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His prospects at Paris, at Versailles, are none of the best; to return as if dismissed will never do! Would fain not go, withal; and has to diplomatize at Potsdam, by D'Argens, De Prades, and at Paris simultaneously, by Richelieu, D'Argenson and friends. The issue is well known. Of precise or indisputable, on the road thither, here are fractions that will suffice:
Their next step was to procure a pastoral from the archbishop of Paris. This document not only condemned the heretical propositions of De Prades, but referred in sombre terms to unnamed works teeming with error and impiety. Every one understood the reference, and among its effects was an extension of the vogue and notoriety of the Encyclopædia.
In those days a sort of diligence with the mails for Olette passed through Prades early in the morning, and a conveyance was sent from Vernet to bring Adolphe to the baths. Never was prince or princess expected with more anxiety. Madame Bauche was up and dressed long before the hour, and was heard to say five several times that she was sure he would not come.
In an eloquent peroration, which is not more eloquent than it is instructive, De Prades is made to turn round on his Jansenist censor, and reproach him with the disturbance with which the intestine rivalries of Jansenist and Jesuit had afflicted the faithful. "It is the abominable testimony of your convulsions," he cries, "that has overthrown the testimony of miracles.
Yet it is really the conclusions to which men come in this region, that determine the quality of the civil sentiment and the significance of political organisation. The theological doctors who persecuted De Prades for suggestions of Locke's psychology, and for high treason against Cartesianism, were guided by a right instinct of self-preservation.
Farther on lay a strange place called Prades, memorable for a huge buttress of rock exactly like the carcass of a mammoth petrified and hanging on a wall. Then, farther on still, over the black face of the rocks flashed a whiteness of waving waters, pouring cascades like bridal veils whose lace was made of mountain snows. "Here we are at Ste. Enemie," said Mr. Dane.
"Ran to Holland, and there continued blurting more at large, decidedly stupid for most part, thinks Voltaire, 'but with glorious Passages, worth your Majesty's attention; upon which, D'Alembert too helping, poor De Prades was invited to the Readership, vacant by La Mettrie's eagle-pie; and came gladly, and stayed.
The Jesuits were not allowed to retain a monopoly of persecuting zeal, and the Jansenists refused to be left behind in the race of hypocritical intrigue. The bishop of Auxerre, who belonged to this party, followed his brother prelate of Paris in a more direct attack, in which he included not only the Encyclopædia, but Montesquieu and Buffon. De Prades took to flight.
ABBE DE PRADES. "De Prades, 'Abbe de Prades, Reader to the King, though happily not an enemy of Voltaire's, is in some sort La Beaumelle's counterpart, or brother with a difference; concerning whom also, one wants only to know the exact date of his arrival.
To deny the innateness of ideas was roundly asserted to be materialism and atheism. As he was known to be a friend of Diderot, and was suspected of being the writer of articles on theology in the Encyclopædia, the design of the Jesuit cabal in ruining De Prades was to discredit the new undertaking, and to induce the government to prohibit it.
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