is' passion for knowledge, and his parents' wish not
to expose him to the dreadful chances of war; and, indeed, his taste for
study and precocious intelligence gave grounds for hoping that he might
rise to high fortunes in the Church.

After remaining for about three years with his uncle, an old and not
uncultured Oratorian, Louis left him early in 1811 to enter the college
at Vendome, where he was maintained at the cost of Madame de Stael.

Lambert owed the favor and patronage of this celebrated lady to chance,
or shall we not say to Providence, who can smooth the path of forlorn
genius? To us, indeed, who do not see below the surface of human things,
such vicissitudes, of which we find many examples in the lives of great
men, appear to be merely the result of physical phenomena; to most
biographers the head of a man of genius rises above the herd as
some noble plant in the fields attracts the eye of a botanist in
its splendor. This comparison may well be applied to Louis Lambert's
adventure; he was accustomed to spend the time allowed him by his uncle
for holidays at his father's house; but instead of indulging, after the
manner of schoolboys, in the sweets of the delightful _far niente_ that
tempts us at every age, he set out every morning with part of a loaf
and his books, and went to read and meditate in the woods, to escape
his mother's remonstrances, for she believed such persistent study to be
injurious. How admirable is a mother's instinct! From that time reading
was in Louis a sort of appetite which nothing could satisfy; he devoured
books of every kind, feeding indiscriminately on religious works,
history, philosophy, and physics. He has told me that he found
indescribable delight in reading dictionaries for lack of other books,
and I readily believed him. What scholar has not many a time found
pleasure in seeking the probable meaning of some unknown word? The
analysis of a word, its physiognomy and history, would be to Lambert
matter for long dreaming. But these were not the instinctive dreams by
which a boy accustoms himself to the phenomena of life, steels himself
to every moral or physical perception--an involuntary education which
subsequently brings forth fruit both in the understanding and character
of a man; no, Louis mastered the facts, and he accounted for them after
seeking out both the principle and the end with the mother wit of a
savage. Indeed, from the age of fourteen, by one of those startlin