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
two such broken Bables it were better he left individuals and fell to judge of species in general and that he would consider other mens follies without partaking of them It were better to discredit vice by scorn then to give it reputation by invectives and to laugh with success then to put himself in Choler without profit Though there be many sorts of disciplining men and correcting their manners yet I for my part am for this sort and finde nothing so excellent as a Medicine that pleases Many men fear more the bitterness of the potion that is given them then the annoyance of the infirmity that offends them we would fain go to health by a way of pleasure and he should be a much abler man that could purge with Raspices then he that should do it with Rhubarbe Our Gentleman by his leave is none of these for commonly he neither instructs nor delights he neither heals nor flatters their passions that read him he hath neither inward treasure nor outward pomp and yet I can tell you as beggarly and wretched as he is he hath been robbed and ransacked in France He could not save himself from our Theeves and you may see some of his spoils which I present you here My fidling Doctor in his visage various Had twice as many hands as had Briareus There was not any morsel in the dish Which he with eyes and fingers did not fish And so forth You see we live in a Countrey where even Beggars and Rogues cannot pass in safety though they have nothing to lose yet they lose for all that and men pull the hairs even from them that are bald There is no condition so ill but is envied of some no pvoerty so great which leaves not place for injuries Cottages are pillaged as well as Pallaces and though covetousness look more after great gains yet it scorns not small But all this while you must remember that my discourse is allegorical and that I speak of Poets and not of Treasurers I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 25. of Sept. 1630. To my Lord the Mareschall Deffiat LETTER XXXV SIR THough I know your life is full of business and that it hath neither festival nor day of rest yet I am so vain as to fancy to my self that I shall be able to suspend this your continual action and that the recreation I send you shall finde some place amidst your affairs you are not one to be wrought upon you know the true value of things and see in Arts those secrets which none but Artists themselves see There is no thinking therefore to deceive you by a shew of good and by false flashes of reputation no way to gain estimation with you but by lawfull wayes and rather by seeking commendation from ones self than testimony from others This is the cause that I come alwayes directly to your self and never seek to get a favour by canvasing and suit which is not to be gotten but by merit If my book be good it will be a sollicitour with you in my behalf and if it make you pass some hours with any contentment you will let me understand it when you have read it Howsoever I hope you will grant that the Pension which the King gives me is no excess that needs reformation and that none will accuse you of ill husbandry if you please to pay me that which is my due There have been heretofore in the place that you are now in certain wilde unlettered persons who yet made show of valuing humane learnings and to respect those graces in others which were wanting in themselves forcing their humour and sweetning their countenances to win the love of learned men and either out of opinion or out of vanity have revered that which you ought to love out of knowledge and for the interest you have in it I say for the interest because besides the virtues of peace having in you the virtues of war it concerns you not to leave your good atchievements to adventure but to cast your eyes upon such as are able to give your merits a testimony that may be lasting I dare not say that I my self am one of that number but thus much I can assure you most truly that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 20. Octob. 1633. To Mounsieur Granier LETTER XXXVI SIR I have received your Letter of the 27. of the last moneth but it makes mention of a former which never came to my hands and it must needs be that fortune hath robbed me of it for fear I should be too happy and should have two pleasures in Sequence This is an accident which I reckon amongst my misfortunes and I cannot sufficiently complain of this Violatour of the Law of Nations who hath been so cruel as to break our Commerce the very first day of our entring into it and to make me poor without making himself rich I am more troubled for this loss than for all that shall be said or written against me Slander hath a goodly catch of it to be at war with me it shall never make me yield it is an evil is it not a glory for a private man to be handled in such manner as Princes their Officers are And is it not a mark of greatness to be hated of those one doth not know I never sought after the applause of which cannot chuse but have corrupt affections in such sort that did they praise me I should ask what fault I had done Though their number were greater than you make it this would be no great novelty to me who know that truth goes seldom in the throng and hath in all times been the Possession but of a few Even at this day for one Christian there are six Mahometans and there was a time when Ingemuit orbis se Arrianum esse miratus est If God suffer men to be mistaken in matters of so great importance where their salvation is at stake why should I expect he should take care to illuminate them in my cause which no way concerns them and to preserve them from an errour which can do them no hurt Whether I be learned or ignorant whether my eloquence be true or false whether my Pearls be Oriental or but of Venice what is all this to the Common-wealth There is no cause the publick should trouble it self about so light a matter and the fortunes of France depend not upon it Let the Kings subjects believe what they list let them enjoy the liberty of conscience which the Kings Edicts allow them A man must be very tender that can be wounded with words and he must be in a very apt disposition to die that lets himself be killed by Philarchus or Scioppius his Pen. For my self I take not matters so to heart nor am sensible in so high a degree The good opinion of honest mindes is to me a soveraign remedy against all the evils of this nature I oppose a little choise number
Head which is so full of reason and understanding This is that which hinders me from inviting you to come hither where He is ever in the slavery of Ceremonies and Complements and playes the coward with such a contradiction of his spirit that one could not imagine He hath the Soul of a Rebel and the submission of a slave if you may believe him he hath no ambition yet he consents to that of another and dies of a sickness that is not his own See what is to be a sycophant and to be undutifull by obedience But you Sir have raised your mindes above these vulgar considerations and when I think upon the Stoicks Wiseman who onely was free was rich was a King me thinks I see you foretold long ago and that Zeno was but the Figure of Mounsieur Descartes Foelix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas Atque metus omnes inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus Either you are this happy man or he is not to be found in the World and the conquest of truth for which you labour with so great force and industry seems to me a more noble business than all that is done with so great bruit and tumult in Germany and Italy I am not so vain to pretend I should be a companion of your travel herein but I shall at least be a spectator and shall enrich my self with the rellicks of the prey and with the superfluity of your abundance Think not that I make this proposition by chance I speak it in great earnest and if you stay never so little in the place where you are you shall finde me a Hollander as well as your self and my Masters the States shall not have a better Citizen nor one more passionate for liberty than I am Although I love extreamly the air of Italy and the soyl that bears Orenges yet your virtue is able to draw me to the Banks of the frozen Sea and even to the uttermost Border of the North. It is now three years that my imagination goes in quest after you and that I even die with longing to be united to you and never to part from you again and to testifie unto you by a continual subjection that I passionately am Sir Your c. At Paris 25. of April 1631. To Mounsieur de la Motte-Aigron LETTER XXX Sir I Have heard of the happy accomplishment of your marriage and that it hath been one of the great solemnities of Rochell I have celebrated it here in my particular with less pomp indeed and tumult but with as much joy and satisfaction of minde as they that sung the Hymonaeus Though perhaps you would not have it so yet your contentments are mine you have not any passion so proper to your self which is not common with me and play the cruel as long as you will I will have a share in that which is yours even then when you will not affoard to give it me At the worst I will love you still as I have ever done as a creature supreamly excellent though not supreamly just As there are some virtues that are fierce and scornfull so there are some sciences which have attractives amidst their difficulties and which draw us on in thrusting us back You are like these abstract knowledges Your merit sweetens all your rigours and how hard soever the persecution hath been which I have suffered yet I vow unto you I could never finde in my heart to hate the Tyrant I have still so great a care of his reputation that I would not be thought innocent for fear he should be blamed to have done me wrong and I had rather be a Prevaricatour and treacherous to my self than to seem I had cause of complaint against him We ought to condemne the memory of this disorder and to suppress this unfortunate Olympiade We ought to perswade our imagination that the matter is not so indeed but that it is onely dreamt When you shall please to remember your words I shall see your Verses and your friends Sermons In the mean time Sir if you will not have it be a meer liberality I send you something to exercise commutative justice and begin a traffick whereof the Toll is not agreed upon to be taken of right Never was a man so miserably busied as my self I am intricated with an infinite number of petty affairs which as you know are no less cumbersom than the great One thrust of a sword hurts not so much as a hundred pricks of a Pin and the Arabians have a saying It is a better bargain to be devoured of a Lion than to be eaten up of Flies If I had you I should have a Redeemer but your State-business is preferable before my interests and it is better I should want you than come to have you with the curses of the people I am and shall ever be At Balzac 29. July 1634. Sir Your c. To Mounsieur de Granier LETTER XXXI SIR THe day I parted from Paris I dreamt not of taking any journey but a news which I received made me take Horse within an hour after I received it This is that which hindred me from taking my leave and to use such compliments with you as in such cases are accustomed If I did not know you to be an enemy of the Tyranny of Ceremonies and that you as well as my self cut off from friendship all vain pomp and superfluities I should study for long excuses to justifie my journey but in so doing I should offer wrong to a wise man to think he had opinions like the vulgar and that he would not either give or take so good a thing as liberty I enjoy it as I would wish within these three or four dayes and I have received it at the Bank of the River where I left it the last year I banish from my minde all thoughts of the street Saint Jaques and dream not either of my Prince or Common-wealth either of enemies books or of my own I dream to say true continually of you and finde no image in my memory so pleasing as that which presents me the time of our being together I would willingly employ Atlante or Melisse to procure me a more solid contentment and to convey you and your Library hither in a night I cannot forget this dear retreat of your repose for I know that without this you would finde even in Tryvolie a want in your felicity and that without your books our fruits would be but sour and our good cheer but of ill taste unto you These are imaginations Sir with which I flatter my self whilest I stand waiting to return to Paris that I may there go finde out a happiness which cannot come hither to finde out me If in the mean time you please to send me some news whereof you know provincial spirits are extreamly greedy you shall give me means to make a whole Countrey beholding to me and you need but to dictate them to who will
acquired reputation Many of our friends have fallen into the like errours I will not name them fearing to astonish at the first sight all such to whom you shall shew this Letter or least I should publish odious truths It shall suffice I tell you by the way that if to attain perfect Eloquence it sufficed onely to weary our hands with Writing none could therein any way compare with our Practitioners and Pen-clerks Yet is there not any reason why those who perform poor things should draw their weakness to their own advantage or imagine I flatter them A man is as well damned for one single deadly sin as for a thousand without repentance nor is it the strength of their judgement which hinders them from committing many faults but the onely barrenness of their wits which enables them not to write many books I might enlarge my self upon this subject and discover divers secrets unto you the world is not yet acquainted with But I have neither time nor paper left save onely to tell you that I am Sir Your most humble servant BALZAC Another Letter from BALZAC to the same man LETTER IX I Understand some have taxed me for saying in my last Letter unto you the spirits of Angels since Angels being all spirits it seemed unto them to be two inseperable terms But to let such men see how ill grounded their Objection is and I suppose our judgements will herein agree it may please them to remember that we call Angels spirits to distinguish them from bodies being a far different signification from what the word Spirit importeth when we take it for that part of the Soul which understandeth reasoneth and imagineth and which causeth so different effects in the Soul of a fool and that of a discreet person Questionless even among Angels themselves there may be a difference found between the spirits of some and othersome of them to wit in the faculty of Ratiotination and Comprehension Since those of the last order are not illuminated but by means of them of the precedent ranks and so of the rest even to the first which have a far more sublime intelligence then the inferiour Orders which as no man how smally soever seen in the Metaphysicks will doubt of come as far short of the understanding the first Order is indued with as they do of their degree We are therefore to admit of this difference and say that an Angel is doubtless a Spirit to wit he is not a body but withall that an Angel hath moreover a spirit namely this faculty of knowing and conceiving either lesser or more large according to the priviledge of his Order So as if a spirit hath no other signification then a simple and incomposed substance this inequality were not to be found among the Angels being equally simple and far from all composition and mixture When then I say it was a wrong done to Angels to call any other spirits divine save onely theirs I take the word Spirit in its second signification and thereby seperate it from the Angel and distinguish the simple substance and nature Angellical from that faculty of the Soul termed the understanding But that one may not say the spirit of Angels because they are all spirit is a reason very reproveable and whereto there wanteth nothing but verity to make it no untruth for that besides the spirit or understanding affoarding to Angels so eminent a knowledge of divine things they are likewise indued with will causing them to love what they know and with memory dayly adding something to their natural intellect But admitting I should yield to whatsoever these my reprehendors would have and that I limit the word spirit within the bounds of its first signification I should still have the better of it For in truth our ordinary manner of conception cannot possibly represent Angels without bodies yea and the Church it self affoardeth them so fair beatifull and perfect ones that from thence the best Poets ordinarily pick their Comparisons to pourtraite the rarest beauties Besides if in holy writ mention be often made of the spirit of God even before he assumed our corporal substance and in a sence which could not be understood of the third person in Trinity why may not I as justly speak of the spirits of Angels being in comparison of Gods spirit no better then earth and material and which approacheth not by many degrees unto the simplicity and purity of this majesterial cause being as the Mother to all the rest You see here that howsoever it is very dangerous to study by half parts or to understand some small matter more then those who never were at School yet is it out of such men as these that Novelists and superstitious persons are raised yea and all the rest who have reason enough to doubt but not science sufficiently to determine rightly BALZAC To Mounsieur de Bois Robert from BALZAC LETTER X. SIR YOu have anticipated what I intended to say and have not left for me in all Rhetorick either complement or commendations to return you This is to force ingratitude by excess of obligation and to reduce me to the necessity of being indebted unto you after I be dead In truth it were necessary I had the power to promise you felicity and Paradise in requital of the vows and sacrifices you offer unto me and that I were in case to be your advocate instead of being thus put to a stand to answer you It may be you have a minde in such sort to disguise me to my self as I shall not hereafter know who I am but be forced to forget my own name by causing me to imagine I am not the same man I was yesterday Proceed at your pleasure to deceive me in this sort for I am resolved not to contest with you in this kinde to the Worlds end nor to arm my self against an enemy who onely throws Roses at my head I should be very glad all my life would pass in such pleasing dreams and that I might never awake for fear of knowing the truth to my prejudice But for the attaining this happiness it is necessary I do quite contrary to your advice and never quit my Countrey-house where none comes to enter into comparisons or contest with me for the advantage I have over bruit beasts or my Lackeys I agree with you that it is the Court-voice which either approveth or condemneth all and that out of its light things though never so perfect have no appearance But I know not whether it were my best to make that my own case since I fear left my presence there will rather prejudice my reputation your judgement then make good your position Upon the matter if there be any tollerable parts in me they appear so little outwardly as I had need have my breast opened to discover them And in conclusion you will finde a sufficient obligation for me to have you think my Soul is more eloquent then my
