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What disappointed every one else might perhaps have commanded the admiration of the great Orientalist. But here follows, on the same authority, a more wonderful performance still. "The famous Bourdaloue reperused every year St Paul, St Chrysostom, and Cicero." The sacred author makes but a slight addition to the bulk, but the works of St Chrysostom are entombed in eleven folios.
The inspiration offered by music is well-known, and it is doubtless a stimulant to the intellectual work. Bacon, Milton, Warburton, and Alfieri needed music to stimulate them in their labors, and it is said that Bourdaloue always played an air on the violin before preparing to write.
We find, however, in writers of genius, even in the great preachers, as Bourdaloue and Massillon, who formed a type of pulpit eloquence peculiar to France, a tendency to what seems now a stilted style. Of a very different tone is Rochefoucauld, whose Maxims, expressed in pithy language, seek to trace all virtuous action to self-seeking.
This town, then a centre of the woollen trade, supplied that commodity to the greater part of Europe, and manufactured on a large scale blankets, hats, and the excellent Chevreautin gloves. Under Louis XIV., Issoudun, the birthplace of Baron and Bourdaloue, was always cited as a city of elegance and good society, where the language was correctly spoken.
But that which above all attracted to the little Jansoulets the respect both of pupils and masters, were their purses heavy with gold, ever ready for school subscriptions, for the professors' birthdays, and the charity visits, those famous visits organized by the College Bourdaloue, one of the tempting things in the prospectus, the marvel of sensitive souls.
In Moorfields, on Kennington Common, and on Blackheath, he sometimes drew a crowd of forty thousand people, all of whom could hear his voice. He could draw tears from Hume, and money from Dr. Franklin. He could convulse a congregation with terror, and then inspire them with the brightest hopes. He was a greater artist than Bossuet or Bourdaloue.
"Presently." "Eh?" "I said presently, my father." "Father? . . . You say father?" "Yes. But a moment gone you spoke of Margot Bourdaloue." "What is that to you?" cried the marquis, raising himself on an elbow, though the effort cost him pain. "She was my mother," softly. The marquis fell back among his pillows. The gnawing of a mouse behind the wall could be heard distinctly.
In the chapel, Bourdaloue preached in vain to empty benches, but a ballet in the grounds was attended by the whole court, and received with a frenzy of enthusiasm. The Montespan ante-room was crowded every morning with men and women who had some suit to be urged, while her rival's chambers were as deserted as they had been before the king first turned a gracious look upon her.
It was powerful in its leaders and its great preachers; in fact, France has never, either before or since, exhibited such an array of preaching genius as Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fléchier, and Massillon. Yet the uncontrolled and enormously increased power conferred upon the French Church at that time, most probably proved its greatest calamity.
Mme. de Sévigné was on the best terms with every great writer of her time—Pascal, Racine, La Fontaine, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, La Rochefoucauld. She was a woman of such broad affections that numerous friends and admirers were a necessary part of her existence. Of all the eminent women of the seventeenth century, she had the greatest number of lovers—suitors who frequently became her tormentors.
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