Chapter VIII: The Fronde rebellion

IT is difficult to connect the Court of Anne of Austria with the real spirit of Vincent de Paul, and there is equal difficulty in realizing that the devout persons who carried out the social reforms suggested at S. Lazare, or were members of the secret company of the Blessed Sacra­ment, were of the same rank and race as those on whose shoulders rests the guilt of the Fronde Rebellion. Many of the heroes and the heroines of those wild years sought refuge at Port Royal, and they found fit environment among the hermits and nuns, for the violence of Port Royal in its self-abnegation and its penitence is clearly the right antidote to the unbridled licence of the Frondists.

But M. Vincent’s teaching was very different from that of S. Cyran and Mère Angélique. Natures nourished for a lifetime on excitement could find nothing to satisfy them at S. Lazare, for it was by a rule of charity that the Lazarists were guided, and the necessary preparation for that rule is the gradual development of years of Christian living. On the first awakening of penitence it may not be understood. The practical service of others in matters temporal as well as spiritual was the object of M. Vincent and his followers, and, of a truth, nothing could be more opposed to the aims of those who ruled in Paris during the Regency. In periods of civil warfare, however false in origin, the spirit of heroism and of sacri­fice is seldom lacking; but in those miserable years of strife it is hard to find a suggestion of devotion or of loyalty among the combatants. The picture is among the strangest that history presents. All who might claim to high estate and to the power that went with it—from the Queen downwards—had been schooled and disciplined by Richelieu into an impotence so universal as to be unrealized. The death of the autocrat had no immediate effect; his methods had been too well adjusted; the machinery could continue for a while without him. It is possible, indeed, that Louis XIII. might have had skill to keep this machinery in working order—he had been the nearest witness of its construction—and with skilful treatment the habit of submission inculcated by the great Cardinal might have endured for a generation. But death made the skilled hands impotent, and Anne of Austria was like the boy owner of a great estate who finds himself released from the tutelage of guardians. The King’s death signalized the end of her minority, but to have prolonged it another twenty years would not have made her more fit for independence, and the severity of her past experiences gave greater impetus to the swing of the pendulum.

If, at the time of the King’s death, there were onlookers who gave any thought to the future, it must have been clear to them that the Government of France would not Long be directed by the Queen; but for a time it was not possible to be certain whose hands would hold the reins. Perhaps that period of uncertainty was partly responsible for the tempest that made this Regency so memorable. Unreasonable as well as natural ambition was stirred by a sense of possibility. The influence of Richelieu so far survived that the Queen was afraid to adopt an obvious coursa, and give her confidence to Condé, who was by far the st ongest and most capable of her subjects. Accord­ing to Richelieu’s doctrine, he was too near the throne and to much admired by the people for any extra eleva­tion; but the fact that he possessed the qualifications for the pI I+açe of Queen’s Councillor when the place was vacant, and that he did not attain to it, poisoned his nature, and helped to make a traitor of him. In sharp contrast to the great General stands de Beaufort, one of those left-handed kinsmen of the King who complicated Court society in bygone times. At the beginning of the Regency he made use of his personal attractions to win the Queen’s favour, and dreamed of power. He was, however, singu­larly incompetent as a statesman, and was hardly less indolent than the Queen herself. Gaston d’Orleans, the young King’s uncle, was also precluded by feebleness both of will and intellect from ruling; and de Gondi, the only one of the contemporaries of Mazarin who might aspire to rival him, was not, at the death of Louis XIII., in a position that gave him the opportunity of competing on equal terms with the Italian Cardinal.

