Note 177 — Chapter XXI · FREETHOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

“L’incrédulité de Sainte-Beuve était sincère, radicale, et absolue. Elle a été invariable et invincible pendant trente ans. Voilà la vérité” (Jules Levallois, Sainte-Beuve, 1872, préf. p. xxxiii). M. Levallois, who writes as a theist, was one of Sainte-Beuve’s secretaries. M. Zola, who spoke of the famous critic’s rationalism as “une négation n’osant conclure,” admitted later that it was hardly possible for him to speak more boldly than he did (Documents Littéraires, 1881, pp. 314, 325–28). And M. Lavisse has shown (as cited above, p. 406) with what courage he supported Duruy in the Senate against the attacks of the exasperated clerical party. See also his letter of 1867 to Louis Viardot in the avant-propos to that writer’s Libre Examen: Apologie d’un Incrédule, 6e édit. 1881, p. 3. ↑