began to cabal against him, and the monarch to treat him coldly; and, though he succeeded in procuring a pension for himself, and pensions and preferments for his children, he failed to obtain the blue riband and a marshal’s staff, which were the great objects of his ambition. He died in 1693. A longer term of imprisonment than was undergone by Bussy Rabutin fell to the lot of the next prisoner. Among the victims of the persecution which was carried on against the Jansenists, was Louis Isaac le Maistre, better known by the name of Saci, which is an anagram formed by him from one of his christian names. He was born in 1613, and was educated at the college of Beauvais, along with his uncle, the celebrated Anthony Arnauld. Though he was early destined to the clerical profession, he did not take orders till he was in his thirty-fifth year; a praiseworthy humility having long induced him to doubt his being competent to fulfill properly the duties of a gospel minister. He was soon after appointed director of the Port Royal nuns, on which occasion he took up his abode in the convent, resigning to it all his property, except a small annuity, and of that he distributed the largest portion to the poor. His time was spent in study, prayer, and pious exercises. But a blameless life was not sufficient to shield him from theological hatred. In 1661, he was compelled to fly from the convent, and he remained in concealment till 1666, when he was discovered and conveyed to the Bastile. In that prison he was immured for three years and a half, and he solaced his lonely hours by undertaking a translation of the Bible, a considerable part of which he accomplished while he was held in durance. He, however, did not live to complete it. In the autumn of 1669 he was set at liberty. The minister, to whom he was presented on leaving the Bastile, seems to have been willing to grant him some favour, as a compensation for his unmerited sufferings; but all that Saci asked was, that the prisoners might be more leniently treated. After the destruction of Port Royal, he found an asylum in the house of his cousin, the Marquis of Pomponne, and there he ended his days, in 1684. Saci was such an enemy to controversy that, though often attacked, he is said never to have replied except in one instance. Voltaire speaks of him as “one of the good writers of Port Royal.” In the poetical compositions of Saci, which were his earliest literary attempts, there are passages that rise above mediocrity. Among his principal works, besides his version of the Bible, are translations of the Psalms, St. Thomas à Kempis, two books of the Eneid, the Fables of Phædrus, and three of the Comedies of Terence.