Louis Lambert | Page 9

hands were burnt brown by the sun, giving him an
appearance of manly vigor, which, in fact, he did not possess. Indeed,
two months after he came to the college, when studying in the
classroom had faded his vivid, so to speak, vegetable coloring, he
became as pale and white as a woman.
His head was unusually large. His hair, of a fine, bright black in masses
of curls, gave wonderful beauty to his brow, of which the proportions
were extraordinary even to us heedless boys, knowing nothing, as may
be supposed, of the auguries of phrenology, a science still in its cradle.
The distinction of this prophetic brow lay principally in the exquisitely
chiseled shape of the arches under which his black eyes sparkled, and
which had the transparency of alabaster, the line having the unusual
beauty of being perfectly level to where it met the top of the nose. But
when you saw his eyes it was difficult to think of the rest of his face,
which was indeed plain enough, for their look was full of a wonderful
variety of expression; they seemed to have a soul in their depths. At
one moment astonishingly clear and piercing, at another full of
heavenly sweetness, those eyes became dull, almost colorless, as it
seemed, when he was lost in meditation. They then looked like a
window from which the sun had suddenly vanished after lighting it up.
His strength and his voice were no less variable; equally rigid, equally
unexpected. His tone could be as sweet as that of a woman compelled
to own her love; at other times it was labored, rough, rugged, if I may
use such words in a new sense. As to his strength, he was habitually
incapable of enduring the fatigue of any game, and seemed weakly,
almost infirm. But during the early days of his school-life, one of our
little bullies having made game of this sickliness, which rendered him
unfit for the violent exercise in vogue among his fellows, Lambert took
hold with both hands of one of the class-tables, consisting of twelve
large desks, face to face and sloping from the middle; he leaned back
against the class-master's desk, steadying the table with his feet on the
cross-bar below, and said:
"Now, ten of you try to move it!"
I was present, and can vouch for this strange display of strength; it was
impossible to move the table.

Lambert had the gift of summoning to his aid at certain times the most
extraordinary powers, and of concentrating all his forces on a given
point. But children, like men, are wont to judge of everything by first
impressions, and after the first few days we ceased to study Louis; he
entirely belied Madame de Stael's prognostications, and displayed none
of the prodigies we looked for in him.
After three months at school, Louis was looked upon as a quite
ordinary scholar. I alone was allowed really to know that sublime--why
should I not say divine?--soul, for what is nearer to God than genius in
the heart of a child? The similarity of our tastes and ideas made us
friends and chums; our intimacy was so brotherly that our
school-fellows joined our two names; one was never spoken without
the other, and to call either they always shouted
"Poet-and-Pythagoras!" Some other names had been known coupled in
a like manner. Thus for two years I was the school friend of poor Louis
Lambert; and during that time my life was so identified with his, that I
am enabled now to write his intellectual biography.
It was long before I fully knew the poetry and the wealth of ideas that
lay hidden in my companion's heart and brain. It was not till I was
thirty years of age, till my experience was matured and condensed, till
the flash of an intense illumination had thrown a fresh light upon it, that
I was capable of understanding all the bearings of the phenomena
which I witnessed at that early time. I benefited by them without
understanding their greatness or their processes; indeed, I have
forgotten some, or remember only the most conspicuous facts; still, my
memory is now able to co-ordinate them, and I have mastered the
secrets of that fertile brain by looking back to the delightful days of our
boyish affection. So it was time alone that initiated me into the
meaning of the events and facts that were crowded into that obscure life,
as into that of many another man who is lost to science. Indeed, this
narrative, so far as the expression and appreciation of many things is
concerned, will be found full of what may be termed moral
anachronisms, which perhaps will not detract from its peculiar interest.
In the course of