Many of our readers, unacquainted with his writings, will remember the name of the gentle prelate and renowned rhetorician who delivered the funeral oration of the great Turenne, accomplishing the mournful but glorious task with such eloquence and grace that the composition constitutes his chief claim to the admiration of posterity. We should say, perhaps, that it did constitute his principal hold upon the world's memory, previously to the year 1844, date of exhumation of a work likely to command readers longer than his Oraisons FunÉbres, or, than any other portion of the ten serious volumes published under the incorrect title of oeuvres Completes. We can imagine the astonishment of an erudite book-worm, suddenly encountering, when winding his way through dusty folios and antique black letter, a sprightly and gallant narrative, sparkling with graceful sallies and with anecdotes and allusions À la Grammont; and finding himself compelled, by evidence internal and collateral, to accept the mundane manuscript as the work of a grave and pious father of the church. A courtly chronicle, in tone fringing on the frivolous, and often more remarkable for piquancy of subject than for strict propriety of tone, suddenly dragged from the cobwebbed obscurity of an ancient escritoire and put abroad as the production of a South, a Tillotson, or a Blair, would astound the public, and find many to doubt its authenticity. In bringing forward the earliest work of the amiable bishop of Nismes, the librarian of the town of Clermont had no such scepticism to contend against. Moreover, he had arguments and proofs at hand sufficient to confound and convince the most incredulous. True, there was vast difference in tone and subject between the literary pastime of the AbbÉ, and the results of the grave studies and oratorical talents of the reverend churchman and renowned preacher; but affinities of style were detectible by the skilful, and, in addition to this, there had crept out, at sundry periods of the present century, certain letters of FlÉchier[24]—letters not to be found in the so-called "complete editions" of his works—whose strain of graceful levity and exaggerated gallantry indicated a talent distinct from that to which he owes a fame now daily diminishing; and prepared the few whose notice they attracted for a transition from grave didactics and inflated declamation to lively badinage and debonair narrative. The masses knew little about the matter, and cared less. Latin verses, complimentary discourses, and funeral orations, dating from a century and a half back, and relating to persons and events great and brilliant, it is true, but now seen dim and distant through the long vista of years, are not the class of literature to compel much attention in this practical and progressive age. As a constructor of French prose, FlÉchier is unquestionably entitled to honourable mention. If his claims to originality of genius were small, he at least was an elegant rhetorician and a delicate and polished writer, to whom the French language is under obligations. As a man of letters, he formed an important link between the school of Louis XIII. and that of the Grand Monarque; he was one of the first to appreciate grace of diction, and to attempt the elevation and correction of a spurious style. His florid eloquence, however, not unfrequently wearies by its stilted pomposity, and, save by a few scholars and literati, his works are rather respected than liked, more often praised than read. He wrote for the century, not for all time. And his books, if still occasionally referred to, each day drew nearer to oblivion, when the publication of the MÉmoires sur les Grands-Jours tenus À Clermont came opportunely to refresh his fading bays. The lease of celebrity secured by ten studied and ponderous tomes, exhaling strong odour of midnight oil, had nearly expired, when it was renewed by a single volume, written with flowing pen and careless grace, but overlooked and underrated for nearly two centuries.

Although scarcely essential to a just appreciation of the book before us, we shall cursorily sketch the career of Esprit FlÉchier, esteemed one of the ablest of French pulpit orators,—one of the most kind-hearted and virtuous of French prelates. Born in 1632, in the county of Avignon, he early assumed the sacerdotal garb, and obtained occupation as teacher of rhetoric. At the age of eight-and-twenty, business resulting from the death of a relation having taken him to Paris, he conceived an affection for that capital and remained there. Having no fortune of his own, he was fain to earn a modest subsistence by teaching the catechism to parish children. Already, when professing rhetoric at Narbonne, he had given indication of the oratorical talents that were subsequently to procure him the highest dignities of the church, the favour of a great king, and the enthusiastic admiration of a SÉvignÉ. At Paris he busied himself with the composition of Latin verses, for which he had a remarkable talent, and celebrated in graceful hexameters the successes and virtues of ministers, princes, and kings. The peace concluded with Spain by Mazarine, the future prospects of the dauphin of France, the splendid tournament held by the youthful Louis, in turn afforded subjects for the display of his elegant Latinity. FlÉchier had the true instinct of the courtier, exempt from fawning sycophancy, and tempered by the dignity of his sacred profession. And when he condescended to flatter, it was with delicacy and adroitness. Ambitious of the patronage of the Duke of Montausier, he knew how to obtain it by a judicious independence of tone and deportment, more pleasing to that nobleman than the most insinuating flattery. A constant guest in the Salon Rambouillet, he made good his place amongst the wits frequenting it, and when its presiding genius expired, it fell to him to speak its funeral oration. This was the commencement of his fame. From the hour of that brilliant harangue, his progress was rapid to the pinnacle of royal favour and priestly dignity. Unanimously elected member of the academy, he became almoner to the dauphiness, and was long the favourite court preacher, petted by the king and by Madame de Maintenon. His nomination as bishop was delayed longer than the high favour he enjoyed seemed to justify. At last, in 1685, he received his appointment to the see of Lavaur. The words with which Louis XIV. accompanied it, were characteristic of the selfish and smooth-spoken sovereign. "Be not surprised at my tardiness in rewarding your great merits: I could not sooner resolve to resign the pleasure of hearing you." His promotion to the bishopric of Nismes followed two years later, and there he founded the academy, and abode in the constant practice of all Christian virtues, until his death, which occurred in 1710, five years sooner than that of his royal patron and admirer. This provincial residence could hardly have been a matter of inclination to one who had so long basked in the warm sunshine of court favour. But the self-imposed duty was well and cheerfully performed. And we find the mild and unambitious churchman deprecating the benefits showered on him by the king. "It is a great proof your goodness," he wrote to Louis, when appointed to the rich and important see of Nismes, "that you leave me nothing to ask but a diminution of your favours." Strict in his own religious tenets, he was tolerant of those of others, and more than once, during the cruel persecutions of the Huguenots, his sacerdotal mantle was extended to shield the unhappy fanatics from the raging sabres of their pitiless foes. "He died," says St Simon, "distinguished for his learning, his works, his morals, and for a truly episcopal life. Although very old, he was much regretted and mourned throughout all Languedoc."

