Chapter XVI: Book IV: I. Explanation of the Enigma (3)

Having conceived a disgust for the profession of arms--for which he had been originally intended--in consequence of having fought with and wounded a young officer in a duel, he determined upon embracing the ecclesiastical state; and shortly after taking orders was inducted by Cardinal Fleury to the royal abbey of Jard--an easy government, the seat of which was his own chateau of Voisenon.

As soon as he was actually a dignitary of the Church, he turned his thoughts entirely to the stage! In compliance with the request of Mademoiselle Quinaut, the new Abbe of Jard wrote a series of dramatic pieces, among which may be cited, _La Coquette fixee_, _Le Reveil de Thalie_, _Les Mariages assortis_, and _Le Jeune Grecque_, little drawing-room comedies, which have not kept possession of the stage, and to which French literature knows not where to give a place at the present day, so far are they from offering a single recommendable quality. The only style of composition in which the Abbe de Voisenon might have, perhaps, distinguished himself, had he been seconded by an intelligent musician, was the operatic. In this _baladin_ talent of his there was something of the freedom and sparkle of the Italian abbes; and yet the Abbe de Voisenon enjoyed during his life-time a high degree of celebrity. Seeing the utter impossibility of justifying this celebrity by his works, we must presume that it proceeded chiefly from his amiable character, his pointed epigrammatical conversation, and in a great measure, also, from his brilliant position in the world. And, after all, did celebrity require other causes at a time when a man's success was established, not by the publicity of the press, but from the words dropped from his lips in the "world," and from the occasional enunciation of a sparkling _bon mot_ quickly caught up and for a length of time repeated? Were we to protest against this species of _illustration_, as the French call it, we should be in the wrong: each epoch has its own; since then times are altered: now-a-days, in France, a man obtains celebrity through the medium of the press, formerly it was by the _salons_. In general, the French _litterateurs_, especially the journalists, may be said to write better now than they did then; but where, we should like to know, is there now to be found a young writer of thirty capable of creating and sustaining a conversation in a society consisting of upwards of a hundred distinguished persons? The lackeys of M. de Boufflers were, in all probability, more in their place in a _salon_ than would be the most learned or witty writers of the present day.

If the Abbe de Voisenon was not exactly an eagle as regards common sense and intellectual attainments, what are we to think of M. de Choiseul, who wished to appoint him minister of France at some foreign court? The Abbe de Voisenon a minister! that man whom M. de Lauraguais called _a handful of fleas_! But if he became not minister of France, it was decreed by fate that he should be minister of somebody or other; he was too incapable to escape this honor. Some years after the failure of this ridiculous project of M. de Choiseul, the Prince-bishop of Spire appointed him his minister plenipotentiary at the Court of France. His admission into the bosom of the French Academy was all that was now required to complete his happiness, and this honor was shortly afterwards conferred upon him, for he was duly elected to the chair vacated by the death of Crebillon.

At the age of fifty-two, with the intention of getting rid of his asthma, his constant companion through life, he determined to try the effect of mineral waters upon his enfeebled constitution. His journey from Paris to Cautarets, and his sojourn in this head-quarters of bitumen and sulphur, as related by himself in his letters to his friends, may be considered as an historical portraiture of the method of travelling, as pursued by the grandees of the time, as well as being the truest pages of the idle, epicurean, pleasure-loving, yet infirm, existence of the narrator.

"We passed through Tours yesterday (writes he to his friend
Favart, in his first letter, dated from Chatelherault the 8th
day of June, 1761), where Madame la Duchess de Choiseul
received all the honors due to the _gouvernante_ of the
province: we entered by the Mall, which is planted with trees
as beautiful as those of the Parisian Boulevards. Here we found
a mayor, who came to harangue the duchess. It happened that M.
Sainfrais, during the harangue, had posted himself directly
behind the speaker, so that every now and then his horse, which
kept constantly tossing its head, as horses will do, would give
him a little tap on the back--a circumstance which cut his
phrases in half in the most ludicrous manner possible; because
at every blow the orator would turn round to see what was the
matter, after which he would gravely resume his discourse,
while I was ready to burst with laughter the whole time. Two
leagues further on we had another rich scene; an ecclesiastic
stopped the carriage, and commenced a pompous harangue
addressed to M. Poisonnier, whom he kept calling _mon Prince_.
M. Poisonnier replied, that he was more than a prince, and that
in fact the lives of all princes depended upon him, for he was
a physician. 'What!' exclaimed the priest, 'you are not M. le
Prince de Talmont?' 'He has been dead these two years,' replied
the Duchesse de Choiseul. 'But who, then, is in this carriage?'
'It is Madame la Duchesse de Choiseul,' replied some one.
Forthwith, not a whit disconcerted, he commenced another
harangue, in which he lauded to the skies the excellent
education she had bestowed on her son. 'But I have no son,
monsieur,' replied the duchess quietly. 'Ah! you have no son; I
am very sorry for that;' and so saying his reverence put his
harangue in his pocket, and walked off.

"Adieu, my worthy friend. We shall reach Bordeaux on Thursday.
I intend to feed well when I get there."

