was then a fawn-coloured suit, and his black taffeta cravat was edged with an embroidery of gold. His most partial biographers confess that there was nothing of the priest about him; and he thought it a great condescension if he donned a black velvet costume, with buttons of gold, when he expected serious company. The mingled web of his character was well illustrated by himself when he answered to a question of Champvallon as to where he had been, and whither he was going, that he had been preaching during the morning like an angel, and that in the afternoon he was going to hunt like the devil.

From folly to vice, from vice to heavier crimes, is the usual course of men given up to pleasure, and engaged in unlawful pursuits, as de Rancé was. Nor did he form any exception to the general rule; and the climax of his own errors is to be found in the illicit and scarcely veiled intercourse which he carried on with the young wife, and subsequently widow, of the aged libertine, the Duc de Montbazon. In the duke's house he lived as though he were one of the family, and he rewarded the hospitality and the confidence of his disreputable host by seducing his wife-a circumstance not only facile of accomplishment, but, such was the condition of the society of that day, one also that he was probably expected to achieve. One of his priestly biographers attempts to palliate this connection, by describing it as a platonic attachment, fostered by the gratitude of the brilliant duchess for important services rendered to her by de Rancé. If it went beyond the strict boundary of mere friendship, he is inclined to think that it may almost be excused, for the outward decency that was observed, and that the parties so arranged their conduct in presence of the world as to make it appear "que l'esprit avait plus de part à cette amitié que la chair."

All that an extravagant mind could devise; all that unlimited means could purchase; all that taste could invent and satiated dispositions enjoy-pleasures, fêtes, banquets; the excitements of gambling, and the duel; the most brilliant equipages; the most costly attire-all these, with the young and beautiful duchess surpassing them all, were, during ten rapidly revolving years, at the entire command of the tonsured libertine. His ambition stalked forth in a double guise. It urged him to be the greatest debauchee of his day, and to rise to the highest offices in the Church. It impelled him to edit a Greek edition of Eusebius, and to give men examples of ultra-licentiousness. It made him grand almoner to the Duke of Orleans, and the adulterous lover of the Duchess of Montbazon; and at thirty years of age, de Rancé still contentedly and thoughtlessly lived on in an atmosphere polluted by folly, crime, and raging insanity.

Such was the god-son of the cardinal minister during his early years. But suddenly an event occurred which worked a remarkable change in the character and pursuits of him who had hitherto been distinguished for the possession of great talent, and who had won a bad reputation for the ingenuity with which he abused it; some of the friends of his tempestuous youth died; some incurred the displeasure of the court, fell from their high estate, and lived. De Rancé deplored these events, but found consolation for them in the society of the guilty duchess. At length, even this fair obstacle which stood between himself and his better destiny, was, as suddenly as unexpectedly, snatched away from him by a fatal attack of measles.* The reed upon which he had so long depended broke and left him without support. His despair drove him to the very verge of insanity; he buried himself in the depths of his native forest, and wandered along the banks of his native river, screaming forth the name of the lost one; he invoked the moon to restore what the Almighty had taken away; and he had recourse to unhallowed rites and ceremonies in the mad and blasphemous attempt to render again to life her who had been so awfully summoned before the judgment-seat of the Eternal. He defied heaven to keep from him what sorcery might enable him to recover, and he only ceased from wrestling with a Power which was graciously pleased to spare him, by a frightful vision which he had (as he was one day wandering in the vicinity of his chateau) of his house surrounded by flames. As he approached to witness the calamity, the flames appeared to retire from the building, and change into a lake of liquid fire. From the centre of this lake arose the form of a female; she seemed to be enduring the tortures of the condemned. De Rancé gazed for a moment, and then fled in the wildest affright; he rushed, despairing and distracted, into his house, where, on arriving, he sunk prostrate alike in sense and the power of speech. But these convulsions of the soul were followed by a calm, which left the sufferer in

* The well-known story of de Rancé returning after a long absence, and finding the duchess lying dead in her coffin; with the after episode of his cutting her head from her body, and employing it as a memento in his meditations, are matters which the author skilfully contrives to leave completely shrouded in mystery. As far as he is intelligible, we are inclined to believe that he has no faith in the first part of the legend, yet finds it too full of the elements of poetry not to wish it were true; and that he discredits the second portion, yet deems it deserving of belief because of its pictorial romance. In short, he wishes the whole legend were true, is sorry it is not so, and yet finds the entire tradition so exquisite, that he would have the world know it to be a fiction, and receive it as if it were fact.

the possession of an energy which is the parent of vigorous resolution.

The conversion of de Rancé had commenced; but we are not at all inclined to allow that it was either begun or continued under healthy influences. In our judgment of this matter, we are guided solely by the public acts of the so-called convert, and these, we think, authorize us in the conclusion at which we arrive. We hear of no open acknowledgment of guilt-we are told of no recourse made to the guides appointed by his Church; but we find him resorting to a cast-off mistress of the Duke of Orleans, who, having outlived the liking of the capricious Gaston, had entered a nunnery, and was now only known by the appellation of Mother Louisa. The result of the conversations held with this exemplary person was, that de Rancé dismantled his house, stripped his furniture of its gold trappings and his walls of their gorgeous adornments, and allowed his garden to run to seed, and to become a wilderness of weeds and rankness. There was surely not much of a right and healthy feeling exhibited in such conduct as this, though some portion of it may be accounted for. Nor do we see more to admire in the subsequent act of his receiving a few of his associates into his melancholy abode, that was not on that account the house of mourning where the fool might learn wisdom. We cannot, with all the willing and ready charity possible-we cannot, we say, be edified at witnessing a society of men who began to play at penitence before they practised it. However this may be, their leader found neither rest nor satisfaction in endeavouring to reconcile himself with Heaven after the theatrical fashion which he appears to have adopted. His ecclesiastical superiors counselled him to go as a missionary to India; they thought his wild energy and his incipient fanaticism would find a fitting sphere for development among the frowning rocks of the Himalaya. But France had more attractions for the yet unstable convert; and we find him receiving the last breath of the contemptible Gaston, carrying the feeble heart of the deceased prince to the Jesuits of Blois, writing some sensible remarks on the death of his patron, and finally, so much the fashion in his new character, that no one could die happy but with him by their side. It would seem that the greater portion of the Parisian world hoped to gain immortality through the merits of Armand Jean Bouthilier.

