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If the Company's attack on trade unions failed, it was not so with their attack on the Huguenots. As is well known, those "enemies of God" had, long before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, been pursued with venomous and ruthless hatred. True, after the fall of Rochelle, and all through the troubles of the Fronde, the Protestant minority in France had been quiet and loyal and obedient to the government. But heretics, Jews and unbelievers, were anathema to La Compagnie du Trés-Saint-Sacrement de l'Autel, and according to recent French authors it was the Company rather than the Jesuits that inflamed the clergy, the ignorant masses in the cities and the multitude of peasants country; it was the Company that, by public agitation and private intrigue, forced on France the expulsion of religionists whose morals and industry were a rebuke to the thriftless and unthinking crowd, and whose faith had been made hateful to society at large

It was then (wrote M. Rebelliau) when nowhere in French society, save among a few fanatic Parlements and prelates, and perhaps among the dregs of the ignorant multitude, was there any encouragement or incitement to persecution, that the Company by its spontaneous initiative revived the expiring spirit of persecution... and, according to all appearance, accomplished a work which has been attributed to the Jesuits . . . and proved itself to be the furious adversary of that spirit of tolerance that was permeating French society... so that the good done by the Company in the domain of public benevolence is but a poor compensation for the evil wrought by it in reviving and fomenting religious warfare.*

After the year 1660, the influence of the Company rapidly waned, and for this several causes may be found. Many of its earlier members must have passed away. It was composed of discordant elements. Oratorians, Jansenists and Jesuits must, sometimes, have found it hard to live in peace together. Those members who happened to be Jansenists were expelled in 1656 and, after that, would not always feel themselves bound to secrecy. Judges and bishops detected traces of a clandestine and anonymous agency that seemed to be controlled by mots d'ordre emanating from a common centre. Like our own later Societies for the Reformation of Manners, the Company entangled itself in a mesh of spies and informers. It interfered with the habits of many by attempting to regulate or prevent the sale, on Sundays and Church

*cf. M. Mariegol, who says of the Company: "Ses pratiques de délation répugnent et son esprit d'intolérance fait horreur."

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festivals, of such commodities as meat and milk. It became meticulous. But one main cause of its fall was not unworthy. It challenged the duellists and thereby infuriated the courtiers and nobles.

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The veil was torn away. Mazarin turned against it. La Compagnie du Trés-Saint-Sacrement de l'Autel was branded as La Cabale des Dévots. Molière is believed by some readers to have held it up to scorn in "Tartuffe." Certain phrases in that play may easily have been applicable to the Cabal, but a mere beggar (gueux) could never have been a member of so select a Company, though it is barely possible that Orgon, his patron, might have been received. It may, however, be suggested that in three scenes of" Le Festin de Pierre "Molière possibly had the Company in his mind. The opening scene begins with Sganarelle's panegyric on snuff. Quoi que puissent dire Aristote et toute la Philosophie, il n'est rien d'égal au tabac : c'est la passion des honnêtes gens, et qui vit sans tabac n'est pas digne de vivre ;" and so on through a dozen lines that are à propos of nothing in particular. The reason why Sganarelle went out of his way in praise of snuff may, perhaps, be found in certain doings of the daughter Company at Dijon. M. Allier transcribes from the archives of that Company as follows: "un nommé Dumay est chassé de la ville, prévenu de recevoir journellement chez lui des gens qui prennent du tabac." In the same city of Dijon, M. Allier tells us, the Company forbade inn-keepers to supply pipes to their customers, and would not allow inhabitants to smoke in their own homes. Evidently there was prohibition of snuff and tobacco in at least one French city, and as daughter companies always acted in concert with the mother company, we feel justified in surmising that a general campaign had been decreed against tobacco in all its forms, and that Sganarelle's irrelevant little speech was a topical allusion, easily understood if the heart of Paris was at the moment stirred to its depths by an agitation on the great question of the snuff-box.

As above stated, it was in its fight against duelling that the Company met with its coup de grâce. There is no duel in "Le Festin de Pierre," but in the fifth scene of the third act there is a good deal of what one-half of Paris (and that the best half) must have been saying on duelling. Molière does not take sides in the fierce controversy that, not long before, raged in Paris, but

a duel that seemed inevitable is avoided, and the discussion between Don Alonse and Don Carlos (both of whom are honourable and high-minded) makes us inclined to believe that Molière did not disapprove of the Company's hostility to the duel.

