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98 EUGENIE BE GTTERIN.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
«¦ » It Journals Is Consolatory And Lett...
musing temperament , and was too much given up to reveries while still at Cayla .
At the Stanislas College , where he remained five years , this melancholy turn seems to have gained upon him . He wrote
affectionately to his sister ; he even , as we shall see , made attempts at intimate confidence ; but it would be very difficult for such a youth ,
whose mind was scarcely known to himself , to display it freely to another . Besides , in the larger world before him , questions would
arise which , to his sister , would be no questions at all , and would be merely met by prayer . He loved her—we cannot doubt it—with
all the force of affectionate gratitude , mingled with admiration and respect ; but it was not like her adoring , passionate following of
Mm * There is a long letter written to Eugenie in 1828 , in which he expresses his desire to be more entirely confidential . " Can
any one find , " he says , " a better friend than such a sister as mine ? Be then my confidante from henceforth , and help me with
advice and friendship . " He accounts for a previous reserve as the effect of childishness , not indifference . It might be thought that
his father Would be his best friend ; but no . " Papa is so susceptiblehe is so much affected by small thingsthat I dare not
tell him , what passes within me . Thus thou art , the one of all the family whose character best agrees with mine . I was only
fourteen when I left thee ( that is for Paris ) . At that age one judges of another , so to say , by sight only . My reason was not
enough developed , nor capable of a sufficiently serious examinationto _se"ize the traits of thy character ; nor do I believe that
, thou either eouldest know me , because I was too young to have a decided character ; but what changes four years bring ! " Then
he proposes to trace out the history of his mind and heart since reflection began , and solicits her to be equally frank with
him . He returned to La Cayla from Paris in the year 1882 , and he
did not leave it again till February , 1833 . Some entries in his journal show that he was in a state of conflict and dissatisfaction .
He became at this time attached to one of his sister ' s female friends ; butwithout fortunewithout a profession , the way
could not but , _Tbe confused and , difficult ; and it is conjectured by M . St . Beuve _, not without reason , that he joined himself to the
little band of disciples of the Abbe Lamennais , as much to restore his mind to calmness and reconcile him to disappointment as from
religious motives . Also it was as a means of making clear his future course . La Chenaie" a sort of oasis in the steppes of Bretagne , "
, was the chosen retreat of Lamennais . It was a chateau , converted into a small monastery , where were assembled a few young men
pupils , occasionally visited by some of the choicest spirits of France , who had more or les _& connected themselves with the movement in
the Church which called Lamennais its head . At the time of
98 Eugenie Be Gtterin.
98 _EUGENIE BE GTTERIN .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1863, page 98, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041863/page/26/
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