remainders or fore-runners was it the last spring that was tardie or the new that is hastie and forward loe here a Problem worthie to be discussed by the Philosophers of your Sexe and it would not be amisse to propose it to Her whom you speak of for to have her resolution I professe that if she be verie expert she is a verie dissembler for I could never discover her to this houre She hath such a heavie dull apprehension that a man had need interpret twice or thrice over what ever he speaks to her It were easier to converse with a deaf woman and I would chuse rather to make my self understood by a Cornet then to be my own Interpreter Yet if this stupiditie be without malice it is more tolerable then malicious cunning God permits himselfe to be intreated sometimes by a simple thumping of the breast and often rejects eloquent and loud prayers It is a miserable light that whose glorie and lustre flowes from vice onelie and yet is not offensive to great men A good Beast is of more worth than a bad Angel This is the upshot of all my deare Niece that you must lay a foundation of bountie upon which it is allowed you to raise a Structure of other vertues that are more high and more glorious You did not stand in need of this lesson but I would needs fill up my paper before I would put a period and tell you that I am Your c. Balzac 15. Dec. 1637. To Monsieur the Abbat of Rois-Robert LET. XLIII SIR The world is full of darstardlie friends but you are none of this world You can love daringly and resolutelie and I see that my injuries are commonlie more apprehended by you then by my selfe neverthelesse I am much vexed with the language which you received from Messieurs the These are men that do understand too well the points of honor for to give me any satisfaction and for my part I carrie so much goodnesse about me as to demand nothing from them but my life I never believed that their Superior had promised me nothing If he hath left them no other debts to pay but this they have great cause to commend him for his good providence and thrift In the mean while I cannot dissemble my sorrow to you for his death nor forget to tell you that in all his ill carriages towards me he hath never done me a greater affront then this to die If I had some particular Revelation concerning it or if he had advertised me thereof by the Spirit of Prophecie which is spoken of in his Elegy he should have seen his prating long since condemned and should not have carried away into the other world that great opinion of sufficiencie which his fraternitie did sooth him with For the other extravagant Doctor which you mention it would not be acceptable to God Almightie that I should undertake his reformation it were needful to create him anew for to amend him It were no mean enterprise but to examine his book and to make a breviaty of all the absurd things therein contained I would chuse as soon to be condemned to be a Scavenger for the streets of Paris and to carrie away all the dirt out of that little world His impertinencies are infinite and would puzzle a better Arithmetician then I am to calculate them and he that would go about to count them Conterà ancorae in sùl'ombraso desso c. Will count the Trees on top of shady Appennine Assoon or waves when windes do chafe the curling Brine If this Bearer shall stand in need of recommendation to the Councel I doubt not but knowing his name and what a share I bear in his interests you will effectually assist him for love of me who am more then any man in the world Sir Your c. Balzac 30. Jan. 1629. To the same LET. XLIV SIR I am ever this moneth confined to my bed where I received your Letter directed from Roan To read there the continuation of your sickness could not you must think be any asswagement of mine I bestow a thousand curses upon the waters of Forges for impairing your health Propertius hath not been more liberall or bestowed more upon the Baia that killed Angustus his Nephew But a main difference is that this man was a Poet and did but act grief but I am truly afflicted and true friendship doth really suffer more then flattery can personate I am very sorry that hath not demeaned himself towards you so well as he should have done and if you have resolved upon his ruine I do not mean to step in between him and it and undertake his protection I do ever side with all your passions without premeditation and that man that doth not please you hath no allurements so powerful as can render him pleasing to me neverthelesse if this mans offence were venial and your justice could be satisfied I would adventure to beg his pardon and would become his surety that he should willingly undergoe all the punishments that you would inflict upon him to regain your favor There are some businesses between us that force me to dissemble a little and do not permit an apparent runture if there come not from you an express order to the contrary But being once freed out of this turmoil if he be so unlucky as to offend you again I declare unto you that I do even now renounce him and I had rather forget my obligations to him then to carry affections repugnant to yours Your Cousen is too generous to oblige so nobly a man whom he never knew and I had rather believe that his esteem of me is but the consequence of your love then to imagine it to be an apprehension of any merit in me I do purpose a voyage beyond the Seas the next year If I take ship at Diepe as I hope to do I shall not fail to go and kisse His hands at Roan and to make him see that the Monster that Father Goulie speaks of is a tame Beast at least and capable of knowledge If I did exceedingly rejoyce at the news when a Canonship was bestowed upon you I forgot how far this Dignity was below your deserts It sufficeth me that I give you some testimony that I am not sorry for it and that I consider it as in the croud among other Benefices that shall fall upon you knowing that some few mens lives that be not yet dead are the onely obstacles to your Vertues I expect by the first Post some better news concerning your health and ever remain with all my soul Sir Your c. Balzac 10 May 1634. To the same LET. XLV SIR Your last Message did give me exceeding content and though I am well assured of your affection towards me yet I take a singular delight to read in your Letters that you love me These be words whose fragrancy time cannot weare away and which will be as pleasant to me many years hence as
composed of Christal or as if I were some necessary matter for the good of all men Yet my Lord you have so great power over me that I will strain my self to shew my obedience and to give you an account of my leasure since you please to think I ought not to deprive the World thereof It is better to utter glorious dreams than to labour in gross designs and there are certain Acts of the spirit so excellent that Princes are too poor and their power too slender to afford them their full merit But my Lord you have often given so great testimonies of me that if I should not have some presumption it were fit I lost my memory wherefore out of the assurance you give me that my Stile doth not stray from that perfection which men imagine but never saw nor have attained unto I will enter upon a design which shall amaze our vulgar wits and cause those who have hitherto supposed they surmount others to see I have found what they seek for Whatsoever I do I will at least have you at all times present to my thoughts thereby to oblige my self not to come short before so great an example nor will I forget the place where at this present I am to the end not to omit any thing worthy the Ancient Rome It is impossible at once to have so glorious objects and degenerous thoughts or not to be transported with all those Triumphs of times past and with the glory of our age But this is not the place where I intend to speak it being of too small extent to receive so illimitable a subject It shall therefore suffice in conclusion of this my Letter to tell you that since upon your advice all posterity dependeth and the whole Court expecteth from you what they are or are not to believe I cannot chuse my Lord but to esteem my self right happy even amidst my greatest miseries if you still continue unto me your equal Judgement with the honour of your favours BALZAC From Rome this 10. of April 1623. To the Lord Cardinal of Richelieu from Monsieur Balzac LETTER V. My Lord MY purpose was at my arrival in France to have presented my Service unto you in the place of your Residence that I might have had the honour to see you but my health having not been such as to afford me the free disposition of my self I am forced to defer my contentment in that kinde and to intreat to hear some news from you till I be able to go to understand them from your Self In the interim the better to chear my Spirits I will believe they are as good as I wish them and will imagine this Collick of yours whereof I had so great apprehension shall be drowned in the fountain of Pougues This truly is so generally desired and sought for at Gods hands by so many mouths that I am confident he will not in this point leave the felicity he hath prepared for our times unperfect and that he loveth the World too well to deprive it of the good you are to Perform Armies being defeated new forces may be set on foot and a second Fleet may be rigged after the first perish But if we should want your Lordship the World would not last long enough to be able to repair such a loss And the King might have just cause to bewail the same in the midst of his greatest Triumphs He hath indeed an inexhaustable Kingdom of men The Wars do daily afford him Captains The number of Judges is not much inferiour to that of Criminals It is onely of wise men and such as are capable to guide the Stern of States whereof the scarcity is great and without flattery to finde out your Equal herein all Nature had need put it self into Action and that God long promised the same to mankind before he be pleased to produce him I say nothing my Lord I am not ready to swear in verification of my belief or which I confirm not by the Testimony of your very Enemies The authority of Kings is not so Sovereign as that is you exercise over the Souls of such as hearken unto you Your spirit is right powerfull and daily imployed in great affairs and which refresheth it self in agitation of ordinary occurrents You are destinated to fill the place of that Cardinal which at this present maketh one of the beautifull parties of heaven and who hath hitherto had no Successour though he have had Heirs and Brothers This being thus who will doubt that publick Prayers are to be offered for so precious and necessary a health as yours or that your life ought to be dear unto you within you are to conserve the glory of our age As for me my Lord who am assaulted on all sides and to whom nothing is remaining save hope being the onely benefit of those who are deprived of all others since my misfortune will needs make me that publick sacrifice which is to be charged with the pains of all the people and pay for all the World I could be well content you should send me your Collick and that it come to accompany the Feaver the Scyatica and the Stone Since of so many diseases there can but one Death be composed Nor is it time any longer to be a good husband of what is already lost But I will not enter further into this discourse whereof I shall finde no end and it were to small purpose to tell you he is the most wretched man in the World who so much honoureth you for fear you should reject my affection as some fatal thing and least it avail me not at all to protest that I am my Lord Your most humble and most obedient Servant BALZAC Septemb. 4. 1622. To the Lord Cardinal of Richelieu LETTER VI. MY LORD AFter the sealing of these presents a messenger passed by this place by whom I understand that the Pope hath created you a Cardinal I make no question but you received this news as a matter indifferent unto you and that your spirit being raised above the things of this World you behold them with one and the same Aspect Yet since herein the publick good meeteth with your particular interest and that for your sake the Church rejoyceth even in all the most irksome Prisons of Europe it is not reasonable you should deprive your self of a contentment no less chast than those heaven it self affordeth us and which proceedeth from the same cause All good men my Lord ought in these times to desire great Dignities as necessary means to undertake great matters If they do otherwise besides that God will demand a strict account from them of those his graces whereof they have made no good use the World hath likewise just subject of complaint seeing them abandon it as a prey to the wicked and that their desire of ease causeth them to forsake the publick good This my Lord is to let you know you are to reserve your
flatteries fools and cheaters of Old men corrupted by their Ancestors and who corrupt their children Of slaves who cannot live out of Servitude of poverty among virtuous persons and ambitious covetousness in the Souls of great persons But now that you have broken the bars through which I could onely receive some light impression of truth I distinctly see this general corruption and do humbly acknowledge the injury I offered to my Creator when I made Gods of his creatures and what glorie I sought to bereave him of c. BALZAC The 12. of January 1626. To Mounsieur de la Marque Letter VII I Know not what right use to make of your praises if I receive them I lose all my humility and in rejecting them I give that as granted which I am taxed for Upon the edge of these two extreamities it is more laudable to suffer my self to fall on my friends side and to joyn in opinion with honest men then to lean to that of Lysander since all men agree that his censure is ever opposite to the right and that he is the wisest man in France who resembles him the least There would be some errour in the reputation I aim at were I not condemned by him Think it not therefore strange that injuries are blown upon me by the same mouth which uttereth blasphemies against the memorie of ÏÏÏ and remember this old Maxim that fools are more unjust then some sinners The best is that for one Enemy my Reputation raiseth against me it procures me a thousand protectors so as without stirring hence I get victories at Paris nor finde I any Harmony so pleasing as what is composed of one particular murmure mingled with general acclamations There are sufficient in your Letter to cause me to retract the Maxims of my ancient Philosophy At the least they oblige me to confess that all my felicity is not within my self things without me entring towards the composition of perfect happiness I must freely confess unto you mine infirmity I should grow dumb were I never so short a time to live among deaf persons and were there no glorie I should have no eloquence But it is time I return to the task I have undertaken and that instead of so many excellent words you have addressed unto me I onely answer you that I am Your most humble servant BALZAC To Mounsieur Tissandier LETTER VIII AT my return from Poiton I found your packet attending me at my house but thinking to peruse your Letters I perceived I read my â—anegyrick I dare not tell you with what transport and excess of joy I was surprized thereupon fearing to make it appear I were more vain then usually women are and affect praises with the like intemperance as I do persumes Without dissembling those you sent me were so exquisite as be it you deceive me or I you there never issued fairer effects either from injustice or errour I beseech you to continue your fault or to persevere in your dissimulation For my part I am resolute to make you full payment of what I owe you and to yield so publick a testimonie of the esteem I hold of you as my reputation hereafter shall be onely serviceable to yours oblige me so far as to accept this Letter for assurance of what I will perform and if you finde me not so serviceable as I ought to be blame those troublesom persons who are alwayes at my Throat forcing me to tell you sooner then I resolved that I am Your most humble and faithfull servant BALZAC The 5. of August 1625. To Mounsieur de Faret LETTER IX THere is not any acknowledgement answerable to my Obligations unto you If I owe you any honour I am farther indepted unto you then my life comes to Truely to be sensible of another mans sufferings sooner then himself or to assume a greater share in his interests then he doth I must confess is as much as not to love in fashion or not to live in this age It is likewise a long time since I have been acquainted that the corruption environing you doth not at all infect you and how among the wicked you have conserved an integrity suiting the Raign of Lewes the twelfth Nay happily we must search further and pass beyond the Authentick Historie It is onely under the Poets Charlemain where a man of your humour is to be found and that the combat of Roger hath been the victorie of Leon. Without more particularly explaining my self you understand what I would say and I had much rather be indebted to your support then to the merit of my cause or to the favourable censure I have received from the Publick Certainly truth it self cannot subsist or finde defence without assistance yea even that concerning the Religion and which more particularly appertaineth to God then the other seaseth not on our Souls but by the entermise of words and hath need to be perswaded to have it believed You may hereby judge whether the good Offices you affoarded me were not usefull unto me or whether or no my just cause happened succesfully into your hands But I must defer the thanks due unto you upon this occasion till our meeting at Paris to the end to animate them by my personal expression Be confident in the interim though pitty it self would stay me in my Cell yet you are of power to cause me to infringe my heremetical vow besides you have set such a luster upon that great Citie and have punctuated unto me so many remarkable things and novelties thereof in the Letter you pleased to send me as I should shew my self insensible of rarities and not possessed with an honest curiositie had I not a desire to return thither I therefore onely attend some small portion of health to strengthen me to part hence and to go to enjoy with you our mutual delights I mean the conversation of Mounsieur de Vaugelas who is able to make me finde the Court in a Cottage and Paris in the plains of Bordeaux Adieu Mounsieur love me alwayes since I am with all my Soul Your most humble and affectionate servant BALZAC The 12. of Decemb 1625. To Mounsieur Coeffeteau Bishop of Marseilles LETTER X. IT is now fifteen dayes since I received any news from you yet will I believe the change of air hath cured you and if you as yet walk with a staff it is rather I hope for some mark of your authority then for any support of your infirmity If this be so I conjure you to make good use of this happy season yet remaining and not to lose these fair dayes hastning away and which the next Clouds will carry from us I give yon this advice as findeing it good and because there is not any thing doth more fortifie feeble persons then the Sun of this moneth whose heat is as innocent as its light Adamantus hath had his share of the unwholesom influence raigning in these parts The Feaver hath not born him
