The inefficacy of the various edicts to restrain duels was at last acknowledged, and various means were adopted to enforce them. In the year 1651, a clergyman of the name of Olier, founder of the congregation of St. Sulpice, conceived a plan of supplying the inefficiency of the law, by putting honour in opposition to itself. With this view he projected an association of gentlemen of tried valour, who, by subscribing an engagement to which the solemnity of an oath was to be added, obliged themselves never to send or accept a challenge, and never to serve as seconds in a duel. In this project he engaged the Marquis de Fénélon, a nobleman respected for the frankness of his disposition and the austerity of his principle, as well as for his well-known courage, when that quality had been called upon in the service of his country; since it was of him that the great Condé had said, that he was equally qualified for conversation, for the field, or for the cabinet. It was to this nobleman that the justly celebrated Archbishop of Cambray owed his education and his rise in the church. The Marquis de Fénélon having placed himself at the head of this association,--into which no one was admitted unless he had distinguished himself in the service,--on the Sunday of the Pentecost, the members assembled in the church of St. Sulpice, and placed in the hands of M^r Olier a solemn instrument, expressing their firm and unalterable resolution never to be principals or seconds in a duel, and moreover to discourage the baneful practice to the utmost of their power. The great Condé was so struck with the proceeding, that he said to the marquis, that a person must have the opinion which he himself entertained of his valour, not to be alarmed at seeing him the first to break the ice on such an occasion. However, it appears that neither the King’s determination to forward the views of this praiseworthy association, nor the exertions of its respectable members, could totally eradicate the prejudice that maintained the evil; and Madame de Crequi, in her Reminiscences, sadly errs when she affirms that during seventeen years not a duel had been fought. Voltaire was also incorrect when he attributed to this prince, surnamed the Great, the abolition of these bloody proceedings. Voltaire was such an enthusiastic admirer of Louis XIV, that in this case, as in many others, where his partiality, his prejudices, or his scepticism prevailed, he lost sight of facts, or, at any rate, passed them over in silence to suit his purposes. The following extract from a recent work gives a much fairer view of this prince’s reign than is given by the generality of his historians: