Saying this, Marie read with repugnance, knitting her brows, and nearly trembling, the following:
“The Druid Adamas delicately called the shepherds Pimandre,
Ligdamont, and Clidamant, newly arrived from Calais. ‘This
adventure can not terminate,’ said he, ‘but by the extremity of
love. The soul, when it loves, transforms itself into the object
beloved; it is to represent this that my agreeable enchantments will
show you in this fountain the nymph Sylvia, whom you all three love.
The high-priest Amasis is about to come from Montbrison, and will
explain to you the delicacy of this idea. Go, then, gentle
shepherds! If your desires are well regulated, they will not cause
you any torments; and if they are not so, you will be punished by
swoonings similar to those of Celadon, and the shepherdess Galatea,
whom the inconstant Hercules abandoned in the mountains of Auvergne,
and who gave her name to the tender country of the Gauls; or you
will be stoned by the shepherdesses of Lignon, as was the ferocious
Amidor. The great nymph of this cave has made an enchantment.’”
The enchantment of the great nymph was complete on the Princess, who had hardly sufficient strength to find out with a trembling hand, toward the end of the book, that the Druid Adamas was an ingenious allegory, representing the Lieutenant-General of Montbrison, of the family of the Papons. Her weary eyes closed, and the great book slipped from her lap to the cushion of velvet upon which her feet were placed, and where the beautiful Astree and the gallant Celadon reposed luxuriously, less immovable than Marie de Mantua, vanquished by them and by profound slumber.
CHAPTER XVI. THE CONFUSION
This same morning, the various events of which we have seen in the apartments of Gaston d’Orleans and of the Queen, the calm and silence of study reigned in a modest cabinet of a large house near the Palais de justice. A bronze lamp, of a gothic shape, struggling with the coming day, threw its red light upon a mass of papers and books which covered a large table; it lighted the bust of L’Hopital, that of Montaigne the essayist, the President de Thou, and of King Louis XIII.
A fireplace sufficiently large for a man to enter and sit there was occupied by a large fire burning upon enormous andirons. Upon one of these was placed the foot of the studious De Thou, who, already risen, examined with attention the new works of Descartes and Grotius. He was writing upon his knee his notes upon these books of philosophy and politics, which were then the general subjects of conversation; but at this moment the ‘Meditations Metaphysiques’ absorbed all his attention. The philosopher of Touraine enchanted the young counsellor. Often, in his enthusiasm, he struck the book, uttering exclamations of admiration; sometimes he took a sphere placed near him, and, turning it with his fingers, abandoned himself to the most profound reveries of science; then, led by them to a still greater elevation of mind, he would suddenly throw himself upon his knees before a crucifix, placed upon the chimney-piece, because at the limits of the human mind he had found God. At other times he buried himself in his great armchair, so as to be nearly sitting upon his shoulders, and, placing his two hands upon his eyes, followed in his head the trace of the reasoning of Rene Descartes, from this idea of the first meditation:
“Suppose that we are asleep, and that all these particularities—
that is, that we open our eyes, move our heads, spread our arms—are
nothing but false illusions.”
to this sublime conclusion of the third:
“Only one thing remains to be said; it is that like the idea of
myself, that of God is born and produced with me from the time I was
created. And certainly it should not be thought strange that God,
in creating me, should have implanted in me this idea, to be, as it
were, the mark of the workman impressed upon his work.”