Denmark's taking up arms, with its
two million inhabitants, against a great power like Prussia, roused his
enthusiasm. "It is great, it is Spartan!" he exclaimed. It must
certainly be admitted that this human sympathy was not a prominent
characteristic, and he wearied me with his hateful verdicts over all
those whom I, and by degrees, all Europe, esteemed and admired in
France.
As an instance of the paradoxicalness to which Huysmans many years later
became addicted, the latter tried to puff up Hello as being a man of
remarkable intellect; and an instance of the want of independence with
which the new Catholic movement was carried on in Denmark is to be found
in the fact that the organ of Young Denmark, _The Tower_, could
declare: "Hello is one of the few whom all men of the future are agreed
to bow before.... Hello was,--not only a Catholic burning with religious
ardour,--but a genius; these two things explain everything."
When Hello invited me to his house, I regarded it as my duty to go, that
I might learn as much as possible, and although his circle was
exceedingly antipathetic to me, I did not regret it; the spectacle was
highly instructive.
Next to Hello himself, who, despite his fanaticism and restlessness,
impressed one as very inoffensive at bottom, and not mischievous if one
steered clear of such names as Voltaire or Renan, the chief member of
his circle was the black doctor, (_le Docteur noir_,) so much
talked of in the last years of the Empire, and who is even alluded to in
Taine's _Graindorge_.
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