...
Pourtant un seul pouvait suffire.
"Victime des desirs, esclave des regrets,
L'homme s'agite, et s'use, et vieillit sans progres
Sur sa toile de Penelope;
Comme un sage mourant, puissions-nous dire en paix
J'ai trop longtemps erre, cherche; je me trompais;
Tout est bien, mon Dieu m'enveloppe."
Upon the small remains of Amiel's prose outside the Journal there is no
occasion to dwell. The two essays on Madame de Stael and Rousseau
contain much fine critical remark, and might find a place perhaps as an
appendix to some future edition of the Journal; and some of the
"Pensees," published in the latter half of the volume containing the
"Grains de Mils," are worthy of preservation. But in general, whatever
he himself published was inferior to what might justly have been
expected of him, and no one was more conscious of the fact than himself.
The story of his fatal illness, of the weary struggle for health which
filled the last seven years of his life, is abundantly told in the
Journal--we must not repeat it here. He had never been a strong man, and
at fifty-three he received, at his doctor's hands, his _arret de mort_.
We are told that what killed him was "heart disease, complicated by
disease of the larynx," and that he suffered "much and long.
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