What an edifying picture of the state of the high and low clergy of France at this epoch is presented to us! The Abbe de Voisenon rolling along in his carriage, indulging in the anticipatory delights of some good 'feeds' when he shall get to Bordeaux; and a hungry priest haranguing right and left the first comers who may present themselves, in order to obtain the wherewithal to procure a dinner.

It is to Madame Favart that Voisenon writes from Bordeaux:--

"We arrived here at ten o'clock yesterday evening, and found
Marshal de Richelieu, who had crossed the Garonne to meet the
Duchesse de Choiseul. This city is beautiful viewed at a
distance--all that appertains to the exterior is of the best;
but what afflicts me most of all, is the sad fact that there
are no sardines to be had on account of the war. I was not
aware that the sardines had taken part against; however, I
revenged myself upon two ortolans, which I devoured for supper,
along with a _pate_ of red partridges _aux truffes_, which,
though made as long back as November last--as Marshal de
Richelieu assured me--was as fresh and as _parfume_ as if it
had been made but the night before."

If the reader should feel astonished that an asthmatical patient could eat partridges and truffles without being horribly ill, his astonishment will not be of long continuance. The following day Voisenon wrote to Favart:--

"Oh, my dear friend, I have passed a frightful night. I was
obliged to smoke and take my _kermes_. I shall not be able to
see any of the 'lions' of the place. If I am three days
following in this state after I get to Cauterets, you will have
me back again with you by the end of the month."

One would suppose that after this gentle hint our abbe would be more prudent; not a bit of it. In the same letter he adds:--

"The dinner-table yesterday was covered with sardines. At the
very first start I eat six in as many mouthfuls--a truly
delicious _morceau_; despite my _kermes_, I reckon upon eating
as many to-day, along with my two ortolans. We leave to-morrow,
and on Wednesday we shall reach Cauterets."

Thus, ill on the 11th in consequence of a monstrous supper taken on the 10th, we find him, for all that, on the following day devouring sardines by the half-dozen, and ortolans again! On the 18th he writes from Cauterets to his friend Favart:--

"I arrived yesterday in good health, but have slept badly,
because the house in which I lodge is situated over a torrent,
which makes a frightful noise. This country I can only compare
to an icy horror, like the tragedy of _Teree_."

Twelve days afterwards, Voisenon writes to Madame Favart:--

"Madame de Choiseul's uncle, who paid you so many compliments
in the green-room, arrived yesterday: he lodges in the same
house with me.... I introduced him this morning into one of the
best houses in Cauterets--indeed the very best house--where, I
must confess, I myself spend three parts of the entire day; in
a word, it is the pastry-cook's. This learned individual
compounds admirable tartlets, as well as some little cakes of
singular lightness; but above all, certain delicious little
puffs composed of cream and millet-flour, which he calls
_millassons_. I stuff them all day long. This makes the waters
turn sour on my stomach, and myself turn very yellow; but I am
tolerably well notwithstanding."

This gormandizing Abbe de Voisenon, ever hanging, as it were, between _pates_ and his grave, becomes now a rather interesting subject of study. We begin to speculate upon what it is that will finally carry him off: his asthma, or the confectionary he daily swallows.

He writes to Favart:--

"I bathe every morning, and during this operation I bear a
striking resemblance to a match dipped in sulphur. I keep my
health, however, tolerably well, though still suffering from my
asthma, of which I fear I shall never be cured."

It would be a wonder if he should be cured, with his unfortunate table excesses, which would have killed half-a-dozen healthy men. In vain do we seek in his correspondence with Favart and his wife, a single thought unconnected with the pleasures of the stomach. We have read with what delight he sings the praises of a pastry-cook established at Cauterets, famous for his millet-cakes and cream-puffs. His happiness did not stop here:--

"A second pastry-cook (he cries), upon my reputation, has set up here. There is a daily trial of skill between the two artists; I eat and judge, and it is my stomach that pays the cost. I go to the bath, and return to the oven. I shall come here again in the thrush season. We have red partridges, which are brought here from all parts; they are delicious."

In short, he remained so long stuffing confectionary at Cauterets, where he had gone solely to take care of himself, and to live with the strictest regularity, that on the eve of his departure he wrote sadly to Madame Favart:--'I am just the same as when you saw me last: sometimes asthmatical, and always gormandizing.' The sufferings which he experienced during his sojourn at, Bareges, previous to his final return to Paris, are proofs of the deplorable effects of the mineral waters upon his health:--

"I am suffering dreadfully; and am now, while I write, laboring
under so violent an attack of asthma, that I cannot doubt but
that the air of this country is as bad for me as that of
Montrouge. If I am as bad to-morrow, I shall return to pass the
week at Cauterets, and on Saturday go on to Pau, where I shall
wait for the ladies who are to pass through on Monday, on their
way to Bayonne. I know I shall be in a miserable state during
the journey."

