Chapter VII: The Queen Regent and the Council of Conscience

THERE is a very strong element of the unexpected in the life of Vincent de Paul. Events have none of the coherence which may be observed in the career of one who sets an aim before him and uses men and circum­stances to serve it, and those occurrences which affected him most deeply and were the most sensational burst upon him without warning, and never seem to have been in accord with his personal desires. In so far as he formed any intention with regard to politics it was one of entire abstinence. A part of the Rule of the Mission Priests forbade discussion of public affairs, and their Superior, apart from any other motive, had quite enough to do in connection with his own undertakings without embarking on dangerous waters where his vocation did not call him. But M. Olier was probably in agreement with M. Vincent on this point when he went to S. Sulpice, and in his case circumstances proved stronger than his resolution, and in consequence S. Sul-pice lost its curé. M. Vincent at one point was moved to an act that resembled that of M. Olier, and before and after that special crisis—during a period that lasted fifteen years—was deeply involved in public affairs.

The claim came upon him very suddenly. Until he had passed middle age he had succeeded in holding aloof. He must have been in Paris at the date of the murder of Henri IV., and in the years that followed, when the Regency of Marie de Médici was furnishing perpetual scandal and excitement, it was impossible even for a humble priest to be completely ignorant of the affairs of the Court. M. Vincent left the capital only to find a place in one of those great houses where every national event must have been a subject of interested discussion. In those days the favourites of the Queen-mother and of the young King, Louis XIII., succeeded each other on a pinnacle of giddy eminence, and one after another lost balance and fell headlong, and royal personages struggled perpetually among themselves, distracting trade and agriculture by petty civil warfare. It was, indeed, a period when human nature, as seen in the great ones of the earth, was brought on the stage under the pitiless glare of the footlights, and humble persons might stare and wonder. M. Vincent’s detachment can hardly have gone the length of ignoring the extraordinary drama that was being played by the hereditary rulers of his country, but he never refers, even distantly, to-the history of that time. When he was established in Paris as Superior of the Mission Priests an age of com­parative quiet was beginning. It was in 1624 that Richelieu became chief of the King’s Council. To every citizen of Paris—whether he realized it or not—that event had immense significance, and to one who, like Vincent de Paul, threw himself whole-heartedly into the life of the people, the dawn of Richelieu’s despotism could not have been indifferent. But we have not from his own lips or his own pen any testimony that he was oppressed by that overshadowing presence, or that, on the other hand, he was grateful for the rule and order that resulted from its dominance. The influence of Richelieu was the most important external factor in the career of Renaudot, but, though it touched him faintly at certain points, it affected M. Vincent very little-.) All through the years of the great Cardinal’s administra­tion Vincent de Paul contrived to carry on work that was so far-reaching in its scope that the limits of the kingdom did not limit it, and yet to avoid all visible connection with the Courts either of King or Minister. Probably he anticipated that he would always be granted the skill and the good fortune to remain hidden, and it was chance rather than the deliberate intention of any individual that drew him into the sort of publicity he shunned.

Cardinal Richelieu died in the autumn of 1642. In the following April the news that the King also was very near his end began to spread through Paris. The account of his last days has been written by Saint-Simon, who seems to have had an honest admiration for him; but there seems no reason to believe that his subjects generally felt any violent grief at the prospect of his death, nor that he had given them reason to do so. He was not noble either in his private life or in his rulership, but beneath his weakness and his folly, and in spite of the cruelty of which he had from time to time been guilty, he had a deep understanding of religion. It was this quality in him which links his name to that of Vincent de Paul. The Mission Priests had been in existence for eighteen years, and had never been chosen for special royal favours, and their Superior had not any of the methods or the manners of a courtier; nevertheless, when the King lay dying, it was to S. Lazare that he sent for help. The clouds were gathering before his eyes, and a great desire seized him to have M. Vincent at his side to give him courage.

The Court was at S. Germain, and it was necessary for M. Vincent to leave behind him all familiar sur­roundings, and to plunge into a world that was com­pletely uncongenial. Probably there was no moment in his life when he so greatly needed to concentrate his mind on the high essentials of his religion. The idea of Royalty in those days, to loyal subjects, was connected with exaggerated reverence, and Vincent the peasant would regard the surroundings of a King with bated breath. But Vincent the priest was able to forget his awestruck regard for kingship in his sympathy for the human being who, remembering the past, was afraid to face the future.

