These outbursts startled me, first, because I had never in the least expected or even wished either to be received by the Danish Minister or to be helped by him; secondly, because it revealed to me a wide difference between the point of view in the Romance countries, in France especially, and that in the North. In Denmark, I had never had the entrée to Court or to aristocratic circles, nor have I ever acquired it since, though, for that matter, I have not missed it in the least. But in the Romance countries, where the aristocratic world still occasionally possesses some wit and education, it is taken as a matter of course that talent is a patent of nobility, and, to the man who has won himself a name, all doors are open, indeed, people vie with one another to secure him. That a caste division like that in the North was quite unknown there, I thus learnt for the first time.
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.
V.
A source of very much pleasure to me was my acquaintance with the old author and Collège de France Professor, Philarète Chasles. Grégoire introduced me to him and I gradually became at home, as it were, in his house, was always a welcome visitor, and was constantly invited there. In his old age he was not a man to be taken very seriously, being diffusive, vague and vain. But there was no one else so communicative, few so entertaining, and for the space of fifty years he had known everybody who had been of any mark in France. He was born in 1798; his father, who was a Jacobin and had been a member of the Convention, did not have him baptised, but brought him up to believe in Truth, (hence the name Philarète,) and apprenticed him to a printer. At the Restoration of the Royal Family, he was imprisoned, together with his father, but released through the influence of Chateaubriand; he then went to England, where he remained for full seven years (1819-1826), working as a typographer, and made a careful study of English literature, then almost unknown in France. After having spent some further time in Germany, he returned to Paris and published a number of historical and critical writings.