"The love of study brought me hither, as you know. I

have met really learned men, amazing for the most part;

but the lack of unity in scientific work almost

nullifies their efforts. There is no Head of

instruction or of scientific research. At the Museum a

professor argues to prove that another in the Rue

Saint-Jacques talks nonsense. The lecturer at the

College of Medicine abuses him of the College de

France. When I first arrived, I went to hear an old

Academician who taught five hundred youths that

Corneille was a haughty and powerful genius; Racine,

elegiac and graceful; Moliere, inimitable; Voltaire,

supremely witty; Bossuet and Pascal, incomparable in

argument. A professor of philosophy may make a name by

explaining how Plato is Platonic. Another discourses on

the history of words, without troubling himself about

ideas. One explains AEschylus, another tells you that

communes were communes, and neither more nor less.

These original and brilliant discoveries, diluted to

last several hours, constitute the higher education

which is to lead to giant strides in human knowledge.

"If the Government could have an idea, I should suspect

it of being afraid of any real superiority, which, once

roused, might bring Society under the yoke of an

intelligent rule. Then nations would go too far and too

fast; so professors are appointed to produce

simpletons. How else can we account for a scheme devoid

of method or any notion of the future?

"The _Institut_ might be the central government of the

moral and intellectual world; but it has been ruined

lately by its subdivision into separate academies. So

human science marches on, without a guide, without a

system, and floats haphazard with no road traced out.

"This vagueness and uncertainty prevails in politics as

well as in science. In the order of nature means are

simple, the end is grand and marvelous; here in

science, as in government, the means are stupendous,

the end is mean. The force which in nature proceeds at

an equal pace, and of which the sum is constantly being

added to itself--the A+A from which everything is

produced--is destructive in society. Politics, at the

present time, place human forces in antagonism to

neutralize each other, instead of combining them to

promote their action to some definite end.

"Looking at Europe alone, from Caesar to Constantine,

from the puny Constantine to the great Attila, from the

Huns to Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Leo X., from

Leo X. to Philip II., from Philip II. to Louis XIV.;

from Venice to England, from England to Napoleon, from

Napoleon to England, I see no fixed purpose in

politics; its constant agitation has led to no

progress.

"Nations leave witnesses to their greatness in

monuments, and to their happiness in the welfare of

individuals. Are modern monuments as fine as those of

the ancients? I doubt it. The arts, which are the

direct outcome of the individual, the products of

genius or of handicraft, have not advanced much. The

pleasures of Lucullus were as good as those of Samuel

Bernard, of Beaujon, or of the King of Bavaria. And

then human longevity has diminished.

"Thus, to those who will be candid, man is still the

same; might is his only law, and success his only

wisdom.

"Jesus Christ, Mahomet, and Luther only lent a

different hue to the arena in which youthful nations

disport themselves.

"No development of politics has hindered civilization,

with its riches, 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 to Rome, from

Rome to Constantinople, from Constantinople to Venice,

from Venice to Spain, from Spain to England--while no

trace is left of Memphis, of Tyre, of Carthage, of

Rome, of Venice, or Madrid. The soul of those great

bodies has fled. Not one of them has 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 great social facts. No political theory has

ever lasted. Governments pass away, as men do, without

handing down any lesson, and no system gives birth to

a system better than that which came before it. What

can we say about politics when a Government directly

referred to God perished in India and Egypt; when the

rule of the Sword and of the Tiara are past; when

Monarchy is dying; when the Government of the People

has never been alive; when no scheme of intellectual

power as applied to material interests has ever proved

durable, and everything at this day remains to be done

all over again, as it has been at every period when man

has turned to cry out, 'I am in torment!'

"The code, which is considered Napoleon's greatest

achievement, is the most Draconian work I know of.

Territorial subdivision carried out to the uttermost,

and its principle confirmed by the equal division of

property generally, must result in the degeneracy of

the nation and the death of the Arts and Sciences. The

land, too much broken up, is cultivated only with

cereals and small crops; the forests, and consequently

the rivers, are disappearing; oxen and horses are no

longer bred. Means are lacking both for attack and for

resistance. If we should be invaded, the people must be

crushed; it has lost its mainspring--its leaders. This

is the history of deserts!

"Thus the science of politics has no definite

principles, and it can have no fixity; it is the spirit

of the hour, the perpetual application of strength

proportioned to the necessities of the moment. The man

who should foresee two centuries ahead would die on the

place of execution, loaded with the imprecations of the

mob, or else--which seems worse--would be lashed with

the myriad whips of ridicule. Nations are but

individuals, neither wiser nor stronger than man, and

their destinies are identical. If we reflect on man, is

not that to consider mankind?

"By studying the spectacle of society perpetually

storm-tossed in its foundations as well as in its

results, in its causes as well as in its actions, while

philanthropy is but a splendid mistake, and progress is

vanity, I have been confirmed in this truth: Life is

within and not without us; to rise above men, to

govern them, is only the part of an aggrandized

schoolmaster; and those men who are capable of rising

to the level whence they can enjoy a view 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 to certain discoveries, an invincible power

bears me toward a luminary which shone at an early age

on the darkness of my moral life; but what name can I

give to the power that ties my hands and shuts my

mouth, and drags me in a direction opposite to my

vocation? I must leave Paris, bid farewell to the books

in the libraries, those noble centres of illumination,

those kindly and always accessible sages, and the

younger geniuses with whom I sympathize. Who is it that

drives me away? Chance or Providence?

"The two ideas represented by those words are

irreconcilable. If Chance does not exist, we must admit

fatalism, that is to say, the compulsory co-ordination

of things under the rule of a general plan. Why then do

we rebel? If man is not free, what becomes of the

scaffolding of his moral sense? Or, if he can control

his destiny, if by his own freewill he can interfere

with the execution of the general plan, what becomes of

God?

"Why did I come here? If I examine myself, I find the

answer: I find in myself axioms that need developing.

But why then have I such vast faculties without being

suffered to use them? If my suffering could serve as an

example, I could understand it; but no, I suffer

unknown.

"This is perhaps as much the act of Providence as the

fate of the flower that dies unseen in the heart of the

virgin forest, where no one can enjoy its perfume or

admire its splendor. Just as that blossom vainly sheds

its fragrance to the solitude, so do I, here in a

garret, give birth to ideas that no one can grasp.

"Yesterday evening I sat eating bread and grapes in

front of my window with a young doctor named Meyraux.

We talked as men do whom misfortune has joined in

brotherhood, and I said to him:

"'I am going away; you are staying. Take up my ideas

and develop them.'

"'I cannot!' said he, with bitter regret; 'my feeble

health cannot stand so much work, and I shall die young

of my struggle with penury.'

"We looked up at the sky and grasped hands. We first

met at the Comparative Anatomy course, and in the

galleries of the Museum, attracted thither by the same

study--the unity of geological structure. In him this

was the presentiment of genius sent to open a new path

in the fallows of intellect; in me it was a deduction

from a general system.

"My point is to ascertain the real relation that may

exist between God and man. Is not this a need of the

age? Without the highest assurance, it is impossible to

put bit and bridle on the social factions that have

been let loose by the spirit of scepticism and

discussion, and which are now crying aloud: 'Show us a

way in which we may walk and find no pitfalls in our

way!'

"You will wonder what comparative anatomy has to do

with a question of such importance to the future of

society. Must we not attain to the conviction that man

is the end of all earthly means before we ask whether

he too is not the means to some end? If man is bound up

with everything, is there not something above him with

which he again is bound up? If he is the end-all of the

unexplained transmutations that lead up to him, must he

not be also the link between the visible and invisible

creations?

"The activity of the universe is not absurd; it must

tend to an end, and that end is surely not a social

body constituted as ours is! There is a fearful gulf

between us and heaven. In our present existence we can

neither be always happy nor always in torment; must

there not be some tremendous change to bring about

Paradise and Hell, two images without which God cannot

exist to the mind of the vulgar? I know that a

compromise was made by the invention of the Soul; but

it is repugnant to me to make God answerable for human

baseness, for our disenchantments, our aversions, our

degeneracy.

"Again, how can we recognize as divine the principle

within us which can be overthrown by a few glasses of

rum? How conceive of immaterial faculties which matter

can conquer, and whose exercise is suspended by a grain

of opium? How imagine that we shall be able to feel

when we are bereft of the vehicles of sensation? Why

must God perish if matter can be proved to think? Is

the vitality of matter in its innumerable

manifestations--the effect of its instincts--at all

more explicable than the effects of the mind? Is not

the motion given to the worlds enough to prove God's

existence, without our plunging into absurd

speculations suggested by pride? And if we pass, after

our trials, from a perishable state of being to a

higher existence, is not that enough for a creature

that is distinguished from other creatures only by more

perfect instincts? If in moral philosophy there is not

a single principle which does not lead to the absurd,

or cannot be disproved by evidence, is it not high time

that we should set to work to seek such dogmas as are

written in the innermost nature of things? Must we not

reverse philosophical science?

"We trouble ourselves very little about the supposed

void that must have pre-existed for us, and we try to

fathom the supposed void 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 is quite as

desirable to know whether we have any roots in the past

as 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 of no middle term between these two

propositions; one, then, is true and the other false!

Take your choice. Whichever it may be, God, as our

reason depicts Him, must be deposed, and that amounts

to denial. The world is eternal: then, beyond question,

God has had it forced upon Him. The world was created:

then God is an impossibility. How could He have

subsisted through an eternity, not knowing that He

would presently want to create the world? How could He

have failed to foresee all the results?

"Whence did He derive the essence of creation?

Evidently from Himself. If, then, the world proceeds

from God, how can you account for evil? That Evil

should proceed from Good is absurd. If evil does not

exist, what do you make of social life and its laws? On

all hands we find a precipice! On every side a gulf in

which reason is lost! Then social science must be

altogether reconstructed.

"Listen to me, uncle; until some splendid genius shall

have taken account of the obvious inequality of

intellects and the general sense of humanity, the word

God will be constantly arraigned, and Society will rest

on shifting sands. The secret of the various moral

zones through which man passes will be discovered by

the analysis of the animal type as a whole. That animal

type has hitherto been studied with reference only to

its differences, not to its similitudes; in its organic

manifestations, not in its faculties. Animal faculties

are perfected in direct transmission, in obedience to

laws which remain to be discovered. These faculties

correspond to the forces which express them, and those

forces are essentially material and divisible.

"Material faculties! Reflect on this juxtaposition of

words. Is not this a problem as insoluble as that of

the first communication of motion to matter--an

unsounded gulf of which the difficulties were

transposed rather than removed by Newton's system?

Again, the universal assimilation of light by

everything that exists on earth demands a new study of

our globe. The same animal differs in the tropics of

India and in the North. Under the angular or the

vertical incidence of the sun's rays nature is

developed the same, but not the same; identical in its

principles, but totally dissimilar in its outcome. The

phenomenon that amazes our eyes in the zoological world

when we compare the butterflies of Brazil with those of

Europe, is even more startling in the world of Mind. A

particular facial angle, a certain amount of brain

convolutions, are indispensable to produce Columbus,

Raphael, Napoleon, Laplace, or Beethoven; the sunless

valley produces the cretin--draw your own conclusions.