It is characteristic of Mazarin and of Anne of Austria that for many months their consultations were held every evening in her private oratory, and that in consequence his rise was imperceptible. By the time the general public had discovered whose will was expressed by the Queen’s actions, and disapproval of the foreign interloper had grown into definite form, his authority over the Queen was established on a basis even stronger than her wish to be relieved of trouble, and all the power of France, though there were moments when it seemed concentrated against him, proved insufficient to oust him from his place. The revolt which darkened the youth of Louis XIV. was primarily an expression of indignation against the do­minion of the royal favourite. There was much more involved. There were many leaders and many causes; there were the plots brewed in whispers round the couches of intriguing women, of which jealousy or pure love of excitement were the inspiration; there were those set on foot by the few who had some definite personal ambition in view—by Condé, by Jean François de Gondi, or by de Beaufort; and there was the continual counter-plotting, the ingenious weaving of complicated webs to entrap his enemies, by Mazarin himself. But at the root of every­thing lay fury with the Queen for imposing the Italian on her subjects, and therewith lay the dangers that are latent in the challenge of authority; for in the middle of the seventeenth century, as at the end of the eighteenth, the people of France were an oppressed and suffering people. And then, just as a hundred and fifty years later, they were strong enough to overwhelm their op­pressors had they had a leader able to reveal and to direct their strength.

The attempts of the few, such as M. Vincent and Théo­phraste Renaudot, to remedy the ills beneath which the poor were groaning, did probably direct the thoughts of those who had energy left to think to the injustice of prevailing conditions. Such suggestions were an ominous preparation for the Regency. Richelieu spent the public money freely, and was callous to the distress of the French people so long as France herself reaped glory. Anne of Austria also spent the public money freely, and was heedless of the sufferings of the people, but no mag­nificent motive excuses her. She was frankly eager to enjoy herself, and to indulge her favourite in the very expensive species of display which he affected. The wars on the frontier went on giving occupation to dangerous persons, but they also drained the State coffers, and left many a humble household bereft of the breadwinner. The peasantry, starved out of their natural homes, tramped to the towns, and met starvation in the streets or a miserable death in the prisons. Actual famine devastated many parts of the provinces, but the refugees who managed to escape and to fmd their way to Paris had the privilege . at their journey’s end of beholding a display of magnificence which should have indicated wealth and prosperity.

Mme. de Motteville, the most naïvely honest of memoir-writers that ever wielded pen, pictures for us the life of the Palais Royal in these early years of the Regency. It appears to have been characterized by an astonishing levity rather than by actual vice. The austerity of Louis XIII. had been due partly to his feeble health, and partly to his natural disposition, but it had resulted in the suspension of Court society, and the younger generation had never learnt to connect amusement with the royal presence. The Court of the Regent might, perhaps, have been livelier if she had possessed more energy ; but while it was a novelty, it satisfied the pleasure-seekers. Anne of Austria was not imbued with the rest­less spirit of the age. She liked a great deal of repose, and made it a habit to sleep till ten or eleven in the morning. A certain amount of business was transacted before she got up, and courtiers of both sexes paid her their respects. As a rule, she spent twelve hours in the twenty-four in bed, and it was her practice to remain there for a day or two at a time if any special pressure of business had been forced upon her. It is likely that she began her reign with good resolutions—her Council of Conscience is, indeed, a proof of this—for she had always a certain desire to do her duty, and was sincerely attached to her children; but, as Mme. de Motteville expresses it, ” her resolutions were undermined by her desire for ease and her aversion to the multiplicity of business affairs, which cannot be separated from the Government of a great kingdom.” As time went on, she grew more indo­lent. She desired always that the royal will should be supreme, but would not realize that even royalty requires a measure of knowledge for the direction of its will. It is possible that, though he could hardly have secured the same stability of rule merely by his skill as a politician,

Mazarin might have enslaved the Queen without the power of sex; for a master of statecraft such as he was able to save her from the constant friction of small anxieties, which she abhorred, and in great things to leave her with the impression that her decisions were all-important.

Yet Mazarin, despite his cleverness, was not in touch with the French people. He was quite incapable of gauging the force of public opinion, and was, in fact, the worst of advisers for the Queen Regent. In 1647, on the eve of the outbreak of revolt, Mme. de Motteville tells us that ” the most considerable affair at Court and the things which were chiefly thought about were diversion and pleasure.” The Queen’s enjoyment of comedy was so great that in the early days of her mourning she sought a place at each performance where her ladies could shield her from observation, while she herself could see the stage. Being free at last of such conventional hindrance, she indulged her taste to the full, and every alternate day there was a performance either in French or Italian. The cost to her of these performances was very great, for they were held at the Palais Royal, and she enter­tained the Court. They were an offence also to many serious persons. A priest, whose name we do not know, remonstrated most earnestly with her on this subject, and did not desist even in the face of her displeasure. There was a difference of opinion with regard to it among the Doctors of the Sorbonne, to whom the matter was referred, and the Queen chose very wisely to place her confidence in the judgment of such Bishops and theo­logians as were able to sanction the indulgence of her tastes. The Court blamed Vincent de Paul, who cer­tainly had not interfered personally, but may safely be assumed to have shared the opinion of the nameless priest, and the comedy continued.

