Chapter V: Epilogue: 288 (4)

"Tartuffe, or the Impostor," is perhaps the most celebrated of all Moliere's plays. Scarcely comedy, scarcely tragedy, it partakes of both characters. Like tragedy, serious in purpose, it has a happy ending like comedy. Pity and terror are absent; or, if not quite absent, these sentiments are present raised only to a pitch distinctly below the tragic. Indignation is the chief passion excited, or detestation, perhaps, rather than indignation. This feeling is provided at last with its full satisfaction in the condign punishment visited on the impostor.

The original "Tartuffe," like the most of Moliere's comedies, is written in rhymed verse. We could not, with any effort, make the English-reading student of Moliere sufficiently feel how much is lost when the form is lost which the creations of this great genius took, in their native French, under his own master hand. A satisfactory metrical rendering is out of the question. The sense, at least, if not the incommunicable spirit, of the original is very well given in Mr. C. H. Wall's version, which we use.

The story of "Tartuffe" is briefly this: Tartuffe, the hero, is a pure villain. He mixes no adulteration of good in his composition. He is hypocrisy itself, the strictly genuine article. Tartuffe has completely imposed upon one Orgon, a man of wealth and standing. Orgon, with his wife, and with his mother, in fact, believes in him absolutely. These people have received the canting rascal into their house, and are about to bestow upon him their daughter in marriage. The following scene from act first shows the skill with which Moliere could exhibit, in a few strokes of bold exaggeration, the infatuation of Orgon's regard for Tartuffe. Orgon has been absent from home. He returns, and meets Cleante, his brother, whom, in his eagerness, he begs to excuse his not answering a question just addressed to him:--

ORGON (_to_ CLEANTE). Brother, pray excuse me: you will kindly
allow me to allay my anxiety by asking news of the family. (_To_
DORINE, _a maid-servant_.) Has every thing gone on well these last
two days? What has happened? How is everybody?

DOR. The day before yesterday our mistress was very feverish from
morning to night, and suffered from a most extraordinary headache.

ORG. And Tartuffe?

DOR. Tartuffe! He is wonderfully well, stout and fat, with blooming
cheeks and ruddy lips.

ORG. Poor man!

DOR. In the evening she felt very faint, and the pain in her head
was so great that she could not touch any thing at supper.

ORG. And Tartuffe?

DOR. He ate his supper by himself before her, and very devoutly
devoured a brace of partridges, and half a leg of mutton hashed.

ORG. Poor man!

DOR. She spent the whole of the night without getting one wink of
sleep: she was very feverish, and we had to sit up with her until
the morning.

ORG. And Tartuffe?

DOR. Overcome by a pleasant sleepiness, he passed from the table to
his room, and got at once into his warmed bed, where he slept
comfortably till the next morning.

ORG. Poor man!

DOR. At last yielding to our persuasions, she consented to be bled,
and immediately felt relieved.

ORG. And Tartuffe?

DOR. He took heart right valiantly, and fortifying his soul against
all evils, to make up for the blood which our lady had lost, drank
at breakfast four large bumpers of wine.

ORG. Poor man!

DOR. Now, at last, they are both well; and I will go and tell our
lady how glad you are to hear of her recovery.

Tartuffe repays the trust and love of his benefactor by making improper advances to that benefactor's wife. Orgon's son, who does not share his father's confidence in Tartuffe, happens to be an unseen witness of the man's infamous conduct. He exposes the hypocrite to Orgon, with the result of being himself expelled from the house for his pains; while Tartuffe, in recompense for the injury done to his feelings, is presented with a gift-deed of Orgon's estate. But now Orgon's wife contrives to let her husband see and hear for himself the vileness of Tartuffe. This done, Orgon confronts the villain, and, with just indignation, orders him out of his house. Tartuffe reminds Orgon that the shoe is on the other foot; that he is himself now owner there, and that it is Orgon, instead of Tartuffe, who must go. Orgon has an interview with his mother, who is exasperatingly sure still that Tartuffe is a maligned good man:--

MADAME PERNELLE. I can never believe, my son, that he would commit
so base an action.

ORG. What?

PER. Good people are always subject to envy.

ORG. What do you mean, mother?

PER. That you live after a strange sort here, and that I am but too
well aware of the ill will they all bear him.

ORG. What has this ill will to do with what I have just told you?

PER. I have told it you a hundred times when you were young, that
in this world virtue is ever liable to persecution, and that,
although the envious die, envy never dies.

ORG. But what has this to do with what has happened to-day?

PER. They have concocted a hundred foolish stories against him.

ORG. I have already told you that I saw it all myself.

PER. The malice of evil-disposed persons is very great.

ORG. You would make me swear, mother! I tell you that I saw his
audacious attempt with my own eyes.

PER. Evil tongues have always some venom to pour forth; and here
below, there is nothing proof against them.

ORG. You are maintaining a very senseless argument. I saw it, I
tell you,--saw it with my own eyes! what you can call s-a-w, saw!
Must I din it over and over into your ears, and shout as loud as
half a dozen people?

PER. Gracious goodness! appearances often deceive us! We must not
always judge by what we see.

ORG. I shall go mad!

PER. We are by nature prone to judge wrongly, and good is often
mistaken for evil.

