Louis Lambert
DEDICATION"Etnunc et semper dilectoe dicatum."Louis Lambert was born at Montoire, a little town in the Vendomois,where his father owned a tannery of no great magnitude, and intendedthat his son should succeed him; but his precocious bent for studymodified the paternal decision. For, indeed, the tanner and his wifeadored Louis, their only child, and never contradicted him inanything.At the age of five Louis had begun by reading the Old and NewTestaments; and these two Books, including so many books, had sealedhis fate. Could that childish imagination understand the mysticaldepths of the Scriptures? Could it so early follow the flight of theHoly Spirit across the worlds? Or was it merely attracted by theromantic touches which abound in those Oriental poems! Our narrativewill answer these questions to some readers.One thing resulted from this first reading of the Bible: Louis wentall over Montoire begging for books, and he obtained them by thosewinning ways peculiar to children, which no one can resist. Whiledevoting himself to these studies under no sort of guidance, hereached the age of ten.At that period substitutes for the army were scarce; rich familiessecured them long beforehand to have them ready when the lots weredrawn. The poor tanner's modest fortune did not allow of theirpurchasing a substitute for their son, and they saw no means allowedby law for evading the conscription but that of making him a priest;so, in 1807, they sent him to his maternal uncle, the parish priest ofMer, another small town on the Loire, not far from Blois. Thisarrangement at once satisfied Louis' passion for knowledge, and hisparents' wish not to expose him to the dreadful chances of war; and,indeed, his taste for study and precocious intelligence gave groundsfor hoping that he might rise to high fortunes in the Church.After remaining for about three years with his uncle, an old and notuncultured Oratorian, Louis left him early in 1811 to enter thecollege at Vendome, where he was maintained at the cost of Madame deStael.Lambert owed the favor and patronage of this celebrated lady tochance, or shall we not say to Providence, who can smooth the path offorlorn genius? To us, indeed, who do not see below the surface ofhuman things, such vicissitudes, of which we find many examples in thelives of great men, appear to be merely the result of physicalphenomena; to most biographers the head of a man of genius rises abovethe herd as some noble plant in the fields attracts the eye of abotanist in its splendor. This comparison may well be applied to LouisLambert's adventure; he was accustomed to spend the time allowed himby his uncle for holidays at his father's house; but instead ofindulging, after the manner of schoolboys, in the sweets of thedelightful _far niente_ that tempts us at every age, he set out everymorning with part of a loaf and his books, and went to read andmeditate in the woods, to escape his mother's remonstrances, for shebelieved such persistent study to be injurious. How admirable is amother's instinct! From that time reading was in Louis a sort ofappetite which nothing could satisfy; he devoured books of every kind,feeding indiscriminately on religious works, history, philosophy, andphysics. He has told me that he found indescribable delight in readingdictionaries for lack of other books, and I readily believed him. Whatscholar has not many a time found pleasure in seeking the probablemeaning of some unknown word? The analysis of a word, its physiognomyand history, would be to Lambert matter for long dreaming. But thesewere not the instinctive dreams by which a boy accustoms himself tothe phenomena of life, steels himself to every moral or physicalperception--an involuntary education which subsequently brings forthfruit both in the understanding and character of a man; no, Louismastered the facts, and he accounted for them after seeking out boththe principle and the end with the mother wit of a savage. Indeed,from the age of fourteen, by one of those startling freaks in whichnature sometimes indulges, and which proved how anomalous was histemperament, he would utter quite simply ideas of which the depth wasnot revealed to me till a long time after."Often," he has said to me when speaking of his studies, "oftenhave I made the most delightful voyage, floating on a word downthe abyss of the past, like an insect embarked on a blade ofgrass tossing on the ripples of a stream. Starting from Greece, Iwould get to Rome, and traverse the whole extent of modern ages.What a fine book might be written of the life and adventures of aword! It has, of course, received various stamps from theoccasions on which it has served its purpose; it has conveyeddifferent ideas in different places; but is it not still granderto think of it under the three aspects of soul, body, and motion?Merely to regard it in the abstract, apart from its functions,its effects, and its influence, is enough to cast one into anocean of meditations? Are not most words colored by the idea theyrepresent? Then, to whose genius are they due? If it takes greatintelligence to create a word, how old may human speech be? Thecombination of letters, their shapes, and the look they give tothe word, are the exact reflection, in accordance with thecharacter of each nation, of the unknown beings whose tracessurvive in us."Who can philosophically explain the transition from sensation tothought, from thought to word, from the word to its hieroglyphicpresentment, from hieroglyphics to the alphabet, from the alphabet towritten language, of which the eloquent beauty resides in a series ofimages, classified by rhetoric, and forming, in a sense, thehieroglyphics of thought? Was it not the ancient mode of representinghuman ideas as embodied in the forms of animals that gave rise to theshapes of the first signs used in the East for writing down language?Then has it not left its traces by tradition on our modern languages,which have all seized some remnant of the primitive speech of nations,a majestic and solemn tongue whose grandeur and solemnity decrease ascommunities grow old; whose sonorous tones ring in the Hebrew Bible,and still are noble in Greece, but grow weaker under the progress ofsuccessive phases of civilization?"Is it to this time-honored spirit that we owe the mysteries lyingburied in every human word? In the word _True_ do we not discern acertain imaginary rectitude? Does not the compact brevity of its soundsuggest a vague image of chaste nudity and the simplicity of Truth inall things? The syllable seems to me singularly crisp and fresh."I chose the formula of an abstract idea on purpose, not wishing toillustrate the case by a word which should make it too obvious to theapprehension, as the word _Flight_ for instance, which is a directappeal to the senses."But is it not so with every root word? They are all stamped with aliving power that comes from the soul, and which they restore to thesoul through the mysterious and wonderful action and reaction betweenthought and speech. Might we not speak of it as a lover who finds onhis mistress' lips as much love as he gives? Thus, by their merephysiognomy, words call to life in our brain the beings which theyserve to clothe. Like all beings, there is but one place where theirproperties are at full liberty to act and develop. But the subjectdemands a science to itself perhaps!"And he would shrug his shoulders as much as to say, "But we are toohigh and too low!"Louis' passion for reading had on the whole been very well satisfied.The cure of Mer had two or three thousand volumes. This treasure hadbeen derived from the plunder committed during the Revolution in theneighboring chateaux and abbeys. As a priest who had taken the oath,the worthy man had been able to choose the best books from among theseprecious libraries, which were sold by the pound. In three years LouisLambert had assimilated the contents of all the books in his uncle'slibrary that were worth reading. The process of absorbing ideas bymeans of reading had become in him a very strange phenomenon. His eyetook in six or seven lines at once, and his mind grasped the sensewith a swiftness as remarkable as that of his eye; sometimes even oneword in a sentence was enough to enable him to seize the gist of thematter.His memory was prodigious. He remembered with equal exactitude theideas he had derived from reading, and those which had occurred to himin the course of meditation or conversation. Indeed, he had every formof memory--for places, for names, for words, things, and faces. He notonly recalled any object at will, but he saw them in his mind,situated, lighted, and colored as he had originally seen them. Andthis power he could exert with equal effect with regard to the mostabstract efforts of the intellect. He could remember, as he said, notmerely the position of a sentence in the book where he had met withit, but the frame of mind he had been in at remote dates. Thus his wasthe singular privilege of being able to retrace in memory the wholelife and progress of his mind, from the ideas he had first acquired tothe last thought evolved in it, from the most obscure to the clearest.His brain, accustomed in early youth to the mysterious mechanism bywhich human faculties are concentrated, drew from this rich treasuryendless images full of life and freshness, on which he fed his spiritduring those lucid spells of contemplation."Whenever I wish it," said he to me in his own language, to which afund of remembrance gave precocious originality, "I can draw a veilover my eyes. Then I suddenly see within me a camera obscura, wherenatural objects are reproduced in purer forms than those under whichthey first appeared to my external sense."At the age of twelve his imagination, stimulated by the perpetualexercise of his faculties, had developed to a point which permittedhim to have such precise concepts of things which he knew only fromreading about them, that the image stamped on his mind could not havebeen clearer if he had actually seen them, whether this was by aprocess of analogy or that he was gifted with a sort of second sightby which he could command all nature."When I read the story of the battle of Austerlitz," said he to me oneday, "I saw every incident. The roar of the cannon, the cries of thefighting men rang in my ears, and made my inmost self quiver; I couldsmell the powder; I heard the clatter of horses and the voices of men;I looked down on the plain where armed nations were in collision, justas if I had been on the heights of Santon. The scene was as terrifyingas a passage from the Apocalypse." On the occasions when he broughtall his powers into play, and in some degree lost consciousness of hisphysical existence, and lived on only by the remarkable energy of hismental powers, whose sphere was enormously expanded, he left spacebehind him, to use his own words.But I will not here anticipate the intellectual phases of his life.Already, in spite of myself, I have reversed the order in which Iought to tell the history of this man, who transferred all hisactivities to thinking, as others throw all their life into action.A strong bias drew his mind into mystical studies."_Abyssus abyssum_," he would say. "Our spirit is abysmal and lovesthe abyss. In childhood, manhood, and old age we are always eager formysteries in whatever form they present themselves."This predilection was disastrous; if indeed his life can be measuredby ordinary standards, or if we may gauge another's happiness by ourown or by social notions. This taste for the "things of heaven,"another phrase he was fond of using, this _mens divinior_, was dueperhaps to the influence produced on his mind by the first books heread at his uncle's. Saint Theresa and Madame Guyon were a sequel tothe Bible; they had the first-fruits of his manly intelligence, andaccustomed him to those swift reactions of the soul of which ecstasyis at once the result and the means. This line of study, this peculiartaste, elevated his heart, purified, ennobled it, gave him an appetitefor the divine nature, and suggested to him the almost womanlyrefinement of feeling which is instinctive in great men; perhaps theirsublime superiority is no more than the desire to devote themselveswhich characterizes woman, only transferred to the greatest things.As a result of these early impressions, Louis passed immaculatethrough his school life; this beautiful virginity of the sensesnaturally resulted in the richer fervor of his blood, and in increasedfaculties of mind.The Baroness de Stael, forbidden to come within forty leagues ofParis, spent several months of her banishment on an estate nearVendome. One day, when out walking, she met on the skirts of the parkthe tanner's son, almost in rags, and absorbed in reading. The bookwas a translation of _Heaven and Hell_. At that time MonsieurSaint-Martin, Monsieur de Gence, and a few other French or half Germanwriters were almost the only persons in the French Empire to whom thename of Swedenborg was known. Madame de Stael, greatly surprised, tookthe book from him with the roughness she affected in her questions,looks, and manners, and with a keen glance at Lambert,--"Do you understand all this?" she asked."Do you pray to God?" said the child."Why? yes!""And do you understand Him?"The Baroness was silent for a moment; then she sat down by Lambert,and began to talk to him. Unfortunately, my memory, though retentive,is far from being so trustworthy as my friend's, and I have forgottenthe whole of the dialogue excepting those first words.Such a meeting was of a kind to strike Madame de Stael very greatly;on her return home she said but little about it, notwithstanding aneffusiveness which in her became mere loquacity; but it evidentlyoccupied her thoughts.The only person now living who preserves any recollection of theincident, and whom I catechised to be informed of what few wordsMadame de Stael had let drop, could with difficulty recall these wordsspoken by the Baroness as describing Lambert, "He is a real seer."Louis failed to justify in the eyes of the world the high hopes he hadinspired in his protectress. The transient favor she showed him wasregarded as a feminine caprice, one of the fancies characteristic ofartist souls. Madame de Stael determined to save Louis Lambert alikefrom serving the Emperor or the Church, and to preserve him for theglorious destiny which, she thought, awaited him; for she made him outto be a second Moses snatched from the waters. Before her departureshe instructed a friend of hers, Monsieur de Corbigny, to send herMoses in due course to the High School at Vendome; then she probablyforgot him.Having entered this college at the age of fourteen, early in 1811,Lambert would leave it at the end of 1814, when he had finished thecourse of Philosophy. I doubt whether during the whole time he everheard a word of his benefactress--if indeed it was the act of abenefactress to pay for a lad's schooling for three years without athought of his future prospects, after diverting him from a career inwhich he might have found happiness. The circumstances of the time,and Louis Lambert's character, may to a great extent absolve Madame deStael for her thoughtlessness and her generosity. The gentleman whowas to have kept up communications between her and the boy left Bloisjust at the time when Louis passed out of the college. The politicalevents that ensued were then a sufficient excuse for this gentleman'sneglect of the Baroness' protege. The authoress of _Corinne_ heard nomore of her little Moses.A hundred louis, which she placed in the hands of Monsieur deCorbigny, who died, I believe, in 1812, was not a sufficiently largesum to leave lasting memories in Madame de Stael, whose excitablenature found ample pasture during the vicissitudes of 1814 and 1815,which absorbed all her interest.At this time Louis Lambert was at once too proud and too poor to go insearch of a patroness who was traveling all over Europe. However, hewent on foot from Blois to Paris in the hope of seeing her, andarrived, unluckily, on the very day of her death. Two letters fromLambert to the Baroness remained unanswered. The memory of Madame deStael's good intentions with regard to Louis remains, therefore, onlyin some few young minds, struck, as mine was, by the strangeness ofthe story.No one who had not gone through the training at our college couldunderstand the effect usually made on our minds by the announcementthat a "new boy" had arrived, or the impression that such an adventureas Louis Lambert's was calculated to produce.And here a little information must be given as to the primitiveadministration of this institution, originally half-military andhalf-monastic, to explain the new life which there awaited Lambert.Before the Revolution, the Oratorians, devoted, like the Society ofJesus,to the education of youth--succeeding the Jesuits, in fact, in certainoftheir establishments--the colleges of Vendome, of Tournon, of laFleche, Pont-Levoy, Sorreze, and Juilly. That at Vendome, like theothers, I believe, turned out a certain number of cadets for the army.The abolition of educational bodies, decreed by the convention, hadbut little effect on the college at Vendome. When the first crisis hadblown over, the authorities recovered possession of their buildings;certain Oratorians, scattered about the country, came back to thecollege and re-opened it under the old rules, with the habits,practices, and customs which gave this school a character with which Ihave seen nothing at all comparable in any that I have visited since Ileft that establishment.Standing in the heart of the town, on the little river Loire whichflows under its walls, the college possesses extensive precincts,carefully enclosed by walls, and including all the buildings necessaryfor an institution on that scale: a chapel, a theatre, an infirmary, abakehouse, gardens, and water supply. This college is the mostcelebrated home of learning in all the central provinces, and receivespupils from them and from the colonies. Distance prohibits anyfrequent visits from parents to their children.The rule of the House forbids holidays away from it. Once enteredthere, a pupil never leaves till his studies are finished. With theexception of walks taken under the guidance of the Fathers, everythingis calculated to give the School the benefit of conventual discipline;in my day the tawse was still a living memory, and the classicalleather strap played its terrible part with all the honors. Thepunishment originally invented by the Society of Jesus, as alarming tothe moral as to the physical man, was still in force in all theintegrity of the original code.Letters to parents were obligatory on certain days, so was confession.Thus our sins and our sentiments were all according to pattern.Everything bore the stamp of monastic rule. I well remember, amongother relics of the ancient order, the inspection we went throughevery Sunday. We were all in our best, placed in file like soldiers toawait the arrival of the two inspectors who, attended by the tutorsand the tradesmen, examined us from the three points of view of dress,health, and morals.The two or three hundred pupils lodged in the establishment weredivided, according to ancient custom, into the _minimes_ (thesmallest), the little boys, the middle boys, and the big boys. Thedivision of the _minimes_ included the eighth and seventh classes; thelittle boys formed the sixth, fifth, and fourth; the middle boys wereclassed as third and second; and the first class comprised the seniorstudents--of philosophy, rhetoric, the higher mathematics, andchemistry. Each of these divisions had its own building, classrooms,and play-ground, in the large common precincts on to which theclassrooms opened, and beyond which was the refectory.This dining-hall, worthy of an ancient religious Order, accommodatedall the school. Contrary to the usual practice in educationalinstitutions, we were allowed to talk at our meals, a tolerantOratorian rule which enabled us to exchange plates according to ourtaste. This gastronomical barter was always one of the chief pleasuresof our college life. If one of the "middle" boys at the head of histable wished for a helping of lentils instead of dessert--for we haddessert--the offer was passed down from one to another: "Dessert forlentils!" till some other epicure had accepted; then the plate oflentils was passed up to the bidder from hand to hand, and the plateof dessert returned by the same road. Mistakes were never made. Ifseveral identical offers were made, they were taken in order, and theformula would be, "Lentils number one for dessert number one." Thetables were very long; our incessant barter kept everything moving; wetransacted it with amazing eagerness; and the chatter of three hundredlads, the bustling to and fro of the servants employed in changing theplates, setting down the dishes, handing the bread, with the tours ofinspection of the masters, made this refectory at Vendome a sceneunique in its way, and the amazement of visitors.To make our life more tolerable, deprived as we were of allcommunication with the outer world and of family affection, we wereallowed to keep pigeons and to have gardens. Our two or three hundredpigeon-houses, with a thousand birds nesting all round the outer wall,and above thirty garden plots, were a sight even stranger than ourmeals. But a full account of the peculiarities which made the collegeat Vendome a place unique in itself and fertile in reminiscences tothose who spent their boyhood there, would be weariness to the reader.Which of us all but remembers with delight, notwithstanding thebitterness of learning, the eccentric pleasures of that cloisteredlife? The sweetmeats purchased by stealth in the course of our walks,permission obtained to play cards and devise theatrical performancesduring the holidays, such tricks and freedom as were necessitated byour seclusion; then, again, our military band, a relic of the cadets;our academy, our chaplain, our Father professors, and all our gamespermitted or prohibited, as the case might be; the cavalry charges onstilts, the long slides made in winter, the clatter of our clogs; and,above all, the trading transactions with "the shop" set up in thecourtyard itself.This shop was kept by a sort of cheap-jack, of whom big and littleboys could procure--according to his prospectus--boxes, stilts, tools,Jacobin pigeons, and Nuns, Mass-books--an article in small demand--penknives, paper, pens, pencils, ink of all colors, balls and marbles;in short, the whole catalogue of the most treasured possessions ofboys, including everything from sauce for the pigeons we were obligedto kill off, to the earthenware pots in which we set aside the ricefrom supper to be eaten at next morning's breakfast. Which of us wasso unhappy as to have forgotten how his heart beat at the sight ofthis booth, open periodically during play-hours on Sundays, to whichwe went, each in his turn, to spend his little pocket-money; while thesmallness of the sum allowed by our parents for these minor pleasuresrequired us to make a choice among all the objects that appealed sostrongly to our desires? Did ever a young wife, to whom her husband,during the first days of happiness, hands, twelve times a year, apurse of gold, the budget of her personal fancies, dream of so manydifferent purchases, each of which would absorb the whole sum, as weimagined possible on the eve of the first Sunday in each month? Forsix francs during one night we owned every delight of thatinexhaustible shop! and during Mass every response we chanted wasmixed up in our minds with our secret calculations. Which of us allcan recollect ever having had a sou left to spend on the Sundayfollowing? And which of us but obeyed the instinctive law of socialexistence by pitying, helping, and despising those pariahs who, by theavarice or poverty of their parents, found themselves penniless?Any one who forms a clear idea of this huge college, with its monasticbuildings in the heart of a little town, and the four plots in whichwe were distributed as by a monastic rule, will easily conceive of theexcitement that we felt at the arrival of a new boy, a passengersuddenly embarked on the ship. No young duchess, on her firstappearance at Court, was ever more spitefully criticised than the newboy by the youths in his division. Usually during the eveningplay-hour before prayers, those sycophants who were accustomed toingratiate themselves with the Fathers who took it in turns two andtwo for a week to keep an eye on us, would be the first to hear ontrustworthy authority: "There will be a new boy to-morrow!" and thensuddenly the shout, "A New Boy!