55. Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1740-1814), Portrait of Paris, 17811
p. 123
Texte intégral
1Louis-Sébastien Mercier, playwright, novelist, and a great chronicler of his era, offers reflections on the customs of his contemporaries in Tableau de Paris.
Eighteenth-century portrait of Mercier

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Louis-SebastienMercier.jpg
2Religious freedom is entirely possible in Paris; never will you be held accountable for your beliefs. […] A bishop was once asked: ‘What are you complaining about? Have you ever seen a single act of sacrilege? Has a single philosopher ever disrupted even one catechism class? Have those who preach from the pulpit ever encountered a single heckler? They have always enjoyed the most gratifying right of all – that of never being interrupted or contradicted whatever they say’. And the bishop replied: ‘If only God would permit the occasional sacrilege! At least then people would still be thinking about us, but now they can’t even be bothered to show any disrespect’. […]
3Jews, Protestants, deists, atheists, Jansenists, equally culpable in the eyes of the Molinists, even nothingists, therefore, live just as they please; people don’t even argue about religion anymore. It is an old trial, with a definitive ruling; and about time too, given that the enquiry has lasted centuries. […] The Enlightenment has brought us this desirable calm, and fanaticism has been left to consume itself. We only hear talk of Jansenism and Molinism in a few insignificant households, where folly and hypocrisy reign supreme; and from a few women who, because they are unable to partake of earthly pleasures, take up these ancient arguments with the pillars of the parish, spiritual directors born of the common rabble, and almost indistinguishable from it.
Read the free original text online (facsimile), 1781 edition: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=J0kGAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA367
Notes de bas de page
1 Louis-Sébastien Mercier, ‘à Hambourg et à Neuchâtel’, Tableau de Paris, 1781, III, ch. 231, p. 367.

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
On History
Introduction to World History (1831); Opening Address at the Faculty of Letters, 9 January 1834; Preface to History of France (1869)
Jules Michelet Lionel Gossman (éd.) Flora Kimmich, Lionel Gossman et Kaplan Edward K. (trad.)
2013
Rameau’s Nephew - Le Neveu de Rameau
A Multi-Media Bilingual Edition
Denis Diderot Marian Hobson (éd.) Kate E. Tunstall et Caroline Warman (trad.)
2016
The Idea of Europe
Enlightenment Perspectives
Catriona Seth et Rotraud von Kulessa (dir.) Catriona Seth (trad.)
2017
Don Carlos Infante of Spain
A Dramatic Poem
Friedrich Schiller Flora Kimmich (éd.) Flora Kimmich (trad.)
2018