here--but they must wait; we will examine them
afterwards. Now they would only interrupt the thread of our historical
deduction.

At the first outbreak of religious re-action, the nuns were generally
governed by the friars of their order. The Bernardin nuns were
directed by the Bernardin friars, the Carmelite nuns by the Carmelite
friars, and the nuns of St. Elizabeth by the Picpus friars. The
Capuchin nuns were not only confessed by their friars, but were fed at
their expense, and by the produce of their begging.[2]

The monks did not long preserve this exclusive possession. For more
than a quarter of a century, priests, monks, and friars of every order,
carried on a furious war against one another on this question. This
mysterious empire of shut-up and dependent women, over whom unlimited
sway may be held, was, not without reason, the common aim of the
ambition of all. Such houses, apparently quiet and strangers to the
world, nevertheless are always _grand centres of action_. Here was an
immense power for the orders that should get possession of it; and for
individuals, whether priests or friars, it was (let them confess it, or
not) an affair of passion.

What I say here, I say of the purest and most austere, who are often
the most tender. The honourable attachment of Cardinal Berulle for the
Carmelite nuns, whom he had brought here, was know to everybody. He
had lodged them near his house; he visited them every hour of the day,
and even in the evening. The Jesuits said _at night_. It was to them
he went when he was ill, in order to get better. When Paris was
infested by a plague, he said he would not leave it, "on account of his
nuns."

The Oratorians and the Jesuits, naturally enemies and adversaries,
joined together at first in a common cause to remove the Carmelite
friars from the direction of these nuns; but no sooner had they
succeeded, than they began to dispute with each other.

The austere order of the Carmelites, which spread but little in France,
obtained its importance as the _beau ideal_ of penitence, a sort of
religious poetry. The enthusiastic spirit of Saint Theresa still
animated them. There it was that the most violent converts came to
seek refuge; and there it was, also, that those whose wounds were too
deep, and who, like Madame de la Valliere, sought death as their last
resource, came to die.

But the two great institutions of this age, those which expressed its
spirit and h