CHAPTER LVII

OF VIRTUE, SO CALLED

Myself, I honour with the name of virtue the habit of doing painful actions which are of use to others.

St. Simon Stylites, who sits twenty-two years on the top of a column beating himself with a strap, is in my eyes, I confess, not at all virtuous; and it is this that gives this essay a tone only too unprincipled.

I esteem not a bit more the Chartreux monk who eats nothing but fish and allows himself to talk only on Thursday. I own I prefer General Carnot, who, at an advanced age, puts up with the rigours of exile in a little northern town rather than do a base action.

I have some hope that this extremely vulgar declaration will lead the reader to skip the rest of this chapter.

This morning, a holiday, at Pesaro (May 7th, 1819), being obliged to go to Mass, I got hold of a Missal and fell upon these words:--

Joanna, Alphonsi quinti Lusitaniae regis filia, tanta divini amoris flamma praeventa fuit, ut ab ipsa pueritia rerum caducarum pertaesa, solo coelestis patriae desiderio flagraret.

The virtue so touchingly preached by the very beautiful words of the _Génie du Christianisme_(50) is thus reduced to not eating truffles for fear of a stomach-ache. It is quite a reasonable calculation, if you believe in hell; but it is a self-interested calculation, the most personal and prosaic possible. That philosophic virtue, which so well explains the return of Regulus to Carthage, and which was responsible for some similar incidents in our

[Pg 244] own Revolution,[1] proves, on the contrary, generosity of soul.

It is merely in order not to be burned in the next world, in a great caldron of boiling oil, that Madame de Tourvel resists Valmont. I cannot imagine how the idea, with all its ignominy, of being the rival of a caldron of boiling oil does not drive Valmont away.

How much more touching is Julie d'Étanges, respecting her vows and the happiness of M. de Wolmar.

What I say of Madame de Tourvel, I find applicable to the lofty virtue of Mistress Hutchinson. What a soul did Puritanism steal away from love!

One of the oddest peculiarities of this world is that men always think they know whatever it is clearly necessary for them to know. Hear them talk about politics, that very complicated science; hear them talk of marriage and morals.

[1] Memoirs of Madame Roland. M. Grangeneuve, who goes out for a walk at eight o'clock in a certain street, in order to be killed by the Capuchin Chabot. A death was thought expedient in the cause of liberty.

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