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In 1505, the Bishop Charles de Blanchefort, together with the chapter, addressed the following request to the King: "May it please the King to have pity and compassion on the poor church of Senlis... which, by fortune and inconvenience of fire, in the month of June, 1504, was burned, the bells melted, and the belfry which is great, magnificent and one of the notable of the kingdom, by means of the said fire in such wise damaged that it is in danger of falling." Louis XII showed himself favorable to the request. Nobles, citizens and merchants contributed to the work. The spire was made firm. The walls of the nave were raised, the vaulting was reconstructed, the transept was built, and there were constructed at the north and south sides those two finely chiseled portals which give to Notre Dame de Senlis so much elegance and sumptuousness. How, without diminishing the pure beauty of the old cathedral, the architects of the Renaissance should have been able to give it this luxurious attire, this festal clothing; how, without damage to the ancient edifice, they should have been able to envelop it with all these laces and jewels of stone, slender columns, balustrades, carved copings, pierced lanterns, is a miracle of taste and ingenuity. The French builders of the first half of the sixteenth century often produced such prodigies; but nowhere, I believe, has the success been as complete as at Senlis.
In the interior, even though the nave is very short and the choir very deep, the same impression of unity. Nevertheless, the balustrades in Renaissance style, which garnish the upper galleries, shock us for a moment. The discrepancy in the styles is more visible inside the edifice. Outside the light envelops all and softens the contrasts; the sun creates harmony.
The chapels are poorly decorated. The architects and clergy have there rivaled each other in bad taste. They have broken open the apse to add to it a chapel of the Virgin, which breaks all the lines of the monument inside and out. Two statues of the thirteenth century, one representing Saint Louis and the other Saint Levain, have been ridiculously colored, so that one would take them today for products of the Rue Bonaparte. A pretty Virgin of the fourteenth century would have been better off without the new gilding which has been inflicted on it.....
At the end of the church, I read on one of the pillars the following inscription: "Nicolas Jourdain, administrator of this parish, deceased January 30, 1799.—This church owes to him its restoration and its embellishment. The grateful parishioners have erected this monument to him.—Marie Françoise Truyart, his spouse, equally benefactress of this church, deceased January 17, 1811.—Pray for their souls."
Who was M. Jourdain? What embellishments does the church of Senlis owe to him? I would have liked to know. X looked for the sacristan, that he might tell me, and also that he might allow me to enter the sacristy, where one may see the Dance of Fools on a capital. But the sacristan of Notre Dame de Senlis dwells very far from his church, on the banks of the Nonette, in the place called the Asses' Backs; he goes home before eleven o'clock in the morning to get his lunch, and is never seen again at the cathedral, according to the bell-ringer, before four o'clock in the afternoon. So I returned at four o'clock. The sacristan was still eating breakfast at the Asses' Backs.... So I shall never know anything about either M. Nicolas Jourdain nor Marie Françoise Truyart, his wife.
On the other bank of the Nonette, turn about. A little bridge over a little river; some orchards, still pink and white with their last flowers; a street which climbs through the town, whose roofs and uneven gables are outlined softly against a sky of pale blue; remnants of ramparts starred with golden flowers; great clumps of verdure rising everywhere among the rosy roofs, and finally the great belfry dominating all, the little town, the little valley, the fields which rise and fall to the horizon. Behold, and if you are "one of us," you will recognize the most perfect, the most elegant, the finest, the best arranged of all the landscapes of the world. Here is France, the France of Fouquet, the France of Corot.
And I must also, before leaving Senlis, announce that this truly aristocratic town has not a single statue in its squares.
THE Oratorist Fathers founded the college of Juilly September 2, 1639. They still directed it when these lines were written. The world knows what fate has since come to the masters of this old institution.
Here we are deep in the soil and the history of France. Juilly, an ancient monastery of the Canons Regular of Saint Augustine, is seven leagues from Paris, four leagues from Meaux, in the Parisis, in the heart of the region where France discovered that it had a conscience, a destiny, a tongue and an art. The earth here is so opulent, so fat and so heavy that six oxen harnessed to a plow labor over the furrow. The rich plateau lifts here and there in slow and measured undulations or sinks in laughing and umbrageous folds. The brooks are called the Biberonne, the Ru du Rossignol (Nightingale Brook); the villages, Thieux, Compans, Dam-martin, Nantouillet. Joan of Arc prayed in the church of Thieux. Saint Geneviève, to slake the thirst of one of her companions, called forth the limpid spring about which the monastery grew. All the virtues and all the legends of France render the air more gentle and more salubrious here.