Their intercourse was not limited to one visit. M. Vin­cent remained more than a week at S. Germain, and then, because the patient seemed to be recovering, returned to Paris. The improvement was very brief. Once more the King saw death approaching, and another messenger was sent to S. Lazare. During his last three days he kept M. Vincent near him, and tradition says that he died in his arms. It is, of course, impossible to have any authentic knowledge of what passed between them, yet the fact of that brief intimacy shows us Louis XIII. in a new aspect. We forget the vindictive son and hus­band, we cease to condemn the weak ruler who could yield up all authority to other hands ; we see only the King accepting his share of the suffering of humanity, yet crying out for help in his desolation. It is proof that there was in him a quality of which history can tell us nothing that he sent for M. Vincent. He had courtier priests at hand, devout and learned men, who were ready to give him spiritual consolation. When he sent his messenger to S. Lazare he was breaking through con­vention and grasping at reality.

“I have never seen in anyone who had reached this condition greater reliance upon God, greater resignation, or more evident distress over the smallest actions that might be sins,”¹ wrote M. Vincent to a Mission Priest when the King was dead, and from him we hear no more of that strange episode.

If he could have followed his own wishes, he would have left the Court for ever when the service that had called him thither was complete ; but, though Anne of Austria, as Queen Consort, had never disturbed him in his labours, and only displayed interest in them at rare intervals, as Queen Regent she claimed a large share of his time and powers. When she entered upon her Regency, Vincent de Paul was actually in the Palace, therefore, when her heart was stirred by the great change that had come into her life, the thought of him was fresh in her mind, and it was natural that she should turn to him to help her to carry out the good intentions which for a time possessed her.

In Saint-Simon’s account of the last days of Louis XIII. the dying King is reported to have said to M. Vincent that he would wish for the future to have no Bishops appointed in France who had not spent three years at S. Lazare. There is an echo of this wish in the Queen’s endeavour to appoint a ” Council of Conscience ” to regulate the disposition of all ecclesiastical preferment. In France this rested almost completely with the Crown, and even with the support of a high tradition the re­sponsibility would have been a very grave one. Enough has been said already to show that the tradition had become deplorably degraded. The provision of the Council of Trent, that the holder of any benefice should be a man of sufficient learning and assured virtue, re­ceived no attention, and the spiritual degradation of the land was the result. The Council of Conscience was to consist of five persons, on whose advice the Queen in­tended to act, and as one of the five she chose Vincent – de Paul. His experience and his character made him admirably suited to this office, and infinite good might have resulted but for the fact that Cardinal Mazarin was associated with him in the Council, and that the aims of these two were impossible to reconcile. The Italian diplomatist was as intent on his chosen life-work as was the Mission Priest, but its accomplishment re­quired the encouragement of the conditions and the standards which M. Vincent constantly endeavoured to break down. It was by understanding and utilizing the vices of humanity—the cupidity, the passion, the meanest order of ambition—that Mazarin built up his fortunes. Observation must have given M. Vincent a measure of understanding of these vices, but its only use to him was as an incentive for himself and others to renewed struggle against the forces that made for evil. And of human forces in those dark times the strongest and most fruitful was Mazarin himself. M. Vin­cent was no match for him. Even after three centuries the fact that their names were ever coupled is matter for regret. The unambitious peasant, versed in the methods of dealing with God’s poor, apt in guidance of the rich and gifted who desired to qualify as Christians, had no understanding of real statecraft; and when at a moment of crisis conscience bade him testify, at all costs, against the selfishness that was ruining his country, he only forfeited the confidence of the poor he loved without altering by a hair’s breadth the action of those great ones whom he sought to influence.

But that climax was not reached until he had endured other, and perhaps severer, tests of his singleness of pur­pose. It is likely that Anne of Austria was partly actu­ated in her selection of M. Vincent for her Council of Conscience by a desire to reward a priest who worked so hard in the service of others. She was a good-natured woman. ” La reine est si bonne” was the phrase on the lips of many in the weeks that succeeded the death of Louis XIII. She gave freely (sometimes with so little understanding of the value of her gift that it was neces­sary afterwards to take it back), and M. Vincent, who had comforted the last hours of the dying King, received a post that most men would have coveted. It meal t the command of patronage and, in consequence, of almost illimitable power. The man who had a hand in bestowing preferment would be courted everywhere; if he was clever, he could make his own terms with his suitors. It was only a question of bargaining, and it was an accepted custom. M. Vincent, as he was so devoted to the poor, would no doubt use his power to obtain benefits for them, and all good people would be pleased. This, according to the standards of the day, was the natural point of view for the Queen Regent, and she was not prepared for the refusal of her councillor either to use or recognize the power with which she had endowed him.