the respect due to a person of his quality having so rudely intreated him as he is scarce to be known Yet hath he some kinde of obligation to his sickness in having acquainted him with such pleasures as were not made for those who are over fortunate and which formerly he knew nor At this present he can never be weary in praising the benefits of Liberty nor in admiring the beauty of day and the diversities of Nature so as to hear him speak you would suppose all things to be Novelties unto him and that he is entred into another World or new born again in this Besides they pass their time merrily at N. and of two hundred calling themselves Virgins I verily think there is not one who speaks truth if she have not recovered her Maiden-head It may be their intention is not ill and that in suffering themselves to be courted they have no other design then to raise servants to God But since Godly intentions do not alwayes produce good effects if you suffer things to run on in the same course which they do I greatly apprehend in your regard that Antichrist will shortly take his beginning in your Diocess and lest you by consequence should be the first object of his persecution I suppose you-have a greater interest then any man to oppose this accident which now threatneth us and that to divert a mischief which is to be followed by the Worlds ruin you ought not to spare the fulminations of Rome nor make use onely of half your power There are not any will be averse to this good work save onely our young Gallants But you cannot procure their disaffections upon a better subject then this nor do greater service to the jealious God then to conserve the honour of those creatures he loveth I am Your most humble and most affectionate servant BALZAC The 7. of Octob. 1618. To Mounsieur Pouzet LETTER XI IF you will not return from Court we are resolved to send Deputies on purpose to require you of the King and to beseech him to restore us our good company I know well that in the place where you are there are prisons both for the innocent and most happy and that no man can blame you for your over-long abode there without accusing you for being fortunate But it were likewise small Justice your absence should make this Citie a Village and that Paris should usurp all the affections you owe me As I perfectly love you so do I expect to be reciprocally respected by you nor would you I should herein have any advantage over you though I yield unto you in all other things Neither of us therefore can enjoy solide contentments so long as we are separated and I pretend you do me wrong if you take satisfaction where I am not Take Post therefore with speed to be here quickly grow not old either by the way or at your Inne for by this means I shall get the advantage of that time and you shall gain me four dayes out of the loss of three Moneths I have seen what you willed me concerning λ λ λ But I would you knew I have no resentments against forceless enemies nor have I any minde to put my self into passion when these petty Doctors please Should these fellows speak well of me I would instantly examine my conscience to know whether I were guilty of any fault and as Hippolitus suspected his own innocencie because he was esteemed spotless in his stepdames eye So should not I have any good opinion of my own sufficiencie were I gracious in their sights who can have no other then bad affections Howsoever they cause me once a day to think my self some greater matter then I am when I reflect upon their number and the miracle I work in interessing in one and the same cause supersticious persons Atheists and evil Monks Adieu Yours BALZAC The 14. April 1625. An answer to a Letter sent to BALZAC from a learned Old Lady Madamoiselle de Gournay LETTER XII Madam I Do here at the first tell you I have no other opinion of you then your self gives me and I have at all times had a more strong and sound notion of the inward qualities by the speech then by the Physiogmony But if after the Letter you did me the honour to write unto me it were necessary to seek any forraign proofs the testimonie of those two great personages who have admired your virtue even in the bud and left the pourtrait thereof under their own hands may well serve as an Antidote to secure me from the impressions and the painted shadows of calumny I who know that Asia Africk and a great part of the World besides believe Fables as fundamental points of Religion do not at all wonder if in what concerneth your particular there be some who side not with the truth which is sure to finde enemies in all places where there are men This is an effect of that errour now grown old in popular opinion that it is fit an honest woman be ignorant of many things and that to maintain her reputation it is not requisite all the World commend her but that she be unknown to all men Nay I say further The vulgar doth ordinarily cast an injurious eye and with some tax of extravagancie upon great and Heroical qualities if they appear in that sex to which they conceive it ought not to appertain Now though to speak generally and to reflect rightly upon the order of earthly things and the grounds of policie I must confess I should lean to the first of these opinions Yet will I be well advised how I think that Nature hath not so much liberty left her as to pass upon occasion the limits she ordinarily alloweth her self or sometimes to exceed her bounds without blame to the end to produce certain things far surpassing the rest in perfection It is no good Argument to averre that because you are adorned with the virtues of our sex you therefore have not reserved those of your own or that it is a sin for a woman to understand the Language which heretofore the Vestals made use of I will therefore leave these calumnious persons who desire to bereave Lillies of their beauty and Christal of its clearness to return to the Letter I have received from you where without flattery I will affirm that this man who hath been described unto you for so vain-glorious a person who despiseth times past who mocketh the modern and prejudicateth the future hath found out divers things in your works well pleasing unto him so as if my approbation be at this present of any weight with you you may for your own advantage add this Encomion to that of Lipsius and Montagnio and boldly affirm you have this advantage over Kings and Emperours that the tastes of two different ages have agreed in your favour Since you were first commended the face of Christendom hath changed ten times Neither our manner attire
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
first hour of leasure and the first place I finde of commerce to tender you the complement I owe you I see well that your word is not subject to the accidents of the World and that I have chosen a plot which is out of the reach of Fortune Your affection to me is not of this brittle matter that friendships at Court be made of it is of a more excellent stuff and such as neither time can wear out nor my negligence weaken I need not doubt of preserving a good that you keep for me your faithfulness is more than my negligence and I am more assured of your honesty than of my own notwithstanding what certainty soever I have of your love it is no double to me to have new assurances Men that are well enough perswaded yet will go to a Sermon and take a pleasure to hear that they know already For my self I can never be weary of reading a thing that gives me satisfaction and though it were as feigned as it is true yet you write it with so good a grace that it would be a pleasure to be so deceived yet it was fit you should have stayed there and not cause me to fall from joy into presumption How can you look my spirit should contain it self within its bounds knowing that I am talked of at Rome and that my name is sometimes pronounced by the most eloquent mouth of Italy you should have concealed the express charge you had from M. the Cardinal of Bentivoglio to send me his History or at least for a temper to my vanity you should have told me at the same time that I must not impure a favour to my own sufficiency for which I am beholding to your good offices I may believe Sir that he had never had this thought of me if you had not stirred it up in him by some favourable mention you made of my person and I know he puts so great a trust in you that after you have once made a commendation he would make a conscience to use his own judgement in examining my worth From what ground soever my happiness comes I am bound to acknowledge the visible cause and to that I destinate my first good dayes journey that God shall send me I will not fail to give thanks to M. the Cardinal and to give him an account of my reading that he may see I know as well how to receive as he to give In the mean time I offer him a present far unworthy of the magnificence of his and which will shew him how with his hook of Gold he hath fished but brass such as it is you shall do me a favour to present it to him and to let me hold the possession I have in your love whose I am all my life Sir Your c. At Balzac 10. of May 1634. To Mounsieur de Nesmond Controller of the Prince of Conde's House LETTER XVII SIR MY dear Cosin your Letter hath told me no news it hath onely confirmed me in my opinion and testified that you are alwayes good and alwayes do me the honour to love me You have qualities of greater luster than this but you have none of greater use and they that could live without your wisdom yet cannot bear the miss of your goodness My sister and I continue to implore it in a business which is already set on foot by your commendation and which attends a full accomplishment by your second endeavour It is neither without example nor without reason it needs but such an undertaker as your self and you may easily save it from rigorous justice if you will but lend a little aid to its equity Of your will I make no doubt it is the continual agitation of the Court that makes me fear which drives men one way and their affairs another But if the Heavens help us not we are not like in haste to see it in any state of consistence it will be alwayes floting like the Island of Greece untill a great birth shall make it stay and that God make sure the Kings victories by the Queens fruitfulness In the mean time it is not fit you should stay at home but that you should make one in all voyages but you must not be of these travellours that get many hoasts and few friends You are in a state of obliging and making men beholding to you by doing alwayes good and now for fear you should want matter to work upon I offer you matter here to set you a work Be pleased Sir my dear Cosin that I intreat you to deliver to the Letter I writ unto him and when you deliver it to testifie withall unto him that having the honour to be to you as I am the things that touch me must needs concern you Heretofore I have held good place in his confidence and to use the terms of a man you hate not Vetus mihi cum eo confuetudo cum privatus erat Amici vocabamur Even lately at Paris he offered me courtesies that might have contented a prouder mans vanity than mine and I received from him more good words than was possible for me to return him But these illustrious friendships require continual cares and an assiduity without cessation I know they are subject to a thousand inconveniences and that they grow cold if they be not stirred up and kindled continually Three words of your mouth spoken with a due accent may save me the solliciting of three moneths and my requests ought not to seem uncivil seeing I desire nothing but that which hath done me the honour to promise me and thinks no otherwise but that I have received it To this purpose I send you a short instruction for and you may be pleased to be a means that he cast his eyes upon it at such time as the business he hath about your person shall permit him I would not sollicite you so boldly nor press upon you so burdensome a familiarity if you had not your self made the overture first It is a persecution you have drawn upon your self by the liberal offers you made me in your Letter and I conceive you did speak as you mean as I do in protesting that I honour you with my Soul and am Sir My dear Cosin Your c. From Balzac 20. Octob. 1632. To Mounsieur de Borstell LETTER XVIII SIR I Do not know my self in your Letters you are like those Painters that care not for making a face like so they make it fair Certainly you thought upon some honester man than my self when you took the pains to write unto me and your Idea went beyond your subject or else you meant to excite me to virtue by a new subtility and the praises you give me are but disguised exhortations They could nor be Sir either more fine or more delicate and I do not think that your pretended Barbarism comes any thing behinde the Grecian eloquence But tell me true Is it not as artificial as Brutus his
the good of your affairs I assure my self your Majesty will be so impartial as to be pleased to reflect upon the necessity of my particular occasions and that suffering me to retire my self to my own house you will at least permit me to enjoy a favour usually inflicted on others as a punishment I doubt not Sir but you will condiscend to the desire I have to undertake this voyage and I presume you will be pleased to consider that I being ingaged in two hundred thousand Crowns for your service after the sight of your royal bounty in all sorts of hands it were small reason I receiving nothing should still in this place stand as a meer cypher for the honour of France or that I ruine my self with a rich shew onely to continue strangers in the opinion they have of the magnificent greatness of your Crown Yet Sir having never believed I could sustain any great detriment by the loss of a thing I so slightly esteem as I do worldly substance I intend not in this place to complain of my poverty But to speak truth since all my words and actions are by many mis-interpreted and that having affoarded my dutifull attendance to the service of three great Kings I yet finde much difficulty to defend my so long a loyalty against Calumny I am with much sorrow constrained to say that if I stood firm in my duty even when disobedience was crowned with rewards and have maintained your Authority when by some it was abused by others contemned It is no small injury to me to imagine I will now begin to fail in my loyalty at this age wherein I am or suffer my self to be reproached by posterity whereto I study to annex the last actions of my life But I see well Sir it is long since the hatred of dishonest French-men hath been fatal unto me and that it hath been born with me inseparably From the first hour I appeared in the World there was never either peace or truce unviolated to my prejudice and as though I were excepted out of all treaties though War be ended yet that made against me endureth At this present Sir it sufficeth not I perform my charge without omitting or forgetting any thing due to your service or that the innocencie of my actions be generally acknowledged but I am driven to those streights as to be forced to give account of my very thoughts there being not any my self excepted from whom satisfaction is required for the fault he hath not as yet committed If we lived in a Countrey where virtue were avoided as not concurrent with the times or adverse to the State and where a great reputation were more dangerous then an inglorious one I should not need to make much search for the cause of my misfortunes but I well know the conduct you use hath more honourable and honest grounds and that your Majesty hath no pretention to reign with more assurance then the King your Father did before you It is from him Sir you may learn how you are to distinguish wounded innocencie from wicked impudencie and to know it is ordinary to draw honest men into suspicion thereby to make them unserviceable In following his example you shall finde out the truth though never so closely hidden or what shadow soever they cast over the same to disguise it And truely Sir since this great Prince in bestowing your Origin upon you hath together therewith conferred his most Royal inclinations I will never believe that to follow a stranger passion you will lose those perfections so proper and natural unto you or that for me alone your Majesty hath any other spirit then for the rest of men Truely if when you were not yet at your own liberty such hath been the natural goodness of your gracious disposition as you have at all times resisted violent counsels nor have ever permitted your Authority should be imployed to the ruine of your subjects there is small appearance that having now by publick and solemne act obliged your self to reign alone and your bounty finding not any obstacle to hinder the same you would disturb the old age of one of your best servants or deny to his gray hairs that rest nature requires at your hands I ought to hope at least for this recompence for my long and faithfull services since your Majestie may bestow it without incommodateing your affairs and besides I having never expected other reward of worthy actions then the onely contentment to have performed them I shall hold my self sufficiently happy to receive from my conscience the testimonies which whilest I live it will affoard me that I have been really am and ever will to the end remain Sir Your most humble most obedient and most faithfull subject and servant Espernon From Mets 7. of Jan. 1619. Another Letter to the French King from the Duke of Espernon penned by the same BALZAC LETTER XIX SIR HAving long attended at Mets the occasions not to be unusefully there and not finding any thing either in the conduct of my present life or in the memorie of my fore-passed time which might justly cast me into a worse condition then the rest of your subjects I have presumed that the Laws of this Kingdom and my Births prerogative might permit me to make use of publick liberty and to partake of that peace you have purchased to the rest of your subjects Nevertheless Sir your Majesties will doth so regulate mine that I had not removed had not the cause of my stay there ceased and the difficulties of the Bohemian War been utterly removed But haveing had perfect intelligence by the relations the Duke of Lorain hath received from those parts that the affairs there begin to be well setled the overture thereof beginning with the suspension of War on both sides I could not imagine the good of your service did any way oblige me to remain longer in a place out of all danger in time of peace and which will make good use of the Empires weakness if the War continue considering likewise that if there be any part of your State less sound then the rest and where your Authority had need with more then ordinary care to be conserved it is questionless in the Province whither I am going which bordering upon such neighbours as all honest men may justly suspect and being a people composed of divers parts have at all times been either troubled or threatned with changes yea at this present Sir the most common opinion is that the assembly now holden at Rochel is no way pleasing unto you and that if you have been drawn to give any asscent thereto it hath rather been a connivency to the necessity of time then conformable to your will Whereupon Sir if your Majesty please to reflect upon the miseries of your State where out at least you have drawn this advantage that even in the very spring of your age you have attained great experience You shall plainly see
much ado to forbear dying and to support my self upon my weakest part Yet my meaning is not to have thee return hither for were it possible for me I had much rather come to thee and continually to gaze on that face whereof I have drawn so many fair poutraicts It is true there are few men living whose love we should prefer before liberty But assure thy self thy Master is of those be not therefore more proud then Henry the third who first obeyed him For my part though I be naturally refractory yet have I ever had a special inclination to his service yea when all things went cross with him and that his best friends forsook him I took pleasure in perishing on purpose to affoard him some consolation in his calamities Many desire a dependency on him out of their particular ends but me thinks we should have more noble designs since his onely virtue deserveth to be followed and to cause a press wheresoever it passeth In truth the service we yield to so great a person ought to hold the rank of the chief recompences we are to expect yet after this there followeth another seldom failing any of good parts yea or those who have but patience If thou heest of the one or other sort of such men remember this maxime and do not as those honest persons who think they do good service to the State when they betray their Masters Beasts themselves are capeable of acknowledgement and that Italian had some small shew of reason who called those Devils who cured Agues good Angels Yet truely it is no less than to be over mannerly to go so far nor would I thank Gods enemies for those gracious favours I indeed receive from him onely But as touching the rest of worldly affairs there is no question but we are to reflect upon the nearest occasions Fortune affoardeth us and those who seek after more remote means shall in conclusion finde from one degree to another that it is to Hugh Capete to whom they are obliged I was affraid lest I should have left my fingers upon this paper and have disenabled my self for ever writing more Letters after this had I any longer continued my discourse I tell thee no lie Hydasp this is the third Winter we have had this year and the greatest irregularity I ever observed in nature For Gods love inquire the cause of Father Joseph and intreat him from me if your self be not acquainted with him that he would be pleased to imploy the credit he hath in Heaven to cause the return of warmer weather BALZAC The 25. of Jan. 1624. To the Seigneur de la Roche from BALZAC LETTER V. SIR I Cannot conceive your meaning when you speak of my friendship as of a favour or predestination or in being so prodigal of your complements and commendations There was sufficient in the Letter you lately sent to bereave me of speech and to make me flie to the Indies were I forced to frame you a punctual answer But since you are usually victorious be pleased I beseech you to permit your courtesie to work the same effects as doth your courage and suffer me to yield unto you in this occasion as I would do in those of Rochel or Mountuban I onely intreat you hence forward to love me with less ostentation and luster then you have done hitherto and since it is not in my power to hinder you from having me in estimation let me at the least intreat you to carry the matter so as though you had committed some sin that is without calling witness or confirming the fact otherwise doubtless the World will suppose your affection to be injurious to your judgement and I much fear lest I should be blamed for blinding you and for being more wicked then the late War which was contented onely to make divers of our friends blinkards Truely that so compleat a person whose acquaintance you commend unto me not finding me sutable to the pourtraict you shewed him may well say you are not onely satisfied in being singly seduced but seek to raise Heresies out of your errours and a contagion out of your crazy constitution This being so I see not how I can better make good either mine own reputation or your report then by voluntarily banishing my self from the place where you are and not by my presence to overthrow all the Honour you have hitherto acquired for me If therefore you will not appear a deceiver nor declare your self my adversary leave me I pray you to my retiredness where I study onely to maintain health and take no other pains then to procure my own repose nor have any conference but with my self Your most humble servant BALZAC The 10. of April 1623. To Mounsieur de Bois Robert from BALZAC LETTER VI. SInce the dead never return but they affright us I was perswaded I should do you no small pleasure nor a little oblige you in forbearing to appear so much as in Paper before you suffering you purely to enjoy your accustomed pleasures without the mixture of any thing that might be distastefull unto you But since at this present you come to disturb the quiet of Church-yards and to finde out a man in affecting whose memory you might well be satisfied I am forced to tell you that the party you so highly esteem is wholy remaining beyond the Alps and how this is onely his Ghost lately returned into France I break all the Looking-glasses I meet with I blunder the water of all Rivers I cross I avoid the sight of all Painters in any place where I come lest they shew me the pattern of my pale visage Yet if in the crazy case wherein I am I were any way capeable of consolation I beseech you to be assured I should take it as proceeding from the good success of your affairs nor would I desire of my disease any long respite then what were requisite to rejoyce with you But truely it is an enemy who knows not how to admit of conditions of peace or truce and I am so happy as not to be suffered to quit my pains to resume them The meat I here eat for sustenance is to me as pleasing as poyson I endure life out of pennance whereas you in the place where you live spend the remainder of the Golden age refusing nothing to your sences you lawfully may allow them Though the Queens Court be so chaste as it were easier to drink drunk of a fountain then to take any dishonest pleasures there and that to gain admittance it is requisite to be first purified at the Porters lodge yet are you allowed even there to have pleasing temptations and going elsewhere to seek out more solide contentments But as for me in the case I am I make no difference at all between lovely creatures and well limmed pictures and the misery I endure having bereaved me of action my wretched virtue is as much constrained as the sobriety of the poor is
