -sweet flowers in her posies,
that with the selfsame flowers she would frame many divers
kinds of nosegays;' and he goes on to show, that in like
manner doth ' the Holy Ghost dispose and order, with ever-
changeable varieties, the instractions of devotion which He
gives by the tongues and pennes of His servants.'
Doubtless, the exuberant fancy of the Saint sometimes makes
him appear to lack reverence, although he never does so in
reahty. As the Islamite treasures evety scrap of paper, because
the name of God may be written on it, so he evety leaf, or
stone, or legend. 'The maiden called Glycera' suggests to
him the action of the Holy Ghost, and he does not scruple
to say so. The fanciful allusive style, rich in metaphor, and
with a certain suggestion of mysticism, faUs short of the deeper
feeling and imagination which mark the mystic. But the
seventeenth centuty was not the age of mystics ; and it was a
time when men looked for and were attracted by, the graceful
and poetical fancies which those who are vety much in earnest
are apt to resent
Francis de Sales recoiled from the stem Cal-vinistic doc
trines which he had combated in the Chablais, and from the
hard logical creed of Calvin and his disciple Beza. He
believed that man has a natural inclination to love God, which
he received in Paradise and has never entirely lost He would
not accept election and predestination in any shape or form,
and held that Redemption through Christ was more than
co-extensive with the fall of Adam, and that humanity re
gained in the Son of God all, and more than all, that it had
lost in the first man. The doctrine which he expounded -with
so much eloquence and fervour was not a hard one. It was
received gladly in France, and also in England where there
was a strong reaction against the severity of the Puritans.
Marie de Medicis sent the 'Introduction to a Devout Life'
to our own James I., who was delighted with it, and always
carried it about with him, finding in it an ' unction ' wanting in
Protestant works.
This same unction is not the most attractive part of the
writings of Francis de Sales ; but as works of fancy, they are
perhaps unrivalled. And fancy is here used in its highest
sense, to indicate the graceful, thoughtful, suggestive mind,
which looks with love and interest upon evety living thing,

IX.] ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. 1I3
bird or beast, insect and plant, and learns from them some
lesson of love to God and man. There is a tendency, perhaps,
to overlook dark shades, to ignore evil and crime and to
live in the sunlight as if there was no night, which, in Francis
de Sales, is the natural tendency of a pure and happy nature,
contented wilh the outside of things, and taking up indiscrimi
nately fact or fable, if it served to iUustrate his views.
In another celebrated work, his treatise on 'The Love of
God,' he says :
'Among partiidges, it often happens that certain of them
steal the eggs of the others, in order to sit upon them ; and
this they do, either from their anxiety to become mothers, or
from stupidity, and not knowing their own eggs. And now
follows a strange thing, and nevertheless the trath of it is
well certified, for the partridge which has been hatched and
fed under the breast of a stranger, when it hears the voice of
the hen which laid the egg which produced it, forsakes that
thieving stepmother, goes back to its true mother, and follows
her, being drawn to her by ties of birth and blood. It is the
same with our heart, O Theotimus ! for, although it may be
born and nurtured, and brought up in the midst of things
material, and base, and transient and, as we may say, under
the wings of nature, nevertheless, at the first glance that it
casts upon God, at the very first recognition of Him, the original
natural instinct of love to God, which had been dormant and
unperceived, is roused up and called out in a moment'
He says elsewhere, that God has not left this natural incli
nation to love Him above all things in our hearts for nothing ;
but that He uses it like a handle, in order that He may take
hold of it, and turn us gently, and draw us close to Him ; and
it is like a fine thread, which is attached to small birds to pre
vent their escape, and, by means of it, God can check us when
it pleases His Divine mercy.
' This inclination,' he says, ' is an indication and memorial
of our first Author and Creator, impelling us to love Him, and
giving us a secret intimation that we belong to Him. It is the
same thing with stags. - Great princes sometimes put collars
around their throats, with their arms upon them, and then,
although they are let go, and set free in the forest, evetyone
who sees them, knows not only that once upon a time they
belonged to the prince whose arms they bear, but also that
I 2

Il6 ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. [chap.
they are still reserved for him ; and it was thus, as historians
feU us, that the extreme age o/ a stag was once recognized, for,
three hundred years after the death of Cassar, he was found,
wearing a collar, with the device of Caesar, and these words,
" Cffisar set me free." '
Although we have a natural inclination to love God, Francis
urges that we are not able to love Him without His help, and
he illustrates his meaning by saying : —
' Eagles have a large heart and great strength of wing, but
yet their sight greatly excels their flight, and their eyes are
more powerful and more rapid than their wings ; in the same
way our hearts, which are fiUed by a sacred natural inclina
tion towards God, have a clearer knowledge of His worthiness
to be loved than strength of will to love Him. ... In fact,
O Theotimus, our sorry nature, wounded by sin, is like those
palm-trees which we bring from abroad, and which certainly do
make abortive attempts at producing frait in our own land, but
as to bearing dates of full size, and ripe, and well-flavoured, that
is only possible in more favoured climes.'
Francis de Sales, as Bishop of Geneva, was unchanged. He
retained all the simphcity of his early years, aU his youthful
disregard for wealth and luxury, all his first love of gentleness,
meekness, and purity. He said that a prelate ought not to be
distinguished from a priest merely because of his fine clothes,
and he would not therefore wear silk, velvet, or lace, but retained
the woollen garb he had worn hitherto. Nor would he live in
a fine well-furnished house. His palace was scrupulously clean
and well kept, for he said though luxuty had always been a
vice, dirt would never become a virtue. But there was no costiy
furniture ; everything in it was plain and simple ; the pictures
were few in number and of no value ; they were chosen as aids
to devotion, and not as works of art. He kept'no carriage or
vehicle of any kind, and visited his diocese on foot, unless bad
weather or the state of tiie roads compelled him to go on
horseback. He was frugal and temperate, but he did not
approve of austerity or severe penance, and did not wish his
piety to consist in extraordinary self-mortification, but in doing
the will of God. Fasting in accordance with one's own will,
he considered as a temptation of the devil. We ought to say
to it, ' Get thee behind me, Satan.' On another occasion he
said : ' Remember, that to eat little and work mucli ; to have

IX.] ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. 117
great anxiety of mind and to refuse sleep to the body, is like
trying to get another journey out of a horse which is knocked
up, without first giving it a feed of corn.'
His household consisted of four male servants, whom he
treated with great kindness, saying : ' A capful of wind in the
sails will drive the vessel on more quickly than a hundred
strokes given by galley slaves chained to the oars.'
It was vety difficult for Francis to deal with those priests of
his diocese who had been guilty of crime and were imprisoned
at Annecy, for he could not refuse pardon when they im.plored
his mercy, even although he found that in many cases theii
repentance was not sincere. His brother, Jean Fran9ois de
Sales, who had been appointed his coadjutor, was a grave
silent man, inclined to severity. When a priest relapsed
into crime, he refused to show him any further mercy. But
Francis dwelt upon the infinite tenderness of God towards
sinners, His ears are always open to their prayers, and His
compassion can always be touched by their tears. ' What,'
said he, 'can it be wrong to follow such an example? God
has so often been moved by my tears, and shall I be in
sensible to those I see flowing from the eyes of my brethren ?
God listens to the prayers of miserable sinners and grants
them ; and shall I, who am only a man and a miserable sinnei
like themselves, be deaf and hard-hearted ? '
'True,' repUed his brother, 'but God sees the heart and
pardons only those whose repentance is sincere, whilst you who
have not the same advantage forgive every one indiscriminately.
Doubtless there are some whose hearts are touched by your
compassioHj and they are converted and sin no more ; but
others take advantage of it, and, being certain of forgiveness,
they do evil with impunity, and become incomgible.'
Frances yielded to these remonstrances so far as to com
promise matters by leaving the criminals to his brother, and
taking a long circuit on his way to church so as to avoid
the prison.
There was once a mad priest sent to Annecy who was so
violent that he was confined in a wooden cage. Francis
visited him, and watched him with tears. He prayed for a
time in silence, and then desired that the door of the cage
might be opened as he intended to go in. Remonstrance was
in vain; he entered alone, and taking the madman by the

ii8 ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. [chap.
hand said: ' Put your trust in God, my brother ! ' and laying
one hand gently upon his head he stroked and smoothed
his hair. The poor fellow was soothed and grew quite calm,
and Francis, still holding his hand, led him to his own house,
clothed him, seated him by his side at table, and sent him
home in his right mind. 'We should hesitate to acknowledge
that this incident is rightly placed among the miracles attri
buted to Francis ; but it is very human and beautiful.
It is almost needless to say that he was very charitable.
He gave away all that he had, the clothes off his back when
he had nothing else to give. The Princess of Piedmont pre
sented him with a valuable diamond. He accepted it re
luctantly, and only on condition that he might use it for the
benefit of others. Whenever, therefore, he was in want of
money he pawned the diamond, redeeming it again as soon as
possible. A gentleman who had visited him was asked, ' Did
you see the Bishop's diamond ? ' ' The Bishop's,' he rephed ;
' why it belongs to all the beggars in Annecy ! '
Perhaps the most charming picture we have of Francis de
Sales is that given by Pfere Louis de la Rivifere :
' Every Sunday and during Lent on Saturdays after dinner,,
St. Francis used to teach the catechism to little children ; and
about an hour before the time a herald, wearing a violet doublet,
went round the town ringing a bell, and calling out :
' " Christian doctrine ! Christian doctrine ! Come and leam
the way to Paradise."
' I have had the honour of being present at this blessed
catechism, and never in my life did I see such a sight; the
delectable and truly pious father used to sit on a kind of
throne with four or five steps leading to it, and aU around him
thronged the littie chUdren, and many there were of riper age
who did not disdain to come and gather spiritual food. Never
was there so great a pleasure as to hear him expound tiie
rudiments of our faith, and to see what a wealth of comparisons
came crowding to his lips to explain them. He looked at his
little people, and the httle people fixed their eyes on him : he
made himself a child in order that the perfect man in the
likeness of our Lord and Saviour might grow within them.
' When you saw him in the midst of little children he seemed
to be in his element They were his felicity and his chief
dehght ; he caressed them and fondled them with such smiles

IX.] ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. 119
and so tenderly, that never was seen the Uke. And they for
their part would talk to him in all confidence and with great
secrecy ; seldom did he leave his house without finding him
self surrounded by this flock of lambs, who saw their kindly
shepherd, and ran to ask his blessing. Sometimes his servants
would check the children, and make signs to them to run away,
fearing lest they should be troublesome. But when he saw
this he would reprove them gently, and say quite kindly, " Oh,
let them come I let them come ! " and then he would fondle
the little ones and pat their cheeks, saying, "They are my little
family, my littie family, all these dear littie folk." And it used
to be considered almost a miracle when the babies, still at the
mother's breast, would crow and dance at the sight of him
coming along the street, and would fret and scream if they
were not taken quickly to the holy man, but after he had
greeted and blessed them they were quiet and content'
Francis made it a rule never to see or speak to a woman
alone, and he said, ' When you write to a woman, let it be with
the tip of a penknife rather than the point of a pen, so that
you may say nothing superfluous.'
There was no woman in his household, and he habituaUy
guarded himself against woirien as the greatest danger he had
to encounter. He contrived to avoid their presence, but with
all his precautions . he could not escape their influence, and
foremost among liis friends we find a woman, Mdme. de.
Chantal, who founded the Order of the Visitation.

CHAPTER X.

ST.. FRANCIS AND THE ABBESS.

In 1619 the Cardinal of Savoy went to Paris to propose a
marriage between the Prince of Piedmont and a Princess of
France. On this important mission he was accompanied by
the Bishop of Geneva, who left his diocese to the care of his
coadjutor and brother, Jean Frangois de Sales. It was twenty
years since Francis had visited France, and during that time his
fame and popularity had greatly increased. The churches in
which he preached were again crowded to excess ; noble peni
tents entreated him to direct their conscience ; rich preferment
lay at his feet. He was no ascetic either in word or deed,
and with enjoyment which he did not attempt to conceal, he took
part in gorgeous ceremonies, and received flattering attentions
from all the wealth and beauty in France. His words gave
a correct image of his heart, and this deceived the world, for it
seemed impossible that he could really be what he seemed.
There were many who imitated his gracious manner and used
his honeyed words ; but they lacked the trae heart, the
pure, simple nature, and intense reality which were charac
teristic of him. He was a dangerous model, because all that
marked him outwardly could be so easily put on, .whilst
that which made him what he was could not be imitated. The
school of Francis de Sales, weak, sentimental and tolerant ot
evil, has reflected back a discredit which he does not deserve,
and against which those who know him have a right to protest
indignantly. Angelique Arnauld was at Maubuisson in 1619. One of
the novices whom she received there was a daughter of the

CHAP. X.] ST. FRANCIS AND THE ABBESS. 121
Introducteurs des Ambassadeurs. The father of this young lady
was very anxious that she should be confirmed by the Bishop
of Geneva, whom Angelique also had a great desire to see.
She had long been interested in Mdme. de Chantal's work,
and even wished to join the Order of the Visitation.
She was therefore grateful when, on the 5th April, 1619, the
father of her novice brought the Bishop with him to Maubuis
son. She writes of this occasion : ' I had always had a great
desire to see him ; and when I did so I had a still greater wish
to place my conscience in his hands, for it was clear to me that
God was working in and by this holy Bishop. I had never yet
found anyone at all like him, although I had seen all those who
had the greatest reputation for piety.'
We have no account of this first meeting. Marie Claire,
who was with Angehque at the time, and who could have
described it, died before the nuns had been commanded to
write the numerous memoirs which afford material for the
history of Port Royal. Angelique used to thank God that,
after aU, very little would be known about her, because the
sister who knew her life thoroughly had taken all with her to
the grave. But it is certain that, from the first meeting, she
believed that her Father in heaven had sent her a spiritual
father upon earth, the guide and director whom she had so
long been seeking ; and that Francis de Sales recognized her
noble nature and the importance of the work she had under
taken. After the first -visit she wrote to beg him to retum to
Maubuisson. He did so ; and went there several times before
he left France, staying on the last occasion for nine days. At
Angelique's entreaty he also visited Agnes at Port Royal and
their father at Andilly.
M. Arnauld was delighted to welcome the Bishop to his
well-ordered country house, where children and grandchUdren
were gathered round him ; and the whole family had good
reason to be proud of the friend whom Angelique had gained
for them.
It is difficult to say how many of M. Arnauld's twenty children
were alive and at Andilly in 16 19; probably ten or twelve ot
them. We know that his eldest son, d'AndiUy was there with
his own wife and several children; their third, was a very
beautiful little boy named Frangois ; the Bishop looked at him,

ST. FRANCIS AND TIIE ABBESS. ["iap.

and said : ' What a fine chUd ! but there is death in his eyes.'
And so there was ; three days later he was attacked with small
pox, which proved fatal. This prediction need not be caUetl
a prophecy ; but it shows the searching glance wliich always
sees much that is hidden from a casual observer.
M. Arnauld's second son, de Trie, was also at AndUly, and
of him the Bishop predicted that he would leave the bar and
enter the Church. He did so not long afterwards.
Mdme. le Maitre, whose married life had been most unhappy,
was separated from her husband, and had returned with her
five sons to her father's house ; she had resolved to enter a
convent as soon as their education was completed, and took the
first of the conventual vows, that of perpetual chastity, during
the visit of St Francis. Her eldest son Antoine le Maitre,
who was eleven, made a general confession to the Bishop;
whilst his 'little uncle,' Antoine, M. Arnauld's youngest and
twentieth child, received the holy man's blessing. Magdalen
Arnauld, who was eleven, was a very pretty child, and the
Bishop predicted that she would be a nun, if her mirror did
not stand in the way. The mirror did not stand permanently
in the way; and again the prediction, or, as the Amaulds
call it, the prophecy, was fulfilled.
Angelique had never relinquished her desire to give up her
abbey and follow Christ as one of the poorest and lowest ot
his servants, and the visit of Francis de Sales rekindled the old
flame ; she longed to become a sister of the Order of the Visita
tion. But Francis would not listen to her proposal, or allow her
to leave her own order, in which he saw that she was needed.
She thought, however, that if she could free herself from Port
Royal, Mdme. de Chantal would certainly not refuse to receive
her. She therefore wrote to tell her father that her work at
Maubuisson would not be completed for several years, and that
it would be desirable to have another Abbess appointed,
as a convent could not long be govemed by a nun like Agnes
without authority. M. Arnauld was more than equal to the
occasion, and again he made Angelique's scruples serve his
own ends. He wrote, after some delay, to say that he thought
her objection valid, and quite agreed with her; and that he
would provide a remedy by making her sister Agneis coadjutrix
of Port Royal ; she would then have the requisite authority
in Angelique's absence. He had obtained a brief from

X.] ST. FRANCIS AND THE ABBESS. 123
Rome so rapidly and secretly that Angelique knew nothing
until the whole matter was arranged, and the letter which,
announced his intention was accompanied by proofs of its
fulfilment. She discovered that, instead of renouncing her
abbey, she had secured it for a second member of the family.
When the Bishop heard of the transaction, he said, ' What,
my daughter ! And are you also -one of those who wish to keep
benefices in their own family ? ' Angelique had no difficulty in
explaining her real wish and aim, which he appreciated. It was
a curious protest from a man whose brother was his coadjutor
in the see of Geneva.
He left Maubuisson in September 16 19, and Angelique saw
him no more.
It was only a few days later that Mdme. d'Estrees escaped
from the Filles Penitentes at Paris ; and Angelique felt that his
visit had been a preparation for that stormy scene in the church,
and the walk to Pontoise, as well as for the triumphant return
to the scene of her labours.
Three years later, in 1622, Francis de Sales died. His
friendship for Angehque had been unbroken, and she received
numerous letters from him, a few of which have been preserved,
and are those which in his collection are addressed, ' To an
Abbess.' Many were destroyed a few years later as a ' mortifi
cation,' and it is probable that it was very effectual. She did
not value the letters as her own personal possessions, and
deprecates the too favourable terms in which she is mentioned
in them ; but she considered them, and justly, as treasures which
Port Royal might well guard with jealous care.
In one of them he says, ' I begin where you end, my very
dear and truly well-beloved daughter ; for your last letter ends,
" I think that you know me." Yes, certainly I do know you,
and know that your heart is entirely set upon serving God ; but
I know also that your vety ardent and impetuous nature some
times carries you away. Ah, my daughter, do not, I beseech
you, imagine that the work begun in you can be so soon com
pleted. Cherry-trees bear frait quickly because they produce
nothing better than a cherry, soon ripe and soon over ; but the
palm, that prince of trees, is said to bear no dates, until it has
l3een planted a hundred years. Mediocrity may be acquired
in twelve months ; but, alas ! the perfection at which we aim
does not come, dear daughter, for many years.'

124 ST. FRANCIS AND THE ABBESS. [chap
' Oh my daughter, cannot you prostrate yourself before God
when a thing happens, and say quite simply : " Oh my God, it
this is Thy wiU it is my will also, and if it is not Thy will then
it is not my will," and then pass on from this matter to some
action or exercise which shall divert your mind? But my
daughter, I will tell you what you do in such a case. 'When
this trifling matter enters your mind you are angry and wiU not
consider it, you are afraid that it may prove a stumbling-block
to you. This fear robs you of all strength, and leaves you pale,
and sad, and trembling ; and then the fear itself displeases you
and engenders another fear lest the first fear and the terror to
which it has given rise should lead you into evdl, and it is thus
that you bewilder yourself. You are afraid of fear, and then
you are afraid of the fear of fear. You are annoyed at an
annoyance, and then you are annoyed at having been annoyed
with an annoyance. Just as I have seen persons who put them
selves into a passion, and then are angry at having been in a
passion. It is like the circles which we see when we throw a
stone into a pool of water, for there is first a little circle and
then a larger and another, and then another.'
Again he says : ' We must not be too severe 'with ourselves,
our faults, and imperfections ; for although it is in accordance
with the dictates of reason that we should be annoyed when
we have committed a fault, yet we must be careful not
to cherish bitter angry severity, for it is thus that many
are bitter because they have been bitter, and angry because
they have shown anger, and are vexed because they have
been vexed. We must strive to feel such sorrow for our
faults as shall be firm and constant, but tranquil, gentle and
peaceful. For just as a judge executes justice upon offenders
far better when he passes sentence in a calm mind under the
sway of reason than when he passes sentence with anger and
impetuosity (because if he allows himself to be influenced by
anger he does not punish faults according to their magnitude,
but according to his own state of mind), in the same way we
punish our own faults much more effectually by a persistent
and tranquU repentance than by bitter, impetuous and angty
repentance, because that impulsive sorrow^ does not result from
the nature of our sins but of our own inclinations.'
Angelique was at this time exposed to two antagonistic
influences, which possibly neutralized each other. The Indies

X.] ST. FRANCIS AND THE ABBESS. 125
of Maubuisson opposed and ridiculed her; whilst admiring
friends, relatives and her faithful nuns, thought and said that
she was perfect, and received her words as oracles. She stood
in need of some one who would appreciate her work and aims,
and at the same time not rest contented with what she had
already achieved, but lead her onwards. She found such a
friend in St. Francis, and surrounded as she was by difficul
ties of all kinds, his favourite saying, 'Ask nothing, desire
nothing, refuse nothing,' indicated the frame of mind which
she most needed to cultivate. Another of his sayings com
mended itself to her at once, for she, like the saint, was blessed
with a sweet temper, and inclined to ways of pleasantness ; it
was : ' More flies are caught with one spoonful of honey than
with ten barrels of vinegar.'
Francis made many inquiries as to the rules of Maubuisson
and Port Royal, and after hearing them, said, ' My daughter,
wouldn't it be better not to try for such large fish, and to take
more of them ? '
She told him of the difficulty she had experienced in finding
a director of conscience, and that therefore she had been
obliged to take advice and assistance from all sides, which was
in reality guiding herself. He answered that ' she need not be
uneasy on that point, as there is no harm in seeking from
several flowers the honey which we cannot find in one.'
Angelique admired the answer, but thought it would be
dangerous to act upon it ; and indeed it was rather a fanciful
evasion than a true solution of her difficulty.
There is nothing that shows the strength or vitality of
AngeUque's nature more than this friendship for Francis de Sales
and the lasting esteem with which she honoured his memory.
She was not of those who seek first one guide and then another,
quickly adopt and as easily abandon views and principles, who
are led in opposite directions all unconscious of a change, and
renounce a leader from caprice rather than conviction. She
weighed the words and worth of St Francis, though he was
fifty-three and she .was twenty-eight ; she distinguished maxims
that it would be dangerous to act upon; but she also re
cognized his loving insight and lofty aspirations, his faith in
God and faith in man, and she never relinquished what she
had once gained ; truth and goodness, once seen, were never
lost, sight of by her. What Francis de Sales taught her

126 ST. FRANCIS AND THE ABBESS. [chap.
she never forgot ; his gentle words were often on her lips, still
oftener we may beheve in her heart. His firm faith in the love
of God to man and of man to God, lends a tender compunction
to the sterner doctrine which she received from later guides ;
the recollection of his gentleness helped her to subdue her
own impetuosity, and to overcome her impatience with the
faults of others. She maintained that he was firm as well as
gentle, and contrasted him with the Jesuit fathers, saying that
of all the priests she had ever known his motives were the
purest and most unworldly.
' I opened my heart to him without any reserve,' she says,
' and he spoke to me with equal frankness. I can assure you
that he did not conceal from me his most secret and important
thoughts on the state of the Church and of several religious
orders, the spirit of which he knew and did not approve, as he
thought it too intriguing, too worldly, and too politic'
More than thirty years later she had a long conversation with
her nephew le Maitre, which represents her recoUection of
the sentiments, if not the exact words, of her early friend.
Le Maitre wrote down all that he could remember as soon as
his aunt left the room, and although we cannot therefore look
for verbal accuracy in this recollection of an old memoty, it is
important enough to warrant translation. It shows what
were the subjects that occupied the mind of AngeUque as well
as that of the Bishop ; that she was not engrossed even then
by the overwhelming cares of Maubuisson and Port Royal, but
could look beyond them to the Church of which she was a
member, and trace the disorders of the individual and the com
munity to the immorality and irreligion of fhe Court of Rome
which ought to have been the source of light and trath.
Le Maitre says : 'On the 6th of April, 1653, I was talking
to her about the Bishop of Geneva, and she said, " That holy
man helped me vety much, and I think I may venture to say
that he honoured me with as much affection and confidence as
he bestowed on Mdme. de Chantal. I was astonished at the
manner in which he told me all his deepest thoughts without
any reserve, just as I always told and always had told him
mine from the very first. He certainly did not receive so much
credit as he deserved for his knowledge of the condition of the
Church of Rome. His pure eye could not but see the im-
' Memoires pour servir i I'Histoire de Port Royal, vol. ii. p. 307.

X.] ST. FRANCIS AND THE ABBESS. 127
morality of monks and priests, which had been brought about
by relaxation of their rules ; but he concealed his thoughts,
and covered them with a veU of charity and humUity."
' " He was quite as much distressed as M. de Beralle, at the
irregularities of the Court of Rome, and spoke to me particularly
about them. Then he said, 'My daughter, these are subjects
for our tears, for in the existing state of the world it would
cause great scandal to speak of them, and would do no
good. These sick men love their maladies, and do not desire
to be cured. The Ecumenical Councils ought to reform the
head as weU as the members of the Church, for their authority
is decidedly higher than that of the Pope. But Popes take it
amiss if the Church does not yield to them on every point,
although in the order established by God a really representa
tive Council, assembled in accordance with the canons of the
Church, is above the Popes. I know as much about this
as any one, but discretion keeps me sUent, for I see no
possible result from speaking. We must weep, and pray in
secret, and trust that the hand of God wUl adjust what the
hand of man dare not touch ; and we must humble ourselves
beneath the ecclesiastical powers to which we have been made
subject, and at the same time entreat God to humiUate and
convert them by the aid of His mighty Spirit and to reform
the abuses which have crept in to degrade the lives of the
ministers of the Church. We must implore Him to send holy
riien, animated with the zeal of Saint Charles, who wUl purify
the Church by the fire of their zeal and knowledge, and make
it without spot or stain in discipline, as it is in doctrine.' He
found some consolation in opening his heart to me, and I
know that he did the same to Mdme. de Chantal. He had
drawn us together, as closely as it was possible to do two
persons who had never seen each other." '
These extracts help us to understand the attitude of Angelique
towards her Church. She beUeved that it embodied all the
great truths necessary to salvation. So far as we know, she
never experienced the slightest difficulty with regard to any
of its doctrmes ; the attraction which she felt as a giri towards
her Huguenot aunts was not the longing for a purer faith, but
a desire to be set free from the vows which bound her to a
conventual life. Intellectual difficulties she had none, moral
difficulties many, but she attributed them to the individual and

I2S ST. FRANCIS AND THE ABBESS. [chap.
not to the system. Priests, monks, bishops, and Popes were
fallible, but the Catholic Church was infallible. If she could
have enforced strict obedience to the rules of the monastic
orders, obedience, not only to the letter, but to the spirit of
them, she would have realized her highest ideal of holiness
upon earth.
Francis de Sales had no more desire for innovation than
Angelique. He was contented with the theoty of his Church,
and found all the freedom that he needed in practice. Ange
lique learnt from him to attribute evety evil and all the per
secution she had ultimately to undergo to the individual, and
not to the Church. Moreover, she looked upon Francis as a
saint ; and the recollection of his faith and piety, his gentle
ness and consideration for others, his faith in the good as
well as the evil in human nature never failed to kindle her
enthusiasm. Angelique retained through life the affection and veneration
for Mdme. de Chantal, who was nearly twenty years her senior,
which she had learnt from Francis de Sales. They saw each
other at the rare intervals when Mdme. de Chantal was called
to Paris by work connected with 'her order. Their first meet
ing took place in 1620, at Maubuisson; Mdme. de Chantal
was ill, and Angehque, who had acquired considerable reputa
tion for her surgical skill, bled her in the hand; the nuns
preserved the blood, and dried it so as to have relics of the
saint These years are eventful for AngeUque. In December 1619
her father died at sixty years of age, comparatively young
for an Arnauld. During his illness he made known his de
termination to renounce the world if he recovered, and to
change his name from Antoine to Rene, or Bom again. He
desired that his past life should be marked by a black stone,
and that which he was about to lead by a white one. He also
made a vow that any plans formed by his wife and eldest son
during his illness -with reference to the disposal of the property
after his death, such as selling the house, or anything of that
kind, should be carried out on his recovety. Such vows were
by no means uncommon at this time, but they availed nothing,
and eleven days later M. Arnauld died. He was a good
husband, and an affectionate father, shrewd and worldly, and
seeking in aU that he did to advance the interests of his

X.] , ST. FRANCIS AND THE ABBESS. 129
family ; but withal his aspirations were towards goodness and
piety, and he strove after them for himself and his children.
The bulls from Rome appointing Agnes coadjutrix of Port
Royal did not arrive until 1620, after her father's death. The
appointment was most distasteful to her, and she thought that
Angehque, who disliked the burden of her rank, was transferring
it to her upon whom it weighed no less heavily. But there
was great joy throughout the community when it was made
known, and Angelique came from Maubuisson for the inaugural
ceremony. Among other observances at that time it is the
coadjutrix, and not the Abbess, who selects the chant for
the day. Agnes opened the book at this sentence from the
Apocalypse: 'These are the two olive trees.' The words
were understood by the community to show the future fecun
dity of the abbesses as spiritual mothers, . and the light which
they would show forth in the Church.
But Agnes read them differently. ' Two olive trees, sister ;
we shall be two,' she murmured to Angelique, answering
thereby the heart of the elder, who was already picturing to
herself that future day when she should not divide, but alto
gether lay aside the burden of her rank, and leave her abbey
to the care of the Reverend and dear Mother Agnes.

S.L. XIIL

CHAPTER XI.

BACK TO MAUBUISSON.

Maubuisson was offered to Angehque, but she declined it
She said that under existing circumstances the Abbess must be
a woman of rank, -with influential friends ; and urged that as
she found the small poor Abbey of Port Royal too great a
burden for her, she could not accept one that was large and
wealthy. She pointed out that she had placed the temporal
affairs of Maubuisson in the hands of a man of business, so
that she might devote herself entirely to the spiritual well-being
of its inmates ; and although she had thus undertaken only
one half of the duties of an abbess, the task was too difficult
for her.
She suggested that Mdme. de Soissons, natural daughter
of the Comte de Soissons, and half-sister of Mdme. de
Longueville, had all the qualifications necessary for so im
portant a post. Her high birth (for iUegitimacy was not -con
sidered a stain upon it) would be a security against any danger
from Mdme. d'Estrees, and would be appreciated by the Ladies.
She was a nun at Fontevrault, and had a reputation for piety
and conformity to. the rules of the Order which led Angehque
' to hope that she would undertake the reformation of Mau
buisson. The abbey was offered to her and accepted. She
went to it at once ; but Angelique ruled the house for thirteen
months longer, until Bulls could be obtained from Rome and
the new Abbess formaUy instaUed.
When Mdme. de Soissons was expected fhe whole convent
insisted that Angelique should have a new gown. She yielded
to their wishes, especially as they urged the necessity of show
ing respect to the Abbess-designate. After she had put it on

CHAP. XL] BACK TO MAUBUISSON. 131
she was in conference with her novices, and could not refrain
from looking at her dress and exclaiming, ' What a gown ! Is
it possible that I am obliged to wear such a gown as this ! '
And then, in her love of sacred poverty, she forgot the subject
on which she had been speaking, and talked to her pupUs of
the poor in spirit and the poor in this world's goods, who had
nothing and hoped for nothing, until they were moved to tears.
A few days later she exchanged the new gown for a shabby
white one worn by one of the postulants, of which she grew so
fond that she wore, and darned, and patched it, until no scrap
'of the original material remained.
She was disappointed in Mdme. de Soissons, whose friends
had given an exaggerated account of her piety in order to
enlist Angelique's S)nnpathy in her favour. The new Abbess
was luxurious and self-indulgent. The Capuchin monks and
Jesuit priests defended her habits, and told Angelique she
ought to make allowance for a Princess, who had made far
greater sacrifices to become a nun than she had done, and
who had no love of poverty and asceticism. Angelique replied
that she no longer considered her as a Princess but as a nun,
and that she ought to live like one, and not like a Princess.
The new Abbess had no intention of reforming Maubuisson,
no interest in Angelique's aims. They treated each other with
respect; but that was all, and Mdme. de Soissons' coldness
gradually changed to angty intolerance and culminated in bitter
reproaches against Angdlique for ha-ving ' fiUed the house -with
beggars.' 'Madam,' said Angelique, 'if you think that your monastery,
which has thirty thousand francs a year, is overburdened by
those whom I have admitted, we shall not think so at Port
Royal, where we have only six thousand.'
She -wrote immediately to her own community, and asked if
they had faith and courage to share their poverty -with the
Maubuisson novices. A letter signed by the whole sisterhood
of Port Royal told her that they would be received joyfully.
Nineteen of the thirty-two novices had now taken the veil,
ten as nuns of Port Royal, and -with the understanding that
they were to accompany Angelique thither ; and nine as nuns
of Maubuisson. As the removal of these nine would reflect
unfavourably on the Abbess and the monastety, it was certain
to be strongly opposed by Mdme. de Soissons,; she would
K 2

132 BACK TO MAUBUISSON. [chap.
rather keep the ' beggars ' than have it said that they would
not stay with her. But when they found that Angehque and
all their companions were about to leave, they implored her
to take them also. She could not refuse their entreaty, and
thought that it would be a failure of duty to abandon them.
They drew up a petition, which was forwarded to the General
of the Cistercian order, together with the letter already referred
to from Port Royal. Considerable influence was used to induce
the Abbot of CiteaUx to grant their request, and the matter
was kept so secret that Mdme. de Soissons and the Ladies had
no suspicion of what was going on. When the Abbot sent
permission for the removal of all those whom Mdme. de Port
Royal had received there was great rejoicing ; but Mdme. de
Soissons was surprised and angry, and never forgave Angelique
for her share in the transaction.
Angelique wrote to her mother, who now was a -widow,
asking if she would send carriages to Maubuisson to convey
them to Port Royal ; but she added that her mother was not to
do so unless God inclined her heart to bestow this alms freely.
Mdme. Amauld sent the carriages required, and female atten
dants to escort the travellers. Angelique spent a few days in
Paris at Mdme. de Chantal's monastery of the Visitation, and
with her mother ; her companions went direct to Port Royal.
She feared that the excitement caused by their arrival would
lead to a great relaxation of discipline, therefore when they
left her she imposed a rule of absolute silence until they
should meet again. When they were near the end of their
joumey, and had reached the summit of the hUl, from which,
looking down into the valley beneath, they could see the top of
*the steeple of Port Royal, they were to recite together:
' Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth ; and keep the door
of my lips,' and from that moment their lips were to be sealed
until she rejoined them. As, however, it was necessary to
provide means for their identification, she wrote their names
upon tickets which were sewn to their sleeves.
They arrived at Port Royal on the 3rd of March, 1623. It
was a fete-day for the monastery, and all the Sisters went out in
procession to meet them, chanting Te Deum, with hearts fuU
of gratitude to God for this great and good gift, and of love
towards those who were bringing 'sacred poverty' to the
monastery. They drew near to welcome the guests, and lo, they

XL] BACK TO MAUBUISSON. 133
were all dumb, and the answer of each one was to point to her
sleeve. It cannot be doubted that Port Royal had had plea
sant anticipations of long stories about Maubuisson, Mdme.
d'Estrees, and the Ladies, and that they felt a momentary
disappointment at finding these were not to be realized. But
their own discipline was scarcely inferior to that pf Angelique's
thirty-two, and their fervour and piety received a fresh impulse
from the accession of this silent devout band.
Angelique returned on the nth or 12th of March, and was
received with great joy. She removed the seal of silence from
the Sisters, who had been dumb for nine days ; but it was only
to greet them tenderly, and ask after their welfare ; each one
then returned in silence to her accustomed work.
There were now more than sixty persons in a monastery
which had thirteen cells in the dormitory. Angelique says : —
' I built some new ones of lath and plaster, very poor. The
splendour of the house I had just left, and its wealth, had shown
me how these unfortunate tares choke the good seed. I had
seen so much of the accursed evil and detestable monuments
of vice in that house, and how completely they had destroyed
the work of the holy queen who had founded it,^ that I was
more than ever in love with sacred poverty; and as far as
possible I had taught those who accompanied me to love it,
and they had a great ~ affection for it, and were delighted to
find themselves in a house so poor and peaceful as Port Royal.'
Angelique's sisters Agnes and Marie-Claire, together with
Sister Isabelle-Agnes, possessed great influence, and their zeal
made them eager to discover new methods of serving God
and sacrificing -themselves. They submitted all their plans
to Angelique, who modified some and rejected others, being
guided by that excellent common sense which made her avoid
extremes. There was at that time a violent recoil from Mau
buisson. The example of the idle, gossiping Ladies, with their
scandal and mischief-making, had given rise to an exaggerated
notion of the sanctity of silence; and the faith of the community
in this virtue was so great that they resolved to abolish con
ferences which were not in accordance with the rule of St.
Benedict All the nuns worked by turns in the kitchen, and Sisfer
Isabelle-Agnes was there for six weeks in Lent During that
1 Blanche of Castille, mother of St. Louis.

134 BACK TO MAUBUISSON. [chap.
time she never spoke one word, either superfluous or neces
sary, but made herself understood by signs. It was owing to
her influence and example that a wave of silence swept over
the monastery, and the enthusiasm which had been kindled, and
for which there was no adequate outlet, was employed in
checking itself.
During this period a young nun was sent to a ceU which had
been assigned to her and was supposed to be duly fumished.
Upon entering it she found that it was full of bundles of fire
wood ; she wrapped her cloak round her and lay down quietly
in a corner ; made no remark on the following day, and
continued to occupy it in uncomplaining silence. One day she
was wanted, and the sister who was sent to fetch her opened
the door and found nothing, as she thought, but a store-closet
full of firewood ; so she returned, saying there must be some
mistake, as the cell was not occupied. The young nun was
sent for and asked where she slept ? In that, place, she answered,
and it did vety well for her.
This was nothing extraordinary at a time when poverty and
mortification of every sense were sought for "and received with
gratitude at Port Royal. The slothful, selfish Uves of the
Maubuisson Ladies, their wealth and love of pleasure, had
made an indelible impression on young and ardent natures.
They were wUling to suffer any privation and hardship, rather
than desecrate their high vocation and bring into disrepute
the holy name of nun. As the dranken Helot to a Spartan
youth, so was Maubuisson to Port Royal. It was associated
in Angelique's mind with a sense of failure and of her o-wn
insufficiency; but to the world, the matter bore a very different
appearance. Maubuisson was a splendid success ; the Abbess
had been removed, the nuns were reformed, religious obser
vances re-established, and the rules of the Order were now
observed. The young Abbess of Port Royal had effected
these marvellous changes, she and a band of holy maidens
who were devoted to her, and who followed in her steps.
They had now returned to a home which -was the abode of
piety and good works. The holy lives and good deeds of the
Sisters were talked of far and near. Before long nuns from
other convents began to ask permission to join Port Royal,
and Angehque would not refuse any who were really in earnest,
and were drawn to her by motives which she respected.

XL] BACK TO MAUBUISSON. 13S
Her yoimgest sister, Madeleine, born in 1607, entered upon
her no-yiciate in 1624. 'When I passed through Paris in
1 8 18 on my way to Maubuisson I stayed at my father's house,
and there I found my little sister Madeleine, who was vety
pretty and knew it, and was also very worldly. When I saw
this I was quite grieved, and said : " How is this, little Made
leine ; won't you be a nun and come and live with us ? " To
which she replied quite pertly : " No, sister, I have not the
slightest desire to do so." " 'Why, my child, then what do you
want?" "Well, sister, I want to be married." Upon which I
asked, " And pray why do you want to be married ? " " Because
I am so fond of babies," she replied. " I love them with all
my heart.- I am never tured of kissing and nursing my little
nephews, and that makes me wish to have babies of my own."
This simplicity of a child of ten years old who did not know
what marriage meant, and only looked upon it as the means ot
procuring httle children to play with, made me laugh at first,
but afterwards I was vety sony to see her so frivolous and
'with no thought of serving God.'
Doubtiess the visit of her Abbess-sister produced a great
impression upon little Madeleine, and the result of it may be
seen in a dream which she never forgot. One night, when she
was eleven years old, she was sleeping in the room of her sister
Mdme. le Maitre. She dreamt, or, as she thought, had a vision
of St Madeleine, her patron saint, standing in a thorny desert,
and stretching out a white and beautiful hand, with which she
beckoned to her to draw near. She did so, and the saint
pointed to a nun's white dress, and gave her some butter — a
symbol, as she thought, ,of the food of those who abstain from
meat. The child aroused Mdme. le Maitre, recounted her
dream, and said that she intended to be a nun. Her sister
laughed, told her that she and her intentions were very young,
and she had better go to sleep again. She replied, 'Well,
you will see what comes of it It is quite trae that my resolu
tion is vety new just now, but soon it will be hours old, and
then days, and weeks, and months ; and at last years will show
you that I am in camest.' On the morrow she told her parents
and friends of her intention, and they also laughed at her.
She was vety pretty, very lively, admired and beloved by all
who knew her, and she was her fa-ther's darling; but her re
solution never faltered. In 1624, when she was fifteen years

136 BACK TO MAUBUISSON. [chap.
old, she forsook her mirror, entered upon her noviciate, and in
1625 fulfilled the prediction uttered by St. Francis, and became
a nun. Very soon after she had taken the veU her ardour began to
relax. Like all the Arnaulds, she was high-spirited, gay, and
Ught of heart The soUtude of the monastery was irksome,
the implicit obedience required of her very difficult Instead
of submitting, she contradicted and argued. Angelique's tender
ness and patience never failed her at such a time, but when she
found that instead of pi;oducing a good effect they tended to
increase the self-sufficiency and vainglory of the young nun, she
resolved to ' drive out the demon of pride by confusion.' So
one day, when Madeleine had disputed instead of obeying, she
seriously reprimanded her, and then boxed her ears soundly.
' The proud devil left her from that day,' we are told, ' and
untU her death she was remarkable for her simple, unaffected
piety, her humility and submission.'
After an example of Angelique's severity it is only right to
give one of her tenderness. During her absence at Maubuisson
Sister Marguerite, who had at first been received as lay-sister
and had taken the veil after some years' residence at Port
Royal, was rather troublesome. When Angelique returned she
removed her from the office of cook in order to give her rest,
which she seemed to need. But Sister Marguerite resented
the interference of her Abbess, and her temper 'was so violent
that at one of the high festivals of the Church, Angelique
would not allow her to partake of the Holy Communion.
Sister Marguerite resolved to ran away, and spoke of her in
tention to the Confessor, who did not however tell the Abbess.
When night came she went to a room where the secular dresses,
discarded by the novices, were kept, and changed her own for
one of them ; and she stole some relics which were kept in a
cross above the altar. The convent walls were so low that
with the help of a ladder she easily got over them, and was
soon in the open field. And then a great fear of wolves feU
upon her, for at that time there were many in the country. She
had often heard them howling around Port Royal, and knew
.what havoc they committed among the flocks. But anything
was better than being devoured by them. She knocked at the
door of a poor woman who lived in a cottage near the abbey
and entreated her to let her sit by her fire tiU morning. But

XL] BACK TO MAUBUISSON.

137

the woman said, ' I don't know who you are, I don't know any
thing about you ; why do you come to me ? .Go about your
business.' And then the nun entreated so piteously that the
woman relented, and aUowed her to come in and sit by the
fire. As soon as it was daylight the unwUling hostess told her
to go, and she went out and made her way to Paris, where
she had a sister in service. At the sight of her the sister said,
' Oh, you wretched woman ! what have you done ? ' for she
thought she must have committed some crime, and had run
away to escape punishment. ' I am lost ! ' was the only
answer of the nun. As her sister could get no information
from her she took her to the confessional of the monks of
St Bernard, where she was told that the Fathers would not
confess secular persons. ' I am a nun,' she said, ' and I have
ran away from Port Royal.' She was sent to a place of safety
and a messenger was despatched , to her Abbess. Meanwhile
on the following moming the priest of Port Royal was in the
confessional, when a man asked for him and said, ' My father,
somebody has tried to rob you in the night, for there is a ladder
against the convent walls.' The priest immediately suspected
what had happened, and search was made for Sister Marguerite
throughout - the house and in the neighbourhood, but all in
vain ; the priest set out on horseback, but could obtain no
tidings of her. Angelique and the sisterhood fasted and
prayed, and implored God with many tears to have mercy on
her and restore her to them. At length news came that she
was in Paris, and would be kept there until Angelique could
send for her. She did so on the following day, and Sister
Marguerite reached Port Royal at night. When the carriage
wheels were heard Angelique had all the hghts put out so that
no one might see the return of the poor penitent, and she
stood alone at the open door, and took the wanderer in her
arms and kissed her, with no other words than ' Oh my dear
child 1 ' Then she led her into the convent and took oft' the
secular dress and gave her the garb she had discarded, and
appointed a nun who was her special favourite to be her con
stant companion. But it was in vain ; Sister Marguerite was
one of those who was repelled by the pur-ity of heart and life
which she saw around her. She ran away a second time, and
Angehque, seeing that nothing could be done for her at Port
Royal, allowed her to be sent to another convent, reproaching

138 BACK TO MAUBUISSON. [chap
herself for not having done enough or done it in the right
way. Shortly after her retum from Maubuisson, Angehque was
asked to send two nuns to the Abbey of Lys, one to act as
Prioress, the other as mistress of novices. She selected for the
first post Sister Anne Amauld, and for the last Sister Marie
des Anges. They laboured at Lys very much as AngeUque
had done at Maubuisson, but hi the end they were successful,
and Lys was reformed.
The Abbess of Lys had promised the Princess de TremouUle
to select her cousin, Mdme. de TremouiUe, as coadjutrix ; but
she broke her word, and conferred this favour upon Mdme. de
Risse. The Princess was deeply offended, and there was a
strong party in her favour among the nuns, who were resolved
not to alienate such an influential patron. They therefore con
sented to the proposal made by her, that Mdme. de Risse
should be forcibly ejected from the abbey, and Mdme. de
TremouiUe installed in her place. This was done.
The Abbess had been suspended by the Superior of the Ordei
for many and great faults, but she would not submit to the
sentence which deprived her of all authority ; and would not
allow Mdme. de TremouiUe to take her place and usurp the
post of coadjutrix.
We may take this as a fair example of many of the difficulties
which Angelique was now called upon to solve. In 1625 she
joined the two Port Royal Sisters. The Abbess was tormenting
Mdme. de TremouUle in every possible way, and was determined
not to resign her functions, although she had been formaUy
suspended. When the bell rang for divine service, she used to
hurry to the church, obtain possession of the throne of the
Abbess, direct the choir, and chant the benediction; thus
giving rise to great confusion and disturbance. Mdme. de
TremouiUe wished to stay away altogether, because, for example,
at vespers, when she began to chant Paternoster, the Abbess
would shout as loud as she could, so as to drown her voice,
and the nuns were not only scandalized, but were beginning
to be divided in their aUegiance.
Mdme. de TremouiUe would go to Angelique and throw
herself weeping at her feet, saying that she could endure it no
longer, and must remain in her own room. But AngeUque
replied that this was ordained by God as a punishment for

XL] BACK TO MAUBUISSON. 139
having obtained the office of coadjutrix iUegally; she must
not only submit to this decree, but accept it willingly ; when
the Abbess took the high seat, she must take the low ; but she
must not refrain from attending di'vine service, for those who
had placed her in authority intended her to exercise it. She
must not shrink because of difficulty, but must endure, and show
great forbearance ; when she had anything to do which she dis
liked exceedingly, she must first of all ask God to help her,
and must offer at His throne the sacrifice which she was
about to make.
Still, whenever she was alone with the nun who accompanied
her, she used to throw herself on her knees, and say, ' Now let
us pray God to help Madame.' No doubt in those days she
lived over again the sorrows and humUiations of Maubuisson ;
but she never faltered in her duty, and it was the -strength ot
her nature which made its tender sympathy so precious.
She found that her presence irritated the Abbess so much
that she did not attempt to see her ; but in order to show due
respect, sent her companion. Sister Angehque de-St. Agnes de
Marie de la Falaire, to pay a ceremonious visit every momirig in
her stead. The Abbess used to take no notice of this nun with
the long name, but would tum to the little birds which filled her
room, and of which she was vety fond, and tell them that they
had much more sense than human beings, and she found them
much more amusing. The nun entreated Angelique not to send
her, for she disliked her mission and was afraid of being alone
with the Abbess, who lived in a house which was quite apart
from the rest of the building. Angelique replied that she
¦ft'ould not send her if she thought there was any^personal risk ;
but this she did not believe, and it was easy to see that the
Abbess really had some shade of preference for her, so that
they must persevere, and tty to soften her heart.
Angelique's wisdom, her strong sense of right, and also her
influence, enabled her ultimately to make satisfactoty arrange
ments for the community at Lys.
Her uncle on the mother's side, M. de Dray, was President
of the Grand Conseil; he was induced to take up the matter
and dispose of the chief difficulty by procuring the deposition
of the- guilty Abbess, and giving Mdme. de TremouiUe per
mission to exercise her full rights. Angehque, however, told
her and the community that they must pause untU justice

14° BACK TO MAUBUISSON. [chap.
haa been done to Mdme. de Risse ; whether they Uked it or
not, she was now legally their Abbess, as she had been appointed
coadjutrix by the Abbess who had been deposed. She per
suaded them to wait until Mdme. de Risse had been nominated
to another abbey, and then to write to the king, and ask for
Lys for Mdme. de TremouUle. Through her influence and
exertion, both matters were satisfactorily arranged.
When the Abbess heard that she was deposed, she gave way
to an uncontrollable fit of fury, and after displaying the most
outrageous violence, announced her intention of partaking of
the Holy Communion with the rest of the community. Ange'-
lique was horrified, and insisted that such a desecration must
not be allowed. She spoke so strongly to the Confessor
on the subject, that when, in spite of all attempts to dissuade
her, the Abbess came forward to the communion-table, he said,
that as her crimes had been public, so he must publicly refuse
to administer to her.
We can imagine the lengthy conferences at which AngeUque
had to preside, and the arguments and persuasions necessary
to bring the nuns of Lys to a right mind. She often sat up
talking until ii o'clock at night, — a very late hour for one
who began the day at 2 a.m. When the conversation was
ended, she would say that she felt exceedingly tired, and yet
would do the same thing on the morrow ; or if she met a nun
whom she was trying to convince and win to the service of
God, she would stand talking to her for an hour or two, with
no thought of fatigue. The Sister who accompanied her on
her journeys said years afterwards, that she could stiU hear
the 'True, Madam; quite true, Madam,' which formed the
invariable answer of those whom she was addressing. They
were not always conquered by the truth, but they always said,
' When she speaks, all that she asks you to do seems so righr
and reasonable that you can't refuse her.'
Among other things whilst she was at Lys, she persuaded a
vain nun to cut off her long and beautiful hair, which was a
great 'snare' to her, as it requhed much time and skiU
to arrange her head-dress so as to show it aU off to ad
vantage. After AngeUque's return from Lys, she heard that the new
Abbess of Maubuisson was dangerously Ul, and Mdme. de
Longueville applied to her for a nun from Port Royal fitted to

XL] BACK TO MAUBUISSON. 141
be her coadjutrix and successor. She refused the request,
for she knew that the Duke de Longueville had an illegitimate
daughter of nine years old, who was a pupil at Maubuisson,
and she suspected that, as usual, a nun who could easily be
removed was to be put in to fill the position of Abbess until
the child was of an age to receive it But whatever the
Duchess may have desired, she protested that she had no
such scheme, and that her only aim was to reform the monas
tery. Angelique therefore yielded, and promised to send Sister
Marie des Anges, who had been three years at Lys, and was
now about to retum to Port Royal. To this excellent nun so
high an office offered no attractions. She wept bitterly when
Angelique told her of the proposal, and asked if her vow of
obedience compelled her to accept it. Angelique answered
that she thought not, and yet it might be that God required
this sacrifice at her hands. At the word sacrifice Sister Marie
des Anges yielded ; she took up the dignity of Abbess as a
burden which she was to endure for the love of God, and in
obedience to His will.
Mdme. de Soissons died in December 1626, and at the
request of Mdme. de LonguevUle, the king at once ga,ve the
abbey to Sister Marie des Anges, or, as she is henceforward
called, la Mfere des Anges. She was accompanied to Mau
buisson by eight of the nuns whose removal had caused such
estrangement between the two monasteries, and by Agnes
Arnauld, who was a powerful auxUiary ; her mystic talk, saintly
fervour and ascetic life made a powerful appeal to the imagina
tion, whilst her unobtrasiveness as a simple nun excited none of
the jealousy which both Angelique and the Mfere des Anges
called forth.
Angelique wrote out four rules for the new Abbess, which
' bear testimony to her practical wisdom and piety, and to the
evenly balanced mind which enabled her to discern the path of
duty, either for herself or others.
The rules were : —
X. To be very charitable to the poor, and give them large
alms, because the great wealth of the abbey had really been
intended by the Founders for their service.
2. To receive portionless girls, and never to refuse any who
had a genuine vocation.
3. To have nothing whatsoever to do with the monks of

142 BACK TO MAUBUISSON. [chap.
Pontoise, whether Jesuit or Capuchin, and never on any
pretence to allow them to talk to the nuns.
4. To kneel at least three times a day before the Holy Altar
and offer her life and all that she had to Christ, asking Him
for grace and strength to fulfil the duties of her position and
to labour faithfully for the welfare of the souls committed to
her charge.
Marie des Anges was twenty-two years at Maubuisson, and
her compliance 'with the instructions in the first part of Rule 3
brought upon her the relentless and persevering enmity of
the monks during the whole of that time. They aUenated the
nuns, whom they stUl saw in the parlours and talked to through
the gratings; and induced them to insist on the retum to
Port Royal of Anne Arnauld, who had taken the place of
Agnes. They could not forgive the Abbess for taking into her
own hands the management ofthe large revenues ofthe abbey.
They said this was not the province of a woman ; she ought
not to interfere in business matters, to attempt to give spiritual
advice, or exercise any control over the conscience and conduct
of her nuns : this was the province of the priests and monks
and confessors, and any interference was an act of injustice to
them which imperilled the souls, of the nuns.
It was in vain that the Abbess gave help to every monk who
needed it. There were always ten or twelve of them in the
abbey, who were sumptuously regaled. They had money for
their doctors' degrees, for clothes, church ornaments, vestments,
journeys, — in fact, for everything that they demanded. But it
was not enough. They wanted the absolute disposal of aU
the funds. When this was refused, they tried to induce the
Abbess to erect fine buUdings, or put up a magnificent altar, as
they knew that the supervision of the works must be entrasted
to them. But she replied that Maubuisson was already too
magnificent, and that in time of war, when there was so much
destitution and poverty, it behoved her to give large alms.
She could not convince them, and they could not influence her.
Her charity was so unostentatious and unobtrasive that they
could not obtain details which they would have had no hesita
tion in misrepresenting, but they knew the poor said that the
good Abbess was a mother to them.
EngUsh and Irish, as weU as Frenchmen, who had been
reduced to extreme poverty by the disturbances of those un-

XL] BACK TO MAUBUISSON. 143
settied times, were helped by her; she gave portions to des
titute maidens who wished to enter a convent; apprenticed
many young chUdren to different trades ; gave small pensions
to unmarried ladies who had been reduced to poverty; and
finding that the abbey was deeply indebted, she paid off all its
liabilities, restored it to wealth, and made it a place of refuge
for the poor and needy.
The monks lodged complaints with the General of the
Cistercian Order, and asked him to inquire into the charges
they brought against her. He did so, and she rendered him
a faithful account of her stewardship. As a result of the
visitation, he said he thought she was the most virtuous
Abbess in the Order.
But the nuns, encouraged by the monks, opposed all her
plans for the spiritual weUhre of the monastety, and she found
that she must be content with promoting the temporal well-
being of the poor, and must abandon the hope of making her
abbey 'rich in deeds of grace.'
She laboured at her post for twenty-two years, and then
Angelique thought it was time she should be released, and
proposed that she should be allowed to resign. Her request
was granted. Marie des Anges most thankfully returned to Port
Royal, where she asked to be allowed to- take her place with
the novices, in order that she might again leam the obedience
which she feared that she had forgotten in these twenty-two
years of command.

