Note 40 — THE PORT-ROYAL SOCIETY.

The early history of the house is not given quite clearly and correctly in the text. The old foundation of Cistercians, named Port-Royal des Champs, was situated in the valley of Chevreuse, near Versailles, and founded in 1204 by Bishop Eudes, of Paris. It was in the reign of Louis XIII. that Madame Arnauld, the mother of the then Abbess, hearing that the sisterhood suffered from the damp situation of their convent and its confined space, purchased a house as an infirmary for its sick members in the Fauxbourg St. Jacques, and called it the Port-Royal de Paris, to distinguish it from the older foundation.