OBERMANN 
 
 VOLUME I

 
 OBERM ANN 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM 
 
 Cfosen and translated with an Introductory 
 "Essay and Notes by JESSIE PEABODY 
 FROTHINGHAM, Translator of the 
 Journal of Maurice de Guerin 
 
 VOLUME ONE 
 
 fhe RIVERSIDE PRESS, Cambridge 
 1901 
 
 4 
 

 
 Copyright, 1901 
 By Jessie Peabody Frotbingham 
 
 All rights reserved 
 I
 
 ro Mr MOTHER 
 
 Whose unfailing encouragement and 
 
 criticism have been my help 
 
 and inspiration 
 
 I DEDICATE THESE VOLUMES 
 
 I 
 
 

 
 , ' I
 
 FROM 
 
 STANZAS IN MEMORY OF 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 OBERMANN 
 
 A FEVER in these pages burns 
 Beneath the calm they feign ; 
 A wounded human spirit turns 
 Here, on its bed of pain. 
 
 Yes, though the virgin mountain-air 
 Fresh through these pages blows ; 
 Though to these leaves the glaciers 
 
 spare 
 The soul of their mute snows ; 
 
 Though here a mountain - murmur 
 
 swells 
 Of many a dark-boughed pine ; 
 
 " 
 
 *
 
 vi STANZAS 
 
 Though, as you read, you hear the bells 
 Of the high-pasturing kine 
 
 Yet, through the hum of torrent lone, 
 And brooding mountain-bee, 
 There sobs I know not what ground- 
 tone 
 Of human agony. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 
 
 
 
 *
 
 PR E FA C E 
 
 IN offering to the public for the Jlrst 
 time a translation of OBERMANN,' an 
 explanation is scarcely needed; for although 
 Benancourhasfor a hundred years remained 
 comparatively unknown, his writings must 
 appeal to every lover of nature as much as, 
 or perhaps in some ways even more than, the 
 works of Amiel and Maurice de Guerin, 
 whose precursor he was, and both of whom 
 have already been presented to British and 
 American readers. But while the charm 
 O/*OBERMANN lies chiefly in its subtle and 
 strong delineation of material nature, it is 
 not this alone that challenges attention. As 
 a monody on human experience it may well 
 attract many who are interested in the prob- 
 lem of life. 
 
 In making selections from OBERMANN
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 it has been my aim to lay stress upon these 
 two sides, as well as to emphasize Senan- 
 cour's aversion to the established order of 
 things ; an aversion from which sprang a 
 large part of his inward discontent. 'This 
 has obliged me to include many passages 
 of an introspective character, thus over- 
 accentuating, perhaps, the author's ten- 
 dency to self-analysis ; but these passages 
 usually form the prelude to meditations on 
 life and nature too valuable to be omitted. 
 
 */ 
 
 Although in France the admirers of Senan- 
 cour dwell at length upon the importance 
 of his philosophy, for us his chief claim to 
 recognition must rest on his deep under- 
 standing of the human heart, his constant 
 groping after truth, his realization of what 
 there is of sad and inscrutable in life, and 
 his love of the beautiful and the sublime in 
 nature. 'These qualities of the poet, which 
 give him whatever right he may have to 
 greatness, have received the larger share of 
 attention. As a logician he is not equally 
 strong ; I have therefore left untranslated
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 many long arguments and deductions which 
 in style fall below his highest level, and de- 
 tract from rather than add to the beauty 
 and harmony of the rest. 
 
 To translate OBERMANN has been an 
 interesting, though not an easy work. M. 
 yules Levallois, the most ardent modern 
 exponent of the poet-philosopher, and for 
 years a close student of his works, himself 
 acknowledges that it is difficult to under- 
 stand Senancour ; for his meaning is often 
 subtly hidden, suggested rather than ex- 
 pressed. His extreme literary reserve, which 
 made him shun the favor of the multitude, 
 led him, perhaps, to 'veil his thought, and 
 leave it half-untold, as it were, but clothed 
 in a wealth of imagery. 
 
 It has also been difficult at times to 
 reconcile an attempt to preserve to a certain 
 degree the original style and rhythm, with 
 a desire to use English literary form. In 
 some places I have allowed myself consid- 
 erable freedom where the composition of the 
 sentences seemed intricate and involved, at 

 
 PREFACE 
 
 times I have translated the meaning rather 
 than the words, and in other places I have 
 adhered to an almost literal rendering. My 
 hope is that the remarkable beauty and 
 power of Senancour's expression may not 
 have been entirely lost in the translation. 
 
 J. P. F. 
 
 * 
 
 . . * 
 
 * - 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 . 
 . 
 

 
 
 I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 IN November, 1849, Matthew Ar- 
 nold, then a young man of twenty- 
 seven, almost at the beginning of his 
 literary career, wrote some stanzas in 
 memory of the author of Obermann, 
 an obscure French poet, whose name 
 and writings had, until then, been 
 scarcely known outside of France, and 
 who had died almost unnoticed three 
 years before. These were followed, 
 many years after, by other stanzas, 
 Obermann Once More. It is through 
 these two poems by Matthew Arnold 
 that the author of Obermann, Etienne 
 Pivert de Senancour, has been chiefly 
 known to the reading public of Eng- 
 land and America. But while his name 
 has in this way become familiar to
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 many, his writings have never attained 
 celebrity ; and, even in his own coun- 
 try, he is not famous. The prose poem, 
 Obermann, has been read by a few who 
 have been attracted by its rare poetic 
 quality and interpretative power, but it 
 has not received general recognition, 
 nor been awarded by the public its just 
 rank as a work of marked talent. 
 
 There are good reasons why the au- 
 thor of Obermann should have remained 
 without fame beyond a narrow circle 
 of admirers, as we shall see by a study 
 of his character. His own description 
 of this isolation, which oppressed him, 
 even though he sought it, is filled with 
 a sense of pain. On the 1 2th of Octo- 
 ber, in Letter XXII, he writes from 
 Fontainebleau : 
 
 " I am alone. ... I am here in the 
 world, a wanderer, solitary in the midst 
 of a people for whom I care nothing ; 
 like a man, deaf for many years, whose 
 eager eyes gaze upon the crowd of silent
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 beings who move and pass before him. 
 He sees everything, but everything is 
 withheld from him ; he suffers the si- 
 lence of all things in the midst of the 
 noise of the world ; ... he is apart 
 from the entirety of beings; ... in 
 vain do all things exist around him ; he 
 lives alone, he is isolated in the midst 
 of the living world." 
 
 Although the author of Obermann 
 separated himself by choice from the 
 life of his times, and, while the tur- 
 moil of events swept past him, stood 
 apart as a solitary figure, deaf to their 
 noise and seemingly unconscious of 
 their object, yet he must take his place 
 as a member the most isolated, it is 
 true of the sentimental democratic 
 movement which had its rise in the 
 second half of the eighteenth century. 
 By right of talent, through affinity of 
 sentiment and feeling, he belonged to 
 that romantic school of France which 
 was the successor of classicism and in- 
 
 
 i
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 tellectual atheism, and numbered in its 
 ranks a Rousseau, a Bernardin de St. 
 Pierre, a Chateaubriand, a Madame de 
 Stael, whose names sounded like clarion 
 notes through the end of the eighteenth 
 century and the first half of the nine- 
 teenth. But even the gentler lights 
 among the pantheists of French litera- 
 ture, Vigny, Maurice de Guerin, La- 
 martine, Musset, Amiel, received wider 
 recognition than the solitary dreamer 
 who has, nevertheless, written pages 
 more beautiful, perhaps, in their sim- 
 plicity, charm, grandeur even, than 
 have many of his better known con- 
 temporaries or successors. 
 
 These pages, which formed the re- 
 pository of the intimate personal reve- 
 ries of a nature delicately responsive 
 to every impression and emotion, and 
 which contained a depth of feeling and 
 experience not appreciated by the many, 
 were, however, we are told by Sainte- 
 Beuve, cherished by a small band of
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 admirers, Sautelet, Bastide, Ampere, 
 Stapfer, Nodier, young and ardent 
 spirits, who looked up to their author 
 with reverence as to a master, and by 
 a group of men of letters which counted 
 such names as Rabbe, Ballanche, Pierre 
 Leroux, and Boisjolin the editor of the 
 second edition of Obermann. More than 
 this, Sainte-Beuve himself, George Sand, 
 and in recent years Jules Levallois, at- 
 tracted by his rare gifts and his singu- 
 lar charm, have done for him in France 
 what Matthew Arnold has done in Eng- 
 land, and Alvar Torniidd in Finland : 
 they have made him a name to the 
 many and more than a name to the 
 few who appreciate beauty of style and 
 the poet's power to interpret nature. 
 
 Several of the writers of the roman- 
 tic school possessed to a remarkable 
 degree this gift of rendering nature. 
 Chateaubriand possessed it, though 
 often in a studied form ; Maurice de 
 Guerin had it in all its naturalness and 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 * 
 
 . 
 
 * * ' 
 
 . 
 
 * 
 * 
 
 * *
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 grace ; Senancour had it with a sim- 
 plicity, grandeur, and eloquence which 
 have seldom been surpassed. He has 
 given us pictures of singular beauty, 
 both as a landscapist and as a poet ; for 
 he not only paints nature in her out- 
 ward semblance, but he leads us into 
 close companionship with what is hid- 
 den and intimate in her life. This is 
 why Obermann has outlived obscurity. 
 Although Senancour made no use of 
 metrical form, he held more of the 
 poetic gift of understanding and appre- 
 ciating nature, and of interpreting her 
 with subtle sympathy, than did many 
 poets who wrote in verse. And in this 
 feeling for nature he was perhaps less 
 akin to Lamartine, the chief singer of 
 French romanticism, than to Words- 
 worth and others among the English 
 poets. 
 
 It may appear singular that the only 
 countries where the works of Senan- 
 cour have been widely appreciated are
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 the lands of the far north, Finland, 
 Sweden, and Norway. But his strong 
 sympathy with all that was primitively 
 sublime and titanic in nature and in 
 man, which inspired him to write in 
 Obermann, " It is to the lands of the 
 north that belong the heroism born of 
 enthusiasm, and the titanic dreams bred 
 of sublime melancholy," must have 
 formed a powerful attraction for a peo- 
 ple whose early literature represented 
 types of primeval man and nature. 
 
 Qbermann, written during 1801 to 
 1803, and first published in 1804, is a 
 book of disconnected impressions and 
 meditations, in the form of letters to a 
 friend, containing the reveries of a re- 
 cluse on life and nature. But although 
 Obermann is an internal autobiography 
 of Senancour, we must guard against 
 taking too literally its external details, 
 for the author purposely altered facts 
 and dates in order to mislead the reader. 
 
 Etienne Pivertde Senancour was born
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 in Paris in 1 770, the year of the birth 
 of Wordsworth. His father, who be- 
 longed to a noble and a comparatively 
 rich family of Lorraine, and who held 
 the office of comptroller of the reve- 
 nues under Louis XVI, was a man of 
 inflexible will, and of small sympathy 
 with youth or with what goes to make 
 youth gay. Young Senancour's child- 
 hood was not happy ; he had little 
 companionship, and no pleasures. A 
 profoundly melancholy temperament, 
 given him by nature, developed by all 
 the conditions of his home life, made 
 him prematurely sombre and discon- 
 tented ; ill health and his father's stern- 
 ness increased a self-repression, apathy, 
 and awkwardness which were the re- 
 sult partly of physical immaturity and 
 partly of mental precocity. Romantic 
 from childhood, thirsting for joy with 
 an intensity rarely seen in one so young, 
 receiving back from life only disillu- 
 sions and unsatisfied longings, he soon
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 became acquainted with suffering, and 
 could say with reason that he had never 
 been young. Born without the power, 
 but with the fierce desire for happiness, 
 his "joy in everything" was withered 
 before it bloomed. The few allusions 
 in Obermann to those early years show 
 how greatly they influenced his after 
 life. But among these memories of his 
 youth, one ray of content pierces now 
 and then the general gloom, his love 
 for his mother, and her sympathy with 
 him. Later, after death had separated 
 him from her, he pictures, with un- 
 wonted tenderness, the walks they took 
 together in the woods of Fontainebleau, 
 when he was a schoolboy spending his 
 vacations with his parents in the coun- 
 try. He was only fifteen at that time, 
 but showed even then his love for all 
 things beautiful in nature, his longing 
 for solitude, his premature seriousness, 
 his changeful moods, his ardent, sensi- 
 tive, restless temperament which gave
 
 xx INTRODUCTION 
 
 him no peace. At Paris, on the 27th 
 of June, in Letter XI, this recollection 
 comes to him as an inspiration : 
 
 " The first time I went to the forest 
 I was not alone. ... I plunged into 
 the densest part of the woods, and when 
 I reached a clearing, shut in on all sides, 
 where nothing could be seen but stretches 
 of sand and of juniper-trees, there came 
 to me a sense of peace, of liberty, of 
 savage joy, the sway of nature first felt 
 in careless youth. . . . Often I was in 
 the forest before the rising of the sun. 
 I climbed the hills still deep in shadow ; 
 I was all wet from the dew-covered 
 underbrush ; and when the sun shone 
 out I still longed for that mystic light, 
 precursor of the dawn. I loved the 
 deep gullies, the dark valleys, the dense 
 woods ; I loved the hills covered with 
 heather ; I loved the fallen boulders 
 and the rugged rocks, and, still better, I 
 loved the moving sands, their barren 
 wastes untrodden by the foot of man,
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 but furrowed here and there by the 
 restless tracks of the roe or the fleeing 
 hare. ... It was then that I noticed 
 the birch, a lonely tree which even in 
 those days rilled me with sadness, and 
 which, since that time, I have never 
 seen without a sense of pleasure. I love 
 the birch I love that smooth, white, 
 curling bark ; that wild trunk ; those 
 drooping branches ; the flutter of the 
 leaves, and all that abandonment, simpli- 
 city of nature, attitude of the desert." 
 
 Here, then, at Fontainebleau, came 
 the first awakening of his feeling for 
 nature, a feeling which had perhaps 
 already been unconsciously stirred at 
 Ermenonville, a small village in the 
 Valois, where Rousseau had died a few 
 years before, in 1778. Young Senan- 
 cour, who had early shown his love of 
 study, and, when only seven years old, 
 had devoured with feverish ardor every 
 book of travel that fell into his hands, 
 had been sent to school at Ermenon-
 
 xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 ville, and lived with the cure of the 
 parish. There, as an impressionable 
 boy, he must have stood by the tomb 
 of Rousseau ; must have wandered in 
 the castle grounds where Rousseau had 
 lived before his death ; have listened to 
 the " rustling leaves of the birches ; " 
 have seen " the quiet waters, the cas- 
 cade among the rocks, . . . and the 
 green that stretches beyond like a prai- 
 rie, above which rise wooded slopes," 
 as Gerard de Nerval, in Sylvie, pictures 
 it to us in the first quarter of the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 At fifteen Senancour entered the 
 College de la Marche, at Paris, where 
 he followed the four years* course dili- 
 gently, not brilliantly, but successfully, 
 and graduated with honor. In those 
 four years, his mind, already open to 
 philosophic doubt, was definitely led 
 into channels which destroyed whatever 
 religious belief may have been feebly 
 lodged there by his mother's teaching.
 
 INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 He left college an atheist. It had been 
 the intention of the elder Senancour 
 that his son should enter the priest- 
 hood, and being a man of imperious 
 will, unaccustomed to remonstrance or 
 opposition, he immediately made ar- 
 rangements for Etienne to take a two 
 years' preparatory course at the semi- 
 nary of Saint-Sulpice. 
 
 By nature without depth of Chris- 
 tian religious feeling, by temperament 
 fiercely opposed to rules and institu- 
 tions, by education steeped in the phi- 
 losophic thought of the day, the young 
 student of Malebranche and Helvetius 
 rose in revolt against a step which 
 "essentially shocked his nature." In 
 August, 1789, with the help of his 
 mother, he left Paris, and buried him- 
 self in the solitudes of the Swiss Alps : 
 there, in the region of perpetual ice, 
 the primitive man in him strove to 
 wrest from primitive nature the key to 
 life.
 
 xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 At this period, when we see in him 
 so much to " essentially shock" our 
 natures, his atheism, his antagonism 
 to Christianity, his bitterness against 
 institutions, he has at least the merit 
 of austere sincerity and of scrupulous 
 morality. With a nature so sincere and 
 so strongly opposed to a religious voca- 
 tion, he could not bring himself to 
 enter the priesthood solely for the sake 
 of earning a living, or to play the hyp- 
 ocrite in order to satisfy an exacting 
 parent. 
 
 " I could not sacrifice my manhood," 
 he protests, " in order to become a 
 man of affairs." 
 
 And in another place, in the same 
 letter, he says : 
 
 " It is not enough to look upon a 
 profession as honest for the simple rea- 
 son that one can earn an income of 
 thirty or forty thousand francs without 
 theft." 
 
 Sincerity he regarded as one of the
 
 natural, simple virtues. The grander 
 virtues he had also known ; he writes : 
 
 " I have known the enthusiasm of 
 the great virtues. . . f My stoical 
 strength braved misfortunes as well as 
 passions ; and I felt sure that I should 
 be the happiest of men if I were the 
 most virtuous/* 
 
 This stoicism was merely a phase ; 
 it went hand in hand with an atheism 
 and a fatalism which were also nothing 
 more than phases ; they were not de- 
 stined to endure long, but they pro- 
 duced his first work, Reveries sur la 
 Nature Primitive de I'Homme, written 
 during the early years of his exile in 
 Switzerland, and published in 1799, 
 when he had returned secretly to Paris. 
 During those ten years France had 
 passed through her great crisis ; but the 
 distant rumblings of the Revolution 
 which had shaken his country to her 
 foundations, and had reechoed through- 
 out Europe, seem to have left Senan-
 
 xxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 cour unmoved. Buried in his mountain 
 solitudes, surrounded by the silence of 
 the snows, absorbed in the contempla- 
 tion of natural forces, he remained ap- 
 parently unconscious of the movement 
 of the gigantic social forces around 
 him. He represents passivity in an age 
 of intense moral and social activity, the 
 sage among soldiers, the dreamer of 
 ideas for which the rest of the world 
 were fighting, the believer in a new 
 system which was even then overturn- 
 ing society, and which fifty years later 
 was to produce men of his stamp. 
 
 But the Revolution which he ig- 
 nored did not pass him by unnoticed, as 
 he might have wished. His noble an- 
 cestry and his abrupt departure from 
 Paris immediately before the outbreak 
 of the Revolution were sufficient rea- 
 sons to lay him open to suspicion, and 
 for him to be classed as an " emigre ; " 
 thus his voluntary retirement was turned 
 into a forced exile. Obliged for politi-
 
 INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 cal reasons to make Switzerland his 
 home, we find him, not long after his 
 arrival, living in the house of a patri- 
 cian family in the canton of Fribourg. 
 A daughter of the house, unhappy in 
 her home, and in her engagement to a 
 man for whom she had no attachment, 
 became interested in Senancour ; they 
 saw each other constantly, even began 
 to write a romance together ; she con- 
 fided her troubles to him, and at last 
 broke her engagement. Young Senan- 
 cour, sensitive, scrupulous, believing 
 himself to be morally, though uninten- 
 tionally, bound to the young girl, mar- 
 ried her in 1790, at the age of twenty. 
 The marriage was not a happy one ; 
 but he remained a devoted husband un- 
 til his wife's early death. He had been 
 in love once, some years before, a 
 transient fancy, as he then thought, 
 but one that had for a moment opened 
 before him visions of happiness which 
 might have been his, and that returned
 
 xxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 to him, in later years, with almost over- 
 whelming force in the hour of his great 
 moral crisis. 
 
