These feelings were equally shared by us without our know-
ing it; perhaps I have but now divined them. We lived
exactly like two rats, huddled into the corner of the room
1 72 LOUIS LAMBERT
where our desks were, sitting there alike during lesson time
and play hours. This strange state of affairs inevitably and
in fact placed us on a footing of war with all the other boys
in our division. Forgotten for the most part, we sat there
very contentedly; half happy, like two plants, two images
who would have been missed from the furniture of the room.
But the most aggressive of our schoolfellows would some-
times torment us, jvist to show their malignant power, and
we responded with stolid contempt, which brought many a
thrashing down on the Poet-and-Pythagoras.
Lambert's home-sickness lasted for many months. I know
no words to describe the dejection to which he was a prey.
Louis lias taken the glory off many a masterpiece for me.
We had both played the part of the "Leper of Aosta," and
had both experienced the feelings described in Monsieur de
Maistre's story, before we read them as expressed by his elo-
quent pen. A book may, indeed, revive the memories of our
childhood, but it can never compete with them successfully.
Lambert's woes had taught me many a chant of sorrow far
more appealing than the finest passages in "Werther." And,
indeed, there is no possible comparison between the pangs
of a passion condemned, whether rightly or wrongly, by
every law, and the grief of a poor child pining for the glorious
sunshine, the dews of the valle}^ and liberty. Werther is the
slave of desire; Louis Lambert was an enslaved soul. Given
equal talent, the more pathetic sorrow, founded on desires
which, being purer, are the more genuine, must transcend the
wail even of genius.
After sitting for a long time with his eyes fixed on a lime-
tree in the playground, Louis would say just a word ; but that
word would reveal an infinite speculation.
"Happily for me," he exclaimed one day, "there are hours
of comfort when I feel as though the walls of the room had
fallen and I were awa}' — away in the fields ! What a pleasure
it is to let oneself go on the stream of one's thoughts as a bird
is borne up on its wings !"
"Why is green a color so largely diffused throughout crea-
L6UIS LAMBERT lt3
tion V he would ask me. "Why are there so few straight lines
in nature? Why is it that man, in his structures, rarely
introduces curves ? Why is it that he alone, of all creatures,
has a sense of straightness ?"
These queries revealed long excursions in space. He had,
I am sure, seen vast landscapes, fragrant with the scent of
woods. He was always silent and resigned, a living elegy,
always suffering but unable to complain of suffering. An
eagle that needed the world to feed him, shut in between
four narrow, dirty walls; and thus his life became an ideal
life in the strictest meaning of the words. Filled as he was
with contempt of the almost useless studies to which Ave were
harnessed, Louis went on his skyward way absolutely uncon-
scious of the things about us.
I, obeying the imitative instinct that is so strong in child-
hood, tried to regulate my life in conformity with his. And
Louis the more easily infected me with the sort of torpor
in which deep contemplation leaves the body, because I was
younger and more impressionable than he. Like two lovers,
we got into the habit of thinking together in a common
reverie. His intuitions had already acquired that acuteness
which must surely characterize the intellectual perceptiveness
of great poets and often bring them to the verge of madness.
"Do you ever feel," said he to me one day, "as though
imagined suffering affected you in spite of yourself? If, for
instance, I think with concentration of the effect that the
blade of my penknife would have in piercing my flesh, I feel
an acute pain as if I had really cut myself ; only the blood is
wanting. But the pain comes suddenly, and startles me like
a sharp noise breaking profound silence. Can an idea cause
physical pain ? — What do you say to that, eh ?''
When he gave utterance to such subtle reflections, we both
fell into artless meditation; we set to work to detect in our-
selves the inscrutable phenomena of the origin of thoughts,
which Lambert hoped to discover in their earliest germ, so as
to describe some day. the unknown process. Then, after much
discussion, often mixed up with childish notions, a look would
174 LOUIS LAMBERT
flash from Lambert's eager eyes; he would grasp my hand,
and a word from the depths of his soul would show the cur-
rent of his mind.
"Thinking is seeing," said he one day, carried away by
some objection raised as to the first principles of our organi-
zation. "Every human science is based on deduction, which
is a slow process of seeing by which we work up from the
effect to the cause ; or, in a wider sense, all poetry, like every
work of art, proceeds from a swift vision of things."
