My conduct in this particular resembled the
coquetry of some very honest women, who, to obtain their wishes,
without permitting or promising anything, sometimes encourage hopes
they never mean to realize.
Reason, piety, and love of order, certainly demanded that instead of
being encouraged in my folly, I should have been dissuaded from the
ruin I was courting, and sent back to my family; and this conduct
any one that was actuated by genuine virtue would have pursued; but it
should be observed that though M. de Pontverre was a religious man, he
was not a virtuous one, but a bigot, who knew no virtue except
worshiping images and telling his beads; in a word, a kind of
missionary, who thought the height of merit consisted in writing
libels against the ministers of Geneva. Far from wishing to send me
back, he endeavored to favor my escape, and put it out of my power
to return even had I been so disposed. It was a thousand to one but he
was sending me to perish with hunger, or become a villain; but all
this was foreign to his purpose; he saw a soul snatched from heresy,
and restored to the bosom of the church: whether I was an honest man
or a knave was very immaterial, provided I went to mass.
This ridiculous mode of thinking is not peculiar to Catholics, it is
the voice of every dogmatical persuasion where merit consists in
belief, and not in virtue.
"You are called by the Almighty," said M. de Pontverre; "go to
Annecy, where you will find a good and charitable lady, whom the
bounty of the king enables to turn souls from those errors she has
haply renounced.
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