—For man maintains a constant inner conversation that it would be good to regulate, if not to exterminate …

—I now see a time approaching when libertines of the mind will lose all credit and attention, and will be judged importunate and tedious as are our priests of today, not out of any distaste for their views, but because all things will be regarded with indifference, aside from pleasure and business.

—But there is a peculiar connivance between mystics and libertines. They are all antinatural beings, who implicitly accept the void and from it they draw a certain rough and brutal flavor in whatever they say. If Calvary brings them enlightenment, over it they lay, not a graduated landscape, but a vast field plowed by fate, devastated by the force, or dried up by the customs of society.

—Thoughts emerge, tattooed by emotions and memories, like certain enigmatic mythical beings that appear from the waves covered with seaweed. But we are surrounded by an opaqueness that seems to make such an apparition exotic. We are suspicious. We have long pored over words, we have been gripped by keen sensations, but not for this can we say we have had thoughts …

—You ask me what impression I have of les Solitaires? Well, as a saint dear to me once said, I often see them weighed down by pride and arrogance, stuck in their poor cells like a venomous dragon in its cave.

—Fascinatio nugacitatis, a fascination for trifles.

Saint-Cyran

So the corpse of Monsieur de Saint-Cyran had to be divided up, fixed as it was, majestically, in the posture in which death had overcome him, and with such a grave expression on his face that it was thought none of his bitter enemies would have withstood his blind gaze. His heart, then, was assigned to Monsieur d’Andilly, in accordance with a long-standing pact between him and Monsieur de Saint-Cyran, by which, once he had taken possession of the coveted heart, he would shut himself off from the world. The entrails were set aside for the devotion of Mother Angélique. Lancelot had the task of severing the hands of Monsieur de Saint-Cyran, but his possession of them was contested by Monsieur Le Maître, who, having arrived late, was not satisfied with the “trifling relics” of the corpse of Monsieur de Saint-Cyran that were left for him at that point—relics which were then buried within the walls of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas.

Jenkins

He was known as Monsieur François, gardener of Port-Royal. He came from far away. An English gentleman, a disciple of Monsieur Le Maître who had come to seek his guidance over a lawsuit and had been converted by him to the spirit.

When the twelve rebel nuns were removed from the cloister, the archbishop, accompanied by a group of fifteen officials, asked to visit the garden. There they found Monsieur Jenkins hoeing. The archbishop went up to him and ordered him to leave the place immediately. In a worldly tone, he then continued: “You are more suited to bearing a sword than a hoe.” Jenkins looked up, his face prematurely wrinkled, his cheeks flushed. With that gentle irony sometimes found among saints, he replied: “I have been here twenty years and have never asked for money, for I believed I would end my days here; but if you wish to send me away, you must remunerate me for all the past.” These words were too shrewd for the archbishop, who muttered in embarrassment: “Better the sword, better the sword.”