It is pleasing to trace so virtuous a career, its just reward and peaceful termination; otherwise we might have been contented to refer to the period when FlÉchier was tutor to the son of M. Lefevre de Caumartin, one of the king's council, master of requests, and bearer of the royal seals at the tribunal of the Grands-Jours. The future bishop had been at Paris about two years, when he accepted this tutorship. Four years more elapsed; he was in priest's orders, and already had some reputation as a preacher, when he accompanied M. de Caumartin to Clermont. It was in 1665, and Louis XIV. had convoked the exceptional court occasionally held in the distant provinces of France, and known as the Grands-Jours. "This word," says M. Gonod, in his introduction to FlÉchier's volume, "which excited, scarcely two centuries ago, such great expectations, so many hopes and fears, is almost unknown at the present day; and one meets with many persons, otherwise well informed, who inquire 'what the Grands-Jours were?' They were extraordinary assizes, held by judges chosen and deputed by the king. These judges, selected from the parliament, were sent with very extensive powers, to decide all criminal and civil cases that might be brought before them, and their decisions were without appeal. They inherited the duties of those commissioners, called missi dominici, whom our kings of the first and second dynasties sent into the provinces to take information of the conduct of dukes and counts, and to reform the abuses that crept into the administration of justice and of the finances. The rare occurrence of these assizes, and the pomp of the judges, contributed to render them imposing and solemn, and obtained for them from the people the name of Grands-Jours. They were held but seven times in Auvergne," (the dates follow, commencing 1454;) "and of those seven sittings, the most remarkable for duration, for the number and importance of the trials, for the quality of the persons figuring in them, and for their result, are, without the slightest question, those of 1665-6. They lasted more than four months, from the 26th September to the 30th January. More than twelve thousand complaints were brought before them, and a multitude of cases, both civil and criminal, were decided. And, amongst the latter, whom do we see upon the bench of the accused? The most considerable persons, by birth, rank, and fortune, of Auvergne and the circumjacent provinces, judges, and even priests!" Here we find the true reason why FlÉchier's interesting memoirs of this important session have so long remained unprinted, almost unknown. It were idle to assert that want of merit caused them to be omitted, or at best passed over with a cursory notice, by collectors and commentators of FlÉchier's writings. We have already intimated, and shall presently prove, that, both as a literary composition, and as a chronicle of the manners of the times, this long-neglected volume is of great merit and interest. And had these been less, this was still hardly a reason for grudging the honours and advantages of type to a single volume of no very great length, at the cost of the integrity of its author's works. If not included in any of the partial editions of the bishop's writings, or printed with his posthumous works at Paris in 1712, a nook might surely have been reserved for it in the AbbÉ Ducreux's complete edition, or in the less estimable one of Fabre de Narbonne. But no—such favour was not afforded. M. Fabre dismisses it with a curt and flippant notice, and Ducreux confines himself to a careless abstract, inserted in the tenth volume of his edition, as a sort of sop to certain persons who, having obtained access to the manuscript, were sufficiently judicious to hold it in high estimation. The AbbÉ alleged as his reason, that he thought little of the style, which he considered strange and negligent. We will not do him the unkindness to accept this as his real opinion. His true motive, we cannot doubt, was more akin to that loosely hinted at by M. Fabre, who, as recently as the year 1828, intimates that there might be some "imprudence" in raking up these old stories. In 1782 M. Ducreux may have been justified in apprehending detriment to his interests, and perhaps even danger to his personal liberty, as the possible consequence of his giving too great publicity to the chronicles of the Grands-Jours. The Bastille and Lettres-de-Cachet were not then the mere empty sounds they were rendered, seven years later, by the acts of a furious mob and a National Convention. There was still "snug lying" in the fortress of the Porte St Antoine, for impertinent scribes as for suspected conspirators. We cannot doubt that, by the affected disparagement of FlÉchier's book, the AbbÉ Ducreux sought to veil his own timid or reasonable apprehensions, feigning, like the fox in the fable, to despise what he was unable (or dared not) to make use of. "This narrative," says M. Gonod, speaking of the MÉmoires, "in which the manners and morals of the nobility and clergy of the period are sometimes painted in such black colours, could not, as will be seen on perusal, be brought to light in the time of its author. More than a century later, the AbbÉ Ducreux did not deem it advisable to print it in a complete form. 'What interest,' he says, 'could the reader find in the recital of those old stories, some of revolting atrocity, others studiously malicious, and of depravity calculated only to shock susceptible imaginations and generous hearts? The history of crime is already too vast and too well known; it is that of virtue, and of actions honourable to humanity, that we should endeavour to preserve and disseminate.' Admitting this principle, M. Gonod very justly remarks, "the first thing to do would be to pass a spunge over history; and the virtuous AbbÉ forgot that nothing is more adapted to inspire horror of crime than the contemplation of its hideous face, and of the penalties that follow in its train. On the other hand"—and here we have the true reason—"the AbbÉ Ducreux feared to retrace these facts at a time when the descendants of the men most compromised in those terrible trials held the first places in the church, the magistracy, and the army: it would have been wounding them, he says, without utility to the public." Nearly sixty years later, M. Fabre de Narbonne allows himself to be fettered by similar unwillingness to offend the posterity of the noble and reverend criminals of 1666; for thus only can be explained his intimation of the possible imprudence of reviving those judicial records. In 1844, the librarian of Clermont writes thus: "This reason"—he refers to that alleged by Ducreux—"which I respect and approve, is extinct for us. Of all those families, two only, I think, are still in existence; and I believe that the present representatives of those once odious names are personally known in too honourable a manner to have to dread from FlÉchier's narrative any lesion to their honour. I must add, moreover, that with respect to one, every thing has been long since published by Legrand d'Aussy, Taillandier;[25] and that the other has received communication from me of all relating to his family, and sees no objection to its publication." From this paragraph it is manifest, that M. Gonod was not quite at his ease as to the effect of his publication. He thinks one thing, believes another, assumes altogether a doubting and deprecatory tone, defending himself before attack. The worthy bibliophilist and editor was evidently in some slight trepidation as to the reception of his literary foster-child by the descendants of the dissolute and tyrannical nobility arraigned before the tribunal of the Grands-Jours. His apprehensions were not unfounded. It is certainly difficult to understand what could be risked and who offended by the resuscitation—after one hundred and eighty years, and when French institutions and society had been so completely turned upside down by successive revolutions—of these antiquated details of feudal oppression, priestly immorality, and magisterial corruption. It argues singular tenuity of epidermis on the part of French gentilÂtres of the nineteenth century, that they cannot bear to hear how their great grandfather, seven or eight times removed, oppressed his vassals by enforcing odious privileges, hung up his lady's page by the heels till death ensued, poisoned his wife, or confined a serf[26] in a damp closet where he could neither sit nor stand, and where his face lost its form and his garments acquired a coat of mildew. Why the disclosure of these crimes—atrocious though they are, and characteristic of a barbarous state of society—should disturb the repose or cloud the countenances of the far-removed posterity of the feudal tyrants who committed them, is no easy question to answer. Are these susceptible descendants apprehensive lest the crimes of the French aristocracy, two hundred years ago, should acquire a peculiarly swart hue, in the eyes of existing generations, by contrast with the immaculate purity of corresponding classes in the nineteenth century? The misdeeds of a Senegas and a Montvallat, extenuated by the circumstances of the times, by a ruder state of society and greater laxity of morals, might well be forgotten in the infamy of a Praslin and a Teste. Whatever the reason, however, the fact is that the publication of the Grands-Jours was viewed with displeasure by various Auvergnat families. The edition consisted, we believe, of seven or eight hundred copies, of which the public bought a portion, and the remainder were purchased and destroyed by those whom the contents of the volume offended. The book is now unobtainable; and there appears little probability of a reprint in France. Under these circumstances, it is surprising that the Brussels publishers—whom no trashy French novel can escape—have not laid their piratical claws upon a book of such attractive interest.

Written during the four months that FlÉchier passed at Clermont as one of the household of M. de Caumartin, the MÉmoires are intended less as an historical record of the assizes than as a general diary of all the amiable AbbÉ saw, heard, and collected during his stay in Auvergne. Their nature scarcely admitting publication during the author's lifetime, we must consider their composition to have been a pastime, a manner of dispelling the tedium of long mornings in a provincial town. "Assuredly," a clever French critic has said, "no author ever wrote for himself alone; in literature, as on the stage, monologues are purely conventional; in reality, one speaks to the public, without seeming so to do." If ever there was an exception to this rule, it was in the case of FlÉchier. During the Grands-Jours, Clermont, crowded with functionaries and their families, with plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses, from every part of the extensive district[27] over which the court had jurisdiction, was a grand focus of gossip and scandal; and by this, FlÉchier, as one of the household of so important a person as M. de Caumartin, was in the best possible position to benefit. It is by no means improbable, that a desire to retain the many pungent anecdotes that reached his ear, and also the more important and striking of the proceedings before the court, stimulated him to indite the four hundred and fourteen folio pages of manuscript now printed, with introduction, notes, and appendix, in an octavo volume of four hundred and sixty. He may have anticipated lively gratification in refreshing his memory, at some later and more tranquil period of his life, by a reference to the annals of those gay and bustling days. He may have had in view the delectation of the witty Parisian coteries by whom he was already held in high and well-merited esteem. And the modest preceptor, foreseeing not, at that early period of his career, the eminence he was destined to attain, may have indulged in pleasing visions of posthumous fame, founded on this graceful volume of memoirs. What we cannot suppose him to have contemplated, was its immediate publication; and to this we must attribute the capricious disorder, the frequent transitions, the sprightly naivetÉ and piquant negligence of a book written (as so few are written) for the author's private gratification, or at most for that of a limited circle of friends. With regard to the intrinsic merit of the work, we can hardly do better than quote M. Gonod. "Independently," says that gentleman, "of the curious facts it reveals, of the manners (still too little known) which it retraces, it will be for the intelligent reader one of the most precious literary monuments of the age of Louis XIV. It was composed ten years after Pascal's 'Provinciales,' when Corneille had already produced his masterpieces, at the moment that MoliÈre brought out his 'Misanthrope,' when Racine prepared his 'Plaideurs,' and his 'Britannicus,' and Boileau published his first satires. These memoirs add a new gem to FlÉchier's literary crown, by displaying qualities not to be traced in his previously-published works. Here one does not find that scientific formality of style which procured him the name of a skilful artisan of words; but the author, still young, and writing, as we may say, in play, or to exercise his easy pen, lets the latter run on at random, whence often arises a certain laisser-aller, an apparent negligence, of which Legrand d'Aussy, who criticises it, felt neither the charm nor the value. Had he found declamation against reigning abuses, against the nobility, or against what he called superstition, he would have admired it. But the scholarly harmony of the style, the vein of subtle and delicate wit pervading the work, have completely escaped him. Let others having more right to be severe than the author of the 'Voyage en Auvergne,' point out occasional prolixity, romantic adventures, digressions, a superabundance of antitheses; let them even blame the coolness with which FlÉchier—in times when such circumspection was necessary—relates horrible facts. I leave them to play this easy part, and prefer receding with the author to a period whose private and intimate customs are little known to me, observing with him the follies, and listening to the gossip of the day, laughing with him, enjoying his gaiety, and, at the same time, acquiring knowledge." Then come a few words of compliment and gratitude to the enlightened minister (M. Villemain) who encouraged the publication of the MÉmoires. In the main we agree with M. Gonod, and are much more disposed to give ourselves up to the charm—scarcely admitting exact definition—which we find in FlÉchier's work, and to cull the flowers of instruction and amusement so liberally scattered through his pages, than to sit down with the dogged brow of a hypercritic to pick out errors and carp at deficiencies. The kind-hearted AbbÉ, by his decorous gaiety, inoffensive satire, and occasional tinge of tender melancholy, surely deserves this much forbearance. Nor can we, considering the unassuming nature of his work and the circumstances under which it was written, allow ourselves to be angry with him for the abrupt flights and transitions by which he so frequently passes from the annals of crime to the recital of follies, from the lady's bower to the ensanguined scaffold, from the dark details of feudal oppression to the trivial tattle of the town; careless in some instances to terminate history or anecdote, to dispel the doubts and gratify the curiosity of the reader. Whilst recognising the historical importance and interest of a grave and minute account of the sessions of the Grands-Jours, we do not quarrel with our AbbÉ for not having transmitted it to us, but accept his heterogeneous tragi-comic volume as a graphic and amusing sketch of the vices, follies, and tone of French society in the twenty-third year of the reign of Louis, surnamed the Great.

At the last stage before Clermont, the town of Riom, FlÉchier abruptly commences his narrative. It was the place of rendezvous for the members of the tribunal, who halted there to shake their feathers and prepare their pompous entry into Clermont. "At Riom," says the AbbÉ, "we began to take repose and congratulate ourselves on our journey. We were so well received by the lieutenant-general, and were lodged in his house with so great cleanliness and even magnificence, that we forgot we were out of Paris." The hospitable seneschal, moreover, took pleasure in showing his honourable guests all that was remarkable in the town and its environs, especially a young lady of great attractions, whose numerous charms of person and mind made her to be considered in that country as one of the wonders of the world. She was about twenty-two years of age, daughter of a certain President Gabriel de Combes, and without being a perfect beauty, she was deemed irresistible when desirous to please. The great praises FlÉchier heard of her, raised his expectations to a high pitch, and when he saw her, he was disappointed. He admitted many merits, but also discovered defects. A person of quality belonging to that country, and whose name is not given, combated this depreciatory opinion, which the gentle AbbÉ willingly waived, merely expressing surprise that a lady of such merit should have passed her twentieth year without making some great marriage. The worthy country gentleman, his interlocutor, was astonished at his astonishment, being unable to conceive that the adventures of this pearl of Auvergne had not been trumpeted in the remotest corners of the kingdom. When at last convinced of FlÉchier's ignorance, he volunteered to dispel it; and the AbbÉ, evidently delighted to be initiated into the chronique scandaleuse of Riom, gave him all encouragement. But because they were not at their ease for such discourse, but importuned by many compliments, in the drawing-room where this occurred, they got into the honest gentleman's carriage, and were driven to a certain garden, which passed for the Luxembourg of the district, and was much frequented in the fine season by the Riom fashionables. "There are fountains," says FlÉchier, "and grottos, and alleys separated by palisades of a very agreeable verdure, which divert the eyes, and thick enough to keep the secrets exchanged by lovers, when they walk and talk confidentially. Although it was one of the finest of autumnal days, the arrival of Messieurs des Grands-Jours kept every body in the town, and we found more tranquillity and solitude than we had hoped for." Amidst the discreet shades of this suburban Eden, FlÉchier learned the gallant adventures of Mademoiselle de Combes, which he professes to set down verbatim, although it is easy to judge, how greatly the narrative is indebted to his consummate art as a narrator, far superior to what could reasonably be attributed to the Auvergnat squire or noble from whom he derived the facts; to say nothing of the impossibility of retaining word for word, and upon once hearing it, a narrative extending over thirty pages. But, throughout the volume, the same thing occurs. Give FlÉchier a story to tell, and he imparts to it a character entirely his own, arranging it with infinite grace, attributing motives to the personages, and placing imaginary conversations in their mouths. This story of Mademoiselle de Combes, for instance, in itself a very simple case of jilting, acquires, in his hands, an interest peculiarly its own, and we follow it to the end with unabated amusement. A young gentleman of Clermont, of the name of Fayet, rich and amiable, of agreeable person and noble and generous disposition, and well allied, returned to his native town, after completing his studies at Paris, to marry Mademoiselle Ribeyre, daughter of the first president of the Court of Aids at Clermont. The marriage had been arranged between the respective parents, but some difference supervening, the lady's father broke off the match, and to prevent any possible renewal of negotiations, gave his daughter to M. Charles de Combes, so that Fayet arrived to find his mistress snatched from him, and to witness a rival's wedding instead of celebrating his own. Many persons would have been sensibly affected by such a misadventure, but he consoled himself with a good grace for the loss of a bride whom he had known little and loved less, paid the usual civilities to the new-married couple, and soon found himself on a friendly footing in their house. There he met the sister-in-law of his former intended, Mademoiselle de Combes, then a young girl of fifteen, endowed with every grace of mind and person that can be expected at that age, and her favour he seriously applied himself to gain. "He found a virgin heart," says FlÉchier, "upon which he made a tolerably favourable impression; he made more expense than ever, gave magnificent entertainments, acquired the good will of most of the persons who habitually saw his mistress, and did all in his power to place himself favourably in her opinion, knowing well that esteem leads to tenderness by a very rapid road. On occasion he would address a few words to her in a low voice; and in his conversation would opportunely introduce generous and tender sentiments. These, the young lady, who had infinite wit and sense, well knew how to apply; but although she was already a little touched, she had the art to dissimulate so naturally that it was impossible to penetrate her thoughts, and even those she most trusted knew nothing of her new-born inclinations." Such power of dissimulation, at so early an age, might have alarmed the lover, and given the aspirant to her hand matter for reflexion. Instead of that, it served to stimulate his passion, and he pressed the siege of her heart with renewed vigour. In a long conversation, detailed by FlÉchier in the graceful but insipid language of the period, where the voice of passion seems cramped and chilled by the necessity of polished periods and elegant diction, Fayet paved the way to a declaration, which he had already commenced, when interrupted by the entrance of the sister-in-law. But his discourse, and the constancy of his attentions, had touched the heart, or at least wrought upon the imagination of the obdurate fair one; and the gallant, perceiving his advantage, impatiently awaited an opportunity to renew the attack. It soon occurred, whilst walking with some ladies and cavaliers in the same garden where FlÉchier heard the tale. Accident divided the party, and the lovers found themselves alone. With trembling and hesitation, for his sincere and ardent passion made him dread the possibility of a refusal which his reason forbade him to think probable, Fayet avowed his love. The lady affected dismay, and uttered a cry, says the AbbÉ, that nearly pierced the paling; but she ended by permitting him to love her, and after two or three more interviews, confessed a reciprocal flame. Their amorous joy, however, was converted into bitterness and despair by the positive refusal of the President de Combes to sanction their union. The magistrate's motives for this refusal were in the highest degree absurd. One was, that M. Ribeyre having declined the alliance of Fayet, it was to be inferred the latter had less fortune than he received credit for; the second, still more ridiculous, was an idea that it would be disgraceful to his daughter to marry a man whom his daughter-in-law had refused. Fayet, we are told, was near dying of grief on receiving this rude and unforeseen blow. Retiring to his apartment, he wrote a despairing billet to his mistress, who, although also very desponding, returned an encouraging and consolatory reply, and there ensued an animated correspondence and long series of secret interviews, known of course to everybody but to the parents who forbade them. At last, the vigilance of the latter became excessive: Mademoiselle Combes, never suffered out of sight of her mother, who even slept in her room, was compelled to scribble her love-letters in haste, by favour of a half-drawn curtain and a ray of lamplight, whilst the good lady was absorbed in her evening devotions; until at last, by reason of this painful constraint, or from some other cause, she fell into a state of languor, and was taken to the baths of Vichy. "She there recovered her health," says FlÉchier, who manifestly sympathises with the sufferings of these constant lovers; "but the miracle was less owing to the waters than to secret interviews with her lover. He followed her in disguise, and remained hidden in a house adjacent to the baths, whither, under some pretext, a good lady conducted her, and thence, after a space of conversation, led her back to her mother. Never were the waters of Vichy more eagerly desired, or taken with more pleasure." After this, Mademoiselle de Combes, hoping to alarm her parents into acquiescence, took refuge in a convent, where she was received on condition that she should break off all intercourse with the world. But the superior, a lady of quality and friend of both parties, favoured the reception of letters, and even visits from Fayet to his mistress. The lover was smuggled by female friends as far as the convent grating. At last, Madame de Combes persuaded her daughter to return home, and treated her more kindly than before, but continued stanch in her opposition to the marriage. To be brief, this state of affairs lasted eight or nine years. "The thing went so far," says the AbbÉ, "that they swore fidelity before the altar, making profane vows in holy places, and even writing promises signed with their blood, and committing other follies peculiar to persons whom a violent passion blinds. By this time the lady was in her twenty-fourth year, and seeing herself near the age when the law exempts children from the control of their parents, she exhorted Fayet to perseverance, writing him to that effect."

Just at this time, M. Bernard de Fortia, a friend and college-comrade of Fayet, was appointed to the high office of Intendant of Auvergne. He was a widower, and, on arriving at Clermont, il se pourvut d'abord d'une galanterie. The object of his attentions was a young girl of eighteen, whose embonpoint added several years to her apparent age, and who was generally known as la Beauverger. "For we are accustomed thus to abridge the manner of naming, and find the word Mademoiselle useless, the name of the family sufficiently indicating the quality." With the unaffected ease and lively conversation of this lady, the Intendant was much pleased and amused, and saw a good deal of her, being also greatly diverted by her letters. "Sometimes she began them by some extravagance, as when she wrote to him: 'The devil take you, sir!' at others by tender pleasantries and by naivetÉs of her invention. Writing easily, she wrote much; and as she was one day told that if she continued she would produce more volumes than Saint Augustin, 'Ay, truly,' she replied, 'though, like him, I were to write only my confessions.'"

