THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 BEQUEST 
 
 OF 
 
 ANITA D. S. BLAKE 
 
/< 
 
 
THOUGHTS. 
 
MEDITATIONS OF A PARISH 
 PRIEST 
 
 THOUGHTS. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH ROUX. 
 
 Introduction by Paul Marieton. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD FRENCH 
 EDITION BY 
 
 ISABEL F. HAPGOOD. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO., 
 
 No. 13 Astor Place. 
 
Copyright, 
 By Thomas Y. Crowell & Q). 
 
 GIFT 
 
 Typography by J. S. Cashing &> Co., Boston. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PC 34ok 
 "RcP4^ 
 
 Introduction by Paul Marieton 
 Prelude by the Author 
 I. Literature, Poets. 
 II. Eloquence, Orators 
 
 III. History, Historians 
 
 IV. Mind, Talent, Character 
 V. Joy, Suffering, Fortune . 
 
 VI. Time, Life, Death, The Future 
 VII. The Family, Childhood, Old Age 
 VIII. The Country, The Peasant 
 IX. Love, Friendship, Friends . 
 X. God, Religion .... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 iii 
 
 i 
 
 5 
 
 45 
 
 59 
 
 74 
 
 97 
 
 109 
 
 117 
 
 122 
 
 168 
 
 181 
 
 485 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Several years ago, when I began my felib- 
 rian studies, I observed in the Review of the 
 Romance Languages, two or three little cha7i- 
 sons de geste (heroic songs), by a Limousin 
 author, who was unknown to me, the Abbe* 
 Joseph Roux. , I wrote to him ; a correspond- 
 ence sprang up between us, and th^ pleasure 
 which I soon enjoyed in my intercourse with 
 my new friend suggested to me the idea of 
 allowing others to participate in it. 
 
 I had, in fact, discovered in the Abbe" Roux, 
 not only the Limousin poet whom I had set out 
 to seek, but a remarkable French writer and 
 almost a polygraph. 
 
 I shall never forget the feeling of surprise 
 which I experienced when I came to examine 
 for the first time the voluminous pile of his 
 manuscripts, when it was, with me, only a ques- 
 tion of a note upon a poet. 
 
 In the presence of these large pages, all cov- 
 ered with an astonishing lapidary writing which 
 would delight graphologists, but which were 
 
iv THOUGHTS. 
 
 very unequal, to tell the truth, and in all tones, 
 I perceived the possibility of many volumes of 
 Complete Works for this man of fifty who had 
 as yet published nothing. 
 
 Great was destined to be the surprise of his 
 fellow-countrymen, and he himself could not 
 have foreseen the whole extent of his good for- 
 tune, for the learned men of Germany, after 
 outbidding each other in advance, began to edit 
 his philological works for him. ... It is a pro- 
 found truth that no one is a prophet in his own 
 country. Superior minds are like stars which 
 may disappear from our horizon without a single 
 ray of their light having reached us. 
 
 My first care was to carry out my project of a 
 biography, the Limousin Fe'libre 1 (March, 1883), 
 which was destined, in fact, to assign him to a high 
 position in the Provencal Revival a few months 
 later. This circumstance, and the publication 
 of a portion of his French studies which I 
 effected in the Revue Lyonnaise and the Revue 
 du monde latin, have made the name of the Abbe" 
 Roux widely known among the lettered men of 
 the South. It is upon this score that I have per- 
 mitted myself to write this introduction to his 
 work, in the form of a familiar conversation. 
 
 1 The Fdlibres compose a society for the revival and 
 production of Provencal literature. Frdddric Mistral is the 
 chief ornament of the society. 
 
INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 Born at Tulle, in 1834, of a humble and num- 
 erous family, of which he was the last child, 
 Joseph Roux was early destined to the priest- 
 hood. Thus his youth retains from the toilsome 
 mediocrity of his first surroundings only the 
 worship of legends, and of his natal manner of 
 speech. This worship awakes but tardily in 
 him, when he shows himself a true poet, in his 
 native tongue, in Limousin. Up to that time, 
 that is to say, towards his fortieth year, the 
 influence of his classical education wholly en- 
 grosses him. He imitates too easily, prefers 
 the grandiose to the profound, and if he does 
 not watch himself, grows solemn without cause, 
 and apropos of everything. 
 
 The first essays of the young poet, when he 
 had but just quitted the seminary of Brive, 
 were noticed by his bishop, Monsigneur Ber- 
 taud. That illustrious theologian, perceiving in 
 him possibly a future light of the Church, left 
 him the choice of his own position. The Abbe 
 Roux selected teaching ; but an excess of work 
 caused him to abandon it, . . . in order to pur- 
 sue his studies. He obtained the vicarship of a 
 village which was doubly poetical through its site 
 and its memories, — Varetz, the cradle of the 
 Grand Master Pierre d'Aubusson, — and there 
 
vi THOUGHTS. 
 
 he continued his essays in versification and in 
 prose. I shall not repeat here the judgment 
 which I have elsewhere pronounced upon the 
 French poems of the Abbe Roux. I regard 
 them as scales rather than as music. Never- 
 theless, they contain real pith, as do also his 
 first literary articles, and some of his maxim.es 
 of 1866. 
 
 . Monsigneur Bertaud distinguished him in 
 his great mind ; certain of his familiar conver- 
 sations with the young vicar of Varetz are re- 
 called at the episcopal palace in Tulle : " Go, 
 my child ; I know you well ; you are like men 
 of genius, you have great faults and great 
 qualities. ..." In all his French works pub- 
 lished before the Thoughts, these faults predom- 
 inate in a singular degree. The replies of the 
 Abbe Roux, who with difficulty controlled the 
 sallies of his powerful wit, are also remem- 
 bered. . . . But it was a good epoch, those first 
 years of country life ! Gradually the solitude 
 became oppressive to the young writer. He 
 exchanged Varetz for the benefice of Saint- 
 Silvain, a little parish near Tulle, where twelve 
 years of melancholy isolation awaited him. 
 
 If great thoughts come from the heart, the 
 most comforting proceed from the mind. The 
 Abb6 Roux had been fortified against this 
 necessity of a village priest, by a solid educa- 
 
INTRODUCTION. vii 
 
 tion. It can be readily understood what a re- 
 source his memory was to him. His years of 
 study had been well employed in the libraries. 
 He invariably passed his days of vacation there, 
 amassing, at the happy age when impressions 
 become fixed, all the treasure which he was to 
 cause to fructify in the future. 
 
 At Saint-Silvain, where he wrote more French 
 poems, the Abbe" Roux composed his first 
 Thoughts, and also the first fragments of his 
 Chanson limousine, a series of historical fres- 
 coes, a sort of Limousin Legend of the Ages. 
 Finally, in 1876, he was called to the benefice 
 of Saint-Hilaire le Peyrou, a large market town 
 of Correze, far removed from all centres, where 
 he still is. 
 
 Thus, for twenty-five years since his depar- 
 ture from Brive, this noble mind has been pre- 
 paring in darkness and silence a work, the 
 reward for which he cannot long fail to reap. 
 Two circumstances only, two dates of capital 
 interest in the history of his humble life, have 
 tempered the melancholy of this renunciation 
 by their real utility : a tutorship which he exer- 
 cised for six months, in 1870, in an ancient 
 family in Normandy, which relaxed the oppres- 
 sion of his solitude, and permitted him to catch 
 a glimpse of Paris, and precipitated him still 
 more deeply into his literary projects ; next, 
 
Vlll THOUGHTS. 
 
 his almost providential affiliation with the work 
 of the Fe'libres, on the occasion of the cen- 
 tenary of Petrarch, in 1874, which we will not 
 repeat here. 
 
 If this last circumstance was certainly a boon 
 to the Abbe" Roux, the former can hardly be 
 regarded in that light. He lost at the Chartres 
 railway station on the occasion of his abrupt 
 return, in 1870, six note-books of his Thoughts, 
 — his entire property, — which he has only re- 
 placed in part. The half of his life was in 
 them. He set himself courageously at the task, 
 but I cannot affirm that the new, more intimate, 
 and more subjective work is as valuable in point 
 of poetry and freshness of impressions as the 
 first, which has forever disappeared. 
 
 Such as it is to-day, such as it will appear 
 consecutively, the Abbe Roux's work will com- 
 prise four distinct volumes : the Thoughts, the 
 Chanson lemouzina (twenty-four short epic 
 poems), his Studies (country and literature), and 
 his Poems, a Franco-Limousin collection. In 
 this introduction, I shall consider only the 
 Thoughts and the Studies} more especially the 
 Thoughts. 
 
 1 Many fragments which figured in the first edition, the 
 Portraits of Peasants, have been suppressed in the present 
 one for the benefit of the special volume of Studies, and 
 replaced by freshly written Thoughts. 
 
INTR OD UCTION. IX 
 
 When the Abbe Roux, on intrusting me with 
 the tolerably bulky and as yet unexplored manu- 
 script of this book, was willing to defer to my 
 judgment in the selections to be made from 
 it, these Thoughts formed, under the denomina- 
 tion of Maxims, Studies, and Pictures, the often 
 undigested collection of all the author's reflec- 
 tions, coined in the special money of our great 
 moralists. My eliminations were numerous. I 
 have been reproached, however, — although the 
 unanimous success which welcomed the partial 
 publication which I have made of them has been 
 acknowledged, — with having retained certain 
 portions ; but is it not more interesting to have 
 a strong literary temperament to study, with all 
 its faults and its beauties, and to afford a deep 
 insight into the soul ? . . . 
 
 The first Thoughts were written with the view 
 of a more or less immediate publication. It 
 was only on perceiving that this was slow in 
 coming that the author gave full course to the 
 unreserved confidence of his subjectiveness. 
 His finest pages are the echo of this. As in the 
 case of all those whose minds have been awak- 
 ened by a classical education, the least carefully 
 prepared of their writings will be the most dur- 
 able. Compare Voltaire's little verses and his 
 Correspondence. To this there is no exception, 
 except for those who have been gradually de- 
 
X THOUGHTS. 
 
 livered from the constraint of formulas by a 
 whole life of independence or adventure. It will 
 be understood that the most piquant bits in the 
 volume — like the two biblical strophes, which 
 Lamennais might have signed : Obscure germ, 
 remain beneath the earth. . . . I will be a flower ; 
 I must be a flower — are the last-born of the 
 thinker's melancholy ; but at the same time it 
 will be questioned whether the poet does not 
 decidedly outweigh the prose-writer in his case. 
 The reply is difficult to give ; for, outside of his 
 entirely special work as a medallion-maker of 
 Thoughts, the Abbe Roux rarely, or only at a 
 very late date, allowed himself an opportunity 
 of moulding his prose into pieces of any length. 
 The best thing to do is to assert that we have 
 in him a penetrating analyst and poet, who 
 complement each other in this diary, these Con- 
 fessions of a solitary. 
 
 I wished to view for myself the isolation of 
 my friend, and one fine day he received a visit 
 from me in his exile's nest. He appeared to me 
 like the Limousin giant, of his Geste of Charle- 
 magne, with his strong, square-built form and 
 his deep bass voice. I found him with a face 
 large and lofty, gentle and rugged, — like those 
 English lords of Henry VIII., colossi of the 
 North, painted by Holbein, — and reflecting a 
 fund of almost feminine sensibility, like the 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 accent of his words. With the gentleness of a 
 child and a poet, he exhibited to me the sim- 
 plicity of his life, and I departed more affected 
 than I can express. . . . 
 
 This Bas-Limousin is a very distant country. 
 Missions are there preached in patois, as will be 
 the case with all important affairs for a long 
 time to come, in spite of all that can be done 
 in the matter. This people has remained hard 
 and uncultivated, with that lack of cultivation 
 of which certain Thoughts give us the most 
 exact idea. What, then, will be the situation of 
 a mind brought up in these melancholy sur- 
 roundings ? This is what I have tried to explain 
 in my Introduction. 
 
 ii. 
 
 I am led to speak first of all about his thoughts 
 concerning the Peasants, which are the most in- 
 teresting probably, the most original certainly, 
 of the whole collection, and which should assure 
 to their author a permanent reputation. 
 
 Their accent of sadness, their tinge of bitter- 
 ness, have called attention to them first. With- 
 out being precisely the harshest of all, like the 
 intimate cries, the thoughts of isolation, still 
 they form the prelude and the corollary to these. 
 Therefore we will begin with them. 
 
xii THOUGHTS. 
 
 In spite of the lusty vigor with which they 
 overflow, — a vigor of bitterness and vain de- 
 sires, — all this portion of the work is as deso- 
 late as the country which witnessed its birth. 
 This old Limousin seems to Wear mourning for 
 its glory of other days. I shall always remem- 
 ber the long desolation which extends from Cler- 
 mont to Tulle along the whole line of the rail- 
 way. The consideration of this gloomy stretch 
 rendered my friend's solitude all the more keen. 
 I even passed a night at Ussel, a small his- 
 torical city which is not wholly characterless. 
 But what a flat and insipid country ! . . . A 
 land of poets, nevertheless, and of melancholy, 
 like all moorland countries. 
 
 Quite the reverse of La Bruyere, who always 
 retained a sweet and compassionate recollection 
 of the country from having been brought up 
 there, the Abbe Roux has suffered, having only 
 come there as a man. . . . He would not say 
 with Joubert, happy man, "It pains me to leave 
 the country because I must separate from my- 
 self." These soliloquies with one's self predis- 
 pose to evil-speaking. But "a certain sort of 
 evil-speaking proceeds from love." I do not ob- 
 ject to-that. . . . Thus, from the day when the 
 La Bruyere of the peasants found out how to 
 strike his parcels of observations into medals, 
 he did not hesitate to take possession of them. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xill 
 
 He has branded with a red-hot iron both their 
 oddities and their selfishness ; he has exhibited 
 the qualities of their natures in their true light ; 
 he has, in short, established in a superior man- 
 ner the relations of the peasant to the country. 
 This picture was wanting in the Museum of 
 French Letters. 1 
 
 It is interesting to observe how a priest who 
 feels the charm of nature sets forth that beauty, 
 explains its seductions in order chiefly to arrive 
 
 1 In spite of the acclamations which have hailed its ap- 
 pearance, this chapter on the Peasant has been generally 
 misunderstood. In the first place, a sufficient distinction 
 has not been made between the curd of the village, the min- 
 ister of the God of charity, and the observant author who 
 understands and, through a tendency common to moralists, 
 generalizes his remarks. Some have thus thought him 
 pitiless, others severe though just ; others still have unex- 
 pectedly arisen to reproach him for the temper of his 
 criticisms. . . . 
 
 To those who, like Racine's bourgeois weeping over 
 Holofernes, have pitied the parishioners of Saint-Hilaire, 
 beneath the author's anonymous peasants, the Abbe" Roux 
 replies with justice that all peasants do not belong to his 
 parish. To others — to those who do not concern them- 
 selves about this ill-understood charity — he repeats that 
 his observations are made in good faith, with equality and 
 justice, within Christian limits, and are worthy of a priest 
 who, without rancor, without wrath, without any personal 
 interest, has noted down here, there, and everywhere what 
 he has seen with his own eyes, and only what he has seen. 
 
XIV THOUGHTS, 
 
 at the contrast between it and the antipathetic 
 homeliness of the peasant. When I say that 
 no one had perceived all this, I make a mistake. 
 A powerful writer, Proudhon, in a page which 
 the Abbe" Roux has doubtless perused, has led 
 us, as you will see, to the confession of his 
 brutal pantheism. 
 
 The peasant is the least romantic, the least 
 idealistic of men. Immersed in reality, he is 
 opposed to the dilettante, and will never give 
 thirty sous for the most magnificent picture of 
 a landscape. 
 
 "He loves nature as a child loves its nurse, 
 being less occupied by her charms, to a sense of 
 which he is not, however, a stranger, than her 
 fruitfulness. . . . The peasant loves nature for her 
 fertile breasts, for the life with which she over- 
 flows. He does not touch her lightly with the 
 eye of an artist ; he caresses her with both arms 
 like the lover in the Song of Songs : Veni et in- 
 ebriemnr uberibus." 
 
 He has recognized the fact that in every poet 
 of nature there is a pantheist unconscious at 
 the least. The most religious, in the evangeli- 
 cal sense, — Mistral and Laprade, for example, 
 — insensibly abandon themselves to a pagan 
 intoxication in the presence of the larches of 
 Ventoux or the oaks of Forez. But every poet 
 is not a priest ; and the priest will end by 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 so thoroughly repressing this pantheistic senti- 
 ment that it will escape from him in the presence 
 of nature. 
 
 The Abbe* Roux never depicts nature for her- 
 self. Rarely does a pleasing description temper 
 the harshness of his observations. At the most, 
 it is only the rehabilitation of a despised plant 
 or animal which lightens this uniform severity. 
 The moralist never shows us the country with- 
 out showing us himself there also, indifferent 
 and isolated. 
 
 This folk of the Bas-Limousin, coarse, rough, 
 and heavy, but with a forcible heaviness, bears 
 considerable resemblance in point of the dis- 
 tance which separates it from the great cities, 
 to the people of ancient France, whom La Fon- 
 taine, La Bruyere, and Sevigne" observed in their 
 wretchedness. Its native vulgarity is common 
 to all peasants of Central France. No compari- 
 son is therefore possible between it and the 
 southern paean} who is acute, ingenious, clear- 
 headed, and with whom poetical expression is 
 as frequent as the gayety of his sun. This ex- 
 plains some of the objections which the Proven- 
 cals have made to the severity of the Abbe* 
 Roux towards the peasants whom he observes. 
 Nevertheless, he has his poetry, which is as 
 wholesome within and as rough without as the 
 
 1 Rustic. 
 
XVI THOUGHTS. 
 
 fruit of the chestnut-tree which is so abundant 
 in that region. The proverbs of the Bas-Lim- 
 ousin are full of vividly conceived comparisons 
 which bear witness to poetical vigor. Is it not 
 here that arose that name for chimney-sweeps, — 
 winter-nightingales ? . . . The Abbe Roux's 
 rustic studies, the shortest of which only will 
 figure in the Thoughts, also bear witness to this 
 rough and easy forcefulness of the Limousin 
 temperament. Jean Rosier is an example in 
 point. Besides containing a great practical 
 truth, — the intelligence of which has allowed so 
 many superior organizations to go astray through 
 force of habit, the abandonment of his natal 
 speech, — he shows us a local physiognomy in 
 high relief, and serves as a pretext for the exer- 
 cise of a very curious style, like the story of 
 Bourassou. The labored phrases, the constant, 
 at times painful, effort, the original research for 
 picturesque words and for conciseness, that 
 conjunction of Limousinisms which are like the 
 color of his genius, are certainly so many proofs 
 of that disuse of flowing prose, to which the 
 author has subjected himself for the very special 
 exercise of coining maxims. 
 
 At all events, the Rustic Studies of the Abbe" 
 Roux, taken from the life, like his Characters, 
 form in their entirety a very modern and very 
 veracious chapter of the moral history of our 
 
INTRODUCTION. xvii 
 
 provinces. In all his remarks upon country life, 
 the author does not always feel himself bound 
 to form a conclusion — to question himself, for 
 instance, after the manner of a psychologist, the 
 why of the peasant's vulgar exuberance in the 
 presence of the tranquil and starry sky, and to 
 make subtle replies to himself, as Amiel has 
 done, shocked by this contradiction : " Why ? 
 Through a sad and secret instinct ; through the 
 need of consciously recognizing one's own spe- 
 cialty as an individual, of asserting one's self, of 
 possessing one's self exclusively, egotistically, 
 idolatrously, of opposing one's ' I ' to everything 
 else, by setting it rudely in contrast with the 
 nature which envelops us, with the poetry which 
 takes us from ourselves, with the harmony which 
 unites us to others, with the adoration which bears 
 us towards God . . ." ; still less to form a conclu- 
 sion in which he recognizes the "rapid vision 
 from the absolute side of the personal soul ! " 
 
 No ! it was far more the need of unbosoming 
 himself than the deliberate design of writing a 
 moral study, which guided the man whom we 
 have designated as the La Bruyere of the Peas- 
 ants. That powerful incentive, a literary con- 
 fession, has led him to examine more deeply 
 into this point than any one else ; that is all. He 
 has brought back from his search pages which 
 are new and of the first order. 
 
xviii THOUGHTS. 
 
 Contradictions certainly are met with here and 
 there. Is not contradiction the characteristic 
 of this poor, great century ? But we have there, 
 if not a study at all times equally critical, at least 
 a great page from a moralist which will endure. 
 
 in. 
 
 Does it follow that, because the Abbe Roux 
 has studied the peasant profoundly, he has an 
 eminently critical spirit, and that he will bring 
 the same penetrating analysis to bear upon other 
 subjects less tried by him — such as literature 
 and morals ? I answer, that the profundity of his 
 views upon the Peasant, rests upon the sincerity 
 of his observation. Now, very few men of his 
 calibre have been found in a position so hard to 
 endure. However critical, then, the examination 
 which the author makes of the divers springs of 
 action in the country people, the novelty of this 
 chapter constitutes its greatest interest. 
 
 For the spirit of criticism, in the modern sense 
 of the word, is not the dominant note of these 
 Thoughts. In the literary judgments of this 
 book, as well as in the various studies which 
 will form the succeeding collection, there will 
 be found broad statements, a picturesque mode 
 of expression, criticism of the poet or of words 
 only, in the fashion of Saint-Victor, both superb 
 and insufficient, — and imagination always. But 
 
INTR OD UC TION. XIX 
 
 in all this a profound study of surroundings, 
 causes, processes of the mind, have but little 
 or no place. One does not find there, for in- 
 stance, " the substantive marrow " of a Weiss 
 or a Sarcey, — if he has not the fine judgment 
 of the former, he has at least the extremely 
 good sense of the other, — but a theme, a state- 
 ment, both classical and poetical, of the remarks 
 of his imagination, over which hovers something 
 like a philosophy of history. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Up to this point we have permitted a glimpse 
 of the influence of a wholly classical education 
 to peep through. It is this which causes him 
 to give to his confessions that constrained, cir- 
 cumscribed form which make of them a book of 
 Thoughts. For I might well be accused of exag- 
 gerating the poetry exhaled by this soul, by 
 those who, unlike myself, have not yielded to 
 the irrresistible charm in his letters, in his pri- 
 vate writings, all humid with melancholy ; like 
 certain English poets of seraphism, sensibility. 
 If that classic imprint, which will appear on a 
 first perusal of his book, is very stable in the 
 style of the author, it varies at times in the guid- 
 ance of his judgment. I do not think that in 
 general he preserves sufficient moderation. Is 
 this saying that he lacks taste ? . . . I have in 
 
XX THOUGHTS. 
 
 my memory a little phrase of M. Brunetiere, apro- 
 pos of Galiani, which furnishes me with an ex- 
 act reply : " He has not that discretion, that 
 moderation, that eloquence, which are the very 
 foundation of the French mind. . . ." 
 
 In fact, this powerful mind, which, I will not 
 hesitate to make the avowal, like Galiani, would 
 not even recoil at a play upon words, has not al- 
 ways been ballasted with a useful alloy. As for 
 good sense, he certainly is not lacking on that 
 point. It even forms a part of his force, which 
 is also composed of superb and biblical imagery, 
 of irony filled with spirit, of powerful antitheses, 
 and which wells up from a deep foundation of 
 poetry. 
 
 Let us take, for instance, his definitions of 
 authors, in two strokes, which are like a sequel 
 to Joubert. In these he shows himself charming 
 and striking. That which is ingenious comes 
 very near to being true, thought Joubert. The 
 Abbe" Roux, less profound, less studied in his 
 definitions, is more spontaneous and more poet- 
 ical. " Every thought should be a little like 
 lightning, rapid and luminous," M. Jules Cla- 
 retie has somewhere said, " and the more of this 
 rapidity and electricity it has, the longer — unlike 
 the lightning — it will last." 
 
 He has one of those powerful natures like 
 Veuillot's, more commanded, perhaps, by the 
 
INTR OD UC TION. XX 1 
 
 temperament than by the patience of genius, — 
 which will serve as an excuse for his faults of 
 taste. But this poetry, weighed and restrained 
 by the example of his models, remains classical 
 by fts symmetry, its order, and its clearness of 
 style. 
 
 Here and there in this style, it is true, will 
 be found distant echoes of La Bruyere, Lamen- 
 nais, of Victor Hugo, even. The play upon 
 words is familiar to him, as we have seen ; thus 
 he will say, " I have been inspired by gratitude, 
 if not by the Graces. ..." But this style is 
 fine, fine with force and with poetry. Anti- 
 thesis is likewise familiar to him, although he 
 reproaches Victor Hugo with abusing it. But 
 the antithesis of our thinker is that of Pascal 
 or of Saint Augustine, firm and harmonious. 
 And assuredly, the spirit of antithesis is a 
 superb gift, just as genius is. . . . 
 
 Apart from these exuberances which consti- 
 tute the reverse of the medal, the Abbe Roux's 
 style is strongly original. Nourished with clas- 
 sic reminiscences, filled with the sap of the 
 ancients, with the marrow of the lion, he avoids 
 modern liberties of phrase. Better than that, 
 his style is lapidary, like his handwriting, large 
 and concise ; and all variegated as it is with 
 limousinisms, as I have already said, it but 
 draws fresh savor from that fact. But the 
 
xxii THOUGHTS. 
 
 abuse even of this charm constitutes a shock- 
 ing defect. I have mentioned it to the author. 
 He at first opposed me, and not unjustly, with 
 the patavinisms of Titus Livius, which were 
 so much enjoyed by the ancients, but then 
 above all, with my eulogium of the Limozisin 
 felibre, which "would condemn me without ap- 
 peal " 
 
 v. 
 
 The first movement of the author in all the 
 fresh unconstraint of his mind will be, then, a 
 glance cast at his solitude. He has become ac- 
 customed to this form of thoughts, which he 
 already manipulates like an artist. Now a 
 maxim will bud, a reflection whose all is brevity, 
 as a sonnet comes to Soulary, for example. Un- 
 der this expression of the state of his soul, as 
 under all others which he employs concurrently, 
 he will write above all the journal of a solitary. 
 In fact, his real, very private, and unknown 
 biography is in his letters and his thoughts. 
 Quite the contrary of La Rochefoucauld, of 
 La Bruyere, and of Vauvenargues, he has no 
 fixed plan in regard to the arrangement of his 
 book, for it is indeed a book which he intends 
 to make of his reflections, but he unbosoms 
 himself freely in order to relieve his soul, 
 merely with reference to the subjects which he 
 
INTR OD UC TION. xxiii 
 
 will see only as they are related to his own des- 
 tiny. He does not perceive, this virtuoso of 
 his own melancholy, that he is generally only a 
 moralist endowed with imagination or a poet. 
 
 If Flaubert was not wrong in writing that 
 " Every work deserves condemnation in which 
 the author can be divined," then this one is 
 good for nothing but to throw in the fire. I 
 prefer to think with M. Paul Bourget, that no 
 poetical work can be necessary to another soul, 
 if it has not first been necessary to our own. 
 Life is the portion of that one of our works 
 only from which we have suffered and which 
 has healed us. And without even speaking of 
 the moral benefit, curiosity, believe me, counts 
 for more than half in the success of the majority 
 of the great modern works, that curiosity which 
 makes us seek in them the slightest traces of 
 the life and passions of the author. In the 
 work of the Abbe" Roux, this I, so hateful, ac- 
 cording to Pascal's maxim, is almost always 
 exposed to view. Since this is found at the 
 root of all psychology, why veil it with tinsel 
 which criticism will tear away before entering 
 upon the subject? . . . The contrary excess is 
 equally to be avoided. If one makes one's self 
 too explicit, leaving nothing to the investiga- 
 tions of the analysts, then comes along a reader 
 who undertakes to discover something more. . . . 
 
xxiv THOUGHTS. 
 
 Our thinker's habitual disposition of mind 
 caused him once to write to me : " 111 of long, 
 profound, accustomed, possibly incurable sad- 
 ness, I am your invalid. Scarron called himself 
 the Queen's invalid ; I am the invalid of your 
 heart, and your cry, 'Hope!' makes me smile in 
 a melancholy way, — me, the man who has no 
 longer, through fatigue of knowing and foresee- 
 ing, even a gleam of illusion as to that future of 
 which you speak to me so generously." 
 
 May I be pardoned for this quotation, but it 
 seems to me that it provides needed information 
 as to the state of morbid sadness which solitude, 
 aggravating precarious health, breeds in the 
 mind of our friend. It has been remarked else- 
 where that hypochondria is frequent among 
 moralists, who are generally valetudinarians. 
 The good Joubert alone, perhaps, in spite of the 
 suffering which accompanied his life, has allowed 
 nothing of it to appear in his work. He was 
 happy in the mediocrity of ambitions which 
 did not urge him to trouble himself about his 
 Thoughts. Hence they do not bear the imprint 
 of the universal law which says to the genius of 
 men, "Thou shalt bring forth in pain." 
 
 One day at Paris, Jos6phin Soulary, who is by 
 nature the harshest humorist in the world, was 
 tasting in my presence, in the Revtie Lyonnaise, 
 where they appeared, an important series of 
 
INTR OD UC TION. xxv 
 
 thoughts. I was just writing to the author. 
 "Tell your Abbe Schoperhauer," said Soulary 
 to me, "that I enjoy his pessimism and his 
 sombre humor very much, for we are somewhat 
 related on that point." I wrote down the poet's 
 reflection, and we began to discuss the affinity 
 which might exist between these two melan* 
 cholies. The thought of his friend, Chenavard, 
 the illustrious conversationalist who will be met 
 with in all the memoirs of the century, then 
 occurred to Soulary, and he was obliged to agree 
 with me that if there are in the world, but in 
 directions totally opposed to each other, two, 
 . . . misanthropies which are capable of com- 
 parison, it is rather those of the great panthe- 
 ist painter and of the Abbe Roux. Soulary's 
 philosophical pre-occupation does not, in fact, 
 exclude a certain paganism of views, a certain 
 sensual indifference. He is, indeed, the French 
 Horace. On the contrary, the purely social 
 preoccupation of Chenavard implies an apostolic 
 proselytism, which is that of a believer, after 
 his own fashion. 
 
 The Abbe Roux was at that time ignorant of 
 even the name of the German pessimist, any 
 resemblance to whom was repugnant to him : 
 "Novelties" he says, "arrive so late in the Bas- 
 Limousin ! " It was not what would make him 
 enjoy them more. Pessimism, in all its forms, is 
 
XXVi THOUGHTS. 
 
 nothing but an intellectual malady, a compliant 
 and privileged malady ; that is to say, it is acces- 
 sible to dilettanteism, to free thought alone. 
 
 Nevertheless, however fixed may be the obses- 
 sion of our solitary, this resigned man is far 
 from judging life to be evil in itself, of even 
 suspecting the essence of pessimism. " Oh, if 
 I could escape the pneumatic machine which 
 envelopes me," he wrote to me, " how I would 
 raise my heart and my wings on high ! " This 
 is the utmost, if he shows any misanthropy, re- 
 sulting from endless disappointments and from 
 illusions which have flown, each in turn. . . . 
 "But," he replied to me in advance, "no one 
 loves the good, the beautiful, and the true, more 
 than I do ; no one desires more than I do to 
 render some one happy, or to know that one is 
 so ! . . . Come, Philintus, remember that Alceste- 
 Montausier had the reputation of being the most 
 virtuous man of his day." 
 
 VI. 
 
