Chapter IX: M. Vincent and the people

THE subjugation of the rebellious citizens of Paris in 1649 was due to Condé, and the Queen soon awoke to the fact that her state and dignity was likely to suffer more from the arrogance of her kinsman than from the insolence of the magistrates. The prestige of his military genius was dangerous in a prince of the blood-royal; by a reminder of it Condé always had the power to stir the common people to enthusiasm, and they realized that the protec­tion given to Mazarin was only temporary, and that their conqueror shared their detestation of the Italian Cardinal. Possibly the fact that he had been too strong for them and had had power to bring the King back to Paris in triumph, added to his impressiveness, and for a year the outward manifestations of his power increased steadily. During that year Anne of Austria was forced to look on while he and his family indulged in pomp and circum­stance that dimmed her own, and the Palais Royal was deserted that the courtiers might throng the galleries of the Hôtel de Condé. But at length the moment came when her own pride and the Cardinal’s forebodings prompted decisive action. An order was given for the arrest of Condé, and with his brother de Conti and the Duc de Longueville he was imprisoned at Vincennes.

The tradition of imprisonment as a remedy for those who were offensive to the Crown had been well sustained in France since medieval times, yet no force of tradition could make it anything but a dangerous remedy. The patients were apt to develop an after-disease of a more serious nature. ” I went into my prison innocent, I came out of it guilty,” is the traditional saying of Condé him­self. For all his arrogance he had been a patriot, and he was the most skilled commander of his time. His country owed him a debt of gratitude, and with the recol­lection of that debt vivid in his mind, the humiliation of imprisonment made a traitor of him.

After his arrest there was no escape from civil war. Turenne led the Spaniards into France, and the friends of the imprisoned Princes joined forces with them. Mazarin and the Queen were dexterous in choosing those who had power with the people as their supporters, but they broke faith repeatedly, and so alienated the allies who had been admitted to their councils. The thirteen months of Condé’s imprisonment were full of danger for all parties and all interests; the scale wavered perpetually. When his release was determined, Mazarin himself fled.

It made but little real difference to the people which party was in the ascendant; there was, it is true, a deep-seated and general desire to expel Mazarin from France, and between January, 1651, and the following December, this purpose was achieved; but Condé proved himself as inhuman as a leader as he had been as a foe, and they never suffered more than when he held Paris against the King. The horrors of anarchy turned the city into a hell, and a longing for peace became universal. The citizens at length, in the autumn of 1652, invited their King to come back to them, and though they would give no invitation to the Cardinal, the cry of ” point de Mazarin” grew fainter. Nothing that could be inflicted on them by an Italian favourite could be worse than the treatment they received from their own Princes. So they decided, and in February, .1653, Mazarin was tri­umphantly reinstated in the capital, and a great banquet at the Hôtel de Ville itself celebrated the victory of autocracy and the final humiliation of the people.

From beginning to end of the five years of misery Vincent de Paul had desired peace ; probably it would be true to say that he desired it at any price. No man in France understood the people as he did, no one had so true an estimate of their grievances; but without an honest leader they had no hope of winning fair terms by honourable means, and he foresaw their ultimate discomfiture if the Queen was bent on enforcing her will and keeping Mazarin with her in face of all opposition. It is said that he tried to exert personal influence with the young King and to intervene among the aristocratic leaders of the mob ; but his message was always, in one form or another, a call to sacrifice, and the ears of the Frondists were not open to it. When in August, 1652, the misery of the people, both in Paris and in the country, had reached its climax, he turned—like the good and simple-minded churchman that he was—to the Holy Father for assistance, and the follow­ing letter was despatched to Rome¹.

” MOST HOLY FATHER²,—

” Kneeling humbly at the feet of Your Holiness, I—the most wretched of all men—once more offer, devote, and consecrate to your service, myself and the little Con­gregation of Priests of the Mission, of which I have been made the Superior-General by the Holy See, although I am most unworthy. Further, I am venturing—confiding in the fatherly goodness with which you receive and listen to even the least of your sons—to lay before you the miserable and pitiful state of France.

