pernicious custom by which a father might secure the reversion of his office to his son by the payment of a fixed sum to the Government. This, having been invented by one M. Paulette, was known by his name, and was a regular source of revenue. Still, there was much independence and uprightness of spirit among these magistrates, and they sometimes attempted to resist the registration of edicts or imposition of taxes which they disapproved; but all in vain, it was only to be crushed by the stern will of the Ministry. The nobility never dreamt of making common cause with them. The gens de la robe were hateful to the gens de l'épée, whose violence they had at times to restrain, and whose breaches of the law they judged. Taxation, and all the horrible burthens of the country, did not touch the nobles. They paid nothing, nor did the clergy, except as a benevolence, the theory being that the nobles served the country with their swords, the clergy with their prayers, and, therefore, the nobles were exempt. Not merely the head of the family, but his descendants to the latest generation, not only the pair de France, but the smallest provincial who, in England, would have been an esquire, known by his simple surname, but in France bore the title of his estate, and was commonly classed as a hobereau, or kite, a bird of prey to all beneath him. The bourgeois, though heavily laden with imposts, taxes, and customs, were not so much oppressed as the miserable peasantry, who not only had to pay to the King, and the dues of the Church, to work on the public roads, and lend their horses for the royal service; but were besides fleeced by their feudal lords, who held, like their forefathers, that Jacques Bonhomme was created simply to serve them and provide them with means for their extravagance. Lawless beyond all measure had these nobles become-dangerous alike to the State and to each other. Their chief leaders, had been, some crushed, some fascinated, some pensioned by Henri IV., but with his death, all had broken loose again; and nothing but the firmest of hands could have kept them within bounds. Therefore Richelieu caused judgment to be without mercy, and filled the prisons -the Bastille, Vincennes, Nantes, and all the royal castles-with men and women who might be dangerous to the State. Others he attached to the Court, in the way Sully had invented, by a multitude of offices about the royal person, with pensions attached to them—pensions wrung from the bourgeois and the peasant. Moreover, all Church patronage being in the hands of the Crown, he could offer any amount of bishoprics or abbeys to provide for the younger children of noble or magistrate alike. The persons whose rank would have made them leaders of the nation, were incapable, mischievous, or both. Marie de Medici, Gaston of Orleans, and the Prince of Condé, were equally unworthy and incapable, their sole idea being to amass money for themselves or their favourites. Only their exile or suppression could save the kingdom. CAMEO Men of the sword and the robe. 1633. САМЕО XXIV. The Dukes of Orleans. 1634. Anarchy or Richelieu was the only choice, and the Cardinal had to bear the obloquy of having led the King to drive away his mother and brother The King, continually suffering from ill-health, led a dull and dreary life. The Cardinal dreaded his attaching himself to any noble, lest an intrigue might be hatched to overthrow the ministry, but there seemed less danger in female favourites. Marie de Hautefort, beautiful, brilliant, and witty, amused and charmed the King, in perfect innocence, and was equally loved and trusted by the Queen. She was a really good woman, and thought it her duty to endeavour to bring the King and his wife together, and to reconcile Louis to his family. Anne of Austria naturally longed to write to her brothers, the King of Spain and the Cardinal in the Low Countries, and this could only be done secretly. Richelieu, fearing a reconciliation with the Queen might take place, accused Mdlle. de Hautefort of fostering dangerous correspondence, and she was separated for a time from the King. In 1634 Gaston, getting tired of banishment, suddenly left Brussels, without telling his wife, Marguerite of Lorraine, and appeared at Paris, where his brother received him as if nothing had happened, and the Cardinal arranged a course of splendid banquets; but, at the same time, he insisted that Gaston's marriage should be declared null because it had been celebrated without the consent of the Crown. Two doctors of the Sorbonne, three Jesuits, Père Joseph, and Giulio Mazarini, the Pope's Nuncio, all were set to argue with the Duke, but for once he was resolute, and maintained that his marriage was real. However, Anne Marie, the child of his first marriage with the heiress of Montpensier, though nearly nine years old, had only been privately baptized, and the ceremonial admission into the Church was to be completed with the Cardinal for her godfather. If