Meanwhile I was finishing the Génie du Christianisme: Lucien asked to see some of the proofs; I sent them to him; he added some rather common-place notes in the margins.
Although the success of my big book was as brilliant as that of my little Atala, it was nevertheless more widely contested: this was a serious work, in which I no longer fought the principles of the old literature and of philosophy with a novel, but attacked them directly with arguments and facts. The Voltairean empire uttered a cry and flew to arms. Madame de Staël was mistaken as to the future of my religious studies: they brought her the work uncut; she pushed her fingers between the pages, came upon the chapter headed the Virginité, and said to M. Adrien de Montmorency[420], who was with her:
"Oh Heavens! Our poor Chateaubriand! That will fall to the ground!"
The Abbé de Boulogne[421], who was shown some portions of my work before it was sent to press, said to the bookseller who asked his opinion:
"If you want to ruin yourself, print that."
And the Abbé de Boulogne has since written an all too splendid eulogy of my book.
Everything, in fact, seemed to prophesy failure. What hope could I have, I with no name and no extollers, of destroying the influence of Voltaire, which had prevailed for more than half a century, of Voltaire, who had raised the huge edifice completed by the Encyclopædists and consolidated by all the famous men in Europe? What! were the Diderots, the d'Alemberts, the Duclos[422], the Dupuis[423], the Helvétius[424], the Condorcets[425] minds that carried no authority? What! was the world to return, to the Golden Legend, to renounce the admiration it had acquired for masterpieces of science and reason? How could I ever win a case which Rome armed with its thunders, the clergy with its might, had been unable to save: a case defended in vain by the Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont[426], supported by the decrees of the Parliament and the armed force and name of the King? Was it not as ridiculous as it was rash on the part of an unknown man to set himself against a philosophical movement so irresistible as to have produced the Revolution? It was curious to see a pygmy "toughen his little arms" to stifle the progress of a century, stop civilization, and thrust back the human race! Thank God, a word would be enough to pulverize the madman: wherefore M. Ginguené, when trouncing the Génie du Christianisme in the Décade[427] declared that the criticism came too late, since my tautologous production was already forgotten. He said this five or six months after the publication of a work which the attack of the whole French Academy, on the occasion of the decennial prizes, was not able to kill.
I publish my chief work.
It was amid the ruins of our temples that I published the Génie du Christianisme.[428] The faithful thought themselves saved: men at that time felt a need of faith, a thirsting for religious consolations, which arose from the want of those consolations experienced since long years. What supernatural strength was required to bear all the adversities undergone! How many mutilated families had to go to the Father of mankind in search of the children they had lost! How many broken hearts, how many solitary souls, were calling for a divine hand to cure them! One threw one's self into the house of God, as one enters a doctor's house on the outbreak of an infection. The victims of our disturbances (and how many different kinds of victims!) saved themselves at the altar: shipwrecked men clinging to the rock on which they seek for salvation.