owards each other, in
their austerities so severe, now in this great conjuncture offer up
Law on the altar of Mercy, by flinging their arms round the poor
threatened child, purifying her with kisses on the forehead, baptizing
her anew in tears.

If Provence be naturally wild, she is all the more wonderful in these
wild moments of generosity and real greatness. Something of this was
later seen in the earliest triumphs of Mirabeau, when he had a million
of men gathered round him at Marseilles. But here already was a great
revolutionary scene, a vast uprising against the stupid Government of
the day, and Fleury's pets the Jesuits: a unanimous uprising in behalf
of humanity, of compassion, in defence of a woman, a very child, thus
barbarously offered up. The Jesuits fancied that among their own
rabble, among their clients and their beggars, they might array a kind
of popular force, armed with handbells and staves to beat back the
party of Cadiere. This latter, however, included almost everyone.
Marseilles rose up as one man to bear in triumph the son of the
Advocate Chaudon. Toulon went so far for the sake of her poor
townswoman, as to think of burning the Jesuit college.

The most touching of all these tokens in Cadiere's favour, reached
her from Ollioules. A simple boarder, Mdlle. Agnes, for all her
youthful shyness, followed the impulse of her own heart, threw herself
into the press of pamphlets, and published a defence of Cadiere.

So widespread and deep a movement had its effect on the Parliament
itself. The foes of the Jesuits raised their heads, took courage to
defy the threats of those above, the influence of the Jesuits, and the
bolts that Fleury might hurl upon them from Versailles.[118]

[118] There is a laughable tale which expresses the state of
Parliament with singular nicety. The Recorder was reading his
comments on the trial, on the share the Devil might have had
therein, when a loud noise was heard. A black man fell down
the chimney. In their fright they all ran away, save the
Recorder only, who, being entangled in his robe, could not
move. The man made some excuse. It was simply a chimneysweep
who had mistaken his chimney.

The very friends of Girard, seeing their numbers fall off, their
phalanx grow thin, were eager for the sentence. It was pronounced on
the 11th October, 1731.

In sight of the popular feeling, no one dared to follow up the savage
sentence of the be