The Project Gutenberg EBook of Louis Lambert, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: Louis Lambert

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Clara Bell and James Waring

Release Date: October, 1999 [Etext #1943]
Posting Date: March 6, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOUIS LAMBERT ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

LOUIS LAMBERT

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Clara Bell and James Waring

DEDICATION

"Et nunc et semper dilectoe dicatum."

LOUIS LAMBERT

Louis Lambert was born at Montoire, a little town in the Vendomois,
where his father owned a tannery of no great magnitude, and intended
that his son should succeed him; but his precocious bent for study
modified the paternal decision. For, indeed, the tanner and his wife
adored Louis, their only child, and never contradicted him in anything.

At the age of five Louis had begun by reading the Old and New
Testaments; and these two Books, including so many books, had sealed his
fate. Could that childish imagination understand the mystical depths of
the Scriptures? Could it so early follow the flight of the Holy Spirit
across the worlds? Or was it merely attracted by the romantic touches
which abound in those Oriental poems! Our narrative will answer these
questions to some readers.

One thing resulted from this first reading of the Bible: Louis went all
over Montoire begging for books, and he obtained them by those winning
ways peculiar to children, which no one can resist. While devoting
himself to these studies under no sort of guidance, he reached the age
of ten.

At that period substitutes for the army were scarce; rich families
secured them long beforehand to have them ready when the lots were
drawn. The poor tanner's modest fortune did not allow of their
purchasing a substitute for their son, and they saw no means allowed by
law for evading the conscription but that of making him a priest; so,
in 1807, they sent him to his maternal uncle, the parish priest of Mer,
another small town on the Loire, not far from Blois. This arrangement at
once satisfied Lou