demanded of the moral theorist. For so pronounced a lover of
sincerity as Monsieur de Montaigne, there was certainly a strange
ambiguousness in the result of his lengthy inquiries, on the greatest
as well as on the lightest matters, and it was inevitable that a
listener should accept the dubious lesson in his own sense. Was this
shrewd casuist only bringing him by a roundabout way to principles he
would not have cared to avow? To the great religious thinker of the
next century, to Pascal, Montaigne was to figure as emphatically on
the wrong side, not merely because "he that is not with us, is
against us." It was something to have been, in the matter of
religious tolerance, as on many other matters of justice and
gentleness, the solitary conscience of the age. But could one really
care for truth, who never even seemed to find it? Did he fear,
perhaps, the practical responsibility of getting to the very bottom
of certain questions? That the actual discourse of so keen a thinker
appeared often inconsistent or inconsecutive, might be a [115] hint
perhaps that there was some deeper ground of thought in reserve; as
if he were really moving, securely, over ground you did not see.
What might that ground be? As to Gaston himself,--had this kindly
entertainer only been drawing the screws of a very complex piece of
machinery which had worked well enough hitherto for all practical
purposes?--Was this all that had been going on, while he lingered
there, week after week, in a kind of devout attendance on theories,
and, for his part, feeling no reverberation of actual events around
him, still less of great events in preparation? These were the
questions Gaston had in mind, as, at length, he thanked his host one
morning with real regret, and took his last look around that
meditative place, the manuscripts, the books, the emblems,--the house
of Circe on the wall.