ing the Hindoo Trimourti. The Trimourti is our Trinity.
From this dogma Magianism arose in Persia; in Egypt, the
African beliefs and the Mosaic law ; the worship of the Cabiri,
and the polytheism of Greece and Eome. While by this rami-
fication of the Trimourti the Asiatic myths became adapted
to the imaginations of various races in the lands they reached
by the agency of certain sages whom men elevated to be
demi-gods — Mithra, Bacchus, Hermes, Hercules, and the
rest — Buddha, the great reformer of the three primeval re-
ligions, lived in India, and founded his Church there, a sect
which still numbers two hundred millions more believers than
Christianity can show, while it certainly influenced the pow-
erful Will both of Jesus and of Confucius.

"Then Christianity raised her standard. Subsequently
Mahomet fused Judaism and Christianity, the Bible and the
Gospel, in one book, the Koran, adapting them to the appre-
hension of the Arab race. Finally, Swedenborg borrowed
from Magianism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Christian
mysticism all the truth and divine beauty that those four
great religious books hold in common, and added to them a
doctrine, a basis of reasoning, that may be termed mathe-
matical.

"Any man who plunges into those religious waters, of



LOUIS LAMBERT 210

which, the sources are not all known, will find proofs that
Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ, and
Swedenborg had identical principles and aimed at identical
ends.

"The last of them all, Swedenborg, will perhaps be the
Buddha of the North. Obscure and diffuse as his writings
are, we find in them the elements of a magnificent conception
of society. His Theocracy is sublime, and his creed is the only
acceptable one to superior souls. He alone brings man into
immediate communion with God, he gives a thirst for God,
he has freed the majesty of God from the trappings in which
other human dogmas have disguised Him. He left Him
where He is, making His myriad creations and creatures
gravitate towards Him through successive transformations
which promise a more immediate and more natural future
than the Catholic idea of Eternity. Swedenborg has absolved
God from the reproach attaching to Him in the estimation
of tender souls for the perpetuity of revenge to punish the
sin of a moment — a system of injustice and cruelty.

"Each man may know for himself what hope he has of
life eternal, and whether this world has any rational sense.
I mean to make the attempt. And this attempt may save
the world, just as much as the cross at Jerusalem or the
sword at Mecca. These were both the offspring of the desert.
Of the thirty-three years of Christ's life, we only know the
history of nine; His life of seclusion prepared Him for His
life of glory. And I too crave for the desert !"

Notwithstanding the difficulties of the task, I have felt it
my duty to depict Lambert's boyhood, the unknown life to
which I owe the only happy hours, the only pleasant memo-
ries, of my early days. Excepting during those two years
I had nothing but annoyances and weariness. Though some
nappiness was mine at a later time, it was always incomplete.

I have been diffuse, I know; but in default of entering
into the whole wide heart and brain of Louis Lambert — two
words which inadequately express the infinite aspects of his



220 LOUIS LAMBERT

inner life — it would be almost impossible to make the second
part of his intellectual history intelligible — a phase that was
unknown to the world and to me, but of which the mystical
outcome was juade evident to my eyes in the course of a few
hours. Those who have not already dropped this volume,
will, I hope, understand the events I still have to tell, forming
as they do a sort of second existence lived by this creature —
may I not say this creation? — in whom everything was to be
so extraordinary, even his end.

When Louis returned to Blois, his uncle was eager to pro-
cure him some amusement ; but the poor priest was regarded
as a perfect leper in that godly-minded town. jSTo one would
have anything to say to a revolutionary who had taken the
oaths. His society, therefore, consisted of a few individuals
of what were then called liberal or patriotic, or constitutional
opinions, on whom he would call for a rubber of whist or
of boston.

At the first house where he was introduced by his uncle,
Louis met a young lady, whose circumstances obliged her to
remain in this circle, so contemned by those of the fashionable
world, though her fortune was such as to make it probable
that she might by and by marry into the highest aristocracy
of the province. Mademoiselle Pauline de Villenoix was sole
heiress to the wealth amassed by her grandfather, a Jew
named Salomon, who, contrary to the customs of his nation,
had, in his old age, married a Christian and a Catholic. He
had an only son, who was brought up in his mother's faith.
At his fathers death young Salomon purchased what was
known at that time as a savonnette a vilain (literally a cake
of soap for a serf), a small estate called Villenoix, which
he contrived to get registered with a baronial title, and took
its name. He died unmarried, but he left a natural daughter,
to whom he bequeathed the greater part of his fortune, in-
eluding the lands of Villenoix. He appointed one of his
uncles. Monsieur Joseph Salomon, to be the girl's guardian.
The old Jew was so devoted to his ward that he seemed willinsr



LOUIS LAMBERT 221

to make great sacrifices for the sake of marrying her well.
But Mademoiselle de Villenoix's birth, and the cherished
prejudice against Jews that prevails in the provinces, would
not allow of her being received in the very exclusive circle
which, rightly or wrongly, considers itself noble, notwith.-
standing her own large fortune and her guardian's.

Monsieur Joseph Salomon was resolved that if she could
not secure a country squire, his niece should go to Paris and
make choice of a husband among the peers of France, liberal
or monarchical; as to happiness, that he believed he could
secure her by the terms of the marriage contract.

Mademoiselle de Villenoix was now twenty. Her re-
markable beauty and gifts of mind were surer guarantees of
happiness than those offered by money. Her features were
of the purest type of Jewish beauty; the oval lines, so noble
and maidenly, have an indescribable stamp of the ideal,
and seem to speak of the joys of the East, its unchangeably
blue sky, the glories of its lands, and the fabulous riches of
life there. She had fine eyes, shaded by deep eyelids, fringed
with thick, curled lashes. Biblical innocence sat on her brow.
Her complexion was of the pure whiteness of the Levite's robe.
She was habitually silent and thoughtful, but her movements
and gestures betrayed a quiet grace, as her speech bore witness
to a woman's sweet and loving nature. She had not, indeed,
the rosy freshness, the fruit-like bloom which blush on a
girl's cheek during her careless years. Darker shadows, with
here and there a redder vein, took the place of color, sympto-
matic of an energetic temper and nervous irritability, such as
many men do not like to meet with in a wife, while to others
they are an indication of the most sensitive chastity and pas-
sion mingled with pride.

As soon as Louis saw Mademoiselle de Villenoix, he dis-
cerned the angel within. The richest powers of his soul, and
his tendency to ecstatic reverie, every faculty within him was
at once concentrated in boundless love, the first love of a
young man, a passion which is strong indeed in all, but which
in him was raised to incalculable power by the perennial ardor



222 LOUIS LAMBERT

of his senses, the character of his ideas, and the manner in
which he lived. This passion became a gulf, into which the
hapless fellow threw everything; a gulf whither the mind
dare not venture, since his, flexible and firm as it was, was
lost there. There all was mysterious, for everything went on
in that moral world, closed to most men, whose laws were
revealed to him — perhaps to his sorrow.

When an accident threw me in the way of his uncle, the
good man showed me into the room which Lambert had at
that time lived in. I wanted to find some vestiges of his
writings, if he should have left any. There, among his
papers, untouched by the old man from that fine instinct of
grief that characterizes the aged, I found a number of letters,
too illegible ever to have been sent to Mademoiselle de Ville-
noix. My familiarity with Lambert's writing enabled me
in time to decipher the hieroglyphics of this shorthand, the
result of impatience and a frenzy of passion. Carried away
by his feelings, he had written without being conscious of
the irregularity of words too slow to express his thoughts.
He must have been compelled to copy these chaotic attempts,
for the lines often ran into each other ; but he was also afraid
perhaps of not having sufficiently disguised his feelings, and
at first, at any rate, he had probably written his love-letters
twice over.

It required all the fervency of my devotion to his memor}%
and the sort of fanaticism which comes of such a task, to
enable me to divine and restore the meaning of the five letters
that here follow. These documents, preserved by me with
pious care, are the only material evidence of his overmaster-
ing passion. Mademoiselle de Villenoix has no doubt de-
stroyed the real letters that she received, eloquent witnesses
to the delirium she inspired.

The first of these papers, evidently a rough sketch, betrays
by its style and by its length the many emendations, the
heartfelt alarms, the innumerable terrors caused by a desire
to please; the changes of expression and the hesitation be-
tween the whirl of ideas that beset a man as he indites his



LOUIS LAMBERT 223

first love-letter — a letter he never will forget, each line the
result of a reverie, each word the subject of long cogitation,
while the most unbridled passion known to man feels the
necessity of the most reserved utterance, and like a giant
stooping to enter a hovel, speaks humbly and low, so as not
to alarm a girl's soul.

No antiquary ever handled his palimpsests with greater-
respect than 1 showed in reconstructing these mutilated docu=
ments of such joy and suffering as must always be sacred t©
those who have known similar joy and grief.



"Mademoiselle, when you have read this letter, if you ever
should read it, my life will be in your hands, for I love you ;
and to me, the hope of being loved is life. Others, perhaps,
ere now, have, in speaking of themselves, misused the words
I must employ to depict the state of my soul; yet, I beseech
you to believe in the truth of my expressions ; though weak,
they are sincere. Perhaps I ought not thus to proclaim my
love. Indeed, my heart counseled me to wait in silence till
my passion should touch you, that I might the better conceal
it if its silent demonstrations should displease you ; or till I
could express it even more delicately than in words if I found
favor in your eyes. However, after having listened for long
to the coy fears that fill a youthful heart with alarms, I write
in obedience to the instinct which drags useless lamentations
from the dying.

