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I read him everlastingly. I read Law and Barrow too, till I almost knew many of their works by heart. I studied Penn from beginning to end. And I never got tired of reading Hooker. I regarded his Ecclesiastical Polity as one of the richest, sweetest, wisest, saintliest books under heaven. My favorite French authors were Massillon, Fenelon, Flechier, Bourdaloue and Saurin, all practical preachers.
An able general, a worthy pupil of the great Conde, a courtier of much wits and no shame, he was more corrupt than his age, and his private life was injurious to his fame; he died, however, as people did die in his time, turning to God at the last day. "I haven't lived like M. de Luxembourg," said Bourdaloue, "but I should like to die like him."
The "Moi-même" of his boyish resolution became the "L'état, c'est moi" of his maturer egotism; Spain yielded to France the mastery of the land, as she had already yielded to Holland and England the sea; Turenne fell at Sassbach, Condé sheathed his sword at Chantilly; Bossuet and Bourdaloue, preaching the funeral sermons of these heroes, praised their glories, and forgot, as preachers will, their sins; Vatel committed suicide because his Majesty had not fish enough for breakfast; the Princess Palatine died in a convent, and the Princess Condé in a prison; the fair Sévigné chose the better part, and the fairer Montespan the worse; the lovely La Vallière walked through sin to saintliness, and poor Marie de Mancini through saintliness to sin; Voiture and Benserade and Corneille passed away, and Racine and Molière reigned in their stead; and Mademoiselle, who had won the first campaigns of her life and lost all the rest, died a weary old woman at sixty-seven.
What great prelates and preachers were Bossuet, Fenelon, Bourdaloue, Massillon, Flechier, Saurin, unrivalled for eloquence in any age! What original and profound thinkers were Pascal, Descartes, Helvetius, Malebranche, Nicole, and Quesnel!
As he concluded the prince looked curiously at Keller; evidently this problem of double motives had often been considered by him before. "Well, how anybody can call you an idiot after that, is more than I can understand!" cried the boxer. The prince reddened slightly. "Bourdaloue, the archbishop, would not have spared a man like me," Keller continued, "but you, you have judged me with humanity.
In obedience to their tutor's injunction, "to salute their venerable grandmother," they came up one by one and gave her one of the same little handshakes with arms close to their sides of which they had distributed so many among the garrets; indeed, that good woman with the earth-colored face, and neat but very simple clothes, reminded them of their charitable visits from Collège Bourdaloue.
"Bossuet and Fénelon taught his children; Bourdaloue and Massillon adorned his chapel; La Chaise and Le Tellier directed his conscience; Boileau and Molière sharpened his wit; La Rochefoucauld cultivated his taste; La Fontaine wrote his epigrams; Racine chronicled his wars; De Turenne commanded his armies; Fouquet and Colbert arranged his finances; Molé and D'Aguesseau pronounced his judgments; Louvois laid out his campaigns; Vauban fortified his citadels; Riquet dug his canals; Mansard constructed his palaces; Poussin decorated his chambers; Le Brun painted his ceilings; Le Notre laid out his grounds; Girardon sculptured his fountains; Montespan arranged his fêtes; while La Vallière, La Fayette, and Sévigné all queens of beauty displayed their graces in the Salon de Venus."
Just as the Church perpetuated the primitive form of holy objects, so she has preserved the relics of her dogmas, piously retaining, as the frame that encloses them, the oratorical language of the celebrated century. As one of the Church's own writers, Ozanam, has put it, the Christian style needed only to make use of the dialect employed by Bourdaloue and by Bossuet to the exclusion of all else.
Does not that shine bright even in the light of the stars?" I answered with something I had once heard old Père Bourdaloue thunder forth from the pulpit in Notre Dame, about good deeds outshining the sun; at which my master laughed, and accused me of wanting to join Monsieur de Rancé in his dumb cloister of La Trappe.
They were as ignorant as young noblemen of the Middle Ages; in Tunis M. Bompain had charge of their studies, but in Paris the Nabob, intent upon giving them the benefit of a Parisian education, had placed them in the most stylish and most expensive boarding school, the Collège Bourdaloue, conducted by excellent Fathers, who aimed less at teaching their pupils than at moulding them into well-bred, reflecting men of the world, and who succeeded in producing little monstrosities, affected and ridiculous, scornful of play, absolutely ignorant, with no trace of spontaneity or childishness, and despairingly pert and forward.
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