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The valley of Juilly has the modest and penetrating grace of the exquisite landscapes of the Ile-de-France. At the bottom of the valley stretch lawns and a pool with formal banks. On one of the slopes, a beautiful park displays its grand parallel avenues, which debouch on wide horizons, a park made expressly for the promenade of a metaphysician, a Cartesian park. On the opposite slope, a farm, a dovecote, then the vast buildings of the college, massive constructions of the seventeenth century, whose austere and naked façades are not without grandeur.
On the edge of the pool rises a chestnut tree, thrice centenarian. Tradition will have that it sheltered the reveries of Malebranche. It is perhaps in this place that the Oratorist read Descartes, with such transports "that he was seized with palpitations of the heart, which sometimes obliged him to interrupt his reading," an extraordinary emotion which inspired Fontenelle with this delicious remark: "The invisible and useless truth is not accustomed to find so much sensitiveness among men, and the most ordinary objects of their passions would hold themselves happy to be the object of as much."
The chestnut tree of Malebranche has been pruned. Under the weight of centuries, its branches bent and broke. They have been cut, and the venerable trunk now stretches toward the sky only the wounded stumps. This spectacle in this place makes one think of the destiny of a philosophy. The decaying branches of the system have been broken, the soil has been strewn with the great branches under which men formerly enjoyed the repose of certainty. But, when the pruner has finished his task, we still admire the structure of the old tree and the fecundity of the soil whence it grew.
The college, with its long corridors and its vast staircases, preserves a monastic appearance, which would be severe and harsh if the countryside, the grass plots, the park and the pool did not display their gayety about the old walls. When M. Demolins and his imitators created their new schools, they followed the example of England; but, in a certain manner, they revived a French tradition. Before any one thought of crowding children into the university barracks of the nineteenth century, there were in France colleges where life was lived in the open air, in the midst of a beautiful park.
Within, the house is grave and without luxury. The Oratorists were never rich. The house has remained almost in the state in which it was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The chapel only was rebuilt a few years ago, for the ancient convent chapel of the thirteenth century had fallen to ruins. The magnificent wainscot-ings of oak in the strangers' refectory enframe paintings of the time of Louis XV, representing skating, fishing and hunting scenes; the staircase which leads to the apartments of the Superior is ornamented with a beautiful railing of iron and brass; these are the only traces of ancient decoration to be met with in the whole college.
But the ancient home is rich in memories. Before entering, we have already half seen on the bank of the pool the meditative shade of Malebranche. Other ghosts rise on every side. The Oratory of France lives again at Juilly.
Here, in the chapel, is the image of Cardinal de Bérulle. This statue, an admirable work by Jacques Sarazin, is the upper portion of a mausoleum which the Oratorist Fathers of Paris had erected in their institution to the memory of their founder. The cardinal, in full canonicals, kneels on aprie-dieu, in the attitude of prayer, with an open book before him. His head and the upper portion of his body turn toward the left in a curious way, but the face is a prodigy of life and expression. The coarse features, strongly accentuated, breathe good-will and kindness. He has the magnificent ugliness of a saint.
The concordat of Francis I had caused the moral ruin of the convents of France; the secular clergy, among the troubles of the religious wars, had fallen into the most miserable condition, without piety, without knowledge, and without manners, when, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Pierre de Bérulle, Madame Acarie and Saint Vincent de Paul undertook the religious restoration of France, which the adjuration of Henri IV had just definitely restored to Catholicism. Bérulle founded the Oratory of France on the model of the Oratory of Rome, instituted by Saint Philip Néri.
On November 11, 1611, Saint Martin's Day, in a house of the Faubourg Saint Jacques, called the House of Petit Bourbon (the Val-de-Grâce was later built on this same spot), Bérulle and five other priests assembled to constitute a congregation. The aim of this was to "increase the perfection of the priestly calling." But its rule and its spirit had nothing in common with the rule and the spirit of the monastic orders. The Oratorist does not pronounce special vows, and remains under the jurisdiction of his bishop.
Bossuet, in his funeral oration on Father Bour-going, splendidly summarized the constitution of the Oratory:
"The immense love of Pierre de Bérulle for the Church inspired him with the design of forming a company to which he desired to give no other spirit than the very spirit of the Church nor any other rules than its canons, nor any other superiors than its bishops, nor any other bonds than its charity, nor any other solemn vows than those of baptism and of the priesthood.
"There, a holy liberty makes a holy engagement. One obeys without dependence, one governs without commands; all authority is in gentleness, and respect exists without the aid of fear. The charity which banishes fear operates this great miracle, and, with no other yoke than itself, it knows how, not only to capture, but even to annihilate personal will."