CHAPTER XIL

PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT.

Angelique writes of the period which followed her retum from
Maubuisson with a fervour of happiness. The revenue of
Port Royal was not increased, the house was not enlarged, and
yet, for three years, eighty nuns were fed and lodged where
formerly there were only sixteen. God had granted poverty
in answer to their prayers, and they received it joyfully; one
greater gift was stUl in store for them. This world was only a
stepping-stone to the next; ; life chiefly valuable as a preparation
for death; death would crown all their efforts with victory, and
open to them the gates of the kingdom of heaven.
Their ignorance of the laws which govern physical well-
being, and the contempt which their creed had taught them
for this world and the human body, soon brought about the
realization of their highest hopes. Sickness and death reigned
at Port Royal. AngSlique writes :
' God, of His great mercy, now began to take these precious
souls out of the world and to caU them home to Himself.'
Fifteen nuns died in the first and second years after their
return from Maubuisson, and twelve in the third. The infir
mary was always full ; the overcrowded cells were beginning to
look empty. ' It was a great sign of grace and a special
manifestation of the love of God,"they said ; but friends could
not be brought to look upon the mortality in this light, and
asserted that the locality was unhealthy and likely to promote
disease. The drainage of the high lands surrounding Port Royal had
been long neglected, and the stagnant water had gathered into

CHAP. XIL] PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. 145
pools and formed marshes on all sides of it. It was suggested
that the community should leave the abbey, and we have now
to consider the motives which led to the adoption of this
scheme. Madame Arnauld had five daughters in Port Royal: Ange
lique, Agnes, Anne, Marie-Claire, and Madeleine. Mdme. le
Maitre had expressed her intention of taking the veil as soon
as the education of her sons was completed, and had urged her
mother also to join the community. Mdme. Arnauld laughed,
and replied :
' How can I begin to learn obedience at fifty, when I have
been exercising authority ever since I was twelve !'
Nevertheless her heart was with her five daughters, and her
chief desire was to be near them. She took refuge at Port
Royal in 1623, when the plague was raging in Paris, and dis
covered that the sanitary conditions of the abbey were no
better than those of the city, if so good. This was one reason
for desiring the removal to Paris. Another was that she
could not leave her eldest daughter, Mdme. le Maitre, alone in
Paris with so great an anxiety and responsibility as the charge
of her five sons. These two circumstances induced her to urge
the translation of Port Royal to Paris, and two years later
she offered to defray the expense of the removal, to provide
means for the purchase of a suitable residence, and also, if
her request was granted; to take the veil and end her days
under the same roof as hen dear daughters. Tempting as this
offer was, Angelique would not have accepted it unless she
had been drawn by other motives which appealed to her
even more strongly.
¦When she at first undertook the task of reforming her
monastery she had met with constant opposition from the
Cistercian monks who were sent to her as confessors. There
can be no doubt that they would have succeeded in stifling her
efforts, if, through her father's influence, the Abbot of Citeaux
had not supported, and to some extent encouraged her. The
Abbot of Clairvaux was also friendly, and so was the Abbot
de la Charmoye, her Superior. But the two first Abbots died,
one in 1624, and the other in 1625 ; and the men spoken of as
their successors had already intimated their intention of bringing
back Port Royal to the ' customs of the Order,' that is to say,
they proposed to interdict what they called the ' pecuharities '
S.L. XIIL L

146 PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. [chap.
introduced by Angelique, and to withhold the permission
granted by their predecessors for those changes which were
in reality a return to the old rules.
When this was known at Port Royal, it was resolved that
each nun should spend a portion of every day before the altar
in prayer to God for help. They knelt there by turns through
out the whole day from the time when danger first threatened
them ; and when the friendly Abbots died, prayers throughout
the night were added to those of the day.
Angehque began to think that perhaps God did not intend
her to find help in her own Order, but to look for it elsewhere
than among the Cistercians ; and thus she was led to contem
plate a removal from Port Royal as the means indicated for
her deliverance.
This view was fostered by the noble friends and patrons
who were beginning to look upon monastic reform as a plea
sant variety of religious duty. M. Amauld, Francis de Sales,
Mdme. d'Estrees, arid the Duchesse de LongueviUe had made
Port Royal the talk of the day; a brother of Louis XIII.
had visited the abbey to see the community, and asked par
ticularly which of them was The Saint; — for Genevieve le
Tardif, one of the Maubuisson novices, had aheady acquired a
reputation for sanctity which had reached Paris and the court
But Angelique 'did not expose her relics, for fear of losing
them.' She would not run the risk of sacrificing that humUity
and poverty of spirit which were the most precious possessions
of a nun, in order to gratify idle curiosity. If she could have
foreseen the result of a removal to Paris she would not have
consented to make a show of her community in order to please
the court and the bishops, and to try to restore that odour of
sanctity which the Church had lost She did not anticipate this
danger, and no longer had her father to appeal to for the advice
which his knowledge of the world and shrewd practical wisdom
made so valuable. She accepted in all simplicity the assurance
of her friends that Paris would give her additional opporhini-
ties of devoting herself and her nuns to the service of others
who were stiU in spiritual darkness.
Thus the mortality at Port Royal, the entreaties of Mdme.
Arnauld, the hostiUty of ecclesiastical superiors, and the in
fluence of certain churchmen and friends of high bhth whom
she always treated with vety great deference and respect,

XIL] PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. 147
all drew Angelique to Paris ; and soon after her retum from
Lys she went there for the express purpose of finding a house
to which the whole convent might be removed writh as little
delay as possible. She stayed on the way for eight or ten
days in the convent of Poissy, at the request of the Abbess, to
encourage and direct the good work which she had begun ; and
the numerous inquiries and demands for advice and assistance
which she now received showed her that Paris would be a con
venient centre and starting-point for missionaty labour. But
there were many difficulties to be overcome. The Archbishop
of Paris and the Abbot of Citeaux must be induced to sanc
tion the change of residence ; a house must be found, and it
was obvious tiiat an increase of income would be required
to support so large an estabhshment in a city like Paris ; but
Angelique rejoiced to think that they would be really poor,
nay, possibly brought to depend on God for their daily bread,
and she transposed this item to the credit side of the
account. Mdme. Arnauld disposed of one difficulty by purchasing
the Hotel de Clugni in the Faubourg St Jacques, which was at
that time almost in the country ; and, virith the consent of the
Superiors, Angelique, and a few of the sisters and scholars,
took possession of it in December 1625. The remainder were
to follow as soon as possible, for twelve nuns had died in the
course of this year, and a great many more were so Ul that it
was necessaty to remove them at once.
The Queen-Mother, Marie de Medicis, consented to become
the Founder of the new house, Port Royal de Paris, a^^it was
called. The letters-patent from the king, authorizing the
removal of the nuns, are dated December 1625. They are
curious documents, and characteristic of the abject servility of
the age.
' Louis, by the grace of God King of France and ot
Navarre, to all present and to come, greeting.
' Evety act which tends to promote the gloty of God and to
increase His worship is greatly to be esteemed, but those which
emanate from Illustrious Persons are so much the more com
mendable as their authors are of higher eminence than others.
And when those whom God has raised to sovereign dignity
employ themselves in good works, the Divine Majesty is much
L 2

PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. [chap.

more glorified and the edification of the people is very much
greater than at any other time ; the gratitude of those who are
at the height of worldly prosperity, and the fact that they offer
at His feet the good gifts which they have received from Him
does extraordinary honour to God, and calls down blessings
upon their reign. Moreover, the force of their example exer
cises a gentle compulsion over their subjects, who cannot
refrain from imitating the piety which shines with so bright a
lustre in their princes.
' As therefore the Queen, our very honoured Lady and Mother,
has represented to us that, as some acknowledgment of the
grace and favour of God, she vrishes to promote the re-estab
lishment of disciphrie and the retum to the ancient piety of all
religious Orders, and especially that of St Bernard, to which
she is more particularly devoted, and more particularly those
convents for nuns in the Order in which reform is beginning to
make such progress that we may look for great results if it
pleases us to support and protect its zealous promoters ; and
seeing that no one has worked more worthUy or with greater
success to secure the strict observance of the rales of the said
Order than our very dear and well-beloved sister Angehque
Arnauld, therefore  '
And so on through an inflated page of; self-glorification to
give permission, with the consent of the Archbishop of Paris,
for their removal from an unhealthy locality in which they were
dying fast, where they were far removed from other towns and
viUagei, could not obtain help in time of need, were exposed
' to ^ the privations of the desert,' and even to the lawless
excesses of men-at-arms, and to authorize their establishment
in Paris.
Angelique wished to leave a certain number of nuns at Port
Royal des Champs, as it is henceforth called, and to keep up
both houses. But the Archbishop insisted on the removal of
the whole community. A chaplain was, however, left at Port
Royal ; there was daily service in the church, and the manorial
and feudal rights of the abbey were maintained.
Angelique paid her workmen at Port Royal for the last time
from a bag which contained every coin at her disposal. When
she had paid all away, a poor man came forward and asked for
alms ; she said that she had no more, and stood for a moment

XII] PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. 149
in sad sUence ; then she stooped, took off her shoes and gave
them to him.
The Paris house was not large enough to accommodate them
all, so that a gallery was added, and the garrets converted
into dormitories ; by this means at the end of the year they
were all lodged, though they were even more crowded than they
had been at Port Royal des Champs. The choir was so small
that only one-fourth of the nuns could enter at a time, and they
dined in relays in the little refectory. Still in spite of the incon
veniences they were quite contented, and went about their
ordinary work in sUence and with devout humiUty.
But it was not an easy time for Angelique. She saw thatji
extensive additions were absolutely necessary for the permanent
accommodation of a large community, and that she must either
diminish her numbers or build. The latter was difficult ;
the former impossible. Any other Abbess would at once have
looked out for two or three wealthy girls, persuaded the parents
to place them with her, and their portions would have supplied
the requisite funds. Angelique not only did not do this; at this
very time she refused to receive three girls whose parents
offered 39,000 francs as their portion, because she found that
they had no desire to enter a monastery, and no genuine voca
tion, but were merely being put out of the way in order that
their sisters might jnake better marriages. In later years she
thought that she had done wrong in not giving them a trial at
Port Royal, for, "as it happened, they made good nuns in the
monastery to which they were sent. But in 1626 she could not
have relaxed her rale without seeming to abandon her principle,
since her experience arid knowledge were not then sufficiently
large to guide her in applying it Moreover she had discovered
that wealthy nuns had influential friends with will and power to
interfere with the plans and arrangements of an Abbess ; and
she had also found that her pennUess nuns with a genuine
vocation had no one to intrigue on their behalf
All her life she had entertained the greatest horror of debt,
and yet she now chose it as the least of the evils before her,
and resolved to build with borrowed money, and to pay interest
from her income, already sadly too small for the expenses of
Paris life.
Undoubtedlyif Angelique's father had been alive, none of these
things would have happened. He would have'pointed out to her

I50 PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. _ [chap.
that to drain and enlarge Port Royal would have been not
only pradent but comparatively easy ; whereas, to remove nearly
a hundred persons to Paris, procure suitable accommodation,
and maintain them there, was a vety arduous undertaking,
and must end in the acceptance of offers of help, and the loss
of that independence which had hitherto given her so much
power. But M. Arnauld was dead, Francis de Sales was
dead, so was the friendly Abbot of Citeaux; and Angelique
was at this time under the influence of the Bishop of
Langres. Sebastien Zamet, Bishop of Langres, was son of the Itahan
^f the same name, who came into France vrith the Medicis,
and whose name is associated with the business transactions,
pleasures, and intrigues of Henri IV. It was at the house of
M. Zamet, the financier, that Gabrielle d'Estrees was seized vrith
the sudden illness of which she died in a few hours. He had
amassed an enormous fortune, and his influence secured the
rapid advancement of his two sons, one in the army and the
other in the church. The soldier was renowned for his courage,
and w^as known and dreaded by the Huguenots as ' the great
Mahomet.' The priest was a worldly, wicked man, with no aim
beyond his ovra advancement. He was at first Almoner to the
Queen, Marie de Medicis, and was subsequently promoted to the
bishopric of Langres. He lived as a courtier in great pomp and
splendour, and was remarkable for the magnificence of his dress,
equipage, and household. In 1622 his brother the Major-
General was wounded at the siege of Montpelier, and died in
the arms of Angehque's brother, d'AndiUy, and in tiie follow
ing year the Bishop was attacked by severe illness and lay
at the point of death. He was overwhelmed vrith horror and
contrition when he thought of the past, and resolved if he
was spared to lead a new life. He recovered, and immediately
renounced the world and devoted himself to the duties of his
diocese. He determined to emulate the zeal and penitence
of St. Charles Borromeo ; and Cardinal de BeruUe, whom he
knew, sent one of the Fathers of the Oratory to him as a
spiritual director. The court of France was astonished and
edified at his conversion, and his asceticism created a greatei
sensation than his excesses. He spent whole days and nights
in prayer and weeping ; made his visitations as Bishop on foot ;
and spoke of spiritual things in such an ' elevated manner '

XIL] PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. 151
that ' those who listened were quite detached from the earth.'
Among those who listened was the Abbess of Tard at Dijon,
who forthvnfh reformed her monastery in a.ccordance with his
suggestions. Mdme. de Chantal heard of his zeal and piety,
and visited him on her way back to Savoy, after she had
established a convent of the Order of the Visitation in Paris.
She told him of Angelique and her work, and found that
he had visited Port Royal during the absence of AngeUque
at Maubuisson.
He was summoned to Paris in 1625 on ecclesiastical affairs ;
and whilst he was still in the first fervour of his conversion
Angelique became personally acquainted with him. She
thought that God had sent him to her, and, in accordance
wdth the doctrines of the Romish Church, believed it to be
her duty to submit her ovra will and judgment without reserve
to a spiritual director and guide. On one point she felt special
need of help ; from the time of her conversion at sixteen she
had been persistently uneasy at keeping possession of Port
Royal and remaining in the Cistercian Order. She had re
newed her vows more than once, but always with consider
able mental reserve ; and since she had become acquainted
with Mdme. de Chantal she had cherished the hope of some
day joining the Order of the Visitation. She now opened her
heart to the Bishop of Langres, told him her doubts, fears,
and hopes, and confessed that the prospect of a change
which distressed her mother and sisters, also unsettled her
own mind. He insisted on an absolute renunciation of this
desire and intention, and said that when next she received the
Holy Sacrament in the chapel of Port Royal she must renew
her vows without any reserve whatsoever, so that she might
have no pretext in future for leaving her own Order. She
obeyed him, but says that the effect of sacrificing her own will
and giving up long-cherished hopes was ' as if she had been
compelled to become a nun against her wUl ; ' however, from
that time forth her conscience was at peace, and she lost the
desire for change.
This was the only service which Angelique received at the
Bishop's hands ; and in the period now before us we shall see
how gravely her work was compromised by the influence of a
vain and worldly man, whose conversion was transient and
superficial.

152 PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. [chap.
The Abbot de la Charmoye, Superior and Visitor of Port
Royal, had always been kind and considerate to the daughter
of his friend M. Arnauld, and had not offered any opposition
to Angelique's plans. He was now removed from his office by
the new Abbot of Citeaux, who had determined to put down
the Abbess of Port Royal and her reform. But when Angehque
saw what she had to expect, she resolved to follow the advice
of the Bishop, withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Abbot of
Citeaux, and place herself under that of the Archbishop of Paris.
This change offered many advantages ; it would set her free from
the intrigues and interference of the Cistercian monks, and
release her from their presence in the monastery. She had un
willingly endured them for many years, and spoke and wrote with
contempt of their selfish, indolent lives. They were servile or
imperious, the slaves or the masters of an Abbess, must be con
stantly watched and guarded against, and the only remedy was
to change them frequently, so that they should not acquire much
power for evil amongst the nuns. To be free from dependence
on the Cistercian Order implied deliverance from the monks as
well as from the Superior who had threatened to treat her as
recalcitrant, and drag her back into the evil courses of her
predecessors. We need not wonder that she listened to the
Bishop and the Fathers of the Oratoty whom he had intro
duced, for she had no reason to suspect them of interested
motives, and believed that they were sincerely anxious to
promote the welfare of Port Royal.
The Bishop had formed a project in which the Duchess
de Longueville was greatly interested. He wished to found a
new Order of nuns specially consecrated to the adoration of the
mystery of the Holy Eucharist Their constant presence before
the altar was to atone for the outrages offered by the ' blasphemy
of the Protestants,' and the ' sacrilegious communion of un
worthy Christians.' Angelique entered warmly into this plan,
which was in reality a development of the practice aheady
established at Port Royal, and she entreated the Bishop to pro
cure the consent of the Court of Rome for the establishment
of such an Order. But the Port Royal Sisters begged to be
aUowed to add perpetual adoration to the other pious practices
of their rule, and to unite the glorious title of Sisters of the
Holy Eucharist to that of Sisters of St. Bernard. Mdme. de
LonguevUle approved of the suggestion, and seconded it ; but

XIL] PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. 153
the Bishop would not consent to any modification of his plans,
and intended the new Order to follow the rule of St. Augustine
and not that of St Bernard. A petition was presented to the
Pope in the name of Mdme. de Longueville, asking leave for
the estabUshment of an Order of the Holy Eucharist, of which
the Duchess was to be the Founder, and the Archbishops of
Paris and of Sens together with the Bishop of Langres, the
Superiors. A bull to this effect was granted, and also another,
for which Mdme. de LonguevUle asked at the same time,
permitting Port Royal to withdraw from the jurisdiction of
the Abbot of Citeaux and place itself under that of the Arch
bishop of Paris, retaining all the advantages and privileges
which the Cistercian Order enjoyed or might enjoy.
By Angelique's advice the Abbess of Lys also obtained per
mission to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Cistercians,
and place herself under that of the Archbishop of Sens, in
whose diocese she resided.
By the ad-vice of the Bishop of Langres, the Abbess of Tard
de Dijon withdrew at the same time from the jurisdiction of
the Cistercian Order, and the examples of Port Royal, Lys,
and Tard were foUowed in many other abbeys, so that we need
not be surprised to find Angelique beginning to incur the
bitter hostility of the Cistercians. /The new Abbot of Citeaux
was avowedly hostile, but she had many friends in the Order
who were proud of her achievements, called her a St. Theresa,
and were ready to defend and support her. All these she now
ahenated. Meanwhile her reputation had been increased by
the removal to Paris. She was visited by the Queen-Mother
and the court, and influenced the world as well as the Church.
Abbesses entreated that one or two of' the saintly Sisters of
Port Royal might be' sent to instruct and guide them, and
penitent abbots asked for shirts of the coarsest serge, which
they did not always wear.
Some of the missionaty expeditions of that time were without
apparent result, and others were not free from attendant evils.
¦When Agnes retumed from Maubuisson in 1627, she was sent
to Gomerfontaine at the request of the Abbess, and found the
spiritual and temporal condition of the abbey so deplorable,
that, in a letter to Angelique, she said she thought God
must have sent her to this spot in order that she might
understand the full force of the passage, ' He descended into

154 PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. [chap.
hell,' and that this was the only result she expected from her
¦visit. In 1628 the Prioress ofthe Cistercian monastety of St Aubin
was received at Port Royal vrith four of her nuns, and in the
following summer Angelique retumed with them to inaugurate
the good work of reform in their own monastety. She took
vrith her Sister Suzanne de St Esprit, a nun of great promise,
whose piety, humility, gentleness, and submission were most
edif3dng to the community. After their labours at St Aubin
were ended they went to Gif, intending, at the request of the
Abbess, to make a stay of some duration ; but Angelique was
compelled to return to Paris by ill-health. Suzanne de St
Esprit was a valuable servant, and whilst under Angelique's
control, a shining example of what a nun ought to be, but
she was vain and ariibitious, and these qualities had not been
eradicated by her training, they had merely taken a new direc
tion. It was from vanity, not from piety, that her conduct
during her noviciate had been that of an angel, and the ap
pellation of Saint was a title of honour she made evety effort
to acquire. Under the eye of her Abbess her conduct had
been as edifying at Gif as it had been at St Aubin, and it
was decided that she should remain when Angelique returned
to Paris. She made a long stay at Gif, and underwent the
gradual deterioration which is the certain result of flattety and
gratified vanity.
It is unnecessaty to dwell upon or even to enumerate the
missionary efforts of Angelique and her nuns, and we riiust be
contented vrith a single example of the hardships which often
attended their journeys. The Bishop of Langres had requested
that Sister Marie-Claire Arnauld and another nun should be
sent to Dijon in autumn, although the weather was so bad and
the roads so impassable that they do not seem to exaggerate
when they say that they undertook the journey at the risk of
their lives. It cost Angelique a great straggle to obey the
Bishop, and aUow them to set out in November; for Sister
Marie-Claire arid her companion were vety dehcate. The latter
was the same nun who had accompanied Ange'lique to Lys. She
says that when the morning came on which tiiey were to start, the
Abbess entered her sister's room, saying that she had been so
anxious she could not sleep, and could not make up her mind
to send them, for she feared the Sister with the long name

XIL] PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. 155
would die on the road. But her obedience triumphed, and the
young nuns were despatched in charge of an older secular lady.
They had to encounter sickness, bad weather, and great hard
ships ; and their only consolation through it all was that their
Good Mother was thinking of them and praying for them, and
that she had foreseen all their difficulties. The floods were
out, and one day a great rash of water overflowed the door
of the carriage, and nearly swept away Sister Marie-Claire, who
with difficulty was caught and held back by her companions. At
another time the carriage stuck in the mud, and ultimately broke
down in the middle of the fields; it was late at night, and
they had to grope their way for six miles on foot Marie-
Claire and the attendant lady kept together, but the poor
Sister with the long name strayed away; she was, however,
overtaken by a gentleman on horseback, who dismounted and
led her by the hand. They shouted as loud as they could to
let her companions know where they were, and the direction
in which they must go, and at length they all reached the hostelty
in safety, though ' wet to the waist ' arid almost worn out with
cold and terror. The cavalier then took leave of them. They
always spoke of him afterwards as ' The good angel ; ' and the
adventure was possibly the romance of their lives. The nun
ends her narrative with 'Only picture to yourselves a nun
walking for six miles alone vrith a man ! ' After all, they
were compelled to return to Paris and wait until the fol-
lovring March before attempting the formidable journey to
Dijon. The missionaty nuns left their monastery with the reputation
of saints, but unless their love of God was unalloyed by vanity
and love of self, they fell away from the high standard which
Angelique had taught them to strive to attain, and began to
desire the notice and notoriety which she had enjoined them
to shun. But she herself remained unspoilt, and for some time
her vety purity of aim and conduct blinded her to the change
that was going on around her.
Port Royal was becoming a place of fashionable resort. The
devotion of the nuns to the Holy Eucharist was talked of by
the Bishop of Langres. The Fathers of the Oratory paid them
frequent visits, talked to them in the parlours, and reported
their words ; whilst their little chapel was frequented by court
ladies. It was asserted that a lame girl had been enabled to

IS6 PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. [chap.
walk by means of prayer and at the command of Angehque.
The Abbess, however, at the close of her long life said that she
did not believe in any of the miracles attributed either to her
or her contemporaries. Her protests and warnings are clear
and emphatic, and there can be no doubt that she looked back
upon the miracles of that period as delusions which were some
times conscious, sometimes unconscious, and always to be
avoided. Not so the Bishop of Langres. He had secured the interest
of the court and the world of fashion, and he now felt that
Heaven ought also to declare for him by some special sign. A
new Order of nuns was about to be established, a fresh impulse
given to the Catholic Church, and there must be miracles and
visions, whether Angelique liked them or not. So the Fathers
of the Oratory listened and made notes, wrote down dreams
and concocted wonderful versions of so-caUed visions, incited
those nuns who had a reputation for sanctity to pray and
fast, and remain in solitude until ' God should reveal Himself
to them.' When the exhausted body aUowed the mind to
wander uncontrolled by sense, and the long-desired words or
signs seemed to have been vouchsafed, the Fathers were at
hand to question and examine, and extract something more
marveUous than even the excited and ill-regulated fancy of
a weak woman deprived of food and sleep had ventured to
imagine. The nuns were so completely deceived, and acquired such
certainty as to the power granted them by God, that the most
zealous resolved to try theu- hands at a miracle. Now thirty
years previously, when the chUd Angehque went to Port
E.oyal, there had been a certain neglected deaf and dumb
Sister whom she pitied and tried to cheer and comfort When
as a giri of sixteen she began the reform of her abbey, this
same Sister understood by signs what was going forward, and
brought her httie private stores and laid them at Angelique's
feet Now, an old and feeble woman, she was unable to com
prehend the strange scenes around her, and was therefore
selected as the first subject upon whom the nuns would operate.
They pictured to themselves her delight and surprise when her
ears should be opened and her tongue unloosed, the gift of
speech miraculously bestowed upon her, and she raised as from
the dead to praise and glorify the Lord. They placed her on

XIL] PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. 157
a chair in the middle of the choir with sixteen wax-lights round
her, emblems of the sixteen centuiies which had elapsed since
the birth of Christ, and of sixteen corresponding attributes of His
divine character. They passed the night in the choir in prayer
and watching, and vain efforts to cure the deaf and dumb Sister.
From time to time they went up to her to see how the miracle
was getting on, spoke to her and tried to make her answer, but
they got ' no more answer than Gehazi,' writes one of the
Sisters ; when he laid the staff upon the dead child's face, and
there was ' neither voice nor hearing.' Clearly the miracle 'was
a failure, and when the morning came the sixteen wax-lights
were extinguished, and the poor bewildered old woman was
released. It was also about this time, 1628, that Agnes wrote the
Secret Chaplet which ultimately had disastrous results for her
monastery, and caused a complete division among the pro
moters of the new Order. One day a nun was reciting a little
Chaplet of three' words, pausing and meditating after each one
that she uttered ; they were fesus. Love, Pardon, and it came
into her head to substitute for them Adoration to Christ fesus in
the most holy Sacrament ; Honour to Christ fesus in the most holy
Sacrament ; Glory to Christ fesus in the most holy Sacrament.
She told this to Agnes, who liked the idea, and for some time
recited tjhe new Chaplet as she knelt before the altar, dweUing
upon each of the terms and meditating upon the Adoration,
Honour, and Gloty of Christ. After a time it occurred to her
to increase the number of the attributes to sixteen, in honour of
the sixteen centuries during which the Holy Sacrament had
been instituted ; and to enumerate the Holiness, Truth, Pleni
tude, Sufficiency, Dominion, lUimitability and other mystical
and incomprehensible attributes of Christ ; closing her medita
tions by a prayer. This Chaplet was shown to Father Condren,
one of the Fathers of the Oratory, who approved of it so much
that the Bishop of Langres had it printed, and we are told that
it was greatly admired. Father Condren asked Agnes how she
understood these terms, and if she had no further thoughts
about them. Agnes replied that she had, but that it would
be easier to write than to explain them. So she wrote them
' vrithout reflection,' as Angehque says, ttying to discover and
exhaust the mystic meaning of the attributes, and becoming
quite unintelligible in the endeavour. She sent a copy of this

158 PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. [chap.
longer chaplet to the Bishop of Langres, who told her that she
must revere these thoughts as not her own, but the thoughts of
Christ Jesus in her, and it was shown to the Archbishop of
Sens, who also approved of it Copies were given to a Car
melite Abbess, Marie de Jesus, who was a vety intimate friend
of Angehque, and to the Abbess of Lys, but with' these ex
ceptions the Chaplet was preserved as a sacred possession,
known to very few of the nuns of Port Royal, and used by
none of them.
The Bishop and the Fathers urged Sister Genevieve, thh
Saint, to write her thoughts concerning the new Order, and
encouraged her in the belief that her utterances were inspired.
Some years later her voluminous writings were inspected
by a niece of Angelique's, who said she had leamt from them
that everything has its proper place, and that a nun's place is
the silence and solitude of the convent.
Shortly after the removal to Paris, a certain Mdme. de
Pontcarre, who was separated from her husband, deshed to
live in the retirement of a convent, without taking religious
vows. She was a friend of Angelique's sister Mdme. le Maitre,
who believed that her piety was genuine, and urged .Angelique
to receive her at Port Royal, where the money she proposed to
pay would be most useful. AngeUque listened to the advice of
friends, and against her own judgment consented to the arrange
ment She acted without the knowledge or advrice of the
Bishop, who had left Paris for a time and was visiting his
diocese. He found on his retum that Port Royal had acquired
80,000 francs, and an agreeable inmate, and resolved that, in
addition to the enlargements aheady made, new cloisters and
dormitories should be built vrith Mdme. de Pontcarre's money.
The benefactress laid the first stone in the foUowing year, but
her money barely sufficed to raise the waUs of the new buildings.
In order to complete them Angelique was compelled to borrow,
and then to borrow again in order to pay interest The
Bishop wished no expense to be spared, and the debt ultimately
amounted to 130,000 francs.
Mdme. de Pontcan-e entered Port Royal in 1626 when, lUce
the Bishop, she was in the fhst fervour of her conversion. Her
husband was then living, but he died shortly afterwards. An
agreement had been drawn up in which she offered 80,000
francs to the abbey on condition' that the money should be

XlL] PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. 159
restored if she was sent away by the community ; but retained
if she left of her own free will. In consideration of this sum
she asked for a place on which to stand her bed, a space of
four feet around it, and a lay-sister to wait upon her. In fact
she asked so little, and that little with such humUity, that
Angelique and the Sisters thought she really intended to ' seek
salvation,' and gladly signed the agreement Angelique never
forgot a benefit, and always gave more than she had promised.
Instead of the four feet around her bed, she assigned to Mdme.
de Pontcarre a 'whole room, and that one of the best iri the
house, and appointed two lay-sisters instead of one to wait
upon her. Mdme. le Maitre was at first her constant companion,
Angelique paid her frequent visits, and the whole community
was commanded to show every attention to her wishes and to
see that she was weU served in every respect She is de
scribed as vain-glorious, imperious, and wanting in stability
of purpose, but Angelique says she really loved that which was
good, and had such a strong leaning towards virtue, that, under
proper guidance, something might have been made of her.
-She was conscious of her own defects, and had attempted
to guard against one of them by the offer to sacrifice her money
if she left Port Royal by her ovm wish. She hoped her love
of money would outweigh her love of change.
At first her conduct in the abbey was all that could be
desired. She found herself occupation vrithin the convent
walls, and.was cheerful and contented- She played remarkably
well upon' the lute, and when the Bishop retumed to Paris she
was desijTed to take her lute into the parlour and play to him.
After listening to her, he said that she ought to offer this accom
plishment as a sacrifice to God. She obeyed without a murmur,
gave away all her lutes and music-books, and never again
alluded to them.
The Bishop visited her frequently, seeing her in the parlour
and through the wicket, according to the rales of the convent
They had long conversations which referred to spiritual matters
and the state of her soul, and were vety edifying. But before
long he began to take the control of the temporal as well as
the spiritual affairs of the monastety, and then it was natural
that he should also discuss the temporal affairs of the in
dividual. When the dormitory and cloisters were completed, a gallcty

i6o PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. [chap.
above the parlours and on the same floor as Mdme. de Pont
carre's bedroom, was placed at her disposal. She divided it
into sitting-room, study, and an oratory, the latter 'inlaid
with precious stones,' and built a tower adjoining her apart
ments vrith a private staircase and an outer door. More
over, she threw out a broad balcony before the windows, in
which there were a number of orange-trees in tubs. The
Sisters carried eighteen or twenty buckets of water for them
daily. She next engaged an agent, who lived outside the
monastety, attended to all matters of business, and made
arrangements for her comfort and pleasure, so that she was
quite as free and independent as when she was 'in the
world.' The Bishop now visited her in her own apartments, and
before long the nature of their conversations was changed.
He was seeking his own amusement, not her edification ;
as years passed on his religious impressions began to grow
faint, he was intolerably weaty of the life he had chosen,
would not speak of religion or conscience, and cared for
nothing but to try to amuse himself in Mdme. de Pontcarre's
society. He spent day after day in her parlour and dined with
her ; or she went out to dine vrith him, going and retuming by
the private staircase in the tower. She entered readily into
all his views and aims, and as his prestige and influence in the
monastery included her own, she took great pains to keep up
his reputation as saint and ascetic, and to foster the outbursts
of religious excitement which he sought to substitute for the
unassuming piety and self-denial which had hitherto been cha
racteristic of Port Royal. The nuns were taught that they
had been made stupid under the old system, and that if the
rules of the Order were now to some extent relaxed, it was not
to encourage self-indulgence, but to make them more spiritually
minded and enable them to win more souls to God. Sharp
and excessive penance took the place of the steady discipline
of the good old times ; matins at two in the morning were
discontinued, but the nuns were encouraged to spend whole
nights before the altar in prayer, accompanied by flagellation
and other mortifications of the flesh, which were aitenvards
discussed and quoted as signs of special grace.
The Bishop desired to attract the court and turn the eyes
of the world upon himself and his disciples. For a time he

XIL] PORT ROYAL AND THE COURT. i6i
seemed likely to succeed. Angelique was often sent on mis
sions, and in her absence her influence was undermined and
the spirit of Port Royal gradually changed; whilst she, with
her noble earnest nature, did not suspect the danger to which
she was exposed until it was too late and the evil was
accomplished. i

S.L. XIII. M

CHAPTER XIII.
angelique's fall.
The Queen-Mother, Marie de Medicis, visited Port Royal in
1628, whUst her son Louis XIII. was besieging La Rochelle.
' Have you no favour to solicit?' she said to Angelique, as
she was leaving, ' for when I visit an abbey for the first time I
grant whatever is asked.'
Angelique answered by humbly entreating that when the
King had taken La Rochelle he would permit her to resign her
office, and allow Port Royal to be govemed by an Abbess
elected evety three years by the whole sisterhood.
The Marquise de Magnelai (Marguerite de Condi), who
accompanied the Queen, supported Angelique's prayer, saying
that there was no fear of its serving as an example or being
used as a precedent, for there were certainly not many abbesses
in France, with sisters and nieces, who would think of re
nouncing their rights and power in order to establish triennial
election. M. d'Andilly, Angelique's eldest brother, also solicited this
favour at court on his sister's behalf, and was laughed at and
told that he was taking as much pains to injure his famUy and
get rid of an abbey as others did to serve theirs and procure
one. However, the request was granted, and letters-patent
were issued which sanctioned Angelique's resignation and the
triennial election of an abbess by the sisterhood. Angelique was
influenced by the advice of the Bishop of Langres and the
example of the Abbess of Tard. The Bishop had succeeded
in withdrawing Tard from the Cistercians and placing it

CHAP. XIIL] ANGi.LIQUE 'S FALL. 163
under his own jurisdiction. At Tard all his views were
accepted, his plans carried out, and he could rely on the
nuns and the Abbess ; but he was beginning to find Angelique
troublesome, untractable, and too much in earnest. She wanted
realities, and he wanted show. Moreover the Amaulds toge
ther were like the bundle of sticks in the fable, and he saw
that they must be separated. He told Angelique how much
he longed to unite the two abbeys and to see the same spirit
and the same practices in both, and proposed that Agnes
Amauld the coadjutrix and Sister (jenevieve (the Saint) should
be sent to Tard, and that as soon as possible the holy Abbess
of Tard, Jeanne de Pourlans, who had renounced her title and
established triennial election, should visit Port Royal accom
panied by one of her nuns, and instract them in the purer and
more austere rules of her abbey.
Angelique gladly consented, for she believed that piety and
zeal for religion were the motives that led him to desire to
modify the customs of Port Royal. In September 1629,
Agnes and Sister Genevieve were sent to Tard, or rather to
Dijon, whither the community of Tard had been removed on
account of the unsettled state of the country and the dangers
to which they were exposed in that time of civil war. It is
quite possible that the removal of the Monastery of Tard to
Dijon in 1623 was an example urged upon Angelique and
which influenced her, when Port Royal was transplanted to
- Paris ; just as the resignation of the Abbess and the strict dis
cipline of the monastery were now set before her as a pattern
for imitation.
The selection made by the Bishop was a judicious one.
From his point of -view he did well to separate the sisters. He
had encouraged the mystic and ascetic tendencies of Agnes,
her belief in dreams and visions and revelations. He had
urged her forward, instead of holding her back as Angelique
had hitherto done, and she had not yet discovered that what
he called sanctity was a hollow show, and the man himself
false and superficial. Her companion. Sister Genevieve, had
already obtained the reputation of a Saint, and under the
manipulation of the Bishop and the Fathers of the Oratory
had leamt to consider prayer and fasting as the only interests
and highest labours of life.
After Angelique had parted vrith her sister, she took counsel
M 2

i64 ANGELIQUE'S FALL. [chap.
with the Prioress and Sub-prioress quite simply and cheerfuUy,
and as if they could supply all that she had lost in Agnes.
When letters reached her from Dijon in which Agnes described
in the most glowing terms the strict discipline of Tard and the
austerities practised by the nuns, Angelique read them with
enthusiastic delight. She would take aside her sister Marie-
Claire, and another nun, that they might listen to these
'beautiful letters;' and when they suggested that the discipline,
of Tard must be very severe, she would interrupt them with
'great warmth, saying:
' Oh, my children, do not say so ! Surely, we are only too
happy ; we have found the way of trath at last As for me, I
am enchanted. M. de Langres is a true man of God. "Whatso
ever he does is well done, and it is impossible to find any fault
in it.' And then she would embrace them saying, ' Courage,
courage, dear children. You do not know the joy that fills my
heart' New letters produced fresh transports and eager resolves to
follow the example of Tard, and at the end of five months she
was wrought up to such a pitch of enthusiasm, that she could
talk of nothing else, and thought Port Royal was not to be
compared with Tard in virtue and godliness, and that she her
self was the most imperfect member of the community. A
few months later, Sister Marie-Claire and the nun with the
long name undertook the perilous joumey to Tard, previously
described. They were despatched by the orders of the Bishop,
who, says the narrator, ' took pleasure in stripping la Mfere
Angelique of all whom she loved best, and who were of most
value, in order that he might be better able to change the
arrangements of Port Royal.'
In 1630, at the first triennial election held at Tard de Dijon,
Agnes Arnauld was chosen Abbess ; and Jeanne de Pourlans,
the Abbess vriio had resigned, went to Port Royal. Angelique
treated her as a guide who was to instract her in the paths of
holiness, and as an ecclesiastical superior in whose presence
she was to maintain a humble silence. Jeanne de Pourlans
held no office, but she had supreme power, and reported to the
Bishop whatever did not meet with her approval. For example,
some labourers had been allowed to pass unattended to their
work in the monastery. This was an accidental occurrence,
but Jeanne de Pourlans reported it as if it had been habitual,

XIIL] angAlique's fall. 165
and Angelique in consequence received a sharp rebuke. The
nuns were annoyed at this, but she said : ' Do not be angry on
my account, for truly I am delighted to have some one to
watch over my conduct and actions, and tell me of my faults.'
Whenever la Mfere Jeanne found fault with anything, Angelique
begged her to suggest a remedy, and in every way she placed
the authority of this stranger above her own.
Some of the changes seemed injudicious, if not injurious, but
she said : ' God aUows this in order that I may die to self
It is of very little importance whether mere matters of detail
are arranged in one manner or another, but it is of great im
portance that I should learn to renounce self and my own will.'
And then she would quote Tauler to her companion, saying :
' God blinds the eyes of many of the just in order to humble
their souls according to His will' She also said : ' God takes
more notice of the evil in us that is the cause of our faults than
of the faults themselves. That is why we must struggle daily
against the sin which has most hold over us, and daily get the
better of it in something.'
"When others spoke with disapproval of the new arrange
ments, she would not listen to their misgivings, or acknowledge
that there were any grounds for them.
Gradually, her influence in Port Royal was undermined,
her failings were magnified into faults, her indifference to petty
details was looked upon as culpable irregularity, her generous
warmth of feeling as evidence of an undisciplined nature, and
her objections to form and ceremony and pomp and show, as
proof of the absence of true piety. The Bishop, Mdme. de
Pontcarre, the Abbess from Tard and the nuns who accom
panied her, led away all the young and ardent Sisters ; whilst
the discipline of the elders was so perfect that they took no
notice of anything around them. They remained silent and
submissive, and were not enlightened as to the changes which
were gradually transforming Port Royal. The two sisters,
Agnes and Marie-Claire Amauld, who comprehended the
nobility of Angelique's nature and aims, and had the power
of making others understand them, had been sent to Tard ;
Anne was still at Maubuisson. There remained Madeleine, a
young girl, with remarkably httle character and intellect for an
Arnauld, and Mdme. Amauld, who had taken the veU in 1629
at fifty-six years old, and was so much occupied vrith the duties

i66 ANGELIQUE'S fall. [chap.
of her new vocation and learning her psalter, an occupation
which cost her sight, that she was scarcely conscious of extemal
events. As the time drew near for canying out the provisions of the
letters-patent and electing an Abbess, it was understood and
desired by all, vrith the exception of a minority of the older
nuns, and Angelique, who did not understand the real nature
of the changes she was so anxious to promote, that there would
be a new raler and a new rule in Port Royal. AngeUque gave
in her resignation ; Agnes, the coadjutrix, sent hers from Tard ;
and in July 1630 Genevieve the Saint, who had returned to
Paris, was chosen Abbess, whilst Jeanne de Pourlans, former
Abbess of Tard, was appointed Prioress.
Angelique Amauld, Abbess of Port. Royal for twenty-eight
years, is now for the first time in her life a simple nun. The
only emotion which she showed at her resignation was ' great
joy.' Many of the nuns wept around her, but she spoke to
them with 'much joy.' Sister Gamier,^ a nun who had been
one of her oldest and most faithful friends, who was a pupil
at Port Royal in 1602 and her first novice, threw herself at her
feet weeping when the resignation was annoimced. ' "Why are
you so unhappy, my chUd?' she said. ' Do you not see that
I am greatly relieved, and I shall never forsake you.'
There was an angry scene afterwards between Angelique and.
Father Gondi, brother of the Archbishop of Paris, or rather
there was anger on his side, for Angelique had not informed
him of the proposed change. He did not approve of it, nor of
the election of Genevieve, which ensured the supremacy of the
Bishop of Langres in an abbey which ought to have been
guided by the Archbishop of Paris. When next he 'visited
Angelique in the parlour, the wicket was not opened nor the
curtain before it withdrawn, and he found he was shut out from
Port Royal.
Angelique was alone. For some time the Abbess allowed
the nuns to speak to her, but not for long ; she dropped out of
her place, and it was closed against her.
The chief characteristics of Port Royal under her guidance
had been the simplicity and humility of the Sisters. They were
poor in spirit as weU as poor in this worid's wealth; they thought
nothing common or unclean, and performed the huiriblest
^ See page 64.

