have appeased the spirits of an incensed multitude when by your powerfull reasons you have induced Christian Princes to set the Native Countrey of Jesus Christ at liberty to undertake the Holy War when you have gained whole Nations to the Church as well by the force of your Example as by that of your Doctrine who is of ability to pay you the reputation which you in all right deserve and where shall you finde so excellent a witness for all the marvellous Acts of your life as I have of my watchings and studies I cannot chuse but reiterate this and my joy is over-just to be concealed Is it possible this great wit and high spirit which hath been imployed even from his first youth in perswading Princes in giving instructions to Embassadours and hath been listned unto by old men who have seen four Reigns Is it possible I say this man should value me on whose approbation all enemies agree nor is there among all men a contrary party or diversity of belief in this point If I had a purpose to disquiet the repose of this Kingdom I would seek for the consent of slack spirits and I should stand in need in my favour of all sorts of men were I to study for reputation in a popular State but truely I never affected confusion or disorder and my designs have ever aimed at the pleasing of a few For since you have declared your self in favour as he likewise hath done for whom France at this day envieth Italy and since you carry after you the most solid part of the Court I am content to let the rest run astray with Turks and Infidels who make the greater number of mankinde Yet my Lord I cannot think that any hereafter will be so far in love with himself or so obstinate in his own opinion as not to be a Convertite by the onely reading the Letter you honoured me with and who in conclusion will not subscribe to your great judgement And if it be certain that truth it self could not be strong enough against you there is no question but that side whereon you two shall agree ought to be universally followed For my part my Lord let all men say what they will I fix my self with closed eys there and what enemies soever the reputation you have allowed me procure me yet knowing your abilities and what you are I will be no farther solicitous for mine own interest or future benefit since it is become your cause I am My Lord Your most humble and most obedient servant BALZAC The 10. of March 1624. To the Cardinal of Richelieu from BALZAC LETTER III. My Lord I Humbly intreat you to be pleased by these presents to permit me to confirm unto you the assurance of my most humble service and that you would allow me to crave some news from you It is the onely thing wherein I am now curious and which in the very depth of my retiredness obligeth me to reflect sometimes upon worldly affairs But happen what can I am most assured you will remain constant even amidst publick ruins and that Fortune cannot bereave you of those advantages she never gave you Yet could I wish that your life were somewhat more calm and less glorious And I suppose that Artimiza's goodness having so great Affinity to what is infinite which is of power to procure love even amidst the most savage beasts doth in right deserve to obtain truce and repose among reasonable Creatures It is not in us to be Authours of hereafter nor do our wishes rule the event of humane affairs But surely if there be any Justice in Heaven whereof there is no doubt and if God have an eye to worldly matters we must believe the tears of upright persons shall not be shed in vain or that your Queen shall wax old in her misfortunes yet at the least since our cogitations be still within our own compass and we being not forbidden to hope well let us make the best use we may of this small portion of Liberty yet remaining The virtue she hath hitherto made use of in resisting her afflictions will happily one day serve to moderate her felicities And if God strook a certain Woman with suddain death for that she should have been seated in the place he destinated to this great Princess he surely will not suffer that man to live long who hath so highly injured her However my Lord it is great honour unto you not to have failed her in her afflictions and to have under-valued all worldly Prerogatives to be unfortunate with her I know that herein you satisfie your self with the testimony of a clear conscience and that it is not so much for opinion of men you undertake Worthy actions as for your own private satisfactian Nor are you a little to comfort your self in that at this present you are praised even by your very enemies and to see your resolutions redoubtable to those who have great Armies on foot and the chief forces of the State under their Command I would say more did I not fear you might suppose I had some private design in my Discourse or seek hereby to prepare you to receive some kinde of importunity from me But I most humbly beseech your Lordship to be confident that I being of free condition am little acquainted with flattery and that I am not so given over to gain but that notwithstanding you were still in Avignion I would ever as really as at this hour remain My Lord Your most humble and most affectionate servant BALZAC The 15. of May 1623. To the Cardinal of Richelieu from BALZAC LETTER IV. My Lord WEre I not well acquainted with my own insufficiency I might well be possessed with no small vanity upon the Letter you did me the Honour to write unto me and might well imagine my self to be some other thing than I was the day before I received it But knowing it is no other than a meer favour you pleased to afford me I will not flatter my self in my good fortune nor lessen the Obligation due unto you in presuming to merit the same If Virtue required any recompence out of her self she would not receive it from other mouth than yours and your reputation is at this day so Just and General as it is become a Verity wherein the Wise agree with the Vulgar I do therefore account my self very happy to be reputed of by a Person who is able to give a value to things of themselves worthless and I attribute so much to your Judgement that I will no longer hold any mean opinion of my self lest therein I should contradict you Truely my Lord very difficultly will my parts any way answer your expectation The time my Favour affoordeth me for rest is so short I can hardly imploy it to other purpose than to complain of its cruelty I have enough to do to live and to make that good I keep my self as carefully as though I were
LETTERS OF Mounsieur de BALZAC 1.2.3 and 4th parts Translated out of French into English BY Sr RICHARD BAKER Knight and others Now collected into one Volume with a methodicall table of all the letters LONDON Printed for John Williams and Francis Eaglesfield At the Crown and Marigold in S. Pauls Churchyard 1654. LETTERS OF Mounseur de BALZAC Translated into English by Sr. RICHARD BAKER and others LONDON Printed for John Williams and Francis Eâ—glesfeild at the Crown and Marigold in St. Pauls Church-yard 1655. To the Honourable the Lord OF NEVVBURGE ONE OF HIS MAJESTIES most honourable Privie Councell and Chancellour of the Dutchy of Lancaster MY Lord I may perhaps be thought besides the boldnesse to be guilty of absurdity in offering a Translation to him who so exactly understandeth the Originall one who if he had a mind to see how it would look in English were able to set a much fairer gloss upon it then I have done yet my Lord this absurdity may have a good colour for it may not be unpleasing to you to see your own perfection in the glasse of anothers imperfection seeing even the best Diamonds seem to take a pleasure in having of foiles Besides I have my choice of another colour for being to to passe a world of hazard in the censure of the world I am willing to passe the pikes at first and account this done having once passed yours And towards it my Lord I have two comforts one for the Reader that the Authours gold is so much over weight that though much be lost in the melting yet it holds out weight enough still to make it currant the other for myself that by this meanes I may have a testimony remaining in the world how much I honour you and in how high a degree I most affectionately am Your Lordships humble Servant RICHARD BAKER TO THE LORD CARDINALL OF RICHELIEV My LORD I Here present you Mounsieur Balzac's Letters which may well be termed new ones even after the eighth Edition for though they have long since been in possession of publick favour yet I may justly say this is the first time their Authour hath avouched them The advantagious Judgement you have delivered of him and the ardor wherewith all France hath followed your approbation well deserveth his best endeavours toward the perfectionating so excellent things I have been solicitous to draw him to this labour to the end the world might know that if I be not worthy the share I have in his respects yet that I have at least been wise enough to make right use of my good fortune and to cause it to become serviceable to the glory of my Countrey But truly were he master of his body or did his maladies afford him liberty of spirit he would not suffer any but himself to speak in this cause and his pen performing no slight acts would have consecrated his own labours and the wonders they have produced But since evils have no prefixed time of durance and in that all the good interims which hereafter may befall him are wholly to be imployed in his Book The Prince I esteemed it to small purpose to attend his health in this businesse and that it was now no longer any time to deferre the purging of these curious Letters from such blemishes as ill impressions had left upon them They shall therefore non appear in the parity wherein they were conceived and with all their naturall ornaments Besides I have added divers letters of his not as yet come to light which may serve as a subject of greater satisfaction to all men and be as a recompense of the honour wherewith he hath collected the former And truly my Lord had it been possible to place in the Frontispiece of this Book a more illustrous name then yours or should Mounsieur de Balzac's inclination and mine have been farre from any such intention yet would not the order of things or the law of decency have permitted any other reflection then what I now make I speak not at this present of that dazeling greatnesse whereunto you are elevated nor of that so rare and necessary vertue which rightly to recognize the greatest King on earth hath esteemed himself not to be over able I will only say I had reason to submit an eloquence produced in the shade and formed in solitarinesse to this other eloquence quickned both with voice and action causing you to reign in sovereignity at all assemblies Certainly my Lord you are more powerfull by this incomparable quality then by the authority wherein the King hath placed you The only accent of your voice hath a hidden property to charm all such as hearken unto you none can be possessed with any so wilfull passions who will not be appeased by the reasons you propound and after you have spoken you will at all times remain master of that part of man no way subject to the worlds order and which hath not any dependency upon lawfull power or tyrannicall usurpation This is a truth my Lord as well known as your name and which you so solidly confirmed at the last assembly of the Notables as that in the great diversity of humours and judgements whereof it was composed there was peradventure this only point well resolved on That you are the most eloquent man living This being true I can no way doubt but the perusall of this Book I offer unto you will extraordinarily content you and that you will be pleased to retire thither sometimes to recreate your spirits after agitation and to suspend those great thoughts who have for their object the good of all Europe It is a book my Lord wherein you shall find no common thing but the Title where entertaining some particular person Mounsieur de Balzac reades Lessons to all men and where amidst the beauty of Complements and dexterity of Jeasting he often teacheth of the most sublime point of Philosophy I mean not that wrangling part thereof which rejecteth necessary verities to seek after unprofitable ones which cannot exercise the understanding without provoking passions nor speak of moderation without distemper and putting the soul into disorder But of that whereby Pericles heretofore made himself master of Athens and wherewith Epaminondas raised himself to the prime place of Greece which tempereth the manners of particulars regulateth the obligation of Princes and necessarily bringeth with it the felicity of all States where they command This book will make it apparent even to your enemies that your life hath been at all times equally admirable though not alwayes alike glorious How you have conserved the opinion of your vertue even in the time of your hardest fortunes and how in the greatest fury of the tempest and in the most extreme violence of your affairs the integrity of your actions hath never been reduced to the only testimony of your conscience To conclude It is in this Book my Lord where I suppose you will be pleased to read the
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
troope than as your rivall to strive for precedence Give me leave to live a man that cannot be lost what negligence soever be used in keeping me and remember that the least respected of all my friends is much dearer to me than all Sciences or all Bookes Yet such is my unhappinesse that few of them returne me the like but seeme rather they would make a benefit of my paines and sorrowes Because they see I am persecuted they will make every the least courtesie they doe me to be of great value and set an excessive price upon their friendship because they imagine I stand in need of it But I desire them and you also to take notice that my friendship was never grounded upon any interest but my love is ever without any mercenary designe or hope of benefit If they be not willing to embroyle themselves in my affaires I would have them know I am as unwilling as they they should and if they are not strong enough to defend the truth in publique and when it is opposed at least let them not disavow it when they are in place of safety let them not deny their friend when the storme is over and that there is no longer any danger in confessing him You saw my heart the first time you saw my face you were at that time my Confessour and I have not a sinne that is hidden from you I conceive you are too generous to make advantage of this excesse of freenesse you finde in me and I doe not thinke you so subtile that you would make a shew of discontent for feare least I should beginne first These are subtilities indeed of the country from whence you come but in my opinion very remote from your naturall disposition and you need not make complaints of me to prevent the complaints I might else make of you It is certaine that if I had not equity enough to excuse my friends for things they were not able to perfome I might then perhaps have colour to complaine they performed not their promise but I am one that know there happen a thousand impediments which hinder a man from keeping his word and that every thing that is promised and not done is not presently a violating of faith or a breaking of promise Some have laboured to perswade me that but I never believed any such thing and I could never imagine that you would goe about to build your reputation upon the ruines of the reputation of your friend If any shall make use of such like artifices to doe ill offices betweene you and me I earnestly intreate you to make use of the like remedies to preserve your opinions sound and not to suffer your judgement to be corrupted I take God to witnesse there is nothing in the world more deare unto me than your friendship I make publike and open profession of honouring you I highly esteeme a number of eminent qualities in you both Morall and Intellectuall I have oftentimes shedde teares when I read in your Letters of your griefes all this me thinkes should deserve a little affection and make the Fathers themselves that are my adversaries not take it ill that you should love me especially when they shall know that I passionately am Sir Your c. At Paris 8 Feb. 1631. To Mounsieur de Sainte Marte LETTER XVII SIR I am paid for my paines before hand and looke for no greater recompence than you have already made me My ambition should be very excessive if it were not fully satisfied with your excellent Verses and if I did not thinke my selfe happy to be honoured by a hand which crownes none but Soveraigne heads and travells not but about triumphall Archs and publicke Monuments I have long since knowne that all excellent things grow in your Garden and that the Latine eloquence which is but borrowed by others and a stranger every where else ought with you to be accounted as your patrimony but I knew not till now that this rare quality is accompanied with so perfect a courtesie and that a man so worthy of his name and that addes new glory to that of the great Scaevola could admire any other mens workes besides his owne I will doe all that possibly I can to deserve this your favourable judgement and not to make you sorry for being deceived to my advantage but howsoevers if I be not able to preserve your good opinion by my merit I hope at least to merit your favour by my affection and to make you see that I truely am Your c. At Balzac 2. Sept. 1630. To Monsieur D' Argenton Councellor of the King and Master of Requests in Ordinary LETTER XVIII SIR having taken the paines that I have done I cannot altogether disvalue my worke yet I am not a little glad to be confirmed in my opinion by a man of your worth and that my labour is not unpleasing to the soundest judgement The second censure you make of it assures me of the integrity of the first seeing I should be too presumptuous to believe you could be deceived twice together But let us stay there I beseech you and think not I will ever entertain the vanity you put upon me I neither pretend to instruct the world nor take upon me to teach you in any thing it is enough for me that I can finde wise men some recreation and can lay things before your eyes which you know already better than my selfe I may perhaps be some help to your memory and refresh your old Idaeas but to adde any thing to your knowledge and impart to you any new Doctrine this requires qualities that are not to be found in me I rather hope to be much bettered in knowledge by you and make account to account you hereafter for one of my Oracles Prepare your selfe therefore to be persecuted with Questions and look to receive importunities from me in ordinary Thus I use my friends when they are abler men than my selfe and this advantage which is not great is accompanied with this incovenience which is not small You shall beginne to finde it at our next meeting but in the meane time I intreat you to believe that what bad designe soever I have against you yet I meane perfectly to be Sir Your c. At Balzac 17. Septemb. 1631. To the most reverend Father Leon Preacher of the Carmelites LETTER XIX MY most reverend Father you doe me too much good at once your friendship is of great worth being alone and you send it to me accompanied it brings with it an infinite number of excellent things and resembles that happy River which leaves plenty in all places where it passeth The Present I have received comes from such a fruitfull Vine it is not a vaine shew of magnificence which gives onely a light satisfaction to the eyes but I finde it essentiall and solid and any spiâ—it that is capable of speculation may well finde nourishment enough for a long time in â—he
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