The Jesuits had returned to France seven years before Pierre de Bérulle created the Oratory. He was not the enemy of the Company of Jesus, since he himself had labored to procure its return to France. His work was none the less opposed to that of Saint Ignatius. "In our body," said a century later an Oratorist who was faithful to the spirit of his congregation, "liberty consists....in wishing and in doing freely what one ought,quasi liberi." Thisquasi liberiis exactly the opposite of the famousperinde ac cadaver. We may understand sufficiently why, in the course of time, the Jesuits showed little sympathy for the Oratorists. The work of Pierre de Bérulle must have appeared to them a perilous compromise between Catholic orthodoxy and the detested principles of the Reformation: what good is it to renew, at every moment of one's life, one's adhesion to a rule to which it is more simple and more sure to enchain one's self once for all? Why wish to give one's self at any cost the haughty joy of feeling and exercising one's liberty? And what is this annihilation which allows the will to reassert itself incessantly, vivacious and active? The Jesuits, therefore, were not surprised to see the Oratory threatened by the Jansenist contagion.
We might be tempted to say, employing a vocabulary which is too modern, that the spirit of the Oratory was, from its inception, a liberal spirit. Let us rather say: It was aCartesianspirit. Pierre de Bérulle loved and admired Descartes and urged him to publish his writings. The greatest of disciples of Descartes, Malebranche, was an Oratorist.... A Jesuit would not have failed to call our attention also to the fact that here is displayed the imprudence of Pierre de
Bérulle and of his successors; for frommethodical doubtcame all the rationalism of the eighteenth century....
Let us return to Juilly.
On the walls of the masters' refectory hangs a long series of portraits: they are those of the Generals Superior of the Oratory and of some illustrious Oratorists. The most beautiful is that of Malebranche: this long, meager face witnesses the candid and simple soul of the metaphysician, who saw "all in God." Other paintings are less attractive. But they are all precious for the history of the Oratory and of Juilly.... Let us stop before some of these images.
Father de Condren. "God had rendered him," said Saint Chantai, "capable of instructing angels." His features are impressed with infinite gentleness; but the height of his forehead and the veiled splendor of his glance reveal an unconquerable tenacity, and thanks to this contrast the whole face assumes a strange delicacy.
Pierre de Bérulle died at the age of fifty-four, overcome by fatigue; his labor had been immense; he had created and guided his congregation, founded seminaries, delivered sermons, written books, guided consciences, and he had been mixed up in affairs of state. It was Father de Condren who succeeded him in the office of Superior General. He gave to the Oratory its permanent constitution and founded Juilly.
With Father de Condren, the Oratory abandoned the path which its founder had traced for it. It was less occupied in forming the clergy and instituting seminaries than in giving instruction to lay youth. The original purpose of the congregation was thereafter followed and achieved by M. Olier and the priests of Saint Sulpice. The wishes of Louis XIII were not averse to this change, for which in any case Father de Condren had no dislike; he had taste and talent for teaching. The ancient abbey of Juilly was thus transformed into a model college called the Royal Academy (1638). The King authorized the institution to add the arms of France to the arms of the Oratory.
Father de Condren himself prepared the new regulations for study and discipline of the young Academy. These regulations were a veritable reform in French education,—a durable and profound reform, for the programs of the University in the nineteenth century were drawn up in accordance with the principles of the Oratory.
At that period the Jesuits were masters of education and instruction. They considered as the foundation of all studies a grammatical knowledge of the dead languages, and gave little attention to history and the exact sciences. They had instituted that classical education which is so appropriate to the very genius of our nation that its ruin would perhaps be the downfall of our language, our taste and our literature. Nevertheless, their method in certain respects was narrow and antiquated: they excluded the history and the language of France from a college training.
The work of the Oratorists was in a certain measure to Frenchify and modernize the instruction of the Jesuits. They remained faithful to classic antiquity. A year before his death, Father de Condren said to Thomassin that he did not desire to leave this world until he had once more read the entire works of Cicero. However, the Ratio Studiorum, at Juilly, introduced great novelties in the college course. The masters were required to address the youths in their mother tongue and to put in their hands Latin grammars written in French. From that time they began by learning the rules of French orthography. Latin became obligatory only from the fourth class on. The Catechism was given in Latin only in the second class. History lessons were always given in French. In the study of Latin, without abandoning the use of themes, translations were preferred. Greek was taught in the same way, but its knowledge was not pushed as far, A special chair of history was instituted. The history of France was given first place, and became the object of a three-year course. The private library of the pupils contained principally books on ancient and modern history. There were also geography lessons. Finally, in this Cartesian house, mathematics and physics naturally received great honor.
