THE ARRIVAL

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govern, instead of the sister who had been her Mother in Religion, as her sister drove away, went back into the Chapel, and flinging herself before the altar, sobbed out in broken accents, "Ecce nos relinquimus omnia, omnia, omnia." It is the cry of many who are called to the Way of Sorrow, but no question of "what shall we have?" followed.

And the brave Angélique, with the simple obedience of a soldier called to the front, had risen to the occasion, and had left her peaceful, happy Convent to go to face every sort of disagreeable, deprivation of spiritual help, probable danger. She had no illusions on the subject; she warned her companions that they might lose health and life itself in the weary battle.

They seem to have left Port Royal in much the same spirit in which we see our heroic brothers and sisters set forth for Central Africa or China, thank God, in this unromantic and so-called faithless age.

These anticipations were justified. Neither Isabel Agnès de Château-neuf nor Marie Claire was ever well again. They seem to have suffered (to complete the likeness to modern days) from perpetual attacks of malarial fever. Isabel Agnès de Château-neuf died in 1621, at the early age of twenty-eight, having completely lost her health; and Marie Claire, who survived her sixteen years, told her niece, the famous Angélique de St Jean (daughter of M. d'Andilly), that from the time she had entered Maubuisson she had never known a day's freedom from feverish attacks.

The third of the Port Royalists who accompanied Mère Angélique was the "Mère de la Croix," one of the older nuns whom Angélique had "reformed." They spent a few days in Paris with the Arnauld family, while M. de Citeaux prepared the nuns at Maubuisson, and then set out.

When the little party arrived at Maubuisson, one of the Offices of the Day was being sung, and as one of the "relations" says, the way in which the duty was discharged was an excellent specimen for the Mother of what she might expect. The discordant noise was

such that it seemed to be the sound of people who were quarrelling, rather than that of pious voices chanting holy words.

M. de Citeaux entered, presented Angélique, read some regulations, for which she had asked, to aid her in her work of reform, then convoked a Chapter, and installed her with plenary authority to govern. Angélique's work now began. She showed every

quality which was to be desired in a person armed with authority, inspired with a keen sense of what was fitting and right, and yet filled with the love which "beareth all things, endureth all things," patient with the sinful, strict and unsparing with herself; and holding up to those who were with her the loftiest ideal of courage, of love, of self-surrender. From those who knew the love of Christ, who were in very deed His, she expected everything; from those who had to be converted to a sense of sin, she expected nothing. Certainly this is the teaching of the school of Christ.

Angélique began her hard task by trying all the forces of love. She knew many of the nuns, she showed affection for them, she tried her best to please them; and a touching story is told how "la Mère devoted herself with unfailing charity and pity to the care of a poor blind old nun, and did all she could to amuse and comfort her.

By degrees the extreme terror which the arrival of the Port Royalists had excited, diminished, and the sweetness and religious fervour of the little band won the hearts of the Maubuisson nuns. The Port Royalists, who were all still young, were in their purity, their self-surrender, like beings from another sphere.

There were at this time some twenty-two nuns at Maubuisson, most of whom had been professed without any inclination for the Religious Life, and who were as fully unfitted for it as complete ignorance of the first elements of Christian knowledge and the total absence of the most ordinary moral standard in their Abbess could make them. They could not, it is said,

ANGÉLIQUE'S REFORMS

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even make their confessions, or recite the Office properly. They spent their time in amusing themselves as best they could, and it was a favourite expedition" in the summer to go out of the precincts of Maubuisson, and meet the young monks from the neighbouring Abbey of Pontoise; these remarkable specimens of conventual life frequently danced together on the grass. Poor people-so badly treated by a world which had forced them into a life for which they were as unfitted as they would probably have been for the holy estate of marriage. One cannot easily believe that the nun who quite spoiled her life would have made an exemplary wife and mother. There is something grimly fantastic in the quiet account in the Histoire de Port Royal, from which all this is quoted.

How far removed this sort of standard was from the lofty, exalted ideals of Port Royal! Mère Angélique must have felt that the place was a veritable Augean stable.