 Have I not, up to this point, too completely 
 forgotten the priest ? . . . He who has gone 
 directly to the ThougJits without paying any 
 heed to this preamble, will have speedily encoun- 
 tered him. As in Mme. Swctchine's drawing- 
 room one felt the presence of the chapel, we 
 perceive in frequenting the society of our 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxvil 
 
 thinker, that the parish church is close at hand. 
 We should be wrong in reproaching him for it ; 
 it is in this point, above all others, that his case 
 is interesting. We have already announced him 
 as a Limousin Ftfibre, an almost Spanish mystic, 
 a Theresian, if I may put it so. Certain thoughts 
 in the chapter, " God, Theology," will inform 
 every one on this point. This comes from 
 his property of Southerner, of poet, and from 
 the influences of his sacerdotal youth. How 
 that education weighs upon a life ! The time 
 passed in the seminary weighs upon the soul of 
 every priest. When at times he exclaims or 
 sermonizes, do not seek the cause elsewhere. 
 You have seen our thinker, in spite of his emi- 
 nently classical education, arraign Fenelon him- 
 self for his pagan literature ! But the poet has re- 
 mained very free beneath this apparent severity. 
 These Thoughts are, in fact, marked by a 
 broad liberty of spirit. In this era of sceptical 
 works, we are generally wrong in believing that 
 the principle of authority deprives the Church 
 and her faithful followers of all freedom of 
 flight. We so rarely have an opportunity to 
 judge an author who affirms a well settled and 
 definite religious idea (instead of that vague 
 deism, indifferent to all the rest, which only 
 makes its appearance in the good parts of 
 books), that philosophical thoughts from a 
 
XXV111 THOUGHTS. 
 
 priest, under this form, and endowed with this 
 profound interest, falling into the decaying soci- 
 ety which surrounds us, will possess qualities to 
 greatly amaze us. And yet, consider : there 
 seems to be a return, among a young literary 
 school, to the refined mysticism of certain 
 epochs, under the double influence of Baude- 
 laire and M. Barbey d'Aurevilly. But this 
 group, which easily becomes sensualistic, will 
 produce pseudo-catholicism rather than art 
 which is healthily Christian. The Abbe Roux 
 has nothing to do with it. A work may be 
 human, actual, true, without being necessa- 
 rily an exposition of the troubles of the flesh 
 or of the crises of the conscience. Formerly, 
 people knew how to search for interest else- 
 where. Modern psychological criticism will end, 
 through the abuse which it makes of physiol- 
 ogy, by taking pleasure in the examination of 
 intellectual maladies even to the point of con- 
 fining the whole of art and nature to this ! 
 
 As for knowing — and the question has been 
 put to us — up to what degree this work will 
 produce a favorable impression, we cannot under- 
 take to answer in a word. According to the 
 judgment of a literary man of 1885, it ought to 
 prove an event on account of the depths of 
 human nature which it discloses. Twenty years 
 ago, the presence of a priest behind this hymn 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXIX 
 
 of suffering would have called forth a frown ; 
 to-day it evokes a glance of sympathy. The 
 truth, the naked truth, we behold, nothing else. 
 And yet, as Amiel said, "how few original 
 beings there are who are individual and worth 
 the trouble of listening to ! " 
 
 There is still much to criticise and much to 
 praise in the work which I have just introduced. 
 Nevertheless, I will stop my observations here. 
 The friendship which attaches me to the Abbe" 
 Roux is now too absolute to allow of my push- 
 ing the analysis further in either direction. 
 
 I only ask that heed may be paid to the 
 strange situation of the author. " You are pub- 
 lishing my Thoughts" he wrote to me ; " take 
 care. I am not sufficiently independent to seek 
 calumnies ; for I am not individual but legion, 
 and the good Abbe Joseph Roux will bear the 
 mountain of prejudices which weighs upon the 
 clergy at all periods, and especially at the pres- 
 ent one. . . . Prudence, my friend ! You would 
 have me believe that I am about to become a 
 personage. I find some difficulty in hoping it. 
 I shall always be a prisoner immured within 
 walls. With a character both proud and timid, 
 one never comes to anything." 
 
 Having dared, however, he was then obliged 
 to wait. But few priests are capable of thus 
 daring, and those who are remain isolated. Do 
 
XXX THOUGHTS. 
 
 we not behold these terrible errors in all the 
 administrations of the world ? He who does 
 more than his task lies under suspicion ; he 
 who does more than his duty is ridiculous. 
 
 The Abb6 Roux has freed himself from this 
 universal constraint. The dominant note of his 
 Thoughts is long aspiration in long-continued 
 powerlessness. And this great man of fifty 
 who has published nothing, has written, in a 
 style which will endure, the Christian poem of 
 the agonies of a deserted being. 
 
 " But this is like a funeral oration," you will 
 say to me. It is not, in truth, what I intended 
 it to be. . . . 
 
 Think rather, friend reader, that you are 
 present at a birth, and that you have assisted. 
 
 PAUL MARIETON.i 
 March, 1885. 
 
 1 M. Paul Maridton is alone responsible for the opin- 
 ions expressed in this preface. 
 
PRELUDE. 
 
 THOUGHTS AND THINKERS. 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK. 
 
 To put forth thoughts — therein lies my con- 
 solation, my delight, my life. I too would exclaim, 
 in another sense, " I think, therefore I am ! " 
 
 * 
 
 * * 
 
 A maker of maxims is synonymous with a 
 pessimist. {Maximist, pessimist.) 
 
 * 
 
 * * 
 
 " Thoughts " are fruits ; words are leaves. 
 Let us strip off the leaves ! let us strip off the 
 leaves ! in order that thought, thus exposed to 
 the light, may gain strength, beauty, and flavor. 
 
 * 
 
 * * 
 
 O, ye who pluck these " thoughts," may you, 
 beneath their veil of verdure, find always a fra- 
 grant flower, a savory fruit ! 
 
 * 
 
 * * 
 
 A monk was once asked, " How do you know 
 the world, since you live in solitude ? " " I 
 study it in myself," he replied. Thus I catch 
 
2 THOUGHTS. 
 
 only a passing glimpse of society, but I observe 
 attentively the little which I see ; then I reflect 
 upon it frequently and at length. 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 Oh, the irksomeness of writing alone, of cor- 
 recting alone ! Who listens to me, who coun- 
 sels me, who encourages me ? Virgil compared 
 himself to the bear licking its cubs to " finish " 
 them. Happy Virgil, who worked full of hope, 
 midway from Rome, beneath august eyes ! 
 * 
 
 Pascal is sombre, La Rochefoucauld bitter, 
 La Bruyere malicious, Vauvenargues melan- 
 choly, Chamfort acrimonious, Joubert benevo- 
 lent, Swetchine gentle. 
 
 Pascal seeks, La Rochefoucauld suspects, 
 La Bruyere spies, Vauvenargues sympathizes, 
 Chamfort condemns, Joubert excuses, Swetchine 
 mourns. 
 
 Pascal is assailed by an evil spirit, La Roche- 
 foucauld takes sides, La Bruyere has a point 
 of view, Vauvenargues possesses toleration, 
 Chamfort a grudge, Joubert an aspiration, 
 Swetchine a hope. 
 
 Pascal refers everything to folly, La Roche- 
 foucauld to a vice, La Bruyere to eccentricity, 
 Vauvenargues to a sentiment, Chamfort to an 
 abuse, Joubert to an ideal, Swetchine to a belief. 
 
PRELUDE. 
 
 Pascal is profound, La Rochefoucauld pene- 
 trating, La Bruyere sagacious, Vauvenargues 
 delicate, Chamfort paradoxical, Joubert ingen- 
 ious, Swetchine contemplative. 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 It is a difficult enterprise, a delicate under- 
 taking, to write "thoughts." What a well-in- 
 formed mind, what a fertile imagination, what a 
 just and profound feeling of things, what a happy 
 style, is requisite to attain even mediocrity 
 therein ! 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 Why have I taken such a burden upon my 
 shoulders ? What necessity inclines me to this 
 task ? Alas ! the mind of men is a mystery ; 
 and, like the plant, each one of us naturally 
 appropriates and assimilates that about him 
 which responds to that which is within him. 
 
 * 
 
 The commentator of a poet habitually inclines 
 to eulogy : 'tis a question of showing that one 
 has taste. The commentator of a maxim-maker 
 leans towards blame : 'tis a question of showing 
 
 that one has judgment. 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 Of all that I write will anything survive, and 
 what part of it will survive ? If I win renown, 
 to what shall I owe it ? To my Great Limousin 
 
THOUGHTS. 
 
 Dictio7iary ? To my Limousin Epic? To these 
 Thoughts ? I should like to know, but how can 
 I know ? Let us leave to the future its secret, 
 and trust in God. 
 
 * 
 * * 
 
 "... It was a melancholy humor, produced by 
 the chagrin of solitude, which first put this 
 dream of meddling with writing into my head ; 
 and then, finding myself utterly destitute and 
 void of any other matter, I took myself as argu- 
 ment and subject." (Essays, Book II. Chap. 
 
 VIII.) 
 
 These reasons of Montaigne are mine also, 
 with the difference of his marvellous intellect, 
 his high position, his great learning, and his 
 rare experience. That "chagrin of solitude," 
 which he knew during a part of his life only, 
 has been my travelling companion since my 
 youth. Moreover, the Essays, the fruit of a 
 melancholy which was foreign to his natural dis- 
 position, differ greatly from my rough sketch, 
 where much sadness and even a little bitterness 
 are perceptible. 
 
I. 
 
 LITERATURE, POETS. 
 
 Whoever publishes a work which is not 
 mediocre creates for himself a number of friends 
 and of enemies, either known or unknown. 
 
 ii. 
 
 The real gives exactness, the ideal adds the 
 truth. The realist reproduces only things, the 
 idealist " invents " beings. 
 
 in. 
 
 I should define poetry as the exquisite ex- 
 pression of exquisite impressions. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Poetry is always all-powerful over souls which 
 have not become cloyed. 
 
 The artist being spirit and flesh, must guard 
 against the purely ideal, that is to say, against 
 
THOUGHTS. 
 
 spirit which is not united to a body ; and from 
 the purely real, that is to say, from body which 
 is not united to a spirit. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Great souls are harmonious. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The desert attracts the nomad ; the ocean, the 
 sailor ; the infinite, the poet. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 What a beautiful language is Latin ! I love it. 
 It has been said of a Latin scholar, that he spoke 
 Latin in the cradle. I learned Latin at college, 
 but with as much heart as though it had been 
 the tongue of my father and mother. I have it 
 not in my memory ; I have it in my entrails, so 
 to speak. For a long time I thought in Latin, in 
 order to speak in French. More than that, both 
 my prose and my verse swarm with latin isms to 
 this day. Premeditated? No, but they have 
 come of their own will. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Virgil is quoted, and with reason ; Homer is 
 little quoted, and this is wrong. 
 
 Virgil and Homer possess family traits ; the 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 7 
 
 same blood flows in the veins of both, it is true, 
 but Homer begat Virgil. 
 
 How Homer pleases me, read either before or 
 after Virgil, with his loquacity of a Greek, his 
 garrulity of an old man ! Virgil is more the 
 man, Homer more the poet. Homer takes 
 entire possession of the entire mind. He is not 
 the voice of a polished age, of an age which was 
 unique ; he is the genius of the centuries of old. 
 There are above Homer and his sublime chil- 
 dren's stories, only Job and Moses, those incom- 
 parable secretaries of the true God. 
 
 The people of our colleges, who are tolerably 
 ignorant of the language of sovereign harmonies y 
 should have spared Homer their dithyrambic 
 commentaries ; woe to whosoever complains of 
 it ! Monuments should not be built about ; 
 Homer should not be built about. Of what use 
 are the house and the men, who, viewed from 
 this lofty monument, have the appearance of ant- 
 heaps and ants ? 
 
 Homer is such that all comparison, far from 
 belittling him, renders him yet greater. 
 
 x. 
 
 Homer calls the sun " the eye and the ear of 
 the world." Granted, so far as the " eye " is 
 concerned, but " the ear " — what has the ear to 
 
8 THOUGHTS. 
 
 do here ? Does not that strange word contain 
 the germ of many a recent discovery about the 
 transmission of sound by light, of light by sound ? 
 Every language has terms with two uses to 
 express the phenomenon of sound and the 
 phenomenon of light. " Son eclatant," a pier- 
 cing sound ; " lumiere eclatante," a dazzling light, 
 says the Frenchman. Nevertheless, confess 
 that no expression is so true, so picturesque, so 
 bold as that word from old Homer. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Happy Virgil ! How he has been petted, 
 coddled, caressed, admired, spoiled by messieurs 
 the scholiasts ! Each one of them has wished to 
 engrave his own name beneath that name, with 
 the etching-tool, the knife, it matters not how. 
 The greater part of the editions of Virgil appear 
 speckled with exclamation points, laudatory 
 parentheses, blustering signatures. One would 
 say that it was a photograph of Pausilippus with 
 the sentences which load down the walls of the 
 marble niche where sleeps the swan of Mantua. 
 
 I am one of those who love Virgil, not be- 
 cause of the throng which roars about his work, 
 but for his own sake, for his pure and melodi- 
 ous soul. How can one penetrate to the man 
 himself through so many obstacles, hold con- 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 9 
 
 verse with him quite alone, heart to heart ? 
 King, dismiss your court ; friend, disperse these 
 profane ones ! Poetry is a mysterious tete-a-tete. 
 Speak to me, speak to us, and may nothing and 
 nobody again interpose between us two ! 
 
 XII. 
 
 Tu Marcellus eris. ... "At this point, Octavia 
 became ill. On recovering from her swoon, she 
 had ten great sesterces counted out to the 
 poet for each verse. . . ." 
 
 This episode effects our Latin people deeply ; 
 I suspect the sesterces, those great sesterces, 
 of having something to do with the matter : 
 " Happy poet ! Generous Princess ! " and all 
 the rest of it. 
 
 Those sesterces spoil those verses for me; 
 their Octavia spoils my Virgil for me. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Poeta est omnis scriptor. "The poet is all 
 the writer." Who uttered that profound 
 saying ? Cicero ? Quintilian ? Saint Jerome ? 
 Saint Augustine ? Saint Isidore ? No, it was 
 a grammarian, long ago forgotten, Despautere ! 
 How far removed are we from those happy 
 epochs when even the schoolmen thought 
 grandly ! 
 
IO THOUGHTS. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Jesus Christ came, the king of souls, the 
 king of minds. Souls were long in becoming 
 Christianized ; minds preoccupied with Homer 
 and with Virgil were still more tardy. Am- 
 brose and Claudian vied with each other in 
 saying, "Olympus." Ausonius sang Cupid 
 crucified. The same incense burned upon the 
 same altar to Jesus and to Jupiter ; the same 
 lyre vibrated for the God of Ida and the God of 
 Tabor ; there was a daily conflict between the 
 two worships which triumphed in turn, at the 
 family hearth, on the public square, in the sen- 
 ate. The poets, who, like the seas and moun- 
 tains, are rich in images and echoes ; the poets 
 faithfully reproduced this contrast in their 
 works, and then, routine is so powerful ! Edu- 
 cation, pulled in two directions between the 
 past and the future, was not of a piece ; Chris- 
 tian in the basilicas, it must needs be pagan in 
 the gymnasiums. Learned antiquity obtruded 
 itself ; Moses, David, and Job on one side, on 
 the other, Homer, Pindar, and Virgil shared the 
 heart of man. Peter, with the Church, con- 
 quered the pagan world, without doubt ; but Cae- 
 sar, with the Empire, held his own ; and he will 
 never abdicate all authority over the mind. 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. n 
 
 Now, poetry belongs too much to this world 
 to be entirely independent of Caesar, too human 
 to allow of anything human being a stranger to 
 it. Poets — I mean the best — will always have 
 in their heads a good deal of paganism. 
 
 There are souls which are Christian by 
 nature, wrote Tertullian. Granted ! But one is 
 not bom a Christian ; one becomes so, in poetry 
 as in religion, by the resolute and constant 
 effort which is inspired and aided by grace 
 from on high. 
 
 Happy are the poets, really worthy but so 
 rare, alas ! who believe, hope, and love ! Their 
 faith will not be deceived, nor their hope con- 
 founded, nor will their love be vain and sterile ; 
 like those trees of the Orient which first bear 
 flowers and afterwards their leaves, they will 
 blossom before men in time, and will be clothed 
 with verdure in eternity before God. 
 
 All the peoples of Latium contributed to form 
 the speech of Rome, so that that speech took 
 and kept the name of the Latin tongue. 
 
 xv. 
 
 All the peoples of Latium at first, and of the 
 Universe later on, contributed to form the 
 Empire of Rome; and that Empire took and 
 kept the name of the Roman Empire. 
 
12 THOUGHTS. 
 
 The Roman Empire, the Latin tongue ! A 
 difference of denominations full of mystery and 
 suggestion ! 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Two sorts of writers possess genius : those 
 who think, and those who cause others to think. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 That which we know is but little ; that which 
 we have a presentiment of is immense ; it is in 
 this direction that the poet outruns the learned 
 man. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The Greeks called the Furies EuyLtenSe?, the 
 Eumenides, the kindly ones ; the Hebrews 
 called death mansuetudo, gentleness, and they 
 said, gustare mortem, to enjoy death. 
 
 All peoples have these mysterious euphe- 
 misms. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The Roman people, according to Cicero's 
 avowal, was above all a religious people ; that is 
 why facere signified to sacrifice, to perform the 
 action of all others. With the Greeks, a poeti- 
 cal and artistic people, Uoielv denoted another 
 very excellent action ; to invent, to imagine, to 
 versify. 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 1 3 
 
 XX. 
 
 France has never brought forth an epic poem 
 since the Middle Ages. But because France 
 has deserted the way of poetry, and is still 
 awaiting a work as great as herself, does this 
 mean that that epic monument will never arise ? 
 Does this mean that it never has arisen ? A 
 people is one, but it is also multiple ! 
 
 If our mother country is now reputed sterile, 
 shall we forget that she was formerly fruitful ? 
 She was fruitful to such a point that the nations 
 who deny that she possesses the epic gift owe 
 to her the poems on which they pride them- 
 selves. Whence, if you please, did Ariosto, 
 Tasso, Milton, Goethe, etc., — whence did they 
 draw their inspiration ? Was it not from our 
 troubadours, was it not from our trouveres ? 
 Charlemagne, Roland, Merlin, Renaud, Lance- 
 lot, Amadys, etc., are certainly French names, 
 French heroes. 
 
 Ah ! our language has changed too often and 
 our word has been spoken too soon ! 
 
 No matter ! they had the epic inspiration, 
 they knew the accent of the epic lay, our trou- 
 veres of the Middle Ages ! If the syllables em- 
 ployed by those strong men had not suffered 
 from the instability of time, if the edifices of 
 
14 THOUGHTS. 
 
 their imagination had resisted revolutions, like 
 the stone structures bequeathed by other artists 
 who were their contemporaries, the same admi- 
 ration would hail all these works, differing in 
 material but alike in genius : and as it is no longer 
 said as in the age of Fenelon, that our Gothic 
 monuments bear witness against our architectu- 
 ral genius, even so it will cease to be said that 
 we are poor in epics, we who possess a score of 
 incomparable chansons de geste. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The sentimental is dangerous in piety, in 
 morality, in literature, in everything 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Say not, "That man chose a bad time to 
 publish his book." One must publish when one 
 can, in season or out of season. To-day is in 
 our hand ; the past is there no longer ; will 
 there be any future ? Why prefer that which is 
 uncertain to the certain ? The hour is unpro- 
 pitious : will waiting bring a better one ? One 
 must breathe, one must publish, in the present. 
 The work which has been published will, in the 
 long run, free itself from unfavorable circum- 
 stances, and finish by being estimated at its 
 proper value. 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 15 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 A certain poetic perfection reminds one of 
 an over-ripe fruit in a fair way to decay. Lucan 
 polished his verses more than Virgil did ; Silius 
 also, and Statius. Racine polished less than 
 Vigny or Leconte de Lisle. What does this 
 signify ? Are Virgil and Racine on that account 
 authors of the decadence ? Tell that to some 
 one else ! 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 " A noble spirit cannot find in a narrow circle 
 the development of his being. He must learn 
 to endure praise and blame. . . . Then retreat 
 no longer lulls him to sleep with its flattering 
 illusions. An enemy will not, a friend dares 
 not, spare him." 
 
 How often have these words which Goethe 
 puts into the mouth of Tasso (Act I., Scene 11.) 
 troubled me ! Danger from flattering illusions, 
 in the retreat which hems me in ; friends who 
 dare not recommend me ; enemies who over- 
 throw me with a blow of their tongue, and 
 exterminate me with the tip of their little finger ; 
 jealous people above, by my side, below, whom 
 I cannot call by this name because they have, 
 in the eyes of men, more past, present, and 
 future than I have myself; prejudices all the 
 
l6 THOUGHTS. 
 
 more impossible to combat because they are 
 concealed behind a semblance of sympathy, — 
 all this, at intervals, throws me into a sad- 
 ness which is nearly akin to death. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 Classic tragedy, by which I mean that of Cor- 
 neille, Racine, and Voltaire, employs very solemn 
 language and observes a very wise course of 
 conduct, but one which savors too much of con- 
 ventionality, and takes too little interest in real 
 history, in persons, camps, and places. 
 
 Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Scythians, Par- 
 thians, Gauls, are moulded in the same manner, 
 trained and costumed in the same manner. Man, 
 who is one and the same only at bottom, always 
 appears uniform in spite of the very varied 
 manners. 
 
 The drama — that of Shakespeare, of Goethe, 
 and of Schiller — better represents the man like 
 ourselves, his form, temperament, character, his 
 surroundings. Less conventionality permits of 
 more naturalness. The personage who poses 
 and perorates makes way for the person who 
 acts. The types are more perfect, humanly 
 speaking. 
 
 In the drama the idea is more interesting, 
 the field broader, the design bolder, the coloring 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. if 
 
 more lively, the details more frank and more 
 familiar, the inspiration more original. 
 
 Tragedy appeals above all to the erudite ; the 
 drama speaks to all mankind. 
 
 The plans, the parts, the tirades, the rhythm, 
 I know not what impersonal and routine ele- 
 ment, which make one listen without great sur- 
 prise, characterize tragedy. 
 
 The dramas of Shakespeare, of Goethe, of 
 Schiller, even in translations, even badly trans- 
 lated, fix the attention, transport, agitate, in a 
 singular manner. In the presence of the per- 
 sonages introduced upon the scene, of their 
 words, their tears, their aspirations, their strug- 
 gles with others or with themselves, each person 
 recognizes himself, and like the slave of Terence 
 he exclaims, Homo sum; nihil humani a me 
 alienum puto. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Persons of delicate taste endure stupid criti- 
 cism better than they do stupid praise. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Calderon : Happy Spain, where an author can 
 write virtuous dramas, Christian dramas, Catho- 
 lic dramas, devout dramas ! Calderon could do 
 all this tranquilly, simply, sublimely. 
 
 In the Middle Ages the clergy of France were 
 
1 8 THOUGHTS. 
 
 dramatists, and what is more, impresarii. Would 
 our critics who pardon the Spanish priest Cal- 
 deron for having been a dramatic poet, permit a 
 French priest to write dramas or melodramas, 
 religious, of course, and to have them played ? 
 If he came to grief, what monkey-like laughs ! 
 What peacock cries if he succeeded ! 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Lope de Vega: He is not a garden drawn 
 with a chalk-line, cut up into symmetrical 
 squares, pierced with long, straight alleys, such 
 as his quasi-contemporary Le Notre designed. 
 No : Lope de Vega is the Spain of the harsh 
 sierras, of irregular cities, of motley costumes. 
 Lope de Vega is not a classic after the fashion 
 of France ; nevertheless, he is Greek and Latin, 
 vying with Corneille and Racine ; and he is more 
 of a man and more national than they. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 The Duke de Saint-Simon : Scrupulous even 
 to the point of asking himself whether he has 
 been slanderous enough. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Boileau in one of his epigrams, said of him- 
 self : "Whence comes the black chagrin which 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 19 
 
 one reads upon his visage ? It is from seeing 
 himself so badly engraved." 
 
 How much more just chagrin would he not 
 display to-day at seeing himself so badly known ! 
 
 The eighteenth century abated much of the 
 great esteem accorded to Boileau by the century 
 of Louis XIV. Reputations always suffer these 
 reverses. Happy are those which rise again 
 undiminished ! Happy are those which do not 
 lose in the inevitable storm the last plume from 
 their pinions ! 
 
 The great man Boileau has, perhaps, not 
 emerged from the trial without damage. Slag 
 abounds about the anvil. 
 
 Where he makes and remakes his work with 
 more patience than art, with more labor than 
 inspiration, one hears too distinctly the noise of 
 the bellows, and far too much of the fine sound 
 of the flame which roars and crackles and 
 rebounds. 
 
 His work fills a small volume. A strict 
 sorting would reduce it to the dimensions of 
 a booklet. 
 
 But the good man Boileau is ignored more than 
 is fitting. The man surpasses the writer ; his 
 character far surpasses his talent. 
 
 Possessed of free and lofty judgment, he pro- 
 nounces upon merits as posterity does. 
 
 Possessed of a loyal conscience, he under- 
 
20 THOUGHTS. 
 
 stands "how to distinguish the poet from the 
 man of honor." 
 
 A proud soul, he does not excuse himself for 
 having found the king's verses wretched ; he 
 does not conceal his scorn for the Marquis de 
 Saint-Aulaire, an academic candidate. 
 
 He says to Racine, who was troubled about 
 Athalie : " It is the best thing you have 
 done ! " 
 
 He replies to the astonished Louis XIV., 
 "The greatest writer of the century is Moliere ! " 
 
 He recognizes in his letters, if not in his 
 satires, even the talent of Quinault, even that 
 of Boursault. 
 
 He takes it ill that the great Corneille, when 
 aged and infirm, is neglected, and demands that 
 his own pension shall be transferred to him ; it 
 is with the same heart that he congratulates, 
 that he consoles, Racine on receiving a pension 
 of four thousand livres, while he himself has 
 but two thousand. 
 
 And his obstinate friendship for the perse- 
 cuted Arnaud ! and his delicate attentions to 
 Olivier Patru, whom he assisted without the lat- 
 ter's knowledge ! 
 
 Ye men of letters, who, rightly or wrongly, 
 esteem Boileau a mediocre genius, admire at 
 least, imitate above all his noble spirit and his 
 generous character ! 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 21 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Corneille, Racine : The sun does not enter 
 without difficulty into his glory ; he must first 
 contend with the mists below, against the clouds 
 above . . . but at last he prevails, and darts forth 
 free and splendid. 
 
 Such was Corneille, such Racine. 
 
 A first flight set a deep gulf between them 
 and their masters of yesterday, which soon be- 
 came an impassable breach. 
 
 As neither their goals nor the roads traversed 
 were the same, the obstacles were different. 
 
 Corneille had only to vanquish the mediocre ; 
 that does not constitute his glory. His glory 
 lies in having grown great by himself, without 
 a model. Racine had to reach Corneille. With- 
 out being his peer, he was his equal, a supreme 
 triumph ! 
 
 Corneille has an austere and rather harsh 
 visage ; his language is grave and rather rugged ; 
 he is a father whom one respects, a master 
 whom one accepts with his defects and his 
 qualities. Racine has a caressing voice, and a 
 sweet, sympathetic, gracious air : he is a brother, 
 a friend. 
 
 Corneille takes possession of our mind by 
 conquering it. Racine plays about . our heart 
 and penetrates it little by little. 
 
22 THOUGHTS. 
 
 The unforeseen, the roughly sketched, that is 
 Corneille ; the natural, the finely finished, that 
 is Racine. 
 
 Corneille is the lion of Milton which bounded 
 towards space, half life, half mire still ; Racine 
 is the nightingale who from his very first rou- 
 lade discovers marvels of harmony. 
 
 Corneille says, and one applauds : — 
 Je ne dois qu'a moi seul toute ma renomme'e. 
 'Tis to myself alone I owe all my renown. 
 
 One says to Racine, with a smile of love: — 
 
 Je ne trouve qu'en vous, je ne sais quelle grace, 
 Qui me charme toujours, et jamais ne me lasse. 
 
 I find in you only, I know not what grace, 
 Which charms ever, tires never, and naught can 
 efface. 
 
 Corneille is the painter of haughty senti- 
 ments, of heroic resolutions. He is Rodrigue 
 hesitating between love and honor, then immo- 
 lating the father of Chimene ; Horace preferring 
 his country to his family, and Rome to his child ; 
 Cornelie constrained to admire the conqueror of 
 her husband ; M6dee opposing her " I ! " to 
 hostile fortune ; Pauline faithful to memory 
 and duty : he elevates the soul. 
 
 Racine paints the storms of the heart, its 
 errors, its falls, its returns. He is Andromaque 
 sacrificing her griefs and her hatreds to the 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 23 
 
 safety of her son ; Hermione cursing the man 
 whom she adjured to kill Pyrrhus ; Achille 
 casting forth insults at the father of his be- 
 trothed ; Phedre, in spite of herself, u perfidious, 
 incestuous " : he moves the heart. 
 
 Corneille takes most of his types from a 
 world which is, perhaps, chimerical, but which 
 he causes to appear real by dint of ideality. 
 What these personages think is superhuman. 
 So much sublimity speedily fatigues man who 
 is avaricious in the matter of admiration. 
 
 Racine takes man as he is, " wavering and 
 various, full of contradictions," approving what 
 is good and doing that which is evil, ceasing 
 never until he has accomplished "the crime 
 which promised him pleasure and happiness, 
 and which will bring him only remorse," touching 
 in defeat, but not less admirable in his triumph. 
 
 Behold this statue : the forms are very virile, 
 almost coarse ; the muscles are strained and 
 prominent. One could count the network of 
 the veins, so much of energy and power is there 
 in this robust body. Such is Corneille. 
 
 This other marble is of irreproachable purity. 
 The eye glides without displeasure along its soft 
 contours ; the limbs are full, dimpled, harmoni- 
 ous ; the attitude is easy, noble, charming in its 
 dignity and unconstraint. Such is Racine. 
 
 Corneille is exclusive; his heroes are per- 
 
24 THOUGHTS. 
 
 sonal. The savage heroism of the Horaces; 
 the chivalrous honor of Rodrigue and of Chi- 
 mene ; the clemency of Auguste ; the renuncia- 
 tion of Polyeucte belong to a superior and also 
 to a singular order of things. Racine, more 
 comprehensive, likes to generalize. Does he 
 draw the portrait of a man or of humanity ? 
 Phedre, for instance, is not so much the lover of 
 Hyppolite as passion personified ; passion such 
 as can exist in a woman, without distinction of 
 either time or country. 
 
 There is something of Corneille in Britannicus 
 and Mithridate ; of Racine in Le Ctd and Poly- 
 eucte. Racine, in Be're'nice, defeated Corneille ; 
 would he have defeated him in Rodogune ? 
 
 Corneille and Racine attempted comedy, each 
 with the genius which distinguishes him. Cor- 
 neille is original ; he invents. Racine imitates ; 
 he is original, nevertheless. 
 
 Corneille shows man as he should be, — good, 
 generous, faithful to justice and to honor ; he 
 prompts to duty by preaching virtue. Racine 
 contents himself with representing vice, — a 
 representation which is, to tell the truth, rather 
 attractive, but edifying when analyzed to the last 
 degree, if one considers the calamities which 
 vice sooner or later produces. 
 
 Corneille needed a commentary, since too 
 many defects are mingled with his beauties. 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 25 
 
 The commentary of Racine is wholly comprised 
 in these three words of Voltaire, " Beautiful ! 
 harmonious ! sublime ! " 
 
 After the same brilliant beginnings and the 
 same brilliant successes, what a different ending ! 
 
 Corneille was extinguished behind the clouds 
 which had veiled his dawn. He, whom the 
 theatres welcomed with sudden applause, he 
 before whom kings rose to their feet, who had 
 made the great Conde" weep, passed from earth 
 poor, obscure, forgotten. Like that Pomp6e 
 whom he had put upon the stage in better 
 days, he had lived too much by a day, and had 
 come to hear the wish expressed that he could 
 " be again the Corneille, both of the Cid and of 
 Horace." 
 
 Racine was buried in his triumph. He did 
 not live long enough ; he bore away with him 
 as many hopes as regrets. His legacy, at the 
 threshold of the tomb, was his masterpiece, one 
 of the masterpieces of the human mind, — 
 Athalie. 
 
 Many prefer Corneille ; many like Racine 
 better. All are wrong and all are right. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Before the Renaissance religion possessed an 
 interest, even by the family fireside, even in 
 the public square. One was not a Christian in 
 
26 THOUGHTS. 
 
 church only. In order to understand one's self, 
 in order to make one's self understood of others, 
 the poet thought and spoke as a Christian. 
 The Renaissance, which again put to question 
 what the Gospel had settled, came ; it shook the 
 old man which was not dead but only sleeping ; 
 it stirred up that profane, corrupt, untractable, 
 and mocking depth which exists in every man, 
 and under the pretence of liberty and art, aban- 
 doned itself, soul and body, to harmonious false- 
 hoods, to elegant vice, to erudite perversity. All 
 sorts of shameful complicities were established 
 in broad daylight or in the dark, between the 
 mind which was weary of thinking well, and the 
 heart which was tired of wishing well ; a mirage 
 appeared across the way, which was taken for 
 paradise. Love decreased, faith diminished, 
 hope fell lower than the heart. That new sense 
 which Jesus Christ had given to man as re- 
 stored and completed by baptism, made way for 
 the depraved sense of which the Apostle speaks. 
 Once again, all was God except God himself; 
 " the Prince of this world," after a disgrace of 
 many centuries, remounted his throne, and 
 pagan civilization flourished once more. 
 
 What is Villon ? an obscene pagan ; Marot ? 
 a frivolous pagan ; Ronsard ? a learned pagan ; 
 Malherbe ? a purist pagan. Boileau himself is 
 a pagan ; Racine a pagan also. Jodelle sacri- 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 2J 
 
 ficed "for luck" a buck to the god Bacchus, 
 according to the Greek rite ; Boileau gravely 
 invoked, with his wig on his head, that Phoebus 
 and that Pegasus who made the augurs, who 
 were contemporaries of Cicero, laugh, and Hor- 
 ace and Varro, the table-guests of Augustus, 
 yawn. The narrow and monotonous college 
 moulded minds which remained faithful all their 
 lives to the form received. 
 
 Where is Jesus ? Will he be found after 
 three days, in the Temple ? How is he to be 
 found if he is not sought ? The eighteenth cen- 
 tury takes nothing seriously, not even Pegasus 
 and Phoebus. One could not say that it believed 
 in God, if it did not recognize him after its own 
 fashion by blaspheming him. This third pagan- 
 ism, in which Voltaire alone is God, savors of 
 the *gaming-house and the brothel, while await- 
 ing the scaffold promised to the pagan Andr6 
 Chenier. ... 
 
 Later on, the pagan rut, which was badly 
 filled in at the moment, is becoming visibly hol- 
 lowed out, is now full of mire, and will soon, 
 perhaps, be filled with blood. Oh ! when shall 
 we renounce paganism, with all its works and 
 pomps, and become Christians only, entirely 
 Christians, Christians in everything and every- 
 where, Christians in thought, in word, in deed, 
 in writing ? 
 
28 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 You do not know Oriens. When he becomes 
 inflamed, you think he is strange, but he is only 
 inspired ; you think him violent when he is 
 indignant, — he is only generous ; fretful when 
 he complains, — he is only tender hearted. 
 Oriens is sensitive, very sensitive. Very little 
 of this appears ; it is within, " in that spot where 
 lies the heart," that Oriens is particularly alive 
 to feeling. There is his sorrowful part. Oriens 
 loves to distraction the good and the beautiful. 
 All that is false, bad, hideous, makes him leap 
 and cry aloud. All that might be very good, 
 but is only a little good ; very true, but is not 
 sufficiently so ; very beautiful, but is so only in 
 half measure, pains him. Ah ! leave him his 
 repugnances, and his heart-heaviness, peculiar 
 to a nature, proud, delicate, and noble ! Do not 
 fear that it will prove widely contagious ! 
 Neither examples nor exhortations will be lack- 
 ing to dissuade or correct those who would 
 imitate Oriens ! 
 
 xxxiv. 
 
 What remains of Segrais, Racan, Bertaut, 
 Desportes, etc. ? Hardly a stanza, at most a 
 tirade. And yet their talent was remarkable ; 
 and their names will survive in collections of 
 poetry and in anthologies. 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 29 
 
 Oh ! poets of the present day, romanticists, 
 Parnassians, etc., are you sure of leaving even 
 a name ? 
 
 xxxv. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, that not one of the 
 numerous epic enterprises in France since the 
 Middle Ages, has either succeeded or deserved 
 to succeed, Neither Du Bartas, nor Lemoine, 
 nor Chapelain, nor twenty others have broken 
 the charm. Voltaire by his Henriade has con- 
 secrated our reputation for impotence, and the 
 proverb has prevailed, that "the Frenchman 
 has not an epic head." Portugal has Camoens ; 
 Spain, Ercilla ; Italy, Tasso ; England, Milton ; 
 Germany, Klopstock ; France, nothing ! It will 
 be said, "The epoch of the great epics is over." 
 So it was said in England before Paradise Lost; 
 in Germany, before The Messiah. 
 
 What is the cause of our poverty ? To what 
 must our disgrace be attributed ? Du Bartas is 
 not read because of his superannuated style? 
 But La Chanson de Roland is still older, and it 
 is admired. Lemoine is not read because of his 
 bad taste ? But Milton abounds in grotesque 
 inventions and ridiculous expressions, and he is 
 admired. Chapelain, because of his harshness 
 and his coldness ? But Klopstock also was cold 
 and rugged, and he is admired. Du Bartas had 
 
30 THOUGHTS. 
 
 genius, Lemoine had genius, Chapelain had 
 genius ; more than that, they were believers. 
 Du Bartas adored the Word of God in the Bible, 
 vying in that respect with Klopstock and Mil- 
 ton ; Chapelain adored it in the Gospel, equally 
 with Camoens, Tasso, and Ercilla ; Lemoine 
 was as pious as a Jesuit ; and yet they are only 
 recalled with a shrug of the shoulders, or a yawn 
 indulged in with closed mouth ! 
 
 Who knows? Du Bartas, Lemoine, Chape- 
 lain, properly translated into Italian or English, 
 would, perhaps, appear new in their splendor 
 and grace. 
 
 The epic poem, frightfully trampled under foot 
 by the author of the Art of Poetry, had passed 
 for dead for a long time, when, towards the close 
 of the eighteenth century, Gilbert suddenly pro- 
 claimed the great news, " Thomas is in labor 
 with a great epic poem ! " 
 
 After La Pe'tre'ide, an abortion, came Philippe 
 Angus te, still-born. 
 
 Then the wind veered to the didactic poem ; 
 and The Three Kingdoms, The Seasons, The 
 Months, Navigation, Painting, Plants, etc., 
 winged their heavy flight towards the unknown, 
 far away, so far that no one has heard them 
 mentioned since. 
 
 It was said that the epic was not only dead, 
 but well and thoroughly buried. It was both 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 3 1 
 
 said and thought, — while immortal, it emerged 
 from the tomb, transfigured like the butterfly. 
 
 In spite of Boileau's oracle, in spite of so 
 many epic catastrophes which confirmed him, 
 in spite of the opinion which held that the case 
 had been adjudged finally and without appeal, 
 the epic, the Christian epic claimed its place 
 again in the light of the sun. 
 
 It sang of God, of heaven and hell, of the 
 angels and the saints ; of man — his sin, his ex- 
 ile, his redemption, his approaching reconcilia- 
 tion ; of the priest — his humble kingdom, his 
 obscure heroism. It was Christian, as I have 
 said ; it was not Catholic. Heresy is also Chris- 
 tian ! Schism is also Christian ! The truth was 
 received, subject to correction. Under the pre- 
 text of art, in reality out of human respect, this 
 was lopped off, that was altered. People thought 
 to embellish what they merely glossed over. To 
 the immaculate and only robe of the Church, 
 borrowed stuffs, of which she would none, were 
 stitched. " Glorification ! " affirmed the poet ; 
 " Profanation ! " replied the priest. 
 
 Witness, La Divine Epopie of Alexandre 
 Soumet, and Jocelyn, by Alphonse de Lamartine. 
 
 The one said that ; the other said it to him- 
 self. Fatal error ! They understood it too 
 late. 
 
 In truth, the soul often dreams imperti- 
 
32 THOUGHTS. 
 
 nences. Is it in the wrong? If it be, then 
 the lyre cannot be in the right. 
 * If Lamartine and Soumet had listened to 
 their faith and not to a vain and culpable whim, 
 how much their talent would have been increased 
 in its sweep ! and how much higher would their 
 names have risen, borne by those two angelic 
 wings, "truth and poetry " ! 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Certain persons are persuaded that, in order 
 to be a writer of merit, there is required neither 
 reason, nor judgment, nor knowledge of men, 
 nor experience of things, nor assiduous study, 
 nor persevering exercise, but only an uncon- 
 scious, involuntary, instinctive something, which 
 they call talent. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Antique art clothed the human body in mod- 
 esty and majesty ; modern art unclothes even 
 the nude. It is immodest, and sometimes even 
 impudent. Athens diffused the soul over the 
 flesh ; Paris diffuses the flesh over the soul. 
 The Greek statue blushed ; the French statue 
 causes blushes. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Malherbe raved over Seneca ; Corneille over 
 Lucan. These two Spaniards matched these 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 33 
 
 two Normans. The " high-flown " is the style 
 of these four geniuses. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 Shakespeare : Greater than history, as great 
 as poetry, he alone would suffice for the litera- 
 ture of a nation. 
 
 Addison : Shakespeare is an ocean ; Addison 
 an aquarium. 
 
 Milton : He sings ecstasy like Gabriel, hate 
 like Lucifer, love like Eve, repentance like 
 Adam. 
 
 Goldsmith : His Vicar of Wakefield, trans- 
 lated by Charles Nodier, attaches itself to the 
 memory as with nails of gold. 
 
 Walter Scott : History lives again in his ro- 
 mances, which are so upright, so delicate, so 
 true, when he resists the temptation to blacken 
 the monks. 
 
 Thomas Moore : What a patriotic perfume in 
 his verses, which fly as light and fresh as the 
 breezes ! 
 
 Byron : A pure blood, slender, proud, bold, 
 impatient of the rein, an enemy of the spur, in- 
 tractable under the whip, and who is counted 
 vicious, and is only fantastic. 
 
 XL. 
 
 Each person alights by instinct upon the 
 books which respond to the needs of his nature. 
 
34 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Voltaire allowed this phrase to escape him : 
 " Chaulieu is the first of neglected poets ..." 
 The first of neglected poets, O Voltaire ! is 
 the author of La Henriade, and of so many 
 other poems ; the author of Zaire, and so many 
 other tragedies. Few poets versify as badly as 
 he. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Since Voltaire's day we grin ; we no longer 
 laugh. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Never did writers have less sensibility and 
 say more about it than those of the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Lemiere : A hard pebble which emits sparks. 
 
 Bernis : Always nature, never the natural. 
 
 Dorat : Between caterpillar and butterfly. 
 
 ficouchard Lebrun : A virile head, the soul 
 of a eunuch. 
 
 Malfilatre : An abortive genius. 
 
 Gentil-Bernard : An impotent man who is 
 always talking of marriage. 
 
 Piron : An original improviser ; a common- 
 place writer. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 The name is the man ; renown is the writer. 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 35 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Goethe : A German drinking-cup engraved at 
 Corinth. 
 
 Schiller has put into a drama the history 
 which he read in a dream. 
 
 Klopstock : A mortuary pall sown with tears 
 of silver. 
 
 Burger has written ballads which are epic 
 poems. 
 
 Wieland has composed an epic poem which 
 is only a ballad. 
 
 Hoffmann has caught a glimpse of a whole 
 world of fancy through the smoke of his pipe, 
 as one views an eclipse through a bit of smoked 
 glass. 
 
 XL VII. 
 
 In matters of art, quality should be preferred 
 to quantity ; and if etymology is right, nothing 
 is elegant which has not been culled out. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 Jean Baptiste Rousseau : An echo of David, 
 a reflection of Pindar, a shade of Horace. 
 
 Beaumarchias : A happy autumn day, against 
 which the fall of a dead leaf strikes here and 
 there with a sinister sound. 
 
 Buffon : A head of gold, a breast of silver, legs 
 of brass, feet of clay, like the statue of Daniel. 
 
36 THOUGHTS. 
 
 Voltaire : The spirit of a courtier and the 
 heart of a courtisan. 
 
 Laharpe : Much facility, a little talent, no 
 genius. 
 
 Marmontel : An aviary wherein are many 
 sorts of birds, with the exception of the eagle 
 and the dove. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 The poet sees everything in the present, like 
 God. 
 
 L. 
 
 Andre Cheerier : A beautiful Athenian temple 
 without an altar to the unknown God. 
 
 Parny : A dung-heap which smells and glitters. 
 
 Baour-Lormian : A great butterfly, caught in 
 the strings of a harp. 
 
 Collin d'Harleville : He listens to his own 
 talk, and gazes at his own laugh. 
 
 Berchoux : His rhymes fall slow, heavy, 
 stifling, like the rain of roses at the feast of 
 Heliogabalus. 
 
 LI. 
 
 Expressions which one chances upon have 
 something antique about them, I know not what. 
 
 LII. 
 
 Vigny : Fingers of rose, tears of pearl, like 
 the Aurora of Homer. 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 37 
 
 H6g. Moreau : A spoiled apple which is still 
 unripe, and which must be carefully cleansed 
 before one tastes it. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve : What poetry in his prose, and 
 what prose in his poetry! 
 
 Auguste Barbier: Plenty of thunder-claps, 
 little or no lightning. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Auguste Brizeux, in Les Bretons, runs the risk 
 of bursting the veins in his neck in his desire to 
 swell the horn of Armor. One thinks one is list- 
 ening to some ancient bard translated by Baour- 
 Lormian. He has transgressed the precept of 
 Horace, "to avoid a burden beyond his strength." 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Since modern poetry, rightly or wrongly, 
 handles the graver's tool by preference, Sou- 
 lary is certainly a master-graver. One expe- 
 riences in the eye and hand, while reading him, 
 the sensation of an amphora or a cratera, which 
 one seems to see and to touch. But why does 
 rationalism twine about these murrhine vases 
 like a crack of misfortune ? 
 
 LV. 
 
 Nowadays the literature of children abounds. 
 Hugo, S6galas, Ortolan, Beauchene, Jean 
 Aicard, Ratisbonne, have vied in singing the 
 
38 THOUGHTS. 
 
 children. Eugenie de Guerin also wished to 
 sing them. This vein is novel, this vein is rich ; 
 I do not deny it, and I complain of nothing 
 except that this literature of the children is not 
 unfrequently childish. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 There is no complaint that there are too many 
 painters, too many musicians, but the opinion 
 exists that there are too many poets. Why ? 
 
 Painting, music, are, as trades, still endurable ; 
 poetry, unless it is a real vocation, scandal- 
 izes. Being more divine, one wishes it to be 
 more discrete ; being less rare, it appears less 
 precious ; noble above all, it loses more when it 
 becomes unworthy. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 The poet, the artist, the saint, say incessantly, 
 "Again! higher!" The beyond attracts them 
 ever. What they hold is little to them. The 
 anguish which they suffer marks, if it does not 
 measure, the happiness which they long for. 
 And they struggle, and lament, and strive, and 
 tax their ingenuity for the love of that shore, 
 "further on," of which Virgil speaks: ripce 
 ulterioris amore. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 Jacques Delille is a poet-professor who is 
 very clever in treating a given subject. His 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 39 
 
 "poetry "is neither a field nor a meadow, nor 
 even a garden, but a cellar, an herbarium, garn- 
 ished with dried fruits and dead flowers. His 
 tears are deliberate, his smile studied. He 
 excites himself coolly. His tirades are very 
 ingenious pieces which show the springs that 
 move them. He proceeds by articles, like the 
 vulgar cook. He mterprets nature as he did 
 Virgil, with his head, not with his heart. He is 
 a mummy which possesses the attitude but not 
 the movement of life ; he is the animal caught 
 in the ice at the moment of his supreme effort, 
 which is always on the point of beginning and 
 never will begin. Praxiteles gave animation 
 to stone ; Delille petrifies thought, sentiment, 
 the image. He is the fountain of Saint- Alyre 
 of poetry. . . . 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Paul-Louis Courrier : Never, thanks to him, 
 have words seemed more synomyous than style 
 and stiletto. 
 
 George Sand : Like Circe the enchantress, 
 she transforms those whom she enamors into 
 beasts. 
 
 LX. 
 
 The task of demolishing Chateaubriand has 
 been attempted. Saint-Beuve multiplied him- 
 self in order to attain his level. . . . Vain effort ! 
 
40 THOUGHTS. 
 
 Try as one will to uncrown, to dismantle him, 
 he can never be lessened to such a degree that 
 he will not still overtop by head and shoulders 
 the most supercilious of his enemies. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 Victor Hugo : This manly genius always 
 strikes strongly if he does not often strike 
 justly. Not content with wandering from the 
 question, he talks wildly. It is himself that 
 he pursues, that he admires, that he loves, that 
 he adores, himself always, himself everywhere, 
 himself alone ! 
 
 What a magnificent career ! 
 
 What a magnificent career he has run badly ! 
 
 LXII. 
 
 Madame de Girardin : She sings badly, but 
 oh ! the wondrous prattle. 
 
 She combats Paris, its vices, its absurdities, 
 as Clorinda warred against Tancred, consider- 
 ately. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Every woman who writes immodestly, lives 
 in the same way. 
 
 lxiv. - 
 
 It is in vain that Eugene de G^urin praises 
 Maurice ; the more she recommends him, the 
 more she effaces him. 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 41 
 
 The love which she bore her brother greatly 
 scandalized many literary persons. Their cor- 
 ruption thought it perceived therein a nameless 
 perversity. The wretches ! 
 
 Eugenie never rests from loving. She ardently 
 desires literary glory for Maurice, and above all, 
 that celestial glory which is far preferable. This 
 anguish of a Christian sister is something new 
 in French literature. One admires and loves 
 this sweet, pious Eugenie, devoted in life and 
 death. As for Maurice, he is only insipid and 
 colorless. He has some imagination, no char- 
 acter. He does nothing but flutter about in a 
 fickle, or, what is worse, an undecided, way. 
 
 Maurice disenchants, even in his finest pas- 
 sages, by a certain school-boy accent. Le Ce?z- 
 taure is only a brilliant imitation of Bitaub6, of 
 Chateaubriand and of Quinet. Eugenie con- 
 ceals, perhaps ignores, her art, which is exquisite. 
 She appears solicitous of writing well, without, 
 for that reason, believing herself to be a writer. 
 She is not so much conscious of herself as she 
 divines herself. Beneath the evident desire of 
 pleasing her brother, a hack writer, peeps the 
 desire of sooner or later interesting the public. 
 She is careful of her phrasing, somewhat as the 
 narve young girl cares for her face, with a co- 
 quettish innocence. 
 
42 THOUGHTS. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 Literature was formerly an art and finance a 
 trade : to-day it is the reverse. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 We write numerous works in order to multi- 
 ply our chances with posterity, as one takes 
 several tickets in a lottery in order to be more 
 sure of winning. But very often a single ticket 
 brings happiness, a single book brings fame. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 Vigny is above all things Greek, Musset above 
 all Gallic ; Vigny has more variety, Musset more 
 spirit ; Vigny more art, Musset more natural- 
 ness ; Vigny is delicate, Musset is fine ; Vigny 
 is ingenious, Musset is spiritual. 
 
 Vigny was at first biblical, almost religious ; 
 then he gradually became sceptical. Musset, 
 who was for a long time obscene and impious, 
 knew remorse towards the end, and perhaps 
 repentance. I speak of the poet, for the man, 
 less hard to please than the Duke of Clarence, 
 had early disappeared in a cask of gin. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 Jules Janin : He writes ; afterwards he thinks. 
 Charles Nodier : A little of everything, not 
 much of anything. 
 
LITERATURE, POETS. 43 
 
 Joseph Autran : A small shell, within which 
 roars the great sea. 
 
 Beranger : The collection of his songs at first 
 passed for a monument of patriotism. The time 
 will come, if it has not already come, when this 
 same collection will be a curious repertory, 
 neither more nor less, of impieties, impurities, 
 and vanities, which passed current in a great 
 disordered nation, at a sad epoch in its history. 
 
 Casimir Delavigne : Too different from Tyr- 
 taeus and too much like Racine. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 The majority of the writers of genius recall 
 the Mormoluktion of the Greek theatre, tragic 
 on one side, comic on the other ; they willingly 
 throw in a burst of laughter between two serious 
 works or two pathetic tirades. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 Labor does not exclude naturalness, neither 
 does facility imply it. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 Science is for those who learn ; poetry, for 
 those who know. 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 Etymology, true etymology, is good and use- 
 ful. It is profitable for the grammarian, the 
 
44 THOUGHTS. 
 
 poet, the orator, the historian, the philosopher. 
 Words are shells. Open the shell, you will find 
 the kernel which will delight you. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 The Muses love not tumult any more than 
 bees love it. Musce serence, said the ancients. 
 
 Let us be gentle, let us be pacific, let us be 
 thoughtful, and the Muses will hasten to us, will 
 surround us with the sound of their wings, and, 
 perhaps, will place upon our lips one of those 
 combs of honey which rendered Ambrose elo- 
 quent, Virgil melodious, and Plato divine. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger 
 of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a 
 fool. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 The punishment of licentious writers is that 
 no one will read them or confess to having read 
 them. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes. 
 
II. 
 
 ELOQUENCE, ORATORS. 
 
 A passable definition of eloquence would 
 be, Anima erumpens. But how can that be 
 translated into French ? 
 
 ii. 
 
 . . . Habens os rectiun et bene* semens. This 
 definition of the orator in the Scriptures is almost 
 unknown, although it is quite as good as the 
 famous Vir bonus dicendi peritus. 
 
 in. 
 
 To interest the passions, to impassion the 
 interests, behold ! this is the aim of eloquence. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Without eloquence one is not a poet ; with- 
 out poetry one is not an orator. 
 
 v. 
 
 The word tolerates and knows only the will 
 which masters it, and carries far without peril 
 
46 THOUGHTS. 
 
 only the intelligence which spares the spur and 
 bridle while maintaining its supremacy. 
 
 VI. 
 
 A good oratorical exercise is to make verses. 
 Thus harmony is acquired, the soul, the num- 
 ber, the body of discourse. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Let us not judge the eruption by the con- 
 gealed lava, nor the improvisation by the written 
 page. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Who is there who has never been moved even 
 to swooning before speaking in public ? It is a 
 profound anguish which invades the flesh, the 
 blood, the mind, and the heart. What can be 
 done to conquer this revolution of the senses, 
 to calm this tumult of the soul ? Shall one 
 grow angry, curse one's self, taunt one's self ? 
 
 My friend, the orator, in this crisis, pray, if 
 you are a priest ; if you are not a priest, still 
 pray. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The grenadiers who took Port-Mahon, when 
 they measured with their eyes on the following 
 day all those thick, lofty walls, bristling with 
 instruments of attack and defence, could not 
 recover their senses at having scaled such ram- 
 
ELOQUENCE, ORATORS. 47 
 
 parts and taken possession of such fortifications. 
 Intoxicated with heroism, they had done more 
 than they would have dared to undertake in 
 cold blood. Thus the orator, impelled onward 
 by inspiration, borne upwards by the fever of 
 speech, makes conquests which astonish him 
 afterwards. 
 
 x. 
 
 There are men to whom the rostrum or the 
 pulpit is a sort of pillory, where they appear 
 riveted, pale, hesitating, confused; such men 
 suffer and cause suffering. There are others 
 who in the rostrum or the pulpit are as if 
 mounted on the tripod, — ardent, transfigured, 
 fascinating. How happy they are to speak! 
 how happy one is to listen to them ! " 
 
 XI. 
 
 The orator, with a glance, measures immense 
 space. . . . Meanwhile, the word neighs and 
 paws in its impatience. " Go ! " is said to it at 
 last, and the word, launched at a gallop, shakes 
 the earth, strikes out sparks, devours distances, 
 and triumphs ! 
 
 XII. 
 
 A lecturer of Notre Dame said, "If one 
 wishes to preach well, one must have the devil 
 in one's body." Why did he not add, "And 
 God in the heart " ? 
 
48 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 He whines and weeps, thinking to make me 
 tender. If he were tender himself, the thing 
 would be done. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Do you know who is Loquax's best auditor ? 
 It is Loquax himself. Loquax watches himself 
 and listens to himself speak, with a very visible 
 content. He bends towards what he says, and 
 puts his ear to his lips in order not to lose a 
 word. He quotes himself; he adjudges himself 
 to be in the right ; he admires himself ; he ap- 
 plauds himself. While speaking he has the 
 gestures, the motions, the attitudes of a juggler. 
 Nothing escapes him that is simple and naff. 
 All is deliberately planned, measured, combined, 
 prepared. His conversation is a treatise of 
 rhetoric, in which all the figures of speech file 
 by, principally the antithesis, dear to Hugo, 
 the epiphonema familiar to Chateaubriand. All 
 would be according to his heart's desire, no 
 doubt, if the witness of this strange monologue, 
 I dare not call him the interlocutor, wearying of 
 the mute r61e of a personage, did not withdraw, 
 slip away, before the tardy peroration, with a 
 shake of the head and a shrug of the shoulders. 
 
ELOQUENCE, ORATORS. 49 
 
 XV. 
 
 "The cold truth." O preacher of the 
 Word, what are you saying ? The truth cold ? 
 But the truth is life, fruitfulness, joy, all things 
 that are warm. The truth, which is the word of 
 God himself, is warm, burning, fiery ! Ignitum 
 eloquium tuum vehementer. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Demosthenes prepared himself by severe 
 study to become in fact the force of the Athen- 
 ian people (Arj/jLov £#eVo?). His apprenticeship 
 as an orator is legendary, — a subterranean re- 
 treat, hair and beard shaved, Thucydides tran- 
 scribed many times, pebbles placed in his mouth, 
 declamations on the seashore. . . . Tales fabri- 
 cated, perhaps, but whose harmony and concord 
 bear witness to a precocious energy which was 
 not belied by the future. 
 
 In vain are accusations upon accusations 
 launched against this lofty renown ; they fall 
 back powerless at his feet. Demosthenes is no 
 longer the name of a man ; Demosthenes is the 
 name of eloquence itself. 
 
 Was he large or small, homely or handsome ? 
 Was he pusillanimous, versatile ? The inquiry 
 which was opened centuries ago, has not solved 
 these problems. It matters little. The imagina- 
 
50 THOUGHTS. 
 
 tion persists in representing to itself Demos* 
 thenes as great of body and great of heart ; 
 one does not admit that this quality of elo- 
 quence could have gushed forth from a narrow- 
 chest, could have fallen from a sordid soul. 
 The man is to-day unanimously saluted as the 
 equal of the orator. 
 
 The discourse Uepl arecpavov, read by the 
 jealous -^Eschines, before the whole school of 
 Rhodes, provoked enthusiasm : — 
 
 " What would it be then," exclaimed 
 ^Eschines, " if you had heard the monster ! " 
 Posterity consoles itself for not hearing the 
 monster, by vying with the Rhodians in 
 applauding him. 
 
 His relations with Harpalus, the Persian, ap- 
 peared suspicious. For lack of proof, they were 
 forced to acquit him, if not to absolve him. 
 He is also reproached with the disaster of 
 Cheronea. The duty of the great orator did 
 not extend so far as conquering ; he confined 
 himself to convincing the Athenians of the 
 necessity of fighting, and to fighting himself. 
 At the Pnyx, Demosthenes personified the 
 whole of Greece ; at Cheronea- he was only a 
 soldier. 
 
 Moreover, Calaurea found him shortly after- 
 wards, worthy of himself, worthy of Athens. 
 He preferred death to living as the slave of Anti- 
 
ELOQUENCE, ORATORS. 51 
 
 pater. . . . This suicide is rightly revolting to 
 our Christian customs. 
 
 Let us pity him, but let us not despise him. 
 
 As for myself, I admire Demosthenes, who 
 was obedient to his unenlightened conscience, 
 faithful to that which seemed to him to be vir- 
 tue ; just, even to the point of condemning him- 
 self to death, scrupulous to the degree of choos- 
 ing the poison so that he might punish, alas ! 
 those too generous lips and too eloquent heart 
 for having involuntarily caused the misfortune 
 of Athens, his well-beloved country. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 If within thy breast beats a heart warm, loyal, 
 generous, a heroic heart, speak ; oh, speak ! If 
 not, silence, sounding brass ! silence, thou tink- 
 ling cymbal ! 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Onesimus speaks with elegance, a cold ele- 
 gance. It is icy, and so is his audience also. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Ah ! how many phrases ! Ah ! how many 
 ideas ! 
 
 A single phrase well thought out is worth a 
 whole thousand of these superfluous ideas ; a 
 single idea, well developed, is worth a whole 
 thousand of these redundant phrases. 
 
52 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XX. 
 
 From the mouth of a Gallic god issued a 
 chain of gold, the symbol of eloquence. Oh ! 
 who will find the lost links of that precious 
 chain ? 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Cicero is not exclusively an orator like Demos- 
 thenes ; he is, besides, a philosopher, a man of 
 letters, etc. I say "besides," and not "in addi- 
 tion," since this diversity of aptitudes added 
 little to his greatness. 
 
 Ingenious, elegant, delicate, Cicero is gener- 
 ally lacking in energy, I mean that sovereign 
 energy which characterizes Demosthenes. In 
 Demosthenes, the orator predominates ; in 
 Cicero, the lawyer. The one possesses more 
 genius, the other more talent. It seems as 
 though the country spoke with the voice of the 
 Grecian orator. In this he is indeed the "ora- 
 tor." Orator signifies deputy, ambassador, dele- 
 gate of the people. The orator is the mouth 
 (os) of a nation. Cicero forgets himself less, 
 keeps himself less in the background. The Re- 
 public is of great importance to him, one cannot 
 doubt that ; but he does not sufficiently prefer 
 Rome, apparently, to all other things, even to 
 his own glory, nor to all other persons, even 
 himself : 
 
ELOQUENCE, ORATORS. 53 
 
 O fortunatam Romam me consule natam ! 
 
 So much vanity belittles the man, belittles 
 the orator. 
 
 In Cicero's day, the toga and the sword dis- 
 puted Rome, that is to say, the Universe, be- 
 tween them. Victory wavered, at first, between 
 the camps and the rostrums ; the rostrums were 
 Cicero, the camps, Octavius. But when the age 
 is not one of virtue or even of law, force finally 
 wins the day against reason, and the sword cuts 
 short speech. 
 
 Cicero, weary of anguish and uncertainty, 
 despairing of ever restoring order to the State, 
 wished at least to introduce it into his own con- 
 duct ; he paid with his life for this noble reso- 
 lution. 
 
 A few days later, he was seen to lean quietly 
 on the edge of his litter, and to offer his head to 
 the emissaries of Antonius, without saying a 
 word, he who had said so much and said it so well. 
 
 All the sublime attitudes, all the pathetic 
 phrases of his long oratorical career did not 
 equal the sublimity of this composure, the 
 pathos of this silence. 
 
 Augustus one day caught his grandson read- 
 ing Cicero by stealth : " Read him," said the 
 man who had been Octavius, " read him without 
 fear ; he was a great man who loved his country 
 well ! " 
 
54 THOUGHTS. 
 
 Shame to the ungrateful triumvir ! Respect 
 to the truthful Emperor ! 
 
 XXII. 
 
