Chapter 7 No.7

Woman in Religion

The entire religious agitation of the seventeenth century was due to women. Port-Royal was the centre from which issued all contention-the centre where all subjects were discussed, where the most important books were written or inspired, where the genius of that great century centred; and it was to Port-Royal that the greatest women of France went, either to find repose for their souls or to visit the noble members of their sex who had consecrated their lives to God-Mère Angélique, Jacqueline Pascal. Never in the history of the world had a religious sect or party gathered within its fold such an array of great minds, such a number of fearless and determined heroines and esprits d'élite. A short account of this famous convent must precede any story of its members.

The original convent, Port-Royal des Champs, near Versailles, was founded as early as 1204, by Mathieu of Montmorency and his wife, for the Cistercian nuns who had the privileges of electing their abbess and of receiving into their community ladies who, tired of the social world, wished to retire to a religious asylum, without, however, being bound by any religious vows. Later on, the sisters were permitted to receive, also, young ladies of the nobility.

These privileges were used to such advantage that the institution acquired great wealth; and through its boarders, some of whom belonged to the most important families of France, it became influential to an almost incalculable degree. For four centuries this convent had been developing liberal tendencies and gradually falling away from its primitive austerity, when, in 1605, Sister Angélique Arnauld became abbess and undertook a thorough reform. So great was her success in this direction that, after having effected similar changes at the Convent of Maubuisson and then returned to Port-Royal des Champs, the latter became so crowded that new and more commodious quarters had to be obtained.

The immense and beautiful H?tel de Cluny, at Paris, was procured, and a portion of the community moved thither, establishing an institution which became the best known and most popular of those French convents which were patronized by women of distinction. The old abbey buildings near Versailles were later occupied by a community of learned and pious men who were, for the most part, pupils of the celebrated Abbé of Saint-Cyran, who, with Jansenius, was living at Paris at the time that Mère Angélique was perfecting her reforms; she, attracted by the ascetic life led by the abbé, fell under his influence, and the whole Arnauld family, numbering about thirty, followed her example.

Soon "the nuns at Paris, with their numerous and powerful connections, and the recluses at Port-Royal des Champs, together with their pupils and the noble or wealthy families to which the latter belonged, were imbued with the new doctrines of which they became apostles." The primary aim was to live up to a common ideal of Christian perfection, and to react against the general corruption by establishing thoroughly moral schools and publishing works denouncing, in strong terms, the glaring errors of the time, the source of which was considered, by both the Abbé of Saint-Cyran and Jansenius, to lie in the Jesuit Colleges and their theology. Thus was evolved a system of education in every way antagonistic to that of the Jesuits.

At this time the convent at Paris became so crowded that Mère Angélique withdrew to the abbey near Versailles, the occupants of which retired to a neighboring farm, Les Granges; there was opened a seminary for females, which soon attracted the daughters of the nobility. An astounding literary and agricultural activity resulted, both at the abode of the recluses and at the seminary: by the recluses were written the famous Greek and Latin grammars, and by the nuns, the famous Memoirs of the History of Port-Royal and the Image of the Perfect and Imperfect Sister; a model farm was cultivated, and here the peasants were taught improved methods of tillage. During the time of the civil wars the convent became a resort where charity and hospitality were extended to the poor peasants.

"The mode of life at Port-Royal was distinguished for austerity. The inmates rose at three o'clock in the morning, and, after the common prayer, kissed the ground as a sign of their self-humiliation before God. Then, kneeling, they read a chapter from the Gospels and one from the Epistles, concluding with another prayer. Two hours in the morning and a like number in the afternoon were devoted to manual labor in the gardens adjoining the convent; they observed, with great strictness, the season of Lent." Their theories and practices, and especially their sympathy with Jansenius, whose work Mars Gallicus attacked the French government and people, aroused the suspicions of Richelieu. When in 1640 the Port-Royalists openly and enthusiastically received the famous work, Augustinus, of Jansenius, the government became the declared opponent of the convent. Saint-Cyran had been imprisoned in 1638, and not until after the death of Richelieu, in 1642, was he liberated. After the appearance, in 1643, of Arnauld's De la Fréquente Communion, in which he attacked the Jesuits for admitting the people to the Lord's Supper without due preparation, two parties formed-the Jesuits, supported by the Sorbonne and the government, and the Port-Royalists, supported by Parliament and illustrious persons, such as Mme. de Longueville.

