"My mother," I said, in the first preface to that work, "after being flung, at the age of seventy-two years, into dungeons where she saw part of her children die, expired at last on a pallet to which her misfortunes had reduced her. The recollection of my errors cast a great bitterness over her last days; when dying, she charged one of my sisters to call me back to the religion in which I was brought up. My sister acquainted me with my mother's last wish. When the letter reached me across the sea, my sister herself was no more; she too had died from the effects of her imprisonment. Those two voices from the tomb, that death which acted as death's interpreter impressed me. I became a Christian. I did not yield, I admit, to great supernatural enlightenment: my conviction came from the heart; I wept and I believed." * I exaggerated my fault: the _Essai_ was not an impious book, but a book of doubt, of sorrow. Through the darkness of that book glides a ray of the Christian light that shone upon my cradle. It needed no great effort to return from the scepticism of the _Essai_ to the certainty of the _Génie du Christianisme._ * When, after receiving the sad news of Madame de Chateaubriand's death, I resolved suddenly to change my course, the title of _Génie du Christianisme_, which I found on the spot, inspired me: I set to work; I toiled with the ardour of a son building a mausoleum to his mother. My materials were since long collected and rough-hewn by my previous studies. I knew the works of the Fathers better than they are known in our times; I had even studied them in order to oppugn them, and having entered upon that road with bad intentions, instead of leaving it as a victor, I left it vanquished. As to history properly so-called, I had occupied myself with it specially in composing the _Essai sur les Révolutions._ The Camden originals which I had lately examined had made me familiar with the manners and institutions of the Middle Ages. Lastly, my terrible manuscript of the _Natchez_, in 2393 pages folio, contained all that I needed for the _Génie du Christianisme_ in the way of descriptions of nature; I was able to draw largely upon that source, as I had done for the _Essai_.