that you are recovered yet have I still an apprehension of what alteration each hour may bring upon you Ought it then to be in the fits of your Feaver and in your inquietude for want of sleep that you understand these publick acclamations and the due praises you have purchased Shall the Senses suffer and the Spirits rejoyce or they continue tortured amidst these Triumphs or that you at once perform two contrary actions and at the same time have need as well of moderation as patience If Virtue could be miserable or if that Sect which acknowledgeth no other evil but pain nor any greater good than pleasure had not been generally condemned the Divine providence had received complaints from all parts of this Kingdom nor had there been an honest man known who for your sake had not found something farther to be desired in the conduct of this World But my Lord you understand much better than I do that it is onely touching the felicity of beasts we are to believe the body and not concerning ours residing onely in the supreme part of our selves and which is as smally sensible of those disorders committed below her as those in Heaven can be offended by the tempests of the Air or vapours of the Earth This being true God forbid that by the estate of your present constitution I should judge of that of your condition or that I should not esteem him perfectly happy who is superlatively wise You may please to consider that howbeit you have shared with other men the infirmities of humane nature yet the advantage resteth soly on your side since upon the matter there is onely some small pain remaining with you instead of an infinity of errours passions and faults falling to our lots Besides I am confident that the term of your sufferings is well nigh expired that the times hereafter prepares right solide and pure contentments for you and a youth after its season as you are become old before your time The King who hath use of your long living makes no unprofitable wishes Heaven hears not the prayers that the Enemies of this State offer We know no successour that is able to effect what you have not yet finished and it being true that our Forces are but the Arms of your head and that your Counsels have been chosen by God to re-establish the affairs of this age we ought not to be apprehensive of a loss which should not happen but to our successours It shall then be in your time my Lord I hope that oppressed Nations will come from the Worlds end to implore the protection of this Crown that by your means our Allies will repair their losses and that the Spaniard shall not be the sole Conquerour but that we shall prove the Infranchizers of the whole earth In your time I trust the Holy Sea shall have her opinions free nor shall the inspirations of the Holy Ghost be oppugned by the artifice of our Enemies resolutions will be raised worthy the ancient Italy for defence of the common cause To conclude it will be through your Prudence my Lord that there shall no longer be any Rebellion among us or Tyranny among men that all the Cities of this Kingdom shall be seats of assurance for honest men that novelties shall be no farther in request save onely for colours and fashions of Attire that the people will resign Liberty Religion and the Common-wealth into the hands of superiours and that out of law-full government and loyall obedience there will arise that felicity Politicians search after as being the end of civile life My hope is my Lord that all this will happen under your sage conduct and that after you have setled our repose and procured the same for our Allies you shall enjoy your good deeds in great tranquility and see the estate of those things endure whereof your self have been a principal Authour All good men are confident these blessed events will happen in your age and by your advice As for me who am the meanest among those who justly admire your Virtues I shall not I hope prove the slackest in the expression of your Merits Since therefore they of right exact a general acknowledgement if I should fail in my particular contribution I were for ever unworthy the Honour I so ambitiously aspire unto the heighth whereof is to be esteemed Your Lordships most humble and most obedient servant BALZAC To the Lord Bishop of Air. LETTER VIII My Lord IF at the first sight you know not my Letter and that you desire to be informed who writes unto you It is one more old-like than his Father and as over-worn as a Ship having made three voyages to the Indies and who is no other thing than the Relicks of him whom you saw at Rome In those days I sometimes complained without cause and happily there was then no great difference between the health of others and my infirmity Howsoever be it that my imagination is crazed or that my present pain doth no longer admit of any comparison I begin to lament the Feaver and Scyatica as lost goods and as pleasures of my youth now past See here to what terms I am reduced and how as it were I live if it may be called living to be in a continual contestation with death True it is there is not sufficient efficacy in all the words whereof this World makes use to express the miseries I indure they leave no place either for the Physicians skill or the sick mans patience nor hath Nature ordained any other remedies for the same save onely poison and precipices But I much fear least I suffer my self to be transported with pain or indure it less Christianly than beseemeth me being a witness of your Virtue and having had the means to profit my self by your Example My Lord it is now time or never I subdue this wicked spirit which doth forcibly transport my will and that the old Adam obey the other Yet doth it not a little grieve me to be indebted to my miserie for my Souls health and that I much desire it were some other more noble consideration than nessitie should cause me to become an honest man But since the means to save us are bestowed upon us and that we chuse them not it is fitting that reason convince our sensibilities causing us to agree to what is otherwise distastefull unto us At the worst we must at all times confess that we cannot be said to perish when we are safely cast on shore by some Shipwrack and it may be if God did not drive me as he doth out of this life I should never dream of a better I will refer the rest to be related unto you at your return from Italy with purpose to lay open my naked Soul unto you together with my thoughts in the same simplicity they spring in me you are the onely Person from whom I expect relief and I hold my self richer in the possession of your
the corruption of this Age wherein well nigh all Spirits revolt from the Faith cannot be drawn to believe any truth to be greater than what he hath understood from his Nurse or Mother If in what concerneth not Religion I have sometimes had my private sence and opinion I do with my very heart leave the same to the end to reconcile my self with the Vulgar and least I should appear an enemy to my Countrey for a slight word or matter of small importance If φφφφ had held himself to this Maxim he might securely have lived among men nor had he been prosecuted with all extreamity as the most savage of all beasts But he rather chose to make a Tragical end than to expect a death wherewith the World was unacquainted or to execute onely ordinary actions So far as I can learn or if the report which passeth be current he had a conceit he might one day prove to be that false Prophet wherewith the declining age of the Church is threatned and though he be but of mean extraction and poor fortunes he was notwithstanding so presumptuous as to imagine himself to be the man who is to come with armed forces to disturb the quiet of consciences and for whom the infernal Ministers keep all the Treasures yet hidden in the earths entrails So long as he contented himself in committing onely humane faults writing as yet with an untainted Pen I often told him his Verses were not passable and that he was in the wrong to esteem himself an understanding man But he perceiving that the rules I propounded to him for bettering his abilities to be over-sharp and severe for him and finding small hope of arriving whether I desired to conduct him he perhaps thought best to seek out some other way to bring himself into a credit at Court hoping of a mean Poet to become a mighty Prophet So that as it is generally reported after he had perverted a number of silly Spirits and long shewed himself in the throng of the ignorant multitude he in conclusion did as one who should cast himself into a bottomless pit on purpose to gain the reputation of being an admirable Jumper My Lord you remember I doubt not what our joynt opinion hath been of such like persons and the weakness you shewed there was in the principles of their wicked Doctrine Now truely how extravagant soever my Spirit hath been I have yet ever submitted the same to the Authority of GODS Church and to the consent of Nations and as I have always held that a single drop of water would more easily corrupt then the whole Ocean So have I ever assured my self that particular opinions could never be either so sound or sollid as the general Tenets A silly man who hath no further knowledge of himself than by the relations of others who is at his wits end and wholly confounded in the consideration or reflection upon the meanest works of Nature who after the revolution of so many Ages is not able to assign the cause of a certain Rivers overflow nor of the intervales or good days of a Tertian Ague How dare he presume to speak confidently of that Infinite Majesty in whose presence the Angels themselves cover their faces with their Wings and under whom the very Heavens crouch even to the Earths lowest concavities There is no other thing remaining for us save the onely glory of Humility and Obedience within the limits whereof we ought to contain our selves And since it is most certain that Humane reason reacheth not to so high a pitch as to attain the perfection of Knowledge we ought instead of disputing or questioning points of Religion to rest satisfied in the adoration of the Mysteries for doubtless if we strive to enter further thereinto or search for a thing utterly unknown to all Phylosophy and concealed from the Sages of this World we shall by such prophane curiosity gain onely the dazeling of our eys and confusion of our sences God by the light of his Gospel hath revealed unto us divers Truths whereof we were utterly ignorant but he reserveth for us far greater Mysteries which we shall never comprehend but onely in that Kingdom which he hath prepared for his chosen Servants and by the onely vision of his Face In the mean time to the end to augment the merit of our Faith and the more to perfectionate our Piety his pleasure is that Christians should become as blinde Lovers and that they have not any other desires or hopes but for those things above the reach of their understandings and which they can no way comprehend by Natural reason So soon as the time you have prefixed me shall be expired and the Prime-roses make the Spring appear I will not fail to wait upon you and diligently to address my self to the collection of your grave and important Discourses and to become an honest man by hearing since that is the Sence appointed for the apprehension of Christian virtues and whereby the Son of God was conceived and his Kingdom established among men But it is needless to use any artifice or that you paint the place of your abode in so glorious colours thereby to invite me to come For though you preached in the Desart or were you hidden in such a corner of the World where the Sun did onely shine upon the steril Sands and steep Rocks you well know I should esteem my self happy where you are Your Company being of power to make either a prison or proscription pleasing unto me and wherein I finde the Loover and the whole Court will add to the description you have made of Air divers beauties which Geographers have not hitherto observed as being far greater than others though more secret Those Mountains which will not allow France and Spain to be one mans and under which the Rain and Thunder are framed will appear to me more huge than they formerly did when I first saw them your waters which heretofore cured divers diseases will even raise the dead if you once bless them and doubtless this people always bred up to bear Arms and who as the Fire and Iron is onely destinated for the use of War hath ere now mollified their fierce humour by the moderation of your milde conduct For my part Sir I make account to become a new man under your hands and to receive a second Birth from you Truely it would be a thing right happy to me and in it self famous if the like Spiritual health proceeding from the garments and shadows of the Apostles might happen unto me by approaching so holy a person and if being your workmanship and the Son of your Spirit I should instantly resemble a Father so happily endowed with all those rare qualities and perfections which are wholy deficient in me BALZAC To Mounsieur de la Motts Aigron LETTER XV. YEsterday was one of those Sunless days as you tearm them which resemble that beautifull blinde Maid wherewith Philip the
place Wherefore to second your conceit know if that were one while the fire should fall upon all jealous persons and by and by burn all the Mothers and little brothers in a whole Province And doubtless if I did you no harm yet would I put you into such a fright you should be forced to hide your self under ground and come to meet me in some Cave But I gain much by these glorious brags or by my seeming severity I assure my self you mock me and my threats It is long since I have shewed you the way how to catch me and you know the means how to reduce me to my former duty I must confess I am not of sufficient force to contest with Clorinda her kisses have power to expell all spleen even out of the spirit of an Italian Prince for the greatest injury can be offered him Nay they would force the Duke de Main to forsake his Arms in the hottest of his Martiall conflicts Wherefore I pray you let us agree upon a business which of necessity must be concluded how disadvantagious soever the peace be I treat of with you yet shall I at all times gain that which otherwise I should lose in your absence I have therefore presented my complaints with purpose to receive satisfactions I am angry onely to the end you may appease me I will tell you to morrow that I am come to oblige you to take the pains to receive me BALZAC The 17. of April 1620. To Clorinda from BALZAC LETTER XX. I See well Clorinda I do but lose my labour and that if were an easier matter to return Ice into Coales then to kindle love in you All I can say makes no impression in your thoughts you will not so much as hear reason because it resteth on my side Well Clorinda I must resolve my self for the worst of events and stay the time till your wrinkles affoard me revenge for all the wrongs you have done me Think not this tyrannical power of your beauty will last to the Worlds end Time which overturneth Empires and prescribeth limits to all things will use you as it doth the rest of fair workmanships I pray have patience if I take upon me to tell you this bad news for I am not to day in the humour to flatter any Though it would raise choler in you yet must I say you will grow stale and be then no more what you now are I doubt not of your sighes when you reflect upon this change or that your very imagination is not sensible of some sorrow yet shall this happen Clorinda there is not an hour passeth which impaires not some part of your face But the time will come when your Looking-glass will more scare you then a Judge doth a Fellon your fore-head will flie to the Crown of your head your cheeks will fall beneath your chinne and your eyes of those dayes shall turn of the same colour your lips are at this hour I could willingly wish out of my love unto you my relation were not so true as it is But since I have quitted all complacency there is no means to make me silent Clorinda the Sun is still beautifull though ready to set and the Autumne agreeable though sprinkled with some Snow but we enjoy no happy years but the first of youth And be as carefull of your self as is possible yet can you not conserve your complexion and acquire experience Will you have me say more and acquaint you with what I understood by a stranger with whom I have conversed all this day You are to know there is not any part of the World so remote which his curiosity hath not carried him nor rarity in Nature he hath not carefully observed He hath seen Mountains which burn perpetually without diminishing he hath landed in Ilands never resting in one place he hath seen natural Sea-men but he swore unto me who among all these miracles he never yet saw a beautifull old Woman The Moral hereof is that you must make use of your youth and gather Nose-gayes before the Roses wither None knows better then your self that to be fair is to raign without having need either of Guards or Forts You see you are the Worlds ambition no man desiring further happiness then Clorinda But think not to continue this absolute authority or this general esteem by other means then you compassed them and assure your self that when you have no further attractions then an eloquent tongue no man will seek for them among the surrowes of your face A Woman had need be perfectly provided of virtue to repair the ruines of her beauty All the wit and experience in the World is fruitless when she falls into this state nor can any thing hinder her from being hated but onely to change Sex Remember then Clorinda not to expect to live when you are as good as dead nor do not spend that time in deliberating which should be imployed in doing You are now of years both to give and receive contentment and we are in the Moneth wherein each Creature turneth amorous not excepting Lions Tygers or Philosophers I intreat you therefore not to shew your self the sole insensible creature in the World suffer your self to be convinced by reason since you cannot resist the same but to your own disadvantage You have no subject to be suspicious of what I say for I advise you to nothing Clorinda wherein I would not willingly joyn with you in the accomplishment BALZAC The 3. of May 1620. Another Letter to Clorinda from BALZAC LETTER XXI CLorinda your Religion must needs be amiss otherwise I should see you now and then at Church But I think it were an easier matter to convert a whole Nation then to dispose you to give me content The cause why you persist in your own opinion is because it is opposite to mine Well then I must depart without speaking with you and am barred from affoarding to my affection what good manners would have exacted of me though I had not loved you Truely I know not in what manner to suffer so wounding a displeasure nor am I so well acquainted with my self as to pass my word for him I speak of in this occasion All I can say unto you Clorinda is that the onely way to rid me out of my pain is to perform the thing I have so often proposed unto you and to make your self capable of a strong resolution Never did any Prince enterprise a more glorious voyage then mine shall be if you will make one and truely I see not why you should make any difficulty herein the longer your journey is the further shall you be removed from tyranny It is a Monster you ought to fly from even to the Worlds end and with whom to be in peace is dangerous Will you fear to come into the Countrey of Comedies Painting and Musick or into a place where Women are by many as highly esteemed as Saints without flattering you I
thereof assure your self that it is in this Countrey where felicity doth attend you and that being once in this place you will esteem all those as banished persons whom you have left behinde you in France BALZAC The 25. of December 1621. To the Count of Schomberg from BALZAC LETTER XXIV My LORD I Send you the papers you have formerly seen and whereto you have attributed so much as I should be ashamed to assent thereto were it not that I hold it less presumption to believe I have merited the same then to imagine I can have a flatterer of your fashion I had need be elevated to a more soveraign fortune then the state of Kings to expect complacency from a man who could never be procured to approve evil and of whose disfavour one can hardly finde other cause then the onely truth he hath declared Howsoever it be since you are now in Lymosin and take not any journey in those parts without having a thousand old debates to reconcile and as many new ones to prevent it is very propable that after so painfull an imployment and so great disquiet of minde my book will fall into your hands just at such time as you cannot finde any thing more tedious unto you then what you come from treating of For should I presume that in your pleasant walks of Duretal where all your minutes are pleasing and all your hours precious there could be any time spare for me and my works it were as much as to be ignorant of the diversions there attending you or not to be acquainted with the great affluence of noble company daily repairing thither to visite you But were it so that you had none with you save onely the memory of your fore-passed actions your solitariness hath no need of books to make it more pleasing nay if all this were not yet if you desire to seek contentment out of your self you cannot finde any more pleasing then in the presence of your Children and particularly of that Divine daughter of yours from whom I daily learn some miracle It is therefore in her absence and in solitary walks where I have the ambition to finde entertainment and to receive gracious acceptance In all other places without presuming either to pass for Oratour or Poet it shall highly suffice me in being honoured with the assurance that I am My Lord Your most humble servant BALZAC The 25. of May 1624. A Letter from the Count of Schomberg to Mounsieur de BALZAC LETTER XXV SIR THe stile you travail in causeth the Pens of all such who attempt an answer to fall out of their hands and Eloquence may so properly be called yours that it is no marvel though others have but a small share therein I would therefore have you know that if I understand any thing in Letters yours do obscure whatsoever hath hitherto been esteemed of in our Language and that without flattering you there can be no diversion so pleasing which ought not to give place to the perusing of those Lines you sent me This occupation is worthy the Cabinets of Kings and of the richest Eare curtins of France and not as you would have it of my solitarie retirements in Lymosin from whence I am ready to be gone with resolution never to retire from the affection I have promised you whence you shall at all times draw effectual proofs whensoever you please to imploy them for your service Sir Your most affectionate servant SCHOMBERG The 1. of June 1624. The Letters of MOUNSIEUR de BALZAC The fourth Book To my Lord Mashall of Schomberg LETTER I. My Lord I Should be insensible of publick good and an enemy to France had I not as I ought a true taste of the good news your Foot-man brought me I will not mention the Obligations I owe you being no small ones if that be not a slight matter to be esteemed by you But since I make profession to honour virtue even in the person of one departed or an enemy and at all times to side with the right were there onely my self and Justice for it you may please to believe I complain in your behalf for the miseries of our times and that I am most joyfull to see you at this present where all the World mist you Certainly your retirement from Court hath been one of the fairest pieces of your life during which you have made it apparent you are the same in both fortunes since I can witness that no one word then passed from you unsuitable to your resolution Yet this rare virtue being there hidden in one of the remote corners of the World having but a very small circuit to dilate it self must necessarily be contented with the satisfaction of your conscience and slender testimonies In the mean time the authority of your enemies hath been obnoxious to all honest eyes There was no means to conceal from strangers the States infirmities or what reason to affoard them for the disgrace of so irreproachable a Minister nor was there any who grieved not that by your absence the King lost so many hours and services For my part my Lord reflecting upon you in that estate it seemed to me I saw Phidias or some other of those ancient Artists their hands bound and their costly materials as Marble Gold or Ivory taken from them But now that better time succeed each thing being again reduced to its place it is time to rejoyce with all good French men that you shall no more want matter and that the King hath at length found how unusefull your absence hath been to his affairs Truely be it that he content himself to govern his people wisely or that the afflictions of his poor Neighbours set near his heart and that his Justice extend further then his Jurisdiction No man doubts whatsoever he doth but you shall be one of the principal instruments of his designs and that as well Peace as War have equal use of your conduct All men have well perceived you have not contributed any thing to the administration of the Kings treasure save onely your pure spirit to wit that part of the Soul separated from the terrestrial part being free from passions which reasoneth without either loving or desiring and that you have managed the Riches of the State with as great fidelity as one ought to govern another mans goods with as much care as you conserve your own and with as great scruple as we ought to touch sacred things But in truth it is no great glory for that man to have been faithfull to his Master who knows not how to deceive any And did I believe you were onely able to abstain from ill I would barely commend in you the Commencements of virtue I therefore pass further and am assured that neither the fear of death which you have slighted in all shapes and under the most dreadfull aspects it could possibly appear nor complacency which often overpasseth the best Counsels to transport it self to
