ready for their reception; and in 1625 the nuns were transferred to this new abode, which received the appellation of Port Royal de Paris, in contradistinction to Port Royal des Champs.

It was while resident here that the Mère Angelique formed the friendship of M. de St. Cyran, whose name and influence are henceforth so identified with Port Royal. Jean Baptiste du Verger d'Hauranne, better known as the Abbé de St. Cyran, was one of the most remarkable men of a remarkable age. A fellow student at Louvain, and then at Bayonne, with Cornelius Jansen, he had devoted himself no less than his friend to the study of Augustine, and imbibed thoroughly the spirit and doctrines of the great Father of the West. Endowed with a penetrating and powerful genius, he had early attracted the notice of Richelieu. The great minister thought to make him subservient to his ambitious aims, and used every effort to secure the aid of his talents; but the pure and lofty student of Augustine stood aloof from his advances. Unable to bind him to his service, the Cardinal made him feel the weight of his power; and finally, on his refusal to sanction the divorce of Gascon, Duke of Orleans, who desired to marry his niece, he shut him up in the Castle of Vincennes. Before this act of tyranny, however, M. de St. Cyran had established such a powerful connexion with Port Royal, as the director of the monastery, that, immured as he was at Vincennes, his spirit animated the whole community; and his educational schemes were vigorously prosecuted by the recluses settled there. His fervent piety, combined with the natural authority of his character, and the devout catholicity of all his teaching, gave him a peculiar influence with the Mère Angelique. His strong spirit sustained and directed her in all her labours. She seemed to recognise in him again the pious image of St. Francis de Sales, only elevated by a clearer intellect, and a more enlightened devotion.

But it was not only over the nuns of Port Royal that St. Cyran exercised his spiritual control. His commanding character attracted

disciples among the most able and distinguished young men of the day. M. Le Maitre, a nephew of the Mère Angelique, had risen at an early age to great eminence at the bar, and was gifted with such a wonderful eloquence that crowds thronged to hear him plead. His brother, M. de Sericourt, had obtained a great military reputation. Suddenly both abandoned the world, and betook themselves to a life of religious seclusion. M. Claude Lancelot and other young men, who had lived in familiar intercourse with St. Cyran, joined them. They formed a compact body of disciples, devoted to the service of religion, and animated by a common zeal. Their house in Paris becoming too confined for their numbers, they resolved to retire to the University of Port Royal des Champs, which had now been deserted during thirteen years. Here, in 1638, they laid the foundation of the famous association of recluses which more lately established themselves at Les Granges.

The waste monastery was speedily repaired by their efforts; the marshy ground drained, and the water formed into lakes-the tangled brushwood cleared, and converted into avenues. The little company laboured with cheerful assiduity at their sacred task. The spacious gardens blossomed as the rose, and the walls of Port Royal arose from the ground amidst hymns of prayer and shouts of praise.'

The recluses of Port Royal did not bind themselves by any religious Vows; they assumed no special dress; but practically they were scarcely, if at all, distinguished from a religious order. Their time was divided between acts of devotion and of charity. They assembled regularly together, during both day and night, in church; twice each day the whole company attended the refectory; and private prayer and reading of the holy scriptures occupied the rest of their time. St. Cyran, from his prison at Vincennes, directed all their plans and movements, and it is especially remarkable with what earnestness he enforced upon them the study of the holy scriptures. Draw continually from this pure source,' he said; the sacred waters have this

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peculiarity, that they proportion and accommodate themselves to the wants of every one; a lamb may ford them, without fear, to quench his thirst; and an elephant may swim them, and find no bottom to their depths.'

