Jacques-Bénigne Massillon

“ There is nobody among you who can be more shut-tight than me. I flatter myself that I can be more terrible than any English woman or man. You do not catch me now! But what a martyrdom!... I might return to France? No! I am become too English. In Paris I should resemble an émigrée. And people would say: 'What is that? It is like nothing at all. It has no name.' Besides, I like you English. You are terrible, but one can count on you.... Vous y êtes?"
"J'y suis," replied Mr. Prohack, ravished.
Lady Massulam in her agitation picked up the tumbler and sipped. ”

“ We know no other instance of a writer, limited in his production strictly to sermons, who holds his place in the first rank of authorship simply by virtue of supreme mastership in literary style.
Still, from the text of his printed discourses,—admirable, exquisite, ideal compositions in point of form as these are,—it will be found impossible to conceive adequately the living eloquence of Massillon. There are interesting traditions of the effects produced by particular passages of particular sermons of his. When Louis XIV. died, Massillon preached his funeral sermon. ”

“ Massington smiled.
'That is what I like,' she said. 'I like hearing a railway-whistle when I am not going in the train; I like hearing a church bell when I am not going to church; I like seeing somebody looking very hot when I am quite cool; I like hearing somebody sneeze when I haven't got a cold; I like—oh, I like almost everything,' she concluded broadly.
'I wonder if you, I, we shall like America,' said a voice, which apparently came from two shins and a knee in a basket-chair.
'America?' said Sybil. ”

“ Truth, even when it speaks in the name of God, ought to content itself with knocking at the door of kings, and should never break it open. Massillon, convinced of this maxim, did not imitate some of his predecessors, who had displayed their zeal by preaching Christian morality in the mansions of vice with an austerity capable of rendering it odious, and of exposing religion to the resentment of haughty and offended power. Our orator was always firm, but always respectful, while he announced to his sovereign the will of the Judge of kings. ”

“ He at once filled Paris with his fame. The inevitable consequence followed. He was summoned to preach before the king at Versailles. Here he received, as probably he deserved, that celebrated compliment in epigram from Louis XIV.: “In hearing some preachers, I feel pleased with them; in hearing you, I feel displeased with myself.”
It must not, however, be supposed that Massillon preached like a prophet Nathan saying to King David, “Thou art the man”; or like a John the Baptist saying to King Herod, “It is not lawful for thee to have her” ”

“ Men ran to and fro, women whispered and sobbed in corners under shadow of the King's displeasure that lay on the house, the road between the terrace and the stable buzzed with messengers, ordering and counter-ordering, for it was not certain at first that Margaret would not go. A mounted groom dashed up for instructions and was met by Sir James in his riding-cloak on the terrace who bade him ride to Great Keynes with the news, and entreat Sir Nicholas Maxwell to come up to London and his wife to Overfield ”

“ Bennoch was never lord mayor or member of Parliament; I do not know that he cared to be either; but he lived to repay all his creditors with interest, and to become once more a man in easy circumstances, honored and trusted as well as loved by all who knew him, and active and happy in all good works to the end of his days. There could be no keeping down such a man, even in England; and when I knew him, in after years, he was the Bennoch of yore, grown mellow and wise. ”

“ The widow blew a ribbon of smoke from those red lips into the sunlit air under the palm-tree, kissed her slim hand at Benninglon, and laid that hand on her heart.
“Good night!” gulped Bennington, and fled.
BENNINGTON spent three weeks of toils and complications incredible to one who knoweth not the ways and customs of folk in the spig belt. He wrote, however, enthusiastic letters home to Beatrice, all about the land flowing with milk and honey. In case something might yet be salvaged from the wreck, he might never have to own the awful truth. ”

“ Now he was going in for the landed-proprietor stuff, citrus fruits, peon servants, hammocks in the shade of palms, with the Missus in a rocking-chair on a broad piazza under the roses Oh, boy, that would be the life! (Any tropic prospectus will prove it! )
“When I get the finca all jazzed up, right,” said Bennington, I’ll send for Beatrice, and she’ll have to admit I was right!”
Bennington gazed out over the patio at the shimmering plain, the range of the Sierra Hedionda, the buzzards volplaning far aloft. He felt all manner of exotic things. One just bit him under the shirt. ”

“ O, brothers, I had rather starve, than succumb to Bennett, who has abused us all our days. We can survive our present misfortunes, without disgracing our Weekly with the panegyric of James Gordon Bennett, which will injure our respectable family journal more than we shall realise from our advertisements and all the puffs we can squeeze from Bennett. There’s my private fortune. Take it, and I will gladly return to a one story dwelling, and to utter penury, before I will sacrifice my self-respect, and my honor, to such a monster as James Gordon Bennett. ”

“ However, they aren't all quite happy in their minds. Frank Leven there, as Benson says, is decidedly shaky. He is the member for the Maxwells' division—Maxwell, of course, put him in. He has a house there, I believe, and he married Lady Maxwell's great friend, Miss Macdonald—an ambitious little party, they say, who simply insisted on his going into Parliament. Oh, then, Bennett is there—do you see?—the little dark man with a frock-coat and spectacles? ”

“ Bennett’s father was an American, who, in early life, being settled in Montreal, became enamoured of a Canadian girl named Beauchamp. Miss Beauchamp was young, pretty, and a Catholic. The first two of these qualifications rather suited Mr. Bennett, and the third did not in any way annoy him, he being (although a Protestant) a liberal-minded man, and having the idea that thoughts and opinions could not be forced, like sheep, to go in a particular track, but that every one should be free to hold what convictions his reason dictated, untrammelled by conventionality or creed of any kind. ”

“ Benny regarded his fortune as made. Never had life seemed so bright to him as, one Saturday afternoon, when busy at work putting Mr. Lawrence's office in order. There was no one in the office but himself. ”

“ The crowd amassed now at the principal inlets of the square, gave a formidable cry and burst into the refrain--
"Le voila! Nicolas! Ah! Ah! Ah!"
The clamour became furious as a group of workmen in blue blouses drew piece by piece all the components of the guillotine from the waggon and laid them carefully on the ground, under the superintendence of a man in a black frock-coat and a silk hat with broad flat brims; a little fussy man of nervous gestures. And presently the red columns had risen upright from the ground and were joined at the top by an acrobatic climber. ”

“ In private life indolent, greedy, rapacious, ill-educated and morose, in war Masséna was, like Napoleon, the incarnation of battle. Only his indolence and his consequent lack of far-ranging imagination prevented him being as great in strategy as in tactics. His genius needed the presence of the enemy to stimulate it, but once it sprang to life Masséna became an ideal leader, absolutely brave, resourceful, unrelenting and indefatigable. ”

“ For this long, forlorn row housed Bennett's General Stores. Bennett sold everything but tunnels.
Here was Neighbor's nearest errand. After a little delay he was shown into the great man's private office.
Bennett turned slowly in his revolving chair; a tall spare man, with a thin straggle of sandy hair and a sharp, narrow face, close-shaven; which might have been a pleasant face but for a pinched and cruel mouth, a mean, pinched nose, and a shifty eye. ”

“ Bennen’s opinions seem to have undergone a complete change. In 1860 he is described as having been enthusiastic to make an attempt, and in 1861 he was dead against one. Nothing dismayed by this, my friend Mr. Reginald Macdonald, our companion on the Pelvoux—to whom so much of our success had been due, agreed to join me in a renewed assault from the south; and, although we failed to secure Melchior Anderegg and some other notable guides, we obtained two men of repute, namely, Johann zum Taugwald and Johann Kronig, of Zermatt. ”

