Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/416

 402 RECENT FRENCH LITERATURE. of the fragments, ' Patrice/ reprinted here, was written at Rome in 1849. The description of the Rome of the Popes contained in it adds an especial interest to the study of religious psychology that it actually is. There is also a fragment of a novel, the story of two young people, Ernest and Beatrix, who love each other, but who are destined for the religious life, and are separated first by duty, and then by death in the midst of the Revolution. The sixteen letters to (the Abbe) Liart, a boy friend of Renan, give an interesting picture of the life of the seminaries in the third decade of the last century. Liart died at Treguier at the end of March, 1845. Some of the later letters were published in part in Renan's c Souvenirs de Jeunesse.' The gem of the book is ' Les Confessions de Felicula,' a perfect piece of prose written about 1880. The scene is laid at Lyons in the second century A.D. Renan always had a special liking for Lyons, and the mystic spirit, fertile in religious manifestations, of that ancient citadel of the French race. The tale opens thus : c Je naquis dans cette contr6e montagneuse qui spare les eaux du Rh6ne de celles de la Loire, et sert de siege principal a la tribu gauloise des Segusiaves ... on tait alors sous le regne du pieux Antonin. Toutes les pensees, bonnes et mauvaises, se produisaiert en toute Iibert6 ; c'tait un bonheur, une joie de vivre. Ceux qui n'ont pas vcu en ce temps ne peuvent se figurer combien on y a v6cu. Tout 6tait mis en discussion ; le coeur n'etait pas separ de 1'esprit. On passait les nuits a s'entretenir des doctrines nouvelles qui naissaient de toutes parts. 1