ORG. I ought to look upon his desire of seducing my wife as
charitable?

PER. You ought to have good reasons before you accuse another, and
you should have waited till you were quite sure of the fact.

ORG. Heaven save the mark! how could I be more sure? I suppose,
mother, I ought to have waited till--you will make me say something
foolish.

PER. In short, his soul is possessed with too pure a zeal; and I
cannot possibly conceive that he would think of attempting what you
accuse him of.

ORG. If you were not my mother, I really don't know what I might
now say to you, you make me so savage.

The short remainder of the scene has for its important idea, the suggestion that under the existing circumstances some sort of peace ought to be patched up between Orgon and Tartuffe. Meantime one LOYAL is observed coming, whereupon the fourth scene of act fifth opens:--

LOY. (to DORINE _at the farther part of the stage_). Good-day, my
dear sister; pray let me speak to your master.

DOR. He is with friends, and I do not think he can see any one just
now.

LOY. I would not be intrusive. I feel sure that he will find
nothing unpleasant in my visit: in fact, I come for something which
will be very gratifying to him.

DOR. What is your name?

LOY. Only tell him that I come from Mr. Tartuffe, for his benefit.

DOR. (to ORGON). It is a man who comes in a civil way from Mr.
Tartuffe, on some business which will make you glad, he says.

CLE. (to ORGON). You must see who it is, and what the man wants.

ORG. (to CLEANTE). He is coming, perhaps, to settle matters between
us in a friendly way. How, in this case, ought I to behave to him?

CLE. Don't show any resentment, and, if he speaks of an agreement,
listen to him.

LOY. (to ORGON). Your servant, sir! May heaven punish whoever
wrongs you! and may it be as favorable to you, sir, as I wish!

ORG. (_aside to_ CLEANTE). This pleasant beginning agrees with my
conjectures, and argues some sort of reconciliation.

LOY. All your family was always dear to me, and I served your
father.

ORG. Sir, I am sorry and ashamed to say that I do not know who you
are, neither do I remember your name.

LOY. My name is Loyal; I was born in Normandy, and am a royal
bailiff in spite of envy. For the last forty years I have had the
good fortune to fill the office, thanks to Heaven, with great
credit; and I come, sir, with your leave, to serve you the writ of
a certain order.

ORG. What! you are here--

LOY. Gently, sir, I beg. It is merely a summons,--a notice for you
to leave this place, you and yours; to take away all your goods and
chattels, and make room for others, without delay or adjournment,
as hereby decreed.

ORG. I! leave this place?

LOY. Yes, sir; if you please. The house incontestably belongs, as
you are well aware, to the good Mr. Tartuffe. He is now lord and
master of your estates, according to a deed I have in my keeping.
It is in due form, and cannot be challenged.

DAMIS (_to_ MR. LOYAL). This great impudence is, indeed, worthy of
all admiration.

LOY. (_to_ DAMIS). Sir, I have nothing at all to do with you.
(_Pointing to_ ORGON.) My business is with this gentleman. He is
tractable and gentle, and knows too well the duty of a gentleman to
try to oppose authority.

ORG. But--

LOY. Yes, sir: I know that you would not, for any thing, show
contumacy; and that you will allow me, like a reasonable man, to
execute the orders I have received....

The scene gives in conclusion some spirited by-play of asides and interruptions from indignant members of the family. Then follows scene fifth, one exchange of conversation from which will sufficiently indicate the progress of the plot:--

ORG. Well, mother, you see whether I am right; and you can judge of
the rest by the writ. Do you at last acknowledge his rascality?

PER. I am thunderstruck, and can scarcely believe my eyes and ears.

The next scene introduces Valere, the noble lover of that daughter whom the infatuated father was bent on sacrificing to Tartuffe. Valere comes to announce that Tartuffe, the villain, has accused Orgon to the king. Orgon must fly. Valere offers him his own carriage and money,--will, in fact, himself keep him company till he reaches a place of safety. As Orgon, taking hasty leave of his family, turns to go, he is encountered by--the following scene will show whom:--

TAR. (_stopping_ ORGON). Gently, sir, gently; not so fast, I beg.
You have not far to go to find a lodging, and you are a prisoner in
the king's name.

ORG. Wretch! you had reserved this shaft for the last; by it you
finish me, and crown all your perfidies.

TAR. Your abuse has no power to disturb me, and I know how to
suffer every thing for the sake of Heaven.

CLE. Your moderation is really great, we must acknowledge.

DA. How impudently the infamous wretch sports with Heaven!

TAR. Your anger cannot move me. I have no other wish but to fulfil
my duty.

MARIANNE. You may claim great glory from the performance of this
duty: it is a very honorable employment for you.

TAR. The employment cannot be otherwise than glorious, when it
comes from the power that sends me here.

ORG. But do you remember that my charitable hand, ungrateful
scoundrel, raised you from a state of misery?

TAR. Yes, I know what help I have received from you; but the
interest of my king is my first duty. The just obligation of this
sacred duty stifles in my heart all other claims; and I would
sacrifice to it friend, wife, relations, and myself with them.

ELMIRE. The impostor!

DOR. With what treacherous cunning he makes a cloak of all that men
revere!...

TAR. (_to the_ OFFICER). I beg of you, sir, to deliver me from all
this noise, and to act according to the orders you have received.