--A New Boy!" rang through the courts.We hurried up to crowd round the superintendent and pester him withquestions:"Where was he coming from? What was his name? Which class would he bein?" and so forth.Louis Lambert's advent was the subject of a romance worthy of the_Arabian Nights_. I was in the fourth class at the time--among thelittle boys. Our housemasters were two men whom we called Fathers fromhabit and tradition, though they were not priests. In my time therewere indeed but three genuine Oratorians to whom this titlelegitimately belonged; in 1814 they all left the college, which hadgradually become secularized, to find occupation about the altar invarious country parishes, like the cure of Mer.Father Haugoult, the master for the week, was not a bad man, but ofvery moderate attainments, and he lacked the tact which isindispensable for discerning the different characters of children, andgraduating their punishment to their powers of resistance. FatherHaugoult, then, began very obligingly to communicate to his pupils thewonderful events which were to end on the morrow in the advent of themost singular of "new boys." Games were at an end. All the childrencame round in silence to hear the story of Louis Lambert, discovered,like an aerolite, by Madame de Stael, in a corner of the wood.Monsieur Haugoult had to tell us all about Madame de Stael; thatevening she seemed to me ten feet high; I saw at a later time thepicture of Corinne, in which Gerard represents her as so tall andhandsome; and, alas! the woman painted by my imagination so fartranscended this, that the real Madame de Stael fell at once in myestimation, even after I read her book of really masculine power, _Del'Allemagne_.But Lambert at that time was an even greater wonder. MonsieurMareschal, the headmaster, after examining him, had thought of placinghim among the senior boys. It was Louis' ignorance of Latin thatplaced him so low as the fourth class, but he would certainly leap upa class every year; and, as a remarkable exception, he was to be oneof the "Academy." _Proh pudor_! we were to have the honor of countingamong the "little boys" one whose coat was adorned with the red ribbondisplayed by the "Academicians" of Vendome. These Academicians enjoyeddistinguished privileges; they often dined at the director's table,and held two literary meetings annually, at which we were all presentto hear their elucubrations. An Academician was a great man in embryo.And if every Vendome scholar would speak the truth, he would confessthat, in later life, an Academician of the great French Academy seemedto him far less remarkable than the stupendous boy who wore the crossand the imposing red ribbon which were the insignia of our "Academy."It was very unusual to be one of that illustrious body beforeattaining to the second class, for the Academicians were expected tohold public meetings every Thursday during the holidays, and to readtales in verse or prose, epistles, essays, tragedies, dramas--compositions far above the intelligence of the lower classes. I longtreasured the memory of a story called the "Green Ass," which was, Ithink, the masterpiece of this unknown Society. In the fourth, and anAcademician! This boy of fourteen, a poet already, the protege ofMadame de Stael, a coming genius, said Father Haugoult, was to be oneof us! a wizard, a youth capable of writing a composition or atranslation while we were being called into lessons, and of learninghis lessons by reading them through but once. Louis Lambert bewilderedall our ideas. And Father Haugoult's curiosity and impatience to seethis new boy added fuel to our excited fancy."If he has pigeons, he can have no pigeon-house; there is not room foranother. Well, it cannot be helped," said one boy, since famous as anagriculturist."Who will sit next to him?" said another."Oh, I wish I might be his chum!" cried an enthusiast.In school language, the word here rendered chum--_faisant_, or in someschools, _copin_--expressed a fraternal sharing of the joys and evilsof your childish existence, a community of interests that was fruitfulof squabbling and making friends again, a treaty of alliance offensiveand defensive. It is strange, but never in my time did I know brotherswho were chums. If man lives by his feelings, he thinks perhaps thathe will make his life the poorer if he merges an affection of his ownchoosing in a natural tie.The impression made upon me by Father Haugoult's harangue that eveningis one of the most vivid reminiscences of my childhood; I can compareit with nothing but my first reading of _Robinson Crusoe_. Indeed, Iowe to my recollection of these prodigious impressions an observationthat may perhaps be new as to the different sense attached to words byeach hearer. The word in itself has no final meaning; we affect a wordmore than it affects us; its value is in relation to the images wehave assimilated and grouped round it; but a study of this fact wouldrequire considerable elaboration, and lead us too far from ourimmediate subject.Not being able to sleep, I had a long discussion with my next neighborin the dormitory as to the remarkable being who on the morrow was tobe one of us. This neighbor, who became an officer, and is now awriter with lofty philosophical views, Barchou de Penhoen, has notbeen false to his pre-destination, nor to the hazard of fortune bywhich the only two scholars of Vendome, of whose fame Vendome everhears, were brought together in the same classroom, on the same form,and under the same roof. Our comrade Dufaure had not, when this bookwas published, made his appearance in public life as a lawyer. Thetranslator of Fichte, the expositor and friend of Ballanche, wasalready interested, as I myself was, in metaphysical questions; weoften talked nonsense together about God, ourselves, and nature. He atthat time affected pyrrhonism. Jealous of his place as leader, hedoubted Lambert's precocious gifts; while I, having lately read _LesEnfants celebres_, overwhelmed him with evidence, quoting youngMontcalm, Pico della Mirandola, Pascal--in short, a score of earlydeveloped brains, anomalies that are famous in the history of thehuman mind, and Lambert's predecessors.I was at the time passionately addicted to reading. My father, who wasambitious to see me in the Ecole Polytechnique, paid for me to have aspecial course of private lessons in mathematics. My mathematicalmaster was the librarian of the college, and allowed me to help myselfto books without much caring what I chose to take from the library, aquiet spot where I went to him during play-hours to have my lesson.Either he was no great mathematician, or he was absorbed in some grandscheme, for he very willingly left me to read when I ought to havebeen learning, while he worked at I knew not what. So, by a tacitunderstanding between us, I made no complaints of being taughtnothing, and he said nothing of the books I borrowed.Carried away by this ill-timed mania, I neglected my studies tocompose poems, which certainly can have shown no great promise, tojudge by a line of too many feet which became famous among mycompanions--the beginning of an epic on the Incas:"O Inca! O roi infortune et malheureux!"In derision of such attempts, I was nicknamed the Poet, but mockerydid not cure me. I was always rhyming, in spite of good advice fromMonsieur Mareschal, the headmaster, who tried to cure me of anunfortunately inveterate passion by telling me the fable of a linnetthat fell out of the nest because it tried to fly before its wingswere grown. I persisted in my reading; I became the least emulous, theidlest, the most dreamy of all the division of "little boys," andconsequently the most frequently punished.This autobiographical digression may give some idea of the reflectionsI was led to make in anticipation of Lambert's arrival. I was thentwelve years old. I felt sympathy from the first for the boy whosetemperament had some points of likeness to my own. I was at last tohave a companion in daydreams and meditations. Though I knew not yetwhat glory meant, I thought it glory to be the familiar friend of achild whose immortality was foreseen by Madame de Stael. To me LouisLambert was as a giant.The looked-for morrow came at last. A minute before breakfast we heardthe steps of Monsieur Mareschal and of the new boy in the quietcourtyard. Every head was turned at once to the door of the classroom.Father Haugoult, who participated in our torments of curiosity, didnot sound the whistle he used to reduce our mutterings to silence andbring us back to our tasks. We then saw this famous new boy, whomMonsieur Mareschal was leading by the hand. The superintendentdescended from his desk, and the headmaster said to him solemnly,according to etiquette: "Monsieur, I have brought you Monsieur LouisLambert; will you place him in the fourth class? He will begin workto-morrow."Then, after speaking a few words in an undertone to the class-master,he said:"Where can he sit?"It would have been unfair to displace one of us for a newcomer; so asthere was but one desk vacant, Louis Lambert came to fill it, next tome, for I had last joined the class. Though we still had some time towait before lessons were over, we all stood up to look at LouisLambert. Monsieur Mareschal heard our mutterings, saw how eager wewere, and said, with the kindness that endeared him to us all:"Well, well, but make no noise; do not disturb the other classes."These words set us free to play some little time before breakfast, andwe all gathered round Lambert while Monsieur Mareschal walked up anddown the courtyard with Father Haugoult.There were about eighty of us little demons, as bold as birds of prey.Though we ourselves had all gone through this cruel novitiate, weshowed no mercy on a newcomer, never sparing him the mockery, thecatechism, the impertinence, which were inexhaustible on suchoccasions, to the discomfiture of the neophyte, whose manners,strength, and temper were thus tested. Lambert, whether he was stoicalor dumfounded, made no reply to any questions. One of us thereuponremarked that he was no doubt of the school of Pythagoras, and therewas a shout of laughter. The new boy was thenceforth Pythagorasthrough all his life at the college. At the same time, Lambert'spiercing eye, the scorn expressed in his face for our childishness, sofar removed from the stamp of his own nature, the easy attitude heassumed, and his evident strength in proportion to his years, infuseda certain respect into the veriest scamps among us. For my part, Ikept near him, absorbed in studying him in silence.Louis Lambert was slightly built, nearly five feet in height; his facewas tanned, and his hands were burnt brown by the sun, giving him anappearance of manly vigor, which, in fact, he did not possess. Indeed,two months after he came to the college, when studying in theclassroom had faded his vivid, so to speak, vegetable coloring, hebecame as pale and white as a woman.His head was unusually large. His hair, of a fine, bright black inmasses of curls, gave wonderful beauty to his brow, of which theproportions were extraordinary even to us heedless boys, knowingnothing, as may be supposed, of the auguries of phrenology, a sciencestill in its cradle. The distinction of this prophetic brow layprincipally in the exquisitely chiseled shape of the arches underwhich his black eyes sparkled, and which had the transparency ofalabaster, the line having the unusual beauty of being perfectly levelto where it met the top of the nose. But when you saw his eyes it wasdifficult to think of the rest of his face, which was indeed plainenough, for their look was full of a wonderful variety of expression;they seemed to have a soul in their depths. At one momentastonishingly clear and piercing, at another full of heavenlysweetness, those eyes became dull, almost colorless, as it seemed,when he was lost in meditation. They then looked like a window fromwhich the sun had suddenly vanished after lighting it up. His strengthand his voice were no less variable; equally rigid, equallyunexpected. His tone could be as sweet as that of a woman compelled toown her love; at other times it was labored, rough, rugged, if I mayuse such words in a new sense. As to his strength, he was habituallyincapable of enduring the fatigue of any game, and seemed weakly,almost infirm. But during the early days of his school-life, one ofour little bullies having made game of this sickliness, which renderedhim unfit for the violent exercise in vogue among his fellows, Lamberttook hold with both hands of one of the class-tables, consisting oftwelve large desks, face to face and sloping from the middle; heleaned back against the class-master's desk, steadying the table withhis feet on the cross-bar below, and said:"Now, ten of you try to move it!"I was present, and can vouch for this strange display of strength; itwas impossible to move the table.Lambert had the gift of summoning to his aid at certain times the mostextraordinary powers, and of concentrating all his forces on a givenpoint. But children, like men, are wont to judge of everything byfirst impressions, and after the first few days we ceased to studyLouis; he entirely belied Madame de Stael's prognostications, anddisplayed none of the prodigies we looked for in him.After three months at school, Louis was looked upon as a quiteordinary scholar. I alone was allowed really to know that sublime--whyshould I not say divine?--soul, for what is nearer to God than geniusin the heart of a child? The similarity of our tastes and ideas madeus friends and chums; our intimacy was so brotherly that ourschool-fellows joined our two names; one was never spoken without theother, and to call either they always shouted "Poet-and-Pythagoras!"Some other names had been known coupled in a like manner. Thus for twoyears I was the school friend of poor Louis Lambert; and during thattime my life was so identified with his, that I am enabled now towrite his intellectual biography.It was long before I fully knew the poetry and the wealth of ideasthat lay hidden in my companion's heart and brain. It was not till Iwas thirty years of age, till my experience was matured and condensed,till the flash of an intense illumination had thrown a fresh lightupon it, that I was capable of understanding all the bearings of thephenomena which I witnessed at that early time. I benefited by themwithout understanding their greatness or their processes; indeed, Ihave forgotten some, or remember only the most conspicuous facts;still, my memory is now able to co-ordinate them, and I have masteredthe secrets of that fertile brain by looking back to the delightfuldays of our boyish affection. So it was time alone that initiated meinto the meaning of the events and facts that were crowded into thatobscure life, as into that of many another man who is lost to science.Indeed, this narrative, so far as the expression and appreciation ofmany things is concerned, will be found full of what may be termedmoral anachronisms, which perhaps will not detract from its peculiarinterest.In the course of the first few months after coming to Vendome, Louisbecame the victim of a malady which, though the symptoms wereinvisible to the eye of our superiors, considerably interfered withthe exercise of his remarkable gifts. Accustomed to live in the openair, and to the freedom of a purely haphazard education, happy in thetender care of an old man who was devoted to him, used to meditatingin the sunshine, he found it very hard to submit to college rules, towalk in the ranks, to live within the four walls of a room whereeighty boys were sitting in silence on wooden forms each in front ofhis desk. His senses were developed to such perfection as gave themthe most sensitive keenness, and every part of him suffered from thislife in common.The effluvia that vitiated the air, mingled with the odors of aclassroom that was never clean, nor free from the fragments of ourbreakfasts or snacks, affected his sense of smell, the sense which,being more immediately connected than the others with thenerve-centers of the brain, must, when shocked, cause invisibledisturbance to the organs of thought.Besides these elements of impurity in the atmosphere, there werelockers in the classrooms in which the boys kept their miscellaneousplunder--pigeons killed for fete days, or tidbits filched from thedinner-table. In each classroom, too, there was a large stone slab, onwhich two pails full of water were kept standing, a sort of sink,where we every morning washed our faces and hands, one after another,in the master's presence. We then passed on to a table, where womencombed and powdered our hair. Thus the place, being cleaned but once aday before we were up, was always more or less dirty. In spite ofnumerous windows and lofty doors, the air was constantly fouled by thesmells from the washing-place, the hairdressing, the lockers, and thethousand messes made by the boys, to say nothing of their eightyclosely packed bodies. And this sort of _humus_, mingling with the mudwe brought in from the playing-yard, produced a suffocatinglypestilent muck-heap.The loss of the fresh and fragrant country air in which he hadhitherto lived, the change of habits and strict discipline, combinedto depress Lambert. With his elbow on his desk and his head supportedon his left hand, he spent the hours of study gazing at the trees inthe court or the clouds in the sky; he seemed to be thinking of hislessons; but the master, seeing his pen motionless, or the sheetbefore him still a blank, would call out:"Lambert, you are doing nothing!"This "_you are doing nothing_!" was a pin-thrust that wounded Louis tothe quick. And then he never earned the rest of the play-time; healways had impositions to write. The imposition, a punishment whichvaries according to the practice of different schools, consisted atVendome of a certain number of lines to be written out in play hours.Lambert and I were so overpowered with impositions, that we had notsix free days during the two years of our school friendship. But forthe books we took out of the library, which maintained some vitalityin our brains, this system of discipline would have reduced us toidiotcy. Want of exercise is fatal to children. The habit ofpreserving a dignified appearance, begun in tender infancy, has, it issaid, a visible effect on the constitution of royal personages whenthe faults of such an education are not counteracted by the life ofthe battle-field or the laborious sport of hunting. And if the laws ofetiquette and Court manners can act on the spinal marrow to such anextent as to affect the pelvis of kings, to soften their cerebraltissue, and so degenerate the race, what deep-seated mischief,physical and moral, must result in schoolboys from the constant lackof air, exercise, and cheerfulness!Indeed, the rules of punishment carried out in schools deserve theattention of the Office of Public Instruction when any thinkers are tobe found there who do not think exclusively of themselves.We incurred the infliction of an imposition in a thousand ways. Ourmemory was so good that we never learned a lesson. It was enough foreither of us to hear our class-fellows repeat the task in French,Latin, or grammar, and we could say it when our turn came; but if themaster, unfortunately, took it into his head to reverse the usualorder and call upon us first, we very often did not even know what thelesson was; then the imposition fell in spite of our most ingeniousexcuses. Then we always put off writing our exercises till the lastmoment; if there were a book to be finished, or if we were lost inthought, the task was forgotten--again an imposition. How often havewe scribbled an exercise during the time when the head-boy, whosebusiness it was to collect them when we came into school, wasgathering them from the others!In addition to the moral misery which Lambert went through in tryingto acclimatize himself to college life, there was a scarcely lesscruel apprenticeship through which every boy had to pass: to thosebodily sufferings which seemed infinitely varied. The tenderness of achild's skin needs extreme care, especially in winter, when aschool-boy is constantly exchanging the frozen air of the muddyplaying-yard for the stuffy atmosphere of the classroom. The "littleboys" and the smallest of all, for lack of a mother's care, were martyrsto chilblains and chaps so severe that they had to be regularly dressedduring the breakfast hour; but this could only be very indifferentlydone to so many damaged hands, toes, and heels. A good many of theboys indeed were obliged to prefer the evil to the remedy; the choiceconstantly lay between their lessons waiting to be finished or thejoys of a slide, and waiting for a bandage carelessly put on, andstill more carelessly cast off again. Also it was the fashion in theschool to gibe at the poor, feeble creatures who went to be doctored;the bullies vied with each other in snatching off the rags which theinfirmary nurse had tied on. Hence, in winter, many of us, withhalf-dead feet and fingers, sick with pain, were incapable of work, andpunished for not working. The Fathers, too often deluded by shammedailments, would not believe in real suffering.The price paid for our schooling and board also covered the cost ofclothing. The committee contracted for the shoes and clothes suppliedto the boys; hence the weekly inspection of which I have spoken. Thisplan, though admirable for the manager, is always disastrous to themanaged. Woe to the boy who indulged in the bad habit of treading hisshoes down at heel, of cracking the shoe-leather, or wearing out thesoles too fast, whether from a defect in his gait, or by fidgetingduring lessons in obedience to the instinctive need of movement commonto all children. That boy did not get through the winter without greatsuffering. In the first place, his chilblains would ache and shot asbadly as a fit of the gout; then the rivets and pack-thread intendedto repair the shoes would give way, or the broken heels would preventthe wretched shoes from keeping on his feet; he was obliged to dragthem wearily along the frozen roads, or sometimes to dispute theirpossession with the clay soil of the district; the water and snow gotin through some unnoticed crack or ill-sewn patch, and the foot wouldswell.Out of sixty boys, not ten perhaps could walk without some specialform of torture; and yet they all kept up with the body of the troop,dragged on by the general movement, as men are driven through life bylife itself. Many a time some proud-tempered boy would shed tears ofrage while summoning his remaining energy to run ahead and get homeagain in spite of pain, so sensitively afraid of laughter or of pity--two forms of scorn--is the still tender soul at that age.At school, as in social life, the strong despise the feeble withoutknowing in what true strength consists.Nor was this all. No gloves. If by good hap a boy's parents, theinfirmary nurse, or the headmaster gave gloves to a particularlydelicate lad, the wags or the big boys of the class would put them onthe stove, amused to see them dry and shrivel; or if the glovesescaped the marauders, after getting wet they shrunk as they dried forwant of care. No, gloves were impossible. Gloves were a privilege, andboys insist on equality.Louis Lambert fell a victim to all these varieties of torment. Likemany contemplative men, who, when lost in thought, acquire a habit ofmechanical motion, he had a mania for fidgeting with his shoes, anddestroyed them very quickly. His girlish complexion, the skin of hisears and lips, cracked with the least cold. His soft, white hands grewred and swollen. He had perpetual colds. Thus he was a constantsufferer till he became inured to school-life. Taught at last by cruelexperience, he was obliged to "look after his things," to use theschool phrase. He was forced to take care of his locker, his desk, hisclothes, his shoes; to protect his ink, his books, his copy-paper, andhis pens from pilferers; in short, to give his mind to the thousanddetails of our trivial life, to which more selfish and commonplaceminds devoted such strict attention--thus infallibly securing prizesfor "proficiency" and "good conduct"--while they were overlooked by aboy of the highest promise, who, under the hand of an almost divineimagination, gave himself up with rapture to the flow of his ideas.This was not all. There is a perpetual struggle going on between themasters and the boys, a struggle without truce, to be compared withnothing else in the social world, unless it be the resistance of theopposition to the ministry in a representative government. Butjournalists and opposition speakers are probably less prompt to takeadvantage of a weak point, less extreme in resenting an injury, andless merciless in their mockery than boys are in regard to those whorule over them. It is a task to put angels out of patience. An unhappyclass-master must then not be too severely blamed, ill-paid as he is,and consequently not too competent, if he is occasionally unjust orout of temper. Perpetually watched by a hundred mocking eyes, andsurrounded with snares, he sometimes revenges himself for his ownblunders on the boys who are only too ready to detect them.Unless for serious misdemeanors, for which there were other forms ofpunishment, the strap was regarded at Vendome as the _ultima ratioPatrum_. Exercises forgotten, lessons ill learned, common ill behaviorwere sufficiently punished by an imposition, but offended dignityspoke in the master through the strap. Of all the physical torments towhich we were exposed, certainly the most acute was that inflicted bythis leathern instrument, about two fingers wide, applied to our poorlittle hands with all the strength and all the fury of theadministrator. To endure this classical form of correction, the victimknelt in the middle of the room. He had to leave his form and go tokneel down near the master's desk under the curious and generallymerciless eyes of his fellows. To sensitive natures thesepreliminaries were an introductory torture, like the journey from thePalais de Justice to the Place de Greve which the condemned used tomake to the scaffold.Some boys cried out and shed bitter tears before or after theapplication of the strap; others accepted the infliction with stoiccalm; it was a question of nature; but few could control an expressionof anguish in anticipation.Louis Lambert was constantly enduring the strap, and owed it to apeculiarity of his physiognomy of which he was for a long time quiteunconscious. Whenever he was suddenly roused from a fit of abstractionby the master's cry, "You are doing nothing!" it often happened that,without knowing it, he flashed at his teacher a look full of fiercecontempt, and charged with thought, as a Leyden jar is charged withelectricity. This look, no doubt, discomfited the master, who,indignant at this unspoken retort, wished to cure his scholar of thatthunderous flash.The first time the Father took offence at this ray of scorn, whichstruck him like a lightning-flash, he made this speech, as I wellremember:"If you look at me again in that way, Lambert, you will get thestrap."At these words every nose was in the air, every eye looked alternatelyat the master and at Louis. The observation was so utterly foolish,that the boy again looked at the Father, overwhelming him with anotherflash. From this arose a standing feud between Lambert and his master,resulting in a certain amount of "strap." Thus did he first discoverthe power of his eye.The hapless poet, so full of nerves, as sensitive as a woman, underthe sway of chronic melancholy, and as sick with genius as a girl withlove that she pines for, knowing nothing of it;--this boy, at once sopowerful and so weak, transplanted by "Corinne" from the country heloved, to be squeezed in the mould of a collegiate routine to whichevery spirit and every body must yield, whatever their range ortemperament, accepting its rule and its uniform as gold is crushedinto round coin under the press; Louis Lambert suffered in every spotwhere pain can touch the soul or the flesh. Stuck on a form,restricted to the acreage of his desk, a victim of the strap and to asickly frame, tortured in every sense, environed by distress--everything compelled him to give his body up to the myriad tyranniesof school life; and, like the martyrs who smiled in the midst ofsuffering, he took refuge in heaven, which lay open to his mind.Perhaps this life of purely inward emotions helped him to seesomething of the mysteries he so entirely believed in!Our independence, our illicit amusements, our apparent waste of time,our persistent indifference, our frequent punishments and aversion forour exercises and impositions, earned us a reputation, which no onecared to controvert, for being an idle and incorrigible pair. Ourmasters treated us with contempt, and we fell into utter disgrace withour companions, from whom we concealed our secret studies for fear ofbeing laughed at. This hard judgment, which was injustice in themasters, was but natural in our schoolfellows. We could neither playball, nor run races, nor walk on stilts. On exceptional holidays, whenamnesty was proclaimed and we got a few hours of freedom, we shared innone of the popular diversions of the school. Aliens from thepleasures enjoyed by the others, we were outcasts, sitting forlornunder a tree in the playing-ground. The Poet-and-Pythagoras formed anexception and led a life apart from the life of the rest.The penetrating instinct and unerring conceit of schoolboys made themfeel that we were of a nature either far above or far beneath theirown; hence some simply hated our aristocratic reserve, others merelyscorned our ineptitude. These feelings were equally shared by uswithout our knowing it; perhaps I have but now divined them. We livedexactly like two rats, huddled into the corner of the room where ourdesks were, sitting there alike during lesson time and play hours.This strange state of affairs inevitably and in fact placed us on afooting of war with all the other boys in our division. Forgotten forthe most part, we sat there very contentedly; half happy, like twoplants, two images who would have been missed from the furniture ofthe room. But the most aggressive of our schoolfellows would sometimestorment us, just to show their malignant power, and we responded withstolid contempt, which brought many a thrashing down on thePoet-and-Pythagoras.Lambert's home-sickness lasted for many months. I know no words todescribe the dejection to which he was a prey. Louis has taken theglory off many a masterpiece for me. We had both played the part ofthe "Leper of Aosta," and had both experienced the feelings describedin Monsieur de Maistre's story, before we read them as expressed byhis eloquent pen. A book may, indeed, revive the memories of ourchildhood, but it can never compete with them successfully. Lambert'swoes had taught me many a chant of sorrow far more appealing than thefinest passages in "Werther." And, indeed, there is no possiblecomparison between the pangs of a passion condemned, whether rightlyor wrongly, by every law, and the grief of a poor child pining for theglorious sunshine, the dews of the valley, and liberty. Werther is theslave of desire; Louis Lambert was an enslaved soul. Given equaltalent, the more pathetic sorrow, founded on desires which, beingpurer, are the more genuine, must transcend the wail even of genius.After sitting for a long time with his eyes fixed on a lime-tree inthe playground, Louis would say just a word; but that word wouldreveal an infinite speculation."Happily for me," he exclaimed one day, "there are hours of comfortwhen I feel as though the walls of the room had fallen and I wereaway--away in the fields! What a pleasure it is to let oneself go onthe stream of one's thoughts as a bird is borne up on its wings!""Why is green a color so largely diffused throughout creation?" hewould ask me. "Why are there so few straight lines in nature? Why isit that man, in his structures, rarely introduces curves? Why is itthat he alone, of all creatures, has a sense of straightness?"These queries revealed long excursions in space. He had, I am sure,seen vast landscapes, fragrant with the scent of woods. He was alwayssilent and resigned, a living elegy, always suffering but unable tocomplain of suffering. An eagle that needed the world to feed him,shut in between four narrow, dirty walls; and thus this life became anideal life in the strictest meaning of the words. Filled as he waswith contempt of the almost useless studies to which we wereharnessed, Louis went on his skyward way absolutely unconscious of thethings about us.I, obeying the imitative instinct that is so strong in childhood,tired to regulate my life in conformity with his. And Louis the moreeasily infected me with the sort of torpor in which deep contemplationleaves the body, because I was younger and more impressionable thanhe. Like two lovers, we got into the habit of thinking together in acommon reverie. His intuitions had already acquired that acutenesswhich must surely characterize the intellectual perceptiveness ofgreat poets and often bring them to the verge of madness."Do you ever feel," said he to me one day, "as though imaginedsuffering affected you in spite of yourself? If, for instance, I thinkwith concentration of the effect that the blade of my penknife wouldhave in piercing my flesh, I feel an acute pain as if I had really cutmyself; only the blood is wanting. But the pain comes suddenly, andstartles me like a sharp noise breaking profound silence. Can an ideacause physical pain?