 In Letter XI, from Paris, he writes: 
 " It was in March ; I was at Lu . 
 There were violets at the foot of the 
 thickets, and lilacs in a little meadow, 
 springlike and peaceful, open to the 
 southern sun. The house stood high 
 above. A terraced garden hid the win- 
 dows from sight. Below the meadow, 
 steep and rugged rocks formed wall 
 upon wall ; at the foot, a wide torrent, 
 and beyond, other ledges covered with 
 fields, with hedges, and with firs ! 
 Across all this stretched the ancient 
 walls of the city ; an owl had made his 
 home among the ruined towers. In the 
 evening, the moon shone, distant horns 
 gave answering calls ; and the voice that 
 I shall never hear again ! " 
 
 These dreams had passed, and in 
 their place had come misfortunes in a 
 long and overwhelming train. The
 
 INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 loss of his fortune through the French 
 Revolution, and of his wife's inheri- 
 tance through the Swiss Revolution, a 
 painful nervous trouble which deprived 
 him throughout his life of the natural 
 use of his arms, the long and mortal 
 illness of his wife, the death of his 
 father and of his much-loved mother, 
 separation from his son and from his 
 friends, all these formed the setting 
 of a grief, stifling and sombre, that 
 found frequent expression in the book 
 which was the Journal Intime of Se- 
 nancour's inward experience. 
 
 In a life so grave, so full of disillu- 
 sions, Senancour turned for support to 
 nature, to a nature calm, broad, ma- 
 jestic, that brought him moments of 
 content, almost of happiness. His sen- 
 sitive organization responded like an 
 echo to every impression from the nat- 
 ural world, yet his enjoyment of nature 
 had in it as much of an intellectual as 
 of an emotional quality. His style at-
 
 xxx INTRODUCTION 
 
 tracts us, not so much from the sound 
 of the words as from the musical flow 
 of the phrase and the exquisitely har- 
 monious turn of the sentence, the fall- 
 ing cadence at the close, with here and 
 there a sudden break in the rhythm. 
 No one who reads Obermann can fail 
 to find rare delight in the charm of its 
 cadences, in the remarkable power of 
 language which it shows, and in the 
 magic faculty of the artist to see the 
 elements that constitute a picture. 
 
 On the 1 9th of July, in Letter IV, 
 Senancour writes from Thiel of a night 
 spent on the shores of Lake Neucha- 
 teh 
 
 " In the evening, before the rising 
 of the moon, I walked beside the green 
 waters of the Thiele. Feeling inclined 
 to dream, and finding the air so soft 
 that I could pass the whole night in 
 the open, I followed the road to Saint- 
 Blaise. At the small village of Marin, 
 I turned aside to the lake at the south,
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 and descended a steep bank to the shore, 
 where the waves came to die on the 
 sands. The air was calm, not a sail 
 could be seen on the lake. All were at 
 rest, some in the forgetfulness of toil, 
 others in the oblivion of sorrow. The 
 moon rose; I lingered long. Toward 
 morning she spread over the earth and 
 the waters the ineffable melancholy of 
 her last rays. Nature appears immea- 
 surably grand when, lost in reverie, one 
 hears the rippling of the waves upon 
 the solitary shore, in the calm of a 
 night still resplendent and illumined by 
 the setting moon. 
 
 " Ineffable sensibility, charm and tor- 
 ment of our fruitless years, profound 
 realization of a nature everywhere over- 
 whelming and everywhere inscrutable, 
 all-absorbing passion, deepened wisdom, 
 rapturous self-abandonment, all that 
 a human soul can experience of deep 
 desire and world- weariness, I felt it 
 all, I lived it all on that memorable
 
 xxxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 night. I have taken a fatal step towards 
 the age of decay ; I have consumed ten 
 years of my life. Happy the simple man 
 whose heart is always young ! " 
 
 This passage has been quoted before ; 
 it cannot be quoted too often. There 
 is a sentence in one of Emerson's Let- 
 ters to a Friend that reminds one of 
 it ; he has been reading the Vedas 
 " in the sleep of the great heats," and 
 writes : 
 
 " If I trust myself in the woods or 
 in a boat upon the pond, nature makes 
 a Brahmin of me presently eternal 
 necessity, eternal compensation, unfath- 
 omable power, unbroken silence, this is 
 her creed. Peace, she saith to me, and 
 purity and absolute abandonment." 
 
 Less lyrical than Maurice de Guerin, 
 Senancour was more of a Titan in 
 power and daring ; he was an epic 
 poet of landscape. Nature in her bolder 
 moods appealed to him most strongly ; 
 it was not her smiles, her graceful fan-
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxiii 
 
 cies, her waywardness, her exuberance, 
 that moved him, as they did the lighter, 
 more " elusive " temperament of Mau- 
 rice de Guerin ; it was the rugged in 
 her, the mysterious, the vast ; he loved 
 to grapple with the strength, the diffi- 
 culties of a wild and savage region. 
 And in this he showed an intellectual 
 rather than a sensuous quality, a quality 
 which it is interesting to trace, even in 
 the words used to express the elements 
 in nature that aroused his sympathy. 
 Maurice de Guerin was attracted by 
 the evanescence and grace of nature ; 
 Senancour by her " permanence " and 
 " austerity." This austerity and per- 
 manence are especially insisted upon in 
 one of the most striking of the Ober- 
 mann letters, the letter in which he 
 tells of a day spent on the Dent du 
 Midi. 
 
 On the 3d of September, in Letter 
 VII, he writes from Saint-Maurice : 
 
 " I have been to the region of per-
 
 xxxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 petual ice, on the Dent du Midi. Be- 
 fore the sun shone upon the valley I had 
 already reached the bluff overlooking 
 the town, and was crossing the partly 
 cultivated stretch of ground which 
 covers it. I went on by a steep ascent, 
 through dense forests of fir-trees, leveled 
 in many places by winters long since 
 passed away : fruitful decay, vast and 
 confused mass of a vegetation that had 
 died and had regerminated from the 
 wrecks of its former life. At eight 
 o'clock I had reached the bare summit 
 which crowns the ascent, and which 
 forms the first salient step in that won- 
 drous pile whose highest peak still rose 
 so far beyond me. Then I dismissed my 
 guide, and put my own powers to the 
 test. I wanted that no hireling should 
 intrude upon this Alpine liberty, that 
 no man of the plains should come to 
 weaken the austerity of these savage re- 
 gions. ... I stood fixed and exultant 
 as I watched the rapid disappearance
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxv 
 
 of the only man whom I was likely to 
 see among these mighty precipices. . . . 
 
 " I cannot give you a true impres- 
 sion of this new world, nor express the 
 permanence of the mountains in the 
 language of the plains." 
 
 The whole of that day he spent 
 among the chasms, the granite rocks, 
 and the snows of the Alps, taken pos- 
 session of by the inexpressible perma- 
 nence of life in those silent regions, 
 which seemed to have in them less of 
 change than of immutability. 
 
 We can see the landscapes which 
 Senancour paints; they are bold, vivid, 
 and full of atmosphere. And we can 
 feel the mysterious hidden life which he 
 feels so profoundly, which becomes a 
 passion with him, subdues him, absorbs 
 him, until he has grown to be a part 
 of it. The great Pan claims him. We 
 must not, however, mistake Senancour. 
 He loves nature, but to him man is 
 the highest part of nature ; only, man
 
 xxxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 troubles him by departing from primi- 
 tive standards, and nature does not. " It 
 is true I love only nature," he writes, 
 " but men are still the part of nature 
 that I love the best." 
 
 It is not social man, as he existed at 
 the close of the eighteenth century, 
 that fills this high place in Senancour's 
 affections. He pictures to himself a 
 primitive life, simple, austere, uniform ; 
 a state of human relationships in which 
 friendship such as the ancients knew it 
 the friendship of Cicero and Atti- 
 cus, of Laelius and Africanus holds a 
 conspicuous place. By nature strong in 
 the affections, this bond of two minds 
 and souls, united in thought, feeling, 
 and belief, the " absolute running of 
 two souls into one," as Emerson ex- 
 presses it, has for him a deep attraction. 
 He realizes what Emerson emphasizes 
 with greater force when he writes that 
 " the sweet sincerity of joy and peace, 
 which I draw from this alliance with
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxvii 
 
 my brother's soul, is the nut itself 
 whereof all nature and all thought is 
 but the husk and shell." And so Se- 
 nancour writes : " Peace itself is a sad 
 blessing when there is no hope of shar- 
 ing it." 
 
 Believing firmly in the inborn good- 
 ness of humanity, he feels that the dic- 
 tates of one's own nature are safe guides 
 to be followed in life, " convinced," he 
 declares, " that nothing that is natural 
 to me is either dangerous or to be con- 
 demned." Yet these impulses which he 
 acknowledges as wise leaders are never 
 to be other than moderate, for, he says, 
 " dejection follows every immoderate 
 impulse." And the goodness which he 
 broadly ascribes to all human nature 
 is far from being of a commonplace 
 order, to judge from his own definition : 
 " True goodness requires wide concep- 
 tions, a great soul, and restrained pas- 
 sions." Himself a man of restrained 
 passions, he willingly believes that all
 
 xxxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 men are originally made virtuous, and 
 he insists upon the melancholy degen- 
 eration of man as he has been made by 
 the "caprices of this ephemeral world." 
 This forms the keynote of his aver- 
 sion for the world, and the reason for 
 his appeal to nature when, overwhelmed 
 with despair at " the hopeless tangle of 
 our age," and with a full sense of his 
 own impotence, he seeks solace in the 
 strength of the stars and the peace of 
 the solitary hills. For nature " holds 
 less of what we seek, but . . . we are 
 surer of finding the things that she con- 
 tains." And thus, he believes, the tie 
 is often stronger between man and the 
 " friend of man " than between man 
 and man ; for " passion goes in quest of 
 man, but reason is sometimes obliged to 
 forsake him for things that are less good 
 and less fatal." Alone, battling with the 
 "obstacles and the dangers of rugged 
 nature, far from the artificial trammels 
 and the ingenious oppression of men,"
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxix 
 
 he feels his whole being broaden. In 
 Letter VII, from Saint-Maurice, he 
 gives a vivid description of one of his 
 first communings with the " friend of 
 man," after he has fled from a world 
 which oppressed him, and against which 
 he had neither the courage nor the 
 power to struggle : 
 
 " On those desert peaks, where the 
 sky is measureless, and the air is more 
 stable, and time less fleeting, and life 
 more permanent, there, all nature 
 gives eloquent expression to a vaster 
 order, a more visible harmony, an eter- 
 nal whole. There, man is reinstated in 
 his changeful but indestructible form; 
 he breathes a free air far from social 
 emanations ; ... he lives a life of 
 reality in the midst of sublime unity." 
 
 In this very year Wordsworth was 
 writing : 
 
 " To her fair works did Nature link 
 The human soul that through me ran ; 
 And much it grieved my heart to think 
 What man has made of man."
 
 xl INTRODUCTION 
 
 We can now, I think, understand in 
 a measure why Senancour has remained 
 obscure. He shunned the world, and 
 the world neglected him ; he could not 
 make his way with a public whom he 
 ignored and disliked. Shrinking from 
 contact with men, craving neither ap- 
 plause nor popularity, despising every 
 means of obtaining celebrity that savored 
 of intrigue or expedient, he marked out 
 for himself a rigid line of sincerity and 
 truth. 
 
 " If it is not sufficient," he writes, 
 " to say things that are true, and to 
 strive to express them in persuasive lan- 
 guage, I shall not have success." 
 
 And in harmony with this ideal of 
 literary simplicity and directness was the 
 feeling he had that an author should 
 not strive to receive " approbation dur- 
 ing his lifetime." The only success he 
 honored and desired was the austere 
 success of the future which assigns a 
 work "to its right place." Surely this
 
 INTRODUCTION xli 
 
 was not the temperament from which 
 springs the desire to court notoriety or 
 the power to win it. 
 
 Another reason for Senancour's fail- 
 ure to reach general appreciation is 
 perhaps his unevenness. Like Words- 
 worth, he falls, at times, far below his 
 level ; not that he is ever weak, but in 
 his tendency to repetition he becomes 
 tiresome. Although in his later work 
 he shows more unity and a clearer sense 
 of proportion, in Obermann he is want- 
 ing in what is necessary to the creation 
 of a complete work of art, the power to 
 distinguish between the essential and the 
 non-essential. It is this power which 
 makes Chateaubriand's Rene a finished 
 painting, and the lack of this power 
 which makes Obermann a portfolio of 
 sketches as exquisite as Turner's water- 
 colors, intermingled with minute stud- 
 ies of unimportant details. 
 
 Obermann has been compared to 
 Rene. Both books describe the same
 
 xlii INTRODUCTION 
 
 order of psychologic experience ; they 
 are both the expression of thwarted 
 lives, of unsatisfied cravings. But there 
 exists this difference between them : 
 Rene represents passionate struggle, and 
 later, victory ; Obermann y despairing ac- 
 ceptance, and later, resignation. With 
 Rene, nature is secondary to moral pow- 
 er ; his expression is strong, brilliant, 
 vigorous. With Obermann, nature is 
 the spring of all beauty and perfection, 
 she is mystic, vast, inscrutable ; his ex- 
 pression has something of the sensitive, 
 the hidden charm which he has caught 
 from the inner life of nature. 
 
 We know that Senancour became 
 familiar with the works of his great 
 contemporary, Chateaubriand, and that 
 in 1816 he published a critical study 
 of the Genie du Christianisme, in which 
 he exposed with merciless candor and 
 logic the insincerity of Chateaubriand's 
 religious position. But at the time 
 that Senancour wrote Obermann t while
 
 INTRODUCTION xliii 
 
 he had read Atala, as he himself tells 
 us, Rene and the Genie du Christianisme 
 were still unknown to him. Whatever 
 similarity existed between Obermann 
 and Rene was therefore due to the 
 spirit that animated the whole literary 
 movement of the time, to the roman- 
 tic tendency of which they were the 
 simultaneous expression. 
 
 Another parallel that suggests itself 
 is with Amiel ; but here, too, there is a 
 marked difference. Senancour's render- 
 ing of nature, which makes him worthy 
 of being classed among the poets, is on 
 a far higher plane of beauty than that 
 of Amiel, while he is greatly Armel's 
 inferior in strength of intellect, cul- 
 ture, and mental training. It is Amiel's 
 keenness and justness as a critic of life 
 and things, of men and books, that give 
 him his claim to distinction. Senan- 
 cour is a poet and moralist, Amiel a 
 critic and speculative philosopher. The 
 difference in their style is equally
 
 xliv INTRODUCTION 
 
 marked : Amiel is at his best where he 
 is incisive, critical, epigrammatic, full 
 of verve, cutting to the root of his sub- 
 ject like fine steel ; Senancour, where 
 he is poetical and meditative. The 
 philosophy of Amiel is on a far more 
 intricate scale and takes a more promi- 
 nent place in his 'Journal than does that 
 of Senancour in Qbermann; but the idea 
 of the indefinite, miscalled the infinite, 
 appeals equally to both, though in dif- 
 ferent ways. Amiel is fascinated by it, 
 his individual life is absorbed, evap- 
 orated, lost, in the universal nothing ; 
 while Senancour, alone, as an individual, 
 stands face to face with an immutable 
 and inscrutable eternity, which terrifies 
 and overwhelms him, but which he 
 desires to comprehend through an 
 etherealized intelligence. The com- 
 mon ground on which they meet is 
 their desire to be in unison with the 
 life of nature, their mystical pantheism, 
 and their morbid melancholia which
 
 INTRODUCTION xlv 
 
 leads them into pessimism, all of 
 these traits being an inheritance from 
 their great progenitor, Rousseau. It 
 was the malady of the century, 
 " melancholy, languor, lassitude, dis- 
 couragement," as we find in Amiel's 
 Journal, lack of will power, the 
 capacity to suffer, a minute psychologic 
 analysis, the turning of life into a dream 
 without production, that formed the 
 basis of their affinity. 
 
 We must, in fact, go back to the 
 ideas that formed the spring of the 
 Revolutionary movement and changed 
 the conditions of modern society, to 
 find the common meeting-ground of 
 all the romanticists. Unswerving belief 
 in human nature, desire for the simpli- 
 fication of life and dislike of the com- 
 plicated social conditions of the old 
 order, passionate love of the natural 
 world, full return to nature as the ideal 
 of life, glorification of savage man, 
 these ideas, formulated by Rousseau,
 
 xlvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 were the inspiration of Chateaubriand, 
 Senancour, and Amiel. Rousseau, as 
 the father of the movement, became 
 the chief influence in the work of his 
 successors : he set the type for their 
 beliefs ; he opened the path through 
 which all were to walk, some as 
 leaders, like Chateaubriand, others as 
 recluses, like Senancour ; his spirit per- 
 vaded not only France, but Europe ; 
 from him proceeded Childe Harold, 
 Werther, and Rene, as well as Obermann. 
 The poet with whom Senancour has 
 most of kinship in mood, in feeling, in 
 charm of expression, is Matthew Ar- 
 nold. That Obermann exerted a strong 
 influence over Matthew Arnold's early 
 years is clear from several references in 
 both of the Obermann poems. " We 
 feel thy spell ! " the English poet cries, 
 and that spell draws him to solitude, to 
 sad reverie, to companionship with the 
 eremite, the " master of my wandering 
 youth," the name he gives, many years
 
 INTRODUCTION xlvii 
 
 later, to Obermann. But stronger still 
 than this inclination is the opposite 
 impulsion, the necessity which is upon 
 him to go out into the strife of men, 
 an unseen driving power which he 
 calls fate, but which we might call con- 
 science. And so he cries : 
 
 " 1 go, fate drives me ; but I leave 
 Half of my life with you." 
 
 Yet with him he carries into the world 
 that thing which 
 
 " has been lent 
 To youth and age in common discontent," 
 
 and the 
 
 " infinite desire 
 For all that might have been," 
 
 and 
 
 " The eternal note of sadness." 
 
 It is the poet in Matthew Arnold 
 that claims " fellowship of mood " and 
 sympathy with the poet in Senancour. 
 This may explain why Matthew Arnold 
 has not given of him one of his delight- 
 ful critical portraits. The affinity is too
 
 xlviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 close, the influence too subtle, to be 
 brought within the limits of analysis. 
 But beyond this personal affinity of 
 mood, Matthew Arnold reveres Ober- 
 mann as a sage and seer. Every one 
 will recall those verses, in the first 
 Obermann poem, beginning : 
 
 " Yet, of the spirits who have reigned 
 In this our troubled day, 
 I know but two, who have attained, 
 Save thee, to see their way." 
 
 These two spirits are Wordsworth 
 and Goethe. 
 
 Twenty years later he returns to 
 " Obermann once more,'* and in a vi- 
 sion is charged by the ancient sage to 
 carry to the world the message of that 
 hope for which Senancour had so pas- 
 sionately longed. Obermann, addressing 
 the younger poet, urges him to tell, 
 
 " Hope to a world new-made ! 
 Help it to fill that deep desire, 
 The want which crazed our brain, 
 Consumed our soul with thirst like fire, 
 Immedicable pain."
 
 INTRODUCTION xlix 
 
 Matthew Arnold here constitutes 
 himself the disciple and exponent of 
 Obermann, the interpreter of his aspi- 
 rations, and the complement, as it were, 
 of his unfulfilled and disappointed life. 
 
