The Crayon Papers
null and void, and we cannot receive your profession.”
The archbishop rose from his chair, resumed his miter, and took the crozier from the hands of an attendant.
“My dear brethren,” said he, addressing the assembly, “there is no necessity for our examining and interrogating Mademoiselle de Lenoncour on the sincerity of her religious vocation. There is a canonical impediment to her professing for the present; and, as to the future, we reserve to ourselves the consideration of the matter; interdicting to all other ecclesiastical persons the power of accepting her vows, under penalty of interdiction, of suspension, and of nullification; all which is in virtue of our metropolitan rights, contained in the terms of the bull cum proximis :” “ Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini! ” pursued he, chanting in a grave and solemn voice, and turning toward the altar to give the benediction of the holy sacrament.
The noble auditory had that habitude of reserve, that empire, or rather tyranny, over all outward manifestations of internal emotions, which belongs to high aristocratical breeding. The declaration of the archbishop, therefore, was received as one of the most natural and ordinary things in the world, and all knelt down and received the pontifical benediction with perfect decorum. As soon, however, as they were released from the self-restraint imposed by etiquette, they amply indemnified themselves; and nothing was talked of for a month, in the fashionable saloons of Paris, but the loves of the handsome Viscount and the charming Henrietta; the wickedness of the canoness; the active benevolence and admirable address of the Princess de Beauvau; and the great wisdom of the archbishop, who was particularly extolled for his delicacy in defeating this maneuver without any scandal to the aristocracy, or public stigma on the name of De Rupelmonde, and without any departure from pastoral gentleness, by adroitly seizing upon an informality, and turning it to beneficial account, with as much authority as charitable circumspection.
As to the Canoness de Rupelmonde, she was defeated at all points in her wicked plans against her beautiful niece. In consequence of the caveat of the archbishop, her superior ecclesiastic, the Abbess de Panthemont, formally forbade Mademoiselle de Lenoncour to resume the white veil and the dress of a novitiate, and instead of a novice’s cell established her in a beautiful apartment as a boarder. The next morning the Canoness de Rupelmonde called at the convent to take away her niece; but, to her confusion, the abbess produced a lettre-de-cachet, which she had just received, and which forbade mademoiselle to leave the convent with any other person save the Prince de Beauvau.
Under the auspices and the vigilant attention of the prince, the whole affair was wound up in the most technical and circumstantial manner. The Countess de Rupelmonde, by a decree of the Grand Council, was divested of the guardianship of her niece. All the arrears of revenues accumulated during Mademoiselle de Lenoncour’s minority were rigorously collected, the accounts scrutinized and adjusted, and her noble fortune placed safely and entirely in her hands.
In a little while the noble personages who had been invited to the ceremony of taking the veil received another invitation, on the part of the Countess dowager de Gondrecourt, and the Marshal Prince de Beauvau, to attend the marriage of Adrien de Gondrecourt, Viscount of Jean-sur-Moselle, and Henrietta de Lenoncour, Countess de Hevouwal, etc., which duly took place in the chapel of the archiepiscopal palace at Paris.
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So much for the beautiful Henrietta de Lenoncour. We will now draw forth a companion picture of a handsome young cavalier, who figured in the gay world of Paris about the same time, and concerning whom the ancient marchioness writes with the lingering feeling of youthful romance.
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THE CHARMING LETORIÈRES
“A good face is a letter of recommendation,” says an old proverb; and it was never more verified than in the case of the Chevalier Letorieres. He was a young gentleman of good family, but who, according to the Spanish phrase, had nothing but his cloak and sword (capa y espada), that is to say, his gentle blood and gallant bearing, to help him forward in the world. Through the interest of an uncle, who was an abbe, he received a gratuitous education at a fashionable college, but finding the terms of study too long, and
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