XIIL] ANGELIQUE'S fall. 167
duties and ate the humblest fare contented and cheerful. But
the new Abbess Genevieve and the Prioress soon changed the
spirit of the house; or rather the Abbess submitted in all
things to her Prioress, not at first recognizing the great change
that would thereby be introduced. She was merely a pious
nun engrossed by her devotions, foUovring in all respects the
advice given her by those whom she thought herself bound to
honour and obey. The Prioress said that their extreme docUity
had made the Sisters very stupid, and they must really sharpen
their wits a little. Many of them could not write when
they entered Port Royal,^ and if Angelique found that they
were women of moderate inteUigence whom she cOuld never
employ in duties that necessitated writing, she had thought it
unnecessaty to have thepi taught In this matter we must judge
her by the standard of her own age, and not by that of ours,
and must remember that she did not make these ladies ignorant,
but found them so. However, ignorance was to be abolished,
all the nuns were to be taught evetything, and whereas in
former times no writing-desks were to be found except in the
cells of those who had accounts to keep or letters to vmte
on behalf of the community, there were now writing-desks in
evety cell.
Many of the nuns spent the whole day in the parlours talking
to the Fathers of the Oratory, and then afterwards they wrote
accounts of these conversations to ' form their minds ;' others
were sent to the sacristy, not because they had any special
aptitude for the work, but to give them pleasure. No pupils
were to be received in future of lower rank than the daughters
of an earl or marquis.
The new rulers would no longer tolerate • coarse, meagre
fare ; there must be different soups evety day, and omelettes
and spices, and good things hitherto unknown ; and then for
penance they would eat caterpUlars, and ' similar filth.' Their
gowns were not to be mended or patched. They were to have
four new ones a year, and their mantles were to be frequentiy
cleaned and renewed. They had forks, which had not hitherto
been used, and the ceUs were tastefully decorated, in order,
so they said, that noble ladies who were how admitted vrithin
^ Claire Martine, spoken of by Anne Arnauld at p. 81, -was one of these
ignorant nuns ; entire absence of education was not an uncommon thing in
the seventeenth century.

i68 ANGELIQUE'S FALL. [chap.
the monastic precincts might not be disgusted vrith religion.
In the church there were perfumes and fine linen and flowers ;
all the ecclesiastics of note were asked to say mass or preach,
and there were new faces evety day. At the same time, extra
vagant austerities were encouraged which Angelique had never
sanctioned; prolonged fasts, terrible scourgings, the most
humiliating penances that could be devised, so that one day
when she saw a nun whom she had looked upon as undisci
plined, submitting to extreme punishment she was amazed,
and thought this was indeed a miracle ; but when the time
of recreation came, the same nun was joking and laughing
asvmuch as she had wept in the morning, and Angelique said
to herself, ' Surely, they make fun of everything.'
'What is the use of all this?' she could not help asking
herself, and the answer of her own heart was, ' To destroy self,
and my own will, and the / and nfy'
But one trial came that was too great even for Angeiiqne :
the new rulers asked whence she had taken three of the novices,
saying that they intended to send them back wherever it might
be, as they were a burden to the house. Now Angelique had
taken them out of charity, and to save them from some great but
unspecified danger. God had given them into her hands, how
could she forsake them ; and yet she must not resist authority,
she must not even complain. She wept day and night before
the altar, praying God to help her, and the hollow eyes and
worn cheeks showed what she suffered,' and moved those
around her to pity, or showed them that they were going too
far. They said that they would not hurry her, and gave her
time to find another home for the poor portionless girls.
It was not an easy thing to unlearn the habit' of a life
time and to forget that she had once ruled Port Royal; but
she did her best to make herself the lowest and least of the
community. One day she met a little convent pupU wearing
ragged shoes, and asked why they did not give her better shoes
than that, and then checked herself, saying, ' Ah, mon Dieu,
what a pity it is that I must always interfere in things that
don't concern me ! '
We learn from others something of the humUiations to which
she was exposed at this time, though no word on the subject
escaped her own lips. She entered her noviciate again, and
was condemned to humiliations that the other novices did not

XIII. ] ANGAlIQ UE 'S FALL. 1 69
endure ; she bore them so patiently that the hearts of many
were touched. Shortly after her resignation she was sentenced
to perform penance before the sisterhood assembled in the
Chapter-house ; she was bareheaded and barefooted, and as
the pavement of the newly completed building was very damp,
she suffered severely in consequence. Among other- things she
was told at this meeting not to imagine that she had done
anything remarkable in resigning her abbey; she had done
no more than her duty. Sister Garnier, the nun who loved
her, had her eyes fixed upon her, and says that she seemed
' incredibly composed.' The Sisters were after this forbidden
to address her on any subject; she was condemned to absolute
silence; and many of the nuns seemed to take delight in
depreciating her and expressing their love and esteem for the
new Abbess and Prioress in her presence.
Three or four months after the election she was sent to
the schoolroom as mistress of the convent pupils, and she
also swept their rooms, and performed all kinds of menial
duties under the direction of the new Prioress. She was
very fond of children, and easily gained their affection. Each
child thought that the good Sister loved her the best of all ;
and although they tried to find out her favourites, they could
not do so; neither did they discover that she really greatly
disliked a Uttle troublesome discontented chUd, with no signs
of 'grace,' to whom she was so kind that this little one was
supposed to be her special pet. She treated the Abbess Gene
vieve with profound respect, speaking to her on her knees, and
kneeling whenever she met her, and she taught the children
to render her implicit obedience. Some childish fault of her
pupils was once reported to the Abbess and visited with severe
and unmerited punishment. Angelique addressed the children
on the subject ; she was too honest to magnify the fault, which
she said was not so great as the Abbess thought, but she
upheld the authority of her Superior, and told them that they
must submit to the punishment which the Reverend Mother
had inflicted.
It was considered necessaty to humiliate Angelique still further,
and we cannot but marvel at the malignity and petty spite ofthe
penances devised. Several times in the refectory a so-called
histoty of her life was read aloud before the Sisters, which
was a tissue of insult and untrath. She was accused of going to

I70 ANGELIQUE'S FALL. [chap.
church ' as dirty as a pig,' and was told in conclusion that if
she was appointed Abbess of the Monastety of the Holy Eu
charist, of which there was already some talk, she vvould make
it ' a dirty, disorderly house, like Port RoyaL' The humUity
of the nun had not quite extinguished the pride of the Amaulds
or the truth and integrity of her nature ; and she continued to
eat her dinner unmoved. After dinner the Prioress asked why
she had gone on eating during the reading, and she answered
that ' she was not thinking about it' In addition to the silence
within the convent to which she had been condemned, she
was not allowed to correspond with Agnes, or to communi
cate with her friends at the parlour-wicket The letters from
St Francis de Sales, which she had looked upon not as a
private treasure but as a valuable possession of the monastery,
were torn up, and used to cover jars of preserves. She bore
all in silence and without a murmur, but after two years of this
treatment stUl further humiliations were devised, and she was
subjected to innumerable petty indignities. Once, when aU
the sisters and pupils were in the refectory, she was told to
rise from the table, and a basket fuU of tiie most disgusting
filth was put round her neck. She was led in succession to all
the refectory tables by a nun who said, ' Look, my sisters, at
this wretched creature, whose mind is more full of perverse
notions than this basket is of filth.' Angehque gravely thanked
the sister who had devised this mortification for her, but she
said afterwards she thought she should have heaved her heart
up at the horrible stench.
Another time she entered the refectoty wearing a large
paper mask, on which was written, ' My sisters, pray to God -
for this hypocrite. Pray to God, and ask Him to make her
conversion a real and not a pretended one I '
Meanwhile, what thoughts were passing through her mind,
and what did her own experience as a nun teach her ? She
says that at first she scarcely noticed many things that would
have pained her, because she was so glad to be free from re
sponsibility, and to realize the longing of so many years, and
live for God alone, with no duty except duty to God. She had
always desired to learn absolute obedience and submission,
and to have her own wUl and judgment trampled down. Now
that her longing was fulfilled, she took up her cross cheerfuUy,
endured insult and reproach in sUence ; but she could not stifle

XIIL] ANGELIQUE'S FALL. 171
the voice of conscience, or shut her eyes to the actual tendency
of all that she witnessed. She learnt other lessons than
humility and obedience, and found that it was possible to obey
man and disobey God, to conform to the will of the priest and
not to do the will of God. She was the same Angelique whose
earnest- nature and still sad face, speaking of .struggle and
victory, had touched the hearts of worldly nuns in olden times ;
and her steadfast endurance, her gentieness and humility, and
the new light shining into her own' soul, were filling with
doubt the hearts of those who had been alienated from her, and
teaching them to ask themselves whether hers was not the true
piety and true devotion, and not that other which had usurped
its place. They had been led away by novelty, love of change,
and the flattery of the Fathers ; had expected to see their late
Abbess converted by her penance into a fasting, praying saint,
a seer of visions and worker of miracles. When it became
obvious that she submitted to the new rule from obedience and
not from conviction, arid would become none of these things,
their own faith wavered. She was shut out from the nuns
by a wall of sUence;. .from her friends by the closing of the
parlour wicket ; and from her sisters by the refusal to allow her
to write or receive letters ; and even then her influence was felt
in Port Royal, and the Bishop began to grow uneasy, and to
feel that, after all his efforts, this sUent nun might make his
' labours vain.
One day he said to her, ' You are an obstacle in my way ! '
'How can that be,' she answered, 'when I never even
speak to any one ?'
' Your vety shadow is an obstraction,' he replied.
' Send me wherever you please,' said Angelique, ' I will go.'
There is more than submission in these words : they tell of
sorrow, almost of despair. Henceforth the reform she had
laboured to establish, Port Royal that she had loved so dearly,
were to be as nothing to her. She was to go forth alone and
unheeded to end her life, and she had seen her life-work perish
before her eyes. We must look back and try to understand
the successive steps which had led her to this point
At the time of her conversion she desired, in accordance
vrith her duty as a nun and a Roman Catholic, to submit to
the authority of her Church, to find a Director of conscience to
whom she could render implicit obedience. Priest after priest

172 ANGELIQUE'S FALL. [chap.
had been sent to Port Royal, but she always saw through them,
found that they were shallow, selfish, and worldly, and discarded
one after the other. She followed their advice to a certain
extent, obtained information from them as to the rales of the
olden times which she longed to restore, but never placed her
self unreservedly under their guidance, not even under that of
the good old Fathers Pacifique and Archangel, whose advice
was so valuable to her when she reformed her convent.
There seems little doubt that we must attribute an indepen
dence of thought and action which was opposed to the theory
of a nun's condition to her father's influence. He was a good
Catholic, but as a man of the world he knew too much Of
priests and priestly influence to allow his child to foUow
them blindly ; and there can be little doubt that Angelique's
insight into the character of the Cistercian monks was mainly
owing to his shrewd remarks. During his lifetime she was
never a nun shut up within her convent walls, but had an
outlet for wide sympathies, and was free to mould her life
and actions according to her own needs and those of her
community. Neither did her Church put in that claim to obedi
ence which was asserted after her father's death. M. Amauld
was consulted about the mission to Maubuisson, and his con
sent obtained before it was proposed to her. The temporal
affairs of the monastery were placed under his charge, and
the Cistercian monks could not find fault with his disposal
of them, for old dilapidated buildings had been gradually im
proved or rebuilt, the revenue increased, and its expenditure
so wisely directed that, although monks and confessors were
not deprived of their due, there was enough to support a large
number of nuns, and something to spare for the poor and
needy. At Maubuisson Angelique's desire to place herself under the
authority of a spiritual guide to whom she could render im-
phcit obedience was as strong as it had been when she was
a girl at Port Royal, and she found m Francis de Sales aU
that she had hitherto sought in vain. But it is not impossible
that his honeyed words prepared her to receive that homage
and adulation from which she had hitherto shrunk instinctively,
and which is one of the greatest dangers to which a devout
Catholic is exposed.
Angelique believed the Bishop of Langres to be a fitting

XIIL] ANGELIQUE'S FALL. 173
successor to Francis de Sales, and thought she had found in
him her long-sought guide. She submitted her own will and
judgment to his, and considered it her highest wisdom as well
as her chief dvity to render him unquestioning obedience. When
he demanded control of the temporal as well as the spiritual
affairs of the convent she placed them also in his hands. She
had to learn for herself and from her own experience that this
is an error which must lead to disastrous results, and that we
cannot get rid of the duties and responsibilities which belong
to our own individual existence without sinning against others
and against our own souls.
She had attributed the degradation of the nuns of that
period and all her early difficulties at Port Royal to the Cis
tercian monks, and had expected to be free from further
trouble when she was no longer under their jurisdiction. She
discovered that worldly bishops and priests are- not only as
bad as the monks, but worse. The Fathers of the Oratory, with
the Bishop at their head, listening to idle dreams which they
declared to be revelations and rhapsodical nonsense which
they said was inspired, professed themselves the humble ser
vants of these holy nuns ; but they were in reality exercising
a stern tyranny over them, leading them whithersoever they
would, downward into a path of corruption, deception, and lies.
What had she brought upon herself and her nuns ! What
must she have felt as she saw Mdme. de Pontcarre, and her
orange-trees, and the nuns toiling up the staircase with the
heavy vessels of water ; and thought of the choice little dinners
vrith the Bishop, and the comings and goings by that private
entrance ! These were the things she had protested against so
strongly and had tried to reform at Maubuisson, and now they
had fallen upon her, nay, rather, had she not brought them
upon herself !
' Send me wherever you please ; I will go.'

CHAPTER XIV.

ESCAPED AS A BIRD OUT OF THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER.
Pope Urbain VIII. had given his consent to the estabUsh
ment of the Order of the Holy Eucharist in 1627, but the
sanction of the King of France and the Archbishop of Paris
was also necessaty, and this had hitherto been refused.
The Archbishop was very angry when he discovered that the
Archbishop of Sens and the Bishop of Langres were associated
with him as Superiors of the new Order ; and there can be
little doubt that through his adverse influence the King vrith-
held his consent for three years. He would have vrithheld it
longer, but in 1630 he was seriously ill at Lyons, the physicians
thought his case hopeless, and the Viaticum, or Sacrament for
the Dying, was administered to him. After receiving it he re
covered, as it seemed, miraculously ; and he made a vow to
show his gratitude for this great mercy in such a manner as
to do special honour to the Holy Eucharist. Mdme. de
Longueville entreated him to grant permission, so long vrith
held, for the establishment of an Order, devoted to perpetual
adoration of this sacred mystery, and he compUed vrith her
request. But tiie Archbishop of Paris was stiU inexorable. His
consent would have given the Archbishop of Sens and the
Bishop of Langres a right of jurisdiction in his diocese, which
he was resolved they should not exercise. The Bishop of
Langres made every effort to overcome his objections, and was
at length so far successful that in 1633 he yielded on condi
tion that a fresh bull should be obtained vritiiin twelve months
granting him exceptional privileges and prerogatives.

CHAP. XIV.] ESCAPED AS A BIRD. 175
There was, however, another difficulty in the way. The Pope
had nominated Angelique Amauld as Mother Superior of the
new Order, and in 1627 M. de Langres had approved of the
nomination. He did not do so in 1633.
When he had first discovered that Angelique would never
carry out his plans, he had cast his eyes upon her sister Agnes,
and in sending her to Tard had expected to prepare her for
future work, as well as to separate her from Angelique. Before
long, however, he found out that the Amaulds were not the
material out of which men fashion a useful tool. But the
Abbess who had resigned Tard de Dijon was exactly fitted for
his purpose ; and with the nuns who had accompanied her to
Paris, the Mferes de Dijon as they were called, would have
moulded the new Order according to his wiU, and have
secured his ascendancy within the convent walls. He therefore
obtained the consent of Rome to the substitution of the Abbess
Jeanne, late of Tard, for AngeUque, and hoped that the
change would also be sanctioned by the Archbishop. But on
this point M. de Gondi was immovable. He did not propose
to carry out the plans of the Bishop ; he knew what influence
that prelate had obtained at Port Royal, how Angelique and
her work had been superseded, and the Mferes de Dijon reigned
in her stead. His brother, Pfere Gondi, would have much to
tell him on this head. At length he grew tired of the Bishop's
importunity, the names of the Mferes de Dijon, and the in
trigues which had lasted for six years ; he commanded the
nuns of Tard and those of Port Royal to retum to their re
spective monasteries, and Angehque to assume her post and
undertake her duties at the new institution. The Bishop
urged one final objection. Port Royal was too poor to bear
the expense of the journeys ; the Archbishop said he would
pay them. In a moment everything was changed. The
Bishop found that the Archbishop was too strong for him and
had vanquished him at every point; and that too when he
thought he had secured all that he desired ; supreme power at
Port Royal, Tard de Dijon, and the Holy Eucharist, and the
suppression of Angelique, whom he could set on one side,
or banish to a remote convent, where she would no longer in
terfere with his plans. ' Send me wherever you please,' she
had said, ' I will go.'
These words were engraved on her mind, so that after many

176 ESCAPED AS A BIRD OUT OF [chap.
years she repeated them to her nephew M. le Maitre. They
had cost her a great effort, and in uttering them she made the
crowning sacrifice of her own will. She had taken pleasure in
resigning her post as Abbess, but now she was called upon to
make a far greater sacrifice, to give up her life and work as a
nun of Port Royal, and consent to banishment Suddenly the
dark clouds roUed away and morning dawned. She was desired
to ' select certain companions, and go to the Convent of the
Holy Eucharist, there to resume her old rank as Mother
Superior. The conditions of the new life were hard and distasteful to
her, for they had been laid down by the Bishop of Langres. He
had decided that the convent should be in the heart of the
city, and within easy reach of the great ladies of the court.
The church attached to it was to be more magnificent than any
other in Paris. Every nun who joined the Order was to
bring with her at least ten thousand francs, belong to a good
family, and have fine manners and a cultivated mind, so that
she could receive 'princesses.' The dress was to be of the
choicest materials, white and scarlet, and to be made in a
becoming manner, so that, as the Bishop said, it might be
'supremely august.' The nuns were, moreover, to be devout
women, constant in prayer and fervent, able to speak upon
spiritual matters with luminous piety ; in fact they were to be
pre-eminently fitted to serve two masters, God and mammon.
In the old days Angelique would not have consented to
accept any work that was burdened by simUar conditions ; but
the discipline of the last three years had taught her submission,
and her su^erings had made her long to escape from the snares
in which she had been taken. With the proceeds of a legacy
left for the purpose by a certain Mdme. Bardeau, she purchased
a house near the Louvre, and in 1633, accompanied by three
nuns and three postulants whom" she had selected, and one
postulant appointed by the Bishop, she took immediate pos
session of it.
This postulant, Mdlle. de Chamesson, was a special favourite
with the Bishop. She was young, attractivs, intelligent, well
born, and well-bred. She had scarcely said farewell to the
world although she was about to bind herself by the vows
of the convent; she understood society, and was popular;
but most of all she believed in the Bishop and obeyed him.

XIV.] THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER. XTJ
It was not unnatural that he should look upon her as a very
fitting person for any office of trust in the Holy Eucharist.
He therefore selected her to accompany Angelique, and be her
constant companion ; to be with her in the parlour where
visitors were received, and to be consulted on every subject.
Angelique the Abbess was to do nothing without first asking
the advice of Mdlle. de Chamesson the postulant She sub-
mited cheerfully, and tried to give aU and more than all that
Mdlle. de Chamesson expected and the Bishop required.
The young lady was to be the future Abbess of the Holy
Eucharist ; Angelique saw this, and very gladly promoted the
plan. Of the nuns who accompanied her, one was her first
cousin, Anne de St. Paul Amauld, and one of the postulants
was her niece, Catherine de St. Agnes Arnauld.
M. Amauld d'Andilly, Angelique's eldest brother, had fifteen
children, of whom five died in infancy ; six of the remaining
ten were girls, and all six became nuns in Port Royal. Catherine
de St Agnes, born in 1615, was the eldest of the six sisters.
She had been sent to Port Royal at eleven years old, and now,
at seventeen, was preparing to take the veil. With the ex
ception of Mdlle. de Chamesson, Angelique was surrounded
by faithful friends and relatives, and once more her marveUous
power of organizing a religious community, of exercising due
influence and control over every member, ascertaining the
capacity and wisely allotting the task of each one, was called
forth. Moreover, she never failed to recognize the individual
merit and capacity of evety human being with whom she came
into contact, and in this, perhaps, lay the secret of her power.
She could always do something with everybody, though,
perhaps, it was not exactly what they or others expected.
The Bishop must have Jooked with some apprehension at
Angelique and her companions, who were to be the nucleus
of his august assembly of holy women in stately robes. You
might do what you liked with Angelique, she would be shabby
in spite of evety precaution, and she would contrive to inspire
such respect and affection for the 'sacred poverty,' which it
was a nun's privilege to share, that it was in vain to try to
diminish or oppose her influence. It was doubtless a relief to
the Bishop when the Archbishop of Paris prohibited the recep
tion of any new members into the community until all his
demands were complied with. During the time that must
S.L. XIIL N

178 ESCAPED AS A BIRD OUT OF [chap.
elapse, Angelique might be superseded, and all his efforts
were directed to obtain this result
There was at this time a certain nun of whom he thought
very highly. She was Subprioress of the Carmelite Convent
at Paris, and he endeavoured to induce her to leave her own
Order so that he might obtain her services for the Holy
Eucharist. She had no strong attachment to the Carmelites,
and was vrilling to be guided by the Bishop ; her charity was
universal, and she was so disinterested that when a lady told
her she intended to give eighteen thousand francs to the Car
melites, she said that they did not want it, and it would be
much better to give this sum to the Convent of the Holy
Eucharist Now when the Carmelites heard of this they were not
pleased ; and thought they had not done well to listen to the
Bishop and allow the Subprioress to receive visits from noble
men and court ladies on the plea that she had a marveUous
gift for gaining souls to God. They consulted their ecclesi
astical superior. Cardinal de Beralle, and on his next visit to
the convent he put an absolute prohibition upon all visits to
the parlour, deposed the Subprioress from her charge, and
condemned her to strict and solitaty confinement, which she
endured for ten months vrith exemplary patience and humility,
and then died.
The Bishop was angry ; he reproached the Carmelites with
having iU-used the Subprioress and caused her death, and
said that she was a Saint But they repUed that her death
lay at his door, for he had done her great harm by his
praise and flattety. Her sister was Prioress in the same
convent, and one day she told the Bishop that he was raining
the nuns, and she begged he would never enter the house
again. He obeyed, but he had already inspired the Carmelites,
who also caUed themselves Sisters of the Holy Eucharist,
with a jealous fear of the new Order. The Fathers of the
OratOty fanned this flame of jealousy by proclaiming far arid
wide the merits of the Order founded by the Bishop of Langres,
and implying that it was superior to any already existmg.
There can be littie doubt that the Bishop intended to play
them off against each other, and to obtain a hold over both
by calling out an evil spirit of rivalry. AngeUque writes :
' There was a time when I was tempted to be jealous of some

XIV.] THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER. 179
nuns in the Faubourg St Germain, who had usurped as it
seemed to me the name of the Holy Eucharist. But by God's
grace I did not yield to this temptation, although if it had not
been for His help, I was weak enough and worldly enough to
have given way to it.'
The new Order was a failure. The three Superiors were each
resolved to occupy the chief place and to exclude the other
two, and the world began to laugh at them. Cardinal de
Beralle told the Bishop of Langres that Founders ought to be
Saints, separate from the world, pre-eminent in good works,
filled with piety and every virtue, and that he thought neither
the Bishop nor his coadjutors had the necessaty qualifications
for the work.
It was quite trae, and after numerous intrigues too mean
and uninteresting to follow, the two Archbishops resolved
to suppress the Order, rather than allow it to be associated
vrith the name of the Bishop. The Archbishop of Paris
would' not allow any new members to join the community,
nor the postulants to take the veil ; so that it must soon have
been starved out, consisting as it did only of Angelique
and her three nuns. The Archbishop of Sens resolved upon
employing more active means, and at the instigation of the
Carmelites called in question the orthodoxy of the community.
The means were ready to his hands. He obtained posses
sion of a copy of the mystical Secret Chaplet written by Agnes
Amauld, which he had formerly seen and praised. He placed
it in the hands of certain learned Doctors of the Sorbonne
without telling them that the author was a nun ; and they
passed a grave censure upon the work, saying that it was
full of error, false doctrine, and extravagance, and was
irreverent if not impious. This verdict was soon noised
abroad, and all the faults charged upon the book were
attributed to the Sisters. They were looked upon as heretics,
and the defence they had to offer, namely, that they knew
nothing about the Secret Chaplet, and that there was not a
copy of it in the house, was considered too contemptible to
deserve notice.
The Bishop was even more severely handled than the
Sisters ; his adversaries accused him of being the author of the
Chaplet, and of disseminating false doctrine. He was deeply
grieved at his sudden unpopularity, and sorely puzzled how to
act. If he joined the dominant party and condemned the
N 2

i8o ESCAPED AS A BIRD OUT OF [chap.
Chaplet h& would imply condemnation of himself; for he had
approved of it, and told Agnes to revere these mystic words
and to look upon them as inspired, and herself as an instra-
ment which the Deity had deigned to use.
In his perplexity he turned to a man with whom he had
recently become acquainted, and who was equally renowned
for his learning and piety. This was the Abbot of St Cyran,
a special friend of d'AndUIy's, who was certain not to judge,
the work of his friend's sister harshly or uncharitably, although
he was predisposed to condemn it as a cause of conten
tion, which he dreaded above all things. He studied the
Chaplet carefully, and wrote to the Bishop saying that it was
undoubtedly a. good ^ork and contained truths which could not
be gainsaid without equal injury to faith and grace. He pro
posed, however, that it should be submitted to a Doctor of the
University of Louvain and the Bishop of Ypres, and that they
should be asked to express an opinion on its merits. This
was done; and, taking into consideration that it was written
by a nun for her own use, that she was not uttering dogmas
or attempting to lay down articles of faith, but merely tr)ang
to explain certain religious sentiments which she valued only
so- long as it might please God to allow her to feel them, and
was willing to part with whenever it might pleasfe God, they
approved of the work.
Paris was quite agitated by the discussion ; and the Sisters
of the Holy Eucharist and their heresy or orthodoxy were
warmly discussed. The Sorbonne Professors were angry with
the Archbishop of Sens, because he had led them to suppose
that the author of the Secret Chaplet was a theologian, and
they found that they had brought vety heavy artillery to bear
against so slight an object as a nun. They were disposed
to modify if not retract their censure, and as this did not
please the Archbishop he appealed to Rome. The Pope
neither censured nor approved of the Chaplet. He said that
it did not deserve to be placed in the Index Expurgatorius,
or to be censured ; nevertheless he decreed that it should
be suppressed and remain, as it had hitherto been, a Secret
Chaplet, lest it should become a cause of offence to simple
and ignorant persons.
But the papal decree did not extinguish the controversy :
pamphlets were written on both sides ; Apologies and Replies
made their appearance, and the Jesuits discussed the Apologies

XIV.] THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER. l8l
SO unfavourably that the Abbot again came forward in defence
ofthe Holy Eucharist and Port Royal. After his reply the
matter died out, and he was looked upon as the victorious
champion of the nuns. The Bishop was delighted with his
new friend, and spoke of him in both convents as a man to
whom the nuns were greatly indebted, and whose wisdom
and piety made him a fitting guide for them. The Rules
of the Order were submitted to him, with a request that
he would correct and modify them. But the Abbot was
very unwilling to have anything to do with the Rules, he
had no particular esteem for the Order, and 'did not think
that it owed its origin to an impulse given by the Spirit of
God.' Being urged by the Bishop to express an opinion, he
did so, and as it showed a complete want of appreciation of the
prelate's design he was pressed no further on that point But
the Bishop stUl thought that his influence would be valuable
within the convent walls, and after much persuasion induced
him to undertake the religious instruction of the nuns.
Angelique did not welcome his advent, for she was afraid
of him. She had heard of him for many years past from her
brother, who extolled alike his learning arid his piety ; he had
even visited Port Royal, and she had received several letters
from him.
He happened to be calling on Mdme. Amauld on that day
fourteen years previously when she received the letter in which
Angehque asked her to send carriages to Maubuisson for the
transport of the nuns and novices to Port Royal. Mdme.
Arnauld told him why they were leaving Maubuisson, and
he admired Angelique's conduct in Offering them the poverty
of Port Royal. He wrote to thank her for it ; not as St.
Francis would have done, with warm appreciation of her
motives and graceful recognition of her good deeds, but a
letter in which the approval is accompanied by admonition,
almost reproof! Even at that time it had been suggested, or
had occurred to him, that Port Royal was a great field for
labour; and he speaks of his regret at not being influential
enough, or worthy enough, to serve as an instrument in the
work which God was accomplishing there. He praises Ange
lique's ' holy courage ' in daring to meet what seemed like loss
of property for the love of God, and continues : —
'The goodness of 'God is high above our thoughts and
our faith, and we serve Him vety ignobly if we are not wiUing

i82 ESCAPED AS A BIRD OUT OF {chap.
to ran some risk in the exercise of charity. We ought to
remember that in the early ages of the Church the only manner
in which Christians could show their love was by dying for God.
We cannot become martyrs or sacrifice our lives, and therefore
the least we can do is to accept vrith joy any opportunity that
He gives us of showing our love to Him, and manifesting the
zeal of our charity by extending it to those who are devoted to
His service, sharing vrith them our wealth and worldly goods.
Perhaps in the day of judgment He may forgive us for not
having sought every opportunity of employing the means He has
committed to our care in doing good deeds. He may possibly
excuse us for having given ourselves no trouble to rescue the
poor wretches who drag out their lives in caves and forests, and
live like the wUd beasts, abandoned or neglected. This He
may forgive, but assuredly He vrill reproach us for having
disregarded the needs of those whom He leads, as it were, into
our presence ; more especially when we see that if we neglect
the body we risk the still greater loss of the soul. Nothing
shows so clearly that our faith is darkened and charity dead.'
After writing this letter the Abbot visited Port Royal.
There, amongst other things, he made one remark which An
gehque never forgot. He said that he knew many abbesses
who had reformed their convents, but vety few who had
reformed themselves. She felt that she belonged to the many,
and yet that ' by God's grace ' she ' desired greatiy to join the
few.' She respected the man who had spoken so frankly to
her, appreciated the passionate sympathy vrith which he spoke
of the ' poor wretches who drag out their lives in caves and
forests,' knew that he was vety learned and pious, but his
holiness was not of a kind which she could then appreciate.
Francis de Sales was at that time her ideal. He had taught her
that she was a child of God and must respect in others and
in herself the Divine image ; must be tender over her own
faults as weU as the faults of others, and raise up her heart
gentiy, when she had erred or was discouraged. The Abbot of
St Cyran's doctrines were much more severe, or, at least so
they seemed to her at that time; but twelve years later she was
not so incredulous of the fact that the whole world is ' lying in
wickedness. '
The Bishop of Langres is an exaggerated and distorted image
of Francis de Sales ; in whom large charity has degenerated
into the toleration of indifference ; and love of that humanity

XIV.] THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER. 183
for which Christ died into love of the world and desire to obtain
its approbation and applause. Angelique never wavered in her
fidelity to her early guide, Francis de Sales; she would not
acknowledge that he was over-indulgent as a director of con
science ; but she had suffered so much, her sense of truth,
right, and honesty had been so outraged by his followers that
we need not be surprised at the reaction which carried her to
so stem a guide as St. Cyran.
Perhaps the contrast between the two men cannot be better
illustrated than by the manner in which they looked upon
children. Recall the picture of Francis de Sales in the streets of
Geneva with the little children clustering round him, whilst he
looks down smiling upon them : ' This is my little family, my
dear little family,' he says of the children who were dear to
him and dear to God.
But St Cyran held very different views. Children were the
seed of the devU, from whom they could be snatched away
only vrith difficulty, and as brands from the burning. He
believed in the damnation of stillborn babes, and of infants
who died unbaptized. In 1622 he had received a letter on this
subject from his friend Jansen, in which he was informed that
some of the students of a college at Louvain had asked to
have the treatise De Statu Parvulorum^ read aloud to them
whilst they dined in the refectoty. St Cyran's answers to
these letters have not been preserved ; but we know that he
would rejoice to learn that the bodies and souls of the students
had, as he believed, received due nourishment.
Such a guide, truthful and upright, stern, and uncom
promising in doctrine, with a hard logical head, and a nature
that did not shrink from the terrors developed by his views,
was standing at the doors of Port Royal and the Holy
Eucharist He was loth to undertake the control of the
two convents, for he knew the histOty of the last few years ;
but he was a man who having once begun a work never turned
back from it. When he found that Angelique was prepared to
receive him, he consented to lead her along the narrow and
thomy path which she must follow, and was as little deterred
by difficulty or opposition as she herself had ever been.
^ A Treatise Mrritten by Conrius, Archbishop of Tuam, formerly of
Louvain, on ' The Condition of those Babes who die Unbaptized,' in
which he proves, on the authority of St. Augustine, that they cannot escape
eternal punishment.

CHAPTER XV.

THE TWO FRIENDS.

Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, afterwards Abbot of St Cyran,
was bom at Bayonne in 1581. He was remarkable as a chUd
for his inteUigence, and for the energy and perseverance with
which he followed his childish pursuits and youthful studies.
He had none of the graceful vivacity of the south, and was at
all times grave and earnest, seeking relaxation in intellectual
puzzles and paradoxes — 'a fertile soil,' says his friend and
biographer Nicole, 'but specially productive in briars and
thorns.' After having completed his Humanity in his native place, he
went to Paris, to study theology in the Sorbonne. He lodged
in the same house with a fellow-student named Petau, after
wards a celebrated Jesuit priest, who when he was questioned
as to the nature and character of du Vergier in his youth,
answered that he had a restless intellect, was presumptuous,
vain, stern, reserved, and of unimpeachable morality. This
account is given by an enemy, and contains everything un
favourable that could be said of him, but it is manifestly
founded upon a true knowledge and appreciation of his
character ; we shall see that purity in life and aims are charac
teristic of him throughout hfe, as well as that independence
of mind which often gives rise to the charge of vanity and
presumption. By the advice of the Bishop of Bayonne, he left Paris for
the University of Louvain, at that time a celebrated school
of Theology, and renowned for the controversy on grace

CHAP. XV.] THE TWO FRIENDS. 185
carried on by Michael de Bay, or Baius, and the Dutch Jesuit
Lessius. Du Vergier entered the Jesuit College at Louvain, where he
remained four years. At the end of his 'course of study he
wrote, according to custom, a thesis in defence of Scholastic
Theology, which was considered remarkably good, and ob
tained high praise from Lipsius, who was one of the examiners.
Among the letters of Lipsius there are several addressed to
du Vergier, which show the interest felt for him by the great
scholar. In 1604 du Vergier went from Louvain to Paris,
and akhough we know that he was pursuing his studies there
with his usual zeal and diligence we have no mention of his
name until 1609.
One day in that year the King, Henri IV., was talking over
old times with some of his nobles, and wondering what would
have happened after the assassination of Henri III. if he had
lost that battle of Arques which had secured him the throne
of France. Suppose, he said, he had been defeated, and in
order to save his life had been compelled to put to sea in
a vessel without provisions, and had been driven away from
land by a storm, what then would have been the result ? One
of the courtiers said that rather than see his king die of hunger
he would have killed himself, anc;! furnished with his own body
food for his royal master. Thereupon arose a great debate;
for the king propounded the question whether such a suicide
would be criminal ; and on this point opinions were divided.
One of the nobles present, the Count de Cramail, was du
Vergier's friend and companion, and when he repeated the
conversation to the young student, fresh from the schools
with their questions of casuistry, and always interested in
an intellectual or moral puzzle, he at once began to urge
reasons in favour of the suicide. The Count was delighted,
and begged him to write them down. Du Vergier did
so, and they were put forward in a pamphlet which was
pubUshed without his name, called: A Royal Question ;
¦^showing in what extremity, chiefiy in time of peace, a subject
^ may be forced to preserve the Ufe of his Prirue at the expense of
his otvn; and in this pamphlet he enumerates thirty-four cases
of justifiable suicide. There can be no doubt that in his youth
du, Vergier took his pastime in intellectual gymnastics, and
the accomplishment of a difficult feat irrespective of anything

1 86 THE TWO FRIENDS. [chap.

beyond the pleas,ure of overcoming a difficulty. The pamphlet
met with great applause, and the King's Confessor, Father
Cotton, went so far as to say that the author deserved a
bishopric ; but the author who had merely amused himself vrith
ingenious solutions of a difficult problem, most probably gave
no second thought to this jeu d'esprit, and it was forgotten by
him and his friends. In later years the Jesuits discovered and
repubhshed it, expressing their horror at finding that in his
youth the Abbot of St. Cyran had advocated suicide.
There is another rather perverse pamphlet which was written
by him in-1617. The Bishop of Poitiers had taken an active
part in the struggle between CathoUcs and Huguenots, and
at the head of a troop of cavalty had defeated the Huguenots
in the streets of Poitiers. In the seventeenth century such con
duct was caUed in question, and du Vergier, who was then at
Poitiers, undertook the Bishop's defence. He published a work
called : Apology for Henri fLouis Chateignier de la Rocheposai,
Bishop of Poitiers, in reply to those who say that Ecclesiastics
are not permitted to have recourse to arms in case of necessity.
He gives a long and imposing list of cardinals, bishops, and
archbishops who have borne arms, and cites the examples of
the Maccabees, and of Samuel and Abraham. He had under
taken the Bishop's defence, and urges all that can be said in
his favour just as he had done when he wrote the Royai
Question. The prelate was so well pleased with this defence
of his military zeal that the pamphlet was ironically caUed
the Koran of the Bishop of Poitiers.
When du Vergier was at the University of Louvain
CorneUus Jansen was his fellow-student, and doubtless they
were acquainted at that time, but we hear of their friendship
for the first time in 1605, when Jansen, a year later than du
Vergier, came to Paris. Jansen was born in 1585; he was
a native of Accoy, a vUlage near Leerdam, in Holland, and of
very humble origin. His father was a peasant, called Jan
Ottosen, or Jan the son of Otto, and as the family was too
insignificant to be distinguished at that time by surname he was
known as Cornelius Jansen, or Cornelius the son of Jan. It
was not a difficult thing for a clever boy to obtain education in
the Catholic Church ; and when he was seventeen we hear of
Jansen as the first student of his year at Louvain. This would
be in 1602, when du Vergier, who was four years older than

XV.] THE TWO FRIENDS. 187
his friend, had already been two years at the university. The
two young men cannot fail to have been attracted towards each
other, and when Jansen's health broke down in 1605, and he
was recommended to go to Paris, we need not be surprised to
find that a warm friendship sprang up between them. Du
Vergier was wealthy and well-born, and Jansen was the son
of a poor peasant, but neither of them attached any importance
to the external and accidental circumstances of their position ;
they were equals in intellect and culture, and were equally
animated by love of study and love of right and trath
Through du Vergier's influence Jansen, who had to work for
his Jiving, obtained employment as tutor in a wealthy family in
Paris; aU the time that he could spare from his work was
devoted to the study of Theology.
The two friends found that theology in Paris meant the study
of the Schoolmen and not of the Fathers of the Church ; and
after six years of patient labour they were convinced that true
doctrine was extinct or overlaid vrith subtle casuistry, and that
it could only be restored by going back to sources which were
neglected. If it had occurred to them to study the Bible they
would probably have become champions of the Protestant faith,
but they resolved to devote themselves to the Fathers, and to
sUence the endless disputes between the Sorbonne and the
Jesuits by introducing a trae and pure form of Christian belief,
and re-establishing the lost faith of early ages. They found
that St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, was referred to as an
ultimate authority by aU the Schoolmen, and they hoped to
discover in his works, the trath and light which they were
seeking. When du Vergier's father died, his mother urged his
return to Bayonne. He complied vrith her wish, and in or
about the year 1611 the two friends left Paris, and established
themselves at Champre or Campiprat, by the sea, near Bayonne,
a place belonging to the du Vergiers. For five years the
two men, who were respectively twenty-six and thirty years
old, worked day and night at the pages of St. Augustine.
Jansen especially was indefatigable, and Lancelot, a pupil and
friend of St. Cyran, speaks of an old arm-chair which he had
seen with a reading desk fixed to it, in which Jansen used
literally to live, for he would seldom leave it, and preferred
sleeping in it to going to bed. He was still far from strong.

i88 THE TWO FRIENDS. [chap.
and Mdme. du Vergier used to tell her son that if he made
that good Fleming work so hard, he would certainly kUl him.
Their only recreation was battledore and shuttlecock, at
which they became such adepts that when they played a game,
as they did between the chapters of St. Augustine, they would
score three or four thousand without allowing the shuttlecock
to faU.
In 1616 the Bishop of Bayonne appointed du Vergier to
a Canonry in the Cathedral, and selected Jansen as the princi
pal of a College he was about to found. .But in the same year
the Bishop was elevated to the Archbishopric of Tours, so that
his plans were not carried out. He took the two friends vrith
him to Paris, where after a time they separated. Du Vergier
went to Poitiers, and the Bishop, whom he defended in the
Apology, made him first a Canon of Poitiers, then Prior of
Bonneville, and finally, in 1620, Abbot of St. Cyran. He never
accepted any other preferment, and henceforward he is no
longer du Vergier, but M. de St Cyran.
In 161 7 Jansen retumed to Louvain, and was almost im
mediately appointed principal of a new college. The two
friends had found each his appointed path and work, and they
were in opposite directions, but this did not separate them.
They carried on an active correspondence through life, of which
we can form a tolerably fair estimate as the letters of Jansen
are still extant. ' Jansen or, according to the Latinized form of
his name, which in common with other learned men of that
period he adopted, fansenius, was more and more engrossed by
the study of St. Augustine, so that his coUege work was dis
tasteful, and the prospect of a chair in the university offered
no attraction. He read his favourite author again and again,
and says that he seemed to read him without eyes and hear
him without ears. In 162 1 he wrote to his friend : 'I cannot
tell you how completely my former judgment and opinion
respecting St. Augustine and others are now changed. Day by
day I am more astonished at the extent and profundity of his
intellect, and marvel that his" doctrines are so little known by
leamed men now, and have been so much neglected for many
previous centuries. For to speak frankly, I am firmly convinced
that next to the heretics no people in the world have done
more to corrupt and degrade theology thari those brawling
Schoolmen whom we both know. So that if we could show

XV.] THE TWO FRIENDS.

what it used to be in former times, and what it ought to be
now, it would not even be recognized as theology. ... I should
like to confer with you fully on this point, but we should require
weeks, if not months, to talk it over. StiU I may venture to say
that I have discovered by incontrovertible principles that if
the two schools of Jesuits and Jacobins dispute till the Day of
Judgment they will only get further and further from the truth,
unless they take a different course from that which they are
now pursuing, for one is just as much in the wrong as the other.
There is not a single person to whom I can venture to say
what I think (and my judgment is formed in accordance with
the principles established by St. Augustine) of the opinions held
at the present time on most points, and especially on Grace
and Predestination ; for I am afraid lest at Rome they should
treat me as they have done others, and that too before the time
is accomplished, and my work completed. And even if it is never
granted me to make known the truth I have discovered, still
I am marvellously content to have escaped out of the bewilder
ing labyrinth which those garrulous Schoolmen have constructed.
Any ambition I may have cherished as to obtaining a chair in
the University is quite done away with by my present studies,
for I see that I must either be silent, or run great risk in speak
ing, for my conscience would not permit me to be a traitor to
the truth I know. But God will quickly change the whole
aspect of affairs if He sees fit. Until now I have told you
nothing of all this, because I myself have been nearly always
in suspense, and have had to wait until I was confirmed and
strengthened in the knowledge which I am only acquiring by-
degrees, lest I should rashly hurry into extremes.'
The doctrine which Jansen was thus carefully elaborating
from the pages of St. Augustine and confirming by the authority
of other Fathers of the Church, was one which offers enormous
difficulties to the intellect and the moral sense. It attracted
and repelled him. Many years of patient study were necessaty
before he comprehended and received it Ten times he read
over every word of the works of St. Augustine, thirty times all
those parts which relate to the Pelagian i controversy. He
used to say that he could pass his life happily on a desert island
' Pelagius rejected the doctrine of original sin, asserted the entire freedom
of the will, and denied or accepted with limitation the influence of divine
grace.

I go

THE TWO FRIENDS. [chap.

with St. Augustine. He wished he had lived in the time of
Joshua when the sun ' stood stUl in the midst of heaven,' or
that he could foUow the cranes in their northward flight, and
find places where the day should be nineteen or twenty hours
long. He used to say that he was in search of truth. When
he was asked which of God's attributes seemed to him the
highest, he answered Truth. On the rare occasions when he
walked in his garden he was often heard to say, or rather to
sigh, as he raised his eyes towards heaven : ' Oh, Trath, Trath ! '
He foresaw many difficulties which he did not live to expe
rience, and he therefore desired to avoid the notice of the
worid and the Church until his work was finished. He con
sulted his friend on his great work, submitted it to him, and
trusted him to promulgate its doctrines and find a bod-y fitted
to hold this spirit. After the year 1621 the two men corre
sponded in cipher, or secret writing, and speak no longer of
theology and new principles, but of roots from which trees vrill
grow that wUl help to build a certain ]iouse.\
The friendship of St. Cyran and Jansen had been uninter
rupted through life. They had a very tender love for each
other. When Jansen received his first letter from St Cyran
after their separation in 1617, he says that he was not alone,
and therefore he was obliged to imitate the patriarch Joseph
and go out and seek where to weep. They met again in that year,
and his first letter after the interview alludes to the tears they
had shed at parting, and reminds St. Cyran that he was the first
to weep.
In 1623 they were together at Peronne. Jansen arrived on
Saturday, the 29th April, ' in order,' he says, • to enter France
with the month of May.' And these few words tell of the glad
ness with which he journeyed towards his friend.
In 1624 and 1626 they met in Paris, Jansen was on his way
to Madrid, in order to oppose the claims of the Jesuits to
certain privUeges that belonged to the University of Louvain.
In 1635, on the declaration of war by France, he wrote a
pamphlet entitled Mars Gallicus, in which he attacked the
pohcy of the Most Christian Kings of France, and made a
fierce onslaught upon Richelieu for allying himself vrith
Lutherans and Calvinists, pointing out the disasters which he
was thereby preparing for Cathohc Germany. As a reward for
this, he was elevated by the Court of Spain to the See of

XV.] THE TWO FRIENDS. 191
Ypres, and three years later, in 1638, he died ofthe plague
just as his Augustinus was completed. Shortly before his
death, he made a will, submitting his great work to the judg
ment of the Church in which he had lived and was about to
die. He addressed a letter to Pope Urbain VIIL, in which
he lays the fraits of his studies at the feet of His Holiness,
' approving, condemning, advancing, or retracting, as should
be prescribed by the thunders of the apostolic see.' The will
and letter were, however, suppressed, and two years after the
death of Jansen the Augustinus was in print.
St. Cyran left Poitiers in 162 1, and thenceforward lived chiefly
in Paris, where he pursued his studies, and began to obtain
remarkable influence as Director of consciences.
In 1626, he published a work, as usual without name, in
which he exposed the errors of a Jesuit priest. Father Garasse,
which is noticeable as showing the beginning of the differences
between him and the Jesuits.
At Poitiers he had known Richelieu, who was then Bishop
of Lugon, and who saw at once that this was a man whose
genius and power would be useful to him. ' It is said that
St Cyxan knew certain disreputable secrets connected with the
life of Richeheu, and that the crafty prelate wished to pledge
him to silence respecting them. In 1625 he offered him the
place of first almoner to Henrietta of England ; and subse-
quentiy eight bishoprics, among them Clermont and Bayonne,
as well as a choice of numerous abbacies, were successively
offered and refused. After each of these occasions St Cyran
attended the levee of the Cardinal and thanked him for his
kind intentions. One day the Cardinal laid his hand upon
his shoulder and, turning to the courtiers who were stand
ing near him, said: 'Gentlemen, you see before you the most
leamed man in Europe.'
It may be trae that Richelieu's fears made him desire to
sUence St. Cyran by bestowing patronage upon him, but there
were other reasons for his attention, and the Abbot had done
good service in a matter which the Cardinal had at heart
Pope Urbain VIII. had sent Richard Smith to England
as Vicar Apostolical of the Church of Rome. The time
seemed favourable on account of the good wUl of the Stuarts
to the Roman Cathohc faith, and the approaching marriage
of Charies I. with a Cathohc princess, Henrietta of France,

192 THE TWO FRIENDS. ' [chap.
daughter of Henry IV. Richard Smith was received by the
English Catholics with every mark of affection and respect,
and might possibly have fulfilled some of the expectations
which the Pope entertained in sending him to England, but he
was imprudent enough to split up his small party by entering
into a controversy with the Jesuits on the subject of Episcopal
Rights. His vehement assertion of these rights was very im
politic, considering the time at which it was brought forward,
and the state of feehng on the subject in England. The
Jesuits refused to acknowledge his claims, and he attempted
to debar them from administering the sacraments. Each party
sought to justify itself, and each attacked the other. Richard
Smith appealed to the Assembly of the Clergy in France, and
Richelieu, who had been his pupil, supported him warmly and
was instrumental in inducing the Sorbonne to censure the con
duct and writings of the English Jesuits. In 1632, when the
theological world was greatly excited by this controversy, a
book entitled Petrus Aurelius appeared. It was of course
written in Latin, was very learned and weighty, and at the
same time full of fire and vehemence. The object of this
work was to assert and maintain the episcopal rights, and this
was done in such a masterly manner that aU the dignitaries
of the Church were on the side of the anonymous author, who
was no other than St. Cyran. It is as difficult to discover a
motive for Petrus Aurelius, as for either of his previous works,
or to understand how he could stand up as the champion of
the Church and at the same time say :
' I confess that God has shovsm and is shovring me many
things. He has shown me that there is no longer any Church.
No, there is no Church, and there has been no Church for
five or six hundred years. Formerly the Church was like a
mighty stream of pure water flowing through the land, but now
that which looks like water is nothing but mud ; the bed of the
beautiful river is the same, but not the stream that flows
through it.' The Council of Trent he considered as 'first of
all a political assembly ; ' and of the Schoolmen he said, ' it
is they, the Schoolmen, and even St Thomas himself, who
have destroyed true theology.'
Sainte-Beuve in his history of Port Royal suggests that as St.
Cyran intended to attack the vices of the Church of Rome and
his clergy, he thought it weU to secure influential aUies, and at

XV.] THE TWO FRIENDS. 193
any rate to weaken the forces of his enemies the Jesuits, who
had many powerful friends among the clergy in, France. This
may be so ; but he might have foreseen, and probably did
foresee, that allies would also become enemies as soon as he
took up arms against them. The trae explanation seems to be
that like St Francis he inveighed against the corrapt practices
of the Church of Rome, but approved of her theory, and the
Petrus Aurelius was a defence of his ideal of ecclesiastical
government and of episcopal rights in the abstract Just
because he considered this government Divine and the rights
sacred he could not tolerate the manifold abuses which he was
compelled to witness. Richelieu and the clergy found in him
an ally who could attack vrith as much ability as he defended,
and who was perhaps more dangerous as a friend than as an
enemy. St Cyran did not acknowledge the Petrus Aurelius, and it is
believed to have been dictated to his nephew de Barcos, as he
used to assert with much emphasis that he did not write it.
He declined all offers of promotion, and neither flattery nor
bribes could tempt a man for whom the world and worldly
success had no charms. Richelieu, foiled in all his attempts,
began to suspect that St Cyran was a secret enemy, and
in 1636 the Abbot was imprisoned in the fortress of Vin-
cennes, from whence he was not released until after the
Cardinal's death.

S.U XIII.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE LITTLE COMMUNITY.