 The fellowship of Matthew Arnold 
 with Obermann is seen in several of his 
 poems, in The Grande Chartreuse, The 
 Youth of Nature, The Touth of Man, and 
 markedly in Self-Dependence. 
 
 Indirectly it is also apparent in many 
 modes of thought and feeling. In both 
 poets there is a ground tone of melan- 
 choly underlying the passionate craving 
 for tranquillity and joy, which leaves 
 them forever reaching out toward a 
 goal that can never be attained. To- 
 gether with this is the sense of the 
 futility of human effort, and a blind re- 
 liance on fate. Both are stoical in their 
 austerity, and both are transcendental 
 in their tendencies. In both we find a 
 deep discontent with " the thousand 
 discords," and the " vain turmoil " of
 
 1 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the world ; a desire to be in sympathy 
 and union with the inner life of the 
 universe ; to 
 
 " Yearn to the greatness of Nature ; " 
 
 and the final appeal to nature, whose 
 glory and greatness and calm are alone 
 enduring, while all else is subject to 
 change, a nature who can say of men 
 in Matthew Arnold's words : 
 
 " They are dust, they are changed, they are gone ! 
 I remain." 
 
 And how like Senancour is the spirit 
 of these lines : 
 
 " For the world, which seems 
 To lie before us like a land of dreams, 
 So various, so beautiful, so new, 
 Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 
 Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain." 
 
 But this resemblance, strong as it is 
 in many ways, belongs more to their 
 moods, their ethical attitude toward 
 life, the peculiar temper of their minds, 
 than to character, or intellect, or crea- 
 tive power. As a result of this affinity
 
 INTRODUCTION li 
 
 of sentiment is a certain similarity in 
 rhythm, the outward but elusive ex- 
 pression of the inner feeling. In both 
 writers we find the same note of sad- 
 ness in the cadence, the same grace and 
 charm of diction, the same dying fall 
 at the end of the sentence, like the ebb 
 and flow of the waves on the shore. 
 Especially is this evident in The Touth 
 of Man, The Touth of Nature, parts of 
 Tristram and Iseult, and Dover Beach. 
 There exists this difference between 
 them : in Senancour the expression is 
 spontaneous and natural ; in Matthew 
 Arnold it is finished, and the result of 
 art and study. 
 
 Senancour's inward changes during 
 the twenty - five years that followed 
 the appearance of his first work, the 
 Reveries, were great; they formed a 
 gradual and continuous growth, from 
 despair to resignation, from restlessness 
 to calm, from doubt to belief, from ma- 
 terialism through pantheism to theism.
 
 lii INTRODUCTION 
 
 Throughout Obermann we see traces of 
 a passionate longing for more than na- 
 ture could give him, something higher 
 than nature. On the lyth of August, 
 in Letter XVIII, from Fontainebleau, 
 he writes : 
 
 " I am filled with an unrest that will 
 never leave me ; it is a craving I do not 
 comprehend, which overrules me, ab- 
 sorbs me, lifts me above the things that 
 perish. . . . You are mistaken, and I 
 too was once mistaken ; it is not the 
 desire for love. A great distance lies 
 between the void that fills my heart and 
 the love that I have so deeply desired ; 
 but the infinite stretches between what 
 I am and what I crave to be. Love is 
 vast, but it is not the infinite. I do not 
 desire enjoyment ; I long for hope, I 
 crave knowledge ! . . . I desire a good, 
 a dream, a hope, that shall be ever 
 before me, beyond me, greater even 
 than my expectation, greater than what 
 passes away.'*
 
 INTRODUCTION liii 
 
 At the time he wrote these words, 
 he had no belief in the immortality of 
 the soul, no hope beyond this world. 
 Later, this belief and this hope were to 
 come to him ; but even then he had 
 glimpses of the future peace, as when 
 he writes, in Letter XIX, on the i8th 
 of August : 
 
 "There are moments when I am 
 filled with hope and a sense of liberty ; 
 time and things pass before me with 
 majestic harmony,and I feel happy. . . . 
 Happy ! I ? And yet I am, and happy 
 to overflowing, like one who reawakens 
 from the terrors of a dream to a life of 
 peace and liberty. . . . But the moment 
 passes ; a cloud drifts across the sun and 
 shuts out its inspiring light ; the birds 
 are hushed ; the growing darkness drives 
 away both my dream and my joy." 
 
 The time was to come when this life 
 of " peace and liberty " would no longer 
 be seen by snatches, between the drift- 
 ing clouds, but would fill him with the
 
 liv INTRODUCTION 
 
 serenity he so ardently craved. Perhaps 
 he little dreamed that his prayer, framed 
 as a question, was to be answered in his 
 life with the same beauty that he pic- 
 tured it in words. In Letter XXIII, 
 dated on the i8th of October from 
 Fontainebleau, we find this passage : 
 
 " Will it also be given unto man to 
 know the long peace of autumn after 
 the unrest of the strength of his years, 
 even as the fire, after its haste to be con- 
 sumed, lingers before it is quenched ? 
 
 " Long before the equinox, the leaves 
 had fallen in quantities, yet the forest 
 still holds much of its verdure and all 
 of its beauty. More than forty days ago 
 everything looked as though it would 
 end before its time, and now all things 
 are enduring beyond their allotted days ; 
 receiving, at the very door of destruc- 
 tion, a lengthened life, which lingers on 
 the threshold of its decay with abundant 
 grace or security, and seems to borrow, 
 as it weakens with gentle loitering, both
 
 INTRODUCTION Iv 
 
 from the repose of approaching death 
 and from the charm of departing life." 
 This we may take as a picture of his 
 own old age. Not that his material sur- 
 roundings had in any way improved ; 
 the change was internal, and was the ful- 
 fillment of his own words : " The true 
 life of man is within himself; what he 
 absorbs from the outside world is merely 
 accidental and subordinate." The fruit 
 of this change came to maturity in his 
 last important work, Libres Meditations, 
 written fifteen years after Obermann. 
 In the writer of the Meditations we see 
 a man who has profoundly suffered, and 
 whose spirit has been softened, chas- 
 tened, harmonized. His last word to the 
 world is the calm, majestic expression 
 of one who has realized the existence 
 of a distant truth, and has succeeded in 
 lessening the space which separated him 
 from it. It is the answer to the restless 
 questionings, the doubt of Obermann. 
 Even in Obermann he had begun to feel
 
 Ivi INTRODUCTION 
 
 that nature was not the beginning and 
 the end of all things. On a day in Au- 
 gust, in Letter XVI, he writes from 
 Fontainebleau : 
 
 " What noble sentiments ! What 
 memories ! What quiet majesty in a 
 night, soft, calm, luminous ! What 
 grandeur ! But the soul is overwhelmed 
 with doubt. It sees that the feelings 
 aroused by sentient things lead it into 
 error ; that truth exists, but in the far 
 distance." 
 
 In the Meditations the pursuit of this 
 distant truth has led him to belief in 
 a God, in a future life, in a governing 
 power in the universe ; nature is the 
 proof of divine wisdom ; the world we 
 live in, and the world to which we are 
 pressing forward, are the results of di- 
 vine justice. The Meditations is a work 
 of distinct ethical value ; its writer a 
 moralist of the type of Marcus Aure- 
 lius. The classic dignity and repose of 
 its style, its full and measured numbers,
 
 INTRODUCTION Ivii 
 
 like the solemn harmonies of church 
 music, are the perfect outward expres- 
 sion of elevation of thought, a poised 
 nature, a spirit of peace and consola- 
 tion. We are lifted above the strife of 
 the world to a region of moral grandeur. 
 The poet is lost in the seer. 
 
 This change, although so fundamen- 
 tal, is not a mark of inconsistency. The 
 youth of nineteen who ran away from 
 home to avoid acting a part is still the 
 man of maturity who wrote the Medi- 
 tations ; genuineness, simplicity, and the 
 love of truth form the basis of his na- 
 ture. 
 
 Senancour lived twenty-seven years 
 after writing the Meditations, and the 
 spirit of calm continued to grow upon 
 him ; yet his external life can scarcely 
 have held more of happiness in his old 
 age than it had in his youth. He had 
 left Switzerland many years before, soon 
 after the completion of Obermann y and 
 had returned to Paris, where, poor and
 
 Iviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 almost in want, he lived a secluded life, 
 with his daughter as his only companion, 
 in a house near the Place de la Bastile, 
 on the Rue de la Cerisaie, a street of 
 interesting historic memories connected 
 with Charles VI and Francis I. There, 
 a recluse in the midst of the world, he 
 composed his Meditations, and there, 
 obliged to live by his pen, the only way 
 open to him, he wrote for the periodi- 
 cals and journals of Paris, edited ency- 
 clopaedias, prepared historical summa- 
 ries, and spent years in the drudgery of 
 the literary profession. In 1846, four 
 years before the death of Wordsworth, 
 at the age of seventy-six, he died at St. 
 Cloud, a lonely old man.
 
 OBERMANN
 
 LETTERS 
 
 TO A 
 
 FRIEND 
 
 LETTER I 
 
 Geneva, July 8th, ist year* 
 
 & & & $ $OT more than ten days have 
 TVT * passed since I wrote to you 
 from Lyons. I did not men- 
 tion any new project: I had 
 
 J J. J 
 
 none ; and now I have left everything 
 behind, I am in a strange land. . . . 
 
 Even at this moment I am at a loss 
 to judge of a resolution which has swept 
 away all former plans, 3 which carries 
 me abruptly into new surroundings, 
 which destines me for things I had not 
 anticipated, the developments and con- 
 sequences of which I cannot even fore-
 
 4 OBERMANN 
 
 see. ... A narrow and timorous pru- 
 dence in those on whom fate made me 
 dependent, wasted my early years, and 
 has fettered my entire life. Wisdom 
 treads between diffidence and temerity ; 
 the path is difficult. We must follow 
 her in ways that she can see ; but in 
 ways unknown, instinct is our only 
 guide. Though instinct may be more 
 dangerous than prudence, it accom- 
 plishes greater things. It is our ruin, or 
 our salvation ; its temerity becomes at 
 times our only refuge, and its mission 
 may be to redress the wrongs that pru- 
 dence has wrought. 
 
 The yoke must either have weighed 
 me down irrevocably or have been 
 shaken off without heed ; the alterna- 
 tive seemed inevitable. You well know 
 what a wretched chain was being 
 forged. I was to do what it was impos- 
 sible for me to do well. I was to fill a 
 position for its emoluments, use the 
 faculties of my being for what essen-
 
 OBERMANN 5 
 
 tially shocked its nature. Was it my 
 duty to yield in momentary compliance, 
 to deceive a parent into thinking that 
 I was undertaking for my entire life 
 what I should have begun merely with 
 the longing that it might end, and thus 
 live in a false position, in a state of con- 
 tinual antipathy ? May he recognize 
 my powerlessness to satisfy him, may he 
 forgive me ! May he come to feel . . . 
 that a profession cannot be looked upon 
 as honest, simply because one can earn 
 an income of thirty or forty thousand 
 francs without theft ; and that I could 
 not sacrifice my manhood, in order to 
 become a man of affairs. 
 
 I do not seek to persuade you, I re- 
 call facts ; you are the judge. A friend 
 must judge without too great leniency, 
 as you have said. . . . 
 
 I searched my heart ; I passed rapidly 
 in review all my surroundings. From 
 men, I strove to learn whether they felt 
 as I did ; from things, whether they
 
 6 OBERMANN 
 
 were in accord with my inclinations ; 
 and I saw that I was out of harmony 
 with society, that my needs were not 
 in touch with its handiwork. I checked 
 myself with terror, feeling that I was 
 on the verge of giving up my life to in- 
 tolerable weariness, to a loathing with- 
 out aim and without end. To my heart 
 I offered in succession all things sought 
 by men in the various professions which 
 they elect. I even strove to adorn, 
 through the magic of the imagination, 
 those complex aims which they hold 
 up to their passions, and the chimeric 
 end to which they devote their years. 
 I attempted it, but in vain. Why is 
 the earth thus disenchanted to my eyes ? 
 It is not satiety that I feel ; on all sides 
 I find a void. 
 
 On that day when, for the first time, 
 I felt the nothingness which surrounds 
 me, on that day which changed the 
 course of my life, had the pages of my 
 destiny lain in my hands to be forever
 
 OBERMANN 7 
 
 opened or closed, with what indiffer- 
 ence would I have renounced the empty 
 succession of hours, so long yet so fleet- 
 ing, which such bitterness has sullied, 
 and which no true joy can console ! 
 You know that it is my misfortune not 
 to have the capacity to be young ; the 
 long weariness of my early life has 
 apparently destroyed the seductions of 
 youth. Its blooming exterior does not 
 deceive me ; my half-closed eyes are 
 never dazzled ; too steady, they are not 
 taken by surprise. 
 
 That day of irresolution was at least 
 a day of light ; it made me see things 
 within, which before had not been 
 clear. Plunged in the deepest perplex- 
 ity of my life, I had for the first time 
 a full consciousness of my being. Pur- 
 sued even to the melancholy calm of 
 my usual apathy, forced to be some- 
 thing, I was at last myself; and in these 
 emotions, hitherto unfelt, I found an 
 energy, at first constrained and painful,
 
 8 OBERMANN 
 
 but the fullness of which grew to be a 
 repose that was new to me. Out of this 
 condition, so unexpected and so full of 
 peace, my determining thought took 
 shape ; and I saw, as I believed, the 
 reason for what we observe every day, 
 that the actual differences in the lot of 
 man are not the principal cause of his 
 happiness or his misery. 
 
 The true life of man is within him- 
 self; what he absorbs from the out- 
 side world is merely accidental and 
 subordinate. Things influence him far 
 more through the situation in which 
 they find him than through their own 
 nature. Were he to be continually 
 moulded by them throughout the 
 whole course of his life, he might be- 
 come their creature. But in this ever- 
 moving sequence, he alone subsists, 
 though altered, while external objects 
 related to him are wholly changed ; 
 thus, each of their impressions upon 
 him depends far more, for his happi-
 
 OBERMANN 9 
 
 ness or his misery, upon the condition 
 in which they find him, than upon the 
 sensation they produce or the accidental 
 change in him they cause. Thus, in 
 each separate moment of his life, to be 
 what he ought to be, is of the highest 
 importance to man. 
 
 # # # 
 
 As soon as man reflects, as soon as he 
 is not carried away by his first impulse, 
 and by the unconscious laws of instinct, 
 all morality becomes, in a sense, a mat- 
 ter of calculation, and prudence lies in 
 the estimate of the more or the less. 
 
 
 
 Independent of the world, and in the 
 silence of the passions, we can study 
 ourselves. I shall choose a retreat in the 
 calm of those heights which even in 
 childhood left an impression on my 
 mind.
 
 io O B E R M AN N 
 
 LETTER II 
 
 Lausanne ', July yth y 1st year. 
 
 YOU have not seen this land, neither 
 can you picture it to yourself; 
 the imagination is powerless to draw, 
 in their true lines, the grand effects of 
 nature. Had I felt less deeply the 
 grandeur and harmony of the scene 
 as a whole, had not the purity of 
 the atmosphere added a quality beyond 
 the power of words to express, were I 
 different from what I am. I should 
 strive to picture to you these snow-clad 
 and resplendent heights ; these valleys 
 flooded with mist ; the steep, black 
 cliffs of Savoy ; the hills of La Vaux 
 and the Jorat, too verdant, perhaps, but 
 crowned by the Alps of Gruyeres and 
 Ormont ; and the wide waters of Lake 
 Leman, the sweep of its waves, and its 
 measured peace. Perhaps the secret
 
 OBERMANN n 
 
 emotions of my heart added to the 
 magic of these scenes ; perhaps no man, 
 at sight of them, has felt all that I have 
 felt. . . . 
 
 I should be loath to believe that a 
 man whose heart has been wounded by 
 familiarity with sorrow, has not, by his 
 very suffering, been given the power 
 to enjoy delights unknown to the 
 happy joys that are broader and more 
 lasting than theirs, and of a nature to 
 sustain old age itself. As for myself, 
 I realized at that moment, when no- 
 thing was wanting but another heart 
 to feel as I felt, that a single hour of 
 one's life may be worth a whole year 
 of existence, that everything is relative 
 within us and without us, and that our 
 troubles come chiefly from our being 
 out of place in the social order. . . . 
 
 I was under the pines of the Jorat ; 
 the evening was beautiful, the woods 
 silent, the air calm, the sunset misty, 
 but cloudless. Everything seemed sta-
 
 12 OBERMANN 
 
 tionary, illumined, motionless ; then, 
 suddenly, as I raised my eyes, long fixed 
 upon the moss where I was sitting, 
 there came to me an impressive illusion, 
 which the mood of reverie that I was 
 in helped to prolong. The steep slope 
 that reached down to the lake was hid- 
 den by the knoll on which I sat ; and 
 the surface of the lake, seeming to rise 
 as it receded into distance, lifted the 
 opposite shore into the air. The Alps 
 of Savoy were half veiled by the mist, 
 and all were blended and merged into 
 the same shades. The light of the sun- 
 set and the haze of the air in the depths 
 of the Valais uplifted the mountains 
 and divided them from the earth, by 
 making their lower slopes invisible ; 
 and their colossal bodies, without form, 
 without color, sombre and snowy, illu- 
 mined yet shadowy, had the appearance 
 of a mass of storm clouds suspended in 
 space : there was no earth save that 
 which held me above the void, alone 
 in immensity.
 
 OBERMANN 13 
 
 That moment was worthy of the 
 first day in a new life. . . . 
 
 LETTER III 
 
 Cully* July nth, 1st year. 
 
 THE storm has passed, the even- 
 . ing is beautiful. My windows 
 open on the lake ; the white spray of 
 the waves is tossed, now and again, into 
 my room; it has even bathed the roof. 
 The wind blows from the southwest, 
 and it is at this point that the waves 
 sweep to their full height and strength. 
 This movement and these measured 
 sounds give to the soul a powerful im- 
 petus. Were it my lot to go beyond 
 the bounds of ordinary life, were it 
 given me to truly live, yet were I 
 weighed down with discouragement, I 
 should wish to stand alone for a little 
 while on the shores of a wave-tossed 
 lake ; I believe there would then be
 
 14 OBERMANN 
 
 no deeds so great but that I could 
 accomplish them. . . . 
 
 I write you even as I should talk, as 
 one talks to one's self. At times there 
 is nothing to say, yet one still feels the 
 need of talking ; that is often the mo- 
 ment when one rambles on with the 
 greatest ease. The only kind of walk 
 that gives real pleasure is when we 
 wander without aim, solely for the love 
 of walking, looking for something, we 
 know not what ; when the air is still, 
 the sky gray, and we are free from 
 care, indifferent to time, and plunge at 
 random through the gullies and into the 
 woods of an unknown region ; when 
 we talk of mushrooms, of roes, of the 
 red leaves as they begin to fall ; when 
 I say to you : " This is a spot like the 
 one where my father lingered, ten years 
 ago, to play at quoits with me, and 
 where he left his hanger, which, the 
 next day, could not be found;" when 
 you say to me : " The place where we
 
 OBERMANN 15 
 
 have just crossed the stream would 
 have delighted my father. During the 
 last days of his life he was frequently 
 driven a long distance from the city to 
 a dense wood, where there were rocks 
 and water ; then he left the carriage, 
 and sometimes alone, sometimes with 
 me, he sat on one of the rocks ; we 
 read together the Vies des Plres du de- 
 sert 5 He would say to me : ' If in my 
 youth I had entered a monastery, in 
 answer to the call of God, I should not 
 have suffered all the affliction that has 
 fallen to my lot in the world, I should 
 not to-day be so infirm and so broken ; 
 but I should have had no son, and, in 
 dying, I should leave nothing upon the 
 earth.' " . . . And now he is no longer 
 here ! They are not here ! . . . 
 