Such were the benefits derived by the Abbe de Voisenon from his four months' sojourn at the baths of Cauterets and Bareges. He returned to Voisenon infinitely worse than when he left it. On the eve of his departure for home, where, as he said some time afterwards, he wished _to be on the same floor with the tombs of his ancestors_, he devoured a monstrous dinner on the Bareges mountains.

Finding that the mineral waters of the Pyrenees had failed in reestablishing his health--that is, if he ever had health--the Abbe de Voisenon abandoned physicians and their fruitless prescriptions, to seek elsewhere remedies for the cure of his asthma, which became more and more troublesome as he began to get into years. As he was constantly speaking of his disease to everybody, and as everybody--at least all those who wished to get into his good graces--spoke of it to him, he learned one day that there existed in some garret of Paris a certain abbe deeply learned in all the mysteries of occult chemistry, an adept of the great Albert, the master of masters in empirical art. Like all sorcerers, and all _savants_ of the eighteenth century, this abbe was represented as being in a state of frightful misery and destitution. He who possessed the secrets of plants and minerals, of fire and light, of the generation of beings, had not the wherewithal to procure himself a decent _soutane_, nor even a morsel of bread. Though, by the efforts of his magic, he had reached a dizzy height on the paths of knowledge, it was, alas! a fact but too true, that he was unable to maintain himself more than a month in the same apartment--perhaps on account of his indifference to the interests of his landlords. For all that he was a marvellous being, inventing specifics for the cure of all diseases, and consequently of asthma among the rest. It was even whispered, but secretly and mysteriously, and with a sort of awe--for they were very superstitious, though very atheistical, in the eighteenth century--that all these specifics were comprised in one remedy, namely, the celebrated AURUM POTABILE, or fluid gold. Now every one knows, or at least ought to know, that potable gold, that is, gold in a cold and fluid state, like wine, triumphs over every malady to which the human frame is subject: it is health itself, perpetual youth, and would be no less than immortality had not Paracelsus, who, they say, also possessed the secret of potable gold, unfortunately died at the age of thirty-three, or thirty-five: thus establishing a fatal argument against its virtues in this respect. But one thought now possessed Voisenon--that of getting hold, somehow or other, of this magic abbe, and of enticing him to his chateau; but an insensate and monstrous desire was this--a desire almost impossible to be satisfied, for it was stated that this Prometheus repelled all advances. Persecuted by the faculty, censured by the ecclesiastical tribunal, maltreated by the police, who would not suffer anything in the shape of gold-making, he had, in his savage misanthropy, renounced all further thoughts of alleviating the pains of humanity at the cost of his repose and safety. Here was a terrible state of perplexity for our asthmatical abbe, who, for all that, did not lose courage, but set to work with all his might to discover the great physician.

But where, or how, was he to discover a sorcerer in Paris? To whom could he decently address himself? To what professional class? There are so many people in the world ready to ridicule even the most respectable things. Every time that Voisenon elbowed at the Tuileries, or in the Palais Royal, an individual in a seedy cassock, he fancied that he had discovered his man. Forthwith he would enter into conversation with him, his heart fluttering with hope, until the moment came which would convince him that he had been deceived. Though for the moment cast into despair, he did not lose hope, but would the next day recommence his voyages of discovery in search of potable gold. One morning he had a sudden illumination:--"Since the archbishop," thought he, "has censured the conduct of the abbe I have been so long in search of, the archbishop must know where he lodges." Just as if sorcerers had lodgings! That very day he repaired to the archbishop's court. If the reader wonders why our abbe did not give the clerks whom he interrogated the name of his mysterious priest, the answer is easy: it is simply because he did not know his name; magicians seldom make themselves known but by their works. This name, however, to his great and inexpressible joy, he was soon to learn. After some researches made in the register of the episcopal court, the clerk informed him that this abbe (a deplorable subject by all accounts) was called Boiviel, and, at the period when the acts of censure were passed upon him, lodged in the Rue de Versailles, Faubourg Saint Marceau. Voisenon was there almost as soon as the words were out of the clerk's mouth.

Voisenon knocked at every kennel of this deplorable street; not even a bark replied to the name of the Abbe Boiviel. At length, at a seventh floor above the mud, an old woman, who resided in a loft, to which access was obtained by means of a rope-ladder, informed him that the Abbe Boiviel had quitted the apartment about six months before, with the avowed intention of going to lodge at Menilmontant; she added, that this delay gave fair grounds for supposing that he must necessarily have changed his quarters at least five or six times in the course of these six months. Disappointed, but not discouraged, Voisenon descended from the dizzy height, reflecting upon the sad distress to which a man might be reduced, although possessing the secret of potable gold.

An almost incredible chance had so willed it, that the Abbe Boiviel had changed his abode but three times since his descent from the garret of the Rue de Versailles. From Menilmontant he had removed to Passy, and from Passy to La Chapelle, where he now resided.

