The Vicar of Tours

Will this moral cosmopolitanism, the hope of Christian Rome, prove to be only a sublime error? It is so natural to believe in the realization of a noble vision, in the Brotherhood of Man. But, alas! the human machine does not have such divine proportions. Souls that are vast enough to grasp a range of feelings bestowed on great men only will never belong to either fathers of families or simple citizens. Some physiologists have thought that as the brain enlarges the heart narrows; but they are mistaken. The apparent egotism of men who bear a science, a nation, a code of laws in their bosom is the noblest of passions; it is, as one may say, the maternity of the masses; to give birth to new peoples, to produce new ideas they must unite within their mighty brains the breasts of woman and the force of God. The history of such men as Innocent the Third and Peter the Great, and all great leaders of their age and nation will show, if need be, in the highest spheres the same vast thought of which Troubert was made the representative in the quiet depths of the Cloister of Saint-Gatien.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy

Birotteau, Abbe Francois

The Lily of the Valley

Cesar Birotteau

Bourbonne, De

Madame Firmiani

Listomere, Baronne de

Cesar Birotteau

The Muse of the Department

Troubert, Abbe Hyacinthe

The Member for Arcis

Villenoix, Pauline Salomon de

Louis Lambert

A Seaside Tragedy