” The Royal Family is torn by dissension, the people are divided in rival factions, the towns and the provinces alike are made miserable by civil war; villages and cities are devastated, ruined, burnt; the labourers do not reap what they have sown, and no longer sow for future years; everything is at the mercy of the soldiers; from them the people have to fear not robbery only, but actual murder and every sort of torture; most of those who dwell in the country perish of hunger if they escape the sword. Even the priests are not spared, but are cruelly treated, tortured, and put to death. Every maiden is dishonoured, and the nuns themselves are exposed to the wild excesses of the soldiers; churches are profaned and robbed and ruined, and almost all those which are still standing are deserted by their pastors, so that the people are left destitute either of Masses, or of the Sacra­ments, or of any spiritual consolation. Also that hap­pens of which it is horrible to think and even more to speak, the most Blessed Sacrament of the Body of Our Lord is treated with utter contempt even by Catholics, for they throw the Holy Eucharist to the ground and trample It underfoot that they may steal the sacred vessels that contain It. And how far do the heretics go who have no sense of this Mystery ? I dare not and will not enter on description. Yet it is not much to hear of these things or to read of them, it is necessary to be an eye-witness. I know that Your Holiness has good reason to charge me with audacity. I am a mere nameless individual, and I am daring to set forth these things to the Father and Chief of all Christians, with all his wide knowledge of the doings of every nation—especially the Christian nations. In fact, most Holy Father, there is no remedy for our misfortunes unless it may come from the affection, the fatherly kindness, and the authority which Your Holiness possesses. I am aware that you have been greatly troubled by our sufferings, and that very often you have endeavoured to check civil wars at their very birth, that Pontifical Letters have been issued for this purpose, that the most reverend Nuncio has been bidden to interfere in your name, and that he has laboured abundantly so far as lay in his power for the service of God and of Your Holiness, although hitherto without result. But, Most Holy Father, there are twelve hours in a day, and that which has failed once may succeed on a second effort. Moreover, the arm of the Lord is not shortened, and I have a firm belief that God may have reserved to crown the labour of the Pastor of His Church the glory of winning rest for us after all our toil, blessing after so many miseries, and peace after strife; of reuniting the Royal Family, of comforting the people who are crushed by the long war, of giving subsistence to the poor who are nearly dead of hunger, of coming to the help of the devastated country, of rebuilding the ruined churches, and of bringing back to them the priests and the shepherds of souls; finally, of giving life once more to us all. Will Your Holiness condescend to do this ?”

The mixture of courage and simplicity is characteristic of Vincent de Paul. He is ready to incur blame for audacity towards the Pope for the sake of the suffering people, and his faith that the Holy Father had power to still the strife and to save France is perfectly sincere. But if Rome had any power either with Queen or Cardinal, it was not exercised, the slow course of affairs dragged on, security and peace depended on the return of the young King to his capital, but the presence of Mazarin continued—as has been said already—to be the obstacle.

During his years of danger the Cardinal (freed by circumstances from the drag that had been imposed upon him by the assemblies of the Council of Conscience) distributed ecclesiastical preferment freely, paying for the support of powerful families by bestowing an abbey or a bishopric where it was asked. M. Vincent’s hopes for the future of the Church in France were thereby ruined, and it was for him the bitterest form of failure. The fact that Mazarin had been completely triumphant in this matter proved how complete his ascendancy over the Queen had become, and the consequent peril of in­curring his dislike. But Vincent de Paul—having written to the Pope in vain—refused in this matter to accept failure; he mustered his courage, and wrote the following letter to the Cardinal:

September II, 1652.³

” MONSEIGNEUR,—

” I take the liberty of writing to Your Eminence. I beseech you to permit the liberty, and to allow me to inform you that the city of Paris is returning to its natural state, and is crying out for the King and Queen. Wherever I go I find no one who is not of this mind. The Ladies of Charity, who are of the highest in the kingdom, tell me that a veritable regiment of ladies would go out to receive their Majesties in triumph.

