places, sets in flames the forests and countries it reaches: such is the destiny of detraction.
What you had mentioned in secret was nothing at first, and seemed stifled and buried under its own ashes; but this fire lies hid for a while only in order to burst forth with redoubled fury: that nothing soon acquires reality, by passing through a diversity of mouths; every one will add to it whatever his passion, interest, disposition of mind, or his own malignity, may hold out to him as probable. The source is hardly perceptible; but, assisted in its course by a thousand foreign streams, the united torrent will overwhelm the court, city, and country; and that, which at its birth was only a private and imprudent pleasantry, but a simple idea, but a malicious conjecture, will become a serious affair, a public and formal dishonour, the subject of every conversation, and an eternal stain upon the character of your brother. Repair now, if you can, the injustice and scandal; restore to your brother the good name of which you have deprived him. Will you pretend to oppose the public inveteracy, and singly hold forth his praise? But they will regard you as a new comer, who is ignorant of what has taken place in the world; and your praises, come far too late, will serve only to draw upon him fresh satires. Now, what a multitude of crimes proceeding from only one! The sins of a whole people become your's; you defame through the mouths of all your fellowcitizens; you are likewise answerable for the guilt of all who listen to you. What penitence can expiate evils to which it can no longer afford relief? And will your tears be able to blot out what shall never be effaced from the memory of man? Again, were the scandal to end with you, your death, by terminating it, might be its expiation before God. But it is a scandal which will survive you. The shameful histories of courts never die with their heroes. Lascivious writers have transmitted to us the anecdotes and irregularities of the courts which have preceded us; and licentious authors will be found amongst us, to acquaint the ages to come with the public rumours, the scandalous circumstances, and the vices of our own.
O my God! these are of that description of sins of which we know not either the enormity or extent; but we know, that to become a stumbling-block to our brethren is to overturn for them the work of thy Son's mission, and to destroy the fruit of his labours, of his death, and of all his ministry. Such is the illusion of the pretext which you draw from the lightness of your slanders; the motives are never innocent, the circumstances always criminal, the consequences irreparable. Let us examine if the pretext of the public notoriety be better founded. This is what yet remains for me to investigate.
Part II. — Whence comes it that the majority of precepts are violated by those very persons who profess themselves their observers, and that we find more difficulty in bringing the world to acknowledge than to correct its transgressions? The reason is,