To the admirer of this brisk and buxom damsel, Fayet addressed himself as to an old friend, and in all confidence, to intercede for him with the parents of Mademoiselle de Combes. Fortia promised his best services, went several times to the house, and assured his friend that he took all care of his interests, but that it would be unwise to precipitate matters. These assurances he renewed in his letters to Fayet, who, being compelled about this time to make a journey to Paris, was received on his return with every mark of joy by the mistress of his affections. Still, although she had reached her twenty-fifth year, she seemed in no hurry to take the steps necessary to their marriage; she was less eager to hear from her lover, and less assiduous in writing to him. Some time afterwards, Fayet discovered that she was in correspondence with M. Fortia, and chancing to see one of her letters, he nearly fainted with surprise and grief at its contents. "Do not press me, Sir, I entreat you," wrote the perfidious beauty, "to reply very exactly to the last passage in your letter. You well know that word is difficult to utter, and still more so to write; be satisfied with the assurance that as a good Christian I strictly obey the commandment that bids me love my neighbour. Another time you shall know more." Poor Fayet sought his mistress, who denied having written to Fortia, and protested that her sentiments were unchanged. Persuaded of her dissimulation, and overwhelmed with sorrow, he addressed her in a strain of feeling wholly thrown away upon the calculating and deceitful damsel. "If my suspicions are just, Madam," he said amongst other things, "and you are more moved by the fortune of an Intendant than by the sincere passion of a lover lacking such brilliant recommendations, I feel that you will render me the most miserable of men; but I consent to be miserable so that you be the happier." The lady consoled him, taxed him with injustice in thus suspecting her after ten years' fidelity, dismissed him only half persuaded, and wrote to him that same evening to beg him to return her letters. Fayet saw that he was sacrificed. He sent back the letters, retaining only a few of the best, especially the one written in blood. To add to his annoyance, his false friend the Intendant had the hypocritical assurance to protest that he had done all in his power for him, but that, finding all in vain, he at last, subjugated by the lady's charms, had pleaded his own cause. He then told him in confidence that he was to be married in a few days, and, with more anxiety than delicacy, entreated him to say how far his familiarity with Mademoiselle de Combes had been carried during the ten years' courtship. Gentle creature as the jilted suitor evidently was, he could not resist the temptation thus indiscreetly held out, and, without compromising to the last point the lady's reputation, he contrived, by his ambiguous replies, greatly to perplex and torment his rival. The latter, in his uneasiness, consulted other persons; the report of his indiscretion got wind, and was made the subject of songs and pasquinades, rather witty than decent. The marriage, which was to have taken place in a few days, had been several months pending when FlÉchier heard the story, and the general opinion was, that the Intendant was only amusing himself, and that it would never occur. Meanwhile poor feeble Fayet could not get cured of his love; he thought continually of his lost mistress, took pleasure in praising and talking of her, sought excuses for her conduct, and only spoke of her as his "adorable deceiver." "The incidents of your narrative," says FlÉchier, when thanking the obliging gentleman for the pleasure he had procured him, "are very pleasant, and you have told them so agreeably, that I find them marvellously so. If you ask my opinion, I take part with Fayet against his false mistress, and I wish that, for her punishment, the Intendant may amuse her for a while and then leave her; that she may then seek to return to Fayet, and that Fayet may have nothing to say to her. Heaven often punishes one infidelity by another." The adorable trompeuse, as we are informed by a note, ultimately married neither Fortia nor Fayet, but became the wife of a M. de la Barge.

If we have thus lingered over the love story with which FlÉchier commences his MÉmoires, it is because these milder episodes are, to our thinking, more agreeable to dwell upon, and, in their style of telling, more characteristic of the writer, than the details of barbarous crimes and sanguinary scenes with which, at a later period of the volume, we are abundantly indulged. We will get on to the staple of the book, the proceedings of the Grands-Jours. This tribunal, although, as already mentioned, it took cognisance of all manner of causes, civil as well as criminal, and judged offenders of every degree, from the meanest peasant to the highest noble, was intended chiefly for the benefit of the turbulent and tyrannical nobility, who in those latter days of expiring feudality, still oppressed their weaker neighbours, murdered their dependents, and kept up bloody feuds amongst themselves. Such excesses and injustice were common in Bretagne, DauphinÉ, and other provinces of France; but we cannot trace them as having taken place any where quite so late as in Auvergne, whose remote position and mountainous configuration, as well as the rude and obstinate character of its inhabitants, gave greater liberty and pretext for a state of things recalling in some degree the lawless periods of the middle ages. "The license that a long war has introduced into our provinces," says the King's letter to the Echevins, or chief magistrates of Clermont, "and the oppression that the poor suffer from it, having made us resolve to establish in our town of Clermont in Auvergne, a court vulgarly called the Grands-Jours, composed of persons of high probity and consummate experience, who, to the extent of the authority we have intrusted to them, shall take cognisance of all crimes, and pass judgment on the same, punishing the guilty, and powerfully enforcing justice; we will, and command you, &c." "This letter," (of which the remainder refers to the quarters to be provided for the judges, and to the consideration to be shown to their persons and quality,) "read, with sound of trumpet, upon the principal squares and cross-streets of the town, produced an effect difficult to describe. One can form an idea of it, only when the picture of the Grands-Jours, unrolled before our eyes by FlÉchier, shall have permitted us to imagine the system of oppression under which the people groaned. The letter was like a signal of general deliverance." (Introduction, p. xix.) Of deliverance, that is to say, for the lower orders, the vast majority, who foresaw, in the severity and omnipotence of the dreaded tribunal, revenge for their long sufferings at the hands of arrogant and lawless masters. The aristocracy of the province, on the other hand, few of whom could boast clear consciences, beheld the arrival of the royal commissioners with feelings far less pleasing; and although a body of them, including many notorious delinquents, went out to meet and welcome the Messieurs des Grands-Jours, the ceremony was scarcely at an end when most of them took to flight, to await in distant hiding-places the subsidence of the storm of retribution. These were the gentlemen referred to in the popular song of the day, composed for the occasion, and which resounded in the streets of Clermont on the morrow of the receipt of the King's letter. It is given, at its full length of twenty-two couplets, in the appendix to the MÉmoires, and breathes a bitter hatred of the unfeeling nobles and insolent retainers who ill-treated the people—a savage joy at their impending castigation. One of the verses may be quoted, as comprising the principal hardships and extortions suffered by the peasantry.

"Tel est notre plaisir," such is our pleasure, the customary termination of all royal edicts and ordinances, was the closing phrase of the letter already cited, conveying the King's will to the authorities of Clermont. And the insolent assumption of the Auvergnat nobles had to yield to the strong will and energetic measures of the fourteenth Louis. Without dreaming of disputing the royal mandate, the guilty fled in confusion and dismay.