One of the postulants who accompanied Angelique to the
convent of the Holy Eucharist, Magdalen de St. Agnes de
Ligni, has left a picture of the internal life of the littie com
munity established there ; and it is interesting to notice how,
when the hostile pressure of Port Royal is removed, our Abbess
resumes her old place, like a strong steel rod which has been
bent and springs back to its original direction.
Her theory of government is that an abbess must be first
officer of the household, responsible for everything, acquainted
with everything, finding nothing too trivial, and no work too
hard for her. She understands literaUy the words of Christ,
' He that is greatest among you shall be your servant' She
ministered to every want of those around her, was both fiiend
and servant, and laboured constantly to bring them back to
the simple piety of early days. This was not an easy task, for
their residence in Paris had destroyed their humihty, and
replaced it by spiritual pride and impatience of reproof; so
that, although all, except Mdlle. de Chamesson, were warmly
attached to Angelique, she found it no easy task to rale them.
With unconquerable energy and resolution she began again
at forty-four the struggle she had gone through at sixteen, and
which had ended, after thirty years of labour, by leaving her
to be gazed at in her paper mask by the Sisters, ' Pray to
God for this hypocrite I ' But she did not hesitate or lose
patience. The old objections to coarse raiment and hard
fare and poor lodging are raised again, and she meet's them

CHAP. XVI.] THE LITTLE COMMUNITY. 195
with the old rephes ; urges the obligation of their vows and
of their rale, that they are to seek poverty and to love it, and
to choose that which is vile and mean ; to place others before
self in great things and in small, and therefore to take the
lowest place as indi'viduals and as a community.
She rehed, as she had done before, on counteracting selfish
ness by generous charity. The poor soon followed her, and
she gave money, clothing, food, all that she and the Sisters
could by any possibUity do vrithout, rarely appealing to others
for help, as she retained her old dislike to begging, and felt
that charity does not consist in distributing the money of
others. She would not go to the Parlour unless it was abso
lutely indispensable, saying that nuns lost their time behind the
grating, and the secular persons on the other side of it gained
nothing. This is the only reference she makes to the long
conferences between nuns and their visitors at Port Royal de
Paris, but it is enough. She put an end to the thing for herself
and others;' and although she sometimes relaxed her rale in
favour of the poor and needy, she never did so for the world
or the church. She approved of renunciation, but not of pri
vation ; and therefore, although she urged the nuns to give up,
she took nothing from them ; on the contraty, she did all in her
power to secure their comfort She would light a fire aftei
matins, and fetch anyone who stayed away and insist on her
warming herself. She often visited the kitchen and tasted the
food that was being prepared, giving directions if she thought
it not palatable; but she expected the Sisters to make no
complaint if by any accident their food was spoiled, and to
eat cheerfully whatever was set before them, good or bad.
The cook was a lay-sister from Tard, and followed the Bene
dictine rale, eating no meat; whilst at the Holy Eucharist
they had adopted the rale of St. Augustine, and ate meat foui
times a week. The cook did not prepare an5^hing specially
for herself, but reserved and consumed the scraps left by the
Sisters on fast-days. Angelique heard of this and followed her
to the refectoty one day, where she saw that a poor and scanty
meal awaited her. The Abbess made no remark, but fetched
some eggs, beat them up, made an omelette, and set it before
the lay-sister, saying that whenever she neglected to provide
a dinner for herself she should do the same thing again. The
cook was ashamed of being waited upon by her Abbess and

196 THE LITTLE COMMUNITY. [chap.
yet could not help laughing as she told the Sisters it was the
most delicious omelette she had ever tasted.
The august robes which the Bishop was anxious to introduce
in the convent had been much discussed and warmly approved
by Angelique's companions ; she had therefore special reasons
for purchasing and herself preparing the dresses and under
clothing of the Sisters. She was anxious to give them no cause
for complaint, often asked if they had all that they required,
and took no rest until she had satisfied their wants; but
obviously at that time she could not trust another to purchase
coarse material and to make such simple dresses as she thought
suitable for nuns. They urged that finer material would last
longer ; she answered, ' with vehemence,' that they had better
have new gowns than break their vows ; and used to fell them
that if, after she was dead, they tried to make their costume
becoming, she would certainly come back from her grave and
protest against it
Six months after the establishment of the new convent
her cousin, Anne de St. Paul, was attacked by confluent small
pox, and before long was in imminent danger. Angelique
shut herself up in the sick room, allowed no one to enter except
those whose aid was indispensable, and took evety precaution
to prevent the disease from spreading throughout the house.
She was tenderly attached to her cousin, and would not leave
her night or day, in spite of the commands of the physician
and the entreaties of the nuns. Bleeding was a remedy stiU
in vogue, and she bled her cousin frequently. It was in
Angelique's arms that Anne de St Paul died, and Angelique
prepared her for the grave and buried her. Anne de St Paul
bore her sufferings cheerfully, nay joyfully. When she knew
that there was no hope of recovery she made a general confes
sion, and asked for the last Sacraments, wliich she received with
great humility and piety. She demanded pardon from aU
the Sisters, although there was not one whom she had ever
offended or grieved by word or deed. One of those present
said: ' Alas ! dear Sister, how much you suffer !'
She answered : ' It is nothing, my Sister. We must remem
ber what St Paul says, that 'The sufferings of this present
time are not worthy to be compared with the gloty which
shaU be revealed in us.' I am now a poor leper lying at the

I.] THE LITTLE COMMUNITY. 197
or of Christ our Lord, who was Himself wUling to be corn-
red to a leper for the love of us.'
¦ But, dear Sister, you are going to leave us, and we are all
Tirgreat sorrow.'
'Ah no, my Sister, I am not going to leave you. Those
whom God has united can never be separated ; and if God
gives me grace, as I trast He will do, I shall always remember
our Uttle community when I am before His throne.'
This vvas the only death that occurred amongst them,
although there was a Sister who had the plague, so the doc
tor said, whom Angelique nursed and who recovered. But
there was much sickness ; the house was small and incon
venient, the dormitory was under the roof, very hot in summer
and cold and wet in winter; neither wind nor rain were
excluded, and the Sisters often had to take their bedclothes to
the fire at night in order first to thaw and then to dry them.
Angelique's health was beginning to fail ; but now, and during
the remainder of her life, she made light of her sufferings and,
as far as was possible, concealed them.
Those words, ' I shall always remember our little com
munity,' imply not only the love of the dying nun for her
home on earth, but her satisfaction with it. Standing before
the throne of God she hoped to look back upon it, and we
do find that it was an abode of peace and good-will and
well-doing. Angelique urged the Sisters to imitate the early
Christians in Jerasalem, and specially to try and resemble
them in three points.
I. The docUity with which they received the word of God.
2. Their separation from the world.
3. Their union with each other.
Before long there was but one heart and one soul among
them. Nothing could have exceeded their tender love for
each other and interest in all that concemed each other's
welfare. They were very compassionate to any who were sick,
bearing each other's burdens and stiiving to lighten them, so
that evety individual felt that no pain was her own, it was that
of the community, who all rejoiced when it was relieved. In
stead of the old efforts at humiliation, the baskets of filth, the
paper masks, and the false biographies, they treated each other
with respect and deference, and strove to correct each one her
own fault lest they should cause another to offend.

198 THE LITTLE COMMUNITY. [chap.
Angelique had often on her lips at this time, and always in
her heart, a saying of St. Francis de Sales, that ' in order to
attain perfection it is not necessaty to do singular things, but
it is necessary to do common things singularly well.' She
exhorted her nuns not to be negligent in smaU things, telling
them that they could attain perfection by the performance
of small duties as well as great, provided they served God
with their whole heart, at all times and in all circumstances.
True humility would teach them even to shut a door gently
so as not to disturb those who were in the room. They
were to be punctual. At the first stroke of the chapel-bell each
one was to say, in her heart. Hoc signum magni regis est,
eamus / 'It is the signal of the great King; let us go!'
And they were to be as punctual in the refectoty as in the
chapel, and not to think that they went there to satisfy a
material want, and therefore were free to stay away or enter
late. Every action was to be govemed by higher rales than
their own gratification, and the care of body as weU as soul
was to be lifted into the region of duty. A stoty told of
Angehque at this time helps us to understand the sweetness
as well as the strength of her nature, and the sympathy
which made her intelligible to all.
She was ill, and in the room with a nun also iU and unable to
leave her bed. This Sister saw that her Abbess needed help,
and said that she ought not to be left in that manner with no
one to wait on her. Angehque answered cheerfully, that they
must remember how many persons there were of vety different
condition to their ovm who were reduced by misfortune and had
no one to wait on them ; and that if they had remained in the
world it might so have happened that they had only one littie
maid-servant, and whilst she went to market to buy provisions
for the day, they would have been left alone.
'Therefore, my daughter,' she continued, 'when there is
no one in the room and we want something, we must think
that the littie servant has gone to market, and we must wait
patiently till she comes back.'
The sick Sister did not forget this, and was never heard to
complain again. When they were alone she would say, with a
smile, ' My Mother, the httie servant has gone to market'
The nuns of tiie Holy Eucharist led a busy life. In addition
to the usual services of the Romish Church at the canonical

XVI.] THE LITTLE COMMUNITY. 199
hours, there were sometimes as many as seventeen or eighteen
masses said in a day. They were present at evety service if
possible. At first they used to be disturbed at their devotions
by the noises in the street, and the absurd jokes and conversa
tion which they overheard. After the ' sharpening of their
vrits' at Port Royal, they could not listen to them vrithout
laughing, and there was a perpetual giggling, which Angelique
found must be repressed. She told them it was not a crime to
laugh at anything ridiculous, but they were not absorbed in prayer,
as devout nuns should be, if they were conscious of trifling
matters arovmd them. This was enough. Before long, a nun
who laughed saw no answering smiles on the faces around her,
was filled with compunction for her fault, and went to her
Abbess as soon as service was over to confess it. Never,
says Angelique, was an epidemic so quickly stamped out.
The nuns washed and kept in order all the linen needed
by the priests in their ministrations, and several Bishops and
other ecclesiastics sent all that vvas used in their churches
to be washed by them. They had also the work of the
house and as much work for the poor as they could find time
for. Their coarse common clothing was soon worn out, and
required constant mending. 'Patches,' said Angelique, 'are
a nun's jewels,' and she had a large yellow patch on her own
sleeve, the contemplation of which gave her great satisfaction.
She had not lost her early objections to ornaments in the
church; and as soon as she recovered her freedom by the
absence of the Bishop of Langres, she banished flowers and
embroidety from the altar, and entreated that there might be
no vestments embroidered with gold or silver in her chapel.
Mdme. de LonguevUle once sent jewels for decoration during
the Octave of the Holy Eucharist, and Angelique was told
by a nun that women brought their children and placed them
on the altar to look at the precious stones. She was so
shocked to hear this, that she went immediately to the chapel
and prostrated herself before the altar with tears, remaining in
prayer for a long time. She thought it a horrible profanation
that a church should be made attractive, or that it should be
visited for any other purpose than that of prayer and praise.
Mdlle. de Chamesson, the postulant who had been appointed
as AngeUque's companion, began to find that she had a difficult
task. Before many months had passed away, Angelique had

200 THE LITTLE COMMUNITY. [chap.
acquired the ascendancy to which her intellect, her noble nature,
and many virtues entitled her. The affection and respect of
her companions were unbotmded ; they said that she was love
and peace embodied. Almost without an effort she had won
them back to their allegiance. SUence, piety, self-denial, and
grave simplicity of life, were once more characteristic of the
community ; of all but the young postulant who stood aloof.
Mdlle. de Chamesson tried to keep the post of observation
assigned to her by the Bishop, but Angelique had moved into
another region, whither she could not follow. The young lady,
however, did what she could, even asked the Abbess one day
why she had bought a jug without consulting her. AngeUque
answered gently that she had not thought it necessary to do so.
In the sUence of the convent Mdlle. de Chamesson's voice was
often heard speaking angrily to their beloved Mother ; and on
one occasion the Sacristan went to them and was about to
interfere, but Angehque signed to her to be silent
' My daughter,' she said afterwards, ' it is a cross which God
has sent me : shall I not bear it ? '
' But, my Mother, she disgraces us all ! '
' Do not say so, daughter ; we must have compassion on
her, and pray to God to have mercy upon her soul. We are
twelve, the number of the Apostles, amongst whom Christ
suffered one Judas. Shall we not therefore bear with this
poor girl, who ought to make us sorry and not angry ? She
is really and truly blind, and we must be very charitable to
her. Do not be uneasy. She will not remain here, but I
cannot send her away.'
The Bishop of Langres was absent from Paris, and before
leaving he had commended St. Cyran to the two convents as
a man to whom the nuns were greatiy indebted. The Abbot
soon discovered that Angelique would be a valuable disciple.
He visited her frequently, and wrote daily instractions for
the spiritual guidance of the nuns ; and when he understood
the heavy pecuniary difficulties of Angelique's position — ^for
she was Uving in an expensive house, which the royal and
noble founders had not endowed with a single penny — he
found means of obtaining money for the supply of the
most pressing wants of the ' community. A year later he
consented, vrith the approval of the Bishop, to receive the
confessions of the Sisters ; and they prepared for a general

XVI.] THE LITTLE COMMUNITY. 201
confession, such as the Church of Rome requires only upon
rare and important occasions. But Angelique drew back. It
was a serious thing to accept St. Cyran as director of con
science. She says ; ' I had already seen the necessity of
submission and of contempt for the flesh and the gratifi
cation of the senses ; I knew the excellence of trae poverty.
God had given me so much love for these virtues, that my one
desire was to find means of practising them. But my sinful
nature, my levity, my inability to strengthen the first move
ments of grace (although my will had always remained
unmoved), had caused me to commit great faults and to be
unfaithful to my convictions, in consequence of which I often
suffered remorse that caused me anguish too great almost to
be endured. I would then begin again, but I soon fell back
into the old supineness. And therefore I feared that which
I really loved and desired, namely, the strong, holy, upright,
and enlightened guidance of this servant of God  He
was so wise, that I was afraid to show him all my folly, and
so holy, that I shrank from telling, him all my sins.'
Her submission however was a mere question of time, for
undoubtedly she had at last found the ideal guide whom she
had been seeking all her life.
There was much in the past which she had good cause to
regret. She did not conceal from herself that she was re
sponsible for the degeneracy of Port Royal, in Paris, and had
encouraged tendencies which she ought to have repressed ; she
acknowledged that no punishment was too severe for her faults.
Once more we hear of the flagellation and privations which
are sanctioned and inculcated by her Church. But her re
pentance was not of the kind that would allow her to dwell
long in the dark chambers of remorse. She must be up and
doing, striving to repair her faults and to help .those whom she
had hindered. She used to say that our faults ought to make
us humble and strong — to teach us to distrust ourselves and
place our whole confidence in God. We must not therefore fall
from one fault into a second, namely, despair, but rise quickly
and go humbly to God for help and pardon.
Angelique prepared for her general confession by repentance,
humiUty, and gratitude. Her heart was filled with gratitude,
because once again she was called by God. Evety moment
that she could spare she passed on her knees before the altar.

202 THE LITTLE COMMUNITY. -'[chap.
The Sisters were sometimes compeUed to disturb her for some
matter of importance, and she would tum to them vrith such a
light upon her countenance that they shrank back and could
not speak, and she had to ask what was wanted. She found
that they hesitated to disturb her, and said that if this was
the case she should no longer be free to spend every spare
moment in the chapel, for it was of far more importance that
she should do her duty to others than seek her own gratification
in Divine worship, and they must help and not hinder her.
When the Sisters saw her as in the course of her daily duties
she passed from room to room in the convent, there was the
same rapt look upon her face and the same light in her eyes,
so that the sight of her filled them with holy aspirations, and
made them long for the joy and peace which she had found.
In August 1635, the little community formally placed itself
under the guidance of M. de St. Cyran.
Even Mdlle. de Chamesson did not escape the prevaihng
influence; she also submitted, and, confessing that the post
assigned to her by the Bishop was too exalted, she prayed to be
removed from it The Abbot granted her request, and at once
reduced her to the rank of an ordinaty postulant This by no
means met with her approval, for she was unchanged in heart.
She expected to have been treated as a penitent of distinction,
and was not prepared for what she considered indifference and
neglect. Meanwhile, in the absence of the Bishop of Langres,
the Abbess Jeanne and the nuns from Tard de Dijon, Port
Royal was also a changed house. The Abbess Genevieve
and many of her nuns had returned to their old allegiance.
Once more they looked to Angelique for guidance ; once more
they saw that the old way was the best They also were
guided by M. de St. Cyran; and when tiie Bishop returned he
found only Mdme. de Pontcarre and a few nuns m one convent,
and Mdlle. de Chamesson in the other who were stUl faithful
to him. Therefore when, in November 1635, Angelique soU-
cited the return to Paris of her sister Agnes, Abbess of Tard
de Dijon, and the five nuns who had accompanied her, he
wiUingly granted her request, for they were still his staunch
aUies. Between himself and AngeUque there had arisen, as
might have been expected, great coldness ; and he was on the
verge of an open rupture vrith St. Cyran.
Agnes had received the most exaggerated reports of aU that

XVI.] THE LITTLE COMMUNITY. 203
had transpired from Mdme. de Pontcarre, who wrote to her
regularly, whilst all correspondence between herself and Ange
lique had been suspended for many years. She was informed
that the Prioress of Port Royal was in favour of the Cistercian
monks, and that an attempt was being made to replace the
convent under their supervision; that numerous changes in
that direction had aheady been made which were sanctioned
by the Abbess, and probably suggested by AngeUque. The
widow sent lively sarcastic letters, turning evetything and evety
person to ridicule, except the Bishop; and Agnes and her
nuns StiU believed that he was not only the benefactor of the
convent, but a saint who had been treated with the cmelest
ingratitude. When Agnes arrived in Paris she visited Angehque
before going to Port Royal; and Angelique, who was un
changed, found that her sister's heart was gone from her.
Agnes Ustened coldly to all explanations, and was obviously
unconvinced by the statements made to her. The nuns who
accompanied her were much more unrestrained, ^d their
angry reproaches and undisguised hostility induced Angelique
to send a message to the Abbess Genevieve warning her of
the danger of a probable division in the convent. She knew
Agnes, however, too well to doubt her, and when they parted
said that she gave her six months to see things for herself,
and then she would be in another mind.
As soon as Agnes and her nuns reached Port Royal, the
Bishop, who was in Paris, paid them a visit, and there were
many pretty speeches on his side and many tears on theirs,
because they had been removed from his diocese.
At Angehque's request, St Cpan went to see her sister,
and a single conversation with him dispelled her prejudices.
She could not listen unmoved to his calm, clear narrative
of the events of the past few years. Inquity and observa
tion confirmed all that he said. He had exaggerated nothing
as to facts, notably those connected with Mdme. de Pont
carre. Agnes -wrote to Angelique that she did not want six
months, six days had opened her eyes. Angelique says :
' It was a great consolation to receive this letter and to find
my sister in a different mind. I saw that God in His great
goodness had now repaired the fault which I committed in
sending her to Tard at the desire of him to whom I had so
rashly submitted my own judgment Our convent suffered

204 THE LITTLE COMMUNITY. [chap.
greatly in consequence of her absence, and would have been
entirely ruined if God in His mercy, for which I can never be
grateful enough, had not brought good out of evil.'
Angelique does not at all exaggerate the influence of Agnes
when she says that her absence was the greatest calamity which
could have befallen the convent. Angelique was always im
pulsive, often rash ; conviction and action followed close upon
each other, and she was incapable of deliberation. Where
trath, right, justice, self-denial, humUity were concemed, she
never hesitated for one moment. She placed herself on the side
of right and accepted the consequences, whether good or evil.
She was equally rapid in detecting wrong, injustice, and false
hood, and she could not spare them. In childhood she had
turned for help to the grave young sister, so like and yet so
unlike herself; and in evety important event of her life Agnes
had been by her side. Agnes possessed the patience and
foresight which our Abbess often needed ; she saw the tendency
of events, and was not, hke Angelique, engrossed by the im
mediate present, its hopes and fears. Less resolute, she was
also less liable to the errors of judgment which Angelique had
such good reason to lament. ' I had not consulted my sister
Agnes,' ' I resolved upon this course in the absence of my sister
A.gnes,' she says repeatedly in alluding to mistakes which she
did not discover until it was too late to rectify them. Nothing
shows her unbounded confidence in her sister so much as this
desire that she should return to Paris. She knew that for many
years Agnes had only heard of her from those whom we are
justified in speaking of as her enemies, although she did not
call them so ; that they had taken different sides on an im
portant question, one condemning and the other upholding the
conduct of the Bishop of Langres ; and that if Agnes should
remain in opposition, her life's work would be undone. She
knew that evety effort would be made to convmce Agnes that
the Bishop was right and she herself wrong. And yet she
desired her return, was confident that she could not be
deceived, that her judgment would be just and wise, and that
she would remedy aU that had gone amiss.
But there was grief in store for both of them. Marie-Claire,
who had been sent to Port Royal at seven years old, and whom'
the sisters looked upon as their child, returned with Agnes from
Tard de Dijon. She was wannly attached to the Bishop, and

205

XVI.] THE LITTLE COMMUNITY.
would not recognize the possibUity of that change in him which
she was assured had taken place. At first she confesses that
the accusation fiUed her with apprehension, and she used to
pray to God, ' Thou wUt not suffer thy Holy One to see cor
ruption.' But when they reached Paris, and Agnes as weU as
AngeUque was, as she thought, disloyal, the generous warmth
of her nature led her to resolve that she would not forsake
her friend and guide, or listen to unfavourable accounts of
his conduct. She therefore allied herself with Mdme. de Pont
carre, and her sisters had the pain of finding that she was the
leader of their opponents.
' One of these nuns,' says AnglUque, ' was my vety own
sister, Marie-Claire, and there was no one who believed so
earnestly as she did that the Bishop was the most saintly man
in the world, and that we were indeed' guUty for having
renounced his guidance. She used to pray for us night and
day with many tears, entreating God to open our eyes.
Her piety procured her the esteem of the whole convent, and
her love to aU around her, especially the sick, was so great
that she was always ready to do anything in the world for
them ; and on this account many were attracted to her side.
In Mdme. de Pontcarre's rooms the nuns received visits
from the Bishop and the Fathers of the Oratoty, and their
grievances were discussed. There was no open breach in Port
Royal, but the schism was spreading, and if it had not been
for the forbearance and gentleness of Agnes there would have
been an unseemly quarrel. Angelique saw this, and her
heart was vrith her mother and sisters and the companions of
her youth. Before long she found a way to join them. The
new institution was paralysed by the opposition of the Arch
bishop of Paris, and she could not carry out his wishes
because she was pledged by her promise given at Port Royal
to the Bishop of Langres. She therefore proposed to the
Archbishop that the Abbess Genevieve, who was under no
promise, should be allowed to take her place at the Holy
Eucharist, and that she should retum to Port Royal. He
consented, and the matter was kept so secret that vety few in
the new convent and still fewer in the old knew anything of it
until Genevieve was installed as Mother Superior of the Holy
Eucharist, and Angelique was at home again.

CHAPTER XVIL

MARIE-CLAIEE AND THE ABBOT.

Agnes took the place of Mother Superior of Port Royal,
and Angelique replaced her as Prioress. The two sisters
laboured for seven months to restore the work which had
been destroyed, and to win back hearts alienated from them.
They succeeded ; and in September 1636, at the third triennial
election, Agnes was chosen by a large majority of the nuns.
The Bishop, the Grand Vicar, Mdme. de Pontcarre, Marie-
Clahe and her companions had striven in vain to influence
the election. The Grand Vicar presided over the meeting,
and he was exceedingly angry when he had to announce that
Agnes was duly elected Abbess of Port Royal.
But the nuns and novices were full of joy, for Agnes was
beloved by all, and at last Angelique found that the desire of
her heart was one that could be granted. There was work for
her in Port Royal, and she was free from the responsibUity
which she disliked.
The first important step taken by the new Abbess was to
entreat the Bishop with all due humihty not to visit Port Royal
again. As this was equivalent to a command, and impUed
the closing of the pariour wickets, he obeyed ; at the same time
she forbad the nuns to write to him, or to hold any intercourse
with Mdme. de Pontcarre. In she months, all except Marie-
Claire had yielded, but she stiU held out, though the straggle
was UteraUy breaking her heart. She vvas tom by conflictmg
duties and affection. She implored God to give her grace to
submit to Him and to those who were set in authority over her.

ch. xvil] MARIE-CLAIRE AND THE ABBOT. 207
and at the same time she never wavered in her allegiance to
the Bishop. She loved Angelique more than anyone in fhe
world, although at the desire of the Bishop she had neither
written nor spoken to her for many years lest the earthly love
should draw her heart from Heaven. And now Angelique
presumed to judge her saintly guide, and to pronounce him
unworthy even of admission to the convent. Marie-Claire's
grief was greater than she could endure, and mother and sisters
tried in vain to open her eyes to the true character of the
Bishop, and show her the necessity of the step that had been
taken. The whole community prayed for her, but in vain. The
loyalty and generosity of her nature made her faithful to the
man whom she believed to be persecuted and forsaken.
Her eldest brother, d'Andilly, was now the head of the
family ; he had children of his own in the convent school and
among the novices, and was grieved at this division in the
famUy, and the pain it brought to aU. He tried by argument
to convince Marie-Claire that she was wrong, and failed as
others had done ; but a week later he went to her, and said,
' My sister, let us kneel and pray to God to speak to your
heart, and show you the trath.' They knelt and prayed in
sUence. Marie-Claire did not ask to be confirmed, but to be
guided and taught She rose from her knees a new creature,
regretting the past, and earnestly deshing to be restored to
the paths of obedience and duty. AngeUque and Agnes were
summoned, she threw herself at their feet, asked pardon
for her faults, and promised in future to submit to them
in all things. She saw that she had failed in her duty as a
nun; but her opinion of the Bishop was unchanged, and
it was not easy to convince her that, on this point, she was
wrong also. She could not, however, resist the proofs which,
now that she consented to examine them, were brought before
her. They were overwhelming, and she at length acknowledged
that she had been deceived. Her repentance was deep and
sincere. She humbled herself to the dust before God and
her fellow-workers, and entreated that she might be made a
lay-sister for life. She wrote a penitent letter to St. Cyran,
imploring him to see her, but he would not grant her request.
His refusal did not altogether arise from doubt of her sin
cerity, though that may have had something to do with it ; but
he knew that in confession she must refer to her dislike of him

2o8 MARIE-CLAIRE AND THE ABBOT. [chap.
and disapproval of his conduct, and he thought it would be
an unnecessaty humiliation to make her speak of this to him
self. Moreover, she could not speak -so frankly to him, on
matters relating to himself, as she would do to another, and he
wished her to open her heart freely, so that her misgivings
might be examined and removed.
Six months later, he granted her request for an interview,
and after that, for a few months, he saw her from time to time.
She made notes of what he had said during these interviews,
and submitted them to him. He returned them with the fol
lowing, letter :
' My very dear Sister.
' I return your notes of the thoughts which you tell me
you gathered from the conversations I had vrith you during
the time of your contrition. Since you think they have been
useful to you, I see no hann in your keeping them. But you
must never lose sight of that which St Paul takes such pains
to impress upon our minds, namely, that we must not put our
trust in men, who do nothing more than plant and water, but
in God who gives the increase.'
We may conclude from this that, although we have not the
exact words of St. Cyran in Marie-Claire's notes, but only the
effect those words produced on her mind, they are utterances
that he accepts and acknowledges. They enable us to foUow
his method of dealing with penitents, and show something of
the kind of influence he exercised over them.
When he sent for Marie-Claire, he said abraptly :
' I had no vrish to see you, or intention of doing so to-day.
I came here vrith quite another object, but I went into the
church, and then obeyed an impulse, which told me to ask for
you. This is the day of Saint Ignatius, the Martyr : — a vety
remarkable Saint. Well, what do you want ? I am here to
cure you. What is your disease ? '
She told him what her condition had been, and he seems to
have suspected that her statement was over-coloured, for he
rephed :
' We must find out whether you exaggerate your faults, and
whether in the sight of God they are as great as you tiimk
them. Sometimes, a spirit of exaggeration impels us to say

XVIL] MARIE-CLAIRE AND THE ABBOT. 209
things we do not believe, and we are thus led into an evil
course ; so that we must inquire carefully into this matter.
'The outward and visible signs of repentance must pro
ceed from an inward and spiritual feeling of it-; the two must
be closely connected, and we must be very careful not to show
more than we really feel.'
A few days later she made a general confession to him, and
he again exhorted her to restrain herself, and not give way to
her grief :
' God is a Spirit,' he said, ' and spiritual sins offend Him
more than any others. '. . . Beware of exaggeration ; the con
fession that shows most humility is that which is simple and
spontaneous. We do not want any close scratiny to remind us
of our great sins ; the impression which they leave is indelible,
for it belongs to the immortality of the Soul. Kneel before
God without words, without anxious self-scrutiny, Pie will
understand you.'
' You cannot repent whilst you are dead in your sins. You
must be alive to repent That is why I have left you so long :
I waited until you were alive, and now for five months you
have lived a spiritual life.'
' When the dawn first breaks we say it is day, although the
shades of night are not all dispersed. And in the same man
ner we ought to call the first gleam of light that God sends
into a human heart Grace, although that heart is still darkened
by the clouds of sin.'
' It is a great mistake to guide all souls alike. Each soul
must have its own rales. Many things may ,be done without
danger by the innocent, which would be most dangerous for
those who are wounded by sin ; for although they may be healed
by repentance, they are not exempt from the weakness which
their wounds have left A soldier who has received a grievous
wound, feels every change of weather all the rest of his life,
even although the wound is healed ; and if he values health,'
he does not expose himself to wet and cold, as others may do
with impunity. ... In short, the first rule of repentance is
that he who has sinned in doing things that are unlawful, must
abstain even from those that are lawful.'
' Beware of your tears ! I do not want grimaces and signs
and gestures, but a silence of the heart and spirit that shall
control evety movement of the body.'
S.L. xiii. p

2IO MARIE-CLAIRE AND THE ABBOT. [chap.
On another occasion he said to her :
' You must forget the past If we were always obliged to
think of our past sins no one could be happy. I am not
satisfied with a hope that only goes far enough to hinder
despair. We«iust have a firm and constant faith in God, who
is infinitely tender to those who are in the right way, and
infinitely terrible and severe to those who are in the wrong.
He who has commanded us not to look back when we have
put our hand to the plough, knows what is for our good ;
He will not look back upon the past sins of one who is
seeking His kingdom.'
Marie-Claire begged permission to remain a lay-sister for
life, so that there might be no change and no risk of a
subsequent fall. He replied :
' You wish the future to be settled for you. I do not like
'that request. Those who belong to God ought to have
nothing absolutely settled and decided. They ought to act
by faith, which has neither clear vision nor assurance as to
the result of good works. They must look to God and follow
Him always and under all circumstances. For myself, I do
not want to know what I shall do when I leave this place.
We are told to ask God for our bread, that is for His grace,
day by day ; but I should like to ask for it hour by hour.
The Christian soul should be absolutely free and unfettered.
It ought to be able to pass from rest to labouf, and from
labour to rest; from prayer to action, and from action to
prayer; deshing nothing, cleaving to nothing, vrilling to do
everything and equally willing to do nothing, and to remain
useless if sickness or duty should require it There is ¦*
great advantage in a pause, for often when we are at work i
we are really doing nothing in the sight of God.'
He consented to her joining the lay-sisters for a time,
saying : ' We vrill make you a lay-sister this Lent. Such
changes were common in ancient times when Lent was a
period of excessive penitence in order to dispose Catechu
mens to Baptism. You shall labour ; but in moderation, so
that you may persevere. It is contrary to the spirit of true
humUity to seek to do extraordinary things. We are not saints
because we do the same things that the sahits have done. We
must be contented to remain insignificant and unnoticed, and
to live as it were in disguise, so that nothing out ofthe common

xvil] MARIE-CLAIRE AND THE ABBOT. 211
shall be seen in us. You vrill make yourself equal to the
lay-sisters in every respect, only you wUl try to be the most
humble of them aU.'
St Cyran urges humility upon all penitents ; but it is the
humUity which teaches us that we are incapable of any good
or great work without the help of God's grace, and not that
which oppresses us with a sense of our utter inabUity to do
any work whatsoever. Humility is to be shown in accepting
our life, and trying to make; the best of it. He says :
' There is no greater pride than to seek to go beyond the will
of God, and to do some great work for Him by a hasty impulse
of our own will ; and there is no truer humility than to accept
the limits He has prescribed, and make our works vrithin those
limits great works.'. He adds to this the injunction, 'When
a thing is done, forget it in God.'
In all things Marie-Claire strove to follow his advice, and
although the guilt of her defection was in her eyes so great
that she always looked upon herself as a criminal, yet she
did not seek for the extraordinaty penances which her Church
sanctions, and such guides as the Bishop approve. She was
content to be the lowest and last in the community, the
servant of all, especially of the sick. She was always ready
to help them night or day, and slept so little that it was
natural for the Sisters to go first to Marie-Claire upon any
emergencyl She was grieved if she had not an opportunity
of ttying to relieve pain, and as she was very skilful in pre
paring remedies and applying them, everyone who was ill
wanted Sister Marie-Claire, ' it did them good to see what a
tind heart she had, and how she suffered when they were in
pain, and what delight she took in ttying to find something
that would give them ease.' She obtained permission to sleep
in a little dark ceU, or cupboard, under the staircase, so that she
might be called up at any hour of the night without disturbing
the Sisters in the dormitoty.
All the Amaulds have this tender sympathy with suffering,
all have the same affectionate nature, so that we can scarcely
say that Marie-Claire stands apart from them in this respect,
but she had not the strength or vigour of the four elder sisters ;
she had the heart of the Amaulds, but not the intellect or the
elasticity of their nature. Angelique, Agnes, Anne, Mdme. le
Maitre could not be crashed by misfortune or utterly humi-
p 2

212 MARIE-CLAIRE AND THE ABBOT. [chap.
liated by faults. They could not. help rising and going on
their way. But Marie-Claire remains as it were upon her
knees ; praying, waiting, weeping for three years, and then the
Sisters whom she has nursed are standing by her own bedside.
Her illness did not at first alarm them, but one night the nun
watching by her side saw a great change, and said :
' Oh, my Sister, what is this ? '
'It is Death, Sister,' replied Marie-Claire. 'I must leave
you. I am going to throw myself a,t the feet of God, for I have
no hope except in His mercy.'
And even this hope was to fail her for a time as she passed
through the dark shadow. When the priest came to administer
the last sacrament for the dying, she asked him anxiously, ' Oh,
Father, shall I be saved ? ' He tried to give her confidence,
but she had a great dread of death. She had been afraid to
go direct to God even in prayer since her fall, and had trusted
to the intercession of the Virgin ; standing before her as she
had done when she was a child. In her supreme hour the
thought of the Virgin seemed to have faded from her mind,
and a great fear of God fell upon her. But before she died
she held up the cross which they had placed in her hands, and
her last words were, ' Victory ! Victoty ! '
She had not the consolation of seeing St. Cyran before
her death, as he was then in prison, but she occupied every,
spare moment in copying letters and manuscripts which were
received from him. They were written in pencil, and were
often almost illegible, and always difficult to decipher. But
to Marie-Claire it was a labour of love. If she had only time
to write a single line, she took her pen and wrote it The
nuns were amused at this assiduity, but she would teU them
gaily that certainly she had only written a few words, and
yet when she next looked at the page she should be glad to
see them there ; for if many minutes make an hour, so also
many lines make a page.
There were others in the convent who have also left us
an account of the kind of influence that St Cyran exercised
over the nuns who had been flattered and debased by the
priests around them. One of these is Anne Arnauld. She
returned from Maubuisson in 1631, and the Sisters who were
very fond of her, praised her to the Prioress Jeanne; but
the nuns from Tard ridiculed aU that they were told of

XVIL] MARIE-CLAIRE AND THE ABBOT. 213
Anne's virtue and ability. They found her sUent, humble,
and submissive, and ignored her, as they did others.
When Agnes returned in 1633, Anne and her mother,
Mdme. Arnauld, were both at Port Royal, but they were
absorbed in their devotions, and had taken no part in all
tiiat had gone on around them. Anne saw that there was
a great change, but she must also have seen that a reaction
against it was already setting in, and she may have therefore
waited until the retum of Agnes made her way clear. Still
the sUence of Anne is rather puzzling, and does not accord
with what we know of her at other times. She was impulsive,
zealous, very quick to detect the faults of others, and not un
ready to point them out ; and she was haughty and could ill
brook reproof or opposition. Possibly her failure at Maubuisson
may have inclined her to be silent at Port Royal. With the
return of her sisters, however, she resumes a post of import
ance in the convent, and we have from her pen some record
of the influence of St. Cyran over herself and others.
The old temptation to report and exaggerate the failings
and shortcomings of others retumed, and she consulted St.
Cyran. She had noticed these wrong things, was she to speak
of them ? ' Be silent for three months,' he replied. At the
end of that time she told him three months had elapsed,
might she now tell? 'No,' he answered, 'be silent for the
rest of your life.'
There were others in the community who needed a similar
lesson. The process of ' sharpening the vrits,' advocated by
the Bishop, had not always been compatible with keeping the
temper; and jokes intended to make the nuns meny, and
teach them to endure ridicule vrithout vexation, had not always
been successful. Recreation twice a day had taken the place of
the old solemn and often silent Conference, and the nuns passed
much time in discussing each other's faults and the penances
of the refectoty. These were often so absurd — when they
were not disgusting, like Angehque's basket of filth — that they
laughed at them first in the refectory, and then again at Re
creation. To accuse a nun of a trivial fault, and devise a still
more trivial punishment, had become a pastime. Recreation
ceased when Agnes and Angelique returned, and Conferences
were resumed; but it was not easy to check the evil habits
into which the community had fallen. Silence was the only

314 MARIE-CLAIRE AND THE ABBOT. [chap.
possible remedy for them, and St Cyran advocated silence as
eamestly as Angehque did. He urged the community to be
sUent and tolerant Those who were called upon to exercise
superrision were to bear evetything that could be borne. When
a fault was committed which could not be excused, they were
to wait untU if^ had been repeated three times, and were then
to reprove it in a single word. They soon found the value of
this advice, for since all were trying to do right, a fault was
very seldom repeated three times, and there was therefore no
need to speak of it. St. Cyran taught them that the Lord's
Prayer was a daily confession of daily faults and a daily remedy
for them, and that they need seek no other.
After Anne's first confession to him in 1636, she asked for
penance ; he replied :
' You ask for penance, but you have got it already ; you are
a nun. If I were to tell you to abstain from meat for the
rest of your life, to fast, to rise at two o'clock evety mommg,
never to leave the house, and never to speak to anyone
except through a grating, I should have inflicted a very severe
penance upon you. Well, that is what you do already. Keep
your rule, therefore, you need add nothing to it'
He then asked what her duty was in the house, and she
answered, 'the care of the children in the convent school.'
He continued :
' Then you are placed in a very favourable position, for if
you forgive them, God will forgive you. If you show them
mercy, God vrill be merciful to you. If you take pity on them,
God will have pity on you.'
She was surprised to hear work, which she disliked so much,
spoken of in this manner. She thought that she had no love
for chUdren, and had shut up her heart against them. She
had been the strict raler and nothing more, being 'driven
as at the edge of the sword' when she went to the school
room. Now, for the first time, she recognizes that the love
which rules in heaven is to rule upon earth ; that the will of
God for our well-being is to be our will for each other ; and
that obedience is not merely submission, but love of the wiU
of Him who guides us. The tenderness which had been sup
pressed comes out in a very beautiful manner, and the
schoolroom, instead of being her cross, is her crown. It was
impossible that she should overcome her scraples completely.

XVIL] MARIE-CLAIRE AND THE ABBOT. 215
because many of them arose from the human error, mixed with
the divine truth, of her belief. The faults of the children caused
her as much pain as her own ; but she remembered St. Cyran's
injunction to speak little, endure much, and pray more. She
bore the burden ofthe children's faults and did penance for them
herself, for she could neither pass them over nor forget them.
She no longer visited childish faults with severe punishment
as she had formerly done, or exacted repentance and contrition
which the children were unable to feel ; but she had not learnt
that the tenderness of their Father in heaven was as great as
her own, and thought that she must appease Him by her own
sufferings. Her niece, Marie-Charlotte, one of d'AndUIy's six daughters,
was in the convent school at this time, and gives a charming
account of her. We see what a straggle she had to keep
back her love, and to temper it with as much severity as she
thought absolutely necessary for the children's welfare, so that
she might not encourage the evil which it was her duty to
check. It was so pleasant to her to gratify them that she
could not help giving them sweetmeats; but before she did so
she always prayed that they might not like them very much.
One day the children were naughty, and she left the
schoolroom saying that she should not return, for it "grieved
her too much to see how little love they had either for God or
their duty. As they were very fond of her, they spent the
morning in tears, entreating the other teachers to go and fetch
Sister Anne, and tell her how sorry they were. At length some
one went and, as her heart was tender over the little ones,
she relented immediately and returned to them. They flocked
around her and she said it was a great consolation to see
that they were sorry for their faults, because God forgave those
who repented, and it was therefore quite right that she should
forgive them also. With this she drew a bag full of sugar
plums from under her mantle and distributed them, saying, that
when St. Louis wept as he thought of the Passion of our Lord,
he found that the tears which fell upon his lips were sweet like
honey; and she gave them the sugar-plums in order that they
might remember that when we weep for our faults our tears are
sweet St. Cyran had something of the same compunction
in gratifying the childish love for sweet things. He bought a
pot of preserved quinces for one of d'Andilly's nieces in Port

2l6 MARIE-CLAIRE AND THE ABBOT. [CHAP.
Royal, and then did not like to take it to her, lest 'the
sweets of earth should destroy her taste for the sweets of
heaven.' But his scruples were overcome by hearing that she
was ill, and he sent the quinces at once.
Sister Anne had a little, old, battered work-basket, which the
children had decided among themselves she must have found
in the dust-bin. They used to laugh at it, and protest against
it, and call it an old, ugly thing ; whilst she defended it, and
praised its peculiar shape and the high antiquity which lends so
much value to every object She spoke in such a bright, merry
manner that the children thought teazing the basket capital
fun ; and yet in after years they could see that there was earnest
feeling in her pleasantry, and that she was teaching them to
despise externals, and to look favourably upon the poverty
which she loved.
When playtime came, she always remained for some time
with them, telling them tales, and joining in games which she
invented. She wrote short descriptions of different virtues on
slips of paper, and the children drew lots for them ; or she
described some virtue or vice under an image or by a simile,
and the chUdren guessed until they could discover it Both
these games were very popular, and could not be attempted
without Sister Anne.
Her chief aim as a teacher was to make her pupils understand
every word they used. St Cyran had said, that in reading
the Gospel we ought to weigh every word as if we were
weighing gold ; and she saw that this was impossible without
the most careful training as to the use and meaning of words.
She had a dread of speaking of religious traths too soon,
and used to say that when children are familiar with names
and words and dogmas which they do not understand, they
are apt to lose reverence for them.
When she told a child anything from the Bible, she took her
apart from the others, and prepared her to listen to a very im
portant truth, and then stated what she had to say in a few
impressive words, which often remained engraved upon the
memory for life. Thus after one of her nieces had received her
first communion. Sister Anne led her away from her companions,
and said she had a vety serious thing to tell her, and one that
she must prepare her mind to hear, for it was very terrible ;
and yet it was a thing which all those who had received the

XVIL] MARIE-CLAIRE AND THE ABBOT. 217
Holy Sacrament ought to know. Then in a grave, earnest
voice she continued, ' The Gospel tells us that when the devil
has gone out of a human soul he returns again with seven other
devils worse than himself, and if they find no resistance they
enter in and take up their abode there, and the end of that
-soul is worse than the beginning.' The child trembled as she
listened, and never forgot the pathetic pleading of the voice
which uttered this warning.
At first, Sister Anne used to weep over every new pupil, for
she distrusted her own power and anticipated the child's faults.
But before long she leamt to rejoice at the increase of numbers,
and she who had formerly protested against the admission of
new pupils now protested against any being refused.
Angelique had yet another sister in Port Royal, Madeleine,
the youngest, who took the veil in 1625, the child whose ears
she boxed. She is the only Arnauld of that generation who
leaves no mark. She suffered from constant ill-health, so that
she could not perform any duties. We hear of ' vapours
mounting to her brain,' so that she forgot almost everything
and evetybody ; ' but she never forgot God,' add the Memoirs.

CHAPTER XVIII.

RESTORATION.

.St Cyran's influence had restored Angelique to herself, and
effaced all traces of that period of delusions during which she
had listened to the Bishop of Langres. We see once again
the Abbess of old days, though with characteristic features a
little more strongly marked. Her youthful vigour is developed
into vehemence ; her denunciations are more keen and incisive
than in those early years ; and there is a great accession of
strength, so that henceforward she goes on her way undaunted
by any difficulty that assails either herself or others.
A curious document, drawn up during the previous year,
shows both her strength and weakness, and indicates the
direction of her faults. It consists of twelve resolutions,
among which are the following : —
' I vrill always speak to the Sisters with great humility; I wUl
never reprove them for a fault at the time when it is com
mitted, nor the first time it is committed, nor before I have
prayed to God to enable me to speak, and them to listen, in a
right spirit.
' I wUl no longer persevere in the useless superintendence
over all their actions which I have been accustomed to assume,
and wUl put my trast in the guidance of God rather than in
my own superfluous precautions.
' I wUl avoid going to the parlour as .much as possible, and
when I am no longer Abbess I wUl not go at aU, not even to
my relations. When I am obUged to go I vvUl speak as littie
as possible, will not ask the news, and wUl prevent its being
told me.

CHAP. xvm. ] RESTORATION. ei9
' I vrill speak as little as possible, and will write instead of
speaking whenever I can, and make use of signs as often as
I can. ' I will write no letters that are not necessary, and will so
act that, as far as I can, I may forget all humari beings, and
be forgotten by them. When I write I will do it as simply as
possible, and if ever I put anything that savours of affectation
into a letter I vrill write another.'
The strong, simple sense, and right feeling which can be
traced throughout the Resolutions contrasts strangely with
errors which are inseparable from her belief that the life ot
a nun, with its superfluous privations and unnecessaty incarce
ration, is a holy life and pleasing to God ; and that to forget
all human beings and be forgotten by them is in accordance
with His vrill for His creatures.
Angelique, with her large, warm heart, was never forgotten by
any human being who once saw her, and she never forgot any
one whom she could help or had helped. She talked and
wrote and worked throughout the whole of the long, busy day ;
exhorting the novices who had been placed under her charge,
or expounded the Scriptures in a manner that ' edified the whole
community ' and drew the nuns to listen to her as well as the
young girls who aspired to follow in her steps. Her Resolutions
on this point were merely protests which must have pained
her by introducing discord between theoty and practice. But
there is not one that we can entirely condemn, nor one that
is not redeemed by some gleam of wisdom, pradence, or
kindliness. Moreover, they help us to understand her suc
cess as a reformer. She began with herself, never forgot that
she needed the discipline she was advocating for others,
and did not blind herself to her own faults. She laboured
without ceasing to lead the purest and holiest life which she
was able to recognize ; and whilst she acknowledged the evil
in herself she did not shut her eyes to the good in others.
This is perhaps the secret of her success ; she believed in
the goodness of women, — not the goodness of individuals,
but of the whole sex. She used to say that she never knew
any convent, however badly conducted, in which there were
not some good women who had escaped the prevaihng cor-
raption, and were trying to serve God. She never despaired
of any convent, not even of Maubuisson, but believed that

RESTORATION. [CHAP.

the good might be called out in every nun if she were placed
in favourable circumstances.
Her opinion of the male sex, more especiaUy of monks and
priests, was not so favourable ; she believed in the goodness
of certain individuals among them, and in the depravity ot
the sex. It is characteristic of Angelique that, on her return
to Port Royal in 1636, the first evil she vrished to remove was
the Confessor. He had been appointed by the Bishop, and
she attributed, justly, much of the deterioration of the convent
to his influence. She applied to St. Cyran for a successor,
and he suggested Father Singlin, whom Angelique knew and
esteemed, as a disciple of Vincent de Paul. She placed all
the novices and such of the pupils as were being prepared
for their first communion under his care.
The Bishop of Langres, from the moment that he was ex
cluded from Port Royal, avowed himself the enemy of St.
Cyran, and denounced him at court and to Richelieu, saying
that at the Holy Eucharist he had hindered the Sisters from
partaking of the Holy Communion. St. Cyran had other
enemies ; it was owing to his advice that the Cistercian monks,
who had won over the Prioress and were still endeavouring to
regain a footing in the convent, were banished, and with them
the Fathers of the Oratory and the numerous priests and
monks who were in the habit of visiting the nuns, Ustening to
their dreams and getting up miracles. All these spoke of him
bitterly, and he saw that any connection vrith him would bring
ill-will upon Port Royal. After the appointment of Father
Singlin he therefore returned to his abbey near Poictiers, and
there was no communication between him and the Sisters
except by letter.
, As usual much of Angelique's time was spent in undoing
the work of the priests. The numerous Directors of Con
science sanctioned by the Bishop had been a fruitful source
of evil at Port Royal. The nuns told each other all they knew
or could leam about their respective directors, and as many
of them had obtained permission to walk out whenever they
pleased, and talk to evetyone they saw, they were generaUy
provided with abundant topics for conversation.
One of the young nuns was so changed that it was impossible
to recognize hef. She fell into phrenzies, which were encou
raged as manifestations of the Spirit, and it was often difficult

XVIII.] RESTORATION. 221
to restrain or control her. This was a fine opportunity for the
visiting fathers, and the nun gave them something fresh to talk
about from day to day. She would conceal herself for days
together, ' led away by the Spirit,' so it was said. When she
returned half-famished' she would eat all the food" she could beg
or steal. Then foUowed fits of remorse, in which she begged
to be chained to the fireplace, and wore a muzzle ' like that
put on a calf to prevent it from sucking.' In this condition
she was one of the sights of Port Royal. The fathers appointed
a nun to watch over the possessed Sister, and report all her
sayings and doings. She liked the attention bestowed on her
so much that before long there were no intervals of calmness,
and as the new ralers found that they must not look for im
provement whilst she remained at Port Royal they sent her to
Tard de Dijon.
Father Singhn, with something of the sternness of St.
C}Tan, quietly stamped out all that remained of the exaggera
tion which had been encouraged for so long. He would have
no saints in the community, not even the Abbess Agnes. One
of the nuns used to watch Agnes when she was praying, never
removing her eyes from her face. She said that nothing made
her so devout, and carried her thoughts so directly to God, as
the sight of her dear Mother in prayer. Father Singlin heard
of this, and forbad her to watch the Abbess.
Agnes was titular Abbess of Port Royal, but Angelique
still ruled, and all important transactions are associated with
her name. It is she who removes the Confessor, restores
obedience to the rales of the Order, reinstates poverty, and
does battle with obstacles and difficulties ; always, however,
seconded by Agnes, and taking counsel with her on evety
subject, save the debts ofthe convent; and this heavy burthen
she bore alone.
M. de Langres had quite modem notions as to the advantage
of debt for a charitable institution, and he had plunged Port
Royal into difficulties. The convent owed 140,000 francs, and
paid large sums every year as interest. No one but Angelique
and one nun. Sister Suzanne, knew of this. Angelique told her
nephew, M. le Maitre, in later years that she could not rest
for thinking of these debts, and had shed ' millions of tears '
and passed innumerable wakeful nights, through the anxiety
they caused her ; for it was not only the debts that oppressed

RESTORATION. [chap.

