As there was, in those times, a powerful party in France, that opposed the Court, and even was frequently at open war with it, there was no want of Men, in Paris, who found fault with the disciplining processions of the King. When they first made their appearance, some, as the above Historian relates, laughed at them, while others exclaimed that they were an insult both to God and Man. Even Preachers joined in the party, and pointed their sarcasms from the pulpit against those ceremonies. The most petulant among these popular Preachers, was one Maurice Poncet, of the Abbey of Melun, who, using expressions borrowed from a Psalm, compared the King and his brother Disciplinants, to Men who would cover themselves with a wet sack-cloth, to keep off the rain: he was at last banished to his Monastery. The example which the Court, and the Metropolis, had set, was followed in a number of Country Towns, where fraternities of Flagellants were instituted; and among them particular mention is made of the Brotherhood of the _Blue Penitents_, in the City of Bourges, on account of the Sentence passed in the year 1601, by the Parliament of Paris, in consequence of a motion of Nicolas Servin, the King’s Advocate General, which expressly abolished it[115]. [Illustration: (end of chapter mark)] FOOTNOTES: [114] _Siluerunt tunc tempore omnia musica instrumenta & amatoriæ cantilenæ. Sola cantio pœnitentis lugubris audiebatur ubique, tam in civitatibus quam in villis, ad cujus flebilem modulationem corda saxea movebantur, & obstinatorum oculi lacrymis non poterant continere._----This Monk of St. Justina, whose account is here translated at length, was certainly no mean Writer: he was quite another Man than the _Abbé Boileau_. [115] It has no doubt been perceived, that, in the course of this Work, I have commonly taken care to conclude the different Chapters into which it is divided, with a Note or Commentary of a certain length, upon the same subject with the Chapter itself, though of a less grave and serious turn. This precaution I thought necessary for the relief of the Reader, after the great exertion of his mind, occasioned by the weighty objects that had just been offered to his consideration. Such final Note I considered as a farce, after a serious and moral Drama, and as a kind of _petite piece_, or if you please, of interlude, calculated to revive the exhausted spirits of the Reader, and enable him to begin a fresh Chapter with alacrity. On this occasion, however, I find great difficulty in pursuing the same plan. The processions of Disciplinants that have just been described, are such a dismal and gloomy subject, that it suggests no ideas but what are of a serious kind; it precludes all thoughts of mirth and jocularity; and I despair, in this Note, of being able to entertain the Reader so well as I flatter myself I have succeeded in doing in the former ones.