According to every rule of medicine I ought to have died; and it is perhaps a pity that I did not.  Two friends whom I brought with me from Brittany, in the following year gave this clear proof of fidelity.  They could not accustom themselves to this new world, and they left it.  I sometimes think that the Breton part of me did die; the Gascon, unfortunately, found sufficient reason for living!  The latter discovered, too, that this new world was a very curious one, and was well worth clinging to.  It was to him who had put me to this severe test that I owed my escape from death.  I am indebted to M. Dupanloup for two things:  for having brought me to Paris, and for having saved me from dying when I got there.  He naturally did not concern himself much about me at first.  The most eagerly sought after priest in Paris, with an establishment of two hundred students to superintend or rather to found, could not be expected to take any deep personal interest in an obscure youth.  A peculiar incident formed a bond between us.  The real cause of my suffering was the ever-present souvenir of my mother.  Having always lived alone with her, I could not tear myself away from the recollection of the peaceful, happy life which I had led year after year.  I had been happy, and I had been poor with her.  A thousand details of this very poverty, which absence made all the more touching, searched out my very heart.  At night I was always thinking of her, and I could get no sleep.  My only consolation was to write her letters full of tender feeling and moist with tears.  Our letters, as is the usage in religious establishments, were read by one of the masters.  He was so struck by the tone of deep affection which pervaded my boyish utterances that he showed one of them to M. Dupanloup, who was very much surprised when he read it.

The noblest trait in M. Dupanloup’s character was his affection for his mother.  Though his birth was, in one way, the greatest trouble of his life, he worshipped his mother.  She lived with him, and though we never saw her, we knew that he always spent so much time with her every day.  He often said that a man’s worth is to be measured by the respect he pays to his mother.  He gave us excellent advice upon this head which I never failed to follow, as, for instance, never to address her in the second person singular, or to end a letter without using the word respect.  This created a connecting link between us.  My letter was shown to him on a Friday, upon which evening the reports for the week were always read out before him.  I had not, upon that occasion, done very well with my composition, being only fifth or sixth.  “Ah!” he said, “if the subject had been that of a letter which I read this morning, Ernest Renan would have been first.”  From that time forth he noticed me.  He recognised the fact of my existence, and I regarded him, as we all did, as a principle of life, a sort of god.  One worship took the place of another, and the sentiment inspired by my early teachers gradually died out.