--What do you say to that, eh?"When he gave utterance to such subtle reflections, we both fell intoartless meditation; we set to work to detect in ourselves theinscrutable phenomena of the origin of thoughts, which Lambert hopedto discover in their earliest germ, so as to describe some day theunknown process. Then, after much discussion, often mixed up withchildish notions, a look would flash from Lambert's eager eyes; hewould grasp my hand, and a word from the depths of his soul would showthe current of his mind."Thinking is seeing," said he one day, carried away by some objectionraised as to the first principles of our organization. "Every humanscience is based on deduction, which is a slow process of seeing bywhich we work up from the effect to the cause; or, in a wider sense,all poetry, like every work of art, proceeds from a swift vision ofthings."He was a spiritualist (as opposed to materialism); but I would ventureto contradict him, using his own arguments to consider the intellectas a purely physical phenomenon. We both were right. Perhaps the wordsmaterialism and spiritualism express the two faces of the same fact.His considerations on the substance of the mind led to his accepting,with a certain pride, the life of privation to which we were condemnedin consequence of our idleness and our indifference to learning. Hehad a certain consciousness of his own powers which bore him upthrough his spiritual cogitations. How delightful it was to me to feelhis soul acting on my own! Many a time have we remained sitting on ourform, both buried in one book, having quite forgotten each other'sexistence, and yet not apart; each conscious of the other's presence,and bathing in an ocean of thought, like two fish swimming in the samewaters.Our life, apparently, was merely vegetating; but we lived through ourheart and brain.Lambert's influence over my imagination left traces that still abide.I used to listen hungrily to his tales, full of the marvels which makemen, as well as children, rapturously devour stories in which truthassumes the most grotesque forms. His passion for mystery, and thecredulity natural to the young, often led us to discuss Heaven andHell. Then Louis, by expounding Swedenborg, would try to make me sharein his beliefs concerning angels. In his least logical arguments therewere still amazing observations as to the powers of man, which gavehis words that color of truth without which nothing can be done in anyart. The romantic end he foresaw as the destiny of man was calculatedto flatter the yearning which tempts blameless imaginations to givethemselves up to beliefs. Is it not during the youth of a nation thatits dogmas and idols are conceived? And are not the supernaturalbeings before whom the people tremble the personification of theirfeelings and their magnified desires?All that I can now remember of the poetical conversations we heldtogether concerning the Swedish prophet, whose works I have since hadthe curiosity to read, may be told in a few paragraphs.In each of us there are two distinct beings. According to Swedenborg,the angel is an individual in whom the inner being conquers theexternal being. If a man desires to earn his call to be an angel, assoon as his mind reveals to him his twofold existence, he must striveto foster the delicate angelic essence that exists within him. If, forlack of a lucid appreciation of his destiny, he allows bodily actionto predominate, instead of confirming his intellectual being, all hispowers will be absorbed in the use of his external senses, and theangel will slowly perish by the materialization of both natures. Inthe contrary case, if he nourishes his inner being with the alimentneedful to it, the soul triumphs over matter and strives to get free.When they separate by the act of what we call death, the angel, strongenough then to cast off its wrappings, survives and begins its reallife. The infinite variety which differentiates individual men canonly be explained by this twofold existence, which, again, is provedand made intelligible by that variety.In point of fact, the wide distance between a man whose torpidintelligence condemns him to evident stupidity, and one who, by theexercise of his inner life, has acquired the gift of some power,allows us to suppose that there is as great a difference between menof genius and other beings as there is between the blind and those whosee. This hypothesis, since it extends creation beyond all limits,gives us, as it were, the clue to heaven. The beings who, here onearth, are apparently mingled without distinction, are theredistributed, according to their inner perfection, in distinct sphereswhose speech and manners have nothing in common. In the invisibleworld, as in the real world, if some native of the lower spherescomes, all unworthy, into a higher sphere, not only can he neverunderstand the customs and language there, but his mere presenceparalyzes the voice and hearts of those who dwell therein.Dante, in his _Divine Comedy_, had perhaps some slight intuition ofthose spheres which begin in the world of torment, and rise, circle oncircle, to the highest heaven. Thus Swedenborg's doctrine is theproduct of a lucid spirit noting down the innumerable signs by whichthe angels manifest their presence among men.This doctrine, which I have endeavored to sum up in a more or lessconsistent form, was set before me by Lambert with all the fascinationof mysticism, swathed in the wrappings of the phraseology affected bymystical writers: an obscure language full of abstractions, and takingsuch effect on the brain, that there are books by Jacob Boehm,Swedenborg, and Madame Guyon, so strangely powerful that they giverise to phantasies as various as the dreams of the opium-eater.Lambert told me of mystical facts so extraordinary, he so acted on myimagination, that he made my brain reel. Still, I loved to plunge intothat realm of mystery, invisible to the senses, in which every onelikes to dwell, whether he pictures it to himself under the indefiniteideal of the Future, or clothes it in the more solid guise of romance.These violent revulsions of the mind on itself gave me, without myknowing it, a comprehension of its power, and accustomed me to theworkings of the mind.Lambert himself explained everything by his theory of the angels. Tohim pure love--love as we dream of it in youth--was the coalescence oftwo angelic natures. Nothing could exceed the fervency with which helonged to meet a woman angel. And who better than he could inspire orfeel love? If anything could give an impression of an exquisitenature, was it not the amiability and kindliness that marked hisfeelings, his words, his actions, his slightest gestures, the conjugalregard that united us as boys, and that we expressed when we calledourselves _chums_?There was no distinction for us between my ideas and his. We imitatedeach other's handwriting, so that one might write the tasks of both.Thus, if one of us had a book to finish and to return to themathematical master, he could read on without interruption while theother scribbled off his exercise and imposition. We did our tasks asthough paying a task on our peace of mind. If my memory does not playme false, they were sometimes of remarkable merit when Lambert didthem. But on the foregone conclusion that we were both of us idiots,the master always went through them under a rooted prejudice, and evenkept them to read to be laughed at by our schoolfellows.I remember one afternoon, at the end of the lesson, which lasted fromtwo till four, the master took possession of a page of translation byLambert. The passage began with _Caius Gracchus, vir nobilis_; Lamberthad construed this by "Caius Gracchus had a noble heart.""Where do you find 'heart' in _nobilis_?" said the Father sharply.And there was a roar of laughter, while Lambert looked at the masterin some bewilderment."What would Madame la Baronne de Stael say if she could know that youmake such nonsense of a word that means noble family, of patricianrank?""She would say that you were an ass!" said I in a muttered tone."Master Poet, you will stay in for a week," replied the master, whounfortunately overheard me.Lambert simply repeated, looking at me with inexpressible affection,"_Vir nobilis_!"Madame de Stael was, in fact, partly the cause of Lambert's troubles.On every pretext masters and pupils threw the name in his teeth,either in irony or in reproof.Louis lost no time in getting himself "kept in" to share myimprisonment. Freer thus than in any other circumstances, we couldtalk the whole day long in the silence of the dormitories, where eachboy had a cubicle six feet square, the partitions consisting at thetop of open bars. The doors, fitted with gratings, were locked atnight and opened in the morning under the eye of the Father whose dutyit was to superintend our rising and going to bed. The creak of thesegates, which the college servants unlocked with remarkable expedition,was a sound peculiar to that college. These little cells were ourprison, and boys were sometimes shut up there for a month at a time.The boys in these coops were under the stern eye of the prefect, asort of censor who stole up at certain hours, or at unexpectedmoments, with a silent step, to hear if we were talking instead ofwriting our impositions. But a few walnut shells dropped on thestairs, or the sharpness of our hearing, almost always enabled us tobeware of his coming, so we could give ourselves up without anxiety toour favorite studies. However, as books were prohibited, our prisonhours were chiefly filled up with metaphysical discussions, or withrelating singular facts connected with the phenomena of mind.One of the most extraordinary of these incidents beyond question isthis, which I will here record, not only because it concerns Lambert,but because it perhaps was the turning-point of his scientific career.By the law of custom in all schools, Thursday and Sunday wereholidays; but the services, which we were made to attend veryregularly, so completely filled up Sunday, that we considered Thursdayour only real day of freedom. After once attending Mass, we had a longday before us to spend in walks in the country round the town ofVendome. The manor of Rochambeau was the most interesting object ofour excursions, perhaps by reason of its distance; the smaller boyswere very seldom taken on so fatiguing an expedition. However, once ortwice a year the class-masters would hold out Rochambeau as a rewardfor diligence.In 1812, towards the end of the spring, we were to go there for thefirst time. Our anxiety to see this famous chateau of Rochambeau,where the owner sometimes treated the boys to milk, made us all verygood, and nothing hindered the outing. Neither Lambert nor I had everseen the pretty valley of the Loire where the house stood. So hisimagination and mine were much excited by the prospect of thisexcursion, which filled the school with traditional glee. We talked ofit all the evening, planning to spend in fruit or milk such money aswe had saved, against all the habits of school-life.After dinner next day, we set out at half-past twelve, each providedwith a square hunch of bread, given to us for our afternoon snack. Andoff we went, as gay as swallows, marching in a body on the famouschateau with an eagerness which would at first allow of no fatigue.When we reached the hill, whence we looked down on the house standinghalf-way down the slope, on the devious valley through which the riverwinds and sparkles between meadows in graceful curves--a beautifullandscape, one of those scenes to which the keen emotions of earlyyouth or of love lend such a charm, that it is wise never to see themagain in later years--Louis Lambert said to me, "Why, I saw this lastnight in a dream."He recognized the clump of trees under which we were standing, thegrouping of the woods, the color of the water, the turrets of thechateau, the details, the distance, in fact every part of the prospectwhich we looked on for the first time. We were mere children; I, atany rate, who was but thirteen; Louis, at fifteen, might have theprecocity of genius, but at that time we were incapable of falsehoodin the most trivial matters of our life as friends. Indeed, ifLambert's powerful mind had any presentiment of the importance of suchfacts, he was far from appreciating their whole bearing; and he wasquite astonished by this incident. I asked him if he had not perhapsbeen brought to Rochambeau in his infancy, and my question struck him;but after thinking it over, he answered in the negative. Thisincident, analogous to what may be known of the phenomena of sleep inseveral persons, will illustrate the beginnings of Lambert's line oftalent; he took it, in fact, as the basis of a whole system, using afragment--as Cuvier did in another branch of inquiry--as a clue to thereconstruction of a complete system.At this moment we were sitting together on an old oak-stump, and aftera few minutes' reflection, Louis said to me:"If the landscape did not come to me--which it is absurd to imagine--Imust have come here. If I was here while I was asleep in my cubicle,does not that constitute a complete severance of my body and my innerbeing? Does it not prove some inscrutable locomotive faculty in thespirit with effects resembling those of locomotion in the body? Well,then, if my spirit and my body can be severed during sleep, why shouldI not insist on their separating in the same way while I am awake? Isee no half-way mean between the two propositions."But if we go further into details: either the facts are due to theaction of a faculty which brings out a second being to whom my body ismerely a husk, since I was in my cell, and yet I saw the landscape--and this upsets many systems; or the facts took place either in somenerve centre, of which the name is yet to be discovered, where ourfeelings dwell and move; or else in the cerebral centre, where ideasare formed. This last hypothesis gives rise to some strange questions.I walked, I saw, I heard. Motion is inconceivable but in space, soundacts only at certain angles or on surfaces, color is caused only bylight. If, in the dark, with my eyes shut, I saw, in myself, coloredobjects; if I heard sounds in the most perfect silence and without theconditions requisite for the production of sound; if without stirringI traversed wide tracts of space, there must be inner facultiesindependent of the external laws of physics. Material nature must bepenetrable by the spirit."How is it that men have hitherto given so little thought to thephenomena of sleep, which seem to prove that man has a double life?May there not be a new science lying beneath them?" he added, strikinghis brow with his hand. "If not the elements of a science, at any ratethe revelation of stupendous powers in man; at least they prove afrequent severance of our two natures, the fact I have been thinkingout for a very long time. At last, then, I have hit on evidence toshow the superiority that distinguishes our latent senses from ourcorporeal senses! _Homo duplex_!"And yet," he went on, after a pause, with a doubtful shrug, "perhapswe have not two natures; perhaps we are merely gifted with personaland perfectible qualities, of which the development within us producescertain unobserved phenomena of activity, penetration, and vision. Inour love of the marvelous, a passion begotten of our pride, we havetranslated these effects into poetical inventions, because we did notunderstand them. It is so convenient to deify the incomprehensible!"I should, I own, lament over the loss of my illusions. I so muchwished to believe in our twofold nature and in Swedenborg's angels.Must this new science destroy them? Yes; for the study of our unknownproperties involves us in a science that appears to be materialistic,for the Spirit uses, divides, and animates the Substance; but it doesnot destroy it."He remained pensive, almost sad. Perhaps he saw the dreams of hisyouth as swaddling clothes that he must soon shake off."Sight and hearing are, no doubt, the sheaths for a very marvelousinstrument," said he, laughing at his own figure of speech.Always when he was talking to me of Heaven and Hell, he was wont totreat of Nature as being master; but now, as he pronounced these lastwords, big with prescience, he seemed to soar more boldly than everabove the landscape, and his forehead seemed ready to burst with theafflatus of genius. His powers--mental powers we must call them tillsome new term is found--seemed to flash from the organs intended toexpress them. His eyes shot out thoughts; his uplifted hand, hissilent but tremulous lips were eloquent; his burning glance wasradiant; at last his head, as though too heavy, or exhausted by tooeager a flight, fell on his breast. This boy--this giant--bent hishead, took my hand and clasped it in his own, which was damp, sofevered was he for the search for truth; then, after a pause, he said:"I shall be famous!--And you, too," he added after a pause. "We willboth study the Chemistry of the Will."Noble soul! I recognized his superiority, though he took great carenever to make me feel it. He shared with me all the treasures of hismind, and regarded me as instrumental in his discoveries, leaving methe credit of my insignificant contributions. He was always asgracious as a woman in love; he had all the bashful feeling, thedelicacy of soul which make life happy and pleasant to endure.On the following day he began writing what he called a _Treatise onthe Will_; his subsequent reflections led to many changes in its planand method; but the incident of that day was certainly the germ of thework, just as the electric shock always felt by Mesmer at the approachof a particular manservant was the starting-point of his discoveriesin magnetism, a science till then interred under the mysteries ofIsis, of Delphi, of the cave of Trophonius, and rediscovered by thatprodigious genius, close on Lavater, and the precursor of Gall.Lambert's ideas, suddenly illuminated by this flash of light, assumedvaster proportions; he disentangled certain truths from his manyacquisitions and brought them into order; then, like a founder, hecast the model of his work. At the end of six months' indefatigablelabor, Lambert's writings excited the curiosity of our companions, andbecame the object of cruel practical jokes which led to a fatal issue.One day one of the masters, who was bent on seeing the manuscripts,enlisted the aid of our tyrants, and came to seize, by force, a boxthat contained the precious papers. Lambert and I defended it withincredible courage. The trunk was locked, our aggressors could notopen it, but they tried to smash it in the struggle, a stroke ofmalignity at which we shrieked with rage. Some of the boys, with asense of justice, or struck perhaps by our heroic defence, advised theattacking party to leave us in peace, crushing us with insultingcontempt. But suddenly, brought to the spot by the noise of a battle,Father Haugoult roughly intervened, inquiring as to the cause of thefight. Our enemies had interrupted us in writing our impositions, andthe class-master came to protect his slaves. The foe, in self-defence,betrayed the existence of the manuscript. The dreadful Haugoultinsisted on our giving up the box; if we should resist, he would haveit broken open. Lambert gave him the key; the master took out thepapers, glanced through them, and said, as he confiscated them:"And it is for such rubbish as this that you neglect your lessons!"Large tears fell from Lambert's eyes, wrung from him as much by asense of his offended moral superiority as by the gratuitous insultand betrayal that he had suffered. We gave the accusers a glance ofstern reproach: had they not delivered us over to the common enemy? Ifthe common law of school entitled them to thrash us, did it notrequire them to keep silence as to our misdeeds?In a moment they were no doubt ashamed of their baseness.Father Haugoult probably sold the _Treatise on the Will_ to a localgrocer, unconscious of the scientific treasure, of which the germsthus fell into unworthy hands.Six months later I left the school, and I do not know whether Lambertever recommenced his labors. Our parting threw him into a mood of thedarkest melancholy.It was in memory of the disaster that befell Louis' book that, in thetale which comes first in these _Etudes_, I adopted the title inventedby Lambert for a work of fiction, and gave the name of a woman who wasdear to him to a girl characterized by her self-devotion; but this isnot all I have borrowed from him: his character and occupations wereof great value to me in writing that book, and the subject arose fromsome reminiscences of our youthful meditations. This present volume isintended as a modest monument, a broken column, to commemorate thelife of the man who bequeathed to me all he had to leave--histhoughts.In that boyish effort Lambert had enshrined the ideas of a man. Tenyears later, when I met some learned men who were devoting seriousattention to the phenomena that had struck us and that Lambert had somarvelously analyzed, I understood the value of his work, then alreadyforgotten as childish. I at once spent several months in recalling theprincipal theories discovered by my poor schoolmate. Having collectedmy reminiscences, I can boldly state that, by 1812, he had proved,divined, and set forth in his Treatise several important facts ofwhich, as he had declared, evidence was certain to come sooner orlater. His philosophical speculations ought undoubtedly to gain himrecognition as one of the great thinkers who have appeared at wideintervals among men, to reveal to them the bare skeleton of somescience to come, of which the roots spread slowly, but which, in duetime, bring forth fair fruit in the intellectual sphere. Thus a humbleartisan, Bernard Palissy, searching the soil to find minerals forglazing pottery, proclaimed, in the sixteenth century, with theinfallible intuition of genius, geological facts which it is now theglory of Cuvier and Buffon to have demonstrated.I can, I believe, give some idea of Lambert's Treatise by stating thechief propositions on which it was based; but, in spite of myself, Ishall strip them of the ideas in which they were clothed, and whichwere indeed their indispensable accompaniment. I started on adifferent path, and only made use of those of his researches whichanswered the purpose of my scheme. I know not, therefore, whether ashis disciple I can faithfully expound his views, having assimilatedthem in the first instance so as to color them with my own.New ideas require new words, or a new and expanded use of old words,extended and defined in their meaning. Thus Lambert, to set forth thebasis of his system, had adopted certain common words that answered tohis notions. The word Will he used to connote the medium in which themind moves, or to use a less abstract expression, the mass of power bywhich man can reproduce, outside himself, the actions constituting hisexternal life. Volition--a word due to Locke--expressed the act bywhich a man exerts his will. The word Mind, or Thought, which heregarded as the quintessential product of the Will, also representedthe medium in which the ideas originate to which thought givessubstance. The Idea, a name common to every creation of the brain,constituted the act by which man uses his mind. Thus the Will and theMind were the two generating forces; the Volition and the Idea werethe two products. Volition, he thought, was the Idea evolved from theabstract state to a concrete state, from its generative fluid to asolid expression, so to speak, if such words may be taken to formulatenotions so difficult of definition. According to him, the Mind andIdeas are the motion and the outcome of our inner organization, justas the Will and Volition are of our external activity.He gave the Will precedence over the Mind."You must will before you can think," he said. "Many beings live in acondition of Willing without ever attaining to the condition ofThinking. In the North, life is long; in the South, it is shorter; butin the North we see torpor, in the South a constant excitability ofthe Will, up to the point where from an excess of cold or of heat theorgans are almost nullified."The use of the word "medium" was suggested to him by an observation hehad made in his childhood, though, to be sure, he had no suspicionthen of its importance, but its singularity naturally struck hisdelicately alert imagination. His mother, a fragile, nervous woman,all sensitiveness and affection, was one of those beings created torepresent womanhood in all the perfection of her attributes, butrelegated by a mistaken fate to too low a place in the social scale.Wholly loving, and consequently wholly suffering, she died young,having thrown all her energies into her motherly love. Lambert, achild of six, lying, but not always sleeping, in a cot by his mother'sbed, saw the electric sparks from her hair when she combed it. The manof fifteen made scientific application of this fact which had amusedthe child, a fact beyond dispute, of which there is ample evidence inmany instances, especially of women who by a sad fatality are doomedto let unappreciated feelings evaporate in the air, or somesuperabundant power run to waste.In support of his definitions, Lambert propounded a variety ofproblems to be solved, challenges flung out to science, though heproposed to seek the solution for himself. He inquired, for instance,whether the element that constitutes electricity does not enter as abase into the specific fluid whence our Ideas and Volitions proceed?Whether the hair, which loses its color, turns white, falls out, ordisappears, in proportion to the decay or crystallization of ourthoughts, may not be in fact a capillary system, either absorbent ordiffusive, and wholly electrical? Whether the fluid phenomena of theWill, a matter generated within us, and spontaneously reacting underthe impress of conditions as yet unobserved, were at all moreextraordinary than those of the invisible and intangible fluidproduced by a voltaic pile, and applied to the nervous system of adead man? Whether the formation of Ideas and their constant diffusionwas less incomprehensible than evaporation of the atoms, imperceptibleindeed, but so violent in their effects, that are given off from agrain of musk without any loss of weight. Whether, granting that thefunction of the skin is purely protective, absorbent, excretive, andtactile, the circulation