Wherever it is, love is always the master. It seems truly that
it is to the soul of the one who loves, what the soul is to the
body it animates.

Among the eminent men who lent so much brilliancy to this salon
was the great jurist Domat. He adds his contribution and falls
into the moralizing vein:

A little fine weather, a good word, a praise, a caress, draws me
from a profound sadness from which I could not draw myself by any
effort of meditation. What a machine is my soul, what an abyss
of misery and weakness!

Here is one by the Abbe d'Ailly, which foreshadows the thought of
the next century:

Too great submission to books, and to the opinions of the
ancients, as to the eternal truths revealed of God, spoils the
head and makes pedants.

The finest and most vigorous of these choice spirits was Pascal,
who frequented more or less the salon of Mme. de Sable previous
to his final retirement to the gloom and austerity of the
cloister. His delicate platonism and refined spirituality go far
towards offsetting the cold cynicism of La Rochefoucauld. Each
gives us a different phase of life as reflected in a clear and
luminous intelligence. The one led to Port Royal, the other
turned an electric light upon the selfish corruption of courts.
Many of the pensees of Pascal were preserved among the records of