Shortly after the death of Gaston of Orleans, an event which gave great concern to de Rancé, we find the latter among the Pyrenees, whither he had resorted for the sake of consulting the

Bishop of Comminges. And here again we have an illustration of the chamelion-coloured character of the unsteady priest. He was as yet the slave of impulse-not the willing obeyer of conviction; and the new impulse, now strong upon him, he derived from the grandeur of the scenery which surrounded him as he meditated alone, or walked with the prelate. His thoughts were now intent on becoming a hermit; he would found a cell among those gloomy but majestic defiles; live upon herbs and water; forget the world; and serve the Lord in solitude. He revealed his designs to the Bishops of Comminges and Aleth, but declined following their advice. The former dignitary exposed to him the selfishness of his project; while the latter warned him that the inclinations which now impelled him were not always derived from God-that they frequently arose through mere distaste for the world-and that this very distaste was not often the offspring of the purest of motives.

For six long years did de Rancé continue to manifest his want of decision. He had, it is true, to struggle against the opposition of his relations, friends, and servants; but this opposition was at length surmounted, or totally disregarded; and he proceeded to the realization of his plans by selling his estates, and giving the produce of the sale to religious houses. Thus he commenced his career of virtue by defrauding his heirs; or, allowing him the quality of sincerity, we will amend our phrase, and say that he only deprived himself. But under what a mistaken and parti-coloured sincerity did this man work! He sold his estates at Veretz, for instance, to one of his own relatives, who was probably anxious to retain the patrimonial soil in the possession of the family; but the purchase-money was not forthcoming at the required moment; de Rancé immediately pronounced the bargain void, and for a hundred thousand crowns made the entire estate over to the Abbé D'Effiat, the favourite (to use a no more significant term) of the royal courtezan, Ninon de l'Enclos!!

We have already intimated that de Rancé, when a child, was made Abbé Commendataire of La Trappe. A commendataire implied a person who held a commende, and the latter term signified a title to a regular benefice, for the enjoyment of its profits, without the performance of its duties. De Rancé declared himself conscious of the guilt of holding such a preferment, but at the same time he pronounced as strongly his utter scorn of becoming a frocard. He would be a regular priest, but not a regular hard-working priest; and was willing to perform duties, provided only that he was permitted to fulfil them after a will and fashion of his own. With seeming contradiction he

VOL. XVI.B B

now resigned every regular benefice of which he was possessed, retaining only that of La Trappe, to which he had been very irregularly appointed. Of this, however, he became, with some difficulty, the regular Abbé, and, on his institution, received the episcopal benediction at the hands of the Irish (Popish) Bishop of Ardagh. The community of which he was now the legal chief had been founded in 1022; and as the foundation was the consequence of a grateful movement at being saved from shipwreck, the monastery was built so as to represent, according to the architect's best ability, the hulk of a ship reversed. War and neglect had both visited the establishment with their inflictions; and what English hostility had left unscathed, French inatten. tion had allowed to fall to ruin. The inhabitants, too, partook of the spirit of the place in which they dwelt, and the monks themselves are graphically described, in one word, as "the ruins of monks." Dominique Abbé du Val-Richer, speaking of La Trappe previous to the arrival of de Rancé, says―

"The gates remained open night and day, and men and women had alike free access to the cloister. The vestibule was so dark that it seemed more like the entrance to a prison than to a house of God. Here a ladder, placed against the wall, served for stairs to reach a flooring which could not be trodden without danger, so broken and decayed were the boards. The roof of the cloister had sunk into a concave form, and filled with water whenever there was a fall of rain ; the pillars which supported it became bent; and the parlours were turned into stables. The refectory was only such in name. Monks and seculars played at bowls there whenever the weather interrupted their games in the open air. The dormitory was abandoned to the birds of night, and exposed equally to hail, rain, snow, and wind; each of the brethren lodged as he pleased, or as he could. Nor was the church in a better condition. The pavement was broken, the stones dispersed, and the walls threatening ruin. The belfry was ready to fall, and the bells could not be rung without shaking it to the foundation."

Turning from the building to its indwellers, we learn from M. de Chateaubriand, that

"When the Abbé de Rancé introduced his reform into his 'abbaye,' the monks themselves were but the ruins of monks. Reduced to seven in number, these fragments of cenobites were denaturalized by abundance or misfortune. For a long period they had merited reproach. As early as the eleventh century, the monk is declared by Adalbéron to be transformed into a soldier. In Normandy, a superior, having presumed to admonish his monks, was flagellated by them after his death. Abailard, who tried severity in Brittany, found himself exposed to poison. Rancé incurred similar dangers. No sooner had he uttered the word reform, than he was threatened with poison, the dagger, and the pond. A gentleman of the neighbourhood, M. de St. Louis,