The Saturday before Lent in that same year Cardinal Mazarin began a series of entertainments. He had brought singers from Rome and experts in machinery from all parts. His Comedy was so elaborate that the Court could talk of nothing else, and it was essentially Italian. It was in honour of the King and Queen, and designed to meet the taste of the latter; but it was of a character to outrage the section of the dévots, and these, even at that period, were not altogether negligible. It was well known that visits to the Carmelite Convent at Val de Grace were part of the regular routine of the Queen’s life. Before the great festivals she would retire thither for a species of Retreat; at all times she was scrupulous in keeping the fasts prescribed by the Church (although she was frankly fond of good living) ; and refer­ences to her prayers are frequent in the reminiscences of her intimates. Her attitude on this point was, therefore, an anomaly, but so, indeed, was her whole position towards Cardinal Mazarin, and it is possible that to his tortuous Italian mind this method of setting public opinion at defiance made special appeal. Even as early as 1647, when the full peril of his position had not yet declared itself, he had realized that there was danger for him in the Queen’s pious proclivities¹, and that it was well to assure himself that in a moment of crisis he could rule her conscience as well as her heart and her intellect. Therefore, he applied his test, and afterwards had no further misgivings on that score. If, however, the recep­tion of this celebrated Comedy was intended to prove to him the unassailable nature of his supremacy over the French people, as well as over the Regent, it was less satisfactory. It was a dangerous experiment. The country was desperately impoverished, and, as he was known to have come to France as an adventurer, all the money that he spent so lavishly was drawn from a starving people, and only if they looked on without mur­muring could he in future have confidence that he stood above criticism. Such confidence, if he ever cherished it, was short-lived. Serious people were moved to indigna­tion by a display of wealth at such a moment, and even the pleasure-lovers at Court were on the verge of revolt at the self-assertion of the Queen’s Councillor. All avours were at his disposal, and Mme. de Motteville describes how the great nobles were forced to stand in his antechamber if they desired an audience of him, how they murmured at the arrogance that kept them waiting, and then, like grumbling servants, became mute and obsequious when he passed among them to his carriage and drove away.

Such conditions were too unnatural for long continu­ance, but the result was as distorted and unhealthy as its cause. In her years of light-hearted indulgence Anne of Austria prepared a time of misery not only for herself, but for her subjects, the effect of which was wholly evil for the kingdom. In the struggle which taught her son to be a despot, the opening stages were far the most dangerous to her prerogative. The Parlement and the Crown disagreed first on a question of taxes, then on one of privilege. The disagreement revealed behind the Parlement a possibility of force, behind the Crown a sug­gestion of weakness. The Parlement and the people it represented were not alone in possession of grievances; scarcely a noble about the Court but had a grudge against the Queen or the Queen’s favourite. The routine of the Palais Royal had grown monotonous. The Regent grew more and more indolent, the Cardinal more and more autocratic, and imaginations that had long languished for excitement were fired with the bold idea of taking the side of the people in a struggle against the Crown.

It is unlikely that among the great crowd of noble per­sonages who in 1649 joined forces with the Par1enzent there was one who had deliberately considered what effect their action might have upon their country’s his­tory. They saw only the glorious novelty of the im­mediate present, and the future did not concern them. And so, amid much patriotic sentimentalism, the Duc de Longueville confided his wife and children to the keeping of the people of Paris, and Anne Geneviève de Bourbon, sister of Condé, Princess of the blood royal, bore him a son in the Hôtel de Ville itself. By such means the real struggle, which might have served a great purpose had it been waged on its true issue, was turned into a travesty. Great lords and ladies practised knight-errantry, turning from melodrama to farce and back again until they were weary of sensation, and the people paid in blood and tears.

