_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.
_Cle. (to Orgon)._ You must see who it is and what the man wants.
_Org. (to Cleante)._ He is coming, perhaps, to settle matters between
us in a friendly way. How, in this case, ought I to behave to him?
_Cle._ 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 Cleante)._ 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._ 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 byplay 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 Valere, the noble lover of that daughter whom
the infatuated father was bent on sacrificing to Tartuffe. Valere comes
to announce that Tartuffe, the villain, has accused Orgon to the king.
Orgon must fly. Valere 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.
_Cle._ 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 fulfill
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 offense 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 Valere with the
daughter.
"The Tartuffian Age" is the title of a late Italian book admirably
translated into English by an American, Mr. W. A. Nettleton. That such
should be the Italian author's chosen title for his work incidentally
shows how cosmopolitan is our French dramatist's fame. The book is a
kindly-caustic satire on the times in which we live, found by the
satirist to be abundant in the quality of Tartuffe, that leaven of the
Pharisees which is hypocrisy.
Moliere 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
Shakespeare, so there is but one Moliere.
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 generally 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 defense 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 defense
of Arnauld, the writer went on to take up a line of offense 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. Our
extract introduces first the Jesuit father speaking:
"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 crouched 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 marvelous 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 means 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 toward God and
toward 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 offenses, 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."