Why such differences, due to the more or less ample

diffusion of light to men? The masses of suffering

humanity, more or less active, fed, and enlightened,

are a difficulty to be accounted for, crying out

against God.

"Why in great joy do we always want to quit the earth?

whence comes the longing to rise which every creature

has known or will know? Motion is a great soul, and its

alliance with matter is just as difficult to account

for as the origin of thought in man. In these days

science is one; it is impossible to touch politics

independent of moral questions, and these are bound up

with scientific questions. It seems to me that we are

on the eve of a great human struggle; the forces are

there; only I do not see the General."

"November 25.

"Believe me, dear uncle, it is hard to give up the life

that is in us without a pang. I am returning to Blois

with a heavy grip at my heart; I shall die then, taking

with me some useful truths. No personal interest

debases my regrets. Is earthly fame a guerdon to those

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, they can make no change in my

ultimate destiny. I feel myself strong and energetic; I

might become a power; I feel in myself a life so

luminous that it might enlighten a world, and yet I am

shut up in a sort of mineral, as perhaps indeed are the

colors you admire on the neck of an Indian bird. I

should need to embrace the whole world, to clasp and

recreate it; but those who have done this, who have

thus embraced and remoulded it began--did they not?--by

being a wheel in the machine. I can only be crushed.

Mahomet had the sword; Jesus had the cross; I shall die

unknown. I shall be at Blois for a day, and then in my

coffin.

"Do you know why I have come back to Swedenborg after

vast studies of all religions, and after proving to

myself, by reading all the works published within the

last sixty years by the patient English, by Germany,

and by France, how deeply true were my youthful views

about the Bible? Swedenborg undoubtedly epitomizes all

the religions--or rather the one religion--of humanity.

Though forms of worship are infinitely various, neither

their true meaning nor their metaphysical

interpretation has ever varied. In short, 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, and on the vast plains of the

Ganges, ended their warfare some thousand years before

the birth of Christ by adopting the Hindoo Trimourti.

The Trimourti is our Trinity. From this dogma Magianism

arose in Persia; in Egypt, the African beliefs and the

Mosaic law; the worship of the Cabiri, and the

polytheism of Greece and Rome. While by this

ramification of the Trimourti the Asiatic myths became

adapted to the imaginations of various races in the

lands they reached by the agency of certain sages whom

men elevated to be demi-gods--Mithra, Bacchus, Hermes,

Hercules, and the rest--Buddha, the great reformer of

the three primeval religions, lived in India, and

founded his Church there, a sect which still numbers

two hundred millions more believers than Christianity

can show, while it certainly influenced the powerful

Will both of Jesus and of Confucius.

"Then Christianity raised her standard. Subsequently

Mahomet fused Judaism 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

that those four great religious books hold in common,

and added to them a doctrine, a basis of reasoning,

that may be termed mathematical.

"Any man who plunges into those religious waters, of

which the sources are not all known, will find proofs

that Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ,

and Swedenborg had identical principles and aimed at

identical ends.

"The last of them all, Swedenborg, will perhaps be the

Buddha of the North. Obscure and diffuse as his

writings are, we find in them the elements of a

magnificent conception of society. His Theocracy is

sublime, and his creed is the only acceptable one to

superior souls. He alone brings man into immediate

communion with God, he gives a thirst for God, he has

freed the majesty of God from the trappings in which

other human dogmas have disguised Him. He left Him

where He is, making His myriad creations and creatures

gravitate towards Him through successive

transformations which promise a more immediate and more

natural future than the Catholic idea of Eternity.

Swedenborg has absolved God from the reproach attaching

to Him in the estimation of tender souls for the

perpetuity of revenge to punish the sin of a moment--a

system of injustice 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 the attempt. And this attempt may save

the world, just as much as the cross at Jerusalem or

the sword at Mecca. These were both the offspring of

the desert. Of the thirty-three years of Christ's life,

we only know the history of nine; His life of seclusion

prepared Him for His life of glory. And I too crave for

the desert!"

Notwithstanding the difficulties of the task, I have felt it my duty to

depict Lambert's boyhood, the unknown life to which I owe the only happy

hours, the only pleasant memories, of my early days. Excepting during those

two years I had nothing but annoyances and weariness. Though some happiness

was mine at a later time, it was always incomplete.

I have been diffuse, I know; but in default of entering into the whole wide

heart and brain of Louis Lambert--two words which inadequately express the

infinite aspects of his inner life--it would be almost impossible to make

the second part of his intellectual history intelligible--a phase that was

unknown to the world and to me, but of which the mystical outcome was made

evident to my eyes in the course of 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 do a sort of second existence lived by this

creature--may I not say this creation?--in whom everything was to be so

extraordinary, even his end.

* * * * *

When Louis returned to Blois, his uncle was eager to procure him some

amusement; but the poor priest was regarded as a perfect leper in that

godly-minded town. No one would have anything to say to a revolutionary who

had taken the oaths. His society, therefore, consisted of a few individuals

of what were then called liberal or patriotic, or constitutional opinions,

on whom he would call for a rubber of whist or of boston.

At the first house where he was introduced by his uncle, Louis met a young

lady, whose circumstances obliged her to remain in this circle, so

contemned by those of the fashionable world, though her fortune was such as

to make it probable that she might by and by marry into the highest

aristocracy of the province. Mademoiselle Pauline de Villenoix was sole

heiress to the wealth amassed by her grandfather, a Jew named Salomon, who,

contrary to the customs of his nation, had, in his old age, married a

Christian and a Catholic. He had an only son, who was brought up in his

mother's faith. At his father's death young Salomon purchased what was

known at that time as a _savonnette a vilain_ (literally _a cake of soap

for a serf_), a small estate called Villenoix, 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 the lands of Villenoix. He appointed one of his uncles,

Monsieur Joseph Salomon, to be the girl's guardian. The old Jew was so

devoted to his ward that he seemed willing to make great sacrifices for

the sake of marrying her well. But Mademoiselle de Villenoix's birth, and

the cherished prejudice against Jews that prevails in the provinces, would

not allow of her being received in the very exclusive circle which, rightly

or wrongly, considers itself noble, notwithstanding her own large fortune

and her guardian's.

Monsieur Joseph Salomon was resolved that if she could not secure a country

squire, his niece should go to Paris and make choice of a husband among the

peers of France, liberal or monarchical; as to happiness, that he believed

he could secure her by the terms of the marriage contract.

Mademoiselle de Villenoix was now twenty. Her remarkable beauty and gifts

of mind were surer guarantees of happiness than those offered by money. Her

features were of the purest type of Jewish beauty; the oval lines, so noble

and maidenly, have an indescribable stamp of the ideal, and seem to speak

of the joys of the East, its unchangeably blue sky, the glories of its

lands, and the fabulous riches of life there. She had fine eyes, shaded by

deep eyelids, fringed with thick, curled lashes. Biblical innocence sat on

her brow. Her complexion was of the pure whiteness of the Levite's robe.

She was habitually silent and thoughtful, but her movements and gestures

betrayed a quiet grace, as her speech bore witness to a woman's sweet and

loving nature. She had not, indeed, the rosy freshness, the fruit-like

bloom which blush on a girl's cheek during her careless years. Darker

shadows, with here and there a redder vein, took the place of color,

symptomatic of an energetic temper and nervous irritability, such as many

men do not like to meet with in a wife, while to others they are an

indication of the most sensitive chastity and passion mingled with pride.

As soon as Louis saw Mademoiselle de Villenoix, he discerned the angel

within. The richest powers of his soul, and his tendency to ecstatic

reverie, every faculty within him was at once concentrated in boundless

love, the first love of a young man, a passion which is strong indeed in

all, but which in him was raised to incalculable power by the perennial

ardor of his senses, the character of his ideas, and the manner in which

he lived. This passion became a gulf, into which the hapless fellow threw

everything; a gulf whither the mind dare not venture, since his, flexible

and firm as it was, was lost there. There all was mysterious, for

everything went on in that moral 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 showed me

into the room which Lambert had at that time lived in. I wanted to find

some vestiges of his writings, if he should have left any. There, among his

papers, untouched by the old man from that fine instinct of grief that

characterizes the aged, I found a number of letters, too illegible ever to

have been sent to Mademoiselle de Villenoix. My familiarity with Lambert's

writing enabled me in time to decipher the hieroglyphics of this shorthand,

the result of impatience and a frenzy of passion. Carried away by his

feelings, he had written without being conscious of the irregularity of

words too slow to express his thoughts. He must have been compelled to copy

these chaotic attempts, for the lines often ran into each other; but he was

also afraid perhaps of not having sufficiently disguised his feelings, and

at first, at any rate, he had probably written his love-letters twice over.

It required all the fervency of my devotion to his memory, and the sort of

fanaticism which comes of such a task, to enable me to divine and restore

the meaning of the five letters that here follow. These documents,

preserved by me with pious care, are the only material evidence of his

overmastering passion. Mademoiselle de Villenoix has no doubt destroyed the

real letters that she received, eloquent witnesses to the delirium she

inspired.

The first of these papers, evidently a rough sketch, betrays by its style

and by its length the many emendations, the heartfelt alarms, the

innumerable terrors caused by a desire to please; the changes of expression

and the hesitation between the whirl of ideas that beset a man as he

indites his first love-letter--a letter he never will forget, each line

the result of a reverie, each word the subject of long cogitation, while

the most unbridled passion known to man feels the necessity of the most

reserved utterance, and like a giant stooping to enter a hovel, speaks

humbly and low, so as not to alarm a girl's soul.

No antiquary ever handled his palimpsests with greater respect than I

showed in reconstructing these mutilated documents of such joy and

suffering as must always be sacred to those who have known similar joy and

grief.

I

"Mademoiselle, when you have read this letter, if you ever should read it,

my life will be in your hands, for I love you; and to me, the hope of being

loved is life. Others, perhaps, ere now, have, in speaking of themselves,

misused the words I must employ to depict the state of my soul; yet, I

beseech you to believe in the truth of my expressions; though weak, they

are sincere. Perhaps I ought not thus to proclaim my love. Indeed, my heart

counseled me to wait in silence till my passion should touch you, that I

might the better conceal it if its silent demonstrations should displease

you; or till I could express it even more delicately than in words if I

found favor in your eyes. However, after having listened for long to the

coy fears that fill a youthful heart with alarms, I write in obedience to

the instinct which drags useless lamentations from the dying.