First of all, she got rid of the care of administering the estate of Maubuisson by engaging an agent, or steward, who was, however, to act under her orders. Then came internal reforms. Bit by bit, little by little, the Convent was restored to outward order and respectability, and the strictly cloistered life was revived.

But Angélique saw with her usual clear-sightedness that nothing could be done with the elderly nuns, that new wine was needed to burst the ancient wine-skin full of prejudice, of evil habits, of sloth. She obtained permission from the Superior (M. de Citeaux), and possibly also from the Court, to receive forty novices, without any restriction as to dowry, with a single condition-vocation. Maubuisson was supposed to have on the foundation a hundred nuns; at this time there were only sixteen Professed Sisters.

Very soon numbers of would-be postulants presented themselves; not a few were brought by parents who saw an easy way of disposing of superfluous daughters, since this wonderful and eccentric Abbess exacted no dowry. "God gave me from the beginning an intense

с

aversion to haggling about maidens." Angélique once said that the Capuchin Father to whom she owed those first stirrings, told her that it was simony to exact a dowry from a postulant. But she exacted something as difficult to procure on demand, nay, more difficult, than money-she asked for the marks of a true and inward call.

The young novices at Maubuisson were watched and taught and tended with the care one would expect. The Sister Isabelle Agnès, a girl of nineteen, was made Mistress of the Novices, who were kept entirely apart from the original Sisters. Mère Angélique with the other Port Royalists shared their refectory, and practically lived with them. Mère Angélique had set her heart on her novices learning Plain Song thoroughly, so that in time the reproach of the disgracefully rendered Offices might be rolled away from the Convent. Many years were spent in this; but work of all sorts, religious training in silence and recollection, went forward also. Mère Angélique shirked no hardship herself; no bit of housework was too laborious, too menial for her. As we should expect, she chose the worst and unhealthiest room for her own. Mère Angélique set every law of health at defiance, but the seventeenth century was not remarkable for love of fresh air or of frequent ablutions. Little by little the rule of absolute silence was established; work was done with little or no noise. The novices' expenses were cut down to the last degree of economy, and their food was barely sufficient. But the older nuns were treated with the same unwearying kindness. Angélique realised that conversion must precede the life of self-denial, that the outward rule can only be sanctified by the inner life— "Christ dwelling in us and we in Him."

The whole period of her sojourn at Maubuisson was for Angélique one of intense fervour. She denied herself every comfort, chose the least comfortable cell, undertook every sort of menial work, waited on the sick, and also attended to the poor outside Maubuisson.

And now a new epoch-so to speak-began in 1619.

ST FRANÇOIS DE SÂLES

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Angélique was to meet a spiritual adviser who could help, advise, "comfort" as no preceding confessor or director had been able to do. This was the great St François de Sâles. And a short digression is necessary in order that we may fully understand what manner of man St François was. It is needless here to give the details of his life. Of noble birth, born in 1567 in Savoy, called in 1602 to be Bishop of Geneva, François de Sâles lived, more or less perpetually, in the great world. Known equally at the Court of Savoy and that of Paris, through all these years he was in the world, never of it. Those who would study his life and his works can do so. What we wish to notice is the peculiar character of St François' teaching.

Those who have read Sainte Beuve's History of Port Royal will remember his summing up of St François' character: "Son âme, c'était une sphère complète sous une seule étoile." That is to say, his character was extraordinarily balanced. With the most profound sense of the love of God, so great indeed, that love is the virtue, the gift we most associate with his name, yet he had the compensating grace of a strong sense of justice, of the blackness of sin, of the need of self-discipline. He was, as we have seen, the director par excellence of women, and yet all his relations with them were marked by that sanctified common sense which is so lamentably absent in many good people.

There was in St François de Sâles a remarkable union of that love for God, of the temper which characterises-shall we say St John?-of contemplation, of charity for others, with a clear-sighted judgment of men and of affairs.

His life was one of incessant work, of "affairs," of delicate missions. From these, he returned to his conferences with his spiritual children, especially to his beloved Mme. de Chantal, the first Superior of the Order of the Visitation, or to his writings, or his letters. "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength,' he seems to be ever saying. Yet he was not in the