I was more specially influenced by Malebranche,
who continued to recite his prayers throughout the whole of his
life, while holding, with regard to the general dispensation of the
universe, ideas differing but very little from those which I had
arrived at. The _Entretiens sur la Metaphysique_ and the _Meditations
chretiennes_ were ever in my thoughts.
The fondness for erudition is innate in me, and M. Gosselin did much
to develop it. He had the kindness to choose me as his reader. At
seven o'clock every morning I went to read to him in his bedroom,
and he was in the habit of pacing up and down, sometimes stopping,
sometimes quickening his pace and interrupting me with some sensible
or caustic remark. In this way I read to him the long stories of
Father Maimbourg, a writer who is now forgotten, but who in his time
was appreciated by Voltaire, various publications by M. Benjamin
Guerard, whose learning was much appreciated by him, and a few works
by M. de Maistre, notably his _Lettre sur l'Inquisition espagnole_.
He did not much like this last-named treatise, and he would constantly
rub his hands and say, "How plain it is that M. de Maistre is no
theologian." All he cared for was theology, and he had a profound
contempt for literature. He rarely failed to stigmatise as futile
nonsense the highly-esteemed studies of the Nicolaites. For M.
Dupanloup, whose principal dogma was that there is no salvation
without a good literary education, he had little sympathy, and he
generally avoided mention of his name.
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