But it is not to results such as these that the teachers of St. Sulpice attach the highest value. St. Sulpice is, above all, a school of virtue. It is chiefly in respect to virtue that St. Sulpice is a remnant of the past, a fossil two hundred years old. Many of my opinions surprise the outside world, because they have not seen what I have. At Sulpice I have seen, allied as I admit, with very narrow views, the perfection of goodness, politeness, modesty, and sacrifice of self. There is enough virtue in St. Sulpice to govern the whole world, and this fact has made me very discriminating in my appreciation of what I have seen elsewhere. I have never met but one man in the present age who can bear comparison with the Sulpicians, that is M. Damiron, and those who knew him, know what the Sulpicians were. A future generation will never be able to realise what treasures to be expended in improving the welfare of mankind, are stored up in these ancient schools of silence, gravity and respect.
Such was the establishment in which I spent four years at the most critical period of my life. I was quite in my element there. While the majority of my fellow-students, weakened by the somewhat insipid classical teaching of M. Dupanloup, could not fairly settle down to the divinity of the schools, I at once took a liking for its bitter flavour; I became as fond of it as a monkey is of nuts. The grave and kindly priests, with their strong convictions and good desires reminded me of my early teachers in Lower Brittany. Saint-Nicholas du Chardonnet and its superficial rhetoric I came to look upon as a mere digression of very doubtful utility. I came to realities from words, and I set seriously to study and analyse in its smallest details the Christian Faith which I more than ever regarded as the centre of all truth.
PART II.
As I have already explained, the two years of philosophy which serve as an introduction to the study of theology are spent, not in Paris, but at the country house of Issy, situated in the village of that name outside Paris, just beyond the last houses of Vaugirard. The seminary is a very long building at one end of a large park, and the only remarkable feature about it is the central pavilion, which is so delicate and elegant in style that it will at once take the eye of a connoisseur. This pavilion was the suburban residence of Marguerite de Valois, the first wife of Henri IV., between the year 1606 and her death in 1615. This clever but not very strait-laced princess (upon whom, however, we need not be harder than was he who had the best right to be so) gathered around her the clever men of the day, and the Petit Olympe d’Issy, by Michel Bouteroue,[11] gives a good description of this bright and witty court. The verses are as follows:
Je veux d’un excellent ouvrage,
Dedans un portrait racourcy,
Représenter le païsage
Du petit Olympe d’Issy,
Pourven que la grande princesse,
La perle et fleur de l’univers,
A qui cest ouvrage s’addresse,
Veuille favoriser mes vers.
Que l’ancienne poésie
Ne vante plus en ses écrits
Les lauriers du Daphné d’Asie
Et les beaux jardins de Cypris,
Les promenoirs et le bocage
Du Tempé frais et ombragé,
Qui parut lors qu’un marescage
En la mer se fut deschargé.
Qa’on ne vante plus la Touraine
Pour son air doux et gracieux,
Ny Chenonceaus, qui d’une reyne
Fut le jardin délicieux,
Ny le Tivoly magnifique
Où, d’un artifice nouveau,
Se faict une douce musique
Des accords du vent et de l’eau.
Issy, de beauté les surpasse
En beaux jardins et prés herbus,
Dignes d’estre au lieu de Parnasse
Le séjour des soeurs de Phébus.
Mainte belle source ondoyante,
Découlant de cent lieux divers,
Maintient sa terre verdoyante
Et ses arbrisseaux toujours verds.
Un vivier est à l’advenüe
Près la porte de ce verger,
Qui, par une sente cognüe,
En l’estang se va descharger;
Comme on voit les grandes rivières
Se perdre au giron de la mer,
Ainsi ces sources fontenières
En l’estang se vont renfermer.