subverting States hath no leasure to work mischief in mean places I see Shepheardesses who can onely say yea and nay and who are too gross witted to be deceived by understanding persons yet is painting as little known among them as Eloquence and because I am their Master they would suffer me to shew them if I so pleased how small a distance there is between power and Tyrannie instead of the fine words and quaint discourses wherein your Ladies abound there issues from their mouths a pure and innocent breath which incorporates it self with their kisses and gives them a taste you ordinarily finde not among those of the Court. Supposing therefore you make not any better choice there then I happen on here by chance I make over particular profession to relye on your judgement and of being Your most humble servant BALZAC The 7. of October 1625. To Mounsieur de Vaugelas LETTER XV. THe good opinion you have of me makes up more then half my merit and you herein resemble the Poets Epicts who out of small truths frame incredible fixions howsoeuer if you loved me not but according to the rigour or Law and Reason I should much fear to be but of indifferent esteem with you It is then much better for me the affection you bear me appear rather a passion then a virtue Extremities in all other things are reproveable in this laudable and as certain Rivers are never so usefull as when they overflow so hath Friendship nothing more excellent in it then excess and doth rather offend in her moderation then in her violence Continue therefore in observing neither rule nor measure in the favours you afford me and to the end I may be lawfully ingratefull being infinitely obliged leave me not so much as words wherewith to thank you Truely your last Letters have taken from me all the terms I should imploy in this occasion and instead of the good Offices I incessantly receive from you it seems you will onely have new importunies in payment Since it is thus fear not my niceness or that in matters of great consequence I make not use of your affection and in slight ones I abuse it not henceforward it is requisite you recover all my Law-sutes compose all my quarrels and correct all my errours For to undertake to cure all my diseases I suppose you would not in prejudice of Mounsieur de Lorime It shall therefore suffice you will be pleased to let him at this passage read how I require my life at his hands and if the onely obeying him will preserve me I will place his precepts immediately after Gods Commandments There is no receit distastefull if his Eloquence affoard the preparative nor pain unasswaged by his words before it be expelled by his Art Remotest causes are as visible to him as the most ordinarie effects and if nature should discover herlself naked unto him he could not thereby receive any further communication of her secrets then he hath acquired by former experience Let him therefore bestow better nights on me then those I have had these six years wherein I have had no sleep intreat him to make a peace between my Liver and Stomack and to compose this civil War which disturbs the whole inside of my body if he desire I should no longer live but for his glorie and to perswade the World he is nothing indebted to those Arabian Princes who practised Phisick or to the gods themselves who invented it Truely if meer Humanists whom divers of his profession have sometimes scorned seem of slight consideration with him or if he be not contented with a civil acknowledgement I am ready to call him my preserver and to erect Altars and offer sacrifice unto him Yea to compass this I will quit the better part of what I implore It shall suffice he hinder me from dying and that he cause my diseases and plaints to endure some three-score years I would likewise know if you please what his good Cozen doth that Cittizen of all Common-wealths that man who is no more a stranger in Persia then in France and whose knowledge hath the same extent as hath all the Turkish Empire and all the ancient Roman Monarchy I have at the least three hundred questions to ask him and a whole Volumne of doubts to propose unto him I expect at our first meeting to resolve hith him upon the affairs of former ages and concerning the different opinions of Baromus and Genebrard on the one side and of Escales and Casaubon on the other I am in the mean time resolved to pass ten or twelve dayes with Mounsieur de Racan to the end to see him in that time work miracles and write things which God must necessarily reveal unto him Truely Conquerours have no greater advantage over Masters of Fence then he hath over Doctors and he is at this day one of the great workmanships of Nature If all wits were like his there would be a great deal of time lost at School Universities would become the most unprofitable parts of the Common-wealth and Latine as well as Millan Parchment with other forraign Merchandizes would be rather marks of our vanity then any effects of our necessity The 10. of October 1625. To Mounsieur de Racan LETTER XVI WEre my health better then it is yet the roughness of the season we are entring into and which I hoped to prevent makes me over apprehensive to stir out of my Chamber or to hazard my self in a long voyage A Sunless day or one night in a bad Host-house were sufficient to finish the work of my death and in the state wherein I am I should much sooner arrive in the next World then at Chastelleraut I must therefore intreat you to hold me excused if I keep not promise with you or if I take some longer time to make provision of strength to prepare my self for so hardy an enterprize At our return from Court we are to come to your delicate House and to see the places where the Muses have appeared unto you and dictated the Verses we have so much admired Those wherewith you honoured me do overmuch engage me to leave my judgement at liberty I will onely content my self to protest that you were never so very a Poet as when you spake of me and that you have Art enough to invent new Fables as incredible as ancient fictions it seems Divinity cost you nothing and because your Predecessors have furnished Heaven with all sorts of people and since Astrologers have there placed Monsters you suppose it may be likewise lawfull for you at least to get entrance there for some of your friends You may do Sir what you please nor have I any cause to blame the height of you affection since I hold he loves not sufficiently who loves not excessively It will onely be the good wits of our age who will not pardon you and will take it impatiently to see my name in your Verses with as great
and that he of all men who hath most cause to be satisfied with himself should need the assistance of any other to comfort him This is as much as to be distasted amidst the abundance of all things and to be ungratefull toward your good fortune since in the height of those favours you receive and expectation of those prepared for you you notwithstanding seek for forraign pleasures and are sensible of petty contentments among great felicities My writings are no objects but for sick and sad eyes yea of such as will be neither cured nor comforted They may indeed flatter melancholy and affoard a man in despair poison not unpleasing unto him but to contribute any thing to the satisfaction of a contented spirit and to mingle themselves with the pleasures of his life without corrupting all the sweetness is a thing I can hardly be drawn to believe And I herein imagine you have rather a design to tell me some good news then to write a true Historie unto me At the age of 0 0 0 0 0. you are seated upon Flower-de-luces and can you lye down upon Roses You are wise and have not acquired the same with loss of your best years you are born the same we desire to be at the best on what side soever you cast your eyes you finde present felicities and certain hopes and were there neither Loover nor Pallace to promise you preferments or Offices the house where you are may alone make you happy There it is where virtue hath no cause to complain of the injustice of Fortune and where she is more commodiously lodged then among Philosophers without going thence you possess whatsoever we desire in our wishes and what we imagine in our dreams The dayes which to me are so long and whose each moment I reckon pass over swiftly at Villesavin nor can riches annoy you in a society capable to make even poverty pleasing What likelyhood is it then this being so you should be of your Letters opinion and that you cannot be without me It sufficeth me you sometimes have me in your thoughts as those in Heaven behold what they left on Earth and that you receive the votes and prayers I shall hereafter address unto you after the solemne protestation I am about to make to remain whilest I live Your most humble and most faithfull servant BALZAC From Paris the 15. of September 1617. The end of the first Book LETTERS OF MOUNSIEUR DE BALZAC The second Volumne Englished by Sr. RICHRD BAKER LONDON Printed by W. B. for F. E. and I. C. 1654. The Letters of MOUNSIEUR de BALZAC To Mounsieur Moreau Counsellour to the King and Lieutenant of PARIS LETTER I. SIR I Come to renew my old importunity and require your Authority to call the Printers of Paris to account They have set forth in my name certain Letters which I acknowledge to be mine and deny not to father but yet they ought to have been counsel to them considering I never meant they should gadd about the streets By this means when I think I am in my Closer I finde my self upon the Stage they carry me abroad when I desire to be private and what I intended an inclosure to my friends they lay in common for all the Countrey You know Sir that this kinde of writing hath alwayes been priviledged and that many things are entrusted to the bosom of Letters which neither curiosity nor hatred ought to prye into nor ever will if that be any thing discreet This any thing generous An Enemy in War that neither spares mens goods nor lives yet makes a conscience of opening Letters the Law of secrets prevailing against the desire of revenge Yet so unfortunate am I that what an Enemy will not offer in War I suffer in peace and that by men that have no cause to wish me ill I have nothing so properly mine which they think not as properly theirs Nothing kept so close which they bring not to light If hold could be laid on intellectual things they would dive I think into the very thoughts of my heart but since their arms are too short for this they snatch them from me as soon as ever I have made them sensible and given them a body upon Paper in such sort Sir that I should not dare to write my very Auricular Confession for fear they should put it in Print and make it be cried upon the Exchange and I must be forced at last either to renounce all commerce in this kinde or at least to invent some strange unknown Characters to speak in secret and to preserve my conceits from their arresting They arrogate to themselves a more soveraign power than Princes do who alwayes leave to private men the free use of that which is theirs and never offer to make a high-way of my Garden nor a thorough-fare of my Court-yard This is a disorder where of the consequence reflects upon you and wherein you are more interested than my self for I do not believe you would be willing to see those excellent discourses which I have heard you make at the opening of your Courts and be disfigured by an uncorrected impression and it would grieve you that prophane hands should touch them without choice or discretion and thereby marre their lustre and defile their purity I therefore humbly intreat you in this point to take care of your self and to do your self right The boldness of these mercenary persons is not restrained by respect it must have a stronger bridle and if you give it not a stop by fear of punishment neither our Closets nor our Beds will have any thing so secret which will not be cried upon the Market place and to speak in the Comedians phrase That which Jupiter speaks to Juno in her ear shall be made Table talk for all the people You being as you are the censor of manners and Pylot of the state it belongs to your place to restrain this so Tyrannical an usurpation upon the liberty of mens spirits and whilest you defend from violence our fortunes and our lives you must not expose to the same violence other of our goods no less dear to us than those And herein I promise to my self some consideration of my own particular and that for my sake you will let your courtesie go further than your Justice And having obliged me to you already upon the like occasion I doubt not but you will maintain that first favour with a second and make the Printers know that you have taken my name and writings into your protection to defend them against all their practises This shall be to me a singular favour and which shall binde me all my life to seek out means to testifie that I am Sir Your most humble and most affectionate servant BALZAC To Mounsieur Rigault LETTER II. SIR HAving adventured to speak Latin I feared my boldness might have had but ill success and I doubted whether in a forraign Countrey I might pass
Art yet he knows mine much better than my self He is none of these limited wits that count themselves full if they have but three words of Latine have but read one of Plutarks lives Take them out of certain common places within which they entrench themselves and draw all discourse thither every where else they are utterly disarmed and without defence but his knowledge is so universal comprehends such an infinite number of things that one cannot touch upon any point where he is not ready for you and to draw him dry I do not think there are questions enow in the World to put unto him In one day I have heard him discourse with Gentlemen about hunting and husbandry with Jesuites about Divinity and the Mathematicks with Doctors of less austere profession about Rhetorick Poetry without ever borrowing a forraign term where the natural were the fitter and without ever flying to authority where the case in question were to be decided by reason To answer a premeditated oration from point to point upon the suddain to send back our oratours more perswaded by his eloquence than satisfied with their own this I have seen him oftentimes do and no man ever came to visit him whose heart he did not win with his words or at least left in it such an impression as is wont to be the first elementing foundation of love No liberty can be so sweet as so reasonable a subjection such a yoak is more to be valued than the Mayor of Rochels Halberds and when one is once assured of the sufficiency of his guide it is afterwards but a pleasure to be led In less than one week he hath new made all spirits here hath fortified the weak hath cleared the scrupulous and hath given to all the world a good opinion of the present and a better hope of the time to come I vow unto you I never saw a man that had a more pleasing way of commanding nor better knew how to temper force perswasion together I have indeed known some not unfit to command but rather in a Galley than in a Citie such might serve for excellent Galley Officers but are never good to make Governours they understand not the Art of governing Freemen there are even some beasts of so generous a disposition that these men would be too rude to carry a hard hand over them they would curb them with a Bridle and a Cavasson whom they might lead in a garter They think that power cannot subsist but by severity and that it grows weak and scorned if it be not frightfull and injurious This method and manner of governing is not like to come from the school and discipline of M. the Cardinal from whom nothing is ever seen to come that relisheth not of the mildness of his countenance and receiveth not some impression from the clearness of his eyes All that have the honour to come near about him are known by this Character wear all the same livery though they be of different deserving There is not so sullen an humorist that is not mollified by his presence nor so dull an understanding that he