re allowed but three hours
to break up." "We are ready to obey, sir," said the mother-prioress;
"half an hour is more than sufficient for us to say our last good by, and
take with us a breviary, a Bible, and our regulations." And when he
asked her whither she meant to go, "Sir, the moment our community is
broken up and dispersed, it is indifferent to me in what place I may be
personally, since I hope to find God wherever I shall be." They got into
carriages, receiving one after another the farewell and blessing of the
mother-prioress, who was the last to depart, remaining firm to the end
there were two and twenty, the youngest fifty years old; they all died in
the convents to which they were taken. A seizure was at once made of all
papers and books left in the cells; Cardinal Noailles did not interfere.
M. de St. Cyran had depicted him by anticipation, when he said that the
weak were more to be feared than the wicked. He was complaining one day
of his differences with his bishops. "What can you expect, Monsignor?"
laughingly said a lady well disposed to the Jansenists; "God is just; it
is the stones of Port-Royal tumbling upon your head." The tombs were
destroyed; some coffins were carried to a distance, others left and
profaned; the plough passed over the ruins; the hatred of the enemies of
Port-Royal was satiated. A few of the faithful, preserving in their
hearts the ardent faith of M. de St. Cyran, narrowed, however, and
absorbed by obstinate resistance, a few theologians dying in exile, and
leaving in Holland a succession of bishops detached from the Roman
church,--this was all that remained of one of the noblest attempts ever
made by the human soul to rise, here below, above that which is permitted
by human nature. Virtues of the utmost force, Christianity zealously
pushed to its extremest limits, and the most invincible courage,
sustained the Jansenists in a conscientious struggle against spiritual
oppression; its life died out, little by little, amongst the dispersed
members. The Catholic church suffered therefrom in its innermost
sanctuary. "The Catholic religion would only be more neglected if there
were no more religionists," said Vauban, in his Memoire in favor of the
Protestants. It was the same as regarded the Jansenists. The Jesuits
and Louis XIV., in their ignorant passion, for unity and uniformity, had
not comprehended that great principle of healthy freedom and sound
justice of which the scie