"On my arrival at Clermont," says FlÉchier, "I remarked universal terror, there, and throughout the country. All the nobility had taken to flight, and not a gentleman remained who did not examine his conscience, recall the evil passages of his life, and endeavour to repair the wrongs done his vassals, in hopes of stifling complaint. Numerous were the conversions wrought, less by the grace of God than by the justice of man, but which were not the less advantageous for being compulsory. Those who had been the tyrants of the poor became their suppliants, and more restitutions were made than had been operated at the great jubilee of the holy year. The arrest of M. de la Mothe Canillac was the chief subject of consternation." Evil was the fate of the unlucky delinquents who fell into the clutches of the dread tribunal, before the severity of its zeal had been appeased by the infliction of punishment, and daunted by the popular effervescence its first sanguinary measures occasioned. The Viscount de la Mothe was the most estimable of the numerous and powerful family of Canillac; he was much esteemed in the province, and by no means the man who should have been selected for condign chastisement, as an example to titled evil-doers. Nevertheless, the judges had scarcely arrived at Clermont, when their president, Monsieur de Novion, (himself distantly connected by marriage with the Canillac family,) and Talon, the advocate-general, agreed to arrest M. de la Mothe. The provost of Auvergne and his archers found him in bed, and so surprised was he at the intimation of arrest, that he lost his presence of mind, and gave up some letters he had just received from a mistress. At dinner, that day, his friends had bantered him about the Grands-Jours, but he thought himself so innocent, that he could not believe his danger. Nor would he, perhaps, have been interfered with, but for reasons which ought never to have swayed ministers of justice. The name of Canillac was in ill repute, as that of a turbulent and tyrannical family: M. de Novion desired to strike terror and prove his impartiality by arresting a man of first-rate importance, who was also a connexion of his own; and, moreover, the Viscount had borne arms against the king in the civil wars. The crime alleged against him could hardly be deemed very flagrant, and did not justify, at least in those days, the rigour of his judges. During the wars, M. de la Mothe had received a sum of money from the Prince de CondÉ, to be employed in levying cavalry. The Viscount sought assistance from his friends, and especially from a certain M. d'Orsonette, to whom he remitted five thousand francs to equip a troop of horse. The levies not coming in fast enough to please the prince, he flew into a passion with the Viscount, who, proud as Lucifer, would not put up with blame, abandoned CondÉ, and demanded an account from d'Orsonette of the cash intrusted to him. This person, however, neither produced his recruits nor restored the enlistment money, and, whilst acknowledging the debt, showed little haste to discharge it. Ill blood was the consequence; the two gentlemen met, each with retainers at his back, a fight ensued, D'Orsonette was wounded and his falconer killed. All this was an old story in 1665, and a malicious animus appeared in the eagerness of the court to revive it. La Mothe even obtained letters of pardon for the offence, but by a legal quibble these were nullified and made to serve against him. The evidence was very contradictory as to who had been the assailant, although it seemed well established that the Viscount had greatly the advantage of numbers. At the worst, and to judge from FlÉchier's account, the offence did not exceed manslaughter and would have been sufficiently punished by a less penalty than death, to which M. de la Mothe was condemned, and which he suffered four hours afterwards. FlÉchier displays some indignation, cloaked by his habitually-guarded phrase, in his comments on the hard measure of justice shown to the poor Viscount. "I know," he says, "that many persons, who judge things very wisely, thought the president and M. Talon might well have consulted the principal of those Messieurs" (the members of the tribunal) "on this affair, and especially M. de Caumartin, who held so high a rank among them; and that they would have done better not to have thus spread the alarm amongst a great number of gentlemen, who took their departure immediately after this arrest. To prevent the escape of a man who was only half guilty, they lost the opportunity of capturing a hundred criminals; and every one agrees that this first arrest is a good hit for the judge, but not for justice." There was one very singular circumstance in the case, and which could have been met with, as the AbbÉ observes, only in a country so full of crime as Auvergne then was. The accuser, the person who laid the information, and the witnesses, were all more criminal than the accused himself. The first was charged by his own father with having killed his brother, with having attempted parricide, and with a hundred other crimes; the second was a convicted forger; and the others, for sundry crimes, were either at the galleys or in perpetual banishment, or actually fugitives. So that, to all appearance, the Viscount must have been acquitted for want of testimony, had not the president, by a pettifogging manoeuvre, not very clearly explained but manifestly unfair, managed to turn against him his own admissions in the letters of pardon granted by M. de Caumartin, and in which it was customary to set down the criminal's full confession of his offences. FlÉchier's account is, however, too disconnected and imperfect to afford us a clear view of the singular system of jurisprudence argued by this remarkable trial and sentence. The versatile AbbÉ does not plume himself on his legal knowledge, and indeed is rather too apt, as many will think, to turn from the rigorous and somewhat partial proceedings of the tribunal, to flowery topics of gallant gossip. The town of Clermont finds little favour in his eyes, and he doubts that there is one more disagreeable in all France, the streets being so narrow that one carriage only can pass along them; so that the meeting of two vehicles caused a terrible blaspheming of coachmen, who swear there, FlÉchier thinks, better than anywhere else, and who assuredly would have set fire to the town had they been more numerous, and but for the many beautiful fountains at hand to extinguish the flames. "On the other hand, the town is well peopled, the women are ugly but prolific, and if they do not inspire love, they at least bear many children. It is an established fact, that a lady who died a short time ago, aged eighty years, made the addition of her descendants, and counted up four hundred and sixty-nine living, and more than a thousand dead, whom she had seen during her life. After that, can one doubt the prodigious propagation of Israel during the time of the captivity, and may not one ask here what the Dutch asked when they entered China and saw the immense population, whether the women of that country bore ten children at a time?" If FlÉchier, when inditing the lively record of his residence in Auvergne, contemplated the probability of his manuscript some day finding its way into print, it is evident that he cared little for the suffrages of the ladies of Clermont. Had he valued their good opinion, or expected the MÉmoires to be submitted to them, he would hardly have ventured to note thus plainly—not to say brutally—his depreciation of their personal attractions. Ugly, child-bearing housewives! Such crude uncivil phrase would have been more appropriate in the day of the eccentric monarch who used firetongs to remove a love-letter from a lady's bosom,[29] than in that of the graceful lover of La ValliÈre, who cloaked the extremity of egotism under the most exquisite external courtesy. Not often do we catch FlÉchier thus transgressing the limits of polite comment. His keen perception of the ridiculous more frequently finds vent in sly and guarded satire. But the rusticity and want of court-usage of the Auvergne dames meet in him a cruel censor. "All the ladies of the town come to pay their respects to our ladies, not successively, but in troops. Each visit fills the room; there is no finding chairs enough; it takes a long time to place all these little people; (ce petit monde;) you would think it a conference or an assembly, the circle is so large. I have heard say that it is a great fatigue to salute so many persons at one time, and that one is much embarrassed before and after so many kisses. As the greater number (of the visitors) are not accustomed to court ceremony, and know nothing but their provincial customs, they come in a crowd, to avoid special notice, and to gain courage from each other. It is a pleasant sight to see them enter, one with her arms crossed, another with her hands hanging down like those of a doll; all their conversation is trivial (bagatelle;) and it is a happiness for them when they can turn the discourse to their dress, and talk of the points d'Aurillac."[30] Even the homage paid to his own talents and growing reputation is insufficient to mollify the AbbÉ and blunt the point of his sarcastic pen. A capuchin monk of worldly tastes, who passed his time at watering places, coquetting with sick belles and belles lettres, had read some of FlÉchier's poetry, and spread his fame amongst the Clermont blue-stockings. Forthwith the AbbÉ received the visits of two or three of these prÉcieuses languissantes, who thought, he informs us with less than his usual modesty,—"that to be seen with me would make them pass for learned persons, and that wit is to be acquired by contagion. One was of a height approaching that of the giants of antiquity, with a face of Amazonian ugliness; the other, on the contrary, was very short, and her countenance was so covered with patches, that I could form no opinion of it, except that she had a nose and eyes. It did not escape me that she was a little lame, and I remarked that both thought themselves beautiful. The pair alarmed me, and I took them for evil spirits trying to disguise themselves as angels of light." Then comes a dialogue, À la MoliÈre—clumsy compliments on the one hand, modestly declined on the other, and at last the ladies take their departure, after turning over the AbbÉ's books, and borrowing a translation of the "Art of Love." "I wish," concludes the AbbÉ, "I could also have given them the art of becoming loveable." These incidents and digressions, petty in the abstract, will have a collective worth in the eyes of those who seek in the MÉmoires what we maintain ought to be there sought:—a valuable addition to our knowledge of the manners, follies, and foibles of a very interesting period.

The comprehensive nature of the court of the Grands-Jours, competent to judge every description of case, is one cause of the motley appearance of FlÉchier's pages. There was little sorting of causes, civil or criminal, but all were taken as they came uppermost, and strong contrasts are the result. We pass from farce to tragedy, and thence again to comedy, with curious rapidity of transition. Now we are horrified by the account of an atrocious assassination or wholesale massacre; turn the leaf, and we trace the derelictions of a rakish husband, or the scandalous details of conventual irregularities. Here we have a puissant count or baron brought up for judgment, or, more often, condemned by default; thereafter followeth the trial and sentence of a scoundrel-peasant, or unlucky fille-de-joie. The Grands-Jours would certainly have been improved by the establishment of a court of appeal; many of the sentences needed revision, and the errors committed were seldom on the side of mercy. The reproach usually made to partial judges, of favouring the rich, and dealing hardly with the poor, would here have been unjustly applied, for it was the wealthy and powerful whom this tribunal chiefly delighted to condemn. These, it is true, in some degree neutralised the effects of such disfavour by getting out of the way; but their houses were razed, their lands confiscated, or struck with a heavy fine, and they themselves were frequently decapitated in effigy, a ceremony to which they attached but slight importance. After the execution of poor Canillac, the court flagged a little in their proceedings, and resumed their energy only towards the close of the session, and under terror of its further prolongation—one having already taken place. "Then," says FlÉchier, "they applied themselves without pause or relaxation to the consideration of important offences, and despatched them so rapidly that they did not give us time to make ourselves thoroughly acquainted with the circumstances." Assassinations, abductions, and oppression, were the usual subjects of their deliberations; and so numerous were the condemnations, that in one day thirty persons were executed in effigy. These pasteboard punishments must seriously have diminished the prestige of the Grands-Jours, by imparting an air of ridiculous impotency to their proceedings. And amongst others, the Marquis of Canillac, a cousin of La Mothe, and the biggest and oldest sinner in the province, was greatly diverted by the bloodless beheading of his counterfeit. FlÉchier believes it was matter of deep regret to this hardened offender that he could not look on at his own execution, as he had done once before when similarly condemned by the parliament of Toulouse. "He had seen his execution himself from an adjacent window, and had found it very pleasant to be at his ease in a house whilst he was beheaded in the street; and to see himself die out of doors, when perfectly comfortable at his fire-side." Judging from the smallness of the sum (thirty livres) set down in the account of expenses of the Grands-Jours as paid the painter, the decapitated portraits were by no means masterpieces of art, nor probably was it deemed necessary to obtain a very exact resemblance of the contumacious originals.