makes not pregnant with a word of his mouth this you know I am not ignorant of he makes powerfull use of weak instruments and his inspirations lift up spirits to such a height as their own nature could never carry them He needs in a man but a small seed of reason to draw from him exceeding effects of prudence and he instructs so effectually the grossest spirits that what they want in themselves they get by his instructions These are works which none can do but he materials which none but he can put in frame yet I think I may say without offence that this is more of his choise than of his making To spirits that languished for want of room to stir themselves in he hath given scope and imployment and where he hath found a virtue neglected to make it as bright as it was solid he hath not forborn to crown it with his friendship There is not a mouth in all this Province that blesseth not his Election and every man believes to have received from him that power which he hath procured to him who will not use it but for our good Amongst the showts of exultation which wait upon him in all places where he goes the joy of the people is not so fixed upon present objects but that it mounts to a higher cause and gives thanks to the first moover of the good influences which the lower heavens pour down upon us And in effect if Cesar thought he took a sufficient revenge of the Africans for their taking part with the enemy by placing Salust to be their Governour who did them more hurt by his private family than a Conqueror would have done with all his Army by the contrary reason we may gather that the true Father of his Countrey hath had a special care of us in advancing M. de Bâ—assac to the government of this Province and meant herein to honour the memory of his abode there and to make happy that land where perhaps the first conceived those great designs which he hath since effected I should not have spoken so much in this point if I did not know that you mislike not in me these kindes of excess and if it were not the vice of Lovers at the first to speak of the object of their love without all limits Besides I have been willing to make you forget the beginning of my Letter by the length of the middle and by a more pleasing second discourse to take from you the ill taste I had given you by the first And so adue Mounsieur Choler never fear that I will provoke you again it was my evil Angel that cast this temptation upon me to make me unhappy I might have been wise by the example of whom you handled so hardly in presence of I shall be better advised hereafter and will never be Sir But your c. From Balzac 16. of April 1633. To Mounsieur de Soubran LETTER XIII SIR IF you take me for a man hungry of News you do not know me and if I have asked you for any it is because I had none to tell you and because I must have something to say I have done it against the stream of my resolution quite which is to quit the World both in body and minde but custom is a thing we often fall into by flying it and we swear sometimes that we will not swear I desire so little to learn that I know not that I would be glad to forget that I know and to be like those good Hermites who enquired how Cities were made and what kinde of thing a King or a Common-wealth was I am well assured that Paris will not be removed out of its place that Rochell will not be surprized again by Guiton that petty Princes will not devest great Kings that favour will
that you are recovered yet have I still an apprehension of what alteration each hour may bring upon you Ought it then to be in the fits of your Feaver and in your inquietude for want of sleep that you understand these publick acclamations and the due praises you have purchased Shall the Senses suffer and the Spirits rejoyce or they continue tortured amidst these Triumphs or that you at once perform two contrary actions and at the same time have need as well of moderation as patience If Virtue could be miserable or if that Sect which acknowledgeth no other evil but pain nor any greater good than pleasure had not been generally condemned the Divine providence had received complaints from all parts of this Kingdom nor had there been an honest man known who for your sake had not found something farther to be desired in the conduct of this World But my Lord you understand much better than I do that it is onely touching the felicity of beasts we are to believe the body and not concerning ours residing onely in the supreme part of our selves and which is as smally sensible of those disorders committed below her as those in Heaven can be offended by the tempests of the Air or vapours of the Earth This being true God forbid that by the estate of your present constitution I should judge of that of your condition or that I should not esteem him perfectly happy who is superlatively wise You may please to consider that howbeit you have shared with other men the infirmities of humane nature yet the advantage resteth soly on your side since upon the matter there is onely some small pain remaining with you instead of an infinity of errours passions and faults falling to our lots Besides I am confident that the term of your sufferings is well nigh expired that the times hereafter prepares right solide and pure contentments for you and a youth after its season as you are become old before your time The King who hath use of your long living makes no unprofitable wishes Heaven hears not the prayers that the Enemies of this State offer We know no successour that is able to effect what you have not yet finished and it being true that our Forces are but the Arms of your head and that your Counsels have been chosen by God to re-establish the affairs of this age we ought not to be apprehensive of a loss which should not happen but to our successours It shall then be in your time my Lord I hope that oppressed Nations will come from the Worlds end to implore the protection of this Crown that by your means our Allies will repair their losses and that the Spaniard shall not be the sole Conquerour but that we shall prove the Infranchizers of the whole earth In your time I trust the Holy Sea shall have her opinions free nor shall the inspirations of the Holy Ghost be oppugned by the artifice of our Enemies resolutions will be raised worthy the ancient Italy for defence of the common cause To conclude it will be through your Prudence my Lord that there shall no longer be any Rebellion among us or Tyranny among men that all the Cities of this Kingdom shall be seats of assurance for honest men that novelties shall be no farther in request save onely for colours and fashions of Attire that the people will resign Liberty Religion and the Common-wealth into the hands of superiours and that out of law-full government and loyall obedience there will arise that felicity Politicians search after as being the end of civile life My hope is my Lord that all this will happen under your sage conduct and that after you have setled our repose and procured the same for our Allies you shall enjoy your good deeds in great tranquility and see the estate of those things endure whereof your self have been a principal Authour All good men are confident these blessed events will happen in your age and by your advice As for me who am the meanest among those who justly admire your Virtues I shall not I hope prove the slackest in the expression of your Merits Since therefore they of right exact a general acknowledgement if I should fail in my particular contribution I were for ever unworthy the Honour I so ambitiously aspire unto the heighth whereof is to be esteemed Your Lordships most humble and most obedient servant BALZAC To the Lord Bishop of Air. LETTER VIII My Lord IF at the first sight you know not my Letter and that you desire to be informed who writes unto you It is one more old-like than his Father and as over-worn as a Ship having made three voyages to the Indies and who is no other thing than the Relicks of him whom you saw at Rome In those days I sometimes complained without cause and happily there was then no great difference between the health of others and my infirmity Howsoever be it that my imagination is crazed or that my present pain doth no longer admit of any comparison I begin to lament the Feaver and Scyatica as lost goods and as pleasures of my youth now past See here to what terms I am reduced and how as it were I live if it may be called living to be in a continual contestation with death True it is there is not sufficient efficacy in all the words whereof this World makes use to express the miseries I indure they leave no place either for the Physicians skill or the sick mans patience nor hath Nature ordained any other remedies for the same save onely poison and precipices But I much fear least I suffer my self to be transported with pain or indure it less Christianly than beseemeth me being a witness of your Virtue and having had the means to profit my self by your Example My Lord it is now time or never I subdue this wicked spirit which doth forcibly transport my will and that the old Adam obey the other Yet doth it not a little grieve me to be indebted to my miserie for my Souls health and that I much desire it were some other more noble consideration than nessitie should cause me to become an honest man But since the means to save us are bestowed upon us and that we chuse them not it is fitting that reason convince our sensibilities causing us to agree to what is otherwise distastefull unto us At the worst we must at all times confess that we cannot be said to perish when we are safely cast on shore by some Shipwrack and it may be if God did not drive me as he doth out of this life I should never dream of a better I will refer the rest to be related unto you at your return from Italy with purpose to lay open my naked Soul unto you together with my thoughts in the same simplicity they spring in me you are the onely Person from whom I expect relief and I hold my self richer in the possession of your
thereof assure your self that it is in this Countrey where felicity doth attend you and that being once in this place you will esteem all those as banished persons whom you have left behinde you in France BALZAC The 25. of December 1621. To the Count of Schomberg from BALZAC LETTER XXIV My LORD I Send you the papers you have formerly seen and whereto you have attributed so much as I should be ashamed to assent thereto were it not that I hold it less presumption to believe I have merited the same then to imagine I can have a flatterer of your fashion I had need be elevated to a more soveraign fortune then the state of Kings to expect complacency from a man who could never be procured to approve evil and of whose disfavour one can hardly finde other cause then the onely truth he hath declared Howsoever it be since you are now in Lymosin and take not any journey in those parts without having a thousand old debates to reconcile and as many new ones to prevent it is very propable that after so painfull an imployment and so great disquiet of minde my book will fall into your hands just at such time as you cannot finde any thing more tedious unto you then what you come from treating of For should I presume that in your pleasant walks of Duretal where all your minutes are pleasing and all your hours precious there could be any time spare for me and my works it were as much as to be ignorant of the diversions there attending you or not to be acquainted with the great affluence of noble company daily repairing thither to visite you But were it so that you had none with you save onely the memory of your fore-passed actions your solitariness hath no need of books to make it more pleasing nay if all this were not yet if you desire to seek contentment out of your self you cannot finde any more pleasing then in the presence of your Children and particularly of that Divine daughter of yours from whom I daily learn some miracle It is therefore in her absence and in solitary walks where I have the ambition to finde entertainment and to receive gracious acceptance In all other places without presuming either to pass for Oratour or Poet it shall highly suffice me in being honoured with the assurance that I am My Lord Your most humble servant BALZAC The 25. of May 1624. A Letter from the Count of Schomberg to Mounsieur de BALZAC LETTER XXV SIR THe stile you travail in causeth the Pens of all such who attempt an answer to fall out of their hands and Eloquence may so properly be called yours that it is no marvel though others have but a small share therein I would therefore have you know that if I understand any thing in Letters yours do obscure whatsoever hath hitherto been esteemed of in our Language and that without flattering you there can be no diversion so pleasing which ought not to give place to the perusing of those Lines you sent me This occupation is worthy the Cabinets of Kings and of the richest Eare curtins of France and not as you would have it of my solitarie retirements in Lymosin from whence I am ready to be gone with resolution never to retire from the affection I have promised you whence you shall at all times draw effectual proofs whensoever you please to imploy them for your service Sir Your most affectionate servant SCHOMBERG The 1. of June 1624. The Letters of MOUNSIEUR de BALZAC The fourth Book To my Lord Mashall of Schomberg LETTER I. My Lord I Should be insensible of publick good and an enemy to France had I not as I ought a true taste of the good news your Foot-man brought me I will not mention the Obligations I owe you being no small ones if that be not a slight matter to be esteemed by you But since I make profession to honour virtue even in the person of one departed or an enemy and at all times to side with the right were there onely my self and Justice for it you may please to believe I complain in your behalf for the miseries of our times and that I am most joyfull to see you at this present where all the World mist you Certainly your retirement from Court hath been one of the fairest pieces of your life during which you have made it apparent you are the same in both fortunes since I can witness that no one word then passed from you unsuitable to your resolution Yet this rare virtue being there hidden in one of the remote corners of the World having but a very small circuit to dilate it self must necessarily be contented with the satisfaction of your conscience and slender testimonies In the mean time the authority of your enemies hath been obnoxious to all honest eyes There was no means to conceal from strangers the States infirmities or what reason to affoard them for the disgrace of so irreproachable a Minister nor was there any who grieved not that by your absence the King lost so many hours and services For my part my Lord reflecting upon you in that estate it seemed to me I saw Phidias or some other of those ancient Artists their hands bound and their costly materials as Marble Gold or Ivory taken from them But now that better time succeed each thing being again reduced to its place it is time to rejoyce with all good French men that you shall no more want matter and that the King hath at length found how unusefull your absence hath been to his affairs Truely be it that he content himself to govern his people wisely or that the afflictions of his poor Neighbours set near his heart and that his Justice extend further then his Jurisdiction No man doubts whatsoever he doth but you shall be one of the principal instruments of his designs and that as well Peace as War have equal use of your conduct All men have well perceived you have not contributed any thing to the administration of the Kings treasure save onely your pure spirit to wit that part of the Soul separated from the terrestrial part being free from passions which reasoneth without either loving or desiring and that you have managed the Riches of the State with as great fidelity as one ought to govern another mans goods with as much care as you conserve your own and with as great scruple as we ought to touch sacred things But in truth it is no great glory for that man to have been faithfull to his Master who knows not how to deceive any And did I believe you were onely able to abstain from ill I would barely commend in you the Commencements of virtue I therefore pass further and am assured that neither the fear of death which you have slighted in all shapes and under the most dreadfull aspects it could possibly appear nor complacency which often overpasseth the best Counsels to transport it self to