of the blood and all its mechanism would notcorrespond with the transsubstantiation of our Will, as thecirculation of the nerve fluid corresponds to that of the Mind?Finally, whether the more or less rapid affluence of these two realsubstances may not be the result of a certain perfection orimperfection of organs whose conditions require investigation in everymanifestation?Having set forth these principles, he proposed to class the phenomenaof human life in two series of distinct results, demanding, with theardent insistency of conviction, a special analysis for each. In fact,having observed in almost every type of created thing two separatemotions, he assumed, nay, he asserted, their existence in our humannature, and designated this vital antithesis Action and Reaction."A desire," he said, "is a fact completely accomplished in our willbefore it is accomplished externally."Hence the sum-total of our Volitions and our Ideas constitutes Action,and the sum-total of our external acts he called Reaction.When I subsequently read the observations made by Bichat on theduality of our external senses, I was really bewildered by myrecollections, recognizing the startling coincidences between theviews of that celebrated physiologist and those of Louis Lambert. Theyboth died young, and they had with equal steps arrived at the samestrange truths. Nature has in every case been pleased to give atwofold purpose to the various apparatus that constitute hercreatures; and the twofold action of the human organism, which is nowascertained beyond dispute, proves by a mass of evidence in daily lifehow true were Lambert's deductions as to Action and Reaction.The inner Being, the Being of Action--the word he used to designate anunknown specialization--the mysterious nexus of fibrils to which weowe the inadequately investigated powers of thought and will--inshort, the nameless entity which sees, acts, foresees the end, andaccomplishes everything before expressing itself in any physicalphenomenon--must, in conformity with its nature, be free from thephysical conditions by which the external Being of Reaction, thevisible man, is fettered in its manifestation. From this followed amultitude of logical explanation as to those results of our twofoldnature which appear the strangest, and a rectification of varioussystems in which truth and falsehood are mingled.Certain men, having had a glimpse of some phenomena of the naturalworking of the Being of Action, were, like Swedenborg, carried awayabove this world by their ardent soul, thirsting for poetry, andfilled with the Divine Spirit. Thus, in their ignorance of the causesand their admiration of the facts, they pleased their fancy byregarding that inner man as divine, and constructing a mysticaluniverse. Hence we have angels! A lovely illusion which Lambert wouldnever abandon, cherishing it even when the sword of his logic wascutting off their dazzling wings."Heaven," he would say, "must, after all, be the survival of ourperfected faculties, and hell the void into which our unperfectedfaculties are cast away."But how, then, in the ages when the understanding had preserved thereligious and spiritualist impressions, which prevailed from the timeof Christ till that of Descartes, between faith and doubt, how couldmen help accounting for the mysteries of our nature otherwise than bydivine interposition? Of whom but of God Himself could sages demand anaccount of an invisible creature so actively and so reactivelysensitive, gifted with faculties so extensive, so improvable by use,and so powerful under certain occult influences, that they couldsometimes see it annihilate, by some phenomenon of sight or movement,space in its two manifestations--Time and Distance--of which theformer is the space of the intellect, the latter is physical space?Sometimes they found it reconstructing the past, either by the powerof retrospective vision, or by the mystery of a palingenesis notunlike the power a man might have of detecting in the form,integument, and embryo in a seed, the flowers of the past, and thenumberless variations of their color, scent, and shape; and sometimes,again, it could be seen vaguely foreseeing the future, either by itsapprehension of final causes, or by some phenomenon of physicalpresentiment.Other men, less poetically religious, cold, and argumentative--quacksperhaps, but enthusiasts in brain at least, if not in heart--recognizing some isolated examples of such phenomena, admitted theirtruth while refusing to consider them as radiating from a commoncentre. Each of these was, then, bent on constructing a science out ofa simple fact. Hence arose demonology, judicial astrology, the blackarts, in short, every form of divination founded on circumstances thatwere essentially transient, because they varied according to men'stemperament, and to conditions that are still completely unknown.But from these errors of the learned, and from the ecclesiasticaltrials under which fell so many martyrs to their own powers, startlingevidence was derived of the prodigious faculties at the command of theBeing of Action, which, according to Lambert, can abstract itselfcompletely from the Being of Reaction, bursting its envelope, andpiercing walls by its potent vision; a phenomenon known to theHindoos, as missionaries tell us, by the name of _Tokeiad_; or again,by another faculty, can grasp in the brain, in spite of its closestconvolutions, the ideas which are formed or forming there, and thewhole of past consciousness."If apparitions are not impossible," said Lambert, "they must be dueto a faculty of discerning the ideas which represent man in his purestessence, whose life, imperishable perhaps, escapes our grosser senses,though they may become perceptible to the inner being when it hasreached a high degree of ecstasy, or a great perfection of vision."I know--though my remembrance is now vague--that Lambert, by followingthe results of Mind and Will step by step, after he had establishedtheir laws, accounted for a multitude of phenomena which, till then,had been regarded with reason as incomprehensible. Thus wizards, menpossessed with second sight, and demoniacs of every degree--thevictims of the Middle Ages--became the subject of explanations sonatural, that their very simplicity often seemed to me the seal oftheir truth. The marvelous gifts which the Church of Rome, jealous ofall mysteries, punished with the stake, were, in Louis' opinion, theresult of certain affinities between the constituent elements ofmatter and those of mind, which proceed from the same source. The manholding a hazel rod when he found a spring of water was guided by someantipathy or sympathy of which he was unconscious; nothing but theeccentricity of these phenomena could have availed to give some ofthem historic certainty.Sympathies have rarely been proved; they afford a kind of pleasurewhich those who are so happy as to possess them rarely speak of unlessthey are abnormally singular, and even then only in the privacy ofintimate intercourse, where everything is buried. But the antipathiesthat arise from the inversion of affinities have, very happily, beenrecorded when developed by famous men. Thus, Bayle had hysterics whenhe heard water splashing, Scaliger turned pale at the sight ofwater-cress, Erasmus was thrown into a fever by the smell of fish. Thesethree antipathies were connected with water. The Duc d'Epernon faintedat the sight of a hare, Tycho-Brahe at that of a fox, Henri III. atthe presence of a cat, the Marechal d'Albret at the sight of a wildhog; these antipathies were produced by animal emanations, and oftentook effect at a great distance. The Chevalier de Guise, Marie deMedici, and many other persons have felt faint at seeing a rose evenin a painting. Lord Bacon, whether he were forewarned or no of aneclipse of the moon, always fell into a syncope while it lasted; andhis vitality, suspended while the phenomenon lasted was restored assoon as it was over without his feeling any further inconvenience.These effects of antipathy, all well authenticated, and chosen fromamong many which history has happened to preserve, are enough to givea clue to the sympathies which remain unknown.This fragment of Lambert's investigations, which I remember from amonghis essays, will throw a light on the method on which he worked. Ineed not emphasize the obvious connection between this theory and thecollateral sciences projected by Gall and Lavater; they were itsnatural corollary; and every more or less scientific brain willdiscern the ramifications by which it is inevitably connected with thephrenological observations of one and the speculations on physiognomyof the other.Mesmer's discovery, so important, though as yet so little appreciated,was also embodied in a single section of this treatise, though Louisdid not know the Swiss doctor's writings--which are few and brief.A simple and logical inference from these principles led him toperceive that the will might be accumulated by a contractile effort ofthe inner man, and then, by another effort, projected, or evenimparted, to material objects. Thus the whole force of a man must havethe property of reacting on other men, and of infusing into them anessence foreign to their own, if they could not protect themselvesagainst such an aggression. The evidence of this theorem of thescience of humanity is, of course, very multifarious; but there isnothing to establish it beyond question. We have only the notoriousdisaster of Marius and his harangue to the Cimbrian commanded to killhim, or the august injunction of a mother to the Lion of Florence, inhistoric proof of instances of such lightning flashes of mind. ToLambert, then, Will and Thought were _living forces_; and he spoke ofthem in such a way as to impress his belief on the hearer. To himthese two forces were, in a way, visible, tangible. Thought was slowor alert, heavy or nimble, light or dark; he ascribed to it all theattributes of an active agent, and thought of it as rising, resting,waking, expanding, growing old, shrinking, becoming atrophied, orresuscitating; he described its life, and specified all its actions bythe strangest words in our language, speaking of its spontaneity, itsstrength, and all its qualities with a kind of intuition which enabledhim to recognize all the manifestations of its substantial existence."Often," said he, "in the midst of quiet and silence, when our innerfaculties are dormant, when a sort of darkness reigns within us, andwe are lost in the contemplation of things outside us, an ideasuddenly flies forth, and rushes with the swiftness of lightningacross the infinite space which our inner vision allows us toperceive. This radiant idea, springing into existence like awill-o'-the-wisp, dies out never to return; an ephemeral life, like thatof babes who give their parents such infinite joy and sorrow; a sort ofstill-born blossom in the fields of the mind. Sometimes an idea,instead of springing forcibly into life and dying unembodied, dawnsgradually, hovers in the unknown limbo of the organs where it has itsbirth; exhausts us by long gestation, develops, is itself fruitful,grows outwardly in all the grace of youth and the promising attributesof a long life; it can endure the closest inspection, invites it, andnever tires the sight; the investigation it undergoes commands theadmiration we give to works slowly elaborated. Sometimes ideas areevolved in a swarm; one brings another; they come linked together;they vie with each other; they fly in clouds, wild and headlong.Again, they rise up pallid and misty, and perish for want of strengthor of nutrition; the vital force is lacking. Or again, on certaindays, they rush down into the depths to light up that immenseobscurity; they terrify us and leave the soul dejected."Ideas are a complete system within us, resembling a natural kingdom,a sort of flora, of which the iconography will one day be outlined bysome man who will perhaps be accounted a madman."Yes, within us and without, everything testifies to the livingness ofthose exquisite creations, which I compare with flowers in obedienceto some unutterable revelation of their true nature!"Their being produced as the final cause of man is, after all, notmore amazing than the production of perfume and color in a plant.Perfumes _are_ ideas, perhaps!"When we consider the line where flesh ends and the nail beginscontains the invisible and inexplicable mystery of the constanttransformation of a fluid into horn, we must confess that nothing isimpossible in the marvelous modifications of human tissue."And are there not in our inner nature phenomena of weight and motioncomparable to those of physical nature? Suspense, to choose an examplevividly familiar to everybody, is painful only as a result of the lawin virtue of which the weight of a body is multiplied by its velocity.The weight of the feeling produced by suspense increases by theconstant addition of past pain to the pain of the moment."And then, to what, unless it be to the electric fluid, are we toattribute the magic by which the Will enthrones itself so imperiouslyin the eye to demolish obstacles at the behest of genius, thunders inthe voice, or filters, in spite of dissimulation, through the humanframe? The current of that sovereign fluid, which, in obedience to thehigh pressure of thought or of feeling, flows in a torrent or isreduced to a mere thread, and collects to flash in lightnings, is theoccult agent to which are due the evil or the beneficent efforts ofArt and Passion--intonation of voice, whether harsh or suave,terrible, lascivious, horrifying or seductive by turns, thrilling theheart, the nerves, or the brain at our will; the marvels of the touch,the instrument of the mental transfusions of a myriad artists, whosecreative fingers are able, after passionate study, to reproduce theforms of nature; or, again, the infinite gradations of the eye fromdull inertia to the emission of the most terrifying gleams."By this system God is bereft of none of His rights. Mind, as a formof matter, has brought me a new conviction of His greatness."After hearing him discourse thus, after receiving into my soul hislook like a ray of light, it was difficult not to be dazzled by hisconviction and carried away by his arguments. The Mind appeared to meas a purely physical power, surrounded by its innumerable progeny. Itwas a new conception of humanity under a new form.This brief sketch of the laws which, as Lambert maintained, constitutethe formula of our intellect, must suffice to give a notion of theprodigious activity of his spirit feeding on itself. Louis had soughtfor proofs of his theories in the history of great men, whose lives,as set forth by their biographers, supply very curious particulars asto the operation of their understanding. His memory allowed him torecall such facts as might serve to support his statements; he hadappended them to each chapter in the form of demonstrations, so as togive to many of his theories an almost mathematical certainty. Theworks of Cardan, a man gifted with singular powers of insight,supplied him with valuable materials. He had not forgotten thatApollonius of Tyana had, in Asia, announced the death of a tyrant withevery detail of his execution, at the very hour when it was takingplace in Rome; nor that Plotinus, when far away from Porphyrius, wasaware of his friend's intention to kill himself, and flew to dissuadehim; nor the incident in the last century, proved in the face of themost incredulous mockery ever known--an incident most surprising tomen who were accustomed to regard doubt as a weapon against the factalone, but simple enough to believers--the fact that Alphonzo-Maria diLiguori, Bishop of Saint-Agatha, administered consolations to PopeGanganelli, who saw him, heard him, and answered him, while the Bishophimself, at a great distance from Rome, was in a trance at home, inthe chair where he commonly sat on his return from Mass. On recoveringconsciousness, he saw all his attendants kneeling beside him,believing him to be dead: "My friends," said he, "the Holy Father isjust dead." Two days later a letter confirmed the news. The hour ofthe Pope's death coincided with that when the Bishop had been restoredto his natural state.Nor had Lambert omitted the yet more recent adventure of an Englishgirl who was passionately attached to a sailor, and set out fromLondon to seek him. She found him, without a guide, making her wayalone in the North American wilderness, reaching him just in time tosave his life.Louis had found confirmatory evidence in the mysteries of theancients, in the acts of the martyrs--in which glorious instances maybe found of the triumph of human will, in the demonology of the MiddleAges, in criminal trials and medical researches; always selecting thereal fact, the probable phenomenon, with admirable sagacity.All this rich collection of scientific anecdotes, culled from so manybooks, most of them worthy of credit, served no doubt to wrap parcelsin; and this work, which was curious, to say the least of it, as theoutcome of a most extraordinary memory, was doomed to destruction.Among the various cases which added to the value of Lambert's_Treatise_ was an incident that had taken place in his own family, ofwhich he had told me before he wrote his essay. This fact, bearing onthe post-existence of the inner man, if I may be allowed to coin a newword for a phenomenon hitherto nameless, struck me so forcibly that Ihave never forgotten it. His father and mother were being forced intoa lawsuit, of which the loss would leave them with a stain on theirgood name, the only thing they had in the world. Hence their anxietywas very great when the question first arose as to whether they shouldyield to the plaintiff's unjust demands, or should defend themselvesagainst him. The matter came under discussion one autumn evening,before a turf fire in the room used by the tanner and his wife. Two orthree relations were invited to this family council, and among othersLouis' maternal great-grandfather, an old laborer, much bent, but witha venerable and dignified countenance, bright eyes, and a bald, yellowhead, on which grew a few locks of thin, white hair. Like the Obi ofthe Negroes, or the Sagamore of the Indian savages, he was a sort oforacle, consulted on important occasions. His land was tilled by hisgrandchildren, who fed and served him; he predicted rain and fineweather, and told them when to mow the hay and gather the crops. Thebarometric exactitude of his forecasts was quite famous, and added tothe confidence and respect he inspired. For whole days he would sitimmovable in his armchair. This state of rapt meditation often cameupon him since his wife's death; he had been attached to her in thetruest and most faithful affection.This discussion was held in his presence, but he did not seem to givemuch heed to it."My children," said he, when he was asked for his opinion, "this istoo serious a matter for me to decide on alone. I must go and consultmy wife."The old man rose, took his stick, and went out, to the greatastonishment of the others, who thought him daft. He presently cameback and said:"I did not have to go so far as the graveyard; your mother came tomeet me; I found her by the brook. She tells me that you will findsome receipts in the hands of a notary at Blois, which will enable youto gain your suit."The words were spoken in a firm tone; the old man's demeanor andcountenance showed that such an apparition was habitual with him. Infact, the disputed receipts were found, and the lawsuit was notattempted.This event, under his father's roof and to his own knowledge, whenLouis was nine years old, contributed largely to his belief inSwedenborg's miraculous visions, for in the course of thatphilosopher's life he repeatedly gave proof of the power of sightdeveloped in his Inner Being. As he grew older, and as hisintelligence was developed, Lambert was naturally led to seek in thelaws of nature for the causes of the miracle which, in his childhood,had captivated his attention. What name can be given to the chancewhich brought within his ken so many facts and books bearing on suchphenomena, and made him the principal subject and actor in suchmarvelous manifestations of mind?If Lambert had no other title to fame than the fact of his havingformulated, in his sixteenth year, such a psychological dictum asthis:--"The events which bear witness to the action of the human race,and are the outcome of its intellect, have causes by which they arepreconceived, as our actions are accomplished in our minds before theyare reproduced by the outer man; presentiments or predictions are theperception of these causes"--I think we may deplore in him a geniusequal to Pascal, Lavoisier, or Laplace. His chimerical notions aboutangels perhaps overruled his work too long; but was it not in tryingto make gold that the alchemists unconsciously created chemistry? Atthe same time, Lambert, at a later period, studied comparativeanatomy, physics, geometry, and other sciences bearing on hisdiscoveries, and this was undoubtedly with the purpose of collectingfacts and submitting them to analysis--the only torch that can guideus through the dark places of the most inscrutable work of nature. Hehad too much good sense to dwell among the clouds of theories whichcan all be expressed in a few words. In our day, is not the simplestdemonstration based on facts more highly esteemed than the mostspecious system though defended by more or less ingenious inductions?But as I did not know him at the period of his life when hiscogitations were, no doubt, the most productive of results, I can onlyconjecture that the bent of his work must have been from that of hisfirst efforts of thought.It is easy to see where his _Treatise on the Will_ was faulty. Thoughgifted already with the powers which characterize superior men, he wasbut a boy. His brain, though endowed with a great faculty forabstractions, was still full of the delightful beliefs that hoveraround youth. Thus his conception, while at some points it touched theripest fruits of his genius, still, by many more, clung to the smallerelements of its germs. To certain readers, lovers of poetry, what hechiefly lacked must have been a certain vein of interest.But his work bore the stamp of the struggle that was going on in thatnoble Spirit between the two great principles of Spiritualism andMaterialism, round which so many a fine genius has beaten its waywithout ever daring to amalgamate them. Louis, at first purelySpiritualist, had been irresistibly led to recognize the Materialconditions of Mind. Confounded by the facts of analysis at the momentwhen his heart still gazed with yearning at the clouds which floatedin Swedenborg's heaven, he had not yet acquired the necessary powersto produce a coherent system, compactly cast in a piece, as it were.Hence certain inconsistencies that have left their stamp even on thesketch here given of his first attempts. Still, incomplete as his workmay have been, was it not the rough copy of a science of which hewould have investigated the secrets at a later time, have secured thefoundations, have examined, deduced, and connected the logicalsequence?Six months after the confiscation of the _Treatise on the Will_ I leftschool. Our parting was unexpected. My mother, alarmed by a feverishattack which for some months I had been unable to shake off, while myinactive life induced symptoms of _coma_, carried me off at four orfive hours' notice. The announcement of my departure reduced Lambertto dreadful dejection."Shall I ever seen you again?" said he in his gentle voice, as heclasped me in his arms. "You will live," he went on, "but I shall die.If I can, I will come back to you."Only the young can utter such words with the accent of conviction thatgives them the impressiveness of prophecy, of a pledge, leaving aterror of its fulfilment. For a long time indeed I vaguely looked forthe promised apparition. Even now there are days of depression, ofdoubt, alarm, and loneliness, when I am forced to repel the intrusionof that sad parting, though it was not fated to be the last.When I crossed the yard by which we left, Lambert was at one of therefectory windows to see me pass. By my request my mother obtainedleave for him to dine with us at the inn, and in the evening Iescorted him back to the fatal gate of the college. No lover and hismistress ever shed more tears at parting."Well, good-bye; I shall be left alone in this desert!" said he,pointing to the playground where two hundred boys were disportingthemselves and shouting. "When I come back half dead with fatigue frommy long excursions through the fields of thought, on whose heart can Irest? I could tell you everything in a look. Who will understand menow?