110 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



world. It is there that Renan began the composition of his Life of 

 Jesus. But the move had been too late; and in September 1861 a 

 malignant fever laid them low and carried off Henriette. She had 

 given the most perfect example of sisterly devotion; and it would 

 be unfair to think of him, whom she loved so well, without think- 

 ing also of her. She is buried under the palm trees of Amschitt, 

 and our grateful thoughts linger there with her. Renan came back 

 from Palestine with the sketch of a masterpiece, but he had paid 

 a heavy price for it. 



The Vie de Jesus appeared in 1863. Its success was immense. 

 Some of it, to be sure, was of a sensational nature. There was so 

 much in that lofty book to shock and enrage the bigots that they 

 could not ignore it. Its success, however, was due to a far greater 

 extent to the warm sympathy which it aroused. Renan had spoken 

 straight to the hearts of men and they had responded. From that 

 time on, his fame as a writer was so solidly established that his 

 livelihood was relatively secure. Oh! that Henriette had been able 

 to share his triumph and his comfort! The heroic years were 

 over — after all, those were the best, and she had shared them 

 fully. There remained thirty more years which his indefatigable 

 activity filled to the brim, but the recital of such activity lacks in- 

 terest. His was the retired life of a savant, outwardly monotonous, 

 though inwardly so full and so rich, periodically interrupted by 

 vacations in diverse parts of Europe. If one were telling the life of 

 a third-rate personality one would make capital of such voyages; 

 one would narrate them at great length as if they were journeys 

 of discovery; one would draw the reader's attention to every dis- 

 tinguished man whom one's hero met as if to divert a little of their 

 brilliance to him. But when the traveller is himself a great person- 

 ality, whose brightness is not borrowed but original; when he 

 travels not to gratify an aimless curiosity or a despicable snob- 

 bishness, but to recreate his mind, to attain a fresh point of view, 

 to find material for his work and food for his thought, such stories 

 become pointless. At least the history of his movements is so in* 

 extricably mixed with that of his own mind that it is not possible 