without levity it accuseth innocencie without calumny And to say truth Painters and Stage-players are no way culpable of those murthers we see represented in Pictures or presented upon Theaters since therein the most cruel is the most just None can justly accuse those of falsity who make certain glasses which shew one thing for another Errour in some cases being more gracefull then truth In a word the life even of the greatest Sages is not altogether serious all their sayings are not Sermons nor is all they write either their last Testament or the confession of their Faith What can I say more Can you imagine me to be so curious as to condemne the gust of all that great multitude who flock to hear you every morning Are you perswaded that I and the people can never be of one minde That will oppose my self to the belief of honest men to the approbation of Doctors and to their authority who are eminent above others No Father I allow no such liberty to my spirit assure your self I esteem you as I ought I commend your zeal and learning yea were it truer then ever it was that to compose tedious Volumnes is no less then to commit great sins Yet if you oblige me to judge of yours by that you sent unto me I say it is very excellent in its kinde and that I will no way hinder you from obtaining a Rank among the Fathers of these modern ages But my testimony will not I hope become the onely fruit of your labours I wish with all my heart the conversion of Turks and Infidels may crown your indeavours I am perswaded all the honour this World can affoard ought to be esteemed as nothing by those who onely seek for the advancement of Gods glorie I will therefore no farther dilate my self upon this Subject nor wrong holy things by prophane praises my intention is onely to let you know I assume not so poor a part in the Churches interest as not to be extraordinarily well pleased with those who are serviceable thereto and that I am right glad besides the propension I have to esteem your amity so powerfull a perswasion as Religion is doth yet further oblige me Yours BALZAC To the Cardinal of Vallette LETTER IV. My Lord THe Letter you pleased to send me from Rome caused me to forget I was sick and I presumed to solace my self after three years of saddess ever since news was brought me of Lucidors death and the success of that fatal combate wherein you could not but be a loser on which side soever the advantage happened My Lord I doubt not but your spirit though altogether stout and couragious to support your proper misfortunes is yet mollified by the relation of their miseries who love you and where there is question rather of shewing your good nature or your constancy you will quit one virtue to acquire another I know well that in the number of your goods you reckon your friends in the first rank allowing onely the second place to your dignities and to fifty thousand Crowns rent which accompanies them and consequently I assure my self you believe you are as it were grown poor by the loss of a man who had relation unto you But I am likewise most certain how after the passing certain unpleasant dayes out of the love you bare him and having affoardeth him sufficient Testimonies of your affection he now expecting no further acknowledgement or service you will at length call to minde that it is the publick to whom you owe your cares and passions and that you are not permitted farther to afflict a spirit which is no longer yours Since the misery of this age is so general as it leaveth no one house without tears nor any one part of Europe without trouble and since Fortune is not of power to conserve even her own workmanships who are many of them fallen to ground it must needs so happen my Lord that being of the World you are to taste of the fruits it produceth and that you purchase at some hard rate the good successes daily attending you But truely the place where you are and the great designs taking you up may well furnish you with so strong and solide consolations as they need leave no work for others and my Eloquence would come too late should I imploy it after your reason which hath formerly perswaded you there being now neither precept nor Counsel in all humane wisdom unproposed to your view and since neither Seneca nor Epiotetus can say any thing save onely your thoughts I had much rather send you divertisements no way distastefull then to present you any remedies which doubtless will prove importunate These writings my Lord here inclosed shall not enter as strangers into your Cabinet they will not talk unto you of the five Praedicables of Porphiry nor of Justinians Novelles or the numbers of Algebra But you may there recreate and repose your spirits at your return from Audiences Congregations and the Consistory I could well have bestowed upon them a more eminent title then what they have I could out of these composures have framed Apologies Accusations and politick discourses yea had I pleased never so little to have extended some of my Letters they might have been called books But besides my design aiming rather to please then importune and that I tend to the height of conceptions and not at the abundance of words When I treat with you my Lord I suppose my self to be before a full assembly and do propose to my self never to write any thing unto you which Posterity ought not to read Now if sometimes from your person I pass to others or if I commend those whom I conceive are deserving I assure my self I therein performing an act of Justice and not of subjection you will be no way displeased with what I do and well hope I may conserve your favours without violating humane Laws or separating my self from civil society Your most humble servant BALZAC The 15. of July 1629. To the Cardinal of Vallete LETTER V. My LORD THough innocency be the felicity of the afflicted and that I finde in my self the satisfaction he can expect who hath not offended yet can I not so easily comfort my self And the remedies my Phylosophy affoard me are for meaner misfortunes then the loss of your favours All I can contribute to my consolation out of the assurance I have of mine innocency is the liberty I have taken to tell you so and to complain of the injustice you have done me if you have so much as suffered any to accuse me I need not seek colours to palliate my actions or words it is sufficiently known their principal objects have ever been the glory of your name and the desire to please you I beseech you likewise to call to remembrance that hard times have not hindred me from imbarking my self where my inclination called me and that I have served my Lord your Father
when most of his followers were in danger to become his Martyrs It should seem perchance I stand in need of the memory of what is past and that I make my precedent good Offices appear to the end to cause them to over-way my present offences No my Lord I intend not to make use of what now is not for the justification of mine actions nor am I ignorant that never any woman was so vicious who hath not heretofore been a Virgin nor criminal who cannot prescribe some time preceding his bad life I speak of to day as well as of heretofore and do protest unto you with all the Oaths able to make truth appear holy and inviolably that I never had one single temptation against my duty and that my fidelity is spotless as if you so pleased it might be without suspicion I must confess that you having declared your self no way desirous to trench upon my liberty and that you left it wholy to my self I have sometimes made use thereof imagining that without wronging that first resolution I vowed to your service it might be lawfull for me to have second affections I will not expect the rack to force me to confess it I have loved a man whom the misfortunes of Court and the divers accidents happening in worldly affairs have separated from some friends of yours and have cast him into other interests then theirs But besides that he was extracted from a Father who did not more desire his own good then your contentment and since I am most assured how amidst all the fore-passed broils he at all times conserved his inclinations for you I must needs tell you I was in such sort obliged unto him as had he declared War against my King and against my Countrey I could not have chosen any side which had not been unjust I therefore at this day bewail him with warm tears and if ever I take comfort in the loss I have sustained I shall esteem my self the most unworthy and ingratefull person living Your self my Lord knowing as you do how much I owe unto his amity would sooner adjudge me to die with him then blame my resentments I assure my self all my actions are disguised unto you on purpose to cause you to dislike them Howsoever I will not dispair but the time to come will right me for what is past You will one day see the wrong you offer to my innocency in admitting false witnesses in prejudice thereof and what you now term my fault you will then be pleased to say it was my unhappy fate or my hard fortune in the interim I am resolved to continue in well doing and though there were no other but my conscience to acknowledge my fidelitie yet inviolably to remain Your most humble and most faithfull servant BALZAC The 30. of Decemb 1626. To the Lord Bishop of Nantes LETTER IV. SIR AS the bearer hereof can testifie the obligations I owe you so may he bear witness of my perpetual resentments and will tell you that were I born your Son or subject you could have but the same power over me you now possess nay I am perswaded I yet owe somewhat more to your virtue then to the right of Nations or nature If power hath made Princes and chance Parents reason well deserves a further kinde of obedience It was that which overcame me upon the first conference I had with you causing me to prostrate all my presumption at your feet after having rightly presented to my thoughts how impossible it is to esteem my self and know you I am sure this language is no way pleasing to you and that you will look awry at my Letter but do what you please I am more a friend to truth then to your humour and my spirits are so replenished with what I have seen and heard as I can no longer conceal my thoughts I must tell you Sir you are the greatest Tyrant this day living your authoritie becomes awfull to all Souls and when you speak there is no further means to retain private opinions if they be not conformable to yours I speak this seriously and with my best sence you have often reduced me to such extreamities that coming from you without knowing what to answer you I have been ready to exclaim and say in the rapture wherein I was Restore me my opinion which you have violently forced from me and take not from me the liberty of conscience the King hath given me But truely it is no small pleasure to be constrained to be happy and to fall into his hands who useth no violence but to their avail who suffer For my part I have at all times departed your presence fully perswaded in what I ought to believe I never gave you a visite which cured me not of some passion I never came into your chamber so honest a man as I went forth How often with one short speech have you elevated me above my self and bereaved me of whatsoever was fleshly and prophane in me How often hearing you discourse of the World to come and of true felicity have I longed after it and would willingly have purchased it at the price of my life How often could I have followed you would you have conducted me to a higher pitch of perfection then all ancient Philosophers ever attained So it is that you onely have bestowed the love of invisible things upon me causing me to distaste my first and most violent affections I should still have been buried in flesh had not you drawn me forth nor had my spirit been other then a part of my body had not you taken the pains to unloose it from sensual objects and to sever the eternal from the perishable part You caused me at the first encounter to become suspicious to the wicked and to favour the better side before I was of it you have made those remedies pleasing which all others affrighted me with and in the midst of vice you have constrained me to confess virtue to be the most beautifull thing on earth Think not therefore that either the pomp of the Roman Court or the glitter of that of France can dazel those eyes of my Soul whereto you have shewed so many excellent things It is the beams and lightning of those eminent Virtues you have discovered unto me which cast so forceable reflections upon the eyes of my Soul and which cause me though I formerly resolved to slight all things yet at least now to admire something But yet Sir assure your self it is not the World I admire for I rather reflect upon it as on that which hath deceived me these eight and twenty years I have been in it and wherein I scarce ever saw any thing but how to do evil and counterfeit to be good In all places on earth whether my curiosity hath transporteth me beyond Seas or on the other side the Alpes in free States or in Kingdoms of Conquest I have observed among men onely a fare of
not at Christian virtues nor vanteth of Moral ones I hope to see him within few dayes and to take possession of some small corner in his House at Pompona which he hath provided for me there to breath at mine ease and to set my spirits sometimes at liberty In the interim you must needs know about what I busie my self and that I tell you I entertain a fool in whom I finde all the Actors in a Comedy and all sorts of extravagancies incident to the spirit of man After my books have busied me all the morning and that I am weary of their company I spend some part of the after-noon with him partly to divert my thoughts from serious things which do but nourish my Melancholy Ever since I came into this World I have been perpetually troublesome to my self I have found all the hours of my life tedious unto me I have done nothing all day but seek for night Wherefore if I desire to be merry I must necessarily deceive my self and my felicity is so dependant upon exterior things that without Painting Musick and divers other divertisements how great a Muser soever I am I have not sufficient wherewith to entertain my self or to be pleased Think not therefore that either my fool or my books are sufficient to settle my contentment nay rather if you have any care of me or if you desire I should have no leasure to be sad make me partaker of all the news hapning in the place where you are let me see the whole Court by your eyes cause me to assist at all Sermons by your ears give me accompt of the good and bad passages hapning this Winter and that there part not a post uncharged with a Gazetto of your stile as there shall not any go hence who shall not bring you some vision of my retiredness There runs a rumour in these parts that Mounsieur de Boudeville is slain but since there are not many more hard atchievements to be wrought then that it is too great a death to be believed upon the first report The 1. of November 1625. LETTER XXVI WEre I not confined to my bed I should my self have sollicited the business I have recommended unto you nor should I have suffered you thus far to oblige me in my absence But since I cannot possibly part hence and am here constrained to take ill rest being far more grievous unto me then agitation I humbly beseech you to suffer these Lines to salute you in my stead and to put you in remembrance of the request I made unto you Sir I am resolved not to be beholding to any but your self for the happy success whereof the goodness of our cause assureth us and in case your integrity should be interessed I would owe the whole to your favour For besides that you are born perfectly generous I do not at all doubt but the commerce you have with good books and particularly with Seneca hath taught you the Art To do good to all men But to the end the obligation I desire to owe you may be wholy mine own instead of referring it to the study of Morality to your bountifull inclination or to the Justice of my request I will rather imagine I shall be the sole cause of this effect and that you will act without any other assistance out of the love you bear me who am passionately Your most humble and most faithfull servant BALZAC Paris the 2. of May 1627. LETTER XXVII G X. X. is resolved to leave all worldly affairs in the state he found them and these great cares which should have extended themselves over the most remote parts of Christendom have not as yet passed the limits of his house He preserves his old age and prolongs his life by all the possible means he can imagine But it is thought he will not long make his successor attend and that his death will be the first news in the Gazetto Phisicians and Astrologers have concluded upon this point that he shall not see the end of Autumn For my part I never made any great difference between a dead person and an unprofitable one and if things less perfect ought to be post posed to more excellent ones it were a mockery to make choice of sick folks and cause them to be adored by those who are in health or to put soveraign power into their hands to the end onely to have them leave it to others But it is not my part to reform all things displeasing me in this World and I should be very ungratefull if I blamed that form of government wherein I finde my self very well In effect Sir speak no more to me of the North nor its neighbours I declare my self for Rome against Paris nor can I any longer imagine how a man can live happily under your Climate where Winter takes up nine Moneths of the Year and after that the Sun appeareth onely to cause the Plague and weak as it is forbears not to kill men There is not any place Rome excepted where life is agreeable where the bodie findes its pleasures and the spirit his where men are at the source of singular things Rome is the cause you are neither Barbarian nor Pagan since she hath taught you the civility of Religion She hath given you those Laws which Arm you against errour and those examples whereto you owe the good actions you perform It is from hence inventions and Arts are come to you and where you have received the Science of of Peace and War Painting Musick and Comedies are strangers in France but natural in Italie that great Virtue it self you so much admire in your Court is she nor Roman That Martchioness of whom so many marvels are related is she not Countrey-woman to the Mother of the Graches and the Wife of Brutus and in truth to possess all those perfections the World acknowledgeth in her was it not fitting she should be born in a place whereon Heaven defuseth all its Graces Truely I never ascend Mount Palatin or the Capitole but I change spirit and others then my ordinarie cogitations seaze upon me This aire inspireth me with some great and generous thing I formerly had not and if I muse but two hours upon the Banks of Tyber I am as understanding as if I had studied eight dayes It is a thing I wonder at that being so far off you make so excellent Verses and so near the Majestie of Virgils I suppose herefore none will blame me for having chosen Rome for the place of my abode or for preferring flowers before Snow and Ice If men choose Popes of three-score and ten years old and not of five and twenty the dayes are therefore neither sadder nor shorter nor have we any subject to complain of our Masters debility since we are thereto obliged for our quiet From Rome the 25. of March 1621. LETTER XXVIII IT is not to answer your excellent Letter I write you this but onely to let you
