Arvède Barine

“ On the contrary sentiment, blind in its desires, surveys the relics of all countries and all times; it trusts in the midst of ruins, of battles, even of death, in some vague, eternal existence; in all its yearnings it strives after the attributes of the Divinity—infinity, scope, duration, power, greatness, and glory; it adds ardent desire to all our passions, gives to them a sublime impulse, and in subjugating our reason, becomes itself the noblest and best instinct of human life. ”

“ In the great world, the world of the great and the noble, love was mentioned only as Corneille regarded it in his plays. Every one was in love,—or feigned to be in love; on all hands were heard twitterings as of birds in the springtime; but the pretty music ceased when marriage was suggested, for no one had thought of founding a domestic hearth on a sentiment as personal and as ephemeral as love. It was understood that the collective body came first, that the youth—man or maid—belonged to the family, not to self. ”

“ It is bewildering to think of the many crowns and coronets that might have rested on the brow of the dramatic heroine, a heroine who appears and disappears in clouds of dust, with regiments of cavalry wheeling and whirling around her to the sound of the trumpets—the stern devotee of reason who dismissed one of her maids because she married for love—the philosopher who debated in her mimic court whether an accepted lover is more unhappy than a rejected lover in the absence of the beloved.... ”

“ The eyes get larger, the features are less marked, and we have a hero of Romance, a dreamy, sentimental youth, the apocryphal Bernardin de Saint-Pierre which a vignette of the time of the Restoration shows us, seated at a cottage door, his eyes cast up to heaven, his handkerchief in his hand, while his dog fixes his eyes tenderly upon him, and a negress contemplates him with rapture. Legend has decidedly got the better of history. An insipid and rather ridiculous silhouette has insinuated itself in the place of a countenance full of originality and energy. ”

“ La Feuillade said that there were but four words in the French language: "The Queen is good!"
So many cases of private and individual happiness gave the impression of public and general happiness. Paris expressed its satisfaction by entering heart and soul into its amusements. It played by day and it played by night, exhibiting the extraordinary appetite for pleasure which has always distinguished it.
"All, both the little and the great, are happy," [249] said Saint Evremond; "the very air they breathe is charged with amusement and with love." ”

“ At Saint-Fargeau they talked more frequently of love than of either literature or the beauties of nature. Love is a subject of which women never weary, and about which they always have something to say. Mademoiselle lent herself completely to such conversation; it was she who one day posed a question the subtlety of which the Hôtel Rambouillet might have enjoyed. "Whose absence causes the greater anguish, a lover who should be loved or one who should not be?" ”

“ Dead cars bring about a constantly recurring block, and more than an hundred personages of more or less importance stop the way by their gallant intrigues. The romance mirrors the passing loves and the fevered and passionate life of the be-ribanded people who hung up their small arms in their panoplies, twisted their lances into pruning-hooks, and replaced the pitiless art of war by the political arts of peace. Honoré d'Urfé's heroes appear to be more jealously careful of their fine sentiments than of the sword-thrusts lavishly distributed by the lords and gentlemen of their days. ”

“ They passed by the park of Saint-Fargean, absorbed to-day into Belleville, and, by almost imperceptible degrees, gained the gentle heights of those charming solitudes—for they were also solitudes, but less severe than those chosen by Rousseau; green grass there took the place of the brambles of Saint Cloud, and cherry-trees and gooseberry-bushes the dark pines of Sèvres. One had not to seek hospitality from hermits; there were inns, where Rousseau liked himself to make an omelet of bacon, while Saint-Pierre made the coffee, a luxury brought in a box from Paris. ”

“ The same evening Mademoiselle, only half aroused, was severely scolded by Lauzun for her ridiculous dread of the water. This was very sweet to her; it being the first time he had taken such a liberty, and the most passionate women in the early days of love adore the masterful tone. The two saw each other less often than at Saint-Germain, but with more freedom. The chances of travel gave, from time to time, the opportunity for long tête-à-têtes, by which they profited; she, to become more pressing, he, to make himself more keenly desired. ”

“ Bernardin de Saint-Pierre supposes himself to be upon "the most barren spot, a rock at the mouth of a river," and to be at liberty to ornament it with plants suitable to such a soil. These plants spring to life under his pen, and one sees them overrun this miserable corner of earth until its bareness disappears under a glorious mantle of vegetation in all sorts of brilliant and soft tints. ”

“ I am very little sensible of pity [wrote La Rochefoucauld] , and I would prefer not to feel it at all. Nevertheless there is nothing that I would not do for the afflicted, and I believe that I ought to do what I can for them—even to expressing compassion for their woes, for the wretches are so stupid that it does them the greatest good in the world to receive sympathy; but I believe that we ought to confine ourselves to expressing pity; we ought to take great care not to feel it; pity is a passion which is good for nothing in a well-made soul ”

“ Not long before the beginning of the Fronde, the fine world of Paris, stirred to action by the spectacle of the royal infatuation and by the subjection of the national welfare to the suppositive exigencies of "the foreigner," embraced the theory of Opposition, and to be of the Opposition was the fashion of the hour. All who aspired to elegance wore their rebellion as a badge, unless they had private reasons for appearing as the friends of Mazarin. The women who were entering politics found it to their interest to join the opposing body. ”

“ On all the planets, the souls of the just fly away after death into the sun, where they are better placed than anywhere else for enjoying a view of the whole universe. "It is there without doubt that you are, unfortunate Jean-Jacques, who, having reached the end of this life, behold a new one in the sun!" It is there that Bernardin hopes to go to find again his master, and from whence in spirit he sees himself throwing "a triumphant glance to earth where men weep, and where he is no longer." So ends the Harmonies de la Nature in a sort of ecstasy. ”

“ This was his favourite vice which nothing would have induced him to correct, for politics gave him a round of new sensations. To hold the life of a friend in one's hand, knowing in advance that he will be delivered to the executioner, and at the same time bitterly to bewail his loss; to realise also that the present grief will surely vanish and that one can joyously take another life in the hand,—such events evidently make days most interesting, when neither conscience nor heart are tender. ”

“ Its social influence was equal to its influence upon literature. And yet, to-day, not one of all the books that had their time of glory and of popularity is more neglected. No one reads Astrée now, and no one can read it; with the best will in the world, the most indulgent must throw the book down, bored by its dulness. It has become impossible to endure the five thousand pages of the amorous dissertations of the shepherds of Lignon. At the best such a debauch of subtlety would be only tolerable, even had it emanated from a writer of genius. And d'Urfé had no genius; he had nothing but talent. ”