La faveur au dédain, et l’amour à la haine.
‘There is a pretty dissertation for you, adorned with a most apt quotation from Corneille. Why, I could make my fortune in the Ruelles as a Professor of philosophie pour les dames!’ he cried with an affectionate little moue at Madeleine, restored to complete good humour by the sound of his own voice. But Madeleine looked vexed, and Monsieur Troqueville, his eyes starting from his head with triumph, spluttered out, ‘’Twas from Polyeucte, those lines you quoted, and how does Pauline answer them?
‘Ma raison, il est vrai, dompte mes sentiments;
Mais, quelque authorité que sur eux elle ait prise,
Elle n’y règne pas, elle les tyrannise,
Et quoique le dehors soit sans émotion,
Le dedans n’est que trouble et que sédition.
‘So you see, my young gallant, I know my Corneille as well as you do!’ and he rubbed his hands in glee. ‘“Le dedans n’est que trouble et que sédition,” how would your old Descartes answer that? ’Tis better surely to yield to every Passion like a gentleman, than to have a long solemn face and a score of devils fighting in your heart like a knavish Huguenot ... hein, Jacques? hein?’ (It was not that Monsieur Troqueville felt any special dislike to the tenets of Cartesianism in themselves, he merely wished to prove that Jacques had been talking rubbish.)
‘Well, uncle, there is no need to be so splenetic, ’tis not my philosophy; ’tis that of Descartes, and though doubtless——’