At length the two abbes met; but to what delicate manoeuvres the seigneur of Voisenon was obliged to have recourse in accosting his rugged _comfrere_, who was at that moment engaged in eating his breakfast off a chair. He had sense enough to put off as long as possible the true subject of his visit; besides, what cared he for delays? He had found him at last, he was face to face with the mysterious, infallible physician, the successor of the great Albert. Boiviel was even more savage and morose than the Abbe de Voisenon had anticipated. He spoke of offering his services to the Missionary Society in order to get appointed to preach the Gospel in Japan, although, to tell the truth, he did not believe over-much in Christianity. "And I do not believe in Japan," might have perhaps replied the Abbe de Voisenon, had he been in a joking humor: but the fact is, he was thunderstruck at the enunciation of such a project. It was too provoking, when he, had at length found the Abbe Boiviel, to hear that the Abbe Boiviel was going to immolate himself in Japan.

Inspired by circumstance, that tenth muse which is worth all the nine put together, Voisenon said to Boiviel, that he was aware of all the persecutions which the clergy of Paris had made him endure for causes which he did not desire to know; he refrained also from entering on the subject of fluid gold. Touched by the exhibition of so much constancy in misfortune, he had come, he said, to propose to the Abbe Boiviel to inhabit his chateau of Voisenon, where, in the calm and repose of a peaceful existence, and with a mind freed from the harassing cares of the world, he would have leisure to meditate and write; that this proceeding of his, though strange in appearance, was excusable, and to be judged with an indulgent eye; he, the Abbe de Voisenon, was happy, rich, powerful even. The Abbe Boiviel would be quite at home at the chateau de Voisenon; his feelings of independence would not be outraged; when he should be tired of sojourning there, he might quit the chateau, remain absent as long as it pleased him, and return when it suited his fancy. It is hardly necessary to say that the wild boar allowed itself to be muzzled; that very evening a hired carriage conducted the chemist, the sorcerer, the magician Boiviel, to the Chateau de Voisenon. "I shall have my potable gold at last," thought the triumphant Abbe, radiant with hope and exultation.

Installed at the chateau, the Abbe Boiviel conformed himself with a very good grace to the monachal existence led by its inmates. The good regimen of the house tended also to considerably soften the former asperities of his demeanor; he spoke no more of Japan, but neither did he speak of the potable gold, although Voisenon on several occasions endeavored to obtain from him an explanation on this essential point. Whenever our asthmatical abbe would lead the conversation towards subjects relating to chemistry or alchemy, Boiviel would either avoid a direct reply or else fall into a state of profound taciturnity: and yet all his debts had been paid, including the various outstanding accounts due to his numerous landlords, and his dinners at the Croix de Lorraine--that memorable tavern, where all the abbes who received fifteen sous for every mass said at St. Sulpice were accustomed to feed daily. Several cassocks had also been purchased for him, several pairs of stockings, and many shirts.

After a three months' residence at the chateau he had become fat, fresh, and rosy, such as he had never before been at any previous epoch of his life. Emboldened by the friendship he had shown to his guest, Voisenon ventured one day to say to the Abbe Boiviel, that, skeptical and atheistical as they falsely imagined him to be in the world, he possessed, nevertheless, an absolute faith in alchemy; he denied neither the philosopher's stone, nor the universal panacea, nor even the potable gold. Now did he, or did he not, believe in potable gold? This was a home-thrust Boiviel could no longer recoil; he _did_ believe in it; but according to his idea the audacious chemist committed a great sin in composing it: it was, so to speak, as though attacking the decrees of creation to change into liquid what had been ordained a metal. A sorcerer troubled with religious scruples appeared a strange spectacle to the Abbe de Voisenon and one, too, that rather embarrassed him. He did not, however, entirely renounce his conquest of the potable gold; he waited three months longer, and during these three months fresh favors were lavished on Boiviel, who habituated himself to these proceedings with praiseworthy resignation.

Treated as a friend, called also by that title, Boiviel justified the Abbe de Voisenon in saying to him one day, that he had no longer a hope in any remedy whatsoever, save the potable gold, for the cure of his asthma. Without the specific, as much above other remedies as the sun is above fire, the only course left him was to die. Boiviel was moved, his iron resolves were shaken, and his qualms of conscience ceded to the voice of friendship. He warned his friend, however, that in order to compose a little fluid gold much solid gold would be required. The first essay would cost ten thousand livres at the very least. Voisenon, who would have given twenty thousand to be cured, consented to the sacrifice, thanking heartily his future liberator, who, on the following day, commenced the great work. What sage deliberation did he bring to the task! and how slowly did the work proceed! Day followed day, month followed month, but as yet no gold, except that which the Abbe de Voisenon himself contributed in pieces of twenty-four livres each. The day at length arrived in which, the ten thousand livres being exhausted, Boiviel informed his patient that the fluid gold was in flasks, and would be ready for use in a month.

It was during this month that the alchemist Boiviel took leave of the Abbe de Voisenon, on the pretext of going to see his old father, who resided in Flanders. Before two months were out he would return to the chateau, in order to observe the beneficial effects of the liquified metal. Warmly embraced by his friend, overwhelmed with presents, solicited to return as speedily as possible, Boiviel quitted the Chateau de Voisenon, where he had lived for nearly a year, and in what manner we have seen.