"It has needed all my courage to silence the pride of poverty, and to

overleap the barriers which prejudice erects between you and me. I have had

to smother many reflections to love you in spite of your wealth; and as I

write to you, am I not in danger of the scorn which women often reserve for

professions of love, which they accept only as one more tribute of

flattery? But we cannot help rushing with all our might towards happiness,

or being attracted to the life of love as a plant is to the light; we must

have been very unhappy before we can conquer the torment, the anguish, of

those secret deliberations when reason proves to us by a thousand arguments

how barren our yearning must be if it remains buried in our hearts, and

when hopes bid us dare everything.

"I was happy when I admired you in silence; I was so lost in the

contemplation of your beautiful soul, that only to see you left me hardly

anything further to imagine. And I should not now have dared to address you

if I had not heard that you were leaving. What misery has that one word

brought upon me! Indeed, it is my despair that has shown me the extent of

my attachment--it is unbounded. Mademoiselle, you will never know--at

least, I hope you may never know--the anguish of dreading lest you should

lose the only happiness that has dawned on you on earth, the only thing

that has thrown a gleam of light in the darkness of misery. I understood

yesterday that my life was no more in myself, but in you. There is but one

woman in the world for me, as there is but one thought in my soul. I dare

not tell you to what a state I am reduced by my love for you. I would have

you only as a gift from yourself; I must therefore avoid showing myself to

you in all the attractiveness of dejection--for is it not often more

impressive to a noble soul than that of good fortune? There are many things

I may not tell you. Indeed, I have too lofty a notion of love to taint it

with ideas that are alien to its nature. If my soul is worthy of yours, and

my life pure, your heart will have a sympathetic insight, and you will

understand me!

"It is the fate of man to offer himself to the woman who can make him

believe in happiness; but it is your prerogative to reject the truest

passion if it is not in harmony with the vague voices in your heart--that I

know. If my lot, as decided by you, must be adverse to my hopes,

mademoiselle, let me appeal to the delicacy of your maiden soul and the

ingenuous compassion of a woman to burn my letter. On my knees I beseech

you to forget all! Do not mock at a feeling that is wholly respectful, and

that is too deeply graven on my heart ever to be effaced. Break my heart,

but do not rend it! Let the expression of my first love, a pure and

youthful love, be lost in your pure and youthful heart! Let it die there as

a prayer rises up to die in the bosom of God!

"I owe you much gratitude: I have spent delicious hours occupied in

watching you, and giving myself up to the faint dreams of my life; do not

crush these long but transient joys by some girlish irony. Be satisfied not

to answer me. I shall know how to interpret your silence; you will see me

no more. If I must be condemned to know for ever what happiness means, and

to be for ever bereft of it; if, like a banished angel, I am to cherish the

sense 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 my griefs.--And farewell!

"Yes, I resign you to God, to whom I will pray for you, beseeching Him to

grant you a happy life; for even if I am driven from your heart, into which

I have crept by stealth, still I shall ever be near you. Otherwise, of what

value would the sacred words be of this letter, my first and perhaps my

last entreaty? If I should ever cease to think of you, to love you whether

in happiness or in woe, should I not deserve my punishment?"

II

"You are not going away! And I am loved! I, a poor, insignificant creature!

My beloved Pauline, you do not yourself know the power of the look I

believe in, the look you gave me to tell me that you had chosen me--you so

young and lovely, with the world at your feet!

"To enable you to understand my happiness, I should have to give you a

history of my life. If you had rejected me, all was over for me. I have

suffered too much. Yes, my love for you, my comforting and stupendous love,

was a last effort of yearning for the happiness my soul strove to reach--a

soul crushed by fruitless labor, consumed by fears that make me doubt

myself, eaten into by despair which has often urged me to die. No one in

the world can conceive of the terrors my fateful imagination inflicts on

me. It often bears me up to the sky, and suddenly flings me to earth again

from prodigious heights. Deep-seated rushes of power, or some rare and

subtle instance of peculiar lucidity, assure me now and then that I am

capable of great things. Then I embrace the universe in my mind, I knead,

shape it, inform it, I comprehend it--or fancy that I do; then suddenly I

awake--alone, sunk in blackest night, helpless and weak; I forget the light

I saw but now, I find no succor; above all, there is no heart where I may

take refuge.

"This distress of my inner life affects my physical existence. The nature

of my character gives me over to the raptures of happiness as defenceless

as when the fearful light of reflection comes to analyze and demolish them.

Gifted as I am with the melancholy faculty of seeing obstacles and success

with equal clearness, according to the mood of the moment, I am happy or

miserable by turns.

"Thus, when first I met you, I felt the presence of an angelic nature, I

breathed an air that was sweet to my burning breast, I heard in my soul the

voice that never can be false, telling me that here was happiness; but

perceiving all the barriers that divided us, I understood for the first

time what worldly prejudices were; I understood the vastness of their

pettiness, and these difficulties terrified me more than the prospect of

happiness could delight me. At once I felt the awful reaction which casts

my expansive soul back on itself; the smile you had brought to my lips

suddenly turned to a bitter grimace, and I could only strive to keep calm,

while my soul was boiling with the turmoil of contradictory emotions. In

short, I experienced that gnawing pang to which twenty-three years of

suppressed sighs and betrayed affections have not inured me.

"Well, Pauline, the look by which you promised that I should be happy

suddenly warmed my vitality, and turned all my sorrows into joy. Now, I

could wish that I had suffered more. My love is suddenly full-grown. My

soul was a wide territory that lacked the blessing of sunshine, and your

eyes have shed light on it. Beloved providence! you will be all in all to

me, orphan as I am, without a relation but my uncle. You will be my whole

family, as you are my whole wealth, nay, the whole world to me. Have you

not bestowed on me every gladness man can desire in that

chaste--lavish--timid glance?

"You have given me incredible self-confidence and audacity. I can dare all

things now. I came back to Blois in deep dejection. Five years of study in

the heart of Paris had made me look on the world as a prison. I had

conceived of vast schemes, and dared not speak of them. Fame seemed to me a

prize for charlatans, to which a really noble spirit should not stoop.

Thus, my ideas could only make their way by the assistance of a man bold

enough to mount the platform of the press, and to harangue loudly the

simpletons he scorns. This kind of courage I have not. I ploughed my way

on, crushed by the verdict of the crowd, in despair at never making it hear

me. I was at once too humble and too lofty! I swallowed my thoughts as

other men swallow humiliations. I had even come to despise knowledge,

blaming it for yielding no real happiness.

"But since yesterday I am wholly changed. For your sake I now covet every

palm of glory, every triumph of success. When I lay my head on your knees,

I could wish to attract to you the eyes of the whole world, just as I long

to concentrate in my love every idea, every power that is in me. The most

splendid celebrity is a possession that genius alone can create. Well, I

can, at my will, make for you a bed of laurels. And if the silent ovation

paid to science is not all you desire, I have within me the sword of the

Word; I could run in the path of honor and ambition where others only

crawl.

"Command me, Pauline; I will be whatever you will. My iron will can do

anything--I am loved! Armed with that thought, ought not a man to sweep

everything before him? The man who wants all can do all. If you are the

prize of success, I enter the lists to-morrow. To win such a look as that

you bestowed on me, I would leap the deepest abyss. Through you I

understand the fabulous achievements of chivalry and the most fantastic

tales of the _Arabian Nights_. I can believe now in the most fantastic

excesses of love, and in the success of a prisoner's wildest attempt to

recover his liberty. You have aroused the thousand virtues that lay dormant

within me--patience, resignation, all the powers of my heart, all the

strength of my soul. I live by you and--heavenly thought!--for you.

Everything now has a meaning for me in life. I understand everything, even

the vanities of wealth.

"I find myself shedding all the pearls of the Indies at your feet; I fancy

you reclining either on the rarest flowers, or on the softest tissues, and

all the splendor of the world seems hardly worthy of you, for whom I would

I could command the harmony and the light that are given out by the harps

of seraphs and the stars of heaven! Alas! a poor, studious poet, I offer

you in words treasures I cannot bestow; I can only give you my heart, in

which you reign for ever. I have nothing else. But are there no treasures

in eternal gratitude, in a smile whose expression will perpetually vary

with perennial happiness, under the constant eagerness of my devotion to

guess the wishes of your loving soul? Has not one celestial glance given us

assurance of always understanding each other?

"I have a prayer now to be said to God every night--a prayer full of you:

'Let my Pauline be happy!' And will you fill all my days as 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 you yesterday? Throw

off the pride of heart which inflicts on me the secret tortures that can be

caused by one we love. Scold me if you will! Since yesterday, a vague,

unutterable dread of having offended you pours grief on the life of feeling

which you had made so sweet and so rich. The lightest veil that comes

between two souls sometimes grows to be a brazen wall. There are no venial

crimes in love! If you have the very spirit of that noble sentiment, you

must feel all its pangs, and we must be unceasingly careful not to fret

each other by some heedless word.

"No doubt, my beloved treasure, if there is any fault, it is in me. I

cannot pride myself in the belief that I understand a woman's heart in all

the expansion of its tenderness, all the grace of its devotedness; but I

will always endeavor to appreciate the value of what you vouchsafe to show

me of the secrets of yours.

"Speak to me! Answer me soon! The melancholy into which we are thrown by

the idea of a wrong done is frightful; it casts a shroud over 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 our hedge. If you could imagine

all I saw in my soul! What gloomy visions passed before me under the gray

sky, whose cold sheen added to my dreary mood! I had dark presentiments! I

was terrified lest I should fail to make you happy.

"I must tell you everything, my dear Pauline. There are moments when the

spirit of vitality seems to abandon me. I feel bereft of all strength.

Everything is a burden to me; every fibre of my body is inert, every sense

is flaccid, my sight grows dim, my tongue is paralyzed, my imagination is

extinct, desire is dead--nothing survives but my mere human vitality. At

such times, though you were in all the splendor of your beauty, though you

should lavish on me your subtlest smiles and tenderest words, an evil

influence would blind me, and distort the most ravishing melody into

discordant sounds. At those times--as I believe--some argumentative demon

stands before me, showing me the void beneath the most real possessions.

This pitiless demon mows down every flower, and mocks at the sweetest

feelings, saying: 'Well--and then?' He mars the fairest work by showing me

its skeleton, and reveals the mechanism of things while hiding the

beautiful results.

"At those terrible moments, when the evil spirit takes possession of me,

when the divine light is darkened in my soul without my knowing the cause,

I sit in grief and anguish, I wish myself deaf and dumb, I long for death

to give me rest. These hours of doubt and uneasiness are perhaps

inevitable; at any rate, they teach me not to be proud after the flights

which have borne me to the skies where I have gathered a full harvest of

thoughts; for it is always after some long excursion in the vast fields of

the intellect, and after the most luminous speculations, that I tumble,

broken and weary, into this limbo. At such a moment, my angel, a wife would

doubt my love for her--at any rate, she might. If she were capricious,

ailing, or depressed, she would need the comforting overflow of ingenious

affection, and I should not have a glance to bestow on her. It is my shame,

Pauline, to have to tell you that at such times I could weep with you, but

that nothing could make me smile.

