Note 9 — III. 1764–1779. MANTUA-MAKER’S APPRENTICE.—PENSIONER UNDER THE CROWN.—BOARDER IN A CONVENT.

“Never was there a more aristocratic, or, if the chronique scandaleuse is to be believed, a naughtier nunnery than that of Longchamp. It was Rabelais’ Abbey of Thélèma, with additions and emendations, and ‘Fay ce que vouldras’ might have been written over the conventual gates. The excellent St. Vincent de Paul was in a terrible way about the ‘goings-on’ among these exceptionally vivacious nuns, and in a letter to Cardinal Mazarin indignantly denounced the irregularities which had become habitual in the establishment. The Archbishop of Paris remonstrated with the naughty nuns; but they snapped their fingers metaphorically in the archiepiscopal face, and continued their fandangos. But they were eventually punished for their peccadillos. The pious world ceased in disgust to make pilgrimages to the tomb of Ste. Isabelle de Longchamp, and to deposit rich offerings on her shrine. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the convent had grown comparatively poor, when, in 1727, a renowned opera singer, Mademoiselle le Maure, having taken the veil at Longchamp, the happy thought occurred to the abbess of giving concerts of sacred music on the three last days of Lent. These concerts were a prodigious success. The Parisian world, fashionable and frivolous as well as devout, flocked, as fast as their coaches-and-six could carry them, to hear the Longchamp oratorios; and these concerts remained in vogue for nearly fifty years. It came at last to the ears of another Archbishop of Paris, Monsigneur Christophe de Beaumont—a prelate celebrated for his enmity to theatrical entertainments, and his quarrel with Jean Jacques Rousseau—that the attractions of the choir at the Abbey of Longchamp were enhanced by the voices of a number of artistes from the opera who had not taken the veil. So the church was closed to the public. There was an end of the cause, but the effect remained.

“Out of the fashionable pilgrimages grew the world-famous Promenade de Longchamp, which began in the Champs Élysées, and wound its course right athwart the Bois de Boulogne to the gates of the Abbey itself. It was found that the setting-in of the spring fashions might be fitly made to coincide with the eve of Easter; and every year during three days in Passion-week there was an incessant cavalcade of princes, nobles, bankers, fermiers-généraux, strangers of distinction, and the ladies then known as ruineuses, to Longchamp. It became not a Ladies’ Mile, but a Ladies’ League. The equipages of the grandest dames of the Court of Versailles locked wheels with the chariots of La Duthé and La Guimard; and the legends whisper that the ruineuses made, as a rule, a much more splendid appearance than the grandes dames did.”—“Paris Herself Again,” by George Augustus Sala, vol. ii. p. 253, et seq.