After the time allowed by Boiviel for the fluid gold to be fit for use had elapsed, the Abbe de Voisenon began his course of the medicine. He emptied the first, the second, and the third flask, awaiting the result with exemplary patience; but an asthma is not to be cured in a week, especially an asthma of forty years' standing.

Boiviel had not yet returned; he had now been four months in Flanders; to these four months succeeded another four, but no Boiviel; the year revolved, the flasks diminished, but still no Boiviel.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the Abbe Boiviel never reappeared, and that he was nothing better than a charlatan and a thief. But the singular part of the matter is, that the Abbe de Voisenon found his asthma considerably relieved after a course of the fluid gold composed by Boiviel; and his sole regret at the end of his days was, not having foreseen the death, or disappearance--a matter quite as disastrous--of his alchemist, who could have furnished him with the means of compounding the elixir for himself as it might be wanted.

In order to show himself superior to the assaults of his enemy, our Abbe would often endeavor to persuade himself that he was every whit as active as he had formerly been; more active even than he had been in his youth. On these occasions he would jump up from his easy-chair, where he had been sitting groaning under an attack of the asthma; he would cast his pillows on one side, his night-cap on the other, would pitch his slippers to the other end of the room, and call loudly for his domestics. In one of these deceitful triumphs of his will over his feeble constitution, he rang one cold winter's morning for his _valet de chambre_.

"My thick cloth trousers!" cried he, "my thick cloth trousers!"

"Why, Monsieur l'Abbe," timidly objected his faithful servitor, "what can you be thinking of? you were very bad yesterday evening."

"That's very probable; I have nothing to do with what I was yesterday evening. My thick cloth trousers, I tell you--now, my furred waistcoat! Come, look sharp!"

"But, Monsieur l'Abbe, why quit your warm room, your snug arm-chair? You are so pale."

"Pale, am I! that's better than ever, for I have been as yellow as a quince all my life! Good, I have my trousers and waistcoat; fetch me my redingote!"

"Your redingote! that you only put on when you are going out?"

"And it is precisely because I am going out that I ask for it. You argue to-day like a true stage valet. Why should I not put on my redingote? Are you afraid of it becoming shabby? Do you wish to steal it from me while it is new?"

"I am afraid that you will increase your cough if you don't keep the house to-day. It is very cold this morning."

"Very cold, is it, eh? so much the better. I like cold weather."

"It snows even very much, Monsieur l'Abbe."

"In that case, my large Polish boots."

"Your large Polish boots! And for what purpose?"

"Not to write a poem in, probably; for if Boileau very sensibly remarked, that in order to write a good poem time and taste were necessary, he did not add that boots were indispensable. Once for all, I want my Polish boots to go out shooting in. Is not that plain enough, Monsieur Mascarille?"

"Cough shooting, Monsieur l'Abbe?"

"_Maraud!_ wolf-shooting--in the wood. Come, quick, my boots, and no chattering."

"Here are your boots, Monsieur l'Abbe. Truly you have no thought for your health."

"Have you a design upon my boots, also? Be so good, most discursive valet, as to fetch me my deer-skin gloves, my hat, and gun."

The Abbe de Voisenon was soon equipped with the aid of his valet, who, during the operation of dressing, never ceased repeating to him:

"It is fearfully cold this morning. Dogs have been found frozen to death in their kennels, fish dead in the fish-ponds, cattle dead in the stables, birds dead on the trees, and even wolves dead in the forest."

"My good friend," replied the Abbe de Voisenon, "you have said too much; your story of the wolves prevents me believing the rest: upon this I start. Now listen to me. On my return from shooting I expect to find my poultices ready, my asses-milk properly warmed, and my _tisanes_ mixed; give directions about all this in the kitchen."

"Yes, Monsieur l'Abbe. He'll never return, that's certain," murmured the valet, as he packed up his master in his great-coat, and drew his fur cap well down over his ears.

Followed by three of his dogs, our abbe started on his shooting excursion. At the very first step he took on leaving the court-yard, he fell; but he was up in an instant, and brushed speedily along. It must have been a strange spectacle to see this old man, as black as a mute at a funeral, with his black gloves, black boots, black coat, all black in short, tripping gayly along over the snow with three dogs at his heels, sometimes whistling and shouting aloud, sometimes cracking his pocket-whip, and occasionally pointing his fowling-piece in the direction of a flight of crows.

He had passed through the village of Voisenon, and had just gained the open country, when he was stopped at the entrance of a lane of small cottages by a young girl, who, the instant she perceived him, cried out,

"Ah, monseigneur" (for many people styled him monseigneur), "it is surely Providence that has sent you to us!"

"What is the matter?" inquired the abbe.

"Our grandfather is dying, and he is unwilling to die without confession."

"But I have nothing to do with that, my child; that is the priest's business."

"But are you not a priest, monseigneur?"

"Almost," replied our abbe, rather taken aback by this home-thrust, and in a very bad humor besides at the interruption, "almost; but address yourself in preference to the prior of the convent. Run to the chateau, ring at the convent-gate; ring loudly, and reserve me for a better occasion."