” This being so, Monseigneur, I suggest that it would be worthy of Your Eminence to advise the King and Queen to return and take possession of their city of Paris and of all the hearts awaiting them within it. But because there are many drawbacks to this course, I set down those that appear to me the chief and the arguments that balance them, for which I humbly ask the considera­tion of Your Eminence.

The first is that, though there are many good folk in Paris whose inclinations are such as I have described, it is said that there are also many of the opposite opinion and some who are undecided. To which, Monseigneur, I answer that I think there are only a very few that are ill-disposed, for within my knowledge there is not even one, and the indifferent—if such there be—would be infected by the enthusiasm of a crowd representing the greater part of Paris.

” Then there are some who will possibly assure Your Eminence that Paris needs punishment, to the end she may learn wisdom; but to my thinking it were well for Your Eminence to look back on the methods of those Kings against whom Paris has revolted in former times. You will find they have been gentle and tolerant. Only Charles VI., by the punishment of many rebels and the confiscation of the chains that can be stretched across the streets, poured oil on the flames, and so increased them that they continued for sixteen years, and the enemies of the State won many allies.

” And there are some who will urge upon Your Emin­ence that for the sake of your individual interest the King should not enter Paris, or allow his people to have access to his presence, unless Your Eminence can be beside him. They will say this to prove that it is not the intervention of Your Eminence that is the cause of strife, but the malignity of rebellious persons, and that, in fact, it is worth while for you to entangle affairs yet further and to encourage warfare. To which I answer that once the King is himself established in Paris, he will be able to recall Your Eminence whenever it pleases him, and of this I am absolutely convinced. Moreover, if it should be known that Your Eminence—whose chief concern is the good of the King and Queen, and of the State—helped to reunite the Royal Family and to bring Paris back to its allegiance to the King, you, Monseigneur, will win all hearts and will speedily be recalled.

” It is this, Monseigneur, that I am bold enough to lay before you in the assurance that you will take it in good part. I have told no one what I am writing to you, but I live and die in the obedience I owe Your Eminence, and I remain always, Monseigneur,

” Your very humble, very faithful,
and very obedient servant,

” VINCENT DE PAUL.”

It was an injudicious letter. Vincent de Paul would not have been true to himself if he had not made these desperate ventures, but their sole effect was to prove the incapacity of an honest man to influence affairs. When he went to S. Germain he weakened his hold on the Queen, when he wrote to the Pope he must have dis­heartened himself, and when he wrote to Mazarin his unvarnished statement of unpalatable truth was cal­culated to weight the balance against his wishes. The King did enter Paris without the Cardinal, it is true, but it was nearly six weeks after M. Vincent’s petition had been delivered at Compiègne, and during those weeks the suffering of the poor—who were the prey of the lawless ruffians that Condé had brought into the city—increased in horror daily. The rashness of M. Vincent is not a matter of regret. It is in such crises of baffling contra­diction and bewilderment that the real mettle of a man is proved, and there was then so much opportunity for time-serving and shuffling that it was very easy for a priest to adduce sufficient laudable motives for moving with the times. But, as we know, it was not only the Congregation of the Mission that showed itself to be intrepid in the face of danger; across the river in his Clergy-house of S. Sulpice, M. Olier suffered with his suffering people, and lived in hourly peril in this the worst quarter of the city. And he also, moved to extreme measures by the agonies he was witnessing, despatched a letter to Compiègne. He showed even greater boldness than M. Vincent, and wrote in plain terms to the Queen herself. The conclusion of the letter indicates the purport of the whole:

” Madame, you could settle every difficulty and turn this far-reaching insurrection into peace by dismissing the object of your people’s resentment. By sacrificing to God the service you accept from this person you would pay Him the homage that He prizes, and would win for yourself the love and respect of your subjects, which you ought to desire more than anything else.”⁴

It was no wonder that M. Olier was ejected from S. Sulpice at the first opportunity, and that M. Vincent was no more consulted in the distribution of ecclesiastical t appointments; the frankness of these comments and suggestions of theirs were not likely to find favour. Anne of Austria had lost her desire for the love and respect of her subjects, and M. Olier’s idea of her obligation in that direction did not restore it to her; her feeling towards them was one of animosity. She feared the mob, and was ready to show clemency towards all past offences because she feared it; but she judged truly enough that at the extremity to which she had arrived, the only person deserving of confidence was he whose fortune depended entirely upon herself.