necessary In all this I add not one word to the bare truth and if the Count of Pountgibaut had his pardon to let you know how it is with me he would tell you that I am more withered then the last years Roses and how all the Ingeniers in an Army were no more then sufficient to remove me But my discourse will be more pleasing if I speak of that head which deserveth to fill a Diadem then in continuing this wretched complaint When at the first I saw concurrent in him so much valour and so great beauty I neither took him for man nor woman but after having recollected my self I supposed him to be the Amazonian Queen and doubtless in the Worlds infancy it was to such faces onely whereto all people yielded willing obedience none quitting their service every mans duty being conformable to his inclination so as the onely means then to be rebellious was to be blinde When this young Lord came to Rome at his return from te battail of Prague I can well witness the jealousie he aâ— once affoarded both to men and their wives and of the great Prognosticks all such gave of him who presumed to have any experience in future occurrents either by the aspect of Stars or some more sublime understanding besides to consider how at twenty years of age there is scarce any corner of the known World he hath not traced to encounter honourable actions nor any sort of combate wherein for the most part he hath not been Conquerour that he hath born Arms against Turks and Infidels that he hath appeared both in battails and sieges of Cities that he hath given life to some enemies and taken it from others This to speak truth is a thing God suffereth as rarely to be seen as deluges and other great effects of his power or justice in a long process of time the meerest Cowards may become Masters were it by no other means but that by seeing all men die before them they may inherit the whole World Divers likewise have performed great exploits who have begun their actions either with gross errours of mean adventures But as there are very few Rivers navigable even from their first fountains nor Countries where the Sun sendeth forth his full heat from the very day-spring so are such men doubtless very rare and singular who have not any need either of growth or years nor are subject either to the order of times or rules of nature But I have no purpose to fold up a book in a Letter for though my grief do sometimes permit me to spend some small time upon pleasing subjects yet will it not allow me to make thereon any long stay I must therefore leave off during my short good day lest I fall sick again in your presence and once more clogg you with my complaints instead of thanking you for your kinde remembrance and assuring you of the great desire I have to remain so long as I live Your most humble servant BALZAC The 4. August 1615. A Letter from Balzac to Mounsieur de Bois Robert LETTER VII THough I receive no news from you and howbeit those from Paris are generally naught yet am I so confident of your excellent constitution as I cannot imagine it can be endamaged by that contagious aire Surely if it be not in such sort infected that birds fall down dead and that the Springs be not corrupted you have small cause to fear and I have heretofore seen you of so perfect a composition and so strong a substance that an ordinary infection I suppose is unable to seize upon you And rather than I will have any apprehension of your being carried away with the current of those who die of this great mortality I shall sooner believe that God reserveth you to make the worlds Epitaph and those last Songs appointed for the Catastrophe of all humane joys Yet ere it comes to this point remember your promise I pray you and send me something to rid me of the Megreme I have taken in reading the sotteries of these times I cannot counterfeit the matter but must confess I taste Verses as I do Mellons so as if these two sorts of Fruits have not a relish near approaching to perfection I know not how to commend them though on the Kings Table or in Homers works Whatsoever you do yet at the least permit nothing to your spirit which may wound your reputation and above all let me intreat you not to be the man who may justly be taxed of having violated the chastity of our language or for instructing the French in forreign vices utterly unknown to their Predecessours Poetry which God hath sometimes made choice of for the uttering of Oracles and to unfold his secrets to mankinde ought at the least to be imployed in honest uses Nor is it a less offence to make use thereof in vicious matters than to violate a Virgin This I speak upon the subject of our friend whose end I fear will hardly be natural if he die not the sooner of his fourth Pox. This is the second time he hath issued out of Paris by a breach having escaped as furious a flame as that of Troy For my part I cannot conceive what should be his design For to war against Heaven besides that he shall be but slackly accompanied in such an expedition nor hath a hundred hands as it is said of Gyants he ought to understand it was an action they could never atchieve and how in Cicilia there are Mountains yet smoaking with their Massacre We come not into this World to prescribe Laws but to submit our selves to those we finde and to content our selves with the wisdom of our fore-fathers as with their Land and Sun And truely since in matters indifferent novelties are ever reprehensible and that our Kings quit not their Lillies to quarter Tulipans in their arms by how much greater right are we obliged to conserve the ancient and fundamental points of religion which are by so much the more pure in that by their antiquity they approach nearer to the Origine of things and for that between them and the beginning of all good there is the less time subject to corruption To speak plainly there is small appearance that truth hath from the beginning of the World attended this man on purpose to discover it self unto him in a Brothell or Tavern and to be sent forth of a mouth which comes short in sobriety to that of a Suisse I intend not to intermeddle with the Courts of Parliament nor to prevent their decrees by mine opinion And to think to make this man more culpable then he is were as much as to cast Ink on an Ethiopians face I owe so much to the memory of our fore-past acquaintance as I rather pitty him as a diseased person then pursue him as an enemy I confess he hath parts in him not absolutely ill nor do I deny I have much pleased my self with his freedom of speech
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
who have assisted me in deceiving him But in what sort soever you have procured me these favours be it that therein you have either committed theft or made an acquisition I am still right happie to be beloved by a man who hath the reputation not to affect ill things and to please whom it is as much as to be reckoned in the number of honest men The day before I parted from Court I had the leasure to observe him at Mounsieur the Marshal of Schambergs house but I assure you I could spy nothing of slender consideration either in his words or aspect and though I have alwayes used to be diffident of my first opinion nor ever to judge without long deliberation I have notwithstanding herein sinned against my own rules and was not ashamed to say that a wit of twenty years had amazed mine But the Sermon bell rings which calls and forceably draws me from you my contentment therefore must give place to my dutie which commands me to make an end after I have required news from you concerning a Woman to whom I am extraordinarily and particularly obliged of a Woman I say who is more worth then all our books and in whose conversation there is sufficient to make one an honest man without either the help of Greeks or Romans How old a Courtier soever you are you understand not French if you understand not Madame de Deftoges On Christmas day 1625. To the same LETTER XXIII I Hope very shortly to follow these few lines and to come to court you with as much assiduity and subjection as though you were to be the founder of my fortunes I have no other business at Paris but this though I frame many pretexts for that voyage but I swear seriously you are the onely cause My melancholy is of late become so black and my spirits are so beclouded as I must of necessitie see you to dissipate them It is to small purpose to speak well of me in the place where you are they do me no good though this is as much as to cast incense upon a dead body and to strow flowers upon his grave but this is no reviving of him I no longer receive any comfort in the news you send me and I am well assured my misfortune is constant what alteration soever happen in the World it remaineth then that I seek for my consolation in your presence and power forth all my complaints into your bosom this I will do at the first sight of the Sun-beams beseeching you to believe that as in the middest of felicity I should have need of you to make me happy so also having such a friend as your self I shall never esteem my self absolutely miserable BALZAC The 20. of November 1625. BALZAC his Letter to Hidasp LETTER XXIV I Do far more esteem the Carthusians silence then the Eloquence of such Writers and am perswaded excepting in Church service and for the necessity of Commerce the Pope and the King should do well to forbid them Latin and French whereof they seek to make two barbarous languages I know well that French spirits are sworn Enemies to all sorts of bondage and that twelve hundred years of Monarchy hath not been of power to make them lose their liberty it being as natural to them as life it self Whatsoever ugly face they frame to the Inquisition and how full of Tygers and Serpents soever they paint the same yet do I finde it right necessary in this Kingdom For besides that it would cause as in Spain and Italy even the wicked in some sort to resemble the upright and vice not at all to offend the publick eye it would besides hinder Fools from filling the world with their bastardly books and the faults of School masters from being as frequent as those are of Magistrates and Generals of Armies Truely it is a shame there are Laws against those who counterfeit Coins and falsifie Mercandizes yet that such are freely permitted who corrupt Philosophy and Eloquence and who violate those things the Vulgar ought no more to meddle with then with State government or Religious Mysteries The late great plague was of small consideration in comparison of this which checks all the World and surely if speedy order be not taken the multiplicity of our Authors will make a Library as big as Paris wherein there shall scarcely be found one good word or reasonable conceit These be the fruits arising out of inordinate idleness and the third scourge caused by Peace sent to afflict this poor Realm after Duels and Law-suits There are hardly any to be found who are contented to keep their faults and follies to themselves or to sin in secret but are also doting upon their own follies as they do desire to engrave them in Marble and Brass thereby to eternize their memory and to make them past retracting Now to return to the party of whom you particularly required my opinion and who indeed is the first subject of this Letter I must ingeniously confess unto you that next to Beer and Phisick I never found any thing so distastefull as his works he wanteth almost throughout even natural Logick yea that part thereof which proveth men to be reasonable creatures In three words he speaks four bad ones and as he alwayes strayeth from the subject whereof he treateth so doth he ordinarily talk in an unknown language though he intend to speak French Besides Ice it self is not more cold then his conceits and when he desires to be facetious as at every turn he fain would he had need to be in fee with his Reader to make him laugh as at Funerals in Paris weepers are usually hired for money There is no question but truth were of far more force and disarmed then it can be with the assistance this simple fellow would strive to affoard her Now supposing such men were ingaged in the right without any treacherous design yet is it as much as to abandon Gods cause to suffer it to be supported by so weak and unworthy Pens The Renegadoes have not so much wronged Christianity as those who have not valiantly defended themselves against the Turks such who through defect of conduct skill though they wanted neither zeal nor affection suffer themselves to be surprized by the same advantages they otherwise might have had over their enemies Truely the Empire of the wicked doth much more maintain it self by our pusillanimity then by its own power or forces nor doth any thing cause virtue to be so badly followed as doth the weak and unskilfull teaching and explanation thereof It were therefore requisite some wise man who had been in this Countrey where there is continual debate and where there is never either peace or truce called the Colledge of Sarbon and who besides had the art to make good things gratefull could bring matters to attonement by a sweet hand should come to cleanse the Court from those opinions lately introduced and cure Souls
instead of wounding them with injuries It was that great Cardinal who triumphed over all humane spirits and whose memory shall ever be sacred so long as there remain any Altars or that oblation is offered on earth It was I say the Cardinal of Perron who was able to shew Epicurus himself something more sublime and transcendent then this life and cause his fleshly Soul to be capeable of the greatest secrets of Christian Religion Though this man had a dignity equal in height to the greatest Conquerors and Monarchs Yet had he in what concerned Religion an heart as humble as that of decreped men and Infants How often hath he with those two different qualities imposed silence upon all Philosophy and spoken of Divine matters with as great perspicuity as though he had already been in Heaven or had seen the same Devine verity wholy discovered whereof here on earth we have onely a confused understanding and imperfect knowledge To tell you in plain terms but for the works of this Devine person which I as highly esteem as the victories of the late King his Master and wherein I desire alwayes to leave mine eyes when I am necessitated to give over reading I had been much troubled to retire my self from the tracing the book you sent me since any mischief doth so easily catch hold of me when I come near it as I can hardly look upon a begger without taking the itch and my imagination is so tender and delicate as it is sensible and afflicted at the sight of any base object yet thanks be to God and the Antidote I continually take I am the better armed against the conspiracie you intended against me and have yet life in me after having been under a fools hands longer then I desired But by what I can gather he is notwithstanding in good repute in the place where you are and likely enough to finde store of such as will follow him in that he is head of an evil partie I can hereunto answer you nothing save onely that between this place and the Pyrenean Mountains good wits do sometimes stray from common opinion as from a thing too vulgar and do often take counterfeit virtues yea even those who have not any resemblance to the right for perfect verities But when I consider how there is scarce any kinde of beast which hath not heretofore been adored among Idolaters nor any disease incident either to the body or minde of man whereunto Antiquitie hath not erected Temples I do not at all marvel why divers men do sometimes esteem of those who are no way deserving or why simple people should hold Sots in high reputation since they have addressed incense to Apes and Crocadiles The thing I most vex at herein is that both your self and I are in some sort obliged to the Author of the book you sent me and that I have received the beginnings of my studies and first tincture of Learning from the last and least estimable of all men For my part I protest before all the World I am not for all that guilty either of the follies he will fall into or of any such as he hath formerly committed and that having had much ado to purifie my understanding from the ordures of the Colledge and to quit my self from perverse studies I have now no other pretention but to follow such as can no way be reproachable unto me Howsoever I should not reject Chastity though my Nurse had died of the Pox and it may sometimes happen that a bungling Mason may lay some few stones in the building of the Loover or at the Queen-mothers Pallace LETTER XXV THe Letter newly delivered unto me from you is but three moneths and an half old it is an age wherein men are yet young yet some Popes have not reigned so long and in the state wherein the Churches affairs have often stood You might have written unto me at the beginning of one Papacy and I had received yours at the end of another howsoever I can no way better imploy my patience then in attending my good fortune and as it was the use to be invited a year before-hand to the Sybarites Feasts so is it fitting you make me long attend the most perfect content I enjoy in this World I doubt not but T. T. seeketh all occasions to do me ill offices and that my absence affoardeth him much advantage to wrong me but on the other side I cannot think men will more readily believe mine enemies words then mine own actions or that it is sufficient onely to slander an honest man to make him presently wicked It is true what he saith that I am not very usefull for Aâ—amanta's service I will at all times readily yield that quality to his Coach-horses and to the Mules that carrie his Coffers Yet am I too well acquainted with the Generositie of that Signiour to think he doth more esteem the bodie then the Soul or to suppose that a Farmer should be of higher consideration with him then a man of worth What confession of Faith soever R. makes I will not imagine he can ever be really altered I had rather both for mine own contentment and his honour belive it is onely a voyage he hath made into the Adversaries Countrey to the end to bring us some news and to give us account of what passeth at Charenton Surely I suppose I should not wrong him so much in holding him for a Spie among Enemies as to call him a forsaker of his side and a Fugitive from that Church whereto he hath at least this obligation if he will confess no other that it is she who made him a Christian You may do me a courtesie to make me acquainted with the cause moving him to forsake us and to go from those Maxims he hath so often preached unto me That a wise man dies in the Religion of his Mother That he never alters his opinion That he never repents himself of his sorepassed life therein That all Novelties are to him suspicious It is long since I knew that no mans cause can be bad in the hands of Mounsieur d' Andilly and that he betters all the affects he interessed himself in my protection the 1. day he saw my works so as it is not any more my self whom he commends but his own judgement which he is bound to defend Yet will I not desist from being much obliged unto him For I supposing one affoards me a favour when at any time he doth me Justice you may well think I have right particular and most tender sensibilities for those courtesies I receive but they are in special regard with me when they come from a person of so high estimation in my thoughts as he is and of whom I should still have much to say after I had related how amidst the corruption of this age and in the authority Vice therein hath gained he hath notwithstanding the fortitude to continue an upright man and blusheth
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
