Cyr, in preparation for their solemn office. They were of marked but very contrasted characters. The elder inherited the strong will and dominant energy of her race. As yet, and for some time afterwards, without any religious bias, she contemplated her prospects with a quiet and proud consciousness of responsibility. The younger sister was of a softer and more submissive nature. She shrank from her high position, saying that an abbess had to answer to God for the souls of her nuns, and she was sure that she would have enough to do to take care of her own. Angélique had no such page 85scruples. She was glad to be an abbess, and was resolved that her nuns should thoroughly do their duty. These sayings have been preserved in the memoirs of the family, and are supposed to indicate happily the firm, persistent spirit and legislative capacity of the one sister, in contrast with the passive rather than active strength, and milder yet no less enduring purpose, of the other.
The remarkable story of Angélique’s conversion by the preaching of a Capucin friar in 1608, her strange contest with her parents which followed, the strengthening impulses in different directions which her religious life received, first from the famous St Francis de Sales, and finally, and especially, from the no less remarkable Abbé de St Cyran, all belong to the history of Port Royal, and cannot be detailed here. It is a touching and beautiful story, which can never lose its interest. It is only necessary that we draw attention to the temporary removal of the Abbess with her nuns to Paris in the year 1635, and to the settlement in the valley, during their absence from it, of the band of Solitaries whose piety and genius, no less than the heroic devotion of the sisterhood, have shed such a glory around it. It was the spiritual influence of St Cyran which overflowed in this direction. The religious genius of this remarkable man, of whom we shall speak more particularly in the next chapter, laid its spell upon the social life around him, and brought to his feet some of the most able and distinguished young men of the time. The elder brother of Angélique and Agnès Arnauld, known as M. d’Andilly, was amongst his devoted friends; and it was through him that St Cyran first