In 1644, the nuns were dispersed by order of Louis XIV., against whose despotic caprices two Jansenist bishops had fought in support of the rights of the pope. The Paris convent remained closed until 1669, when it and the one at Chevreuse, near Versailles were made independent of each other, a proceeding which resulted in the two institutions becoming opponents. In 1708 the Convent of Port-Royal des Champs was suppressed, and, a year later, the beautiful and once prosperous community was destroyed, the buildings being levelled to the ground. In 1780 the Paris convent was abolished; five years later the structure was converted into a hospital, and in 1814 it became the lying-in asylum of La Maternité.

In those two convents, which were practically one, was fomented and developed the entire religious movement of the seventeenth century, to which period belong the general study and development of theology, metaphysics, and morality. Such great, good, and brilliant women as the Countess of Maure, Mlle. de Vandy, Anne de Rohan, Mme. de Brégy, Mme. de Hautefort, Mme. de Longueville, Mme. de Sévigné, Mme. de La Fayette, and Mme. de Sablé were inmates of Port-Royal, or its friends and constant visitors.

Port-Royal may have been the cause of the civil war waged by the Frondists against the government. It did bring on the struggle between the Jesuits, who were all-powerful in the Church, and the Jansenists. The latter denied the doctrine of free will, and taught the absolutism of religion, the "terrible God," the powerlessness of kings and princes before God-a doctrine which brought down upon them the wrath of Louis XIV., for whom their notion of virtue was too severe, their use of the Gospel too excessive, and their Christianity impossible.

In its purest form, Port-Royalism was a return to the sanctity of the primitive church-an attempt at the use, in French, of the whole body of Scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers; it aimed to maintain a vigorous religious reaction in the shape of a reform, and that reform was vigorously opposed by the Catholic Church.

One family that is associated with Port-Royal gave to its cause no less than six sisters; the latter all belonged to the Convent of Port-Royal and were attached to the Jansenist party; of them, the Archbishop of Paris said that they were "as pure as angels, but as proud as devils." They were related to the one great Arnauld family, of which Antoine and his three sons-Robert, Henri, and the younger Antoine, called "the great Antoine"-were illustrious champions of Port-Royal.

Marie Jacqueline Angélique, the oldest among the three abbesses, was born in 1591, and, at the early age of fourteen, was made abbess of Port-Royal des Champs; it was she who, after having instituted successful reforms at Port-Royal, was sent to reform the system of the Abbey of Maubuisson, thus initiating the important movement which later involved almost all France. She became convinced that she had not been lawfully elected abbess and resigned, securing, however, a provision which made the election of abbesses a triennial event. To her belongs the honor of having made Port-Royal anew. She was a woman capable of every sacrifice,-a wonderful type in which were blended candor, pride, and submission,-and she exhibited indomitable strength of will and earnest zeal for her cause.

Her sister, Agnes, but three years younger than Marie, also entered the convent, and, at the age of fifteen, was made mistress of the novices; during the absence of her sister, at Maubuisson, she was at the head of the convent; from that time, she governed Port-Royal alternately with her sister, for twenty-seven years. Her work, The Secret Chapter of the Sacrament, was suppressed at Rome, but without bringing formal censure upon her.

The last of those great abbesses was Mère Angélique, who lived through the most troublous and critical times of Port-Royal (1624 to 1684). At the age of twenty she became a nun, having been reared in the convent by her aunt, Marie, who was the most perfect disciple of Saint-Cyran. Mère Angélique was especially conspicuous for her obstinacy, and when the nuns were forced to accept the formulary of Pope Alexander VI., she, alone, was excepted, because of that well known characteristic. Upon the reopening of Port-Royal (in 1689), her powerful protectress, Mme. de Longueville, died and the persecutions were renewed; Mère Angélique endeavored to avert the storm, but all in vain; amidst her efforts, she collapsed. She was also a writer, her Memoirs of the History of Port Royal being the most valuable history of that institution.

Thus, about those three women is formed the religious movement which involved both the development of religious liberty, free will, and morality, and of the philosophical literature of the century-a century which boasts such writers and theologians as Nicole, Pascal, Racine, etc.

The mission of Port-Royal seems to have been preparation of souls for the struggles of life, teaching how to resist oppression or to bear it with courage, and how, for a righteous cause, to brave everything, not only the persecutions of power-violence, prison, exile,-but the ruses of hypocrisy and the calumny of opposing opinion. The Port-Royalist nun combated and taught how to combat; she lacked humility, but possessed an abundance of courage which often bordered upon passion.

One of the most pathetic and striking illustrations of the fervent devotion which was a characteristic product of Port-Royal, is supplied by Jacqueline Pascal, sister of the great Blaise Pascal. Young, spirituelle, very much sought after and the idol of brilliant companions, at the age of twenty-six she abandoned the world to devote herself to God. At thirty-six years of age she died of sorrow and remorse for having signed an equivocal formulary of Pope Alexander VI., "through pure deference to the authority of her superiors." The papal decision concerning Jansenius's book, already mentioned, was drawn up in a formula "turned with some skill, and in such a way that subscription did not bind the conscience; however, the nuns of Port-Royal refused to sign." Jacqueline Pascal wrote:

"That which hinders us, what hinders all the ecclesiastics who recognize the truth from replying when the formulary is presented to them to subscribe is: I know the respect I owe the bishops, but my conscience does not permit me to subscribe that a thing is in a book in which I have not seen it-and after that, wait for what will happen. What have we to fear? Banishment and dispersion for the nuns, seizure of temporalities, imprisonment, and death if you will; but is not that our glory and should it not be our joy? Let us either renounce the Gospel or faithfully follow the maxims of that Gospel and deem ourselves happy to suffer somewhat for righteousness' sake. I know that it is not for daughters to defend the truth, though, unfortunately, one might say that since the bishops have the courage of daughters, the daughters must have the courage of bishops; but, if it is not for us to defend the truth, it is for us to die for the truth and to suffer everything rather than abandon it."

She subscribed, "divided between her instinctive repugnance and her desire to show herself an humble daughter of the Catholic Church." She said: "It is all we can concede; for the rest, come what may,-poverty, dispersion, imprisonment, death,-all those seem to me nothing in comparison with the anguish in which I should pass the remainder of my life, if I had been wretch enough to make a covenant with death on the occasion of so excellent an opportunity for proving to God the sincerity of the vows of fidelity which our lips have pronounced." According to Mme. Périer, the health of the writer of the above epistle was so undermined by the shock which all that commotion had caused her, that she became dangerously ill, dying soon after. Thus was sacrificed the first victim of the formulary.

Cousin says that few women of the seventeenth century were as brilliantly endowed as Jacqueline Pascal; possessing the finesse, energy, and sobriety of her brother, she was capable of the most serious work, and yet knew perfectly how to lead in a social circle. Also, she was most happily gifted with a talent for poetry, in relation to which her reputation was everywhere recognized; at the convent, she consulted her superiors as to the advisability of continuing her verse making; and upon being told that such occupation was not a means of winning the grace of Jesus Christ, she abandoned it.

Cousin maintained that the avowed principle of the Port-Royalists was the withdrawal from all worldly pleasure and attachment. "'Marriage is a homicide; absolute renunciation is the true régime of a Christian.' Jacqueline Pascal is an exaggeration of Port-Royal, and Port-Royal is an exaggeration of the religious spirit of the seventeenth century. Man is too little considered; all movement of the physical world comes from God; all our acts and thoughts, except those of crime and error, come from and belong to Him. Nothing is our own; there is no free will; will and reason have no power. The theory of grace is the source of all truth, virtue, and merit-and for this doctrine Jacqueline Pascal gives up her life."

Among the great spirits of Port-Royal, the women especially were strong in their convictions and high in their ideals. They naturally followed the ideas of man and naturally fell into religious errors; but their firmness, constancy, and heroism were striking indeed. Their aspiration was the imitation of Christ, and they approached their model as near as ever was done by man. In an age of courtesans, when convictions were subservient to the pleasure of power, they set a worthy example of strength of mind, firmness of will, purity, and womanliness. M. du Bled says:

"Port-Royal was the enterprise of the middle-class aristocracy of France; you can see here an anticipated attempt of a sort of superior third estate to govern for itself in the Church and to establish a religion not Roman, not aristocratic and of the court, not devout in the manner of the simple people, but freer from vain images and ceremonies, and freer, also, as to the temporal in the face of worldly authority-a sober, austere, independent religion which would have truly founded a Gallican reform. The illusion was in thinking that they could continue to exist in Rome-that Richelieu and Louis XIV. would tolerate the boldness of this attempt."