That establishment of an aristocratic nursery within earshot of the deliberations of the judges was a type of the fantastic nonsense that was fashionable. The ex­citement of a game of hazard bore no comparison with that thrill of the blood which is stirred by the acclama­tions of a mob. High-born women, who, until then, would hardly have admitted the bond of a common humanity betwixt themselves and the toiling multitude, ogled the astonished citizens and posed to the crowd, making their bid for a popularity which they might barter for some other privilege. This most amazing form of sport would be merely a subject of pleasant study for the historian, but for the dread facts that lay behind. If the Fronde had been a tournament of rival lords and Princes, in which the King himself was forced to imperil his dignity, and that only, it would claim no more than passing notice, and it is under this guise that it is very often represented. But it has a different aspect for those who care to look behind the tinsel of noble names and the glitter of amorous adventure to the sombre lives of the common people. The conditions of these lives are worthy of consideration. It was recognized that the passing of an army (which always depended for its sus­tenance on the supplies levied from the inhabitants of the district through which it passed) impoverished the country almost to the point of famine, and in twenty years many armies, hostile and friendly, had marched through France and left their tragic traces. Nevertheless, the taxes never lessened. In 1647 (the year of the Cardinal’s celebrated Comedy), when, in addition to the expenses of the war, the Queen wanted money for herself and her First Minister, she demanded that they should be increased. The previ­ous year the prisons of France contained 23,000 inmates, whose crime was failure to pay their taxes. In the country districts the people existed as those do who have no hope, and they had almost passed beyond the capacity for dread. No threats and no persecution could wring from them money which they did not possess.

Orner Talon and Mathieu Molé, men learned in the law, the latter holding the office of Premier President in the Parlement, presented their humble remonstrance to the Queen in these terms:

” Madame, give a thought to the distress that prevails everywhere. To-night, in the solitude of your oratory, consider the misfortune that has overtaken the country districts. It will be revealed to you there that neither the glory of our victories and of our newly-conquered territory nor the hope of future peace is sufficient sus­tenance for those who have no bread.”

” The working men will soon be obliged to give up their work, to leave their families and their homes, to beg their bread from door to door. Every sort of violence is resorted to to extort payment of the taxes.. If some remedy be not found speedily, the country will soon be a desert”²

It was thus that these two—as near to the type of the City Fathers as France could produce—wrote to the Regent. But she had sunk too deep in the habit of sloth to be stirred. She left such affairs to Mazarin, and Mazarin was not likely seriously to disturb himself for the sufferings of a French peasant or the remonstrance of Parisian magistrates. The Fronde Rebellion, there­fore, sprang from the indolence of the Queen and the recklessness of the Cardinal. It was, despite its name, in its true origin an expression of the despair of the people, not of the rivalry of the nobles. In addition, it is a tragedy not only by reason of the appalling suffering of which it was the cause, but because its true import has been shrouded by the vain futilities of irresponsible persons. Because there was not a man in France who could join to the capacity for leadership the clear brain and the true heart, without which a popular hero is merely a danger to the State, a great opportunity was missed, and misery and injustice continued to hold their sway until, in 1789, the day of retribution dawned.

If the Parlement could have stood firm—if, following the lead of Mathieu Molé, they had as a body represented the people and striven to guide the Queen to justice and moderation—the Regency would have stood for ever as a golden epoch in the social history of France; but they had not the required strength either as individuals or as a body. Misled by traditional respect for the ruling class, they welcomed the intervention of the nobles, only to find that the cause for which they were prepared to sacrifice fortune and life was of no account in the minds of the leaders they had chosen. The people had yet to learn their need of representation; there were no labour leaders even in embryo. Théophraste Renaudot, who, of his contemporaries, had been most fitted for that posi­tion, had had so many enemies among the bourgeoisie that his only possibility of existence depended on the protection of the Court. De Gondi, though he had the genius of the democrat, had none of the self-devotion which would have been necessary in a real champion of the people’s rights; and the others who, at differing epochs, played for and caught the fancy of the populace, desired it and used it solely to serve some evanescent, personal ambition. The strongest cause was that of the Parle­ment against the Crown—this was indeed the cause of a suffering people—but the self-interest of individuals destroyed any hope of a contest on a straight issue, and it would have been difficult for an honest man to choose a party and be loyal to it, for the objects of each of the many parties that opposed the Queen seem to have been interchangeable.

