So volcanic and pretentious a nature was, naturally, out of place in the land that had given it birth. It is in vain that Chateaubriand attempts to conform in his modes of expression to the standards of that society to which he considers himself, spiritually, infinitely superior; he is invariably treated and spoken of as an _esprit romanesque_ for whom life has no use. Here we come for the first time on the term which in a slightly different form was to become so familiar in France as the denomination of a whole school. There is, undoubtedly, something of the Romanticist before the days of Romanticism in this mysterious suffering, which is so conscious of being interesting. From all these half-forgotten memories of vanished grandeur, all these impressions of the vanity of name and fame, these transports of indignation at the baseness and littleness of mankind, René has distilled an obstinate conviction that there is no such thing as happiness, and a persuasion of the weariness and emptiness of life even while he feels its healthy glow tingling in his veins. His favourite expressions are: "La folie de croire au bonheur; dégoût de la vie; profond sentiment d'ennui," &c. In all this misery, the thought of his sister is his only solace, but on his return to France he notices with surprise and grief that she avoids him; she repeatedly declares that she is unable to meet him, and has apparently forgotten all his love for her. Once only, when she divines that he is contemplating suicide, does she draw near to him again for a moment. He has already added this coldness of his beloved sister to the list of his bitter experiences of the faithlessness of mankind, when news of her intention of entering a convent makes him hasten to her. He arrives just in time to take part in the dreary ceremony, to see Amélie's hair fall under the scissors, and to kneel by her side, while she, as the ceremony prescribes, lies prostrate like a corpse on the marble floor of the church. He hears her murmur a prayer for forgiveness for the "criminal passion she has felt for her brother," and, grasping the reason of his sister's conduct towards him, falls in a swoon. As soon as he recovers consciousness he determines to leave Europe and travel to the New World. The night he quits the French coast a terrible storm rages. "Did Heaven," he asks, "mean to warn me that tempests must always attend my steps?" One thing is certain, that to Chateaubriand René's career was as unimaginable without an accompaniment of thunder and lightning as Atala's love tale had been.