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HEcdF 
L 

THE 

NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

AS SEEN IN THEIR OWN NARRATIVES 

BY 
M. E. LOWNDES, LITT.D. 

AUTHOR OF 'MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE', A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY 



HENRY FROWDE 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK, TORONTO 

AND MELBOURNE 

1909 



OXFORD I HORACE HART 
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 

...;? :D Iri ENGLAND 



PREFACE 

THE Narratives of the Nuns of Port Royal introduce us to 
a world of women, and of women not merely set aside, by 
disability of sex, from the purposeful activities of man, but 
deprived also, by their own deliberate choice, of the peculiar 
dower of womanhood. Such a world might well seem remote 
from modern sympathies. True, the unmarried woman is 
frequent now as then, and in England to-day she plays her role 
in life oblivious as any nun of the reproductive functions which 
nature granted her, and which once were thought a woman's 
main reason for existence. But circumstances rather than 
renunciation, the mechanical working of monogamy in a 
society of disproportioned sexes, produces the phenomenon 
now, and it is not in a secluded life of prayer and submissive 
ordered service that the woman of to-day finds a substitute 
for wifely and maternal cares. 

Nevertheless, despite radical difference of view and aim, 
feminine human nature would seem to have been very much 
then what it is now. The annals of these seventeenth-century 
nuns, whose convent was destroyed two hundred years ago, 
display it sometimes running to the weeds of petty jealousies, 
touchy and small-minded, and many a community to-day, 
even though uncloistered, could cap the tale ; they show it also, 
and this is the burden of the narrative, blossoming to the flower 
of self-forgetful magnanimity, and here again the open field of 
modern life can call up subjects for fit comparison. In truth, 
the narratives of Port Royal have an almost modern ring. 
Earlier conventual tales may show women in a similar light, 
with the same broad cleft between the petty and the generous- 
souled ; a S. Theresa or S. Catherine may emerge, as effectively 
as the Mere Angelique, from an environment where trivial 
cares abound. But the earlier figures are clouded to our under- 
standing by a veil of mysticism ; these of the seventeenth 



iv PREFACE 

century are depicted with the clear-sightedness of a highly 
analytic, semi-rationalizing epoch, and appear before us, not 
as saints, but as very human women. The recrudescence of 
religious fervour then in France was tempered, at Port Royal 
more especially, by an accompaniment of critical common sense. 
In all that did not touch on definite articles of faith, the 
spirit of examination was fully roused, and was the more 
acute from a sense of past illusion and abuse. Above all it 
was freely exercised in the field of character. The general 
tendency of the age gave birth to La Rochefoucauld and La 
Bruyerc ; at Port Royal, care for sincerity played the part of 
curiosity and psychological insight in skilful probing of springs 
and motives of human conduct. An oft-repeated saying, 
' that there can be no knowledge of humanity without acquaint- 
ance with Port Royal,' may be an exaggeration of enthusiasts ; 
but the converse at least is true, that from the scrupulously 
candid narratives of nuns and messieurs reliable knowledge 
of human nature may be gathered. 

In their later history, the nuns of Port Royal may suggest 
a parallel with modern women, as regards not character alone 
but conduct. These nuns, for choice hidden in their cloister, 
were brought to play, against their will, a prominent role, and 
to exercise intelligence and courage in matters making a general 
stir. They bore the brunt of suffering entailed by the Church's 
condemnation of their teachers not, in passive woman's imme- 
morial way, with mere patient endurance of consequences 
others had set in train, but by active adherence to a cause. 
Trained though they were to obedience and nurtured in retire- 
ment, they displayed, under ' persecution ', qualities, per- 
tinacity, grasp of the essential issues, power of logical argument, 
even of appeal to the law, with capacity for corporate action , 
that are conspicuously displayed now, yet still excite surprise, 
among women more liberally taught to use their faculties. 
Even to the spectacle of virtuous women sustaining isolation 
and confinement for the cause they champion, and ever the 
more settled in their resolve, may the parallel with modern 
life be drawn. 

Such meeting of extremes is but one of the curiosities of 
history. For the rest the memoirs here gathered are con- 



PREFACE v 

cerned with the growth and character of the convent rather 
than with its dissolution and behaviour in the final days of 
stress. That is the climax, but not the substance of the tale. 
And only in broad outline and so far as it affects the convent is 
the tale of Jansenism and the long-enduring struggle between 
Jansenists and Jesuits told again here. That tale is one of 
great moment in ecclesiastical history ; certain of the issues 
raised are vital still, others appear relegated to the limbo of 
questions, not solved indeed, but for ever shelved. It is of 
moment, besides, in the more general history of France in the 
seventeenth century ; for the struggle, with the partisanship 
it aroused, left its mark upon literature and upon social life. 
The reader who would follow the tale in its ramifications and in 
detail, embedded as it were in the whole seventeenth century, 
can do so, to greatest profit and pleasure still, in the many 
volumes of Sainte-Beuve's Port-Royal ; among more circum- 
scribed accounts, none has superseded the contemporary 
Abrc'ge de VHistoire de Port-Royal by the dramatist Racine, 
which can be most conveniently read in the admirable annotated 
edition by M. Gazier (1908). In English, Port Royal, by Charles 
Beard, B.A., in 2 vols., 1861, is a careful and impartial work, 
but cannot, naturally, sustain comparison with the Port-Royal of 
Sainte-Beuve. A recent survey of the movement of Jansenism, 
in its relation to The Gallican Church, is given in the Cambridge 
Modern History, vol. v, by Viscount St-Cyres. 

For those who would penetrate to documents and sources, 
the Repertoire Al-phabe'tique des Personnes et des Choses de Port- 
Royal par A. Maulvault (Champion, 1902) may serve as partial 
guide, although the bibliography, which for the rest does not 
profess to be complete, omits a work of such capital importance 
as the Lettres de la Mere Ange'lique. Sainte-Beuve (Port-Royal, 
3rd ed., 1888, vol. iii, p. 631) also gives ' le catalogue d'une 
petite bibliotheque janseniste', and, at the close of his 
above-mentioned edition of Racine's Histoire de Port-Royal, 
M. Gazier gives a fuller Essai de Bibliographie Port-Roy aliste. 
Special attention need be called here only to the Mc'moires de 
Godefroi Hermant, since, long known in manuscript, they have 
only quite recently been published. 1 This exact and detailed 

1 Memoires de Godefroi Hermant, docteur de Sorbonne, chanoine de 



vi PREFACE 



of events from 1630 to 1663 is not, certainly, the 
most agreeable reading among the memoirs of Port Royal, but 
is probably the best-informed as regards what passed beyond 
the actual precincts of the community, and it is now, by the 
c.ire of its editor, M. Gazier, the most easily accessible, since 
the zeal of orthodoxy, added to the natural ravages of time, has 
made the earlier publications very scarce. 

The majority of the narratives, letters, and other records 
preserved by nuns and messieurs, copied and even circulated 
in MS. by pious friends after the destruction of the convent, 
were printed in the first half of the eighteenth century. As 
regards the story of the nuns, the collection entitled Me'moires 
pour servir a VHistoire de Port-Royal, et a la Vie de la Reverende 
Mire Marie- Angdique, de Sainte Magdaleine Arnauld, Reforma- 
trice de ce Monastere, Utrecht, 1742, 3 vol. in-i2, is of primary 
value, and from it the narratives translated in this present 
volume, notably that by the Mere Angelique herself, are most ex- 
tensively taken. Supplementary to it and of equally first-hand, 
though more scattered, interest, are the largely autobiographical 
Vies inter essantes et e'difiantes des Religieuses de Port-Royal et de 
plusicurs personnes qui leur ctaient attache'es . . . s. 1., 1750, 
4 vol. in-i2 ; among them are the narratives of Sceur Genevieve 
de I'lncarnation Pineau, forcibly persuaded to become a nun, 
and of Sceur Jacqueline de Sainte Euphemie Pascal, trans- 
lated here in full. Other sources drawn upon more or less 
extensively are the : 

Lettres dc la Reverende Mere Marie- Angelique Arnauld, 

abbesse et rc'formatrice de Port-Royal. A Utrecht, 1742-4, 

3 vol. in-i2 ; 
Entrcticns ou Conferences de la Reverende Mere Marie 

Angelique Arnauld, abbesse et rc'formatrice de Port-Royal. 

A Bruxelles, 1757, i vol. in-i2 ; 
The graphic work by a Port Royal nun (Sceur Eustoquie 

de Bregy) entitled Modele de Foi et de Patience dans 

Beauvais, ancien rcctcur dc 1'Universite, sur 1'Histoire Ecclesiastique 
du xvn* sicclc (1630-63), publics pour la premiere fois sur le manuscrit 
autographe et sur les anciennes copies authentiques, avec une intro- 
duction el des notes par A. Gazier. Paris: Librairie Plon, Plon-Nourrit 
et C ie , 1905-8, 5 vol. in-8 (vol. vi and index are still to appear). 



PREFACE vii 

toutes les traverses de la vie et dans les grandes persecutions, 
ou Vie de la Mere Marie des Anges (Suireau), Abbesse 
de Maubuisson et de Port-Royal, s.L, 1754, 2 vol. in-i2 ; 
Memoires touchant la vie de M. de Saint-Cyran, par M. 
Lancelot, pour servir d 1 e'claircissement a rhistoire de Port- 
Royal. Cologne, aux depens de la Compagnie, 1738, 
2 vol. in-i2 ; 

Memoires pour servir a rhistoire de Port-Royal, par 
M. Fontaine. Utrecht, aux depens de la Compagnie, 
1736, 2 vol. in-i2 ; 

Memoires de Pierre Thomas, sieur Du Fosse, publies en 
entier pour la premiere fois d'apres le manuscrit original, 
avec une introduction et des notes, par F. Bouquet. Rouen, 
1876-9, 4 vol. in-8 ; 

Recueil de plusieurs pieces pour servir a VHistoire de Port- 
Royal, ou supplement aux Memoires de MM. Fontaine, 
Lancelot et du Fosse. Utrecht, aux depens de la Com- 
pagnie, 1740, i vol. in-i2 ; 

and, for the conclusion only, two collections which are, for the 
latter days of Port Royal, of complementary value to the 
Memoires pour servir . . . and the Vies . . . des Religieuses . . . 
for the earlier, viz. : 

Divers Actes, Lettres et Relations des Religieuses de Port- 
Royal du Saint- Sacrement, touchant la persecution et les 
violences qui leur ont ete faites au sujet de la signature du 
Formulaire. s. 1., n.d. [1722], in-4 ; 
Histoire des Persecutions des Religieuses de Port-Royal. 

Rentes par elles-memes. A Ville-Franche, 1753, in-4. 
The few other works cited or referred to are sufficiently indi- 
cated in the notes. 

The nuns of Port Royal were introduced to English readers 
as long ago as 1816, by Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, a member of 
the Moravian Brotherhood, in a Narrative of the Demolition of 
the Monastery of Port Royal des Champs, and more fully in 
1829, m Select Memoirs of Port Royal. These works were 
inspired by sympathy with elements in Port Royal and the 
movement of Jansenism that appear akin to the spirit of 
Protestantism : insistence upon the power of grace and upon 
the spiritual content of sacraments and ceremonies, sobriety 



Vlll 



PREFACE 



of faith and puritanism of living, with the attitude of com- 
parative independence in respect of Papal authority. A 
contrary tendency is visible in two recent works upon Port 
Royal : Angcliquc of Port Royal, by W. K. H., 1905, and The 
Story of Port Royal, by Ethel Romanes, 1907. There the nuns 
and messieurs appear rather in the light they would themselves 
have undoubtedly preferred, as faithful children of the Roman 
Catholic Church, clinging to her at all hazards and at one 
with her on points that to the Protestant mind seem non- 
essential or superstitious. The present account, so far as it 
may claim to strike an individual note, would do so by complete 
impartiality, even indifference, on this point, and would gladly 
rouse a purely human interest in these nuns, without pronounc- 
ing on their principles or purposing to edify the reader of what- 
ever school of thought. For the rest, the tale is left, so far as 
the exigencies of narrative permit, to the chief personages 
themselves concerned. Only, since the accounts repeat and 
overlap, selection and arrangement, curtailment sometimes 
and sometimes elucidation , has been inevitable, and inevitable 
also a slight connective framework. 

The reader may distinguish at a glance these particular 
seventeenth-century narratives and citations, from the general 
supplementary tale, by greater closeness of type and, again, 
by the more generous use of capital letters. I have thought 
well, even at the risk of apparent typographical irregularity, 
to observe this distinction, honouring, e. g. nuns, novices, and 
postulants with capitals where the nuns themselves, and their 
eighteenth-century editors, do so, but without carrying the 
respect further. All that serves to emphasize and demarcate 
the actual sources commends itself naturally to their translator, 
upon whom, and not upon the proof-reader, rests the sole 
responsibility in this matter of capitals. The attempt has been 
made also to preserve the physiognomy of the narratives in 
their easy disregard of style and structure, and, more difficult 
task, in their often picturesque and always vivid simplicity. 
It is not for the writer to judge how far the endeavour has 
succeeded. 

As regards illustrations, the views of the convent and the 



PREFACE ix 

portraits of Saint-Cyran, Jansenius, and the Mere Angelique 
(frontispiece) are reproduced, by kind permission of the Court 
of Sion College, from prints in the College Library. The views, 
which were suppressed when Port Royal was finally condemned, 
and are in consequence scarce, were engraved and sold by 
a certain Madeleine Hortemels, daughter of a bookseller, and 
doubtless represent faithfully the appearance of the convent 
in its latter days. The design for the Church of Port Royal 
in Paris is from a book of Le Pautre's architectural engravings 
in the British Museum Reading-room. Comparison with the 
building still extant, or with the contemporary engraving by 
Marot (reproduced by M. Andre Hallays, Le Pelerinage de Port- 
Royal, 1909), show the design to have been carried out in a 
slightly modified and simpler form. The view of the Church of 
the Carmelites from an engraving by Israel Silvestre is taken, 
by kind permission of the Duke of Devonshire, from the 
collection at Chatsworth, for in the matter of engravings by 
Silvestre the rich Print-room of the British Museum betrays com- 
parative poverty. The portraits are after paintings by Philippe 
de Champaigne, devoted friend to Port Royal, whose daughter 
was among the nuns and was distinguished by a miraculous 
cure from illness in the year 1662. The famous painting, now 
in the Louvre, by which the father celebrated this event, is 
reproduced from a photograph by Giraudon. The second 
portrait given of the Mere Angelique is from an original painting 
by Champaigne, a replica of which is at Chantilly. I am 
indebted to the owner, M. Gazier, for the photograph and for 
leave to reproduce it. The death-mask of the Mere Angelique 
is from a photograph of the original now in the possession of the 
little community of Sceurs de Sainte Marthe at Magny-les- 
Hameaux, not far from the site of Port Royal des Champs. 
The mask is thought to have been modelled by the niece, so 
diligent in collecting memoirs, Sceur Angelique de S. Jean 
Arnauld ; its eventual destination, when the Sceurs de Sainte 
Marthe shall have accomplished the process of peaceful extinc- 
tion which was denied to those of Port Royal, is the museum 
erected upon the site of the ancient convent-chapel. 

The ruins, or site rather, for little else remains, of Port Royal 
des Champs still keep alive, under the zealous custodianship of 



x PREFACE 

M . < i.i/ier, the memory of nuns and messieurs. And to M. Gazier, 
who guards in Paris also the archives of Port Royal, I here 
gratefully record thanks for many courtesies and for kindly 
encouragement and aid when, now some years ago, I first 
thought of presenting the Nuns of Port Royal to the English 
public. This year M. Gazier is bringing out, in record of the 
second centenary of the final suppression of the convent 
(October the 2Qth, 1709), an album, Port-Royal au XVIP- siecle, 
Images ct portraits, reproducing, among the wealth of illustrative 
matter, many rare and beautiful engravings. May this present 
volume, in its humbler fashion, render in England a similar 
tribute to the memory of the nuns. 

M. E. L. 

LONDON, 
Oct. ist, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY ..... . . . i 

CHAPTER I 

The childhood of the Mere Angelique . . . 5 

CHAPTER II 

' Conversion ' of the Mere Angelique. The beginnings of reform 

at Port Royal ........ 19 

CHAPTER III 

The Mere Angelique's directors, and her sisters. The spirit of 

Port Royal 35 

CHAPTER IV 

The Mere Angelique goes to Maubuisson. Her intercourse there 

with S. Frangois de Sales and Mme de Chantal' . . 57 

CHAPTER V 

Reform at Maubuisson. Events as narrated by the Mere Ange- 
lique de S. Jean ........ 74 

CHAPTER VI 

The Mere Agnes. Comparison of the two sisters, Agnes and 

Angelique. Their youngest sister, Madelon, enters the 
convent, and also Madame Arnauld, their mother . .102 

CHAPTER VII 

Reform in other convents aided by the Mere Angelique. Narra- 
tive of the nun who accompanied her . . . 117 

CHAPTER VIII 

The convent transferred to Paris. Money difficulties. Con- 
nexion with the Bishop of Langres. The community quits 
the Cistercian Order. L'Institut du S. Sacvement . 124 

CHAPTER IX 
Changes at Port Royal .... . . 136 



xii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER X PAGE 

lu Mgnation of the Mere Angelique. The days of the nuns from 

Tarcl 149 

CHAPTER XI 
Tale of the girl forcibly induced to become a nun . . .162 

CHAPTER XII 

The Mere Angelique goes to the Institut du S. Sacrement. She 
comes under the direction of Saint-Cyran. Ill-will and 
jealousy aroused by the new foundation. Angelique returns 
to the Convent of Port Royal. . . . .187 

CHAPTER XIII 

Events at Port Royal during Angelique's absence and after her 
return. Further dissensions within that convent, and final 
peace .......... 206 

CHAPTER XIV 

The tale of Soeur Marie Claire Arnauld, her revolt and her sub- 
sequent penitence, as narrated by the Mere Angelique de 
S. Jean Arnauld, her niece . . . . . .214 

CHAPTER XV 

Saint-Cyran and the movement of reform springing from his 

influence 232 

CHAPTER XVI 
Saint-Cyran's relations with the Arnauld family. M. d'Andilly. 

M. le Maitre. The first hermits of Port Royal . . 245 

CHAPTER XVII 

Imprisonment of Saint-Cyran. Retreat of the recluses to Port 

Royal des Champs 256 

CHAPTER XVIII 

Antoine Arnauld. The ' Frequente Communion '. Increase of 

the hermits 264 

CHAPTER XIX 
The' growth of the convent. Activity of the Mere Angelique; 

her letters 273 

CHAPTER XX 

Return to Port Royal des Champs . . 288 



CONTENTS xiii 

CHAPTER XXI PAGE 

The Second Fronde. Temporary return to Paris . . 308 

CHAPTER XXII 

Soeur Jacqueline de Sainte Euphemie Pascal . 3 l % 

CHAPTER XXIII 

The Five Propositions. The Formula. Censure of Arnauld . 344 

CHAPTER XXIV 
The Lettves Provinciates. The Miracle of the Holy Thorn. 

Days of Respite . . -355 

CHAPTER XXV 
Renewal of ' Persecution '. The last days and death of the Mere 

Angelique ..... 37 

INDEX . 394 



THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

INTRODUCTORY 

THE Abbey of Port Royal, in the valley of Chevreuse, some 
twenty miles distant from Paris, dates back to a foundation 
as early as 1204. The pious Mathilde de Garlande, wife of 
Mathieu de Marli, of the house of Montmorenci, crusader, 
applied then a sum of money left in her hands for good works 
that should call down blessing on her husband's enterprise, 
to erect upon the site a convent for women. It was at first a 
small community of only twelve nuns, but, adopted early into 
the Cistercian Order and enriched by subsequent gifts, it grew 
and flourished with that Order in France, and again dwindled 
with the decay of monastic fervour. By the beginning of the 
seventeenth century it had fallen, like the majority of French 
convents, into sad decay. The small handful of nuns eleven, 
and three of them imbecile with their aged and infirm Abbess, 
lived as pleasantly as they could in the lonely country, and 
troubled themselves not in the least to observe their prescribed 
Rule of S. Benedict. The Abbey had been arrogated to the 
Crown, and had become in consequence a gift to be conferred 
for any reason of goodwill rather than for piety in a candidate 
for the post of Abbess. 

The semi-secularization of Church-gifts had become a matter 
of course. There remained scarcely a family but looked to 
the Church to provide for some of its members; for younger 
sons by a benefice, for superfluous daughters by a place in 
a convent as simple nun when the influence of the family 
was but slight, as Abbess where rank was high. The convents 
for their part, filled with girls sent from motives of economy 
not of piety, were more and more stringent in exacting a dowry 



LOWNDES 



2 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

which, though less than required to establish a woman ' in the 
world ', was sufficiently high to exclude one really poor ; and, 
changed in purpose from homes for saints to mere refuges for 
spinsters, they had changed consequently in habits. There 
the unmarried woman had a recognized place. She might live 
with honour if she would, enjoying still the innocent pleasures 
of visitors, feasting, and even elegance on the nun's model of 
dress ; were an honourable life not to her taste, opportunities 
for less sanctioned amusements were seldom lacking. Only 
the ancient profession, of poverty, seclusion, and obedience, 
remained unaltered. 

The Nuns of Port Royal conformed, so far as their limited 
chances allowed, to current practice ; and in the year 1599 
the King, Henri IV, appointed them in the most approved 
manner of the day a new Abbess, to succeed on the death 
of the aged Madame de Boulehard actually reigning. The 
appointment was of a child of seven, Jacqueline Arnauld by 
name, second daughter of M. Arnauld, barrister, and grand- 
daughter of M. Marion, who, also in the law, occupied the post 
of Avocat-General. This maternal grandfather, M. Marion, was 
a man of note, who was brought by his position into close 
contact with distinguished people and was honoured by the 
personal friendship of the King. He it was who, seeing the 
rapidity with which his daughter's family was increasing, and 
that already there were several girls, used his influence to 
obtain the Abbey of Port Royal for the little Jacqueline, and 
at the same time that of S. Cyr for the still younger Jeanne. 
The appointment of such very young Abbesses went a step 
beyond even current practice, or at least beyond current 
practice as approved by Rome. In order to procure the con- 
firmatory Bulls it was necessary to represent the children as 
already in their teens ; and the false statement was accord- 
ingly made, without scruple, it would seem, by these men 
of unquestioned probity and honour so venial were such 
matters held. 

From a bad beginning we cite the chroniclers of Port 
Royal good cannot be hoped for. The appointment in this 
lax manner of the child Jacqueline Arnauld, known to history 
as the Mere Angelique, is the exception to prove the rule. 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

That Abbess herself wrote in after-life the tale of God's 
providence for Port Royal, recounting how from this evil, and 
from others, good came. So far as possible in her words, and 
in those of her nuns, we propose to retell the tale. 

The narrative of the Mere Angelique is incomplete. She 
wrote it unwillingly also, and with something of dryness and 
constraint, acceding to her nuns' wishes only at the express 
command of her Director. The circumstances are told by one 
of the nuns, presumably by the mother's niece and namesake, 
Angelique de S. Jean, who was especially active in gathering 
rnemoirs : 

' The occasion which led the Mere Angelique to write this 
narrative must be made known. We had begun without her 
knowledge, more than two years previously, to write memoirs 
of all we had been able to learn relating to the early Nuns 
(les Anciennes) of Port Royal and to herself, touching what 
she had done to establish reform there and afterwards. But 
although we endeavoured to get her to talk on these matters, 
we had yet greater desire to engage her to write about them. 
We availed ourselves for that of a reason she had furnished 
us with herself, namely, that she frequently said to us, speaking 
of what had happened to her, that she had ground to write 
a Book of the Providence of God, so many had been her experi- 
ences of it ; and that there was nothing she more desired to 
leave us when she died, than a great confidence in this adorable 
Providence which had worked miracles for us, for no other- 
wise could she style all the Conduct of God upon this House. 
As she often repeated this, and even told us that the wish 
sometimes came to her to write this Book of Providence, for 
fear that we might come to forget what God had done for us, 
and that from this forgetfulness we might pass to the infidelity 
of seeking human support, as happened to so many Religious, 
we urged her greatly several times to undertake it. But she 
was at bottom so opposed to making books that what she said 
was only to give expression to the desire she had to establish 
us in gratitude and trust in God, and she thrust us away when 
we tried to speak to her of writing in good earnest. Since we 
saw accordingly that we gained nothing by persuasion, we 
thought well to bring obedience to bear, for that she never 
resisted. 

' We had recourse for that to M. Singlin ' (Confessor at Port 
Royal), ' and we implored him to ordain it her. He did so, 
and she had much distress over it, although as a rule she felt 

B 2 



4 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

none in obeying. She was quite sad about it, and perhaps 
she suspected the use we desired to make of it. For the thing 
she dreaded most in the world was that she should be written 
about, or spoken of advantageously after her death. Since, 
however, she was constrained to yield, she made a retreat in 
a little distant cell, which was called the Watch (la guette), 
during which, giving more time to prayer than to writing, 
she composed this narrative, with such distaste that she 
could not be induced to finish it ; and she seized the pretext 
of other affairs to break it off at the point where it ends.' 

Supplementing the unfinished tale, we have notes, taken at 
the time, of the Mother's conversation with her nephew, M. le 
Maitre, to whom, since he himself was in pious retreat, she spoke 
with full and confidential freedom. Then again we have her 
Letters, three full volumes, and again narratives by the nuns, 
many and voluminous, gathered by the piety, happily regard- 
less of her aunt's wishes, of Angelique de S. Jean. 



r- 





VI i:\VS OF THE ABBEY AND OF THE CLOISTER OF PORT ROYAL DES .CHAMPS 
From engravings by MaileK-ine Hortemels 



CHAPTER I 

The childhood of the Mere Angelique. 

WITH the advent of the Mere Angelique, as child-abbess, to 
her convent, the vital history of Port Royal begins. And the 
mother's narrative, though it brought the tale of God's Provi- 
dence to no legitimate close, opens at that true beginning. 
The reader may look back, through her later retrospect, upon 
that early scene and retrace with her the gradual change from 
lethargy to life. 

Narrative of the chief events of Port Royal from the establish- 
ment of Reform up to 1638. By the Mother Marie Angelique 
(of S. Magdalene) Arnauld. 1 

' Glory to Jesus, to the very Holy Sacrament ! 

' In the name of the very Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and 
Holy Spirit. 

' I write, for obedience sake, a narrative of what has passed 
in this House since, fifty-two years ago, I was brought here 
to be Abbess, July 5, 1602, at the age of only ten years and 
ten months, by a very great abuse common at the time, when 
there was no longer practice of discipline in the appointment 
to Benefices, and in our Order hardly any regularity. Things 
were such that, whereas my father did not venture to dream 
that I could be given the Abbatial Blessing at this early age, 
the General of the Order of Citeaux (who had had me made 
Coadjutrix by Madame Boulehart, Abbess of this House, before 
I was eight, to gratify my grandfather, M. Marion, Avocat- 
General, who was a friend of his, and had made me Profess 
at nine), expressed a desire to bless me at his hands at the 
age of eleven ; which he did in this House with a great gathering 
and great festivity, with everybody inside the cloister of the 
Monastery, as in a secular house. 

1 Memoires pour servir a I'histoire de Port-Royal, et a la Vie de la 
Reverende Mere Marie- Angelique de Ste-Magaeleine Arnauld, Reformatrice 
de ce Monastere. Utrecht, 1742, vol. i, p. 262 seq. 



6 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

* God, who in His infinite goodness did not fail to look 
upon this Monastery with pity, brought about that my mother, 
who feared God but who had at that time perhaps even 
more love for worldly honour than for that of God, being 
obliged to stay here for several weeks on from the month of 
July when I arrived, to set the temporal affairs in order and 
see to the repairs of the House, which was in a very bad 
condition, and to prepare besides all the things required for 
the ceremony . of the Benediction, observed certain criminal 
disorders, partaken in, however, by only one of the twelve 
Sisters who were in the House when I came ; for the others 
had been preserved by a special grace of God, although they 
were exposed constantly to the evil through the disorderly 
conduct of sundry persons who never left the Monastery, 
where some of them were in service. 

' As soon as my mother perceived the misconduct of this 
Nun, the senior of the House though she was only thirty- 
three, she contrived, through the medium of my grandfather, 
to make the General transfer her to another House ; and 
from that moment, although the cloister was not kept until 
several years later, all the persons who had occasioned mis- 
conduct kept away for fear of my father and mother, who 
were in great alarm, not only for me, but also for the others ; 
lest the matter should give rise to blame of their control, 
rather than of that of a child like me, incapable of having 
any. They watched accordingly with great care, that nothing 
should occur contrary to honour and to decency ; for it was 
in that alone that they saw good conduct. To that end they 
obtained the consent of the General to place with me a Nun 
from another House, to look after my control and the economy 
of the House, for which latter she was much better fitted 
than to conduct me, since she was very ignorant, and more 
so than could be believed, of the things of God. 

' As regards the Nuns, with whom she did not interfere at 
all, there was one of the House who was very good and who 
feared God, and her they made Prioress, and she kept the 
Convent going in as great regularity as any House of the 
Order. This Sister, without considering my age, showed me 
such great respect that the others, following her example, did 
the same ; so the House was at peace. She asked me, and 
caused me to be asked, for all permissions, and had me paid 
all respects in the same manner as the previous Abbess, who 
had made herself so feared by the Sisters that they were like 
children with her ; she had received them all, too, very young. 
God made use of this disposition to fear, to preserve peace in 
the House, through the docility of these Sisters. 



CHILDHOOD OF THE MRE ANG&LIQUE 7 

' He made use also of the kindness of my father and of 
my mother, who showed them great affection and took great 
care to have them well treated, and to repair and do up the 
House, which was in a very bad state both in consequence 
of the wars of the League and because of the extreme old 
age of the Abbess, whose servants ruined her by their untrust- 
worthiness, all keeping good living, save the poor Nuns, who 
were given as little as possible. Thus without their thinking 
of their vow of poverty, for which they had no more affection 
than they had knowledge of its excellence, they were made 
to observe it with such rigour that, in the midst of woods, so 
little firing was given them that they had to go in search of 
it in the gardens. Their allowance on fast-days, which were 
four days a week, was nothing but two eggs with very little 
butter. They were given for the whole year only two basket- 
fuls of fruit, although there was a great quantity which was 
sold. And everything was in like manner ; and in illness they 
were as badly treated as in health. 

' The divine providence made use of all this ill-treatment 
to make these Sisters love me, seeing that they were better 
off under my rule ; so that there was such peace in the House 
and such order as regards the service and other observances, 
that the General of the Order, on his visit in the year 1605 
(when I was only fourteen years old), was so satisfied with 
the House that he left us a report in which he said he had 
found us in good order, and prescribed nothing further, save 
that the number of the Nuns should be increased to sixteen. 
We were as yet but twelve, having admitted only two ; and 
of those I had found there, one was dead and one had left. 

' However, all this fine order consisted only in performing 
the service fairly well at the right hours, with the exception 
of Matins, which were said at four in the morning (the Sisters 
taking care to attend), and in living in peace and human 
fellowship. As for the rest, we did nothing but amuse our- 
selves and go about in our property, as was permitted and 
even enjoined by the report, which observed that the Abbess 
should take her community to walk in the grounds after 
Vespers. 

' The time passed in this way from the year 1602 up to 
the year 1607, when God willed to promote His work of mercy 
upon this House, at a time when I am forced to say that, as 
I grew in years, I grew also in wickedness. For I could no 
longer endure the Religious Life, which I had never looked upon 
otherwise than as an insupportable yoke ; and nevertheless 
I bore it, diverting myself as best I could, without telling 
my trouble to any one at all and pretending to be happy. 



8 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

When certain persons said to me that, since I had taken my 
vows under age, I could retract, I asserted that I had no 
wish to ; and it is true that, with a great love of the world, 
I still could not, although I disliked the Veil, make up my 
mind to quit it ; believing that I could not do so without 
going to perdition ; that there was no law which dispensed 
me from belonging to God ; that He had shown me too great 
an honour in taking me for Himself, and that I could not 
abandon my calling without great ingratitude. 

' I do not know whence these thoughts as to the holiness 
of my calling could have come to me, seeing that the life 
I led" in it was wholly pagan and profane. True, I distin- 
guished very well between what I ought to do and what I did ; 
and having often enough great apprehensions of the judgement 
of God, I thought to myself that I would do penance when 
I was old. In the meantime I took my liberty, and used to 
go with one or two Nuns to visit our neighbours ; and they 
began also to pay me visits, although God did not permit me 
to do in this any great harm as the world calls harm. 

' It so happened that my mother heard of these liberties 
I was beginning to take, and came here. She reproved me like 
a true mother, with so many tears that she greatly touched 
me, making me sorry for the pain I was giving her ; and on 
the other hand I was very sorry, too, for myself, seeing myself 
reduced either to lead a life which I felt very melancholy or 
else to grieve my father and mother and to live without 
honour, for I knew very well that there could be honour 
only in living in accordance with one's condition. I begged 
hearty forgiveness from my mother and promised to live with 
all the propriety and prudence that she wished. I remained 
very sad ; and instead of having recourse to God, I proceeded 
to divert myself by reading the Lives of Plutarch and other 
profane works. 

' Two months later I fell ill with a very violent double- 
tertian ague, which was a special grace of God upon me. It 
came to me the day of S. James my patron saint, the 25th 
of July. My mother at once brought me a doctor, and, finding 
the illness very severe, my father sent to have me fetched in 
a litter, that I might be nursed at home. This illness lasted 
up to the end of August, with such violence that I was held 
to be in danger ; and after it had diminished I still had the 
fever up to the end of November. During all this time quite 
extraordinary care was taken of me. My mother put me in 
her room and was so attentive to my needs that I never called 
the nurse, who was close to my bed, but my mother was 
there first. This illness, although I did not think at all of 



CHILDHOOD OF THE MRE ANGELIQUE 9 

God and saw no single person who spoke a word to me of 
Him, but on the contrary all the news of Paris was discussed 
at my bedside, where there was generally a large assembly , 
did not fail nevertheless to be of extreme service to me. The 
great affection which my father and mother had shown me 
made me resolve from my heart that, in order to please them, 
I would remain a Nun and would live with all the modesty 
that I should, without looking farther and without considering 
my duty towards God. Accordingly I returned with goodwill 
to this convent, where the Sisters received me with extreme 
joy and with expressions of greater affection than ever. I felt 
affection also for them, and I spent the winter still very weak 
after my illness.' 

Our Mother's narrative has brought us swiftly to the crisis 
of her youth. We break it here that we may apprehend 
more fully, if it may be, the girlish figure thus early fronting 
destiny. In old age, talking with her beloved nephew, M. le 
Maitre, she speaks more freely than she writes about herself, 
little suspecting that he too a recluse touched by grace and 
pledged to Eternity cherished the vainglorious design of per- 
petuating her memory. He took her words down after each 
interview, and only death hindered him from weaving these 
reminiscences into a ' Life '. He would seem to have been 
skilful in evoking the images of childhood : 

' On April 2, 1652,' he records, 1 ' the Mere Angelique talked 
to me with more freedom than she ever had done, about the 
conditions of her youth, exaggerating her estrangement from 
God and the great perils from which the Divine Providence 
had saved her. " In the first place," she said to me, " I was 
only seven years old when my grandfather Marion, seeing that 
my father had five daughters who followed with only a year 
between, resolved to make some of them Nuns, and chose me, 
as second daughter, to be the first of those he wished to take 
the Veil. With that object he made me come to him and 
said : ' My child, would you not like to be a Nun ? ' And 
since I had not much notion what it meant and he was afraid 
I should say no, he anticipated me and added : ' But, my 
child, you will not be a common Nun, I will make you Abbess 

1 Relation de plusieurs Entretiens de la Mere Angelique avec M. le 
Maistve son neveu, qui les ecrivait sur-le-champ dans le dessein de s'en 
servir un jour pour son Histoire, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 249 seq. 



io THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

and mistress over the others.' I perceived at once that I 
should have to fall in with his wishes and since what he had 
added as to the quality of Abbess sweetened a little what 
seemed to me very hard, I replied : ' Yes, grandfather, I should 
like to.' But at the same time I was splitting with rage, 
and I betook myself to the gallery close by and began to say 
to myself, ' How unlucky I am to be born only second daughter, 
for if I were the eldest they would have me married.' But 
I immediately recovered myself a little and reflected that 
I came so close on my sister Catherine, who was the eldest, 
that my father could not very well have me married like my 
sister ; so I made up my mind to accept the Veil since they 
wished it, and on the spot I returned to the room and said ; 
' I have only consented to be a Nun on condition you make 
me Abbess ; you have promised, remember your promise.' 

On another occasion ('on Saturday, June 7, Eve of the Holy 
Trinity '), this same nephew records, he was returning from 
Paris to Port Royal des Champs in company with the Mere 
Angelique, M. Singlin, his uncles M. Arnauld and M. d'Andilly, 
and his brother de Saci, when she narrated to them the follow- 
ing anecdote, a propos of her little brother Antoine, who had 
died at three and a half when she herself was about six : 

' He was the prettiest child that ever one saw, and a miracle 
of cleverness and beauty. He was everything that could be 
desired in a child. He loved me exclusively and his affection 
was a great comfort to me, for my mother did not care for me. 
But since she loved my little brother Antoine passionately, 
and he loved me to such an extent that he could not live 
without me, she allowed me to stay with him, whereas before 
his birth and after his death, she used to send me every morn- 
ing away from her to M. Marion, the Avocat-General, my 
grandfather, who loved me tenderly and often played with me. 

' I used to spend all the day in his room or in his study. 
And because my brothers and sisters were kept at home in my 
father's apartment by my mother, who was fond of them and 
disliked me, sending me to M. Marion as soon as I was dressed, 
in order to revenge myself in a manner for being turned out 
of the house, I used to bolt the little door of M. Marion's 
apartment as soon as I was through, to prevent my brothers 
and sisters from coming and sharing with me the affection of 
my grandfather, whom I was with constantly, following him 
about almost everywhere, whether in his room or his study, 
and generally holding him by the sleeve. When I found any 



CHILDHOOD OF THE MERE ANG&LIQUE n 

of my sisters with M. Marion I chased them away, telling 
them, " Be off with you home, this is my house and not yours." 
I was sly in those days, and played the circumspect. And as 
M. Marion liked to hear me talk, he used to tell the persons of 
rank, his familiar friends, to ask me my name, and they would 
see that this little girl would give them a different answer to 
the same question if they asked it in his house or in that of his 
son-in-law, M. Arnauld, who lived hard by, a wall only dividing 
them. Whereupon they asked my name and I answered 
" Jacqueline Marion ", and when the same persons took my 
hand and led me to my father's house and then asked me my 
name, I answered " Jacqueline Arnauld ", for I wanted always 
to be taken for daughter of the master of the house I was in, 
in order to be thought much of.' 

These childish tales show the sensitive, but imperious and 
self-assertive character of the future Abbess. Another anec- 
dote marks her dominant nature in contrast to her younger 
sister Jeanne, the second of his grandchildren chosen by 
M. Marion for that role. The children seem both to have 
been pre-occupied with the thought of their promised dignity. 
One day, however, the five-year-old Jeanne (our future Mere 
Agnes) followed M. Marion into his study and said, ' I have 
come to teh 1 you, grandpapa, that I do not wish to be Abbess. 
For they say that Abbesses have to look after the souls of 
their Nuns, and I have enough to do in looking after my own.' 
But Jacqueline (our Mere Angelique) took up her words and 
said, ' But I want to be, grandpapa, and I will see that they 
do their duty.' 1 

The early indication of character is borne out in the subse- 
quent lives of the sisters, destined by their grandfather each 
for the role of Abbess, destined by the fates to be sister and 
complementary spirits, the ' two olives ', in the self-same 
convent. Fondness for the dignity clung, however, in fact, 
longer to the younger and gentler of the two. Jeanne, or 
Agnes as we know her, took more kindly to conventual life 
than her sister ; was easily devout, liked the services and 
the singing, and, as she grew into girlhood, delighted in prayer 

1 Relation ou Histoire suivie de la Vie de la Mere Marie- Angelique 
Arnauld . . . par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean Arnauld, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, p. 8. 



12 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

and even in fasting and penance. But she delighted also in 
her rank and in the ceremonious respect paid to her as Abbess 
of S. Cyr, and she was with difficulty weaned from that vanity. 
Angelique, on the contrary, as her distaste increased for the 
profession of nun, lost whatever consolatory pleasure she had 
taken in her rank and authority. ' God gave me,' she told 
her nephew, ' from the age of thirteen or fourteen a great 
indifference upon that point.' Had she been pleased with her 
dignity, she would have been, so she felt, lost beyond hope. 

Neither was the Mere Angelique's childhood without its 
movements of piety, though they fell dead for lack of nurture, 
and failed to reconcile her to her calling. She recalls her 
emotion, even to tears, at the age of seven, on hearing the 
tale of the Passion, but also that she went off to play and to 
quarrel as usual. 1 Taken to confess about the same period, 
and bidden by her Confessor ask pardon of God for the faults 
she had acknowledged, she knelt down in the courtyard of 
the house, and, fixing her eyes upon the heavens, where she 
had heard that God dwelt, she asked forgiveness with so 
strong a feeling of reverence and faith that it remained in her 
mind as her first act of discernment and reason. She speaks 
with retrospective envy of the children of Port Royal, so 
carefully trained and under a discipline that they knew to be 
for their good. ' Had they taught me,' she tells her nephew, 
' in the like manner, speaking to me of God and of the duties 
of a Christian child, they might have made of me what they 
would.' As it was, left to the care and arbitrary discipline 
of ignorant servants, she could recall as a red-letter day in 
the waste of childish years the occasion it was the day of 
Pentecost when she was whipped for irreverence in church, 
by a woman sensible enough to point out her fault and the 
grounds of the punishment. 2 

Little care, truly, was taken in the young Abbess' training. 
She was given the Veil a few days before her eighth birthday, 
and heartily enjoyed the ceremony and festivities held in her 

1 Relation . . . par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean Arnauld, Memoires 
pour servir . . ., vol. i, p. 9. Cf. Relation de la Mere Marie-Dorothe'e de 
I' Incarnation Le Conte, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 420. 

' Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 251. 



CHILDHOOD OF THE MfiRE ANG&LIQUE 13 

honour. Then, after a winter passed in the little Jeanne's 
convent of S. Cyr, she was sent to finish her education and 
await the death of the Abbess of Port Royal, whom she was to 
succeed, at the convent of Maubuisson. There, at nine years 
old, she took the final vows. Some one among the onlookers 
pitied her, and said, * She does not know what she is doing.' 
The child, overhearing, resented keenly the slight paid to her 
intelligence. ' Do they think I am silly ? ' she said to herself, 
' that I should not know what I am about. I know very well '.* 
Later, when she would gladly have revoked that step, the 
conviction still remained with her that she had indeed known 
what she was doing and was bound by her vows. 

Now Maubuisson was of all convents the least suited to be 
a school of good manners, let alone spiritual teaching. The 
Abbess, Angelique d'Estrees, was sister of Gabrielle, mistress 
of Henri IV, and had obtained the charge at Gabrielle's 
request to facilitate, it was supposed, the latter's meetings 
with the King. The Abbess certainly had no scruples on the 
subject ; her own manners, on the contrary, were so scan- 
dalous that Gabrielle herself is said to have remonstrated 
with her. Her mode of life was not merely, as was common 
enough at the time, purely secular, but also highly disreput- 
able, the scandal reaching later such a height that she was 
deposed and shut up in the Filles Pe'nitentes an event to 
which our history will bring us again. To this gay and scan- 
dalous person the little Jacqueline was given in charge, and 
in compliment to her and no other did she receive the new 
name of Angelique. She was to some extent under the 
Abbess' personal care and had as companion one of her 
children one of the twelve whom rumour accredited her 
with, and who were brought up diversely, it was said, according 
to the rank of the father. But for the most part, presumably, 
the child's upbringing fell to the nuns, who, under the charge 
of an excellent Prioress, came but little in contact with their 
Abbess. The Prioress took all care to keep them away the 
tale goes that on one occasion certain young gallants in the 

1 Relation . . . de la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, p. n. 



i 4 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

suite of Henri IV caught a nun and carried her off to the 
Abbess' quarters ; but the valiant Prioress hastened to the 
rescue and recovered her charge, unhurt though frightened, 
while the king turned the matter off as a jest. 1 Yet the 
Prioress was far from strait-laced ; she was at pains to procure 
all innocent amusement for her nuns, leading them forth, for 
example, on feast-days to dance on the green with the neigh- 
bouring monks, but always with due regard for propriety. 2 

The easy-going regime, healthy enough no doubt for the 
child, could scarcely have tended to piety. And yet when, 
at the age of eleven, she was summoned, on the death of the 
old Abbess, to take possession of her convent of Port Royal, 
she could forget the pomp and festivity of her installation in 
the sense of God's presence as she received, on the same day, 
her first communion. A cobbler of the neighbourhood lent 
her a book of prayer which she read so intently it was her sole 
instruction as to be unaware of the crowd in the church. 3 

The devout moment was prophetic, it may be, of the future ; 
it bore no fruit at the time. The Little Abbess, now installed 
and, under the new name of Angelique, confirmed in possession 
by a fresh Papal Bull, conceived at once a distaste for the 
conventual life, for the dress and the religious observances. 
Nevertheless, she would seem to have passed, among her 
nuns and under the watchful eye of her mother, a normal and 
fairly happy childhood, troubling her head but little about 
her calling. An affectionate and high-spirited child, she was 
beloved by her nuns. She could act the Abbess on occasion, 
receiving a big novice of seventeen with all gravity ; welcom- 
ing Henri IV, at the head of her nuns herself mounted on 
pattens to look taller , when he came by hunting and called 
at the convent to see her father. ' Je baise les mains de Mme 
I'Abbesse,' he called in at the convent windows the following 
day. 4 She could reprove her nuns even, ' d'un ton d'Abbesse,' 
when they stayed gossipping out of bounds she had perhaps 

1 Modele de Foi et de Patience . . . ou Vie de la Mere Marie des Anges 
[Suireau], Abbesse de Maubuisson et de Port-Royal, 1754, pp. 58-9. 

* Relation de la Mere Angelique de S. Jean . . ., Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, p. 129. 3 Ib., p. 14. 

4 Entretiens . . . avecM. le Mattre, loc. cit., . . ., vol. ii, p. 254. 



CHILDHOOD OF THE MERE ANG&LIQUE 15 

learnt from the Prioress of Maubuisson to have a proper dread 
of such licence. But in general she paid thoughtful deference 
to 'Dame Prieure\ so considerate of her claims, and she cor- 
rected only by private liberality the parsimony of the nun 
set in charge of her and the house. 1 

With the passing of childhood there passed, however, the. 
childish contentment. In her talks with her nephew, Angelique 
tells the tale with certain details of interest may the reader 
pardon a repetition which brings us back to her narrative. 

' One day she told me,' he notes : ' From the time that 
I became Abbess in 1602, at the age of eleven, up to the age 
of fifteen, I had a horrible aversion for the Convent. I was 
wide-awake and wild (eveille'e et foldtre), more than can be 
conceived. But God had given me a discretion and natural 
good-sense which prevented me from doing anything immodest. 
Nevertheless I cared only to play, and converse and amuse 
myself : and all the observances of Religion were distasteful 
to me, since my heart was not open to piety. So that I was 
angry with my sister Catherine, who afterwards married, 
because, when she came here, she was more devout than I, and 
liked singing with the Sisters, which I did not like at all. At 
last, when I was fifteen, since I knew very well that I was 
not pledged to the Veil, being under age, and because I had 
an inclination for the life of a good married woman, I con- 
templated leaving Port Royal and returning to the world, 
without telling my father and mother, in order to free myself 
from the yoke which I found unendurable, and to get married 
somewhere. I fancied then that at the worst I could take 
refuge at La Rochelle, although I was a good Catholic and 
although God had given me a secret aversion of heresy, to the 
point that when one of my relatives who was a Huguenot 
told me that if I were to read the Epistle to the Romans 
I should find in it the refutation of the Roman Catholic faith, 
I read it and found just the contrary, because it pleased God 
to enlighten me with the light of the true faith. 

' While these thoughts were filling my mind, and I was 
horribly agitated and on the eve of executing my design, God 
arrested me by a severe illness which He sent me in the month 
of July, 1607. My father and mother sent immediately to 
fetch me and brought me to Paris. I attributed it to the 
intercession of the Apostle S. James my patron saint, whom 

1 Relation . . . par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, p. 254. 



16 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

I invoked at the time, that God preserved me from death. 
I was ill up to Michaelmas, September the 29th, receiving all 
human assistance in respect of the body and none at all for the 
soul. For in all that time there was neither Priest nor Cure nor 
Monk to speak to me of God. I saw only the doctors, and, 
as I appeared to be wholly worldly, no one was at pains to let 
me see any other persons than those of the world. 

' During this time our relatives, among others my uncle, 
M. Arnauld, Minister of Finance, and the one who was after- 
wards Field-marshal and Governor of Fort Louis near La 
Rochelle ; my aunt, wife of the President de Druy, and many 
others, came to see me ; and, as they were all covered with 
satin and velvet, and our other relatives were just as magni- 
ficently dressed and much adorned, that gave me pleasure ; 
and I had a bodice secretly made with whalebone to give 
me a better figure, for I loved vanity, and the sickness of my 
body had not cured that of my soul. But this is what made 
me change my intention of leaving my Convent. 

' I reflected that my father and mother were showing me 
very great affection, especially my mother, who had had me 
put into her room and made a nurse sleep at the left side of 
my bed while she slept on the right. Her affection was so 
great that I never called the nurse but she anticipated her, 
whether day or night, and came to give me whatever I needed. 
These signs of tenderness and sincere affection, as well from 
my father as from my mother, won my heart. I reflected 
that I could not change my condition as Nun and Abbess 
without affording them the keenest distress they could receive, 
and, as they loved me so much, I could not make up my mind 
to give them this great pain. I reflected also that, although 
I had not been of age when I was made to take vows, I had 
yet known very well what I was doing and what I was pro- 
mising ; that I should be innocent in the sight of men but 
guilty before God, and that, after all, our Lord had shown 
me only too great honour in taking me so early for His bride. 
Thus, for fear of being ungrateful to my father and my mother, 
who had shown me so much affection, and unfaithful to Jesus 
Christ, to whom I had dedicated my body and my soul, I 
resolved to remain a Nun, and to have made openly a dress 
of white serge, quite simple, without whalebone, that I might 
continue in the modesty of a person who has taken the Veil.' 1 

The affectionate parents were lamentably blind to their 
daughter's character and treated her at this juncture with 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 255 seq. 



CHILDHOOD OF THE MRE ANG&LIQUE 17 

a mistrust wholly unworthy of her integrity and eminent 
reasonableness, her mother suspecting her of girlish follies, while 
her father played her a turn which went near to spoil the 
whole matter. She related this also in old age to the nephew : 

' When I was very nearly quite well again, my mother, who, 
as a modest woman, kept constant w r atch upon her daughters, 
seeing that I was so lively and wide-awake, as I was horribly , 
became afraid lest the liberty which, according to the ordinary 
custom of Convents at that time, was allowed to men to enter 
our House, and the freedom of my disposition, should have 
led me to listen to some love-talk, and to enter into under- 
standing with some man belonging to that neighbourhood, 
or coming there from Paris. So that she set out one day all 
on purpose and came here (to the Convent) to look through 
all my boxes and all my papers, and see if she could not find 
some letter that should point to some such intercourse. But 
my father, who had more confidence in my discretion than 
my mother, was good enough to tell me that my mother, 
seeing me so young and so free, was afraid lest I might have 
listened to some talk and had gone to Port Royal to see 
whether I had not received letters. Whereupon I replied 
with sincerity : She will find nothing, her journey is thrown 
away so far as that is concerned. And, as a fact, the fear I had 
of the judgements of God and of death, and the feeling of 
honour that was always alive in me, fortified by the example 
of all our family, which was very chaste and strongly opposed 
to all impurity, had made me always inaccessible to every 
temptation of this kind ; although my lack of piety and the 
relaxation of my giddy and libertine life in such extreme 
youth, and the discourses I was accustomed to hear from our 
Bernardine Monks, who entertained me with nothing but 
follies, and with the diversions of Citeaux and of Clairvaulx, 
(the good customs of the Order, as they called them, where, 
they told me, ' ' paulme " was played on Sundays and Feast- 
days,) might well have made those think the contrary who 
did not know the depths of my heart. 

' But when I had turned fifteen, my father played me a 
clever trick which gave me extreme vexation, and which 
might have shaken me in my resolution of remaining a Reli- 
gious, had not God sustained me. It was that he wrote, as 
I gathered from a line I read, a ratification of my vows, and 
presented it to me without having spoken about it, and said 
the same instant, "My daughter, sign this paper" It was 
somewhat badly written, I believe on purpose that I might 
not have time or power to read it. I did not dare ask him 
what it was, such was the reverence I bore him. But, passing 

LOWNDES Q 



i8 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

my eyes down the writing, I read that it was the ninth year. 
Which showed me that it was a ratification of my vows made 
some seven years before. I signed this document, inwardly 
bursting with rage, without, however, expressing any of it 
to him ; and God made me swallow my vexation in silence, 
excusing my father by the affection and respect I had for 
him. May God be eternally praised for it ! ' l 

' At the age of fifteen,' the Mere Angelique told her nuns, 2 
' though I scarcely prayed at all in set words, yet I had a con- 
stant prayer to God in my heart.' At that age, again, she 
read the Lives of the Saints, intently and devoutly, ' as they 
ought to be read ; ' and at that same age, just before the 
crisis, therefore, if we may take the record as exact , in despair 
at her constant relapse into the same faults, she conceived 
the wish to be thrown into a dungeon and loaded with chains 
that she might be free from temptation. A deep, if occasional, 
piety had been present evidently in the turmoil of emotion 
which culminated, so fortunately, in a ' double-tertian ' fever, 
not strong enough, indeed, to withstand the growing distaste 
for the convent and the longing for the joys of womanhood, but 
ready, the thought of escape once overruled, to assume com- 
plete sway. In her mental conflict the issue was determined 
by filial affection, but that sentiment had, even then, a power- 
ful auxiliary in her belief that she was in truth pledged to God. 
Presently filial affection had in its turn to relinquish the field 
to its ally. 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., 
p. 258 seq. 

2 Ib., p. 260. 



CHAPTER II 

' Conversion ' of the Mere Angelique. The beginnings of reform at 

Port Royal. 

ANGELIQUE returned to her convent still very weak after her 
illness, in spite of a period of convalescence in her father's 
country house at Andilly, which she loved and found so beau- 
tiful that she marvelled at ' the folly of people who build 
country houses and leave them empty while they stay in 
town '- 1 She returned acquiescing in her lot ; she was touched 
at the warmth of her nuns' welcome and responded to their 
affection. The winter passed in invalid languor ; she desired 
to spend the ensuing Lent as befitted the season and asked one 
of her nuns for a book of devotion. The work given her 
kindled to quicker life the latent religious feeling, but the final 
' conversion ' awaited a more concentrated stimulus. The 
moment, however, was at hand which was to change the girl's 
forced and grievous acquiescence into glad acceptance ; the 
close of Lent saw, in the language of Port Royal, the ' moment 
of grace ' for the Mere Angelique. 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued] 

' At Carnival (1608) there were the usual festivities, but in 
private and without secular persons. As Lent had come and 
I was stronger, I wished to take to reading again, and consulted 
the Nun who had charge of me what book to read, for I 
found all the works of devotion tedious, and yet, because of 
Lent, I dared not read any other. She told me that, during 
my absence in Paris, some Capuchin friars had been to preach, 
and had given a book of Meditations, which she liked and which 
would perhaps please me. She gave it me and, though it was 
very simple, I liked it as much as she did, and it gave me 
some devotion. 

' Some days after there came a Capuchin friar, close on 
nightfall, and proposed to preach. I was very glad, for I 
always liked to hear preaching, which took place so seldom 

1 Entretiens . . , avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 261. 

C 2 



20 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

that, when I first came, no one had preached for more than 
thirty years, save some five or six times at Professions of Nuns. 
But after my arrival they used to send, on the four great 
feasts of the year, for pupils from the Bernardines, who 
preached so lamentably that the sermons were an occasion of 
sin, through the mockery we made of them. 

' We went to the sermon of this Capuchin, night as it was. 
During this sermon God touched me in such a manner that 
from that moment I felt more happy at being a Nun than 
I had before been unhappy ; and I do not know what I would 
not have done for God had He continued in me the movement 
that His grace gave me. He showed me another grace, which 
was : not to speak to this Capuchin in private, as I had thought 
of doing, in order to communicate to him my good intentions 
and ask his guidance. For God in His goodness made me 
reflect that this man was too young for me, who was only 
sixteen and a half, and that I ought not to apply to him but 
wait for some other. I contented myself with going to thank 
him with one of the Sisters, and it was a great Providence of 
God for me. For I learnt afterwards that this man was 
excessively disordered, that he had committed great follies in 
religious houses, and that some years later he apostatized. 

' I remained strongly touched by the desire to serve God, 
though with very little light as to what I ought to do for my 
conscience. Only I prayed to God the very best I could. I con- 
tinued thus up to Pentecost, when there came another Capuchin 
to preach, who was old and of the severest aspect that ever 
one could see. At once I thought that this was he whom 
I needed, and I did not fail to disclose to him my desires, 
in the which he confirmed me. But he took the advantage 
I had given him, to preach so severely that he gave offence to 
certain of the Sisters, especially to the Prioress who, since 
she had a well-regulated mind, and had always been a careful 
observer of the Rule as then observed, did not think she had 
need of any further reform. She began to say that this Monk 
would put it into my head to make a great reform ; that 
I was very young, that I should tire of it and that all this 
would end only in disorder. I thought her quite right to have 
no confidence in me, and that, since I was not wise enough to 
govern a House and make a reform, I should do much better 
to give up my post, and to go and become Nun in some good 
and well-ordered Convent. 

' A few days after, this Capuchin returned and brought 
with him another holy man, called the Pere Pacifique, very 
aged, who was not a preacher, and who had already visited us 
once before. He came first to the parlour and told me that 
P6re Bernard (as the one I have spoken of was called) had 



CONVERSION OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 21 

told him he had won all here, and that reform was about to be 
established. Whereupon I told him things were not so forward, 
and I repeated to him the discourse of the Prioress, which 
I found very sensible ; and that it made me resolve to think 
only of my salvation and to retire in order to be simple Nun. 
This good Father approved of my purpose, and on the other's 
arrival he told him my resolution, whereupon the latter fell 
into great anger and threatened me that he would go in search 
of my father who would certainly prevent my leaving. I had 
so great a dread of this, that my fear, and the belief I had that 
I ought to obey this Monk, made me promise that I would do 
nothing but what he wished. 

' He continued to come here frequently from Pentecost up 
to the month of September. He preached and spoke to five 
or six of the Sisters, who at once sided with me, desiring all 
that I desired. The others made no commotion, nor ever 
failed in respect to me, and I conversed with them as gently 
as I could, caressing them even more than those who wished 
for reform. For I believed that those to whom God had 
given this good will were bound to sustain the others and set 
them an example of patience and humility. It was true that 
those who opposed the reform had always been more orderly, 
devout, and modest in their dress than the others ; which 
gave occasion to the Prioress to say that those who had in- 
dulged in vanities did well to reform themselves and that, 
as for those who had not, they had nothing to change. Where- 
upon I reproached her with her private possessions, so strictly 
forbidden by the Rule, and she said that she had nothing 
that I did not know of or that she would dispose of without 
leave : which was true. She added that the indulgence which 
was practised, of leaving to every one their little possessions, 
was more useful and convenient for the Abbesses than for the 
Nuns, and that I did not know what cares I should burden 
myself with in establishing community ; that each was careful 
of what she had, but that so soon as all should be in common, 
I should see that none would think of being careful. (Experi- 
ence has taught me this is only too true, for cupidity is more 
active and more powerful than charity, which is a ground of 
great humiliation ; and it is certain that this evil is the reason 
that Abbesses, to escape care, and from avarice, have per- 
mitted these appropriations.) I replied to the Prioress that 
one ought not to pay attention to all that, since the Rule 
required everything to be in common. I did not, however, 
urge her, because I saw clearly that one must have patience 
with this Sister. 

' But the Capuchin Father insisted upon making regulations, 
good in truth, but not adapted to the state of mind of my 



22 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

Sisters, and, do what I could, he would take them, as coming 
from me, to an Abbe of the Order, Vicar-General to M. de 
Citeaux. I told him that ah 1 that would happen would be that 
this Abbe would go to my father and would do in ah 1 this 
only what might please him ; and the event was as I said. 

' Meanwhile harvest-time arrived, when my father wished 
me to go and see him in his house in the country : much to 
my embarrassment, since I now dreaded this journey as much 
as I had formerly desired it. I spoke about it to the Capuchin 
Father, who told me I might go, because in truth I was not 
a professed Nun, and in order also to persuade my father to 
send to Rome that he might have new Rules and absolution 
for the false understanding they had given, saying that I was 
seventeen when I was only nine. I went accordingly ; and 
directly I arrived I learnt from my father that this Abbe, to 
whom the Capuchin had taken the articles of reform, had been 
to see him, not only that he might do whatsoever pleased 
him, but also to tell him that the Capuchins would ruin me 
body and mind by their austerities ; that they were mere 
hypocrites, who sought under pretext of reform to get footing 
in our House in order to make there collections which would 
stand them in the stead of a good farm. He had no difficulty 
in convincing my father, who readily gave him full credence, 
especially as to the fear that the austerities would kill me. 
And he told me all this with such vexation that it made him 
ill, and he told me that if he died of this illness I should be 
the cause of his death ; which touched me so keenly that 
I promised him never to see the Capuchin ; and I was so 
afflicted at seeing all I had foreseen happen, that I fell into 
a quartan fever. 

' My father learnt further from the Nun provided for me in 
my youth, who was strongly opposed to the reform and still 
more to this Capuchin, the details of his violent proceedings, 
and the dissatisfaction of the Prioress ; and he wrote at once 
to the latter, begging her to be at ease and assuring her that 
I would do nothing contrary to her advice. He was attached 
to her, believing, as indeed was true, that he was under obliga- 
tion to her for having governed the House so well in tranquillity 
during my childhood. 

' Some days after, that is to say, on October the i8th, 1608, 
I returned to the Convent, very sad at seeing so many 
hindrances to my desires, and with the resolution to do all 
I could to serve God, but without doing anything that could 
anger my father. On the Feast of All Saints, my father, who 
had arranged with the Vicar-General that he should send, as 
before, pupils (ecoliers) to preach, so that no more Capuchins 
should come, sent one, and it was the will of God that he in- 



CONVERSION OF THE MERE ANG&LIQUE 23 

clined to Reform. He preached pretty well, and among other 
things he spoke to us strongly on the eighth beatitude, ' Blessed 
are those who surfer persecution for righteousness' sake.' It 
chanced that a good girl who waited on me, called Marie 
Baron (since a Nun, to whom was given the name of S. Paulin 
for her name in religion), and whom God had touched 
with us, said to me : " If you wished, Madame, you could 
be among those blessed who surfer persecution for righteous- 
ness' sake." I rebuffed her harshly, telling her she was very 
bold to say that to me. Nevertheless her words penetrated 
my heart, and God made use of her goodness to cause me to 
think seriously of satisfying God rather than my father. I said 
however nothing, and I would not see the Capuchin, who 
returned ; but that was because I was vexed at his proceeding, 
and did not believe him capable of helping us. 

' The f ollowing Advent, God, whose mercy beheld me, brought 
about a jubilee. Straightway I thought of preparing myself 
that I might join in it, and of making a general confession, 
which I had never made, nor a particular one of any worth. 
The first thought that came to me was that, whatever might 
happen, I would live henceforth as a Nun, and that I would 
not confess the faults I had committed merely to begin them 
over again. As we could not venture to think of having any 
other Confessor than a Monk of the Order, I asked for the 
one who had preached on All Saints' Day to hear my con- 
fession. The others did the same, and he confirmed us greatly 
in the purpose of embracing reform. 

' I continued always to be very sad, not knowing where to 
begin in order to gain over the Prioress and some others of 
the senior Nuns. At length one day in Lent (1609), a Nun 
who loved me very much, and who indeed greatly feared God, 
begged me with another Sister to come into her cell, where 
she said to me that she was in distress at seeing me in such 
a great state of melancholy, and that she begged me to tell 
her what was the matter. I acknowledged to her that it was 
because I could not satisfy the desire I had for reform ; 
and immediately they said that, if that was the ground of my 
melancholy, they would do whatever I pleased rather than 
grieve me, and the day was fixed on which all should be put 
in common. 

' The Day of S. Benedict I went to the Chapter for that 
purpose, and all accepted it with goodwill. I permitted only 
the Prioress and one other to keep certain small articles of 
clothing, which they brought directly after to the common 
stock, where I had all our belongings put also. 

' The great difficulty was to establish enclosure, since for 
that we had to deal with secular persons, and above all with 



24 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

my father and mother, who would not by any manner of means 
submit to this law. My mother among other things said that 
it was necessary for her to enter to see how I behaved ; and 
she was right in a manner (for it is true that she had been 
very useful and even necessary in my youth) : and, as I was 
still at that time only seventeen and a half, she had not over- 
much confidence in me. 

' I received word that my father would come in a few days 
during the vacation. I told the Monk who had helped us, 
and whom we had asked for as Confessor ; and when I con- 
sulted him to know what I ought to do to prevent my father 
and mother from entering, he said I should sin mortally if 
I did not shut the door against my father when he came ; 
which made me resolve to do it. But to avoid giving my 
father this pain, I wrote to my mother that I implored her 
humbly to dissuade him from coming, because I could not in 
conscience let him enter. She told him, but he could not 
conceive that I should have the hardihood, so that he did 
not give up coming. I refused to open, which put him in 
such wrath that he proposed to return home on the very 
instant, assuring me that he would never see me again in his 
life, that he had an extreme sorrow at seeing my mind was 
being perverted, and that he advised me at least to be very 
prudent. I was in such grief at seeing him in this frame of 
mind that I thought to suffocate ; which touched him so 
much that he was pacified and consented to see me in the 
parlour. But it happened that this Monk, on hearing it said 
that I was ill, came and presented himself, and on my father's 
accusing him of having given me this counsel, he answered 
harshly ; which angered my father again the more. Observing 
also that he ' (the Monk) ' was very young, it displeased him, and 
he contrived that M. de Citeaux should withdraw him, for 
which I was not sorry ; for I saw clearly that, although he 
had the fear of God, he had not everything that was requisite 
for us, and it was time that he left.' 

With this refusal of the door to her father, the Mere Angelique 
had won the field, and overcome the external opposition to 
her project of reform. The incident, which she recounts so 
quietly and in such brief outline, was known in the annals 
of the convent as the jour du guichet. Fuller details of 
the scene are preserved. As the expectant nuns gathered 
within, the young Abbess, touched with the sense of parental 
injustice, let fall to them : ' It is good that they should make 
me a Nun against my will, and, now that I wish to save my 
soul in my calling, they will not let me ! ' She went alone 



THE BEGINNINGS OF REFORM 25 

to the door, begging her father to enter the little parlour 
adjoining, where she could speak to him. He refused ; her 
mother reproached her loudly with ingratitude ; her brother 
d'Andilly, the eldest son, at that time a youth of twenty, 
took a still higher tone, calling her a monster of ingratitude, 1 
a parricide who would have the death of her father to answer 
for before God, and finally clamouring for the nuns and appeal- 
ing to them to open the door to their benefactor. One at least, 
Dame Morel by name, who had taken but half-heartedly to 
reform, would gladly have opened, and cried, ' What a shame 
not to admit M. Arnauld ! ' ; and even the poor women cleaning 
in the court took up the cry of ingratitude against Madame 
de Port Royal, who treated her father in such a manner. 

The noise had no effect on the Abbess. M. Arnauld resolved 
on a stratagem, and demanded that at least his two other 
daughters, Agnes and the little Marie, who were in the convent, 
should be sent out to him, thinking, the door once opened, 
he would have entrance. But Angelique, with complete 
presence of mind, sent the young girls out by the little door 
of the church, so that they were with their father without 
their manner of exit being seen. Agnes, as her father com- 
plained to her of her sister's conduct, replied that she was 
in the right, and was doing only what she was obliged, and 
what the Council of Trent had commanded. ' Upon my word,' 
interrupted the fiery M. d'Andilly, ' here is another, who comes 
citing the Canons and the Councils.' Yet two more of the 
daughters were present, the eldest, Mme le Maitre, already 
but unhappily married, and a younger sister, Anne. These 
unwilling witnesses, who had come in the family party, were 
torn in two, feeling for the distress both of their father and of 
Angelique. 2 

At length M. Arnauld ordered the horses to be put to, and 
prepared for departure. Only he consented first, at the 
reiterated prayers of his daughter, to enter the parlour where 

1 Relation . . . par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, p. 44 seq. 

2 ' 77 n'y avait en tout cela que les deux soeurs, Madame le Maitre et 
Mademoiselle Anne qui ne disaient mot, etant egalement touchees de la 
peine de M. Arnauld et de celle de la Mere Angelique, qu'elles savaient 
bien ne pas faire ce qu'elle faisait, sans qu'elle en souffrit beaucoup 
et qu'elle ne fit un horrible effort a son naturel.' Ib., p. 47. 



26 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

she could talk to him in the prescribed fashion, from the 
other side of the grille. Then it was that, as he spoke of 
his affection, renouncing all future interest in her but com- 
mending her to take care of her health, she ' thought she 
should suffocate ', that she fell, as a fact, into a dead faint. 
Her father, separated from her by the grille, called in vain 
for the nuns to come and succour her. They only retreated 
at the sound of his cries, not gathering their purport, and 
when at length they ventured near and restored their Abbess 
to consciousness, the father, all alarm, had forgotten his wrath. 
He consented to remain that day at least at Port Royal, and 
conversed peaceably with his daughter as she lay on a couch 
close up to the grille. The young monk, ill-advised enough to 
make his appearance at this moment, was the scapegoat in the 
matter. For the rest, a compromise was arrived at. M. Arnauld 
obtained a special permission to enter the gardens and the 
buildings, with the reserve of the nuns' actual precincts, that 
he might continue his benevolent care of the same. Mme 
Arnauld was permitted to enter at will ; but for long she 
scrupled to avail herself of the leave, because she had vowed 
in her anger never to see her daughter again. Fortunately 
she was present shortly after at a sermon where the preacher 
declared that vows made in anger were not binding, and she 
then hastened without delay to the convent. 

The ' moment of grace ' had been final and decisive for the 
Mere Angelique. The strong emotions of her adolescence, 
denied, at the bidding of filial duty, ah 1 other outlet, found 
a home in her chosen calling. Her heart kindled, as the 
unworthy monk set forth the life of Jesus, with the love of 
poverty, obedience and humility, the traditional marks of 
Christ, the wedding-garments of His bride. The child of seven 
had realized the presence of God in the skies as she knelt to 
ask forgiveness in the courtyard, the child-abbess at her 
installation could forget the crowd and bustle, in her untrained 
devotion, as she took the Sacrament ; the devout strain, so 
long suppressed, came now to the front, and the girl entering 
upon womanhood set the full strength of her affections upon 
the service of Christ. By the grace of God or, shah 1 we 
say, by one of human-nature's miracles ? the uncongenial 



THE BEGINNINGS OF REFORM 27 

path, once accepted by the will, opened out into a wide and 
fair prospect. Henceforth she esteemed herself happier to be 
a nun than previously she had felt herself unhappy. It was 
no sudden change but the turn of a balance, the moment that 
illumined her choice with happiness. 

Angelique's first and strong impulse was, not to reform her 
own nunnery, but to quit her post, hateful both for its unlawful 
acquirement and for its worldly dignity, and to become a simple 
nun, the still humbler lay-sister if it might be, in a strict and 
distant convent. 1 The dread of her father's opposition kept her 
at Port Royal, but from that moment until, twenty years later, 
she was able in part to realize it, she nursed some similar hope. 

Meanwhile her new zeal could run at least in the familiar 
channel of personal austerity. She sought to dominate the 
flesh, rising at night to pray ; dropping, it is said, hot wax 
upon her arms. Taxed in later life with these self-inflicted 
penances, contrary to her mature theory of discipline, she 
excused herself : * What would you have ? All seemed good 
at that time.' In the days when the dress was distasteful to 
her, she yet had scorned the paltry expedients of the nuns to 
better and beautify it ; now she would bring it back in all 
points to the primitive garment of poverty and penance. She 
gave up cuffs, so that the rough material took the skin off her 
wrists ; 2 she left off the linen underwear in general use, but 
forbidden by the Rule ; she slept in her day-garments. These 
personal reforms, already practised when she paid her last 
visit to Andilly, had subjected her to the fire of family criticism. 
A maid reported the absence of linen ; there was a rumour 
of fleas. ' Did she think piety consisted in dirt ? ' she was 
asked. ' Her austerities would ruin her health.' 3 Her con- 
stant defence was the Rule of her Order, the Order that, 
after all, she had not in the first instance chosen. 

The young Abbess had embraced with all her heart the 
calling of a nun and the ideal embodied in her Rule. But 
the question before her was not that of professing or not 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 263. 

* Relation de la Mere Marie de Sainte-Magdeleine du Fargis, loc. cit., 
vol. ii, p. 408. 

3 Relation . . . de la Mere A ngelique de S. Jean, loc. cit., vol. i. p, 32. 



28 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

professing, but of practising or not practising what she already 
had professed. It is characteristic of the Mere Angelique that, 
while a nun in all truth and simplicity, adopting the nun's 
ideal of poverty, obedience and humility, she had always, in 
support of her ideal, arguments that reach beyond convent 
walls. She loved, indeed, poverty, because Christ was poor, 
because ' Blessed are the poor ' ; but she marvelled also that 
any one could take pleasure in superfluity while so many lacked 
food and clothing. And first and foremost this argument of 
integrity, conformity of practice to profession. There was 
much to be said in favour of the relaxed practice of convents, 
becoming as they were a secular institution, a quite tolerable 
refuge for the superfluous woman. But there was nothing at 
ah 1 in favour of the union of that secular purpose with the 
elder religious profession and rule, a glaring anomaly tending, 
as do all such anomalies, to the lowering of the standard of 
national honesty. 

The principle of integrity, simple truth and sincerity, was 
upheld eventually by Port Royal in the teeth of ' persecution ' ; 
it was now Angelique's guide in the reform of her own person 
and of her convent. ' Had I to make a new Order,' she said 
later, to Francois de Sales, ' I should perhaps make it less 
strict ; but since the Rules are already made, I think one should 
conform to them so far as it is possible.' She said to him, 
as her nephew reports it : ' My Father, in reforming my Abbey, 
I did not think I had anything else to do than to return to 
the Rule which had been neglected, and to restore things to 
the same state in which they were before the relaxation and 
deformation. It seems to me that there is no need to subtilize 
and to refine in these matters, and that one has only to restore 
the ancient observances and the ancient spirit of the Order.' 
And she assured him, with regard to that nice question of 
underclothing, that cleanliness was as possible with the regula- 
tion serge as with linen, the former requiring only more care 
and frequent bleaching. 1 

The conquest of the Prioress and other recalcitrant nuns 
was the fruit, as already seen, of their affection for the young 
Abbess rather than of participation in her spirit. They were 
not touched by grace to a kindred zeal, but their hearts were 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Mcmoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, p. 306. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF REFORM 29 

won to do her pleasure. She displayed truly in her treatment 
of them the human qualities most deserving of affection and 
characteristic of her large nature ; an eminent reasonableness, 
that could see the force of their arguments and did not resent 
their natural doubt of her steadfastness, this in rare union with 
warmheartedness and keen sensibilities and with a tempera- 
ment of strong energy and activity. The reform was accepted 
by several of these original nuns against the grain therefore ; 
in one instance it was refused, in another taken with reserve. 

A nun who had been child-pupil under the child-abbess, 
and was a novice at this moment of reform, has recorded her 
memories of the Mere Angelique. 1 She mentions how constant 
Angelique was in prayer at this period before the nuns had 
yielded to her wishes. ' She scarcely stirred from her oratory, 
praying a long while before speaking to the Nuns in whom 
she met with opposition.' According to this report, it was the 
Prioress herself who, moved by the girl's sadness, promised to 
accomplish her will. 

' In all things that she established, she observed such dis- 
cretion and charity, that in general her will was accepted 
readily. When something a Nun had in her cell, such as 
a rosary of some beauty or the like, was brought to her, she 
received it with very great joy, and displayed as much 
pleasure in seeing that these little niceties were given up as 
if she had received some great present. 

' A deaf and dumb Sister, whom it had not been proposed 
to include in the reform, gathered what was going forward 
and brought spontaneously her small possessions to the common 
store. This Sister became thenceforward as indifferent in her 
dress as she had before been dainty, and developed great 
piety and zeal in correcting her faults.' 

Another of the original nuns, on the contrary, declined 
reform altogether, declaring she had been made a nun against 
her will. They asked of her only to live with them in peace, 
but could not obtain it. The young Abbess came to a trial 
of will with this Sister, who, having on some occasion given 
' great scandal ' to all the community, refused to do penance 
for it. She preferred to be deprived of the Sacrament on the 
Feast of Ascension Day. ' Our Mother left her in this state 
until Pentecost. Then she called her to the Chapter and spoke 

1 Relation de la Soeur Anne de S. Augustin Garnier, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. ii, p. 424 seq. 



30 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

to her so strongly that she constrained her to do what she 
desired. I am incapable,' continues the Soeur Garnier, ' of 
reporting the things which she said ; but I remember that 
she made the whole community weep. The care she took of 
this poor Sister is incredible.' Neither firmness nor long- 
suffering were, however, of avail to change the unwilling 
spirit ; and Angelique permitted this nun's translation to 
another, presumably unreformed, convent, where she eventually 
died, ' with a great sense of her faults, so it was reported.' 

Another nun, the senior of all, took very hardly to reform, 
having peculiar aversion to the community of goods. 

' The Mother would not constrain her. But some con- 
siderable time after, this Nun resolved of her own accord to 
put in common all she possessed, with the reserve of a little 
garden which she had in private and could not resolve to part 
with. During the Mother Angelique's absence at Andilly, she 
had made acquaintance with a Capuchin Friar ' (it will be 
remembered certain Capuchins had then visited Port Royal), 
* to whom she was greatly attached. He came to see her at 
this time, and, before he had spoken to her, our Mother informed 
him that this good Sister had put all in common with reserve 
of the garden. He did all he could to make her give it up, 
without any success. He went so far as to go on his knees 
to her ; but that served only to make her more angry. Some 
time after, when her anger had passed, she asked the Mother 
Angelique's permission to write to this Capuchin, which was 
accorded. She brought her the letter open, but the Mother 
would not read it, and told her to close it herself, and that it 
should be sent safely. The Nun accordingly closed her letter 
and enclosed in it the key of the garden. This good Father 
came to bring the key to the Mother Angelique. I used to 
see him ' (it is always the Soeur Garnier who reports), ' when 
he came, because his family was in intimate friendship with 
my father and mother. This time, he said to me : " Did 
I not tell you, my daughter, that Dame Morel would yield in 
the end ? She has sent word to me that she was convinced 
of the goodness of Madame, because in spite of all her opposi- 
tion she did not fail to speak to her with such gentleness 
that it filled her with confusion, so that she could no longer 
resist her. She has sent me the key of her garden to give 
to her. I must own to you that since she has won over the 
spirit of that Nun, I can say it is a miracle." ' 

Even before her conversion the Mere Angelique had been 
struck by the pettiness and tenacity of the spirit of possession 



THE BEGINNINGS OF REFORM 31 

nursed in nuns by the prevailing indulgence, as in the case of 
a Sister who had chosen to abstain from Communion at Easter, 
rather than acknowledge to the Abbess some disposal of her 
belongings which she had made without leave. Her riper 
experience taught her that the same spirit may reappear in 
convents where community is strictly enforced, in the form of 
pride of possession for the community, in rivalry of church 
ornaments and the like. She herself was from the first as 
careful that the community should be poor as that the nuns 
should have all in common, and she cherished all outward signs 
of such poverty. She rejected the cups of faience which her 
mother had given the convent, substituting earthenware mugs. 
She thought out, and made with her own hands, a dress of the 
required coarseness and simplicity. In the later days of the 
convent, which seemed to her to show signs of degeneracy, 
she recalled this first garb of poverty, the coarseness of the 
material, how it was made ah 1 of pieces as many as forty 
and her delight in it. She loved it so much that she began 
to fear it was an idol. 1 She bade her nuns note that their 
Rule of S. Benedict had a detail lacking to that of S. Francis, 
inasmuch as it enjoined that the dress should be of the lowest 
possible price. She persisted all her life in this minute care 
for poverty, telling her nuns that if, after her death, they 
came to desire superfluities, she believed she should return 
from her grave. They would deserve, she said, to be abandoned 
of God, if ever they abandoned the spirit of poverty. 

The young Abbess enforced also from the first that other 
conventual virtue, Silence, particularly during the hours of 
service. She caused a little bell to be rung at the close of 
each service, so that the patients in the infirmary should 
know when to break the silence in which they shared. 2 

She exhorted her nuns to charity and mutual forbearance ; 
and she herself set them the example in her unceasing care for 
their bodies as for their souls. She was as careful they should 
want for no necessaries as that they should desire no super- 
fluities. She kept in her heart the hope of one day laying 

1 Entretiens ou Conferences de la Reverende Mere Marie- Angelique 
Avnauld, A Bruxelles, 1757, pp. 37-8. 

2 Relation de la Sceur Anne de S. Augustin Garnier, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. ii, p. 429. 



32 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

down her ill-gotten dignity, but, till that should be possible, 
she strove to fill her post as Mother and as servant to the 
community. The example for her was that of her Lord 
washing the feet of His disciples. When the nuns were ill she 
was their nurse ; she shared at all times in the humblest 
tasks of the household. The Sceur Gamier, from whom most 
of these details are drawn, was one of the first to experience 
the peculiar care of which instances abound in the later narra- 
tives. This Sister was, as already observed, a novice at this 
time of reform, and while still a novice she developed some 
malady or received some hurt in the leg. She did all she 
could to conceal it, fearing it would prevent her reception 
by the community. But the wound festered and, finding 
herself obliged to make it known, she went to the Abbess 
with tears in her eyes. Angelique was moved with so much 
compassion that she promised no one should know. She her- 
self dressed the wound in secret until it was cured, taking 
the ointment from the cell of a nun who had also a bad leg, 
and she promised the novice that it should be of no prejudice 
to her. 

During those same first years of reform, a nun received as 
guest on her way from one convent to another was amazed 
at the Mother Angelique's conduct, and used to say she had 
never known what it meant to be a nun, and that one 
must come to Port Royal to learn it. She wrote home to 
her convent : 

' Mme de Port Royal takes such care of her Nuns that she 
herself carries the wood into the dormitories to warm them, 
and she has so much charity for those who are ill, that it is 
as though she were herself the nurse. They have put me in 
the Novitiate, where the young Nuns take as much care of 
me as if I were their own Sister.' 

The Abbess took upon herself, for a time at least, and 
failing any nun to whom she could confide it, the charge of the 
Novitiate, instructing the novices with great earnestness, and 
recommending silence and respect for the nuns. She also held 
chapters, but long after, she told her nuns, it was with pain 
and difficulty in those years that she was Abbess by wrongful 
appointment. Subsequently, when she was re-elected Abbess 
legitimately by the nuns, she had no trouble in speaking to 




: LF, CHAPITRE. DE POKTHR.QYAL DES CHAMPS 




I.ES Rtl.ICIKU.SF.> DEI'OKT-ROYM. UFS CT1AMPS FA1SANT I, A CONFER 1 . HANS LA SOLITUDE 



THE CHAPTER AT PORT ROYAL DES CHAMPS AND THE 'CONFERENCE' OF 
NUNS IN THE PORTION OF THE GARDEN CALLED THE ' SOLITUDE ' 

From engravings by Madeleine Hortemels 



P. 32 



THE BEGINNINGS OF REFORM 33 

the community, trusting that God would put words into her 
mouth. 1 

Small as was the community, the charge of Abbess, thus 
understood, was no light one for so young a girl. After two 
or three years she fell suddenly ill (in 1613), and was like to 
die. As the nuns assembled at her bedside, she spoke to them 
of her grief at not completing what seemed to her necessary 
for a full reform, assuring them that if they were faithful to 
God He would not abandon them. 'As she saw the whole 
community moved to tears, she gathered ah 1 the strength of 
her feebleness and repeated out loud the prayer of S. Martin : 
" Lord, if I am still necessary to Thy people, I do not refuse 
labour ; Thy will be done" 

The Mere Angelique recovered and reform went forward. 
The nuns had now ah 1 accepted it cheerfully and some at least 
shared her zeal. All shared in the simplicity of life, and in 
common labour. Turn and turn about, the nuns took a week 
in the kitchen, obeying the lay-sister who was cook as simply 
as though they had been novices. Something of the light- 
hearted charm of all such voluntary returns to the simpler 
life of human fellowship, whether in a nunnery or at Brook 
Farm, hangs about Port Royal in these early days. The 
delight in common labour is here, however, seasoned by the 
thought of a higher service ; the natural charm of simplicity 
is tempered, perhaps refined, by its ideal merit. And that 
flame of the ideal spiritual life was nursed, not by labour only, 
but by abstinence and penance. Port Royal was a nunnery. 
Hand in hand with zeal for labour went the fervour for self- 
mortification. The spirit of Port Royal filled the accustomed 
channels ; only, filling, it was not exhausted in them. They 
were here channels that led to the wide sea of charity. And, 
better check even than the common-sense which was not 
lacking, the zeal for penance had to pass the test of sincerity, 
and approve itself by real change of character. Penance, at 
Port Royal, was never a substitute for amendment. 

1 V. Relation de la Mere Marie-Dorothee de I' Incarnation Le Conte, 
Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, p. 424, and Lettres de la Mere Ange- 
lique, vol. i, pp. 594-5. 2 Relation de la Sceur Anne de 

S. Augustin Gamier, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 429. 



LOWNDES 



34 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

The profound care for sincerity saved the Mere Angelique 
from another danger of convents. Daughter of the Church, 
she accepted without question the authenticated visions of the 
Saints ; her own fervours tended to ' inwardness ', and to a 
spirituality that, without this counteractive, might well have 
taken such mystic form. But the point on which her mind 
dwelt was the frequency of delusion in these matters, the 
trifling of the human spirit. Her early prayer was accordingly 
one strange on the lips of a nun: 'Save me from visions.' 
She did not aspire after the visions of the Saints, she dreaded 
the delusions of the Devil ; and for herself she desired only 
an intermediate form of ecstasy, the sole legitimate one to 
desire, as she told her nuns in ripe old age, a certain ' silence 
of the heart before God.' x 

'God,' Angelique also told her nuns, for all the reverend 
gravity with which her sayings are reported we catch at times 
a turn of the Mother's caustic humour , heard her prayer most 
effectively, and she had no waking visions, and, as for those 
which came to her in sleep, she held them all for dreams or 
reverie. One of her early dreams, however, made so deep 
an impression upon her that she told it to the nuns in 
after-life, and we retail it here as a dream-allegory revealing 
the hidden movement of her mind. 

She saw a church, exceeding beautiful, descend from the 
heavens upon a high hill and enclose a multitude of people 
standing upon the summit. She was at once moved to go 
also to the church, and as she toiled up the hill, she said, 
: Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.' ('I did not 
know at the time,' she told her nuns, ' that these words were 
in the Bible.') As she reached the church, she had a vision, 
but of disembodied beauty, the vision of God, she believed 
it ; and straightway she said to herself, ' I have not deserved 
what I see. I must return to work and fight before daring 
to hope for it.' Upon which, she awoke. 2 

1 Entretiens ou Conferences de la Reverende Mere Marie- Angelique 
Arnauld, p. 252 ; cf. also p. 378. 

! Relation de la Mere Marie-Dorothee de I' Incarnation Le Conte, 
Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, pp. 421-2. 



CHAPTER III 

The Mere Angelique's directors, and her sisters. The spirit of 

Port Royal. 

THE young monk, of uncompromising zeal, was, as we have 
seen, ejected by M. Arnauld from the convent with his 
daughter's private approval : 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued) 

' This Monk had helped two Nuns of S. Antoine des Champs 
(Mme de Nouveau and Mme de Louviers) to obtain permission 
to come and live with us, as they greatly desired so soon as 
they learnt that reform was being established. One of them 
(the Mere de Louviers) had been assisted by a worthy secular 
Priest (M. Boucher) who lived in Paris, and who had been with 
the Capuchins, but had left while Novice because of infirmity. 
This worthy Priest used to visit Haute Bruyere (a neighbouring 
Priory), and on his way thither stopped here to see this Nun. 
I also saw him, and he seemed to me very good, as indeed he 
was. I told him the straits I was in for want of assistance ; 
and he promised to speak for me to an old Capuchin, who was 
very prudent, and of great repute (it was the Father Archangel 
of Pembroke), who had helped very successfuUy in the reform 
of the Abbeys of Montvilliers and of S. Paul near Beauvais. 

' He spoke to this good Father, who came to see us, and who 
was a Monk truly wise and discreet. He was English and 
of high birth, and he had left his country for the Catholic 
religion, his father being Catholic. As one of his friends 
was surprised while hearing mass and taken prisoner, he took 
alarm ; so much so that he fled and came to Paris, and soon 
after, while still only twenty years of age, he became a Capuchin. 
Had this worthy Father not been nurtured upon the study of 
the Casuists, he would have lacked nothing to be a perfect 
Monk ; but since he had studied nothing else, that had done 
him great harm. Nevertheless he was better for us at that time 
than any other we could have had, and his counsels were 
proportioned to what we could do. 

' My father and my mother approved him highly, because 

D 2 



36 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

he was known and esteemed by Mme la Marquise de Maignelai, 1 
whom they wholly esteemed and honoured, and who answered 
for his prudence and discretion, and that he would never 
permit me to do anything contrary to my health, for which 
indeed he had only too much regard. The first piece of 
advice which he gave me, and which I have found very useful, 
was never to let our Sisters speak to any Monk whatsoever, 
not even to the Capuchins, not though they were to preach 
like angels ; for that did not give them the gift of 
directing well, which is very rare ; he promised to see them 
when he came. As there reigned in our Convent an excessive 
ignorance, none of our Sisters knowing the Catechism, no 
more than I, he begged M. Gallot, Doctor, who was Confessor 
to the Carmelites, old and very discreet, to come and see 
us from time to time, in order to preach and teach the 
Catechism to our pupils, whereat everybody attended. He 
had also an extraordinary gift for the Confessional. Further 
the Father Archangel begged a worthy Feuillant, a friend 
of his (Dom Eustache de S. Paul), to come and see us. He 
was a very good Monk, and had more knowledge than any one. 
It turned out that he was son of one of my late grandfather's 
great friends, known and loved by my father and my mother, 
who were very pleased to see me in the hands of these persons, 
of whose discretion they were well satisfied. For in truth, and 
with justice, they feared everything at my age, which was still 
only eighteen. Since these persons were liked by my father, 
for whom the General had an affection, the Monks could not 
complain of their coming, so that we were at peace, but always 
at great straits for the ordinary Confessor, who had to be drawn 
from those of the Order. I inquired everywhere in order to 
find a good one, and I could not meet with what we needed. 
They gave me everyone I asked for, and always I was deceived. 
' The one I had found here, who was very ignorant, proposed 
to depart when he saw us reformed, saying he was not capable 
of conducting us. The one we had next was this young Monk, 
whom my father expelled ; and after that one who was really 
a little mad, which made him deliver what he knew in so 
ridiculous a manner that he was a laughing-stock for us, 
and an affliction at the same time, to see ourselves reduced 
to such persons for the administration of the Sacraments. 

1 The Marquise de Maignelai was one of the leading Dames de la 
Charitt, who formed a benevolent society in Paris in the early seven- 
teenth century. The Cardinal de Retz, who was her nephew, made 
use of her charity to curry favour with the people in preparation for 
the Fronde, so he narrates in his Memoires, 



THE MERE ANGELIQUE'S DIRECTORS 37 

I remember one of the Sisters at that time was thought to be 
dying, and he gave her Extreme Unction and desired to preach, 
which he did at such length and in such a manner that we were 
all in distress for the patient and for ourselves. Finally his 
mind grew so weak, that it was necessary to dismiss him and 
begin the search over again for another. 

' We were told of one who was said to be the best Monk 
of his House. He was granted to us, and we sent to fetch him. 
He came, and, because he made pretence to love reform and all 
the worthy Fathers who came to see us, of whom he was not 
jealous, I took, to please him, two of his great -nephews as he 
wished ; and that seemed the best in the world for peace, 
which was all I sought from such persons. But at the end 
of some years, through the fidelity of two Sisters, I discovered 
things which showed me that this apparent shepherd was in 
reality a wolf. I got rid of him. I had one after who was 
equally worthless, but in a manner less dangerous for the Sisters. 

' At last, not knowing what to do, it occurred to me to 
say to a chaplain we had (who was called afterwards Dom Jean 
Catois, and became Abbe de la Charite), who was very sensible, 
and had the fear of God, that if he had the wish to be a Monk, 
he would show us great kindness ; that, nevertheless, I did not 
dare to give him this advice, or to beg this of him, but that 
I begged him to consult Father Eustache. The latter approved 
of his turning Monk, seeing that he was disposed to it, not in 
order to return here to us after his Profession, unless he should 
be commanded to, but from love of the calling. He who had 
given him the inclination was M. 1'Abbe de la Charmoye 
(M. Mauger), whose acquaintance we had made on occasion 
of the Mother Agnes' Profession, which was in 1612. For in 
order to make a professed Nun, we were obliged to obtain 
permission of M. de Citeaux, and to choose an Abbe of the Order. 

' Since we had heard much good of M. de la Charmoye, we 
begged him to come and profess her. He was a true Monk, 
had a veritable charity, and did not know the meaning of self- 
interest or jealousy. He took a great liking to this House and 
sympathized with the difficulties we sustained in the Order. 
He received the Chaplain of whom I have spoken, let him pass 
his Novitiate with him, and, after his Profession, sent him 
back. But he did not make him into so good a Monk as himself, 
and little by little he (the ex-chaplain) became like the others. 
He served us, however, for some years very charitably accord- 
ing to his small lights ; and the best thing about him was that 
he liked those who helped us. 

' We arranged so as to have M. de la Charmoye as Vicar ; 
which was a great benefit because of his true goodness. But, 



38 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

to tell the truth, he had all the qualities of a good Monk, 
but not of a Superior. Nevertheless we were happy to have 
him, and we could have had no better at that time than this 
good Father, if we could have chosen among all those whom 
we then knew.' 

The Mere Angelique's search after a Director on whom to 
lay the ' burden of her authority, and even for a Confessor 
fit for the ordinary duties of such a post, proved thus a long 
training in the knowledge of persons. Her judgement, as later 
events show, did not become impeccable, but it was from the 
first too sound and clear to be easily overruled, even by her 
great desire to yield obedience. Many years passed before 
she came in contact with any master-mind whose aspirations 
could mate with hers, and on whose force of character and 
intellect she could rely. 

The judgements which, in her reminiscent talks with her 
nephew, she passed upon the directors of this earlier period, 
show how keen and untrammelled, and how involuntarily self- 
reliant, was the intellect of the young Abbess. She gives, too, 
in these reminiscences, some further details of interest : 

' One of the Directors who helped me,' she told her nephew, 1 
' more than any other at the first, was the Father Archangel, 
Capuchin, who showed me an extraordinary kindness, for which 
I tried to be not ungrateful. And since I took pains to assist 
him in his temporal necessities, and often sent, to Meudon or 
elsewhere that I knew he was going, some very simple victuals 
such as bread, beef or mutton, he used to say laughing : " You 
are ill styled Mme de Port Royal, your true name is Mme de 
Cosur Royal." He was a man of excellent intellect, with 
a venerable and imposing mien, worthy of his high birth. 

' He was English, son of the Earl of Pembroke (le Comte de 
Pembrok 2 ), a Catholic, who had obtained permission, on yearly 
payment of twelve hundred crowns, to have a secret chapel 
where he alone, but not his children, could hear mass. It 
was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, of whom this Father 
several times spoke to me as a virgin in name, since she never 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Mattre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 292 seq. 

The dates would make him a son of the second Earl of Pembroke 
and ' Sidney's sister ' ; but his name is not preserved in English annals, 
nor was that Earl of Pembroke reputed a Catholic. 



THE MERE ANGELIQUE'S DIRECTORS 39 

had married, but in reality very lewd, who prostituted her- 
self with men whom she afterwards put to death secretly, 
whether by open assassinations or in prison. This young 
lord, being very Catholic and unable to endure the rigour of 
the persecutions then practised, or the want of the exercise 
of our religion, resolved to come to France, being drawn there, 
as he told me himself, by an extraordinary affection he had 
conceived for M. de Guise, who was held, in England as well as 
in France, to be the support and mainstay of the Catholic party 
in this kingdom against the Huguenots, as indeed he was, 
although ambition mingled in his defence of religion.' 

Angelique narrates further how this Father became Director 
to Mme de Guise and that whole family ; and how also, at 
a later date, he urged Angelique's mother, whom he greatly 
esteemed, to take charge, after M. Arnauld's death, of Mile de 
Guise. Mme Arnauld declined, having the charge of her 
household and being reserved, indeed, for another destiny. 

The Father Archangel saw also the younger sister, Agnes, 
at the age of fourteen, stiU titular Abbess of S. Cyr, and was 
so struck with her intelligence, discretion, and gravity, that he 
predicted she would be some day one of the greatest and most 
saintly nuns in France. He himself 'lived to see his Order 
degenerate and the young Monks endure with difficulty his love 
of austerity and of simplicity, which was the spirit of the 
Fathers when he had first become acquainted with them'. 
He rode only upon an ass, after he could no longer go on foot ; 
' when travelling with Mme de Guise, he continued always his 
simple habits of life, eating only the simplest food.' 

But this kind and venerable Father had not the force of mind 
and intellect that could inspire full confidence. Angelique 
met \\ith the first true Director of her spirit only later, when 
ten years of reform already had elapsed, in the person of 
Francois de Sales. She summed up to her nephew all her 
previous advisers : 

' Up to him (Francois de Sales), I have seen ah 1 the men 
of devotion of that time, Father Pacific, Father Bernard, 
and Father Archangel, all three Capuchins ; Father Binet, 
Jesuit ; M. Duval, doctor of Sorbonne ; M. 1'Abbe de 
la Charmoye, Bernardine, &c. But I was never able to have 
entire confidence in any of them, finding some too subtle for 



40 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

me, who loved sincerity and frankness, especially with persons 
of conscience. Father Binet and M. Duval were among these. 
The others were more open ; but they seemed to me so limited 
in their knowledge that I conducted myself with great circum- 
spection and great reserve towards them, consulting them only 
in matters where they seemed capable of giving me good advice, 
some on one subject, some on another. But when God gave 
me the acquaintance of M. de Geneve (Frangois de Sales) in 
1619, I found in him such great sincerity coupled with so 
much grace and understanding of my needs, that I put my 
heart in his hands without any reserve, finding in him alone 
more than I had found in all the others.' J 

While unable in these earlier years to rest her authority upon 
other shoulders, she had at least, within the convent, a growing 
support in its exercise. Gradually within the community, 
so ignorant and mediocre in its first members, was formed 
a little nucleus of superior spirits, fine in character and capable 
in brain. Most notable were the Abbess' own sisters. 

When Angelique returned to Port Royal after that critical 
illness, she brought back with her, to be educated, her little 
sister Marie Claire, then seven years old. This child conceived 
for her a passionate love, and was enticed by it, she also, into 
the paths of self-sacrifice. 

The elder sister and young Abbess talked, in her girlish 
fervour, to the children in the convent, and to Marie Claire in 
particular, about her dream of retiring to a desert, where she 
would live only on roots and herbs and pray continually to 
God. ' As her little sister Marie Claire, who loved her passion- 
ately, made her promise to take her with her, the Mother 
Angelique availed herself of it to wean her from all her little 
daintinesses as to food, among others her dislike to le maigre 
and vegetables, telling her that if she could not eat all such 
things she would certainly not take her to live in a desert 
where one eats only roots ; and in this way she brought her to 
it so well that she gave her command of a self-denial perfect 
in this respect, in which she went even beyond the general 
rules.' 

Marie Claire herself recounted this to the Mere Angelique de 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., 
p. 300 seq. 



THE MERE ANGELIQUE'S SISTERS 41 

S. Jean. She related also that when she was nine or ten years 
old, at the beginning of the reform, she, with her companions, 
observed in her sister the Abbess and in all the nuns, such zeal 
for mortification and penance, that even they were fired and 
strove to imitate them, seeking opportunities of conquering 
their dislikes in order to practise self-denial : 

' Two of these children, thinking of a means in their opinion 
good for that, went to gather in the garden nasty herbs, and 
among the rest a quantity of nightshade, and, having shredded 
them, they drank the concoction with as much distaste as 
though they had been taking a medicine less dangerous, since 
they ran the risk of making themselves very ill. But God 
did not permit so evil a result of their fervour, which they 
desired further to accompany by an act of charity, thinking 
they should communicate so fine an invention to their little 
comrade, Sister Marie Claire, who doubtless would not have 
discovered it for herself, since she was by nature very dainty 
in her food, although for the rest as eager as the others to 
imitate the devoutness and penitence of the Nuns. She gave 
good testimony by accepting this one, when her companions 
proposed it to her ; but it was with such violence to her feel- 
ings, and repugnance, that when the girl who looked after her 
chanced to come into the room while the two others had gone 
to prepare the drink which the poor child awaited as her torture, 
she found her deadly pale and trembling, so that, surprised, 
she thought her ill and urged her to say what it was, and at 
length by her entreaties made her disclose this purpose she 
would not at first avow. In this manner her goodwill was taken 
for the deed, and she received full dispensation of her promise 
and the others a little reprimand for their indiscreet zeal.' l 

To these convent children Angelique's dream of desert life 
was stimulating, it is clear, as Robinson Crusoe. 

At the age of fourteen, Marie Claire paid a home visit to 
Andilly, and returned for the time spoiled for convent-life 
and peevish at the simplicity and discipline. But Angelique 
won her again by an untiring patience that, making as though 
it observed nothing, retouched little by little the chords of 
union. 2 With girlhood the tender and impressionable nature 
kindled finally with the fire of self-sacrifice. Marie Claire 

1 Relation . . . par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, p. 86. a Ib., pp. 68-9. 



42 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

took the vows, and her fervour had now to be directed and 
held in check rather than incited. 

But besides this child, too young to share yet in the charges 
of the convent, Angelique had the happiness of bringing to her 
side from the earliest days of reform, that other sister, Agnes, 
only two years her junior and her fellow in destiny. From her 
she could receive an equal support ; she hoped to shift upon 
her in time the whole charge and dignity of Abbess. And yet 
again the next sister, Anne Eugenie, destined by her parents 
for marriage, discovered that no earthly bridegroom no, not 
M. de Guise himself could satisfy her rising thoughts, 1 and 
joined her sisters at Port Royal. 

The narrative of the Mere Angelique passes now to these 
two sisters, her account of the second leading her (glad when 
the tale of God's Providence turns away from her own person) 
too far afield and to events too far out of the course for us 
to follow her. The admission of Anne Eugenie to Port Royal 
and her individual joyousness are here in place, but not yet 
her share in the reform of other nunneries. Nor does the 
history of the nun Marie des Anges, to which the narrative 
turns afterwards, belong rightly here. 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued] 

' Since,' Angelique continues, ' I have spoken of the Pro- 
fession of the Mere Agnes, my sister, I think I should tell how 
God has conducted her, since it is one of the great effects of 
His goodness and divine Providence for this House. At the 
same time that the coadjutorship of this House was obtained 
for me, in 1599, the Abbey of S. Cyr, which is only two leagues 
from Port Royal des Champs, was obtained for her, who was 
only five years old ; and in order to preserve it for her, it was 
given to a Nun to keep, on the condition of restoring it into her 
hands so soon as she should be twenty. To this end she was 
brought to the Abbey with the Abbess, and received the habit 
at six and a half. 

' She took to all the practices of Religion with so much 
affection, and especially to the Divine service, that at the 
age of nine she knew the psalms by heart, and all the chants 
and the ceremonies, observing them with marvellous exactitude. 
I was also taken to that Convent six weeks after I had received 

1 Entretiens de la Mi-re Angelique avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour 
scrvir . . ., vol. ii, pp. 338-9. 



THE MERE ANGELIQUE'S SISTERS 43 

the habit at S. Antoine des Champs, and I lived there for eight 
months with my sister. But, since this Abbey did not belong 
to the Order of the House of which I was Coadjutrix, I was 
taken to Maubuisson, where I was made to profess four months 
later ; because they would not grant me the Bulls so long as 
I was a Novice. For that object, they had me confirmed and 
changed my name from Jacqueline to that of Angelique, so 
as to redemand the Bulls under another name. Two years 
later Mme Boulehart, Abbess in this Convent, died, and I was 
brought here, and frequently my sister was brought to see me. 
In the midst of our games, when it rang for service, she left 
everything to attend or to repeat the office ; and, perceiving 
that I did not repeat it at all, she remonstrated with me. 
But since I answered that, when I should be older, I would go 
away somewhere to be a Lay Sister for penance, she was so 
frightened that she dared not say anything more about it. 

' When God touched me she was surprised ; and, although 
she was very glad to see me pray to God, she was scandalized 
at the rest, above all at the vileness of the dress, since she 
cared greatly for neatness. She came with me to my father's, 
and I brought her back, passing by S. Cyr. Shortly after, she 
came to see me, being quite ill ; and, as I was ever more fortified 
in the wish to belong to God, He gave me the desire of attract- 
ing her ; which was difficult enough, for she was attached to 
her Order, and also, I think, to her supposed Charge. I greatly 
caressed her ; and little by little the love she had always had 
for prayer increased, to such an extent that she would drag 
herself, languid as she was, to the church, where she remained 
for whole hours. She was torn between her love for me and 
her repugnance to leave her Order and her Convent. At 
length it occurred to me to tell my father, who came to see 
us and found her very languid, that she was suffering from 
melancholy and that she would have been happy had he 
thought fit for her to leave S. Cyr. I said this because of my 
desire to have her, and to relieve my father's conscience of 
this Abbey, which was a secret arrangement. My father, 
believing that her illness came from what I said, told her that 
he desired only her happiness, and that, if she wished to live 
with me, he was quite willing. She was taken by surprise, but 
nevertheless did not venture to contradict me. 

'After that, there came to her little by little a genuine 
desire to be Nun here, and a complete aversion to possessing 
the Abbey, even could she have had it legitimately. I left her 
for more than a year after her desire, without giving her our 
dress, in order to test her ; and she became truly a different 
creature in submission, humility and love of poverty. 



44 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

' While she was still a Novice, I made her, by the advice of 
the Capuchin, Father Archangel, who assisted us, Mistress of the 
other Novices. For I had nobody who had the smallest talent 
for that, and up to then I had been Mistress myself. She 
acquitted the post very well. This Father told me, when she 
was still only seventeen, that she would be one of the greatest 
Nuns in France. Our Sisters had such docility that not one 
of them found anything to say against it, and they all revered 
her. In addition, there was nothing humble in the House that 
she did not do, even to scouring the stoves ; so that she had 
her fingers all rough. Her failing was her attachment to 
work beyond what her strength could sustain, to fasting, and 
to divine service ; and when it so happened that, because of 
her weakness and infirmities, which were considerable, I pre- 
vented her from attending matins on some great Feast, there 
was no means of preventing her from w T eeping greatly. 

' Her example served not a little to fortify our Sisters. The 
two Nuns of S. Antoine who came to us at the same time, 
one of whom I made Infirmarian and the other Mistress of 
five or six Pupils, were also a great help to us. They were 
already old, and good women, with more intelligence and 
knowledge than those of our House. Thus little by little our 
Monastery was established in good, and we were in possession 
of great peace and of great poverty. 

' Before the reform, I had asked my father freely for all 
we needed, as he wished ; but, after I had seen that he did not 
approve my purpose, I would no longer ask him for anything ; 
and to cover our necessities I sold the silver plate I had. But 
that did not suffice to prevent our suffering. However, we 
lacked nothing essential, only our furniture, dress and accom- 
modation were very poor ; and we were very well satisfied 
with it. There were only twelve cells in the dormitory of the 
Professed Nuns. The infirmaries were low and damp, like 
cellars. The Sisters we received almost all fell ill, and that 
did not discourage them. God sent us several, among others 
one who lived only ten years after her Profession (Sister 
Claire Martine Pinot), who was incomparable in all monastic 
virtues. She had been rejected by the Ursulines, because 
they found her not sufficiently capable. Her Confessor, who 
knew us, gave her to us ; and although she had small means, 
I esteemed myself happy to have her. We received yet 
another (Sister Isabelle Agnes de Chateauneuf), who had been 
Pupil and Postulant at the Ursulines, and whom they would 
not admit for a reason which I did not approve. She was 
a Sister all perfect, whom Our Lord had called, and who gave 
us from the moment of her admission examples of virtue. 



THE MERE ANGELIQUE'S SISTERS 45 

I took her to Maubu.isson x with me, to be Mistress of Novices 
there, where she conducted herself in such a manner that 
the old Nuns revered her as a saint. She died, as she had 
lived, in a marvellous humility and trust in God. We received 
also certain others who brought us little money, but this little 
sufficed us well enough, for all that we did for our accom- 
modation was very poor ; so that very little sufficed us. 

'God gave me from the first a great aversion to bargain 
for Nuns. I well believe that there was much human pride 
mingled, for it seemed to me very shameful. God had given 
me the grace also to learn this truth from an Archbishop 
(M. d'Auch) who came to see us to confirm our Sisters. For 
there were only one or two who had been confirmed, and not 
a single one who knew what this Sacrament signified. And it 
was the first Capuchin Father who had acquainted us with 
the obligation of receiving it, and who had begged the said 
Archbishop to come and confer it on our Sisters. Now this 
Prelate, in speaking to me, told me that it was simony to exact 
money before receiving girls to be Nuns. This remained in my 
mind ; and although people have tried to move me from this 
opinion, they have never succeeded, perhaps because it favoured 
my tendency to pride ; for, as for the rest, I was very glad, on 
account of our needs, when any came to us who had means. 

' Little by little I set the House in order. My father, being 
pacified, obtained permission from our General to enter, in 
order to attend to the plants of the garden and to our build- 
ings ; which he did with great care. He had our infirmaries 
raised a story. When one of my sisters (Sister Anne 
Eugenie de 1'Incarnation) became a Nun, he built the cloister 
walls, which were before only of earth and so low that no 
ladder was needed to climb them, and besides there were 
frequent gaps. 

'I think that it is to the point to narrate how this Sister, 
of whom I have just spoken, became Nun. She was brought 
up, when little, at S. Cyr with the Mother Agnes. She was 
very devout, like her; and, when she came with her to see me, 
she too was shocked to see that I did not pray to God. She 
had some wish to be a Nun here in her childhood, but it passed 
away at the age of fourteen. She returned to the world, and 
completely caught its spirit. She had a great affection for 
me, and, when everybody was opposed to me in the matter 
of reform, she was always on my side, and defended me as 
best she could, and I believe that God rewarded her for it. 
I had a great desire that she should be a Nun, and prayed God 
for it with all my heart ; but she had an extreme disinclination, 

1 V. post, p. 77. 



46 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

being altogether vain and worldly, not frivolous, but proud 
and self-satisfied in the extreme. At length God sent her 
a severe illness, in the course of which an event made her 
believe that she should die ; and at the same time she was 
struck with extreme terror at the thought of her sins, which 
set her in such distress that her malady increased still more. 
In this distress God gave her grace to have recourse to His 
mercy ; and she promised Him that if He would give her time, 
she would love Him with all her heart. The danger passed, 
and, now she was cured, she began to think more of God than 
she had previously. 

' My mother, who had always feared God, took her to all 
good sermons, but they had not touched her in the least until 
then, for God had not yet prepared her heart. But now she 
gathered all the words with great devotion, writing out after- 
wards what she remembered of the sermon. Thus little by 
little she made progress towards her happiness. She had 
known the Father Eustache, Feuillant, to whom my mother 
had already made her general confession, a good year before. 
She prepared as best she could to make hers, and did it with 
such exactness, and was so careful to ask all the advice required 
to live like a Christian, that this good Father, coming to see us 
immediately after, told me that she would be a Nun, although 
she did not yet wish it ; but that she had too much light and 
desire to serve God to remain in the world, where she could 
not find what she desired ; and so it was. During a sermon, 
a person of quality whom she did not know perceived in 
a tuck of the sleeve of her dress a piece of cloth, and, drawing 
it out, said to her : " Mademoiselle, look what I have found 
in your sleeve; it is a sign that you will be a Nun." This 
frivolous speech touched her and made her believe, as she 
very much wished to have the desire, that she would be a Nun. 
A few days after, in the Chapel of S. Merri, her parish church, 
God gave her so great a movement to be a Nun and so great 
a contempt for all the world, that this feeling remained with 
her until death. My father and my mother were greatly 
surprised, and did ah 1 they could to dissuade her ; and whatever 
entreaty she could make to have permission to accomplish her 
desire, they never would give it her until a year had passed. 
My father feared that it was the wretchedness in which she 
saw my sister Le Maitre, by the ill fortune she had had, that 
gave her the thought of being a Nun, and this grieved him. 
My mother believed also that her haughty spirit could never 
reduce itself to obedience ; and thus they retained her, to 
test the firmness of her will. 

' During this time they permitted her to do whatever she 



48 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

by a special working of the Divine Providence, which I'must not 
omit to narrate. There were at Chartres three daughters of 
a family fairly well-to-do, who wanted to come and be Nuns. 
The Mother Marie des Anges, who was then only sixteen, and 
who had desired from the cradle to be a Nun, did not venture 
to come with the others, because her father, who was of good 
birth, but burdened with children, had small means ; and 
although a very skilful lawyer, he made little, being such an 
honest man and so nice in justice, that he found scarcely any 
cause where it was not necessary to employ tricks and lies to 
sustain it ; so that he preferred to live quietly with his wife, 
who was also very virtuous, and with his children, rather 
than encumber himself with the affairs of the world, trusting 
for his children in the Divine Providence. 

' As these three girls of their acquaintance were about to 
start, some one advised him to send his daughter with them, 
at the risk of her returning. He did so without expectation 
that she could remain. But no sooner had these four girls 
entered the parlour than my eye fell upon her, although she 
walked last ; and she touched me so strongly that I said on 
the spot to the Sister who was with me, that there would be 
only this little one to remain. In truth the others had as 
poor mien as she had good, for already devoutness, modesty, 
gentleness and humility were painted on her countenance, 
and we found her from the first day of her Novitiate such as 
she is now in respect of these virtues.' 

* 

Here again we must interrupt the narrative, and not to 
augment, but to omit. This young girl, in her after history, 
showed a constant spirit and a union of humility and force that 
sets her peer with the Mothers Angelique and Agnes. But the 
time for its display was later, and the sphere of her activity was 
mainly elsewhere. 1 We cannot in her case, any more than 
with the Sister Anne, follow Angelique to events far ahead, 
which, familiar to the nuns for whom she wrote, are as yet 
unknown to the present reader. Marie des Anges was chosen, 
years later, to be Abbess of that notorious Convent of Mau- 
buisson where Angelique had passed her childhood, and had 
there full exercise for a courageous humility which, indifferent 

1 Her history is related in a separate work : Modele de Foi et de 
Patience dans toutes les Traverses de la Vie, et dans les grandes Persecu- 
tions ; ou Vie de la Mere Marie des Anges (Suireau), Abbesse de Mau- 
buisson et de Port-Royal, 1754. 



THE SPIRIT OF PORT ROYAL 49 

to all personal slights, abated nothing of the due exercise of 
authority and steered a straight course through the prejudices 
of the nuns and the intrigues of confessors. Events have 
brought us, however, not to her rule at Maubuisson, but to 
the temporary sway there of the Mere Angelique. 

Ten years had passed since the establishment of reform at 
Port Royal, and the good fame of the convent had spread 
throughout the Cistercian Order; the scandalous notoriety of 
that other convent of the same order, Maubuisson, had 
come meanwhile to its height. The Abbess, Angelique 
d'Estrees our Mere Angelique's sponsor had lost her sister 
Gabrielle and her royal protector Henri IV. But neither for 
that, nor because of advancing years, had she changed her 
gay mode of life. The King, so it is said, Louis XIII, declared 
the scandal must cease ; the General of the Order was able, 
at any rate, to count on the support of the Crown and, after 
futile remonstrance, proceeded to extreme measures against 
the recalcitrant Abbess. She was removed forcibly and 
confined in the Filles Pe'nitentes, while to her former pupil 
and namesake was given the task of restoring monastic rule 
and, as she at least interpreted the commission, of instilling 
spiritual life in this most secular of convents. Before accom- 
panying her there, or entering upon the piquant tale of Mme 
d'Estrees, let us dwell again upon Port Royal, recount the 
points of the reform now well established, and gather in brief 
some other memories of the spirit and activity of nuns and 
Abbess. 

First, as we have seen, those crying infringements of the 
rule and spirit of a nunnery, private property and freedom 
of intercourse, were done away; community and the cloister 
were established. 

Then, within the convent, the professed Rule of S. Benedict 
was restored by degrees in letter and in spirit. The dress, 
food, furniture, and utensils were made truly poor. The 
pleated gowns of the nuns were refashioned on the simplest 
loose model a sac, and, from the exigencies of the stuff, were 
composed in great measure of pieces and patches. As for the 
serge that had been so distasteful to the unregenerate mind of 
the child-Abbess, Angelique could scarce now find any coarse 

LOWNDES 



50 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

enough to content her. 1 Yet the nuns accepted her choice 
a rough homespun, ' all hairy, yellow like wax,' et si grasse 
qu'elle en est toute gluante , with submission. One or two 
only begged some little change and adjustment, and they 
' seemed like monsters ' in the general zeal ; they were allowed 
what they would, and, so far from discipline suffering thereby, 
the others regarded them with pity rather than envy. 2 

Talking of these things later to her nuns, the Mere Angelique 
went on to say with great warmth, a Sister reports : 

' If one imagines that one can belong truly to God without 
embracing this genuine spirit of poverty and of mortification 
in all things, and without every day bearing His cross, I confess 
that I no longer know what the Christian life is, let alone the 
monastic. For, in fine, what is a Christian if not a disciple of 
Jesus Christ, and what can we learn of Jesus Christ except 
what He has shown us ? As for me, I cannot understand that 
one should believe that the Son of God, who is supremely wise, 
should have chosen to be born in a stable, dirty, disused, 
exposed to the cold of the rudest season of the year, among 
the animals, in the stench and in the straw; and that, while 
acknowledging the obligation to follow in His footsteps, one 
can voluntarily preserve sundry affectations of neatness, of 
adjustment, and all other attempts to satisfy the senses and 
the mind, whatever they may be. But they are fables then, 
all that we are told of the life of Jesus Christ ? One dare not 
think it, much less say it ; and nevertheless our actions bear 
witness to nothing less. 

' I forgive frailty. I know that, even though one has in 
the heart love for Jesus Christ, and a genuine desire to conform 
one's life to His, one yet does not fail to commit faults by 
surprise, and to relax on occasions this constant study to cut 
off from nature all the idle satisfactions that it seeks. But 
when it is not by surprise, but a deliberate will that one 
cherishes and fortifies by reasons and excuses, that may indeed 
have some likelihood according to the wisdom of the flesh, 
which is hostile to God ; then it is that I can no longer conceive 
how such sentiments and such thoughts can be reconciled with 
the maxims of the Gospel and the belief in the life and in the 

1 Relation de la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, Memoires pour servir . . ., 
vol. ii, p. 469. 

a Relation de la Soeur Marie de Ste. Euphrasie Robert, loc. cit., vol. ii, 
p. 466. 



THE SPIRIT OF PORT ROYAL 51 

words of the Son of God. What ! taught as we are, that it is 
not permissible to enjoy any pleasure of life, but only to take 
the pleasure when it is not otherwise possible to satisfy neces- 
sity, do we imagine that, knowing these things and not prac- 
tising them, giving licence to our eyes and our other senses 
to seek proprieties, adjustments, neatnesses and other super- 
fluous conveniences, that concern, not the needs, but the 
gratifications of life, do we imagine, I say, and do we hope that 
when we shall be at the last gasp, already dying and with 
scarce any feeling left, when they come to give us holy unction 
and repeat Indulgeat tibi Deus quidquid peccasti per visum, 
per gustum, &c., that we shall deserve indeed to obtain the 
effect of these words ? Will not God rather mock us in this 
terrible hour, as we have mocked Him in counting on His 
mercy and despising His example, whose imitation alone can 
obtain it for us.' 1 

Angelique had won her nuns by personal affection, she 
preached to them by example. Of the coarse and unshapely 
garments the Abbess was careful that the rudest should be 
for her. Enclosure was established beyond dispute by the 
notorious exclusion of her own parents, whose benefits to the 
convent might well have pleaded for an exception to be made 
in their favour. Before restoring the total abstinence from 
meat demanded by the Rule, she practised it herself secretly 
for months, concealing her daily portion of omelette under 
a scrap of mutton so that the Prioress should observe nothing 
in making her the accustomed obeisance. Finding the vege- 
tarian diet of no ill effects, she introduced it without difficulty 
in the convent ; and the diet thenceforth was the simple one 
of eggs, occasional salads, and soup of fresh vegetables or 
beans, according to the season, and bread which the nuns ate 
dipped in their soup. The changed hour of matins, from 
four in the morning to two, was again in accordance with the 
Rule. But in another change, which the nuns had some 
unreadiness in accepting, the Mere Angelique seems to have 
been guided rather by her own predilections. She instituted 
among the services an hour of silent prayer, 2 thus marking 
already a tendency to inwardness characteristic of Port Royal 

1 Ib., pp. 466-8. 

2 Relation de la Vie de la Mere Marie Angelique Arnauld . . . par la 
Mere A ngelique de S. Jean A rnauld, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, p. 30. 

E 2 



52 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

and a point of affinity with Protestantism as also with the 
heresy, as yet unborn, of Quietism. The Mere Angelique had 
never, like her sister Agnes and the others, had a natural liking 
for the ceremonies and services of the Church ; her occasional 
foretastes of devotion had tended to the silent realization 
of the presence of God, as a child of seven, in the broad skies ; 
a few years later, at her installation, in the Eucharist. Accord- 
ingly there is from the first and always, in the spirit proper 
to her and imprinted by her upon Port Royal, an insistance 
upon the spiritual content and meaning of the Church cere- 
monies which, while exalting them, made it possible also, 
when the need arose, to dispense with them. But the days 
of such a need were as yet far ahead for Port Royal, and 
undreamt of. And the Abbess, while aiming supremely at 
the inward and spiritual knowledge of God, gave at the same 
time her energies and her care to the ceremonies that should 
foster devotion. As in all the life of the convent, so in the 
services of the Church, simplicity was the rule. But whereas, 
in the nun's rule of life, simplicity verged towards negligence 
and austerity, in the service of God the care was extreme for 
order and even for beauty in its kind. Angelique shunned the 
common conventual covetousness and rivalry for rich vessels 
and ornaments, but was scrupulous that all sacred utensils 
and coverings should be select and well kept ; the singing and 
recital was an object of special care, as well to secure clearness 
and beauty of tone, as to avoid needless flourish and display. 

In all, however, that did not relate to the service of God, 
but to the daily life of the nuns, simplicity went far beyond 
the limits of beauty. The Mere Angelique respected clean- 
liness, and she would suffer no negligence or slovenliness in 
the nuns' discharge of their allotted tasks. Her care, however, 
was not to observe cleanliness, but to avoid those sins so 
often, she found, committed in its name, all the delicacies of 
proud human nature. 1 In her dread lest, under its cover, 
personal niceties and daintiness should creep in, she went 
certainly to the other extreme. She had at one time, we 
learn from a nun who had herself an extraordinary passion 

1 Cf. Relation de la Sceur Marie de S. Joseph Lorsonne, Religieuse 
converse, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. iii, p. 29. 



THE SPIRIT OF PORT ROYAL 53 

for mortification of the flesh, an old decayed mattress to 
sleep on, with a cover so dirty that it made her feel ill. 1 At 
least, there was no natural lack of niceness in the Mother. 
She loved to mortify the senses, and came to find ugliness 
in her surroundings more conducive to piety than beauty, 
finding in these things the marks of her Lord ; but by nature 
she was fastidious, and frequently, she acknowledged, saw 
defects where others could only admire. 2 

Tales of mortification are proper to the history of a convent, 
and are repulsive often to the judgement as well as to the 
unregenerate senses of the reader. Angelique had accepted 
her calling in the spirit and to the letter, and, turning with 
all her will to lead the Christian life, she followed the paths 
prescribed by tradition and by her rule. The narratives 
which her nuns wrote of her are accordingly not free from such 
incidents. These are, however, neither frequent not promi- 
nent, occasional blots, if so we must regard them, upon the 
full pages of her acts of charity. For, while accepting unre- 
servedly the monastic ideal, and allowing none of the current 
compromises with human nature and the world, she had a 
principle which was a sound check upon monastic excesses. 
She would have these things real and from the heart. Humility 
of feeling must precede and determine the acts of humility ; 
penitence must approve itself by change of character, and 
acts of penance be subordinated to that end. Self-imposed 
penances above all were tabooed. The Mother recognized 
that they gave back to self-love and vanity with one hand 
what they took from it with the other. 3 Again, penances and 
abstinences that injured the health were a presumption, for 
few are of that force to bear illness as it should be borne. 
The sure path of penitence lay in the humble and glad accept- 
ance of such pains and mortifications as chance set in the way, 

1 Relation de la Sceur Marie de Ste, Euphrasie Robert. Sur I 'amour 
que la Mere Angelique avail pour la pauvrete, Memoires pour servir . . ., 
vol. ii, p. 463. 

2 Entretiens de la Mere Angelique, p. 125 ; and Relation de la 
Sceuv N., loc. cit., pp. 445-6. 

3 'Elle disait sur le sujet de ces penitences volontaires, qu'on les 
faisait plutot pour se parer que pour se debarbouiller.' Relation de la 
Mere Catherine Agnes de S. Paul Arnauld, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 455. 



54 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

which, as the Mere Angelique saw it, were a penance sent 
straight from God. Of such things, and, above all, of such 
things as charity for our fellows imposes, there were none so 
hard but that, to her mind, a good will could make them 
agreeable. She herself, in those early days, endured this 
characteristic hardship prescribed assuredly by no rule ; 
she slept in a room which served as passage, day and night, 
to the nuns, and only her real love of mortification conquered 
her impatience at the needless noise of their feet, when she 
suffered, as she did frequently, from severe headache. 1 

Paramount above all were the calls of charity and the 
opportunities it gave for self-sacrifice. These for the Abbess 
were endless, and her example preached here incessantly to 
the nuns. She had learned the art of bleeding, and we read 
of her holding the foot of a lay-sister upon whom she had 
operated until the sweat of fatigue ran from her brow, and 
with a sympathy which, the patient found, did more good 
even than the action. 2 Her presence seemed to bring healing, 
and when she entered the infirmary the very patients thought 
themselves cured, forgetting their pains in the joy of seeing her. 
We are fain to believe that there was much purely human, 
much human love and tenderness, that mingled in her minis- 
trations with the love of God, and made them so grateful to 
the sufferers. 

Sincerity and charity were the marks of Port Royal, im- 
printed from these early days. To bring life into conformity 
with profession, to enforce literal observance of the Rule, was 
the first step towards sincerity ; the second step, to foster 
the spirit of the Rule, the love of poverty, obedience and 
humility, afforded the Abbess a fine experience of human 
nature, as she tracked the windings of self-love with an insight, 
at the last, worthy of her contemporary, La Rochefoucauld. 
In her charity, for the body and the souls of her nuns first, 
but ever-increasingly also beyond the convent, the warm 
nature of the Mere Angelique found its vent. For all its 
poverty, because of its persistent poverty, Port Royal became 

1 Relation de la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, Memoires pour servir . . ., 
vol. ii, p. 471. Cf. Relation de la Sceur N., loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 444. 
1 Relation . . . par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, loc. cit., vol. i, p. 63. 



THE SPIRIT OF PORT ROYAL 55 

a growing centre of beneficence. As the Mere Angelique was 
the heart of charity within the convent, so in her hands Port 
Royal became a source of kindness to the neighbourhood 
and to an ever-widening circle. The revenues of the Abbey 
were small, but the needs of the nuns were yet smaller. Their 
simple fare was for the most part of what grew in their garden. 
True, they must needs keep a guest-table, for the monks of 
their Order who had the right to quarter themselves on a con- 
vent when they would ; but here again simplicity reigned, 
though of a less severe kind. The Abbess had little patience 
with the exigencies of the monks. One of the Sisters records 
the Mother's amaze when a monk asked that a specially 
good dinner should be provided for the ' Provincial ' ; x and it 
is probable enough that her simple table discouraged and 
diminished her visitors. In any case it was supplied by carp 
from the ponds, beef and mutton from the farm of the Abbey. 
The material of clothing was the cheapest to be found ; the 
nuns made their own dress, their shoes and almost all things 
required for the household or for the church the wax candles, 
the tin candle-sticks. In the active practical life of the nuns, 
there was certainly no danger of contemplative excesses. 
Diligent labour went hand in hand with silence ; each nun 
being told off to a certain ' obedience ', a particular branch, 
namely, of work. Only the idle vanities of convent industry 
fine embroidery, artificial flowers, and the like were rigor- 
ously excluded. 

Waste and superfluity banished, the Abbess could exercise 
that disinterestedness in the choice of new nuns which set the 
convent in signal contrast with the communities of the time. 
Many a girl for whom no other provision could be made and 
who had a real desire for conventual life found her home at 
Port Royal, and was admitted to share the simple and active 
regime. Through these applicants, again, many an occasion 
for bounty fell in the Abbess' way, and when, in later years, 
the convent became the object of rich benefactions, she found 
in such channels the means of keeping it poor, sending forth 
by one door whatever entered by the other. Meanwhile, from 

1 Relation de la Sceur Marie de Ste. Euphrasie Robert, Memoires 
pour servir . . ., vol. ii, p. 465. 



56 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

the very first days of reform, her charity was exercised towards 
the poor of that country district in good offices to the sick, 
with such simple skill as she possessed in surgery and medicine, 
accompanied by gifts of clothing also, and food in cases of 
extreme want. She was glad especially when she could 
provide work, ' seeking the good of their souls as well as of 
their bodies, and that in receiving alms they should not 
become idle.' 

' M. Arnauld,' we are told, ' seconded her endeavours on 
this point (for he was himself very good to the poor), and 
had that end partly in view when he undertook to raise the 
walls of the cloister. A number of poor folk were employed 
in this work, and in addition to their day's wages received 
their food from the Convent. The Mother Angelique caused 
a quantity of soup to be made every day, and served to them 
in the garden, with meat, bread, and a flask of wine. She 
was present herself with sundry Sisters to see to the distribu- 
tion. She made them sit ia good order while they dined, 
made some little boy read aloud, from a religious book suited 
to their intelligence, so as to instruct them at the same time 
that she fed them ; and she did these things with such zeal 
and feeling, that when once a scoffing spirit ' (a libcrtin] 
' uttered words of mockery upon what was read, she could not 
refrain from tears at the impiety.' J 

1 Relation . . , par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, p. 67. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Mere Angelique goes to Maubuisson. Her intercourse there with 
S. Frangois de Sales and Mme de Chantal. 

THE ten years which had brought Angelique to mature 
womanhood had in nowise abated her courage. The first 
strong turning of her will and her emotion into the channel 
of her allotted calling was confirmed and deepened by daily 
discipline and endeavour. She lived those ten years in the 
cherished light of her ideal, in sustained faith in the spiritual 
world ; yet more, she found full exercise, in the service she 
had vowed, for her natural energy and strong intelligence. It 
is not surprising that her purpose did not slacken. The more 
striking witness to her rich strength of nature and to the 
vitality of her aim is that time, in strengthening, neither 
stereotyped nor hardened her. The rich fount of human 
feeling, of warm affectionate sympathy, was as ready for the 
winning of the elder nuns at Maubuisson, who had played 
with her in her childhood, as when she charmed the delicate 
or peevish humours of her young sister Marie Claire. Yet, so 
entirely were human affections subordinated to her fervour for 
the service, as she conceived it, of Christ, that, bringing with 
her to Maubuisson that younger sister, she could gladly face 
for her, and for the young nun her companion, the probability, 
seeing their delicate frames, of total ruin to health. 1 

So, too, after those ten years of the exercise of authority, 
and the successful moulding of her convent to the primitive 
ideal, the hope was fresh as ever in her of laying down her 
authority and re-entering the religious life as simple nun. The 
on-looker may see only the advantage to her character in this 
charge of Abbess, with its demands on her energies, its call 

1 Relation de la Vie . . . de la Soeur Marie de Ste. Claire Arnauld, 
Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. iii, p. 427. Cf. post, ch. v, p. 77-8. 



58 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

upon qualities of heart and of intellect. The Mere Angelique 
herself in her old age admits a certain safeguard in the post. 
One avoids oneself, she assures a Sister troubled at authority 
entrusted to her, the faults one warns others of ; and she 
found compensation for the dangers in the extreme confusion 
which, she said, comes on one when one has been guilty of 
the insolence of office (des insolences, it is her word). 1 But 
at this time she was oppressed by the dangers, for her especially, 
who was prompt, impatient, and by nature self-assertive and 
self-willed. And, beyond all and unanswerable, was that 
knowledge of the unlawfulness of her charge. 

In the summons to take charge temporarily of Maubuisson, 
she saw a possible opportunity for accomplishing her design. 
The task of reforming that convent would, she anticipated, 
and soon found to be the case, be one requiring much time, 
and her long absence from Port Royal might serve, she hoped, 
as an excuse for substituting there another Abbess. That 
hope was not realized ; but the episode of Maubuisson not 
merely afforded her wider, and indeed dramatic, experiences 
but lifted her also from out the pitiful control of jealous and 
self-indulgent monks, and of directors who, whatever their 
piety, were intellectually either narrow or oblique, into the 
hands of a man of real force and excellence of mind as of 
character. At Maubuisson, the Mere Angelique came in con- 
tact with S. Francois de Sales, and found in him a guide 
who could sustain without cramping, and to whom she could 
make freely the vow of obedience that eased her somewhat 
of the burden of authority. Again, forced hitherto to take 
the lead among the sister-spirits she had gathered, the eldest 
in years as the first in authority, she now for the first time 
tasted the happiness of unreserved confidence in an older 
woman, of like aims but wider experience. Through Francois 
de Sales she came into communion with his friend and fellow- 
worker, Mme de Chantal, head of his newly-instituted Order 
of the Visitation, and her letters to her show the expansive 
and joyous freedom of a child. 

1 Relation de la Mere Marie de I' Incarnation Le Conte, Prienre de 
Port-Royal, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. iii, pp. 11-12. Cf. Lettres de 
la Mere Angelique, vol. i, pp. 594-5. 



THE MERE ANGELIQUE GOES TO MAUBUISSON 59 

She records in her narrative the events of her five years' 
absence from Port Royal with all brevity : 

Narrative of the Mere Ange'lique (continued) 

' As our House began to be settled, in 1618, the General 
of the Order, M. Boucherat, directed me to go to Maubuisson 
in order to govern and reform the House, during the trial of 
the Abbess, whom they had imprisoned in the Filles Penitentes. 
I left the Prioress in charge, and made the Mother Agnes Sub- 
prioress, before quitting Port Royal. I went with joy to 
Maubuisson, because it was always my intention to give up 
the Abbey, and I thought that my being elsewhere might well 
afford me the means of accomplishing my purpose. 

' I left Port Royal on February the igth ; and as I passed 
through Paris, our General made me stay at my father's up to the 
day of S. Matthew, in order to prepare the Nuns of Maubuisson 
to receive me. They had fallen into a great panic on learning 
that I was to be established as their Superior, during the 
trial of their Abbess. The General escorted me there himself, 
and two days after these Sisters became reconciled. 

' I took with me four Nuns, one of whom, who was an 
admirable Nun, I made Mistress of Novices. There were only 
sixteen professed Nuns in this House, and I was directed 
to receive a number sufficient for such a Monastery, which 
was founded for a hundred. As soon as it was known that 
this House was being reformed, and that girls were received 
for nothing, a great number offered themselves, but, out of 
perhaps some sixty or eighty, we admitted only thirty, because 
the majority were brought by the covetousness of their parents, 
or by their own, hoping to find a good and honourable position 
in a fine and well-endowed Monastery. 

' At first I believed I should be there only two or three 
years, but, seeing that it promised to be for longer, it occurred 
to me, in order to promote my design of giving up the Abbey, 
to write to my father that I saw clearly the affairs of this 
House would last a long time ; that I feared so long an 
absence might bring some deterioration to our House under 
a lesser authority ; that I implored him to think well to 
permit me to resign the Abbey to my sister, the Mother Agnes ; 
that we were in so complete a union that he might be assured 
I should live as happily under her control when I returned, 
as she had done under mine. 

' My father caught me very cleverly, for, receiving my 
proposal with joy but not as I had intended it, he wrote to 
me that I had very good grounds for wishing to give my 



60 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

sister authority, but that it must be by making her Coadjutrix, 
and not by resigning in her favour ; and he sent me this reply 
through an Apostolic Notary. I was very much taken by 
surprise ; but nevertheless I did not venture not to sign the 
Procuration he sent me, consoling myself with the hope that 
my sister being Coadjutrix would give me always greater 
facility to retire. My father was enchanted to take the occa- 
sion of my employment atMaubuisson to obtain this Coadjutor- 
ship, which would otherwise have been difficult, since I was 
only twenty-eight years old. 

' At that time the Blessed Bishop of Geneva, Frangois de 
Sales, came to Paris. I had no sooner heard it than I had 
an extreme desire to see him, for the esteem in which I held 
his godliness ; and God provided me the means through a man 
of position, (M. de Bouviers), who had sent us his daughter, 
who was not yet confirmed. I begged him to bring him in 
order to confer on her this Sacrament, which was easy for 
him, since he was the Presenter of the Ambassadors. He 
brought him accordingly on April the 5th, 1619. He (Francois 
de Sales) preached to us, gave the confirmation, and left us the 
same day. If my desire to see him had been great, the sight 
of him gave me a much greater desire to impart to him my 
conscience. For God was truly and evidently in this holy 
Bishop, and I had not yet found in anybody that which I found 
in him, although I had seen those who had the greatest reputa- 
tion among devout persons. I wrote to him, to beg him very 
humbly to return. He promised it me. But in the mean- 
while I opened my heart to him by letters, in regard to a very 
great trouble which I had, namely, that I had never found 
any one in whom I could place an entire confidence and after- 
wards a true submission, and that I made use, in taking 
advice and direction, of those who assisted us, according as 
I recognized that they were disposed to what I desired and 
believed good and useful for the welfare of our Sisters, thus 
taking a partial direction of those whom I believed to favour 
my thoughts and my desires ; which gave me much inquietude, 
because as a fact it was directing myself. He replied to me 
that there was no harm in searching from several flowers the 
honey one could not find upon one alone, and judges favourable 
to our inclinations, if only these, after being examined, were 
found good. 

' I admired this answer, although I found it dangerous so 
to act. But in truth I had been obliged; and, if I had done 
otherwise with the persons who had hitherto assisted us, we 
should have done nothing at all. He came to see us imme- 
diately after. I spoke to him of the Coadjutorship, imploring 



INTERCOURSE WITH S. FRANCOIS DE SALES 61 

him to be good enough to take the trouble of going to console 
the Mother Agnes, who had been so distressed that when they 
came to make her take the oaths she had fallen ill. At first 
he said to me : " What, my daughter, are you one of those 
who desire to perpetuate Benefices in their families ? ' I told 
him, no, and that I had chosen my sister, believing in all 
conscience that she was the most capable of the House, which 
satisfied him. He had the goodness to come and see her, and 
wrote to me that he had found her entirely to his mind, and 
all the House, which was truly the Port Royal, that he loved 
and would love always. He returned afterwards to Maubuisson 
and remained there nine days. 

' I made him my general Confession, with a great satisfac- 
tion and desire to belong more to God. I communicated to 
him my desire to leave my charge in order to turn simple 
Nun, and begged him to receive me into his Congregation of 
the Visitation. He spoke to me of it with great humility, 
saying it was scarcely a Religious Order. Nevertheless, on 
being very much pressed, he consented to my writing to Rome, 
since I required dispensation, our Order being more austere. 
If this holy man had remained in France, I believe I should 
have derived great benefit from his holy direction, which was 
in nowise soft and mild, as most of the world have imagined ; 
for he did not disclose himself save to souls that had a true 
confidence in him, and that he saw disposed to believe him ; 
and of all those I had seen before him, I found none so firm 
as he. 

' When first I had the blessing of seeing him, and he inquired 
into our manner of living, he thought it austere and said to 
me : " My Daughter, were it not better to take fish less 
large, and to take more ? ' I replied that if I had had to 
make a Rule, I thought I should have made it milder ; but 
that, finding myself in an austere one, I conceived I ought 
to have it kept so far as I possibly could, which he approved. 
On reforming in his Diocese certain Nuns of our Order who 
were in great irregularity of life, he had contented himself 
with re-establishing what was essential in the Rule, to rectify 
morals ; and for the rest, he had left them in the mildness of 
the rules of the Visitation ; but, after he returned, he set 
them again so far as he could in the practices of the Order, 
and, among other things, he deprived them of the use of linen, 
and made them adopt chemises of serge, of which they com- 
plained to him some time after, saying it gave them vermin ; 
to which he replied that it was no marvel that vermin should 
eat vermin. It was the good Mother de Chantal who told me 
that, and I have thought it right to record it here, in order 



62 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

to show that this holy man had no sweetish devotion, as 
has been asserted. He excused nothing in souls that wished 
to be directed in the truth, and any one who considers well 
the rules he gave to his Nuns will see that he desires them 
as dead to themselves and crucified with Jesus Christ as any 
an one. When I went into their Houses in Paris, at the time 
that their good Mother the Foundress established them, I was 
enchanted at the devotion, the silence and the mortification that 
I saw ; and in fact they were more austere than is supposed. 

' M. de Geneve returned to his Diocese, and I remained still 
more than three years at Maubuisson with great hindrances 
and difficulties. I continued, so long as he lived, to com- 
municate to him my state of mind, and he took the trouble 
to reply to me with great care and extreme goodness. After 
his death I continued in this same Monastery without Direc- 
tion, all those I had seen before being no longer there, authority 
having removed them. I received there thirty-two girls, out 
of whom we made ten Professed Nuns.' 

This intercourse with Francois de Sales and with Mme de 
Chantal gave a definite colour to Angelique's hopes of retire- 
ment. The Order of the Visitation which they were founding 
approved itself at once to her sober judgement and to her 
fervent devotion, and she longed for admittance there as simple 
nun. It seemed to her that with the Bishop's aid she might 
now accomplish her design. 

She had come in contact already with the more notorious 
Order of the Carmelites, introduced somewhat earlier with great 
eclat into France, under the patronage more especially of the 
Cardinal de Berulle and Mme Acarie, and now in full fervid 
growth. She stayed at their convent at Pontoise on her way 
from Port Royal to Maubuisson, and verified with her own 
senses the reputed sweet odour that rose from Mme Acarie's 
tomb. It was perceptible, she tells her nephew, not only to 
herself, but also to her sister, the Mere Agnes, who had lost 
the sense of smell. And she testifies to the excellence of that 
sainted foundress. The Order, however, did not attract her. 
When the nuns urged her to join them, she put them off 
with the reminder that their Constitutions forbade them to 
receive nuns from other Orders. 1 

1 Entretiens de la Mere Angelique avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., pp. 311-12, 315. 



INTERCOURSE WITH S. FRANCOIS DE SALES 63 

The fashionable success, as also the visionary tendencies of 
this Order, as she knew it in France, repelled her. She found 
too little simplicity in the nuns, ' women of the Court of 
France,' as she describes them, whom the reputation of the 
House induced to enter there from its first establishment : 

' For,' she observes to her nephew, ' as M. de Berulle was 
in great favour with the Queen-mother Marie de Medicis and 
with the Court, and as MM. de Marillac and Duval (patrons 
of the Carmelites) were also in favour, all the women of the 
Court retired there, and it had perhaps been desirable that 
so many had not gone. For, short of God's working extra- 
ordinary miracles upon such persons, they serve often to 
relax the spirit and rigour of discipline, and draw Houses 
away from monastic simplicity and poverty. Thank God,' 
she adds in retrospect, ' we have none at Port Royal, and we 
are well without.' 

' I do not know how it was,' she tells her nephew again, 
; that with the report of this new establishment of the Carme- 
lites, I did not feel strongly disposed to go there. I had 
thought of the Feuillantines, who were good, austere, hidden, 
remote from the favour of the Court and the esteem of the 
world, by which the Carmelites were besieged. I did not like 
this renown, I wished only to be hidden, and I believed myself 
more so even at Port Royal des Champs than among the 
Carmelites. Thus I sought for a hidden Convent, beloved by 
God and unknown to men.' 

' It is true that the acquaintance I then made with the 
spirit and the holiness of M. de Geneve, and that which he 
procured me with Mme de Chantal, made me think of the Order 
of S. Mary (the Visitation). It pleased me very much that 
this Prelate thought less of visions and revelations than did 
M. de Berulle and the Carmelite Mothers. Not that I did 
not honour those of S. Theresa, but as things extraordinary 
and miraculous, and without believing that we should make 
a precedent of them for other women, whom God does not 
destine, like her, to found new Orders or to reform the ancient. 
When I heard these good Mothers say that M. de Marillac, 
who had rendered them great service and who was after- 
wards Keeper of the Seals, had had from the age of fourteen 
the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ always present at his 
side without ever leaving him, I found it hard not to be amazed 
at the trifling of the human mind, and I desired to avoid 
these exalted and sublime paths, fearing error and illusion.' 1 

1 Ib., p. 316 seq. The Mere Angelique found more favour in the 



64 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

The Order to which her desires turned, that of Sainte Marie 
de la Visitation, was directed in the less sublime, but securer, 
paths of practical benevolence and work. Sick-nursing was 
the special duty of the nuns, and the Rule was made inten- 
tionally light that there might be no needless waste of force, 
and that the community might embrace also women of delicate 
frame. This mildness gave rise to ill-natured backbiting. 
Certain persons who went to Maubuisson, Angelique mentions 
in her letters to the Mere de Chantal, ' speak of this Institution 
with singular contempt, thinking one goes to you only to be 
in comfort.' 1 These persons, moreover, were monks and 
ecclesiastics. They told her she would lose the reputation 
she had ' a reputation so vain and so unjustly acquired ! ' 
if she joined the Order. The criticisms irritated her until she 
had herself finally resolved to join it, when they became 
a welcome aid to humility. She contented herself then with 
answering gently that the Rule, after all, was that of the 
greatest Order of the Church (S. Augustine's), and the Constitu- 
tions were made by a great and holy Bishop, and could not 
but be good. ' Then,' she tells the Mere de Chantal, ' I listen 
to them with humility. But to some one who said that each 
Nun was asked every morning what she would like for dinner, 
I said very roughly that it was very far from the truth.' 

The Mere Angelique's desire to join this Order was strong 
and constant. She tested it to herself, to see if it was her 
affection for S. Francois and Madame de Chantal that swayed 
her. In the letter above quoted she writes : 

' My very dear Mother, the Superior of the Feuillantines 
writes to me and professes to desire greatly that we should 
be great friends ; it is my brother' (M. d'Andilly) 'who is the 
cause of it. I honour very highly this Mother, believing her 
a good servant of God ; but her letters are such a burden to 
me that nothing is more so ; and I do not know what to say 
to her, for my heart will not open in that direction. What 
should one do ? I implore you, my dear Mother, to tell me. 

eyes of the Carmelites than they in hers. On a later occasion when 
she visited them, they compared her to S. Theresa, ' saying that she 
resembled her entirely, not only in spirit but in face, and that the 
Saint had sundry warts in the same places that she had.' Ib., p. 318. 
1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, pp. 12-13. 



INTERCOURSE WITH MADAME DE CHANTAL 65 

I send you her letter and what I reply. If you approve of 
it, will you please give it to M. Manceau, who is coming to see 
you this week, and he will take it ? You see, my dear Mother, 
my brother is passionately attached to this good woman, and 
he wants her to love me and me her, and I think he would 
be very pleased that I should go with her, but God does not 
call me at all. 

' I must tell you, my very dear Mother, that I have thought 
deeply over it, and also over the Visitation. I reckon that 
at the very worst I should never see you there, nor yet Mon- 
seigneur, that you would both die long before me, and that 
our dear Mistress, whom I love very much, would die also. 
I picture to myself that our Sister called Petit in the 
world, whom I dislike very much, will be my Superior, and 
that is not capable of putting me out of conceit, because 
that would not prevent me from keeping the Rule, and the 
Constitutions.' l 

She had written previously that she thought, if what she 
wished did not come to pass, it was impossible but she 
should die of it, so little could she reconcile herself to living 
in her post : 

' Although I repeat often enough, I desire it if God desire, 
it is not with my heart, and I say it rather from fear that if 
aught else is perceived, it will be said to be a temptation, 
which I cannot at all believe. It seems to me that even if 
Monseigneur the Bishop of Geneva were to say it, I should 
not believe it ; although I would not execute my design 
without him, even if I could, for I would rather die than 
disobey him. But, nevertheless, I shall not ever be able, it 
seems to me, to pluck out this desire from my heart.' 2 

The expression of her desire recurs again and again as, 
Abbess of Port Royal and temporary Abbess of Maubuisson 
though she be, she lays her heart with a childlike simplicity 
in the hands of this Mother. ' For the love of God,' she 
writes, ' my dear Mother, love me always, and make me, by 
your prayers and your maternal care, to be all His. For 
I am your true child, who places herself all, all, all entirely 
in your hands.' She confesses to her her faults and confides 
the difficulties of her post. A week she had thought to have 
free for a retreat must be devoted to going through the accounts 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, pp. 12-13. Ib., p. 3. 

LOWNDES F 



66 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

with the Commissioners of the Order, a thing more disagreeable 
to her than anything ; ' and besides, what risks of sin in so 
much discourse, and of murmuring, perhaps, with these per- 
sons ! ' Failing the retreat, she makes a self-examination in the 
manner taught by Philothea (in the Devout Life of S.Francois), 
and finds sundry sins of impatience and inattention, of lack 
of charity, even of hypocrisy, to confess. She owns first that 
her acquiescence in the divine will, as regards her purpose 
of leaving, is not, it seems to her, genuine, ' there remaining 
always a certain self-seeking (propric'te] ' which she never gets 
rid of, and which occasions her extreme pain and even illness 
when she meets with contradiction. But besides this, she is 
often irritable with her nuns, and wears a vexed air (Je fais 
souvent une mine bien chagrine). She has two or three times 
been a hypocrite and refused, under pretext of abstinence, 
things to eat w r hich she really disliked, ' and had it been 
something I liked I should have taken it.' 

' I talk,' she continues her confession, ' nearly all meal time, 
and very often about news and follies ; and I reprove the 
Reader, either with mockery or with impatience. I do not 
speak at all to my Sisters, finding no time, because I waste 
it. Once I left my prayers half said, from carelessness and 
lack of devotion, and once from the latter cause I neglected 
to attend service.' 

' The great circumstance in all my faults is that, as a rule, 
while committing them, I see in fact the evil I do, and what 
I ought to do for my right guidance ; and, however much 
I attempt to resist the light, I cannot expel it. That happens 
especially when my faults are against charity, and yet I cannot 
conquer my ill humour. I run on always, and with zeal, 
because it seems to me my impetuosity in this does not dis- 
please you. In brief, my very dear Mother, I am all imperfec- 
tion, and my trouble is that I do not see any means, where 
I am, of correcting myself, for all is an occasion of offending. 
I do not say that to importune you, my dear Mother ; it 
escaped me, forgive me for it.' * 

We assume for the reader what Angelique assumed for the 
Mere de Chantal, that these details do not displease, and 
propose to continue this letter almost in full. To her nuns, 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, p. i seq. 



INTERCOURSE WITH MADAME DE CHANTAL 67 

the Mere Angelique's native impetuosity appeared as it broke 
out in quick acts of charity, in untiring zeal for their bodies 
and souls, sometimes also in acts of mortification and penance. 
In this correspondence we see her with her own eyes, well 
aware how that impetuosity of the natural woman betrayed 
her, under trying circumstances, into irritation and anger. 

Her chief provocations arose, not from the nuns, but from 
the monks, from those of the Order who had prescriptive right 
to govern the convent and who were opposed, more or less 
openly, to the Abbess and to reform, and even from visiting 
monks of other Orders whom she found incompatible in 
humour : 

' There is here at our gate,' she writes, ' a Superior from 
the Capuchins, who is very clever and an honest man, but 
of a humour I cannot tell how. He wants me to caress him, 
to tell him my affairs and show him great confidence ; and 
I, I cannot ; which so puts him out that he complains largely 
of it, as though I treated him with insupportable contempt, 
a thing I am outwardly very far from. But in truth inwardly 
I find it hard enough to respect idle humours and to believe 
that souls who feed upon these trivialities (ces niaiseries), can 
have a great spirit of devotion, as they say of this one. For 
the rest he preaches very well, and our good Dames like hearing 
him, though without fruit.' (These Dames, nos anciennes 
Dames, were the original nuns to whom the Mere Angelique 
was to bring reform.) 

' My dear Mother, I have always regard for the world. 
I am entangled in a troublesome affair, and I have any number 
of enemies. A man like that is quite enough to discredit me 
with his Order ; for they back one another up in these idle 
seekings for honour. Now, as to confiding in him, it is impos- 
sible to me, nor assuredly ought I to do so ; but I deceive 
him at this very time while I wish to cure him of his insane 
passion for trifling. I waste a great deal of time in it, and 
that with dissipation of mind ; for I treat him to idle dis- 
courses, and that, too, with equivocation and similar trickery, 
in order to get rid of him. 

' I am obliged to behave thus with almost all the Monks. 
Their conversation is a thousand times more dangerous to me 
than that of secular persons, because to the latter, when 
I collect myself a little, I say good things ; but with these 
others it would be playing the conceited and the preacher ; 
and when I listen to them they talk nothing but triviality, 

F 2 



68 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

and if I do not answer with the same they say I snub them 
(que je fais la froide), that they no longer know me, that now 
I esteem nobody but bishops, &c. I am paying interest now 
for the time past, when I entertained all the world. Thus 
I have made a thousand acquaintance whom I cannot shake 
off. The other day I gave some of these persons to under- 
stand that I despised others whom I knew they did not esteem, 
and that in flattery. 

' If God does not aid me, as I trust of His goodness through 
your means, my very dear Mother, no, I shall not be able 
to bear up in these entanglements and in a thousand other 
difficulties as to the temporal affairs here, which are in extreme 
confusion and bring disorder and extreme inconvenience to 
my poor Sisters, and no means of regulating them. God will 
bring round Monseigneur ' (to consent to her retirement) ; 
' I believe it because you tell me, and he will take pity upon 
me.' 

Not the monks alone fell short, in their intercourse, of the 
Me"re Angelique's standard. She was scarcely better edified 
by the occasional visits of M. de Belley (Pierre Camus), friend 
of Francois de Sales, but friend who had all the defects of 
the saintly bishop's qualities, who carried flowery eloquence 
into the regions of bad taste, and changed affability into adula- 
tion and flattery. 1 The letters of S. Francois himself were 
so appreciative that her modesty forbade her later, after 
his death, to yield up more than a very few to be published ; 
but the real earnestness of the man, under ah 1 his urbanity, 
made his praise an incentive, and not a hindrance, to moral 
endeavour, while we have her own unimpeachable evidence 
that he was nowise weak or indulgent at bottom. The praises 
of M. de Belley, on the contrary, she found to be downright 
injurious : 

' The good M. de Belley,' her letter goes on, ' who had 
written to me, has arrived. I like him because he is good ; 
but he yet further disturbs my mind with his very idle and 
extravagant praise. For my wicked mind takes pleasure in 
it, and I find it hard to tear up his letters, which are such 
fine panegyrics. I cannot refrain from answering and holding 
intercourse with him, and yet I have almost a scruple in 
doing it, conceiving that it is not so much the respect I have 
for his merit as the esteem which I know he has for me, that 

1 Cf., re M. de Belley, Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, vol. i, p. 241 seq. 



INTERCOURSE WITH MADAME DE CHANTAL 69 

pleases me. I do not know if I ought to beg him to come 
or no. His sermons greatly affect our old Nuns (nos Anciennes) ; 
as for me they gratify the vanity of my spirit more than they 
touch my will.' She adds in reference to her elder sister, 
Mme le Maitre, ' I fear lest she should commit herself to 
M. de Belley. I should not like that, for see, my dear Mother, 
it seems to me that these admirers of persons do not make 
them make great progress. The fashion is nowadays to be 
satisfied with little ; and it seems to me that great harm is 
done in this way to many souls.' 

' I am very glad you have a House ; but that means that 
you will very soon depart to it. Oh well ! may the holy will 
of God be done, without reserve in all. I implore you to 
pray to God for me, my dear Mother, and that I may always 
be your child. . . . My dear Mother, even while writing to 
you, I have just been angry and have spoken with contempt 
of something, and I have said a thing to make them do what 
I wish.' 

During the same month she writes again, again lamenting 
the conflicts and disputes she cannot avoid, and the ' indiscre- 
tion and arrogance ' with which she holds her own. 1 

She confesses sundry other offences, in particular a move- 
ment of jealousy toward the beloved Mother herself. For 
one of her Maubuisson nuns, of unsatisfactory conduct, had 
apparently been visiting the Mere de Chantal, and spoke of 
her on her return as though she had greatly loved her and 
been very happy with her. ' I was so vexed,' confesses 
Angelique, ' I believe through pride, conceiving that she de- 
spised me, that I said to her, " that is because it is something 
new." See, my dear Mother, the force of my pride, that makes 
me thus traitor to my heart.' 

Again : ' I have spoken three times of State affairs and 
repeated an opinion to some one's disadvantage. I have 
shown a letter I had written, from vanity, because I thought 
it well done. . . . I think that I do not weary you by recounting 
these little details, that at least, in the one way I can, I may 
be your little Novice.' 

Mme de Chantal was moved by the tale of the younger 
Abbess' failings and difficulties, to think that she had truly 
need of ' the support of obedience ', and, not without, as she 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, p. 8 seq. 



7 o THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

acknowledges, a side-glance at the advantages that their own 
Order might derive from so true and candid a member, she 
writes to that end to S. Francois de Sales, forwarding to him 
also Angelique's letters.' l 

The Bishop had already dismissed the matter from his mind, 
thinking the difficulties insuperable and, with the larger mascu- 
line view of the situation, dwelling rather upon the advantages 
for the Church of a capable Abbess than upon Angelique's 
private needs. ' I saw well,' he writes to a third person, 
' that this demand was uncommon, but I saw also an uncommon 
heart. I saw well the inclination of that heart to command, 
but I saw that it was in order to conquer that inclination 
that she desired to bind herself to obedience. I saw well that 
it was a woman, but I saw that she had been more than woman 
in commanding and governing, and that she might well be 
the same in obeying well.' 2 

He concludes, now that the question is urged upon him 
again, that it should be referred to the Pope and his decision 
accepted as final. The one vital point, that the authority 
was ill-gotten, does not seem to have caught his mind. It 
remained present always with Angelique and although for the 
moment the matter went no further, and although she was 
led presently to renounce the thought of quitting her Order, 
she did not rest until she had succeeded in laying down her 
position as Abbess, to resume it again, after an interval, only 
when lawfully re-elected by the nuns. 

In his capacity as Angelique's spiritual guide, S. Francois 
displays throughout masculine common sense. He attaches 
small importance to the outbreaks of her native vivacity ; so 
that they were not voluntary or deliberate and that, perceiving 
these movements of impatience, she strove always to moderate 
them, he did not distress himself. 3 It takes, he reminds her, 
even years to break in a young horse 4 : 

1 (Euvres de S. F. de Sales, ed. 1836, vol. iii, p. 377- (Letter from 
Mme de Chantal, Nov. n, 1621.) 

" Ib., p. 378. (Letter to the Pere Etienne Binet, Jesuit, Nov. 11, 
1621.) 

3 Ib., p. 310 (Letter of Feb. 4, 1620). 

4 Ib., p. 322 (Letter of Sept. 12, 1619). 



INTERCOURSE WITH S. FRANCOIS DE SALES 71 

' Tame little by little the vivacity of your spirit to patience, 
gentleness, and affability amidst the trifling and childishness, 
and the feminine imperfections of Sisters who are delicate for 
themselves and given to pester the ears of the Mothers.' x 

' I could have wished,' he owns once, ' that you had not 
rallied and mocked those persons, but that with modest sim- 
plicity you had edified them by the compassion they deserve.' 

He sees that, despite the invariable purpose in her heart 
of living wholly to God, her great natural activity breaks out 
in a thousand sallies (vous fait sentir une grande vicissitude 
de saillies) ; he sees again her ' entanglement in thoughts of 
vanity ', the ' fertility joined to the subtlety ' of her mind 
lending itself to these suggestions ; but, he asks, what need 
this trouble her ? She should brush aside with a prayer these 
idle thoughts, as Abraham brushed aside the birds from the 
sacrifice ; and, for her impetuosity, practise a little speaking 
very gently (tout bellement), walking gently, and doing what- 
ever she does softly and gently. 2 In his eyes, she is as the 
palm-tree that comes but slowly to perfection, but is of so 
much greater worth than the swift-blossoming cherry. 3 ' God,' 
he tells her, in the light of after-events his words seemed to 
her to have been definitely prophetic , ' has cast His eyes 
upon you to make use of you for matters of consequence, 
and to bring you to an excellent way of life.' 4 

The special note struck by S. Francois in these letters is 
that of joyousness and even a certain gaiety in the service 
of the Cross : 

' To abase and humble oneself is to walk with the spouse 
crucified ; to despise oneself unto the death of all our passions, 
and I say unto the death of the Cross. But, my very dear 
daughter, note that I rejoin that this abasement, this humility, 
this contempt of oneself should be practised gently, peaceably, 
with constancy, and not only graciously, but cheerfully and 
joyously.' 5 

1 CEuvres, ed. 1836, vol. iii, p. 320. (Letter before Sept. 12, 1619.) 
' Ib., p. 340. (Letter of Feb. 4, 1620.) 

3 Ib., p. 329. (Letter of Dec. 16, 1619.) 

4 Cf. Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., 
vol. ii, p. 304. 

5 CEuvres, ed. 1836, vol. iii, p. 310. (Letter of June 25, 1619.) 



72 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

This holy cheerfulness (alle'gresse) and joy is indeed to be 

' serious and grave ', ' and when I say grave, I do not mean 
sad or affected, or sombre, or disdainful, or haughty, but 
I mean holy and charitable. . . .' ' Do not,' he begs her, ' lay 
upon yourself too many watchings and austerities, and believe 
me, my very dear daughter, for I know well what I am saying.' 
And again : ' to eat little, work much, having great mental 
worry, and to refuse sleep to the body, is to seek to draw 
much service from a horse that is worn out, and without 
refreshing it.' ' But go to the port royal of the religious life 
by the royal road of the delectation of God and of one's neigh- 
bour, of humility and of genial courtesy.' l 

Humility and geniality are virtues that run, in his advice, 
always in couple. 

The note found ready response in Port Royal, the convent 
which, rather than Maubuisson, was to reap the permanent 
benefit of his influence on the Mere Angelique. The highly- 
strung and romantic Sceur Anne Eugenie, who scarce refrained 
from dancing for joyousness in her convent cell, the gentle 
and equable Agnes with her turn for a somewhat mystic 
devotion, the tender Marie Claire these sisters were all fertile 
soil for the seed of cheerfulness. In the sterner character of 
Angelique herself, an almost playful gaiety flashes through 
from time to time in her sayings to her nuns ; but the finer 
blossom is the magnanimity, a certain high-minded generosity 
of temper, that distinguishes her. Both her creed and her 
personal observation taught her the vanity and weakness of 
human nature ; the knowledge went hand in hand wdth charity 
and raised her soon far above petty irritation or resentment. 
It gave humility, since she too was human ; it did not dis- 
courage, for, as nature was impotent, so, her creed taught her, 
grace was almighty. The creed of Port Royal theologians 
may dispute whether or no it is the true Christian doctrine 
projected all good, and all power of good, beyond human 
nature into God, and leant with full confidence on that 
extraneous aid, discouragement showing therefore as infidelity, 
doubt of the power of God's grace. ' No true courage with- 
out humility, no true humility without courage,' was the 

1 CEuvres, ed. 1836, vol. iii, p. 320. (Letter of Sept. 12, 1619.) 



INTERCOURSE WITH S. FRANOIS DE SALES 73 

Mere Angelique's watchword when persecution broke over 
Port Royal, and that union is already here in the letters of 
S. Francois de Sales : 

' Animate constantly your courage with humility ; that is 
to say, your poverty and the desire to be humble, animate 
them with confidence in God, so that your courage may be 
humble, and your humility courageous.' l 

1 (Euvres, 1836, vol. iii, p. 320. (Letter of Sept. 12, 1619.) 



CHAPTER V 

Reform at Maubuisson. Events as narrated by the Mere Angelique 

de S. Jean. 

THE great fruit for the Mere Angelique of her sojourn at 
Maubuisson was the acquaintance with Francois de Sales and 
Mme de Chantal. As regards reform, though she had her 
external triumph, it was as she measured it, as she conceived 
that God measured it, a practical failure. Neither she now, 
nor the young Abbess whom she sent there on a later occasion, 
was able to make the rich and monk-beridden convent any- 
thing approaching to a second Port Royal. Little more than 
respectability seems ever to have been attained ; the insuper- 
able difficulty was always the obstruction offered by the 
Cistercian monks, who resented any other influence than their 
own, whether of Abbess or of outside directors, over the nuns, 
and who saw whatever might derogate from the wealth and 
power of the convent as robbery of their Order. Even without 
their secret machinations it was no light task to arouse spiritual 
fervour in that small body of so-called nuns, who, having 
entered a convent against their will, had grown old in the 
endeavour to mitigate their lot by all the diversions and 
worldly indulgences within reach. Angelique had been among 
them as a child, and in accepting the commission knew some 
at least of the difficulties she was about to encounter. To 
that dead weight of supineness among the main body of nuns, 
kept free, however, by the watchfulness of the Prioress, from 
gross corruption of morals, there was intrigue to be looked 
for on the part of the deposed Abbess, who was not without 
partisans among nuns and monks. Angelique had need of the 
courage and ardour with which she set forth to the under- 
taking, of which her own account is so meagre. 

The idea of leaving Port Royal for Maubuisson had come 
to her a year or so earlier, while Mme d'Estrees still ruled, 



REFORM AT MAUBUISSON 75 

and was suggested, humorously enough, by that Abbess's own 
professed purpose of reform. For the General of the Order 
had already resolved that the scandal of Maubuisson should 
be put down, though he had not as yet any thought of deposing 
the Abbess. She was, however, deprived of her second bene- 
fice, the Abbey of Bertaucourt ; and certain monks were sent 
to Maubuisson to warn her that order must be established in 
that convent, and that the General was about presently to 
visit it. These monks met with outrageous treatment, imprison- 
ment, starvation, and what not, at her hands, so confident 
was she that relatives at Court would protect her, and so 
reliant on the convent's long immunity from interference. 
Not for twenty-five years had it been inspected. 

Nevertheless, after this high-handed proceeding, some alarm 
seized her, and she thought it best to pretend a purpose of 
reform. Chancing, on one of her journeys, to pass by Port 
Royal, she called upon Angelique, and discoursed to her in 
that tone, giving her to understand that she sought help in 
the matter. 

' The Mere Angelique, wishing to believe that she spoke 
sincerely, . . . replied to Mme d'Estrees that, if she thought 
her capable of rendering her any service in so good a purpose, 
she offered with all her heart to go and be her Prioress, to 
aid her in it, and that perhaps the ladies (les Dames), who had 
known her when she was little, would have more inclination 
for her than for another. But Mme de Maubuisson, who in 
truth thought of nothing less, and exercised this dissimulation 
only to throw dust in men's eyes by this hope of reform that 
she seemed to desire to bring about herself, spoke no more 
of the matter after this reply of the Mother, and thought still 
less of it, continuing in the same disorders '- 1 

The General's next move was to send a monk as Com- 
missioner to hold an inquest on the convent and the Abbess' 
conduct. He met with even worse treatment than his prede- 
cessors, daily stripes being added to imprisonment on bread 
and water, ' so that he might have died had not he found 
means to escape by a window.' 

1 Relation . . . de la Vie de la Mere Marie- Angelique Arnauld . . . par 
la Mere Angelique de S. Jean Arnauld, Memoires pour servir . . ., 
vol. i., p. 1 12 seq. 



76 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

The Abbess had at length gone too far. She had counted 
also too securely on the support of her relatives. They them- 
selves had cause of complaint, because of the way in which 
she had married her young sister, whilst novice in the convent, 
to one of her friends, the Comte de Sanze, without part or 
consent of the other relatives ; and, no\v that complaint was 
brought against her in Paris, her cousin, the Cardinal de Lourdes, 
and her brother, the Marechal d'Estrees, lent a hand to the 
General. M. de Citeaux accordingly paid his visit of inspec- 
tion, and, as the Abbess still refused resolutely to receive it, 
or to appear at his summons, things came to the crisis of her 
forcible removal. The provost with his archers surrounded 
the convent, forced the doors which the nuns would not open, 
and having at length caught the Abbess, who had fled and 
hidden almost naked the guards' matutinal visit surprised 
her in bed they carried her off, bed and all, a young nun 
accompanying her ' for propriety ', to the Filles Pe'nitentes. 1 

M. de Citeaux then offered the nuns their choice of three 
Abbesses, of whom Mme de Port Royal was one, and as they, 
half inclining to the latter for memory of her childhood among 
them, but repelled again by the rumour of her great Reform, 
sought to escape the dreaded unknown and begged that a 
professed nun of their own House might be appointed, he 
cheated them by acceding to their request with secret resolu- 
tion that the nun in question should be Mme de Port Royal, 
who had indeed, though the nuns did not think of it, made 
her Profession as an infant at Maubuisson. The nuns, when 
they learnt the appointment, awaited her coming in great 
alarm. 

For her part, she set forth in all gladness, not only 
from the hope she mentions, of finding in this commission an 
excuse for quitting her charge, but also with a crusader's zeal 
for the task entrusted to her. While the community at 
Maubuisson awaited her coming in dread, the nuns of Port 
Royal were full of sorrow at her departure. All were in tears, 
save only the Sister Anne Eugenie, still under the dominion 
of the joyousness her vows had given her, and disposed, while 
the others were nearly expiring with sorrow, to dance with 

1 Ib., pp. 113-19- 



REFORM AT MAUBUISSON 77 

rapture and joy. The devout Agnes, on the other hand, 
found consolation for the loss of her sister and spiritual Mother 
only by flinging herself at the foot of the Cross, repeating 
Ecce nos reliquimus omnia, with the feeling that now indeed 
she had no more to lose. 1 

The emotion may appear excessive over what was after all 
a mere temporary separation. In later years Port Royal 
learned fortitude and self-control, by severe discipline and 
separations far otherwise grievous. But the community, still 
young and wholly moulded and inspired by the Abbess about 
to quit them, must have felt now bereft of their source of 
life, and Agnes at least knew that, if her sister had her will, 
the loss would be no mere temporary one. She did not yet 
know that the burden might be laid upon herself. 

Angelique chose three nuns to accompany her : the Mere 
de la Croix, one of the senior and original nuns whom she had 
' reformed ', and who had been with her to Maubuisson when, 
as child-abbess, she had returned there to bid final farewell ; 
and the two young nuns, her own sister Marie Claire, aged 
now eighteen, and the Sister Isabelle Agnes de Chdteauneuf, 
one year older, whom she had received and trained. To these 
two she said we have it from Marie Claire, recorded by the 
niece Ange"lique de S. Jean : 

' That in giving themselves to God, they had offered their 
lives to Him, and that up to now He had given no visible 
sign that He would accept their offering, but that the occasion 
which now offered was such an one, and that they must embrace 
it with an entire resolution to make to God not only a sacrifice 
of their powers and their health, but even of their actual life, 
which they must resolve to risk gladly, for the extreme labour 
they would have to undergo in the service of this House which 
was in such great need.' To Marie Claire in particular she 
added that ' she gave her no rule of discretion to observe but 
only that of a great charity which should oblige them all to 
forget their own interests and their health, in the endeavour 
to procure the salvation of souls ; and that in the knowledge 
she had of her constitution she had already given her life to 
God, or at the least she had no doubt but that she would 
lose her health there, and that accordingly she showed her 

1 Ib., p. 122. 



78 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

the place and the bed which she had assigned to her, in one 
of the infirmaries of Port Royal, to pass there the remainder 
of her languishing life, after she should have worn out her 
strength in giving a good example to these poor Nuns, who 
required to be instructed by actions rather than by words.' 1 

Matters did not come quite to this pass ; one may hope 
also that the grim prognostication was relieved in the mouth 
of the Mere Angelique by a flash of playfulness or humour 
which the younger sister's fervid and literal imagination failed 
to catch. Even so, the speech is one of those forcible utter- 
ances, which the nuns sometimes record of their Mother, but 
which in her own written words are controlled always by 
judgement. And this spirit of unbridled self-sacrifice was the 
spirit in which she, and her young companions, set forth for 
Maubuisson. Her prophecy for Marie Claire was not indeed 
fulfilled literally, but both that sister and the Sister Isabelle- 
Agnes are said to have injured their health by their austere 
life and incessant labour in the convent. The Mother herself 
committed excesses beyond judgement in her passion for, 
poverty and humility. A nun who left Maubuisson later for 
Port Royal was careful to preserve the memory of these things, 
and we know accordingly that the Mere Angelique chose for 
herself the worst cell of the dormitory, one ' previously always 
allotted to a servant or some poor Lay Sister who had no choice 
in the matter.' Not actually, like her cell at Port Royal, 
a passage room, it was yet close to a staircase which was in 
frequent use ; it was unhealthy from proximity to the roof 
and to an ill-smelling pipe, through which there entered lizards 
and toads ; further, it was almost quite dark. She resisted 
all attempts to make her change it, saying, ' this room was 
her only consolation ; that when she \vas in it, it seemed to 
her she was in the grotto of Bethlehem, where one saw nothing 
outwardly but of which Jesus Christ was the light. . . . 2 

' In all other respects, since she settled everything, she took 
always for herself the most uncomfortable place, the worst 
bed and all that she could find that was worst.' The nun, 
a certain Sceur Candide, cited by Angelique de S. Jean, dilates 
with a true nun's satisfaction upon these virtues of mortification 

Ib., pp. 132-3. a Ib., p. 143. 



REFORM AT MAUBUISSON 79 

in matters of food, dress, and work, and describes the austere 
and laborious life of the community formed under the Mother 
Angelique's hand. That community, be it understood, was com- 
posed of the new nuns and novices whom Angelique received, 
with the little band from Port Royal to marshal them, and was 
wholly distinct and apart from the original nuns, the ' Anciennes 
Dames ', with their relaxed rule and mundane habits. Angelique 
would not force reform upon these ladies, or even urge it, 
beyond the first essential of the cloister, and hoped to win 
them by the example of this new and fervent sisterhood within 
their midst, a young and living Port Royal in the dead pre- 
cincts of Maubuisson. Upon this community within a com- 
munity she pinned all her hopes, looking there for a solution 
of her difficulties. She established for them the Rule in its 
full rigour the disordered state of the convent's finances 
lending a hand, as we learn from her letters, to the prescribed 
abstinence. As at Port Royal, these nuns worked actively 
and their Abbess shared their labours : 

' She applied herself to all sorts of work indifferently, carrying 
wood to the kitchen and other parts of the House, sweeping 
the passages, the church, the dormitory, and the cloister, 
washing the dishes, carrying the linen and the wash to the 
garret, hoeing the garden, and she did all that with so much 
show of joy, that it seemed as if she had no greater pleasure 
in the world, than to busy herself with her Nuns, in these 
mean and laborious services. She encouraged them in a manner 
full of cordiality and fervour, giving them little sayings to stir 
them ; proffering to the one, as occasion fell, the example of 
Our Lord, to others the imitation of the holy Fathers, and 
encouraging others to mortify or humiliate themselves. Speak- 
ing to each according to her need, she promoted their spiritual 
edifice.' 1 

In later years, some quarter of a century later, the nuns 
who had received this training used to say that in all these 
occupations they had felt no difficulty, although there were 
many delicate ones among them, so much did the example 
and words of the Mere Angelique encourage and animate 
them, and the very memory so renewed their joy that they 
could scarce leave the topic. 

1 Ib., pp. 140-1. 



80 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

'The Mother Angelique, training these Nuns of Maubuisson 
to labour, took very great care to make them observe perfect 
silence. For this object, taking note of all things in general 
and in particular, she so regulated the occupations of each 
one, and proportioned the work so well to their strength 
and their capacity, that there was no need for much talking ; 
and they could do what they were ordered, without noise 
or confusion. I have often heard these Nuns say' (it is the 
Sister Candide whom the narrative cites) ' that she main- 
tained such order in all things that, although there were the 
aforesaid number of old Nuns, who, far from having ever 
practised a life so regulated, had led one quite opposite, one 
would have said there was nothing to do in the Convent, ah 1 
things went so smoothly. These old Nuns (ces Anciennes), 
though very hard to please, were waited upon, according to 
the Mother's orders, by her new Sisters, with great care, great 
charity, great respect, and in a spirit of peace and humility, 
to edify and win them, that by this good example they might 
a little open their eyes and behold the virtue from which they 
were very remote. The Mother Angelique frequently exhorted 
her Nuns on this matter, making them see how important it 
was to teach to these Sisters by action that which could not 
be taught to them by words because they would not have 
borne it.' 

This band of new nuns, novices and postulants, as they all 
were as yet , were kept in all things distinct from the old, 
dwelling with the Mother and the three nuns from Port Royal 
in a separate quarter, with a separate refectory and with 
separate religious observances, save for the church ceremonies 
which had to be performed in the church and in common 
with the ' Anciennes '. 

As at Port Royal, so at Maubuisson, Angelique had a special 
care for the devout and even beautiful performance of the 
services, a zeal which at Maubuisson was augmented by the 
desire to repair, as she said, the former irreverence, and which 
was, moreover, daily fanned by the need of outsinging the 
strong and discordant voices of the original nuns. For these 
ladies had the habit of singing all the service, though in so 
lamentable a manner, the recording nun says, 'that it was 
difficult to know if they were singing or quarrelling.' 1 

Ib., p. 124. 



REFORM AT MAUBUISSON Si 

' The Mother Angelique sang herself hoarse (se rompait 
Vestomac], as did also her Nuns, trying to cover by their singing, 
performed with reverence, the undevout singing of the old 
Nuns ; which could be done only by great effort. Every 
one was amazed that the Mother Angelique and her Nuns 
could stand the effort they had to make, which was continual 
from the opening of Matins to the close of Compline, every 
day, for the space of five years, in which the Mother Angelique 
displayed more patience, more charity and humility, than could 
be conceived ; never showing the old Nuns what distress their 
singing gave her, dissimulating it prudently for fear of annoying 
them and making them think they were despised. For these 
Mothers were very sensitive and, when warned of something 
to be corrected, they easily took umbrage, fancying they were 
looked down upon. The Mother Angelique had need to be, 
as she was, in possession of an admirable patience, discretion, 
and charity, to gain their spirits and be able to be useful to 
their souls ; and this was her chief aim, preferring to endure 
all this distress rather than hurt their feelings in the very least.' 

Both the Mother and the young nuns suffered ill effects 
from this continual hard singing : 

' But that was of no account to them any more than to her, 
because their zeal and the fervour which the Mother had for 
the right celebration of the divine service made them suffer 
with joy all these pains, without tiring. She ' (Angelique) 
' was always concerned to have singing taught to new-comers. 
She went frequently to the place where they learnt, and 
incessantly urged the Mistresses to take great pains. When 
she thought they had neglected to teach some Nun well, she 
reproved them severely, and, judging that the Mother de la 
Croix ' (that elder of her three companions, to whom she had 
given this sole office of teacher of singing) ' could not suffice 
for all in the manner she wished, she employed in it also Sister 
Marie Claire, her sister, although she had other occupations 
necessary enough, and might rather have been relieved in other 
affairs which she had to take on her shoulders. In fine, as 
regards the Nuns who were in her time at Maubuisson, one 
could not see a greater fervour than that which she had to 
cause the Divine Service to be celebrated with devotion and 
reverence, not at all in new chants and music, but simply in 
plain-song, according to the custom of the Order. 

' She was seen several times, while occupied with temporal 
affairs of considerable importance, to leave all to go and make 
a Sister repeat a response, when in doubt whether she had 

LOWNDES G 



82 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

learnt it well enough to repeat it in the choir, and not leave 
her until she knew it perfectly. When there were Sisters 
without talent, of whom the Mistresses despaired, it was they 
to whom she addressed herself the more and whom she recom- 
mended to the utmost care of the Mistresses, encouraging 
them and exhorting them not to grow weary, and encouraging 
also the poor girls in such a manner that all became easy to 
them. In truth they were not long in learning their singing, 
which they attributed to the charity the Mother had for them, 
having recognized that her words brought effect. For when 
she had said to these Sisters that they must take courage 
and that they would soon know what they had to learn, they 
became quite confident of it ; and it very often came to pass 
contrary to all human probability. 

' This appeared in the person of a Novice, named Sister 
Angelique-Basilisse, a very good girl, but delicate, lame, and 
without voice to serve in the choir or any other talents neces- 
sary to make a girl without fortune accepted by the old Nuns, 
without whose consent she could not be allowed to Profess. 
The Mother Angelique, considering in Nuns rather the vocation 
and the virtue than money or talents of nature without grace, 
had great compassion and much charity for this good Sister. 
As she was one day speaking to her, she exhorted her to be 
of good courage, to trust in God, and to repeat certain special 
prayers to acquire a voice so that she might be allowed to 
profess. It happened some days after, that while, according 
to the counsel of the Mother, this girl was repeating her prayer 
with great fervour, she obtained the effect in such a manner 
that, going straight to the place where the others were learning 
to sing, she set to work to do the same and intoned a response. 
The Mistresses were very surprised to hear her, not knowing 
what it could be. But on inquiring they learnt it, and gave 
thanks to God with her, and attributed this favour to the 
prayer and faith of the Mother Angelique. This girl was 
professed, and, in place of the small amount of voice she 
had, very bad and very discordant, she received from God, 
by the intercession of the Holy Virgin to whom she had 
addressed herself, a very fine voice, very strong and very 
sweet ; so that after her Profession we have seen her fill the 
office of first singer until her death, and one was even moved 
to devotion on hearing her sing, on account of the sweetness 
of her voice.' 

Effective, even to miracles, as was Angelique's fervour and 
charity upon these Sisters she was training, and exemplary 
as was their conduct, the original community of Maubuisson 



REFORM AT MAUBUISSON 83 

remained but partially touched by the virtue in their midst. 
They retained their mundane habits and appearance, their 
well-dressed hair ; though the Mother would not force them 
to change, the spectacle was a constant offence to her love of 
poverty. It is possible the example of meekness and austerity 
overshot its mark a little, and seemed beyond emulation, 
though edifying. Not until the young Mother Marie des Anges 
resumed, after another interregnum, the work of reform at 
Maubuisson, were these ladies cajoled into the outward 
semblance of devout nuns, and given, with the orthodox 
veil, some touch of the conventual spirit. 1 

Meanwhile, however, with one exception, they were recon- 
ciled to the new government as mitigated on their behalf, and 
accepted even, though with a sense of imprisonment, the strict 
enforcement of the cloister. Angelique won their suffrages 
from her first arrival with her familiar weapon of warm-hearted 
and cordial simplicity. 

The little band from Port Royal had reached Maubuisson 
at an hour of Church Service, and overheard the nuns singing 
in that lamentable manner which was so like quarrelling. 2 

' So soon as they had finished, they assembled at the door 
to receive M. de Citeaux and the Mother Angelique, whom 
they saluted at first with respect, but in a manner somewhat 
cold ; until the Mother, receiving them with the kindness and 
frankness which were so natural to her, at once opened their 
heart, and they began to discover that reform had not rendered 
her so barbarous as they had pictured ; of which they were 
yet further persuaded, when they saw that, meeting one of 
them named Mme Desmarets, she was for embracing her, 
and said to her gaily: "Good day, my great friend." For she 
remembered that she had called her this when she was a child 
and little Nun, and that these good Mothers loved these little 
endearments, nearly all having such alliances of friendship 
one with another. Thus they were so delighted with this 
frankness and this gaiety on the part of the Mother that, 
believing themselves escaped, as it were, from the hands of 
that chimeric monster of a frightful and savage reform, as they 

1 Cf. Modele de Foi et de Patience, pp. 55-7. 

2 Relation . . . de la Vie de la Mere Marie- Angelique Arnauld . . . 
pay la Mere Angelique de S. Jean Arnauld, Memoires pour servir . . ., 
vol. i, p. 124 seq. 

G 2 



84 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

had conceived that of Port Royal, they began to recognize 
her and to show her more tokens of affection and of joy because 
of her arrival than they had given her before signs of their 
fear and of their coldness. 

' All the first days passed in gently taming the spirits of 
these poor Sisters, who did not yet know what they were to 
expect from the new government. The Mother Angelique 
began by treating them with unparalleled kindness, renewing 
with them all her old acquaintance, and acting with all sorts 
of tokens of friendship towards them. Among other things she 
was very diligent in going to see one of the old Nuns named 
Madame le Vasseur, who was a good woman and had been 
her Mistress formerly when she was little, but who had become 
blind some years before. She lavished upon her every con- 
ceivable caress, and did her all sorts of service, making a point, 
all the Lent of that year, of going to see her every evening 
and taking with her her supper, which consisted of the bread 
of the Lay Sisters (for she would not eat that of the Convent, 
which was finer), together with seven or eight leaves of wild 
chicory, all raw, without oil or vinegar. She w r ould not even 
have them served in a dish, but, making a hollow in the piece 
of bread that was brought her, she put in it this salad so 
easily seasoned. 

' She rejoiced the heart of this good old Nun, comforting 
her for her blindness and trying by her gentleness to win her 
to God. She did much the same in regard to all the others, 
who were in such astonishment at seeing her life and her 
conduct, as also that of her Nuns, that they seemed to them 
creatures from a new world ; so few examples had they seen 
of a life so saintly and so religious, or rather, so far removed 
was this life from all they had hitherto seen in their House. 
A Sister from there, who was at that time a Secular at Maubuis- 
son, where she waited upon the good blind Nun above men- 
tioned, told me recently, that all the persons of the House 
had such an admiration of the piety, the mortification, and 
the modesty which showed even in the dress, the countenance, 
the ways and the smallest actions of these new Nuns, that 
they regarded them as prodigies ; that they were never weary 
of looking at them ; and that often she and other Secular 
Women who were in the House would make rendezvous to 
go and gaze upon them somewhere, where they could see 
them ; such was their satisfaction and devotion in the mere 
sight of their modesty and of all their appearance, which was 
so religious and so edifying.' 

But it was another matte: to instil the religious spirit into 



REFORM AT MAUBUISSON 85 

these original nuns of Maubuisson, however their affections 
might be won or their admiration stirred. They had most 
of them been made nuns against the grain and their vows 
had no meaning for them. They were of an ' inconceivable 
ignorance, not of the duties only, but of the first elements of 
Christianity and the chief mysteries of the faith ' : 

' They did not know even how to confess, but they used 
to present themselves for that purpose to a Bernardine Monk 
who was their Confessor, and who indeed deserved the name, 
since he it was who alone made their confession and named 
for them the sins he desired them to say, even though it might 
be they had not committed them. All he could bring them 
to, was to pronounce yes or no, upon which he gave them 
absolution without further inquiry. But at length, being tired 
of the reproaches which this Pater addressed them for their 
ignorance, they conceived they had found an excellent method 
for confessing well. This was to compose all together, with 
much study, three kinds of confessions, one for the great 
Feasts, one for Sundays, and one for week-days, which they 
wrote out in a book and lent to one another as they went 
to confess in succession ; though they might as well have done 
it all at once, since they all repeated the same thing.' 

Their manner of chanting the service has already been 
touched on ; that singing ' was with such a terrible precipita- 
tion and such discord, that so far from distinguishing any 
word in what they said, it was much if one could recognize 
at first, in this horrible confusion, that it was human voices.' 

' They spent all their time apart from the service which, 
thus performed, did not take much in amusing themselves 
in every way that they could, in entertaining the visitors who 
came to see them and who freely entered the Convent with 
as much liberty as they might have done a secular House 
of the country nobility, in dramatic performances for the 
pleasure of their guests, and so in all they could think of. 

' Many of them had their private gardens, with summer- 
houses for meals ; and what proves more than all that the 
disorder of this House was not personal, but had passed into 
a well-established custom, is that on summer days when it 
was fine weather, after having repeated Vespers and Compline 
both together, as hastily as possible, the Prioress used to take 
all the convent beyond the Abbey, to go for walks by the 
ponds that are along the high road to Paris ; where frequently 



86 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

the Monks of S. Martin of Pontoise, who are hard by, came 
to dance with these Nuns, and that with the same freedom 
that one would do the thing to which of all others there is 
nothing to object. 

' It would be highly useless,' the niece's narrative continues, 
' to enter into further particulars, since from these liberties, 
which were so public, may easily be inferred the rest, which 
it is much better to suppress. What we have said suffices to 
show, in general, what work awaited the Mother Angelique, in 
this vineyard which the Providence of God had sent her to 
cultivate.' 

The nuns were very unwilling to lose any of this ' liberty 
which might be called libertinism, which they loved beyond 
all things.' 

The Mother Angelique had, however : 

' so much skill in winning them, that in a short time, 
and under the authority of M. de Citeaux, she began to 
establish enclosure, forbidding admission to Seculars, and 
causing parlours to be made and setting grilles. The seniors 
having accepted it quietly, although it seemed very hard to 
see themselves, as they thought, made in a manner prisoners, 
the others submitted also ; and they had already so much 
love and respect for the Mother Angelique that they dared 
not refuse her in anything.' 

This fundamental reform was, in the eyes of that Mother, 
but the first step. It was all, however, that she would impose 
by authority, or even by persuasion. For the rest, she trusted 
to the influence that the new nuns, whose virtues she now 
turned to foster in their midst, should gradually exercise upon 
the Anciennes. She left these in undisturbed enjoyment of ah 1 
privileges and possessions that were consistent with observance 
of the cloister, their titles, their mundane attire, provocative 
though this was of her sin of impatience. 

As regards the ' conversion ' of these ladies, Angelique had, 
as observed, to contend not only with their long habits of 
self-indulgence, but also with the secret antagonism of the 
monks. On accepting the charge, she had drawn up a scheme 
of rules she thought should be enforced ; the General approved 
it and sent it, in his own name, to Maubuisson. But the 
monk, his secretary, commissioned to take it, told all the nuns 
privately that they need not look upon it as coming from the 



REFORM AT MAUBUISSON 87 

General, but from Mme de Port Royal, who had composed 
it, and that accordingly they could do about it as they 
pleased. And, what was worse, their Confessor, a venerable 
monk expressly appointed by the General to be the Mother 
Angelique's coadjutor in the work of reform, so far from 
supporting her in her trying position of temporary and doubt- 
ful authority, openly sided, when occasion offered, with the 
deposed Abbess, Mme d'Estrees. The incident, which took 
place when Angelique had been some eighteen months at 
Maubuisson, is a stirring one in convent annals. 

Among these original nuns, one remained wholly unreconciled 
to the new rule, and desirous of the return of the former 
Abbess. This nun, Mme de la Serre by name, was remark- 
able among them all by the vanity and singularity of her 
dress, as also of her carriage and gait. At the time of the 
visit of Francois de Sales to Maubuisson, she had attracted 
the attention of that Bishop's brother, M. de Boissy, who, 
' learning that she was a woman of intelligence, but of a 
proud, haughty, and artful spirit, was moved to try and win 
her to God.' But neither persuasion, nor strong admonition 
of the divine wrath, could induce her to abandon the vanity 
of her dress. 1 She was engaged, indeed, in other schemes 
than her own spiritual conversion, seeking nothing less than 
the forcible return of Mme d'Estrees and of the old misrule. 

With the connivance of this nun and the goodwill, if not 
the active aid, of the Confessor, Mme d'Estrees accomplished 
now a bold stroke : 

' Very few days after the Bishop of Geneva (Francois de 
Sales) left Maubuisson, which was at the beginning of Septem- 
ber, Mme d'Estrees, who ever since her removal had con- 
tinuously sued to be restored to her Abbey, and who was, so 
it is said, on the point of gaining her suit, through the leading 
of God Who directs all things to His purposes herself destroyed 
all the hopes she might have had of her restoration through 
the paths of justice, by a violent and imprudent enterprise.' 2 

On September the loth, 1619, having escaped from the Filies 
Pe'nitentes, and supported by her brother-in-law, the Comte 

1 Relation . . . par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean: p. 157. 

2 Ib., 160 seq. 



88 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

de Sanze (the gentleman to whom, be it remembered, she had 
arbitrarily married her young sister), and by sundry other 
gentlemen, she arrived at Maubuisson at six in the morning 
and sought admission at the gate of the courtyard, called the 
door of the alder-plot (porte de Vaunaie}. The porter refused 
to open, whereupon they forced the door, doing injury to the 
porter, whose cries for help were heard in the adjacent church, 
though their meaning did not penetrate. He, poor man, terri- 
fied at the violence and threats, did not venture to enter 
the House, but had the happy thought of going, ' all wounded 
as he was,' to Paris, to give M. Arnauld notice of the affair. 

At the door of the church, Mme d'Estrees was awaited by 
the aforementioned nun, Mme de la Serre, who had procured 
a counter-key (as came out in the subsequent inquiry, she 
had given an impression of wax to the locksmith), and who 
now admitted her : 

' At the same time that Mme d'Estrees entered by the 
great door of the Church, the Mother Angelique issued from 
a Confessional that was close to that same door; in such a 
manner that she met her face to face. She was not discon- 
certed at a thing so little expected, and Mme d'Estrees, first 
to speak, said to her with a countenance all moved, " Madame, 
you have filled my place long enough. I have come back to my 
House you must leave it." The Mother Angelique answered 
her with firmness : " Madame, I am quite ready to do so, when 
they who set me here remove me." The other responded angrily 
that she should leave, and repeated it several times. But the 
Mother, without exciting herself and without making further 
reply, followed her for the time being, and escorted her from 
the Church to her apartment in the Abbey. 

' Mme d'Estrees, on entering her room, where the Mother 
Angelique was now dwelling, and which consequently formed 
part of the infirmary, since at no time could the Mother have 
anything peculiar to herself or that was not open to all who 
had need of it, she (Mme d'Estrees) found it in bad enough 
order, with two mattresses on the floor upon which were lying 
two of the Mother Angelique's Nuns, who had taken medicine 
that day. Mme d'Estrees proceeded at once to say with 
disdain : " Let them take away all these dirty things from my 
room. What is all this filth ? ' The Mother said to her 
coldly : " Madame, if your room is in bad order, the fault is 
very excusable you were not expected" 



STRUGGLE WITH MADAME D'ESTREES 89 

' She left her presently in her room, and went to set various 
things in order, such as locking up papers and arranging other 
affairs, well foreseeing what might happen. But she did not 
forget to go herself to the kitchen, to have a decent dinner 
prepared for Mme d'Estrees ; and above all to see that the 
new Sisters whom she had received should be ready to do 
all they had to without disturbance and without confusion.' 

While thus readily yielding precedence in things temporal 
and personal, Angelique was firm in asserting her lead and 
control in the divine service : 

' Afterwards the Mother attended Tierce and High Mass, 
which she caused to be very solemnly sung. Mme d'Estrees 
attended also, but she did not venture to enter the choir ; 
and the Mother Angelique, before her very face, had the 
courage to occupy as usual the Abbess' chair ; which so 
incensed her that she could not refrain from saying, in a rage, 
' What insolence ! here is my Pupil taking my place in my 
presence" But the old Nuns of the House, who already 
almost all loved the Mother Angelique, were enchanted that 
she performed this act without timidity. The Mother and 
most of her Nuns communicated at this Mass, to be prepared 
for whatever it should please God might happen to them ; 
and subsequently they occupied themselves in peace, each 
in what she had to do, until dinner. 

' Mme d'Estrees, for her part, went all over the House ; 
and, in view of her re-establishment, sought to regain her 
footing with the Nuns. She sent for one of the seniors, named 
Mme Desmarets, who was Portress and Cellarer, and her 
assistant named Mme Dupuis, whom she tried to gain over, 
because they were all for the Mother Angelique . . . She com- 
manded them, in presence of the Mother Angelique, to restore 
the keys. These two good Nuns answered her, that they had 
given them up into the hands of Madame, meaning the Mother 
Angelique, which so incensed Mme d'Estrees that, having 
asked them angrily, if there were any other Madame in that 
House than herself, she dismissed them and desired to see 
them no more. 

' The dinner hour having arrived, the Mother Angelique, 
after causing that of Mme d'Estrees to be served, repaired 
with her Nuns to their usual refectory ; and before seating 
herself she said to them all : " My Sisters, we do not know 
what may happen to us to-day. All things are in the hand of 
God. We must commit ourselves to Him. Perhaps we shall 
be obliged to go on foot out of this House. We must be 



cjo THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

prepared for all. But for that very reason, all must try to 
eat in order to have strength if God will that we have trial." 
Thereupon she set herself at table. The reading was per- 
formed during dinner, and the customary graces were sung, 
without considering that Mme d'Estrees could hear them 
from her room, which was above, and that she would not fail 
to mock at these novelties.' 

After dinner came the trial of strength. The Confessor, 
Dom Sabbatier, now openly siding with Mme d'Estrees, tried 
to persuade the Mother Angelique to retire peaceably without 
awaiting the violence of which the Comte de Sanze and his 
followers were capable, seeking to intimidate her by an exag- 
gerated report of their threats. She replied firmly that there 
could be no question of deliberation; that, if force were used, 
she must yield to it, but that, short of force, nothing except 
the order of those who had set her in authority could justify 
her in leaving the precincts and breaking the cloister. 

Then, assembling her nuns to prepare them, she said to them, 
' My Sisters, one must commend oneself greatly to God. We 
are in the hands of a madman ' (the Comte de Sanze had that 
reputation), ' but the heart of man is in the hands of God.' 

Mme d'Estrees now came to her and tried, like the Con- 
fessor, to persuade her to depart quietly, but, receiving the 
same answer, that, even had she no other ground for awaiting 
the legitimate command, the law of the cloister would forbid her 
to leave , she proposed that they should both go to the Church. 
The Mother, without betraying any suspicion of her design, 
assented : ' Let us go, Madame, we could be nowhere better.' 

' They went thither accordingly, both. All the Nuns of 
the Mother Angelique followed her. On arrival, the Mother 
and her company began to pray God and ask His aid. Madame 
d'Estrees, who, for her part, was wholly occupied in finding 
means of establishing her claims, tried to induce the old Nuns 
to take part in making the Mother leave, or, if they could not 
persuade her to go voluntarily, to help in expelling her by 
force. She spoke to this end for a long time in a low voice, 
to the Prioress among others.' 

But these ' Ancients ' would not abet her. 

Mme d'Estrees was reduced accordingly to make the scan- 



STRUGGLE WITH MADAME D'ESTR^ES 91 

dalous scene she would have preferred to avoid. She began 
by loud and angry command to the Mother to depart on the 
spot, receiving the previous answer. Then she tried to force 
her towards the main door, but the Mother stood firm, and 
all her novices clustered round her and held her. ' They 
each put a hand into my belt ' in after life she narrated the 
scene to her nephew ' which so squeezed me, I thought 
I should be suffocated.' 1 These young girls were not so well 
drilled to modesty as to contain themselves at the sight of 
offence to their beloved Mother. They came to something 
like a most undignified scuffle with Mme d'Estrees. The 
Mother Angelique, herself impassive, was held back by her 
nuns, forced forward by Mme d'Estrees. In the conflict the 
latter pulled her veil as though about to tear it off ; where- 
upon, to quote the Mother's expression, ' the Nuns, who had 
been lambs, became lions.' One of them, a tall girl of good 
birth, advanced upon Mme d'Estrees, and retaliated by 
tearing off her veil and her entire coiffure, addressing her : 
' What ! Wretch that you are, have you the boldness to wish 
to take the veil from Mme de Port Royal ? Ah ! I know 
you, I know what you are.' Mme d'Estrees called the old 
nuns to the rescue, but they fled, desiring to take no part 
in this affair whereupon she came to extremities, and cried 
at the top of her voice for the Comte de Sanze ; ' Help, my 
brother, they are killing me ! ' 

At this signal, the accomplice nun, Mme de la Serre, opened 
the Church door with her key, and the Count and his com- 
panions entered sword in hand, one firing a pistol with intention 
to frighten. Unsuccessful in striking terror into the bold 
and now excited band of nuns, or in persuading her to move 
voluntarily, they forced Angelique to the door. And she, 
as she owns in her reminiscences, 2 was glad enough to be forced, 
and yielded imperceptibly, finding it high time to bring her 
nuns safely out of such company. 

In all this tumult, one nun played a distinctive part. The 
Sister Anne Eugenie, whom we left at Port Royal too joyous 
after profession to weep for the Mother's departure, had fallen 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . .,vol. ii, p. 285. 

2 Ib., p. 286. 



92 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

ill shortly after and was now at Maubuisson, by invitation of 
the community, for the benefit of the healthier air. And she 
now, while the rest were in full excitement, remained silent, 
without saying a word, it is Angelique who observes , 'pray- 
ing to God in all this noise.' l She made one, however, of the 
band that accompanied the Mother to the door. 

It was no part of Mme d'Estrees' intention to let out any 
nuns save those who had come from Port Royal, or to have 
more scandal than she could avoid. At the door, accordingly, 
the struggle began again, no longer to expel the Mother, but 
to restrain the young Sisters from following her. Again their 
lion-like qualities came into play. A carriage stood ready 
in the courtyard for the Mother Angelique and her companions, 
four with the Sister Anne Eugenie, from Port Royal. But 
as they entered, three of the original nuns of Maubuisson 
pressed after, and as many of the new Sisters as could enter. 
Others climbed on the box, and behind on the imperial, like 
footmen ; and the remainder hung on to the wheels. Mme 
d'Estrees told the coachman to drive on, but he refused, for 
fear of killing the nuns. 

Then Angelique, reflecting moreover that there was no 
knowing where the carriage would take them, redescended and 
the rest with her ; was forced now on foot to the outermost 
gate of the Abbey, where Mme d'Estrees set a man to prevent 
the nuns following, while she herself issued, drawing the Mother 
Angelique after. But a courageous young novice addressed 
this gatekeeper so boldly : 

' and told him in so resolute a tone that if he tried to prevent 
them from leaving, they would all crush him against the door, 
that the poor man was afraid. At the same instant, another 
very strong Nun pushed back the door and went through ; 
and, to prevent Mme d'Estrees from returning and shutting 
them in, she seized her by the waist, seated her on the grass 
and held her so, until all the Novitiate were through. The 
porter was so crushed behind the door as they thronged past 
that, far from resisting them, he was himself unable to stir.' 2 

1 Relation . . . par la Mere Marie- Angelique, Memoires pour servir . . ., 
vol. i, p. 296. 

2 Relation . . . par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, loc. cit., vol. i, 
pp. 170-1. 



STRUGGLE WITH MADAME D'ESTR^ES 93 

Three of the original nuns of Maubuisson were of this com- 
pany, which was composed in the main of the young girls 
received and trained by the Mother Angelique more than 
thirty persons in all. Two only of these new-comers were left 
behind, one of whom had just taken full vows, and was retained 
by a scruple of conscience, at such violence to her feelings that 
she fainted and had to be carried into the house. The other 
was a girl engaged there to work, whom the Mother had 
accepted as postulant, and who had been all day absent in 
the dairy, returning from her work in ignorance of the whole 
affair to find her Abbess and associates gone. This girl in- 
sisted upon following after, ' she being no Nun, nor Mme 
d'Estrees her Abbess,' and rejoined the band in the evening 
at Pontoise, bringing with her a very welcome gold coin she 
happened to find on the way. 

The Mother Angelique, thus unexpectedly on the road with 
her nuns, retained her full presence of mind and practical 
common sense. She arranged them all in procession postu- 
lants, novices, and the seven professed nuns bringing up the 
rear with herself and in this orderly file they marched two 
and two to the nearest town, Pontoise. They walked in silence 
and modesty, the Sister Anne Eugenie repeating her rosary as 
placidly and devoutly as if she had been taking part in the 
procession round the Port Royal cloister. At the suburb 
Angelique made them all take ' cordial waters ' as precaution 
against the pest which was in the town. That their entrance 
might be more modest, she improvised veils out of the skirt 
of one of the postulants, which she cut off round the waist, 
leaving the poor girl with the black bodice of her dress and 
the green petticoat that she wore underneath. 

At Pontoise the nuns received all hospitality, help and 
respect. The people knelt in the streets as the procession 
passed, blessing ' good Mme de Port Royal, who had left the 
Devil behind her at Maubuisson.' They entered the first church 
they came to, that of the Jesuits, and there the Grand Vicar 
and another Jesuit (M. Duval, doctor), both her friends, came 
to consider the best steps to take. It was decided not to 
accept the hospitality speedily proffered by the various convents 
but to remain together in a body in the Vicarage, which the 



94 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

Grand Vicar put at their disposal. Charitable persons in the 
town provided all necessary, Angelique rejoicing to receive 
alms, like the genuine poor , and the Vicarage assumed speedily 
the aspect of a convent. 

The Abbess' first solicitude was that her flock should not 
suffer morally from all this excitement and stir, and should 
resume at once their regular and sequestered manner of life : 

' Scarcely had she entered the house than she began already 
to think how she should establish enclosure and of the means 
of adapting the quarters, not knowing how long they would 
have to remain, and taking heed, with her usual charity, that 
this change might bring no ill to her flock, over whom she 
watched with unparalleled solicitude. All her Nuns were 
already so well trained to regularity, that in an instant they 
were at home in the Grand- Vicarage as though in their Convent, 
each falling into the place assigned her and executing there her 
practices of piety in an admirable meditative silence. 

' On the morrow they heard Mass in the Chapel, and the 
Mother Angelique communicated. They sang Vespers and 
numbers of people came to hear them. Afterwards they 
performed their orisons, all admiring the virtue and regularity 
of so many young girls who appeared to them like Angels in 
their modesty, and whom so much occasion of distraction had 
not withdrawn from the spirit of mortification and of retreat, 
in which they had been raised by the care of the Mother 
Angelique.' l 

The exodus was, however, but brief. News of the affair 
had already reached Paris through the medium of the wounded 
porter of Maubuisson ; provost and archers were at once in 
request, and Mme d'Estrees was re-expelled the very next 
morning. She did not wait to be caught, but fled through 
a little private gate which she had already, in that day's 
sojourn, had the foresight to have unbricked and reopened. 
Her brother-in-law and his friends also took flight ; only the 
accomplice nun, Mme de la Serre, had not time to escape, 
but hid in a high cupboard in the wall, concealed by tapestry, 
where she could not for the moment be found. After spending 
the day in vain search, the provost and a part of his troop 
a hundred archers remaining to guard the Abbey came to 

1 Relation . . . par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, pp. 176 seq. 



STRUGGLE WITH MADAME D'ESTREES 95 

beg the Mother Angelique to resume the government, and to 
escort her and the nuns back to Maubuisson. 

' It was nearly ten at night when the Provost reached 
Pontoise. But as it was desirable to lose no time, the Mother 
Angelique gave order on the instant that all the Nuns should get 
ready to leave. The night was no hindrance, for it was changed 
into full day by the quantity of torches brought by the whole 
town, whom curiosity and piety had assembled to witness this 
new event. All the Cures of the town and all the Ecclesiastics 
were present, and desired to accompany this strange procession. 
The thirty Nuns of the Mother Angelique walked in order, two 
and two, and by their side two rows of Archers on horseback, 
each carrying a torch in his hand and a musquet on the 
shoulder. The Mother Angelique walked after, and beside her 
the Provost of the Island 1 with a number of Guards, who formed 
an escort, because they feared and especially for her person 
the violence of those gentlemen who supported Mme d'Estrees, 
some of whom were very insolent and very audacious. The 
whole town followed with lights, and never was there seen a 
more illustrious procession than this, for the novelty and for 
the piety of the persons who afforded the spectacle to the rest.' 2 

The archers remained to guard the monastery all night, 
within and without, in case Mme d'Estrees' adherents might 
be concealed there. The Mother Angelique and her nuns 
spent this night in watching, ' some preparing food for the 
guards in the kitchen, in an edifying modest silence, and the 
remainder, the Mother took heed, retiring in good order.' 

Towards morning, the archers posted in the dormitory 
heard a strange blowing of the nose, ' as of some one who had 
been crying,' and tapping the walls whence the sound seemed 
to come, by this means discovered poor Mme de la Serre 
in her high cupboard. She was dislodged, not without diffi- 
culty, put under lock and key, and in the course of time trans- 
ferred to another convent. In the course of time, too, but 
not till years later, Maubuisson saw her again, and saw her, 
under the rule and influence of the Mother Angelique's young 
follower, Marie des Anges, at length touched and converted, 
and brought to a meek end. 3 As for Mme d'Estrees, she 

1 The Prevot de I' Isle was the officer responsible for the safety of the 
highways in Paris and the vicinity. 

Relation, &c., pp. 179-80. 

3 Modele de Foi et de Patience, p. 63 seq. 



96 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

too was captured, escaped and was recaptured several times, 
without however reappearing at Maubuisson. She passed 
the remainder of her life, and spent a pension which that 
convent allowed her, in litigating for the recovery of her 
rights, and died finally in a somewhat wretched condition in 
a suburb of Paris. The charity of Port Royal hoped some 
gleam of final repentance from the discovery of books of piety 
among her effects, mixed up with title-deeds stolen from 
Maubuisson. But she was seen once at least in lusty im- 
penitence, by a monk who visited her when she was confined 
in the Chatelet, regaling in bed upon wine and sausages. 

For some little while Maubuisson was in a disturbed state, 
the friends of Mme d'Estrees making hostile demonstra- 
tions, shooting at the convent windows and so forth, and the 
archers remaining to protect. But Angelique dismissed these 
so soon as possible, before indeed the nuns thought her dear 
person safe, and things resumed their normal course. For three 
years longer she continued her rule, in zealous ward over her 
new flock, in conciliatory but little-fruitful intercourse with 
the old nuns, in suppressed antagonism with the monks. 
Then at length Mme d'Estrees' claims were disposed of ; 
the King appointed a new permanent Abbess, and Angelique 
was free to return to Port Royal. The new Abbess, Mme de 
Soissons, a lady of quality, as befitted the Royal Abbey of 
Maubuisson, was highly respectable, and reputed devout, 
but, alas ! as remote as the former one from the spirit of austere 
simplicity initiated by the Mere Angelique. 

Mme de Soissons had a devout reputation in the Convent 
of Fontevrault, where she was nun, and Angelique had been, 
it seems, instrumental in her appointment, pointing out, when 
the office was proposed to herself, that an Abbess of high 
birth was needed to withstand the pretensions of Mme 
d'Estrees. It must have been the more grievous to find how 
little sympathy of spirit there was between them, and how 
little hope for the furtherance of Reform. The new Abbess 
showed her at first all esteem, but was wholly under the 
influence of a nun who was opposed to Reform and who skil- 
fully sowed disunion between them until not all Angelique's 
warm-hearted charity could melt the ice. It was of no avail 



THE NEW ABBESS AT MAUBUISSON 97 

that she nursed Mme de Soissons through an attack of 
smallpox, catching the malady and nearly losing an eye, 
she was saved by a miracle, remembers the niece, writing, 
however, too long after to recover the detail. 1 Neither was 
it of any avail that, by a concession harder to her than this 
act of charity, she wore a new and more seemly dress in the 
new Abbess' honour. 2 

With Mme de Soissons, Maubuisson took on a new phase. 
This Abbess was a person of piety in her way, given to 
fasting and other bodily mortification, to the injury even of 
her health. But her self-love found other than material vents, 
and precisely such as were most contrary to the spirit of the 
Mother Angelique. ' The Bourgeoises of S. Antoine, the Ladies 
of Maubuisson, the Nuns of Port Royal,' were the respective 
titles given by the Cistercian monks to these three sets of 
women in their Order ; 3 and Mme de Soissons, true to her title, 
insisted upon all the prerogatives of her rank. The Mother 
Angelique discarded even the customary title of Madame ; 
she took her charge as that of servant to the community, 
seeking precedence only in poverty and in labour. Mme de 
Soissons let her nuns kneel as they entered her room, approach 
her still on their knees, and address her with every conceivabls 
reverence and ceremony. She was, however, suave and 
affable, and of personal charm, and the novices some dozen 
whom she received, adored her in a species of cult. They 
sought, so they owned after her death, to please her in all 
their acts, even in their devotion, which took the form of fine 
singing and fantastic processions, with flowing hair and crowns 
of thorns, about the garden. 4 The old nuns of Maubuisson, 
for their part, continued their easy and privileged ways, 
untouched by the new practices as they had been by the 
abstemious and laborious life of Angelique's nuns. As for 
that flock, they left Maubuisson with their Mother, to be 
received in their poverty open-armed by the Community at 
Port Royal. 

1 Relation . . . de la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, p. 200. z Ib., vol. ii, p. 147. 

3 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 292. 
1 Modele de Foi et de Patience, p. 17 seq. 
LOWNDES 



98 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

With the advent of Mme de Soissons Angelique continues 
her narrative, passing in silence the stirring events which 
we, tempted by the minute detail given us by Angelique the 
niece and gleaned from the after reminiscences of those well- 
trained but wide-awake young novices, have dwelt upon at 
more length, perhaps, than their intrinsic worth deserves. 
The Mother herself spoke of them to her nephew, in reference 
to the Confessor's bad conduct, and again in a species of 
indictment she had occasion to draw up against the monks 
of the Order, and yet again, in the long digressions of this very 
narrative, in allusion to the rapt fervour, during that scene 
in the church, of her sister Anne Eugenie ; but she gives them 
no place in the main course of events. 

She had spoken last, it may be remembered, of her inter- 
course with S. Fran9ois de Sales. 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued) 

' When I learnt that the King had appointed a Nun of 
quality (Mme de Soissons) to succeed the Abbess, who had 
already been deposed by two sentences passed, I obtained 
leave for her to come there (to Maubuisson) while awaiting the 
third sentence, to see what might be hoped from her govern- 
ment, and that I might prepare quietly for departure ; since 
I was weary of staying so long in a place where there was so 
little likelihood of setting things on a solid basis. I remained 
thirteen months with her, continuing to govern the House, 
for she could not have the Bulls until the final sentence had 
been passed, and, since I saw that I was no longer of any service, 
God having permitted some misunderstanding which arose, 
not from the future Abbess, but from a Nun she had brought 
with her, I asked permission of M. de Citeaux to retire. 

' One of the complaints raised against me was that I had 
filled the House with Nuns without dower, and that thus I took 
away the power of having great splendour in the Church, 
as was befitting a Royal House such as that.' (Mme de 
Soissons applied the injurious term of beggar-girls (gueuses) 
to these nuns, ' wounding thereby,' as Angelique says, speak- 
ing of the matter to her nephew, ' both their feelings and 
hers.') ' I replied to this complaint that I had done that 
which the Superiors had charged me to do ; but that, if they 
found a House with thirty thousand livres a year too heavily 
burdened by thirty Nuns, I should not esteem ours, worth 
only six, inconvenienced by receiving them. These poor girls 



RETURN OF THE MERE ANG&LIQUE 99 

earnestly begged me to take them, and I wrote to our Sisters, 
begging them to tell me if they would have the courage to 
share their poverty with thirty Sisters. They wrote me a letter 
signed by all, in which they said that they would receive with 
joy all that I should be pleased to bring them. I forwarded 
the letter to our General, and asked permission, which I re- 
ceived with more joy than I can express. Thereupon I got 
ready to depart. 

' I wrote to my mother, who was now a widow, for my 
father had died three years earlier, imploring her to bring 
me carriages to transport these Sisters to Port Royal ; and 
I closed my letter by begging her very humbly not to grant 
my petition unless God inspired her to do so, and she could 
do it from her heart. She did not fail to attend on the day 
appointed, with sufficient carriages and sufficient women to 
escort these Sisters. I sent them to Port Royal, and I myself 
went to Paris, because certain persons had counselled me to 
transfer there our House, which was very unhealthy, and 
because my mother greatly desired it. She took me accord- 
ingly thither to consult how it could be managed. I saw no 
great likelihood, and returned on the nth or I2th of March, 
1623, to Port Royal, where our Sisters received me with great 
joy, not only to see me again, but also because pleased with 
the Nuns I had sent them, as though with them there had 
come a greater increase of benefit than of burden. 

' I applied myself at once to make fresh small accommoda- 
tions, to lodge these thirty Sisters of Maubuisson ; for we 
were singularly crowded, having only thirteen cells in the 
dormitory, while we were more than sixty. I had some very 
poor ones made, of wooden partitions filled up with earth and 
straw. The grandeur of the House I had just left, and its 
riches, had so well taught me that these unhappy thorns 
choke the word of God, and I had seen such curse and detest- 
able monuments of vice, which had destroyed those of the 
piety of the holy Queen (Blanche of Castille, mother of S. Louis) 
who had founded that House, that I loved poverty the more 
tenderly. I had nurtured these Sisters I had received, so far 
as it was possible to me, in the love of this virtue. And truly 
they had for it so great affection that they were enchanted to 
find themselves in this poor House, and in the profound peace 
which was there.' 

The thirty dowerless young nuns reached the convent, 
whose charity they had invoked, tongue-tied. Angelique, 
watchful always against occasion for idle talk and dissipation 
of spirit, had bidden them be silent from the first glimpse of 

H H 2 



ioo THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

Port Royal until her own later coming. She enjoined them 
to this end that, so soon as, turning the brow of the hill, they 
should catch sight of the convent steeple, in its deep and 
narrow valley, they should repeat all together this verse, 
Pone, Domine, custodiam ori mco, et ostium circumstantiae 
labiis meis ; and that, from that moment, the door of their lips 
should remain closed until she herself should come to open it. 
As it was needful, however, that they should be known at 
Port Royal, she made each attach a ticket to her sleeve, with 
her name upon it. They punctually observed these orders, 
and arrived at Port Royal on March the 3rd, 1623. 

' It was a Feast-day for the Mother Agnes and for the whole 
Community, of whom may be said on this occasion what the 
Apostle said of the faithful of Macedon, that their profound 
poverty shed abroad in abundance the riches of their sincere 
charity. For not only did they open their arms with all their 
heart to receive this great number of Sisters, but more, as if 
it had been they themselves who had obtained an extra- 
ordinary favour, they sang the Te Deum as they went to 
receive and embrace this present that God made them, to 
enrich their House more and more with the inexhaustible 
treasure of poverty. 

' This House, so inconvenient and so small, became all at 
once large by the breadth of the charity of those who were 
well pleased to be inconvenienced for the ease of others, and 
beautiful for the gratification found in it by these poor girls, 
who sought only Jesus Christ crucified, and found Him in this 
tomb where they were as it were buried from the rest of the 
world, from which this House was in complete remoteness. 

' The Mother Angelique meanwhile was at Paris several days, 
as she says in her narrative, and spent some of them in the 
Convent of the Visitation in the rue de S. Antoine ; for as 
yet there was only that first House. She returned to Port 
Royal in Holy Week, the nth or I2th of March ; and on her 
arrival she loosed the tongues of these thirty mutes, who had 
not said a word while waiting for her. They had only held 
out their arm when it was a question of some one of them, 
that it might be read upon their sleeve who they were, that 
they could be employed in whatsoever they were wanted to do. 
The Mother Angelique opened them the door which she had 
closed ; but it was only to greet her and to re-enter speedily 
into the customary silence in which she had nurtured this 
great Novitiate, who resembled that ancient Tabernacle which 



RETURN OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 101 

was transported and re-established wherever God caused His 
people to encamp in the desert. For all these Sisters were so 
fashioned in regularity, silence and meditation (recueillement) 
that, whether at Maubuisson, at Pontoise, or at Port Royal, 
from the first day that they arrived, they were ordered and 
regular, as though they had never stirred thence.' x 

It is pleasant to read also the Mother Angelique herself 
mentions it to her nephew that for once the Nuns of Port 
Royal made a Feast of a more material kind. They not only 
sang the Te Deum in welcome of these Sisters from Maubuisson ; 
they regaled them also with carp from their pond, to the great 
surprise of the newcomers, who had anticipated, from their 
poverty, only a meagre diet of garden herbs. 2 

1 Relation . . . de la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, p. 203 seq. 

8 Entretiens de la Mere Angelique avec M. le Maitre, loc. cit., vol. ii, 
P- 372. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Mere Agnes. Comparison of the two sisters, Agnes and Angelique. 
Port Royal under their joint rule. Their youngest sister, Madelon, 
enters the Convent, and also Madame Arnauld, their mother. 

PORT ROYAL meanwhile, under the care of the Mere 
Agnes, had been quietly and steadily confirmed in the spirit 
and practice initiated by Angelique, so that when the latter 
returned it was as to a haven of repose and fellowship. Her 
intercourse with it had not been completely broken and she 
had herself been back on more than one occasion during those 
five years' absence, notably when her sister Agnes took posses- 
sion, in September, 1620, as coadjutrix : 

' I was as gay at it,' Angelique relates to her nephew, ' as 
she was sad. The Te Deum was sung, and I sang so hard that 
I made myself hoarse. I advanced by her side to the Book 
of Chants which has to be opened (as one of the ceremonies 
of taking possession) ; and as she saw me gay and smiling 
at the opening of the Book, and she had found, Isti sunt duo 
olivae et duo candelabrae (these are the two olive-trees, and 
the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth), 
she said to me on the spot : " My Mother, do not rejoice so 
greatly, I shall not remain here alone. We shall be two, you 
will be here as well as I. Look, see what I have found on 
opening the Book Isti sunt duo olivae . . . ." 

The prophecy was duly fulfilled. The two sisters remained, 
with one brief period of divergence, companion and comple- 
mentary spirits at Port Royal until, after Angelique's death, 
Agnes was left alone, an aged and venerable Mother, to bear 
the main brunt of the storm that broke over the convent. 

' It seems,' the Mother Angelique de S. Jean, their niece 
and worthy successor, wrote of these two sisters, ' that God, 
in the gifts He had assigned them, had distributed them 
diversely in order that their guidance might be useful to every 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 268. 




CATHERINE AGNES VL S.PAVL^RNAVLD 

rt Royal ELLc at morte U, ipF&uriar i6ji.cfi obeur^ie, tr&s qrcundt. 

.fauOTT. ^fiia^ Ag.^46 g ^.^^at5^agr-^^-'^'^ ~'"^ -~.S**utk ._ 



THE M^RE AGNES 
From engraving ot portrait by Philippe de Champaigne 



P. 102 



THE MRE AGNS 103 

kind of person. In the Mother Angelique there appeared 
a burning charity, vigorous and tender, which was able to 
abase and to exalt itself at need, which made itself feared 
and made itself loved, which had the secret of overturning 
all by its force and of again raising all by its goodness. In 
the Mother Agnes on the contrary one saw an ever uniform 
equanimity, a wisdom ever the same, a gravity accompanied 
by gentleness, which inspired confidence and respect, and 
taught as much by silence as by words.' x 

Angelique 's ' so prompt impetuosity ' was indeed, by the 
discipline of years, not so much checked as transformed. It 
appeared to the last as this burning zeal for the spiritual 
advancement of others ; she was to the last tempted by 
impatience, no longer at opposition to her views and designs, 
but at the evidence of lukewarmness or unconscious hypocrisy 
in professing Christians. To the last also she regretted that 
she yielded too readily to these zealous impulses, apt to pro- 
voke resentment, instead of waiting for the more efficacious 
movement of grace in the offender. 

The nuns testified that, forcible and unsparing as were her 
reproofs, none ever left her presence without fresh courage 
and resolve to new effort. But there were persons who acknow- 
ledged that they were better suited by the Mother Agnes. 
The nephew, M. le Maitre, remembered the words of one of 
these persons, referring to the sisters at a later date (1651), 
when age had yet more strongly marked their respective 
characters. Mme d'Aumont, one of several secular persons 
of rank who retired in age and widowhood to Port Royal to 
devote the remainder of their lives to good works and piety, 
said to him :- 

' I assure you, Monsieur, the Mother Agnes suits me better (Je 
m'accommode mieux de la Mere Agnes) ; our Mother (Angelique) 
is too strong for me. What she says sometimes in the ardour 
of the Spirit of God that animates her, so frightens and amazes 
me that I am quite cast down at it. Only a week ago Mme 
de Belize, daughter of M. Angran, Receveur des Consignations, 
and widow of a Counsellor of the Grand Council, brought her 
grandchild to Port Royal and her great-niece, child of M. Ber- 
taut, her brother-in-law, and the two children were allowed 

1 Abrege de la Vie de la Mere Agnes, loc. cit., vol. iii, p. 207. 



104 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

to come in. The Mother, seeing the little Bertaut, who is six 
years old, very fine and all crimped and curled, spoke to her 
so strongly about the way in which her parents adorned her 
like a little heathen, teaching her, instead of Christian modesty, 
the vanity of the world, and contributing to make her lose 
the grace of her innocence and of her baptism ; that this little 
girl, who is intelligent, was so frightened that she did nothing 
but cry all the time she was in the Convent.' l 

The case seems certainly one of those in which it had been 
better to wait for the movement of grace in the parents. 

The Mother Agnes on the other hand failed, where she 
failed, through lack of this uncompromising zeal for others 
and of faith in their power of attaining the high standard she 
herself strove after, lack, one should say rather, writing of 
Port Royal, of faith in the power of God's grace. She failed, 
in her extreme old age, to give the strong support required 
by a young niece, tempted to compromise (in that matter of 
the formula which is the last chapter in the history of Port 
Royal), and falling for want of it, so both she and the aged 
Mother believed afterwards, into grave sin and into a most 
grievous repentance. 2 

The fervour of the Mother Agnes found its vent in an 
extreme attachment to the services of the Church and to 
prayer. When deprived in her younger days, for reasons of 
penance or health, of any of these indulgences, instead of 
yielding the glad obedience which, in the eyes of Port Royal, 
was the supreme conventual virtue, she could not be restrained 
from much weeping. And her disposition remained the same 
in old age. 

This love of prayer and church-ceremonies had existed in 
her unregenerate days, from childhood even, and was in part 
a mere outcome of nature. It had co-existed, on her first 
coming to Port Royal, with that love of her dignity as Abbess 
of S. Cyr alluded to by Angelique in her narrative, and with 
great self-esteem and vanity. But in this respect she was 
wholly changed. When, at the age of fifteen, brought over as 
we saw at Angelique's instance from S. Cyr to Port Royal, 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le MaUre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
PP- 329-30. * v. post, p. 389. 




; I'OUT ROYAI. DLS CHAMKS- 




- - 



THE CHOIR AND THE REFECTORY AT PORT ROYAL DES CHAMPS 
From engravings by Madeleine Hortemels 



P. 105 



THE MRE AGNS 105 

she first expressed a wish for the habit, Angelique, then 
seventeen : 

' saw well that it was not yet time. I made her,' she recounts 
to her nephew, ' postpone it more than six months. There 
was in her only nature pure and simple, without any apparent 
infusion of the grace of God. She loved austerity by nature, 
and fasted strictly. She was good and punctual but vain and 
ambitious (glorieuse) beyond what one could conceive, to the 
point of asking God why He had not caused her to be born 
Madame de France, who was afterwards Queen of Spain. 
She had a self-esteem which was opposed to all humiliation 
and penance, and which was insupportable to me because God 
had already converted me. I said to her once, when she asked 
for the habit : My Sister, you are not yet fit for it, for if you 
were to come late to the choir or to the refectory and I ordered 
you some penance, you would not be able to endure it. She 
replied coldly and proudly : There remains only not to come 
too late to the choir or refectory. She was very particular as to 
her food, nature not leading her to be austere in that respect. 
She was dainty, neat and particular in her clothes, to an excess. 
But God changed her wholly some months after : He took 
entirely away from her this daintiness and this vanity. When 
she had taken the vows, I made her sacristan ; and one day, 
as she was carrying a jar full of oil for the lamp, she let it 
break against a stone, and her dress was all covered with oil. 
As I knew she was very clean by nature, I forbade her to 
change her dress or to have the oil removed, and ordered her 
to wear it day and night until I should tell her not to do so 
any longer. She wore it by my order six whole weeks. I 
mortified her terribly ; but the Holy Spirit who was in her 
enabled her to endure all. She was too much attached to the 
choir : I had her removed from it one day to mortify her. 
She was then Novice, it is forty years ago and more ; and she 
cried terribly over it. And I said to her recently : See there, 
my Mother, our old and our first dispositions endure long. 
Do you remember that I had you removed from the choir all 
weeping, more than forty years ago, because you loved nothing 
but the service ? I see well that if I were to forbid you now 
to take part in it on some occasion, you would weep now as 
then : truly, we never cure ourselves of our old maladies.' 1 

Together with this passion for the external ceremonies of 
the Church, Agnes had a tendency to absorption, of a decidedly 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 265 seq. 



106 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

mystical character, in private prayer. Angelique experienced 
a ' silence of the heart before God ', the awe and stillness 
that is consciousness of His presence ; Agnes was more directly 
aware of the voice of God speaking in her. The thoughts 
that came to her at such times seemed to her not her own. 
' She had experienced,' her brother, the theologian Antoine, 
said, pronouncing her funeral speech, ' internal communica- 
tions, and whatever reserve she had exercised that it might 
not be perceived, there had escaped her things which had 
sufficiently shown that her thoughts were those of a soul 
which, having come out of itself, was floating in the abyss of 
the divinity.' l 

At the suggestion of her confessor she set down once in 
writing these inspired thoughts, making a little book of devo- 
tion which, falling under hostile eyes, raised a stir warranted 
neither by its merits nor demerits, and brought upon the nuns 
their first taste of persecution. To this affair of the Chapelet 
Secret our narrative will bring us again. But, in general, her 
humility saved her from attaching undue importance to these 
thoughts ' not her own ' ; above all she avoided speaking of 
them to the nuns, seeing in them a grace vouchsafed to her 
that called only for richer fruits of service and stricter reform 
of character. And if she prayed more than the others, she 
had also, the niece testified, a greater ardour for work. Con- 
versely, Angelique's intense faith in God's rule brought her 
vehemence into harness, to wait upon the signs of His grace. 
Angelique was of active and practical, rather than contempla- 
tive nature, and her virile intellect was more constantly domi- 
nant. Inspiration did not come to her in the shape of thoughts 
foreign to her natural reason, but sometimes in the force of 
utterance with which she impressed her habitual and reasoned 
thoughts upon others. The miraculous answers she received 
sometimes to prayer were in the way of special manifestations 
of external providence : opportune gifts of money and the like, 
at times of great need. 

Again, while the sterner temperament of the elder sister, 

1 Relation abregee de la mort de la Mere Agnes, et de ce que M. Arnauld 
dit a son sujet le lendemain de son enterrement, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. iii, pp. 261-2. 



THE MRE AGNS 107 

impressed with the thought of Eternity and the nothingness 
of this life, dwelt upon the severer aspects of Christian doctrine, 
so that she felt at times her devotion to be motived by dread 
rather than love, and herself once stigmatizes her zeal as servile, 1 
the younger let these dread thoughts of judgement and damna- 
tion pass lightly over her. Her tranquillity had a surface of 
bubbling playfulness ; her letters even those ' thoughts not 
her own ' -break out into spiritual conceits and fine-drawn 
allegory. There would seem to have been a sportive element 
in the very exercise of mortification and penance under her 
rule, a merry ingenuity in catching out the wiles of self-love 
and perfecting conventual virtue. 

In aim and in ideal of the religious life, there was no diver- 
gence between the two sisters ; the band of nuns trained under 
Angelique at Maubuisson united as one body with the com- 
munity of which Agnes had for several years held the reins : 

'This great number of Sisters '- this influx from Maubuis- 
son ' which suddenly increased the community of Port Royal,' 
writes the niece, 2 ' only kindled a still greater fervour : as, 
when one throws a great quantity of wood upon a big fire, 
it flames up again. This new Novitiate relaxed in nothing at 
Port Royal. On the contrary all the persons whose charity 
and knowledge could bring souls to greater perfection were 
reunited by the return of the Mother Angelique, of Sister 
Isabelle- Agnes, and of Sister Marie-Claire, who, with the Mother 
Agnes, formed as it were a conspiracy of zeal to carry yet 
further the fervour of their charity. The three latter assembled 
often to deliberate together as to the means that could con- 
tribute to perfect this work of God, which was the sole object 
of their care ; and when they had thought of something that 
might be useful, they went to propose it to the Mother 
Angelique, who sanctioned it by her authority or modified it 
by her prudence. 

' They thought it desirable to cut off entirely the Conferences 
which had been held thitherto, but which are not in the Rule 
of S. Benedict. The Capuchins, who had helped the Mother 
Angelique at the beginning of the Reform, had had them 
instituted ; and the practice of all the ne\v Orders caused 
them to be thought necessary. But the love of silence and 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, p. 119. 

* Relation . . . par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean . . ., Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, p. 204 seq. 



io8 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

the spirit of prayer which reigned then at Port Royal made 
them superfluous for persons whose continual conversation was 
in heaven. Thus they had no difficulty in giving up these 
external discourses, which are often a greater burden to piety 
than a solace to nature. Accordingly, no more Conferences 
were held until the establishment of the Monastery of Paris, 
when the Direction changed ; and the persons who then 
governed not only restored the Conferences, but instituted 
also recreations twice a day with all the liberty practised at 
the Carmelites, whom M. de Langres, who managed everything 
then at Port Royal, wished to be taken as model.' (This was 
later, when Angelique obtained her heart's desire, relinquished 
her charge, and, with the sweets of obedience, tasted also some 
of the bitterness. 1 ) 

' Among other examples of Silence, of which a special study 
was made at Port Royal in these early times, one may be 
indicated in the person of Sister Isabelle-Agnes de Chdteauneuf, 
who spent an entire Lent engaged in the kitchen (where all 
the Choir Sisters served turn by turn), without ever, 
during these six weeks, speaking a single word, whether super- 
fluous or necessary, because the practice of making herself 
understood by signs sufficed when there was need to ask for 
anything. She was capable of forming others in the exercise 
of this virtue, by giving them such a model. In truth the 
young Nuns of whom she had care' (Angelique had made 
her, it will be remembered, Mistress of Novices), were so 
exact in their practice of silence and of mortification, that, as 
it chanced one day a Novice, called Sister Isabelle-Christine 
de Rosicres, was sent in the evening to a cell thought to be 
furnished, but in which there proved to be only fagots that 
had been stacked there. She slept on the top of these and 
covered herself with her church-cloak, and dwelt there several 
days without its occurring to her that she should speak of it ; 
and it was only by chance that some Sister, having gone to the 
cell where she had been told she slept, and finding nothing 
but fagots, believed she had made a mistake and went to say 
so. But when the girl was thereupon called to say where she 
slept, she was obliged to explain how it was. 

' This example might seem extraordinary nowadays ' (Ange- 
lique the niece, who records, already sees or imagines degeneracy 
in the Convent) 'but then was not so at all, although this 
manner of occasion did not occur often. But the spirit of 
these holy Nuns was always ready to embrace such occasions as 
a favour from God, when they presented themselves. The more 
ordinary practice of the Mothers who directed them was not to 

1 v. post, ch. ix. 



A REBELLIOUS NUN 109 

instruct them in the general obligation of Religious, to bear 
all the crosses which God should send them gladly ; they had 
already so strongly impressed it upon them that they found no 
sweetness save in the bitterness of penance. But desiring 
that this fire should kindle in them more and more, they (the 
Mothers) sought, with care, devices to humiliate them and to 
mortify them in things for which they were not prepared, for 
fear lest familiarity should lessen the merit of their ordinary 
mortifications, and that their fervour should slacken for want 
of exercise. The Mother Agnes excelled in finding methods 
of rooting out all that might yet live of secret self-love and of 
human complacency in these souls, for whom she was jealous 
with a jealousy all of God, and whom she would fain offer 
all pure to Jesus Christ. She did it with the greater facility 
since she had herself no greater pleasure, or more ordinary 
exercise, than that of a constant mortification, and gave to 
these Sisters only the remains of this spiritual table where she 
fed with Jesus Christ upon the joys (les voluptc's) of penance, 
when she sought new means to make them die to themselves.' 

This period of happy rivalry in humility and labour lasted 
some three years. But the peace was not, even at this time, 
wholly unrelieved. One unhappy event is recorded, one of the 
Mother Angelique's rare failures. An ill-humoured lay-sister, 
taking offence at her treatment, positively ran away from the 
convent in the secular garments of one of the novices, climbing 
the walls at night and carrying off with her the relics from 
a cross on the church altar. This poor woman had been for 
seven or eight years engaged as lay-sister in the kitchen, and 
in spite, the narrative says, of continual toothache, had 
acquitted her duties well. ' But, as she was very small-minded, 
she did not persevere in submission.' The Mother Angelique 
removed her from the kitchen purely, it seems, for her 
health's sake. The removal was taken as an affront ; the 
unhappy Sister Marguerite-Agathe Du Chesne, as she was 
called, fell into murmurings and neglect of her duties, proved 
unamenable to all Angelique's efforts, and finally, offended by 
refusal of leave to communicate in this frame of mind at the 
Feast of All Saints, she fled as related. 1 

1 Relation de la . . . Sceur Anne de S. Augustin Gamier touchant la 
charite de la Mere Angelique au sujet d'une Sceur Converse nommee 
Sceur Marguerite-Agathe Du Chesne, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 439 seq. 



no THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

After undergoing terrors from wolves in the dark night and 
finding temporary shelter in a poor woman's cottage, she 
reached Paris, and sought out a sister she had there in service, 
who, horrorstruck, took her to the Bernar dines to confess ; 
whence \vord was sent to Port Royal. 

The community there meanwhile had become aware of the 
flight. ' The Mother Angelique caused the Host to be exposed ; 
the whole community did penance with unspeakable fervour 
and dismay.' When at length the culprit was brought back, 
' as she approached the door, the Mother Angelique extinguished 
the lights, and, opening to her, she threw herself upon her neck 
and embraced her, saying : " Oh, my dear child ! ' She led 
her herself to reclothe her with her Nun's dress.' Unhappily 
neither kindness nor the penance imposed availed to convert 
this nun. She attempted again, though this time unsuccess- 
fully, to escape ; and finally was transferred to another con- 
vent, ' where she died,' is the sad brief ending of the tale. 

This seems to have been the one exception to the general 
fervour. And, richly compensating for the loss of one un- 
gracious nun, another of the Arnauld sisters, the youngest, 
Madeleine, was gathered to the fold ; while, crown of all, the 
widowed mother, Madame Arnauld herself, resolved to embrace 
the religious life, becoming spiritual daughter to her own child, 
Angelique. 

As Angelique had journeyed to Maubuisson, on accepting 
the charge of temporary Abbess (1618), she had spent, as her 
narrative tells us, some days at her father's house. There 
she had seen her little ten-year-old sister (twenty, be it 
remembered, was the tale of the Arnauld family, of whom 
ten survived, and close on twenty years separated these two 
daughters) ' quite worldly and playing the beauty (qui faisait 
la belle], which indeed she was '. Angelique describes the 
interview to her nephew : 

' As soon as I saw her it distressed me, and I said to her : 
What, my little sister Madeleine, would you not like to be a Nun 
and come and live with us? To the which she answered boldly : 
"No, my sister, I don't want to in the very least." Ah ! and 
what then do you wish to be, my child ? Sister, I want to be 
married. To which I replied : And what makes you desire 



THE SISTER MADELEINE in 

marriage ? 'Nothing at all, she told me, but the fondness 
I have for little children. I love them with all my heart. 
I am never tired of kissing and nursing my little nephews, 
and that is what makes me want to have some.' It is true 
that this simplicity of a little girl ten years old who did not 
know the meaning of virginity or of marriage, and whose only 
desire was to be the mother of little children, made me laugh 
a little at first ; but afterwards I felt sad at seeing her so 
worldly and so remote from giving herself to God.' 

The beautiful child was in fact reserved, in her father's 
intention, for matrimony and establishment in the world. 
But the force which M. Arnauld had set in movement when 
he had pledged the unwilling Angelique to convent vows, was 
now beyond his guidance and overbore his present wishes. 
The monastic life, embraced, after conflict, with full strength 
of will, had become in Angelique's eyes the supreme good 
to be desired for all she loved. Her influence she had 
made no doubt a deeper impression than she knew upon the 
'worldly' little sister was decisive, and the issue waited, not 
on the father's plans, but on her prayers. This is the sequel 
to her home visit : 

' I left then with my Sisters ' (the young nuns Marie-Claire 
and Isabelle-Agnes) ' for Maubuisson ; and my mother, who 
escorted me, brought with her a girl who waited upon my 
little sister, and who wished to be a Nun. As this girl only 
told me her intention after I had reached Maubuisson, I told 
her I could not receive her then and there, because all the 
vacant places were engaged by other girls, but that I advised 
her to wait and in the meanwhile to speak about God to my 
little sister Madelon, and to pray well for her, that He might 
give her the grace of converting her ; and if God made use 
of her for this event, which I greatly desired, I would promise 
to receive her, not at Maubuisson where the places were taken, 
but at Port Royal which was all reformed, and where she would 
do much better to settle than in the Abbey of Maubuisson. 

' This girl, well pleased with the proposition I made her, 
told me that she would pray God for my little sister as much 
as she possibly could ; and God so answered the prayer which 
she said with such fervour, and the desire I had to see her 
all His, that, the very night following upon this conversa- 
tion, my little sister Madelon, w T ho was sleeping in my 
mother's room (and had next to her Catherine, a cousin, since 
Mme Baraudin, who is with Mile de Longueville), saw in 



ii2 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

a dream a tall and very beautiful woman, who said she was 
S. Magdalene, her patron saint, who was in a desert and who 
called her, saying : Come, my daughter, come to the desert with 
me. And then she was seized with such a desire to be a Nun, 
that on the spot she called her great friend Catherine and woke 
her, to tell her she had just formed the plan of leaving the 
world and of going to pass her life in the desert of Port Royal, 
and that she had seen S. Magdalene who had called her. This 
girl, who was sensible, answered her that she must wait till 
the morning when she got up to tell her dream and must 
go to sleep for the rest of the night, inwardly mocking at 
what she had said. The little girl said to her : You do not 
believe me, but it will take place. And in the morning she 
recounted this dream to my father, who joked about it, and 
afterwards to my sister Catherine de S. Jean, your mother ' 
(Angelique is addressing herself always to the nephew, M. le 
Maitre), ' who put no more faith in it. 

' However, on my mother's return from Maubuisson, my 
sister Catherine went to meet her as she entered the house, 
and said to her that she had a piece of very fresh news for 
her, namely, that her sister Madelon declared since last night 
only that she would be a Nun, and asserted so much that she 
would be that she could not be doubted. My mother put 
more faith in this speech than my sister ; and, after having 
seen the little girl assert and reassert it continually, she saw 
her afterwards punctually carry out what she had seen in 
a dream, and obtain further by the fervour of her prayers 
the vocation of her cousin Anne (de S. Paul) Arnauld whom 
she loved as herself, and whom she had then and there promised 
to pray for always until she should come and be Nun at Port 
Royal, as you have seen she has since done.' x 

Angelique, though critical on the subject of visions, was 
in nowise incredulous. This is one of three, seen by her 
sisters, the child Madelon, Anne-Eugenie, and Mme le Maitre 
respectively, which she held genuine, concluding from them 
that ' while there are an infinitude of false visions, and this 
path is often dangerous, there yet may be true ones.' 2 

S. Fran9ois de Sales, who made acquaintance with the 
whole Arnauld family after Angelique, saw the little Madelon 
the child insisted on kissing him, a thing which, although he 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 339 seq. 
a Ib., p. 337. 



THE SISTER MADELEINE 113 

never permitted it, he could not refuse to her childish sim- 
plicity and gave a certain credence to her assertions. ' This 
little one may very well become a Nun,' he observed, 'I fear 
only that her mirror may prevent her.' ' But her mirror,' 
adds Angelique, 'by the grace of God, did not prevent her ; 
she never knew that she was beautiful, for God so early pre- 
possessed her with the sense He gave her of the beauty of the 
soul and of Paradise that she never considered that of her face.' l 
At the age of fifteen, at the time, namely, of Angelique's 
return from Maubuisson , this child took the habit at Port 
Royal, and two years later the vows. The young nun, or 
novice, however free from personal vanity, tried the Mother's 
patience in other respects. For she began : 

' to relax and to fall into the habit of no longer obeying with 
simplicity, but of- contradicting and arguing about all that 
was said to her, a thing which the Mother suffered for a time. 
She then saw that her patience did not produce the good 
effect that she wished, and that from day to day she (Madeleine) 
acquired an air of self-sufficiency and conceit (elevation], 
which had need of being repressed. Her zeal kindled, and 
she thought it necessary to chase out a demon of pride by 
confusion. Accordingly she gave a serious rebuke to her little 
sister and accompanied it by two blows. But as it was charity 
that struck her, it was charity also that on the instant cured 
her ; and from that moment, and even as if the Devil had 
been seen to fly, in the way reported in the Life of S. Benedict 
on a similar occasion, so great a change was it which appeared 
in this sister that she preserved ever since, and up to her death, 
a character of simplicity, of humility and of submission, 
which made her notable and which seemed a special gift 
of God.' 2 

Angelique herself records, talking to the nephew, that she 
had frequently occasion to chastise this young sister, but that 
her words and tears so convinced the culprit that it was un- 
willingly and for her own good that, when asked afterwards 
if she still loved her, she replied, ' Alas ! my Mother, I love 
you the more for it.' 3 (Of Madelon little more is recorded, 

1 Ib., p. 302. 

2 Relation . . . de la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, pp. 188-9. 

3 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Mattre, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 252. 
LOWNDES I 



H4 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

save the lot, too sadly frequent among these nuns, of recurrent 
illness and many infirmities, accepted and welcomed as a 
favour of God; with this, her love of poverty and so forth. 
She died after twenty-four years of life as a nun, aged not 
quite forty.) 

Yet one more sister remained entangled, though against her 
will, in the world. The eldest of all, Catherine, Madame le 
Maitre, unhappily married, cherished the wish to enter a con- 
vent, but could neither take the vows while her husband lived 
nor quit Paris, to dwell as she would gladly have done at Port 
Royal, because of the care of her children. 

Madame Arnauld, on the other hand, was left now a widow ; 
and only this married daughter, with her cares, was a check 
on the desire, which she too presently conceived, of following 
in her children's wake and taking vows. M. Arnauld had 
died while Angelique was at Maubuisson, likewise turning to 
piety, of a genuine and very practical kind, in his illness ; 
vowing, if he recovered, to live in strict poverty, and exercise 
his legal profession only in the service of the poor and oppressed. 
His widow, always of strict virtue and active benevolence, 
though with an eye to the honour of the world, as Angelique 
says of her, even more than to that of God, had been for some 
time quickened to more active spirituality, and had made 
a general confession. Her interest in Port Royal was con- 
tinuous, and her benevolent support to be counted on, as 
was seen in the case of the band of young nuns for whom she 
supplied means of conveyance to Port Royal from Maubuisson ; 
although there indeed Angelique had employed a species of 
ruse, bidding the girls throw themselves at the feet of Madame 
Arnauld to ask her intercession, which so touched the good 
\voman that she came to her daughter with tears in her eyes 
saying they moved her pity and must certainly be received. 
Madame Arnauld it was who was the moving agent in the 
translation presently effected of the convent to Paris, a step 
occasioned chiefly by the vast amount of illness in the country, 
attributed to the malarial site, but also by her desire to have 
the convent in close neighbourhood with that other interest, 
her eldest daughter and grandchildren. Madame Arnauld, on 
taking the vows, did away with the special pecuniary difficulty 



MADAME ARNAULD 115 

of such a move, by buying a house in the Faubourg S. Jacques 
that could serve the required purpose. 1 

Angelique's narrative gives the course of these events, from 
her return from Maubuisson to the removal to Paris. 

Narrative of the Mere Angc'lique (continued] 

' Directly after my arrival, I was besought urgently by 
five Nuns of the Paraclete, of our Order (Diocese of Amiens), to 
receive them in company with one whom I had already re- 
ceived. I did it gladly and with the full accord of our Sisters, 
who have had always so perfect a docility that they have 
never opposed me ; on the contrary, all that I held good was 
taken as such. I received yet three more from S. Antoine des 
Champs. In fine, our number increased up to eighty, among 
whom there were always a number of invalids, without that 
afflicting those who w r ere Professed Nuns of the House, or 
those whom God had called thither. We lived in this manner 
three years, lacking for nothing, and living eighty with more 
ease, though without increase of revenue, than we had lived 
when we were only thirteen or fourteen, and I think I ought to 
show this to the glory of the Divine Providence by an instance. 
Having received two thousand livres in dower from a Sister 
who took the vows at this time, we lent them to an honest 
man who did us sundry services in Paris, to buy a house 
belonging to a Chapter, which he obtained very cheap on 
account of the affection the Canons bore him ; and this favour 
we did him enabled him to provide for all his children, the 
house being of four times the value. And little by little he 
returned us the money, without its inconveniencing him. 

' God, Who of His goodness had increased this large number 
to save them, diminished it presently to take fifteen to heaven, 
who died within two years and all very happily, as may be 
seen in the Mortuary Register, 2 where a few words have been 
written about several of them. 

tV My mother had in mind always our settlement in Paris ; 
but no progress was made towards it. There was sent us at 
that time a girl of good birth who had money, and who it was 

1 For Madame Arnauld, v. Relation de la Vie et des vertus de Madame 
Arnauld, Religieuse de Port-Royal sous le nom de Sceuv Catherine de 
Sainte-Felicite. Par Madame le Maistre, sa fille ainee, Memoires pour 
servir . . . , vol. iii, p. 275 seq. 

2 The ' Necrologe ' of Port -Royal assumed in time large proportions 
and was published, together with a ' Supplement ', early in the eighteenth 
century. 

I 2 



n6 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

thought would assist ; but after she had been here some time 
and had even taken the Habit, we found her unsuitable and 
discharged her. My mother came to see us very often, and 
dwelt with us as much as her occupations would permit, 
having permission from the Superiors ; and, as my sister 
Le Maitre was taken very ill in our House, she made a very 
long stay. 

' It happened that a Nun took the Vows, and at the sermon 
preached on the occasion my mother was so touched by God 
that, after the ceremony, she came to beg me to put her in 
retreat. This gave me great joy, for I strongly suspected 
that this retreat of a few days would culminate in that of all 
her life. I granted it to her at once, and she had the goodness 
and humility to desire Direction from none but me ; and the 
very next day, to my surprise, she asked my pardon on her 
knees, with tears in her eyes, because she had been angry 
with me for receiving Nuns for nothing. It was not those 
from Maubuisson to whom she alluded; for, as for them, she 
had begged me with all her heart to do so, these poor girls 
having touched her with pity ; but there were others whom 
she did not think in so great need, or whose relatives had 
money and would not give as much as she thought they should, 
since the House was so poor. God in His goodness made her 
see this fault, and from that time it was impossible to take 
enough to please her. 

' Two days after, she told me that God had called her to be 
Nun, but that she was very uneasy on account of my sister 
Le Maitre, whose husband w r as still living, and who could not 
leave Paris on account of her children. My sister Le Maitre, 
who had long had an intense desire to be a Nun (or at least, 
since that could not be while her husband lived, to dwell with 
us), was so delighted that she rose from her bed to go in search 
of my mother and tell her that she entreated her very humbly 
not to let consideration of her hinder her from following the 
vocation of God, and that she advised her to buy us a House 
in Paris ; which was incontinently resolved. They returned 
to Paris to obtain the permission of the Archbishop, and to 
look for a House. This lasted nearly a year ; for M. the 
Archbishop raised difficulties, and also because no House was 
to be found.' 



CHAPTER VII 

Reform in other Convents aided by the Mere Angelique. Narrative 
of the Nun who accompanied her. 

PENDING the removal, Angelique had other occupation for 
her energies than the task, so well fulfilled by Agnes, her Coad- 
jutrix, of setting a finer edge upon the conventual virtue now 
well established at Port Royal. Reform there was a seed 
which spread to other convents, more propitious in their soil 
than Maubuisson, and Angelique, appealed to for advice and 
help, had again a change of field for the exercise of her strong 
influence, and a varied practice for her tact and charity. 
The nunnery of Lys in particular asked and received help at 
this time. The Sisters Anne Eugenie (Arnauld) and the 
young Marie des Anges were sent first to act as Prioress and 
Mistress of Novices there, 1 and Angelique set the seal upon 
their work by her own stay, prolonged by illness, in that 
convent, just before she left for Paris. A nun who attended 
her has given reminiscences of the sojourn at Lys and of 
another visit to Poissy, as also of the first years in Paris. 

At Lys as at Maubuisson the Abbess had been deposed for 
ill conduct. She was, however, when first the nuns from 
Port Royal went to help in reform, still in possession, and 
Mme de la Tremouille, who was to succeed, and who had 
sought their assistance, had further a rival claimant, the 
Abbess having promised to resign in favour first of the one 
and then of the other. This rival was expelled by the agency 
of friends of Mme de la Tremouille, a high-handed proceeding 
naturally disapproved of by Angelique. Not until that rival 
had been suitably provided for elsewhere, would she lend the 

1 v. Relation de la maniere dont quelques Religieuses du Port-Royal 
commencement a etablir la refovme dans I'Abbaye du Lys. Par la Sasur 
A nne-Eugenie de r Incarnation Arnauld, qui y fut quelques annees Pvieuve, 
Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, p. 381 seq. 



n8 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

weight of her authority to Mme de la Tremouille, but after- 
wards she helped to establish her in charge and to fortify her, 
when duly appointed, in exercise of her functions, disputed 
still by the original Abbess. 

' Mme de la Tremouille, who was nominally Coadjutrix' (we 
cite now the companion nun's narrative) 1 'bore her a peculiar 
and tender affection. The Mother Angelique availed herself of 
this affection to speak to her strongly, to the effect that she 
could not in conscience direct the Abbey, since she had been 
placed in possession, not by legitimate means, but by force 
of arms. She spoke to her often on this topic with great zeal, 
telling her that all that time she had not been in a right state, 
that she ought to have great scruples about it : which she 
said to her with so much kindness and charity that ever, at 
the conclusion of the discourse, Mme de la Tremouille would 
come and embrace her and remain clinging a long while to 
her neck. Whereupon our Mother said to her with unparal- 
lelled gentleness : " Well! Is not all I have said quite true ? 
One must ask God's forgiveness. It is a pitiable thing to 
wish to be Abbess, or, though one may not wish it oneself, to 
yield through weakness (mollesse), for lack of a generous 
courage, to the will of one's relatives . . . ' 

' A month or six weeks later the Superiors of the Order 
and the Apostolic Protonotary put her in possession. Then 
the Mother Angelique insisted as strongly on making her 
exercise her charge as she had made her scrupulous at having 
entered upon it contrary to the order prescribed by the canons. 

: The old Abbess who had been deposed, but who was still 
in the House, greatly tormented Mme de la Tremouille, and 
would not cede any of the Abbatial functions ; so that, when 
the bell rang for Service, she hastened to occupy the Chair, 
to give the signs, sing the benedictions, &c. Which made great 
trouble in the Monastery. The young Abbess, for the sake of 
peace, wished not to attend the Service, because when, for 
example, at Vespers she began to sing the Pater, the old 
Abbess repeated it from her side with a still louder voice, and 
that gave rise to a great dissension. After that, Mme de la 
Tremouille would come and throw herself at the feet of the 
Mother Angelique, all in tears, telling her positively she would 
go no more to the Service, &c. But our Mother was firm, and 

1 Relation dela Soeur Angelique de Sainte- Agnes de Marie de la Falaire : 
ok elle rapporte tout ce qu'elle a remarque dans les voyages qu'elle a faits 
avec la Mere Angelique, an Lys, a Poissi, et a Paris, lorsqu'elle vint s'y 
etablir, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, pp. 395 seq. 



REFORM AT LYS 119 

told her she ought to go, that it was a penance sent her by 
God for having exercised the office of Coadjutrix when she 
should not ; that, when the old Abbess went to Church to 
the higher seats, she must go to the lower with her Nuns, 
because otherwise this old Abbess would think she had ousted 
her and would take advantage of it ; that the intention of 
the Superiors who had put her in possession was for her to 
exercise her charge ; that she must be strong and courageous 
(genereuse) ; that God would aid her, since she did it, not 
from a violent and imperious authority and love of dominion, 
but by submission and dependence upon her Superiors. 

' As Mme de la Tremouille was almost always with the 
Mother Angelique, when the bell rung for .Service, the latter 
took wonderful heed to tell her that it was of importance to go, 
and she added always some little word of comfort to fortify 
her. At length the Mother Angelique succeeded in making her 
overcome the violence of the old Abbess, by taking the upper 
hand with her in a humble and courteous manner, and yielding 
to her in all that could be done without prejudice to her charge. 
This was so well done that the enmity of the old Abbess for 
Mme de la Tremouille lessened and they became afterwards 
good friends ; and one may say that it was due to the heed 
given by the Mother Angelique, and to the prayers she made 
to God for that end. 

' She said to me often (for I was alone in her room, with 
the one who served her) : " Let us pray to God for Madame" 
and to her she used to say : " You will have only as much 
strength as you have diligence to look to God." When Madame 
was obliged to go somewhere very repugnant to her on account 
of the old Abbess, she begged her to kneel, and knelt with 
her, to offer herself to God and ask His aid. She spoke to her 
often about the necessity of turning to God on every occasion 
to receive His help, and be directed by His Spirit ; and she 
told her that, without this dependence upon God and this 
guidance of His Spirit, one does nothing of any worth, because 
one acts of oneself, and that ruins and spoils all. She added 
many beautiful things which those acquainted with her manner 
of speaking will relate better than I. 

' She discoursed often with Mme de la Tremouille about 
the duties regarding her post, with great insight and know- 
ledge of the obligations of a Superior. 

' What is yet more notable is the behaviour of the Mother 
Angelique towards the old Abbess. She showed her a respect 
that I often wondered at, and paid her very special attentions. 
During the three or four months we were at Lys, I do not 
believe a single day passed without her telling me to go and 



120 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

see her on her behalf, because it was not thought fitting that 
she should go herself. Since I suffered through vain fear, 
because her Abbatial dwelling was almost entirely distinct 
from the Monastery and I was afraid that, when there, she 
would do something to me, I sometimes testified to the Mother 
Angelique unwillingness to go. Whereupon she said to me 
that it was necessary to fortify myself against it ; that I knew 
what the Scriptures said, that we should heap coals of fire 
upon the head of our neighbour, to try and win him. And 
when I replied, a propos of the discourse she (the old Abbess) 
addressed me when I went to see her, that it was waste of 
time and that she was as it were confirmed in her sin, the 
Mother answered me that one must not say that, and must 
hope to the end ; that, since she was in the House, she was 
obliged to pay her due respects even though she received them 
very badly. 

' Although I often tempted the Mother Angelique to leave 
this former Abbess alone, reporting that she said to me she 
found more sense and more society in little birds than in 
people which I told because I was vexed at the way she 
spoke to me ; our Mother replied : " No matter ; one must 
see her, God wills it and chanty demands it." Thus I was 
obliged to pay this visit every day without fail ; and she told 
me plainly that she would not send me if there were any risk 
for my person, but that she (the old Abbess) was seen to have 
a slight inclination for me : which shows that the Mother did 
nothing save by Direction. 

' She displayed extreme zeal on an occasion that I will tell. 
It was that the former Abbess committed the greatest outrages 
when they came to depose her and to put Mme de Tremouille 
in possession ; and, after all she had done and said, she came 
and presented herself at the Communion. The Mother 
Angelique knew it, and had so great an abhorrence of the act 
that she was quite overwhelmed ; and she opposed it, declaring 
it must on no account be permitted, and spoke to the Con- 
fessor in such a manner that when she (the old Abbess) came 
to communicate he passed her by and said positively he would 
not give her the Communion, and that before all the Church 
because her crimes had been public. 

' The Mother Angelique further commanded esteem all the 
time she was at Lys by the care and heed she took to give no 
trouble. During this time she was very ill, and she suffered 
many incommodities about which she would not even allow 
us to speak a word. We had been lodged in a very small 
room, very inconvenient ; and we wanted to mention it to 
Madame, but she forbade us. We did so nevertheless some 



REFORM AT LYS 121 

time after, and Madame wanted to move her ; but she would 
not even permit it, and said she had not come into the House 
to give trouble ; and she took pleasure in finding herself 
lodged so meanly and uncomfortably. 

' While she was ill, many of the Sisters of Port Royal wrote 
to her with feelings of singular sorrow, about her departure 
from Port Royal and her illness. Since she could not reply, 
she made me write for her, and I remember she said to them 
that to give way like that to sorrow was a sign that we had 
no faith ; that one should attach oneself to God alone, and 
possess the peace spoken of by S. Paul, which exceedeth all 
understanding ; that the love borne to a person must not be 
such as to be capable of causing us so much emotion, and 
make us lose the peace of the heart, more desirable than any 
other thing ; that one should constantly act and rise above 
oneself, &c. I remember among the rest that she sent injunc- 
tions of this sort to my Sister Marie Claire (Arnauld, her sister) ; 
and I observed that, although she loved her very warmly, she 
yet wrote to her with unexampled vigour, and condemned in 
her as well as in the others all these sensibilities and these 
fondnesses which, according to her, serve only to weaken us. 
She said to us sometimes : ".Do you suppose, if I were to listen, 
I should not weep as well as you, when I think of the affliction of 
my sister the Coadjutrix and of the others I have left ; but one 
must be high-minded (genereuse) and consider eternity." She said 
that a propos of her illness, which caused very great sorrow. 
But God heard the prayers said for her and restored her to 
health. 

' After three or four months she returned to Port Royal, 
where she remained, I think, only three or four days, in 
which she gave evidence of her usual generous courage. 
For, with a multitude of Sisters weeping and sighing because 
she w r as going to Paris (for although they were assured that 
in time the whole Community would be reunited, this did not 
prevent tears and sorrow), the Mother withstood them with 
vigour, saying that, since the Superiors approved of the trans- 
ference of the Monastery to Paris, it must be resolved upon. 
She went thither accordingly, and I had the good hap to 
accompany her. 

' I have forgotten ' (this Sister retraces her steps after a few 
pages on the arrival in Paris) ' to speak of the journey which 
the Mother Angelique took to Poissy at the prayer of Mme la 
Marquise de Maignelai. It was on her way from Port Royal 
to Paris ; she stayed there eight or ten days. The only 
thing I remarked was that, when Mme la Marquise expressed 



122 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

to the Mother her great desire that she might contribute 
something to the reform of the Monastery of Poissy, where 
there was, it appears, some beginning, the Mother replied to 
her with great humility that one must look to God ; that it 
was He who made conversions, that the creature could do 
nothing, and that she was very unworthy that God should 
make use of her ; that she was a poor instrument for the 
works of God ; that there was nothing nevertheless that she 
did not wish to do to help souls to be saved and to bring them 
to their duty. She said that and sundry other things by the 
way, and discreetly and prudently gathered information as to 
the Direction exercised in the Monastery, so that, entering 
with discernment into what was taking place, she might come 
with method into discourse with Mme de Poissy. On arriving, 
she found very little order. 

' True, Mme de Poissy had made some commencement of 
reform, and there were perhaps some ten or twelve Nuns on 
her side ; but all the rest were strongly opposed to it and 
so leagued against her that it was pitiable. Besides that, 
it seemed that this Abbess did not set about it with sufficient 
gentleness. The Mother saw all that and spoke to Madame 
with great respect, taking her time to make her see matters, 
and when she saw them disposed her and her sister, Mme de 
Dampierre she spoke to them with so great zeal and so much 
affection that it was sometimes eleven at night before she 
went to bed. For she talked to them generally after supper, 
and however I might try, without failing in respect, to break 
off the discourse, it was not possible, and the Mother let herself 
be so carried away that she did not think of herself and her 
incommodities. When the discourse was over, then she felt 
it, and told us she was excessively weary ; and nevertheless 
she did the same thing again on the morrow. 

' I have seen her sometimes, when she met some Nun whom 
she wished to try and win, stay talking to her for more than 
an hour without thinking whether she were weary or no. 
Since as a rule I accompanied her always (the Nuns were very 
willing, because they knew me and I had relatives among 
them), the Mother used to say everything in my presence ; 
and I never observed that she spoke vainly or without fruit. 
She always made some effect upon their minds, little or much ; 
and it seems to me I can still hear them as they answered : 
It is true, Madame ; it is true, Madame. I have seen some of 
them weep for affection and feeling, and some change was 
seen afterwards in their lives, although in truth they perverted 
one another : I speak of those \vho were not in favour of 
Reform. For as for the others who were inclined to good, 



REFORM AT POISSY 123 

they became strengthened when she had spoken to them, 
and so resolute and fervent, that it was a marvel. But all, 
the one set as well as the other, were never tired of saying 
to me : What an admirable Abbess you have ! What a mind ! 
What 'power of persuasion ! For my part, said some of them, 
while she is speaking I think nothing is so fitting as to do what 
she says. There were two or three who went over to the side 
of reform while we were there, won by the power of the dis- 
courses of the Mother Angelique. 

' Our Mother caused some regularity to be introduced into 
their cloister. She tried also to make them change their 
head-dress, which was horrible ; and Madame acceded to her 
reasons. For she received what the Mother said to her for the 
furtherance of Reform very kindly ; and took so great pleasure 
in conversing with her, as did also Madame her sister, that 
it is not to be credited. When I said to Mme de Dampierre 
(the sister) with whom I was freer, that she kept our Mother 
too late, she replied that hours seemed to her a quarter of an 
hour, and, embracing me, she said : " How fortunate you are 
to have such a good Mother ! She has every kind of capacity. 
She has good wit and great understanding of the things of 
God and of the world, and is besides exceedingly virtuous. 
I seem to be another person after I have spoken to her." 
Mme de Poissy and all her Nuns allowed the Mother Angelique 
to depart with great sorrow and many tears. 

' There must not be forgotten the maxim of our Mother 
which she repeated several times to the Abbess of Poissy, 
namely, to commend greatly all her affairs to God, to consult 
His Spirit on all occasions, and not to depend upon her own 
industry and natural capacities, &c. Which she said much 
better than I can repeat.' 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Convent transferred to Paris. Money difficulties. Connexion 
with the Bishop of Langres. The community quits the Cistercian 
Order. L'Institut du S. Sacrement. 

A HOUSE meanwhile had been found in Paris and, the 
necessary leave obtained from authorities, Angelique passed 
on thither with her attendant nuns to prepare for the trans- 
ference of the community. The removal closes the first chapter, 
as we may call it, in the history of Port Royal, that convent 
idyl of happy rivalry in self-subdual, in works of charity and 
penance, without other interruption or care than the frequent 
illness which, in nuns' eyes, was itself but a variety of penance, 
the more treasured that it came direct from God. 

But illness, in the now crowded convent, had become exces- 
sive, and, if the wishes of Madame Arnauld and, it may be, 
some desire to bring this admirable community to the fore, had 
their share in determining the advice given by the Directors, 
the argument of unhealthiness in the site was unanswerable 
by the Abbess. Lying in a valley at the foot of a slope, the 
un drained convent lands were damp and very malarious. 
Fevers decimated the nuns. The move was an external 
matter, moreover, in which Angelique might well practise 
obedience. Nevertheless, she blamed herself later and was 
blamed by the austere Saint-Cyran, in whom at length her spirit 
found its mate, for this step which she looked back upon as 
an act of distrust towards providence and a manner of deser- 
tion of her appointed post. It was a step unhappy at least 
in its first consequences, entangling the community in debt 
and temporal cares, subjecting it to the caprice of benefactors 
and to the ready calumny of jealous rivals. 

Dissension, moreover, and divergence of aim, entered the 
convent. At first, to their straightened town quarters, the 
nuns transplanted their spirit of humble contented unity and 



REMOVAL TO PARIS 125 

silent labour, and to the last there were nuns whose early 
training brought them through the troubled times Angelique 
notes with humble admiration without their ever perceiving 
discord to exist. But that first false step, if it were one, on 
Angelique's part, was accompanied by a second, unmistakable 
and more serious. Her keen discernment for once failed her 
and, betrayed by her monastic ideal of obedience, left by the 
death of Francois de Sales without a guide to whom she could 
unreservedly render submission, she placed herself and her 
convent in the hands now of a certain prelate, Zamet, Bishop 
of Langres, whom she took for a saint but who proved a weak 
relapsing mortal. This prelate's fervour at its height had the 
note of extravagance ; as it cooled, the vein of ambition and 
love of notoriety showed plainly through. He was in the full 
glow of conversion from a careless life when Angelique first 
made his acquaintance, living with austerity in his diocese 
and striving to effect there a reform. His aims were sufficiently 
like her own to be expressed in like phraseology, identity of 
phrase covering, however, from the first fundamental difference 
of view, or else, as Angelique thought the case, the Bishop 
losing soon his first desires for simplicity and retreat. Under 
his influence and that of nuns introduced from his Diocese,. 
Port Royal of Paris strayed sadly for a time from the spirit 
of simplicity, of glad obedience and silent industry, so well 
established at the convent des Champs. 

To that spirit the convent returned. This Bishop was him- 
self instrumental, by what Angelique saw as a wondrous 
guidance of providence, in bringing the nuns under the care of 
a new Director, the Abbe de Saint-Cyran, in whom Angelique 
found confirmation of her first thoughts of the religious life 
and of the teaching she is careful under later criticism to 
insist on the likeness of S. Francois de Sales. The Bishop,, 
rousing by very human ambition very human jealousy (on the 
part notably of the Archbishop of Paris, who resented this, 
intruder from Langres), was driven from the field and his nuns 
were sent back to his diocese. The convent was left free to- 
recover painfully the path it had spontaneously followed in 
the country. 

Meanwhile, however, Port Royal, with its offshoot in Paris, 



126 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

the Maison du S. Sacrement, had come into great notoriety, 
notoriety in part cultivated by the said Bishop and aided by 
a 'miracle', which occurred in the early years, but especially 
fanned by a small ' persecution ' and scandal, the affair of the 
Chapelet Secret. This was aimed at the Bishop of Langres and 
stirred by the jealousy of the rival Bishop of Sens ; the inno- 
cent occasion, a small book of devotion composed, under 
' inspiration ', by our Mother Agnes, was too slight for grave 
consequences. But this affair brought the first breath, not 
easily cleared away, of ill fame to the nuns. Heresy and 
witchcraft (the devil had recently been very busy in convents 
and the scandals of Loudun were doubtless in men's minds) 
were rumoured of Port Royal or rather of its offshoot, the 
Maison du S. Sacrement. Saint-Cyran, appealed to, defended the 
Chapelet, winning thus the gratitude and trust of the Bishop 
of Langres. But, when presently the latter saw his own 
influence wane and that of Saint-Cyran established, he in his 
turn became ' persecutor ', and, in loose calumniating talk and 
even in writing, lent his quotum to the disfavour and imprison- 
ment of Saint-Cyran. 

These troubled events are narrated by Angelique. She had 
been, during the ascendency of the Bishop, silent spectator of 
changes she could not approve. She had vowed obedience to 
him, had, moreover, at an early stage and before her eyes 
were opened to the mischief, found the opportunity so long 
desired, for laying down her ill-gotten dignity, and had become 
simple nun in her own convent. Made Superior in the Bishop's 
new foundation, the Maison du S. Sacrement, she was still the 
obedient instrument, so far as she could be, of his wishes. 
True to her nun's ideal, she suppressed at the time, or strove 
to suppress, even internal criticism. But when later the Bishop 
turned to calumniate her new guide, her judgement was loosed 
in defence. 

To her narrative, supplemented by side-lights from the nuns, 
we may now in the main leave the reader. 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued) 

' At length, at the time God pleased, the House where the 
Paris Monastery now is, was found, after a hundred others 



REMOVAL TO PARIS 127 

had been looked at. It was by far the most suitable that 
could ever be had for convenience and ease of communication 
with that des Champs.' l 

' I had permission to go and see it. The owner, an ancient 
ecclesiastical counsellor, received us with great warmth, and 
expressed great joy that his House should be converted into 
a Monastery. The bargain was struck, and straightway masons 
were set to work to add some small further structure, and to 
put things in order. That lasted up to the Day of the Holy 
Sacrament of the year 1625, when we arrived.' 

That companion nun, the same who writes of Lys and 
Poissy, describes artlessly the three or four weeks of prepara- 
tion, and the Mother's tedium at the frequent visitors and 
disturbance : 

' We were three weeks or a month without enclosure : which 
gave excessive trouble to the Mother Angelique because, in spite 
of the fact that we had had it, we were obliged to let in every- 
body. She contrived, however, that no men should enter, 
save certain Ecclesiastics ; for as to girls and women, there 
was no preventing it since, as is known, it was allowed every- 
where. Mother Angelique strongly urged Madame Arnauld, her 
mother, to seek out Monseigneur of Paris and get him to send 
and establish enclosure. When evening came and visitors had 
gone, she used to say to us : " Mon Dieu ! how tired I am of 
people ! Eh ! when shall we get our enclosure ! ' She begged 
us to let as few people as possible in ; and, when one went 
to tell her such and such a person was asking for her, she 
manifested such trouble and weariness as to excite pity. She 
excused herself whenever she could from appearing, but often 
she was constrained, because Madame Arnauld urged upon her 
reasons she found to the point. 

' During the three or four weeks of which I have spoken, 

1 This house was situated in the Faubourg S. Jacques in the present 
Boulevard Port Royal, near the Gare Mont Parnasse on the south 
fringe of Paris, and could be reached accordingly from Les Champs 
without any traversing of the town. The quarter was so thick 
with Convents as to be styled the Thebaide of Paris, and there several 
new religious foundations, the Order of the Visitation among others, 
had their Houses. The Convent of Port Royal is now the great 
Maternity Hospital ; the Military Hospital in near vicinity was the 
Val de Grace, while hard by again was the renowned and fashionable 
House of the Carmelites. 



128 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

the Mother desired that we should not fail to repeat the Service, 
even though we were but two Nuns and some children whom 
she had brought from Port Royal and who assisted us. 
Although she herself was overwhelmed with visits, she did 
not fail to try and attend as constantly as she could, and she 
grieved when any irregularity occurred. 

' She was in inexpressible joy when enclosure was established, 
and she said to us : Mon Dieu, how happy we are ! What 
a bustle ! How could one withstand it ! She at once made the 
Nuns come from Port Royal. Enclosure was established on 
the i6th of June, and the Sisters from Port Royal arrived 
on the i8th of the same month.' 1 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued) 

' At first,' continues Angelique, ' only fifteen of us came, 
for there was no room for more ; and M. the Archbishop 
who had obliged us all to come ' (refusing that is to sanction 
a double Community and two Convents) ' gave us the limit 
of a year to accommodate ourselves. It pleased God that, 
the same year we came to Paris, twelve of our Sisters died 
at the Maison des Champs, and a great number were very ill, 
so that, ascribing it to the bad air, we made as many as possible 
come. A gallery was made, which lodged a portion, all the 
garrets were wainscoted, and before the end of the year we 
were all lodged. There were fourteen in a garret, and we were 
everywhere very cramped. The choir was so small that it 
could not contain a fourth part of the Community. For all 
that, the Nuns were happy, as regular and as silent as though 
one had been in the most commodious Monastery in France.' 

That companion nun, Soeur Angelique de Ste Agnes de Marie 
de la Falaire, notes again : 

' The Mother Angelique, having sent for a part of our Sisters 
of Port Royal, began to set all in order. She gave obediences 
to the Sisters, and exhorted us, both us and the others, to 
make a renewal, urging us to begin all afresh to serve and 
seek God. I have always observed that in every sort of event 
a little out of the common, our Mother would make it a ground 
and motive for taking up her obligations with more faithful- 
ness and heed, and for making others take up theirs. 

' She was alone, that is to say without the Mother Agnes, 

1 Relation de la Soeur Angelique de Sainte- Agnes de Marie de la Falaire 
. . . , Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, pp. 401-2. 



REMOVAL TO PARIS 129 

from the i8th of June up to Christmas. During this time 
she took great care of everything, and of all the Sisters in 
particular, applying herself to their needs with great warmth. 
She often took counsel with the rest of us, and with much 
humility obliged me to report to her such things as I noticed 
in general or in particular, to the end that she might bring 
all in good order. 

' When she went to Port Royal (des Champs) to bring the 
rest of the Sisters who were still there, she did a thing which 
several noticed, and my sister Antoinette (de S. Augustin 
Gamier) mentioned it to me again recently: as for me I did 
not see it, not having been there. It is that, as she was 
having something made or taken to pieces by some poor work- 
men, she had a bag of money out of which she gave to them 
without reckoning ; and, after she had given all away, there came 
another poor man who asked her for something. She told him 
she had no more and, taking off her shoes, she gave them him.' l 

Narrative of the Mere Ange'lique (continued) 

' It was only I,' Angelique continues, * and those who had 
charge of the housekeeping, who began to have anxiety, because 
it was necessary to borrow, though only a little, in order to 
make the structure required to lodge us all. But as the interest 
to be paid diminished our revenues, and as we spent more in 
Paris than in the country, living was more difficult ; besides 
which, I was much distressed at owing money, a thing which 
all my life I had greatly dreaded. I had never borrowed, 
whatever our need, unless some small amount which I returned 
as quickly as I could. Nevertheless God gave us grace to 
refuse, in this need, three girls of good position, nieces of one 
of our best friends, for whom we should have received at 
least thirty-nine thousand livres, because I saw clearly that 
they wanted these girls to be Nuns, in order to make richer 
marriages for two of their sisters. They were already fourteen 
or fifteen years old, and had been brought up in a House but 
ill regulated. I said candidly to their aunt, that I feared 
God had not called these girls, and that I could not undertake 
them with the probability of returning them, which offended 
their mother. This is what caused this lady to break with 
us. I committed perhaps an indiscretion, for these girls turned 
out very well in a good House where they were placed. Never- 
theless, I believe it was a working of the Divine Providence, 
because in all likelihood the relatives of these girls, who were 
of rank and some of them in high favour, would have wanted 

1 Ib., pp. 406-7. 

LOWNDES 



130 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

to take cognizance of our affairs and to intrigue, which would 
have injured us in all that it has pleased God to permit befall 
us since. We have had the good fortune that no relative of 
our Nuns has ever intervened in our affairs, which has been 
to us a special grace, and I believe that God caused one to 
die at the beginning of our troubles, because he might have 
brought us into great difficulty, notwithstanding that he was 
very friendly to us. 

' I had at that time nobody to whom I could speak about 
my conscience with entire confidence, because, as I have already 
said, God had removed them nearly ah 1 . It chanced that, on 
occasion of the Assembly of Clergy, I made acquaintance with 
a Bishop (M. Sebastien Zamet, Bishop of Langres), who had 
already been to see me at the Convent des Champs, because 
the Mere de Chantal had spoken to him of us, when she 
passed through his Diocese on her return to Savoy after the 
establishment in Paris ' (of Madame de Chantal 's Order of the 
Visitation). 'What led her to speak of us was a propos of 
a Monastery of our Order, which he had reformed (the Abbey 
of Tard at Dijon). She recounted to him the reform of ours, 
where she had been, and of Maubuisson where I then was, 
which made the Prelate desire to see us ; and so, since he was 
at Paris for the Assembly, at the time we came to establish 
ourselves there, he came to see us and appeared to me a man 
ah 1 filled with zeal, with mortification and with true devout- 
ness. And, because I then had nobody, I was glad to place 
confidence in him and to beg him to assist me with his saintly 
counsels. And truly those which he gave me at the beginning 
were very saintly, and served me greatly, above all in dis- 
engaging me from the obstinate desires (for so I may call them) 
which I had, to leave here and join the Visitation ; which 
caused strife in my mind, and made me more negligent of my 
obligations. My pretext was that, when I was seventeen, the 
age which, in order to obtain the Bulls, I had been said to be 
at Rome when I was only nine, my father sent there again to 
own the truth, asking pardon for the falsehood, and obtained 
new Bulls. At first there was some difficulty, because they 
wished to condemn him to restitution of the fruits. But my 
father gave information through the Official of Paris to prove 
that, so far from having enjoyed any, the House had been 
found so destitute that he had put his own money into it to 
restore it ; in consequence of which nothing had to be paid 
for the Bulls. The Holy Father declared my first Profession 
null, and obliged me to make a new one in six months if 
I desired to remain Nun and Abbess. 

' I was very glad of this nullity, which opened the door to 



MONEY DIFFICULTIES IN PARIS 131 

my leaving, which I so greatly desired in order to become 
Capuchin or Carmelite.' (Angelique had thought at one 
moment of joining the Carmelites in Flanders, who retained 
more of the simplicity of their foundress than the French 
Carmelites.) * I did not mind where, so that it should be 
a well-ordered House ; but I did not, however, dare to think 
of executing it, on account of my father, and I constantly 
deferred renewing my Profession. My father, who kept a con- 
stant watch as the six months drew to an end, begged M. de 
Clairvaux, who was in Paris, to come and make me make this 
Profession. I was taken very much by surprise. Nevertheless, 
I did not venture to refuse, and took my three Vows publicly ; 
but with this express intention, that I pledged myself with 
all my heart to the three Vows, but not to the Rule of S. Bene- 
dict, nor to this House, where only present necessity forced 
me to observe stability for the time being. 

' This Profession, so made, was to me always a pretext for 
trifling, and for seeking the means of leaving ; and whatever 
might be said to me, and in spite of the tears of Mother Agnes, 
of my mother and of several of our Sisters w r ho knew it, I could 
not or would not renounce this thought, seeing nothing in the 
world that could give me true repose save to be simple Nun 
in a place where I was not known. 

' The Bishop, of whom I have spoken, to whom I told this 
thought, as one of the most important matters of my con- 
science, and the most precious to me, applied himself so strongly 
to make me give it up that I yielded, believing that God 
required it of me. He desired then that, communicating in 
our closed Chapel, I should repeat my Vows out loud ; which 
I did, doing myself as great violence as if I had been getting 
made a Nun against my will. Nevertheless, I was at peace, 
and have had no trouble on that account since. 

' Shortly afterwards it happened that a lady (Madame de 
Pontcarre), who was separated from her husband, had a great 
desire to come and dwell here, in order to withdraw from the 
world in which she was much entangled. She begged it of 
me through the medium of persons whom we greatly respected, 
which induced me very unfortunately to receive her, and 
without asking the advice of this Bishop, who had returned 
to his Diocese. Although I wrote to him always for every- 
thing, I did not tell him that which was the most important, 
and which proved, as I believe, by a punishment of God, 
a source of many evils, one of which was that the twenty-four 
thousand livres she brought us were the cause that the said 
Bishop desired us to undertake the building of our large 
dormitory. This sum scarcely sufficed for more than the 

K 2 



132 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

foundations, so that it became daily necessary to borrow, not 
only in order to finish the work, but also, as time went on, to 
pay the interest upon the loans, till it mounted up to a hundred 
and thirty-six thousand livres. For it was desired that nothing 
should be spared in this building, which burdened me with 
a very great trouble : at a loss every minute what to do in 
order to pay the interest and furnish money for the expenses 
which increased daily, all being dearer in Paris than in the 
country.' 

The convent began to be dunned. Creditors, Angelique 
tells her nephew, would present themselves at the turnstile, 
and she, when she chanced to be there, fled and sent another, 
a certain Sceur Suzanne, in her place. ' This poor woman 
sustained all their complaints and satisfied them by her excuses 
and her gentleness, thus sparing me all these torments. I, 
meanwhile, flung myself on my knees before God, bursting 
into tears.' 1 The Bishop, who encouraged the outlay, would 
not himself lend money to the convent, deeming the security 
insufficient. They must look, he held, to that resource, in 
Angelique's eyes unlawful, the dowries of new nuns. 

Other matters, however, went forward more satisfactorily. 
Port Royal was released now from the jurisdiction of the 
monks of the Order, and placed, as Angelique wished, under 
the Ordinary, the direct control, that is, of the diocesan Bishop. 
A memoir which she wrote to justify this step narrates her 
experience, the opposition she had sustained from the monks 
in the matter of Reform, their incapacity as confessors, and 
their general mediocrity : 

' When Abbesses are haughty, the Confessors are their 
valets. This is so true that I have seen one of them engaged 
in planting out the Abbess' flower-beds, and setting in them 
her quarterings and initials ; another I have seen carrying an 
Abbess' train, as lacqueys do for ladies of society. If Abbesses 
show humility and respect for the sacerdoce, as they should, 
they become masters and tyrants, to such an extent that, 
to credit them, one should not venture to do anything without 
their order, which frequently is disorder. Among other things 
they wish one always to go to law ... A Monk told me 
once that if one had not a good title, one should make one, 
and that he had made them and that it was easy. . . .' 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 320. 



PORT ROYAL CHANGES JURISDICTION 133 

' I do not speak here ' we cite her memoir ' of what I have 
seen and known as to crimes committed by certain Monks in 
the Religious Houses of women where I have been ; and of 
what Nuns senior to me have told me they had seen ; or even 
of things that have occurred through the Confessors in reformed 
Houses, for it is too scandalous. Suffice it to say that all the 
world knows that the whole Order, save a very small number 
of Monasteries reformed or said to be so (with which the General 
of the Order is at law), is in every kind of relaxation, not only 
having their special peculium, but carrying on trade, holding 
property, hunting, and the like. 

I do not speak of the expense they bring to Houses ; for, 
although they allege that one has to give higher payment to 
the Priests they call secular than to Monks who are content 
with food and clothing, I have found it the contrary. For 
besides the fact that the food and clothing of the Monks 
amounts to whatever they like, there is a perpetual concourse 
of Monks ; so that one finds dozens at a time coming for 
refreshment to Monasteries of women, and the Confessors' table 
is a very good table d'hote. Bachelors are sent, whose Doc- 
torat expenses one must pay. There are nephews of Confessors 
to be provided for ; and so many other abuses that, were they 
written down, they would amaze honest folk, and would cause 
those who dare to come before Parliament, asking permission 
to continue them, to blush.' x 

The occasion of escape for Port Royal from this plague of 
monks now occurred. The Bishop of Langres co-operated 
with Angelique in effecting the change. They united too in 
founding a new Institution, devoted to the worship of the 
Holy Sacrament, at first as a separate House but afterwards 
incorporated with Port Royal. So dear was it to Angelique, 
that when some other nuns took the name of Filles du S. Sacre- 
ment, she was guilty, she owns to her nephew, of a passing 
feeling of jealousy. 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued) 

' Shortly before I communicated \\ith this Bishop, the 
General of our Order (M. Boucherat) had died. He was 

1 Relation contenant les raisons qui ont engage la Mere Marie- Angelique 
Arnauld a faire sortir son monastere de la jurisdiction de I'Ordre de 
Citeaux, pour le sournettre a celle de I'ordinaire. Par la Mere Marie- 
Angelique elle-meme, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, pp. 375, 378-9. 



134 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

a very humane man, and had never refused me anything 
I had wanted. He died directly after he had given us the 
permits for our removal. There was appointed in his place 
one of a tiresome disposition, who threatened to annul all the 
permissions which his predecessor had given us for Reform ; 
he did actually deprive us of the good Abbe de la Charmoye 
(M. Mauguier) who had been given us as Superior. That grieved 
us very much, and the said Bishop was distressed also for the 
Sisters whom he had reformed as we were. 

' As we spoke to him of this trouble, he said to the Mere 
Agnes and to me, that for some years he had had in his mind 
the thought of creating a Religious Institute, which should 
have as chief object to adore and honour the Holy Sacrament 
at the Altar ; and that for this there should be some one 
always present day and night. Now it is to be observed that, 
while we were still at the Maison des Champs, our General 
dying, as I have said, directly after he had given us permission 
to remove to Paris, we resolved and put into execution, that 
we would be turn by turn all day before the Holy Sacrament. 
And a little later, the Abbot of Clairvaux (M. 1'Argentier), who 
was in our favour, dying also, we added the night to the day, 
in order to pray God that He would be pleased to protect us 
against the successors of these Abbots, declared enemies of 
Reform. This movement which God had given us made us 
receive with great joy that of this Bishop ; and we at once 
implored him with ardour to approve our sending to Rome 
for permission to begin this Institute. There was great dis- 
cussion to decide whether a new House should be founded, 
or if it should be established in this. The final decision was 
for a new House, with the Rule of S. Augustine. Steps were 
taken towards this, and Madame de Longueville (Louise de 
Bourbon-Soissons), 1 who came here pretty often through an 
occasion which I will relate, was begged to consent that the 
supplication to the Holy Father should be presented in her 
name, and that she should be declared Founder, which she 
granted. And thereupon a Doctor of the Sorbonne (M. de 
Feron) was asked to go expressly to Rome, which he did. 
And, while he was there, we received new threats from our 
General, which obliged us to write to him (M. de Feron) to 
try and obtain a Brief replacing us under the Jurisdiction of 
the Bishop. He obtained both, and in a fairly short space 
of time, and sent them us. This was in 1627. 

1 This lady was first wife to that M. de Longueville concerned later, 
together with his better-known second wife, Conde's sister, in the 
Fronde. 



THE MAI SON DU S. S ACRE ME NT 135 

' The Divine Providence caused that, at this time, a lady 
(Madame Bardeau) who was rich and without children, wishing 
to leave a part of her property to God and to the poor, took 
counsel of another (Mademoiselle Feu), who was her intimate 
friend and very virtuous, as to how she should employ a part 
of what she destined for pious works. The latter had heard 
the new Institute spoken of, and, being one of our friends, 
told her the scheme proposed and that she should see whether 
God inspired her to contribute. This lady was taken straight- 
way with devotion for it, and begged me to consent to her 
leaving us in her will thirty thousand livres, with proviso that 
she should enjoy the privilege of Founder for the prayers only, 
and be buried in the Church of the Monastery ; that, if she 
were to die before the House should be established, her body 
should be brought here (to Port Royal) in trust, and that the 
interest of the thirty thousand livres should accumulate until 
they were handed over on the establishment being made. 
We accepted the legacy, and this lady came to thank me with 
more humility than if we had been giving it to her instead of 
receiving it. She died shortly after the Bull had been obtained, 
and we received this legacy to help in paying for the House 
thirty-six thousand livres.' 



CHAPTER IX 

Changes at Port Royal. 

BEFORE, however, the new scheme made further advance, 
a change had come over Port Royal, and a change, or dis- 
closure, of spirit in the Bishop now director there, had brought 
divergence of feeling between him and Angelique. Wholly at 
one with him in this project, she became, though outwardly 
submissive, his unwilling critic as to the way it was executed. 

From the first probably the Bishop of Langres had a less 
literal understanding than Angelique of the Christian virtues, 
and saw simplicity and retirement, which he praised, in less 
rustic and monotonous guise. The reform he had effected 
in his Convent of Tard near Dijon had given birth to a different 
order of spirituality, more striking in its manifestations but 
less uniform. Extreme austerities and severe penances were 
the practice, but tempered by compensatory indulgence and 
licence of spirit ; with this, cultivation of the ecstatic side of 
the religious life and deliberate courting of visions and miracles. 
He sought now, by blending the convents, to infuse this more 
' eminent ' spirituality, as he deemed it, into Port Royal. 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued] 

' The same year that our building was finished, in 1629, 
the Bishop,' Angelique narrates, ' having obtained a Brief to 
withdraw his Sisters from out the Order, as well as we, wished 
to effect the union of our two Houses, and to that end we 
sent the Mother Agnes with the Mother Genevieve de S. Augus- 
tin to that Monastery, whence aftenvards he sent to us the 
Abbess, who had relinquished her charge (the Mother Jeanne 
de S. Joseph de Pourlan), with another Sister.' 

The newcomer, though at first without definite post in the 
convent, began promptly to make changes, acting to Angelique, 
still in nominal charge, as critic and monitor. Certain of the 
nuns saw these things with impatience, though, as nuns, edified 



CHANGES IN THE CONVENT 137 

by Angelique's humility and compliance with the wishes of 
her chosen Director, the Bishop. 

From the narrative of our watchful Sister Angelique de 
Ste Agnes de Marie de la Falaire we learn how strongly the 
Mother was impressed by his apparent zeal : 

' Three years,' she relates, ' after acquaintance with the 
Bishop of Langres, it occurred to this Prelate to send hence 
Nuns to Dijon, and to bring some from Dijon here, in order to 
unite the two Monasteries. The Mother Angelique, who 
revered all his opinions, willingly agreed, and consented that 
the Mother Agnes should go, accompanied by a Sister (in 
September, 1629). She was left accordingly in Paris with 
the Prioress and Sub-prioress, just as happy as though she 
had lost nothing ; and she saw all things so wholly in God 
that, as she often told us, it never entered her mind to make 
a single lament, although, humanly speaking, she was left 
very destitute of support. She took counsel with the Prioress 1 
just as cordially as though she found in her what she had lost 
in the Mother Coadjutrix. She even asked her advice with 
humility and made her hold Chapters ; and, whatever unwill- 
ingness she might show, she said to her with humility : You 
will do it as well as I, considering nothing save that she had 
been elected by the advice of M. de Langres, and that sufficed 
to make her rely on her judgement and set confidence in her. 

' When she received letters from the Mother Agnes, who 
sent her word of all that took place at Dijon the Rule of the 
Monastery, the austerity practised there and sundry other 
things which she described with wonderful rapture our Mother 
received it in like manner, and drew apart my Sister Marie 
Claire and me, to read us these beautiful letters. When we 
thought what took place at Dijon too harsh and too severe, 
she said to us with a fervour impossible rightly to depict : 
" Oh, my children, one must not say that. Are we not only 
too happy to have found the true road of truth ? As for me 
I am delighted. M. de Langres is a man wholly of God. 
Whatever he may do, it will always be well done and it is 
impossible for me to find anything to blame." Then she 
embraced us and said, Courage, courage, for my part I am 
overcome with joy ; and, every time that she received letters, 
there were new fervours and fresh pledges to a truly religious 
life, of which she had notions higher and more sublime than 
all she could learn from the letters she received. That appeared 
clearly in the whole of that time, which lasted five months ; 

1 Viz. Mere Jeanne, the ex- Abbess from Tard, v. post, p. 149. 



138 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

after which we too, my Sister Marie Claire and I, went to 
Dijon by the like order of M. de Langres. 

' During those five months of which I have just spoken, 
I may say that the Mother Angelique was always as though 
transported with zeal and fervour, and on every occasion she 
spoke to me of what passed at Dijon as though the House 
was a mere shadow of virtue in respect of it. And although 
she had a great tenderness for the Mother Agnes, it was im- 
possible for her to find anything to blame in all that was done 
to her, because she believed that nothing was done to her 
save by the order of M. de Langres. Her conclusion was 
always that we had not yet known what Religion was, counting 
herself always among the most imperfect, and then she would 
say : " One must take good courage. Are we not too happy 
to have found a man who directs us in the truth ? ' ' l 

The Bishop of Langres had taken our Mother on her weak 
side. She believed she had found in him the director she 
always longed for, who should be merciless to her frailty and 
should urge her beyond her unaided powers in the pursuit of the 
devout life. His own devoutness, when she made his acquaint- 
ance, was unquestioned. 'He had at that tune,' we are told, 
' altogether withdrawn from the world and from the court. 
He lived in his Diocese with great austerity and poverty, 
setting a great example of virtue, showing great charity to the 
poor, and in continual prayer, even by night, passing many 
hours before the Holy Sacrament.' 2 But this zeal soon 
passed, or, it may be, the fear of hiding his own light under 
a bushel drew him back to Paris and the court. As to that 
point of residence upon which Port Royal later so strongly 
insisted, he had already relaxed when projecting the new 
Institution of the Holy Sacrament, since he wished himself 
to direct a House founded in Paris. 

Angelique had failed to gauge the emotionalism of this 
Bishop's fervour. Through the medium of his nuns from 
Tard, its true complexion akin to the emotional extremes of 

1 Relation de la Sasur Angelique de Sainte- Agnes de Marie de la Falaire, 
Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, pp. 407-10. 

2 Relation de ce qui a precede I' etablissement du Monastere du S. Sacre- 
ment, et de ce qui est arrive depuis jusqu'en 1636. Par la Sceur Catherine 
de S. Jean Arnauld, appellee dans le monde Madame le Maistre, loc. cit., 
vol. i, p. 426 



CHANGES IN THE CONVENT 139 

the Carmelites rather than to the sober and practical spirit of 
the Rule of S. Benedict soon showed unmistakably. 

With the candid testimony of our nun before us, we can 
scarce acquit our wise but ardent Angelique herself of a loss 
at this time of emotional balance, of an overstrained exaltation 
of mood under the influence of the Bishop. And to this period 
of his ascendency belong two singular incidents. In the 
Chapel of Port Royal, on Easter Monday, before many wit- 
nesses, Angelique worked a miracle, not indeed for the first 
or last time in her history, but only this once elaborately, 
as it were, and with publicity. For the first and only time 
she exercised also the force of her personal magnetism to 
impel a young girl to enter the convent, feeling herself irre- 
sistibly urged thereto by the spirit of God. 

This latter event was so contrary to Angelique's approved 
practice, and appeared to herself so strange, that she narrated it, 
in after-life, to her nephew. We give it accordingly in her 
words : 1 

' Some time after our establishment in Paris, while our 
House was being built, a girl who was good-looking and very 
intelligent (pleine d'esprit), and who was disposed neither for 
marriage nor for a Convent, was walking one day with a friend 
beyond the gate of the Faubourg S. Jacques, and, on seeing 
our buildings, said : Who are the wretches for whom this prison 
is being built ? Some time after she came to see one of our 
Nuns, whom she knew, but, since she found her departed for 
Dijon I made her come to the parlour, where I felt myself 
moved to tell her that she was leading a poor sort of life, and 
that she should take a decision either to marry or to become 
a Nun. What I said troubled her, and, as I perceived it, I told 
her to go and pray God before the Holy Sacrament. She 
did it and was so beside herself that she said : God, give me 
grace not to do Thy will, although she meant to say the opposite. 
She returned to the parlour extraordinarily agitated, and 
I felt myself taken with so violent an impulse, that I told her 
she was ruining herself in the world, that she ought to enter 
the House that very instant, although she had not come for 
the purpose, and she believed me and let herself be forced in. 

' She acceded to my words as though in spite of herself, 
and was in such trouble that, on entering the Monastery, she 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 322 seq. 



140 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

struck her head against a wall, not knowing where she was 
going or what she was doing. Her trouble and agitation of 
mind produced a like effect in her body, so that she at once 
fell ill of a pleurisy, for which I bled her five times in two days. 
God cured her afterwards, and when she was about to finish 
her year of Novitiate and I, having resigned my Abbey (it 
was in 1630), was no longer Abbess, she asked leave from the 
Mother Genevieve, then Abbess, to speak to me. She told 
me that, being ready to profess, and having entered the 
Monastery only as it were by foice and on my assurance, she 
begged me to tell her if I believed that God desired her to 
consecrate herself to it for her whole life. To which I replied 
without hesitation, in view of the ordinances of God and of the 
soundness of her conversion : Yes, my Sister, I assure you 
that God wills it. This is the only woman I have as it were 
constrained to become a Nun.' 

How different her ordinary methods Angelique goes on to 
illustrate : 

' Two or three months ago,' she speaks as an aged and 
experienced Mother, ' when a woman of thirty, a lady of the 
Parish of S. Merri, came to see me and told me that she could 
not be a Nun unless she were constrained, and that I was well 
fitted to do her this happy violence, I replied that I had never 
exercised this method save once, towards a girl of twenty ; 
but that I had been impelled by a certain movement which 
I did not feel for her ; and that accordingly it was for her to 
pray God Himself to constrain her. Moreover, this lady is 
very virtuous and very Christian, and in a state of salvation, 
whereas the other was in a state of perdition. But I know 
several who are in as evil a way to whom I should not think 
of speaking with the force which God, so it seems to me, gave 
me for her. 

' All the welfare of a Monastery,' observes Angelique again, 1 
a propos of the Carmelites, ' depends on testing souls thoroughly 
and not making them believe God calls them to be Nuns when 
one sees in them few solid signs of the operation of His grace 
and of a sacred vocation. It is better to have few but well 
chosen.' 

The tale of this one exception to her theory and her practice 
may be read at more length in the young girl's own narrative. 2 
Be it noted here only that the questionable exercise of personal 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le MaUre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 355. * Post, ch. xi. 



A MIRACLE IN THE CONVENT 141 

influence was justified by results. This nun ' never regretted 
having entered ', not even though left, by Angelique's resigna- 
tion, to a new and unwelcome rule. ' Obedience,' to which 
she clung as a safeguard, brought her happily, we are told, 
through the days of the nuns from Tard. 

The sudden rape, as we almost may call it, of this girl into 
a nunnery, stirred not unnaturally much talk among her 
friends, not all presumably to the convent's credit. The 
miracle, which was prior, in the preceding year (1628), added 
solely to the fair repute of Port Royal, and to that largely, 
in the devout world of Paris. 

The incident is a clear case of faith-healing upon an hysterical 
child. The patient, who herself tells the tale in later life, 1 
was a little cousin of the Arnaulds, child of Mme Arnauld's 
only brother, the Baron of Druy, Privy Councillor, Controller 
of Finance, and a person generally of note. From the age of 
eight the child had been brought up in the convent and had 
already resolved to be a nun. At twelve and a half she fell 
ill, a distressing cough and continuous fever were the symp- 
toms, and after receiving, at her request, the habit in bed, 
she became so much worse that her life was despaired of. She 
was given Extreme Unction, and the doctor, thinking she 
would not live through the night, gave orders he should be 
sent for ' to open the body '. 

There followed a lethargy of eighteen hours, then violent 
convulsions on the right side, such that both leg and arm 
were contracted by two inches, and could not be extended 
even when the convulsions ceased. An eminent surgeon who 
saw her after she had been some months in this state, with 
frequent and violent accesses of convulsions, lying ah 1 twisted 
(en 5), half in, half out of bed, declared that the contracted 
nerves would never recover, and that, if she walked again, 
it would be as a cripple and hunchback. Her regular doctors 
declared she never would walk. 

' She was in this state for eighteen months, and was believed 

1 Relation faite par la Soeur Magdeleine des Anges Marion de Druy, 
d'un Miracle opere en sa personne Van 1628, par la foi et les prieres de la 
Mere Angelique, loc. cit., vol. ii, p. 179 seq. 



142 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

incurable. Then one of the Nuns had the idea that she should 
be dedicated to the Holy Sacrament and that it would cure 
her. She said so to the Mother Angelique who, with the 
Mother Agnes, went to see the child. She asked her if she 
wanted very much to be cured. The child answered that she 
wished it very much so that she might become a Nun, because 
she could not be one if she were reduced never to stir out of 
bed. The Mother Angelique told her, since it was her intention 
to give herself to God in Religion, she should offer herself 
especially to our Lord Jesus Christ and should make a Vow 
of communicating nine successive days to ask health from 
God. And the Mother Angelique told the Mother Agnes to 
make her take the Vow, which the child did with great devotion 
and sense of God ; and from that instant she believed without 
any doubt that she would be cured. This was on the Wednes- 
day in Holy Week, April the iQth, 1628. 

' On the Thursday she was carried to Mass, where she com- 
municated. On Easter Day she communicated to fulfil the 
precept of the Church, which caused postponement of the 
Novena until the Monday. She was so ill on Good Friday 
and Saturday, that she seemed on the point of a fresh illness ; 
but that did not impair in the least the firm belief she had 
conceived, in making her Vow, that she would be cured ; and 
she believed it as securely as though she had seen it. 

' On the Saturday, the Mother Angelique desired her to be 
carried before the Holy Sacrament, in the little Tribuna 
where she took the Communion, close to her room. As the 
child's father was there that day, it was resolved to tell him 
that the doctors and surgeons had given verdict she would 
never walk again, and she was carried to him in some one's 
arms. He was with M. d'Andilly and with his sons. They 
were so moved at the sight of her that they could not speak 
to her, and her father withdrew, saying he would come and 
see her another day. 

' On Easter Monday she was carried to Mass, where she 
communicated. The Mother Angelique, who had communi- 
cated in choir at the same Mass, asked one of the Sisters whom 
she met if the sick child had communicated ; and, receiving 
answer that she had, bade this Sister go and tell her to walk 
in the name of Our Lord in the Holy Sacrament. The Sister 
excused herself, and begged her to go herself ; which she did, 
wearing still her Church-cloak. Approaching the sick child 
with a countenance all lit up, she said to her : My daughter, 
trust in God ; and, taking her by the hand, Rise in obedience 
to the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Sacrament. 
The child rose to her feet (which she had not done for more 



A MIRACLE IN THE CONVENT 143 

than five months), and climbed eight steps all alone, having 
on only her stockings and no shoes, to go to her room.' l 

The child, in brief, was cured ; before the novena was 
finished, completely so. The contracted limbs re-stretched, 
and even the cough, original cause, it was supposed, of the 
illness, disappeared. The child walked about, exploring the 
new building, taking her place in the choir, as well as any one. 
The doctors who had pronounced the case incurable gave 
their testimony now to a ' miracle '. 

This event brought a great concourse of visitors to Port 
Royal, all who heard of the cure desiring to see the patient. 
' She scarce had left one parlour before she was asked for in 
another. She had not time even to take her meals without 
sundry interruptions. The Mother Angelique feared it was 
indiscreet to expose her to such fatigue and that it was tempt- 
ing God. But it could not be remedied ; and she went on 
without being any the worse.' 2 

The tale is of the common order of miracles. It is not 
lacking, however, in a picturesque touch, conveying already 
a feeling for the charm of rustic naivete which is more peculiar 
to Port Royal, and characteristic of the narratives, not so 
much of the nuns, whose eyes seldom stray beyond their 
Convent, but of the recluses, the Messieurs of Port Royal, 
who were presently to gather round it. The same touch 
introduces also Saint-Cyran who, already acquainted with 
Angelique, had a watchful eye on the Convent, though as yet 
without authority there. 

The sick child's father, coming to see her one day during 
her illness, brought with him a peasant from Grenoble, 

' very simple, but so filled with God that it was marvellous 
to hear him. Directly this good man saw the child he said 
to her : Little lamb (petite brebiette) of our Lord, the good God 
will be your doctor, yes, my little sister ; and he repeated several 
times, God will be your doctor.' 3 

After the cure, this peasant Frere Antoine they called him 
came again with her father. 

' He said to her with delight : Well ! my little sister, little 

1 Relation . . . d'un Miracle . . ., loc. cit., pp. 183-5. 

2 Ib., p. 1 86. 3 Ib., p. 182. 



144 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

lamb of our Lord, did I not tell you truly that God would be your 
doctor ? Monsieur the Abbe of Saint-Cyran came also while she 
was with this good peasant, and, wishing to make him talk 
to try his spirit, he said to him, as though blaming the pro- 
ceeding of the Mother Angelique in this matter : " What do 
you think, mon Frhe, of the presumption and boldness of 
Madame of Port Royal, who has sought to do like S. Peter, 
saying to this child, Rise in the name of Jesus Christ ? ' To 
which he replied, / say, Monsieur, that it was not presumption, 
but her faith and her charity which induced her to do it ; and 
he maintained always that it was by the spirit of God.' 1 

Reading between the lines of our nun's narrative, we may 
surmise that the question was designed, not solely to ' try the 
spirit ' of this pious peasant, but to convey also a warning 
to Angelique who, whatever her simple charity of purpose, 
had by this miracle entered upon a dangerous path and sadly 
disturbed the quiet tenor of convent routine. 

The notoriety of the cure gave a great impetus to the worship 
of the Holy Sacrament at Port Royal. The Bishop of Langres 
hoped to turn this to the furtherance of his new institute. 
But one miracle was not enough. Port Royal fell now into 
the common line of ambitious convents, advertising its virtue, 
and deliberately striving after visions and miracles. 

We may read of these things as they came to the later 
knowledge of Angelique the niece. Her account of a failure 
in miracles is not without piquancy after this tale of success : 

* About this time the devotion for the Holy Sacrament 
greatly spread, and the little chapel of Port Royal began to 
be much frequented for Novenas, and many Masses were said 
daily. All this favoured the project of establishing the new 
Order. But for this a human method was employed. In 
addition to the care taken to secure the interest of influential 
persons, it was desired also that God should declare Himself 
by miracles and revelations. To this end all the Nuns, and 
especially those who were the most virtuous, were obliged to 
say prayers, make retreats, and undergo extreme penances 
to induce God to make His will known, or rather to reveal 
it to them. For after these practices they were made to give 
an account of all they had experienced in these retreats, and 
of all the views and opinions God had given them. 

1 Relation . . . d'un Miracle . . ., loc. cit., p.i86. 



AN UNSUCCESSFUL MIRACLE 145 

' This did great harm to a very good Nun, who was after- 
wards elected Abbess when the Mother Angelique resigned, 
and who was called the Mother Genevieve le Tardif. She was 
one of the thirty-one Novices from Maubuisson, and had been 
always so extraordinarily virtuous that, although in no other 
way remarkable, and although the Mother Angelique did not 
proclaim her, yet everybody esteemed her and many styled 
her the Saint ; so much so that when Monsieur, brother of the 
King, came once to Port Royal des Champs and wished to see 
the Community, he asked to see the Saint. But the Mother 
Angelique did not thus display her relics to everybody; and, 
for fear of losing them, she took great care to hide them. 

'After they were in Paris, it was no longer the same ; and, 
as the Mother Angelique was entirely submissive to M. de 
Langres, from the idea she had always had that, because she 
had entered ill upon her office, she ought not to exercise 
authority except when she could find no persons in whose 
hands she could place it, she allowed this new Director and 
all his associates ' (the Fathers of the Oratory were introduced 
by the Bishop to Port Royal and appear to have shared his 
injudicious spirit) ' to act as they thought good. They did 
accordingly great injury to this Sister, whom they drew out 
of her simplicity and whom they made speak incessantly of 
all her views about the new Order, taking all her thoughts 
for revelations. I have recently burned several of her letters 
directed to M. Feron, who was then in Rome to solicit Bulls 
of Foundation for this new Order ; in the which she sent him 
the ideas that came to her everyday, as proofs of God's design, 
and this in so pitiable a manner that I judged they could 
serve no purpose, unless that which may be sufficiently gathered 
from the sequel of events, namely to teach that people should 
be left in their place, and that silence and retreat is that of 
a Nun. 

' In order to try also the path of miracles, they undertook 
to perform one upon the person of a Nun deaf and dumb 
from her infancy, one of the original Nuns whom the Mother 
Angelique had found at Port Royal when she became Abbess.' 
(It was that same nun who had voluntarily joined in the early 
Reform, cf. Chap. II, p. 29). ' She was called Mother Anne- 
Marie Johannet. With this object the most zealous of them 
resolved to spend the night watching before the Holy Sacra- 
ment and to petition this miracle. They took with them 
this good Sister, whom they set in the centre of the choir, 
surrounded with sixteen candles lighted in honour of the 
sixteen attributes of Jesus Christ in the .Holy Sacrament. 
And from time to time they attempted the miracle, speaking 



LOWNDES 



146 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

to her and making her try to speak. But they succeeded 
no better than Gehazi, and it was needful to wait for an 
Elisha to give life to a design so little animated by the spirit 
of God in its commencement.' 1 

The niece, Mother Angelique de S. Jean, writes, with this 
unwonted irony, in the light of after-events. Our Mother 
Angelique was still under the ascendency of the Bishop, deeply 
impressed by his virtue and unable to criticize anything done 
by his orders. Such was the power upon her of the life-long 
cherished thought- that her ill-acquired authority obliged her 
to obedience and submission. Not until she had laid that 
authority actually down did her judgement recover its freedom, 
and then involuntary criticism, however silenced, soon under- 
mined her reverence for this director and his methods. 

Another nun introduces us yet more intimately to the life 
of the convent under this Rule, and to the follies brought 
about by the injudicious spirit of the Bishop and of the Fathers 
of the Oratory associated with him : 

' These good Fathers were very zealous in the service of 
souls and took note of all their motions ; but they attributed 
the cause to the designs of God upon these souls, and thus 
ah 1 the corruptions of nature, and the inclinations it produces, 
were matters for compassion. Thus one was led to feel pity 
for one's state, one believed that God had great purposes for 
us, and one trifled in eternal talking and doing nothing to 
correct oneself. If one did anything, one was heartily praised 
as though for some heroic action ; while if, on the contrary, 
one did nothing but let oneself go to trifling, as happened 
sometimes with me, I was said to deserve pity, because I had 
great difficulty. 

' This was carried so far that, in truth, most extraordinary 
and strange things occurred to sundry Nuns, and there is 
reason to believe that the evil spirit made sport of us. Each 
one played her role. There was one with a very weak intellect, 
and slightly impaired, whom I had seen before as a very 
humble Nun, always in prayer, useful, and loving work, so that 
the Mother Angelique took her with her when she had to 
leave the Convent, as when she went to Lys and to Paris to 

1 Relation . . . de la Vie de la Mere Marie- Angelique Arnauld . . . 
par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean Arnauld, Memoires pour servir . . ., 
vol. i, p. 224 seq. 



THE NEW CONTROL 147 

establish a new House.' (This was not, of course, the com- 
panion nun we have so largely cited, but presumably a Sister 
alluded to in that nun's narrative, as one who waited upon 
Angelique.) ' This Nun changed to such an extent under this 
direction that she could not be recognized. She would fall 
into rages and fits of anger which were terrifying ; this was 
styled paths and leadings of God, but it went so far that there 
was much difficulty in controlling her. She would sometimes 
go and hide and have to be looked for with inconceivable 
trouble ; there was alarm sometimes lest she should injure 
herself ; she remained sometimes whole days without eating, 
and at other times she would eat to excess, laying hold of 
everything she could. It was a fine occupation for these good 
Fathers, this Nun who played a new role every day. She 
would come on certain occasions and accuse herself of every 
irregularity, and beg to be restrained for fear of returning to 
them. She was sometimes fastened to the fire-place with an 
iron chain ; sometimes she was given a muzzle such as is put 
on calves to prevent their sucking ; and this was done I believe 
by order of the Director, and she had besides a Directress in 
the House, a penitent of these Fathers and instructed in their 
manner of rule, to whom she spoke. This Nun greatly delighted 
in the attention paid her, and entertained herself with it all, 
till she came to do nothing more whatsoever. She was sent 
afterwards to Dijon where she was finally spoiled, and she 
became, as one was afterwards sorry to see, a very imperfect 
Religious. 

' Others played other parts ; the most imperfect were those 
who spoke oftenest to the Fathers, and one saw no fruits. 
They all repeated what they knew about their Directors ; 
there were some who wandered about as they pleased, who 
talked on every opportunity, &c. ; so that they became as 
dissipated in mind and distracted as they had before been 
recollected (recueillies). True, this was only the young ones. 
The seniors took no part in it at all ; no pains were taken to 
enlighten them, and they were the more fortunate ; they were 
amazed to see these things in the young Nuns, but their good 
habit of preserving silence, and of meddling with nothing, 
caused them to say nothing and to continue in their customary 
submission and silence.' 1 

Things scarcely could have come to this pass while Angelique 

1 Vies diftantes et Interessantes des Religieuses de Port Royal : 
La vie de la Mere Marie-Genevieve de St. Augustin le Tardif . . . par les 
Meres Marie de I'lncarnationLeConte, et Angelique de St. Jean Arnauld, 
vol. ii, p. 4 seq. 

L 2 



148 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

still held the reins, even nominally, of the convent. But 
change set in, under the Bishop's influence, even during her 
rule, and, at this critical juncture, there came the opportunity 
she had sought so long, of resigning her post. The act had 
been practically accomplished before the nuns came from Tard, 
and awaited only ratification by the King. 



CHAPTER X 

Resignation of the Mere Angelique. The days of the Nuns from Tard. 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued) 

' As the previous year ' (previous to the interchange of nuns 
with Tard) ' the Queen, mother of the King Louis XIII, then 
engaged in besieging Rochelle, came to visit us, I took the 
opportunity of very humbly begging her Majesty to obtain 
from the King, as an act of grace when he should have taken 
that town, to grant us the right of election. Mme la Marquise 
de Maignelai (Marguerite de Gondi), who had come with the 
Queen, strongly supported my prayer, which the Queen granted 
us ; and, on the return of the King, she asked him this grace, 
which was given her, and the Brevet dispatched and registered 
in the Grand Council. I then gave in my resignation, and the 
Mother Agnes, who was Coadjutrix, sent me hers from the 
Monastery she was at. The Mother Genevieve was elected 
Abbess (July the 23rd, 1630). She was one of the first Novices 
I had brought from Maubuisson. She was very virtuous, and 
the Abbess who had come (from Tard) was made Prioress.' 

The Queen Mother, Marie de Medici, acceded to Angelique's 
request in accordance with her customary practice of granting 
a favour on her first visit to any convent. The favour asked 
took her by surprise. But the Marquise de Maignelai reassured 
her, observing she need not fear to set a dangerous precedent, 
other Abbesses would not follow suit. Angelique's brother 
d'Andilly, then at court, also supported her request, winning 
thereby, we are told, much ridicule for his simplicity in letting 
this benefice pass out of his family. 1 

The long-sought opportunity of resigning her charge came, 
as even Angelique must have recognized later, very inoppor- 
tunely for the convent. Yet so plainly in the simple line of 
duty did the act appear to her that, although she saw in 
consequence the undoing for a time of all her work, she never 

1 Note (by the Mere Angelique de S. Jean ?) to the Mere Angelique's 
narrative, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, p. 332. 



150 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

for an instant repented it. Constantly present to her mind 
was the illegality of her appointment. She had besides a keen 
feeling of the iniquity of royal nominations in general royal 
' usurpations ', Fran9ois de Sales had called them in talk with 
her 1 to Religious Houses. Unless an Abbess be freely elected 
by her nuns, her rule, she observes elsewhere, is a tyranny ; 
though experience taught her also that nuns do not always 
choose wisely. 

Angelique never regretted this step. But she became keenly 
aware of her error in placing herself and her convent in the 
hands of the Bishop of Langres. She accounts for it, nun- 
like, by undue reliance upon her own judgement. 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued) 

' I ought to say, in order to show the justice of God, that 
I had not sufficiently prayed before making the liaison with 
this Bishop, having engaged in it very lightly, by the guidance 
and discernment of my mind : not having even consulted the 
Mother Agnes who was at Port Royal des Champs. 

' No sooner had I quitted the Charge, than the Mother Gene- 
vieve, who had been at the Monastery of Tard and had taken 
its spirit, having also the Prioress 2 to advise her, changed by 
order of the Bishop the whole conduct of this House, which 
lay in very great docility, poverty and simplicity, which, it 
was said, made our Sisters perfectly stupid (toutes betes). There 
were several who did not know how to write when they were 
received ; and, seeing that they were of only moderate intelli- 
gence, and could not be employed in the charges which required 
writing, I had judged it unnecessary for them to learn. It 
was at once desired that they should know how, and straight- 
way all the cells were provided with inkstands, so that every- 
body might write : whereas previously only those in office 
had had them, or those appointed to write what was necessary 
for the Community. It was said that all the Sisters must be 
made capable of everything. Many did not stir from the 
Parlours, with talking to the Fathers (of the Oratory), and 
then they had to write in order to polish their minds. 

What distressed me most, was that they gave charge of 
the turn and the sacristy to the most imperfect, whom I would 

1 Entretiens . . , avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
P- 307 - 

' This Mere Jeanne from Tard, though nominally only second in 
command, was now clearly the actual controlling spirit. 



