eturn home she said but little about it, notwithstanding an
effusiveness which in her became mere loquacity; but it evidently
occupied her thoughts.

The only person now living who preserves any recollection of the
incident, and whom I catechised to be informed of what few words Madame
de Stael had let drop, could with difficulty recall these words spoken
by the Baroness as describing Lambert, "He is a real seer."

Louis failed to justify in the eyes of the world the high hopes he had
inspired in his protectress. The transient favor she showed him was
regarded as a feminine caprice, one of the fancies characteristic of
artist souls. Madame de Stael determined to save Louis Lambert alike
from serving the Emperor or the Church, and to preserve him for the
glorious destiny which, she thought, awaited him; for she made him out
to be a second Moses snatched from the waters. Before her departure she
instructed a friend of hers, Monsieur de Corbigny, to send her Moses in
due course to the High School at Vendome; then she probably forgot him.

Having entered this college at the age of fourteen, early in 1811,
Lambert would leave it at the end of 1814, when he had finished the
course of Philosophy. I doubt whether during the whole time he ever
heard a word of his benefactress--if indeed it was the act of a
benefactress to pay for a lad's schooling for three years without a
thought of his future prospects, after diverting him from a career in
which he might have found happiness. The circumstances of the time, and
Louis Lambert's character, may to a great extent absolve Madame de Stael
for her thoughtlessness and her generosity. The gentleman who was to
have kept up communications between her and the boy left Blois just at
the time when Louis passed out of the college. The political events that
ensued were then a sufficient excuse for this gentleman's neglect of
the Baroness' protege. The authoress of _Corinne_ heard no more of her
little Moses.

A hundred louis, which she placed in the hands of Monsieur de Corbigny,
who died, I believe, in 1812, was not a sufficiently large sum to leave
lasting memories in Madame de Stael, whose excitable nature found ample
pasture during the vicissitudes of 1814 and 1815, which absorbed all her
interest.

At this time Louis Lambert was at once too proud and too poor to go in
search of a patroness who was traveling all over Europe. However, he
went on foot from Blois to Paris in the hope