of his writing as I should look upon a piece of Ebone that were well wrought and polished This hath been ever my opinion of him As the beauties of Africa do not therefore leave to be Amiable because they are not like to ours and as Sophonisbe would have carried the prize from many Italian faces so the wits of the same Countrey do not leave to please though their eloquence be a forreiner and for my part I prefer this man before many that take upon them to be imitators of Cicero Let it be granted to delicate ears that his stile is of Iron but then let it be granted also that of this Iron many excellent Armours have been forged that with it he hath defended the honour and innocency of Christianity with it he hath put the Valentinians to flight and hath pierced the very heart of Marcion You see I want not much of declaiming in his praise but to avoid this inconvenience I think best to break off abruptly I am neither good at making Orations nor at venting of Complements I am a bad Advocate and as bad a Courtier yet I entreat you to believe that I very truely am Sir Your c. To Mounsieur du Moulin LETTER III. SIR no modesty is able to resist the praises that come from you And I vow unto you I took a pleasure to suffer my self to be corrupted with the first lines of your Letter But it must be one that knows himself less then I do that dwels long in this errour After a pleasing dream one is willing to awake and I see well enough that when you speak so much in the praise of my work you make not use of the whole integrity of your judgement You do me a favour I cannot say you do me justice you seem to have a will to oblige me to you by hazarding to incurre the displeasure of truth Now that you are your self at the Goal you encourage with all your forces those that are in the race and to perswade them to follow you make them believe they shall go beyond you An admirable trick of Art I must confess and which at first I did not discover But whatsoever it be and from what ground soever this wonderfull commendation of yours proceeds I esteem it not less than an ambitious man doth a Crown and without piercing into your purpose I take a joy in my good fortune which is not small Sir to be loved of you whom I have alwayes exceedingly esteemed and whom I have a long time looked upon in the Huguenot party as an excellent Pylot that affronts a great Fleet being himself but in Pinnace The right and authority is on our side the plots and Stratagems on yours and you seem not less confident in your courage than we in our cause It is certain that this is the way to give a sedition the shew of a just War and to a multitude of mutiners the face of a well ordered Army By this you keep many in a good opinion of that which hath now lost the attractive grace of Novelty and though it be now bending to its declination yet it cannot be denied but that it holds still some colour and some apparance by the Varnish of your writings and that never man hath more subtilly covered his cause from shew of weakness nor more strongly upheld his side from ruine than your self Si Pergama Dextra Defendi possent etiam hac Defensa fuissent This is my ordinary language when it comes in my way to speak of you I am not of the passionate humour of the vulgar which blancheth the liberty of their judgement and findes never any fault in their own side nor virtue in the opposite For my self from what cloud soever the day break I account it fair and assure my self that at Rome honest men commended Hannibal and none but Porters and base people spake basely of him It is indeed a kinde of sacriledge to devest any man whatsoever he be of the gifts of God and if I should not acknowledge that you have received much I should be injurious to him that hath given you much and in a different cause wrong an indifferent Benefactour It is true I have not alwayes flattered the ill disposed French and was put in some choler against the Authors of our last broils but observing in your writings that our Tenets are alike and that the subjection due to Princes is a part of the Religion you profess I have thought I might well speak by your consent as much as I said and in so doing be but your Interpreter Whether the tempest rise from the Northern winde or from the Southern it is to me equally unpleasing and in that which concerns my duty I neither take Counsel from England nor yet from Spain My humour is not to wrestle with the time and to make my self an Antagonist of the present it is pain enough for me onely to conceive the Idea of Cato and Cassius and being to live under the command of another I finde no virtue more fitting than obedience If I were a Switzer I would think it honour enough to be the Kings Gossip and would not be his subject nor change my liberty for the best Master in the World but since it hath pleased God to have me born in chains I bear them willingly and finding them neither cumbersom nor heavy I see no cause I should break my teeth in seeking to break them It is a great argument that Heaven approves that government which hath continued its succession now a dozen ages an evil that should last so long might in some sort seem to be made Legitimate and if the age of men be venerable certainly that of states ought to be holy These great spirits which I speak of in my work and which have been of your party should have come in the beginning of the World to have given Laws to new people and to have setled an establishment in the politick estate but as it is necessary to invent good Laws so certainly it is dangerous to change even those that are bad These are the most cruel thoughts that I entertain against the heads of your party in this sort I handle the adverse side and take no pleasure to insult upon your miseries as you seem civilly to charge me who have written that the King should be applauded of all the World if after he hath beaten down the pride of the Rebels he would not tread upon the calamity of the afflicted The persecutors of those who submit themselves are to me in equal execration with the violatours of Sepulchers and I have not onely pitty of their affliction but in some sort reverence I know that places strucken with lightning have sometimes been held Sacred The finger of God hath been respected in them whom it hath touched and great adversities have sometimes rather given a Religious respect than received a reproach But thus to speak of the good success of the
and which most of all startles me in reading his books If he would have it that his watchings and abstinence had dried up his bloud and made him look gastly that to the burnt colour of Africk he added also that of burnt Melancholy and of overflowing choler it may perhaps be granted him yet I will not accuse either the Sun of his Countrey or the temperature of his body but leave every one in his natural estate and so should he have done But to go about to disfigure the most beautifull amongst the Children of men and to eclipse all the beams and lustre of a Divine countenance this is a sullen humour which no patience can bear with no charity can ever pardon You wondered at this strange opinion when I last shewed it unto you and I perceived you suspected I did him wrong now therefore to justifie my credit with you and to let you see I did it not to abuse you I send you here the passages I promised you to look out The first is in his book of Patience where Christ is called Contumeliosus sibi ipsi The second in his book against the Jews where he is said to be Ne aspectu quidem honestus but hear the third which will fright you to hear in his Tract of the flesh of Christ Adeo utâ—nec humanae honestatis corpus fuit â—acentibus apud nos quoque Prophetis de ignobili aspectu ejus ipsae passiones ipsaeque contumeliae loquuntur passiones quidem humanam carnem contumeliae vero inhonestam An ausus esset aliquis ungue summo perstringere corpus novum Sputaminibus contaminare faciem nisi merentem c. Let us see what Mounsieur Rigaut thinks of this and whether he be of these sharp and sour ones that would take from Heaven its stars and from the Earth its flowers Certainly my censurer is of this number for I perceive beauty offends him and he would easily subscribe to Tertullians opinion Yet say no more to him of all this but that which he must needs know and spare sending out a second Process against a man that hath too much of the first and deserves you should take some care of his quiet since he is from the bottom of his heart Sir Your c. From Balzac 10. of March 1633. To My Lord the Bishop of Nantes LETTER XXV SIR IT is told me from all parts that you speak of me as one that is dear unto you and of my ill fortune as of a thing that concerns you If this tenderness proceed from a soft effeminate spirit yet it would not be without merit and oblige me infinitely unto you but now that it comes from a feeling of the purest spirit in the World and the least capable of weakness how much ought I to esteem it and of how great price to value it It wants not much of making me love that grief which procures me so glorious a consolation and I vow unto you that to be pittied of you is a more pleasing thing than to be favoured of the Court. In that Countrey men go upon snares and ruines the best places there are so slippery that few can stand upright and if the miserable pretenders avoid a sudden falling it is by enduring a tedious tossing receiving perpetual affronts and returning perpetual submissions I therefore like much better to hide my self here with your good favour and my own good quiet than to bear a shew there with their frights and sour looks and I bless the windes and count my Shipwrack happy which hath cast me back upon my old home Some that were more sensible than my self would in this case complain of the World but I content my self to forget it I will neither have War nor commerce with the world I have sounded a retreat to all my passions as well those that be troublesom as those that be pleasing and I protest unto you Sir I should read with more delight a relation of one of your walks at Cadillac than the most delightsom passage of all the German History when I think upon you in company with me thinks I see Laelius come to visite Scipio and confirming him in the resolution he hath taken to stand aloof from the tumults and turbulencies of worldly affairs and by a quiet retreat to place his virtue and his glory in a sure hold I am extreamly glad of the honour he will do my Father to pass this way and bring you along with him and you may well think that after this I shall not reckon our Village inferiour to Tempe or to Tyvoly If it were not for the sit of an Ague which is now leaving me but very quickly to return I would go as far as Rochel to meet with this good fortune that I might be at the first opening of those Largesses of the Church which a mouth so holy and eloquent as yours must needs distribute But I am not happy enough to see you and gain a Jubilee both at once It must be your pleasure to be so gracious as to accept of such a complement as I am capable of and to rest assured with my assuring you by this messenger that I am and alwayes will be with all the forces of my Soul Sir Your c. At Balzac 13. May 1633. Another to the same LETTER XXVI SIR THere are some of your bounties I have cause to complain of they are such as cannot be acknowledged and in the least of your actions you are so great that if I take measure of my self by you I cannot appear but very little Your liberality makes me rich but withall it discovers my necessity there being no proportion between you and me how extream soever my possession be it can be no competent price for yours and in the Commerce that is between us I return you but Flints for Diamonds yet I present them to you but informa pauper is not as a Mountibank know I give you nothing though I keep nothing for my self I am well assured Sir that I honour you infinitely but am infinitely unsatisfied to offer you so mean a thing there is no reasonable man that doth not as much since so much is due to you for onely your virtue how much am I to pay you more for your affection Of this last moyity I am altogether Non-solvent my services my bloud are not all worth it and I confess unto you I shall never be able to deserve but these four words of your Letter Non discedo abs te Mi Fili sed avellor nor those Delicias in Christo meas nor this Dulce decus meum with which you graced me at another time Mounsieur Gyrard who knows all my secrets and offers to be an agent for me with you will tell you with a better grace how sensible I am of your so great favours and how proud of so illustrious an adoption as you are pleased to honour me with of which I make far greater reckoning
then to be adopted into the family of the Fabians or the Marcelli you shall also hear by him that since your departure from hence you have been I may say solemnly invocated and most honourable commemoration hath been made of you in all our innocent disorderly wakes Our Curate believes verily that your presence hath brought a blessing to the fruits of our Parish and we look for better Harvests then our neighbours who had not the happiness thereof as we had There is therefore just cause that every week we make a feast upon the day of your coming to Balzac Et ut tibi tanquam futuro in posterum loci Genio non uno poculo libetur If this kinde of acknowledgement will content you I shall perfectly acquit my self of performing my duty having learned in Lorrain and the Low Countreys the means of testifying that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 6. of June 1633. Another to him LETTER XXVII SIR THough I know the good deserts of are not unknown unto you and that you need no forraign commendation to increase your respects towards him yet I cannot hold from doing a thing superfluous assure you by these few lines that it will be no blemish to your judgement to let him have your Testimony of his piety Ever since the time he renounced his errour he hath continued firm and stedfast in the doctrine you taught him of an erroneous Christian you made him an Orthodox and your hand is too happy to plant any thing that doth not prosper He is therefore your workmanship in Christ Jesus and otherwise so perfect a friend of mine that I know not if in the order of my affections I ought not to set him in equal rank with my own brother This at least I know that the least of his businesses is the greatest of mine and I will not onely part your savour between him and me but will become your debtour for the whole my self alone I am now polishing those writings which I had condemned but that you asked their pardon and since it is your will they should not perish I revoke my sentence and I am resolved your self shall be the other person of my Dialogue after the example of that Roman you love so well whose books of Philosophy are commonly his conferences with Brutus or other Sages the true and natural judges of such matters yet Sir it is impossible for me to dissemble any longer a grief I have at my heart and to end my Letter without letting you see a little cut you have given me there you made me a promise to come back by Balzac and now you have taken another way Thus the wise men of the East dealt with Herod yet I am neither Tyrant nor enemy to the Son of God This kinde of proceeding is far unlike the Belgick sincerity and it is not fit for Saints to mock poor sinners But how unkindely soever you deal with me I can never turn Apostara and should you prove more cruel I should yet never be Sir But your c. From Balzac 15. Octob. 1633. To LETTER XXVIII SIR SInce you have taken pleasure in obliging me I will not have you have the grief to lose your Obligation nor that my incompetent acknowledgement should make you have the less stomack for doing good I know your goodness is clear and free from all forraign respects and hath no motive but it self it is not at any mans prayers that the Sun riseth neither doth he shine the more for any mans thanks your courtesies are of like condition Your favours have not been procured by my making suit and as of my part nothing hath gone before the kindenesses I have received so on your part I assure my self you expect not that any thing should follow them yet something must be done for examples sake and not to give this colour for shewing little courtesie to such as complain that men are ungratefull The place where you are is full or such people all commerces are but Amusements and to make men believe the whole World is given to deceive and it is a great merit in you that you can follow so forlorn and solitary a thing as truth is in a Countrey where Divines maintain her but weakly and where she dares scarce be seen in a Pulpit doth it not shew an extraordinary courage to take upon him to distribute her amongst the pretenders and that in open Theater It is no mean hardiness to be good at the Court to condemn false Maxims where they have made a Sect and where they have gotten the force of Laws I have been assured you make profession of this difficult virtue and that in the greatest heat of calumny and the coldest assistance that ever a poor innocent had you have been passionately affected in my behalf being altogether unknown unto you but by the onely reputation of my ill fortune and even at this present you are taking care of some affairs of mine which I in a manner had abandoned and upon the report you heard of my negligence you make me offer of your pains and industry The onely using your name were enough for all this I might well spare my own unprofitable indeavours where my negligence being favoured by you shall without all doubt be crowned You have heard speak of that Grecian whom the love of Philosophy made to forget the tilling of his ground and of whom Aristotle said that he was wise but not prudent He found a friend that supplied the defect of his own ill husbandry and repaired the ruins of his house If my estate were like his I should expect from you the like favour but I ask not so much at this time All that I desire now hath promised me a dozen times over and I see no reason to distrust an Oracle He is neither inspired by any false Deity nor hath made me any doubtfull answer to that resisting my self upon this foundation there seems to have been a kinde of Religion in my negligence and I am not altogether in so much blame as would make you think me He is I deny not an Authour worthy to be credited and his testimony ought to be received but yet he hath not the gift of not erring and never believe him more than when he assures you that I am Sir Your c. From Balzac 9. of Febr. 1630. To Mounsieur du Pleix the Kings Historiographer LETTER XXIX Sir Since the time that persecution hath broken out into flames against me I never received more comfortable assistance than from your self and I account your strength so great that I cannot doubt of the goodness of a cause which you approve You were bound by no Obligation to declare your self in my behalf and you might have continued Neutral with decency enough but the nobleness of your minde hath passed over these petty rules of vulgar Prudence and you could not endure to see an honest man oppressed without taking him into your