THE NEW CONTROL 151 

never put in office, and that to gratify them. They were 
unwilling to receive any more pupils, unless daughters of 
a marquis or a count. They mocked at the simplicity and 
cooking of the Refectory. We had to have a daily change 
of soup, and saupiquets, unknown to us, had to be made, with 
all sorts of seasonings to which we were unaccustomed. In 
the Church many perfumes, elaborate linen (plissures de linge], 
and bouquets. All the \vorld was begged to come and say 
Mass and preach. Every day new acquaintances were made. 
Together with all that, extraordinary austerities, fastings on 
bread and water, terrible disciplines, penances the most humi- 
liating in the world, so that, seeing one imposed upon a very 
imperfect Sister, I was greatly moved, thinking it a miracle ; 
but at the recreation the same day, seeing her joke as much 
as she had wept in the morning, I was all in surprise and 
found that everything \vas turned into play. To tell the truth, 
there were some very good Sisters who did it with goodwill 
and with benefit. Those who were most fastidious as to their 
food eat afterwards caterpillars and other filth. During recrea- 
tion, they had to make fun of one another, mimicking each 
other, and that was called sharpening their wits (se deniaiser). 
I was often in distress at all this, but I said nothing ; and 
when I asked myself secretly, What is the good of it all ? I 
replied to myself, To destroy my own judgement. 

' It was easily seen, without my saying it, that I did not 
approve all that, and the Bishop said to me once that I did 
him harm there (que je lui nuisais ce'ans}. And when I replied 
that I said nothing, he answered : Your shadow does us harm 
(Votre ombre nous nuit}. I said to him, Send me where you 
will, I will go. Nevertheless, he would not do it, and he 
employed me in soliciting for the affair of the Maison du 
S. Sacrement, whither, however, he did not wish me to go. 
With it all, I inured myself to everything, and lived in great 
harmony with the Mother Abbess and the Prioress. He did 
not wish me to write any more to the Mother Agnes who 
was in his Monastery, and I submitted ; and she also ceased 
to write. Thus we were as separated in mind as in body.' 

The memory of this interlude in their history, the days of 
the nuns from Tard, remained long with the nuns of Port 
Royal. From their reminiscences we learn the indignities and 
slights sustained by Angelique, the ugly and degrading penances 
inflicted on her. We learn, too, her edifying conduct, her 
submissiveness at first heartfelt, and always exemplary ; 
further, the love she aroused in the children placed for a time 



152 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

in her care. Among these children were some who, growing 
to be themselves Mothers of Port Royal, recorded with the 
rest their childish memories. The following choice of extracts 
may serve to show Angelique as her nuns saw her, through 
their love, their reverence for her saint-like virtue, their sup- 
pressed wrath at the ill-treatment she sustained. 

The scene of her resignation, first, is most fully described by 
that young girl she had ' compelled to be a Nun ' ; Sister 
Genevieve de 1' Incarnation was her name in religion, Pineau 
her secular name. 

Account of the Mere Angelique' s resignation, by Sister Genevieve 

de r Incarnation Pineau. 1 

' A few days after I had taken the Habit, our Mother resigned 
her office, and delivered over her Abbey to the authority of 
Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris, at the hands of M. le 
Blanc, his Grand Vicar. She knelt before the Holy Sacrament 
in presence of a number of distinguished persons and of the 
whole Community, who burst into tears. She spoke in a loud 
voice so that all present heard her, with so much humility 
that she drew tears to the eyes of all who beheld her. She 
began by saying : " My Father, I recognize that I am unworthy 
of the charge of Abbess which I have exercised up to now. 
Therefore I am impelled by God to resign it into your hands, 
very humbly begging you to forgive me all the faults I have 
committed in the rule of this Monastery. I ask also forgiveness 
very humbly from all my Sisters for my want of charity and 
for all my other shortcomings in regard to them. I implore 
you very humbly, my Father, to give me penance." When 
she had said this, she delivered the keys of the Monastery 
into the hands of M. le Blanc, who received them, and said 
to her : " My Mother, your humility forces you to believe 
that you have committed a number of faults in the rule of this 
Monastery, and it is this which makes you ask penance. This 
feeling is very laudable in you. But I am forced, on behalf 
of Monseigneur the Archbishop, to thank you for ah 1 the 
trouble you have taken from the time that God placed you, 
so many years ago, in this office. I thank you for your good 
government, which has been pleasing to God, since He has 

1 Relation sur la vocation et la vie de la Sceur Genevieve de I' Incarnation 
Pineau . . . ecrite en partie par elle-meme, Vies . . . des Religieuses de 
Port-Royal, vol. ii, p. 65 seq. 



RESIGNATION OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 153 

given it His blessing. For this reason all they who are con- 
cerned in the welfare of this House desire that you should 
continue the exercise of your charge ; and as for me, I beg you 
to do so, and I believe that God requires it of you." Our 
Mother answered him : " My Father, it was not God who 
placed me in this post, but men who usurped it for me. This 
is what obliges me to deliver it into your hands ; and you 
will grant me, if it please you, my Father, the grace of accept- 
ing." He replied : " But, my Mother, your Nuns (vos Filles) 
will not permit it : their tears show it plainly ; and they implore 
you not to give them into any other hands than your own." 
Our Mother responded : " My Father, I still hold their wills 
in my hands : that is why I do not ask their permission." 
Whereupon he said to her : "I see that you are resolved to 
give up your charge ; I accept accordingly your resignation, 
and the Community will pray God to obtain from Him the 
light required to make a good choice, that shall be to His 
glory, and for the spiritual welfare of the Community." 



' Our Mother, having thus resigned, took the lowest place 
in the Community. The Superiors, who acted in her place, 
assisted her greatly in this. For, as she sought only to humiliate 
herself, to mortify herself and be hidden among the Sisters 
in general, God permitted the same thought of humiliating 
her to enter the mind of certain persons, who had only too 
much power in the House. They gave her the means of 
satisfying her desire, under pretext that she would derive 
great spiritual benefit by being as much humiliated and abased 
as she had been exalted. This principle of charity was the 
ground for beginning to wish to deprive her of knowledge of 
the affairs of the House, as well as of all those of her family. 
In the sequel her advice was never asked save when it could 
not be dispensed with, and hardly anything private was com- 
municated to her. I believe that she was very well aware of 
this ; but it was a great means of attaining to the design 
she had in her heart of being the least of the Sisters. For 
this reason she embraced it with all her heart and with joy. 
Whatever authority was exercised over her, she yielded yet 
more. In brief she did all she could to hide herself and be 
lost in the Community, like a drop of w r ater in the ocean. 
I know that others will say more on this point, which was 
carried, I am assured, to excess, both as to the mortifications 
which she practised by the movement God had given her, and 
as to those which were imposed upon her by a rule which 
He permitted to be exercised over her.' 



154 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

Narrative of the Mere Marie de Ste. Magdeleine du Fargis. 1 

' When first I entered here as a pupil, I remember that 
she (the Mother Angelique) was at the pains of coming often 
to our room to teach us, before she had resigned. I do not 
know whether there was any special distress at that time ; 
but I remember only that I often saw her come quite expressly 
to make us pray to God for the poor. Which she did with so 
much warmth that it has always remained in my mind. 

' While the building was going on at Port Royal of Paris 
(1628), the contractor was seized with the plague and died of 
it, he and his wife. They left two children, a boy and a girl. 
As the girl was not yet weaned, the Mother Angelique saw to 
her being nurtured and kept ; I do not know for how long, 
only I remember that I often saw her make linen and clothes. 
As for the boy, who was already pretty big, he worked at the 
building ; and, whenever the Mother found him there, she 
took care to make him repeat his Catechism. 

' I have heard Sisters, who had good means of knowing, 
say that, when the Mother Jeanne de S. Joseph from Tard came 
here in 1630, the Mother Angelique, who had not yet resigned, 
showed from the first entire confidence in her and deference 
for all her advice. So that when the Mother Jeanne told her 
that she disapproved of something, whatever it might be, she 

1 Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, p. 409 seq. Cf. Vies . . . des 
Religieuses . . ., vol. ii, p. 107 seq. This nun was the only daughter of 
a Madame du Fargis who, after three years passed, though without 
vows, in the Carmelites, became at court the chief attendant or con- 
fidant of the Queen Anne of Austria, played her share in the court 
intrigues, both gallant and political, and was 'persecuted ', as her 
daughter saw the matter, by Richelieu. This only daughter was sent 
at the age of seven, on the recommendation of the Mother Magdeleine 
of the Carmelites (in 1626), to be brought up at Port Royal. She 
remained to take the vows, withstanding the wishes of her father 
(ambassador to Spain), who, left by his son's death without other 
child, even entreated her on his knees to ' return to him and to the 
world '. Her fortitude on this occasion earned her the characteristic 
warning from the Mother Angelique : ' You are too strong, my Daughter ; 
humble yourself.' She lived to be one of the last abbesses of Port 
Royal, surviving not only the Mothers Angelique and Agnes, but even 
their niece Angelique de S. Jean, and presenting to the last a brave 
and dignified front to persecution. A child at the time we are now 
treating of, she gives in her narrative a compound of childish reminis- 
cence with hearsay from other nuns and confidences let fall in later 
years by the Mere Angelique herself. 



THE NEW CONTROL 155 

bade her at once set it to rights. I remember in this con- 
nexion that once, at the very first arrival of the Mothers from 
Tard or Dijon, the order was given that the grille of the Parlour 
should no longer be opened to certain persons to whom it had 
always been opened before, in particular to M. Feron. Mother 
Angelique obeyed this order, without manifesting the slightest 
trouble. On the contrary, when a Sister who was in our 
room at that time said to her one day, before us, that she 
could not make up her mind to go and see M. Feron, who had 
asked for her, without opening the grille, after having always 
opened it for him before, the Mother said to her that she had 
already spoken to this gentleman with the grille closed and 
that, it had not troubled her. She added several things, 
which I do not recall, to reconcile her to it. I remember only 
that she spoke so happily and with so much apparent approval 
of all the things that were being ordered new, that it seemed 
as though they were all in conformity with her views. 

'Nevertheless, she has told me since that she was distressed 
often enough about several things, over which she had reason 
to be. She told me further that, when there came to her some 
thought, why things which seemed to her not over-desirable 
were ordered, she used to say at once to herself : " God permits 
it to make me die to myself. It is of no great importance that 
outside things should be in one manner or another, but it is very 
important to renounce self." She has often quoted to me 
in this connexion what stands in Thauler : " God often blinds 
a great number of just persons, that a soul may be mortified to 
his mind.''' And I have since heard her say that she never 
expressed any pain at all that took place during this time, 
not even to persons the most opposed to all the new regula- 
tions ; and that, when she was with these persons and they 
testified their pain to her, it was precisely then that she be- 
lieved herself the more pledged to let nothing of what she 
thought appear. 

' At this same time took place the first Election. I remem- 
ber only one or two things worth remarking. God permitted 
me to be present at the resignation of the Mother Angelique. 
What surprised me was the joy with which she made it. For, 
while the Sisters showed much affliction, she spoke with great 
joy. I do not know whether anybody remembers better than 
I what took place on this occasion between her and the Father 
de Gondi' (Brother of the Archbishop of Paris, one of the 
Fathers of the Oratory). ' I know well that there was some- 
thing about which he was dissatisfied for a long time. I have 
been told it was that he had not been given notice of the 
Election. I remember also that he came to see her shortly 



156 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

after, and that she spoke to him with the curtain of the grille 
closed. I was astonished, because she had always seen him 
before, even before he joined the Oratory. All I can say of 
the matter, from my present recollections, is that she sub- 
mitted in such a manner to this rule, that she paid no regard 
to the dissatisfaction her friends might have about it. 

' Directly after the Election, she withdrew from all things 
and took no part in anything at all. She would not even 
permit us, although we were only children, to salute her in 
any special manner when we met her. On one occasion 
I happened to meet her. As I had on very old shoes, she 
asked me why they did not give me new ones. All at once 
she stopped without finishing what she had begun. She only 
added : " My God, it is very wretched to be always meddling 
in what does not concern one." 

' During this time we scarcely ever saw her, for she was 
in every respect a simple Nun. I have heard say that she 
performed penance in the Refectory and at the Chapter ; 
and that, on the Eve of All Saints, she was made to attend the 
Chapter bareheaded and barefoot, although the Chapterhouse 
had not been built a year. And she was in consequence very 
ill afterwards. I do not know whether it was at the same 
Chapter that all the Sisters were forbidden to speak to her ; 
a thing which she obeyed with great exactitude. She was 
often known to excuse herself to the Sisters who came in search 
of her, until they should have asked permission. But the 
Sisters did not importune her at all in this respect. There 
were some even who displayed with great freedom more 
esteem and affection for the Mother Jeanne who was in control, 1 
than for her ; and sometimes even before the Mother Angelique 
herself, and in a contemptuous manner. She did not show 
the smallest distress at all that ; but, on the contrary, was 
very glad. And it is a thing I have always observed in her, 
that, when persons to whom she had afforded much kindness 
and help, come to leave her in order to subject themselves to 
others, and afterwards express more regard for those others 
than for her, she never shows any displeasure, but, on the 
contrary, is very glad of it. 

' Three or four months after the Election, she was made 
Mistress of the pupils ; in which post she began to act as 
though she was there to serve. She swept the room and did 
all the other most disagreeable things. In respect of the 
control, she treated us with much charity, trying to make us 
do what she wished by reasoning and by kindness. She so 
adapted herself to us all that there was not one of us but 

1 v. ante, p. 150, and note. 



THE NEW CONTROL 157 

believed she had a special affection for her. Sometimes I used 
to try and find out which of us she loved most ; but it was 
impossible for me to discover. There was a girl who was 
discontented here and of a troublesome temper, finding some- 
thing to object to whatever was done, and never showing any 
feeling of piety. The Mother Angelique has since told me 
that she had great difficulty in tolerating her. Nevertheless, 
all the time she was in our room, she displayed so much charity 
for her that it was believed she felt for her a quite special 
affection. She continued to show her the same charity when 
she went to the Maison du S. Sacrement, whence she often 
wrote to her. When she (the pupil) wished to leave, she still 
took great care of her, so much so that she won her in a measure, 
at any rate for a time. She gave her subsequently particular 
assistance, and that with extraordinary kindness. But there 
are many persons who know about that better than I. I will 
add only what she told me on this point, namely that, when 
once God had given her a person, she always felt kindness 
for her whatever she might do, and that she believed herself 
compelled to give help so long as the said person should leave 
it in her power. And she has told me also since, a propos of 
women who proposed to be Nuns, that every time one came, 
she looked upon her as a soul whom God had given her, and 
that she did not feel discharged of her when it came to pass 
that she could not keep her, because she held she was com- 
pelled to have the care until God should discharge her. 

' But to return to what I was saying about the time when 
she was in the children's room : she wished us always to have 
great respect for the Mother who was then Abbess, and she set 
us the example, showing her all manner of submission as the 
least Nun of the House might have done. She never spoke to 
her except on her knees, and knelt also whenever she met her. 
Once, when we had committed a fault, which however was 
only a childishness, it was told to the Mother Abbess, who 
thought the matter was more important ; in consequence she 
told Mother Angelique not to allow us to receive communion 
the next day, which was the Epiphany. The Mother spoke 
to us, and recognized that this fault was not so great as she 
(the Abbess) thought it. She would not, however, permit 
us to communicate, without first taking us to beg the Mother 
Genevieve to allow us. 

' During all the time she was with us, she was under the 
Direction of the Mother Jeanne de S. Joseph (the former Abbess 
of Tard), to whom she rendered such exact submission that she 
did nothing at all without leave, very often even in matters 
which concerned only us. 



158 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

' She was made to undergo all sorts of humiliation and 
mortification. Two or three times an account of her life 
was read in the Refectory. All sorts of humiliating things 
were read in it, and things that might well have made a person, 
with less humility than she had, angry. Among others, she 
told me that they read one time that she held herself at church 
wallowing like a pig ; and in conclusion that, if she were made 
Superior of the Monastcre du S. Sacrement, she would make it 
a House of disorder as she had of Port Royal ; and many other 
similar things. Throughout this reading she went on with 
her dinner, no more moved than if some indifferent matter 
had been said. After dinner the Mother Jeanne asked her why 
she had gone on eating during this reading, and she said to 
her : " That she had not thought about it at all." 

' After she had been Mistress of the children for two years, 
she was taken from us, and she began a great retreat. During 
this time, which lasted about three months, she was in the 
Novitiate and walked last. 

' I remember that, when all the children were in the Re- 
fectory, she was made to rise from table and a basket full of 
filth was hung round her neck and she was then led from table 
to table while they said : " My Sisters, look at this wretched 
creature, whose spirit is more full of perverted opinions than 
this basket is of filth" I forget the rest of what was in the 
paper, which they read at all the tables one after the other, 
even at that of the children, where I was. The Mother during 
that reading had a very devout air, even as though she recog- 
nized as true all that was in the paper. 

' Another time she came to the Refectory with a great paper 
mask, and they said : " My Sisters, pray to God for this hypo- 
crite, pray God that He may convert her truly." 

' I have forgotten to say that at the first, after she had 
given in her resignation, several things were said to her in 
Chapter, to give her to understand that it was no great deed 
to have resigned her Abbey; and, among others, that she had 
done nothing more than she ought, that it was incumbent upon 
her ; and various other things which she sustained with joy. 

' She has often told me that she had always such joy at 
being no longer in office, that it made her surmount all the 
pain she might have had at various things, which might well 
have given it her.' 



THE NEW CONTROL 159 

Narrative of the Mere Marie Dorothee de V Incarnation Le Conte l 

' As I spoke one day to Mother Angelique about the time 
when the Mothers from Burgundy were here, she told me she 
had seen very clearly that many things were not as they should 
be ; but that the thought that it served to make her renounce 
her own judgement and her own likings sufficed to prevent her 
speaking. And she added, a propos of the fact that she was 
not then in control, that this did not give her occasion to 
regret having resigned, that she had never regretted it, and 
that she had always given praise to God Who had led her to 
do so by His Spirit, as well for her own good as for that of 
others. She told me further that M. de Langres had once 
told her he would have to remove her from the House, because 
she hindered him and the Mothers from Burgundy from acting 
with the freedom required for bringing the Sisters into an 
eminent devotion ; that she had answered him he might do 
what he would with her, and that God knew she would be 
very glad, although she did not know where they would have 
placed her. And she bade me observe that the House was 
preserved from the spiritual disorders that might have resulted 
from this Rule, only by the gentleness, silence and submission 
of the old Nuns (les Anciennes) ; whereas, if they had revolted, 
there would have been a terrible scandal, and they would 
have suffered greatly.' 

Angelique nevertheless, however sustained by the belief she 
had done right to lay down her ill-gotten charge, and by her 
personal benefit in a mortified judgement, was hard-pressed 
more than once. She might preserve an attitude of reverent 
submission during the disgusting penance of the basket of 
filth, and of indifference not unmingled apparently, for all 
her nun's virtue, with contempt when her legendary life was 
read out at table. But she was touched to the quick when 
her letters from S. Francois de Sales were treated with obloquy. 
She tells her nephew a propos of this correspondence : 

' I kept these letters carefully until my resignation of the 
title of Abbess. But subsequently the Mothers from Dijon, 
who thought their own spirituality far above that of M. de 

1 Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, p. 423 seq. This nun made her 
profession at Port Royal in 1626 and lived to exercise authority, as 
prioress, in the convent, and also to experience the ' persecution ' 
which befell it. v. Vies . . . des Religieuses, vol. ii, p. 27 seq. 



160 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

Geneve, and all his letters a slight thing in comparison with 
their pre-eminent devotion, took them from me. And, what 
was pitiable, they set so little store by what I looked upon 
as relics, all written and signed as they were by the hand of 
the Saint, that they made use of them to cover some pots of 
preserve, as I myself saw, without venturing to complain. 
Some however were saved from this shipwreck.' l 

Yet more keenly did she feel the change of spirit in the 
convent in respect of charity and disinterestedness. The 
central point of her reform had been the acceptance of nuns 
without dower ; in the legend of her life, read to her scorn, 
she was reproached accordingly with neglect of the convent's 
interest, and under the new rule only rich girls of good birth 
were admitted. Worst of all, it was proposed to send away 
two of Angelique's special protegees. 

She told her nuns, 2 years after, speaking of the need for 
self -subdual : 

' that there had occurred at this time a thing which gave her 
deep pain and greatly distressed her ; and that, when some 
one spoke to her about it, and said to her, "But what good 
does it serve," God had given her grace to reply instantly, "It 
serves to make me die to myself " ; that this was the thought 
He gave her in all things which she did not like, which were 
at that time very many. 

' A sister begged her to tell what it was which had distressed 
her so much ; she related to us that there had been two girls 
in a village whom the seigneur of the place had resolved to ruin, 
that she had been told of it and advised it would be a work 
of charity to save them from this peril by finding a place for 
them ; that she had had them brought for that purpose and, 
as nothing suitable was found, she had taken them into the 
House until they should be placed ; and that the Mother 
Genevieve came to her one day to ask where they came from, 
saying it was in order to send them back ; that she named 
the place and said nothing else ; but that she felt it acutely, 
and shed many tears over it, without, however, saying a 
word. 

' She added, that she had extreme difficulty in preventing 
herself from talking on certain occasions, and about things 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 300. ' 

2 Entretiens ou Conferences de la Mere Angelique, p. 301 seq. 



THE NEW CONTROL 161 

trivial enough ; that one day, at the Chapter, when my Sister 
Marie de Sainte Claire was next to her and, on being spoken to, 
did not stir, she pulled her dress gently to point out to her 
what she was to do, whereupon she was reproved and asked 
what she was meddling for. Everybody took sides in the 
matter, indignant against the persons who had treated the 
Mother in this manner. For the Sisters who were there at 
the time tell of many other and strange things. Upon which 
she said that they were perfectly right, and that it was not 
her place then to meddle with anything at all.' 



LOWNDES 



CHAPTER XI 

Tale of the girl forcibly induced to become a nun. 

LEAVING Port Royal for the moment under this rule of 
strangers, we may look back upon the girl so curiously 'forced' 
at this time ' to be a nun', with her own eyes, and upon the 
convent as she then saw it. The tale is of a girl who, whether 
led by secret unacknowledged movements of piety or, as it 
seemed to her afterwards, in mere wantonness, played with 
the notion of monastic life till her imagination was dominated 
by it and, against all her acknowledged tastes and reasoned 
convictions, she became a nun. As a psychological document 
the story is incomplete, for the first chapter, the ' years of 
innocence' and the influences then at work, is missing ; there is 
one indication, her early and forgotten vow (cf . p. 181), that the 
later fervour was a recrudescence of impressions then received. 
The narrative remains of no small interest, in its naive display 
of the conflict between ' nature ' and ' grace ', between the 
clear, conscious, ordered field of desire and thought and the 
untracked spontaneous movements, the inexplicable rise to 
the surface of what psychologists have named ' sub-conscious ' 
life. In the case of this nun the conflict was peculiarly marked, 
the reflex devout impulses, though they conquered and though 
their victory brought peace of mind, yet conquering as an 
extraneous and subduing force, not as support to deliberate 
effort. At the decisive moment the influence of the Mere 
Angelique was, as already narrated, brought to bear, she too 
moved by an impulse that seemed foreign to her will, a strong 
* movement of grace ' that urged her to a rare exercise of 
authority. Such movements were, in the Mere Angelique, 
the fruit and crown of a life bent to one purpose ; they con- 
firmed instead of subduing her will, leading her only beyond 
prudence in its expression. Their analogy is with the inspira- 



THE GIRL FORCED TO BE A NUN 163 

tions of genius, rather than with the ' unconscious ' acts of 
hysterical subjects. In this instance accordingly, though it 
fell in a time of high-strung fervour, and though the action 
was one she would never repeat, the result showed her insight. 
The young girl found peace and happiness in the ordered 
activity of convent life. Her active though untutored intellect, 
quick in girlhood to reflect the rationalizing and sceptical 
tendencies she came across, faintly anticipating in crude 
effort thoughts that were to gain ascendency in another age, 
was subdued to silence before the daily contemplation of the 
Christian mysteries. Her activities had an outlet in household 
duties ; she aided the beloved Mother in the convent cares, 
and enjoyed her intercourse and confidence. In later life she 
became one of the props of the convent under ' persecution ', 
and, in criticism of the persecutors and graphic description of 
the bishops and others who sought to enforce, and the nuns 
who accepted, the Formula, she found a new and legitimate, 
if not very spiritual, exercise for her intellect. From her pen 
is one of the most detailed of the later accounts, belonging, 
ho\vever, to a time which our limits do not include. Only 
this first and personal tale, falling as it does within the days 
of the Mere Angelique and illustrating her rule at the moment 
when she was on the point of laying down authority, comes 
here in place. 

Narrative of the Conversion of Sceur Genevieve de F Incarnation 
Pineau, and of her Entrance into Religion, by herself* 

' It appears to me that I cannot better exhibit the magnitude 
of the grace I have received from God, through the medium 
of our very dear Mother Marie Angelique de Sainte Magdeleine, 
than by displaying my previous evil disposition, which deserved 
rather the anger and wrath of God than the grace He has done 
me by His sole goodness and mercy. I think that, by charity, 
I shall be forgiven the fault I commit in exposing the extremity 
of my wretchedness and of the darkness which blinded me. 
Shame and confusion w r ould bid me bury it in perpetual silence, 
but I cannot abstain from speaking of it, in order to manifest 
the more the glory due to a holy soul whom I honour \\ith 
great respect, and for whom I have a very special veneration, 

1 Vies . . . des Religieuses de Port-Royal, vol. ii, p. 33 seq. 

M 2 



164 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

because God gave her so penetrating a light that she was able 
to discern a glimmer of His grace hidden in the utmost depths 
of an abyss of death, such as I was through sin which had 
rendered me vile and had degraded me below all created 
things. 

' I had lived innocently enough up to the age of seventeen, 
when I began to open my eyes to behold vanity. The first 
trap the Devil set to bring me into the way of perdition was 
the companionship of certain girls of my acquaintance, who 
excelled in the knowledge of all that could please the world 
and who instructed others in the most subtle inventions of 
vanity. It is inconceivable what harm this dangerous society 
did me. I liked them very much and gladly followed their 
advice as a matter of great consequence, letting it occupy 
a large place in my mind. Everything they said was precious 
to me, and I should have felt it a most serious fault to neglect 
any of their precepts of vanity. I imitated them in all that 
the world loves and esteems, as rules well established according 
to the supreme perfection of worldly wisdom. This evil 
manner of intercourse with them disordered me greatly in 
a short time, and changed me into a different person. 

' They had other kinds of license and took liberties yet 
more dangerous. But God gave me grace to take no part in 
these, besides that I had a great natural aversion which held 
me aloof, and might have sufficed to withdraw me from their 
society had I not had a prodigious attachment to the vanities 
which attracted me in them. This disorder was not apparent 
to the persons in authority over them, nor even to the world, 
for they had a great deal of human respect which restrained 
them and caused them to pass in society for virtuous and 
modest. As for me, although I had also much human respect, 
it would not have sufficed to restrain me had God not held me 
by His goodness and by special grace ; and, without seeking 
for time and place to be disordered in secret, I should have 
committed freely in the face of the world the faults which 
the others hid with great care, because my humour would 
endure no constraint. Nevertheless I do not remember that, 
in this great peril, any indecent image ever entered my thought, 
because at the slightest approach of any such thing there 
arose in my mind a trouble which effaced it before it began 
to form. 

' The greatest evil which this dangerous companionship 
brought me was to make me love the world, vanity, society, 
plays, songs, excursions, in which I took extraordinar} 7 pleasure, 
and in brief all other amusements learnt by those wise in the 
world, for I had no other study than that of pleasing it. But 



THE GIRL FORCED TO BE A NUN 165 

as I greatly loved the world, I desired nothing more than to be 
loved by it. 

' To attain this there was no sort of artifice which I would 
not have employed. I spent days and nights in this criminal 
study ; and since I succeeded according to my design, it was 
the crown of my misfortune, for the gratification I found 
made me love the ill which was causing my death. I was 
very much afraid of seeing myself cured, and my passion was 
so extreme that, of all the things I saw, none pleased me save 
in proportion as the world was more or less in it. And to 
say the truth, I became a little world myself, since I was all 
transformed into it. This is the first cause of the disorders 
of my life, which on this point were very great. 

' The second thing which was of great prejudice to me in 
disordering my mind, and which set me entirely wrong, was 
a mixture of reading of all sorts, sacred and profane, good 
and bad, which I undertook in a like spirit of vanity, curiosity 
and impiety. I began by reading novels, 1 which I knew to be 
mere fables with nothing real save the lie that composes them. 
As I read a great many, this imprinted upon my mind a per- 
nicious tendency to incredulity for things the most sacred, 
which were above my reason. This evil had most unhappy 
results for me. After this reading I wanted to see all manner 
of books, even the most curious. I examined them deeply 
according to my capacity, more to ascertain the turn of mind 
of the authors than to profit by their views ; and, a thing 
which is terrible, I had so much pride as to judge and condemn 
them all without a single exception. I despised novels as 
being dreams, poetry as feignings full of exaggeration, philo- 
sophers as proud persons who believed only their own under- 
standing and whom a solitary and melancholy humour divided 
off from ordinary life and from association with other men. 
As for those who wrote upon government and regulation of 
morals, I condemned them as men losing their time in seeking 
to set bounds to a torrent and labouring in vain to subject 
the whole world to their laws. 

' I read books of piety like others, and even the Holy Scrip- 
tures, without respect and without submission, believing 
them no more true and no more worthy of honour and of 
reverence than the rest. For my blinded and corrupt reason 
made me see with a light from hell that there was nothing 
more substantial in these sacred Books, composed by the 

1 In the early seventeenth century, the rage for the long romantic 
novels which took I' A stree as model, was, it will be remembered, extreme 
in French society. 



166 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

Holy Spirit, than in the others. I thought it was a pure 
invention of the human mind which had made these Sacred 
Books, in order to keep men moral and make them love an 
orderly life, by giving them respect and fear for a law imposed 
by a God. I said : To give men laws and precepts ordained 
by men, would be to run the risk of having them despised : 
that is why, seeing that thus the world would be brought into 
horrible confusion, the idea occurred of propounding Divine 
Commandments, with promises of an external reward for those 
who should keep them, and with threats of punishment equally 
eternal for those who should despise them. 

' But when I came to think that there was no other way 
of assuring oneself of the truth of the Church than by entire 
and respectful submission to the Holy Scriptures, and that 
these Scriptures oblige us to believe in an original sin, which 
caused a God to descend from heaven to earth to be made 
man, that He might live like other men, and be crucified with 
infamy, and all that to give satisfaction to God His Father 
for the sin of men ; and when, together with that, I considered 
the rest of the mysteries which the Church enjoins us to believe 
and adore, I cannot say what impieties passed through my 
mind. And it could only have been the Devil who could 
have given me the thoughts I had, which did not spring from 
my own mind, since, now that he is at a greater distance from 
me, I find it impossible to express them and to exhibit the 
motions that agitated me excessively against God Himself and 
against all that is most holy in the Church. 

' Not but what I believed indeed still that there was a God. 
My reason convinced me of it by the things created, which 
I knew could not be works of the hand of man. I believed 
that there must necessarily be a principle of things visible, 
which should be invisible and independent of all else than 
itself ; and this sufficiently assured me of its divinity. I did 
not doubt but that He desired to be worshipped by men ; 
and I was persuaded that one must not offend His holy eyes 
by actions unworthy of His presence, which I knew to be in 
every place. But in brief all my reasoning brought me back 
to the law of nature, in the which men worship a God by the 
knowledge that the light of reason gives them of one. For it 
seemed to me unworthy of the justice and of the holiness 
of a God merciful and full of goodness, to command men to 
worship, love and serve Him, while obliging them to believe, 
and to submit to, things so contrary to their reason and to 
their knowledge as are the mysteries which the Church believes 
in and adores, since He has given them this reason only to 
discern and judge between the true and the false. 



THE GIRL FORCED TO BE A NUN 167 

' When I saw, in the Holy Scripture, that humility was very 
strictly enjoined, I said, speaking humanly in the darkness 
of my spirit : " What is there happier or more contented than 
one who, desiring no honour and setting himself below every- 
body, meets with no one who is in his way or who opposes his 
designs ? ' When I reflected upon the commandments to 
love our enemies, to do good to those who wish us evil, to 
despise riches, greatness, and honour, to love purity, labour, 
and lowliness, in order to follow Christ crucified, and, in general, 
the practice of all the Christian and evangelical virtues, that 
hold in captivity all unruly passions and inclinations, and, with 
that, upon the hope given of seeing a God, of enjoying Him in 
heaven, and of being for ever blessed in the possession of 
a crown of eternal glory, I said : " This is the only way of 
making the mind of man perfectly happy upon earth, and 
more so a thousand times than one who should enjoy the 
empire of the world." Then I set in comparison a man aban- 
doned to all the unruly desires of his passions, of hatred, pride, 
anger, ambition, and of all the remaining vices that follow 
the one the other. I looked upon him as possessed by so 
many furies, who would carry him beyond bounds into all 
kinds of excess, who would make him captive and miserable 
under the dominion of his passions, and who would little by 
little devour him, making him hope for a satisfaction that 
they could not give him ; and when I added to that the fear 
given of a God, of his judgements and of the eternal pains 
of a Hell, I said : " That is the height of all the miseries of 
life. For what good, what repose and what satisfaction can 
he have who finds nothing upon earth or in heaven capable of 
filling the stretch and compass of his unruly desires." I drew 
from that the necessary consequence that it was safest to 
follow the path of virtue in order to live happily in this world, 
and I believed that it sufficed to practise it on so bad a prin- 
ciple. So that I said, " by observing this manner of life one 
might be happy both in this world and in the other, should 
that be true which the Church obliges us to believe and wor- 
ship." For I did not think that faith was necessary. 

' One may judge, by this account, of the bad and pernicious 
tendencies of my mind, which would believe nothing save 
what it could understand by its own reason. I examined thus 
all the virtues one after the other, and interpreted them in my 
own way. My blindness prevented my seeing that there are 
certain divine things given to us by God through the Church, 
because the basis of my temptation was to discover in them 
only a moral meaning, without any more exalted end than to 
preserve the nations generally in peace and union one with 



168 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

another, and each man in particular satisfied with what he 
possessed without bearing envy to others. All this reasoning 
made me fall from one disorder into another yet greater. For 
I added impiety to the passion that I had for the world and 
for vanity ; and this union made me incapable of appre- 
hending any of the sacred truths which the Church commands 
us to adore. 

' Afterwards I passed into a state more dangerous than 
all I have yet told, into indifference namely towards the things 
of God. For I no longer disputed in my thoughts, but I re- 
mained at peace in the confidence that I was born only to live, 
having no view of eternity ; and in consequence I wished 
to pass the time according to the maxims of the world, and 
satisfy my inclinations in all things. 

' I could not bear that the years should increase my age 
and I would gladly have arrested Time that I might not grow 
old and might never die. Thus, without any fear, I lived a life 
worse than death itself. 

' This evil disposition had produced in my mind an extreme 
distaste for everything relating to the holy service of God, 
and had so obliterated the feelings of Christianity that I had 
not the slightest submission for all that the Church and the 
Faith obliges us to believe ; and I gave full liberty to my 
reason, that I might be at peace in a false and pernicious 
confidence. In this deathly state I had thoughts according to 
the malice of my heart and words conformable to the unruliness 
of my thoughts ; so that I said impiously : "If there be a 
God, let Him make me a Nun and I will believe in Him. For 
I desire no greater miracle." I said this because I thought 
it had been easier to make a new heaven and a new earth 
than to change my will, and that there could be no miracle 
powerful enough to convince me of the truth of God save that 
which should take place in myself by the changing of my 
disposition. For I did not think it possible to make me love 
that which I hated to the last degree, and to make me hate 
that which I loved with all my heart, unless by a miracle of 
the true God, whom I desired to know , before worshipping 
Him. I will show by an incident that occurred at the time 
I was in this frame of mind, what an aversion I had for the 
Religious Life ; whence it may be known that God alone could 
produce such a change in my spirit. 

' I was passing one day close to the w r alls of the Monastery 
of Port Royal (in Paris) on the field side ; and seeing the big 
dormitory which was being built I asked my companions what 
it was. I received answer that it was Port Royal. But 
knowing the House no better by name than by sight, I was 



THE GIRL FORCED TO BE A NUN 169 

obliged to ask again, " But what is Port Royal ? ' I was told 
that it was a Monastery for women. These words penetrated 
so deeply into my mind and touched me so acutely, on account 
of the great aversion I had for the Religious Life, that I began 
to say with terror and with a tightening of the heart which 
came from the horror I had for that holy manner of life : 
" Ah ! wretched creatures that are to pass their lives in there ! ' 
I said this in the genuine feeling of my heart. For I looked 
upon this holy profession as the height of unhappiness and 
misfortune, and I could not understand that there were persons 
who made so wretched a condition their choice. 

' If I had been told then that in a short time I should be 
among the number of these, with profound satisfaction, and 
that I should offer to God actions of grace for the mercy shown 
me, I believe that, had the greatest saint in Paradise told me 
so, I should have taken him for a false prophet. I will say 
more. My aversion was so extreme, that even after I had 
begun to visit the Monastery of Port Royal, when I saw some- 
thing placed in the turn, or enter by the door of the Monastery 
for the use of the House, even though they were things inanimate 
and without reason, it seemed to me they were specially 
unhappy in being thus destined for use in a Monastery, and 
I held that the same things, when they remained in the world 
for similar usage, were incomparably happier. This detail 
will appear no doubt a folly that I ought to hide, but I tell 
it with the purpose of showing the obligation I am under to 
God for having delivered me by His goodness from manifest 
perdition and for having drawn me from an abyss of corruption 
and of sin. 

' Such was the wretched condition I was in when I began 
to come to Port Royal, which is now my dear dwelling. I be- 
came acquainted with it \\ithout design on my part, but by 
a guidance as wonderful as it was secret, of the Divine Provi- 
dence, which prepared my salvation by this means without my 
knowledge. 

' It came to pass, by some chance, that she to whom I was 
subject according to the order of God and of nature, withdrew 
me from the society in which I was usually, and in which I 
could not hear the voice of God for the noise of the vanities 
and disorders of the world. As this retreat obliged me to 
look for interests less questionable in her eyes, somebody took 
me to Port Royal, where I had no acquaintance. I was forced 
to talk to some of the Nuns, among the old ones ; which I did 
from complaisance, having no other impulse than the desire 
to see something new, in order to amuse myself and pass the 
time. But I dissimulated, making as if I greatly desired 



i/o THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

it and derived from it great satisfaction, and, while speaking 
to these Nuns, I even conformed to their views, and pretended 
that I shared them. I discoursed a long time with them 
about the happiness of the Religious Life and the wretchedness 
of the world and of secular life. I listened to them with 
apparent submission, testifying a singular respect for their 
persons, for their profession and for their views. I listened 
to their discourse with great attention, telling them that 
I desired with all my heart that God would give me the grace 
to be a Nun, and begging them to ask it of God for me 
and to obtain for me this grace of His goodness. All this dis- 
course was only a pretence ; for, had I believed the change 
possible, I should have greatly dreaded it. But I spoke 
confidently, believing without any doubt that it never would 
take place. 

' When I think of the dissimulation with which I talked 
to these good Nuns, I know not why God has not punished me 
by some severe chastisement. For I responded to their good 
and kind and genuine discourses with nothing but feints and 
lies. But God suffered me in His goodness, permitting me to 
speak according to the purpose He had concerning me, without 
my having any knowledge of it ; and He made me accomplish 
by His grace that of which I should have been incapable by my- 
self, had He abandoned me to the vileness of my own thoughts. 
This it is which compels me to admire the sovereignty of 
the empire of God, who disposed of me as it pleased Him 
according to His absolute power, acting in His strength with 
the independence that belongs to Him, and without as yet 
changing my will, all corrupt and incapable of any good. 

' One day, when I was speaking to the Mother Prioress, 
I said to her that I wished with all my heart that I might be 
permitted to enter the Monastery for several days, and that 
it would be a great means of helping me to take my decision, 
but that I did not venture to ask, or to hope for, this blessing. 
She gave me no answer ; but she made known to our Mother 
what I had proposed and that I was resolved to enter for 
several days, if her goodness granted it. As our Mother 
does all that she can, when opportunities for kindness present 
themselves, to let none pass without giving testimony to God 
that this holy virtue is graven in the forefront of her heart, she 
conceived this a great means of helping me for love of Him. 
In this view she permitted me, by advice of certain persons of 
great virtue, to enter as I had requested. 

' None of these holy persons knew that I was impelled by 
the mere spirit of curiosity and desire to see things that are 
not seen in the world. But I have reason to believe that God 



THE GIRL FORCED TO BE A NUN 171 

considered their good intentions in giving me the grace that 
I have received from His mercy. Our Mother, then, per- 
mitted me to enter on the Eve of the Feast of All Saints, 
which was four months before my final entrance. I was in 
the Monastery for three days ; and I may say that I never 
had so tedious a time. Everything I saw seemed to me dread- 
ful, and I would rather have died a thousand deaths than have 
remained. God permitted me this trial no doubt to show me 
up to what point I was opposed to His grace, and that I owe 
my change to His sole goodness and mercy. After these three 
days, I returned to the world, which I found, in my opinion, 
more beautiful than ever, and I felt myself most relieved to 
have left such a captivity. Whereas previously I had had 
a distaste for Religion, after this visit I had a dread horror 
of it, and I was quite resolved never to be a Nun. For I looked 
upon this holy manner of living as an insupportable torment, 
and could not even believe that there was any single Nun 
happy in her Profession. I did not, however, fail to continue 
my visits to Port Royal, with the customary dissimulations, 
pretending always to desire that God might give me the grace 
to become a Nun. 

' Our Mothers, who were full of compassion for the sufferings 
I declared to them I endured on this account, said to me one 
day with great kindness, that they advised me to have a No vena 
said to the Blessed Virgin, and that they had great hopes 
from the goodness of God for my relief by her prayers and her 
merits. I promised to do it with joy, declaring myself of 
their opinion. I was very glad to have this opportunity of 
displaying to them my submission and my obedience, and 
that I was doing my utmost to draw down the mercy of God 
upon me. It was, however, only a pretence, according to my 
wont. I caused the No vena to be said to the Blessed Virgin, 
with as little faith and hope as desire of being answered ; 
and I leave it to be imagined if I was in a disposition to be so. 
At the close of the No vena I had made no more progress than on 
the first day. I returned to tell our Mothers that I had accom- 
plished their command but without result, and that I had 
no more movement to be a Nun than before. I said to them 
also, with affected sorrow, that I had no more hope, since one 
could not force the will of God against His very \vill or 
obtain His grace by violence. But I begged them very humbly 
to let me have another Novena said, before the Holy Sacrament 
at Port Royal ; and I begged urgently the aid of their prayers 
while it was being said. They promised me willingly and 
said many things to incline me to receive the grace that they 
hoped by this means. I had this second Novena performed 



172 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

with as little devoutness or preparation as the first, neither 
hoping nor desiring any better result. For I had made the 
proposal only to please our Mothers and to show them that 
I had a great respect for their opinion, since I conformed to 
their first idea of saying the Novena to the Blessed Virgin. 

' But I was overtaken by the goodness of God. On the 
fourth day of the second Novena it happened, contrary to my 
expectations, that I fell into thoughts which I had never had 
and of which my natural humour was incapable. I do not 
know if it was a turn of my mind, or if it was by permission 
of God, or by a special ordinance of His supreme goodness 
towards me. However it may have been, it seems to me that 
I was no longer myself at that time, for my thoughts were 
not my own thoughts nor my feelings my own feelings ; but 
a foreign disposition, which was unknown to me, had hold 
of me, and made me act contrary to my inclinations, an 
experience of which I had never had the like. 

' I had gone to the Church of S. Gervais to hear Mass. 
I withdrew, contrary to my custom, to a place divided off from 
the rest, in order to see nothing and not to be seen by any one. 
From the part I was in I looked at this church, which is an 
ancient building of Paris and one of the biggest and most 
beautiful naves that can be seen. This antiquity set me 
thinking of the eternal years. I reflected that all I saw was 
perishable, fragile and fugitive ; which caused me intense 
sadness, because I greatly loved this present life, and these 
changes made me see that I was passing like other things. 
After I had been absorbed for a long time in contemplating 
this great edifice, I passed from one thought to another, and 
\vas carried very far. I said to myself : ' These stones, these 
marbles, these paintings, and all that I see beautiful, will one 
day end. Everything which is visible endures only for a time. 
But of all creatures man is the most frail, for those who cut 
and placed and raised the materials and the stones of this 
great building are dead long ago, while they remain in place 
after so many years ; and, even since those first men, many 
generations have passed, and these stones still remain. What ? 
Have senseless things, that have neither movement nor reason, 
a being more durable than man, who is the most noble amongst 
all that is under the heaven, and the master of things visible ? 
That cannot be, since reason shows us that they are made 
for His use and service, and that consequently they are inferior 
to Him." 

' Thus I sought for that in man in which he excelled above 
other creatures ; and this set me thinking that there was in 
him something hidden, which was immortal and destined for 



THE GIRL FORCED TO BE A NUN 173 

glory, for eternity, and to enjoy even God. All the things 
which I saw were so many voices that cried to me in their 
silence that they had an eternal principle, that this principle 
was God, that this God must be worshipped, loved, and served, 
and that of all creatures only man was capable of this holy 
office, and of enjoying this grace : that his supreme happiness 
upon earth and in heaven was comprised in this adoration, 
in this love, and in this service which he was obliged to render 
to his God, principle of his being, since, according to the good 
or ill use he should make of so many favours, he was destined 
by God to be eternally happy or unhappy, by a union or 
separation which should endure for ever. 

' These thoughts gave me a great desire to serve God ; and 
I thought myself only too happy in that He permitted me to 
do so. I looked, at that moment, upon the greatest fortunes 
of the earth as more worthy of contempt than atoms. The 
pleasures and all that I naturally loved appeared to me sources 
of pain and constraint which I could no longer endure. After 
I had been long engaged in these thoughts, I came to myself 
and I said : "All these thoughts and these good feelings will 
pass, and I shall have realized in vain the necessity of serving 
God. For my madness and the love I have for the world will 
carry me along like a torrent that I cannot overcome, and my 
passion will take away even the desire. But it is needful 
that I set bounds upon the inconstancy of my spirit, and that 
I select some holy person of a mind and character such that 
I shall not be afraid of submitting to what he shall tell me as 
from God. I will look upon such a person as a holy and living 
rule, that shall keep all my passions and my inclinations under 
good discipline. I will look upon him as a celestial tongue 
that shall teach me the orders of the Divine Will towards me. 
I will regard him as an Angel of God, who shall introduce 
me into His presence and show me the path of eternity. Then 
let my aversions rise up against me like mountains to over- 
whelm me, it matters nothing though I die in so holy a combat : 
it is this that I should esteem my supreme happiness upon 
earth, since it would be a means for me to make a sacrifice to 
God of His enemies and of avenging me for the captivity in 
which I have been hitherto under the dominion of my passions." 

' I made these resolutions without thinking that God was 
giving me our dear Mother to lead me in the path of heaven 
and to serve as my guardian angel, by making me fulfil my 
promise. As a consequence of these projects, there came 
to me some thought and some motion of the Religious Life ; 
but I did not pay much attention to it and it passed lightly 
enough. 



174 THE NUNS OF p O R T ROYAL 

' After I had been a long time in these thoughts, I perceived 
that many hours had passed in this species of sleep, as I may 
call it, since I was not myself, but a mood that was foreign 
to me held me engaged against my inclinations and yet without 
violence. I returned to the place where I lived, and what 
I had foreseen came to pass. For I found myself in the world 
again with my former habits stronger than ever ; and my 
madness, my passion, and my blindness, made me love every- 
thing I saw with fresh ardour and violence, and in complete 
oblivion of what had passed. If any thoughts came into my 
mind I flung them away with all my force and resisted them 
to the utmost possible. This did not prevent some spark of 
light, which I violently smothered, appearing from time to 
time, and in the greatest depths of my darkness. Thoughts 
of Religion even presented themselves sometimes to my mind, 
but at a distance, and I did not permit them to come near ; 
on the contrary, I fled from them with as much horror as I 
should have fled from ministers of justice who were pursuing 
me with force, to confine me in the black hole of some dark 
prison and to compel me to atone thus for my crimes all the 
rest of my life. 

' From the day that I have noted, I felt in myself two con- 
trary wills : the one strong, which I loved and which caused 
me to behave with my usual licence ; the other feeble and 
languishing, that brought forth only sterile and ineffectual 
thoughts, for I caused them to die as they were born. But 
I could not entirely dismiss them, although I made all sorts 
of efforts to succeed and hinder them from coming. They 
pursued me in spite of myself, who would not look at them 
nor permit them for a moment to engage my mind or my 
thoughts. Thus I fled before God with voluntary perversity, 
and in pursuance of those evil dispositions which I had cherished 
from my childhood and which were causing my death, while 
God followed me by His grace and His mercy, to give me life 
and to lead me in the path of salvation. 

' I may say that this struggle, which lasted more than ten 
months, was carried on on my part with so much resistance 
of God that, were He susceptible of pain, I should have given 
Him a great deal, and I set myself against His purposes more 
than all creatures together, because I wished to give no entrance 
to thoughts that could lead to my salvation. 
V ' At that time an incident occurred which may show the 
aversion I had for God, and for His holy service, and for all 
that had an air of excellence and virtue. 

' I was talking one day to one of my good friends, now 
a Carmelite. She was a girl of good understanding, for whom 



THE GIRL FORCED TO BE A NUN 175 

our Mother had an affection and to whom she would gladly 
have been of service for the love of God ; but she joined the 
Carmelites in spite of her intention to be at Port Royal. This 
girl said to me with a warm-heartedness that would have won 
any other than me : " Now what are we to become ? We 
have to make up our minds and select a condition for the rest 
of our lives." I gave her to understand that I also desired 
to do so. 

' She, who was serious-minded, said to me : " For my part 
I am resolved to serve God, and to make a great effort. For 
indeed Heaven is well worth one's constraining oneself a little ; 
and besides, I have sufficient experience of the world to know 
that God is the one and true friend whom we should set above 
all things, loving only Him in earth and in heaven." As she saw 
that I listened with little responsiveness, she continued, saying : 
" But indeed, what is there worthy of being loved in the 
world ? And what is there in the world worthy of a reasonable 
spirit ? ' I, who had little relish for this discourse, answered 
according to my humour, repeating in a contrary sense her 
very same terms : " But tell me rather, I beg, what is there 
in the world which is not worthy of love ? What do you find 
in the world that is not worthy of a reasonable spirit ? And 
how can one set all one's hopes beyond the grave and bury 
oneself alive at the age of twenty ? Better enjoy a present 
good than solace oneself with a hope." 

' While so speaking I felt in the bottom of my heart a dis- 
position contrary to my words, but I set myself against this 
secret movement, which I would neither follow nor recognize. 
When this good girl heard me speak in this way, she was vexed 
with me, for she was very fond of me. She wished to see me 
with right feelings towards God and saw well by my discourse 
that I wished to remain in the world. 

' After these first attempts she was silent for a little, then 
she began again and said to me : "It is not that I have not 
had much trouble to make up my mind and subdue myself. 
But can we do too much for God ? Suppose, if you like, that 
the extremity of the suffering makes you regard the Religious 
Life as a species of temporal damnation, we must prepare our- 
selves for it to escape the eternal. Indeed, believe me, one 
must follow in this choice faith and reason. Faith obliges 
us to believe in God, and right reason commands us to love 
Him and to serve Him. I shall have more trouble than you 
to conquer myself, for my bond is love of self ; and in whatever 
place I go, I shall find myself always and I shall have to fight 
an enemy at home who will wage me constant war, the more 
fierce and bloody as he will be closer and more inseparable 



176 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

from me. Nevertheless I am resolved shortly to make this 
final effort with the grace of God, even though I have reason 
to fear that the combat will endure all my life. But your 
bond is not love of self (and it is that which is the most in- 
furiated enemy of the grace of God), but only the love of the 
world and its amusements. When you have left it, you will 
not see it again. It is easy not to fear an enemy at a distance, 
and it is not necessary to prepare for combat when one is in 
an invincible fortress, as is a Monastery to which the world 
has no access. Once you have entered you will have no more 
suffering, and you will be able to serve God with joy." 

' She said to me a number of things of the sort to incline 
me as she wished. But I was untouched by her discourses. 
She looked at me with sorrow and compassion, but I answered 
her : " Do what you like. These undertakings last a long 
time, and require to be thought over more than once. One 
has too much leisure for repentance if one has executed them 
in haste. I beg you to think it over seriously." As I spoke, 
I was thoroughly determined to resist and never to be a Nun. 
This did not prevent my entering a Convent three months 
before she did ; that is, I think, two months after she had 
held me this discourse. 

' However, I still continued my visits to Port Royal with 
the usual feints and pretences, which lasted more than six 
months. But, as I began to grow tired of them, I tried to 
beat a gradual retreat. For I wanted to do it with honour 
and a good grace, in some way that would not be uncivil. 
For this reason I manifested more regard for the Religious 
state than before, and I pretended to endure my evil dis- 
position with pain and sorrow. As I was thinking of with- 
drawing, an opportunity proffered itself that seemed to me 
very favourable to my purpose. It was, that our Mother sent 
to another Monastery the Nun whom I saw oftenest and who 
showed me most affection and kindness. I wished to say 
good-bye to her, thinking that, when she was gone, I would 
not return any more to Port Royal, and that in this way 
I would withdraw ; but God made me enter that very same 
day, as I am about to relate. 

' The Nun, whom I loved and to whom I was greatly indebted 
on account of her kindness towards me, had left before I 
reached Port Royal to say good-bye to her ; I was told so on 
entering the Monastery. This information made me respond 
that I had nothing more to do at Port Royal, since she was no 
longer there. But I was told that our Mother Marie Angelique 
wished to speak to me. This gave me a secret dread, for 
I knew her force of mind. It seems that I anticipated what 



THE GIRL FORCED TO BE A NUN 177 

was about to happen, for I tried to leave without speaking 
to her ; and there was some secret instinct hidden in myself 
that made me afraid of meeting her. Nevertheless I dared 
not manifest my unwillingness more openly. I was escorted 
accordingly to the Parlour where our Mother awaited me. 

' When I had greeted her, she said to me in a rather strong 
voice, " Now, what are you going to do ? Will you always 
throw away the time that God gives you for your salvation ? " 
I made answer, trembling, that I desired to obey her. " In 
what ? ' she said. '' In whatever you wish, my Mother," 
I answered. " That is well said," she went on : " but let us 
come to actions. Will you be a Nun ? ' " No, no, my Mother ; 
it is impossible for me to live shut up between four walls ; the 
very thought gives me horror ; I cannot endure it.' " And you 
wish whatever I wish ! ' said our Mother, " but on condition 
that I wish only what you wish yourself. I tell you from 
God that you are being lost by thus following your inclinations, 
which in the end will render you unhappy in this world and 
the next. I know the life that girls lead in the world. You 
must be pledged one way or the other, in order to settle 
your mind." 

' At these words I conceived a genuine respect for her person, 
and for all that she said to me ; and I, who had never had 
faith or submission towards God Himself, began to see Him 
in her, and her words made a great impression on my mind, 
I listened with great attention, but with so troubled a mind 
and with such trembling in my whole body, that I could no 
longer speak without stammering ; and I believe I could not 
be understood, as well from the failure of my voice as from 
the disconnectedness of my speech ; for I had no longer the 
power of saying or of thinking anything to the point, because 
my mind was a frightful darkness. 

' Seeing me in this condition, our Mother said to me : " Go 
before the Holy Sacrament, and abandon yourself to the will 
of God for your whole life, and for all that He shall be pleased 
to ordain you for time and for eternity. Reflect in His 
presence that you are His and not your own, that you are the 
work of His hands, and that you are committing sacrilege 
by hindering the working of His holy will upon you." She 
then made a number of Sisters go with her before the Holy 
Sacrament, to ask mercy from God for me, and for my part 
I went also, as she had commanded me, but in trouble of 
mind, and with trembling of body and such extreme weakness 
that I could no longer support myself nor find the way to 
the Church. 

' When I was before the Altar, I may say with truth that 

LOWNDES 



178 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

I flung myself on the ground like a person half fainting, having 
no longer free use of my reason, nor any power of controlling 
my mind. There was nobody in the Church, which was very 
fortunate for me ; for, had any persons seen me, they would cer- 
tainly have taken me for some one out of her mind, and I have 
no doubt the more charitable would have shown me some 
kind attention with this idea, seeing my actions, which were 
so extraordinary that they showed the trouble of my mind. 
In this state I spoke to God without knowing what I was 
saying ; for as for thinking of what our Mother had said to 
me, that was impossible. I recalled afterwards some words 
uttered without order or sense, but expressing very well the 
disposition I was in at the moment. I said trembling : " My 
God, give me grace to do my will ah 1 my life, and not yours. 
No, my God, I never wih 1 do yours." I spoke thus, in this 
disorder, a quantity of things which I no longer remember, 
thinking I was saying words of submission and of resignation 
to the sacred commands of the Divine Will upon me. In this 
state I was as those who are agitated by strong fever. My 
tongue was dry as wood and stuck to my palate, so that I could 
not articulate. But nothing that I can say will express it ; 
those who have had a similar experience will understand it 
better than I can tell it. 

' After I had been for some time before the Holy Sacrament 
in this disorder of thought, I returned to the Parlour to find 
our Mother, who awaited me. She began by saying to me : 
' This is the moment that you must enter. God wills you to 
be a Nun." When I heard her speak in this manner, ah 1 my 
anguish was redoubled. I answered her : " My Mother, it is 
impossible." " Why ? ' she said. " My Mother, I have given 
my word to some people who are waiting for me." She replied : 
" That is the answer of a child. What ? there are people 
waiting for you. Is that enough to make you lose the moment 
that God has set apart from all eternity to make you enter 
upon the way of your salvation ? Now one must speak more 
seriously. God wills you to be a Nun." I was then upright 
before the grille, holding the bars with both my hands to 
support me, for I could do no more. Our Mother said to me : 
" You must enter" 

' She has told me several times since that she felt herself 
strangely impelled to speak thus to me, a thing at which she 
could not sufficiently wonder, for she had never had a like 
movement for anybody, and that it seemed to her as if some 
great misfortune must fall upon me were I to return thence. 
But the greatest which awaited me lay in the resolution I had 
taken never again to come to Port Royal ; for me a misfortune 



THE GIRL FORCED TO BE A NUN 179 

greater than all the ills of the world, because my salvation is 
linked to my calling. And I know by my own experience 
that I could not be in a state of salvation while dwelling in 
the world. 

' When our Mother said to me, You must enter, it seemed 
to me that God Himself was speaking to me ; which made me 
answer with as much respect as grief and repugnance : " What" 
my Mother, must I then be a Nun ? ' She answered, " You 
must ; God wills it." I replied, " Then I must, my Mother" 
As I pronounced these words, I believe that I suffered as 
much as though I had experienced the pains of death ; for 
it seemed that my soul was sundered from my body ; and God 
alone knows that I have no words to express myself on this 
matter. I remember that I held the grille with both hands, 
and that distress and repugnance made me strike my head 
several times quite roughly against the bars, without feeling 
the pain, because I was taken up with a pain to which I was 
more alive ; and I may say that, at that moment, I was the 
field of the struggle between grace and nature, and that all 
the blows fell upon me. Our Mother said to me : " Go to 
the door of the cloister of the Monastery, I will receive you 
there." 

' At these words my terror was redoubled, and, in the state 
I was in of apprehension, I said to her, in order to avoid obeying 
her so far as I could : " My Mother, you do not know me. 
I have views contrary to the Religious Life. I have failings 
which you do not know," and a number of similar things, in 
order to turn her aside and make her say I was unfit to be 
a Nun. She listened to me without changing her will, for she 
saw clearly the movement that made me speak thus. On the 
contrary she said to me : " That is what I ask of you, for they 
will be a ground of deep humiliation for you." She said to 
me no longer, as before, " Do you desire it ? ' but, with an air 
not to be gainsaid, " / desire you to go to the door" And she 
added : " No more deliberating ; go to the door, I am going 
to receive you." I had to obey this time. But I leave it to 
be imagined what distress, what dread, what bewilderment 
was in my mind, and what pains and anguish I suffered. I am 
convinced no one can tell without experience. 

' I went in this condition to the door of the Monastery, 
where our Mother awaited me. I was as a criminal led to 
torture, who can think of nothing but death, except that the 
criminal dreads death because he loves life, while I had for 
sole consolation the thought of a speedy death, to be delivered 
from the life I was about to embrace, which was more hateful 
to me than death itself. For I thought that the austerity 

N2 



i8o THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

and observance of the cloister, together with all my aversion, 
would make me die in two or three years ; and had I thought 
I should live the twenty-three years that have passed since 
I became a Nun, I never should have entered, and I should 
not have made up my mind to it, even though our Mother 
told me it was the will of God ; for I had not the feeling of 
God strong enough to rule my reason made feeble by pain. 
Nevertheless I said to myself : " If I am happy enough after 
my admission to have a spark of faith, it will dissipate the 
gloom of my spirit ; and when I am overwhelmed by the 
weight of my misery and my repugnance, or oppressed on all 
sides, I will fling myself at the foot of the Altar, and I will 
say to God with my whole heart : God of my soul, Thou Who 
hast created me, desert me not. I do not ask to be relieved, but 
that Thou wilt give me grace to suffer for Thy glory according 
to the ordinance of Thy holy will. With this thought that I am 
looked upon by God, it seems to me I shah 1 be invincible, and 
that I shall esteem myself only too happy to suffer in this 



manner.' 1 



' I went to the door with these thoughts, which did not at 
the time give me any comfort. On the contrary, at the 
moment I am describing there seemed to be about me a legion 
of devils, a great number of passions in my body and in the 
spirit a dreadful tempest. Our Mother opened the door of the 
cloister, but seeing that I did not proceed to enter, she took 
me by the hand. Then I flung myself at her feet, bursting 
into tears. She raised me and embraced me with affection, 
manifesting great joy. The first thing I said was : " My 
Mother, I shall repent having entered.^ She answered me with 
a smile : "I am pledge that you will never repent, on the 
contrary you will bless God for it all your life." These words 
have not ever left my mind, because they have proved very 
true ; for the door was barely closed when my mind became 
more calm than it had before been agitated ; and this troop 
of passions and of demons, that had oppressed me with such 
violence, remained outside, God not permitting them to follow 
me, because my strength was exhausted and I could no longer 
bear them. My spirit was at rest, and I had no other pain 
than the fear lest the former ones should return. I was 
happy in the present but I feared the future ; for I could not 
believe that the change I felt in myself w r as genuine, or that it 
could last, so that I had the quite new pain of dreading what 
might happen. 

' I entered, thus happily constrained, on the first of May 
in the year 1630. my birthday and the day of my baptism. 
I was twenty-two years old that day ; and I had always said 



THE GIRL FORCED TO BE A NUN 181 

that at that age I would become a Nun, but in jest and thinking 
of anything rather than of speaking the truth ; for when, in 
company, I was accused of loving the world, I used to answer 
laughing and thinking I was making fun of myself : " Wait 
a little till I am twenty-two, when I will desert you and turn 
Nun, but until then I mean to have a good time. Do not 
pity me. I will do penance for it." I did not know what 
I was saying ; but God made me accomplish it by His grace, 
together with the Vow I had made at the age of fifteen, in 
which I had promised God I would be a Nun, if He would restore 
to health my mother, who was nearly dying ; for the fear 
I had of losing her would have made me promise much more, 
had it been in my power. But when she was cured, I did not 
think any more of my Vow, and I had not any wish to accom- 
plish and acquit it. Thus God alone by His goodness drew 
a good result from an evil cause, and made true a speech 
pronounced lightly and set forth as a lie, making me a Nun 
at the moment I believed myself farthest from it, since I was 
thinking only of remaining in the world. This it is which 
shows me clearly that God was working through our very 
dear Mother, when she forced me to enter against my will 
and my reason, while I was making every kind of effort to 
leave her, with the resolution never again to return to Port 
Royal. 

' When I had entered, my mind became happy as I have 
said. My feelings were at rest and all my former agitations 
were calmed. But the previous conflict had made such an 
impression on my body, that I fell very ill the following night. 
This gave great trouble to our Mother, for, since the persons 
of the world, who came to ask for me, could not speak with 
me, they took occasion to say all sorts of things beside the 
mark, because none of my acquaintance had ever thought 
I should be a Nun. Some attributed it to one cause, some 
to another ; each according to their taste. But the sole 
cause was the goodness of God, and His sole mercy, which 
willed to show me so many favours at the time when I set 
myself with all my force against the effects of His holy will 
upon me. My illness lasted six weeks with considerable 
violence and suffering, a thing which was a happiness rather 
than distress to me, because the repose of my mind gave me 
great contentment, although I was always in fear lest the 
former distress should return and overwhelm me. Our Mother 
showed me the kindness of coming often to see me during 
this illness, to learn what state I was in. 

' Although her kindness made her take great part in the 
malady I was suffering, and see that I had the necessary 



182 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

remedies, she had another care, which was to sustain my 
spirit under the weakness she had reason to dread, because 
she had experienced what I could do by myself, and she feared 
lest there should rise in my mind some storm which should 
make me lose courage. She said to me with her customary 
benevolence and her kindness : " How do you feel with us ? 
have you as much dread of being a Nun as formerly ? I think 
you cannot say you do not wish it and that God does not 
leave you free in this matter, that this choice is not in your 
power, and that you can do nothing else than follow the path 
that is shown you. You have been with us several days 
and the time has passed without your feeling it. All your 
life will pass in the same way, because God sustains you, 
and will sustain you to the end of your life, even though you 
do not feel it ; which He does by a great compassion for you, 
for you are so inclined to appropriate everything to yourself 
that you would make yourself the owner of His very gifts. 
He wills that you should live and act without knowledge, in 
dependence upon His divine will for you, without reasoning 
about everything as you do. You have an evil tendency which 
He has anticipated by His goodness. It is that you measure 
everything according to the reach and the power of the human 
mind ; and you believe that a person with a strong mind is 
capable of succeeding in aU that he undertakes. This tendency 
would be a great obstacle in the estate to which God calls 
you and would be greatly to the prejudice of your perfection. 
But, by His grace, He has so annihilated and destroyed in 
you this would-be strength, that you are constrained to acknow- 
ledge and confess that you are but weakness, and can expect 
of yourself only inconstancy and confusion. It is the way 
of God for you ; hope for no other." 

' I may say here, that it seems she had the spirit of prophecy ; 
for I have spent twenty-three years, which have passed since 
I became a Nun, in the state she predicted, without change 
of disposition ; and that has not prevented me from being 
perfectly happy, although my life has passed in a succession 
of actions wholly contrary to my tastes and my former habits, 
God sustaining me by His goodness and by His grace with 
the same force and violence as when He made me leave the 
world to enter into Religion. 

' I began to leave my room after my illness in Holy Week. 
During these holy days the austerities and customary peni- 
tences of the Community are redoubled. Our Mother's 
kindness made her dread my weakness on this occasion, for 
she strongly suspected I should be startled at seeing disciplines 
received in public, and a number of other penances beyond 



THE GIRL FORCED TO BE A NUN 183 

my capacity. 1 For this reason she suppressed a great part, 
and arranged so that the few she permitted should not come 
to my knowledge. A Sister was provided to escort me to 
the places, and at the hours, where she knew I should see 
nothing that should distress me. But all her care could not 
prevent her disclosing to me herself what she wished to hide. 
One day, on opening a door, she saw that the discipline was 
being given to a Sister and that a number of other penances 
were being done before the Community. She was taken by 
surprise, and reclosing the door, made a pretext for not entering, 
without letting me see there was anything secret. But I had 
seen what was going on, and I was very much dismayed. 
This accident made me ask to speak to our Mother, that she 
might tell me what she thought well to make me capable of 
these holy actions. 

* Our Mother spoke to me with her customary kindness, 
and said to me, " You seem very terrified. Tell me what 
troubles you ; you may do so without fear. Tell me, I beg 
you, freely." I answered her that I implored her to do me 
the favour not to hide from me any of the things I should have 
to do when I was a Nun, because I feared lest there should 
be a number of secret austerities which I should not be able 
to observe ; that it was better to show me them at the very 
beginning of my entrance than to wait longer ; and that 
I wished to take steps and consider whether I could be a Nun. 
Finally I testified to her my aversion for these sorts of penance, 
and above all for disciplines taken before others. I told her 
that I did not believe one was pledged to that, since the Gospel 
did not ordain it. Our Mother answered me that I need 
not distress myself, and that I should never do such penance 
unless I requested, because these kinds of penance were volun- 
tary, that they were never imposed, and that she had refused 
more than fifty in consideration of me. She added that, when 
I became a Nun, God would require of me only the practice 
of the Rule of S. Benedict, that it would be upon that He 
would examine me when He judged me, and that to have 
kept it faithfully would suffice for my justification in His 
presence. 

' I was satisfied with what our Mother had said, not per- 
ceiving that it was in aid and accommodation to my weakness 
that she spoke thus, by excess of goodness and kindness. 
I was quite resolved not to ask for external penances, saying 
that such was not God's way for me, since He had given me 

1 The time, it must be remembered, was that .of the direction of the 
Bishop of Langres. 



184 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

so much aversion for them, and consequently I felt certain 
I never in all my life should perform any. I was in this 
manner at rest, honouring the penances and those who per- 
formed them ; but I had no desire to imitate them. From 
that day nothing was hidden from me, and I had no more 
alarm on seeing the austerities and the penances that were 
performed in great number in the Community throughout 
the remainder of Lent. I spent the three first months of my 
entrance in the Monastery without keeping the Observances, 
thus giving occasion to our Mother and our Sisters for the 
exercise of charity and patience ; but they hoped that, when 
I was pledged, I should become more punctual and more 
regular. 

' Our Mother gave me the Habit at the end of the three 
months of my entrance ; and I was the last to receive this 
favour at her hands, before she laid down the charge of Abbess. 
When I found myself pledged, I began to look upon my duties 
as a sacred tie and happy obligation which bound me to God 
and to the Observances, and which took from me all power 
of disposing of myself for the remainder of my life ; which 
made me love obedience solely, as my guide and my only 
hope. For this was the greatest happiness I had in Religion, 
to know that I was subject to obedience, and that it was the 
rule of all my actions. It seemed to me that God obliged 
me more than any one else to practise this virtue, on account 
of the darkness of my mind. For this reason I kept it always 
before me in my smallest actions, and I measured them by 
the rules of obedience. 

' When our Mother, or the Mistress of Novices, ordered 
something, I kept it in the most exact manner that I possibly 
could. For I feared exceedingly to relax, and I said to myself : 
" If I let myself commit voluntary faults through negligence, 
God will abandon me and leave me to myself ; then at length 
I shall be given in prey to my own passions, and overwhelmed 
under the burden of my weakness and my corruption, which 
will make me flee from obedience and observances. Thus 
I shall faU from one irregularity into another greater, and 
this will lead me to an abyss of evil, which will make me 
wretched in this world, and will anticipate the eternal damna- 
tion which will be inevitable in the next." All these thoughts 
redoubled the love I had for obedience, which I looked upon 
as the sole means given me by God on earth to attain to heaven. 
This made me sometimes say, that if the Religious state could 
be without obedience, it would be a hell. For from the moment 
that I began to obey our Mother, by entering to become a Nun, 
it seemed to me that I could hope nothing from God save 



THE GIRL FORCED TO BE A NUN 185 

through this holy virtue, which I reverenced as the key of 
heaven. 

' A few days after I took the Habit, our Mother laid down 
her charge and gave up her Abbey . . .' l 



' The year of my Novitiate passed without my speaking 
to our dear Mother, because, being no longer in charge, she 
spoke to no one. When I was received in the Chapter for 
my Profession, I asked leave to see her. For I looked upon 
her always as my true Mother, who had given me birth in 
Jesus Christ, to make me live to God alone in holy Religion. 
Permission was granted, and she gave me an hour of her time. 
When I was with her, I said to her : What ? my Mother, must 
I then be a Nun ? Not but what I desired it with all my heart ; 
but I looked back at my former disposition, which made me 
still fear my weakness in so great a pledge ; and I wanted 
to be assured of the will of God by our Mother, as I had been 
in respect of my entrance into Religion. This is what made 
me speak in this way. Our Mother said a number of things 
to prepare me for my Profession. She confirmed me in my 
resolution, and took from me the doubts I had as to whether 
it were the will of God for me. She prepared me for the 
temptations which might occur, and said to me what she 
thought suitable to fortify me against the Devil. This inter- 
view was of some length and very happy for me. In brief, 
I made my Profession on her surety, confiding in the mercy 
of God from Whom I awaited the success of an undertaking 
so important for me ; no longer doubting that it was the 
will of God since I did it by submission, in obedience to our 
dear Mother whom I knew to be His faithful servant, and 
to whom I am indebted for all the favours I have received 
from God. 

' By all that I have just related, it may be observed that 
God sometimes grants requests made to Him without faith, 
even impiously and without the wish to be heard, as was mine 
when I said : // there be a God, let Him make me a Nun, and 
I will believe in Him, for I do not wish for any other or greater 
miracle. I asked what I did not wish to obtain, and that 
which I believed to be impossible. I asked it in malice, 
and only to convince and assure myself that my impiety was 
justified ; and God answered me so as to show me the depths 
of His mercy, in bestowing so many favours upon one who 
merited complete destruction, and doing it in a manner more 
wonderful than I had asked ; for I thought it impossible 

1 v. ante, pp. 152-3. 



186 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

that I should become a Nun, without my will first changing, 
and without loving forthwith that which I previously abhorred. 
But God, Who had no need of my will to dispose of me in 
accordance with His purposes, brought me to Religion with 
the like aversion, against my feelings and my reason, that 
I might perceive it was an effect of His grace, of His mercy, 
and of His absolute power. 

' They who learn how God performed a miracle of grace 
and goodness in making me a Nun, in subjecting my will 
by a strong though gentle violence, will think that the course 
of my life must have been also a continual miracle of fidelity, 
of gratitude and of love towards Him, to render Him an 
action of grace corresponding to the greatness of His mercy. 
But His goodness, which did not call me to the Religious Life 
in order to raise me to great perfection, drew me there only 
to withdraw me from the damnation which was inevitable 
had death overtaken me in the world. 

' If the order of God permit souls, who are in heaven, to 
feel gratitude towards the holy persons who have had the 
kindness to assist them and to conduct them upon earth for 
love of Him, and if He show me mercy, I shall look upon 
our very dear Mother as the secondary cause of my salvation. 
And it seems to me that her blessedness will increase mine, 
since mine will be a result of hers, although she be very exalted 
according to her desert, and I only in the lowest place, having 
no other merits than the mercy and the goodness of God, by 
which I hope this grace in heaven.' 



CHAPTER XII 

The Mere Angelique goes to the Institut du S. Sacrement. She comes 
under the direction of Saint-Cyran. Ill-will and jealousy aroused 
by the new foundation. Angelique returns to the Convent of 
Port Royal. 

FOR three years Angelique cultivated, under the trying rule 
of the nuns from Tard, the self-effacing virtues of a simple 
nun. One or two letters to her brother d'Andilly the year 
after her resignation, written apparently when she had charge 
of the children, show, better than any reports from the nuns, 
her assured serenity of soul. 

The plague was that year (1631), in Paris, on the increase 
when she writes at the end of September, though colder weather 
gave hopes of improvement. ' However that may be, we are 
God's, and, since He does not will that we should go to the 
country, He will preserve us, if it please Him, in town ; if not, 
it is just as good to die this year as the next.' 1 

She writes on the birth of his fifth daughter, three already 
were at Port Royal, the two elder in the novitiate, and her 
namesake Angelique, our often-cited Mere Angelique de S. Jean, 
among the children under her charge : 

' But these five daughters, do they not turn your hair grey ? 
It must not be so, my very dear brother. God is their Father, 
your only care must be to seek His kingdom and His justice; 
and, that being so, rest assured that all things will be given 
you. . . . Angelique says that she wants very much to see 
her new sister, but that she would rather deprive herself of 
that pleasure than go to Andilly. And, as I said to her they 
were five, she said to me : But you are counting those who are 
in Religion ; you must not, for we do not belong any more to the 
world. She said this so resolutely and so gaily that it seemed 
as though she were on the eve of her Profession.' 2 

1 Lettres de la Reverende Mere Marie- Angelique Arnauld . . ., vol. i, 
p. 36. 2 Ib., p. 37. 



i88 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

(The child was then about seven ; she did not pass to her 
calling with quite such triumphal ease, but, about the age 
of twelve, would seem to have been troubled with doubts. 
' Her strong intelligence,' we learn from later letters, ' went 
near to ruining her.') 

After three years, Angelique was called upon again to take 
the headship, not at Port Royal but at the new Institute, 
though now against the wishes of the Bishop. Even before 
losing his ascendency over her mind, he had recognized that 
she was not of the stuff he required. Her ardour did not 
take the mystic turn agreeable to him and her spirit of sim- 
plicity was not apt to attract the world he wished to please. 
The Sister Genevieve, as Angelique de S. Jean so unsparingly 
relates, was an instrument more pliant and responsive, and, 
Abbess now at Port Royal, was amenable to the influence of the 
ex-Abbess of Tard. He cast about for a Superior other than 
Angelique, who had been named in the project submitted 
to the Pope, for his new House. He thought of Agnes, with 
her more mystic tendency, and had this end in view when he 
sent her, for training, to Tard. But from her his thoughts 
had turned to a Carmelite Sister, Sub-Prioress of the Petit 
Convent as a smaller House of the Carmelites was called, 
in contradistinction to their other great convent. With 
this Sister the Bishop had much intercourse, lodging hard 
by for the purpose. He succeeded in detaching her affections 
from her own Order, but the outcome was only that the 
Superior's jealousy was aroused, the nun relegated to seclusion, 
and the Bishop forbidden the parlour. The incident was 
rife in seeds of discord. The jealousy of the Carmelites was 
stirred shortly after against the whole proposed scheme, and 
not without reason. The Maison du S. Sacrement threatened 
to encroach on their prerogative of Court favour ; it had 
become now its promoter's set purpose to attract those women 
of the Court of whom the Carmelites had hitherto had a 
monopoly. Nor were his methods of attraction very different. 

The Bishop's religious fervour had, as already said, affinity 
with the devotion of the Carmelites, captivating the imagina- 
tion by excessive austerities while admitting at the same 
time much that gratified and exalted the senses, rather than 



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THE MAISON DU S. SACREMENT 189 

with the Port Royal cult of uniform simplicity and unobtrusive 
silent prayer and industry. Angelique herself had formed, 
at his desire, a friendship with the Carmelite Mere Magdeleine ; 
the two Abbesses had sympathized in their desire to escape 
the jurisdiction of monks ; from the Carmelites Angelique had 
adopted also a detail of conventual dress. She was much 
admired by them, and when, on bringing her community 
from Port Royal, she passed a day there, they told her she 
closely resembled S. Theresa, even to the detail of identical 
warts. But for her part, though with genuine esteem for the 
Mere Magdeleine and for the Carmelites' fasting and austerities, 
she criticized them in precisely those points which the Bishop 
of Langres would have had copied ; for the great adornment 
of their convent, their valuable pictures ' the palace of the 
Luxembourg itself with all its pictures was less magnificent 
than their Monastery ' ,the incongruity of their renowned 
hermitages, ' called by the names of hermits who had lived 
truly in caverns and deserts,' while these were ' grottoes 
resplendent with precious things, worthier of princes than 
of hermits.' l These nuns in Paris, she felt, had sadly declined 
from the spirit of their first foundress, S. Theresa. 

At this present juncture Angelique herself was called upon 
to rule over a House whose constitutions and general aims 
were a grave decline from the ideal she had nurtured at Port 
Royal. The Archbishop would sanction no other head in 
the new Maison du S. Sacrement ; least of all would he accept 
the final choice of the Bishop of Langres, the ex- Abbess namely 
of Tard. Three months later he compelled the nuns from 
Tard, intruders into his diocese, to return from Port Royal to 
their own monastery. 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued) 

1 During this time ' the three years subsequent to her 
resignation ' we were suing for Letters Patent from the 
King for the establishment of the Maison du S. Sacrement, 
but great difficulties arose, many persons having an interest 
that this Institute should not be created. At length God 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
P- 353-4- 



igo THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

granted that the King, being taken very ill at Lyons, should 
be cured, it was believed, by the very Holy Sacrament which 
he received in Viaticum. The Keeper of the Seals (de Marillac), 
who had never been willing to ratify these Letters, had a 
movement of God, in gratitude for the health of the King, 
to draw up very advantageous ones, the King granting this 
grace in gratitude for his cure, which he attributed to the 
Holy Sacrament. 

' After this happy success, M. the Archbishop of Paris was 
approached, but there seemed no likelihood of obtaining 
his consent ; because he was offended that two other Prelates 
(M. the Archbishop of Sens, and M. the Bishop of Langres) 
should be associated with him in the Superiority of this 
Monastery. However, after great beseeching on the part of 
Mme de Longueville, he permitted me to see a House and 
that it should be bought ; and immediately they set to work 
to turn it into a Monastery, as well as could be. It was in 
the district of the Louvre, the noisiest in Paris, surrounded 
by streets and big houses, without any possibility of enlarging 
it except at immense outlay. But the neighbourhood of 
the Court was desired, in order to attract women of rank 
and of the Court. 

' For I am compelled to say it. It came to pass, by a 
secret judgement of God, that this Bishop, who, when we 
first saw him, breathed only God, and appeared quite dead 
to the world, and who had cast his eyes at first upon our 
House, all retired as it was and apart from the world, afterwards 
believed that the new House could not prosper unless by 
making many friends and having Nuns of rank and wealth. 
He had the Constitutions made, in which he laid down truly 
many good and holy rules, but there were others which were 
not so. He desired that the dress should be beautiful and 
august, so he said, of beautiful white serge, a red scapulary 
of beautiful scarlet, fine linen ; that the church should be 
magnificent, and everything in great elegance and daintiness ; 
that Matins should be said in the evening at eight o'clock ; 
and that all should be so mild and so agreeable as not to alarm 
the women of the Court ; further, that the Sisters should 
be refined and courteous, and attractive in their devotion. 

' As regards enclosure, he desired it very strict, with all 
the observances which did not offend against good breeding. 
And since I was not spiritual enough to unravel all that, he 
did not want me to be Superior, although I was named in 
the Bull ; but he wanted it to be the Abbess who had resigned ' 
(from Dijon) ' and who had come from the Monastery he had 
reformed. But, and I do not know why, he could not ever 



THE MAI SON DU S. SACREMENT 191 

obtain this from M. the Archbishop of Paris, although I bagged 
it of him greatly and with all my heart, even against my heart. 
For it is true that I had a great desire to go thither, though 
not in order to be Superior. 

' M. of Paris was firm against all our solicitations, and did 
not wish even that this Nun should come with me to the House. 
At length, by what I must call a happy chance, for the good 
that God gave me through this means, he yielded, and allowed 
us to go thither on the 8th of May, 1633.' 

Angelique did not, however, enter unhampered upon her 
new duties. The Bishop of Langres sent with her a protegee 
of his, Mile de Chamesson by name, a girl left an orphan, 
who fancied she might find her sphere in a convent, while 
the Bishop thought her breeding and polish serviceable to 
his ends. This girl, as yet not even a nun, had a position 
of undefined authority in the House. Her arrogance and 
ill-humour was a new exercise, the nuns do not fail to record, 1 
of our Mother's patience and forbearance ; her wounded 
vanity was the hinge upon which, in the sequel, events turned. 

In this new House, with outer things against her, Angelique 
strove still to foster, by precept and example, the old ideal 
in her nuns. As regards all externals she remained, true to 
her vow of obedience, the passive instrument of the Director's 
wishes. No act of hers, but a happy chance, the hand of 
providence, as she saw it /transferred her allegiance, legiti- 
mately, from that Bishop to the Abbe de Saint-Cyran. Then 
at length she rested in obedience, finding in the outer guide 
assurance of her own aims. 

The acquaintance with Saint-Cyran had already begun, 
though to no purpose, at Port Royal des Champs. 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued) 

' It must be known that, before we had come to Paris, we 
had the advantage of seeing at the Maison des Champs M. 1'Abbe 
de Saint-Cyran, who did my brother the honour of loving him. 
As he knew my mother fairly well, he chanced to be visiting 
her when I begged her to bring carriages to escort the Sisters 

1 Cf. Relation de la conduite de la Mere Angelique dans la premiere 
Maison du S. Sacrement . . . Par la Mere Magdeleine de Sainte Agnes 
de Ligni, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, p. 509 seq. 



192 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

of Maubuisson to our Monastery in 1623. My mother having 
told him the reasons for transferring these Sisters, he was 
so pleased with the charity he thought we were showing, 
that he took the trouble to write and thank me, as though 
he had been the Father of all these Nuns (Filles) ; and from 
that moment God gave him kindness towards me. 

' He left soon after with M. the Bishop of Aire (M. Bouthil- 
lier), who begged him, as his intimate friend, to assist him 
in his cure, and he remained there up to the death of this 
good Bishop (1625). On his way back to Paris, he passed by 
our House in the country. In one of the visits which he paid 
us on Ascension Eve, he did me the honour of conversing 
with me with great kindness, and he said admirable things 
about this great mystery. It happened that, speaking to me, 
he said a word which touched me greatly : namely, that he 
had seen many Abbesses reform their Monasteries, but that 
he had seen few reform their persons. I knew myself to be 
of this majority, although God had given me the grace to 
greatly desire that I might be one of the smaller number. 

' I reverenced thenceforth this holy man, as being very 
learned, but I was not so happy as to recognize his saintliness 
to the full, or to enjoy then the happiness that God seemed 
to offer me, of taking direction from him. He gave me also 
no opening, a thing which he never did, inquiring into nothing, 
and replying to precisely that alone which was asked him. 
And for the rest, he spoke of general matters of devotion, 
with an admirable elevation of mind ; in such a manner that 
one saw clearly that his words sprang from the depth of his 
heart rather than of his mind. 

' When I was in Paris he continued to come and see us, 
more for my mother, whom he knew better, than for me. She 
took his advice as to her vocation. He confessed her w r hen 
she made her Profession, and she spoke to him with great trust. 
As for me, I respected him greatly, and begged him to come 
and see me at the time I was in great distress, no longer knowing 
what to do for our subsistence. I told him only very super- 
ficially the cause of my trouble ; and, without asking anything 
further, he consoled me with words all full of faith and of 
charity. 

' Little by little I learned to know him better ; but I did 
not venture to engage myself with him, because I was pledged 
elsewhere. I did not fail to perceive many things which did 
not follow the first lights I had seen in him who directed me 
(M. de Langres), nor those it had pleased God to give me from 
the moment He inspired me with the impulse to serve Him. 

' But I was in terrible perplexity on account of this new 



DIRECTION OF SAINT-CYRAN 193 

Institute, the foundations of which were laid by the purchase 
of a House costing twenty-nine thousand livres, and he who 
directed me was Superior. At length God of His goodness 
willed that this Bishop, making acquaintance with M. de 
Saint-Cyran on occasion of some affair of Church and Clergy, 
formed a particular friendship with him; and, with more 
frequent intercourse, his esteem of his wisdom and great 
ability ever increased. And as he was persecuted on account 
of the new Institute by sundry eminent and devout persons, 
and for sundry matters known to God, he thought he had 
need of M. de Saint-Cyran to defend his honour ; and he did 
not deceive himself, as the sequel shows. 

' He told me one day, after much praise of M. de Saint-Cyran, 
that I should show him the Constitutions of the Maison du 
S. Sacrement. That surprised me greatly, although indeed 
it gave me much joy. I said that I begged him to think 
it well over first, because I knew M. de Saint-Cyran, who would 
never ask to see them if they were not shown to him, and 
would not fail, for all that, to serve him and the Institute in 
all he could ; but that, if they were shown him, and that in 
order to make him give his opinion, he would do it frankly 
and feel it his duty ; and I feared it might bring about some 
coolness between them, their views perhaps not agreeing. 
To which he replied : Do not be afraid, show them him. I wish 
him to be absolute master of them. 

' I immediately begged M. de Saint-Cyran to come and see 
us, and prayed him on the part of the Bishop to see these 
Constitutions, and to make all the corrections he pleased. 
He took them, examined them, and out of respect for this 
Bishop he changed very little, although there was much not 
to his mind. One thing he could not endure, finding it contrary 
to the Order of the Church, and this was that the Sisters 
should bury one another without Priests. I told the Bishop. 
This offended him a little, and he alleged me grounds in favour 
of the ceremony. Nevertheless he bade me remove the clause, 
and continued to be very much attached to M. de Saint-Cyran ; 
so much so that he begged him urgently to have a care of us 
and help us in our new establishment, where we were four Pro- 
fessed Nuns from here, a Lay Sister who had come from the 
Monastery of Tard which he had reformed, four Postulants of 
the Choir and one Lay Sister. M. de Saint-Cyran obeyed him 
with great fidelity, taking such care of us, that every day he 
wrote to me as to the holy dispositions we ought to be in to 
start an Institute and be one of the foundation stones of a 
House of God in the Church. 

' I began then to know better than I had hitherto, that he 

LOWNDES O 



194 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

was as spiritual and saintly as he was learned. The Bishop 
was enchanted at the pains he took with us, and exhorted us 
to testify our gratitude well. 

' We were not long in repose ; for incontinently the affair 
of the Chapelet took place, which I will not write about here 
because it has been done already. 1 I will say only, that I sent 
it to him ' (viz., the work in question to M. de Saint-Cyran) 
' by command of the Bishop, one day when it was already late, 
after I had received it, not having any copy in the Maison du 
S. Sacrement. He set himself to examine it then and there 
with great care, and wrote to me that same evening at eight 
o'clock, that, having read and examined it without any preju- 
dice, ready to condemn it if it deserved, as to approve it if 
it were good, he could assure me that it contained nothing 
contrary to the Catholic truth, or that could not be very 
well maintained, and that he hastened to tell me so in order 
to relieve me of anxiety. 

' The Bishop was extremely gratified that he supported him 
in this persecution, which was very unjust, the work not being 
bad in itself ; and, even had it been, the Bishop was not the 
author as he was said to be. It is true that he had seen 
and approved it, but so too had he 2 who had stirred up this 
persecution, and with much more warmth and zeal. God 
permitted it so to be, and turned it to His glory, as He does 
with all our ills. 

' M. the Archbishop, who was already dissatisfied because 
the Bishop who directed us was conjoined with him in the 
Superiority of this Monastery, although he had allowed us 
to enter the House, preserved always some feeling of annoyance ; 
and, being again irritated by certain persons, he required 
absolutely that the Mother Jeanne, who was Prioress of Port 
Royal, should return thence with four other Nuns who had 
come with her ' (back, i. e., to Dijon). ' In addition, the persecu- 
tion of the Chapelet was so great, that the Court took part 
in it, and we were run down as visionary heretics ; and some 
went so far as to accuse us of sorcery.' 

This affair of the Chapelet 3 had as cause the jealousy of 
a Bishop ; the innocent occasion was the Mother Agnes. 

1 A narrative of the events of this time, by Mme le Maitre, was 
written apparently as early as 1636, for the purpose of defence against 
calumny, v. Memoir es pour servir . . ., vol. i, p. 419 seq. 

2 The Bishop of Sens. 

3 v. Relation de I'origine et de la querelle du Chapelet Secret du tres 
saint Sacrement. Par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean Arnauld, Memoires 
pour servir . . ., vol. i, p. 456 seq. 



AFFAIR OF THE CHAPELET SECRET 195 

The Superiority of this House of the Holy Sacrament was, 
as narrated, divided between three prelates ; the Archbishop 
of Paris, the Archbishop of Sens, and the Bishop of Langres. 
The Archbishop of Paris, resenting the equality with him 
of two strange prelates, used his power as diocesan to hamper 
the establishment until his sole, or at least supreme, authority 
should be recognized. The Archbishop of Sens for his part, 
finding himself quite overshadowed by the Bishop of Langres 
and jealous both for himself and on behalf of the Carmelites, 
with whom he was in close union, practically dropped his 
connexion with the new House and, having no such legal 
expedients as the Archbishop of Paris, took opportunity for 
more personal attack. He raised a stir over a small devotional 
treatise, the Chapelet Secret, which, he declared, embodied the 
teaching of the Bishop of Langres and the tendencies of this 
House, and which he caused to be examined and censured 
by eight doctors of Sorbonne, as dangerous and heretical. 

The Chapelet Secret dated back to the period when the 
nuns of Port Royal, urged on by the Bishop of Langres and 
his associates from the Oratory, were cudgelling their brains 
ior ' inspired thoughts ' on the Sacrament (ante, p. 145). 
The Mere Genevieve, afterwards Abbess, whose inspirations 
the clear-headed Angelique de S. Jean found so lamentable, 
led the way with a Chapelet du S. Sacrement, a leaflet of pious 
ejaculations, admired and printed by the Bishop of Langres. 
The Mere Agnes, questioned on this subject by Pere de Condren 
of the Oratory (successor to the Cardinal de Berulle) acknow- 
ledged that the attributes given by the Mother Genevieve 
did not quite express her own feelings, her aneantissement, 
before the Sacrament. At that Father's request, she wrote 
accordingly in her turn a Chapelet, the Chapelet Secret, as it 
was called to distinguish it from the first, ' composed of sixteen 
attributes with brief explanation of each attribute.' ' She 
did it with such facility and so little mental effort that she 
said afterwards, and even wrote, she could attribute none 
of it to herself, because she seemed to have lent only her hand 
while another spirit than her own dictated to her what she 
wrote almost without reflection ; in such a manner that it 
must have been either the spirit of truth or the spirit of delusion 

o 2 



196 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

who guided her, and that it seemed to her she herself had 
no share in it.' 1 

The facile composition was at the time much admired by 
her Directors, and in particular, we are told, by the Archbishop 
of Sens. It remained, however, for several years in the obscurity 
which it actually merited, not even printed but communi- 
cated in manuscript to one or two persons interested in 
the new Order, to the titular foundress, the Duchesse de 
Longueville, and to that Carmelite Mother, Marie de Jesus, 
whom the Bishop of Langres had wished to make its head. This 
poor woman died in the solitary confinement to which her own 
Superior had relegated her ; and the work of unknown origin, 
found in her cell, made a passing stir of mingled admiration and 
criticism, which had died away, however, long before the Arch- 
bishop of Sens thought fit to call attention again to the work. 

Six years had elapsed since its composition. The Maison 
du S. Sacrement had attained, despite difficulties, a certain 
repute ; it was established close to the Court, and brought 
into notice by the Duchesse de Longueville as well as by 
the Bishop of Langres. The Carmelites watched its growth 
with anxiety ; their ally the Archbishop of Sens saw with 
chagrin the success of a House from which he had severed 
himself. The dangerous tendencies of the Bishop of Langres, 
with whom formerly he had been in full harmony, became 
suddenly apparent to him and, forgetting his former praise 
of the Chapelet Secret, he found in that unpretentious work 
a pretext for denouncing them. The work was presented 
for censure, not as the devotional exercise of a nun, but as 
embodying the whole teaching and devotion of the Maison 
du S. Sacrement. 

It is needless to trace the course of the affair ; how the 
Bishop of Langres defended and the Archbishop of Sens 
replied; how Saint-Cyran wrote, and wrote again, in defence 
of the Chapelet ; how the Jesuits entered the fray. Slight 
as was its first origin, the fame of the scandal spread, as 
Angelique relates, even to the Court, and gravely touched 
the honour of the House. The charge of 'sorcery' was due, 

1 Relation . . . de la querelle du Chapelet Secret. . . , Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, pp. 457-8. 



DIRECTION OF SAINT-CYRAN 197 

it may be presumed, to the ' inspired ' manner of composition. 
The actual writer denied conscious authorship ; the theory of 
the day left the credit accordingly either to God or to the Devil. 
Happily Rome, whither the matter was referred, found the 
work, if not sublime enough for the one authorship, too innocuous 
for the other, and suppressed it merely as ' unserviceable '. 

The conflagration, though of straw, left sparks that 
rekindled later to the detriment of Saint-Cyran, who, having 
defended the work, was accused by the Jesuits of being its 
author. For the moment, its salutary effect was to solder 
the friendship between him and the Bishop of Langres, and to 
give him firm footing at the Maison du 5. Sacrement. 

Narrative of the Mere Ange'lique (continued) 

' Shortly after, the Bishop returned to his Diocese, and, 
recommending us to M. de Saint-Cyran, he commanded us to 
obey him in all things. He begged him also to preach to us 
and to confess us. M. de Saint-Cyran refused at first to confess 
us, but he preached to us for the space of nearly three years 
in our Parlour, the Archbishop not wishing any one to preach 
in our Church ; and this was a singular providence of God 
for us, for, besides the fact that, preaching publicly, he could 
not have given us particular instructions or any so suitable 
to Nuns, we should have been overwhelmed with persons 
offering to preach, and should not have had M. de Saint-Cyran. 
He did not fail to show us this charity every Feast-day and 
Sunday, ten or twelve as we were ; and there were present 
also three Priests, friends and close neighbours of ours, and 
two ladies. These persons were so delighted that several 
times, after the sermon and the departure of M. de Saint-Cyran, 
they approached the grille, and said to me that it pertained 
only to this man to preach the word of God. And none the 
less they have been since among those who have taken part 
in the persecution, forgetting what they had heard to believe 
in the calumny of inflamed persons. Our Sisters were also 
all enraptured. 

' M. de Saint-Cyran, after having preached to us for a year 
or a little less, consented to confess us, whereat all our Sisters 
were in great joy ; and they all wished to make him general 
confessions. I sent word of this to the Bishop (M. de Langres), 
for I gave him an account of everything ; he professed to 
be very glad, and I believe it was true. I was the last to 
confess to M. de Saint-Cyran, dreading the great righteousness 



198 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

of this Servant of God, although I reverenced it exceedingly, 
and although indeed God had given me the same idea of true 
devotion and the Religious Life from the moment when He 
touched me by the Sermon of the Capuchin of which I have 
spoken. For I saw forthwith the necessity of true obedience, 
of contempt of the flesh and of all sensual pleasures, and the 
merit of true poverty ; and God gave me so much love of 
these virtues that I breathed only to find means of practising 
them. But my wretchedness, my levity, and the small amount 
of true help I had received to correspond to this first grace, 
although my will remained firm in the depths of my heart 
to seek the means of following it , caused me to commit very 
great faults and infidelities, for which I had very frequent 
remorse of conscience which gave me extreme anguish. I 
recovered myself, and straightway I returned to my languor. 
I dreaded then what in truth I loved and desired, even the 
strong, holy, upright and enlightened guidance of this Servant 
of God. I regarded it as the death of my will, of my discern- 
ment and my own opinion, whereof I had hitherto preserved 
the greater part. I wished not to deceive him or abuse the 
grace God showed me, after that I had so greatly desired to 
find a man whose force of spirit in the truth should overwhelm 
my own. Further, I had an extreme difficulty, and one 
natural to me, in confessing, and to him yet more than to any 
other. His great wisdom made me fear to acquaint him with 
so many follies, and his saintliness with so many infidelities 
and sins. This difficulty was so great, that at first I told him 
that, although it was my true will to acquaint him with the 
whole condition of my soul, God compelling me, in the belief 
that He would assist me to quit my wretchedness, the burden 
of which was so heavy, nevertheless it was, it seemed to me, 
impossible for me to confess, unless God were to show me 
an extraordinary grace, which I begged him very humbly to 
ask for me. 

' At first he told me that I must not do violence to my 
spirit, and that, as I had told him I had already made several 
general confessions, there was no need for me to begin one 
again. But he could not convince me, because, finding him 
so saintly in his Conduct, and God giving me an all new desire 
to follow faithfully the first thoughts it had pleased Him to 
give me of living as a true Nun and in a more favourable con- 
dition than I had as yet been, since I was discharged of the 
Abbey, for this Superiority of the House of the Holy Sacrament 
was only for a time , I had great desire to avail myself of the 
grace God showed me of having met this holy man, abandoning 
myself wholly to his Conduct, and renouncing my own will 



DIRECTION OF SAINT-CYRAN 199 

and my own opinion, which had caused me to commit so 
many faults. To that end I believed myself obliged to acquaint 
him with them minutely : and had it been possible to me 
to let him see them, as I saw them, without telling them, 
I should have esteemed myself happy. But my speech was 
suspended, and it seemed to me impossible to put into words 
that which I saw with so much trouble. 

' In fact during the first interview that I had with him for 
this purpose, lasting two hours, I told him only my general 
dispositions, and made protestation of the desire I had to 
obey him, as God impelled me, begging him to help me and 
to make me do without reserve all which God should acquaint 
him that I ought to do to satisfy Him. 

' A few days after, he returned, and I believe that he obtained 
for me by his prayers the grace of overcoming my extreme 
repugnance to confess, since I did it then without great diffi- 
culty. I became so contented and happy that I felt a different 
creature : and, although God made me feel sorrow for my sins, 
I may say that I have never had so true or even so keen a 
satisfaction in all my life, and that never had I had so much 
pleasure in amusing myself and laughing as I had then in 
weeping. I ought not to relate this, since I am writing only 
that which concerns the guidance and the providence of 
God for this House ; but I tell it because all our Sisters, with 
exception of two, were in the same disposition of penitence 
and of joy. 

' There was so close union of all our hearts, that, in a silence 
carefully kept, it seemed as though our Sisters spoke to each 
other, to confirm each other in the desire of religious perfection. 
Punctuality in all observances was very great. Our Chapel 
was in one of the noisiest streets in Paris, where one heard 
all sorts of follies. On our first going there, they had difficulty 
to avoid laughing and often they remained unable to sing. 
But after we had come entirely under the Direction of M. de 
Saint-Cyran, they were so attentive as not to have the smallest 
desire to laugh. 

' At the Conference, when she who was adverse to us was 
not present ' (Mile de Chamesson), ' whether because it was 
her turn to be before the Holy Sacrament or for some other 
reason, we spoke only of our happiness and of the acts of 
grace and of fidelity we owed to God, and of the grace He had 
shown us in teaching us the reality of our obligations. 

' Mme de Ligny, who was our Benefactress and who 
entered the House, after having been on a journey of several 
months in the country, was so surprised on her return to see 
the change in the House that she was quite enchanted, above 



200 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

all with regard to her daughter, who was young, fastidious, 
and who, although with goodwill a Nun, had kept the spirit 
of the world, was vain and readily accepted little indulgences. 
But so soon as she had made her renewal to M. de Saint-Cyran, 
there was no one more humble, or who better loved mortification 
and poverty. 

' It must be observed that it was not by any violence or 
constraint that this saintly man brought persons to the spirit 
of penitence, neither did he prescribe great mortification and 
austerities. But God gave him grace so to touch hearts, 
by the force of sound truths, with the love and respect due 
to God, as to engender sorrow at having offended Him and 
so great a desire to satisfy Him, that one desired always to 
do more than he wished. He took amazing care to cut off 
all occasions of sin, and to that end he noted in confessions 
the most minute circumstances, in order to learn the inclinations 
and the bent of the heart. His exactitude was not grievous 
to souls. On the contrary, as one saw it proceed, not from 
a severe or scrupulous spirit, but from genuine charity and 
righteousness, it gave people great consolation and hope that 
God willed them to be cured, having let them fall into the 
hands of so great a Physician. 

' Good Mme de Ligny, as I have said, was quite delighted, 
and said to me frequently : This man must have a quite 
Apostolic grace and Conduct to bring about such changes in souls. 
She entered our House to make a retreat ; and as, before 
knowing the Direction of M. de Saint-Cyran, she had pledged 
herself to that of a Father of great repute, she did not dare 
omit to beg him to direct her in this retreat also. He came 
accordingly every day to our Parlour to see her, and he wished 
me to be present that I might afterwards recall to the mind 
of this lady what he had said, which in truth was very beautiful 
and very good. But he contented himself with instructing, 
without ever inquiring into her dispositions or how far these 
truths which he said every day had profited her. So that, 
at the end of this retreat, she saw that this Father had said to 
her many beautiful things, but all general without applying 
them to her particular needs ; which made her believe that 
this Direction w y ould prove of little use. She told me that 
she begged me in the name of God to obtain from M. de Saint- 
Cyran that he would be pleased to direct her, and make her 
make a renewal ; that she would come a month later. And, 
as I said to her that M. de Saint-Cyran would be unwilling to 
take charge of her, because she was rich, she answered me : 
/ will tell him all my possessions, and will dispose of them 
according to his orders. 



DIRECTION OF SAINT-CYRAN 201 

' But this good lady, on the morrow of her departure, fell 
ill to death, and straightway sent to beg me with all possible 
urgency to persuade M. de Saint-Cyran to go and see her ; but 
he held it undesirable, her relatives having already sent for 
this other good Father, to whom he feared to give offence. 
He told me to send word to her to trouble about nothing, 
that this good Father would aid her very well at death, and 
that, if God restored her to life, he would serve her as she 
wished. She received this answer humbly, but expressed 
distress because she was always praised. And, as she entered 
upon the death-agony, a priest, whom it seemed God sent for 
her consolation, said to her : Well, Madame, we must die in 
penitence. Then, turning to the place by her bedside where 
he was, and quitting those who extolled her, she replied to 
him : Ah! yes, my Father, and, beginning the Miserere, she 
said it through to the end, and died soon after (in 1636). 

' She was a lady of very good intelligence and of great 
virtue, and one to whom God had taught the truth of the need 
for Christian penitence. During her retreat she discoursed 
to me of nothing else, and of the vanity of the world, of riches 
and of honours, with great resolution never more to take 
part in it. And indeed, on visiting her brother the Chan- 
cellor the day that she left us, and the eve of her mortal illness, 
she was so estranged from all the splendours of his house, 
that she seemed to him a perfect fool (toute idiote), and he 
said so in complaint to some one. 

' She had said several times when with us : How I pity 
my brother ! I pray God that he may be expelled from the Court, 
for I do not know how otherwise he can possibly be saved. It 
appeared, by what has happened since, that God withdrew 
this lady from the world in so good a disposition, in order 
not to expose her to the extreme pain of seeing the persecutions 
which M. de Saint-Cyran and the truth have sustained, and 
in which some of her close relatives, whom she greatly loved, 
have taken part. We lost in her much, but I was consoled 
by this thought. She died in the month of January, and 
from that time I began to think of retiring from this House, 
in order to bring disputes to an end. 

' I have already said that the Bull of the Institut du S. 
Sacrement gave the superiority of the House to three Bishops ; 
a thing which gave great offence to M. de Paris ; and although 
by force of solicitation, and out of regard for Mme de Longue- 
ville, who had taken at my request the name of Foundress, 
he had let us take possession of the House, he permitted us 
only to repeat the service in the Choir ; for he did not allow 
preaching there, and still less the giving of the Habit to any 



202 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

Sister : in order, by leaving us thus, to force them to leave 
him sole Superior. We had been in this state already for nearly 
three years, and one of the Prelates Superior (M. de Sens), 
had by the providence of God altogether severed from us 
before we entered, and secretly solicited M. de Paris against 
us ; and, not having succeeded in preventing our entrance, 
he had at once roused against us the war of the Chapelet. 
The second Prelate (M. de Langres) entirely changed the first 
maxims wherein we had seen him, and began to condemn the 
Direction of M. de Saint-Cyran, whom he had so greatly revered, 
and to which he had so expressly commanded us to submit, 
as the best and most saintly that could be. We, who had 
found it such with so great profit for our souls, had no desire 
to leave it ; which caused us to dissimulate, making as though 
we did not see the distaste he had for it, and which he made 
only too plain to us by his coldness, not venturing to contradict 
himself, nor to condemn openly what he had so greatly praised 
and approved. 