OFFICER. I have certainly put off too long the discharge of my
duty, and you very rightly remind me of it. To execute my order,
follow me immediately to the prison in which a place is assigned to
you.

TAR. Who? I, sir?

OFFICER. Yes, you.

TAR. Why to prison?

OFFICER. To you I have no account to render. (_To_ ORGON.) Pray,
sir, recover from your great alarm. We live under a king [Louis
XIV.] who is an enemy to fraud,--a king who can read the heart, and
whom all the arts of impostors cannot deceive. His great mind,
endowed with delicate discernment, at all times sees things in
their true, light.... He annuls, by his sovereign will, the terms
of the contract by which you gave him [Tartuffe] your property. He
moreover forgives you this secret offence in which you were
involved by the flight of your friend. This to reward the zeal
which you once showed for him in maintaining his rights, and to
prove that his heart, when it is least expected, knows how to
recompense a good action. Merit with him is never lost, and he
remembers good better than evil.

DOR. Heaven be thanked!

PER. Ah! I breathe again.

EL. What a favorable end to our troubles!

MAR. Who would have foretold it?

ORG. (to TARTUFFE, _as the_ OFFICER _leads him off_). Ah, wretch!
now you are--

Tartuffe thus disposed of, the play promptly ends, with a vanishing glimpse afforded us of a happy marriage in prospect for Valere with the daughter.

Moliere is said to have had a personal aim in drawing the character of Tartuffe. This, at least, was like Dante. There is not much sweet laughter in such a comedy. But there is a power that is dreadful.

Each succeeding generation of Frenchmen supplies its bright and ingenious wits who produce comedy. But as there is no second Shakspeare, so there is but one Moliere.

VIII.

PASCAL.

1623-1662.

Pascal's fame is distinctly the fame of a man of genius. He achieved notable things. But it is what he might have done, still more than what he did, that fixes his estimation in the world of mind. Blaise Pascal is one of the chief intellectual glories of France.

Pascal, the boy, had a strong natural bent toward mathematics. The story is that his father, in order to turn his son's whole force on the study of languages, put out of the lad's reach all books treating his favorite subject. Thus shut up to his own resources, the masterful little fellow, about his eighth year, drawing charcoal diagrams on the floor, made perceptible progress in working out geometry for himself. At sixteen he produced a treatise on conic sections that excited the wonder and incredulity of Descartes. Later, he experimented in barometry, and pursued investigations in mechanics. Later still, he made what seemed to be approaches toward Newton's binomial theorem.

Vivid religious convictions meantime deeply affected Pascal's mind. His health, never robust, began to give way. His physicians prescribed mental diversion, and forced him into society. That medicine, taken at first with reluctance, proved dangerously delightful to Pascal's vivacious and susceptible spirit. His pious sister Jacqueline warned her brother that he was going too far. But he was still more effectively warned by an accident, in which he almost miraculously escaped from death. Withdrawing from the world, he adopted a course of ascetic practices, in which he continued till he died--in his thirty-ninth year. He wore about his waist an iron girdle armed with sharp points; and this he would press smartly with his elbow when he detected himself at fault in his spirit.

Notwithstanding what Pascal did or attempted, worthy of fame, in science, it was his fortune to become chiefly renowned by literary achievement. His, in fact, would now be a half-forgotten name if he had not written the "Provincial Letters" and the "Thoughts."

The "Provincial Letters" is an abbreviated title. The title in full originally was, "Letters written by Louis de Montalte to a Provincial, one of his friends, and to the Reverend Fathers, the Jesuits, on the subject of the morality and the policy of those Fathers."

Of the "Provincial Letters," several English translations have been made. No one of these that we have been able to find, seems entirely satisfactory. There is an elusive quality to Pascal's style, and in losing this you seem to lose something of Pascal's thought. For with Pascal the thought and the style penetrate each other inextricably and almost indistinguishably. You cannot print a smile, an inflection of the voice, a glance of the eye, a French shrug of the shoulders. And such modulations of the thought seem everywhere to lurk in the turns and phrases of Pascal's inimitable French. To translate them is impossible.

Pascal is beyond question the greatest modern master of that indescribably delicate art in expression, which, from its illustrious ancient exemplar, has received the name of the Socratic irony. With this fine weapon, in great part, it was, wielded like a magician's invisible wand, that Pascal did his memorable execution on the Jesuitical system of morals and casuistry, in the "Provincial Letters." In great part, we say; for the flaming moral earnestness of the man could not abide only to play with his adversaries, to the end of the famous dispute. His lighter cimeter blade he flung aside before he had done, and, toward the last, brandished a sword that had weight as well as edge and temper. The skill that could halve a feather in the air with the sword of Saladin was proved to be also strength that could cleave a suit of mail with the brand of Richard the Lion-hearted.

It is universally acknowledged, that the French language has never in any hands been a more obedient instrument of intellectual power than it was in the hands of Pascal. He is rated the earliest writer to produce what may be called the final French prose. "The creator of French style," Villemain boldly calls him. Pascal's style remains to this day almost perfectly free from adhesions of archaism in diction and in construction. Pascal showed, as it were at once, what the French language was capable of doing in response to the demands of a master. It was the joint achievement of genius, of taste, and of skill, working together in an exquisite balance and harmony.

