Note 365 — Chapter V · SOME PRIVATE RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WRITER

I wish that it were possible to quote the moving panegyric on Ganneau in a letter addressed by Éliphas Lévi to Alexandre Erdan and printed by him in La France Mystique, vol. ii. p. 184-188. He is described as one of the élite of intelligence, an artist, a poet of original and inexhaustible eloquence. He was sometimes bizarre but never absurd or wearisome. He was, finally, one of those hearts under the inspiration of which the zealous will crucify themselves with joy for the ungrateful. Erdan once saw Ganneau addressing a crowd in the Place de la Concorde, “uplifting his great arms and raising to heaven his beautiful Christ-like head.”