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In fine, this sentiment of paternity, which gave his pen a delicately feminine quality, lent to his prose a characteristically individual accent discernible among all the clerical literature. After Lacordaire, ecclesiastics and monks possessing any individuality were extremely rare. At the very most, a few pages of his pupil, the Abbe Peyreyve, merited reading.
We gained, moreover, a great deal of information from each other. One of our number, who had studied philosophy in the university, would recite passages from M. Cousin to us; a second, who had studied history, would familiarise us with Augustin Thierry; while a third came to us from the school of Montalembert and Lacordaire.
Thompson would rather have got into the carriage at any other spot in Le Puy than at that at which she was forced to do so the chief entrance, namely, of the Hotel des Ambassadeurs. And what made it worse was this, that an appearance of a special fate was given to the occasion. M. Lacordaire was dressed in more than his Sunday best. He had on new yellow kid gloves.
Her custom then was to take up a novel; but on this morning she sat herself down in her arm-chair, and resting her head upon her hand and elbow, began to turn over certain circumstances in her mind. "Mamma," said Mimmy, "why won't you go with M. Lacordaire to that place belonging to the prince? Prince Polly something, wasn't it?" "Mind your work, my dear," said Mrs. Thompson.
He had squeezed her hand and he had looked into her face. However much it may have been nonsense on Mimmy's part to talk of such things, they had not the less absolutely occurred. Was it really the fact that M. Lacordaire was in love with her? And if so, what return should she, or could she make to such a passion? He had looked at her yesterday, and squeezed her hand to- day.
The influence of such a man cannot pass away, and has not passed away, for it cannot be doubted that his views have been embraced by enlightened Catholics from his day to ours, by such men as Pascal, Fénelon, and Lacordaire, and thousands like them, who prefer ritualism and auricular confession, and penance, monasticism, and an ecclesiastical monarch, and all the machinery of a complicated hierarchy, with all the evils growing out of papal domination, to rationalism, sectarian dissensions, irreverence, license, want of unity, want of government, and even dispensation from the marriage vow.
Such as this: No one is more incapable of affection than a profligate. This, in my judgement, is a ludicrous error, though it is the statement of no less a moral physician than Lacordaire.
Here in France they have a great many princes." "Well, at any rate I should like to see a prince's chateau; so I do hope you'll go." And then there was a pause. "Mamma, could it come to pass, here in France, that M. Lacordaire should ever be a prince?" "M. Lacordaire a prince! No; don't talk such nonsense, but mind your work." "Isn't M. Lacordaire a very nice man? Ain't you very fond of him?"
She threw herself back on her sofa in perfect silence, and began to reflect whether she would like to sign her name in future as Fanny Lacordaire, instead of Fanny Thompson. It certainly seemed as though things were verging towards such a necessity. A marchand! But a marchand of what?
Whatever his individual preferences, his mental organization is so large and happy, that he enjoys, and can do equal justice to, Father Lacordaire and M. Michelet, to Madame de Staël and M. Guizot, to Corneille and Goethe, to Fénélon and M. Renan, to Marie Antoinette and Mirabeau. Have you then for M. Sainte-Beuve, some reader will be impatient to ask, nothing but praise? Not much else.