mpact brevity of its sound
suggest a vague image of chaste nudity and the simplicity of Truth in
all things? The syllable seems to me singularly crisp and fresh.

"I chose the formula of an abstract idea on purpose, not wishing to
illustrate the case by a word which should make it too obvious to the
apprehension, as the word _Flight_ for instance, which is a direct
appeal to the senses.

"But is it not so with every root word? They are all stamped with a
living power that comes from the soul, and which they restore to the
soul through the mysterious and wonderful action and reaction between
thought and speech. Might we not speak of it as a lover who finds on
his mistress' lips as much love as he gives? Thus, by their mere
physiognomy, words call to life in our brain the beings which they
serve to clothe. Like all beings, there is but one place where their
properties are at full liberty to act and develop. But the subject
demands a science to itself perhaps!"

And he would shrug his shoulders as much as to say, "But we are too high
and too low!"

Louis' passion for reading had on the whole been very well satisfied.
The cure of Mer had two or three thousand volumes. This treasure had
been derived from the plunder committed during the Revolution in the
neighboring chateaux and abbeys. As a priest who had taken the oath,
the worthy man had been able to choose the best books from among these
precious libraries, which were sold by the pound. In three years Louis
Lambert had assimilated the contents of all the books in his uncle's
library that were worth reading. The process of absorbing ideas by means
of reading had become in him a very strange phenomenon. His eye took
in six or seven lines at once, and his mind grasped the sense with a
swiftness as remarkable as that of his eye; sometimes even one word in a
sentence was enough to enable him to seize the gist of the matter.

His memory was prodigious. He remembered with equal exactitude the ideas
he had derived from reading, and those which had occurred to him in
the course of meditation or conversation. Indeed, he had every form of
memory--for places, for names, for words, things, and faces. He not
only recalled any object at will, but he saw them in his mind, situated,
lighted, and colored as he had originally seen them. And this power he
could exert with equal effect with regard to the most abstract efforts
of the intellect. He could remember, as he said, not merely t