knowing in what true strength consists.
Nor was this all. No gloves. If by good hap a boy's parents, the
infirmary nurse, or the headmaster gave gloves to a particularly
delicate lad, the wags or the big boys of the class would put them on
the stove, amused to see them dry and shrivel; or if the gloves escaped
the marauders, after getting wet they shrunk as they dried for want
of care. No, gloves were impossible. Gloves were a privilege, and boys
insist on equality.
Louis Lambert fell a victim to all these varieties of torment. Like
many contemplative men, who, when lost in thought, acquire a habit of
mechanical motion, he had a mania for fidgeting with his shoes, and
destroyed them very quickly. His girlish complexion, the skin of his
ears and lips, cracked with the least cold. His soft, white hands grew
red and swollen. He had perpetual colds. Thus he was a constant
sufferer till he became inured to school-life. Taught at last by cruel
experience, he was obliged to "look after his things," to use the school
phrase. He was forced to take care of his locker, his desk, his clothes,
his shoes; to protect his ink, his books, his copy-paper, and his pens
from pilferers; in short, to give his mind to the thousand details of
our trivial life, to which more selfish and commonplace minds devoted
such strict attention--thus infallibly securing prizes for "proficiency"
and "good conduct"--while they were overlooked by a boy of the highest
promise, who, under the hand of an almost divine imagination, gave
himself up with rapture to the flow of his ideas.
This was not all. There is a perpetual struggle going on between the
masters and the boys, a struggle without truce, to be compared with
nothing else in the social world, unless it be the resistance of
the opposition to the ministry in a representative government. But
journalists and opposition speakers are probably less prompt to take
advantage of a weak point, less extreme in resenting an injury, and less
merciless in their mockery than boys are in regard to those who rule
over them. It is a task to put angels out of patience. An unhappy
class-master must then not be too severely blamed, ill-paid as he is,
and consequently not too competent, if he is occasionally unjust or out
of temper. Perpetually watched by a hundred mocking eyes, and surrounded
with snares, he sometimes revenges himself for his own blunders on the
boys who are only too ready to detect them.
Unless for serious misdemeanors, for which there were other forms of
punishment, the strap was regarded at Vendome as the _ultima ratio
Patrum_. Exercises forgotten, lessons ill learned, common ill behavior
were sufficiently punished by an imposition, but offended dignity spoke
in the master through the strap. Of all the physical torments to which
we were exposed, certainly the most acute was that inflicted by this
leathern instrument, about two fingers wide, applied to our poor little
hands with all the strength and all the fury of the administrator. To
endure this classical form of correction, the victim knelt in the middle
of the room. He had to leave his form and go to kneel down near the
master's desk under the curious and generally merciless eyes of his
fellows. To sensitive natures these preliminaries were an introductory
torture, like the journey from the Palais de Justice to the Place de
Greve which the condemned used to make to the scaffold.
Some boys cried out and shed bitter tears before or after the
application of the strap; others accepted the infliction with stoic
calm; it was a question of nature; but few could control an expression
of anguish in anticipation.
Louis Lambert was constantly enduring the strap, and owed it to a
peculiarity of his physiognomy of which he was for a long time quite
unconscious. Whenever he was suddenly roused from a fit of abstraction
by the master's cry, "You are doing nothing!" it often happened that,
without knowing it, he flashed at his teacher a look full of fierce
contempt, and charged with thought, as a Leyden jar is charged with
electricity. This look, no doubt, discomfited the master, who, indignant
at this unspoken retort, wished to cure his scholar of that thunderous
flash.
The first time the Father took offence at this ray of scorn, which
struck him like a lightning-flash, he made this speech, as I well
remember:
"If you look at me again in that way, Lambert, you will get the strap."
At these words every nose was in the air, every eye looked alternately
at the master and at Louis. The observation was so utterly foolish, that
the boy again looked at the Father, overwhelming him with another
flash. From this arose a standing feud between Lambert and his master,
resulting in a certain amount of "strap." Thus did he first discover the
power of his eye.