her, but the remembrance of her own past conduct The
temptation to receive ladies of fortune probably assailed her,
for she consulted St. Cyran on this subject, and he told
her, it was not wealthy novices who would pay her debts,
but God. She had offended God by her indiscretion and rash
ness, and must make atonement by repentance : when she had
satisfied God, He would satisfy men, and as soon as she had
paid her debt to God He would pay all other debts for her.
'This discourse,' she continues, 'did me much good, for
he did not flatter me as others had done, and excuse me
because in these foolish, rash undertakings my intentions had
been good. Still, I had never deceived anyone as to our
resources, and once when a man came to offer to lend me
money, and asked what security I could give him, I said the
only security I had to offer was that of our abbey which was
small, and the Providence of God which was great ; and the
man seeing my frankness lent us his money upon interest.
' Our creditors often pressed me for money, and when I
heard that one of them was asking for me I have often hidden
myself, and sent Sister Suzanne. She, poor woman, used to
listen to all their complaints, and by her gentieness and tact
would induce them to accept her excuses ; and thus she spared
me the torture of their applications. But while she was vrith
them I was on my knees before God, weeping bitterly.
' It was so impossible tp pay all demands that it came to
pass that at length we were 16,000 francs in arrears, and were
also deeply in debt. And then God put it into the heart of
the Due de LonguevUle to redeem an annuity which he had
hitherto paid us, and he gave us instead 17,000 francs. I
got rid of the arrears for 15,000, and paid off some smaU
debts with the other 2,000. The community did not think I
had acted wisely, because I had lost both principal and interest
of this money, so I wrote to M. de St. Cyran, who was then
in prison. He sent back word that I had' done right, and
that the hand of God was visible in the matter. About 1640
I sent a carpenter to look at the wood-work in the dormitoty
at Port Royal des Champs, as I thought of selling it to the
nuns of St. Cyr. I wrote to M. de St. Cyran, and told him I
could get 6,000 francs for it, and that it was a great useless
buUding, which cost a large sum of money to keep in repair,
whUst our creditors were growing importunate. He replied

xvm.] RESTORATION. 223
that we must endure poverty rather than run the risk of destroy
ing a fine building which might some day be of use.'
Angehque had good' reason to be grateful for this advice,
and looked back on it as a prophecy.
St. Cyran was upright and honourable in small matters as
well as great, and Port Royal was now under the guidance of
a man who did not think integrity a merely human attribute.
The sister of one of the nuns had promised to send her
fifty crowns, about one hundred and fifty francs, for the use ot
the church, but instead of that sum she sent two hundred livres,
or about two hundred francs. The nun, who had entered the
monastery when she was vety young, did not know the relative
value of crowns and livres, and said she would rather have
fifty crowns. But Anne Arnauld, who had accompanied her
to the parlour, whispered, ' Take it, take it ! ' Afterwards,
her conscience reproached her, and when next she went to
confession she began to speak of the matter to St Cyran.
He interrapted her, saying, ' Sister, say no more. I see what
it is. For the future you must remember that what seems
our loss is in reality our gain. The love of gain diminishes as
charity increases. We must shun avarice and not give way to
it, being assured that God wUl not leave those who serve Him
to perish, and if He allows them to suffer poverty it is for their
edification.' Angelique 'took her griefs and debts to God.' On one
occasion she wanted three hundred francs to send to the farm
at Port Royal des Champs, six hundred for Gif, a hundred and
fifty to pay a. debt, and two hundred for the butcher. ' I had
not a single sou,' she says, ' so I went to my room and prayed
to God for the money, and when my prayer was ended a widow
lady came to me and said that she had changed her mind as
to 'the disposal of two thousand three hundred francs which
she had laid by, and instead of keeping them herself, she
wished to give them to me for our immediate use. And after
this people tell me to ask alms of man and not of God.
Indeed I shall ask God. I shall always beg from God and not
from man.'
On another occasion an Irish priest wished to retum to his
own country and called on her to ask for help. She had not
seen him for seventeen years^ and had only three francs in the
house ; it was at a time when they were in great difficulty, and

224 RESTORATION. [chap.
depended on what they received from day to day to purchase
the very bread they required. But she gave the three francs,
and prayed for more. On the same day, an uncle, one of
Mdme. Amauld's brothers, who had never bestowed so much
as a sou on Port Royal, gave her three hundred francs, saying
that by the help of God he had been successful in one of his
undertakings and therefore he had brought this sum as a thank-
offering. Worldly friends suggested that she ought to make some
provision for the future instead of spending all she received ;
if not, the nuns of Port Royal would be in danger of dying ot
hunger, for it was very improbable that they would continue
to receive miraculous assistance after her death, and the income
of the abbey was not one-third of what they required for bare
subsistence. ' If they die of hunger,' she replied with a vehemence which
shows her resentment of the flattery implied in this advice,
'so much the better. Hunger could not be put to a better
use. Nuns who expect to want for nothing, and who wiU not
trust God to give them their temporal as weU as their spiritual
food, deserve to be forsaken by God and man, and to be
reduced to abject need. I will leave them no other inheritance
than our sacred poverty, and with it our trast in Him who has
kept us alive by so many miracles to the present hour. It
they keep their trast in Him they vrill want for nothing after
my death any more than during my life. If they lose it, I pray
God to let them lose evetything, and to confound them and
bring them low, so that they may no longer put their trast in
the treasures of the earth, but in that true treasure which
is in heaven, namely, the Providence of God, which is enough
for all faithful Christians and all faithful nuns.'
This emphatic protest was called out by the changes in Port
Royal, where the poverty she loved so dearly had been lost
sight of. She did not immediately and openly attack all that
had been done by the Bishop and the nuns of Dijon, but
whenever there was an opportunity she gave away, or allowed
the Sisters to give away, everything in the convent that reflected
the luxury of the court The common earthenware plates and
dishes which she had provided had been replaced by porcelain,
the simple crosses by bronze crucifixes of the best workman
ship to be had in Paris. There were coveriets of fine grey

XVIII.] RESTORATION. 225
serge on all the beds, and one room which had been occupied
by a young lady of noble birth had a finer coverlet than any
other. This room was now used by a nun, to whom Angelique
said one day :
' My daughter, I have come to tell you of an act of charity
which is required of you. You must give your grey counter
pane to make a cloak for a poor gentleman. He is a soldier,
and has not got one, so that when he is on guard at night he is
nearly frozen to death. Yours is the best in the house and
therefore he must have that'
This was only a beginning, and by degrees she carried
them all away and replaced them by others which were coarse
and common. The porcelain and the bronze crucifixes had to
go also, but no allusion is made to the forks, and we do not
know their fate.
In 1630 forks were not generally used,'' and their introduc
tion at Port Royal may be taken as an evidence of the
fashionable habits into which the nuns were falling.
Many of the serge coverlets and all the crucifixes were sent
in 1639 to the Ursuline nuns in La Nouvelle France, Canada,
which was at that time a French colony. The gifts were re
ceived with much gratitude, and the nuns wrote, ' Your charity
must extend vety far, Reverend Mother, since it has crossed
the ocean to reach us.'
Angelique was told that the poor of Port Royal des Champs
were in great want, and this gave her an opportunity of selling
the silver candlesticks from the altar of the Paris chapel and
sending them the money. The Sisters soon took as much
pleasure as their Abbess in giving away every article that could
be spared, and she further taught them that there is no charity
without self-denial, and that we must give what we can not
spare as well as what we can. Port Royal became once more
poor and honest. No debts were incurred for luxuries to be
paid for with borrowed money. There were no more delicacies
for the refectoty, no ornaments in the convent chapel, no
purple and fine linen to pain Angelique's heart as she thought
of the Lazaras at her gates.
But there was one person in Port Royal who did not approve
1 Even in 1652 forks -were a novelty in England, and Heylin says ;
' The use of silver forks vpith us, by some of our spruce gallants taken up of
late, came from hence (China) to Italy, and from thence into England.'
S.L. XIIL Q

226 RESTORA TION. [chap,
of the changes, and that was Mdme. de Pontcarre. She was
no longer allowed to receive her friends ; the private door
was closed. Evetything she saw annoyed her, and she said and
did as many disagreeable things as she could. Whereupon the
nuns were forbidden to speak to her, and she, as the Memoirs
naively remark, ' was very much hurt at it.' She scoffed
openly; ridiculed and blamed everyone connected with the
estabUshment, but she was in a house that was deaf and dumb
to her. She then spread absurd and exaggerated reports of
the conduct of the nuns, and did all in her power to foster
the animosity and jealousy which St. Cyran inspired; she
hated him, and attributed to his influence all the changes and
restrictions from which she suffered. In 1638 he was imprisoned,
and shortly afterwards a printed statement was put up in the
convent chapel. It purported to come from the Abbot, and
was a petition for the prayers of the community, written by
a person who acknowledged his guilt and was overwhelmed
by shame and contrition.
The whole community were strangely agitated when they
discovered that the author of this outrage was Mdme. de
Pontcarre. They resolved to adopt a different course for the
future and appointed a nun to be her attendant, who was not
to allow her to go anywhere in the house alone. In this matter
Angelique showed her usual consideration. She selected a nun
of whom Mdme. de Pontcarre was so fond that she had in
duced her to leave her own convent and go to Port Royal
when she took up her own abode there. But Mdme. de Pont
carre did not like the new arrangement ; and one day when she
was in a passion she beat Sister Marguerite with a table napkin,
and seems to have cuffed her on sundry other occasions.
In 1639, Angelique, who saw that there was no prospect
of amendment in the lady's conduct, proposed that they
should offer to pay her the interest of the money she had
deposited with them, on condition that she left Port Royal.
The community gladly acceded to the suggestion. Mdme.
de' Pontcarre heard it with surprise and annoyance, and
did not believe that it was made in earnest Port Royal
was not only poor, but was burdened with debt, and she
did not know where they would get the money. As, however,
she could not vety well refuse to go under the circumstances,
she said that she would consent to do so if a deed was drawn

xviil] ' RESTORATION. 227
up and signed by the whole community, acknowledging ^her
right to return if the interest was not duly paid every quarter.
This was done, and she prepared for departure. She carried
away everything that could by any possibility be removed, and
much that it was necessary to destroy, and which could be of
no use to her elsewhere. The orange tubs went of course, and
also the wainscoting of her rooms ; windows and frames and
sashes, and woodwork, even the flooring of the balcony was torn
up. The nuns looked on vrithout regret, for they saw that the
ruin separated them entirely from her. There was only one
catastrophe they dreaded, and that was her return. In order
to avert it, her quarterly interest was always paid in advance,
and this proof of the manner in which she was regarded seems
to have pained her deeply. It is said that some time later she
requested to be received again, and was refused. She died at
Ivry five years later, and now disappears from our pages.

Q 2

CHAPTER XIX.
MDME. LE MaItRE AND HER SONS.
' Oh, how unlucky I am to be the second daughter!' Angehque
had said when she was a child, ' for if I had been the eldest
I should have been the one to be married.'
Mdme. le Maitre was ' the one to be married,' but she had
no reason to congratulate herself on her good fortune. She
was married in 1605, at fifteen years old, and after ten
years, during which the only happy intervals were those
which she passed with her parents, she was separated from her
husband M. Isaac le Maitre, Conseiller du Roi, and retumed to
her father's house, taking with her her five sons. She with
drew from society, and devoted herself enthely to the educa
tion of her boys. From time to time, she spent a fortnight
' in retreat ' at Port Royal, and announced her intention of
joining the community as soon as her sons were estabhshed
in the world, and the death of her husband left her free to
follow her inclination. She took one of the conventual
vows, that of perpetual chastity, in 16 19, when St Francis
was in Paris ; and he always afterwards wrote to her as ' Sister
Catherine.' When Port Royal was removed to Paris, Mdme. le Maitre
spent much time with the community. She was AngeUque's
right hahd, and the one who in character resembled her most
closely of aU the sisters. Angelique and Mdme. le Maitre had
inherited their father's eager, ardent temperament, whilst
Agnes and Anne resembled the mother, and were cold and
reserved in manner. Ange'lique made her plans with Agnes,
but carried them out with Mdme. le Maitre.

CH. XIX.] MDME.' :^E MAtTRE AND HER SONS. 229
Mdme. le Maitre was' the constant companion and chief
friend of Mdme. de Pontcarre when she was first received at
Port Royal, but was deeply grieved by her subsequent conduct,
and was one of the first to welcome the intervention of St.
Cyran. She did not witness the revolting humUiations and
penances to which Angelique submitted, for at that time the
Duchess de LonguevUle had entreated her to take charge of
.her infant daughter. Mdme. le Maitre retained her affection
and interest in her pupil through life, and, twenty-five years
later, on her death-bed, wrote her a letter which is not only
admirable in itself, but valuable as showing her own opinions
and character as well as the nature of the influence which
the Port Royal Sisters exercised.
' Mademoiselle, I am lying on my death-bed. I have re
ceived the last Sacraments and given my last blessing to my
children. I cannot forget one whose noble birth will not allow
me to presume to call her child, but who has her place with
my children in my heart And therefore since you allow me
to take so great a liberty, I desire to write those things which
I may never hope to say to you. I know, Mademoiselle, that
there are many who can say very pretty things to you, but
they care nothing for your soul, which ought to be more
precious to you than anything else. . . .
' You are a Christian, Mademoiselle, and God has given you
wealth ; therefore you must take all needful care to administer
it for the benefit of others. I know that you have good men
to counsel you, but I also know that God has not given this
wealth to them but to you, and that from you He wUl demand
an account of it You ought therefore. Mademoiselle, as soon
as your affairs are in order, to procure a plan of all your
•rillages, with the houses and land belonging to them, so that
you may know the condition of the church, the parsonage, and
the priest. If you are the patron of the hving, you must seek
the advice erf wise and good people, so that you may select
good pastors, and see that the stipends are sufficient for them.
If they are insufficient, you should increase them, so that the
cure may have wherewithal to support the burthen of his cure,
which is sufficiently great You. ought, also, if you please, to
inquire into the condition of the church ornaments, and see in
what condition they are, so that aU things may be done decently
and as they ought to be.

230 MDME. LE MAITRE AND HER SONS. [chap.

' You should also, may it please you, have a table drawn up,
showing the number of inhabitants on your estates, their con
dition in life, means, and character ; also another table, shovring
the number of the poor who through age or infirmity are
unable to earn their bread, and whom you must support until
they die. ; of poor, orphan chUdren who have lost both parents,
and for whom you must provide until they are of an age to
earn their living. And as to the other poor, over and above
these, who are unable to earn their own living all the year
round, or who are compelled to ask alms by sickness, a fund
should be set apart for their assistance. All this should be
set in order at once. . . . You should try to make the acquaint
ance of some religious and inteUigent gentleman in the country,
who would inform you of everything that goes on, and especiaUy
of the manner in which your steward treats your tenants. . . .
And now. Mademoiselle, I have said all that I am constrained
to say by that love which will last to the end of my life, and
after life is ended. I implore you to weigh my words in the
presence of God, who ought to be served by the great as well
as by the humble. Before Him you vrill have some day to
appear, and I am summoned to appear before Him now at this
very hour. Give yourself to Him, Mademoiselle, for He is the
only Lord worthy of the heart of a Princess like you, who
are only great in His eyes when you are a Christian, humble,
just, and charitable.'
Mdlle. de Longueville, afterwards Duchesse de Nemours,
needed the advice of her mother's friend, but did not profit
by it.
After her return from the Hotel de Longueville, Mdme.
le Maitre lived in seclusion at Port Royal, waiting for the
time when she could take the veil. Many of the friends
whom she had found whilst she resided with the Duchess
visited her frequently ; and the great ladies of the court,
whom the Bishop had in vain endeavoured to attract by mere
outward show, were drawn to the convent by her piety and
large sympathy, and attracted by the vety simplicity and
poverty which the worldly prelate had expected they would
find so revolting.
Mdme. le Maitre was vety liberal, delighting to give to
the nuns, to the poor, to everyone who was in want.
She had much of Angelique's expansive warmth of sympathy,

XIX.] MDME. LE MAITRE AND HER SONS. 231
SO that next to her she was the most beloved member of
the community. Her husband, one of whose principal faults
seems to have been that he was a persistent Protestant, died in
1640, and she at once entered upon her noviciate and took
the veil in 1644 as soon as all arrangements connected with
her property had been made.
Up to that time her property had been at her own disposal ;
she employed it in ministering to the wants of the community,
and, as far as possible, did good by stealth, even to those with
whom she lived. One Lent the convent was so poor and fish
so dear, that they did not know how to procure it for the in
firmary or the boarders. To supply their needs a basket of
fish was sent by an unknown friend several times a week, and
it was not until long afterwards that they discovered the friend
to be Mdme. le Maitre.
She had the same large, motherly heart as Angelique, not the
transient and often selfish instinct which makes a woman affec
tionate to her own chUdren whilst she is cold and indifferent
to all others ; but the larger and more divine motherhood, not
denied even to the childless, which endures through life, and
is tender and compassionate to every suffering, helpless being,
and most of all to young children. One day a, doctor who
visited Port Royal told Angehque he had never been so dis
tressed as at the misery of a poor woman with a baby two
months old, and two or three other young children. She was
very ill, and absolutely destitute. She had no food for herseU
and nothing for the baby; she used to carry it about to the
neighbours and implore them to put it to the breast for a few
minutes, and thus by the charity of one and another the chUd
was kept alive; and yet was only just alive, for the mothers
would not rob their own children.
Angelique relieved the mother, but did not know what to do
for the cliUd. Mdme. le Maitre entreated her to send for it,
and put it under her charge. It was brought to her in its only
garment, a bit of dirty window curtain, within which, covered
with filth and vermin, so that the nuns shrank back from it, lay
the littie wasted form. Mdme. le Maitre tenderly took it up,
washed it and dressed it in clothes she had prepared, and laid
it in a little basket which was to serve as bed, and had it with
her day and night, giving it the care ' not of a nurse, but of a
mother.' Innumerable simUar traits are recorded of her as they

232 MDME. LE MAITRE AND HER SONS. [chap.
are of AngeUque. Once, we are told, AngeUque remonstrated
with her, saying, that in bestowing charity she should give
nothing more than absolute necessities, and not, as she had
done, pretty fashionable dresses to the child of a lady in re
duced circumstances. But Mdme. le Maitre replied that St
Cyran had taught her that our charity must be regulated by the
condition of the persons whom we assist, so that their hearts
may be gladdened by it, and they may not have the mortifica
tion of thinking that we forget what they have been. It seems
unlikely that Angehque should have made the remark, which is
probably attributed to her in error. She did not herself need
St. Cyran's instructions on this point, and was from the very
earliest times Mdme. de Cceiir Royal, so large and Uberal of
heart that she could not humiliate by an unworthy gift, or
urge others to humiliate those who were in misfortune. The
saying deserves record chiefly as showing that the Director
and his foUovyers were already in harmony on so many
points that we need scarcely wonder at his ultimate ascen
dancy on all.
Shortly before Mdme. le Maitre took the veU she obtained
permission to visit the conventual offices, and ascertain what
was wanting in them. ' My Sisters,' she said, ' tell me all your
little wants, for before long I shall have nothing to give away.'
And then, like a good housewife, she set everything in order,
and provided whatever seemed necessary for the comfort and
convenience of the household.
Mdme. le Maitre's eldest son, Antoine, was bom in 1608.
He chose the profession of his father and grandfather, and
was Called to the bar when he was twenty-one years old. His
eloquence was considered as great, or even greater, than that
of his grandfather M. Arnauld, and his success as a pubhc
speaker was quite extraordinary. At twenty-six years old he
contemplated marriage with a lady, whom he described as the
loveliest and most virtuous maiden in Paris. He wrote to in
form his aunt Agnes, who was at that time Abbess of Tard,
of the project, but she did not approve of it ; neither did
AngeUque, nor, we are justified in concluding, his mother, who
always prayed that God would draw her sons to Himself, and
take them out of the world. It is wortli our while to consider
the views of one of our abbesses on matrimony, and to notice
the reception which M. le Maitre's proposal met with from the

XIX.] MDME. LE MAITRE AND HER SONS. 233
relatives for whom he had so much affection and respect
Agnes writes : —
' My very dear Nephew,
' This is the last time I shall address you by that title.
Just in proportion as you have hitherto been dear to me, you
will now become indifferent, for there wUl no longer be
anything in you to call forth remarkable affection. Of course
I shall still love you, but it will be with the love which
Christianity enjoins, and which is universal ; and as you are
about to enter a very commonplace condition, I shall feel
no more for you than a very ordinary affection. You are about
to make yourself a slave, and you expect to remain a king
in my heart. The thing is impossible. You will say that I
blaspheme the Sacrament ^ of which you are such a devout
worshipper. But do not give yourself any trouble about my
conscience. I can quite well separate what is sacred from what
is profane, what is precious from what is mean. In fact, I can
forgive you as St. Paul does, and you will have the goodness to
content yourself with my pardon, and not to ask for approval
and praise. But, as I write I read your letter over again, and
seem to wake out of a deep sleep, and to discern I know not
what light shining through the gloom, and a hidden and myste
rious meaning in words, which seemed at first so clear and
commonplace. ' I begin to suspect that the story of your love which you tell
at such length, forgetting that I have no ears for such a dis
course, is only a myth taken from one of the Parables in the
Gospel, in which marriages are often spoken of, and where we
are told especially of that one wedding to which none but
virgins are invited. This little ray of hght illuminates my
mind, and enables me to try and explain your words, and to
look with a more favourable eye upon the maiden who has
taken possession of your heart'
And foUovring out the idea which she has started, the Abbess
endeavours to persuade her nephew that the Church is the
object of his affections, and continues : ' What apology can I
offer you, my dear nephew, for the manner in which I wrote at
the beginning of this letter ? How was it that my eyes were
blinded, so that I could not see the light at mid-day ; for I have
' Marriag«.

234 MDME. LE MAITRE AND HER SONS. [chap.
a thousand times more reason to believe that you are seeking
the joys of heaven than the joys of earth. Who has ever heard
a syllable fall from your lips, except those upon which I put such
a coarse interpretation — I am ready to die with shame when I
think of it — which breathed any other sentiment than love for
that which is holy and pure.'
M. le Maitre was not convinced by this letter, nor was he
at all inclined to renounce his bride. In fact, he wrote to his
aunt, ' The first page of your letter annoyed me so much that
I was more than a fortnight reading it ; every line stopped me,
and seemed to contain something offensive.' And he pro
ceeds to justify his proposed marriage, and to state that he
speaks in a very literal manner and with no hidden meaning.
But it is in vain. Agnes, the author of the mystical Secret
Chaplet, is resolved to find a hidden meaning in his words, will
hear of no bride but the Church, and writes back to explain
away his explanations. Whether he was altogether influenced
in this matter by these protests we do not know, but the pro
ject of marriage was abandoned.
The fame of the young advocate increased rapidly. Crowded
audiences listened to him, and popular preachers left their
pulpits when he was speaking. Friends told him they would
rather have the applause bestowed on him than all the glory
of Cardinal Richelieu, and through the favour of the Chan
cellor it was obvious that a brilliant and successful career was
before him.
On the death of his grandfather Amauld, he, together vrith
his brothers and mother, lived vrith their uncle d'Andilly, and
of course made the acquaintance of his uncle's friend St C)Tan.
In 1637 his aunt, Mdme. d'Andilly, was seized with a mortal
illness. She was a kindly woman, a devoted wife and mother,
but worldly and frivolous, and not prepared for the supreme
act of renunciation now required at her hands. St. C)Tan
visited her frequently, and le Maitre, who spent much time
in his aunt's sick room, was much affected by his ex
hortations and prayers. He wondered how it would be with
himself when death drew near, and how it would be if he
was at that very time called upon to appear before God.
Mdme. d'Andilly's last hour came. The service for the dying
was recited by her bedside. St. Cyran uttered the solemn
words, ' Depart, 0 Christian soul, from this world, in the name

XIX.] MDME. LE MA/TRE AND HER SONS. 235
of the Omnipotent God who created thee.' Le Maitre, on
hearing them, burst into tears, and knew not how to contain
himself as he thought of that day when he must listen to such
a command and appear before the presence of God. But there
was consolation for him in. the words of the Liturgy that
followed and told of mercy and pardon, and this fell like
cooling drops upon his heart At length all was over, and he
left the chamber of death, and hurried out of the house into
the moonlight. There, as he paced up and down the long
avenue near the house, he made no attempt to restrain his
grief; he could not stifle his regret for the past, his appre
hensions for the future, and he resolved to forsake all that he
had, and by the help of St. Cyran to follow God.
The Abbot heard of this conversion with great joy; but he
saw that it would be fraught with serious consequences to him
self and others. Richelieu was not a man to be trifled with,
and did not approve of the withdrawal of those whom he
expected to find useful. ' I foresee,' said St. Cyran, ' the
direction in which God is leading me when He sends you to
me, but it does not matter ; we must follow Him to prison or
to death.' And he gave no second thought to himself, but
began to make plans for the new convert He advised that
le Maitre should not abandon' his profession until the close
of the annual session of the courts, as he would then be
able to vrithdraw without attracting so much attention, and
with less injury to his clients than if he suddenly threw up all
his briefs. He may also have wished to test the sincerity of
the young advocate's convictions, and their durabUity. For
some time le Maitre attended the court and spoke as usual,
but the applause of the audience sounded in his ears like ' the
crowing of the cock that called Peter to repentance.' A great
dusty cracifix was suspended in the court, which he had never
previously noticed, but now he could not turn his eyes from
it, and said that it moved him to tears rather than to words.
His speeches had lost their wonted eloquence, and a rival
said that there was a remarkable change in the direction of
le Maitre's power, for it no longer produced conviction, but
sleep. This saying was repeated, and a week later the young
advocate made one great and final effort, uttered one eloquent
harangue, in which he spoke with sparkling eyes fixed on the
author of the sarcasm, arm stretched out, and body bent

236 MDME. LE MAITRE AND HER SONS. [chap.
towards him, and with no thought, so it seemed, and no look
for any other than the man who had for a moment electrified
him into life. Then he left the court never to return. The
session was at an end, and he was free.
His mother's joy was indeed great ; for as other mothers
labour to advance their -sons in the world, she laboured to
withdraw hers from it She and St Cyran thought that the new
convert ought to live in strict seclusion for a time ; but there
was a difficulty in the way. Her son did not wish to be a monk,
and would not join the Carthusians as St Cyran urged. And
then the happy mother proposed to build a lodge in the court
yard of Port Royal, to which le Maitre, and perhaps his
brothers also, might retire ; whilst she would take the veil, and
be always near her dear children. This proposal met vrith the
approval of all parties. The buUding was begun in October
1637, finished before Christmas in the same year, and as the
walls were not dry, they were lined with pine planks. It was
close to the church, so that the Recluses could enter and
leave the sacred edifice without being seen. Le Maitre did not
take possession of it alone. His mother's third and favourite -
son, de Sericourt, was so much impressed by the account of
his brother's conversion that he also resolved to leave his pro
fession, quit the army, and place himself under the direction of
St. Cyran. The two brothers were installed in the little lodge
in January 1638, 'on the day of St Paul, the first hermit'
In the same month St. Cyran estabhshed with them Claude
Lancelot, born 1615, a young scholar who had joined a
community of priests in the parish of St Nicholas, at Paris,
and who left them to seek a ' more exceUent way.' The cure
of St. Nicholas warned him against St Cyran, saying, ' He
is a dangerous man, and if you are not careful he wiU get
you into trouble.' In addition to these three, aged respectively
twenty-nine, twenty-six, and twenty-three, there were Father
Singlin, the Confessor, and four young boys, his pupils, 'who had
spent the previous summer with him at the forsaken monastery
of Port Royal des Champs.
We have here the nucleus of the Recluses of Port Royal,
and the first germs of the schools which were afterwards so
famous. Lancelot was the author of the Port Royal Grammars,
Greek, Latin, and Italian, now fallen into disuse ; and he
wrote Memoirs, which give a vivid picture of the men with

XIX.] MDME. LE MAITRE AND HER SONS. 237
whom he lived, and the holy women whose influence arid
prayers had helped to withdraw them from the world.
The Recluses began their day with Matins in the chapel at
I A.M., and had finished by 2 o'clock, when the nuns came.
De sericourt, the former Major, who always retained his
punctual militaty habits, undertook to call his companions in
time, and never failed. They chanted the Te Deum aloud,
and the rest of the service they intoned in a low voice. St
Cyran instructed all those who came to him to chant the
services and sing canticles and psalms, even when they were
alone. Lancelot says, ' when we went back to our own
rooms we aU did so, and on all sides there was a soft low sound
of singing, so that it reminded me of the early Church at
Jerusalem ; for St. Jerome says that even in his time wherever
you went, you could hear in the open fields and in the houses
the sound of the singing of Psalms and Hallelujahs. But
those which we sang were in a very low tone, so that from the
neighbouring houses we could not have been heard at all, for
our singing would certainly have been misunderstood.'
The reader will remember how Anne Arnauld ' danced for
joy' to think that she was a nun. The same enthusiasm of
happiness showed itself in a different manner in the Recluses.
Lancelot says :
' There was nothing but joy among us, and our hearts were
so full of it that it shone out in our faces. And with regard to
this, before I proceed I must mention one fact that regards
myself. The abounding grace which it has pleased God to
bestow on me, and the peace that resulted from it were so
great, that I could scarcely prevent myself from laughing at
everything that happened. I did not know what could be the
cause of this change ; certainly the defect was not one that had
troubled me previously.' [Poor fellow, he had abounded in
tears I] ' I accused myself of levity, and mentioned this fault
frequently in confession. But M. de St. Cyran, who was vety
clear-sighted, said that this was not really the cause of my
exuberant spirits. One day he told me that I need not be sur
prised, for that sometimes the soul, looking back on the path
over which it has travelled, whence it has come, what it has
attained, and all that inner life which lies hidden within it, is, as
it were, transported and lifted out of its ordinary trammels and
restraints ; and he thought that my joy came from this cause

238 MDME. LE MAItRE AND HER SONS. [chap.
rather than from levity, and that I need not take it so much
to heart.
' I saw that what he said was trae, for verily never had I
known, such a happy Ufe. God, according to the words of
the Apostie, ' was causing all things to work together for my
good,' so that I knew not how to be grateful enough for His
great mercy. I was deeply impressed by the charity of M. le
Maitre, the gentleness of M. de Sericourt, and the humUity of
M. Singlin ; but that which I admired most of all, and which
edified me most, was the poverty of the nuns. Often they had
not as much as half a franc with which to buy provisions.
They were rich in virtue and in nothing else.
There are few memoirs more charming than those of Lan
celot; They still bring before us the fresh gladness of those
early times when the Recluses, bound by no vows, had drawn
apart from the world to worship God, and were waiting to see
what work He had for them to do. The kindly sympathetic
nature of Lancelot gives back in bright colours all the impres
sions made on it. Men and women live in his pages ; we do
not read about them, we know them and love them." It
cannot be denied that Lancelot is diffuse, but then all memoirs
are, and perhaps ought to be, diffus,e. They abound in minute
and delicate touches which history cannot give, and without
which human beings are mere abstractions, or virtues and vices
labelled with a name.
In the voluminous memoirs vinritten by sisters, nieces, and nuns
who were her companions, Angelique Arnauld really lives. We
watch her as she holds by her grandfather's sleeves, trots with
him about the house, and shuts out the little brothers and sisters
that she may have him all to herself. We see the handsome
young Abbess having ' whalebone stays ' made to improve her
figure, and then sadly turning away and going back to the
gloom of Port Royal. Or in the early days of her conversion
we stand by her as she listens unmoved to the reproaches and
angry commands of her father, but falls fainting at his feet
when he tells her how dear she is to him. We follow her as
she walks through the convent in her paper mask, and know
that her sorrow is not for herself, but for the empty, hollow
show of religion and penitence around her ; and we see her on
her knees 'weeping bitterly' for the shame of unpaid debt and
for her blindness to the guilt of incuning it

XIX.] MDME. LE MAItRE AND HER SONS. 239
In the memoirs of Lancelot, it is St. Cyran who hves before
us, a figure as noble as Angehque's, and like her in its mys
terious power of attracting others and changing the whole
direction of their lives. Angelique and Agnes, Marie-Claire
and Anne, Mdme. le Maitre and Mdme. Arnauld, have all
listened and been convinced; Port Royal is restored to its
early piety and simplicity. Priests and bishops and the court
have for a time forgotten its existence, but at its gates there
is gathering together a little society which is one day to
make it famous. One by one St. Cyran is drawing the mem
bers of that society from the world ; lawyers, soldiers and
priests are the first to listen to his voice, physicians' and nobles
are to follow. We must not tarry with them or forestall that
story of the Recluses of Port-Royal which has some day to
be written ; but we cannot pass on without some notice and
some attempt to form a just estimate of their character and
influence. Next to St Cyran the man most noteworthy is Father Singlin
the Confessor. He was born in Paris in 1607, and was at the
time of which we speak thirty years old. His father, who was
a wine-merchant, had apprenticed him to a linendraper, with
whom he remained until he was twenty-two. He was then
moved to visit Vincent de Paul, who at once took a warm
interest in him and advised him to become a priest. The
young man thought this was impossible, for he was uneducated,
and knew not a single word of Latin. Vincent de Paul, how
ever, enabled him to overcome all the obstacles in his way,
told him of a college where the professors would give him
special attention, and, wilh considerable effort, Singlin contrived
to acquire all that was absolutely necessary to enable him to
become a priest. Vincent de Paul appointed him Confessor
of the HSpital de la Pitie, and it was there that he became
acquainted with St C}Tan, who introduced him to Angelique
and the nuns at the Holy Eucharist Many years later Ange
lique said of him : ' He thinks like one of the Fathers of the
Church, and speaks like a linen-draper's assistant.'
Before long, Antoine Singlin resolved to leave all and follow
St. Cyran, who had kindled him, so he says, ' like a match
held to the fire.' At first St. Cyran was unwiUing to receive
him, but when he found that the priests had no opportunity
of doing good in the HSpital, and that all their efforts were

240 MDME. LE MAItRE AND HER SONS. [chap,
paralysed by the opposition of the governors, he aUowed him
to leave it, and sent him in charge of two of his own nephews
and two other children to spend the summer of 1637 in the
solitude of the forsaken Port Royal des Champs. On his
return he joined the Recluses in Paris, and was appointed
Confessor to the convent.
St, Cyran ' had, like Angelique, the gift of insight ; he
invariably discovered the power and capacity of those who
vvorked with him, even when they themselves were ignorant of
it. He held Father Singlin to his post in spite of his desire
to leave it and enter a monastery; seeing that his special
power was to speak to the hearts of penitents, and that his
very directness, his blunt unpolished speech lent him a certain
power often denied to finished orators. That and his recti
tude, for he was a man upright and honourable, hating lies,
deceit and avarice, never tolerating them anywhere, and least
of all in the service of God. Father Singlin was characterized
also by marvellous tenacity of purpose. He never abandoned
any work which, after mature deliberation, he had resolved to
take up, and was inflexible in what he believed to' be right
either for himself or others. St Cyran saw that the firm,
upright guide must not be allowed to immure himself in a
monastery when there was so much work to be done in
the world.
Le Maitre and his brother, de Sericourt, occupied one room,
and their ' retreat ' vvas so strict that they saw theh companions
only once in the day, at matins. There vvas no communication
between the Recluses and the nuns of Port Royal, but they
acted as a stimulus to the fervour and piety of each other,
and St Cyran's visits formed a bond of union between them.
He saw each Recluse alone, and often went to the schoolroom,
where he exhorted the children and encouraged, those who
had charge of them. He used to say that there is no more
f^ important work than education, not only because the whole
future of the chUd depends on it, but also because it requires
great charity, patience, wisdom, assiduity, and continual effort
on the part of the teacher, who has to tum the child from evU
and lead it towards God. We cannot read many of the hard
sayings that impressed his foUowers so deeply without pain ;
but the life of monk and nun and recluse is only conceivable
for those who accept the doctrine that the world is the devil's

xix.] MDME. LE MAItRE AND HER SONS. 241
and is under the curse of God, and that living to God means
Uving out of the world and standing apart and loose from
all its ties. Lancelot treasures up and records the following
anecdote. One day, when St. Cyran entered- the schoolroom,
he found the little boys busy with their Virgil, and said :
'Look you now at this Virgih He is damned, yes, he is
damned for vreiting that fine poetry, because he wrote it from
vanity and to please the world. But you may be saved through
learning it, for you must leam it to please God and to prepare
for the service of the Church, And therefore you must offer
aU study as a sacrifice to God, and be faithful in the employ
ment of your time, for the time which we do not employ in the
service of God is the devil's, and he takes it to himself.'
He read St Augustine with the Recluses, saying, however, to
Lancelot that it was not his usual practice to read such
advanced works vrith those who were only beginning to lead
a religious life. But he found that milk for babes would not
suit le Maitre's keen subtle inteUect, and thought it desirable
to give him something that should task his powers more than
any subject he had ever studied. Very often he read the New
Testament with them, and would sometimes exclaim in a trans
port of delight, ' I have discovered a text to-day that I would
not part with for ten thousand crowns.'
A few weeks later the three remaining sons of Mdme. le
Maitre joined their brothers in the Uttle lodge at the gates of
Port Royal. The second, St Elme, returned to the world,
had considerable success as an advocate, married, and had
daughters, who became nuns of Port Royal, Isaac le Maitre
de Saci, or de Saci, as he was called, born in 16 13, was the
fourth son. Two years previously his mother was in great
grief, for it was reported that her favourite son, de Sericourt,
had been killed at the battle of Philipsburg, St Cyran called
on her and expressed his sympathy. She said : ' I have one
son who will, I hope, desire to enter the Church, and the only
consolation you can offer me now is to see him and take him
under your guidance.' St Cyran fulfilled her wish, and de
Saci, then twenty-two years old, was prepared by him for the
Priesthood. He was so ill at one time that his mother said
she had lost all hope of his recovery. ' Lost all hope 1 ' ex
claimed St Cyran ; ' why do you not know that to lose your
son would be the greatest loss the Church could experience ! '
S.L, XIII, R

242 MDME. LE MAITRE AND HER SONS. [ch, xix,
Mdme, le Maitre's fifth and youngest son, Charles le Maitre
de Vallemont, lived and died a Recluse, but he and St Elme
may be dismissed with the mention of their names, whilst
le Maitre the advocate, de Sericourt the soldier, and de Saci
the priest, have important parts to play in the future histoty
of Port Royal,
Such a little community of devout men and women in Paris
in the seventeenth century, in the very heart of a profligate
city, and .to some extent in the power of a profligate court
and still more profligate priesthood, may well excite our
interest and attention. Can they exist together?
The answer to this question is not long delayed.
Two hours after midnight, on the 14th of May, 1638,
twenty-two archers surrounded St Cyran's house, and at six
o'clock they knocked and demanded admission. He was
readniL; St. Augustine with his nephew, M. de Barcos, and had
come to a passage on contrition, ' That is what we want,' he
said. ' Here is something vrith which to defend ourselves
when we are attacked !' At that moment an officer entered
and informed him in a low tone that he had the king's orders
to conduct him to a carriage which was waiting outside. St
Cyran took him kindly by the hand, and said, ' Well, sir, let
us go wherever the king commands. I have no greater pleasure
than in obedience.'
They set out, accompanied by several archers who were not
in uniform, and, driving through the park of Vincennes, met
d'AndUly, who was on his way to Pomponne, his country house,
'Wliy where are you taking aU these people?' he said,
laughing, to his old friend, ' I am not taking them, it is they
who are taking me,' answered St Cyran, And then gravely
added, ' But I look upon myself as the prisoner of God, and
not of man. By the way, they were in such a hurry that I
could not even bring a book with me,' Now d'Andilly was
reading the Confessions of St Augustine, so he stretched out
his hand, saying, ' Here, this is a book that you gave me long
ago, and now I must give it back again,'
D'AndUly was everybody's friend, and was so well known in
Paris that the officer aUowed the two friends to spend a few
moments together in grave and earnest talk; then they em
braced, and parted sadly enough, for St Cyran was on his way
to the prison of Vincennes,

CHAPTER XX.
THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES,
When St Cyran reached Vincennes, and was conducted to his
cell, he fell on his knees, thanked God for this crowning mercy,
and implored help to enable him to make a good use of it.
In order to show his ready assent to the present dispensation,
nay more his gratitude for it, he sent a sum of money to one
pf his friends, and desired her to divide it into three portions,
and procure admission to a convent for one poor maiden, give
a marriage portion to a second, and ransom a prisoner.
But this state of exaltation was succeeded by great depres
sion. He was placed in strict and solitary confinement ; his
friends were not allowed access to him, and if any tidings from
the outer world reached him, and on this point his biographers
are not unanimous, it was that, eight days before his own arrest,
Jansen, Bishbp of Ypres, the companion of his youth, his
faithful friend and feUow-student, was dead. Jansen was dead.
Their great work was ended, and who could say that their life
long labours had not been in vain ? Jansen had died suddenly,
on the vety day that his book was completed. So much St,
Cyran knew, for Lancelot says he was not told of the death
of his friend until he could be reassured on this point But
who could give him any assurance that the work they had
begun together would be brought to a successful issue, and
lead, as they had hoped, to the reform of the Catholic Church ?
His own papers were in the hands of enemies who would
twist and turn his words to serve their own purpose, and
who were ignorant enough to charge St Augustine himself with
heresy. He had no personal fear, but had he not good reason
R 2

244. THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. [chap.
to be afraid for his friends and for the nuns and Recluses at
Port Royal I
Great gloom fell upon him. He began to ask himself
whether he had not been mistaken in supposing that his
imprisonment was a mark of Divine favour, and whether it
was not rather a punishment and a sign of God's anger. He
began to be haunted night and day by the fear of the wrath of
God and His judgment He tumed to the Bible for help, but
found none. Every denunciation in it seemed directed against
himself He read that ' If the bhnd lead the blind, both
shall fall into the ditch,' and recognized that he was indeed a
blind leader of the blind. Or he turned to the passage, ' Every
plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be
rooted up ;' and it seemed to him that his imprisonment was
the 'rooting up,' that not man but God was against him,
and the ' devil had obtained permission to sift him like wheat'
' But after the tempest came a calm,' says Lancelot, ' and
although God did not deliver him from his chains as He did
Peter, yet He deUvered him from his fears, and gave him
abundant consolation from the same Scriptures by which He
had been pleased to afflict him.'
One day, after prayer, St Cyran had recourse to the chance
opening ofthe Bible, which was at that time considered as asking
and receiving a message direct from God. His eye fell upon
the words, ' Thou liftest me up from the gates of death, that I
may show forth all Thy praise in the gates of the daughter of
Zion : I will rejoice in Thy salvation. The nations are sunk
down in the pit that they made. In the net which they secretly
hid is their own foot taken.' He received these words with
reverence and gratitude, and believed that it had pleased God
to give him comfort, and put an end to his fears for him
self; a few weeks later the anxiety for his friends was also
relieved. D'Andilly was a universal favourite at the French court, and
the one subject of his conversation to evetyone he met had for
some time past been St Cyran, whose extraordinaty piety and
wonderful gifts he was never weary of describhig. And now
everyone pitied d'Andilly quite as much as St Cyran, and
there were many who tried for his sake to use their influence in
favour of his friend.
Richelieu's niece, the Duchess d'Aiguillon, appealed in vain

XX.] THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. 245
to the great Cardinal for pardon, but she obtained permission to
visit the prisoner at Vincennes and to take d'Andilly with her.
The prisoner was brought from his cell, and after some con
versation with the duchess she gave the two friends an opportu
nity of talking together privately. D'Andilly told him that all
his friends were safe and well. No one had been compromised
by his papers. They had been searched, but his work against
the Calvinists, which had caused him most anxiety, had been
removed before the search began. St, Cyran answered fervently
that a thousand lives would not be long enough to enable him
to thank God for these great mercies.
The duchess was much affected by this interview between
the two friends, and on the way home she said there was no
casket in the world she thought so precious as that which con
tained the key of St. Cyran's prison, and nothing she would
like so much as to give it to d'AndUly, that he might set hia
friend at liberty. It was doubtless through her influence with
the Cardinal that from henceforward d'Andilly was allowed
access to the prisoner whom he visited frequently, and the
Governor of Vincennes often left them alone together. When
d'Andilly was going away St Cyran would say, ' Why do you
give me the pleasure of meeting if it is always to be followed
by the pain of parting?'
Many friends gathered round St Cyran, but he called
d'Andilly the iatxA par excellence ; not suth a friend as Jansen,
who was his equal in character and intellect ; not a great man
in any way, but a kindly enthusiast, good enough and clever
enough to appreciate him.
The reassurance which he had received with regard to the
safety of his friends, and probably some alleviation of the
rigour of his confinement, helped to restore the prisoner to
peace and serenity, which he never again lost during the five
years he remained at Vincennes, He was removed to a better
cell than that 'which he at first occupied, and allowed to take
exercise ; but, with the exception of d'AndUly, he was seldom
permitted to see his friends, and was closely watched fo
prevent his holding any communication with them, D'Andilly,
however, contrived to supply him with pencil, paper, and some
times pen and ink. The supervision cannot have been extra
ordinarily strict, for in addition to a mass of letters, he wrote
during this period two thick octavo volumes of ' Meditations

246 THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. [chap.
on Sundays and Holy Days,' and several volumes of ' Medita
tions on the Priesthood,' ' Poverty,' ' Death,' and other sub
jects which occupied his thoughts. D'AndUly conveyed away
these precious documents, and they were carefuUy deciphered
and copied by his daughter Agnes, who was a nun at Port
Royal, and also by Marie-Claire, his sister.
The Governor of Vincennes showed his prisoner great kind
ness ; but the vrife of the Lieutenant, upon whom St C5Tan
practicaUy depended, treated him very badly. She robbed him
of his food, and sold his allowance of wood, so that sometimes
in the depth of winter he was left vrithout fire. Before long
his health showed signs of failing, and he was more than once
believed to be at the point of death, and received the last
sacrament of the Church. He obtained great influence over
the inmates of the prison, who soon discovered the sanctity of
his life and his zeal for good works. He was a man who lived
habitually in the presence of God, and thus he was at the same
time humble and strong. Worldly motives, worldly hopes and
fears he had none ; nor did he form a worldly estimate of the
importance of those around him. He offered to take charge
of the two sons of the Lieutenant of the prison, and at the
same time taught a poor boy, whom he afterwards sent (que
of many others) to be educated in his own Abbey of St
Cyran. The Lieutenant's wife was so angry that his favours
had not been confined to her own chUdren that she treated
hini worse than ever. There were many cases in prison which
excited his special sympathy, and we cannot pass them by
without notice, because they help us to understand not only
his own character, but the affection and reverence vrith which
the Port RoyaUsts regarded their imprisoned saint.
Perhaps the most characteristic story told of him at this
time is that which relates to the Baron and Baroness de Beau
Soleil. The Baron was imprisoned in the BastiUe, and the
Baroness and her daughter at Vincennes. They were without
money, and almost destitute, St Cyran sold part of his scanty
collection of books to purchase clothes for them. He gave the
commission to a friend, saying, ' I beg that the material may be
fine and good and befitting their station in society. I do not
know what is suitable ; but, if I remember rightly, I have heard
that gentiemen and ladies of their condition ought not to
be seen in company vrithout gold lace for the men and black

xx,] THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. 247
lace for the women. If I am right on this point, pray purchase
the best, and let everything be done modestly and yet hand
somely, so that when they see each other they may forget, for
a few minutes at least, that they are prisoners,'
Another case that excited his sympathy was that of General
d'Enkenfort, who had been taken prisoner in 1638, D'AndiUy
was always ready to serve evetyone whom he met, and it did
not need St, Cyran's advocacy to interest him in the German
General, Now M, de Feuquiferes, a connection of the Arnaulds,
was a- prisoner at Thionville, and in 1640, through d'Andilly's
influence, he was exchanged for General d'Enkenfort. The day
before the exchange was completed, d'Enkenfort was released
on parole, and went to Paris to thank d'AndiUy for his good
offices, sta3dng all night at his house. In the morning the
horses were standing saddled in the courtyard, ready for his
departure to Germany, and his foot was in the stirrup, when
M. de Feuquiferes' two sons entered in haste with the terrible
news that their father had died in prison before his release. ' We
remained motionless,' says the Abbe Arnauld, who recounts the
story, ' silent and motionless as if we had been thunder-struck.
General d'Enkenfort was no less overwhelmed than we were,
but although in this crael contretemps he saw the ruin of all
his hopes, and the indefinite postponment of that liberty,
the sweets of which he had begun to taste, yet so great was
his courage that he overcame his own grief, and began to
comfort his friends as if he had not needed any consolation
himself. '
That same night he was taken back again to prison, and it
was then that he found the true worth of the man who had
shown so much interest in his fate. When St. Cyran saw him,
he said solemnly, 'Your emperor desired to procure your
freedom, and the /greatest king in the world consented to grant
it, but the King of kings holds you a prisoner stUl, and it is
He who has overraled their action.'
A still more celebrated German prisoner was at that time at
Vincennes, and although he did not, like d'Enkenfort, turn for
help and guidance to St. Cyran, he conceived great admiration
for him, on account of what he knew of his prison life. In
the winter of 1640-41, Richelieu gave a series of grand enter
tainments to the King and court, and the German prisoners of
war, Jean de Wert (Johann von Werth) and d'Enkenfort, were

248 THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. [chap.
allowed to be present at a magnificent ballet, which repre
sented the triumphs of the arms of France. The subject was
one which must have had a painful interest for them at that
time. At this performance there were reserved seats for the
bishops and abbots of note who happened to be in Paris,
and also fpr the confessors, almoners, and other priests, who
belonged to the Cardinal's household. Richelieu expected that
the magnificence of the display would greatly impress the
German prisoners, and Jean de Wert was asked what he thought
of it. He replied that it was fine enough, but that which had
astonished him more than anything else in the Most Christian
Kingdom of France was to see the bishops at a theatre and
the saints in prison. This saying was repeated to Richelieu,
but it did not induce him to release his prisoner.
It is difficult to understand the exact grounds on which
Richelieu persecuted St, Cyran, The latter assigns no less than
nineteen causes for his imprisonment Perhaps they may all be
summed up in this, that Richelieu believed him to be a dan
gerous adversaiy, who would neither be silenced by fear or
favour. On the morning after the arrest the Cardinal said to the
Abbe Beaumont de Perefixe, afterwards Archbishop of Paris :
' Beaumont, I have done a thing which will raise a great outcry.
I have had the Abbot of St Cyran arrested by order of the
king. Learned people and pious people too will make a great
piece of work about it But let that be as it wUl, I am sure
that I have done good service both to Church and State, A
great many calamities would have been averted if Luther and
Calvin had been shut up as soon as they began to dogmatize.'
The dogmatizing which had offended the Cardinal was con
tained in St. Cyran's opposition to his view of attrition. When
Richeheu was Bishop of Lugon he wrote a catechism, in which
he taught that attrition or a fear of God and of punishment, ,
together with confession, entitied a person to receive abso
lution, and was therefore all that was necessary for salvation.
Some years later, one Seguenot, a priest of the Oratoty,
wrote a book to prove that attrition was not enough, unless
it was accompanied by contritioti or sorrow for sin, arising
from love of God. Now Richelieu was, according to Retz,
' a very great man, but he possessed in a sovereign degree the
weakness of not being able to despise small things,' and
he could not brook opposition to his theology. Seguenot

XX.] THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. 249
expressed his regret when he found that he had offended
the Cardinal, and retracted humbly ; but he was sent to the
Bastille, where he had an opportunity of meditating on the
difference between attrition and contrition until the death of
Richelieu. Rumour, however, ascribed the book not to Segue
not, but to St. Cyran ; and although it is certain from internal
evidence that he did not write it, yet so far as that particular
doctrine is concerned, he might have done so. After he had
been some time in prison. Prince Henry of Bourbon inter
ceded for him, but Richelieu said : ' You don't know the man
for whom you are interceding. He is more dangerous than
six armies. Just look at that catechism on my table ; it has
passed through twenty-two editions. I say in it that attrition
together with confession is all that is necessary, and he believes
that contrition is also necessary. Again, with regard to the
marriage of Monsieur (Duke of Orleans), all France agreed
with me, and he alone was bold enough to oppose me.'
The Jesuits, and other priests who had their own grievances
against St Cyran, took care, as soon as he was imprisoned, to
spread vague reports of grave charges to be brought against
him. The Bishop of Langres found an outlet for his jealous
anger in collecting all their denunciations, and forwarding them
to Richeheu. But as a matter of fact no definite accusation
was ever brought against him, and it was not until he had been
a year in prison that M. de Laubardemont, the Commissioner
of infamous memoty who presided at the trial of Urbain Gran-
dier, was sent to interrogate him. He refused to answer any
one except an ecclesiastic, and thereupon Richelieu appointed
Lescot, Canon of Notre Dame, and afterwards Bishop of
Chartres, who had twelve interviews with the prisoner, extending
over a period of three weeks, and tried to obtain from him an
admission of heresy and Calvinism. They contrived to mis
understand each other on evety subject they discussed. Lescot
knew very little of the Fathers of the Church, and St, Cyran
very little of the schoolmen. Lescot tried to draw St. Cyran
into the meshes of scholastic theology, and St Cyran in vain
referred Lescot to patristic literature. Each charged the other
with ignorance. Lescot said that much learning had made St.
C)Tan mad, and he knew nothing of many things he ought to
know ; whilst St. Cyran, in spite of his humUity and modesty,
was eager to prove that Lescot had made a number of gross

250 THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. [chap.
blunders, some thirty of which he was at the trouble of dictating
to his faithful Lancelot
Lescot tried to draw from St. Cyran condemnation of the
doctrine of contrition ; but he argued that he had not exer
cised his private judgment on this matter; his viewS were
sanctioned by the Church, and he could not therefore retract
He offered, however, to write on the subject and dedicate his
work to Richelieu, if he was allowed to go out on bail for
four or five months. His offer was not accepted, and the
foUowing year Lescot again visited Vincennes, and there was
a fresh investigation, with no different result
St. Cyran was at great pains to explain himself to his
disciples on this point. He compares attrition and contrition
to sunrise and mid-day, and says that one must follow the
other. When the sun rises we are sure of the noon, and God
never gives attrition which is not followed by contrition. If we
have obtained mercy in His sight, and are touched by fear, He
will also inspire us with love.
The question of the day was, however, not this, but rather
whether it is necessary to salvation to love God at all ; and
whether fear of Him is not enough, or at all events enough
untU a man is on his deathbed, when perhaps a little con
trition may be desirable. Is it enough to tum to the Church
in order to escape everlasting punishment, or is it necessary
to be moved by genuine sorrow for sin, which implies love
of God and a desire to escape not from the punishment of
sin, but from the evU of it ? It was the latter which St
Cyran asserted ; whilst Richelieu, the Jesuits, and the world
maintained the former.
His friends were much alarmed when they heard of these
examinations. Vincent de Paul hastened to advise him to
dictate his answers to the Secretary who was to take them
down, and to be sure and verify them afterwards, lest they
should be falsified. His friend, M. Moie, the Procureur-Ghih-al,
recommended hini to make marginal notes or draw lines over
every bit of blank paper on every page, saying that he had
to deal with ' curious people,' and it was by no means impro
bable that statements would ' creep in,' for which he was not
responsible. The examinations, however, were barren of resvUt, and
another influential friend, M. de Chavigny, appealed to Riche^

XX.] THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. 251
lieu in St. Cyran's favour. The Cardinal promised to ' procure '
his pardon if he would adopt the ' ordinary opinions of the
Church,' and make a declaration to the effect that attrition,
together with confession, was alone necessary to justify the
priest in granting absolution.
St Cyran declined to do this ; but he wrote a long letter to
M. de Chavigny, in which he justified both his own view and
that of his opponents, and consequently satisfied neither friends
nor enemies.
During the five years of his imprisonment attrition and con
trition were discussed in every salon in Paris, and the Jesuifs
were unanimous in condemning St. Cyran.
Port Royal shared both the obloquy and ill-vrill which the
Abbot had incurred. A fortnight after his arrest the Arch
bishop of Paris informed the Recluses that he had received orders
for their removal, as their close vicinity to the nuns of Port Royal
was considered unseemly. Father Singlin urged that they had
no communication with the nuns, not even seeing them in the
parlour or through a grating ; but it was in vain, they were told
that they must go ; and, after some deliberation. Port Royal des
Champs, the Port Royal of AngeUque's early days, was fixed on
as their future retreat.
For twelve years it had stood empty and abandoned ; but
Angelique, Agnes, and the companions of their youth, looked
back to it as their home. It was there, on that terrible
day when Angelique closed her doors against father and
mother, brother and sisters, that she shut out an evil past in
order to prepare for a time which, it seemed to her, had now
arrived, when mother and sisters could be received within
her convent, and brothers and nephews dwell outside the walls.
Angelique thought the one a necessary sequence of the other.
If she removed abuses she could restore the purity of early
times, and allow holy men and women to dwell side by side.
She despatched le Maitre and his brothers, together with
Lancelot and the young pupils whom St Cyran forbade them to
relinquish, in all some ten or twelve persons, to the deserted
monastety. They found the building almost in ruins, the land
around it a wilderness, and vipers and stagnant waters on all
sides of them. But the accommodation, they required was
small, and their diet simple. They spent some weeks as
quietly as if they had been in Paris, each following his usual

252 THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. [chap.
avocations. The only difference was that sometimes in the
evening they left the stifling valley, and ascending the hills that
surround Port Royal, walked there, and chanted complines in
the open air, in order, says Lancelot, ' that the harmony of our
voices might bear witness to the joy that filled our hearts, and
that we might openly glorify God, even when our enemies
thought the trath was held captive.'
A few weeks later Laubardemont, the Commissioner who
was afterwards sent to St. Cyran, made his appearance. He
had not gone direct from Paris to Port Royal, but had slept
at a neighbouring viUage, and started early in the moming
so as to take the Recluses by surprise. He expected to find
them in bed, he found them at prayers ; and when he knocked
at le Maitre's door it was opened by the young advocate him
self, wearing a long black coat buttoned the whole way down
the front, Laubardemont interrogated all the Recluses and
their pupUs, even children of eight years old ; but it was against
le Maitre that the attack was chiefly directed.
Now although le Maitre had said farewell to the world, he
had not lost the powers which had given him so high a position
at the bar, and the result of the examination was by no means
gratifying to the Commissioner, It was impossible to entangle
the advocate, or draw from him any damaging admissions. He
had a way of .quietly turning upon his questioner, which was
far from pleasant ; and his friends repeated with considerable
amusement an answer which was not reported by the Com
missioner himself
Laubardemont asked le Maitre in a contemptuous manner
if he did not see visions. Le Maitre answered coldly, yes, he
did : when he opened one of the windows in his room, to
which he pointed, he saw the viUage of St Lambert, whUst
when he opened the opposite window he saw Vaumurier : he
had no other visions than these.
Laubardemont next examined his books. They consisted
of a Bible in twelve small volumes, four or five little volumes
of Saint Augustine, a copy of Paulinus, a New Testament in
Greek and Latin, and a translation of St, Chtysostom, The
Commissioner gravely wrote that he had not found any book
which could be suspected of containing heretical doctrine, and
then acquitted himself of the remainder of his task and com
manded the Recluses to leave Port Royal.

