In matters of virtue, as we know, we speak more readily of what we do not possess.
Hypocrisy is not the only homage born of vice, preaching and propaganda also come from it.
Thus Julien Green claimed that the pious books were written by the devil.
Despotic states invoke freedom, lustful peoples chastity, violent nations pacifism.
Virtue is perhaps above all a regret, and this regret takes all the forms that the imagination, personal, religious or political, gives it.
However, I will not dwell on the
chapter of culpes
and I come to Montyon, this lawyer at the Châtelet who became a State Councilor, then intendant, and who, endowed with an immense fortune, donated it by will to the disinherited and to the French Academy, on condition that it to have one of its members read each year
“a speech which will contain the praise of an act of virtue”.
I had first thought of praising a rarely described virtue, flight...
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