And, in general, the pathetic interest of the
book for all whose sympathy answers to what George Sand calls "_les
tragedies que la pensee apercoit et que l'oeil ne voit point_" is very
great. Amiel published it a year before his death, and the struggle with
failing power which the Journal reveals to us in its saddest and most
intimate reality, is here expressed in more reserved and measured form.
Faith, doubt, submission, tenderness of feeling, infinite aspiration,
moral passion, that straining hope of something beyond, which is the
life of the religious soul--they are all here, and the _Dernier Mot_
with which the sad little volume ends is poor Amiel's epitaph on
himself, his conscious farewell to that more public aspect of his life
in which he had suffered much and achieved comparatively so little.
"Nous avons a plaisir complique le bonheur,
Et par un ideal frivole et suborneur
Attache nos coeurs a la terre;
Dupes des faux dehors tenus pour l'important,
Mille choses pour nous ont du prix ... et pourtant
Une seule etait necessaire.
"Sans fin nous prodiguons calculs, efforts, travaux;
Cependant, au milieu des succes, des bravos
En nous quelque chose soupire;
Multipliant nos pas et nos soins de fourmis,
Nous vondrions nous faire une foule d'amis.
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