ious distant bells in the depth of a dark night. I was no
longer surprised that Mademoiselle de Villenoix considered Lambert to
be perfectly sane. The life of the soul had perhaps subdued that of
the body. His faithful companion had, no doubt--as I had at that
moment--intuitions of that melodious and beautiful existence to which we
give the name of Heaven in its highest meaning.

This woman, this angel, always was with him, seated at her embroidery
frame; and each time she drew the needle out she gazed at Lambert with
sad and tender feeling. Unable to endure this terrible sight--for I
could not, like Mademoiselle de Villenoix, read all his secrets--I went
out, and she came with me to walk for a few minutes and talk of herself
and of Lambert.

"Louis must, no doubt, appear to be mad," said she. "But he is not, if
the term mad ought only to be used in speaking of those whose brain is
for some unknown cause diseased, and who can show no reason in their
actions. Everything in my husband is perfectly balanced. Though he did
not actively recognize you, it is not that he did not see you. He has
succeeded in detaching himself from his body, and discerns us under
some other aspect--what that is, I know not. When he speaks, he utters
wondrous things. Only it often happens that he concludes in speech an
idea that had its beginning in his mind; or he may begin a sentence and
finish it in thought. To other men he seems insane; to me, living as I
do in his mind, his ideas are quite lucid. I follow the road his spirit
travels; and though I do not know every turning, I can reach the goal
with him.

"Which of us has not often known what it is to think of some futile
thing and be led on to some serious reflection through the ideas or
memories it brings in its train? Not unfrequently, after speaking about
some trifle, the simple starting-point of a rapid train of reflections,
a thinker may forget or be silent as to the abstract connection of ideas
leading to his conclusion, and speak again only to utter the last link
in the chain of his meditations.

"Inferior minds, to whom this swift mental vision is a thing unknown,
who are ignorant of the spirit's inner workings, laugh at the dreamer;
and if he is subject to this kind of obliviousness, regard him as a
madman. Louis is always in this state; he soars perpetually through the
spaces of thought, traversing them with the swiftness of a swallow; I
can follow him in his flight. This is th