And finally, as we already know, events unfolded themselves much as M. Vincent had foretold. The King and Queen were welcomed by their people, and within a few weeks the Cardinal himself returned amid the plaudits of the populace. Of all the great personages concerned in those five years of uproar, Mazarin, and Mazarin only, emerged at the end in a somewhat stronger position than he had held at the beginning. When we remember that among many grievances, the grievance against him was admittedly the chief, that the sole point of unity amid contesting factions was hatred and distrust of him, that for this reason fertile provinces had been laid waste and thousands of lives sacrificed, the record of his return and of the subsequent Feast of Welcome in the Hôtel de Ville takes rank among those flashes of irony with which history sometimes provides us.

Vincent de Paul has left no statement of his own opinion either of the political or moral aspect of the Fronde in its progress or in its conclusion ; he has only set down the horror of its effects as he witnessed them, and even out of those effects he made an opportunity. In his instituting of his Confraternities we see the intention of bringing the true condition of the poor to the notice of the rich; the sensational sufferings of vast numbers of the French people in the years between 1647 and 1653 brought the attainment of his object nearer, for it served to level differences of rank and to convince the aristocrat that the peasant was of the same human nature as him­self. Although this new impression was not received universally, there is evidence that it was widespread, and after the Fronde M. Vincent was able to reckon on the capacity for generosity in the rich with greater certainty than before it. The amount of relief given in the years of the nation’s most poignant distress was stupendous, but no claim can be made that it was all collected and administered from S. Lazare. The Company of the Blessed Sacrament laboured diligently and gave freely, the nuns and hermits of Port Royal sheltered refugees and dis­tributed food and clothing, there was also in all proba­bility a great deal of private benevolence in the pro­vincial towns; but the onus of organization on a large scale fell on M. Vincent, for it was he who had applied his mind to problems of poverty long before the nation was overwhelmed by the special disasters of the civil war. It seems, indeed, that he became imbued—after years of association with the poor of Paris and study of their conditions—with social theories that were far in advance of the opinion of his times. He applied them unob­trusively but very vigorously, and to this day the traces of his industry and of his discoveries remain. But while he dealt to good purpose with the city, the condition of the country-people was not greatly altered. It had become the custom to regard the succour of the peasant as the monopoly of pious persons. The pious gave relief, and added an exhortation to accept distress as a visitation from the Almighty—the fitting chastisement for sin—but there were probably many occasions when neither relief nor exhortation supplied the real needs of the recipient—bodily or spiritual—there were probably many needs also which were never supplied at all. Almsgiving generally took place at convent doors, and those who desired it learnt to loiter through hours of waiting in the certainty of eventual reward. No more fatal lesson can be taught, and it is one which pious persons after the lapse of centuries are still teaching. Thus, on the one hand, the race of beggars was nurtured and encouraged, while, on the other, the system of taxation destroyed the spirit of enterprise. When the civil war came upon them, the people were unfit both morally and physically to act for themselves. There may have been moments when it was possible to combine for their own protection, or at least to find some hopeful method of escape; but in every account they appear to have shown no more initiative than would be expected from flocks of sheep.

Circumstances rather than natural incapacity were responsible for their degradation. They had never been trained to think for themselves. It is significant that agricultural interests were not represented either in Paris or in the provincial barlerents. The lawmaker was in­variably a citizen, and all his energies were concentrated on the protection of commerce from the aggression of the aristocracy. The noble lords of those days were landowners on the most enormous scale, but very rarely did one of them find time to give a moment’s considera­tion to the conditions of life on his estates. The wars were constant, and it was the duty of a gentleman to fight. Year after year, with the coming of summer, all those whose time was at their own disposal turned their backs on the frivolities of ladies’ society and rode off to the frontier. They were thus preserved from effeminacy and from interfering unduly in home politics. But war­fare as it was then practised did not nurture the milk of human kindness; they might acquire endurance and resourcefulness, but they became so inured to the spectacle of suffering that it ceased entirely to move them. And in those days there were no connecting links between the differing classes. There were the aristocracy, the bourgeois, and the poor. There was also—and in the seventeenth century this was becoming a very important development—the noblesse de la robe, the product of many generations of cultivated intellects and of moderate wealth. Life demanded of these that they should strive to retain and augment inherited benefits, and this tradi­tion of striving resulted in a keenness of wit and vigour of character not to be acquired by a race whose part was merely graceful acceptance. Of the noblesse de la robe came the Arnaulds, the Pascals, Descartes, Corneille, Racine, Boileau, and Colbert himself—to name only a few of the many who were the true strength of the nation in that period. Superficially, we find a correspondence to the English upper middle class of the twentieth century ; but in fact there is an essential divergence, and in that divergence is the spirit that made for so much misery in the France of long ago. For this class, which possessed the largest share of wisdom and wit and intuition, was a citizen class; the movements to which it led were in the interests of the cities. The home-keeping country squire and his family, whose interference in the affairs of their neighbours and enthusiasm for county business may be so unfailing a source whether of irritation or improve­ment, had no existence. In his place there was the great seigneur, spending his time between Court and camp; and in a specially favoured district might be found his pious lady, who would stay some months at the ancestral chateau and dole out charity, sometimes with a generous hand, but who would never dream of helping those toiling, hopeless wretches to rise above the squalor and the drudgery to which they had been born. The idea of encouraging self-respect was against the spirit of the times, it held a suggestion of heresy. The divine right which gave a noble his possessions fixed the di­mensions of the gulf between him and the canaille, and any attempt to lessen it was tampering with the decree of Providence. That was the sort of doctrine with which far-seeing ecclesiastics checked any tendency to dangerous innovation, and so it came to pass that the peasant, half-starved in body and wholly starved in mind, continued for many generations to accept in silence the fate allotted to him.

But to M. Vincent, though he was obedient to the Church and loyal to the Throne, and paid all the respect that was due to rank, every man, whether serf or seigneur, was equally an individual, equally the possessor of a soul.

And therefore the conditions that he found in the country even before the days of the Company and his own ex­perience as a wandering preacher, were very disquieting. The miseries of the people in Lorraine in the earlier years of the Regency stirred his compassion, and taught him to rouse the sympathies of others, and when similar or even worse horrors were inflicted on French subjects in all parts of the kingdom by foreign mercenaries, he lost no time in applying the same organization by which Lorraine had long been benefited.

There are detailed records of the tortures in which the Fronde involved the poor, but they are so ghastly as to be unfit for reading. Yet the facts must have been widely known at the time, and neither the Queen on the one hand, nor the rebellious noblesse on the other, were moved thereby to relent and modify the course of action they intended, to check the sufferings for which they were responsible. It was well for M. Vincent in those days that he had acquired a philosophy of life that enabled him to act, to love, and to pity with all his generous heart, to maintain the attitude of the Christian towards his fellows, and not to criticize the attitude of others. Had he allowed himself to reflect upon the cruelty and indifference of those who dwelt in high places at the time when he was most closely in contact with human agony, his courage must surely have failed him; but, instead, he set himself to discover his own office in the general con­fusion, and to concentrate every power he possessed upon it. His months of enforced exile from Paris at the very beginning of the Fronde established his position as the friend and helper of the poor. Wherever he went in his travels he left the kind of memory which starts into vividness in the moment of distress. When every hope was failing, when the population of each little country town and its surrounding district were perishing of want, the wise heads of the community came to the one conclusion that was fruitful, and sent tidings of

their plight to M. Vincent⁵. The Priests of the Mission and the Sisters of Charity became the heralds of re­turning life. It is literally true that thousands of lives were saved by their ministrations, and although the general misery baffles the imagination, that which was accomplished was miraculous. From S. Quentin in Picardy—to take one instance only—there came a letter describing how the food distributed by the Mission kept more than i,000 persons from starvation. ” The want is so great that in the villages no one has even any straw left to lie on. There are some who used to be possessed of 200,000 crowns who are now without bread, and have starved for the last two days.”⁶

