Monsieur du Maine gave a jump, as if he had trodden on a serpent, and went away without replying, not being better furnished with wit than he was with valour.
And the autumn leaves of Ninon’s life were ever fast falling around her. In her Château de Boulogne Madame de la Sablière passed away, and la Fontaine, finding life a sad thing without her, quickly followed her.
The Jesuit conception of religious faith, great as were its merits as originated in the mind of Loyola, theoretically, and in its code drawn up by his gifted successor, Lainez, had displayed its imperfections in its practical working, as time passed. This was more apparent in France even than elsewhere on the Continent; since there papal authority was tempered by regulations which afforded wider scope to thoughtful and devout minds ever occupied by the problem of final salvation and its attainment.
“Two such opposed foes encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will,”
says Friar Lawrence, musing over his “osier cage,” of weeds and flowers. There had been no time on Christian record that the question had not exercised theologians, and when it had burnt into fuller flame, fanned by the ardent soul of Luther, it spread through Europe and was called the Reformation; but the spirit of it had been ever present in the Church, and to endeavour to stamp out the Catholic faith had, in Luther’s earlier days at all events, formed no part of his desire. Yet scarcely had his doctrines formulated, than the fanaticism and extravagance of the ignorant and irresponsible seized upon them, and wrung them out of all size and proportion to fit their own wild lusts and inclinations, “stumbling on abuse,” striving to impose their levelling and socialistic views, and establish a community of goods, and all else in common—even their wives, though dispensing with clothing as a superfluity and a vanity displeasing in Heaven’s sight. So Anabaptism ran riot in Germany under John of Leyden and his disciples; while upon its heels Calvin’s gloomy and hopeless tenets kept men’s minds seething in doubt and speculation over grace and free-will, his narrow creed and private enmity bringing Servetus to hideous and prolonged torture and death at the stake, for heresy.
Stirred by the revolt of Protestantism on one side, and the claims of Rome on the other, supported by the Jesuits, speculation gained increased activity within the pale of the Catholic Church, animated further by the writings of Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, whose theories on grace and the efficacy of good works were grounded mainly on the viâ media, and it was the following of his opinions by the illustrious students gathered at Port Royal which created the school of Jansenists that included such names as Fénelon, Pascal, and so many others, headed by the Abbé Arnauld, whose sister Angélique was the Superior of the convent of Port Royal, and whose father, the learned advocate, had been so stern an opponent to the Jesuits as to have caused their expulsion from France in the reign of Henri IV. Readmitted later, they found as firm an opponent in his son, who, when still quite young, wrote a brilliant treatise against the danger of Jesuit casuistry.
The convent of Port Royal des Champs was situated on the road from Versailles to Chevreuse, and hard by, in a farmhouse called La Grange, “Messieurs de Port Royal,” as the Jansenist priests and students were called, made their home. They had for their friends the most distinguished men, scholars and poets of the time; Boileau, Pascal, Racine were of the band. The place itself is now scarcely more than a memory. It was then, wrote Madame de Sévigné, “Tout propre à inspirer le désir de faire son salut,” and hither came many a high-born man and woman of the world to find rest and peace. Now a broken tourelle or two, the dovecote and a solitary Gothic arch reflecting in a stagnant pool, are all that remain in the sequestered valley, of the famous Port Royal, which early in the next century was destroyed by royal decree, when its glory had departed, following the foreordained ruling of all mundane achievement; and the extravagance of the convulsionnaires and later followers of Jansenism was stamped out by the bull “Unigenitus” against heresy.
Arnauld’s heart was deposited at Port Royal at his death, with the remains of his mother and sisters. Louis XIV., as ever his wont had been to genius and intellect, had invited him “to employ his golden pen in defence of religion;” but that was before the great king came under the direction of Madame de Maintenon and Père la Chaise. But that Madame and her Jesuit confessor would long continue to regard the Port-Royalists with favour was not possible. Intolerance succeeded to patronage, and Fénelon was deported to Cambrai, sent afar from his friend, Madame Guyon, whose order of arrest and incarceration in the Château de Vincennes was issued very shortly after Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ interview with Madame Louis Quatorze in her Versailles sanctum.
In her dismay, Madame Guyon contrived to fly to Ninon, seeking protection; but it was of no avail. Without a moment’s delay, Ninon drove to Versailles, and sought an interview with Madame de Maintenon on behalf of Madame Guyon. The interview was not accorded. Nanon—the Nanon of Scarron days, but now “Mademoiselle Balbien”—was delegated to speak with her.—“Mademoiselle Balbien,” who gave Ninon to understand that she was to be addressed no longer as “tu” (“thou”), but as “vous” (“you”), that the question of Madame Guyon could not even be entered upon, and under threat of being herself again lodged in the Répenties she was bidden to depart.