Kings armies were to speak properly Both sides have gained by his victory All the penalty that hath been imposed upon you hath been but this to make you as happy as our selves and you are now in quiet possession of that happiness for which before your Towns were taken you were but suppliants Our Prince will put no yoke upon the consciences of his subjects he desires not to make that to be received by force which cannot be received but by perswasion nor to use such remedies against the French which are not good but against the Moors If the King of Sweden use his prosperity in this manner and soil not so pure a grace with proscriptions and punishments I make you a faithfull promise to do that which you desire me to do to employ all my cunning and all my Engines to erect a statue to the memory of his name You touch the right string of my inclination when you pray me to praise and to magnifie that Prince If all the Crowns that are wrought upon his Scarf should be changed into so many Kingdoms they could never in my opinion sufficiently recompence so rare a virtue not be able to fill so vaste a Spirit as his is As I expect nothing but great from his valour so from his honesty I hope for nothing but good and although in Spain it be currant that he is the true Antichrist yet I am neither so devout to believe such a fable nor so fearfull to be afraid of such a dream I onely answer some scrupulous persons who question me about this Prince that our King hath in him a second to stand by him and such a one as a fitter could never be found to strike an amusement into the house of Austria and to divert it from the care it takes of our affairs But I will stay my self here for this time and not enter upon a subject which I reserve for the dearest hours of my leasure it is better to make a stand at the porch of holy places than to enter into them without preparation Besides my discourse may seem already long if not too long for a beginning of acquaintance pardon I beseech you the contentment I take to be this way with you which makes me forget both your employments and my own custom which is not to be troublesom to any much less to make Sermons to my friends but your self gave me the Text I have handled and I cannot doubt but that having opened unto you the bottom of my heart without dissimulation you will give my liberty the credit of your belief and with this I solemnly assure you that I truely am Sir Your c. To Mounsieur the Abbot of Baume LETTER IV. SIR I Am true if not liberal and I send you that I promised though I cannot send you what I would This is neither a moveable for the use of your house nor an ornament to beautifie your closet it is matter of discourse onely for two or three dayes at your table and a Novelty that will quickly grow stale But if your self have any better opinion of it and that you account it of any value I am contented that you leave my stile to the mercy of any that will arrest it so you please to justifie my intentions to men that are reasonable and not suffer in the Countrey where you are that an honest man should be oppressed with the hatred against his side If I were a revolted Spaniard and that the words I write did come from the mouth of a Fugitive they might with good reason be taken in ill part and we finde that a Grecian at Athens was once punished for serving the Persians to be their Interpreter but I desire you to consider that the cause I maintain is the cause of my Prince and Countrey which I could not maintain coldly without a kinde of treason We punish Prevaricatours and Traitors but true and lawfull enemies we praise and I cannot think that M. the Cardinal of â—â—â—va will think the worse of my passion for the publick liberty who hath shewed himself the like passion for one particular mans Regency I am not afraid that a good action should make me lose his favour or that being himself extreamly just he should not more esteem of my zeal which is natural and honest than the choller of Doctor Bouâ—her a mercenary man and a Pentioner to a stranger It will be no Novelty to say that of Spain which hath been alwayes said of great Empires and that rapine and cruelty is a reproach even to Eagles and Lions To be a Tyrant and an Usurper is it not in other terms to be a Grandee and a Conquerour And are noâ— violence and severity vices that exceed the reach of virtue and which makes our morality ridiculous I blame sometimes the counsels of Kings but I never lay hands upon their royalty and if I seek to cut off superfluities and excesses it cannot therefore be justly said I tear that off which I seek to prune Crowns are to me sacred even upon Idolaters heads and I adore the mark of God in the person of the great Cham and of the great Mogoll Having now made this Declaration which yet is more expresly delivered in my book I hope there will be no place left for calumny and I promise to my self that for my sake you will whip the Spaniards in point of generousness and shew them that she hath shewed her self principally to do a favour to enemies and to mingle things which seem hard to be mingled courtesie and war together I demand not these good Offices from you I expect them from your friendship and I doubt not but you will continue it to me in spight of all the spightfulness and bitterness of the opposites seeing I know you are free from those petty passions of vulgar spirits and that you know I am Sir Your c. To Mounsieur Bouthillier Counsellor of the King in his Counsels and Secretary of his commands LETTER V. SIR I Vow I am one of the worst Courtiers of France and to justifie fortune for having little favoured me I will accuse my self for having little courted her yet for the love of you I have used an extraordinary endeavour My affection hath gone beyond my action and I have put my self to the venture to go as far as Gascogny to seek you out If you had gone by Cadillac as I was told you would you had found me at the waters side at your disinbarking and I should have put hard with the best of the Countrey to have had the honour to offer you my service first of any but God did not think me worthy of my desires It was his pleasure I should make a journey of fifty leagues not to see you and I conceive my happiness to be such that if I should go to Paris with the like intention God would presently inspire the Kings heart to send you away in some Embassage Be pleased therefore Sir
faith seeing I assure you I will ever be Sir Your c. From Balzac the 5. of Febr. 1633. To LETTER XXI SIR SInce you will have me to write that in a Letter which I spake unto you by word of mouth this Letter shall be a second Testimony of the account I make of and of the feeling I have of the courtesies received from him During the time we had his company I considered him with much attention but in my conscience observed nothing in the motions of his spirit but great inclinations to great designs and to see him do wonders in the World you need wish him no more but matter of imployment He hath all the intendments of an honest man all the Characters of a great Lord by these he gains mens eyes in present and their hearts in expectation and afterwards brings more goodness forth than ever he promised and exceeds expectation with performance And in truth if this Heroick countenance had no wares to vent but vulgar qualities this had been a trick put upon us by nature to deceive us by hanging out a false sign The charge he exerciseth in the Church is no burden to him he hath in such sort accommodated his humour to it that in the most painfull functions of so high a duty there lies nothing upon his shoulders but ease and delight He embraceth generally all that he believes to be of the decency of his profession and is neither tainted with the heat which accompanies the age wherein he is nor with the vanity which such a birth as his doth commonly bring with it In a word the way he takes goes directly to Rome He is in good grace with both the Courts and the Pope would be as willing to receive the Kings commendation of him as the King would be to give it He hath brought from thence a singular approbation and hath left behinde him in all the holy Colledges a most sweet odour and that without making faces or making way to reputation by singularity For in effect what heat soever there be in his zeal he never suffers it to blaze beyond custom his piety hath nothing either weak or simple it is serious all and manly and he protesteth it is much better to imitate S. Charls than to counterfeit him Concerning his passion of horses which he calls his malady since he is not extream in it never counsel him to cure it it is not so bad as either the Sciatica or the Gout and if he have no other disease but that he hath not much to do for a Physician One may love horses innocently as well as Flowers and Pictures and it is not the love of such things but the intemperate love that is the vice Of all beasts that have any commerce with men there are none more noble nor better conditioned and of them a great Lord may honestly and without disparagement be curious He indeed might well be said to be sick of them who caused mangers of Ivory to be made for them and gave them full measures of pieces of Gold this was to be sick of them to bestow the best office of his state on the goodliest horse of his stable and to mock indeed reason it self and the speech of men to give them a neighing Consul You shall give me leave to tell you another story to this purpose not unpleasant It is of Theophylact Patriarch of Constantinople who kept ordinarily two thousand horses and fed them so daintily that in stead of Barley and Oats which to our horses are a feast he gave them Almonds Dates and Pistach nuts and more than this as Cedrenus reports he steeped them long time before in excellent Wine and prepared them with all sorts of precious odours One day as he was solemnizing his Office in the Church of Saint Sophia one came and told him in his ear that his Mare Phorbante had foaled a Colt with which he was so ravished that instantly without having the patience to finish his service or to put off his Pontifical Robes he left the mysteries in the midst and ran to his stable to see the good news he had heard and after much joy expressed for so happy a birth he at last returned to the Altar and remembred himself of his duty which the heat of his passion had made him to forget See Sir what it is to dote upon horses but to take a pleasure in them and to take a care of them this no doubt may make a man be said to love them and nevertheless not the less the wiser man Even Saints themselves have had their pleasures and their pastimes all their whole life was not one continued miracle they were not every day 24. hours in extasie amidst their Gifts their Illuminations their Raptures their Visions they had alwayes some breathing time of humane delight during all which time they were but like us and the Ecclesiastical story tells us that the great Saint John who hath delivered Divinity in so high a strain yet took a pleasure and made it his pastime to play with a Partridge which he had made tame and familiar to him I did not think to have gone so far it is the subject that hath carried me away and this happens very often to me when I fall into discourse with you My complements are very short and with men that are indifferent to me I am in a manner dumb but with those that are dear unto me I neither observe Rule nor Measure and I hope you doubt not but that I am in the highest degree Sir Your c. At Balzac 5. Jan. 1633. To Mounsieur Godeau LETTER XXII SIR THere is no more any merit in being devout Devotion is a thing so pleasing in your book that even prophane persons finde a rellish in it and you have found out a way how to save mens Souls with pleasure I never found it so much as within this week that you have fed me with the dainties of the ancient Church and feasted me with the Agapes of your Saint Paul This man was not altogether unknown to me before but I vow unto you I knew him not before but onely by sight though I had sometimes been near unto him yet I could never mark any more of him than his countenance and his outside your Paraphrase hath made me of his counsel and given me a part in his secrets and where I was before but one of the Hall I am now one of the Closet and see clearly and distinctly what I saw before but in Clouds and under shadows You are to say true an admirable Decipherer of Letters in some passages to interpret your subtilty is a kinde of Divination and all throughout the manner of your expressing is a very charm I am too proud to flatter you but I am just enough to be a witness of the truth and I vow unto you it never perswades me more than when it borrows your stile There reflects from it a certain
flash which pleaseth instantly as beauty doth and makes things to be lovely before one knows they are good Your words are no way unworthy of your Authour they neither weaken his conceits by stretching them out at length nor scatter the sence by spreading it out in breadth But contrariwise the powerfull spirit which was streightened within the bounds of a concise stile seems to breath at ease in this new liberty and to encrease it self as much as it spreads it self he seems to pass from his fetters into triumph and to go forth of the prisons of Rome where Nero shut him up to enter into a large Kingdom into which you bring him with royal magnificence There are some so curious palats they cannot relish the language of the Son of God and are so impudent as to accuse the holy Scriptures of clownishness and Barbarisme which made Mounsieur who died Archbishop of Benevent that he durst not say his Breviary for fear to mar his good Latin by contagion of the bad and least he should take some tincture of impurity that might corrupt his eloquence I will not speak at this time what I conceive of his scruple onely I say that if in the vulgar Translation there be Barbarism yet you have made it civil and if our good Malherb should come again into the World he would finde nothing in your Paraphrase that were not according to the strictness of his rules and the usage of the Court whereof he spake so often Some other time we will confer about the Preface and the Letters I received which I have in a manner all by heart but especially I have culled out these dear words to print in my memory and to comfort my spirits A little patience will crown you all their throws seem like those of sick men a little before they die in which I think there is neither malice nor force if you can but dispise them Prefer the better side before the greater and the Closet before the Theater Honest persons are for you and I make account you care not much for pleasing others The people have often times left Terence for dancers upon the Rope and banished Philosophers to gratifie Jesters I have nothing to add to this and will take heed how I sow Purple with pack-thâ—ead I content my self Sir at this time to assure you that I passionately am Sir Your c. From Balzac 10. of May 1632. To Mounsieur de Thibaudiere LETTER XXIII SIR I Will not raise to you the price of my tears though I have shed them for you eight dayes together I content my self to tell you that I am now comforted since the news of your death it changed into tidings of your hurt and that I am made assured you may be quitted of it for a little pain and a little patience I know well that virtue is more happily imployed in well using honest pleasures than in patient bearing troublesom crosses and that without an absolute distemper in the taste one can never finde any sweetness in pain yet you shall confess unto me that there is a kinde of contentment in being lamented and though the joyes of the minde be not so sensible as those of the body yet they are more delicate and more subtill at least you have come to know of what worth you are by the fear which all honest men were in to lose you and that in a time when half the World is a burthen to the other and every one reserves his lamentation for his own miseries yet all in general have mourned for you in such sort Sir that you have had the pleasure to hear your own Funeral Oration and to enjoy the continuance of a happy life after receiving the honours done to worthy men after death If the War of Italy continue till Winter I will come and learn from your own mouth all the particulars of your adventures and I shall then know if your Philosophy have not been moved and waxed pale at the sight of the Probe and of the Rasour In the mean time do me honour to be mindefull of him who exceedingly honours you and to keep for me that part in your affection which you have promised me since I truely am Sir Your c. At Balzac 29. of July 1630. To Mounsieur Gyrard Secretary to my Lord the Duke de Espernon LETTER XXIV SIR I Had heard that before which you sent me word of by your footman and had rejoyced already for the new Dignity of Mounsieur the President Segnior It seems you think he is made Lord Keeper of the Scales for none but for you and that no Feast for the joy of it should be kept any where but at Cadillac Within these four dayes you shall see it kept all the Countrey over it is a favour the King hath done the whole Realm It is not so much for the purity of the air and for the fruitfulness of the earth that we ought to call it a happy year as for the election of worthy Magistrates I therefore take a joy in this news as I am a subject of the Kings and this is the first Right I claim in it but beyond this I have a second Right of rejoycing in that I am interessed in the advancement of a modesty which I know and make account to be made happy by the prosperity of him of whose honesty I am assured I put not forth this last word at adventure I am ready to make it good against whosoever shall think it rash and I know he hath preservatives against all the poysons of the Court and a judgement that cannot be corrupted with all the bribes of Fortune There is nothing of so high a price for which he would be willing to leave his virtue if he had lived in Neroes time he had been a constant Martyr but living now under a just Prince he will prove a profitable Officer To preserve a life which is to continue but a few dayes he would not obscure that life which ought to last in the memory of many ages and the least spot upon his honour would be more insupportable to him than the effusion of all his bloud He knows that in the administration of Justice being the interpreter of God he cannot work of himself that this Divine Act ought to be a general Suspension from all humane affections and that in the exercise thereof he is no longer at his liberty to shew love or hatred revenge or gentleness He considers that he makes not law but onely declares it that he is a Minister and not a Master of his Authority and that the Soveraignty is in the Law and not in himself This is the reason why in every cause he censures he bethinks himself of his own proper cause which shall one day be censured he so judgeth as if Posterity were to take a review of his judging and as though the present time were but subalternate to the future Thus I have heard him to make
and which most of all startles me in reading his books If he would have it that his watchings and abstinence had dried up his bloud and made him look gastly that to the burnt colour of Africk he added also that of burnt Melancholy and of overflowing choler it may perhaps be granted him yet I will not accuse either the Sun of his Countrey or the temperature of his body but leave every one in his natural estate and so should he have done But to go about to disfigure the most beautifull amongst the Children of men and to eclipse all the beams and lustre of a Divine countenance this is a sullen humour which no patience can bear with no charity can ever pardon You wondered at this strange opinion when I last shewed it unto you and I perceived you suspected I did him wrong now therefore to justifie my credit with you and to let you see I did it not to abuse you I send you here the passages I promised you to look out The first is in his book of Patience where Christ is called Contumeliosus sibi ipsi The second in his book against the Jews where he is said to be Ne aspectu quidem honestus but hear the third which will fright you to hear in his Tract of the flesh of Christ Adeo utâ—nec humanae honestatis corpus fuit â—acentibus apud nos quoque Prophetis de ignobili aspectu ejus ipsae passiones ipsaeque contumeliae loquuntur passiones quidem humanam carnem contumeliae vero inhonestam An ausus esset aliquis ungue summo perstringere corpus novum Sputaminibus contaminare faciem nisi merentem c. Let us see what Mounsieur Rigaut thinks of this and whether he be of these sharp and sour ones that would take from Heaven its stars and from the Earth its flowers Certainly my censurer is of this number for I perceive beauty offends him and he would easily subscribe to Tertullians opinion Yet say no more to him of all this but that which he must needs know and spare sending out a second Process against a man that hath too much of the first and deserves you should take some care of his quiet since he is from the bottom of his heart Sir Your c. From Balzac 10. of March 1633. To My Lord the Bishop of Nantes LETTER XXV SIR IT is told me from all parts that you speak of me as one that is dear unto you and of my ill fortune as of a thing that concerns you If this tenderness proceed from a soft effeminate spirit yet it would not be without merit and oblige me infinitely unto you but now that it comes from a feeling of the purest spirit in the World and the least capable of weakness how much ought I to esteem it and of how great price to value it It wants not much of making me love that grief which procures me so glorious a consolation and I vow unto you that to be pittied of you is a more pleasing thing than to be favoured of the Court. In that Countrey men go upon snares and ruines the best places there are so slippery that few can stand upright and if the miserable pretenders avoid a sudden falling it is by enduring a tedious tossing receiving perpetual affronts and returning perpetual submissions I therefore like much better to hide my self here with your good favour and my own good quiet than to bear a shew there with their frights and sour looks and I bless the windes and count my Shipwrack happy which hath cast me back upon my old home Some that were more sensible than my self would in this case complain of the World but I content my self to forget it I will neither have War nor commerce with the world I have sounded a retreat to all my passions as well those that be troublesom as those that be pleasing and I protest unto you Sir I should read with more delight a relation of one of your walks at Cadillac than the most delightsom passage of all the German History when I think upon you in company with me thinks I see Laelius come to visite Scipio and confirming him in the resolution he hath taken to stand aloof from the tumults and turbulencies of worldly affairs and by a quiet retreat to place his virtue and his glory in a sure hold I am extreamly glad of the honour he will do my Father to pass this way and bring you along with him and you may well think that after this I shall not reckon our Village inferiour to Tempe or to Tyvoly If it were not for the sit of an Ague which is now leaving me but very quickly to return I would go as far as Rochel to meet with this good fortune that I might be at the first opening of those Largesses of the Church which a mouth so holy and eloquent as yours must needs distribute But I am not happy enough to see you and gain a Jubilee both at once It must be your pleasure to be so gracious as to accept of such a complement as I am capable of and to rest assured with my assuring you by this messenger that I am and alwayes will be with all the forces of my Soul Sir Your c. At Balzac 13. May 1633. Another to the same LETTER XXVI SIR THere are some of your bounties I have cause to complain of they are such as cannot be acknowledged and in the least of your actions you are so great that if I take measure of my self by you I cannot appear but very little Your liberality makes me rich but withall it discovers my necessity there being no proportion between you and me how extream soever my possession be it can be no competent price for yours and in the Commerce that is between us I return you but Flints for Diamonds yet I present them to you but informa pauper is not as a Mountibank know I give you nothing though I keep nothing for my self I am well assured Sir that I honour you infinitely but am infinitely unsatisfied to offer you so mean a thing there is no reasonable man that doth not as much since so much is due to you for onely your virtue how much am I to pay you more for your affection Of this last moyity I am altogether Non-solvent my services my bloud are not all worth it and I confess unto you I shall never be able to deserve but these four words of your Letter Non discedo abs te Mi Fili sed avellor nor those Delicias in Christo meas nor this Dulce decus meum with which you graced me at another time Mounsieur Gyrard who knows all my secrets and offers to be an agent for me with you will tell you with a better grace how sensible I am of your so great favours and how proud of so illustrious an adoption as you are pleased to honour me with of which I make far greater reckoning
