CHAPTER VII.

ROSSUET ALONE WITH LOUIS XIV.-UNUSUAL BOLDNESS.-"THOU ART THE MAN. -HESITATION OF THE KING.-BOSSUET GAINS A SLIGHT ADVANTAGE.

THE Duke de Montausier had really guessed the truth. Bossuet had indeed resolved to return without delay, but he was far from being prepared for such a bold stroke. However, this was always the old duke's manner of doing things; there was never a day passed that he did not by his virtuous bluntness, put into an embarrassing situation some one of his best friends, and no one would have been more capable than he, of imitating Mentor casting his pupil into the sea, in order to force him to quit the island.

It is true, that once in the water, poor Telemachus is very glad to have no one but himself to struggle against; Bossuet also very soon acknowledged that M. de Montausier had done him a great service. Would he have been sure of finding, an hour after, the courage which he was now forced to have?

The king had not changed his position. He knit his brow slightly; it was rather surprise than anger.

"It is you!" he said.

"It is I, sire. I know that I am very bold; but to call me, to order me to speak, was also to order me to be sincere. I have been so

"Did I appear to doubt it?"

"No; but your majesty did not allow me time to be thoroughly so. Will your majesty permit me to finish?"

"Go on; you will probably tell me nothing which I do not know-"

"I am sure of it. Nothing which has not been said to you an hundred times-"

"A thousand times."

"I do not doubt it. Therefore, what I ask from God for you, is not understanding; you have that; but the strength to listen to and obey it. You know better than any one else, that you have not always this strength. For the good that I would, I do not,' said an apostle; but the evil which I would not, that I do;' I find two men in me—"

"Ah! these two men, I know them well!"* cried the king.

"It is already something to know them, sire, but it is not enough. One of the two must perish. Why do yo you delay to condemn him to death? In allowing you, as a king, to be exposed to more temptations than others, God has also placed in your hands more means of resisting them. All those qualities, solid as well as brilliant, of which we admire the union in your character, shall it be said that they have done nothing for you yourself, while they have made the happiness and glory of France? You owe the high position which you have gained abroad among all the kings of Europe, perhaps as much to your firmness as to your victories; at home also, everything proclaims that the reins of state have never been held by a firmer hand; and in the very centre of power, there is a man who defies you, a man who remains disobedient to those laws of order and morality which you have held up for reverence; and this man is yourself!"

The king made no reply. But it was not only because he had nothing to answer,—it was unhappily also because the commendations of Bossuet, although joined with reproofs, and only

* Historical.

destined to make the latter go down, had only too agreeably caressed his pride. Bossuet had meant to put the remedy beside the evil, but had, in reality, only put the evil beside the remedy. So the king had soon abandoned himself to the charm of that species of music so familiar to his ear; deaf to all which might have destroyed its harmony, the little sermon which he had just heard, was reduced in his mind to three ideas, or rather to the three first halves of these ideas; "I am wise, I am resolute, I am great;" the three last halves, being lost in the abyss of his pride.

The form of speech used by Bossuet,-a form, by the way, which we find in almost all the exhortations addressed to Louis XIV., either from the pulpit, or elsewhere, was one of the worst which could be used to such a man as the king. Far from being alarmed by the idea that there were two men in him, he caressed it complacently. Remark, in effect, that it is a twoedged sword; pious and humble, you will groan as the apostle did, to feel the evil within you continually enfeebling the good; self-satisfied, you will reverse the thought; you will not say to yourself, that if there is good in you there is also evil; you will

that if there is evil, there is also good; and thus you will be perfectly at rest. Thus did Louis XIV.; thus, again, he deceived himself, when, many years later, old and unhappy, but so much the more a slave to pride, because he imagined himself free from it, he liked to repeat these lines of one of Racine's paraphrases;

"O God this cruel strife!

I find within two men."

"Mon Dieu, quelle guerre cruelle !

Je trouve deux hommes en moi."

And confessors and courtiers repeated in chorus, that there were actually two men in him, and that God could not fail to pardon

one of them for the sake of the other. Alas! it is not necessary to be a king and to have courtiers, in order to whisper to one's self the same language!

Bossuet perceived accordingly, that he had not gained much. However, he revolved the same ideas a few moments longer in his mind ;-perhaps he was not entirely displeased with it. All were so accustomed to praise him and to listen to his praises! The language of a Corneille, of a Racine seemed only made to celebrate Louis XIV.*

"Sire," he at length said,—and this time the courtier was altogether merged in the archbishop,-" you do not listen to me, or rather you only listen to me too much. I do not wish to retract my praises; I believe them just; I will repeat them at any time. But so long as you have not imposed silence upon me, I will also repeat my rebukes; and then, not in my own name, but in the name of religion, of the salvation of your soul, I shall summon you to answer them. The law of God, the law of the church is explicit; councils, popes, doctors, all agree; excommunication-”

Louis frowned.

"Do not be startled at the word, sire; you know well, that I would be the first to sustain your crown against the thunders of a Boniface VIII., or a Sixtus V. Such an excommunication you would defy, and you would do well;† but take care, there is

* And the Academy in particular, had only been created to stimulate and direct this employment of the language. See in 1728, in the discourse at his reception, what the same Montesquieu, who had so ridiculed it at other times, says of it; "Above all, it is gratifying to see you working at the portrait of the great Louis,-this portrait always commenced and never finished,-every day further advanced and more difficult. We can now scarcely realize that wonderful reign which you celebrate."

Bossuet was quite right, but a Protestant might have remarked to him, that, if he who is excommunicated may be judge of the nature and

another which cannot be defied. Pronounced or not it exists; if you merit it,-in vain the Church may shut its eyes and not register it on the earth-it is nevertheless registered in heaven." “And you think—that I have incurred this?"—cried the king, with a sudden start.

"Thou shalt not commit adultery."

"Adultery! adultery!" repeated the king, more and more agitated; "Adultery! but it is the first time I ever imagined— In truth-it is-"

And he began to stride to and fro in the room, repeating every moment: "Adultery! adultery!"

He spoke the truth. It was really the first time that he had applied this word to himself; neither preachers nor confessors had yet ventured to pronounce it in so direct a manner that he was forced to understand that it involved himself.* Not that he had not vaguely felt when it was by accident pronounced, that there was something beneath the word that he might take to himself; but we do not like to examine too

validity of this act, it is not very clear what is to become of its virtue. And this is not the only difficulty. If excommunication signify any thing, it signifies vastly too much, for then it must be admitted, that the most pious and virtuous of men dying excommunicated, must of necessity be damned. If one shrinks from this consequence, excommunication is nothing more than a disciplinary penalty, a simple declaration, in virtue of which, the excommunicated ceases to belong to the Roman church. This is more reasonable; but it is clear that Rome, in the time of her power, was very far from understanding it thus.

* "Thou shalt not commit adultery," is one of the ten commandments of God, the seventh in the Bible, and the sixth in the Roman Catholic catechisms. It is known that the Romish church has suppressed the second, (that forbidding the worship of images,) and makes ten only by dividing the last into two. It is difficult to understand, not from whence this fraud comes, for the motive which prompted it is sufficiently clear, but how it was dared.