hed fashion. Women invented conversation, the art of intimate
letter-writing, and politeness. Manners took on a sweetness and a
nobility unknown to preceding ages. One of the finest minds of that age
of reason, the amiable Bernier, wrote one day to St. Evremond: 'It is a
great sin to deprive oneself of a pleasure.' And this pronouncement
alone should suffice to show the progress of intelligence in Europe. Not
that there had not always been Epicureans but, unlike Bernier, Chapelle,
and Moliere, they had not the consciousness of their talent.

"Then even the very devotees understood Nature. And Racine, fierce bigot
that he was, knew as well as such an atheistical physician as Guy Patin,
how to attribute to divers states of the organs the passions which
agitate mankind.

"Even in my abbey, whither I had returned after the turmoil, and which
sheltered only the ignorant and the shallow thinker, a young monk, less
of a dunce than the rest, confided to me that the Holy Spirit expresses
itself in bad Greek to humiliate the learned.

"Nevertheless, theology and controversy were still raging in this
society of thinkers. Not far from Paris in a shady valley there were to
be seen solitary beings known as 'les Messieurs,' who called themselves
disciples of St. Augustine, and argued with honest conviction that the
God of the Scriptures strikes those who fear Him, spares those who
confront Him, holds works of no account, and damns--should He so wish
it--His most faithful servant; for His justice is not our justice, and
His ways are incomprehensible.

"One evening I met one of these gentlemen in his garden, where he was
pacing thoughtfully among the cabbage-plots and lettuce-beds. I bowed
my horned head before him and murmured these friendly words: 'May old
Jehovah protect you, sir. You know him well. Oh, how well you know him,
and how perfectly you have understood his character.' The holy man
thought he discerned in me a messenger from Hell, concluded he was
eternally damned, and died suddenly of fright.

"The following century was the century of philosophy. The spirit of
research was developed, reverence was lost; the pride of the flesh was
diminished and the mind acquired fresh energy. Manners took on an
elegance until then unknown. On the other hand, the monks of my order
grew more and more ignorant and dirty, and the monastery no longer
offered me any advantage now that good manners reigned in the town. I
could bear it no lon