hath been the companion of my voyage and is now the comforter of my Exile and after I am dulled with a deal of troublesom discourse and have my ears filled with idle chat I go and purifie my self in his delicate relations and gather my spirits together which the noise and clatter had before dispersed I never saw in so sober and chaste a stile so much fulness and delight if nature herself would speak she could never make choise of more proper terms than those he useth and where proper terms fail she could never more discreetly borrow forraign than he doth The Character of his phrase is so noble that by this onely without any other signs I should easily know he is come of a good house and I see that fortune which hath been so great an enemy of his bloud and hath done so much hurt to his ancestors hath not yet been able to take from him the mark of their greatness nor the manners and language of a Prince Afterwards you give me thanks for loving qualities that are so lovely and that making profession of Letters I am put in passion for him who preserves their honour and who in his Countrey is the Crown and glory of our Muses as often as there is question for his service I shall need no second consideration to put me in heat about it I tell you plainly I shall do it no whit the more for any love of you I intreat you to provide some occasion apart from all interests of his where you may see the extraordinary account I make of your merits and the desire I have to manifest unto you that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 3. of Octob. 1631. To Mounsieur Ogier LETTER IV. SIR YOu could never have fallen again to your Pen upon better terms than you have done and I have a conceit your silence hath not been so much a neglect as a meditation The Letter you pleased to write unto me is so full of infinite excellent things that it seems you have been making provision three years together to make one feast and that your sparing for so long a time had no other meaning but to be magnificent for one day The dispatch of the Constantinopolitan slave you sent me and the news of Koppenhagen you writ unto me are so inriched with ornaments of your making that I see plainly whatsoever passeth through your hands receiveth an impression of excellency and that glorious atchievements have need of you to be their Historian It is not strange unto me that M. your brother hath pleaded my cause I am an eternal client of your family and as it is my part to honour my benefactors so it is yours to preserve your benefits But verily I could never have thought this last action should have had the Court of Denmark for a Theater and the King and his Daughters the Princesses for Judges You sent me word I had a famous decree passed on my side and that the assailant was as much hissed at as the defendant was applauded God be praised that grants us justice amongst the Gothes for injuries done us by the French and that raiseth up in an end of the World a soveraign defendor of persecuted innocency such succour sometimes he hath extraordinarily afforded when men abandon her the Lions do become humane rather than leave her without protection and in the most frightfull desarts there have been found Nurses for Children whom the cruelty of their Mothers had exposed Let us therefore never believe that sweetness and humanity are qualities of the Earth or of the Air they are neither proper goods of the easterlings nor captive virtues of the Grecians They are wandring and passant all climates receive them in their turn and it is not the Cimbrick Chersonesus any longer it is Athens and Achaia that at this day are Barbarians This Divine Princess of whom your brother writes such wonders hath no doubt contributed much to this change and and though there should shine no other Sun upon the Banks of the Baltick Sea this one were enough to make virtue bud forth in all hearts and to make Arts and Discipline to flourish in all parts This is a second Pallas that shall have her Temples and her suppliants she shall be president of Letters and studies as well as the former Even that which you say of the defect of her birth and of the obscurity of her Mother might be ground enough for a Poet to make an entire work and to assure us that she was born and came out of her Fathers head at least Sir if your relations be true she is the lively image of his spirit the interpretour of his thoughts the greatest strength of his estate and who by her eyes and tongue reigneth and ruleth over all objects that either see or hear Why should I dissemble or hide my contentment I must confess I am proud in the highest degree for the praises she hath given me Never Prince passed the Rhine more happily than mine hath done seeing so good Fortune hath attended him there and that there he should be crowned by a hand which was able to give wounds to all others What shall I say more I scorn all the ancient Triumphs when I think upon this I hope for no lustre but from her splendour I seek for no glory but in her recommendation her onely voice is instead of the suffrages of a whole Diet of all the North and what reason they should not for ever be banished the Empire who blame that which she praiseth or that would oppose the soveraignty of her excellent judgement As for our common enemy condemned by her to keep company with the Hobgoblins of Norway since he is no longer in the World is no longer in state to do her obeysance If it be not that God will have that to be the place of his purgatory which she would have to be the place of his banishment and that this proud spirit is confinde to live amongst the tempests and other frantick issues of the North as Varro speaks of Satyrs You have read I suppose the Dialogues of Saint Gregorie and therefore must needs know that all Souls are not purged after one manner but some pass through the fire and others endure the Ice and the extremity of cold is no less an instrument of Divine justice than extremity of heat But I purpose not to set abroach a question of Divinity for I should then begin a new Letter and it is now time I should finish this but telling you first that he which shall deliver it to you hath in charge to present you a larger discourse and to let you see that there is both Greek and Latine in our Village If it were not for my study my solitude would neither have excuse nor comfort and yet shall not have it perfect neither unless you bring it to me and be so honest a man as to come and see me as I most heartily intreat
experience that an inferiour virtue is possible to be acquired so that to say true I study you more than I praise you and am in this more swayed with interest than with passion I mean this passion without eyes that riseth onely from the animal part for as for that which is reasonable and works with knowledge I have that for you in the highest degree and by all kinde of obligations and of duties am At Balzac 6. February 1634. Sir Your c. To Mounsieur Heinsius Professor of the Politicks at LEYDEN LETTER XI SIR I Acquit my self of a charge that was laid upon me and send you from Mounsieur Favereau the Verses he lately made for the King they have had the approbation of all France but they have not yet had his own and if this publick judgement be not confirmed by your particular he takes it but as the passion of a Mother and that France doth but flatter her Children He thinks no glory is legitimate whereof you are not the distributour and that things are not so good by their own goodness as by the account you make of them you see by this Sir what rank you hold in the Common-wealth of Letters and that I am not the onely man that look upon you with veneration being seated in the Throan of the great Scaliger and giving Laws to all the civil parts of Europe The highest degree that a man can aspire unto who is Prince amongst his own is to become a judge amongst strangers and there to get reverence where he cannot pretend subjection To this uppermost Region of merit are you ascended the light of your doctrine shines upon more than one people and more than one Countrey it spreads and communicates it self in divets places and kindes it hath as well adorers afar off as admirers at home He of whom I speak Sir is worth a whole multitude and makes not onely a part of a choise company but is himself alone a company and a number Do you ask for qualities intellectual and moral for virtues civil and military would you have a Philosopher a Mathematician a Poet for Latine Italian French you shall finde them all in his one person He hath the Key of the most sublime sciences and the superintendance of the noblest Arts. Heretofore he hath been the dispenser of the conceits of Marino the reformer and pruning knife of the superfluities of his stile at this time he is overseer of all curious works the Oracle that Carvers consult and the spirit that guides the hand before Painters He meddles in an infinite number of things with equal capacity and hath as many trades as the Sage of the Stoicks had but makes better works of them than he did It is not possible either to fill his spirit or to set it about work enough so greedy and unsatiable it is of knowledge so impatient of rest and growing fresh with action And to impart to you the expression of a gallant friend of ours he is in as great a heat for the pleasures of the minde as the Princes of Asia are for the pleasures of the body and as they have many Concubines besides the Sultana which they marry so hath he one profession as his principal study but leaves not for all that to follow other exercises though follow them but with inferiour affection so that it cannot be said of him that he knows all but that he ought to know and that he is nothing less than that he ought to be He acquits himself most worthily of his charge and never stands in contemplation when it is time to be in action If he be a great Poet he is no less a great Lawyer he makes as well the draught of a Process as the description of a Tempest and having sung Phillis and Amarillis with an admirable grace he treats of Seia and Sempronia with no less solidity I give this testimony as religiously of him as if I give it before a Judge and as if my writing were upon Oath Is it not fit you should be ignorant of his merit whom without any merit you ought to respect though but onely for his respect to you It is fit you know that he is an elevated person humbling himself before you and a Saint offering you sacrifice It is fit also I should satisfie his desire which you shall see in the word he hath written to you as he was going out of his Inne and taking Coach but that done Sir it is not fit I should forget my self I intreat you therefore you will be pleased that in presenting to you the vows of another I may offer you also my own and make you this true protestation that I am Sir Your c. From Balzac 5. of December 1634. To Mounsieur de la Pigeonniere Lieutenant General of Bloyes LETTER XII SIR THe Letter you took the pains to write unto me hath calmed my spirit and given it ease I could have no comfort of the news of your death but onely by that of your resurrection and to make an end of weeping for you it was necessary you should come your self and stay my tears I am none of these broachers of Paradoxes whom too much reason makes unreasonable and have no feeling either of joy or grief My spirit is more tender and my Philosophy more humane and let them as long as they please call these passions infirmities yet for my part I had rather have my malady than their health If I had lost you I had lost part of my self and should never think my self an entire man again and if I had not hope to enjoy again your learned conversation I should finde nothing but bitterness in my life nothing in my studies but Thorns at this time especially when I am promised a retreat three miles from Bloys and that I shall come under the jurisdiction of M. the Lieutenant General I do not much rejoyce at this your new Dignity because I do not rejoyce at the servitude of my friends and because I do not count it any great happiness to be alwayes handling the Sores and Ulcers of the people I make more reckoning of your idleness than of your imployment and of the Elegy you will make than of all the judgements you will give If you please to send it or please to bring it your self to Paris you shall make choise your self in what place of my book you will have it set and I shall not be a little proud to have so fair a mark remaining of your friendship I had more to say but I was pull'd away from my Letter and your own best friends debauch me I must therefore perforce leave you yet assuring you once again that I am infinitely glad I shed my tears for you without cause and that no man is more truly than my self Sir Your c. At Paris 7. Sept. 1631. To Mounsieur Chaplain LETTER XIII SIR IF your ticket had overtaken me at Orleans I had certainly returned
to Paris to receive that honour it promised me and not have lost so pleasing a visit which would have comforted me for a troublesom one that afflicted me not a little the day before But the mischief is that I was come hither before your ticket and all I can do now is to let you know the grief I take that my inclination and my affairs lye not alwayes in the same place They have drawn me from the suburb Saint German to make me ride Post in â—he greatest violence of the late heat and have exposed my head to all the beams or to speak like a Poet to all the Arrows of the Sun I vow unto you that being in this case I even repented my self of all the good I had ever said of it and would fain call back my praises seeing it made no difference at all between me and my Post-boy who had never praised it Thanks be to God I am now in place of safety where you may well think I seek rather to quench my thirst than to clear my Sun burnt skin and look more after refreshing than tricking my self up To this purpose I forget nothing of that I have learned in Italy My ordinary Diet is upon the fruits of Autumne being of opinion that no intemperance of these pure Viands can be dishonest and that it is not fit to be sober as long as the Trees offer us their store and temptour appetite Be pleased Sir that my business may not be to do untill the trees shall have nothing upon them but leaves and that I may not go to the Cittie but when the winter drives me from the Countrey In the mean time I leave mine honour to your care in the place where you are and I recommend unto you a little reputation that is left me having so many wars upon me and so many combinations made against me I would be glad my name had less lustre and my life more quiet but I know not where to finde obscurity I am so well known if not by my good qualities at least by my ill fortune that though I should banish my self into a strange Countrey I do not think I could be hidden Vbique Notus perdidi exilio locum I have no remedy therefore but to continue in this famous miserie and to be labouring continually to provoke the envious and to make work for the idle wherein notwithstanding if I shall do any thing that pleaseth you I shall not think my labour ill bestowed I am in truth in great impatience to make known to all the World the account I make of your virtue and to leave a publick Testimony and if I durst say it an eternal by which posterity may see that we have loved one another and that I passionately have been and am From Balzac 10. September 1631. Sir Your c. To Mounsieur Mainard LETTER V. Sir I Have heard this day by a Letter from Mounsieur Chaplain that you are at Paris and that in some business of his you have obliged him exceedingly wherein you have done more than ever you ment and your action hath in it a double merit I owe you thanks for it in my own behalf and besides being joyned as I am with him in communion of all goods and evils you cannot fasten upon him and leave me free He sends me no word of the nature of his business in which you have done him such good offices but I doubt me it is some imployment beyond the Alpes and dependance upon some Ambassadour to Rome Whereof I think I may truely say without giving reins to my Passion at all that he hath both the substance and the suppleness which are necessary in dealing with the brains of that Countrey and that he under whom he serves may lie and sleep all the time of his imployment without any prejudice at all to the Kings service They who see but his outside onely take him for a neat man and one of excellent and pleasing qualities but I to whom he hath discovered that which he hides from all the World besides I know him to be a man capable of great designs and that besides speculative knowledge he possesseth those also which serve for use and are reduceable to action I would say more if the Post would suffer me I will onely add this in point of his honesty which I said to you once of an ancient Roman that I see no example of virtue in all the first Decade of Titus Livius that is of too high a strain or too hard for him Never therefore withdraw your affection from so worthy a place and so long as you thus oblige my friends It is I that will be Sir Your most humble and most obliged servant c. At Balzac 20. of December 1631. To LETTER XV. SIR IN the Letter which received from you I saw a line or two for my self that would even tickle a heart that were harder than mine and which I could not read without some touch of vain-glorie There is a pleasure in yielding to such sweet temptations and though I know my merit hath no right to so gracious a remembrance yet by what title soever I come to be happy I am not a little proud of my fortune These are Sir the meer effects of your goodness and your experiments in that art with which you know how to gain hearts and to purchase men without buying them The fairest part of the earth in which you have left a dear remembrance of your name gives this testimony of you by the mouth of its Princes and of their subjects but seeing in the place where you are you meet with spirits of love and tenderness it cannot be that any should escape you upon whom you have any design to take hold All things are biting beyond the Garonne the Sheep of that Countrey are worse than the Wolves of this and I have heard a great person of our age say That if France had a Soul certainly Gascogny should be the Irascible part Yet I hear Sir you have already sweetned all you found sowr there and that your onely look hath melted all the steel of the courages of that Province Mounsieur de and my self make account to go see the progress of so admirable a beginning and this next Summer to come and behold you in all your glorie But if we go thirty miles for we would more willingly go three hundred for and I begin to think already of a vow to Loretta that I may thereby have a colour to go to Rome to be there at the time when you shall do honour to France and maintain the Kings rights This cannot be too soon for his service nor soon enough for my desire who am From Balzac 4. of August 1632. Sir Your c. To Mounsieur Arnaut Abbot of Saint Nicholas LETTER XVI Sir I Am very slow in answering your Letter but I could not do it sooner after three moneths of continual agitation this is my