XX.] THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. 253
It was of no use to protest, so they prepared to obey ; and
in July 1638 they returned to Paris. As soon as they arrived
there de Saci fell ill, and his mother, Mdme. le Maitre, had
him taken secretly to Port Royal, so that he might be carefully
nursed. When he had recovered he joined his -brother de
sericourt, who was living with St. Cyran's nephew, M. de
Barcos. It was vety difficult to find a home for le Maitre, as people
were afraid of receiving him lest they should bring ill-will upon
themselves. He wished to join the Carthusians in Paris, and
asked them to receive him as a boarder, and allow him to
attend Matins and the daUy Church services. But they replied
that they had property to think of, and could not afford to
offend the Government Several other religious houses gave
the same answer ; and there was only one that ventured to
show a little more courage, and to say to d'AndUly through
their prior that they should have been delighted to receive his
nephew if it had been possible, but, unfortunately, they had
only one suitable apartment for him, and that was occupied by
a person who could not be induced to give it up,
St, Cyran had discerned in Lancelot a special gift for the
instruction and education of children. He was therefore de
spatched to La Ferte-Milon, about fifty miles from Paris, with
his pupil Uttle Vitart This boy had been received because he
was the nephew of Sister Suzanne, the cellarer of Port Royal ;
his father was the Duke de Luines' steward, and resided at
La Ferte-Milon, where lived also his wife's sister, Mdme,
Racine, and her family.
The Vitarts had heard of the persecution of St, Cyran and
the Recluses from Sister Suzanne, and when they learnt still
more from Lancelot, they opened their doors to any who chose
to come to them, and received le Maitre and de Sericourt,
who, accompanied by Father Singlin, passed a year under
M, "Vitart's roof'; but hermits in a lonely cell could not have
lived more solitary lives.
The essential point in St. Cyran's system of education was
that a pupil must be under constant supervision, and never out
of sight of his instructor. Lancelot, therefore, was bound to
little Vitart by night and day ; they dined with the family,
attended the parish church, and Lancelot could not, according
to his own views, lead such a holy life as his companions.

254 THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. [chap,
StUl, he and his pupil spent as much time in their own
room as was possible, and he and the Recluses continued
to say Matins together. They had no special place of wor
ship in the house, and did not wish to disturb the inmates
during the night, so de Sericourt woke Lancelot by means
of a string which passed from one room to the other. They
then commenced their devotions, and were ' united in the spirit
though not in the flesh.' Lancelot speaks vrith rapture of the
holy secluded life led by his companions. They passed their
time in prayer and study, deaf and blind to the world around
them, its interests and its cares ; and yet they exercised a
mysterious attraction over the imaginations of the members of
the household. In the summer of 1639 they were ordered to
walk evety evening on the hills behind La Ferte-MUon for the
good of their health, and enjoyed the relaxation of talking to
gether on matters relating to religion, Lancelot says :
' We could not get to the hills vrithout passing through part
of the town, but we- never spoke to anyone on our way; and
on our return, about nine o'clock in the evening, we walked one
after the other in silence, telling our beads. It was summer time,
and the people would be sitting outside their doors. When
they saw us they used to rise and saSute us, and were all silent
as we passed along ; for the holy lives and virtues of these
gentlemen inspired great respect,'
Mdme, Racine, little Vitart's aUnt, was the grandmother of
Jean Racine the poet, who was born this very summer of 1639,
and educated in the Port Royal schools. Mdme, Racine had
daughters, the poet's aunts, who became nuns at Port Royal ;
and one of them, under the name of Agnes de St, Thekla
Racine, was Abbess from 1691 till her death in 1700.
At the close of this summer, as the storm of persecution
seemed to have blown over, the Recluses thought they might
venture back to Port Royal, and prepared to take their de
parture. The Vitart household was strangely agitated, could
not part with them, and at last determined to accompany them
to the deserted monastety. The Recluses did not object to
M. Vitart, who offered to take the charge of the household and
look after the buildings and land, so as to leave them free to
devote their whole time to study and prayer. But the ' band
of pious women,' who insisted on accompanying them, was not
so welcome. In vain St Cyran urged grave objections from

XX,] THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. 255
his prison cell, and le Maitre entreated ; the ladies were re
solved to carty their point, and they had a staunch ally in
Angehque, who gave them permission to occupy part of the
building, where they would be completely isolated. They
foUowed the Recluses to Port Royal, and as long as they
were there together, there was not even verbal communication
between them. Lancelot did not remain at Port Royal. He
went to Paris, to take charge of two boys who had been placed
under St, Cyran's care.
This period of imprisonment is fertile in conversions. They
all took place by means of d'Andilly, who was the medium of
communication between St, Cyran, Port Royal, and the outer
world. Great ladies Ustened to d'AndUIy's accounts of St.
Cyran and his prison cell, of Angelique and her convent. They
visited Port Royal, and what the Bishop of Langres had failed
to effect was brought about in quite another way. Port Royal
became the resort of the court, and might have been, if
AngeUque and Agnes had desired it, fashionable and influ
ential. But they spoke of themselves as disciples of an
imprisoned saint, and Port Royal was a stepping-stone to
Vincennes. The most influential convert made at this time was the
Princess de Guemene. It cannot be said that she did more
than amuse herself with religion, but she was a trae friend to
Port Royal, and we may be charitable enough to believe that
her occasional retreat to the convent, and long intervdews with
the Abbess, who would talk of nothing but spiritual matters,
show at any rate an aspiration for something more than the life
of vicious intrigue, which she never altogether abandoned.
In the summer of 1639, d'Andilly spent some time at her
countty seat, and on her return she paid weekly visits to Port
Royal, and had long conferences in the convent parlour with
Angelique, Agnes, and Anne-Eugenie, who were induced to
break through their rale of silence when they believed there
was an opportunity of winning souls to God. The progress of
this distinguished convert was faithfully reported to St Cyran,
who knew too much of the world to expect any lasting result
from it : ' The grace of God in her soul,' he wrote, ' is like a
spark kindled upon an icy pavement with the winds blowing
upon it from evety quarter.' She was placed under the im
mediate guidance of Father Singlin, who wrote to Lancelot at

256 THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. [chap.
Ferte-MUon and desired him to pray for her, saying, that if
the change which had been effected in her was lasting it would
be the greatest miracle of that age.
Another of d'AndUIy's converts was the Barpness de St
Ange, whose husband was maitre d'hotel to Anne of Austria ;
d'Andilly made her acquaintance in 1635, and as he never
saw a pretty woman without taking an interest in her soul, he
begged her to go and see the nuns of Port Royal. She did so
in the following year, and on her first visit received a notable
rebuff from Angehque.
She entered the httie parlour and greeted the Reverend
Abbess in the conventional manner, with many compliments
and much assumed humUity. Angelique in reply drew the cur
tain before the window of communication, and thus intimated
that the interview was at an end. The Baroness was astonished
and annoyed, but she took leave in the usual manner, com
mending herself to the prayers of the community ; in answer
to which Angelique said : —
' Those who desire that we should pray for them ought to
leave us in solitude. The convent parlour is of no use to fine
ladies, and their visits do a great deal of harm to nuns.'
The Baroness complained of her reception, but Angelique's
sister-in-law, Mdme. d'Andilly, said :
' Do not be deterred from seeking her, for she is like the
good angels who terrify at first and comfort us afterwards.'
This account was verified, for when Angelique found that the
lady was in earnest, she did all in her power to promote her
spiritual well-being, and was not satisfied with the result of her
efforts until she had made the Baroness a humble disciple of
St. Cyran.
Mdme. de St, Ange was soon promoted from the rank of dis
ciple to that of friend, and St Cyran had such confidence in
her good sense as well as her good intentions, that he used to
say if he had fifty thousand crowns to distribute to the poor,
he should think it impossible to place them in better hands
than hers. During his imprisonment, she and Mdme, le Maitre
were his almoners. It is a female friend who is asked to
bestow a dowry upon a poor maiden, to purchase suitable gar
ments for a lady of rank, and to buy a black coat for a poor
mad prisoner, who could not endure the sight of the grey
clothes he was compeUed to wear ; and the friend was one of

XX,] THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. 257
the two ladies upon whose delicacy he could rely as confidently
as ori their charity. The son of Mdme, de St, Ange was one
of the boys whom he confided to Lancelot's care.
The influence of this lady led to her husband's conversion ;
he died in 165 1, and she then entered Port Royal, and took
the veil in 1654,
The peculiarity of Port Royal is that good and earnest
people cannot escape from it They begin with admiration of
the Abbess and reverence for St. Cyran, and are insensibly
drawn onwards until the world has no charm, and life offers no
brighter prospect than the convent cell, or a lonely hut outside
the Abbey gates. One after the other of the great family of
the Arnaulds renounces the world, not when they are old and
because they are unsuccessful, but in the first flush of youth,
whilst the future is bright with promise.
A second generation follows the first ; d'Andilly's daughters
are nuns in Port Royal, Mdme. le Maitre's sons are the earliest
Recluses. Before lorig cousins, uncles, and friends swell this
band, until their number and importance overshadow the con
vent, and the Port Royal Schools and the Jansenist contrc-
versy cause Angelique, the Reformer, to be overlooked.
Antoine, Angelique's youngest brother, led Port Royal into
the troubled sea of theological controversy, and his advent at
this period changes the course of action which had hitherto
been adopted by our Abbess, and calls out all the combative-
ness lying dormant in the Amauld nature,
Antoine, his father's twentieth child, belongs to the first
family, but the second generation of Arnaulds. Born in 16 12,
he was twenty-four years younger than his brother d'Andilly,
and twenty-one younger than Angelique. His nephew le
Maitre was three years his senior, and de Sericourt and de Saci
respectively a year older and younger than himself. He is Le
Petit Oncle of their boyish da,ys, their companion and school
fellow; so quick, and gifted with such a wonderful memory,
that he never had to study his lessons, but used to say them
last, and knew them quite well from hearing the two elder boys
repeat them before it came to his turn. He chose the law as his
profession, but his mother induced hini to abandon it for the
Church, and after a very distinguished career at the University
he proposed to take holy orders and obtain his doctor's
degree in the Sorbonne. He already held several benefices
S,L, XIII. s

2S8 THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. [chap.
which had been procured for him whilst he was a boy, for
M. Arnauld, as we have seen, did not neglect the temporal
interests of his children. He was wealthy and young, had
attracted considerable attention at court, and Richelieu is said
to have honoured him by an unexpected visit. His youthful
ambition may have led him to contemplate the possibility of
finding such a career open to him as that of the great Cardinal,
but he paused before taking the irrevocable step of becoming
a priest, and began to entertain doubts as to his vocation. His
mother and sisters in Port Royal, his eldest brother and his
three nephews helped to deepen his doubts, and they all spoke
to him of the one man who was alone able to guide him, and
who was now a prisoner for the truth.
To St. Cyran, therefore, Antoine Amauld referred his diffi
culties in a letter written at Christmas 1638, and conveyed to
Vincennes by d'AndiUy. The prisoner, vrith considerable diffi
culty, for he was at that time strictly watched, contrived to
dictate an answer, and ultimately to write a series of letters
Which resulted in leading young Arnauld to throw up his bene
fices, bestow upon Port Royal all that he possessed except a
bare pittance, and prepare for holy orders in a very different
spirit from that which had formerly animated him.
In 1640,' ]a.nssii's Augustinus was pubUshed, and Arnauld's
attention was at once drawn to it. He prepared by careful
study for that defence of the work which St Cyran said he was
well able to undertake, and in which he spent more than fifty
years of his long life. It was not, however, the defence of
Jansen which first called attention to him, but a book written
in 1643 On Frequent Communion, which was caUed forth in
the following manner : —
A Jesuit priest saw some of the instructions written by St.
Cyran for the Princess de Guemene, and said that they were
much too strict. In a letter which he wrote to prove his asser
tions, he stated among other things that the less we have of grace
the more boldly we ought to approach the Table of our Lord,
and that those who are entirely engrossed by love of the
world and love of self, ought to communicate vety frequentiy.
Now, in the Romish Church, Communion must be preceded
by Absolution ; and if this doctrine is accepted, hardened and
impenitent sinners may be absolved and receive the Holy Eu
charist without repentance. It is the old difficulty of attrition

XX.] THE PRISONER OF VINCENNES. 259
and contrition over again, St, Cyran had suffered for his
doctrine. Amauld was prepared to suffer and to fight also.
He wrote an answer to the Jesuit's work, entitled. On Frequent
Communion, in which he urges the necessity of delaying abso
lution until there has been sincere repentance for sin. On the
authority of the Bible, the Fathers, and the Canons, he shows
that this is the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and that
repentance must precede confession ; contrition must go before
absolution ; and communion must be accompanied by penance.
At the time when this book appeared, it was the custom in
France to grant absolution for all sins, great and small, with
extreme facility; and there was an immediate outcry against
the innovator and his novelties. The name Jansenist had not
been introduced, but Arjiauldists 3.T\d Cyranists v/ern declaimed
against from the pulpit A Jesuit attacked the book in a course
of sermons, and forbade any of his listeners to look at it
Their cunosity was excited ; they hastened to procure copies ;
the first edition was sold in a fortnight, and a second was
announced in an advertisement affixed to the doors of the
Jesuit College before the reverend father had finished his
course of sermons.
The Jesuits were undoubtedly alarmed at the number and
importance of St. Cyran's followers, and felt that their supre
macy was threatened, Amauld's novelty soon became an
established custom throughout France, and absolution was
delayed in the case of flagrant sinners. It was not, however,
principle the Jesuits were fighting for, but power ; and this
they were resolved to maintain at any cost.
Marshal de Vitri was present at one of the sermons referred
to, and said afterwards he was quite sure there was more than
appeared on the surface in this matter, for the Reverend
Fathers never showed such extraordinary zeal when there was
nothing at stake but the gloty of God.
The theological literature of this period is not attractive.
Even the great Arnauld finds no readers in the present day ;
and the work which marked a new era when it appeared, and
attained a sudden popularity almost equal to the Introduction
to a Devout Life of St Francis de Sales, already belongs to
a long-forgotten past.

s 2

CHAPTER XXI.

BESIDE THE STILL WATERS.

A FEW days after the arrest of St. Cyran the nuns from the
Holy Eucharist retumed to Port Royal. The smaU house in
a fashionable quarter which the Bishop of Langres had been
at such pains to establish, had been a failure and he had
ceased to take any interest in it. St. Cyran withdrew from it
when he found how much ill-wiU his visits called forth.
Mdlle. de Chamesson had vrith some difficulty been got rid
of, and since that time there had been no incident worthy of
record, save a visit from Mdme. de Chantal, who said that she
could not pass through Paris without going to see the littie
community towards which she felt very warmly for the sake
of her dear friend the Abbess of Port Royal.
The house was small, inconvenient, without a garden, and
overcrowded. Its inmates, for want of air, exercise, and
proper dormitories were never well, and at length their
ecclesiastical superior, the Archbishop of Paris, would not
allow them to remain and die before his eyes. He said they
must do one of two things, either purchase a more com
modious house with a large garden, or go back to Port Royal,
They were strongly inchned to retum to the early home
from which they had never been entirely separated ; for the
Abbess Genevieve referred to'Angeiique in all her difficulties.
Father Singlin was confessor to both convents, and St Cyran
was their spiritual head. Their only fear was lest the unbroken
hamiony of their little community might be impossible in so
large an establishment as Port Royal had become. Father
Singlin reassured them by saying that where there is the Spirit

CHAP. XXL] BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. 261
of God tiiere will always be peace and union, whether a
community is large or small. They could not, however, make
up their minds, and in order to enable them to come to a
decision, the ABbess put a long pin into the New Testament,
and, pricking for a text, fell upon a passage in which St. Paul
advocates prayer, charity, and almsgiving ; the community
saw at once that Port Royal was indicated, and decided
unanimously in favour of a return to their very dear mother
Angelique. They were received with great joy ; Agnes, who was at that
time Abbess, gave them a warm welcome. Angelique was
mistress of the novices, and the new comers entreated permis
sion to resume their noviciate, so that they might be under
her rule. Their request was granted, they entered upon the
duties assigned to them with great zeal, and throughout the
whole monastety there was what Angelique especially liked,
a revival. When the little community left Port Royal, the Bishop of
Langres was at its head. When they returned in 1638 they
scarcely recognized their former home in its new garb of
poverty and silence, and were astonished at the complete
change that had been effected.
One thing, however, marred their joy. They had hoped fo
see St. Cyran, and they found that he was in prison. Like all
his followers thtty assigned his persecutions to the ill-will which
he had incurred for their sakes. Le Maitre thought that his
own conversion had drawn odium upon his master, Lancelot
attributed the Abbot's misfortunes to the anger of the priests
from whose influence he had been withdrawn, and Port Royal
traced them to the jealousy of the Bishop of Langres. All
these may be reckoned among the causes which helped to
make St Cyran obnoxious, although not one is so important
or affords such a complete explanation as the authors of it
imagined. When the Sisters of the Holy Eucharist joined Port Royal
the special design of their institution, namely, perpetual
adoration of the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, was not
abandoned. Angelique, whose tenacity of purpose is one of
the distinguishing features of her character, had returned to
her original idea and desired to add perpetual adoration to
the rules of her own convent

262 -BESIDE TIIE STILL WATERS. [chap.
There were tedious delays in the preliminary arrangements
which we need hot follow, and it was not untU 1645 that the
Pope gave permission for the incorporation of the two
societies, and the transfer to Port Royal of the funds be
queathed to the Holy Eucharist by Mdme. Bardeau.
The chapel attached to Port Royal was small and incon
venient, and as the community had now the funds, they resolved
to build a church. In 1 646 the first stone was consecrated by
the Archbishop and laid by Mdme, de Longueville, afterwards
Duchess de Nemours, and on that day visitors were allowed
to enter the monastery. Many who had listened to unfriendly
reports which were widely circulated were present on that day,
and when they saw Scripture texts painted on the walls of the
refectory they said it was just like a Huguenot church; and
they were surprised that such heretics as these nuns should have
Holy Water and orthodox pictures of the Saints and the Vhgin
in their convent.
In the- following year all preUminary arrangements had been
completed, and the Bishop of Langres' new Order which had
failed to give him the rank he coveted by the side of St
Francis and St, Charles Borromeo was allowed quietiy to
subside. When the two monasteries were incorporated a
question of vestments arose, as it is apt to do in matters that
concern the Church, and this caused Angelique considerable
annoyance. The 'august robes' had been "abandoned for many years,
but instead of the black scapulary hitherto worn at Port Royal,
it was decided that there should be a white one with a scarlet
cross to hang over the breast
Angelique disapproved of the change and would not consent
to it, although her sister, Anne-Eugenie, tried to convince her
that it was a very simple matter and would do no harm.
Whilst the question was still undecided a certain box was
opened 'by chance,' or by some one with a good memoty,
which proved to be full of white scapularies. It had been
brought from the Holy Eucharist eight or nine years pre
viously, put away and forgotten. Anne-Eugenie carried aU
thelittle capes to Angelique and laid them down before her,
saying that God, had now decided this matter by a special
interposition in favour of the scarlet crosses. Angehque
yielded ; she liked to feel her dependence upon God's pro-

XXL] BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. 263
vidence, and this manifestation was so very opportune that
she could not reject it A day was fixed in October 1647
for the distribution of the new vestments, and the Grand
Vicar officiated at the ceremony.
Possibly it was one of the most distasteful at which Ange
lique by her own consent had ever presided, and not the less
so because she was conscious of a little flutter of excitement
in some of the well-regulated breasts on which the red cross
was henceforth to repose.
It is thus at least that we interpret the impatience of our
Abbess and the manner in vvhich she threw on the capes
one after the other so hastily and carelessly that the nuns had
tO- retire and adjust them, before they considered themselves
fit to be seen, Angelique, when she was young, would have
absolutely refused her consent to any ornamental modification
of dress, but at fifty she has begun to see that a cape more or
less is of no great consequence, only let there be no nonsense
about it
As for the Grand Vicar he was as glad to hurry through the
ceremony as the Abbess, for there were more than eighty
nuns to be arrayed, and he was not at all interested in their
change of costume,
Genevieve, the Abbess who had been led astray through
her sweet submissive nature and the guilelessness of her own
heart, and had now resigned her post in order to become a
novice, did not live to witness the completion of all the
arrangements for uniting her little community with the Sisters
of Port Royal.
Shortly after her return she was appointed sacristan. One
day she was kneeling down to sweep under a cupboard in
the sacristy, and as she rose she struck her eye with such
violence against a projecting comer of the cupboard that it
was entirely destroyed, and before long she lost the sight of
the other eye also. Her blindness was accompanied by
incessant pains in the head, and in walking at every step
she felt as if she was falling down a precipice ; so that she
was never able to go about alone, not even in her own room,
but must have some hand to cling to.
It was vety touching to see her waiting at a door or
standing in a passage until some one passed who would lead
her a few steps in the direction she wanted to go.

z64 BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. [chap.
Sanetimes the guide of the former Abbess was an unwilling
chUd, impatient at the delay caused by her companion's timid
steps; sometimes it was a nun, who had formerly knelt to
receive her commands. She was greatiy disfigured by the
accident, so that her companions said, 'there was no form
.nor comeliness ' left, and it was almost impossible to recog
nize the face that had once been beautiful. But her sufferings
taught her such patience, humility, and submission, that they
began to think she belonged more to heaven than earth, and
was only lent to them for a time as a bright example. Her
death took place in the spring of 1646, and Angelique's niece,
who gives an account of it, says :
'I do not know whether I ought to mention one incident
which we noticed when she died. . . . The whole of the com
munity was standing round her bed, and we were chanting the
Subvenite, according to our custom at such a time. A very
extraordinary thing happened, which we all noticed ; it seemed
to us as if other voices mingled with ours and joined with them
in supernatural harmony. Perhaps this may have been merely
our imagination ; but we were all certain that the angels rejoiced
when they received her soul ; and although our senses may
have deceived us, our hearts showed us the truth.' ^
Throughout St. Cyran's imprisonment he was informed of all
that passed at Port Royal, and consulted on every matter of
importance. During the early years of Genevieve's blindness
he Wrote her several consolatory letters, and the community
tumed to him for sympathy and advice in all their difficulties.
After the Commissioner had visited Port Royal des Champs
and expelled the Recluses, it was rumoured that he was coming
to Paris to interrogate Angelique. The nuns expected his
arrival from day to day, and feared that he would take their
beloved Mother from them. But the friendly Archbishop of
Paris averted the threatened danger. He would not hear of
an examination by Laubardemont, and said that he would
inspect Port Royal himself His visit was delaypd on various
excuses, until the excitement caused by St, Cyran's arrest and
the dispersion of the Recluses had died out, and there was no
further need for it. He adopted this course, not because he
sympathised with St Cyran, but because he entertained a high
esteem for Angelique, whom he called a ' holy nun, and a bright
' 'Vies Interessantes, ii. 13,

XXL] BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. 265
example in the Church.' He said she was one of the first who
had set the example of reforming herself and leading a holy
life ; that she was perfect in obedience, and had gained his
affection by her respect for her ecclesiastical Superiors. The
storm which threatened Port Royal passed over for a time, and
the incidents of the years that follow are all connected with the
inner life of the convent, from which the shadow of death is
never absent.
Angehque's mother, an old, feeble woman, kneeling at the
feet of her daughters Agnes and Angehque, standing aside
humbly to give precedence to Anne and Marie-Claire and
little Madelon who are her seniors in religion, with dim eyes
almost blinded by her efforts to learn the chants by heart, and
health that fails visibly from day to day, hears in 1639 that her
son Simon, born in 1603, has been kiUed in battle near Verdun.
It is a terrible blow from which she never raUies, for she had
hoped that some day he would be converted and join the
children and grandchildren who had forsaken the world and
given themselves to God. Two years later, in 1641, death
released her from much suffering, borne without a murmur.
She had at that time six daughters in Port Royal ; for
although Mdme. le Maitre had not then taken the veil, she
had entered upon her noviciate ; and six grandchildren, the
daughters of her eldest son d'Andilly. She refused herself
the gratification of seeing them during her last illness, but
when she was dying they all stood around her. Nature was
stronger than culture, and the Abbess Agnes knelt down by her
side and kissed her, saying, ' My own dear mother, speak to
me, your child, and tell me what God requires of me.'
The dying woman's answer shows even to the last the sub
ordination of the nun to her Superior, though the mother's love
ultimately triumphs.
' Ma Mkre,' she repUed ; ' my Mother ! ' and then : ' you must
take care of your health.'
' I know it,' said Agnes.
' Yes,' replied Mdme. Arnauld ; ' but you do not do it. You
must do it faithfully and literally, souls are so dear to God.'
' But my life is not worth caring for,' continued Agnes. ' Of
what use is it ? '
' That is not for you to decide.'
And so the conversation ended. .'Ml the sixteen years during

266 BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. [chap.
which iMdme. Arnauld had been learning to despise the body
and mortify the flesh had not sufficed to obliterate the tender
solicitude of a mother for her child's health ; and, in spite of
long repression, it asserted itself as soon as the pressure of
sUence and obedience was removed.
Ten of Mdme, Arnauld's children died in infancy; of the
remaining ten, the six daughters were nuns in Port Royal ; her
eldest son, d'Andilly, was still in the world ; but everyone said
that his life there was blameless, and that his only use of it was
to draw souls to God, Her second son, Henri, M, de Trie
as he was called, was a priest. He had been appointed to one
bishopric, that of Toul, during her lifetime ; but had resigned it
on account of a dispute between the Pope and the King of
France as to the right of nomination. He became ultimately
Bishop of Angers, but not untU after his mother's death.
Her third son, Simon, was dead ; kiUed in battle.
The fourth, Antoine, the twentieth and last child, had glad
dened her heart by renouncing the world, throwing up his
benefices, and placing himself under the guidance of St Cyran
in 1639. Father Singlin asked her if she had anything to say
to her youngest son. She answered that, as God had em
ployed him to defend the truth, she exhorted and entreated
him never to relax, but to persevere boldly even though he had
a thousand lives to lose.
Once again before her death she was asked, by his desire, if
she had any last words for him ? ' Tell him,' she replied, ' never
to falter in his defence of truth I '
When she died Antoine Arnauld was not in priest's orders,
and was still living at the Sorbonne ; but he went to Port Royal
and stayed there aU night. The last Sacrament, Extreme
Unction, was administered to her, and he asked Father Singlin
to aUow him to assist, so that he might be with his mother to
the end. But the Father said that de Saci, her grandson, was
vrith him; two assistants were unnecessary and his presence
would be a concession to nature; his request was therefore
refused. The nuns of Port Royal watched by Mdme. Amauld, or Sister
Catherine as she was called, through the night ; and, as it was
thought that she would live till morning, they left her to go to
matins. Agnes, who was at that time Abbess, said that as her
mother's room was immediately over the chapel, she would

XXL] BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. 267
accompany them and the attendants in the sick room could
knock on the floor if there was any change. Soon after the
service began she was summoned, and was present when her
mother breathed her last She returned to the chapel and took
her place with a calm, sweet expression in her face, so that the
nuns thought the sufferer had raUied again; but when they
reached that part of the service where the Abbess says the
Lord's prayer aloud, and she came to the words 'Thy will
be done,' she burst into tears, and they knew her mother
was dead,
Mdme, Amauld was sixty-eight when she died, and had
been twelve years a maiden, thirty-four a wife, six a widow,
and sixteen a nun,
Mdme. de Chantal, friend of St. Francis and founder of the
Order of Visitation, was now an old woman; her activity
was, however, undiminished, and she still went from one city
to another and established fresh offshoots from her society
wherever there was a demand for them.
In 1641 she visited Paris for the fourth time, and spent two
days, before leaving it, with Angelique at Port Royal. It was
their last time of communion upon earth; and 'there was a
special blessing upon their meeting, and they had great joy of
each other,' In November of the same year, a few weeks bC'
fore her death, Mdme. de Chantal wrote a farewell letter to An- .
geiique, sweet and simple, and breathing the frank and cordial
spirit which had been characteristic of their intercourse : —
'My very DEAR and good Mother,
' I cannot help sending this little note to say adieu to
you once more. Adieu my very good and vety dear Mother,
I commit you to God who is unchangeable; we shall meet
again in His presence. I cannot tell you what a consolation
the pious and cordial union of our hearts has been to me,
and I think God in His goodness must have allowed us to
live very close to each other in spirit. I send you. ray books.
Alas ! can I keep anything back from you ? Surely not ; I could
not bear to do it When you die let them be sent back here,
unless you think it better to leave them to our good Sisters
(of Port Royal), It is a great consolation to me to see that
our Superiors and Sister Heifene-AngeUque desire to live on
such cordial terms with you, I salute all our very dear

268 BESIDE IHE STILL WATERS. [chap.
Sisters and that good servant of God (St. Cyran). Pray
for her who is always and altogether yours. Praise the Lord
always,' On the 13th of December, 1641, Mdme. de Chantal died,
and Ange'lique lost in her not only a dear friend but a powerful
ally. No shadow of doubt ever rested upon the orthodoxy of
Mdme, de Chantal during her life and after .death she was
canonized. Opponents were silenced when they heard of her
approval of Angelique's efforts, her pleasure in Angehque's
success, and her protest against the imprisonment of St Cyran,
whom she wrote of as a man ' whose life was quite apostolical,
and who was a martyr to the cause of truth and justice.'
If St. Francis de Sales and Mdme. de Chantal had lived,
Angelique's course during the period which we are now
approaching would probably have been modified. If not she
must have forfeited their esteem, and probably have had to
reckon them amongst, not certainly her enemies, but her
antagonists. Up to this time her course from their point of
view had been blameless. She had been the obedient daughter
of the Church, reforming abuses but never opposing authority.
She had deplored the crimes of the Church privately vrith St
Francis, but she had not exposed them openly. But a sense
of injustice was being roused in her which obedience and
submission could not quell. She had begun to ask herself if
St. Cyran was a martyr in the cause of truth, what vvas the
Church which persecuted him ?
Shortly after his imprisonment the Duchess d'Aiguillon,
Richelieu's niece, caUed to see her, and expressed her
sympathy with the prisoner. Instead of entreating her to
try and induce the Cardinal to set him at liberty, Angelique
was ' carried away by the Spirit of God,' she says, ' and
lifted up her voice and said : " There are some who are
prisoners in this world who will be free and happy through
out eternity ; and there are others who are free and powerful
and prosperous in this world, but they will be prisoners and
wretched slaves throughout eternity." '
The lady was silent, and Angelique said no more. It was
her first outspoken hostile criticism, and it marks the com
mencement of a new" era in her history. Not that there was
any immediate change, but the incidents of this period aU

XXL] BESIDE THE STILL WA TERS. 269
tended to separate her from the past, and leave her free to
take up a new position. She lost dear friends in her mothei
and Mdme. de Chantal, but a still greater loss awaited ber ;
Marie-Claire died in 1642. Little Marie, at seven years old,
had been given to her by their father as pupil, companion,
friend, to console her for the loss of all other friends and
all dearer ties. She is the child who trembled vrith fear and
yet was prepared to drink the poisonous tisane, who liked
nice things but could sacrifice them all if she might live in the
desert with her dear sister. In all save one of Angelique's
trials Marie-Claire had been with her ; she had listened in
terror to their father's anger when he was excluded from Port
Royal, and accompanied the young Abbess to Maubuisson
amongst the insolent ' Ladies ; ' she had formed one of the
little band expelled by the wicked Mdme. d'Estrees, and walked
in that silent procession escorted by soldiers with their gleam
ing swords and flaming torches ; she had shared her 'poverty'
with the thirty-three novices, and welcomed the advent of the
Bishop of Langres, and the increase of ascetic sanctity which
accompanied him. After that Marie- Claire was sent to Tard,
and on her return she was for a short time faithful to the
priest and unfaithful to her sister. Angelique waited patiently
until Marie-Claire was convinced of her error. They were
reunited, dearer to each other than ever, and then three years
afterwards Marie-Claire died.^ ' I thank God,' said Angelique
when she heard that her companions had been desired to
write all that they knew of the incidents of her life, ' I thank
God that after all people will know very little about me,
for that one who knew all my acts and understood me weU
has taken all with her to the grave.' Other sisters were dear,
her brothers and nephews had a large place in her heart, but
Marie had been child and sister and friend, trusted even in
estrangement ; no other could ever fill her place.
Father Singlin said that the countenance of Marie-Claire
after death was ' very noble and beautiful,' and made him
conscious of extraordinary respect for her. Up to that time
one custom introduced from Tard de Dijon had been retained;
the dead had been clothed in fine linen ; choice flowers were
strewn over them, and their bier was surrounded by lighted
tapers. But when the nuns looked at the calm, still face
' P-ige 212.

270 BESIDE THE STILL WA TERS. [chap.
of their Sister, and remembered what her life had been, they
felt sure she would have disapproved of these things, and
resolved that the last rites should henceforward be as simple
as they were in the old times at Port Royal des Champs.
WhUst her funeral was taking place, Agnes, who had been
ill for some time, was belie^'cd to be at the point of death
and received Extreme Unction. There was at that time a nun
in the Infirmary who was very old and infirm. She had been
one of the earliest converts to reform, and had adopted it from
love to the two young sisters who were carrpng it out. A few
days before her death she was told that Agnes was dangerously
ill. She said in that case she must get up at once, foi this
would never do, and she must go and see to it She insisted
on being dressed, made her way to the chapel, and kneehng
before the altar offered her life for the life of her Abbess. She
then went back happUy to bed and died in three days. Agnes,
who had by that time irecovered from a sudden and sharp
attack, was by her side and tended her to the last, and the
dying woman looked at her triumphantiy, as one who belonged
to her and whom she had redeemed from the grave.
Agnes had now been Abbess for six years, and in 1642,
when there was a fresh triennial election, Angehque was
chosen. It cost her a great effort to resume the office of
Abbess which she hoped she had laid aside for ever, but
StiU the change was more nominal than real, as she was and
always had. been the head of the community. She was glad
dened by learning that St. Cyran's imprisonment was less strict
than it had been ; his books' and papers were restored, and
his friends were allowed to visit him. Richelieu, occupied by
other matters and absent from Paris, had apparently forgotten
him. On the 4th of December, when the death of the great
Cardinal vvas announced, St. Cyran's friends hastened to in
form him of it, and to congratulate him on the prospect of
speedy release. Lancelot lost no time in getting to Vincennes,
but he found Antoine Arnauld already there, and instead
of being engrossed by the news they had just heard, he and
St. Cyran were discussing the errors in a book which was
intended to refute Jansen's Augustinus. Two months later
the prisoner was set free, and was aUowed to leave Vincennes
without any disavowal of the heresy which his enemies
had imputed to him. His ami par excellence, as he caUed

XXL] Beside the still waters. 271
d'Andilly, fetched , him in his carriage, and Vincennes was
strangely moved at his departure. The prisoners shed tears
of joy for him and sorrow for themselves, the soldiers of the
garrison and jailors formed a long line on either side of the
road by which he left, fifes were played, drams beaten, and
muskets fired off to show their joy. But St Cyran passed
through them all a dying man, aged and broken down by the
five years he had spent in that gloomy prison.
The room in which he had been so long confined was looked
upon as a sacred spot In after years his faithful Lancelot
used to visit it, and when he found it closed would kneel
down and pray outside the door and kiss the locks and bolts.
D'AndUly took St Cyran into Paris to thank the two friends
who had procured his release. They next drove to Port Royal,
where information of the prisoner's reprieve had preceded
them. Agnes heard it at the time when the Sisters had
assembled for the silent meeting which had replaced the gossip
of recreation time. She went at once to tell them the good
news, and entered vrith a radiant face, which fixed immediate
attention upon her. She spoke no word, but snatched off the
girdle which bound her robe and held it forth. Not a sound
was uttered; but evety heart beat fast, for the Sisters knew
that the bonds were broken and the prisoner was free.
It was five o'clock in the evening of a day in February
1643 when St. Cyran and d'Andilly arrived at Port Royal
where St Cyran's nephew awaited them. Father Rebours was
also there, a man of whom Father Singlin had formed so high
an opinion that he had induced him to enter the Church, and
take priest's orders in 1641, at the same time as Antoine
Amauld. They went to the convent chapel to return thanks, and St
Cyran knelt before the altar whilst the nuns, hastily summoned,
chanted the Te Deum. Once more he listened to the sweet
voices* which had been trained to honour as well , as praise
God in their singing ; and the triumphant sounds vvhich called
forth his emotion kindled in- the nuns an unwonted gladness
that somewhat interfered vrith their usual self-restraint
The service ended, St Cjrran adjourned to the parlour, and
the community was summoned to receive his greeting. And
now an unfortunate incident occurred. Father Rebours was an
old man, and his sight was failing. In the dim light he could

272 BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. [chap.
not distinguish the faces of the Sisters so he put on his
spectacles, at that time a novelty, and began to peer about
him. Some of the younger nuns could not preserve theii
gravity when they witnessed this extraordinary proceeding.
They laughed, laughter is contagious when the heart is very
joyful, and it spread on all sides. St Cyran, much sur
prised, asked the meaning of this mirth. It jarred painfully
upon him ; and he gravely said : ' Traly I had something to
say to you ; but this is not a fitting preparation for it, and I
will wait for some other time.'
The punishment was severe for so slight a fault ; but his
shattered nerves and suffering condition made him less incUned
than ever to tolerate anything that seemed like an approach
to levity.
A week later there was a solemn thanksgiving service in
the chapel, conducted by Father Singlin, who was assisted by
Antoine Arnauld, Father Rebours — without his glasses let us
hope — de Saci, and Lancelot St. Cyran was too ill to take
any part in it, though he was present. When the service was
ended, he sent to ask Father Singlin if he would select a psalm
which he might use every Friday for the rest of his life, in
memory of that eventful day.
The confessor and his assistants knelt together in prayer,
and asked God to direct their choice ; and then the great
Arnauld held the psalter, whilst Father Singlin put in a long
pin which pricked the thirty-fourth Psalm : —
' / will bless the Lord at all times : His praise shall icoti-
tinually be in my mouth. . . . I sought the Lord, and He
heaj'd me, and delivered me from all my fears. . . . This poor
7nan cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his
troubles. The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them
that fear Him, and deliver eth them. . . . The Lord redeemeth
the soul of His servants : and none of them that trust in Him
shall be desolate.'
They all felt that this psalm of thanksgiving was peculiarly
appropriate, and believed that the method of ascertaining the
will of God to which priests and learned men resorted as
readily as an abbess and her nuns, had resulted in a divine
manifestation in favour of their revered master,
St, Cyran was quite overcome; and begged everyone to
leave the chapel, so that he might be free to open his heart

XXI.] BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. 273
to God, Singhn and Lancelot, however, concealed themselves
and watched him ; he stood up and intoned the psalm with
tears streaming from his eyes; at length, overpowered by
emotion, he threw himself upon his face before the altar, and
no sound reached them but his sobs.
Although St Cyran had been set at liberty, he was stUl
suspected and watched. An attempt was made to suppress
and censure a Catechism which he had written ; and when
this failed, the Jesuits endeavoured to have him summoned
before the Archbishop of Paris on a charge of heresy, so that
even if they could prove nothing, they might be able to say he
had been accused.
Some of his friends wished him to go to the Archbishop
and vindicate himself, by explaining his views ; but he refused.
Angehque urged him to adopt this course, saying that ' humUity
is always a virtue ; and, therefore, when we humiliate ourselves
we must be doing right' St Cyran answered :
' It would be right for you because you think so, and you
would not by your huniiUation compromise trath and honour ;
but, as for me, I should despise myself before God if I were to
dO' as you say.' And then he added, cheerfully; 'Don't be
afraid. By God's grace I withstood the great Cardinal, and
I certainly need not be afraid of the Archbishop.'
Nevertheless the storm seemed as if it would not blow
over. Amauld's book On Frequent Communion had excited
extraordinaty interest in its author and the school to which
he belonged. It was all very well for nuns to say that religion
and morality, which had been so long divorced, must be united
again ; but when a learned man, and a priest, asserted such a
dangerous doctrine the Church rose in arms against him. It
was rumoured that St Cyran was to be sent back to Vincennes ;
that Amauld would be shut up in the Bastille, and that he and
his 'accomplices' would perish on the scaffold. Port Royal
was implicated ; the nuns were to be interrogated as to the
doctrine they had been taught, and the monastery searched
for St Cyran's papers.
Angelique wrote to her Director, in great anxiety, to ask what
she was to do ; she had heard that the community was to b©
dispersed, her nuns placed in other convents, and confessors
appointed who would not tolerate innovations. She was still
a trae daughter of the Church, and thought her duty lay in
S.L. XIII. T

274 BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. [chap.
obedience and submission ; she was prepared to yield on all
points, but referred to St Cyran her guardian.
He answered somewhat coldly, that she must do what she
thought right ; showed clearly that, so far as he was concemed,
he did not intend to submit on any point ; and added, rather
ominously, that, for his own part, he was more afraid of weak
people than of vricked ones.
As soon as he could leave Paris, St Cyran paid a short vdsit
to his faithful disciples, the Recluses at Port Royal des Champs.
He afterwards frequently expressed his regret that Angehque
had left so beautiful a spot, saying that if he had known her at
that time he certainly would not have given his consent to the
change. ' But, ray Father,' she urged one day, ' we were often ill, and
sometimes there were not enough of the healthy to wait on the
sick, or even to perform the choral services.'
'So much the better,' answered, St Cyran. 'It is quite as
good a thing to praise God in an infirmary, if that is His wUl,
as in a church. There are no better prayers than those which
we offer from a bed of suffering.'
These words made a great impression on Angehque. She
began to look back to the early times, and to ask herself if she
had done wisely in leaving her peaceful home for the great city
where they had not escaped sickness and death, and had been
exposed to far greater dangers than any that had previously
assailed them. Doubtless she often discussed the question,
and it raay have been in some of her arguments with him on
this subject that he was abrupt, almost jude, to her, so that
she said :
' My Father, it seems to me that you are only gentie towards
those who abuse your confidence and deceive j'ou.'
The reproach was not well merited ; but St C3rran received
it well, and was afterwards careful not to hurt her feelings.
D'Andilly's noble converts paid frequent visits to Port Royal,
and occasionally spent a week there 'in retreat;' but St.
Cyran was not deceived as to the transient nature of their
repentance. ' Do you think,' he said one day, to the ladies assembled in
the parlour, ' it is an easy thing to turn to God .after you have
been led astray by the world, and have fallen a victim to its
^nares ? I tell you nay ; it is more difficult than you think, and

XXL] BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. 275
more rare. I scarcely know anyone, except M. le Maitre, to
whom God in our time has granted the grace of a true con
version.' So far from thinking that Angelique was doing well in offer
ing an asylum to great ladies who were tired of the world and
disappointed with life, he believed it was a doubtful benefit to
them, and a step fraught with peril to herself.
It was the theoty of St. Cyran, as of other pious Roman
Catholics, that the body is an enemy to be tortured and kept
in subjection — a snare which the devil has wound about our
soul ; but we find traces of a recognition of the opposite belief,
that the body is the gift of God, to be used in His service. Mo
nasticism and the celibacy of the priesthood would cease if the
forraer theory were abandoned ; and yet at all times priests and
nuns have hesitated to accept and act upon it ; and their treat
ment of the human body may be described as cruelty tempered
by indulgence. They think it a duty to suffer pain, not only
without complaining, but often without seeking any alleviation
of their sufferings, and at the same time they fall readily into
greater sloth and self-indulgence than any other members of
the community, Angelique and her nuns found it difficult
to reconcUe the doctor's visits with their sense of the duty
of submission to the vrill of God. St. Cyran would not allow
the Abbess Genevieve to have an abscess opened ; he con
sidered that if such a violent measure was necessary for her
relief, it was an indication that God intended her to endure her
malady. He could not escape from the fear that the physician
to some extent supersedes the decrees of Providence, for when
God vriUs that a man shall suffer, the doctor steps in and says
he shall not. In his last illness, the fact that he was attended
by an unskilful surgeon was almost a gratification to him. He
was urged to call in another, but refused for three reasons. In
the first place, his life was in the hands of God and not of
man ; therefore it was of no consequence whether the surgeon
was skUful or unskUful. In the second place, the poor man
was doing his best, and it would be unjust to punish him for
what was not his own fault; whilst thirdly, the raedical col
league suggested was one of his own personal friends, whom it-
would be a great pleasure to see, and he was glad to deny him
self this gratification. He was hard to himself, the Recluses,
and the nuns, and yet was not only capable of tenderness, but
T 2

276 BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. [chap.
the tenderness lay deeper than the austerity, and was the true
source of his power.
St. Cyran lived in an age when false miracles abounded ; his
trathful nature revolted against them ; he distrusted visions, and
would not listen to marvellous stories. He was told one day
of a woman who was surrounded by supernatural light, held
communion vrith spirits, and had received on her own body the
stigmata^^o%& mysterious marks which represent the wounds
of Christ on the Cross. He interrapted the speaker vrith : ' Ah,
yes ; a very extraordinary story — very extraordinary indeed I '
and so put an end to the relation. We find the same dis-
trast of visions and miracles in all his followers, Angelique
had it all her life, and yet it did not preserve any of them
from occasional lapses into gross superstition.
When de Sericourt joined the Recluses he asked St, CjTari
to teach him to pray, saying that as he was a soldier he was
greatly in need of instraction on this point. St Cyran put his
hands together, bowed his head, and lifted his eyes towards
heaven. ' This, sir, is all we have to do,' he repUed ; ' we have
only to appear humbly before God, and remember that He is
looking down upon us.' De Sericourt says that his master's
devout look, and these simple words, affected him more deeply
and gave him a traer insight into the nature of prayer than all
the books of devotion in the world.
St Cyran advocated mental prayer ; he said that it consisted
rather in listening to God than speaking to Him, and in that
attitude which prepares us to receive spiritual gifts rather than
to ask for them.
He urged his converts not to delay their progress by too
much looking back upon their faults; and St. Francis might
have written the pretty fable, that ' To spend time in countmg
and lamenting little faults, is like a child who has fallen down
whilst it is ranning, and who, instead of getting up and ranning
on again, stops to cry and look at its dirty hands, which delays
it far more than the fall has done.' But St. Francis could not
have written such a solemn passage illuminated by so virid a
flash of insight as the foUovring : ' The smallest cloud which is
in our heart wUl spread over our pages like an evil breath that
tarnishes a mirror, and the slightest impurity is like a worm
vvhich will pass into our book and gnaw the hearts of those who
read it to the end of the world!

