_The Bishop’s Choice.--A Military Zealot.--Hopeful Beginnings.--Signs of Storm.--The Quarrel.--Distress of Mézy.--He Refuses to Yield.--His Defeat and Death._ |We have seen that Laval, when at court, had been invited to choose a governor to his liking. He soon made his selection. There was a pious officer, Saffray de Mézy, major of the town and citadel of Caen, whom he had well known during his long stay with Bernières at the Hermitage. Mézy was the principal member of the company of devotees formed at Caen under the influence of Bernières and his disciples. In his youth he had been headstrong and dissolute. Worse still, he had been, it is said, a Huguenot; but both in life and doctrine his conversion had been complete, and the fervid mysticism of Bernières acting on his vehement nature had transformed him into a red-hot zealot. Towards the hermits and their chief he showed a docility in strange contrast with his past history, and followed their inspirations with an ardor which sometimes overleaped its mark. Thus a Jacobin monk, a doctor of divinity, once came to preach at the church of St. Paul at Caen; on which, according to their custom, the brotherhood of the Hermitage sent two persons to make report concerning his orthodoxy. Mézy and another military zealot, “who,” says the narrator, “hardly know how to read, and assuredly do not know their catechism,” were deputed to hear his first sermon; wherein this Jacobin, having spoken of the necessity of the grace of Jesus Christ in order to the doing of good deeds, these two wiseacres thought that he was preaching Jansenism; and thereupon, after the sermon, the Sieur de Mézy went to the proctor of the ecclesiastical court and denounced him. * His zeal, though but moderately tempered with knowledge, sometimes proved more useful than on this occasion. The Jacobin convent at Caen was divided against itself. Some of the monks had embraced the doctrines taught by Bernières, while the rest held dogmas which he declared to be contrary to those of the Jesuits, and therefore heterodox. A prior was to be elected, and, with the help of Bernières, his partisans gained the victory, choosing one Father Louis, through whom the Hermitage gained a complete control in the convent. But the adverse party presently resisted, and complained to the provincial of their order, who came to Caen to close the dispute by deposing Father Louis. Hearing of his approach, Bernières asked * Nicole, Mémoire pour faire connoistre l’espnt et la conduite de la Compagnie appellée l'Hermitage. aid from his military disciple, and De Mézy sent him a squad of soldiers, who guarded the convent doors and barred out the provincial. *