we did not know it on the authority of one of the persons concerned, it would be hardly credible that the young Abbé Jean François de Gondi, a son of the Duke of Retz, and once a pupil of St. Vincent de Paul, now only twenty-two years of age, conspired with his cousin, M. de Rochefort, and with the consent of the Duke they undertook to murder the Cardinal in the midst of the ceremony. However, probably the Duke's conscience spoke, or his nerves failed him, for on some excuse the christening was put off, and the Duke retired to Blois, with his favourite, Puy Laurens. The Cardinal offered this nobleman a marshal's staff and a rich marriage if he could induce Monsieur to consent to the dissolution of his marriage, which was obnoxious because of the connection of the Duke of Lorraine with the Spaniards. Puy Laurens stood firm, and Spanish correspondence was suspected. He was safe when with his master at Blois, but he was invited to dance in a court ballet during the carnival of 1635, pounced upon and shut up at Vincennes. Gaston vainly pleaded for his restoration, but he died in confinement there. A representative assembly of the Church of France was convoked, and under the Cardinal's dictation, annulled the marriage; but one man, Jean Vergier de Hauranne, a priest from Poitiers, better known by his title as Abbot of St. Cyran, the confessor of the nuns of Port Royal, boldly declared that he would rather have killed ten men than have agreed to a resolution "ruining one of the sacraments of the church." Nor could the Pope, Urban VIII., be persuaded to truckle to the French power; and in 1637 the Cardinal-defeated for once-had to acknowledge Marguerite of Lorraine as lawfully Duchess of Orleans. She was a fat, dull, complacent person, as disappointing a heroine of romance as Charlotte of Montmorency. St. Cyran was a man of great piety, ability, and originality, the first confessor who had fully satisfied Mère Angélique. The Cardinal disliked him both for his boldness of speech, and for his repeated refusal of preferment intended to bind him to Richelieu's service. He had also affronted the Cardinal, and the various monastic orders, by the part he took in a controversy stirred up by Richard Smith, Bishop of Chalcedon in partibus, who had been sent with Queen Henrietta to take charge of the English Romanists, and who had insisted that no priest among them should hear confessions without a licence from him. The religious orders held themselves privileged to dispense with the Episcopal licence, and there was a hot controversy, in the course of which St. Cyran published a book taking the part of the Bishops; and further, in defining what was true repentance, disagreeing with a Catechism drawn up by Richelieu for his own diocese of Luçon. This Catechism declared that the sinner might be saved by attrition, namely, just enough fear of the consequences to drive him to penance and absolution. St. Cyran declared nothing to avail but contrition, or deep repentance and heartfelt sorrow for the sin against God. However, a greater offence was yet to come. St. Cyran had a friend, with whom he had been educated at the University of Lorraine, and with whom he had read deeply of the Scriptures and the Fathers, namely, a Fleming, Cornelius Jansen, who, indignant at Richelieu's alliance with the Swedes and German Protestants, published an attack on the irreligion of the French policy entitled Mars Gallicus. The King of Spain rewarded Jansen with the Bishopric of Ypres, but in France, because St. Cyran was the friend of the author, he was seized by order of the King, i.e. of Richelieu, and thrown into prison at Vincennes, while all the gentlemen of the hermitages about Port Royal aux Champs were dispersed. St. Cyran endured his captivity with the utmost patience and sweetness towards both guards and fellow prisoners. Once, observing a lady and gentleman to be very shabbily dressed, he disposed of some of his beloved books in order to procure clothing for them, writing that the garments were to be "handsome, and in the fashion, as becomes their rank, that, looking on one another they may forget that they are prisoners." CAMEO St. Cyran. 1635. CAMEO Mademois selle de la Fayette. 1638. All manner of people were examined in order to prove heresy in his teaching, but in vain, except that he had said something disparaging of the Council of Trent. St. Vincent de Paul supplicated for his liberty, but Richelieu answered, “I tell you this man is more dangerous than ten armies. If Luther and Calvin had been imprisoned in good time, Germany and all France would have been Catholic now!" And as St. Cyran refused to modify his opinions, he remained in prison, while his friend Singlin ministered to the ladies of Port Royal. The King had by this time taken a fancy to another maid of honour, Louise de la Fayette, a beautiful girl of seventeen, less clever than Mdlle. de Hautefort, but with more sweetness. She was equally good and