XXL] BESIDE THE STILL WAIERS. 277
St Cyran advocated the study of the Scriptures at a time
when it was so much neglected, that Lantelot, who had been
ten years in the community of St. Nicholas, had never read a
word of the New Testament ; and there were Cardinals and
Prelates, grey-headed men and bent with age, who had not read
one syllable of the Bible except what was contained in their
breviaries. When St. Cyran heard that a bull, issued by Urban VIIL,
was directed against ^¦i.-as.e.r^?, Augustinus,\A said: 'They are
going too far. We must show them their duty.' And he warmly
approved of Amauld's proposal to attack the Pope's decree,
and take up the defence of Augustinus, saying : ' You are
right; and if you were silent the vety stones would speak.'
He justified his opposition by saying that it was directed
against the Court of Rome and not the Church. He was an
obedient son of the Church, but refused to submit to the
Court ; and taught his followers to separate the one from the
other, and to be prepared'to defend the truth and oppose the
Pope, although they acquiesced in all the decrees and accepted
all the doctrines bequeathed to them by earlier ages. It is
impossible not to acknowledge that the emancipation 'which he
advocated was partial and incomplete, and to suspect that if
he had lived longer he would have become the heresiarch which
his enemies called him.
The physician who attended him in his last illness belppged
to the Jesuit CoUege; one day St Cyran said to him: 'TeU
your Fathers that they have nothing to hope for from my death ;
they will gain nothing by it; for I shall, in aU probability,
bequeath them a dozen followers who will give them more
trouble than I have done.'
Six months after he left Vincennes he died. The Jesuits
spread the report that he had not received the last Sacraments ;
but his friends were able to prove that this was false. He died
as he had lived, a good Catholic ; and experienced after death
the fate that befalls many good Catholics — he was converted
into relics.
He had bequeathed his heart to d'Andilly, on condition that
he quitted the world; and Lancelot, who superintended the
acquisition of this legacy, speaks in a sickening manner of ' the
Uttle treasures' he 'contrived to scrape together;' namely,
numerous handkerchiefs dipped in blood, and likewise the

278 BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. [chap, xxL
stomach and entraUs of the deceased. When at length the
poor mutilated corpse had been placed in a coffin, le Maitre
arrived from Port Royal des Champs and begged for the hands :
' Those pure and holy hands which had been so often raised in
prayer to God; which had written so many great truths, and
were still fighting for the Church when God called him,' His
request was at once acceded to, A parish priest, who was
deemed unworthy to vrituess their devotion, was watching by
the coffin. He was dismissed on some pretext, and then
Lancelot and another ' cut the hands off neatly at the wrist'
They were taken with the other 'relics' to Angelique, who
received them reverently, and kept them with similar treasures
which she had been taught to consider sacred.
It is one of those extraordinary contradictions in which this
history abounds, and another example of the manner in which,
a pure and spiritual religion, as Angehque's undoubtedly was,
tnay be degraded by the superstitions of a corrupt Church.
When the Abbess heard of St Cyran's death, she went about
her usual work quite calmly. The Sisters knew that the greatest
grief of her whole life had fallen upon their very dear Mother,
and watched her anxiously as in silence, with a calm face and
tearless eyes, she passed from room to room. Not, however, in
absolute silence, for from time to time they heard her ejaculate,
'Dominus in ccelo ! Dominus in coelo!' ' The Lord God is in
heaven I ' She had no other words with which to express her
own loneliness ; and at the same time her profound faith in
God, and her certainty that He orders all things both in heaven
and on earth.

CHAPTER XXII.

THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR,

St, Cyran's death is a landmark in the history of Port Royal.
Angelique had been for some time previously more or less
undecided as to the attitude she ought to assume. She now
sees that it must be one of resistance. No power on earth
can make her unfaithful to the dead. She identifies the cause
of St, Cyran with that of trath, and is prepared to die for it.
Through the remaining years of her life we see her gradually
falling away from her early endeavours. Reform is no longer
the great work of her life ; it is not less needed than it had
been thirty years previously at Maubuisson ; her influence had
extended far and vride ; monks as well as nuns had been
affected by it, and much remained to be done for which she
was better qualified than anyone else at that time. Age had
given her increased authority ; she possessed large and valu
able experience, and had acquired corisideTahle prestige, so that
the name of Mdme, de Port Royal was known throughout
France, Practically there were no limits to her sphere of
usefulness, and yet by degrees she abandons her early labour ;
Port Royal ceases to be identified with practical work, and
becomes the nucleus of a band of men and women, devoted
to trath, enduring persecution, affliction, death, winning our
admiration by their courage and their fidelity, but occupying
the anomalous position of rebelling against a Church every
decree of which they assumed to be Divine, and dying in
defence of a book which the greater number of them professed
to be unable to read.
Doubtless passionate devotion to the memory of St. Cyran

28o THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. [chap.
influenced Angehque and her nuns more strongly than any
convictions they had imbibed from him, or any doctrine she had
inculcated. We see his influence reflected in the character of
the women and the intellect of the men who were his disciples ;
and although we may regret the deflection of Angelique from
her original course, it is difficult to see how she could have
armed herself against a man so good, so holy, so vrise as St
Cyran, or how she could have resisted personal influence to
which men and women, young and old, alike succumbed. No
one was better able than she to appreciate the peculiar excel
lence of her Director, which consisted in the even balance and
symrnetry of all his faculties, InteUect and heart were alike
great ; his moral qualities were as remarkable as his mental
powers ; he was truthful in word and deed ; just to friends
and enemies ; generous in thought as well as action ; he pos
sessed that supreme charm, a grateful nature, and could not
receive the slightest testimony of goodwiU from another
without desiring to requite it double; he endured his own
sufferings like a Stoic, but was all tenderness and moderation
to his friends. Angelique's affection and respect for him were
absolute and unbounded, and she could not have acknow
ledged him to be an unfaithful son of the Church or have
joined in the condemnation of his doctrines without becoming
an apostate, false alike to the noblest nature and the highest
truth revealed to her upon earth.
Almost imraediately after the death of St. Cyran, the long-
threatened storm broke over Port Royal, and the Grand Vicar
and Grand Penitencier paid a formal visit of inspection to the
Abbey ; the nuns were, interrogated one by one, and the rules
drawn up for their guidance by St. Cyran closely examined.
The inspectors were not among the friends of the deceased
Abbot, but they were compeUed to acknowledge that the
reports which had reached them were untrue ; that his conduct
at Port Royal had been that of a good Catholic and a good
Christian, and the convent was the abode of religion and
virtue, nay even of sanctity. The Archbishop sent to con
gratulate Angehque on this result, and assured her that he had
not authorized the inspection to satisfy his own doubts, for he
had always recognized that God's special blessing rested upon
her work, but in order to put an end to the false reports which
had been circulated for so many years.

XXII.] THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. 281
Upon this Agnes wrote 'to her brother, the great Arnauld,
who was at the time in concealment : ' We are such good
women, if we will only believe it ; but there is another judge
who will accuse us before God unless we follow that which we
have been taught'
The result of the Inspection was, however, what the enemies
of Port Royal had desired. The public looked suspiciously at the
Abbey and considered that they had good reason for so doing
since the Archbishop had thought it necessary to institute an
inquiry into the conduct of the nuns ; and the Jesuits made
every effort to prevent novices from joining them. Portionless
girls who were about to enter the convent were told that they
ought not to risk the loss of their souls in order to provide
for the body ; and noble ladies were informed that they
might as well go to a Huguenot chapel as to the church of
Port Royal,
Angelique had no reason to fear the hostility which had been
aroused, for if Port Royal had influential enemies it had also
very powerful friends. But the friends themselves were be
coming a source of disquietude. One noble penitent brought
another in her train, and not only the Princess de Guemene,
but also the Marquise de Sabie and Marie de Gonzague de
Cloves, Princess of Mantua, paid frequent visits to the convent.
The Princess Marie came for the first time a few days before
St Cyran's death. She had intended to place herself under
his guidance, but was too late and could only be present, an
uninvited guest, at his funeral. A few months previously she
had been affianced to Cinq-Mars, whose conspiracy against
Richelieu had cost him his life. The untimely death of
her lover, and the attention directed to her on account of
the relation in which she stood to him, were among the
causes which prompted her retreat to Port Royal. She was
romantic, superstitious, easily affected by the externals of
religion, and of a gentle, sensitive nature. Angehque hoped
that she might derive permanent benefit from her residence
amongst them, and when that hope was destroyed she stUl
maintained a warm affection for her. One day Angehque
told her that worldly people treat their conscience as they do
their dirty linen, vvhich is washed when it is soiled, and soiled
again as soon as it is washed. The Princess answered that
this was true and yet there was a difference, for the dirty

282 THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. [chap.
linen could be made quite pure and clean, but she could not
believe that confession and absolution made a soul pure
in the sight of God if the heart and its evil courses were
unchanged. Angelique thought that this answer was a sign
of the grace of God, and it encouraged her to persevere with
the noble penitent A room was assigned to the Princess,
which for two years she frequently occupied, coming to it
usually every Thursday, and staying some days. She was often
joined there by Mdme. de Guemene, and Mdme. de Sabie,
who were not so much seeking their own salvation as seeking
the desire to undertake the search, Angelique exercised a
certain authority over them which gained their respect. More
over, they saw that she was in earnest about their con
version, whatever they might be. She made rales for the
employment of their time when they were in the convent,
fixed the hours for their devotion, and named the persons
to whom they were allowed to speak. The last was a pre
cautionary measure, as she would not allow the rale of sUence
to be broken by the Sisters, She did not permit the ladies
to spend much time together, saying that they could not help
discussing worldly matters and as they had come to Port
Royal to leam a new language, it, was essential that they
should not make use of the old. One day she was told that
they had been talking together for a long time after dinner,
and exclaimed, ' I must go and separate our ladies, for they
do harm to one another. No sooner do they begin to talk
than a head-'dress, a new fashion, a collar is sure to find its
way into the conversation. I must try to put a stop to aU
these diableries, which cannot be tolerated in Cliristian con
versation.' But her efforts were unavaUing. The visits of the Princess
de Guemene to Port Royal were, as De Retz says, not so much
retreats as escapades. St. Cyran was right ; the ' spark on the
icy pavement ' was never kindled into flame,
Mdme, de Sabie went to Port Royal in the hope and with
the desire of becoming religious. She failed in that respect
but she became a Jansenist ; not however from conviction, but
from that pride of nature which makes tyranny odious, and
the side of the oppressed the only possible side to choose.
She and the Princess de Guemene were faithful friends of Port
Royal in all its persecutions. The Princess offered a home to

XXII.] THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. 283
the whole sisterhood when they were threatened with disper
sion, and concealed in her own house St. Cyran's nephew and
the great Arnauld, when they were summoned to Rome ; whilst
for five years Arnauld and his companion Nicole were hidden
from their enemies by Mdme, de Sabie.
Two years after the Princess Marie paid her first visit to
Port Royal she was demanded in marriage by the King of
Poland, whom she accepted vrithout a moment's hesitation.
She was asked if she would not like to see his portrait, and
replied no it was not necessary, for she was marrying his crown.
Her ambition was fully gratified by the wedding ceremony in
the chapel of the Palais-Royal, where she took precedence of
her former lover the Duke of Orleans, and even of the Queen
of France. When she reached Poland she carried on an active
correspondence with Angelique, and the replies of the Reverend
Mother — copied without her knowledge before they were de
spatched from Port Royal — bear witness to the mutual respect
and affection of the Abbess and the Queen, and afford a valuable'
insight into the affairs of the convent
Ladislaus Sigismund, King of Poland, died in 1648, two
years after his marriage. He was succeeded by his half-brother,
John Casimir, who laid aside his Cardinal's hat in order to
ascend the throne, and married the Queen, his brother's vridow.
The second marriage was a very unhappy one ; the Queen saw
all her children die in early infancy ; her adopted country was
never at peace, and never free from civil discord. Angelique in
her letters does not attempt to give advice on matters concern
ing which she was imperfectly informed, if informed at all ; but
she wrote as frankly and freely as she would have done to one
of the Sisters, urging upon the Queen attention to the duties of
her position, and above all the necessity of bestowing large
alms upon her distressed subjects. The Queen was not loth to
follow the advice which harmonized with her own generous
impulses ; and before long her advisers suggested that she had
better moderate her almsgiving and lay by for herself. She
replied : ' No, I vrill not save ; for if I am a widow it does not
matter how poor I am ; I shall have enough to go to la Mkre
Angelique at Port Royal, and she will take me in.
M. le Maitre repeated this answer to his Aunt Angelique vrith
¦some pride ; but she said : ' I do not know if we ought to wish
for her at Port Royal ; unless a Queen is a woman of excep-

284 THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. [chap.
tional piety, it is almost impossible that she should not be the
means of relaxing the discipline of a convent. These great
ladies are so fastidious that it almost exceeds belief; and I see
no reason for expecting that there will be a miracle in her case.
Moreover ' — ;and in these words that follow there is a sternness
unusual to Angelique, and a bitterness which tells of disap
pointed hope — ' moreover, kings and queens are as nothing in
the sight of God, and their pomp and ostentation call forth His
aversion rather than His love. They are bom doubly children
of His wrath, and there is scarcely any princess in whom the
spirit and grace of God are to be found.'
Angehque soon discovered that her noble ladies raade a
pastime of their religion. In Paris she neither sought them nor
avoided them ; but she turned with longing towards Port Ro)'al
des Champs, which would not be so attractive as a retreat
for penitents who wished to spend a few days or weeks in
seclusion. D'Andilly had now renounced the world and joined his
nephews, the Recluses. He had been preceded by his second
son Charles Henry Arnauld, known as M. de Luzanci who had
been converted by St Cyran. De Luzanci began life as a page
in Richelieu's service, and speedily obtained the Cardinal's
favour and a commission in the army ; but at twenty he left
the world and joined his cousins at Port Royal, where also
his young brother Jules was at school.
Many years before this time, Angehque, in a dream, saw her
sister Mdme. le Maitre and her brother d'AndUly coming to
her at Port Royal des Champs; d'Andilly was on horseback and
his sister was riding behind him, and they were both very sad
and grave. Her dream was now fulfiUed; Mdme. le Maitre
was a nun and d'Andilly a Recluse. But he was not sad ; it
would have been impossible to subdue his indomitable gaiety,
or to have made him any other than the d'AndiUy, whose eager,
happy, hopeftU nature had for more than forty years surrounded
him with friends and converts. ' We used to teaze him,' says
Mdme. de Sevigne, ' and tell him that he liked best to save the
souls that were in beautiful bodies.' But no one ever doubted
that it was the souls he loved ; and no shadow of impurity ever
rested upon him even in those corrupt times. He was warmly
attached to his wife, his chUdren, his sisters, his friends. His
wife was dead, and sons and daughters, nephews and nieces,

XXII.] THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. 285
all were congregated at Port Royal; when he joined them he
may be considered to have retired into the bosom of his family
rather than to have renounced the world.
He took leave of the Queen-Mother, and, alluding to the
report that the Recluses occupied their time in making wooden
shoes, entreated her Majesty not to believe it if she was told
that he was making shoes ; but he said that if she heard he was
cultivating wall-fruit that would be quite true, and he hoped
to send her Majesty some of the produce of his garden. He
did so every year, and Mazarin used to laugh and say that the
baskets were full of consecrated fruit
Fontaine, who joined the Recluses in 1644, when he was
twenty years old, gives a charming picture of d'Andilly. Fon
taine did not write his Memoirs until he was himself an old
man, and he makes the mistake of saying that d'Andilly was
eighty when he first saw him. He was in reality fifty-seven, for
he was born in 1588, and left Paris for Port Royal in 1645 or
1646. The impression which he produced on the mind of the
young man is admirably given : ' I confess,' says Fontaine,
' that I am even now carried away by my feelings when I think
of the intense vitality of that holy Recluse. Age, which impairs
evetything, seemed only to have renewed his vigour. I seem
to see and hear him now, as he speaks to me with that eager
look, those animated words and gestures. His whole appear
ance gave the lie, as one may say, to his great age ; and at
eighty years old he had the activity of a youth of fifteen. His
bright eyes ; his quick, firm step ; his voice of thunder ; his
erect carriage, and healthy, vigorous frame; his white hair
which formed such a striking contrast to the bright colour of
his face ; his grace in mounting a horse and riding it ; his mar
vellous 'memory ; his ready vrit ; his manual dexterity which
was shown as much in his manner of holding a pen as in the
way he pruned his fruit-trees — all these were a kind of immor
tality; they were, as St. jerome says, a foreshadowing of the
future resurrection of the body, and, if one may presume to say
it, they were the reward of admirable virtue. 'Throughout his
whole life he combined the most opposite, almost antagonistic
quaUties ; the courtesy acquired in good society, together with
great simplicity of manner ; a keen penetrating inteUect with
almost incredible guUelessness; and heroic generosity with
profound humUity.'

286 THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. [chap.
D'Andilly's time was not engrossed by his garden. He
caused the marsh, which was the fruitful source of fever and
ague at Port Royal, to be drained; made a conduit for the
water, and laid out terraces and garden walks. A large un
wholesome pond was allowed to remain; but still the place was
so much improved that the Recluses thought their ardent vrish
might now be granted. Angelique and her nuns could retum
to Port Royal, and they would present to the world such a
spectacle as it had not seen for many ages and yet one that was
in conformity with the rules of their order ; namely, a community
of devout men and women, some bound by irrevocable vows
and others only seeking a temporary retreat ; aU united by the
bonds of common faith and common worship, and all endea
vouring to realize the ideal of spiritual communion. They were
to be to each other nothing more than a voice, heard at rare
intervals through the grated vrindow of a convent parlour.
In 1646 Angelique revisited her former home for the first
time since she had left it twenty years previously. She was
accompanied by Mdme. d'Aumont, the widow of Field-Marshal
d'Aumont, a lady who lived at Port Royal from this time untU
her death in 1658, and who earned and well deserved the esteem
and respect of the whole sisterhood. She was a compensation
to them for Mdme. de Pontcarre ; her piety and charity were
accompanied by genuine humUity, and she was an almost
solitary example of a great lady, not bound by any vows, liring
contentedly in a convent. She identified herself with the
interests of Port Royal, and part of her large fortune was
devoted to paying some of the debts which weighed so hearily
on Angelique's conscience.
Mdme. le Mattre, or Sister Catherine de St Jean, also
accompanied AngeUque, and so did their younger brother
Arnauld — the 'little, dark, ugly man,' who must have formed' a
striking contrast to the florid, handsome d'AndUly, Father
Singlin completed the party.
There was no accommodation for the Abbess and her suite
in the deserted convent ; and, therefore, M, Pallu, a Recluse
who-had formerly been a doctor of medicine, gave up his house
to them, Angehque stayed three days, and visited every part
of her old domain. D'Andilly accompanied her everywhere,
pointed out aU his improvements, inspected the outlying farms'
and made plans for the erection of twelve hermitages to be

XXII.] THROUGH TROUBLE A'ND WAR. 2S7
occupied by as many recluses. He showed that it would be
quite easy to secure ample accommodation for them all and
also for the schools and tutors to be grouped around the sacred
centre, the great heart of their devotion — their very dear and
very Reverend Mother Angelique.
"The Abbess was convinced that St. Cyran would have
approved of her retum and had foreseen it when he urged her
not to sell the woodwork of the dormitory, still she would
not decide on undertaking it at that time without much prayer
and the advice of competent persons. On her return to Paris,
everything seemed favourable to the enterprise. The Arch
bishop and the Queen-Regent, who had refused all previous
applications, now gave their consent Anne of Austria vvas
guided in this matter by her Jesuit advisers, who thought that
the return of the nuns must, of necessity, scatter the detested
band of Recluses. ' There are forty students there,' they said
of Port Royal ; ' and forty writers, whose pens are all guided
by one and the same hand,'
When AngeUque received the Archbishop's permission to
return, she summoned the Sisters to the chapter-house and
informed them of it At first they were overwhelmed with
sorrow, for they thought she intended to leave them in Paris,
and reside in the country with a few companions ; they threw
themselves weeping at her feet, and implored her to take them
all vrith her. She replied that she should divide her time
between the two moriasteries, and take them with her in turns,
and added that her conscience had always reproached her for
leaving the country convent, and they must rejoice with her at
the relief she now experienced.
She raade two journeys to Port Royal des Champs in 1647,
in order to inspect the repairs, and after one of these visits
wrote to the Queen of Poland : ' God is served much more
faithfully there than He can ever be in Paris. It is marvellous
to see the silence, the decorous behaviour and piety of the
very workmen ; they are preparing for us with as much reve
rence as if we were angels.'
On the 13th of May, 1648, all was prepared; the Recluses
had made ready for the accommodation of a small number,
and Angelique, accompanied by two lay-sisters and seven nuns,
two of whom were d'Andilly's daughters, said fareweU to the
Paris community. The nuns who were left behind followed her

288 THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. [chap.

weeping to the convent door, and the nuns who went with her
wept also. The first were parting with Angehque, and the last
were leaving Agnes and Anne, who remained with the Paris
sisterhood. About two in the aftemoon they arrived at Port
Royal, and as soon as they reached their own domain, the
church bells were rung and they saw a crowd of people at the
convent gates. These were the poor who had come to welcome.
them home. Many women had known AngdUque twenty-
eight years before, when she was the Good Mdme. de Port
Royal, the young Abbess who fed and clothed the poor, cared
for their souls and bodies also. Now they threw themselves at
the feet of the worn and aged woman, clasped her round the
neck and pressed her in their arms, as if she belonged to them,
and they had got their own again. Her joy was as great as
theirs ; she returned their embraces, although ' many of the
women were very dirty, and if one could judge by appearances
there must have been plenty of vermin about them.' This
was not, however, a point which would have attracted Ange
lique's attention at any time, for she was in the habit of ignoring
what she considered matters of detail. She saw the poor and
the aged whom she had cherished in bygone years, and her
heart yearned towards them. Behind them stood another band
waiting silently at the church-door, a priest in front of them
holding a cross. They were the Recluses, Angelique's kinsmen
and their companions, who stood waiting to greet her. The
Abbess and her companions entered the church, and the Re
cluses, who were admitted by a different door and occupied the
chancel, followed them ; the church-bells were still peahng as
they all chanted together a joyful Te Deum. This was their
first and only meeting. Some of the Recluses went to Les
Granges, a farmhouse on the hill side, and others to private
dwellings, which they had erected. The gates of the monastery
were closed on the nuns, and the only communication they
had from that time forth with the Recluses was in the Uttle
convent parlour.
AngeUque was very happy. She told her nuns about the
good old times when she and her sisters were young, gave an
account of their hopes and fears, their prayer and penance,
their sacred enthusiasm and zeal in the service of God. Her
companions were carried away by her eloquent words, and
there was a revival which affected the Recluses as well as

XXII.] THROUGH TROUBLE AND IfAR. 289
the nuns. It was doubtless at this time that the following
letter, bearing no date, was addressed by le Maitre to the
community. 'Although I am only a miserable sinner, overwhelmed by
the consciousness of my sins at this very hour, yet I have re
ceived too many proofs of the supreme and ineffable mercy of
my Saviour, Jesus Christ, not to hope for conversion through
His grace and by means of the prayers of His faithful servants.
And, therefore, although I am unworthy so much as to speak
to the most insignificant nun in this house, and the Reverend
Abbess knows that I ought to hide myself in a hole in the
earth, and there weep not only for my sins but even for my
repentance which has been false and unworthy, yet I do not
give up the hope that she and the good Sisters will grant the
prayer of one who has resolved to live and die with the name
and dress, not of their brother which he does not deserve, but
of their servant,
' I should have made this humble prayer to the Reverend
Abbess in person, and with her permission should have spoken
and not written it to the Sisters ; but I am afraid that tears
would stifle my voice, and that my reverence for them would
cover me with confusion, I have, therefore, thought it better
to utter my supplication in these few lines, so that seeing it
written they may consider it more attentively and may offer
up more fervent prayers for him who, like a beggar and a
wretched dog, will consider himself only too happy if God will
condescend to feed him with the crambs which fall from the
sacred table which He has spread for the Sisters, and wUl make
him a partaker of the humility, poverty, and obedience which
by His grace have been so largely bestowed upon them. And
all that I say for myself I say also on behalf of my dear brother
de sericourt'
The Recluses felt for the nuns an enthusiastic admiration
which le Maitre's letter does not at aU exaggerate, and a
tender chivalrous affection shown chiefly in acts but occa
sionally in words also, Le Maitre wrote to Mdme. St Ange,
St. Cyran's friend, urging her to join the community, and
saying that if there was a Paradise upon earth it was to be
found at Port Royal, He was recovering from an iUness, and
concludes his letter by saying: 'Pray do not forget poor brother
Antoine who is once again on his' feet and at your service,
S.L. XIII. U

290 • THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. [chap,
and also at the service of the nuns of Port Royal who are
our Ladies, our Mistresses, and our Queens,'
Angelique was elected Abbess for the third time, in
November, 1648, and frequently visited the Paris community;
whUst Agnes returned for a time to Port Royal des Champs.
She writes enthusiastically of the beauty of this sacred abode
and so do the elder nuns whose early associations were con
nected with it, but the younger Sisters seem to have preferred
Paris. There was no relaxation of the rule of seclusion when
they were in the country, not even in favour of near relations,
and Angelique did not like the Recluses to pay frequent visits
to the convent parlour. She was strict in this respect and was
faithfully obeyed ; but Agnes did not approve of her solitude,
and wrote to le Maitre : —
'My very dear Nephew,
' I think you must imagine that I have gone back to Paris
or have been excommunicated since you have not deigned to
ask to see me for so long a time. Therefore using my autho
rity as aunt and venerable old lady, I desire you to come at
noon to-day to the parlour of St Madeleine, where I intend
to reproach you for shutting yourself up ; but this does not
prevent me from remaining your vety affectionate Aunt,'
The peaceful life which to all the Arnaulds seemed a fore
taste of the joys of heaven was rudely interrupted. In 1649,
the first Fronde broke out and filled Paris and the surrounding
country with the miseries of civil war.
It has been impossible within the narrow limits of this volume
to dwell upon the political aspects of events connected vrith
Port Royal, In the present instance it is unnecessary. Self-
interest drew French nobles and French generals from one
side to the other, and whether Marshal Turenne should serve
Conde or the King depended not on his principles, his sym
pathies, or the justice of the cause, but on which side could
make him the largest promises. "The civil wai- in England
characterized throughout by its profound religious and political
earnestness was at an end, and the commonwealth under
Cromwell had been estabhshed at the very time when Mdme,
de Longueville decided in favour of a second civil war in France
because she did not wish to join her husband in Normandy,
The Fronde was neither an imitation of what had so recently

xxiL] THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. 291,
taken place in England, nor a precursor of the French revolution
of 1789. Religion and liberty had no part in it, and the people
no expectation of advantage from the success of either side.
Richelieu had humbled the nobles, and they made one final
effort to regain the power which they had lost Self-interest
was their sole motive, and the history of the Fronde is a story
not of war but of intrigue.
With intrigue and counter-intrigue Angelique .had nothing
to do, but the condition of the victims of the war excited her
deepest compassion. There was an amount of misety on all
sides of Port Royal which taxed even the large resources of
her boundless charity.
Abbesses and nuns from neighbouring convents,, and ladies
who were the wives or daughters of her country neighbours,
sought safety in a convent known to be protected by the Re
cluses. She received them gladly, and encouraged the Sisters
to deprive themselves of their simple accommodation in order
to offer it to others. But her warmest sympathies were enlisted
by the peasants, and her most ardent wish was to save them
from robbery and violence. She could not shelter them, but
she could at least try to save their stores of provision and their
portable property. As soon as this was known they flocked to
her with everything they could carry, — corn, peas, beans, cook
ing utensils, coffers, packets, and even their bread. The house
was already full ; there was but little spare room for storing
away all that was brought to them, and Angelique, seeing no
other alternative, threw open the great doors of the church,
offered to the poor the house of God, and received theiri and
their humble treasures vrithin the cloistered precincts. Night
and day the door was opened at their demand, and many came
daily to take their daUy supply of food. The nuns were fairly
exhausted by incessant work and watching, but who could show
signs of weariness in well-doing when their Abbess was among
the first to devote herself to the needs of others ? She received
the goods, had them ticketed and arranged so as to avoid dis
order and confusion, and when the aisles of the church were
filled, she did not scruple to make use of the nave also. ' Our
monastery,' say the MemoirSj ' reminded us of Noah's Ark, in
which there were all kinds of beasts. For whichever way we
turned there was nothing to be seen but horses, sheep, and
cows, and our courtyard was full of fowls.'
u 2

292 THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. [chap.
 1—  ' 
Angelique was informed that she was incurring great danger;
several officers had been heard to say that as they could find
nothing in the villages they would certainly go and pillage the
monastery. She replied that she did not believe they would
do anything of the kind, and even if she did she should not be
deterred from doing her duty by fear of the consequences.
Besides, did not God listen to the prayers of the poor which
were offered up for them daily and hourly ?
Some of the nuns entreated her to make a ccuhe and hide
the few ornaments and articles of value which were iu the
sacristy and on the altars ; she answered sternly that she would
not consent to do anything of the kind. Certainly Ange
lique Arnauld looking after her property would offer a new
and unexpected spectacle. She explained to the timid Sisters
that their suggestion was not even prudent for if the soldiers
found no valuables where they had a right to expect them,
they would be sure to pillage the monastety ; and she added
that if they came she should give them everything worth
having with her own hands, so that they might go away
the sooner.
Only a few of the well-to-do peasants had money or stores
to conceal ; the greater number of them were reduced to abso
lute destitution. Angelique caused enormous quantities of bread
and soup to be prepared and supplied daily to those who were
in the greatest need. From time to rime throughout the day
she went to the kitchen to inspect the huge cauldrons, and if
the soup was not good she made the cooks taste it in her
presence, and asked if they could eat it themselves like that,
and how they had the conscience to give it to the poor. Then
she would have onions fried and added to give it flavour, and
would see that it was not only good but appetizing. The
expense was great and Port Royal poor, but this was not a time
to think of ways and means, her only concern was to give away
as much as possible. Thanks, doubtiess, to d'Andilly's care,
the abbey gardens had been very productive. There was a
large stock of apples and pears for winter use, as weU as of
beetroot, which, with peas and milk, formed the food of the
nuns during Lent Angelique first of all distributed large
baskets of apples and pears, giving them out after tiie soup ;
when they were all consumed she bethought her that, if she
gave away the beetroot which took up considerable space, there

XXIL] THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. 293
would be more food for starving wretches, and she could take
charge of additional property for the peasants.
It is not merely what Ange'lique does, it is the manner in
which she does it which is sC charming ; not only her dauntless
courage in the face of difficulties, but the happy brightness
with which she encounters them. She astonished her com
panions by indefatigable activity, but still more by the ' mar
vellous joy' which animated her. When she ehhorted the
poor to have courage and take patience for God was looking
upon their sorrows and their suffering and would have com
passion upon them, it is no wonder that they believed her to
be inspired, and that the help she gave them seemed nothing
short of miracles wrought in their favour. All her letters
written at the time contain vivid pictures of the scenes she
witnessed. In April 1649, when the worst was over, she wrote
to Port Royal in Paris : ' We will do the utmost we can, my
very dear Sister, to hire a horse and send you the rest of the
dresses ; our own horses and asses are dead. It is a sad thing
to reflect on all our misfortunes ; war is a horrible scourge. It
is a marvel that men and beasts are not all dead from having
been so long shut up together. We had horses in the room
beneath us, and horses opposite us in the chapter-house,
whilst in a cellar there were forty cows belonging to us and
some of the poor peasants.
' All the courts were full of fowls,, turkeys, ducks and geese,
and when we could not take in any more they said : ' Keep
them yourselves if you like, we would rather you had them
than the soldiers,' Our church was so full of wheat, oats, peas,
beans, pots, kettles, and all kinds of rags that we had to walk
over them to get into the choir, and when we reached it the
floor was covered with books piled up, belonging to our hermits.
Moreover there were ten or twelve nuns who had taken refuge
with us. All the women servants from Les Granges were inside
the abbey and the men out : the farm buildings were full of the
halt and rnaimed and wounded, and the outer courts were full
of cattle. In fact if it had not been for the great cold we
must have had the plague ; still the cold itself added to our
discomfort for our fuel failed, and we dared not send to the
woods to fetch more.
' And yet vvith all this God was so present with us and helped
us so mightUy, that in one sense we were not sad; and the

294 THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. [chap.
extreme misery of the poor who were hiding in the woods to
escape butchery made us see that God had been only too good
to us. There is nothing now to be had at any price, for every
place has been pillaged and ravaged. Indeed it is a terrible
thing to see our poor country. I did not intend to tell you all
this, but my heart is so full of pity and sorrow that I write on
without knowing it,'
During this period the Recluses were the ' guardian angels '
of the nuns, "They left Les Granges to which they had retreated
the previous summer, and came down to the valley to guard
Port Royal. ' Our good hermits,' writes Angelique, ' girded on
their swords again for our defence, and they also threw up
such strong barricades, that it would have been difficult to take
us by assault.'
The Paris community was even worse off than the country
sisterhood. -Their chief danger was from famine. With con
siderable difficulty a store of provisions was from time to time
forwarded to them, conveyed by a strong guard of Recluses.
Before long it was manifest that so large a number of women,
many of them quite young, were not safe in an outlying
faubourg of Paris. Angelique proposed to send for them to the
country, and have them all under her own charge, but this plan
was quite impracticable. A charitable friend offered the loan
of a house in a safe part of the city, and it was decided that
Agnes, who was the Prioress, Mdme. d'Aumont and some thirty
or forty of the younger nuns and pupUs, should be sent thither
on the I Ith January, 1649. But when they were about to set out
the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who considered the pre
sence of these holy women a security to them, refused to allow
them to leave the convent On the following morning, there
fore, M, le Nain — father of the historian le Nain de TUlemont —
and M, de Berniferes who lent the house, wearing their robes
as magistrates, were obliged to escort them through the streets ;
the nuns formed a procession, in which the white scapulary
and scarlet cross of their Order would form a striking feature.
They walked on in silence and quite calmly, although many
of the Sisters thought they were setting out on foot to join
Angelique in the country I
It was difficult to contrive accommodation for so many in a
small house, and there was but little comfort or convenience
for them, "They were hable to all the alarms of war, and had

XXIL] THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. 295
good cause for anxiety when they thought of the friends and
companions from whom they were separated, and the difficulty
of procuring their supplies. The present and future must have
been dark enough, but Agnes Arnauld was at their head, and
her courage animated them all. She thanked God daily for
the opportunity He had granted them of making a sacrifice of
all that had hitherto conduced to their comfort, rebuked all
selfish fears and hopes, found employment for all in cutting out
and making clothes for the poor, and three months later led
back her little band in a higher state of discipline than when
they left the gates of Port Royal,
The older nuns who had remairied in the convent were under
the care of Marie des Anges,^ who had returned from Mau
buisson the previous year, and of Anne Arnauld. There was
no relaxation of discipline among them, although they were
exposed to continual alarms, and incurred considerable risk.
They had recourse to ' extraordinary penance ' in order to tty
and appease the anger of God, but in other respects their rules
and customs were unchanged during this troublous time.
The result of Angelique's noble charity during the war, of
the self-sacrifice of the Recluses, the piety of the Sisters, and
the protection of the Archbishop, was to fill Port Royal to
overflowing. In May 1651 there were two hundred and
twenty-eight persons in the Paris and country houses, including
pupils and Recluses, and the numbers increased from day to
day. The Recluses received as many accessions as the nuns,
and their rank and acquirements made them as formidable in
the eyes of the Jesuits as their numbers.
But death was already diminishing the number of the
Arnaulds. Magdalen Amauld, httie Madelon, Angehque's
youngest sister, had been a great sufferer for twenty years. In
Febraary 1649 she died, 'deprived of the great consolation'
of seeing Angelique. In 1650 de Sericourt died, the gallant
young soldier, brother of le Maitre, who had given up all that
he had to follow Christ He was his mother's favourite child,
and his death affected her deeply. Three months later she
also died, and Angelique lost the sister, who in the world and
the convent had been her faithful friend and trusted adviser.
Mdme. le Maitre, or Sister Catherine as she was called after she
took the veil, was in the countty house with Angelique during
1 See page 141.

296 THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. [chap.
the war, and her tender compassion and boundless charity
gained all hearts. On her death-bed she wrote the letter to
Mdme. de Longueville previously inserted,^ and she was con
soled by the ministrations of her fourth son, de Saci, who had
two years previously received priest's orders and been appointed
Confessor of Port Royal des Champs.
Our Abbess was re-elected for the fourth time in 1652, and
she then resolved to build new dormitories for the country
house and raise the pavement of the church, which was many
feet below the level of the ground. This work which pro
vided employment for a large number of destitute labourers
was comraenced and completed in troubled times. War had
again broken out, and the country was so unsettled that it was
thought necessary to remove the Sisters to Paris. They were
guarded by a strong escort, and Angelique and fifty nuns
reached the Faubourg St Jacques without any adventure. A
few of the aged nuns courageously remained at Port Royal, in
order to distribute alms to the destitute, and to keep open the
soup kitchen, which supplied two hundred peasants with food.
The second Fronde affected the Sisters very differently from
the first. It vvas no longer the peasantry who thronged around
Angelique seeking help, but nuns from all the convents in the
neighbourhood of the capital who, on the approach of the rival
armies, sought refuge in Paris,
The Sisters iri a convent at Etampes received notice that
they were in danger. They set out immediately for Paris, and
reached it about nine o'clock at night. Some of them had
friends in the city but knew not where to find them, others
were friendless. It was quite dark, they had no guide, no
guard, and did not know where to seek shelter and safety.
Worn out vrith fear and fatigue they could bear up no longer,
and ¦ began to weep bitterly. They were in the Faubourg St
Jacques, and as they passed Port Royal one of them remembered
that her sister had known Mdme. le Maitre, and had often told
her of the good Abbess Angelique. She bade her companions
be of good cheer, Mdme. de Port Royal would take them in.
When Angelique heard that a whole community of poor
terrified women stood at her gates, not knowing which way to
turn nor how to escape the dangers of the night, her heart
yearned towards them as if they had been her own flesh and
^ See page 229.

XXU.] THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. 297
blood. This was no time for considering the rules and regula
tions which forbade an Abbess to receive members of another
community without the permission of her Superior. ' Charity
is above law,' she said and took them in. The house was
already overcrowded, her own two communities more than filled
it, and there were also many strangers who had obtained
leave to stay at Port Royal until the war was at an end.
Angelique's first consideration for the twenty-five new comers
was to give them their supper. Now, fortunately, the nuns had
prepared their next day's' dinner over night; a novice, Jacque
line Pascal, was going to take the veil, and they all wished to
be present at the ceremony and the sermon. There was
food, therefore, for the tired Sisters and they were urged and
encouraged to eat Next came the more difficult task of find
ing beds for them. Nearly all the Port Royal nuns were
already in bed and asleep, but when they heard voices and
quick steps in the dormitory they were soon out of their cells,
for they were living in the midst of dangers. ' When we
found that it was not a troop of soldiers in the house, but a
band of nuns worn out with fatigue for whom there were no
beds, we turned back again and began to gather together all
that we had. There was nothing to be met in the passages
and on the stairs but Sisters dragging their beds, pillows,
coverlets, rnattresses, and doing it with the heartiest good-will.'
When the Archbishop was inforraed of what had taken place
he expressed great satisfaction at Angelique's conduct, and
gave her a general permission to receive all and any nuns who
applied to her. This was noised abroad and numerous were
the demands upon her charity and hospitality. On the 15th
of September, 1652, she wrote to M. de Barcos, St Cyran's
nephew : ' More than four hundred nuns, of different orders^
sought refuge vvith us during the war, which seems to me a
special mark of God's providence. It has given us a little
work but not, thank God, too much excitement and distraction.
On the contrary, what we have seen has given us good reason
for recognizing our great obligations towards God, and those
whom He has pleased to send to instruct us in our duties
(chief among them the author of all our happiness, M. de St
Cyran, our good Father who is now with God). The spiritual
destitution of these poor nuns has been something terrible to
witness, and many of them were strongly prejudiced against us.

298 THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. [chap.
They are now undeceived, and even think more highly of us than
they ought to do ; for they judge us by our rules and maxims
and well-regulated household. Many have been converted, and
eight of the number have remained vrith us altogether. We
have sometimes had as many as fifty in a day, and yet have
had no difficulty in supplying them with food ; and although
our total number in the convent has sometimes amounted to
a hundred and eighty, there has been no confusion or irregu
larity. Never have the Sisters maintained more profound
silence, and never have we experienced less difficulty in pro
curing the means of subsistence, although provisions have been
a third dearer than in any previous year. I humbly entreat
you, my father, to ask God to make us traly grateful for all
His mercies. ... I tremble to think how unworthy we are of
the special favour God has shown us.'
One day , a Sister came to demand shelter and hospitality
who wore a tight-fitting scapulary with a busk, which may have
recalled to Angehque the whalebone corset of her youth. The
sister also had gloves, and her demeanour vvas quite unlike
that of a nun. Angelique looked at her, and immediately
reprimanded her severely ; then saying : ' Daughter, I cannot
allow our Sisters to see you in this condition,' she took away
the busk and the gloves, and flung them down. The poor
nun stood speechless, and could not regain her equanimity even
when the Abbess brought food and spoke kindly to her.
On another occasion she noticed that a Sister who entered
the room wore her hair in curls. She made her take off her
coif, comb out the curls and arrange her hair simply ; then
with a stem rebuke bade her, when she next went to confes
sion, tell the Father that she vvas a hypocrite.
One day at the conference there was a nun from Poissy who
said that in her convent they had cut off part of the chants as
a mortification. ' You would have done much better,' said Angelique, ' if you
had cut off the tails of your gowns.'
Many of her sayings in later years show stern impatience
vvith the vanity and foolish affectatiori which had excited her
compassion when she was young, and she not unfrequentiy
inspired awe rather than affection. ' I assure you, sir,' said
Mdme. d'Aumont to le Maitre, ' that I get on better vvith la
Mfere Agnes ; la Mfere Angelique is too severe for me.' Le

XXIL] THROUGH TROUBLE AND WAR. , 299
Maitre himself a.cknowledged that he was afraid of her. But
her severity was shown to folly and vice, and she never lost her
compassionate tenderness for misfortune or suffering. One
day she was talking to the novices somewhat sternly about the
performance of their duty, and the difference between a halt
ing and a vigorous performance of them, when looking round
she saw the sad expression of a lame nun's face. ' Come,
come, daughter,' she said, 'don't make yourself unhappy, for
the lame walk as quickly in Paradise as any others.'
When the war was at an end she prepared for a retum to
Port Royal des Champs for she had been in exile in Paris,
and in January 1653 she returned with an increased number
of Sisters to her early home. The Recluses retired to Les
Granges and their respective dwellings. During the war they
had resided at Port Royal, which they defended by means of
intrenchments, and towers built on the walls. The old soldiers
among them had resumed their swords, the men of peace and
the labourers had been drUled and trained, and military zeal
bad fair to rival religious ardour.
But de Saci, the young priest and Confessor, looked on at
first in sUent and before long in open disapproval. The Re
cluses yielded, resumed their peaceful avocations, and wielded
no other weapons than the hoe, the spade, and the trowel.
Still there was a division among them which threatened
grievous results. Owing to the overcrowded condition of the
house — for there were, including the labourers employed upon
the dormitories and church, some three hundred men — an
epidemic broke out, of which a considerable number died,
M, Hamon, a retired physician, resumed his lancets and was
in most cases fatal. The Duke de Luines and d'Andilly there
upon each introduced an unauthorized practitioner, one of
whom treated every malady with pills, and the other with
powders, and there was a division amongst the Recluses as
to whether they ought to die at the hands of the faculty or
the quack, De Saci again found it necessary to interfere, and
he did so in favour of M, Hamon's lancet The empirics dis
appeared, and there was peace in Port Royal; but the
Memoirs say that the position of de Saci was something like
that of Moses in the midst of the children of Israel whom
he had led into the wilderness.

CHAPTER XXIIL

THE HOLY THORN.

The Bull of Pope Urban VIII. dated 1641, but not promulgated
until 1643, interdicted any resumption of the dispute on grace
and had therefore prohibited the publication of Jansen's Augus
tinus, though without naming it. It was in reference to this
bull that St. Cyran said : ' They are going too far ; we must teach
them their duty.' The prohibition came too late ; the Augus
tinus had been already brought out at the Fair of Frankfort
in 1640, and received with acclamation by the Calvinists in
Holland. It reached Paris in 1641, and speedily excited the
theological world. A second edition was published at Rouen
in 1643, and the Paris pulpits began to resound with attacks
on Jansen, who was called a Calvin ' warmed up.' Perhaps no
book so famous as the Augustinus has ever been so little
read. Sainte-Beuve compares it to an overloaded cannon which
bursts within the fortress, and does more injury to friends than
enemies. Under no circumstances could it have become
popular since it is written in Latin, and it may well be doubted
whether it would have excited so fierce a controversy if it had
not been identified with Port Royal, which the Jesuits detested
and were determined to crush ; and it is more than probable
that its doctrines would not have been so well known if Pascal
nad not defended them in his immortal Provincial Letters.
The Augustinus consists of a selection from the works of
St Augustine, passages chosen and arranged so as to fomi a
complete theological system. Jansen thought St Augustine's
works contained those true and pure doctrines vvhich had been
lost sight of in later times,^ and he spent his life in discovering
1 See page 188.

CHAP. XXIIL] THE HOLY THORN. 301
and preparing to promulgate them. The whole system rests
upon the belief that man since the Fall has been lost in sin,
and can only be redeemed by the grace of God. No man has
it right to claim or expect this grace ; for all have fallen. God
gives it to whom He will, and withholds it from whom He
wiU. Predestination is the eternal decree by which God has
resolved to withdraw and except certain persons from their
just doom, whilst He leaves others to perish. We know
nothing of the motives of this preference, and can simply refer
it to the Divine wUl.
These doctrines in our own times are distinguished as Cal
vinistic or Evangelical, and in the seventeenth century the
Jesuits pointed triumphantly to the fact that their enemies at
Port Royal were guided by a man whose doctrines were iden
tical with those of the arch heretic of Geneva. Some of the
Arnaulds were Huguenots, and le Maitre's father had lived
and died a Protestant, so that the charge of Calvinism was
once more urged against them.
The Jesuits protested against Jansen's works but Rome vvas
silent, for, though unwilling to favour Calvin, she was equally
unwilling to condemn St, Augustine.
The Jesuits accused Port Royal of despising the Sacraments
of the Roman Catholic Church and being in alliance with
Geneva, Arnauld replied by learned apologies in defence of
Jansen, Father Brisacier, who had failed to procure the con
demnation of Amauld's book On Frequent Communion returned
from Rome more bitter than ever in consequence of his defeat ;
he now attacked the nuns of Port Royal, calling them ' Foolish
Virgins, deriders of the Sacraments, impenitent, devoid of
religion and morality.' Mdme. d'Aumont and Angehque
wrote to the Archbishop of Paris in 165 1, called his attention
to Father Brisacier's Jansenism unveiled, and appealed to him
for protection. The Archbishop prohibited the sale of the
book, and ordered a copy of his censure of the Reverend
Father to be fixed against the doors of every church in his
diocese. He also imitated the policy of Rome, and forbad
any further mention of the controversy on Grace. But, in
1649 Nicholas Cornet, Syndic of the Faculty of Theology at
Paris, had asked that seven abstruse propositions referring to
Grace should be examined, and their orthodoxy or heresy
decided. Seventy doctors protested against any reopening of

302 THE HOLY THORN. [chap.
the discussion, but ultimately the propositions, reduced to five,
were submitted to Pope Innocent X. and a congregation of
Cardinals and Assessors, and condemned by a bull issued in
1653. All the propositions were declared heretical, and the
first and fifth were also called impious and blasphemous.^ It
was not directly asserted that these propositions were to be
found in the Augustinus, though the Pope's bull attributed the
dispute to its publication and certainly implied that they were
extracted from it.
The triumph of the Jesuits was almost complete ; their
enemies were heretics in the eyes of the Church ; they were
resolved that they should be heretics in the eyes of the people
also. On the frontispiece of an almanac, of which AngeUque
says that 16,000 copies were sold or distributed, Jansen was
represented with his bishop's robes and the devil's wings, hoofs,
and horns, flying before the Pope, who hurled thunderbolts
at him and his followers. A farce was performed in the Jesuit
College in Paris, in vvhich Jansen was carried off by devils ;
whilst in a public procession of students at the Jesuit College
of Macon, Jansen was represented in chains, and led prisoner
by ' saving grace.' Before long the words saving grace and
predestination were considered suspicious.
The Jansenists revenged themselves on the Jesuits for the
almanac and the farce by recounting how a certain bishop who
was visiting an abbey in his diocese, entered the refectory at
meal-time and heard the words : * For it is God vvhich worketh
in you, both to will and to do of His pleasure.' He sternly
bade the reader be silent and bring him the book. To his
1 These propositions were as follows : —
1. Some of God's commands cannot possibly be obeyed by just men ;
they desire and strive to keep them, but have only their own strength and
not the grace of God, by which alone it is possible to obey Him.
2. In the state of fallen nature there is no resistance to the action of
internal grace.
3. In a state of fallen nature imputed merit and demerit do not depend
on free will exempt from the necessity of action ; it is enough if there is
free will exempt from constraint.
4. The Semi-Pelagians admitted the necessity of preventing grace in
every action, even the first beginnings of faith ; they were heretics because
they said that this grace was of such a nature that tiie will of man had
jiower to accept or reject it.
5. It is a Semi- Pelagian error to say that Jesus Christ died or shed His
blood for all men without exception.

