VII

GUI PATIN'S LETTERS

HE pleasure to be derived from, these letters

THE

is anecdotal and historical. They are matter of gossip rather than of criticism. What we are to look for in them is the expression of those details of human life, necessarily omitted by historians, which bring so clearly before us the day-to-day existence of men in other centuries, all the "little" things which pleased or worried or occupied them, as if they had not been under sentence of death like every other generation. The very remoteness of these interests to our own, which renders them indifferent or tiresome to the mass of mankind (and rightly), is an additional attraction for those who enjoy travelling in time, who extend their own lives by the imagination into the lives of others.

Sainte-Beuve found in Patin "a subject made to his hand"; the two essays in the "Lundis are admirable and definitive. The kind of analysis in which Sainte-Beuve specialized, attacking each author from a triple standpoint (as it were) of history, philo

sophy and literature, is there carried to its triumphal conclusion. Nothing more remains to remains to be said. The reader is then recommended to consult the essays in volume eight of the first series of "Lundis," as the best possible introduction to the reading of Patin; let us restrict ourselves to the much humbler task of tracing a few of the occupations of that rather choleric, wholly reactionary, and bourgeois doctor of medicine, Monsieur Gui Patin (very much "of the Faculty "), during the troublesome times of the Fronde.

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The first letter in the collection before us is dated January 8, 1649. England is in the very centre of that earthquake which destroyed the old, vivid, coarse Merry England"; Charles I is at the foot of the scaffold. And, as always happens in these violent mutations of a great State, the shock is felt more or less severely by all neighbouring Governments. La Fronde is the repercussion in France of the Great Rebellion. Richelieu had left the whole State in almost perfect order, so that pretexts for the overt expression of bourgeois hatred for the aristocracy and the Crown did not occur until 1648. Mazarin was minister; Emery the financial expert; Broussel the popular hero; Anne the "despot." The aristocracy, even to the Royal House, took sides according to personal ambition. I shall not sketch the turmoil of these months in Paris (available in any history of

France) except to recall that the legend runs: "Anne capitulated outwardly to the Parliament on the advice of Henrietta Maria, who apparently, had at length learnt wisdom." This capitulation, and still more the Queen's refusal to sacrifice Mazarin (as Charles sacrificed Strafford) saved the situation. That was in October 1648. But on January 6, 1649 (two days before M. Patin dates his epistle to "Monsieur Spon, Doctor of medicine," at the Place de l'Herberie, in Lyon), the Regent, the King, the Duc d'Orléans, and most of the Court retired secretly to St. Germain, and a letter de cachet was sent to the Parlement, commanding it to remove its sittings to Montargis. Condé, for the Crown, surrounded Paris with 8,000 troops; Paris raised an army in opposition, commanded by the Prince de Conti and supported by the Dukes of Beaufort, Elbœuf, Bouillon, Longueville, and La Rochefoucauld. This quantity of nobles on the popular side seems to indicate that La Fronde was more a party intrigue than an

insurrection.

But what has that eminent doctor Patin, on the verge of his election as "doyen de la Faculté," to say to his provincial correspondent, writing as he does in the exciting and unfamiliar circumstances of a civil war and a siege? He begins, of course, with a note that he is safe personally, and then proceeds to discuss the then burning topics of the flight of the

Royal Family, the chances of conflict, of starvation, of an assault on the city? Not a bit. He begins with the leisurely assurance of the true savant to speak of those things which really matter

Paris, this 8th of January, 1649.

Since my last, which I sent you on Tuesday, the 10th of November, the eve of Saint Martin, there has appeared a new book by M. David Blondel, minister of the holy gospel, intitled "Concerning the Sibyls celebrated as well by Pagan Antiquity as by the Holy Fathers," etc. Therein is much spoken of the vanity of the sibylline oracles.

So, with Paris two days besieged and learned physicians like to be taken for active service or at best somewhat scantily fed, M. Gui Patin is still so much master of himself that he begins with the (now unhappily forgotten) tome of M. David Blondel on that palpitating subject of the Sibyls. And before we arrive at such mundane and trivial occurrences as modern civil war, we hear of the death (by "hydropisie des poumons") of that resolute and well-meaning man, Monsieur Nic. Héliot; of the ceremonies at the burial of this worthy, who left two quarters of a crown to every doctor who attended his funeral in a red gown and one quarter of a crown to each who came in a black gown and square bonnet, whereof sixty appeared, but the Faculty gave the money to the widow; of a letter from one M. Garnier; of the "worthy and incom

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parable gentleman," M. Gassendi, the Epicurean, an epitome of moral virtue and the moral sciences and singularly well-seen in the mathematics"; of the speech of M. Talon; of the death of M. Guenant; of the evil part played by antimony in his last sickness, and of the "bons livres bien curieux" left by the deceased. And so we are gossiped along, with more medical small-talk and mention of a large book "De Infelicitate Litteratorum" (which might be added to at the rate of at least one folio a century), until at the end of the letter we hear of these unhappy political disturbances, due (it appears) to the inefficiency of Cardinal Mazarin. But Patin, like many another philosopher, is brave enough until the artillery opens out; "for my part I am a good servant of the King, but if my house is attacked I shall act as others do and defend myself as long as I can." Since his riches, like those of "le bonhomme Casaubon " were chiefly "libros et liberos," he was probably in no great danger.

The next letter is not quite so detached in spirit ; there was still no lack of food on January 25th, but the culinary preoccupations of the rationed begin to show through M. Patin's sententious prose . . . "il faudra prendre Saint-Denis, afin d'avoir aussi le pain de Gonesse, pour ceux qui ont l'estomac délicat et qui y sont accoutumés. ." The Queen has dismissed one of her waiting women, Mlle. Danse,