"Monseigneur," repeated the girl, "our grandfather has not time to wait; he is dying--you must come."

"I tell you," replied the abbe, confused within himself at his refusal, "I cannot go. I am, as you see, out shooting: the thing is utterly impossible."

With these words he sought to pursue his way; but the young girl, who could not comprehend the bad arguments made use of by the abbe, clung obstinately to his coat skirts, and compelled him to turn round. Aroused by the noise of this altercation, a few of the male population appeared on the thresholds of their doors, others at their windows; and as a village resembles a bundle of dry hay, which a spark will set in a blaze, the wives joined their husbands, the children their mothers, and soon the entire population flocked into the street to see what was the matter.

The Abbe du Jard, seigneur of Voisenon, king of the country, felt deeply humiliated amid the crowd which surrounded him, and which had already begun to murmur at this refusal, as irreligious as it was inhuman.

But our poor abbe was not inhuman. The fact was, he had completely forgotten the formula used on such occasions; and if the truth must be told, as he was careless and indifferent in religious matters, rather than hypocritical, his conscience reproached him for going to absolve or condemn a fellow-creature when he inwardly felt how utterly unworthy he was himself of judging others at the tribunal of the confessional.

Necessity, however, prevailed over his just scruples; which scruples, however, be it said, could not be made use of as excuses to his vassals: so, with downcast eyes and his reversed fowling-piece under his arm, he permitted himself to be led to the cottage where lay the old man, who was unwilling to render his last sigh without having made the official avowal of his sins.

The villagers knelt in a circle before the door, whilst the abbe seated himself by the side of the dying man, in order the better to receive his confession.

Since the unlucky moment in which the Abbe de Voisenon had been balked of his morning's sport, he had lost--for he had at times his intervals of superstitious terror--the proud determination he had formed of not believing himself ill on that day. But then, what signs of evil augury had greeted him! He had tripped and fallen on leaving home; he had seen flocks of crows; a weeping girl had dragged him to the bedside of a terrified sinner--even now they were repeating the prayers for the dying around him. The Abbe de Voisenon was overcome; his former temerity oozed palpably away, he felt sick at heart, his ears tingled, his asthma groaned within his chest.

"I am ill," thought he. "I was in the wrong to come out; why did I not take my old servant's advice, and remain at home?"

Finally he lent an ear to the old man's confession.

"You were born the same day as myself!" exclaimed the abbe, at the patient's first confidential communication; "you were born the same day as myself!"

The old man continued, and here a new terror arose for our abbe.

"You have never heard mass to the end! And I," thought he, "have never heard even the beginning for these last thirty years!"

The penitent continued:--

"I have committed, monseigneur, the great sin that you know."

"The great sin that I know! I know so many," thought the abbe. "What sin, my friend?"

"Yea, the great sin--although married--"

"Ah! I understand!" Then, _sotto voce_, "My great sin, although a priest."

A deplorable fatality, if it was a fatality, had so willed it that the vassal should have fallen into the same snares as had his lord, who was now called to judge him at his last hour.

When the confession was ended, the Abbe de Voisenon consulted his own heart with inward terror, and after some hesitation he remitted his penitent's sins, inwardly avowing to himself that the dying man ought, at least, out of gratitude, to render him the same service.

The ceremony over, the abbe rose to depart: but his limbs failed him, and they were actually obliged to carry him home, where he arrived in a state of prostration that seriously alarmed his household. During the remainder of that day he spoke to no one; wrapped up in the silence of his own melancholy thoughts, he opened his lips only to cough. The night was bad; icy shiverings passed over his frame: the image of this man, of the same age, and burdened with the same sins as he himself had committed, would not leave his memory. By daylight his trouble of mind and body was at its height; he desired his valet to summon his physician and the prior of the convent. "And immediately," added he, "immediately."

Comprehending better this time the wishes of his master, the domestic hastened to arouse the prior, whose convent almost adjoined the chateau, and the physician, who had apartments in the chateau itself. This physician was a young man, chosen by the celebrated Tronchin from among his cleverest pupils at the express desire of the Abbe de Voisenon.

Seriously alarmed at the danger of the abbe, both prior and physician hastened to obey the summons. M. de Voisenon was so ill last night. Should they arrive in time? So equal and so prompt was their zeal that both reached the abbe's bedroom door together. But when they opened it, what was their astonishment to find that the bird had flown; our abbe had got over his little fright, and had gone out shooting again.

