1880.
It was not my intention to call on Renan during my stay in Paris from
April to September, 1870, for I have always had an absolute horror of
robbing celebrated men of their time under pretext of paying tribute to
them. When, however, Taine--Renan's most intimate friend--repeatedly
urged me to look up his "friend, the philologist," I gathered up my
courage, and one day, provided with a letter of introduction from
Taine, found myself on the third floor of a house in Rue de Vannes,
where Renan lived. His surroundings were exceedingly simple. Since he
had been deprived of the chair of Hebrew in the "Collège de France," he
was without any fixed income, and his first popular publication was the
only one of his books that had been at all remunerative.
Judging from his works and portrait, I had imagined Renan to be a
refined reproduction of Jules Simon, philanthropic, gentle, with his
head slightly inclined to one side; I found him decided, terse, and
bold in his utterances, firm in his convictions, with somewhat of the
modesty of the savant, but still more of the confidence and air of
superiority of the man of the world. Renan was at the time forty-seven
years of age. He was sitting at his writing-table when I entered his
room, a little, broad-shouldered man, with a slight stoop, and a large,
heavy head; his features were coarsely moulded, his complexion poor;
he had blue eyes that displayed a wondrous power of penetration, and a
mouth that, even in repose, was eloquent and indicative of shrewdness.
His far from beautiful yet unquestionably attractive face, with its
expression of lofty understanding and excessive industry, was framed in
a mass of long brown hair that over the temples gradually shaded into
white. In looking at him I was reminded of one of his own sentences,
"_La science est roturière_".