Although none ever ventured to cast a doubt on FlÉchier's strict orthodoxy, he made himself remarkable by a spirit of tolerance unusual in that age, by discountenancing superstition, and by his enlightened disapproval of the abuses of the conventual system. A great doubter of modern miracles, he scrupled not, when a bishop, to protest in a letter to his flock, relating to some miraculous cross, against "those who put their confidence in wood and in lying prodigies." His natural good sense and kindness of heart made him oppose the compulsory profession of young women. In the MÉmoires, he relates an anecdote of a young girl, at whose reception as a nun M. ChÉron, the grand vicar of Bourges, was requested to assist. The vicar, having donned his sacerdotal robes, asked the novice, in the usual formula, what she demanded. "I demand the keys of the monastery, Sir, in order to leave it," was her firm reply, which astonished all present. The vicar could not believe his ears, till she repeated her words, adding, that she had chosen that opportunity to protest against her destiny, because there were abundant witnesses. "If the girls who are daily sacrificed had as much resolution," says FlÉchier, "the convents would be less populous, but the sacrifices offered up in them would be more holy and voluntary." When invested with the episcopal purple, the worthy man acted up to these sound opinions. "I may be allowed," says M. Gonod in his appendix, "to cite, to his glory and to that of religion, his conduct with regard to a nun at Nismes, who had not, like her sister at Bourges, had the courage to demand the keys of the convent, and who subsequently yielded to another description of weakness. FlÉchier, then bishop of Nismes, extended to her his paternal hand, and in this instance, as in many others, approved himself of the same merciful family as a Vincent de Paul and a FÉnelon." This story is told by D'Alembert in his "Eulogiums read at the public sittings of the French Academy," p. 421. An unfortunate girl, whom unfeeling parents had forced into a convent, was unable to conceal the consequences of a deplorable error, and her superior confined her in a dungeon, where she lay upon straw, scarcely nourished by an insufficient ration of bread, and praying for death as a rescue from suffering. FlÉchier heard of it, hastened to the convent, and after encountering much resistance, obtained admission into the wretched cell where the unfortunate creature languished and despaired. On beholding her pastor, she extended her arms as to a liberator sent by divine mercy. The prelate cast a look of horror and indignation at the abbess. "I ought," he said, "if I obeyed the voice of human justice, to put you in the place of this unhappy victim of your barbarity; but the God of clemency, whose minister I am, bids me show, even to you, an indulgence you have not had for her. Go, and for sole penance, read daily in the Evangelists the chapter of the woman taken in adultery." He released the nun, and caused every care to be taken of her, but she was past recovery, and died soon afterwards, blessing his name.

How can we, after reading such traits as this, criticise with any severity the occasional levity displayed in the MÉmoires? How dwell invidiously on the small frivolities and flippancies of the AbbÉ, whose after life was a pattern of Christian virtue and charity? Short of a degree of perfection impossible to humanity, we can scarcely imagine a more charming character than that of FlÉchier, whose very failings "leaned to virtue's side." His sincere benevolence and gentle temper display themselves in each page of his book, in every recorded action of his life. His professed principles—from which we can nowhere trace his practice to have differed—breathed a very different spirit to that usually attributed to the Roman Catholic priesthood. "Violence and oppression," he says, in a letter to M. Vignier, "are not the paths the gospel has marked out for us." His smallest actions were inspired by the same kindly maxims, by a spirit of tolerance and compassion for human frailty. The vein of satire we have exemplified by extracts is tempered by a tone of good-humoured bonhomie; and such sallies, moreover, could not have been intended to wound the feelings of persons in whose lifetime, it is pretty evident, FlÉchier did not destine his book to publication. Neither can fault be fairly found with the occasional freedom of his language and peculiarity of his topics. What we esteem license in these strait-laced days, was regarded as decorous, and passed without censure or observation in those in which he wrote; and the most rigorous will admit the absence of all offensive intention. The AbbÉ is a chronicler; as such he puts down facts, unmutilated and unabridged. If the words in which he clothes them have sometimes more of the courtier's easy pleasantry than of the churchman's grave reserve, we must make allowance for the spirit of the age, look to intention rather than form, and we shall admit that his gaillardises are set down all "in the ease of his heart," without the least design of conveying impure thoughts or immodest images to the imaginations of his contemporaries or of future generations. "If any wonder," says M. Gonod, "at FlÉchier's language, as being sometimes rather free, I tell them he derived his freedom from his virtue; unreproached by his conscience, he thought he might speak plainly: omnia munda mundis. As an historian, he understood the historian's duty differently from the AbbÉ Ducreux, differently from this or that obscure critic who may dare attack him; he took as a guide this maxim: 'Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat.'—(Cic. de Orat. ii. 15.) We must also revert to the times in which he wrote; do we not see, if only by MoliÈre's comedies, how much more prudish and reserved our language has become?"

Amongst the long list of crimes of which the Grands-Jours took cognisance, that of sorcery was not forgotten. "Conversation is an agreeable thing," says FlÉchier, after three or four pages of gossip, including an anecdote of Mademoiselle de ScudÉry and her brother, who had been arrested at Lyons on suspicion of high treason, for having discussed rather too loudly the manner of slaying the king in a projected tragedy—"but exercise is also necessary, and I know nothing pleasanter than to take the country air after having passed several hours discoursing in one's apartment. So we got into our coaches with some ladies, and went to visit the source of the Clermont fountains, one of the curiosities of the country." His elegant account of these springs and the surrounding scenery is alone sufficient to establish his reputation as a proficient in the descriptive art, and loses little by comparison with Charles Nodier's brilliant description of the same spot, the Tivoli of Auvergne. "On our return home we found M. l'Intendant there before us. He had come from Aurillac, and had had great difficulty in getting through the snow which had already fallen in the mountains. He had caused a president of the election of Brioude to be arrested, accused of several crimes, and especially of magic. One of his servants deposed that he had given him certain characters which made him sometimes rise from the ground, when at church, in sight of all the congregation. The Intendant having questioned the accused on this subject, he was so disconcerted that he nearly lost his senses; he fell into a furious passion, and then entreated they would not press him further, that he was not disposed to acknowledge any thing that day, but that on the morrow he would confess all the irregularities of his life. His prayer was granted, and M. de Fortia gave him in charge to four of his people. I do not know if the devil had promised to rescue him from the hands of a Master of Requests, or if, by his art, he bewitched his keepers; but it is certain he made his escape to the woods and mountains, where they have now for three days pursued him. Here is an instance how the devil is friendly and of good faith with those who love him, and how he deceives even Intendants. I was very sorry to miss this opportunity of hearing news of the witches' sabbath and of learning the secret of the characters; perhaps some good angel, hostile to his demon, will deliver him again into the hands of justice." This tone of mockery, when referring to a belief pretty universal in those days,—the belief, namely, in witchcraft and sorcerers—contrasts oddly enough with the strain of grave credulity in which the same writer tells the touching tale of a shepherd and shepherdess who gathered flowers together in the meadows, held tender rendezvous in a green alley formed by nature at the foot of a rock, made reciprocal presents of fruits and flowers, and drank the water of the limpid fountain out of the hollow of each other's hands. This loving pair, the Corydon and Phillis of Auvergne, were ultimately united in the bonds of wedlock, when, behold, a malicious farmer, two of whose ducks had been devoured by Phillis's poodle, laid a spell upon them, greatly to the hindrance of the connubial felicity they had so fondly anticipated. The charm was dissolved by the prayers and interposition of Mother Church; and this little history, FlÉchier admonishes us, "shows that we ought not to treat these enchantments as fables." Notwithstanding which injunction we should think the AbbÉ was indulging in a bit of grave fun, did he not quote Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, and Virgil's Eclogues and other authorities, in support of the authenticity of these malevolent practices.