that of a jeast there should have been made a fault or that a poore word spoken without designe or ayming at any should have been the cause of so great complaints You know that in a certaine moderne Schoole there is a difference made Fra la virtu faemiâ—ile la Donnesca and it is held that to make love it more the vice of a woman than of a Princesse and lesse to be blamed in the person of Semiramis or Cleopatra than in the person of Lucretia or Virginia I carry not my opinions so farre and I meane to be no Authour of so extravagant a Morality It may suffice that without descending from the Thesis to the Hypothesis I protest unto you I should be very sorry I had trenched upon the reputation of that great Queene or intended to corrupt the memory of so excellent an odour as shee hath left behinde her of whose great worthinesse I have in other places sayd so much that I should but shame my selfe to say any otherwise and indeed the termes I used were free and not injurious and such as if they wound a little they tickle and delight much more I neither spake disgracefully of the dignity of her royall birth nor gave her any odious or uncivill Names as some others have done whom I condemne extreamly for it yet Sir I will yield to confesse that I have said too much and though my saying too much should have attractives to charme mee and were as deare to mee as any part of my selfe yet seeing it is distastfull to you I will for your sake cut it cleane off and never looke for fuâ—ther reasons to induce mee to it I can deny nothing to my friends and therefore make no doubt of the power you have over mee and of my testifying upon this occasion without opening my Eyes that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 4. Jan. 1632. To Monsieur de Borstell LETTER XIII SIS I am so farre from seeking to justifie my negligence that I will not goe about so much as to excuse it nothing but my being dead can be a valuable reason why I waited not upon you to offer you my service all other impediments would prove too light to have kept me here but such is your graciousnesse that it is impossible to fall foule with you such your indulgence that you remit a fault before I can confesse it you give me no leisure to aske you at the very first you oblige me to thanke you and I have received my pardon here at home which I never looked to obtaine but at Oradeur and that with long solliciting I have not yet seene the AmbassatriΣ who hath done me the favour to bring it to me and I cannot imagine shee should be surprized with that despaire as your Letter represents her in Alciones affliction in respect of hers would be but meane and those women whose teares Antiquity hath hollowed did but hate their Husbands in comparison of her I know not whether you doe her a pleasure to raise her sorrow to so high a pitch for after this you speake of shee shall never be allowed to lift up her Eyes and you give her a reputation whereof shee is not worthy if shee leave but one haire upon her Head I much distast your exaggerations and cannot thinke shee will beare you out in the report you make of her miserable estate if it were such as you make it it would be capable of no remedy Epictetus and Seneca would be too meane Physitions to take her in hand yet I meane not to contradict you I thinke when death her Husband seaz'd Angelica with her Fates displeasd Lookt pale i' th face as Alabaster Charging the guiltlesse Starres with blame In all th'hard Language Rage could frame When it is growne the Reasons Master Yet the glory of her spirit makâ—s me believe withall that this sad humour was but a Fit and continued not long and that the same day upon the tempest there followed a calme A man shall meet with some Women of such spirits that neither time nor Philosophy can worke upon them and some others againe that prevent the worke of time and Philosophy by their owne naturall constitution As there is some flesh so hard to heale that no Balme can cure the prick but of a pinne so againe there are some bodies so well composed that their wounds are healed with plaine Spring-water and they close and grow together of themselves I assure my selfe our faire Lady is of this perfect temper and that she would be no example to make Widowes condemned for curling their locks or for wearing their mourning gowns edged with greene You should alledge unto her the Princesse Leonina so highly esteemed of the Court of Spaine and the prime ornament of this last age Knowing that her Husbands quirry was come to relate unto her the particular of his death and hearing that his Secretary was to come the morrow after she sent the quirry word to forbeare comming to see her till the Secretary were come that so she might not be obliged to shed teares twice There is no vertue now adayes so common as constancy nor any thing so superfluous as the custome of comforting All the Steele of Biscay and all the poyson of Thessalic might well enough be trusted in the hands of the mourners of our time without doing any hurt I scarce know a man that would not be glad to out live not onely his friends and parents but even the age he lives in and his very Country and rather than die would willingly stay in the World himselfe alone Speake therefore no more of keeping Angelica here by force who in my opinion is not of her selfe unwilling and not having lost the King of Sweden may therefore the more easily repaire her losse I would to God Sir I could be no sadder than shee is and that I could forget a person who is at this present the torment of my spirit as he hath heretofore been the delight of my eyes but melancholick men doe not so easily let goe the hold of their passions and the good remedies you have sent to comfort me for his death I approve them all but apply none of them yet I give you a thousand thankes though six moneths after they were due and though I say not often yet I say it most truly that you shall never take care of any man that is more than my selfe Sir Your c. At Balzac 30. Aprill 1633. To Madam LETTER XIIII MAdam seeing I could not come to see you at your departure as I was bound to doe I doe not think I shall doe you any wrong to send you a better companion than that I promised you I meane the Booke I now send you whereof you have heard so much talke and which you meant to have carried with you into Perigord to be your comforter for the losse of Paris It is in truth worthy of the good opinion you have of it
you will heare the vowes of those who wish your hapinesse I would think it fit you should not make your selfe a spectacle for the vulgar nor suffer your entertainment to be a recreation for idle persons It deserves not to be approached unto without preparation and that they should examine themselves well who present themselves before it All spirits at all times are not capable of so worthy a communication and therefore let men say what they will I account the reservations you make of your selfe to be very just and it cannot be thought strange that being as you are of infinite value you take some time to possesse your selfe alone and not to lose your right of reigning which admits as no division so no Company To use it otherwise Madam would not be a civiltie or a courtesie but indeed an ill husbanding of your spirit and a wastfull profusion of those singular graces of which though it be not fit you should deprive them that honour you yet it is fit you should give them out by tale and distribute them by measure It is much better to have lesse generall designes and to propose to ones selfe a more limited reputation than to abandon ones spirit to every one that will be talking and to expose it to the curiositie of the people who leave alwayes a certain taynt of impuritie upon all things they looke upon by such vicious sufferance we find dirt and mire carried into Ladies Closets if there come a busie fellow into the Countrey presently honest women are besieged there is thronging to tell them tales in their eares and all the world thinks they have right to torment them and thus saving the reverence of their good report though they be chaste yet they be publike and though they can spie the least fullying upon their ruffes yet they willingly suffer a manifest soiling of their noblest part You have done Madam a great act to have kept your self free from the tirannie of custome and to have so strongly fortified your selfe against uncivill assaylants that whilst the Louver is surprized your house remaines impregnable I cannot but magnifie the excellent order with which you dispose the houres of your life and I take a pleasure to thinke upon this Sanctuary of yours by the only reverence of vertue made inviolable in which you use to retire your selfe either to injoy more quietly your repose or otherwise to exercise your selfe in the most pleasing action of the world which is the consideration of your selfe If after this your happie solitude you come sometimes and cast your eyes upon the book I sent you you shall therein Madam doe me no great favour the things you shall have thought will wrong those you shall reade and so it shall not be a grace but an affront I shall receive I therefore humbly entreat you there may be some reasonable intermission between two actions so much differing Goe not streight from your selfe to me but let the relish of your owne meditation be a little passed over before you goe to take recreation in my worke To value it to you as a piece of great price or otherwise to vilifie it as a thing of no value might justly be thought in me an equall vanity They who praise themselves desire consent and seeke after others approbation they who blame themselves seeke after opposition and desire they may be contradicted This latter humilitie is no better than the others pride But to the end I may not seeme to goe to the same place by a third way and desire to be praysed at least with that indifferency I ascribe to you I entreat you Madam that you will not speake the least word either of the merit of my labour or in default of merit of the fashion of language I have used in speaking to you I meane not to put this Letter upon the score to speake plainly I entreat you to make me no answer to it so farre I am off from expecting thanks for it It is not Madam a present I make you it is an homage I owe you and I pretend not to oblige you at all but onely to acquit my selfe of the first act of veneration which I conceive I owe you as I am a reasonable creature and desiring all my life to be Madam Your c. At Balzac 4. May. 1634. To Monsieur Balthazar Councellour of the King and Treasurer Generall of Navarre LETTER XIX SIR I never deliberate upon your opinion nor ever examine any mans merit when you have once told me what to beleeve But yet if I should allow my selfe the libertie to do otherwise I could but still say that I find Monsieur de well worthy the account you hold him in and my selfe well satisfied of him upon his first acquaintance By further conversation I doubt not but I should yet discover in him more excellent things but it is no easie matter ever to bring us together againe For he is a Carthusian in his Garrison and I an Hermite in the Desart so as that which in our two lives makes us most like is that which makes us most unlikely ever to meet yet I sometimes heare newes of him and I can assure you he is but too vigilant in looking to his Charge hee hath stood so many Rounds and Sentinells that it is impossible he should be without rhumes at least till Midsomer These are to speake truly workes of supererogation for I see no enemy this Province need to feare unless perhaps the Persian or Tartarian the very Name of the King is generally fortification enough over all his Kingdome and as things now stand Vangirod is a place impregnable that if Demetrius came againe into the world he would lose his reputation before the meanest village of Beausse but this is one of your politician subtilties to make Angoulesme passe for a Frontier Towne and to give it estimation that it may be envied Doubt not but I shall give you little thankes for this seeing by this meanes you are cleane gone from us and I must be faine to make a journey of purpose into Languedoc if I ever meane to enjoy the contentment of embracing you and of assuring you that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 1. March 1633. To Monsieur de Serizay LETTER XX. SIR if you were but resident at Paris I should hope sometimes to heare of your Newes but now that you are bewitched there it will be an ungratefull worke for you to reade mine They are alwayes such as must be pittied In my way there are as many stones to dash against as in yours there are flowers and life it selfe is as evill that I suffer as it is a good that you enjoy you left me blind and may now find me lame my causes of complaining never cease they doe but change place and the favours I receive are so husbanded that I cannot recover an eye but by the losse of a leg I was yesterday in a great musing upon
I writ unto you it is true but the cause hath beene for that these six moneths I have every day been upon comming to see you and according to the saying of the Oratour your acquaintance I have dispenced with my ordinary worshipping in hope of a great Holy day and to performe my devotion with the more solemnitie If Monsieur de have kept his word with mee he hath told you how often he hath found me upon the very poynt of comming but as many journeys as I intended to make so many crosse accidents alwayes happened to hinder them and the mis-fortune that accompanies me makes every dutie though never so easie to another impossible to me Yet Madam I have never ceased from doing continuall acts of the reverence I beare you and I never sweare but by your merit My braine is drie in any other Argument and words are drawne from me one by one but when there is occasion to speake of you then I overflow in words upon this only Text I take pleasure to be Preaching and Monsieur de to whom I was alwayes before a harkener as soone as I begin discourse of you becomes my auditour I can assure you Madam he honours you exceedingly and neither his ambassage to Rome from whence Gentlemen returne not commonly without a certaine conceit of soveraigntie nor the imployments of the State which make particular men thinke themselves the Publike have been able to make him take upon him this ungratefull gravitie which makes Greatnesse ridiculous and even vertue it selfe odious He hath protested here before good companie that hee will never be found other and that Fortune should have an ill match in hand to thinke to corrupt him I used my ordinary rudenesse and intreated him to be mindfull of his word and to be one of our first examples of so rare a moderation You shall see Madam in a Letter I send you that which hereupon I am bound to say of him and I intreat you to maintaine for me that I am no common prayser and that if I were not perswaded of what I say it is not all the Canons of his Fort should make mee to say it It is onely the worth of things or at least the opinion I have of their worth that drawes from mee the prayses I give them If Monsieur de should returne to be a private person I should not respect him a joe lesse than now I doe and if you should be made Governesse of the Queenes house I should not be a whit more than I am Madam Your c. At Balzac 30. Aprill 1633. Another to her LETTER XL. MAdam never trust me any more I promise that I cannot performe but though I be a deceiver I am an honest one my promises are alwayes true in my intention though oftentimes false in the Event I know not what to say of this unfortunatenesse nor to what knowne cause to attribute this long â—rayne of mischiefes It must needs be there is some Devill imployed to hinder voyages to Lymousin and that will not suffer me to goe thither to see you sometimes he rayseth up suites in Law against me sometimes puts me into a quarrell and when these be composed and that I am ready to take horse either he sends me companie to divert me or prickes my horse in shooing or puts a leg out of joynt for all these crosses have befallen me as he that delivers you this Letter can be my witnesse But withall Madam he shall assure you that though I do steale away by night and be carryed in a chayre it shall not be long ere I will have the honour to come and see you In the meane time vouchsafe to accept from me the amusement of halfe an houre and be pleased to reade an Inscription which was lately found and taken forth of the ruines of an old Building It is engraven in Letters of Gold upon a Table of blacke Marble and seemes Prophetically to speake of you and me If I were a man could make Verses you might doubt it were some tricke put upon you but my ignorance justifies me and seeing as you know Poets are not made it were a strange thing I should be borne at the age of seaven and thirtie yeares I expect from you a Comment upon the whole Mystery and remaine Madam Your c. At Balzac 6. Jan. 1628. In Effigiem D. D. praestantissimae laudatissimae faeminoe Hac est sequaâ—ico veniens à littore Nympha Hospite quá Lemovix jure superbit ager Quae desiderium Dominae mibi durius urbis Mitigat per quam non fera turba sumus Vindicat hanc sibi Thuscae caris sibi musa latina Nec minus esse suam Graius Apollo velit Hanc sophiae Gens sancta colit dat jura disertis Princeps Grammaticas temperat una Tribus Scilicet ut distent speciose sana tumore Vna scit fractis verba sonora modis Judicat urbano quid fit sale tingere ludos Et quid inhumano figere dente notas Novit ab egresti secernere plectra cicuta Vosque sacri vates non sociare malis Ergo quid infidipetitis suffragia vulgi Quidve Palatinus quaritur arte favor Quae canitis vivent si docta provaverit auris Et dabitur vestris versibus esse bonos At si quando canat taccas velmascula Sappho Te meliùs salva nostra pudore canit Another to her LETTER XLI MAdam my eyes are yet dazeled with the brightnesse of your Cabinet and I vow unto you the Night was never so fayre nor so delicately trimmed up as lately at your House Not when the Moone accomplishing her way Vpon her silver wayne beset with starres Within the gloomy world presents the day I have shewed our Ladies the Description of this 〈◊〉 stately Night and of the rest of your magnificence which if it were in a severer Common-wealth than ours would be called a Profusive Wast they admire you in your house as well as in your Verses and agree with mee in this that wisdome hath a hand in every thing and that after she hath discoursed of Princes and matters of State she descends to take care of her Hosts and lookes what is done in the Kitchin But from a vertue of their own they alwayes come to that of yours asking me continually for Newes of your entertainment and for Copies of your Letters and by this meanes the happinesse which I have from you is instantly made common to all the neighbourhood and yet stayes not there neither but spreads it selfe both farre and neere so that when you thinke you write but to one particular man you write indeed to a whole Province This is not to write Letters but rather to set forth Declarations and Edicts I know Madam you were able to acquit your selfe perfectly in so noble an Imployment complements are below the dignitie of your style and if King Elisabett should come againe into the world you know of whom this is