gotten by practice and by conference The ayre of Italy which is so powerfull in ripening of fruits hath not been lesse favourable to the seeds of his spirit and having been at the spring-head of humane prudence I assure my selfe he hath drawn deepe of it and hath filled his minde with so many new and sublime knowledges that even his Father if it were not for the great love he beares him might not unjustly grow jealous at it This Madam is that happinesse I speak to you of and which I have alwayes wished to you and to which there can nothing be added but to see shortly so excellent an instrument set a worke and so able a man employed in great affaires When this shall be I shall then see the successe of my ancient predictions and of that I have long read in his very face so that you may well thinke I shall take no distast at your contentment as well for the reputation of my skill in Physnomy and Prognosticating as for that I perfectly am Madam Your c. At Balzac 2. Octob. 1631. To Monsieur de Gomberville LETTER XI SIR the mischance at the Tuilliries hath disquiâ—ted me all night and my unquietnesse would have continued still if you had not â—â—en the paines to calme it The newes you send me gives me life A â—â—an cannot be innocent whom Madam de Maisonfort judgeth culpable shee is not one that will complaine where there is no fault and truly if she had taken the mischance of her page in another fashion than she did I would rather have abandoned reason than maintaine it against her and would not have trusted my own testimony if she rejected it You remember that but hearing her Name I fell down in a trance and that the very sight of her livery struck into me a religious horrour and a trembling respect which is not borne but to things Divine And in this ranke I place so rare a beauty as hers is and though I be no man of the World yet I am not so very a stranger to the occurrents of the World but that I very well know she is universally adored I must not alwayes passe for an Hermite this I am sure she carries with her the desires and vowes of all the Court and shee leads in triumph those Gallants who have themselves triumphed over our enemies yet I know withall they depend more upon her by their own passion than by her endeavours and follow without being drawne These are Captives whom she trusts upon their word for their true imprisonment and whom she suffers to be their owne Keepers In the course she holds of honesty her favours are so morall or so light that either they content none but the wise because they desire no more than what is given them or none but the unwise because they take that to be given them which was never meant them so there are some perhaps well satisfied but it is by the force of their imagination and no body hath cause to be proud of a Fortune which no body possesseth As her vertue is as cleare as the fire that sparkles in her eyes so her reputation is as much without blemish as her beauty and of this honest people give testimony by their words and Detractors by their silence Shee makes thornes that they cannot prick and makes slander it selfe to learne good manners And therefore Sir I should be very unfortunate it I had been cause of displeasing her whom all the World endeavours to please and it would be a shame to our Nation that a Frenchman should beare himselfe unreverently towards her to whom very Barbarians would beare a reverence If this mis-fortune had befallen me it is not the saving my Pages life should make me stand in the defence and I would never desire to augment my traine but to the end I might have the more sacrifices to offer upon the Altar of her choler But she is too mercifull to punish mean Delinquents and too generous to give petty Examples shee reserves her justice for the Great ones and the Proud for those who having more tender senses are better able to feele the weight of her anger or else in truth her purpose is to shew me a particular favour by a publike declaration and to let the World see shee makes a reckoning of that of which the World makes none And knowing what the gratefulnesse of good Letters is shee is desiroâ—â— to have them in her debt shee payes our studies before-hand for the fruit she expects from them and obligeth the Art which can prayse the Obligation shee is made believe that I have some skill in this Art and I perceive I am not in so little respect with her as I thought and of this I am assured by the paines it cost you to make her take her Page againe that was hurt and by the civill language shee desired you to deliver from her It exceeded indeed all bounds of moderation and it seemes shee would not onely for my sake protect an innocent but would be ready if need were to reward a delinquent For acknowledgement of which generous goodnesse all my own spirit and all my friends put together can never be too much It is particularly your selfe to whom I must have recourse in this occasion you Sir who set the Crown upon Beautâ—es head who have the power to make Queens at your pleasure and to whom Olympia and Yzatide are beholding for their Empire having bestowed so great glory upon persons that never were and set all France a running after Phantasmes you may well take upon you to defend the reputation of a sensible and living vertue and choose a subject that may be thankefull to you for your choice and this is a matter yon cannot deny of which we will talke more and conclude it after dinner in presence of the Lady that is interessed in it into whose presence I must entreat you to be my Usher to bring me that so I may ever more and more be Sir Your most humble and most obliged servant c. At Paris 1. June 1631. To Monsieur de Villiers Hottoman LETTER XII SIR being equally tender of the good will you beare me and of the account you make of me I cannot chose but rest well satisfied with your remembring me and with the judgement you deliver of my writings you are not a man that will bearâ— false witnesse and you have too much honesty to deceive the World but withall you have too much understanding to be deceived your selfe and one may well rely upon a wisdome that is confirmed by time and practice This is that which makes me to make such reckoning of your approbation and such account of your counsell that I shall be loath to be defective in the least tittle of contenting you It it farre from me to maintaine a point that you oppose I give it over at the first blow and yield at the first summons yet I could never have thought
owne sexe and ours too and hath spared nothing to make you compleat the better part of Europe admires you and in this point both Religions are agreed and no contesting between Catholique and Protestant The Popes Nuntio hath presented our beliefe even to your person all perfumed with the complements and civilities of Italie Princes are your Courtiers and Doctors your Schollers and is this Madam that you call to be unfortunate and that which you take for a just cause to complaine I humbly intreat you to speak hereafter in more proper termes and to acknowledge Gods favours in a more gratefull manner I know well that your loyaltie hath suffered by your brothers Rebellion and that in the publike miseries you have had some private loss but so long as you have your noble heart and your excellent spirit left you it is not possible you should be unfortunate for indeed in these two parts the true Madam Desloges is all entire and whole It is I Madam that have just cause to say I am unfortunate who am never without paine never without griefe never without enemies and even at this very time I write from a house of griefe where my mother and my sister being sicke on one hand and my selfe on the other I seeme to be sick of three sicknesses at once yet be not afraid least this I send you should be infectious as though I had a designe to poyson you with my presents for I have not yet medled with any of the Musque fruits which I hope you shall eat I have not durst so much as to come neere them least I should chance to leave some light impression of my Feaver upon them They are originally Natives of Languedoc and not so degenerated from the goodnesse of their auncestors but that you will find them I hope of no unpleasing taste and besides Madam they grow in a soyle that is not hated of Heaven and where I can assure you your Name is so often rehearsed and your vertue so highly esteemed that there is not an Eccho in all our woods but knowes you for one of the perfectest things in the world and that I am Madam Your c. At Balzac 20. Septemb. 1629. To LETTER XXVII MAdam see here the first thankes I give you for you know that having never done me but displeasures I have never yet returned you but complaints but now at last you have been pleased to begin to oblige me and after so many sentences of death which you have pronounced against me and after so many cruelties which I have suffered you have bethought your selfe ten yeares after to send me one good newes which truly is so pleasing to me that I must confesse you had no other way to reconcile your selfe unto me and I cannot forbeare to blesse the hand that brought mee a Letter from Madam Desloges though they were dyed in my bloud and had given me a thousand wounds The sense of former injuries hath no competition with so perfect a joy and of two passions equally just the more violent is easily overcome of the more sweet You have hastened the approach of my old age and made gray one halfe of my haire you have banished mee this Kingdome and forced me to flie your tyranny by flying into another Country finally it is no thanks to you that I have not broken my owne necke and made matter for a Tragedie and yet foure lines of Madam Desloges have the force to blot out all this long story of my mis-fortunes and willingly with all my heart I forget all the displeasures I have received for this good office you now affoord me I make you this discourse in our first language that I may not disobey Monsieur de who will have me write but will not have me write in any other stile for in truth and to speake seriously now that he leaves me at libertie I must confesse unto you Madam that I am exceedingly bound unto you for the continency I have learned by being with you and good examples you have given me your medicines are bitter but they heale you have banished me but it is from prison and if my passions be cooled by the snow of my head I have then never a white hayre which I may not count for one of your favours I therefore recant my former complaints and confesse my selfe your debtour of all my vertue The time I have imployed in your service hath not been so much the season of my disorderd life as it hath been an initiating me into a regular life which I meane to lead Your conversation hath been a schoole of austeritie unto me and you have taught me never to be either yours or any others but only in our Lord Madam Your c. At Balzac 10. Octob. 1629. To Madam Desloges LETTER XXVIII MAdam my evill Fortune gives one common beginning to all my Letters I am impatient even to death to have the honour to come and see you but now that I am well the ayre is sicke and all the Country drowned There is no land to be seene between this and Lymousin and the mischiefe is that there is no navigation yet found out for so dangerous a voyage This bindes me to waite till the waters be fallen and that God be pleased to remember his Covenant with Noah As soone as this shall be I will not fayle to performe my vow and to come and spend with you the happiest day of all my life In the meane time Madam give me leave to tell you that I am not yet well recovered of the extasie you put me in by writing unto me such excellent things that I could not reade them with a quiet minde nor indeeed without a â—inde of jealousie All Frontignon would be sufficiently paid with that you write of a dozen paltry Muske fruits I sent you and you prayse my writtings with words which have no words worthy of them but your own This of one side makes me eâ—vious and of the other side interessed and if the honour I receive by your flattering Eloquence did not sweeten the griefe of being overcome it would trouble me much that I had no better defended the advantages of our sexe but should suffer it to lose an honour which the Greeks and Latines had gotten for it Yet take heed you hazzard not your judgement too freely upon the unce taintie of humane things you esteeme well of a Prince who is not yet borne you should have seene his Horoscope from the poynt of his conception before you should speak of him in so loftie termes But besides that nothing is lesse assured than the future and nothing apter to deceive than hope Consider Madam I beseech you that you favour an unfortunate man and that Faction oftentimes carries it away from truth It will be hard for you your selfe alone to withstand an infinite multitude of passionate men and it may be said to you as was said to those of Sparta upon occasion of
you here in May. But seeing you have made my hopes recoyle and that you make your abode in Limousin for some longer time be pleased Madam that I send to bring me a true relation of the state of your health and to tell me if you use as you ought the shade of your woods and the freshnesse of your fountaines For my selfe who make my harvest at the gathering of Roses and Violets and who reckon the goodnesse of the yeare by the abundance of these delicate Flowers Now is the season for my humour and in one onely subject I finde cause enough to scorne and slight both the perfumes of the street St. Honore and the pictures of the faire St. Germain Thus I make my selfe happie at a very easie rate and have not so much as a thought of any want And indeed to what purpose should I grieve for pleasures that are absent and curiously hunt after all the defects of my Estate If my commerce be onely with dumbe Creatures at least I am not troubled with the importunities of Courtiers nor with the verses of a paltry Poet nor with the Prose of Messieurs These are the inconveniences of Paris which I count more troublesome then either the dirt or the justling of Coaches and at the worst if by living in the Desart I should become a meere savage yet I am sure to recover the garbe of the world as soone as I shall but see Madam Desloges and to make my selfe neat and civill with but one halfe houres conversing with her This is my wish Madam and passionately I am Your c. At Balzac 20. June 1730. To Monsieur de la Nouve Counsellor of the King in his first Chamber of Enquests LETTER XIX SIR My deare Cousin one cannot say you nay in any thing to doe you a second pleasure I am about to commit a second treason and to send you the Verses of which I told you who was the Poet. I was bound by a thousand Oaths to keepe them secret but I must confesse you are a strange corrupter and your perswasions would shake a firmer fidelitie then mine yet to the end we may at least save the apparence and give some colour to my fault you may be pleased to say that it is the translation of an Ode made by Cornelia mother of the Gracchi and that you found it in an ancient Manuscript you may say shee made it for one of her sonnes being in love with a woman whom afterward he married and that seeing him one day looke extreamly palo shee asked him what it was that made him sicke There is nothing more true then this Story and there needs nothing but to change the Names It is not indeed the same person but it is the same merit and I am sure you doubt not but a French Lady is capable of as much as Quiâ—tilian spake of a Romane Graccorum eloquentiae multum contuâ—isse Corneliam matrem cujus doctissimus sermo in posteros quoque est Epistolis traeditus I never heard speake of such an impatience or such an irresolution for I cannot beleeve that it is either feare or effeminatenesse or that the spirit of so great a Prince could be subject to such enormous maladies Whatsoever it be if he had but read Virgill a woman would have sayd unto him with great indignation and is it then such a miserable thing to die And if he had been in the Levant he might have learned of a Turkish Proverbe That it is better to be a Cock for one day then a Henne all ones life Et con questo vi bâ—tio le mani and am Sir my deere Cousin Your c. 2. August 1630. L' Amant qui meurt OLympa made me sicke thou hast Thou cause of my Consumption art There needs but one frowne more to wast The whole remainder of my heart Alas undone to Fate I bow my head Ready to die now die and now am dead You looke to have an age of tryall Ere you a Lover will repay And my state brookes no more deniall I hardly can one minute stay Alas undone to Fate I bow my head Ready to die now die and now am dead I see already Charons boate That comes to ferry me to Hell I heare the Fatall Sisters note That cryes and calls to ring my knell Alas undone to Fate I bow my head Ready to die now die and now am dead Looke in my wound and see how cold How pale and gasped my soule lyes Which Nature strives in vaine to hold Whilst wing'd with sighes away it flyes Alas undone to Fate I bow my head Ready to die now die and now am dead To Madam Desloges LETTER XXXV MAdam I have not dared now a good while tosend you any Letters for feare you should conceive they carried an ill ayre about them nor yet to send you any more Melons which yet prove excellent good this yeare for doubt you should suspect them as comming from a Countrey extreamely discredited but since I understand by your Letter that you are not so much frighted as I was told and since also I can protest unto you most religiously that I write from a place most cleere from any taint of the neighbouring misery and that hath kept sound in the midst of infection I am most glad Madam that I have the libertie to tell you that I value you more than all the ancient Romans and that I have no comfort to thinke of in the deepest houres of all my solitude but onely you and your incomparable merit What businesse soever I am about I take pleasure to let this thought make me a trewant at my travaile it is a recreation for which I abandon all affayres and there is neither Morall nor Politique Plato nor Aristotle but I presently hive him over as soone as you are once presented to my imagination I hope I shall need to use no Oaths to make you beleeve this veritie you are well enough acquainted with my pride and know that this Country swayne would not turne flatterer for an Empresse There are but three persons I am resolved to prayse you Madam are one and if you have the leisure to read that I send you you will easily guesse who the other two are and so I bid you Good morrow and perfectly am Madam Your c. At Balzac 9. Septemb. 1630 Another to her LETTER XXXVI MAdam you shall receive from me no premeditated excuses I had rather confesse my fault ingenuously than take the paines to justifie it untowardly Indeed a fatall sluggishnesse cousin german to a Lethargie hath seized in such sort upon me since my comming hither that I have not so much as written to my owne mother so as having fayled in this first poynt I thought not fit to fayle by halfes and therefore never troubled my selfe much in the rest of my dutie I speake Madam of this exteriour dutie and this affection in picture which is oftentimes but a false representation of
her birth will she not be as well contented as you with the partition which Nature her selfe hath made I cannot conceive with what face she can goe a hunting amongst such violence and tumults and how she can run hallowing all day till shee be out of breath after a kennell of Hounds and a troope of Huntsemen God made her for the Closet and not for the Field and in truth it is a great sin to distend so handsome a mouth and to disfigure so comely a face with blowing a borne To expose such excellent things to all the boughes of the Forrest and to all the injuries of the weather and to endanger such pretious colours with winde and raine with the Sun and dust And yet Madam to see hunting without being a partie to goe in Coach and in Parkes inclosed where a multitude of beasts are kept prisoners and come to dye at Ladies feet such a recreation as this I doe not condemne being only entertained with the eyes and may passe either for a spectacle or a walke and is as farre from agitation as from rest But this serves not her turne she cals these but lazie and sedentarie recreations and takes no pleasure but when it is with hazard of her life But what would be thought Madam if one would come and tell you shee is slaine with a fall by ranke riding or that shee hath met with a wild Boare that was too hard for her In such cases there would not onely be no excuse for her death but it would bee a blot upon her memory for ever and to save her honor there must bee feigned some other accident in her Epitaph As for that other discoursing Lady you complaine of and whom I know she commits not in truth such extravagant faults as this doth yet she hath her faults too and I can no more allow of women to be Doctors than of women to be Cavaliers She should take you for a paterne and make profit of the good example you give You know indeed an infinite number of excellent things but you make no open confession of your knowledge as ssee doth and you shew you have not learned them to keepe a Schoole You speake to her when she preacheth to you and making popular answers to her riddles and giving distinction to her confusion you doe her at least this good office to expound her to her selfe Neither in the tune of your voyce nor in the manner of your expressing is any thing seen in you but that which is naturall and French and although your spirit bee of an extreame high elevation and farre above the ordinarie reach yet you so accomodate it to the capacitie of all that heare you that whilest the meaner sort doe understand you the more able spirits do admire you It is a great matter Madam to have gotten the knowledge of such excellent things but it is a greater matter so to hide them as if they were stollen and to call them as you do by the name of of your secret Truantings Your Canvas your Silk your Needles are seen but your papers are not seen and those women that are taken with men that are not their husbands are not more surprized than you are when you are found to have an Authour in your hand that is not French I know therefore Madam you cannot approve of one so contrarie to your selfe how faire a shew soever you make nor will ever change the plainnesse of your words for her learned gybrish Pedanterie is not sufferable in a Master of Art how should it bee borne withall in a woman And what patience can endure to heare one talke a whole day together Metamorphosis and Philosophie to mingle the Idaeas of Plato and the Praedicables of Porphirie together to make no complyment that hath not in it a dozen Horizons and Hemispheares and at last when she hath no more to say then to raile upon me in Greeke and accuse me of Hyperbole and Caco-zeale These be her devises she will have in two verses at least foure full points she hath a designe to set on foot and bring into use againe the Strophes and Antistrophes she gives Rules both of Epick and Dramatick Poesie and sayth she cannot endure a Comedie that is not within the law of foure and twentie houres and this she is going about to publish through all France If I had a mortall enemie I would desire no greater revenge of him than to wish him such a wife Nothing hath more confirmed me in my desire of solitude than the example of this Ladie and I see plainly that a single life is the best thing in the world seeing it lies in covert and is free from the cumber of this talking Ladie I expect by this bearer the Essences you promised me and am Madam Your c. At Balzac 20. Septemb 1628. Another to her LETTER LI. MAdam I cannot possibly live anie longer without hearing from you but I cannot hear of any of whom to hear it and Lymousins are as rare in these parts as Spaniards since the war was proclaimed I must therfore make use of a messenger whom you have raised to an Embassador to the end he may inform me of your health and your friends My love of you drawes on a curiositie for all that are yours and my minde will not be in quiet till I heare how the Gentlemen your children doe and what good newes you heare from them Particularly I desire to know whether you be yet a Grand-mother in Holland and whether my Lady your daughte-in law have brought you Captaines or Senatours at least Madam they shall be children much bound to their mother seeing besides their birth they shall owe her for their libertie a thing they should not doe to a Fleming of Bruxels I have seene the Cavalier you have so often spoken of and I thinke you judge verie rightlie of him He consists wholly of a Pickedevant and two Mustachoâ—s and therefore utterly to defeat him there needes but three clippes of a paire of scizers It is not possible to bring one to be afraid of him Hee sayth that if he wore a Lions skinne and carried in one hand a Torch and in the other a Clubbe yet in such equipage hee would be more ridiculous than redoubtable Hee beleeves he hath choler enough but beleeves not he hath any heart he reckons him in the number of beasts that are skittish and resty but not that are cruell and furious And when I tell him he hath been often in the field he answers me it hath been then rather to feed than to fight You can if you please returne me a hundred fold for this my untoward short relation and it will be long of you if my man come not back laden with histories which must certainly have been written to you by the last Posts Take pitty upon the ignorance of your neighbours and doe me the honour to beleive I am Madam Your c. At Balzac 15. Aug.