“ The monarchy is a decoration, a sentiment, a habit; as a matter of fact, England is more democratic in many essentials than we have as yet learned how to be. Bennoch was not a university man, and lacked the historical consciousness that Bright so assiduously cultivated; he lived by feeling and intuition more than by deliberate intellectual judgments. He was emotional; tears would start to his eyes at a touch of pathos or pity, as readily as the laughter of a moment before. So lovable, gallant, honest, boyish a man is seldom born into this modern world-boyish as only the manliest men can be. ”

“ The Reformation was shown to be not its beginning but a critical stage in its growth.'
While Benson thus spent himself for the good of the church at home, he bestowed more care upon the church abroad than any archbishop of Canterbury before him. He threw himself into the missionary work of the church not only with ardour and sagacity, but with a philosophic largeness of view. The founding of a new mission, like that to Corea for example, gave him profound delight. He guided the young church on the Niger through a most grave crisis. ”

“ Massington were, and though she was not in the slightest degree in love with the man—or, indeed, ever had been—yet she looked on him as her possession, and while she did not want him, she distinctly did not wish him to change hands. Jealousy of the ordinary green variety had something to do with it. A shrewd eye to business, the knowledge of how much better her career went if the great impresario was her devoted admirer, had about as much. ”

“ An' that hangel war little Nell, bless her! she's wi' Him now, in the land where there's no more sorrow nor pain, an' Joe's on the way."
And the old man looked up into the star-bespangled sky, as if he would look through the very floor of heaven.
Benny thought of all this, as he hurried from Mr. Lawrence's door, and felt as if he, too, had had an angel sent from God to help him on the way to heaven.
Poor boy! he did not see the heavy cloud that was gathering in the sky, nor the dark and painful paths that lay before him, which he, with bruised and bleeding feet, would have to tread. ”

“ Masséna (mä'sâ'nȧ') , André, duke of Rivoli, prince of Essling and the greatest of Napoleon's marshals, was born at Nice, Italy, probably of Jewish parents, May 6, 1758. He served 14 years in the Sardinian army. Early in the French Revolution he joined a battalion of volunteers, becoming a general of division (1793) . He distinguished himself greatly in the campaigns in upper Italy. After Jourdan's defeat at Stockach, in 1799, Masséna was given command of the army in Switzerland and by his crushing victory over Suvaroff's Russians at Zurich freed France from the danger of invasion. ”

“ One man pushed roughly by another, and where in England the one would look aggrieved, and the other probably, however insincerely, mutter an apology, here neither grievance nor apology was felt, desired, or expressed, for it is a waste of time to feel aggrieved and a waste of energy to express or feel regret. To-morrow the crowd would, on the average, be a little richer than to-day; that was all they wanted. To-morrow the world in general would be a day richer.
Sybil Massington and Bertie Keynes had arrived that morning by the Celtic, after a voyage of complete uneventfulness. ”

“ Benyon answered, wearily, with his hand on the knob of the door.
She laid hers on his shoulder; he stood there an instant feeling it, wishing that her loathsome touch gave him the right to strike her to the earth, to strike her so that she should never rise again.
"How clever you are, and intelligent always,—as you used to be; to feel so perfectly and know so well, without more scenes, that it's hopeless—my ever consenting! ”

“ Jack rejoined with emphasis. "He thinks a good deal of your opinion—he told me so."
She smiled, but turned away her eyes nevertheless. "And what am I to say to your brother?"
"Tell him that he can do it yet, if he will only believe as much. Say that it's not the game for him to be here, there and everywhere when his future depends on what we're doing for him. If he wins the ten thousand pounds put up by the London daily paper, he's a made man for life. There's nothing Benny could not do with capital, nothing on earth, I do believe. ”

“ Good nite.—Benny."
More than one scalding tear fell upon the letter while he wrote, for the tears would come despite his efforts to keep them back. Life seemed to him such an utter desolation, and hope had almost died out of his heart.
When he had carefully folded and sealed the letters, he went out again on the steps in the shadow of the great Hall, and waited for the darkness. All around him the people hurried to and fro. But had he been in the heart of Africa he could not have felt more utterly forsaken and alone. ”