ears--whose care it was to bury, hush
up, bedarken everything connected with justice.

Meanwhile, some honey-tongued priests had comforted Madeline in her
Rouen dungeon; they heard her confessions, and enjoined her, by way of
penance, to ask forgiveness of her persecutors, the nuns of Louviers.
Thenceforth, happen what might, Madeline could never more be brought
in evidence against those who had thus bound her fast. It was a
triumph indeed for the clergy, and the victory was sung by a knave of
an exorciser, the Capuchin Esprit de Bosroger, in his _Piety
Afflicted_, a farcical monument of stupidity, in which he accuses,
unawares, the very people he fancies himself defending.

The Fronde, as I said before, was a revolution for honest ends. Fools
saw only its outer form--its laughable aspects; but at bottom it was a
serious business, a moral reaction. In August, 1647, with the first
breath of freedom, Parliament stepped forward and cut the knot. It
ordered, in the first place, the destruction of the Louviers Sodom;
the girls were to be dispersed and sent back to their kinsfolk. In the
next, it decreed that thenceforth the bishops of the province should,
four times a-year, send special confessors to the nunneries, to
ascertain that such foul abuses were not renewed.

One comfort, however, the clergy were to receive. They were allowed to
burn the bones of Picart and the living body of Boulle, who, after
making public confession in the cathedral, was drawn on a hurdle to
the Fish Market, and there, on the 21st August, 1647, devoured by the
flames. Madeline, or rather her corpse, remained in the prisons of
Rouen.

CHAPTER IX.

THE DEVIL TRIUMPHS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

The Fronde was a kind of Voltaire. The spirit of Voltaire, old as
France herself, but long restrained, burst forth in the political, and
anon in the religious, world. In vain did the Great King seek to
establish a solemn gravity. Beneath it laughter went on.

Was there nought else, then, but laughter and jesting? Nay, it was the
Advent of Reason. By means of Kepler, of Galileo, Descartes, Newton,
there was now triumphantly enthroned the reasonable dogma of faith in
the unchangeable laws of nature. Miracle dared no longer show itself,
or, when it did dare, was hissed down. In other and better words, the
fantastic miracles of mere whim had vanished, and in their stead was
seen the mighty miracle of the universe--more regular, and therefore
mo