inviolable and have the priviledge of sanctuary yet prophane persons stick not to lay hands on the Saints themselves and on their Altars and nothing is so sacâ—ed that can escape the hand of sacriledge Onely those persons that can revenge offences may venture to give offences and one that will give the lye must be of a condition to fight a Duell and maintaine it by Armes My Neece hath no great need of these precepts nor indeed of any forraigne instruction she cannot wander from the right if she goe not astray from her owne inclination nor can be troublesome to others if shee borrow not a vice which is none of her owne I have therefore represented to her the woman of the other day but after their example who shewed their slaves drunke to their Children and that is to make her afraid of filthy Objects and to make that hatefull to her which is not in it selfe lovely to confirme her in the principles which you have taught her and to draw her out some rules from her owne action She is I know naturally good but the best natures have need of some method to guide them and direction doth never any hurt to vertue she is able to keep her selfe in termes extremely obliging without ever falling into the basenesse of flattery She is able to please without colloguing and although she call not every thing by the right name nor be so very curious to speak in proper termes yet her stile shall not for that be the lesse liked nor her company the lesse desired she may call them wise that want the reputation of being valiant and women that are sad she may say they are serious If a man be not of a quick spirit she may say he is of a good judgement and if one be unfortunate in his actions she may yet say he hath a good meaning in his counsails But yet in this there is a measure to be held and a choyce must be made in laying her colours that she seeke not to disguise all sorts of subjects for there are some indeed that are not capable of disguising Those that are pale she may praise for their whitenesse but those that have a dropsie she must not praise for their fatnesse she may say that scruple is a bud of pietie but she must not say that prophanenesse is an effect of Phylosophie She may make a favourable construction of things doubtfull and sweeten the rigour of particular judgements but she must not contend against common sence nor be opposite to verities that are publicke and manifest She must make a difference betweene errours and crimes betweene a docible simplicitie and a presumptuous stupiditie betweene sots that are honest and those that are wicked And if she happen to be in company where some weake spirit is oppressed as the world is full of such that will triumph over the weak and take no pittie of any she must then by all meanes be a protectresse of such a one and make her selfe a Sanctuary for all those whom stronger adversaties would otherwise ruine This onely is to be observed that she so undertake the maintaining of weake causes that it may appeare by the tune of her voyce that it proceeds from excesse of goodnesse and not from want of knowledge and that she compassionates humane infirmities by an act of charity but makes not her selfe a party by false perswasion I am now at the end of my paper and should have beene a good while since at the end of my letter but I alwayes forget my selfe when I am with you and never thinke howers shorter than those I bestow upon your memorie And so my deare sister I bid you farewell not without great longing to see you and if you and all your company come not hither the next weeke I proclaime it to you that I am no longer At Balzac 10. July 1634. Your c. THE SECOND PART of the third Volume of the Letters of MONSIEUR DE BALZAC To my Lord the Cardinall Duke of Richelieu LETTER I. MY Lord being stayed here by some occasions I suffer this hard necessitie with a great deale of paine and account my selfe banished from my Countrey being so long a time deprived of your presence I deny not but the victorious and triumphant Newes that comes continually from the Armie gives me some resentment of joy and that the brute of your Name in all quarters toucheth me very sensibly but it is no perfect satisfaction to me to learne that by others relating which I ought to know as an eye-witnesse and I conceive so great a pleasure to consist in the sight of your glory that there is not a common souldier under your Command whose happinesse and good fortune I doe not envie But my Lord though I cannot serve you with my bodily actions yet I revere you day and night with the thoughts of my minde and in this so worthy an imployment I never thinke the noblest part of my selfe can doe service enough Your Lordship next to the King is the eternall object of my spirit I never turne my eyes from the course of your life and if perhaps you have Courtiers more officious than my selfe and such as doe their duties with greater ostentation and shew yet I am most sure you have no servant that is more faithfull and whose affection comes more truely from his heart and is fuller of life and vigour But to the end my words may not be thought vaine and without ground I send you now a proofe of that I say by which you shall perceive that a man that is himselfe perswaded hath a great disposition to perswade others and that a Discourse founded upon the things themselves and animated with the truth both stirres mens spirits with greater force and also begets a firmer beliefe than that which is but feigned and comes but in the nature of Declayming This my Lord is a part drawne out from the whole bodie and a piece which I have taken most paines to polish which I freely vow unto you that all the houres of a calmer leisure than mine and all the powers of a more elevated spirit than ordinary would have found work enough to bring to perfection In it there is handled Of the vertue and victories of the King Of the Justice of his Armes Of Royalty and Tyranny Of usurpers and lawfull Princes Of Rebellion chastened and liberty mainteined but because the Prince I speake of is a stirrer and makes no stay any where and that in following him I should imbarque my selfe in a world of severall subjects I have therefore prescribed to my selfe certaine bounds which in his actions I should never have met with and after the example of Homer who finished his Ilias with the death of Hector though that were not the end of the warre I have thought fit not to goe further than the taking of Size though this were but the beginning of the wonder we have seene of his You know my
beene for the indisposition of my body I had not staid so many days from thanking you for your many courtesies but for these two moneths I have not stirred from my bed so cruelly handled with the Sciatica that it hath taken from me all the functions of my spirit and made me utterly uncapable of any conversation otherwise you may be sure I should not voluntarily have deprived my selfe of the greatest contentment I can have when I have not your company and that I should not have received three Letters from you without making you three Answers Now that I have gotten some quiet moments from the violence of my torture and that my paine is turned into lamenesse I cannot chuse but take you by the hand and tell you in the first place that you are an ungratefull man to leave our Muses and follow some of their sisters that are neither so faire nor so worthy of your affection I intreat you to believe it is a temptation your evill Angel hath cast upon you and that you ought to reject it as the counsell of an enemy Things are not now to begin it is no time now to deliberate you are gone too farre in the good way to looke back and to be unwilling to finish that little which remains To leave eloquence for the Mathematickes is to refuse a Mistris of eighteen yeares old and to fall in love with an old woman God keep you from this unhappinesse and inspire you with better thoughts than those that have carried you to this desire of change It would be a disloyaltie I should never pardon you but should blame you for it as long as I live For making that reckoning of you as I doe and expecting gâ—eat matters from you it were an infinite wrong you should doe to make me lose the most pleasing of all my hopes I therefore by all meanes intreat you to persevere in your first designe and to resolve upon a voyage of three moneths to come and be reconciled to her whom you have offended and to make her a publique satisfaction by the edition of your writings by which it will plainely enough be seene the great favours she hath done you And for my part I promise you a chamber where you shall have the prospect of a Garden twelve miles long and so you shall be at once both in the City and in the Country Besides â— binde my selfe to set before your Book an Advertisement to the Reader to the end that no man may be ignorant of the part I beare in that which concernes you Consider whether you like of these conditions and whether you have courage enough to come and lodge Au Pre aux Glerks where I will wait for you without any designe of challenge or processe You shall be sure Sir to have there admirable visions and shall meditate nothing but with successe And in truth seeing the least motion of your spirit puts me to extasie what will it be when you shall employ your whole forces And if your conceits be so just and so well governed in the midst of confusion and unseasonable disturbances what a man will you be when you shall be at leisure and have the liberty which now you want Take my word for it you need not feare the censure of the world I 'l undertake you shall have the approbation of all honest people provided that you make a truce with your Mathematicks and never intricate your braines with that melancholick and doting Science which cost Archimedes his life at least before you cast your selfe upon such high and sublime specuculations it is fit you should get you credit by exercises that are more sweet and popular And now Sir this is all you are like to have at this time from my Sciatica that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 23. March 1628. Another to him LETTER XXV SIR I doe but now receive your Letter of the twelfth of this Moneth which confirms me in the opinion I have alwayes had that my interests are as deare unto you as your own to complement with you for this would be to thank you for being good as much as to say for being your self It is much better to returne you friendship for friendship than to pay you with unprofitable words In a word Sir I make profession to be an honest man and therefore all the thankfulness that can be desired from a person obliged you may expect from me As concerning I assure you I wish him no ill because I conceive he hath done me none it is sufficient for me that my friends have no good opinion of his opinions and that his owne friends begin to take notice of his false dealing In all this there is nothing either new or strange I am not the first innocent that have beene persecuted in the world and if I could not beare detraction and slander I should be more dainty than Princes and their principall officers are who forbear not to do well though for their well doing they be evill spoken of the best and foundest part is of my side I want no protector either Males or Females and if I would make use of all my advantages I could oppose Doctor to Doctor and Gown to Gown Fratribus fratres claustra minantia claustris But it is fit sometimes to make spare of ones forces and to restraine resentment within lesse bounds than justice allowes The Prince you desire to heare of is yet in the Idea of the King his Father farre from coming as yet to Paris or Thouleuze for my selfe I am alwayes block'd up by my Sciatica and I think all the stormes of the middle region of the aire fall downe upon my unhappy leggs but it is you that will bring me health and faire weather and your presence will worke that miracle which I expected from Monsieur de L'orme come therefore I inireat you speedily and suffer not a man to die for want of succour who passionately is Sir Yours c. At Park 30. March 1628. To my Lord the Duke Valette LETTER XXVI SIR it grieves me much that the first Letter you see of mine should not be pure and free from all my interests and that instead of entertaining you with matters of weight and proportionable to your spirit I should bring it downe to the petty affaires of a private man yet I cannot believe that you being all gracious and all generous as you are will think any occasion of doing good unworthy of you but that your vertue in this doth imitate the supreme which is never to busie in governing of Heaven and the other nobler parts of the world but that he takes care as well for governing the meanest of all his creatures I humbly beseech your Lordship to consider me in this last quality and if it be no incivility to make such a request that you will undertake the businesse I present unto you but as a disburdening you of some more weighty if it be
all on at least but very coole and moderate but I see now that you have more generousness in you than is sit to have amongst men that are interessed and that you put in practise the Maximes of our Ancestors and the Rules of your Epictetus It is I that am for this exceedingly bound unto you seeing it is I that receive the benefit of it that am the Object of your vertue You may then believe I have not so unworthy a heart as not to feel a resentment answerable to so great an Obligation at least Sir I hope to shew you that the Picture mine enemies have made of me is not drawn after the life and that their colours disfigure me rather than represent me I have nothing in me heroicall great I confess but I have something that is humane and indifferent If I be not of the number of the vertuous I am at least of their side I applaud them whom I cannot follow and admire that I cannot imitate I am glad if I can be praised not onely of the judicious and wise such as you and our Monsieur de Boissat are but even of the simpler sort that are honestly minded such as I know Sir how to love in perfection and when you shall know me better you shall confess there is none that can be more than I At Paris 2 April 1635. Your c. To Monsieur de Voyture LETTER XXXIII SIR if I did not rely upon your goodness I should take more care than I do in preserving your favour and I should not let a messenger go from hence by whom I should not persecute you with my Letters But knowing you are no rigorous exactor of that which is your due much less expect I should give you more I have conceived I might be negligent without offence and that having an absolute power over me as you have you would use it upon me with the moderation of good Soveraignes And I should still continue to follow mine owne inclination which finds a sweetness in idleness if I did not think it necessary to advertise you that I am in the world lest you should think all your courtesies lost that you have done me I would have been glad I could have loved you all my life long without any kind of interest or temporal consideration yet it troubles me not to give honour to my friend by giving him matter of his vertue to work upon I am content you shall hold the higher part in our friendship which is to do good but then I look to hold the lower less noble part which is to acknowledge and this is so setled in my heart that a greater cannot be desired from a man exceeding sensible and exceedingly obliged But though it were so that you had no tie upon me and that without ungratefulness I might forbeare to love you yet I intreat you to believe that the knowledge I have of your worth merit would never give me leave to doe it but that the naturall respect we owe to things that are perfect would alwayes bind me infinitely to honour you and to be with all my soul as I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 15. July 1630. Another to him LETTER XXXIV SIR you are welcome from Flanders from England and from Spaine I am not onely glad for your returne but I refresh my self after your voyages For if you know it not I must tell you that my spirit hath gone these voyages with you and you never passed the Sea that I was not near a shipwreck They that know what it is to love will not mislike the novitie of this complement I have born my part in all the fits of your Feavor I have drunk part of all your potions I have accompanied you in all your strange adventures It is therefore great reason I should give you thanks for giving my friendship rest and that by finishing your travel you have finished my unquietnesse It is better Sir to be a private man at home where there is courtesie and freenesse than to be a Lord Ambassadour among publique enemies and if the Jewes said well that the Graves of Judea were more beautifull than the Palaces of Babylon why may not we be bold to say that the Dirt of Paris is better than the Marble of Madrid It is a juster thing to adore M. the Cardinall than to put off ones hat to the President Rose or to the Marquess of Aitâ—na and it would have been a newes no lesse shameful than lamentable if we had come to read in the Gazets these pittifull words spain's rising up Atque ibi magnuâ— Mirandusque Glâ—ens sedâ—t id Praetoria regis Donec Hâ—sperio libeat vigilare Tyranno Thanks be to God the face of things is hanged and a great Prince liberty hath cost but the life of good a Horse At our next meeting you shall tell me all the fortunes you have passed and in requitall thereof I will tell you newes out of the wildernesse and it shall be at Monsieur de Chaudebous Chamber that our conference shall be at least if you care any thing for it and that I be in his favour still Howsoever this I am sure he can never love any man that honours him more perfectly than I doe or that hath a greater opinion of the beauty and noblenesse of his mind He is alwayes one of the dear objects of my thoughts and I still take him for one of those true Knights which are no where to be found now but in the History of France I want such an example before my eyes to stir up the faintness I feel in my duty and to thrust me forward in the love of Vertue The least of his words make my spirit both higher greater the only sound of his voyce give me both life strength I doubt not but I should be twice as good as I am if I could but see him once a moneth and make a third in your excellent conferences But this is a happinesse which is at home with you but far off from me though I have a designe to come nearer to it you injoy it to the full and leave to others onely a desire of it and a jealousie and jealous indeed I should be if I did not love you more than I love my selfe and if being bound to you for a thousand favours I did not acknowledge my selfe more bound to take a contentment in your good fortune Enjoy then your happinesse Siâ— and never feare I will oppose it seeing I shall alwayes prefer your contentments before my own and shall be all my life Sir Your c. At Balzac 5 Novemb. 1634. To Monsieur Mestivier Physitian to my Lord the Duke D'Espernon LETTER XXXV SIR I am a thirst for the waters of Vic ever since I heard you thinke them to be wholsome the reputation you give them hath made me to send for them to try whether this Drug will do me any more good
to be the true owners of things of which indeed we are but usurpers there is nothing secure against wrangling every thing is matter of suit in this wretched world yet I mean not so easily to yeild and give up my right for if I were nor able to write according to the rules of Art I must certainely be one of the most dull capacity and altogether uncapable of all discipline For did I learn nothing by seeing the Cardinall Perron Nothing by being a Scholler in the French tongue under Mr. Nicholas Geoffeâ—ean Nothing by a thousand conferences with the good man Malherbe And lastly Nothing by lodging with Father Baudoin Vel in bicipiti somniâsse Parnasso For one is as much as the other as you know well This man in truth is no ordinary Father his conceptions and productions are without intermission he fills our studies with his books he amends reforms embellishes the books of others he smells a Barbarisme or an incongruity seven miles off he hath counted by tale all the improprieties that are in he is admirable in knowledge and use of all particles and I am sure he loves me not so little to hide any secret or mystery of all his knowledge from me I intreat you to kisse his hands for me and to believe that I am most truly Sir Your c. At Balzac 20. Aug. 1630. Another to him LETTER XLVIII SIR three dayes since I imparted my melancholy and my unquietnesse unto you and how much I was moved at the cruelty of I have since received your Letter of the ninth of this present which doth not indeed take all my paine from me because it declares not what is done against me but yet asswageth it a little because it declares that nothing is done against me that is deadly However I must put on a resolution for all events and comfort my self with Philosophy and with you you that are my true and faithfull friend and that stand between me and all the stones my enemies throw at me Your affection is no small help to me in these troublesome encounters and the tendernesse you shew to have of me bindes me in a very sensible obligation to you Concerning the ill will of it can do me no great hurt and pardon me if I do not think my honour is ingaged to make so bloody a warre upon him as you would have me The lesse shew is made of resenting petty injuries the better and the more readily they are repelled if I should think upon answering him I should but make a comment upon his gibâ—ish for them that understand him not and thereby bring his folly into the more credit and request When time and place servâ—s we will handle him as he deserves and doubt not but his lightness shall light heavily upon him onely doe you collect some common places upon this matter and remember your selfe of all that hath passed between to the end the History may not be lost I have had speech with the man whose whole life is nothing but a continuall meditation of death I never found him so austere nor so great an enemy of bravery as now his devotion respects neither right of nations nor lawes of civility I have not been able to get him to write to that person that loves him so dearly and complaines to you so often about it All the Answer he returnes to his long Letters are but these three words of the Gospel Noli amplius peccare which in sweeter and more courtly termes is as much as to say Lites heures au lieu de lire ses poulets Desile tes coliers faits-en des chapelets c. I received the other day a most elegant and gentle Letter from one Mounsieur Ytterius a Lawyer of Antwerpe but I know not by what meanes it came to my hands nor by what direction to return an answer Pray enquire after him and let our friends know that in spight of the Maâ—quesse of Aytona I have adherents in Flanders and therefore he neede not make his bragges for having burnt my booke at Brux â—s Scilicet illo igne vocem omnium Gentium libertatem Europae conscientiam generis humani abolere arbitrabatur By the next Post I will write to Monsieur Hottoman and will give Monsieur de la Pigeonnerio thanks for the verses you had of him to send me We have read them here in good company both of Males and Females and they all agree that the Fathers my adversaries are none of those Christian Ulysses's he speaks of that have nailed their Passions to the Crosse of Christ I forgot to ask you of Monsieur Seton and to desire you to call to him for the papers he promised me I regard him as one of the great Doctours of our age and make use of the riches of his spirit with so great privacy that he seems to be but as it were my Treasurer I know not how to make an end nor yet am willing to say more because I must reserve something for Monday next I therefore take my leave assuring you there is none more truly than I Sir Your c. At Balzac 7. Jan. 1631. To Monsieur Girrard Officiall of the Church of Angoulesme LETTER XLIX SIR I make use of you with the like liberty as I desire you would make use of me if therefore you have any spare time you may allow it to the affaires of but so as you allow it to mine first and that you make a difference between friendship and courtesie I doubt not but you will give your best advice to the Gentleman that is recommended to you and will set forward the best you can the design we have to make him one day an honest man I find the Booke more neatly and more correctly printed than I could have imagined and I would tell you that you are an able Grammarian but that I feare your Divinity would be angry for giving you so small a praise and so much vilified by the Messieurs or Masters The two Latin Tracts you sent me are as different of stile as they are of matter Any man that can but relish the antient purity will take the first of them for the work of some Roman that lived in the times of the republick but the other can be but the writing of some Gaule or Spaniard that came to declaim at Rome in the reign of the sixth or seventh Emperour One meets at the beginning with something that dazles and makes a faire shew of some great good to follow but at the bottome there is no such matter to be seen nothing but swelling and obscurity oftentimes false traines and eveâ—y where brags and bravadoes that are not tolerable It is a pleasure as I am told to heare this famous Author talk of himself he thinks his Pen as much worth as the King of Sweden's Sword and no less fatall to States and Princes He saith it is he that bestowes glory or dishonour makes men famous or infamous