1635. To Madam du Fos. LETTER LII MAdam my deer Cousin There is nothing heard in all quarters but benedictions and praises which our poor pleaders give you They invocate you as their Redeemer and if Themis be the goddess of good causes it seems you are the goddess of good success For my self I have known a long time that you are powerful in perswasion and never speak without prevayling This is the cause why I have promised Monsieur de not that you shal sollicit for him but that you shall speed for him and I am this day warranted of the Event I could tell you to make you respect him the more that he is able to thanke you in five or six languages that he hath a full Magazine of Astrolabes and Globes and that being but of a meane statute he hath yet by his knowledge in the Mathematicks found a meanes to make himselfe as high as Heaven But I will content my selfe to say that he is my friend and your Oratour that if my commendation and your own glory be deare unto you you cannot but very shortly send him backe with full satisfaction I promised to send you the two Sonnets you have heard so much spoken of but my bad memory makes me sayl in a part of my promise and I can send you but one and a halfe The one entire is this Tu reposois Daphnis au plus haut de Parnasse Couronné de louriers si touffus si vers Qu' ils sembloit te Couurir des orages divers Dont la rigueur du sort trouble nostre bonace Quand l' injuste Menaique a been eu cett ' audace D' employer les poysons sons sarabe couuerts Pour corrumpre ton Nom qui remplit l' univers Et me sprise du temps la fatale menace Mais si durant la paix tes Innocents Escrits Forcerent d' avouer les plus rares esprits Que Florence devoit ta Temple a ta memoire Ce style de combat Cet Efford plus qu' humain Fera voir a quel poynt tu peux mettre ta gloire Qu'and l' injure t' a mis les armes a la main The halfe one is this Quelque fois ma raison par des foibles discans M' incite a la revolte me promet secours Mais lors que tout de bon je me veur servir d' elle Apres beaucoup de peine et d' efforts impuissants Elle dit qu' vranie est seule aymable belle Et m' yrengage plus que ne font tous mes sens The Authour of this last Sonnet hath made one in Spanish which in the Court of Spaine goes under the Name of Lopez de Vega and another in Italian which Marino verily beleeved he had read in Petrarke It is a Spirit that changeth himselfe at pleasures and transformes himselfe into what shape he list yet he deserves better prayses than this and his Morall qualities are nothing behinde his Intellectual I will tell you his Name when it shall be lawfull to love him openly and and to make his Encomium without scruple But first it is needfull that Fortune which hath cast him upon an Enemies Countrey should bring him backe to Paris where both of us meane to waite upon or to make our Court and from thence I desire not ever to returne but onely to testifie to you more carefully than heretofore I have done that I am Madam my deare Cousin Your c. At Balzac 4. May. 1630. To Madam de Campagnole LETTER LIII MY most deare Sister I send you the Book which you required of me for my Neece and I beleeve that this and her Prayer-Booke may very well suffice to make up her whole Librarie she shall find in it a Devotion that is not too mysticall nor too much refined and which hath nothing but Morall and reasonable I like this popular Divinitie which meets us halfe way and stoops a little that we may not strayne our selves too much It follows the example of its Authour who made himselfe familiar with common people and put not backe so much as Curtisans and Publicans farre from making division in families and withdrawing women from obedience to their mothers and their husbands It commends this obedience as their principall vertue and calls it a second worship and a second religion I shall be glad to see my Neece make profession of a pietie so conformable to naturall reason and so good a counsellour of all other duties But let her not I pray climbe higher and undertake Meditations of her owne head Irenada whom I sent her hath taken this paines for her and hath meditated for her and for all other that shall read his Bookes There is nothing more dangerous than to mount up to Heaven without a helper and a guide and it is a great confidence one must have in his Spirit to let it goe so farre and be assured it will ever come backe againe It is not long agoe there was in a Towne of Spaine a Societie of devoted persons who continued in meditation so many houres a day leaving of all base workes to live as they sayd a more heavenly life but what thinke you became of it even a thousand domesticall disorders and a thousand publike extravagancies The less credulous tooke the pricke of a pinne for a Saints marke the more humble accounted their husbands prophane the wiser sort spake what came in their heads and made faces perpetually In so much that when in the moneth of May there did not past three or foure runne mad it was counted a good yeare It is fit to stay ones selfe upon the true vertue and not to follow the vaine Phantasmes of holinesse And it is farre safer to ground ones selfe upon a solid and certain reading than to goe wandring in a hollow and unsteady contemplation If I had more time you should have mors words but he that brings you the letter calls upon me for it and I can adde no more to it but that I perfectly am My deare sister Your c. At Balzac 15. Aprill 1635. Another to her LETTER LIIII MY dearest Sister all the world tells me that my Niece is fayre and you may beleeve I will challenge no man for saying so Beautie is in Heaven a qualitie of those glorious bodies and in Earth the most visible marke that comes from Heaven It is not fit therefore to slight these gifts of God nor to make small account of this sparke of the life to come It is not fit to be of so crosse an humour to blame that which is generally praysed Marke when a comely personage comes in place having but this advantage of her birth you shall presently see all that were talking to hold their peace and what noyse soever there was before you shall have all husht and an universall calme upon a suddaine you shall see a whole great multitude all busie in different matters to make presently but one body
from thence I will acquaint you with it and intreate this savour from you that you will believe I passionatelie am Sir Your c. At Balzac 10 June 1635. To Mounsieur Girard Secretary to M. the Duke D' Espernon LETTER IX SIR your last Letters have exceedingly comforted me and you have such things for me that they make me forgetfull of all my miseries With such a friendship I can mocke at ill fortune and it makes me taste contentments which good fortune knowes not of It is true that your absence is a perpetuall cooling Card to my joy and possessing you but in spirit it requires a very strong imagination to desire nothing else Shall we never come to be Citizens of one City Never to be Hermits in the same Desart Shall my Counsayle be alwayes twenty myles from me and must I be alwayes forced to passe two Seas to fetch it when I need it I hope your justice will doe me reason and that Heaven will at last heare the most ardent of all my prayers but in the meane time whilst I stay waiting for so perfect a contentment I would be glad to have of it now and then some little taste if it be not in your power to give your selfe at least lend your selfe for some few dayes and come and sit as supreame President over both my French and Latin I promise you I will never appeale from you to any other onely for this once give me leave to tell you that the word Ludovix which you blame as too new seemes to me a more Poeticall and pleasing word than either the Aloysius of the Italians or our Ludovicus and besides It favours of the Antiquity of our Nation and of the first language of the Gaules witnesse these words Ambiorix Eporedorix Orgetorite Vercingetorix c. In which you see the Analogie to be plaine yet more than this I have an Authority which I am sure you will make no difficultie to allow you know Monsieur Guyet is a great Master in this Art but perhaps you know not that he hath used this very word Ludovix before I used it for I tooke it from these excellent Verses of his Non tulit hoc Ludovix justa puer acer ab ira Et patriae casum sic videamus ait For other matters Sir you may adde to that which was last alledged in the cause of Madam Gourney this passage out of the divine Jerusalem where Aladin calls Clorinda the Intercessour of Sophronia and of her lover Habbian vita Rispose libertade E Nulla a tanto Intercessor se neghi I kisse the hands of that faire creature you love and am withall my soule Sir Your c. At Balzac 20. Septemb. 1635. To my Lord the Earl of Port. LETTER X. SIR I have received a letter from you since your being in England but not being able to read the Gentlemans hand that sent it to me for want of a decipherer I have been forced to be uncivill till now and have therefore not answered you because indeed I knew not whom to answer but now that this Gentleman whose name is a mysterie in his letters is by good fortune come againe into this countrey I can by no meanes suffer him to part without some testimony of the account I make of your favour and the desire I have to preserve it by all the possible meanes I can I will make you Sir no studied Protestations nor send complements to a man that is borne in the Countrey of good words I will onely say there are many respects that make your person dear unto me and that besides the consideration of your vertue which gives me just cause to honour you that also of the name you beare and of the ranke you hold are things that exceed the value of indifferencie I love all them that love France and wish well to our great Prince of whom in truth I have heard you speake so worthily that as often as I remember it it stirres me up to doing my duty and to profit by so good an example If it had been seconded in Italy we should have seene all we could have hoped But God himselfe saves none but such as contribute themselves to their salvation Saguntum was taken while the Senatours were deliberating and a wisedome that is too scrupulous commonly doth nothing for feare of doing ill The most part of Italians are themselves the workmen to make their owne setters they lend the Spaniard their blood and their hands to make a slave of their countrey and are the parricides of their mother of whom they might have been the redeemers But of all this we shall talke more at Paris if you come thither this Winter as I am put in hope you will In the meane time doe me the honour to let me have your love and to believe me there is none in the world more truly than I Sir Your c. At Balzac 10 Sept. 1630. To my Lord the Bishop of Nantes LETTER XI MY Lord the joy I take in the recoverie of your health is not yet so pure but that it alwayes represents unto me a terrible Image of your last sicknesse The imagination of a danger though past and gone yet makes my memorie afraid and I looke upon it rather in safety than with assurance We missed the losing you but very narrowly and you were upon the poynt to leave us Orphans I speake it seriously and without any flattery at all all the victories we have gotten or shall get would never be able to make us amends for such a losse you wouldd have made our conquest turne to mourning M. the Cardinall would have found something to complaine of in his great felicitie and would have watred his triumph with his tears Let it not be Gods will to lay this crosse upon our time and if it be a crosse inevitable yet let it be deferred to our posteritie It is necessary the Phoenix should live out her age and that the world should be allowed time for enjoying the possession of so profitable and sweet a life as yours It is true the world is not worthy of you but my Lord the world hath need of you your vertue indeed should long since have been crowned but that your example is still necessary and the more happie ones there be in heaven the fewer honest ones will be left upon earth Love therefore your selfe a little for our sakes begin now at last to studie your health which hitherto you have neglected and make a difference hereafter betweene cold and heate betweene good and bad aire betweene meates that are sweet and those that are bitter Though you take no care of your health for your own sake yet you must take care of it for the common good For I beseech you my Lord tell me what should become of the cause of the poore what of the desolation of widdowes what of the innocencie of men oppressed I speake not of the hope of such as hope for
should be but one Monarch upon earth and that the Pope himself for his better accomodation doth mean to resign Rome to him and exchange it for the Arch-Bishoprick of Toledo That the Battle where the King of Sueden was slain was the last sigh of dying libertie that this Prince was no such thing as we took him to be and for those atchievements of his which we entertain'd with such wonder nothing was performed without the help of Magick by vertue onelie of some charms and characters and the assistance of the Powers of Hell which at last was found too weak against the House of Austria That to the end that the second causes and humane means might concur with the design of providence forrain affaires do seem to complie of themselves to this great change That the King of England is not so brave but that he would be contented to be a Feudatary of the King of Spain and if it goes to the worst that there will not be wanting some Gunpowder-men to make him caper in the aire with his whole Realme That the cinders of the Holy League and the remainder of the Huguenot Partie begin to flame a new in Frence by the bellowes and Libells of St. Germaine that they have bargain'd with some secret Engineers who have undertaken to fortifie Roâ—bâ—l in one night That Duke Charles must be revenged upon Nancy and that he doth hold Paris alreadie in extremitie that if there be not a Spanish Garrison alreadie in Turin and Câ—sall there will be one when it shall seem good to his Catholick Mâ—jesty and when the Dukes of Savoy and Mantua shall be received into his favour That he will have none of Venice or Amsterdam because that an Illuminatee of Madrid and a Sybille of Naples have assured him that the Sea will one day swallow up these two great Cities and the losse of his Spaniards that should be their Commanders would be a cause of great grief unto him That he had long since chastis'd the Rebels of Holland if some considerations of state had not hindered him from it But let him preserve that Land of contradiction for a Fencing-schoole for his own Subjects to keep them from idlenesse and to breath them by continual exercise That for the rest if the world will not be so easilie conquered he hath in his coffers wherewith to buy it And hereabouts this Daughter of Fame and Enceladus her Brother must raise her tone higher and out-bid her first figure or number she must with one dash of the pen make more gold then the Sun can make in a thousand years she must make the windes labor and force the Ocean to groan under the new Fleet which according to her computation must arrive everie moneth punctuallie at Lisbon and Sivil she must make a discoverie if needs be of the third Indies and finde out all the hidden mines there not those within the Demaines of Antichrist excepted and cause them to be guarded by those evil Spirits which S Augustine calls for this reason Incubones Thesauroruâ—â— c. Behold Sir a rude draught of a work which expects from you its consummation and perfection which you might soon finish if your poetical fancie should once seize you Here is matter you see for an excellent Irony and wherewith to continue it to a hundred verses and more though the Comedy did affect you neere so little especiallie when you shall adde from and fashion to the stuffe which I present you with who am Sir Your c. Balzac 27. Nov. 1637. To Monsieur de Couurelles LET. XXVIII SIR J cannot write unto you but tumultuarilie my hands and head are so ful of businesse that being to take a journie to Paris I am bound to bid farewell to the Clergie the Nâ—bilitie and the Commons It is now four years that I have deliberated upon this voyage and being at last resolved I am like by your favor to be accompanied then I did expect Comes facundus in via c. I think I may give this attribute to your Book after the Elogy which you vouchsafe me therein and if I had not alreadie taken part and declared my selfe for the Author of the Flandrian History who is one of my good Lords and friends I should have entered blindlie into a new faction which as it seems you do abet and patronize but Sir you will not take it amisse that I professe constancie and that this second Author hath not won my first affection This evening I shall begin to entertain him and to taste of those delicacies whereof you were pleased to make an Essay These will not be painted Cares I am sure not Pageants of good no nimble juglings and impostures practised upon the eye and imagination as most part of those things are that come from that Countrie There is no imposture so finelie contrived as to be able to cheat so cautious a judgement as yours And I will folllow you wheresoever you will please to lead me I mean still to except matters of faith and I believe you will not be offended with such an exception since the Lawes of friendship will allow it me and since I never cease to be most affectionatelie Sir Your c. Angoulesme March 8. 