Note A — XCV. To M. Noël Brulart, the Commander de Sillery.[A]

Noël Brulart, Commander of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem (better known in the correspondence of St. Jane Frances as the Commander de Sillery), after a brilliant career at Court, where as Ambassador to the courts of Spain and Rome he displayed all the pride and splendour that his great revenues enabled him to gratify, fell under the influence of St. Vincent de Paul, and the Visitation Nuns, by whom he was excited to a higher ambition, and in 1632, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, giving up his worldly career, became a Priest and consecrated his wealth to relieving the unfortunate and furthering the interests of religion. A generous benefactor to the Visitation Order, amongst many other gifts he built the Church of the first monastery of Paris (designed by Mansard), where he was buried. It is now, alas! the Protestant temple of the Rue St. Antoine, near the Bastille. Commander de Sillery closed a life of rare sanctity on the 26th Sep., 1640, in the sixty-third year of his age. The above letter is taken from the "Lettres de Ste Jeanne Françoise Frémoit de Chantal." Tournei edition. J. Casterman, 1848.