“I took the veil; but now that I am twenty years of age, and my constitution formed, I daily feel that I am not made for this state, and think I want something; and that something, or I am much mistaken, is a husband.
“My talking continually of matrimony sets the community a-madding; the sister of the Holy Ghost tells me, that I am Jesus Christ’s spouse; but, for my part, I feel myself much inclined to a second marriage with a man.
“On a young girl’s coming into a convent, half a dozen wheedlers get about her, and never leave her till they have persuaded her to take the veil. Children are buried every day in monasteries, whilst their early age does not admit of any solid reflections on the vows they are drawn to make.
“Let me intreat you, Madam, to persuade the King to reform this abuse; it is a reformation which both religion and the prosperity of the state call for. The sacrificing so many victims to the avarice of parents, is a great loss of people to the state, and the kingdom of heaven is not the fuller. God requires voluntary sacrifices, and these are the fruit of reflection. It is surprising, that the laws, in settling the age for our sex’s passing a civil contract, should forget the age for making vows: is reason less necessary for contracting with God, than with men? This I submit to yours and his Majesty’s reflections: in the mean time, give me leave to be,
Madam,
Your most humble servant,
Sister Joseph.”
The King thought that sister Jesus’s heart, and sister Holy Ghost, had done wrong in drawing sister Joseph into the state of celibacy, as with such happy dispositions for marriage, she bid fair to have been a fruitful mother, and thus have benefited the state.
To suppress the aforesaid abuse, his Majesty issued an arret, forbidding all religious communities to admit a novice under twenty-four years of age and a day.
Other bodies, besides the parliament, continued setting forth to the court the impossibility the people were under of paying the twentieth denier. The states of Languedoc, with a peremptory kind of humility, represented that it was a load the province could by no means bear: the bishops, who usually employ their pens only in mandates, now wrote memorials on the public distress. The King ordered them not to meddle with money matters, and dissolved the assembly. The Duke de Richelieu, who was then at Montpellier, seconded the court’s injunctions, and restrained the bishops pens as much as he could.
On being thus debarred from writing or meeting, they appointed an extraordinary deputation to lay before the King the condition of the kingdom. They were admitted to audience; they made their speech, returned home, and the twentieth denier was levied.
A minister of state used frequently to say, that these representations only increased the public charges. Were the provinces to pay at first, they would save themselves the no small expences of journies, correspondencies, and deputations, not to mention monopolies, which, on these occasions, are unavoidable.