Unhappily
the soul of truth in him, which wins her esteem, refuses to be tamed, or
silent, or unsuspicious, and is the perpetual obstacle to their good
accord. He is that melancholy person, the critic of everybody save
himself; intensely sensitive to the faults of others, wounded by them; in
love with his own indubitable honesty, and with his ideal of the simpler
form of life befitting it: qualities which constitute the satirist. He is
a Jean Jacques of the Court. His proposal to Celimene when he pardons
her, that she should follow him in flying humankind, and his frenzy of
detestation of her at her refusal, are thoroughly in the mood of Jean
Jacques. He is an impracticable creature of a priceless virtue; but
Celimene may feel that to fly with him to the desert: that is from the
Court to the country
'Ou d'etre homme d'honneur on ait la liberte,'
she is likely to find herself the companion of a starving satirist, like
that poor princess who ran away with the waiting-man, and when both were
hungry in the forest, was ordered to give him flesh.
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