Enough has been said already to show that M. Vin­cent’s sympathies were bound up with the interests of the people. His touch with the Court left him with the same opinions as he had always maintained—that is to say, with an abhorrence of luxury and self-indulgence, and a deep respect for rank. When the Fronde began, he was unavoidably on the side of the people; it was, indeed, impossible for a priest who lived among them as he did to hold aloof from their concerns. M. Olier, during his ministry at S. Sulpice, became a keen politician, and—until the agitation of rebellion had reached fever pitch—he had considerable influence with his aristocratic neigh­bours in the region of the Luxembourg. But M. Vincent was in a more difficult position. He had made it one of his rules of life that he and his company should have nothing to do with politics, and in the light of the opposing point of view of the Frondists it is well to recall his maxims, as he had written them a few years earlier to Le Breton, Superior of the Mission at Rome :

“1. It is not fitting for poor priests like us to interfere, except in the things that concern our vocation.

“2 The business affairs of Princes are mysteries which we should respect and not spy upon.

“3 Most people offend God by sitting in judgment on the affairs of others.

“4 All choice of action is questionable unless it be such as Holy Writ decides; outside that, no opinion is infallible.

“5 The Son of God preserved silence on questions of politics.”

But we must remember that he was living in Paris, and Paris was in an uproar³. In the autumn of 1648 the Queen had been rash enough to imprison Broussel, a magistrate who was a favourite with the people, because he opposed the royal will, and she was afterwards—by the threats of the infuriated mob—forced to release him. The Palais Royal offered no security for the Royal Family; a courtier recognized in the streets was in peril of his life, and the air rang with scurrilous ballads against the Queen and the Cardinal. For the moment authority had lost all meaning, and the right was undoubtedly on the side of disorder. So great, indeed, did the danger of a revolution appear that the Parlement might have ex­torted any terms so long as they held the person of the King in their power. They failed to maintain their advantage, however. The Queen was clever enough to escape by night to S. Germain, taking her son with her, and once they were both outside the gates of the rebellious city the aspect of affairs was completely altered.

Perhaps the news of what was happening in England was useful to the Regent. Condé hated Mazarin, and it is conceivable that he might have held aloof from a dispute that centred upon the general abhorrence of the Italian; but the people had more provocation in France than in England, and if they had found a leader they might have been equally successful. And Condé would not at that time have thought his hatred of Mazarin was sufficient justification for leaving the monarchy in jeopardy, and he had not the slightest feeling for the people. He joined forces with the Regent and the Cardinal, therefore, and on January 6, 1649, laid siege to Paris, that the audacious Parlement might be terrorized into complete submission.

It was at this point that the reality of M. Vincent’s self-abnegation was put to the test. He had always been clear that a hidden and retired life was essential to the spirit of the Mission Priests. The Company had been tested once already. In August, 1636, when the Spaniards entered Picardy and were within ten leagues of the capital, M. Vincent wrote to M. Portail with undis­turbed composure: ” There is a rush of the countryfolk inside the walls, while the terrified citizens fly from the city. Our army is far away, and everyone is volunteering. The drums begin beating at 7 a.m. The Company has gone into Retreat, that each one may be prepared to go wherever he is sent.”⁴

That last sentence summarizes the fitting attitude of the Company. To remain untouched by public excite­ment, but to be prepared to respond to any call, was the ideal held up before every Mission Priest, and it was as clear to them in 1649 as it was thirteen years earlier. But for their Superior the difficulty was to determine whether the call to action was a certain one. It seemed that the moment had come when piety was no longer separable from politics, but in the interests of S. Lazare the wisest course was to abide by those maxims of his, and to allow ” the business affairs of Princes ” to remain mysterious. If he maintained a neutral attitude, he could depend on the protection of the Queen, if the Court party triumphed; and his services to the people were so well known that the wildest mob would restrain itself before his gates. He was essentially a man of peace, and he had seen enough of the Court to know the compli­cation of motive that lay behind the movements of the royal will, and the impossibility of inducing the Queen to form and follow an unbiassed judgment.

