Part 20

At the time we now mention, the period of his sister's death, his own end was near: decrepid and feeble, his life had become one course of pain, and each day increased his physical sufferings. He became at last so ill as to need the constant attentions of madame Périer. He had given shelter in his house to a poor family, and at this juncture one of the sons had fallen ill of the small-pox. Fearful that, if his sister visited him, she might carry this illness to her children, he consented to remove to her house. But her cares availed nothing; he was attacked by colics, which continued till his death, but which the physicians did not believe to be attended with danger. He bore his sufferings with patience; and, true to his principles, received no attendance with which he could at all dispense; and, unsoftened by pain, he continued to admit the sedulous attentions of his sister with such apparent repulsion and indifference, that she often feared that they were displeasing to him. Strange that he should see virtue in checking both his own and her sympathy--that diviner portion of our nature which takes us out of ourselves, and turns our most painful and arduous duties into pleasures.[58] In the same spirit, when his sister lamented his sufferings, he observed, that, on the contrary, he rejoiced in them: he bade her not pity him, for that sickness was the natural state of a Christian; as thus they are, as they always ought to be, suffering sorrow, and the privation of all the blessings of life--exempt from passion, from ambition, and avarice--ever in expectation of death. "Is it not thus," he said, "that a Christian should pass his life?--and is it not a happiness to find one's self in the state in which one ought to place one's self, so that all one need do is to submit humbly and serenely?" Self-denial thus became a passion with this wonderful man; and no doubt he derived pleasure from the excess to which he carried it.

There was one other passion in which he indulged, that was far more laudable. We compassionate his mistake when he looks on the uselessness and helplessness of sickness as a good, but we admire him when we contemplate his sublime charity. In his last hours he lamented that he had not done more for the poor; more wholly devoted time and means to their relief. He made his will, in which he bestowed all that he could, with any justice, leave away from his family; and as he was forced, through the excess of his sufferings, to accept more of comfort and attention than he thought consonant with virtue, he desired either to be removed to an hospital, where he might die among the poor, or that a sick mendicant should be brought to his house, and receive the same attention as himself. He was with difficulty diverted from these designs, and only gave in submission to the dictates of his confessor.

He felt himself dying--his pains a little decreased, when a weakness and giddiness of the head succeeded, precursors of death: his physicians did not perceive his imminent danger, and his last days were troubled by their opposition to his wish to take the sacrament. His sister, however, perceived that his illness was greater than was supposed, and prepared for the last hour, which came more suddenly even than she expected. [Sidenote: 1662. Ætat. 39.] He was one night seized with convulsions, which intermitted only while he roused himself to communicate, and, then recurring, they ended only with his life. He died on the 19th August, 1662, at the age of thirty-nine.

We contemplate the career of this extraordinary man with sentiments of mingled pity and admiration. He certainly wanted a lively imagination, or he would not have seen the necessity of so much mortification and suffering in following the dictates of the gospel. His charity, his fortitude, his resignation, demand our reverence; but the view he took of human duties was distorted and exaggerated: friendship he regarded as unlawful--love as the wages of damnation--marriage as a sin disguised; he saw impurity in maternal caresses, and impiety in every sensation of pleasure which God has scattered as flowers over our thorny path.

A modern writer[59] has said, that he pities any one who pronounces on the structure and complexion of a great mind, from the comparatively narrow and scanty materials which can, by possibility, have been placed before him; and observes, that modest understandings will rest convinced there remains a world of deeper mysteries, to which the dignity of genius refuses to give utterance. And thus, in all humility, we despair of penetrating the recesses of Pascal's mind, while solving mathematical problems that baffled all Europe; writing works replete with wit and wisdom, close reasoning and sublime eloquence; and the while believing that he pleased the Creator by renouncing all the blessings of life; by spending his time in the adoration of relics, and shortening his life by self-inflicted privation and torture. His works, replete with energy and eloquence as they are, present many of the same difficulties. We have already spoken at large of his "Lettres Provinciales." His "Pensées," or Thoughts, which he wrote on loose scraps of paper, meaning hereafter to collect them in the form of a work, for the conversion of atheists, contain much that is admirable and true, though we may be allowed to object to some of his reflections. He has been praised for the mode in which he enounces the idea, that an atheist plays a losing game[60]; he had far better believe, since thus he gains the chance of eternal happiness, while by disbelief he insures eternal damnation. This thought, however, is founded on misapprehension, and a want of knowledge of the human mind. Belief is not a voluntary act--it is the result of conviction; and we have it not in our choice to be convinced. Besides, love of truth is a passion of the human soul; and there are men who, perceiving truth in disbelief, cling to it as tenaciously as a religionist to his creed. The method of convincing infidels by commenting on the beauty of the morality of the gospel, and its necessity for the happiness of man, is far more conclusive. On the excellence of Christianity, and the benefits mankind has derived from its propagation, is founded the noblest argument for its truth; and he has urged these eloquently and forcibly in other portions of his work. Pascal, indeed, must always rank among the worthiest upholders of the Christian faith; one who taught its lessons in their purity, and only erred by being good overmuch. The same precision and clearness of mind that made him a good mathematician led him to excellence in the practice of Christian virtues; but it also led an adherence to the letter rather than the spirit, and to the taking up its asceticism in preference to the holier duties which are an integral part of the plan of the creation, and form the most important portion of human life.

