{105} And the controversy which their labours were destined once more to awaken in the bosom of the Catholic Church was nothing else than the old dispute which, since the days of Augustine and Pelagius, had more than once already agitated it. The fellow-students continued their studies near Bayonne for five years. So closely did they work, that Jansen is said to have spent days and nights in the same chair, snatching only brief intervals of rest. A game at battledore and shuttlecock occasionally relieved their vigils; but no serious employment divided their attention with the arduous task upon which they had entered, of mastering and digesting the principles of the Augustinian theology. The Bishop of Bayonne offered preferment to D’Hauranne, and there were projects of settling Jansen also at the head of a college; but it was not till some time afterwards that either of them entered upon official labours. They were left during those years to the uninterrupted studies which subsequently resulted in the great work of Jansen. The system of theological thought associated with his name was then definitely matured. It is beyond our province to sketch the career of these fellow-students, one of whom became the chief spiritual director of Port Royal, and the other its great theological centre. The abbey of St Cyran was the only preferment which D’Hauranne ever accepted, notwithstanding Richelieu’s repeated offers of a bishopric. He was content to exercise from his monastic seclusion an influence far more powerful than that of any bishop of his day. And so penetrating and dangerous did this influence seem to the great Minister whose efforts to bind him to his side had so often failed, that he at length shut him up in Vincennes (May 1638). Here he remained in close confinement for more than four years; but even from this gloomy retreat the impression of his great personal power was spread abroad, and felt in many quarters as steadily as before. He survived his release only a few months. His long imprisonment had broken down his health; and although the enthusiasm of his spirit was strong as ever, his weakened body was no longer able to answer to its demands. He could hardly “hold himself up,” and a slight attack of illness carried him off.