revived by Chateaubriand with the Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem (1811), the tradition of pilgrimage in the East was very successful in the Roman era. With both religious and cultural dimensions, this circular route of the Mediterranean aims to return to the origins of Western civilisation — Greece, Palestine, Egypt itself. But the modern pilgrimer, while believing that it is on the ground, cannot escape the experience of difference. Because the East, at the beginning of the 19th century, was also the Ottoman Empire (and thus another political system), with its very wide ethnic and sectarian diversity, and in particular an important presence of Islam which left no different traveller. However, this confrontation with the eastern alterity, pulsed and often publicised by Chateaubriand, does not produce the same effects. In this sense, it is interesting to compare two stories of the same trip, that made by Lamartine and doctor Delaroière in 1832-1833. Let me briefly refer to the circumstances. After an initial diplomatic career in Italy, Lamartine resigned from his post of embassy secretary in 1830 by loyalty to the Bourbons. This is the path to a political career, which the journey to the East will serve as a seat, — Lamartine learns about his appointment as a Member of Parliament while still in Syria, and is one of his first speeches in the House of Speeches on the “Eastern Issue”. When he embarked in Marseille in July 1832, Lamartine was therefore both a famous poet (he published the ‘Meditations’ in 1820, the Harmonies in 1830) and a politician who was already in the countryside, as evidenced by visits, banquets and official rituals prior to his departure. He is also accompanied by his wife Marianne, his single daughter Julia (who will die from tuberculosis in Beirut), a number of domestic servants, and finally three friends, one of whom, Jean-Vaast Delaroière, a doctor and former mayor of Hondschoote, had contributed to Lamartine’s parliamentary victory. All this small company rents a brick (one of the last Mediterranean crossings on a sailing boat) that will be used during the sea journey. Let us see quickly the itinerary of this journey, with its main stages. After two stopovers (in Sardinia and Malta), the Alceste approaches south of the Peloponnese on 6 August 1832. Although the Greek liberation war has ended, the Turks are still present in Attica at that time. Athens has not yet returned to the capital of a state that most travellers cannot stop comparing with the image of ancient Greece conveyed by the humanities culture. Disappointment, as often from that time onwards, is therefore a matter of disappointment. One month later, it was the landing in Beirut, where Lamartine and his loved ones would remain for several months, before and after the pilgrimage in Jerusalem. Here too, the political circumstances are special, as Ibrahim, the son of Méhemmet-Ali and Chief General of the Egyptian army, has just taken over Syria. Egypt, in the early 1830s, was at the peak of its military power and directly threatened sultan, to the extent that Lamartine believed in an imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire at that time. From Beirut, travellers land in Palestine (October 1832). One of the highlights of this trip, which is perceived to have a quasi-informative dimension (an outbreak of plague in Jerusalem and making travel very difficult), is of course the visit to San Sepulcre. Delaroière in an upheaval spring, supported end-to-end in his faith, while Lamartine, although very emotional, feels more distant than ever from the Catholic Orthodoxy, — the ‘Travelling in the East’ will be placed on the index by Rome in 1836. While he had planned to go to Egypt from the Holy Earth, Lamartine renounces it, having received alarming news about the health of his daughter, who stayed in Beirut. After the death of Julia, he travelled with his wife and friends to Baalbek and Damascus in March 1833 and then travelled through the anti-Lebanon chain to Constantinople in April, where he arrived a few weeks later, after stopping in Rhodes and Smyrne. One and a half months of stay in the Ottoman capital, where travellers regain strength and admirate the enchanting landscapes of the Horn of Or, is the last major step in this long journey, before Turkey’s return to Europe (Bulgaria and Serbia, already agitated by independent movements). As soon as he returned to France in autumn 1833, Lamartine was thinking of publishing a book from his notes (much more worked than would be imagined): it will be ‘Impressions, memories, thoughts and landscapes’ during a journey to the East..., which appeared in 4 volumes in 1835 and which quickly became ‘Travelling in the East’ as a result of the numerous reeditions. Delaroière uses the same title to publish its own travel story in 1836. Let us begin by looking at how these two authors describe some of the main stages of their journey to the East.