Ruin so complete only overtook the wealthy in the districts devastated by the soldiery, but every class suffered in those dark years, and if the Ladies of Charity had elected to tighten their purse-strings, the plea of ” bad times ” would have had obvious justification. It was very difficult to fulfil their obligations in Paris; the support of the foundlings and the many claims of their immediate neighbours in that period of famine imposed a very severe strain on their resources. But Vincent was ruthless in his demands—his was the spirit of the early Christian who must perforce share all that he has if his neighbour be in need. It is a spirit difficult to impart, especially to those who have family claims continually present, and M. Vincent failed to impart it in its entirety, but he was able to achieve whit to others seemed im­possible. He summoned his Ladies of Charity together and read to them the appeals he had received, and in making record of their response he acknowledges all that it meant. ” The difficulty these ladies have in sustaining the weight of their immense expenditure is hardly to be believed.”

We hear of jewels and precious personal possessions sacrificed. It is easy, when much already has been given, to resent a further claim, and to fmd a conscientious scruple to support refusal. It is hard, too, for a woman, even though she be devout and ready to renounce all vanities, to part with her diamonds, and it is in contem­plating such results that the effect of M. Vincent’s per­sonality becomes apparent. The small establishment of Mission Priests and Sisters of Charity planted here and there about the kingdom stood forth as the most im­portant of philanthropic agencies, and the influence over a certain section of the wealthy class which M. Vin­cent had gradually acquired became suddenly the chief hope of vast multitudes of starving refugees.

And to these great ladies the invitation to charity was (we must reiterate) given without any of the inducements that are generally appended. The rivalry, the self-aggrandizement, the innumerable cross-issues that con­fuse every philanthropic effort of modern times, were swept away, but with them went every misgiving lest the gift might be misdirected and do harm to its re­cipient. Once again came the question of the beloved disciple, ” Whoso hath this world’s goods, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him ?” It came with absolute and direct simplicity; there was no evading it, and the sincerity of the dévote was never put to sharper test. But M. Vincent was in personal touch with those in whose hearts he had stirred the embers of charity years before—his demand on them had been continuous—and any who were not able to bear it had long since drifted away. In this supreme moment his confidence in his followers was that of the General who can lead to victory against overwhelming odds.

The hard fact of actual statistics is necessary to under­stand the full effectiveness of these efforts.

From 1635 onwards depopulation had been going on steadily in the country districts. Those who held real authority acted for the moment only, and the ultimate effect of a system of government which ignored industrial questions and concerned itself only with the bribing or the bridling of the nobles was never made a topic for serious consideration. The cloth manufactories at Lille and Elbeuf were the first to close; the glass-makers in Burgundy and in Lorraine, and the woollen industry in Picardy followed. In Champagne and Burgundy the wine trade was at a standstill. The taxes were so enor­mous that it was hard to pay wages, and the wage-earners could only continue to keep the barest subsistence for themselves by concealing the amount they were re­ceiving. If common sense was the property of any French subject, it was not utilized in the processes of government. The elementary wisdom which teaches us not to slay the goose who lays the golden eggs was completely ignored. An immediate desire for goose outweighed the future need for her product. Political exigencies required the continuance of warfare and the maintenance of an army, and the troops were quartered on the people. The indulgence of expensive tastes had emptied the royal coffers, and the people were required to replenish them. In those days the rich had no financial resources outside the kingdom, except as the result of military exploits, and therefore depopulation and ruin of trade must even­tually be felt by the great landowner, however persistent he might be in his indifference to responsibility. In some quarters a tenth of the small towns and villages that had been centres of industry disappeared entirely. This was the case in Burgundy and in Lorraine, ordinarily prosperous and populous districts, and often one farm, or a mill where two or three miserable refugees had found shelter, was all that remained of the homes of a hundred housetwids.