They also taught drawing, music, horsemanship, fencing and dancing. But comedies and ballets, which the Jesuits allowed their pupils, were replaced at Juilly by the sessions of a sort of literary Academy where the most advanced pupils imitated the French Academy.
Richelieu, who had so profound and just an instinct for the interest of France in all directions, could not be indifferent to the enterprise of Father de Condren. He understood that the Oratorists were associating themselves with his great work, gave their methods "applause such as one could scarcely believe," and, when he founded a college in his natal town of Richelieu, laid out the regulations and the program in imitation of those which were in use at Juilly.
Sainte-Beuve has done honor to the little schools of Port-Royal for this great revolution in teaching: "It is indeed," he says, "to these gentlemen of Port-Royal that the honor is due of having put education in accord with the literary progress which the French Academy accomplished about the same time, and for having first introduced the regularity and elegance of French into the current of learned studies. To get rid of pedantry without ruining solidity, might have been their motto.... So, a great innovation! To teach children to read in French, and to choose in French the words which stood for the objects with which they were already acquainted and of which they knew the meaning: this was the point of departure of Port-Royal...."6
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A historian of Juilly (M. Charles Hamel) has observed that the lower schools were opened only four years after the foundation of Juilly, and that we must restore to Father de Condren the glory of having been the first "to get rid of pedantry without ruining solidity," and to cause French to be spoken in the schools of France.7
Father Bourgoing. This third superior was a harsh and absolute master. He was also a rather rough man of business and one who was not embarrassed by an excess of power. He imposed the authority of the rules in all possible ways. His conduct had a tinge of superb vehemence which contrasted strongly with the modesty and gentleness of his predecessors. The Jansenist heresy was commencing to hover around the Oratory. Father Bourgoing drew back those who were straying, with a rough and heavy crook. He was, besides, as Cardinal Perraud says, inL'Oratoire de France,"the living model of the virtues which he desired that others should practice."8He inflicted terrible penances. We behold him to his very last day "shorten his sleep in spite of his need; endure the rigors of cold despite his advanced years; continue his fasts in spite of his labors; finally afflict his body by all sorts of austerities without considering his bodily infirmities." Thus Bossuet expressed himself in his funeral oration for Father Bourgoing, one of the least celebrated, but one of the most magnificent, that he composed. We have only to read it to know the men and the spirit of the Oratory in the seventeenth century.
Father de Sainte-Marthe. This man seems to have been a student, full of virtue, good sense and good fellowship, but a man who found himself very much at a loss in the midst of vexations. And it was exactly at the period of his government that the tempests were unloosed upon the Oratory. Jansenism had entered the house. Fathers Quesnel and Du Guet were expelled from the community. But these punishments did not satisfy the Archbishop of Paris, M. de Harlay, who wished to govern the Oratory with a strong hand. In the midst of these griefs and intrigues the unfortunate Father de Sainte-Marthe exonerated himself, proclaimed his submission, preached conciliation, sought to ward off the animosity of the Archbishop and the King, defended his congregation against the assaults of heresy, and went away in exile from province to province, until the day came when it was necessary for him to resign his office.... The more we look at the portrait of Father de Sainte-Marthe, the more we pity this good priest, who was evidently born to live in fair weather.
Father de la Tour. One of the most pleasing portraits in the refectory of Juilly, full of grace and malice. Saint-Simon has also drawn a portrait of Father de la Tour and the painter has added nothing to the sketch of the writer. "He was tall of stature, well built, agreeable but imposing of countenance, well known for his pliant but firm mind, adroit but strong in his sermons, in the way he led in gay and amusing conversation without departing from the character which he bore, excelling by a spirit of wisdom, conduct and government, and held in the greatest consideration."
We have arrived at the threshold of the eighteenth century. Before going farther, let us evoke once more the remembrance of two illustrious guests of whom the old house was proud.
They still show at Juilly the room of Bossuet. It is lined with very simple paneling and has an alcove. The furnishings are in the style of the First Empire. It is here that Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, often slept in the course of his pastoral visits, for Juilly was situated in his diocese. He preached in the village chapel and presided at the exercises of the Academy. On August 6, 1696, he wrote to his nephew, Abbé Bossuet: "I came here to listen to a thesis which was dedicated to me. There are here a number of worthy people, and the flower of the Oratory...."
The other "great man," whose memory has been preserved at Juilly is Jean de La Fontaine.
He was scarcely twenty years old when a canon of Soissons, named Héricart, lent him some religious books. The reading of these inflamed him with great devotion and he believed that he was called to the ecclesiastical state. He departed for Paris and entered the institution at the Oratory on April 27, 1641. This was his first distraction.
