They are addressed to M. Léon Cornudet, whom Montalembert calls the friend of his soul, his dearest friend; to whom he is bound by a common sympathy in every noble feeling and high aim; whom nor time nor absence can make him even for one moment forget. What chiefly strengthens him in his faith in the permanency of this friendship is the fact that it is based on religion, which becomes the immortal mediatrix between his soul and that of his friend.
When he travels and contemplates the beauties of nature, his only regret is that his friend is not near him; when he reads a poem, and his soul is borne aloft on the wings of inspiration, he exclaims, “Oh! if he were but here to share my delight.” He never dreams of the future, of battling for religion and freedom, of victories won and defeats nobly borne, that he does not behold his friend by his side; and when, picturing to himself the vicissitudes of life, he imagines that possibly, in spite of his high resolves and strong purposes, he may fail, may be doomed to obscurity and the contempt of the world, he seeks for consolation in the thought that in the heart of his friend he will find a better world.
His friend is, as it were, his other self, which gives to him a twofold life; making him feel always that “joy was born a twin,” and that all who joy would win must share it, and that sorrow, too, longs to pour itself into the heart of love.
This strong friendship—“the only impulse of the soul admitting of excess”—which, like a thread of gold, runs through all these letters, wins at once our sympathy and our confidence.
There is something noble and great in the youth who is capable of such pure and deep love. After all, it is the heart that reaches highest and deepest, and through it man attains to the best.
Of course there is in these letters much that is immature; were it not so, they would not be the letters of a mere boy; but the infinite faith in the possibility of divine realities even on earth, the lofty contempt for what is mean and ignoble, the self-confidence that never doubts of [pg 283] itself, the restless activity that no work satisfies, the boundless craving for knowledge, the freshness of the heart that falls like dew upon every lovely thing, giving it health and beauty—all this so charms and delights us that we have no eye for defects.
“A contempt for life,” he writes to his friend, “is, in my opinion, the finest privilege of youth. As we grow older, the more we cling to a frail existence which becomes a burden to ourselves and to others.”
What has experience that can compensate for the loss of
“The love of higher things and better days;
The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance