they were hastening to dinner, and that it
rained—no excuse whatever, at that time and
place.

De la Barre enjoyed the patronage of one of
his relations, Madame Feydeau de Brou, Abbess
of Willancourt, whose nephew he was according
to the custom of Brittany.* This lady adopted
him, in a manner, in 1764; she gave him masters,
and procured him a lieutenant's commission.
She lodged him in the external buildings
of the convent, and invited him to meet the
select society by whom she was visited, and who
moulded his manners to the ways of the world.
Voltaire says of her that she was amiable,
strictly moral in her conduct, gentle-tempered
and cheerful, benevolent and prudent without
superstition. She often asked him to supper,
together with several of his young friends
(amongst them, one named Moisnel and another
D'Etalonde de Morival), whose spirits were
high, but whose faith was of the weakest.
Reports were current that these young people, in
their secret parties of pleasure, were irreligious
as well as dissolute, and that the chevalier
partook of their follies. Witnesses (mostly of the
lowest class, who had waited on the young men
at their merry meetings) were subsequently
brought to prove that they recited Pirou's
notorious verses, sang libertine songs, spoke
against the doctrine of the Eucharist, and
profaned by mimicry the ceremonies of the Church.
The state of the times, the profligacy of the
court, the looming of a political tempest on the
horizon, the antagonism of the philosophers and
the Catholic clergy, must all be remembered
while pronouncing judgment on the conduct of
these thoughtless youths.

* Suppose two cousins-german to be married,
the son of one of these cousins will address the
other as " Ma tante"—" Aunt." He is her neveu a
la mode de Bretagne.

Had the matter been confined to private
orgies even worse than these, the names of De
la Barre and his associates would probably
never have reached our days; but during the
night of the 8-9th of August, 1765, a wooden
crucifix, standing on the Pont-Neuf, was mutilated
with a cutting instrument. In the same
night, another crucifix, planted in the cemetery
of Saint Catherine, was covered with filth. These
events excited a general disturbance throughout
the town. The procureur du roi (king's
attorney), a mystical enthusiast, caused the severest
inquiry to be made. The Bishop of Amiens
(De la Motte d'Orléans), a naturally good-
natured prelate, but excited by bigoted coteries
and enfeebled by age, published a " Monitoire,"
inviting the public to denounce the
offenders, with the threat of censures and
excommunication. On the 8th of October he
himself came to Abbeville, accompanied by
twelve missionaries, and with them went in
procession, barefoot, with ropes round their necks,
to the insulted crosses, prostrated himself
before them, and without foreseeing the
consequences of his fatal step, hastily pronounced
his opinion of the culprits, declaring that they
deserved the extremest punishment. This
expiatory ceremonial, at which all the civil and
judicial authorities were present, made a
profound impression on the populace. More than
a hundred witnesses, summoned to depose to
facts relating to the mutilation, spoke of
impious talk uttered in the heat of thoughtless
carousals by young people of the town, but
which afforded no clue whatever to the affair
of the crucifixes. With this were mingled
rumours of hosts (consecrated wafers), stolen
from churches, being stabbed with knives, and
miraculously bleeding from the wounds received.

In most instances of popular excitement ending
in outbursts of popular frenzy, some secret
instigator has been at work, fanning the flame
unperceived. In the present case the underhand
agitator, whoever he was, took great pains
to fix suspicion on the Chevalier de la Barre.
Popular rumour and probability (although
doubts as to the facts have been raised) assign
this villanous manoeuvre to the lieutenant-
particulier and criminal assessor, Pierre Duval de
Soicourt, who had a private grudge against the
Abbess of Willancourt, and who, unable to
injure the lady herself, might seek revenge on her
adopted child. If we may believe Voltaire,
Duval, although sixty years of age, annoyed
Madame de Willancourt with importunities
which only excited her utmost aversion, so far
even as to exclude him from her society.
Duval, in revenge, did all he could to beset her
with legal and pecuniary difficulties. De la
Barre took his aunt's part with imprudent
earnestness, and spoke to the old assessor with
provoking harshness.

Moreover, in the Abbess of Willancourt's
convent there resided a charming girl belonging
to a very wealthy family, who was Duval's ward,
and whom he desired to marry to his son, a
young man of coarse and brutal manners. The
abbess, yielding to her pupil's entreaties, who
loathed the idea of such a union, opposed the
marriage aud succeeded in getting another
guardian appointed in the place of Duval de
Soicourt. Either of these affronts sufficed to
make the criminal assessor vow eternal hatred
to the abbess.

Duval, therefore, in his official capacity,
brought a formal accusation against De la Barre
and four other young men belonging to the first
families of the neighbourhood. It is a damning
circumstance for Duval's memory that, with four
out of five of the families of which the parties
accused were members, he had had serious
misunderstandings. "I mean to frighten Madame
de Willancourt," he said, "and show her that I
am not a man to be despised." Mixing up the
affair of the procession with the reports of
irreligious talk, he coupled the whole with the
offence of mutilating the crucifixes; so that the
result should be to punish as mutilators of the
holy symbol those who should be merely
convicted of impious discourse.

The arrest of the culprits was decreed. Three