--Good-bye! I could wish I had never met you; I should not knowall I am losing.""And what is to become of me?" said I. "Is not my position a dreadfulone? _I_ have nothing here to uphold me!" and I slapped my forehead.He shook his head with a gentle gesture, gracious and sad, and weparted.At that time Louis Lambert was about five feet five inches in height;he grew no more. His countenance, which was full of expression,revealed his sweet nature. Divine patience, developed by harsh usage,and the constant concentration needed for his meditative life, hadbereft his eyes of the audacious pride which is so attractive in somefaces, and which had so shocked our masters. Peaceful mildness gavecharm to his face, an exquisite serenity that was never marred by atinge of irony or satire; for his natural kindliness tempered hisconscious strength and superiority. He had pretty hands, very slender,and almost always moist. His frame was a marvel, a model for asculptor; but our iron-gray uniform, with gilt buttons andknee-breeches, gave us such an ungainly appearance that Lambert's fineproportions and firm muscles could only be appreciated in the bath.When we swam in our pool in the Loire, Louis was conspicuous by thewhiteness of his skin, which was unlike the different shades of ourschoolfellows' bodies mottled by the cold, or blue from the water.Gracefully formed, elegant in his attitudes, delicate in hue, nevershivering after his bath, perhaps because he avoided the shade andalways ran into the sunshine, Louis was like one of those cautiousblossoms that close their petals to the blast and refuse to openunless to a clear sky. He ate little, and drank water only; either byinstinct or by choice he was averse to any exertion that made a demandon his strength; his movements were few and simple, like those ofOrientals or of savages, with whom gravity seems a condition ofnature.As a rule, he disliked everything that resembled any special care forhis person. He commonly sat with his head a little inclined to theleft, and so constantly rested his elbows on the table, that thesleeves of his coats were soon in holes.To this slight picture of the outer man I must add a sketch of hismoral qualities, for I believe I can now judge him impartially.Though naturally religious, Louis did not accept the minute practicesof the Roman ritual; his ideas were more intimately in sympathy withSaint Theresa and Fenelon, and several Fathers and certain Saints,who, in our day, would be regarded as heresiarchs or atheists. He wasrigidly calm during the services. His own prayers went up in gusts, inaspirations, without any regular formality; in all things he gavehimself up to nature, and would not pray, any more than he wouldthink, at any fixed hour. In chapel he was equally apt to think of Godor to meditate on some problem of philosophy.To him Jesus Christ was the most perfect type of his system. _EtVerbum caro factum est_ seemed a sublime statement intended to expressthe traditional formula of the Will, the Word, and the Act madevisible. Christ's unconsciousness of His Death--having so perfectedHis inner Being by divine works, that one day the invisible form of itappeared to His disciples--and the other Mysteries of the Gospels, themagnetic cures wrought by Christ, and the gift of tongues, all to himconfirmed his doctrine. I remember once hearing him say on thissubject, that the greatest work that could be written nowadays was aHistory of the Primitive Church. And he never rose to such poeticheights as when, in the evening, as we conversed, he would enter on aninquiry into miracles, worked by the power of Will during that greatage of faith. He discerned the strongest evidence of his theory inmost of the martyrdoms endured during the first century of our era,which he spoke of as _the great era of the Mind_."Do not the phenomena observed in almost every instance of thetorments so heroically endured by the early Christians for theestablishment of the faith, amply prove that Material force will neverprevail against the force of Ideas or the Will of man?" he would say."From this effect, produced by the Will of all, each man may drawconclusions in favor of his own."I need say nothing of his views on poetry or history, nor of hisjudgment on the masterpieces of our language. There would be littleinterest in the record of opinions now almost universally held, thoughat that time, from the lips of a boy, they might seem remarkable.Louis was capable of the highest flights. To give a notion of histalents in a few words, he could have written _Zadig_ as wittily asVoltaire; he could have thought out the dialogue between Sylla andEucrates as powerfully as Montesquieu. His rectitude of character madehim desire above all else in a work that it should bear the stamp ofutility; at the same time, his refined taste demanded novelty ofthought as well as of form. One of his most remarkable literaryobservations, which will serve as a clue to all the others, and showthe lucidity of his judgment, is this, which has ever dwelt in mymemory, "The Apocalypse is written ecstasy." He regarded the Bible asa part of the traditional history of the antediluvian nations whichhad taken for its share the new humanity. He thought that themythology of the Greeks was borrowed both from the Hebrew Scripturesand from the sacred Books of India, adapted after their own fashion bythe beauty-loving Hellenes."It is impossible," said he, "to doubt the priority of the AsiaticScriptures; they are earlier than our sacred books. The man who iscandid enough to admit this historical fact sees the whole worldexpand before him. Was it not on the Asiatic highland that the few mentook refuge who were able to escape the catastrophe that ruined ourglobe--if, indeed men had existed before that cataclysm or shock? Aserious query, the answer to which lies at the bottom of the sea. Theanthropogony of the Bible is merely a genealogy of a swarm escapingfrom the human hive which settled on the mountainous slopes of Thibetbetween the summits of the Himalaya and the Caucasus."The character of the primitive ideas of that horde called by itslawgiver the people of God, no doubt to secure its unity, and perhapsalso to induce it to maintain his laws and his system of government--for the Books of Moses are a religious, political, and civil code--that character bears the authority of terror; convulsions of natureare interpreted with stupendous power as a vengeance from on high. Infact, since this wandering tribe knew none of the ease enjoyed by acommunity settled in a patriarchal home, their sorrows as pilgrimsinspired them with none but gloomy poems, majestic but blood-stained.In the Hindoos, on the contrary, the spectacle of the rapid recoveriesof the natural world, and the prodigious effects of sunshine, whichthey were the first to recognize, gave rise to happy images ofblissful love, to the worship of Fire and of the endlesspersonifications of reproductive force. These fine fancies are lackingin the Book of the Hebrews. A constant need of self-preservation amidall the dangers and the lands they traversed to reach the PromisedLand engendered their exclusive race-feeling and their hatred of allother nations."These three Scriptures are the archives of an engulfed world. Thereinlies the secret of the extraordinary splendor of those languages andtheir myths. A grand human history lies beneath those names of men andplaces, and those fables which charm us so irresistibly, we know notwhy. Perhaps it is because we find in them the native air of renewedhumanity."Thus, to him, this threefold literature included all the thoughts ofman. Not a book could be written, in his opinion, of which the subjectmight not there be discerned in its germ. This view shows howlearnedly he had pursued his early studies of the Bible, and how farthey had led him. Hovering, as it were, over the heads of society, andknowing it solely from books, he could judge it coldly."The law," said he, "never puts a check on the enterprises of the richand great, but crushes the poor, who, on the contrary, needprotection."His kind heart did not therefore allow him to sympathize in politicalideas; his system led rather to the passive obedience of which Jesusset the example. During the last hours of my life at Vendome, Louishad ceased to feel the spur to glory; he had, in a way, had anabstract enjoyment of fame; and having opened it, as the ancientpriests of sacrifice sought to read the future in the hearts of men,he had found nothing in the entrails of his chimera. Scorning asentiment so wholly personal: "Glory," said he, "is but beatifiedegoism."Here, perhaps, before taking leave of this exceptional boyhood, I maypronounce judgment on it by a rapid glance.A short time before our separation, Lambert said to me:"Apart from the general laws which I have formulated--and this,perhaps, will be my glory--laws which must be those of the humanorganism, the life of man is Movement determined in each individual bythe pressure of some inscrutable influence--by the brain, the heart,or the sinews. All the innumerable modes of human existence resultfrom the proportions in which these three generating forces are moreor less intimately combined with the substances they assimilate in theenvironment they live in."He stopped short, struck his forehead, and exclaimed: "How strange! Inevery great man whose portrait I have remarked, the neck is short.Perhaps nature requires that in them the heart should be nearer to thebrain!"Then he went on:"From that, a sum-total of action takes its rise which constitutessocial life. The man of sinew contributes action or strength; the manof brain, genius; the man of heart, faith. But," he added sadly,"faith sees only the clouds of the sanctuary; the Angel alone haslight."So, according to his own definitions, Lambert was all brain and allheart. It seems to me that his intellectual life was divided intothree marked phases.Under the impulsion, from his earliest years, of a precociousactivity, due, no doubt, to some malady--or to some special perfection--of organism, his powers were concentrated on the functions of theinner senses and a superabundant flow of nerve-fluid. As a man ofideas, he craved to satisfy the thirst of his brain, to assimilateevery idea. Hence his reading; and from his reading, the reflectionsthat gave him the power of reducing things to their simplestexpression, and of absorbing them to study them in their essence.Thus, the advantages of this splendid stage, acquired by other menonly after long study, were achieved by Lambert during his bodilychildhood: a happy childhood, colored by the studious joys of a bornpoet.The point which most thinkers reach at last was to him thestarting-point, whence his brain was to set out one day in search ofnew worlds of knowledge. Though as yet he knew it not, he had made forhimself the most exacting life possible, and the most insatiably greedy.Merely to live, was he not compelled to be perpetually castingnutriment into the gulf he had opened in himself? Like some beings whodwell in the grosser world, might not he die of inanition for want offeeding abnormal and disappointed cravings? Was not this a sort ofdebauchery of the intellect which might lead to spontaneouscombustion, like that of bodies saturated with alcohol?I had seen nothing of this first phase of his brain-development; it isonly now, at a later day, that I can thus give an account of itsprodigious fruit and results. Lambert was now thirteen.I was so fortunate as to witness the first stage of the second period.Lambert was cast into all the miseries of school-life--and that,perhaps, was his salvation--it absorbed the superabundance of histhoughts. After passing from concrete ideas to their purestexpression, from words to their ideal import, and from that import toprinciples, after reducing everything to the abstract, to enable himto live he yearned for yet other intellectual creations. Quelled bythe woes of school and the critical development of his physicalconstitution, he became thoughtful, dreamed of feeling, and caught aglimpse of new sciences--positively masses of ideas. Checked in hiscareer, and not yet strong enough to contemplate the higher spheres,he contemplated his inmost self. I then perceived in him the struggleof the Mind reacting on itself, and trying to detect the secrets ofits own nature, like a physician who watches the course of his owndisease.At this stage of weakness and strength, of childish grace andsuperhuman powers, Louis Lambert is the creature who, more than anyother, gave me a poetical and truthful image of the being we call anangel, always excepting one woman whose name, whose features, whoseidentity, and whose life I would fain hide from all the world, so asto be sole master of the secret of her existence, and to bury it inthe depths of my heart.The third phase I was not destined to see. It began when Lambert and Iwere parted, for he did not leave college till he was eighteen, in thesummer of 1815. He had at that time lost his father and mother aboutsix months before. Finding no member of his family with whom his soulcould sympathize, expansive still, but, since our parting, thrown backon himself, he made his home with his uncle, who was also hisguardian, and who, having been turned out of his benefice as a priestwho had taken the oaths, had come to settle at Blois. There Louislived for some time; but consumed ere long by the desire to finish hisincomplete studies, he came to Paris to see Madame de Stael, and todrink of science at its highest fount. The old priest, being very fondof his nephew, left Louis free to spend his whole little inheritancein his three years' stay in Paris, though he lived very poorly. Thisfortune consisted of but a few thousand francs.Lambert returned to Blois at the beginning of 1820, driven from Parisby the sufferings to which the impecunious are exposed there. He mustoften have been a victim to the secret storms, the terrible rage ofmind by which artists are tossed to judge from the only fact his unclerecollected, and the only letter he preserved of all those which LouisLambert wrote to him at that time, perhaps because it was the last andthe longest.To begin with the story. Louis one evening was at theTheatre-Francais, seated on a bench in the upper gallery, near to oneof the pillars which, in those days, divided off the third row of boxes.On rising between the acts, he saw a young woman who had just come intothe box next him. The sight of this lady, who was young, pretty, welldressed, in a low bodice no doubt, and escorted by a man for whom herface beamed with all the charms of love, produced such a terribleeffect on Lambert's soul and senses, that he was obliged to leave thetheatre. If he had not been controlled by some remaining glimmer ofreason, which was not wholly extinguished by this first fever ofburning passion, he might perhaps have yielded to the mostirresistible desire that came over him to kill the young man on whomthe lady's looks beamed. Was not this a reversion, in the heart of theParis world, to the savage passion that regards women as its prey, aneffect of animal instinct combining with the almost luminous flashesof a soul crushed under the weight of thought? In short, was it notthe prick of the penknife so vividly imagined by the boy, felt by theman as the thunderbolt of his most vital craving--for love?And now, here is the letter that depicts the state of his mind as itwas struck by the spectacle of Parisian civilization. His feelings,perpetually wounded no doubt in that whirlpool of self-interest, mustalways have suffered there; he probably had no friend to comfort him,no enemy to give tone to this life. Compelled to live in himselfalone, having no one to share his subtle raptures, he may have hopedto solve the problem of his destiny by a life of ecstasy, adopting analmost vegetative attitude, like an anchorite of the early Church, andabdicating the empire of the intellectual world.This letter seems to hint at such a scheme, which is a temptation toall lofty souls at periods of social reform. But is not this purpose,in some cases, the result of a vocation? Do not some of them endeavorto concentrate their powers by long silence, so as to emerge fullycapable of governing the world by word or by deed? Louis must,assuredly, have found much bitterness in his intercourse with men, orhave striven hard with Society in terrible irony, without extractinganything from it, before uttering so strident a cry, and expressing,poor fellow, the desire which satiety of power and of all earthlythings has led even monarchs to indulge!And perhaps, too, he went back to solitude to carry out some greatwork that was floating inchoate in his brain. We would gladly believeit as we read this fragment of his thoughts, betraying the struggle ofhis soul at the time when youth was ending and the terrible power ofproduction was coming into being, to which we might have owed theworks of the man.This letter connects itself with the adventure at the theatre. Theincident and the letter throw light on each other, body and soul weretuned to the same pitch. This tempest of doubts and asseverations, ofclouds and of lightnings that flash before the thunder, ending by astarved yearning for heavenly illumination, throws such a light on thethird phase of his education as enables us to understand it perfectly.As we read these lines, written at chance moments, taken up when thevicissitudes of life in Paris allowed, may we not fancy that we see anoak at that stage of its growth when its inner expansion bursts thetender green bark, covering it with wrinkles and cracks, when itsmajestic stature is in preparation--if indeed the lightnings of heavenand the axe of man shall spare it?This letter, then, will close, alike for the poet and the philosopher,this portentous childhood and unappreciated youth. It finishes off theoutline of this nature in its germ. Philosophers will regret thefoliage frost-nipped in the bud; but they will, perhaps, find theflowers expanding in regions far above the highest places of theearth."PARIS, September-October 1819."DEAR UNCLE,--I shall soon be leaving this part of the world,where I could never bear to live. I find no one here who likeswhat I like, who works at my work, or is amazed at what amazesme.Thrown back on myself, I eat my heart out in misery. My long andpatient study of Society here has brought me to melancholyconclusions, in which doubt predominates."Here, money is the mainspring of everything. Money isindispensable, even for going without money. But though thatdrossis necessary to any one who wishes to think in peace, I have notcourage enough to make it the sole motive power of my thoughts.Tomake a fortune, I must take up a profession; in two words, Imust,by acquiring some privilege of position or of self-advertisement,either legal or ingeniously contrived, purchase the right oftaking day by day out of somebody else's purse a certain sumwhich, by the end of the year, would amount to a small capital;and this, in twenty years, would hardly secure an income of fouror five thousand francs to a man who deals honestly. An advocate,a notary, a merchant, any recognized professional, has earned aliving for his later days in the course of fifteen or sixteenyears after ending his apprenticeship."But I have never felt fit for work of this kind. I preferthoughtto action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity. Iam absolutely devoid of the constant attention indispensable tothe making of a fortune. Any mercantile venture, any need forusing other people's money would bring me to grief, and I shouldbe ruined. Though I have nothing, at least at the moment, I owenothing. The man who gives his life to the achievement of greatthings in the sphere of intellect, needs very little; still,though twenty sous a day would be enough, I do not possess thatsmall income for my laborious idleness. When I wish to cogitate,want drives me out of the sanctuary where my mind has its being.What is to become of me?"I am not frightened at poverty. If it were not that beggars areimprisoned, branded, scorned, I would beg, to enable me to solveat my leisure the problems that haunt me. Still, this sublimeresignation, by which I might emancipate my mind, throughabstracting it from the body, would not serve my end. I shouldstill need money to devote myself to certain experiments. But forthat, I would accept the outward indigence of a sage possessed ofboth heaven and heart. A man need only never stoop, to remainlofty in poverty. He who struggles and endures, while marching onto a glorious end, presents a noble spectacle; but who can havethe strength to fight here? We can climb cliffs, but it isunendurable to remain for ever tramping the mud. Everything herechecks the flight of the spirit that strives towards the future."I should not be afraid of myself in a desert cave; I am afraidofmyself here. In the desert I should be alone with myself,undisturbed; here man has a thousand wants which drag him down.You go out walking, absorbed in dreams; the voice of the beggarasking an alms brings you back to this world of hunger andthirst.You need money only to take a walk. Your organs of sense,perpetually wearied by trifles, never get any rest. The poet'ssensitive nerves are perpetually shocked, and what ought to behisglory becomes his torment; his imagination is his cruelest enemy.The injured workman, the poor mother in childbed, the prostitutewho has fallen ill, the foundling, the infirm and aged--even viceand crime here find a refuge and charity; but the world ismerciless to the inventor, to the man who thinks. Here everythingmust show an immediate and practical result. Fruitless attemptsare mocked at, though they may lead to the greatest discoveries;the deep and untiring study that demands long concentrations ofevery faculty is not valued here. The State might pay talent asitpays the bayonet; but it is afraid of being taken in by merecleverness, as if genius could be counterfeited for any length oftime."Ah, my dear uncle, when monastic solitude was destroyed,uprootedfrom its home at the foot of mountains, under green and silentshade, asylums ought to have been provided for those sufferingsouls who, by an idea, promote the progress of nations or preparesome new and fruitful development of science."September 20th."The love of study brought me hither, as you know. I have metreally learned men, amazing for the most part; but the lack ofunity in scientific work almost nullifies their efforts. There isno Head of instruction or of scientific research. At the Museum aprofessor argues to prove that another in the Rue Saint-Jacquestalks nonsense. The lecturer at the College of Medicine abuseshimof the College de France. When I first arrived, I went to hear anold Academician who taught five hundred youths that Corneille wasa haughty and powerful genius; Racine, elegiac and graceful;Moliere, inimitable; Voltaire, supremely witty; Bossuet andPascal, incomparable in argument. A professor of philosophy maymake a name by explaining how Plato is Platonic. Anotherdiscourses on the history of words, without troubling himselfabout ideas. One explains Aeschylus, another tells you thatcommunes were communes, and neither more nor less. These originaland brilliant discoveries, diluted to last several hours,constitute the higher education which is to lead to giant stridesin human knowledge."If the Government could have an idea, I should suspect it ofbeing afraid of any real superiority, which, once roused, mightbring Society under the yoke of an intelligent rule. Then nationswould go too far and too fast; so professors are appointed toproduce simpletons. How else can we account for a scheme devoidofmethod or any notion of the future?"The _Institut_ might be the central government of the moral andintellectual world; but it has been ruined lately by itssubdivision into separate academies. So human science marches on,without a guide, without a system, and floats haphazard with noroad traced out."This vagueness and uncertainty prevails in politics as well asinscience. In the order of nature means are simple, the end isgrandand marvelous; here in science as in government, the means arestupendous, the end is mean. The force which in nature proceedsatan equal pace, and of which the sum is constantly being added toitself--the A + A from which everything is produced--isdestructive in society. Politics, at the present time, placehumanforces in antagonism to neutralize each other, instead ofcombining them to promote their action to some definite end."Looking at Europe alone, from Caesar to Constantine, from thepuny Constantine to the great Attila, from the Huns toCharlemagne, from Charlemagne to Leo X., from Leo X., to PhilipII., from Philip II. to Louis XIV.; from Venice to England, fromEngland to Napoleon, from Napoleon to England, I see no fixedpurpose in politics; its constant agitation has led to noprogress."Nations leave witnesses to their greatness in monuments, and totheir happiness in the welfare of individuals. Are modernmonuments as fine as those of the ancients? I doubt it. The arts,which are the direct outcome of the individual, the products ofgenius or of handicraft, have not advanced much. The pleasures ofLucullus were as good as those of Samuel Bernard, of Beaujon, orof the King of Bavaria. And then human longevity has diminished."Thus, to those who will be candid, man is still the same; mightis his only law, and success his only wisdom."Jesus Christ, Mahomet, and Luther only lent a different hue tothe arena in which youthful nations disport themselves."No development of politics has hindered civilization, with itsriches, its manners, its alliance of the strong against the weak,its ideas, and its delights, from moving from Memphis to Tyre,from Tyre to Baalbek, from Tadmor to Carthage, from Carthage toRome, from Rome to Constantinople, from Constantinople to Venice,from Venice to Spain, from Spain to England--while no trace isleft of Memphis, of Tyre, of Carthage, of Rome, of Venice, orMadrid. The soul of those great bodies has fled. Not one of themhas preserved itself from destruction, nor formulated this axiom:When the effect produced ceases to be in a ratio to its cause,disorganization follows."The most subtle genius can discover no common bond between greatsocial facts. No political theory has ever lasted. Governmentspass away, as men do, without handing down any lesson, and nosystem gives birth to a system better than that which came beforeit. What can we say about politics when a Government directlyreferred to God perished in India and Egypt; when the rule of theSword and of the Tiara are past; when Monarchy is dying; when theGovernment of the People has never been alive; when no scheme ofintellectual power as applied to material interests has everproved durable, and everything at this day remains to be done allover again, as it has been at every period when man has turned tocry out, 'I am in torment!'"The code, which is considered Napoleon's greatest achievement,isthe most Draconian work I know of. Territorial subdivisioncarriedout to the uttermost, and its principle confirmed by the equaldivision of property generally, must result in the degeneracy ofthe nation and the death of the Arts and Sciences. The land, toomuch broken up, is cultivated only with cereals and small crops;the forests, and consequently the rivers, are disappearing; oxenand horses are no longer bred. Means are lacking both for attackand for resistance. If we should be invaded, the people must becrushed; it has lost its mainspring--its leaders. This is thehistory of deserts!"Thus the science of politics has no definite principles, and itcan have no fixity; it is the spirit of the hour, the perpetualapplication of strength proportioned to the necessities of themoment. The man who should foresee two centuries ahead would dieon the place of execution, loaded with the imprecations of themob, or else--which seems worse--would be lashed with the myriadwhips of ridicule. Nations are but individuals, neither wiser norstronger than man, and their destinies are identical. If wereflect on man, is not that to consider mankind?"By studying the spectacle of society perpetually storm-tossed inits foundations as well as in its results, in its causes as wellas in its actions, while philanthropy is but a splendid mistake,and progress is vanity, I have been confirmed in this truth: Lifeis within and not without us; to rise above men, to govern them,is only the part of an aggrandized school-master; and those menwho are capable of rising to the level whence they can enjoy aview of the world should not look at their own feet."November 4th."I am no doubt occupied with weighty thoughts, I am on the way tocertain discoveries, an invincible power bears me toward aluminary which shone at an early age on the darkness of my morallife; but what name can I give to the power that ties my handsandshuts my mouth, and drags me in a direction opposite to myvocation? I must leave Paris, bid farewell to the books in thelibraries, those noble centres of illumination, those kindly andalways accessible sages, and the younger geniuses with whom Isympathize. Who is it that drives me away? Chance or Providence?"The two ideas represented by those words are irreconcilable. IfChance does not exist, we must admit fatalism, that is to say,thecompulsory co-ordination of things under the rule of a generalplan. Why then do we rebel? If man is not free, what becomes ofthe scaffolding of his moral sense? Or, if he can control hisdestiny, if by his own freewill he can interfere with theexecution of the general plan, what becomes of God?"Why did I come here? If I examine myself, I find the answer: Ifind in myself axioms that need developing. But why then have Isuch vast faculties without being suffered to use them? If mysuffering could serve as an example, I could understand it; butno, I suffer unknown."This is perhaps as much the act of Providence as the fate of theflower that dies unseen in the heart of the virgin forest, whereno one can enjoy its perfume or admire its splendor. Just as thatblossom vainly sheds its fragrance to the solitude, so do I, herein the garret, give birth to ideas that no one can grasp."Yesterday evening I sat eating bread and grapes in front of mywindow with a young doctor named Meyraux. We talked as men dowhommisfortune has joined in brotherhood, and I said to him:"'I am going away; you are staying. Take up my ideas and developthem.'"'I cannot!' said he, with bitter regret: 'my feeble healthcannot stand so much work, and I shall die young of my strugglewith penury.'"We looked up at the sky and grasped hands. We first met at theComparative Anatomy course, and in the galleries of the Museum,attracted thither by the same study--the unity of geologicalstructure. In him this was the presentiment of genius sent toopena new path in the fallows of intellect; in me it was a deductionfrom a general system."My point is to ascertain the real relation that may existbetweenGod and man. Is not this a need of the age? Without the highestassurance, it is impossible to put bit and bridle on the socialfactions that have been let loose by the spirit of scepticism anddiscussion, and which are now crying aloud: 'Show us a way inwhich we may walk and find no pitfalls in our way!'"You will wonder what comparative anatomy has to do with aquestion of such importance to the future of society. Must we notattain to the conviction that man is the end of all earthly meansbefore we ask whether he too is not the means to some end? If manis bound up with everything, is there not something above himwithwhich he again is bound up? If he is the end-all of the explainedtransmutations that lead up to him, must