mbert and his master,
resulting in a certain amount of "strap." Thus did he first discover the
power of his eye.

The hapless poet, so full of nerves, as sensitive as a woman, under the
sway of chronic melancholy, and as sick with genius as a girl with
love that she pines for, knowing nothing of it;--this boy, at once so
powerful and so weak, transplanted by "Corinne" from the country he
loved, to be squeezed in the mould of a collegiate routine to which
every spirit and every body must yield, whatever their range or
temperament, accepting its rule and its uniform as gold is crushed into
round coin under the press; Louis Lambert suffered in every spot where
pain can touch the soul or the flesh. Stuck on a form, restricted to
the acreage of his desk, a victim of the strap and to a sickly frame,
tortured in every sense, environed by distress--everything compelled
him to give his body up to the myriad tyrannies of school life; and,
like the martyrs who smiled in the midst of suffering, he took refuge in
heaven, which lay open to his mind. Perhaps this life of purely inward
emotions helped him to see something of the mysteries he so entirely
believed in!

Our independence, our illicit amusements, our apparent waste of time,
our persistent indifference, our frequent punishments and aversion for
our exercises and impositions, earned us a reputation, which no one
cared to controvert, for being an idle and incorrigible pair. Our
masters treated us with contempt, and we fell into utter disgrace with
our companions, from whom we concealed our secret studies for fear
of being laughed at. This hard judgment, which was injustice in the
masters, was but natural in our schoolfellows. We could neither play
ball, nor run races, nor walk on stilts. On exceptional holidays, when
amnesty was proclaimed and we got a few hours of freedom, we shared in
none of the popular diversions of the school. Aliens from the pleasures
enjoyed by the others, we were outcasts, sitting forlorn under a tree in
the playing-ground. The Poet-and-Pythagoras formed an exception and led
a life apart from the life of the rest.

The penetrating instinct and unerring conceit of schoolboys made them
feel that we were of a nature either far above or far beneath their own;
hence some simply hated our aristocratic reserve, others merely scorned
our ineptitude. These feelings were equally shared by us without our
knowing it; perhaps I have but now divined them. We live