mysticism to great lengths; and
first among them was Sister Remusat, who passed for a saint.

[107] The great plague of 1720, which carried off 60,000
people about Marseilles. Belzunce is the "Marseilles' good
bishop" of Pope's line--TRANS.

[108] See "The Proceedings in the Affair of Father Girard and
La Cadiere," Aix, 1733.

In spite, or perhaps by reason, of this success, the Jesuits took
Girard away from Marseilles: they wanted to employ him in raising
anew their house at Toulon. Colbert's splendid institution, the
Seminary for Naval Chaplains, had been entrusted to the Jesuits, with
the view of cleansing the young chaplains from the influence of the
Lazarists, who ruled them almost everywhere. But the two Jesuits
placed in charge were men of small capacity. One was a fool; the
other, Sabatier, remarkable, in spite of his age, for heat of temper.
With all the insolence of our old navy he never kept himself under the
least control. In Toulon he was reproached, not for having a mistress,
nor yet a married woman, but for intriguing in a way so insolent and
outrageous as to drive the husband wild. He sought to keep the husband
specially alive to his own shame, to make him wince with every kind of
pang. Matters were pushed so far that at last the husband died
outright.

Still greater was the scandal caused by the Jesuits' rivals, the
Observantines, who, having spiritual charge of a sisterhood at
Ollioules, made mistresses openly of the nuns, and, not content with
this, dared even to seduce the little boarders. One Aubany, the Father
Guardian, violated a girl of thirteen; when her parents pursued him,
he found shelter at Marseilles.

As Director of the Seminary for Chaplains, Girard began, through his
seeming sternness and his real dexterity, to win for the Jesuits an
ascendant over monks thus compromised, and over parish-priests of very
vulgar manners and scanty learning.

In those Southern regions, where the men are abrupt, not seldom
uncouth of speech and appearance, the women have a lively relish for
the gentle gravity of the men of the North: they feel thankful to them
for speaking a language at once aristocratic, official, and French.

When Girard reached Toulon, he must already have gained full knowledge
of the ground before him. Already had he won over a certain Guiol, who
sometimes came to Marseilles, where she had a daughter, a Carmelite
nun. This Guiol, wife of a small carpenter, t