In the last twenty-five years of Angélique's life her religious views underwent a change, and her confessor, St. Cyran, who shared them, was imprisoned, on a charge of heresy, at Vincennes. Even as a young girl she had left the chapel at Port Royal bare of ornaments, and later sold the silver candlesticks which were a gift to the altar of Port Royal de Paris, in order to bestow the money on the poor. Everyone looked up to her, but by-and-by it began to be whispered that she was 'a dangerous person,' who thought that the Church needed reforming as well as the convents, and had adopted the opinions of one Jansen, a Swiss, who wished to go back to the faith of early times, when St. Augustine was bishop.
In 1654 she heard through one of her nephews that in consequence of some of the recluses having resisted a decree of the pope condemning a book of Jansen's, a resistance supposed to have been inspired by the abbess herself, it was reported that she was either to be sent to the Bastille or imprisoned in some convent. She did not take any notice, and neither threat was fulfilled; but the hatred which the order of the Jesuits bore to the 'Jansenists,' as their opponents were called, never rested, and later a command came for the recluses to be dispersed, and the leaders were forced to go into hiding. Then her schoolgirls were sent to their homes, 'la belle Hamilton,' a Scotch girl, among them; and after them went the candidates, or those who wished to take the veil. All these blows came thick and fast, and Angélique, with health broken from the incessant labours of over fifty years, was attacked by dropsy.
The nuns were in despair, and hung about her night and day, hoping that she might let fall some words which they might cherish almost as divine commands; but Angélique, who, unlike her sister Agnes, had all her life been very impatient of sentimentality, detected this at once, and took care 'neither to say nor do any thing remarkable.' 'They are too fond of me,' she once said, 'and I am afraid they will invent all sorts of silly tales about me.' And in order to put a stop as far as she could to all the show and parade which she knew her nuns would rejoice in, as she felt that her end was drawing near she gave them her last order:
'Bury me in the churchyard, and do not let there be any nonsense after my death.'
GORDON
Many years hence, when the children of to-day are growing old men and women, they will perhaps look back over their lives, as I am doing now, and ask themselves questions about the people they have known or have heard of. 'Who,' they will say, 'was the person I should have gone to at once if I needed help?' 'Who was the man whose talk made me forget everything, till I felt as if I could listen to him for ever?' 'What woman was the most beautiful, or the most charming?' and they will turn over the chapters in the Book of Long Ago and give the answers to themselves, or to the boys and girls who are listening for their reply. Well, if the question were put throughout England at this moment, 'What man has kindled the greatest and most undying enthusiasm during your life?' the answer would be given with one voice:
'Gordon.'