ABSTRACT
It is now time to imitate the manner of Rapin in his history, who, when he has finished a certain portion of the affairs of the state, as we have done, returns to wind up those of the church, and then on to the state, and then backwards to the church; 515 a comfortable and unfatiguing regularity we much envy. We novelists are classed beneath our brothers who profess authentic history, and yet we have to feed the fire of our imagination with the most costly aromatics; but the fire of an historian is extremely small, and kept up by mere wood and coal. But as the eyes of most people are more perfect than the delicacy of their / olfactory nerves, it has happened that historians are considered as sublime personages, and we as nugatory triflers. As for our church affairs, they are much easier to narrate than those of the other historians, a church being the very last object of a novelist’s attention. It is with us as with many other men; to go to church for marriage is an act of despair; and when we discover that we are in an exhausted state, to save our reputation we have recourse to the parson.
