confessors were
instructed to manage their penitents in a matter made immortally famous
by the wit and genius of Pascal, the matter of "directing the
intention." There is nothing in the "Provincial Letters" better suited
than this at the same time to interest the general reader, and to
display the quality of these renowned productions. (We do not scruple to
change our chosen translation a little, at points where it seems to us
susceptible of some easy improvement.) Remember it is an imaginary
Parisian gentleman who now writes to a friend of his in the country:--

"You know," he said, "that the ruling passion of persons in that
rank of life [the rank of gentleman] is 'the point of honor,' which
is perpetually driving them into acts of violence apparently quite
at variance with Christian piety; so that, in fact, they would be
almost all of them excluded from our confessionals, had not our
fathers relaxed a little from the strictness of religion, to
accommodate themselves to the weakness of humanity. Anxious to keep
on good terms, both with the gospel, by doing their duty to God,
and with the men of the world, by showing charity to their
neighbor, they needed all the wisdom they possessed to devise
expedients for so nicely adjusting matters as to permit these
gentlemen to adopt the methods usually resorted to for vindicating
their honor without wounding their consciences, and thus reconcile
things apparently so opposite to each other as piety and the point
of honor."...

"I should certainly [so replies M. Montalte, with the most
exquisite irony couched under a cover of admiring simplicity],--I
should certainly have considered the thing perfectly impracticable,
if I had not known, from what I have seen of your fathers, that
they are capable of doing with ease what is impossible to other
men. This led me to anticipate that they must have discovered some
method for meeting the difficulty,--a method which I admire, even
before knowing it, and which I pray you to explain to me."

"Since that is your view of the matter," replied the monk, "I
cannot refuse you. Know, then, that this marvellous principle is
our grand method of _directing the intention_--the importance of
which, in our moral system, is such, that I might almost venture to
compare it with the doctrine of probability. You have