a happy man to be of that number and you may believe me that I am not troubled about it seeing there is good hope I may have a benefit by it my self and that your prayers may draw me after you I doubt not but they are of great power and efficacy and doubt as little that I am my self of the number of those you hold dear unto you but as one that hath more need then any other I conjure you to double them unto me who am in heart and Soul Sir My dear Cosin Your c. From Balzac 4. of May 1633. To Mounsieur d'Andilly Counsellour of the King in his Counsels LETTER XXXII Sir I Perceive that Mounsieur the great Master is a great extender of expositions and hath tied you to explain your self in a matter whereof I never doubted Herein he hath exceeded his Commission and done more than he had in charge to do I seek no new assurance of your friendship this were to shew a distrust in the old whereas the foundation already laid is such that makes me forbear even ordinary duties for fear I should make shew to need them and as if I would hold by any other strength then your own inclination Care and diligence and assiduity are not alwayes the true marks of sincere affections which I speak as well in your behalf as my own Truth walks now adayes with a less train men use not to make open profession of it but rather to confess it as a sin her enemies are strong and open her adherents weak and secret yet Sir if she were in more disgrace and were driven out of France by Proclamation I should believe you would be her receiver and to finde her out I should go directly to Pompone I therefore never doubted of your love this were to shew a distrust of your word past to me I marvelled that knew nothing of it and that you let him take possession of his government without recommending unto him your friends there To satisfie my self in this point I said in my minde that certainly this proceeded from the great opinion you had of his justice and that conceiving there would not be with him any place for grace or favour you would not do me a superfluous office This is the interpretation I made of an omission which in appearance seemed to accuse you and this is the conjecture I made of your silence before I came to know the cause Now I see I was in the wrong to imagine you had such subtil considerations or that you were restrained by such a cowardly wisedom which dares not assure the good to be good least such assuring should corrupt it For my part I renounce a prudence that is so dastardly and scrupulous that fears to venture a word for a virtuous friend because this friend is a man and may perhaps lose his virtue You do much better than so and I am glad to finde you not so jealous of the glory of your judgement but that you can be contented to be slighted and scorned when it is for the benefit of a friend you love let us leave flegm and coldness to old Senatours and never make question whether we ought to call them infirmities of age or fruits of reason There are good qualities for enabling men to judge of criminal causes but are nothing worth for making men fit to live in society and he of whom it was said that all he desired he desired extreamly seems to me a much honester man than those that desire so coldly and are so indifferent in their desires If you were not one of these violent reasonable men and had not some of this good fire in your temper I should not have your approbation so good cheap That which now galls you would not at all touch you and things which now descend to the bottom of your Soul would pass away lightly before your eyes I hear came yesterday a man to see me who is not so sensible of the pleasures of the minde and took great pitty of me and my Papers he told me freely that of all knowledges which require study he made reckoning of none but such onely as are necessary for life and that he more valued the stile of the Chancery than that of Cicero he more esteemed the penning of a Chancery Bill than the best penned Oration that ever Cicero writ I thought this at first a strange complement but thinking well of it I thought it better to seem to be of his opinion then undertake to cure a man uncureable I therefore answered him that the Patriarch Calarigitone so famous for the peace of Vervins was in a manner of his minde who being returned from his Embassage and asked what rare and admirable things he had seen at Paris made mention of none but their Cooks shops saying to every body as it were with exclamation Veramente quelle rostisseries sono Cosa stupenda as much as to say that there are Barbarians elsewhere then at Fez and Morocco One half of the World doth not so much as excuse that which you praise our merchandise is cried down long since and to bring it into credit again and put it off there had need return into the World some new Augustus and Antoninus saith that whilest he waits for the resurrection of these good Princes he is resolved to rest himself and not to publish his Verses till they shall be worth a Pistole a piece I fear it will be long ere we shall see this Edition come forth for my self who make no such reckoning of my Prose I have no purpose to make merchandise of it yet desire I not neither to tire my hands with writing continually to no profit I mean to make hereafter no other use of my Pen then to require my friends to let me hear of their healths and to assure you Sir that I am no mans more Than your c. At Balzac 12. June 1633. To Mounsieur Conrart LETTER XXXIII Sir I Had a great longing to see and you have done me a special kindeness to send it me over Yet I must tell you that your sending it gets him a greater respect with me then his own deserving and if you appoint me not to make some reckoning of him all that I shall do for his own sake will be but to bear with him A man had need be of sanguine complexion and in a merry vein before that should be moved to laugh at his poor jests Melancholick men are too hard to be stirr'd that which goes to the Centre of other mens hearts stayes without doors in theirs at least it toucheth but very weakly the outside and oftentimes I am so sadly disposed and in so sullen an humour that if a jeaster be not excellent I cannot think him tolerable nor indure to hear him It is certain the Italians are excellent in the art of jesting and I could mark you out a passage in Boccace that would have made and all his predecessours
of your book I have not yet discovered the bottom onely the bark I must tell you seems very precious and I am ravished with the sound and harmony of things I understand not this kinde of writing would have astonished Philosophers whom it could not have perswaded and if Saint Gregory Nazianzen had but shewed such a piece as this to Themistius he could not chuse but have been moved with it and must needs have admired the probability of Christianity though he had not known the secret These are not words that one reads and are painted upon Paper they are felt and received within the heart They live and move and I see in them the sinews of the first Christians and the stile of that Heroick age where one and the same virtue gave life both to discourse and actions gave influence both to the Soul and to the courage made both Doctours and also Martyrs Tell me true Did you not propose to your self a Pattern to follow Have you not been at the Oracle of have you not received some inspiration from our excellent friend Me thinks I meet with his very Character In certain passages I observe some marks and traces of his spirit and when I read them cannot sometimes forbear crying out Sic oculos sic ille manus c. You need not take offence at my suspition so noble a resemblance is an inferiority lifted up extreamly high You are not therein his Ape but his Son There is nothing base not mean in the imitation of so high and perfect an Idea and you know the example of Plato made Philo go cheek by jowl with him All I ask of you at Paris where you so liberally offer me all the good Offices you can do is but this that you will do me the favour to assure that great personage of the great reverence I bear to his merits and what glory I count it to be counted his friend but I require with all the continuation of your own love with which you can honour none that is more truely than I am Sir Your c. July 25. 1630. To Mounsieur Coeffeteau Bishop of Dardany LETTER VIII SIR SInce your departure from Mets there hath nothing hapned worthy of the History I promised you but onely that Caesar as I hear hath presented to the view of brave spirits certain new and very strange recreations by which he hath gained a great opinion of his knowledge As to make the images in a piece of Tapistry to walk and move to make all the faces in a room to seem to be double to make a River rise in a Hall and after streaming away without wetting of any make a company of Fayries appear and dance a round these are his ordinary sports and to use the phrase of our friend but the outside of his secret Philosophy Signiour Mercurio Cardano swears he hath seen all this and more enough to finde you discourse for many meetings and if you appoint him to set hand to his Pen he will be a Philostratus to this Appolonius He hath told me as he hath heard it from him that for certain the Heavens menace France with a notable revolution and that the fall of hath not been so much the end as the change of our miseries For my self who know that God never makes Mountibanks of his Councel and that the virtue of the King is able to correct the malignity of the Stars I laugh at the vanitie of such presages and look for nothing but happiness from the ascendent and fortune of so great a Prince But to change this discourse and this Mountibank for another I have seen the man Sir that is all armed with Thorns that pursues a Proposition to the uttermost bounds of Logick that in most peaceable conversations will put forth nothing nor admit of nothing that is not a Dilemma or a Syllogysme To tell you true what I think of him he would please me more if he had less reason this quarrelsom eloquence affrights me more than it perswades me They which commonly converse with him run in my opinion the same fortune which they do that live near the falls of Nilus there is no overflowing like that of his words a man cannot safely give him audience a Headach for three dayes after is the least hurt he can take that but hears him talk an after-noon The Gentleman that brings you this Letter hath charge given him from all in general to entreat you Sir not to forsake us in so important a matter but to come and free our companies from one of the greatest crosses that hath a long time afflicted civil society You are the onely man in whom this Sophister hath some belief and therefore none but you likely to reduce him to common right and to bring his spirit to submit it self to Custom and Usage You can if you please make it appear unto him that an honest man proposes alwayes his opinions no otherwise than as doubts and never raiseth the sound of his voice to get advantage of them that speak not so loud that nothing is so hatefull as a Chamber Preacher who delivers but his own word and determines without Warrant that it is fit to avoid gestures which are like to threatnings and terms which carry the stile of Edicts I mean that it is not fit to accompany his discourse with too much action nor to affirm any thing too peremptorily Lastly that conversation reflects more upon a popular estate than upon a Monarchy and that every man hath there a right of suffrage and the benefit of liberty You know Sir that for want of due observing these petty rules many have fallen into great inconveniences and you remember him who spilt Queen Margarets own dinner by striking an argument upon her Table with too great violence disturbed and drove Queen Margaret from her dinner Such men commonly spoil the best causes whilest they seek to get the better not because their cause is good but because themselves are the Advocates reason it self seems to be wrong when it is not of their side at least not in its right place nor in its ordinary form They disguise it in so strange a fashion that it cannot be known to any and they take away her authority and force by painting her in the colours and marks of folly These are the particular heads for which we desire you to take the pains of applying your Exorcismes particularly upon I dare say you will have a thousand Benedictons if you can drive out of his body this Devil of dispute and wrangling which hath begun already to torment us We expect you at the end of the week and I remain From Mets 15. August 1618. Sir Your c. To my Lord the Earle of Brassac LETTER IX SIR THat which I have written of you is but a simple relation of that I have seen of you and if there be any ornament in it It must needs be that either your self have put it
folly And are not you in plain terms a Cosener to make us believe you come from that climate from whence the cold and foul weather comes Whereas it cannot be you should be born any where but in the heart of Paris or if any place be more French then Paris that certainly must needs have been your Cradle You speak too well not to speak naturally this garb and this purity in which you express your self is not a thing that can be learned by Books you owe it to a nearer cause and study goes not so far as it There have strangers been Marshalls of France but their accent hath alwayes discovered they were not natural and they have found it more easie to merit the leading of our Armies and to gain the favour of our King than to learn our language and attain a true pronouncing But Sir seeing in your person there is seen an Ambassadour of eighteen years old and a wisdom without experience there is not any thing be it never so wonderfull which being reported of you may seem incredible after this It is fit onely that you make more account than you do of this so rare and admirable a quality and that you should use it according to its merits and not to employ it upon base subjects that are not worthy of it Otherwise how good an Artist so ever you be you will be blamed for making no better choise of your Materials and my self who draw so much glory from your fault had yet much rather see you employ your excellent language in treating of Princes interests and the present estate of Europe than in advancing the value of a poor sick man who prayes you to keep your valuing for and ask you nothing but pitty or at most but affection if this be to merit it that I passionately am Sir Your c. From Balzac 6. November 1629. To him another LETTER XIX SIR I Remember my promise upon condition you forget not yours and that in case you come within six miles of Balzac you will allow me the half dayes journey I require It is not any hope I have to send you away well satisfied either with your Hoste or with your lodging that makes me to make this request but it is Sir for my own benefit for you know very well we never have commerce together but all the gain remains of my side I finde that in your conversation which I seek for in vain in my neighbours Libraries and if there fall out any errours in the work I am about the faults must be attributed to your absence Leave me not therefore I intreat you to my own sence and suffer me to be so proud as to expect one of your Visits if you go to Santoigne or otherwise to prevent it if you stay at Lymousin There are some friendships that serve onely to pass away the time and to remedy the tediousness of solitariness but yours Sir besides being pleasant is withall I vow no less profitable I never part from you that I bring not away pleasures that last and profit that doth you no hurt I make my self rich of that you have too much and therefore as you ought not to envy me my good fortune which costs you little so you ought to believe also that as long as I shall love my self I shall be At Balzac 20. of December 1629. Sir Your c. Another to him LETTER XX. SIR AT that time when Mistriss parted from hence I was too much out of order to present my self before a wise man and I chose rather to be failing in the rules of civility than to be importunate upon you with my grievances Now that I am a little at quiet and can fall to work indifferent well I must needs tell you that the confidence I have of your love sweetens all the bitterness of my spirit and that in my most sensible distastes I finde a comfort in thinking of this It is certain Sir the World is strangely altered and good men now a dayes cannot make a troup This is the cause that seeing you are one of this little flock which is preserved from infection and one of those that keep virtue from quite leaving us I therefore bless incessantly Madam Desloges for the excellent purchase I have made by her means and proclaim in all places that she discovered me a treasure when she brought me first to be acquainted with you If I husband it not and dress it with all the care and industry it deserves it is not I assure you for want of desire but so sweet and pleasing duties have no place amidst the traverses of a life in perpetual agitation and your ordinary convensation is reserved for men more happy than I. I wait therefore for this favour from a better fortune than the present as also occasions by which I may testifie that I passionately am Sir Your c. At Balzac 1. of February 1630. To him another LETTER XXI SIR ALthough I am ravished with your eloquence yet I am not satisfied but you remain still unjust and I not well pleased I see what the matter is you are so weary of your Pennance at Lymousin that you have no minde to come and continue it in Angoumois You like better to go in a streight line to the good than to go to it by the crooked change of evil and prefer a safe harbour before an incommodious creek Wherein Sir I cannot blame your choise onely I complain of your proceeding and finde it strange you should disguise your joy for escaping a bad passage and that you are content to be unhappy at Rochel because you will not venter to be unhappy here These high and Theological comparisons which you draw from the austerity of Anchorets concerning works of supererogatition concerning Purgatory and Hell make me know you are a mocker and can make use of Ironies with the skill and dexterity of Socrates Take heed I be not revenged upon this Figure of yours by another and return you Hyperboles For this once I am resolved to suffer all hereafter perhaps I shall help my self with my old Arms. But howsoever the World go and in what stile soever I write unto you you may be sure I speak seriously when I say that I very firmly am Sir Your c. At Balzac 9. Sept. 1630. To him another LETTER XXII SIR I Am exceedingly beholding to you for remembring me and for the good news you have so liberally acquainted me withall If they loved Suger as well as they love Salt they should have enough of it never to drink any thing but Hyppocras nor to eat any thing but Comfits Without jesting I vow these are excellent Rebels and their simplicity is more subtill than all the Art and Maxims of Florence These Mariners read Lessons now to the inhabitants of Terra firma and are become the Paedagogues of Princes There is nothing of theirs that troubles me but the proposition of their Truce They should reject
