The idea which this verse expresses can be found throughout the works of Quinault. He has said it again and again, with the same langourous, insinuating sweetness, for a period which lasted more than thirty years, and in the beginning no one very seriously divided with him the attention of the public.

At the appearance of his first piece in 1653, Racine was fourteen; Moliere did not return to Paris until 1658. Corneille, in truth, was preparing his return to the theatre; but he found when his last tragedies were played, that he had done well to study Quinault, and in doing this he had not wasted his time;--a decisive proof of the echo to which souls responded,[65] and of the increasing immorality of the new era.

Thus the Court of France lost its prestige. The eclat cast by the Fronde upon the men and women seeking great adventures had been replaced by no new enthusiasms. The pleasures to which entire lives were devoted had not always been refining, as we have seen above, and people had not grown in intelligence. The bold crowd of the Mazarins gave the tone to the Louvre, and this tone lacked delicacy. The Queen, Anne of Austria, groaned internally, but she had loosed the reins; except in the affair of her son's marriage she had nothing to refuse to the nieces of Cardinal Mazarin.

Because the Court was in general lazy and frivolous, a hasty opinion of the remainder of France should not be formed. The Court did not fairly represent the entire nation; outside of it there was room for other opinions and sentiments. It was during the years of 1650 to 1656, which appear to us at first sight almost a moral desert, that private charity made in the midst of France one of its greatest efforts, an effort very much to the honour of all concerned in it.

I have noticed elsewhere[66] the frightful poverty of the country during the Fronde. This distress which was changing into desert places one strip after another of French territory, must be relieved, and amongst those in authority no one was found capable of doing it.

It is hardly possible to represent to one's self to-day the condition left by the simple pa.s.sage of an army belonging to a civilised people, through a French or German land, two or three hundred years ago.

The idea of restricting the sufferings caused by war to those which are inevitable is a novel one. In the seventeenth century, on the contrary, the effort was to increase them. The chiefs for the most part showed a savage desire to excite the mania for destruction which is so easily aroused with soldiers during a campaign. Towards the end of the Fronde, some troops belonging to Conde, then in the service of the King of Spain, occupied his old province of Bourgogne. If any district of France could have hoped to be respected by the Prince, it was this one; his father had possessed it before him and it was full of their friends.

Ties of this kind, however, were of no advantage. March 23, 1652, the States of Bourgogne wrote to M. de Bielle, their deputy at Court:

The enemies having already burned fourteen villages [the names follow], besides others since burned, these fire-fiends are still in campaign and continuing these horrible ravages, all which has been under the express order of M. le Prince, which the commandant [de la ville] de Seurre has received, to burn the entire Province if it be possible. The same Sieur de Bielle can judge by the account of these fires, to which there has so far been no impediment presented, in what state the Province will be in a short time.

The common soldier troubled himself little whether the sacked region was on the one or the other side of the frontier. He made hardly any difference.

Some weeks after the fires in Bourgogne, two armies tortured the Brie.

The one belonged to the King, the other to the Duc de Lorraine, and there was only a shade less of cruelty with the French forces than with the others. When all the troops had pa.s.sed, the country was filled with charnel houses, and there are charnel houses and charnel houses.

That of Rampillon,[67] particularly atrocious, must be placed to the account of the Lorraines: "at each step one met mutilated people, with scattered limbs; women cut in four quarters after violation; men expiring under the ruins of burning houses, others spitted."[68] No trouble was taken to suppress these h.e.l.ls of infection.

It would be difficult to find any fashion of carrying on a war both more ferocious and more stupid. Some chiefs of divisions, precursers of humanitarian ideas, timidly protested, in the name of interest only, against a system which always gave to campaigning armies the plague, famine, and universal hatred. A letter addressed to Mazarin, and signed by four of these, Fabert at the head, supplicates him to arrest the ravages of a foreigner in the services of France, M. de Rosen. Mazarin took care to pay no attention to this protest: it would have been necessary first to pay Rosen and his soldiers. If it is expected to find any sense of responsibility in the State, in the opinion of contemporaries, for saving the survivors, left without bread, animals, nor harvests, without roof and without working tools, there is disappointment; the State held itself no more responsible for public disasters than for the poor, always with it.

The conception of social duty was not yet born. Public a.s.sistance was in its infancy, and the little which existed had been completely disorganised by the general disorders; like everything else. Each city took care of its beggars or neglected them according to its own resources and circ.u.mstances. On the other hand, the idea of Christian charity had taken a strong hold upon some circles, under the combined influence of the Jansenism which exacted from its devotees a living faith; of a secret Catholic society whose existence is one of the most curious historical discoveries of these last years[69]; and of a poor saint whose peasant airs and whose patched _soutane_ caused much laughter when he presented himself before the Queen. Vincent de Paul is easily recognised. Relations with great people had not changed him. It was said of him after years of Court society, "M. Vincent is always M.

