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Mathieu Bodet, Barrister at the Court of Cassation. De Maupas, Prefect of Police. Mesnard, President of the Chamber of the Court of Cassation. Joseph Périer, Governor of the Bank. Portalis, First President of the Court of Cassation. General de Préval. General Randon, ex-Minister, Governor-General of Algeria. General Rogé. De Royer, ex-Minister, Attorney-General at the Court of Appeal of Paris.
Madame Périer says expressly of her brother that he had been “preserved by the special protection of God from all youthful vices, and, what was still more remarkable in the case of a mind of such strength and pride, he had never yielded to any libertinism of thought, but had always limited his curiosity to natural inquiries.” He attributed, according to her statement, this religious sobriety of mind to the instructions and example of his father, who had a great respect for religion, and who had impressed upon him from his infancy the maxim, “that whatever is the object of faith cannot be the object of reason, and still less the subject of it.” He had seen, in his father, the combination of scientific attainment with a strong reasoning power, and the maxim therefore fell with weight from his lips.
We need hardly say, therefore, that in the present instance M. Perier is merely a Richard Roe, who will not be mentioned in any subsequent stage of the proceedings, and whose name is used for the sole purpose of bringing Machiavelli into court. We doubt whether any name in literary history be so generally odious as that of the man whose character and writings we now propose to consider.
Madame Périer’s daughter, Marguerite Périer—the same to whom we are indebted for interesting memorials of her uncle’s life—had become, with her sister, a pupil at Port Royal. She suffered from an apparently incurable disease of the eye, fistula lachrymalis.
Exertions were made to bring him round, and then those gentlemen withdrew. When he was quite recovered, Madame Perier asked him what had caused this incident. He answered, 'When I saw all those persons that I looked upon as being those whom God had made to know the truth, and who ought to be its defenders, wavering and falling.
During the night of the 26th there was another very important meeting of the leaders of the liberal party at the mansion of M. Casimir Périer. About thirty were present. Nearly all were members of the Chamber of Deputies, and in intellectual strength were among the most illustrious men in France. Anxiously, yet firmly, they discussed the course to be pursued. It was a fearful question to decide.
"With regard to the petition of Pierre-Etienne de Saint-Faust de Lamotte, a Royal Equerry, Sieur de Grange-Flandre, Buisson-Souef, Valperfond, and other places, widower and inheritor of Marie Francois Perier, his wife, according to their marriage contract signed before Baron and partner, notaries at Paris, the fifth day of September 1762, whereby he desires to intervene in the action brought against Derues and his accomplices, concerning the assassination and poisoning committed on the persons of the wife and son of the said Sieur de Saint-Faust de Lamotte, on the accusation made by him to the Deputy Attorney-General of the King at the Chatelet at present pending in the Court, on the report of the final judgment given in the said action the 30th of April last, and which allowed the intervention; it is decreed that there shall be levied on the goods left by the condemned, before the rights of the Treasury, and separate from them, the sum of six thousand livres, or such other sum as it shall please the Court to award; from which sum the said Saint-Faust de Lamotte shall consent to deduct the sum of two thousand seven hundred and forty-eight livres, which he acknowledges has been sent or remitted to him by the said Derues and his wife at different times; which first sum of six thousand livres, or such other, shall be employed by the said Sieur de Saint-Faust de Lamotte, who is authorised to found therewith, in the parish church of Saint Nicholas de Villeneuve-le-Roy, in which parish the estate of Buisson-Souef is situate, and which is mentioned in the action, an annual and perpetual service for the repose of the souls of the wife and son of the said Sieur de Saint-Faust de Lamotte, of which an act shall be inserted in the decree of intervention, and a copy of this act or decree shall be inscribed upon a stone which shall be set in the wall of the said church of Saint Nicholas de Villeneuve-le-Roy, in such place as is expedient.
He felt that he could not consult the impulses of his heart, but that he must listen to the colder dictates of prudence. He therefore did not venture personally to call upon Queen Hortense, but sent Casimir Périer, president of his council, to see her. As Périer entered her apartment, Hortense said to him: "Sir, I am a mother. My only means of saving my son was to come to France.
He showed at school a precocity which might bear comparison with Mill's. Expelled from school, cast off by his parents, dismissed by the elder Casimir Perier, whose secretary he had been, he eked out a living by tutoring in mathematics. Friends of his philosophy rallied to his support. He never occupied a post comparable with his genius. He was unhappy in his marriage.
He repaired, as we have already said, to Paris, and after a while took up his abode “at a little inn opposite to the Jesuit College of Clermont, just behind the Sorbonne.” Here he lodged with his brother-in-law, M. Périer, who had lately come to Paris; and here, too, the latter was visited by Père Defrétat, a Jesuit and distant relative, who came to tell him that the suspicions of the Society were beginning to point to Pascal.
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