conscientious, and had the same desire to bring the husband and wife together, so that Richelieu soon thought her dangerous. However, she had had an inclination to the monastic life as a child, and was always reproaching herself with not attending to her true vocation. The Cardinal took care these scruples should be enhanced, though Père Caussin, her own confessor, thought she was doing more good at large. At last, Louis said, "I will not hinder her vocation. Only let her wait till I go to join the army." She would not, however, wait. As his carriage drove out of the court that very day, she stood at the window and sighed, "I shall see him no more! and at once repaired to the Convent of the Visitation, where she assumed the name of Angélique. However, she saw the King again and again, he spent hours leaning against the parlour grille, talking to her, so that Richelieu became alarmed, and recalled Mademoiselle de Hautefort. Anne kept This lady was able to render the Queen a great service. up a secret correspondence with her two brothers, Philip IV. and the Cardinal Infant in the Low Countries, by means of Madame de Chevreuse, and of a servant of the Queen, called Laporte, termed cloakbearer or portemanteau. The lady, already noted for her intrigues, was in exile from the Court in Touraine, but the servant was arrested while carrying a letter to her from the Queen. On this, he was thrown into the Bastille, and the tidings coming to his mistress, who was with the King at Chantilly, she was greatly alarmed as to what he might confess, and hoped to hinder his examination by making a solemn oath before Père Caussin that she had never written secret letters to foreign countries, especially Spain and the Low Countries. Richelieu sent her word that he was too well informed to believe her; and she then sent for him, and on his promise that the King would forget whatever she had done, she made a half confession. Marie de Hautefort volunteered to put on the disguise of a maidservant, and to penetrate into the Bastille, where her friend, the Chevalier de Jars, although a prisoner, was able to procure an interview for her with the portemanteau, in which she gave him a letter telling him exactly how much to confess. The Abbess of Val de Grâce, He had the Queen so much in his power that he ventured to try to bring her to be on closer terms with the King, and both the Demoiselle de Hautefort, as well as the confessor, the Jesuit Père Caussin, likewise strove to unite the husband and wife. They made another effort, as a matter of conscience, namely, to get rid of Richelieu, whose policy they hated and disapproved. Louis used to spend hours before the grating of the parlour at the Convent of the Visitation, where Sœur Angélique spoke so severely of the indolence and indifference which made him submit to the rule of the Cardinal, that one day he turned his back on her, and went away affronted; but afterwards he repented, and sent her word by Père Caussin that he did not disapprove of her boldness. The confessor himself had long conversations with the King, after which it was observed that Louis was in lower spirits than ever. When four months had passed in this struggle, on the 8th of December, Caussin, when about to hear the King's confession, made a serious appeal to his conscience against his minister's whole policy, the alliances with the Turk and the Protestant, the oppression of the nation, the ill-treatment of the Queen mother. How far Louis seemed to be moved is unknown. Most likely he assented to everything, but what is quite certain is, that after he had seen his master, the Cardinal, the next morning, a lettre de cachet was put into the hands of Père Caussin containing a sentence of exile to Rennes, the King's expeditions to the Convent of the Visitation ceased, and of the party Mademoiselle de Hautefort alone remained in favour. It was soon after this that hopes arose of a direct heir to the crown, full twenty years after the marriage of the King and Queen. The prospect of the succession of Gaston of Orleans had been so distasteful that there was universal transport. The King, in token of gratitude, put out letters patent on the 10th of February, 1638, in which he adopted the Holy and Glorious Virgin as the special protectress of his kingdom, consecrating to her his person, his kingdom, crown, and subjects. This was called the "Vow of Louis XIII." It was remembered that the Queen had lately been on pilgrimage to Meaux, to the shrine of St. Fiachra, or Fiacre, that Scottish saint who was supposed to have revenged on Henry V. the plunder of his Church by the English. In consequence St. Fiacre became the fashion, and people flocked on pilgrimage to Meaux, very comfortably in hired carriages, which thence took the name they have ever since borne, of fiacres. The verses and compliments that flowed in were in vast numbers. Even little Jacqueline Pascal, the child of the President of САМЕО The vow of Louis XIII. 1638. |