A few weeks later his masters sent him to Juilly, under Father de Vemeuil, who was to prepare him for ordination. La Fontaine read Marot and looked out of the window. Now, as his room overlooked the farmyard, he amused himself every day by watching the hens pick up their living. To get the sympathy of the hen-keeper, he let down by a cord his cap full of bread crumbs.
Father Bourgoing, then superior of the congregation, was not the man to sympathize with the tastes and crotchets of Jean de La Fontaine; he sent him back to Paris, to the seminary of Saint-Magloire. Then one fine day, the young man went away as he had come, leaving behind him his brother, Claude de La Fontaine, who, taking his example seriously, had also entered the Oratory. His stay at Juilly does not seem to have left a very deep trace in its memory. But he had at least furnished the future students of the college with a very fine subject for Latin verses.
It is well known that Canon Héricart, as he had not been able to make a priest of his friend, later decided to marry him to one of his relatives. La Fontaine went to the marriage as he had gone to the Oratory; he escaped from it in the same way.
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The fate of the Oratory of France was less glorious in the eighteenth century than it had been in the seventeenth: the theological quarrels which broke out as a result of the BullUnigenitusdivided and enfeebled the congregation. But the renown of Juilly did not suffer from this, and the college founded by Father de Condren prospered. The buildings of the old monastery were reconstructed and enlarged. The methods of instruction remained the same. As to discipline, it is said to have been quite paternal, and was exercised by reprimands or affectionate chidings rather than by punishments. At Juilly, however, as in all colleges, the children continued to be whipped.
In 1762, the Jesuits were expelled from France and their properties sold. This was apparently a great advantage for the Oratory: the closing of the colleges of the Company of Jesus made it the master of education. But the thoughtful Oratorists did not fall into this illusion. "It is the destruction of our congregation," said Father de la Valette at that time; he understood that this brutal blow touched the Church itself, even if some doubted this and others were unwilling to admit it. Besides, the succession of the Jesuits was too heavy a burden to be undertaken. The Oratory was not sufficiently numerous suddenly to take charge of so many houses; it found it necessary to associate with itself a great number of "lay brothers," whose vocation was doubtful; these young "regents" were generally found to be unprepared to undergo the constraints of a religious rule. This was being discovered when the Revolution broke out.
An old student of Juilly, Antoine Vincent Arnault, a tragic poet, author ofMarius à Miniurne, Lucrèce, Cincinnatus, etc., whom Napoleon wished to have as collaborator in writing a tragedy and who was the predecessor of Scribe in the French Academy, left some interesting memoirs entitledSouvenirs d'un sexagénaire.9He was born in 1766 and entered Juilly in 1776. He has told us of his college years, "the eight un-happiest years of his life." Thanks to him, we know the existence which was the rule at Juilly from 1780 to 1784, and what professors had charge of the instruction. The picture seems to me to be worth redrawing, now that we know the architecture and the history of the school.
The superior of the house at that time was Father Petit. "A skilled administrator, a prudent director, a mentality without prejudice or illusions, more of a philosopher than he perhaps believed himself to be, indulgent and malevolent at once, he guided this great house with good words, and maintained admirable order in it for thirty years.... Religious, but not fanatical, he did not forget that he was director of a boarding school and not of a seminary, and that the children who were confided to him were to live in the world: so he was especially anxious that they should be turned into worthy men: this was his own expression."
In truth, this "admirable order" was sometimes troubled. The collegians of 1780 played their parts: they wrote little verses and little libels against their masters, became enthusiastic about the American Revolution, and played at uprisings. The wisdom and moderation of Father Petit did not always succeed in calming the revolutionary effervescence of these youths. The wind which commenced to blow across France blew hard even in the high monastic corridors of Juilly.
The middle classroom was the most turbulent and the promptest to revolt against iniquity. One day these "middles" decided to hang their prefect in effigy. The victim got angry, shut off recreation and ordered the children to return to the schoolroom. Instantly the candles went out; dictionaries, candlesticks, writing desks, became so many projectiles which rained upon the prefect's back; struck down by a copy of the Gradus, the pedant fled. The class then built barricades and lit a bonfire, into which they threw the ferule, the mortarboard and the scholarship record which the enemy had left upon the field of battle. They refused to listen to overtures of peace, and remained deaf to the warnings of the Superior, although they were in the habit of respecting them.
From the viewpoint of a man who later went through several revolutions, Arnault here makes this judicious remark: "Whoever may be the individuals of which it is composed, the mob always obeys the same principles. The breath of a child in a glass of water produces the same effects as the blast of the hurricane upon the ocean."
It became necessary to turn the siege into a blockade. On the next day, vanquished by hunger, the scholars surrendered. They were promised a general amnesty. But, once in possession, the besiegers violated the treaty. "Then," adds Arnault, "I understood what politics was; I saw that it was not always in accord with the morality which we were so eloquently advised to respect as the equal of religion." And this was doubtless the reason why there were so many prefects of the Empire among the former pupils of Juilly!
Father Petit was not the only Oratorist of whom Arnault handed down a good report. Father Viel, the translator ofTélémaqueinto Latin verse, showed so much justice and goodness in the college that the students always arranged to rebel while he was traveling, thus showing how much they respected him. Father Dotteville, the translator of Sallust and of Tacitus, built at Juilly a charming retreat where he cultivated literature and flowers. Father Prioleau, who taught philosophy, knew how to make all work lovable, even the study of Aristotle's Categories. Father Mandar, who later became superior of the college, was famous as a preacher—he was compared to Massillon—and as a poet—he was compared to Gresset. His lively muse, fertile in songs, rose even to descriptive poetry. Father Mandar wrote a poem called the Chartreuse; for he was sensitive to the beauties of nature and Jean Jacques had sought his company.... These remained, even to the end of their life, faithful to their vocation. Others failed in this, and owed their great celebrity neither to translations nor to the practice of oratorical virtues. Juilly was a nursery of Revolutionists and of Conventionals.
One day—science was still honored in this Cartesian college—it was decided to give the pupils a scientific recreation. Under the direction of their professor of physics, they built a fire balloon of paper, upon which a prefect of studies who indulged in fugitive verse wrote this quatrain of his own composition:
We have grown too old for soap bubbles;
In changing balloons we change pleasures.
If this carried our first homage to King Lotus,
The winds would blow it to the goal of our desires.
We do not know if the fire balloon came down in the park of Versailles. But we do know the names of the physicist and the poet of Juilly. The physicist was Father Fouché, and the poet was Father Billaud (Billaud-Varennes). Arnault remarks in this connection: "Ten years afterward, they showed themselves less gracious toward the monarch."
Father Billaud, good Father Billaud, as he was called at Juilly, was a young man of twenty-one years. He was the son of a lawyer of La Rochelle who had neither fortune nor clients. He had scarcely left college when he abducted a young girl and then became a member of a troupe of comedians. He was a failure on the stage and returned to La Rochelle. There he put on the stage a satirical comedy:La Femme comme il n'y en a plus, in which he defamed all the women of his town. It was hissed off the boards and he had to flee to Paris. As he was penniless, he entered the Oratory; and, as the Oratory needed regents for its colleges, they sent him to Juilly as prefect of studies. His pupils loved his good fellowship. But his superiors had very quickly seen what was under the mask. "Billaud—To judge by the way in which he reads Latin, he does not know it very well. Has he brains? I have not had sufficient time to find out. But he has a high opinion of himself, and I regard him as only a worldly man, clothed in the habit of the Oratory, coolly regular and honest, who has tried hard not to compromise himself in the last few? months, for when he first came here his behavior was not of the best. Though he may be judicious in his conduct, I do not think that he is suited to the Oratory, because of his age, of what he has been, and of what he is." Such was the judgment passed upon him by his superior, for the Superior General of the congregation, in 1784. Shortly afterward it was learned that Father Billaud had offered a tragedy to the comedian Larive: he was expelled.... We know what followed: his entry of the bar at Paris, his marriage to the natural daughter of a farmer-general, his friendship with Marat and Robespierre, his complicity in the massacres of September, his ferocities and cowardices, his turnabout on the ninth of Thermidor, his banishment to Guiana, his escape, his death in San Domingo. He ended his career as a teacher of parrots.
Was good Father Billaud of Juilly a hypocrite? Did he already dissimulate under the appearance of cold regularity the wild passions of the Jacobin of '93.... I prefer the explanation of Arnault who, decidedly, does not lack judgment: "Father Billaud, who later became so frightfully famous under the name of Billaud-Varennes, also appeared to be a very good man at that time, and perhaps he was so; perhaps he would even have been so all his life, if he had remained a private citizen, if the events which provoked the development of his atrocious policy and the application of his frightful theories had never presented themselves. I would prefer to believe that morally, as physically, we all carry in ourselves the germs of more than one grave malady, from which we seem to be exempt as long as we do not meet the circumstance which is capable of provoking the explosion." Father Fouché, professor of physics, was a year older than Father Billaud. He also passed at Juilly as a good fellow, and interested his pupils by showing them spectacular physical experiments. He, however, did not enter the Oratory from necessity or caprice. He was brought up by the Oratorists of Nantes, and had come to the institution at Paris with the intention of devoting himself to the teaching of science. He had no bent for theology, but was fond of studying Horace, Tacitus and Euclid's Commentaries. He was soon to abandon Euclid; but he did not forget the examples of perfect wickedness which were presented to him by Tacitus, and he served the Terror, the Directory and Napoleon with the cold infamy of a freedman; as for Horace, he was never faithless to him, for he had a taste for gardens and for friendship.