"A woman can always conceal her troubles; for her child, or for the man she

loves, she can laugh in the midst of suffering. And could not I, for you,

Pauline, imitate the exquisite reserve of a woman? Since yesterday I have

doubted my own power. If I could displease you once, if I failed once to

understand you, I dread lest I should often be carried out of our happy

circle by my evil demon. Supposing I were to have many of those dreadful

moods, or that my unbounded love could not make up for the dark hours of my

life--that I were doomed to remain such as I am?--Fatal doubts!

"Power is indeed a fatal possession if what I feel within me is power.

Pauline, go! Leave me, desert me! Sooner would I endure every ill in life

than endure the misery of knowing that you were unhappy through me.

"But, perhaps, the demon has had such empire over me only because I have

had no gentle, white hands about me to drive him off. No woman has ever

shed on me the balm of her affection; and I know not whether, if love

should wave his pinions over my head in these moments of exhaustion, new

strength might not be given to my spirit. This terrible melancholy is

perhaps a result of my isolation, one of the torments of a lonely soul

which pays for its hidden treasures with groans and unknown suffering.

Those who enjoy little shall suffer little; immense happiness entails

unutterable anguish!

"How terrible a doom! If it be so, must we not shudder for ourselves, we

who are superhumanly happy? If nature sells us everything at its true

value, into what pit are we not fated to fall? Ah! the most fortunate

lovers are those who die together in the midst of their youth and love! How

sad it all is! Does my soul foresee evil in the future? I examine myself,

wondering whether there is anything in me that can cause you a moment's

anxiety. I love you too selfishly perhaps? I shall be laying on your

beloved head a burden heavy out of all proportion to the joy my love can

bring to your heart. If there dwells in me some inexorable power which I

must obey--if I am compelled to curse when you pray, if some dark thought

coerces me when I would fain kneel at your feet and play as a child, will

you not be jealous of that wayward and tricky spirit?

"You understand, dearest heart, that what I dread is not being wholly

yours; that I would gladly forego all the sceptres and the palms of the

world to enshrine you in one eternal thought, to see a perfect life and an

exquisite poem in our rapturous love; to throw my soul into it, drown my

powers, and wring from each hour the joys it has to give!

"Ah, my memories of love are crowding back upon me, the clouds of despair

will lift. Farewell. I leave you now to be more entirely yours. My beloved

soul, I look for a line, a word that may restore my peace of mind. Let me

know whether I really grieved my Pauline, or whether some uncertain

expression of her countenance misled me. I could not bear to have to

reproach myself after a whole life of happiness, for ever having met you

without a smile of love, a honeyed word. To grieve the woman I

love--Pauline, I should count it a crime. Tell me the truth, do not put me

off with some magnanimous subterfuge, but forgive me without cruelty."

FRAGMENT.

"Is so perfect an attachment happiness? Yes, for years of suffering would

not pay for an hour of love.

"Yesterday, your sadness, as I suppose, passed into my soul as swiftly as a

shadow falls. Were you sad or suffering? I was wretched. Whence came my

distress? Write to me at once. Why did I not know it? We are not yet

completely one in mind. At two leagues' distance or at a thousand I ought

to feel your pains and sorrows. I shall not believe that I love you till my

life is so bound up with yours that our life is one, till our hearts, our

thoughts are one. I must be where you are, see what you see, feel what you

feel, be with you in thought. Did not I know, at once, that your carriage

had been overthrown and you were bruised? But on that day I had been with

you, I had never left you, I could see you. When my uncle asked me what

made me turn so pale, I answered at once, 'Mademoiselle de Villenoix has

had a fall.'

"Why, then, yesterday, did I fail to read your soul? Did you wish to hide

the cause of your grief? However, I fancied I could feel that you were

arguing in my favor, though in vain, with that dreadful Salomon, who

freezes my blood. That man is not of our heaven.

"Why do you insist that our happiness, which has no resemblance to that of

other people, should conform to the laws of the world? And yet I delight

too much in your bashfulness, your religion, your superstitions, not to

obey your lightest whim. What you do must be right; nothing can be purer

than your mind, as nothing is lovelier than your face, which reflects your

divine soul.

"I shall wait for a letter before going along the lanes to meet the sweet

hour you grant me. Oh! if you could know how the sight of those turrets

makes my heart throb when I see them edged with light by the moon, our only

confidante."

IV

"Farewell to glory, farewell to the future, to the life I had dreamed of!

Now, my well-beloved, my glory is that I am yours, and worthy 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 lying under your eyes, in drawing deep

breaths in the heaven you have created for me? All my powers, all my

thoughts must be yours, since you could speak those thrilling words, 'Your

sufferings must be mine!' Should I not be stealing some joys from love,

some moments from happiness, some experiences from your divine spirit, if I

gave my hours to study--ideas to the world and poems to the poets? Nay,

nay, my very life, I will treasure everything for you; I will bring to you

every flower of my soul. Is there anything fine 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 a greater charm

in the expression of your feelings, more harmony in your voice, more grace

in your smile, more purity in your looks than in mine. Let me feel that you

are the creature of a higher sphere than that I live in; it will be your

pride to have descended from it; mine, that I should have deserved you; and

you will not perhaps have fallen too far by coming down to me in my poverty

and misery. Nay, if a woman's most glorious refuge is in a heart that is

wholly her own, you will always reign supreme in mine. 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 me by the words, 'Now and for ever?' _Nunc et semper!_ And

I have written these words of our ritual below your portrait--words worthy

of you, as they are of God. He is _nunc et semper_, as my love is.

"Never, no, never, can I exhaust that which is immense, infinite,

unbounded--and such is the feeling I have for you; I have imagined its

immeasurable extent, as we measure space by the dimensions of one of its

parts. I have had ineffable joys, whole hours filled with delicious

meditation, as I have recalled a single gesture or the tone of a word of

yours. Thus there will be memories of which the magnitude will overpower

me, if the reminiscence of a sweet and friendly interview is enough to make

me shed tears of joy, to move and thrill my soul, and to be an

inexhaustible well-spring of gladness. Love is the life of angels!

"I can never, I believe, exhaust my joy in seeing you. This rapture, the

least fervid of any, though it never can last long enough, has made me

apprehend the eternal contemplation in which seraphs and spirits abide in

the presence of God; nothing can be more natural, if from His essence there

emanates a light as fruitful of new emotions as that of your eyes is, of

your imposing brow, and your beautiful countenance--the image of your soul.

Then, the soul, our second self, whose pure form can never perish, makes

our love immortal. I would there were some other language than that I use

to express to you the ever-new ecstasy of my love; but since there is one

of our own creating, since our looks are living speech, must we not meet

face to face to read in each other's eyes those questions and answers from

the heart, that are so living, so penetrating, that one evening you could

say to me, 'Be silent!' when I was not speaking. Do you remember it, dear

life?

"When I am away from you in the darkness of absence, am I not reduced to

use human words, too feeble to express heavenly feelings? But words at any

rate represent the marks these feelings leave in my soul, just as the word

God imperfectly sums up the notions we form of that mysterious First Cause.

But, in spite of the subtleties and infinite variety of language, I have no

words that can express to you the exquisite union by which my life is

merged 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 in death? But is death

a farewell? Would not my spirit be then more closely one with yours? Ah! my

first and last thought; formerly I offered you my heart and life on my

knees; now what fresh blossoms of feelings can I discover in my soul that I

have not already given 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 could have back

all the years that are ours no more, and give them to you to reign over, as

you do over my present life. What indeed was that time when I knew you not?

It would be a void but that I was so wretched."

FRAGMENT.

"Beloved angel, how delightful last evening was! How full of riches your

dear heart is! And is your love endless, like mine? Each word brought me

fresh joy, and each look made it deeper. The placid expression of your

countenance gave our thoughts a limitless horizon. It was all as infinite

as the sky, and as bland as its blue. The refinement of your adored

features repeated itself by some inexplicable magic in your pretty

movements and your least gestures. I knew that you were all graciousness,

all love, but I did not know how variously graceful you could be.

Everything combined to urge me to tender solicitations, to make me ask the

first kiss that a woman always refuses, no doubt that it may be snatched

from her. You, dear soul of my life, will never guess beforehand what you

may grant to my love, and will yield perhaps without knowing it! You are

utterly true, and obey your heart alone.

"The sweet tones of your voice blended with the tender harmonies that

filled the quiet air, the cloudless sky. Not a bird piped, not a breeze

whispered--solitude, you, and I. The motionless leaves did not quiver in

the beautiful sunset hues which are both light and shadow. You felt that

heavenly poetry--you who experienced so many various emotions, and who so

often raised your eyes to heaven to avoid answering me. You who are proud

and saucy, humble and masterful, who give yourself to me so completely in

spirit and in thought, and evade the most bashful caress. Dear witcheries

of the heart! They ring in my ears; they sound and play there still. Sweet

words but half spoken, like a child's speech, neither promise nor

confession, but allowing love to cherish its fairest hopes without fear or

torment! How pure a memory for life! What a free blossoming of all the

flowers that spring from the soul, which a mere trifle can blight, but

which, at that moment, everything warmed and expanded.

"And it will be always so, will it not, my beloved? As I recall, this

morning, the fresh and living delights revealed to me in that hour, I am

conscious of a joy which makes me conceive of true love as an ocean of

everlasting and ever-new experiences, into which we may plunge with

increasing delight. Every day, every word, every kiss, every glance, must

increase it by its tribute of past happiness. Hearts that are large enough

never to forget must live every moment in their past joys as much as in

those promised by the future. This was my dream of old, and now it is no

longer a dream! Have I not met on this earth with an angel who has made me

know all its happiness, as a reward, perhaps, for having endured all its

torments? Angel of heaven, I salute thee with a kiss.

"I shall send you this hymn of thanksgiving from my heart, I owe it to you;

but it can hardly express my gratitude or the morning worship my heart

offers up day by day to her who epitomized the whole gospel of the heart in

this divine word: 'Believe.'"

V

"What! no further difficulties, dearest heart! We shall be free to belong

to each other every day, every hour, every minute, and for ever! We may be

as happy for all the days of our life as we now are by stealth, at rare

intervals! Our pure, deep feelings will assume the expression of the

thousand fond acts I have dreamed of. 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 too weak, it will burst with the vehemence of my ideas. I

cry and I laugh--I am possessed! Every joy is as an arrow of flame; it

pierces and burns me. In fancy you rise before my eyes, ravished and

dazzled by numberless and capricious images of delight.

"In short, our whole future life is before me--its torrents, its still

places, its joys; it seethes, it flows on, it lies sleeping; then again it

awakes fresh and young. I see myself and you side by side, walking with

equal pace, living in the same thought; each dwelling in the other's heart,

understanding each other, responding to each other as an echo catches and

repeats a sound across wide distances.

"Can life be long when it is thus consumed hour by hour? Shall we not die

in a first embrace? What if our souls have already met in that sweet

evening kiss which almost overpowered us--a feeling kiss, but the crown of

my hopes, the ineffectual expression of all the prayers I breathe while we

are apart, hidden in my soul like remorse?

