To ascertain the matter with certainty, I repaired to my neighbor, M. N——, doctor of Navarre, who, as you are aware, is one of the keenest opponents of the Jansenists, and my curiosity having made me almost as keen as himself, I asked him if they would not formally decide at once that “grace is given to all men,” and thus set the question at rest. But he gave me a sore rebuff, and told me that that was not the point; that there were some of his party who held that grace was not given to all; that the examiners themselves had declared, in a full assembly of the Sorbonne, that that opinion was _problematical_; and that he himself held the same sentiment, which he confirmed by quoting to me what he called that celebrated passage of St. Augustine: “We know that grace is not given to all men.” I apologized for having misapprehended his sentiment, and requested him to say if they would not at least condemn that other opinion of the Jansenists which is making so much noise, “That grace is efficacious of itself, and invincibly determines our will to what is good.” But in this second query I was equally unfortunate. “You know nothing about the matter,” he said; “that is not a heresy—it is an orthodox opinion; all the Thomists[84] maintain it; and I myself have defended it in my Sorbonic thesis.”[85] I did not venture again to propose my doubts, and yet I was as far as ever from understanding where the difficulty lay; so, at last, in order to get at it, I begged him to tell me where, then, lay the heresy of M. Arnauld’s proposition? “It lies here,” said he, “that he does not acknowledge that the righteous have the power of obeying the commandments of God, in the manner in which we understand it.” On receiving this piece of information, I took my leave of him; and, quite proud at having discovered the knot of the question, I sought M. N——, who is gradually getting better, and was sufficiently recovered to conduct me to the house of his brother-in-law, who is a Jansenist, if ever there was one, but a very good man notwithstanding. Thinking to insure myself a better reception, I pretended to be very high on what I took to be his side, and said: “Is it possible that the Sorbonne has introduced into the Church such an error as this, ‘that all the righteous have always the power of obeying the commandments of God?’” “What say you?” replied the doctor. “Call you that an error—a sentiment so Catholic that none but Lutherans and Calvinists impugn it?” “Indeed!” said I, surprised in my turn; “so you are not of their opinion?” “No,” he replied; “we anathematize it as heretical and impious.”[86]