XXIII.] THE HOLY THORN. 303
great surprise he found that it was one of the Epistles of St.
Paul !
All good Catholics accepted the Pope's decree, and ac-
.knowledged that the Five Propositions were heretical, but the
Jansenists had still a point in their favour. There had been
no indication of the page or chapter of the Augustinus, in
which the propositions were to be found, and they said it was
a mistake to attribute them to Jansen, since the words were not
his nor the meaning either. And thereupon arose the cele
brated dispute concerning the droit and the fait. The droit
was the justice of the Papal censure of the propositions,
which all Catholics admitted ; and the fait was the existence
of the propositions in Jansen's Augustinus, which the Jansenists
denied. The great Arnauld was an untiring controversialist;
letters of 250 pages, pamphlets, volumes, were poured from his
-ready pen in defence of Jansen's doctrines, and to prove that
the heretical propositions were not contained in his works and
did not represent his true meaning. It was necessary there
fore to silence Arnauld also ; and in 1656, he was censured,
expelled from the Sorbonne, and all his writings declared
heretical and placed in the Index. Whilst the Doctors -of
the Sorbonne were deliberating on his sentence, the Recluses
at Port Royal were urging Amauld to defend his views : ' Are
you going to let them condemn you like a child, without saying
a word and without letting the public know what are the points
in dispute,' He accordingly drew up a reply, doubtless very
long and learned, and read it aloud to his friends. They lis
tened in silence. No one praised it, Arnauld said : ' I see that
you don't like my paper, and I think you are right,' Then he
turned to Blaise Pascal, who had recently joined them, ' Now
you,' he said, ' who are young, vvhy don't you do something? '
Pascal set to work at once and wrote the first of his ' Letters
to a Provincial from one of his Friends ; ' or, as they are called,
' The Provincial Letters,' On the following day it was read
to the Recluses, ' That is exceUent ! ' exclaimed Amauld,
' that's exactly what is wanted ! We , must print that,' And
on the 23rd of Januaty,. 1656, nine days after Arnauld's con
demnation, it was pubUshed.
Blaise and JacqueUne Pascal had been attracted to Port
Royal in the first place by a disciple of St. Cyran, and there
could be no more important acquisition than a man whose

304 THE HOLY THORN. [chap.
scientific eminence was at that time unrivalled. On the death
of their father, Jacqueline entered Port Royal during the
F"ronde, and took the veil in 1653, whilst her brother Blaise
joined the Recluses in 1655. The excitement produced by.
Pascal's first letter was very great, and increased with each
one that succeeded it The first three letters are occupied
with the subtle disputes on grace and free-will, and the' all-
absorbing questions of droit and fait. But in the fourth
Pascal leaves these subjects in order to expose the corruptions
of Jesuit morality and attack the writings of the Casuists ; and
from these attacks, which were the first of their kind, the
Jesuits have never recovered. In the sixteenth letter the author
refutes the calumnies so persistently uttered against Port
Royal, and recurs in the seventeenth and eighteenth to the
subjects discussed in the first. All the later letters cost him
much time and labour. He apologizes for the length of the
sixteenth, excusing himself on the ground that he had not
had time fo make it short He worked at many of them for
twenty days ; writing and rewriting them six or seven times,
and he is said to have rewritten the eighteenth no less than
thirteen times. Those wonderful letters clear, eloquent, and
incisive, so brilliant and playful and yet so earnest, hindered
for a time, but could not avert the rain of Port Royal.
All Paris listened and waited for their appearance, talked of
the Five Propositions, Jansen's Augustinus and the question of
fait and droit. But it is doubtful whether many of the nuns
of Port Royal knew the Provincial Letters even by name.
Their lives were once more flowing on smoothly and in
the old channels. Father Singlin's preaching, with its ragged
power, was producing more effect than the most finished
discourses. Their church was crowded every Sunday, and
numerous were the converts who testified to the sincerity of
the change which his words had wrought,
Angelique had been chosen Abbess at four successive tiien-
nial elections, and in 1654 she finally resigned her post. Her
successor was that Marie des Anges, who had returned to Port
Royal after twenty years' absence as Abbess of Maubuisson
Angehque was never again the nominal head of the community,
and was relieved of some of the cares of office, but she oc
cupied a place in the eyes of the Sisters, the Recluses, and the
world, independent of title or office.

XXIIL] THE HOL Y THORN. 305
She had up to this time deserved the praise bestowed upon
her by the Archbishop of Paris as an obedient daughter of the
Church. She had submitted and was prepared to submit to all
its decrees ; but the events of the years that follow tended to
draw her earnest mind away from the Church of Rome and
assuredly in the direction of Protestantism. By slow degrees
she began to exercise an independence of judgment which is
incompatible with the intellectual and moral attitude required
of a devout Catholic, She asked herself if a decree was right
and not if it was ordained by the Pope, and she resolved to be
faithful to the trath at the risk of imprisonment and excommu
nication. But in 1654 she had not begun to contemplate the possibility
of resisting the decrees of the Court of Rome.
When the bull of Innocent X. condemning the Five Pro
positions was promulgated. Port Royal deliberated as to the
course to be adopted. St. Cyran's nephew M. de Barcos, who
was now the Abbot de St. Cyran, urged that there must be no
signature of the formulary of submission with which France was
threatened, le Maitre agreed with him, and it was decided that
the Recluses must refuse to sign any condemnation of Jansen's
writings, but that the nuns might submit to whatever was re
quired of them.
In a letter written at the time, Angehque says that she does
not pretend to understand the Five Propositions and therefore
can neither receive nor reject them ; moreover, submission is
the duty of all and more especially of nuns who cannot dis
pute and argue: 'All we can do is to sefve God in silence
and by obedience to our rule, so that we should be doubly
guilty if we did not submit I can assure you that except
myself, who by reason of my office am sometimes obliged
to speak with persons not belonging to the convent and thus
to hear what is going on, none of our sisters know anything of
this matter,'
Agnes writes even more strongly : ' Don't give yourself any
trouble about the bull any more than we dp who are not at all
uneasy about it We condemn whatever it condemns without
knowing what that may be. It is enough for us to know that
it is issued by the Pope, and that as daughters of the Church
we are bound to respect all the decrees of the Holy See.'
But before long ominous rumours reached the convent. The
S.L. XIII. X

3o6 THE HOLY THORN. ^ [chap.
opposition of the Recluses and their refusal to acknowledge
the decisions of the Pope were attributed to Angelique's in
fluence, and it was asserted that she was to be sent to the
BastiUe. Her nephew le Maitre told her of this report, and
said it was very unlikely that her enemies would do more than
send her to some distant monastety. She replied, that this
would not trouble her; 'she had always desired to end her
days alone and apart. She would take spectacles and lancets
with her; spectacles that she might study the Trath, and
lancets that she might be of some use in the world.
Her ascetic spirit led her to desire that the monastety to
which she was banished should be under Jesuit govemment :
'Nothing,' she says, 'would be such a trial as to have them
coming to convert me.'
It was suggested that even in such a convent the nuns would
be good to her, but she said she" thought not; they would
believe they were doing God service if they got rid of an old
heretic. Her time was spent chiefly at Port Royal des Champs, and in
interviews with le Maitre and Arnauld she often urged them to
translate into French St. Bernard's treatise on grace, and the
works of any of the Fathers who held the same views as St
Augustine, and this shows that she wished not merely to defend
Jansen's views but to promulgate them. And then she would
suddenly exclaim, ' We must amend our lives, we must amend
our lives, that is the right way of rendering trath victorious I '
All her life she had been learning and teaching obedience,
and the habits of a lifetime clung about her and could not
easily be discarded. St Francis de Sales had required abso
lute submission, so had St Cyran, so had evety Director to
whom she had submitted her conscience, and it had been
granted. She had recognized that obedience to a Director
implies a far more profound and humble submission to the
Pope, the Father of the Church; throughout her whole life
she had received those doctrines sanctioned by the Pope and
rejected those which he had declared to be contrary to the
Catholic faith, without any reference to the dictates of her
own intellect or conscience. Now she was graduaUy drifting
into an attitude of opposition, and learning to uphold those
who ventured to assert the rights of their own indiridual
judgment When Arnauld was about to be condemned

XXIIL] THE HOLY THORN. 307
by the Sorbonne and went into hiding to escape imprison
ment, she wrote : ' I cannot help telling you, my vety dear
brother, with what calmness and joy I saw you leave us to
suffer whatever it may please God to ordain for you whilst
you assert His Grace. Indeed, so complete is my resignation,
that I have lost the fear with which natural affection and the
tenderness I have always felt for my poor little brother had
filled my heart. I no longer dread the evils to which you are
exposed, they -will turn out to be real advantages. . , , If your
name is struck out from amdng the doctors of the Sorbonne,
it wUl only be written the more plainly in the book of God.
. , , Whatever happens God is with you, and you will serve
His sacred cause better by your suflerings than by your writings,'
In the years between 1653 and 1656 she gradually learnt
to identify the cause of Jansen and St Cyrari with the cause
of Truth. There is no further mention of submission to the
Pope, that is of absolute, unconditional submission, but only
of assent to decrees which do not imply any censure of the
great teacher of Port Royal.
The position was one of daily increasing danger, to which
Angelique was not blind. The Recluses had made known
their decision not to sign any condemnation of Jansen's works.
She had taken up her position on their side. The ranks of the
enemy received fresh accessions day by day. Even Vincent
de" Paul protested strongly against the Jansenists, and was
amongst those who urged theiir suppression.
The friendly Archbishop of Paris was dead. His nephew
and successor Cardinal de Retz had been proscribed for his
conduct during the Fronde, and as Port Royal was faithful to
him it was accused of disloyalty as well as heresy, and de
nounced as a nest of traitors, Mazarin's fears were aroused
when he was assured that it was a centre from which political
as well as religious disaffection was disseminated ; he espoused
the cause of the Jesuits and resolved upon the suppression of
the Jansenists,
The Recluses were the first to suffer, and Angelique wrote to
the Queen of Poland in 1656: 'The preparations for our dis
persion are making rapid progress from day to day. They
are only waiting for water from the Tiber to submerge our
monastery. At one time we thought that it would be better
for the hermits to withdraw before they were tumed out, but
X 2

3o8 THE HOLY THORN. [chap.
they have entreated to be allowed to remain until the last
moment and until they are driven away from a spot which grows
dearer to them daily now that they see how short a time they
have to stay in it.'
But d'Andilly's influence was stUl considerable with the
Queen-Mother, and she could not be induced to consent to the
harsh proposals of her advisers. 'The Queen's behaviour,'
said Mazarin, ' is really admirable in this affair of the Jansenists,
When they are spoken of in general, she says they must all
be exterminated, but when it is proposed to root out two or
three, and begin with d'Andilly or some other, she cries out at
once, and says they are too good and too faithful to the King,
and she won't have it,'
However, her scruples were so far overcome, that in March
1656, although the formulary of submission had not been pro
mulgated, she consented to the dispersion of the Recluses and
the breaking up of their schools. Even then she did not forget
d'Andilly, but informed him of what had been decided. He
wrote at once to the Queen and Cardinal Mazarin, saying that
it was not necessary to employ force, he and his friends would
submit and leave Port Royal at once. The Order in CouncU
was therefore revoked, and on the 27th of March, 1656, Ange
lique wrote to tell le Maitre, who was in concealment vrith
Arnauld, that the pupils were scattered, t^e Recluses dispersed,
and d'AndUly, who was the last to go, had just set out for his
country seat at Pomponne, A few days later the Lieutenant-Civil
appeared to interrogate Angehque, and ascertain if any of the
Recluses stUl remained. As it was supposed that the pro
scribed Jansenist literature was issued from Port Royal, he
searched the buildings for printing presses ; but as they did
not exist he could not find them. He then tried in a long con
versation with Angelique to induce her to acknowledge that the
Recluses formed a regularly constituted religious community,
and were amenable as such to established laws. This she de
nied ; they were hermits and solitaries, bound by no vows, free to
come and. free to go, and to live apart or together as it might
seem good to them. During the conversation there was some
reference to Laubardemont and his visit, and the first dispersion
ofthe Recluses in 1638, 'Oh, Madam !' exclaimed the Lieute
nant-Civil, ' for whom do you take me ? I am not Laubarde
mont, the butcher of Loudun ! ' He left her with expressions

XXIIL] THE HOLY THORN. 309
of regret for the duty he had been compelled to perform, and
of admiration for all that he had seen and heard in Port Royal.
There were rumours that this inspection was ' only the pre
cursor of still more severe measures ; and it was asserted that
the confessors of Port Royal were to be dismissed, and the
nuns, both in Paris and the country, dispersed. On the 6th of
April, Angelique wrote to the Queen of Poland : ' At last the
Queen has commanded the Assembly of the Clergy to treat us
with the utmost rigour, and has said that she looks upon the
matter as one that concerns herself. I have no angry feeling
against her Majesty; I know that she believes she is doing a
very good work, and that she is constantly told it would be
impossible to do a better. Our Saviour said that those who
persecuted His servants would think they did God service.
AU that we have to desire is that we may suffer because we are
His servants, and not because we are evil-doers.'
AngeUque vvas prepared for the worst that could befall when
unexpectedly there was a respite ; the persecution ceased, and
the Port Royal nuns, from being denounced as heretics were
in a fair way of being worshipped as saints.
A certain greatuncle of Angelique's, M. de la Potherie, a
priest living in Paris, had a passion for coUecting relics, and,
among other treasures, believed that he had obtained possession
of a thorn from the crown which our Saviour wore at His cruci
fixion. When it had been placed in a fitting shrine he sent the
thorn to Port Royal, that the nuns might behold and adore
it. Accordingly, on Friday, the 24th of March, 1656, the very
day on which the Recluses were compelled to abandon Port
Royal des Champs, a solemn procession of nuns, novices, and
scholars, chanting appropriate psalms, raoved along the choir to
the altar, on which the sacred relic was deposited. Each in
tum kissed the Holy Thorn, first the nuns, then the novices, last
the scholars. Among the scholars was little Marguerite Perier,
niece of Jacqueline Pascal, a child of ten years old, who for
three years and a half had been afflicted with what was sup
posed to be fistula lachrymalis of the left eye, and the bones
of the nose were said to be diseased. As a last resource
the operation of cautery had been resolved upon, and the
child's father vvas on his way from Auvergne to be present
when it was performed. As this afflicted child in her tum
approacried the reUc, Sister Flavie, who had taken the place of

310 THE HOLY THORN. [chap.
Anne Arnauld as schoolmistress, said to her : ' Commend your
self to God, my child, and touch your eye vrith the Holy Thom I'
and with this Sister Flavie herself took up the sacred relic and
pressed it to the child's face.
The ceremony ended, the Holy Thom was restored to M. de
Potherie. But at night Sister Flavie overheard the child saying
to a companion, ' My eye does not hurt me now, the Holy
Thom has cured it' Sister Flavie approached, and could dis
cover no difference between the diseased and the healthy eye.
She at once infomied the Prioress, Agnes Amauld, of the
miracle, who on the following day told the chUd's aunt, Jacque
line Pascal. It was not untU five days later that M, de la
Potherie, the proprietor of the Thom, was informed of the
miraculous cure ; and the doctor, who had not seen the child for
more than two months before the event, did not visit her again
until the 31st of March, a week after it She was brought to
him vrithout a word being said, and he began to press, and
probe, and examine ; he was asked if he did not remember
what a sore eye she had, and answered, 'That's what I am
looking for, but I see no traces of it' Thereupon Sister Flavie
told him what had happened, and he asked if the cure was
instantaneous. She replied that it was and the child, when
appealed to, confirmed this statement Upon which M. Delance,
the doctor, said that he was ready to affirm upon oath that
such a cure could not have taken place without a miracle.
On the 14th of April seven physicians and surgeons drew up a
statement, in which they asserted that it was impossible the
child could have been instantaneously cured without a miracle ;
and the miracle began to be noised abroad,
M, perier. Marguerite's father, was delighted to think his child
was spared a painful operation which he had most unwiUingly
authorized. He spoke everywhere of the miracle, and soon
Paris and the Court were ringing with it. The Queen was
very unwiUing to give it credence, the Jesuits said it was aU
a trick, and that another chUd had been substituted for Mar
guerite perier, whose eye was in the same condition it always
had been. The Queen therefore sent M. Felix, first surgeon
to her son Louis XIV,, to report upon the case. He inquired
and examined, and said the child was undoubtedly cured,
that such instantaneous relief could be nothing else than the
work of God, Next appears upon the scene the Grand Vicar

XXIIL] THE HOLY THORN. 311
of the Archbishop of Paris, who inquires, and approves, and
verifies, and lends the sanction and approval of the Church
to the miracle. Six months later, on Friday, October 27th,
there is a solemn ceremony in the church of Port Royal in
Paris. It is crowded with people although the rain falls fast
The Grand Vicar and numerous priests and deacons with
lighted tapers and clouds of incense carty the Holy Thorn to
a little altar which has been prepared for it. The nuns kneel
ing in the choir sing : ' Loose thyself from the bands of thy
neck, O captive daughter of Zion;' and little Marguerite,
neatly dressed in grey and wearing a coif, kneels on high
cushions, so that all the people who are pressing forwards
and climbing to evety point of vantage may be able to see
her. There is a lighted taper before her, and a little chair
behind, so that she may sit down when she is tired. As
the ceremony proceeds the rain ceases, and soon the sunlight
streams down upon the kneeling nuns, the little motionless
figure in grey before the altar, the outstretched heads of the
spectators, -fhe gorgeous robes of the priests, and the heavy-
clouds of incense.
As the miracle had received the sanction of the Church, all
devout Catholics were convinced that the nuns of Port Royal
were holy women, and the reports spread against them wicked
slanders. The Holy Thom was begged by other communities.
It was lent to the Ursulines and the Carmelites and worked
no wonders with them ; but when it was sent back to Port
Royal it yielded a harvest of miracles. Nuns came from all
parts of France to touch the Holy Thorn, and more than eighty
cures were effected, all of them upon women. It was the work
of one nun to apply the sacred relic to rosaries, medals and
linen vvhich were brought to her. The Princess Palatine,
sister of the Queen of Poland, was restored to health by the
application of linen which had been touched by the Thorn ;
and Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I. and exiled Queen
of England, made a pilgrimage to it Every Friday crowds
thronged to Port Royal to adore the sacred relic, Masses
were said on that day from five o'clock until noon ; the con
gregations were so large that seats had to be secured months
beforehand ; and soon the streets outside the church were full
of people, watching the long string of carriages and their
occupants, and the windows of houses which overlooked the

312 THE HOLY THORN. [chap.
Faubourg St. Jacques were let to sight-seers who were afraid
of the crowded streets,
Protestant readers will consider it equally unprofitable to enter
into any discussion as to the genuineness of the miracle or ofthe
Thorn. And yet on behalf of the miracle it must be urged
that Pascal, Arnauld and le Maitre, the man of genius, the great
scholar, and the learned advocate, all believed it ; that Ange
lique, whose integrity and truth we dare not presume to doubt,
received it ; and that it was attested by surgeons and physicians
who, although not very able men, were probably honest In
fact, there is such a mass of overvihelming evidence in ils
favour that it is only when we discover that Sister Flavie, on
whom so much depended, was, by her own confession seven
years later, a liar and an impostor, that we get an inkling of
the manner in which the deception was practised. It is not im
possible that a physician's diagnosis should be incorrect, and
that there was a mistake as to the nature of the disease from
which the child was suffering.
Sister Flavie had every opportunity for carrying out a de
ception, because she was the chUd's mistress and only attendant
Granted the faulty diagnosis, and parents, friends, physicians,
to some extent even she herself, had some grounds for believing
that the child had been miraculously cured of a malady, which
would otherwise have necessitated a painful operation. Sister
Flavie herself may have been led on almost unconsciously to
exaggerate and invent all the details that were necessary to
ihow that there was extensive disease of the parts affected.
When she told Agries Arnauld of the miracle, Agnes quietly
went to bed and did not repeat the story to the child's aunt,
JacqueUne Pascal, until the following morning. After that,
the Abbess, Marie des Anges, heard it, and the nuns began
to hope that their petition in the service of the previous day
had been heard, ' Shew me a token for good,' they had sung,
' that they which hate me may see it, and be ashamed.'
Angehque was slow to beheve the miracle, and we may be
allowed to doubt whether we should have heard anything of it
if she had been Abbess instead of Marie des Anges, or even if
she had been in Paris. It was not until a month afterwards
that she wrote an account of it to the Queen of Poland, telling
her in a simple natural way exactly what she had heard. She
accepted the miracle as a Divine manifestation, and was grate-

XXIIL] THE HOLY THORN. 313
ful for it But in another letter she writes : ' If I were to
desire and ask for miracles, they should not be worked upon the
body, but upon all the wretched souls which languish under
miseries a hundred times worse than any bodily evils,' Again
when she was consulted respecting the account that had beet
drawn up of the miracles at Port Royal, she replied : ' I cannot
approve of these investigations ; God knows why He performs
these miracles, and He wUl manifest His own gloty in them in
such a raanner as He shall see fit. It is not necessary that we
should interfere or do anything except adore His Divine Provi
dence, and bless Him, vrith all humUity and gratitude for His
good gifts, ... I believe it to be the will of God that the
world should speak of the miracles, and that we should be silent
— and not we only, but all our true friends.'
But the true friends were not all silent, and Pascal, in the
celebrated sixteenth letter, alludes to the ' holy and terrible
voice which astounds all nature, and consoles, the Church.'-
He apostrophizes the Jesuits :
' Cruel and cowardly persecutors ! cannot even the most
secluded cloisters afford a refuge from your calumnies ? Whilst
these holy virgins, according to their rule, day and night adore
Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist, day and night you do not:
cease to state publicly that they do not believe He is either in
the Eucharist, or even at the right hand of the Father ; and
you cut them off openly from the Church, whilst they pray in
secret for you and for the whole Church. You calumniate
those who have no ears to hear you, and no mouth to answer.*
But Jesus Christ, in whom they are hidden, and with whom they
will one day appear, listens to you now, and answers for them.
We hear His voice at this very hour — that holy and terrible
voice which astounds all nature, and consoles the Church ;
and, I fear, my Fathers, that those who harden their hearts,
and obstinately refuse to listen to Him when He speaks as
their God, will be condemned to listen in terror when He
speaks as their; judge.'
Pascal's impassioned appeal, and the popular belief in the ^
authenticity of the miracle, averted for a time the rain of Port
Royal. The conscience of the Queen was touched ; she would
proceed no further in the matter. It was in vain that the
Jesuits urged that the miracle might just as well have happened
in a Protestant chapel as iji the church at Port Royal ; and that

314 THE HOLY THORN. . [CHAp.xxm.
it only proved that God would work a miracle wheresoever and
whensoever it seemed best to Him, and often more readily in
the midst of unbehevers than of the faithful. No one heeded
their words, not even the Queen. She gave d'AndiUy per
mission to return to Port Royal; one by one the Recluses
followed, the schools were re-opened, and the persecution
ceased. Cardinal Retz was still in exile; but he appointed
Father Singlin Superior of Port Royal and Angelique wrote :
' I have now obtained my chief desire upon earth, for I can
see nothing more likely to lead us to heaven,'

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE END.

For three short years there was peace at Port Royal ; years of
plenty the nuns called them, that preceded famine. Port Royal
in Paris was crowded vrith nuns, novices, postulants, and
school pupils ; so was the house in the country. The Recluses
had all retumed ; their schools were again in full activity and
threatened to become formidable rivals of the Jesuit schools
and colleges ; the pupils trained in them were taught to
reverence the life of St. Cyran, the work of Port Royal and
the writings of Jansen.
Angelique, the very Reverend and very dear Mother of the
whole community, is failing fast. Her mental vigour is unim
paired, but her physical strength is almost gone. ' My life,' she
wrote, 'is one long languor.' Her threescore years and ten
are almost accomplished, and her work upon earth is finished.
Her old age was honoured, as it deserved to be ; and two short
letters, in the Memoirs, give a picture of her which is well
worth dwelling upon. Ori her way to Paris in 1655 she stayed
at Gif, and one of the nuns who accompanied her wrote back
to the Prioress of the country convent :
' We arrived at Gif, where our Reverend Abbess was received
just as we should have received her ourselves ; that is, like a
saint; and vrith all the respect, submission, and joy that
daughters owe to a trae mother. The Abbess of Gif was
the first to welcome her, and spoke to her alone; and then
all the community came and talked to her with the greatest
possible frankness. There was not one single secret kept back
from our very dear Mother; and I can assure you that this

3i6 THE END. [chap.
was no small satisfaction to someone who accompanied her
and whom I need not name. I vrish you could have seen for
yourself all that I teU you, for our reception throughout was
of the same kind. Our only trouble was that there seemed no
bounds to the hospitality, affection, and delight of our hosts.
In short, they did ever3^hing that love and respect can do
under such circumstances. Our dear Mother held two con
ferences vrith the community, at which she spoke in a manner
worthy of her. She gave images to all the Sisters, who prize
them very highly ; and she read to each one a sentence from
St. Theresa which gave them great satisfaction.'
Angelique also wrote to the Prioress, giving an account of
this same journey: — 'We paid a very happy visit to Gif, thank
God. Everything passed off well except that I made an un
fortunate speech which I am afraid vexed a person who had
previously seemed touched with what I said to her about de
voting the whole of her life to God. I entreat you very humbly
to pray that my fault may be repaired. With that exception
there was nothing but joy and affection ; indeed, it would have
been impossible for them to show more ; but the old lady cried
more than she laughed. Nevertheless they treated her very
well and with great civUity. ... I think fatigue must suit me,
for ahhough I slept littie and taUied much at Gif, I am not too
tired this evening.'
The young Abbess, with her eager, ardent appeals to the
nuns whom she visited, has now become the Reverend Mother,
venerated even by those who do not agree with her riews,
keeping watch and guard over her words, and reproaching
herself for an inconsiderate speech. Before setting out on this
journey she wrote to le Maitre expressing her fears lest her
' brusque, imperious, indiscreet nature and habit of command '
should lead her astray ; and undoubtedly the old fire does leap
forth, but it does not burn steadily as m the old time, and ' the
old lady cries more than she laughs.'
One last trait of her disinterestedness deserves a place here.
A stranger to the community, who knew her by report, be
queathed a valuable property in Bazas to the Sisters of Port
Royal. Angelique induced them to renounce it in favour of a
poor Ursuline convent in that town, of which she heard a very
favourable report. She told the widow of their benefactor that
he would gain by the change, because he would have tiie

XXIV.] THE END. 317
prayers of the two communities instead of one. ' BeUeve me,'
she said to one of the Sisters, ' this house shall never be rich as
long as I live ; for after the wants of the community, who are
the first poor we are bound to assist, are supplied, all that
comes in at one door shall go out by the other.'
When she was a girl, she resolved that her vow of poverty
should be a reality ; and she has at seventy the same noble
improvidence which characterized her at seventeen. These last
years brought her many sorrows and many losses. Her sisters,
Mdme. le Maitre, Anne, Marie-Claire, and Madeleine were all
dead ; only Agnes remained from whom she was of necessity
separated, for one was in Paris when the other was in the
country. She looked forward to her own death, and frequentiy
spoke of it to her nephew le Maitre, entreating him not to let
there be any nonsense and ' grimacing ' at her funeral, but to
let her be buried simply. She showed him one of the medals
which Sister Flavie, she of the Holy Thom, had made of the
' blood, hair, and veil ' of her sister Anne, and expressed her
fear lest a similar fate awaited her. He reassured her, and
promised that there should be nothing of the kind. But the
nuns were already collecting materials to show that she was a
saint, and had worked miracles, A Sister attempted one day
to persuade her that she had miraculously caused some heavy
bread to become light : ' Go about your business, and hold
your tongue ! ' replied the Abbess, vrith her usual swift common
sense. She said mournfully one day : ' They are too fond of
me ; and after I am dead, if they are not kept in check, they
vrill invent a hundred fables about me. I know them. It is a
point on which they are not to be trusted.'
Le Maitre was not able to fulfil his promise, for in 1658 he
died. His death had been preceded by that of his friend
M. de Bagnols, a Recluse who was highly esteemed by the whole
community and of whom Angelique said, when she heard that
he also had passed to his rest : ' It seems as if there was no
one left in the world.' In 1658 her faithful pupU, novice, and
friend, Marie des Anges, who had been elected Abbess of Port
Royal in 1656, died in Paris. On her death-bed she spoke
vrith a shudder of the twenty years she had passed at Mau
buisson, but added : ' Ten years ago God brought me out of
the house of bondage.'
Angehque requested that the heart of her deceased friend

3i8 THE END. [chap.
might be sent to her at Port Royal des Champs, and this was
done. Nine days later Mdme. d'Aumont died, also in Paris.
And then, in both these overcrowded houses, there was a
terrible mortality. In Paris it was measles, always a more
serious disease in France than in England, and malignant fever
to which the nuns fell victims ; whilst in the country it was
inflammation of the lungs, of which five died in a fortnight
D'Andilly lost another daughter at this time.
Meanwhile, though the nuns said that these were years of
plenty which preceded the famine, they added that they ate
their bread in anxiety.
In the year 1656, Pope Alexander VII. declared that the
Five Propositions were to be found in Jansen's Augustinus, and
had been condemned in the sense in which Jansen propounded
them ; and, therefore, a synod of the clergy of France, at the
request of Louis XIV. and the Queen-Mother, drew up a
formulary of submission to the Pope's decree and condemna
tion of the ' Five Propositions of Comelius Jansen,' which not
only all the ecclesiastics of the realm were to be coinpeUed to
sign, but also aU the nuns and schoolmasters. The last clause
was aimed at Port Royal, and it was well known that to enforce
it would secure the suppression of the hated monastery and its
attendant schools. From various causes, however, the signa
ture of the formulary was not enforced untU after Mazarin's
death in 1661. At that time the Queen Dowager no longer
possessed any power, and Louis XIV. had placed his conscience
in the hands of the Jesuits, who raled him for sixty years.
The final dispersion of the Port Royal schools took place in
1660. They had existed for fifteen years, and had been dis
persed three times ; they had, probably, in no year received
more than fifty boys, and sometimes less ;i but the names of
masters and pupils— Nicole, Fontaine, du Fosse, de Saci, le
Nain de TiUemont, Racine, and many others — have made them
illustrious. After the dispersion of the schools, the Lieutenant-Civil and
a troop of soldiers returned to expel the Recluses, But they
had already abandoned their homes, and Arnauld, de Saci,
and Father Singlin had thought it pradent to go into conceal
ment; indeed, Arnauld was scarcely ever out of it, 'I am
looking everywhere for M, Arnauld,' said Louis XIV. at a later
^ Port Royal, par C. A. Sainte-Beuve, iii. 478.

XXIV.] THE END. 319
period. 'Your Majesty has always been fortunate,' replied
Boileau ; ' you will not find him.'
Volume after volume, pamphlet upon pamphlet, issued from
the untiring pen of the great controversialist ' For God's sake
keep M. Amauld quiet 1 ' said the King on another occasion
when there was an illusive promise of peace between Port
Royal and the Jesuits.
"The schools and the Recluses were scattered, but the Sister
hoods remained. The first step taken by the King at the
instigation of the Jesuits was to command the Grand Vicar of
Paris to depose the Director Father Singhn, and the confessors
of Port Royal, and to submit fresh names for the royal approval.
This he refused, saying that as Singlin had been appointed by
the Archbishop, it was not in his power to remove him.
The King, therefore, gave orders that on the 23rd of April,
1 66 1, the Lieutenant-Civil should visit Port Royal, and see.
that vrithin three days aU the boarders were sent to their
homes. When Angehque heard of the impending blow she felt that
her place was in Paris ; and, on the 22nd of April, said farevi^ell
to the community and the house she loved so weU, knowing
that she should see them no more. D'Andilly was waiting for
her in the courtyard outside the abbey.
' FareweU, brother,' she said ; ' be of good courage whatever
happens.' ' Sister,' he replied, ' don't be afraid, I have plenty of courage.'
' Ah ! brother, brother, we must be humble. We must re
member tiiat humUity without firmness is no better than
cowardice, but courage without humility is presumption.'
When they reached Paris, the Sisters met her with sad faces
and in tears. She said cheerfully and calmly : ' Why, I think
I see tears ! My children, what does this mean ? Have you
no faith ? And why are you amazed ? Is it because men are
plotting against us? Well, they are flies; are you afraid of
them ? You hope in God, and yet there is something you are
afraid of ! BeUeve me, that if you fear Him and Him only, all
vrill be well.' And then she raised her eyes to heaven and said :
' My God, have pity on Thy chUdren ! My God, Thy holy wUl
be done ! '
She retumed amongst them as their true Mother, inspiring
fortitude and resignation. But this first blow was indeed a

320 THE END. [chap.
heavy one. There were thirty-three boarders in Paris, and
about as many in the country. Many of them were orphans,
and knew no other love than that which the kind Sisters
lavished upon them. They could not keep back their tears at
the thought of separation, and when the time came, and one
after the other vvas removed, their sobs and cries resounded
through the convent The nuns could scarcely restrain their
sorrow as they saw that they were to be deprived for the future
of the children to whom they were tenderly attached,' and
who gave so much of .brightness and interest to their lives,
Angelique was the strength and consolation of all around her.
Anxiety and excitement prevented her from sleeping, and she
spent the night in writing letters, making arrangements, and
giving orders. Father Singlin came to take leave of her
and of the community, and that farewell seemed the greatest
trial she had experienced. She begged the nuns to leave her
in the parlour alone that she might confess to him for the last
time, for she was so weak she thought that she must die.
But there were more trials for her still. An order came
for the removal of the postulants. Among them were two
girls to whom she stood in the place of a mother. One
was the daughter of the Duchess de Luines and the other of
M. de Bagnols, They had been confided to her by the
parents, and had been under her care since they were infants.
They also must go, and it was she herself who led them to
the door, spoke words of comfort to them, and dried their tears.
The Duchess de Chevreuse, who was waiting to receive them,
was astonished at her calmness, but she replied : ' Madam,
when there is no God I shall lose courage, but whilst God is
God I will put my trust in Him.'
Agnes, who had been elected Abbess on the death of
' There were at that time English girls in the convent school, whose
parents had sought refuge in Paris after the execution of Charles I. Among
those expelled were daughters of Lord Hamilton and Lord Muskerry,
The eldest of the Ladies Hamilton, La belle Hamilton as she was called,
married the Count de Grammont, and as Countess de Grammont was one
of the beauties of the Court of Charles II. Louis XIV. one day desired
his favourite, the Count de Grammont, to read Jansen's book and find the
celebrated Five Propositions. When he was asked the result of the study,
he said that if they were there they must be incognito. The Countess was
rather proud of her husband's bon-mot, and often repeated it. — Memoires
de Port Royal, ii. 389.

XXIV.] THE END. 321
Marie des Anges, had allowed seven of the postulants to enter
upon their noviciate and assume the dress of novices after the
order of dispersion had been received. When the King heard
this he commanded that the dress should be taken from them,
that they should be expeUed with the other postulants, and
that no fresh members should be aUowed to enter the com
munity. To this Agnes could not submit, and she wrote a
letter to the King, in which she pointed out very respectfully
that such a course would involve the extinction of a monas
tery which had done nothing to forfeit the favour of his
Majesty. She explained that the seven postulants had been
long destined for a conventual life, and one of them was
Marguerite Perier, the object of a special Divine manifestation
in favour of Port Royal. She professed entire submission to
the King's commands, but implored him to reconsider his
decision. The King praised the letter, but sent the Lieutenant-Civil
to remove the seven novices, with orders that the Abbess was
to take away the religious and restore their secular dresses.
This command she refused to comply with. It was against
her conscience. It was not she who had received the pos
tulants, but the Church. She had neither will nor power to
revoke what was done. It was in vain that the Lieutenant-
Civil threatened to break open the convent doors, and to
make her answerable in person and in her own name for
setting the law at defiance. She would not yield ; and the
seven young girls were removed wearing the dress of novices.
Day by day matters assumed a more threatening aspect :
seventy-five persons had been removed, the gates were guarded,
the courtyards full of archers ; the Grand Vicar of Paris had
yielded to the King's wish, and nominated a hostile Superior
in the place of Father Singlin. The Abbess again protested,
but in vain ; she was compelled to accept the new Superior and
the confessors whom he appointed.
The nuns fasted and prayed, and strove by extraordinary
penance to ' appease the anger of God ; ' and then it was
decided that there should be a solemn procession, and the
whole community, barefooted, should carry their sacred relics
and implore the intercession of the Saints at the throne of God.
Among the relics there was a ' fragment of the true cross,' small
and light, which was assigned to Ange'lique. On the loth of
S.L, XIII. y

322 THE END. [chap.
May, a fortnight after her arrival in Paris, she took her place
in the procession, bearing this fragment. As they entered the
choir she sank to the ground and could not rise again ; with
great difficulty she was so far restored as to be carried to her
own room. For two days she remained in a state of insensi
bility and then, rallying, was attacked by the malady to which
after three months of suffering she succumbed. "The Sisters
said God had shown them that she was to ' bear the cross with
them, but to sink under its weight'
Fresh troubles awaited them daily. The novices were torn
from them, and both the Paris and the countty house were now
stripped of all except the professed nuns. 'At length our
good Lord has seen fit to deprive us of all,' Angelique wrote
to Mdme. de Sevigne. ' Fathers, Sisters, disciples, chUdren—
all are gone. Blessed be the name of the Lord,'
There was still one step which she thought might be attended
with advantage to the community, and at every moment of
respite from pain she dictated at intervals, sometimes of days,
a long letter to the Queen Dowager, Anne of Austria,' There
is no anger in it, and no trace of weakness. She pleads her
cause and that of her household dispassionately, without
reproaches or complaint; she exposes the virongs they have
suffered and the injustice of their persecutors.
' I should be afraid of offending God,' she- says, ' of whose
justice I stand in awe, if, while your Majesty to some extent
represents Him upon earth, I should neglect to justify myself
before you, and fail to give my Sisters, who are borne down
by affliction, the testimony which I owe to God and to their
integrity. And I believe that, at the peril of my Ufe, I should
give this testimony to any house, however alien from me, if I
saw it persecuted as this is, and was convinced of its innocence.'
The whole letter is an appeal for justice — an appeal which
passed unheeded. ' Now my earthly business is done ! ' she
exclaimed, when it was ended.
On the 1 2th of July, the Grand Vicar and the new Superior
visited Port Royal by the King's order, to inspect, and
examine the convent, and report to him upon its condition.
It was a humiliation which Angehque felt keenly, and against
1 Sainte-Beuve suggests that Arnauld and Nicole furnished Angehque
with memoranda for this letter, and they probably corrected and revised it
for publication after her death.

XXIV.] THE END. 323
which she uttered a spirited protest. When the inspection was
over they vvent up to her room, and the Grand Vicar, sitting
down by her bedside; said : — ¦-
' And so you are iU, Reverend Mother ; what is the matter
with you ? '
' Dropsy,' repUed Angelique,
'Jesus I' exclaimed the Grand Vicar, 'you say that as if
it was nothing remarkable. Why, does not such an illness
startle you ? '
' I am incomparably more startled at what I see taking place
in this house. For, in fact, I came here to die, and therefore
I was bound to be prepared for it, but I did not come here
expecting all that I now see, and had no reason to look for
such treatment. Oh sir, sir, this is man's day, but the day
of the Lord is at hand vvhich will disclose many things that are
hidden, and avenge all'
She spoke with all her old energy, and with an outburst of
righteous indignation at the cruel persecution to which she was
subjected. And then, as if she desired to plead for those whom
she was so soon to leave, she added : ' I am sure, sir, that there
are very few convents in which, if you were to search them as
strictly as you have done this one, you would not find many
more books and much more knowledge of the world and pass
ing events than there is amongst us. For I am certain, sir, that
you will find in our Sisters nothing but a very true and simple
faith,' She passed to her rest through great suffering, bodily and
mental, vrith a fear of death upon her, and an anguish which
she knew not how to put into words. ' Believe me, my children,
believe what I tell you. No one knows what death is. No
one realizes it. I have been afraid of death all my life. My
thoughts have always been full of it, and yet all that I have
imagined is less than nothing compared to what it really is,
to what I feel and what I understand now. . . . Now all the
world is nothing to me. I am set alone and apart; and it
seems as if all that I hear and all that I see cannot enter
into my mind, or occupy my attention, or divert it from the
one thought that engrosses me. And now I know what
death is.'
Again she said : ' I have never understood as I do now that
saying of the Scripture, that as the tree falls so it must lie j for
y 2

324 THE END. [chaf.
traly in sickness the tree has fallen, arid there is nothing more
to be done.'
But the dark clouds passed before sunset ; hope returned,
peace and joy were again granted to her, and with the removal
of all those to whom she had turned for help upon earth, her
soul sought and found comfort in God. ' I shall never see you
again,' she said to Father Singlin, who had come by stealth to
visit her once more ; ' but I promise never again to be afraid
of God.'
Her nephew de Saci had paid her frequent visits. At length
the time came when he could no longer do so vrithout danger
to the community. They hesitated to tell her, and she guessed
it, saying, 'Ah, my poor nephew, he is not to come again; I
shall never see him more. It is the will of God. I have
nothing to do with it My nephew without God can do
nothing for me, , and God without my nephew is all in all.'
And again she said : ' It does not distress me that I cannot
see Father Singlin. I know that he is praying for me and that
is enough. I revere him greatly, but I do not put a man in
the place of God.'
On one point she was unchanged. ' Bury me in the grave
yard,' she said, ' and pray don't let there be so much nonsense
after my death.'
For some days before the last she w^s scarcely conscious,
but from time to time she rallied, and then the same words
were repeated : ' Adieu, my children, adieu, adieu, adieu,' And
at the last, ' Jesus, oh Jesus, you are my God, my justice, my
strength, my all.'
And thus on the 6th of August, 1661, in the midst of the
storm and tempest of persecution, she sank calmly to her rest.
We may truly say that her work was finished. And what was
the end of it ? Her labours in the cause of conventual reform
had been abandoned, and she and all her nuns were clinging
desperately to the one shred and particle of truth that they
had discovered, _ They would not sign a formulary stating
that five propositions were contained in a book written in an
unknown tongue, which they never had read and never should
read. "They would not condemn a man as a heretic whom
they believed to be a saint, and whose pure doctrines were
capable of regenerating the world.
This was what Angelique's death taught the devoted women

XXIV.] THE END. 325
who stood in silence round her grave. They, too, would
be faithful to the end ; they would not shrink from bear
ing the cross, although like her they might fall beneath the
burden, ' Pure as angels,' said the angty Archbishop of Paris, M, de
Perefixe, 'they are proud as devils,' This was the judgment
of the church, and their reward on earth was persecution,
tribulation and privation,
Agnes survived Angelique ten years. Upon her refusal to
sign the formulary in 1664, she was torn from Port Royal and
imprisoned in a convent of the Order of Visitation, where
her treatment is a remarkable comment on the farewell letter
in which Mdme, de Chantal rejoices at the friendly feeling of
those of her Order for Port Royal,^ Agnes was imprisoned ;
the Last Sacraments were refused when she was believed to
be dying, and finally she was threatened that her dead body
should be thrown out unburied if she did not submit. It was
in vain ; she did not yield, and never signed. After ten
months she was released, and died at Port Royal des Champs,
in 1 67 1, at seventy-eight years of age.
Before long there was a division in the monastery. The nuns
not trained by the Arnaulds, or influenced by St Cyran or his
successor Singlin, readily yielded to the wishes of the new Supe
rior and confessors. Port Royal de Paris soon became all that
they could desire, and was the abode of intrigue and revelry.
The Abbess gave brilliant entertainments, and made application
to the sister house for funds to defray her expenses. Where
upon the King said, ' No, no. If Port Royal de Paris dances,
Port Royal des Champs shall not pay the piper.' There was a
final separation between the two monasteries, and those who
were faithful to the tradition of their house and the memory
of Angelique, retired to the now scantily endowed house in the
country. All the after history of Port Royal des Champs is a tale of
bitter relentless hostility to the Recluses, of mean unmanly
persecution of the nuns. There were Amaulds among them
still,^ and they not only did not yield, they fought nobly for
1 Page 267.
2 Notably Angelique de St. Jean, d'Andilly's second daughter : ' a
prodigy of talent and goodness,' as the Memoirs not unjustly say. All the
best accounts of Angelique are from her pen.

326 THE END. , [chap.
every inch of ground, and by protests, petitions, and remon
strances, held the enemy in check. But the end came at last.
Fifty years after Angelique's death there were still twenty-
two nuns at Port Royal des Champs. They were old and feeble
women ; bedridden, paralytic, dying. They had been shut up
within the convent, without confessor, without priest, vrithout
sacraments for the dying ; they had been excommunicated, and
yet they had not yielded, nor set their hands to the detested lie.
Mdme. de Maintenon, a hard, narrow bigot, ridiculed their
sufferings ; and she, as well as the Jesuit confessors of Louis
XIV., had always exasperated him against Port Royal. He
was now urged to take the final step — disperse these old
women, and raze their monastery to the ground.
On the 26th of October, 1709, the decree ofthe King in
Council was granted. D'Argenson, vrith a troop of three
hundred soldiers, was appointed to carry it out. He had also
twenty-two lettres de cachet, numerous carriages, and perraission
from Cardinal de Noailles to enter all the cloistered parts of
the abbey.
When he reached Port Royal and seated himself on the
throne of the Abbess, the nuns, whom he had summoned,
appeared before him veiled and silent He deprived them of
papers, property, titie-deeds, all that they had, and made
known to them the King's decree of exUe : they were to be
immediately sent one by one to different convents out of the
diocese of Paris. The Prioress asked if they might not go
two by two, as many of them were so infirm. 'The answer
was 'No.'
Might they have time to prepare for their departure and take
a few necessaries with them ? Ten minutes were granted.
They were re-assembled, and placed one after the other in the
carriages waiting to convey them to their destinations. Many
of them were between seventy and eighty years old; the
oldest was eighty-six, the youngest more than fifty. Many
were too infirm to walk ; one was borne away in a litter. Some
died on the joumey; others as soon as they reached their
destination. They were imprisoned in cells without window-
light or fire, deprived of sacraments and their dying or dead
hands guided to obtain a signature vvhich no persecution had
previously been able to draw from them. At length the
Church was able to assert triumphantly that their obstinacy

XXIV.] THE END. 327
was vanquished, and that its faithful efforts had been rewarded
by the signature of these formidable enemies.
Even this was not enough. The monastery where the nuns
had dwelt, and the farmhouse of the Recluses, the church in
which they had worshipped together, and the quiet graveyard
in which so many were buried, were a memorial and a protest.
They must be destroyed and overthrown. They were laid low
to the foundations ; and then a band of workmen, prepared for
their task by drink, broke open the graves of Recluses and
nuns, tore the bodies -from their graves, threw them together
in heaps, and allowed the dogs to feed on them. The
lacerated remains were heaped up in carts, and conveyed to a
large pit near the churchyard of St. Lambert, into which they
were cast.
When Louis XIV. lay on his death-bed, he thought of this
scene, and of the dying women whom he had tormented. He
turned to the Jesuits by his side and said —
' If indeed you have misled and deceived me, you are
deeply guUty ; for, in trath, I acted in good faith. I sincerely
sought the peace of the Church.'
AU was over; and at length in the narpe of right and truth
and for the sake of the ' peace of the Church ' one of the noblest
efforts of the seventeenth century had been utterly and finally
trampled out.
Angelique had striven to substitute order for disorder,
virtuous self-denial for vicious indulgence, and charity .for
spoliation. Far and vride stories of the good Abbess of Port
Royal found their way into convents and monasteries, and
roused monks and nuns from the sloth of self indulgence. Her
great courage carried her triumphantly through all the diffl
culties she encountered. She was never daunted, never dis
couraged ; the thing that seemed to her right she must do at
any cost to herself or others. Nuns were weak and foolish,
and priests wicked; the same difflculties met her again and
again. All the tricks of dream, and vision, and miracle, she
knew and hated, and was on her guard against them. She tried
to make the religion of her house pure and undefiled, and when
she failed, with unshrinking courage she was ready to begin
again, and to try once more. There was nothing small or mean
about her, no petty jealousy, no pride : ' My Order is that of
all the Saints,' and all the Saints are of my Order,' as she said.

328 THE END [chap, xxiv.
We cannot wonder that her personal purity and active
philanthropy exercised such marvellous influence over others ;
that into the magic circle of which she was the centre, she
drew mother, sisters, brothers, cousins, nephews, and nieces.
The ' eloquent family,' Balzac called the Arnaulds, they were
also the earnest family; having put their hands to the
plough, not one of them ever drew back. They were un
daunted by hardship, poverty, persecution, death, and not one
Amauld was faithless to the example of heroic endurance and
lofty courage which the great Angelique had set It would be
an easy and a thankless office to point out Angelique's mistakes,
to call attention to her sordid humiliations, penance, and
childish superstitions. They are here faithfuUy recorded. If
such a woman, vrith high aims, exalted morality, and vigorous
intellect, could not free herself and her household from them,
the fault lies with the system and not vrith the individual. She
did all that would be possible for any vvoman, and more than
is attainable by the majority.
Angelique Arnauld is nothing more than a name, but a name
which those who have once known it can never forget Her
influence survives though not her work. Her heroism may
kindle our hearts, but we search in vain for any traces of that
Port Royal des Champs she loved so well, of the church in
which she worshipped, and the chapter-house in which she
spoke. The Roman Catholic Church has rejected her, and
yet the truth remains that she is of ' the Order of all the
Saints, and aU the Saints are of her Order.

THE END.

LONDON : K. CLAY, SONS, AND TAVLOK, PKINTERS,

Bedford Street, Covent Garden,
London, W.C.
1871.
MESSRS. MACMILLAN & CO.
BEG TO ANNOUNCE THAT THEY HAVE NOW IN
COURSE OF PUBLICATION
A SUNDAY LIBRARY

HOUSEHOLD READING.
In crown 8vo. Volumes, handsomely bound in cloth,
price 4^. (id. With Illustrations. The Four Volumes
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The projectors of the Sunday Library feel that there is
a want of books of a kind that will be welcome in many
Households for reading on Sundays, and will be in accord
ance with earnest convictions as to the nature of the
" Sabbath Day "

Sunday is the day of rest, as well as the day of worship,
and this rest should consist not only in the cessation of
labour, but in the repose which the spirit finds in the con
templation of all things that are good. We should be
strengthened for the work of the week by the services of the
Sabbath, and also by religious contemplation, in which on
that day, if on no other, we ought to find the deep and
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our work-day lives ; and these work-days should be the
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do more than afford abstract subjects of meditation ; they
should exercise a living power, by bringing ?es into direct
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the central truth of humanity.
For Sunday reading, therefore, we need not only history,
but history in its relation to Christianity ; not only biography,
but the lives of men who have consciously promoted the
Christian religion — Christian heroes in art, in science, in
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The Publishers have secured the co-operation of very
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