A celebrated woman of the seventeenth century, one who really belongs to the circle of Mme. de Longueville and Mme. de La Fayette, but who early in life, like Mme. de Longueville, devoted herself to religion and retired to live at Port-Royal, and is therefore more intimately associated with the religious movement, was Mme. de Sablé, a type of the social-religious woman.

Mme. de Sablé is a heroine of Cousin, whom we closely follow in this account of her career. According to that writer, she is a type of the purely social woman, a woman who did less for herself than for others, in aiding whom she took delight, a woman who was the inspiration of many writers and many works.

Mlle. de Souvré married the wealthy Marquis of Sablé, of the house of Montmorency, of whom little is known. He soon abandoned her; and she, most unhappy over unworthy rivals, fell very ill, retired from society for a time, and then reappeared; her career as a society woman then began. At an early age, by force of her decided taste for the high form of Spanish gallantry, then so much in vogue, and her inclination to all things intellectual, she became one of the leaders of the H?tel de Rambouillet. She, Mmes. de Sévigné, de Longueville, and de La Fayette formed that circle of women who idealized friendship.

Within a few years she lost her father, husband, two of her brothers, and her second son; and after putting her financial affairs into order, she and her friend, the Countess of Maure, took up their quarters at the famous Place Royale; there they decided to devote their lives to letters, and there assembled their friends, men and women, regardless of rank or party, personal merit being the only means of access. Mmes. de Sablé and de Rambouillet were called the arbiters of elegance and good taste.

To her friends, Mme. de Sablé was always accommodating and showed no partiality; well informed, she was constantly approached for counsel and favors; discreet and trustworthy, the most important secrets were intrusted to her-a confidence which she never betrayed. During the Fronde she remained faithful to the queen and Mazarin, but did not become estranged from her friends, so many of whom were Frondists, and who chose her as their counsellor, arbitrator, and pacifier.

About 1655 she began to realize her unsettled position in the world and to long for a place where she might, modestly and becomingly, spend her declining years. She was then fifty-five years of age. The ideas of Jansenism had so impressed the great people of the day, that she decided to retire to Port-Royal, to end her days with sympathizers of the spiritual life around her and her former friends whenever she desired them. There she gathered about her the most exclusive and aristocratic people of the day: La Rochefoucauld, the Prince and Princess of Conti, Condé, Monsieur,-brother of Louis XIV.,-Mme. de La Fayette, Mme. de Hautefort, and others.

At her apartments, not only were religious and literary affairs discussed, but the most delicate and delicious dishes were prepared and elixirs and remedies for disease compounded. Famous people were led to seek her, through her reputation and influence, and through friendship, for she seldom left her house. Mme. de Sablé possessed all the qualities that attract and hold, nothing extraordinary or rare, but abundant politeness and elegance.

It was not long before she began to withdraw from even her friends, still continuing, however, her fine cuisine, the remarkable care of her health, and her medical experiments. Her dinners became celebrated, and invitations to them were much in demand; about them there were no signs of opulence, but her gatherings were distinguished for refinement and taste. Her friends were constantly asking her for her recipes, of the preparation of which no one but herself knew the secret.

At the salon of Mme. de Sablé originated many famous literary works, such as the Conférences sur le Calvinisme, works on Cartesian philosophy, the Logique de Port-Royal, Questions sur l'Amour, Les Maximes, etc. She will be remembered as the initiator of many maxims, in the composition of which she excelled. A number of her sayings concerning friendship have been preserved. Two treatises, in the form of maxims, on the education of children and on friendship, respectively, are supposed to have come from her pen; from them La Rochefoucauld conceived the ideas he utilized in his famous Maxims.

La Rochefoucauld's maxims were composed according to the chance of conversation, which gave rise to various subjects and led to his serious reflection upon them. Cousin even goes so far as to say that the Pensées of Pascal would never have been published in that form had not the Maxims enjoyed such favor. Pascal often visited Port-Royal and naturally followed the general reflective tendency of its society. His Discours sur les Passions de l'Amour possibly originated at the salon of Mme. de Sablé, because the subject of which that work treated was one much discussed there. La Rochefoucauld was in the habit of sending his maxims to Mme. de Sablé with the message: "As you do nothing for nothing, I ask of you a carrot soup or mutton stew."

