to thank them for the intelligent and sympathetic way in which they have supported me.  In former times the most that a man who went out of the beaten track could expect was that he would be tolerated.  My age and country have been much more indulgent for me.  Despite his many defects and his humble origin, the son of peasants and of lowly sailors, trebly ridiculous as a deserter from the seminary, an unfrocked clerk and a case-hardened pedant, was from the first well-received, listened to, and ever made much of, simply because he spoke with sincerity.  I have had some ardent opponents, but I have never had a personal enemy.  The only two objects of my ambition, admission to the Institute and to the College de France, have been gratified.  France has allowed me to share the favours which she reserves for all that is liberal:  her admirable language, her glorious literary tradition, her rules of tact, and the audience which she can command.  Foreigners, too, have aided me in my task as much as my own country, and I shall carry to my grave a feeling of affection for Europe as well as for France, to whom I would at times go on my knees and entreat not to divide her own household by fratricidal jealousy, nor to forget her duty and her common task, which is civilization.

Nearly all the men with whom I have had anything to do have been extremely kind to me.  When I first left the seminary, I traversed, as I have said, a period of solitude, during which my sole support consisted of my sister’s letters and my conversations with M. Berthelot; but I soon met with encouragement in every direction.  M. Egger became, from the beginning of 1846, my friend and my guide in the difficult task of proving, rather late in the day, what I could do in the way of classics.  Eugene Burnouf, after perusing a very defective essay which I wrote for the Volney Prize in 1847, chose me as a pupil.  M. and Mme. Adolphe Garnier were extremely kind to me.  They were a charming couple, and Madame Garnier, radiant with grace and devoid of affectation, first inspired me with admiration for a kind of beauty from which theology had sequestered me.  With M. Victor Le Clerc I had brought before my eyes all those qualities of study and methodical application which distinguished my former teachers.  I had learnt to like him from the time of my residence at St. Sulpice:  he was the only layman whom the directors of the seminary valued, and they envied him his remarkable ecclesiastical erudition.  M. Cousin, though he more than once displayed friendliness for me, was too closely surrounded by disciples for me to try and force my way through such a crowd, which was somewhat subservient to their master’s utterances.  M. Augustin Thierry, upon the other hand, was, in the true sense of the word, a spiritual father for me.  His advice is ever in my thoughts, and I have him to thank for having kept clear in my style of writing from certain very ungainly defects which I should not have discovered for myself.  It was through him that I made the acquaintance of the Scheffer family, whom I have to thank for a companion who has always assorted herself so harmoniously to my somewhat contracted conditions of life that I am at times tempted, when I reflect upon so many fortunate coincidences, to believe in predestination.