But let us be entirely frank. The "Provincial Letters" of Pascal are now, to the general reader, not so interesting as from their fame one would seem entitled to expect. You cannot read them intelligently without considerable previous study. You need to have learned, imperfectly, with labor, a thousand things that every contemporary reader of Pascal perfectly knew, as if by simply breathing,--the necessary knowledge being then, so to speak, abroad in the air. Even thus, you cannot possibly derive that vivid delight from perusing in bulk the "Provincial Letters" now, which the successive numbers of the series, appearing at brief irregular intervals, communicated to the eagerly expecting French public, at a time when the topics discussed were topics of a present and pressing practical interest. Still, with whatever disadvantage unavoidably attending, we must give our readers a taste of the quality of Pascal's "Provincial Letters."

We select a passage at the commencement of the Seventh Letter. We use the translation of Mr. Thomas M'Crie. This succeeds very well in conveying the sense, though it necessarily fails to convey either the vivacity or the eloquence, of the incomparable original. The first occasion of the "Provincial Letters" was a championship proposed to Pascal to be taken up by him on behalf of his beleaguered and endangered friend Arnauld, the Port-Royalist. (Port Royal was a Roman-Catholic abbey, situated some eight miles to the south-west of Versailles, and therefore not very remote from Paris.) Arnauld was "for substance of doctrine" really a Calvinist, though he quite sincerely disclaimed being such; and it was for his defence of Calvinism (under its ancient form of Augustinianism) that he was threatened, through Jesuit enmity, with condemnation for heretical opinion. The problem was to enlist the sentiment of general society in his favor. The friends in council at Port Royal said to Pascal, "You must do this." Pascal said, "I will try." In a few days, the first letter of a series destined to such fame, was submitted for judgment to Port Royal and approved. It was printed--anonymously. The success was instantaneous and brilliant. A second letter followed, and a third. Soon, from strict personal defence of Arnauld, the writer went on to take up a line of offence and aggression. He carried the war into Africa. He attacked the Jesuits as teachers of immoral doctrine.

The plan of these later letters was, to have a Paris gentleman write to a friend of his in the country (the "provincial"), detailing interviews held by him with a Jesuit priest of the city. The supposed Parisian gentleman, in his interviews with the supposed Jesuit father, affects the air of a very simple-hearted seeker after truth. He represents himself as, by his innocent-seeming docility, leading his Jesuit teacher on to make the most astonishingly frank exposures of the secrets of the casuistical system held and taught by his order.

The Seventh Letter tells the story of how Jesuit confessors were instructed to manage their penitents in a matter made immortally famous by the wit and genius of Pascal, the matter of "directing the intention." There is nothing in the "Provincial Letters" better suited than this at the same time to interest the general reader, and to display the quality of these renowned productions. (We do not scruple to change our chosen translation a little, at points where it seems to us susceptible of some easy improvement.) Remember it is an imaginary Parisian gentleman who now writes to a friend of his in the country:--

"You know," he said, "that the ruling passion of persons in that
rank of life [the rank of gentleman] is 'the point of honor,' which
is perpetually driving them into acts of violence apparently quite
at variance with Christian piety; so that, in fact, they would be
almost all of them excluded from our confessionals, had not our
fathers relaxed a little from the strictness of religion, to
accommodate themselves to the weakness of humanity. Anxious to keep
on good terms, both with the gospel, by doing their duty to God,
and with the men of the world, by showing charity to their
neighbor, they needed all the wisdom they possessed to devise
expedients for so nicely adjusting matters as to permit these
gentlemen to adopt the methods usually resorted to for vindicating
their honor without wounding their consciences, and thus reconcile
things apparently so opposite to each other as piety and the point
of honor."...

"I should certainly [so replies M. Montalte, with the most
exquisite irony couched under a cover of admiring simplicity],--I
should certainly have considered the thing perfectly impracticable,
if I had not known, from what I have seen of your fathers, that
they are capable of doing with ease what is impossible to other
men. This led me to anticipate that they must have discovered some
method for meeting the difficulty,--a method which I admire, even
before knowing it, and which I pray you to explain to me."

"Since that is your view of the matter," replied the monk, "I
cannot refuse you. Know, then, that this marvellous principle is
our grand method of _directing the intention_--the importance of
which, in our moral system, is such, that I might almost venture to
compare it with the doctrine of probability. You have had some
glimpses of it in passing, from certain maxims which I mentioned to
you. For example, when I was showing you how servants might execute
certain troublesome jobs with a safe conscience, did you not remark
that it was simply by diverting their intention from the evil to
which they were accessory, to the profit which they might reap from
the transaction? Now, that is what we call _directing the
intention_. You saw, too, that, were it not for a similar
divergence of _the mind_, those who give money for benefices might
be downright simoniacs. But I will now show you this grand method
in all its glory, as it applies to the subject of homicide,--a
crime which it justifies in a thousand instances,--in order that,
from this startling result, you may form an idea of all that it is
calculated to effect."

"I foresee already," said I, "that, according to this mode, every
thing will be permitted: it will stick at nothing."

