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For the "Journal Intime" runs to 17,000 folio pages of MS., and his half dozen volumes of poems, though the actual quantity is not large, represent an amount of labor which would have more than carried him through some serious piece of critical or philosophical work, and so enabled him to content the just expectations of his world.
But it is just because Amiel is profoundly sensitive to the problems of evil and responsibility, and M. Renan dismisses them with this half-tolerant, half-skeptical smile, that M. Renan's "Souvenirs" inform and entertain us, while the "Journal Intime" makes a deep impression on that moral sense which is at the root of individual and national life.
That he possessed literary power of the highest order is abundantly proved by the "Journal Intime." Knowledge, insight, eloquence, critical power all were his. And the impulse to produce, which is the natural, though by no means the invariable, accompaniment of the literary gift, must have been fairly strong in him also.
"Often though I was with him sometimes a week at a time in Peterboro I never could persuade him to play for me. I once asked Paderewski to play for me his new set of songs, and he promptly did so. But MacDowell always was 'out of practice, or had some other excuse, generally a witticism or bit of sarcasm at his own expense. I am sorry now that I did not urge him with more persistence, for he might have yielded in the end, and I would have got a more intime idea of his playing; for after all a musical tête-
There must be ample material for it; and Amiel's letters would probably supply us with more of that literary and critical reflection which his mind produced so freely and so well, as long as there was no question of publication, but which is at present somewhat overweighted in the "Journal Intime."
She had never looked more lovely than on this afternoon, and she busied herself with the preparations for tea with a housewifely grace that added a peculiar delicacy to her comeliness. 'C'est tellement intime ici, smiled Dr Porhoët, breaking into French in the impossibility of expressing in English the exact feeling which that scene gave him. It might have been a picture by some master of genre.
Madame de Connal," cried Ormond. No French actor could have done it better than nature did it for him. Dora gave one glance at Ormond pleasure, joy, sparkled in her eyes; then leaning on the lady who stood beside her, almost sinking, Dora sighed, and exclaimed, "Ah! Harry Ormond!" The husband vanished. "Ah ciel!" said l'amie intime, looking towards Ormond.
Wappinger answered, with decision; "a tay antime, as the French say. I shall have these two Eveleths or whatever their name is Lucilla van Tromp, and Derek and Dorothea Pruyn." "You may accomplish the first and the last. You'll find it difficult to fill in the middle. To say nothing of the old girl, Derek Pruyn is too busy for teas intime, or otherwise."
"My dear marquis," he said; "we are much disturbed at seeing you on the point of committing an amazing folly." "What do you mean by that?" "Do you know where that girl comes from, who she is, and what her schemes about you are?" "Don't trouble yourself, my dear Intime; between you and me my fancy for her will be over to-morrow." "Yes; but suppose that creature betrays you to-night?"
It was long, it was monotonous; it dwelt with a tiresome persistency, I used to think, upon dull things laws, commandments, statutes. Now that I am older, it seems to me one of the most human of all documents. It is tender, pensive, personal; other psalms are that; but Psalm cxix. is intime and autobiographical.
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