"But-it might-"

"Oh!" cried the prince and the orator at the same time.

"One moment, one moment, gentlemen!" resumed Turenne, with a smile. "How fast you go on! There is conversion and conversion. What I meant to say was this,-that the sermon has given me some very good ideas about death, and the vanity of the world, two things about which we people of the court and battle-field do not often think. You see, my dear D'Enghien, that you could easily say so much-"

"Good! good!" interrupted the prince; "but apropcs, sir preacher, may one know your name?"

"Bossuet, Monseigneur."

28

CHAPTER II.

COTIN.

THE next day, nothing was talked of in the c ty but this magnificent success. Every one asked, "Were you at the hotel de Rambouillet yesterday?" and those who coul answer "yes," were happy and proud, as of a great adventure.

The preacher retired alone and quite late. Every one was in bed at the college of Navarre, and he hastened to his cell, delighted to find no one to whom to relate his triumph; one does not like to praise one's self, when sure of losing nothing by waiting. He did not deceive himself. In the morning, before eight o'clock, the great news had arrived, and flew rapidly from mouth to mouth, from cell to cell throughout the whole building. An unaccustomed activity reigned in the corridors and the courts; he heard steps, whisperings, questions, answers which he could not seize, but which he guessed from the beatings of his heart. He had written to his father, delighted that he could fill his soul with such happiness, and enchanted at last to pour out his own; not to have to pretend modesty, to be able at length to say, "I have fought! I have triumphed! I have opened to myself the way to fortune and glory!"

There was a knock at and it was the head

The hour for mass had nearly arrived. his door: "Come in," he said, carelessly; master, the grave Nicholas Cornet, who had risen a quarter of an hour sooner than usual, to come and embrace his dear Benignus.

This day was but one long triumph. His professors treated

him with the greatest respect; his companions dared not call him thou; before noon he had I know not how many comtes and marquises for intimate friends,—all younger sons of noble families, and destined also for the church, but who had never yet addressed a word to him. It is true that he had been at Paris but a short time, and that he had until then been considered much less as an orator, or a man of talent, than a scholar, a hard student, a plodder as we say. Those more solid than brilliant qualities, accompanied, it must be confessed, by manners still somewhat provincial, had made no great impression upon these ignorant and idle young nobles, who came to the college of Navarre to pretend to study. Bossuetus, they said, Bos suetus oratio; Bossuet is an ox accustomed to the plough. (Authentic.) But the ox had become a bull, the digger had finally displayed all the gold he had been raking up; the dawn of a great name had begun to break in France!

But nevertheless his joy was not unmixed. Faint praise would bitterly have mortified him; too much frightened him. Singular destiny of ambition! Pure or impure in its motive, successful or unsuccessful in its efforts, no matter; it feeds but on anguish. His success had been too great, too far above his hopes. He calculated with a kind of terror the dangers of a position suddenly become so glorious; and his friends,-his real friends I mean,—did not know what conduct to pursue with him. To praise him as much as he deserved, would have been exposing him to the danger of being spoiled; not to praise him, or only to praise him with reserve, was to run great risk of being thought by him unjust or jealous.

Do not imagine, however, that detractors were wanting. Nearly unanimous beneath the impression of so noble and lofty and eloquence, the praises were already fainter on the following evening, and as there is nothing easier than to make fools burn

what they adore, a single man had enough influence at the hotel de Rambouillet, to bring about the strange revolution which we are about to relate.

We do not yet know this man, that is to say, we have as yet had no occasion to bring him forward; for, as to his name, it is known, prodigiously known; far too well known for his glory or the repose of his spirit, since it was no less a person than Monsieur Charles Cotin, chaplain and preacher to the king, chanoine of Bayeux, member of the French Academy, and author also of I know not how many works, which would sleep at the present day, like his sermons, were it not for the sad immortality which Moliere and Boileau have given them.

We could have shown you, upon the evening of which we have spoken, at the extremity of the saloon, a certain abbé, whose easy, gallant manners, together with the regards of all who surrounded him, would have made you recognize him as one of the court, and one of the principal habitués of the house; but as soon as he had no more compliments to give or receive, you could have perceived from his sullen and irritated air, and certain spiteful and almost angry motions, that no one in the world could wish less for the success of the young orator, than he.. You might have seen him beforehand, doing his best to encourage the little conspiracies got up against him; you might have heard him dictating to some of his neighbors texts from which the ablest rhetorician would not have been able to get a discourse of half a dozen pages. Then, forced to listen, impressed like all the rest, and struggling with himself not to manifest the least sign of approbation; he had gone out precipitately at the last word of the discourse, which had, however, not prevented his hearing from the antichamber the flattering murmurs and the long concert of praises, of which we have endeavored to give an idea. This poor abbé was our man; it was Cotin.

The Abbé Cotin was not malicious at heart; we may add, (and it is the very least we can do before making ourselves merry at his expense,) that his absurdities have been much exaggerated. As a poet, he made very pretty verses, the prettiest, perhaps, of this epoch, when as yet so few beautiful ones were made; as a preacher, whatever the author of " Satires" may say, he was one of the most run after of the capital; lastly, as a man of letters, (and everybody is ignorant, or pretends to be ignorant of this,) he read Hebrew and Syriac; and understood Greek as few people understood it at that time. But the infatuation of his friends, the indulgence of the public, and the flatteries of the sex, from whom, alas, his robe did not always cause him to turn away his eyes,—all had concurred to pervert his judgment and spoil his heart. Since the death of Voiture, he shared with Chapolain the sovereign authority at the hotel de Rambouillet; he found himself the centre of all that perfumed literature to which the century was soon to do justice, and which filled his little life with he most noise and folly possible. Spoiled child of the first society of Paris, might he not think himself a genius? All the interest and praise which any other might receive, was a wrong done him.

He went out, then, with death in his soul. This palm which he thought he held, and which he had held perhaps, had been snatched from him by a preacher of eighteen years! And it is not so bad to be jealous, if one has only the consolation of telling one's self, right or wrong, that the decree was unjust, and that the triumph of one's rival was due to error or intrigue. But to confess to one's self that one is vanquished, well and justly vanquished,—to look for something to criticize and find only what is admirable, that is terrible! And this, the most torturing of all jealousy, was precisely that of Cotin. He would have given twenty of his own sermons, to find a fault of any importance in