ease you of the pains of writing them In these I require not the strains of your understanding nor the politick Animadversions which come from this accurate and Collineant judgement to use the barbarous eloquence of our friend it shall be enough for me that I may know in general some part of that which passeth and may have some Epitome of the History which you send weekly to Mounsieur d'Andilly I humbly entreat you to assure him that I honour him continually with passion and assure your self also that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 10. of Septemb. 1631. To Mounsieur de la Nauve Commander of a Company in Pyedmont LETTER XXXII Sir MY dear Cousin I cannot endure you should be come back into France for nothing but and that he should solely and without me possess a happiness which more belongs to me than him His Letters speak nothing but of your conversations and of your feastings news which he sends me rather to brave me and to set me in a longing than to give any part in his good fortune and to justifie his stay at Paris I shall one day have means to be revenged of him for this malice I doubt not to have liberty to walk abroad when he shall be tied to stay at home and to have my turn in feasting and making merry when he shall stand waiting upon enterrements and go exhorting men that are to be hanged Yet he is all this while your Favorite in my absence though he need not think me absent unless he will for if he love me enough to be troubled for losing me he may easily recover me by looking upon your face This resemblance between you and me is not the least of my vanities and I vow unto you I am proud of it in the highest degree every day I thank my Mother for it in my heart and do a secret homage for it to Nature It were enough for me to be taken for your Coppy but my gray hairs tell me to my shame that I am rather your Original and put me in minde of this untoward advantage I should not do much good to paint them unless withall I could discharge the pensiveness that hath changed them for the tincture of this blots out all other It is fit therefore to be merry and to banish sorrow seeing this iâ— the onely means to new make us and to make us able to resist old age I resolve my self to do so though it be but to do Fortune a spight and to take from her by my not grieving the pleasure she thinks to take in her cruelty But this goodly resolution stands in need of you my joy would be perfect if you would sometimes be a man of the Province and that there were any appearance of hope to see you at Condeville I know no reason you should scorn an Island in which our Ariosto would have charmed his dearest Herces and whereof he would have made a thousand other strange devises if he had been able to discover it Venture to come thither this next Sommer I conjure you to it by the memory of and I will promise you though not the good fellowship of Paris yet at least the fair dayes of Paris yet at least the fair dayes of Pignerol But I fear me much you are not resolute enough to come to civilize a clown who yet is beyond all I can say At Balzac 3. of January 1634. Sir Your c. Another to him SIR MY dear Cousin the beginning of your Letter had frighted me and I was taking Alarum at these words of death and Physicians but I recovered my spirits when I saw the first had failed of his blow and that you use not the other but to strengthen you in an estate they have already put you such dayes as this will prove more healthfull to you than all their Drugs and the sweetness which begins to spring from the purity of the Elements is the onely Medicine that heals without corrupting and cleanseth without wasting For my self I think not of dying when I have once gotten March over my head and me thinks I finde my self renewed at the onely smelling of the Violets I make use of them to more than one service they serve me for Broths as well as for Nosegayes I cannot be perswaded that cold purgeth the Air or drives away sickness and I am glad at heart to hear the Duke of Feria is dead of the Purples in the moneth of January and that in Germanie At least this will justifie the Summer and the hot Countreys and will serve us for a proof against when according to his custom he will plead our adversaries cause I am more than I thought I was seeing you assure me that I am sometimes the subject of our conferences and though in this you run the hazard of being in the number of those Oratours who were blamed for making ill choise of their subjects yet pardon me if I account the testimony of your remembring me more dear unto me than the glorie of your well speaking and if I like rather you should talk of my idleness and of my walks than to discourse of publick affairs or voyages of Princes I regard not the estimation of the people I would give a great deal to buy out that with which I have gotten it but there are certain friendships upon which onely I rely and to be razed out of all accounts in the state would be less grievous to me than to be blotted out of your memory Continue therefore these conferences which are so pleasing to me and of which I am in spirit a partaker or rather deny me not these consolations which are so sweet unto me and whose effect I feel a hundred miles off I cannot dissemble the need I have of you I could not live if you did not love me but withall you could love a man who is more passionately than I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 22. of Febr. 1634. Another to him LETTER XXXIV SIR MY dear Cousin I am exceeding glad to hear of your news as for news of the World I set so little by them and interest my self so little in general affairs that I may boldly say I never yet read a whole Gazetta through you may think this a strange distaste of the present time and a remarkable impatience especially in a man who complains that Livies History is too short and wishes Herodotus would never make an end Things that wounded me heretofore at the very heart do not now so much as superficially touch me that which I accounted as my own is now become a stranger to me and my heart is hardned against all accidents that happen if they concern not either my self or my friends It is true the death of wrought in me some compassion I can never hate men that are extraordinarie and it grieves me that cowardice should triumph over vertue and the lazie cause the valiant to be murthered For this man it
and cause of ruine But that now the case is altered in this point that now the French are onely French in the Courage and Valour that these Lions are grown reasonable and now to the strength and courage of the North they joyn the prudence and stayedness of the South c. Also where he saith that the carriage at Cazal is a thing incomprehensible and for which we must be fain to look out some new name for it cannot be called a Siege seeing the place was surrendred before ever it was battered nor it cannot be called a battel seeing no man strook a stroak nor it cannot be called a Treaty seeing Treaties are not made with Weapons in hand c. But that which pleaseth me most of all because it toucheth indeed the string of my own inclination is that which he speaks of the Marquess of Rambovillet that there had been Statues erected in honour of her virtue if she had fortuned to be born in the beginning of her race For as you know Sir this illustrious Woman is of Romane stock Et de Gente Sabella of which Virgil speaks These are the passages I can call to minde having not the Originals by me being taken from me by a neighbouring Lady who affects the King of Sweden with the like passion as Madam Rambovillet if I durst discover my self therein they should both know how I do concurre with them so eminent a virtue may chastely enough be loved of both Sexes and let the slanderous History speak its pleasure I for my part think no otherwise of it than as the Queen of Sheba loved Salomon and as Nicomedes loved Caesar I had begun something for the Triumph of this great Prince but his death made my Pen fall out of my hand and therefore you are like to have nothing from me at this time in revenge of your Sonnet For your French Prose I send you another which I will never believe to be Latin untill shall assure you it is to whom I intreat you to shew it from me Vir plane cum Antiquitate conferendus qui mihi est in hoc genere unus curia Censor Quirites I have read many things of his with infinite satisfaction but I know he hath certain miseries in his writing which he lets not common people know and hath told me of a continuation he hath written of the History of M. de Thou which is not imparted but to his special friends and which I am infinitely desirous to see but I am not a man that will enter by force upon any mans secrets and my discretion in such cases shall be alwayes greater than my curiosity Optare licebit si potiri non licet If I should not presently make an end of my Letter I should kill you with Latin for I finde my self in an humour that way and in this desert where I live I have no commerce but wiâ—h such as speak all Latin I would perswade you to revive them in our language by an imitation which you are able to do not much unlike those great examples I mean of Cicero of Salust and of Livie not of Cassiodore or Ennodius Ticinensis or Sidonius Apollinaris They that love this impurity of stile are in a sicker state than they that love to eat Coals and ashes Fat be it from us to have such disordered appetites and let us never be so foolish to prefer the corruption and decay of things before their prime and their maturity I am At Balzac 4. of February 1633. Sir Your c. Another to him LETTER XLIII SIR HE that delivers you this Letter knows as much of my news as I my self and will make you ample relation of all that hath passed at He hath a business in the Parliament which is of no great difficulty and which may be sped without any great eloquence yet I address it to you but upon condition that you shall not imploy your whole force about it but that your labouring for him may be a refreshing to you from some other labour I hear with a great deal of pleasure of the progress of your reputation and of the effects of my presages The acclamations you cause in the Pallace are sounding in all places and we are not so out of the World but that the Eccho of them comes to us But Sir I content not my self with clapping of hands and praising your well-speaking as others do I desire to have some particular ground for which to give your thanks and am willing to be in your debt for complement and reverence this shall be when you have sped my friends suit and which shall be a cause if you please that I will now at the end of my Letter add a superlative and say I am Sir Your most humble most faithfull c. At Balzac 2. of Nov. 1631. Another to him LETTER XLIV SIR I Make no secret of our friendship it is too honest to be hidden and I am so proud of it that I think my self of no worth but by it Mounsieur Jamyn acknowledgeth my good Fortune herein and is himself in passion to get your acquaintance to which he perswades himself I should not be his worst introductor and that by my means he might be admitted to your Closet I will make my self believe that he shall not be deceived in this opinion and that for my sake you will add to your accustomed courtesies a little extraordinary They who saw Pericles how he thundred and lightened in the publick Assemblies were desirous to hear him in a quieter estate to know whether his calm were as sweet and pleasing as his Tempest This man hath the like desire and though my recommendation were as indifferent to you as it is dear yet so honest a curiosity would deserve to be respected He is the Son of one of my best friends and though perhaps you know it not you are the example that Fathers propose for imitation to their Children and by whose name they excite to virtue all their youth I need not say more to you of this onely be mindefull of our resolute and undaunted Maxims and in this age of malice do not scorn the praise I give you for your goodness I kiss the hands of all your eloquent family and I am Sir Your c. At Paris 16. of Febr. 1634. To Mounsieur de Caupeau ville Abbot of Victory LETTER XLV Sir THe time which my malady permits me I bestow upon you and make use of the respite of my fits to tell you I have received your last Letters and the new assurances of your friendship which is so much the dearer unto me because I know you use them with discretion and that there be not many things you greatly affect This makes for my glory that I can please so dainty a taste and that I can get good from one that is so covetous It is no small matter to draw a wise man out of himself and to make Philosophy compassionate
of others evils Although the place to which she hath raised you cannot be more eminent nor more sure yet my disgraces may be cause that her prospect is not so fair or pleasant and how setled soever the peace of your minde be yet the Object of a persecuted friend may perhaps offend your eyes Our Mounsieur de Berville I assure my self dislikes not this kinde of wisdom he likes to have that husbanded and dressed which Zeno would have to be rooted out he knows that magnanimity hath its residence between effeminateness and cruelty and that the sweet and humane virtues have place between the Fierce and the Heroick Poets sometimes make the Demy Gods to weep and if an old womans death were cause enough to make Aeneas shed tears the oppression of one innocent cannot be unworthy of your sighes Yet I require from you none of these sad offices your onely countenance is enough to give me comfort I do not live but in the hope I have to see it and to get you to swear once again in presence of the fair Agnes and the rest of your Chamber Divinities that you love me still After that if you will have us make a voyage in your Abby I shall easily condiscend Provided Sir that you promise me safety amongst your Monks and that they be none of those who profess exquisite words and onely talk of Analysis and Caco-zeal If you have any that be of this humour you are an unfortunate Abbot and you may make account to be never without suites First they will ask you a double allowance next they will question your Revenew and if you chance by ill hap to make a Book you are sure to be presently cited before the Inquisition or at least before the Sorbon God keep you Sir from such Friers and send you such as I am who eat but once a day and who will not open my mouth unless it be to praise your good words and to tell you sometimes out of the abundance of my heart that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 26. of Decemb. 1631. To LETTER XLVI SIR I Am able to live no longer if you be resolved to love me no longer and think not that the good you promise me can countervail the loss of that you take from me Keep your estimation and your bounty for those that have nothing in them but Vanity and Avarice I am endowed from Heaven with better and more noble passions I like better to continue in my poverty than in your disgrace and will none of this cold speculative estimation which is but a meer device of reason and a part of the Law of Nations if you give it me single and nothing else with it I must tell you I think my self worthy of something more and that the Letter I write to you was worthy of a sweeter answer than you sent me If therein I said any thing that gave you distaste I call that God to witness by whom you swear I then wandred far from my intention I meant to contain my complaints within so just bounds that you should not finde the least cause to take offence But I see I have been an ill interpreter of my self and my rudeness hath done wrong to my innocency yet any man but your self would I doubt not have born with a friend in passion and not so unkindely have returned choler for sorrow As for my pettish humour it is quickly over and there is not a shorter violence than that of my spirit whereas you have taken five whole weeks to digest your indignation and in the end come to tell me you would do me any good you can upon condition to love me no longer I vow unto you it is a glorious act to do good to all the World and to make even ungratefull men beholding But Sir if you think me one to whom you may give that name you do me exceedingly much more wrong than it is in your power to do me right Neque decorum sapienti unde amico infamiam parat inde sibi gloriam quaerere I am wounded at the very heart with this you have written but since you will not suffer me to complain I must be fain to suffer and say nothing onely I will content my self to make a Declaration contrary to yours and tell you I will never make you beholding to me because I am not happy enough to be able to do it but yet I will love you alwayes and will alwayes perfectly be Sir Your c. At Balzac 1. of March 1633. To Mounsieur Trovillier Physician of the Popes House LETTER XLVII SIR HAving alwayes made especial reckoning of your friendship it is a great satisfaction to me that I receive assurance of it by your Letter I doubt not of your compassionating my disgraces and that the persecution raised against me hath touched you at least with some sence of grief for even meer strangers to me did me these good Offices and though the justice of my cause had not in it self been worthy of respect yet the violence of my adversaries was enough to procure me favour and protectours There is no man of any generous spirit that found not fault with the wits of your Philarchus nor a man of any wisdom that thought him not a Sophister Yet I cannot blame you for loving him seeing I know well you do it not to prejudice me and that your affection corrupts not your judgement You are too intelligent to be deceived with petty subtilties and too strong to be broken with engins of Glass but in truth being as you are a necessary friend to a number of persons of different qualities it cannot be but you must needs have friends of all prices and of all me it and that the unjust as well as the innocent are beholding to you You shall hear by Mounsieur when he comes to Rome the little credit I have with the man you spake to me of to whom I present my service but onely once a year and that I do too least I should forget my name and mistake my person If in any other matter which is absolutely in my own power you will do me the honour to imploy me you shall see my course is not to use excuses and colours but that I truly am Sir Your c. At Paris 4. of April 1631. To Mounsieur Gerard Secretary to my Lord the Duke d'Espernon LETTER XLVIII SIR YOu cannot complain nor be in misery by your self alone I partake of all your good and evil and feel so lively a reflection of them that there needs but one blow to make two wounds And thus I am wounded by the news you write and though your grief he not altogether just yet it is sufficient to make me partake with you that it is yours We weep for one not onely whom we knew not but whom we know to be happy one that in six months staying in the World hath gained that which St. Anthony was afraid
with magnificence enough and not without bestowing some publike largesse I never knew you go a forraging that you returned not home laden with booty and your Voyages have alwayes enriched your followers I pretend my selfe to have a feeling of this and though farre removed from the place where you act them yet I doe not meane that my absence should cause me to lose my share in the distribution of your good deeds Cease not Sir I entreat you to bind me unto you and to deserve well of our language Fill our Closets with the fruits of your brain and since you can do it make us to gather more sheaves of Corn than the best workmen hitherto have left us eares My devotion stands waiting continually for your Christian workes and I entreat you they may be done in such a volume that we may carry them handsomely with us to Church That which I have seen of them doth so exceedingly please me that I would be a Poet for nothing else but with some indifferent grace to praise them and to say Verses blesse him that makes such blessed Verses If I did not love you well I should envy you the conversation of Monsieur Chaplaine of which in a fortnight I received not one small spark by the ordinary Post Thus I do but taft of that whereof you make full meales yet remember I have as good right in him as your selfe and though I trust you with the keeping him yet I do not quit my part in him To him and you both I am most affectionately Your c. To Monsieur Conrat LETTER V. SIR had undertaken to have answered to every point of your eloquent Letter but when I had spent a whole moneth about it I could not satisfie my selfe with my undertaking That which I had written was not worthy me thought that I should Father it and I began to thinke I should doe you a great courtesie to save you the reading of an ill Oration But seeing of evills the least are the best you shall have cause to be pleased with this complement which will cost you no more but one looke to looke over and never put you to the labour of turning over the leafe I have this onely to say at this time that the report which was spread of my death hath not killed me and that in despight of rumour and mortall Presages I intend to be happy by your meanes and not to forgoe the good fortune presented to me in your person so I call your excellent friendship with which no burden is heavy no calamity dolorous For I know I shall finde in you that ancient generousnesse whereof Monsieur de la Nove and Monsieur de Ferres made profession I account when I discover secrets to you I hide them and shall have no jealousie of my honour when I have put it into your hands In such sort Sir that my soule should be a very hard temper if it did not feele a kind of tickling in so present and great adventages and if I should not most perfectly be as you oblige me to be Your c. To my Lord the Bishop of Nantes LETTER VI. SIR I was upon the point of sending my footman to you when I saw your footman enter my Lodging who brought me news exceeding joyfull and now I depend no longer upon Fortune since another besides her self can make me happy and am so indeed as much as I would wish and should never know the value of your friendship if I made it not the bounds of my ambition To complaine of forturne and to be your favorite are things that imply a mortall contradiction it is an easie matter to comfort a pension ill paid when a man is in possession of store of treasure and having neither the gift of impudency nor of hypocrisie it is not for me to prosper in an age which esteeme them most that are owners of these qualities It is enough for me that M. the Cardinall doth me the honour to wish me well and condemnes not your judgement of me all other disgraces from whence soever they come I am prepared to beare and take for a favour the contempt that is linked to the profession of vertue But it is too much to say of me that which Seneca said to Cato Catonem saeculum suum parùm intellexit These are transcendencies of Mr. de Nantes and impostures of love He stretcheth all objects to infinity and all his comparisons are beyond proportion The Sunne and the Starres are common things with him and he can find noting in Nature godly enough to serve for a similitude of that he loves It is this deceitfull passion hath made you believe that I am of some great worth and that my barren soile is fruitfull in high conceits But Sir I count all this nothing if this love of yours peswade you not to come and stay a while in it and to be mindfull of your word I have put Monsieur in hope hereof and make my selfe sure since you have made me a solemne promise knowing that Truth is resident upon the mouth of Bishops Dixisti venies Grave immutabile sanctis Pondus adest verbis vocem fata sequuntur The Authour of these Verses shall be your fourth suppliant it is one that hath been of your old acquaintance and was accounted the Virgil of his time I make use of him upon this occasion because perhaps you will make more reckoning of him than of mee who yet am more than any man in the World Sir Your c. Another to my Lord Bishop of Nantes LETTER VII SIR I speake Latine but once a yeare and yet as seldome as it is it comes more upon hazard than out of knowledge and holds lesse of learning than of rapture vouchsafe therefore to take it in good part that in my setled braines I answer you in the vulgar Tongue and tell you that never Eares were more attentive nor more prepared to hearing than those of our family when I read your Letter before them they were not satisfied to have onely a litterall interpretation and to make me their Grammarian but I must declaime upon it and make a Paraphrase as large as a Commentary If you will know the successe I can truly say that all the company was well satisfied but I may tell you all that they were ever ravished with admiration of your bounty specially my Niece who in the greatest vanity that sex is capable of never durst imagine she should ever have the honour to be praysed in Latin and should serve for an Argument of commendation to the greatest Doctor of our age Shee saith this is a second obligation you bind her in to make her a Romane after you have made her your daughter and to give her so noble a Country after giving her so worthy a Father And yet to these two favours I can adde a third which she forgot methinkes Sir shee fattens and grows up with these prayses you give her shee
