her chateau of
Rocher, in order to bring up her grandchildren, after the successive
deaths of her son and her daughter-in-law, was very much attached to her
cure, and used to say of him: "What a heart he has!"

He came every Thursday to spend the evening with the comtesse, and they
were close friends, with the frank and honest friendship of old people.

She persisted:

"Look here, M. le Cure! it is your turn now to make a confession!"

He repeated: "I was not made for ordinary life. I saw it fortunately
in time, and I have had many proofs since that I made no mistake on the
point:

"My parents, who were mercers in Verdiers, and were quite well to do,
had great ambitions for me. They sent me to a boarding school while I
was very young. No one knows what a boy may suffer at school through
the mere fact of separation, of isolation. This monotonous life without
affection is good for some, and detestable for others. Young people are
often more sensitive than one supposes, and by shutting them up thus too
soon, far from those they love, we may develop to an exaggerated
extent a sensitiveness which is overwrought and may become sickly and
dangerous.

"I scarcely ever played; I had no companions; I passed my hours in
homesickness; I spent the whole night weeping in my bed. I sought to
bring before my mind recollections of home, trifling memories of little
things, little events. I thought incessantly of all I had left behind
there. I became almost imperceptibly an over-sensitive youth to whom the
slightest annoyances were terrible griefs.

"In this way I remained taciturn, self-absorbed, without expansion,
without confidants. This mental excitement was going on secretly and
surely. The nerves of children are quickly affected, and one should
see to it that they live a tranquil life until they are almost fully
developed. But who ever reflects that, for certain boys, an unjust
imposition may be as great a pang as the death of a friend in later
years? Who can explain why certain young temperaments are liable to
terrible emotions for the slightest cause, and may eventually become
morbid and incurable?

"This was my case. This faculty of regret developed in me to such an
extent that my existence became a martyrdom.

"I did not speak about it; I said nothing about it; but gradually I
became so sensitive that my soul resembled an open wound. Everything
that affected me gave me painful twitchings, frightful shocks, and
conse