"We may nobly feel our own strength in the face of man's works."
In my opinion, the opposition in these two passages is only apparent; it will he explained by means of a distinction which I have already slightly indicated.
Bailly's diffidence required the same distinction. When people praised him to his face on the diversity of his knowledge, our colleague did not immediately repel the compliment; but soon after, he would stop his panegyrist, and whisper in his ear with an air of mystery: "I will confide a secret to you, pray do not take advantage of it: I am only a very little less ignorant than another man."
Never did a man act more in harmony with his principles. Bailly was led to reprimand severely a man belonging to the humblest and poorest class of society. Anger does not make him forget that he speaks to a citizen, to a man. "I ask pardon," says the first magistrate of the capital, addressing himself to a rag-gatherer; "I ask your pardon, if I am angry; but your conduct is so reprehensible, that I cannot speak to you otherwise."
Bailly's friends were wont to say that he devoted too much of his patrimony to pleasure. This word was calumniously interpreted. Mérard Saint Just has given the true sense of it: "Bailly's pleasure was beneficence."
So eminent a mind could not fail to be tolerant. Such in fact Bailly constantly showed himself in politics, and what is almost equally rare, in regard to religion. In the month of June, 1791, he checked in severe terms the fury with which the multitude appeared to be excited, at the report that at the Théatines some persons had taken the Communion two or three times in one day. "The accusation is undoubtedly false," said the Mayor of Paris; "but if it were true, the public would not have a right to inquire into it. Every one should have the free choice of his religion and his creed." Nothing would have been wanting in the picture, if Bailly had taken the trouble to remark how strange it was, that these violent scruples against repeated Communions emanated from persons who probably never took the Sacrament at all.
The reports on animal magnetism, on the hospitals, on the slaughter-houses, had carried Bailly's name into regions, whence the courtiers knew very cleverly how to discard true merit. Madame then wished to attach the illustrious academician to her person as a cabinet secretary. Bailly accepted. It was an entirely honorary title. The secretary saw the princess only once, that was on the day of his presentation.
Were more important functions reserved for him? We must suppose so; for some influential persons offered to procure Bailly a title of nobility and a decoration. This time the philosopher flatly refused, saying, in answer to the earnest negotiators: "I thank you, but he who has the honour of belonging to the three principal academies of France is sufficiently decorated, sufficiently noble in the eyes of rational men; a cordon, or a title, could add nothing to him."
The first secretary of the Academy of Sciences had, some years before, acted as Bailly did. Only he gave his refusal in such strong terms, that I could not easily believe them to have been written by the timid pen of Fontenelle, if I did not find them in a perfectly authentic document, in which he says: "Of all the titles in this world, I have never had any but of one sort, the titles of Academician, and they have not been profaned by an admixture of any others, more worldly and more ostentatious."
Bailly married, in November, 1787, an intimate friend of his mother's, already a widow, only two years younger than himself. Madame Bailly, a distant relation of the author of the Marseillaise, had an attachment for her husband that bordered on adoration. She lavished on him the most tender and affectionate attention. The success that Madame Bailly might have had in the fashionable world by her beauty, her grace, by her ineffable goodness, did not tempt her. She lived in almost absolute retirement, even when the learned academician was most in society. The Mayor's wife appeared only at one public ceremony: the day of the benediction of the colours of the sixty battalions of the National Guard by the Archbishop of Paris, she accompanied Madame de Lafayette to the Cathedral. She said: "My husband's duty is to show himself in public wherever there is any good to be done, or sound advice to be given; mine is to remain at home." This rare retiring and respectable conduct did not disarm some hideous pamphleteers. Their impudent sarcasms were continually attacking the modest wife on her domestic hearth, and troubling her peace of mind. In their logic of the tavern they fancied that an elegant and handsome woman, who avoided society, could not fail to be ignorant and stupid. Thence arose a thousand imaginary stories, ridiculous both as to their matter and form, thrown out daily to the public, more, indeed, to offend and disgust the upright magistrate than to humble his companion.