Page:Memoirs of Madame de Motteville on Anne of Austria and her court.djvu/41

the quarrels of the period, the disputes of Jansenism and Molinism, in which women were as eager as others to mingle. "It costs us so dear," she says, alluding to Eve, "for having sought to learn the knowledge of good and evil, that we ought to agree that it is better to be ignorant of it than to know it; especially as we women are accused of being the cause of all evil. . . . Whenever men talk of God and the hidden mysteries I am astonished at their boldness, and I am delighted not to be obliged to know more than my Pater, my Credo, and the Commandments." Madame de Motteville follows exactly the line that Bossuet traced in such matters. This whole page should be read ; the author crowns it with very noble Italian verses, which prove that while submitting her mind she by no means renounced a reasonable self-adornment and embellishment. This rare person, this honest woman of so much judgment and intelligence, died in December, 1689, in her sixty-eighth year. She can be appreciated at her full value only by accompanying her throughout the whole course of her Memoirs, following her in her development and continuity; quotations and analysis give but a very imperfect idea of their slow, full, tranquil, and engaging character.

Sainte-Beuve.