utrage with her acrid
humor a husband whom she had previously, in a different manner,
outraged many times. She piously denounces those who allow themselves
the indulgence of the most innocent pleasures; in the belief of
manifesting religious earnestness, she exhales downright passion,
envy, jealousy, and spite; and in lending herself warmly to the
interests of heaven she shows an excess of ignorance, insanity, and
credulity.

But is it necessary, Madam, to insist upon this? You live in a country
where you see many devotees, and few virtuous people among them. If
you will but slightly examine the matter, you will find that among
these persons so persuaded of their religion, so convinced of its
importance and utility, who speak incessantly of its consolations, its
sweets, and its virtues,--you will find that among these persons there
are very few who are rendered happier, and yet fewer who are rendered
better. Are they vividly penetrated with the sentiments of their
afflicting and terrible religion? You will find them atrabilious,
disobliging, and fierce. Are they more lightly affected by their
creed? You will then find them less bigoted, more beneficent, social,
and kind. The religion of the court, as you know, is a continual
mixture of devotion and pleasure, a circle of the exercises of piety
and dissipation, of momentary fervor and continuous irregularities.
This religion connects Jesus Christ with the pomps of Satan. We there
see sumptuous display, pride, ambition, intrigue, vengeance, envy, and
libertinism all amalgamated with a religion whose _maxims_ are
austere. Pious casuists, interested for the great, approve this
alliance, and give the lie to their own religion in order to derive
advantage from circumstances and from the passions and vices of men.
If these court divines were too rigid, they would affright their
fashionable disciples seeking to reach heaven on "flowery beds of
ease," and who embrace religion with the understanding that they are
to be allowed no inconsiderable latitude. This is doubtless the reason
why Jansenism, which wished to renew the austere principles of
primitive Christianity, obtained no general influence at the Parisian
court. The monkish precepts of early Christianity could only suit men
of the temper of those who first embraced it. They were adapted for
persons who were abject, bilious, and discontented, who, deprived of
luxury, power, and honors, became the enemies of grandeurs from