[Footnote 53: La Vie de M. Pascal, écrite par Madame Périer, sa sœur.]

[Footnote 54: Life of Galileo, by Drinkwater, p. 90, 91.]

[Footnote 55: Innocent X., in condemning propositions, did not cite the passages in which they were to be found; and, in fact, they are not quoted with verbal correctness. Voltaire asserts that they are to be found there in spirit; and he cites passages which establish his assertion. _Siècle de Louis_ XIV., chap. XXXVII.]

[Footnote 56: Madame Périer, in the life she has written of her brother, mentions the miraculous cure of her daughter: "This fistula," she says, "was of so bad a sort, that the cleverest surgeons of Paris considered it incurable. Nevertheless she was cured in a moment by the touch of the holy thorn; and this miracle was so authentic, that it is acknowledged by every body." Racine, in his fragment of a History of the Abbey of Port Royal, details the whole circumstance with elaborate faith in the most miraculous version of it. He says, that such was the simplicity of the nuns, that though the cure took place on the instant, they did not mention the miracle for several days, and some time elapsed before it was spread abroad. Voltaire says, that persons who had known mademoiselle Périer told him that her cure was very long. Still some circumstance must have made it appear short, or so universal a belief in a miracle, sufficient at the time to confound the jesuits, could not have been spread abroad; nor would her uncle, Pascal, the most upright and single-minded of men, have given it the support of his testimony.]

[Footnote 57: Boileau's admiration for Pascal was unbounded. He declared the "Lettres Provinciales" to be the best work in the French language. Madame de Sévigné, in her letters, narrates a whimsical scene that took place between him and some jesuits. Their conversation turning on literary subjects, Boileau declared that there was only one modern book to be compared to the works of the ancients. Bourdaloue begged him to name it. Boileau evaded the request. "You have read it more than once, I am sure," he said, "but do not ask me its name." The jesuit insisted; and Boileau, at last, taking him by the arm, exclaimed, "You are determined to have it, father; well, it is Pascal." "Morbleu! Pascal!" cried Bourdaloue, astonished. "Yes, certainly Pascal is as well written as any thing false can be." "False!" exclaimed Boileau, "False! Know that he is as true as he is inimitable." On another occasion, a jesuit, father Boubours, consulted Boileau as to what books he ought to consult as models for style. "There is but one," said Boileau, "read the 'Lettres Provinciales,' and believe me that will suffice." Voltaire pronounces the same opinion: he calls Pascal the greatest satirist of France; and says that Molière's best comedies have not the wit of the first of these Letters, nor had Bossuet written any thing so sublime as the latter ones.]

[Footnote 58: He thus expresses his sentiments on individual attachments: "It is unjust to attach one's self, even though one should do it voluntarily and with pleasure: I should deceive those in whom I call forth affection--for I cannot be the end of any one, and possess not that by which they can be satisfied. As I should be culpable if I caused a falsehood to be believed, although I should persuade gently and was believed with pleasure, arid hence derive pleasure myself--so am I culpable if I caused myself to be loved, and attracted persons to attach themselves to me. I ought to undeceive those who are ready to give faith to a falsehood in which they ought not to believe, and in the same way teach them that they should not attach themselves to me; for their lives ought to be spent in pleasing God, and seeking him." As if the beneficent Creator would not be pleased in seeing his creatures linked by the bonds of those very affections which he himself has made the law of our lives. One wonders where and how Pascal lived, that he did not discover that the worst crimes and vices of mankind arose from want of attachment: and that hardness of heart, pride, and selfishness, would, in the common run of men, be the consequences of an adherence to his creed.]

[Footnote 59: Lockhart, in his Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. VII.]

[Footnote 60: The following is Pascal's address to Atheists:--

"I will not certainly make use, to convince you, of the faith by which we ascertain the existence of God, nor of all the other proofs which we possess, since you will not receive them. I will act by your own principles, and I undertake to show you, by the manner in which you daily reason on matters of less consequence, the way in which you ought to reason on this, and the part you ought to take in deciding the important question of the existence of God. You say we are incapable of knowing whether there be a God. Yet either God is, or God is not--there is no medium: towards which side, then, shall we lean? Reason, you say, cannot decide. An infinite gulph separates us. Stake, toss up at this distance; heads or tails--on which will you bet? Your reason does not affirm, nor can your reason deny one or the other.

"Do not blame the falsehood of those who have chosen--you cannot tell whether they are mistaken: No, you say I do not blame the choice they have made, but that they choose at all; he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are both in the wrong--the right thing is not to make the wager.

"Yes; but the wager must be made. You have no choice--you are embarked; and not to bet that God does exist, is the same as betting that he does not. Which side will you be on? Weigh the gain and loss of taking that, that there is a God. If you win, you win all: if you lose, you lose nothing. Bet then that he doe's, without hesitation. Yes, you must wager. But perhaps I wager too much. Let us see. Since there is equal risk of gain or loss, even if it were only that you gain two lives for one, it were worth betting; and if you had ten to win, you would be imprudent not to risk your life to gain ten, at a game in which there is so much to be lost or won. But here there is an infinite number of lives to gain, with equal risk of losing or winning, and what you stake is so little and of so short duration that it is folly to fear hazarding it on this occasion."

Pascal reasons better in the following article:--

"We must not deceive ourselves, we are as much body as soul, and thus it is that persuasion does not use demonstration only as its instrument. How few things are proved? Proofs only convince the understanding. Habit renders our proofs strong; that persuades the senses, and gains the understanding without an exertion of its own. Who has demonstrated that there will be a to-morrow, or that we shall die? and yet what is more universally believed. Habit, then, persuades us. Habit makes so many Turks and Pagans: it makes trades, soldiers, &c. We ought not, indeed, to begin finding the truth through habit--but we ought to have recourse to it, when once the understanding has discerned the truth, so to imbibe it, and imbue ourselves with a belief which perpetually escapes from us--for to be for ever calling the proofs to mind would be too burdensome. We must acquire an easy belief--which is that of habit; which, without violence, art, or argument, causes us to believe, and inclines all our faculties to faith, so that our soul naturally falls into it. It is not sufficient to believe by force of conviction, if our senses incline us to believe the contrary. We must cause both parts to agree: the understanding through the reason that it has once acknowledged: and the senses, through habit, by not allowing them to incline the other way.

"Those to whom God has given religion as a feeling of the heart are happy and entirely convinced. We can only desire it for those, who have not this by reason, until God impresses it on the heart."]

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ

1626-1696

It appears ridiculous to include a woman's name in the list of "Literary and Scientific Men." This blunder must be excused; we could not omit a name so highly honourable to her country as that of madame de Sévigné, in a series of biography whose intent is to give an account of the persons whose genius has adorned the world.

The subject of this memoir herself would have been very much surprised to find her name included in the list of French writers. She had no pretensions to authorship; and the delightful letters which have immortalised her wit, her sense, and the warm affections of her heart, were written without the slightest idea intruding that they would ever be read, except by her to whom they were addressed.

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was born on the 5th February, 1626. The family of Rabutin was a distinguished one of Burgundy, and Chantal was its elder branch. Her paternal grandmother, Jeanne-Françoise Fremiot, now canonized, was a foundress of a religious institution, called the Sisters of Visitation; which was the cause of a sort of hereditary alliance between her grand-daughter and the sisters of St. Mary, whose houses she was in the habit of visiting in Paris, and during her various journeys. Mademoiselle de Rabutin lost her father in her early infancy. When she was only a year and a half old, the English made a descent upon the isle of Rhé, for the purpose of succouring Rochelle. M. de Chantal put himself at the head of a troop of gentlemen volunteers, and went out to oppose them. The artillery of the enemy's fleet was turned upon them. and M. de Chantal, together with the greater part of his followers, were left dead on the field. It has been 1597. said that he fell by the hand of Cromwell himself. [Sidenote: 1697. July 22.] The baron de Chantal was a French noble of the old feudal times; when a cavalier regarded his arms and military services as his greatest glory, and as the origin of his rank and privileges. His daughter has preserved a curious specimen of his independence in his mode of treating great men, and of the impressive concision of his letter writing. When Schomberg was made marshal of France, he wrote to him--

"Monseigneur, "Rank--black beard--intimacy.

"Chantal."

By which few words he conveys his opinion that Schomberg owed his advancement, not to his valour nor military exploits, but to his rank, his having a black beard, like Louis XIII., and his intimacy with that monarch. The mother of mademoiselle de Rabutin was Marie de Coulanges, who was of the class of nobility distinguished in France as of the robe; that is, as being ennobled through their having filled high civil situations of chancellor, judge, &c. She died in 1636, when her daughter was only ten years of age, and the orphan fell under the care of her maternal grandfather, M. de Coulanges (her grandmother, the saint, being too much occupied by her religious duties to attend to her grandchild's welfare and education): he, also, dying the same year, her guardianship devolved on her uncle, Christophe de Coulanges, abbé de Livry. Henceforth he was a father to her.