this excellent worke you send mee After this it is not to be sufferd you should make shew of nicenesse and tell me of your sloathfulnesse When fire shall cease to be active I will then beleeve you can be sloathfull but will never thinke you hate bookes untill shall give over his suits in Law or if I must needs give credit to your words I then assure my selfe this distast could never come unto you but by your too great fare nor this wearinesse but by your too great labour I am my selfe a witnesse of your assiduitie in studie and you know how early soever I rise in the morning I alwayes find you in the Chamber next to the Meteors which high region I conceive you have chosen that you may be the neerer to take in the inspirations of Heaven I thinke it long till I come and visit you there to take counsell of your Muses in a number of difficulties I have to propound unto you In the meane time I have this to say that the Newes you send me hath even astonished me and it seemes to me a kinde of Enchantment Monsieur will shew you certaine Letters which I entreat you to consider of and by which you shall see that if I be deceived yet it is not grossely nor without much cunning used Make me beholding to you by opening your minde more particularly in this matter and by beleeving that I am with all my heart Sir Your c. At Balzac 4. Feb. 1629. Another to him LETTER XXIV SIR there is no friendship in the world of more use than yours it is my Buckler in all my battels it is my Consolation in all my calamities but specially it is my Oracle in all my doubts That which before I have your advice I propose to my selfe with trembling as soone as once I have your approbation I make it a Maxime and an Aphorisme and when I have once consulted with you never did an Ignoramus take upon him to be some great Doctour better than I doe You have knowledge enough to serve your owne turne and your friends you are the God that inspires the Sibyllae for my selfe I am no longer an Authour but an Interpreter and speake nothing of my selfe but preach onely doctrine I give you a thousand thankes for your great magnificence in giving me so great a treasure and for the learned Observationâ— you have been pleased to communicate unto me Assure your selfe I will cry them up in good place and make your Name alledged solemnly for an Authority Gratefulnesse is the poore mans best vertue and seeing I cannot be liberall I will endeavour at least not to be unmindfull And so Sir I am most perfectly and more than any other in the world Sir Your c. At Balzac 6. Mar. 1629. To Madam Desloges LETTER XXV MAdam being in a fit of a Feaver I heare you are at Oradour where I should have the honour to see you if the joy of so good Newes had the power to carry me thither and were able to give me the health which it is forward to promise me Being therefore not in case to assure you in person how sensible I am of your many courtesies give me eave to testifie unto you that I am not unmindfull of the very last you shewed me and that I give you thanks for the beginning of my amendment whereof you are the cause It is certaine that when I was burning in a most extreame fire I received a notable cooling and comfort to heare you but only named and this Madam is the first miracle you have done in this Countrey if you stay but a while here I hope we shall see many more and greater and that you will leave some excellent markes that you have been here Our desarts shall be no longer rude or savage having once been honoured by your presence the sweet ayre that breaths on the bankes of the Loyre shall spread it selfe hither and I doubt not but you will change all the choler of Lymousin into Reason and make our Lyons become men I doe not thinke there is any will oppose this truth unless perhaps who had the heart to part from you with drie eyes and could not finde teares to accompany yours I have told him of it to his shame before Monsieur de and both of us agree that in this occasion he might honestly enough have broken the lawes of his Philosophie and might have lost his gravitie without any lightnesse Whilst we were together they desired to see a part of my Prince which as yet I dare not call by so illustrious a Name for in truth Madam he can be but a private person untill such time as you proclaime him and that he receive investiture from his Soveraigne so I call your approbation which is with me in such respect and reverence that I should preferre it before Reason it selfe if they were two things that cold be separated and that I were allowed to choose which I would have I would say more hereof but that methinks I have done a great worke to say so much for my head is in such violent agitation with the heat of my last fit that all I can doe at this time is but to set my hand to this Protestation that I honour you exceedingly am as much as any in the world Madam Your c. At Balzac 25. August 1629. Another to her LETTER XXVI MAdam I am jealous of my Lacquies fortune who makes now a second journey to you and consequently shall be twice together more happie then my self he should never have this advantage of me if to a journey to see you there went nothing but courage and if the relicks of my disease which prey upon weakness did not tyre me more than the extreame violence did when I had some strength to resist it By staying in my chamber I loose all the fayre dayes that shine in the garden all the riches of the fields are gathered without me I have no part in the fruits of Autumne whereof the Spring gave me such sweet hopes and I am promised health at winter when I shall see nothing but a pale Sunne a thread-bare Earth and dead sticks that have brought forth grapes but not for me to eat In this miserable estate I have no comfort but onely the Letter you did me the honor to write unto me which is so precious to me Madam that I even honour it with a kinde of superstition and am ready to make a chaine or bracelet of it to try whether the wearing it about me may not prove a better Remedy against my Feaver than all the other I have used There is but one word in it that I cannot endure being not able to conceive why you should call your selfe unfortunate are you not afraid least God should call you to account for this word and charge you with ungratefulnesse for making so slight reckoning of his great benefits and Graces He hath lifted you up above your
the great Armie of the Parsians that you can never vanquish as long as they can die Herein there is nothing to be feared but for your selfe for as for me I finde in your favour all I seeke for and having you of my side I care not what fame can doe having once your testimony I can easily slight hers and all her tongues put together can never say any thing for me that is worth the least lyne of your delicate Letter It is at this time the delight and joy of my spirit I am more in love with it than ever I was with and if she shew you that which I write to her you shall finâ—e I make not so much reckoning of my ancient mistris as I do of youâ— new messenger and that I desire all the world should know that I perfectly am Madam Your c. At Balzac 13. Octob. 1629. Another to her LETTER XXIX MAdam I will not take upon me to give you thankes for the good cheare you made me for besides that I have none but Country Civilities and when I have once said your humble servant and your servant most humble I am then at the end of my complements and can goe no further It were better yet to let you hold your advantage entire and owe you that still which I can never pay I forbeare to speake of the dainties and abundance of your Table enough to make one far that were in a Consumption nor I speake not of the delicacy of your perfumes in which you laid me to sleep all night to the end that sending up sweet vapours into my braine I might have in my imagination none but pleasing visions But Madam what but Heaven can be compatable to the dainties of your Closet and what can I name to represent sufficiently those pure and spirituall pleasures which I tasted in your Conversation It is not my designe to take idly nor to set my stile upon the high straine you know I am bound to avoyd Hyperboles as Mariners to avoyd Sands and Rockes but this is most true that with all my heart I renounce the world and all its pompes as long as you please to inhabit the Desart and if you once determine to stay there still though I have sent to Paris to hyre me a lodging yet I resolve to breake off the bargaine and meane to build me an Hermitage a hundred paces from your abode from whence Madam I shall easily be able to make two journeys a day to the place where you are and shall yeeld you a subjection and an assiduitie of service as if I were in a manner of your houshold There shall I let nothing fall from your mouth which I shall not carefully gather up and preserve it in my memory There you shall doe me the favour to resolve me when I shall have doubts set me in the right way when I goe astray and when I cannot expresse my selfe in fit termes you shall cleare my clouds and give order to my confusednesse It shall be your eares upon which I will measure the cadences of my sentences and upon the different motions of your eyes I will take notice of the strength or weaknesse of my writings In the heare of the travaile and amidst the joyes of a mother that lookes to be happily delivered I will expose the Infant to the light of your jugement to be tryed and not hold him for legitimate till you approve him Sometimes Madam we will reade your Newes and the divers Relations that are sent you from parts of Christendome Publike miseries shall passe before our eyes without troubling our spirits and the most serious actions of men shall be our most ridiculous Comedies Out of your Closet we shall see below us the the tumults and agitation of the world as from the top of the Alpes we stand and safely see the raine and hayle of Saevoy After this Monsieur de Borstell shall come and reade us Lectures in the Politiqâ—es and Comment upon Messer Nicolo unto us He shall informe us of the affayres of Europe with as great certaintie as a good husband would doe of his familie He He shall tell us the Causes the Proceedings and the Events of the warre in Germany and therein shall give the lye a thousand times to our Gazets our Mercuries and such other fabulous Histories Wee will agree with him that the Prince he is so much in love withall is most worthy of his passion and that Sweden is no longer able to containe so great a vertue After the fashion of Plutarch he shall compare together the prime Captaines of our age alwayes excepting who admits of no comparison He shall tell us which is the better man the Italian or the Germane what meanes may be used to take off the Duke of Saxony from the house of Austria and what game the Duke of Bavaria playes when he promiseth to enter into the League and is alwayes harkening to that which he never meanes to conclude From these high and sublime Newes we will descend to other meaner and more popular subjects It shall be written to you whether the Kingdome of Amatonte be still in being and whether there appeare not a rising Sunne to which all eyes of the Court are turned Monsieur de shall send you word whether he persist in his pernicious designe to bring Polygamie into France and to commit nine Incests at once I meane whether he have a good word from those nine Sisters to all whom he hath solemnly made offer of his service Wee shall know whether the Baron of put Divines still to trouble whether Monsieur de have his heart still hardened against the ungreatfullnesse of the time and whether Monsieur de continue still in his wilfulnesse to punish mankinde by the suppression of his Bookes By the way of Lymoges we shall get the devises of Boissiere the Epigrammes of Maynard and other daynties of this nature The Stationer des Espies Meurs will furnish you plentifully with Romances and with that they call Belles Choses and if it come to the worst from the very Cinders of Philarcus there will spring up every moneth a new Phaenix of backbiting Eloquence that will find us recreation for one houre at least And these Madam are a part of those imployments in which I fancy in my minde we may spend our time all the time of the heat for when the return of Aprill shall bring againe the flowers and fayre dayes and invite you abroad a walking we must then looke us out some new pleasures and change our recreations we will have Swannes and other strange Birds to cover this water at once both quicke and still which washeth the seet of your wals we will fall a planting of trees and dressing the allies of your Garden wee will digge for Springs and discover treasures which lose themselves under ground which yet I value no lesse than veynes of silver because I judge of them without covetousnesse And finally Madam
we will fall a building that famous Bridge by which to enter your enchanted Palace and whereof the onely designe puts all the neighbouring Nobilitie already into a jealousie If you like of this course and of these Propositions and that my company may not be troublesome to you there remaines nothing to doe but that you command me to come and I am instantly ready to quit all other affayres in the world and to come and testifie to you that I am Madam Your c. At Balzac 6. Novemb. 1631. Another to her LETTER XXX MAdam we receive the Answers of Oracles without making reply perfect devotion is dumbe and if you had left me the use of my tongue I should then have had one part at least of my spirit free from this universall astonishment that hath surprized it You are alwayes lifted up above the ordinary condition of humanitie and the divinenesse of your spirit is no longer an Article in question amongst people that are reasonable yet I must confesse you never shewed it more visibly then in the last Letter you writ unto me and if at other times I have beene dazeled with some beame you have now made me starke blind with the fulnesse of your light Spare Madam I intreat you the weaknesse of my sight and if you will have me be able to indure your presence take some more humane forme and appeare not all at once in the fulnesse of that you are I were never able to abide such another flash of brightnesse My eyes are weary with looking upward and with considering you as you are a creature adorable and divine Hereafter I will not looke upon you but on that side you are good and gracious and will not venture to reason with you any more for feare I should to my owne confusion illustrate the advantage of your spirit over mine You shall have nothing from me hereafter but prayers and thanks and I will make you confesse that I sollicite better than I praise I therefore send you now Madam divers crosses at one time and persecute you with no lesse then three afflictions at once I meane three Letters of recommendation which I request from you in behalfe of humbly entreat you to deliver them to this messenger to write them in such a perswasive style as might be able to corrupt all the Gatoes of Paris although indeed the cleernesse of our right hath more need of their integretie then of their favour I expect Madam this new courtesie from your goodnesse and am alwayes more than any in the world Your c. At Balzac 10. Decemb. 1629. Another to her LETTER XXXI MAdam in the state I am now in there is none but your selfe could make me speak and I never did a greater worke in my life than to dictate these foure untoward lynes my spirit is so wholly taken up with the consideration of my misery and flies all commerce and company in so violent a manner that if it concerned me not exceedingly you should know that finds himselfe infinitely obliged to your courtesies and my self no lesse than he I thinke verily I should have let depart without so much as bidding him Farewell Pardon Madam the weaknesse of a vulgar spirit which feeles no crosses light and falls flat down at the very first blow of adverse Fortune Perhaps in prosperitie I should carry my selfe better and I doe not thinke that joy could make me insolent but to say the truth in afliction I am no body and that which would not so much as leave a scratch upon the skin of a Stoick pierceth me to the very heart and makes in it most deepe wounds Griefe dejects me in such sort and makes me so lazie in doing my dutie and so unfit for all functions of a civill life that I wondred no longer at those that were turned into trees and rockes and lost all sense with only the sense of griefe Yet Madam as often as I call to minde that I hold some part in your account and love I am forced to confesse that my melancholy is unjust and that I have no good foundation for my sadnesse This honour ought to be unto me a generall remedy against all sorts of affliction and the misery that you pittie is not so much to be pittied as to be envied From thence it is that I draw all the comfort I am capable of humbly entreating you to beleeve you shall never pitie a man in misery that will be more gratefull than my selfe nor that is more passionately than I am Madam Your c. 31. Decemb. 1629. Another to her LETTER XXXII MAdam I received but just now your Letters of the five and twentieth of the last moneth and though I know not by whom to send an answer yet I can no longer hold from expressing my joy nor keepè my words from leaving my heart to fall upon this paper The last time I writ unto you I had heard of the unfaithfulnesse of a friend of mine which struck me to the very heart since which time a better report hath somewhat quieted me but it is you Madam that have restored to me the full use of my reason and are a cause that I am contented to live Although corruption be in a manner universall and that there is no more any goodnesse to be found amongst men yet as long as you are in the world it is not fit to leave it quite but your vertue may well supply all its defects Besides Madam if it be true as you doe me the honour to write unto me that you account my interests as your owne this very consideration is enough to make them dearer to me than they were before and I am therefore bound to preserve my selfe seeing it seemes you would be loath to lose me One gracious word which I observed in your Letter hath wonne me to you in such sort that I have no longer any power of my selfe but what you leave me and in all your Empire which is neither meane nor consists of meane subjects I can assure you that you possesse nothing with more soveraigntie than my will If your occasions draw you to Annix this next spring I hope to have the honour to see you at Balzac where I am trimming up with all the care I can that it may be a little more worthy of your presence and that the amusement I shall thereby give you may keepe you from marking the ill cheare you are like to find in a Country village My sister is infinitely bound to you for the honour you doe her in remembring her and I am my selfe with all my soule Madam Your c. At Balzac 1. Febr. 1630. Another to her LETTER XXXIII MAdam my indisposition hath been the cause of my silence and I thought it better to say nothing than to entertaine you with a troublesome discourse Besides I was in a continuall expectation of the performance of your promise and looked to have the honour to see
