OF AMBOISE.

These animated mechanisms of all nature;
This password that man, in the heart of this earth,
Receives from God each day; this solemn sign
By which he must preserve her in the name of the Eternal:
Scholars, it was your duty to expose these wonders;
This is what his glory expected from your sleepless nights.
But what does he gain from your descriptions?
While you come with your long lessons,
Without nourishing our spirits, only burdening our memory,
He remains without a crown and starves for his glory."

"And sad nature, a prey to all evils;
She who expected rest from your cares;
Whom man was able to plunge into mourning and distress,
Is it by weighing her irons, is it by measuring her chain,
That you will bring back her days of liberty,
And console her in her viduité state of deprivation or widowhood, referring to nature being separated from its divine source!
The torch of the sun, if it shines in the world,
Is less to light it, than so that it may fertilize it."

"Say to them: this universe which, despite its languor,
Is your only means to prove its author,
Shows us only the least of God's power.
His love, his wisdom, and his intelligence,
We would be ignorant of them if our divine being
Did not serve as a mirror to this sovereign God;
And it is you who should have, in this faithful mirror,
Indicated to us the features of the supreme model;
But this man, your eye sees only obscurities in him:
You have not yet weighed his faculties:
You claim at times, that the idea is innate the philosophical concept that certain knowledge is present in the mind from birth;
At other times, that it is given to us by the senses.
The idea, a profound object that divides you all,
Is not innate in you, but beside you.
These animals, these fruits, whose purest essence,