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 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 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 Valere with the
daughter.
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 Shakspeare,
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 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.
It will be interesting and instructive to see Pascal's own statement of
his reasons for adopting the bantering style which he did in the
"Provincial Letters," as well as of the sense of responsibility to be
faithful and fair, under which he wrote. Pascal says:--