When La Rochefoucauld entered the society of Mme. de Sablé, he had seen much of life, was familiar with most of the adventures and intrigues of the Fronde and the society of the time; he himself had acted his part in all, and at the age of fifty was ready to put his experience into a permanent form of reflection. His Maxims created a stir, through the clearness and elegance of their character, their fine analyses of man as he was in the seventeenth century, and through their truthfulness and general applicability to men of every country. From all the illustrious women of the day, either he or Mme. de Sablé received letters of criticism or suggestion-eulogies and condemnations of which he took notice in his next edition. This shows the intense interest felt in the appearance of any new literary production.

Cousin says that the whole literature of maxims and reflections issued directly from the salon of a kind and good woman who had retired to a convent with no other desire than to live over her life, to recall her past and what she had seen and felt therein; and upon her society, that woman impressed her own tastes, elegance, and seriousness. Her great act of benevolence was her protection of Port-Royal. When, after the death in 1661 of Mother Angélique Arnauld, that institution became the object of persecution and its tenants were either imprisoned or compelled to seek refuge in the various families of Paris, Mme. de Sablé remained faithful to its principles; she lived with her friends, Mme. de Longueville and Mme. de Montausier, until 1669, when, with the co?peration of Mme. de Longueville, who exerted all her influence for Port-Royal, she finally succeeded in bringing about its reopening. At least, Cousin ascribes this result to Mme. de Sablé, but he may have somewhat exaggerated her influence in this respect. From her retreat at Port-Royal, she kept up a constant correspondence with her friends all over France; she lived there until 1678, with but one intimate friend, Mme. de Longueville.

Mme. de Sablé had remarkable gifts; her mission in politics, religion, and literature seems to have been to excite to action, to stimulate and to bring out to its fullest value, the talents and genius of others. In her modest salon, she inspired the great and illustrious work which will keep her memory alive as long as the Maxims and Pensées are read. Her name will be connected with that of Mme. de Longueville, because of their ideal friendship, and with that of Port-Royal because of her ardent and self-sacrificing support of it in the time of its direst persecution, when any exhibition of sympathy was dangerous in the extreme; and finally, her name will always be connected with that small circle of French society of the seventeenth century, which was noble, moral, and elevating to an unusual degree.

Somewhat later in the century a different movement was started by a woman, which involved many of the highest in rank at court. This took the form of a kind of mystical enthusiasm, running into a theory of pure love, and was instigated by Mme. Guyon, a widow, still young, and gifted with a lofty and subtile mind. After losing her husband, whom she had converted to her religious views, she went, in 1680, to Paris to educate her children. Becoming interested in religion, she went to Geneva, where she became very intimate with a priest who was her spiritual director, and whom she soon wholly subjected to her influence. On account of their views on sanctification, they were ordered to leave.

After travelling over Europe for a number of years, and writing several works, including Spiritual Torrents and Short and Easy Method of Making Orison with the Heart, the widow returned to Paris, with the intention of living in retirement; but so many persons of all ranks sought her out, that she organized, for ladies of rank, meetings for purposes of prayer and religious conversation. The Duchess of Beauvilliers, the Duchess of Béthune, the Countess of Guiche, the Countess of Chevreuse, and many others, with their husbands, became her devoted adherents.

According to Mme. Guyon, prayer should lose the character of supplication, and become simply the silence of a soul absorbed in God. "Why are not simple folks so taught? Shepherds, keeping their flocks, would have the spirit of the old anchorites; and laborers, whilst driving the plow, would talk happily with God. In a little while, vice would be banished and the kingdom of God would be realized on earth." Thus, her doctrine was directly opposite to the theories of the Jansenists.

At that time, 1687 to 1688, all religious movements, however quiet, were condemned at Rome; and the teachings of Mme. Guyon were found to differ very little from those of the Spanish priest Molinas. The first arrest, that of her friend Lacombe, was soon followed by that of Mme. Guyon herself, by royal order; she was released through the intercession of Mme. de Maintenon, who was fascinated by her to the extent of permitting her to teach her doctrines at Saint-Cyr, Upon the appearance of her Method of Prayer, an examination was instituted by Bossuet and Fénelon, who marked out a few passages as erroneous-a procedure to which she submitted. However, Bossuet himself wrote a treatise against her Method of Prayer, in which he cast reflections upon her character and conduct; to that work Fénelon refused to subscribe, which antagonistic proceeding brought on the great quarrel between those two absolute ecclesiasts. In fact, Fénelon became imbued with the doctrines of Mme. Guyon.