He was regent at Vendôme, then at Juilly, then at Arras, where he made the acquaintance of Robespierre. He was prefect of studies at Nantes when the Revolution threw him into public life.
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He never forgot Juilly. Perhaps some of the verses of Horace were associated in his mind with the memory of the trees of the park and the waters of the pool.... In 1802, when he was Minister of the General Police, he wished to come to visit his old college, he who, in the time of the Terror, in the Nièvre and at Lyons, had added to the most frightful massacres the most childish sacrilege. Events then passed easily over the imagination of men, and even more quickly over the imagination of a Fouché. An ex-Oratorist, Father Dotte-ville, accompanied him to Juilly. The pupils received the visitors by singing verses of their own composition:
Leaving, to revisit your friends,
The worries of the ministry,
Such leisures as are allowed you
In that solitary asylum;
Our forebears had the good fortune
To profit by your lessons....
This last allusion appeared a little too precise to Fouché, who turned his back on the singers. But, after this moment of ill humor, his Excellency showed himself very amiable. Fathers Lombois and Crenière, his former associates, who still lived at Juilly, refused to speak to him, however. But he did not despair of weakening their determination, and it was he who in 1806 gave to the chapel of the college the magnificent statue of Bérulle, of which I have spoken to you.
It was natural that Fouché, when he became an official under Bonaparte, should show himself less vehemently irreligious than at the period when he was the colleague of Collot d'Herbois. It was even necessary for him to pretend devotion when Louis XVIII consented to give him a civil position. But it is impossible to read without smiling the following lines written to M. Charles Hamel, the historian of Juilly, by L. Roberdeau, the former secretary of Fouché: "Here are the facts, whose exactness I can guarantee to you. The curate of Ferrières always had a place set for him at the chateau, when the Duke of Otranto was there. He received from him annually a supplementary salary of six hundred francs and was allowed to sign wood, bread and meat tickets ad libitum, as well as to call for any other kind of aid or to distribute arms. The Duke also gave a magnificent dais to the church. [This touch is exquisite, when attributed to the former conventional who had methodically plundered and wrecked all the churches of the Nièvre.] The doctor of the château was required to take care of all the invalid poor of his domains; he exacted that they should receive the same attention as himself, etc." But this is the most admirable: "I do not know in what sentiments the Duke of Otranto died; but I know that, when Louis XVIII offered him an ambassadorship of the first rank,he chose the humble court of Dresden because the King of Saxony was known to be a sincerely religious man." I do not doubt that Fouché may have thus talked to his credulous secretary. It is possible that he even said the same thing to Louis XVIII. But the Kins: assuredly did not believe it, and was right.
I cannot decide to leave Fouché without quoting in this place some lines from a magnificent portrait drawn by Charles Nodier. This passage is almost unknown, being buried in theDictionnaire de la conversation; M. Charles Hamel has quoted it in his book: "There was not a feature in his face, not a line in all its structure, on which work or care had not left their imprint. His visage was pale, with a paleness which was peculiar to himself. It was a cold but living tone, like that which time gives to monuments. The power of his eyes, which were of a very clear blue, but deprived of any light in their glance, soon prevailed over all the impressions which his first aspect produced on one. Their curious, exacting, profound, but immutably dull fixedness, had a quality which was frightful.... I asked myself by what operation of the will he could thus succeed in extinguishing his soul, in depriving the pupil of its animated transparency, in withdrawing his glance into an invisible sheath as a cat retracts its claws." This is wonderful!
Father Fouché and Father Billaud were not the only masters of Juilly who played a part in the Revolution. About the same time Father Gaillard was regent of the sixth class, and Father Bailly was prefect of studies. This Father Gaillard was a terrible man; he frightened his pupils by his severity and his intractable piety. "Here is a man who, if justice had been done, would have been burned, together with his writings," he said before a portrait of Jean Jacques. In 1792 he left Juilly, having exchanged his robe for the uniform of the National Guard; he went with his company to Melun, where he married and became president of the criminal court. Later he found means of paying a compliment to the First Consul, and had the good luck again to come in contact with his former associate Fouché. The latter elevated him to the Court of Cassation, and made him one of his agents; Gaillard rendered great services to the Duke of Otranto, at the court of Ghent.
