Louis Lambert | Page 7

_De l'Allemagne_.
But Lambert at that time was an even greater wonder. Monsieur
Mareschal, the headmaster, after examining him, had thought of
placing him among the senior boys. It was Louis' ignorance of Latin
that placed him so low as the fourth class, but he would certainly leap
up a class every year; and, as a remarkable exception, he was to be one
of the "Academy." Proh pudor! we were to have the honor of counting
among the "little boys" one whose coat was adorned with the red
ribbon displayed by the "Academicians" of Vendome. These
Academicians enjoyed distinguished privileges; they often dined at the
director's table, and held two literary meetings annually, at which we
were all present to hear their elucubrations. An Academician was a
great man in embryo. And if every Vendome scholar would speak the
truth, he would confess that, in later life, an Academician of the great
French Academy seemed to him far less remarkable than the
stupendous boy who wore the cross and the imposing red ribbon which
were the insignia of our "Academy."
It was very unusual to be one of that illustrious body before attaining to
the second class, for the Academicians were expected to hold public
meetings every Thursday during the holidays, and to read tales in verse
or prose, epistles, essays, tragedies, dramas --compositions far above
the intelligence of the lower classes. I long treasured the memory of a
story called the "Green Ass," which was, I think, the masterpiece of this
unknown Society. In the fourth, and an Academician! This boy of
fourteen, a poet already, the protege of Madame de Stael, a coming
genius, said Father Haugoult, was to be one of us! a wizard, a youth
capable of writing a composition or a translation while we were being
called into lessons, and of learning his lessons by reading them through
but once. Louis Lambert bewildered all our ideas. And Father
Haugoult's curiosity and impatience to see this new boy added fuel to
our excited fancy.
"If he has pigeons, he can have no pigeon-house; there is not room for

another. Well, it cannot be helped," said one boy, since famous as an
agriculturist.
"Who will sit next to him?" said another.
"Oh, I wish I might be his chum!" cried an enthusiast.
In school language, the word here rendered chum--faisant, or in some
schools, _copin_--expressed a fraternal sharing of the joys and evils of
your childish existence, a community of interests that was fruitful of
squabbling and making friends again, a treaty of alliance offensive and
defensive. It is strange, but never in my time did I know brothers who
were chums. If man lives by his feelings, he thinks perhaps that he will
make his life the poorer if he merges an affection of his own choosing
in a natural tie.
The impression made upon me by Father Haugoult's harangue that
evening is one of the most vivid reminiscences of my childhood; I can
compare it with nothing but my first reading of Robinson Crusoe.
Indeed, I owe to my recollection of these prodigious impressions an
observation that may perhaps be new as to the different sense attached
to words by each hearer. The word in itself has no final meaning; we
affect a word more than it affects us; its value is in relation to the
images we have assimilated and grouped round it; but a study of this
fact would require considerable elaboration, and lead us too far from
our immediate subject.
Not being able to sleep, I had a long discussion with my next neighbor
in the dormitory as to the remarkable being who on the morrow was to
be one of us. This neighbor, who became an officer, and is now a writer
with lofty philosophical views, Barchou de Penhoen, has not been false
to his pre-destination, nor to the hazard of fortune by which the only
two scholars of Vendome, of whose fame Vendome ever hears, were
brought together in the same classroom, on the same form, and under
the same roof. Our comrade Dufaure had not, when this book was
published, made his appearance in public life as a lawyer. The
translator of Fichte, the expositor and friend of Ballanche, was already
interested, as I myself was, in metaphysical questions; we often talked
nonsense together about God, ourselves, and nature. He at that time
affected pyrrhonism. Jealous of his place as leader, he doubted
Lambert's precocious gifts; while I, having lately read Les Enfants
celebres, overwhelmed him with evidence, quoting young Montcalm,

Pico della Mirandola, Pascal--in short, a score of early developed
brains, anomalies that are famous in the history of the human mind, and
Lambert's predecessors.
I was at the time passionately addicted to reading. My father, who was
ambitious to