She was imprisoned at various times; and when a letter was received from Lacombe, who had been imprisoned at Vincennes for a long time, exhorting her to repent of their criminal intimacy, Mme. Guyon's cause was hopeless. She was sent to the Bastille, her son was dismissed from the army, and many of her friends were banished. In 1702 she was released from prison and banished to Diziers; she passed the remainder of her life in complete retirement at Blois.

Fénelon had written a treatise, Maxims of the Saints, which was said to favor Mme. Guyon's doctrines, and which was sent to Rome for examination. He defined her doctrine of divine love in the following maxim, which was condemned at Rome:

"There is an habitual state of love of God, which is pure charity without any taint of the motive of self-interest. Neither fear of punishment nor desire of reward has, any longer, part in this love; God is loved, not for the merit, but for the happiness to be found in loving Him."

Such a doctrine made repentance unnecessary, destroyed all effort to withstand evil, and did not acknowledge the need of a Redeemer. This the great Bossuet foresaw; consequently, he, as the supreme religious potentate of his inferior in rank, Fénelon, demanded the condemnation by the latter of the works of Mme. Guyon. The refusal cost Fénelon exile for life. To Mme. de Maintenon he wrote a letter which shows the sincerity of his devotion to a friend in disgrace, even though his own reputation was thereby endangered:

"So it is to secure my own reputation that I am wanted to subscribe that a lady-my friend-would plainly deserve to be burned, with all her writings, for an execrable form of spirituality which is the only bond of our friendship. I tell you, madame, I would burn my friend with my own hands, and I would burn myself joyfully, rather than let the Church be imperilled; but here is a poor, captive woman, overwhelmed with sorrows; there is none to defend her, none to excuse her; all are afraid to do so. I maintain that this stroke of the pen, given from a cowardly policy and against my conscience, would render me forever infamous and unworthy of my ministry and my position."

Thus, in the seventeenth century, religious agitations and religious reform were the work pre?minently of women; but that reform and those agitations were productive of good results to a far greater degree than was any similar movement in any other century, with the possible exception of the nineteenth. The seventeenth century was, as mentioned before, a century of stability, one that toned down and crushed all violations and abuses of the standard established by authority. Woman, in her constant striving for the complete emancipation and gradual purification of her sex, rebelled against the power of established authority; she did not consciously or intentionally violate law and order, but in her intense desire to act for good as she saw it, and in her noble efforts to ameliorate all undesirable conditions, she created commotion and confusion. The seventeenth-century woman is conspicuous as a champion of religion, moral purity, and social reform; therefore, her influence was mainly social, religious, moral, and literary, while that of the woman of the sixteenth century was mainly political. This difference was the result of the greater advantages of education and training enjoyed by the females of the later period.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, young girls were granted greater privileges and received more attention from men and society than did their predecessors; they thus had more opportunities for mental development, more occasion to become aware of the temptations and injustices of life, without falling prey to them. Such young girls as Julie d'Angennes, Mlle. d'Arquenay, and Mlle. de Pisani, took part in the balls, fêtes, garden parties, and all amusements in which society indulged. They met young men of their own age and became intimately acquainted with them, morals were purer, marriages of affection were much more frequent, and the state of married life was much more congenial, than in any other century. Young men paid court to the older ladies, to refine their manners and sharpen their intellects, but not for any immoral purpose. To a certain extent women were more world-wise when they reached the marriageable age, and inspired respect and admiration rather than passion and desire as in the next century.

Young girls of the seventeenth century were early placed in a convent, and when they left it they were ready for marriage; in the meantime, they frequently visited home and associated with their parents and brothers; at the convents intellectual intercourse with people of high rank and men of letters was encouraged. Yet the discipline at those institutions was very rigid, the boarders being more carefully watched then than later on; two nuns always accompanied them on their walks, and when not busy with their studies, to prevent the mind from wandering, they were kept busy with their hands; "the transports of the soul of the young girl, as every reflection of the intelligence, are watched and held in check, every one of her inclinations opposed, all originality suppressed."