the soule for as for the true respect and the passion which hath residence in the heart I assure you I have that in me for you as pure and entyre as ever and that he that calls you his Soveraigne yet honours you not more perfectly than I doe Monsieur de will I doubt not be my witnesse herein and will tell you that what part soever I be forced to play amongst jeasters and merry companions yet under my players cloathes there will alwayes be found an honest man I have been sensible Madam of the losse which hath had and have not been sparing to speake of his unfortunate vertue yet I never thought he needed any comforting for it for seeing he sees that God spares not his own Images and that his neerest friends have their disgraces and troubles he ought not to thinke any thing strange that happens in this inferiour world and upon inferiour persons what consideration soever may otherwise make them deare unto him If you have vouchsafed to keepe the Letters I have written to you I humbly entreat you to send them to me that I may see what volume I can make for the impression that is required of me but Madam it shall be if you please upon this condition that parting with the Letters you shall never let your memory part with the truths they containe but hold undoubtedly that I very firmely am though I doe not very often say I am Madam Your c. 25. Decemb. 1630. Another to her LETTER XXXVII MAdam my labour is happie since it is never from before you and since I am told you make it your ordinary entertainment The end of all fayre Pictures and good Books is but onely to please your eyes and to delight your spirit and the good you have not yet set a price upon is not yet come to its utter most perfection I have therefore all that an ambitious man could wish for I may perhaps have fortune from others but glory I can have from none but you and another perhaps may pay me but none but you can recompense mee The paines I have hitherto taken have beene but ill requited I have tilled a ground that brings me forth but thornes yet Madam since they blossome for your service I am contented to be pricked by them and I love the cause of my disgraces if they proove a cause of your recreations The first Newes you shall heare will tell you what I meane and that my patience never makes my persecutours weary You shall see Madam that there is no conscience made to contradict you and that the same which you call excellent and admirable hath yet 〈◊〉 Paris found enemies and at Bruxells hangmen I will say no more at this time but that I am Madam Your c. At Balzac 6. Jan. 1631. Another to her LETTER XXXVIII MAdam I writ unto you about six weekes since but my packet not being delivered where I appointed it I perceive some curious body hath seazed on it and sought for secrets which he could not find The losse is not great to lose nothing but a few untoward words and small comforting would serve me for so small a crosse yet because they were full of the passion I owe to your service and carried in them the markes of my dutie I cannot but be troubled they câ—me not to your hands and that my mis-fortune gives you cause to complaine of my negligence I dare not undertake to cleere my selfe altogether for though in this I committed no fault yet I cannot forget some other faults committed before The truth is Madam I have been for some time so continually taken up with businesse that I have beene wanting in the principall obligations of a civill life and I have drunke besides so many bitter potions and tasted so many bitter Pills that I should but offend you with my complements which could not choose but carrie with them at least some tincture of my untoward humour What pleasure could you have taken to see a medley of choler and Melancholy powred out upon paper and in stead of pleasing Newes to read nothing but pittifull Stories and mortall Predictions But enough of this unpleasing matter I expect here within three or foure dayes my Lord the Bishop of Nantes and I would to God Madam you could be here at that time and that you were at leisure to come and taste the doctrine of this rare personage I have heard you say heretofore you never saw a more holy countenance than his and that his very looke was a Prologue of perswasion This conceit makes me hope that he is the man whom God hath ordained to be your Converter and to bring you into the bosome of our Church Beleeve me Madam and you shall not be deceived trust that enemy who wounds nor but onely to draw out the bloud that causes a Feaver and never make difficultie to commit your selfe to one that intends your freedome The triumph which the world makes you feare is no way injurious to those that be the captives nor like unto that of which Cleopatra tooke so sad an apprehension but in this case the vanquished are they that are crowned and all the glory and advantage of the victory rests on their side I am not out of hope to see so good a dayes worke and seeing you are rather layd asleepe in the opinion of your mother than obstinate in a wrong cause I intreat you that you will not be frighted with phrases Wee will not use this hard terme to say you have abjured your haeresie wee will onely say you are awaked out of your slumber and if our deare friend Monsieur du Moulin would doe so too then would be the time of a great festivall in Heaven and the Angels would rejoyce at the prosperitie of the Church My zeale Madam is not out of ostentation for it is most true that such a change is one of my most violent wishes and to see you say your prayers upon your beads I would with all my heart give you a payre made of Diamonds though I am not rich yet I hope you doubt not of the truth of these last words and that I am with all my soule Madam Your c. At Balzac 7. May. 1632. Another to her LETTER XXXIX MAdam it hath beene as much my shame as my glory to read your Letter having so ill deserved it and the remorse of the fault I committed makes mee that I dare not yet rejoyce in the honour I received You are good and gracious even to the not hating of evill actions Your delinquents not only obteine impunitie but you allow them recompence and idlenesse hath more respect with you than deligent service with ordinary Masters This is the faelicite of the Golden age where Plentie had no neede of tilling and where there was reaping without sowing Yet Madam I must not so abandon my cause that I forbeare to alledge the good it hath in it it is long since
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
doe you Homage by laying my Compositions at your feete than to make a Challenge as opposing them to yours rather to acknowledge the superioritie of your Eloquence and to goe in your Lyverie than to make my selfe youâ— Competitor and seeke to brave you with so rash a Comparison If you finde any rellish in Discourses so farre short of the force and merit of yours and if you thinke they may give my Masters of the Universitie any the least contentment I earnestly entreate you to present them a Copy and withall my humble submission to their judgement I know this Societie is at this day the supreme Tribunall that Censures all workes of the Braine and gives Rules to all other Tribunalls of France I neither doubt of the sufficiencie nor suspect the integritie of the Judges that praeside there Moreover I confesse Sir it could never have a more happie Conception seeing your selfe was the first that spake it nor a more illustrious birth seeing M. the Cardinall was a Patron to it and therefore borne in Purple as were those Princes in Constantinople whom I would call Porphyrogencies if the Academie had Naturalised this Forreigne word The honour it hath done me to make me a member of their body without binding me to part from hence and the place it hath given me without taking away my liberty are two singular favours I received from it both at one time And to say the truth it is no small benefit to a man of the wildernesse that turnts his face sometimes towards the world and is not altogether devested of humane affections that he may injoy together both the repose of solitude and yet flatter his imagination with the glory of so pleasing a Societie This I cannot doe without thanking you for so great a favour and if they understand not of my Resentment by your mouth they may have just cause to condemne me for one of little Gratefulnesse Lend me therefore I beseech you Sir some five or six words I would ask you more but I know they are of that worth and so high in their account that these few will be enough not onely to satisfie for the complement I owe but for the Oration also it is expected I should make them You will not I hope deny me the testimony of your love and I require it of you by the memory of the other Obligations I owe you Atque per inceptos promissum munus Iambos you know my meaning and that I have a long time beene and am My Lord Your c. At Balzac 15. Iul. 1635. To Monsieur de Bois Robert LETTER VI. SIR I heare you have beene seene at Paris from whence I conclude you are not at the warre in Flanders but are content to goe and give it your malediction upon the Frontiers If you would acquaint us with the passages of that Countrey you should infinitely obâ—ige your old friend who feeds upon no other nourishment but Newes and takes no Newes to heart but those which concerne the King He is so carefull of the Reputation of his Armes that he cannot abide his victory should be spoken of with doubting To make him confesse we have lost one man it is necessary there should be foure Regiments defeated and when he is spoken to of the Emperouâ—s ayde his answer is that this is a Remedie to be lookt for when the contrary part is dead To make this man a Present the Poet you wot of made lately some Verses upon the estate of affaires in Lorrayne and answers another Poet who had written that the King would never be able to hold it and that the rellicke of affection which the Countrey beares to its ancient Duke would never suffer any familiaritie or friendship to reflect upon us The that are the Latins of this Countrey would make him believe that he hath found a meane betweene the Character of Catullus and that of Martiall and that he hath avoided the drinesse and harshnesse of the former times without engaging himselfe in the luxurie and intemperance of the latter times With these new Verses I send you the old Prose you desired and which hath lyen so long asleepe in my Closet Though they be writings of an old dare yet you know they are alwayes in season and seeing they entreate of the soveraigne vertue that is of M. the Cardinall they intreate of a matter that is immortall and can never lose the grace of being new Thermopylae and Platea are to this day the common places of the Graecians that are in the world and our remotest posteritie which shall more quietly enjoy the labours of this rare man than we doe shall speake more often and more honouâ—ably of them than we doe I believe the Letter to Mounsieur Chastelet will not dislike you and that you will finde something in it worth your reading I had word sent me from Paris that his style was too much painted and too full of Figures for a military style but you shall see how in praysing him for the rest I justifie him in this and with what byasse I defend the cause of worthy things I entreate you to aske him for me the last Libells of and to deliver them to to bring them to me You have heard by the cause I have to complaine of Mounsieur de Delayes in such cases are very dangerous and if you have not already made an end of the matter I feare me the Stocke that was appointed for paying of me will goe some other way Doe herein what you shall thinke fittest and I shall remaine Sir Your c. At Balzac 15. Jul. 1635. Austrasia infaelix ne somnia blanda tuorum Neu mâ—mores Aquilas Imperiumque vetus Quamvis Titulos Nomen inutile jactes Multusque in vano Carolus ore sonet Carolus ecce iterum Nostri virtute Capeti Concidit lapsas luget Eugenus opes Vel solo dixisse sat est capta Oppidae nutu Atque ulrto exutum terga dedisse Ducem Austrasia huic vilis nimiùm neglecta fuisti Nec te ita qui tenuit credidit esse suam Credidit hostiles fugitivus linquere terras Sed te qui propriam jam tueatur adest Ille Triumphata rediit qui victor ab Alpe Et pâ—r quem placidis Mincius errat agris Ille suo natus Juvenis succurrere saeclo Non tantùm Patri sistere Fata suae Cur sequeris Fumo VacuaÌ„ cur diligis umbram Evereque colis diruta saxa domus Desere Fessa tuos supremasae clade jacentes Te validam stantem Deserutre tui Prima mali patiens atque inter Gallica pridem Fulmina Arctoas non benè tuta minas Tandem pone animos ac Nostra assuesce vocari Ni facias Cecinit quae mihi Phaebus habe Alternis vertet te Celta Teuto ruinis Et nisi Pars uniâ—es Praeda duobus eris To Monsieur Favereau Councellour of the King in his Court of Aydes LETTER VII SIR He whose
undertake a Paradoxe and trie the strength of your wit upon the novelty of an irregular subject I think I must my selfe be of this opinion and charge you Sir with abusing Poetry and for chusing an incredible thing to make it believed Neverthelesse seeing the Philosopher Favonrinus tooke upon him to praise a feavour and the Romans adored it I wonder not at your designe for I perceive there is nothing so bad of which may not be spoken some good and whereof some or other have not maâ—e a holy day After this extravagant Encomium and this ridiculous Temple you might do well to take my miseries too and consecrate them in your stanzes and take me too and make me a thing adoreable and divine for they are but the sports of wit which delight though they do not perswade and accuse with pleasure because they are witty but do not deceive me because I know their craft For the assurance you give me by your Letter of your friendship I am infinitely beholding to you and make account to reap no small benefit by it for having a soule as you have full of vertue you make me a Pâ—esent that is invaluable to bring me into so worthy a possession and whilst you offer me freenesse and fidelity you offer me the two greatest rarities this age affords I bâ—lieve you speake more seriously in Prose than you doe in Verse and that you are content to be a Poet but have no meaning to be a Sophister I likewise entreat you to believe that the least word I speak is accompanied with Religion which I never violate and that there is nothing more true than the promise I here seale you most perfectly to be Sir Your c. At Balzac 6 Octob. 1635. To Monsieur Souchote LETTER XXII SIR By your reckoning you have written to me thrice for nothing when indeed I knew not of your first Letters but by your last if I had received them you may be sure I should have answered them for though I be not very regular in observing compliments yet I am not so negligent of necessary duties that I should commit so many faults togethe How profound soever my slumber be yet I awake presentlie assoone as I am once stirred and especially when it is by so deare a name and by so pleasing a voice as yours is Never therefore require me to give it in charge to some other to let you heare from me such a request would be an offence to our friendship an action fitter for a Tyrant than a Cittizen it were to take me for that great Mogull who speaks to none but by an Interpreter I like not this savage stateliness it is far from me to use so little civility towards men of your worth when it is I that am beholding to you I pray let it not be my Groome that shall thank you for it I will take the paines my selfe to assure you I am wholly yours and whereas I did not bid you farewell at my going from Park you must not take it for an argument of slighting your person but for an effect of the liberty I presume of and of the renouncing I have vowed to all vaine ceremonies They that are my friends give me this leave and you are too well acquainted with the solidity of things to ground your judgement upon apparances neither do I think you will require them of me who am as bad a courtier as truly I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 20. Iul. 1630. To Monsieur Tissandier LETTER XXIII SIR you shall receive by this bearer the rest of the works of or to speak more properly the continuation of his follies They are now as publique as those of the great divine Marshall whom you have heretofore visited in the famous little house He useth me still with the same pride and insolencie he was wont and you would think that he were at the top of the empyreall Heaven and at the bottome of Hell so farre he takes himselfe to be above me but I doubt not ere long his pride shall be abâ—tâ—d and his insolency mortified He shall shortly be made to see that he is not so great a man as he thinks himselfe and if he have in him but one spark of naturall justice he shall confesse he hath triumphed without cause and must be fain to give up all the glory he hath gotten unlawfully Turno tempus erit magno cum optaverit emptum Intactum Pallanta Monsieur de is still your perfect friend and he never writes to me but he speaks of you He is at this present at Venice where he meditates quietly the agitation of all the world besides and where he enjoys the honest pleasures which Italy affords to speculative Philosophers But Sir what mean you by speaking of your teares and of the request you make unto me Doe you not mock me when you pray me to comfort you for the death of your Grandfather who had lived to see so many Families so many Sects so many Nations both to be born and die a man as old as Heresie it selfe the League was younger than he which when the Cardinall of Lorraine first conceived he caused a Book to be printed wherein he advertised France of the conception of this Monster You weep therefore for the losses of another age it is Anchyses or Laertes you weepe for at least it is for a man who did but suffer life and was in a continuall combate with death He should long agoe have been one of the Church Triumphant and therefore you ought to have been prepared for either the losse or the gaine that you have made Monsieur Rembo was not of your humour I send you one of his Letters where you shall see he was as much troubled to comfort himselfe for the life of two Grandmothers that would not die as hee was for the death of a Brother that died too soone I commend your good Nature But I like not your Lamentations which should indeed do him you sorrow for great wrong if they should raise him againe to be in the state in which you lost him It may suffice to tell you that he is much happier than I for he sleepes and I wake and he hath no more commerce with men unreasonable and inhumane and that are but Wolfes to one another You know I have cause enough to speak thus but out of this number I except certain choice persons and parâ—â—cularly your self whom I know to be vertuous and whose I am Sir Most humble c. At Paris 3. Dec. 1628. The Letter of Peter Bembo to Hercules Strotius A Vias ambas meas effoetas deploratasque foeminas jam prope centum aunorum mulieres mibi fata reliquerunt unicum fratrem meum juvenem ac florentem abstulerunt spem solatia meaâ— Quamborem quo in maerore fim facile potes existimare Heu me miserum Vale Id. Jan. 1504. Venetijs Another to him LETTER XXIV SIR if it had not
not that my unfortnatenesse makes the easiest that are to become unpossible I see no reason you neede to imploy your whole forces about this matter there needes no more but onely the motion of your will and a light impression of your credit with to give it all the solidity and lustre I desire I should not seeme to understand the tearmes of the last Letter he did me the honour to write unto me if I had not yet some little hope left and a kinde of satisfaction in my owne Conscience Yet I alledge to him no merit of my part but much generousnesse of his nor speake of any services of mine to recompense him but of his goodnesse that prevents them and subjects not it selfe to the rigours of ordinary justice This my Lord is all the right I alledge for my selfe and all the title upon which I ground my pretensions but now I leave following it my selfe and put it wholly into your hands a place perhaps to which my ill fortune her selfe will beare a respect but if she shall be opposite to your desire and prevaile above your favour yet at least I shall thereby know the force of destinie to which all other forces give place and which cannot be mastered by any force nor corrected by any industry but yet it shall not hinder me from resting well satisfied seeing I shall in this receive much more from you than I am denyed by him it I hold any part in your grace favour which is already my comfort against whatsoever ill successe shall happen It sufficeth me to be happy with this kinde of happinesse which is more deare to me than all the happinesse the Court can give me being a man no more ambitious than I am My Lord Your c. At Balzac 25. Decemb. 1634. To my Lord the Bishop of Poitiers LETTER XXVII MY Lord although Monsieur de hath promised me to give you assurance of the continuation of my service yet I cannot forbeare to adde these few lines to his testimony and to tell you that which I tell to all the world that your vertue is a transcendent far above the abilities and carriage of our age It is a match for Antiquity in its greatest purenesse and severity When the Camilli and the Scipio's were not in employment they reposed themselves and took their ease as you doe and when I consider sometimes the sweet life you lead at Dissay I conclude that all the imployments of the Palace and all the intricacies of the Court are not worth one moment of a wise mans idlenesse It is well knowne that from your childhood you have despised Vanity even in her kingdome and that in an ayre where she had attractives able to draw the oldest and most reluctant spirits All the pomp of Rome hath not so much as given you one temptation and you are so confirmed in a generous contempt that if good Fortune her selfe should come to looke you out you would scarce goe out of your Closet to meet her in your Chamber This is that I make such reckoning of in your Lordship and which I preferre before all your other qualities for those how great soever they be are yet but such as are common with many base and mercenary Doctors whereas this force and courage are things that cannot be acquired in the noyse and dust of Schooles You found not these excellent qualities in the Vatican Library nor yet got them by reading of old Manuscripts you owe them indeed to Monsieur your deceased Farther that true Knight without spot or wrinkle equally skilfull in the art of warre and in affaires of peace and that was the Heros of Muret of Scaliger and of Saint Mart. I propose not a lesse object for my worship than they did neither indeed is it lesse or lesse aeligious than theirs was and though you did not love me as you doe and though you should denounce warre against me and become head of a faction to seek my ruine yet I should not for all that forbeare to revere so rare a vertue as yours is but should still remaine My Lord Your c At Balzac 4 May. 1630. To Monsieur Guyet LETTER XXVIII SIR I feare not much to lose a thing I esteem but little but holding your friendship in that account I do if I should have lost it I should never see day of comfor more you must not therefore think it strange that I was moved with the Alarum that was given me for though I know my selfe to be innocent yet I conceived my unfortunateness to be such that I may give credit to any bad news Now that Monsieur de hath quieted the agitation of my mind and hath assur'd me of your love I cannot forbear to signifie unto you the joy I take telling you withall that so I may preserve a friend of your merit and worth I do not greatly care for loving him â—hat will leave me There is little to be seen amongst men but malice and weakness and even of good men the greatest part is scarce sound this is a cause why a firm constant spirit as yours is is of wonderfull use in society it is no small benefit to them that are wearied and overtoyled as I am to have a person to rest upon that cannot fall There is need of courage to maintain a friendship indeed of prudence to performe the meanest duty of life t is nothing worth to have a sound will if the understanding be defective it is to no purpose that one makes vows and sacrifices Nil vota furentâ—m Nil delubra juvant he complains without cause of his spleen and his other inferiour parts this is to accuse innocents the evil no doubt comes from a higher place it is the brain that is cause of all the disorder The knowledge I have hereof makes me have compassion of him and excuse in a Dr. of threescore years old those base shifting tricks that are not pardonable in a Schollar of eighteen Any man but my self would call his action a cowardice a treason but I love to sweeten my grief as much as I can cannot become an enemy at an instant pass from one extremity to another without making a little stay by the way I honour still the memory of our former friendship and cannot wish ill to a man to whom I have once wisht well but this is too much of complaining quarrelling Do me this favour I beseech you to make choise of something in your study for a consolation of my solitude I have already the Encomium of Monsieur the Admirall de la Vâ—let but I would fain have the Epitaph of my Lady the Dutchess of Espâ—â—non and those admirable Elegies you shewed me once In quibus tamâ—e Tibullo similis quam Tibullus sibi I intreat you to deliver them to Monsieur who will see them safely delivered to me if you please we will use him hereafter as our common correspondent who knowing me to