 It was the custom in Rome, to accompany 
 the exordium of orators with the flute. ... So 
 should kindness and encouragement always aid 
 those who make their first appearances. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Those who try to speak too well, always have 
 some misgivings as to the manner in which 
 they have spoken. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 A man becomes an orator ; he is born elo- 
 quent. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 God has given you a beautiful soul, Optimus. 
 Great thoughts flow from your heart as from 
 a spring ; your mind is a very harmonious instru- 
 ment, which every suffering and every joy vies 
 with each other in causing to vibrate. When 
 you speak, your heart is heard to palpitate upon 
 your lips. Your grave, sonorous, penetrating 
 voice agitates like a chant in church ; it lin- 
 gers long in our ear like the murmur of the 
 sea. Never, no, never shall I forget our last 
 conversation. My breast still quivers, my eyelid 
 
ELOQUENCE, ORATORS. 55 
 
 is still moist with the emotion which you caused 
 in me. Where do you get this energy, this ten- 
 derness, these accents, this color and this per- 
 fume ? Have you read everything, meditated 
 everything, sounded everything? In the most 
 obscure question, you pierce openings through 
 which the light streams. Profound and subtle, 
 ardent and calm, austere and charming, cold and 
 inspired, you have within you two men who 
 form but one, superior and complete. It is an 
 honor for me to know you, a happiness to see 
 you. O Optimus, may I be not too unworthy 
 to speak before you, to think like you, to listen 
 to you, and to understand you ! God loved me 
 on that day when I met you, O Optimus ! 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 A too exact stenography injures a discourse, 
 as a too faithful photograph injures a face. In 
 order that discourses and faces should "appear" 
 beautiful on canvas and on vellum, they must 
 be retouched. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Who is more silent than Timaeus before the 
 indifferent ? And who more fluent, I will even 
 say more eloquent, than he, when he can pour 
 out his soul freely ? Timid because he is gentle, 
 bold because he is strong, he offers the singular 
 spectacle of two contrary characters. The battle 
 
56 THOUGHTS. 
 
 which he will win, frightens him. Strife causes 
 him horror ; and yet, what energy, what ardor, 
 what valor, he will display ! Arguments throng 
 to his lips. His brow grows lofty ; his nostrils 
 dilate ; his eyes dart flames ; his gesture, always 
 harmonious, accompanies the movements of his 
 thought, the movements of his speech. Who 
 could resist so much force, so much grace ? 
 His adversaries, happy at being vanquished, clap 
 their hands. And he — will he take no pride in 
 his victory ? Observe him : his air is confused ; 
 he has but one fear, that he has caused pain ; 
 but one care, to obtain pardon ; and he must be 
 comforted. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 A fertile country is worth nothing without 
 fine roads ; a great deal of science goes for little 
 without an eloquent tongue. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Is Studio a learned man ? I make a distinc- 
 tion. Studio has, to be sure, acquired a certain 
 science ; but of profound science, science which 
 is broad and lofty, good and true science, he 
 has none. Studio reads day and night, Studio 
 toils night and day ; but all that goes into his 
 head is spoiled there, like a liquid in a wretched 
 cask. A troubled brain, an adulterated judg- 
 ment, an unlucky memory, — that is Studio. 
 
EL O Q UENCE, OR A TORS. 5 7 
 
 Add to this, a very heavy tongue, incapable of 
 saying things in a happy manner. 
 
 Nevertheless, Studio with difficulty conceals 
 his belief that he is a paragon of eloquence. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 "Eloquence," replied the ancient orator, "is 
 action, still action, and ever action." 
 
 Action ! what does that signify ? 
 
 Did he mean gesture ? voice ? attitude ? bear- 
 ing ? delivery ? movement of ideas ? the vivacity 
 of the images ? the vehemence of the discourse ? 
 the combined effect of the proofs ? the order of 
 reasoning ? 
 
 Yes, all this at once. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Hoc quod continet omnia scientiam habet vocis 
 (Eccl.). 
 
 In fact, to know how to say a thing is the sum 
 of the whole matter : the word which is lan- 
 guage, the language which is intelligence, the 
 created intelligence which is mind, the gift of 
 creative mind which is God. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Judith, before presenting herself before Holo- 
 fernes, clothed herself in her richest attire, her 
 bracelets, her earrings, her necklets, her rings, 
 
58 THOUGHTS. 
 
 her fillets of purple, her pins of gold. . . In 
 addition to this, God gave her splendor. 
 
 Thus the orator decks himself in sentiments, 
 thoughts, images, all good things, without doubt, 
 but powerless without the Beautiful, that splen- 
 dor of the True. 
 
 xxxm. 
 
 Extemporizers, beware of extemporizing repe- 
 titions ! 
 
 xxxiv. 
 
 "A priest should not talk politics in the 
 pulpit.". . . Yes. Only you must not taint 
 everything with politics ; otherwise, nothing will 
 be left to say. 
 
 xxxv. 
 
 When orators and auditors have the same pre- 
 judices, those prejudices run a great risk of being 
 made to stand for truths, for incontestable truths. 
 
 xxxvi. 
 Is not an eloquent thing always, more or less, 
 a splendid and sonorous thing ? 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Thought causes one to understand, the image 
 makes one see. There will always be more elo- 
 quence in the image than in thought. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Length of saying makes languor of hearing. 
 
III. 
 
 HISTORY, HISTORIANS. 
 
 History, if thoroughly comprehended, fur- 
 nishes something of the experience which a 
 man would acquire who should be a contempo- 
 rary of all ages and a fellow-citizen of all peoples. 
 
 The ancients made of history a panegyric ; 
 we have made of it a libel. 
 
 in. 
 
 The Emperor Augustus, when seated at table 
 between Virgil, who was asthmatic, and Horace, 
 who was blear-eyed, said, laughing, " I am be- 
 tween sighs and tears ! " 
 
 Alas ! who is not seated between these two 
 table-companions at the banquet of life ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Greeks said to strangers, " Barbarians ! " 
 The strangers retorted, " Children ! " 
 
60 THOUGHTS. 
 
 Are not we Frenchmen something of Greeks 
 in Europe ? 
 
 v. 
 
 The Jews, writing to the Spartans, call them 
 brothers. Who are these Spartans ? The Lace- 
 demonians, without a doubt. These Lacedemo- 
 nians, or Laconians, might have descended from 
 one of those tribes who came from Egypt, a 
 country long inhabited by the Hebrews ; or from 
 Phoenicia, a country contiguous to the Holy 
 Land. 
 
 Apropos of this, might not the Laconian 
 tongue, which differed so widely from the abun- 
 dance of other dialects, according to the testimony 
 of the Greeks, be a congener or a derivative of 
 Hebrew, — that language which is succinct if 
 ever a language was ? Thus, the community 
 of genius would permit us to conjecture a com- 
 munity of origin, and two brother peoples might 
 be recognized by a sister tongue. 
 
 Tacitus makes the Jews come from Ida, the 
 island of Crete {Ida, Idce,Jnd(zi). A misappre- 
 hension big with mysteries. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Hannibal : How bold he is, and prompt, and 
 tenacious ! Desirous of killing the Roman 
 power, he will not attack it at its extremities, 
 he will strike it full in the heart ! With one 
 
HISTORY, HISTORIANS. 6l 
 
 bound he crosses rivers like the Ebro and the 
 Rhone, and traverses mountains like the Pyre- 
 nees and the Alps. His expedition to Italy is 
 no adventure, but a plan of campaign which he 
 has coldly meditated, and which he will reso- 
 lutely accomplish. Deprived of troops, deserted 
 by Carthage, he camps for thirteen years in the 
 heart of Italy, as impregnable in defence as he 
 was irresistible in attack. Alone and a stranger, 
 he copes with a whole nation fighting on its own 
 soil. Conquered, he makes his conqueror great 
 without becoming less himself. A fugitive, he 
 raises levies in all the country round about 
 Rome. He is learned, he is witty, he is acute, 
 he is ironical, he is eloquent. His harangue to 
 the senate of Carthage is, perhaps, the most 
 solemn and most pathetic piece which the 
 human tongue has ever uttered. This man 
 weighs down the breast of Rome. Twenty con- 
 federated nations would not alarm the Republic 
 like Hannibal alone. If he does not perish, she 
 is not sure of living. Hannibal deigns to die, 
 and Rome utters such a sigh of relief, so great 
 a cry of joy, that the cry and the sigh make the 
 centuries tremble ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 The great historians of Greece and Italy are 
 so many poets. 
 
 What is Tacitus ? A dramatic poet. 
 
62 THOUGHTS, 
 
 And Titus Livius ? An epic poet. 
 
 And old Herodotus ? A poet, a great poet. 
 
 Men and deeds were what they were ; they 
 are for us what the historian pleases. 
 
 History is a piece played by whom ? By dead 
 heroes, who have become, thanks to the writer, 
 living actors. The historian, a poet by virtue of 
 his magic art, transforms his readers into ocular 
 witnesses of the things which he relates. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Tacitus is frightful because he is frightened. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The words of Tacitus seem to have been 
 drawn from Virgil and from Horace ; his 
 phrases have the air of disjointed hexameters, 
 disjecti membra poetce ; they might be taken 
 for verses intended to be put back into form. 
 
 This poetical style, with its solemn but rather 
 stiff, rather monotonous gait, with a supreme 
 but somewhat affected accent, made of Tacitus 
 a writer, and, at the same time — shall I say 
 it ? a wicked author. 
 
 x. 
 
 What is not pardoned to glory? Caesar 
 drowned the Gauls in blood, and the Gauls 
 loved Caesar ; Napoleon opened all the four veins 
 of France, and the French adored Napoleon ! 
 
HISTORY, HISTORIANS, 63 
 
 XI. 
 
 Nothing stains and nothing cleanses like 
 blood. 
 
 XII. 
 
 In order to judge of an event, it is necessary 
 to place one's self at a distance, as it is in order 
 to measure a building. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " The philosophy of history ! The philosophy 
 of history ! . . . " That is the only cry that is 
 audible. It is an abuse. When will it be said, 
 "The theology of history" ? 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The hero arouses wonder, but the man inter- 
 ests. 
 
 xv. 
 
 Marius was nothing but a brave soldier and a 
 good general. A mediocre politician and a 
 mediocre citizen, he showed little genius and 
 little heart. His few virtues were perhaps 
 vices which had not had time to develop or 
 the occasion to expose themselves. His great 
 science consisted in banishment. Whoever, 
 whether in war or peace, opposed obstacles to 
 him, was an enemy whom he set about destroy- 
 ing. A partisan of Sylla was a Cimbrian in his 
 eyes. He acknowledged only two kinds of men, 
 
64 THOUGHTS. 
 
 friends and enemies. An ambitious egoism was 
 his only conscience, his only rule of conduct. 
 He elevated the vilest who took sides with him ; 
 he suppressed the noblest who opposed him. 
 " Rome," " Country," meant nothing to him. To 
 rule, to rule alone, to rule no matter how, to rule 
 before and against all men, that was his passion. 
 Marius was an indefatigable and pitiless sword 
 against the enemies of the Roman name, which 
 cut them down or expelled them ; turned against 
 his fellow-citizens, that sword decimated them 
 to such a point that there remained in Rome 
 only a small number of people, who appeared 
 shadows of men and of Romans. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Victus, victima ; fiostis, hostia. . . . These 
 etymologies tell more about the cruel Roman 
 civilization than all the accounts of Titus 
 Livius. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Pompey, born a patrician, the man of the 
 aristocracy ; Caesar, also born a patrician, the 
 man of the democracy ; Cicero, plebeian by 
 birth, a patrician by education, incessantly be- 
 tween Pompey and Caesar, while awaiting the 
 hour to founder in the gulf into which the irres- 
 olute man, who tries to keep the middle between 
 two contrary currents, rarely fails to fall. 
 
HISTORY, HISTORIANS. 65 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Augustus, the nephew of Julius Caesar, young, 
 obscure, inexperienced, the heir of a name which 
 condemns him to the empire of the world, sys- 
 tematically cruel, will be the scourge of the 
 universe until the day when he can become its 
 delight. 
 
 What matters the way to him ? The goal is 
 all. At need, he will exile his friends, he 
 will elevate his adversaries. Like the cork 
 plunged in water, he will strive towards the 
 surface with all his nature. By as much 
 as Octavius was ungrateful, inexorable, vindic- 
 tive, by so much will Augustus appear full of 
 mildness, I will even say of good nature. 
 Who immolates Cicero, and pardons Cinna ? 
 Who covers Italy and the East with corpses, 
 and weeps over the legions of Varus? Who 
 causes the slave to be hung, who was guilty of 
 having eaten a roasted quail, and saves another 
 slave who has just unintentionally broken the 
 crystals of Vedius Pollio ? Octavius, Augustus. 
 
 Thus ambition defeated renders men fero- 
 cious, and, satisfied, persuades them to gentle- 
 ness. Why did not Octavius possess Rome at 
 his birth ? He would, perhaps, have always 
 been Augustus. 
 
66 THOUGHTS, 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Polycrates, on finding in the body of a fish 
 the ring which he had flung into the sea, turns 
 pale with fright. Alexander's Philip, on hear- 
 ing, one after the other, three pieces of good 
 news, implores a reverse. Paulus Emilius 
 wishes to have the coffins of his two dead chil- 
 dren accompany him on his triumphal way. . . . 
 Everywhere is distrust of fortune ; everywhere 
 a disposition to fear a trap of the perfidious one. 
 . . . There is something more than experience, 
 something more than hearsay, in this ; there is 
 an inborn feeling; the memory of some great 
 original misfortune, justly inherited ; the un- 
 conscious avowal of a disobedience, deserving of 
 chastisement, not of favors. . . . Ausonius pro- 
 found for this once, ably summed up the spirit 
 of antiquity in this hemistich : — 
 Fortunam reverenter habe. 
 
 XX. 
 
 The Roman Empire held its peace before 
 Augustus ; one day he wished to impose upon 
 it the article, which is lacking in Latin, and a 
 universal cry arose; Domitian imposed alpha- 
 betical reforms by edicts, and there was no one, 
 from consul to lictor, who did not burst with 
 laughter. Chilperic perpetrated some ortho- 
 
HISTORY, HISTORIANS. 6? 
 
 graphical decrees, which aroused more indigna- 
 tion than the abomination of that husband of 
 Fr£degonde. 
 
 Servility indulges in these unexpected rebel- 
 lions. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Suetonius recoils before no detail ; modesty- 
 is nothing to him : the truth, whatever it may 
 be, nothing but the truth, the whole truth, naked 
 in history as in the fable ! It is not that he is 
 shameless, nor indifferent to good and evil. 
 Many have thought so, and wrongly, as it seems 
 to me. Suetonius always distinguishes between 
 what is virtuous and what is vicious ; only he 
 avoids moralizing, and contents himself with 
 exposing the facts, in order that the reader, the 
 sole judge, may pronounce with full knowledge 
 of the case. Hence, no political considerations, 
 no moral reflections. 
 
 Suetonius does not relate like Titus Livius, 
 he does not sing like Quintus Curtius, he does 
 not reason like Sallust, he does not moralize 
 like Tacitus ; Suetonius reports simply and 
 crudely what he knows through having seen it 
 or learned it. He lacks dash, depth, and scope ; 
 still he interests, he'instructs, he causes thought. 
 The historian exhibits but little genius, no 
 doubt, but the relater of anecdotes deserves 
 well of posterity. 
 
68 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Jeanne d'Arc : She was not suffering from 
 "hallucinations." She was not an "adventu- 
 ress." Holy voices said to her, "Quit the distaff; 
 take the oriflamme and the lance !" She gives 
 her name, she offers proofs. Nothing astonishes 
 her, neither court, nor camp, nor field of battle. 
 Those who are in command obey her. A cui- 
 rass protects her bosom and her heart. Scoff- 
 ers and impudent men hold their peace ; when 
 this young girl passes on horseback, the poor 
 people say, "May God and the good Virgin 
 take pity on the kingdom of France ! " 
 
 The Englishman envelops her with his hate, 
 the Frenchman with his love. She is the 
 "Saint," she is the "Sorceress." A strange 
 sorceress, in sooth, who delivers her country by 
 the command of God. Once blood tinges her 
 armor ; and what blood is it ? Her own. Her 
 hand is raised in exhortation, never to slay ! 
 She dies as she has lived, like a woman, a hero, 
 a Christian. 
 
 An old poet says that she reproduces Hercu- 
 les in her life and in her death ; a rather absurd 
 comparison, but grandiose and striking. Upon 
 the scaffold she weakens, she mourns her pure 
 young life ; the fire frightens her : " Mercy ! " 
 There is no mercy, and she becomes resigned. 
 
 I have seen Jeanne d'Arc in that very Rouen 
 
x HISTORY, HISTORIANS. 69 
 
 where she wept because she must die. The 
 statue was heavy and unpleasant, without human 
 expression, without a celestial expression. I 
 saw it with my heart most of all, and I have 
 always shuddered at the memory of it. 
 
 The Bishop of Orleans, Alexander Guillemin, 
 and Antoine de Latour have desired for the vir- 
 gin, for the warrior, for the martyr, yet another 
 glory, — that of the canonized saint. This fourth 
 crown will blossom on her brow when the reign 
 of the sons of Voltaire shall have come to an end. 
 
 Stranger lips have vied in chanting the "Good 
 Lorrainese." Bedford and Shakespeare alone, 
 of all England, have dared to hate her ; Germany 
 has "filled her hands with lilies," that is to say, 
 with hymns and poems and dramas ; France, 
 dishonored blow upon blow by the grotesque 
 Chapelain and the infamous Arouet, owes the 
 homage, doubly expiatory, of an epic to her 
 incomparable child. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 The historian must be a poet ; not to find, 
 but to find again ; not to breathe life into beings, 
 into imaginary deeds, but in order to reanimate 
 and revive that which has been ; to represent 
 what time and space have placed at a distance 
 from us. 
 
 Scipio Dupleix, Daniel, Rapin-Thoyras, An- 
 
70 THOUGHTS. 
 
 quetil, etc., are bad historians for lack of being 
 poets. Even that which is authentic is not 
 true beneath their pens, and the days of old 
 die over again under their unintelligent hands. 
 Thiers, Lamartine, Michelet, Thierry, etc., know- 
 how to vivify ; they make one to see, hear, and 
 touch. Not only do they resuscitate, they even 
 create at times ; and they divine so well the why 
 and the how of everything, that one can sus- 
 pect them, like the commentator Brossette, of 
 "knowing Despr^aux better than Despreaux 
 knew himself." 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Christopher Columbus : Great genius and 
 great heart, equal to his prodigious mission. 
 Always rebuffed, always persevering; every- 
 where misunderstood, everywhere faithful to 
 himself. Reputed by turns a fool and impious, 
 he protests in the name of reason and of faith. 
 Nothing turns him aside ; neither ridicule, nor 
 arguments, nor calumnies, nor the threats which 
 will be realized, nor the promises which will 
 never be realized. Difficulties without, anguish 
 within. A secret voice which says to him, 
 " Courage ! " his only support. 
 
 Introduced by a monk to the presence of the 
 queen, he explains his project. "A new world ? 
 How can it exist ? Neither the ancients nor the 
 moderns have ever mentioned it ! . . . " 
 
HISTORY, HISTORIANS. Ji 
 
 Sadly he takes his departure. Whither will 
 he go ? To France, to face more ironies ? To 
 England ? But Isabella hastens towards him. 
 She pledges her jewels. Oh, noble woman, 
 willed also in the plan of God ! . . . Columbus 
 takes to the sea. 
 
 What an expedition ! Never were the mar- 
 vellous and the real so well united together! 
 Will he reach the goal ? Will that world which 
 he beholds at the bottom of his soul spring up 
 before his eyes ? Without doubt that world 
 exists, but will he find it ? . . . Oh, sleeplessness ! 
 oh, anxiety ! oh, toil ! He must struggle against 
 everything and everybody : against the elements, 
 against the crew, against the unknown. This 
 fleet bears the fortune of a world. 
 
 At length he cries, "Land! land!" He 
 leaps upon the shore ; he falls upon his knees ; 
 he raises his hands to heaven; his sword re- 
 mains in its sheath ; the standard of the queen 
 of Spain, the cross, the banner of the King of 
 kings, nothing else. And what need of more ? 
 
 He sails towards Spain ; with him envy has 
 embarked, exasperated by so much glory. In- 
 gratitude forces him, as indifference in former 
 days, to wander from city to city alone with his 
 son, whom Lamartine, in an inexcusable fit of 
 abstraction, blasts with the title of bastard. He 
 has given twenty Spains to Spain, and to shelter 
 
72 THOUGHTS. 
 
 himself he has a narrow lodging ! He has dis- 
 covered mines of gold and diamonds, and they 
 haggle with him for a bit of bread ! 
 
 The history of no people offers a contrast 
 parallel to this. Columbus, at the point of 
 death, possessing no longer anything but a cru- 
 cifix to remind him of God, and a trophy of 
 chains to remind him of men, bequeathing by 
 will to his poor son, in a poor " posada " of Val- 
 ladolid, his titles of Viceroy of the Seas and 
 Grand Admiral of the Indies ! 
 
 If, at least, the world revealed by him bore 
 the name of its discoverer ! He had the pain, 
 another has the profit. May God have opened 
 His paradise to the great Christian, who all his 
 life toiled laboriously to spread Jesus Christ and 
 the Church ! And, finally, may Rome, the seat 
 of all justice and source of all consolation, place 
 upon the altars the man who aided Peter to 
 accomplish the command of the Gospel : " Go ! 
 teach all nations ! " 
 
 xxv. 
 
 Danton asks pardon of God and of men for 
 having instituted the Revolutionary Tribunal ; 
 Jacques Lafitte asks pardon of God and men for 
 having established the government of July; 
 Jules Favre asks pardon of God and men for 
 having stipulated the non-disarmament of the 
 Parisian militia. . . . 
 
HISTORY, HISTORIANS. 73 
 
 Oh, shortness of human wisdom ! Oh, folly 
 of pride and vanity ! Thus men of the greatest 
 talent, wisdom, and experience fall with both 
 feet and open eyes into the snares foreseen by 
 all, ignored by themselves alone. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Certain names always awaken certain preju- 
 dices. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Interests desire order ; morals give it. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Ninety-three ! All the monkeys of pagan 
 Rome, whose dream it was to live as Romans 
 of the Republic, could but die as Romans of 
 the Empire ; that is to say, violently, at each 
 other's hands. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 A historian minister has been caught talking 
 like a historian of lazy kings, with supreme con- 
 tempt, wishing in his character of minister, that 
 kings should reign and not govern. 
 
 xxx. 
 
 A variety of bloods is necessary in nations, as 
 well as in families, for the health and well-being 
 of the races. 
 
IV. 
 MIND, TALENT, CHARACTER. 
 
 The conscience of the man who is given over 
 to his passions is like the voice of the ship- 
 wrecked mariner overwhelmed by the tempest. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Memory is an impression which reverberates 
 from time to time in the course of our life. 
 
 in. 
 
 Sensible men, so long as they have only an 
 experience of intuition and not of manipulation, 
 will not fail to commit follies. They would like 
 to treat the matters of life like matters of the 
 idea. Hence many, disappointments. Never- 
 theless, after a few lessons, they improve. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The witty man is reputed malicious, and, in 
 general, wrongly. He, malicious? Eh, good 
 heavens I smile at the epigrams which he lets 
 
MIND, TALENT, CHARACTER. 75 
 
 fly at you, and out of gratitude he will fall upon 
 your neck ! 
 
 v. 
 
 There is no humiliation for humility. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Imbeciles and malicious people hate witty 
 people. The malicious say that the witty are 
 imbecile, and the imbecile say that the wits are 
 malicious. 
 
 VII. 
 
 In the matter of praise we consult our appe- 
 tite more than our health. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 However much light there may be in a mind, 
 there are always some corners which remain in 
 shadow. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Epochs of decadence multiply that singular 
 contrast of a fine mind and a vile character. 
 
 We love justice greatly, and just men but 
 little. 
 
 XI. 
 
 There are sterile souls where nothing germi- 
 nates, neither vices nor virtues. 
 
76 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The fool never wishes to appear ignorant of 
 what he is being taught, nor to appear not to 
 teach you that which he is ignorant of. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The man who abstains on principle from flat- 
 tering the great soon renders himself suspected 
 in their eyes. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Much prudence does not always keep one 
 from committing follies, nor much sense from 
 thinking them, nor much wit from uttering 
 them. 
 
 xv. 
 
 What is experience ? A poor little hut con- 
 structed from the ruins of the palace of gold and 
 marble called our illusions. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Are the talents which have lost their virginity, 
 and afterwards their force, rare in our epoch ? 
 
 XVII. 
 
 "Buried alive! . . ." What measures are not 
 taken to prevent such a peril ? But there are 
 souls which are buried alive, hearts which are 
 
MIND, TALENT, CHARACTER. 77 
 
 buried alive, minds which are buried alive, and 
 who troubles himself about them ? 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 It is said, " Wit runs the streets." In truth, 
 I have been waiting a long, long time to see it 
 pass by, in order to take off my hat to it. It is 
 as rare in the streets as in the drawing-room. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Let us not have our heads in our hearts, nor 
 our hearts in our heads. 
 
 xx. 
 
 It is hard work to argue with a paltry and 
 supercilious fool in the presence of ignorant 
 people. How are we to set about establishing 
 the rights of reason ? Shall we address our- 
 selves to our man's judgment ? Our man has 
 no judgment ! Shall we appeal to the taste of 
 the audience? The audience is lacking in 
 taste ! 
 
 XXI. 
 
 What is less difficult to awaken than a self- 
 love which has grown drowsy ? What more 
 difficult to lull to sleep again than a self-love 
 once awakened ? 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Pride and voluptuousness engender madness. 
 
78 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XXIII. 
 No labor is hopeless. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 There is a frankness which is brutal, and I 
 detest it ; a frankness which is indiscreet, and I 
 fear it ; a foolish frankness, and I pity it. 
 There is also a frankness which is opportune, 
 delicate, and good ; honor to it ! 
 
 xxv. 
 We are more conscious that a person is in the 
 wrong when the wrong concerns ourselves. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Happy the man who mortifies the bitter pleas- 
 ure of crying out at everything which wounds or 
 oppresses. He will live in peace with others 
 and with himself. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Ah ! how much alone is a virtuous man ! 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Our experience is composed rather of illusions 
 lost than of wisdom acquired. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 I call a certain generative faculty "genius." 
 {Genius, generare.) 
 
MIND, TALENT, CHARACTER. 79 
 
 XXX. 
 
 "How is he?" "Ill, very ill." "But the 
 doctor has just told me that he passed a good 
 night, and that perhaps. . . ." " The doctor is 
 mistaken." "But who assures you? . . ." "I 
 know by a certain sign that he is lost : Vecors 
 js mourning aloud, Vecors his favorite, his 
 creature, — and that ever since yesterday ! " 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 A king, surrounded by his court, was seated 
 beside the highway. Savoir-faire came along. 
 "Who are you?" asked the king. Savoir-faire 
 replied, " I am not much of anything. If you 
 think good, I can be a great deal. Say the word, 
 and I shall have talent, wisdom, power, all that 
 I desire to make myself agreeable to you." — 
 " Remain," said the king. 
 
 Then Knowledge (Savoir) passes. The king 
 in his abstraction did not perceive him. " King, 
 Knowledge ! " cried a courtier. Knowledge, with 
 a humble mien and trembling lip, approaches. 
 " Sire, my words are straightforward, my heart 
 is true, my hand is just. Take me into your 
 employ : I shall be of service to you." 
 
 The king replied, " Away, proud creature ! " 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Our character often makes our conscience. 
 
80 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 He : " I have been owing you for more than 
 a year ; I wish to pay my debt. . . . What is it ? " 
 
 The workman : "Twenty-five francs, sir." 
 
 He : "Twenty-five francs ? Oh ! Oh ! . . . Let 
 it go at twenty francs." 
 
 The workman : M My account is just, sir ! 
 Merchandise is dear, work is at a standstill, and 
 workmen are scarce, so scarce ! . . ." 
 
 He : "I have said twenty, and I stick to 
 that." 
 
 The workman : " I am sorry. . ." 
 
 He : " It is an insult ! My friends shall know 
 about you ! " (He opens his purse.) 
 
 A beggar (half opening the door) : " Charity, 
 gentlemen ! " 
 
 He : " Capital ! . . . It shall not be said that I 
 have the shame and you the profit (tossing a 
 Louis d'or to the workman and a five-franc piece 
 to the beggar). "Take that, and begone." 
 
 The beggar : " Five francs ! Oh, the good 
 man ! " 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Salt sprinkled on the earth renders it sterile ; 
 mixed with the soil, it renders it fruitful. 
 
 xxxv. 
 Experience teaches the good that there are 
 wicked people, and the wicked that there are 
 good people. 
 
MIND, TALENT, CHARACTER. 8 1 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 " Every sincere opinion is worthy of respect." 
 ... I make a distinction : the sincerity is a thing 
 worthy of respect. The opinion ... if it is vir- 
 tuous, yes ; if not, no. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Our judgments are inspired by our acts more 
 than our acts by our judgment. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 How many sacrifice honor, a necessity, to 
 glory, a luxury ! 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 People who are calumniated are like fruits. 
 They are bitten ; therefore they are good. 
 
 XL. 
 
 Imitation is a necessity of nature ; when 
 young, we imitate others ; when old, ourselves. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 The good hate evil, but not evil people ; the 
 evil abhor both good and good people. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Yesterday I plucked up some plants and flung 
 them on the dung-heap. ... I found them this 
 morning blossoming and smiling. 
 
82 THOUGHTS. 
 
 Thus do beautiful souls flourish under humili- 
 ation. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 The foolhardy man prevails there and now ; 
 the prudent man in the long run and every- 
 where. 
 
 XL1V. 
 
 This lower world must be traversed as ship- 
 wrecked mariners traverse the sea, with head 
 above the billows, eye and arms towards the 
 shore. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 An undisputed merit finds no great difficulty 
 in appearing modest. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Success causes us to be more praised than 
 known. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 The cause of good has against it both the 
 vicious who combat it, and the just who defend 
 it badly or not at all. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 You have talent ? Possibly ! But do you 
 make the most of it ? That is to say, do you 
 exert yourself, more or less, according to times, 
 places, and people ? If you simply intend, but 
 
MIND, TALENT, CHARACTER. 83 
 
 do not exert yourself, your talent will probably 
 profit no one, and it certainly will not profit you. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 " The air which the body can breathe does not 
 extend very high," say the physicists. . . . 
 
 The air which the soul can breathe here be- 
 low is still less abundant. 
 
 If a great personage of lowly birth commits a 
 base action, " He forgets himself," more than 
 one will say. Eh ! no, he recollects himself ! 
 
 LI. 
 
 " Simple, innocent, candid, na'ff." These 
 words take a sense which make one smile in 
 exact proportion as public morals take a turn 
 which makes one weep. 
 
 LII. 
 
 The subtle mind excels in giving reasons for 
 a thing ; the penetrating mind, in finding their 
 reasons. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Our soul, which the world pretends to divert 
 with its vanities, resembles the child which is 
 consoled by the offer of a rattle in lieu of a star. 
 
84 THOUGHTS. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Is it you who are barking so, Molossus ? 
 What has been done to you ? You fly into a 
 fury at everything, at the wind, the rain, the 
 sun. . . . Your tongue is a lash which is always 
 raised, always resounding. May the saints of 
 paradise preserve me from your wrath! It 
 bursts forth more o quickly than the thunder, 
 more abundantly than the storm, more impetu- 
 ously than the hurricane. It shakes, it twists, 
 it uproots, it carries away, it disperses ! The 
 less cause it has, the more effect does it pro- 
 duce. In truth, you are no longer a reasonable 
 being, you are an element. You have no regard 
 for any one, you respect nothing. You set out ; 
 your gallop is accelerated by the speed acquired ; 
 and you strike blindly, cut and thrust, to right, 
 to left, above, below, far and near, at random ! 
 Who could flatter himself at finding mercy 
 before you, implacable man ? You want all to 
 hold the same reason, your own ; you want all 
 to have the same character, the same senti- 
 ments, your own, always your own. Woe to 
 him who opposes you with an if, a but, a smile, 
 a gesture, a silence ! You sacrifice him on the 
 instant to the Furies. Thus your aspect terri- 
 fies, Molossus. Mothers flee in desperation, on 
 perceiving your approach ; and little children 
 
MIND, TALENT, CHARACTER. 85 
 
 take flight, in terror amid tears and cries of 
 "the bugaboo! . . ." 
 
 LV. 
 
 Who suffers more, the capable man who is at 
 the bottom and who should be at the top, or the 
 mediocre man who is at the top and ought to be 
 at the bottom ? 
 
 LVI. 
 
 It is not as far from the heart to the mouth, 
 as it is from the mouth to the hand. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 We all boast of something : one of his ances- 
 tors, another of his alliances, one of his face, 
 another of his mind, another of his heart, one 
 of his hopes, one of his disappointments, one 
 of his fortune, another of his poverty, one of 
 his virtues, another of his vices. . . . That man 
 who boasts of not boasting is not the one who 
 boasts the least. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 The violet beneath the grass, the nightingale 
 amid the foliage, the genius who has patience, 
 the virtue which hides itself, — these are four 
 charming things. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 What virtue is not indispensable to the witty- 
 man, to enable him to deny himself the pleasure 
 
86 THOUGHTS. 
 
 of a malicious hit ? Jean Racine, at the mo- 
 ment of his greatest fervor, bit his lips until 
 they bled, in order to restrain a sally. 
 
