Volume III Part 73 (1/2)
”Yes, please God”
This Socratic reply made me see how misplaceda book to my hand I opened it to restore my composure
It was an octavo volume of his works, and I read in it:
”Utrum memoria post mortem dubito”
”You do not think, then,” said I, ”that the memory is an essential part of the soul?”
”How is that question to be answered?” M de Haller replied, cautiously, as he had his reasons for being considered orthodox
During dinner I asked if M de Voltaire came often to see him By way of reply he repeated these lines of the poet:--
”Vetabo qui Cereris sacruarit arcanum sub usdem sit trabibus”
I spent three days with this celebratedhis opinion on any religious questions, although I had a great desire to do so, as it would have pleased me to have had his opinion on that delicate subject; but I believe that in ed only by his heart I told hireat event, and he said I was right He added, without the slightest bitterness,
”M de Voltaire is a h, in spite of the laws of nature, reater at a distance than close at hand”
M de Haller kept a good and abundant though plain table; he only drank water At dessert only he allowed hilass of water He talked a great deal of Boerhaave, whose favourite pupil he had been He said that after Hypocrates, Boerhaave was the greatest doctor and the greatest chemist that had ever existed
”How is it,” said I, ”that he did not attain e?”
”Because there is no cure for death Boerhaave was born a doctor, as Homer was born a poet; otherwise he would have succunant ulcer which had resisted all the best treat it constantly with salt dissolved in his own urine”
”I have been told that he possessed the philosopher's stone”
”Yes, but I don't believe it”
”Do you think it possible?”
”I have been working for the last thirty years to convince myself of its impossibility; I have not yet done so, but I am sure that no one who does not believe in the possibility of the great work can be a good cheed reat Voltaire, and in, this way our French correspondence began I possess twenty-two letters from this justly celebrated man; and the last ritten six er I live the more interest I take in my papers They are the treasure which attaches me to life andat Berne Rousseau's ”Heloise,” and I asked M
Haller's opinion of it He told e a friend, and froe of the whole ”It is the worst of all romances, because it is the most eloquently expressed
You will see the country of Vaud, but don't expect to see the originals of the brilliant portraits which Jean Jacques painted He see was allowable in a roe Petrarch, was a learnedof his love for Laura, whom he loved as every man loves the woman hom he is taken; and if Laura had not contented her illustrious lover, he would not have celebrated her”
Thus Haller spoke toRousseau with aversion
He disliked his very eloquence, as he said it owed all its merits to antithesis and paradox Haller was a learned e was not employed for the purpose of ostentation, nor in private life, nor when he was in the company of people who did not care for science No one knew better than he how to accommodate himself to his coave offence But ere his qualifications? It would be much easier to say what he had not than what he had He had no pride, self-sufficiency, nor tone of superiority--in fact, none of those defects which are often the reproach of the learned and the witty
He was a man of austere virtue, but he took care to hide the austerity under a veil of a real and universal kindness Undoubtedly he thought little of the ignorant, who talk about everything right or wrong, instead of re silent, and have at bottom only conte nothing He knew that a despised ignoramus becomes an enemy, and Haller wished to be loved