h we do
not understand. But Eleusinian Ceres and the Good Goddess have
their secrets, like those at Rome and in Greece; still we freely
tolerate everywhere, their god alone excepted, every kind of god;
all the monsters of Egypt have their temples in Rome; our fathers,
at their will, made a god of a man; and, their blood in our veins
preserving their errors, we fill heaven with all our emperors; but,
to speak without disguise of deifications so numerous, the effect
is very doubtful of such metamorphoses.

Christians have but one God, absolute master of all, whose mere
will does whatever he resolves; but, if I may venture to say what
seems to me true, our gods very often agree ill together; and,
though their wrath crush me before your eyes, we have a good many
of them for them to be true gods. Finally, among the Christians,
morals are pure, vices are hated, virtues flourish; they offer
prayers on behalf of us who persecute them; and, during all the
time since we have tormented them, have they ever been seen
mutinous? Have they ever been seen rebellious? Have our princes
ever had more faithful soldiers? Fierce in war, they submit
themselves to our executioners; and, lions in combat, they die like
lambs. I pity them too much not to defend them. Come, let us find
Felix; let us commune with his son-in-law; and let us thus, with
one single action, gratify at once Paulina, and my glory, and my
compassion.

Such is the high heroic style in which pagan Severus resolves and
speaks. And thus the fourth act ends.

Felix makes a sad contrast with the high-heartedness which the other
characters, most of them, display. He is base enough to suspect that
Severus is base enough to be false and treacherous in his act of
intercession for Polyeuctes. He imagines he detects a plot against
himself to undermine him with the emperor. Voltaire criticises Corneille
for giving this sordid character to Felix. He thinks the tragedist
might better have let Felix be actuated by zeal for the pagan gods. The
mean selfishness that animates the governor, Voltaire regards as below
the right tragic pitch. It is the poet himself, no doubt, with that high
Roman fashion of his, who, unconsciously to the critic, taught him to
make the criticism.

Felix summons Polyeuctes to an interview, and adjures him to be a
prudent man. Felix at length says