I wrote the first part of the _Génie du Christianisme._ Messrs. Dulau[249], who had become the booksellers of the French emigrant clergy, undertook the publication. The first sheets of the first volume were printed. The work thus begun in London in 1799 was completed only in Paris in 1802: see the different prefaces to the _Génie du Christianisme._ I was devoured by a sort of fever during the whole time of writing: no one will ever know what it means to carry at the same time in one's brain, in one's blood, and in one's soul, _Atala_ and _René_, and to combine with the painful child-birth of those fiery twins the labour of conception attending the other parts of the _Génie du Christianisme._ The memory of Charlotte penetrated and warmed all that, and to give me the finishing stroke, the first longing for fame inflamed my exalted imagination. This longing came to me from filial affection: I wanted a great renown, so that it might rise till it reached my mother's dwelling-place, and that the angels might carry her my solemn expiation. As one study leads to another, I could not occupy myself with my French scholia without taking note of the literature and men of the country in which I lived: I was drawn into these fresh researches. My days and nights were spent in reading, in writing, in taking lessons in Hebrew from a learned priest, the Abbé Capelan, in consulting libraries and men of attainments, in roaming about the fields with my everlasting reveries, in paying and receiving visits. If such things exist as retroactive and symptomatic effects of future events, I might have foreseen the bustle and uproar created by the book which was to make my name from the seething of my mind and the throbbing of my inner muse. Reading aloud to others my first rough drafts helped to enlighten me. Reading aloud is an excellent form of instruction, when one does not take the necessary compliments for gospel. Provided an author be in earnest, he will soon feel, through the impression which he instinctively receives from the others, which are the weak places in his work, and especially whether that work is too long or too short, whether he keeps, does not reach, or exceeds the right dimensions. [Sidenote: A letter from Panat.] I have discovered a letter from the Chevalier de Panat on the readings from a work at that time so unknown. The letter is charming: the dirty chevalier's positive and scoffing spirit did not seem susceptible of thus rubbing itself with poetry. I have no hesitation in giving this letter, a document of my history, although it is stained from end to end with my praises, as though the sly author had taken pleasure in emptying his ink-pot over his epistle: "_Monday._