. St. Sulpice is now the only place where, as
formerly at Port-Royal, the style of writing possesses that absolute
forgetfulness of form which is the proof of sincerity. It never
occurred to the masters that among their pupils must be a writer or an
orator. The principle which they insisted upon the most earnestly was
never to make any reference to self, and if one had anything to say,
to say it plainly and in undertones. It was all very well for you, my
worthy masters, with that total ignorance of the world which does
you so much honour, to take this view; but if you knew how little
encouragement the world gives to modesty, you would see how difficult
it is for literature to act up to your principles. What would modesty
have done for M. de Chateaubriand? You were right to be severe upon
the stagey ways of a theology reduced so low as to bid for applause
by resorting to worldly tactics. But what does one ever hear of your
theology? It has only one defect, but that is a serious one; it is
dead. Your literary principles were like the rhetoric of Chrysippus,
of which Cicero said that it was excellent for teaching the way of
silence. Whoever speaks or writes for the public ear or eye must
inevitably be bent upon succeeding. The great thing is not to make
any sacrifice in order to attain that success, and this is what your
serious, upright and honest teaching inculcated to perfection.

In this way St. Sulpice with its contempt for literature is perforce
a capital school for style, the fundamental rule of which is to
have solely in view the thought which it is wished to inculcate, and
therefore to have a thought in the mind. This was far more valuable
than the rhetoric of M. Dupanloup, and the teaching of the new
Catholic school. At St. Sulpice, the main substance of a matter
excluded all other considerations. Theology was of prime importance
there, and if the way in which the studies were shaped was somewhat
deficient in vigour, this was because the general tendency of
Catholicism, especially in France, is not in the direction of very
high and sustained efforts. St. Sulpice has, however, in our time
turned out a theologian like M. Carriere, whose vast labours are in
many respects remarkable for their depth; men of erudition like M.
Gosselin and M. Faillon, whose conscientious researches are of great
value, and philologists like M. Garnier, and especially M. Le Hir, the
only eminent masters in the field of ecclesiastical crit