She raised the departing sister from her knees and embraced her. Outside, the king's carriages were waiting. Mother Louise de Sainte-Anastasie du Mesnil, prioress of Port-Royal-des-Champs, would give that farewell again and again before her own carriage left.
On 29 October 1709, Louis XIV's lieutenant of police, Marc-René d'Argenson, arrived at the abbey to disperse its twenty-two remaining nuns. All were fifty or older. Several were infirm. They were to be scattered among convents from Rouen to Nantes and from Amiens to Nevers, and nothing their prioress could do would keep her community together.
Their age had a history. In 1679 the authorities had cut Port-Royal off from new recruits. For thirty years the community had grown older without being allowed to renew itself. Death could take a sister out of the household; no novice could come in to take her place. By the time the carriages arrived, the women left were the survivors of a policy that had been working on them for a generation.
They still lived as a religious community, with a rule, a superior, appointed duties and the prayers that divided their days. The infirmary belonged to that life as much as the church did. So did the archives, where the house kept its papers. D'Argenson would take possession of the keys before he told them they must leave.
Port-Royal had become a centre of the controversy called Jansenism, a Catholic dispute about grace and salvation that had spread into a struggle over obedience. Its defenders insisted on humanity's complete dependence on God's grace. The Church condemned five propositions attributed to the writings of Cornelius Jansen, and the nuns were required to sign a declaration accepting the condemnation. They could reject heresy while still disputing whether the condemned teaching was actually his. What the authorities required was assent without that reservation.
The distinction had consequences far beyond a signature. These women had taken vows of obedience, but obedience could not settle what they believed they could truthfully affirm before God. In 1706, faced with a renewed demand for submission, they again offered only a qualified assent. It was not enough. Their continued resistance brought ecclesiastical penalties and, finally, the royal order for their removal.
The king had already stopped new women entering. Now he would send the remaining women out.
D'Argenson arrived at about half past seven, after Mass, with a commissioner and mounted officers, and asked first to inspect the archives. The prioress admitted him. He took the keys from the portress, then from the prioress, the subprioress and the cellaress, and had the cupboards and strongboxes opened. When the bell sounded for the morning office of Terce, Mother du Mesnil asked whether she and her sisters might attend. He permitted it, provided they did not take long. Even the prayers were now on someone else's timetable.
Afterwards the bell was rung for chapter. D'Argenson took the abbess's seat, with the prioress beside him, and the sisters took their usual places. One was missing. Sister Euphrasie Robert was eighty-six and paralysed, and could not come by herself. D'Argenson required her presence too. Six women carried her in on a mattress laid on a stretcher.
Only then did he announce the general dispersal. They had three hours to prepare. The prioress answered that half an hour would be enough to say their goodbyes and take a breviary, a Bible and their Constitutions, the written rule of their life. The other sisters asked for the same. Her submission to removal did not surrender the convictions they were being removed for. Those books could travel with them even when the community could not.
He read the royal warrants one by one, and each woman promised to submit. The prioress was going to Blois. The others were bound for Rouen, Autun, Chartres, Amiens, Compiègne, Meaux, Nantes, Nevers and Saint-Denis. Officially, all of this was done for the good of the state. The state had brought an armed escort to remove twenty-two ageing nuns.
The loss of her authority soon became painfully practical. Sister Françoise de Sainte-Agathe Le Juge, who had been bled that morning, found that her arm was bleeding again and asked the prioress for permission to have it attended to. Mother du Mesnil told her that, with the community destroyed, she no longer had the authority to grant it. The sister must ask d'Argenson. He let her go and have the arm bound again, provided she came straight back. The infirmarian, Sister Julie, obtained permission to go with her.
Then the sisters gathered to say goodbye. They embraced one another and knelt before their prioress. She raised them and embraced them, urging them to stay faithful to their rule. The keys had gone; the power to permit even a visit to the infirmary had gone. Still they knelt to her, and still she raised them.
From about two o'clock they went in procession from the chapter house to the enclosure door. Some shared a carriage; the first, bound for Autun, carried two sisters together. D'Argenson saw each one off himself, handing money for the journey from a white leather bag to the officers who rode with them and commending the women to their care. Courtesy could accompany an exile quite comfortably. It did nothing to alter the destination.
The carriages left one by one, for Autun, Nevers, Chartres, Compiègne, Rouen and Meaux. The carriage for Blois went last, at about five in the evening. Mother du Mesnil had seen every one of them go before her own. She had eaten nothing all day.
