The false devotees

My remembrance has just been evoked by my portrait and my verses.

Twice touched in my feminine vanity and in my self-love, I come to thank your benevolence, sketching in broad strokes the silhouette of the false devotees, who are to religion what the pseudo-honest woman is to society. The subject enters into the scope of my literary studies, of which Lady Tartufe – Google Books, expressed a nuance.

The false devotees consecrate themselves to appearances and betray the truth; they have a dry heart and moist eyes, a closed purse and an open hand; they speak readily of their neighbor, criticizing his actions in an affected manner, that is, exaggerating the evil and underestimating the merit. Very turned toward the conquest of material or worldly goods, they cling to imaginary treasures, which death disperses, and neglect the true goods, which serve the end of man and are the riches of eternity. The hypocrites of devotion are the reptiles of moral nature; vile, base, they avoid the faults chastised by public vengeance and in the shadow commit sinister acts. How many disunited families, despoiled! how many betrayed trusts! how many tears and, even, how much blood!… Comedy is the inverse of tragedy. Behind the scoundrel marches the buffoon, and the false devotees have for acolytes inept beings, who act only by imitation: in the manner of mirrors, they reflect the physiognomy of their neighbors. They take themselves seriously, deceive themselves, timidity makes them mock that in which they do not believe, they exalt what they doubt, they commune with ostentation and light in secret small candles, to which they attribute much more virtue than to the holy host. The false devotees are the true atheists of virtue, of hope, of Nature and of God; they deny the true and affirm the false. Death, however, will carry them off smeared with cosmetics and covered with tinsel, which disguises them, and will cast them, gasping, into full light.

Delphine de Girardin. n [1]

[see Delphine de Girardin.]