Gradually this society grew and multiplied; distinguished names were enrolled among its members, and the fame of its piety and charity spread abroad. Port Royal became a great centre, both of practical benevolence and educational acti

vity. Several of its members studied physic and surgery, and occupied themselves in visiting and relieving the sick; others became acquainted with the law, in order to reconcile differences among their poorer neighbours; some preached; and many especially became teachers. Schools were instituted at various places,-at Chénet, at Des Troux, in Paris, and beside the monastery itself; and such men as De Saci, Lancelot, Nicole, and Fontaine, were among the number of the instructors. Pupils and masters, -professional eminence and literary genius, practical philanthropy and the most ardent devotion,-combined to shed a lustre around Port Royal. Never perhaps did a more brilliant and diverse array of talents gather around so lowly a centre, and become consecrated to higher uses. While yet at the school of Chénet, Tillemont traced out the plan of his immense and laborious works. Some of the finest verses of Racine's Tragedies were meditated amongst the woods of Port Royal. Arnauld here conceived and wrote some of his ablest treatises; the essays of Nicole, and the letters of De Saci, owed their inspiration to its lessons; and more than all, the Thoughts and Letters of Pascal were here moulded into sublimity, and sharpened to their rarest finish.

Shortly after the settlement of the recluses at Port Royal des Champs, it was found necessary to send there again a detachment of the nuns already overcrowding the residence in Paris, and the Mère Angelique returned at their head. The recluses prepared everything for their reception, received and bade them welcome to their restored habitation, endeared to them by so

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many associations; and then retired to their own new residence of Les Granges, on the brow of the hill overlooking the valley. The two communities virtually formed one body, controlled by the same spiritual direction, and animated by the same spirit; but they lived wholly apart, never meeting save at church, and then even separated by a grating. The sisterhood, under the rule of the Mère Angelique, rivalled the recluses in all active works of charity, extending their benevolent activity in every direction, and taking the young under their charge and education. Amid all her distinction and the extending fame of her labours, the Mère Angelique preserved a simple and humble spirit she was firm without ostentation, and ruled without pride. If an air of rather high-flown and imposing magnanimity is thrown around some of her actions, this is owing to the admiration of her biographers rather than to any elements of exaggeration in herself. During these happy years from 1638 to 1643-Port Royal reached under her superintendence its highest usefulness, and received the reward of its good deeds and honourable name, not merely in the love and respect of hundreds of benefactors, but in the growing murmurs and whispered malice of its enemies.

The

The first interruption to its quiet usefulness came from the wars of the Fronde. On the accession of Louis XIV. in 1643, and the appointment of Cardinal Mazarin as Prime Minister, many of the old nobility stirred up a powerful faction in opposition to the Court. Duchess de Longueville, sister to the great Condé, became the leading spirit of this faction, and by her beauty, energy, and enterprise, imparted an éclat to the movement, and dazzled the Parisians into a semi-revolt. The Queen Mother, with the Prince and Minister, were compelled to flee from Paris. Civil war seemed imminent, and violence, rapine, and desolation spread around the neighbourhood of the capital. The religious houses did not escape. The abbey of St. Cyr was ransacked, and a similar destruction threatened Port Royal. In the emergency,

the Mère Angelique drew off her nuns once more to Paris, whilst her friends engaged to defend and protect the monastery.

A strange scene now presented itself in the quiet valley. Instead of solitude was everywhere heard the sound of warlike preparation: the walls were strengthened, and small towers of defence were raised all round. The peaceful recluses were suddenly transformed into three hundred warriors armed cap-à-pie. Spears and helmets glittered amidst the dark recesses of the forests, and the din of arms was heard for the first time in a retreat so eminently consecrated to prayer.' Yet the same spirit of devotion animated the community, and amid all the bustle and excite

ment of approaching conflict, the exercises of religion and charity were never forgotten.

The exhortations of De Saci served to quell this warlike panic. He preached a higher trust than in any carnal weapons, and the hearts of the recluses as they listened to him smote them with shame for their weakness and fear. The nuns were recalled; arms were banished; and the monastery resumed its old aspect of devotional quietude. War, however, raged all around, and busy employment was found in relieving the wants of the sufferers, and ministering to the necessities of the wounded and pillaged.

