“Let us drink!” cried Chaulieu; “let us drink!” and the conversation was turned again.
“What is that you say of Tacitus, Huet?” said Boulainvilliers.
“That his wisdom arose from his malignancy,” answered Huet. “He is a perfect penetrator* into human vices, but knows nothing of human virtues. Do you think that a good man would dwell so constantly on what is evil? Believe me—no. A man cannot write much and well upon virtue without being virtuous, nor enter minutely and profoundly into the causes of vice without being vicious himself.”
* A remark similar to this the reader will probably remember in the “Huetiana,” and will, I hope, agree with me in thinking it showy and untrue.—ED.
“It is true,” said Hamilton; “and your remark, which affects to be so deep, is but a natural corollary from the hackneyed maxim that from experience comes wisdom.”
“But, for my part,” said Boulainvilliers, “I think Tacitus is not so invariably the analyzer of vice as you would make him. Look at the ‘Agricola’ and the ‘Germania.’”
“Ah! the ‘Germany,’ above all things!” cried Hamilton, dropping a delicious morsel of sanglier in its way from hand to mouth, in his hurry to speak. “Of course, the historian, Boulainvilliers, advocates the ‘Germany,’ from its mention of the origin of the feudal system,—that incomparable bundle of excellences, which Le Comte de Boulainvilliers has declared to be le chef d’oeuvre de l’esprit humain; and which the same gentleman regrets, in the most pathetic terms, no longer exists in order that the seigneur may feed upon des gros morceaux de boeuf demi-cru, may hang up half his peasants pour encourager les autres, and ravish the daughters of the defunct pour leur donner quelque consolation.”
“Seriously though,” said the old Abbe de Chaulieu, with a twinkling eye, “the last mentioned evil, my dear Hamilton, was not without a little alloy of good.”
“Yes,” said Hamilton, “if it was only the daughters; but perhaps the seigneur was not too scrupulous with regard to the wives.”
“Ah! shocking, shocking!” cried Chaulieu, solemnly. “Adultery is, indeed, an atrocious crime. I am sure I would most conscientiously cry out with the honest preacher, ‘Adultery, my children, is the blackest of sins. I do declare that I would rather have ten virgins in love with me than one married woman!’”