Among them was the disappearance of almost the
whole existing staff of the academy, then and now the center of Genevese
education, and up to 1847 the stronghold of the moderate ideas of 1814,
followed by the appointment of new men less likely to hamper the Radical
order of things.
Of these new men Amiel was one. He had been absent from Geneva during
the years of conflict which had preceded Fazy's triumph; he seems to
have had no family or party connections with the leaders of the defeated
side, and as M. Scherer points out, he could accept a non-political post
at the hands of the new government, two years after the violent measures
which had marked its accession, without breaking any pledges or
sacrificing any convictions. But none the less the step was a fatal one.
M. Renan is so far in the right. If any timely friend had at that moment
succeeded in tempting Amiel to Paris, as Guizot tempted Rossi in 1833,
there can be little question that the young professor's after life would
have been happier and saner. As it was, Amiel threw himself into the
competition for the chair, was appointed professor, and then found
himself in a hopelessly false position, placed on the threshold of life,
in relations and surroundings for which he was radically unfitted, and
cut off by no fault of his own from the _milieu_ to which he rightly
belonged, and in which his sensitive individuality might have expanded
normally and freely.
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