Louis Lambert | Page 8

see me in the Ecole Polytechnique, paid for me to have a
special course of private lessons in mathematics. My mathematical
master was the librarian of the college, and allowed me to help myself
to books without much caring what I chose to take from the library, a
quiet spot where I went to him during play-hours to have my lesson.
Either he was no great mathematician, or he was absorbed in some
grand scheme, for he very willingly left me to read when I ought to
have been learning, while he worked at I knew not what. So, by a tacit
understanding between us, I made no complaints of being taught
nothing, and he said nothing of the books I borrowed.
Carried away by this ill-timed mania, I neglected my studies to
compose poems, which certainly can have shown no great promise, to
judge by a line of too many feet which became famous among my
companions--the beginning of an epic on the Incas:
"O Inca! O roi infortune et malheureux!"
In derision of such attempts, I was nicknamed the Poet, but mockery
did not cure me. I was always rhyming, in spite of good advice from
Monsieur Mareschal, the headmaster, who tried to cure me of an
unfortunately inveterate passion by telling me the fable of a linnet that
fell out of the nest because it tried to fly before its wings were grown. I
persisted in my reading; I became the least emulous, the idlest, the most
dreamy of all the division of "little boys," and consequently the most
frequently punished.
This autobiographical digression may give some idea of the reflections
I was led to make in anticipation of Lambert's arrival. I was then twelve
years old. I felt sympathy from the first for the boy whose temperament
had some points of likeness to my own. I was at last to have a
companion in daydreams and meditations. Though I knew not yet what
glory meant, I thought it glory to be the familiar friend of a child whose
immortality was foreseen by Madame de Stael. To me Louis Lambert
was as a giant.
The looked-for morrow came at last. A minute before breakfast we
heard the steps of Monsieur Mareschal and of the new boy in the quiet

courtyard. Every head was turned at once to the door of the classroom.
Father Haugoult, who participated in our torments of curiosity, did not
sound the whistle he used to reduce our mutterings to silence and bring
us back to our tasks. We then saw this famous new boy, whom
Monsieur Mareschal was leading by the hand. The superintendent
descended from his desk, and the headmaster said to him solemnly,
according to etiquette: "Monsieur, I have brought you Monsieur Louis
Lambert; will you place him in the fourth class? He will begin work
to-morrow."
Then, after speaking a few words in an undertone to the class-master,
he said:
"Where can he sit?"
It would have been unfair to displace one of us for a newcomer; so as
there was but one desk vacant, Louis Lambert came to fill it, next to me,
for I had last joined the class. Though we still had some time to wait
before lessons were over, we all stood up to look at Louis Lambert.
Monsieur Mareschal heard our mutterings, saw how eager we were,
and said, with the kindness that endeared him to us all:
"Well, well, but make no noise; do not disturb the other classes."
These words set us free to play some little time before breakfast, and
we all gathered round Lambert while Monsieur Mareschal walked up
and down the courtyard with Father Haugoult.
There were about eighty of us little demons, as bold as birds of prey.
Though we ourselves had all gone through this cruel novitiate, we
showed no mercy on a newcomer, never sparing him the mockery, the
catechism, the impertinence, which were inexhaustible on such
occasions, to the discomfiture of the neophyte, whose manners,
strength, and temper were thus tested. Lambert, whether he was stoical
or dumfounded, made no reply to any questions. One of us thereupon
remarked that he was no doubt of the school of Pythagoras, and there
was a shout of laughter. The new boy was thenceforth Pythagoras
through all his life at the college. At the same time, Lambert's piercing
eye, the scorn expressed in his face for our childishness, so far removed
from the stamp of his own nature, the easy attitude he assumed, and his
evident strength in proportion to his years, infused a certain respect into
the veriest scamps among us. For my part, I kept near him, absorbed in
studying him in silence.

Louis Lambert was slightly built, nearly five feet in height; his face
was tanned, and his