and that he hath been talking a song houre yet so little heed is taken of him that none will believe there is any man in the Pulpit Before he comes to the Ave Maâ—ia all his Auditors are out of the Church and he may call them Apostataes from the Word of God and Fugitives from the Church yet with all he can say he shall never make one of them to come back I have not these two yeares written thus much with my own hand it is to me as one of Hercules labours and can you then doubt how much I would be willing to do to do you service I kiss the hands of all the Family which you see and which I honour exceedingly and am Sir Your c. At Balzac 10 Feb. 1633. Another to him LETTER XL. SIR I love you better than I thought since you parted from hence I have had a number of Alarums for you and though I stand in covert yet that keeps me not from the foule weather of your voyage But I hope by this time you are upon returning and that shortly we shall â—it by the fires side and heare you tell your adventures of Bcausse and of Mantelan Whatsoever Monsieur de have said unto you when you tooke leave of him I doe not thinke that in all the whole Discourse there can one passage be found that is subject to any bad interpretation if it be considered as a member depending upon the body and not as a piece that is broken off There may perhaps be found some proposition a little bold but never to go so farre as rashnesse the Antecedents and the Consequents so temper it that if a man will not be too witty in another mans intentions he can never make any doubt of mine It was never intended you know but onely to prove a Monarchy to be the best forme of Government and the Catholique Church to be the onely Spouse of Christ Neither yet doe I write so negligently but that I am ready to give a reason of that I write and am able to defend my opinions against those particular persons that oppugne them for as for the soveraigne authority you can witnesse for me with what humility I submit my selfe unto it The day after your departure Monsieur de came to Balzac whom I kept with me three whole dayes I never saw man lesse interessed lesse ambitious lesse dazled with the splendour of the Court and to speak generally better cured of all popular diseases By this I come to know the noblenesse and even the soveraignty of reason when it is well schooled and instructed we need not mount up to heaven to finde cause of scorn in the littlenesse of the earth the study of wisdome will teach it as well A wise man counts all things to be below him Palaces to him appear but Cottages and Scepters but Baubles it pities him to see that which is called the greatnesse and fortune of Princes and from the heighth of his spirit Il void comme fourmis marcher nos legions Daus ce petit amas de poussiere de bove Dons nostâ—e vanito fait tant de regions I have at last found the Letter you required of me which I now send you by this Post our good father hath taken a copy of it and saith it is fit to be kept for an eternall monument in our house and addes moreover that Erasmus never had so much honour done him by the Sorbon which instead of condemning my divinity hath given a faire testimony in praise of my eloquence for so he pleaseth to call the little ability I have in writing for it is his custome to make choice of very noble termes for expressing of very vulgar qualities For your selfe Sir you know it very well and I intreat you to advertise our other friends that know it not that all this testimony and all this honour that is done me is happened to me by a meer mistaking I had satisfied the desire of the Sorbon long before it if I had understood they desired any satisfaction from me but two Editions of my Book coming forth at one time my charitable neighbours in my absence delivered the Sorbone the lesse corrected Copy in which indeed my proposition was not so fully cleared nd unfolded as was fit but never told them that in the other Copy I had cleane taken away all colour of wrangling and justified before-hand that wherein I imagined they could finde any thing to say against me I expect to heare by the next messenger of your coming to Paris and am with all my heart Sir Your c. At Balzac 25 Jan. 1632. Clarissimo Balzacio Facultas Theologiae Pariensiensis S. REdditae sunt nobis ad Calendas Aprilis abs te Literae vir clarissime omnibus quidem gratis simae non eo solum nomine quod multam in ordinom nostrum observantiam prae se ferrent sed etiam vel maxime quod propeâ—ssissimam tuam voluntatem immutandi ca quae in Principe tuo offendere mentes Christianas possent Hunc in librum inquirendi fama quae nec te latere potuit non tam occasionem nobis quam necessitatem attulit In quo sane uti nulla nisâ— disertissimo sic incogitanti quaedam excidisse deprehensa sunt ex corum relatione quibus recensendi ejusdem delegata provincia fuerat Praetipas eaque maxime instituti nostri huic Epistolae subnectemus quae si judicabantur minus ad orthodoxa doctrinae amussim quadrare aequum tamen pro Christiana charitate ac dignitate tua duximus ut omnem judicii aequitatem amicae monitionis humanitas praecederet quo tu ipse operi tuo emendando quaqua operam dares I stud vero quam pre voto nostro successerie ' vel ex â—o intelleximus quod tua ipse sponte in idem cosilium conspeÌ„raverâ—s docilitatem facultati nostrae ad id tua Epistola pollicitus Quad maxime tibi gratulamur neque velimus tamen in illud incumbas ordmis nostri duntaxat authoritate viotus uti bencvole recipis sed ipsius veritatis cui nunquam faelicius triumphant ingenia quam dum cedunt summissis praesertim per religionis obsequium armis quorum usus quantum subsidit ad decertandum conferret tantum non posset afferre impedimento ad victoriam siquidem hoc in genere Vincere nisi victi non possumus Ne tu etiam talem deinceps debebis Modestiae tuae gloriam Cujus laude non minor inter Christianos audies quam inter mortales Facundia audiisti hactenus ejusdem merito lubentissimos laudatores habebis quos alià s multa urgente querimonia officii ratio coegisset vel invitos esse Censores De Mandato D.D. Decani Magistrorum Sacrae Facultatis Theologiae Parisiensis Ptt. Bouuot Apud Sorbonam Anno Christi 1632. Another to him LETTER XLI SIR my Philosophy is not of so little humanity but that I grieved exceedingly at the reading of your Letter and
then to be despaired of when they throw their Medicines on the ground and account of Potions as of Poysonings It is not therefore our fault if they be not cured we have active power enough to work but it must be upon a matter that is apt disposed I expect hereupon a Decree from your politicks and remain Your c. At Balzac 1 July 1635. To Monsieur D'Espernon Marshall of the Kings Armies LETTER XLVI SIR my complements are very rare and I take no great care for preserving your friendship I account you so true of your word that I cannot doubt of having your love seeing you have done me the honour to let me have your promise It is to no purpose to solicite Judges that cannot be corrupted it is enough for procuring their favour that the cause be good You see therefore I doe not much trouble my selfe to commend mine unto you and I present my selfe so seldome before you that if you had not an excellent memory you had certainly forgot me long ago I pray you not to do me good offices for knowing that you let slip no occasion of doing good I may be sure to have my part of your good deeds though you have none of my prayers Your new Acquests at the Court make you not leave that you have on this side the Loyre your friends that are alwayes with you take not up all your heart there is some place left for your friends farther off of which number I am one and more in love Sir with the contemplative life than ever I am alwayes under ground and buried with my trees and they must be very strong cords and very violent commandements that should remove me yet I am contented to give my thoughts a liberty and my spirit is often in the place where you are and my absence is not so idly bestowed but that I can make you a reckoning of it I speak to you in this manner because I know you are no hater of delightfull knowledges and have an excellent taste to judge of things Though by profession you be a Souldier yet I refuse you not for a Judge in our peacable difference being well assured there are not many Doctours more accomplisht or of a sounder judgâ—ment than your selfe This quality is no opposite to true valour the Romanes whose discipline you seek to reestablish used to lead with them the Muses to War and in the tumult of their Armies left alwayes place for these quiet excercises Brutus read Polybius the night before the battell at Phlilippi and his Uncle was at his book he very houre before he meant to die Never therefore fear doing ill when you follow the example of such excellâ—nt Authors none will ever blame you for imitating the Romanes unless perhaps the Crabates or other Enemies as well of Humanity as of France But to be thus blamed by Barbarians is an infallible mark of merit for they know no points of vertue but such as are wild savage and imagine that roaring and being furious are far more noble things than speaking and reasoning I leave them to their goodly imaginations and come to tell you that though you Letter to my Sister be dated from the Army in Germany yet it is eloquent enough to come from the Academy of M. the Cardinall it neither smells of Gunpowder nor of Le pais de adieu pas I know by certaine marks I have observed in it that your Books are part of your Bâ—ggage and I finde nothing in it that is worthy of blame but onely the excessive praises you bestow upon me and if you were not a stout champion and able to maintain it with your sword you would certainely ere this have had the lie given you a thousand times for praising me so I should be very sorry to be a cause of so many petty quarrells and so unworthy of your courage a Forraign war hath need of your spirit make not therefore any Civil for my sake I desire no such violent proofs of your affection it serves my turn that you love me quietly and if you so please secretly too to the end that our friendship being hidden may lie in covert from injuries and that possessing it without pomp I may enjoy it without envy I reckon it alwayes amongst my solidest goods and will be sure never to lose it if perfect faithfulness will serve to keep it and if it will suffice to be as I most passionately am Sir Your c. At Balzac 4 Jan. 1635. To Monsieur de Reussines LETTER XLV MY deare Brother I have upon this last occasion received nothing from you but the offices I expected I know you to be jusâ— and generous and one that will alwayes religiously pay whatsoéver you owe either to bloud or friendship yet this hinders me not from being obliged to you and to your good Birth for it This hath bestowed a friend upon me which I never took pains either to look out or to make it is a present of Nature which I should have taken if she had given me my choyce I desire you to believe that I never stood lesse in neede of comfort than now I oppose nothing against the rage of a thousand adversaries but my scorn I am Armor of proof against all the tales from the Suburbs St. Honoré and from all the Libells of the street St. Iaques They increase daily in sight and if the heat of their spirits do not abate there will shortly be a little Library of follies written against me But you never yet heard of such a gravity as I have nor of a mind that could take such rest in the midst of storms and tempests as I do and this I owe to Philosophy under whose covert I shelter my self it is not only higher than mountains where we see it rain and hail below us but it is stronger also than a Fortress where we may stand out of danger make mouths at our enemies All that hurts me in the warre of is that which concernes the interest of others it grieves me extreamly that his cruelty should leave me and fall upon my friends I wish I could have bought out the three lives that touch the honour of with a third Volumn of injuries done to my selfe and where no body else should have any part and I may truly say that this is the onely blow which that perfidious enemy hath given me that goes to my heart and the onely of all his offences that I have felt I intreat you to let my friend know of my grief and to make sure unto me this rare personage by all the cares and good offices your courtesie can devise His vertue ought to be inviolable to detraction but detraction will not spare vertue it selfe but takes a delight in violating the best things I have reason to place him in this rank and considering him as one of the most accomplisht works of Nature I must needes consider withall that Nature it selfe is
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
J professe such an austere honestie and goodnesse that is not of the present times J would take a pleasure to be a Companion of my friend in exile and be his fellow prisoner J would runne under his Ruine to bear it off when J could not help him to stand fast and subsist Your Fortune being so well established as it is doth not require any such proof and tryal of fidelity But it is certain that you cannot desire of me any experiments of love so hazardous but I would willinglie undergoe them with pleasure for your sake and testifie unto you that I am beyond comparison more then all my Informers Sir Your c. Balzac 7. June 1633. To Monsieur de Serizay LET. XXXII SIR There is no way to beare any longer with the contumacy of your silence I have sent this Messenger of purpose to make you speak and to tell you though with some distaste to you that you have lost your memorie and that is no lesse then the third part of your soul So that there remain but the understanding and the will wherein I have perhaps some nook and seat You have promised me wonders and performed just nothing you did owe me a visit immediatly after your voyage to Sainctes and since that you might have gone to Rome and come back again You see here great cause of discontent neverthelesse I am so facile that if you would but bereave your selfe of the pleasures of the Court for three or four dayes I would seal you a general Pardon for all that is past and account you as honest a man as ever I did before While I expect this reasonable satisfaction which you cannot denie me be pleased to acquaint my Lord the Duke of Rochefoucaut that Monsieur de Nantes is extreamlie troubled that he cannot receive the honor which he would willinglie pay him by comming to visit him in these parts He expects this morning some tidings from my Lord the Duke of Espernon for to render himself where he shall appoint him to finde him and I look upon him as upon a blessing which I expect to lose everie moment If he were not preparing to Masse he would gnifie unto him his discontents himself and the earnest desire he hath to make his Son one of the Luminaries of our Church He findes the businesse so for advanced that there will be no great difficultie to effect the rest and that his Extraction is so happie that a little cultivation will produce rare and excellent fruits Do me the favor as to deliver to Monsieur his eldest Son the Panegyricke framed for the King of Sueden together with the Letter which I wrote the last Summer to poor This is not to recommend unto him the memorie of her I know that she is infinitely deare unto him nor to put him into any affright for men of his sort do apprehend nothing but dishonor I desire only that he should see that my poor judgement doth sometimes jump with good understandings and that I had the honor to be his Rivall in one passion that he hath harbored If you do not send me by my Man the Discourse of garnished with Notes and Commentaries I shall have a new cause of quarrel and do not you think that I betake my self to Monsieur for them this is an Oracle indeed that is alwayes readie to answer but I feare me that you have not alwayes devotion enough to consult with him Adieu Sir I am absolutelie Balzac 30. May 1633. Your c. To Monsieur Habert Abbat of Cerizy LET. XXXIII SIR I believe that you will not be offended with a Petition that this Bearer shall commence unto you in my behalf Your goodnesse carrieth you so far at to love your Persecutors and you have entertained so favourablie my first importunities that I stand not now in feare of making motions If you had given me the repulse at first you had taught me the vertue of discretion and provided better for your own quietnesse But the force of example is dangerous the evil doth suddenlie insinuate and growe familiar and treads oft that way which it was wont to measure So that I think that I have now some colour of justice to torment you and it is habitual unto me to abuse a thing when I have not found difficultie enough to make me use it with moderation I shall continue Sir an importunate Begger till you forget to be generous and do no doubt but I knowe how to make use of a good so diffusive and beneficial as in your Amitie You shall travel to day for the good of my estate because there is a Councel and to morrow for the good of my soul because there is a Sermon that I may acknowledge you my friend for my spiritual as well as temporal good and that you may receive my thanks both in this and the other world That which you are to pronounce with gracefulnesse of action and cannot well be communicated in writing hath notwithstanding alreadie given me infinite delight upon paper I have never seen our Mysteries illustrated with so much light of eloquence nor Reason so succesfullie imployed in the service of Faith nor Christian Moralitie better season'd to make it relish well in profane palates But in this particular I would fain be lesse beholding to you that I might have the more freedom and be able to assure you without any supposition of engagement or sign of acknowledgement that I admire all your Muses universallie both the politer and the severer ones both those that can compose Hymnes and Anthems and sing the praises of our Saviour Christ and those that can resolve Problems and deal in Christian learning I bid you good day and remain with all my soul Sir Your c. Paris 29 April 1636. To Monsieur De Gaillard LET. XXXIV SIR Be of good courage and start not at the opening of my packet I do assure you beforehand that it is not my Ghost that talks to you and that the Letter that I write unto you doth not come from the other world The rumor which was scattered concerning my death hath not killed me and I am yet since it is the pleasure of God a witness of his works and an Adorer of his power I have ere this received the alarm of the like newes but I am no longer credulous to dreams and presages my soul doth not labor with those popular infirmities And I do consent with that Grecian that all the wishes of enemies all the imprecations of Poets and all the false bruits of Fame are not able to bring on our destiny one houre the sooner There is a Gentleman in Gascoigne who is chronicled to have been slain in the battle of Yury and he is yet verie well notwithstanding and means to live long I am Sir of the same humor too and confesse to you that I do not much hate my life though I have little cause to love it Your Stationers indeed did not believe
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
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
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