"I, who would creep back and hide in the hedge only to hear your footsteps

as you went homewards--I may henceforth admire you at my leisure, see you

busy, moving, smiling, prattling! An endless joy! You cannot imagine all

the gladness it is to me to see you going and coming; only a man can know

that deep delight. Your least movement gives me greater pleasure than a

mother even can feel as she sees her child asleep or at play. I love you

with every kind of love in one. The grace of your least gesture is always

new to me. I fancy I could spend whole nights breathing your breath; I

would I could steal into every detail of your life, be the very substance

of your thoughts--be your very self.

"Well, we shall, at any rate, never part again! No human alloy shall ever

disturb our love, infinite in its phases and as pure as all things are

which are One--our love, vast as the sea, vast as the sky! You are mine!

all mine! I may look into the depths of your eyes to read the sweet soul

that alternately hides and shines there, to anticipate your wishes.

"My best-beloved, listen to some things I have never yet dared to tell you,

but which I may confess to you now. I felt a certain bashfulness of soul

which hindered the full expression of my feelings, so I strove to shroud

them under the garb of thoughts. But now I long to lay my heart bare before

you, to tell you of the ardor 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 by you, so fair

in form, so attractive in manner. How can I express to you my thirst for

the unknown rapture of possessing an adored wife, a rapture to which the

union of two souls by love must give frenzied intensity. Yes, my Pauline, I

have sat for hours in a sort of stupor caused by the violence of my

passionate yearning, lost in the dream of a caress as though in a

bottomless abyss. At such moments my whole vitality, my thoughts and

powers, are merged and united in what I must call desire, for lack of a

word to express that nameless delirium.

"And I may confess to you now that one day, when I would not take your hand

when you offered it so sweetly--an act of melancholy prudence that made you

doubt my love--I was in one of those fits of madness when a man could

commit a murder to possess a woman. Yes, if I had felt the exquisite

pressure you offered me as vividly as I heard your voice in my heart, I

know not to what lengths my passion might not have carried me. But I can be

silent, and suffer a great deal. Why speak of this anguish when my visions

are to become realities? It will be in my power now to make life one long

love-making!

"Dearest love, there is a certain effect of light on your black hair which

could rivet me for hours, my eyes full of tears, as I gazed at your sweet

person, were it not that you turn away and say, 'For shame; you make me

quite shy!'

"To-morrow, then, our love is to be made known! Oh, Pauline! the eyes of

others, the curiosity of strangers, weigh on my soul. Let us go to

Villenoix, and stay there far from every one. I should like no creature in

human form to intrude into the sanctuary where you are to be mine; I could

even wish that, when we are dead, it should cease to exist--should be

destroyed. Yes, I would fain hide from all nature a happiness which we

alone can understand, alone can feel, which is so stupendous that I throw

myself into it only to die--it is a gulf!

"Do not be alarmed by the tears that have wetted this page; they are tears

of joy. My only blessing, we need never part again!"

* * * * *

In 1823 I traveled from Paris to Touraine by _diligence_. At Mer we took up

a passenger for Blois. As the guard put him into that part of the 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 looked eighty

at least, I naturally thought of Lambert's uncle. After a few ingenious

questions, I discovered that I was not mistaken. The good man had been

looking after his vintage at Mer, and was returning to Blois. 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 soldier who has gone through many

hardships, became more sad and dark; the lines 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 our

forgetfulness. Young men, as you know, lead such an adventurous and

storm-tossed life when they leave their school-forms, that it is only by

meeting that they can be sure of an enduring affection. However, a

reminiscence of youth sometimes comes as a reminder, and it is impossible

to forget entirely, especially when two lads have been such friends 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 gloomier than

ever.

"Then you have not heard his story?" said he. "My poor nephew was to be

married to the richest heiress in Blois; but the day before his wedding he

went mad."

"Lambert! Mad!" cried I in dismay. "But from what cause? He had the finest

memory, the most strongly-constituted brain, the soundest judgment, I ever

met with. Really a great genius--with too great a passion 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 already related in

the order of their interest. I confessed to his uncle the character of our

studies and of his nephew's predominant ideas; then the old man told me of

the events that had come into Lambert's life since our parting. From

Monsieur Lefebvre's account, Lambert had betrayed some symptoms of madness

before his marriage; but they were such as are common to men who love

passionately, and seemed to me less startling when I knew how vehement his

love had been and when I saw Mademoiselle de Villenoix. In the country,

where ideas are scarce, a man overflowing with original thought and devoted

to a system, as Louis was, might well be regarded as eccentric, to say the

least. His language would, no doubt, seem the stranger because he so rarely

spoke. He would say, "That man does not dwell in my heaven," where any one

else would have said, "We are not made on the same pattern." Every clever

man has his own quirks of speech. The broader his genius, the more

conspicuous are the singularities which constitute the various degrees of

eccentricity. In the country an eccentric man is at once set down as half

mad.

Hence Monsieur Lefebvre's first sentences left me doubtful of my

schoolmate's insanity. I listened to the old man, but I criticised his

statements.

The most serious symptom had supervened a day or two before the marriage.

Louis had had some well-marked attacks of catalepsy. He had once remained

motionless for fifty-nine hours, his eyes staring, neither speaking nor

eating; a purely nervous affection, to which persons under the influence of

violent passion are liable; a rare malady, but perfectly well known to the

medical faculty. What was really extraordinary was that Louis should not

have had several previous attacks, since his habits of rapt thought and the

character of his mind would predispose him to them. But his temperament,

physical and mental, was so admirably balanced, that it had no doubt been

able to resist the demands on his strength. The excitement to which he had

been wound up by the anticipation of acute physical enjoyment, enhanced by

a chaste life and a highly-strung soul, had no doubt led to these attacks,

of which the results are as little known as the cause.

The letters that have by chance escaped destruction show very plainly a

transition from pure idealism to the most intense sensualism.

Time was when Lambert and I had admired this phenomenon of the human mind,

in which he saw the fortuitous separation of our two natures, and the signs

of a total removal of the inner man, using its unknown faculties under the

operation of an unknown cause. This disorder, a mystery as deep as that of

sleep, was connected with the scheme of evidence which Lambert had set

forth in his _Treatise on the Will_. And when Monsieur Lefebvre spoke to me

of Louis' first attack, I suddenly remembered a conversation we had had on

the subject after reading a medical book.

"Deep meditation and rapt ecstasy are perhaps the undeveloped germs of

catalepsy," he said in conclusion.

On the occasion when he so concisely formulated this idea, he had been

trying to link mental phenomena together by a series of results, following

the processes of the intellect step by step, from their beginnings as those

simple, purely animal impulses of instinct, which are all-sufficient to

many human beings, particularly to those men whose energies are wholly

spent in mere mechanical labor; then, going on to the aggregation of ideas

and rising to comparison, reflection, meditation, and finally ecstasy and

catalepsy. Lambert, of course, in the artlessness of youth, imagined that

he had laid down the lines of a great work when he thus built up a scale of

the various degrees of man's mental powers.

I remember that, by one of those chances which seem like predestination, we

got hold of a great Martyrology, in which the most curious narratives are

given of the total abeyance of physical life which a man can attain to

under the paroxysms of the inner life. By reflecting on the effects of

fanaticism, Lambert was led to believe that the collected ideas to which we

give the name of feelings may very possibly be the material outcome of some

fluid which is generated in all men, more or less abundantly, according to

the way in which their organs absorb, from the medium in which they live,

the elementary atoms that produce it. We went crazy over catalepsy; and

with the eagerness that boys throw into every pursuit, we endeavored to

endure pain by thinking of something else. We exhausted ourselves by making

experiments not unlike those of the epileptic fanatics of the last century,

a religious mania which will some day be of service to the science of

humanity. I would stand on Lambert's chest, remaining there several minutes

without giving him the slightest pain; but notwithstanding these crazy

attempts, we did not achieve an attack of catalepsy.

This digression seemed necessary to account for my first doubts, which

were, however, completely dispelled by Monsieur Lefebvre.

"When this attack had passed off," said he, "my nephew sank into a state of

extreme terror, a dejection that nothing could overcome. He thought himself

unfit for marriage. I watched him with the care of a mother for her child,

and found him preparing to perform on himself the operation to which

Origen believed he owed his talents. I at once carried him off to Paris,

and placed him under the care of Monsieur Esquirol. All through our journey

Louis sat sunk in almost unbroken torpor, and did not recognize me. The

Paris physicians pronounced him incurable, and unanimously advised his

being left in perfect solitude, with nothing to break the silence that was

needful for his very improbable recovery, and that he should live always in

a cool room with a subdued light.--Mademoiselle de Villenoix, whom I had

been careful not to apprise of Louis' state," he went on, blinking his

eyes, "but who was supposed to have broken off the match, went to Paris and

heard what the doctors had pronounced. She immediately begged to see my

nephew, who hardly recognized her; then, like the noble soul she is, she

insisted on devoting herself to giving him such care as might tend to his

recovery. She would have been obliged to do so if he had been her husband,

she said, and could she do less for him as her lover?

"She removed Louis to Villenoix, where they have been living for two

years."

So, instead of continuing my journey, I stopped at Blois to go to see

Louis. Good Monsieur Lefebvre would not hear of my lodging anywhere but at

his house, where he showed me his nephew's room with the books and all else

that had belonged to him. At every turn the old man could not suppress some

mournful exclamation, showing what hopes Louis' precocious genius had

raised, and the terrible grief into which this irreparable ruin had plunged

him.

"That young fellow knew everything, my dear sir!" said he, laying on the

table a volume containing Spinoza's works. "How could so well organized a

brain go astray?"

"Indeed, monsieur," said I, "was it not perhaps the result of its being so

highly organized? If he really is a victim to the malady as yet unstudied

in all its aspects, which is known simply as madness, I am inclined to

attribute it to his passion. His studies and his mode of life had strung

his powers and faculties to a degree of energy beyond which the least

further strain was too much for nature; Love was enough to crack them, or

to raise them to a new form of expression which we are maligning perhaps,

by ticketing it without due knowledge. In fact, he may perhaps have

regarded the joys of marriage as an obstacle to the perfection of his inner

man and his flight towards spiritual 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 follow it,

would this melancholy logic comfort me for the loss of my nephew?"

Lambert's uncle was one of those men who live only by their affections.

* * * * *

I went to Villenoix on the following day. The kind old man accompanied me

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 have said;

and in Mademoiselle de Villenoix's presence affect not to perceive that

Louis is mad."

He remained standing on the spot where I left him, watching me till I was

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 so often

trodden with a heart full of hopes, a soul spurred on by the myriad darts

of love. The shrubs, the trees, the turns of the winding road where little

gullies broke the banks on each side, were to me full of strange interest.

I tried to enter into the impressions and thoughts of my unhappy friend.

