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The minister, M. de Pontchartrain, thought "the care of the sick is a task better adapted to women than to men, notwithstanding the spirit of charity which may animate the latter," and he forbade the wearing of the costume adopted by the hospitallers. François Charron, seeing his work nullified, yielded to the inevitable, and confined himself to the training of teachers for country parishes.
"Sit down, my dear friend," he said, taking the sealed packet; "there is bread and meat here, and a bottle of good Macon. You are nearly always hungry, and you must be starved now." Charron perceived that his mouth was offered employment at the expense of his eyes; but the kernel of the matter was his own already, and he smiled to himself at the mystery of his chief.
When Carmen went, when Zoe fled, when his cousin Auguste Charron took his flight, when defeats at law abashed him, the house and mills, and stores and offices, and goodly trees, and well- kept yards and barns and cattle-sheds all looked the same. Thus it was that he had been fortified. In one sense his miseries had seemed unreal, because all was the same in the outward scene.
For saith Charron in his book of wisdom, "Toute proposition humaine a autant d'authorite quel'autre, si la raison n'on fait la difference;" "Every human proposition hath equal authority, if reason make not the difference," the rest being but the fables of principles.
Then there is none of the ancient moralists to whom the modern, from Montaigne, Charron, Ralegh, Bacon, downwards, owe more than to Seneca. Seneca has no spark of the kindly warmth of Horace; he has not the animation of Plutarch; he abounds too much in the artificial and extravagant paradoxes of the Stoics.
As soon as the echo of their steps was dead, Charron, old Jerry, and another man jumped down from a loop-hole into the vault they had left, piled up a hoarding at the entrance, and with a crowbar swung back a heavy oak hatch in the footings of the outer wall. A volume of water poured in from the moat, or rather from the stream which had once supplied it.
Thirteen years after Montaigne, Charron wrote his famous treatise on Wisdom. In this work he systematized many of the opinions of Montaigne. Voltaire treated the whole subject with a scornful ridicule and observed that, "Since there had been philosophers in France, witches had become proportionately rare."
My companion went on as follows: "Set free by Charron from any scruples I still might have, and from those false ideas so hard to rid one's self of, I pushed my business in such sort, that at the end of six years I could lay my hand on ten thousand sequins.
Do you, sir, get this book, and pay no heed to those foolish persons who would tell you this treasure is not to be approached." This curious discourse made me know my man. As to Charron, I had read the book though I did not know it had been translated into Italian. The author who was a great admirer of Montaigne thought to surpass his model, but toiled in vain.
M. Fille hesitated, then said reflectively: "He has lost his case in the Appeal Court, monsieur; also, his cousin, Auguste Charron, who has been working the Latouche farm, has flitted, leaving " "Leaving Jean Jacques to pay unexpected debts?" "So, monsieur." "Then I can be of no use, I fear," remarked M. Mornay dryly. "Fille! Fille !" came the voice of Jean Jacques insistently from the room.
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