I led Ballangier to my book shelves, from which I took Racine, Molière, Montesquieu, Fénelon, and La Fontaine.
"There, those are for you," I said; "take these books home with you, and read them carefully and with profit. Some will seem to you a little severe and serious; but the others, while they instruct you, will make you laugh. Learn by heart the great, the immortal Molière. He castigated the vices and absurdities of his time; but as vices unluckily belong to all times, as men are no better to-day than they ever were, as we meet in the world every day tartufes, précieuses ridicules, avares, and bourgeois gentilshommes, Molière, like all authors who depict nature, is and will be of all epochs.
"'Rien n'est beau que le vrai; le vrai seul est aimable.'[A]
That maxim is earnestly denied by those poets who have never succeeded in being natural. They put a conventional jargon in the mouths of all their characters, and call that style! In their works, the peasant talks just like the noble; the man of the people uses as fine phrases as the advocate; the maid-servant indulges in metaphors like the grande dame; and they call that style! Posterity will do justice to all such stuff. Bathos sinks and is drowned, while the natural sails smoothly along and always rides out the storm."
"What! are all these fine books for me?"
"Yes; make a bundle of them and take them away."
"Oh! thanks, Charles!"
"When you have read them with profit, I will give you more."
"You are too kind! But I mean to make myself worthy of——. Well, you will see. Meanwhile, I've brought this back to you."
He took from his pocket a small paper-covered package.