' I believe I must tell one of the chief causes of his change, 
which was on account of a young lady of rank (Mile de Chames- 
son, Canoness of Remimont), whom he had given us, and who 
had fallen into his hands on the death of Mme her mother, 
who belonged to his Diocese, and he was present at her death. 
This girl being left without mother, without means correspond- 
ing to her rank, and without support, moved him to pity : and 
as she had told him she had good will to be a Nun, and as 
he found in her besides the natural gifts he desired in his 
Sceurs du S. Sacrement, he sent her to us before we were yet 
in the House, to begin to train her. 

' At first she showed signs of great devotion for prayer 
and for bodily austerities, although she was feeble and in 
bad health ; but she was little uniform in true mortification, 
doing more in health than she could, and seeking in illness 
more indulgence than was necessary. She had besides a very 
high and very sensitive spirit, and yet sometimes she corrected 
herself very humbly. And perhaps, had she been happy 
enough to pass wholly under the Direction of M. de Saint-Cyran, 
she might have made a good Nun. At first she appreciated 
him greatly, and admired his charity, his discretion, and 
his uniformity, the light of his spirit making her see the weak 
side of others in many things. 

' She wished accordingly to make him a renewal (in 1635) 
like the rest, and began by complaining of the fact that, 
although she was still only secular and quite fresh in religion, 
M. de Langres had desired her to be Mistress of Novices and 
of the Pupils, and to take part in all the affairs of the House ; 



MADEMOISELLE DE CHAMESSON 203 

that she recognized it was very bad for her, and was entirely 
disproportioned to her condition, which ought to be in the 
abasement of the Novitiate. M. de Saint-Cyran told her that 
she was quite right, and advised her to beg me to relieve her 
of everything, and to treat her as a Novice, which she did. 
But I suspected shrewdly that she was sorry to be taken at 
her word. However, I wrote about it to the Bishop, who was 
absent ; and he sent word to me to persevere ; and I did so, 
giving the charge of the pupils to another ; which put her into 
so ill a humour, that she did not complete her renewal, and 
did not afterwards see M. de Saint-Cyran any more in private. 
Her chagrin was pitiable. Everything one did offended 
her. She was even in ill humour with M. de Langres, to whom 
she no longer wrote as she had been accustomed. The whole 
House endured her with great patience, without letting it 
appear that they saw her contrarieties. 

' When M. de Langres returned and I told him of her condition, 
he himself recognized it from her speeches and from the dis- 
satisfaction she displayed with her Direction, which displeased 
him, because he was still in union with M. de Saint-Cyran. But 
it happened one day that he asked for her, and in a three hours' 
interview she so completely won him over that, seeing him 
afterwards, I found him quite changed. He told me that 
she had moved him to great pity ; that she was a troubled 
soul, and that at bottom there were many things of God in 
her. There chanced another occasion, when, the Bishop 
having begged for his opinion, M. de Saint-Cyran gave it 
with his usual sincerity ; which the Bishop took so well 
that he thanked him for it with great feeling, because he was 
very ill at the time. But having recovered his health, he was 
offended at the truth he had been told, and he withdrew little 
by little from him ; seeing him no more, and even coming 
no more to the S. Sacrement save to speak to his Fille, and to 
me by courtesy. 

' He reproached me for being too retired, saying one no 
longer knew me, that I repulsed all our friends. For example, 
he alleged to me that an Abbe Commendatory of the Order 
of S. Augustin, who came sometimes to say Mass in our Chapel, 
and who had asked for me, had complained that at first I 
had received him with great open-heartedness, and that 
I had said good things to him which had greatly touched him ; 
and that, when he returned afterwards, I had scorned to take 
him under my Direction, and that, instead of receiving him 
with my previous kindness, I had asked his pardon for having 
ventured to speak as though instructing him, and had acknow- 
ledged that it had been a boldness in me, since women should 



204 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

not meddle with Direction. I replied that it was all true, 
and that I had confessed for what I had said to this Abbe, 
my conscience reproaching me as for a great fault ; and, 
besides its being an irregularity for women to meddle with 
teaching men and Priests, that I had more matters in the 
House than I could attend to, if I were to render to our Sisters 
the service that I owed them. 

' That did not satisfy him. But neither did his disapproval 
shake me, since I was so persuaded by my own experience 
of the obligation that Nuns have to fly absolutely all commerce 
with the world (under whatsoever pretext of piety it may be, 
save indispensable obligations, which must be well examined, 
with great fear of extending them too far), that I esteemed 
myself happy to have found a Direction which had taught 
me this first and most important duty of a Nun ; and I can 
say that M. de Saint-Cyran had in that only revived the first 
movements of the grace of our Lord upon me, which gave 
me so ardent desire for separation from all the world, that, 
had I not been a woman, I believe I should have been in a place 
so remote as to have been known by no one. I had been 
very faithless to this grace, although always with great remorse 
of conscience, and it was a great happiness for me that this 
saintly man from the first recommended me nothing so much ; 
knowing how far it was necessary for me, to cut off an infinity 
of faults that vanity, promptitude and the natural incon- 
siderateness of my spirit made me commit in conversation, 
besides those that I committed against my Profession. 

' Seeing all this misunderstanding with this Superior, I judged 
that it would be expedient to deliver this House into the 
hands of Monseigneur of Paris alone, in accordance with 
the first rule of the Church. And because I should have had 
great difficulty in persuading Mme de Longueville, w r ho was 
closely united with the Bishop, and with his spiritual Daughter 
(Fille), who had won her over ; and, since I had passionately 
desired this Bishop to be Superior, my change would have 
been judged lightness and inconstancy ; it occurred to me 
that, by means of a third person, I might persuade M. de Paris 
to remove me from this Monastery, to send me back to Port 
Royal, and in my place bring here the Mother Genevieve, Abbess 
of Port Royal, who would do what he desired towards making 
him sole Superior. I suggested this idea to M. de Saint-Cyran, 
who approved it, and immediately I spoke to some of our 
friends ; and it was done so opportunely, that, without the 
Bishop knowing anything, or his Fille, a Grand- Vicar brought 
the Mother from Port Royal and, at a given sign, I was 
at the door, let her in, and myself left at the same moment 



MERE ANG&LIQUE RETURNS TO PORT ROYAL 205 

(February 10, 1636). Some of our Nuns were informed, but 
they did not let it appear. 

' So soon as the Bishop's Fille saw this good Mother, she 
was ravished for joy, thinking she could do what she liked 
with her ; and, instantly making herself mistress of the House, 
she sent to inform the Bishop and Mme de Longueville, who 
came. Although they gave it to be understood by the Nuns, 
who they knew loved me, that they were sorry at this violence, 
it gave them as a fact great joy ; and they took this change 
to be a miraculous working of God, who willed to establish 
this Monastery according to their mind. 

' They proceeded to caress the Mother, flattering her and 
saying that God had reserved to her the accomplishment of 
this work, and the Fille (Mademoiselle de Chamesson) rendered 
her duty and an excellent submission. This Mother, who was 
very virtuous, informed us of all. But one day the Bishop 
took her in hand so adroitly, and with so much devotion, that 
he conquered her ; and she promised him that she would 
do what he wished, which was, chiefly, not to send away his 
' Fille '. For, since we had told her it would be necessary to 
begin by that, she had told the Bishop that she did not believe 
her to have a true vocation. 

' After this discourse of the Bishop to the Mother, the 'Fille', 
well instructed, came and threw herself at her feet, and made 
her so many fine protestations of obedience that she was yet 
further touched. In consequence she wrote to me that there 
seemed to her a great change in this girl, and in a style that 
showed me she was shaken. I answered her that I begged 
we might preserve silence during the Octave of the Holy 
Sacrament (for it was the Eve when she wrote), and that 
afterwards I would tell her my thoughts. At the end of the 
Octave, she was the first to write, acknowledging with sorrow 
that she had been won over by the girl, who had deceived her, 
and at once she frankly told her that she could not keep her. 
She, who had a high spirit, did not need to be told twice, 
and at once informed the Bishop and the Princess ' (Madame 
de Longueville, the titular foundress) ' who came herself to 
fetch her at the door without entering, and never came there 
again. There was also a Lay Sister who had come with the 
other Nuns of the Bishop's Diocese, who desired to leave on 
seeing this girl leave, and thus the House remained in great 
peace. And soon after, Monseigneur of Paris having been 
begged to carry the establishment into effect, remaining sole 
Superior, he gave the Habit himself to five Sisters.' 



CHAPTER XIII 

Events at Port Royal during Angelique's absence and after her return. 
Further dissensions within that Convent, and final peace. 

ANGELIQUE had returned to Port Royal, and relieved the 
Maison du S. Sacrement from its disabilities, by a stratagem 
which, however excusable under the circumstances, may 
perhaps seem to the lights of the plain man a regrettable 
lapse from her wonted straight-dealing. Her narrative retraces 
next the thread of events at Port Royal during her three 
years' absence. 

The nuns from Tard had been speedily sent back to their 
own diocese, leaving the pliant Mother Genevieve still Abbess. 
Their departure, however, was the signal for new difficulties. 
Certain monks thought the juncture favourable to recover 
their footing and win back Port Royal for their Order. Trading 
on the elder nuns' love of their ancient Rule of S. Benedict, 
infringed and altered in sundry respects by the nuns from 
Tard, they tried to persuade the Abbess, not merely to resume 
that Rule, but to place the convent again under Cistercian 
control. Angelique's renewed influence prevented the reversion, 
but the matter was rife in ill-feeling. She narrates : 

Narrative of the Mere Angelique (continued). 

' I must tell what passed at Port Royal after I left it to 
come to the 5. Sacrement, that is to say from 1633 onwards. 
I left, as I have said, the Mother Genevieve Abbess, and the 
Mother divested of the Bishop's Monastery, Prioress, in the 
state and under the Direction that I have described above. 
But I omitted to say that we had been deprived of the 
observances of our Rule. Previously Matins had been said at 
two in the morning ; they were now said at nine in the evening, 
and followed by Lauds. Further many of the observances 
of our Order had been cut off to introduce others, but above 
all simplicity and poverty ; not that any one had anything 




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From engraving of portrait by Philippe de Champaigne 



P. 207 



EVENTS AT PORT ROYAL 207 

in private, but all had to be more beautiful and more refined 
than had been our practice. 

' By the will of God, three months after we had left, M. de 
Paris' (the Archbishop) 'ordered the Mother Abbess to send 
back to her Monastery the said Mother Prioress and all the 
Nuns of her Monastery, six in number. No solicitations were 
spared to prevent this departure. But God in his providence 
rendered M. de Paris inflexible ; and, to facilitate the journey, 
he even furnished the expenses. And because the first triennial 
of the Mother Genevieve expired at that time, and M. de 
Paris knew that there was a desire to elect this Prioress whom 
he wished to send back, he had the election deferred until 
the Nuns should have left. It took place after, and the Mother 
Genevieve was elected a second time Abbess (September the 
loth, 1633) and my Sister Suzanne du S. Esprit (de la Roche), 
who died Abbess of Maubuisson, was made Prioress. 

' So soon as the Monks of our Order, especially a certain Abbe 
de Prieres, saw these two Sisters alone, they went very often 
to the House, offered to say Mass, and discoursed to the Abbess 
and the Prioress about the Observances of the Rule, and the 
ceremonies of the Order ; in such a manner that they gave 
them the wish to resume them. The Mother spoke about it to 
M. de Saint -Cyran, who was at the pains of visiting them, and 
he approved their return to the former Observances ; but these 
Monks desired further that they should replace themselves 
under their jurisdiction, which he did not approve. And, 
as the Mother wrote to me regarding this re-establishment, 
1 begged her strongly not to think of replacing herself under 
the Order, and to believe it would be the greatest evil she could 
do to the Monastery. She credited me ; but the Prioress 
had been so convinced by the Monks that she had no peace 
until she left the House, a thing which was again a result of 
Divine Providence. For this Nun, who was very austere, 
virtuous and gentle, did all she could to persuade our Sisters ; 
and if she had remained through the dissensions that God per- 
mitted to occur afterwards, she would have done us great 
harm. When she saw accordingly that there was no means 
of accomplishing her design of replacing the House under 
the jurisdiction of the Monks, she contrived by their agency 
that a young Abbess of the Order (Madame d'Argensoles) 
should ask for her to help in reforming her Monastery. 

' When first this affair was communicated to me, at the 
time when I was at the S. Sacrement, I opposed it strongly, 
for I had much affection for this Nun, and believed that the 
House, where she was Prioress and Mistress of Novices, 
would sustain a great loss. I begged M. de Saint-Cyran to see 



208 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

her. He had the goodness, and did all he could to make 
her see the obligation she was under of keeping her vow of 
stability. She seemed to acquiesce, but her wounded spirit 
could not recover ; and God for our good did not permit it ; 
so that I was informed she was in great inquietude, and the 
Monk I have mentioned came to speak to me about it. Seeing 
that, I told him that, having done all that I could to retain 
her, charity and my affection for her constraining me, I was 
quit before God, and that she might go when she would. 
Her leave was accordingly obtained, and she came to see me 
at the S. Sacrement, where she remained some days. I made 
her understand that her departure was a temptation, but this 
did not heal her. She offered to return to Port Royal, but 
I saw well that it was not from her heart, and further that 
her spirit had lost its former simplicity. And I confess that 
I am guilty of it, not having directed her well, nor discerned 
rightly her spirit and the leading of God upon her. Her 
virtue, her humility, her gentleness, and her mortification, 
had dazzled my spirit, without considering that there was 
much in it of mere nature ; and that, besides, she had not 
the qualities necessary for government, listening too much to 
her impulses, when one gave her opportunity by an office, 
and that she was good only under the yoke of obedience as 
simple Nun, and in this estate she gave a great example. 

' Three years after her Profession (1629), I na d taken her 
with me to a Monastery of the Diocese of Rouen (at S. Aubin), 
whose Abbess, after being some time with us to study reform, 
desired that I should go for a time to her. I remained three 
months, and also this Nun, who edified the whole House. 
As I was returning, Madame the Abbess of Gif desired me 
to go to her also for some time, she being quite fresh in charge. 
But I fell ill two days after I arrived, and it was decided I should 
return to our Monastery. And as this good Abbess was dis- 
tressed that I could not stay longer with her, I proposed, 
without reflection and on the impulse of my spirit, without 
praying God or consulting any one, to leave her this Nun ; 
which she accepted with joy, seeing her very good. Straight- 
way her spirit took wing, but so discreetly and so gently 
that one scarcely perceived it. A year after she was recalled, 
when I was no longer in charge. Immediately she took to 
extraordinary devotions and to all the new practices, which 
suited her spirit. The Prioress made much of her, because 
she was a fine figure and of high rank. These two Nuns, 
both virtuous, had this common attachment to singular 
devotions, and that is the only thing I had noticed in my 
Sister Suzanne du S. Esprit which had shocked me during 



STRIFE AT PORT ROYAL 209 

her Novitiate, when we looked upon her as an angel, so irrepre- 
hensible was she. As for love of her rank, I had not seen it ; 
for she did not speak of it, loving moreover what was mean 
and abject. It is true that, shortly before her Profession, 
she asked Monsieur her brother for a Book of their House, 
where all her ancestors were depicted, to show me. That 
displeased me greatly, but nevertheless I would not think 
ill of her, attributing it to simpleness. But in the sequel 
I recognized that this worm of vanity had done great harm 
to this soul. Nevertheless I do not doubt but that God has 
pardoned it, for in truth she loved Him, and would have suffered 
martyrdom for Him. He has greatly humiliated her, nothing 
having prospered in her hands in spite of her ardent desires 
to serve Him.' 

This affair again increased the growing volume of ill-will felt 
for Saint-Cyran, the offended Abbe de Prieres ranging himself 
presently with his calumniators. But, like the affair of the 
Chapelet, its immediate consequences were to the good and 
furthered the return of Port Royal to its early spirit, reuniting 
the two sisters, Angelique and Agnes. Before peace and 
concord finally reigned there was, however, a last grievous 
strife : 

' God drew one good result, among others, from the exit 
of this Nun from Port Royal, which was that, seeing that 
there remained only the Mere Genevieve who could serve 
the House, after having asked advice from M. de Saint-Cyran, 
I said to M. the Bishop of Langres, that I begged him very 
humbly to bring back the Mere Agnes from the Monastery 
where he had sent her, because, as he could well see, she was 
absolutely necessary to Port Royal. We were then on very 
cold terms, and he no longer opposed me, knowing that I took 
advice before asking him anything, so that, although it did 
not please him, he at once granted it, and I lost no time in 
sending to fetch her. 

' She arrived with five of our Sisters, November the 20th, 
1635, and stopped at the Monastere du S. Sacrement. I found 
her so prejudiced against M. de Saint-Cyran, against me, and 
against the changes that had been made at Port Royal (because 
of those things which the Bishop and the Nuns had established 
there contrary to the customs of the Order she had so loved), 
that I found her a different creature ; however, she spoke with 
discretion and gentleness. But the others were so impassioned 
that it cannot be told what were their excesses. I was very 

LOWNDES P 



210 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

grieved about it, and I wrote to the Mother Abbess of Port 
Royal, to warn her, that she might not be dismayed or afflicted 
at seeing them in this state. And taking farewell of the 
Mother Agnes, I told her that I hoped before six months 
from that date to see her in a different frame of mind. 

' The Bishop came to see them, and there were great caresses 
on his side and tears on theirs, at having the misfortune of 
quitting his Diocese. I begged M. de Saint-Cyran to see the 
Mother Agnes, and informed him of this change in her spirit, 
but that I believed, however, she would recover when he had 
spoken to her, knowing her so reasonable and so God-fearing 
that the truth would at once restore her spirit. He excused 
himself, as he did always at first, fearing to put himself forward. 
But as I told him he was pledged to help her, since he had 
defended her and borne her so good a witness in the defence 
of the Chapelet, he at length promised. He saw her once or 
twice; and, some days after, she wrote to me, recalling that 
I had said she would change before six months, that six days 
had sufficed to undeceive her in place of six months ; that she 
had seen M. de Saint-Cyran, and could say, without drawing 
comparisons, that never had any man spoken as this one. I was 
very greatly comforted on reading this letter, to see my sister 
in this disposition, and that God repaired in His goodness the 
evil I had done, sending her to that House in consequence 
of the engagement into which I had precipitated myself ; 
a thing which would have done great harm to ours, and would 
have ruined it utterly, had not the Divine Providence drawn 
good from all my faults, by a working of His infinite mercy 
for which I can never show sufficient gratitude. 

' As soon as the Mother Agnes was won, the others who 
had come with her divided off and linked themselves with 
Madame de Pontcarre, with whom they mingled their murmurs 
in her room, and the Bishop (M. de Langres) came to see them 
in the parlour of that lady, and she conveyed to him their 
letters. There were also a Father of the Oratory (the Father 
Vigne), a friend of the Bishop's, who came to see them. One 
of these Nuns (my Sister Marie Claire) was my own sister, 
and the most inflamed of all, in her belief that there was not 
in the world a greater Saint than this Bishop ; and she looked 
upon us as the most faithless persons that ever were, to the 
grace God had given us in so holy a Director; which led this 
poor Sister to pray God day and night with extreme fervour 
and many tears, that it would please Him to undeceive us. 
Her great devoutness, and her punctuality in the Observances 
of the Rule, made her loved and respected in the House, 
besides that she had so great a kindness for everybody, and 



STRIFE AT PORT ROYAL 211 

especially for the sick, that she was always ready to serve 
them ; and this caused her to attract to her side some who 
thought that she was not valued as much as she deserved. 

'All this took place, however, quietly, because of the great 
respect and confidence given to the Mother Agnes, who, more- 
over, was very united with the Mother Genevieve, who w r as 
Abbess, and who made her Prioress directly she returned ; so 
that it was only those in revolt who dared speak openly, and 
that but seldom, and only when something offended them. 

' After I had returned from the 5. Sacrement, I was given 
the post of Mistress of Novices ; and judging that I had 
need, in order to be able to serve them, of a Confessor with 
the qualities necessary for leading souls to God, of which 
he whom we had, and who had been given by the Bishop, 
had none, I begged the Mother Agnes, who was Superior (through 
the absence of the Mother Abbess sent to the S. Sacrement), 
to implore M. de Saint-Cyran to give us one. He did so, and 
sent us M. Singlin, who then had charge of the Hopital de la 
Pitie, where Madame his mother had given herself up to serve 
the poor with great charity. I at once put all our Novices 
into his hands, and such of our Pupils as it was desired to 
prepare for the Holy Communion at Easter, and we saw soon 
the fruit of the saintly Direction of this good Ecclesiastic. 
He went also to confess our Sisters of the S. Sacrement, M. de 
Saint-Cyran having judged it better to do so no longer, after I 
had left ; besides that he went to his Abbey, so that M. Singlin 
alone remained to us. 

' Little by little the rebellious Nuns retracted, and those 
whom they had estranged retracted also, with the exception 
of two (one of whom was my sister above spoken of), who 
strengthened themselves every day in their resistance by their 
communication with the Bishop ; which obliged the Mother 
Agnes, after she had been elected Abbess (September, 1636) 
to beg him very humbly in a letter not to come any more 
to the Monastery. From that time he came no more, but 
the letters between him and his Nuns still continued. 

' At the election of the Mother Agnes, we received an evident 
help from God. These rebellious Nuns, supported by the 
Bishop and Madame de Pontcarre, had done all they could 
to prevent it ; and the Grand Vicar, who presided in place 
of M. de Paris, had been quite won over against us, so that 
we were in great fear lest there should be a division. But 
God by His grace did not permit it, and there were so few 
who did not give her their voice, that the President, all in anger, 
was obliged to pronounce her legitimately elected ; at which 
all the Sisters were very joyful, with exception of these four 

p 2 



212 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

or five. But in six months they all returned to God, with 
movements of penitence so great that they edified the Com- 
munity more than they had scandalized it. My Sister Marie 
Claire, as she who had been the most culpable in her passion, 
was also by grace of God the most strongly touched. She 
wished her penitence to be as visible as her faults had been. 
She wore the habit, and performed the duties, of Lay Sister 
six months, and would have done so all her life, if M. de Paris, 
whom she implored very humbly, had not refused her this 
grace, which she desired with great ardour to repair her faults. 
' Madame de Pontcarre, with whom she had broken, was 
very surprised to see her and the others with these good move- 
ments ; but she was not any the more touched ; on the 
contrary it exasperated her. She gave a very faithful report 
to the Bishop, who also was annoyed ; and he composed 
the Memoir which has been so much talked of, which he gave 
to another Bishop (M. de Harlay de Sancy, Bishop of S. Malo) 
to give to the Cardinal de Richelieu, who on other grounds 
of more weight with him, and also being urged to it by the 
Pere Joseph, caused M. de Saint-Cyran to be arrested by order 
of the King, and had him imprisoned in the Bois de Vincennes, 
May the i4th, 1638.' 



Angelique's narrative closes here. We must pause for a 
moment upon these final dissensions within the convent, 
before passing to the outer events which now so deeply 
affected it the imprisonment of Saint-Cyran and the so-called 
'movement of Jansenism'. 

The figure of Madame de Pontcarre need not long detain us. 
Suffice it to say that, received as ' benefactress ' in the house 
on the first settling in Paris, she had soon proved an exacting 
and troublesome inmate. At first pious and kindly, she 
might, Angelique thought, have come to good had she been 
well directed. She made a ' sacrifice ', in the early days and 
at the instance of the Bishop of Langres, of her lute-playing, 
to which she was much attached. But she soon relapsed 
into such mitigated ' worldliness ' as was possible in her con- 
ventual residence. A spacious apartment was allowed her 
in the new building, where she built a terrace for herself 
and harassed the nuns with the constant watering of her 
orange-trees. As the Bishop grew more mundane, his inter- 
course with this lady became frivolous to a degree that shocked 



PEACE AT PORT ROYAL 213 

and alarmed the Sisters appointed to wait on her. He would 
spend whole days in her parlour ; their intimacy was so great 
that she saw to the furnishing of his new house in Paris. 
Finally she became, as Angelique briefly tells, centre of this 
party of malcontents in the Convent, their go-between with 
the Bishop, and her parlour their place of rendezvous. In 
the sequel, as peace and dullness, the poor lady doubtless 
experienced reigned again, she became herself so discon- 
tented that Port Royal, hampered though it still was for money, 
found it expedient to be rid of her at all costs and, undertaking 
to pay her a yearty income for the money sunk in the building, 
bade her seek another residence. Madame de Pontcarre was 
thenceforth, in their eyes, merely one of the calumniators 
of Saint-Cyran. 1 

The penitence of Marie Claire is of another order of interest, 
and belongs to the heart of our subject. Among the Arnauld 
sisterhood there is no more touching figure than this tender 
impressionable girl, child of Angelique's spirit, kindling with 
her beloved sister's ardour, brought by that same sister under 
an estranging influence, and reunited with her at length only 
to find a last outlet for her high-strung fervour in undying 
penitence. The niece, Angelique de S. Jean, tells the tale. 

1 v. Relation de ce que Madame de Pontcarre fit a Port-Royal, depuis 
qu'elle y entra comme bienfaitrice, jusqu'a sa sortie. Par la Mere Marie- 
Dorothee de I'lncarnation le Conte, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, 
p. 495 seq. 



CHAPTER XIV 

The tale of Soeur Marie Claire Arnauld, her revolt and her subsequent 
penitence; as narrated by the Mere Angelique de S. Jean Arnauld, 
her niece. 

THE reader is acquainted already with Marie Claire in girl- 
hood, and will remember how her love for the maternal elder 
sister conquered her natural fastidiousness (ante, Chap. Ill, p. 40). 
That love remained intense and dominant, although Angelique, 
jealous of ah 1 human motives sullying the purity of God's 
service, strove to check rather than encourage it. 

' After the years spent at Maubuisson, Marie Claire returned 
to Port Royal with the Mother Angelique in 1623 when the 
King had appointed another Abbess to Maubuisson. This 
great Novitiate of thirty Sisters whom they had trained there, 
returned with them to Port Royal, and their fervour having 
only increased by this change, Sister Marie Claire continued 
to devote herself with the other Mothers to feed this ardour 
by the inventions they sought in order to test their virtue 
and purify it in the test. 

' God took heed also to test hers ; the Mother Angelique 
contributed thereto with Him, and, because she believed that 
Sister Marie Claire's affection for her sprang from a natural 
ardour and vivacity which it was difficult for her to moderate, 
she mortified her frequently on this point.' * 

The Bishop of Langres, on his first acquaintance with Port 
Royal went to greater extremes : 

' It happened that at this time a Prelate (the Bishop of 
Langres), in whom the Mother Angelique reposed confidence 
because of his high reputation of capacity and of piety, came 
to Port Royal. He noticed this excessive attachment which 
Sister Marie Claire seemed to have for her, and he said that, were 

1 Relation de la Vie et des Vertus de la Soeur Marie de Sainte-Claire 
Arnauld. Par la Mere Angelique de S. Jean Arnauld, sa niece, Memoires 
pour servir . . ., vol. iii, p. 429 seq. 



THE TALE OF MARIE CLAIRE 215 

he in her place, he would never speak to her. This sufficed 
to the good disposition of heart of this true Religious ; so 
soon as she had learnt from his words what she believed to 
be the will of God, she listened no longer to her suffering or 
to her reason. She undertook this exercise of virtue which 
cost her so dear, and courageously gave to God the sole gratifi- 
cation she had kept for herself when she renounced all, in 
such a manner that for some years she did not speak at all 
to the Mother Angelique, not even for the commonest things, 
and scarcely ventured even to look at her. God willed to 
add yet further to her voluntary sacrifice. For as this was 
the time of the transference of the Monastery of Port Royal 
des Champs to Paris, the Mother Angelique, on going to establish 
that House, did not take her with her, and let her come only 
among the very last, about a year later ; so that she learned 
during this separation which she had never before experienced, 
that there is no union secure, or capable of making us happy, 
save that which links us to an immutable object, and which 
makes us find in Him all we ought to love for His sake.' l 

There had been already a briefer parting. When Angelique 
was at Lys just before leaving for Paris, she had dictated 
the forcible letters to Marie Claire and other nuns, alluded 
to by her companion nun, reproving their weak distress and 
anxiety. Again, subsequent to the removal, Marie Claire was 
sent for a time to aid in reform of a convent at Auxerre. Her 
clinging spirit made even this absence grievous ; it was but 
slight preparation for the real trial which awaited her on 
transference to the convent at Tard : 

' She, with our Sister Angelique de Ste Agnes de Marie de 
la Falaire and another, followed the Mother Agnes, some six 
months later, to that Convent.' 

' They had already been made to start on this journey 
towards the end of November, 1629, at the beginning of a bad 
winter and in a time of melting snow, which had so flooded 
the roads that they would themselves have been submerged 
had they persisted on their way, so that after tw r o days those 
who escorted them were forced to bring them back to Port 
Royal, whence they set forth again only in the following month 
of March. Thus it was that this new government tested 
the patience and obedience of the Mother Angelique and of her 
Sisters. 

' She (Angelique) suffered more than they on these occasions, 

1 Ib., p. 430. 



216 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

and, since she was in the habit of acting with much prudence 
and charity in all things, her mind as well as her heart was 
disturbed that matters should be undertaken with so little 
forethought, and that the Nuns should be exposed without 
necessity to all the mischances that may happen in a great 
journey during the worst season of the year, when one must 
travel almost as much in the dark as by daylight. She 
preserved silence nevertheless, being persuaded that her time 
for obedience, so long desired, had come ; for she was then 
on the point of relinquishing the Abbey to make -it elective, 
as she did the following summer. Thus she instructed the 
others by the great example which she gave them. 

' Sister Marie Claire, whatever her sorrow, did not venture 
even to let it be seen by her tears. She said farewell to the 
Community without weeping ; but, wishing it to be observed 
that she rendered this due to obedience, and that she did not 
feel it the less, she said on leaving them : " You see, my Sisters, 
that I do not weep." As much as to say that she did all that 
could lie with her, and that she offered to God in silence the 
sacrifice of her heart broken with sorrow at such a parting. 

' The roads were still so bad at the close of the winter, when 
they set out, that a thousand disagreeable accidents occurred ; 
to the point that they were obliged to dismount from the 
carriage in a bad road at nightfall, each walking without 
seeing the others, so that one of the Nuns (Sister Angelique 
de Ste Agnes de Marie de la Falaire) strayed so far from 
her companions and was so lost that, but for a gentleman on 
horseback who met her and dismounted to escort her till 
she had rejoined the carriage, she would have been in peril 
of drowning and being killed, not to mention other mishaps 
from which God preserved her by this encounter, which might 
have been so dangerous and was so favourable.' 1 

(The heroine herself has recounted this incident and begs the 
reader to ' conceive the feelings of a Nun, all alone for two lieux 
with a man '. In later retrospect, however, her escort, thought 
of gratefully as 'guardian angel ', lost his terrible aspect). 2 

' The very day that they reached Dijon they thought they 
would be drowned, and they were all soaked when they entered 
the Convent whither they went. In this state they were well 

1 Relation de la Vie et des Vertus de la Sceur Marie de Sainte-Claire 
Arnauld. Par la Mere A ngelique de S. Jean Arnauld, sa niece, Memoires 
pour servir . . ., vol. iii, p. 432 seq. 

' Relation de la Sceur Angelique de Sainte-Agnes de Marie de la Falaire 
. . . Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, pp. 411-13. 



THE TALE OF MARIE CLAIRE 217 

received, but directly after, Sister Marie Claire was taken to 
a cell to begin there a very close solitude and as it were a 
rigorous Novitiate, although this name was not given to it. 

' She was expressly forbidden to hold any communication 
with the Mother Agnes her sister, whom we have mentioned 
as sent to this Abbey the previous year, and who filled there 
the post of Prioress. She was forbidden even to speak to 
a single one of the Nuns of Port Royal who had come with, 
or before her, to that House, so that she found herself suddenly 
a stranger among persons unknown, whose spirit and customs 
were very contrary to her bent, and without any consolation 
whether interior or exterior. In the anguish of heart which 
she experienced, her ardent nature and the vivacity of her 
spirit and her feelings increased the suffering. For the more 
she loved all the persons from whom she now was separated, 
the more she suffered from this strange solitude, and the more 
she found contrariety among minds whom the temperament 
of the country and their maxims, even in respect of the spiritual 
life, rendered infinitely different from what she had seen all 
her life. 

' She continued a very long time in this distress, with so 
passionate a desire to return to Port Royal that she told the 
Mother Angelique shortly before she died, speaking of what 
she had suffered at that time, that she believed she had never 
made a greater sacrifice to God than when once she had offered 
up this intense desire of returning, with the resolve never 
more to think of it and to resign herself absolutely to His will. 
It was this abandonment of herself to God which alone calmed 
her distress. But, by a strange enough revulsion, she passed 
from this first repugnance to so great an esteem for the Conduct 
of that place, that it was afterwards an occasion for quite 
new suffering when she had to leave. 

' One will not however be astonished at her passing to such 
a contrary disposition when one considers the circumstances ; 
and one may see that even her virtue contributed to the 
change. With perfect submission always for the opinions of 
the Mother Angelique, she saw that it was she who had entirely 
delivered over her and her House to the Conduct of the Prelate 
who did it all ; so that, believing herself obliged to resign 
herself as she did, she condemned in herself all the repugnance 
which she felt, and directed all her effort to combat it until 
she came to the point of making the sacrifice told above, 
after which, not venturing any longer to turn her eyes to her 
native land, she strove to attach herself to the place of her 
exile. It became indeed easier for her in the sequel to habituate 
herself to it. For as the merits of the Mother Agnes had 



218 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

led the Nuns to elect her as Superior from the very first year 
she was there, the yoke became very gentle to my Sister Marie 
Claire, when she had now to obey only a person whom she 
loved more than herself. 

' There still remained the customs and spirit of this House, 
very contrary to hers. But besides the fact that habituation 
took away some of the distaste, the austerity of the Conduct, 
favouring her bent for penance, reconciled her to their manner 
of life, and she was very glad to have more liberty to maltreat 
her body than the Mother Angelique had allowed her at Port 
Royal, her Conduct having been always accompanied by great 
discretion, because she strove rather to humiliate and mortify 
the passions of the mind, than to weaken the forces necessary 
to sustain the labour of the Religious Life. This other Conduct 
was the direct opposite ; for it held much by a certain exterior 
hardness and austerity, which obliged persons to take much upon 
themselves in seeking out devices of mortification in addition to 
the ordinary practices, with but little regard for their infirmities. 
But to sustain them under this rigour, of which nature soon 
would tire, much freedom of spirit was allowed, which com- 
pensated for this outward austerity. 

' My Sister Marie Claire remained then for over five years 
in this Monastery ; and in the meantime many things took 
place at Port Royal. It may be seen elsewhere what led the 
Mother Angelique to leave the guidance of this Prelate we have 
mentioned, and to place herself entirely under that of M. de 
Saint-Cyran, who was of opinion that the ancient Rule should 
be re-established at Port Royal and all the Observances, which 
had been changed under the previous government. Since 
these two opposed Conducts had brought division into certain 
spirits, because there were persons at Port Royal attached 
to the former, and in particular a Benefactress (Madame de 
Pontcarre) who greatly condemned this change and who was 
careful to inform the Mother Agnes and her companions in 
Burgundy by letter of all that took place in Paris, it was easy 
to prejudice them against it, in their persuasion of the enlighten- 
ment and piety of this first Director (the Bishop of Langres), 
and since they were totally ignorant of what had happened 
since their departure from Paris.' 

When recalled, as narrated, Agnes and Marie Claire, with 
the other nuns from Port Royal, came accordingly full of 
regret and passionate prejudice. ' They started out in this 
disposition, and the Mother Agnes did not conceal it from the 
Mother Angelique on her arrival in Paris, when she passed by 



THE TALE OF MARIE CLAIRE 219 

the Maison du S. Sacrement, where she (Mere Angelique) still 
was, to see her. But the Mother Angelique, who knew her 
spirit and her heart, did not distress herself ; and assured her 
that it would not take long to change her mind when once she 
saw matters near to, seeing the enlightenment and uprightness 
she knew to be in her heart ; and so it came to pass. 

' My Sister Marie Claire was more strongly prejudiced and 
had even confirmed herself against impressions she might 
receive from without, by her firm opinion that there was nothing 
holier and wiser than the previous rule of the Prelate, whom 
she placed in the first rank of the Saints, and believed accord- 
ingly that whatsoever was contrary to it was a path of error. 
They had not seen him since their departure from Paris, 
so that his visits to Port Royal yet further fanned the zeal 
of these Sisters, and made them take sides in the disunion 
which had arisen between him and M. de Saint-Cyran ; which 
began to form a species of party in Port Royal. This Lady 
Benefactress of whom we have spoken and certain Nuns, 
both among those returned from Dijon and among those who 
had not left Port Royal but who were attached to the Rule 
of the Bishop, were thus united in their criticism of the Conduct 
of their Superiors and of the whole Community, causing as 
it were schism and a manner of scandal. Never would my 
Sister Marie Claire have been capable of engaging in anything 
of the kind, had she not let herself be dazzled by a pretext 
of piety and zeal, believing that she owed to God this testimony 
of fidelity which she rendered to a person in whom she had 
up to then revered His authority, and whom she believed 
filled with His spirit.' 

' It is true that she observed at this time certain changes in 
the behaviour of this Prelate, which gave her some apprehension 
that his virtue was not of the same exaltation as she had held 
it in the beginning. But she satisfied herself by praying 
God ardently in these words, said secretly in her heart : Non 
dabis Sanctum tuum videre cormptionem. She would gladly 
almost have not heard her own prayer, and that God would 
nevertheless have granted it ; such pain did she have at 
getting a glimpse of what she could not conceive might ever be. 
She cherished in her spirit the utmost she could the idea so 
strongly imprinted there of the enlightenment and usefulness of 
this Conduct, which she could not believe reasonable to abandon 
after so greatly esteeming it. Save for this point in which 
she was in error, and which led her into disunion with her 
Superiors, she was for all the rest in uniform submission, and, 



220 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

although she wrote often to this Prelate and had like facility 
with the others to convey her letters to him without the 
knowledge of the Superior, by medium of this Benefactress, 
who had her own turnstile and her parlour, she never used it : 
but she carried them always to the Superior, knowing she 
owed it to obedience. But she was deceived in believing that 
she did not owe her a like submission on this other point, 
as regards which she thought she would have been wanting 
to God by lacking in fidelity to this former Conduct, which 
her Superiors themselves had held in such esteem.' 

' Her outward behaviour did not change throughout that 
time. She appeared always equally fervent in practices of 
charity, equally attentive to prayer and equally remote from 
every kind of irregularity contrary to the duties of Religion. 
For she could not endure the liberties which some who shared 
her feelings took on every occasion, diverting themselves 
with discourse injurious to the reputation of the persons 
whose Conduct they criticized, or testifying bitterness against 
them. As she believed she was defending a good cause, she 
desired to do so holily; but this, which showed her heart 
the less corrupted, served only to blind her spirit the more, 
and to blind also the others, who remained the more attached 
to her opinions from their esteem for her virtue. 

' She suffered in the midst of it ah 1 inconceivable pain, and 
she would have been fortunate had it been for a good cause. 
No one has ever had a better nature or more affection, and we 
have seen already how she had been compelled to do violence 
to herself in order to moderate her extreme attachment for 
the Mother Angelique. She loved no less the Mother Agnes, at 
that time her Abbess ; and she had in the House her mother 
a Religious, and her other sisters ; all united under the Conduct 
to which she was opposed. Her heart was thus constantly 
torn, and she was amazed herself how she could live in the 
mental torment she endured ; which caused her to cry con- 
tinually to God, although she knew not what she asked in 
asking strength to suffer as long as He willed, since He might 
have answered her that He does not will the death of the 
sinner, but rather his conversion and his life. In effect He 
was preparing the means for hers little by little. 

' For when this division had lasted fourteen months, the 
Mother Agnes, who \vas then Abbess as beforesaid, judging that 
no remedy was to be hoped for this disorder so long as the 
Prelate's visits nursed these spirits in revolt, took the resolution 
of begging him to come no longer to Port Royal. Many human 
considerations had to be overlooked before coming to this 
point, in respect of a person with whom such engagements 



THE TALE OF MARIE CLAIRE 221 

had been taken. But it was better to pluck out the right 
eye than to suffer darkness to spread over the body and be 
occasion of scandal. She wrote to him accordingly to this 
effect with much respect but with great firmness, and at the 
same time she forbade my Sister Marie Claire and all the 
others to write to him. 

' It were to no purpose to tell what the sorrow and what 
the anguish of mind of my Sister Marie Claire, since the 
sufferings caused by error are vain sufferings and pains of 
sin. But what may show that God was, notwithstanding, 
hidden in the cloud in the midst of this tempest, is that she 
looked only to Him in her affliction, praying to Him cease- 
lessly and keeping watch upon her words, that none might 
escape her against God, and against the respect she owed to 
the persons who represented Him. This remedy, although 
violent, had not a speedy effect, and although my Sister Marie 
Claire no longer ventured to have any communication with 
the Prelate, she preserved in her heart the same adherence 
to his spirit and his maxims ; which prevented her from 
savouring the Conduct of the House, even though, little by 
little, she could not hinder herself from seeing that it \vas much 
more conformable to the spirit of the Rule, and though she 
would readily have loved it had her heart been loosened from 
this tie \vhich checked her natural impulse. 

' The Mothers, who saw no prospect of healing her, employed 
for her the most powerful of all remedies, as S. Benedict 
calls it, w r hich is that of prayer, and God heard them. He 
put into the heart of M. d'Andilly, Sister Marie Claire's eldest 
brother, who was greatly moved at seeing her remain always 
in this spirit of disunion, to speak to her with assurance and 
freedom ; for up to then he had not done so. He had a first 
interview with her, which was without result, because she 
employed the w r hole force of her mind and of her mistaken 
zeal to guard herself against the impressions of respect and 
affection which might have undeceived her as to the opinion 
to which she clung so strongly. He returned eight days 
later, and although he spoke to her forcibly, he yet made no 
impression upon her spirit. Seeing this, an impulse came to 
him to tell her that he saw clearly what he asked of her was 
not to be brought about by the words of a man, and must 
needs be the effect of the all-powerful grace which the Holy 
Spirit pours upon the heart ; that he begged her to kneel 
with him that they might together pray God to be pleased 
to speak to her heart. They did so, and remained the 
one and the other some time praying to God, who answered 
them so promptly that my Sister Marie Claire, when she finished 



222 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

her prayer, found herself a new creature. She understood 
the danger of the state into which she had fallen ; she testified 
her regret by her tears, and, as she desired to return to her duty 
by returning to the submission and union she owed to her 
Superiors, they were called ; and, as they came to the same 
parlour, she flung herself at their feet and placed her soul 
again within their hands, asking their forgiveness for her 
revolt, and protesting that she submitted for the future to 
the Conduct of the House, and to all they might be pleased 
to ask of her. 

' In truth she continued thenceforth in this disposition ; but 
it was as yet only the break of day ; the sun had not risen, 
and there remained still in her spirit the shades of the past 
night. God disposed her little by little to enter the light 
of truth ; and, on the day of the Feast of the Assumption, 
the Holy Virgin, whom she had all her life invoked in her 
troubles, obtained for her a change of heart so sudden and 
so complete that from that day she became a different person. 
She began to recognize and to lament the errors of her mistaken 
zeal with as much sorrow as though she had passed her life 
in most criminal disorders. For this reason she borrowed 
the words of the prodigal son to begin a letter which she 
wrote that day to the Mother Agnes her Abbess, in which she 
poured out her heart with her tears, to blot out all traces of 
her disobedience and of this blindness which had made her 
fight against the path of God and so holy a Conduct, because 
she was herself straying through the affection of her heart 
which would not let her see anything that might have en- 
lightened her. For, even though she had returned to the 
submission she owed her Superiors some time previously, 
she had not failed to preserve in her mind the veneration she 
thought due, for fidelity's sake, to the opinions and lights 
of her former Director. 

' But she began to make a more accurate discernment 
when truth had pierced the clouds which obscured her spirit, 
and from that moment no one appreciated better than she 
those holy maxims of penance, of which Saint-Cyran had given 
the first knowledge in this century, when the ancient discipline 
of the Church seemed wholly ignored, no one any longer 
speaking of it because they pursued a wholly different practice.' 
(The aUusion is to Saint-Cyran's revival of the primitive Church 
practice of penitential abstinence for a time from Communion, 
a revival which, intended to honour the Sacrament, was easily 
represented as neglect and disparagement.) 'While the 
division of Marie Claire and her companions lasted, it was 
this point of the Conduct of M. de Saint-Cyran which they most 



THE TALE OF MARIE CLAIRE 223 

strongly opposed, because it was that which the Prelate had 
condemned in his teaching. When, on the contrary, God had 
touched her, it was that to which she attached herself with 
greatest ardour and zeal. She entered upon movements of 
penitence so humble and so strong, that there was nothing 
which could slake her eagerness to give satisfaction to God. 
No sort of humiliation appeared to her great enough to repair 
the scandal she had given to all her Sisters, and every kind 
of suffering seemed to her too light for her to punish herself. 

' She wished thenceforth to place her soul in the hands of 
M. de Saint-Cyran, that he might teach her the ways of God, 
which she was already persuaded he knew better than any one ; 
for this purpose she begged to make him a general confession. 
And, having been touched on the day of the Assumption of 
the Holy Virgin, she wrote to him on that of S. Louis, 1636, 
the following letter : 

' " My Father, It was my intention to seal up the strong 
desire which was given me, while communicating on the day 
of the Holy Virgin, of placing my soul within your hands 
and of imploring you by the divine mercy to show me the paths 
of true penitence, because, recognizing how I had despised 
this grace in the time of blindness of my spirit and hardness 
of my heart, I saw myself unworthy of even aspiring to this 
benefit, and confessed before God that the privation was 
my desert. But I own to you, my Father, that the silence 
I had resolved to keep is impossible to me, because the move- 
ment which urges me to be converted permits me no delay. 
You are free to refuse me, but I am not free to withdraw ; 
and you will command me to do so before I cease from impor- 
tuning you. I have little hope of being received by you, and 
all manner of reasons lead me to fear that you will not burden 
yourself with so wretched a soul, one which in truth has no 
fellow in malice. Nevertheless, I do not wholly despair, 
because I know that the mercies of God are immense, and it 
may be that He will constrain you to do this action of extra- 
ordinary charity. I have some ground to hope in His goodness, 
seeing the condition from which He has drawn me. I look 
upon it with terror, and my whole life is so criminal that 
I should scarcely venture to hope for the grace of penance. 
I know that God can save me, but what obligation has He 
to work this miracle ? I adore His judgement upon me with 
trembling and with tranquillity, and whatever it may please 
you to do, in consequence of this, with submission and reverence, 
desiring to remain, whatever it may be, my Father, your very 
humble and very obedient daughter and servant, Sister Marie 
de Jesus-Christ. This day of S. Louis." 



224 THE NUNSJDF PORT ROYAL 

' M. de Saint-Cyran remained for six months unwilling to grant 
what she asked, as much to test the soundness of the change 
as because he thought she would feel more freedom in telling 
some other than him all the difficulties she had felt on his 
account during the time of her disaffection. Her perseverance 
in asking this grace and awaiting it with humility, made him 
grant it. She saw M. de Saint-Cyran at the beginning of the 
year 1637, on the Eve of the Purification of the Virgin, all 
of Whose feasts seemed to be marked as days of grace for 
her ; and, a few days after, she began her general confession 
with feelings of humiliation so profound and such great sorrow 
that, far from M. de Saint-Cyran requiring to persuade her of 
the necessity of atoning to God by a penance corresponding 
to the sins she had committed, he had to moderate the ardour 
she had to make hers public and as lasting as her life. 

' She asked, on this account, for the rank and habit of a Lay 
Sister to be granted her, in order to be all her life servant 
and last of the Community, and to expiate by work as well 
as by tears the scandal she had caused by her strife. She 
wore accordingly this habit for three months, and spent this 
time, a part of which was Lent, in the work of the kitchen, 
which was combined with that of fasting, of the watch she 
kept for two hours every night before the Holy Sacrament, 
and of several other bodily austerities which she accounted 
as nothing compared with the sorrow of her soul, of which 
it might be said : Magna est velut mare contritio tua ; your 
sorrow is as great and as deep as the sea. 

' I know not if anybody ever believed himself more criminal 
and in consequence more subject to the justice of God. Not- 
withstanding that, M. de Saint-Cyran, who had heard her confes- 
sion, had observed in her heart so much righteousness before 
God as to say of her : " he had been surprised at seeing in her 
so much inclination to sin \\ithout being able to see any falls.'* 

' Her own feeling was very contrary, and she could see 
nothing in her life which she did not hold to call for tears. 
That came, in her, from the purity of the love she had always 
had for God, which made her feel the blindness into which 
she had fallen as a persecution she had offered to the truth, 
that is to say even to God, which she regarded as the greatest 
of crimes. 

' She was ill during these three months with a very painful 
fluxion which swelled her head and face extraordinarily. But 
after a few days, during which she was obliged to interrupt 
it in order to be cured, she returned to her work with the 
same ardour, and there is reason to believe that this fire would 
not ever have slackened in her, had she been permitted to 



THE TEACHING OF SAINT-CYRAN 225 

spend her life in this estate, since she left it, when obliged, 
only with much regret and in the hope that she might obtain 
from M. the Archbishop, Superior of the House, the permission 
she wished to ask, of returning permanently to the state of 
Lay Sister, which should be a monument of her penitence the 
remainder of her life. But her Superiors did not share this 
opinion. 

' It will not be futile to preserve here what my Sister Marie 
Claire wrote down, with great care not to forget it, of the advice 
given her by M. de Saint-Cyran for her guidance at the time she 
made him her general confession. Such persons as have known 
M. de Saint-Cyran will recognize his entire spirit, his piety, his 
soundness and his disinterested Conduct, which led souls to 
God without permitting them the least trifling on the road. 

' The first time he saw her, he addressed her with these 
words : "I had neither wish nor intention of seeing you. 
I came with another purpose ; but, on going to the Church, 
I felt myself impelled to ask for you. Your sole obligation 
for it is to God. To-day is the Feast of S. Ignatius, Martyr ; 
he is a note\vorthy Saint. Well, what is it you wish ? I am 
here to heal you show your wounds." 

' After she had discoursed to him about the state she had 
been in, he said this : "It must be seen before God, if you 
have been truly what you make out. Sometimes extravagance 
carries the spirit to say what it does not believe, and to follow 
that which it does not approve. One must make this dis- 
cernment. 

' " The external works of penitence must proceed from 
internal feeling, and there must be harmony between the one 
and the other. For one must beware of testifying more 
feeling outwardly than one has genuinely within. 

' "I praise God at seeing you return to Him in truth. It 
is a grace of which you do not sufficiently estimate the rarity ; 
among a thousand souls not one returns. I believed you 
inconvertible. Had you died, you could have claimed no 
great share in Heaven. I give you these words : Misericordias 
Domini in aeternum cantabo. God has remembered, says the 
Holy Virgin, His mercy which He seemed to have forgotten 
four thousand years. He has remembered it to withdraw you 
from this dangerous life. In what you have been recognize 
what you are, and in your change what He is." 

' When she began her confession, he said to her : " God 
is a spirit, and the sins of the spirit offend Him much more 
than the bodily. Your feelings on this point are sound. 
Beware of exaggeration. There is more humility in confessing 
simply. 

LOWNDES Q 



226 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

' " There is no need of examination to remember sins of 
consequence ; their impression is not effaced, because it 
touches the immortality of the soul. Stay before God without 
thoughts or words, He will understand you. I leave you 
with these words of the Gospel for the week : The last shall 
be first. In the first centuries sinners asked with extreme 
humility to be admitted to penance, and esteemed themselves 
unworthy even to approach the Priests. 

'"One must come alive to penance. That is the reason 
why I let you wait so long. I have let you live ; for five 
months you have been living with spiritual life. 

' "The first break of dawn is called day, even though it does 
not eclipse the shades of night ; even so the first spark of 
the true light which God sends upon a soul must be called 
grace, although it be still enveloped in the shades which sin 
brings with it. 

'"It is an extreme abuse to direct all souls alike; each 
soul must have its rule. Many things may be done without 
danger by innocent souls, which would be dangerous to souls 
wounded by sin, who, however cured by penitence, are not 
exempt from the weaknesses their wounds have left them. 
A soldier who has been dangerously wounded feels all his 
life, even though his wounds may be well healed, the change 
of weather, and, if he cares for his health, does not expose 
himself to fogs and snow, as another might do without peril. 
I cannot therefore leave you in your liberty of conscience, 
unless you desire me to deceive you like those who have 
attributed your troubles to other causes. I, who know your 
wounds, must heal them. I am the physician and must 
come to the remedy ; it lies in the cutting-off which you 
desire. The path is narrow ; it is deception to make it 
broad. In fine, it is the first rule of penance that whoso- 
ever has sinned in doing things illicit should abstain from 
those lawful. 

' "Let your penitence be accompanied by silence, by patience 
and by abstinence ; I mean that of the spirit which bears 
separation from all things. 

' I desire no sorrow that finds outlet in the senses ; take 
heed to your tears. I desire no grimaces, sighs, or gestures, 
but a silence of spirit that checks all movement. Pray to 
God, and be God's without affectation . . . You are happy to 
be a Religious. If you were in the world, it would be difficult 
to make you do the penance which you need. But your 
cloister favours the purpose, and your cloister and the 
observance of your rules, practised in a new spirit, are the 
best penance you can do. 



THE TEACHING OF SAINT-CYRAN 227 

' " The things which are obligatory must be accomplished 
before those which go beyond. You cannot have made me 
the proposal of penance in your paper without a movement 
of grace, and I must not answer you save in the movement 
of God ; I will refer it to Him. 

" We will make you Lay Sister this Lent. In ancient days 
the habit was changed in Lent, which was the time of grandis- 
sime penance, done to prepare the Catechumens for baptism. 
You will be engaged in work but without excess, so that you 
may be able to persevere. It is contrary to humility to wish 
to do extraordinary things. We are not saints, to do as 
the saints. One must remain humbly in mediocrity, and 
live in a certain disguise which lets nothing be seen in us except 
\vhat is ordinary. You will consider yourself the equal of 
the Lay Sisters in all things, only you will try to be the most 
humble. 

' "You will be the least of the House, to obey Jesus Christ, 
who warns us in the gospel, if we are called to a wedding, to 
take the lowest place. It is a wedding, is penance, to the 
\vhich God calls you in His goodness ; you will take then 
the lowest rank there. . . . 

' " Preserve silence and solitude internal and external, so far 
as you can ; cut off every occasion of amusement and grati- 
fication, leaving, whenever possible, places where talk of the 
world has been entered upon, or diverting it if it be in your 
power. 

' "I am amazed at the mercy God has shown you. It is a 
marvel when one returns from such straying. You must 
praise God, and give Him satisfaction by penance. You are 
now in penance, and in a habit and estate which witness your 
purpose to perform it. You must speak to us now by actions. 
It wall be sufficient to be what you are, and to persevere in 
the endurance of this estate with humility. In ancient days 
penitents changed their habits, and many who were innocent 
did the same by humility, mingling among the guilty ; and 
the Fathers said that penance was the remedy for the one set 
and the glory of the other." 

'As she had some distress at first under this change of estate, 
she acknowledged it to him, and he said : "I am not surprised 
at your difficulty. I should be so rather if it had not happened ; 
this must be so. ... It is a wile of your enemy; to withdraw 
you from your condition would be to favour his design. He 
is angry at seeing in lowliness a soul he wishes to exalt ; he 
fears lest its work, done for the sake of the painful works 
exercised by Jesus Christ when on earth, should bring it near to 
God. . . . When we have undertaken a work for God, advisedly, 

Q2 



228 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

one must continue it without minding one's difficulties, diverting 
one's mind from them by a better occupation. It is an ill- 
grounded subject for distress, that which absence from the 
Choir gives you ; while not assisting at it, you are present 
there through the desire of the heart which God hears. . . . 

' " The Church ceases to sing Alleluia during the time of 
Lent, which is that of its penance, and, to do penance, you 
have broken off your customary singing. This privation must 
be endured patiently for penance. You are distressed because 
of a spirit who afflicts you, and I would wish you four to 
exercise you without ceasing ; this endurance would make 
you fit for something. You, more than others, are pledged 
to tolerance, in view of the incomparable tolerance God 
has shown you. Suffer then all sorts of humours ; work 
with joy and with so much gentleness that you may win 
spirits ; it is a grace of the Gospel to make the wolf and the 
lamb dwell together ; preserve peace, joy, and patience. 
Let your prayer be action ; recall this verse : Levavi manus 
meas ad mandata tua. . . . Silence is the lot of penitents, and 
internal silence yet more than exterior." 

' Another time, to sustain her in another difficulty, he 
said to her : " One must forget the past. Had one to think 
of sins committed, none would be happy. I am in no way 
satisfied with a hope which suffices only to prevent despair ; 
there needs one firm and constant in God, who is as infinitely 
gentle to souls who are in the true path, as He is infinitely 
terrible and rigorous to souls who follow a false one. He, 
Who has commanded us not to look back when once we have 
set our hand to the plough, does Himself what we must do ; 
He does not look upon the past sins of a soul who seeks His 
Kingdom." 

' " Were you to die at this hour, I would absolve you with 
joy, and should have as great hope of your salvation as I had 
ever of any one. The sins for which one does penance are 
forgotten by God.' 



55 5 



We may pass, yet more briefly than the niece Angelique 
de S. Jean, over the edifying tale of Marie Claire's further 
life, of her continued fidelity to the spirit of penitence, of 
her self-denial and her acts of charity. Suffice it to note, 
from another source, that our Mere Angelique found a fitting 
way to gratify her love for this younger sister, privileging 
her alone to share in such peculiarly painful tasks of sick- 
nursing as she ordinarily reserved for herself. And when, 



THE TEACHING OF SAINT-CYRAN 229 

after three years of this mortified but happy life, she fell ill 
to death of a dysentery, Marie Claire had thoughts only of 
God, and could die in tranquil peace with ' Victory, Victory ' 
upon her lips. 

Angelique de S. Jean, who tells the tale of Marie Claire, 
is full, it is evident, of sympathetic love for her penitent aunt, 
so excusably led into error, so amply atoning it. She herself, 
a child at the time in her convent, was, we read, greatly over- 
come at Marie Claire's death. Saint-Cyran, for his part, what- 
ever his hidden regard for the candid uprightness of that soul, 
was far from palliating her offence. Had she died in revolt 
she would have had, he told her, small claim upon heaven. 

The peculiar interest of the tale of Marie Claire, as regards 
the history of Port Royal, lies in the entrance of Saint-Cyran, 
in this close intimacy, upon the scene. Scarce elsewhere, 
and not at all in the nuns' narratives, have we so clear a view 
of this Saint of Port Royal. ' Fanatic ' is the natural verdict 
of our human wisdom, thinking how excusably and with how 
pure a purpose, Marie Claire had sinned. Yet that we may 
not overrate the fanaticism, nor regard the culprit's remorse 
as all morbid, let us bear in mind that the offence was, un- 
questionably, a breach of a nun's supreme duty, observance 
of her vow of obedience to the appointed Superior, to her Abbess. 
She had helped to foster cabal and schism within her convent ; 
later, as the statements of the rebellious nuns turned to the 
hurt of Saint-Cyran, she saw her offence in the light, doubly 
grievous, of a 'persecution of the truth'. Saint-Cyran, mean- 
while, saw penance as a good in itself, the peculiar good which 
he desired to restore in the Church. ' The cure of sinners, 
it is the glory of the righteous,' he quotes from the Fathers ; 
he respected, and had no wish to moderate, Marie Claire's 
thirst for that ' wedding feast '. A strain of fanaticism may 
not be denied him. Yet, more perhaps than any other reformer, 
Saint-Cyran calls forth the question, is not such fanaticism 
the logical outcome of Christian doctrine, of belief in human 
corruption and in the merits of vicarious suffering ? 

At least, Saint-Cyran's 'fanaticism' was tempered by grave 
tenderness, and, granted his premisses, by profound insight. 



230 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

His treatment of Marie Claire, though it may seem dispro- 
portioned to her offence, was well adapted to fortify her 
clinging soul and hold in check her emotional excesses ; or, 
to speak more accurately, to confine them to the safer ideal 
outlet. Nor may the sublimity of his faith be denied. To 
cite one last passage from his words to Marie Claire : 

{ The souls which are God's must have neither certitude nor 
foresight ; they must act by the faith which has neither clear 
light nor assurance in the continuance of good works ; they 
look to God and follow Him every instant, dependent upon 
the occasions His providence brings to birth. I should not 
desire to know what I shall do when I leave here. We are 
under obligation to ask our bread from God, that is to say 
His grace, only for each day, but I should like to ask it for 
every hour. A Christian soul needs an unparalleled and 
universal flexibility. It must know how to pass from rest 
to work, from work to rest, from prayer to action, from action 
to prayer, loving nothing, holding by nothing, prepared to 
do everything, and prepared also to do nothing when illness 
or obedience checks it, remaining useless with peace and joy. 
There is benefit in the break, and often while working we are 
doing nothing before God.' 

Two points in the advice of Saint-Cyran call for special note, 
as typical of his spirit and of the movement which sprang 
from him. First the profound care for sincerity. Heedless to 
moderate the penitent's zeal, he is scrupulous to ensure, not 
merely the obvious sincerity that matches feeling with words, 
but depth of reality to the feeling. He is on the guard against 
emotionalism. The outlet of sighs and tears are denied her ; 
acts alone are the legitimate product of sorrow. And secondly, 
what we may call the duality of the movement. In it two 
tendencies, ordinarily centrifugal, worked to one end ; respect for 
authority and tradition, for the Church, shared the field with 
personal dependence on the direct voice of God. Saint-Cyran saw 
the remedy for the evil days on which he had fallen in a revival 
of the disused Church practices and the doctrine of the Fathers ; 
the Primitive Church is his guide and ideal as of any High 
Anglican ; but he waits like a Methodist for a personal impulse 
from God, before seeing or answering Marie Claire. He had 
one eye upon ancient usage, the other upon the incalculable 



THE SPIRIT OF SAINT-CYRAN 231 

present movement of grace. To the mind of antiquarian and of 
scholar, Saint-Cyran added something of the soul of a prophet 
of a fanatic if one will. The movement he set on foot was 
weighted with learning and borne up by authority authority 
of the past against that of the present ; but its force was faith 
in the grace of God speaking, not through authorities, or to 
the Church, but direct to the individual soul. 



CHAPTER XV 

Saint-Cyran and the movement of reform springing from his influence. 

WITH the imprisonment of the Abbe de Saint-Cyran the 
narrative of the Mere Angelique comes to a close, not indeed 
as terminating the tale of God's providence upon Port Royal, 
but because some press of occupation gave her an excuse for 
leaving it. Written as it was, not only amid the infirmities 
of age and illness, but against the grain, merely from ' obedience' 
and with a shrewd suspicion that her nuns desired it in order 
to commemorate her rather than to glorify God, it is a plain 
and restricted document, stating facts with little of the glow 
of fervour which seems to have attended her spoken words. 
Her indication of external accidents : the death of a friend, 
the exit of a nun, quarrels of Superiors, as evils prepared for 
the ultimate good of the convent, may raise a smile from the 
reader rather than convey to him the burning faith in the 
ever-present hand of God which was said to be her ' special 
gift '. In such partial providences rather than in universal 
laws, Port Royal saw the visible operation of the Deity ; later, 
as persecution engendered sectarianism, the tendency grew 
upon the community to see all outside events in their bearing 
upon itself, elect band witnessing for the truth. In Angelique 
the tendency left unimpaired her breadth of heart and is but 
a small check to the full flow of her charity. 

At least the profound sincerity that no less distinguished 
the Mother may be read in the quiet narrative, and we learn 
from it what were for her, looking back, the three great moments 
of her spiritual life, the crisis of her youth, so happily ending 
in her ' conversion ', her union with Fran9ois de Sales and 
Mme de Chantal, and finally this union, in which her narrative 
culminates, with the Abbe de Saint-Cyran. The coil of error 
tangled by mistaken judgement on her part, by the back- 
slidings of an ill-chosen Director, by ecclesiastical jealousies 




- 



JANSEN 
From engraving ot portrait by Philippe de Champaigne 



P. 23? 



THE ABBE DE SAINT-CYRAN 233 

and rival ambitions, had at length resolved itself into that 
supreme good. 

The junction of the Mere Angelique with Saint-Cyran, 
junction, as it proved, of her movement of conventual reform 
with a wider and far-reaching movement of reform within 
the Catholic Church, was indeed the event truly momentous 
in the history of Port Royal. 

About the same time that the young Abbess first gave her 
soul to reform and, with her Rule of S. Benedict as guide, 
sought, no new thing for her convent, but a revival of the 
ancient spirit and primitive discipline, the theological student 
Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, whom we know from his later 
benefice as the Abbe de Saint-Cyran, together with his friend 
and fellow student, the Fleming Jansen, turned his thoughts 
also to reform, of no one House or single Order but of the 
whole Church. Jansen and Saint-Cyran looked too for guidance 
to times past and to authorities which, though neglected, were 
not denied. 

At the close of their theological course, at Louvain and 
in Paris, these two friends retired (1611) to Du Vergier's home 
at Bayonne, to devote themselves to an indefatigable and 
exhaustive study of the Fathers of the Church. The fervour 
they brought to this study of Christian Antiquity has a parallel 
only in the earlier fervour brought by scholars to the revival 
of pagan literature. They spent twelve to fifteen hours a day 
at their books, their sole recreation the mild sport of kite- 
flying. Jansen passed whole nights, despite his delicate frame, 
in his armchair with a tome of the Fathers on the book-rest 
before him. ' You will kill this good Fleming,' Du Vergier's 
mother assured him, ' by dint of making him study.' ] 

Among the Fathers, one assumed in the eyes of these enthusi- 
asts a place of supreme authority. Jansen had drawn already, 
it would seem, a leaning towards S. Augustine from the 
University of Louvain, where the Augustinian teaching of Baius 
had recently flourished and recently been silenced by Rome. 

Now as he read and re-read S. Augustine, all his works 
ten times and the treatise against the Pelagians some thirty, 

1 Memoires touchant la Vie de M. de Saint-Cyran, pay M. Lancelot, vol. i, 
p. 102 seq. 



234 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

he fastened, he and Saint-Cyran, upon that Father as the 
bulwark par excellence of the Church, the doctor who had 
combated in advance, and against the Pelagians, tendencies 
actually undermining pure Christian doctrine. That doctrine 
was the total corruption of man, the impotence of his will, 
and the omnipotence of God's grace sole agent for good. 
The modern Pelagians, the Semi-Pelagians to be exact, were 
the Jesuits. From their ranks had come Molina who, finding 
a place in the economy of salvation for free-will, allowed some 
merit to man and diminished in consequence his dependence 
upon grace, ' which bloweth where it listeth,' diminishing too the 
supreme part played by the Atonement. And. though Molina's 
particular philosophic explanation (he sought to reconcile, by 
a theory of pre-established harmony, those irreconcilables, 
man's free-will and the fore-knowledge of God) had been 
rejected by Rome and was disowned by the body of Jesuits, 
the tendency which had led to it remained a rationalizing 
tendency strictly in unison, for the rest, with the general 
movement of thought. It was left to Protestant heretics 
though in their ranks, too, the conflict raged between Free Will 
and Grace to insist on the need for ' movements of grace '. 

The Jesuits again, with their dominant purpose of reasserting 
the sway of the Church, dwelt above all upon outer conformity, 
tending to set in the rites of the Church an efficacy almost 
magical and irrespective of inner change, whether of ' will ' 
or of ' grace '. In contrast to the moral laxity admitted under 
this system, Jansen and Saint-Cyran laid hold with fervour upon 
the early practices of the Church, with their close union between 
sacramental rites and moral discipline. 

And again, seeking unity, the Jesuits saw the Church as 
concentrated in its head, the Pope (with their General by his 
side), and depreciated in his favour the power of subordinate 
Bishops. Opposed to this also was the view which Jansen 
and Saint-Cyran derived from the first centuries, of the Church 
as an Episcopal hierarchy ; while duly acknowledging the 
Pope head of the whole, they exalted the sacred office of 
every Bishop and held the authority of each supreme in his 
own diocese. And above even the Pope they set the authority 
of the Church Councils and Canons. 



THE ABBE DE SAINT-CYRAN 235 

In a revival of the pure days of early Christianity Jansen and 
Saint-Cyran saw the sole hope for the Church, fallen into decay 
in these latter 'dregs' of time. How far, or precisely when, 
they conceived any definite hope and purpose of bringing 
about such a revival, is uncertain. Jansen at any rate pro- 
jected soon a great work, the Augustinus, which should 
familiarize the world again with the Augustinian teaching and 
crush the Molinists as S. Augustine had crushed the Pelagians ; 
Saint-Cyran, continuing his study of the Fathers more generally, 
prepared to set forth again from them the pure doctrine of 
the Church on a number of points, whether to confute the 
heretics and schismatics, in the matter, for example, of the 
Real Presence , or to restore practices, such as those of penance 
and even the Sacrament of Confirmation, which had fallen 
into abeyance or were held in small esteem by the Church. 

But coming late to reform, with the spectacle before them 
of schemes which had rent the Church and led to schism, 
with a recent example, too, in the case of Baius, of Rome's 
swift suppression of these dangerous topics, all controversy 
between grace and free-will being then in fact under taboo , 
they conceived their plans in all prudent secrecy. Reform 
became their life-purpose, but one to be executed only as 
occasion befell. They held themselves ready as instruments of 
the divine providence when it should be manifested, avoiding 
rather than courting all stir or open propaganda. They 
looked to small beginnings, words in season, personal influence, 
methods which the Jesuits stigmatized later by the name of 
cabal. The counsel of human wisdom was confirmed by 
their faith, faith in the sole potency of God's grace, which 
alone, and when it pleased, would operate reform. Hence 
a part of their work was, through prayer and penance, to call 
down that grace upon the Church. As, in the revival of 
learning, blind respect for antiquity had led to the emancipating 
worship of what antiquity had worshipped, nature, so this 
reverential study of the Fathers gave a faith which, logically, 
should have lessened the weight of tradition, faith namely in 
the living voice of grace. Saint-Cyran waited upon the personal 
movement of grace as S. Augustine had waited upon it. 

When the friends parted, after some fifteen months, it was 



236 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

to follow accordingly the normal ecclesiastic career. Jansen 
distinguished himself at the University of Louvain, whither 
he returned, and became eventually Bishop of Ypres, in his 
native Flanders. He engaged on occasion in successful con- 
troversy both with the heretics and the Jesuits, but his main 
hopes were set on the Augustinus, which, though he completed 
it, he did not live to see published. He had meantime rendered 
himself obnoxious in France by a work, the Mars Gallicus, 
condemnatory of Richelieu's policy and of the employment of 
heretic troops in Flanders. 

Saint-Cyran, for his part, assisted the Bishop of Poitiers in 
his diocese, and declined all preferment save the modest 
Abbey of Saint-Cyran in Brienne, by the name of which we, 
anticipating, already know him. 

At the time of this close union with the Mere Angelique, 
Saint-Cyran was living in Paris, in the Cloitre Notre Dame, 
devoting his mornings to study, still of the Fathers, and his 
afternoons to his neighbours in his capacity as director of 
consciences. A quarter of a century had elapsed since his 
first deep draught of Christian antiquity, and the purpose 
of reform, still undeclared, was ripening still for fulfilment. 
A man now of middle age, he was highly esteemed in ecclesias- 
tical circles, and his learning was admired without any dread 
of its subversive tendencies. 

The times, for all the need of reform, were by no means 
times of stagnation. On the contrary, the early seventeenth 
century was, in France, a period of peculiar vitality in the 
Church, marked by reorganization at ah 1 points ; a revival 
as vigorous as the social revival which marks that century 
of internal peace, succeeding upon one of civil and religious 
warfare. The witness still remains in the numerous institu- 
tions dating from that time : 5. Sulpice for example, S. Nicolas 
du Chardonnet and its allied seminaries : most notable of all, 
The Oratory founded by the Cardinal de Berulle : and again 
the Missions of S. Vincent de Paul, uniting a new spirit of 
philanthropy with the old one of religious zeal. Among 
\vomen's Orders, the Visitation we have already seen founded 
by S. Fran9ois de Sales, and the Carmelites introduced under 
the auspices of the Cardinal de Berulle, and these were but 



THE ABBE DE SAINT-CYRAN 237 

the more notable among many communities established or 
reformed. 

The Mere Angelique was far from alone, though she had 
been independent and isolated, in her work of conventual 
reform. Neither were Saint-Cyran and Jansen alone in their 
hope of new life for the Church, or in their recognition of its 
corrupt practices. Angelique herself, in her talks with her 
nephew, bears a noteworthy witness : 

' In 1653, on the 26th of April,' the nephew reports, 1 ' as 
I was speaking to her about the life of M. de Geneve (Fr. de 
Sales), she said to me : " This saintly Prelate helped me 
greatly and I venture to say that he honoured me with his 
affection and his confidence as much as he did Mme de Chantal. 
I was surprised at the freedom and kindness with which he 
told me all his most secret thoughts, even as I told him, and 
had told him from the first, all my own. It is certain that he 
was far more enlightened than has been supposed in regard to 
the government and discipline of the Church. His was a pure 
eye which saw all the evils and all the disorders brought about 
by laxity in the morals of Ecclesiastics and Monks. But he 
hid all in silence and covered all with charity and humility. 

' " He lamented, as did M. de Berulle, the disorders of the 
Court of Rome, and pointed them out to me in detail. After- 
wards he said : ' My Daughter, here is matter for tears ; 
for to speak of them to the world in the state it now is, would 
cause scandal to no profit. These sick persons love their 
sickness, and do not wish to be cured. The (Ecumenical Councils 
ought to reform head and limbs ; since they are certainly 
above the Pope. But the Popes are irritated when the Church 
does not bend wholly under them, even though, according to the 
true order of God, it is above them, when the council is called 
universally and canonically. I know this just as well as the 
doctors who publish it abroad, but discretion prevents my 
speaking of it, for I do not see any hope of remedy. One 
must weep and pray in secret that God may set His hand 
where man cannot set his ; and we must humble ourselves 
beneath the Ecclesiastical powers to whom He has subjected us, 
and ask Him nevertheless to humble and convert them by the 
omnipotence of His Spirit, and to reform the abuses which 
have slipped in as to the Conduct of the Ministers of the Church, 
and to send her holy shepherds animated with the zeal of 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 307 seq. 



238 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

S. Charles, who may serve to purify her by the fire of their 
zeal and their learning, and to render her without spot or 
blemish in discipline, even as she is in faith and doctrine.' 
He took comfort in speaking to me, as I know he did also 
with Mme de Chantal, with whom he had united me as closely 
as is possible, without our having ever seen one another." 

' The Mother Angelique added : " M. the Cardinal de Berulle, 
intimate friend of M. de Geneve, saw and deplored these same 
abuses of the Court of Rome, and conversed about them to 
M. de Saint-Cyran, who told me that he saw a marvellous degree 
of knowledge and discernment in this saintly man, and that 
they confirmed each other in the silence that the true children 
of the Church should observe at the sight of these internal 
ills and these intestine wounds, and that S. Bernard had 
pronounced them, five hundred years ago, to be incurable, 
that one must at least cover up the nakedness of one's mother, 
when one saw that one could not cure her of her maladies, 
and say even more in the present day what S. Gregory 
Nazienzene said only of his own times : ' We have nothing to 
give to the Church save our tears.'' 

' " Likewise," she added, " M. de Saint-Cyran told me that 
they who truly love the Church should hide themselves in 
solitary places, in order to take no part in the passions of 
such as dishonour her holiness, and to pray for her in private. 
She is our mother, he said to me, we must love her, we must 
pity her, we must aid her, we must weep for her, and not scandalize 
and vex her by an excess of zeal which is not sufficiently humble 
nor sufficiently prudent." 

In desire for reform, Fra^ois de Sales was doubtless at one 
with Saint-Cyran ; in the wish to avoid open scandal, in view 
of heretic onlookers and scarce-healed dissensions, Saint-Cyran 
was in accord with Fra^ois de Sales. Always the Mother 
Angelique delights to bring out points of agreement, in thoughts 
as in character, between these two Fathers of her spirit. But 
beneath the agreement there was as surely great difference, 
difference of emphasis and final aim. The one, lamenting, 
resigned the matter to God and adjusted his energies to existing 
conditions ; the other, equally looking to God, yet saw himself 
as God's instrument and, in whatever silence, held himself 
always braced for the task of reform. 

Outwardly, however, and in relation to the Cardinal 



THE ABBE DE SAINT-CYRAN 239 

de Berulle and other innovating spirits, Saint-Cyran must 
have appeared as a man lacking a scheme for the good of 
the Church, rather than as one dangerous in his zeal. 

At the very date (1611) of Saint-Cyran's retreat with Jansen 
for the purpose of study, the Cardinal de Berulle, M. Vincent 
de Paul and a third ecclesiastic, M. Bourdeoise, had met 
together, so the story goes, to consult with prayer as to the 
best means of revivifying the Church. De Berulle saw hope 
in a union of priests of learning and distinction ; Vincent 
de Paul in popular missions ; M. Bourdeoise in restored 
discipline among the clergy, with whom, so purely secular 
had the estate become, even the distinctive dress had fallen 
into abeyance. The Oratory, the Missions, the Seminary of 
S. Nicolas du Charbonnet, were the outcome. 1 

' It seemed,' a young seminarist, Lancelot, 2 who passed 
into the hands of Saint-Cyran from S. Nicolas du Charbonnet, 
wrote of its founder M. Bourdeoise, ' that God had sent him, 
him and certain others who appeared at almost the same time, 
to clear away what was grossest in the clergy, while he mean- 
time made ready M. de Saint-Cyran to come and show us that 
more excellent path, to borrow the Apostle's words, which he had 
discovered in the Holy Fathers and in all Antiquity. For 
one may say that it has been his peculiarity to set forth in 
all their light the most sound truths, without the which all 
done for external reform is almost without fruit.' 

Here we have struck the distinctive note of Saint-Cyran 
among these reformers. 

Friend of the Cardinal de Berulle, friend and supporter 
of Vincent de Paul, admired for his learning by M. Bourdeoise, 
Saint-Cyran for his part had propounded no new scheme. His 
hopes were set on no external reform ; or rather he hoped, 
not to work from external change a change in spirit, but 
from change in spirit to restore to its pristine glory the 
face of the Church. It was unsuspected in the clerical 
world that his learning, his unrivalled mastery of the 
Fathers and of Church history, covered a purpose of reform 
reaching far beyond any single community ; that, though he 

1 Cf. Sainte-Beuve : Port-Royal, vol. i, p. 9 (fifth ed.). 

2 Memoires touchant la vie de Monsieur de Saint-Cyran. Par 
M. Lancelot, vol. i, pp. 3-4. 



240 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

broached no new thing, he aimed at a return to things old, 
more foreign by far to the actual trend of the Church. Our 
seminarist Lancelot gives us the picture of Saint-Cyran as he 
was seen then in clerical circles, the learned ecclesiastic patent 
to all, the enthusiast and reformer veiled, and yet his presence 
stirring in receptive spirits something of suspense and ex- 
pectancy. The movement was preparing, though underground 
as it were, and obscurely. 

Lancelot, dissatisfied at S. Nicolas du Chardonnet with 
the teaching of the excellent M. Bourdeoise, which dwelt 
mainly on externals, could not bring himself either to enter 
the priesthood or to ' return to the world ' : 

' I was as a man cast up by the sea on the shore of some 
island, where he awaits the ship to come and take him off. 
Young though I was, as God had given me grace to seek him 
solely, so His goodness willed also that I should take more 
pleasure in acquainting myself with certain works of the 
Fathers of the Church, than in reading the devotional books 
of the day ; and I said sometimes to those who were being 
trained with me, and who have since reminded me of it : 
"There are no more such men," alluding to S. Chrysostom, 
S. Ambrose and S. Augustine and the rest ; " and if there 
were but one, I would depart this very instant and would 
go in search of him, even to the end of the earth, in order 
to throw myself at his feet, and to receive from him so pure 
and salutary a guidance." 

' For the space of ten years this thought never left my 
heart, so that, although these Messieurs of S. Nicolas did 
all they could to attach me to them and make me take Orders, 
I nevertheless could not resolve upon it. ... 

' As I sought constantly the means of giving myself more 
particularly to God, I desired to become a Religious ; and, 
not knowing where to go, I cast my eyes upon the Jesuits. 
I did not know them, but I had read some Lives of their early 
Fathers which had moved me; and, after having preserved 
this desire for five or six years, I became a Postulant by advice 
of my Confessor at the close of my classes of humanity in the 
year 1634. God diverted this blow by an act of His provi- 
dence which would take too long to relate. . . . 

' About a year after that an Ecclesiastic of merit took up his 
abode at S. Nicolas. God had given him such knowledge of the 
principles of S. Augustine, that the late M. de Saint-Cyran, '- 
Lancelot wrote these memoirs long after Saint-Cyran's death 



THE ABBE DE SAINT-CYRAN 241 

' sometimes said to me he had seen nobody who had entered 
better into the doctrine of this holy Doctor : which was saying 
much for those days. This Ecclesiastic was received at 
S. Nicolas in so strange a manner that it seemed as though 
God had sent him there only for me. Also from the moment 
I saw him, although I had never known him and was myself 
only a pupil, such a union was formed between him and me 
that I think a holy and civil friendship could not go further. 
M. Bourdeoise himself encouraged this union without meaning 
it ; for, since his humility led him to communicate to me all 
he did, he desired me then to discourse to this Ecclesiastic 
about a little work he had given me to revise ; and this 
occasioned the said person to speak to me with great 
frankness. 

' Considering then the spirit and Direction of M. Bourdeoise, 
who assuredly had much zeal but who sometimes lacked 
enlightenment, he said to me: ''' I see well that the spirit of 
this good Priest is a little exterior, and that he sets all 
in words. He conceives that it is only necessary to urge a 
man hard in order to convert him." "He does," said he, "for 
morals what Father Veron " (an ex- Jesuit, cure of Charenton) 
" does for the errors of the heretics : they both believe that 
one has but to scream loud." " I know well," he added, 
" that all the Conduct of the day leads to that ; but it is not 
that of S. Augustine, which God has given me the grace to 
appreciate ; and I scarcely know at the present day any who 
has really entered into the whole truth save one man." I asked 
him : " Who is that ? ' He replied : " It is the Abbe de 
Saint-Cyran." 

' These words were as an arrow which on the very instant 
pierced my heart, and from that time I had so great a veneration 
for M. de Saint-Cyran, and so great a notion of his virtue and 
merit, that I believe it reached its height at one stroke and 
has never since been able to receive any increase, although, 
as is known, I have had more veneration for M. de Saint-Cyran 
than for any mortal man, and have always looked upon him as 
a Saint upon earth. ' Alas ! ' I said to myself, ' here is he whom 
God long since pointed out to me : one must leave all to go 
and find him, were it to the end of the earth '. 

' I afterwards asked this friend how he knew M. de Saint-Cyran ; 
he replied he had never seen him, and judged of him only 
by what he had heard ; but that he saw clearly from his 
principles that he was a second S. Augustine, that he pos- 
sessed all the doctrine of the holy Fathers of Antiquity, and 
that he was the first man in existence for many centuries of 
the Church. 

' The truths concerning grace, Christian justification, penance, 

LOWNDES 



242 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

and vocation to the Ecclesiastical estate were so little known 
at that time, and the greatness of S. Augustine so obscured 
with the general run of men of letters, that M. Froger, Cure 
of S. Nicolas, one of the most celebrated Doctors of the 
Sorbonne and of oldest standing, who passed as an oracle 
in Paris, did not even possess his works. Thus the comparison 
of M. de Saint-Cyran with S. Augustine did not make sufficient 
impression upon my mind. As I had read some Letters of 
S. Jerome which had pleased me, I thought of measuring the 
idea he had given me of M. de Saint-Cyran with that which I had 
of this holy Doctor. I said to him, amusingly enough : " Is 
he as learned as S. Jerome ? " This was the question of a 
schoolboy, at which he might have laughed. However, he 
did not, and replied gravely, " that he would compare M. de 
Saint-Cyran to S. Augustine rather than to S. Jerome. He 
is,' he added, " more learned than S. Jerome in his mastery 
of theology, that is to say, of the basis, the sequence, and, so 
to speak, the system, of Christian doctrine. No," he added, 
" I know none save S. Augustine to whom one can compare 
him." I responded : " You surprise me ; I saw him at 
dinner here on the occasion of the first Mass of one of his 
friends, but he did not say a word. It is true that, after the 
visitors had gone, M. Bourdeoise said to us that he was one 
of the most learned men of this century ; but I took that 
as the praise often given to such as have some merit above 
the ordinary, without conceiving that of this Abbe to be at 
the point you set it." 

' Thereupon I saw my friend take fire as I had done myself 
previously. " What," he said to me, " is it possible ? Does 
M. de Saint-Cyran come here ? Does M. Bourdeoise know him ? 
You must procure me by his means a visit to him ; it will 
be the very greatest pleasure you ever could give me." I 
promised I would ; and in effect I pledged M. Bourdeoise to 
take him to see M. de Saint-Cyran, who was living then in the 
Cloitre Notre Dame, and to make them acquainted. 

' Since I was very young, I did not deem myself capable of 
profiting by their interview, and I did not venture to ask to be 
of the party ; but I preserved always in my heart this great 
veneration which God had given me for M. de Saint-Cyran, with 
the firm resolution to come and fling myself at his feet so soon 
as I had finished my studies, of which there remained still 
the two years of Philosophy. God began then to recompense 
the goodwill He had Himself given me, causing M. de Saint-Cyran, 
by an extraordinary marvel, to serve me already, without 
knowing me, as father and guide in the way of salvation. 

' This friend came two or three times a year to Paris, and 



THE ABBE DE SAINT-CYRAN 243 

did not fail to go and pay his respects to M. de Saint-Cyran. I was 
very careful to learn from him afterwards what had passed 
at their interview ; and that served me as sustenance until 
another journey, for I turned over frequently in my heart that 
which my friend had told me of this great servant of God, 
without saying anything about it to any one. Sometimes, 
even when M. de Saint-Cyran said nothing to him, and did not 
reply to the questions he had put to him, we did not fail to 
be edified as much by his silence as by his discourse, because 
one saw that charity governed all his movements, and that, 
if he did not reply, it was because time and the dispositions 
of the persons did not seem to him apt for speaking of certain 
matters. Thus, admiring his holiness and his prudence, we 
judged from his reserve what he had in his heart, and we 
asked of God the disposition necessary for benefiting from the 
instructions of His servant. Making accordingly these 
reflections, we judged of our defects by the comparison we 
"drew with his virtues. We recognized the feebleness of the 
greater number of the men of these latter days, by the slight 
proportion they bore to the weightiness of his thoughts, and 
we were more and more inflamed with desire to approach 
him and know him.' 1 



This preparation of spirits for the teaching of Saint-Cyran, 
so naively related by the simple-hearted seminarist, fell in the 
years (1635-6) which saw the final triumph of Saint-Cyran at the 
Maison du S. Sacrement and Port Royal. We have seen how 
his ascendency over the nuns brought down upon him jealous 
calumny and the enmity of the supplanted Bishop of Langres. 
Presently the young Lancelot passed, from S. Nicolas du 
Chardonnet, under his charge, and in consequence ill-feeling 
was aroused on the part of M. de Bourdeoise, who lost thus 
a favourite pupil, and of the community. 2 A third spiritual 
conquest, not of nun or pious seminarist, but of a man in 

1 Memoires . . . par M. Lancelot, p. 5 seq. 

2 ' Durant tout ce tems-la ces Messieurs de la Communaute de 
S. Nicolas et M. le Cure firent tout ce qu'ils purent pour me degouter 
de M. de Saint-Cyran, et pour m'attacher d'eux ... M. le Cure me dit 
un jour, parlant de M. de Saint-Cyran : ' ' C'est un homme dangereux ; et 
si vous n'y prenez garde il vous perdra : " mais tout cela faisait aussi 
peu d'impression sur moi que sur un rocher.' Memoires . . . par 

. M. Lancelot, vol. i, p. 24. 

R 2 



244 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

full professional career and well known in the Paris world, 
made a wider stir and roused more powerful jealousy. In 
the year 1637, M. le Maitre, our Mother Angelique's nephew, 
eldest son of the one married Arnauld sister, renounced a 
successful and distinguished career at the bar to enter, under 
the influence of Saint-Cyran,intoa strict and penitential retreat 
to become, in fact, first of the recluses of Port Royal. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Saint-Cyran's relations with the Arnauld family. M. d'Andilly. M. le 
Maitre. The first hermits of Port Royal. 

THE Abbe de Saint-Cyran had become Director of the Maison 
du S. Sacrement by the unworthy medium of the Bishop of 
Langres, and the complications of the affair of the Chapelet 
had secured the path for his influence. But the roundabout 
way of human error, so skilfully manipulated by providence 
to a happy ending, had led only to a result which a simpler 
train of events and a direct human purpose had been preparing. 

Long previously, Saint-Cyran had come into touch with 
Angelique's family, with her eldest brother, M. d'Andilly, and 
with her mother. He had already, on occasion of the trans- 
ference to Port Royal des Champs of the thirty Maubuisson 
nuns, turned his thoughts to Angelique herself, recognizing in 
her the spirit of true Christian charity and already perhaps 
seeing in her an apt instrument for the revival he had at 
heart. He expresses, somewhat enigmatically, his regret that 
he was not himself an instrument in the renewal her signal act 
of charity would bring about in her convent. Some passages 
from the letter he then wrote to her may show his spirit. 
The familiar matter of Christian ethics, blind trust in providence 
and scorn of human wisdom elsewhere frequent synonym for 
idle self-indulgence is presented here in its sublimity : 

' I like nothing so much as to see that, amid all the great 
precautions and anxieties of the world, pleasure is taken in 
doing violence to the wisdom and prudence of the human 
spirit, in order to rest upon God. . . . God has an excellence 
raised so far above the highest thoughts of our intellect and 
of our faith, that it is serving Him basely to run no risks in 
the practice of charity. Remember only that in the first 
centuries of the Church all Christians testified to Him their 
love no otherwise than by dying, and that, failing martyrdom 



246 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

and occasions of losing our life for Him, the least we can do 
is to embrace with joy the opportunities which He occasions of 
testifying our love and the zeal of our charity, by doing good 
to His poor. ... It may be that at His judgement He will 
not accuse us of not having searched out all opportunities . . . 
and of not having taken the trouble to look for the poor who 
languish in caves and woods that we may feed them. But 
what He will assuredly reproach us with, is neglect to provide 
for the needs of those He Himself presents to us. ... There 
is nothing which shows so clearly that our faith is slumbering 
and that our charity is dead. ... I will render to you, not of 
myself, but through Him Who sacrifices Himself every day in 
my hands, more than equal return of the prayers you shall 
make for me, which can have force and efficacy only as they 
draw it from His divine sacrifice. . . .' x 

Saint-Cyran had heard of the proposed act of charity while 
visiting Mme Arnauld. His first and particular friend in 
the Arnauld family was M. d'Andilly so called from that 
country property which Angelique had found so delightful 
in her girlhood, at the moment of keen sensibility preceding 
her ' day of grace '. 

This eldest brother makes a first appearance in the annals 
of Port Royal on the momentous journee du guichet, inveighing 
then with youthful and quite secular wrath against his sisters 
who presumed to shut out their father and to quote the ' councils 
and canons '. 2 

Now, ami par excellence of M. de Saint-Cyran, his ardour was 
directed to bring about a union between him and his own now 
revered sister Angelique. His success, we saw, was only 
partial. Saint-Cyran visited first Maubuisson and then Port 
Royal des Champs, as Angelique tells in her narrative : 

' I have had the happiness,' she writes in 1626 to her brother, 
' to possess M. de Saint-Cyran five days, which seemed to be 
moments. How much I owe you for having given me a share 
in the holy friendship of so incomparable a friend ! I say 
truly, my very dear brother, incomparable for the holy truth 
with which he is filled, and for the sincerity and greatness of 
his affection ; and all this in an excellentissime intellect. 
You had told me so, and experience has made me see it. It 
is impossible for you to be deceived in that quarter, notwith- 

1 M ^moires pour servir . . ., vol. i, p. 211 seq. 
8 Cf. ante, p. 24. 



M. D'ANDILLY 247 

standing the excess of your good-heartedness (which sometimes 
gets the better of your judgement), for in this soul there is 
too much candour and truth. I pray to God he may give 
as much to all your dear friends.' l 

Nevertheless, from very respect for his weight and learning, 
Angelique did not ask from Saint-Cyran the personal guidance 
she desired. And he, with his customary reticence, waited 
to be asked, or for a clear guidance of providence which 
did not come until after, as we saw, the convent had been 
committed to the Bishop of Langres. 

But, though M. d'Andilly was not to be the chief instrument of 
Saint-Cyran's union with our Mother Angelique, it was through 
him that Saint-Cyran's influence spread over the male side of 
the Arnauld family. Their friendship was the root whence 
sprang the community of the Messieurs of Port Royal. 

At first sight, M. d'Andilly would seem a strange friend 
for the austere and reserved Saint-Cyran. The Arnaulds were 
divided they themselves made the distinction into hot 
and cold Arnaulds : Robert d'Andilly, Angelique, and the 
youngest Antoine (the ' fiery doctor ', at this date not yet 
completing his studies) belonging most notoriously to the 
' hot '. They drew their impetuous blood from their father the 
advocate, while Agnes, Anne Eugenie and Mme le Maitre took 
after their mother in serene equanimity. But the impetuosity 
of this eldest son was above all of the heart, and betrayed 
itself in the warm-heartedness and quick attachments, which, 
as Angelique wrote to him, sometimes outstript his judgement. 
He was carried away, not by moral indignation, but by charit- 
able zest, believing too readily in virtue and excellence. His 
expansive nature found a vent, too, in enjoyment of matters, 
innocent truly, but by no means purely spiritual, and it won 
him favour and popularity at the Court, and from the Queen, 
Anne of Austria. Connected early, through his uncles, with 
the Council of Finance, he held successive good posts. He 
was at one time Superintendent of the Household of Monsieur, 
and, though he suffered temporary disgrace under Richelieu, he 
was made army-intendant during the wars with Spain. The 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, p. 29. Cf. also p. 21. 



248 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

vigour and zest which he brought to temporal affairs, his 
hearty enjoyment of things mundane, of the favour of the 
great and of the good offices he himself could render to his 
friends, are amply reflected in his Memoirs. His zeal for 
such service was not quenched, though Saint-Cyran wrote to 
him sublime words, ' However small a man may be, he is too 
great to be any one's servant, save God's only.' * 

D'Andilly's virtue was truly, Saint-Cyran remarks, not that 
of an anchorite or a saint, but the experienced Director added: 
' I know no man in his circumstances who is more soundly 
virtuous.' And, whatever glamour the Court might have for 
him, d'Andilly was ready always to risk disgrace for his friend 
and for the truth ; was ready also later, advanced in life, but 
with a long span of vigour still before him, to quit the Court 
at his friend's bidding. 

The friendship dated back to 1620, when the two d'Andilly 
in attendance on the Court, Saint-Cyran engaged in diocesan 
duties had met at Poitiers. 2 It was thus already of long 
standing, confirmed by time without loss of warmth, in these 
years (1635-7) a ^ which our history of the convent has arrived. 
And now, through their friendship, the influence of Saint-Cyran 
reached to the younger branch, to the sons of the only married 
Arnauld sister, Madame le Maitre. 

The occasion was the illness and death of d'Andilly's wife. 
Saint-Cyran attended the deathbed as priest ; among the 
assembled relatives was Antoine le Maitre, eldest of the 
nephews, a man of twenty-eight, who had achieved already 
brilliant success at the bar. As this nephew listened to the 
words which Saint-Cyran addressed to the dying woman, all 
his success and his reputed eloquence became to him vanity. 
The death of a cousin, his contemporary, about the same time, 
confirmed the effect. He renounced his career and, placing 

1 v. Maximes Saintes et Chretiennes, tirees des Lettres de Messire 
Jean du Verger de Hauranne, Abbe de Saint-Cyran : 1703, p. 52, 
' L'homme, quelque petit qu'il soit, est si grand, qu'il ne peut, 
sans faire tort a sa grandeur, estre serviteur en ce monde que de Dieu 
seul.' 

2 Cf . Memoires de M. d'A ndilly, au sujet de Messire Jean du Verger de 
Hauranne, Abbe de Saint-Cyran. Vies . . . de Port-Royal, vol. i, pp. 31-2. 



RETREAT OF M. LE MAlTRE 249 

himself in Saint-Cyran's hands, turned all his thoughts to live, 
as that Director should advise, wholly for God.' 1 

At the moment of this ' conversion ', Antoine le Maitre he 
too was one of the hot Arnaulds, vehement and impetuous in 
his enterprises was thinking, not of retreat, but of marriage. 
He had written on the subject to the Mere Agnes, apparently 
with full- winged enthusiasm for this project also, and for 
the lady. But the Mere Agnes, who was at the time absent 
at Dijon, had sublimer hopes for this eldest and favourite 
nephew. She replied with coldness ; then, by a far-fetched 
turn of her mystic fancy, feigned to believe his words bore 
reference to a higher marriage ; 

From Notre-Dame of Tard, 
June nth, 1634. 

' MY VERY DEAR NEPHEW, 

This is the last time that I shall make use of this term ; 
by as much as you have been dear to me, you will be indifferent : 
since I have no longer response in you upon which to found 
a peculiar friendship. I shall love you with Christian, but 
universal, charity ; and, as you will be in a very ordinary 
estate, so I shall bear you a very ordinary affection. You 
desire to become a slave and at the same time to remain 
monarch in my heart ; that is not possible ; for what relation 
is there between light and darkness, or between Jesus Christ 
and Belial ? 

' You will say that I blaspheme against this venerable sacra- 
ment for which you have such devotion ; but do not distress 
yourself for my conscience, which knows well how to separate 
the holy and the profane, what is precious from what is abject, 
and which, after all, excuses you with S. Paul; rest satisfied 
with that, if you please, without asking of me approval and 
praise. But, while writing thus, I re-read your letter, and, 
as though awakening from deep sleep, I perceive I know not 
what light in the midst of this darkness, and something of 
hidden and mysterious in the words which appear so clear and 
so commonplace. I begin to question whether this tale of 
your love affairs, which you narrate at such length, without 
considering that I have no ears to hear such discourse, may 
not be an enigma drawn from the parables of the Gospel, where 
there is so frequent celebration of marriage, and one in particular 

1 Cf. Memoires pour servir a I'histoire de Port-Royal, par M. Fon- 
taine, vol. i, p. 31 seq. 



250 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

to which only virgins are summoned. By the little ray of 
light that now appears to me, my mind expands and sets to 
work to explain your words, and to behold with a better eye 
this admirable girl who has ravished your heart. You say she 
is the most beautiful and the wisest in Paris, and you should 
say in Paradise, since she is sister of the angels. Oh ! how 
beautiful she is, la chaste generation avec clarte, and how wise ! ' 
and so on into the particular circumstances of the case. 
The girl's mother had been oppressed, was therefore the 
Church &c. ' But how shall I interpret that this girl's father 
is so perfect that only two other persons equal him ? Must 
one then rise even to the bosom of God to find there in the 
unity of His essence a plurality of persons that have nothing 
of more or of less, being equally divine, or to speak more 
truly, equally God the one as the other ? ' x 

Unjustified as her attitude at the time and irritating as 
it was to M. le Maitre, his provoked response drew down upon 
him only a second similar letter , events as we see confirmed 
her prophecy. There is in truth always a basis of common 
sense in our nuns, who could accept well enough the ' more 
ordinary ' estate of marriage in their friends and relatives ; 
the loftier hopes of Agnes for this nephew were grounded 
probably on some earlier show of piety. We read as a fact 
that, before taking to the bar, M. le Maitre had had thoughts 
of the priesthood. These sudden conversions have usually 
some such antecedents, obliterated though they may be and 
forgotten in view of the more dazzling moment. 

M. le Maitre's impetuosity once awakened to the vanity 
and danger of his calling (' it is very difficult ' he observes, 
' in this estate to be so scrupulous as to refuse help to a friend, 
and once resolved to serve him, one makes things appear 
innocent which are not, and one renders what is black \vhite, 
by artifice as it were and the charm of one's speech') 2 , he 
could brook no delay. ' He exposed to M. de Saint-Cyran all 
that was passing in his heart. He told him that he was resolved 
to quit the world and all his hopes, in order to think for the 
future only of serving God in penitence and in retreat ; and 
that, from the moment he was speaking, he bade farewell to 

1 Lettres de la Mere Agnes Arnauld, vol. i, p. 38 seq. 
* Memoires . . . par M. Fontaine, vol. i, p. 30. 



RETREAT OF M. LE MAlTRE 251 

the Courts, and begged him to aid in this design and assist 
him with his counsel.' 1 

In the memoirs of Lancelot, seminarist as we saw him, 
and afterwards noted teacher in the schools of Port Royal, 
we have the careful record of Saint-Cyran's life and sayings. 
With equal candour, and yet more exuberant naivete, the 
doings of the hermits of Port Royal, and among the rest the 
great renunciation of M. le Maitre, are recorded in the memoirs 
of another teacher in their schools, the simple-hearted Fontaine. 
He gathered his knowledge of it from M. le Maitre's own lips 
as, a young lad, he waited upon ' ces messieurs '. 

' M. de Saint-Cyran was at first rejoiced at what he heard. 
His clear-sightedness nevertheless made him foresee the great 
consequences of the matter. He saw that they would not 
fail to recoil upon himself, for he knew how great the reputation 
of M. le Maitre, and that the distinguished persons with whom 
he had to do might well be annoyed at being deprived of him. 

' However, he thought only of the new convert, and collected 
all his judgement to direct wisely a matter of such consequence. 
He therefore advised M. le Maitre to do nothing in haste, 
and to postpone the execution of his design until the vacation, 
as S. Augustine had done in a similar case. He represented 
to him that this would make much less stir ; that he would 
irritate people much less by breaking with them, not abruptly, 
but more quietly ; that only a little time remained for him, 
as for that Saint, before he would recover full liberty ; that 
he should avoid doing himself the honour of so exactly declaring 
his purpose ; and that it seemed to him much better that 
he should lend his voice still to his ordinary profession, while 
awaiting peaceably the day which should release him in fact 
from an employment from which God had already so happily 
released his heart. 

' M. le Maitre yielded in truth to so wise a counsel, but 
he has since told me that during that interval, all occupied 
as he was with his new resolutions, he found it impossible to 
recover the same fire he had had previously. He fixed his 
eyes upon a crucifix, all dusty, which he could see while he 
was pleading, and which up to then had never caught his 
attention ; and he said that, looking at it, he was more disposed 
to weep than to speak. 

' This was all at once observed by those who listened to 
him ; and M. Talon, the Advocate-General, who was secretly 

1 Memoir es . . . par M. Fontaine, vol. i, pp. 32-3. 



252 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

jealous of M. le Maitre on account of his great renown, said 
to his friends that this time, instead of pleading, he was but 
dozing. This was repeated to M. le Maitre who, piqued at 
the remark, spoke eight days later, so he told me, and with 
such force that never had he had more fire and vigour. He 
kept M. Talon always in view. He turned, while speaking, 
only in his direction ; his body ever on the stretch, his arm 
continually extended, continually on tiptoe, his eye constantly 
fixed upon him, as being the last effort he would make, and 
resolved to quit then and there, to make to God a sacrifice 
of this rare talent, and to render for the future mute a voice 
which was the admiration of all France.' 1 

The cynic may smile, not at the picture of the impassioned 
and overstrained orator alone, but at the final spurt of vanity 
and self-esteem. M. le Maitre could renounce his career, 
but he must needs carry with him into retreat his reputation 
without blemish. 

When the vacation ended, M. le Maitre was looked for in 
vain at the Courts : 

: The Courts opened, and he was not seen. He was inquired 
for on all sides, and could not be unearthed. When his absence 
began to be recognized, all the Palais seemed in mourning ; 
and they could not make up their minds to believe what they 
saw with their eyes. The report spread all at once from the 
Palais throughout Paris, and from Paris throughout all 
France.' 2 

Our narrator saw the world, beyond his immediate happy 
confines of Port Royal, with vague and inflated vision. But 
the stir and annoyance caused by the noted barrister's retreat 
were genuine, if scarcely moving France ; and curiosity was 
fanned by the mystery and apparent inconsequence of the 
change. The ardour of the penitent did not carry him to 
monastic vows, nor to the priesthood, where his eloquence 
might have found a new sphere. He retired quite simply 
into absolute privacy, hiding in the midst of Paris from his 
friends, for the purpose of prayer and penance, as only a few 
years before Descartes had hidden for the purpose of unbroken 
study. 

1 Memoires . . . par M. Fontaine, vol. i, p. 31 seq. 
8 Ib., p. 35. 



RETREAT OF M. LE MAlTRE 253 

In this retreat M. le Maitre was joined almost immediately 
by the second brother, M. de Sericourt, a young soldier who, 
in consequence of escape from imprisonment and near peril 
of life, turned now to consider eternity and the dangers attend- 
ing his soul. 

The place of retreat, a mystery to the gossiping world, 
was Port Royal of Paris, our convent in the Boulevard 
S. Jacques. Madame le Maitre, their mother, who, though 
unable yet to take vows, made there her residence, wearing 
le petit habit blanc, caused a little house to be built for these 
sons upon the road-side of the convent, a tiny annex, of course 
duly separate and shut off from the nuns. 

To these fraternal penitents Saint-Cyran added presently one 
or two young men who had sought at his hands guidance as 
to the best manner of life, and as main employment he gave 
them the education of some children, a little nephew of his 
own and the sons of a friend. From this modest beginning 
sprang the famous schools of Port Royal. 

