Henri-Dominique LACORDAIRE (1802-1861) L.A.S., La Quercia December 16, 1839, to Count de Falloux, Rome; 2 1/2 pages in-4, address, Viterbo postmark (edge slightly frayed). Magnificent letter to the young publicist. He was unable to return the visits M. de Falloux made to him in Viterbo, and writes to him before entering "this terrible year 1840 which, without destroying my feelings for you, would be capable of sending their expression to the other world. I hold the other world in high esteem, thank God, but I believe one must pay one's debts in this one. [...] I wrote to Madame Swetchine that you appear to me from time to time as you did in the days of the fairies, or rather of chivalry, when after years of separation we would suddenly meet under the walls of Antioch or Edessa, at the foot of Mount Lebanon, or drinking water from the Nile. And, in truth, if the chivalry of the sword is no more, the chivalry of ideas is beginning. We are all, in many respects at least, knights errant of the intellect; we seek the lost secret of truth [...]; we seek the future city of men, because today's city is no more than a tent in the middle of a field. This is precisely why, dear and noble friend, we meet on the paths of this world; we are two runners of spiritual avantures, you younger, I older, departing from shores even more different than the number of our years. That's why you'll forgive me if I don't always sleep in the same bed as you. A monk's bed is always a little harder and wilder than that of a young man of the world, however much he may love wisdom. [...] Gathered as we are by the great places of the mind, let's leave it to time to teach us who's right or wrong about the rest. Since Jesus Christ and his church are for you the cornerstone of humanity's destiny, I consider you to have received the light of those revelations that are vulgarly called revolutions. You are a man baptized with the baptism of the future; you are in the conspiracy of what God is preparing, his soldier, his Levite, a Frenchman tempered at the predestined source from which France emerged"...