FOOTNOTES
1 ([return])
[ Upon the very day that this volume was going to press, news reached me of the death of my brother, snapping the last thread of the recollections of my childhood’s home. My brother Alain was a warm and true friend to me; he never failed to understand me, to approve my course of action and to love me. His clear and sound intellect and his great capacity for work adapted him for a profession in which mathematical knowledge is of value or for magisterial functions. The misfortunes of our family caused him to follow a different career, and he underwent many hardships with unshaken courage. He never complained of his lot, though life had scant enjoyment save that which is derived from love of home. These joys are, however, unquestionably the most unalloyed.]
2 ([return])
[ This passage was written at Ischia in 1875.]
3 ([return])
[ I may perhaps relate all these anecdotes at a future time.]
4 ([return])
[ What grand landwehr leaders they would have made! There are no such men in the present day.]
5 ([return])
[ [Greek: ATHAENAS DAEMOKRATIAS], Le Bas. I. 32nd Inscrip.]
6 ([return])
[ A conscientious and painstaking student, M. Luzel, will, I hope, be the Pausanias of these little local chapels, and will commit to writing the whole of this magnificent legend, which is upon the point of being lost.]
7 ([return])
[ The ancient form of the word is Ronan, which is still to be found in the names of places, Loc Ronan, the well of St. Ronan (Wales).]
8 ([return])
[ A very graphic description of it has been given by M. Adolphe Morillon in his Souvenirs de Saint-Nicolas. Paris. Licoffre.]
9 ([return])
[ See the excellent memoir by M. Fonlon (now Archbishop of Besançon) upon Abbé Richard.]
10 ([return])
[ I am speaking of the years from 1842 to 1845. I believe that it is the same still.]
11 ([return])
[ Paris, 1609-1612.]
12 ([return])
[ First Edition, 1839; second and much enlarged edition, 1845.]
13 ([return])
[ An essay which describes my philosophical ideas at this epoch, entitled the “Origine du Langage,” first published in the Liberté de penser (September and December, 1848), faithfully portrays, as I then conceived it, the spectacle of living nature as the result and evidence of a very ancient historical development.]
14 ([return])
[ In the French the phrase is, “L'île de Chio, fortunée patrie d’Homère.”]
15 ([return])
[ I went a short time ago to the National Library to refresh my memory about the Comte de Valmont. Having my attention called away, I asked M. Soury to look through the book for me, as I was anxious to have his impression of it. He replied to me in the following terms:
“I have been a long time in telling you what I think of the Comte de Valmont. The fact is that it was only by an heroic effort that I managed to finish it. Not but what this work is honestly conceived and fairly well written. But the effect of reading through these thousands of pages is so profoundly wearisome that one is scarcely in a position to do justice to the work of Abbé Gérard. One cannot help being vexed with him for being so unnecessarily tedious.
“As so often happens, the best part of this book are the notes, that is to say, a mass of extracts and selections taken from the famous writers of the last two centuries, notably from Rousseau. All the ‘proofs’ and apologetic arguments ruin the work unfortunately, the eloquence and dialectics of Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, and even Voltaire, differing very much from those of Abbé Gérard. It is the same with the libertines’ reasons refuted by the father of the Comte de Valmont. It must be a very dangerous thing to bring forward mischievous doctrines with so much force. They have a savour which renders the best things insipid, and it is with these good doctrines that the six or seven volumes of the Comte de Valmont are filled. Abbé Gérard did not wish his work to be called a novel, and as a matter of fact there is neither drama nor action in the interminable letters of the Marquis, the Count and Emilie.
“Count de Valmont is one of those sceptics who are often met with in the world. A man of weak mind, pretentious and foppish, incapable of thinking and reflecting for himself, ignorant into the bargain, and without any kind of knowledge upon any subject, he meets his hapless father with all sorts of difficulties against morality, religion and Christianity in particular, just as if he had a right to an opinion on matters the study of which requires so much enlightenment and takes up so much timed. The best thing the poor fellow can do is to reform his ways, and he does not fail to neglect doing this at nearly every volume.
“The seventh volume of the edition which I have before me is entitled, La Théorie du Bonheur; ou, L’ Art de se rendre Heureux mis a la Portée de tous les Hommes, faisant Suite ait ‘Comte de Valmont,’ Paris Bossange, 1801, eleventh edition. This is a different book, whatever the publisher may say, and I confess that this secret of happiness, brought within the reach of everybody, did not create a very favourable impression upon me.”]
16 ([return])
[ I should like to make one observation in this connection. People of the present day have got into the habit of putting Monseigneur before a proper name, and of saying Monseigneur Dupanloup or Monseigneur Affre. This is bad French; the word “Monseigneur” should only be used in the vocative case or before an official title. In speaking to M. Dupanloup or M. Affre, it would be correct to say Monseigneur. In speaking of them, Monsieur Dupanloup, Monsieur Affre; Monsieur, or Monseigneur l'Évqêue d’Orleans, Monsieur or Monseigneur l’Archévêque de Paris.]
17 ([return])
[ Lucta mea, Genesis xxx. 8.]
18 ([return])
[ His name was François Liart. He was a very upright and high minded young man. He died at Tréguier at the end of March, 1845. His family sent me after his death all my letters to him, and I have them still.]
19 ([return])
[ This has reference to a post of private tutor which was at my disposal for a time.]
20 ([return])
[ M. Dupanloup was no longer superior of the Petty Seminary of Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet.]
21 ([return])
[ A collection of hymns of the sixteenth century, touching in their simplicity. I have my mother’s old copy; I may perhaps write something about them hereafter.]
22 ([return])
[ I will add towards animals as well. I could not possibly behave unkindly to a dog, or treat him roughly, and with an air of authority.]
23 ([return])
[ See above, page 262.]
24 ([return])
[ M. Cognat merely analyses the rest as follows:—“M. Renan then enters into some details with regard to preparing for his examination for admission into the Normal School, and for a literary degree. With regard to his bachelor’s degree, the examination for which he has not yet passed, it does not cause him much concern. He had, however, great difficulty in passing, and only did so by producing a certificate of home study, much as he disliked having resort to this evasive course. He did not feel compelled to deprive himself of the benefit of a course which was made use of by every one else, and which seemed to be tolerated by the law of monopoly of university teaching in order to temper the odious nature of its privileges. ‘But,’ he goes on to say, ‘I bear the university a grudge for having compelled me to tell a lie, and yet the director of the Normal School was extolling its liberal-mindedness.’”]