he not be also the linkbetween the visible and invisible creations?"The activity of the universe is not absurd; it must tend to anend, and that end is surely not a social body constituted as oursis! There is a fearful gulf between us and heaven. In our presentexistence we can neither be always happy nor always in torment;must there not be some tremendous change to bring about Paradiseand Hell, two images without which God cannot exist to the mindofthe vulgar? I know that a compromise was made by the invention ofthe Soul; but it is repugnant to me to make God answerable forhuman baseness, for our disenchantments, our aversions, ourdegeneracy."Again, how can we recognize as divine the principle within uswhich can be overthrown by a few glasses of rum? How conceive ofimmaterial faculties which matter can conquer, and whose exerciseis suspended by a grain of opium? How imagine that we shall beable to feel when we are bereft of the vehicles of sensation? Whymust God perish if matter can be proved to think? Is the vitalityof matter in its innumerable manifestations--the effect of itsinstincts--at all more explicable than the effects of the mind?Isnot the motion given to the worlds enough to prove God'sexistence, without our plunging into absurd speculationssuggestedby pride? And if we pass, after our trials, from a perishablestate of being to a higher existence, is not that enough for acreature that is distinguished from other creatures only by moreperfect instincts? If in moral philosophy there is not a singleprinciple which does not lead to the absurd, or cannot bedisproved by evidence, is it not high time that we should set towork to seek such dogmas as are written in the innermost natureofthings? Must we not reverse philosophical science?"We trouble ourselves very little about the supposed void thatmust have pre-existed for us, and we try to fathom the supposedvoid that lies before us. We make God responsible for the future,but we do not expect Him to account for the past. And yet it isquite as desirable to know whether we have any roots in the pastas to discover whether we are inseparable from the future."We have been Deists or Atheists in one direction only."Is the world eternal? Was the world created? We can conceive ofno middle term between these two propositions; one, then, is trueand the other false! Take your choice. Whichever it may be, God,as our reason depicts Him, must be deposed, and that amounts todenial. The world is eternal: then, beyond question, God has hadit forced upon Him. The world was created: then God is animpossibility. How could He have subsisted through an eternity,not knowing that He would presently want to create the world? Howcould He have failed to foresee all the results?"Whence did He derive the essence of creation? Evidently fromHimself. If, then, the world proceeds from God, how can youaccount for evil? That Evil should proceed from Good is absurd.Ifevil does not exist, what do you make of social life and itslaws?On all hands we find a precipice! On every side a gulf in whichreason is lost! Then social science must be altogetherreconstructed."Listen to me, uncle; until some splendid genius shall have takenaccount of the obvious inequality of intellects and the generalsense of humanity, the word God will be constantly arraigned, andSociety will rest on shifting sands. The secret of the variousmoral zones through which man passes will be discovered by theanalysis of the animal type as a whole. That animal type hashitherto been studied with reference only to its differences, notto its similitudes; in its organic manifestations, not in itsfaculties. Animal faculties are perfected in direct transmission,in obedience to laws which remain to be discovered. Thesefaculties correspond to the forces which express them, and thoseforces are essentially material and divisible."Material faculties! Reflect on this juxtaposition of words. Isnot this a problem as insoluble as that of the firstcommunicationof motion to matter--an unsounded gulf of which the difficultieswere transposed rather than removed by Newton's system? Again,theuniversal assimilation of light by everything that exists onearthdemands a new study of our globe. The same animal differs in thetropics of India and in the North. Under the angular or thevertical incidence of the sun's rays nature is developed thesame,but not the same; identical in its principles, but totallydissimilar in its outcome. The phenomenon that amazes our eyes inthe zoological world when we compare the butterflies of Brazilwith those of Europe, is even more startling in the world ofMind.A particular facial angle, a certain amount of brainconvolutions,are indispensable to produce Columbus, Raphael, Napoleon,Laplace,or Beethoven; the sunless valley produces the cretin--draw yourown conclusions. Why such differences, due to the more or lessample diffusion of light to men? The masses of sufferinghumanity,more or less active, fed, and enlightened, are a difficulty to beaccounted for, crying out against God."Why in great joy do we always want to quit the earth? whencecomes the longing to rise which every creature has known or willknow? Motion is a great soul, and its alliance with matter isjustas difficult to account for as the origin of thought in man. Inthese days science is one; it is impossible to touch politicsindependent of moral questions, and these are bound up withscientific questions. It seems to me that we are on the eve of agreat human struggle; the forces are there; only I do not see theGeneral."November 25."Believe me, dear uncle, it is hard to give up the life that isinus without a pang. I am returning to Blois with a heavy grip atmyheart; I shall die then, taking with me some useful truths. Nopersonal interest debases my regrets. Is earthly fame a guerdontothose who believe that they will mount to a higher sphere?"I am by no means in love with the two syllables _Lam_ and_bert_;whether spoken with respect or with contempt over my grave, theycan make no change in my ultimate destiny. I feel myself strongand energetic; I might become a power; I feel in myself a life soluminous that it might enlighten a world, and yet I am shut up ina sort of mineral, as perhaps indeed are the colors you admire onthe neck of an Indian bird. I should need to embrace the wholeworld, to clasp and re-create it; but those who have done this,who have thus embraced and remoulded it began--did they not?--bybeing a wheel in the machine. I can only be crushed. Mahomet hadthe sword; Jesus had the cross; I shall die unknown. I shall beatBlois for a day, and then in my coffin."Do you know why I have come back to Swedenborg after vaststudiesof all religions, and after proving to myself, by reading all theworks published within the last sixty years by the patientEnglish, by Germany, and by France, how deeply true were myyouthful views about the Bible? Swedenborg undoubtedly epitomizesall the religions--or rather the one religion--of humanity.Thoughforms of worship are infinitely various, neither their truemeaning nor their metaphysical interpretation has ever varied. Inshort, man has, and has had, but one religion."Sivaism, Vishnuism, and Brahmanism, the three primitive creeds,originating as they did in Thibet, in the valley of the Indus,andon the vast plains of the Ganges, ended their warfare somethousand years before the birth of Christ by adopting the HindooTrimourti. The Trimourti is our Trinity. From this dogmaMagianismarose in Persia; in Egypt, the African beliefs and the Mosaiclaw;the worship of the Cabiri, and the polytheism of Greece and Rome.While by this ramification of the Trimourti the Asiatic mythsbecame adapted to the imaginations of various races in the landsthey reached by the agency of certain sages whom men elevated tobe demi-gods--Mithra, Bacchus, Hermes, Hercules, and the rest--Buddha, the great reformer of the three primeval religions,livedin India, and founded his Church there, a sect which stillnumberstwo hundred millions more believers than Christianity can show,while it certainly influenced the powerful Will both of Jesus andof Confucius."Then Christianity raised her standard. Subsequently MahometfusedJudaism and Christianity, the Bible and the Gospel, in one book,the Koran, adapting them to the apprehension of the Arab race.Finally, Swedenborg borrowed from Magianism, Brahmanism,Buddhism,and Christian mysticism all the truth and divine beauty thatthosefour great religious books hold in common, and added to them adoctrine, a basis of reasoning, that may be termed mathematical."Any man who plunges into these religious waters, of which thesources are not all known, will find proofs that Zoroaster,Moses,Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ, and Swedenborg had identicalprinciples and aimed at identical ends."The last of them all, Swedenborg, will perhaps be the Buddha ofthe North. Obscure and diffuse as his writings are, we find inthem the elements of a magnificent conception of society. HisTheocracy is sublime, and his creed is the only acceptable one tosuperior souls. He alone brings man into immediate communion withGod, he gives a thirst for God, he has freed the majesty of Godfrom the trappings in which other human dogmas have disguisedHim.He left Him where He is, making His myriad creations andcreaturesgravitate towards Him through successive transformations whichpromise a more immediate and more natural future than theCatholicidea of Eternity. Swedenborg has absolved God from the reproachattaching to Him in the estimation of tender souls for theperpetuity of revenge to punish the sin of a moment--a system ofinjustice and cruelty."Each man may know for himself what hope he has of life eternal,and whether this world has any rational sense. I mean to make theattempt. And this attempt may save the world, just as much as thecross at Jerusalem or the sword at Mecca. These were both theoffspring of the desert. Of the thirty-three years of Christ'slife, we only know the history of nine; His life of seclusionprepared Him for His life of glory. And I too crave for thedesert!"Notwithstanding the difficulties of the task, I have felt it my dutyto depict Lambert's boyhood, the unknown life to which I owe the onlyhappy hours, the only pleasant memories, of my early days. Exceptingduring those two years I had nothing but annoyances and weariness.Though some happiness was mine at a later time, it was alwaysincomplete.I have been diffuse, I know; but in default of entering into the wholewide heart and brain of Louis Lambert--two words which inadequatelyexpress the infinite aspects of his inner life--it would be almostimpossible to make the second part of his intellectual historyintelligible--a phase that was unknown to the world and to me, but ofwhich the mystical outcome was made evident to my eyes in the courseof a few hours. Those who have not already dropped this volume, will,I hope, understand the events I still have to tell, forming as they doa sort of second existence lived by this creature--may I not say thiscreation?--in whom everything was to be so extraordinary, even hisend.When Louis returned to Blois, his uncle was eager to procure him someamusement; but the poor priest was regarded as a perfect leper in thatgodly-minded town. No one would have anything to say to arevolutionary who had taken the oaths. His society, therefore,consisted of a few individuals of what were then called liberal orpatriotic, or constitutional opinions, on whom he would call for arubber of whist or of boston.At the first house where he was introduced by his uncle, Louis met ayoung lady, whose circumstances obliged her to remain in this circle,so contemned by those of the fashionable world, though her fortune wassuch as to make it probable that she might by and by marry into thehighest aristocracy of the province. Mademoiselle Pauline de Villenoixwas sole heiress to the wealth amassed by her grandfather, a Jew namedSalomon, who, contrary to the customs of his nation, had, in his oldage, married a Christian and a Catholic. He had only one son, who wasbrought up in his mother's faith. At his father's death young Salomonpurchased what was known at that time as a _savonnette a vilain_(literally _a cake of soap for a serf_), a small estate calledVillenoix, which he contrived to get registered with a baronial title,and took its name. He died unmarried, but he left a natural daughter,to whom he bequeathed the greater part of his fortune, including thelands of Villenoix. He appointed one of his uncles, Monsieur JosephSalomon, to be the girl's guardian. The old Jew was so devoted to hisward that he seemed willing to make great sacrifices for the sake ofmarrying her well. But Mademoiselle de Villenoix's birth, and thecherished prejudice against Jews that prevails in the provinces, wouldnot allow of her being received in the very exclusive circle which,rightly or wrongly, considers itself noble, notwithstanding her ownlarge fortune and her guardian's.Monsieur Joseph Salomon was resolved that if she could not secure acountry squire, his niece should go to Paris and make choice of ahusband among the peers of France, liberal or monarchical; as tohappiness, that he believed he could secure her by the terms of themarriage contract.Mademoiselle de Villenoix was now twenty. Her remarkable beauty andgifts of mind were surer guarantees of happiness than those offered bymoney. Her features were of the purest type of Jewish beauty; the ovallines, so noble and maidenly, have an indescribable stamp of theideal, and seem to speak of the joys of the East, its unchangeablyblue sky, the glories of its lands, and the fabulous riches of lifethere. She had fine eyes, shaded by deep eyelids, fringed with thick,curled lashes. Biblical innocence sat on her brow. Her complexion wasof the pure whiteness of the Levite's robe. She was habitually silentand thoughtful, but her movements and gestures betrayed a quiet grace,as her speech bore witness to a woman's sweet and loving nature. Shehad not, indeed, the rosy freshness, the fruit-like bloom which blushon a girl's cheek during her careless years. Darker shadows, with hereand there a redder vein, took the place of color, symptomatic of anenergetic temper and nervous irritability, such as many men do notlike to meet with in a wife, while to others they are an indication ofthe most sensitive chastity and passion mingled with pride.As soon as Louis saw Mademoiselle de Villenoix, he discerned the angelwithin. The richest powers of his soul, and his tendency to ecstaticreverie, every faculty within him was at once concentrated inboundless love, the first love of a young man, a passion which isstrong indeed in all, but which in him was raised to incalculablepower by the perennial ardor of his senses, the character of hisideas, and the manner in which he lived. This passion became a gulf,into which the hapless fellow threw everything; a gulf whither themind dare not venture, since his, flexible and firm as it was, waslost there. There all was mysterious, for everything went on in thatmoral world, closed to most men, whose laws were revealed to him--perhaps to his sorrow.When an accident threw me in the way of his uncle, the good man showedme into the room which Lambert had at that time lived in. I wanted tofind some vestiges of his writings, if he should have left any. Thereamong his papers, untouched by the old man from that fine instinct ofgrief that characterized the aged, I found a number of letters, tooillegible ever to have been sent to Mademoiselle de Villenoix. Myfamiliarity with Lambert's writing enabled me in time to decipher thehieroglyphics of this shorthand, the result of impatience and a frenzyof passion. Carried away by his feelings, he had written without beingconscious of the irregularity of words too slow to express histhoughts. He must have been compelled to copy these chaotic attempts,for the lines often ran into each other; but he was also afraidperhaps of not having sufficiently disguised his feelings, and atfirst, at any rate, he had probably written his love-letters twiceover.It required all the fervency of my devotion to his memory, and thesort of fanaticism which comes of such a task, to enable me to divineand restore the meaning of the five letters that here follow. Thesedocuments, preserved by me with pious care, are the only materialevidence of his overmastering passion. Mademoiselle de Villenoix hadno doubt destroyed the real letters that she received, eloquentwitnesses to the delirium she inspired.The first of these papers, evidently a rough sketch, betrays by itsstyle and by its length the many emendations, the heartfelt alarms,the innumerable terrors caused by a desire to please; the changes ofexpression and the hesitation between the whirl of ideas that beset aman as he indites his first love-letter--a letter he never willforget, each line the result of a reverie, each word the subject oflong cogitation, while the most unbridled passion known to man feelsthe necessity of the most reserved utterance, and like a giantstooping to enter a hovel, speaks humbly and low, so as not to alarm agirl's soul.No antiquary ever handled his palimpsests with greater respect than Ishowed in reconstructing these mutilated documents of such joy andsuffering as must always be sacred to those who have known similar joyand grief.
I"Mademoiselle, when you have read this letter, if you ever shouldread it, my life will be in your hands, for I love you; and tome,the hope of being loved is life. Others, perhaps, ere now, have,in speaking of themselves, misused the words I must employ todepict the state of my soul; yet, I beseech you to believe in thetruth of my expressions; though weak, they are sincere. Perhaps Iought not thus to proclaim my love. Indeed, my heart counseled meto wait in silence till my passion should touch you, that I mightthe better conceal it if its silent demonstrations shoulddisplease you; or till I could express it even more delicatelythan in words if I found favor in your eyes. However, afterhavinglistened for long to the coy fears that fill a youthful heartwithalarms, I write in obedience to the instinct which drags uselesslamentations from the dying."It has needed all my courage to silence the pride of poverty,andto overleap the barriers which prejudice erects between you andme. I have had to smother many reflections to love you in spiteofyour wealth; and as I write to you, am I not in danger of thescorn which women often reserve for profession of love, whichtheyaccept only as one more tribute of flattery? But we cannot helprushing with all our might towards happiness, or being attractedto the life of love as a plant is to the light; we must have beenvery unhappy before we can conquer the torment, the anguish ofthose secret deliberations when reason proves to us by a thousandarguments how barren our yearning must be if it remains buried inour hearts, and when hopes bid us dare everything."I was happy when I admired you in silence; I was so lost in thecontemplation of your beautiful soul, that only to see you leftmehardly anything further to imagine. And I should not now havedared to address you if I had not heard that you were leaving.What misery has that one word brought upon me! Indeed, it is mydespair that has shown me the extent of my attachment--it isunbounded. Mademoiselle, you will never know--at least, I hopeyoumay never know--the anguish of dreading lest you should lose theonly happiness that has dawned on you on earth, the only thingthat has thrown a gleam of light in the darkness of misery. Iunderstood yesterday that my life was no more in myself, but inyou. There is but one woman in the world for me, as there is butone thought in my soul. I dare not tell you to what a state I amreduced by my love for you. I would have you only as a gift fromyourself; I must therefore avoid showing myself to you in all theattractiveness of dejection--for is it not often more impressiveto a noble soul than that of good fortune? There are many things
Imay not tell you. Indeed, I have too lofty a notion of love totaint it with ideas that are alien to its nature. If my soul isworthy of yours, and my life pure, your heart will have asympathetic insight, and you will understand me!"It is the fate of man to offer himself to the woman who can makehim believe in happiness; but it is your prerogative to rejectthetruest passion if it is not in harmony with the vague voices inyour heart--that I know. If my lot, as decided by you, must beadverse to my hopes, mademoiselle, let me appeal to the delicacyof your maiden soul and the ingenuous compassion of a woman toburn my letter. On my knees I beseech you to forget all! Do notmock at a feeling that is wholly respectful, and that is toodeeply graven on my heart ever to be effaced. Break my heart, butdo not rend it! Let the expression of my first love, a pure andyouthful love, be lost in your pure and youthful heart! Let itdiethere as a prayer rises up to die in the bosom of God!"I owe you much gratitude: I have spent delicious hours occupiedin watching you, and giving myself up to the faint dreams of mylife; do not crush these long but transient joys by some girlishirony. Be satisfied not to answer me. I shall know how tointerpret your silence; you will see me no more. If I must becondemned to know for ever what happiness means, and to be forever bereft of it; if, like a banished angel, I am to cherish thesense of celestial joys while bound for ever to a world of sorrow--well, I can keep the secret of my love as well as that of mygriefs.--And farewell!"Yes, I resign you to God, to whom I will pray for you,beseechingHim to grant you a happy life; for even if I am driven from yourheart, into which I have crept by stealth, still I shall ever benear you. Otherwise, of what value would the sacred words be ofthis letter, my first and perhaps my last entreaty? If I shouldever cease to think of you, to love you whether in happiness orinwoe, should I not deserve my punishment?"
II"You are not going away! And I am loved! I, a poor, insignificantcreature! My beloved Pauline, you do not yourself know the powerof the look I believe in, the look you gave me to tell me thatyouhad chosen me--you so young and lovely, with the world at yourfeet!"To enable you to understand my happiness, I should have to giveyou a history of my life. If you had rejected me, all was overforme. I have suffered too much. Yes, my love for you, my comfortingand stupendous love, was a last effort of yearning for thehappiness my soul strove to reach--a soul crushed by fruitlesslabor, consumed by fears that make me doubt myself, eaten into bydespair which has often urged me to die. No one in the world canconceive of the terrors my fateful imagination inflicts on me. Itoften bears me up to the sky, and suddenly flings me to earthagain from prodigious heights. Deep-seated rushes of power, orsome rare and subtle instance of peculiar lucidity, assure me nowand then that I am capable of great things. Then I embrace theuniverse in my mind, I knead, shape it, inform it, I comprehendit--or fancy that I do; then suddenly I awake--alone, sunk inblackest night, helpless and weak; I forget the light I saw butnow, I find no succor; above all, there is no heart where I maytake refuge."This distress of my inner life affects my physical existence.Thenature of my character gives me over to the raptures of happinessas defenceless as when the fearful light of reflection comes toanalyze and demolish them. Gifted as I am with the melancholyfaculty of seeing obstacles and success with equal clearness,according to the mood of the moment, I am happy or miserable byturns."Thus, when I first met you, I felt the presence of an angelicnature, I breathed an air that was sweet to my burning breast, Iheard in my soul the voice that never can be false, telling methat here was happiness; but perceiving all the barriers thatdivided us, I understood the vastness of their pettiness, andthese difficulties terrified me more than the prospect ofhappiness could delight me. At once I felt the awful reactionwhich casts my expansive soul back on itself; the smile you hadbrought to my lips suddenly turned to a bitter grimace, and Icould only strive to keep calm, while my soul was boiling withtheturmoil of contradictory emotions. In short, I experienced thatgnawing pang to which twenty-three years of suppressed sighs andbetrayed affections have not inured me."Well, Pauline, the look by which you promised that I should behappy suddenly warmed my vitality, and turned all my sorrows intojoy. Now, I could wish that I had suffered more. My love issuddenly full-grown. My soul was a wide territory that lacked theblessing of sunshine, and your eyes have shed light on it.Belovedprovidence! you will be all in all to me, orphan as I am, withouta relation but my uncle. You will be my whole family, as you aremy whole wealth, nay, the whole world to me. Have you notbestowedon me every gladness man can desire in that chaste--lavish--timidglance?"You have given me incredible self-confidence and audacity. I candare all things now. I came back to Blois in deep dejection. Fiveyears of study in the heart of Paris had made me look on theworldas a prison. I had conceived of vast schemes, and dared not speakof them. Fame seemed to me a prize for charlatans, to which areally noble spirit should not stoop. Thus, my ideas could onlymake their way by the assistance of a man bold enough to mounttheplatform of the press, and to harangue loudly the simpletons hescorns. This kind of courage I have not. I ploughed my way on,crushed by the verdict of the crowd, in despair at never makingithear me. I was at once too humble and too lofty! I swallowed mythoughts as other men swallow humiliations. I had even come todespise knowledge, blaming it for yielding no real happiness."But since yesterday I am wholly changed. For your sake I nowcovet every palm of glory, every triumph of success. When I laymyhead on your knees, I could wish to attract to you the eyes ofthewhole world, just as I long to concentrate in my love every idea,every power that is in me. The most splendid celebrity is apossession that genius alone can create. Well, I can, at my will,make for you a bed of laurels. And if the silent ovation paid toscience is not all you desire, I have within me the sword of theWord; I could run in the path of honor and ambition where othersonly crawl."Command me, Pauline; I will be whatever you will. My iron willcan do anything--I am loved! Armed with that thought, ought not aman to sweep everything before him? The man who wants all can doall. If you are the prize of success, I enter the liststo-morrow.To win such a look as that you bestowed on me, I would leap thedeepest abyss. Through you I understand the fabulous achievementsof chivalry and the most fantastic tales of the _Arabian Nights_.I can believe now in the most fantastic excesses of love, and inthe success of a prisoner's wildest attempt to recover hisliberty. You have aroused the thousand virtues that lay dormantwithin me--patience, resignation, all the powers of my heart, allthe strength of my soul. I live by you and--heavenlythought!--foryou. Everything now has a meaning for me in life. I understandeverything, even the vanities of wealth."I find myself shedding all the pearls of the Indies at yourfeet;I fancy you reclining either on the rarest flowers, or on thesoftest tissues, and all the splendor of the world seems hardlyworthy of you, for whom I would I could command the harmony andthe light that are given out by the harps of seraphs and thestarsof heaven! Alas! a poor, studious poet, I offer you in wordstreasures I cannot bestow; I can only give you my heart, in whichyou reign for ever. I have nothing else. But are there notreasures in eternal gratitude, in a smile whose expressions willperpetually vary with perennial happiness, under the constanteagerness of my devotion to guess the wishes of your loving soul?Has not one celestial glance given us assurance of alwaysunderstanding each other?"I have a prayer now to be said to God every night--a prayer fullof you: 'Let my Pauline be happy!' And will you fill all my daysas you now fill my heart?"Farewell, I can but trust you to God alone!"
