Pray Eternity May Be As Sweet

Joseph Ernest Renan, Brother & Sister: A Memoir and the Letters of Ernest and Henriette Renan, tr. Lady Mary Loyd (London: William Heinemann, 1896), 51-52:

The memory of those days is inexpressibly precious to me. The unavoidable delay connected with such work as we were occupied in winding up left me much leisure. I resolved to note down all the thoughts concerning the life of Jesus which had been stirring in my brain since my sojourn in the Tyrian country and my journey into Palestine. The personality of that great Founder had risen very clearly to my mind as I perused the Gospels in Galilee itself. Buried in the deepest conceivable retirement, with the help of the Gospels and of Josephus, I wrote a Life of Jesus, carrying the story while I was at Ghazir as far as the last journey to Jerusalem. Exquisite hours, departed all too quickly! I pray eternity may be as sweet! From morning till night I lived intoxicated, as it were, with the idea unfolding itself before my mental vision. I fell asleep pursuing it, and the first ray of sun shooting above the mountain revealed it to me yet clearer, stronger, than before. Henriette was the daily confidante of the progress of my labour. As fast as I could write a page she copied it. ‘‘I shall love this book,’’ she said, ‘‘because we have done it together, first of all, and then because I like it in itself.’’

The elevation of her thoughts had never struck me more. In the evening we used to walk on our terrace under the stars. Then she would give me the result of her reflections, full of tact and wisdom. Some of them were absolute revelations to me. She was perfectly happy, and this was certainly the most blessed moment in her life. Our intellectual and moral communion had never been so intimate. She repeatedly told me those days had been a paradise to her. A gentle mournfulness of tone pervaded everything she said. Her physical suffering was only numbed, and would wake, now and again, as though in sinister warning. Then she would complain that fate was miserly, and grudged her the few hours of perfect bliss it had ever granted her.