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Bél. It is true that it says more than its size seems to imply.
Phil. (to Trissotin). But when you wrote this charming whate'er men say, did you yourself understand all its energy? Did you realize all that it tells us? And did you then think that you were writing something so witty?
Triss. Ah! ah!
Arm. I have likewise the ingrate in my head,—this ungrateful, unjust, uncivil fever that ill-treats people who entertain her.
Phil. In short, both the stanzas are admirable. Let us come quickly to the triplets, I pray.
Arm. Ah! once more, whate'er men say, I beg.
Triss. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say,—
Phil., Arm., and Bél. Whate'er men say!
Triss. From out your chamber, decked so gay,—
Phil., Arm., and Bél. Chamber decked so gay!
Triss. Where, ingrate vile, with murderous knife,—
Phil., Arm., and Bél. That ingrate fever!
Triss. Bold she assails your lovely life.
Phil. Your lovely life!
Arm. and Bél. Ah!
Triss. What! reckless of your ladyhood,
Still fiercely seeks to shed your blood,—
Phil., Arm., and Bél. Ah!
Triss. And day and night to work you harm.
When to the baths sometime you've brought her
No more ado, with your own arm
Whelm her and drown her in the water.
Phil. Ah! It is quite overpowering.
Bél. I faint.
Arm. I die from pleasure.
Phil. A thousand sweet thrills seize one.
Arm. When to the baths sometime you've brought her,
Bél. No more ado, with your own arm
Phil. Whelm her and drown her in the water. With your own arm, drown her there in the baths.
Arm. In your verses we meet at each step with charming beauty.
Bél. One promenades through them with rapture.
Phil. One treads on fine things only.
Arm. They are little lanes all strewn with roses.
Triss. Then, the sonnet seems to you—
Phil. Admirable, new; and never did any one make any thing more beautiful.
Bél. (to Henriette). What! my niece, you listen to what has been read without emotion! You play there but a sorry part!
Hen. We each of us play the best part we can, my aunt; and to be a wit does not depend on our will.
Triss. My verses, perhaps, are tedious to you.
Hen. No. I do not listen.
Phil. Ah! Let us hear the epigram.
But our readers, we think, will consent to spare the epigram. They will relish, however, a fragment taken from a subsequent part of the same protracted scene. The conversation has made the transition from literary criticism to philosophy, in Molière's time a fashionable study rendered such by the contemporary genius and fame of Descartes. Armande resents the limitations imposed upon her sex:—
Arm. It is insulting our sex too grossly to limit our intelligence to the power of judging of a skirt, of the make of a garment, of the beauties of lace, or of a new brocade.
Bél. We must rise above this shameful condition, and bravely proclaim our emancipation.
Triss. Every one knows my respect for the fairer sex, and that, if I render homage to the brightness of their eyes, I also honor the splendor of their intellect.
Phil. And our sex does you justice in this respect: but we will show to certain minds who treat us with proud contempt, that women also have knowledge; that, like men, they can hold learned meetings—regulated, too, by better rules; that they wish to unite what elsewhere is kept apart, join noble language to deep learning, reveal nature's laws by a thousand experiments; and, on all questions proposed, admit every party, and ally themselves to none.
Triss. For order, I prefer peripateticism.
Phil. For abstractions, I love platonism.
Arm. Epicurus pleases me, for his tenets are solid.
Bél. I agree with the doctrine of atoms; but I find it difficult to understand a vacuum, and I much prefer subtile matter.
Triss. I quite agree with Descartes about magnetism.
Arm. I like his vortices.
Phil. And I, his falling worlds.
Arm. I long to see our assembly opened, and to distinguish ourselves by some great discovery.
Triss. Much is expected from your enlightened knowledge, for nature has hidden few things from you.
Phil. For my part, I have, without boasting, already made one discovery; I have plainly seen men in the moon.
Bél. I have not, I believe, as yet quite distinguished men, but I have seen steeples as plainly as I see you.
Arm. In addition to natural philosophy, we will dive into grammar, history, verse, ethics, and politics.
Phil. I find in ethics charms which delight my heart; it was formerly the admiration of great geniuses: but I give the preference to the Stoics, and I think nothing so grand as their founder.
"Les Précieuses Ridicules" is an earlier and lighter treatment of the same theme. The object of ridicule in both these pieces was a lapsed and degenerate form of what originally was a thing worthy of respect, and even of praise. At the Hôtel de Rambouillet, conversation was cultivated as a fine art. There was, no doubt, something overstrained in the standards which the ladies of that circle enforced. Their mutual communication was all conducted in a peculiar style of language, the natural deterioration of which was into a kind of euphuism, such as English readers will remember to have seen exemplified in Walter Scott's Sir Piercie Shafton. These ladies called each other, with demonstrative fondness, "Ma précieuse." Hence at last the term précieuse as a designation of ridicule. Madame de Sévigné was a précieuse. But she, with many of her peers, was too rich in sarcastic common sense to be a précieuse ridicule. Molière himself, thrifty master of policy that he was, took pains to explain that he did not satirize the real thing, but only the affectation.
"Tartuffe, or the Impostor," is perhaps the most celebrated of all Molière'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 Molière's comedies, is written in rhymed verse. We could not, with any effort, make the English-reading student of Molière 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 Molière 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 Cléante, his brother, whom, in his eagerness, he begs to excuse his not answering a question just addressed to him:—
Orgon (to Cléante). 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.
Clé. (to Orgon). You must see who it is, and what the man wants.
Org. (to Cléante). He is coming, perhaps, to settle matters between us in a friendly way. How, in this case, ought I to behave to him?
Clé. 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 Cléante). 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 Valère, the noble lover of that daughter whom the infatuated father was bent on sacrificing to Tartuffe. Valère comes to announce that Tartuffe, the villain, has accused Orgon to the king. Orgon must fly. Valère 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.
Clé. 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 Valère with the daughter.
Molière 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 Molière.
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.