Those evening meetings on the edge of the coombe, where his lady-love had

been wont to find him, had, no doubt, initiated Mademoiselle de Villenoix

into the secrets of that vast and lofty spirit, as I had learned them all

some years before.

But the thing that most occupied my mind, and gave to my pilgrimage the

interest of intense curiosity, in addition to the almost pious feelings

that led me onwards, was that glorious faith of Mademoiselle de

Villenoix's which the good priest had told me of. Had she in the course of

time been infected with her lover's madness, or had she so completely

entered into his soul that she could understand all its thoughts, even the

most perplexed? I lost myself in the wonderful problem of feeling, passing

the highest inspirations of passion and the most beautiful instances of

self-sacrifice. That one should die for the other is an almost vulgar form

of devotion. To live faithful to one love is a form of heroism that

immortalized Mademoiselle Dupuis. When the great Napoleon and Lord Byron

could find successors in the hearts of women they had loved, we may well

admire Bolingbroke's widow; but Mademoiselle Dupuis could feed on the

memories of many years of happiness, whereas Mademoiselle de Villenoix,

having known nothing of love but its first excitement, seemed to me to

typify love in its highest expression. If she were herself almost crazy, it

was splendid; but if she had understood and entered into his madness, she

combined with the beauty of a noble heart a crowning effort of passion

worthy to be studied and honored.

When I saw the tall turrets of the chateau, remembering how often poor

Lambert must have thrilled at the sight of them, my heart beat anxiously.

As I recalled the events of our boyhood, I was almost a sharer in his

present life and situation. At last I reached a wide, deserted courtyard,

and I went into the hall of the house without meeting a soul. There the

sound of my steps brought out an old woman, to whom I gave a letter written

to Mademoiselle de Villenoix by Monsieur Lefebvre. In a few minutes this

woman returned to bid me enter, 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 dimly saw 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 her

presence, and noiselessly brought me a chair, which at first I would not

accept. It was so dark that at first I saw Mademoiselle de Villenoix and

Lambert only as two black masses perceived against the gloomy background. I

presently sat down under the influence of the feeling that comes over us,

almost in spite of ourselves, under the obscure 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 those

spectacles that are stamped on the memory for ever. He was standing, his

elbows resting on the cornice of the low wainscot, which threw his body

forward, so that it seemed bowed under the weight of his bent head. His

hair was as long as a woman's, falling over his shoulders and hanging about

his face, giving him a resemblance to the busts of the great men of the

time of Louis XIV. His face was perfectly white. He constantly rubbed one

leg against the other, with a mechanical action that nothing could have

checked, and the incessant friction of the bones made a doleful sound. Near

him was a bed of moss on boards.

"He very rarely lies down," said Mademoiselle de Villenoix; "but whenever

he does, he sleeps for several days."

Louis stood, as I beheld him, day and night with a fixed gaze, never

winking his eyelids as we do. Having asked Mademoiselle de Villenoix

whether a little more light would hurt our friend, on her reply I opened

the shutters a little way, and could see the expression of Lambert's

countenance. Alas! he was wrinkled, white-headed, his eyes dull and

lifeless as those of the blind. His features seemed all drawn upwards to

the top of his head. I made several attempts to talk to him, but he did not

hear me. He was a wreck snatched from the grave, a conquest of life from

death--or of death from life!

I stayed for about an hour, sunk in unaccountable dreams, and lost in

painful thought. I listened to Mademoiselle de Villenoix, who told me every

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 the

sound 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 of every

effort. An involuntary instinct warned me, making me doubt whether Louis

had really lost his reason. I was indeed well assured that he neither saw

nor heard me; but the sweetness of his tone, which seemed to reveal

heavenly happiness, gave his speech an amazing effect. These words, the

incomplete revelation of an unknown world, rang in our souls like some

glorious distant bells in the depth of a dark night. I was no longer

surprised that Mademoiselle de Villenoix considered Lambert to be perfectly

sane. The life of the soul had perhaps subdued that of the body. His

faithful companion had, no doubt--as I had at that moment--intuitions of

that melodious and beautiful existence to which we give the name of Heaven

in its highest meaning.

This woman, this angel, always was with him, seated at her embroidery

frame; and each time she drew the needle out she gazed at Lambert with sad

and tender feeling. Unable to endure this terrible sight--for I could not,

like Mademoiselle de Villenoix, read all his secrets--I went out, and she

came with me to walk for a few minutes and talk of herself and of Lambert.

"Louis must, no doubt, appear to be mad," said she. "But he is not, if the

term mad ought only to be used in speaking of those whose brain is for some

unknown cause diseased, and who can show no reason in their actions.

Everything in my husband is perfectly balanced. Though he did not actively

recognize you, it is not that he did not see you. He has succeeded in

detaching himself from his body, and discerns us under some other

aspect--what that is, I know not. When he speaks, he utters wondrous

things. Only it often happens that he concludes in speech an idea that had

its beginning in his mind; or he may begin a sentence and finish it in

thought. To other men he seems insane; to me, living as I do in his mind,

his ideas are quite lucid. I follow the road his spirit travels; and though

I do not know every turning, I can reach the goal with him.

"Which of us has not often known what it is to think of some futile thing

and be led on to some serious reflection through the ideas or memories it

brings in its train? Not unfrequently, after speaking about some trifle,

the simple starting-point of a rapid train of reflections, a thinker may

forget or be silent as to the abstract connection of ideas leading to his

conclusion, and speak again only to utter 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 a madman. Louis

is always in this state; he soars perpetually through the spaces of

thought, traversing them with the swiftness of a swallow; I can follow him

in his flight. This is the whole history of his madness. Some day, perhaps,

Louis will come back to the life in which we vegetate; but if he breathes

the air of heaven before the time when we may be permitted to do so, why

should we desire to have him down among us? I am content to hear his heart

beat, and all my happiness 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, where we took some sea-baths. I have twice been very happy! I can

live on memory."

"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's eyes.

"At those times, when he talked a little," she added, "I think I have

recorded some of his phrases, but I left it off; I did not understand him

then."

I asked her for them by a look; she understood me. This is what I have been

able to preserve from oblivion.

I

Everything here on earth is produced by an ethereal substance which is the

common element of various phenomena, known inaccurately as electricity,

heat, light, the galvanic fluid, the magnetic fluid, and so forth. The

universal distribution of this substance, under various forms, constitutes

what is commonly known as Matter.

II

The brain is the alembic to which the Animal conveys what each of its

organizations, in proportion to the strength of that vessel, can absorb of

that Substance, which returns it transformed into Will.

The Will is a fluid inherent in every creature endowed with motion. Hence

the innumerable forms assumed by the Animal, the results of its

combinations with that Substance. The Animal's instincts are the product of

the coercion of the environment in which it develops. Hence its variety.

III

In Man the Will becomes a power peculiar to him, and exceeding in intensity

that of any other species.

IV

By constant assimilation, the Will depends on the Substance it meets with

again and again in all its transmutations, pervading them by Thought, which

is a product peculiar to the human Will, in combination with the

modifications of that Substance.

V

The innumerable forms assumed by Thought are the result of the greater or

less perfection of the human mechanism.

VI

The Will acts through organs commonly called the five senses, which, in

fact, are but one--the faculty of Sight. Feeling and tasting, hearing and

smelling, are Sight modified to the transformations of the Substance which

Man can absorb in two conditions: untransformed and transformed.

VII

Everything of which the form comes within the cognizance of the one sense

of Sight may be reduced to certain simple bodies of which the elements

exist in the air, the light, or in the elements of air and light. Sound is

a condition of the air; colors are all conditions of light; every smell is

a combination of air and light; hence the four aspects of Matter with

regard to Man--sound, color, smell, and shape--have the same origin, for

the day is not far off when the relationship of the phenomena of air and

light will be made clear.

Thought, which is allied to Light, is expressed in words which depend on

sound. To man, then, everything is derived from the Substance, whose

transformations vary only through Number--a certain quantitative

dissimilarity, the proportions resulting in the individuals or objects of

what are classed as Kingdoms.

VIII

When the Substance is absorbed in sufficient number (or quantity) it makes

of man an immensely powerful mechanism, in direct communication with the

very element of the Substance, and acting on organic nature in the same

way as a large stream when it absorbs the smaller brooks. Volition sets

this force in motion independently of the Mind. By its concentration it

acquires some of the qualities of the Substance, such as the swiftness of

light, the penetrating power of electricity, and the faculty of saturating

a body; to which must be added that it apprehends what it can do.

Still, there is in man a primordial and overruling phenomenon which defies

analysis. Man may be dissected completely; the elements of Will and Mind

may perhaps be found; but there still will remain beyond apprehension the x

against which I once used to struggle. That x is the Word, the Logos, whose

communication burns and consumes those who are not prepared to receive it.

The Word is for ever generating the Substance.

IX

Rage, like all our vehement demonstrations, is a current of the human force

that acts electrically; its turmoil when liberated acts on persons who are

present even though they be neither its cause nor its object. Are there not

certain men who by a discharge of Volition can sublimate the essence of the

feelings of the masses?

X

Fanaticism and all emotions are living forces. These forces in some beings

become rivers that gather in and sweep away everything.

XI

Though Space _is_, certain faculties have the power of traversing it with

such rapidity that it is as though it existed not. From your own bed to the

frontiers of the universe there are but two steps: Will and Faith.

XII

Facts are nothing; they do not subsist; all that lives of us is the Idea.

XIII

The realm of Ideas is divided into three spheres: that of Instinct, that of

Abstractions, that of Specialism.

XIV

The greater part, the weaker part of visible humanity, dwells in the Sphere

of Instinct. The _Instinctives_ are born, labor, and die without rising to

the second degree of human intelligence, namely, Abstraction.

XV

Society begins in the sphere of Abstraction. If Abstraction, as compared

with Instinct, is an almost divine power, it is nevertheless incredibly

weak as compared with the gift of Specialism, which is the formula of God.

Abstraction comprises all nature in a germ, more virtually than a seed

contains the whole system of a plant and its fruits. From Abstraction are

derived laws, arts, social ideas, and interests. It is the glory and the

scourge of the earth: its glory because it has created social life; its

scourge because it allows man to evade entering into Specialism, which is

one of the paths to the Infinite. Man measures everything by Abstractions:

Good and Evil, Virtue and Crime. Its formula of equity is a pair of scales,

its justice is blind. God's justice sees: there is all the difference.

There must be intermediate Beings, then, dividing the sphere of Instinct

from the sphere of Abstractions, in whom the two elements mingle in an

infinite variety of proportions. Some have more of one, some more of the

other. And there are also some in which the two powers neutralize each

other by equality of effect.