 When we used to lose ourselves in 
 the woods of the Forez, we wandered 
 freely and at random. A strange so- 
 lemnity would hover over the memo- 
 ries of a time long since passed away,
 
 16 OBERMANN 
 
 which seemed to come back to us in the 
 depths and the majesty of the woods. 
 How it enlarges the soul to meet with 
 things beautiful, yet unforeseen ! Those 
 things which are the province of the 
 soul ought not, I think, to be fore- 
 known and ordered ; let us leave it to 
 the mind to study by rule, and to bring 
 symmetry into its work. But the heart 
 does not work, and if you call upon it 
 to produce, it will produce nothing ; 
 cultivation makes it sterile. 
 
 LETTER IV 
 
 ly July igth, 1st year. 
 
 MY window was open at night. 
 Towards four o'clock I was 
 awakened by the splendor of the dawn, 
 and the scent of the new-mown hay, 
 cut in the fresh night air, by the light 
 of the moon. I looked for an ordinary 
 view ; I was given a moment of won-
 
 OBERMANN 17 
 
 der. The waters, which had already 
 risen by the melting of the Jura snows, 
 were kept at their full by the rains 
 of the summer solstice. The plain be- 
 tween the lake 6 and the Thiele 7 was 
 flooded in parts ; the highest levels 
 formed lonely pastures, rising out of 
 the midst of the fields of water ruffled 
 by the fresh winds of the morning. 
 The waves of the lake were driven 
 afar by the wind, over the half-sub- 
 merged shore. At that moment some 
 cows and goats, and the goatherd play- 
 ing a wild melody on his horn, passed 
 over a dry strip of land between the 
 flooded plain and the Thiele. A few 
 stones, thrown here and there into the 
 deepest places, supported and length- 
 ened out this natural causeway ; the 
 pasture, to which these docile creatures 
 were on their way, was out of sight ; 
 and to watch their slow and uncertain 
 gait, it seemed as though they would 
 step into the lake and be lost. The
 
 i8 OBERMANN 
 
 heights of Anet, and the deep forests 
 of the Jolimont, rose out of the heart 
 of the waters, like a wild and unin- 
 habited island. The hilly chain of the 
 Vuilly bordered the lake on the ho- 
 rizon. Towards the south, it stretched 
 its length behind the slopes of Mont- 
 rnirail ; and beyond all, sixty leagues of 
 a century's ice gave to the whole coun- 
 try that inimitable majesty by which 
 nature with her boldest strokes makes 
 earth sublime. . . . 
 
 In the evening, before the rising of 
 the moon, I walked beside the green 
 waters of the Thiele. Feeling inclined 
 to dream, and finding the air so soft 
 that I could pass the whole night in 
 the open, I followed the road to Saint- 
 Blaise. At the small village of Marin, 
 I turned aside to the lake at the 
 south, and descended a steep bank to 
 the shore, where the waves came to die 
 on the sands. The air was calm, not a 
 sail could be seen on the lake. All were
 
 OBERMANN 19 
 
 at rest, some in the forgetfulness of toil, 
 others in the oblivion of sorrow. The 
 moon rose ; I lingered long. Towards 
 morning she spread over the earth and 
 the waters the ineffable melancholy of 
 her last rays. Nature appears immea- 
 surably grand when, lost in reverie, one 
 hears the rippling of the waves upon 
 the solitary shore, in the calm of a night 
 still resplendent and illumined by the 
 setting moon. 
 
 Ineffable sensibility, charm and tor- 
 ment of our fruitless years, profound 
 realization of a nature everywhere over- 
 whelming and everywhere inscrutable, 
 all-absorbing passion, deepened wisdom, 
 rapturous self-abandonment, all that 
 a human soul can experience of deep de- 
 sire and world-weariness, I felt it all, 
 I lived it all on that memorable night. 
 I have taken a fatal step towards the 
 age of decay ; I have consumed ten 
 years of my life. Happy the simple 
 man whose heart is always young !
 
 20 OBERMANN 
 
 There, in the peace of the night, I 
 questioned my uncertain destiny, my 
 restless heart, and that incomprehensi- 
 ble nature which, containing all things, 
 seems yet not to hold the object of my 
 desires. What am I, then ? I asked 
 myself. What melancholy mixture of 
 all-embracing affection and of indiffer- 
 ence towards every aim of actual life ? 
 
 Always seeking what I shall never 
 find, an alien in the midst of nature, 
 out of place among men, empty af- 
 fections will alone be my lot ; and 
 whether I live unto myself, or whether 
 I live unto men, I shall suffer either 
 oppression from without or restraint 
 from within nothing but the perpet- 
 ual torment of a life forever repressed 
 and forever miserable. . . . 
 
 It is true I love only nature ; but for 
 this very reason, while I love myself, I 
 do not love myself exclusively, and 
 other men are still the part of nature 
 that I love the best. I feel a compel-
 
 OBERMANN 21 
 
 ling power which binds me to every 
 loving influence ; my heart, full of it- 
 self, of humanity, and of the primitive 
 harmony of beings, has never known 
 any personal or contentious passion. I 
 love myself, but as a part of nature, in 
 the order of things which she ordains, 
 in companionship with men whom she 
 chooses, whom she has made, and in 
 harmony with the totality of things. 
 Nothing of what exists, has, in truth, 
 won the fullness of my love, and a void 
 beyond utterance forever fills my trou- 
 bled soul. But all that I love might ex- 
 ist, the whole earth might be according 
 to my heart, without a single change in 
 nature, or in man himself, excepting 
 the ephemeral accidents of the social 
 order. . . . 
 
 I love existing things ; I love them 
 as they are. I neither desire, nor seek, 
 nor imagine anything outside of nature. 
 My thoughts, so far from wandering 
 towards strange or complex aims, so far
 
 22 OBERMANN 
 
 from being attracted to remote or un- 
 usual things, and I, so far from being 
 indifferent to what is around me, to 
 what nature daily produces, or aspiring 
 to what is denied me, to things foreign 
 and unfamiliar, to improbable circum- 
 stances, and to a romantic destiny, 
 I desire, I ask of nature and of man, I 
 claim for the whole span of my life, 
 only those things which belong inevi- 
 tably to nature, which all men must 
 possess, which alone can employ our 
 days and fill our hearts, and which form 
 the groundwork of life. 
 
 While I do not crave what is com- 
 plex and uncommon, neither do I long 
 for what is novel, varied, or profuse. 
 What has once pleased me, will always 
 please me ; what has before satisfied 
 me, will satisfy me always. 8 A day like 
 unto the day that once was happy, is 
 still a happy day for me. . . . 
 
 The love of power or of riches is 
 almost as foreign to my nature as envy,
 
 OBERMANN 23 
 
 hatred, or revenge. Nothing should 
 alienate me from other men. I am 
 the rival of none ; I can no more envy 
 than hate them; I should refuse what 
 impassions them, I should decline to 
 triumph over them, and I do not even 
 desire to surpass them in virtue. I rely 
 upon my natural goodness. Happy in 
 that I need make no effort not to do 
 wrong, I shall not torment myself 
 without cause ; and provided I am an 
 honest man, I shall not pretend to be 
 virtuous. 
 
 Virtue is a high merit, but I rejoice 
 in that it is not indispensable to me, 
 and I leave it to other men ; the only 
 rivalry that might have existed between 
 us, is thus destroyed. Their virtues are 
 as ambitious as their passions ; they dis- 
 play them with ostentation, and what 
 they strive for is, above all, priority. 
 I am not, nor shall I ever be, their com- 
 petitor, even on this point. What do I 
 lose by the concession of this superior- 
 
 

 
 24 OBERMANN 
 
 ity ? In what they call virtues, the only 
 ones that are useful are natural, in a 
 man constituted as I am, and as I would 
 willingly believe all men originally are ; 
 the others, complex, austere, arrogant, 
 and imposing, do not take their spring 
 directly from man's nature. This is 
 why I consider them either false or 
 empty, and am not anxious to obtain 
 credit for them, a credit which is in 
 any case rather uncertain. . . . 
 
 Whatever happens, I must remain 
 always the same, and always myself; 
 not precisely what I am in the midst 
 of ways antagonistic to my nature, but 
 what I feel myself to be, what I desire 
 to be, what I am in that internal life, 
 which is the only refuge of my sorrow- 
 ful affections. 
 
 I shall examine myself, I shall study 
 myself, I shall sound this heart, which 
 is naturally true and loving, but which 
 much weariness may have already dis- 
 couraged. I shall decide what I am, or
 
 OBERMANN 25 
 
 rather what I ought to be ; and having 
 once established this type, I shall strive 
 to preserve it throughout my life, con- 
 vinced that whatever is natural to me 
 is neither dangerous nor to be con- 
 demned, firm in the belief that one is 
 never right unless following one's own 
 nature, 9 and fully determined to repress 
 nothing in myself, excepting what 
 would tend to alter my original estate. 
 I have known the enthusiasm of the 
 sterner virtues ; in my proud error, 
 I thought to replace all the motive 
 powers of social life by this other, 
 equally illusive, motive power. My 
 stoic strength braved misfortune, as 
 well as passions, and I was convinced 
 that I should be the happiest of men 
 if I were the most virtuous. The illu- 
 sion lasted, in its full force, for about a 
 month ; a single incident swept it away. 
 Then it was that all the bitterness of a 
 colorless and fleeting life came to fill 
 my soul, after it had renounced the last 

 
 26 OBERMANN 
 
 spell that had beguiled it. Since then 
 I have made no further pretence of 
 employing my life ; I seek only to fill 
 it. I exact, not that it shall be virtuous, 
 but that it shall never be culpable. 
 
 And how can one aspire even to this, 
 how attain it ? Where can one find 
 days that are easy, simple, employed, 
 uniform ? How escape misfortune ? 
 This is the limit of my desire. But 
 what a destiny, when sorrows endure, 
 and pleasures vanish ! Perchance some 
 days of peace will be granted to me ; 
 but never again enchantment, never 
 intoxication, never a moment of pure 
 joy ; never! and I am not yet twenty- 
 one ! and I was born sensitive, ardent ! 
 and I have never tasted the joys of fru- 
 ition ! and after death . . . Nothing 
 more in life, nothing in nature. . . . 
 I have not wept ; the fountain of my 
 tears is dry. . . . 
 
 You who know me, who understand 
 me, but who, happier and wiser than I,
 
 OBERMANN 27 
 
 submit without impatience to the cus- 
 toms of life, you realize, in this our 
 doomed separation, the nature of those 
 desires which in me can never be satis- 
 fied. One thing consoles me ; you are 
 mine ; this feeling will never pass away. 
 . . . You are the staff on which I love 
 to lean amid the restlessness that leads 
 me astray, to which I love to return 
 after I have tried all things, and have 
 found myself alone in the world. Could 
 we live together, were we sufficient 
 unto each other, I should cease my 
 wanderings, I should know rest, I 
 should accomplish something upon the 
 earth, and my life would begin. But 
 I must wait, seek, press onward to the 
 unknown ; and, ignorant of my goal, I 
 must fly from the present, even as 
 though the future held for me some 
 hope. 
 
 : 
 
 | 
 I 
 
 * / '<
 
 28 OBERMANN 
 LETTER V 
 
 Saint-Maurice, August i8th, 1st year. 
 
 AT last I have made up my mind ; 
 I shall pass the winter here. . . . 
 
 I slept at Villeneuve," a melancholy 
 spot in such a beautiful country. Be- 
 fore the heat of the day, I wandered 
 over the wooded slopes of Saint-Try- 
 phon, and through the unbroken stretch 
 of orchards which cover the valley as 
 far as Bex. I walked between the Alps, 
 which, on each side, rose in two high 
 mountain-chains ; surrounded by their 
 snows, I took my way along a level 
 road in the heart of a fruitful country, 
 which, in times past, seems to have lain 
 almost entirely under water. 
 
 The valley of the Rhone, from Mar- 
 tigny to the lake, is almost shut in by 
 rocky ledges, covered with forests and 
 with clearings, which form the first 
 steps of the Dent de Morcles and the Dent 
 
 * 
 
 I
 
 OBERMANN 29 
 
 du Midi, and are divided only by the 
 bed of the river. 12 Towards the north, 
 these ledges are wooded, here and there, 
 with chestnut-trees, and near the sum- 
 mit with fir-trees. In this wild region 
 is my dwelling, at the foot of the Dent 
 du Midi, one of the most beautiful of 
 the Alpine peaks. . . . 
 
 At sight of these gorges, fertile and 
 inhabited, yet still wild, I turned aside 
 from the road to Italy, which at this 
 point takes a bend towards the town of 
 Bex, and pressing on towards the bridge 
 of the Rhone, I wandered through paths 
 and across fields undreamed of by our 
 painters. The bridge, 13 the castle, and 
 the sweep of the Rhone, are grouped, 
 at this point, into a view of singular 
 picturesqueness. As for the town, 14 its 
 only remarkable feature is its simplicity. 
 The site is somewhat melancholy, but 
 of a sadness that I love. The moun- 
 tains are beautiful, the valley level ; the 
 rocks touch the town and seem to 
 

 
 3 o OBERMANN 
 
 cover it ; the muffled rumbling of the 
 Rhone gives a note of melancholy to 
 this land, which lies separated, as it 
 were, from the world, hollowed out 
 and shut in on all sides. Peopled and 
 cultivated, it yet seems at moments 
 touched by the curse or the beauty 
 of the austerity of the deserts, when 
 black clouds overshadow its sweep 
 down the mountain sides, darken the 
 gloomy firs, throng together, are piled 
 mass upon mass, and then, like a som- 
 bre dome, hang motionless above ; or 
 when, on a cloudless day, the sun's burn- 
 ing rays concentrate upon it, make the 
 unseen vapors seethe, cause all things 
 that draw breath beneath the arid sky 
 to throb with a tormenting heat, and 
 turn this all too beautiful solitude into 
 a grievous waste. . . . 
 
 I allowed myself to be allured into 
 staying near Saint-Maurice. ... I wan- 
 dered at random through the neighbor- 
 hood, and looked at the most attractive
 
 OBERMANN 31 
 
 sites, in search of a chance dwelling. 
 The water, the depth of the shade, the 
 solitude of the moors, filled me with 
 delight. ... I had followed the wind- 
 ings of field and forest, had crossed 
 swift streams, when I came upon a 
 lonely house on the edge of the woods, 
 standing among the most solitary clear- 
 ings. A moderately good dwelling, a 
 wooden barn, a vegetable garden bor- 
 dered by a wide stream, two springs of 
 pure water, a few rocks, the sound of 
 the torrents, the land sloping on every 
 side, hawthorn hedges, an abundant 
 vegetation, a broad field stretching out 
 beneath the scattered beeches and chest- 
 nut-trees, even to the foot of the moun- 
 tain-firs, this is Charrieres. . . . 
 
 I want to enjoy Charrieres before 
 the winter. I want to be there for the 
 chestnut harvest, and I am determined 
 not to lose the quiet autumn in its 
 midst. 
 
 In twenty days I shall take posses-
 
 32 OBERMANN 
 
 sion of the house, the chestnut grove, 
 and apart of the meadows and orchards. 
 To the farmer I leave the rest of the 
 pastures and fruit, the vegetable garden, 
 the hemp field, and especially the ara- 
 ble ground. 
 
 The stream winds through my part 
 of the domain. I have the poorest land, 
 but the deepest shades and the most 
 secluded nooks. The moss prevents the 
 harvesting of the hay ; the close-grow- 
 ing chestnut-trees give little fruit; there 
 is no view over the long stretch of the 
 Rhone valley ; everything is wild and 
 neglected ; there is even a narrow space 
 between the rocks which has been left 
 untouched, and where the trees, leveled 
 by the wind and crumbling with age, 
 hold the ooze, and form a kind of dike ; 
 alders and hazel-trees have taken root, 
 and made of it an impenetrable maze. 
 But the stream filters through this mass, 
 and flows, sparkling with foam, into a 
 natural pool wondrously limpid. From
 
 OBERMANN 33 
 
 there it makes its way between the 
 rocks; its hurried waves flow over the 
 moss ; and far below, it slackens its 
 course, leaves the shadows, and passes 
 in front of the house, spanned by a 
 bridge of fir planks. 
 
 Wolves, driven down by the depth 
 of the snows, come, it is said, in winter 
 time, in search of bones and fragments 
 of the food which even in pastoral val- 
 leys is a necessity to man. The fear of 
 these animals has long kept this dwell- 
 ing uninhabited. But such a fear is 
 not what would alarm me. Would that 
 man might leave me free in this lair of 
 the wolves ! 
 
 LETTER VI 
 
 Saint -Maurice, August 26th, 1st year. 
 
 DO you believe that a man who 
 has fulfilled his time without 
 having loved has truly entered into the
 
 34 OBERMANN 
 
 mysteries of life, that his heart is known 
 to him, and that the fullness of his ex- 
 istence has been revealed to him ? To 
 me it seems as though he had halted 
 half way, and had seen only from afar 
 what the world might have held for 
 him. 
 
 LETTER VII 
 
 Saint-Maurice, September jd, 1st year. 
 
 1HAVE been to the region of per- 
 petual ice, on the Dent du Midi. 
 Before the sun shone upon the valley 
 I had already reached the bluff over- 
 looking the town, and was crossing 
 the partly cultivated stretch of ground 
 which covers it. I went on by a steep 
 ascent, through dense forests of fir- 
 trees, leveled in many places by win- 
 ters long since passed away : fruitful 
 decay, vast and confused mass of a veg- 
 etation that had died and had regermi-
 
 OBERMANN 35 
 
 nated from the remains of its former 
 life. At eight o'clock I had reached 
 the bare summit which crowns the as- 
 cent, and which forms the first salient 
 step in that wondrous pile whose high- 
 est peak still rose so far beyond me. 
 Then I dismissed my guide, and put 
 my own powers to the test. I wanted 
 that no hireling should intrude upon 
 this Alpine liberty, that no man of 
 the plains should come to weaken the 
 austerity of these savage regions. I felt 
 my whole being broaden, as it was 
 left alone among the obstacles and the 
 dangers of a rugged nature, far from 
 the artificial trammels and the ingen- 
 ious oppression of men. 
 
 I stood fixed and exultant as I 
 watched the rapid disappearance of the 
 only man whom I was likely to see 
 among these mighty precipices. On 
 the ground I left watch, money, every- 
 thing that I had about me, and almost 
 all my clothing, . . . and holding be-
 
 36 OBERMANN 
 
 tween my teeth the branch I had cut 
 to help me in the descent, I started to 
 crawl along the ridge of rocks which 
 connects this minor peak with the prin- 
 cipal mass. Several times I dragged my- 
 self between two bottomless chasms. 
 And in this way I reached the granite 
 peaks. 
 
 My guide had told me that I could 
 climb no higher, and for some time I 
 was brought to a standstill. But at last, 
 by descending a short distance, I found 
 an easier way, and, climbing with the 
 audacity of a mountaineer, I reached a 
 hollow filled with frozen and crusted 
 snow, which had lain unmelted by the 
 summer suns. Still I mounted higher ; 
 but on reaching the foot of the high- 
 est peak of the Dent, I found I could 
 not climb to its summit, for its steep 
 sides were scarcely out of the perpen- 
 dicular, and it seemed to rise five hun- 
 dred feet above me. 
 