The horrors of famine were superadded to those of war: the monastery became at once a storehouse and a hospital, and the abbess draws a touching picture of the miseries which she endeavoured but partially to alleviate :

Perhaps I shall not be able (she writes) to send you a letter to-morrow, for all our horses and asses are dead with hunger. O how little do princes know the detailed horrors of war! All the provender of the beasts we were obliged to divide between ourselves and the starving poor. We concealed as many of the peasants and their cattle as we could in our monastery, to save

them from being murdered and losing all their substance. Our dormitory and the chapter-house were full of horses. We were almost stifled by being pent up with these beasts; but we could not resist the piercing lamentations of the starving and heart-broken poor. In

the cellar were concealed forty cows. Our court-yards and outhouses are stuffed full of fowls, turkeys, ducks, geese, and The church is piled up to the ceiling with corn, oats, beans, and pease,

asses.

and with caldrons, kettles, and other things belonging to the cottagers. Every time we enter the chapel we are obliged to scramble over sacks of flour and all sorts of rubbish; our laundry is thronged with the aged, the blind, the maimed, the halt, and infants; the infirmary is full of the sick and wounded. We have torn up all our rags and linen clothes to dress their sores. The cold weather alone preserves us from pestilence. We are so closely crowded that deaths happen continually. God, however, is with us, and we are in peace.

These destructions arising from civil commotion were but the beginning of sorrows for the Port Royalists. A fiercer storm had for some time been gathering against them. The Jesuits had watched their progress with jealousy; they could not see without alarm a party strong in numbers, and still stronger in intelligence and piety, surround the hated names of St. Cyran and Arnauld. The former had become especially obnoxious to them as the editor of the Augustinus of his friend Jansen. The latter had, with his accustomed vigour, taken up the quarrel regarding the five propositions which they professed to have extracted from this work, and against which they succeeded, in 1653, in obtaining a Papal Bull denouncing them to be heretical, false, rash, impious, and blasphemous.' It was obvious that the Jesuits were resolved on a war of extermination. Facts might be against them, and genius and piety enlisted in the cause of Port Royal and the doctrines with which it had 'become identified; but these obstacles only served to quicken the ardour of a faction which in its hostility knew no scruples and gave no quarter. The Abbé de St. Cyran had in the mean time passed beyond their rage. Released by the death of Richelieu from his long imprisufferings immediately afterwards, sonment, he yet sank under his and expired on the 11th of October, 1643. But the conflict continued to be waged around the Augustinus. When the five propositions of Father Cornet were declared by the friends

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of Jansen not to be in his book, the Jesuits had recourse to Rome for another decree on the subject, to the effect that the propositions were not only heretical, but that they were in the Augustinus; and they actually succeeded in this monstrous scheme! The Pope asserted his infallibility so far as to declare it to be a matter of fact that the propositions were contained in the book of Jansen. To this the Port Royalists naturally demurred as even beyond the province of Papal infallibility, and the conflict raged more fiercely than ever.

Arnauld, to whom had descended the position and influence of St. Cyran, published, in 1656, two letters on the subject of discussion, and the tide of resentment and attack, which had been long threatening him, immediately swayed in his direction. With their usual tactics his Jesuitical enemies selected two propositions from his letters which they submitted to his colleagues in the Sorbonne, and after a long-continued discussion they succeeded in having them condemned. His expulsion followed; and they gave themselves up to a temporary feeling of triumph over their powerful adversary.

Their joy, however, was but short-lived. The disgraceful means by which the decision of the Sorbonne was sought to be influenced, and the indignant feeling which was consequently excited, called a champion into the field whose immortal pen has branded in ineffaceable lines their proceedings and their character. Even before the sentence of the Sorbonne was published, the first of the Provincial Letters had appeared; and no sooner did the sentence become known, than assault followed assault in a manner that carried dismay into the stoutest ranks of the domineering faction. Better certainly had it been for the peace and fame of the Jesuits that they had never roused such a pen as Pascal's; for never did playful satire, rising at last into indignant invective, set in a more scathing light the enormities of any sect or system.

But, startled as they were by this new and visored opponent, they did not flinch from their purpose of

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vengeance. They obtained an order from Government to abolish the Port Royal schools, which, as seminaries of Jansenism, they regarded with special hatred. The officers of police, accompanied by a troop of archers, proceeded to Port Royal, and having made a list of all the schools, forthwith expelled both masters and scholars. They then dismissed all the recluses on pain of imprisonment, and were about to carry out the same severe measures against the nuns, when an extraordinary event arrested their violence, and for the time saved Port Royal from utter destruction.

Marguerite Perrier, a niece of Pascal, and for some years an inmate of the abbey, had suffered greatly from a fistula lachrymalis of a loathsome and apparently incurable description. Allmedical skill had failed to remove or even mitigate the disease. On a sudden she was reported to be instantaneously and completely cured. A priest had brought to the abbey a holy relica thorn from the Saviour's crown: the pious zeal of the sisterhood was greatly excited, and a procession formed to view and kiss the sacred emblem of the Passion. As Marguerite Perrier passed along with the others before the relic, she was advised by one of the sisters to apply it to her diseased eye. The consequence was the instantaneous cure, soon everywhere reported. A holy dismay fell upon the enemies of Port Royal. They shrank from their meditated violence. Not only friends, but strangers, gave credit to the miracle, and the Queen Mother herself, apparently convinced of it, gave orders to withdraw the troops and leave the sanctuary unmolested.

It would be idle to enter into any examination of this supposed miracle. It is quite true that Pascal, Nicole, and Tillemont sincerely believed in it, and that the very officers who had been commissioned to carry out the obnoxious Order of Council for the expulsion of the nuns reported the fact of the cure. The fact indeed can scarcely be doubted; but when the circumstances attending the professed cause of the cure are attentively regarded, the mystery, if not ex

plained, yet greatly vanishes. The little Perrier,' as she was called, appears to have been a mere tool in the hands of the Sour Flavie Passart, who suggested the application of the remedy. The subsequent conduct of this woman; her unscrupulous ambition; and the ingenious deceptions by which she sought to advance her aims; her talents and her want of principle; leave scarcely any doubt that the whole affair was cleverly concocted and accomplished by her.

The

prone faith of both nuns and recluses, and the unquestioned sacredness attached to the relic in the eyes alike of friends and enemies, sufficiently account for the ready assent yielded to the imposture.

Shortly after this unexpected deliverance, and the extended fame which arose from it, another remarkable event brought credit and distinction to Port Royal. Madame de Longueville, the heroine of the Fronde, whose wit, beauty, and accomplishment had well nigh plunged her country into civil war, became a visitant to Port Royal and a convert under the hallowing influences which there surrounded her. 'Her schemes of dominion were renounced, the haughty intrepidity of her manner disappeared, her restless and perturbed spirit became calm and peaceful.' And not only herself, but her brother and sister, the Prince and Princess Conti, became the subjects of this remarkable change. They abandoned their ambitious views, deplored the evils that had sprung out of them, and instead of devoting their immense revenues to a lavish and ostentatious expense, they turned them to purposes of charity, and especially devoted them to the benefit of those whose fortunes had been injured by the civil commotions which they had excited.

Such an illustrious example of the Christian influence of Port Royal, however, was again fatal to its peace. Instead of further quelling its enemies, it stirred them up to new attempts to disturb and subvert it. In 1660 a second formulary was concocted by the Jesuits, founded on the Bull of Alexander VII., affirming not only the heresy of the five propositions, but the fact that

they were contained in the work of Jansenius. The formulary was framed by the Archbishop of Tou louse, and all clergy and schoolmasters, and members of religious houses, were required to subscribe it. The Port Royalists unanimously refused their subscription; the recluses alleging the distinction between the duty of submission in matters of faith and matters of fact; the nuns professing their inability to decide upon oath as to the contents of a book which, being in Latin, they were incompetent to read. No excuses, however, were held valid. The order was given to enforce subscription under the penalty of expulsion; and the result was the invasion and devastation of the establishments both of Port Royal de Paris and Port Royal des Champs.

The former was the first threatened; and at the call of danger the Mère Angelique, who had spent the winter in Port Royal des Champs in a state of great feebleness, resolved to set out, to be with her afflicted sisters. But the hardships of the journey and the miseries that awaited her proved too much for her exhausted strength. She sank under her sufferings on the 6th of August, 1661-her last thoughts being with her children.' My dear children, adieu! adieu!' she cried; let us go to God.' She united,' says Besogne, 'a profound humility to a sublime genius.' She was certainly one of those rare cha racters who, to all womanly gentleness and virtue, united the most heroic firmness and a profound capacity of government. Her powers developed themselves all the more amidst difficulties and opposition. Her character brightened under suffering; and of all the Arnaulds,

there is none whose name is sur

rounded by a more illustrious