If the _Génie du Christianisme_ had only given rise to such investigations, I should congratulate myself on having published it. It remains to be seen whether, at the time of the appearance of the book, a different _Génie du Christianisme_, raised on the new plan the outline of which I have barely indicated, would have obtained the same success. In 1803, when nothing was granted to the old religion, when it was the object of scorn, when none knew the first word of the question, would one have done well to speak of future liberty as descending from Calvary, at a time when people were still bruised from the excesses of the liberty of the passions? Would Bonaparte have suffered such a work to appear? It was perhaps useful to stimulate regrets, to interest the imagination in a cause so misjudged, to call attention to the despised object, to render it endearing before showing how serious it was, how mighty and how salutary. Now, supposing that my name leaves some trace behind it, I shall owe this to the _Génie du Christianisme_: with no illusion as to the intrinsic value of the work, I admit that it possesses an accidental value; it came just at the right moment. For this reason it caused me to take my place in one of those historic periods which, mixing an individual with things, compel him to be remembered. If the influence of my work was not limited to the change which, in the past forty years, it has produced among the living generations; if it still served to resuscitate among late-comers a spark of the civilizing truths of the earth; if the slight symptom of life which one seems to perceive was there sustained in the generations to come, I should depart full of hope in the divine mercy. O reconciled Christian, do not forget me in thy prayers, when I am gone; my faults, perhaps, will stop me outside those gates where my charity cried on thy behalf: "Be ye lifted up, O eternal gates[445]!" [361] This book was begun at Dieppe in 1836 and finished in Paris in 1837. It was revised in December 1846.--T. [362] Anne Geneviève de Bourbon-Condé, Duchesse de Longueville (1619-1679), sister of the great Condé, had intrigued against the Court, and played a great part in the war of the Fronde (1648-1652). The escape took place in 1650. Eventually, Mazarin defeating all her intrigues, the Duchesse de Longueville withdrew into retirement and a convent--T. [363] Queen Anne of Austria (1602-1666), daughter of King Philip III. of Spain, and wife of Louis XIII. of France, whom she married in 1615. She gave birth to Louis XIV. in 1638, after twenty-three years of marriage, and became Regent of the Kingdom on the death of Louis XIII. in 1643.--T. [364] Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Maréchal Vicomte de Turenne (1611-1688), joined the Fronde on Madame de Longueville's persuasion, but returned to his allegiance the next year (1651). He was born a Protestant, was converted by Bossuet, but abjured the Catholic Faith in 1678.--T.