 I had crossed few fields of snow, yet
 
 OBERMANN 37 
 
 my unprotected eyes, wearied by its 
 brilliancy, and parched by the glare 
 of the noon sun on its frozen surface, 
 could see but vaguely the surrounding 
 objects. Besides, many of the peaks 
 were unknown to me, and I could be 
 sure of only the most important ones. 
 Yet I could not mistake the colossal 
 summit of Mont Blanc, which rose far 
 above me; that of Velan; one more 
 distant, but still higher, which I took 
 to be Mont Rosa ; and, on the opposite 
 side of the valley, near me but lower 
 down, the Dent de Morcles, beyond the 
 chasms. The peak that I could not 
 climb, shut off what was perhaps the 
 most striking part of this vast scene. 
 For, behind it, stretched the long depths 
 of the Valais, inclosed on each side by 
 the glaciers of Sanetsch, of Lauterbrun- 
 nen, and of the Pennine Alps, and end- 
 ing in the domes of the Saint Gothard 
 and the Titlis, the snows of the Furca, 
 and the pyramids of the Schreckhorn 
 and the Finster-Aar-Horn.
 
 38 OBERMANN 
 
 But this view of the mountain-tops 
 outspread at the feet of man, this view 
 so grand, so majestic, so far removed 
 from the monotonous vacuity of the 
 plains, was still not the object of my 
 quest in the midst of unfettered nature, 
 of silent fixity, of unsullied ether. On 
 the lowlands, natural man is of neces- 
 sity undergoing continual change by 
 breathing that social atmosphere, so 
 dense, stormy, seething, forever trou- 
 bled by the clamor of the arts, the din 
 of ostensible pleasures, the cries of hate, 
 and the endless laments of anxiety and 
 of sorrow. But on those desert peaks, 
 where the sky is measureless, and the 
 air is more stable, and time less fleeting, 
 and life more permanent, there, all 
 nature gives eloquent expression to a 
 vaster order, a more visible harmony, 
 an eternal whole. There, man is rein- 
 stated in his changeful but indestructi- 
 ble form ; he breathes a free air far from 
 social emanations ; he exists only for
 
 OBERMANN 39 
 
 himself and for the universe ; he lives 
 a life of reality in the midst of sublime 
 unity. 
 
 This was the feeling that I desired, 
 that I sought. Uncertain of myself, in 
 an order of things which has been de- 
 vised with unwearied pains by ingen- 
 ious and childish minds, I scaled the 
 heights to ask of nature why I should 
 feel ill at ease in their midst. I wished 
 to know whether my existence was out 
 of place in the human economy, or 
 whether the present social order is un- 
 related to eternal harmony, like some 
 irregularity or accidental exception in 
 the progress of the world. At last I 
 believe I am sure of myself. There are 
 moments which dispel mistrust, pre- 
 judice, uncertainties, when the truth 
 comes to us with an overruling and un- 
 alterable conviction. . . . 
 
 I cannot give you a true impression 
 of this new world, or express the per- 
 manence of the mountains in the Ian-
 
 40 OBERMANN 
 
 guage of the plains. The hours seemed 
 to me both more serene and more pro- 
 ductive; and, even as though the plan- 
 ets, amid the universal calm, had been 
 arrested in their course, I was conscious 
 that the gradual train of my thoughts, 
 full of deliberation and of energy, could 
 in no wise be hastened, yet was press- 
 ing forward at unusual speed, . . . and 
 I inferred that the consciousness of 
 existence is really more inert and more 
 sterile amid the tumult of human sur- 
 roundings. I realized that thought, 
 while less hurried, is more truly active 
 among the mountains on their peace- 
 ful heights even though visible move- 
 ments are more gradual. The man of 
 the valleys consumes without enjoyment 
 the span of his restless and feverish 
 days ; he is like unto those ever-moving 
 insects which waste their efforts in futile 
 vacillations, while others, equally weak, 
 but more tranquil, by their straight and 
 unflagging course, outstrip them in the 
 race.
 
 
 OBERMANN 41 
 
 The day was hot, the horizon veiled 
 with haze, the valleys flooded with mist. 
 The brilliancy of the fields of ice filled 
 the lower atmosphere with its lumi- 
 nous reflections; but an undreamed-of 
 purity seemed to form the essence of 
 the air I breathed. At that height, 
 no exhalations from the lowlands, no 
 effects of light and shade, either dis- 
 turbed or interrupted the vague and 
 sombre depth of the skies. Their seem- 
 ing color was no longer that pale and 
 luminous blue, the soft canopy of the 
 plains, the charming and delicate blend 
 which forms a visible inclosure to 
 the inhabited earth, and is a rest and 
 a goal to the eye. In those high re- 
 gions, the invisible ether allowed the 
 gaze to lose itself in boundless space ; 
 in the midst of the splendor of the 
 sun and of the glaciers, to seek other 
 worlds and other suns, as under the 
 vast sky of the night ; and above the 
 burning atmosphere of the day, to pen- 
 etrate a nocturnal universe.
 
 42 OBERMANN 
 
 Stealthily the mist rose from the 
 glaciers and was shaped into clouds 
 at my feet. The snows had lost their 
 dazzling brightness, and the sky grew 
 deeper still and full of shadow. A fog 
 covered the Alps ; here and there a sol- 
 itary peak rose out of this ocean of 
 mist ; held in their rugged clefts, lines 
 of shimmering snow gave the gran- 
 ite a blacker and a sterner look. The 
 snow-white dome of Mont Blanc lifted 
 its imperishable mass above this gray 
 and moving sea, above these drifts of 
 fog, which were furrowed by the wind 
 and piled in towering waves. A black 
 point appeared in this abyss; it rose 
 rapidly, and came straight towards me ; 
 it was the mighty eagle of the Alps; 
 his wings were wet, his eye fierce ; he 
 was in search of prey, but at the sight 
 of man he fled with a sinister cry and 
 was lost as he plunged into the clouds. 
 Twenty times the cry reechoed, but 
 the sounds were short and sharp, like
 
 OBERMANN 43 
 
 twenty separate cries in the univer- 
 sal silence. Then absolute stillness fell 
 upon all things, as though sound itself 
 had ceased to exist, and the power of 
 sound had been effaced from the uni- 
 verse. Never has silence been known 
 in the tumultuous valleys ; only on the 
 icy summits does that stability, that 
 solemn permanence reign, which no 
 tongue can express, which the imagi- 
 nation is powerless to attain. Except 
 for the memories of the plains, man 
 could not conceive of any movement 
 in nature beyond himself; the course 
 of the planets would be incomprehen- 
 sible ; even to the changes of the mist, 
 everything would seem to subsist in the 
 very act of change. Each actual mo- 
 ment having the appearance of conti- 
 nuity, 13 man would have the certainty 
 without ever having the sentiment of 
 the succession of things ; and the per- 
 petual mutations of the universe would 
 be to his mind an impenetrable mystery.
 
 44 OBERMANN 
 
 I wish that I could have kept surer 
 records, not of my general impressions 
 in that land of silence, for they will 
 never be forgotten, but of the ideas to 
 which they gave birth, and of which 
 scarcely a memory has been left to me. 
 In the midst of scenes so different, the 
 imagination recalls with difficulty an 
 order of thought which seems to be in 
 disaccord with all the objects of its pre- 
 sent surroundings. I should have had 
 to write down what I felt ; but then 
 my emotions would soon have fallen to 
 the level of everyday experience. This 
 solicitude to harvest one's thought for 
 future use has in it an element of ser- 
 vility which belongs to the painstaking 
 efforts of a dependent life. 
 
 Not in moments of ardor does one 
 take heed of other times and other men ; 
 in those hours one's thoughts are not 
 born for the sake of artificial conven- 
 tionalities, of fame, or even for the 
 good of others. One is more natural,
 
 OBERMANN 45 
 
 without even a desire to utilize the pre- 
 sent moment : no thoughts that come 
 at one's behest, no reflection, no spirit 
 of intellectual investigation, no search 
 for hidden things, no attempt to find 
 the new and strange. Thought is not 
 active and ordered, but passive and free: 
 dreams, and complete abandonment ; 
 depth without comprehension, great- 
 ness without enthusiasm, energy with- 
 out volition ; to muse, not to meditate, 
 this is one's attitude. Do not, then, 
 be surprised if, after an experience in 
 thought and emotion which will per- 
 haps never be repeated during my life, 
 I still have nothing to tell you. You 
 remember those nature-lovers of the 
 Dauphine, who expected so much from 
 Jean-Jacques, and were so bitterly dis- 
 appointed. They went with him to a 
 vantage ground well suited to the kin- 
 dling of a poetic genius ; they waited 
 for a magnificent burst of eloquence ; 
 but the author of Julie sat on the
 
 46 OBERMANN 
 
 ground, dallied with some blades of 
 grass, and said not a word. 
 
 It may have been five o'clock when 
 I noticed how the shadows began to 
 lengthen, and how the cold crept over 
 me, in the angle, open to the western 
 sky, where I had long lain upon the 
 granite rock. It was too treacherous to 
 walk over those steep crags, and so I 
 could not keep in motion. The mists 
 had disappeared, and I saw that the 
 evening was beautiful even in the val- 
 leys. . . . 
 
 Descending once more to inhabited 
 earth, I felt that I again took up the 
 long chain of anxieties and weariness. 
 I returned at ten o'clock ; the moon 
 shone upon my window. I heard the 
 rushing of the Rhone ; there was no 
 wind ; the city slept. I thought of the 
 mountains I had left, of Charrieres 
 which is to be my home, of the lib- 
 erty which I have claimed as mine.
 
 OBERMANN 47 
 
 LETTER VIII 
 
 Saint-Maurice, September ifth, 1st year. 
 
 I HAVE just returned from a trip 
 of several days among the moun- 
 tains. . . . Before retiring, I opened a 
 letter; it was not, in your handwriting ; 
 the word haste, written in a conspic- 
 uous way, rilled me with uneasiness. 
 Everything is open to suspicion when 
 one has with difficulty escaped from 
 former fetters. . . . 
 
 I think you will readily suspect what 
 it was. I was crushed, overwhelmed ; 
 then I decided to neglect everything, 
 to rise above everything, to forever 
 abandon all things that would be a 
 link to the life I had left behind. But 
 after many uncertainties, whether rea- 
 sonable or weak I know not, I thought 
 it best to sacrifice the present, for the 
 sake of future rest and security. I sub- 
 mit, I leave Charrieres.
 
 48 OBERMANN 
 
 This morning I could not endure 
 the thought of so great a change. I 
 went to Charrieres. ... I stood among 
 the fields ; it was the last mowing. I 
 lingered on a rock, to see only the 
 sky ; it was veiled with haze. I looked 
 at the chestnut-trees; the leaves were 
 falling. Then I went to the river, as 
 though I feared lest that also might be 
 silent ; but it was still flowing. 
 
 Inexplicable necessity of human af- 
 fairs ! I am going to Lyons ; I shall go 
 to Paris ; this is my decision. Farewell. 
 Let us pity the man who finds but lit- 
 tle, and from whom even that little is 
 taken away. 
 
 LETTER I X 
 
 Lyons, October 22d, 1st year. 
 
 1LEFT for Meterville two days 
 after your departure from Lyons, 
 and spent eighteen days there. . . . The
 
 OBERMANN 49 
 
 grounds are not extensive, and the 
 situation is more restful than striking. 
 You know the owners, their character, 
 their ways, their simple friendship, their 
 winning manners. I arrived at a happy 
 moment. On the following day the 
 grapes were to be gathered from a long 
 trellis, open to the south, and facing the 
 woods of Armand. At supper-time it 
 was decided that the grapes, which were 
 to be made into choice wine, must be 
 carefully picked with our own hands, 
 so as to leave the unripe bunches on 
 the vines to mature. 
 
 On the next day, as soon as the 
 morning mists had lifted, I put a win- 
 nowing fan on a wheelbarrow, and was 
 the first to go to the farther end of the 
 vineyard and begin the harvesting. I 
 worked almost alone, without trying to 
 find a quicker method ; I liked this 
 deliberate way, and saw with regret 
 that others came, now and then, to 
 help ; the harvesting lasted, I believe, for
 
 50 OBERMANN 
 
 twelve days. My wheelbarrow came 
 and went through unfrequented paths, 
 overgrown with wet grass ; I chose the 
 least level, the most uneven ones, and 
 thus the days passed by in forgetfulness, 
 in the heart of the mist, in the midst 
 of the fruit, under an autumn sun. And 
 when the evening came, we drank our 
 tea, with milk warm from the cow, and 
 smiled at the men who go in search of 
 pleasures ; we walked beside the old 
 yoke-elms, and we lay down content. 
 
 I have seen the vanities of life, and 
 in my heart I carry the glowing germ 
 of the strongest passions. There, too, 
 I bear the consciousness of great social 
 issues, and of philosophic ideas. I have 
 read Marcus Aurelius, and was not sur- 
 prised ; I can conceive of the sterner 
 virtues, and even of monastic heroism. 
 All this can stir my soul, but cannot 
 fill it. My wheelbarrow, which I load 
 with fruit and push gently along, is a 
 firmer support. The hours move peace-
 
 OBERMANN 51 
 
 fully on, and this slow and useful mo- 
 tion, this measured walk, seem better 
 to represent the needs of our daily life. 
 
 LETTER XI 
 
 Paris, June 2fth y 2d year. 
 
 1 OFTEN spend a couple of hours 
 at the library, not exactly to gain 
 knowledge, for that desire has mate- 
 rially cooled of late, but because, not 
 knowing how to fill those hours which 
 still flow irrevocably on, I find them 
 less intolerable when employed outside 
 than when consumed in the house. Oc- 
 cupations that are somewhat regulated 
 suit me in my discouragement ; too 
 much liberty would leave me in indo- 
 lence. I feel more at rest among peo- 
 ple as silent as myself than when I am 
 alone in the midst of a seething crowd. 
 I love those long halls, some empty, 
 others filled with studious men, the an-
 
 52 OBERMANN 
 
 cient and cold repository of all human 
 vanities and efforts. . . . 
 
 The halls surround a long, quiet 
 court, overgrown with grass, where 
 two or three statues stand, a few ruins, 
 and a basin of green water, which looks 
 to be as old as the monuments. I rarely 
 leave without lingering for a time in 
 this silent inclosure. I love to dream as 
 I walk upon these ancient pavements, 
 cut from the quarries so that their hard 
 and barren surface might be laid be- 
 neath the feet of man. But time and 
 neglect have, in a way, buried them 
 anew under the ground, by covering 
 them with a fresh layer of earth, and 
 adding the green grass and the hues 
 that were its portion of old. I find 
 these pavements more eloquent, at 
 times, than the books that have ab- 
 sorbed me. 
 
 Yesterday, when I was consulting 
 the Encyclopedic, I opened the volume 
 at a chance page, and do not even re-
 
 OBERMANN 53 
 
 member now the title of the article ; 
 but it spoke of a man, who, weary 
 of tumult and affliction, plunged into 
 complete solitude by following out one 
 of those resolutions which conquer cir- 
 cumstances and lead us to congratulate 
 ourselves forever after on having had so 
 much strength of will. The idea of 
 this independent life did not recall to 
 my imagination either the free soli- 
 tudes of the Ismaus, or the happy 
 isles of the Pacific, or the nearer Alps 
 already so deeply regretted. But a clear 
 memory pictured vividly to my mind, 
 with a sense of wonder and inspiration, 
 the barren rocks and the woods of Fon- 
 tainebleau. . . . 
 
 You know that when I was still 
 young, I lived for several years in Paris. 
 My parents, in spite of their love for 
 the city, spent, at different times, the 
 month of September with friends in 
 the country. One year it was at Fon- 
 tainebleau, and twice again we stayed
 
 54 OBERMANN 
 
 with these same friends, who, at that 
 time, lived at the foot of the forest, 
 towards the river. I was, I believe, 
 fourteen, fifteen, and seventeen years 
 of age, when I saw Fontainebleau. Af- 
 ter a restricted, inactive, and tedious 
 childhood, I felt as a man in some 
 ways, but was still a child in many 
 others. Awkward and timid, anticipat- 
 ing all things, it may be, but knowing 
 nothing, an alien amid my surroundings, 
 my nature was characterized by restless- 
 ness and discontent. The first time I 
 went to the forest I was not alone ; I 
 cannot clearly recall my impressions, 
 and merely know that that spot was 
 dearer to me than any other, and was 
 the only one to which I longed to re- 
 turn. 
 
 The following year I wandered 
 eagerly through these solitudes ; I pur- 
 posely went astray, and was overjoyed 
 when I had completely lost my way, 
 and could not find any frequented path.
 
 OBERMANN 55 
 
 When I came to the edge of the forest, 
 I saw with regret the wide expanse of 
 bare plains, and the distant steeples. 
 Then I turned back and plunged into 
 the densest part of the woods, and when 
 I reached a clearing, shut in on all 
 sides, where nothing could be seen but 
 stretches of sand and of juniper- trees, 
 there came to me a sense of peace, of 
 liberty, of savage joy, the sway of nature 
 first felt in careless youth. Yet I was 
 not gay ; almost happy, I felt only the 
 exuberance of well-being. But enjoy- 
 ment grew wearisome, and a feeling of 
 sadness crept over me as I turned my 
 steps homeward. 
 
 Often I was in the forest before the 
 rising of the sun. I climbed the hills 
 still deep in shadow ; I was all wet 
 from the dew-covered underbrush ; and 
 when the sun shone out I still longed 
 for that mystic light, precursor of the 
 dawn. I loved the deep gullies, the dark 
 valleys, the dense woods ; I loved the
 
 56 OBERMANN 
 
 hills covered with heather; I loved the 
 fallen boulders and the rugged rocks, 16 
 and, still better, I loved the moving 
 sands, their barren wastes untrodden by 
 the foot of man, but furrowed here and 
 there by the restless tracks of the roe 
 or the fleeing hare. When I saw a 
 squirrel, when I startled a deer, I paused, 
 I felt more content, and for a moment 
 I ceased my wanderings. It was then 
 that I noticed the birch, a lonely tree 
 which even in those days rilled me with 
 sadness, and which, since that time, I 
 have never seen without a sense of 
 pleasure. I love the birch; I love that 
 smooth, white, curling bark ; that wild 
 trunk ; those drooping branches ; the 
 flutter of the leaves, and all that aban- 
 donment, simplicity of nature, attitude 
 of the desert. 
 
 Wasted hours, never to be forgotten ! 
 Vain illusions of a responsive and im- 
 pressionable nature ! How great is man 
 in his inexperience ; how productive
 
 OBERMANN 57 
 
 would he be, if the cold glance of his 
 fellow, the sterile breath of injustice, 
 came not to wither his heart ! I had 
 need of happiness. I was born to suf- 
 fer. You know those sombre days, fore- 
 runners of the frost, when even the 
 dawn, as it gathers the mist, heralds 
 the light by touching the cloud-mass 
 with a sinister glow of fiery color. 
 That gloomy veil, those sudden gales, 
 those pale gleams, that whistling of the 
 wind through the trees as they bend 
 and tremble, those endless wails like fu- 
 neral lamentations, such is the morn- 
 ing of life ; at noon, colder and more 
 enduring gales ; at eventide, denser 
 gloom, and the day of man is finished. 
 That specious and perpetual illusion, 
 which is born with the heart of man, 
 and would seem to have a life as en- 
 during as his own, was rekindled in 
 me one day ; I went so far as to think 
 that my longings would be fulfilled. 
 But this sudden and all too impetuous
 
 58 OBERMANN 
 
 fire burned itself out in empty space, 
 and was quenched ere it had shed 
 abroad one ray of light. Even as in the 
 season of storms a sudden lightning- 
 streak will gleam in the cloud - dark 
 night, to alarm all living creatures. 
 
 It was in March ; I was at Lu . 
 There were violets at the foot of the 
 thickets, and lilacs in a little meadow, 
 springlike and peaceful, open to the 
 southern sun. The house stood high 
 above. A terraced garden hid the win- 
 dows from sight. Below the meadow, 
 steep and rugged rocks formed wall 
 upon wall ; at the foot, a wide torrent, 
 and beyond, other ledges covered with 
 fields, with hedges, and with firs ! 
 Across all this stretched the ancient 
 walls of the city ; an owl had made his 
 home among the ruined towers. In 
 the evening, the moon shone, distant 
 horns gave answering calls ; and the 
 voice that I shall never hear again ! . . . 
 All this deceived me. My life has, be-
 
 OBERMANN 59 
 
 fore now, held but this solitary mistake. 
 Why then this memory of Fontaine- 
 bleau, and not that of Lu ? 
 
 LETTER XII 
 
 July 28th, 2d year. 
 
 AT last I feel as though I were in 
 the desert. Here, there are wide 
 tracts of land without a trace of man. 
 I have escaped, for a season, from those 
 restless cares which consume our years, 
 mingle our life with the darkness that 
 goes before, and the darkness that fol- 
 lows after, and grant it no larger boon 
 than to be a less tranquil void. . . . 
 
 Can you understand the joy I feel 
 when my foot sinks into the moving 
 and burning sands, when I walk with 
 difficulty, and there is no water, no 
 freshness, no shade ? I see a mute and 
 barren stretch of land ; bare, decayed, 
 and shattered rocks ; and the forces
 
 60 OBERMANN 
 
 of nature laid under subjection to the 
 forces of time. Is it not like unto a 
 sense of peace that falls upon me, 
 when I find, in the outer world, beneath 
 a burning sky, obstacles and excesses 
 other than those of my own heart ? 
 
 I do not care to know where I am ; 
 on the contrary, I go astray whenever 
 I can. Often I walk in a straight line, 
 without following any path. I strive 
 not to keep any trace of my way, and 
 not to grow too familiar with the for- 
 est, so as always to have something 
 new to find. There is one path that I 
 love to follow ; it winds in a circle, 
 keeping to the line of the forest, and 
 leads neither to the plains nor to the 
 city ; it goes by no wonted course ; it 
 is neither in the valleys nor on the 
 heights ; it seems to have no end ; it 
 passes through everything, it reaches 
 nothing ; I think I shall tread this path 
 all my life. .... 
 
 In former days, when I wandered
 
 6i 
 
 through these woods, I saw, in a dense 
 thicket, two roes fleeing from a wolf, 
 who was close upon them. I felt sure 
 he would capture them, and followed, 
 to be in at the struggle, and to help 
 them if I could. They sprang from 
 the cover of the woods into a clear- 
 ing filled with rocks and heather ; but 
 when I reached the spot they were out 
 of sight. Then I scrambled down into 
 the very depths of the rough and hol- 
 low moor, from which large quantities 
 of sandstone had been quarried for the 
 street pavements ; but I found nothing. 
 On my way back to the forest by a dif- 
 ferent path, I came upon a dog, who 
 stood gazing at me in silence until I 
 started to move on. Then he barked, 
 and I saw that I had almost stepped 
 upon the threshold of the dwelling 
 over which he was watching. It was 
 a sort of cave, inclosed partly by a nat- 
 ural wall of rock, and partly by piles of 
 stones, branches of juniper, and heaps
 
 62 OBERMANN 
 
 of heather and moss. A workman, who 
 for more than thirty years had cut stone 
 in the neighboring quarries, having 
 neither family nor goods, had retired 
 to this spot so as to be released from 
 forced labor in his last days, and to 
 escape the workhouse and contempt. 
 Near his rock-dwelling, in a barren 
 piece of ground, was a garden plot; 
 and together they lived, he, his dog, and 
 his cat, on bread, water, and liberty. 17 
 " I have worked much, and have had 
 nothing," he said to me ; " but at last 
 I am at rest, and soon I shall die." It 
 was the story of humanity, told me by 
 this uncouth man. . . . 
 
 You may now understand the power 
 of the memory that came to me so 
 unexpectedly at the library. This sud- 
 den thought opened up to me the full 
 consciousness of a real life, a wise sim- 
 plicity, the freedom of man amid a 
 nature of which he is the master. 
 
 Not that I consider as such the life
 
 OBERMANN 63 
 
 that I lead here, nor think that in the 
 midst of my rocks, surrounded by the 
 wretched plains, I am the man of na- 
 ture. . . . But, since I am condemned 
 ever to wait for life, I strive to vege- 
 tate alone and in solitude. . . . 
 
 May I once again, beneath the au- 
 tumn sky, in the last of the beautiful 
 days that are filled with the mystery of 
 the mist, seated by the side of the stream 
 that carries the yellowed leaf upon its 
 current, may I listen to the deep and 
 simple notes of an artless melody. May 
 I one day, as I climb the Grimsel or the 
 Titlis, alone with the man of the moun- 
 tains, listen, while lying near the snows 
 upon the close-cut grass, to the famil- 
 iar and romantic sounds of the cows of 
 Unterwalden and of Hasli ; and once 
 before I die, may I there say to a man 
 who can understand me : Had we but 
 lived !
 
 64 OBERMANN 
 
 LETTER XI I I 
 
 Fontainebleau, July 3 1st, 2d year. 
 
 WHEN an irresistible feeling 
 carries us far beyond the 
 things that are ours, and fills us first 
 with rapture, then with regret, giving us 
 a vision of blessings which are beyond 
 our reach, this deep and fleeting sense 
 is but the inner proof of the superiority 
 of our faculties over our destiny. And 
 for this very reason it lingers but for a 
 while, and is soon changed to regret ; 
 it is enchanting, then heartrending. 
 Dejection follows every immoderate 
 impulse. We suffer for not being what 
 we might be ; but were we to find our- 
 selves in that order of things for which 
 we long, we should no longer have 
 either that excess of desire or that 
 redundance of faculties ; we should no 
 longer enjoy the delight of being above
 
 OBERMANN 65 
 
 our destiny, greater than our environ- 
 ment, more productive than we have 
 need to be. Were we to be in posses- 
 sion of those delights which our im- 
 agination had so ardently pictured, we 
 should be found cold, often dreamy, 
 indifferent, even wearied ; because we 
 cannot produce beyond our possibil- 
 ities ; because we should then feel the 
 irresistible limits of our human nature, 
 and, in employing our faculties on the 
 things of actual life, they would no 
 longer be at our service to bear us be- 
 yond, into the imaginary region of the 
 ideal brought into subjection to the 
 sovereignty of actual man. 
 
 But why should these things be 
 purely ideal ? This is what I cannot 
 understand. Why does the non-existent 
 seem more in accord with man's nature 
 than what exists ? Actual life is also 
 like a dream ; it has no whole, no 
 continuity, no end ; it has elements 
 that are positive and settled ; it has
 
 66 OBERMANN 
 
 others that are nought but chance and 
 dissonance, that pass like shadows, and 
 hold nothing but deceptive illusions. 
 Thus, in sleep, we think of things true 
 and connected, and of things strange, 
 disconnected, and chimeric, all united 
 by some indefinable link. The same 
 medley forms the dreams of the night 
 and the sentiments of the day. It has 
 been said, by the wisdom of the an- 
 cients, that the moment of awakening 
 will come at last. 
 
 LETTER XIV 
 
 Fontainebleau, August Jth, 2d year. 
 
 MR. W , whom you know, 
 said recently: "When I take 
 my cup of coffee, I arrange the world 
 to my liking." I, too, indulge in this 
 kind of dream ; and when my path lies 
 through the heather, between the dew- 
 covered junipers, I find myself pictur-
 
 OBERMANN 67 
 
 ing the lot of happy men. I fully be- 
 lieve that men might be happy. It is 
 not my wish to create another species, 
 or a new earth ; it is not my desire to 
 make a widespread reform. That kind 
 of hypothesis leads to nothing, you de- 
 clare, because it is not based on actual 
 life. Then let us take what necessarily 
 exists; let us take it as it is, arranging 
 merely those things that are accidental. 
 I have no longing for new or visionary 
 species ; my materials lie within my 
 reach, and with them I form my plan 
 after my own ideal. 
 
 I want two things : a settled climate, 
 and sincere men. If I know when 
 the rain will overflow the rivers, when 
 the sun will scorch my plants, when the 
 hurricane will shake my cottage, it is 
 the part of my industry to battle with 
 the forces of nature that are arrayed 
 against my needs. But when I am 
 ignorant of the coming event, when 
 misfortune crushes me while I am still
 
 68 OBERMANN 
 
 unwarned of danger, when prudence 
 may be my ruin, and the interests of 
 others confided to my care forbid un- 
 concern and even a sense of security, is 
 not my life, of necessity, both restless 
 and sorrowful ? Is it not inevitable that 
 inaction follows in the train of forced 
 labor, and that I should consume my 
 days, as Voltaire has so well said, in the 
 convulsions of unrest or in the lethargy 
 of weariness ? 
 
 If almost all men are deceitful, if 
 the duplicity of some forces others at 
 least into the refuge of reserve, does 
 it not follow that to the inevitable 
 wrongs against their fellows, commit- 
 ted by some men in their own interests, 
 is added a far larger share of useless 
 wrongs ? Does it not follow that men 
 injure one another without intent, that 
 each one is watchful and guarded, that 
 enemies are inventive, and friends are 
 prudent? Is it not inevitable that an 
 honest man should fall in public esti-
 
 OBERMANN 69 
 
 mation by an indiscreet remark or a 
 false judgment; that an enmity born of 
 a baseless suspicion should grow to be 
 mortal; that those who would have 
 wished to do well are discouraged ; that 
 false principles are established ; that 
 craftiness is of more use than wisdom, 
 valor, or magnanimity ; that children 
 reproach their father for not having 
 been a trickster, and that states perish 
 for not having committed a crime ? In 
 this state of endless uncertainty, I ask 
 what becomes of morality ; and in the 
 uncertainty of things, what becomes of 
 security ; and without security, with- 
 out morality, I ask if happiness is not 
 a child's dream ? . . 
 
 A settled climate, and men sincere, 
 unmistakably sincere, is all I require. 
 I am happy if I am sure of things. I 
 leave to the heavens its storms and its 
 thunderbolts ; to the earth, its mire 
 and its dryness ; to the soil, its steril- 
 ity ; to our bodies, their weakness, their
 
 7 o OBERMANN 
 
 degeneration; to men, their differences 
 and incompatibilities, their faithless- 
 ness, their errors, their vices even, 
 and their necessary egoism ; to time, its 
 slowness and irrevocableness. The city 
 of my dreams is happy, if life is or- 
 dered, and thought undisguised. The 
 only added element it requires is a 
 good government ; and this cannot fail 
 her, if thought is unconcealed. 
 
 LETTER XV 
 
 Fontainebleau, August yth, 2d year. 
 
 THE day was at its close ; there 
 was no moon ; there was no stir; 
 the sky was calm, the trees motionless. 
 A few insects under the grass, a solitary 
 bird singing, far away, in the warmth 
 of the evening. I lingered long, at rest 
 upon the ground; my mind seemed rilled 
 with indistinct ideas. My thoughts 
 wandered over the earth and the
 
 OBERMANN 71 
 
 centuries ; I shuddered at the work of 
 man. I came back to myself, and saw 
 myself in this chaos; I saw my life 
 lost in its depths ; I foresaw the future 
 ages of the world. Rocks of the Righi ! 
 had your chasms been there ! 
 
 Already the night was gloomy. 
 Slowly I left the spot ; I wandered at 
 random, I was filled with weariness. I 
 had need of tears, but could only groan. 
 The early days have passed away ; I feel 
 the torments of youth, but no longer 
 have its consolations. My heart, still 
 wasted by the fire of an immature and 
 profitless age, is withered and parched 
 as though it had reached the exhaustion 
 of the age that has outlived passion. 
 My life is dead, but I am not calm. 
 Some men enjoy their sufferings, but 
 for me all things have passed away ; I 
 have neither joy, nor hope, nor rest ; 
 nothing is left to me, not even tears.
 
 72 OBERMANN 
 
 LETTER XVI 
 
 Fontainebleau, August I2th, 2d year. 
 
 WHAT noble sentiments ! What 
 memories ! What quiet ma- 
 jesty in a night soft, calm, luminous ! 
 What grandeur ! But the soul is over- 
 whelmed with doubt. It sees that the 
 feelings aroused by sentient things lead 
 it into error ; that truth exists, but in 
 the far distance. Nature seems incom- 
 prehensible at sight of those mighty 
 planets in the changeless sky. 
 
 Such permanence is bewildering ; it 
 is to man a fearful eternity. All things 
 pass away ; man passes away, but the 
 worlds do not pass ! Thought is lost 
 in a gulf between the changes of the 
 earth and the immutability of the 
 heavens.
 
 OBERMANN 73 
 
 LETTER XVII 
 
 FontainebleaUy August i^.th y 2d year. 
 
 1GO to the woods before the com- 
 ing of the sun ; I see it rise in a 
 cloudless sky ; I walk in the dew-cov- 
 ered brakes, in the midst of the bram- 
 bles, among the hinds, under the 
 birches of Mont Chauvet. A sense of 
 the happiness that might have been 
 takes full possession of me, drives me 
 onward, and overpowers me. I climb, 
 I descend, I press on like a man longing 
 for joy ; then a sigh, discontent, and a 
 whole day of wretchedness.
 
 74 OBERMANN 
 
 LETTER XVIII 
 
 Fontainebleau, August ifth, 2d year. 
 
 EVEN here I love only the even- 
 ing. The dawn delights me for 
 a moment ; it seems as though I should 
 feel its beauty, but the day which is to 
 follow in its train must be so long ! . . . 
 Here, nothing crushes me, nothing 
 satisfies me. I even believe that my 
 weariness is on the increase ; it is be- 
 cause I do not suffer enough. Am I, 
 then, happier ? Ah, no ; suffering and 
 unhappiness are not the same ; neither 
 are enjoyment and happiness. 
 
 My lot is easy, but my life is sad. I 
 am in the best of surroundings : free, 
 tranquil, well, without cares, indiffer- 
 ent towards the future, from which I 
 expect nothing, and drifting away 
 without regret from the past, which 
 has brought me no joy. But I am filled
 
 OBERMANN 75 
 
 with an unrest that will never leave 
 me ; it is a craving I do not compre- 
 hend, which overrules me, absorbs me, 
 lifts me above the things that perish. 
 . . . You are mistaken, and I too was 
 once mistaken ; it is not the desire for 
 love. A great distance lies between the 
 void that fills my heart and the love 
 that I have so deeply desired ; but the 
 infinite stretches between what I am 
 and what I crave to be. Love is vast, 
 but it is not the infinite. I do not desire 
 enjoyment ; I long for hope, I crave 
 knowledge ! I need endless illusions, 
 which shall ever lure me onwards, and 
 ever deceive me. What do I care for 
 things that will cease to be ? The hour 
 that will come in sixty years is near 
 me now. I have no liking for what 
 is prearranged, for what approaches, 
 arrives, and is then no more. I desire 
 a good, a dream, a hope, that shall be 
 ever before me, beyond me, greater 
 even than my expectation, greater than
 
 76 OBERMANN 
 
 what passes away. I should like to be 
 pure intelligence, and I wish that the 
 eternal order of the world. . . . And 
 thirty years ago the order was, and I 
 was not! 
 
 LETTER XIX 
 
 Fontainebleau, August i8th, 2d year. 
 
 THERE are moments when I am 
 filled with hope and a sense of 
 liberty ; time and things pass before 
 me with majestic harmony, and I feel 
 happy, as though happiness were pos- 
 sible to me. I have surprised myself re- 
 turning to my early years ; once more 
 I have found in the rose the beauty 
 of delight, and its celestial eloquence. 
 Happy ! I ? And yet I am, and happy 
 to overflowing, like one who reawak- 
 ens from the terrors of a dream to a 
 life of peace and liberty ; like one who 
 emerges from the filth of a dungeon,
 
 OBERMANN 77 
 
 and, after ten years, looks once again 
 upon the serenity of the sky; happy 
 like the man who loves the woman he 
 has saved from death ! But the mo- 
 ment passes ; a cloud drifts across the 
 sun and shuts out its inspiring light; 
 the birds are hushed ; the growing dark- 
 ness drives away both my dream and 
 my joy. . . . 
 
 LETTER XX 
 
 Fontainebleau, August 2fth, 2d year. 
 
 HOW few are the needs of the 
 individual who desires only to 
 exist, and how many are those of the 
 man who wishes to live happily and 
 usefully. If a man were strong enough 
 to renounce joy, and realize that it is 
 beyond his reach, he would be far hap- 
 pier ; but must one live forever alone ? 
 Peace itself is a sad blessing when there 
 is no hope of sharing it.
 
 78 OBERMANN 
 
 I know that there are many who care 
 for nothing more lasting than the good 
 of the moment ; and that others know 
 how to limit themselves to a manner of 
 life without order and devoid of taste. 
 . . . Such a life is called a simple life. 
 I call it an unfortunate life, if it is 
 temporary ; a life of misery, if it is ne- 
 cessary and enduring ; but if it is vol- 
 untary, if it is not distasteful, if it is 
 the accepted life of the future, then I 
 call it a life worthy of ridicule. 
 
 Contempt of riches is a beautiful 
 sentiment when expressed in books ; 
 but one who has a family and no money 
 must be either callous, or endowed 
 with resolute strength; and I question 
 whether a man of high character would 
 submit to such a life. One endures 
 whatever is accidental ; but to forever 
 bow one's will before misery is to adopt 
 misery. Are such stoics wanting, per- 
 haps, in that sense of propriety which 
 teaches man that a life of this kind
 
 OBERMANN 79 
 
 is unworthy of his nature ? Their sim- 
 plicity, without order, without delicacy, 
 without shame, approaches nearer, it 
 seems to me, to the gross penitence of 
 a fakir than to the strength and indif- 
 ference of a philosopher. 
 
 There is a propriety, a care, a har- 
 mony, a completeness, even in simpli- 
 city. . . . 
 
 LETTER XXI 
 
 Fontainebleau, September fsf, 2d year. 
 
 THE days are beautiful, and I am 
 filled with profound peace. In 
 times past, I should have enjoyed with 
 keener zest this full liberty, this relin- 
 quishment of all business, of all pro- 
 jects, this complete indifference to 
 events. 
 
 I begin to feel that I am advancing 
 in life. Those exquisite impressions, 
 those sudden emotions which stirred
 
 8o OBERMANN 
 
 me once so deeply, and carried me so 
 far beyond this world of sadness, are 
 now all changed and weakened. That 
 longing, awakened in me by the feel- 
 ing for every beauty which exists in the 
 natural world, that hope so uncertain 
 and so full of charm, that celestial fire 
 which dazzles and consumes the heart 
 of youth, that all-embracing rapture 
 which sheds a light over the vast illu- 
 sion all these have passed away. 
 
 You who know the limitless cravings 
 of my nature tell me what I shall do 
 with my life, when I shall have lost 
 those moments of illusion which shone 
 in the darkness, like tempest-gleams on 
 a stormy night ! They made life more 
 sombre, it is true ; but they were an 
 earnest that it might change, and that 
 the light still burned. . . . 
 
