My "will was not borne very coldly" towards my father, and I do not doubt that, in spite of his "tyrannous fashion," he loved me tenderly: he would, I am sure, have regretted me had Providence called me before him. But would he, had we remained on earth together, have set store by the fame that has sprung from my life? A literary reputation would have wounded his nobility; he would have seen nothing but degeneration in his son's gifts; even the Berlin Embassy, conquered by the pen, not the sword, would have indifferently satisfied him. His Breton blood, besides, made him a political malcontent, a great opponent of taxation and a violent enemy of the Court. He read the _Gazette de Leyde_, the _Journal de Francfort_, the _Mercure de France_, and the _Histoire philosophique des deux Indes_, the declamatory style of which delighted him. He called the Abbé Raynal[201] "a master man." In diplomacy, he was an anti-Mussulman; he declared that forty thousand "Russian rascals" would march over the Janissaries' stomachs and take Constantinople. Hater of the Turks though he were, my father nevertheless bore a grudge in his heart against the "Russian rascals," because of his encounter at Dantzic. I share M. de Chateaubriand's opinions as regards literary and other reputations, but for different reasons. I do not know of a fame in history that tempts me: had I to stoop to pick up at my feet and to my advantage the greatest glory in the world, I would not take the trouble. If I had formed my own clay, perhaps I would have created myself a woman, for love of them; or if I had made myself a man, I would in the first place have granted myself beauty; next, as a safeguard against weariness, my stubborn enemy, it would have suited me fairly well to be a consummate but unknown artist, using my talent only for the benefit of my solitude. In life, weighed by its light weight, measured by its short measure, relieved of all its cheating, there are but two things true: religion with intelligence, love with youth; that is to say, the future and the present: the rest is not worth while. With my father's death ended the first act of my life; the paternal home became empty; I pitied it, as though it were capable of feeling desertion and solitude. Thenceforth I was independent and master of my fortune: this liberty frightened me. What should I do with it? To whom give it? I mistrusted my strength: I retreated before myself. *