Recollections of My Youth | Page 2

this aged recluse enveloped his
existence. I have, however, made no change in the body of the work,
thinking that it would be better to leave M. Duportal to publish the true

story, known only to himself, of this enigmatic character.
The chief defect for which I should feel some apology necessary if this
book had any pretension to be considered a regular memoir of my life,
is that there are many gaps in it. The person who had the greatest
influence on my life, my sister Henriette, is scarcely mentioned in it.[1]
In September 1862, a year after the death of this invaluable friend, I
wrote for the few persons who had known her well, a short notice of
her life. Only a hundred copies were printed. My sister was so
unassuming, and she was so averse from the stress and stir of the world
that I should have fancied I could hear her reproaching me from her
grave, if I had made this sketch public property. I have more than once
been tempted to include it in this volume, but on second thoughts I
have felt that to do so would be an act of profanation. The pamphlet in
question was read and appreciated by a few persons who were kindly
disposed towards her and towards myself. It would be wrong of me to
expose a memory so sacred in my eyes to the supercilious criticisms
which are part and parcel of the right acquired by the purchaser of a
book. It seemed to me that in placing the lines referring to her in a book
for the trade I should be acting with as much impropriety as if I sent a
portrait of her for sale to an auction room. The pamphlet in question
will not, therefore, be reprinted until after my death, appended to it,
very possibly being several of her letters selected by me beforehand.
The natural sequence of this book, which is neither more nor less than
the sequence in the various periods of my life, brings about a sort of
contrast between the anecdotes of Brittany and those of the Seminary,
the latter being the details of a darksome struggle, full of reasonings
and hard scholasticism, while the recollections of my earlier years are
instinct with the impressions of childlike sensitiveness, of candour, of
innocence, and of affection. There is nothing surprising about this
contrast. Nearly all of us are double. The more a man develops
intellectually, the stronger is his attraction to the opposite pole: that is
to say, to the irrational, to the repose of mind in absolute ignorance, to
the woman who is merely a woman, the instinctive being who acts
solely from the impulse of an obscure conscience. The fierce school of
controversy, in which the mind of Europe has been involved since the
time of Abélard, induces periods of mental drought and aridity. The

brain, parched by reasoning, thirsts for simplicity, like the desert for
spring water. When reflection has brought us up to the last limit of
doubt, the spontaneous affirmation of the good and of the beautiful
which is to be found in the female conscience delights us and settles the
question for us. This is why religion is preserved to the world by
woman alone. A beautiful and a virtuous woman is the mirage which
peoples with lakes and green avenues our great moral desert. The
superiority of modern science consists in the fact that each step forward
it takes is a step further in the order of abstractions. We make chemistry
from chemistry, algebra from algebra; the very indefatigability with
which we fathom nature removes us further from her. This is as it
should be, and let no one fear to prosecute his researches, for out of this
merciless dissection comes life. But we need not be surprised at the
feverish heat which, after these orgies of dialectics, can only be calmed
by the kisses of the artless creature in whom nature lives and smiles.
Woman restores us to communication with the eternal spring in which
God reflects Himself. The candour of a child, unconscious of its own
beauty and seeing God clear as the daylight, is the great revelation of
the ideal, just as the unconscious coquetry of the flower is a proof that
Nature adorns herself for a husband.
One should never write except upon that which one loves. Oblivion and
silence are the proper punishments to be inflicted upon all that we meet
with in the way of what is ungainly or vulgar in the course of our
journey through life. Referring to a past which is dear to me, I have
spoken of it with kindly sympathy; but I should be sorry to create any
misapprehension, and to be taken for an