The children ran after him, and the mothers followed their children.

Little family? or little intrigue? the words (ménage, manége) are somewhat similar; and though a child in appearance, the good man was at bottom very deep. If he permitted the nuns a few trifling falsehoods ought we to believe he never granted the same indulgence to himself? However it may be, actual falsehood appeared less in his words than in his position; he was made a bishop in order to give the example of sacrificing the rights of the bishops to the Pope. For the love of peace, and to hide the division of the Catholics by an appearance of union, he did the Jesuits the important service of saving their Molina† accused at Rome; and he managed to induce the Pope to impose silence on the friends, as well as the enemies, of Grace.

This sweet-tempered man did not, however, con

* Little lies, little deceits, little prevarications. See, for instance, Euvres, vol. viii. pp. 196. 223. 342.

† Luis Molina, a celebrated Spanish theologian, born in 1535 at Cuença, was admitted into the order of the Jesuits at eighteen. He died at Madrid in 1601. Anxious to reconcile man's free will with the Divine foreknowledge and predestination, he published at Lisbon, in 1589, a work called, "De Liberi Arbitrii cum Gratiæ Donis Concordiâ." This book, approved by the censor, and dedicated to the Archduke of Austria, Inquisitor General of Spain, had great success at first; though eight years after, it was the subject of much discussion in a congregation summoned for that purpose by Pope Clement VIII. This congregation was, however, dismissed by Pope Paul V. without coming to any decision. His followers are called Molinists.— C. C.

fine himself to the means of mildness and persuasion. In his zeal as a converter, he invoked the assistance of less honourable means-interest, money, places; lastly, authority and terror; he made the Duke of Savoy travel from village to village, and advised him at last to drive away the remaining few who still refused to abjure their faith. Money, very powerful in this poor country, seemed to him a means at once so natural and irresistible, that he went even into Geneva, to buy up old Theodore de Bèze, and offered him, on the part of the Pope, a pension of four thousand crowns.

*

It was an odd sight to behold this man, the bishop and titular prince of Geneva, beating about the bush to circumvent his native city, and organising a war of seduction against it by France and Savoy. Money and intrigue did not suffice; it was necessary to employ a softer charm to thaw and liquify the inattackable iceberg of logic and criticism. Convents for females were founded, to attract and receive the newly converted, and to offer them a powerful bait composed of love and mysticism. These convents have been made famous by the names of Madame de Chantal and Madame Guyon. The former es

* Nouvelles Lettres Inédites, published by Mr. Datta, 1835, vol. i. p. 247. See also, for the intolerance of St. Francis, pp. 130, 131. 136. 141., and vol. ix. of the Euvres, p. 335., the bounden duty of kings to put to the sword all the enemies of the Pope.

tablished in them the mild devotion of the Visitation; and it was there that the latter wrote her little book of Torrents, which seems inspired, like Rousseau's Julie (by-the-bye a far less dangerous composition), by the Charmettes, Meillerie, and Clarence.

CHAPTER II.

ST. FRANCIS DE SALES AND MADAME DE CHANTAL. QUIETISM. RESULTS OF RELIGIOUS DI

VISITATION.

RECTION.

SAINT Francis de Sales was very popular in France, and especially in the provinces of Burgundy, where a fermentation of religious passions had continued in full force ever since the days of the League. The parliament of Dijon entreated him to come and preach there. He was received by his friend André Frémiot, who from being a counsellor in Parliament had become Archbishop of Bourges. He was the son of a president much esteemed at Dijon, and the brother of Madame de Chantal, consequently the great-uncle of Madame de Sévigné, who was the grand-daughter of the latter.*

The biographers of St. Francis and Madame de Chantal, in order to give their first meeting an air of the romantic and marvellous, suppose, but with little probability on their side, that they were unacquainted; that one had scarcely heard the other spoken of;

* See the biographers of Madame de Chantal (Fichet the Jesuit, Bishop Maupas) and especially her letters, unfortunately incomplete, 3 vols. 12mo. 1753.

that they had seen each other only in their dreams or visions. In Lent, when the Saint preached at Dijon, he distinguished her among the crowd of ladies, and, on descending from the pulpit, exclaimed, "Who is then this young widow, who listened so attentively to the Word of God?" "My sister," replied the Archbishop, "the Baroness de Chantal.”

She was then (1604) thirty-two years of age, and St. Francis thirty-seven; consequently, she was born in 1572, the year of St. Bartholomew. From her very infancy she was somewhat austere, passionate, and violent. When only six years old, a Protestant gentleman happening to give her some sugar-plums, she threw them into the fire, saying, "Sir, see how the heretics will burn in hell, for not believing what our Lord has said. If you gave the lie to the king, my papa would have you hung; what must the punishment be then for having so often contradicted our Lord!"

With all her devotion and passion, she had an eye to real advantages. She had very ably conducted the household and fortune of her husband, and those of her father and father-in-law were managed by her with the same prudence. She took up her abode with the latter, who, otherwise, had not left his wealth to her young children.

We read with a sort of enchantment the lively and charming letters by which the correspondence begins between St. Francis de Sales, and her whom he calls