THE FRENCH CONVULSIVES. 55 



This is a matter of conscience ; and if you are really desirous of bringing 

 the case before a tribunal, go to the tribunal of Penance.' 



" The incarnation of the Code was silent, sat down, and drank a glass of 

 champaigne. 



" The man whose business it was to expound the gospel, the good priest, 

 rose 



" ' God has made us frail/ said he, with firmness. ' If you love the 

 heiress of the crime, marry her ; but be content with the marriage portion, 

 and give the residue of the father's property to the poor.' 'But/ cried one 

 of those medlers without pity, so often to be met with, ' most likely the 

 father's good marriage was in consequence of his having acquired riches. 

 Has not these, the very least of his enjoyments, been the fruit of his crime. 

 The discussion is in itself a sentence.' ' There are things upon which a 

 man does not deliberate/ cried my aged tutor, thinking to enlighten the 

 assembly by a drunken sally. 



" ' Aye/ said the secretary of the embassy. 



" ' Aye/ cried the priest. 



" Neither understood the other's meaning. 



" A young doctrinaire, who had narrowly escaped being elected deputy, 

 rose 



" ' Gentlemen, this phenominal accident of our intellectual nature is one 

 of those which rise strongest in relief from the conventional form to which 

 society is subjected. Hence the decision to be come to ought to be an extem- 

 poraneous act of conscience, a sudden conception, an instinctive judgment, 

 a fugitive emanation of our internal appreciation, quite similar to the reve- 

 lations which constitute the sentiment of taste, Let's vote/ 



" ' Aye, let's vote/ cried my guests. 



" I handed two balls to each, one white, the other red. The white, the 

 symbol of virginity, was to prohibit the marriage ; the red to approve of it. 



" I abstained voting from a feeling of delicacy. My friends were seven- 

 teen in number absolute majority nine. On opening the box I found nine 

 white balls. This result dfd not surprise me ; however, I counted the num- 

 ber of young people of my own age, interspersed among my judges. These 

 casuists were nine in number. They had all the same thought. Oh, oh ! 

 said I, here is unanimity against my marriage. How shall I escape from 

 this embarrasment ?" 



After proceeding in this strain, the scene is closed by the pithy 

 exclamation of the puritan " Fool, why did you ack the father if he 

 was born at Beauvais ?" (This question, be it understood, had led 

 to the certainty of his having been the perpetrator of the crime.) 



The " Biography of Louis Lambert," which immediately succeeds, 

 is nothing more than a reproduction of some of the ideas and characters 

 of his former work, " The Talisman," and a further exposition of the 

 mystic metaphysics in which our author delights. The substance of 

 his singular theory, often conveyed in language that escapes the 

 comprehension of the reader, is the endowing of thought, with a 

 living and corporeal form, to represent it as a physical power, ac- 

 companied by its innumerable generations. Will and thought he 

 makes living forces, and these two powers are represented as becom- 

 ing in a manner visible and tangible, and invested with all the quali- 

 ties of living agents. 



There is something extremely interesting in this species of ideali- 

 zation, but it too frequently reminds us of the wild vagaries of 

 Swedenberg. 