Once persuaded that it was his duty to accept re­sponsibility, Vincent de Paul was unflinching in up­holding his principles with reference to the Church. But it was one thing to deplore upon his knees before the altar at S. Lazare the abuses from which she suffered, and quite another to withstand their continuance against the wishes of the Queen Regent and her first Minister. His first plea for reform appears culpably moderate, but its moderation indicates the point of corruption that had been reached.

He stipulated that in future children should not be Bishops, and that a bishopric should be given to persons who had been priests for at least a year; that the rich endowment of an abbey should not be conferred on a person who had not reached the age of eighteen; that a cathedral Canon must be sixteen years old, a Canon in a college fourteen; that it should be impossible to divert the revenues of a bishopric to a seigneur ; and that the system of granting un dévolu, whereby a priest was guaranteed the reversion of a benefice, should be abolished, because it was found to cause the aspirant constantly to watch for an opportunity of denouncing the man in possession, to the damage of Christian amity.

These demands do not appeal to the modern mind as being specially heroic. It is obvious that they leave abundant scope for irregularity ; but before we condemn M. Vincent as pusillanimous, it is well to remember that Mazarin, before whom they were made, was not a priest, nor even a deacon, but that he was Bishop of Metz and the holder of thirty abbeys². The Church of France could not be reformed in a moment by a solitary champion, but it was no small thing that the Superior of the Priests of the Poor had courage to throw down his gauntlet in full view of the first Minister of the Crown. It is hard to say how much he actually accomplished; it is possible that Mazarin purposely increased the difficulties of his posi­tion, and it is most unlikely that the Cardinal was ever prevented from carrying out any serious intention by the interference of the priest. But the interference had its value; the gossip of the Court spread the tidings of M. Vincent’s protests, and men began to ponder on the reasons for them and to understand the rottenness of the existing system.

M. Vincent himself was called to new understanding of the devious developments of human nature. Probably at the time of his first visit to the Court he was ignorant of many events in the lives of the royal personages whom he saw there, which were matter of common knowledge. The mind of Vincent de Paul was too much occupied to give space to gossip, and he had no premonition that the character of Anne of Austria would ever be of signal importance to himself. He owed to it, however, some of the bitterest of his personal experiences as well as the vicarious suffering due to the distress of others. It was the character of the Queen Regent which was mainly responsible for the disasters of the Regency ; but before judging the Queen Regent, it is fitting that we should glance at the Queen Consort.

Anne of Austria, as the wife of Louis XIII., had a just claim to pity. She had come as a young girl to a strange Court, and instead of being guarded and cared for by the King, she was persistently neglected. Her ill-fortune gave her as companion the wife of the Constable de Luynes, and she could hardly have encountered a more pernicious influence. As Mme. de Chevreuse, Mme. de Luynes, in a later reign, won celebrity as a leader of revolt; but in the earlier stages of her career her rebellion was against the laws of morality and seemliness rather than against those of the State. She looked on life as on a great feast spread out before her, and would recognize no hindrance to helping herself from any dish that caught her fancy. The young Queen was thrown into intimacy with this woman at the most impressionable stage of her development, when the novelty of her surroundings and her own isolation gave her a special craving for sympathy, and their subsequent separation did not undo its effects. Dumas has per­petuated the romance of the Queen Consort and thrown a certain halo over her relations with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. Probably a trap was laid for her; possibly her own conduct was innocent throughout; but with such a confidante as Mme. de Luynes she was not likely to be conspicuous for prudence. Whatever truth there may have been in the original scandal, it is certain that the Queen suffered very severely for her part in it. It placed a weapon in the hands of Richelieu, who was always her enemy, and he used it against her mercilessly. As the years passed, her position grew more and more miserable. There came a time, indeed, when, by the King’s orders, no man might be admitted to her apartments save in his presence. When she became the mother of the Dauphin the worst indignities to which she had been subjected were removed; but while Richelieu was dominant it was hopeless for her to assert any of her rights as Queen. Then, within six months, death removed the Cardinal and the King; her son was a child of four, and she, as Regent, was supreme. There is no room for wonder that her years of Regency were not well used, and that she fell a prey to the most brilliant adventurer in history, Jules Mazarin, the Italian pupil of Cardinal Richelieu.

