after a
time, determines to travel, fancying when he leaves home that his sister
is actually glad to get rid of him. Of course it is a case of _coelum
non animum_. When he returns he is half-surprised but (for him) wholly
glad to be at first warmly welcomed by Amelie; but after a little while
she leaves him, takes the veil, and lets him know at the last moment
that it is because her affection for him is more than sisterly, that
this was the reason of her apparent joy when he left her, and that
association with him is too much for her passion.[26] _She_ makes an
exemplary nun in a sea-side convent, and dies early of disease caught
while nursing others. _He_, his wretchedness and hatred of life reaching
their acme, exiles himself to Louisiana, and gets himself adopted by the
tribe of the Natchez, where Chactas is a (though not _the_) chief.

[Sidenote: Difference between its importance and its merit.]

Now, of course, if we are content to take a bill and write down Byron
and Lamartine, Senancour and _Jacopo Ortis_ (otherwise Ugo Foscolo),
Musset, Matthew Arnold, and _tutti quanti_, as debtors to _Rene_, we
give the tale or episode a historical value which cannot be denied;
while its positive aesthetic quality, though it may vary very much in
different estimates, cannot be regarded as merely worthless. Also, once
more, there is real pathos, especially as far as Amelie is concerned,
though the entire unexpectedness of the revelation of her fatal passion,
and the absolute lack of any details as to its origin, rise, and
circumstances, injure sympathy to some extent. But that sympathy, as far
as the present writer is concerned, fails altogether with regard to Rene
himself. If his melancholy were traceable to _mutual_ passion of the
forbidden kind, or if it had arisen from the stunning effect of the
revelation thereof on his sister's side, there would be no difficulty.
But, though these circumstances may to some extent accentuate, they have
nothing to do with causing the _weltschmerz_ or _selbst-schmerz_, or
whatever it is to be called, of this not very heroic hero. Nor has
Chateaubriand taken the trouble--which Goethe, with his more critical
sense of art, _did_ take--to make Rene go through the whole course of
the Preacher, or great part of it, before discovering that all was
vanity. He is merely, from the beginning, a young gentleman affected
with mental jaundice, who cannot or will not discover or take
psychological calomel