It could hardly have excited surprise, if, in a narrative of criminal assizes written by a churchman, the misdeeds of the priests had been softened down, lightly passed over, or even entirely suppressed. The least jesuitical of AbbÉs might have reconciled such a course to his conscience by the argument that, although the crimes of the individuals merited infamous publicity, the interests of religion and of the ecclesiastic body would suffer by their revelation. No such plausible plea is set up by FlÉchier, either mentally or openly. He is unsparing in his censure of the laxity of the clergy, and records their derelictions as freely and unreservedly as those of the lay population. A sincere lover of religion, he entertained an honest detestation for those who, under its mask, violated its tenets; and he pillories a priest as readily and heartily as he does Mad Canillac, or Montvallat the extortioner, or any other of the profane and tyrannical gentry of Auvergne. And some very pretty tales he finds to tell about his brethren in black, conveying most unflattering ideas of their morality and Christian virtues. Amongst others, is that of a certain curÉ of St Babel, who was condemned to death for murder, upon very strong evidence—a companion of the slain man having sworn positively to the murderer's identity, and there being besides a mass of circumstantial evidence. When the curÉ had been hung his innocence was discovered. He denied to the very last moment the crime for which he suffered, avowing, however, that he was guilty of many others. And some of his offences, written down by FlÉchier, deserved severe castigation, although the gallows was rather too violent a penalty for them. He was particularly blamed for his amours, and so indiscreet in the choice of time and place, that he was known to make love to a servant maid whilst her mistress lay dying in an adjoining apartment, anxiously awaiting the last sacrament. "He forgot where he was," says FlÉchier, "and love overcame duty. Instead of hearing the confession of the one, he made a declaration to the other, and far from exhorting the sick woman to a pious death, he solicited the healthy one to an evil life." And then this antithetical chronicler proceeds, rather unnecessarily, to a verbatim report of the libertine curÉ's love speeches, adding, we suspect, some slight embellishments of his own. The priest's profligacy was indirectly the cause of his death, for the murder for which he undeservedly suffered was committed on a peasant who had detected him in an intrigue, and fastened him into a barn with one of the objects of his illicit flame. When, a day or two afterwards, the author of this practical joke was set upon and slain, suspicion naturally fell on him who had been its object, and he was arrested by the lieutenant of the watch, who apparently anticipated an attempt at evasion, for "he insinuated himself into his house under pretence of having masses said, and conducted him very adroitly to Clermont." Upon the day of this man's condemnation or execution, (it does not appear very clearly which of the two is meant,) a ray of sunshine again seduced FlÉchier and his company out of the town, and they made an expedition to the country-house called Oradoux, then and still the property of the family of Champflour. The grounds were rendered very agreeable to the party by a multitude of purling streams, whose waters were applied to various fantastical purposes, "making very pleasant figures," as FlÉchier informs us. "One finds basins supplied by a thousand streams, floating islands forming small apartments, where all manner of parties of pleasure take place; an aviary enclosing cascades, a grotto whence the water flows on all sides by a hundred little leaden tubes, and a Diana in a niche who throws up streamlets of water, and is completely covered by a liquid veil falling unceasingly and always preserving its form." Whilst perambulating these aqueous parterres, the AbbÉ fell in with a canon, seemingly a worthy and sensible man, who had sought that retirement with a view to serious meditation. Unrestrained by this latter consideration, FlÉchier, having formed at first sight so good an opinion of the stranger's worth and wisdom, courteously addressed him. "I saluted him as civilly as I could, accosting him with a smiling air, in which was mingled, however, a little of my habitual gravity." The canon took the interruption kindly, and the pair walked and talked together. Their dialogue is given at length in the MÉmoires, indebted, no doubt, to FlÉchier's nimble pen for many flowers of style, and, perhaps, for much of the subject matter. The church of Clermont was the subject of discourse, and from the church a transition to the bishops was very easy. Various saints, and more than one sinner, had ruled the diocese of Clermont; and in the latter class was reckoned a certain Joachim d'Estaing, who had worn the mitre for the first six and thirty years of the seventeenth century. He was stone blind, but the infirmity affected him little. When overtaken by it (at an early age) he took for his motto: Charitate et fide, non oculis, Christi diriguntur oves. Charitable he was, faith he may have had, his cecity was perhaps no absolute impediment to the discharge of his pastoral duties; but neither charity, faith, nor blindness, sufficed to restrain him within the limits of ecclesiastical decorum. Such a rattling, love-making, rollicking boy of a bishop had seldom been heard of. His principal occupations were making war with his chapter and pleading against his canons. These maintained their privileges with much vigour and success. So that when he was on the point of death, some one having exhorted him to do good to a chapter whose tranquillity he had so long troubled:—"I have done them more good than all my predecessors," was his sharp and prompt reply, "since in pleading against them, I have established their privileges upon an immoveable basis." When overtaken by blindness, he had assigned to him, as an episcopal aide-de-camp, AndrÉ de Sausia, Bishop of Bethlehem, who, proceeding to perform some particular duties in the church of Clermont, the canons shut the door against him, pretending that only the bishop of Clermont had that privilege. Thereupon M. L'Estaing, having obtained the sanction of the temporal authorities, burst open the doors with battering-rams, "not unlike those formerly used by the Romans." On another occasion, the Viscount de Polignac, governor of the province, having had a praying-desk (prie-Dieu) placed for him in the nave of the church, without regard to a previous warning that the King alone had that right, the blind bishop had sufficient courage and decision to expel him the sacred edifice. FlÉchier does not give the details of this scandalous scene, but they are to be found in contemporary authors. The bishop, it appears, used force to expel M. de Polignac, who ordered his guards to fire, when one of the bishop's gentlemen prevented bloodshed and sacrilege by swearing that if they made a movement, he would run his sword through the Viscount's body. The bishop's firmness, although it had a degree of violence less becoming in a church dignitary than in a temporal warrior, is approved by FlÉchier as an episcopal virtue. The faults he finds with the diocesan of Clermont are of a different stamp. He deplores his weaknesses, as tending, by example, to the encouragement of immorality, and to the disrepute of the church. "All the balls were held at his house, which, instead of an abode of prayer and penitence, was one of festival and rejoicing; and he appeared there not as a bishop instructing his flock, but as a gentleman in a violet coat, saying soft things to the ladies. His manner of saluting these was other than paternal; and, passing his hands over their faces, he would form an exact estimate of their appearance, never deceiving himself as to their beauty, blind though he was; having his discernment in his hands as others have in their eyes, and, like a good shepherd, knowing all his sheep." These facial manipulations were of small impropriety compared to other particulars of the bishop's conduct and discourse. Under such a prelate, the conduct of the clergy was not likely to be very exemplary, and accordingly we read that canons were seen habitually dressed in coloured clothes, throwing aside their ecclesiastical garb when service was over, and appearing covered with gay ribbons. They left the altar to run to the playhouse, escorting ladies thither, and making a scandalous mixture of worldly vanity and external piety. The parish priests were no better; and we are told of one so fond of the chase that he passed all his time in it, to the neglect of his parochial duties. To such an extent did he carry his passion for field sports, that, when conveying the consecrated wafer to a distant farm, he was known to make his clerk carry his fowling-piece, so that he might have a shot at any game he met upon the road. Which piece of profanity elicits from the worthy FlÉchier an angry and indignant ejaculation. It is not surprising that, under the lax rule of Monseigneur Joachim, the clerical profession was in favour with the idle and dissolute. During his time a vast number of religious fraternities sprang up in the diocese; no less than eight convents and monasteries being established in the town of Clermont. An ordinance, published in 1651, by Jacques Pereyret, canon of the cathedral church, is directed at ecclesiastics who "frequent public games, taverns, and gambling tables; buying and selling at fairs and markets; having commerce with persons of profligate life, and abandoning themselves to all manner of vices and excesses," &c. &c. This state of things, however, was not limited to the diocese of Clermont, but was at that time only too general in France. The following is curious, on account both of the state of things it exhibits, and of the cavalier manner in which FlÉchier refers to his holiness the Pope. "So great were the irregularities of the clergy of Clermont, that there exists a papal bull exempting the canons and the children they might have had, by any crime whatever, from the bishop's jurisdiction. This bull appeared to us of an extraordinary form, and we admired the effrontery of the court of Rome and of the canons of that day."

We find several ladies, amongst them some of high family and name, appearing as plaintiffs or defendants before the tribunal of the Grands Jours. The commencement of the third month's sitting, was signalised by "an audience that every body found very diverting, because there was pleaded the cause of the Countess of Saigne against her husband, on a pleasant difference they had together." The old count had committed the common blunder of marrying a young and pretty wife, who became desirous of a separation, and brought a variety of scandalous charges against him. She had the sympathy and support of many of her own sex, and especially of the grisettes, whom the reverend FlÉchier gravely defines as "young, bourgeoises, having rather a bold style of gallantry, and priding themselves on much liberty." Finally, the count and countess made up their quarrel. The affair of Madame de Vieuxpont, a Norman lady, was of a more serious nature. She was arraigned for conspiracy against the procureur du Roi at Evreux, against whom she conceived so violent an animosity, that she resolved to ruin him at any price, and to that end associated herself with an intendant of woods and forests, a serjeant, and three or four other persons. Her plot being ripe, she accused the obnoxious magistrate of conspiracy against the state, of having called the king a tyrant, and of a design to establish in France a republic after the model of Venice. The unfortunate functionary was arrested and sent to Paris, where he died before his trial was at an end, and narrowly escaped posthumous condemnation. At last his memory was cleared by a decision of the Chamber of Justice, and his perjured accusers were brought before the Grands-Jours. M. Talon, the public prosecutor, pressed for the perpetual banishment of Madame de Vieuxpont and the confiscation of all her property. She was even in fear of capital punishment, and her countenance brightened greatly when the decision of the court, condemning her to three years' exile and a fine of two thousand livres, was intimated to her. She was a lady of violent character, and had lived on very bad terms with her husband, in whose death some hinted her agency; but this, FlÉchier charitably remarks, was perhaps a mere calumny, invented in retaliation of those wherewith she had assailed other persons. It is distinctly stated, however, that she went so far as to challenge her husband to fight a duel; and when he declined a combat in all respects so singular, her mother wounded him with a pistol-shot,—an advertisement, the AbbÉ quietly remarks, never to fall out with one's mother-in-law. Then we have the story of a handsome village maiden, who might have pleased the most fastidious courtiers as well as the bumpkins of Mirefleurs. She was besieged by admirers, from amongst whom she selected one whom she loved with great fidelity. And after her marriage, one of her former suitors risking a daring attempt upon her virtue, she mustered the courage of Lucretia, to protect herself from the evil designs of a modern Tarquin. Finding tears and entreaties unavailing, and as the sole means of preserving her honour, she seized a halbert that stood in a corner of the chamber, and inflicted a deadly wound on her insolent pursuer. "She pierced," says FlÉchier, in his flowery style, and not in the very best taste, "the wretch's heart that burned for her; two or three ardent sighs escaped it, and he expired." The testimony of the neighbours, whom she called in, and her reputation for virtue, absolved her in the eyes of her judges. But when the Grands-Jours came, the relatives of the deceased revived the case; and that tribunal—upon what grounds it is difficult to say—condemned the woman and her family to a heavy fine. There seems to have been scanty justice. At the present day in France, the verdict of justifiable homicide does not preclude a civil action for damages; but these would now hardly be granted by any French court in such a case as the above. The justice of the Grands-Jours was evidently of a very loose description. They had not to dread the revision of a higher court, or the lash of newspaper satire; the king would not trouble himself much about them, so long as they duly scourged the tyrannical counts and barons who impoverished the country and caused discontent amongst the peasantry; and thus, unfettered by any of the usual checks, the bench of gentlemen in square caps, loose cloaks, flowing curls, and delicate moustaches, represented in the frontispiece to M. Gonod's publication, certainly did render some very inexplicable and, as it appears from FlÉchier's chronicle, very iniquitous judgments. Whilst they blundered and mismanaged in their department, an elderly lady of great enterprise and activity made herself exceedingly busy in hers. It was a jurisdiction she had created for herself, without the least shadow of a right, and it is inconceivable how she was allowed to exercise, even for a day, her self-conferred authority. Madame Talon, the respectable mother of the advocate-general, had no sooner arrived at Clermont, than she undertook the whole police regulation of the town, imposing taxes, correcting weights and measures, fixing a tariff of prices, and lecturing the Clermont ladies as to the mode of distributing their alms. At last the housewives of Auvergne would stand this no longer, and then she turned her attention to monastic abuses, and hospital regulations. She was evidently an officious nuisance; and although FlÉchier supports her, it is after a feeble manner, his faint praise strongly resembling condemnation. "When people do good," he says, "it is impossible to keep the world from murmuring. Some say she would do better to alter her head-dress, which is a very extraordinary one; others have remarked, that she wears a spreading cap, bearing some resemblance to a mitre, which is the livery of her mission and the character of her authority. Others complain, that she spoils every thing instead of doing good, prevents charities by her rigorous examination of charitable ladies, destroys the hospital by endeavouring to regulate it, because she sends away those who, to her thinking, are not ill enough, leaving it empty, &c., &c. And it is said, she ought not to meddle so much, examining every thing, even to a prison allowance and an executioner's wages; but," concludes the sly AbbÉ—who doubtless concealed a little solemn irony under this long recapitulation of charges and brief acquittal of the accused—"Virtue is generous and puts itself above all such murmurs."

