f whom people got rid by shutting them
up so strictly therein, died off immediately, and their swift decease
led to frightful statements of the cruelty shown by their families.
They perished, indeed, not by their excessive penances, but rather of
heart-sickness and despair. After the first heats of zeal were over,
the dreadful disease of the cloister, described by Cassieu as dating
from the fifteenth century, that crushing, sickening sadness which
came on of an afternoon--that tender listlessness which plunged them
into a state of unutterable exhaustion, speedily wore them away. A few
among them would turn as if raging mad, choking, as it were, with the
exceeding strength of their blood.

A nun who hoped to die decently, without bequeathing too large a share
of remorse to her kindred, was bound to live on about ten years, the
mean term of life in the cloister. She needed to be let gently down;
and men of sense and experience felt that her days could only be
prolonged by giving her something to do, by leaving her not quite
alone. St. Francis of Sales[87] founded the Visitandine order, whose
duty it was to visit the sick in pairs. Caesar of Bus and Romillion,
who had established the Teaching Priests in connection with the
Oratorians[88], afterwards ordained what might be called the Teaching
Sisters, the Ursulines, who taught under the direction of the said
priests. The whole thing was under the supervision of the bishops, and
had very little of the monastic about it: the nuns were not shut up
again in cloisters. The Visitandines went out; the Ursulines received,
at any rate, their pupils' kinsfolk. Both of them had connection with
the world under guardians of good repute. The result was a certain
mediocrity. Though the Oratorians and the Doctrinaries numbered among
them persons of high merit, the general character of the order was
uniformly moderate, commonplace; it took care never to soar too high.
Romillion, founder of the Ursulines, was an oldish man, a convert
from Protestantism, who had roamed everywhere, and come back again to
his starting point. He deemed his young Provencials wise enough
already, and counted on keeping his little flock on the slender
pasturage of an Oratorian faith, at once monotonous and rational. And
being such, it came in time to be utterly wearisome. One fine morning
all had disappeared.

[87] St. Francis of Sales, famous for his successful missions
among the Protestants, and Bishop