It was not his skill in diplomacy, nor the courage and finesse with which he could play a desperate game, that won for Mazarin his supreme dominion over France; it was his understanding of a woman’s character, his capacity for holding the balance steadily, and knowing when to flatter and when to rule, when to be the counsellor and when the lover. The long years, barren of all delight, on which the pleasure-loving Queen looked back had been the most perfect preparation for the success of Mazarin’s schemes. He began by encouraging her in her amuse­ments, and from time to time gave her an entertainment, as a wise tutor will give a child a treat. It was his object to divert her more and more from thinking of affairs, and to teach her to think of him as inseparable from all those things that gave her happiness. He had both the patience and the pertinacity that his task needed, and he succeeded in it. The time came at length when he was indispensable, and the Queen Regent would have forfeited the kingdom rather than consent to a per­manent separation from him. The actual terms of their alliance remain a mystery, but at its best it was de­grading to the Queen and a demoralizing spectacle for her subjects. It was a strange freak of destiny that brought Vincent de Paul into touch with this sinister romance, and one which he had every reason to regret. Yet he had no free will in the matter. The Council of Conscience was the direct result of the Regent’s good intentions, and when he accepted his place on it Cardinal Mazarin had not attained to his supremacy.

In eighteen years of rule over others as Superior of the Mission priests the character of M. Vincent had had opportunity to develop, but those whom he had ruled—though we shall find how widely they differed in individu-ality—all came under his authority because they desired to serve God and their neighbour in a special way. The duty which the Queen laid upon him put him in quite a different position from any which he had ever occupied, and he had to win fresh knowledge of human frailty. In the Council Chamber at the Louvre the burden of his new appointment was a very heavy one. He had to withstand Mazarin, and, as time passed, this endeavour became more and more hopeless; he had to avoid associa­tion with the great folk who tried to flatter him, and even his shabby cassock was no protection from their importunities. But he knew when these hours of diffi­culty would come, and could arm himself against them; he had to face the sharpest test to nerve and brain when he was outside the limits of the Court, and the detail of some of these has its own curious interest.

By the original constitution of the Council of Con­science nominations for ecclesiastical preferment were to be submitted to M. Vincent, that he might report on the qualifications of the nominee. His knowledge of the individual lives of the younger generation of priests was enormous, and for the fulfilment of the true purpose of the Council no plan could have been more perfect. Mazarin disapproved of this purpose because he required bishoprics and abbeys as bribes to wavering adherents, therefore the Council eventually was a failure; but in its first years the real responsibility of selection rested upon M. Vincent. It is a theme for wonder that the Superior of S. Lazare was able to carry out this task with the thoroughness and devotion which is ascribed to his performance of it. His place as the centre and director of immense organizations, to each of which he gave the most minute attention, seemed to preclude the possibility of bearing this additional burden without a stumble. Yet he did so. His unusual capacity for detachment, and that mental self-conquest of his, the most precious of attainments, explain in some measure his comprehensive power. He could banish completely the harassing questions that made judgment of the for­tunes and characters of other men so difficult, and turn to a letter of encouragement to a Sister of Charity in a far-away provincial town or to the selection of preachers for a country Mission, or to the consideration of the latest scheme of some impulsively disposed Confraternity; and because he had this capacity it was possible for him at the same time to continue his own enormous labours and direct the patronage of the Crown. His success does not indicate immense intellectual vigour so much as the real power that results from consistent submission to the will of God. M. Vincent, confronted with the persons and circumstances most calculated to oppose his purpose, wasted no time or energy in quarrelling with them, but merely sought for greater confidence that his purpose was the right one, and so went on, indifferent to the likelihood of recognized success. For him per­sonally, indeed, success and failure seem to have had no existence. The thing that God could use might flourish by the will of God, and he, to whom it had been given to sow the seed, looked on and humbly offered up his thanks for what he saw. In learning to withdraw him­self, he learnt how to establish and confirm the work he had been inspired to begin, and it was this same capacity for withdrawal of personal interest that made him able to sustain without disturbance the attacks of the envious when they were directed towards him.

