and of concentrating all his forces on a given
point. But children, like men, are wont to judge of everything by first
impressions, and after the first few days we ceased to study Louis; he
entirely belied Madame de Stael's prognostications, and displayed none
of the prodigies we looked for in him.

After three months at school, Louis was looked upon as a quite ordinary
scholar. I alone was allowed really to know that sublime--why should
I not say divine?--soul, for what is nearer to God than genius in the
heart of a child? The similarity of our tastes and ideas made us friends
and chums; our intimacy was so brotherly that our school-fellows joined
our two names; one was never spoken without the other, and to call
either they always shouted "Poet-and-Pythagoras!" Some other names had
been known coupled in a like manner. Thus for two years I was the
school friend of poor Louis Lambert; and during that time my life was
so identified with his, that I am enabled now to write his intellectual
biography.

It was long before I fully knew the poetry and the wealth of ideas that
lay hidden in my companion's heart and brain. It was not till I was
thirty years of age, till my experience was matured and condensed, till
the flash of an intense illumination had thrown a fresh light upon it,
that I was capable of understanding all the bearings of the phenomena
which I witnessed at that early time. I benefited by them without
understanding their greatness or their processes; indeed, I have
forgotten some, or remember only the most conspicuous facts; still, my
memory is now able to co-ordinate them, and I have mastered the secrets
of that fertile brain by looking back to the delightful days of our
boyish affection. So it was time alone that initiated me into the
meaning of the events and facts that were crowded into that obscure
life, as into that of many another man who is lost to science. Indeed,
this narrative, so far as the expression and appreciation of many
things is concerned, will be found full of what may be termed moral
anachronisms, which perhaps will not detract from its peculiar interest.

In the course of the first few months after coming to Vendome, Louis
became the victim of a malady which, though the symptoms were invisible
to the eye of our superiors, considerably interfered with the exercise
of his remarkable gifts. Accustomed to live in the open air, and to the
freedom of a purely haphazard education, happy in the