III"Pauline! tell me if I can in any way have displeased youyesterday? Throw off the pride of heart which inflicts on me thesecret tortures that can be caused by one we love. Scold me ifyouwill! Since yesterday, a vague, unutterable dread of havingoffended you pours grief on the life of feeling which you hadmadeso sweet and so rich. The lightest veil that comes between twosouls sometimes grows to be a brazen wall. There are no venialcrimes in love! If you have the very spirit of that noblesentiment, you must feel all its pangs, and we must beunceasinglycareful not to fret each other by some heedless word."No doubt, my beloved treasure, if there is any fault, it is inme. I cannot pride myself in the belief that I understand awoman's heart, in all the expansion of its tenderness, all thegrace of its devotedness; but I will always endeavor toappreciatethe value of what you vouchsafe to show me of the secrets ofyours."Speak to me! Answer me soon! The melancholy into which we arethrown by the idea of a wrong done is frightful; it casts ashroudover life, and doubts on everything."I spent this morning sitting on the bank by the sunken road,gazing at the turrets of Villenoix, not daring to go to ourhedge.If you could imagine all I saw in my soul! What gloomy visionspassed before me under the gray sky, whose cold sheen added to mydreary mood! I had dark presentiments! I was terrified lest Ishould fail to make you happy."I must tell you everything, my dear Pauline. There are momentswhen the spirit of vitality seems to abandon me. I feel bereft ofall strength. Everything is a burden to me; every fibre of mybodyis inert, every sense is flaccid, my sight grows dim, my tongueisparalyzed, my imagination is extinct, desire is dead--nothingsurvives but my mere human vitality. At such times, though youwere in all the splendor of your beauty, though you should lavishon me your subtlest smiles and tenderest words, an evil influencewould blind me, and distort the most ravishing melody intodiscordant sounds. At those times--as I believe--someargumentative demon stands before me, showing me the void beneaththe most real possessions. This pitiless demon mows down everyflower, and mocks at the sweetest feelings, saying: 'Well--andthen?' He mars the fairest work by showing me its skeleton, andreveals the mechanism of things while hiding the beautifulresults."At those terrible moments, when the evil spirit takes possessionof me, when the divine light is darkened in my soul without myknowing the cause, I sit in grief and anguish, I wish myself deafand dumb, I long for death to give me rest. These hours of doubtand uneasiness are perhaps inevitable; at any rate, they teach menot to be proud after the flights which have borne me to theskieswhere I have gathered a full harvest of thoughts; for it isalwaysafter some long excursion in the vast fields of the intellect,andafter the most luminous speculations, that I tumble, broken andweary, into this limbo. At such a moment, my angel, a wife woulddouble my love for her--at any rate, she might. If she werecapricious, ailing, or depressed, she would need the comfortingoverflow of ingenious affection, and I should not have a glancetobestow on her. It is my shame, Pauline, to have to tell you thatat times I could weep with you, but that nothing could make mesmile."A woman can always conceal her troubles; for her child, or forthe man she loves, she can laugh in the midst of suffering. Andcould not I, for you, Pauline, imitate the exquisite reserve of awoman? Since yesterday I have doubted my own power. If I coulddisplease you once, if I failed once to understand you, I dreadlest I should often be carried out of our happy circle by my evildemon. Supposing I were to have many of those dreadful moods, orthat my unbounded love could not make up for the dark hours of mylife--that I were doomed to remain such as I am?--Fatal doubts!"Power is indeed a fatal possession if what I feel within me ispower. Pauline, go! Leave me, desert me! Sooner would I endureevery ill in life than endure the misery of knowing that you wereunhappy through me."But, perhaps, the demon has had such empire over me only becauseI have had no gentle, white hands about me to drive him off. Nowoman has ever shed on me the balm of her affection; and I knownot whether, if love should wave his pinions over my head inthesemoments of exhaustion, new strength might not be given to myspirit. This terrible melancholy is perhaps a result of myisolation, one of the torments of a lonely soul which pays foritshidden treasures with groans and unknown suffering. Those whoenjoy little shall suffer little; immense happiness entailsunutterable anguish!"How terrible a doom! If it be so, must we not shudder forourselves, we who are superhumanly happy? If nature sells useverything at its true value, into what pit are we not fated tofall? Ah! the most fortunate lovers are those who die together inthe midst of their youth and love! How sad it all is! Does mysoulforesee evil in the future? I examine myself, wondering whetherthere is anything in me that can cause you a moment's anxiety. Ilove you too selfishly perhaps? I shall be laying on your belovedhead a burden heavy out of all proportion to the joy my love canbring to your heart. If there dwells in me some inexorable powerwhich I must obey--if I am compelled to curse when you pray, ifsome dark thought coerces me when I would fain kneel at your feetand play as a child, will you not be jealous of that wayward andtricky spirit?"You understand, dearest heart, that what I dread is not beingwholly yours; that I would gladly forego all the sceptres and thepalms of the world to enshrine you in one eternal thought, to seea perfect life and an exquisite poem in our rapturous love; tothrow my soul into it, drown my powers, and wring from each hourthe joys it has to give!"Ah, my memories of love are crowding back upon me, the clouds ofdespair will lift. Farewell. I leave you now to be more entirelyyours. My beloved soul, I look for a line, a word that mayrestoremy peace of mind. Let me know whether I really grieved myPauline,or whether some uncertain expression of her countenance misledme.I could not bear to have to reproach myself after a whole life ofhappiness, for ever having met you without a smile of love, ahoneyed word. To grieve the woman I love--Pauline, I should countit a crime. Tell me the truth, do not put me off with somemagnanimous subterfuge, but forgive me without cruelty."FRAGMENT."Is so perfect an attachment happiness? Yes, for years ofsuffering would not pay for an hour of love."Yesterday, your sadness, as I suppose, passed into my soul asswiftly as a shadow falls. Were you sad or suffering? I waswretched. Whence came my distress? Write to me at once. Why did Inot know it? We are not yet completely one in mind. At twoleagues' distance or at a thousand I ought to feel your pain andsorrows. I shall not believe that I love you till my life is sobound up with yours that our life is one, till our hearts, ourthoughts are one. I must be where you are, see what you feel,feelwhat you feel, be with you in thought. Did not I know, at once,that your carriage had been overthrown and you were bruised? Buton that day I had been with you, I had never left you, I couldseeyou. When my uncle asked me what made me turn so pale, I answeredat once, 'Mademoiselle de Villenoix had has a fall.'"Why, then, yesterday, did I fail to read your soul? Did you wishto hide the cause of your grief? However, I fancied I could feelthat you were arguing in my favor, though in vain, with thatdreadful Salomon, who freezes my blood. That man is not of ourheaven."Why do you insist that our happiness, which has no resemblancetothat of other people, should conform to the laws of the world?Andyet I delight too much in your bashfulness, your religion, yoursuperstitions, not to obey your lightest whim. What you do mustberight; nothing can be purer than your mind, as nothing islovelierthan your face, which reflects your divine soul."I shall wait for a letter before going along the lanes to meetthe sweet hour you grant me. Oh! if you could know how the sightof those turrets makes my heart throb when I see them edged withlight by the moon, our only confidante."
IV"Farewell to glory, farewell to the future, to the life I haddreamed of! Now, my well-beloved, my glory is that I am yours,andworthy of you; my future lies entirely in the hope of seeing you;and is not my life summed up in sitting at your feet, in lyingunder your eyes, in drawing deep breaths in the heaven you havecreated for me? All my powers, all my thoughts must be yours,since you could speak those thrilling words, 'Your sufferingsmustbe mine!' Should I not be stealing some joys from love, somemoments from happiness, some experiences from your divine spirit,if I gave my hours to study--ideas to the world and poems to thepoets? Nay, nay, my very life, I will treasure everything foryou;I will bring to you every flower of my soul. Is there anythingfine enough, splendid enough, in all the resources of the world,or of intellect, to do honor to a heart so rich, so pure as yours--the heart to which I dare now and again to unite my own? Yes,now and again, I dare believe that I can love as much as you do."And yet, no; you are the angel-woman; there will always be agreater charm in the expression of your feelings, more harmony inyour voice, more grace in your smile, more purity in your looksthan in mine. Let me feel that you are the creature of a highersphere than that I live in; it will be your pride to havedescended from it; mine, that I should have deserved you; and youwill not perhaps have fallen too far by coming down to me in mypoverty and misery. Nay, if a woman's most glorious refuge is inaheart that is wholly her own, you will always reign supreme inmine. Not a thought, not a deed, shall ever pollute this heart,this glorious sanctuary, so long as you vouchsafe to dwell in it--and will you not dwell in it for ever? Did you not enchant mebythe words, 'Now and for ever?' _Nunc et semper_! And I havewritten these words of our ritual below your portrait--wordsworthy of you, as they are of God. He is _nunc et semper_, as mylove is."Never, no, never, can I exhaust that which is immense, infinite,unbounded--and such is the feeling I have for you; I haveimaginedits immeasurable extent, as we measure space by the dimensions ofone of its parts. I have had ineffable joys, whole hours filledwith delicious meditation, as I have recalled a single gesture orthe tone of a word of yours. Thus there will be memories of whichthe magnitude will overpower me, if the reminiscence of a sweetand friendly interview is enough to make me shed tears of joy, tomove and thrill my soul, and to be an inexhaustible wellspring ofgladness. Love is the life of angels!"I can never, I believe, exhaust my joy in seeing you. Thisrapture, the least fervid of any, though it never can last longenough, has made me apprehend the eternal contemplation in whichseraphs and spirits abide in the presence of God; nothing can bemore natural, if from His essence there emanates a light asfruitful of new emotions as that of your eyes is, of yourimposingbrow, and your beautiful countenance--the image of your soul.Then, the soul, our second self, whose pure form can neverperish,makes our love immortal. I would there were some other languagethan that I use to express to you the ever-new ecstasy of mylove;but since there is one of our own creating, since our looks areliving speech, must we not meet face to face to read in eachother's eyes those questions and answers from the heart, that areso living, so penetrating, that one evening you could say to me,'Be silent!' when I was not speaking. Do you remember it, dearlife?"When I am away from you in the darkness of absence, am I notreduced to use human words, too feeble to express heavenlyfeelings? But words at any rate represent the marks thesefeelingsleave in my soul, just as the word _God_ imperfectly sums up thenotions we form of that mysterious First Cause. But, in spite ofthe subtleties and infinite variety of language, I have no wordsthat can express to you the exquisite union by which my life ismerged into yours whenever I think of you."And with what word can I conclude when I cease writing to you,and yet do not part from you? What can _farewell_ mean, unless indeath? But is death a farewell? Would not my spirit be then moreclosely one with yours? Ah! my first and last thought; formerly Ioffered you my heart and life on my knees; now what freshblossomsof feelings can I discover in my soul that I have not alreadygiven you? It would be a gift of a part of what is wholly yours."Are you my future? How deeply I regret the past! I would I couldhave back all the years that are ours no more, and give them toyou to reign over, as you do over my present life. What indeedwasthat time when I knew you not? It would be a void but that I wasso wretched."FRAGMENT."Beloved angel, how delightful last evening was! How full ofriches your dear heart is! And is your love endless, like mine?Each word brought me fresh joy, and each look made it deeper. Theplacid expression of your countenance gave our thoughts alimitless horizon. It was all as infinite as the sky, and asblandas its blue. The refinement of your adored features repeateditself by some inexplicable magic in your pretty movements andyour least gestures. I knew that you were all graciousness, alllove, but I did not know how variously graceful you could be.Everything combined to urge me to tender solicitation, to make meask the first kiss that a woman always refuses, no doubt that itmay be snatched from her. You, dear soul of my life, will neverguess beforehand what you may grant to my love, and will yieldperhaps without knowing it! You are utterly true, and obey yourheart alone."The sweet tones of your voice blended with the tender harmoniesthat filled the quiet air, the cloudless sky. Not a bird piped,not a breeze whispered--solitude, you, and I. The motionlessleaves did not quiver in the beautiful sunset hues which are bothlight and shadow. You felt that heavenly poetry--you whoexperienced so many various emotions, and who so often raisedyoureyes to heaven to avoid answering me. You who are proud andsaucy,humble and masterful, who give yourself to me so completely inspirit and in thought, and evade the most bashful caress. Dearwitcheries of the heart! They ring in my ears; they sound andplaythere still. Sweet words but half spoken, like a child's speech,neither promise nor confession, but allowing love to cherish itsfairest hopes without fear or torment! How pure a memory forlife!What a free blossoming of all the flowers that spring from thesoul, which a mere trifle can blight, but which, at that moment,everything warmed and expanded."And it will always be so, will it not, my beloved? As I recall,this morning, the fresh and living delights revealed to me inthathour, I am conscious of a joy which makes me conceive of trueloveas an ocean of everlasting and ever-new experiences, into whichwemay plunge with increasing delight. Every day, every word, everykiss, every glance, must increase it by its tribute of pasthappiness. Hearts that are large enough never to forget must liveevery moment in their past joys as much as in those promised bythe future. This was my dream of old, and now it is no longer adream! Have I not met on this earth with an angel who had made meknow all its happiness, as a reward, perhaps, for having enduredall its torments? Angel of heaven, I salute thee with a kiss."I shall send you this hymn of thanksgiving from my heart, I oweit to you; but it can hardly express my gratitude or the morningworship my heart offers up day by day to her who epitomized thewhole gospel of the heart in this divine word: 'Believe.'"
V"What! no further difficulties, dearest heart! We shall be freetobelong to each other every day, every hour, every minute, and forever! We may be as happy for all the days of our life as we noware by stealth, at rare intervals! Our pure, deep feelings willassume the expression of the thousand fond acts I have dreamedof.For me your little foot will be bared, you will be wholly mine!Such happiness kills me; it is too much for me. My head is tooweak, it will burst with the vehemence of my ideas. I cry and Ilaugh--I am possessed! Every joy is an arrow of flame; it piercesand burns me. In fancy you rise before my eyes, ravished anddazzled by numberless and capricious images of delight."In short, our whole future life is before me--its torrents, itsstill places, its joys; it seethes, it flows on, it liessleeping;then again it awakes fresh and young. I see myself and you sidebyside, walking with equal pace, living in the same thought; eachdwelling in each other's heart, understanding each other,responding to each other as an echo catches and repeats a soundacross wide distances."Can life be long when it is thus consumed hour by hour? Shall wenot die in a first embrace? What if our souls have already met inthat sweet evening kiss which almost overpowered us--a feelingkiss, but the crown of my hopes, the ineffectual expression ofallthe prayers I breathe while we are apart, hidden in my soul likeremorse?"I, who would creep back and hide in the hedge only to hear yourfootsteps as you went homewards--I may henceforth admire you atmyleisure, see you busy, moving, smiling, prattling! An endlessjoy!You cannot imagine all the gladness it is to me to see you goingand coming; only a man can know that deep delight. Your leastmovement gives me greater pleasure than a mother even can feel asshe sees her child asleep or at play. I love you with every kindof love in one. The grace of your least gesture is always new tome. I fancy I could spend whole nights breathing your breath; Iwould I could steal into every detail of your life, be the verysubstance of your thoughts--be your very self."Well, we shall, at any rate, never part again! No human alloyshall ever disturb our love, infinite in its phases and as pureasall things are which are One--our love, vast as the sea, vast asthe sky! You are mine! all mine! I may look into the depths ofyour eyes to read the sweet soul that alternately hides andshinesthere, to anticipate your wishes."My best-beloved, listen to some things I have never yet dared totell you, but which I may confess to you now. I felt a certainbashfulness of soul which hindered the full expression of myfeelings, so I strove to shroud them under the garbs of thoughts.But now I long to lay my heart bare before you, to tell you oftheardor of my dreams, to reveal the boiling demands of my senses,excited, no doubt, by the solitude in which I have lived,perpetually fired by conceptions of happiness, and aroused byyou,so fair in form, so attractive in manner. How can I express toyoumy thirst for the unknown rapture of possessing an adored wife, arapture to which the union of two souls by love must givefrenziedintensity. Yes, my Pauline, I have sat for hours in a sort ofstupor caused by the violence of my passionate yearning, lost inthe dream of a caress as though in a bottomless abyss. At suchmoments my whole vitality, my thoughts and powers, are merged andunited in what I must call desire, for lack of a word to expressthat nameless delirium."And I may confess to you now that one day, when I would not takeyour hand when you offered it so sweetly--an act of melancholyprudence that made you doubt my love--I was in one of those fitsof madness when a man could commit a murder to possess a woman.Yes, if I had felt the exquisite pressure you offered me asvividly as I heard your voice in my heart, I know not to whatlengths my passion might not have carried me. But I can besilent,and suffer a great deal. Why speak of this anguish when myvisionsare to become realities? It will be in my power now to make lifeone long love-making!"Dearest love, there is a certain effect of light on your blackhair which could rivet me for hours, my eyes full of tears, as Igazed at your sweet person, were it not that you turn away andsay, 'For shame; you make me quite shy!'"To-morrow, then, our love is to be made known! Oh, Pauline! theeyes of others, the curiosity of strangers, weigh on my soul. Letus go to Villenoix, and stay there far from every one. I shouldlike no creature in human form to intrude into the sanctuarywhereyou are to be mine; I could even wish that, when we are dead, itshould cease to exist--should be destroyed. Yes, I would fainhidefrom all nature a happiness which we alone can understand, alonecan feel, which is so stupendous that I throw myself into it onlyto die--it is a gulf!"Do not be alarmed by the tears that have wetted this page; theyare tears of joy. My only blessing, we need never part again!"In 1823 I traveled from Paris to Touraine by _diligence_. At Mer wetook up a passenger for Blois. As the guard put him into that part ofthe coach where I had my seat, he said jestingly:"You will not be crowded, Monsieur Lefebvre!"--I was, in fact, alone.On hearing this name, and seeing a white-haired old man, who lookedeighty at least, I naturally thought of Lambert's uncle. After a fewingenious questions, I discovered that I was not mistaken. The goodman had been looking after his vintage at Mer, and was returning toBlois. I then asked for some news of my old "chum." At the first word,the old priest's face, as grave and stern already as that of a soldierwho has gone through many hardships, became more sad and dark; thelines on his forehead were slightly knit, he set his lips, and said,with a suspicious glance:"Then you have never seen him since you left the College?""Indeed, I have not," said I. "But we are equally to blame for ourforgetfulness. Young men, as you know, lead such an adventurous andstorm-tossed life when they leave their school-forms, that it is onlyby meeting that they can be sure of an enduring affection. However, areminiscence of youth sometimes comes as a reminder, and it isimpossible to forget entirely, especially when two lads have been suchfriends as we were. We went by the name of the Poet-and-Pythagoras."I told him my name; when he heard it, the worthy man grew gloomierthan ever."Then you have not heard his story?" said he. "My poor nephew was tobe married to the richest heiress in Blois; but the day before hiswedding he went mad.""Lambert! Mad!" cried I in dismay. "But from what cause? He had thefinest memory, the most strongly-constituted brain, the soundestjudgment, I ever met with. Really a great genius--with too great apassion for mysticism perhaps; but the kindest heart in the world.Something most extraordinary must have happened?""I see you knew him well," said the priest.From Mer, till we reached Blois, we talked only of my poor friend,with long digressions, by which I learned the facts I have alreadyrelated in the order of their interest. I confessed to his uncle thecharacter of our studies and of his nephew's predominant ideas; thenthe old man told me of the events that had come into Lambert's lifesince our parting. From Monsieur Lefebvre's account, Lambert hadbetrayed some symptoms of madness before his marriage; but they weresuch as are common to men who love passionately, and seemed to me lessstartling when I knew how vehement his love had been and when I sawMademoiselle de Villenoix. In the country, where ideas are scarce, aman overflowing with original thought and devoted to a system, asLouis was, might well be regarded as eccentric, to say the least. Hislanguage would, no doubt, seem the stranger because he so rarelyspoke. He would say, "That man does not dwell in heaven," where anyone else would have said, "We are not made on the same pattern." Everyclever man has his own quirks of speech. The broader his genius, themore conspicuous are the singularities which constitute the variousdegrees of eccentricity. In the country an eccentric man is at onceset down as half mad.Hence Monsieur Lefebvre's first sentences left me doubtful of myschoolmate's insanity. I listened to the old man, but I criticised hisstatements.The most serious symptom had supervened a day or two before themarriage. Louis had had some well-marked attacks of catalepsy. He hadonce remained motionless for fifty-nine hours, his eyes staring,neither speaking nor eating; a purely nervous affection, to whichpersons under the influence of violent passion are liable; a raremalady, but perfectly well known to the medical faculty. What wasreally extraordinary was that Louis should not have had severalprevious attacks, since his habits of rapt thought and the characterof his mind would predispose him to them. But his temperament,physical and mental, was so admirably balanced, that it had no doubtbeen able to resist the demands on his strength. The excitement towhich he had been wound up by the anticipation of acute physicalenjoyment, enhanced by a chaste life and a highly-strung soul, had nodoubt led to these attacks, of which the results are as little knownas the cause.The letters that have by chance escaped destruction show very plainlya transition from pure idealism to the most intense sensualism.Time was when Lambert and I had admired this phenomenon of the humanmind, in which he saw the fortuitous separation of our two natures,and the signs of a total removal of the inner man, using its unknownfaculties under the operation of an unknown cause. This disorder, amystery as deep as that of sleep, was connected with the scheme ofevidence which Lambert had set forth in his _Treatise on the Will_.And when Monsieur Lefebvre spoke to me of Louis' first attack, Isuddenly remembered a conversation we had had on the subject afterreading a medical book."Deep meditation and rapt ecstasy are perhaps the undeveloped germs ofcatalepsy," he said in conclusion.On the occasion when he so concisely formulated this idea, he had beentrying to link mental phenomena together by a series of results,following the processes of the intellect step by step, from theirbeginnings as those simple, purely animal impulses of instinct, whichare all-sufficient to many human beings, particularly to those menwhose energies are wholly spent in mere mechanical labor; then, goingon to the aggregation of ideas and rising to comparison, reflection,meditation, and finally ecstasy and catalepsy. Lambert, of course, inthe artlessness of youth, imagined that he had laid down the lines ofa great work when he thus built up a scale of the various degrees ofman's mental powers.I remember that, by one of those chances which seems likepredestination, we got hold of a great Martyrology, in which the mostcurious narratives are given of the total abeyance of physical lifewhich a man can attain to under the paroxysms of the inner life. Byreflecting on the effects of fanaticism, Lambert was led to believethat the collected ideas to which we give the name of feelings mayvery possibly be the material outcome of some fluid which is generatedin all men, more or less abundantly, according to the way in whichtheir organs absorb, from the medium in which they live, theelementary atoms that produce it. We went crazy over catalepsy; andwith the eagerness that boys throw into every pursuit, we endeavoredto endure pain by thinking of something else. We exhausted ourselvesby making experiments not unlike those of the epileptic fanatics ofthe last century, a religious mania which will some day be of serviceto the science of humanity. I would stand on Lambert's chest,remaining there for several minutes without giving him the slightestpain; but notwithstanding these crazy attempts, we did not achieve anattack of catalepsy.This digression seemed necessary to account for my first doubts, whichwere, however, completely dispelled by Monsieur Lefebvre."When this attack had passed off," said he, "my nephew sank into astate of extreme terror, a dejection that nothing could overcome. Hethought himself unfit for marriage. I watched him with the care of amother for her child, and found him preparing to perform on himselfthe operation to which Origen believed he owed his talents. I at oncecarried him off to Paris, and placed him under the care of MonsieurEsquirol. All through our journey Louis sat sunk in almost unbrokentorpor, and did not recognize me. The Paris physicians pronounced himincurable, and unanimously advised his being left in perfect solitude,with nothing to break the silence that was needful for his veryimprobable recovery, and that he should live always in a cool roomwith a subdued light.