Amidst the bustle of judicial proceedings, whilst each day some sanguinary drama was recapitulated before the court, whilst sentences, often of savage severity, were recorded, and executions, for the most part in effigy, were of daily occurrence, time was still found for gaiety and amusement. Balls and assemblies went on, encouraged by the President de Novion, in order to do pleasure to his daughters; and all the ladies of quality in the province, as well as those gentlemen who had managed to compound their offences, having established themselves for the time at Clermont, there was no lack of dancers. And the grave members of the tribunal did not disdain to mingle in these terpsichorean gambols. But somehow or other there was always disorder at the assemblies. Decidedly the demon of discord was abroad in Auvergne. "Sometimes the ladies quarrelled, menaced each other, after the manner of provincial dames, with what little credit they chanced to possess, and were on the point of seizing each other by the hair and fighting with their muffs. This disturbed the company, but they managed to appease the disputants; and a few more bourrÉes and goignades were danced." The bourrÉe d'Auvergne, now confined to peasants and water-carriers, was at that time a favourite and fashionable dance. "There are very pretty women here," says Madame de SÉvignÉ, writing from Vichy, the 26th May, 1676. "Yesterday, they danced the bourrÉes of the country, which are truly the prettiest in the world. They give themselves a great deal of movement, and dÉgogne themselves exceedingly. But if at Versailles these dancers were introduced at masquerades, people would be delighted by the novelty, for they even surpass the Bohemiennes." FlÉchier was scandalised by this peculiar movement or dÉgognement, esteemed so captivating by the Marchioness. He makes no doubt that these dancers are worthy successors of "the Bacchantes of whom so much is spoken in the books of the ancients. The bishop of Aleth excommunicates in his diocese those who dance in that fashion. Nevertheless, the practice is so common in Auvergne, that children learn at one time to walk and to dance."

Did space permit, we would gladly accompany the AbbÉ on other of the excursions in the environs of Clermont, for which he continually finds excuse in the necessity either of escorting ladies or of enjoying the winter sunbeams. As at Riom, he always manages to pick up some anonymous but intelligent acquaintance, to enlighten him concerning the gossip of the country, and to father those sallies and inuendoes of which he himself is unwilling to assume the responsibility. His account of a visit to the Dominican convent is full of quiet satire. He was accompanied by his friend Monsieur de B—— "a sensible man, well acquainted with the belles lettres, and of very agreeable conversation." M. de B—— is made the scapegoat for the sly hits at the abuses of the church, and at the pictures and records of miracles to which they are introduced by a simple and garrulous monk. There were few founders of religious orders, they were informed, of such good family as St Dominick, who was a grandee of Spain, and consequently far superior to St Ignatius, whose nobility the Jesuits vaunted, and who, after all, was but a mere gentleman. There were, of course, many pictures of the grandee upon the church and cloister walls, representing him engaged in various pious acts. "In one of them he was depicted presenting a request to the Pope, surrounded by his cardinals, whilst on the same canvass was seen the horse of Troy, dragged by Priam and by the gentlemen and ladies of the town, with all the circumstances related by Virgil in the second book of the Æneid." FlÉchier was considerably puzzled by this mixture of sacred and profane personages; but his guide explained its singularity by assigning the picture to a pious and learned monk, as well read in Virgil and Homer as in his breviary, who made a good use of his reading, and was particularly happy in employing it to the glorification of God and the saints. Another picture represented a Dominican holding a pair of scales, in one of which was a basket full of fruit, and in the other an empty basket, with the inscription Retribuat tibi Deus. The promissory note of the Jacobins was so heavy that it outweighed the laden basket. The guide would fain have expatiated on the beauty of this allegory, suggested, as he maintained, by a miracle actually wrought in favour of his order, but FlÉchier cut him short in his homily, and passed on to the next painting, the representation of one of those "piously impious" legends, as M. Gonod justly styles them, so often met with in monkish chronicles. This one, in which the Saviour of mankind is represented as supping with and converting a beautiful Roman courtesan, shocked the religious feelings of the AbbÉ FlÉchier in the year 1666, although in the year 1832, it was not deemed too irreverent for reproduction in a work entitled "Pouvoir de Marie," written by the notorious Liguori, and published at Clermont Ferrand, by the Catholic Society for pious books. "I could not help telling him," says FlÉchier, "that I had seen pictures more devout and touching than this one; that these disguises of Jesus Christ as a gallant, were rather extraordinary; that there are so many other stories more edifying, and, perhaps, truer...." Here the monk interrupted the AbbÉ, and was about to repeat a whole volume of miracles, compiled by one of the brotherhood, when the vesper bell summoned him to prayer, to the great relief of FlÉchier, who manifestly disapproved as much the profane travesty of holy things, as the lying miracles by which the Dominicans strove to attract into their begging-box and larder the contributions of the credulously charitable.

We perhaps risk censure by terminating this paper without a more minute consideration of the Grands-Jours themselves, the ostensible subject of FlÉchier's book, and without examining in greater detail the nature of the crimes and characters of the culprits brought before the arbitrary tribunal. Although we have shown that a large portion of the MÉmoires consists of matters wholly unconnected with the proceedings of the court, it must not be thence inferred that the AbbÉ neglects his reporting duties, and does not frequently apply himself to give long and elaborate accounts of the trials, especially of the criminal ones. Many of these are sufficiently remarkable to merit a place in the pages of the Causes CÉlÉbres. Some have actually found their way thither. In FlÉchier's narrative, their interest is often obscured and diminished by wordiness and digression; and persons interested in the civil or criminal jurisprudence of the period will surely quarrel with the divine, who is a poor lawyer, apt to shirk legal points, or, when he endeavours to unravel them, to make confusion worse confounded. The state of society in Auvergne, in the seventeenth century, is exhibited in a most unfavourable light. We find a brutal and unchivalrous nobility, deficient in every principle of honour, and even of common honesty, unfeeling to their dependents, discourteous to ladies, perfidious to each other. Here we behold a nobleman of ancient name offering his adversary in a duel the choice of two pistols, from one of which he has drawn the ball, with a resolution to take his advantage if the loaded weapon is left him, and to find a pretext for discharging and reloading the other, should it fall to his share. He gets the loaded pistol, and shoots his man. A gentleman of rank and quality enforces the droit de nÔces, formerly known in Auvergne by a less decent name—but language, as FlÉchier says, purifies itself even in the most barbarous countries. And certainly there was much of the barbarian in the Auvergnat, even so late as 1666. The odious exaction referred to was compounded by payment of heavy tribute, often amounting to half the bride's dowry. The Baron d'Espinchal was another brilliant specimen of the aristocracy of Auvergne. After committing a series of crimes we have no inclination to detail, he pursued his wife (a daughter of the Marquis of ChÂteaumorand) with gross insult, even in her convent-sanctuary at Clermont. The unfortunate lady had contracted such a habit of fear, that she could not be in his presence without trembling; and on his putting his hand to his pocket to take out his watch, whilst separated from her by the grating of the convent parlour, she thought he was about to draw a pistol, and fell fainting from her chair. Numerous traits of this description prove baseness and brutality as well as vice on the part of the higher orders of the province, who appear to have been deficient in the military virtues and redeeming qualities sometimes found in outlawed and desperate banditti. We should have had less gratification in dwelling upon the crimes and excesses narrated in the MÉmoires, than we have derived from the consideration of their lighter passages, and of the occasional eccentricities and many admirable qualities of their estimable and reverend author.