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.