Part 12

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.