Albert Cim’s New Literary and Historical Recreations is the sort of book you can open anywhere: it has little organization other that that this reminded the author of that. Here, for example, he mentions an interesting little fact about Guez de Balzac, which brings up a longer anecdote about Balzac’s rival Vincent Voiture, which in turn reminds him of a play.…
Guez de Balzac (1594 or 1597–1654), the author of the Christian Socrates, “a great artist in language, the Malherbe of prose, the master under whom all France learned her rhetoric” (Ludovic Lalanne, Historical Dictionary of France), is, according to Victor Hugo, the first who called the neighborhood of the schools the “Latin quarter,” a name it has retained.
The rival of Guez de Balzac, the famous letter-writer Vincent Voiture (1598–1648), to console a son for the death of his father, could think of nothing better to say than, “Don’t cry; you inherit.” That is practical advice.
“Knowing what a good brother you are, what a good parent and good friend, I have no doubt that you are also a good son,” he wrote to the Maréchal of Grammont, “and that, having lost a father who is missed even by those who did not know him, you feel a very strong affection.… And that, in an age when examples of natural goodness are rare, you are afflicted by a loss that renders you one of the richest men in France—this is, to speak strict truth, an extraordinary thing, and on top of all your accomplishments.… They say that you will have quite a bit of money and poultry from now on.…”
This sort of consolation has never been very rare in any country or any time, but it seems that in the seventeenth century it appeared less reserved or disguised than ever:
“We know just what it is to lose a father.
No son despairs of such a loss, but rather
In the delights inheritance has in store
Are consolations we cannot ignore.”
Thus one character assures us in the amusing comedy by Philippe Quinault (1635–1688), The Coquette Mother.