VIOLENT PROCEEDINGS.

81

The quarrel grew more hot between the Jesuits and Port
Hoyal, and was telling against the former, when the P&re
Tellier brought all his influence to bear, to change the current
of success. He was, as I have said, an ardent man, whose
divinity was his Molinism, and the company to which he
belonged. Confessor to the King, he saw himself in a good
position to exercise unlimited authority. He saw that the
King was very ignorant, and prejudiced upon all religious
matters; that he was surrounded by people as ignorant and as
prejudiced as himself, Madame de Main tenon,, M. de Beauvilliers,
M. de Chevreuse, and others, and he determined to take good
advantage of this state of things. Step by step he gained over
the King to his views, and convinced him that the destruction
of the monastery of Port Eoyal des Champs was a duty which
he owed to his conscience, and the cause of religion. This
point gained, the means to destroy the establishment were soon
resolved on.

There was another monastery called Port Royal, at Paris, in
addition to the one in question. It was now pretended that
the latter had only been allowed to exist by tolerance, and that
it was necessary one should cease to exist. Of the two, it was
alleged that it was better to preserve the one at Paris. A de-
cree in council was, therefore, rendered, in virtue of which, on
the night from the 28th to the 29th of October, the abbey of
Port Eoyal des Champs was secretly invested by troops, and,
on the next morning, the officer in command made all the in-
mates assemble, showed them a lettre de cachet, and, without
giving them more than a quarter of an hour's warning, carried
off everybody and everything. He had brought with him
many coaches, with an elderly woman in each; he put the
nuns in these coaches, and sent them away to their destina-
tions, which were different monasteries., at ten, twenty, thirty,
forty, and even fifty leagues distant, each coach accompanied
by mounted archers, just as public women are carried away
from a house of ill-fame! I pass in silence all the accompani-
ments to this scene, so touching and so strangely new. There
have been entire volumes written upon it.

VOL. n. 6