Father Bailly also left the Oratory to take part in public affairs; but he had more moderate opinions. As a deputy to the Convention from Meaux, he voted against the death of the King; he was one of the Thermidorians, took part in the Eighteenth Brumaire, and became a prefect of the Empire....
If we believe with Taine that the Revolution was entirely an outcome of Cartesianism and of the classic spirit, what a beautiful allegory is this assembly of future Revolutionists in square caps, under the wide branches of Malebranche's chestnut tree!
The Oratory did not survive the Revolution, but Juilly outlived the Oratory.
After 1789, the congregation was divided against itself. Some fathers were willing to take the oath; others refused it. Some of the young associates scorned the authority of the Superior General. The law of August 18, 1792, dissolved the Oratory. But the Oratorists remained at Juilly at the very height of the tumult. One day mobs from Meaux invaded the buildings and pillaged the chapel; even after this, a few priests and a score of pupils again assembled in the college. They left it only during three months in 1793, when a military hospital was installed in place of the school. After the Terror was over, the woman who had acquired Juilly as a national property returned it to its former masters. The college peopled itself anew.
Napoleon dreamed for a time of reestablishing the Oratory and of putting it in charge of all secondary education; Jérôme was brought up at Juilly. But this project was abandoned. But at least, when he reorganized the University, Fontanes was inspired by the rules and the programs of the colleges of the Oratory.
The last Oratorists retired in 1828. Juilly passed under the direction of the Abbés de Scorbiac and de Salinis. Then comes another of the glorious moments of its history. In 1830 and in 1831 Lamennais became the guest of Juilly. Enveloped in his long black quilted coat, following by choice the path at the water's edge—doubtless to rediscover there memories of the pool of La Chesnaie, Lamennais carried back and forth, under the trees of the old park, his passionate dreams. It was here that he meditated his articles for L'Avenir, conceived the plan of the "General Agency for the Defense of Religious Liberty," composed the ardent diatribes in which he claimed independence for the Church, the right of teaching for Catholics, freedom to associate for the monks. It was here that he charmed his friends by the sensitiveness of his heart and frightened them by the boldness of his imagination. It was from Juilly that he returned to Paris to appear with Lacordaire before the Court of Assizes. It was from Juilly that he left for Rome....
Abbé Bautain and Abbé Carl, then Abbé Maricourt, directed Juilly after MM. de Scorbiac and de Salinis, up to the time (1867) when the reconstituted Oratory reentered in possession of the college founded by Father de Condren.
In 1852 a few priests had been united by Father Pétetot, ex-curate of Saint Roch, for the purpose of restoring the congregation dispersed at the time of the Revolution. They had sought and found the traditions of the former Oratory, and slowly "reconstituted in its entirety the pacific and studious city built more than two centuries before by Father de Bérulle." "They could then," said Cardinal Perraud, "place a living model under their eyes in order, to imitate it." The Oratory was thus reborn with the ancient rule which had formerly been its originally—a simple association of lay priests submissive to bishops, it asked of its members neither the vow of obedience nor the vow of poverty.10It was natural that it should undertake the direction of Juilly, the most ancient and the most glorious of its houses....
Here I end the rather desultory notes which I have made while visiting Juilly and rummaging through its history. I wish to speak neither of yesterday, nor of today..., nor of tomorrow. I have not attempted to plead for the masters of Juilly, now threatened with again being expelled from their house. I have not the ability to defend them, and besides one cannot plead against a position already taken, or folly, or wickedness.
Nor have I the candor to believe that the illustrious phantoms with which are populated the shady avenues and the long galleries of Juilly, Malebranche, Bossuet, La Fontaine, Lamennais, can move the vulgar pedants to whom France now belongs. But if by chance I have evoked "the long, mobile and flat face... the physiognomy like an agitated fizgig... the little bloody eyes... the restless and convulsive attitudes" of Joseph Fouché, I have allowed myself this historical amusement, without thinking that the President of the Council may be able to take the same pleasure in it. Father Fouché and the representative of the Mountain, the bad Oratorist and the good Jacobin, must be congenial to him, without doubt; but there is also the Duke of Otranto: M. Combes has not yet got to that point.
Finally, if I have tried to show that the Oratory is attached by a close bond to the past of France, that the mold in which, for two centuries and a half, French intelligence was founded was fabricated at Juilly, and that the very basis of our education remains Oratorist in spite of everything, I have not for a single instant dreamed that these considerations based on history could awake the least respect or the least gratitude among the politicians, for these gentlemen are sincerely convinced that France was born on the day when a majority of three votes, captured, bought or stolen, made them ward bosses.