 I was far different in those days 
 when it was possible for me to love. 
 I had been romantic in my childhood, 
 and even then pictured a retreat to my
 
 OBERMANN 81 
 
 taste. . . . The word Chartreuse had 
 impressed me, and there, near Greno- 
 ble, I built the house of my dreams. I 
 then believed that pleasant places went 
 far to make a happy life ; and there, 
 with the woman I loved, I felt that the 
 changeless joy, for which my baffled 
 heart had ardently longed, might at 
 last be mine. ... 
 
 The farther I look back into my 
 youth, the deeper are the impressions 
 I find. If I pass beyond the age when 
 ideas begin to have some breadth ; if I 
 seek in my childhood for the earliest 
 fancies of a melancholy heart, which 
 never had a true childhood, and was 
 intent upon strong emotions and un- 
 usual things at a time when a love or 
 a distaste for play was scarcely devel- 
 oped if I look back to my experi- 
 ences at seven years, at six years, at 
 five years, I find impressions as endur- 
 ing, more confiding, sweeter than than 
 those of later days, and shaped by those
 
 82 OBERMANN 
 
 complete illusions which have been 
 the happiness of no other age. . . . 
 
 September 2d. 
 
 . . . Prettiness amuses the mind, 
 beauty sustains the soul, sublimity 
 astounds or exalts it ; but the beauties 
 that captivate and impassion the heart 
 are broader and more undefined, rare, 
 beyond comprehension, mysterious, and 
 ineffable. 
 
 Thus, love makes all things beauti- 
 ful to hearts capable of loving, and 
 adds a sense of exquisiteness to their 
 feeling for everything in nature. Cre- 
 ating as it does in us the noblest of 
 all possible relationships outside of 
 ourselves, it opens to us the conscious- 
 ness of every relationship, of all har- 
 monies ; it unveils a new world to our 
 affections. Swept along by this swift 
 current, fascinated by this power which 
 holds immeasurable promise, and of 
 which nothing has as yet disillusioned
 
 OBERMANN 83 
 
 us, we seek, we feel, we love, we desire 
 all that nature holds in fee for man. . . . 
 
 LETTER XXII 
 
 Fontainebleau, October 12 th, 2d year. 
 
 1 LONGED to see once more all the 
 places through which I loved to 
 wander in the past. Before the nights 
 grow cold, before the trees lose their 
 leaves, before the birds take wing, I 
 am exploring the most distant parts of 
 the forest. 
 
 Yesterday I was on my way before 
 the break of day ; the moon still shone, 
 and the dawn had not yet dispelled the 
 shadows. The valley of Changis still 
 lay in the shades of night ; but I had 
 already gained the heights of Avon. 18 
 I descended to the Basses-Loges, and 
 reached Valvin as the sun, rising be- 
 hind Samoreau, colored the rocks of 
 Samois. 19
 
 84 OBERMANN 
 
 Valvin is not a village, and has no 
 cultivated land. The inn stands soli- 
 tary, at the foot of a hill, on a small, 
 level strand, between the river and the 
 woods. Valvin or Thomery 20 may be 
 reached by water, in the evening, when 
 the shores are sombre, and we hear the 
 belling of the stags in the forest ; or 
 else, at the rising of the sun, when the 
 earth is still at rest, when the boatman's 
 cry startles the roes, and echoes under 
 the high poplars and through the heath- 
 covered hills all steaming in the early 
 break of day. . . . 
 
 Then I turned to the west, in search 
 of the spring of Mont Chauvet . . . 
 and descended into the quiet valley 
 where its waters are lost without form- 
 ing a stream. In turning aside, to- 
 wards the cross of the Grand- Veneur, 21 
 I came upon a solitude as austere as the 
 wilderness that I am seeking. I passed 
 behind the rocks of Cuvier; I was rilled 
 with sadness; I lingered long among
 
 OBERMANN 85 
 
 the gorges of Apremont. 22 Towards 
 evening I reached the solitudes of the 
 Grand-Franchard, 23 an ancient monas- 
 tery standing alone among the hills 
 and the sands ; . . . the moon shone 
 faintly as if to add to the solitude of 
 this deserted monument. Not a sound, 
 not a bird, not a movement stirred the 
 silence of the night. But, when all 
 that oppresses us is at rest, when all 
 things sleep and leave us to repose, 
 then phantoms hold watch in our own 
 hearts. 
 
 The next day I turned to the south, 
 and, as I wandered among the hills, 
 I watched with delight the gathering 
 of a storm. I found an easy shelter in 
 the hollows of the overhanging cliffs. 
 From the depths of my retreat, I loved 
 to see the junipers and the birches 
 wrestling with the strength of the 
 winds, while their roots were crowded 
 within a small and arid space ; I loved 
 to see them hold their poor and inde-
 
 86 OBERMANN 
 
 pendent life, while their only support 
 was the face of the rocks, in the clefts 
 of which they stood balanced, and their 
 only nourishment a handful of moist 
 earth, caught in the crevices into which 
 their roots had crept. 
 
 When the rain had lessened, I 
 plunged into the wet woods, which 
 were clothed with fresh beauty. I 
 followed the edge of the forest near 
 Recloses, 24 la Vignette, and Bourron. 
 Towards evening, I turned my steps 
 homeward with regret, and felt well 
 pleased with my walk, if anything can 
 give me a sense of pleasure or of re- 
 gret. 
 
 I care no longer for desires ; they do 
 not deceive me. Not that I wish them 
 to die, for such absolute silence would 
 seem more sinister still. But they are 
 like the vain beauty of the rose which 
 blooms before eyes that have closed : 
 they hold up before me what I can 
 never possess, what I can scarcely see.
 
 OBERMANN 87 
 
 If hope seems still to throw a ray of 
 light into the night which envelops 
 me, it heralds nought but the bitterness 
 that is her last bequest before she dies ; 
 it illumines only the depths of the void 
 where I sought, and found nothing. 
 
 Soft climates, beautiful places, the 
 sky of the night, significant sounds, 
 early memories ; times, opportunities ; 
 nature, beautiful and expressive; sub- 
 lime affections all have passed before 
 me, all allure me, and all abandon me. 
 I am alone ; the strength of my heart 
 is not given out, it reacts on itself, it 
 waits. I am here in the world, a wan- 
 derer, solitary in the midst of a people 
 for whom I care nothing ; like a man, 
 deaf for many years, whose eager eyes 
 gaze upon the crowd of silent beings 
 who move and pass before him. He 
 sees everything, but everything is with- 
 held from him ; he divines the sounds 
 that he loves, he seeks them, and hears 
 them not ; he suffers the silence of all 
 

 
 88 OBERMANN 
 
 things in the midst of the noise of the 
 world. Everything passes before him, 
 but he can grasp nothing ; universal 
 harmony reigns in external creation, it 
 is in his imagination, but is not in his 
 heart ; he is apart from the entirety of 
 beings, no bond unites him to them ; 
 in vain do all things exist around him, 
 he lives alone, he is isolated in the 
 midst of the living world. 
 
 LETTER XXIII 
 
 FontainebleaUy October f8th y 2d year. 
 
 WILL it also be given unto man 
 to know the long peace of au- 
 tumn, after the unrest of the strength 
 of his years, even as the fire, after its 
 haste to be consumed, lingers before it 
 is quenched ? 
 
 Long before the equinox, the leaves 
 had fallen in quantities, yet the forest 
 still holds much of its verdure and all
 
 OBERMANN 89 
 
 of its beauty. More than forty days ago 
 everything looked as though it would 
 end before its time, and now all things 
 are enduring beyond their allotted days; 
 receiving, at the very door of destruc- 
 tion, a lengthened life, which lingers 
 on the threshold of its decay with 
 abundant grace or security, and seems 
 to borrow, as it weakens with gentle 
 loitering, both from the repose of ap- 
 proaching death and from the charm 
 of departing life. 
 
 LETTER XXIV 
 
 Fontainebleau, October 28 th, 2d year. 
 
 THE frosts depart, and I give no 
 heed ; spring dies, and I am not 
 moved ; summer passes, and I feel no 
 regret. But I take delight in walking 
 over the fallen leaves, on the last of the 
 beautiful days, in the unclothed forest. 
 Whence come to man the most last-
 
 90 OBERMANN 
 
 ing of the delights of his heart, that 
 rapture of sadness, that charm full of 
 secrets, which make him live on his 
 sorrows and be still content with him- 
 self in the midst of the sense of his 
 ruin ? I cling to the happy season that 
 will soon have passed away; a belated 
 interest, a contradictory delight, draws 
 me to her as she is about to die. The 
 same moral law which makes the idea 
 of destruction painful to me, makes me 
 also love the sentiment of it in the 
 things of this world that must pass away 
 before me. It is natural that we should 
 more fully enjoy the life which perishes, 
 when, conscious of its frailty, we feel 
 that it still lives on within us. When 
 death separates us from things, they 
 subsist without us. But when the leaves 
 fall, vegetation is at an end, and dies ; 
 while we live on for new generations. 
 Autumn is full of delight, because, for 
 us, spring is yet to come. 
 
 Spring is more beautiful in nature ;
 
 OBERMANN 91 
 
 but man, by his works, has made au- 
 tumn sweeter. The awakening green, 
 the singing bird, the opening flower, 
 and that fire which returns to give 
 strength to life, and the shadows which 
 shield those hidden retreats, and that 
 luxuriant grass, that wild fruit, those 
 soft nights which invite to liberty ! Sea- 
 son of joy ! You fill me with dread in 
 my burning unrest. I find deeper re- 
 pose towards the eve of the year ; the 
 season when all things seem to die is 
 the only time when I sleep in peace on 
 the earth of man. 
 
 LETTER XXV 
 
 FontainebleaUy November 6th y 2d year. 
 
 I LEAVE my woods ; I had intended 
 to stay here through the winter, but 
 if I want to free myself from the busi- 
 ness which brought me within reach of 
 Paris, I must neglect it no longer. . . . 

 
 92 OBERMANN 
 
 So I shall leave the forest, its life, its 
 dreamy ways, and the peaceful 4hough 
 imperfect image of a free land. 
 
 LETTER XXX 
 
 Paris., March fth, jd year. 
 
 IT was gloomy and cold ; I was 
 heavy-hearted ; I walked because 
 I could do nothing else. I passed near 
 some flowers, which grew on a wall at 
 arm's height. A daffodil wa^ in bloom, 
 the most perfect expression of longing, 
 the first fragrance of the year. I was 
 filled with a sense of all the joy to 
 which man is heir. That ineffable 
 harmony of beings, the image of the 
 ideal world, took possessioa of me ; 
 never before had I experienced an 
 emotion so instantaneous, and so full 
 of grandeur. 
 
 I know not what form, what ana- 
 logy, what secret affinity led me to see
 
 OBERMANN 93 
 
 in this flower a measureless beauty, the 
 expression, the elegance, the attitude of 
 a happy and simple woman in all the 
 grace and splendor of awakening love. 
 I shall not strive to render that power, 
 that immensity which nothing can ex- 
 press ; that form which nothing can 
 contain ; that idea of a better world 
 which we feel, but which nature can- 
 not have given us ; that celestial ray 
 which we think to grasp, which im- 
 passions us, leads us on, and is nought 
 but an invisible, wandering spirit, stray- 
 ing in the dark abyss. 
 
 But this spirit, this image, touched 
 with a mysterious beauty, mighty with 
 the magic power of the unknown, 
 which has become needful to us in the 
 midst of our miseries, and has grown 
 natural to our overburdened hearts, 
 where is the man who can see it even 
 for a moment, dimly, and ever forget 
 the vision ? 
 
 When the opposition, the inertia of
 
 
 94 OBERMANN 
 
 a power dead, brutal, unclean, fetters 
 us, envelops us, imprisons us, holds us 
 plunged in uncertainties, loathing, puer- 
 ilities, imbecile or cruel follies ; when 
 we know nothing, possess nothing ; 
 when all things pass before us like the 
 whimsical figures of an odious and ab- 
 surd dream, what can repress in our 
 hearts the longing for a different order 
 of things, for another nature ? 
 
 LETTER XXXII 
 
 Paris, April 2Qth, jd year. 
 
 A SHORT while ago, at the Biblio- 
 tfoque, I heard some one near me 
 address by name the famous L. . . . 
 At another time I happened to be sit- 
 ting at the same table with him ; . . . 
 he gave me some idyls, written by an 
 obscure Greek author, which he had 
 found in an old Latin manuscript. 
 
 ' 
 
 ., ' 
 
 - 
 

 
 OBERMANN 95 
 
 LETTER XXXIII 
 
 Paris, May fth y jd year. 
 
 THE author to whom I referred 
 in my last letter said to me yes- 
 terday, " If I mistake not, my idyls 
 do not interest you greatly. Possibly 
 you would prefer a moral or philoso- 
 phic fragment, attributed to Aristippus, 
 spoken of by Varro, and afterwards sup- 
 posed to have been lost. But, as it was 
 translated in the fifteenth century into 
 contemporary French, it must have been 
 still in existence at that time. I found 
 it in manuscript, at the end of an un- 
 used and imperfect copy of Plutarch, 
 published by Amyot." 
 
 I acknowledged that, not being a 
 scholar, I had the misfortune to pre- 
 fer things to words, and was far more 
 deeply interested in the sentiments of 
 Aristippus than in an eclogue, were it 
 written by Bion or Theocritus.
 
 96 OBERMANN 
 
 But, in my opinion, there was not 
 sufficient evidence to prove that Aris- 
 tippus 23 was the author of this short 
 fragment, and we owe it to his mem- 
 ory not to attribute to him what he 
 would perhaps have disclaimed. If he 
 did write it, then the famous Greek, 
 who was as misjudged as Epicurus, and 
 was supposed to have been effeminately 
 voluptuous, or of a too pliant phi- 
 losophy, really possessed that severity 
 which is exacted by prudence and or- 
 der, the only severity which becomes 
 a man born for enjoyment, and a way- 
 farer upon the earth. 
 
 MANUAL OF PSEUSOPHANES 
 
 " Thou hast awakened gloomy, 
 downcast, already weary of the hours 
 that have just begun. Thou hast raised 
 upon life the glance of disgust ; thou 
 hast found her vain, dull ; after a while 
 thou shalt feel her to be more endur- 
 able. Will she then have changed ?
 
 OBERMANN 97 
 
 " She has no definite shape. All the 
 experience of man is in his heart ; all 
 his knowledge is in his thought. His 
 whole life is within himself. 
 
 "What ruin can crush thee thus? 
 What canst thou lose ? Does there 
 exist outside of thee anything that is 
 thine ? Of what account is that which 
 perisheth ? All things pass, excepting 
 justice, which is hidden beneath the 
 veil of mutable things. For man all is 
 vain, unless he walks with an even and 
 tranquil step, obedient to the laws of 
 the intelligence. 
 
 " Everything is in a ferment around 
 thee, everything holds a menace ; if 
 thou givest thyself up to alarms, thy 
 anxieties will be endless. Thou shalt 
 not possess what cannot be possessed, 
 and thou shalt lose thy life which 
 belonged to thee. The things that 
 happen pass away forever. They are 
 necessary accidents, generated in an 
 endless circle ; they vanish even as an 
 unexpected and fleeting shadow.
 
 98 OBERMANN 
 
 " What are thy ills ? Fanciful fears, 
 hypothetical needs, passing vexations. 
 Impotent slave ! Thou cleavest to what 
 does not exist ; thou art the servant of 
 shadows. Leave to the deluded mul- 
 titude whatsoever is illusive, vain, and 
 mortal. Give heed only to intelligence, 
 which is the principle of the order of 
 the world, and to man who is its in- 
 strument ; intelligence which we ought 
 to follow, man whom we ought to aid. 
 
 "Intelligence struggles against the 
 opposition of matter, against those blind 
 laws whose invisible results have been 
 called chance. When the power that 
 has been given thee has become the 
 handmaid of intelligence, when thou 
 hast added thy share to the order of the 
 world, what more canst thou desire ? 
 Thou hast lived in accordance with thy 
 nature ; and what is better for the be- 
 ing who is endowed with feeling and 
 knowledge than to exist in conformity 
 with his own nature ?
 
 OBERMANN 99 
 
 " Each day, as thou art born to a new 
 life, remember that thou hast resolved 
 not to walk in vain upon the earth. 
 The world advances to its end. But 
 thou dost linger, thou dost retrograde, 
 thou dost remain in a state of suspense 
 and languor. Thy days that have passed, 
 will they ever return at a better time ? 
 The whole of life is gathered into the 
 present, 26 which thou dost neglect in 
 order to sacrifice it to the future ; the 
 present is time, the future is only its 
 semblance. 
 
 " Live in thyself, and seek that which 
 perisheth not. Consider the desires of 
 our thoughtless passions ; among such 
 a throng, is there one which is suffi- 
 cient unto man ? Intelligence finds, in 
 herself alone, food for her life ; be just 
 and strong. No one can know the day 
 that is to come ; thou wilt not find 
 peace in outward things, seek her in 
 thy heart. 
 
 " Strength is the law of nature, and
 
 ioo OBERMANN 
 
 will is power ; intensity in suffering is 
 better than apathy in gratification. He 
 who obeys and suffers is often greater 
 than he who enjoys or he who com- 
 mands. Thy fears are vain, thy desires 
 are vain. One thing only is good for 
 thee : to be what nature has ordained. 
 " Thou art intelligence and matter. 
 So also is the world. Harmony trans- 
 forms individuals, and the whole fol- 
 lows the road to perfection through the 
 endless improvement of its different 
 parts. This law of the universe is also 
 the law of man. 
 
 
 
 " Console, enlighten, and support 
 thy fellows ; thy part has been marked 
 out by the place thou dost fill in the 
 immensity of living beings. Know and 
 obey the laws of man, and thou wilt 
 help other men to know and to follow 
 them. Consider and show them the 
 centre and the end of things ; let them 
 see the reason of what surprises them,
 
 OBERMANN 101 
 
 the instability of what troubles them, 
 the nothingness of what sweeps them 
 along. 
 
 " Do not isolate thyself from the 
 entirety of the world ; keep thine eyes 
 ever fixed upon the universe ; and re- 
 member justice. Thus thou wilt have 
 filled the measure of thy life, and have 
 accomplished the work of man." 
 
 LETTER XXXIV 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM TWO LETTERS 
 
 Paris, June 2d and flh, ^d year. 
 
 1HAVE seen, within a few days, the 
 difficult part of Mahomet played by 
 the only three actors who are capable 
 of attempting it. ... 
 
 This tragedy of Mahomet is one of 
 the most beautiful plays of Voltaire ; 
 but had Voltaire not been a French- 
 man he might not have made the con-
 
 102 OBERMANN 
 
 quering prophet the lover of Palmyra. 
 It is true that the love of Mahomet is 
 masculine, imperious, and even some- 
 what fierce ; he does not love as Titus 
 did, but it might have been better had 
 he not loved at all. We know the pas- 
 sion of Mahomet for women ; but it is 
 likely that after so many years of dis- 
 simulation, of retirement, of perils, and 
 of triumphs, the passion of this deep 
 and ambitious heart did not partake of 
 love. 
 
 This love for Palmyra was ill-suited 
 to his high destiny and his genius. 
 Love is out of place in a stern heart, 
 filled with its own projects, grown old 
 under the craving for authority, know- 
 ing pleasure only through forgetfulness, 
 and for which happiness itself is no- 
 thing more than a diversion. 
 