He was a spiritualist (as opposed to materialism) ; but I
would venture to contradict him, using his own arguments
to consider the intellect as a purely physical phenomenon. We
both were right. Perhaps the words materialism and spiritual-
ism express the two faces of the same fact. His considerations
on the substance of the mind led to his accepting, with a cer-
tain pride, the life of privation to which we were condemned
in consequence of our idleness and our indifference to learn-
ing. He had a certain consciousness of his own powers which
bore him up through his spiritual cogitations. How de-
lightful it was to me to feel his soul acting on my own!
Many a time have we remained sitting on our form, both
buried in one book, having quite forgotten each other's ex-
istence, and yet not apart ; each conscious of the other's pres-
ence, and bathing in an ocean of thought, like two fish swim-
ming in the same waters.
Our life, apparently, was merely vegetating; but we lived
through our heart and brain.
Lambert's influence over my imagination left traces that
still abide. I used to listen hungrily to his tales, full of the
marvels which make men, as well as children, rapturously
devour stories in which truth assumes the most grotesque
forms. His passion for mystery, and the credulity natural to
the young, often led us to discuss Heaven and Hell. Then
Louis, by expounding Swedenborg, would try to mak? me
share in his beliefs concerning angels. In his least logical
arguments there were still amazing observations as to the
powers of man, which gave his words that color of truth
LOUIS LAMBERT 175
without which nothing can be done in any art. The ro-
mantic end he foresaw as the destiny of man was calculated to
flatter the yearning which tempts blameless imaginations
to give themselves up to beliefs. Is it not during the youth
of a nation that its dogmas and idols are conceived? And
are lot the supernatural beings before whom the people trem-
ble tl e personification of their feelings and their magnified
desirei ?
All that 1 can now remember of the poetical conversations
we held together concerning the Swedish prophet, whose
works I have since had the curiosity to read, may be told in
a few paragraphs.
In each of us there are two distinct beings. According to
Swedenborg, the angel is an individual in whom the inner
being conquers the external being. If a man desires to earn
his call to be an angel, as soon as his mind reveals to him
his twofold existence, he must strive to foster the delicate
angelic essence that exists within him. If, for lack of a lucid
appreciation of his destiny, he allows bodily action to pre-
dominate, instead of confirming his intellectual being, all his
powers will be absorbed in the use of his external senses,
and the angel will slowly perish by the materialization of
both natures. In the contrary case, if he nourishes his inner
being with the aliment needful to it, the soul triumphs over
matter and strives to get free.
When they separate by the act of what we call death, the
angel, strong enough then to cast off its wrappings, survives
and begins its real life. The infinite variety which differ-
entiates individual men can only be explained by this twofold
existence, which, again, is proved and made intelligible by
that variety.
In point of fact, the wide distance between a man whose
torpid intelligence condemns him to evident stupidity, and
one who, by the exercise of his inner life, has acquired the
gift of some power, allows us to suppose that '^^here is as great
a difference between men of genius ind other beings as there
176 LOUIS LAMBERT
is between the blind and those who soe. This hypothesis,
since it extends creation beA'ond all limits gives us, as it were,
the clue to heaven. The beings who, here on earth, are ap-
parently mingled without distinction, are there distributed,
according to their inner perfection, in distinct spheres whose
speech and manners have nothing in common. In the in-
visible world, as in the real world, if some native of the lower
spheres comes, all unworthy, into a higher sphere, not only
can he never understand the customs and language there,
but his mere presence paralyzes the voice and hearts of those
who dwell therein.
Dante, in his Divine Comedy, had perhaps some slight in-
tuition of those sjDheres which begin in the world of torment,
and rise, circle on circle, to the highest heaven. Thus Sweden-
borg's doctrine is the product of a 'rcciu spirit \ioting down
the innumerable signs by which the angels maiiifest their
presence among men.
This doctrine, which I have endeavored to sum up in a
more or less consistent form, was set before me by Lambert
with all the fascination of mysticism, swathed in the wrap-
pings of the phraseology affected by m.ystical writers: an
obscure language full of abstractions, and taking such effect
on the brain, that there are books by Jacob Boehm, Sweden-
borg, and Madame Guyon, so strangely powerful that they
give rise to phantasies as various as the dreams of the opium-
eater. Lambert told me of mystical facts so extraordinary,
he so acted on my imagination, that he made my brain reel.