XVI

Specialism consists in seeing the things of the material universe and the

things of the spiritual universe in all their ramifications original and

causative. The greatest human geniuses are those who started from the

darkness of Abstraction to attain to the light of Specialism. (Specialism,

_species_, sight; speculation, or seeing everything, and all at once;

_Speculum_, a mirror or means of apprehending a thing by seeing the whole

of it.) Jesus had the gift of Specialism; He saw each fact in its root and

in its results, in the past where it had its rise, and in the future where

it would grow and spread; His sight pierced into the understanding of

others. The perfection of the inner eye gives rise to the gift of

Specialism. Specialism brings with it Intuition. Intuition is one of the

faculties of the Inner Man, of which Specialism is an attribute. Intuition

acts by an imperceptible sensation of which he who obeys it is not

conscious: for instance, Napoleon instinctively moving from a spot struck

immediately afterwards by a cannon ball.

XVII

Between the sphere of Abstraction and that of Specialism, as between those

of Abstraction and Instinct, there are beings in whom the attributes of

both combine and produce a mixture; these are men of genius.

XVIII

Specialism is necessarily the most perfect expression of man, and he is the

link binding the visible world to the higher worlds; he acts, sees, and

feels by his inner powers. The man of Abstraction thinks. The man of

Instinct acts.

XIX

Hence 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; the Infinite dawns on him; he sees

what his destiny must be.

XX

There are three worlds--the Natural, the Spiritual, and the Divine.

Humanity passes through the Natural world, which is not fixed either in its

essence or its faculties. The Spiritual world is fixed in its essence and

unfixed in its faculties. The Divine world is fixed in its faculties and

its essence both. Hence there is necessarily a Material worship, a

Spiritual worship, and a Divine worship: three forms expressed in action,

speech, and prayer, or, in other words, in deed, apprehension, and love.

Instinct demands deed; Abstraction is concerned with Ideas; Specialism sees

the end, it aspires to God with presentiment or contemplation.

XXI

Hence, perhaps, some day the converse of _Et Verbum caro factum est_ will

become the epitome of a new Gospel, which will proclaim that The Flesh

shall be made the Word and become the Utterance of God.

XXII

The Resurrection is the work of the Wind of Heaven sweeping over the

worlds. The angel borne on the Wind does not say: "Arise, ye dead"; he

says, "Arise, ye who live!"

* * * * *

Such are the meditations which I have with great difficulty cast in a form

adapted to our understanding. There are some others which Pauline

remembered more exactly, wherefore I know not, and which I wrote from her

dictation; but they drive the mind to despair when, knowing in what an

intellect they originated, we strive to understand them. I will quote a few

of them to complete my study of this figure; partly, too, perhaps, because,

in these last aphorisms, Lambert's formulas seem to include a larger

universe than the former set, which would apply only to zoological

evolution. Still, there is a relation between the two fragments, evident to

those persons--though they be but few--who love to dive into such

intellectual deeps.

I

Everything on earth exists solely by motion and number.

II

Motion is, so to speak, number in action.

III

Motion is the product of a force generated by the Word and by Resistance,

which is Matter. But for Resistance, Motion would have had no results; its

action would have been infinite. Newton's gravitation is not a law, but an

effect of the general law of universal motion.

IV

Motion, acting in proportion to Resistance, produces a result which is

Life. As soon as one or the other is the stronger, Life ceases.

V

No portion of Motion is wasted; it always produces number; still, it can be

neutralized by disproportionate resistance, as in minerals.

VI

Number, which produces variety of all kinds, also gives rise to Harmony,

which, in the highest meaning of the word, is the relation of parts to the

whole.

VII

But for Motion, everything would be one and the same. Its products,

identical in their essence, differ only by Number, which gives rise to

faculties.

VIII

Man looks to faculties; angels look to the Essence.

IX

By giving his body up to elemental action, man can achieve an inner union

with the Light.

X

Number is intellectual evidence belonging to man alone; by it he acquires

knowledge of the Word.

XI

There is a Number beyond which the impure cannot pass: the Number which is

the limit of creation.

XII

The Unit was the starting-point of every product: compounds are derived

from it, but the end must be identical with the beginning. Hence this

Spiritual formula: the compound Unit, the variable Unit, the fixed Unit.

XIII

The Universe is the Unit in variety. Motion is the means; Number is the

result. The end is the return of all things to the Unit, which is God.

XIV

Three and Seven are the two chief Spiritual numbers.

XV

Three is the formula of created worlds. It is the Spiritual Sign of the

creation, as it is the Material Sign of dimension. In fact, God has worked

by curved lines only: the Straight Line is an attribute of the Infinite;

and man, who has the presentiment of the Infinite, reproduces it in his

works. Two is the number of generation. Three is the number of Life which

includes generation and offspring. Add the sum of four, and you have Seven,

the formula of Heaven. Above all is God; He is the Unit.

* * * * *

After going in to see Louis, once more, I took leave of his wife and went

home, lost in ideas so adverse to social life that, in spite of a promise

to return to Villenoix, I did not go.

The sight of Louis had had some mysteriously sinister influence over me. I

was afraid to place myself again in that heavy atmosphere, where ecstasy

was contagious. Any man would have felt, as I did, a longing to throw

himself into the infinite, just as one soldier after another killed himself

in a certain sentry box where one had committed suicide in the camp at

Boulogne. It is a known fact that Napoleon was obliged to have the hut

burned which had harbored an idea that had become a mortal infection.

Louis' room had perhaps the same fatal effect as that sentry box.

These two facts would then be additional evidence in favor of his theory

of the transfusion of Will. I was conscious of strange disturbances,

transcending the most fantastic results of taking tea, coffee, or opium, of

dreams or of fever--mysterious agents, whose terrible action often sets our

brains on fire.

I ought perhaps to have made a separate book of these fragments of thought,

intelligible only to certain spirits who have been accustomed to 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 of this man's visions--a being

incomplete for lack of force or of weakness; but I preferred to give an

account of my own impressions rather than to compose a more or less

poetical romance.

* * * * *

Louis Lambert died at the age of twenty-eight, September 25, 1824, in his

true love's arms. He was buried by her desire in an island in the park at

Villenoix. His tombstone is a plain stone cross, without name or date. Like

a flower that has blossomed on the margin of a precipice, and drops into

it, its colors and fragrance all unknown, it was fitting that he too should

fall. Like many another misprized soul, he had often yearned to dive

haughtily into the void, and abandon there the secrets of his own life.

Mademoiselle de Villenoix would, however, have been quite justified in

recording his name on that cross with her own. Since her partner's death,

reunion has been her constant, hourly hope. But the vanities of woe are

foreign to faithful souls.

Villenoix is falling into ruin. She no longer resides there; to the end, no

doubt, that she may the better picture herself there as she used to be. She

had said long ago:

"His heart was mine; his genius is with God."

CHATEAU DE SACHE, _June-July 1832_.

THE EXILES

ALMAE SORORI

In the year 1308 few houses were yet standing on the Island formed by the

alluvium and sand deposited by the Seine above the Cite, behind the Church

of Notre-Dame. The first man who was so bold as to build on this strand,

then liable to frequent floods, was a constable of the watch of the City of

Paris, who had been able to do some service to their Reverences the Chapter

of the Cathedral; and in return the Bishop leased him twenty-five perches

of land, with exemption from all feudal dues or taxes on the buildings he

might erect.

Seven years before the beginning of this narrative, Joseph Tirechair, one

of the sternest of Paris constables, as his name [Tear Flesh] would

indicate, had, thanks to his share of the fines collected by him for

delinquencies committed within the precincts of the Cite, been able to

build a house on the bank of the Seine just at the end of the Rue du

Port-Saint-Landry. To protect the merchandise landed on the strand, the

municipality had constructed a sort of break-water of masonry, which may

still be seen on some old plans of Paris, and which preserved the piles of

the landing-place by meeting the rush of water and ice at the upper end of

the Island. The constable had taken advantage of this for the foundation of

his house, so that there were several steps up to his door.

Like all the houses of that date, this cottage was crowned by a peaked

roof, forming a gable-end to the front, or half a diamond. To the great

regret of historians, but two or three examples of such roofs survive in

Paris. A round opening gave light to a loft, where the constable's wife

dried the linen of the Chapter, for she had the honor of washing for the

Cathedral--which was certainly not a bad customer. On the first floor were

two rooms, let to lodgers at a rent, one year with another, of forty sous

_Parisis_ each, an exorbitant sum, that was however justified by the luxury

Tirechair had lavished on their adornment. Flanders tapestry hung on the

walls, and a large bed with a top valance of green serge, like a peasant's

bed, was amply furnished with mattresses, and covered with good sheets of

fine linen. Each room had a stove called a _chauffe-doux_; the floor,

carefully polished by Dame Tirechair's apprentices, shone like the woodwork

of a shrine. Instead of stools, the lodgers had deep chairs of carved

walnut, the spoils probably of some raided castle. Two chests with pewter

mouldings, and tables on twisted legs, completed the fittings, worthy of

the most fastidious knights-banneret whom business might bring to Paris.

The windows of those two rooms looked out on the river. From one you could

only see the shores of the Seine, and the three barren islands, of which

two were subsequently joined together to form the Ile Saint-Louis; the

third was the Ile de Louviers. From the other could be seen, down a vista

of the Port-Saint-Landry, the buildings on the Greve, the Bridge of

Notre-Dame, with its houses, and the tall towers of the Louvre, but lately

built by Philippe-Auguste to overlook the then poor and squalid town of

Paris, which suggests so many imaginary marvels to the fancy of modern

romancers.

The ground floor of Tirechair's house consisted of a large hall, where his

wife's business was carried on, through which the lodgers were obliged to

pass on their way to their own rooms up a stairway like a mill-ladder.

Behind this were a kitchen and a bedroom, with a view over the Seine. A

tiny garden, reclaimed from the waters, displayed at the foot of this

modest dwelling its beds of cabbages and onions, and a few rose-bushes,

sheltered by palings, forming a sort of hedge. A little structure of lath

and mud served as a kennel for a big dog, the indispensable guardian of so

lonely a dwelling. Beyond this kennel was a little plot, where the hens

cackled whose eggs were sold to the Canons. Here and there on this patch of

earth, muddy or dry according to the whimsical Parisian weather, a few

trees grew, constantly lashed by the wind, and teased and broken by the

passer-by--willows, reeds, and tall grasses.

The Eyot, the Seine, the landing-place, the house, were all overshadowed on

the west by the huge basilica of Notre-Dame casting its cold gloom over the

whole plot as the sun moved. Then, as now, there was not in all Paris a

more deserted spot, a more solemn or more melancholy prospect. The noise of

waters, the chanting of priests, or the piping of the wind, were the only

sounds that disturbed this wilderness, where lovers would sometimes meet to

discuss their secrets when the church-folks and clergy were safe in church

at the services.