Our acquaintance Lancelot was among these youths, and 
tells the tale of his union, through Saint-Cyran, with these first 
hermits. We cannot better visit them than in his company : 

' On the morrow of the Octave of the Epiphany, January 
the I4th, held as the feast of S. Hilary, I went in search of 
M. de Saint-Cyran . . ., but he was not in his apartment. 
I returned the following day, when the feast of S. Maur, 
who may be looked on as the Father of all the Religious 
in our France, is celebrated. As I still did not find him, 
I was sent to look for him at Port Royal where he was. 
I went there at once, and, when I asked for him, he happened 
by good fortune to be engaged with M. le Maitre and with 
M. de Sericourt his brother, who had taken up their abode 
in the little dwelling built by their mother Mme le Maitre, 
on the day of S. Paul, the first hermit, that is to say only 
four or five days previously. These gentlemen had the good- 
ness, although they saw nobody in the world, to beg M. de 
Saint-Cyran to make me come in. I was escorted thither 
accordingly, without knowing where I was going. When 
I entered and saw persons of such modesty, who received 
me with so great an effusion of joy, I suspected something, 
seeing well that there was a certain atmosphere of charity 
quite out of the common. At once M. de Saint-Cyran took me 
and led me to the side of a very humble bed, upon which he 



254 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

made me sit beside him, to talk to me. I perceived there was 
only a stuffed straw mattress. I saw likewise that all the 
rest of the furniture consisted only of some books and some 
cane chairs ; and I was confirmed in the thought that I was 
undoubtedly in the room of him ' (M. le Maitre) 'whom I wished 
so much to discover. I said so to M. de Saint-Cyran, who 
acknowledged it, and promised to receive me, adding, however, 
that I must wait three days longer until he knew whether to 
place me with himself or at Port Royal with these Messieurs. 

' I went down with him ; and, as we were in the court, he 
said to me that, although he had some reputation of learning, 
I must not come to him with the idea of acquiring knowledge ; 
and that perhaps he would not make me study. Then he 
added : " Look at S. Hilary, whose feast was kept yesterday ; 
he was the cleverest man of his times, and yet he did not make 
a scholar of S. Martin." 

' These three days over, I returned in search of M. de Saint- 
Cyran and I had his definite word that he would place me 
at Port Royal, the Mothers having given their approval, 
while M. le Maitre professed very kindly to desire it. I was 
obliged, however, to go back and take leave of the Messieurs 
of S. Nicholas who, for all their annoyance at my departure, 
could not but approve my conduct. Having thus taken leave 
of them on the 2Oth of January, 1638, I reached Port Royal 
close on five in the evening. The Feast of S. Agnes had 
already begun, and we said the Matins at night, for which 
reason I have taken her also for my patron-saint. There 
were then only M. Singlin and M. Gaudon senior, to whom 
M. de Saint-Cyran did me the favour of uniting me. M. le Maitre 
and M. de Sericourt were in another dwelling, where they 
lived separately, each in his room, like the Carthusians, and 
we saw them only at night, when we all assembled in the 
room of M. Singlin to say Matins. We began them at one in 
the morning, so as to be finished when the Nuns began. M. de 
Sericourt was at the pains of waking us. We sang the Te 
Deum out loud, and repeated the rest chanting it in a low 
voice. 

' M. de Saint-Cyran took extraordinary consolation in seeing 
this little number of persons who had no other thought than 
of serving God in spirit and in truth, at a time when this grace 
was so rare ; and considering the marvels of God and the 
miraculous manner in which he had gathered us, the one on 
this side, the other on that, he did not scruple to say that 
it was one of the greatest marks of predestination. Never- 
theless, M. Gaudon did not persevere and returned to the 
age, by a judgement which we must resign to God, Who desired 



THE FIRST RECLUSES 255 

perhaps to show us thereby that in whatever state we may be 
in this world, and whatever grace we have received from Him, 
we have always occasion to fear. 

' But at that time all was joy among us, and our hearts 
were so filled with it that it appeared even upon our coun- 
tenances. On which matter, before passing on, I must recount 
a detail that concerns me. The abundance of favours with 
which it pleased God to load me, and the peace with which 
He filled me, were so great, that I could scarcely keep myself 
from laughing on every occasion. I did not know how to 
account for this change, besides that it had not previously 
been my chief defect. I accused myself of levity and often con- 
fessed for it ; but M. de Saint-Cyran, who was very enlightened, 
saw well that this effusiveness had some other source ; and 
he told me at length that I must not be confused because of 
it, and that sometimes the soul, considering the path it has 
followed, whence it came, where it w r as, and all that passed 
in it, felt so transported that it could not contain itself ; that 
he believed my joy came from this ground rather than from 
levity, and that I must not be unduly troubled. 

' I recognized that he spoke truly, and that in truth I had 
never before been at such a feast. For God, according to 
the word of the Apostle, so ordered all things for my good and 
for my edification, that I could not sufficiently marvel at 
the greatness of His mercies. I was extremely touched by 
the charity of M. le Maitre, the gentleness of M. de Sericourt, 
and the humility of M. Singlin ; but above all the very edifying 
poverty of the Nuns enchanted me. For often they had not 
a quarter of an ecu to send to market ; and, rich only in virtues, 
they led a life all heavenly, in so great a remoteness from the 
world, that their House was scarcely know r n and hardly anybody 
came to it.' 1 

1 Memoir es . . , par M. Lancelot, vol. i, p. 32 seq. 



CHAPTER XVII 

Imprisonment of Saint-Cyran. Retreat of the recluses to Port Royal 

des Champs. 

FOR but a brief period did the little band continue their 
orisons at the gate of the convent undisturbed. The sub- 
sequent year (1638), the various grievances the ' persecution ', 
Port Royal finds the ennobling term, against Saint-Cyran 
gathered to a head. The Bishop of Langres had written a 
memoir against him, accusing his 'new practices ', that of set- 
ting an interval of penance between confession and absolution in 
particular, as smacking of heresy ; the Abbe de Prieres and 
others had exaggerated in loose talk his statements as to 
the early Church and the Canons. A more powerful enemy, 
Richelieu's confidant, Pere Joseph, had a grievance similar 
to that of the Bishop of Langres. He had entrusted the 
Filles du Calvaire, whom he directed, to Saint-Cyran during an 
absence from Paris, to find on return that his own influence 
there was diminished ; the nuns ' had tasted the difference 
between a Director given wholly to God and one who divided 
his allegiance between God and the world '^ The enmity of 
the Jesuits was another factor, not yet clearly defined, in the 
accumulating ill-will. Now this retreat of M. le Maitre roused 
a fresh enemy in high places, the Chancellor Seguier, offended 
in the extreme at the loss, for no apparent reason, of a brilliant 
protege. And since the convert fell into none of the estab- 
lished ranks of the Church, became neither monk nor priest, 
it was natural to attribute to his adviser some deep design, 
heretical probably and subversive of order. 

The converging murmurs came to Richelieu only as fuel to 
suspicions already alive. Already he had his own grievances 
against Saint-Cyran. The general grievance, in the first place, 
that he had upon him no hold. Saint-Cyran had walked, it would 

1 Racine, Abrege de VHistoire de Port-Royal, ed. by A. Gazier, 1908, p. 23. 



IMPRISONMENT OF SAINT-CYRAN 257 

seem, for many years among his fellow ecclesiastics known only 
as a man of piety and learning ; but by Richelieu the force 
hidden behind his reserve had at once been noted. The two had 
met long before, Richelieu not yet minister but simple Bishop of 
Lugon, Saint-Cyran engaged in assisting the Bishop of Poitiers. 
Both then and later Richelieu sought to win Saint-Cyran, offer- 
ing him preferment a succession of bishoprics it is said l , 
paying him signal compliments. ' You see, gentlemen,' so he 
once introduced him, ' the most learned man in France.' 

Saint-Cyran's learning, in effect, and his views of church 
government, might well have proved serviceable to Richelieu 
in certain phases of his policy towards Rome. But Saint-Cyran, 
desirous of reinstating the dignity of the episcopal office 
in view of the usurpations of Rome, was equally careful to 
avoid playing into the hands of the State and to preserve 
the Church from royal encroachments. The Mere Angelique 
cites an instance : 

' At the time when the Cardinal de Richelieu was offended 
with Rome because the Pope had made him angry, and wished 
to prevent the sending for Bulls to Rome, it happened that my 
brother, now the Bishop d' Angers, was elected Bishop of Toul 
canonically by the Chapter of which he was Dean, without 
having taken any steps whatsoever in the matter. M. de 
Saint-Cyran said to me that my brother was the one Bishop in 
France who might, since he had been elected by the Chapter 
in accordance with ancient rights, let himself be consecrated 
without sending for Bulls from Rome, and that perhaps the 
Cardinal might induce him to do it ; but that he held he ought 
not to do so, and that, at the actual juncture, such a proceeding 
would create a scandal, which prudence and Christian charity 
bound him to avoid.' ' 2 

Saint-Cyran's ' Gallicanism ' was in fact of a kind no more 
acceptable to Richelieu than to the Pope. His ideal was not 
that of a Frenchman qua Frenchman, of the patriot glad to 
keep out foreign influence and retain for France the revenues 

1 Memoir es . . . par M. Lancelot, vol. ii, pp. 162-3. For a more exact 
statement of the facts, cf . Memoires de Godefroi Hennant, now in process 
of publication, vol. i, pp. 64-7. 

2 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . .,vol. ii, 
p. 310. 

LOWNDES S 



258 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

of the French Church, but of the churchman who, independent 
of nationality, saw the Church as a hierarchy of Bishops, the 
Pope merely their chief. In no wise did he wish the Church, 
thus conceived, to be under the hand of the State. 

He let fall accordingly every offer of preferment from Riche- 
lieu and, retaining independence of action and liberty of 
criticism, could not long steer clear of offence in his eyes. 
The temper that saw the meanest man as 'too great to be any 
one's servant ' was one incompatible with Richelieu's policy. 

Particular points of offence soon arose. Saint-Cyran, alone 
of the divines consulted, disapproved the divorce, pressed by 
Richelieu, of the King's brother, the Due d'Orleans. Again, 
and this was the given ground of arrest , Saint-Cyran differed 
from Richelieu on a point of theology, the matter of contrition 
versus attrition. 

Under cover of these technical terms, and in this question 
raised by theologians, lay already the germ of disputes to take 
full wing in the Lettres Provinciates. The immediate point, 
on the wide moral horizon there opened, was whether the 
minor degree of repentance known as attrition repentance, 
that is, moved only by fear of hell sufficed for absolution, 
or whether the sinner required also contrition, sorrow in which 
love of God played also some part. 

Richelieu had maintained in a Cate'chisme the more lenient 
view, that attrition sufficed. At this present juncture a Father 
of the Oratory, the Pere Seguenot, published a work in which 
the need for contrition was maintained. Richelieu sent the 
author to the Bastille, and Saint-Cyran, on charge of complicity, 
to the Chateau de Vincennes. 

Saint-Cyran denied all share in the work, which indeed went 
a step farther than he approved, and, maintaining that the 
priest pronounced only and did not confer absolution, over- 
passed the line so delicately drawn between the early Christians 
and latter-day heretics. But the charge came near enough 
home to give him the joy of ' suffering for the truth '. 

Lancelot narrates the arrest : 

' On Ascension-day M. de Saint-Cyran came again to say Mass 
at Port Royal ; and not having been able to see me on the 
eve as usual, for he never heard confessions on Feast-days unless 



IMPRISONMENT OF SAINT-CYRAN 259 

from actual necessity, he had the goodness to ask me that day 
if I wished to confess ; to which I replied I saw nothing par- 
ticular to tell him. Well, so much the better, he said, for one 
should not be too rigorous as to confession. He gave us the 
same day three addresses, imitating the Son of God who, 
seeing the hour approach when He should be seized, made to 
His disciples longer and loftier discourses ; as was afterwards 
imitated by the Apostle S. Paul when he passed by Ephesus 
and, foreseeing what was to happen, summoned to Miletus the 
Priests of that church and the neighbouring Bishops. 

' It appears that M. de Saint-Cyran had some presentiment 
of his arrest, for speaking that same day to M. le Maitre he 
said to him : To-day all goes well ; but I will not answer for 
to-morrow. In the evening, as, where he lived, he always caused 
a chapter of Scripture to be read, the passage of Jeremiah was 
chanced upon : Ecce in manibus vestris sum ; facite mihi quod 
bonum et rectum est in oculis vestris. And he added, That is 
for me. 

' In effect, by two in the morning his apartment was invested 
by the Archers of the Guard. They seemed to have been given 
the same distrust of M. de Saint-Cyran that Judas had given to 
the Jews in respect of Jesus Christ, for, as though they feared 
he might escape them, they came twenty-two in number, and 
placed sentinels on ah 1 sides even to the neighbouring gardens. 
But since they saw that nothing stirred in this house, which was 
a house of peace and of prayer, they came at six o'clock and 
knocked at the door to ask to speak with M. de Saint-Cyran. 

M. de Saint-Cyran was at that actual moment reading 
S. Augustine with his nephew, and having lit upon some passage 
dealing with contrition, which was the pretext for oppressing 
him, he said again : There is something for us, something to defend 
ourselves with if we are attacked. Thereupon enters the Captain 
of the Guard, and, after greeting him with much courtesy, told 
M. de Saint-Cyran in a low tone that his orders were to make him 
enter a carriage which was waiting. M. de Saint-Cyran replied 
that he submitted willingly to this order ; and, without appear- 
ing in any way surprised, he took him pleasantly by the hand 
and said in a firm voice : " Let us go, Monsieur, wherever the 
King commands ; I have no greater joy than when opportunity 
to obey him is afforded." He asked leave only to put on his 
cassock, for he was only in his dressing-go wn. Then he said 
to his nephew, M . de Barcos, will you come ? M. de Barcos 
replied, Very gladly, Monsieur. But the Captain said, Oh, 
Monsieur, my orders are for you alone. 

' Thus the uncle and nephew parted, and M. de Saint-Cyran 
entered a carriage escorted by a portion of the Archers, the 

s 2 



260 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

others remaining to guard the house, while as yet it was not 
known where he was being taken, no one as yet having dreamt 
the Cardinal de Richelieu would employ such great violence as 
to throw into a rude prison a person he had honoured with 
quite special esteem. 

' Some believed he would be taken before His Eminence, 
to acquit himself of what was alleged against him ; others 
thought before the Chancellor, to receive orders to leave Paris ; 
others said that such a number of Archers might well be to 
take him to the Bastille, others said to the Bois de Vincennes, 
and these latter proved right. 

'It was a Friday, May the I4th, 1638, the day after the Feast 
of the Ascension. The day of this Feast, M. d'AndiUy had 
come to bid farewell to M. de Saint-Cyran, before leaving on the 
morrow for his house at Pomponne ; and on his way thither, 
by good fortune, he met him in the park of Vincennes. I learnt 
from M. d'Andilly himself that a certain Gilleton, who was 
in his service, was the first to perceive M. de Saint-Cyran in the 
carriage and, when he said so, M. d'Andilly replied: "You 
are mistaken, I saw M. de Saint-Cyran yesterday, and he did 
not tell me of any journey he had to take in this direction." 
The Guards had reversed their cloaks, which was why he was 
not seen to be a prisoner ; so that M. d'Andilly, as yet without 
any suspicions, went up to the carriage, and, seeing that it 
was in truth M. de Saint-Cyran, said to him gaily : "Where are 
you taking all these people ? " M. de Saint-Cyran replied with 
equal joyousness : " It is they on the contrary who are taking 
me. I regard myself the prisoner of God rather than of men. 
For the rest," he added, " they are in such haste that I had no 
time to take any book." M. d'Andilly had then in his hands 
the Confessions of S. Augustine, and said to him : " Look, 
here is one which you once gave to me, I must return it you." 
Afterwards the Captain of the Guard, who was a friend of 
M. d'Andilly, had the courtesy to let them converse a little. 

' Thus, after M. d'Andilly had received certain instructions as 
to his affairs, greatly praising God for this fortunate meeting, 
they mutually agreed that M. d'Andilly should pursue his 
journey, that nothing should seem affected. They embraced 
as though they might never meet again, and M. de Saint-Cyran 
was escorted to the Chateau and put in the Keep.' 1 

The seizure of Saint-Cyran was followed by the dispersal of 
the hermits at Port Royal. It was reported unseemly that men 
should thus cluster on the skirts of a convent. Calumny did 

1 Memoir es . . . par M. Lancelot, vol. i, p. 56 seq. 



THE RECLUSES AT PORT ROYAL DES CHAMPS 261 

not spare the nuns, but for this time they were protected by 
the Archbishop, who averted from them a threatened royal 
inquiry and, himself visiting the convent, reported of them 
favourably. ' We are such good women,' Angelique writes 
with irony, ' if we are to believe all that is said of us.' 

The hermits for their part, at the happy suggestion of Ange- 
lique, betook themselves from Port Royal in Paris to the 
deserted convent of Port Royal des Champs. They were now 
ten or twelve in number, the three remaining sons of Madame 
le Maitre having joined the household at the gate. Of these, 
two are of no special note, nor did they in the sequel prove 
of more than respectable, and married, virtue ; but the 
youngest, M. de Saci, destined from childhood for the priest- 
hood, became the Director and the prop of Port Royal in later 
days of stress. 

At this time, M. Singlin, Confessor already appointed by 
Saint-Cyran to the convent, was the mainstay alike of nuns and 
hermits. Up to the time of Angelique's death he filled this 
place, representing Saint-Cyran in the convent, and inspiring 
awe as well as affectionate respect. The imperious-natured Ange- 
lique trembled before this unassuming priest. And yet it is 
characteristic and befits his modesty that our narrative may 
pass him by with slight notice. He was the animating heart 
rather than a prominently active member of the community, 
the regulator of consciences that held all true and in unison. 

In M. Singlin we touch on the democratic strain in the move- 
ment, upon a second point of affinity with methodism, where 
personal advantages and human learning are set at naught 
in view of spiritual grace. He was of obscure origin son of 
an unsuccessful wine-merchant , insignificant in person and 
\\lthout learning ; he had passed from trade to the priesthood, 
encouraged by S. Vincent de Paul, and hastily acquiring the 
bare modicum of Latin. Acquaintance with the profounder 
teaching of Saint-Cyran was followed by a long abstinence from 
the functions of priest and by retreat into the then real solitude 
of Port Royal des Champs deserted by the nuns and not yet 
peopled by hermits. But, no more than S. Vincent de Paul, did 
Saint-Cyran see in the mere absence of learning any disquali- 
fication for the priesthood ; and, recognizing in the obscure and 



262 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

modest Singlin, who asked nothing better than a hidden life of 
penitence, the gift, akin to his own, of insight into character 
and power over souls, he made him, however unwilling, Con- 
fessor in his own place at Port Royal. 

M. Singlin it was who marshalled the hermits in retirement 
to Port Royal des Champs. 

' We departed then ' (from Paris for Les Champs), Lancelot 
narrates, ' at Pentecost, some before, some after the Feast. 
M. le Maitre and M. de Sericourt continued to live in the 
country as they had in town, dwelling and taking meals apart 
like the Carthusians. As for us, we had meals in common, 
together with certain children under our charge. We said 
Matins at night all together ; the other hours were kept 
privately, and each practised in the abundance of his heart 
the holy instructions which he esteemed himself happy to have 
learnt from the mouth of M. de Saint-Cyran. 

' Since the site of the Abbey was in those days very unhealthy, 
because the place was a wilderness and the waters had no outlet, 
we were made to ascend the slopes towards evening to take 
the air, and we used to repeat Compline. M. Singlin sometimes 
made us sing out loud, that the mingling of our voices might 
better testify the joy of our hearts, and that God might publicly 
be praised whilst the truth was thought to be held captive in 
the person of him to whom we were indebted for all the favours 
God was pleased to show us. 

' We spent thus some months in a life all happy and full 
of charity, where the sole care of each was to make progress 
towards God and to give himself wholly to Him, after having 
set in oblivion all creatures. . . . 

' But the enemy of peace could not longer suffer so sweet 
and holy a union. He took umbrage at a manner of life so 
closely resembling that of the early Christians, where every- 
body had equal consideration, where help given to persons was 
regulated by their needs and not by outer considerations, and 
where all things were ordained by the zeal alone of charity 
and by contempt for the things of the world. He held it 
a shame to allow the merit of M. de Saint-Cyran to triumph in 
the person of those whom God had given him, while he was 
endeavouring to overwhelm it in his own. He persuaded the 
Cardinal to disperse the sheep after having smitten the shep- 
herd, for fear lest the purity of our morals and of our life 
should be the apology of him whose conduct he wished to 
blacken. Accordingly the resolution was taken to make us 
depart from this holy spot and to disperse us. M. de Laubarde- 



THE RECLUSES AT PORT ROYAL DES CHAMPS 263 

mont, Master of Requests, was sent for that purpose, and he 
came twice in one day to interrogate us. The second time he 
questioned even the children of eight or nine years of age ; 
upon which subject I would write at greater length had not 
the industry of the Jesuits, who have had their examination 
printed, anticipated me.' 1 

Neither must we dwell in detail upon these events, for the 
reason that we are concerned primarily with the nuns and with 
' ces messieurs ' only in so far as their acquaintance is essential 
to the knowledge of Port Royal. Briefly be it said that, 
dispersed, they found each a separate refuge with sympathizing 
friends and remained one in spirit however scattered. And 
never was that work of training children abandoned, the 
several pupils moving with their respective tutors. Presently 
this first storm blew over, and hermits and pupils alike 
reassembled at Les Champs. 

1 Memoir es . . . par M. Lancelot, vol. i, p. 109 seq. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Antoine Arnauld. The ' Frequente Communion '. Increase of the 

Hermits. 

SAINT-CYRAN'S imprisonment lasted five years, until 1643, 
when the death of Richelieu facilitated his release. That 
minister would listen to no word in his favour. ' Do you know,' 
he replied to an intercessor, ' of what man you are speaking ? 
He is more dangerous than six armies. Look at my Catechism 
there on the table I say in it that attrition suffices with 
confession, and he, he believes that contrition is necessary. 
And in the marriage of Monsieur, all France gave in to my 
wish, he alone had the temerity to oppose it.' 1 And again, 
' Had only Luther and Calvin been taken in such good time, 
we should have been spared all the troubles.' 

To no one more than to Saint-Cyran was the comparison with 
Luther and Calvin unpalatable. But his imprisonment did not 
check that movement of reform, so carefully distinguished 
from schismatic revolt, of which he was main author. 

Nor indeed was his own activity checked. His prison was 
a field for the small beginnings which promise to the eye of 
faith a wide fruition ; he taught the child of his warder, the 
mother in return exercising his humility and patience by 
petty thefts and tyrannies ; he found means of showing 
charity to his fellow-prisoners. Neither was the wider sphere 
of influence shut off. Though kept in strict confinement, 
Saint-Cyran continued to write, in pencil and on scraps of paper, 
an infinity of letters, continuing thus his work as Director of 
souls. The penitent Marie Claire, at Port Royal, made it her 
pious task to copy fairly out these letters, as they passed 
through the convent. 

In this manner Saint-Cyran's influence extended now to the 
youngest member of the Arnauld family, to Antoine, le grand 
1 Memoives de Godefroi Hermant, vol. i, p. 82. 



THE FREQUENTS COMMUNION 265 

Arnauld. This youngest of the family, Angelique's petit 
frere, as she alludes to him in early letters, her junior by twenty 
years, was now at the entrance only of theological study, to 
which he had turned from the law. His young ambition 
was to become doctor of the Sorbonne ; having obtained it, 
he was to win the more glorious honour of expulsion from 
that body ' for the truth's sake '. 

Saint-Cyran directed the student to the works of S. Augustine, 
and Antoine Arnauld became at once, even in his thesis for 
a degree, the champion of the Augustinian doctrine of grace, 
rousing from the first the disfavour of his regular teacher. 
His pen was soon employed in a more open arena, and matters 
of reform were brought forward on a side which concerned 
and interested the general public the side, namely, not of 
theological doctrine or of church government, but of daily 
practice and discipline. Arnauld's work, De la Fre'quente 
Communion, written under the influence of Saint-Cyran in prison, 
is the first great landmark in the controversies between 
Jansenists and Jesuits. Thenceforth all minor and individual 
grievances against the Directors of Port Royal became merged 
in the enmity of the Jesuits ; and the strife took definite shape 
as one with that powerful Order. 

The Fre'quente Communion is the precursor of the Lettres 
Provinciates ; it appealed as they did to the public conscience, 
and it produced an effect inferior only to that produced by 
the more illustrious work. It took up the combat openly for 
those practices of penance, of penitential delay before absolu- 
tion, the advocacy of which had been one article of offence 
against Saint-Cyran ; and it stirred again the burning matter 
of contrition versus attrition. 

The book appeared in 1643, the year of Richelieu's death 
and Saint-Cyran's release, and was in answer to strictures 
passed by a Jesuit upon Saint-Cyran's conduct of souls. 

One of the ladies of the Court, Madame la Princesse de 
Guemene, and her conscience, was the slight cause that led to 
the work. The princess, hitherto given to vanity of a pro- 
nounced and even scandalous type the Cardinal de Retz 
gives her measure a , came at this time, through the medium 
1 v. De Retz: Memoires, ed. Regnier, vol. i, pp. 129-32, 



266 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

of Arnauld d'Andilly, under the influence of Saint-Cyran. ' Grace 
was in her,' recognized that man of insight, ' as a flickering 
spark upon a frozen pavement,' l a spark which not many 
years resisted the wind of vanity. D'Andilly, with his wonted 
enthusiasm, the greater, his worldly friends suspected, when 
the penitent soul was lodged in a fair body, conceived great 
hopes of this Court beauty, and even for a moment inspired 
Angelique with the same. The gay creature, young, beautiful, 
and in perfect health, had moved d'Andilly to compassion 
by her remark that she could conceive no happier estate than 
her own, and had in her turn been impressed by his answering 
wish to transfer her health and beauty from her body to her 
soul. Saint-Cyran, appealed to by d'Andilly, did what he could 
to preserve and fan the flickering spark of grace, giving her 
from his prison a paper of rules for her guidance. 

Madame de Guemene, obedient to his teaching, abstained 
from a ball on the eve of Communion. Her friend, Madame de 
Sable, surprised at this abstinence, compared with her notes 
as to their respective Directors. The instructions given by 
Saint-Cyran were shown to the Jesuit who guided Madame de 
Sable ; the latter's reply, strongly advocating contrary views, 
in its turn passed to Saint-Cyran. The Jesuit went so far as to 
say that ' the more a person lacked grace, the more diligently 
should he partake of the divine food ', and, in general, main- 
tained the external, as it were magical, virtue of the Sacra- 
ments, irrespective of inward change. 

Arnauld, that he might not seem to be hitting in the air, 
took this reply accordingly as his text, though without naming 
the author or source ; and made his work at once an attack 
upon current practices and an exposition of the practice and 
doctrine of the Fathers, Canons and Councils. 

With the Fre'guente Communion, the quarrel took on shape 
and full proportions. Thenceforth it was war to the death 
with the Jesuits. They led off with an error in tactics. For 
they declaimed with such fury against the work, from the 
pulpit, as greatly to excite public curiosity, and it was in large 
measure due to their sermons that the first edition sold out 

1 Lettresde Saint-Cyran: ed. 1648, p. 2. (Letter to the Mere Angelique.) 



THE EFFECT OF THE FREQUENT E COMMUNION 267 

in a fortnight. 1 A second promptly appeared, explaining the 
attacks by stating the source of the writing and opinions in 
view. The most violent of the Jesuit preachers exceeded too 
all measure and, having insulted the several bishops and arch- 
bishops who had approved the book, was compelled to make 
amends by a manner of public penance, the practice of which, 
Port Royal historians are careful to observe, he had turned to 
ridicule in his sermons. 

Neither, in this matter of the Frc'quente Communion, were 
the Jesuits more successful at Rome. Their influence with 
Mazarin, the more formidable Richelieu being dead, obtained 
an order from the Queen Mother for Arnauld to answer at 
Rome for his book. But the order brought the Sorbonne up 
in arms, and also the Bishops, in defence of Gallican liberties, 
and Mazarin was fain to apologize, on the score of ignorance, 
for the step taken. Arnauld thought it more prudent not to 
venture his person in Rome. His work, however, was examined, 
but neither Cardinals nor Pope would condemn it. The 
Jesuits abided a more favourable occasion for venting their 
wrath. 

Meanwhile the work had an effect far deeper than the 
rousing of curiosity. It touched the serious conscience of 
the nation and brought many penitents to Port Royal ; some 
to the convent, yet more to the hermits. 

We have many tales of the serious spirits touched thus to 
penitence ; of M. le me'dicin Pallu, first of several physicians 
who at Port Royal varied penance with charitable practice 
of their skill ; of the Bishop of Bazas who, after a retreat with 
ces messieurs, converted his palace into a seminary and led 
in his diocese a life truly apostolic ; of others again who served 
in the work of teaching at Port Royal, or in literary and even 
humble manual labour. They are narratives of a more varied 
interest than those of the nuns, but again lead us too far 
from our convent. 

Complementary to the several abbesses, won by our Mother 
Angelique to lay down an ill-gotten dignity, there were priests 
who, under this influence, voluntarily resigned the cures upon 
1 Memoires . . . par Lancelot, vol. i, pp. 240-1. 



268 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

which they had too lightly entered and duties for which they 
felt themselves unworthy. A most notable case was that of 
the cure of S. Merri in Paris, M. Hillerin, who was an amiable 
bon viveur with hearty enjoyment of social intercourse among 
his parishioners, but who, awakened to a higher understanding 
of his office, resigned and entered into retreat under guidance 
of M. Singlin. 1 His successor, M. du Hamel, made the parish 
of S. Merri an active centre of reform and strait Christianity. 
Again, whole families came under the influence, and then 
both convent and community of Messieurs gained recruits, the 
daughters sent for education to the one, the sons to the other 
enlarging the bonds of human kinship already, with the 
Arnauld family, so strong a support to spiritual union. The 
family of Du Fosse at Rouen they, however, previously 
touched provided thus nuns for the convent and sent three 
boys to be taught by the Messieurs. The youngest boy, the 
sole who survived, has left invaluable memoirs, their worth 
impaired only by the common failing in Port Royal memoirs, 
of prolixity, recording with zest in his old age his boyish 
impressions of the hermits and his school-days. He was 
already at Port Royal des Champs when the effects of the 
Fre'quente Communion began to be seen : 

' The extraordinary blessing which God shed upon the 
book, De la Frequente Communion, was apparent in the con- 
version and retreat of a great number of persons, who renounced 
the world to come and confine themselves within the solitude of 
the Abbey where we dwelt. We saw the arrival from diverse 
parts of persons of diverse professions, who came like travellers 
in danger of shipwreck at sea, saving themselves as best they 
could upon a plank, to the port whither the almighty and 
merciful hand of the Lord conducted them.' 2 

There was M. de la Riviere, converted from Protestantism, 
a soldier, ' and esteemed according to the world a gallant one,' 
who took charge of the woods. M. de la Pe'titicre, again, was 
un lion plutot qu'un homme, but turned all his fiery energy 
to practical service and penance. M. Pallu built himself 
a little house as retreat in the garden : 

1 Cf. Memoires . . . par M. Fontaine, vol. i, p. 6 seq. 

2 Memoires de Pierre Thomas, sieur du Fosse, ed. 1876, vol. i, p. 121. 



RETREAT OF M. D'ANDILLY 269 

' After having long practised medicine for the princes of the 
blood royal in view of gain and temporal honour, he made 
it his glory to practise it for the poor in order to gain Heaven 
which, as Jesus Christ declares, is theirs. But at the same 
time he thought chiefly of healing the wounds of his soul and 
his spiritual maladies, by the penance to which he consecrated 
himself with the others who dwelt in this spot. 1 

' He had built (in the garden of the Monastery) a dwelling small 
but very neat, which was afterwards called le petit Pallu, both 
because of the smallness, very precise and compact, of its 
rooms, and because of the figure of its master who was small 
in every respect except in wit : little body, little dwelling, 
little horse, but all well shapen, well proportioned, and very 
agreeable. "MonDieu! who would not have loved this good 
recluse? One almost rejoiced at falling ill," observes the 
elder youth, Fontaine, "in order to have the pleasure of enjoy- 
ing his visits." ' 2 

Fontaine and Du Fosse, in their memoirs fresh with young 
interest, people for us with graphic images the ' desert ' of 
Port Royal. One last hermit may alone detain us, late 
comer to retreat though first in discipleship to Saint-Cyran. 

Saint-Cyran left his prison (1643) only to die after a few brief 
months of reunion with his friends. To the ami par excellence, 
M. d'Andilly, he now bequeathed his heart, attaching to that 
precious legacy the condition that the possessor should enter 
into retreat, that d'Andilly should crown his virtuous life in 
the world by a final renunciation of even his innocent pleasures 
there. The head of the Arnauld family took leisurely and 
cordial leave of his friends at Court and set his affairs in order, 
establishing one son in his property of Pomponne, and another, 
M. 1'Abbe Arnauld, who has left memoirs, in an ecclesiastical 
career. (The sons, we may note, M. 1'Abbe in particular, 
found him less generous to them than to the community of 
Port Royal, which henceforth was his own absorbing interest.) 
Already the convent was the home for all his daughters. 
Two had died there, the third we know as Angelique de S. Jean, 
and two still younger were growing from convent children 
into nuns. One son, again, former page to Richelieu, was 
among the early hermits. 

' Ib., p. 124. 

2 Memoires par. . . M. Fontaine, vol. i, p. 302. 



270 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

With the advent of this veteran, sixty-three years of age, 
but full of vigour and gusto as a boy, retreat at Port Royal 
assumed an aspect of more material happiness. As d'Andilly 
had adorned his social life with benevolence and sound virtue, 
so he tempered his penitential retreat by innocent enjoyment 
and agreeable occupation. His was the care especially of the 
gardens. Improvement of the deserted convent grounds had 
already been begun by M. le Maitre and his comrades, M. le 
Maitre, warned in a dream to care for this property of the 
nuns, had turned to manual labour with such characteristic 
zest that M. Singlin had to recall him to the primary end of 
retreat, the penitential care of his own soul. M. d'Andilly, 
ripe in practical capacity and experience, brought also money 
to the task. At his expense, the much-needed work of drain- 
age was effected, and the malarial site changed under cultiva- 
tion into a salubrious garden. 

M. Singlin announced the expected new arrival to the 
hermits. He had been talking to M. le Maitre, and : 

' on his rising to go and see the other recluses, M. le Maitre 
inquired if he might take the liberty of asking who were 
they who, he had just said, would retire to this desert.' ' It 
is M. d'Andilly, your uncle,' said M. Singlin ; ' but that is 
not yet noised abroad ; as yet nothing is known of it in the 
world, and he will not come alone. This again is one of the 
fruits of M. de Saint-Cyran. I marvel,' added M. Singlin, 'at 
the extent to which this man, so enlightened, was persuaded 
of the malice of the world, and of the need for retiring from it. 
For you know as well as I what M. d'Andilly is, his candour, 
his innocence, his integrity, his virtue and his wise simplicity. 
If any one might remain with innocence in the world, surely 
it is he. Nevertheless M. de Saint-Cyran thought something still 
wanting to him ; and on his death-bed bequeathed him his 
heart on condition he should retire from the world. No 
sooner had he received this pledge of so tender a love, than 
he was touched to the quick, and conceived at once the purpose 
of retiring. It is this he is now working for and he thinks 
only of disengaging himself from his affairs.' l 

It took M. d'Andilly a considerable time to shake off his 
worldly engagements and set his affairs in order. Not until 

1 Memories . . . par M. Fontaine, vol. i, pp. 257-8. 



RETREAT OF M. D'ANDILLY 271 

1645, two years after Saint-Cyran's death, was his retreat 
effected. It made a great stir in Paris: 

' where he was immensely beloved by everybody . . . He had 
long sighed for this moment. He had taken beforehand the 
title of Superintendent of the Gardens. He constantly sent 
letters, the most tender in the world. He declared that no 
one could so desire to grow younger as he to grow older by 
several months ; and that each day gone seemed to him 
a great gain, because his awaited liberty was the nearer. It 
may be judged by this what his joy was when, his affairs 
terminated, he was at length able to satisfy this long thirst 
which had so long parched him, and to bring into this desert an 
inexpressible comfort. And could one see, without transports 
of joy, this wise, venerable and loveable old man meditating, 
with the seriousness natural to him, upon the outcry of the 
world from which God had drawn him, the agitations of the 
Court from which He had sheltered him, the laborious occupa- 
tions of the age from which He had relieved him, to adore 
Him in this ever peaceful haven, as he says so well in the 
Ode he composed on the subject ; or could one see without 
sorrow the shipwreck of so many persons whom his good 
heart had made his friends, but whom his example had not 
strength enough to draw from out the sea when he escaped it ? 

' I own,' Fontaine recalls in his own old age this veteran 
Arnauld, who, in retreat, lived to be eighty, ' that I am still 
quite stirred when I think of the glowing fire which burned 
so constantly in this holy recluse. Age, which weakens all, 
seemed to bring only a fresh renewal of his ardour. I seem 
to see and hear him speaking to me with that glance of fire, 
his animated words and gestures, and his whole bearing, 
giving the lie in a manner to his great age, and, in a body of 
eighty years, as active as a person of fifteen. His eager 
eyes, his firm, quick walk, his voice of thunder, his white 
hair harmonizing so well with the vermilion of his countenance, 
his grace in mounting and holding himself on horseback, the 
excellence of his memory, the quickness of his wit, the boldness 
of his hand, whether in wielding the pen or in pruning trees, 
were like a species of immortality, in the words of S. Jerome, 
an image of the resurrection to come, and, if one may say so, 
the reward of an excellent virtue. During his whole life he 
had united two things almost irreconcileable, that is to say, 
the polish of the world with great innocence, a very pene- 
trating mind with incredible simplicity, heroic magnanimity 
with profound humility. 

'With what joy, mon Dieu, did one see this holy old man 



272 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

retire to Port Royal, which was his family-home more than 
the very house he left ! . . . He came thither to finish his course, 
dividing the hours that remained over from prayer and attend- 
ance at the Holy Sacrament between the labours of the mind 
and of the body ; giving some to his customary translations, 
the rest to his gardens and his trees where, as he so often 
said to me, he forced nature, to make her fertile in fruits to 
which were given the name of monster on account of their 
prodigious size. In this blessed repose and these tranquil 
occupations he ended his career. Never was more appro- 
priate emblem found, nor device which better fitted him, than 
the one placed beneath his portrait, of a swan sailing tran- 
quilly upon the waters, that sings, being near to death, these 
words : Quam dulci senex quieted l 

1 Memoir es . . . par M. Fontaine, vol. i, p. 289 seq. 



CHAPTER XIX 

The Growth of the Convent. Activity of the Mere Angelique ; 

her Letters 

THE imprisonment of Saint-Cyran, his release and subse- 
quent death, touched closely both nuns and hermits. The news 
of the release coming to the convent at an hour of silence, 
the Mere Agnes conveyed the glad tidings to the community 
by the simple gesture of loosing her girdle, and at once the 
attuned minds of the nuns caught her meaning. 1 

One of Saint-Cyran's first visits was for the convent, and 
then the nuns' joy overflowed in light laughter. Something 
comic struck them in the way in which an ecclesiastic present 
used an eye-glass ; and they laughed : 

' because,' says Lancelot, who was present and who had had 
his own experience of a gaiety of heart resembling levity, ' it is 
harder to restrain laughter in great joy than in other moods. 
This unexpected noise surprised M. de Saint-Cyran, who did 
not know what caused it. He asked accordingly the reason, 
and, as no one knew what to answer, he said : " I had truly some- 
what to say to you, but it needs a different preparation than 
this ; it shall be for another time." Thus a fault in itself very 
slight deprived us of a happiness which would not have been 
slight, if indeed it be a lesser one to have seen how restrained 
Saint-Cyran wished one to be in intercourse with Nuns, and how 
faithfully he observed this precept of the Wise Man : Filiae 
sunt tibi, ne ostendas hilarem faciem tuam ad illas ; since he did 
not think the universal joy we were in could give dispensation; 
thus teaching us with what purity and reverence he desired 
the divine truths to be bestowed and heard.' 2 

The joy conferred by Saint-Cyran's presence was but short- 
lived. Yet Angelique, whose personal debt to him was so 

1 Relation , . . de la Mere Angelique de S. Jean, Memoires pour 
servir . . ., vol. i, p. 238. 

2 Memoires . . . par M. Lancelot, vol. i, p. 210 seq. 
LOWNDES X 



274 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

great, indulged no sorrow at his death. Her faith, true to 
Christian profession, saw death as gain to him and suppressed 
the sense of personal loss. 

Relics of the master were, however, carefully treasured. 
The precious heart was for Arnauld d'Andilly, but, before 
the body passed for interment to S. Jacques du Haut Pas, the 
Nuns gleaned their share. Lancelot, most loving disciple, 
prepared and dispensed the coveted parts, and he it is who 
tells the grim tale : 

' To prevent the confusion which ordinarily arises on such 
occasions, when every one wishes to obtain a relic, I took 
possession of the room and I kept the door locked, permitting 
only the needful persons to enter. ... I had a quantity of linen 
steeped in his blood. I made them take his heart, which he 
had bequeathed to M. d'Andilly . . . and M. d'Andilly afterwards 
wished it to be preserved at Port Royal des Champs. I caused 
the entrails to be set aside, and they were buried at Port Royal 
in Paris to gratify the devotion of the Mere Angelique. I 
reserved the top part of his head ... to give into the hands 
of his nephew, who has since given it to Port Royal. I was 
careful to gather up all the dust made when the head was 
severed. I broke off also the fairly large pieces remaining at 
the back of the head and one was sent to the Monastery of the 
Visitation at Poitiers, which he had carefully formed from its 
establishment. I cut off a quantity of his hair, and I kept 
the shirt in which he died, which the Mere Angelique had begged 
to have. 

' On Monday evening ' Saint-Cyran had died on the 
Sunday M. le Maitre arrived from Port Royal des Champs, 
and on learning of all these little treasures I had garnered was 
not yet satisfied. He wished to have the hands ; those hands, 
he said, all pure and holy, which he raised so often to God, 
which have written so much truth, and which were still fighting 
for the Church when God called him. He obtained the 
approval of M. Singlin ; but it was not so easy a thing to 
accomplish, because the body was already shrouded and set 
in a wooden coffin until the leaden one should be made. It 
was placed in the parlour, covered with a pall, surrounded 
by lights and attended by an Ecclesiastic of the parish whom 
it was undesirable to have as witness of our devout act. 
Nevertheless the matter did not admit of further deliberation, 
for the man with the lead coffin was every moment expected. 

' It was thought well to charge me with the execution of 
the design. So, after sending the said Ecclesiastic to supper, 



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P. 274 



VIEWS OF THE CHURCH OF PORT ROYAL DES CHAMPS 
Showing places of burial and the altar of relics 



INFLUENCE OF SAINT-CYRAN 275 

I shut myself up in the room with one other person. We 
removed all these trappings of death, we opened the coffin, 
we uncovered the cloth wrapped round the body, and, devoutly 
kissing those hands so worthy to be venerated, I took the 
knife and cut them both off at the wrist, and placed them very 
cleanly in a box which I had got ready for this purpose, and 
on the morrow I carried them to the Mere Angelique, together 
with the greater part of the relics I have already mentioned. 
I found the body of M. de Saint-Cyran as supple and as easy to 
handle as though he had but just expired, although he had 
already been dead more than thirty hours ; a thing which in 
certain saints has been looked upon as a mark of great holiness 
and innocence. 

' Words fail to express the joy of the Mere Angelique when 
I placed this sacred trust in her hands, or the reverence with 
which she received it. . . . 51 

The first benefit which Angelique had realized in the teaching 
of Saint-Cyran was the confirmation of all her own tendencies ; 
under his guidance she could pursue, with all the ' support 
of obedience ', the ideal of the Religious Life as she had con- 
ceived it in her girlish ardour, as she had endeavoured to 
imprint it upon her convent des Champs the ideal of sim- 
plicity, of poverty common as well as individual, of perfect 
disinterestedness and laborious charity. From this ideal she 
had not swerved in heart. Through all the temporal difficulties 
of the Paris convent, which had made her ' shed a million tears 
and pass many nights without sleeping ', she had never been 
tempted, by the grace, as she relates, of God , to refuse any poor 
girl who proffered herself. Nevertheless, whether from lack of 
faith or error of judgement, or from whatever human weakness, 
she had betrayed her convent into a wrong track, had been her- 
self an instrument in the very worldly procedure by which the 
House, first recipient of Saint-Cyran's teaching, the Maison du 
S. Sacrement, had been set on foot. Her indiscretion in choice 
of a Director, in ever leaving so she now felt the original 
convent, was largely responsible for the debts of Port Royal. 

On these points Saint-Cyran did not fail to blame her, or to 
confirm her self -blame. For in him she had at length found 
a director who did not flatter, but who satisfied her early desire, 

1 Memoir es . . , par M. Lancelot, vol. i, p. 255 seq. 

T 2 



276 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

satisfied it yet more completely than had S. Frangois de Sales, 
for a stern and inflexible guide. He condemned roundly the 
way, by soliciting patronage and seeking notoriety, in which 
so sacred a project as the Institut du S. Sacrement had been 
set on foot ; he declared that God's best grace upon it would 
be persecution a grace which, in that matter of the Chapelet, 
did not fail it. As for the debts : 

' M. de Saint-Cyran said to me,' Angelique tells her nephew, 
' that it was not the rich Sisters who should pay our debts, but 
God ; that I had offended Him by my indiscretion and by my rash- 
ness, and ought to satisfy Him by penitence ; that, when I should 
have satisfied God, God would satisfy men, and that I should no 
sooner have discharged myself of what I owed to God, than God 
would discharge me of all our debt. These sincere words from 
this great man delighted me. He did not flatter me like all 
the others, who excused me on the score of good intention for 
these mad and rash undertakings.' x 

Nor was Angelique slow to follow the road indicated. Her 
self-imposed bodily penance was grievous, 2 only less painful 
to read of than the ingenious humiliations she underwent at 
the hands of the nuns from Tard. 

Neither bodily pain nor repentance subdued her joyous 
serenity. And for the debt, the method proved in the course of 
time effective. New and unsolicited benefactions came before 
long to enable their discharge, Saint-Cyran himself aiding, 
whereas the Bishop of Langres, who had instigated the outlay, 
had thought always the security too poor to advance money 
himself. Angelique comments on her experiences with a 
characteristic touch of humorous irony : ' For my part I have 
sometimes said that penance brought us thousandfold goods, 
both through cutting off superfluities, and through the move- 
ment God inspired in penitent persons to assist us. The 
Monks are very unfortunate to oppose it ; it saves both in 
the next world and in this.' 3 

1 Entretiens , . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 

p. 320. 

2 Cf. Relation de la conduite de la Mere Angelique dans la premiere 
Maison du S. Sacrement . . . par la Mere Magdeleine de Sainte-Agues 
de Ligni, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, p. 530 seq. 

* Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, loc. cit., p. 322. 



LADIES IN RETREAT 277 

Saint-Cyran confirmed her also in her desire for retirement ; 
a nun's duty was within convent walls and should be as little 
as possible extended beyond. She should not encourage that 
easy frequentation of the convent parlour with which, as with 
the hearing of sermons, the fashionable world then seasoned 
its frivolities. A set of ' Resolutions ', which she drew up, 
show how truly Angelique desired such retirement, and how 
simply faithful she remained to her earlier ideal. 1 Later 
tales of her rebuffs to ladies kneeling before the grille bear 
further witness to her dread of idle converse. ' Those who 
want our prayers,' she said harshly to one, ' should leave us 
in peace to pray.' 2 

Happily for the interest of the tale, the actual effect of 
union with Saint-Cyran was widening, and not restrictive, for 
the convent. Neither Port Royal nor Angelique were hard of 
access to genuine and approved penitents. The lady rebuffed, 
undeservedly rebuffed as it proved, in the manner told, became 
a valued secular friend at the convent, a right arm to administer 
the Mother's charity, and eventually in widowhood ended her 
days as herself nun within the walls. And this lady Madame 
de Saint-Ange was her name in the world was but one of 
many. As the movement stirred by Saint-Cyran spread, 
secular friends multiplied, aiding, and aided by, our Mothers 
in works of charity and in care of souls. 

Ladies moreover, serious penitents it was hoped, were per- 
mitted to make retreats within the convent. The Princesse 
de Guemene, coquetting with the thought of permanent retreat, 
built on to the convent an apartment for her own use, and 
Madame de Sable made a similar annex. The Princesse Marie 
de Gonzague had also an apartment for her use in the convent, 
and these three ladies were sometimes in simultaneous retreat. 
Then Angelique's ingenuity was taxed to keep them from 
lapsing into worldly gossip. ' I must go and separate our 
Ladies,' she was known to say, ' for they do harm to one 

1 Relation de la conduite de la Mere A ngelique dans la premiere Maison 
du S. Sacrement . . . par la Mere Magdeleine de Sainte-Agnes de Ligni, 
Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, p. 534. 

2 Memoire . . . de la Soeur Anne de Sainte-Eugenie de Boulogne de 
Saint-Ange, Vies . . . des Religieuses . . ., vol. ii, p. 408. 



278 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

another. A way of doing the hair, a fashion, a collar, is always 
being brought up. One must try to banish all these tempta- 
tions of the devil (ces diableries), which are not permissible in 
Christian converse.' x 

Madame de Guemene relapsed ' into vanity ', of the former 
scandalous kind, though she remained faithful always in 
affection to Port Royal ; Madame de Sable was but a tender 
penitent, renouncing the grosser and more ostentatious pleasures 
of the world for delicate refinements of taste, and teasing the 
nuns with her constant dread of death and infectious illness. 
Marie de Gonzague alone of the three had force of sincerity 
enough to win and sustain the Mere Angelique's permanent 
regard. She too had thoughts of the veil, but, when offered 
marriage with the King of Poland, the attractions of a crown 
proved too strong, as she owned with an honesty which 
charmed our Mother however the sentiment might disappoint 
her. As Queen of Poland she remained constant still in 
friendship with the Mere Angelique, generous in gifts to the 
convent and, a matter of more value in the Mother's eyes, 
obedient to her exhortations to piety and benevolence within 
her kingdom. Angelique's letters to her range over twenty 
years and, under all forms of respect, are uniform in faithful 
dealing and reminder of the vanity of worldly honour. ' She 
receives my letters,' Angelique tells her nephew, ' with joy, 
and M. de Fleury, her Confessor, has written to tell me all her 
household are delighted when she gets them, because they see 
that in consequence she treats them more gently, with more 
moderation and charity, that she pardons their shortcomings 
and is more devout and self -restrained. It is this fruit that 
God draws from my letters which leads me to write to her 
with a force that sometimes astonishes me, and with a like 
sincerity as to our Sisters.' 2 

But when choice lay between writing to the Queen and to 
a poor widow, the Mother true Christian democrat gave 
preference to the widow. 

^Relation . . . de la Vie de la Mere Marie- Angelique . . . par la Mere 
Angelique de S. Jean, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. i, p. 242. 

a Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
P- 385- 



LETTERS OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 279 

Angelique's narrative closed, as we saw, with the imprison- 
ment of Saint-Cyran. In compensation for the broken tale, 
her letters become from the time of her return to Port Royal 
from the Maison du S. Sacrement very frequent, and in them 
we may trace the course of events and realize the energy and 
participating zeal of the Mother. 

The convent in Paris could never regain the idyllic obscurity 
of the early days at Les Champs. It acquired instead a new 
weight and dignity ; in the eyes of the world through its part 
in matters which made a great stir, in its own eyes as repository 
of the pure Christian doctrine, of the true faith of the Church. 
And at length the community was called upon, involuntarily 
transgressing the prescribed sphere of nuns, to bear active 
witness and sustain persecution for the truth thus received. 
Angelique felt the prophetic force of words addressed to her 
long before by S. Fra^ois de Sales : ' God has shown me that 
He has reserved you for things of great consequence, for which 
you have great cause to render thanks to His Divine Majesty.' l 

For the first few years after her return from the Maison 
du S. Sacrement to Port Royal, Angelique had no authority, 
save as Mistress of Novices, in the convent. Not she, 
but Agnes, was elected Abbess, and after the term of three 
years re-elected, by the nuns. The obedience which she 
rendered under this congenial rule, if it gratified her imperious 
spirit's need for discipline, was no check upon her activity and 
energy. Freedom from the cares of authority would seem 
rather to have facilitated outer interests. 

We find her continuing, for example, a long correspondence, 
begun at the Maison du S. Sacrement, with a worthy ecclesiastic 
of Boulogne who, Director to a convent of women, asks her 
advice in reforming it. Angelique's sound, even masculine, 
common sense and her power of organization, it is true she con- 
sulted Saint-Cyran , together with the experience and insight 
into character she had gained, appear in these letters. The 
nuns' narratives display the beloved Mother in her fervour of 
charity and apparent blindness of humility. Her own words 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
P- 34- 



2 8o THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

show her keen-sighted enough, and free from all delusions as 
to the native virtue of women or nuns, whatever she might hope 
from the transforming power of grace. 
The point of Lay-Sisters is raised : 

The reason,' she writes, ' that I strongly approve of having 
none, is the great difficulty in finding such as one would wish, 
and because they ordinarily enter Religion with the object 
of finding what they cannot have in the world, and to assure 
their livelihood; and then the Choir Nuns apply them- 
selves more bravely to work where there are no Lay-Sisters, 
and mutually serve each other with more goodwill. I would 
retrench other austerities rather than that of work.' l 

In respect of unusual and voluntary penances : 

' You will do well not to permit them, for singularity does 
great harm.' 2 

As to correction fraternelle : 

' This brotherly reproof is entirely against my judgement, 
for I have never seen a Community in which it could be 
advantageously practised. The majority of Sisters have small 
wit and still less discretion. They are sometimes over-con- 
scientious and are importunate in warning, even when the 
thing is not worth it, or in respect of a person who does not 
take it well ; so that, out of a trifle, a serious matter is made, 
through the rebuff given by the Sister reproved, or through 
her secret rancour. Moreover, it is a source of distraction to 
judge of others' behaviour. We on the contrary strive to 
accustom the Sisters to attend only to their duties.' 3 

She gives the key to Port Royal's theory of discipline : 
' In fine, it is by the interior that the exterior must be formed, 
not the interior by the exterior.' 4 

Angelique's counsel to this priest, M. Macquart, extends 
even to his duties in his parish. She reminds him that the 
souls of his parishioners are as dear to God as those of the 
nuns. As early as 1635, while she is still at the Maison du 
S. Sacrement, she can hold up to him this example, significant 
of the nature in some respects so like Methodism and early 
spread of Saint-Cyran's reform. 

' There is a good Cure in Lorraine of whom marvels are told. 

1 Lettres de la Mere A ngelique, vol. i, pp. 49-50. 

2 Ib., p. 68. 3 Ib., p. 71. 4 Ib., p. 54. 



LETTERS OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 281 

All his parishioners are true Religious, that is to say, true 
Christians. They are divided into three classes, beginners, 
proficient, and more advanced. Their Cure takes as much 
pains to instruct them as you do your Nuns. They practise 
penance and mortification, and great charity reigns among them, 
in imitation of the primitive Church ; in such wise that none 
among them lack necessaries, because they assist one another 
with as great goodwill as though they were brethren.' l 

With such words and counsel, Angelique ' gives of her 
poverty ', as she has done, she laments, all her life, 

' in such a manner that I shall never be filled unless God 
show me the mercy, which I ask Him with all my heart, of 
spending the remainder of my days in solitude and a simple 
Nun, as I am at present. . . .' 2 

The Mother Superior of that same convent at Boulogne 
draws also from Angelique's stores, winning for example 
from our charitably fervent Mother, so clear-sighted an analysis 
of souls as that which follows : 

' Mothers Superior must be exceedingly discreet in all 
their words, and weigh them with the weight of the true gold 
of holy charity. Whether they exhort, or reprove, or comfort, 
they must adapt themselves to souls, that they may be neither 
too forcible nor too mild ; and not only may no souls be treated 
alike, but the same one must be dealt with variously according 
to the dispositions found in it, the which vigilant charity 
carefully observes, in order to render effective service to one's 
Sisters, and be able to do for them what is always necessary, 
which is : to destroy, to root up, to plant, and to build. None, 
as a rule, sincerely desire one to root up and destroy, and 
yet it is impossible to plant and build without having destroyed 
and uprooted ; which sets Superiors, and must needs set 
them, at a loss, not knowing where to lay hold of these souls 
which they see languish in their feebleness, their self-love 
and their bondage, not only unwilling that the cause should 
be uprooted, but unable even to endure that it should be 
shown them, thinking this would reduce them to extremity 
and make the path to heaven so narrow as to be inaccessible 
to them. 

' There are more of these souls than one thinks ; and many, 
out of human wisdom, conceal themselves, not manifesting 
their distress on hearing Superiors speak of true virtue more 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, p. 62. * Ib., p. 81. 



2 8z THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

forcibly than they like, either to themselves or to others, 
because they do not wish to be thought weak. They are 
content to accept and practise only what pleases them. These 
souls are dangerously sick. Others avow their repugnance 
frankly, and sometimes with spirit, and their lack of conviction 
as to the need of such rigorous observance in matters which 
are good indeed and holy, but so painful to Nature that they 
cannot be practised without special grace from God. These 
too are very sick, for hardihood is no better than hypocrisy, 
save in so far as it makes itself known and attracts no false 
praise. There are others who are neither hypocritical nor 
bold, but who yet have no more true zeal than the others, 
and equally dread the truth and what they take for severity ; 
but, whether from gentleness, humour, timidity, or even from 
affection for their Superiors, they will not own to feeling them 
too strong. Nevertheless they give way to discouragement, 
to vexation, or to seeking excuses for their cowardice, instead 
of looking for the remedy in humility and prayer. Superiors 
must support all these various souls without neglecting them, 
nor yet urging them ; they must despair of none, no more 
than they must confide too much in the good tendencies of 
the best. . . .' l 

The Superior of the Annonciades was, Angelique learnt, 
herself but a half-hearted soul, one of those Abbesses more 
eager to reform her convent than her person. She had con- 
ceived, however, under the influence of her Director, M. Macquet, 
an enthusiasm for our Mother, and, though she evades her 
counsel to lay down authority for a time and enter penitential 
retreat, she yet accepts meekly her forcible and candid exhorta- 
tions. She had written to ask for a portrait, and receives 
this reply : 

' I am only too much indebted to you, my very dear Mother, 
for your extraordinary kindness. I pray God with all my 
heart to reward you for it, and to moderate its excess, which 
is displeasing to Him in all things, since His wisdom makes 
and desires all with weight and measure. I cannot, above 
all, forgive you your vain wish to have my portrait, and I tell 
you before God that I should believe I was offending Him 
mortally by consenting to have it taken. Is it possible that you 
do not see the vanity of this wish, and the grave fault I should 
commit in consenting ? Permit me, in gratitude for your 
kindness, to take courage and tell you the thought I have 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, p. iSS seq. 



LETTERS OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 283 

ventured to conceive, though I do it with difficulty and scruple, 
since God makes me wish to attend only to my own wretched- 
ness. But since He permits you to set trust in me, and so 
much affection, unworthy as I am, perhaps it is His will that 
I should speak to you ; I implore His goodness that it may 
be by His spirit. 

' I say then, my dear Mother, that this request shows me 
that you are still all human, and in the devotion of the day 
and not of Christian grace. The devotion of the day tends 
to canonize self. We do not wish to see the imperfections 
of those we love, any more than our own ; or at least, if we see 
them, we excuse them like our own. Where does self-love 
lead us ? We practise the commandment of God to treat 
our neighbour as ourselves, but it is not in order to follow 
His commandment, but only to obey our own inclination ; 
accordingly this love produces only bad effects which injure 
our neighbour, or serve as temptation to him as well as to 
ourselves. Christian charity on the contrary more readily 
endures defects in enemies, or in those for whom nature has 
some natural aversion, rather than in friends ; for as for the 
latter, while tolerating, it corrects them, if it can. Thus, 
my very dear Mother, desiring to have this Christian charity 
for you, I am in distress for you and never pray God for you, 
or think of you, without anxiety ; because (may I venture 
to say it ?) I am afraid always that you do not think enough 
of your salvation, that you flatter yourself in your imperfec- 
tions, or that, recognizing them, you let yourself be discouraged 
rather than fling yourself at the feet of Our Lord, to ask His 
mercy. Meanwhile life passes in this wretched way, and we shall 
presently be called upon to go and give account of our cowardly 
and lukewarm life, without having other excuses to produce 
than our own malice and corruption, which will accuse us 
ourselves. Thus the discouragements we have had during 
our life will be followed by despair at death. 

' I speak to you as I do to my own soul. . . .' * 

With openness of another kind Angelique writes, this same 
year (1637), to the Mother de Chantal. She had the happiness, 
before leaving the Maison du Saint Sacrement, of renewing 
that early intercourse when, young Abbess at Maubuisson, 
she had placed her soul ' as a little Novice ' in the hands of 
the elder Mother. 

Madame de Chantal was then first founding, in union with 
S. Francois de Sales, her Order of the Visitation ; now, an 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, p. 88 seq. 



284 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

aged Mother, she could look upon it, spread and flourishing 
in many branches throughout the country. But her letters 
to Angelique are on a sad theme. She was suffering, at this 
end of her course, from religious depression, a long and obstinate 
sc'cheresse of the heart. The ideas which had ruled her life 
had lost for a time their savour, the emotional reward. She 
relates to Angelique her depression and loss of trust, and 
Angelique receives the confidence with the tenderness, as she 
herself says, of a daughter. She, and Saint-Cyran when con- 
sulted, see in this suffering no guilty discouragement, but the 
perfecting hand of God's grace. The two Mothers write in 
profound union of soul : 

' God has given me, my very dear Mother,' Madame de 
Chantal responds to Angelique, ' decided comfort on reading 
your letter, and I know not what of profound and intimate 
delectation for you, so that it seems there is but one heart 
between us, and that your prayers and those of this worthy 
servant of God (Saint-Cyran), which you have obtained for me, 
will, by the mercy of God, procure me strength and grace not 
to offend God. . . . Believe that you are so dear and so close 
to me, that I cannot, so I feel, offer myself to God without you ; 
and I have confidence that in my need you will persevere, 
with an extraordinary care, in praying and in causing prayer 
to be made.' l 

Angelique is filled with mingled sorrow and joy, compassion 
at the spiritual martyrdom undergone, joy exceeding the 
sorrow : ' because I see the singular love of Our Lord which 
perfects in you His holy work, by the cross with which He 
has visited you. . . .' The practical advice meanwhile is 
exceedingly sound : 

' Do not speak of your suffering, not to God, nor to yourself, 
neither consider its nature to tell to any one whatsoever, and 
never make any examination of it. Hide your trouble from 
yourself and as though you did not feel it. . . .' 2 

This, the deathbed counsel of the Mother Chastel, Madame de 
Chantal's fellow-worker in her Order, is heartily corroborated 
by Angelique : 

* How wisely you act, my dear Mother, in avoiding all 
1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, p. IOQ. 2 Ib., p. no seq. 



LETTERS OF THE MRE ANGELIQUE 285 

reflections ! For it is true that your sole remedy is : never 
to look at yourself but, as you do, at the very holy will of 
God, to accomplish it every instant and whenever occasion 
offers.' 

' And I, my dear Mother ', Angelique reciprocates confidence, 
speaking again to another soul ' as to her own ', and this time 
without thought of edifying , ' I am unhappy at the continuance 
of my infidelities and resistances to His grace. I cannot tell 
you what I suffer, if it is not enough to see me always in a state 
in which I know, so it seems to me, that the essence of my spirit 
is not truly God's, since I find it always moved by self-love, 
and never making a genuine resistance in order to submit 
perfectly to God ; so that I believe all my life is only lying 
and hypocrisy. With that, I have a fear of God which is 
servile and horrible, and such dread of death and of hell that 
it seems to me I have no love at all nor true confidence in 
Him. It appears to me that all the prayers, and the acts 
I perform, are only of the lips and an outcome of the human 
mind, from my knowledge that they ought to be made, and 
not of grace. However, I am at peace, and only too joyous. 
Light-mindedness effaces often the thoughts of my spirit, 
which is not even perturbed, though it is grieved. Yet I prefer 
this affliction to idle joy. I implore you, my very dear Mother, 
pray God to have pity on me, and to destroy all the opposition 
I make to His grace, whatever it costs me. It seems to me 
that I am in extreme need of being humiliated and put to 
shame, while yet I dread it and ever fly from it. God knows 
what I need, and can do it in my despite. Obtain for me this 
grace. . . .' 1 

Angelique, we have already observed (p. 107), was not free 
from the darker influences of Christian doctrine; the dread 
of death and judgement had strong hold upon her. Activity 
and force of will suppressed, however, the tendency to gloomy 
introspection, and now outside events more and more claimed 
her mind. 

When the book De la Fre'quente Communion appeared, her 
letters show her participating zeal. The author, le petit frcre 
of an earlier date, becomes now ' Very reverend Father ', 
as she addresses him. But her exhortations are all maternal, 
as she recognizes in this brother, twenty years her junior, 
the same hot temperament as her own, and reminds him of 
the parting words of their common mother in the flesh. 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, pp. 1 19-20. 



286 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

Madame Arnauld, or Soeur Catherine de Sainte Felicite as 
she was known in Religion, had died a year earlier in the 
convent. As her daughters gathered round her bedside, she 
gave to each appropriate blessing. When Agnes, now Abbess, 
begged to be spoken to as her daughter and told what God 
willed, she maternally bade her submit to what was thought 
good for her health. But to Angelique, who had been Abbess 
when she, Madame Arnauld, had become a Religious, the 
dying woman said : ' My Mother, be the Mother of all your 
brothers and of all your sisters, and tell them the truth always.' 
And to her youngest son Antoine, she sent the injunction that 
' since God had called him to defend the truth, he should never 
relax and should, if need be, die for the truth, and she again 
repeated, that he should never relax in defence of the truth.' 1 

Angelique accepted the dying charge : 

' Our good mother,' she writes to Antoine, ' who, in dying, 
so conjured you to suffer and die for the truth, and me to be 
your Mother, has as it were bequeathed to me the tender 
love she had for her Benjamin ; and I hope she will obtain 
for me also from God her strength, that I may see you suffer 
with as glad a heart, and die if God find you worthy, for the 
truth, as she desired. I do not cease to pray God that He 
will fortify in you His grace more and more, . . ? 

Angelique's love for this young brother, and anxiety for 
his spiritual welfare, betrayed her, however, into a regrettable 
error. She opened one of his letters addressed, not to her, 
but to M. Singlin ; and, lax as was even this convent's standard 
of honour in such matters, the nuns had no scruple in un- 
sealing and copying their beloved Mother's letters to the 
Queen of Poland , the hasty act filled her with compunction. 

' I must ask your forgiveness, my very dear Father, for 
having, the other day, opened your letter to M. Singlin. Your 
note had given me such great distress for the distress which 
you told me you had, that, for my solace, I committed this 
fault, thinking you would tell him more openly the cause of 
your trouble, which I feared might be some weariness and 
discouragement at your present situation ; and, as I saw the 

1 Relation de la Vie . . . de Madame Arnauld . . . par Madame le 
Maistre sa fille, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. iii, p. 300 seq. 
1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, pp. 255-6 



CALUMNY BUSY WITH THE CONVENT 287 

contrary, I was comforted, save that there remains grief for 
my fault. It was indeed great, since I sought my consolation 
by offending against God and violating your privacy. I once 
more ask your forgiveness. I committed a double fault, doing 
it in presence of your messenger, to whom it set an ill example. 
Such is my wonted hastiness, hardihood, impatience and lack 
of mortification, all this having part in the action, which 
bears no excuse, although I know well your goodness would 
find one ; but no man can justify himself before God, nor 
justify others.' l 

Although much harassed, and reduced to hiding, by the 
outcry which the Jesuits raised at the Fre'quente Communion, 
Arnauld was, as we saw, in that matter triumphant. His pen 
was kept, however, in constant exercise to defend and corrobor- 
ate the work, and Angelique follows anxiously the controversy, 
anxious above all that the heat of combat should not weaken 
charity or infringe upon prayer. 

Even when open combat paused, the backbiting calumnies 
of Arnauld's vigilant enemies continued, embracing also the 
convent. Angelique writes of these things to the Queen of 
Poland, mentioning for example an unkind trick played in 
transmission of copies of the Fre'quente Communion, in the 
new Latin version. The packet was intercepted at Lyons 
and, in its place, another substituted, which contained all 
the books written against the work. 

' What will you think, Madam,' she continues, ' if word is 
sent to Poland, as it is elsewhere, that we no longer believe 
in two Sacraments, in Penance and the Eucharist, and that 
we no longer pray to the Holy Virgin or the Saints ? I am 
confident your Majesty will not believe a word of it ; the 
rosary ' (a gift of the queen's) ' in front of the little grille 
gives the lie to this calumny, and gives us the greater desire 
to tell the beads with all our heart for your Majesty.' 2 

About this time, the first stone of the convent church was 
laid, and the Archbishop gave permission, at the ceremony, 
for lay visitors to enter the refectory. Then the prejudices 
of the crowd saw, so we are told, in the pious texts round the 
walls, a resemblance to a Huguenot place of worship, the Temple 
at Charenton. 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, pp. 261-2. 2 Ib., pp. 328-9. 



CHAPTER XX 

Return to Port Royal des Champs. 

THROUGH good report and ill report the Convent of Port 
Royal grew in numbers in 1647 there were ninety-eight nuns 
as in outside influence. 

The offshoot, the Maison du S. Sacrement, had been unable, 
we saw, through lack of funds, to subsist as a separate build- 
ing and its Sisters were, in 1638, gathered in to the larger 
community. After remaining for a time in abeyance, the 
institution, with its special duties, was, in 1641, transferred 
to Port Royal, all the nuns there taking the name of Filles du 
S. Sacrement, and exchanging the black Bernardine scapulary 
for a white scapulary with scarlet cross on the breast. At the 
same time such funds as the Maison du S. Sacrement had 
possessed the thirty thousand livres, namely, left by Mme 
Bardeau were handed over to Port Royal and, by decision of 
the trustees, devoted to building the convent chapel. 

Built from designs by Le Pautre, ' on the model of the Little 
Jesuits,' 1 this church was esteemed a gem of his architecture ; 
it remains, the one original part still extant of Port Royal in 
Paris, enclosed, as formerly within the convent walls, now 
within the precincts of the Maternity Hospital. 

Even our Mother Angelique would seem to have rejoiced, 
with a momentary lapse from her cult of plainness, in the 
beauty of this church, and to have welcomed gifts for its 
adornment. She acknowledged, speaking of the errors of 
the Carmelites to her nephew, that she herself was once guilty 
of asking the Queen of Poland for a carpet for the church, 
though, repentant when it came, she utilized half of it for 
a canopy. Gifts were not lacking ; the Queen of Poland 
was ready to lavish them, and the King, her husband, 

1 v. Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, p. 309. 



RETURN TO PORT ROYAL DES CHAMPS 289 

sent a fine golden pyx 1 ; the painter Philippe de Champaigne, 2 
whose daughter was a nun at Port Royal, gave pictures. The 
inventory of belongings in the sacristy taken at a later date 
(1665) makes no ill show for a convent, and proves Port Royal of 
Paris to have never recovered the quite literal grace of poverty 
which adorned the primitive days at Les Champs. 

The old ideal, however, was now fully reaffirmed. And at 
length the opportunity came for return, without abandoning 
the convent in Paris, to the earlier home. The community 
had now outgrown the building which, twenty years before, 
had been beyond their needs, and so greatly beyond their 
means ; and in 1647, after long application, they obtained leave 
from the Archbishop to make use as well of the old convent 
in the country. The two Houses were to form one Community, 
under the rule of one same Abbess and subject to the same 
Constitutions and Episcopal control. 

Port Royal des Champs had, in the meanwhile, notably 
changed in aspect. The hermits, with their manual labour, 
and M. d'Andilly in particular with no small expenditure of 
money upon drainage, had converted the neglected and 
malarious ' desert ' into a healthy and productive garden. 
They themselves, on the proposed advent of the nuns, re- 
moved to Les Granges, a farm-building upon the adjacent 
hill-slope, d'Andilly alone retaining a dwelling in the valley 
beside the convent, in a part of the outer precincts, where 
he could more conveniently superintend the grounds. 

At the time of this return Angelique was again Abbess. 
Succeeding, by due election of her nuns, her sister Agnes in 
1644, she had been re-elected after the prescribed term of three 

1 v. Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. ii, pp. 597, 600-1. This pyx 
was valued, in 1665, at 12,000 francs. ' Le fonds de la coupe est fait 
d'une Agathe, le reste est d'or, enriche de petits Diamonds et autres 
pierreries d'un ouvrage extremement delicat.' Archives Nationales, 
Paris, MS. L. 1035. 

1 Philippe de Champaigne gave a portrait of the Mere Angelique (pre- 
sumably after her death in 1661) to the Mere Agnes, and it hung over 
the chapter-door of the convent in Paris. His most famous painting 
(vide illustration), now in the Louvre, records his gratitude for his 
daughter's miraculous cure in 1 662 through the prayers of the Mere Agnes, 
and was also given to Port Royal. 

LOWNDES TJ 



290 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

years. Her grief at the reimposition of an authority which, 
as she felt, fostered her natural failings, touched the hearts even, 
we are told, of the nuns who elected her. It did not hamper 
her in the conscientious exercise of that authority. 

Returning now to the scene of her young enthusiasm, 
Angelique brought a like fervour undaunted, however schooled 
by long experience to the task of reform, hoping to call back to 
life the earlier idyl of simplicity, seclusion, and literal poverty. 
She held before her present nuns the high level of those former 
days. Rather than have the beloved solitude broken in upon, 
she would take a nun, whose friends wished to see her, back 
to Paris. She had looked forward eagerly to the outward 
stillness which should foster peace of the soul ; once there, she 
writes that she could have forgotten such a place as Paris existed, 
were it not for the friends for whom charity bound her to pray. 

The Mother Madeleine de Ste Agnes de Ligny, whom we saw 
as a postulant in the Maison du S. Sacrement, and to whose 
account of events there we have alluded, was one of the nuns 
chosen to accompany Angelique back to Les Champs, and to her 
we owe the narrative of the return together with that of sub- 
sequent events. She tells us how, the re-establishment scarce 
effected, the first Fronde broke the peace of the country, 
alarming the convent with threats of pillage and giving the 
nuns, in place of their coveted quiet, an active exercise for 
practical charity ; how Port Royal des Champs, with the 
hermits to protect it, became general granary and storehouse, 
as also centre of benevolence, for the peasantry of the whole 
countryside ; and yet again how, at the second Fronde, all 
returned for the time being to Paris, to exercise their hospi- 
tality there upon nuns from other convents. 

Narrative of the re-establishment of Port Royal des Champs in 
1648, and of what occurred in the subsequent years, 1 by the 
Mere Magdaleine de Sainte- Agnes de Ligni. 

' When the Mother Marie Angelique spoke to M. de Saint-Cyran 
about the translation she had made in 1626 of her Monastery 
to Paris, he testified to her that he did not approve the advice 
given her, thus readily to abandon her ancient House in the 

1 MSmoires pour servir a I'histoire de Port-Royal, vol. ii, p. i seq. 



RETURN TO PORT ROYAL DES CHAMPS 291 

country. And when she said to him that at times nearly 
everybody was ill, and there were barely enough to attend the 
Choir, he answered her : "So much the better. Is it not 
just as good to serve God in the Infirmary, when He wills it, 
as in the Church ? There are no prayers more pleasing to 
Him than those made under suffering." M. de Saint-Cyran 
always prompted the Mother to preserve this House, in the 
hope that God would some day re-establish there souls to serve 
Him. The Mother Angelique entered into his views both 
by submission and by the instinct of grace, ever regretting 
the solitude and remoteness from the world of this ancient 
dwelh'ng-place, whither she desired to return although she 
saw no prospect of doing so. 

' Meanwhile many proposals were made her for raising 
money on what was left in this Abbey in the country. A 
Religious House wished to buy the stalls of the Church which 
were very beautiful ; others asked for the remains and the 
woodwork of the dormitories. In the extreme need of the 
House in Paris at that time, on account of the loans raised 
for building, considerable sums might have been thus obtained 
which would have greatly helped. But the Mother Angelique 
could not entertain any of these proposals, preserving always 
in her heart a secret confidence that God would give her some day 
an opportunity to repair the fault she believed she had com- 
mitted by following too readily the advice given her to remove 
to Paris. 

' The Mother Angelique had always expressed to us much 
sorrow at having left this House of Port Royal des Champs ; 
and she often said to us that she feared truly the advice, which 
afterwards appeared to her very human, had not been given by 
the Spirit of God. Thus she preserved always the hope of 
returning ; but, having several times endeavoured to obtain 
the consent of M. Jean Fran9ois de Gondi, Archbishop of 
Paris, he had always refused. At length, after having consulted 
anew with very enlightened persons of great piety, having 
greatly recommended the matter to God, and having made 
the Community pray, without specifying the occasion (save 
that it was for an affair which concerned God's glory), she 
made the proposition again to M. the Archbishop of Paris 
in 1647. 

' The Prelate with great kindness granted permission to 
reinstate the Nuns in this House, which was to form one body 
with that in Paris, and be subject to the government of the 
same Abbess. The Mother Angehque felt extreme joy in 
seeing herself in a position to repair the fault she thought she had 
committed in leaving this Monastery. She received much 

u 2 



292 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

happiness also from the hope she had of spending at least 
a portion of her life in solitude and remoteness from the world ; 
and she would have wished to be able to spend it so entirely, 
after having laid down the rank of Abbess she then held. 

' She at once called together the Sisters of the Chapter, to 
let them know she had leave to re-establish this Monastery. 
All the Sisters were greatly moved, thinking truly that she 
wanted to make it her habitual residence ; and, flinging them- 
selves at her feet, they most of them begged her to take 
them with her. She comforted them, giving them to under- 
stand that this work was for the glory of God ; and that, 
since the first Monastery of the Holy Sacrament had not 
been able to subsist according to the intention of persons who 
had made donations to that end, she had felt bound to set 
in its place that of Port Royal des Champs, and that she had 
communicated this idea to the Archbishop of Paris, who had 
approved it. She told them also that they were well aware 
of the regret she had always entertained at having left the 
Monastery of Port Royal des Champs, that it had always 
weighed on her conscience, and that for this reason she was 
very happy at being able to re-establish it. 

' In truth, this joy so shone in her countenance that we had 
never seen the like in her. Nevertheless, since she had great 
benevolence for the Sisters, she comforted them with much 
tenderness, promising to visit frequently both Convents, and 
even to take them all in turn with her. She told them also 
that this parting must be offered to God in gratitude for the 
grace we had just received, the Institute of the Holy Sacrament 
having been recently established. Finally she conjured them 
not to discuss the matter, and not to tell one another the 
distress they might feel on this account, which could only serve 
to distract and weaken them ; she added that they must be 
content to offer this re-establishment heartily to God, and 
pray Him to bless it and bestow His Spirit upon those destined 
for it. Work was at once begun, to set the House of Port 
Royal des Champs in order, that the Nuns might be lodged ; 
and it lasted until the May of the following year. 

' On the eve of the day the Mother Angelique was to leave, 
M. the Cardinal de Retz, coadjutor of M. de Gondi his uncle, 
the Archbishop of Paris, did us the honour of coming to Port 
Royal of Paris to bid her adieu. He was also so good as to 
desire to see all the Nuns who were to accompany her, and he 
gave them his blessing. On the morrow, May the i3th, 1648, the 
Mother Ang61ique, and those who were to follow, communicated 
at the first Mass ; and afterwards she assembled all the Sisters 
to bid them farewell. She informed them the moment of 



RETURN TO PORT ROYAL DES CHAMPS 293 

departure had come ; and, seeing them all dissolve into tears, 
she said to them : " Why do you weep, my Sisters ? Must 
one not do the will of God gaily and with a good grace ? Rather 
should we rejoice that He will be glorified, as I hope, in this 
re-establishment." After she had comforted them and had 
bidden adieu to all the Nuns, the Community escorted her to 
the gate of the Convent, with tears and sobs beyond my power 
to describe. And, although the Sisters who were to follow 
the Mother to Port Royal des Champs went thither with all their 
heart, they did not fail to weep much, because of their sorrow 
in leaving our dear Mother Agnes, Sister Anne Eugenie de 
1'Incarnation (Arnauld), whom we looked upon as a third 
Mother, and the greater part of the Community, in whom God 
had placed such great union, that we could not part one from 
another without great violence to our feelings. 

' The Mother Angelique departed then from Port Royal in 
Paris, accompanied by seven professed Choir Nuns and by 
two Lay Sisters. . . . We observed to our consolation on the 
road that this day, May the I3th, was a day sacred to the Holy 
Virgin, on which it is our custom to make a Procession in 
honour of Our Lady of Montferat, as do all who, like ourselves, 
belong to this Confraternity. 

' We arrived the same day at Port Royal des Champs about 
two in the afternoon. So soon as we were known to be on 
the property of the Convent, the bells were rung and we were 
received with all possible solemnity and rejoicing. Two bands 
of different kinds of people took part in this ceremony. The 
first was composed of a great number of poor who had gathered 
in the courtyard of the Monastery, and, among them, some 
old women who had known the Mere Angelique there in former 
days, and who looked upon her as their Mother and their 
foster-Mother. They flung themselves at her feet and on her 
neck, and pressed her in their arms, unable to give adequate 
expression to their joy. This good Mother in her turn em- 
braced them, without heeding that they were very dirty and 
to all appearance covered with vermin. All these poor people 
could not tire of giving loud praise to God, and of rendering 
Him actions of grace, for having restored to them their good 
Mother. 

' On approaching the Church, we found another company of 
persons, who touched, some by medium of M. de Saint-Cyran, 
others by the sermons of M. Singlin, or by some extraordinary 
event, had retired some years previously to this solitude, 
to serve God there in practices of penitence and piety. All 
these Anchorites awaited us at the door of our Church, one 
of the Ecclesiastics carrying the Cross. So soon as we had 



294 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

entered, they themselves entered the outer Church, where they 
sang the Te Deum, the bells still ringing. 

' The same day, which was a Wednesday, and the three 
following, were employed in buying the things required for 
the Cloister. On the Sunday following, M. de Sainte-Beuve, 
who had been deputed to that end by our Superior, entered 
the Monastery to visit the Cloister ; and on the morrow he 
entered again, and established the Cloister. On this Sunday 
we began to sing the Service in the Church and to set everything 
in regular order. 

' The Mother Angelique worked also to make her little 
Community enter into the spirit and the holy dispositions 
in which she had seen formerly, in the same place, a great 
number of Sisters, under her Conduct and under that of our 
Mother Agnes. She took pleasure in speaking to us of the 
virtue and of the fervour of the first reformed Nuns, regarding 
whom she and some of the ancient Sisters often told marvellous 
instances of love of poverty, of mortification, of simplicity, of 
silence, and of recollectedness (recueillement). They told us 
that it was scarcely perceived that there were faulty Sisters in 
the Community, because those who were strong sustained 
the weak, and as there were very few of the latter they would 
have been ashamed to let their laxity and frivolity be noticed, 
and were themselves strengthened by the example of the 
others. 

' As it was one of the maxims of the Mother Angelique 
that things in their commencement should be taken at as 
high a level as possible, because one always relaxes only 
too much, she had a great idea of the perfection she desired 
to establish in this House in respect of poverty, simplicity, 
separation from the world, silence and union among the 
Sisters. 

There follows the old familiar tale of Angelique's efforts to 
inculcate perfect self-sacrifice and mutual charity among 
her nuns, and of her own practice. Inconveniences were con- 
sequent on the move, and had to be borne cheerfully. The 
nuns could not at once have separate cells, but slept many in 
a dormitory. This, Angelique told them, was the ancient 
practice of Religious Orders, and she set them the example by 
having six or seven beds in her own room. She rejoiced at 
the deficiency in kitchen and other utensils, which obliged the 
nuns to be accommodative one to another, rapidly cleaning 
a saucepan or a dish to pass it on to a Sister. 




THE MERE ANGELIQUE IN 1648 (AET. 57), AT THE TIME OF THE 
RETURN TO PORT ROYAL DES CHAMPS 

From picture by Philippe de Champaigne 



P. 295 



RETURN TO PORT ROYAL DES CHAMPS 295 

' Not but that,' our narrative continues, ' the charity of 
the Mother Angelique would have led her to aid her Nuns, and 
give them all they needed so far as was possible, but, because 
we were then much in debt, we had brought furniture, linen, 
and utensils from the House in Paris in order to have no fresh 
outlay. Accordingly we dispensed with all we could, in order 
not to inconvenience the Sisters in Paris too much. . . . 

' Our Mother exhorted us also to be satisfied in health and 
illness with the simplest things and those most suited to our 
state, without being fastidious or particular about anything. 
That did not prevent her from taking great care of those who 
were ill. She frequently visited them and took heed they 
should lack nothing : which she did without respect of persons. 

' A Lay Postulant had been very ill and, when she began 
to take food again, her dinner was sent for to the kitchen. 
The Mother Angelique, having gone to see her, did not fail 
to look if this dinner was fit for a person in her condition. 
She observed that flies had been upon the meat and that it 
was unappetizing. She sent at once for the cook who had 
given it to the invalid, and, speaking as though it had been for 
herself, she asked how she had dared to send her up that ? 
This Sister replied naively that she had not been told it was 
for her, but for the Postulant. Whereupon the Mother Angelique 
spoke to her very severely, to impress upon her that she should 
not make these distinctions, and that she should give nothing 
to this Sister which she would not give to her. She added 
that as a fact it was for her, since she would give her dinner 
to the invalid.' (Angelique's own ill health had, for some 
time, obliged her, by obedience, to break the general rule of 
abstinence she had so happily established. We spare the 
reader the tales of her ingenuity in turning indulgences into 
penance.) 

' I should take too long were I to recount all her acts of 
charity, and all the help she gave to the poor, in health and 
sickness. At first something was given at the gate to all 
who came and who resorted to the Abbey for help in the various 
needs they professed. Some asked clothes, some bread, 
others meat and soup, milk and flour to make pap for their 
children, some asked for preserves for the sick, for medicine 
and other remedies, and in general for anything they thought 
of, and the Mother never sent them away, but she showed on 
the contrary, on all these occasions, that she had no greater 
joy than to do good to all she could assist, and thus to practise 
one of the instruments of good works of our Rule of S. Benedict, 
which is to rejoice and solace the poor. But afterwards the 
Mother judged it not prudent to trust entirely to the statements 



296 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

of these good people, who sometimes feigned needs they did 
not have. She begged the late M. Pallu (vide p. 269), who was 
then our Doctor and who died two years after our arrival in 
this House, to ascertain their needs, and to ask freely for 
whatever he judged necessary. 

' M. Pallu was one of the Hermits who had retired to this 
House, where he served not only the Nuns after their return 
and the servants, but all the sick poor of the country with 
incredible kindness. This was why our Mother begged him 
to undertake this commission, because, constantly going many 
leagues about the country-side to visit the sick, he could inform 
himself better than any one of their wants and see for himself 
if they were genuine. Moreover she was so convinced of his 
charity and his prudence that she believed one could not do 
better than follow his advice. For which reason she gave him 
full authority to dispose of everything in regard to the poor. 
He, nevertheless, would not ever avail himself of it. As he 
was very humble, he would do nothing save by order of the 
Mother, or, in her absence, of some of us. He said, a propos of 
this, that he mistrusted himself : that he was afraid of following 
his own inclination, by giving too much or too little, and that 
his safeguard lay in obedience. 

' Such were the instructions and the example which the 
Mother Angelique gave us in respect of charity. . . . 

* 

' As regards separation and remoteness from the world, 
she had conceived so great an idea, on coming here, of what 
she hoped to establish, that she proposed to see no secular 
persons whatsoever, not even her near relatives, unless it 
were persons wholly given to God, without hold on the world. 
She observed this as much as she could, and until those to 
whom she had given power over her soul obliged her to do 
otherwise. I recollect that in the beginning, when one saw 
as yet no one, a lady, the sister of one of our best friends, 
to whom the House was greatly indebted, and M. Arnauld 
in particular ' (it was the sister of a friend who had given 
him shelter during the storm of the Fre'quente Communion), 
' proposed to come and see both him and the Mother Angelique. 
M. Arnauld, who was informed of it, bade me beg the Mother 
urgently from him to receive this lady kindly, and to be so 
good as to entertain her and show her all possible signs of 
affection and gratitude. I took my message to the Mother, 
who replied: 'Well and good, she should be shown the best 
possible entertainment, and we should take great care to make 
her comfortable, but she would not see her, and it was enough 
for her to see M. Arnauld.' I urged her, so far as I possibly 



RETURN TO PORT ROYAL DES CHAMPS 297 

could with respect, to grant what he asked, and showed her 
I could not make up my mind to take this answer to her 
brother M. Arnauld. But she remained firm, telling me with 
tears in her eyes that we ought to try and keep people away 
from this House, and that she had no mind to attract them 
by her attentions. She said also that, should it happen that 
the near relatives of any Sister here wanted greatly to see their 
daughter or their sister, she would rather take the said Sister 
with her to Paris to see them, than give occasion for the world 
to look us up in our solitude. 

' We have known her also refuse the parlour to some of 
her very near relatives (such as her nephew M. de Pomponne, 
son of M. d'Andilly), although she greatly loved them ; but 
she said it was enough to see M. Arnauld and M. d'Andilly 
who dwelt in this House. She did not wish Messieurs her 
nephews (M. le Maitre and M. de Sericourt) and other pious 
persons who had retired here, . . . she did not wish, I say, 
that they should have any communication with the Nuns, 
unless it were necessary for the household and the affairs to 
which they attended. Even then she desired it to be with 
great circumspection, and that we should take heed and 
curtail all words which might be superfluous. I do not 
speak here of frivolous discourse and news of the world ; for 
it may well be believed that these were completely banished, 
our Mother having always taught us to repress them what- 
ever the occasion ; and they would have seemed to us almost 
a crime. 

' Such was the spirit which the Mother Angelique established 
in the new House of Port Royal des Champs. But we must 
take up the thread of events. On the 2gth of September in 
the same year 1648, M. de Sainte-Beuve ' (Confessor then at 
Port Royal), ' commissioned by the Superior to perform our 
election, came to this House des Champs to take the votes of 
the eligible Sisters who were here, and carried them sealed with 
the seal of the House, to represent them at the election of the 
Mother Superior, which took place in the Monastery of Paris on 
the Sunday following, October the 4th. Our very dear Mother 
Marie Angelique Arnauld, who had gone to Paris a short time 
previously, was elected and continued for the third time. 
On the I3th of November of the same year she came back from 
the Monastery of the town after her new election and took 
possession here with the usual ceremonies and to the great 
joy of all her Sisters. As for her, she said to me ' our narrator 
was herself made Prioress at Port Royal des Champs ' that 
she took comfort in the hope that she would obey in command- 
ing, and in the thought that it could not last more than three 



298 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

years ; although that did not, she said, prevent her from being 
in great peril unless God showed her grace and pity. 

' We have seen that the love of the Mother Angelique for 
silence and for solitude had induced her to close at first the 
grilles .of the parlours ; but there came soon an occasion 
when her charity obliged her to open all the gates of the 
Monastery. This was the first " Guerre de Paris " in 1649, 
when a number of persons of all sorts and conditions sought 
refuge here.' 

First a country neighbour begged her to take in her daughter 
and a young friend, and herself followed shortly after with 
the daughters of her farm-tenants. Again, the Abbess of the 
Convent of Gif, not far distant, thought Port Royal safer 
than her own convent and begged Angelique to take in her 
and a number of her nuns, who meantime were sheltered in 
a chateau at Chartres. 

' The Mother Angelique being touched with compassion, at 
once opened to them her heart, and promised to open to them 
the door of the Monastery. 

' She promptly caused two rooms to be emptied, and seven 
or eight beds prepared in them, although we had then very 
little space or furniture, any more than other things, because 
it was not a time for laying in provisions, and there were so 
many extra people here. But the charity of the Mother 
Angelique never allowed her to consider the difficulties which 
arose, when she was engaged in undertaking something for the 
assistance of persons in need. She did it with so great fullness 
of heart, and an affection so tender and so ardent, that it 
seemed as though one was greatly obliging her by asking 
help which she could give. Her example had so much power 
over her Sisters, that they rejoiced in hastening to incon- 
venience themselves on these occasions.' 

After all, owing to the prejudice already rife against Port 
Royal, the invasion from this quarter was not large : 

' Although the Mother was prepared to receive all the 
Religious of Gif who were in this Chateau whence they had 
written, only three came, the Mother d'Aligre, daughter of 
the late Chancellor d'Aligre, an old Nun who was cellarer, 
and another young one. They brought with them one of 
their pupils, niece of one of our friends. Our Mother thinking 
truly they would have no convenience for coming, sent them 
her brother M. d'Andilly's carriage, and an escort of ces 



DISTURBANCES OF THE 'FRONDE' 299 

Messieurs who were our own guard. She received them with 
every possible token of kindness, in such a manner that they 
were very pleased and were undeceived as to what had been told 
them. For the Mother d'Aligre owned to us that, since they 
had been prejudiced against us, they had scarcely been able 
to make up their minds to come ; and that their Sisters would 
never consent to accompany them because of the apprehension 
they had all conceived from the tales told them of us, the 
falsity of which they saw for themselves. And she told us 
she would never have dared hope to find such charity as 
there was in the House, nor to see everything so different 
from what they had been given to understand. They testified 
to us also great comfort at having come.' 

Now too the Mother Angelique was able, without prudential 
restraint, to ease her heart of love upon the poor. Their 
misery during this war of Princes was too great to leave room 
for false tales : 

' But the charity of the Mother Angelique was not satisfied 
with having received all these persons who came to take 
refuge here, to set their life and their honour in surety. She 
would have wished also to secure all the poor peasants from 
the violence and pillage of the soldiers. As she could not 
harbour their persons, she resolved at least to give shelter 
to their belongings and to their grain. Accordingly a number 
of these poor folk brought us all they had, corn, peas, beans, 
utensils, boxes, packets, and even their bread, which they 
came to ask for as they needed it, so that there was not enough 
room in the House, already filled up with people, to put away 
what they were continually bringing. The Mother decided 
that in this need a part of their grain and of their boxes might 
be placed in the lower end of our Church. On this account 
it was necessary to open constantly the great door of our 
Church, which was then a closed door, and even to leave 
it open sometimes the greater part of the day, while these 
poor people came to bring their corn, or to take it again 
when they wanted to grind it, which obliged us to keep guard. 

' The amount of time all this took is incredible, and how it 
tired us. But our dear Mother encouraged us in this exercise 
of charity, and was often the first to receive what was brought, 
and to have all arranged. She had labels written upon every- 
thing, to avoid confusion. The quantity of things brought 
was so great that all the aisles of the Church were filled with 
them, besides the other places where one put ah 1 one could. 
The Monastery often called to our minds the Ark of Noah, 



300 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

in which was all manner of cattle. For on whatever side one 
turned, one found only horses, sheep, and cows. Our court- 
yard was all full of poultry. These poor people would come 
and beg us eagerly to buy them, they told us to give them 
what we would and nothing at all if we liked, because they 
would rather we had them than the soldiers ; we bought them 
at market prices, to please them, for we had no need of them 
and were the rather inconvenienced by the number we had. 
We also kept some in trust, to return after the war. 

' What increased our work in this matter was that these 
good people came at all hours to seek what they wanted, 
without ceremony, the quite extraordinary charity of our 
Mother having made them take this liberty. Some came by 
four or five in the morning, and others all day long. Our 
Mother frequently was at the pains of escorting them herself 
to take what they needed. 

' Certain persons of distinction, who loved this House, and 
who saw matters more humanly than she, did what they 
could to dissuade her from guarding the belongings of the 
peasants. They warned her that she was placing the Monas- 
tery in great danger of pillage, and that the leaders and officers 
of the army were known, on good authority, to have said 
that, since they found nothing more in the villagers' houses, 
they would come and pillage the Monastery whither they had 
transported all they had. To the which she replied con- 
fidently, that she would not fail in the charity she owed to 
these poor people in this matter, and that, if the Monastery 
were pillaged for having exercised this charity, she would 
rejoice ; but that she did not think it and was convinced, on 
the contrary, that God would preserve us by the prayers of 
these poor people. The result showed that God gave her 
according to her faith. 

' Since the greater part of the peasants were ruined during 
this time, an incredible number of poor besieged us for alms. 
Our Mother had soup made, to give to all. She desired it to 
be good and well seasoned. She often took the trouble of 
going to the kitchen to see that nothing was spared. On 
account of the large quantity needed, it could not be done 
without great outlay. So large a number of poor people 
came, that fourteen or fifteen cauldrons barely sufficed. When 
our Mother thought it not good, she made the cooks taste it 
in her presence, and asked if they could eat it like that, and 
how they had the conscience to give to the poor what they 
would not eat themselves. She had it rectified at once, with 
fricasseed onions if it had not enough taste, and adding what 
was wanted. She had bread given also to many of the poor, 



5*-- 

i.- ' 35t^-. 




I..V- DT-STRIBT/TION DF. S Al'MOSNKS DK PORT-KV iY.\l. DKS CHAA1I J 




'tES RRLIGIEL T SES J)K I'OI 



DISTRIBUTION OF ALMS AT PORT ROYAL, AND NUNS ATTENDING 

TO THE SICK 

From engravings by Madeleine Hortemels 



P. 300 



CHARITY DURING THE ' FRONDE ' 301 

as at all times, distributing weekly to poor families one or 
two loaves, according to their need. But during this season 
of the war, the increased wretchedness stirred proportionately 
her compassion and her charity. 

' She was constantly thinking what she could do for the 
comfort and solace of so many poor. We had gathered that 
same year a great quantity of fruit. It occurred to her to 
have great baskets of pears and apples distributed to them 
every day after their soup. We had also laid in a good stock 
of beetroot for ourselves and our people, because at the 
beginning of this war one could procure nothing. Thus we 
got through part of Lent with these vegetables, peas, and 
milk. Our Mother, seeing that Lent was passing and that 
it was becoming easier to get provisions, caused this beetroot 
also to be given to the poor. 

' The eagerness with which they received these little com- 
forts is incredible. When our Mother knew, it rejoiced her, 
and she said to us with delight : " God has shown us the 
grace to-day of doing what He enjoins in His Scripture, of 
' rejoicing the entrails of the poor '." 

' One had great difficulty in providing bread and soup, and 
it gave great labour to the Sisters, especially those who opened 
the door ; so much so that one of the Sisters who was very 
strong, and for that reason employed in it more than others, 
fell ill of fatigue and exhaustion. One scarcely had time to 
sleep ; these good folk came so early and so late to get all 
they required that it took up an immense time. But what 
called for admiration was that our Mother did all with amazing 
joy, without tiring of it all, long as it lasted. On the contrary 
she exhorted all these poor to be of good courage and have 
patience, offering what they suffered to God Who beholds 
labour and pain. 

' The compassion and kindness she showed them emboldened 
them to ask for all their small needs. And if some poor sick 
person had a fancy to eat anything, she had only to make it 
known to this charitable Mother who immediately provided it. 
One might record many instances of her care and charity in 
solacing and gratifying them. . . . 

' A poor sick woman whom she aided had a fancy during 
Lent to eat roast veal ; and believed it would effect her cure. 
When our Mother heard this, through M. Pallu, our doctor, 
she had it at once prepared for her and sent all hot between two 
plates. At which the good woman greatly rejoiced, and she 
found it so good that from that day she began to recover. . . . 



' Although the trust which the Mother Angelique had in 



302 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

God was in no need of miracles, she was capable of obtaining 
them without asking. In truth all the aid she received from 
Him through her faith, in this time of war and on many other 
occasions, might pass for miraculous, since it can only be 
attributed to a quite special providence whereby God rewarded 
her faith and her charity. This appears especially on an 
occasion which is narrated by the very person who was ocular 
witness. We will record it here. The said person is the 
Mother Angelique de S. Jean Arnauld. . . . 

' In the year 1649, during the war of Paris, I was, says the 
Mother Angelique de S. Jean, at Port Royal des Champs with 
the Mother Angelique. I witnessed, with all the others, the 
extreme charity she manifested there in a thousand ways, 
which I will not report here. But I cannot omit recording 
a thing known indeed to many at the time, but to which 
I alone can testify as having seen it, since it took place in 
my presence. I do not wish to give it a name. Let it be 
called as one will, an effect of the providence of God or a 
miracle. I will relate only what occurred. 

' One afternoon I was with the Mother Angelique in a little 
room, called after S. Monica, near the fire : it was Lent, 
if I am not mistaken. Madame Desseaux, our portress (the 
widow of a bourgeois of the neighbourhood, who had charge 
of the housekeeping for twenty-five years in either Convent), 
who was then living in the House . . . came up to this room 
where we were sitting to tell the Mother a poor man was at 
the gate, burdened with a family in great distress, and asking 
help. The Mother said to her: "Well, my Daughter, what 
can we do for him ? What have we got ? ' Madame Desseaux 
said to her : " My Mother, we have nothing." ' What ! ' 
answered the Mother, " nothing at all ? ' " We have," 
answered Madame Desseaux, " a single piece of twenty-nine 
so/s." " Give it him," answered the Mother, " for this poor 
man it is something, and for us nothing ; for we cannot live 
upon that. We are accustomed to rest upon God's Provi- 
dence." It was done then and there, without reply. 

' A quarter of an hour later Madame Desseaux came again 
in search of the Mother in the same place, whence we had 
not stirred, to bring some other message from the gate. So 
soon as the Mother saw her, she said : " Well, my Daughter, 
what of the poor man ? Did he go away satisfied ? ' She 
replied, " Yes, and that he had heartily thanked God for the 
charity of the House." The Mother said to her : " But you, 
what will you do ? For we have no longer anything." " My 
Mother," replied Madame Desseaux, " you said that the 
providence of God would provide." At this moment the 



A PRESUMPTIVE MIRACLE 303 

Mother remembered that she had something she had not 
thought of, and she said to Madame Desseaux : " Truly ! 
I believe we are not as poor as I thought, and that I shall 
give you back more than you have just given to the poor man. 
I remember that some time ago I was given two rolls of little 
five sols pieces, and used up one of them ; I must still have the 
other somewhere." 

' She searched at once in our presence in all her pockets, 
and in effect she produced with satisfaction this roll, and 
promptly opened it to count what was in it. But if ever 
one saw a person surprised, it was she, when, on unfolding 
the paper, she found gold instead of silver. Never have 
I seen such a change in her countenance. For, contrary to 
her nature, which gave her constant presence of mind, and 
provided her ready answers to everything, she was so dumb- 
foundered that, without saying a word or venturing even to 
look at us, she reddened and looked down for a time, until we, 
no less surprised, urged her to own that God had rendered it 
her back a thousandfold. 

' She said then that she could not understand it. She was 
in truth so taken aback that she did not yet know what to 
answer, to take from us the idea of a miracle. We agreed 
that, whatever it was, one must thank God. And I remember 
that her embarrassment and confusion made me sorry for her, 
so that I did not venture at first to urge her too much to speak, 
besides that I was myself in a certain amazement, which de- 
prived me of freedom to make much reflection. This gold 
was then counted, and was found to amount to twenty-nine 
demi-louis of gold, in place of the piece of twenty-nine sols. 
This is the exact truth of what happened. 

' When the Mother had recovered from her surprise, we 
strongly urged her to speak. Then she recovered her usual 
presence of mind, and told us that one must not trouble so 
much as to where this gold came from, that certainly some one 
must have given it her and she have forgotten it, since she 
had found it. We said to her she had not forgotten the five 
sols pieces, and that this would have equally remained in 
her memory ; that this was not a time in which she could 
keep so much gold as to forget it in the hourly need for money. 
To all which she replied that, nevertheless, she must have 
had it ; and she began even to try and say that she had some 
idea of gold having been given her. But she did not finish 
and one saw well that she feared to be insensibly led to say 
something contrary to truth. We told her then that the 
roll of five sols pieces must then be found, if it were not this. 
She replied that it must be looked for, because she was certain 



304 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

of having had it. But it was not to be found, however carefully 
one might look ; and neither could one ever get the Mother 
to say anything else. 

* Her very silence was a proof that she had no adequate 
argument to combat the opinion that God had wished to recom- 
pense her faith and her charity in this occurrence ; and I am 
confirmed in it by what happened during her last illness ' (the 
niece writes in 1672). 'One day as she was in the state of 
somnolence which alarmed the doctors, and which they desired 
one to fight against, 1 in order to rouse her I began to speak 
of the miracle of the flour' (Angelique's prayers had once 
turned bad flour to good, so the nuns said, but she laid the 
miracle to the score of the cook's perseverance and patience!) 2 
' and of this one. She asked me what I was thinking of to 
speak to her about that ? I told her I did it because I knew 
it displeased her, and on that account she would more effec- 
tively rouse herself ; that, when I spoke of things more agree- 
able to her, she fell asleep, and that, when I asked where 
she had got this gold, she had to answer. She replied to me 
with a smile that I was a veritable Satan, and should let her 
rest. Had she been able to disabuse me of this error, I believe 
she would have wanted to do so before she died ; and accord- 
ingly I had no further doubt that she believed the thing 
genuine. 

' Such is the narrative of one of those extraordinary occur- 
rences whereby God desired at once to reward and to increase 
the faith of the Mother Angelique. I will now resume the 
thread of events. 

' The charity of our Mother Angelique was accompanied by 
wisdom and prudence. She did not rest satisfied with aiding 
the poor people in their need, but she took also great care to 
provide for our safety. Every day there were alarms ; we 
were continually threatened that troops would come down 
upon us and pillage the Monastery. That, however, was not 
what our Mother feared most, as she was always of the utmost 
disinterestedness. She would have had far more regret at 
seeing what our poor peasantry had given us in deposit carried 
off, than all which belonged to us. 

' To show how little she cared about our temporal goods, 
I will relate what we heard her say on an occasion when some 
of our Sisters urged her to make a hiding-place for the best 
things belonging to the Sacristy. She answered forcibly that 
she never would permit it, because it would be an occasion 
for the soldiers to remain longer in the Monastery, searching 

1 Cf. post, ch. xxv, p. 383. 

* Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, p. 191 seq. 



DANGERS OF THE 'FRONDE' 305 

for what they did not immediately find. She added even, 
that, if they did chance to enter, she would rather herself put 
into their hands all that was of most value, so that they might 
quickly leave, and not remain a moment longer to look for 
anything. 

' But as there was only too much ground, especially for 
Monasteries, to fear the approach of the soldiers, our Mother 
begged the greater number of the Messieurs who had retired 
to our farms, to come down here and protect us. Among them 
were some who had formerly held posts in the army, where 
they had given proof of their courage and skill, and who 
could be of great service in defending us should the occa- 
sion arise ; the more that they might perhaps know some of 
those who commanded the troops which were in the neigh- 
bourhood. They began at once to strengthen those parts of 
the Monastery where entry would be easiest ; and they guarded 
us with constant vigilance. 

' But our Mother, and they also, thought this was not 
enough to assure our safety, unless we had one of the King's 
Guards, or one from M. le Prince. She thought accordingly 
of asking for one. Fearing, however, lest we should be given 
somebody lacking in the piety required for such a place as 
this, she thought it better to obtain permission from M. le 
Prince for one of ces Messieurs, who was named to him, to 
wear the uniform of his Guards, and, since he was known to 
his Highness, the favour was readily granted. 