--Mademoiselle de Villenoix, whom I had beencareful not to apprise of Louis' state," he went on, blinking hiseyes, "but who was supposed to have broken off the match, went toParis and heard what the doctors had pronounced. She immediatelybegged to see my nephew, who hardly recognized her; then, like thenoble soul she is, she insisted on devoting herself to giving him suchcare as might tend to his recovery. She would have been obliged to doso if he had been her husband, she said, and could she do less for himas her lover?"She removed Louis to Villenoix, where they have been living for twoyears."So, instead of continuing my journey, I stopped at Blois to go to seeLouis. Good Monsieur Lefebvre would not hear of my lodging anywherebut at his house, where he showed me his nephew's room with the booksand all else that had belonged to him. At every turn the old man couldnot suppress some mournful exclamation, showing what hopes Louis'precocious genius had raised, and the terrible grief into which thisirreparable ruin had plunged him."That young fellow knew everything, my dear sir!" said he, laying onthe table a volume containing Spinoza's works. "How could so wellorganized a brain go astray?""Indeed, monsieur," said I, "was it not perhaps the result of itsbeing so highly organized? If he really is a victim to the malady asyet unstudied in all its aspects, which is known simply as madness, Iam inclined to attribute it to his passion. His studies and his modeof life had strung his powers and faculties to a degree of energybeyond which the least further strain was too much for nature; Lovewas enough to crack them, or to raise them to a new form of expressionwhich we are maligning perhaps, by ticketing it without due knowledge.In fact, he may perhaps have regarded the joys of marriage as anobstacle to the perfection of his inner man and his flight towardsspiritual spheres.""My dear sir," said the old man, after listening to me with attention,"your reasoning is, no doubt, very sound; but even if I could followit, would this melancholy logic comfort me for the loss of my nephew?"Lambert's uncle was one of those men who live only by theiraffections.I went to Villenoix on the following day. The kind old man accompaniedme to the gates of Blois. When we were out on the road to Villenoix,he stopped me and said:"As you may suppose, I do not go there. But do not forget what I havesaid; and in Mademoiselle de Villenoix's presence affect not toperceive that Louis is mad."He remained standing on the spot where I left him, watching me till Iwas out of sight.I made my way to the chateau of Villenoix, not without deep agitation.My thoughts were many at each step on this road, which Louis had sooften trodden with a heart full of hopes, a soul spurred on by themyriad darts of love. The shrubs, the trees, the turns of the windingroad where little gullies broke the banks on each side, were to mefull of strange interest. I tried to enter into the impressions andthoughts of my unhappy friend. Those evening meetings on the edge ofthe coombe, where his lady-love had been wont to find him, had, nodoubt, initiated Mademoiselle de Villenoix into the secrets of thatvast and lofty spirit, as I had learned them all some years before.But the thing that most occupied my mind, and gave to my pilgrimagethe interest of intense curiosity, in addition to the almost piousfeelings that led me onwards, was that glorious faith of Mademoisellede Villenoix's which the good priest had told me of. Had she in thecourse of time been infected with her lover's madness, or had she socompletely entered into his soul that she could understand all itsthoughts, even the most perplexed? I lost myself in the wonderfulproblem of feeling, passing the highest inspirations of passion andthe most beautiful instances of self-sacrifice. That one should diefor the other is an almost vulgar form of devotion. To live faithfulto one love is a form of heroism that immortalized MademoiselleDupuis. When the great Napoleon and Lord Byron could find successorsin the hearts of women they had loved, we may well admireBolingbroke's widow; but Mademoiselle Dupuis could feed on thememories of many years of happiness, whereas Mademoiselle deVillenoix, having known nothing of love but its first excitement,seemed to me to typify love in its highest expression. If she wereherself almost crazy, it was splendid; but if she had understood andentered into his madness, she combined with the beauty of a nobleheart a crowning effort of passion worthy to be studied and honored.When I saw the tall turrets of the chateau, remembering how often poorLambert must have thrilled at the sight of them, my heart beatanxiously. As I recalled the events of our boyhood, I was almost asharer in his present life and situation. At last I reached a wide,deserted courtyard, and I went into the hall of the house withoutmeeting a soul. There the sound of my steps brought out an old woman,to whom I gave a letter written to Mademoiselle de Villenoix byMonsieur Lefebvre. In a few minutes this woman returned to bid meenter, and led me to a low room, floored with black-and-white marble;the Venetian shutters were closed, and at the end of the room I dimlysaw Louis Lambert."Be seated, monsieur," said a gentle voice that went to my heart.Mademoiselle de Villenoix was at my side before I was aware of herpresence, and noiselessly brought me a chair, which at first I wouldnot accept. It was so dark that at first I saw Mademoiselle deVillenoix and Lambert only as two black masses perceived against thegloomy background. I presently sat down under the influence of thefeeling that comes over us, almost in spite of ourselves, under theobscure vault of a church. My eyes, full of the bright sunshine,accustomed themselves gradually to this artificial night."Monsieur is your old school-friend," she said to Louis.He made no reply. At last I could see him, and it was one of thosespectacles that are stamped on the memory for ever. He was standing,his elbows resting on the cornice of the low wainscot, which threw hisbody forward, so that it seemed bowed under the weight of his benthead. His hair was as long as a woman's, falling over his shouldersand hanging about his face, giving him a resemblance to the busts ofthe great men of the time of Louis XIV. His face was perfectly white.He constantly rubbed one leg against the other, with a mechanicalaction that nothing could have checked, and the incessant friction ofthe bones made a doleful sound. Near him was a bed of moss on boards."He very rarely lies down," said Mademoiselle de Villenoix; "butwhenever he does, he sleeps for several days."Louis stood, as I beheld him, day and night with a fixed gaze, neverwinking his eyelids as we do. Having asked Mademoiselle de Villenoixwhether a little more light would hurt our friend, on her reply Iopened the shutters a little way, and could see the expression ofLambert's countenance. Alas! he was wrinkled, white-headed, his eyesdull and lifeless as those of the blind. His features seemed all drawnupwards to the top of his head. I made several attempts to talk tohim, but he did not hear me. He was a wreck snatched from the grave, aconquest of life from death--or of death from life!I stayed for about an hour, sunk in unaccountable dreams, and lost inpainful thought. I listened to Mademoiselle de Villenoix, who told meevery detail of this life--that of a child in arms.Suddenly Louis ceased rubbing his legs together, and said slowly:"The angels are white."I cannot express the effect produced upon me by this utterance, by thesound of the voice I had loved, whose accents, so painfully expected,had seemed to be lost for ever. My eyes filled with tears in spite ofevery effort. An involuntary instinct warned me, making me doubtwhether Louis had really lost his reason. I was indeed well assuredthat he neither saw nor heard me; but the sweetness of his tone, whichseemed to reveal heavenly happiness, gave his speech an amazingeffect. These words, the incomplete revelation of an unknown world,rang in our souls like some glorious distant bells in the depth of adark night. I was no longer surprised that Mademoiselle de Villenoixconsidered Lambert to be perfectly sane. The life of the soul hadperhaps subdued that of the body. His faithful companion had, no doubt--as I had at that moment--intuitions of that melodious and beautifulexistence to which we give the name of Heaven in its highest meaning.This woman, this angel, always was with him, seated at her embroideryframe; and each time she drew the needle out she gazed at Lambert withsad and tender feeling. Unable to endure this terrible sight--for Icould not, like Mademoiselle de Villenoix, read all his secrets--Iwent out, and she came with me to walk for a few minutes and talk ofherself and of Lambert."Louis must, no doubt, appear to be mad," said she. "But he is not, ifthe term mad ought only to be used in speaking of those whose brain isfor some unknown cause diseased, and who can show no reason in theiractions. Everything in my husband is perfectly balanced. Though he didnot actively recognize you, it is not that he did not see you. He hassucceeded in detaching himself from his body, and discerns us undersome other aspect--what that is, I know not. When he speaks, he utterswondrous things. Only it often happens that he concludes in speech anidea that had its beginning in his mind; or he may begin a sentenceand finish it in thought. To other men he seems insane; to me, livingas I do in his mind, his ideas are quite lucid. I follow the road hisspirit travels; and though I do not know every turning, I can reachthe goal with him."Which of us has not often known what it is to think of some futilething and be led on to some serious reflection through the ideas ormemories it brings in its train? Not unfrequently, after speakingabout some trifle, the simple starting-point of a rapid train ofreflections, a thinker may forget or be silent as to the abstractconnection of ideas leading to his conclusion, and speak again only toutter the last link in the chain of his meditations."Inferior minds, to whom this swift mental vision is a thing unknown,who are ignorant of the spirit's inner workings, laugh at the dreamer;and if he is subject to this kind of obliviousness, regard him as amadman. Louis is always in this state; he soars perpetually throughthe spaces of thought, traversing them with the swiftness of aswallow; I can follow him in his flight. This is the whole history ofhis madness. Some day, perhaps, Louis will come back to the life inwhich we vegetate; but if he breathes the air of heaven before thetime when we may be permitted to do so, why should we desire to havehim down among us? I am content to hear his heart beat, and all myhappiness is to be with him. Is he not wholly mine? In three years,twice at intervals he was himself for a few days; once in Switzerland,where we went, and once in an island off the wilds of Brittany, wherewe took some sea-baths. I have twice been very happy! I can live onmemory.""But do you write down the things he says?" I asked."Why should I?" said she.I was silent; human knowledge was indeed as nothing in this woman'seyes."At those times, when he talked a little," she added, "I think I haverecorded some of his phrases, but I left it off; I did not understandhim then."I asked her for them by a look; she understood me. This is what I havebeen able to preserve from oblivion.
IEverything here on earth is produced by an ethereal substancewhich is the common element of various phenomena, knowninaccurately as electricity, heat, light, the galvanic fluid, themagnetic fluid, and so forth. The universal distribution of thissubstance, under various forms, constitutes what is commonlyknownas Matter.
IIThe brain is the alembic to which the Animal conveys what each ofits organizations, in proportion to the strength of that vessel,can absorb of that Substance, which returns it transformed intoWill.The Will is a fluid inherent in every creature endowed withmotion. Hence the innumerable forms assumed by the Animal, theresults of its combinations with that Substance. The Animal'sinstincts are the product of the coercion of the environment inwhich it develops. Hence its variety.
IIIIn Man the Will becomes a power peculiar to him, and exceeding inintensity that of any other species.
IVBy constant assimilation, the Will depends on the Substance itmeets with again and again in all its transmutations, pervadingthem by Thought, which is a product peculiar to the human Will,incombination with the modifications of that Substance.
VThe innumerable forms assumed by Thought are the result of thegreater or less perfection of the human mechanism.
VIThe Will acts through organs commonly called the five senses,which, in fact, are but one--the faculty of Sight. Feeling andtasting, hearing and smelling, are Sight modified to thetransformations of the Substance which Man can absorb in twoconditions: untransformed and transformed.
VIIEverything of which the form comes within the cognizance of theone sense of Sight may be reduced to certain simple bodies ofwhich the elements exist in the air, the light, or in theelementsof air and light. Sound is a condition of the air; colors are allconditions of light; every smell is a combination of air andlight; hence the four aspects of Matter with regard toMan--sound,color, smell, and shape--have the same origin, for the day is notfar off when the relationship of the phenomena of air and lightwill be made clear.Thought, which is allied to Light, is expressed in words whichdepend on sound. To man, then, everything is derived from theSubstance, whose transformations vary only through Number--acertain quantitative dissimilarity, the proportions resulting inthe individuals or objects of what are classed as Kingdoms.
VIIIWhen the Substance is absorbed in sufficient number (or quantity)it makes of man an immensely powerful mechanism, in directcommunication with the very element of the Substance, and actingon organic nature in the same way as a large stream when itabsorbs the smaller brooks. Volition sets this force in motionindependently of the Mind. By its concentration it acquires someof the qualities of the Substance, such as the swiftness oflight,the penetrating power of electricity, and the faculty ofsaturating a body; to which must be added that it apprehends whatit can do.Still, there is in man a primordial and overruling phenomenonwhich defies analysis. Man may be dissected completely; theelements of Will and Mind may perhaps be found; but there stillwill remain beyond apprehension the _x_ against which I once usedto struggle. That _x_ is the Word, the Logos, whose communicationburns and consumes those who are not prepared to receive it. TheWord is for ever generating the Substance.
IXRage, like all our vehement demonstrations, is a current of thehuman force that acts electrically; its turmoil when liberatedacts on persons who are present even though they be neither itscause nor its object. Are there not certain men who by adischargeof Volition can sublimate the essence of the feelings of themasses?
XFanaticism and all emotions are living forces. These forces insome beings become rivers that gather in and sweep awayeverything.
XIThough Space _is_, certain faculties have the power of traversingit with such rapidity that it is as though it existed not. Fromyour own bed to the frontiers of the universe there are but twosteps: Will and Faith.
XIIFacts are nothing; they do not subsist; all that lives of us isthe Idea.
XIIIThe realm of Ideas is divided into three spheres: that ofInstinct, that of Abstractions, that of Specialism.
XIVThe greater part, the weaker part of visible humanity, dwells inthe Sphere of Instinct. The _Instinctives_ are born, labor, anddie without rising to the second degree of human intelligence,namely Abstraction.
XVSociety begins in the sphere of Abstraction. If Abstraction, ascompared with Instinct, is an almost divine power, it isnevertheless incredibly weak as compared with the gift ofSpecialism, which is the formula of God. Abstraction comprisesallnature in a germ, more virtually than a seed contains the wholesystem of a plant and its fruits. From Abstraction are derivedlaws, arts, social ideas, and interests. It is the glory and thescourge of the earth: its glory because it has created sociallife; its scourge because it allows man to evade entering intoSpecialism, which is one of the paths to the Infinite. Manmeasures everything by Abstractions: Good and Evil, Virtue andCrime. Its formula of equity is a pair of scales, its justice isblind. God's justice sees: there is all the difference.There must be intermediate Beings, then, dividing the sphere ofInstinct from the sphere of Abstractions, in whom the twoelementsmingle in an infinite variety of proportions. Some have more ofone, some more of the other. And there are also some in which thetwo powers neutralize each other by equality of effect.
XVISpecialism consists in seeing the things of the material universeand the things of the spiritual universe in all theirramifications original and causative. The greatest human geniusesare those who started from the darkness of Abstraction to attainto the light of Specialism. (Specialism, _species_, sight;speculation, or seeing everything, and all at once; _Speculum_, amirror or means of apprehending a thing by seeing the whole ofit.) Jesus had the gift of Specialism; He saw each fact in itsroot and in its results, in the past where it had its rise, andinthe future where it would grow and spread; His sight pierced intothe understanding of others. The perfection of the inner eyegivesrise to the gift of Specialism. Specialism brings with itIntuition. Intuition is one of the faculties of the Inner Man, ofwhich Specialism is an attribute. Intuition acts by animperceptible sensation of which he who obeys it is notconscious:for instance, Napoleon instinctively moving from a spot struckimmediately afterwards by a cannon ball.
XVIIBetween the sphere of Abstraction and that of Specialism, asbetween those of Abstraction and Instinct, there are beings inwhom the attributes of both combine and produce a mixture; theseare men of genius.
XVIIISpecialism is necessarily the most perfect expression of man, andhe is the link binding the visible world to the higher worlds; heacts, sees, and feels by his inner powers. The man of Abstractionthinks. The man of Instinct acts.
XIXHence man has three degrees. That of Instinct, below the average;that of Abstraction, the general average; that of Specialism,above the average. Specialism opens to man his true career; theInfinite dawns on him; he sees what his destiny must be.
XXThere are three worlds--the Natural, the Spiritual, and theDivine. Humanity passes through the Natural world, which is notfixed either in its essence and unfixed in its faculties. TheSpiritual world is fixed in its essence and unfixed in itsfaculties. The Divine world is necessarily a Material worship, aSpiritual worship, and a Divine worship: three forms expressed inaction, speech, and prayer, or, in other words, in deed,apprehension, and love. Instinct demands deed; Abstraction isconcerned with Ideas; Specialism sees the end, it aspires to Godwith presentiment or contemplation.
XXIHence, perhaps, some day the converse of _Et Verbum caro factumest_ will become the epitome of a new Gospel, which will proclaimthat The Flesh shall be made the Word and become the Utterance ofGod.
XXIIThe Resurrection is the work of the Wind of Heaven sweeping overthe worlds. The angel borne on the Wind does not say: "Arise, yedead"; he says, "Arise, ye who live!"Such are the meditations which I have with great difficulty cast in aform adapted to our understanding. There are some others which Paulineremembered more exactly, wherefore I know not, and which I wrote fromher dictation; but they drive the mind to despair when, knowing inwhat an intellect they originated, we strive to understand them. Iwill quote a few of them to complete my study of this figure; partly,too, perhaps, because, in these last aphorisms, Lambert's formulasseem to include a larger universe than the former set, which wouldapply only to zoological evolution. Still, there is a relation betweenthe two fragments, evident to those persons--though they be but few--who love to dive into such intellectual deeps.
IEverything on earth exists solely by motion and number.
IIMotion is, so to speak, number in action.
IIIMotion is the product of a force generated by the Word and byResistance, which is Matter. But for Resistance, Motion wouldhavehad no results; its action would have been infinite. Newton'sgravitation is not a law, but an effect of the general law ofuniversal motion.
IVMotion, acting in proportion to Resistance, produces a resultwhich is Life. As soon as one or the other is the stronger, Lifeceases.
VNo portion of Motion is wasted; it always produces number; still,it can be neutralized by disproportionate resistance, as inminerals.
VINumber, which produces variety of all kinds, also gives rise toHarmony, which, in the highest meaning of the word, is therelation of parts to the whole.
VIIBut for Motion, everything would be one and the same. Itsproducts, identical in their essence, differ only by Number,whichgives rise to faculties.
VIIIMan looks to faculties; angels look to the Essence.
IXBy giving his body up to elemental action, man can achieve aninner union with the Light.
XNumber is intellectual evidence belonging to man alone; by it heacquires knowledge of the Word.
XIThere is a Number beyond which the impure cannot pass: the Numberwhich is the limit of creation.
XIIThe Unit was the starting-point of every product: compounds arederived from it, but the end must be identical with thebeginning.Hence this Spiritual formula: the compound Unit, the variableUnit, the fixed Unit.
XIIIThe Universe is the Unit in variety. Motion is the means; Numberis the result. The end is the return of all things to the Unit,which is God.
XIVThree and Seven are the two chief Spiritual numbers.
XVThree is the formula of created worlds. It is the Spiritual Signof the creation, as it is the Material Sign of dimension. Infact,God has worked by curved lines only: the Straight Line is anattribute of the Infinite; and man, who has the presentiment ofthe Infinite, reproduces it in his works. Two is the number ofgeneration. Three is the number of Life which includes generationand offspring. Add the sum of four, and you have seven, theformula of Heaven. Above all is God; He is the Unit.After going in to see Louis once more, I took leave of his wife andwent home, lost in ideas so adverse to social life that, in spite of apromise to return to Villenoix, I did not go.The sight of Louis had had some mysteriously sinister influence overme. I was afraid to place myself again in that heavy atmosphere, whereecstasy was contagious. Any man would have felt, as I did, a longingto throw himself into the infinite, just as one soldier after anotherkilled himself in a certain sentry box where one had committed suicidein the camp at Boulogne. It is a known fact that Napoleon was obligedto have the hut burned which had harbored an idea that had become amortal infection.Louis' room had perhaps the same fatal effect as that sentry box.These two facts would then be additional evidence in favor of histheory of the transfusion of Will. I was conscious of strangedisturbances, transcending the most fantastic results of taking tea,coffee, or opium, of dreams or of fever--mysterious agents, whoseterrible action often sets our brains on fire.I ought perhaps to have made a separate book of these fragments ofthought, intelligible only to certain spirits who have been accustomedto lean over the edge of abysses in the hope of seeing to the bottom.The life of that mighty brain, which split up on every side perhaps,like a too vast empire, would have been set forth in the narrative ofthis man's visions--a being incomplete for lack of force or ofweakness; but I preferred to give an account of my own impressionsrather than to compose a more or less poetical romance.Louis Lambert died at the age of twenty-eight, September 25, 1824, inhis true love's arms. He was buried by her desire in an island in thepark at Villenoix. His tombstone is a plain stone cross, without nameor date. Like a flower that has blossomed on the margin of aprecipice, and drops into it, its colors and fragrance all unknown, itwas fitting that he too should fall. Like many another misprized soul,he had often yearned to dive haughtily into the void, and abandonthere the secrets of his own life.Mademoiselle de Villenoix would, however, have been quite justified inrecording his name on that cross with her own. Since her partner'sdeath, reunion has been her constant, hourly hope. But the vanities ofwoe are foreign to faithful souls.Villenoix is falling into ruin. She no longer resides there; to theend, no doubt, that she may the better picture herself there as sheused to be. She had said long ago:"His heart was mine; his genius is with God."CHATEAU DE SACHE. June-July 1832.
ADDENDUMThe following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Lambert, Louis
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Seaside Tragedy
Lefebvre
A Seaside Tragedy
Meyraux
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Stael-Holstein (Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baronne de)
The Chouans
Letters of Two Brides
Villenoix, Pauline Salomon de
A Seaside Tragedy
The Vicar of Tours
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