auld,
entered his room on the 31st of October, 1668. They chatted a while
without any appearance of impatience on the part of M. de Saci. "You are
free," said his friends at last, who had wanted to prove him; "and they
showed him the king's order, which he read," says Abbe Arnauld, "without
any change of countenance, and as little affected by joy as he had been a
moment before by the longinquity of his release."

He lived fifteen years longer, occupied, during the interval of rest
which the Peace of the Church restored to Port-Royal, in directing and
fortifying souls. He published, one after another, the volumes of his
translation of the Bible, with expositions (_eclaircissements_) which had
been required by the examiners. In 1679 the renewal of the king's
severities compelled him to retire completely to Pomponne. On the 3d of
January, 1684, at seventy-one years of age, he felt ill and went to bed;
he died next day, without being taken by surprise, as regarded either his
affairs or his soul, by so speedy an end. "O blessed flames of
purgatory!" he said, as he breathed his last. He had requested to be
buried at Port-Royal des Champs; he was borne thither at night; the cold
was intense, and the roads were covered with snow; the carriages were
escorted by men carrying torches. The nuns looked a moment upon the face
of the saintly director, whom they had not seen for so many years; and
then he was lowered into his grave. "Needs hide in earth what is but
earth," said Mother Angelica de St. Jean, in deep accents and a lowly
voice, "and return to nothingness what in itself is but nothing." She
was, nevertheless, heart-broken, and tarried only for this pious duty to
pass away in her turn. "It is time to give up my veil to him from whom I
received it," said she. A fortnight after the death of M. de Saci, she
expired at Port-Royal, just preceding to 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