 LX. 
 
 Genius makes its way with so much difficulty, 
 because this lower world is in the hands of two 
 omnipotences, — that of the wicked, and that of 
 the fools. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 What is a virtuous man ? Some one who 
 possesses a perfect whole of religious, social, 
 and domestic virtues, perfumed with delicacy. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 Our sentiments, our thoughts, our words, lose 
 their rectitude on entering certain minds, just 
 as sticks plunged in the water look bent. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 We amend our defects less than our good 
 qualities. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 The irresolute man blesses the necessity 
 which will absolve him from taking any side 
 whatever. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 If you have neither virtues nor vices, rejoice; 
 you will be called good : if you lack wit and 
 
MIND, TALENT, CHARACTER. Zj 
 
 imagination, be comforted ; you will be consid- 
 ered sensible and "practical." 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 That which puts the last touch to the perver- 
 sion of the wicked man, finishes the conversion 
 of the good one. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 What is slander ? A verdict of " guilty " 
 pronounced in the absence of the accused, with 
 closed doors, without defence or appeal, by an 
 interested and prejudiced judge. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 All which bars his road gives way, willingly 
 or unwillingly, before the man of talent who no 
 longer goes alone. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 We thrive on evil for a time, in order that it 
 may the more surely ruin us in the end. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 This man has his defects ; yet he cherishes 
 truth and defends justice. And petty souls 
 exclaim : " Oh, the inconsistency ! Oh, the 
 scandal ! . . ." But pious hearts say : " Oh, 
 the native nobility of the man ! oh, the happy 
 contradiction of the Christian ! " 
 
88 THOUGHTS. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 The wicked man has two ways of injuring, — 
 by doing good, and by doing evil. 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 When the tongue puts itself at ease, it puts 
 everything else under constraint. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 A multitude of things awake in us at first 
 .sight a sensation which seems to be memory. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 Very few men are capable of judging. "The 
 general opinion " is often merely the opinion of 
 a few accepted by all. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 A tree with lofty head has less shade at its 
 foot. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Too many social or literary conventionalities 
 prevent one's being "one's self," either as a citi- 
 zen or as a writer. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 A man makes his way better with agreeability 
 without merit, than with merit without agreea- 
 bility. 
 
MIND, TALENT, CHARACTER. 89 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Fortuna had, formerly, only the meaning of 
 luck, chance, opportunity ; to these we have 
 added the meaning, riches ; " to possess a great 
 fortune. . . ." Facultates signified "pecuniary 
 resources," alone ; it no longer designates any- 
 thing but the " powers " of the mind. Never- 
 theless, the expression is good, "To give ac-< 
 cording to one's powers." 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 The world constitutes itself the judge and the 
 executioner of whomsoever sacrifices his con- 
 science to it. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 Conscientious men are, almost everywhere, 
 less encouraged than tolerated. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 One sort of humility springs from pride ; one 
 sort of pride springs from humility. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 He who says, " I have done wrong," however 
 wicked he may be, could be more so. 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 How many are there who do not sin from lack 
 of desire or lack of occasion ? 
 
90 THOUGHTS. 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 The folly which we might have ourselves com- 
 mitted is the one which we are least ready to 
 pardon in another. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 The man of talent who is born poor, can 
 neither take care of himself, look out for him- 
 self, nor place himself where, when, and as he 
 should. Daily bread solicits his attention first 
 of all, and holds him captive from the beginning. 
 He cannot live according to his mind, except at 
 "leisure" hours, by hiding himself, and com- 
 promising himself. Possessing neither complete 
 liberty, complete independence, complete ease, 
 nor complete respect, he runs a great risk, if he 
 arrives at the goal at all, of arriving old and 
 way-worn. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 When those who can and ought to do us good 
 content themselves with paying us off in so- 
 norous compliments, let us console ourselves 
 with the thought that we are superior to them 
 by the whole depth of their baseness. 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 A whole heaven is contained in a drop of dew, 
 a whole soul within a tear. 
 
MIND, TALENT, CHARACTER. 91 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to 
 succeed by his talent. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 We are never well served except by that which 
 we support well. 
 
 xc. 
 
 Dignities are fruitful ; dignity, alas ! is sterile. 
 
 xci. 
 
 The lion in his cage must have his bow-wows, 
 and the despot in his palace, his fussy little 
 minds and flatterers. 
 
 xcn. 
 
 The same clouds which grew thick and dark 
 to prevent the sun from shining, clothe them- 
 selves in sjuppleness and transparency when the 
 sun has forced them to make way for him. 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 There is a slowness in affairs which ripens 
 them, and a slowness which rots them. 
 
 xciv. 
 
 The philosopher spends in becoming a man 
 the time which the ambitious man spends in 
 becoming a personage. 
 
92 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XCV. 
 
 Reason ! reason ! . . . As much as you like ; 
 but beware of thinking that it answers to every- 
 thing, suffices for everything, satisfies every- 
 thing. This mother loses her child : will reason 
 comfort her? Does cool reason counsel the 
 inspired poet, the heroic warrior, the lover? 
 Reason guides but a small part of man, and that 
 the least interesting. The rest obeys feeling, 
 true or false, and passion, good or bad. 
 
 xcvi. 
 
 Satan, having one day convoked his grand 
 council, the ministers of hell, when on the point 
 of taking their places Abated the question of 
 precedence. 
 
 " The place on my right to the most worthy ! " 
 exclaimed Satan. 
 
 Lust pleaded his right ; Falsehood asserted 
 his title ; Pride vaunted his merits. 
 
 Satan listened in indecision. 
 
 Sarcasm gave vent to a grin, and said : u No 
 one is more worthy than I, Satan. The evil 
 which these do is little compared with what I 
 know how to effect. One can correct himself 
 of all of them, but one can never free himself 
 from me : they ruin individuals, I destroy em- 
 pires ; they encourage vice, I discourage virtue. 
 
MIND, TALENT, CHARACTER. 93 
 
 Through me, enthusiasm expires, justice suc- 
 cumbs, truth becomes afraid, duty ashamed. 
 Devisor perdet civitatem. ..." 
 
 " Come, seat thyself beside me ! " said Satan. 
 
 xcvu. 
 
 On earth we obtain nothing without effort ; 
 how, without virtue, shall we attain glory in 
 heaven ? 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 Reason is habitual, secondary inspiration ; 
 inspiration is superior, intermittent reason. 
 
 xcix. 
 
 Like those statues which must be made larger 
 than " nature " in order that, viewed from below, 
 or from a distance, they may appear to be of 
 the " natural " size, certain truths must be 
 " strained " in order that the public may form a 
 just idea of them. 
 
 c. 
 
 What is a day without sun, or a man without 
 goodness ? 
 
 ci. 
 
 Ah ! how little we know those who know us 
 best. 
 
 en. 
 
 A brain without judgment is like a carriage 
 badly hung, which upsets on the way. 
 
94 THOUGHTS. 
 
 cm. 
 
 Pervicax has been studying, observing, writ- 
 ing these thirty years to no purpose. With the 
 exception of two or three who suspect his worth 
 and hold their peace, no one takes Pervicax seri- 
 ously. "But if he possessed merit, the masters 
 would salute him in the sight of all ! . . ." 
 
 But behold homage comes from above and 
 afar to seek Pervicax in the depths of his isola- 
 tion. 
 
 " Really ? . . . Such a surprise ! . . . Thq 
 man has talent, it must be confessed. . . ." 
 
 And in one day Pervicax becomes a prophet ; 
 a prophet in his own country! He is sur- 
 rounded, admired, glorified. Some pamphlet 
 which he published fifteen years ago amid uni- 
 versal indifference is lauded ; some college com- 
 position in which his genius began to dawn is 
 exhumed ; his latest work is placed upon the 
 table by itself, with a paper-knife between the 
 leaves ; " it will be read page by page with 
 delight, as it deserves ; his ideas, his style, are 
 charming ! . . ." Thus Pervicax enters upon 
 his triumphal path. The time for the shrugging 
 of shoulders, for sly looks and heart-rending 
 smiles is past. Everything has changed its 
 aspect, and the stones which were hurled at 
 him must now be placed in orderly fashion, and 
 
MIND, TALENT, CHARACTER. 95 
 
 a pedestal must be constructed of them for the 
 statue which is being prepared for him. 
 
 civ. 
 Generosity is more charitable than wealth. 
 
 cv. 
 In a brilliant position a piece of folly speedily 
 creates a sensation. 
 
 cvi. 
 
 Let those talk who assert that in order to 
 speak with knowledge of a passion of the heart, 
 it is necessary to have shared it. O, thou who 
 art chaste, remain chaste. Study vice outside 
 thyself ; it is enough. Do not become impure 
 in order to know. To graft good upon evil is 
 divine ; to graft evil upon good would be Satanic. 
 Teach us by experience, O, converted libertine, 
 what a misery sin is ; thou canst do it, and it 
 is thy duty. And you, snow without a spot, 
 sweet-scented lily, if you renounce your white- 
 ness, what will you be good for? To enlarge 
 the dung-heap in the corner. 
 
 cvn. 
 All has not been discovered in the firmament 
 of ideas. The sons of Galileo and Herschel 
 every year point out some planet unknown in 
 this quarter of the universe ; why should not 
 the disciples of Descartes and Leibnitz find in 
 
g6 THOUGHTS. 
 
 some corner of the brain, in some fold of the 
 heart, a star, very ancient, since it would date 
 from God ; and very new, since it has beamed 
 upon our horizon only yesterday ? 
 
 Silence, philosopher ; priest, resignation. 
 
 CVIII. 
 
 Repress a certain disposition to treat as ene- 
 mies those who do not believe, pray, think, act, 
 nor speak as thou dost. 
 
 cix. 
 It is impossible to be just if one is not gen- 
 erous. 
 
 ex. 
 
 The Revolutions of Sweden made a great 
 noise at their birth. The Swedish ambassador 
 was ordered to offer the author a pension and 
 the cross. " The Abb£ Vertot ? " he inquired 
 at the court of Versailles. " Not known here." 
 "The Abbe Vertot?" he asked of the Acad- 
 emy ; the same reply. He seeks the editor : 
 "Can you tell me where the Abb6 Vertot 
 lives ? " "In a village between Paris and 
 Melum." " With whom ? " " At home, in the 
 parsonage. The Abbe Vertot is a simple coun- 
 try cure." "Ho! that makes a difference!" 
 And the ambassador pocketed the purse and 
 the decoration. 
 
 Only those who have, receive. 
 
V. 
 JOY, SUFFERING, FORTUNE. 
 
 What prince of Europe or of Asia, seeking 
 throughout the whole of his vast empire for a 
 happy man, found him at last in the skin of a 
 poor wretch who had no shirt ? Felicissimus 
 has a shirt, and more, thank God, but in spite 
 of that, Felicissimus is certainly the happiest 
 man beneath the canopy of heaven. Listen to 
 him, look at him, apropos of everything, not to 
 say of nothing. Joy beams from his eyes, over- 
 flows from his lips, wells up from his heart to 
 gush forth far and near, all around him. Every 
 one honors him, distinguishes him, is his friend. 
 The slightest word, the slightest piece of polite- 
 ness, covers him with glory. A mere nothing 
 becomes gold by passing through his mouth. 
 The entire universe gravitates towards him and 
 revolves about him. " I have just dined with 
 my friend, the ambassador; I have received a 
 visit from my comrade Z, . . . the deputy ; the 
 poet X . . . wishes to render homage to me in a 
 
98 THOUGHTS. 
 
 poem he is composing, etc." There is no great 
 personage who does not seek him, who does not 
 consult him. ... If Felicissimus has a regret 
 (which takes nothing from his beatitude), it is 
 that he is not able to multiply himself, to suffice 
 for the love of all. Life, for him, is a perpetual 
 banquet, where he is suffocated under roses. 
 
 Let us not be jealous of Felicissimus ; let us 
 rather admire him, since he does not wish to be 
 pitied. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Nothing vivifies, and nothing kills, like the 
 emotions. 
 
 in. 
 
 Great joys weep, great sorrows laugh. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Present unhappiness is selfish ; past sorrow is 
 compassionate. 
 
 v. 
 
 Let us prefer, let us not exclude. 
 
 VI. 
 
 A certain sadness constitutes a refinement of 
 pleasure, which is peculiar to pride. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The passions have a certain something, I 
 know not what, about them, which always 
 tempts, and which never contents. 
 
JOY, SUFFERING, FORTUNE. 99 
 
 VIII. 
 At first we hope too much, later on, not 
 enough. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Hope deceives, enjoyment undeceives. 
 
 x. 
 
 One day everything breaks and crumbles, 
 another day everything rises again. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Few know how to suffer, from lack of heart ; 
 or how to enjoy, for lack of mind. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Press anything you will, a groan will issue 
 forth. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Trees assume, on the approach of winter, an 
 air of anguish, an accent of desolation which 
 are thrilling. One would say that all these 
 leaves were struggling before they fall and die. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Many conditions are necessary for happiness, 
 which are rarely encountered together. 
 
 xv. 
 He who does not appreciate does not possess. 
 
100 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 We shall know whether we have been happy, 
 we do not know if we are so. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " I was ignorant, I was happy ! "... all proud 
 spirits, anxious to ignore, more anxious to know, 
 breathe forth this cry of pain, since Adam, the 
 first who desired and the first who was deceived. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Does he desire a thing? It is with all his 
 heart.' Neither appetite nor sleep will divert 
 him from it. . . . Frustrated, he is disenchanted. 
 The news of a success long waited for in vain, 
 finds him indifferent. In everything, sponta- 
 neity, opportuneness, alone are sweet to him. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 We abandon ourselves to revery, before our 
 eyes first flit fantastic forms. We almost see 
 them ; they seem to have a body ; they turn, 
 they withdraw, they return, like the butter- 
 flies which play about a lamp ; they caress our 
 imagination with the tip of their wing. Little by 
 little our fancy strays among the folds of a con- 
 fused and fluttering veil. Our eyes dilate and 
 become fixed, gazing but seeing nothing. . . . 
 
JOY, SUFFERING, FORTUNE. 10 1 
 
 Let some one come, we start up as though 
 awakened from the midst of a dream. 
 
 xx. 
 
 There are days when we permit ourselves to 
 be invaded by great waves of sadness. Our 
 mind becomes cast down, our will succumbs, 
 our soul leaves us. We think we are no longer 
 free. Our energy seems fettered hand and 
 foot. We have no longer either force or desire 
 to do anything. We regard ourselves with 
 amazement, sometimes with pity. Happy are 
 we if tears come to our aid ! . . . But this arid 
 and silent malady dries the eyelids after having 
 dried up the heart. Body and soul become sus- 
 ceptible to the highest degree ; the light pains 
 us, we seek the shadow; the human voice 
 wearies us, we bury ourselves in silence ; social 
 life is a burden, we embrace solitude ; we live 
 with difficulty, as a wicked man lives with his 
 remorse. We eat our hearts out at pleasure. . . . 
 Terrible trial ! What poison can be compared 
 to that virus which chills and consumes ; which 
 paralyzes, pulverizes, and dissolves ; which dis- 
 suades us from virtue, and disgusts us with 
 generosity; which renders us enemies of our- 
 selves and of every one else. 
 
 We detach ourselves from what we love the 
 most, willingly, coldly, obstinately. We display 
 
102 THOUGHTS. 
 
 lamentable ingenuity in destroying our own 
 happiness of memory or hope. Every sweet 
 word returns to us like a bitter after-taste ;• all 
 devoted service, every flattering distinction, 
 every delicate attention produces upon us the 
 effect of an irony. 
 
 We bear our torture about with us, and when 
 it is necessary to smile, the lips assume sinister 
 folds. . . . And we exaggerate this evil which is 
 already so great, with a cruel pleasure. If such 
 a disorder were lasting ! woe, ah ! yes, woe to 
 us ! but God at whom we are sulking (for this 
 strange nightmare sets us against>. God also), 
 does not hold us sternly to our proud infirmity ; 
 and in order to snatch us from the peril, he 
 sends us either an all-powerful consolation or a 
 real sorrow. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Pleasure once tasted satisfies less than the 
 desire experienced for it torments. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Say nothing good of yourself, you will be dis- 
 trusted ; say nothing bad of yourself, you will 
 be taken at your word. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Those men whose backs are so elastic in 
 bending before you, in the hour of your pros- 
 
JOY, SUFFERING, FOXTUJVF. 103 
 
 perity, will find them just as elastic for straight- 
 ening up against you in the day of your 
 adversity. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Since unhappiness excites interest, many, in 
 order to render themselves interesting, feign 
 unhappiness. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 The chief cause of our misery is less the vio- 
 lence of our passions than the feebleness of our 
 virtues. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 We often experience more regret over the 
 part we have left, than pleasure over the part 
 we have preferred. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 All moralists have discerned a mysterious 
 connection between pride, that voluptuousness 
 of the spirit, and voluptuousness, that pride of 
 the flesh. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 The same vanity causes us to announce our- 
 selves as new as to mind and ideas, and ancient 
 as to descent and nobility. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Great dejection often follows great enthusiasm. 
 
104 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 The imagination passes over pleasure, but not 
 over suffering. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Long-continued happiness seems to require 
 an excuse, and long-continued unhappiness, par- 
 don. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 One grain of sand, which would not check a 
 torrent, holds in check the sea. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 When unhappy, one doubts everything ; when 
 happy, one doubts nothing. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Our folly does not fail to seek happiness where 
 even our reason knows well that it is not to be 
 found. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 At one time everything succeeds with us, 
 though we heap faults upon faults ; at another 
 time we might perform wonders, and nothing 
 succeeds according to our wish. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Whoever does not recognize himself in good 
 fortune, will recognize himself just to that de- 
 gree in misfortune. 
 
JOY, SUFFERING, FORTUNE. 105 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 The happiness which is' lacking makes one 
 think even the happiness one has unbearable. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 I look at what I have not, and think myself 
 unhappy ; others look at what I have, and think 
 me happy. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 If you feel happy to the point of saying so, 
 listen ! unhappiness is at your door. 
 
 XL. 
 
 Man is not made for joy, and he becomes 
 habituated to joy to the point of satiety ; man 
 is made for pain, and he resists pain to the point 
 of despair : a double mystery ! 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Success shows off our good qualities ; lack of 
 success shows off our defects. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Merit passes current, — but as contraband. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 We are deceived both by our hopes and by 
 our fears. 
 
I06 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Delicate souls seefn more at their ease in deli- 
 cate bodies. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Evil often triumphs, but never conquers. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 " I thought him faithful. . . . He has deceived 
 me ! " To say, " I deceived myself," would be 
 more just. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 At the bottom of every man there is an abyss 
 which hope, joy, ambition, hate, love, the sweet- 
 ness of thinking, the pleasure of writing, the 
 pride of conquest, cannot fill. The whole world 
 cast into that abyss would not satisfy it ; but, oh 
 my God ! a drop, one single drop of your grace, 
 causes it to overflow. It is you who are the 
 principle of real joy. Without you one laughs, 
 but one says at that laugh, " Why dost thou de- 
 ceive me ? " That laugh is harsh, like a note 
 which offends the laws of harmony; cold, like 
 those waters which never reflect the sun. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 The same desire which, planted on earth, 
 will produce the flowers of a day, sown in 
 heaven, will bear the fruits of eternity. 
 
JOY, SUFFERING, FORTUNE. 1 07 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 The heart which has wept much resembles 
 the rock of Horeb, which is now dry, but pre- 
 serves the mark of the waters which gushed 
 from it in days of yore. 
 
 Everything that is exquisite hides itself. 
 
 LI. 
 
 There are in this world beings who are not of 
 this world. The public (for a long time the ex- 
 pression ran — the vulgar herd), when it beholds 
 them pass, judges them to be haughty, eccentric, 
 insane. . . . Ah ! if the public could see them feel, 
 think, suffer ! Then it would account them as 
 more of men than other men. 
 
 LII. 
 
 Pleasure attracts — like a void. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 That which deceives us and does us harm, 
 also undeceives us and does us good. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Socrates asked that he might be lodged and 
 fed at the expense of the Republic in the Pryta- 
 neum of Athens ; he obtained a prison and hem- 
 
108 THOUGHTS. 
 
 lock. — Merit is conscious of itself ; at need, it 
 puts forth its claims. . . . Happy is it if its de- 
 mand is merely refused ! . . . 
 
 LV. 
 
 In youth one has tears without grief : in age, 
 griefs without tears. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 Lofty mountains are full of springs ; great 
 hearts are full of tears. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 Who resists the pleasure of preaching to a 
 priest ? 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 Let us correct the habit of believing in. men, 
 and of placing our hopes on them ; let us not 
 correct ourselves of the habit of loving them. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Natural philosophers say, " This drop of water 
 contains worlds of vibrii, volvoces, elminthae, 
 and animalculae of all sorts." And we marvel. 
 Who will tell (a nomenclature no less interest- 
 ing) the myriads of thoughts and feelings con- 
 tained in one tear which has fallen from the 
 heart ? 
 
 LX. 
 
 Solitude vivifies ; isolation kills. 
 
VI. 
 TIME, LIFE, DEATH, THE FUTURE. 
 
 Cicero asserts that the noises of earth pre- 
 vent men from hearing the harmony of the stars 
 as they roll through the ether. 
 
 In the same way, the tumult of the century 
 and the bustle of life render the soul deaf to the 
 mysterious voices which summon him on high. 
 
 The future, the future, to what can I compare 
 the future ? 
 
 A strange flame flies through the shadow. 
 And in order to seize it, you run, — you run to 
 seize the wandering light. . . . Courage ! you 
 will overtake it. . . . You have reached it ! 
 Alas ! the brightness disperses, and a precipice 
 engulfs you ! Image of the future. 
 
 The future, the future, to what can I compare 
 the future ? 
 
 You have been told of the mirage which 
 spreads over the horizon of the desert. The 
 
HO THOUGHTS. 
 
 pilgrim, hoping for a soft couch amid the ver- 
 dant grass, and fresh water from the sparkling 
 lake, hastens onward. Transported with joy, he 
 stretches out his hands, he utters a cry. . . . 
 Alas ! the mirage has vanished ! Image of the 
 future. 
 
 The future, the future, to what can I compare 
 the future ? 
 
 When you were a child, it sometimes happened 
 to you that you possessed handfuls of gold- 
 pieces in your dreams. You said to yourself : 
 " How shall I spend this fortune ? I will buy 
 this and that. . . ." Illusion ! The day breaks, 
 there is no more treasure ! Ima'ge of the 
 future. 
 
 A man ransacks the great sea, seeking for 
 pearls : " Surely, I shall have a happy old age ! " 
 He speaks and dives, and dives again, and goes 
 on diving ! Horrors ! when he rose he was a 
 corpse ! Image of the future. 
 
 Yes, the future lures us on, bears us away, 
 and ruins us. I speak of that future towards 
 which men direct their gaze. Another future, 
 very faithful, very true, is the future in the 
 skies. That never deceives. When shall we 
 pursue it, — it alone ? 
 
 in. 
 
 Man, finding himself miserable, comforts him- 
 self with the thought that the past, which he has 
 
TIME, LIFE, DEATH, THE FUTURE, in 
 
 not seen, was worth more than the present, — that 
 present which is obvious to him with all its vices 
 unsoftened by distance. 
 
 IV. 
 
 "Oh, cruel death!" . . . This, if I mistake 
 not, is a pagan phrase. Death is not cruel, but 
 just and severe : just as the sentence, severe as 
 the punishment. 
 
 v. 
 
 To live, to outlive, to live again, should be the 
 whole of man. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Life is a stream upon which drift flowers in 
 spring, and blocks of ice in winter. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Strange is life, into which we enter weeping, 
 through which we weeping pass, and out of 
 which we go still weeping. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 "Time restores all things." Wrong! Time 
 restores many things, but eternity alone restores 
 all. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The time comes when one feels the need of 
 the slumber of death, as, at the end of a toil- 
 some day, one feels the need of another sleep. 
 
112 THOUGHTS. 
 
 X. 
 
 All that passes gives rise to reflection. 
 
 XI. 
 
 A little more and I should have crushed this 
 worm which must devour me to-morrow. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Man is a braggart ! "lam killing time," he 
 says, and it is time which is killing him. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Ah ! how quickly time passes ! and time is our 
 life, it is ourselves here below. Life seems 
 interminable when one surveys it from the end 
 at which it begins ; but the other end makes 
 haste and approaches apace. In vain do we 
 leap to right and left, to retard its entrance; 
 naught avails. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 That which we have the most desired is that 
 which will chastise us best. 
 
 xv. 
 
 Born in the crowd, Calixtus now rules. His 
 equals of yesterday obey him to-day. Will he, 
 the man of genius, who has happily succeeded, 
 remember amid his lofty fortune, the humble 
 
TIME, LIFE, DEATH, THE FUTURE. 113 
 
 and obscure, encumbered with their unrecog- 
 nized talent ? Will he rise to go and take them 
 from the rabble rout where they are in danger 
 of suffocation ? Will he incline graciously 
 towards them ? Will he direct a glance towards 
 them ? Will he send them a word ? Will he 
 reach out his hand to them to separate them 
 from the vulgar herd, to raise them above the 
 multitude, to make them manifest to themselves, 
 to himself, to all ? Calixtus cannot ; Calixtus 
 will not. The great Calixtus loves only fools. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 He compares himself to the guest, who, weary 
 of eating in emptiness and digesting in imagi- 
 nation, takes it ill that he should be summoned 
 at last to seat himself at table at the hour of 
 betaking himself to sleep. 
 
 It is because he is, above all, delicate, — I mean 
 delicate in character. A morsel of dry bread 
 pleases him better than a dainty dish obtained 
 by a mean action. That which predominates in 
 him is the head and the heart. The disinter- 
 estedness of which he has furnished more than 
 one example, has won him the peculiar renown 
 of not being a practical man, of living in the 
 clouds, like a poet as he is. It is not denied 
 that he knows how to think, to write, to speak ; 
 all admit that he is a master on these points. 
 
1 14 THOUGHTS. 
 
 As for other things, he passes for being unsuited 
 to them ; this makes him so difficult to place, 
 that he is no longer thought of, if he was for- 
 merly thought of at times. An employment for 
 him ! a title ! a dignity ! . . . In the first place, 
 he has not asked, and in the next place, what if 
 he were to refuse ! . . . 
 
 XVII. 
 
 A- blade of grass which has sprung up amid 
 the sand, bends towards the brook ; and each 
 wave, as it passes, shakes the blade of grass, 
 which falls, and rises to fall once more. . . . 
 
 This blade of grass is man, who is tossed 
 about by the billows of life, and who is, in turn, 
 bowed down by trials, and raised again by hope. 
 
 The blade of grass yields little by little to the 
 wave, falling each time lower, rising each time 
 less high. The wave draws it, tears it up at 
 last, and bears it away. 
 
 Thus man, that blade of grass, toils wearily 
 until he succumbs. That rapid water, which is 
 called time, tosses him about, uproots him, and 
 hurries him on towards the ocean of eternity. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Lack of credit is worse than lack of money. 
 "The loss of money is not deadly," says the 
 
TIME, LIFE, DEATH, THE FUTURE. 115 
 
 proverb. Money can be replaced. But what 
 can replace credit and honor ? 
 
 XIX. 
 
 A man who is not in his place is like a dis- 
 located bone ; he suffers «*nd he causes suffering. 
 
 xx. 
 
 Man made anew by Christ, in his image and 
 in his likeness ; man raised anew, and yet anew 
 by grace ; man educated and completed by faith, 
 ecce homo ! this is man, man such as he should 
 be, the true man, the man of Christ, the Chris- 
 tian. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Some. certain period of your life, which was 
 so cruel to traverse, will, perhaps, one day 
 merit your regrets ; and, perhaps, at the present 
 moment you may, without knowing it, be finish- 
 ing your share of terrestrial happiness. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Happiness comes only from one quarter, 
 unhappiness comes from all quarters. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Life is passed in desiring what one has not, 
 in regretting what one has no longer. 
 
Il6 THOUGHTS. 
 
 xxrv. 
 
 Death, indifferent apparently, by dint of being 
 impartial, spares no one ; and those who depart 
 warn us that we must depart also. That which 
 saddens the heart instructs the spirit. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 Ah ! how happy must they feel who die, even 
 amid their regret for the earth, at meeting once 
 more, there on high, those of their family who 
 have preceded them ! Here we part ; in heaven 
 we shall find each other again. 
 
VII. 
 
 THE FAMILY, CHILDHOOD, OLD 
 AGE. 
 
 We know only how to repeat, "There are 
 no longer any children." But parents — are 
 there still any of them ? 
 
 XL 
 
 A child should be early furnished with the 
 greatest possible sum of ideas, of healthy, broad, 
 and grand ideas. Man only likes to learn what 
 he knows. Now, if he is not forewarned in 
 time of what is just, beautiful, and good, he 
 runs the risk of spurning the just, later on, 
 as false, the beautiful as ugly, the good as bad ; 
 and it will be so much the worse for him ; and, 
 above all, so much the worse for society. 
 
 in. 
 
 I. His son leaves him, his only son, the son of 
 his old age, his well-beloved son. And the 
 
Il8 THOUGHTS. 
 
 young man smiles through his tears, he smiles 
 in order to deceive his mother, whose heart 
 trembles, — he, whose heart is trembling too. 
 Poor son ! 
 
 II. Time passed more swiftly in former 
 days! A letter? Oh, joy! What does he 
 say ? What is he doing ? . . . He loves you, 
 he says that he loves you ? . . . A letter is very 
 sweet, but an absent son is something cruel ! . . . 
 Mother of Jesus, who lost your child twice for 
 three days, give me back my son ! . . . Poor 
 Mother ! 
 
 III. After seven years (a century), this son 
 returns. It is he ! She kisses him a hundred 
 times in one, and she lifts him up, as she presses 
 him to her bosom ! . . . Relations, neighbors, 
 friends, troop in : " You beheld my pain, now 
 share my pleasure ! " The table is laid. They 
 eat, they drink, they sing, — " To thy health, 
 mother! "... The unfortunate woman tries to 
 answer, stammers, bends over her child, and 
 expires ! Poor mother ! poor son ! . . . 
 
 IV. Too much joy after too much pain brings 
 death. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " That old man ! . . . That young man ! . . . " 
 So age is an evil, an evil which depends upon 
 man, since he is reproached with it on every 
 occasion ! 
 
THE FAMILY, CHILDHOOD, OLD AGE. 119 
 
 Women must endure as much as possible; 
 man must make himself endured as little as 
 possible. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Mother : Grieve not, my son, because 
 thou art a child. Age hastens on, too, and time 
 bears us away fast enough, without being urged 
 by the spur. Keep thy ignorant joy. Days 
 will come full of bitterness and anguish. Then 
 the burden of life will multiply on thy head, 
 thou wilt walk with bended back and bruised 
 heart. Thou art in thy springtime : then blos- 
 som, sing, and smile while awaiting the sharp 
 and gloomy winter. 
 
 The Father : Life is a stern and manly thing, 
 my son. Have a care that thou become a man 
 speedily. Thy soul is small, increase it ; thy 
 heart is frail, strengthen it. Command thy feet 
 to be energetic, thy hands to be robust, thy 
 breast to be proud and persevering. Every 
 road groans. Happy is he who never succumbs, 
 or who, having succumbed, rises again ! Pre- 
 pare to pay the tribute of sweat and tears, owed 
 by every traveller upon earth. 
 
 The Child : Joy, sadness, confident tranquil- 
 ity, uneasy foresight, . . . which shall I choose ? 
 Must I abandon myself to present delights, or 
 
120 THOUGHTS. 
 
 anticipate future trials ? What is life ? All 
 pleasure ? all pain ? . . . I shall only know the 
 taste of that vase of mystery after I shall have 
 drunk it to the dregs. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Education, properly understood, is that which 
 teaches discernment, in order that one may 
 love or hate that which is really loveworthy or 
 hateful. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 A child is told, — " Love this person : hate 
 that one : " and the child, who has confidence 
 in the command, cherishes the one and detests 
 the other. 
 
 Many great persons are children in this re- 
 spect, loving or hating on the word of others. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Does instruction render good natures bet- 
 ter, as frequently as it renders bad natures 
 worse ? . . . 
 
 x. 
 