1636. To LET. XXIX SIR My willingnesse to relieve afflicted men deserves not the thanks which I have reapt thereby This is a passion which on my part doth but produce fruitlesse desires and which cannot by you be â—â—d in any estimation but out of a superlative noblenesse in you In that I have given harbor to a man that was persecuted I did but that which the Law of Nations required of me and what I would not have denied to the misfortunes of an or a Spaniard If you take this to mind and become my debtor you do assume the interest of all mankind and acquit the honor of the whole world for my part I am twice rewarded for an act which J thought was sufficientlie rewarded in the doing and for which J expected neither honor nor acknowledgement You see Sir that I am not privie to your secrets and if you were obliged hereby it was by an innocent and blindly ignorant man For the Cavalier touching whom you aske some news J believe that he hath prevented me as being unwilling that any other then himself should be the Historian of his adventures He will no question write unto you what hath hapned unto him in the Resectory of the Fathers and the notable advantages he hath gotten over a Gladiator of the long Gown J am not troubled a whit that he hath got him some credit in so good a place and gained the reputation of a man of valor Yet I must tell you that his credit is dearer unto me then my own interest and that if he have not the mind to dispute it is not my desire he should turn for my sake He may be my friend at a cheaper rate and I can content my self with the
this they have handled me as though I had been dead indeed and have magined withall that they be my rightful Heyres ex asse having eized upon the first papers of mine that they could meet with I am omething apprehensive of this injury and it should grieve me if Monsieur should be the Author of it because I should then endure it with more impatience yet To say truth if this be not to wound and violate downright the Law of Nations it is at least to deflowre and taint it and you will confesse with me that it could not be pleasing unto me that the should be publisht without asking my consent thereunto Had it been so I should not have been perhaps very averse and I should have desired him onely to alter something for my sake and something for his own For though his understanding be passing good yet you know well that our Grammatians do not allow his stile for regular and though their scruples be ill grounded yet they must be considered That which I would fain have changed and where I thought I had some small interest was one word which nay ancient Enemie had alreadie miserablie mangled and which not wanting spirit and life in its natural place doth resemble those delicate plants which die as soon as they be transplanted from their own banks But remedie comes now too tardie I must comfort my selfe against this as well as other injuries This is but dallying to former wrongs and such pinches should well be born with by a man that never useth to complain of Treasons and Assassinates For your satisfaction Sir let it suffice that I have a perfect knowledge of your wisdom and honestie and that I would trust you with my life my honor and my fortunes If I had had so base a thought as to suspect you in this dealing I should believe that I were bound to do penance for my suspition I know that you are everie way virtuous and my firm friend as I am verie reallie Sir Your c. Balzac 10. Jan. 1634. To the same LET. XXXV SIR J have received your incomparable Book in the which after a long and tedious perusal my Grammer could finde no construction nor my Logick common sense This is not the first time that that poor Wit hath strayed so He hath been this long time ridiculous without being facetious and hath been a laughing-stock to the vulgar and an object of pitty to the wise The late Monsieur did use to call him the greatest enemy that ever Reason had between Cales and Bayonne and said he was a fool in two Sciences and in four Languages Neverthelesse if our friend shall think him worthie of some traces of his pen let us indulge him that exercise with this provisoe that he be not violent and that he put not himselfe to a heat that if it please him he do not deal seriously with him or arm himselfe at all points against an Adversary that deserves not any encounter but with pins As for the you wrong your selfe for to mistrust the moderation of my spirit In the estate that I have ordered and setled it in I have lesse passion then the King of the Stoicks and I must be excited for eight dayes together to the crueltie of hearing any man whatsoever for one half an houre It is not my intention to write against Monsieur but to discourse with him and I have not so little wit but that I can distinguish his person from his cause He hath obliged me with so good grace and spoken of me in such high language and sumptuous terms that I cannot doubt of his respect or his affection towards me And he shall likewise see my resentment of it through the whole file of my discourse wherein I am resolved to temper my self so discreetlie that if I perswade him not to my opinion I shall not make my proceedings odious and if I do not rest satisfied with what he faith I shall contradict him but obliquely and with a kind of Biasse which shall not be distastful unto him This will be perhaps the first example of modestie that hath been heard of among the disputants of this age and we will demonstrate to those of that side who talk outragiouslie in Problems of small importance that the altercations of honest men are without choler and that generous enemies live better together then malicious Burghers For the rest Sir I desire you to continue the pains that you have begun and to send me wherewith J may fortifie all the Approaches that are liable to assault and batterie I shall feare nothing being strengthned with so powerful succors and you will justifie my cause if it be good or give it a colour of justice if it be not so See what an enterprise it was in you to love me You could never have conceived a more pernicious design for your selfe It will repent you more then once and you will renounce at anytime I am sure the sory purchase which you have made in the acquaintance of a troublesome man Neverthelesse he is one that is most affectionatelie Sir Your c. Balzac 20 March 1634. To Madam Desloges LET. XXXVI MAdam It is now three moneths that I have expected Monsieur de Auvila that I might be informed of the state of your health But having latelie understood that it is not so currant as I could wish it and mine being not so firm that I could adventure upon a journie I have dispatched one towards you to learn the truth thereof It will be an incredible ease to my mind if I finde that it was be a false alarm or that your sicknesse by this time be over past I do hope for one of the two Madam because I do passionately desire it but I beseech you to believe that it is long of my crazie body that I am no sooner cleared of my fear and rid of the pain you put me to and that you do not see me in person instead of the Messenger that I have sent He hath in charge to present you with my fine Cuts or small Ingravery which I have newly received from Paris I thought meet to send you this dumb visit that it might not oblige you to any complement that might put you to trouble you do receive indeed more troublesom ones sometimes And if the fullenness of my countenance be an object of bad presage you will confesse that the perpetual silence that doth accompany it is a great Commodity at leastwise it can never be offensive to you since it leaves you still at quiet and demanding no ceremony from you it must perplex you lesse then the Antiquities and Originals of La Marche and Limousin Finally Madame it lyeth in you to preserve your bounties for me and maintain me in my possession I know that Monsieur de Alle is of infinite value and I believe I cannot loose him since it was you that gave him me you have too good a hand to do any
when they were first spoken I am indeed ravished with your last Protestaetions But I rejoyce with you the rather for the felicity of this new age since you are in part the cause of it and that by your suggestions Monsieur doth purpose to allot a considerable Tenement of lands for the relief of poor and disconsolate Muses We shall see this year Sonnets and Odes and Elegies enough The Almanack doth promise wonderful plenty and Parnassus must not yield lesse then it did under the Pontificate of Leo the Tenth For you Sir if you believe me you shall never take pen in hand again but in case of necessity and onely that commerce may not decay Hitherto you have been a Horace now you aâ—e Mecenaes and if we do not celebrate you everie Scribler of us and addresse our Works both in prose and verse to you you have just cause to indict us of ingratitude For my part I would willinglie both live and die under your patronage and I do provide an oration for you in genere demonstrative wherein at the first salute I shall astonish the world with this great prodigie That you are both a compleat Courtier and a perfect friend Since you would absolutely have it so that I come to Paris it is to you that I shall make my most frequent resorts to do my respects and it is in your Cabinet that I shall by your good leave redeem the time which I have lost in the Countrie but we must give place a while to the anger of storming Jove or to speak the language of men we must permit it to rain and freeze in Beausse and not go to outbrave the moneth of February I have no great need to die out of too much daring My health is still verie infirm and unconstant and if I did not take incredible care I say not to preserve my person but onelie to continue my sleeps you had lost me a great while since Since I am whollie yours you will allow me the use of this word and take it not ill that I reckon my selfe in the number of those things that are not to you indifferent You have infinitelie obliged me in assuring Monsieur the Count of of the continuance of my zeal and fidelitie I have made him so eminent and publick a maâ—ke that as I can never recant it so can he never suspect it I omit a thousand things that I should tell you of but this will be imployment for the next week and I am forced to conclude that I am Sir Your c. Balzac 10 Feb. 1632. To Monsieur de Savignac LET. XLVI SIR Either I have not well interpreted my selfe or Monsieur de hath not well understood me I do ever value the merits of Madam de Anguitar and if it must be that I must by a second act confirm that testimonie which J have given of her J am readie to declare my self anew and to commend once more a Lady that is so praise-worthy It is true that for the interest of her honor it will be something material to understand the cause that made my intentions to be misconstrued and that I lead you to the verie source of this jealousie whereas it seemed to certain Cavaliers my friends that J did too much approve of her singular humor and frequent retirings one of the most eloquent of them took a fancie to publish his dislike in this point and to write a reproachful Letter unto me in the name as he saith of the whole Corporation of honest men Wherein he proclaimes open warre against me in their name as though I had conspired against fair Society and calls me the Common enemy the universally jealous man the Tyrant to both sexes He doth imagine that it is my intent to shut up in prison all fair and delectable things for to punish curious eyes He cries out that I would fain abrogate the sweetest lawes of this Realm and bring in the crueltie of that custom in Spain where honest women are mewd up in Cages and honest men adore but doors and windowes From Madrid he passeth to Constantinople and tells me in a great rage that I am good for nothing but to be a Counceller of the great Turk for to advise him to raise the walls of the Seraglio higher and to double the Guard of the Sultana Then he doth accuse me for a thousand mischiefs and takes me for Him that invented the iron grates the locks the vails and maskes and for the author of all those things that oppose his intrusion and saucy curiositie Insomuch that he imagines that I must render him a reason of the secrets and difficulties of all riddles of the darkness of all ancient Oracles of the Allegories of Poets and of the Mysteries of all Religions To make answer to farre lesse then this it behoved me to studie a long Apologie and as ill luck was when I received his Letter I was not in the humor of making Books Wherefore Sir I professe to you trulie I chose rather to yield then defend my selfe and abandon my Maxims to the verbosity of my good friend rather then maintain them with the expence of so many words as he did plie them with But if J be not deceived there is a good deal of difference between my Maxims and the praises of Madam d' Anguitar and he must take heed of confounding in the design that J have that which I have distinguished in the Letter which I wrote unto Her To say that She is one of the Perfections of the world is an immoveable truth for which I would sight all my life time But to say that such Perfections must be sequestered from the eyes of men is I suppose a probematical opinion which I may revoke without prejudice to my own constancie or to the worth of these Perfections But on the contrarie most will be apt to believe that this will be sufficient amends and just satisfaction for the injurie I did them in condemning them to solitude and retirednesse and will call it their revoking from exile and releasing out of bondage Thus Sir I preserve still my first Design and my commendations remain whole and intire among the ruines of my Maxims Nay out of their demolitions Trophies might be erected to the honor of Madam d' Anguitar and a Theater built where she might be gazed upon by those that can but divine guesse at Her and that the Desart might no longer have such advantage over the City This is not then to rebel against her Vertues but to wish Her a more spacious Empire and a greater number of Subjects then She hath had nor to go about to eclipse her light but to adjudge that She should issue forth out of the Clouds for the benefit and comfort of the Vniverse I pitty those Criticks that take it otherwise and am sorry that Monsieur is fallen upon a thought so far distant from mine He might have understood me well enough without putting me
