His elocution was defective, and his lectures were not quite such a success as he could have wished. The students used to meet in the cafés to parody them in the evenings. On the other hand, however, serious people eagerly watched the developments of the spiritual drama. Not only did it seem to them that the fate of a soul was in the balance--they were also hoping to see Protestantism score the sort of triumph that would make a noise in Paris. So they asked daily for news of Sainte-Beuve, as of a sick man lying at death's door, and asked Vinet, whom they regarded as his spiritual physician, to issue a bulletin. And Vinet's bulletin was to this effect: 'I think he is convinced, but not yet converted.' But Vinet, as he was soon to discover, was only partly right. That Sainte-Beuve was not converted was, indeed, obvious enough, seeing that he was making violent love to his neighbour's wife at the time--between him and 'conversion' stood the obstructive charms of Madame Olivier. But it is equally true that he was not convinced; and, by a crowning irony, he found his faith evaporating as he got to close quarters with the subject, through the study of which he had expected to achieve conviction. The great history of Port Royal, begun by a believer, was finished by a sceptic. 'Moral bankruptcy,' is M. Michaut's description of his condition, and there is a sense in which it might be applied even by those who desire to dissociate morality from creeds. It was the end--at any rate, for Sainte-Beuve--of all emotion which was not either purely sensual or purely intellectual. He could not be a mystic, as he could not be a poet, because he lacked the necessary genius; and forms of religion which depended, not on intuition, but on authority, were repugnant to his sane intelligence. So he said a sad farewell to Christianity, and sought no substitute. 'I am mournfully looking on at the death of my heart,' he wrote to Vinet; and he went away and resigned himself to become a materialist, a voluptuary, and a critic. And now a word about that Juste Olivier to whom Sainte-Beuve owed his appointment, and to whose wife Sainte-Beuve made love. The poet and the critic had met at Paris, where Olivier had gone to prepare himself for the Chair of Literature at Neuchâtel. He was promoted, three years later, to the Chair of History at Lausanne, which he occupied for twelve years, acting also, during part of the time, as editor of the _Revue Suisse_, to which Sainte-Beuve contributed. The Revolution of 1845 unseated him. He went to Paris, where he achieved no great success, and was homesick there for five-and-twenty years. The Swiss forgot him, and the Parisians did not understand him. But, in 1870, when there was no longer a living to be made in Paris, he came home again. One may quote the pathetic picture of his home-coming, drawn by M. Philippe Godet: