I fancied that I was to address a modern Moses, who derived from the
rays of another Mount Sinai the divine light which he shed upon human
laws. I wrote the ode in one night, and read it the next morning,
beneath a spreading chestnut-tree, to her who had inspired it. She made
me read it three times over, and in the evening she copied it with her
light and steady hand. Her writing flew upon the paper like the shadow
of the wings of thought, with the swiftness, elegance, and freedom of a
bird on the wing. The next day she sent it to Paris. M. de Bonald
replied by many obliging auguries respecting my talents. This was the
beginning of my acquaintance with that most excellent man, whose
character I have always admired and loved since, without sharing his
theocratical doctrines. My approval of his creed, of which I knew
nothing, was at that time a concession to my love; at a later period it
would have been an homage rendered to his virtues. M. de Bonald was,
like M. de Maistre, a prophet of the past, one of those men whose ideas
were of bygone days, and to whom we bow with veneration, as we see them
seated on the threshold of futurity; they will not pass onward, but
tarry to listen to the sublime lament of all that dies in the human
mind.
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