Lamartine, on the other hand, was influenced by the religion of his infancy. Piety always came back to him when he was alone; it made him better, as though the thought of man when he is isolated from others was his best counsellor. It was not so much a matter of conviction, as a wish that it should be true. The poetry and affectionateness of religion swayed his will. He could contemplate the mystery of the Incarnation as filling, or at least bridging over, the unmeasurable space between humanity and God. If he did not quite admit this as actual fact, he revered it as a wonderful poem of the soul. He embellished it with the charms of his imagination, he embalmed it with his desires, he colored it with the tints of his thought and enthusiasm; in short,—he subordinated his rebellious reason to this earnest desire to believe, so that he might be able to love and pray. He put away from him, as by force, every shadow of doubt and repugnance, and almost succeeded in producing the illusions for which he was so eager, and in conforming the habit of his soul to the current sentiment of the epoch. If he did not really worship his mother's God as his own God, he at least carried him in his heart as an idol. The cordial relations of the two friends were maintained for years. The priest continued to minister in his little church and gave much assistance to the mother of Lamartine in her charities. Above his grave in the cemetery is a stone with a brief epitaph, and beneath it the words: "Alphonse de Lamartine à son ami." The mental depression under which Lamartine labored, seriously affected his health. The family physician was alarmed. Plainly enough it was from causes outside of the province of medicine and so instead of prescribing medicines he ordered the young man to go to Aix in Savoy, to the hot sulphur springs. He borrowed money from a friend of the family and went. Vignet procured a room for him, and paid him several visits during his sojourn. It was early Autumn. October had just begun, and the leaves on the trees had put on their colors. The bathing season was over, and the usual guests had gone away, leaving the place solitary. There was another patient in the house. This was a lady from Paris. She was in a decline and had been at Aix several months. Lamartine, however, had no inclination to see her. An accident on the lake brought them together in which he rescued her from imminent peril of life. The acquaintance thus begun became at once an ardent attachment. Lamartine describes it as "repose of the heart, after having met with the long-sought and till then unfound object of its restless adoration; the long-desired idol of that vague, unquiet adoration of supreme beauty which agitates the soul till the divinity has been discovered."