ORIGINAL.
GENIUS IN A PARISIAN ATTIC
[Footnote 197]
[Footnote 197: In a private letter received from a member of the Guérin family—one whose name is held in gentle reverence by all the readers of Eugénie's Journal—we are asked if it would be possible to interest devout souls in America in the reconstruction of the little church of Andillac. We would gladly answer this question in the affirmative, for the restoration of Eugénie's parish church would be a monument that even her humility could not reject.
The smallest sums for this purpose will be gratefully received and forwarded to Andillac by Miss E. P. Cary, Cambridge, Mass., or Office of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, 145 Nassau Street, New-York.]
In a former article [Footnote 198] we traced the course of Maurice de Guérin's career at La Chênaie; and left him in Paris, bewildered by the rush and whirl of such a city, one day to become so familiar to him. We will now let his journal and letters exhibit the curious change through which he passed in turning from the fair Utopian dreams of Lamennais to the work-day experiences of an unsuccessful author.
[Footnote 198: See article in THE CATHOLIC WORLD of June, 1866, entitled: Two Pictures of Life in France before 1848.]
To do this fully we must retrace our steps to Le Val, the asylum thrown open to him by Hippolyte de la Morvonnais when he left Ploërmel. Guérin's record of that peaceful sojourn in Brittany is as distinct from our popular ideas of French life as Eugénie's sketches of Rayssac and Le Cayla. The brother and sister have successfully proved that all Frenchmen are not deceitful and unbelieving, nor all Frenchwomen vain and perfidious. Surely no young man in any country ever met with influences more sound and elevating than Maurice found in the society of Eugénie and Mimin; of Louise de Bayne, Madame de la Morvonnais, and Caroline de Gervain; or with friends more enduring than Hippolyte, Paul Quemper, Marzan, Trébutien, and D'Aurevilly.
There is in France an undercurrent of domestic life as pure and fresh as the superficial existence in her great cities is shallow and turbid. Indeed, the more familiar one becomes with French life and manners, the more one appreciates the truth of the mot of a certain cardinal: "There is no purgatory for Frenchmen; they go straight to heaven or hell." But we will no longer detain the reader, by moral reflections, from the perusal of the selections we have made from Guérin's writings.
LE VAL, Dec. 7th, 1833.