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Good-bye Angela; I will not tell you where I am going lest Fontenelle should ask you, and then you would have to commit yourself to a falsehood, it is enough to say I have left Paris." "Shall I see you again soon?" said Angela, holding her by both hands and looking at her anxiously. "Yes, very soon, before the winter is over at any rate. You sweet, calm, happy Angela!
This observation might be exemplified by more instances than some readers might choose to read. It will be sufficient to observe with what art both Pope and Fontenelle have drawn up their Essays on the nature of Pastoral Poetry, that the rules they wished to establish might be adapted to their own pastorals.
Superficial and transient though the popular enthusiasm was, it was a sign that an age of intellectual optimism had begun, in which the science of nature would play a leading role. Nine months before the first part of Perrault's work appeared a younger and more brilliant man had formulated, in a short tract, the essential points of the doctrine of the progress of knowledge. It was Fontenelle.
"You please yourself and your own fanciful temperament by those arguments," said Angela, "but they are totally without principle. Oh, why," and raising her eyes, she fixed them on him with an earnest look, "Why will you not understand? Sylvie is good and pure, why would you persuade her to be otherwise?" Fontenelle rose and took one or two turns up and down the room before replying.
Not the express Sciences or Technologies; not these, in any sort, except the military, and that an express exception. These he never cared for, or regarded as the noble knowledges for a king or man. Fontenelle, Rollin, Voltaire, all the then French lights, and gradually others that lay deeper in the firmament: what suppers of the gods one may privately have at Ruppin, without expense of wine!
"May there not," he asks, "many circumstances concur to one production that do not to any other in one or many ages?" Fontenelle speaks of trees. It is conceivable that various conditions and accidents "may produce an oak, a fig, or a plane-tree, that shall deserve to be renowned in story, and shall not perhaps be paralleled in other countries or times.
Fontenelle had before him unsuccessfully presented himself once oftener; but Fontenelle underwent these successive checks without ill-humour, and without being discouraged.
"At your service, Marquis!" Jeanne Richaud, a soubrette, whose chief stock-in-trade had been her large dark eyes and shapely legs, uttered a desperate scream, and threw herself at the feet of the Marquis Fontenelle. "Monsieur! Monsieur! Think for a moment! This combat is unequal out of rule! You are a gentleman, a man of honour! would you fight without seconds? It is murder murder !"
At the same time I do not give you permission to call me Loyse." "Forgive me!" and the Marquis folded his hands with an air of mock penitence. "Perhaps I will, presently," and she laughed, "But meanwhile I want you to do something for me." "Toujours a votre service, madame!" and Fontenelle bowed profoundly. "How theatrical you look!
Frequent these people, and be glad, but not proud of frequenting them: never boast of it, as a proof of your own merit, nor insult, in a manner, other companies by telling them affectedly what you, Montesquieu and Fontenelle were talking of the other day; as I have known many people do here, with regard to Pope and Swift, who had never been twice in company with either; nor carry into other companies the 'ton' of those meetings of 'beaux esprits'. Talk literature, taste, philosophy, etc., with them, 'a la bonne heure'; but then, with the same ease, and more 'enjouement', talk 'pom-pons, moires', etc., with Madame de Blot, if she requires it.
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