* * * * *

One evening in April in the year 1308, Tirechair came home in a remarkably

bad temper. For three days past everything had been in good order on the

King's highway. Now, as an officer of the peace, nothing annoyed him so

much as to feel himself useless. He flung down his halbert in a rage,

muttered inarticulate words as he pulled off his doublet, half red and half

blue, and slipped on a shabby camlet jerkin. After helping himself from the

bread-box to a hunch of bread, and spreading it with butter, he seated

himself on a bench, looked round at his four whitewashed walls, counted the

beams of the ceiling, made a mental inventory of the household goods

hanging from the nails, scowled at the neatness which left him nothing to

complain of, and looked at his wife, who said not a word as she ironed the

albs and surplices from the sacristy.

"By my halidom," he said, to open the conversation, "I cannot think,

Jacqueline, where you go to catch your apprenticed maids. Now, here is

one," he went on, pointing to a girl who was folding an altar-cloth,

clumsily enough, it must be owned, "who looks to me more like a damsel

rather free of her person than a sturdy country wench. Her hands are as

white as a fine lady's! By the Mass! and her hair smells of essences, I

verily believe, and her hose are as fine as a queen's. By the two horns of

Old Nick, matters please me but ill as I find them here."

The girl colored, and stole a look at Jacqueline, full of alarm not unmixed

with pride. The mistress answered her glance with a smile, laid down her

work, and turned to her husband.

"Come now," said she, in a sharp tone, "you need not harry me. Are you

going to accuse me next of some underhand tricks? Patrol your roads as much

as you please, but do not meddle here with anything but what concerns your

sleeping in peace, drinking your wine, and eating what I set before you, or

else, I warn you, I will have no more to do with keeping you healthy and

happy. Let any one find me a happier man in all the town," she went on,

with a scolding grimace. "He has silver in his purse, a gable over the

Seine, a stout halbert on one hand, an honest wife on the other, a house as

clean and smart as a new pin! And he growls like a pilgrim smarting from

Saint Anthony's fire!"

"Hey day!" exclaimed the sergeant of the watch, "do you fancy, Jacqueline,

that I have any wish to see my house razed down, my halbert given to

another, and my wife standing in the pillory?"

Jacqueline and the dainty journeywoman turned pale.

"Just tell me what you are driving at," said the washerwoman sharply, "and

make a clean breast of it. For some days, my man, I have observed that you

have some maggot twisting in your poor brain. Come up, then, and have it

all out. You must be a pretty coward indeed if you fear any harm when you

have only to guard the common council and live under the protection of the

Chapter! Their Reverences the Canons would lay the whole bishopric under an

interdict if Jacqueline brought a complaint of the smallest damage."

As she spoke, she went straight up to her husband and took him by the arm.

"Come with me," she added, pulling him up and out on to the steps.

When they were down by the water in their little garden, Jacqueline looked

saucily in her husband's face.

"I would have you to know, you old gaby, that when my lady fair goes out, a

piece of gold comes into our savings-box."

"Oh, ho!" said the constable, who stood silent and meditative before his

wife. But he presently said, "Any way, we are done for.--What brings the

dame to our house?"

"She comes to see the well-favored young clerk who lives overhead," replied

Jacqueline, looking up at the window that opened on to the vast landscape

of the Seine valley.

"The Devil's in it!" cried the man. "For a few base crowns you have ruined

me, Jacqueline. Is that an honest trade for a sergeant's decent wife to

ply? And, be she Countess or Baroness, the lady will not be able to get us

out of the trap in which we shall find ourselves caught sooner or later.

Shall we not have to square accounts with some puissant and offended

husband? for, by the Mass, she is fair to look upon!"

"But she is a widow, I tell you, gray gander! How dare you accuse your wife

of foul play and folly? And the lady has never spoken a word to yon gentle

clerk; she is content to look on him and think of him. Poor lad! he would

be dead of starvation by now but for her, for she is as good as a mother to

him. And he, the sweet cherub! it is as easy to cheat him as to rock a

new-born babe. He believes his pence will last for ever, and he has eaten

them through twice over in the past six months."

"Woman," said the sergeant, solemnly pointing to the Place de Greve, "do

you remember seeing, even from this spot, the fire in which they burnt the

Danish woman the other day?"

"What then?" said Jacqueline, in a fright.

"What then?" echoed Tirechair. "Why, the two men who lodge with us smell of

scorching. Neither Chapter nor Countess nor Protector can serve them. Here

is Easter come round; the year is ending; we must turn our company out of

doors, and that at once. Do you think you can teach an old constable how

to know a gallows-bird? Our two lodgers were on terms with la Porette, that

heretic jade from Denmark or Norway, whose last cries you heard from here.

She was a brave witch; she never blenched at the stake, which was proof

enough of her compact with the Devil. I saw her as plain as I see you; she

preached to the throng, and declared she was in heaven and could see God.

"And since that, I tell you, I have never slept quietly in my bed. My lord,

who lodges over us, is of a surety more of a wizard than a Christian. On my

word as an officer, I shiver when that old man passes near me; he never

sleeps of nights; if I wake, his voice is ringing like a bourdon of bells,

and I hear him uttering incantations in the language of hell. Have you ever

seen him eat an honest crust of bread or a hearth-cake made by a good

Catholic baker? His brown skin has been scorched and tanned by hell-fires.

Marry, and I tell you his eyes hold a spell like those of serpents.

Jacqueline, I will have none of those two men under my roof. I see too much

of the law not to know that it is well to have nothing to do with it.--You

must get rid of our two lodgers; the elder, because I suspect him; the

youngster, because he is too pretty. They neither of them seem to me to

keep Christian company. The boy is ever staring at the moon, the stars, and

the clouds, like a wizard watching for the hour when he shall mount his

broomstick; the other old rogue certainly makes some use of the poor boy

for his black art. My house stands too close to the river as it is, and

that risk of ruin is bad enough without bringing down fire from heaven, or

the love affairs of a countess. I have spoken. Do not rebel."

In spite of her sway in the house, Jacqueline stood stupefied as she

listened to the edict fulminated against his lodgers by the sergeant of the

watch. She mechanically looked up at the window of the room inhabited by

the old man, and shivered with horror as she suddenly caught sight of the

gloomy, melancholy face, and the piercing eye that so affected her husband,

accustomed as he was to dealing with criminals.

At that period, great and small, priests and laymen, all trembled before

the idea of any supernatural power. The word "magic" was as powerful as

leprosy to root up feelings, break social ties, and freeze piety in the

most generous soul. It suddenly struck the constable's wife that she never,

in fact, had seen either of her lodgers exercising any human function.

Though the younger man's voice was as sweet and melodious as the tones of a

flute, she so rarely heard it that she was tempted to think his silence the

result of a spell. As she recalled the strange beauty of that

pink-and-white face, and saw in memory the fine fair hair and moist

brilliancy of those eyes, she believed they were indeed the artifices of

the Devil. She remembered that for days at a time she had never heard the

slightest sound from either room. Where were the strangers during all those

hours?

Suddenly the most singular circumstances recurred to her mind. She was

completely overmastered by fear, and could even discern witchcraft in the

rich lady's interest in this young Godefroid, a poor orphan who had come

from Flanders to study at the University of Paris. She hastily put her hand

into one of her pockets, pulled out four livres of Tournay in large silver

coinage, and looked at the pieces with an expression of avarice mingled

with terror.

"That, at any rate, is not false coin," said she, showing the silver to her

husband. "Besides," she went on, "how can I turn them out after taking next

year's rent paid in advance?"

"You had better inquire of the Dean of the Chapter," replied Tirechair. "Is

not it his business to tell us how we should deal with these extraordinary

persons?"

"Ay, truly extraordinary," cried Jacqueline. "To think of their cunning;

coming here under the very shadow of Notre-Dame! Still," she went on, "or

ever I ask the Dean, why not warn that fair and noble lady of the risk she

runs?"

As she spoke, Jacqueline went into the house with her husband, who had not

missed a mouthful. Tirechair, as a man grown old in the tricks of his

trade, affected to believe that the strange lady was in fact a work-girl;

still, this assumed indifference could not altogether cloak the timidity

of a courtier who respects a royal incognito. At this moment six was

striking by the clock of Saint-Denis du Pas, a small church that stood

between Notre-Dame and the Port-Saint-Landry--the first church erected in

Paris, on the very spot where Saint-Denis was laid on the gridiron, as

chronicles tell. The hour flew from steeple to tower all over the city.

Then suddenly confused shouts were heard on the left bank of the Seine,

behind Notre-Dame, in the quarter where the schools of the University

harbored their swarms.

At this signal, Jacqueline's elder lodger began to move about his room. The

sergeant, his wife, and the strange lady listened while he opened and shut

his door, and the old man's heavy step was heard on the steep stair. The

constable's suspicions gave such interest to the advent of this personage,

that the lady was startled as she observed the strange expression of the

two countenances before her. Referring the terrors of this couple to the

youth she was protecting--as was natural in a lover--the young lady

awaited, with some uneasiness, the event thus heralded by the fears of her

so-called master and mistress.

The old man paused for a moment on the threshold to scrutinize the three

persons in the room, and seemed to be looking for his young companion. This

glance of inquiry, unsuspicious as it was, agitated the three. Indeed,

nobody, not even the stoutest man, could deny that Nature had bestowed

exceptional powers on this being, who seemed almost supernatural. Though

his eyes were somewhat deeply shaded by the wide sockets fringed with long

eyebrows, they were set, like a kite's eyes, in eyelids so broad, and

bordered by so dark a circle sharply defined on his cheek, that they seemed

rather to be prominent. These singular eyes had in them something

indescribably domineering and piercing, which took possession of the soul

by a grave and thoughtful look, a look as bright and lucid as that of a

serpent or a bird, but which held one fascinated and crushed by the swift

communication of some tremendous sorrow, or of some superhuman power.

Every feature was in harmony with this eye of lead and of fire, at once

rigid and flashing, stern and calm. While in this eagle eye earthly

emotions seemed in some sort extinct, the lean, parched face also bore

traces of unhappy passions and great deeds done. The nose, which was narrow

and aquiline, was so long that it seemed to hang on by the nostrils. The

bones of the face were strongly marked by the long, straight wrinkles that

furrowed the hollow cheeks. Every line in the countenance looked dark. It

would suggest the bed of a torrent where the violence of former floods was

recorded in the depth of the water-courses, which testified to some

terrible, unceasing turmoil. Like the ripples left by the oars of a boat on

the waters, deep lines, starting from each side of his nose, marked his

face strongly, and gave an expression of bitter sadness to his mouth, which

was firm and straight-lipped. Above the storm thus stamped on his

countenance, his calm brow rose with what may be called boldness, and

crowned it as with a marble dome.

The stranger preserved that intrepid and dignified manner that is

frequently habitual with men inured to disaster, and fitted by nature to

stand unmoved before a furious mob and to face the greatest dangers. He

seemed to move in a sphere apart, where he poised above humanity. His

gestures, no less than his look, were full of irresistible power; his lean

hands were those of a soldier; and if your own eyes were forced to fall

before his piercing gaze, you were no less sure to tremble when by word or

action he spoke to your soul. He moved in silent majesty that made him seem

a king without his guard, a god without his rays.