The description of these deserted places is less poignant in horror than the facts concerning those where the people congregated. The pressure of actual hunger was of long standing. In 1633 the Ladies of Charity had begun to send relief from Paris to distant places. In nine years Frère Matthieu Renard, of the Congregation of S. Lazare, journeyed fifty times from Paris to Lorraine, driving his donkey before him, and passing on many occa­sions through the ranks of the soldiery. There was careful organization of the relief, and the emissaries of M. Vincent were spared pillage, even in those lawless times. In 1639 the general need became greater, and some difficulty was experienced in meeting it. This, it should be remembered, was eight years before the Fronde. To such places as Nancy, Verdun, Metz, Toul, Bar-le-Duc, an allowance of 500 livres a month for food was made; at S. Miluel, at one period, ‘,1o° hungry per­sons were fed daily; at S. Quentin there were 1,500 sick requiring support. With the civil wars of the Fronde complete destitution took possession of these country districts, but the Ladies of Charity had for years been supporting many thousand souls whom they never saw, and who had no nearer claim than that of a common nationality. To increase a demand that was already so exorbitant might have abashed a less humble man than M. Vincent, and he had to go beyond the circle of his Ladies of Charity in his exploitation.

It was computed at the end of the war that he had distributed 12,000,000 livres. He made application to the Queen herself, although her sympathies at that period were not at the disposal of her people, and obtained from her on two several occasions jewels amounting in value to 25,000 livres (these gifts, if we regard them as a salve to qualms of conscience, are characteristic of her). So miraculous was the response that even this most notable of beggars was astounded. In Paris the shopmen brought goods tQ1 the door of S. Lazare. Not only did the great ladies, who were themselves feeling the pinch of poverty, bring jewels and plate, but their humbler neighbours offered clothing they could ill afford to spare. The infection of generosity spread from one to another, de­stroying the acquisitiveness natural to human nature—an infection hardly less irresistible than that which had de­stroyed all scruple and all self-control among the women of the Fronde, and, if the truth be told, hardly less sen­sational in its effects. Even at the Court the Maids of Honour had a confraternity for the assistance of the people who rebelled against their mistress. Wisdom and folly were intermingled, but the chaos of the times pre­vented orderly procedure. At the quay by the Hôtel-Dieu, barges arrived continually laden with the sick and wounded from provincial districts where the soldiery had worked havoc. The Hôtel-Dieu was so overcrowded that the lives of its inmates were endangered, and the homeless sufferers were landed, only to be left on straw by the river’s brink. To them came the Ladies of Charity, causing them to be carried to their own homes, and there tending them as best they could, in literal obedience to Gospel maxims—a proceeding attended by many risks, social and sanitary—and Mme. de Bretonvilliers gave up her house on the Ile Notre Dame for the storage and distribution of the goods intended for the refugees. It is not difficult to picture the glow of enthusiasm with which these devout ladies (who were so near akin to the women of the Fronde) threw aside established custom and all the tradition and etiquette of well-appointed lives, and sacrificed rest and food, as well as luxury, that they might succour the brother who had need. The divine spark of charity animated them, and there was also in them, as in their lawless sisters, that tendency to weariness, to the condition which later generations have termed ” boredom,” which was their inheritance from a genera­tion nourished on excitement. The quiet progress of the pious from the cradle to the grave could not satisfy the great lady whose grandmother had been of the Flying Squadron, whose father had fought and feasted with Henri IV. Latent in them all was the thirst for excitement, but in the colleagues of Mme. de Chevreuse it was slaked by excess of self-gratification, in the adherents of M. Vincent by an exaggeration of self-suppression. In both camps reigned the imperative need of the abnormal, no less in the assumption of responsibilities than in the frenzied negation of them.