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In the second scene of the fifth act we may have a direct allusion to the Company which, in 1665, when “Le Festin de Pierre was first presented, had already been nicknamed “La Cabale des Dévots." Don Juan declares that he intends to add hypocrisy to his other sins. If found out, "Je verrai," he says: prendre mes intérêts à toute la cabale, et je serai défendu par elle envers et contre tous. Je m'érigerai en censeur des actions d'autrui, jugerai mal de tout le monde. . . . Je ferai le vengeur des intérêts du Ciel je pousserai mes ennemis, je les accuserai d'impiété et saurai déchaîner contre eux des zélés indiscrets qui, sans connoissance de cause, crieront en public contre eux, qui les accableront d'injures et les damneront hautement...." From the lips of so arrant a libertine as Don Juan, all this sounds like what half Paris (and that not the best half) must have been saying about the secte des dévots, the Cabale des Dévots, the invisibles whose burrows had so recently been unearthed.*

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Few Englishmen would be bold enough to question the verdict of French students writing, on their own ground, of their own national history. But we cannot altogether rid ourselves of the fear that the novelty of their discovery may have led them a little to over-rate its importance. Whether we think of the active philanthropy of the Company or of the part it played in the Counter-Reformation in France, we cannot but ask whether events would not have happened in much the same way if this secret society had never been formed. Did the Company create new forces, or merely bring to a focus forces that were already acting on parallel or converging lines? The reform of preaching began not later than 1611 when Berulle introduced the Oratorians into France. S. Vincent de Paul had worked for the galley slaves

*Once at least in his life, Molière seems to have been something like a victim of the Cabal. M. Aulagne says that he met with a rough reception in the city of Limoges, and that this was due to the Company's opposition to play-acting ("La Réforme Catholique dans le Diocèse de Limoges," par J. Aulagne, Paris, 1906, p. 561). "M. de Pourceaugnac seems to have been Molière's revenge on certain people in Limoges (nous renvoierons à Limoges monsieur de Pourceaugnac, I, iii).

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years before the Company was thought of. Seclusion in a cloister was already giving place to active service in the world as the higher ideal of a Christian life; and men and women were banding themselves by pledges rather than vows to serve their destitute neighbours. The source of la misère was untouched and its main stream unchecked. The Company's admirable philanthropy was, perhaps, the product rather than the root of a widespread emotion of gracious pity that followed in France the religious revival (common to England, Spain and France) of the first half of the seventeenth century.

The Counter-Reformation and the persecution of the Protestants was as inevitable as anything in history. Everyone was against the Huguenot. The great nobles, who once used him, had left him to his fate, and the ubiquitous clergy, often ignorant and fanatical, roused and embittered the common people. Spain had expelled her Moriscos, and Spanish influence was strong among the Catholics of France. On the other hand all the members of the Company were not heartless bigots. Bossuet dealt with the Huguenots as leniently as he could without compromising his position. St. Vincent de Paul was not inhumane, and Père le Jeune was evidently sincere when in his counsels to young preachers he urged them to show all respect and courtesy when arguing with heretics. But the weekly conclaves were secret. Busy men like St. Vincent de Paul, Père le Jeune and Bossuet must often have been absent. Extremists may have been more assiduous. Jesuits, Oratorians and Jansenists-often as their tendencies in other respects might clash and possibly because they did clash-would be eager to prove their zealous orthodoxy by uniting in hostility to the enemies of God. After all, the Jesuits in the Company may have won the day. Perhaps it would have been better for all the world if the Company had known and considered Lord Bacon's counsel: "But moile not too much under ground."

W. J. PAYLING WRIGHT

FOUNDERS OF THE MODERN NOVEL:

II. HENRY FIELDING

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. By HENRY FIELDING. 1749.

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kind-hearted generous man, Samuel Richardson's nature was warped by literary vanity and jealousy of rival authors. He never forgave Henry Fielding for laughing at "Pamela "; believed that he had taught the younger man "how to write to please"; persistently depreciated his writings, while professing never to have opened" Tom Jones or more than begun " Amelia." In the latter book he found the characters and the situations "so wretchedly low and dirty" that he could not read beyond the first volume. His criticisms are cattish. After stating that Parson Adams was copied from the Rev. William Young, he goes on to deny to Fielding the power of invention.

In his " Tom Jones" his hero is made a natural child, because his own first wife was such. Tom Jones is Fielding himself, hardened in some places, softened in others. His Lady Bellaston is an infamous woman of his former acquaintance. His Sophia is, again, his first wife. Booth, in his last piece, again himself. Amelia, even to her noselessness, again his first wife. His brawls, his jars, his gaols, his spunging houses, are all drawn from what he has seen and known.

When Fielding attempted to draw a good woman, said Richardson, he "knew not how, and lost his genius-low humour-in the attempt." Similar criticisms he felt bound to repeat to Sarah Fielding, and to protest to the sister against the "continued lowness" of her brother's writing. To these attacks Fielding made no reply. He had given the first provocation by wounding the literary vanity of his rival. There was in him nothing of the spiteful littleness of Richardson. In his tribute to "Clarissa Harlowe " he made his public amende with the characteristic bigness of nature which has endeared him to generations of

readers.

In character, temperament, education, experience, outlook, no two men could have differed more widely than Richardson and Fielding. The differences are naturally reflected in their novels. In one man, shy and retiring, a vegetarian and a water-drinker, the pulse of life trickled sluggishly; in the other, buoyant in spirits,

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