The marvellous in the affairs of mankind is the concatenation of
effects and causes. M. Jerome Coignard was quite right in saying:
"To consider that strange following of bounds and rebounds wherein
our destinies clash, one is obliged to recognise that God in His
perfection is in want neither of mind nor of imagination nor comic
force; on the contrary He excels in imbroglio as in everything else,
and if after having inspired Moses, David and the Prophets He had
thought it worth while to inspire M. le Sage or the interluders of a
fair, He would dictate to them the most entertaining harlequinade."
And in a similar way it occurred that I became a Latinist because
Friar Ange was taken by the watch and put into ecclesiastical
penance for having knocked down a cutler under the arbour of the
_Little Bacchus_. M. Jerome Coignard kept his promise. He gave
me lessons and, finding me tractable and intelligent, he took
pleasure in instructing me in the ancient languages.

In but a few years he made me a tolerably good Latinist.

In memory of him I have conceived a gratitude which will not come to
an end but with my life. The obligation I am under to him is easily
to be conceived when I say that he neglected nothing to shape my
heart and soul, together with my intellect. He recited to me the
"Maxims of Epictetus," the "Homilies of St Basil" and the
"Consolations of Boethius." By beautiful extracts he opened to me
the philosophy of the Stoics, but he did not make it appear in its
sublimity without showing its inferiority to Christian philosophy.
He was a subtle theologian and a good Catholic. His faith remained
whole on the ruins of his most beloved illusions, of his most