It was, according to the custom of those times, natural to regard the possession of interest as a source of wealth. M. Vincent’s position on the Council of Conscience had great pecuniary value, and by its judicious exercise he might have gathered large sums for the use of the Com­pany and the benefit of the poor. He might have done this without countenancing any appointment of which he disapproved, because the most worthy of candidates for preferment might give a bribe, under some other name, without infringing any law of conscience. But M. Vincent’s idea of morality was not in unison with that of his generation. The financial resources of S. Lazare suffered by his singularity, and he was the less popular. He missed also many an opportunity by which he might have strengthened the position of the Company in Paris and the provinces by conciliatory methods to­wards those in power that would not have outraged any principle. But he would not. He was for the whole of his ten years of office uncompromising in repudiating the smallest claim on personal interest. ” The Company will not perish by reason of its poverty,” said he; ” it is far more from lack of poverty that one fears its down­fall.”

When preferment was wrongly given by the will of the Queen (or, rather, by the will of Cardinal Mazarin), Vincent bowed to the inevitable, but if any loophole was left by which the abuse might be prevented, he did not hesitate to take it. Thus, on one occasion, Mazarin having written to him from S. Germain that it was the Queen’s pleasure to present a certain most important bishopric to a young priest whose father merited special reward and distinction, M. Vincent, knowing the matter had gone too far to be stopped by authority, resorted to persuasion, and went himself to the father, representing the unfitness of the son for this sacred responsibility. It is certainly to the honour of the gentleman in question that the Mission Priest was well received, and his inter­ference carefully considered. It is not to be wondered at that his plea was unsuccessful, but it was not roughly pushed aside, and perhaps the new Bishop might have been roused by remembrance of it to justify its refusal by his zeal and energy. He died within a few weeks of his consecration, however, and those who agreed with M. Vincent regarded his death as a judgment on himself and on his father.

The difficulty of vigorous intervention was enormous; the Church was regarded as the natural haven of the impoverished or inefficient noble. Claimants of all conditions, armed with a recommendation from the Queen or on their own initiative, constantly attacked him. The first were, of course, the most difficult to deal with, but it is not hard to picture the uneasiness of the peasant priest, conscious, as he always was, of his own humble origin, when he found the great ladies of the Court currying favour with him, and had not skill to check them before they had laid themselves open to dis­comfiture. In fact, the prospects of their sons and nephews were only injured by their attempt to make interest in this quarter, but such attempts were so far the rule that a rebuff—especially from an obscure person in a very shabby cassock—was altogether intolerable.

In connection with the Bishopric of Poitiers, M. Vincent had an opportunity of learning the entire indifference to the claims of justice and of righteousness that dis­tinguished the leaders of the great world. A well-known Duchess, dame du palais to the Queen, desired it for her son, and, as a clever woman who had had ample oppor­tunity of watching how affairs of this kind came to suc­cess or failure, she approached the matter very carefully. She went first to the Queen, representing that the See was of very little value, but that the family estates in Poitou made it desirable that they should hold the bishopric. The Queen, whose conscientious scruples on questions of this kind were intermittent, professed herself quite ready to sign the appointment if M. Vincent would bring it to her in fitting form at Court the following day. The Duchess repaired to S. Lazare, and, declaring that she was very much pressed for time, gave the Superior the Queen’s order that the nomination paper should be made out in her son’s favour. M. Vincent, aghast at the bare suggestion, implored her to stay and talk it over with him; but she declared that there was nothing to be added to the fact of the Queen’s command, and hurried away. The simplicity of the arrangement made the position of M. Vincent extremely difficult. To him personally there would come no discredit because an unworthy Bishop held the See of Poitiers; he was not in the least degree responsible for the choice, and if he opposed it he was braving the sort of enmity that was most dangerous and most far-reaching. It was a situation calculated to tax the resolution of a saint; to an average person the simple path of submission was the obvious one.

M. Vincent duly appeared with his roll of paper at the Court, in obedience to the royal command; but when the Queen took it for signature she found that it was blank, and her councillor was obliged to explain that he felt it impossible to take any part in such a transaction. It appears that Anne of Austria was never roused to anger by M. Vincent, and in this case she was distressed. She believed herself bound by her word, and yet was uneasy as to the possible consequences of her impulsive promise. M. Vincent did not hesitate to overcome her scruples by assuring her that the fulfilment of such a promise was nothing short of a crime. The young abbé who aspired to episcopal dignity was an habitué of the lowest haunts of the city, and so confirmed a drunkard that he was constantly picked up unconscious in the streets. His family, justly ashamed of him, desired an excuse for getting him out of the capital, but their method of so doing was not one in which a lover of the Church could give assistance.

