For the defeated upper class very naturally shut
their doors on the nominees of the new _regime_, and as this class
represented at that moment almost everything that was intellectually
distinguished in Geneva, as it was the guardian, broadly speaking, of
the scientific and literary traditions of the little state, we can
easily imagine how galling such a social ostracism must have been to the
young professor, accustomed to the stimulating atmosphere, the common
intellectual interests of Berlin, and tormented with perhaps more than
the ordinary craving of youth for sympathy and for affection. In a great
city, containing within it a number of different circles of life, Amiel
would easily have found his own circle, nor could political discords
have affected his social comfort to anything like the same extent. But
in a town not much larger than Oxford, and in which the cultured class
had hitherto formed a more or less homogeneous and united whole, it was
almost impossible for Amiel to escape from his grievance and establish a
sufficient barrier of friendly interests between himself and the society
which ignored him. There can be no doubt that he suffered, both in mind
and character, from the struggle the position involved. He had no
natural sympathy with radicalism.
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