But there is something stronger than the resolves of the most resolute man, and that is innate disposition, or natural bent, which, try to rid himself of it as he may, _tamen usque recurret_. De Rémusat flattered himself that, in strenuously devoting his faculties to political journalism, in writing leading articles on the current topics of the hour, in examining Parliamentary Bills, and in composing Legislative Reports, he had stifled in himself the original taint of an evil passion for literature. That accidental visit to the Ambigu-Comique, the representation of that inferior and distorted play, stirred in him afresh his native passion. He could not get rid of the figure of that strange personage, at once exalted philosopher and frensied lover, belonging unquestionably to history, yet made, it would seem, expressly for the purposes of romance. On the very morrow of that eventful evening, he might have been seen in the library of the Chamber of Deputies, asking for the volume that contained the correspondence of Abelard and Eloisa. The chamber was not sitting, for it was vacation time; and he carried the book with him to Lafitte, in the Haute Garonne, where he had recently established his household gods. He perused it without delay or intermission; for the man who, taking up the correspondence of the separated lovers of the Paraclete, could lay it down unfinished, may rest assured that he has little genuine interest in the more romantic workings of human nature. But on the 6th of September the Ministry of Casimir-Périer was overthrown, and Count Molé was summoned to form a Cabinet. His Minister of the Interior was M. Gasparin, and De Rémusat was appointed Under-Secretary of State for the same department. Had the career of the new Ministry been a protracted one, it is possible that time would have divorced his attention from Abelard and mediæval philosophy. But in less than a twelvemonth Molé’s Cabinet was overthrown, and the liberated Under-Secretary buried himself once more in the passions and dialectics of the twelfth century. He spent much of the winter of 1837 in studying the period in which the Gallic Socrates—Gallorum Socrates, it was the pleasure of Abelard’s followers to designate him—had lived, triumphed, and suffered; and in the course of the summer of the following year a “Philosophical Drama” on the subject was completed. For nearly forty years it lay in manuscript in the author’s drawer, though he occasionally permitted himself the indulgence of reading portions of it in the intellectual salons of Paris which he frequented. Its success in those select but critical circles was considerable; and it was probably the encouragement thus extended to him that led to his writing _Abélard, sa Vie, sa Philosophie, et sa Theologie_, the best account extant of the great Conceptualist, his metaphysics, and his fate.