approached the tomb, his views of religion appeared to
become clearer. "What a wonderful thing!" he would say, "the Christian
religion, which seems to have no object but felicity in the next world,
yet forms our happiness in this." He had never looked to life for any
very keen delights; his spirits were as even as his mind was powerful.
"Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against the disagreeables of
life," he wrote, "never having had any sorrow that an hour's reading did
not dispel. I awake in the morning with a secret joy at beholding the
light; I gaze upon the light with a sort of enchantment, and all the rest
of the day I am content. I pass the night without awaking, and in the
evening, when I go to bed, a sort of entrancement prevents me from giving
way to reflections."

Montesquieu died as he had lived, without retracting any of his ideas or
of his writings. The priest of his parish brought him the sacraments,
and, "Sir," said he, "you know how great God is!" "Yes," replied the
dying man, "and how little men are!" He expired almost immediately on
the 10th of February, 1755, at the age of sixty-six. He died at the
beginning of the reign of the philosophers, whose way he had prepared
before them without having ever belonged to their number. Diderot alone
followed his bier. Fontenelle, nearly a hundred years old, was soon to
follow him to the tomb.

[Illustration: Fontenelle----274]

Born at Rouen in February, 1657, and nephew of Corneille on the mother's
side, Fontenelle had not received from nature any of the unequal and
sublime endowments which have fixed the dramatic crown forever upon the
forehead of Corneille; but he had inherited the wit, and indeed the
brilliant wit (_bel esprit_), which the great tragedian hid beneath the
splendors of his genius. He began with those writings, superfine
(_precieux_), dainty, tricked out in the fashion of the court and the
drawing-room, which suggested La Bruyere's piquant portrait.

"Ascanius is a statuary, Hegio a metal-founder, AEschines a fuller, and
Cydias a brilliant wit. That is his trade; he has a sign, a workshop,
articles made to order, and apprentices who work under him. Prose,
verse, what d'ye lack? He is equally successful in both. Give him an
order for letters of consolation, or on an absence; he will undertake
them. Take them ready made, if you like, and enter his shop; there is a
choice assortment. He has a friend whose only duty o