' I will here narrate a case of the protection given by God 
to certain women who were at our Grange Farm. 

' A troop of soldiers, having gone to this farm to pillage it, 
found there a widow woman who was in service there, and the 
wife of our agent at Montigni, who had retired there for greater 
safety. They began by laying hold of these two women, 
whom they shut up in a room, leaving some of their comrades 
to watch them while the others ransacked the house. These 
poor women were in a state of terror and distress that may 
be imagined. The agent's wife, who was the youngest and 
good-looking, turned faint. One of the soldiers, who seemed 
more humane than the others, was touched by it, and he 
spoke to his companion to effect her escape. But they would 
not let the Grange servant go ; and, as she tried to escape, 
they held her back so roughly that she was badly hurt. 
However, as she continued to struggle, she perceived that 
they held her only by her belt ; she skilfully unfastened it 
and fled. 

' While this was taking place, one of the servants ran quickly 
to give warning at the Abbey of the arrival of soldiers at the 



LOWNDES 



306 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

Grange. When our Guard learnt it, he promptly went up 
there ; and, being a man of rank and very high-spirited, he 
reproved them with much authority and vigour, and threatened 
to have them punished for their insolence. On hearing him 
talk in this manner, and above all on seeing his uniform, they 
apologized profusely, and quickly withdrew. 

' After that our Mother made these women come down here, 
and lodged them in the outer precincts of the Monastery, that 
they might not be exposed to such danger. It was found that 
the fright had made such a strong impression upon the mind 
of our rent-collector's wife, that she had quite lost her wits, 
and began to wander. Our Mother, when she learned it, was 
moved to great pity. She had her bathed, and treated with 
much care and without stint of anything, so that she entirely 
recovered and has been very grateful. 

' We remained fairly quiet for the rest of the war, without 
any one doing us harm ; to the which I have no doubt the 
charity of our Mother Angelique greatly contributed. For 
since she extended it to all sorts of persons, and did good to 
all to whom she could, she did the same even to the soldiers. 
On learning that some of them, and among others some in 
command, had been left ill in the neighbourhood, she sent 
them soup, remedies, and anything she could for their comfort, 
whereby she acquired their esteem and their respect. 

' The Mother Angelique took great care not only of her 
Nuns (ses Filles) who were with her, but also and no less of 
those who were in Paris. For, as she was the common Mother 
of all, and bore us all in her heart, there was nothing she 
did not do for the relief and ease of the one set as of the 
other. . . .' 

The tale, however, is too long, and we must omit the detailed 
story of how, during this first Fronde, the nuns in Paris were 
guarded, under the watchful eye of Angelique at a distance, 
by her faithful coadjutrix, our Mother Agnes ; how the younger 
nuns were removed, for greater safety, from the Faubourg 
S. Jacques, to a friend's house more in the centre of Paris ; 
how they transported thither, without the external aid of the 
cloister, the true Port Royal spirit of seclusion, charity and 
silence. The older nuns meanwhile remained in the convent, 
under the charge of the Mother Marie des Anges and Sceur 
Anne Eugenie de 1'Incarnation (Arnauld), heeding little of the 
perils to which their situation on the borders of the city exposed 
them. Among these we may note Madelon, youngest of the 



THE NUNS IN PARIS 307 

Arnauld sisters, won in radiant childhood, by Angelique's 
influence and by a vision, to the conventual life. She, now 
among these older nuns held fit to risk perils of soldiery, died 
at this time from an illness of long standing : 

' Although her malady, which had lasted several years, had 
so changed her complexion and her countenance that they 
were not recognizable, she appeared after death so beautiful, 
and had so good a colour, that our Sisters found it hard to 
believe she was dead. They concluded this beauty was not 
natural, but a token of her bliss.' l 

1 Relation . . . pay la Mere . . . de Ligni . . ., Memoires pour servir . . ., 
vol. ii. p. 58. 



X 2 



CHAPTER XXI 

The Second Fronde. Temporary return to Paris. 

WITH the brief peace matters at the convent resumed their 
normal course. But when the second Fronde presently 
followed upon the first, the convent in the country, now the 
most exposed to peril, was judged unsafe for women, and 
Angelique, leaving her dear solitude to the care again of the 
hermits, brought her nuns, some fifty, thence back to Paris, 
and all reunited in the convent of the Faubourg. Crowded 
as was the community in that outgrown house, it became 
a place of refuge for an incredible number of fugitive nuns, 
even of whole convents, flocking to Paris for safety. 

Narrative of Sceur Madeleine de Ste Agnes de Ligni 

(continued). 

' The Mother Angelique arrived at Port Royal in Paris, 
very calm, whatever her regret may have been at leaving 
her retreat, which was the sole attachment she had in the 
world, but she had none to anything, from the moment she 
saw the command of God. On her arrival here, a Sister asked 
her if she were not very tired, because it was always she who 
saw to everything on such occasions. She replied gaily: "Not 
in the least ; nothing is any trouble to me, except when I am 
not sure of the will of God, and have to act by my own judge- 
ment ; on this occasion, since M. Singlin, who was with us, 
decided what was to be done, I had only to obey God who 
spoke through him, and that never tires me." 

' It would not be possible to note all the acts of charity 
which the Mother Angelique showed to divers persons during 
this period of the second war, which lasted a long while. The 
Sister Angelique de S. Jean made at the time some "Observa- 
tions", which I will give here as she gave them me, written 
in her own hand. 

' As the approach of the armies of the King and of the 
Princes imperilled all the Religious Houses of Nuns in the 
country round about Paris, the majority left their Convents 
to enter the town. 



THE NUNS IN PARIS 309 

' The Nuns of Notre-Dame de Liesse, whose House was at 
the extreme end of the Faubourg S. Germain, and very 
isolated ' (it was in the Rue de Sevres), ' were warned that they 
were not safe. When the Mother Angelique heard it, she was 
in great trouble, because she would gladly have taken them 
in ; but a permission from their Superior was needed, which it 
was very difficult to obtain. On this account, she had prayers 
said here, that God would help them and bring them out 
of the peril they were in. However, some friends of the 
House . . . who had solicited and obtained their "obedience", 
came to tell the news to our Mother, who, full of joy, fell upon 
her knees to thank God, with as much feeling of love as if 
they had been her own Sisters, although she had never seen 
these poor girls and knew them only on account of their great 
poverty, living as they had for some years only on the charity 
of friends of the House. As she left the parlour, and chanced 
to meet Mme d'Aumont ' (a lady who lived, as ' benefactress ', 
in the convent) ' and some of the Sisters, she said to them 
with a gay and open countenance : "Here is good news, my 
children." They to whom she spoke fancied it concerned 
peace and asked if some agreement had been come to. She 
answered them : "No, but that these poor Sisters of Liesse were to 
come on the morrow, May the 2nd, to the number of eight Nuns, 
and that room must be found to accommodate them ", notwith- 
standing that the House was increased by all the Community 
of Port Royal des Champs, by the Mother Prioress of Gif and 
the Mother de S. Maur, Madame Aumont's sister, whom 
the Mother had taken in at that same time and for the same 
reason, the war having brought them to Paris. For as both 
were ill and inconveniently lodged in the House where they 
were, they had leave to come to this ; as also another Religious 
from Chanteloup, one from S. Rhemi, one from Belhomer ; 
so that in less than ten or twelve days, the Mother Angelique 
burdened herself with thirteen Religious, at a time when 
everybody sought to get rid of them. 

' On the morrow, May the 2nd, she spent the day preparing 
beds in the building of the Princesse de Guemene ' (who had, it 
will be remembered, a little dwelling in the convent) ' to put 
in it our Sisters, whom she made leave their cells to give them 
to these Religious she was expecting. Two days after, when 
she had held them a brief discourse, she said to us, after having 
left them, that she was very pleased with them, that they 
were true sheep ; that it seemed as though God gave a special 
blessing upon the Religious taken in from elsewhere, more 
than to others. Whereupon, it having been objected that 
it seemed, by what she said, as though she would not admit 



310 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

we were submissive, and made it seem we were less obedient 
to her, she replied that such was not her meaning, and that 
she would be wrong to complain on that score of any one; 
that everybody was a lamb to her, and that she did not know 
how it was ; but that God showed her the grace of greatly 
easing the burden of her charge, through the trust in her which 
He set in the minds of all persons, whom she found ever pliable 
and submissive, and that she had reason to thank God for it. 
This only shows how great a gift of Conduct she had received. 

' A few days after, she took in also the sister of M. le Roi, 
Canon of Notre-Dame, who was Nun at Collinances, a Priory 
of Fontevrault, and four others from Chanteloup and a Novice 
of the same House. 

' At this same time the Mother Angelique, learning from the 
Mother Prioress of Gif, who was with us, that her niece, a girl 
of twenty-four, Religious in the same Abbey of Gif, had fallen 
ill of the small-pox at the house of Mme de Miramion, who 
had taken her as companion to her daughter, another Religious 
of Gif who was at home, the greater number of the Nuns having 
gone to their relatives , and knowing that the said lady could 
not well keep her, because she had children in her house who 
might catch the complaint, which put the good Prioress in 
great distress, not knowing what to do for the safety of her 
niece (about whom the Abbess, who should have been more 
concerned than she, did not trouble at all), the Mother Angelique 
had, as I have said, no sooner learnt it, than she made good 
the indifference of the one and the incapacity of the other, 
her charity having long accustomed her to bear the burdens 
of others. She at once gave the order that the girl should 
be brought to a room just opposite the gate of the Convent, 
which belonged to a woman known to the House, and of which 
use was sometimes made. She gave her the charge of this 
patient, and provided for her also a Lay Sister. . . . The 
Mother commissioned Mme Vitard 1 to furnish the room with 
everything necessary to a sick person. . . . Seeing the great 
gratitude of the Mother Prioress of Gif, for so wide a charity, 
which surprised even us, accustomed as we were to the Mother's 
manner of acting on such occasions , she said to us, to lessen 
our opinion of it, that she had no scruple in amply furnishing 
this little room with all things required, and expressly pur- 
chased, because she would want them all at Port Royal des 
Champs, when we returned there. It is her custom to find 
such shifts, to cover what she does, when she thinks one notices 
and admires her on like occasions.' 

1 Mme Vitard, pious aunt of Racine, the dramatist, aided in the good 
works of the convent. 



HOSPITALITY DURING THE SECOND ' FRONDE ' 311 

The outcome of Angelique's charity on this occasion was 
a fruit more precious to her even than the restoration to health 
of this sick nun. The thoughtless young Abbess of Gif, obliged 
by mere courtesy to acknowledge such kindness shown to 
one of her nuns, was brought thereby within the sphere of 
Angelique's influence, and, an Abbess wrongfully appointed 
through the exercise of worldly influence, became one of those 
who, following Angelique's example, voluntarily resigned an 
ill-gotten charge. 

The Convent of Gif lay at no great distance from Port Royal 
des Champs, and, as \ve saw, a few of its nuns had tasted 
Angelique's hospitality there during the first troubles, becoming 
disabused of prejudices entertained against that community, 
To the grief of our Mother, as successor to a worthy Abbess, 
a young girl of twenty-two was appointed, with no claim 
save family influence. She it was whom Angelique now won 
to penitence. 

The Prioress, finding her niece in serious danger, wrote to 
this Abbess to tell her of the Mother Angelique's kindness, 
and begged her to send a Lay Sister to help nurse. Madame 
de Gif, of gentle breeding if only of the world, replied with 
courteous thanks and offers to repay expenses, and presently 
came herself to bring the Lay Sister asked for : 

' She did not think she should herself enter the House, 
but the Mother Angelique proposed it to her, from the pure 
motive of zeal that this Religious might be made worthy of her 
charge, thinking it might be of service to her to see the order 
of the House, and persons who perhaps might prove useful 
to her. She did it with more kindness than can be told. As 
she went to the door to receive her, she said to the Prioress, 
with inexpressible grace, " I am going to make so much of her" 
(Je m'en vais tant la caresser) ; which is the more worthy 
consideration, that she had in view nothing save the welfare 
of that Abbey, where it was much feared that this new rule 
of a girl of twenty-two would be very prejudicial to the good 
order established by the late Abbess. It was from this sole 
consideration that the Mother offered to take her in, and that 
on a day when we were already much encumbered, there being 
in the Convent nineteen Nuns from Belle-Chasse, admitted 
that day, May the 23rd, 1652, ... so that, counting those of 
Belle-Chasse, and those of Gif whom the Abbess had with her, 



3 i2 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

we had twenty-seven extra Nuns for dinner, without counting 
those already admitted to stay. 

' On Friday, May the 24th, six Religious from Montmartre 
were admitted. The four first, who had never seen the House 
nor the Mother Angelique, were so pleased with the one and 
the other, and above all so enchanted with the manner in 
which the Mother spoke to them, that they could not leave 
her when they had to go. They spoke of her, among themselves 
and to us, with an admiration totally unaffected, acknowledging 
that she had completely won their hearts, and that they thought 
us infinitely happy to have such a person. The Mother had 
narrated to them a part of her life, that at least relating to 
her entry into the House, the reform of Maubuisson, &c. 
Unhappily I was not present, which I most deeply regret. 

' It appears ', continues our Sister Agnes de Ligny, ' from 
these Observations of my Sister Angelique de S. Jean, that 
she had begun to keep exact count of the Religious received. 
But the number became so great that she grew tired of it. 
And it would have been difficult indeed for her to continue, 
because there were several of us Nuns told off to receive them ; 
and, when she was with one set of these stranger Nuns, she 
frequently did not see those whom other Sisters escorted.' 

* 

' I think it may not be superfluous to narrate here what 
gave rise to these frequent entries ; for at first no one entered 
without express permission. 

' It was this. The Nuns of the congregation of Notre-Dame 
of the town of Etampes, having come to Paris, like many 
other Communities in the country, who were not safe in their 
Monasteries, reached the Faubourg de S. Jacques about nine 
in the evening, on the Eve of the Holy Trinity (May the 25th). 
They were in extreme anxiety, not knowing where to find 
shelter for the night, for they were ah 1 to retire to their relatives 
and could not seek their homes at that hour, when it was too 
dark to find their way. Not knowing what to advise, they 
fell into distress and wept. But one of them, who had been 
formerly in the service of Madame le Maitre, sister of the Mother 
Angelique, before she became Nun, remembered, when she saw 
Port Royal, the charity which she knew to be practised there. 
She told the Sisters not to distress themselves, for they were 
close to a House which she knew well enough to hope they 
would certainly not be refused shelter if they applied for it. 
The straits they were in made them soon resolve to do so, 
although they were very prejudiced against Port Royal. 

' When the Mother Angelique was told that a whole Convent 
of Nuns begged her hospitality, and were without shelter at 



HOSPITALITY DURING THE SECOND ' FRONDE ' 313 

that hour and exposed to all the perils of a time of war, she 
was as much touched with pity as though they had been 
her own Sisters, although she did not know them in the least. 
Reflecting that she could not lodge them on the outside, where 
was neither room nor furniture for so many, she thought that 
charity, which is above all laws, dispensed her of the need 
to have a permission for allowing them to enter within the 
Monastery, and she received them with a warmheartedness 
that cannot be described. And as the House was exceedingly 
full, as well with our two Communities as with Nuns from other 
Monasteries, who had obtained leave to pass with us the 
period of the war, she took them to the apartment of Mme la 
Princesse de Guemene, who had kindly lent it to us, seeing 
the need we were in, which had induced us to put beds even 
in the parlours. 

' Preparations were made at once to get supper for these 
good Nuns, who were twenty-five in number ; and it fortunately 
so happened that our Sisters had prepared beforehand a part 
of our dinner for the next day, so as not to lose the sermon 
and the ceremony of Sister Euphemie (Pascal) taking the Veil, 
which was to be that day, the Feast of the Holy Trinity, so it 
came very a propos to serve for our new guests. They were 
made as comfortable as possible, with great joy and good- 
will ; which transpired above all when it was a question of 
preparing their beds, their quarters being quite destitute of 
furniture, and no great surplus in a House with so many 
extra people. All our Sisters let it be well seen on this occasion 
that they were the true daughters of so charitable a Mother, 
and that her example as well as her words was deeply engraven 
in their heart. The majority of the Sisters, who had already 
gone to bed and were asleep, aroused by hearing more commo- 
tion in the dormitory than usual, at a time when all was to be 
feared, came out of their cells to see what it could be. When 
they learnt that it was not an army of soldiers which had 
given this little alarm, but the arrival of a troop of Religious 
in need of rest and without beds, they brought at once what- 
ever they could for the comfort of these good Sisters, with 
incredible swiftness and zeal. One met nothing but Nuns 
burdened with their pillows and blankets, their mattresses 
and bed-spreads, all delighted to inconvenience themselves 
a little at this opportunity of practising charity. There were 
also seven boarders who were being taken back to their relatives 
in Paris, and some other secular persons, who did not enter 
within the cloister, and the Mother Angelique strongly recom- 
mended that they should be taken care of. M. d'Andilly, 
who was lodged without, busied himself more than anybody 



314 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

to carry out this injunction ; and it was he himself who begged 
the Mother Angelique to let all these persons be kept, and 
kindness shown to the Seculars as to the Religious ; which 
he had no difficulty in obtaining. 

' On the next day, that of the Holy Trinity, these good 
Nuns attended the Convent Mass and the ceremony of taking 
the Veil. There were present also several other Nuns who 
had come to spend the Feast with us : so that all the seats in 
our Choir were full. 

' Most of these Nuns from Etampes departed after the cere- 
mony, and did not dine at Port Royal ; but there were, without 
them, so great a number that they nearly filled the Refectory, 
so that most of our Sisters had a place only at the second 
Refectory. I do not know how God provided for the wants 
of so many persons, but, in spite of so many extra people 
who had not been expected, there did not fail to be enough 
for everybody. 

' The brief time that the Religious from Etampes spent 
at Port Royal served to undeceive them ; for they were then 
so prejudiced against what was called "Port Royal", that, 
although they could not but be under obligation for the kindness 
shown them, they could scarcely acknowledge it with good 
grace, and several let us see that they suspected us and were 
eager to get away. We have known for some years past that 
their opinion has quite changed.' 



' The Mother Angelique wrote immediately to M. the Arch- 
bishop of Paris (Jean Fran$ois de Gondi) to account to him 
for what she had done, in the confidence that he would not 
disapprove of her having opened the door of the Monastery 
to these good Nuns, in a case of such great necessity, \\ithout 
his permission. M. the Archbishop, who had a quite special 
regard and benevolence for the Mother Angelique, let her 
know that he was much pleased with her conduct. He gave 
her a general permission to admit any Nuns who should come ; 
and from that day one saw nothing but processions of most 
of the Nuns who had taken refuge in Paris, coming to Port 
Royal. Soon we were obliged to open the door four or five 
times a day to admit them. There came frequent little troops 
from Montmartre, from Chelles, from Gif, from Malnoue, . . . 
and from various other monasteries of almost every Order. 
For in addition to those who were living in Community, we 
also often admitted such as had retired to their relatives, and 
who were very glad to come and spend the Feast-days with us. 
One counted sometimes as many as twenty, thirty, and even 
forty, of different Orders. Most of them came from love and 



HOSPITALITY DURING THE SECOND ' FRONDE ' 315 

for edification, and some from curiosity ; but in the end 
they all appeared exceedingly pleased with the Mother Angelique 
and with the Community. 

' The Mother received all these Nuns with equal kindness. 
They accompanied us to the Church, to the Refectory, to the 
Conference. Coming as they did at all hours, they were always 
at once offered refreshment. The Mother insisted too on 
their taking it, unless they were under obligation to fast, 
for she could not bear their leaving us until she had shown 
them every possible kindness. She spoke to them with an 
openness of heart and goodness which at once gained their 
affections. She discoursed to them only upon things which 
might be of service to them, turn them more to God, and give 
them greater contempt for the world and love of their vocation. 
She represented to them the duties to which this pledges us, 
with such zeal and vigour that they were enchanted and were 
never weary of listening. 

' I remember that I chanced to be one day in the room 
with five or six Religious from Chelles. These were Madame 
Duval, Madame de Bois-ruffin, Madame Brandon and several 
others. She talked to them for some time about reform, 
toleration, and suffering one's neighbour, about charity to 
the poor, and other matters on which they had asked her 
opinion. I cannot possibly depict the ardour with which she 
spoke, any more than the gratification they expressed to us, 
not only in words, but by their actions and mien. I was 
between two of these good women who kept turning to me 
with a smiling countenance, and every now and again they 
embraced me, with the remark : " Oh ! you are lucky, to 
have such a good Mother ! ' 

' To give a precise account of these admissions and all 
that took place in them, one should have noted it down at 
the time. I can only say generally, that they were so frequent, 
or rather so constant, that, as I was one of those engaged in 
conversing with the Nuns and escorting them about, I had 
scarcely time to go and pray a little to God, and repeat the 
office, except when they desired to go with us, which they 
did at any rate upon Feast-days, when they spent the whole 
day at Port Royal. Nevertheless the Mother always received 
them joyously and with inexpressible goodwill ; without ever 
testifying to us any weariness at the numbers who came, 
and without minding the burden of expense which they 
entailed, at a time when one had difficulty in living and obtain- 
ing provisions. We know that she did great service to some 
of these Religious who placed special trust in her, and especially 
to certain weh 1 disposed Abbesses, who conversed with her 



316 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

frequently in private and consulted her, whether for the 
government of their House or for their own conduct.' 

These we need not name in detail. The instance of the 
young Abbess of Gif we already know. She, as we learn 
from Angelique's own letters, among other sources, renounced 
her lightly acquired Abbey under this influence, and began 
a new religious life as novice of Port Royal. Among the 
older Abbesses now hospitably received in the convent was 
one, Madame de la Tremouille, who had come under Angelique's 
influence years before at Lys (vide chap. VII), while one aged 
Mother visited Port Royal who was Angelique's forerunner in 
reform : 

' Madame the Abbess of Montmartre also desired to pay 
a visit to the Mother Angelique, although so aged and so feeble 
that she could not stand and had to be carried in a chair. 
She testified great regard and affection for the Mother Angelique. 
She said to her, among other things, that they were the two 
first to reform their Houses, and that God had sent them at 
the same time to work in His vineyard. Our Mother gave 
her to understand that she was far from comparing herself 
with her, who had been the first to reform, and that she was 
but her little Novice. To which Madame de Montmartre 
rejoined, it was true she had begun first ; and that she was 
the older ; but that the Daughter had since far outstripped 
the Mother.' 

It was not, however, all cates and ale for the nuns so hospit- 
ably entertained. The Mother Angelique was nothing if not 
frank, and did not let pass in silence, even in her guests, obvious 
infringements of monastic virtue. One of her nuns, Soeur 
Anne Marie de Sainte-Eustoquie de Flecelles de Bregy, writing 
of the freedom of speech which endeared her only the more 
to some at least of the Community, cites an instance : 

' Among the graces which our very dear and worthy Mother, 
the Mother Marie Angelique, had received from God, that 
which I especiaUy observed and most admired was her extreme 
charity, and the all-holy freedom with which she spoke. She 
showed souls their faults, and the things God asked of them, 
with a vigour one felt came truly from the Spirit of God, 
and which one could not resist. But what is remarkable is 
that, although by nature one is more afraid and less open with 



SEVERITY OF THE MERE ANG&LIQUE 317 

persons who act thus, when they do it by the impulse of their 
own mind, her freedom and vigour, on the contrary, since they 
were effects of the power of the Holy Spirit, instead of pro- 
ducing estrangement, opened the heart and bred closer union 
with her. I experienced it myself, when I was only a boarder 
in this House. For she reproved me once for something with 
great vigour, and in a way my pride found hard to endure. 
It hurt me at first, but never had I loved this dear, dear Mother 
so tenderly as from that day ; and I seemed to myself of some 
value since she took care of me. I have found ever since 
that, when she spoke to the Novitiate or elsewhere with this 
force, it united me to her the more. 

' She used this freedom, not only in respect of persons of 
this House, but also of those from without. I have known 
many instances in the parlour when she was with persons 
who desired to see her. Among many others, I observed one 
notable case of this kind. Some eight or nine years ago ' 
(at the time this Sister writes) ' during the final disturbances 
of Paris, which attracted hither many stranger Nuns, all of 
whom she received with unparalleled goodness, there came 
one who was very carefully dressed. She had an exceedingly 
neat habit, busks in her scapulary, and gloves on her hands, 
with a mien little in accordance with Religious simplicity. 
Directly she entered the room, the Mother, seeing her in this 
condition, felt moved with ardent zeal for Religious discipline. 
Almost before greeting her, she reproved her severely for 
being so elaborately dressed ; and, removing her busk and 
her gloves, she flung them upon a little bed which stood near, 
saying to her : " My Daughter, I cannot permit our Sisters 
to see such an example." Then she spoke admirably to her 
about the obligations of the Religious Life. This poor Sister 
was speechless all this time, whether in admiration of the 
Mother's generous virtue or because filled with confusion. 
Afterwards the Mother had refreshments brought, and spoke 
to her as well as to the others who were there with her customary 
kindness. 1 

' There came also during this same period,' it is again 
recorded, ' another Nun of our Order, who had long hair plaited 
like a secular person. The Mother saw little of her, and 
did not notice it. But when we told her, after the Nun had 
gone, she said : " You were very wrong not to have called 
my attention to it. I can assure you that I would have cut 
off her hair before she had left this House." 

1 Relation de la Saeur Anne-Marie de Sainte-Eustoquie de Flecelles de 
Bregy: Sur les Instructions que la Mere Angelique donnait a ses Filles, 
Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, p. 574 seq. 



CHAPTER XXII 

Soeur Jacqueline de Sainte-Euphemie Pascal. 

IN the midst of the stir and bustle caused by these daily 
refugees, one of the rarest spirits of Port Royal, Jacqueline 
Pascal, took the veil. 

This sister of the great Pascal, who in childhood rivalled, 
it is said, her marvellous brother in gifts of the intellect as of 
personal charm, had come into touch as a young girl with the 
movement set on foot by Saint-Cyran and Jansen and, together 
with all her family, had been stirred to ardent piety. Visiting 
Port Royal, she had found it a convent where, as she told her 
elder sister Madame Perier, ' one could reasonably be a Nun.' l 

From that time her mind was set upon the veil ; she lived in 
nun-like seclusion at home until, at her father's death, she was 
free to accomplish her desire. Then she entered Port Royal ; 
but at the last an unexpected difficulty arose. Her brother, 
who at first had been all zeal for the project, had now cooled 
in his spiritual ardour and, himself much engaged in social 
intercourse, took it unkindly that his one unmarried sister 
should not tarry with him for a short while at least ' in the 
world '. Further, when the question of dot arose, he, and the 
married sister Guilberte, Mme Perier, also, opposed Jacqueline's 
wish to give her share of the paternal inheritance which 
could indeed be only with some difficulty separated from theirs 
-to Port Royal. 

The narrative which, interrupting again the course of our 
tale, we here present to the reader, relates how, this being so, 
the convent took the matter, and portrays for us, in closest 
intimacy, the mind of the Mother Angelique. It brings, too, 

1 Relation de la Vie de la Soeur Jacqueline de Sainte-Euphemie Paschal, 
jusqu'a son entree a Port-Royal oit elle fit profession en 1651, par Madame 
Perier sa sceur . . ., Vies . . . des Religieuses de Port-Royal, vol. ii, p. 347. 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 319 

for the first time upon the scene that brother Blaise Pascal, 
later so inseparably connected with Port Royal. 

Dated from Paris, June the loth. 1653, two years after the 
event, the narrative is addressed to the Mother Marie Dorothee 
de 1' Incarnation Le Conte, Prioress at the time of Port Royal des 
Champs, and is one of the memoirs already then collected by 
the nuns to do honour to their Mere Angelique. 

Narrative of Sceur Jacqueline de Sainte-Euphemie Paschal. 1 

' Glory to Jesus in the very Holy Sacrament. From Port 
Royal this day: June the loth, 1653. 

' I cannot doubt, my very dear Mother, but that your kind- 
ness made you take part in the very keen trouble which God 
sent me at the time of my Profession, perhaps to serve as 
counterbalance to the exceeding joy I had in it. This it is 
which impels me in due gratitude to share with you the con- 
solation I received. 

' With this purpose I do myself the honour of writing to 
you. But because it is necessary, in order to give you full 
understanding of the matter, that you should be informed of 
what had happened, I have thought well to make a little 
abre'ge, which will serve at once to explain it to you and to 
fulfil the obligation I am under of making public, at least 
among ourselves (since I am forbidden to spread it further), 
what I have learnt, by a striking experience, concerning the 
disinterestedness of this House, the great charity of our Mothers 
and the purity of their intentions and of their rule, which has 
been so apparent in my affairs that one needs no other proof 
to recognize that they look only to God in all matters in which 
they have to act. 

' My conscience urges me, my dear Mother, to render to 
the truth which I know this witness, which is the more worthy 
of credit in that it is quite voluntary, and that I dare not even 
make it public because the modesty of our Mother would never 
suffer it. This is what prevents my daring to attempt what 
gratitude and justice demand of me, in fear lest obedience would 
then deny me the little as yet permissible, since it has not 
been forbidden ; which is, to leave you a little memorial that, 
under cover of the silence and privacy we keep among us, 
preserves the memory of what has occurred, which we should 
otherwise be constrained to let perish ; and it shall be the 
monument of my gratitude, and the faithful witness of the 

1 Memoires pour sevvir a I'histoire de Port-Royal, vol. iii, p. 54 seq; 



320 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

memory that remains to me of the grace I have received, since 
I can do no more. 

' Know then, my Mother, that, so soon as I had obtained 
the votes for my Profession, I wrote to my relatives to wind 
up my affairs and to inform them of the manner in which I 
wished to dispose of the little property God had given me. 
I informed them with great freedom and candour that I desired 
to restore these goods to God, since I was depriving myself 
of them. For I thought I had full grounds of assurance that 
they would approve all my designs, and, knowing the depths 
of my purpose and the disposition of my heart in regard to 
them, I was so vain as to suppose I could not possibly offend 
them, whatever I might do. You know that I had some grounds 
for living in this confidence, seeing what union and friendship 
there had always been among us. 

' Nevertheless they took acute offence at my purpose, and 
held that I was doing them a marked injury in wishing to 
disinherit them in favour of strangers, whom I preferred, they 
said, to them, although they never had disobliged me. In fine, 
my dear Mother, they took things in a wholly secular spirit, 
as persons of the world might have done who did not even know 
the name of charity, and they looked upon that which I pro- 
posed to give to certain persons, of whose need they were not 
ignorant, as marks of an affection which was to their own 
prejudice, and they would not recognize the motive which 
animated me. 

' God no doubt permitted this in order to humiliate us, 
the one and the other, and make us recognize more and more 
how little one may build upon the affection of creatures. For 
I cannot attribute this blindness, if the respect I owe them 
permit me so to call it, to any other cause than to a secret 
judgement of God upon us, since they certainly had all too 
much knowledge of the things of God to have led me to expect 
that I should find them still so human in a concern of piety 
and one which, moreover, was of so little consequence and so 
slightly touched their interests that I had not thought of 
hesitating a moment in proposing to them this so-called 
disinheritance, which I desired to make only for God ; because 
I felt assured they would not only approve but would be them- 
selves very glad to take part by their consent in those little 
charities I had in mind, seeing that they themselves often 
make such as may be called considerable. 

' But, my dear Mother, all this does not concern you. You 
must be told only, for the sequel of the tale, that this supposed 
lack of regard on my part gave them fine occasion for discoursing 
upon the inconstancy of the human mind, and the instability 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 321 

of my affection. But well and good had that been all, they 
would have exercised their spirit without troubling mine ; 
but it was not. For they each wrote to me separately, in the 
same tone, a letter in which, without telling me they were 
displeased, they nevertheless treated me as though they were 
so greatly. For all answer to my propositions, they gave me 
a strict account of my affairs and declared to me that the 
character of my property was such that I could not dispose 
of it in any manner whatsoever or in anybody's favour. They 
brought forward as reason that, in apportioning to us, it had 
been agreed that our shares should be guarantee conjointly, 
the one for the other, for whatever should be lacking during 
a certain time, and other arguments of chicanery which would 
weary you, and which doubtless would not have been such 
had they not been out of humour. I know, however, very 
well that strictly they were true ; but we had not been accus- 
tomed to treat one another in this manner. 

' They added that if, notwithstanding, I were to dispose 
of anything, I should set them at law between themselves, and 
with those to whom I should give my property, a thing they 
assured me to be inevitable on account of certain legal formal- 
ities which had to be observed. And, to avoid this evil, they 
informed me that they were about to take steps to have me 
forbidden to dispose of my property, as no longer having the 
right, thus restricting me for everything to a small sum of 
money which I had procured before taking the Veil and which 
they did not know I had already disposed of in sundry charities. 

' Judge, my dear Mother, I beg you, the state into which 
these letters, in a tone so different from our customary mode 
of dealing, put me. They imposed upon me the inevitable 
necessity either of deferring my Profession four years, in order 
to release my property from the pledge it was under as 
guarantee for the other shares of our portion, and without 
security even then that it would be entirely freed, or of suffering 
the confusion of being received gratuitously, and of having 
the pain of doing this injustice to the House. Thus the sorrow 
I experienced was so violent I cannot sufficiently marvel I did 
not succumb under it. 

'As soon as the Mother Agnes knew that I was in trouble she 
sent for me. I gave her to understand that what moved me 
most keenly was this necessity to which I found myself reduced 
of either deferring what I had desired so ardently for many 
years, or of doing it under conditions so hard to me. She said 
many things which comforted me, as to how one must be 
affected only by that which is eternal : that all which is but 
temporal is never irreparable, and does not deserve to be 



LOWNDES 



322 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

wept over : that we must reserve our tears for sins, which 
are the only genuine ills : that all the rest is nothing, and 
that, when it occurs, one must look to means of extricating 
oneself instead of wasting time in lament. She added, with her 
customary kindness, that, if matters were done according to 
her advice, they would soon be happily terminated ; and that 
she desired I should leave my affairs as they were, and think 
only of my Profession without disquieting myself over anything. 

'"She said to me further many other beautiful things, and 
talked then with more gaiety, forgetting nothing which might 
sweeten the bitterness I experienced. She said it would be 
a shame to the House, and incredible to those who knew it, 
were it said that a Novice ready to make Profession was 
capable of being distressed by anything whatsoever, but 
much more so were it known that it was because of finding 
herself reduced to poverty. Then she strove to make me 
understand how it was the greatest benefit which could befall 
me, and she told me that our Mother had never desired anything 
so much as to have been free to do what she would have wished 
on making Profession, that she might have been able to give 
all her goods to the poor, and then be received for charity 
in an obscure House. To leave no pretext of justification to 
my sadness, she tried to make me see it as not only more 
honourable, but even as more advantageous and useful to the 
House, because, while the love we owe to our neighbour does 
not permit us to wish he should do us injustice, that which 
we owe to ourselves should make us rejoice when he does it us. 

' " There is no earthly advantage," she went on, ' which 
can compare to that, because there is nothing more profitable 
to Religion than genuine poverty. It is not always permissible 
to procure it, but it is always well to desire it, to love it, and 
to rejoice at whatever may contribute to it. One should 
tremble, and often be greatly distressed, when one obtains 
wealth, looking on it as a snare and as the foe of virtue and 
of the spirit of poverty. And one must rejoice not only 
when one does not receive what one might claim, but also 
when that which we already had is snatched from us, because 
at least we are no longer responsible for it." In fine, my dear 
Mother, she employed so many means that she brought me 
almost to rejoice at all which had most distressed me, and not 
to dare indulge in other sorrow than that of my compassion for 
those who had given me the ground. Had I remained in this 
unconcern I should have been such as the Mother Agnes desired 
me. But I was too feeble and too much moved to be equal 
to such strength, and I own to my shame that, an instant after, 
I returned to my former weakness and my first feelings. 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 323 

' Afterwards the Mother Agnes made me speak to M. Singlin, 
to whom I retailed all that had happened, while she was good 
enough on her part to do the same to our Mother (Angelique). 
She returned promptly and said to M. Singlin from our Mother 
that her opinion was : that I ought to resign all my property to 
my relatives, concerning myself no more about it than if it did 
not belong to me, letting them control the whole without 
troubling myself, and thinking of nothing save of making my 
Profession without burdening myself with any other care. 
M. Singlin did not at first accede to this view, fearing lest 
there might be too much high-mindedness and not enough 
humility in this mode of action, as to which he said to us, with 
great force, that, after having conquered the insatiable covetous- 
ness for riches which reigns almost universally, one must 
beware carefully of falling into the other extreme, which rests 
in coveting the consequent honour, in the vanity drawn from 
subsequent actions, the contempt of all those whom one sees 
still under its sway, and the ostentation of this virtue ; and 
that, when one has set one's honour in being above the love of 
riches as others in possessing them, if one does not take heed, 
one does actions which are in truth all contrary, but are 
animated by the same principle and the same ambition, which 
causes some to contend for their right with too much warmth 
and others to cede it with too great readiness. " One must 
make oneself in all things," he added, " neutral, and divest 
oneself of all self-interest, looking only to what justice demands 
of the one side and the other. And if the persons with whom 
we deal go wrong, and get carried away to some injustice against 
us, charity requires us to help them by all the means in our 
power to recover themselves and return to their duties towards 
us, even as we should owe them that assistance were it a 
question of a third person's interest. But one must take 
heed not to let this deceive us, and to act by a secret cupidity, 
taking cover under pretext of charity. It must be on the 
contrary by a desire, free from all self-interest, to see justice 
done in all things." 

' Nevertheless M. Singlin, after reflecting a little, entered 
into the views of our Mother. For he feared lest this opposi- 
tion, so unreasonably shown by my relatives, were a sign that 
they had some pledge on the property, which they had perhaps 
looked upon as already theirs, in which case one would only 
offend and not serve them, by forcing them to act otherwise 
than they wished ; which would only embitter them instead 
of healing them. As he saw that I withstood this with all 
my might, and that I could not endure things to be done in 
this manner, he said that he knew them all, that he was well 

Y 2 



324 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

assured they were reasonable and that there must infallibly 
be some misunderstanding which made them unreasonable 
on this occasion ; and it was accordingly to be hoped that, 
when we could see one another and have an explanation, 
they would spontaneously do justice to themselves and to 
me"; but that if, after we had met, they did not do so, it would 
be for me a proof of the wrong I should do them were I to 
oblige them to comply now by force, and that I should only 
irritate and embitter them. In conclusion he told me positively 
that I must accept this advice, which, of all that could be given, 
was the most conformable to charity and the example we 
owed them. 

' I cannot in truth tell you, my dear Mother, whether this 
decision, which was taken so firmly as to leave me no further 
opening for resistance, gave me more confusion at the charity 
shown me or joy that my Profession was not to be deferred. 
For it seemed to me they so equally divided my spirit that 
I could not abandon myself to the one or to the other. I had, 
nevertheless, to make up my mind to that which was commanded 
me, and which so gratified my desire that I do not think I could 
have resolved to decline it. But, while accepting this shame 
so little anticipated, all I could do for consolation was earnestly 
to beg M. Singlin that, since they were good enough to receive 
me for nothing, it might be in the capacity of Lay Sister. 
This was the only means I could think of to afford some remedy 
to my ills ; and the thought had not left my mind from the 
moment when I saw myself reduced to the necessity of either 
deferring my Profession or being a charge upon the House. 
For, since the first alternative appeared to my desire impossible, 
I thought I could do no less than testify to the Sisters, by the 
humble service I should render them all my life, my gratitude 
for the double favour they would do me if, by receiving me 
gratuitously, their charity deigned to meet my impatience. 
As I knew myself to be so unworthy, I could not endure that 
my gratitude should not be well known ; and I thought it 
my duty to try and make up by what little work I could do 
for my other shortcomings. 

' M. Singlin did not at first disapprove of my proposal, 
recognizing that nothing in the House could be more beneficial 
for me. But because God, Who searches hearts, knew I was 
not worthy of an estate which is so high in His eyes, and that 
my pride, past and present, deserved punishment and not 
reward, he took from the heart of M. Singlin the thought of 
acceding to my resolution. For, after weighing it, he judged 
that he ought not to comply, because he did not think I was 
strong enough for this position, so that I should need more 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 325 

indulgence than my companions, and he feared lest this might 
weaken them, giving them occasion to think that it was done 
for other reasons and was a respect of persons, which is always 
hateful, for it offends against charity and the spirit of Religion, 
which admits of no distinction among the Sisters. Accordingly 
he determined to reject my prayer absolutely ; so much so 
that I found myself reduced to let things be as our Mother had 
proposed. 

' I wrote at once to tell my relatives, by order of M. Singlin, 
and in the very manner he prescribed, for fear lest I should 
be carried away to exhibit too great heat. He approved, 
however, of my letting them see a little strongly their unfairness 
and the pain they had given me, because it might serve to 
aid them to do justice to themselves, by curing them of the 
opinion they clearly had that they were much injured, which 
made them think they were showing me favour enough by 
not expressing their anger more forcibly, and that nothing 
was incumbent upon them save to forgive me in their hearts. 
But he warned me at the same time to mingle many marks of 
gentleness and affection and even of tenderness, without showing 
any bitterness, since God gave me grace to feel none, so that, 
if the one might make them see their error, the other might serve 
to recall them. He commanded me above all to let them know 
the charity shown me of making me profess without admitting 
any delay, not even to see whether my affairs could not be 
arranged. But he advised me to point this out with such 
discretion that no indignation should appear, and that it 
might not seem to be the outcome of despite or passion, or a 
bravado one would make them, or perhaps an invention to 
touch their sense of honour, and he told me to express naively 
and nakedly the feelings of the House and my own which 
were anything but all this ; and to let them see merely that 
a small temporal gain was not esteemed worthy to defer 
a thing of such importance to a soul as is the total and solemn 
consecration which it desires to make of itself to God. 

' Since this letter, which could not be brief, occupied me 
until the evening, I was unable to see our Mother that same 
day. But on the morrow she assembled the Novitiate, as you 
know was her practice when she arrived from Port Royal 
(des Champs). I was there with the rest ; and, saluting her in 
my turn, I could not help saying to her that I was the only sad 
one among all the Sisters, who were in great joy at her return. 
" What," she said, " my daughter, is it possible that you are 
still sad ? Were you not prepared for what you see ? Have 
you not long known that one must never count upon the 
love of creatures, and that the world loves only what is its 



326 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

own ? Are you not very happy that God should take away 
all ground for doubting it before you have entirely quitted 
the world, so that you may perform this action with the 
greater courage, taking it as a species of necessity which renders 
you immovable in the resolution you have made, since you 
can say in a manner that you no longer have any one in the 
world ? ; I answered, weeping, that it seemed to me I was 
already so detached from it that I had no need of this experience. 
Whereupon she replied : " God desires to show you that you 
deceive yourself in this thought. For, if it were so, you would 
behold with indifference all that has happened, far from 
grieving as you do. This is why you ought to recognize that 
God is showing you a great grace, and should profit well by it." 
She said to me further much else upon the vanity of all human 
affection, holding me always in her embrace with much tender- 
ness, until I had to leave her to make way for the others. 

' The next day, the Mother Angelique observing during Prime 
the extraordinary sadness of my countenance, left the Choir 
before the beginning of Mass and, having me called, she made 
every effort to give some solace to my grief. But, since this 
space of time was too brief to satisfy her charity, directly 
after Mass she signed to me to follow her, and making me 
come beside her, she held me for a whole hour, my head upon 
her bosom, embracing me with the tenderness of a true mother ; 
and there I may say with truth that she omitted nothing of 
all in her power to soothe my pain. 

' Would to God, my dear Mother, that my mind and memory 
had been sufficiently under my control to have let nothing 
escape of this precious cordial she endeavoured to instil 
into my heart to sweeten its bitterness. I should esteem 
myself to have gained much by my affliction, and I venture 
to say I should make you a rare gift. But I had not the 
happiness or the capacity ; and, in place of preserving all as 
were to be wished, I have been able only not to lose all. It 
is more especially in order to preserve the little which has 
remained with me, that I place it in your hands by this letter, 
as a relic which cannot fail to be very precious, even though 
it be but a tiny fragment of a great whole. 

' Our Mother said to me first, with a severity full of gentle- 
ness : " I cannot be sufficiently surprised, my daughter, at 
seeing you weak like this for a thing of no consequence. You 
surprised me so much yesterday when you told me you were 
sad, that I cannot adequately express it to you. For I believed 
firmly that j^ou had already forgotten all that had happened, 
since, things being left as they were, you had nothing more 
to do. I assure you I did not understand what you meant. 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 327 

It took me a little time to guess and to call all this affair back 
to mind." 

' The state I was in of depression was not so great but that 
I was struck by so ready a forgetfulness. For you will remem- 
ber, my dear Mother, that this affair was so recent as to have 
been known and terminated only the previous day. Never- 
theless she already no longer thought of it, which shows how 
genuine her indifference and with what sincerity she had 
wished me to renounce everything, regarding it as a matter 
thus concluded and of which there was no further need to 
think. But I, who was very far from so rare a virtue, could 
not answer save by tears. When she perceived it, she said 
to me, anticipating the excuse I might have made: "Why do 
you weep for that, or rather why do you not weep equally for 
all the sins of the world ? If you consider only God in the 
matter, and the interest of your neighbour, why, when you 
saw certain of them fall into more considerable faults and 
into greater infidelity, much more important in respect of God, 
did you not weep as much as now when they have not, properly 
speaking, offended save against the love they owe you ? " 

' I replied, as I believed truly, that I was affected only 
by the injustice done to the House ; and that, as for what 
concerned myself alone, I felt no movement of bitterness or 
of sorrow and that my heart seemed to me unconcerned on 
that score. 

'"You deceive yourself, my child," she said. "There is 
nothing more quickly touched or more easily affronted than 
affection. Your love for them was genuine and you see that 
theirs is not the same. For even though it may be true that 
they love you very much, they are still, do you see, of the 
world, and all the special grace God has shown them in giving 
them more knowledge of the things of God than many others 
does not hinder them from acting in the world as though of the 
world ; that is to say, self-interest takes ever the lead. And it 
is that which has offended you, without your knowing it. It is 
true you have not done the same. But that too is because you 
were no longer of the world, even though you had not yet 
quitted it. And the proof that it is yourself whom you think 
of in the matter rather than the injustice sustained by the 
House, as you think, is that you are not touched in like measure 
by all that is done to it. I know, however, well that this is 
what chiefly moves you, but even as you yourself are concerned 
in it, for self-love mingles in everything." 

' Thereupon she was good enough to relate to me in great 
detail several tales of the same kind, though without exposing 
the names ; which she did, I think, as much to give me the 



328 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

species of consolation found in companionship in distress, 
as to make me recognize that one never has the interests of 
justice so much at heart when one has no interest in the injustice 
committed as when one has some share in it. After having 
extracted from me this avowal, she added in the fullness of 
her heart what follows : 

' " This is one of the reasons which give me great joy that 
this has occurred, I say a keen and genuine joy ; and not 
for twice your property would I wish you not to have had 
this trial before your Profession. For you were not sufficiently 
tried during your Novitiate. See, my daughter, you renounced 
the world with great ease, because God has given you grace 
to recognize the vanity and the lack of substance in all the 
pleasures and amusements of the world, which charm and 
ravish other girls. You are not any the better on that account ; 
for it is God Who has shown you the grace, however unworthy 
of it you may be. It is certain that you were very detached 
from it ; but there remained to you still two things from 
which it was necessary to detach yourself and you did not 
think of them. 

' " The one is, that, even though, from the world's point of 
view, you had not great riches, nevertheless, for Religion, one 
may say you had them in abundance, because one requires 
hardly anything in comparison with what one wants in the 
world. The other is, that the chief riches of your home were 
the friendship and very close union which rendered all things 
in common amongst you, and to which you trusted without 
thinking. God has elected to deprive you of the one and the 
other to make you really poor in all ways, and in love yet 
more than in riches. For you were prepared to give it up 
entirely, and you have made certain benefactions which can 
take the place in a manner of those which you proposed to 
make the House. For this reason you should be satisfied 
on that point ; and your deprivation is not the less great 
for the matter not going as you intended. But you did not 
think of parting with your affection and esteem for your 
relatives, because it seemed to you wholly innocent ; and in 
truth all that was in itself very permissible and very legitimate. 

' " Nevertheless you see that God asks from you more 
detachment ; and to that end he has caused you to recognize 
what their feelings are for you : this is why I cannot tire of 
telling you that I rejoice greatly at what has happened. For 
their humour towards you would not have been other, only 
you would have known nothing of it, and you would always 
have flattered yourself with the thought that they were towards 
you as you towards them ; and, in fact, there was every reason 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 329 

to think it. But, believe me, this is very rare. For those who 
give themselves to God do all things in the sight of God, with 
frank sincerity, without admixture of self-interest. But they 
who are still in the world cannot avoid having always some 
human views even in the most holy things, and, whereas the 
one set of persons treat secular matters in the spirit of God, 
the other treat the things of God in the spirit of the age. One 
must not be surprised at it. It is almost impossible to do 
otherwise when one lives in the world, unless it be by a quite 
special grace of God ; because all with whom one has inter- 
course do the same, and no one advises or judges matters 
save by the spirit of the world and human reason, so that things 
are not even looked at with reference to God. 

' " What I say to you may pass for simplicity. But judge 
for yourself if it be not true that everybody would call a person 
very foolish if he did not do his utmost to defend his claim to 
an inheritance and should let it be disposed of in favour of 
some one else. I tell you it is very rare to find any one not 
of this opinion, whatever their piety. For one is so prejudiced 
by self-interest that one considers that alone, and if there is 
some charity to be done one always prefers it should be done 
at one's own hands rather than at that of others, even though 
that be not customary. For, believe me, the persons of the 
world are not in the least disposed to show charity, because 
they do not know what need is. They never experience it, for 
they never want for anything. This is why, had I been here 
and you had spoken to me of all this before making the proposi- 
tion to your relatives, I should have predicted to you point 
for point what you now see. For I have seen an endless variety 
of this sort, 

' " You see, my Sister, when a person is out of the world, 
all the favours shown him are thought of as thrown away. 
There were only two motives to induce them to agree to your 
purpose : either charity, making them share your feelings, or 
love, making them wish to oblige you. Now you were well 
aware that he who is principally concerned in this matter ' 
(viz. her brother) " is still too much in the world, and even 
engaged in vanity and amusement, to set the alms you wished 
to give above his private convenience ; and as for believing 
he would have enough affection to do it on your behalf, that 
was to hope an unheard-of and impossible thing. That could 
not occur without a miracle, I mean a miracle of nature and 
love, for there was no ground to await a miracle of grace in 
a person such as he, and you know well that one must never 
count upon miracles." 

' I could not avoid interrupting our dear Mother to say to 



330 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

her that, even had I made this reflection, I should none the less 
perhaps not have been turned aside from the trust I had in 
them, because I should have thought I had the right to hope 
for one of these miracles, since there were several instances 
in our family more remarkable than this one, and on the 
part of my late father in respect of one of my uncles, who for 
the rest was already sufficiently indebted to him. 

' " I can well believe that," she said, " but your uncle was 
a man in society. Have you never heard a little tale from 
the Lives of the Fathers in the Desert, which bears closely on 
what you say, though it may not seem to at first sight. A man 
of the world went to see one of his brothers, who, after having 
lived very holily in the world, had retired into solitude, and 
was greatly surprised to find him eating at the hour of Nones, 
because before his retreat he never dined before Vespers. 
The hermit, perceiving it, said to him : ' Do not be surprised, 
my brother, it is not an indulgence, but a necessity. When 
I was in the world I had no need of it, because my ears fed 
me. The praise given to my austerities so satisfied my mind 
that the body was fortified and emboldened even to redouble 
them, had there been need. But here, where nobody says 
a word to me, where self-love has nothing to please it, I am 
forced in spite of myself to give this satisfaction to nature, 
because it is in other respects absolutely destitute.' 

' " You see, my daughter," she continued, "it is just the 
same in what you are speaking of. A gentleman (un honnete- 
homme) in society feels moved, even at the expense of his own 
interests, to do a kindness to a person who is in society like 
himself, because it is a constant witness and a trumpet to 
proclaim his action merely at the sight of him, and because 
the gratitude of this man and the praise he brings him are 
the recompense for his benefaction, so often as there are 
flatterers to congratulate him. But the services rendered to 
a person who is out of the world have nothing of all that. 
As it is an action purely of charity, which is more useful to 
him that gives than to him that receives, no one thinks of 
praising you for it. He who has received the benefit cannot 
proclaim it, because he is not there. Those who know and 
approve it, readily forget, because they have no interest in it, 
and it pays no one to remind them of it. Hence ah 1 done 
for Religious is held to be lost, because there is neither honour 
nor temporal gain to serve as recompense. You may take it 
as an infallible rule upon which one should never fail to build. 
Otherwise you will always be deceived. I have had so much 
experience that I can no longer doubt it. Indeed reason 
shows it ; for it is truly the world and its mode of behaviour. 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 331 

It has always been like that and always will be ; and were it 
otherwise it would no longer be the world. Therefore consider 
you no longer have any friend in the world from the moment 
you leave it. There are no longer any from whom you should 
expect great signs of affection, unless from such as might 
show them by spirit of charity. But in that case it would 
not be you they would consider, and they would do as much 
for the veriest stranger." 

' Thereupon she related several cases similar to mine, which 
she had herself known, and, among others, that the relatives 
of a girl of rank, whom she had allowed to profess, had broken 
their word, contrary to all expectation, as to the dot, which 
was to have been considerable, at a time when the Monastery 
was in great need of it; and that the girl was one who had 
always manifested a quite special love for her relatives. ' I 
own," said our Mother, " that this injustice surprised and 
moved me very much, for I had held the thing assured from 
the manner they had always behaved with us. Nevertheless 
the late M. de Saint-Cyran advised me to suffer this hardship 
(for it really was one) with such gentleness and peace that 
he did not wish me even to mention it to them or to show 
them in any way that I was wounded, but that I should act 
just as if I had forgotten it. And he assured me that were 
I to do so, God would know well how to make good this loss 
and to provide by other means for our wants." Then she 
added : " God gave me grace to credit him and to follow his 
advice, for I have never thought it permissible to do anything 
he disapproved, and I have learnt since by constant experience 
the truth of this promise, as you see yourself. 

' " For this reason, my daughter, in God's name, do not 
reproach your relatives, or display any resentment, and do not 
let this affect your union. For, after all, what is it all about ? 
a little property that is all. Is it not less than nothing ? It 
is true that property is necessary to life ; one cannot do entirely 
without it. But in truth it seldom happens that one lacks 
enough to fall into genuine want, and it is covetousness to 
desire superfluity. When God sends it by legitimate ways, 
one may accept it, because it is necessary to have some in 
order to live. But when that is not so, or even when he 
permits us to be deprived of what we have, in truth one should 
rejoice. M. de Saint-Cyran said that riches are in the world 
like bad humours in the body, which fall always the more 
copiously upon the most feeble part and the most susceptible 
to ill. Thus it is a bad sign for any one when one sees that 
wealth comes to him in abundance from all sides. So that, 
instead of rejoicing when you see things are given us, you need 



332 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

fear for this House nothing so much as to see it greatly enriched, 
and please to bear this well in mind. You are young, and some 
day you may see things happen similar to that which occurs 
now in your person and your affairs. That gives me great 
joy for all which has been done. For at least, if ever your 
advice is asked in a like event, you should have learned to do 
to others as has been done to you. 

' " Write then again to your relatives," she added, " and 
above all to the person you wot of " (Mme Perier, the married 
sister) " who has most tenderness for you, and show them 
all possible affection with great open-heartedness, so that 
they may recognize its full sincerity, and simply, for fear 
of offending them by your renunciation of your property, 
and to show that you no longer think of it all ; and when he 
who is presently expected " (her brother) " arrives, talk to him 
in the same manner, without making him the slightest reproach 
and not even showing any air of displeasure in respect of all 
which has occurred, to testify that you have forgotten it. 
As a fact you ought to have done so already, and for my part 
I am quite amazed to find you so weak in a matter of such 
slight importance." 

' Thereupon she was silent for a time, and I had the oppor- 
tunity of telling her that one of the things which distressed 
me most in the matter was my fear that I had employed my 
property ill when it was under my control, because I had made 
a personal gift of a large part, whereas I might have distributed 
it with more charity. True I thought at the time I had sufficient 
for that and for the other things I proposed to do. Never- 
theless I greatly feared I had been culpable at any rate of 
precipitancy. 1 

' She thought a little, then she said to me : " Do not be 
uneasy ; for I do not think that, even were things again under 
your control, you could in conscience abstain from doing what 
you did under the circumstances. You know well that you 
looked only to God in the matter, and to the welfare of that 
person who must be dearer to you than all the gold of the 
world, and that it was not from ambition to make him great 
or give him eclat in the world. Neither did it provide him 
the means, since you see that, with all you have given him, 
he has not the wherewithal to live like others of his estate. 
What then makes you fear you disposed of it badly ? W 7 hat 
less could you have done ? But I will say more. Even w r ere 
it true that what you have given him served only to maintain 
him at present in vanity, I believe you would none the less 

1 She had made over a portion of her inheritance by deed of gift 
to her brother. 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 333 

have been bound to God to act as you did, since, had you 
done less, you would have offended him and done him great 
harm (I mean to his conscience), in employing the money 
otherwise ; and that you may not think I speak without basis, 
I must tell you for your consolation a thing which will surprise 
you. 

' "The late M. de Saint-Cyran, who belonged to God as you 
know, had a brother who was in the world as much as it is 
possible to be, and who even died in it. You may think how 
that grieved him. Nevertheless, although he knew him such as 
he was, he did not refrain from giving him a considerable 
property which he owned, and which he wished to dispose 
of in order to possess as little earthly riches as he could. You 
do not question but that he had opportunities of employing 
his property better, that is to say he could have done much 
charity ; however he did not. He gave this property to his 
brother, who would make use of it only for vanity, and this 
from another ground of charity of no less account than the 
first. For he did it in order to preserve the affection of this 
person, and not to alienate him, as would infallibly have been 
the case had he not given it, because he would have testified 
the low opinion he held of his manner of life . . ., and thus 
he would have lost all remaining hope of being able to serve 
him in the way he desired. For, as he knew what price to 
set upon things, he had no scruple in squandering, and even 
losing, a little temporal possession to obtain for him 1 true 
possessions. This shows you, my daughter, that you have not 
done ill in acting similarly, since you did it with a like end. 

' " But in order to relieve you of all scruple, you must 
know ' (she added in an admirable movement of charity) 
" that, were it true you had committed a fault and a waste, 
which, as I say, is not the case, and that your property had 
been simply thrown away, you should look upon it as one 
of the least of possible losses ; I say truly one of the least. 
For think, my Sister: all things outward and perishable are 
nothing. The waste one makes of the smallest grace of God 
is a thousandfold greater in His eyes than that of all the goods 
of the earth. Whatever usage we may make of these, God 
thinks little of all that What does He care for our possessions ? 
He esteems them as nothing in comparison of the virtues He 
sets within us. These are the true riches ; and one must 
often examine oneself as to the use one makes of them, for 
one's personal benefit and for that of others. Nevertheless 
one does not think about that. 

' " One is very little moved, or not at all, at falling short 
of one's usual humility, or of gentleness, or of some other 



334 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

virtue. Yet one has scruples at employing ill a little money, 
which is the least of all the goods whereof God will ask account, 
because at the very most it could have served only to relieve 
some temporal ill or for some other work which time bears 
away ; whereas the grace of God and the virtues He gives 
us are treasures which should do service eternally to our own 
soul and to that of others, if we take heed to guard them well 
and not let them be lost. To conclude, the matter is settled ; 
you need no longer think about it. I tell you it is a temptation 
for you, which distracts you from what you have to do. Do 
not think any more about it all ; think only of rendering 
thanks to God because, after having had compassion to give 
you the idea of quitting the world, He gives you acquaintance 
of this House and the esteem you have conceived for it, which 
has made you give it preference over any other. For, but 
for that, you would doubtless have been at the Carmelites, 
now so greatly in vogue and with such high repute of sanctity, 
and justly so. For it is true that they are Nuns as holy as 
one could wish, whose austerities are prodigious, and their 
observance of all their rules so exact that they would not fall 
short one iota. But, in respect of money, there is no quarter 
granted ; and you may feel sure that, in the actual state of your 
affairs, they would have made you quarrel with all your relatives 
and break off from everybody, rather than abate a jot of what 
they had ground to hope from you. 

' " This is a thing which should fill us with compassion 
and at the same time cover us with confusion. For they are 
such holy persons and souls so faithful to the good they know, 
that it is evident they act thus only by lack of such teaching 
as should make them know that it is an evil and a very great 
one. And one has reason to believe, indeed it is beyond 
doubt, that, if they had the light with which God has favoured 
us, they would be incomparably more faithful to it. This is 
why we must the more wonder at the mercy of God which is 
so rare, and which He has shown us although we so little 
deserved it. That ought to give so much joy as to make you 
forget all else. For, were you there, you would think you 
could do no better than follow the commands of your Superiors, 
as you are doing here. What, however, would be the outcome ? 
Are you not then very fortunate to have fallen into the hands 
of persons who conduct you according to the pure rules of 
charity, as though they had no interest in the matter ? ' 

' I could not abstain from begging her to consider that that 
in itself was a most legitimate ground of sorrow, because the 
injustice done was the more blameable, the more disinterested 
was the House. 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 335 

' " That," she said, " is a sentiment which clearly shows 
you are not yet quite one of the House; that is to say, you 
have not lost the habit of looking upon yourself as belonging 
to your family rather than to us, since you are jealous for 
their honour and their gain at the expense of ours." 

' Then, speaking seriously again : " See, my daughter," she 
said, "it is certain that the charity you owe your relatives 
compels you to desire greatly they should yield to reason. 
But you must wish it in respect of everything, not only in 
what concerns us. Otherwise it would be not charity but 
veritable covetousness. On the contrary, if they must show 
injustice to any one, desire rather heartily that it may be to 
us rather than to others. For you do not know how others 
would take it ; and you are assured that we shall not trouble 
ourselves. And, besides, it is certain that, although, by the 
grace of God, we are not rich, neither are we in sufficient need 
to be unable to do without the money. 

' You see that we lack nothing. We have no genuine 
want (which ought to give us real confusion before God, we 
who make profession of poverty) ; but, apart from all that, 
it is to our advantage to be ill-treated in all things, to be 
despised, to be calumniated, to have injustice done us. Not 
that we should wish this to happen, or should obtain it were 
it in our power, because it would be lacking charity to those 
who should commit it, since on their side would be sin. But 
as for us, it is a very great good fortune ; so that, when God 
permits it to happen without our concurrence, we should 
greatly rejoice ; I say with true joy. It is our greatest gain, 
and we should believe it to be so and act accordingly. Other- 
wise we should be wanting in fidelity to the light God gives 
us, and we should have neither poverty nor disinterestedness. 
For in what would it consist, if we did not let it appear when 
occasion offered ? It would be then nothing but talk and 
parade, to gain the world's esteem." 

' She said these words so forcibly that it seemed as though 
she doubted in a manner my power of putting them strictly 
into practice, and that she wished to imprint them on my heart. 
But, as though she had read my thought, she answered it at 
once, softening a little ; and said to me, smiling : " I do not 
in the least doubt but you share my feelings, and I am very 
certain that, were your advice asked in a like matter affecting 
indifferent persons, you would be very sorry for them to act 
otherwise than as now. I am sure even that you would feel 
neither anger nor grief, and that you would not make the 
persons in question the smallest reproach or show them cold- 
ness ; I would stake my hand in the fire this is so. But what 



336 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

I have said should make you recognize that you have still 
much self-love, and that, whatever you may believe, it is not 
really either the House or Justice you are chiefly thinking of 
in all that has occurred, but yourself and your distress at 
being unable to arrange things as you wished. 

' " Supposing robbers had entered here last night and 
carried off whatever money we have, would you weep over 
it, and be distressed as at present ? Assuredly not. For 
even though one may be annoyed at such things, and would 
prevent them if one could, one is not really afflicted about them. 
To be so, one would have to care very much for riches All 
the same it would be an injustice and wrong done to the House. 
You see then very clearly that one must not flatter oneself, 
and that it is for oneself and for one's own private interest 
that one grieves. 

' " Forget then all that has passed, and behave to your 
relatives in the manner I have said. I beg you, speak to 
them, and write to them, as though nothing had happened, 
only that you will confirm the renunciation you have made. 
But remember that you must write and speak with sincerity. 
For, on the one hand, you must avoid doing it in pride and 
bravery, saying : We are more generous than you. Done from 
this motive, it is worth nothing at all. There must be nothing 
save charity alone compelling, else it is as though we were 
to do nothing. On the other hand, one must beware also of 
trying to touch their affection in order to compel them to do 
what you wish. For that would be taking again with one 
hand what you give up with the other. But you must act 
by the sole desire of setting all at peace, and especially your 
sister, whom you know to be very tender and who would be 
deeply moved if she thought you were angry with her. That 
might dangerously affect her present indisposition." (Madame 
Perier was enceinte at the moment.) 

' I report to you all these small particulars, my dear Mother, 
perhaps with more freedom than reason, and even contrary 
to courtesy, which requires one not to importune others with 
what concerns oneself alone, and least of all persons to whom 
one owes much respect. But I have deemed this maxim 
inapplicable here, because it seems to me that every one must 
be as much touched as I, on seeing the care and charity of our 
dear Mother, and at noting how, when this divine virtue is 
so strongly rooted in a soul as in hers, it governs all. It 
operates indeed everything there, calls forth even the slightest 
impulses and thoughts, and gives proof on all occasion of the 
happy sway it exercises, and that in actions the most natural 
and least weighed, because it serves as a second nature, having 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 337 

become mistress of the first. You know that this was clearly 
apparent in our Mothers' rule, but I may say with truth that 
I never observed it better than at this juncture. I do not know 
if it is because I only this once saw them engaged in affairs, or 
because one is always more touched by what concerns oneself. 

' I think, my dear Mother, that I have the happiness to be well 
enough known to you, for you to conceive what joy I felt in 
the midst of all my sorrow at finding my opinion of the dis- 
interestedness of the House, and of the purity of its Conduct, 
so surely confirmed. Nevertheless my pride was so great 
(for I no longer dare call it love of justice), that I could not 
absolutely resolve to leave the matter as our Mother wished ; 
so that I implored her to consider that, if I deferred my Pro- 
fession for four years, I might hope to be mistress of my affairs, 
and even to add to my capital the savings of a considerable 
allowance which my relatives were bound to make me in return 
for a certain favour I had conferred on them, and which the 
harshness they had shown me well entitled me to claim for 
the future, instead of acquitting them as I had hitherto done. 
I told her again that this being so, however great my wish 
to profess soon (and it exceeded in truth all expression I can 
give it), I held myself nevertheless bound in conscience and 
irrespective of all self-interest, to make this delay, in order to 
have it in my power to do justice to the House. 

' " No," she said, " my daughter ; on the contrary, you are 
bound not to do it. For do you not see that, even if you had 
full power to execute your purpose, it is nevertheless not in 
your power to make them accede to it ? I have never ques- 
tioned what you say ; I know well that, strictly, no one can 
prevent you from doing what you like with your property. 
But I am not concerned with what you can do, I consider only 
what you ought to do : that is the whole question. And I do 
not doubt at all but that you are bound, I say indispensably, 
to procure their peace of mind so far as you can, and to do 
nothing which may offend them. When you thought every- 
thing was at your disposal, without anticipating any difficulty, 
you desired nevertheless to have their consent to what you 
wished, and you were right. Otherwise you would have 
given them ground of offence ; and, in effect, that was why 
you did it. Judge then how offended they would be were 
you to do it in spite of them and by a species of violence. 
If anything is done, it must be they themselves who do it of 
their own impulse, without your taking any part." 

' Being unable to answer the arguments of our dear Mother, 
or to resist her will, I begged her to permit me at least to 
threaten them with this, in order to see what effect it would 



LOWNDES 



338 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

produce. But she would consent no more to this than to the 
rest. " No," she said, " my daughter, take good heed not to. 
Do you not see well that you would thereby destroy all you 
desire to do in your renunciation ? Credit me ; leave matters 
as they are and remember that you are bound above all things 
to prefer their repose of spirit, and the peace which should be 
among you, above every other interest, that it may not pass 
here as in the places we were speaking of. And this ought to 
be so precious to you that, had you two millions of wealth, 
I would counsel you to give it them without hesitation, to 
prevent charity cooling between you. Speak of it then no 
more, nor think of it. When you see them, say nothing about 
it at all. Should they speak of it, you will tell them that 
you know perfectly you had left everything in their hands, 
and that, since you had no longer any concern in the matter, 
you no longer thought about it." Thereupon our dear Mother 
dismissed me without permitting further reply, and the inter- 
view ended in this manner. 

' A few days later, that one of my relatives ' (her brother 
Blaise Pascal) ' who had chief interest in this affair, came 
to this city, and I endeavoured to deal with him as our Mother 
proposed. But, whatever effort I might make, it was impossible 
for me to hide entirely the sadness I still felt, in spite of all the 
trouble she had taken to dispel it. This was so little customary 
with me that he at once perceived it ; and he had no need of 
an interpreter to learn the cause. For although I put on as 
friendly an air as I could, I know that he readily understood 
it was his action which had put me in this state. He wished, 
however, to be first to complain ; and then it was I learnt that 
they regarded themselves as so injured by what I had written. 
But he left off speaking when he saw that I made no com- 
plaint on my side, although I could else have upset all his 
arguments with a single word. On the contrary, I declared 
to him, as cheerfully as my actual state permitted, that, since 
the House was willing to show me the charity of receiving me 
for nothing, and since my Profession was not deferred, I 
troubled myself no longer about anything save making it 
well, and drawing down the grace I had need of to be a true 
Religious. 

' Had the whole of this colloquy been as worthy of record 
as the above, I should have taken pains to retain it, and should 
in no wise grudge the time spent in transcribing it. But 
because it is not entirely either so beautiful or so useful, as 
I am sure you will readily believe without its being necessary 
for me to assert it further, it is better to pass it over in silence 
than to waste time in wearying you. I will say in one word 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 339 

that he was touched to confusion, and that he resolved of 
his own impulse to set this matter in order, even proposing to 
take upon himself all the charges and risks upon the property, 
and to do for the House in his name that which he saw could 
not with justice be omitted. 

' I will give you, my dear Mother, the conclusion of this 
tale, although my actual purpose is not to acquaint you with it, 
it is not worth it ; but only to preserve the memory of my 
obligations to our Mothers, and of the profitable teaching 
I received on this occasion. This is what obliges me to give 
it all, because the one and the other persisted to the end. 

' When the person of whom I have just spoken had left me, 
I went to give an account of this interview to our Mothers, 
to learn from them if I ought to dictate to him, as he seemed 
to expect, what he ought to do for the House. But they 
forbade me absolutely to claim anything, expressly com- 
manding me to be satisfied with what he proposed to give 
without prescribing him anything, and to do nothing save 
fall in with his intentions. However, on learning the character 
of his property, they approved my proposing to him to take 
whatever he thought of giving out of a certain portion ; which 
was for his own convenience. That was the utmost for which 
I could obtain leave, and the matter was thus concluded. 
For there was no need to urge him to do more than he might 
wish, since I had express orders to take his first inclination 
for law, and so expressly, and by such absolute authority, 
that I dared take part in this affair no more than if it had not 
concerned me, unless sometimes through impetuosity and on 
first impulse. But I had always many qualms on that score, 
because the commands I received were based on so many 
grounds drawn from the principles of supreme reason, that, 
even though I could not yield to them, I was constrained to 
acknowledge I could not answer them, and to recognize when 
I broke them that I acted contrary no less to my own conscience 
than to obedience. 

' This matter could not, however, be entirely terminated 
until after three or four interviews, which were marvellously 
beneficial to me. For, when I went to render count of them 
to our Mothers, I had occasion to recognize their constant care 
so to act that all might be according to God and the rules of 
the most perfect charity. I cannot sufficiently tell you, my 
dear Mother, how fully this appeared on every opportunity. 
I pray God not to permit me ever to forget it. For I can say 
with truth that I have learnt more from their mode of pro- 
ceeding than from many of the best sermons I have heard on 
this theme. 

Z 2 



340 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

' But what was admirable, was to see the diversity of Conduct 
which the Holy Spirit inspired, Who animated them all. For 
our Mother (Angelique), justly guarding the interest of the 
House, made it apparent that her chief concern was to prevent 
any shade of self-interest, of avarice, or of weakness, entering 
into all this business, and, in fine, she was bent only on submit- 
ting to every sort of injustice rather than do the smallest 
thing contrary, however slightly, to the true spirit of Religion. 
M. Singlin, as common Father both of the House and my 
relatives (some of whom are wholly under his Conduct, while 
the others know him intimately and have extreme affection 
for him), was animated with the zeal of our Mother in respect 
of the House, but in such a manner as to be also touched with 
compassion for them, and he was no less distressed at the 
injustice of their action than rejoiced at the profit he held 
it might bring to the Monastery. The Mother Agnes seemed 
to put off upon those two these two concerns, and to occupy 
herself mainly with teaching her Novice to profit by what was 
taking place. For, every time I saw her, she carefully weighed 
what I reported, to make me observe all that was human in 
my behaviour, or that betrayed the spirit of the world ; and, 
with an unwearying charity, she did not cease to make every 
effort to forestall by her warnings the faults into which I might 
fall ; to raise me again when her precautions had proved vain, 
and to see that I lost none of the opportunities proffered of 
exercising either patience, or tolerance, or humility, or some 
other of those virtues far from pleasing to the imperfect. 

' Not but that our Mother had the same care. But as she 
was in a manner charged with the general Conduct of the 
House rather than with that of my particular person, she did 
not inquire so often into what concerned me alone, and her 
first care, whenever the sight of me called to her mind what 
was occurring, was to forbid me absolutely to make any effort 
to bring things about as I desired. And never did she fail, 
every time she spoke to me, to beg me to be resolute in exacting 
nothing from my relatives, exhorting me to take part in the 
interests of the House in this manner. When she saw once, 
by the account I gave her, that I had spoken a little warmly 
of how little this person proposed to do, she reproved me 
severely, and said to me, in the forcible manner which gives 
such weight to the burning words so often issuing from her 
mouth, that it could be nothing but pride or avarice making 
me speak thus, or perhaps both combined, desiring at once 
to increase the wealth of this House and to have the honour 
of having greatly contributed to it. She so strongly repre- 
sented to me the feelings with which the spirit of poverty 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 341 

should inspire me at this juncture that one had needs have 
been hardened completely not to conceive a scruple at acting 
otherwise. In the end, everything was settled on the eve of 
my Profession, the day for which had long been fixed without 
any regard to the progress of the affair, and, since all that 
remained was for the one and the other to sign, I begged our 
Mother to repair to the Parlour for that purpose. But she 
could not, being very unwell that day ; which was noteworthy, 
because she was delighted : " So that," she said, " it may all 
be put off until after your Profession, and that your relative 
may do nothing save in perfect freedom and from pure spirit 
of charity. For see, my daughter, one must be resolute in 
one's principles. We know that all which is not done by the 
spirit of God, and from charity, is done from cupidity, and 
that all which is done from cupidity is sin. That is why I have 
so exhorted you not to prick either his sense of honour or his 
affection. For I should much prefer he should give nothing 
at all than that he should give much from a motive purely 
human. If he does it of himself, we cannot help it. All we 
can do, you and I, is to exhort him not to. For we are not the 
rulers of his conscience to see from what motive he acts, 
it is for him to examine it ; but to contribute by our talk, 
or by our demeanour, or in whatsoever manner, to give him 
a bad motive, would be not only to participate in his sin but 
to be its cause. 

' Therefore, my daughter, in God's name, take good 
heed not to incite him to do what you would not do yourself. 
For, if it were you to decide, you would not make a gift to 
the House for human considerations. Why then should you 
try to make him do it ? If he is not disposed to do it from 
a good motive, it is much better he should not do it at all. 
Perhaps at some other time God will touch him. But if that 
should not be, you must not be troubled ; it is to the good 
of the House. Go, then, and tell him yet once more now, 
and cordially, that he should search his heart to see what 
induces him to make this benefaction, that he must do nothing 
precipitately and that there will always be time enough after 
your Profession, since I am not in a state to be able to do 
what is necessary for accepting it. Besides you know that 
here a Sister's dot is never spoken of until after her Profession." 
' I acquitted myself as faithfully as I could of this com- 
mission, and I recited to him this brief discourse, word for 
word, as to you. It surprised him not a little, although he 
had long been acquainted with the manner in which things are 
conducted here. But he had with him certain lawyers, who 
were so amazed that they said never had they known such 



342 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

a manner of proceeding, and that this was not the customary 
behaviour. They said a great deal more ; but that is not to 
the point of our discourse. He ' (her brother) ' did not wish, 
however, to put it off any longer; and to testify on his side 
that he did willingly what little was in his power, and to con- 
vince me of what he repeatedly protested that he greatly 
regretted not being able to do more , he did not fail to return 
the following day. 

' At the close of the interview he then had with our Mother, 
who was better that day and could not make an excuse, he 
told me that she first said she did not know whether I had 
dealt with him in the manner I had been constantly urged. 
" For this reason, Monsieur," she said to him, " for fear lest 
she may have failed to do so, I am bound to tell you that 
I adjure you in the name of God to do nothing out of human 
consideration, and, unless you do this charity in the spirit 
of charity, not to do it at all. See, Monsieur : we have learnt 
from the late Monsieur de Saint-Cyran to accept nothing for 
the House of God which does not come from God. All that 
is done from any other motive than charity is not a fruit of 
the spirit of God, and consequently we ought not to accept 
it." He replied with protestations all that courtesy required 
on such occasions, without wishing in the least to defer ; and 
the matter was thus concluded. 

* Our Mother, meeting me afterwards, told me I need no 
longer torment myself about anything, and that all was con- 
cluded. Then, drawing me aside, she said to me very gravely 
that she was very troubled at having seen me so anxious to 
make the said person behave liberally, and so distressed when 
I thought he would not do so. "I am genuinely afraid, my 
daughter," she said with wonderful kindness, " lest you have 
offended God by it. I beg you to think it over seriously ; 
and reflect besides that you have in fact no ground of com- 
plaint against your relative. For it is certain that he gives 
liberally in proportion to what he has, especially if one com- 
pares him with almost every one else. I wish you knew how 
most people abuse the disinterestedness shown them ; it is 
not credible. But we must not on that account abstain 
from doing our duty. It is said that secular persons are so 
avaricious and unfair that one must not be surprised if 
Religious are the same, and that they set the example. But, 
you see, my daughter, we do not wish to imitate them in 
their other vices, why should we imitate them in this ? They 
love amusement, play, and fine clothes ; they avenge them- 
selves when offended, and many other such things : should 
we do the same ? Why, then, is it proposed we should imitate 



NARRATIVE OF JACQUELINE PASCAL 343 

them in their avarice ? Is it not a sin as great as the rest ? 
But the fact is, when one is avaricious, one is very glad to 
excuse oneself on the score that every one is the same. One 
must not thus deceive oneself. One must recognize evil as 
it is and where it is." 

' These, my dear Mother, are the last words said to me on 
the matter and the conclusion of the whole affair. . . .' 

Sister Jacqueline de Sainte Euphemie concludes for herself 
with apologies for bad writing, &c., due to the little leisure 
which her ' obedience ' left her for this narrative. And in 
a postscript she inserts a final apology for the gilded paper on 
which she had written surviving token of her love, in unre- 
generate girlhood, of writing poetry : 

' I found it in a box which had been left me, and, as this 
was the last thing that remained to me of the world, at least 
of outward things, I thought well to make it a sacrifice to God. 
It seemed to me that gold could not be better employed than 
in making known charity, of which it is the image. Even 
thus I can render only the shadow in exchange for the reality 
of that shown to me, which deserves rather, in my opinion, 
characters of blood than gilded paper, to preserve its memory.' 



CHAPTER XXIII 

The Five Propositions. The Formula. Censure of Arnauld. 

THE tumult brought by the Fronde presently subsided. 
The nuns received from other convents were free to depart, 
they of Port Royal to return to Les Champs where, at the 
expense of a recent convert, the Due de Luines, a new dormitory 
had been built for them and the church raised and improved. 
But general disturbance cleared away only to give place to 
private alarms. The ' persecution ' of Port Royal now waxed 
stronger, and the goodwill and better knowledge which 
hospitality had won for the nuns availed them little against 
the odium constantly and at length successfully cast upon 
them by the Jesuits. 

The prosperity of the convent and the growth above all 
of the Petites coles kept by ces Messieurs, served only to 
quicken the enmity of the Jesuits. They were now declared 
and implacable foes, and each several stroke that failed only 
stirred them to renewed effort. Attacks against the schools 
were for a time checked by the ' hand of Providence ', some- 
what cruelly displayed ; Mazarin's nephew, a child at school 
in the Jesuit College of Clermont, was killed by a fall in the 
rough game of ' tossing the blanket ', and the Jesuits found 
it wisest to drop the question of schools. The sermons of 
M. Singlin were jealously watched. One preached on the Day 
of S. Augustine, in the very midst of the civil disturbances 
(1649), had seemed dubious enough to procure his suspension ; 
as, previously, a stop had been put to the Lenten preaching of 
a like uncompromising Christianity by the Pere des Mares, at 
the church of S. Merri. But at S. Merri, the cure, Du Hamel, 
had pursued the same stern vein, 1 and M. Singlin was 
soon reinstated by the Archbishop and his sermons more 
largely attended than before. Direct attack upon the nuns 
1 v. Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, pp. 361, 363-4. 



CALUMNY UPON PORT ROYAL 345 

was no more successful. The Mother Angelique obtained now 
(1651) from the Archbishop easy redress for a calumnious work, 
Le Janse'nisme Confondu, written by the same Jesuit Father 
who had failed at Rome in the matter of the Fre'quente Com- 
munion, and sold, as the title-page announced, in the Goitre 
des Jesuites. This work exceeded all bounds in its insulting 
reflections upon these ' heretic ' and ' anti-sacramentarian ' 
Nuns of Port Royal ; and the Archbishop published an open 
censure of so gross a libel upon nuns directly under his 
jurisdiction, and by him approved. A second outrageous 
calumny, Le Port Royal d* intelligence avec Geneve, was parried 
by the indefatigable pen of Antoine Arnauld, already volumes 
deep in controversy. 

But however open attack might be parried, or the convent 
win esteem, in spite of prejudice, from other communities, 
there was no dispersing the cloud of private calumny. The 
friendship of the Cardinal de Retz, hero of the Fronde, 
coadjutor and presently successor to his uncle Gondi, the 
Archbishop , occasioned the rumour that the hermits were 
implicated in the civil disturbances. De Retz bore amused 
witness to the ineptitude of such people for conspiracy, as 
Anne of Austria on another occasion smiled at the notion of 
the candid and loyal d'Andilly stirring up sedition. Other 
reports were yet more ridiculous. The nuns were sun- 
worshippers it would seem because they had built their 
Chapel towards the east, a practice fallen into disuse. 1 As for 
Antoine Arnauld, theologian and particular foe, such unlikely 
slanders as an understanding with Cromwell, or, but this was 
later, his support of the disgraced minister, Fouquet, were cir- 
culated. By a consoling parallel, Arnauld recalled how the early 
Christians were accused of causing bad harvests and of being 
the authors of every evil which befell the State. Yet insensibly, 
however consoled and through all demonstration of absurdity, 
Port Royal was blackened in public esteem and the way 
prepared for more adroit assault. True, that very fact of 
calumny brought friends more closely round the Convent 
in generous partisanship, but it was to share in the 
discredit. 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, p. 364. 



346 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

Already the triumphant weapon of the Jesuits was forged. 

Jansen's life-work, the Augustinus, had appeared in 1638 
and, in the background of the stir caused by the Fre'quenle 
Communion, had been the occasion of intermittent theological 
sparring. The Jesuits had not been able to suppress the work, 
but up to this time the interest of the formidable Latin tome 
had been confined to theologians. 

In 1649, the year of the first Fronde, the same year that 
M. Singlin was temporarily suspended from preaching , the 
ex-Jesuit Cornet, a member of the Sorbonne, had the happy 
thought of extracting from the Augustinus a number of Proposi- 
tions, representing, or purporting to represent, its doctrine, 
and offered them for censure to the Sorbonne and to Rome. 
With these Propositions, reduced eventually to five, the Jesuits 
skilfully drew the combat from off the moral to the doctrinal 
ground, and, accentuating the Calvinistic aspect of the doctrine 
of grace, caught the disciples of Jansen and Saint-Cyran on 
their vulnerable side. 

The Five Propositions set forth the doctrine of grace in its 
extreme statement and unquestionably awkward logical con- 
sequences, where it clashes not only with natural reason but 
also with faith in God's goodness. The first, the only one 
verbally drawn from Jansen, is to the effect : ' That a good 
man is at times unable, whatever effort he make, to perform 
certain of God's commands, because the requisite grace is not 
given.' The second, third, and fourth are to the effect that 
man has no free-will, or power to resist inward grace once given ; 
the fifth, which from comparative simplicity of expression 
caught the popular mind, ' that Christ did not die for all men,' 

These subtleties and the distinctions drawn between adequate 
grace and effective grace (grace tuffisante et grace efficace) need 
not detain us. Neither need we trace the preliminary steps 
in the controversy : how the Bishops in France took part for 
or against, one group calling on Rome to examine the matter, 
another warning the Pope of personal animosity and hidden 
design, and of danger, in the person of Jansen, to S. Augustine 
himself : how delegates in favour of Jansen went to Rome, 
the journal of one of them, Saint- Amour by name, forms a 
thick closely-printed folio. 



THE FIVE PROPOSITIONS CONDEMNED 347 

The Jansenists were in a quandary, between their dread of 
Calvin and love of S. Augustine, from whom Calvin also had 
drawn. But so too was the Pope who, gladly suppressing the 
doctrine, was not prepared to impeach the great Father of 
the Church. The ' Jansenists ', or ' Augustinians ' as they 
preferred to be called, drew up a three-column edition of the 
disputed questions, with the views of the Molinists on the 
one hand, of the Calvinists on the other, and in the centre 
the true doctrine as they held it. These debates occupied two 
years ; then, in 1653, the Pope, Innocent X, took his stand and 
issued a Bull declaring the Five Propositions heretical, though 
at the same time assuring the delegates of his unbroken 
allegiance to S. Augustine and the doctrine of effective grace. 

The news reached Port Royal of the condemnation, at first 
without the qualifying assurance. 

' On July the 2nd, 1653, day of the Visitation of the Blessed 
Virgin, M. Arnauld, the Mere Angelique's brother, received 
news of the censure passed at Rome upon the Five Propositions 
(attributed to M. Jansenius) and he came at once to tell the 
Mother. She was not surprised but, lifting up her eyes to 
Heaven, she said to him : " You see, my brother, God desired 
to humiliate us. If our friends who went to Rome in order 
to defend the effective grace of the Son of God, and the doctrine 
of S. Augustine, had hindered the Molinists from hurting it 
by a Bull, it would have been very difficult for us not to be 
exalted, and not to attribute to the force of writings, and the 
capacity and high-mindedness of individuals, that glory which 
is never due save to God's Providence and to the power of truth 
itself. He shows us now that we are useless servants, that it 
is for Him alone to defend His cause, and that, unless He employ 
His same invisible grace in the hearts of some, and His visible 
protection upon the persons of certain others, it wiU go hard 
but His truth shall suffer some injury, and the doctrine of 
S. Augustine, which has hitherto been received as that of the 
Church, will lose credit little by little in the spirit of the Court, 
and in that of many other persons." 

M. Arnauld replied to this with sundry remarks. 

' The Mother meanwhile remained in profound silence and 
appeared absorbed in God. Then she took up the speech 
and said to him : "I must tell you a thought which comes 
into my mind ; it is, that it seems to me our Age was not 



348 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

worthy to see a miracle so great as it would have been, had 
five individuals sent to Rome (who, though pious and zealous 
for the truth, are not Saints to work miracles) been able of 
themselves alone to resist all the intrigues and cabals of the 
Molinists . . . and all the corruption of the Court of Rome. 
One must not, however, lose courage. The pride of the 
enemy will rise to insolence. They were not yet proud enough, 
nor we sufficiently humble. God has ways enough to put 
them down. Nevertheless we must hold ourselves ready to 
suffer and meet things at their worst. Humble suffering is 
one of the strongest means of defending the truth, because 
the truth is holy, and Christian patience is holy." ' x 

M. le Maitre, who records this speech at second-hand, pre- 
sumably from his uncle Arnauld, was sent for to learn the news. 
And, when he had learnt it, he was much surprised, and said 
to her : 

' " You were in the right, my Mother, when you told me 
a week ago that the audience which had been granted to 
M. 1'Abbe de Valcroissant (de Lalane) and to the Pre des 
Mares ' ; (two of the five delegates) " might very well be 
a snare, with intention to take them in, and to be able to 
say they had not been condemned before being heard, although 
perhaps the condemnation was already made beforehand, 
deridetur justi simplicitas" " It is true," she said, "but we must 
not abandon our simplicity for their cunning. The grace of 
the Son of God has always been attacked by hypocrites and 
cheats, and defended by the simple and sincere. Let us pray, 
let us weep and groan. Tears will effect more than pens and 
writings. For writings are not understood by men, and tears 
will be by God.' ! 

Looking to these humble weapons, the spirit of the Mother 
was high to meet whatever might befall Port Royal and herself. 
M. le Maitre called to her mind prophecies made to them, more 
than once, of persecution. He said to her that, if he remembered 
rightly, it had even been declared blood would be shed. 

' A Sister who was present cried out " Blood shed, my 

Mother ! What ! they will kill our Fathers ? that will be very 

grievous." The Mother began to laugh, and said to her : 

' But, my Sister, I do not know why you think that so sad, 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, 
p. 362 seq. 



ATTITUDE OF THE MfiRE ANG&LIQUE 349 

for one must always die, and, for my part, I would rather die 
kneeling, and instantaneously by a stroke from a sword cutting 
off my head, than languish a long time in the death-agony 
in my bed without knowing what one is doing ; the other 
manner of death is much pleasanter." 

M. le Maitre hoped that whatever blood were shed might 
save the Church, even as the blood of S. Thomas Archbishop 
of Canterbury had preserved it. But he added to the Mother 
Angelique that there was little to fear for her, and that at the 
worst she could but be relegated to some distant convent ; 
to which she replied : 



c cc 



Let them do what they will, I am already prepared ; 
I have always begged God to let me retire at the close of my 
life into a cell : here will be a genuine opportunity. I will 
take with me spectacles and a lancet ; the one for reading, 
the other to succour the sick who need bleeding. The one will 
be for truth, the other for charity. For the rest, I will keep pro- 
found silence, and the Court will be very much deceived if 
they imagine I shall dogmatize : for I shall speak only to God, 
and enjoy perfect repose." 

* "The following day . . . she said to us," her nephew con- 
tinues, " I have a quite personal reason to rejoice at this matter, 
namely, that, if persecution arise against our Monastery, I am 
certain to have the chief part. For I do not hope that God 
will do good to me in the other world unless He do me evil 
in this." 

But further reflection convinced her the immediate danger 
was slight. 

' On Sunday, the 6th day of the same month, when our 
foundation is celebrated, she said to us ' (Antoine Arnauld, 
MM. le Maitre and de Saci) : "The more I consider this matter 
before God, the more I hope in His mercy; the Jesuits and 
the Court may do what they will, the truth will not perish." . . . 
Alluding to the Pelagian monks who, in the days of the early 
Church, had burned a Convent and slain and mutilated nuns 
faithful to " grace ", she observed, " For my part I shall be 
readily consoled when I see them burn our new dormitory, 
which is but just finished ; for, look you, all that is not sin 
afflicts me very little." 

' Seeing that she expressed no apprehension of immediate 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, loc. cit., pp. 366-7. 



350 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

persecution, in consequence of this Bull, M. le Maitre said 
to her : " But, my Mother, who can check people who, ever 
since 1643 and 1644, when it was only a question of the book 
De la Fre'quente Communion, approved by so many Doctors 
and Prelates, sued at the Court for three months to have 
Monsieur Arnauld put in the Bastille, as the Cardinal Mazarin 
since openly said, protesting that this act of violence had 
seemed to him shameful and that he had prevented it ; and 
who have recently asked, in writings printed and addressed 
to the Queen, that she should put him, with all his abettors, 
to death upon the scaffold ; what may they not ask on this 
occasion, now they have the pretext of a Bull ? ' " They will 
ask everything," she said, " and it is certain that men could not 
check them ; but God can do it. And it sometimes happens 
that, when persons are exalted to the extreme point of insolence, 
God opens at their feet a precipice into which He makes them 
fall ; and that, when His servants believe themselves over- 
whelmed and lost, they are saved. The Jesuits will make the 
Queen believe that they have obtained from the Pope all they 
wished, although that is quite false ; for the censure does not 
faU upon the particular and Catholic meaning, in which alone 
the Doctors sent to Rome declared they maintained the 
Propositions to be according to S. Augustine and the Church. 
But the truth will, little by little, dispel these clouds with which 
they seek to obscure it. One must leave God to act. He 
never works greater acts of grace than when extremity is 
greatest. And when may we better hope it than for the 
sake of the truth of His very grace, which is so far from doing 
us violence in its efficacy and preventing us from being free 
(as nowadays they would have us believe), that we never do 
anything with less constraint, with more freedom, more joy, 
with more pleasure and more fullness of volition, than what 
we do by movement of the Holy Spirit, which, in ravishing 
our heart, shows us but a gentle violence." 

Towards the end of the same month of July, the further 
news reached Port Royal, and seemed to justify Angelique's 
confidence, that the Pope, while condemning the Propositions, 
had declared it in no way his intention to reflect upon the 
doctrine of S. Augustine, and of grace effective in itself and 
necessary to all good works. 

M. le Maitre read the letter containing the news to Angelique. 

' She praised God and said " He had treated us as His 
children, humbling us first and raising us afterwards, and the 



ATTITUDE OF THE "MERE ANG&LIQUE 351 

Molinists as His adversaries, letting them first be exalted 
to humiliate them afterwards." And a Sister who was present 
added, that we had been at first terrified and afterwards 
comforted, as in the Visions of good Angels : and that they 
on the contrary had been caressed and made glad at first, 
as in the Visions of Evil Spirits, and then terrified and distressed. 
' The Mother said afterwards : " Let us amend our lives, let 
us amend our lives. That is the true way to make the truth 
victorious over its enemies." ' * 

The Pope's saving clause left Arnauld, M. Singlin, and all 
the Community, free to bow in silence to his decision. The 
condemnation of the Five Propositions, being no condemna- 
tion of S. Augustine, was, in their eyes, no condemnation of 
S. Augustine's true interpreter, Jansen. 

Their submission left that year in peace. Angelique passed 
the winter quietly at Port Royal des Champs, and saw to the 
completion of the cells in the new dormitory which the Due de 
Luines had built. She had the happiness, the following spring, 
of seeing the young Abbess of Gif, who had come under her 
influence when sheltering from danger during the Fronde, 
resign her Abbey, obtained by worldly favour, and set in her 
place a duly elected nun, she herself then entering humbly 
as novice at Port Royal in Paris. 2 Through all outward change 
of event, Angelique's influence remained the same, directed con- 
stantly towards those aims she had so ardently embraced in 
youth. 

But the calm even of that year was full of menace. The 
advantage gained by the Jesuits was a real one, and they were 
not slow in pressing it home. In their writings, in caricature, 
and even in pieces played by boys in their schools, they treated 
Jansen as a heretic, declared and condemned. The Almanack 
of the Jesuits won a reply, too nearly in the same tone, 
from M. de Saci, Les Enluminures de I' Almanack des Je'suites. 
Arnauld himself prudently kept silence upon these topics, 
turning his two-edged pen now against Protestantism and 
busying himself with his Perpetuite de la Foi. 

The Jesuits meanwhile, through their Pere Annat, Confessor 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, loc. cit., p. 367 seq. 

2 Ib., pp. 375-6- 



352 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

presently to the young King, were in favour at the Court. They 
won the ear of Mazarin, anxious now to conciliate the Pope; and, 
in a general assembly of Bishops summoned by that Minister, 
the Five Propositions were declared, with but four dissentient 
voices, to represent truly the teaching of Jansen. A Formula 
was drawn up, abjuring the condemned doctrine ' of Jansenius ', 
which all ecclesiastics, and all members of a Religious Order 
were required to sign. 

The action of the Bishops was felt painfully at Port Royal, 
as a blow dealt through that episcopal authority so faithfully 
upheld. Angelique spoke with some bitterness to her nephew 
of the ' Courtier Prelates ', ' Slaves of the Court where the 
Jesuits are masters.' 1 She recalled her own zeal in transferring 
her convent from monastic to episcopal control, to be thus 
rewarded ; but ' one must humble oneself and accept these 
humiliations which come from the hand of those who ought 
to protect us '. 

' As for me,' she again declares her hopes, ' I do not think 
the persecution will spare me. M. de Langres called me the 
first daughter of M. de Saint-Cyran. The Jesuits accuse me of 
being in the full secret, conceiving there is one among us . . . ; 
they believe this House, where they know me to have great 
authority, to be of great service to the party. It will be a 
marvel if they leave me to end my life here. I am prepared 
to go and spend several years away from Port Royal, in some 
Convent governed by the Jesuits, and to maintain there pro- 
found silence. Nothing will be so annoying to me as to see them 
come to talk and undeceive me ; but I will answer them nothing 
save that, forty years ago and more, after my conversion, I 
several times asked God, if He would not permit me to give up 
my Abbey as I passionately desired, that at least He would 
grant me the grace to spend the last years of my life in an 
unknown spot where I should not be esteemed as I was here, 
and where I should not be loved, so as to imitate Jesus Christ, 
Who was abandoned at death, and that I blessed God on seeing 
that through their means He was giving me the fulfilment of 
my desire. 

' I believe, my nephew, that He will grant me this favour, 
because He has granted me another, which was to return to 
this desert. . . .' 2 

1 Entretiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, loc. cit., p. 378. 

2 Ib., pp. 378-9. 



ATTITUDE OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 353 

She was not to be dissuaded of her belief that in such a 
convent she should find the coveted ill-usage. M. le Maitre 
observed to her that, in whatever monastery she might be 
placed, she would meet with some kindness from women who 
like her were Religious, to which she replied : 

' You are mistaken. God will permit those who hold me con- 
fined in their House to think they do Him great service by 
treating me very harshly, that they may soon be relieved of 
an old woman represented to them as infected with heresy, 
as deceitful, hypocritical and malicious. They may well take 
offence alike at my words and my silence. And, moreover, the 
Sisters who are opposed to grace and are taught in the School 
of the Molinists are harsh, inhuman and cruel. I know it by ex- 
perience.' Thereupon, adds M. le Maitre, ' She named to me 
one, who, she said, had spoken to her as a Turk or a Scythian 
might have done. ' Grace,' she continued, ' is humble and 
the principle of humility, and humility is inseparable from 
gentleness. Confidence in one's own strength is presumptuous, 
and all presumption is by nature rude and stern.' 1 

We strike here on the limitations of our Mother's Christian 
tolerance. 

Angelique's anticipations were, as she observed, made not 
by spirit of prophecy, but by natural reasoning. Though not 
fulfilled in her own person, the later history of the convent 
Showed them not ungrounded. 

Meanwhile the net was drawn closer. The Five Propositions 
were successfully fathered on Jansen, it remained only to 
convict Port Royal of ' Jansenism '. The Jesuits watched for 
Arnauld to break his prudent silence. 

The occasion was not long in coming. The enemies of 
Port Royal grew so bold that a priest of the Community of 
S. Sulpice a body particularly prejudiced against the convent 
went so far as to refuse absolution to the Due de Liancourt, 
on the sole ground of his friendship with the recluses, and of the 
presence of his grandchild as boarder in the convent. S. Sulpice 
upheld the action of its priest, and the event successfully 
goaded Arnauld again to the fray. 

In two letters, published under the titles Premiere Lettre 

1 Entretiens. , . avec M. le Maitre, loc. cit., pp. 381-2. 

LOWNDES \ a 



354 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

a une Personne de Condition, and Seconde Lettre a un Due et 
Paire (the influential friend of Port Royal, the Due de Luines, 
is the person designated), Arnauld declared the position of 
the ' Jansenists '. Accepting the condemnation of the Five 
Propositions, he denied that they were to be found in the 
Augustinus, or that, as condemned, they represented its 
teaching. And, while upholding his authority in all articles 
of Faith, he denied the Pope's right to impose acceptance of 
matters of Fact. This famous distinction gave again another 
colour to the disputes, the doctrinal aspect now shifting to 
that of discipline ; and the Jansenists again here, as in their 
respect for the Episcopacy, joined hands with the Gallican 
party in the Church. The policy, unhappily, of Louis XIV 
was Gallican only in so far as the King disputed power for 
himself with the Pope. 

These letters gave the Jesuits their hoped-for opportunity. 
They referred them to the Sorbonne and, by dint of some 
intrigue and packing of the assembly for opinion was very 
divided , obtained (February, 1656) the censure of Arnauld, 
with his formal expulsion from that body. 

Practical consequences at once threatened. The schools 
were to be broken up, the hermits dispersed, the convent 
deprived of its pupils and novices. A Royal Commission was 
sent to investigate matters at Port Royal des Champs. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

The Lettres Provinciates, The Miracle of the Holy Thorn. Days of 

Respite. 

NOT yet, however, was the triumph of the Jesuits fulfilled. 
Port Royal tasted a respite of persecution, three years granted, 
Angelique clear-sightedly foretold, in which to prepare for 
future suffering ; three years of plenty before the time of 
famine, so Angelique the niece looked back on them. 

The censure of Arnauld was the signal for a new defender 
of Port Royal, the event which called forth that more 
famous successor to the Frequente Communion, the Lettres 
Provinciates. The brilliant wit and burning eloquence of the 
Letters, as they appealed to the general public, rapidly turned 
the tide of opinion in favour of Port Royal and against the 
Jesuits ; to clinch the effect produced by these human weapons 
came, that same spring, what to Pascal and all Port Royal's 
friends appeared an unmistakable sign from Heaven the 
Miracle of the Holy Thorn. 

Blaise Pascal, whom we saw a few years earlier acting the 
part of grudging relative to his sister Jacqueline, had become 
now, if not one of the Messieurs of Port Royal we may accept 
his testimony, though equivocal, in the Letters, that he did 
not deem himself one , at least one with them in spirit and by 
temporary retreats amongst them. Many years earlier, when 
a youth of twenty, he had been touched, together with his 
father and sisters, to embrace the strict piety of the move- 
ment springing from Jansen and Saint-Cyran. At that time, 
the date of the Frequente Communion, he it was who fanned 
Jacqueline's ardour to the steady flame it so constantly preserved. 
And although his own zeal cooled, and he became so far 
entangled in the world as to feel, like most worldlings, his 
income inadequate, he retained a letter on his father's death 
(1651) sufficiently proves it the pious turn of feeling and the 

A a 2 



356 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

phraseology of a strict Christian. The second and decisive 
' movement of grace ' had now come, a sermon of M. Singlin's 
its immediate channel. M. Singlin became Pascal's Director 
of Conscience and at his advice the penitent, heartily sick 
of the world, entered upon a temporary retreat, first at Port 
Royal des Champs, then in Paris when some business called 
him thither, and then again at Les Champs. The tedium 
and distaste with which his mundane life had latterly inspired 
him yielded to happiness in his austere retreat. ' I know not,' 
Jacqueline, herself joyous, writes to him, ' how M. Singlin can 
put up with so joyous a penitent.' 

Thus happy at release from ' the world ' but with its polish 
fresh upon him, Pascal was among the recluses when the news 
of Arnauld's censure reached them. The story is well known : 
how Arnauld was urged to defend himself by an appeal to 
the public ; how he wrote a defence and read it to the assem- 
bled hermits, Pascal among them ; how it was received in 
dead silence, his friends recognizing it would not serve the 
turn. Then Arnauld, free, for all the long sharpening of his 
pen in controversy, from an author's susceptibility, turned to 
Pascal ' But you, who are young, write us something.' 
Pascal the next morning submitted to them the draft of the 
first Lettre a un Provincial. 

' Ce sera goute',' the Hermits rightly prognosticated. The 
Petites Lettres or Lettres Provinciates, as these letters addressed 
to a friend in the provinces came to be inaccurately styled, 
were the literary event of the day. Curiosity as to the anony- 
mous writer, the excellence of the writing so excellent as to 
mark a new era in the French language , united with the 
interest of the matter to keep the public on the stretch for 
each letter as it appeared. 

With the self-possessed wit of a man of the world, Pascal 
set the intricacies of the theological dispute in truer proportion, 
exposing to the public the complications of the affair, the 
verbal differences and careful hedging employed by the enemies 
of Port Royal, exposing also their personal animus. To yet 

1 Memoire suv la Vie de M. Paschal . . . Recueil de Pieces pour servir 
a 1'Histoire de Port-Royal. Utrecht, 1740, p. 268. 
* Ib., p. 278. 



THE LETTRES PROVINCIALES 357 

greater effect he brought his counter-attack against the Jesuits, 
his famous indictment of their casuistry. This led the quarrel 
successfully back to the moral field. As Arnauld had denounced, 
in the Fre'quente Communion, the danger to serious piety 
arising from easy-going Jesuit practice, Pascal now denounced 
the danger to common morality from their casuist teaching. 

The priesthood throughout France were roused, and the 
Lettres Provinciates were followed by more regular protests 
of the cures. When the Jesuits wrote an Apology for the 
casuists, their work in its turn met with censure from the 
Sorbonne. 

The Attic salt of the Letters was scarce tasted by our nuns. 
In their annals we find no mention of this powerful weapon 
of defence. The light handling of these momentous questions 
of grace, and the witty baiting of the naive Jesuit Father, 
mouthpiece of the casuists, could but doubtfully commend itself 
to the Mere Angelique, 1 and the work would not penetrate to the 
secluded Sisters in general. In truth, the appeal to the public 
arena, and to very human powers of enjoyment, had its draw- 
back. The topic of grace, thus set a la mode, lost something 
of weight. Ridicule cast, and quickly caught up by active 
wit, upon the hair-splitting distinctions of grace adequate 
and grace efficacious, did not tend to penitential waiting upon 
the movements of grace. The Fre'quente Communion had 
brought penitents to Port Royal ; the Petites Lettres served 
as good reading to Madame de Sevigne in the country. Fervour, 
hidden for the occasion by Pascal, cooled to calm partisanship 
in Boileau's polished verse ; the burning theme of grace became 
a mere topic of conversation, discussed at leisure by the animals 
of La Fontaine's Fables. 

The Letters served, however, the immediate purpose and 
turned the tide of public opinion rapidly against the Jesuits. 
Whether they would have sufficed alone to divert attack from 
Port Royal is uncertain. They had delighted the public for 
a couple of months when God Himself, so Port Royal inevitably 
saw the matter, took up the defence of His servants and of His 
Grace, working at Port Royal a signal miracle. 