Therefore, while we pay full tribute to the magnificent generosities and the real self-devotion of the Ladies of Charity, we must accept that it was not permitted to them to touch the highest level. They gave personal service as well as largesse, but it was reserved for the more immediate companions of M. Vincent to show what glory of self-devotion can be inspired by extremity of suffering. It was not enough that food and funds should be provided; in those troublons times there was great difficulty in their distribution. The little settle­ments of Sisters of Charity were utilized in this arduous task. They prepared the soup that kept so many thou­sand starving folk alive (one of M. Vincent’s letters gives the receipt, with bread, dried peas, lentils, herbs, salt, and butter for ingredients) ; but, in addition to this new duty, the demand on them in their ordinary vocation as parish nurses became overwhelming. Wherever there was a town the survivors of rapine sought refuge there, and, as violence and hunger had done deadly work upon them, they all needed tending. The Sisters were unre­mitting in their toil, and some died at their posts. In its detail the toil itself was probably abhorrent, for all that was most loathsome in disease was bred by the pre­vailing wretchedness of the people, and the impossibility of fulfilling everything that was needed of them added the element of despair to the weight of labour. Great as was their heroism, however, it is the Mission Priests who bear off the palm of victory in that amazing compe­tition of self-sacrifice.

They were the envoys of the Good Samaritans of Paris, and ran the risk attendant on bearing money and valu­able commodities across a country infested by lawless soldiery. But in this they only fulfilled a duty demanding natural courage; their service to their country in its darkest moment was one needing qualities of a higher order. The barbarities of the troops upon the country-f olk had left ghastly traces in the human remains lying by the wayside as a prey to wolves or vultures, or across the threshold of deserted homesteads. They meant a chance of pollution for the living as well as the desecra­tion of the dead, and such things cried for a remedy; but the case was worse when civil warfare became wide­spread, and the bodies of men and horses rotted by hundreds where they had fallen⁷.

In the prevalent disorder no public effort was made to meet this horror. It was left for M. Vincent to devise a means, and but for the spirit that animated the Company, even he might have been baffled. The task was hideous, and one after another those who volunteered for it for­feited their lives. It was, indeed, a service that would have rejoiced the heart of Francis of Assisi, the acme of sensual mortification, and each one of the Company who devoted himself to it, paid a glorious tribute to the Superior to whom he owed his inspiration. ” These are most truly martyrs !” cried M. Vincent proudly.

Throughout all those dark years, wherever the horror was greatest, wherever human cruelty and human suffer­ing had been brought to their farthest point, there would be found the sons of M. Vincent labouring steadfastly to comfort and to remedy. And in Paris itself the work of S. Lazare went on unceasingly. The national mis­fortunes broke routine, but gave new opportunity. The parish priests from all quarters of France, flying for safety to Paris, appealed to M. Vincent. Many of them were of that lax type whose reformation was among the objects of the Company. ” We give them subsistence,” wrote the Superior⁸, “together with training in those things that they should both know and practise.” The mass of refugees also were just those persons to whom the Company ministered habitually, and at the moment when it became impossible to reach them in the country they were brought into contact with their appointed helpers in the city. ” Not being able to hold missions in the provinces, we are resolved to hold them for those who have taken refuge in Paris,” says M. Vincent, ” and we have begun to-day in our own church with 800 poor folk lodging in this neighbourhood. Later we shall go elsewhere. Some of us also are beginning at S. Nicholas du Chardonnet.”

The practical side of M. Vincent’s action during the Fronde is so prominent that it is well once more to be reminded that these spiritual opportunities were those which he prized and valued; for these he sought even when the burden of organization was weighing most heavily upon him, and through them he derived the only comfort that was attainable. For, in truth, all the knowledge accumulated in his long life, all the courage won in the thousands of hours spent in prayer, were needed to help him to fulfil what this stage of his journey demanded of him.

1. “Lettres,” vol. i., No. 235.
2. Innocent X.
3. “Lettres,” vol. i., No. 239.
4. l’Abbé Faillon, ” Vie de M. Olier,” part ü., liv. 8.
5. For official recognition of his position, see Appendix, Note III.
6. From M. de La Fons. See Feillet, ” La Misere au Temps de la Fronde,” chap. x.
7. It is recorded that near Rethel 2,000 corpses lay for two months unburied.
8. ” Lettres,” vol. i., No. 226.