This took place between 1653 and 1658, consequently only a few years before the representation of Molière's Tartuffe, who wrote the three first acts in 1664. Every thing leads us to believe that such adventures were not rare at that period. Tartuffe, Orgon, and all the other personages of this truly historical piece, are not abstract beings, pure creations of art, like the heroes of Corneille or Racine; they are real men, caught in the act, and taken from

nature.

What strikes us in Mademoiselle de Bourignon's Flemish Tartuffe is his patience to study and learn mysticism, in order to speak its language, and again his perseverance in associating himself for whole years with the thoughts of the pious maiden.

If Molière had not been confined in so narrow a frame, if his Tartuffe had had the time to prepare better his advances, if he had been able (the thing was then, no doubt, too dangerous) to take the cloak of Desmarets and Quietism in its birth, he might have advanced still further in his designs without being discovered. Then he would not in the very beginning have made to the person he wants to seduce the very illogical confession, that he is a cheat. He would not have ventured the expression, "If it be only heaven" (act iv. scene 5.). Instead of unmasking abruptly this ugly corruption, he would have varnished it over, and unveiled it by degrees. From one ambiguous phrase to another, and by a

cunning transition, he would have contrived to make corruption take the appearance of perfection. Who knows? he would, perhaps, at last have succeeded, like many others, in finding it unnecessary to be a hypocrite any longer, and have finished by imposing on himself, cheating and seducing himself into the belief that he was a saint. It is then he would have been Tartuffe in the superlative degree, being so not only for the world, but for himself, having perfectly confounded within himself every ray of good, and reposing in evil with a tranquillity secured by his ignorance, counterfeit at first, but afterwards become natural.

CHAPTER VII.

APPARITION OF MOLINOS, 1675.- HIS SUCCESS AT ROME.

MADAME GUYON.

FRENCH QUIETISTS. HER DIRECTOR.- THE TORRENTS. -MYSTIC DEATH. -DO WE RETURN FROM IT.

THE Spiritual Guide of Molinos appeared at Rome in 1675. The way having been prepared for twenty years by different publications of the same tendency, highly approved of by the inquisitors of Rome and Spain, this book had a success unparalleled in the age: in twelve years it was translated and reprinted twenty times.*

We must not be surprised that this guide to annihilation, this method to die, was received so greedily; there was then throughout Europe a general feeling of wearisomeness. That century, still far from its close, already panted for repose. This appears to be the case by its own doctrines. Cartesianism, which gave it an impulse, became inactive and contemplative in Mallebranche (1674). Spinosa, as early as 1670, had declared the immobility of God, man, and the world, in

* This is the testimony borne by its enthusiastic admirer, the Archbishop of Palermo (at the head of the Latin translation, 1687).

the unity of substance. And in 1676, Hobbes gave his theory of political fatalism.

Spinosa, Hobbes, and Molinos - death, every where, in metaphysics, politics, and morality! What a dismal chorus! They are of one mind without knowing each other, or forming any compact; they seem, however, to shout to each other from one extremity of Europe to the other!

Poor human liberty has nothing left but the choice of its suicide; either to be hurled by logic in the North into the bottomless pit of Spinosa, or to be lulled in the South by the sweet voice of Molinos, into a death-like and eternal slumber.

The age is, however, as yet in all its brilliancy and triumph. Some time must pass away before these discouraging and deadly thoughts pass from theory to practice, and politics become infected with this moral languor.

It is a delicate and interesting moment in every existence, that middle term between the period of increasing vigour and that of old age, when, retaining its brilliancy, it loses its strength, and decay imperceptibly begins. In the month of August the trees have all their leaves, but soon they change colour, many a one grows pale, and in their splendid summer robe you have a presentiment of their autumnal decline.

For some time an impure and feverish wind had blown from the South, both from Italy and Spain:

Italy was alreadly too lifeless, too deeply entombed, to be able to produce even a doctrine of death. It was a Spaniard established at Rome, and imbued with Italian languor, who invented this theory and drew it forth into practice. Still it was necessary for his disciples to oblige him to write and publish. Molinos had for twenty years been satisfied with sowing his doctrine noiselessly in Rome, and spreadit gently from palace to palace. The theology of Quietism was wonderfully adapted to the city of catacombs, the silent city, where, from that time, scarcely any thing was heard but the faint rustling of worms crawling in the sepulchre.

When the Spaniard arrived in Rome it had hardly recovered from the effeminate pontificate of Madame Olympia. The crucified Jesus reposed in the delicate hands of her general Oliva, among sumptuous vines, exotic flowers, lilies, and roses. These torpid Romans, this idle nobility, and these lazy fair ones, who pass their time on couches, with half-closed eyes, are the persons to whom Molinos comes at a late hour to speak-ought I to say speak? His low, whispering voice, sinking into their lethargy, is confounded with their inward dream. Quietism had quite a different character in France. In a living country, the theory of death showed some symptoms of life. An infinite measure of activity was employed to prove that action was no longer necessary. This injured their doctrine, for noise and light were hurtful to