CONDORCET: A BIOGRAPHY. 195 



Our confrere resisted with the more assurance the invasion of bad 

 taste, the confusion of style, and the dithyrambic tendencies attempted 

 by a certain school, because encouraged by Voltaire, who thus writes to 

 him from Feruey, on the 18th of July, 1774: '-It is without doubt a 

 misl'ortune to be born in a century of bad taste, but what will you have! 

 The i^ublic for eighty years have been content to diink bad brandy at 

 their repasts." 



It is now generally considered as a matter of hearsay that Coudorcet 

 lacked in his eulogies force, warmth, elegance, and sensibility. I differ 

 from this opinion without fear of fin<ling myself alone. In fact what 

 have those wbo complain of his want of force to say to the following 

 portrait of the academicians, happily few in number, whose names are 

 connected with factious intrigue "? 



" Such intrigues have always been the work of those men tormented 

 with the feeling of their own insignificance, who seek to obtain by noise 

 what they fail to merit by worth, who having no right to reputation of 

 their own, would destroy that merited by others, and overcome by petty 

 malice the men of genius who oppress them with the weight of their 

 renown." 



To the critics who have accused Condorcet of a want of sensibility, 

 I oppose the following passage from the unpublished eulogy of fathers 

 Jacquier and Le Seur: * * * "Their friendship was not of that 

 vulgar sort produced only by conformity of tastes and interests. It 

 had its origin in a natural and irresistible attraction. In these deep 

 and delicious friendships each endures the sufferings of his friend and 

 enjoys all his pleasures. He has not a thought, he has not a senti- 

 ment, which his friend does not share ; and if he is not always one with 

 him, it is solely on account of the preference he gives him over himself. 

 This friend is not only a man that one prefers to all other men, he is a 

 being apart, whom none resembles ; it is not his qualities, his virtues 

 that one loves in him, for others may have these and yet not be loved 

 the same ; it is himself that one loves, and because it is himself. Those 

 who have never experienced the sentiment can alone deny that it exists. 



* * * From the instant they encountered each other at Rome, every- 

 thing was in common between them; troubles, pleasures, labors — glory 

 even, the good, of all others, that two men very rarely share in good faith. 

 Still each of them published separately a few articles, but these were of 

 little importance, and in tbe judgment of him to whom they belonged 

 not worthy to appear with the name of his friend. They desired perfect 

 equality in the situations they occupied ; if one obtained a distinction, 

 he was not content until he had procured a similar honor for his friend. 



* * * Father Jacquier had the misfortune to survive his friend. 

 Father le Seur succumbed to his infirmities in 1770. Two days before 

 his decease he appeared to have lost all consciousness. 'Do you know 

 me?' said Father le Jccquier to him a few moments before his death. 

 ' Y'es,' answered the dying man ; ' I have just resolved a difficult cqua- 



