Meantime, Sir Francis Ommaney had had become intimate with the
Darpents, and so too had our good Abbe Bouchamp, who had assisted at
the funeral ceremonies, and from whom the widow derived much
consolation. From them we heard that she would fain have retired
into the convent at Port Royal, only she would not leave her son.
There were those who held that it was her duty not to let him stand
between her and a vocation, especially as he was full grown, and
already in the world; but she retained enough of her old training
among the Huguenots to make her insist that since God had given her
children, it was plain that He meant her to serve Him through her
duty to them, and that if, through her desertion of him, Clement were
tempted to any evil courses, she should never forgive herself. And
our Abbe was the more inclined to encourage her in this resolve that
he did not love the Jansenists, and had a mind sufficiently imbued
with theology to understand their errors.
Certainly Clement showed no inclination to evil courses. In fact, he
was so grave and studious that his mother cherished the hope of
taking him with her to Port Royal to become one of the solitaries who
transformed the desert into a garden. She said that with patience
she should see him come to this, but in the meantime youth was
sanguine, and he had not renounced the hope of transforming the
world. I think she also foresaw that the unavowed love for Annora
could scarcely lead to anything but disappointment, and she thought
that, in the rebound, he would be willing to devote himself as one of
those hermits.
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