The Queen was convinced, but her courage was not equal to the task of explaining matters to her lady-in-waiting. M. Vincent might appoint whom he would to Poitiers, but it must be his part to interview Mme. la Duchesse. If we would realize what such a commission entailed, we must consider the respect with which the lower orders were trained to treat the nobility. In an unassuming nature that tradition would be impossible to eradicate, and M. Vincent needed all the strength of his great conviction to support him. He spoke plainly, and did not leave Mine. la Duchesse, who had met him with a welcome, long in doubt as to the nature of his errand. It appears that she forgot her dignity in her anger, and ended a torrent of abuse by throwing a footstool at his head. He left her house with the blood streaming from his face, and had much difficulty in calming the Brother who had accompanied him by ex­plaining that this ungovernable rage was part of a mother’s affection for her son. How far, indeed, it proceeded from that sentiment, and how far from the fury of the aris­tocrat whose path is obstructed by the plebeian it is im­possible to say, but certainly reverence for the dignity of the Church or the sanctity of religion had no place therein, and those who had no such reverence to give, were not likely to look with favour on M. Vincent. For them the fact of his position, and even of his existence, as a matter for notice was offensive and unintelligible.

To catalogue the struggles of this kind which he carried through, more or less successfully, would be an interminable task. Besides the appointments of the clergy there were the Religious to be considered. There had grown up a sort of heredity in the command of some of the monasteries. Daughters of the same house held them in succession, and sometimes each succeeding abbess insured the use of the monastic building and pleasure gardens to her relations when they needed recreation and change. These abuses were far-reaching, and had brought the religious life into dishonour; it was extremely difficult to reform them. The work of the Abbess Angélique of Port Royal had set an example, and M. Vincent was anxious to find and to obtain the appointment for such women as would have strength and courage for the task, rather than for one whose father could claim for her the dignity and comfort of provision by the Church revenues. He guarded himself always from any close connection with religious houses. It was only at the express desire of François de Sales that he undertook the direction of the mother-house of the Order of the Visitation, and he was never the referee—as de Bérulle had been—for the Religious or the Superior whose spiritual distresses were baffling the convent con­fessor. Therefore it was easy for Churchmen to urge against him that his experience of the religious life was not sufficient to justify the vigorous line he took towards the system of preferment in it. He maintained (and his judgment agrees with that of the lay mind) that the true spirit of such a life was so delicate that it must not be exposed to the risk of injury from contact with a worldly motive, and that authority over souls could not rightly be a privilege of certain families, but must be vested in persons who had proved themselves worthy to wield it. The plea of his opponents was that the fact of the ap­pointment of a certain person to a position of responsi­bility proved that an overruling Providence had intended her for her post, that family interest would not have been bestowed upon her without reason, and that to question the system which custom had established was to question Divine wisdom.

Aristocratic privilege, especially on such lines as these, had many powerful supporters; nevertheless, while M. Vincent held his place in the Queen’s Council, it was impossible to obtain the royal consent to the appointment of girl abbesses or of those whose pursuit of pleasure had demonstrated their ignorance of the only possible motive for their profession.

No great knowledge of human nature is required to estimate the danger braved by M. Vincent in thus out­raging the susceptibilities of the ruling class. They claimed the right to establish the daughters whom they could not afford to marry in the command of religious houses. M. Vincent not only criticized their motive in exercising their right, but actually deprived them of the right itself. Even he, however, could not defy tra­dition with impunity. His reputation was too firmly established, it is true, for open assault, but the stab in the dark may always be delivered, and false charges of a kind incidental to his office were urged against him. It was said that the Superior of S. Lazare, though he inveighed so fiercely against simony, had, in fact, been known to accept a percentage of revenue and a gift of books from one who desired, and had received, a benefice from the Crown. The story, with full detail, was whis­pered about Paris until it came to the ears of M. Vincent. His first instinct was to challenge his accuser and to make open declaration of his innocence. But a strife of tongues or of pamphlets was not to be reconciled with his chosen standpoint towards life. We are told that he flung down his pen in bitter self-abasement, and would make no effort for his own defence.

In fact, he had lived his years of service to such good purpose that those who knew him were moved only to anger by the whispers of calumny, and the number of his friends was great enough to silence his enemies. Through that trial—a dangerous one for a man who had any joints in his armour—he passed scathless, but the malice that prompted such an attack remained un­appeased, and the time was coming when, by his own imprudence, M. Vincent gave his foes their desired opportunity.

1. “Lettres,” vol. i., No. 72.
2. “Coups d’Etat des Cardinaux,” A. Richard.