IV.
Through Taine, I very soon made the acquaintance of Renan, whose personality impressed me very much, grand and free of mind as he was, without a trace of the unctuousness that one occasionally meets in his books, yet superior to the verge of paradox.
He was very inaccessible, and obstinately refused to see people. But if he were expecting you, he would spare you several hours of his valuable time.
His house was furnished with exceeding simplicity. On one wall of his study hung two Chinese water-colours and a photograph of Gérôme's Cleopatra before Caesar; on the opposite wall, a very beautiful photograph of what was doubtless an Italian picture of the Last Day. That was all the ornamentation. On his table, there always lay a Virgil and a Horace in a pocket edition, and for a long time a French translation of Sir Walter Scott.
What surprised me most in Renan's bearing was that there was nothing solemn about it and absolutely nothing sentimental. He impressed one as being exceptionally clever and a man that the opposition he had met with had left as it found him. He enquired about the state of things in the North. When I spoke, without reserve, of the slight prospect that existed of my coming to the front with my opinions, he maintained that victory was sure. (Vous l'emporterez! vous l'emporterez!) Like all foreigners, he marvelled that the three Scandinavian countries did not try to unite, or at any rate to form an indissoluble Union. In the time of Gustavus Adolphus, he said, they had been of some political importance; since then they had retired completely from the historical stage. The reason for it must very probably be sought for in their insane internecine feuds.
Renan used to live, at that time, from the Spring onwards, at his house in the country, at Sèvres. So utterly unaffected was the world-renowned man, then already forty-seven years of age, that he often walked from his house to the station with me, and wandered up and down the platform till the train came.
His wife, who shared his thoughts and worshipped him, had chosen her husband herself, and, being of German family, had not been married after the French manner; still, she did not criticise it, as she thought it was perhaps adapted to the French people, and she had seen among her intimate acquaintances many happy marriages entered into for reasons of convenience. They had two children, a son, Ary, who died in 1900 after having made a name for himself as a painter, and written beautiful poems (which, however, were only published after his death), and a daughter, Noémi (Madame Psichari) who, faithfully preserving the intellectual heritage she has received from her great father, has become one of the centres of highest Paris, a soul of fire, who fights for Justice and Truth and social ideas with burning enthusiasm.