the tomb her brother M. de Luzancy, who breathed his last at Pomponne, where he had lived with M. de Saci.  “I confess,” said the inconsolable Fontaine, “that when I saw this brother and sister stricken with death by that of M. de Saci, I blushed—­ I who thought I had always loved him—­not to follow him like them; and I became, consequently, exasperated with myself for loving so little in comparison with those persons, whose love had been strong as death.”  The human heart avenges itself for the tortures men pretentiously inflict upon it:  the disciples of St. Cyran thought to stifle in their souls all earthly affections, and they died of grief on losing those they loved.  “Their life ebbed away in those depths of tears,” as M. Vinet has said.

[Illustration:  Abbey of Port-Royal——­580]

The great Port-Royal was dead with M. de Saci and Mother Angelica de St. Jean, faithful and modest imitators of their illustrious predecessors.  The austere virtue and the pious severance from the world existed still in the house in the Fields, under the direction of Duguet; the persecution too continued, persistent and noiseless; the king had given the direction of his conscience to the Jesuits; from Father La Chaise, moderate and prudent, he had passed to Father Letellier, violent and perfidious; furthermore, the long persistence of the Jansenists in their obstinacy, their freedom of thought which infringed the unity so dear to Louis XIV., displeased the monarch, absolute even in his hour of humiliation and defeat.  The property of Port-Royal was seized, and Cardinal de Noailles, well disposed at bottom towards the Jansenists, but so feeble in character that determination, disgusted him as if it were a personal insult, ended by once more forbidding the nuns the sacraments; the house in the Fields was surpressed, and its title merged in that of Port-Royal in Paris, for some time past replenished with submissive nuns.  Madame de Chateau-Renaud, “the new abbess, went to take possession; the daughters of Mother Angelica protested, but without violence, as she would have done in their place.”  On the 29th of October, 1709, after prime, Father Letellier having told the king that Madame de Chateau-Renaud dared not to go to Port-Royal des Champs, being convinced that those headstrong, disobedient, and rebellious daughters would laugh at the king’s decree, and that, unless his Majesty would be pleased to give precise orders to disperse them, it would never be possible to carry it out, the king, being pressed in this way, sent his orders to M. d’Argenson, lieutenant of police.”

[Illustration:  Reading the Decree 581]