of seeing her, and arrived,
unluckily, on the very day of her death. Two letters from Lambert to
the Baroness remained unanswered. The memory of Madame de Stael's good
intentions with regard to Louis remains, therefore, only in some few
young minds, struck, as mine was, by the strangeness of the story.

No one who had not gone through the training at our college could
understand the effect usually made on our minds by the announcement that
a "new boy" had arrived, or the impression that such an adventure as
Louis Lambert's was calculated to produce.

And here a little information must be given as to the primitive
administration of this institution, originally half-military and
half-monastic, to explain the new life which there awaited Lambert.
Before the Revolution, the Oratorians, devoted, like the Society of
Jesus, to the education of youth--succeeding the Jesuits, in fact, in
certain of their establishments--the colleges of Vendome, of Tournon,
of la Fleche, Pont-Levoy, Sorreze, and Juilly. That at Vendome, like the
others, I believe, turned out a certain number of cadets for the army.
The abolition of educational bodies, decreed by the convention, had but
little effect on the college at Vendome. When the first crisis had blown
over, the authorities recovered possession of their buildings; certain
Oratorians, scattered about the country, came back to the college
and re-opened it under the old rules, with the habits, practices,
and customs which gave this school a character with which I have seen
nothing at all comparable in any that I have visited since I left that
establishment.

Standing in the heart of the town, on the little river Loire which flows
under its walls, the college possesses extensive precincts, carefully
enclosed by walls, and including all the buildings necessary for
an institution on that scale: a chapel, a theatre, an infirmary,
a bakehouse, gardens, and water supply. This college is the most
celebrated home of learning in all the central provinces, and receives
pupils from them and from the colonies. Distance prohibits any frequent
visits from parents to their children.

The rule of the House forbids holidays away from it. Once entered there,
a pupil never leaves till his studies are finished. With the exception
of walks taken under the guidance of the Fathers, everything is
calculated to give the School the benefit of conventual discipline; in
my day the tawse was still a living memory, and