 Childhood is subject to slumber so profound 
 that the sense of time and place is lost : — 
 What day is to-day ? . . . Where am I ? . . . are 
 the cries on waking. 
 
THE FAMILY, CHILDHOOD, OLD AGE. 12 1 
 
 XI. 
 
 The memory of certain dreams survives child- 
 hood. ..." Have I seen that or dreamed it ? . . ." 
 one asks one's self, at long intervals in the 
 course of one's life. 
 
VIII. 
 THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 
 
 The people of Tulle call our peasants peccata. 
 This nickname contains an admirable meaning. 
 The peasant is, indeed, sin, original sin, still 
 persistent and visible, in all its brutal simplicity, 
 in all its simple brutishness. 
 
 ii. 
 
 The peasant loves nothing and nobody except 
 for the use he can make of him. 
 
 in. 
 
 If you do good to a peasant, he will not love 
 you, perhaps : do evil to him and he will cer- 
 tainly fear you. 
 
 IV. 
 
 All that any peasant requires, to become a 
 great saint, is to be supernaturally that which 
 he is naturally, — laborious, sober, patient, re- 
 signed. . . . 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 23 
 
 The peasant who does not come to us from 
 necessity, believes himself to be necessary, and 
 assumes importance as soon as we go to him 
 out of charity. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The peasant is a deist ; beyond that he heeds 
 nothing that is said or done. 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Does one ever know of whom or of what one 
 may have need ? " That, in brief, is the peas- 
 ant's preoccupation, his criterion, his spring of 
 action. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The peasant is a sullen payer, like the soil 
 which he tills. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Creation has no animal more sober than the 
 peasant in his own house, less sober than the 
 peasant in other people's houses. 
 
 x. 
 
 The peasant does not so much deprive him- 
 self of enjoyment as he enjoys the act of de- 
 priving himself. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Was there ever a peasant-patriarch ? 
 
124 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The peasant admits that the most petty em- 
 ployee in the town is greater than he. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The earth, mellowed by a recent rain, shines 
 in the sun, as fat and brown as a honey cake. 
 
 The man, goad in hand, weighs down the 
 heavy plough which two cows draw with diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 The team, it seems, never goes as it should. 
 
 And the man harshly reproves, reproaches, 
 appeals to the poor beasts. 
 
 "Ha! Rousselle! Ha! Fromente ! ha, there ! " 
 
 But Fromente and Rousselle, no longer 
 knowing what they are about, trace the furrow 
 awry : and the man, more provoked than ever, 
 speaks sharply to them, strikes them, and blas- 
 phemes ! 
 
 The cows utter a long low of distress ; it is 
 useless, they will not stir. He must unharness 
 them. . . . 
 
 No sooner are they unbound than they set 
 out for home at a gallop, gloomy, wild, agitated 
 as at the approach of a storm. . . . 
 
 A fellow -laborer with God, he has blas- 
 phemed. 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 12 5 
 
 XIV. 
 
 They were married young ; he seemed a child, 
 she a little sister. Acquaintance produces dis- 
 gust, — often, not always. Witness this couple, 
 who were more loving every morning than the 
 day before. 
 
 The most fragile thing is not love ; it is life 
 
 She died. . . . He could not die, but he ceased 
 to live. 
 
 Oh, lost happiness ! Oh, faithful love ! 
 
 As his face grew ever paler, some said : " It 
 is the effect of the black : his color will come 
 back when he leaves off mourning. ..." 
 
 He no longer cared for anything. Work, ap- 
 petite, sleep, farewell ! Oh, how lonely he found 
 himself night and day ! 
 
 Driven by excess of anguish, he rose at all 
 hours, and he wandered about the house, making 
 the ancient joists to creak beneath his fevered 
 tread, drinking in the tears which coursed down 
 his cheeks. . . . 
 
 Sometimes, craving air, he opened a window, 
 and, with his elbows resting upon the sill, he 
 gazed at the heavens, — the heavens all sown 
 with stars. 
 
 One woman had pleased him among a thou- 
 sand women, and among so many stars one star 
 pleased him. That star was something to him. 
 
126 THOUGHTS. 
 
 Did she recognize him? Yes, without doubt. 
 Otherwise, why that long look opened obsti- 
 nately upon him, that long, deep, pure, calm, at 
 times humid, look ? . . . Ah, it is the look of his 
 love! 
 
 And his eyes, his arms, his lips, begin to reach 
 up on high ; and his heart begins to beat as 
 though it would burst from his breast. . . . 
 
 Then, exhausted with fever and ecstasy, he 
 let himself fall upon his knees ; and the dawn, 
 taking pity on him, brought him a little repose. 
 
 One day I met him going (in body, not in 
 spirit) to his vineyard. 
 
 On perceiving me, he smiled ; and I can still 
 behold his strange smile. 
 
 " Well ? ..." I asked, wishing to speak to 
 him, yet not knowing of what to speak. 
 
 He replied at once : " Well ... I have seen her. 
 They said she was dead ; they think she is be- 
 neath the earth, down there ! . . . It is folly ! She 
 is there above, alive ! . . . I invite her to come 
 down. . . . She would like to. Can she ? . . . 
 Ah, the poor woman ! . . . In truth, it cannot 
 go on so ; we must return together, she with 
 me, or I with her, for ever ! " 
 
 xv. 
 
 A sojourn in the country pleases city folk 
 greatly, — a brief and rare sojourn, in the fine 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. \2J 
 
 season, when all is verdure, flowers, fruit, songs 
 of birds, lays of hay-makers, reapers, and vine- 
 dressers ; when the days are long, pure, and 
 generous, the nights slightly warm and serene, 
 the roads perfumed ; when life is superabundant 
 within us and around us ; when Nature, hospi- 
 table queen, receives. 
 
 And the city people exclaim : " God ! God ! 
 how admirable is the country ! How I should 
 like to live in the country ! How happy you are 
 to live in the country ! " . . . 
 
 That the country is admirable is certain ; that 
 you would like to reside there is possible ; but 
 that it is good to live there is open to debate. . 
 
 The country is not always flowery, nor melo- 
 dious, nor ready with a welcome. After summer, 
 autumn, winter ; that is to say, cold, retreat, 
 silence, mourning. The trees are bald and 
 poor ; the bushes depeopled, surly, sinister ; the 
 roads filled with ignoble mire ; the meadows 
 faded ; the fields bare ; the sky lugubrious ; the 
 air inclement and harsh. 
 
 Henceforth, the only refuge is the hearth : the 
 hearth sparkling with life, gaiety, and flame in 
 the cities ; mean, monotonous, sluggish, cold, in 
 the country! . . . 
 
 XVI. 
 
 A sample of the country does the city good ; 
 a sample of the city does the country good. 
 
128 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Have you ever walked some road, green to 
 right and to left, quite white in the middle, on 
 one of those evenings of autumn, mysterious 
 and solemn, which cause a man to hold his peace 
 as in a church ? 
 
 Then you have heard a voice issuing from the 
 depths of the shadow, grave, sonorous, penetrat- 
 ing, sad as a sob, plaintive as a sigh. 
 
 A poet calls the frog a " little monster with 
 soft eyes." That saying has caused laughter. 
 Why has he not, rather, praised his voice ! We 
 might have smiled, perhaps. . . . 
 
 That liquid voice falls drop by drop \nto the 
 obscure silence of things, like water from the 
 rock into the granite basin ; that voice vibrates 
 and leaps through space like the bow of cork 
 beneath the crystal keys of a harmonica. 
 
 A daughter of Saint Theresa said to me, 
 " Admire the manner in which God has shared 
 his gifts among his creatures ! The peacock 
 dazzles with his plumage, but his hoarse cry 
 brings disenchantment. The nightingale is a 
 paltry bird ; it is clad like a beggar ; when it 
 sings, there is no music so delicious. And the 
 frog, how ugly he is! Ah, good Jesus, how 
 ugly the creature is ! Nevertheless (and I say it 
 to you only), he alone, amid solitude, moves me 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 29 
 
 according to my desire, and helps me to medi- 
 tate." . . . 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Mme. de Se'vigne' and La Bruyere have a 
 gloomy page upon the peasant, which our econo- 
 mists and politicians, singularly moved, and with 
 reason, quote triumphantly : " Ah ! how much 
 better is the condition of the inhabitant of the 
 country, thanks to the revolution ! " . . . 
 
 In truth, the lot of the peasant is always the 
 same. Take a great lady, accustomed to the 
 splendors of the faubourg, or some prince of 
 finance, fascinated with the luxury and the 
 comfort of Paris ; show them suddenly, on the 
 spot, the sordid dwelling of one of our good 
 peasants, his frightful bed, his dirty table, his 
 course bread, his hard and heavy linen and his 
 vile clothes, his loathsome food and his nauseous 
 drink, his life narrow, harsh, desolate, imposed 
 upon by every one, deceived by all, rendered 
 harder by all, — show them this, all this and the 
 rest, and if they do not utter a cry of horror, of 
 pity, perhaps, for the great moralist and the 
 good letter-writer, it will be because they have 
 neither heart nor mind. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Every countryman who learns to read and 
 write, renounces the country in his heart. 
 
130 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XX. 
 
 The peasant who establishes himself in the 
 city falls by his own weight into the lowest 
 depths. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 A rare bird is the ex-peasant who is delicate 
 and not arrogant. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The countryman is too much of a child not to 
 be a liar. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 I have known peasants who thought too well of 
 the sun. That centre of light and heat appears 
 to them, by its habits, by its movements and its 
 beneficent action, a superior creature, and even 
 a creator, the Creator ! There is always some- 
 thing of the "pagan " in the "peasant." 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The peasant is ignorant of the art of express- 
 ing his thought directly and clearly : the truth 
 of a matter is not what you will hear about it, 
 but what you will divine with regard to it. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 In Theocritus, and Virgil, and Florian, and 
 Berquin, you do not imagine that the peasant, 
 when he sings, sings anything but "beautiful 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 131 
 
 nature," virtuous love, God, his hearth-stone, 
 the spring, flowers and fruits. . . . Illusion ! 
 The peasant devotes his mind to howling non- 
 sense, his heart to mewing coarse jests ! 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 The sun has just set in gold and purple, the 
 moon shines in the horizon ; stars twinkle 
 around her ; the cricket cries, the frog sighs, the 
 butterfly rustles, the nightingale, full of love and 
 harmony, bursts forth ; all is joy and light and 
 song and mirth and prayer and transport. . . . 
 
 Where is man ? There below he is sleeping 
 heavily, incapable of all else after having drunk 
 the wretched wine which he has thrown up in 
 the form of vile songs ! 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 When a poor peasant dies, it is not he whom 
 one pities (plaindre also signifies to regret in our 
 Limousin language), but his wife, his children, 
 the property which he leaves in disorder. The 
 disceased's whole household might almost be 
 buried with him, so natural are suttees. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 The man of the fields is incomplete without 
 his beast of burden ; take away his ox, his cow, 
 his ass, and you spoil him. The Decalogue 
 
132 THOUGHTS. 
 
 raises a smile. . . . Moses knew his man. The 
 legislation of the Middle Ages also protected the 
 beast of burden. 
 
 Thus is explained the fast imposed upon ani- 
 mals, their accessory extermination or their sal- 
 vation : Homines etjumenta salvabis, Domine. 
 
 The farewell of the Arab horseman has long 
 been the subject of song and story. And the 
 regrets of the laborer for his oxen, of the house- 
 wife for her cows ? It seems to me that a Millien 
 or a Langlade would have found here a fruitful 
 theme. 
 
 Those who reproach Pierre Dupont for his 
 famous refrain, — 
 
 " J'aime Jeanne ma femme ; eh bien! j'aimerais mieux 
 La voir mourir, que voir mourir mes boeufs! . . ." 
 
 " I love Jeanne my wife ; well, I should much prefer 
 Rather than see my oxen die, to see the last of her !" 
 
 do not consider that a wife costs nothing, and 
 that oxen cost a great deal ; that a peasant can 
 live and work without his wife, but not without 
 his oxen. . . . 
 
 Thus Napoleon the Great counted the loss of 
 a horse dearer than that of a soldier. 
 
 xxix. 
 The dandelion. 
 
 Consider it ; an upright stalk, a round head, 
 set with winged seeds, all white and quivering. . . 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 33 
 
 One would say a ball of needles ; one would say 
 the helmet of a paladin bristling with darts. 
 
 The breeze, at dawn of day, blows gently, 
 gently gathers them, gently embarks them ; and 
 the pretty flotilla sails before the wind at God's 
 pleasure, mounting, descending, advancing ever, 
 furnished with its own ballast and its own sails ; 
 the ballast is the seed, which weighs it down 
 below ; the sail is the tuft which bears you on, 
 mysterious skiffs ! 
 
 And the innocent armada alights where God 
 calls it. It is often in an arid spot. The blessed 
 immigration establishes itself in this desert, 
 decks it with flowers, comforts it, peoples it, 
 while other seeds departing thence, go to colo- 
 nize other places in their turn. 
 
 May the gratitude of man sakite, in those dis- 
 tant regions, the wandering plant, with name as 
 graceful as itself ! 
 
 xxx. 
 
 She is a large and robust spinster, slow of 
 mind and of word, faded by age and poverty. 
 
 She tranquilly pursues her little path. To 
 help with the harvest and the vintage ; to break 
 hemp, to spin wool, for other people, of course ; 
 to tend a neighbor's child ; to rear, as she can, 
 a wretched little pig, which she will sell at the 
 end of a year for a miserable sum, this or nearly 
 this is her whole occupation. 
 
134 THOUGHTS. 
 
 Naturally, hunger sometimes pays her a visit ; 
 no one suspects it except the good God to whom 
 she prays in church, alone, at the hour when 
 people are supping in their houses. Sometimes 
 the poor woman sinks with exhaustion. Then 
 alms flow in abundantly: — 
 
 " But, B6n£dicte, when you are in want, why 
 do you not beg ? " — " Beg ? Death rather than 
 that ! " 
 
 " Then, why have you not married ? " 
 
 M He" ! No one wanted me." 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 O peasant, thou tillest the fields and fertil- 
 izest them, and sowest them ; 
 
 Thou makest the wheat to rise from the earth ; 
 
 Through thee, the " barren " is converted into 
 grain ; 
 
 Thou nourishest man, who is flesh. 
 
 It is thanks to thy efforts that we live here 
 below. 
 
 Thou buriest a dead, cold seed, which soon 
 revives, and flowers, and fructifies. . . . 
 
 Glory to thee, O peasant ! 
 
 O priest, thou tillest souls, thou enrichest 
 them with the word, and the example and the 
 seeds of faith, hope, and love. 
 
 Thou makest God to descend from heaven ; 
 
 Through thee, the wheat is changed into God ; 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 35 
 
 Thou nourishest man who is a soul ; 
 
 It is thanks to thy efforts that we live on high. 
 
 Thou dost bury a body forsaken by life, and 
 destined to decay ; but this body, reconciled to 
 its soul, will rise one day, and that day will be 
 as long as eternity ! . . . 
 
 O priest, glory to thee ! 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Towards the end of the second Empire, the 
 peasants showed themselves rabid Imperialists ; 
 they voted as one man in favor of the " Gentle 
 Caesar." And the politicians of Paris began to 
 cry: "Brutes of peasants!" etc. They de- 
 spaired of winning the peasant. They misun- 
 derstood him. 
 
 The prefects once changed, the mayors re- 
 placed, the deputies renewed, the peasant, who 
 was believed to be attached to the very soil trod- 
 den by the Rouhers and the Mornys, passed over 
 completely, arms and baggage, to the Republic. 
 
 And behold him a Republican until further 
 orders. 
 
 The peasant never sets out quickly, but he 
 always arrives surely. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 When will it come to pass that the peasant 
 alone will be ashamed to speak the language of 
 his fathers ? 
 
136 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 The Witch. 
 
 A philosopher has defined man as "a reli- 
 gious animal." Why am not I a philosopher? 
 I would define the peasant as " a superstitious 
 animal." 
 
 O Paul Bert, thou canst tear the heart from 
 the hedgehogs of Brive ; thou wilt never take 
 faith from our peasants. This faith is not always 
 in conformity with the Gospel : no matter ! it is 
 still faith, less abominable to men and angels 
 than incredulity. The countryman, in spite of 
 instructors, in spite even of the cures, believes 
 in sorcerers and witches, like the Romans, like 
 the Gauls. Canidia is not dead, nor Velleda 
 either. Ask M6rigale ! 
 
 " Knock ! knock ! 
 
 " — Who goes there ? 
 
 " — It is we, Me>igale. 
 
 " — What do you wish ? 
 
 " — The daughter of Jantou of Marsalieu, has 
 been burned all over with petroleum which was 
 poured upon her by mistake. Come, heal 
 her. . . ." 
 
 It is far to Marsalieu : the clock strikes mid- 
 night ; the sky is as black as pitch. . . . 
 
 Merigale hesitates. . . . Then: "Wait for me; 
 I will come down." 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 37 
 
 And she hastily fastens her petticoat, her 
 dress ; throws a handkerchief about her neck, 
 puts on her " straw," her galoshes. . . . 
 
 " The case is urgent, then ? " 
 
 "It is." 
 
 " Let us go ! " 
 
 Two women hasten to the right and left of 
 the witch ; five or six men precede them, some 
 carrying lanterns, others wisps of lighted straw, 
 others still cudgels. . \ . 
 
 Forests, meadows, thickets ; hedges, brooks, 
 and ditches are traversed at racing speed. . . . 
 O Rembrandt ! 
 
 And the procession gallops, gallops, gallops 
 on. . . . Woods, bushes, moors, question each other 
 in the darkness : "Where is Merigale going at 
 this hour ? . . . The owl forgets to hoot, and 'tis 
 all the better so ; the nightingale breaks off her 
 nocturne of love, and 'tis all the worse; the 
 frog, on hearing the earth resound, inquires in 
 his crystal voice : " Is it a witches' sabbath ? " 
 
 And the train gallops, gallops, still. . . . 
 
 Plains, valleys, hills, hold soft converse : 
 "But it is not Christmas, that Merigale should 
 go to midnight mass ? What is going on in the 
 country ? There is surely something new. . . ." 
 The watch dog barks at her, mistaking her for 
 the moon ; in the depths of the stable lows the 
 ox; the herdsman roused from slumber, mur- 
 
138 THOUGHTS. 
 
 murs, with eye pressed to the pane of his cabin : 
 " The Spectre Chase. . . ." 
 
 And the train gallops on. . . . 
 
 " It is here ! . . ." 
 
 Merigale enters, haughty and mysterious. 
 
 " The sick girl ? " 
 
 They point to the poor young girl, gasping, 
 screaming, swathed in bandages. 
 
 Merigale, full of her r61e, observes in silence 
 that open mouth, which utters cries of pain, 
 those limbs which contract, those arms which 
 are contorted. . . . 
 
 Those around her wait. A horrible waiting, 
 composed of contemplation and anguish ! 
 
 Suddenly:— "Ashes! fire! flame!" 
 
 No one understands, no one stirs. 
 
 " — A chafing-dish and embers ! " 
 
 They hasten, they elbow each other, they 
 contend for the kitchen utensils. . . . 
 
 A large earthen dish is placed on the table, 
 over against the bed, before Merigale. 
 
 " Favete Unguis ! " a priestess of Vesta would 
 have said. Our witch contents herself with 
 exclaiming : — " No noise ! " 
 
 The spectators hold their peace; the unfor- 
 tunate girl herself looks and listens. 
 
 Then Merigale raises her eyes to heaven, 
 blows upon the embers, and makes the sign of 
 the cross over them, over the dish, over the 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 139 
 
 child (the number three is sacred) : then sighs, 
 then coughs, then sneezes ; then mutters a 
 Pater, then whispers an Ave, then quavers a 
 Credo ; then strikes three blows upon her right 
 hand, then three blows upon her left ; then 
 grumbles and hisses out a mass of interjections 
 as frightful as they are uncouth, and which 
 make you think of the witch scene in Macbeth. 
 Finally she chants the cabalistic syllables of 
 Little Albert, jerking them out slowly. . . . 
 
 Here the witch resumes her ordinary expres- 
 sion of countenance, and her natural voice. 
 
 " Is it done ? " 
 
 u Yes, it is done." 
 
 A long sigh of relief runs through the 
 room. . . . 
 
 The little one's father comes forward. 
 
 "Thanks. . . . How much do we owe you ? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 " The good God will requite you ! " says the 
 mother. 
 
 Barely a fortnight has passed ; she presents 
 herself before Merigale, and from the depths of 
 a huge basket she draws out a pair of ducks, an 
 enormous pat of butter, a bottle of garus elixir, 
 and two pounds of wool. 
 
 "All that for me?" 
 
 " My husband has beaten over the whole of 
 Marsalieu to catch a hare for you ; impossible to 
 find one, to his great regret." 
 
140 THOUGHTS. 
 
 " The good man ! . . . And the little girl ? " 
 "The little one suffers no longer." 
 " Really ? " 
 "Dead! dead!" 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 The war of the slaves in Italy, the war of the 
 serfs in France, have bequeathed to history a 
 particularly mournful memory. . . . 
 
 Oh, ye who rob the peasant of his beliefs and 
 his money, stuffing his pocket with vile journals 
 and his heart with brutal desires, beware of the 
 reprisals which he will owe you for having put 
 him back into slavery, into servitude ! 
 
 xxxvi. 
 
 " Spare whom ? This virtuous man ? A vir- 
 tuous man is inoffensive. This wicked man ? 
 Yes, he may injure me." . . . 
 
 Thus speaks every peasant. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 A heavy rain has been falling since yester- 
 day. 
 
 Rain is dismal in the country. 
 
 Here there is no one to converse with : the 
 isolation is absolute. 
 
 A certain description of Washington Irving 
 haunts my memory ; it concerns a traveller who 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 141 
 
 has been detained in a country tavern by a rain 
 storm. Ah ! how well that rain is expressed ! 
 One sees it, one hears it falling and disappearing 
 in the water beneath the eaves ; and the ennui 
 of the gentleman becomes the ennui of the 
 charmed reader. 
 
 My ennui is not reflected, nor that which 
 comes from pleasure. I do not read the ennui 
 of another person ; I feel my own. It is less 
 poetical. . . . 
 
 Behold me alone amid the depths of night, 
 alone amid the heavy rain which makes the 
 young leaves rustle. The nightingale, newly 
 come, ceases her moan beneath this sullen rain ; 
 a warm summer rain would not thus benumb 
 her. The moon, instead of rolling through the 
 clear firmament round and splendid as the silver 
 wheel of some mysterious chariot, — the moon 
 drags herself wearily behind the opaque clouds. 
 
 There are those who journey very far, to seek 
 solitude and silence. I have found these last, 
 poor me, without so much trouble, and more 
 profound, more persevering, than my desire. . . . 
 
 I have not lived yet, not yet have I acted ; all 
 the little which I have been able to undertake, 
 has always burst in my hand. 
 
 In former days, unoccupied in spite of myself, 
 I still hoped. . . . 
 
 To-day, too old by ten years, I hope no more. 
 
142 THOUGHTS. 
 
 No past : no future. 
 
 I have always desired to live intellectually, 
 ideally, divinely ; and I have never done any- 
 thing but vegetate and languish ! . . . 
 
 The depths of the country ! the depths of the 
 province ! the vilest of men in the vilest of 
 lands ! , . . 
 
 I do not wish, in saying this, to set at naught 
 my dear Limousin, nor to scorn myself, a man, 
 a Christian, and a priest. But do you see where 
 and what I am ? A nothing in nothingness. 
 
 Many console me . . . lamentable consolation ! 
 Thus do people console and amuse a dying man, 
 by trying to persuade him of what they them- 
 selves doubt. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Three sorts of people die without affectation : 
 the priest, the soldier, and the peasant. 
 
 xxxix. 
 
 A monster has lately come into existence : 
 the infidel peasant. 
 
 XL. 
 
 Peasants are caught by the mouth, like fish. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 The last to cling to dying nations are the 
 priest, out of love, the peasant, from force of 
 habit. 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 43 
 
 XLII. 
 
 A certain peasant would have passed for less 
 acute had he been thought less stupid. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 The peasant refers everything to the mouth, 
 like little children. 
 
 XL1V. 
 
 The peasant passed from paganism to Chris- 
 tianity through great expenditure of miracles ; 
 he would return from Christianity to paganism 
 at a less cost. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 A peasant is a man very much as a block of 
 marble is a statue. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 The peasant has two words to designate the 
 companion of his life : femena, femna. The 
 "femna" is only the female of man; the "fem- 
 ena " is also the female of the animal. On this 
 score, my "femena" should be employed but 
 little, or not at all. It is, nevertheless, the 
 favorite term. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Children, women, and peasants like to be 
 flattered, which is as much as to say, that they 
 like to be deceived. 
 
144 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 The city does not take away, neither does the 
 country give, solitude ; solitude is within us. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 If we search well in the subsoil of many a 
 peasant, we shall end by discovering a certain 
 superior sense, which is difficult of explanation, 
 but which must be admitted. 
 
 "The fatherland!" A fine word, certainly, 
 and one which sounds well, and which makes 
 everyone start up, except the peasant. In order 
 to make the peasant rise up in his might, cry : 
 " Thy house, thy fields, thy money ! . . . be- 
 ware ! . . . " 
 
 LI. 
 
 The peasant dies of hunger all his life that he 
 may have something to live on after his death. 
 
 LII. 
 
 Far away, yonder, the sky appears all red. 
 
 " It is the sunset," says the man. 
 
 Wrong ! it is his house on fire ! 
 
 One of those wretches, so many of whom pass 
 among us nowadays, set a fuse beneath the 
 door, and the house has burst into flames. 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 145 
 
 The man darts forward, crying, " Fire ! " . . . 
 
 Then he bethinks himself, halts at a reasona- 
 ble distance, crouches down on the trunk of a 
 tree, listening to see if anyone is coming, and 
 wishing that they may come too late : 
 
 The house is insured ! 
 
 Meanwhile the alarm-bell bleats ; people rush 
 from the neighboring villages : " The furniture ? 
 Come!" 
 
 The man stirs not, makes no reply. 
 
 The furniture is insured ! 
 
 So burn on in peace, ye cupboards and chests 
 of his ancestors ; burn, bridal bed, and cradle 
 lately cold ; burn, picture of the Virgin Mary, 
 patron of the dead wife ! (Alas ! he will soon 
 replace her, when his house is once rebuilt. . .) 
 burn, military tunic ! burn, little frame of his 
 first communion. Souvenirs of glory, of love, 
 and of grief, souvenirs ancient and recent, burn 
 on in peace : 
 
 He is insured ! 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Our peasants tolerate God well : " He is not 
 there, if he is anywhere, and besides, he de- 
 mands neither gold nor silver." On the other 
 hand, they endure but ill the men of God, the 
 pope, the bishop, the cure. . . . 
 
 To tell the truth, they would tolerate their 
 other masters still less if they dared ! 
 
146 THOUGHTS. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 "What, shall he, the peasant, who needs 
 everything, pay the cur6 who needs nothing ! " . . . 
 Idiotic reasoning. Admirable reason ! thinks 
 the peasant. 
 
 LV. 
 
 The peasant never takes a walk. 
 The peasant gives his arm to his wife, for the 
 first and last time, on their wedding-day. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 To sell no matter what, no matter how, to no 
 matter whom ; behold in three words the whole 
 diplomacy of the peasant at the fair. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 The peasant has a second home, where he 
 enjoys himself no less than in the other, and it 
 is the fair ground. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 The peasant, as soon as he arrives at the fair, 
 ceases to be a Christian, to be a man. He is a 
 spider in the centre of his web. Neither the 
 voice of blood, friendship, nor respect is any- 
 thing to him any longer. " In war one must 
 adopt the methods of war ! at the fair the 
 methods of the fair ! " One is conscious that 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 47 
 
 he feels resolved to sell as quickly and ac dearly 
 as possible, to cheat even his neighbor, even 
 his own father and mother ! 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Absenteeism and Malthusianism are visibly 
 depopulating our country districts. The Natchez 
 and the Mohican have had their turn. The 
 next subject for a book will be: "The Last of 
 the Peasants ! " 
 
 LX. 
 
 The petty peasant who wishes to acquire a 
 competency ; the peasant in easy circumstances 
 who wishes to found a family ; the ex-peasant 
 who wishes to become monsieur. Malthus fur- 
 nishes the law for all of you, does he not ? . . . 
 
 LXI. 
 
 In spite of the fact that they are still young, 
 they will have but one son. 
 
 And this son, a spoiled child like every only 
 son, has come near perishing beneath a crum- 
 bling wall, in his turbulence and rashness. 
 
 "It would have been a lesson for the par- 
 ents ! " said a villager, who witnessed the affair, 
 with a mysterious smile. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 If the ex-peasant is father to a male child first 
 of all, it is enough ! If he has only daughters, 
 
148 THOUGHTS. 
 
 he will persevere until: the arrival of a boy. 
 This tardy son will be the eldest, the only child, 
 to speak rightly. The rest will stir only at 
 his beck and call. He will have as many ser- 
 vants as he has sisters. None of them will get 
 settled, all will devote themselves to monsieur, 
 their brother, and to his wife. If one of them 
 speaks of taking the veil, there is a long suit to 
 argue. The good father is inexhaustible in 
 whys and hows. " So you no longer love me ? " 
 he sighs ; then, " Who will counsel, guide, 
 take care of your poor brother ? " . . . Then he 
 begins to discourse about the clergy who tear 
 children from their family, and to rage against 
 that " era of ignorance and fanaticism, abolished 
 by the great revolution, when the victims of the 
 cloister . . . etc. ..." The vocation will be 
 finely tempered if it does not break in this as- 
 sault of sensibility and hypocrisy ! 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 " Scratch the Russian," said Napoleon, " and 
 the Tartar will reappear." And you, ye people 
 who favor obligatory instruction, polish and 
 varnish the peasant as much as you please, the 
 "peccata" will still remain; and it is fortunate 
 that it is so, since you must eat bread. 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 49 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 The saint tastes death, the philosopher drinks 
 it, the peasant swallows it. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 The peasant of the olden time revolted a pro- 
 pos of everything, d propos of nothing; the 
 modern peasant does not revolt ; he hardly com- 
 plains : he has universal suffrage, a pretty toy, 
 to divert his attention. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 " Liable to villain-tax and contribution of 
 forced labor at pleasure ! . . . " Thus spoke the 
 ancient law as it is maintained. The modern 
 law does not speak : too much speaking does 
 harm. It is a quicker matter to load down " the 
 beast with a thousand heads," to load it again, 
 to load it without end. The modern law is very 
 sly. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 The hygienist : " Air as well as bread is of the 
 first importance ; air, windows, my good man ! " 
 — "Yes, sir." 
 
 The collector : " So many openings, so many 
 taxes : pay up ! " — " Yes, sir ! . . ." 
 
 Whereupon, stopping up three windows out of 
 four : — 
 
150 THOUGHTS. 
 
 "No more air for me, no more light, nor 
 health, nor joy, except out of doors, beneath the 
 sky of the good God ! " says the peasant with a 
 sigh. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 " . . . Our fathers cried out when they were 
 deprived of a tithe, a tenth of their revenues ; 
 and you, you pay three and four tithes. . . ." 
 
 Who speaks thus ? Dreux-Br^ze in a manda- 
 mus ? Dupanloup in a pamphlet ? Rochefort, 
 Veuillot or Cassagnac in an article ? . . . 
 
 This language comes from a child of the 
 people, from a great manufacturer who is fond 
 of convincing a man of madness in order that he 
 may deign to allow himself to be healed, that 
 poor Jean Guetre, who " has been invoking thee 
 for thousands and hundreds of years, oh, repub- 
 lic of the peasants ? " 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 Our peasants never return from the city with- 
 out a loaf of white bread, with which to regale 
 themselves in the bosom of their family. This 
 gentleman bread chewed slowly, respectfully, so 
 to speak, possesses for them the savor of for- 
 bidden fruit, although they esteem black bread, 
 their own bread, more invigorating and more 
 healthful. 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. \^i 
 
 LXX. 
 