"You always fly from the one extreme to the other," replied the
monk; "prithee avoid that habit. For just to show you that we are
far from permitting every thing, let me tell you that we never
suffer such a thing as a formal intention to sin, with the sole
design of sinning; and, if any person whatever should persist in
having no other end but evil in the evil that he does, we break
with him at once; such conduct is diabolical. This holds true,
without exception of age, sex, or rank. But when the person is not
of such a wretched disposition as this, we try to put in practice
our method of _directing the intention_, which consists in his
proposing to himself, as the end of his actions, some allowable
object. Not that we do not endeavor, as far as we can, to dissuade
men from doing things forbidden; but, when we cannot prevent the
action, we at least purify the motive, and thus correct the
viciousness of the mean by the goodness of the end. Such is the way
in which our fathers have contrived to permit those acts of
violence to which men usually resort in vindication of their honor.
They have no more to do than to turn off their intention from the
desire of vengeance, which is criminal, and direct it to a desire
to defend their honor, which, according to us, is quite
warrantable. And in this way our doctors discharge all their duty
towards God and towards man. By permitting the action, they gratify
the world; and by purifying the intention, they give satisfaction
to the gospel. This is a secret, sir, which was entirely unknown to
the ancients; the world is indebted for the discovery entirely to
our doctors. You understand it now, I hope?"

"Perfectly," was my reply. "To men you grant the outward material
effect of the action, and to God you give the inward and spiritual
movement of the intention; and, by this equitable partition, you
form an alliance between the laws of God and the laws of men. But,
my dear sir, to be frank with you, I can hardly trust your
premises, and I suspect that your authors will tell another tale."

"You do me injustice," rejoined the monk; "I advance nothing but
what I am ready to prove, and that by such a rich array of
passages, that altogether their number, their authority, and their
reasonings, will fill you with admiration. To show you, for
example, the alliance which our fathers have formed between the
maxims of the gospel and those of the world, by thus regulating the
intention, let me refer you to Reginald. (_In praxi._, liv. xxi.,
num. 62, p. 260.) [These, and all that follow, are verifiable
citations from real and undisputed Jesuit authorities, not to this
day repudiated by that order.] 'Private persons are forbidden to
avenge themselves; for St. Paul says to the Romans (ch. 12th),
"Recompense to no man evil for evil;" and Ecclesiasticus says (ch.
28th), "He that taketh vengeance shall draw on himself the
vengeance of God, and his sins will not be forgotten." Besides all
that is said in the gospel about forgiving offences, as in the 6th
and 18th chapters of St. Matthew.'"

"Well, father, if after that, he [Reginald] says any thing contrary
to the Scripture, it will, at least, not be from lack of scriptural
knowledge. Pray, how does he conclude?"

"You shall hear," he said. "From all this it appears that a
military man may demand satisfaction on the spot from the person
who has injured him--not, indeed, with the intention of rendering
evil for evil, but with that of preserving his honor--_non ut malum
pro malo reddat, sed ut conservat honorem_. See you how carefully,
because the Scripture condemns it, they guard against the intention
of rendering evil for evil? This is what they will tolerate on no
account. Thus Lessius observes (De Just., liv. ii., c. 9, d. 12, n.
79), that, 'If a man has received a blow on the face, he must on no
account have an intention to avenge himself; but he may lawfully
have an intention to avert infamy, and may, with that view, repel
the insult immediately, even at the point of the sword--_etiam cum
gladio_.' So far are we from permitting any one to cherish the
design of taking vengeance on his enemies, that our fathers will
not allow any even to _wish their death_--by a movement of hatred.
'If your enemy is disposed to injure you,' says Escobar, 'you have
no right to wish his death, by a movement of hatred; though you
may, with a view to save yourself from harm.' So legitimate,
indeed, is this wish, with such an intention, that our great
Hurtado de Mendoza says that 'we may _pray God_ to visit with
speedy death those who are bent on persecuting us, if there is no
other way of escaping from it.'" (In his book, De Spe, vol. ii., d.
15, sec. 4, 48.)

"May it please your reverence," said I, "the Church has forgotten
to insert a petition to that effect among her prayers."

"They have not put every thing into the prayers that one may
lawfully ask of God," answered the monk. "Besides, in the present
case, the thing was impossible, for this same opinion is of more
recent standing than the Breviary. You are not a good chronologist,
friend. But, not to wander from the point, let me request your
attention to the following passage, cited by Diana from Gaspar
Hurtado (De Sub. Pecc., diff. 9; Diana, p. 5; tr. 14, r. 99), one
of Escobar's four-and-twenty fathers: 'An incumbent may, without
any mortal sin, desire the decease of a life-renter on his
benefice, and a son that of his father, and rejoice when it
happens; provided always it is for the sake of the profit that is
to accrue from the event, and not from personal aversion.'"

"Good," cried I. "That is certainly a very happy hit, and I can
easily see that the doctrine admits of a wide application. But yet
there are certain cases, the solution of which, though of great
importance for gentlemen, might present still greater
difficulties."

"Propose such, if you please, that we may see," said the monk.

"Show me, with all your directing of the intention," returned I,
"that it is allowable to fight a duel."