Yet I have come to know and fame hath sounded in our desart the great battels that have been fought for the honour of France and how you have vanquished the spirits of strangers which is a greater victory than to vanquish their forces I have come to know that Italy hath vented out all her subtilties and imployed them to deceive us and yet could not and that these spirits which thought to reigne in all assemblies and to be masters of reason have not beene able to defend themselves against you but with spight and choller nor to complain of any thing but that you perswaded them to that which they came resolved never to do so as they which called us Barbarians and got alwayes as much by their Treaties as they lost by our Victories have found at last that there is wisdome on this side the Alpes as well as beyond and are driven to acknowledge that we had a man amongst us now able to hinder them from deceiving us as they had done They wondred to see a Servant that could not endure there should be a greater Master than his own that felt the least evils of his Country as if they were his proper wounds and thought it a hurt to himself if there were but an offer made to touch the Dignity of his Crowne but when they saw that you applyed remedies upon the sodaine to all inconveniencies which they thought you could never have avoyded that you not only answer'd all objections they made but prevented all they intended to make that you dived into their soules and took hold of their intentions there and at the first conference made answer to that which they reserved for the second then in truth their fleam turned into choller and then you quite routed all their humane Prudence and all their politick Maximes c. I am not able to dissemble the joy I take to heare that your good services are acknowledged that when divers counsels had been tryed yet yours at last was still faine to be followed and that in guiding the fortune of France you are no lesse President of all affaires of Europe It is true that of all externall contentments I have none so sensible to me as this but on the other side when I heare that your health is continually assaulted or at least threatned by some accident or other that the rest which the quietnesse of your Conscience ought to afford you keeps you not from having unquiet Nights and that in the midst of all your glory and good successes yet you oftentimes are as it were weary of your life then indeed c. And can it not be that you should come to heare the publique acclamations but in the unquietnesse of your watchings Nor of your praises but in your paines Must the Sense suffer and the Spirit rejoyce Must you be upon the rack when you are in your triumphs Must you do two contrary works at once and at the same time have need both of moderation and of patience If vertue could be miserable and that the sect which accounts nothing evill but paine nothing good but pleasure were not universally condemned Certainely the divine Providence would at this day be complained upon by places of all this Kingdome and all honest men would in your behalfe finde something amiss in the worlds government Bâ—t my Lord you know better than I that it is the happinesse of Beasts onely of which we must believe the body for as for ours which resides in our highest part it is as little sensible of disorders that are below her as they which are in Heaven are uncapable of offences by stormes of the aire or by vapours of the earth And this being so God forbid that I should judge of your condition by the state of your health and not think him perfectly happy whom I esteem Doe but imagine with your selfe that you have made a division of the infirmities of humane nature with other men and then you shall finde the advantage is on your side seeing there is in you but a smal portion of pain for infinite defects that are in others Yet I cannot but think that the term of your patience is neere expired and that the time to come is preparing contentments for you that are wholly pure and will make you young againe after the time as before the time you have made your self old The King that hath need of your long life makes no wishes in vaine and heaven heares not the prayers of the enemies of our state We know of no successour fit to undertake what you leave unfinished and if it be true that our Armies are but the armes of your head and that God hath chosen your counsaile for establishing the affairs of this age why should we feare a losse which hath no right to come but to our posterity he will not in this onely point leave imperfect the happinesse he hath promised us be loves men too well to deprive them of that good which you are borne to do them When Armies are defeated there may new be levied and a second Fleet may be set forth when the first is lost but if you my Lord should false uâ— c. It shall be in your time that people oppressed shall come fâ—om the worles end to seeke the protection of this Crown 〈◊〉 by your means our Allies shall be well payed for their losses that the Spaniards shall be no conquerours but the French shall be the fâ—eâ—rs of all the earth It shall be in your time that the holy seat shall have her opinions free the inspirations of the holy Ghost shall be no more oppugned by the cunning of our adversaries and that there shall be raised up couragious hearts worthy of ancient Italy and able to defend the common cause Finally my Lord I shall be by your wisdome that there shall be no more tyâ—anny in Christendome nor rebellion in this Kingdome That the people shall leave in their superiours hands both Liberty and Religion and that â—â—om this legall government and from this perfâ—ct obedience there shall arise that happinesse which Polititians seek foâ— and which is the end of all civill societies My hope is that all these things shall câ—me to passe thorough your wise government and that after you have made sure our peace and our neighbours you shall your selfe enjoy the benefit of your good deeds with pleasure and at your ease and shall see the state of things continuâ— flouâ—ishing whereof none but yoursâ—lfe have beene the Author I earnestly intreat you so to deale with Monsieuâ— de that he may rest contented with this and dispense with me for any new meditation which would require more leisure than I am like to have This bearer will deliver you the History of Queen Elizabeth which may serve you for a recreation to the end of the week and then I shall come and aske your opinion and desire you to give me some light of that time out of the
but you would have the world also shew a respect unto my retirednesse and that being sequestred from men I should be also placed beyond the level and teach of Detraction yet this fiend did pursue Saint Hierome even unto the gates of Bethlehem and to the foot of our Saviourss cradle there she found him as he relates himself although he had thought to hide himself If this insolent thing had no regard of an admirable sanctity and a place guarded with Angels me thinks a vulgar innocence retired within an ill fortified village must not expect any favourable treatie But to passe from common conditions to the learned Tribe If in all ages there arose seditious spirits that rebelled against the Chieftains of Arts and discipline and if in the memory of our Fathers it was spoken openly at Paris that Aristotle was a simple Sophister J think they deal courteously with me in this Countrie if they be contented to call mee a simple write That great blasphemer of the name of Aristotle my Lord was D. Ramus who afterward though he was a Catholique was taken for a Huguenot at the massacre And indeed some did believe that God permitted this to come to passe by a just judgement and that the Tutelar Angel of good Letters took the pretext of Religion for to revenge the injuries that were done to Reason There is one this day alive in Germanie a pettie Tyrant in Grammer an enemy of common and general verities and an accuser of Cicero who not long since hath put forth some observations where he prefers a bill against his own Judge and questions the precedencie ever allowed unto that Prince of Latine Antiquitie So that my Lord the universal consent of all the world strengthned by a prescription of 18. centuries of years is not a sufficient title for to warrant the reputation of that Roman against the prevaricating quirks of this Barbarian Indeed this is a businesse of no good example but yet since it is so and that it doth little avail Virtue to be consecrated by time and to be crowned by the people for to make it inviolable against the practises of some private Humors There is no reason that I should complain before so many Worthies that have been so ill intreated themselves and that I should be had in any consideration where Aristotle and Cicero are not in safetie an ordinary man should not make moan for suffering the same destiny which extraordinary Personages have undergone and I cannot with modestie desire or expect from you that you should reform the world for the love of me nay I know my Lord that this little disorder is of some good use in a Common-wealth and it were to be wished that malice would busie it self thus about things of small importance that it might not think of businesse of higher consequence Those that have hitherto bestowed their pains in depraving the sense of my words and in falsifying my works had perhaps ere this time forged mens Testaments and minted false coins And he that now desires from you a priviledge would have stood in need of a pardon it may be if it had not been for me It is better by far that injustice should exercise it self upon my books then that it should vex and implead against all that is good and sacred in a civil societie that unjust men should rather tosse and transpose words invert and pervert periods of speeches then remove the bounds of lands or demolish their Neighbours houses To say the truth this is the most innocent way that vice can employ it self in and I believe I have not a little deserved from the Commonwealth for keeping at work these ten years such an infinite number of idle companions who certainly would have been dangerous Common-wealths men if they had not chosen rather to have been ridiculous Censors It is well that the heat of their brains is exhaled out this way and that their intemperance takes this course and that to prevent their fury men give some scope and liberty to their folly Permit them therefore this exercise my Lord they cannot choose but make use of their time which they will imploy farre worse if you doe not permit them to imploy it thus-Permit giddy Youth to spend their heat and fury upon a senselesse subject and a dead Letter which is not capable either of joy or sorrow As long as these Pen-fincers onely begge the Seal of your Authority be no niggard of the Prince his grace and favour and abate something of your wonted severity and rigour If it were a new and unusual thing it may be I should be contented to have the first Libel which branded me with injuries be suppressed but since there is now a pretty Librarie of them I am in a manner well pleased it should swell and encrease and I take a delight to build me a monument with those stones which envy hath hurl'd at me without doing me harm I account it no disgrace to be censured by some men because I account it no credit to be favoured by them I intend not to canvasse for voices nor labour a mysterious secret whereby I may gain the general applause of the world I have obtained what I desired my Lord if I have obtained your approbation as being derived from an unerring principle and from an Intelligence most perfectly illuminated God hath bestowed on you a soveraign judgement before the King had committed to your hands his soveraign Justice And you were most powerful in Reason before you were so in Authority I need not have recourse to this knowing that the other is no way against me and I esteem it more glory to me to have pleased you then I would think it satisfaction to have my enemies proscribed by you Your speeches of me upon every occasion so full of respect your own pourâ—raiture that you bestowed upon me a year agoe for a pledge of your Affection your imparting to me the riches of your writings I mean those writings that were animated with the spirit of the State and were full of the greatnesse of your Masterie which seemed to mee so farre to transcend the strength and vigour of this age and so nearly resembling the Roman Majesty In a word my Lord each moment of that happy afternoon which I had the honour to passe away with in your closet are priviledges which I doe value above that which you denied a Fantasme or the successor of Philarchus I dare not rehearse my other obligations by which I stand bound unto you you have herein injoyned me silence and believe that your favours would lose something of their purity if my thanks should still attend them Neverthelesse you must not stifle in me the intentions of an honest man or smother the conceptions of grateful thoughts you have debarred me from divulging my acknowledgements but you shall not debarre me from acquitting that secret part of duty and from being at least in my soul and that while I
your virtues did oblige me and where will be one also wherein as some would perswade you I am injurious to you How I pray can all these agree can I be both your friend and your foe at once can I blowe with the same mouth both hot and cold can the literal sense favor you and the allegorical injure you can I do you wrong when I must needs wrong my selfe shall I give an occasion of distast by ambiguous termes where I must make my self ridiculous by apparent contradictions This was it Sir that was suggested to your credulitie and which you did not reject at first acquaintance as I had reason to expect from your good discretion These were the false surmises which were brought before you wherein you found more semblance of truth then in the sincere protestations which I made to you I cannot conceive knowing that you have continued your friendship towards me and that I too have not lost my reason how you could imagine that I intended in a bravery to disingage you and by those aukeward spirits which I had known I aim'd directly at you and might not designe some other as well I know a great many of the Gascons and as there be some of them very moderate so also there be others that are not so I knowe some of Provence and Corsica and I am not ignorant of their natural gentleness I knowe some Spaniards and I know how agreeable is their yoak with that which they call Castiga vellacos Lastly you may believe that I have not travelled blindfold I had in vain conversed with men if I had not endeavored to know them and yet in this particular men would fain make all my acquaintance to be terminated in you and that I have pardoned a thousand Humorists in the world to whom my proposition might be applied for to violate you They surmise that having an aim to wound some body I made choice of one of my chiefest friends for my mark and that I have murmur'd closely and in dark language that He is rough and violent whom I proclaim every where and with loud accent for compleatly wise and noble I will not cite unto you mean testimonies for the confirmation of this truth I can alleage My Lord the Duke of and My Lord the Count of of whom is here question made They know both of them how far I am your Servant and with what servencie I did maintain your honor and interests on a time when occasion was presented I am willing to believe that your other friends might serve you in some stead in some other encounters but in this here all the whole Company I except no man was mute There was not any there but my selfe that spake strenuouslie in your behalf concerning those things that did reflect upon you and the boldnesse of my affection carried me so far that the Lords whom I now named unto you did give me a publick testimony and professed though with a little disgust that I was too good a friend to make a Countier of I am therefore something agrieved at this time to be requited thus with oblequie where I thought I had deserved thanks to have preserved my fidelity inviolable towards you and now to be accused of treacherie to be the onely man in your defence on that occasion whereof you have cause to boast and now to be the onely man of whom you complain I do not use to value my services which I perform to my friends and I am content to stand up for them manfullie without making unto them an account of my prowesse Moreover Sir this betrayes grief more then presumption and may be termed defending rather then upbraiding These are resentments which accompanie innocence that is offended and which your facilitie abused by the malice of another doth force from my heart against my will I will not conceal it from you you have made a deep wound in it it makes me think in all my dreams of the injustice which I suffer at your hand and you had utterlie lost any friend that had been lesse firm then my selfe by putting him to such a hazard Wherefore Sir for all the revenge that I desire for the injurie which I have received take it not amisse that I give you this advice that you give lesse credit hereafter to another and more to your selfe that you would be more jealous of those opinions that you have conceived upon your first acquaintance of a businesse and lesse affected to the rumors of the Citie which are not grounded upon any solid foundation You should consider the place from whence these quaint Newes have travelled weigh the circumstances of the thing examine by what spirit the accuser was led thereunto and not examine his person onely and passion and interests but also the deservings of the party accused his manner and behavior of life and his former actions suspend your judgement at leastwise until time shall give you a more exact particular information of businesses otherwise you shall never want disquiet and vexation and you should thus but feed upon suspicion and distrust which are verie unwholsome viands Men must not send you relations of whatsoever an undiscreet friend or some rude sturdie servant or such and such a Neighbor shall report unto they must have more care of the tranquillitie of your minde and likewise for your part you must not sweare unto the testimonies of all the Informers that have a plot upon your credulitie and take pleasure in the pain and exercise which they put you unto If you allow an open gate for all tales and suggestions to enter in they will throng into your house apace and first come first heard To day they will inform you and perhaps with specious colours too that your Privadoes do divulge your secrets and to morrow that your Domesticks do rob and rifle you and at last that all the world is your enemy and all private conferences are but conspiracies against you I conjure you Sir for your own peace not to give so much credit to those things which do no way concern Religion nor to abandon your self to those Relators who pretend to dispel melancholie when they are fit for nothing but to whisper follies into your eares and to calumniate with a good grace make a distinction betwixt the fraudulent Arts of Parasites and the freedom of ingenious men between those that adore Fortune and those that regard nothing but Vertue For my part I declare freelie unto you that if Monsieur the were rais'd again and would commit his omnipotencie to your hands I should not do that to regain your favor what I do now perform in regard of our friendship At leastwise I should be more stern and stubborn then I am in my displeasure and more obstinate in seeking to you and lesse solicitous of the event of my seeking But I have not yet the skill to complie with the times and to be still on Fortunes side
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