In these traits the author has simply described his own nature. Chateaubriand's _Mémoires_ contain, especially in their silences, sufficient witness to the studied coldness with which he accepted love and admiration. Some of his private letters to which Sainte-Beuve had access show with what icy egotism he at times attempted to enveigle with promises of a consuming passion. Even at the age of sixty-four he wrote to a young lady from whom he was soliciting a rendezvous in Switzerland: "My life is merely an incident; of that incident take the passion, the perturbation and the suffering; I shall give you more of these in one day than others in long years." One looks back and remembers the touching tenderness shown by Voltaire to his Emilie even after he knew that he was being grossly deceived by her, and the so-called Lucifer of the last century seems as innocent as a child in comparison. The picture of René was not finished in the book which bears his name; he plays an important part in _Les Natchez_, a romance written about the same time, but published later. His behaviour in it completes the portrayal of the character. Conforming to Indian custom, he takes to himself a wife, Celuta, who is passionately devoted to him. But it goes without saying that life with her does not heal the wounds of his heart. "René," we read, "had longed for an uninhabited country, a wife, and liberty; he had got what he longed for, but something marred his enjoyment of it. He would have blessed the hand that at one blow freed him from his past suffering and present felicity, if felicity indeed it were. He tried to realise his old dreams. What woman could be more beautiful than Celuta? He carried her into the heart of the forest, and strove to strengthen the impression of his freedom by exchanging one lonely dwelling-place for another, but whether he pressed his young wife to his heart in the depths of the forest or high on the mountaintop, he did not experience the happiness he had hoped for. The vacuum that had formed deep down in his soul could not be filled. A divine judgment had fallen upon René--which is the explanation both of his suffering and his genius. He troubled by his presence; passion emanated from him but could not enter into him; he weighed heavy on the earth over which he impatiently wandered, and which bore him against his will." Such is the author's description of René as the married man.