Ernest Renan

Excerpt from Ernest Renan

Ernest Renan was born at Treguier, in the department of the Cotes du Nord, on the 27th February I 823. His father came of a race which had been given for generations to the life of the sea. He owned a small vessel and supported his family by his industry but he was a Breton of the Bretons, full of their dreamy unpractical fantasies, and died, in a very melancholy way, while his famous son was still a child. His wife was of mixed parentage, her mother having Gascon blood, and she brought to the manage ment of the family a solidity of judgment and a courageous gaiety which were very foreign to her husband's nature. Ernest Renan was fond of dwelling on the fact that in him, for the first time, many generations of humble and unlettered but not ungifted people found at length a voice and an interpreter.