 What does he mean by exclaiming, 
 " L 'amour seul me console"? 27 Who 
 forced him to seek the throne of the 
 East, to leave his wives and his obscure
 
 OBERMANN 103 
 
 independence, and to lift the censer, the 
 sceptre, and the sword ? " U amour seul 
 me console ! " To rule the destiny of na- 
 tions, to change the religion and the 
 laws of one portion of the globe, to 
 raise up Arabia on the ruins of the 
 world, was this so sad a life, so dull a 
 lethargy ? It was, doubtless, a difficult 
 task, but it was the very occasion not 
 to love. These cravings of the heart 
 have their spring in the emptiness of 
 the soul ; he who has great things to do 
 has far less need of love. . . . 
 
 FIRST FRAGMENT 
 
 5th year. 
 
 I question whether it is good for man, 
 as he is, to be invariably happy, without 
 ever having struggled against adverse 
 fate. It may be that the happy man 
 among us is he who has suffered much, 
 not habitually and with that slow at- 
 rophy which dulls the faculties, but 
 rather with an intensity which excites
 
 104 OBERMANN 
 
 the secret energy of the soul and forces 
 it, happily, to seek within itself re- 
 sources of which it had been before 
 unconscious. 
 
 It is a gain for the whole of life to 
 have been unhappy at the age when 
 head and heart begin to live. It is the 
 lesson of fate ; it shapes good men, it 
 enlarges the ideas, and it matures the 
 heart not yet weakened by old age ; it 
 moulds a man early enough in his 
 career for him to be a complete man. 
 Though unhappiness may take away 
 pleasure and delight, it excites the sense 
 of order and the desire for domestic 
 joys ; it gives the greatest satisfaction 
 for which we may look, that of ex- 
 pecting nothing more than a calm and 
 useful existence. We are far less un- 
 happy when we desire merely to live ; 
 we are nearer to usefulness when, in the 
 full strength of life, we seek nothing 
 more for ourselves. Misfortune alone, 
 I believe, has the power, before the
 
 OBERMANN 105 
 
 coming of old age, to thus develop the 
 ordinary man. 
 
 True goodness exacts wide concep- 
 tions, a great soul, and restrained pas- 
 sions. If goodness is the highest merit 
 of man, if moral perfections are essen- 
 tial to happiness, it is among those who 
 have greatly suffered during the early 
 years of the heart's life that we shall 
 find the men who are most fitly framed 
 for their own good and for the good of 
 all men who are the most just, the 
 most rational, the nearest to happiness, 
 and the most steadfastly virtuous. . . . 
 
 The upright man is steadfast ; he has 
 not the passions of any faction, nor has 
 he the habits of any profession ; he is 
 not the tool of any man ; he can have 
 neither animosity, nor ostentation, nor 
 folly ; he is not surprised at goodness, 
 because it exists within him, or at evil, 
 because it exists in nature ; he is indig- 
 nant against crime, but does not hate 
 the guilty; he despises meanness of
 
 io6 O B E R M A N N 
 
 soul, but is not angered at the worm 
 because the unfortunate creature has no 
 wings. . . . 
 
 He is virtuous, not because he is a 
 fanatic, but because he is in quest of 
 order ; he does good so as to lessen the 
 uselessness of his life ; he prefers the 
 happiness of others to his own, because 
 others can enjoy, and he cannot ; he 
 desires merely to reserve for himself 
 the means of doing some good, and of 
 living in peace ; calm is the necessary 
 portion of those who do not look for 
 joy. . . . He is not satisfied with what 
 he does, because he feels that he might 
 do far better. . . . Thus he will pass 
 his days, while drawing ever onward to- 
 ward the highest good ; at times with 
 an energetic but hampered step ; oftener 
 with uncertainty, with some weakness, 
 with the smile of discouragement.
 
 OBERMANN 107 
 
 It is a small thing not to be like the 
 common type of men ; but it is a step 
 towards wisdom not to be like the com- 
 mon type of sages. 
 
 LETTER XXXVI 
 
 Lyons, A$ril fth, 6th year. 
 
 SUPERB mountains, falling of the 
 avalanches, solitary peace of the 
 forest glen, yellow leaves floating on 
 the silent stream ! What would you 
 be to man, if you spoke not of other 
 men ? Nature would be mute, did man 
 no longer live. Were I alone upon the 
 earth, what would I care for the sounds 
 of the relentless night, the solemn si- 
 lence of the great valleys, the light of 
 the sunset in a sky filled with melan- 
 choly, above the calm waters ? Nature 
 is felt only in human relationships, 
 and the eloquence of things is nothing 
 more than the eloquence of man. The
 
 io8 OBERMANN 
 
 fruitful earth, the broad skies, the mov- 
 ing waters, are but an expression of the 
 relationship that our hearts create and 
 hold. . . . 
 
 But the relationships of human life 
 have multiplied ; the friendship of the 
 ancients is far from our hearts, or from 
 our destiny. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Man grows old, and his slighted 
 heart grows old before him. If all 
 that he can love is in man, all that he 
 must shun is there also. Where there 
 are many social conventionalities, there, 
 too, of stubborn necessity, are many 
 discords. And thus the man whose 
 fears are greater than his hopes lives 
 apart from his fellows. Things inani- 
 mate have less power, but they belong 
 to us more fully; they are what we 
 make them. They hold less of what 
 we seek, but we are surer of finding 
 the things that they contain. They
 
 OBERMANN 109 
 
 are the joys of mediocrity, limited but 
 certain. Passion goes in quest of man, 
 but reason is sometimes obliged to for- 
 sake him for things that are less good 
 and less fatal. Thus has been forged a 
 powerful link between man and this 
 friend of man.
 
 NOTES 
 
 NOTE i, Page vii 
 
 ' I **HE following is a list of Senancour's 
 
 * works : 
 
 Reveries sur la Nature primitive de FHomme. 
 
 Obermann. 
 
 De rumour. 
 
 Libres Meditations. 
 
 Traditions morales et religieuses. 
 
 La Chine. 
 
 Republique romaine. 
 
 Empire romain. 
 
 De Napoleon. 
 
 Valombre, comedie. 
 
 Isabelle a Clemence. 
 
 Observations sur le Genie du Christianisme. 
 
 Vocabulaire de simple v'erite. 
 
 France litt'eraire. 
 
 De fatheisme impute a Voltaire. 
 
 VAmiti'e. 
 
 Senancour wrote, in addition, a number of politi- 
 cal pamphlets, letters, and articles ; and in the last 
 years of his life he began a work, De la Religion
 
 H2 NOTES 
 
 eternelle, the manuscript of which was lost. He 
 also planned, it would seem, to write a second 
 part to Obermann. 
 
 NOTE 2, Page 3 
 
 The method of dating the letters that was 
 used in the last French edition, and that was 
 presumably the original system followed by Senan- 
 cour, has been strictly adhered to. Although 
 Obermann was written during three years, from 
 1801 to 1803, the letters were made to cover 
 apparently a period of nine years. 
 
 NOTE 3, Page 3 
 
 This and the following pages refer to the 
 time when, in 1789, Senancour fled from Paris 
 and took refuge in Switzerland in order to avoid 
 entering the priesthood, to which his father had 
 destined him, and for which he felt an uncon- 
 querable aversion. It is probable that, after this, 
 Senancour saw his mother only at rare and un- 
 certain intervals j for she died in 1796, and the 
 French Revolution, which broke out almost imme- 
 diately after Senancour's flight, kept him an exile 
 in Switzerland for many years. When we read 
 his tender and beautiful words about his mother, 
 in the chapter on irreparable faults in the M'edita- 
 tions, we feel that in later years Senancour deeply 
 repented his hasty act.
 
 NOTES 113 
 
 NOTE 4, Page 13 
 
 Cully is a small village on the margin of lake 
 Leman, between Vevey and Lausanne. Above 
 it rise the vine-covered slopes of La Vaux. 
 
 NOTE 5, Page 15 
 
 The Vies des Peres du desert was probably the 
 French translation made in the early part of the 
 seventeenth century by Rene Gautier from the 
 original Latin work, Vita Patrum, sive Historic 
 Eremetica, libri X. This Acta Sanctorum, which 
 was published at Antwerp in 1628, by P. Herbert 
 Rosweyde, Jesuit, contained in ten books all the 
 biographies and authentic notices of the fathers of 
 the desert which Rosweyde was able to collect. 
 The Bollandists afterwards carried out more fully 
 the original design of the Jesuit father. Among 
 the contents of the Vitee Patrum are the lives of 
 the chief patriarchs of the Thebaid, written by St. 
 Jerome, St. Athanasius, St. Ephrem, and others ; 
 lives of holy women ; biographical notices by 
 Ruffinus ; maxims and examples from the lives 
 of the fathers ; the Historic Lausiaca, written by 
 Palladius, afterwards Bishop of Helenopolis, who 
 visited Egypt in about 390, and who gives a nar- 
 rative of the three years he spent among the her- 
 mits ; and accounts of the holy hermits of Asia. 
 Montalembert, in his Monks of the West, speaks of 
 this collection as " one of the noblest of existing 
 books."
 
 ii4 NOTES 
 
 NOTE 6, Page 17 
 This lake must be that of Neuchatel. 
 
 NOTE 7, Page 17 
 
 The river Thiele, or Zihl, connects lake Neu- 
 chatel with the lake of Bienne. 
 
 NOTE 8, Page 22 
 
 Compare Matthew Arnold in Tristram and 
 
 Iseult : 
 
 " Dear saints, it is not sorrow, as I hear, 
 Not suffering, which shuts up eye and ear 
 To all that has delighted them before, 
 And lets us be what we were once no more. 
 No, we may suffer deeply, yet retain 
 Power to be moved and soothed, for all our pain, 
 By what of old pleased us, and will again." 
 
 NOTE 9, Page 25 
 
 Compare this and several other passages of 
 the same character, in which Senancour empha- 
 sizes the importance of living according to the 
 dictates of one's own nature, with the following 
 sentences from the Meditations of Marcus Aure- 
 lius : 
 
 " No man can prevent you from living accord- 
 ing to the principle of your nature. . . . 
 
 " Each one should act in accordance with his 
 natural constitution. . . .
 
 NOTES 115 
 
 " Think nothing of importance except to act 
 as your nature dictates, and to bear whatever uni- 
 versal nature brings." 
 
 Compare also these lines from Emerson's essay 
 on Self-Reliance: 
 
 "No law can be sacred to me but that of my 
 nature. . . . The only right is what is after my 
 constitution, the only wrong what is against it." 
 
 NOTE 10, Page 28 
 
 We can follow Senancour's trip of two months, 
 from the 8th of July to the 3d of September, 
 through the cantons of Vaud, Neuchatel, Berne, 
 and Fribourg, to the Valais. His first letter was 
 written at Geneva. From that point his itinerary 
 lay along the northern shore of lake Leman 
 through Nyon to Lausanne, which covers the 
 slopes of Mont Jorat. Crossing northward, he 
 went to Yverdun by way of Moudon, then to 
 Neuchatel, and after a trip through the Val de 
 Travers, to Saint-Blaise, on the northeastern point 
 of lake Neuchatel, and to Bienne. He stopped for 
 several days at Thiel, on the frontier of Neuchatel 
 and Berne, and, passing by lake Morat, went south- 
 ward to Vevey, through Payerne. Skirting the 
 eastern end of lake Leman, he visited Clarens and 
 Chillon, and then journeyed on to Saint-Maurice, 
 where he decided to make his home. 
 
 I have not followed Senancour's spelling of 
 Swiss names, as it is frequently incorrect.
 
 n6 NOTES 
 
 NOTE n, Page 28 
 
 Villeneuve is a small, ancient town on the 
 eastern point of lake Leman, where the road 
 leaves the borders of the lake and enters the 
 valley of the Rhone. 
 
 NOTE 12, Page 29 
 
 This narrow gorge is described by Rogers in 
 Saint Maurice : 
 *' 'T was dusk; and journeying upward by the Rhone, 
 
 That there came down a torrent from the Alps, 
 
 I entered where a key unlocks a kingdom; 
 
 The road and river, as they wind along f 
 
 Filling the mountain-pass." 
 
 NOTE 13, Page 29 
 
 The bridge of Saint-Maurice unites the can- 
 tons of Vaud and of Valais. With its one arch, 
 seventy feet wide, it spans the river, which is here 
 a rapid torrent, and rests on one side upon the 
 Dent de Morcles and on the other side upon the 
 Dent du Midi. 
 
 NOTE 14, Page 29 
 
 The town to which Senancour here alludes is 
 that of Saint-Maurice. 
 
 NOTE 15, Page 43. 
 Compare the Confessions of St. Augustine, in
 
 NOTES 117 
 
 the eleventh book, xi, on time and eternity (ed- 
 ited by William G. T. Shedd): 
 
 " Who shall hold their heart, and fix it, that it 
 be settled awhile, and awhile catch the glory of 
 that ever-fixed Eternity, and compare it with the 
 times which are never fixed, and see that it cannot 
 be compared ; and that a long time cannot become 
 long but out of many motions passing by ... 
 but that in the Eternal, nothing passeth, but the 
 whole is present ? . . . Who shall hold the heart 
 of man, that it may stand still, and see how eter- 
 nity, ever still-standing, neither past nor to come, 
 uttereth the times past and to come ? " 
 
 NOTE 1 6, Page 56 
 
 The masses of bare sandstone rock, well known 
 as the gres de Fontainebleau^ give to the forest 
 much of its picturesqueness. Deep valleys and 
 gorges separate the long ridges of sandstone, and 
 in their hollows lie piles of rocks heaped up in 
 rugged masses. 
 
 NOTE 17, Page 62 
 
 This adventure, which happened to Senancour 
 when he was about fifteen or sixteen years of age, 
 seems to have left a deep impression on his mind, 
 for he recurs to it again in the Meditations. In 
 his preface to that book, he declares, in order to 
 cover his own identity, that he discovered the man- 
 uscript of the Meditations in the rock-cave of
 
 n8 NOTES 
 
 the forest of Fontainebleau, and he calls himself 
 merely the editor of a moral treatise which, he 
 suggests, may have been written by some recluse- 
 philosopher who had lived in the former dwelling 
 of Lallemant, the poor quarryman. 
 
 NOTE 1 8, Page 83 
 
 Avon is the only village within the precincts 
 of the forest of Fontainebleau. 
 
 NOTE 19, Page 83 
 
 Valvin, Samoreau, and Samois are all border 
 forest-villages situated on the banks of the Seine. 
 
 NOTE 20, Page 84 
 
 Thomery, which lies at the west of the forest, 
 by the banks of the Seine, is a village of gardens. 
 It is surrounded on almost every side by vine- 
 yards, which yield the famous Chasselas grapes, 
 and by orchards and gardens ; its streets are filled 
 with trees, vines, and flowers, hedges of roses, and 
 orchards of plum-trees. 
 
 NOTE 21, Page 84 
 
 According to an old legend, the Grand Veneur, 
 the terrible spectre huntsman, haunted the forest, 
 and with torch and hounds followed through the 
 night a spectre stag which, like an ignis fatuus, ever 
 allured him and ever eluded him. To this nightly 
 ride he had been condemned as a punishment for
 
 NOTES 119 
 
 an offense against St. Hubert. It was this phan- 
 tom Chasseur Noir who is said to have appeared 
 to Henry IV a short time before his assassina- 
 tion, and to have uttered the words, "Amendez 
 vous ! " 
 
 NOTE 22, Page 85 
 
 The gorges and valley of Apremont which lie 
 on the northwest of the forest, not far from the 
 now famous artist village of Barbizon, contain 
 some of the wildest and most picturesque scenery 
 in the Fontainebleau district. 
 
 NOTE 23, Page 85 
 
 Beyond Apremont to the south is the Hermi- 
 tage of Franchard, now solitary and abandoned, 
 buried in rocks and sand, and lying in ruins among 
 the hills. The monastery was founded in 1197, 
 by monks from Orleans, under Philippe Auguste. 
 During the wars of the fourteenth century it was 
 partially destroyed, and was afterwards used as a 
 stronghold by bands of brigands, who so terrorized 
 the neighborhood that Louis XIV ordered the 
 ruins to be razed to the ground. 
 
 NOTE 24, Page 86 
 
 Recloses, la Vignette, and Bourron are border 
 forest-villages on the south. 
 
 NOTE 25, Page 96 
 There is every reason to believe that this story
 
 120 NOTES 
 
 about the discovery of the Manual of Pseusophanes 
 is fictitious and invented by Senancour, who doubt- 
 less was himself the author of the Manual. 
 
 I have to acknowledge with sincere thanks the 
 courtesy of M. Barringer, of the Bibliotheque Na- 
 tlonale at Paris, who, in response to an inquiry as 
 to whether there exists, in that library, either the 
 defective copy of Plutarch or the fragment of 
 Aristippus, referred to by Senancour, writes : 
 
 " In spite of my most minute investigations in 
 the Department of Printed Books, I have been 
 unable to discover the slightest trace of the defec- 
 tive copy of Plutarch mentioned by Senancour. 
 In the Department of Manuscripts, M. Omont 
 went through, with me, all the inventories and 
 catalogues, in none of which was found the name 
 of Aristippus. Under such circumstances, I think 
 you are right in supposing the Manual an offspring 
 of Senancour' s fertile imagination. . . . Yours 
 very truly, S. S. Barringer, Bibliotkecaire" 
 
 NOTE 26, Page 99 
 
 Compare the Confessions of St. Augustine, elev- 
 enth book, xvii, xviii, and xx, on the idea of time 
 (edited by William G. T. Shedd). 
 
 " Who will tell me that there are not three 
 times, past, present, and future, but only one, the 
 present, because those two are not ? . . . For if 
 times past and to come be, I would know where 
 they be. Which yet if I cannot, yet I know 

 
 NOTES i2i 
 
 wherever they be, they are not there as future, or 
 past, but present. For if there also they be future, 
 they are not yet there ; if there also they be past, 
 they are no longer there. . . . What now is clear 
 and plain is, that neither things to come, nor past, 
 are. Nor is it properly said, c There be three 
 times, past, present, and to come : ' yet perchance 
 it might be properly said, l There be three times ; 
 a present of things past, a present of things pre- 
 sent, and a present of things future.' " 
 
 Compare also the following from the Medita- 
 tions of Marcus Aurelius : 
 
 " The present is the same for all, and what is 
 lost also is the same ; for what escapes us is only 
 the passing moment. Death cannot rob us of 
 either past or future ; for how can one take from 
 a man what he has not ? . . . The one who lives 
 longest and the one who dies soonest suffer an 
 equal loss. The present moment is all that either 
 is deprived of, since that is all he has. A man 
 
 cannot part with what he does not possess." 
 
 . 
 
 . NOTE 27, Page 102 
 
 Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophete^ by Vol- 
 taire, second act, fourth scene. Mahomet speak- 
 ing to his lieutenant, Omar : 
 
 " Tu sais assez quel sentiment vainqueur 
 Parmi mes passions regne au fond de mon coeur. 
 Charge du soin du monde, environne d'alarmes,
 
 122 NOTES 
 
 Je porte 1'encensoir, et le sceptre, et les armes : 
 
 Ma vie est un combat, et ma frugalite 
 
 Asservit la nature a mon austerite. 
 
 J'ai banni loin de moi cette liqueur traitresse, 
 
 Qui nourrit des humains la brutale mollesse : 
 
 Dans des sables brulants, sur des rochers deserts, 
 
 Je supporte avec toi 1'inclemence des airs. 
 
 L' amour seul me console ; il est ma recompense, 
 
 L'objet de mes travaux, 1'idole que j'encense, 
 
 Le dieu de Mahomet ; et cette passion 
 
 Est egale aux fureurs de mon ambition.*'
 
 7 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 Series 9482
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 794 987 8