We know nothing, except by conjecture, of Marie de Rabutin's education and early years. She says that she was educated with her cousin Coulanges, who was several years younger than herself. He is known to us as a gay, witty, convivial man, whose reputation arose from his talent for composing songs and madrigals on the events of the day, written with that airiness and point peculiar to French productions of this sort. He was quick and clever, and the young lady must have enjoyed in him a merry, agreeable companion. She tells us, also, that she was brought up at court; a court ruled over by cardinal de Richelieu, who, though a tyrant, studied and loved letters, was desirous of advancing civilization, and took pleasure in the society of persons of talent, even if they were women. She was always fond of reading. The endless romances of Scuderi were her earliest occupation; but she aspired to knowledge from more serious studies. Under the care of Ménage and Chapelle, who both admired her, she learnt Latin and Italian. She must always have possessed the delicacy and finesse of understanding that distinguish her letters: vivacity that was almost wit; common sense, that regulated and harmonized all, and never left her. She was not, perhaps, what is called beautiful, even on her first entrance into the world, but she was exceedingly pretty; a quantity of light hair, a fair blooming complexion, eyes full of fire, and a person elegant, light, and airy, rendered her very attractive. [Sidenote: 1644. Ætat. 18.] She married, at the age of eighteen, Henry, marquis de Sévigné, of an ancient family in Britany.

The Bretons even now scarcely consider themselves French. They are a race remarkable for dauntless courage and inviolable fidelity; for rectitude and independence of feeling, joined to a romantic loyalty, which, in latter years, has caused them to have a distinguished place in the internal history of France. M. de Sévigné was not quite a man fitted to secure the felicity of a young girl, full of ability, warmth of heart, and excellent sense. He was fond of pleasure, extravagant in his expenses, heedless, and gay. In the first instance, however, the marriage was a happy one. The _bon temps de la régence_ were, probably, the _bon temps_ of madame de Sévigné's life. [Sidenote: 1647. Ætat. 21.] She bore two children, a son and a daughter. Her letters at this period are full of gaiety: there is no trace of any misfortune, nor any sorrow.

M. de Sévigné was related to the celebrated cardinal de Retz, in those days coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris. When France became distracted by civil broils, this connection caused him to adhere to the party of the Fronde. His wife partook in his politics, and was a zealous Frondeuse. We have traces in all her after life of the intimacies formed during the vicissitudes of these troubles. She continued warmly attached to the ambitious turbulent coadjutor, whose last years were spent so differently from his early ones, and on whom she lavishes many encomiums: she was intimate with mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter of Gaston, duke of Orleans; but her chief friend was the duchess de Chatillon, whom she called her sister. [Sidenote: 1649. Ætat. 23.] Several letters that passed between her and her cousin Bussy-Rabutin, during the blockade of Paris by the prince de Condé, are preserved. He sided with the court, and wrote to ask his cousin to interfere to obtain for him his carriage and horses, left behind in Paris when the court escaped to St. Germain:--"Pray exert yourself," he writes: "it is as much your affair as mine; as we shall judge, by your success in this enterprise, in what consideration you are held by your party; that is to say, we shall have a good opinion of your generals, if they pay the attention they ought to your recommendation." She failed; and Bussy-Rabutin writes, "So much the worse for those who refused you, my fair cousin. I do not know if it will profit them anything, but I am sure it does them no honour."

We have mentioned, in the memoir of the duke de la Rochefoucauld, the depraved state of French society during the wars of the Fronde. Madame de Sévigné kept herself far aloof from even the suspicion of misconduct, but her husband imbibed the contagion. The name of his mistress, Ninon de l'Enclos, gave a celebrity 1650. to his infidelity infinitely painful to his wife. [Sidenote: 1650. Ætat. 24.] Madame de Sévigné felt her misfortune, but bore it with dignity and patience. Not long after she had cause to congratulate herself on her forbearance, when her husband was killed in a duel by the chevalier d'Albret. The occasion of the combat is not known, but such were too frequent in the days of the Fronde. The inconstancy of her husband did not diminish the widow's grief: she had lived six happy years of a brilliant youth with him; his gay, social disposition was exactly such as to win affection; and, when he was lost to her for ever, she probably looked on her jealousy in another light, and felt how trivial such is when compared with the irreparable stroke of death. Her sorrow was profound. Her uncle, the abbé de Coulanges, was her best friend and consoler. He drew her attention to her duties, and assisted her in the arduous task of managing her affairs, embarrassed by her husband's extravagance. She had two young children, and their education was her chief and dearest care, and she was thus speedily recalled to active life.