It is well to review the evident objections to the course chosen by M. Vincent at this juncture, for it is certain that he must have realized them himself. It is clear that if safety was possible to anyone in France, it was assured to him and to his companions at S. Lazare; and that he was under no obvious obligation to depart from his ordinary routine—by adhering to it he could have brought much assistance within reach of the distressed people inside the city walls, and retained the favour of the Queen at the same time. But a vision of the horrors of civil warfare banished every other consideration. His knowledge of his fellow-countrymen told him that it was imminent, and he—not being touched himself by the fever of revolt—could measure the ghastly conse­quences once it should be declared. At that stage the struggle was not complicated by the innumerable cross­currents of ambitions and opinions that afterwards were interwoven with it; to M. Vincent it appeared that the only insuperable obstacle to peace was the presence of Cardinal Mazarin, and that no reasonable person—if the position were clearly represented to them—could fail to see the necessity of Cardinal Mazarin’s withdrawal. But from the fact that the Queen was at S. Germain surrounded by courtiers and prejudiced advisers, he deduced that the position was not likely to be clearly represented, and that the supreme disaster he was dread­ing might come to pass merely by reason of her ignorance.

We have had opportunity of noticing his slowness of decision and’ habitual prudence, but here was a crisis when, if he was to act at all, he must act quickly; while the fear of implicating others in dangerous responsibility withheld him from taking counsel. On his knees in the church of S. Lazare he could seek guidance, and there he came to the decision that meant complete self-sacrifice. The bitter cold had added to the miseries of the famished people, and his love of them had suggested his great venture. In the night of January 12, 1649, he mounted his horse in the courtyard of S. Lazare and rode forth to seek the Queen at S. Germain, and lay before her the true dangers of the situation and the extent of her responsibility towards her people. There is a child-like simplicity in his conception of this enterprise. It was a marvel that he ever reached his destination. His only companion was his secretary, and the prevalent disorder was so great that travellers by night were regarded as suspicious persons, and were liable to arrest by any of the self-constituted guardians of the peace who might be about. As he rode into Clichy before dawn he was way­laid by some of the townspeople, and only their discovery of his identity saved him from rough usage. At Neuilly the Seine had risen so that it covered the bridge, and it was necessary to ride through the water (a feat which caused Ducourneau, the secretary, by his own confession, ” to shake with terror “), and they were soaked to the skin when they gained the farther bank. S. Germain was reached without further mishap, and we are told that the Queen, imagining that M. Vincent had come as an emissary from the rebels to make terms with her, gave him an immediate audience.

That dangerous night ride does not appear the best preparation for an interview which was intended to have infinite importance, but one may be sure that Vincent de Paul was praying for guidance throughout the weary journey, and came into the Queen’s presence as com­posedly as if he had had many quiet hours for reflection. In fact, he regarded his case as a very clear one. To him the claim of the people was immeasurably stronger than that of any individual, and the indignation of the Queen towards her subjects seemed a small thing corn-pared to their calamities. He explained himself with that simplicity of speech which he could always command, and—as it appears—without full understanding of the odds against him. He had ridden from Paris to S. Ger­main to ask Anne of Austria to deprive herself of the company of Cardinal Mazarin for the sake of the people who had defied and insulted her, and he cherished high hopes of success. Probably the result of his mission modified his regard for his royal mistress, and gave him knowledge of a type of human nature—that of the spurious dévote—with which he had had no previous dealing.

The Queen listened while he made his plea, and she did not then—or at any other time—show the least resentment at his plain expression of opinion; but though her manner was gracious, the point of view which he strove to represent to her did not move her in the slightest. She heard him to the end, and then referred him to the Cardinal, and at that even the sanguine spirit of M. Vin­cent must have acknowledged defeat. The Cardinal was suave and smiling, and, though it is said that he never forgave M. Vincent, he was in no real danger from so honest a foe, and could well afford to be generous. The real demand of the Mission Priest was that the Regent and her First Minister should, at a moment of crisis in political affairs, set an example of self-sacrifice and humility; that, in plain words, the maxims of Christ should be applied to their methods of government. Such an idea cannot have failed to move the Cardinal to covert mirth, however great his indignation at the out­spoken suggestion that he should withdraw from France; but in fact, in propounding it, M. Vincent was only follow­ing that principle of faith in the character of his fellow­men which guided him to success in so many difficult enterprises. In this instance, however, the sole result was damage to himself; and of this the first token came from those on whose account he had risked his personal peace and well-being.

When he left Paris he despatched a letter to Mathieu Molé, explaining his design and his reasons for keeping it a secret, and the news soon leaked out that M. Vincent had joined the Queen at S. Germain. At that crisis of tense excitement the bare fact was enough. The record of all his years of service to them was insufficient to hold for him the confidence of the people with whose true interests he was identified more closely then than at any other moment. Because he had gone to S. Germain they believed that he had betrayed them, and S. Lazare —hitherto exempt from all depredations—was pillaged by the mob. Twenty-four hours seemed to have de­stroyed the fabric of reputation which it had taken thirty years to build, and to have altered the position held by M. Vincent entirely. He had brought his misfortunes upon himself; by his own deliberate act he had forfeited his favour at Court and flung away his popu­larity in the city, and he gained nothing either for him­self or for anybody else. Nevertheless, as he Ieft S. Ger­main he told Ducourneau that he had said to the Queen and her Minister ” that which, if I was at my hour of death, I should have wished to have said to them.”

It is impossible to doubt that he felt himself impelled to his hopeless venture by a force stronger than human judgment, and that he would have known no peace if he had preserved his security and left the Queen to pursue her way without remonstrance. Long afterwards, when he looked back, he wrote: ” I meant to serve God in going to S. Germain, but I was not worthy “; and if that was a reminiscence of his mood at the moment, he must have added personal discouragement to the sense of outward failure. It is, indeed, the temptation of the devout man to believe that if his cause is good, the fer­vour of his prayer must bring its accomplishment. And therefore failure means more than the disappointment of a hope; it may involve the pressure of self-questioning and the despairing avowal of unworthiness, or it may mean the far more intimate and poignant misery of doubt as to the foundation of his faith. It is hardly possible that M. Vincent’s courage could have borne him through his tasks if any cloud of uncertainty had ever descended on him; their difficulty and multiplicity needed the support of an absolutely simple faith; but when he was pressed by failure, he attributed it to the corrupt condition of his own mind, and strove to maintain a closer watch upon himself than hitherto.

No episode in his life gives us a more impressive in­stance of his command over himself than this. He had reached his seventy-third year, and his only personal desire was for seclusion and repose. He had made a great and valiant attempt to further the welfare of others, and in return had been met with contumely on all sides. Almost inevitably he must have felt the temptation to lay down his arms and cease to serve, because his service had been flouted and he himself was infinitely weary. In­stead, he made the moment an opportunity. Throughout every enterprise he had imputed all success to God Him­self; now, under this semblance of disgrace, he showed, as he had never shown before, the degree to which he was the servant of God, and not of man, and that human disapproval had no power to daunt him. Ousted from Paris, he turned unhesitatingly to labour in the provinces.

It was no light matter in those days for a young and active man to ride from end to end of France with one attendant; in one who had fulfilled his threescore years and ten it meant fortitude and determination of the highest order. Vincent de Paul was provided with a passport which the young King himself had signed, but even such authentic royal sanction was not security, and his real protection came from his courage and his poverty. It was his object to utilize his hour of misfortune by visiting some of the many branches of the two Com­panies, and seeing for himself what a Mission Priest or a Sister of Charity could accomplish when in exile from the mother-house.

From S. Germain he went to Villepreux; from thence to Valpuiseaux, in the neighbourhood of Etampes. Here, early in his pilgrimage, came great encouragement. The country was already feeling the grip of famine, and the Sisters had responded to the call to suffering, and were denying themselves to the point which nears starvation that they might have the more to give away. ” They are more and more united,” wrote M. Vincent, ” loving their vocation and fulfilling it.”

