“I have become aware that it is the life of
a good man,” said my father, “and with
the exception of Colas’ cow there is hardly
anything to complain of. Give me your hand!
We are friends, what’s your name?”
“Jerome Coignard, doctor of divinity, master
of arts.”
The Pupil of M. Jerome Coignard—I receive
Lessons in Latin Greek and Life.
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 cherished hopes. His weaknesses,
his errors, his faults, none of which he ever tried
to dissemble or to colour, have never shaken his confidence
in the Divine goodness. And to know him well,
it must be known that he took care of his eternal
salvation on occasions when, to all appearance, he
cared the least about it. He imbued me with the
principles of an enlightened piety. He also endeavoured
to attach me to virtue as such, and to render it to
me, so to say, homely and familiar by examples drawn
from the life of Zeno.
To make me acquainted with the dangers of vice, he
went for arguments to the nearest fountain-head, confessing
to me that by having loved wine and women too much,
he had lost the honour of taking the professor’s
chair of a college in long gown and square cap.
