228 LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFF 



results, and he was obsessed by the fear of having 

 given bad advice to those who followed him. 



He knew not how to refuse, even when he should 

 have done so ; therefore he was odiously exploited. 

 Often he worked, in his rare leisure moments, for 

 people who were unworthy of his kindness. During 

 the last years of his life, all these incidents grieved 

 him so much that he used to say he felt the burden 

 of existence. His soul was darkened, he felt very 

 depressed, and his health suffered. 



We spent the summer holidays of 1913 at St. 

 Leger-en-Yvelines, a pretty place on the edge of the 

 Rambouillet forest. In his choice of a holiday resort, 

 my husband was always guided by the desire to find 

 a place favourable to my sketching, and St. Leger 

 answered the purpose wonderfully. The fields with 

 their vast horizons, the forest with its graceful 

 bracken and carpets of softly-tinted heather, the 

 mysterious ponds, all went to compose an admirable 

 symphony, full of artistic suggestion. 



Elie himself was gay and full of spirits. He 

 worked in the morning, and we spent the rest of the 

 day in the forest. He often read aloud ; he rested 

 and enjoyed the peaceful calm, pure air, and verdure 

 which he loved so much. 



He had arranged to take advantage of these 

 holidays to execute work of which he had been think- 

 ing for a long time. As it has been said above, he 

 thought that the life instinct was only developed 

 gradually and produced at the same time an optimistic 

 conception of life ; he wished to verify this per- 

 sonal impression by the psychological evolution of 

 divers other thinkers. He turned to Maeterlinck, as 

 a representative of modern ideas. This author, 