Vincent," and this was true: men of this calibre never change, happily for the world.

He became the keynote of the impulse which caused the regeneration of provincial life, almost ruined by the wars of the Fronde. Even after the work was ended it would be difficult to decide upon the share of each of these bodies in this colossal enterprise. The society to which allusion has been made was founded in 1627, by the Duc de Ventadour, whose mystical thought had led him, as often happens, to essentially practical works. The name of Compagnie du Saint Sacrement was given it, and without doubt its supreme end was "to make honoured the Holy Sacrament."

Precisely on account of this, the society sought to "procure" for itself "all the good" in its power, for nothing is more profitable to religion than support, material as well as spiritual and moral, distributed under its inspiration and as one might say on its own part.

One pa.s.ses easily from the practice of charity, a source of precious teaching, to the correction of manners. After comes the desire to control souls, which naturally leads to the destruction of heresies, with or without gentleness.

This programme was responsible for many admirable charitable works, two centuries in advance of current ideas, and, at the same time, for cruelties, infamies, all the vices inseparable from the sectarian spirit in which the end justifies the means.

Once started, the society rapidly increased, always hidden, and multiplying precautions not to be discovered, since neither clergy nor royalty were well disposed towards this mysterious force, from which they were constantly receiving shocks without being able to discover whence came the blows.

It was an occult power, a.n.a.logous in its extent and its intolerance, and even in the ways and means employed, to the Free Masonry of the present.

The Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement had links throughout France and in all cla.s.ses. Anne of Austria was included in its sacred band and a shoemaker played in it an important role. Vincent de Paul enrolled himself in the ranks towards the year 1635, contributed to the good, and probably was ignorant of the evil to be found in its folds. Dating from his affiliation, his charitable works so mingled with those of the society that it was no longer to be recognised. The society brought to the Saint powerful succour, and aided him effectively in finding the support of which he had need; it would be difficult to say from whom came the first idea of many good works.

As for what at present concerns us, however, the point of departure is known. It was neither Vincent de Paul nor the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement which conceived and put in train the prodigious work of relieving the Provinces. The first committee of relief was founded in Paris, in 1649, by a Janseniste, M. de Bernieres, who was also responsible for the invention of the printed "Relations" which were informing all France of the miseries to be relieved. It was the first time that Charity had aided itself through publicity. It soon found the value of this. M. de Bernieres and his committee, in which the wives of members of Parliament dominated, were soon able to commence in Picardie and Champagne the distribution of bread, clothing, grain, and working implements. Hospitals were established. They put an end to the frightful feeling of desolation of these unfortunate populations, pillaged during so many years by mercenaries of all races and tongues. But the number of workers was small even if their zeal was great, and the Janseniste community was not equipped for a task of this dimension. From the end of the following year, the direction of the enterprise pa.s.sed entirely into the hands of Vincent de Paul, who led with him his army of sisters of charity, his mission priests, and an entire contingent of allies, secret but absolutely devoted.

It does not seem as if at first there was any conflict. Mme. de Lamoignon and the Presidente de Herse were the right arms of M. Vincent as they had been of M. de Bernieres. When the Queen of Poland,[70] a spiritual daughter of Port-Royal and brought up in France, wished to subscribe to the work, she sent her money to the Mother Angelique, telling her to communicate with M. Vincent. But this harmony was of short duration. The members of what the public were going to baptise with the sobriquet of "Cabale des Devots," not being able to discover the real name, could not suffer the Janseniste concurrence in charitable works. They showered upon M. de Bernieres a ma.s.s of odious calumnies and denunciations which resulted in the exile of this good man.

This was one of the most abominable of the bad actions to which a sectarian spirit has pushed human beings.

The "Relations" were continued under the direction of Vincent de Paul.

One knows through them and through the doc.u.ments of the time, the details of the task undertaken. The first necessity for the public health was the clearing the surface of the ground, in the provinces in which there had been fighting, of the putrifying bodies, and of the filthiness left by the armies. There was one village from which such an odour exhaled that no one would approach it. A "Relation" of 1652 describes in these terms the environs of Paris:

At etrechy, the living are mingled with the dead, and the country is full of the latter. At Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, Crosne, Limay, one hundred and seventy-four ill people were found in the last extremity, with neither beds, clothes, nor bread.

It was necessary to commence by taking away the seeds of infection which increased the maladies, by interring the corpses of men, of dead horses and cattle, and removing the heaps of dirt which the armies had left behind. The cleansing of the soil was the specialty of M. Vincent and one of his most signal benefits. He employed for this work his mission priests and his sisters of charity. The missionaries placed themselves at the head of the workmen, the sisters sought the abandoned sick. Cloth and cap died at need "the arms in the hand," said their chief, but their work was good; and finally the work was taken hold of in the right way.

