PART I.
ON DIRECTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
RELIGIOUS REACTION IN 1600.—INFLUENCE OF THE JESUITS OVER WOMEN AND CHILDREN.—SAVOY; THE VAUDOIS; VIOLENCE AND MILDNESS.—ST. FRANCOIS DE SALES.
Everybody has seen in the Louvre Guide's graceful picture representing the Annunciation. The drawing is incorrect, the colouring false, and yet the effect is seducing. Do not expect to find in it the conscientiousness and austerity of the old schools; you would look also in vain for the vigorous and bold touch of the masters of the Renaissance. The sixteenth century has passed away, and everything assumes a softer character. The figure with which the painter has evidently taken the most pleasure is the angel, who, according to the refinement of that surfeited period, is a pretty-looking singing boy—a cherub of the Sacristy. He appears to be sixteen, and the Virgin from eighteen to twenty years of age. This Virgin—by no means ideal, but real, and the reality slightly adulterated—is no other than a young Italian maiden whom Guido copied at her own house, in her snug oratory, and at her convenient praying-desk (prie-Dieu), such as were then used by ladies.
If the painter was inspired by anything else, it was not by the Gospel, but rather by the devout novels of that period, or the fashionable sermons uttered by the Jesuits in their coquettish-looking churches. The Angelic Salutation, the Visitation, the Annunciation, were the darling subjects upon which they had, for a long time past, exhausted every imagination of seraphic gallantry. On beholding this picture by Guide, we fancy we are reading the Bernardino. The angel speaks Latin like a young learned clerk; the Virgin, like a boarding-school young lady, responds in soft Italian, "O alto signore," &c.
This pretty picture is important as a work characteristic of an already corrupt age; being an agreeable and delicate work, we are the more easily led to perceive its suspicious graces and equivocal charms.
Let us call to mind the softened forms which the devout reaction of this age—that of Henry IV.—then assumed. We are lost in astonishment when we hear, as it were on the morrow of the sixteenth century, after wars and massacres, the lisping of this still small voice. The terrible preachers of the Sixteen,—the monks who went armed with muskets in the processions of the League—are suddenly humanised, and become gentle. The reason is, they must lull to sleep those whom they have not been able to kill. The task, however, was not very difficult. Everybody was worn out by the excessive fatigue of religious warfare, and exhausted by a struggle that afforded no result, and from which no one came off victorious. Every one knew too well his party and his friends. In the evening of so long a march there was nobody, however good a walker he might be, who did not desire to rest: the indefatigable Henry of Beam, seeking repose like the rest, or wishing to lull them into tranquillity, afforded them the example, and gave himself up with a good grace into the hands of Father Cotton and Gabrielle.
Henry IV. was the grandfather of Louis XIV., and Cotton the great uncle of Father La Chaise—two royalties, two dynasties; one of kings, the other of Jesuit confessors. The history of the latter would be very interesting. These amiable fathers ruled throughout the whole of the century, by dint of absolving, pardoning, shutting their eyes, and remaining ignorant. They effected great results by the most trifling means, such as little capitulations, secret transactions, back-doors, and hidden staircases.
The Jesuits could plead that, being the constrained restorers of Papal authority, that is to say, physicians to a dead body, the means were not left to their choice. Dead beat in the world of ideas, where could they hope to resume their warfare, save in the field of intrigue, passion, and human weaknesses?