Still, I loved to plunge into that realm of mystery, invisible
to the senses, in which every one likes to dwell, whether he
pictures it to himself under the indefinite ideal of the Future,
or clothes it in the more solid guise of romance. These vio-
lent revulsions of the mind on itself gave me, without my
knowing it, a comprehension of its power, and accustomed
jne to the workings of the mind.
Lambert himself explained everything by his theory of
the angels. To him pure love — love as we dream of it in
youth — was the coalescence of two angelic natures. Nothing
LOUIS LAMBERT 177
could exceed the fervency with which he longed to meet a
woman angel. And who better than he conld inspire or feel
love? If anything could give an impression of an exquisite
nature, was it not the amiability and kindliness that marked
his feelings, his words, his actions, his slightest gestures,
the conjugal regard that united us as boys, and that we ex-
pressed when we called ourselves chums?
There was no distinction for us between my ideas and his.
We imitated each other's handwriting, so that one might
write the tasks of both. Thus, if one of us had a book to
finish and to return to the mathematical master, he could
read on without interruption while the other scribbled off his
exercise and imposition. We did our tasks as though paying
a task on our peace of mind. If my memory does not play
me false, they were sometimes of remarkable merit when
Lambert did them. But on the foregone conclusion that
we were both of us idiots, the master always went through
them under a rooted prejudice, and even kept them to read
to be laughed at by our schoolfellows.
I remember one afternoon, at the end of the lesson, which
lasted from two till four, the master took possession of a
page of translation by Lambert. The passage began with,
Cuius Gracchus, vir nohilis; Lambert had construed this by
'^Caius Gracchus had a noble heart."
"Where do you find 'heart' in noljilisT' said the Father
sharply.
And there was a roar of laughter, vhiie Lambert looked
at the master in some bewilderment.
"What would Madame la Baronnt de Stael say if she could
know that you make such nonsense of a word that means of
noble family, of patrician rank?"
"She would say that you were an ass !" said I in a muttered
tone.
"Master Poet, you will stay in for a week," replied the
master, who unfortunately overheard me.
Lambert simply repeated, looking at me with inexpressible
affection, "Vir nobilis!"
178 LOUIS LAMBERT
Madame de Stael was, in fact, partly the cause of Lam-
bert's troubles. On every pretext masters and pupils threw
the name in his teeth, either in irony or in reproof.
Louis lost no time in getting himself "kept in" to share my
imprisonment. Freer thus than in any other circumstances,
we could talk the whole day long in the silence of the dormi-
tories, where each boy had a cubicle six feet square, the parti-
tions consisting at the top of open bars. The doors, fitted
with gratings, were locked at night and opened in the morn-
ing under the eye of the Father whose duty it was to super-
intend our rising and going to bed. The creak of these gates,
which the college servants unlocked with remarkable expedi-
tion, was a sound peculiar to that college. These little cells
were our prison, and boys were sometimes shut up there for
a month at a time. The boys in these coops were under the
stem eye of the prefect, a sort of censor who stole up at
certain hours, or at unexpected moments, with a silent step,
to hear if we were talking instead of writing our impositions.
But a few walnut shells dropped on the stairs, or the sharp-
ness of our hearing, almost always enabled us to beware of his
joming, so we could give ourselves up without anxiety to our
iavorite studies. However, as books were prohibited, our
prison hours were chiefly filled up with metaphysical discus-
sions, or with relating singular facts connected with the phe-
nomena of mind.
One of the most extraordinary of these incidents beyond
question is this, which I will here record, not only because
it concerns Lambert, but because it perhaps was the turning-
point of his scientific career. By the law of custom in all
schools, Thursday and Sunday were holidays; but the ser-
vices, which wo were made to attend very regularly, so com-
pletely filled up Sunday, that we considered Thursday our
only real day of freedom. After once attending Mass, we
had a long day before us to spend in walks in the country
round the town of Vendome. The manor of Eochambeau
was the most interesting object of our excursions, perhaps
by reason of its distance; the smaller boys were very seldom
LOUIS LAMBERT 179
taken on so fatiguing an expedition. However, once or twice
a year the class-masters would hold out Kochambeau as a
reward for diligence.
