flash from his
inexorable good sense. Sometimes, too, his uncompromising morality found
expression in biting words, which left clouds of sadness or fear hanging
over agitated consciences. This naturally gained him violent enemies;
and the efforts of impotent hatred, helped by the feeling of awe which
his eccentric behaviour produced, fastened upon him the reputation of a
sorcerer.

When I said that Patience was lacking in education, I expressed myself
badly. Longing for a knowledge of the sublime mysteries of Nature,
his mind wished to soar to heaven on its first flight. From the very
beginning, the Jansenist vicar was so perplexed and startled by
the audacity of his pupil, he had to say so much to calm him into
submission, he was obliged to sustain such assaults of bold questions
and proud objections, that he had no leisure to teach him the alphabet;
and at the end of ten years of studies, broken off and taken up at the
bidding of a whim or on compulsion, Patience could not even read. It was
only with great difficulty, after poring over a book for some two hours,
that he deciphered a single page, and even then he did not grasp the
meaning of most of the words expressing abstract ideas. Yet these
abstract ideas were undoubtedly in him; you felt their presence while
watching and listening to him; and the way in which he managed to embody
them in homely phrase enlivened with a rude poetry was so marvellous,
that one scarcely knew whether to feel astounded or amused.

Always serious, always positive himself, he scorned dalliance with
any dialectic. A Stoic by nature and on principle, enthusiastic in the
propagation of his doctrine of severance from false ideas, but resolute
in the practice of resignation, he made many a breach in the poor cure's
defences; and it was in these discussions, as he often told me in his
last years, that he acquired his knowledge of philosophy. In order to
make a stand against the battering-ram of natural logic, the worthy
Jansenist was obliged to invoke the testimony of all the Fathers of the
Church, and to oppose these, often even to corroborate them, with the
teaching of all the sages and scholars of antiquity. Then Patience, his
round eyes starting from his head (this was his own expression), lapsed
into silence, and, delighted to learn without having the bother of
studying, would ask for long explanations of the doctrines of these
men, and for an account of their lives. Noticing this attent