Chapter XXXI: Letter XX: THE ROCKS, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 1671

I believe the _Leonic_ opinion is now the most ascertained. He understands the subject completely, can tell whether matter reasons or not, what kind of intelligence God has given to the brute creation, with other subjects that occupied his thoughts. You may perceive by this that I suppose him in heaven, _O che spero!_[53] He died on Monday morning; I was then at Vitré and saw him, but I wish I had not seen him. His brother seems inconsolable; I invited him to my woods that he might weep at liberty, but he told me he was too deeply afflicted to seek consolation. The poor bishop was only five and thirty years of age; he was well provided for, and had an admirable taste for science; this was, in fact, the cause of his death, as it was of Pascal’s--he wore himself out with study. You are not much interested in this detail; but it is the news of the place, and you must, therefore, bear with it. Death, in my opinion, is the concern of every one, and its consequences strike home to our bosoms.

[53] O, how I wish it!

I read M. Nicole with a degree of pleasure that lifts me above the earth. I am particularly charmed with his third treatise on the means of preserving peace and harmony among mankind. Read it, I beseech you, and with attention; you will see how clearly he develops the intricacies of the human heart, in which every sect is alike included--philosophers, Jansenists, Molinists, in short, all mankind: this may truly be called searching to the bottom of the heart with a lantern. He discovers to us sensations that we feel daily, but which we have neither the wit to comprehend nor the sincerity to acknowledge. In a word, I never read any thing like it, except Pascal. Were it not for the amusement of our books we should be moped to death for want of employment. It rains incessantly. I need say no more to make you conceive how dull our situation is. But you who enjoy a sunshine which is so much the object of my envy, how do I pity you to be torn from Grignan, while the weather is delightful, in the middle of autumn, and from an agreeable society, and all this to be shut up in a little dirty town! I can not bear the idea. Could not M. de Grignan have put off the assembly a little longer? Is he not master in this respect? And poor Coulanges, what will become of him? Our recluse mode of life has so turned our brains that we make matters of consequence of every thing. Receiving and answering letters takes up some of our time, indeed, but we have always enough left upon our hands. You make our abbé proud by the kind things you say of him in your letters. I am satisfied with him on your account. As for La Mousse, he catechises Sundays and holidays; he is resolved to go to heaven. I tell him it is only out of curiosity, to see whether the sun is a heap of dust, continually in motion, or a globe of fire. The other day he assembled all the children of the village about him, and was catechising them, but after several questions they had so confounded things, that when he asked them who the Blessed Virgin was, they all with one accord answered, “The Creator of heaven and earth.” His faith was not shaken by the children, but finding the men and women, and even the old people, all in the same story, he began to doubt, and at length joined in the opinion; in short, he did not know what he was about, and if I had not luckily come to his aid he would never have got out of the scrape. This new opinion would certainly have been productive of more mischief than that of the motion of atoms. Farewell, my dear child, you see we tickle ourselves in order to laugh, to so low an ebb are we reduced.