In 1812, towards the end of the spring, we were to go there
for the first time. Our anxiety to see this famous chateau
of Eochambeau, where the owner sometimes treated the boys
to milk, made us all very good, and nothing hindered the
outing. Neither Lambert nor I had ever seen the pretty
valley of the Loir where the house stood. So his imagination
and mine were much excited by the prospect of this excursion,
which filled the school with traditional glee. We talked of it
all the evening, planning to spend in fruit or milk such money
as we had saved, against all the habits of school-life.
After dinner next day, we set out at half-past twelve, each
provided with a square hunch of bread, given to us for our
afternoon snack. And off we went, as gay as swallows,
marching in a body on the famous chateau with an eagerness
which would at first allow of no fatigue. When we reached
the hill, whence we looked down on the house standing half-
way down the slope, on the devious valley through which the
river winds and sparkles between meadows in graceful curves
— a beautiful landscape, one of those scenes to which the keen
emotions of early youth or of love lend such a charm, that
it is wise never to see them again in later years — Louis Lam-
bert said to me, "Why, I saw this last night in a dream."
He recognized the clump of trees under which we were
standing, the grouping of the woods, the color of the water,
the turrets of the chateau, the details, the distance, in fact
every part of the prospect which we looked on for the first
time. We were mere children; I, at any rate, who was but
thirteen ; Louis, at fifteen, might have the precocity of genius,
but at that time we were incapable of falsehood in the most
trivial matters of our life as friends. Indeed, if Lambert's
powerful mind had auy presentiment of the importance of
such facts, he v/as far from appreciating their whole bearing;
qnd he was quite astonished by this incident. I asked him
if he had not perhaps been brought to Rochambeau in his
180 LOUIS LAMBERT
infancy^ and my question stnick liim; but after thinking it
over, he answered in the negative. This incident, analogous
to what may be known of the phenomena of sleep in several
persons, will illustrate the beginnings of Lambert's line of
talent; he took it, in fact, as the basis of a whole system,
using a fragment — as Cuvier did in another branch of in-
quiry — as a clue to the reconstruction of a complete system.
At this moment we were sitting together on an old oak-
stump, and after a few minutes' reflection, Louis said to me :
"If the landscape did not come to me — which it is absurd
to imagine — I must have come here. If I was here while I
was asleep in my cubicle, does not that constitute a complete
severance of my body and m}' inner being ? Does it not prove
some inscrutable locomotive faculty in the spirit with effects
resembling those of locomotion in the body? Well, then, if
my spirit and my body can be severed during sleep, why
should I not insist on their separating in the same way while
I am awake ? I see no half-way mean between the two propo-
sitions.
"But if we go further into details: Either the facts are
due to the action of a faculty which brings out a second
being to whom my body is merely a husk, since I was in my
cell, and yet I saw the landscape — and this upsets many
systems; or the facts took place either in some nerve centre,
of which the name is yet to be discovered, where our feelings
dwell and move ; or else in the cerebral centre, where ideas
are formed. This last hypothesis gives rise to some strange
questions. I walked, I saw, I heard. Motion is inconceivable
but in space, sound acts only at certain angles or on surfaces,
color is caused only by light. If, in the dark, with my eyes
shut, I saw, in mj^self, colored objects; if I heard sounds in
the most perfect silence and without the conditions requisite
for the production of sound; if without stirring I traversed
wide tract? of space, there must be inner faculties independent
of the external laws of physics. Material nature must be
penetrable by the spirit.
"How is it that men have hitherto given so little thought
LOUIS LAMBERT 181
to the phenomena of sleep, which seem to prove that man has
a double life ? May there not be a new science lying beneath
them?" he added, striking his brow with his hand. "If not
the elements of a science, at any rate the revelation of stu-
pendous powers in man; at least they prove a frequent sever-
ance of our two natures, the fact I have been thinking out
for a very long time. At last, then, I have hit on evidence
to show the superiority that distinguishes our latent senses
from our corporeal senses ! Homo duplex !
