“Monsieur l’Abbé,” said I, “allow my feelings to oppose your arguments. All the world knows that Monseigneur de Séez has only become considerable by the suppleness of his character and his manners, and what one admires in him is his skill in detaching himself from both parties.... We have seen him glide gently between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, tincting his pale prudence with the roses of Christian charity.... He thinks he has done enough when he has displeased no one, and all his care is to sustain his position. Thus it is not his great heart which has gained for him the suffrages of the King’s illustrious _protégés_.[11] Neither is it his great mind. For, with the exception of this panegyric on St. Maclou, which he had (as all the world knows) but the trouble of reading, this peace-loving bishop has only let us hear the depressing instructions issued to his clergy. “He recommends himself by the amenity of his language and the politeness of his conversation. Are these sufficient titles to immortality?” “Tournebroche,” answered Monsieur l’Abbé, civilly, “you reason with the simplicity given to you by Madame, your mother, at your birth, and I see that you will keep your natural candour for long enough. I congratulate you upon it. But innocence must not make you unjust; it is enough that it leaves you ignorant. The immortality that they have bestowed on Monseigneur de Séez does not call for the attainments of a Bossuet or a Belzunce; it is not graven in the heart of an astounded people—it is inscribed in a big book; and you can well understand that these paper laurels only suit the heads of such heroes. “If, among the Forty, there are persons of more gentility than genius, what harm do you see in it? Mediocrity triumphs in the Academy. But where does it not? Do you see it less powerful in Parliament or in the royal Council, where doubtless it is less fitted to find place? Must one be an exceptional man to work at a dictionary which wishes to regulate custom, and can only follow it? “Academicians, or academists, were instituted, as you know, to fix the best usage in matters of speech, to purge the language of all archaisms and vulgar impurities, and to see that a second Rabelais, or a second Montaigne, does not arise, smelling of the rabble, of pedantry, or of the provinces. They assembled, to this end, gentlemen, who knew good usage and writers who were interested in knowing it. That gave rise to alarm lest the assembly should, tyrannically, reform the French language. But it was soon recognised that these fears were vain, and the academists, far from imposing custom, obeyed it. In spite of their veto we continue to say as before, ‘I shut my door.’[12]