h
the greatest possible tact, but the Duchess could not control her
fury. Seizing a heavy stool, she flung it at the head of the unwelcome
messenger, who bowed and retired from the house with the blood
streaming from a wound in his forehead. The brother who had
accompanied him and who was waiting in the antechamber, justly
indignant, begged to be allowed to give the great lady a piece of his
mind. "Come on," said Vincent; "our business lies in another
direction." "Is it not strange," he said, smiling, a few moments
later, as he tried to staunch the blood with his handkerchief, "to
what lengths the affection of a mother for her son will go!"

Such incidents did not pass unnoticed by Mazarin, who looked with
jealous eyes on Vincent's influence with the Queen. As time went on he
resolved at any cost to rid the Court of the presence of this man,
whose simple, straightforward conduct baffled the wily and defeated
their plans; but an attempt to get him ejected from the Council met
with such stormy opposition that the Prime Minister determined to
change his tactics. There was no man whom he revered or admired so
much as M. Vincent, he declared enthusiastically; no one who was of
such use in the Council of Conscience.

But the summoning of the Council rested with Mazarin, and the
intervals between its meetings became longer and longer. Anne of
Austria's sudden spurt of energy--she was a thoroughly indolent woman
by nature--began to die out as she became accustomed to her new
responsibilities; she was only too glad to leave all matters of State
to a man who declared that his only desire was to save her worry and
trouble. In course of time the Council of Conscience ceased to meet,
and the distribution of bishoprics and abbeys fell once more into the
hands of Mazarin, who used them, as of old, for his own ends.

Vincent de Paul, in bitter grief and sorrow, was forced to witness an
abuse that he had no longer any power to check. "I fear," he wrote in
after years to a friend, "that this detestable barter of bishoprics
will bring down the curse of God upon the country." A few years later,
when civil war, pestilence and famine were devastating France, and
Jansenism was going far to substitute despair for hope in the hearts
of men, his words were remembered.

Chapter 9
THE JANSENISTS

WHILE Vincent de Paul was striving, by charity and patience, to renew
all things in Christ, the Jansenists* were busy spreading their
dange