even when she came back she found her house deserted, every one having gone away at once by agreement. She was very violent with her servants, beat them, and changed them every day. Upon one occasion, she took into her service a strong and robust chambermaid, to whom, from the first day of her arrival, she gave many slaps and boxes on the ear. The chambermaid said nothing, but after submitting to this treatment for five or six days, conferred with the other servants; and one morning, while in her mistress's room, locked the door without being perceived, said something to bring down punishment upon her, and at the first box on the ear she received, flew upon the Princesse d'Harcourt, gave her no end of thumps and slaps, knocked her down, kicked her, mauled her from her head to her feet, and when she was tired of this exercise, left her on the ground, all torn and disheveled, howling like a devil. The chambermaid then quitted the room, double-locked the door on the outside, gained the staircase, and fled the house. Every day the princess was fighting, or mixed up in some adventures. Her neighbors at Marly said they could not sleep for the riot she made at night; and I remember that after one of these scenes, everybody went to see the room of the Duchesse de Villeroy and that of Madame d'Espinoy, who had put their beds in the middle of their room, and who related their night vigils to every one. Such was this favorite of Madame de Maintenon; so insolent and so insupportable to every one, but who had favors and preferences for those who brought her over, and who had raised so many young men, amassed wealth for them, and made herself feared even by the prince and minister. ADAM DE SAINT VICTOR (TWELFTH CENTURY) BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN HE Latin hymns or sequences of Adam de Saint Victor came from that great period, the Middle Ages, so wonderful and so misconceived. They belong to literature because they reflect the vital motive of the time, Faith; because they are expressions of the personality of their author; and because their style is governed by delicate canons of art little understood by the modern world of poetry-lovers. To the strict classicist, to the man who reverences Horace and Catullus, their rhymes are an abomination. But to one who approaches these sacred poems of the twelfth century remembering that they were part of that greater religious poem, the daily sacrifice of the Catholic Church, they are worthy of critical study, and they will amply repay it. They can neither be studied nor even dimly appreciated through the medium of translations. They are as intricate and technical as the Gothic architecture of the time which produced them; they have the sonorousness and aspirational cadence, without the simplicity, of the Gregorian chant which their music seems to echo; and above all, they are musical. The sequence was sung between the Epistle and Gospel of the Mass. It was called "a prose," too, because in no regular metre; but in the Middle Ages these sequences, which were at first merely prolongations of "the last note of the Alleluia," were arranged for all feasts of the Church in such profusion that much weak and careless "prose" crept in. The consequence was that by the revision of the Roman Missal in the sixteenth century, only the Victimæ Paschali (for Easter), the Veni Sancte Spiritus' (for Pentecost), 'Lauda Sion' (for Corpus Christi), and 'Dies Iræ' (in masses for the dead), were retained. In this revision, the thirty-nine sequences of Adam de Saint Victor disappeared from general usage. M. Félix Clément, in an enthusiastic notice of Saint Victor's poetry, regrets this, and welcomes M. Charles Barthélemy's edition of the sequences as an act of reparation to a genius too long misunderstood. > There is no doubt that the almost merciless precision of Adam de Saint Victor's rhyme had a great influence on French poetry, although neither his rhythm nor rhyme ever reaches the monotony of the later French recurrences; and some of the poems are most exquisitely lyrical, artificial, and intricate, yet with an appearance of simplicity that might easily deceive the unlearned in the metrical modes of the twelfth century. Take for instance the sequence beginning Virgini Maria Laudes.' It is a marvel of skill; it has the quaintness of an old ballad and the play on words of a rondeau. It is modeled on the Easter sequence of the monk Notker, with, as M. Clément says, "extraordinary skill." It is untranslatable: no prose version can represent it, and no metrical imitation reproduce its unique shades of verbiage. In the sequence Of the Holy Ghost,' occur the famous lines which were part of the liturgy of France for four centuries: "THOU who art Giver and the gift, Who from the naught all good didst lift, Adam de Saint Victor was born in the twelfth century, and he died in either 1177 or 1192. It is certain that he was a canon regular of the Abbey of Saint-Victor-les-Paris; he composed certain treatises, and lived, honored and admired, for a part of his life under the rule of the Abbot Guérin, and was regarded as the foremost poet of his time. He drew his inspiration from the sacred Scriptures; and he applied both the teachings and the splendid figures of the Bible with the force and fervor of Dante. Modern hymn-writers - who seem to grow weaker every year- would do well to study the elevation and harmony of Adam de Saint Victor: he is a mine of riches. In the 'Carmina e Poetis Christianis (Songs from Christian Poets), etc., by M. Félix Clément (Paris, Gaume & Co.), and in an appendix to M. Charles Barthélemy's translation into French of the 'Rationale Divinorum Officiorum' (Rationale of Divine Services), the material for a study of this poet's work may be found. An analysis of the sequence Of the Resurrection of Our Lord,' a prose version of which is given below, will show the skill with which it is constructed,— a skill as technical as that of a Petrarcan sonnet. The rhythm is as marked as the time of a military march. DE RESURRECTIONE DOMINI MUNDI renovatio Nova parit gaudia; Ignis volat mobilis, Fluit aqua labalis, Terra manet stabilis, Alta petunt levia, Centrum tenent gravia, Renovantur omnia. Cœlum fit serenius, Gelu mortis solvitur, Vita mortem superat; Viam præbet facilem, 12729 TRANSLATION OF THE PRECEDING THE renewal of the world begets new joys; all things arise with the resurrection of the Lord. The elements obey [him] and feel how great are the feasts of their Creator. The mobile ether and the whirling air are set in motion. The gliding water flows, the earth remains steady; what is light arises, what is heavy keeps its position at the centre [of the universe]. All things are renewed. The heaven becomes more serene, the sea more quiet; one breathes gentle airs; our valley is [clothed] in flowers; what [was] dry becomes green again, what [was] cold grows warm again: after which the spring gains color. The ice of death is loosened, the Prince of this world is done away with, and his power over us destroyed. While he wished to hold Him in whom he had not anything [cf. John xiv. 30], he lost the power that was his own. Life conquers death; man now recovers what he had lost before, the joy of Paradise. [Christ] makes the way easy [for us to travel] by removing, as God had promised, the sword of the Cherubim that "turns in every way" [Gen. iii. 24]. An inadequate prose translation must serve to give a faint impression of the deep feeling and sublime passion of the sequence in honor of the Holy Ghost beginning Qui procedis ab utroque, Pariter, Paraclete, DE SANCTO SPIRITU (ON THE HOLY SPIRIT) O THOU Paraclete that dost proceed equally from each, the Begetter and the Begotten, render eloquent our tongues, make our souls burn [glow] for thee with thy rich flame [of grace]. Love of the Father and of the Son, equal of both and [fully] equal and like to each: thou dost replenish all things, dost cherish all |