The hapless poet, so full of nerves, as sensitive as a woman, under the
sway of chronic melancholy, and as sick with genius as a girl with
love that she pines for, knowing nothing of it;--this boy, at once so
powerful and so weak, transplanted by "Corinne" from the country he
loved, to be squeezed in the mould of a collegiate routine to which
every spirit and every body must yield, whatever their range or
temperament, accepting its rule and its uniform as gold is crushed into
round coin under the press; Louis Lambert suffered in every spot where
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 a sickly frame,
tortured in every sense, environed by distress--everything compelled
him to give his body up to the myriad tyrannies of school life; and,
like the martyrs who smiled in the midst of suffering, he took refuge in
heaven, which lay open to his mind. Perhaps this life of purely inward
emotions helped him to see something 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 for
our exercises and impositions, earned us a reputation, which no one
cared to controvert, for being an idle and incorrigible pair. Our
masters treated us with contempt, and we fell into utter disgrace with
our companions, from whom we concealed our secret studies for fear
of being laughed at. This hard judgment, which was injustice in the
masters, was but natural in our schoolfellows. We could neither play
ball, nor run races, nor walk on stilts. On exceptional holidays, when
amnesty was proclaimed and we got a few hours of freedom, we shared in
none of the popular diversions of the school. Aliens from the pleasures
enjoyed by the others, we were outcasts, sitting forlorn under a tree in
the playing-ground. The Poet-and-Pythagoras formed an exception and led
a life apart from the life of the rest.
The penetrating instinct and unerring conceit of schoolboys made them
feel that we were of a nature either far above or far beneath their own;
hence some simply hated our aristocratic reserve, others merely scorned
our ineptitude. These feelings were equally shared by us without our
knowing it; perhaps I have but now divined them. We lived exactly like
two rats, huddled into the corner of the room where our desks were,
sitting there alike during lesson time and play hours. This strange
state of affairs inevitably and in fact placed us on a footing of war
with all the other boys in our division. Forgotten for the most part, we
sat there very contentedly; half happy, like two plants, two images
who would have been missed from the furniture of the room. But the most
aggressive of our schoolfellows would sometimes torment us, just to
show their malignant power, and we responded with stolid contempt, which
brought many a thrashing down on the Poet-and-Pythagoras.
Lambert's home-sickness lasted for many months. I know no words to
describe the dejection to which he was a prey. Louis has taken the glory
off many a masterpiece for me. We had both played the part of the "Leper
of Aosta," and had both experienced the feelings described in Monsieur
de Maistre's story, before we read them as expressed by his eloquent
pen. A book may, indeed, revive the memories of our childhood, but it
can never compete with them successfully. Lambert's woes had taught me
many a chant of sorrow far more appealing than the finest passages in
"Werther." And, indeed, there is no possible comparison between the
pangs of a passion condemned, whether rightly or wrongly, by every law,
and the grief of a poor child pining for the glorious sunshine, the
dews of the valley, and liberty. Werther is the slave of desire; Louis
Lambert was an enslaved soul. Given equal talent, the more pathetic
sorrow, founded on desires which, being purer, 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 in the
playground, Louis would say just a word; but that word would reveal an
infinite speculation.
"Happily for me," he exclaimed one day, "there are hours of comfort when
I feel as though the walls of the room had fallen and I were away--away
in the fields! What a pleasure it is to let oneself go on the stream of
one's thoughts as a bird is borne up on its wings!"
"Why is green a color so largely diffused throughout creation?" he would
ask me. "Why are there so few straight lines in nature? Why is it that
man, in his structures, rarely introduces curves? Why is it that 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 always silent
and resigned, a living elegy, always suffering but unable to complain of
suffering. An eagle that needed the world to feed him, shut in between
four narrow, dirty walls; and thus this life became an ideal life in the
strictest meaning of the words. Filled as he was with contempt of the
almost useless studies to which we were harnessed, Louis went on his
skyward way absolutely unconscious of the things 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 more easily
infected me with the sort of torpor in which deep contemplation leaves
the body, because I was younger and more impressionable than he. Like
two lovers, we got into the habit of thinking together in a common
reverie. His intuitions had already acquired that acuteness which must
surely characterize the intellectual perceptiveness of great poets and
often bring them to the verge of madness.
"Do you ever feel," said he to me one day, "as though imagined suffering
affected you in spite of yourself? If, for instance, I think with
concentration of the effect that the blade of my penknife would have in
piercing my flesh, I feel an acute pain as if I had really cut myself;
only the blood is wanting. But the pain comes suddenly, and startles me
like a sharp noise breaking profound silence. Can an idea cause physical
pain?--What do you say to that, eh?"
When he gave utterance to such subtle reflections, we both fell
into artless meditation; we set to work to detect in ourselves the
inscrutable phenomena of the origin of thoughts, which Lambert hoped to
discover in their earliest germ, so as to describe some day the unknown
process. Then, after much discussion, often mixed up with childish
notions, a look would flash from Lambert's eager eyes; he would grasp my
hand, and a word from the depths of his soul would show the current of
his mind.
"Thinking is seeing," said he one day, carried away by some objection
raised as to the first principles of our organization. "Every human
science is based on deduction, which is a slow process of seeing by
which 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 of things."
He was a spiritualist (as opposed to materialism); but I would venture
to contradict him, using his own arguments to consider the intellect
as a purely physical phenomenon. We both were right. Perhaps the words
materialism 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 condemned in
consequence of our idleness and our indifference to learning. He had a
certain consciousness of his own powers which bore him up through his
spiritual cogitations. How delightful it was to me to feel his soul
acting on my own! Many a time have we remained sitting on our form, both
buried in one book, having quite forgotten each other's existence, and
yet not apart; each conscious of the other's presence, and bathing in an
ocean of thought, like two fish swimming in the same waters.
Our life, apparently, was merely vegetating; but we lived through our
heart 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 make
men, as well as children, rapturously devour stories in which truth
assumes the most grotesque forms. His passion for mystery, and the
credulity natural to the young, often led us to discuss Heaven and Hell.
Then Louis, by expounding Swedenborg, would try to make me share in his
beliefs concerning angels. In his least logical arguments there were
still amazing observations as to the powers of man, which gave his words
that color of truth without which nothing can be done in any art. The
romantic end he foresaw as the destiny of man was calculated to flatter
the yearning which tempts blameless imaginations to give themselves up
to beliefs. Is it not during the youth of a nation that its dogmas and
idols are conceived? And are not the supernatural beings before whom the
people tremble the personification of their feelings and their magnified
desires?
All that I can now remember of the poetical conversations we held
together concerning the Swedish prophet, whose works I have since had
the 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 the external
being. If a man desires to earn his call to be an angel, as soon as his
mind reveals to him his twofold existence, he must strive to foster the
delicate angelic essence that exists within him. If, for lack of a lucid
appreciation of his destiny, he allows bodily action to predominate,
instead of confirming his intellectual being, all his powers will be
absorbed in the use of his external senses, and the angel will slowly
perish by the materialization of both natures. In the contrary case, if
he nourishes his inner being with the aliment needful 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, strong
enough then to cast off its wrappings, survives and begins its real
life. The infinite variety which differentiates individual men can only
be explained by this twofold existence, which, again, is proved and made
intelligible by that variety.
In point of fact, the wide distance between a man whose torpid
intelligence condemns him to evident stupidity, and one who, by the
exercise of his inner life, has acquired the gift of some power, allows
us to suppose that there is as great a difference between men of genius
and other beings as there is between the blind and those who see. This
hypothesis, since it extends creation beyond all limits, gives us, as it
were, the clue to heaven. The beings who, here on earth, are apparently
mingled without distinction, are there distributed, according to their
inner perfection, in distinct spheres whose speech and manners have
nothing in common. In the invisible world, as in the real world, if some
native of the lower spheres comes, all unworthy, into a higher sphere,
not only can he never understand the customs and language there, but his
mere presence paralyzes the voice and hearts of those who dwell therein.
Dante, in his _Divine Comedy_, had perhaps some slight intuition of
those spheres which begin in the world of torment, and rise, circle on
circle, to the highest heaven. Thus Swedenborg's doctrine is the product
of a lucid spirit noting down the innumerable signs by which the angels
manifest their presence among men.
This doctrine, which I have endeavored to sum up in a more or less
consistent form, was set before me by Lambert with all the fascination
of mysticism, swathed in the wrappings of the phraseology affected by
mystical writers: an obscure language full of abstractions, and
taking such effect on the brain, that there are books by Jacob Boehm,
Swedenborg, and Madame Guyon, so strangely powerful that they give rise
to phantasies as various as the dreams of the opium-eater. Lambert told
me of mystical facts so extraordinary, he so acted on my imagination,
that he made my brain reel. Still, I loved to plunge into that realm
of mystery, invisible to the senses, in which every one likes to dwell,
whether he pictures it to himself under the indefinite ideal of the
Future, or clothes it in the more solid guise of romance. These violent
revulsions of the mind on itself gave me, without my knowing it, a
comprehension of its power, and accustomed me to the workings of the
mind.