 For the peasant, the word Christian is sy- 
 nonymous with the word tnan. Admirable ac- 
 ceptation, in which the informing spirit of the 
 church makes itself plainly felt. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 The rural postman. Ye city folk, accustomed 
 to be spoiled by the post which coddles you at 
 all hours, you have no idea of the great place 
 which the rural postman occupies in the exist- 
 ence of us country people ; with what impatience 
 he is expected, and with what emotion he is 
 greeted when he makes his appearance once a 
 day, with his regulation cap, his blue blouse, 
 and that leather sack which contains so many 
 secrets ! 
 
 One is uneasy and hopeful while one is young. 
 One still believes in long memories and lucky 
 chances. "I may suddenly learn that I have 
 ceased to be useless and obscure. Providence is 
 a good mother. Fortune is blind, they say ; on 
 that score she is free from partiality. Perhaps I 
 have at length won in that lottery the prize which 
 is drawn now by this person, now by that, amid 
 the throng, and which introduces him abruptly 
 from the waiting-room where one pines away, to 
 the hall of honor promised to the fortunate." 
 
152 THOUGHTS. 
 
 A knock. It is he ! I open quickly. And 
 letters, journals, pamphlets fill my hands. A 
 general curiosity is followed by a curiosity, re- 
 stricted in limits, but all the more lively. 
 
 I carry my prize aside. Naturally, I run over 
 the most interesting. . . . 
 
 What is there new in Paris, that capricious 
 and terrible city ? And my poor little native 
 town, so humble in France, so great in my 
 heart, is it tranquil? Such an one is ill, such 
 another is dead. . . . The dearest friend of my 
 childhood is to be married : joy and patience to 
 the new couple! . . . 
 
 The postman has taken his departure after 
 wishing me " Good evening," to which in my 
 abstraction, I make but slight reply. Before his 
 coming I hoped, I feared. I shall begin again 
 in the same way to-morrow and always : to fear, 
 to hope, is not this all of life ? And does man 
 do anything else on the earth except wait al- 
 ways for a happiness which never comes ? 
 
 The world which is within me, has been 
 troubled from thought to thought, like a deep 
 sheet of water, from undulation to undulation ; 
 my soul is different from what it was a moment 
 ago ; things change around me. 
 
 Thus a humble postman binds my solitude to 
 the entire universe ; thanks to him, nothing 
 human is foreign to me. A poor man who sus-. 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 53 
 
 pects nothing, produces this profound impres- 
 sion on my heart ; the voice of this wretched 
 being vies with a fine piece of music or a power- 
 ful poem in agitating me. 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 "O priests, these peasants to whom you 
 preach incessantly, seem none the better for 
 it ! " . . . 
 
 It is true. But oh ! how soon they would 
 appear worse, if we preached to them rarely or 
 never ! 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 Obscure germ, remain beneath the earth. 
 Why shouldst thou wish to come forth and to 
 blossom ? Thou dreamest of the sun, the breeze, 
 the dew. Alas ! the sun scorches, the breeze 
 harasses, the dew crushes down and soils. In 
 the broad daylight trouble, not peace, awaits 
 thee ; pain, not joy ; and if some glory is prom- 
 ised to thee, it will be vain and brief. . . . Re- 
 main beneath the earth, obscure germ. 
 
 I will be a flower, I must be a flower. Ordeal 
 for ordeal, 'tis better to suffer in the light than 
 in the shadow. For I suffer here. And I do 
 not find it true, that isolation is happiness. 
 Night surrounds me, the earth oppresses me, the 
 worm affronts me. Desire, above all, is killing 
 me. I must be a flower, I will be a flower. 
 
154 THOUGHTS. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 The peasant loves the city and detests the 
 citizen ; the citizen loves the country and de- 
 tests the peasant. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 A stone detaches itself from the wall and 
 rolls to the middle of the road. . . . Who will 
 pick it up ? Who will restore it to its place ? 
 The stone is there, says the peasant to himself; 
 let it stay there ! It is a question of passing 
 over or around it. One year later, ten years 
 later the stone will still occupy the same spot, 
 like the god Terminus. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 May the good God grant me some day to quit 
 the country, and thenceforth, the country, viewed 
 through my memories, through my regrets, will 
 perhaps have charms for me ; like the faces of 
 parents who were harsh to us, and which appear 
 to us so gentle to gaze upon, when they are no 
 more ! 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 Some one has accused me of reproaching the 
 peasant with lack of patriotism ; that some one 
 has not understood me. 
 
 No, the peasant will not rise to defend that 
 which neither his hand nor his intelligence can 
 touch ! Country is a word which signifies noth- 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 155 
 
 ing to him. What you call Country, you men 
 who know, is a thing which interests him but 
 little, poor ignorant creature ! 
 
 Nevertheless he has a country, which is not 
 the whole of the other, but which is a part of it. 
 
 The child clings to its mother, by clinging to 
 the skirt of her dress. The peasant who takes 
 the trouble to defend his land, his hearth, his 
 village, takes the trouble at the same time to 
 defend the country. I have not said that the 
 peasant was not patriotic. A little more and I 
 would affirm that he is as much so, after his fash- 
 ion, as thou, thou tiller of paper ! 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Our country districts are difficult to traverse. 
 One must pass through meadows, fields, forests, 
 everywhere except along the roads. These nar- 
 row, tortuous roads, with their embankments, 
 make one think of the Styx and of Erebus, so 
 full are they of black, liquid, tainted mud : Styx 
 atra. 
 
 Our people, shod with wooden shoes higher 
 than the antique cothurnus, leap from one stone 
 to another without stumbling, almost without 
 looking, and swaying from side to side. Imag- 
 ine giants with a boat on each foot by way of 
 shoes. The idea of paving the road, in order to 
 remove the obstacle, never occurs to them. 
 
156 THOUGHTS. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 The countryman is less slow in sending for 
 the veterinary for his beasts than for the doctor 
 for himself. Ah ! when the doctor is summoned, 
 the sick man is very sick indeed ! Fifteen 
 francs a visit is still another malady ! and " ill- 
 ness upon illness is not health ! " 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 He passes by, drunken with pride and perhaps 
 with brandy, brandishing a vote. 
 
 I am tempted to cry out : " Stop him ! he is 
 mad ! he is armed ! he is going to commit an 
 evil deed ! " . . . 
 
 Poor good man, sold for a full bottle or an 
 empty promise, to the Michel Morins and to the 
 Robert Macaires of politics ! Poor good Chris- 
 tian, who gives his voice to the breakers of the 
 cross, to the la'fcizers of schools, of hospitals, of 
 churches ! Poor dear parishioner, faithful to 
 mass on Sunday, and to his communion on 
 Easter, obstinate, nevertheless, in upholding the 
 devourers of cur6s ! . . . 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 The peasant still lives under the law of fear ; 
 the law of love is a dead letter to him. 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 57 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 The peasant limits his duty to keeping the 
 house in bread. All other household needs are 
 as though they did not exist. "The little one 
 must have a dress," says the mother. — "A 
 dress ! a dress ! . . . Then make one out of one 
 of your cast-off gowns ! " — "I have used up 
 everything long ago, and the rags in which I 
 -now drag about every day are all that I have 
 left ! " — " Enough ! The little money which I 
 have, I need for myself! . . ." And the poor 
 woman, having drained all her resources, ex- 
 hausted all expedients, daring neither to borrow 
 nor to beg (for their house is a prosperous house), 
 resigns herself to stealing in her own home ; and 
 she sells, secretly, butter, poultry, wheat, etc., to 
 save the honor of her family ! 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 "The hail has played its usual pranks: the 
 Saint Michael, our best harvest, is lost ; the red 
 wheat dispersed to the four winds of heaven ; 
 the buckwheat cut to pieces, crushed, and soiled ; 
 of the dung-heap, what ! Th'e few grapes which 
 had come out, scarcely enough to make a little 
 dreg-wine, trampled down as if in a vat ! " 
 
 " There is some spell in it." 
 
 " Some spell ? I understand. But who has 
 cast the spell ? " 
 
158 THOUGHTS. 
 
 " I do not wish to sin, but . . ." 
 " H6 ! speak, you ceremonious woman." 
 " Here then : I have been told — I did not see 
 it — that M. le Cure of X stopped at Font- 
 Vive, under the pretext of watering his horse. 
 The horse was a long time drinking. It was as 
 hot as an oven yesterday ; and the cure plunged 
 his arms into the basin up to the elbow, and then 
 he shook them, as though he were shaking a 
 holy-water sprinkler, and then he looked at the 
 sky, and moved his lips ; then he dipped his 
 handkerchief in the water and wrung it. What 
 he murmured was not quite understood, but 
 people thought they heard the word " Storm." 
 " Really ? . . . Ah ! it is he who brought the 
 hail ! . . ." 
 
 " Surely. Everybody knows that cures bring 
 hail. My husband has often ridiculed me for 
 doubting it, in the beginning. . . ." 
 
 And our fiddle-faddles in Paris say in print, 
 that, as soon as the peasant is taught to read 
 and write, he is in the way of progress ; and that 
 in less than fifteen years he will be lacking in 
 nothing ! And people talk of the ignorance of 
 the olden times, of the superstitions of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, as though ignorance and superstitions 
 did not exist always, everywhere, — the weeds of 
 that more or less cultivated garden which is 
 called human society ! 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 159 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 This peasant has discovered a very ingenious 
 means of enriching himself, which is to lend 
 out, at interest, money which he has borrowed 
 gratis. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 After a frost which changes the green mantle 
 of spring into soiled and pendant rags, after a 
 storm which slashes vines, wheat, and fruit-trees, 
 those adornments of summer, those treasures of 
 autumn, the poor peasant, suddenly robbed of 
 his labors, is truly fine to contemplate : " God 
 has given, God has taken away ; blessed be his 
 holy name." This word of Job is not on his lips ; 
 he does not know it ; but this word is contained 
 in his resigned silence. A marvellous subject 
 for a picture, the peasant surveying his kingdom, 
 which has been laid waste by a storm ! 
 
 Nevertheless, to be exact, revolts do arise here 
 and there, revolts which are sometimes satanic ! 
 Shall I say it ? Madmen have been seen shak- 
 ing their fist at heaven, or even levelling their gun, 
 loaded with ball, at the zenith, and firing without 
 a movement of the eyelids, in order to hurl dead 
 from his throne Him who reigns on high ! 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 The peasant lacks simplicity, through igno- 
 rance and false taste. If he sings, his song is 
 
l60 THOUGHTS. 
 
 silly, it is not simple ; if he dresses, it is not 
 simply, but strikingly, offensively, grotesquely ; 
 if he builds, nothing is put in its place, all is out of 
 proportion, without convenience or beauty. Give 
 a peasant a long and broad piece of cloth, a spa- 
 cious piece of ground, instead of a simple coat, 
 a vast house, he will cut and build for himself 
 some scanty, complicated thing, I know not 
 what, where his mind will be at ease just in 
 proportion as his body is under constraint. 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 The most intolerable creature to the peasant 
 who farms on shares is . . . the collector ? — No. 
 — The bailiff ? — No. — The marauder ? — You 
 have not guessed it yet ; it is the proprietor of 
 the farm, a funded gentleman of recent date, 
 an artisan, who has grown rich, who knows no 
 other pleasure at present than" handling the 
 spade, driving the plough, planting, sowing, 
 and, above all, giving advice. The poor peas- 
 ant has him always before or behind him, like 
 his shadow. " Such a thing must be finished, 
 such another must be begun ; this must be done 
 thus or otherwise ; pay attention to this or to 
 that. . . ." The rustic boor becomes irritable, 
 fretful. . . . With great difficulty does he re- 
 strain himself: a forced smile, an equivocal 
 assent, serve him for a reply. At evening, he 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. l6l 
 
 returns home more weary than is his wont, full 
 of secret grumbling, and committing the gentle- 
 man to all the fiends, under his breath. 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 The spot is fertile ; the wheat elbows the 
 vine ; the chestnut and walnut are neighbors 
 to the apple and the peach ; maize and buck- 
 wheat grow side by side. The stables are full of 
 cows, pigs, and lambs ; the poultry-yards are 
 peopled with chickens ; milk, eggs, butter, and 
 cheese abound ; " Comfort and ease dwell 
 here," you think. Wrong. Ask the notary; 
 question the huckster ; and one will admit that 
 he can no longer get enough money to lend ; 
 and the other will confess that ruin frequents 
 the country, and that one would never suspect 
 the poverty which afflicts nearly every family, 
 even those who have the appearance and the 
 reputation for wealth. . . . 
 
 And yet the peasant of to-day makes money 
 out of everything ; everything, except wheat, is 
 sold at a high price. Forty years ago a louis 
 d'or was a rarity ; a -bank-note was a curiosity ; 
 old men had never seen one. In our day, gold- 
 pieces are as common as the stones of the high- 
 way ; paper money flutters about like leaves 
 from the trees ; and poverty is everywhere. 
 
 Let him explain this who can. 
 
1 62 THOUGHTS. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 No one, after the priest, approaches nearer 
 the divinity than the peasant. 
 
 xc. 
 
 Matheline, at first sight, is like any other 
 peasant. A gown of serge, a cape of red cot- 
 ton, a head-dress of coarse cloth. . . . Could 
 anything be less elegant ? But look at her face ; 
 observe it well : does it not remind you of the 
 Pieta of Michael Angelo ? 
 
 It is a thin, pale face, framed in flame- 
 colored hair, streaked here and there with 
 threads of silver. Wrinkles furrow her brow, 
 her temples, her cheeks ; those wrinkles are 
 not all the work of time ; grief, that mysterious 
 worker, has hollowed out a portion of them ; 
 the bluish gray eyes, veiled by tawny lashes, 
 shine with calm energy. The whole physiog- 
 nomy inspires respect, would almost inspire 
 fear, were it not that goodness and gentleness 
 dwell in the folds of her lips, like doves in 
 crevices of the rocks. 
 
 For Matheline is a brave woman. She is 
 called, and with justice, the Angel of the cot- 
 tage, the Apostle of the village, the counsel and 
 comfort of all. 
 
 Her husband would have been a poor man, 
 without virtue, if not without vice. He loved 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 63 
 
 the bottle ; and what ills the bottle contains ! 
 It is the box of Pandora minus hope. Mathe- 
 line, by dint of smiles and tears — smiles for the 
 man, tears before God — succeeded in grafting a 
 Christian conscience upon that gross nature, 
 and making him bring forth, oh, miracle ! fruits 
 of probity and honor. 
 
 Matheline has three children, a boy and two 
 girls. The eldest, Tissette, will marry when 
 and how her parents desire ; the other, Noreille, 
 is only awaiting an opportunity to become a 
 Little Sister of the Poor ; the young man, who 
 came into the world a little in advance of 
 Noreille, and long after Tissette, will continue 
 the house. Tissette commands, by right of birth, 
 this brother and sister, who like to call her 
 " little mamma," to tease her. In truth, she is 
 like a second mother to them, resembling the 
 other both in heart and face. 
 
 During the week, the father goes off to work 
 in the fields, the children go to the woods as 
 guards. Matheline parts from them with regret. 
 
 Left alone (and it must be so !), the day seems 
 long, so long, to her ! Finally, at night, they 
 return, weary and joyous. She stands on the 
 threshold waiting for them, she questions them, 
 urges them on : " Quick, be quick, the soup is 
 served, come ! . . ." After the porridge, come 
 " truffles " (this is our peasants' name for 
 
1 64 THOUGHTS. 
 
 potatoes). They eat much bread and drink a 
 little wine. Then the family gathers about the 
 hearth, on which a fire burns" at all seasons for 
 the warm mash of the "merchandise" (this is 
 the term for the cattle which are being fattened). 
 Then they shell the chestnuts for the first meal 
 on the following day ; then they go down to the 
 stable to milk the cows ; then they kneel in 
 prayer ; then each betakes himself to his cham- 
 ber : " Farewell ! until to-morrow ! . . ." The 
 whole day was toil ; the whole night will be sleep. 
 On Sundays there is a great vigil from five 
 o'clock until midnight. Matheline will not kill 
 time: she prefers to enliven and sanctify it. 
 The neighbors seek the hospitality of this 
 house. Nevertheless, all are not received in- 
 discriminately. Away with swearers, libertines, 
 and insolent persons ! Silence, all gossip and in- 
 trigue ! And the Man relates, for the hundredth 
 time, the things of old, the Dragon, the Bere, the 
 Werewolf, the Spectre Hunt ; Matheline has a 
 weakness for Genevieve of Nanterre, Isidore 
 the Laborer, Pascal Baylon, and Germaine 
 of Pibrac. . . . Tissette, and especially No- 
 reille, recite Sacred History, the Gospels, the 
 Catechism. . . . The canticles prevent yawns 
 or sleep. The canticles? and nothing else? 
 Yes ! There are also chestnuts roasted in the 
 ashes ! cider ! and sometimes, sometimes, claret 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 65 
 
 sent by some unknown person, Monsieur le 
 Cure, no doubt ! . . . 
 
 Of course, none of the watchers has missed 
 mass or vespers. Matheline has but a poor 
 opinion of any one who does not honor the 
 Lord God. She and hers set an example of 
 Christian fidelity. The boy accompanies the 
 father to church. Matheline betakes herself 
 thither, in her turn, between her daughters. 
 The people range themselves in rows as they 
 pass, and murmur, " Happy mother ! happy 
 daughters ! . . ." When they come out, they 
 go about among the groups, but not for long, to 
 inquire about some relative, a friend, an invalid, 
 or some poor person. . , . 
 
 For Matheline is the providence of the coun- 
 try. All needy people bless her. A man has 
 cleft his skull, while gathering cherries — who 
 will dress it ? A woman has been taken ill — 
 who will pass the night with her ? This widow 
 has lost her son in Tonquin — who will comfort 
 her? Matheline. Where, pray, does she who 
 has to earn her own living, who has hardly 
 read, and who considers herself the most insig- 
 nificant person in the parish, get the numerous 
 alms which she bestows, the wise words which 
 she utters, the noble and delicate sentiments 
 which she exhibits ? Where ? From her faith. 
 Oh, the good woman ! oh, the holy woman ! 
 
1 66 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XCI. 
 
 The poor child was at the point of death. A 
 candle had been lighted in honor of the sacred 
 Host, and also to permit a little sight within 
 that black cavern. Those present knelt upon 
 the damp earth. My eyes became impercepti- 
 bly used to the darkness, and I could at length 
 discern the objects around me. The little cow- 
 herd lay upon a trestle-bed of badly joined 
 boards ; a truss of straw served for his pillow ; 
 a tattered packing-cloth was his sheet ; his 
 waistcoat, his breeches, and I know not what 
 formless rags, formed his coverlet. Never in all 
 my life had I encountered such misery. Amid 
 all these hideous surroundings, the child beamed 
 with resignation and innocence. Nothing was 
 white save his face and the surplice of the 
 priest ; everything else appeared tawny or livid 
 in that hut, where the timid light of the torch 
 was overpowered by palpable shadows. And 
 I bent my knee ; then, rising, I poured forth 
 the words of absolution upon the gentle patient ; 
 then approaching, and bending down, I laid 
 upon his lips, already growing cold, the God of 
 all consolation. At that moment, the clank of 
 chains resounded, and the head of an animal 
 emerged from an opening in the wall near the 
 pallet, then another quite different head. . . . 
 
THE COUNTRY, THE PEASANT. 1 67 
 
 It was a cow and an ass, who stretched out 
 their necks lovingly towards the bed, to the 
 barely covered feet of him who had formerly 
 led them to pasture ; and this sight suddenly 
 made me shiver, and the tears rose to my eyes ; 
 and, as Christmas was at hand, I thought I had 
 been transported to Bethlehem, during that 
 great night : all was there, — the stable, the 
 manger, the infant Jesus, for the poor are all 
 Jesuses ; that woman, his mother, represented 
 the Divine Mother ; those men, Saint Joseph ; 
 the shepherds, the magi ; those two humble 
 beasts the ass and the ox ; that light, the mirac- 
 ulous star ; I, the minister of salutation, the 
 Angel sent to announce the great joy. . . . 
 
 As he breathed his last sigh, I exclaimed, 
 11 God descended from heaven into a manger, 
 do thou, child, mount from this manger into 
 heaven ! . . ." 'Tis a memory which cannot be 
 forgotten ! 
 
IX. 
 LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, FRIENDS. 
 
 i. 
 To love is to choose. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Friends are rare, for the good reason that 
 men are not common. 
 
 in. 
 
 The vital air of friendship is composed of 
 confidence. Friendship perishes in proportion 
 as this air diminishes. 
 
 IV. 
 
 We distrust our heart too much, and our head 
 not enough. 
 
 v. 
 
 " Let us love each other. . . ." For our 
 neighbor's sake ? He is so unlovable ! For 
 our own sake ? We are so unloving ! For the 
 sake of God, the only lovable, the only loving. 
 
LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, FRIENDS. 1 69 
 
 VI. 
 
 All human affection soon crumbles, if God, 
 invoked as the cause, as the reason, as the end, 
 does not strengthen and consecrate it. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Is to love ourself only to love ? 
 
 VIII. 
 
 What we love in others is, our ideas, our 
 tastes, our opinions. ... — And our talents ? . . . 
 — Not at all. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The way Pamphilius receives me is to extend 
 his arms to me from afar, to throw himself upon 
 my neck, to embrace me, to raise me up, to 
 bruise me with kisses, to seize my hands, to 
 twist them, to shake them, and, gazing at me 
 with exaltation, to ask all in a breath, and with- 
 out waiting for a reply, about my health, my 
 studies, my affairs, my parents, my acquain- 
 tances ; to call me at every phrase, " My dear 
 fellow ! my dearest fellow ! " 
 
 " Oh, large-hearted man ! rare friend I n ... 
 I say to myself. And while rearranging my 
 hair and wiping my face, I rack my brain for 
 some response to such an effusion of tenderness. 
 I turn round, I open my mouth. . . . Where is 
 
\JQ THOUGHTS. 
 
 Pamphilius ? Pamphilius has disappeared ! Be- 
 hold him yonder in the distance, lifting up, and 
 nearly suffocating in his arms, Gordian, whom 
 he hardly knows, and who repeats, " Oh, large- 
 hearted man ! . . ." 
 
 x. 
 A face which is always serene possesses a 
 mysterious and powerful attraction : sad hearts 
 come to it, as to the sun, to warm themselves 
 again. 
 
 XI. 
 
 The egoist does not tolerate egoism. 
 
 XII. 
 
 I do not always admire what I love, neither 
 do I always love what I admire. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Have friends, not for the sake of receiving, 
 but of giving. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Commonplace consolations are harsh for deli- 
 cate sorrows. 
 
 xv. 
 
 Arcan draws me aside, and confides to me, 
 with numberless precautions and endless exhor- 
 tations, a trifling secret : " Be careful, at least ! 
 do not tell it, please, to a living soul ! ... if you 
 were to compromise me ! . . ." I reassure him. 
 
LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, FRIENDS. 171 
 
 Nevertheless, this fine secret has made the 
 tour of the town in two days. 
 
 So some one has betrayed Arcan ? — No 
 doubt. — Who is it ? — Himself. . . . Every one 
 is his intimate friend, and he opens his heart 
 equally to all. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Your friend returns from a long journey. . . . 
 Shall you confide in him at once ? This is hardly 
 prudent. What if he has changed ? . . . Then 
 feel him near his heart, for an instant, at least. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 The man of genius and the man of heart vie 
 with each other in saying, " Understand me and 
 you will love me. ..." — " Love me and you 
 will understand me!" 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 When we are loved by one person, or more, 
 than one, we become so accustomed to this 
 sweet sensation, that we are tempted to cry 
 out about injustice when we stumble against 
 an enemy, or, I should say, an indifferent 
 person, outside. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 I love enthusiasts ; exalted people frighten 
 me. 
 
172 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XX. 
 
 DilectiOt diligentia : a relationship of words 
 which should be a relationship of things. 
 
 Is "love" which is inactive, sincere "love"? 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Here are two strange loves, — our love for our- 
 selves who are so miserable, and our love for 
 this life which is so full of woes. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 A certain sort of evil-speaking proceeds from 
 love. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 How many love God so intensely, so intensely 
 that they cannot love their neighbor by reason 
 of it. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Friendship admits of difference of character, 
 as love does that of sex. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 As long as we love, we lend to the beloved 
 object qualities of mind and heart which we 
 deprive him of when the day of misunderstand- 
 ing: arrives. 
 
LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, FRIENDS. 173 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 To imagine that we know love, when it is not 
 God whom we love, is to take this little pool of 
 muddy water for the great sea with its azure 
 waves. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Sphinx draws me aside and says to me with 
 quite an interesting air: "There are three or 
 four of us who propose to recommend you to the 
 master. It is really a shame that a man like you 
 should remain thus in obscurity. Yet we have 
 feared to take too much upon ourselves ; and I 
 wish, before going further, to inform you of it, 
 and to ask your opinion." — What need have 
 you of my authority, Sphinx, to speak well of 
 me ? If you had served me without my knowl- 
 edge, how much more merit you would have 
 had, how much glory I ? I understand : you 
 take advantage of having wished it, as though 
 you had said : " We propose, you say, to oblige 
 you . . . " — "And I, Sphinx, propose to say, 
 thank you, for it." 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 God alone can properly bind up a bleeding 
 heart. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Stomachs which have long been deprived of- 
 nourishment, weaken and succumb : thus hearts 
 
174 THOUGHTS. 
 
 long tried, resist a happiness which is late in 
 coming. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Let us carry our heart through life as we 
 would carry a torch, with our hand about it, 
 lest the wind should extinguish it. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 What is love ? two souls and one flesh ; 
 friendship ? two bodies and one soul. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 We vaunt our friend as a man of talent, less 
 because he has talent than because he is our 
 friend. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 We always distrust too much or too little. 
 
 xxxiv. 
 
 " Necessarius," the friend, the man who is 
 necessary. ... A deep word, an ingenius word, 
 a touching word. When will it be French ? 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Friendship is the ideal ; friends are the real- 
 ity; reality always remains far apart from the 
 ideal. 
 
LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, FRIENDS. l?$ 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 The man abandoned by his friends, one after 
 another, without just cause, will acquire the 
 reputation of being hard to please, changeable, 
 ungrateful, unsociable. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Our friend, on the day of rupture, forges for 
 himself a weapon against us from the fact 
 that we are on bad terms with some one else, 
 whether justly or not. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Let us be proud of a friendship without ever 
 being vain of it. 
 
 xxxix. 
 
 One feels tempted to say to certain persons, 
 "If you deceive me, I will never again trust 
 anyone." 
 
 XL. 
 
 However well proved a friendship may ap- 
 pear, there are confidences which it should not 
 hear, and sacrifices which should not be required 
 of it. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Not all of those to whom we do good love 
 us, neither do all those to whom we do evil 
 hate us. 
 
176 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 The tenderness of some people is a torrent. 
 On certain days it is over abundant, and it 
 overflows ; and then, what a drought ! 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Interest, ambition, fortune, time, temper, love, 
 all kill friendship. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Cerberon and Pectorin fill, the one here, the 
 other there, an inferior position all beset with 
 irritating difficulties. The same trouble isolates 
 them from the world, and draws them together. 
 As each needs a confidant, they complain to- 
 gether, — Pectorin, who is gentle, sadly ; Cerbe- 
 ron, the proud Cerberon, with bitterness ; and 
 some consolation visits them, at least while thus 
 communicating their vexation to each other. 
 
 Cerberon, more fortunate than Pectorin, be- 
 comes his own master while still young. Behold 
 him, then, his own master and, what is more, 
 master of no one knows what poor fellow who 
 displeases him at first sight, and of whom he 
 complains in a letter to Pectorin. "What if you 
 were to claim me for your own ? " they write to 
 each other. This idea flatters them. Neither 
 of them will rest until it is realized. 
 
 Victory ! Behold them together, these good 
 
LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, FRIENDS, IJJ 
 
 old friends, these ancient neighbors of the 
 galleys! Oh, what joyous bursts of laughter! 
 Oh, what embraces ! Oh, what promises to be 
 happy with each other, through each other ! . . . 
 
 Long dinners, frequent walks, interminable 
 tete-a-tete, games, music, reading, gossip about 
 Peter and about Paul . . . that will last at least 
 a week. 
 
 Cerberon, having exhausted his enthusiasm, 
 makes haste to exhibit his irascible, peevish, 
 arrogant character. The friend departs, the 
 master remains. Who is surprised ? Pectorin ; 
 Pectorin henceforth condemned to suffer doubly ; 
 for he who formerly comforted him is now the 
 man who wounds him. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Many, not being able to do without love, love 
 at random. These wear out their people rapidly ; 
 a new friend each month would not be too much 
 for them. At first all is flame. They unbosom 
 themselves as much as they are capable of 
 doing. This effusion once over, they yawn, 
 complain, get angry, and depart. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Since in possessing you, we possess all if we 
 had nothing else, and in not possessing you we 
 have nothing if we had all the rest, oh, my 
 
178 THOUGHTS. 
 
 God, I will love you that I may possess you 
 upon earth ; and I will possess you that I 
 may love you one day in heaven. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Neither frivolous enough to have comrades, 
 nor credulous enough to have friends. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 Eubalus, in his youth, pierced both friends 
 and foes with his arrows. A reputation for a 
 malicious tongue is the price of his long toil. 
 Every one fears him. In other days he found 
 an advantage in it, now he reproaches himself 
 for it. In order to win his way back into favor, 
 he distributes right and left many a compliment, 
 many a smile. What success responds to his 
 efforts ? People end by not fearing him, and 
 begin to despise him. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Encomius addresses a word of praise to me. 
 He knows well that I do not deserve it. I know 
 it also. Nevertheless, I do not fail to smile 
 with gratitude upon him. . . . Oh, the strength 
 of flattery ! Oh, the feebleness of man ! 
 
 L. 
 
 Love, almost everything in romances, is 
 almost nothing in life. 
 
LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, FRIENDS. 1 79 
 
 LI. 
 
 There are people who laugh to show their 
 fine teeth ; and there are those who cry to show 
 their good hearts. 
 
 LII. 
 
 Souls naturally generous, but chilled by expe- 
 rience, resemble brooks covered with ice, which 
 are full beneath of beautiful movements and 
 sweet murmurs. 
 
 Lin. 
 
 Trees which the cold has touched do not 
 perish at once. Spring visits them again with 
 a remnant of sap, and decks them over again 
 with a little foliage ; then they die. . . . Thus 
 it is with hearts which, deeply wounded, love, 
 speak, smile for a space ere they die. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 We call that person who has lost his father, 
 an orphan ; and a widower, that man who has 
 lost his wife. . . . And that man who has 
 known the immense unhappiness of losing 
 his friend, by what name do we call him ? . . . 
 Here every human language holds its peace 
 in impotence. 
 
180 THOUGHTS. 
 
 LV. 
 
 King, priest, poet, call each other thou ! Call 
 each other thou, ye wearers of crowns ! 
 
 LVI. 
 
 Every large family has its angel and its 
 demon. 
 
X. . 
 
 GOD, RELIGION. 
 
 Scitolus has studied everything ; he remem- 
 bers everything ; he has all the dynasties of the 
 Pharaohs at the tips of his fingers, all the incarna- 
 tions of Vishnu, all the migrations of the Aryans ; 
 ask him about the colonies of Gaul, the divinities 
 of Carthage, of Athens, and of Rome, the name, 
 the age, the country of the' Sibyls, the titles, 
 subjects, personages, the authors of the pieces of 
 the Greek theatre, he will answer all without an 
 error. The pearl which Cleopatra dissolved 
 in Cyprus wine, or the fish which Domitian 
 put to the vote of the senate ? " Questions 
 for a schoolboy ! " he will say, shrugging 
 his shoulders. " Have you nothing to ask 
 me but that trifle ? " Thus it is an estab- 
 lished truth, an understood thing, an attested 
 fact, that Scitolus is ignorant of nothing. Thus 
 it is imputed to disdain, if not to modesty, that 
 when he held his sister's child at the bap- 
 tismal font the other day, he could neither 
 
1 82 THOUGHTS. 
 
 finish the " Our Father," nor commence " I 
 believe in God ! " 
 
 ii. 
 
 The modern nations are ant-heaps in constant 
 agitation. All within them is movement, dis- 
 order, dissension. . . . What is the end of all 
 these labors without or against God ? Sooner 
 or later God will rise, and with his foot he will 
 scatter the fabric of madness. 
 
 in. 
 
