He wrote in serious earnest: "I do not believe that more intelligent men than Paul Bourget and Jules Lemaître can ever have existed." He had no perception then of Bourget's fear of hell, or of Lemaitre's want of moral equilibrium. Here is his testimonial to the latter, the future Nationalist fanatic: "He is one of the men who bear ill-will to none, but are long-suffering and benevolent. His is a fearless spirit, a smiling soul; he is all tolerance." When this was written Jules Lemaître was already malicious and ungenerous, though perhaps not yet base. A few years later he was, as Vice-President of the Patrie Française, leader of the band which kept Dreyfus prisoner in the île du Diable and advocated the _coup d'état_ against Loubet. A few years later Paul Bourget had returned to the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, and was attacking with the utmost violence every progressive movement, even the enlightenment of the people and instruction for the working man. These were France's models of intelligence. Compared with the attitude of these men, France's own attitude during the past six years may almost be termed exemplary. It may be that as the popular orator--a career for which he was not intended by nature--he has proclaimed himself rather more strongly convinced than he is in his inmost soul; this does not prevent its being the real man who has come to light during the last decade--the man who was concealed behind the thinker's play of thought and the poet's metamorphoses. Suddenly he stripped himself of all his scepticism and stood forth, with Voltaire's old blade gleaming in his hand--like Voltaire irresistible by reason of his wit, like him the terrible enemy of the power of the Church, like him the champion of innocence. But, taking a step in advance of Voltaire, France proclaimed himself the friend of the poor in the great political struggle. That he did thus come forth was undoubtedly a consequence of the circumstance that the whole civilisation of France and her old position as protector of justice appeared to him to be endangered during a crisis in public morality; but, in the absence of some instigation from without, he might quite possibly have remained inactive. The person who influenced him more than any other at this time was a lady in whose house he has for years been the most welcome of daily visitors--whose house is, indeed, his second home. France did not hesitate to bring the whole weight of his influence publicly to bear when it came in France to a trial of strength between a few chosen spirits on the one side, and the army, the Church, those in authority, and the misled masses on the other.