"Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation.

My brethren, have pity! behold the suffering on all sides of you!"

　　Born a Provencal, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of the south.

　　He said, "En be! moussu, ses sage?" as in lower Languedoc; "Onte anaras passa?" as in the Basses-Alpes; "Puerte un bouen moutu embe un bouen fromage grase," as in upper Dauphine.

　　This pleased the people extremely, and contributed not a little to win him access to all spirits.

　　He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and in the mountains.

　　He understood how to say the grandest things in the most vulgar of idioms.

　　As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts.

　　Moreover, he was the same towards people of the world and towards the lower classes.

　　He condemned nothing in haste and without taking circumstances into account.

　　He said, "Examine the road over which the fault has passed."

　　Being, as he described himself with a smile, an ex-sinner, he had none of the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with a good deal of distinctness, and without the frown of the ferociously virtuous, a doctrine which may be summed up as follows:--

　　"Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation.

　　He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, cheek it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity.

　　There may be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in prayer.

　　"To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err, fall, sin if you will, but be upright.

　　"The least possible sin is the law of man.

　　No sin at all is the dream of the angel.

　　All which is terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation."

　　When he saw everyone exclaiming very loudly, and growing angry very quickly, "Oh! oh!" he said, with a smile; "to all appearance, this is a great crime which all the world commits.

　　These are hypocrisies which have taken fright, and are in haste to make protest and to put themselves under shelter."

　　He was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom the burden of human society rest.

　　He said, "The faults of women, of children, of the feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the fault of the husbands, the fathers, the masters, the strong, the rich, and the wise."

　　He said, moreover, "Teach those who are ignorant as many things as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul is full of shadow; sin is therein committed.

　　The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow."