ions to the pope; Clement XI. launched the bull _Unigenitus,_
condemning a hundred and one propositions extracted from the _Reflexions
morales_. Eight prelates, with Cardinal de Noailles at their head,
protested against the bull; it was, nevertheless, enregistered at the
Parliament, but not without difficulty. The archbishop still held out,
supported by the greater part of the religious orders and the majority of
the doctors of Sorbonne. The king's confessor, Letellier, pressed him to
prosecute the cardinal and get him deposed by a national council; the
affair dragged its slow length along at Rome; the archbishop had
suspended from the sacred functions all the Jesuits of his diocese; the
struggle had commenced under the name of Jansenism against the whole
Gallican church. The king was about to bring the matter before his bed
of justice, when he fell ill. He saw no more of Cardinal de Noailles,
and this rupture vexed him. "I am sorry to leave the affairs of the
church in the state in which they are," he said to his councillors. "I
am perfectly ignorant in the matter; you know, and I call you to witness,
that I have done nothing therein but what you wanted, and that I have
done all you wanted. It is you who will answer before God for all that
has been done, whether too much or too little. I charge you with it
before Him, and I have a clear conscience. I am but a know-nothing who
have left myself to your guidance." An awful appeal from a dying king to
the guides of his conscience. He had dispeopled his kingdom, reduced to
exile, despair, or falsehood fifteen hundred thousand of his subjects,
but the memory of the persecutions inflicted upon the Protestants did not
trouble him; they were for him rather a pledge of his salvation and of
his acceptance before God. He was thinking of the Catholic church, the
holy priests exiled or imprisoned, the nuns driven from their convent,
the division among the bishops, the scandal amongst the faithful. The
great burden of absolute power was evident to his eyes; he sought to let
it fall back upon the shoulders of those who had enticed him or urged him
upon that fatal path. A vain attempt in the eyes of men, whatever may be
the judgment of God's sovereign mercy. History has left weighing upon
Louis XIV. the crushing weight of the religious persecutions ordered
under his reign.

CHAPTER XLVIII.----LOUIS XIV., LITERATURE AND ART.

It has been said in this History that L