real cause of my suffering was the ever-present souvenir of my mother.
Having always lived alone with her, I could not tear myself away from
the recollection of the peaceful, happy life which I had led year
after year. I had been happy, and I had been poor with her. A
thousand details of this very poverty, which absence made all the more
touching, searched out my very heart. At night I was always thinking
of her, and I could get no sleep. My only consolation was to write her
letters full of tender feeling and moist with tears. Our letters,
as is the usage in religious establishments, were read by one of the
masters. He was so struck by the tone of deep affection which pervaded
my boyish utterances that he showed one of them to M. Dupanloup, who
was very much surprised when he read it.

The noblest trait in M. Dupanloup's character was his affection for
his mother. Though his birth was, in one way, the greatest trouble of
his life, he worshipped his mother. She lived with him, and though
we never saw her, we knew that he always spent so much time with her
every day. He often said that a man's worth is to be measured by the
respect he pays to his mother. He gave us excellent advice upon
this head which I never failed to follow, as, for instance, never to
address her in the second person singular, or to end a letter without
using the word _respect_. This created a connecting link between us.
My letter was shown to him on a Friday, upon which evening the reports
for the week were always read out before him. I had not, upon that
occasion, done very well with my composition, being only fifth or
sixth. "Ah!" he said, "if the subject had been that of a letter which
I read this morning, Ernest Renan would have been first." From that
time forth he noticed me. He recognised the fact of my existence, and
I regarded him, as we all did, as a principle of life, a sort of god.
One worship took the place of another, and the sentiment inspired by
my early teachers gradually died out.

Only those who knew Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet during the brilliant
period from 1838 to 1844 can form an adequate idea of the intense
life which prevailed there.[1] And this life had only one source, one
principle: M. Dupanloup himself. The whole work fell on his shoulders.
Regulations, usage administration, the spiritual and temporal
government of the college, were all centred in him. The college was
full of defects, but he made up for them all. As a wr