Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/273

Rh be married, and asserts that statistics are wrong when they show that there are more women than men in the world. In the mean time, la couple parfait, as the married pair Gasparin are called, is always a beautiful sight on the earth.

I transcribe the following from my diary:

, March 18th.—Yesterday I visited the celebrated historian, Merle d'Aubigné, at his country-house near Geneva, by “the living waters”—murmuring brooks—children of the river Arve, or of its Alpine spring—which never freeze or dry up, and which water this region in many directions. The historian of the Reformation, Merle d'Aubigné, is a man of a vigorous and splendid frame, with brilliant eyes under black, bushy eyebrows, a handsome and worthy representative of old Geneva, of the militant, Protestant city. His conversation is animated and rich in imagery, like a living chronicle. “The living waters” murmur cheerfully through his grounds—also the home of his childhood—watering its wonderfully beautiful trees. Death, however, has lately visited his house, robbing him of his wife, and, with her, of much of the cheerfulness of his life. But he has another wife in the Goddess of History, and he begins again to listen to her inspiration. He is now employed upon the fourth part of his History of French Reformation, in which he has a great work before him.

Over the door of his house is inscribed, Tempus breve.

Merle d'Aubigné is strictly orthodox as an historian, and adheres to the doctrine of literal inspiration. There may be a more profound theologian than he,