"Our great Hurtado de Mendoza," said the father, "will satisfy you
on that point in a twinkling. 'If a gentleman,' says he, in a
passage cited by Diana, 'who is challenged to fight a duel, is well
known to have no religion, and if the vices to which he is openly
and unscrupulously addicted, are such as would lead people to
conclude, in the event of his refusing to fight, that he is
actuated, not by the fear of God, but by cowardice, and induce them
to say of him that he was a _hen_, and not a man--_gallina, et non
vir_; in that case he may, to save his honor, appear at the
appointed spot--not, indeed, with the express intention of fighting
a duel, but merely with that of defending himself, should the
person who challenged him come there unjustly to attack him. His
action in this case, viewed by itself, will be perfectly
indifferent; for what moral evil is there in one's stepping into a
field, taking a stroll in expectation of meeting a person, and
defending one's self in the event of being attacked? And thus the
gentleman is guilty of no sin whatever; for in fact, it cannot be
called accepting a challenge at all, his intention being directed
to other circumstances, and the acceptance of a challenge
consisting in an express intention to fight, which we are supposing
the gentleman never had.'"

The humorous irony of Pascal, in the "Provincial Letters," plays like the diffusive sheen of an aurora borealis over the whole surface of the composition. It does not often deliver itself startlingly in sudden discharges as of lightning. You need to school your sense somewhat, not to miss a fine effect now and then. Consider the broadness and coarseness in pleasantry, that, before Pascal, had been common, almost universal, in controversy, and you will better understand what a creative touch it was of genius, of feeling, and of taste, that brought into literature the far more than Attic, the ineffable Christian, purity of that wit and humor in the "Provincial Letters" which will make these writings live as long as men anywhere continue to read the productions of past ages. Erasmus, perhaps, came the nearest of all modern predecessors to anticipating the purified pleasantry of Pascal.

It will be interesting and instructive to see Pascal's own statement of his reasons for adopting the bantering style which he did in the "Provincial Letters," as well as of the sense of responsibility to be faithful and fair, under which he wrote. Pascal says:--

I have been asked why I employed a pleasant, jocose, and diverting
style. I reply... I thought it a duty to write so as to be
comprehended by women and men of the world, that they might know
the danger of their maxims and propositions which were then
universally propagated.... I have been asked, lastly, if I myself
read all the books which I quoted. I answer, No. If I had done so,
I must have passed a great part of my life in reading very bad
books; but I read Escobar twice through, and I employed some of my
friends in reading the others. But I did not make use of a single
passage without having myself read it in the book from which it is
cited, without having examined the subject of which it treats, and
without having read what went before and followed, so that I might
run no risk of quoting an objection as an answer, which would have
been blameworthy and unfair.

Of the wit of the "Provincial Letters," their wit and their controversial effectiveness, the specimens given will have afforded readers some approximate idea. We must deny ourselves the gratification of presenting a brief passage, which we had selected and translated for the purpose, to exemplify from the same source Pascal's serious eloquence. It was Voltaire who said of these productions: "Moliere's best comedies do not excel them in wit, nor the compositions of Bossuet in sublimity." Something of Bossuet's sublimity, or of a sublimity perhaps finer than Bossuet's, our readers will discover in citations to follow from the "Thoughts."

Pascal's "Thoughts," the printed book, has a remarkable history. It was a posthumous publication. The author died, leaving behind him a considerable number of detached fragments of composition, first jottings of thought on a subject that had long occupied his mind. These precious manuscripts were almost undecipherable. The writer had used for his purpose any chance scrap of paper,--old wrapping, for example, or margin of letter,--that, at the critical moment of happy conception, was nearest his hand. Sentences, words even, were often left unfinished. There was no coherence, no sequence, no arrangement. It was, however, among his friends perfectly well understood that Pascal for years had meditated a work on religion designed to demonstrate the truth of Christianity. For this he had been thinking arduously. Fortunately he had even, in a memorable conversation, sketched his project at some length to his Port Royal friends. With so much, scarcely more, in the way of clew, to guide their editorial work, these friends prepared and issued a volume of Pascal's "Thoughts." With the most loyal intentions, the Port-Royalists unwisely edited too much. They pieced out incompletenesses, they provided clauses or sentences of connection, they toned down expressions deemed too bold, they improved Pascal's style! After having suffered such things from his friends, the posthumous Pascal, later, fell into the hands of an enemy. The infidel Condorcet published an edition of the "Thoughts." Whereas the Port-Royalists had suppressed to placate the Jesuits, Condorcet suppressed to please the "philosophers." Between those on the one side, and these on the other, Pascal's "Thoughts" had experienced what might well have killed any production of the human mind that could die. It was not till near the middle of the present century that Cousin called the attention of the world to the fact that we had not yet, but that we still might have, a true edition of Pascal's "Thoughts." M. Faugere took the hint, and consulting the original manuscripts, preserved in the national library at Paris, produced, with infinite editorial labor, almost two hundred years after the thinker's death, the first satisfactory edition of Pascal's "Thoughts." Since Faugere, M. Havet has also published an edition of Pascal's works entire, by him now first adequately annotated and explained. The arrangement of the "Thoughts" varies in order, according to the varying judgment of editors.

We use, for our extracts, a current translation, which we modify at our discretion, by comparison of the original text as given in M. Havet's elaborate work.

Our first extract is a passage in which the writer supposes a sceptic of the more shallow, trifling sort, to speak. This sceptic represents his own state of mind in the following strain as of soliloquy:--

'I do not know who put me into the world, nor what the world is,
nor what I am myself. I am in a frightful ignorance of all things.
I do not know what my body is, what my senses are, what my soul is,
and that very part of me which thinks what I am saying, which
reflects upon every thing and upon itself, and is no better
acquainted with itself than with any thing else. I see these
appalling spaces of the universe which enclose me, and I find
myself tethered in one corner of this immense expansion without
knowing why I am stationed in this place rather than in another, or
why this moment of time which is given me to live is assigned me at
this point rather than at another of the whole eternity that has
preceded me, and of that which is to follow me.

'I see nothing but infinities on every side, which enclose me like
an atom, and like a shadow which endures but for an instant, and
returns no more.

'All that I know, is that I am soon to die; but what I am most
ignorant of, is that very death which I am unable to avoid.

'As I know not whence I came, so I know not whither I go; and I
know only, that in leaving this world I fall forever either into
nothingness or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing
which of these two conditions is to be eternally my lot. Such is my
state,--full of misery, of weakness, and of uncertainty.

'And from all this I conclude, that I ought to pass all the days
of my life without a thought of trying to learn what is to befall
me hereafter. Perhaps in my doubts I might find some enlightenment;
but I am unwilling to take the trouble, or go a single step in
search of it; and, treating with contempt those who perplex
themselves with such solicitude, my purpose is to go forward
without forethought and without fear to try the great event, and
passively to approach death in uncertainty of the eternity of my
future condition.'

Who would desire to have for a friend a man who discourses in this
manner? Who would select such a one for the confidant of his
affairs? Who would have recourse to such a one in his afflictions?
And, in fine, for what use of life could such a man be destined?

The central thought on which the projected apologetic of Pascal was to revolve as on a pivot, is the contrasted greatness and wretchedness of man,--with Divine Revelation, in its doctrine of a fall on man's part from original nobleness, supplying the needed link, and the only link conceivable, of explanation, to unite the one with the other, the human greatness with the human wretchedness. This contrast of dignity and disgrace should constantly be in the mind of the reader of the "Thoughts" of Pascal. It will often be found to throw a very necessary light upon the meaning of the separate fragments that make up the series.

We now present a brief fragment asserting, with vivid metaphor, at the same time the fragility of man's frame and the majesty of man's nature. This is a very famous Thought:--

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking
reed. It is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to
crush him. An exhalation, a drop of water, suffices to kill him.
But were the universe to crush him, man would still be more noble
than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and
knows the advantage that the universe has over him. The universe
knows nothing of it.

Our whole dignity consists, then, in thought.

One is reminded of the memorable saying of a celebrated philosopher: "In the universe there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind."

What a sudden, almost ludicrous, reduction in scale, the greatness of Caesar, as conqueror, is made to suffer when looked at in the way in which Pascal asks you to look at it in the following Thought! (Remember that Caesar, when he began fighting for universal empire, was fifty-one years of age:)--

Caesar was too old, it seems to me, to amuse himself with conquering
the world. This amusement was well enough for Augustus or
Alexander; they were young people, whom it is difficult to stop;
but Caesar ought to have been more mature.

That is as if you should reverse the tube of your telescope, with the result of seeing the object observed made smaller instead of larger.

The following sentence might be a Maxim of La Rochefoucauld. Pascal was, no doubt, a debtor to him as well as to Montaigne:--

I lay it down as a fact, that, if all men knew what others say of
them, there would not be four friends in the world.

Here is one of the most current of Pascal's sayings:--

Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish to go.

The following "Thought" condenses the substance of the book proposed, into three short sentences:--

The knowledge of God without that of our misery produces pride. The
knowledge of our misery without that of God gives despair. The
knowledge of Jesus Christ is intermediate, because therein we find
God and our misery.

The prevalent seeming severity and intellectual coldness of Pascal's "Thoughts" yield to a touch from the heart, and become pathetic, in such utterances as the following, supposed to be addressed by the Saviour to the penitent seeking to be saved:--

Console thyself; thou wouldst not seek me if thou hadst not found
me.

I thought on thee in my agony; such drops of blood I shed for thee.

It is austerity again, but not unjust austerity, that speaks as follows:--

Religion is a thing so great that those who would not take the
pains to seek it if it is obscure, should be deprived of it. What
do they complain of, then, if it is such that they could find it by
seeking it?

But we must take our leave of Pascal. His was a suffering as well as an aspiring spirit. He suffered because he aspired. But, at least, he did not suffer long. He aspired himself quickly away. Toward the last he wrought at a problem in his first favorite study, that of mathematics, and left behind him, as a memorial of his later life, a remarkable result of investigation on the curve called the cycloid. During his final illness he pierced himself through with many sorrows,--unnecessary sorrows, sorrows, too, that bore a double edge, hurting not only him, but also his kindred,--in practising, from mistaken religious motives, a hard repression upon his natural instinct to love, and to welcome love. He thought that God should be all, the creature nothing. The thought was half true, but it was half false. God should, indeed, be all. But, in God, the creature also should be something.

In French history,--we may say, in the history of the world,--if there are few brighter, there also are few purer, fames than the fame of Pascal.

IX.

MADAME DE SEVIGNE.

1626-1696.

