"Heavens, what an interesting reading I owed to your extreme kindness this morning! Our religion had numbered among its defenders great geniuses, illustrious Fathers of the Church: those athletes had wielded with vigour all the arms of reasoning; incredulity was vanquished; but that was not enough: it was still necessary to show all the charms of that admirable religion; it was necessary to show how suited it is to the human heart and what magnificent pictures it offers to the imagination. It is no longer a theologian in the school, it is the great painter and the man sensitive to impressions who open up a new horizon for themselves. Your work was wanted, and you were called upon to write it. Nature has eminently endowed you with the great qualities which this work requires: you belong to another age.... "Ah, if the truths of sentiment rank first in the order of nature, none will have proved better than yourself those of our religion; you will have confounded the unbelievers at the gate of the Temple and introduced delicate minds and sensible hearts into the sanctuaries. You bring back to me those ancient philosophers who gave their lessons with their heads crowned with flowers, their hands filled with sweet perfumes. This is a very feeble image of your suave, pure and classic mind. "I congratulate myself daily on the happy circumstance which made me acquainted with you; I can never forget that it was Fontanes who did me that kindness; I shall love him for it the more, and my heart will never separate two names whom the same glory is bound to unite, if Providence re-opens to us the doors of our native land. "CHEV. DE PANAT." The Abbé Delille also heard some fragments of the _Génie du Christianisme_ read. He seemed surprised, and did me the honour, soon after, to put into verse the prose which had pleased him. He naturalized my wild American flowers in his various French gardens, and put my somewhat hot wine to cool in the frigid water from his clear spring. The unfinished edition of the _Génie du Christianisme_, commenced in London, was a little different, in the order of the contents, from the edition published in France. The consular censure, which soon became imperial, showed itself very touchy on the subject of kings: their persons, their honour and their virtue were dear to it beforehand. Already Fouché's police saw the white pigeon, the symbol of Bonaparte's candour and revolutionary innocence, descend from Heaven with the sacred phial. The true believers who had taken part in the Republican processions of Lyons compelled me to cut out a chapter entitled the _Rois athées_, and to distribute paragraphs from it here and there in the body of the work. *