He had time to judge. It was early in February and bitterly cold, and his journey was delayed. He utilized the time to preach a Mission in the village—” by way of preparation,” as he explained, ” to help these good people to give themselves to God during the miseries that lie before them.”

This, being written to Mlle. Le Gras, was certainly an expression of his real feeling, and it is significant. We may have reason to wonder how a man of his vivid capacity for sympathy could survive the horrors which he was obliged to witness in the years that followed, but his idea of a preparation for that which he foresaw furnishes us with a clue. They ” must be helped to give themselves to God.” If he could accomplish this for them—if he could make them see, as he himself saw, beyond the terror and the ghastliness of life, the Will of God as an absolutely perfect explanation—then he could leave them to their earthly fate without misgiving.

For the consistent believer in Divine guidance this is, of course, the only logical position; but absolutely con­sistent belief is probably a rarity, and in face of the worst forms of suffering faith in the perfection of a Divine ordinance is difficult to maintain. In fact, the experi­ence through which the French people were passing made brutes rather than saints. Here was no simple issue—no obvious motive of attack and defence by which the spirit of patriotism and of endurance might be aroused; probably those who suffered most had least opportunity of understanding the burning questions that brought their suffering upon them, and were given no chance to choose a side or to remain neutral. The poor were merely the prey of both opposing forces. At the approach of the soldiery every farm and cottage was deserted. The people took refuge in the woods, and were fortunate if they were able to remain hidden, and to escape death or mutilation. All that they possessed was stolen or destroyed, and when the storm had swept by and they crept back to the ruins of their home, it was to face the terrors of famine. Accounts of this sort are common to every history of civil war or of invasion—so common that they convey little to the imagination. Present-day problems of overcrowding and of unemployment are apt to present themselves to the philanthropist as of greater difficulty than any question that disturbed former genera­tions. But in the middle of the seventeenth century, when there was not in France anything representing a Poor Law, when the financial resources of the country depended chiefly on the contributions of the working class, and when for immense districts there was no possibility of deriving benefit from the farms because of the completeness of the devastation, it must be allowed that a position of difficulty was reached to which the twentieth century affords no parallel.

M. Vincent was the better able to meet it when the time came because he could speak with the authority of his experience of these country places. We find him at Marseilles, at Nantes, at Angers, at S. Méens, at Richelieu. Never was travelling more difficult. He was old and broken in health, and it is not surprising that at S. Méens and at Richelieu he was delayed by definite illness. In the autumn he returned to Paris, because the Queen desired his presence there. Mme. d’Aiguillon sent a carriage and pair to fetch him from Richelieu, and so feeble was he that his usual resistance to such luxuries was overcome.

During his exile the people had had time to discover what he meant to them. The siege of Paris had lasted till March, and then the starving citizens made terms. In the August following the young King, with Mazarin on one hand and Condé on the other, rode into his capital as a conqueror The whole sequence of events had been a contradiction of M. Vincent’s ideal of the relations of governors and governed, and even from a distance he had been an agonized spectator of the ruthless cruelties of Condé and the indifference of the Regent While the siege lasted he had written to implore the Queen to send supplies of grain to the starving poor within the walls; but though in good-humoured compliance she gave an order, her energy was not sufficient to see that it was carried out, and M. Vincent was too far off for effective insistence.

Doubtless he returned to S. Lazare with relief. When the people were suffering they needed him, and he was not deceived by the nominal peace. It was not difficult to read the signs of the times, or to foresee that the future held promise of disasters as great as any that had yet been experienced. The fitting place for Vincent de Paul at such a moment was Paris.

1. See his entry ” Carnet,” No. iii.: ” Tous ces prétendus ser­viteurs de Dieu sont en réalité des Ennemis de l’Etat.”
2. See Orner Talon, ” Mémoires,” Petitot Coll., vol. lx. (January 15, 1648) ; and de Barante, ” Le Parlement et la Fronde ” (” Vie de M. Molé “).
3. For description see Mme. de Motteville, “Mémoires pour servir a l’histoire d’Anne d’Autriche,” vol. ii.
4. ” Lettres,” vol. i., No. 27.