Through Taine, I very soon made the acquaintance of Renan, whose
personality impressed me very much, grand and free of mind as he was,
without a trace of the unctuousness that one occasionally meets in his
books, yet superior to the verge of paradox.
He was very inaccessible, and obstinately refused to see people. But if
he were expecting you, he would spare you several hours of his valuable
time.
His house was furnished with exceeding simplicity. On one wall of his
study hung two Chinese water-colours and a photograph of Gérôme's
_Cleopatra before Caesar_; on the opposite wall, a very beautiful
photograph of what was doubtless an Italian picture of the Last Day.
That was all the ornamentation. On his table, there always lay a Virgil
and a Horace in a pocket edition, and for a long time a French
translation of Sir Walter Scott.
What surprised me most in Renan's bearing was that there was nothing
solemn about it and absolutely nothing sentimental. He impressed one as
being exceptionally clever and a man that the opposition he had met
with had left as it found him. He enquired about the state of things in
the North. When I spoke, without reserve, of the slight prospect that
existed of my coming to the front with my opinions, he maintained that
victory was sure. (_Vous l'emporterez! vous l'emporterez_!) Like all
foreigners, he marvelled that the three Scandinavian countries did not
try to unite, or at any rate to form an indissoluble Union. In the time
of Gustavus Adolphus, he said, they had been of some political
importance; since then they had retired completely from the historical
stage. The reason for it must very probably be sought for in their
insane internecine feuds.
Renan used to live, at that time, from the Spring onwards, at his house
in the country, at Sèvres. So utterly unaffected was the world-renowned
man, then already forty-seven years of age, that he often walked from
his house to the station with me, and wandered up and down the platform
till the train came.
His wife, who shared his thoughts and worshipped him, had chosen her
husband herself, and, being of German family, had not been married
after the French manner; still, she did not criticise it, as she
thought it was perhaps adapted to the French people, and she had seen
among her intimate acquaintances many happy marriages entered into for
reasons of convenience. They had two children, a son, Ary, who died in
1900 after having made a name for himself as a painter, and written
beautiful poems (which, however, were only published after his death),
and a daughter, Noémi (Madame Psichari) who, faithfully preserving the
intellectual heritage she has received from her great father, has
become one of the centres of highest Paris, a soul of fire, who fights
for Justice and Truth and social ideas with burning enthusiasm.