know you have so absolutely acquired me to your service as you have left me no libertie to do what I desire when there is any question of performing your pleasure Since therefore you and your Printers have conspired against my quiet and that you determine to make my infirmities as publick as though you meant to lead me to the Hospitals or Church-porches I am contented with closed eyes to obey you and to put my reputation to adventure rather then seem to refuse a thing you have demanded of me Mounsieur the Priour of Chives to whom I communicate my most secret thoughts and in whose person you shall see that I know how to make good elections in delivering you this Letter may conclude it and acquaint you with the power I have given you over all my desires truely it hath no other bounds then impossibilities Since as for those which are onely unjust I believe I should make small scruple to violate the Laws for your sake and to testifie unto you that virtue it self is not more dear unto me then your friendship this is Your most humble and most affectionate servant BALZAC The 4. of January 1624. LETTER XXIX BEing now ready to alter my course of life and part hence to come to Court I held my self obliged to advertise you that herein I do what I have no minde unto and that they have pulled me out from a soil where I suppose I had taken Root It much afflicts me that I must forsake the company of my Trees and part from that pleasing solitude my good Fortune had chosen for me before I was born But since all the World drives me out and because what I call repose my friends term Pusillanimity I must suffer my self to be carried away with the press and to erre with others since they will not let me do well by my self Upon my Conscience it is not out of my own ambition that I am high-minded but out of my Fathers and if people of his time had not measured things by the events had not believed those onely to be wise who are fortunate I should not have busied my self in searching at Paris for what I ought to have found in my self But truely I have so great obligation to so good a Father and the care he hath taken to husband the good grain he hath cast into me and to finish me after he had framed me have been so great and passionate as there is no reason I should follow my private inclination by resisting his intention I go therefore since it is his pleasure to live among wilde beasts and to expose my self to hatred and calumny as though the Feaver and Sciatica were not sufficient to make me miserable At my first approach the Grammarians will call me into question because I put not the French word Mensonge into the feminine gender and do not believe the Jurisdiction they have over words is powerfull enough to cause this word to change Sex Those who have not as yet written will set pen to paper against me and the new Bridge will Eccho nothing but my name and their injuries I shall be much distasted to hear I am become an Author and that I perform indifferent good pieces The meaner sort of spirits will be much moved in that I have set so high a rate upon Eloquence and being unable to follow me they will throw stones to stay me The truth I have not dissembled will at once offend our adversaries and ill Priests debaucht persons will never forgive me the P. P. they have seen in my books and Hypocrites will wish me ill because I set upon vice even within the Sanctuary See here my dear friend the persecution prepared for me and of what sorts of people the Army of mine Enemies is composed In all apparence there is not any valour able to surmount so great a multitude and I should do much better to enjoy the peace of my village and to eat Mellons in security then to cast my self into this incensed troup and to engage my self in an endless War yet since all Grammarians are not worth one Philosopher and in that the better part hath often the advantage over the greater I am in hope Authority and Reason siding with me I shall easily get the upper hand of multitudes and injustice To tax me in these times wherein we are is as much as to give the lye to his Master and to condemne the opinion of the prime men of our age Those who govern at Rome and at Paris make my labours their delights and when at any time they lay aside the weight of the whole World they refresh themselves with my Works But if some bad Monks who in religious houses as Rats and other imperfect creatures may happily have been in the Ark seek to gnaw my reputation Mounsieur de Nantes and Mounsieur de Berille will conserve it and you know them for two men whom the Church in this age beholdeth as two Saints disâ—interred out of the memorie of her Annals or two of those Primative Fathers whose Souls were wholy replenished with Jesus Christ and who have established the Truth as well by their Bloud as Doctrine I have besides as an opposite to my Calumniators one of the most perfect Religious this day living I mean Father Joseph whose great Zeal is guided by as eminent an understanding and who hath the same passions for the general good of Christendom as Courtiers have for their particular interests This irreproachable witness knows I reverence in others the Piety I finde not in my self and if I perform not all the actions of a perfectly virtuous person yet have I at least all the sensibilities and desires Mounsieur the Abbot of St. Cyran who is not ignorant of any thing falling within the compass of humane understanding besides the more sublime gifts and illuminations wherewith he is adorned and who in a right profound Litterature hath yet a more resigned humility will answer for me in the same case and though all these strange forces should fail me have I not sufficient in the protection of the Bishop of Air and Mounsieur Bouthilier who do both of them love me as though I had the honour to be their Brother and who are so sage so judicious and so understanding in all things as it is not probable they would begin to erre by the good opinion they have of me I suppose that hereupon I may venter to go to Court and that with so powerfull assistance there are no enemies I need fear Yet will I once again tell you and I beseech you believe me I would not part hence were I permitted to stay and that it doth not a little trouble me to lose the sight of my paths and allies wherein I walk without being enforced to wear Bootes or have any apprehension of Carroaches From Balzac the 18. of October 1624. LETTER XXX I Am doubtfull to believe you speak in earnest in your Letter
her birth will she not be as well contented as you with the partition which Nature her selfe hath made I cannot conceive with what face she can goe a hunting amongst such violence and tumults and how she can run hallowing all day till shee be out of breath after a kennell of Hounds and a troope of Huntsemen God made her for the Closet and not for the Field and in truth it is a great sin to distend so handsome a mouth and to disfigure so comely a face with blowing a borne To expose such excellent things to all the boughes of the Forrest and to all the injuries of the weather and to endanger such pretious colours with winde and raine with the Sun and dust And yet Madam to see hunting without being a partie to goe in Coach and in Parkes inclosed where a multitude of beasts are kept prisoners and come to dye at Ladies feet such a recreation as this I doe not condemne being only entertained with the eyes and may passe either for a spectacle or a walke and is as farre from agitation as from rest But this serves not her turne she cals these but lazie and sedentarie recreations and takes no pleasure but when it is with hazard of her life But what would be thought Madam if one would come and tell you shee is slaine with a fall by ranke riding or that shee hath met with a wild Boare that was too hard for her In such cases there would not onely be no excuse for her death but it would bee a blot upon her memory for ever and to save her honor there must bee feigned some other accident in her Epitaph As for that other discoursing Lady you complaine of and whom I know she commits not in truth such extravagant faults as this doth yet she hath her faults too and I can no more allow of women to be Doctors than of women to be Cavaliers She should take you for a paterne and make profit of the good example you give You know indeed an infinite number of excellent things but you make no open confession of your knowledge as ssee doth and you shew you have not learned them to keepe a Schoole You speake to her when she preacheth to you and making popular answers to her riddles and giving distinction to her confusion you doe her at least this good office to expound her to her selfe Neither in the tune of your voyce nor in the manner of your expressing is any thing seen in you but that which is naturall and French and although your spirit bee of an extreame high elevation and farre above the ordinarie reach yet you so accomodate it to the capacitie of all that heare you that whilest the meaner sort doe understand you the more able spirits do admire you It is a great matter Madam to have gotten the knowledge of such excellent things but it is a greater matter so to hide them as if they were stollen and to call them as you do by the name of of your secret Truantings Your Canvas your Silk your Needles are seen but your papers are not seen and those women that are taken with men that are not their husbands are not more surprized than you are when you are found to have an Authour in your hand that is not French I know therefore Madam you cannot approve of one so contrarie to your selfe how faire a shew soever you make nor will ever change the plainnesse of your words for her learned gybrish Pedanterie is not sufferable in a Master of Art how should it bee borne withall in a woman And what patience can endure to heare one talke a whole day together Metamorphosis and Philosophie to mingle the Idaeas of Plato and the Praedicables of Porphirie together to make no complyment that hath not in it a dozen Horizons and Hemispheares and at last when she hath no more to say then to raile upon me in Greeke and accuse me of Hyperbole and Caco-zeale These be her devises she will have in two verses at least foure full points she hath a designe to set on foot and bring into use againe the Strophes and Antistrophes she gives Rules both of Epick and Dramatick Poesie and sayth she cannot endure a Comedie that is not within the law of foure and twentie houres and this she is going about to publish through all France If I had a mortall enemie I would desire no greater revenge of him than to wish him such a wife Nothing hath more confirmed me in my desire of solitude than the example of this Ladie and I see plainly that a single life is the best thing in the world seeing it lies in covert and is free from the cumber of this talking Ladie I expect by this bearer the Essences you promised me and am Madam Your c. At Balzac 20. Septemb 1628. Another to her LETTER LI. MAdam I cannot possibly live anie longer without hearing from you but I cannot hear of any of whom to hear it and Lymousins are as rare in these parts as Spaniards since the war was proclaimed I must therfore make use of a messenger whom you have raised to an Embassador to the end he may inform me of your health and your friends My love of you drawes on a curiositie for all that are yours and my minde will not be in quiet till I heare how the Gentlemen your children doe and what good newes you heare from them Particularly I desire to know whether you be yet a Grand-mother in Holland and whether my Lady your daughte-in law have brought you Captaines or Senatours at least Madam they shall be children much bound to their mother seeing besides their birth they shall owe her for their libertie a thing they should not doe to a Fleming of Bruxels I have seene the Cavalier you have so often spoken of and I thinke you judge verie rightlie of him He consists wholly of a Pickedevant and two Mustachoâ—s and therefore utterly to defeat him there needes but three clippes of a paire of scizers It is not possible to bring one to be afraid of him Hee sayth that if he wore a Lions skinne and carried in one hand a Torch and in the other a Clubbe yet in such equipage hee would be more ridiculous than redoubtable Hee beleeves he hath choler enough but beleeves not he hath any heart he reckons him in the number of beasts that are skittish and resty but not that are cruell and furious And when I tell him he hath been often in the field he answers me it hath been then rather to feed than to fight You can if you please returne me a hundred fold for this my untoward short relation and it will be long of you if my man come not back laden with histories which must certainly have been written to you by the last Posts Take pitty upon the ignorance of your neighbours and doe me the honour to beleive I am Madam Your c. At Balzac 15. Aug.
thing that should not last and there is no accident that can menace and shake that friendship whereof vertue is the cause and you the Mediatrix I esteem that of this rare Personage as a treasure and I would be well pleased that he should know by your means that I admire the eloquence of his Degmatical and peaceable Divinity though I do not subscribe unto the Doctrine of his polemical writings I most humbly kisse your hand and remain Sir Your c. Balzac 16. Jan. 1637. To Monsieur De LET. XXXVII SIR Take pitty on a man that hath not the leasure to live that is alwayes busie and alwayes sickly whom a thousand griefs seize upon in his Chamber and a thousand persecutions throng upon from without Monsieur de knowes it well that I am no dissembler and will testifie unto you I assure my self that in the state that J am in I can but admire those letters to the which I should frame an answer I avow unto you Sir that it cost me some pains to decipher them But yet I do not complain of my travel which found most happy success I have discovered infinite rarities under the riddles of your Scribe and I did not mistake the graces though He had begrimmed them all over I send them back to you since it is your request and yet notwithstanding I cease not to detain them my memory is not so unfaithful but it preserves the better part of your fair compositions as well as of your excellent conversation It is certain that this gave me some gusts and appetites which I never had before you came hither I am not good Sir but by your goodness and if I have any degree of holy heat in me it is neither proper nor natural unto me I have it from your communication You are at this day one of those Authors whom I cite still with a grace and an Emphasis I do arm my self with your reasons against the enemies of truth and you are all my French Divinity What a harvest might be reapt think you of devour meditations and spiritual Treatises from lesse seed then are your Discourses and Letters A man might extract from them more sap and juice then from many Quaáragesimall Sermons of Spanish Postillers and were they but a little amplified they might serve for compleat Apologies of Christian Doctrine and solid refutations of unsound Philosophie Your acquaintance then is no small purchase and I owe you more thâ—n vulgar thanks for it But since you desire none other but my edification instead of minting fastidious complements for you I will labor to put your wholsome counsels to practise I will become a good man if I can that you may be celebrated in my works being not contented with words The curing of a disease doth sufficiently proclaim the soveraignty of the remedy and it is a far better way to magnifie your stile by performing actions of vertue which it doth propose as its end then to cry out Euge at every period There is no hopes to go beyond this Remember me if you please in your Sacrifices that is love me effectually after your way since I am after mine and that very sincerely Sir Your c. Balzac 30. Decemb. 1636. To Monsieur Girard Official of the Church of Angoulesme LET. XXXVIII SIR Your favor have exhausted my thanks I cannot chuse but acquaint you that I do repossesse my old pieces again and that your love is still ingenious in obliging those whom you affect I doubt not but that the courtesies that I have received from Monsieur de are the effects of your testimonies of me and I must ascribe all the contentment that I have received thereby to your preparation and induction There is no subject so vile and mean but gains price by your estimation You have found the trick or secret to make objects swell beyond their proportion ad infinitum and to stamp a man Illustrious though of a very abject condition I came to know him by the civilities of which are far different from the brevadoes of Are not these the most tyranical spirits in the world that should say that I could hinder that any Books should be written or published at a hundred leagues distance that is that I should maintain an Agent in all the Printing-houses of France that should prevent the publication of Antiphilarkes These Messieurs that have handled me in such a sort that fire and poyson would seem to an Italian too gentle tortures to revenge their crueltie are at this time offended for sooth that I should be furnished with so much as a Buckler and that I should be offered a Sanctuarie They demand a reason of me why a man whom I never knew should take compassion on Innocence opprest and could not endure the noise and insolence of their false triumphs which I should not do neither dear Friend if I would give vent and libertie to my grief and that nature suffered not in the suppression of so just complaint And yet I must continue to do her violence and deserve the approbation of Monsieur our Prelate I beg from you his good favors and desire you both to believe that I am affectionatelie Sir Your c. Balzac 20. March 1633. To the same LET. XXXIX Sir It is not your will that I sollicite but your Memory For amidst the presie of businesse of the whole Province which you do willinglie take the charge of mine happilie may slip out of your memorie without your fault The importance is to commence it with an opinion that it is feasible and with a resolution to carrie for if reason be urged timorouslie and if a man do not descend streight from generalities to particulars a thousand journies unto the will not be worth one and we should but take much pains to little purpose Monsieur de shall pardon me if I do not finde my selfe either hardlie or strong enough to undertake the work which he hath done me the honor to design me for and for such a taske a more peaceable and happy retreat and a more practis'd and expert quill then mine are requisite I have used my hand and minde to write but toyes and things unnecessarie For the future I purpose not to write any works of supererogation but what the Church prescribes and God doth reckon as meritorious I am extreamlie troubled at my Cousins mischance and the burning of his Study He cannot chuse but be verie sensible of this losse since it was the chiefest part of his wealth and thereby saâ— the Issues of his brain perish before his face without being able to redresse it This must be his comfort that he is young and laborious and that Fortune cannot ravish from him those true Gods which he is Master of The losse of a vessel is not valued if the Pilot be saved and Captains have been seen to triumph after the losse of many Armies Miser nudus Imperator invenit exercitum Our Advocate is