The last died five years ago. He was found dead in his cell, some days apparently after that he had expired. He was the last, and there are not likely to be any successors to an Order that was by no means an element of good in the country. Ferdinand Fabre has given a graphic account of the hermits in Barnabé, and also in Mon Oncle Célestin.
"I am in despair," says he. "Letters from the South inform me that one by one the hermitages are being closed; that the hermits, knapsack on back, are quitting their solitary chapels, and that they do not return. Did the order for their suppression issue from the Prefecture or from the Episcopal Palace? It is supposed from both simultaneously. What a pity! O how the picturesqueness of our South will be the poorer thereby."
The hermits, calling themselves Free Brothers of S. Francis, were a begging fraternity; they rambled about the country selling sacred pictures, rosaries, and other religious trifles; they frequented the fairs and the taverns, and neither ate nor drank in moderation, and their morals were not irreproachable. But they served a purpose. They attended to the solitary chapels, and made ample provision for the pilgrims who visited these shrines.
"Mon Dieu!" says Fabre; "I know well enough that the Free Brothers of S. Francis, as they loved to entitle themselves, had allowed themselves a good deal of freedom, more than was decorous. For instance, it was not particularly edifying at Bédarieux on a market-day to see the hermits from the mountains round about leave the tavern of the Golden Grapes staggering, jolting against one another, shouting, and at nightfall describing ridiculous zigzags as they went on their way straying along the roads leading to their solitary dwellings.
