FATHER ANDRE BOULANGER.
France has produced several entertaining preachers, among whom was André Boulanger, better known as "little Father André," who died about the middle of the seventeenth century. His character has been variously drawn. He is by some represented as a buffoon in the pulpit; but others more judiciously observe, that he only indulged his natural genius, and uttered humorous and lively things to keep the attention of his audience awake. "He told many a bold truth," says the author of Guerre des Auteurs, Anciens et Modernes, "that sent bishops to their dioceses, and made many a coquette blush. He possessed the art of biting while he smiled; and more ably combated vice by his ingenious satire, than by those vague apostrophes which no one takes to himself. While others were straining their minds to catch at sublime thoughts which no one understood, he lowered his talents to the most humble situations, and to the minutest things." In fact, Father André seems to have been a sort of seventeenth century Spurgeon, as two samples may serve to show. In one of his sermons he compared the four doctors of the Latin Church to the four kings of cards. "St. Augustine," said he, "is the King of Hearts, for his great charity; St. Ambrose is the King of Clubs (treflé), by the flowers of his eloquence; St. Gregory is the King of Diamonds, for his strict regularity; and St. Jerome is the King of Spades (pique), for his piquant style." The Duke of Orleans once dared Father André to employ any ridiculous expression about him. This, however, the good father did, very adroitly. He addressed the Duke thus: "Foin de vous, Monseigneur; foin de moi; foin de tous les auditeurs." He saved himself from the consequences of his jest, by taking for his text the seventh verse of the tenth chapter of Isaiah, where it is said, "All the people are grass"—Foin in French signifying hay, and being also an interjection, "Fie upon!"