Sulpice; though
the great scientific and critical attainments of men like Eugene
Burnouf, the brilliant conversation of M. Cousin, and the revival
brought about by Germany in nearly all the historical sciences,
coupled with my travels and the fever of production, carried me away
and prevented me from meditating on the years which were already
relegated to what seemed like a distant past. My residence in Syria
tended still further to obliterate my early recollections. The new
sensations which I experienced there, the glimpses which I caught of
a divine world, so different from our frigid and sombre countries,
absorbed my whole being. My dreams were haunted for a time by the
burnt-up mountain-chain of Galaad and the peak of Safed, where the
Messiah was to appear, by Carmel and its beds of anemone sown by
God, by the Gulf of Aphaca whence issues the river Adonis. Strangely
enough, it was at Athens, in 1865, that I first felt a strong backward
impulse, the effect being that of a fresh and bracing breeze coming
from afar.
The impression which Athens made upon me was the strongest which I
have ever felt. There is one and only one place in which perfection
exists, and that is Athens, which outdid anything I had ever imagined.
I had before my eyes the ideal of beauty crystallised in the marble of
Pentelicus. I had hitherto thought that perfection was not to be
found in this world; one thing alone seemed to come anywhere near to
perfection. For some time past I had ceased to believe in miracles
strictly so called, though the singular destiny of the Jewish people,
leading up to Jesus and Christianity, appeared to me to stand alone.
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