The Lily of the Valley | Page 4

the librarian. How many griefs were in the shadow of that solitude;
what genuine anguish filled my neglected life! Imagine what my sore
heart felt when, at the first distribution of prizes,--of which I obtained
the two most valued, namely, for theme and for translation,--neither my
father nor my mother was present in the theatre when I came forward to
receive the awards amid general acclamations, although the building
was filled with the relatives of all my comrades. Instead of kissing the
distributor, according to custom, I burst into tears and threw myself on
his breast. That night I burned my crowns in the stove. The parents of
the other boys were in town for a whole week preceding the
distribution of the prizes, and my comrades departed joyfully the next
day; while I, whose father and mother were only a few miles distant,
remained at the school with the "outremers,"--a name given to scholars
whose families were in the colonies or in foreign countries.

You will notice throughout how my unhappiness increased in
proportion as the social spheres on which I entered widened. God
knows what efforts I made to weaken the decree which condemned me
to live within myself! What hopes, long cherished with eagerness of
soul, were doomed to perish in a day! To persuade my parents to come
and see me, I wrote them letters full of feeling, too emphatically
worded, it may be; but surely such letters ought not to have drawn upon
me my mother's reprimand, coupled with ironical reproaches for my
style. Not discouraged even then, I implored the help of my sisters, to
whom I always wrote on their birthdays and fete-days with the
persistence of a neglected child; but it was all in vain. As the day for
the distribution of prizes approached I redoubled my entreaties, and
told of my expected triumphs. Misled by my parents' silence, I
expected them with a beating heart. I told my schoolfellows they were
coming; and then, when the old porter's step sounded in the corridors as
he called my happy comrades one by one to receive their friends, I was
sick with expectation. Never did that old man call my name!
One day, when I accused myself to my confessor of having cursed my
life, he pointed to the skies, where grew, he said, the promised palm for
the "Beati qui lugent" of the Saviour. From the period of my first
communion I flung myself into the mysterious depths of prayer,
attracted to religious ideas whose moral fairyland so fascinates young
spirits. Burning with ardent faith, I prayed to God to renew in my
behalf the miracles I had read of in martyrology. At five years of age I
fled to my star; at twelve I took refuge in the sanctuary. My ecstasy
brought dreams unspeakable, which fed my imagination, fostered my
susceptibilities, and strengthened my thinking powers. I have often
attributed those sublime visions to the guardian angel charged with
moulding my spirit to its divine destiny; they endowed my soul with
the faculty of seeing the inner soul of things; they prepared my heart for
the magic craft which makes a man a poet when the fatal power is his
to compare what he feels within him with reality,--the great things
aimed for with the small things gained. Those visions wrote upon my
brain a book in which I read that which I must voice; they laid upon my
lips the coal of utterance.

My father having conceived some doubts as to the tendency of the
Oratorian teachings, took me from Pont-le-Voy, and sent me to Paris to
an institution in the Marais. I was then fifteen. When examined as to
my capacity, I, who was in the rhetoric class at Pont-le-Voy, was
pronounced worthy of the third class. The sufferings I had endured in
my family and in school were continued under another form during my
stay at the Lepitre Academy. My father gave me no money; I was to be
fed, clothed, and stuffed with Latin and Greek, for a sum agreed on.
During my school life I came in contact with over a thousand comrades;
but I never met with such an instance of neglect and indifference as
mine. Monsieur Lepitre, who was fanatically attached to the Bourbons,
had had relations with my father at the time when all devoted royalists
were endeavoring to bring about the escape of Marie Antoinette from
the Temple. They had lately renewed acquaintance; and Monsieur
Lepitre thought himself obliged to repair my father's oversight, and to
give me a small sum monthly. But not being authorized to do so, the
amount was small indeed.
The Lepitre establishment was in the old Joyeuse mansion where, as in
all seignorial houses, there was a porter's lodge.