At first the convents were reproached for stifling all culture and development and applying only correction and mortification of the flesh. Mme. de Maintenon opposed such a state of affairs, but her methods discouraged true independence. The happiness of her charges was her one aim, but they had no voice in the matter. When of marriageable age, they were given a trousseau and a husband; however, they were taught to be reasonable.

In that century, the young girl, mixing more generally in society, received greater consideration-hence, she became more active and conspicuous. It will be seen that the r?le played by the eighteenth century woman was not so much played by the young woman as it was by the woman of mature years, of the mother, the counsellor-the indispensable element of society. There were three classes of women-young women, mature women who sought consideration, and old women who received respect and deference, and who, as arbiters of culture, upheld the principles already established.

A young man making his début had to find favor with one of those classes which decided his future reputation and the extent of his favor at court, and assigned him his place and grade, upon which depended his marriage. All education was directed to the one end-social success. The duty of the tutor charged with the instruction of a young son was to give a well-rounded, general education; by the mother, he was taught politeness, grace, amiability-a part of his training to which more importance was attached than to the intellectual portion. Whenever a young man was guilty of misconduct toward a woman, his mother was notified of the occurrence, on the same evening, and he promptly received his reprimand. This spirit naturally fostered that rare politeness, exquisite taste and tact in conversation, in which the eighteenth century excels.

But where did the young girls receive the education which gave them such prestige-that consummate art of conversation exemplified in Mme. de Boufflers, Mme. de Luxembourg, Mme. de Sabran, the Duchess of Choiseul, the Princess of Beauvau, the Countess of Ségur? The sons were educated in the usages of the bonne compagnie by the mothers, but the daughters did not enjoy that attention, for, at the age of five or six years, they were sent to the convent; there the mother's influence could not have reached them, and they never left the convent except to marry. The middle class imitated the higher class, and family life became practically impossible. All men of any importance had a charge at court or a grade in the army, and lived away from their families. A large number of women were attached to the queen, spending the greater part of their time at Versailles; the little time passed at their homes was entirely occupied in preparation for the evening causeries at the salons, in reading new books, acquiring information upon current events, and in superintending the making of the many necessary and always elaborate gowns; as M. Perey so well says, "as the toilettes and hairdressing took up the greater part of the morning, they devoted the time used by the coiffeur, in constructing complicated edifices that crushed down the heads of women, to the reading of new books."

Nearly every large establishment kept open house, dining from twenty to thirty persons every day. They dined at one, separated at three, were at the theatre at five, and returned with as many friends as possible-the more, the greater the reputation for hospitality and popularity. Under such circumstances, the mother had no time for the daughters, nor were the conversations at those dinners food for young, innocent girls-and innocence was the first requirement of a marriageable young woman.

The great convents were the Abbaye-aux-Bois and Penthemont, where the daughters of the wealthiest and highest families were educated. In those convents or seminaries, strange to say, the young girls were taught the most practical domestic duties, as well as dancing, music, painting, etc. Such teachers as Molé and Larrive gave instruction in declamation and reading, and Noverre and Dauberval in dancing; the teaching nuns were all from the best families. The most complete costumes, scenic decorations, and other equipments of a complete theatre were supplied, special hours being set aside for the play. However, much intriguing went on there, and many friendships and lifelong enmities were formed, which later led to serious troubles.

Often, from the midst of a group of young girls of from ten to fifteen years of age, one would be notified of her coming marriage with a man she had never seen, and whom, in all probability, she could not love, having given her heart to another. If it turned out to be an uncongenial marriage, a separate life would be the result, and, while still absolutely ignorant of the world, those young married women would fall prey to the charms of young gallants or men of quality, and a liaison would follow.

The difference between a liaison of the seventeenth century and one of the eighteenth led to one essential difference in the standards of social and moral etiquette; in the former period, a liaison meant nothing more censurable than an intimate friendship, a purely platonic love; the lover simply paid homage to the lady of his choice; it was an attraction of common intellectual interests and usually lasted for life; in the eighteenth century, a liaison was essentially immoral, rarely a union of interests, but rather one of passions and physical propensities. Such relations developed and fostered deceit, intrigues, infidelity, and rivalry, one woman endeavoring to allure the lover of another; affairs of that nature were the chief topic of conversation in social circles, and were soon reflected in every phase of the intelligent world. This will be seen in the study of the eighteenth century.