affluence of every
sort in which I do find myself." The spirit of M. de St. Cyran is there,
and also the spirit of the gospel, which caused Pascal, when he was
dying, to say, "I love poverty, because Jesus Christ loved it. I love
wealth, because it gives the means of assisting the needy." A genius
unique in the extent and variety of his faculties, which were applied
with the same splendid results to mathematics and physics, to philosophy
and polemics, disdaining all preconceived ideas, going unerringly and
straightforwardly to the bottom of things with admirable force and
profundity, independent and free even in his voluntary submission to the
Christian faith, which he accepts with his eyes open, after having
weighed it, measured it, and sounded it to its uttermost depths, too
steadfast and too simple not to bow his head before mysteries, all the
while acknowledging his ignorance. "If there were no darkness," says he,
"man would not feel his corruption; if there were no light, man would
have no hope of remedy. Thus it is not only quite right, but useful, for
us that God should be concealed in part, and revealed in part, since it
is equally dangerous for man to know God without knowing his own misery,
and to know his own misery without knowing God." The lights of this
great intellect had led him to acquiesce in his own fogs. "One can be
quite sure that there is a God, without knowing what He is," says he.

In 1627, four years after Pascal, and, like him, in a family of the long
robe, was born, at Dijon, his only rival in that great art of writing
prose which established the superiority of the French language. At
sixteen, Bossuet preached his first sermon in the drawing-room of Madame
de Rambouillet, and the great Conde was pleased to attend his theological
examinations. He was already famous at court as a preacher and a
polemist when the king gave him the title of Bishop of Condom, almost
immediately inviting him to become preceptor to the dauphin. A difficult
and an irksome task for him who had already written for Turenne an
exposition of the Catholic faith, and had delivered the funeral orations
over Madame Henriette and the Queen of England. "The king has greatly at
heart the dauphin's education," wrote Father Lacoue to Colbert; "he
regards it as one of his grand state-strokes in respect of the future."
The dauphin was not devoid of intelligence. "Monseigneur has plenty of
wits," said Councillor Le Gout de