"And yet," he went on, after a pause, with a doubtful shrug,
"perhaps we have not two natures ; perhaps we are merely
gifted with personal and perfectible qualities, of which the
development within us produces certain unobserved phe-
nomena of activity, penetration, and vision. In our love of
the marvelous, a passion begotten of our pride, we have trans-
lated these effects into poetical inventions, because we did
not understand them. It is so convenient to deify the in-
comprehensible !
"I should, I own, lament over the loss of my illusions. I
so much wished to believe in our twofold nature and in
Swedenborg's angels. Must this new science destroy them?
Yes; for the study of our unknown properties involves us in
a science that appears to be materialistic, for the Spirit uses,
divides, and animates the Substance; but it does not de-
stroy it."
He remained pensive, almost sad. Perhaps he saw the
dreams of his. youth as swaddling clothes that he must soon
shake off.
"Sight and hearing are, no doubt, the sheaths for a very
marvelous instrument," said he, laughing at his own figure of
speech.
Always when he was talking to me of Heaven and Hell, he
was wont to treat of Nature as being master; but now, as
he pronounced these last words, big with prescience, he
seemed to soar more boldly than ever above the landscape,
and his forehead seemed ready to burst with the afflatus of
genius. His powers — mental powers we must nail them till
182 LOUIS LAMBERT
some new term is found — seemed to flash from the organs
intended to express them. His eyes shot out thoughts; his
aplifted hand, his silent but tremulous lips were eloquent;
his burning glance was radiant; at last his head, as though
too heavy, or exhausted by too eager a flight, fell on his
breast. This boy — this giant — bent his head, took my hand
and clasped it in his own, which was damp, so fevered was he
for the search for truth ; then, after a pause, he said :
"I shall be famous ! — And you too," he added after a
pause. "We will both study the Chemistry of the Will."
Noble soul ! I recognized his superiority, though he took
great care never to make me feel it. He shared with me all
the treasures of his mind, and regarded me as instrumental
in his discoveries, leaving me the credit of my insignificant
contributions. He was alwa3's as gracious as a woman in love ;
he had all the bashful feeling, the delicacy of soul which
make life happy and pleasant to endure.
On the following day he began writing what he called a
Treatise on the Will; his subsequent reflections led to many
changes in its plan and method ; but the incident of that day
was certainly the germ of the work, just as the electric shock
always felt by Mesmer at the approach of a particular man-
servant was the starting-point of his discoveries in magnetism,
a science till then interred under the mysteries of Isis, of
Delphi, of the cave of Trophonius, and rediscovered by that
prodigious genius, close on Lavater, and the precursor of Gall.
Lambert's ideas, suddenly illuminated by this flash of light,
assumed vaster proportions; he disentangled certain truths
from his many acquisitions and brought them into order;
then, like a founder, he cast the model of his work. At the
end of six months' indefatigable labor, Lambert's writings
excited the curiosity of our companions, and became the object
of cruel practical jokes which led to a fatal issue.
One day one of the masters, who was bent on seeing the
manuscripts, enlisted the aid of our tyrants, and came to
seize, by force, a box that contained the precious papers.
' LOUIS LAMBERT 183
Lambert and I defended it with incredible courage. The
trunk was locked, our aggressors could not open it, but they
tried to smash it in the struggle, a stroke of malignity at
which we shrieked with rage. Some of the boys, with a sense
of justice, or struck perhaps by our heroic defence, advised the
attacking party to leave us in peace, crushing us with in-
sulting contempt. But suddenly, brought to the spot by the
noise of a battle. Father Haugoult roughly intervened, in
quiring as to the cause of the fight. Our enemies had inter-
rupted us in writing our impositions, and the class-master
came to protect his slaves. The foe, in self-defence, betrayed
the existence of the manuscript. The dreadful Haugoult
insisted on our giving up the box; if we should resist, he
would have it broken open. Lambert gave him the key; the
master took out the papers, glanced through them, and said,
as he confiscated them :
"And it is for such rubbish as this that you neglect your
lessons !"
Large tears fell from Lambert's eyes, wrung from him as
much by a sense of his offended moral superiority as by the gra-
tuitous insult and betrayal that he had suffered. We gave the
accusers a glance of stern reproach : had they not delivered