it is, love is always the master. It seems truly that it is to
the soul of the one who loves, what the soul is to the body it animates.

Among the eminent men who lent so much brilliancy to this salon was
the great jurist Domat. He adds his contribution and falls into the
moralizing vein:

A little fine weather, a good word, a praise, a caress, draws me from
a profound sadness from which I could not draw myself by any effort
of meditation. What a machine is my soul, what an abyss of misery and
weakness!

Here is one by the Abbe d'Ailly, which foreshadows the thought of the
next century:

Too great submission to books, and to the opinions of the ancients,
as to the eternal truths revealed of God, spoils the head and makes
pedants.

The finest and most vigorous of these choice spirits was Pascal, who
frequented more or less the salon of Mme. de Sable previous to his final
retirement to the gloom and austerity of the cloister. His delicate
platonism and refined spirituality go far towards offsetting the cold
cynicism of La Rochefoucauld. Each gives us a different phase of life
as reflected in a clear and luminous intelligence. The one led to Port
Royal, the other turned an electric light upon the selfish corruption of
courts. Many of the pensees of Pascal were preserved among the records
of this salon, and Cousin finds reason for believing that they were
first suggested and discussed here; he even thinks it possible, if
not probable, that the "Discours sur les Passions de L'amour," which
pertains to his mundane life, and presents the grave and ascetic recluse
in a new light, had a like origin.

But the presiding genius was La Rochefoucauld. He complains that the
mode of relaxation is fatiguing, and that the mania for sentences
troubles his repose. The subjects were suggested for conversation, and
the thoughts were condensed and reduced to writing at leisure. "Here are
all the maxims I have," he writes to Mme. de Sable; "but as one gives
nothing for nothing, I demand a potage aux carottes, un ragout de
mouton, etc."

"When La Rochefoucauld had composed his sentences," says Cousin, "he
talked them over before or after dinner, or he sent them at the end of
a letter. They were discussed, examined, and observations were made,
by which he profited. One could lessen their faults, but one could lend
them no beauty. There was not a delicate and rare turn, a fine and keen
touch, which did not come from him."

After availi