The end of that fatal eighteenth century was now approaching; undermined by years and debauchery, it was now like a ruined spend-thrift moving away from the calendar of the world in rags; it was hideously old, but its years inspired not respect. Old king, old ministers, old generals--if indeed there were generals,--old courtiers, old mistresses, old poets, old musicians, old opera dancers, broken down with _ennui_, pleasure, and idleness--toothless, faded, rouged, and wrinkled--were descending slowly to the tomb. Louis XV. formed one of the funeral procession; he was taken to St. Denis between two lines of _cabarets_ filled with drunken revellers, madly rejoicing at being rid of this plague, which another plague had carried off to the grave. Crebillon was dead; the son of the great Racine, honored by the famous title of Member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, was taken off by a malignant fever, and obtained from the grateful publicity of the day the following necrological eulogium, as brief as it was eloquent: "M. Racine, last of the name, died yesterday of a malignant fever; as a man of letters he was long dead, having become stupefied by wine and devotion." Twelve days afterwards Marivaux followed Racine to the grave. The Abbe Prevost died of a tenth attack of apoplexy in the forest of Chantilly. In the following spring the celebrated Madame de Pompadour descended, at the age of forty-four, into the grave, after having exhaled a _bon mot_ in guise of confession. Desirous, as it would appear, of leaving this world like the rest of his worthy _comperes_, the composer Rameau cried furiously to his confessor, whose lugubrious note while intoning the service at his bedside offended the delicacy of his ear, 'What the devil are you muttering there, Monsieur le Cure? you are horribly out of tune!' And thereupon Master Rameau expired of a putrid fever. And what think you, worthy reader, occupied the public the day following the death of the most celebrated musician in Europe, the king of the French school? Why, nothing less than this wonderful piece of news: "Mademoiselle Mire, of the Opera, more celebrated as a courtesan than as a _danseuse_, has interred her lover; on his tomb are engraven these words:

MI RE LA MI LA."

A touching funeral oration, truly, for poor Rameau! Panard, the father of the French vaudeville, died some days after Rameau; and the Parisian public, with its national tenderness of heart, merely remarked, that "the words could not be separated from the accompaniment."

You see, reader, how the ranks were thinning, how all these old candles were expiring in their sockets, how the ball was approaching its end.

"Piron died yesterday," writes a journalist; and he adds, "They say he received the cure of St. Roche very badly." What an admirable piece of buffoonery! these cures going in turn to shrive the writers of the eighteenth century, and having flung at their heads epigrams composed for the occasion, perhaps, ten years before.

Louis XV. died soon after Piron. A few hours before his death he said to Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon: "Although the king is answerable to God alone for his conduct, you can say that he is sorry for having caused any scandal to his subjects, and that from henceforth he desires to live but for the support of faith and religion, and for the happiness of his people!"

Like Rameau, Piron, Helvetius, and Pompadour, this good little king Louis XV. must have his _bon mot_; he was sorry for having caused any scandal to his subjects, and at his last moment of existence would live from henceforth for the sole happiness of his people! "Can any thing be finer than this?"

Finally came the Abbe de Voisenon's turn. Witty to his last hour, when they brought home the leaden coffin, the exact form and dimensions of which he had himself arranged and ordered beforehand, he said to one of his domestics,--

"There is a great-coat, any how, that you will not be tempted to steal from me."

He died on the 22d of November, 1775, aged sixty-eight.

FOOTNOTES:

[Q] This was the celebrated society called the _Academie de ces Messieurs_: it numbered among its members all the more celebrated wits of the day.

IRELAND IN THE LAST AGE.

Recollections of Curran.

From the London Times

If the work of Mr. Charles Phillips were a description of the Roman bar in the time of Hadrian, it would scarcely be more completely than at present the picture of a time and system entirely passed away; yet he professes to give us--and performs his promise--a somewhat gossipping and very amusing description of the Irish bar, and the great men belonging to it, very little more than half a century since. But we travel and change quickly in these days of steam and railroads; even Time himself appears now to have attached his travelling carriage to a locomotive, and in the space of one man's life performs a journey that in staid and ancient days would have occupied the years of many generations, and, as if in illustration of the fleeting nature of men and things and systems at this time, here we find a contemporary (at this moment hardly past the prime of life) giving us portraits, and relating anecdotes of men with whom he, in his youth, lived in intimate and professional relations, but who seem now as absolutely to belong to a bygone order of things, as if they had wrangled before the Dikasts of Athens, or pleaded before the Praetor at Rome. Mr. Phillips seems to feel this, and, as the gay days of his sanguine youth flit by his memory, the retrospect brings, as it will ever bring, melancholy, and even sadness, with it. Yielding himself up to the dominion of feeling, in place of keeping his reason predominant, he mourns over the past, as if, in comparison with the present, it were greatly more worthy. Forgetting that there is a change also in himself; that the capacity for enjoyment is largely diminished; that hope has been fulfilled, or is for ever frustrate; he tests the present by his own emotions, instead of weighing with philosophic _indifference_ the relative merits of the system that he describes, and of that in which he lives. We are told--

"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view;"

but, when age comes upon us, we must turn and look back, if we desire to enjoy this pleasing hallucination.

But in what is the present of Ireland so different from the past, in which our fathers lived? And what do these repinings mean? What is the charm that has for ever faded? The answer to this question, if complete, would occupy a volume, for the composition of which that of Mr. Phillips might well serve in the character of _une piece historique_, abounding, as it does, in apt and instructive illustration, and giving, by its aggregation of anecdotes and descriptions, a somewhat confused but still interesting and lively picture of a very curious and stirring period. There lies, indeed, at the bottom of this inquiry a question with which the practical statesman has now little reason to trouble himself, but which, nevertheless, to the speculative philosopher, cannot fail to be a subject of never-failing interest.

The great physical discoveries of modern times, by which the powers of nature are made to act in subservience to the use and comfort of mankind, steadily tend to one great political result, viz., the permanently uniting and knitting together of much larger numbers of men into one and the same community, and subjecting them to one and the same Government, and that Government one of law and not of force, than was ever known or possible during the early days of man's history. This result, as regards the peace of the world and all the material comforts of life, is highly favorable. Whether the same can be said, of the mental vigor and moral excellence of the human race is a question upon which men may speculate, but which time alone can satisfactorily answer.

The small, contentious, and active communities of Greece; the little, ill-governed, yet vigorous Republics of modern Italy, stand out in the history of mankind bright and illustrious beyond all hope of comparison; and, from the wondrous intellects that appeared among them, they have proved to all succeeding times a never-failing subject of admiration, envy, and despair. Just in proportion to our own advancement in art, literature, and science, is the intensity of our astonishment, of our envy, and of our despondency. We endeavor to compete with, but can never equal them; we imitate, but, like all imitators, we are condemned to mediocrity; it is only when we attempt to explore some new and untrod region of art or science that we can pretend to the dignity even of comparison. And these regions are rare indeed.

But, if we compare our own social condition with that of the Greeks or the Italians--if we look into their houses, their cities, and their fields,--if we acquire an accurate and vivid conception of the insecurity of life, of property, and of peace among them,--and if we measure the happiness of life by the comforts of every day existence, then, indeed, the superiority belongs to ourselves; and we may be led to ask, whether the advantages of both conditions of political and social existence may not be united; and to that end seek to learn what it was that brought out into such vigorous relief the wonderful mental activity of the two periods, which form such peculiar and hitherto unequalled epocha in the history of mankind. We shall find, if we pursue this inquiry into other times and among other people, that there was one circumstance, among many others indeed, of peculiar weight and importance, which then exercised and has never failed to exercise, wheresoever it has existed, a vast influence upon the mental and moral character of the people--we mean a feeling of intense _nationality_. This feeling is not all that is required; without it no great originality or vigor in a people is probable, and where it has been strongly manifest, it has generally led to great deeds, and much mental activity. The character of this manifestation will, indeed, greatly depend upon the natural character of the people--upon the peculiar state of their civilization, and upon their political condition. If these be all favorable, the spirit of nationality is divine, and manifest in great and ennobling deeds and thoughts; but, if adverse, then the spirit will be destructive, and vice will be quickened into fatal activity.

In Ireland, at the end of the eighteenth century, a remarkable series of events cherished, if it did not indeed produce, this sentiment of a separate nationality and independence. Conquerors and conquered, in spite of social and religious distinctions, had long since coalesced into one people; and the successful revolt of our American colonies, induced the people of Ireland to demand for themselves freedom and independence also. With arms in their hands the Volunteers wrung from England an independent Parliament in 1782; and in the eighteen years which followed, all that is really great in the history of Ireland, is comprised. The Volunteers, indeed, obtained independence, but that was all. The constitution of the Irish was, as before, narrow and mischievous, oppressive and corrupt; but it was Irish, and independent of the Parliament of England. And the struggles of an independent people, endeavoring, by their own efforts, to reform their own institutions, led to the rising of that brilliant galaxy of statesmen, orators, wits, and lawyers, to which Irishmen of the present day, almost without exception, refer with grief and despondency, not unmixed with indignation, when wishing to make the world appreciate the evils their country has suffered in consequence of its union with England. But, unhappily, the great spirit of freedom was awakened in evil times. Great, vigorous, and almost glorious was this wonderful manifestation of its power; but eventually the horrible corruption and vice of the period bore all before it, and extinguished every chance of benefit from the acquisition of independence. Great men appeared, but they were powerless. Of the remarkable period in which they lived, however, every memorial is of interest. With the society of which they formed a part, so different from our own--with the character and manners of the men themselves, their history, their good sayings and wild deeds, every student of history wishes to become acquainted, and seizes with avidity upon every piece of evidence from which authentic information respecting them may be gathered--and, as a portion of this evidence, the work of Mr. Phillips deserves consideration.

Among the most remarkable of the many distinguished characters of this stirring period was John Philpot Curran,--among Irish advocates, as was Erskine among those of England, _facile princeps_. With him, when on the bench as Master of the Rolls in Ireland, Mr. Phillips, himself then a junior at the Irish bar, became acquainted. Acquaintance became intimacy, and intimacy led to friendship, which lasted without interruption to the day of Curran's death. Admiration and affection induced Mr. Phillips to gather together memorials of his deceased friend, round whose portrait he has grouped sketches of many of his celebrated cotemporaries. He says in his preface--

"My object has been, touching as lightly as possible on the politics of the time, to give merely personal sketches of the characters as they appeared upon the scene to me. Many of them were my acquaintances--some of them my intimates; and the aim throughout has been a verisimilitude in the portraiture;--in short, to make the reader as familiar with the originals as I was myself."