uits
for whatever is finical and narrow-minded, for a meanness of style and
littleness of heart. The bold but innocent language of an angel, pure
as light itself, who incessantly points out God in his sweetest
revelation, woman suckling, and the divine mysteries of love,
emboldened his imitators to make the most perilous equivocations, and
was the occasion of their carrying their ambiguous terms to such a
pitch, that the line of demarcation between gallantry and devotion, the
lover and the spiritual father, became at length invisible.

The friend of St. Francois de Sales, good bishop Camus, with all his
little romances, contributed much to this. There was nothing now but
pious sheep-folds, devout Astreas, and ecclesiastical Amyntases.
Conversion sanctifies everything in these novels; I am aware of it.
The lovers at the end of the story enter a convent or seminary, but
they arrive there by a long roundabout road, which enables them to
dream by the way.

A taste for the romantic and insipid, the benignant and paternal style,
thus gained ground rapidly. The event showed that the innocent had
worked for the benefit of the cunning. A St. Francois and a Camus
prepared the way for Father Douillet.

The essential point for the Jesuits was to reduce and to lessen, to
make minds weak and false, to make the little very little, and turn the
simple into idiots: a mind nourished with trifles and amused with toys
must be easy to govern. Emblems, rebuses, and puns, the delight of the
Jesuits, were very fit for that purpose. Among the class of silly
emblems, few books can vie with the _Imago primi Soeculi Societatis
Jesu_.

All this paltry nonsense succeeded admirably with women who had no sort
of occupation, and whose minds had been for a long time corrupted by an
unintellectual gallantry. It has been proved by experience, in every
age, that to please the sex only two things are requisite; first, to
amuse them, to participate in their taste for everything that is
trifling, romantic, and false; secondly, to flatter them, and spoil
them in their weaknesses, by making one's self weaker, more effeminate,
and womanish than they.

This was the line of conduct laid down for all.--How is it that the
lover gets an advantage over the husband? Generally speaking, it is
less by his passion, than by his assiduity and complaisance, and by
flattering woman's fancy. The director will make use of the very same
means; he will flatter, an