abysmal and loves
the abyss. In childhood, manhood, and old age we are always eager for
mysteries in whatever form they present themselves."

This predilection was disastrous; if indeed his life can be measured by
ordinary standards, or if we may gauge another's happiness by our own or
by social notions. This taste for the "things of heaven," another phrase
he was fond of using, this _mens divinior_, was due perhaps to the
influence produced on his mind by the first books he read at his
uncle's. Saint Theresa and Madame Guyon were a sequel to the Bible; they
had the first-fruits of his manly intelligence, and accustomed him to
those swift reactions of the soul of which ecstasy is at once the result
and the means. This line of study, this peculiar taste, elevated his
heart, purified, ennobled it, gave him an appetite for the divine
nature, and suggested to him the almost womanly refinement of feeling
which is instinctive in great men; perhaps their sublime superiority is
no more than the desire to devote themselves which characterizes woman,
only transferred to the greatest things.

As a result of these early impressions, Louis passed immaculate through
his school life; this beautiful virginity of the senses naturally
resulted in the richer fervor of his blood, and in increased faculties
of mind.

The Baroness de Stael, forbidden to come within forty leagues of Paris,
spent several months of her banishment on an estate near Vendome. One
day, when out walking, she met on the skirts of the park the tanner's
son, almost in rags, and absorbed in reading. The book was a translation
of _Heaven and Hell_. At that time Monsieur Saint-Martin, Monsieur de
Gence, and a few other French or half German writers were almost the
only persons in the French Empire to whom the name of Swedenborg was
known. Madame de Stael, greatly surprised, took the book from him with
the roughness she affected in her questions, looks, and manners, and
with a keen glance at Lambert,--

"Do you understand all this?" she asked.

"Do you pray to God?" said the child.

"Why? yes!"

"And do you understand Him?"

The Baroness was silent for a moment; then she sat down by Lambert, and
began to talk to him. Unfortunately, my memory, though retentive, is far
from being so trustworthy as my friend's, and I have forgotten the whole
of the dialogue excepting those first words.

Such a meeting was of a kind to strike Madame de Stael very greatly;
on her r