Lambert himself explained everything by his theory of the angels. To him
pure love--love as we dream of it in youth--was the coalescence of two
angelic natures. Nothing could exceed the fervency with which he longed
to meet a woman angel. And who better than he could inspire or feel
love? If anything could give an impression of an exquisite nature,
was it not the amiability and kindliness that marked his feelings, his
words, his actions, his slightest gestures, the conjugal regard that
united us as boys, and that we expressed when we called ourselves
_chums_?
There was no distinction for us between my ideas and his. We imitated
each 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 the
mathematical master, he could read on without interruption while the
other scribbled off his exercise and imposition. We did our tasks as
though paying a task on our peace of mind. If my memory does not play
me false, they were sometimes of remarkable merit when Lambert did
them. But on the foregone conclusion that we were both of us idiots, the
master always went through them under a rooted prejudice, and even kept
them to read to be laughed at by our schoolfellows.
I remember one afternoon, at the end of the lesson, which lasted from
two till four, the master took possession of a page of translation by
Lambert. The passage began with _Caius Gracchus, vir nobilis_; Lambert
had 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 master in
some bewilderment.
"What would Madame la Baronne de Stael say if she could know that you
make such nonsense of a word that means noble family, of patrician
rank?"
"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, who
unfortunately 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 my
imprisonment. Freer thus than in any other circumstances, we could talk
the whole day long in the silence of the dormitories, where each boy had
a cubicle six feet square, the partitions consisting at the top of open
bars. The doors, fitted with gratings, were locked at night and
opened in the morning under the eye of the Father whose duty it was to
superintend our rising and going to bed. The creak of these gates, which
the college servants unlocked with remarkable expedition, was a sound
peculiar to that college. These little cells were our prison, 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, a sort of censor who
stole up at certain hours, or at unexpected moments, with a silent step,
to hear if we were talking instead of writing our impositions. But a few
walnut shells dropped on the stairs, or the sharpness of our hearing,
almost always enabled us to beware of his coming, so we could give
ourselves up without anxiety to our favorite studies. However, as
books were prohibited, our prison hours were chiefly filled up with
metaphysical discussions, or with relating singular facts connected with
the phenomena of mind.
One of the most extraordinary of these incidents beyond question is
this, 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 were holidays;
but the services, which we were made to attend very regularly, so
completely filled up Sunday, that we considered Thursday our only real
day of freedom. After once attending Mass, we had a long day before us
to spend in walks in the country round the town of Vendome. The manor of
Rochambeau was the most interesting object of our excursions, perhaps
by reason of its distance; the smaller boys were very seldom taken on so
fatiguing an expedition. However, once or twice a year the class-masters
would hold out Rochambeau as a reward for diligence.
In 1812, towards the end of the spring, we were to go there for the
first time. Our anxiety to see this famous chateau of Rochambeau, where
the owner sometimes treated the boys to milk, made us all very good,
and nothing hindered the outing. Neither Lambert nor I had ever seen the
pretty valley of the Loire where the house stood. So his imagination and
mine were much excited by the prospect of this excursion, which filled
the school with traditional glee. We talked of it all the evening,
planning to spend in fruit or milk such money as we had saved, against
all the habits of school-life.
After dinner next day, we set out at half-past twelve, each provided
with a square hunch of bread, given to us for our afternoon snack.
And off we went, as gay as swallows, marching in a body on the famous
chateau with an eagerness which would at first allow of no fatigue.
When we reached the hill, whence we looked down on the house standing
half-way down the slope, on the devious valley through which the river
winds and sparkles between meadows in graceful curves--a beautiful
landscape, one of those scenes to which the keen emotions of early youth
or of love lend such a charm, that it is wise never to see them again in
later years--Louis Lambert said to me, "Why, I saw this last night in a
dream."
He recognized the clump of trees under which we were standing, the
grouping of the woods, the color of the water, the turrets of the
chateau, the details, the distance, in fact every part of the prospect
which we looked on for the first time. We were mere children; I, at any
rate, who was but thirteen; Louis, at fifteen, might have the precocity
of genius, but at that time we were incapable of falsehood in the most
trivial matters of our life as friends. Indeed, if Lambert's powerful
mind had any presentiment of the importance of such facts, he was far
from appreciating their whole bearing; and he was quite astonished
by this incident. I asked him if he had not perhaps been brought
to Rochambeau in his infancy, and my question struck him; but after
thinking it over, he answered in the negative. This incident, analogous
to what may be known of the phenomena of sleep in several persons, will
illustrate the beginnings of Lambert's line of talent; he took it, in
fact, as the basis of a whole system, using a fragment--as Cuvier did in
another branch of inquiry--as a clue to the reconstruction of a complete
system.