Page:Out of due time, Ward, 1906.djvu/51

Rh and great things were expected of him. He was known to be a complete unbeliever, a strong thinker, and expected to prove a leader of men. He was the heir to the great properties he now owns, but he always seemed quite aloof from the considerations of wealth and ease. He had admirers, but not, I think, many friends. It was for a very brief space that he was in men's minds. Then he announced that he did not feel his intellectual position to be sufficiently well reasoned, or his opinions on a clear enough basis, for him to come forward as a politician. His sister showed me the other day a witty article in the Figaro, laughing at the young aristocrat who had played at patriotism and appeared to have the earnestness of a young English nobleman embarking on political life, but who then withdrew with the remarks of a German philosophical student. 'While Mons. le Comte is finding a logical basis for action, true Frenchmen have to act, not to dream,' was the conclusion. The outcome of the next five years, during which Paris forgot his existence, was that the Count emerged a professed Catholic, and announced that in the Church alone could modern thought and religious faith 'make one music' in a world fast hurrying to destruction. Neither the Church nor the world paid much attention to what he had to say. The world does not listen to the Church, he wrote, because the Church does not fulfil her true mission; she lives and works in the present hour, but she does not look forward. If she did, she would not ignore the thinkers who, obscure or unpractical as they may be, are in reality preparing a public opinion which will take the Church by surprise. He certainly thinks it his mission, as I was just saying, to rouse ecclesiastics in authority to the intellectual situation. By now, although he is barely thought of in public life, he has a very large following among intellectual people on the Continent. You will soon notice what an immense correspondence he carries on; and at least he has proved his sincerity by giving up all that the world