After the dead the living:

The cure of Boult[71] [reports another "Relation"] a.s.sures us that he buried three of his parishioners dead from hunger; others were living only upon cut-up straw mixed with earth, of which was composed a food called bread. Five tainted and decaying horses were devoured; an old man aged seventy-five years had entered the presbytery to roast a piece of horse-flesh, the animal having died of scab fifteen days previously, was infected with worms, and had been found cast into a foul ditch.... At Saint-Quentin, in the faubourgs, in which the houses had been demolished, the missionaries discovered the last inhabitants in miserable huts, "in each of which," wrote one of them, "I found one or two sick, in one single hut ten; two widows, each having four children, slept together on the ground, having nothing whatever, not even a sheet." Another Ecclesiastic, in his visit, having met with many closed doors, upon forcing them open discovered that the sick were too feeble to open them having eaten nothing during two days, and having beneath them only a little half rotten straw; the number of these poor was so great that without succour from Paris, the citizens under the apprehension of a siege, not being able to nourish them, had resolved to cast them over the walls.

Millions were needed to relieve such distress, but Vincent de Paul and his a.s.sociates had a better dream; they wished to put these dying populations in a condition to work again and to undertake the reparation of the ruins themselves. The enterprise was organised in spite of obstacles which appeared insurmountable, the exhaustion of France and the difficulty of communication being the princ.i.p.al. The Parisians raised enormous sums and sent gifts of all kinds of materials, and found the means of transporting provisions. The committee divided the environs of Paris; Mme. Joly took the care of one village; the Presidente de Nesmond, four villages; and so on. Missionaries were sent outside the boundaries. One of the later biographers of Vincent de Paul[72] values at twelve millions of francs, at this date worth about sixty millions, the sums distributed, without counting money spent directly for the work of piety nor for the support of those engaged in it. However this may be, this latter body certainly consumed a large portion. The immensity of the enterprise, and its apparent boldness, gives us an idea of the wealth and power of the middle cla.s.ses of the seventeenth century. After Vincent de Paul and M. de Bernieres, the honour for this work of relief belongs to the parliamentary world and the Parisian bourgeoisie; the aristocracy only playing a very secondary role. The middle cla.s.ses provided for this enormous effort, at a period in which all revenues failed at once. We are told that many were forced to borrow, that others sold their jewels and articles of silver; still this supposes luxury and credit. In one way or another, the citizen was in a position to give, while the small n.o.ble of Lorraine or of Beauce was obliged to receive; and this emphasises an historic lesson. Gentlemen as well as peasants lacked bread. After remaining two days without eating, one is ready to accept alms; at the end of three days, to demand them on account of the children. The decadence of the one cla.s.s, the ascension of the other until their turn comes; it has always been the same since the world began.

One last detail, and perhaps the most significant:

There is no reference in the Memoirs of the times[73] to the princ.i.p.al work of Vincent de Paul. Their authors would have made it a matter of conscience not to forget a Court intrigue or a scandalous adventure; but what can be interesting in people who are naked and hungry? One avoids speaking of them. It is even better not to think of them. In 1652, the year in which poverty was at its height in oppressed Paris, the Mother Angelique wrote from Port-Royal, to the Queen of Poland (June 28th):

With the exception of the few actually engaged in charity, the rest of the world live in as much luxury as ever. The Court and the Tuileries are as thronged as ever, collations and the rest of the superfluities go on as always. Paris amuses itself with the same fury as if its streets were not filled with frightful spectacles. And, what is more horrible, fashion will not suffer the priests to preach penitence (Letter of July 12th).

The lack of pity for the poor was almost general among the so-called higher cla.s.ses. There is no need of too carefully inquiring as to what is pa.s.sing in hovels.

Vincent de Paul and his allies struggled six years. Not once did the government come to their aid, and the war always continued; for one ruin relieved, the armies made ten others. The group of the "good souls" who had made these prodigious sacrifices was at length used up, as one might say, and was never reinforced, in spite of the inexhaustible source of devotion offered by the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement. This body had been composed of men and women so exceptional in character, as well as in intelligence, that its ranks, emptied by death, and by the exhaustion of means and courage, could not be filled up. In 1655, the receipts of the committee were visibly diminished. Two years later, the resources were entirely exhausted and the work of relief remained unfinished.

It was well that it was attempted; a leven of good has remained from it in the national soul.

The actual benefits however, were promptly effaced; the famine of 1659 to 1662, especially in the latter year, counts amongst the most frightful of the century, perhaps in our entire history. The excess of material poverty engendered immense moral misery, particularly in the large cities, in which luxury stood side by side with the most frightful conditions, and Paris became both excitable and evil, as always when it suffers.

The Carnival of 1660 was the most noisy and disorderly which old Parisians had ever known. Great and small sought amus.e.m.e.nt with a kind of rage, and dissensions and quarrels abounded from the top to the bottom of the social scale. Public places were noisy with riots and affrays. During the nights, masks were masters of the streets, and as has been seen above, no security existed with these composite crowds, which stole candles from the houses into which they had surged.

One ball alone received in a single evening the visit of sixty-five masks, who ran through the city three nights in succession. These hysterics in Paris, while France was dying with hunger, are so much the more striking, inasmuch as the Court was not there to communicate to the outer world its eternal need of agitation and amus.e.m.e.nt. Louis XIV.

spent a large portion of these critical years in journeying through his kingdom. One of the first journeys, lasting from October 27th to the following January 27th, had for its end the meeting of the Princess of Savoie at Lyons. There had been some question of marrying this Princess to the young King. On pa.s.sing to Dijon, the Court stopped more than fifteen days. Mademoiselle tells us the reason for this delay; it is not very glorious for royalty. The Parliament of Dijon refused to register certain edicts which aggravated the burdens of the province. Le Tellier, "on the part of the King," promised that there should be no more difficulty if the states of Bourgogne would bring their subsidy to a sum which was indicated. "Upon which they agreed to what was demanded and presented themselves to account to the King."

Upon the next day, with a cynical contempt for the royal promise, "Her Majesty went to the Dijon Parliament to register the deeds."[74]

Mademoiselle had the curiosity to be present at the session. The first president did the only thing in his power. He courageously expressed his "regrets" and was praised by all those who heard him.

The Court hastily departed the following day, leaving Dijon and the entire province "in a certain consternation." Mademoiselle blamed only the manner of action. At the bottom of her heart, she had the belief of her times: that the sovereign owed only control to his people, and that there was no question of giving them happiness.

Some weeks after the incident at Lyons, the vicinity of the princ.i.p.ality of Dombes[75] gave her the desire to visit this place, which she had never seen. Dombes did not pay any impost to the King, and this fact alone sufficed to render it prosperous. Mademoiselle was scandalised at this prosperity. The peasants were well clothed, "they ate meat four times a day," and there were "no really poor people" in the country; "also," pursued Mademoiselle, "they, up to this time, have paid no duties, and it would perhaps be better that they should do so, for they are do-nothings, taking no interest in either work or trade."

The people had left everything and dressed themselves in their fine clothes to receive Mademoiselle. In order to thank them, Mademoiselle drew from them all the money she could. It is necessary to recollect, however, that in the eyes of the great, even those of the better sort, a peasant was hardly a man. It would hardly be worth while for us to be indignant at this att.i.tude. We now admit that the so-called superior races have the right to exploit those considered inferior, and thus at need destroy them. It was the habit of our fathers to treat a lower cla.s.s as to-day we treat a less advanced race; the sentiment is precisely the same.

Upon her return from Dombes, Mademoiselle found the Court again at Lyons. Every one was all eyes and ears for a spectacle which might derange the admitted ideas of kings. Marie Mancini was trying to make Louis XIV. marry her, and the attempt had not so absurd an air as might be imagined. The Savoie project had failed under painful conditions, which gave subject of thought to the courtiers. The King had conducted himself like an ill-bred man to the Princess Marguerite.

People were demanding whether the Spanish marriage was also going to fail, and with it the so greatly desired peace, because it pleased two lovers, one of whom ought not to have forgotten his kingly duties, to proclaim the sovereign rights of pa.s.sion. Anne of Austria became uneasy.

Mazarin, yielding to temptation, left the field to his niece, who "took possession" of the young King with looks and speech. She fascinated him, and he swore all that she wished. The contest was not an equal one between the pa.s.sionate Italian and the timid and somewhat unformed Louis XIV.

On his return from Lyons, Louis knelt down before his mother and Mazarin, supplicating them to permit him to marry the one he loved. He found them inflexible. The Queen realised that such a _mesalliance_ would cast disrepute on royalty. The Cardinal was torn by conflicting emotions, but in the end sent away his niece.

A second journey lasted more than a year. The Court set out on June 29, 1659, and pa.s.sed through Blois. It stopped with Gaston. We owe to the _Memoires_ of Mademoiselle a last glimpse of this Prince, formerly so brilliant, now become a lazy good-for-nothing in his provincial life, where nothing of Parisian fashion was found; neither toilettes nor cooking, nor household elegance, nor even Monsieur himself, who no longer knew how to receive, and was vexed that the King should kill his pheasants. He permitted it to be seen that he was put out, and this became so plain that every one was eager to depart, and there was a sudden scattering.

The eldest of his daughters by his last marriage, Marguerite d'Orleans, had a great reputation for beauty. Her parents had for a long time antic.i.p.ated seeing her Queen of France.