1 Cf. Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. iii, p. 203 ; and, upon this 
subject, Strowski, Pascal et son Temps, vol. iii, p. 203 seq. 



358 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

The object of the miracle was Pascal's little niece, Mar- 
guerite Perier, at school in the convent and suffering from 
a terrible fistula in the eye. The letters of Jacqueline Pascal 
to her sister, the child's mother, give the course of the event, 
from the decision of the doctors to burn out the malady, as 
a last resource, with hot irons, up to the triumphant moment 
when the child of ten, raised on a buffet that all might see her, 
was the centre of observation at a crowded service of thanks- 
giving for her complete and painless cure by miracle. 

A relic, the splinter of a thorn from the sacred crown, had 
been lent, after going the round of sundry other Paris convents, 
to Port Royal, on March 24, 1656: 

' In order that the whole Community might have the con- 
solation of seeing it before giving it back, it was placed, with 
great reverence, upon a small altar in the Choir, and all the 
Sisters went to kiss it kneeling, after having sung an anthem 
in honour of the sacred crown ; after which all the children 
went one after another. Sister Flavie, their Mistress, on 
seeing Margot ' (the little Perier) ' approach quite close to it, 
made her a sign to touch her eye with the reliquary, and she 
herself took up the holy relic and applied it without reflection. 

' In the evening Sister Flavie, who thought no more of 
what she had done, heard Margot saying to one of her little 
Sisters : My eye is cured, it does not hurt any more. She was 
no little surprised ; she went to her and found that this 
swelling in the corner of the eye, which in the morning was 
as big as the end of one's finger, very long and very hard, 
was no longer there at all, and that her eye, which before the 
touching of the relic was painful to see, appeared as healthy 
as the other, without any difference being noticeable. . . . 
I leave you to think what astonishment she was in. She 
did not, however, build great hopes upon it, and contented 
herself with telling the Mother Agnes how things were, waiting 
for time to show whether the cure were as genuine as it seemed. 

' The Mother Agnes was so kind as to tell me about it next 
day, and, as one did not dare to hope so great a marvel had 
been effected in so short a time, she said to me that, if the 
child continued to be well and there seemed likelihood God 
willed her cure by this means, she would very gladly beg 
M. de la Potherie (the ecclesiastic who owned the relic) to 
repeat the favour he had done us in lending the relic, in order 
to complete the miracle. But up to now that has not been 
necessary ; for although it is a week since this occurred 



THE MIRACLE OF THE HOLY THORN 359 

because I was unable to finish my letter last Tuesday there 
is not the smallest trace of her malady, and it requires now 
incomparably more faith for those who had not seen it to 
believe she had it, than for those who saw it to believe she 
could have been cured, in a moment, only by a miracle as 
great and as evident as the restoring of sight to the blind. . . . 

' Nevertheless, that we might not claim too lightly such 
special favour, it was thought well to show her to M. Dalence 
(the doctor) who had seen her not long before . . . and who 
had found her so bad that he had condemned her to the remedy 
by fire without hesitation, giving us his reasons. 

' It is a double joy to receive favour from God when one has 
the hatred of men. Pray God for us, that He may prevent us 
from exalting ourselves in the one and of losing courage for 
the other, and that He will make us look upon both as equally 
the outcome of His mercy. . . . 

' M. Dalence has seen Margot and judged the cure complete 
and miraculous ; but he has fixed a week later to make sure. 
Until then no word of it will be breathed. . . .' 

(We spare the reader the details which follow of the child's 
offensive and disfiguring ailment.) 

' When M. Dalence came on the 3ist, in the morning, she 
was shown to him without anything being said. He began 
to examine her on each side without saying anything, he 
pressed the eye, put his spatula up her nose ; and, with all that, 
was very astonished to find nothing at all. He was asked if 
he did not remember the malady he had seen, and he answered 
naively : That is what I am looking for, but I no longer find it. 
I begged him to look in her mouth. He did so and put in his 
spatula, and he found so little that he began to laugh and 
said : There is nothing at all. Thereupon Sister Flavie told 
him what had occurred. He made her repeat it more than 
once, for he is a very sensible and prudent man ; and after 
listening quietly, and having asked if it disappeared all at 
once, and the child herself having replied it did, he said he 
would give his attestation, \vhenever one wished, that it was 
impossible this could have taken place without a miracle. 

' He does not wish to assert, any more than we, that the 
malady will not return, because God alone knows, but he 
asserts that at present there is none at all and that she is in 
perfect health ; these are his own words, or the equivalent. 
He has exhorted us, however, to make no report for the present, 
and to confine our movements of gratitude within our House, 
so far as possible, for fear of false judgements. . . .' 



360 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

On April the i/jih, the several physicians and surgeons who 
had seen the child signed a certificate attesting the miraculous 
nature of the cure. Whatever prudent reserve might at first 
be exercised, the matter was soon noised abroad. A regular 
inquiry was made by the ecclesiastical authorities, and resulted 
in the official ' verification ' of the miracle, given in October 
of the same year. In consequence a solemn thanksgiving was 
held at Port Royal. 

Jacqueline writes again to the child's mother : 

' We were made to begin the Solemnization the eve before, 
and we sang the Vespers of the Sacred Crown. . . .That nothing 
might be wanting, my little Sister Marguerite (who is no longer 
called Margot) was in the Choir among the Novices, because it 
was her feast (for as a rule the little ones are not admitted). 

' On the morrow from early morning there were numbers of 
people in the Church, although it rained a great deal. A small 
Altar was erected in our Choir, close to the grille, which was 
left open, adorned with white and covered with a beautiful 
chalice veil, upon which our Mother placed the Reliquary of 
the Holy Thorn surrounded by a number of lights. M. the 
Grand Vicar, who performed the ceremony, came for it with 
the cross, accompanied by sixteen deacons holding candles, 
and he carried it with ceremony under the canopy, as in the 
procession of the Holy Sacrament, as far as the Altar, two 
Deacons constantly burning incense ; and he set it upon 
a beautifully adorned little tabernacle, which had been made 
expressly. Meanwhile all the Sisters, with their great veils 
lowered, sang on their knees before the grille the Hymn Exite 
filiae Sion and the Anthem Corona. They held lighted 
candles, as did also the child, who was before our Choir, in 
the very front of the grille, dressed in secular clothes, very 
neatly but very modestly, in a grey frock and a cap \_une coeffe], 
kneeling upon two great hassocks so as to be high enough to 
be seen by a crowd of people who clambered where they 
could to^see her. 

' Then the small altar was removed, and the Grand Vicar 
said Holy Mass, which was sung for the Sacred Crown with 
great solemnity ; during which the centre of the grille remained 
open that the people might have the gratification of seeing 
the child, who was close to it upon a Prie-Dieu covered by 
a carpet ; and she had a lighted candle in front of her, and, 
behind, a chair to sit upon when she needed. She stayed 
there with as much self-possession as though it had been 
her ordinary place, standing and kneeling at the right times, 



DAYS OF RESPITE 361 

modestly as though very devout, and with as good a grace as 
though she had been made to practise it. ... 

' This is all I have to tell, save to add that, the weather 
becoming finer in the course of the ceremony, the Church did 
not empty the whole day, and so great a number of copies of 
the Sentence of the Grand Vicar were sold that, at a sol apiece, 
some hundred francs were taken in the court of the Church 
alone. . . .' x 

The hour of Port Royal had come. Persecution itself 
turned, for the time being, to its glory. The Commissioners 
sent at the beginning of April to report further on the ortho- 
doxy of the nuns, came in time to see with their own eyes the 
child cured and to hear the attestation of the doctors. The 
attempts of the Jesuits, in a work entitled Le Rabat-joie des 
Jansenistes, to decry the miracle, were unsuccessful. As we 
have read, the cure, which indeed was singular enough, was 
verified as miraculous by the ecclesiastical powers. Paris 
was convinced of it, so too the Court with Anne of Austria, 
and the miracle was taken as unanswerable witness to the 
persecuted innocence of Port Royal. The Jesuits were alone 
in disputing it, but among these was the Pere Annat, who 
ruled the conscience of the young King, Louis XIV. 

For the time persecution ceased. The hermits reassembled ; 
the schools flourished again ; the children and novices at the 
convent remained undisturbed. Supreme sign of favour and 
occasion of joy to the Nuns, M. Singlin, hitherto only Confessor, 
was appointed Director to both convents, Port Royal in Paris 
and Port Royal des Champs. 

Yet this manifestation of Providence had also its drawback. 
The convent was too sober to be led astray now into any such 
deliberate seeking for miracles as had blemished it under the 
guidance of the Bishop of Langres (vide Ch. IX, pp. 145-6). 
A sequence of miracles worked by the Holy Thorn, now given 
by its owner to Port Royal, was but the inevitable consequence 
of the prestige won by the relic and of its exposure in the 
church ; the convent was too deeply imbued with the maxim 
that humility and reform should be the fruit of all such special 

1 Memoire sur la Vie de M. Paschal, Recueil . . ., 1740, p. 283 seq. 



362 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

favour, to suffer greatly or be hysterically affected. But the 
miracle formed a dangerous precedent for later degenerate 
days when, Port Royal destroyed, the movement of ' Jansen- 
ism ' still went forward. The cures wrought by the Holy 
Thorn had an ugly echo in the miracles at the tomb of the 
diacre Paris, from 1727 to 1732, until the hysterical excesses 
committed by the convulsionnaires in the churchyard of 
S. Medard, which contained it, caused the closure of that 
precinct : 

'De par le roi, defense a Dieu 
De faire miracle en ce lieu. 1 ' 

The miracle was taken as a sign that Heaven acknowledged 
Port Royal as true daughter of the Church. To posterity it 
may serve at least to show that Port Royal followed Roman 
Catholic tradition. But more distinctive of its spirit within 
the Church was the attitude of caution towards such mani- 
festations, the avoidance of parade and idle talk, the application 
to inward reform and spiritual growth. 

In fairness to that spirit we may close this tale of a miracle 
with words from Angelique to an Abbe anxious to keep record 
of the cures afterwards wrought in rapid succession by the 
relic exposed in the church of the convent : 

' For my part I may tell you I cannot approve of so much 
inquiry ; God knows for what reason He performs His miracles, 
and He will derive glory from them in the way which pleases 
Him, without any need for us to meddle, or to do anything 
save adore His divine Providence, and bless His goodness 
with deep humility and gratitude. ... A record should rather 
serve those who are to come after us, making them reverence 
the guidance of God, than distract us from it. The world 
makes to-do enough about it, and I believe it is God's purpose 
that the world should talk and that we should keep silence, not 
only we but all our true friends.' 

A propos of another miracle discussed in a convent, she 
had written earlier, ' In God's name do not let this miracle 
be spoken of ... since instead of producing in these Sisters 
a fresh, secret and inward trust in the Holy Virgin, it has only 

1 Inscription written in consequence upon the gate. Cp. Recueil des 
Miracles operes au tombeau de M. de Paris, Diacre, a Utrecht, 1733; 
and Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, vol. iii, p. 198. 



DAYS OF RESPITE 363 

caused talk. I am certain not one of them has prayed Her in 
consequence to deliver her from her failings.' 1 

And now, on occasion of a further miracle in the convent 
worked by the Holy Thorn, she bade the community offer to 
God ' the hymn of silence, which alone is worthy of Him ', 
assuring them that, if this miracle were made the subject of 
discourse and tittle-tattle, she would give sound penances. 2 

The Convent entered upon this time of respite with the 
Mother Marie des Anges as Abbess, in succession to Angelique 
who, thrice re-elected, was by the Rule no longer eligible. 

In Marie des Anges we have the perfect nun, the figure 
upon whom the eye of Angelique rested with complacency 
from the moment when, a young girl, she had entered the 
convent scarce hoping to be received, 3 to these latter days of 
her election as Abbess at Port Royal after long filling the like 
post at Maubuisson. 

In the early days of Port Royal's removal to Paris, Angelique 
had been asked to name among her nuns one fit to take charge 
of Maubuisson, again left by the death of Mme de Soissons 
without an Abbess. Only this Sister Marie des Anges Suireau 
had seemed to her to possess the requisite virtue. She named 
her, and then, bethinking her that the girl's obscure birth 
would add greatly to the external difficulties of the charge, 
in that ' Royal Abbey ', would have drawn back. The appoint- 
ment however was made. Once assured it was her duty, the 
Sister, whose perfect obedience was, in the eyes of Port Royal, 
her best title to command, accepted the office in all simplicity. 4 

Her merits, and her trials, as Abbess of Maubuisson, are 
recorded at full length in the work, Modele de Foi et de Patience, 
by a Port Royal nun, from which we have already drawn for 
the history of that convent. Under her persuasive rule, those 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, pp. 138-9, and vol. iii, pp. 348-9. 

2 Relation de la Sceur Anne-Marie de Sainte-Eustoquie de Flechelles de 
Bregy : Sur les Instructions que la Mere Angelique donnait a ses filles, 
Memoires pour servir . . ., vol. ii, pp. 580-1. 

3 v. ante ch. iii, p. 48. 

4 Relation . . . pay la Mere Marie- Angelique, Memoires pour servir . . ., 
vol. i, p. 303 seq. 



364 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

ancient dames, now truly ancient and falling into decrepitude, 
\vere coaxed out of their mundane ways and into something 
of piety. Even Mme de la Serre, former accomplice of Mme 
d'Estrees, subdued her proud and violent spirit in the hands 
of this young Mother, persistent and firm beneath her mildness. 1 

But the outside difficulties were too great. The opposition 
and intrigues of the monks ' made her rule a martyrdom ', 
says the Mere Angelique, kindling with wrath at the thought 
of these false Religious ; human wisdom will perhaps find 
the submissive nun-like virtue of Marie des Anges little fitted 
to the case. She resigned, very gladly, after twenty-two years 
of rule, in favour of an Abbess more agreeable to the monks, 
and returned to Port Royal the same in modest gentleness- 
it is Angelique who testifies as when she left. 2 

She begged to be placed again in the novitiate, to purge 
herself, as it were, from the habit of command ; and ' her 
request was acceded to, though not as she had meant it. For 
she was placed among the Novices, not as one of them, but 
as their Mistress '. And when at length Angelique had com- 
pleted, as Abbess, the extreme term of twelve years permitted by 
the rule, and could no longer be held at the post by the wishes 
of her nuns, Marie des Anges was, with her warm support, chosen 
in her stead. Elected first (1654) in days of threatening 
difficulty for Port Royal, the new Abbess left the management 
however so far as might be, to the former Mothers, Angelique 
and Agnes ; and only when continued now (1657) for a second 
term, prepared, at the bidding of M. Singlin, to take real as 
well as nominal charge. 3 

In personal matters, meanwhile, Angelique, full of years 
as she now was, and of infirmities, rejoiced to pay prompt 
unquestioning obedience to the younger, though also aged, 
Mother, whom she, as girl-Abbess, had received, a child, into 
the convent. By such discipline of her still imperious will 
she saw for herself the best preparation for trial to come ; 
preparation also for death, which her ever growing malady 

1 v. ante ch. v, p. 95. 

3 Relation . . . par la Mere Marie Angelique . . ., Memoires pour servir . . ., 
vol. i, pp. 310-11. 

3 Modele de Foi et de Patience, p. 500. 



DAYS OF RESPITE 365 

warned her could not be far distant. Submission to remedies, 
some of them indeed more trying than any penance, and 
obedience to the easier regime imposed, was the chief discipline 
now open to her. 

Even from the Maison du S. Sacrement, Angelique, not yet 
fifty, had written : ' I am old, and in very bad health, so that 
there is little likelihood I shall live long.' l From that time 
onwards, there are increasing references to illness in the nuns' 
narratives concerning her and, little as her energy and vigour 
would seem to have been impaired, ill-health, apparently 
always of a dropsical character, took with the years increasing 
hold. She had to fight now against the solicitude of her nuns, 
more eager to procure alleviation for her bodily suffering 
than to aid her in moral discipline. A thought which troubled 
her also at this time was that the Sisters, foolish in their love, 
would talk of her after death as a saint and would commit, 
in her regard, the convent follies which she so greatly disliked. 
She saw with distress their eagerness to collect relics and pro- 
claim miracles, exemplified recently after the death (in 1653) of 
her Sister Anne Eugenie, bright romantic spirit, and ' truly 
saint-like', Angelique herself acknowledged. She spoke of 
this matter to her nephew, M. le Maitre : 

' She told me,' he records, ' it was in 1654, that she feared 
lest our Sisters should treat her after her death as the Carmelites 
had treated the Mother Madeleine, that is to say as a Saint, 
although they had no ground, since she had never had visions, 
ecstasies and trances like the Mother Madeleine. But that she 
said so because the Sisters, without telling her, had made 
a compound of sundry things belonging to my Sister Anne 
Eugenie, such as her blood, her hair, and her veil ; and had 
made medals of it, one of which she showed me. I looked 
at her, and told her boldly that she need not be anxious on 
that score, and that her Nuns would not commit these follies 
after her death, that we would prevent it, that they were 
sensible and discreet, and that, even though they had made 
these medals without asking her, I did not think them to blame, 
for my Sister Anne Eugenie was in truth a Saint, and even 
the Carmelites who had known her, the Mother Marguerite 
Acarie among them, declared her sanctity : that she ought 
accordingly to forgive so innocent a love for their Sister, 

1 Lettres de la Mere Angelique, vol. i, p. 59. 



366 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

whom she herself knew to have performed miracles at Port 
Royal in Paris and here ; and that they need not do the same 
for her, for she was not so good and saint-like as Sister Anne. 

' I said this to her as though in earnest, and she took it so, 
replying : ' No alas ! my poor Sister Anne ! Were I like 
her, I would forgive them their excessive love for me as for 
her. But what vexes me is that they judge of me by the 
things God causes me to do, because He has made me Superior 
to sanctify them by my Conduct, and not for my own sanctifica- 
tion ; for in this our Sisters are greatly deceived ... An Abbess 
may be wiser and more enlightened to direct than all her Nuns, 
and yet be the least holy in the Monastery. This is what 
they do not take into consideration . . . This false and idle 
esteem and praise makes me groan and weep." To which 
I responded : Take comfort, my Mother, take comfort. Nothing 
shall be said of you after death that is not strictly true. You 
know that we do not love falsehoods in the Lives of the Saints, 
all the more not in one like yours. Our Sisters have the love 
of truth engraved on their hearts. She answered me : " Unless 
they are checked, they will tell a hundred tales of me, for 
they love me too much. I know them, they are not sensible 
in this respect." n 

The death of ' poor Sister Anne ', saint-like as she acknow- 
ledged her, had left upon Angelique herself an impression 
deeply painful if more consonant with her sense of the awful 
dignity of the event, than was the nuns' raking up of miracles. 
They thought of Anne Eugenie, in her joyous serenity, as of 
one little touched by human weakness and distress. She 
herself had told how, in a moment of discouragement, the sight 
of the starry skies above Port Royal des Champs had brought 
instant peace to her soul. 2 But Angelique had seen her at 
the last in deeper trouble, and an untimely call of duty had 
played the part self-seeking oftener plays, and had made the 
elder sister fail the younger in the hour of need. 

' In one moment,' Angelique told her nuns, who had com- 
mented on the apparent exemption of some saints from 
humiliation and suffering, ' God can inflict on a soul the 
deepest humiliation conceivable. He has no need of time to 

1 Entvetiens . . . avec M. le Maitre, Memoires pour servir . . . , p. 349 seq. 

a Memoire de la Sceur Anne-Eugenie de I' Incarnation Arnauld, sur le 
premier esprit de Port-Royal, sur la propre conduite, et sur le bien que 
M. de S. Cyran etablit dans le Monastere, Memoires pour servir . . ., 
vol. iii, p. 365. 



DAYS OF RESPITE 367 

humiliate ... I remember constantly the last words my 
Sister Anne Eugenie said to me : for, when I left her in her death- 
agony to go and assist another Sister who was also dying, I said 
to her, before leaving, that I was going to Sister Frangoise 
Catherine ' (a lay-sister) ' and that she should stay meanwhile 
with God and trust in Him. Whereupon she answered me 
(and in the greatest conceivable anguish), " But I have offended 
God so deeply ! " I confess that nothing so awes me or makes 
me better realize the greatness of the judgements of God 
than when I recall the extreme anguish in which I saw my 
Sister Anne Eugenie at that moment, she who had ever led 
so pure, so holy and exemplary a life ; and the pain I had in 
leaving her, so near her end, was so great that I still cannot 
think of it without experiencing such keen sorrow as pierces 
my heart. As she said this, she could not refrain from great 
weeping, and she added : "I believe God permitted such an 
occurrence to be a lifelong affliction to me, for I do not think 
I can ever be consoled about it ; and what further increased 
my sorrow was that my presence was of no avail to my Sister 
Frangoise Catherine, who had entirely lost consciousness before 
I reached her." 

' Our Mother, after saying this,' so the nun, her niece 
Angelique de S. Jean most probably, who records her Entretiens 
or Conferences, tells us, 'tried to repress her tears and, striving 
for self-control, went on : "I take back what I said, that 
I should not have left Sister Anne Eugenie. I had to do it, 
because, although my presence was not necessary to Sister 
Fran9oise Catherine, that was the action by which God purposed 
me to help Sister Anne Eugenie. I do not doubt but that by 
doing this I was more useful to her than if I had remained 
constantly beside her ; and I believe that God permitted it 
both for the good of Sister Anne Eugenie and for my own, 
because, although it was very painful, and the memory is so 
still, I did it with goodwill, and I take comfort, because there 
is no good, no happiness or true satisfaction save in the 
accomplishment of one's duty." ('These,' adds the recording 
nun, ' are her actual words.') l 

The death of Anne Eugenie (on January the ist, 1653) had 
fallen in that year of crowding and busy hospitality consequent 
on the Fronde. 

Of the five sisters in the flesh whom Angelique had won to 
her side at Port Royal, only Agnes last survivor as first help- 
mate now remained. Marie Claire had died long since, happy 

1 Entretiens . . . de la . . . Mere Marie- Angelique Arnauld, pp. 162-4. 



3 68 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

in penitence. Madelon, the fair child ' who, by God's grace, 
never knew that she was beautiful,' closed the uneventful 
chapter of her convent life in 1649 at the age of forty, after 
long illness patiently borne. The eldest, Mme le Maitre, 
who had taken the long-coveted veil on the death, a few years 
previously, of her husband, had also died, as Sceur Catherine 
de S. Jean, in 1650, at the close of the first Fronde, during 
the disgrace and imprisonment of its leaders. 

Madame le Maitre, the Monica of Port Royal, had the 
satisfaction of receiving the last spiritual offices from her 
younger son, M. de Saci, as of leaving her firstborn, M. le 
Maitre, in full vigour of pious energy at Port Royal des Champs, 
translating and writing Lives of the Saints, informally assisting 
in the teaching of the elder boys, and varying his literary 
tasks with manual labour. 

M. de Saci survived many years, the saintly guide of Port 
Royal in its latter days of trouble, living to undergo imprison- 
ment in the Bastille as his model, Saint-Cyran, had suffered it at 
Vincennes. 1 But M. le Maitre died now during this lull in 
the storm, leaving his proposed Life of the Mere Ange'lique 
perforce unaccomplished. Only the notes we have so often 
cited, of his talks with her, remained as witness of the innocent 
treason. 

The Abbess Marie des Anges also preceded Angelique to 
the grave. On her second election in 1657 she dutifully sought 
to exercise her authority without help now from the former 
Mothers. But after a year she fell ill and died, in the same 
sweet charity in which she had consistently lived, responding 
cordially with good sayings to all who approached her, and 
gladly foretelling that the Mother Agnes would succeed her 
in the charge of Abbess. 

One 'effect of her charity' is narrated. The night before 
her death there sat watching by the fire with the Mother Agnes, 
Madame d'Aumont, the lady who as Benefactress resided in 
the convent. Believing that the patient slept, she did not 
speak to her. But the Mother Marie des Anges, not asleep 
but wrapt in peaceful prayer, saw her and sent a message to 

1 v. Mtmoires . . . par M. Fontaine. M. de Saci had in Fontaine, 
as Saint-Cyran in Lancelot, a naive disciple and biographer. 



DAYS OF RESPITE 369 

her by the nursing Sister to the effect that she would gratefully 
recall her charity to the House before God, and, if she received 
mercy, would think of her first of all. Madame d'Aumont, 
gratified, saw no deeper meaning in the words. 

She herself meanwhile was full of the fear of death, 

' and scarce dared look upon dying persons. Nevertheless her 
own death was very near and she did not think of it. 

' The Friday after the death of the Mother des Anges, 
she dreamt that she saw the Mother in a great plain, calling 
her with a gay and pleasant countenance, and making her 
a sign to pass quickly the great lake which separated them ; 
and that, as she refused to go for fear of the water . . ., the 
Mother des Anges showed her beautiful pearls and jewels, 
promising to give them her when she should have passed. 

' This dream somewhat disturbed Madame d'Aumont all the 
rest of the night.' The nun to whom she recounted it in the 
morning was not consoling. ' It means,' she said when asked 
its meaning, ' death.' ' Madame d'Aumont, yet more dis- 
turbed but wishing to dissimulate her fear and the grouud 
of it, replied vehemently " Oh yes ! it means death, that 
is a fine tale, it means that I have dreamt that is what it 
means." She diverted herself all day in order to drive off 
the thought of death, which came back always in spite of 
herself, but, with all her efforts, she could not drive it from 
her mind. Her dream came back to her always in spite of 
herself, and by Saturday evening she saw the explanation. 
For she was seized with an illness, which at first seemed slight, 
but which brought her nevertheless to the grave on the following 
Thursday, December the iQth, nine days after the death of the 
Mother des Anges, who, as there is reason to believe, obtained 
for her deliverance from the fear she had of death, as well as 
from the wretchedness and sin wherewith life is filled.' l 

The Mere Agnes, she, too, aged and infirm, was chosen, 
as the Mere Marie des Anges, not needing perhaps prophetic 
vision, had foretold, to resume the charge of Abbess. She 
was in Paris at the time, where also this death occurred 
Angelique at Les Champs. 

1 Modele de Foi et de Patience, p. 523 seq. 



LOWNDES B b 



CHAPTER XXV 

Renewal of 'Persecution'. The last Days and Death of the Mere 

Angelique. 

THE two aged Mothers, Angelique and Agnes, remained 
thus last survivors of their generation of Arnauld sisters, to 
face renewal of attack upon the Community, and to see ruin, 
as human reason judges, threaten the work upon which they 
had set their energies from girlhood up. Barely two years 
elapsed after the death of the Abbess Marie des Anges and the 
election of the Mere Agnes in her stead before fresh alarms 
reached the convent. The year 1660, which marked, with 
the royal marriage, the true beginning of the reign of Louis XIV, 
was one ominous to Port Royal. As the young King took up 
the reins of government, the prejudice which his Jesuit advisers 
had instilled into his mind came into active play. The death 
of Mazarin, from which for a moment hermits and nuns hoped 
better things, only left them in the hands of a more resolute 
enemy. The Queen Mother, Anne of Austria, however her 
ears might be filled with evil tales of ces Messieurs, preserved 
always a liking for Arnauld d'Andilly, and was open to a turn 
in favour of the convent when an event, such as the miracle, 
gave rise to it ; the mind of Louis XIV on the contrary was 
closed to favourable views, and inexorable to resistance shown 
to accredited authority. The impression produced by the 
miracle faded away ; that of the Lettres Provinciates was 
more permanent, but one of its most potent effects was, 
unhappily, the intensified enmity of the Jesuits. 

At the Assembly of Clergy held in 1660 the question of the 
Five Propositions was again raised ; and signature to the 
Formula denouncing them was again demanded, not merely 
from ecclesiastics and nuns, but even from regents and masters 
in schools. And now the order for dispersal of schools and 
recluses at Port Royal was renewed, this time to be enforced ; 



RENEWAL OF ' PERSECUTION ' 371 

and with it went the order, more directly touching the convent, 
that all pupils there, and presently that all postulants and 
novices, should be dismissed. 

The Paris House was first dealt with, Port Royal des Champs 
connected mainly in the public view with the recluses taking 
as convent the secondary place. To Paris accordingly Angelique 
now repaired, that, aged and infirm as she was, she might die 
in the heart of danger. To the watching nuns, the cruel 
course of events kept even pace with the progress of her last 
malady ; she herself cherished a hope that with her death 
there might come peace to the convent. 

Our faithful chronicler, Angelique de S. Jean, was at her 
aunt's side throughout these last troubled months, and from 
her pen we have the : 

Narrative of the illness and death of the Mother Marie 
Angelique Arnauld, Reformer of Port Royal 1 

' The Mother Angelique had spent the whole winter of the 
year 1660 at Port Royal des Champs, in a very languid and 
feeble state, not having properly recovered after a severe 
illness which she had had the previous summer. We sent word 
to her,' Angelique de S. Jean, who was at the time in Paris, 
narrates, ' of all that was taking place here (in Paris), and of 
the storm which seemed to be gathering for us. All her 
replies indicated extraordinary vigour and constancy, and 
showed her prepared for all ; to the point that, on receiving 
news during Lent that matters seemed likely to be smoothed 
down, and that there was more likelihood of it than one could 
ever have thought, she wrote forcibly that neither did she 
credit it, that the time to suffer had come, and she desired to 
think only of preparing for it. 

' It soon appeared that she had judged rightly. She was 
accordingly not surprised when, in Easter week, she was sent 
the order given by the King, as he left for Fontainebleau, to the 
Grand- Vicars, to remove our Superior (M. Singlin), and was 
informed of the purpose entertained of forcing us to send 
away our Boarders. This blow struck her heart in its tenderest 
spot. Her perfect submission to the Direction which God 
had given us, and the extraordinary esteem in which she 
held such a gift, upon which all the welfare of communities 

1 Memoires pour servir a I'histoire de Port-Royal, vol. ii, p. 123 seq. 

B b 2 



372 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

depends, made her behold this purpose of depriving us of 
it as one of the greatest evils which could befall us. But 
she bore it with that serenity of spirit and courage which, 
all her life, appeared on the greatest occasions. And, as though 
she feared to have less share in our sufferings when absent 
from the place where they were to begin, she wrote, the morning 
after receiving this news, that, whatever love she might have 
had at another time for her desert, in the present state of 
affairs she thought it well, if they approved, for her to come 
to Paris to await events and be of any use she could. This 
was agreed ; and she departed from Port Royal des Champs the 
Saturday before Quasimodo, April the 23rd, 1661, after having 
bid fareweh 1 to the whole Community with amazing goodness 
and vigour, comforting and fortifying them for all that might 
happen, in a manner which showed well enough she did not 
expect to see them again. 

' On leaving the Monastery, she found her brother, M. 
d'Andilly, in the outer court, waiting to bid her farewell. 
As he approached her, she said to him : " Good-bye, my 
brother, be of good courage whatever happens." He answered 
her : " My Sister, fear nothing, I am full of courage." But 
she responded : " My brother, my brother, let us be humble. 
Let us remember that humility without strength is cowardice ; 
but that courage without humility is presumption." 

' While she was on the way, an Ecclesiastic, who was returning 
from here (Port Royal in Paris) to Port Royal des Champs, 
met the carriage, and approached the Mother to tell her that 
the Civil Lieutenant had just left this Convent and had taken 
the names of all the boarders, with intention of dismissing 
them by the King's order. She replied without distress : 
"Well, Monsieur, God be praised. I beg you carry this news 
to our Sisters, and bid them be troubled about nothing, and 
that one has but to hope in God." Then speaking to those 
with her in the carriage : " One must," she said, " render 
thanks to God for ah 1 things and at all times. Let us repeat 
together the Te Deum." Which they did on the spot. 

* When she arrived, she found us for the most part very 
sad, and some in tears. She looked at us with a frank and 
confident air : 

' " What ! ' she said, " I believe there is weeping here. 
Come, my children, how is this ! Have you no faith ? And 
what is this that dismays us ? 

' " What ! are men bestirring themselves ! Well, but they 
are flies, are you afraid of them ? You trust in God, and 
are afraid of something ? Believe me, fear Him alone, and 
all will go well." Then lifting her eyes to Heaven, she said : 



EXPULSION OF THE CHILDREN 373 

" My God have pity upon Thy children : My God, Thy Holy 
will be done." 

' She said all this with such strength and kindness that, in 
a moment, she dried our tears. Every one felt herself pene- 
trated by I know not what spirit of strength of grace which 
seemed diffused upon her lips, and which passed even into 
the hearts of those to whom she spoke, driving out all the 
bitterness and sadness.' 

The tears of the convent were dried only for the moment. 
Angelique's force of character did not suffice to cheer the 
hearts of the children and novices condemned to leave the 
convent, and delivered over, as all their training made them 
feel, to ravening wolves : 

' From that day the House became a house of tears, and 
all re-echoed with the sobs and tears of thirty-three children 
and of several girls already admitted to the Novitiate, who 
awaited as their death-warrant the moment when they should 
be forced to leave the House. The number at Port Royal des 
Champs was about the same, and the sorrow equal of those 
who expected the like sentence. The Mother Angelique, whose 
tenderness and love for all these children exceeded that of 
a real mother, felt her heart torn, despite her supernatural 
courage, by the sorrow of this separation ; which moved her 
far more on account of the dangers to which were exposed 
all these souls, whom she loved for God's sake and had received 
from His hand, than for the mere grief of losing sight of them, 
which would have been nothing to her force of mind but 
for this other consideration. 

' At all hours of the day this spectacle was renewed, as they 
came to take away, one after the other, these poor little lambs, 
who did not keep silence but raised their cries even to Heaven 
when they came to say farewell, and to part from her who had 
nurtured them with such care in her bosom. She comforted 
them ; she exhorted them to be of good courage ; and, with 
so many grounds for weakness, her spirit sustained the like 
strength ; but her body, already greatly enfeebled, could not 
long hold out. For, from the first, she entirely lost the power 
of sleep ; and although she forced herself to eat, as she often 
said, she could not force herself to sleep ; so that, passing the 
nights in almost unbroken wakefulness, she employed the 
time for the most part in writing letters, giving directions 
about sundry matters, and sustaining by her advice, and by 
words filled with the Spirit of God, her Sisters of Port Royal 
des Champs, with whom, in their affliction, she was no less 



374 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

present through her love and charity, than she was here in 
actual presence. These nights of watching weakened her so 
extraordinarily that she changed visibly. Although so feeble 
that she could scarcely hold herself upright, she did not fail to 
be active, and to speak and go everywhere where her presence 
was required, although she said frequently she felt herself 
dying, and that she was sure not to go very far, because she 
sometimes felt so ill she thought she might die any moment. 

' From that time she had death so present, and was so 
occupied with the thought of preparing for it by endurance 
of all the afflictions with which God was visiting us that . . . 
she could not longer participate in anything which might call 
off and distract her mind from this humble preparation for 
every evil. 

' The blow she felt most keenly was when M. Singlin was 
ordered to withdraw, or rather when he had to retire to avoid 
this order. . . . Nevertheless she bore up on this, as on all 
other occasions, save that she realized the struggle between 
nature and faith would soon be over, because the former was 
about to give way ; and accordingly, after various matters 
had been for some time discussed in the parlour, on the day 
we bade him farewell, she begged us to desist and leave her 
a little time to confess, because she thought she might die the 
next day from the weakness she felt, and her life seemed to 
her to hang by a thread, as was only too apparent in her 
countenance. 

'After the exit of the Boarders, there came a fresh order 
to dismiss all the Postulants. She had needs be present erect 
at this sacrifice, and. on the 5th of May, she herself escorted 
to the door Mademoiselle de Luines and Mademoiselle de 
Bagnol, who left together, and to whom she had been the 
genuine Mother, since she had brought them up almost from 
the cradle, and their relatives had given them to her with 
a true movement of piety, so to nurture them that they might 
be worthy to be offered to God ; which had given her a special 
tenderness for them. The sorrow of these children would have 
penetrated the heart even of strangers. Hers was more than 
pierced, but she did not fail to preserve her calm. When 
Madame la Duchesse de Chevreuse, who came to take these 
girls, expressed her admiration at her strength, she replied 
with amazing vigour : " Madame, when God no longer is, 
I shall lose courage, but so long as God be God I shall hope 
in Him." And embracing Mademoiselle de Luines whom 
Madame de Chevreuse begged her to comfort : " Come," she 
said, ' my child, hope in God, trust with all your heart in 
His infinite goodness, and do not let your courage sink. We 




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LAST DAYS OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 375 

shall meet again elsewhere, where men will not have the power 
to separate us." 

' Seeing that things grew worse from day to day, and that 
there were threats of expelling the Novices who had recently 
taken the Veil, we endeavoured to add new practices of penance 
to the prayers already being said. Processions, barefoot, were 
proposed, in which all the Holy Relics should be carried, to 
implore the intercession of the Saints with God. The suggestion 
was made in the Mother's presence, and we wanted her, if 
she had strength enough to take part, to carry a Relic, which 
was not heavy, of the true Cross. She felt much weaker than 
she allowed to be seen, but would not express the difficulty 
she would have in doing it, taking as a providence of God 
the thought entertained that she very well could. She let 
this decide her in a thing she would not have ventured to 
undertake, had her opinion been asked. She did it accordingly 
on the loth of May and carried the Cross, but she gave way 
under her burden, and, on entering the Choir, was forced to 
sink upon the ground, whence she could not rise. For all that 
one could do, was to assist her to her room. She was put 
to bed, where for two whole days she remained in so great 
a state of exhaustion that she could neither see nor hear what 
was said, and she passed from that into the full course of her 
severe and long illness, God desiring to show us by this 
that she would carry the Cross with us, but that she would be 
overwhelmed by its weight, and that He would add to the 
weight of ours the sorrow of losing a person who aided us 
to sustain it, and whose strength and charity were the very 
greatest props of our weakness.' 

Thenceforth to the end, for Angelique, the scene is a prolonged 
deathbed. One last effort she was able, however, to make 
on behalf of her convent : 

' A few days after thus taking to her bed she was seized 
with difficulty of breathing, so serious that, one midnight, she 
would have been given the last Sacrament, had not the oppres- 
sion been somewhat relieved. It was at this time, after the 
Novices had left, and such extraordinary acts of violence had 
shown how strangely the piety of the King had been prejudiced 
against this House, to lead him to undertake such unexampled 
things, that she thought herself bound to render to her House 
the last service of which she was capable, vindicating its 
innocence in a letter to the Queen Mother . . . hoping that, as 
she was less unknown to her than to the King, the Queen would 
give a little more credence to the facts. . . . She dictated 



376 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

this letter at several different times and days, on one of which 
she was so ill, that it was feared she would not be able to sign 
it. But she grew better after a while, and did so without 
difficulty.' 

The letter is a long one and, if without literary beauty, 
is full of sober dignity and the eloquence of grave sincerity. 
Angelique writes under the sense of impending death, rendered 
by it, as she says, indifferent to the judgement passed by men 
upon herself, but obliged still, for her Sisters' sake, to witness 
to the convent's innocence. 

The mind of the aged Mother as, on her deathbed, she 
surveyed the course of God's providence upon her, did not 
dwell exclusively upon the maligned teacher Saint-Cyran, so 
closely connected with Port Royal, but reverted also to that 
earlier father of her spirit, S. Francois de Sales. And, knowing 
that the latter had stood in good favour at the Court and 
with Anne of Austria, she saw no better defence of her convent 
than to declare the conformity of Saint-Cyran's teaching with 
his. She can urge further, on behalf of her nuns, that they are 
nurtured in absolute ignorance of controversial matters and 
the points in dispute. They had not read even the Fre'quente 
Communion, so anxious were their directors to keep con- 
troversy from them. 

The letter so painfully indited was read lightly enough at 
the Court and produced at most a passing regret from Anne 
of Austria. Louis XIV was resolved on unqualified obedience, 
in matters religious as political, from his subjects, and the 
process of subduing this obstinate convent took its course. 

For Angelique, outside events were now veiled and set at 
a distance. Her nuns fancied, it is true, that each fresh step 
in the destruction of Port Royal hastened on her malady, but 
rather did the consciousness of ' persecution ' attend her 
deathbed as a solemn background to her more pressing personal 
affair, impending death. 

The fate of the convent her own last effort made she 
resigned to the hand of God, rousing herself only on the occa- 
sion of a domiciliary visit to protest against the measures taken. 

'On July the I2th, M.de Contes, Grand- Vicar of M. le Cardinal 



LAST DAYS OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 377 

de Retz, and M. Bail, entered the Chapter to open the visit 
of inspection, and assure themselves, according to the order 
the King had given them, of the state of the House. On 
returning from the Chapter they went up to the Mother 
Angelique's room to see her. M. de Contes, sitting down 
beside her, said : " You are ill then, my Mother. What is 
the matter with you ? ' She said : " Monsieur, I have 
dropsy." " Jesus, my Mother," answered M. de Contes, 
" you say that as a matter of course. Does not this illness 
alarm you ? ' : "No, Monsieur," retorted the Mother, "I am 
infinitely more alarmed at what I see taking place in our 
House. For in fine I came hither to die, and must prepare 
for it ; but I did not come to see all that I see now, and I had 
no reason to expect the treatment we are receiving. Monsieur, 
Monsieur, this is the hour of man. The hour of God will 
come, which shall disclose many things, and avenge all." 
She said that with great strength, and added : "I am con- 
vinced, Monsieur, that there are few Religious Houses where, 
if like search were made as in this, there would not be found 
more books, and more curiosity and knowledge concerning 
all the questions of the day, than among us. For assuredly, 
Monsieur, you will find in all our Sisters only a very simple 
faith." 

' She said more, but could not well be heard. And, as they 
withdrew, she said to M. de Contes that he would not find 
her alive at the end of the inspection, which proved only too 
true, the inspection ending only on the 2nd of September, 
nearly a month after her death. 

' Her trust and hope in God, as regards the actual distress 
of the House, ever increased in proportion as she came nearer 
death. So long as the inspection lasted, she had the consola- 
tion of seeing that this, which might perhaps have sown some 
seed of disaffection in such a juncture of affairs, served on the 
contrary only to confirm charity, unity, and peace. She 
could not avoid on these occasions testifying her joy to those 
who went to see her, and holding out to them hopes that 
God would restore the ruins of the House, since He preserved 
in it this unity which is the foundation. 

' One day as we were speaking of the state to which the 
House was reduced, and each was prognosticating what would 
happen in the future, the Mother took up the discussion and 
said to us confidently : " Do not torment yourself about 
all that ; as for me I have not the remotest anxiety as to the 
future on that account. I am not distressed as to whether 
our Boarders and our Novices will be restored to us, for I do 
not doubt it. But I am more concerned that the spirit of 



378 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

retreat, of simplicity, of poverty and disinterestedness, should 
be preserved and re-established even better than at present : 
for one deteriorates always : and, given that these things 
subsist in the House, we may make light of all the rest. All 
that is done, and all that is purposed against us, I care no 
more about than about this fly ' driving one away, and in 
a manner so animated with faith and resolution that, on hearing 
her speak thus, one felt also that nothing was to be feared. 

' About the end of July and a few days only before her 
death, when the Civil Lieutenant came again bringing fresh 
orders, and inspected all the quarters outside the cloister 
and even those in the neighbourhood, a Sister who was greatly 
alarmed spoke to her with dread, implying she did not know 
what they meant to do. The Mother said to her quite gaily : 
" But in truth, my Sister, what will they do to us ? Why, 
if you were in the belly of the whale, God would bring you 
out." She replied : " But, my Mother, you frighten me, 
for you as good as say one must enter in." " No, my Daughter," 
responded the Mother, " you will not enter there, it is I who 
shall enter, and when Jonas is flung into the whale's belly, 
the storm will cease." On hearing another Nun sigh, she 
said to her : " My Daughter, fear nothing. When I am 
before God, I promise you to attend to your affairs." 

' Only five days before her death, \vhen she was already 
so weak that nothing more was told her, and she was in such 
a state of drowsiness as to heed hardly anything, it chanced 
that, as we were speaking in her presence, thinking she did not 
hear us, about the order, newly brought by the Civil Lieutenant, 
to brick up the gates of the cloister and of the gardens, 
requisite though they were for cartage, she woke up and asked 
what we were saying, and if there were something fresh, 
because we had not told her of it. We told her what it was, 
adding that one of us had asked if it were not to be feared 
that they who thus closed up our gates would at the same 
time close to themselves the gates of Heaven. She looked 
at us, and said in a voice manifesting her charity and zeal : 
" We must not say that, my children. We must pray God 
for them, and for ourselves that He will show us pity, and 
that His holy will be done." 

' During a few days' respite in her illness, when she was able 
to take more deliberate part in the Nuns' Conferences, a Sister ' 
(probably the recording niece herself) ' asked her for advice 
in the event of all the threatened changes taking place. The 
Mother prescribed to her in detail the manner in which she 
should act, in order to wound neither justice nor charity, and 
to render to all persons the respect owed them, without relax- 



LAST DAYS OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 379 

ing, for compliance sake, any of the exactness of discipline. 
She advised her above all to hope in God, and said she had 
no doubt but that, if God permitted these troubles to come 
upon us, He would strengthen us to bear them ; and that 
His truth . . . would enlighten us with the knowledge of what 
to do, when we should lack all other guidance.' 

While thus, in her physical weakness, a stronghold of courage 
to her affrighted nuns, Angelique had upon herself the weighty 
sense of the dignity and glory of ' persecution ', honour in 
all ages to the Christian. She hoped that she herself might 
be the Jonah to still the tempest for the nuns ; but also that 
Port Royal might be the one convent whose sacrifice should 
bring peace to the many and to the Church : 

'Not only did she sustain these last trials in peace, but, in 
accordance with the words of S. Paul, she glorified also in her 
affliction and suffering. When a lady who came to see her 
during the early part of her illness spoke to her of what was 
taking place, she said to her: "When I think of the honour 
of this affliction, it makes me tremble. What are we that 
God should esteem us worthy to suffer for truth and for justice ; 
undoubtedly we do not deserve this." And speaking to 
another lady on the same subject, but with a different feeling 
and sense of humility, looking rather to the result than to the 
cause of this affliction, she said to her : " Truly, Madame, 
God does all things with wonderful wisdom and great goodness. 
We had need of all that has happened to humble us. It 
would have been perilous for us to have remained longer in 
our plenitude. In all France there was no House more filled 
with spiritual riches, with right teaching and good guidance. 
We were spoken about on all sides. Believe me, it was needful 
for us that God should humiliate us. Had He not put us down, 
we should perhaps have fallen. Men know not why they do 
things, but God, who makes use of them for His own purposes, 
knows very well." 

She enlarged upon the same theme on the sole occasion 
during her illness when she saw the nuns as a body, the 
novitiate first. 

A Sister attending her was unwilling one day, when the 
Mother seemed much exhausted, to leave her bedside for the 
Conference, at which she was due, of the Novitiate, and told 
her so. 



380 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

' The Mother took occasion to say she need not go, but 
that she would be very glad to see the Sisters. It was a pro- 
vidence of God ; for otherwise one would not have thought 
of letting her see either the Novitiate or the Community as 
a body, for fear of tiring her, and this was the only time she 
was able to do it during all her illness. When the Novitiate 
came and the subject of our actual sufferings was entered 
upon, she began to speak with so much vigour that it was 
thought necessary to interrupt her, for fear of her hurting 
herself. " I assure you, my Sisters," she said, " you must be 
neither dismayed nor cast down by what is happening to us. 
We have only to humble ourselves. For God does it on that 
account only. Believe me, one abuses the very best gifts. 
Pride almost always accompanies all wealth, and we enjoyed 
a certain plenitude of spiritual riches, which was not perhaps 
free from secret vanity. . . . One drew comparison perhaps 
between the spirit of this House " (its disinterestedness and 
retirement) " and that of others where the like things are not 
heeded, and before God this vanity sufficed to make all one's 
virtue as a house of cards. It was needful that God should 
humiliate us." . . . She would have spoken further, although 
it was with great effort; but we prevented her, seeing that she 
was doing herself harm. 

' On the morrow, which was the 2nd of July, the Community 
came to see her at the same hour, and, on the Sisters expressing 
their sorrow at her manifold sufferings, she replied : " Suffering 
is nothing. There is no ground to pity the evils of this life, 
when one thinks of Eternity." 

Eternity was now indeed the thought before which, to the 
mind of Angelique, not only her own bodily suffering, but 
even the fate of Port Royal, dwindled into insignificance. All 
outside events were as nothing in view of the awful moment 
awaiting herself. Ever alive to the more dread aspect of the 
Christian faith, she was assailed now, despite all her long years 
of preparation, with the terrors of death and judgement: 

' A Sister one day observed to her that persons like her 
had no need to fear death, for she had prepared for it all her 
life. She responded: "That is not done by speaking well 
about it, and talking of it to others ; but the true preparation 
for death is to renounce oneself wholly and be lost in God." 

' Again she said : "One should think no more of the world 
during life than one does at the hour of death" ; and "Never did 
I better understand than now what the Scripture says : ' Where 



LAST DAYS OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 381 

the tree falls there it must lie ; ' for truly in illness the tree has 
already fallen as it were, and is incapable of anything." 

Her dread was most acute, as also her bodily sufferings 
were greatest, in the early stages of her illness. Her difficulty 
of breathing ' was to her a constant image of death, threatening 
any instant to strangulate her ' ; and indeed, throughout almost 
the whole of her illness, she was unable to rest her head upon 
the pillow. 

' She was day and night seated upon the bed, with her legs 
on the ground ; or placed in a chair where she could not even 
lean back, obliged to gain breath by bending constantly 
forward. 

' But, however great her discomforts and her pains, they 
were nothing in comparison with the state of mental suffering, 
in which God willed to set her during this time, to purify her 
more and more. For from the first time that she thought 
she was dying, death remained so graven on her mind that 
she could say with the Apostle, Quotidie morior. She 
thought only of that, and she spoke of nothing else, and that 
with so great a notion of the holiness of God and of her own 
unworthiness that she was lost in the contemplation. She 
said to us several times, and in a way which would have made 
the least fearful tremble : " Believe me, my children, believe 
what I tell you. One does not know what death is, and one 
does not think of it. For my part I have dreaded it all my 
life, and I have always thought of it ; but whatever I have 
conceived is less than nothing in comparison of what it is, 
of what I feel, and of what I understand at this hour. Now 
the whole world is less than nothing. I find myself in a solitude 
and isolation from all things, such that it seems to me all 
I see, and all I hear, could not enter my mind to occupy the 
smallest place there, or divert it from the preoccupation 
which wholly fills it. From the manner I realize what death 
is, I can no longer understand how a Christian who has faith 
can think, or disquiet and busy himself, about any other 
thing ah 1 his life, than to remember he must die, and that he 
must prepare for this terrible hour." 

' She seemed so filled with this thought that she took no 
further part in anything, and asked from the persons on 
whom she relied for Direction nothing save that they should 
say something to sustain her hope in God, and should pray 
to Him to forgive her sins. Whenever she was asked what 
she wished them to say from her to the Sisters, or to Port 
Royal des Champs, she had but one answer : " that they 



382 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

should pray God to have pity upon me, and to forgive me 
my sins," which she said with such feeling and humility that 
it seemed as though she prostrated herself at the feet of those 
to whom she spoke.' 

The isolating awe of death remained with Angelique to the 
end. But the acuter personal dread subsided, leaving her 
mind free to occupy itself again in some measure, though 
on a secondary plane as it were, with passing events. 

A visit, surreptitiously paid her, by M. Singlin brought 
peace to her soul : 

' After having spoken to him of her trouble and received 
his counsel with her customary submissiveness, she said to 
him in an almost dying voice, for she was very ill that day, 
" I shall never see you again, my Father, but I promise you 
then I will no longer be afraid of God." And, in effect, after 
that she was more at peace ; and when, at the end of some time, 
she spoke again with dread of death, so soon as one of us 
reminded her of this promise she had made to be no longer 
afraid of God, she raised her eyes and said : " It is true, His 
mercy is everlasting. I will hope in Him." 

The nuns attending their Mother's sick-room and the memoir- 
gathering niece Angelique in particular, eager for parting 
words and deathbed counsels, were careful to observe her 
every act. The virile nature of the woman showed itself in her 
dislike of this loving weakness of nuns. She had expressed 
to M. le Maitre her fears lest, in their misguided affection, the 
Sisters should tell tales and gather relics of her, as of a saint. 
Now that the time had come, the Mother did what she could to 
circumvent their pious watchfulness. The narrative of her 
last days, though not brief, is, observes the narrating niece, 
' shorter than might have been expected, because she of whom 
we are speaking took special heed during this illness, which 
she knew to be her last, to say very little and to do nothing 
remarkable, for fear it should in effect be remarked, and made 
a ground for talk about her and esteem of her ' : 

' This could easily be told by seeing her behaviour ; but 
God permitted that she also explained herself on an unexpected 
occasion. One of us urged her to say something for us to 
send from her to some persons who greatly loved her, and, 
after having refused two or three times, it escaped her to say, 



LAST DAYS OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 383 

as we still importuned her, that she knew very well why she 
refused, and that she wished to take away all excuse for the 
idle talk common on such occasions, which are made a pretext 
for conversing and saying one to another : "Our late Mother said 
this" ; and "to me she said that", all which merely would give 
opportunity to the Demon, who made use of everything to dis- 
tract us from the thought of God, from the inward recueillement 
and silence to which Religious are pledged, and that she had 
well observed all that had been said about the Mother Marie des 
Anges, dead now two years ; that they perhaps thought they 
could do as much by her, and that it was not the same. Some- 
one present answered her, that this good Mother whom she so 
esteemed had not acted thus, and had spoken and gratified 
those who had asked her something during her illness. To 
which she responded : " That was all very well for her, who 
had great simplicity and much humility. I am not like her." 

At a moment when death seemed imminent, the Mother 
Agnes, now Abbess, begged her blessing for herself and all 
her nuns, but Angelique made a sign to indicate it was not 
for her to give it : 

' And when the Confessor present said to her that the rank 
which God had given her of Mother of the whole House gave 
her the right of blessing them, she lowered her eyes and struck 
her breast three times without making other answer.' 

The difficulty of breathing yielded after three weeks to 
a profound drowsiness, from which, by the doctors' orders, 
she was continually roused. 

' They wished us to fight against it constantly, by distracting 
her, and this slight violence done in order to rouse her was 
torture to her mind and body. For she was so occupied with 
the thought of God and of death that she found it hard to 
endure the indifferent matters talked about, when she had 
such great and solemn things in her mind. Nevertheless she 
dissembled it with much gentleness, save on the occasions 
when, as the only means of rousing her, we urged her to speak ; 
and sometimes she told us her views, and among other things 
the constant thought she had of death, and how it set her at 
a distance from everything.' 

This state of exhaustion yielded in its turn to other symp- 
toms, to a swelling of the limbs which seemed to the doctors 
less alarming, and a slight passing hope of recovery was enter- 
tained. There were a few days in which her mind regained 



384 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

some freedom and vigour, and she could pay more heed to 
what was said. 

' Accordingly we spoke to her of all that was taking place 
and that was being done against this House ; and she listened 
to all with a like peace and strength as in health, giving us 
courage to suffer ever humbly and to trust in God.' 

The sustaining words now from time to time won from her, 
have been narrated. On all other matters, as already said, 
she strove not to speak. Her zeal in combating all softness 
and self-indulgence and her nuns' excessive care for her comfort, 
found however no infrequent vent. 

She was consoled for the invalid chair, and for contrivances 
of pillows, &c., essential to any comfort in her painful illness, 
only by the thought they would serve other patients for whom 
perhaps they would not otherwise have been provided. But 
when, to these real necessities of the case, some ill-advised 
Sister added superfluous care either for comfort or appearance, 
she did not contain herself. To one who spoke of a covering 
against draughts : ' My God ! ' she said, ' will they always 
find these pretexts ? that does not affect my malady, and 
I am not afraid of cold ; one must confine oneself to what is 
necessary.' 

' One day she said to my Sister Marie de 1'Incarnation 
(le Conte), "I have much occasion to ask your forgiveness, my 
Sister, yours and the whole Community's, for I am so wicked 
as constantly to lose patience and do ill to everybody." Sister 
Marie de 1'Incarnation replied it was rather for us to ask her 
forgiveness very humbly for all the grounds of trouble we had 
given her. Afterwards our Mother said to her : ' I beg you 
have me buried in the burial ground " (i.e. as an ordinary 
nun), "and do not let them be guilty of such trifling after my 
death." [Qu'on ne fasse pas tant de grimaces, was her vigorous 
phrase, as she made the like request to the Mere Agnes.] 

.** 

' On July 27, she was taken in the afternoon with a great 
attack of shivering, which lasted two hours. . . . She saw well 
that we were greatly depressed at this, however much we 
tried not to show it ; and, looking at us very tenderly, she said 
to us : " That is nothing extraordinary, I have been expecting 
this cold, death comes in no other way. ..." From that day, 



DEATH OF THE MRE ANG^LIQUE 385 

she grew worse and weakened visibly. On the morrow, which 
was the Feast of S. Anne, she communicated at two in the 
morning. She did so several times during her illness, and 
always so devoutly that several of the Sisters said that, in 
order to rouse their own devotion, they had only to recall her 
countenance as she took the Communion. 

* 

' On Thursday, August the 4th, eve of her death, she was ex- 
tremely ill, and spent the night in great restlessness, but more 
conscious and less drowsy. She prayed continuously, but could 
scarcely be heard, except when she strove to raise her voice, as 
she did in the morning, when I was with her, to pronounce the 
words : " Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive. ..." I said to 
her : " My Mother, you forget us, and pray only for yourself." 
She at once clasped her hands and said, in a tone to penetrate 
the listener : " My God, have pity upon us all ; I say upon 
all, my God, upon all. . . ." She fell again into drowsiness for 
a little while ; then, waking up, said several times, "Adieu, 
adieu". I asked her why she said that, and she answered : 
" My children, I am going." 

' At eight in the morning, the next day, the doctor thought 
it best not to postpone letting her communicate in Viaticum 
for the third and last time. At this proposal she roused 
herself completely. . . . Shortly before the Sacrament entered, 
she lifted her eyes to a Cross in front of her bed, and raising 
her voice said : " O Jesus, O Jesus, You are my God, You 
are my judge, You are my strength, You are my all : " and 
she pronounced these last words with so much zeal that she 
seemed to pour out her whole heart. She received the Holy 
Viaticum with a fervour which animated all her countenance, 
and with a serenity and peace as of Heaven. And afterwards, 
seeing all the community dissolve into tears as they prepared 
to escort back the Holy Sacrament, she said to them, " Adieu, 
my children, Adieu, let us go to God." Then she thanked 
the Priest. . . . She afterwards gave her blessing to all the 
Community, and to several persons who begged it separately : 
saying little words of comfort to all who were beside her, 
and herself remembering other friends, to whom she sent 
word they should be of good courage, and hope ever in God. 
And turning to a Sister who had always served her, and whom 
she heard weeping greatly, she said to her : " How human 
you are still." ' 

About nine on the Saturday evening the Mother Angelique 
passed quietly away, ' all her restlessness changed into a 
species of lethargy.' The community scarcely quitted her 

LOWNDES 



386 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

room all the day. It was the Day of the Transfiguration, and 
as at Nones they read the appointed lesson, of the vision of 
S. John when, transported in spirit upon a high mountain, 
he saw the Holy City descend from Heaven, the nuns called 
to mind the vision almost parallel, though it was but in a 
dream, which Angelique had told them, how, more than forty 
years before, at the time she first set her thoughts on 
reform of her convent, she dreamt of the church descending 
on a high mountain and, seeking to enter, awoke saying : 
" I am not worthy : I must return to work and fight." It 
was perhaps a dream prophetic, the nuns thought, of the 
day upon which she should die. She had told it them several 
times, and yet again in these last months on being asked. 

Not for all her wishes, could Angelique escape after death 
something of the usage of a saint. Her body was exposed 
at the grille of the church, and the people, flocking to see it, 
were so urgent in their prayers to touch it with their rosaries 
and medals, that they would not take repeated refusal, and 
had at length to be gratified. Two persons were engaged the 
whole evening, and from the next morning until the funeral, 
in merely taking in at the grille, and giving back, all that, 
was passed through to touch the body : 

' Those who had neither rosary nor image had it touched 
with their books, their rings, linen or even paper, and kissed 
them when returned with a reverence which was the mark of 
their piety. There were even some who, having nothing else, 
passed in their handkerchiefs all steeped in tears, to touch 
her. They said out loud that it was the Mother of the poor 
whom they had lost. Others said that, if this good Mother 
were not a saint, they did not know who could be. In fine 
this crowd ceased only when she was carried to the grave ; 
and the Ecclesiastics themselves who were admitted to take 
part in the burial, kissed her hands as the body was carried 
out of the Church in token of their reverence, although they 
were not persons of the House, nor any who had special 
acquaintance with her. She died on Saturday, the 6th of 
August (1661), at the age of 70, all but a month, and was 
buried on the 8th ' (not as she had begged, in the general 
burial-ground, but) 'before the choir of our House in Paris. 
Her heart was taken to Port Royal des Champs.' 




DEATH-MASK OF THE MERE ANGELIQUE 



P. 386 



CONCLUSION 

THE death of Angelique brought no peace to Port Royal, 
nor did the sorrows of the nuns end with the dismissal of 
novices and pupils. 

The long-threatened signature to the Formula became now 
the urgent matter. That document, originally drawn up at 
the Assembly of Bishops in 1657, brought, as we saw, the Five 
Propositions definitely home to Jansenius. To sign it was 
to declare, not the condemned doctrine only, but iheAugustinus, 
heretical. The resolve of the King to obtain unqualified 
obedience, on the one hand, and the dislike of Port Royal to 
subterfuge, on the other, made attempted compromise in vain. 
Only a pause of eighteen months, due to a quarrel between 
Louis himself and the Pope, gave the nuns time to redeem 
their former ignorance of controversial matters and to decide 
upon their part. 

They were definitely put to the test the year following 
the death of the Mere Angelique (1662), and refused, all 
save five or six, to give a signature which should assert, 
not merely their own orthodoxy, but also the heresy of one 
whom their teachers revered. Anxious at the same time to 
show submission to the Church, they at first signed, with the 
reservation that they were not admitting the condemned 
doctrine to be in the Augustinus, but such signature was not 
accepted ; and they suffered accordingly the penalty of the 
King's displeasure and the Pope's. 

First, banished severally to alien convents, the senior nuns 
experienced the fate Angelique had so cheerfully anticipated for 
herself. Then, since isolation did not move them, and since 
their board cost money, the recalcitrant nuns were reunited 
in the Convent des Champs, the Paris House, no longer Port 
Royal save in name, was given to more submissive spirits , 
and placed there in a manner of imprisonment, guarded by 

c c 2 



3 88 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

soldiers from outside intercourse, and, more grievous trial to 
these daughters of the Church, placed under papal interdict. 

,** 

' How human you are still ! ' was the last observation of the 
Mother Angelique to the weeping nuns attending her, her 
very last words were a farewell message to certain persons 
du dehors, presumably her brothers, that they should live in 
peace and charity. 

The message has, to the ears of the plain man, looking to 
the after-history of Port Royal, an ironic strain. Peace truly 
was not to be, in any obvious sense, for the champions of the 
doctrine of grace, for the indefatigable controversialist Antoine 
Arnauld least of all ; and in the long enduring combat charity, 
it scarce can be denied, was much impaired. Disinterested 
zeal was fretted by persecution into party spirit ; brotherly 
love dwindled to comradeship. Angelique herself had been 
unable to see any good outside the pale of grace ; in later 
days, as the reproach of Jansenism became le pot noir with 
which the Jesuits blackened all their enemies, so, for the 
' Jansenists ', the pale of grace grew sadly narrow. 

And for the nuns, they remained in truth very ' human ', 
in more ways than in the fondness of their love for Angelique. 
Their convent-virtue was called now to other tests than 
the observance of their Rule, than patience in illness and 
mutual acts of charity or zealous regulated labour. They 
were brought to face conflicting authorities and a divided 
duty, to exercise judgement and discretion rather than unques- 
tioning obedience, and to nurse charity meanwhile as best 
they might. Their nerves irritated by misrepresentation and 
cross-questioning, they developed, some of them, an unsus- 
pected power of repartee, as of graphic portraiture. The 
Archbishop Perefixe, who naively hoped to cajole these mere 
nuns into compliance, was utterly worsted in the trial of 
wit and is mercilessly portrayed, as he lost his temper and 
forgot his dignity, in their later narratives and lengthy scenes 
of self-defence 1 . ' Petite Pimbesche ', he so far forgot himself as 

1 v. Divers Actes, Lettres et Relations des Religieuses de Port-Royal . . . 
[1724]; and Histoire des Persecutions des Religieuses de Port-Royal,. 
Ecrites par elles-memes, 1753. 



THE NUNS IN EXILE 389 

to address the abbess, now Mere Magdeleine de Sainte- 
Agnes de Ligni, 1 and the excited nuns were swift to 
record the lapse of episcopal courtesy, as also the dis- 
comfiture of the Archbishop on reading their report of his 
demeanour. The Sisters of the Visitation, set in charge for 
a time over the nuns left at Port Royal, received no kinder 
measure, and the nuns trained by our Mother Angelique 
scoffed at the excessive genuflexions of the new Mere Eugenie, 
even as those from Tard had ridiculed the customary 
prostrations of Angelique herself. The few who signed fared 
worst of all at the hands of their loyal sisters and, unless in 
the case of those who, after signing the Formula for obedience's 
sake to the Church, recanted in bitter penitence for disloyalty 
to the truth and to their convent, survive in our memoirs only 
as hopeless children of wrath. One, Soeur Flavie the very 
nun who, as Mistress of the children, was instrumental in the 
great miracle of the Holy Thorn became an eager advocate 
of the signature, from motives, the loyal nuns were sure, 
of mere personal ambition. And, for her, their wits were 
sharpened to discover vanity beneath her mortifications, 
greed behind her fasting, and all the subtle wiles of self-love 
which Angelique would have had them quick to note only in 
themselves. 

The loosing of mere human wit makes these later narratives 
entertaining reading and, were it not for their undue prolixity, 
they would rank high as scenes of life and character. They 
lie outside our present scope, and breathe another atmosphere 
than Angelique's ' tale of God's providence '. 

The loftier spirit remained, however, vital at Port Royal, 
tempering, if it could not dominate, the excitement of self- 
defence and angry martyrdom. 

There are other narratives from nuns in exile that breathe 
the higher air. The aged Mere Agnes preserved her rapt 
devoutness in an alien house, and her gentle nature, fixed in 
its own resolve, would fain have left all others free to sign 
if conscience let them. She thus said no restraining word 
when the young niece, one of d'Andilly's daughters permitted 

1 Elected in 1661 in succession to the Mere Agnes, grown too infirm 
for the office. 



390 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

to be with her by reason of her bodily needs was tempted 
to sign, but she lamented her 'lack of zeal' when the act 
was followed by grievous remorse. 

The Mere Agnes was of the older generation a last 
survivor. But the younger had too a representative worthy 
in all respects to stand beside the former Mothers. The niece 
Angelique de S. Jean, chosen in her turn Abbess when peace 
again prevailed, is the dominant figure in the later history 
of Port Royal as our Mere Marie Angelique was in the earlier. 
And upon her the fire of persecution had but a refining influence. 

In her exile, alone, in an unfriendly convent, Sceur Angelique 
de S. Jean was vainly urged to comply with the commands 
of her diocesan Bishop and sign the Formula. News was 
brought to her that one after another of the Sisters had signed, 
at last the false news that even the Mere Agnes had yielded. 
Then at length the faith of this Angelique was confounded. 
In every other instance she could see, she tells, some weakness 
or self-confidence which might well leave the relapsing Sister a 
prey to evil, but in the Mother Agnes none. If God could desert 
her, whom might He not desert ? She was assailed by doubts 
of God's providence, doubts we do not know how far extending 
-of the faith to which her life was pledged. 

This Angelique was a woman of intellect. In her childhood 
even, in the convent, her strong intelligence threatened, we 
are told, to be her ruin. Her father M. d'Andilly declared of 
her, so Madame de Sevigne reports, ' You may reckon that 
all my brothers, and all my children, and I, are fools in com- 
parison with Angelique.' 1 

Her mind, convent-bred however strong, had now to grapple 
with doubt of all which gave life its value in her eyes, of the 
whole order of ideas in which she had moved from infancy ; 
and she passed through a time of profound anguish. 

On the immediate problem, whether she herself should 
sign the Formula, she had no doubt. Though God were 
not, the way of simple truth and honesty remained the 
only one to walk in. She would not sign what she did not 
know to be true. And, after long distress, her mind cleared, 

1 Lettres de Madame de Sevigne: (A Madame de Grignon: 29 novembre, 
1679.) 



THE ' PEACE OF THE CHURCH ' 391 

and faith, confirmed when she learnt the report was false, 
came back to her. The trial had but strengthened her for 
the future. Her younger, weaker sister, who had signed and 
then retracted, when she met her again after that exile, found 
her scarce recognizable physically, so worn and thin she 
looked, but full of ' spiritual riches gained in her captivity 
and bonds '. 

For five years the nuns were thus deprived, not only of 
intercourse with their spiritual Fathers, but even of the rites 
of the Church to which they clung, their sole comfort thoughts, 
strangely akin to the protestantism they abhorred, of spiritual 
communion. A dying nun, urged to sign that she might 
receive the last sacrament and be duly buried by the Church, 
could recall bravely that Christ Himself had no consecrated 
burial-ground. 

France, even Louis XIV, grew tired of the strife and of this 
spectacle of virtuous, if obstinate, women kept in such straits. 
The accession of a new Pope, Clement IX, opened the door 
to the Peace of the Church (1669). A more general wording 
was given to the Formula, and the nuns, assured that it 
implied no condemnation of Jansen, or of the true doctrine of 
grace, signed it with a clear mind. The interdict was raised 
and yet again the Convent of Port Royal flourished for a time, 
again taking in novices and children. 

Formally divorced from the Paris House, it was now again 
a country convent only; but friends gave it powerful support, 
while recluses gathered again on the adjacent hill. Unhappily 
for itself, Port Royal had been too prominently before 
the public to fall again into obscurity. Its speedy growth 
during the ten ensuing years shows how warmly the sympathies 
of onlookers had been with the recalcitrant nuns. Madame de 
Sevigne may be taken as representative of general cultivated 
opinion and, though she smiled at the force of prejudice on 
the one side as on the other, she was at bottom all for Port 
Royal. S. Augustine, she perceived, was ' bien Janseniste ' 
and S. Paul also. ' Les Jesuites,' she observes, ' ont un fantome 
qu'ils appellent Jansenius, auquel ils disent mille injures, et 
ne font pas semblant de voir ou cela remonte . . . et la-dessus 



392 THE NUNS OF PORT ROYAL 

ils font un bruit etrange, et reveillent les disciples caches de 
ces deux grands saints.' l 

Great ladies again frequented and patronized the convent 
when reinstated. The second Duchesse de Longueville, 
heroine of the Fronde, gave her protection and support to 
Port Royal in these latter days, proving, in her penitence 
for past follies, a spirit more truly to its mind than her virtuous 
predecessor, the first duchess, who, as we learn from the Mere 
Angelique's narrative, patronized the early foundation of 
the Maison du S. Sacrement. Madame de Longueville divided 
her time and attentions between Port Royal in the country 
and the Carmelites in Paris ; her friend Mile de Vertus took 
up her abode entirely at Port Royal. These two had retired 
from ' the world '. But Port Royal was visited also, and kept 
warmly in remembrance, by persons even at the Court ; notably 
by the Duchesse de Grammont who, as Mary Hamilton, had 
passed her childhood as pupil in the convent before becom- 
ing maid of honour in the Court of Charles II. Racine, 
occupying the post of royal historiographer to Louis, was 
notoriously a friend, penitent and devoted, to Port Royal 
where, with the recluses, he too had passed years of boyhood 
and where his aunt was still among the last nuns surviving 
from the early days. 

There is no stronger witness to the merits of Port Royal 
than the respect which it commanded in a light and witty 
age, from men and women swift to ridicule, to read the dessous 
des cartes, and eager after pleasures which Port Royal con- 
demned. But the renewed prosperity of the convent was its 
undoing. Though it had constrained for a time the tolerance 
of the great king, it never won his favour; and the favour 
which his subjects showed it, in face of his own disapproval, was 
a fresh source of offence. ' On ne va pas de Port-Royal a 
Marly ' was his verdict, and the Duchesse de Grammont was 
excluded from the coveted privilege. As, with age, intoler- 
ance and absolutism grew upon him, Louis resolved to 
make an end of this House, tainted in his eyes always with 
heresy and with the equal crime of contumacy. Again, 
without fresh specific reason, the convent was forbidden to 
1 Lettres de Madame de Sevigne (Lettre du 9 juin, 1680). 




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From engraving by Cochin 



P. 3 92 



FINAL DESTRUCTION OF PORT ROYAL 393 

take novices or pupils. Again the nuns were called upon 
to declare that the Five Propositions were in Jansen's work ; 
and again they refused to sign, appealing, though vainly, to 
the ' Clementine peace '. 

The end of Port Royal had now come. Denied the power 
of recruiting their number, the community could only die out 
gradually. And even this was not enough for Louis in his 
later mood or for his Jesuit adviser. In October, 1709, it 
was decreed that the two-and-twenty aged nuns still remaining 
should be dispersed and the Convent of Port Royal finally 
destroyed. These last survivors of our sisterhood finished 
accordingly their days in other convents, while, the year 
following, the outward frame of Port Royal des Champs was 
razed to the ground. 

The act of violence was the final crown of martyrdom in 
the eyes of sympathizing friends, and stamped the image of 
Port Royal the more deeply on their hearts. The movement 
of ' Jansenism ' went on, narrowing, but growing in violence ; 
becoming, whether ' heretical ' or no, unquestionably sectarian 
in spirit. And the name of Port Royal was a watchword in 
this movement ; the site of its ruins was cherished by pious 
care and, still so cherished, is to this very day a place of pious 
memories as of historic interest. Only in these latter days 
perhaps, when even religious controversy has entered upon new 
phases and buried ancient strife, can we look with just eyes 
upon these victims to a cause, who win our wider sympathies 
because their cause was not that merely of a doctrine, but 
of honour also and of personal loyalty. 



INDEX 



Acarie, Mere Marguerite (nun at the 
Carmelites), 62, 365. 

Agnes, Mere (Jeanne Arnauld), ap- 
pointed Abbess of S. Cyr, 2 ; child- 
hood of, \i-i2 ; during Jour du 
Guichet, 25 ; Profession of, 37 ; 
prediction of Father Archangel 
relative to, 39 ; at S. Cyr, 42 ; 
brought to Port Royal, 43 ; novice 
at Port Royal, 44 ; appointed 
Coadjutrix, 59-60 ; approved by 
S. Francois de Sales, 61 ; charac- 
ter of, 72 ; emotion on Angelique's 
departure for Maubuisson, 77 ; re- 
ceives nuns from Maubuisson, 100 ; 
ceremony of installation as Coad- 
jutrix at Port Royal, 102 ; com- 
pared with Angelique, 102 seq. ; 
suppresses Conferences, 107-8 ; sent 
to Tard, 136, 137 ; her letters from 
Tard, 137 seq. ; visits sick child, 142 ; 
resigns her charge as Coadjutrix, 
149 ; considered for charge of 
Superior at Institut du S. Sacrement, 
1 88; returns from Tard, 209 seq., 218 
seq.; Superior at Tard, 217-18; 
elected Abbess of Port Royal, 211, 
279 ; letter to M. Le Maitre, 249- 
50 ; announces release of Saint- 
Cyran, 273 ; remains in Paris 
during Fronde, 306 ; advice to 
Jacqueline Pascal, 321 seq., 340; 
resumes charge as Abbess, 369 ; in 
exile, 389 ; and see pp. 128, 150, 
293, 358, 367, 370. 

Aire, Bishop of. See Le Bouthillier. 

Aligre, Mere d' (nun of Gif), 298-99. 

Almanack des Jesuites, L', 351. 

Andilly, d', see Arnauld d'Andilly. 

Angelique-Basilesse, Sceur (novice at 
Maubuisson), 82. 

Angelique, Mere : appointed Abbess 
of Port Royal, 2 ; narrative of, 3 ; 
appointment as Coadjutrix to Ab- 
bess of Port Royal, 5 ; receives 
abbatial blessing from General of 
Cistercians, 5 ; childhood of, 6 seq.; 
reads the Lives of Plutarch, 8 ; 
illnesses of, 8-9, 15-16, 22, 33, 
120-1, 156, 365 ; childish piety of, 
12 ; educated, and takes final vows 
(set. 9), at Maubuisson, 13 ; cere- 



mony of her installation as Abbess 
of Port Royal, 14 ; rebels against 
the Religious Life, 7 seq., 15 ; 
relatives of, 16 ; early piety of, 18 ; 
conversion of, 19 seq. ; early aus- 
terities, 27 ; confides views to 
S. Fran9ois de Sales, 28 ; character 
of, 28, 29, 72 ; Mistress of Novices, 
32 ; dream of, 34 ; Directors of, 
35 seq. ; sisters of, 40 seq. ; views 
of, on poverty and mortification, 
50-5 1 ; example of, 51; regard 
for simplicity, 52 ; government 
of, 53 seq. ; desires to resign her 
charge, 57-8 ; temporary charge of 
Maubuisson, 57 seq. ; intercourse 
with S. Fran9ois de Sales, 58 seq. ; 
intercourse with Madame de Chan- 
tal, 58 ; views on visions, 63, 112 ; 
letters to Madame de Chantal, 
64 seq. ; desires to enter Order of 
the Visitation, 64 seq. ; interview 
with Madame d'Estrees, 75 ; leaves 
Port Royal for Maubuisson, 76 ; 
forcible utterances of, 77-8 ; morti- 
fications of, 78 ; reforms Convent 
of Maubuisson, 79 seq. ; struggle 
with Madame d'Estrees, 87 seq. ; 
return to Port Royal, 98 seq. ; com- 
plaints against, at Maubuisson, 98 ; 
visits Convent of the Visitation in 
Paris, 100 ; at installation of her 
sister Agnes as Coadjutrix, 102 ; 
compared with Mere Agnes, 102 
seq. ; failure with a nun, 109-10 ; 
chastises her sister Madeleine, 
113; receives her mother into 
retreat, 116; aids in reform of 
other convents, 117 seq. ; con- 
demns indulgence in emotion, 121 ; 
submission to the Bishop of 
Langres, 126, 145, 146 ; transfers 
convent to Paris (1625), 127 seq. ; 
charities of, 129, 295-6 ; anxieties 
in Paris, 129 seq., 131-2 ; dis- 
interestedness of, 129, 319 seq. ; 
takes Bishop of Langres as Director, 
130; renews vows, 130-1 ; renounces 
design of leaving her Order, 130-1 ; 
criticizes monks of the Order, 
132-3 ; obtains transfer of juris- 
diction for convent, 132 seq. ; in- 



INDEX 



395 



stitutes perpetual adoration, 134 ; 
her cordiality towards the nuns of 
Tard, 136 seq. ; forces girl (Mile 
Pineau) into Religious Life, her 
account of this circumstance, 139- 
40, nun's account of it, 162 seq. ; 
performs miracle, 139, 141 seq. ; 
resigns her charge, 147-8, 149 seq. ; 
152-3; conduct when dispossessed, 
151-2, 154 seq. ; as Mistress of the 
Pupils, 157 seq. ; mortifications 
imposed upon, 157-8 ; appointed 
Superior of the Institut du S. Sacre- 
ment, 187 seq. ; letters of, 187, 279 
seq .; as Superior of the Institut du 
S. Sacrement, 197 seq. ; under the 
Direction of Saint-Cyran, 197 seq. ; 
return to Port Royal, 245 ; at Con- 
vent of S. Aubin, 208 ; austerity 
towards her sister Marie-Claire, 
214-15 ; quotes S. Francois de 
Sales and Saint-Cyran, 237-8 ; 
first acquaintance with Saint- 
Cyran, 246-7 ; bearing at death of 
Saint-Cyran, 274 ; receives relics 
of Saint-Cyran, 275 ; confirmed in 
her ideal by Saint-Cyran, 275 seq. ; 
renewal of intercourse with Madame 
de Chantal, 283 seq. ; receives her 
mother's dying injunction, 286 ; 
elected Abbess of Port Royal, 289 ; 
re-establishes Port Royal des 
Champs, 289 seq. ; re-election of, 
297-8 ; her charities and kindnesses 
during the Fronde, 298 seq., 304 
seq., 308 seq. ; miracle attributed 
to, 302 seq. ; escorts community 
to Paris, 308-9 ; conduct to Abbess 
of Gif, 311 ; severity of, 317 ; 
advice to Jacqueline Pascal, 
326 seq. ; comments upon Papal 
censure of ' Five Propositions ', 
347 seq. ; condemns discussion of 
miracles, 362-3 ; her Entretiens ou 
Conferences, 367 ; repairs to Paris, 
371 ; illness and death of, 370 ; 
encouragement to nuns on her 
deathbed, 378 seq. ; precautions 
against loving weakness of nuns, 
382 seq.; interment of, 386; and see 
pp. 220, 228, 355, 364, 370, 387, 388. 

Annat, Pere (Jesuit), 351, 361. 

Anne of Austria, 361, 370, 376. 

Annonciades at Boulogne, Mother 
Superior of, 281 seq. 

Antoine, Frere (peasant from Gre- 
noble), 143-4. 

Archangel of Pembroke, Father, 
35 seq., 38-9. 

Argensoles, Madame d' (Abbess of 
the Cistercian Order), p. 207. 



Arnauld, family of, 247. 

Arnauld, Mere Angelique de S. Jean 
(daughter of Arnauld d'Andilly), 
3, 5, 74 seq. (narrative of reform 
at Maubuisson), 102, 144, 146, 187- 
8, 214 (account of Marie-Claire), 
228-9, 302, 308, 312, 355, 371, 388, 
390. 

Arnauld, Soeur Anne-Eugenie de 1'In- 
carnation, 25, 42, 45 seq., 72, 76, 
91-2, 98, 117, 293, 306, 365-7. 

Arnauld, Soeur Anne (de S. Paul), 112. 

Arnauld, Antoine (father of Mere 
Angelique), 2, 17, 22 seq., 24 seq., 
39, 45, 56, 59, 60, in, 130. 

Arnauld, Antoine, 1'Abbe (eldest son 
of Arnauld d'Andilly), 269. 

Arnauld, Antoine (called le grand 
Arnauld, brother of Mere Ange- 
lique), 264 seq., 285 seq., 296-7, 
345, 347, 349, 35O, 35i, 353, 354, 
355-6, 388. 

Arnauld, Antoine (brother of Mere 
Angelique, who died in infancy), 10. 

Arnauld, Catherine, see Le Maitre. 

Arnauld, Henri, Bishop of Toul, after- 
wards of Angers (brother of the 
Mere Angelique), 257. 

Arnauld, Jacqueline, see Angelique, 
Mere. 

Arnauld, Jeanne, see Agnes, Mere. 

Arnauld, Madame (mother of Mere 
Angelique. In religion Soeur Cathe- 
rine de Ste-Felicite), 6, 17, 26, 39, 
99, no, 114-16, 124, 192, 286 seq. 

Arnauld, Soeur Madeleine de Sainte- 
Christine, no seq., 306-7, 368. 

Arnauld, Marie-Angelique de Ste- 
Madeleine, see Angelique, Mere. 

Arnauld, Sceur Marie-Claire, 25, 40 
seq., 72, 77, 78, 81, 107, in, 121, 
137-8, 210 seq., 214 seq., 264, 367. 

Arnauld, Simon, see Pomponne. 

Arnauld, Minister of Finance, uncle 
of Mere Angelique, 16. 

Arnauld d'Andilly, Robert, 25, 64, 
142, 149, 187, 221, 245 seq., 266, 
269 seq., 274, 289, 297, 313-14, 
370, 372, 390. 

Arnauld d'Andilly, Madame, 248. 

Assembly of bishops, 387. 

Assembly of clergy (1660), 370. 

Astree, L', 165 n. 

Auch, Monseigneur d', 45. 

Augustinus, The, 235, 236, 346, 354, 
387. 

Aumont, Madame d', 103, 309, 368-9. 

Auxerre, convent at, 215. 

Bagnol, Mile de (pupil of Port Royal), 

374- 



396 



INDEX 



Bail, M. (Superior vice Singlin), 377. 

Baius, 233, 235. 

Baraudin, Madame, in. 

Barcos, M. Martin de (nephew of 

Saint-Cyran), 259. 
Bardeau, Madame, 135, 288. 
Baron, Marie (nun at Port Royal), 23. 
Bazas, Bishop of, 267. 
Belhomer, 309. 
Belize, Madame de, 103. 
Belle-Chasse, nuns of, 311. 
Belley, see Camus. 
Bernard, Pere, 20 seq., 39. 
Bernardines, 20, 1 10. 
Bertaucourt, Abbe of, 75. 
Bertaut, Monsieur, and his child, 103- 

104. 
Berule, Cardinal de, 62, 195, 236,237 

seq. 

Binet, Pere, 39-40. 
Blanc, Monsieur de (Grand Vicar of 

the Archbishop of Paris), 152. 
Blanche of Castille (foundress of 

Maubuisson), 99. 
Boissy, Monsieur de (brother of 

S. Fran9ois de Sales), 87. 
Boileau, 357. 
Bois-ruffin, Madame de (nun from 

Chelles), 315. 
Boucher, Monsieur, 35. 
Boucherat, Nicolas, see Cistercian 

Order. 
Boulehard, Madame de, Abbess of 

Port Royal, 2, 5. 
Bourdoise, Adrien (founder of S. 

Nicolas du Charbonnet), 239 seq. 
Bouviers, Monsieur de (Presenter of 

Ambassadors), 60. 
Brandon, Madame (nun from Chelles), 

315- 

Calvinists, 347. 

Camus, Jean-Pierre, Bishop of Belley, 

68-9. 
Candide, Soeur (nun at Maubuisson 

and at Port Royal), 78, 80. 
Capuchin friar, sermon of, at Port 

Royal, 19-20. 
Capuchins, 131. 
Carmelites, Order of, 47, 62, 127 ., 

131, 139, 140, 174-5, 188-9, 2 36, 

288, 392 ; and see p. 188. 
Catherine de Ste-Felicite, Sceur, 

see Arnauld. 
Catois, Dom Jean, 37. 
Chamesson, Mile de, (Canoness of 

Remimont), 191, 199, 202 seq. 
Champaigne, Philippe de, 289. 
Chantal, Jeanne-Fran9oise, Fremiot 

de Rabutin, Madame de, 58, 61 seq., 

130, 232, 283 seq. 



Chanteloup, 309, 310. 

Chapelet secret, Le, 106, 126, 194 seq., 

245, 276. 

Charenton, temple of, 287. 
Chastel, Mere (of the Order of the 

Visitation), 284. 
Chateauneuf, Sceur Isabelle-Agnes de, 

44, 77, 78, 107, 108, in. 
Chelles, nuns from, 314. 
Chevreuse, Duchesse de, 374. 
Cistercian Order, Nicolas Boucherat, 

General of, 5, 36, 49, 59, 75, 76, 83, 

86, 133-4; monks of, i, 55, 67-8, 

74, 132-3, 206-7, 364- 
Citeaux, see Cistercian Order. 
Clairvaux, L'Argentier, Abbot of, 131, 

134- 

Clement IX, 391. 
Clermont, college of, 344. 
Collinances, nuns from, 310. 
Condren, Pere de (of the Oratory), 

195- 
Contes, M. de (Grand Vicar of Car- 

dinal de Retz), 376-7. 
Convents, character of, at beginning 

of seventeenth century, 2-3. 
Cornet, Syndic of the Sorbonne, 346. 

Dalence, Doctor, 359. 
Dampierre, Madame de, 122. 
Des Mares, Pere, 344, 348. 
Desmarets, Madame (nun at Mau- 

buisson), 83, 89. 
Desseaux, Mme (portress at Port 

Royal), 302 seq. 
Druy, Baron de, 142. 
Druy (wife of above), 16. 
Druy, Magdeleine des Anges, Marion 

de (nun at Port Royal), 141 seq. 
Du Chesne, Sceur Marguerite-Agathe 

(nun at Port Royal), 109-10. 
Du Fargis, Marie de Ste-Magdeleine, 

154- 

Du Fosse, family of, 268, 269. 
Du Fosse, Pierre Thomas, 268. 
Du Hamel, Cure of S. Merri, 268. 
Dupuis, Madame (nun at Maubuisson), 

89. 
Duval, Andre (doctor of Sorbonne), 

39-40, 63, 93. 
Duval, Madame (nun from Chelles), 



Enluminures de I' Almanack des 

J /suites, 351. 
Entretiens ou Conferences of Mere 

Angelique, 367. 
Estrees, Angelique d', Abbess of 

Maubuisson, 13-14, 49, 74 seq., 

87 seq., 364. 



INDEX 



397 



Estrees, Gabrielle d', 13, 49. 

Estrees, Marechal d', 76. 

Etampes, Convent of Notre-Dame at. 

312, 314. 

Eugenie, Mere, see Fontaine. 
Eustache, Pere (Feuillant), 46. 

Feron (doctor of the Sorbonne), 134, 

H5, 155- 

Feu, Mademoiselle, 155. 
Feuillantines, Order of, 63 ; Superior 

of, 64-5. 

Fittes Pe'nitentes, Les, 49, 76, 87. 
' Five Propositions,' the, 346 seq., 

370, 387, 392. 
Flavie, Soeur, see Passart. 
Flecelles de Bregy, Soeur Anne-Marie 

de Ste-Eustoquie de, 316. 
Fleury, Monsieur de (Confessor to 

Queen of Poland), 278. 
Fontaine, Mere Louise-Eugenie de (of 

the Order of the Visitation), 389. 
Fontaine, Nicolas, 251, 269, 271. 
Fontevrault, Convent of, 96. 
Formula denouncing the ' Five Pro- 
positions ', 370,387, 389, 390, 391- 
Fran9oise Catherine, Sceur (lay sister 

at Port Royal), 367. 
Frequente Communion, Traite de la, 

265 seq., 285, 287, 345, 346, 350, 

355, 357, 376. 

Froget (Cure of S. Nicolas), 242. 
Fronde, the, 290, 298 seq., 367. 

Gallot, Monsieur, 36. 

Garlande, Mathilde de, i. 

Gamier, Sceur Antoinette de S. 

Augustin, 32, 129. 
Gaudon, Monsieur (one of the first 

Messieurs de Port Royal), 254. 
Genevieve de S. Augustin, Mere, 

see Le Tardif. 
Gif, Abbess of, 208, 298, 311,316,351 ; 

Convent of, 311, 314; Prioress of, 
^ 309 seq. 
Gondi, Frangois de, Archbishop of 

Paris, 128, 152, 190, 195 seq., 

204-5, 211-12, 225, 291, 314, 345. 
Gondi, Monsieur de (brother of 

Archbishop of Paris), 155. 
Gonzaga, Princess Marie of (after- 
wards Queen of Poland), 277-8, 288. 
Grammont, Mary Hamilton, Duchesse 

de, 392. 
Grand-Vicar of Archbishop of Paris, 

217, 360-61. 
Guemenee, Princesse de, 265 seq., 

277-8, 309, 3I3- 
Guerre de Paris, see Fronde. 
Guise, Due de, 39 ; Duchesse de, 39 ; 

Mademoiselle de, 39. 



Harlay de Sancy, Bishop of S. Malo, 

212. 

Haute Bruyere, 35. 
Henri IV, 2, 13, 14, 49. 
Hillerin, Cure of S. Merri, 268. 

Innocent X, his Bull against ' Five 

Propositions ', 347, 350. 
Isabelle-Agnes, Soeur, see Chateau- 

neuf. 

Jansenius,Cornelius(Bishopof Ypres), 
223 seq., 318, 346, 387. 

Jansenisme Con/ondu, Le, 345. 

Jansenists, 265, 347, 362, 388. 

Jesuit Confessor of Madame de 
Sable, 266. 

Jesuits, 196, 234, 265, 267, 344 seq., 
346, 357, 36i, 370, 388, 391. 

Johannet, Mere Anne-Marie, (deaf- 
and-dumb nun at Port Royal), 29, 
145-6. 

Joseph, Pere, 212. 

Jour du Guichet, 24 seq. 

L'Argentier, see Clairvaux. 

La Charmoye, see Mauger. 

La Croix, Mere de, 77, 81. 

La Fontaine's Fables, 357. 

Lancelot, Claude, 239 seq., 251, 253, 
253 seq., 273 seq. 

Langres, Zamet, Bishop of, 108, 125 
seq., 130 seq., 136 seq., 145, 146 
seq., 150-1, 183 n., 188 seq., 190 
seq., 209 seq., 214-15, 243, 276, 

352, 361. 

La Petitiere, M. de, 268. 

La Potherie, M. de, 358. 

La Riviere, M. de, 268. 

La Roche, Soeur Suzanne du S. Esprit 

de (nun at Port Royal), 207-9. 
La Serre, Madame de (nun at 

Maubuisson), 87, 88, 91, 94-5, 364. 
La Tremouille, Madame de, Abbess 

of Lys, 117 seq., 316. 
Laubardemont, M. de, Master of 

Requests, 262-3. 
Le Bouthillier. Sebastien, Bishop of 

Poitiers, aftei'wards of Aire, 192,236. 
Le Conte, Mere Marie -Dorothee de 

1'Incarnation (nun at Port Royal), 

159, 319, 384- 

Le Maitre, Antoine, 4, 103, 244, 248 
seq., 270, 274, 297, 348, 349, 350, 

353, 368, 382. 

Le Maitre, Catherine (Arnauld), 
Madame (in Religion, Sceur Cathe- 
rine de S. Jean), 25, 46, 112, 114, 
116, 253, 312, 368. 

Le Pautre, 288. 

Les Granges, farm of, 305. 



398 



INDEX 



Le Tardif, Mere Genevieve (nun at 
Port Royal), 136, 140, 145, 149, 150, 
160, 188, 195, 204 seq., 206-7, 209. 

Lettre, Premiere, a une Personne de 
Condition, 353-4. 

Lettre, Seconde, a un Due et Pane, 354. 

Lettres Provinciates, Les, 265, 355 seq., 
370. 

Le Vasseur, Madame (nun at Mau- 
buisson), 84. 

Liancourt, Due de, 353. 

Ligny, Madame de, 199 seq. 

Ligny, Mere Madeleine de Ste-Agnes 
de (nun at Port Royal), 200, 290, 
308, 312, 389. 

Longueville,Anne-Genevievede Bour- 
bon, second wife of Due de, 391-2. 

Longueville, Louise de Bourbon- 
Soissons, first wife of Due de, 134, 
190, 196, 201, 204, 205. 

Loudun, Convent of, 126. 

Louis XIII, 49, 189-90. 

Louis XIV, 361, 370, 371, 376, 387, 

39i, 392. 

Lourdes, Cardinal de, 76. 
Louvain, University of, 233, 236. 
Luines, Due de, 344, 351, 354. 
Luines, Mile de (pupil at Port 

Royal), 374- 
Lys, Convent of, 117 seq., 146, 215, 

316. 

Macquart, Ecclesiastic of Boulogne, 

279 seq. 
Magdeleine, Mere, Superior of the 

Carmelites, 189. 
Maignelai, Marguerite de Gondi, 

Marquise de, 36, 121, 149. 
Malnoue, nuns from, 314. 
Manceau, Monsieur, 65. 
Marie de Jesus, Mere, Subprioress of 

the Petit Convent des Carmelites, 

188, 196. 

Marie des Anges, Mere, see Suireau. 
Marillac, Monsieur de (Keeper of the 

Seals), 63, 190. 
Marion, Monsieur (grandfather of the 

Mere Angelique), 2, 5, 9 seq. 
Marie de la Falaire, Sceur Angelique 

de Ste-Agnes de (nun at Port Royal), 

128, 137, 215 seq. 
Marli, Mathieu de, i. 
Mars Gallicus, 236. 
Mathilde de Garlande, I. 
Maubuisson, Convent of, 13, 14, 45, 

47, 49 seq., 57 seq., 75 seq., 130, 

214, 246 312, 363 ; nuns of, 14, 74, 

76, 79 seq., 97, 145, 191-2 ; Prioress 

of, 75- 
Mauger, or Mauguier, Abbe de la 

Charmoye, 37-8, 39, 134. 



Mazarin, Cardinal de, 267, 344 (his 

nephew), 350, 352. 
Medici, Marie de, 63, 149. 
Messieurs, see under Port Royal. 
Miracle of the Holy Thorn, 355 and 

357 seq., 389. 

Miracles, see under Port Royal. 
Miramion, Madame de, 310. 
Missions, of S. Vincent de Paul, 236, 

239- 

Modele de Foi et de Patience, Le, 363. 
Molina, 234. 
Molinists, 347, 351. 
Monsieur, see Orleans. 
Montmartre, Abbess of, 312, 314, 316. 
Montvilliers, Abbey of, 35. 
Morel, Dame (nun at Port Royal), 25, 

30. 

Notre-Dame de Liesse, Convent of, 

309- 

Nun, deaf-and-dumb, 29; recalcitrant, 
29-30 ; of weak intellect, 146-7. 

Oratory, Fathers of the, 145, 146-7, 

150, 236, 239. 
Orleans, Gaston, Due d', Monsieur, 

145. 

Pacifique, Pere, 20 seq., 39. 
Pallu, Victor (doctor at Port Royal 
des Champs), 267 seq., 296, 301. 

Papal Bulls, 2,14,43,130,135,145,347- 

Paraclete, nuns of the, 115. 

Paris, Le diacre, 362. 

Paris, Archbishop of, see Gondi and 

Perefixe. 

Pascal, Blaise, 318, 338 seq., 355 seq. 
Pascal, Sceur Jacqueline de Ste- 

Euphemie (nun at Port Royal), 311 

seq. ,318 seq. (narrative of ), 3 5 5 , 3 5 8 . 
Passart, Soeur Flavie (nun at Port 

Royal), 358, 389. 

'Peace of the Church '(1669), 391, 392. 
Pelagians, 233-5. 
Pembroke, see Archangel. 
Pembroke, Earl of, 38 n. 
Perefixe, Hardouin de Beaumont de, 

Archbishop of Paris, 388-9. 
Perier, Guilberte, Madame (sister to 

Pascal), 318, 332. 
Perier, Marguerite (daughter of 

above), 358 seq. 
Perpetuite de la Foi, 351. 
Petit, Soeur (nun of the Order of the 

Visitation), 65. 
Pineau, Soeur Genevieve de 1'Incar- 

nation (nun at Port Royal), 139-40, 

152, 162 seq. 
Pinot, Sceur Claire-Martine (nun at 

Port Royal), 44. 



INDEX 



399 



Poissy, Convent of, 117, 121-3. 

Poitiers, Bishop of, see Le Bouthillier. 

Pomponne, Simon Arnauld, Marquis 
de, 269, 297. 

Pontcarre, Madame de, 131, 210 seq., 
218 seq. 

Pontoise, Convent of, 62 ; monks of 
S. Martin of, 86 ; town of, 93 seq. 

Port Royal, Foundation of, arrogated 
to the Crown, i ; appointment of 
the Mere Angelique as Abbess, 2, 
5 seq. ; state of the convent when 
Angelique was appointed, 6 seq. ; 
beginning of Reform, 20 seq. ; com- 
munity of goods inaugurated, 23 ; 
enclosure (cloister) established, 
23 seq. ; details of reform of, 
31 seq., 49 seq. ; spirit of, 33, 232 ; 
early poverty of, 44 ; cloister walls 
built, 45 ; charities of, 55-6 ; creed 
of, 72 ; epithet of nuns, 97 ; re- 
ceives nuns from Maubuisson, 
loo-i ; Necrologe of, 115 ; pur- 
chase of house in Paris, 115; trans- 
ference to Paris, 124 seq. ; illness 
at, 124 ; dissension in convent, 
124-5 ; present Maternity Hospital, 
127 ., 289; pecuniary difficulties 
in Paris, 131-2 ; changes juris- 
diction, 133 seq. ; perpetual adora- 
tion instituted at, 135 ; under 
regime of the nuns of Tard, 136 seq., 
147 seq. ; miracles at, 139, 141 seq., 
302 seq., 355 and 357 seq. (of the 
Holy Thorn), 366 ; notoriety of, 
because of miracle, 143 ; failure in 
miracles, 144-6 ; new control, 150 
seq. ; enlargement of Paris con- 
vent, 168-9 ! events during Ange- 
lique 's absence at Maison du S. 
Sacrement, 206 seq. ; schools of, 
2 S3, 344; first gathering of Mes- 
sieurs, 253 seq. ; development of 
community of recluses, 267 seq. ; 
last visit of Saint-Cyran to the 
convent, 273 ; charities of, 277 ; 
foundation-stone of convent church 
laid, 287 ; calumny against, 287, 
345 ; church in Paris, 288 ; re- 
installation of nuns at Les 
Champs, 288 seq., 293 seq. ; 
Angelique again Abbess, 289-90 ; 
as a double community, 289 seq. ; 
during Fronde, 290 ; Institut du S. 
Sacrement established there, 292 ; 
hardships at Port Royal des 
Champs, 294 seq., charities dur- 
ing the Fronde, 298 seq. ; tem- 
porary return of community to 
Paris during second Fronde, 308 
seq. ; disinterestedness of, 319 seq.; 



community returns to Les Champs, 
344 ; enlargement at Les Champs, 
344 ; Royal Commission at, 354 ; 
days of respite from persecutions, 
355 seq. ; Pascal in retreat at, 356 ; 
thanksgiving for miracle of the 
Holy Thorn, 360-1 ; rule of Marie 
des Anges, 363-4, 368-9 ; Mere 
Agnes again Abbess, 369 ; fresh 
attack on, 370 seq. ; dispersal of 
schools and recluses, 370 ; order 
for dismissal of pupils, postulants, 
and novices, 371, account of dis- 
persal, 373-4 ; removal of M. Sing- 
l in , 371, 3745 procession at, 375 ; 
later history of, 387 seq. ; nuns in 
exile, 389 ; final dispersal of nuns, 
392-3 ; destruction of convent des 
Champs, 393 ; and see pp. 218, 387, 
388. 

Port Royal, Messieurs de, 143, 247, 
253 seq., 293-4, 3.05, 355, 37O. 

Port Royal d 'intelligence avec Geneve, 

345- 
Pourlan, Mere Jeanne de S. Joseph 

de, Abbess of Tard, 136, 149, 154-5, 

*&, 157, 158, 188, 189, 194. 
Prieres, Abbe de (monk of the 

Cistercian order), 207, 209. 
Prioress of Port Royal during Ange- 

lique's childhood, 6, 21, 23. 

Rabat-joie des Janstnistes, Le, 361. 

Racine, Jean, 392. 

Remimont, Canoness of, see Chames- 

son. 
Retz, Jean-Fran9ois-Paul de Gondi, 

Cardinal de, 265, 292, 345. 
Rhemi, nuns from, 309. 
Richelieu, Cardinal, 212, 247, 264, 

267. 
Rosieres, Sceur Isabelle-Christine de 

(novice at Port Royal), 108. 

Sabbatier, Dom (Confessor at Mau- 
buisson), 87, 90. 

Sable, Madeleine (de Souvre), Madame 
de, 266, 277-8, 277-8. 

Saci, Isaac-Louis Le Maitre de, 349, 
351, 368. 

Saint- Amour, Louis-Gorin de (Jan- 
senist delegate to Rome), 346. 

Saint-Ange, Madame de, 277. 

S. Ambrose, 240. 

S. Antoine, Convent of, 97. 

S. Antoine des Champs, Convent of, 
115 ; nuns of, 35, 44. 

S. Aubin, Convent of, 208. 

S. Augustine, 233, 235, 240 seq., 251, 
264, 346, 347, 350, 391- 



400 



INDEX 



S. Augustine, Rule of, 64, 134. 

S. Benedict, 221. 

S. Benedict, Rule of, 31, 49, 107, 139, 

183, 206, 232, 295. ' 
S. Chrysostom, 240. 
S. Cyr, Abbey of, 2. 
Saint-Cyran, Jean du Vergier de 

Hauranne, Abbe de, 124,125,143-4, 

191 seq., 196, 197 seq., 207 seq., 

212 (arrest of), 218, 219, 222 seq., 

232 seq., 245 seq., 251, 253 seq., 

264 seq., 269, 270, 271, 273 seq. 

(release and death of), 279, 284, 

290-1, 293, 318, 331, 333, 342, 352, 

376. 
S. Fran9ois de Sales, 28, 39-40, 58 

seq., 87, 112, 125, 150, 159-60, 

232, 236, 237-8, 376. 
S. Gervais, church of, 172. 
S. Jacques du Haut Pas, church of, 

274. 

S. Jerome, 242. 
S. Maur, Abbess of, 309. 
S. Medard, church of, 362. 
S. Merri, chapel of, 46 ; parish of, 268. 
S. Nicolas du Chardonnet, Seminary 

of, 236, 239, 254. 

S. Paul near Beauvais, Abbey of, 35. 
S. Paul, Dom Eustache de, 36, 37. 
5. Sacrement, Institut du, 126, 133 

seq., 135, 138, 144, 157, 188 seq., 

243, 275, 288, 292, 392. 
S. Sulpice. 236, 353. 
S. Theresa, 63 and n., 189. 
S. Vincent de Paul, 236, 239. 
Sainte-Beuve, M. de (Confessor at 

Port Royal), 294, 297. 
Sanze, Comte de, 76, 88, 90. 



Sens, Octave de Bellegarde, Arch- 
bishop of, 190, 195 seq. 

Sericourt, Simon Le Maitre de, 253 
seq., 297. 

Sevigne, Madame de, 357, 390. 

Singlin, Antoine (Confessor of Port 
Royal), 211, 244, 245, 268, 270, 274, 
286, 293, 308, 323 seq., 340, 344, 
351, 356, 361, 364, 37i, 382. 

Soissons, Madame de, Abbess of Mau- 
buisson, 96 seq., 363. 

Sorbonne, 267, 354. 

Suireau, Mere Marie des Anges (nun 
atPortRoyal),47-8,83,-95,ii7, 306, 
363 seq., 383. 

Suzanne, Sceur (nun at Port Royal), 
132. See also La Roche. 

Talon, Omer (Advocate-General), 

251-2. 

Tard, Abbess of, see Pourlan. 
Tard, Abbey of (at Dijon), 130, 136, 

215 seq. 
Tard, nuns of, 138, 141, 154 seq., 

159-61, 187, 189, 206-7, 276. 
Thauler, 155. 
Trent, Council of, 25. 

Val de Grace, convent of the, 127. 
Valcroissant, de Lalane, Abbe de 

(Jansenist delegate to Rome), 348. 
Veron, Pere (Cure at Charenton), 241. 
Vertus, Mile de, 392. 
Vincennes, Chateau de, 212. 
Visitation, Monastery of, at Poitiers, 

274; Order of the, 61 seq., 236. 

Zamet, Sebastien, see Langres. 



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