Of Madame de Sevigne, if it were permitted here to make a pun and a paradox, one might justly and descriptively say that she was not a woman of letters, but only a woman of--letters. For Madame de Sevigne's addiction to literature was not at all that of an author by profession. She simply wrote admirable private letters, in great profusion, and became famous thereby.

Madame de Sevigne's fame is partly her merit, but it is also partly her good fortune. She was rightly placed to be what she was. This will appear from a sketch of her life, and still more from specimens to be exhibited of her own epistolary writing.

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was her maiden name. She was born a baroness. She was married, young, a marchioness. First early left an orphan, she was afterward early left a widow,--not too early, however, to have become the mother of two children, a son and a daughter. The daughter grew to be the life-long idol of the widowed mother's heart. The letters she wrote to this daughter, married, and living remote from her, compose the greater part of that voluminous epistolary production by which Madame de Sevigne became, without her ever aiming at such a result, or probably ever thinking of it, one of the classics of the French language.

Madame de Sevigne was wealthy as orphan heiress, and she should have been wealthy as widow. But her husband was profligate, and he wasted her substance. She turned out to be a thoroughly capable woman of affairs who managed her property well. During her long and stainless widowhood--her husband fell in a shameful duel when she was but twenty-five years old, and she lived to be seventy--she divided her time between her estate, The Rocks, in Brittany, and her residence in Paris. This period was all embraced within the protracted reign of Louis XIV., perhaps, upon the whole, the most memorable age in the history of France.

Beautiful, and, if not brilliantly beautiful, at least brilliantly witty, Madame de Sevigne was virtuous--in that chief sense of feminine virtue--amid an almost universal empire of profligacy around her. Her social advantages were unsurpassed, and her social success was equal to her advantages. She had the woman courtier's supreme triumph in being once led out to dance by the king--her own junior by a dozen years--no vulgar king, remember, but the "great" Louis XIV. Her cynical cousin, himself a writer of power, who had been repulsed in dishonorable proffers of love by the young marchioness during the lifetime of her husband,--we mean Count Bussy,--says, in a scurrilous work of his, that Madame de Sevigne remarked, on returning to her seat after her dancing-bout with the king, that Louis possessed great qualities, and would certainly obscure the lustre of all his predecessors. "I could not help laughing in her face," the ungallant cousin declared, "seeing what had produced this panegyric." Probably, indeed, the young woman was pleased. But, whatever may have been her faults or her follies, nothing can rob Madame de Sevigne of the glory that is hers, in having been strong enough in womanly and motherly honor to preserve, against many dazzling temptations, amid general bad example, and even under malignant aspersions, a chaste and spotless name. When it is added, that, besides access to the royal court itself, this gifted woman enjoyed the familiar acquaintance of La Rochefoucauld and other high-bred wits, less famous, not a few, enough will have been said to show that her position was such as to give her talent its best possible chance. The French history of the times of Louis XIV. is hinted in glimpses the most vivid and the most suggestive, throughout the whole series of the letters.

We owe it to our readers (and to Madame de Sevigne no less) first of all to let them see a specimen of the affectionate adulation that this French woman of rank and of fashion, literally in almost every letter of hers, effuses on her daughter,--a daughter who, by the way, seems very languidly to have responded to such demonstrations:--

THE ROCKS, Sunday, June 28, 1671.

You have amply made up to me my late losses; I have received two
letters from you which have filled me with transports of joy. The
pleasure I take in reading them is beyond all imagination. If I
have in any way contributed to the improvement of your style I did
it in the thought that I was laboring for the pleasure of others,
not for my own. But Providence, who has seen fit to separate us so
often, and to place us at such immense distances from each other,
has repaid me a little for the privation in the charms of your
correspondence, and still more in the satisfaction you express in
your situation, and the beauty of your castle; you represent it to
me with an air of grandeur and magnificence that enchants me. I
once saw a similar account of it by the first Madame de Grignan;
but I little thought at that time, that all these beauties were one
day to be at your command. I am very much obliged to you for having
given me so particular an account of it. If I could be tired in
reading your letters, it would not only betray a very bad taste in
me, but would likewise show that I could have very little love or
friendship for you. Divest yourself of the dislike you have taken
to circumstantial details. I have often told you, and you ought
yourself to feel the truth of this remark, that they are as dear to
us from those we love, as they are tedious and disagreeable from
others. If they are displeasing to us, it is only from the
indifference we feel for those who write them. Admitting this
observation to be true, I leave you to judge what pleasure yours
afford me. It is a fine thing, truly, to play the great lady, as
you do at present.

Conceive the foregoing multiplied by the whole number of the separate letters composing the correspondence, and you will have no exaggerated idea of the display that Madame de Sevigne makes of her regard for her daughter. This regard was a passion, morbid, no doubt, by excess, and, even at that, extravagantly demonstrated; but it was fundamentally sincere. Madame de Sevigne idealized her absent daughter, and literally "loved but only her." We need not wholly admire such maternal affection. But we should not criticise it too severely.

We choose next a marvellously vivid "instantaneous view," in words, of a court afternoon and evening at Versailles. This letter, too, is addressed to the daughter--Madame de Grignan, by her married name. It bears date, "Paris, Wednesday, 29th July." The year is 1676, and the writer is just fifty:--