feelings as to alarm the Government. Richelieu took summary means of asserting his authority and silencing the disturbers. The meeting was denounced as seditious, and a warrant issued to arrest the offenders and throw them into the Bastille. Étienne Pascal, having become apprised of the hostile designs of the Cardinal, contrived to conceal himself at first in Paris, and afterwards took refuge in the solitude of his native district. His children were left without his care, and plunged in the greatest sorrow. At intervals, indeed, he contrived to see them in secret, page 12and is said even to have nursed Jacqueline through a severe attack of the smallpox, which impaired her hitherto remarkable beauty. But all the pleasant companionship which he had enjoyed as their instructor, and the centre of a group of intellectual friends, was at an end. He could only visit his home by stealth.
At this crisis (February 1639) Richelieu took a fancy to have Scudéry’s tragi-comedy of “L’Amour Tyrannique” acted before him by young girls. The Court lady who undertook the management of the piece appealed to Jacqueline Pascal, whose accomplishments as a girl-actor were well known, to assist in its performance. She was then thirteen years of age. The elder sister, who, in the enforced absence of the father, was acting as the head of the family, replied, with feeling, that “they did not owe any favour to M. le Cardinal, who had not acted kindly towards them.” The request, however, was pressed, in the hope that some good might come out of the affair to the family, and Jacqueline was allowed to appear. The result was all that could be anticipated. The Cardinal, charmed by the grace and accomplishment of her acting, received her cordially when she ventured to approach him with a petition on behalf of her father, thrown into a form of verses similar to many which she had already composed. The verses have been preserved with her other pieces, and have been thus rendered:—7