Was it that all the while Amiel felt himself sure of his _revanche_ that he knew the value of all those sheets of Journal which were slowly accumulating under his hand? Did he say to himself sometimes: “My friends are wrong; my gifts and my knowledge are not lost; I have given expression to them in the only way possible to me, and when I die it will be found that I too, like other men, have performed the task appointed me, and contributed my quota to the human store?” It is clear that very early he began to regard it as possible that portions of the Journal should be published after his death, and, as we have seen, he left certain “literary instructions,” dated seven years before his last illness, in which his executors were directed to publish such parts of it as might seem to them to possess any general interest. But it is clear also that the Journal was not, in any sense, written for publication. “These pages,” say the Geneva editors, “written _au courant de la plume_--sometimes in the morning, but more often at the end of the day, without any idea of composition or publicity--are marked by the repetition, the _lacunae_, the carelessness, inherent in this kind of monologue. The thoughts and sentiments expressed have no other aim than sincerity of rendering.” And his estimate of the value of the record thus produced was, in general, a low one, especially during the depression and discouragement of his later years. “This Journal of mine,” he writes in 1876, “represents the material of a good many volumes; what prodigious waste of time, of thought, of strength! It will be useful to nobody, and even for myself--it has rather helped me to shirk life than to practice it.” And again: “Is everything I have produced, taken together--my correspondence, these thousands of Journal pages, my lectures, my articles, my poems, my notes of different kinds--anything better than withered leaves? To whom and to what have I been useful? Will my name survive me a single day, and will it ever mean anything to anybody? A life of no account! When all is added up--nothing!” In passages like these there is no anticipation of any posthumous triumph over the disapproval of his friends and the criticism of his fellow-citizens. The Journal was a relief, the means of satisfying a need of expression which otherwise could find no outlet; “a grief-cheating device,” but nothing more. It did not still the sense of remorse for wasted gifts and opportunities which followed poor Amiel through the painful months of his last illness. Like Keats, he passed away, feeling that all was over, and the great game of life lost forever.