 With the Hebrews, a single term expressed 
 these two different things : To pledge one's 
 word ; To tell a lie. 
 
 The French form of speech, To take an oath, 
 is tending day by day towards this double 
 meaning. 
 
 IV. 
 
 One ray of sunlight contributes more to the 
 welfare of our poor people than all the dreams 
 of our economists. 
 
 Greek and Latin have a word to designate 
 an individual of the human species ; they say, 
 avOpwiro*;, homo. These two languages have, 
 moreover, a special word to express the cour- 
 ageous man : avrjp, vir. Who knows why such 
 a term is lacking in French ? 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 183 
 
 VI. 
 
 Egoism willingly generalizes : if anything 
 suits him, everything is going well ; if any- 
 thing does not suit him, everything is going ill. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The sun drinks in the drop of dew which casts 
 back its rays, and God absorbs the soul which 
 reflects him. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 O thou who art calumniated, have patience ! 
 God knows. Thou who art misunderstood, be 
 resigned ! God sees. Thou who art forgotten, 
 have hope ! God remembers. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Everything is against us, even ourselves ; 
 God alone loves us well ; 'tis he alone whom we 
 repulse. 
 
 x. 
 
 Impious men deny God at first through 
 boastfulness, and afterwards through false 
 shame. 
 
 XI. 
 
 If we only understood thoroughly that the 
 good God loves us more than we love him, more 
 than we love ourselves ! 
 
1 84 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Jesus Christ, says Saint Augustine, never 
 performed a miracle for the sake of performing 
 a miracle ; and you, ye artists, imitators of God, 
 you claim to paint for the sake of painting, to 
 sing for the sake of singing, to write for the 
 sake of writing. . . . 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Morality is the fruit of religion : to desire the 
 former without the latter, is to desire an orange 
 without an orange-tree. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Man is naturally pious ; he is virtuous only 
 supernaturally. 
 
 xv. 
 
 Two sorts of men despise public opinion, — 
 sinners and saints. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Let us love God, not as much because he 
 deserves — that we cannot do; but as much 
 as we can — that he deserves. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Catholicism is alone sincerely "human," be- 
 cause it alone is truly " divine." 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 185 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " Love only me and others for my sake ! " 
 Admirable precept, absolute, yet just, urgent, 
 yet tender ! 
 
 Ah ! if we loved God, this demand for love 
 would not trouble us ingrates, would not incom- 
 mode us, unbelievers that we are ! 
 
 XIX. 
 
 When Louis XV. was ill at Metz, and began 
 to convalesce, the populace, whom fear of losing 
 their king had plunged in anguish which was 
 worse than mourning, abandoned themselves to 
 transports of wild joy on learning of his recovery. 
 It is said that the king exclaimed, " What have 
 I done to them ! " 
 
 Thus God, who grieves when man is ill with 
 sin, rejoices when he sees him regain life. And 
 man asks, " What have I done to God ? " 
 What have you done to him, O man ? To him 
 who loves you and thought he had lost you ! . . . 
 
 XX. 
 
 In the presence of God we speak too much ; 
 we do not listen enough. Let us allow the 
 Master to speak. This is just ; it will be profit- 
 able. Indeed, he knows what we know, and we 
 do not know what he knows. 
 
1 86 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Everything contends with God for us. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Belief in one's self conquers the world ; belief 
 in God conquers heaven. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 God endures us when we offend him ; let us 
 endure him when he tries us ; endurance is one 
 of the names of love. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Christian, philanthropist humanitarian. . . . 
 Humanitarian, philanthropist, Christian. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 The good God is not proud. When the 
 world will have none or will have no more of a 
 beauty, of a glory, of a grandeur, of a soul, he 
 claims it and takes it. 
 
 xxvi. 
 
 O priest, think not that when, at the foot 
 of the altar, before the assembled church, you 
 renounced the world, the flesh and blood, you 
 uttered a vain formula. The people, jealous 
 witnesses, understood naught of the Latin sylla- 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 1 87 
 
 bles, but they understood perfectly what they 
 saw done ; and woe to you, if you should chance 
 — which God forbid ! to forget your vow ; they 
 will force you to remember it, these people, 
 however impious they may have become, and 
 will recall you in rude fashion to your duty. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 The true, the good, the beautiful. A thou- 
 sand times have I tried to define this triple 
 radiance of a glorious mystery. Vain effort ! 
 Who is powerless ? The word ? the mind ? the 
 man ? myself ? . . . 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 St. Thomas d' Aquinas verifies as though he 
 could not believe, and believes as though he 
 ought not to verify. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Contemporary science is laborious, skilful, 
 mighty . . . and blind. Yes, blind. Theology 
 is the eye which it lacks. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 The believer and the unbeliever vie in saying, 
 " Liberty ! " But the one wishes to be free in 
 order that he may make himself the slave of all ; 
 the other, in order that he may make all his 
 slaves. 
 
1 88 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 In our trials we run to God, and we do well. 
 Only we are wrong in believing that God, be- 
 cause he is God, will infallibly grant prayer 
 which we address to him, because we address a 
 prayer to him. If the effect does not meet our 
 expectations, we are scandalized ; we doubt God 
 and his Providence. . . . Suppliants should 
 show more confidence, more resignation, and 
 not "enjoin" God to deliver them from their 
 trouble, thus placing before him the alternative 
 of either doing our will or of forfeiting our 
 good graces. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Let us lavish ourselves upon God alone. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Love everybody for God, and few for thyself. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 All is open, all is in the air (letter to the 
 French Academy). Who speaks thus of the 
 Gothic cathedral ? F^nelon ; F^nelon who has 
 become an ancient through a pagan-classic edu- 
 cation, to the point of neither feeling nor think- 
 ing as a Christian, a priest, an artist. 
 
 All is in the air! Eh! yes; the Christian 
 also is " in the air," and his soul losing beneath 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 1 89 
 
 the evangelical chisel its native heaviness, has 
 quitted the earth to suspend itself and gleam 
 resplendent in heaven. 
 
 xxxv. 
 
 An inscription has been found, a strange, 
 mysterious inscription ; some learned man halts, 
 bends down, turns the enigma, and turns again ; 
 and the enigma rolls itself into a ball of spines 
 like the hedgehog, and becomes the more inex- 
 orable, the more it is shaken and interrogated, 
 which exasperates our learned man, who is re- 
 duced to exclaiming : " Oh, the foolish thing ! 
 oh, the vain caprice ! oh, the gross carelessness ! 
 oh, barbarous age ! ..." And the Sphinx cries 
 to himself, " Barbarus his ego sum, quia non in- 
 telligor Mis " (I am barbarous to them because 
 I am not understood of them). 
 
 xxxvi. 
 
 So long as philosophy neglects to teach belief, 
 love, prayer, it will be condemned to be only an 
 ornamental science. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 What is the present philosophy? An exer- 
 cise of declamation for the use of schools, rather 
 than a rule of conduct which is useful for life. 
 
I90 THOUGHTS. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 The philosophy of the colleges is unsolid food, 
 which loads the stomach without nourishing the 
 body. 
 
 xxxix. 
 
 Whence come we ? What are we ? Whither 
 are we going ? All questions which perplex the 
 human reason, which divine wisdom alone can 
 solve. 
 
 XL. 
 
 The incessant calling into question of that 
 which is already solved, or of that which is 
 evidently not to be solved, constitutes the vain 
 extravagance which people dare to decorate with 
 the name of philosophy. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 A proof that human reason alone would not 
 have discovered supernatural truths is found 
 in the fact that they do not yet exist for its 
 followers. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Many philosophers imitate the maniac who 
 closed the shutters of his chamber in broad day- 
 light, in order to write by candle-light. The 
 candle is the wisdom of the ancients ; the full 
 daylight is the eternal wisdom manifested in 
 the Gospel. 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 191 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 If the son of Mary is nothing but a great 
 philosopher, whence comes it, O, ye free- 
 thinkers, that you love so little and profess so 
 badly his philosophy ? 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 They do nothing but affirm, on the one hand, 
 the eternity of Matter, and on the other dispute 
 the eternity of Life . . . Oh, contradiction ! oh, 
 calamity ! 
 
 XLV. 
 
 "The soul," says the Council of Trent, "is 
 the substantial form of the body." Admirable 
 definition, unknown to the ancient philosophers, 
 disregarded by the modern philosophers, and 
 which sets forth in the light, without withdraw- 
 ing it from its profundity, that great question of 
 the Homo duplex. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Who is there that does not love the truth . . . 
 speculatively ? 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 The prejudices of the schools are obstinate. 
 Let those refuse to free themselves from them 
 who will. How many people who believe them- 
 selves to be grounded in reason, and are only 
 grounded in routine, bear them about for a long, 
 
192 THOUGHTS. 
 
 long time, without being able to quit them, 
 like those boys who still wear petticoats at an 
 advanced age. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 Certain logicians never give but one reason, 
 — the best one, I suppose. Others begin by- 
 enumerating all the reasons ; then they say, 
 " This is peremptory ; that is open to dis- 
 pute. . . ." Such tilters never fail to provoke 
 both adversaries and spectators ; I admit it ; 
 nevertheless, one must know how to wait upon 
 their pleasure, and not to beat them harshly 
 from the very threshold of their argument. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 The same arguments which we deem forcible 
 as applied to others, seem feeble to us when 
 turned against ourselves. 
 
 L. 
 
 The incredulous cease not to clamor: "Oh, 
 the disinterestedness of Crates ! oh, the re- 
 nunciation of Diogenes ! oh, the austerity of 
 Pythagoras and Epictetus ! oh, the goodness of 
 Marcus Aurelius ! . . ." On the other hand, the 
 humble and daily practice of all these virtues, 
 and of others besides, renders them indignant, 
 even horrifies them. 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 193 
 
 LI. 
 
 To hope to grasp such or such a truth by dint 
 of abstraction, is to wish to lay hold of the 
 sun or the moon by leaping : one quickly falls 
 back. 
 
 LII. 
 
 Analysis, synthesis, reasoning, abstraction, 
 and experience, wishing to take counsel to- 
 gether, begin by banishing sentiment, which 
 carries away the light when it departs, and 
 leaves them in darkness. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Many metaphysicians recall Don Quixote 
 mounted upon Clavifer ; they shake about, rise 
 in their stirrups, and spur forward with might 
 and main, crying, "Come on!" The heat which 
 they arouse in themselves, and in those about 
 them, seems to them the atmosphere of the 
 upper regions : " The infinite ! the infinite ! " 
 In truth, they have not quitted the earth. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 The effort of human reason succeeded in dis- 
 covering God, though very imperfectly. What 
 remained was to serve God, to love God. Phi- 
 losophy did not discover this, or the discovery 
 amounted to nothing. 
 
194 THOUGHTS. 
 
 LV. 
 
 Anathema upon those rash beings who, under 
 the pretext of desiring simply to know and to 
 sound the depths, go straight to the roots, lay 
 them bare, detach them, starve them so that 
 the tree, with sap exhausted and strength con- 
 sumed, falls at last, and with its dead boughs 
 crushes the generations which are reposing 
 beneath its shadow. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 " Man, depraved by pride, is so strangely his 
 own enemy, that he conceives a hatred for the 
 only doctrine which gives value to his exist- 
 ence ; he would regard it as a triumph to estab- 
 lish upon the ruins of that celestial doctrine 
 errors equally absurd and disheartening, and 
 would taste, I know not what desperate joy, in 
 insuring for himself, even at the expense of his 
 reason, a wretchedness without remedy and 
 without end. . . ." (Lamennais, Essay on In- 
 difference in the Matter of Religion, Pagnerre's 
 edition, Vol. I. Part II. Chap, n.) 
 
 Lamennais himself was surely that man "de- 
 praved by pride, so strangely an enemy to him- 
 self," who "conceived a hatred for the only 
 Catholic doctrine which gave value to his exist- 
 ence" as a priest and an apologist. He "re- 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 1 95 
 
 garded it as a triumph to establish upon the 
 ruins of that celestial doctrine" of humility be- 
 fore God and obedience to the Church " errors 
 equally absurd and disheartening," and "tasted," 
 without even being able to say, " I do not know," 
 a desperate joy in assuring for himself, even at 
 the expense of his reason, alas ! " a wretched- 
 ness without remedy" here below, and "with- 
 out end " elsewhere. 
 
 By dint of dissecting that rotten body of 
 philosophy of the eighteenth century, the unfor- 
 tunate anatomist has caught the poison from 
 the corpse, like those practitioners who owe 
 their death to imprudent autopsies. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 The Middle Ages " ratiocinated " about every- 
 thing and everywhere ; the new times fall into 
 the opposite excess. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 We do wrong to be proud, O my contempo- 
 raries ! What do we possess ? Fragments of 
 doctrine, tatters of science. The men of the 
 Middle Ages teach us too many things to per- 
 mit of our imagining that we know much. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 What do you mean by your God ? " Chance," 
 that "being of reason" who has neither being 
 nor reason ? 
 
I96 THOUGHTS. 
 
 LX. 
 
 To know one's self is the true ; to strive with 
 one's self is the good ; to conquer one's self is 
 the beautiful. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 "Methodical doubt," which was inoffensive in 
 the hands of the reverent Descartes, becomes 
 a dangerous weapon when it passes to his disci- 
 ples. Descartes exempted the truths of faith ; 
 he was reminded of it. By dint of exaggerating, 
 of misconstruing the system of their master, 
 that which should serve the truth brought profit 
 only to error. Methodical doubt changed into 
 systematic doubt, into radical doubt ; the means 
 became the end, the way became the goal, and 
 faith perished in many souls. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 The discovery of a planet, the invention of a 
 machine, or the application of a system, etc., is 
 proclaimed with trumpet and voice ; but the 
 truths which are diminishing, the morals which 
 are vanishing, religion which is perishing, no 
 one, no one thinks of them. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 In theology, intuition works marvels. While 
 ordinary intelligences are climbing the paths of 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 1 97 
 
 the holy mountain by force of study, the choic- 
 est minds gain its summit with one bound. 
 They do not learn ; they understand. Profound 
 questions, sublime themes inspire them, delight 
 them. They have the instinct of the divine. 
 While the argument is going on in the dark, 
 sudden flashes overflow them. What matter 
 words and formulas ? They see, they possess, 
 they enjoy ! 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 A poplar leaf hides our view of the sun ; the 
 slight substance of an earthly care hides from 
 us the immense and radiant God. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 God often visits us, but most of the time we 
 are not at home. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 Intuition deceives us at first ; facts belie our 
 ideas as if at will ; experience chastens us . . . 
 and amends us. Little by little foreseeing no 
 longer suffices for us ; we wish to see, we accus- 
 tom ourselves to look needfully. Then intuition 
 and observation, blended together, form as ex- 
 quisite wisdom. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 We are full of prejudices and antipathies with 
 regard to God. We love him little because we 
 
198 THOUGHTS. 
 
 know him badly, and we know him badly because 
 we love him little. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 Philosophers call God "the great unknown." 
 " The great mis-known " would be more correct. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 Cicero asserted that there was no folly which 
 philosophers had not uttered. Suarez struck 
 out "philosophers" to write "theologians." 
 Thus, neither philosophy, the profane remedy, 
 nor theology, the sacred remedy, wholly heal the 
 mind of man which is tainted by original sin. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 Error is contagious by nature. ... By its 
 nature ? No, by ours. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 God occupies the base and the apex of Chris- 
 tian morality : the base as principle, support, and 
 force ; the apex as direction, goal, and reward. 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 When one fights for a holy cause, victory is 
 glory here below ; defeat is glory on high. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 The women of Ionia, on the point of giving 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 1 99 
 
 birth, fixed their eyes upon some beautiful 
 statue, or upon some graceful picture, in order 
 that the child might come into the world more 
 graceful and beautiful. 
 
 Let us, Christians, have thus before our eyes 
 some great example, in order that we may be 
 born more perfect into the life of heaven. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 There is a " sense " of the True, and he who 
 possesses it has the stuff for a philosopher ; a 
 "sense" of the Beautiful, and he who possesses 
 it is born an artist ; a " sense " of the Good, and 
 he who possesses it has the vocation of a saint. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 The same word in Hebrew designates good 
 and beautiful. This word dates from the ter- 
 restrial Paradise. It bears witness to the anti- 
 quity of the language in which it occurs, and 
 may serve as a proof to those who assert that 
 Adam spoke Hebrew. 
 
 Since the original sin, Beauty and Goodness 
 have ceased to be one and the same thing. That 
 which is good is not always beautiful, neither is 
 that which is beautiful always good. The effort 
 and the aim of Art should be to re-establish its 
 primitive identity. Ideal creation, like the di- 
 vine creation, has need of this approbation. 
 
200 THOUGHTS. 
 
 Viditque Dens cuncta qiuz fecerat, et erant valde 
 bona (pulckra-bona). 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Incredulity takes its rise in excess of vice 
 rather than in excess of ignorance. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 A serpent, intoxicated with pride, was wallow- 
 ing voluptuously in his bed of mire. Suddenly 
 an eagle darts down upon him and bears him on 
 high. The monster resists, coils himself about 
 the bird, hisses in his face, pierces him with his 
 triple dart. 
 
 Yet the eagle soars on, soars ever, with bleed- 
 ing heart and eye serene, bearing the cold rep- 
 tile, which struggles, filled with hatred, amid 
 space and light. . . . 
 
 This eagle is the Church, the Church bearing 
 to heaven, by doctrine and example, those men 
 of sin who, in recompense, lavish venomous 
 insults upon her, and seek to stifle her in their 
 coils, and lacerate her sides with their stings ! 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 What ancient poet was not a priest ? What 
 priest of old was not a poet ? 
 
 Poetry, that language divine descended upon 
 human lips, united heaven and earth as well as 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 201 
 
 religion. The poet vied with the priest as the 
 interpreter of the divinity. . . . 
 
 The infant Church opened its mouth in har- 
 monious wails. A whole swarm of singing 
 bees, a whole chorus of poets surrounded its 
 cradle. There were but few bishops and monks 
 who did not pluck the cords of the harp. 
 Women even were heard to sing in a manner 
 to charm the nightingales, to equal the angels. 
 Then came the Renaissance and the Revolu- 
 tion. The Renaissance raised anew the tem- 
 ples of the gods, the Revolution scattered the 
 churches of God. The infidel, that wolf, saw 
 Moeris, and Mceris lost his voice ; " that voice 
 whose science includes everything," and the 
 sanctuary unlearned the art of exultation and 
 of groans. The strict liturgy suffices for wor- 
 ship. No more spontaneous, personal, living 
 poetry. Inspiration holds its peace ; tradition 
 could recall itself but vaguely. Poetry quitted 
 the cloister ; hymn, drama, winged prose, all 
 flew away like swallows in the autumn. The 
 priest no longer prayed melodiously ; the art 
 of verse became a profane art ; the shew-bread 
 yielded its place to lay-bread ; the minister 
 of God no longer dared to say God, but the 
 gods ; people became accustomed to scan Olym- 
 pus, Tartarus, etc. Santeuil and Vaniere found 
 Jupiter more poetical than Jehovah-Jesus. 
 
202 THOUGHTS. 
 
 Chateaubriand, Montalembert, Lamartine, 
 Hugo, despatched these cast-off garments to the 
 old-clothes man. Paganism grew musty outside 
 the Church — what am I saying? — outside of the 
 Academy itself, in spite of Leconte de Lisle, and 
 Arsene Houssaye, and Theodore de Banville. 
 Andr£ Chenier was afraid of being buried by a 
 priest ; he was interred by the executioner. It 
 was a lesson ; many understood it. The base- 
 ness of the literary revolution was renounced 
 equally with the wildness of the revolutionary 
 literature. 
 
 Silence of the neo-pagan poets, whether lay 
 or clerical. 
 
 Yes, indeed, but silence also of the pious 
 poets, above all, of the poet-priests! What 
 great poet is a priest to-day ? or, if that pleases 
 better, what priest of to-day is a great poet ? I 
 speak of France. Spain, which had Calderon, 
 now has Verdaguer, Verdaguer, the magnificent 
 " reviver " of a world engulfed in the billows of 
 the ocean, and in the gloom of history ; but as 
 for thee, where is thy poet-priest, O France ? 
 
 Ah ! let him arise at last, and may God grant 
 me to hail him, this mortal doubly crowned ! 
 His it is to begin, to pursue and to accomplish 
 the worthy homage and the hymn which is due, 
 in opposition to those violent persons who stand 
 ready to cry,/' Oh, scandal! " and to those pusil- 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 203 
 
 lanimous ones who are prepared to sigh, " Oh, 
 madness ! . . ." 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 The best, I had almost said the only, way of 
 being virtuous, since the Gospel exists, is to 
 follow the Gospel. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 The Holy Scriptures praise the dew of the 
 morning and the dew of the evening ; ros matu- 
 tinum, ros serotinum ! 
 
 Happy is he who possesses the gift of tears ! 
 when young, he will bear flowers ; when old, 
 fruit ! 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 The habit of prayer communicates a pene- 
 trating sweetness to the glance, the voice, the 
 smile, the tears, to all one says, or does, or 
 writes. . . . 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 Ah ! what need there is at present that a man 
 should rise up from amongst men ; and, pre- 
 pared for official disgrace, imprudent in the 
 sight of the age, truly wise in the sight of God, 
 should cry, his breast heaving with sobs, that 
 God is too little recognized, conscience too often 
 slain, the interest and honor of each individual 
 too greatly tried. . . . 
 
204 THOUGHTS. 
 
 Friends and enemies would probably repeat, 
 " Tolle ! to lie ! " (away with him ! away with 
 him !) But, on the other hand, how faith, 
 hope, and love would be avenged ! 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 I. The Grain of Wheat. — O sower, why 
 dost thou forsake me ? Escaped from the hoar 
 frosts of winter and the storms of summer, how 
 greatly did I suffer when thou didst pluck me 
 from the ripened ear, when thou didst confine 
 me within the depths of the dark granary! 
 Thou lovest me then no longer ? Alas ! I had 
 hoped to nourish thee one day, that is, to be- 
 come flesh of thy body, and blood of thy veins. 
 O sower, why dost thou abandon me ? 
 
 The Sower. — I do not abandon thee ; I but 
 leave thee for a space. Soon we shall meet 
 again, thou multiplied, I grateful. Fructify. 
 Wait. Complain not. Do thy work. Thou 
 must needs be harvested, and I must harvest 
 thee ; I do not abandon thee. 
 
 II. The Man. — Sower of beings, why have 
 you cast me away upon the earth, naked and 
 alone? Day, night, winter, summer, I suffer. 
 Do you know that I am unhappy after nothing- 
 ness, before heaven ? Why have you cast me 
 away upon the earth, naked and alone, O 
 sower of beings ? 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 20$ 
 
 God. — I have not cast thee away ; I have 
 confided thee to the fecundating soil. Grow 
 and prosper. At the time of the harvest I shall 
 gather thee, and thou shalt be served in thy fra- 
 grance, upon the table of the father of the 
 family. I have not cast thee away. 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 The man knows only how to say " sorrow " ; 
 the Christian, better informed, says "trial." 
 
 Trial ! that word explains man, evil, Christi- 
 anity, expiation, heaven, God. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 Repentant sinners hasten to God. His good- 
 ness begrudges nothing to his greatness. There 
 is' no fear that this great King will ever say to 
 you : " I did wrong to wait." 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 The blue lake sleeps amid the green grass; 
 and the star of heaven, reflected in the wave, 
 forms the counterpart of the glow-worm which 
 gleams upon the shore. 
 
 The meditation which envelops nature is so 
 profound that all the sounds of evening can be 
 discerned, — the cry of the cricket, the moan of 
 the frog, the murmur of the breeze, the whis- 
 pering of the bird which sings no more but is 
 not yet asleep beneath the foliage. 
 
206 THOUGHTS. 
 
 It is night, and the air is transparent ; one 
 shivers, and the weather is mild ; the earth 
 gives back an echo ; space vibrates. . . . 
 
 Solitude is peopled ; silence speaks. 
 
 I gaze upon the firmament ; I interrogate the 
 earth ; I examine myself also. 
 
 What is the great universe ? And I, what 
 am I ? 
 
 I am a colonist of the Lord God here below. 
 
 All that I see and hear, near by, afar, beneath 
 my feet, and above my head, has been created 
 by God for me. 
 
 And that God, I must love him, know him, 
 serve him. Thus shall I enter into his joy. 
 Fiat! 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 O pagan philosophers, your wisdom was a 
 beautiful presentiment. Jews, you knew "the 
 beginning of wisdom, which is the fear of the 
 Lord." Wisdom attains its full growth, bears 
 all its flowers, and yields all its fruits only 
 through Christian love well understood and 
 well practised. 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 Since neither good nor evil have nowadays 
 much vigor, it seems that God has only wished 
 to give some force to evil, which he hates, in 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 207 
 
 order to give new energy to the good which he 
 loves. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 To love to know is human, to know how to 
 love is divine. 
 
 xc. 
 
 Godescard and his school admire in their 
 Lives of the Saints only that which the reason 
 of man could accept of the miracles and prodi- 
 gies. Everything which exceeded the settled 
 limits was rejected under the name of extrava- 
 gance, or at least, of temerity. It was with the 
 best faith in the world, and for the greater 
 glory of God, and the good of the faithful, and 
 the honor of the Church, that they said to the 
 blood of Jesus Christ, which was shed for all, 
 and eager to extend to all, "Thou shalt go 
 no further ! " 
 
 They were sincere, I repeat, in spite of so 
 much pride and overweening self-confidence ; 
 they thought they knew men and things a lit- 
 tle better than God himself ; they simply gave 
 lessons in tact to the Holy Spirit ; they recalled 
 the son of Mary to respect for law, manners, 
 and usages ; they explained the Gospel, they 
 made excuse for it when necessary ; they clip- 
 ped the wings of the angels ; they warned ec- 
 statics to speak low, and wonder-workers to be 
 
208 THOUGHTS. 
 
 on their guard. The marvels of the Old Testa- 
 ment and of the New sufficed ; all the rest was 
 compromising superfluity and lacking in pro- 
 priety. 
 
 Why were not these good people, so mediocre 
 in mind and heart, contemporaries of Jesus 
 Christ ? They would have besought him in the 
 name of God, in his own interest and in ours, 
 not to be born in a stable, and, above all, not to 
 die upon a cross ! 
 
 xci. 
 
 Admirable authority and fortunate popularity 
 of the name of God, which condemns to im- 
 potence and devotes to ridicule every legislator 
 who undertakes to omit it, every writer who 
 endeavors to replace it by periphrases ! 
 
 xcn. 
 
 " . . . Dilexi nimis." (Psalms.) Let us love 
 too much, in order to love as God loves. 
 
 xcni. 
 No joy is joy without God ; no pain is pain 
 with God. 
 
 xciv. 
 
 God, for a mass of Christians, is like one of 
 those relatives whom we visit in secret, to whom 
 we are gracious by stealth, but whom we blush 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 209 
 
 to meet in a public place, or to hear mentioned 
 in a drawing-room. 
 
 xcv. 
 
 Devotion is not always piety, nor piety always 
 devotion, nor virtue always sanctity. 
 
 xcvi. 
 
 God is a shower to the heart burned up with 
 grief; God is a sun to the face deluged with 
 tears. 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 Many persons consider the Latin of the Imi- 
 tation rude and heavy. It should be thought 
 simple, transparent, and picturesque. 
 
 The best French translates it but badly, or 
 barely, or not at all. Here are two examples, 
 two proofs of this : — 
 
 Book II. chapter ix. : Magnum est, et valde 
 magnum, tarn humano quam divino posse carere 
 solatio, et pro honore Dei libenter exilium 
 cordis velle sustinere. 1 ... Is this exilium cordis 
 untranslatable? I do not know, but no inter- 
 preter has thoroughly understood it. 
 
 Book III. chapter xxiv. : Non sit tibi cures 
 
 1 It is a great thing, a very great thing, to be able to be 
 deprived of every consolation, both human and divine, 
 and to be willing to bear gladly for the love of God, the 
 exile of the heart. 
 
2IO THOUGHTS. 
 
 de magnitudinis umbra * . . . Magnitudinis um- 
 bra ! Herein lies a design and an effect of 
 words which Lallemand and Gonnelieu (Lamen- 
 nais was their plagiarist) have missed. 
 
 And the text of that unknown work is full of 
 this eloquence and of this poetry. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 Mirabeau, " the idol of the people," undertook 
 to unchristianize France ; Voltaire, " the high 
 priest of reason," dared to write, " Let us crush 
 the infamous wretch ! " Beranger, "the singer of 
 liberty," strove to destroy both throne and altar ; 
 Gambetta, " the defender of the country," was 
 able to exclaim, "Behold — clericalism; that is 
 the enemy ! " 
 
 Ye prophets who lie and lie, because some 
 part of it always remains ; ye empirics who treat 
 the people with poison, pass on ; your iniquity 
 has missed its aim, pass quickly, pass on ! 
 
 xcix. 
 " Compelle intrare ..." compel them to come 
 in. . . . What horror this saying has occasioned ! 
 It has been likened to the Believe or die of Ma- 
 homet ; to the Bible or the fagot of Calvin. . . . 
 People have neither wished nor known how to 
 understand the Word — God. 
 
 1 Take no care of the shadow of greatness. 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 211 
 
 Every great love is tyrannical. The good 
 master commands the good servant, both for his 
 own sake and for the latter's. The friend who, 
 being able, yet would not force you to be happy, 
 would be but a sham friend. 
 
 " You must take this remedy ! " says the phy- 
 sician to the sick man whom he has resolved to 
 cure. " I will have you eat ! " says the father 
 to his son who is no longer hungry and is suc- 
 cumbing to debility. " I insist upon your com- 
 ing to my house, and sharing my table, my fire- 
 side, my bed," says the charitable man to the 
 traveller who dares not venture. . . . 
 
 You must, I will, I insist. . . . What is this, if 
 not the Compelle intrare of our physician, of our 
 father, of our host Jesus ? 
 
 c. 
 
 Let us not fear giving pain to our brother 
 who has gone astray ; let us recall him to duty 
 generously, delicately. Our words will cause in 
 his heart a beneficent trouble, a salutary dis- 
 quiet, which he will not, perhaps, avow either to 
 himself or to you for the time being, but which 
 he will confess with gratitude after his return. 
 
 ci. 
 
 The sculptor having thought out a statue, 
 first sketches in the shape of a rough model, 
 
212 THOUGHTS. 
 
 then casts it in bronze, then erects it on a 
 pedestal. . . . 
 
 Christian, imitate the sculptor; make for 
 yourself an ideal life, all of terrestrial trial now, 
 all of celestial glory in the future. 
 
 en. 
 
 The beggar knocks ; and in the shut-up house 
 a voice says, " Go thy way ; I will not give ! " 
 The beggar approaches another door, and 
 knocks, " Welcome ; enter ! " 
 
 O soul whom the world repulses, be not dis- 
 couraged ; turn to God ; He will open to him 
 who knocks, and gives to him who entreats ! 
 
 cm. 
 
 Bossuet : Always greater than others, at times 
 greater than himself. 
 
 civ. 
 
 Let us pray : God is just, he tries us ; God is 
 pitiful, he will comfort us ; let us pray ! 
 
 cv. 
 O Lord Jesus ! who wert willing to take our 
 soul and our flesh, in order to suffer like us, 
 with us, for us ; who didst endure all anxieties, 
 all bitterness, all injustices, all ingratitude; who 
 didst ask that the cup of the Passion might be 
 taken from thee, and didst cry, " Eloi ! eloi ! 
 Lamma sabachtani ! . . . " Ah ! when the com- 
 
GOD, RELIGION. 213 
 
 bat of life shall cause me to complain, if men 
 have for me neither pity nor excuse, do you, at 
 least, Lord Jesus, hear me, understand me, com- 
 fort me, cheer me ! . . . 
 
 cvi. 
 
 I declare that I retract every passage in this 
 book which would be, directly or distantly, incon- 
 sistent with religion and morality. No thought 
 is avowable which is not Catholic. All which 
 did not belong to the Roman Empire bore the 
 name of Barbary ; all which is not attached to 
 the Roman Church is named Error. A philoso- 
 pher, however ingenious he may believe himself 
 to be, or have the reputation of being, propa- 
 gates darkness, not light, scandal, not peace, if 
 he does not teach like Peter, with Peter. . . . 
 
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