"It has needed all my courage to silence the pride of pov-
erty, and to overleap the barriers which prejudice erects be-
tween you and me. I have had to smother many reflections
to love you in spite of your wealth ; and as I write to you,
am I not in danger of the scorn which women often reserve
for professions of love, which they accept only as one more
tribute of flattery? But we cannot help rushing with all
our might towards happiness, or being attracted to the life
of love as a plant is to the light; we must have been very



224 LOUIS LAMBERT

unliappy before we can conquer the torment, the anguish of
those secret deliberations when reason proves to us by a
thousand arguments how barren our yearning must be if it
remains buried in our hearts, and when hopes bid us dare
everything.

"I was happy when I admired you in silence; I was so
lost in the contemplation of your beautiful soul, that only to
see you left me hardly anything further to imagine. And
I should not now have dared to address you if I had not
heard that you were leaving. What misery has that one
word brought upon rae ! Indeed, it is my despair that has
shown me the extent of my attachment — it is unbounded.
Mademoiselle, you will never know — at least, I hope you may
never know — the anguish of dreading lest you should lose the
only happiness that has dawned on you on earth, the only
thing that has thrown a gleam of light in the darkness of
misery. I understood yesterday that my life was no more
in myself, but in you. There is but one woman in the world
for me, as there is but one thought in my soul. I dare nol
tell you to what a state I am reduced by my love for you. 1
would have you only as a gift from yourself ; I must therefore
avoid showing myself to you in all the attractiveness of dejec-
tion — for is it not often more impressive to a noble soul than
that of good fortune? There are many things I may not
tell you. Indeed,. I have too lofty a notion of love to taint
it with ideas that are alien to its nature. If my soul is
worthy of yours, and my life pure, your heart will have a
sympathetic insight, and you will understand me!

"It is the fate of man to offer himself to the woman who
can make him believe in happiness ; but it is your prerogative
to reject the truest passion if it is not in harmony with the
vague voices in your heart — that I know. If my lot, as de-
cided by you, must be adverse to my hopes, mademoiselle, let
me appeal to the delicacy of your maiden soul and the in-
genuous compassion of a woman to burn my letter. On my
knees I beseech you to forget all ! Do not mock at a feeling
that is wholly respectful, and that is too deeply graven on my



LOUIS LAMBERT 225

heart ever to be effaced. Break my heart, but do not rend it !
Let the expression of my first love, a pure and youtliful love,
be lost in 5-our pure and youthful heart ! Let it die there as a
prayer rises up to die in the bosom of God !

"I owe you much gratitude : I have spent delicious hours
occupied in watching you, and giving myself up to the faint
dreams of ray life; do not crush these long but transient joys
by some girlish irony. Be satisfied not to answer me. I shall
know how to interpret your silence ; you will see me no more.
If I must be condemned to know for ever what happiness
means, and to be for ever bereft of it; if, like a banished
angel, I am to cherish the sense of celestial joys while bound,
for ever to a world of sorrow — well, I can keep the secret of
my love as well as that of my griefs. — And farewell !

"Yes, I resign you to God, to whom I will pray for you,
beseeching Him to grant you a happy life ; for even if I am
driven from your heart, into which I have crept by stealth,
still I shall ever be near you. Otherwise, of what value would
the sacred words be of this letter, my first and perhaps my
last entreaty? If I should ever cease to think of you, to
love you whether in happiness or in woe, should I not deserve
my punishment?"

II

"You are not going away ! And I am loved ! I, a poor,
insignificant creature ! My beloved Pauline, you do not
yourself know the power of the look I believe in, the look
you gave me to tell me that you had chosen me — you so young
and lovely, with the world at your feet!

"To enable you to understand my happiness, I should have
to give you a history of my life. If you had rejected me,
all was over for me. I have suffered too much. Yes, my love
for you, my comforting and stupendous love, -was a last effort
of yearning for the happiness my soul strove to reach — a soul
crushed by fruitless labor, consumed by fears that make me
doubt myself, eaten into by despair which has often urged me
to die. No one in the world can conceive of the terrors my



226 LOUIS LAMBERT

fateful imagination inflicts on me. It often bears me up to
the sky, and suddenly flings me to earth again from prodi-
gious heights. Deep-seated rushes of power, or some rare
and subtle instance of peculiar lucidity, assure me now and
then that I am capable of great things. Then I embrace the
universe in my mind, I knead, shape it, inform it, I com-
prehend it — or fancy that I do; then suddenly I awake — ■
alone, sunk in blackest night, helpless and weak; I forget
the light I saw but now, I find no succor; above all, there is
no heart where I may take refuge.

"This distress of my inner life affects my physical exist-
ence. The nature of my character gives me over to the
raptures of happiness as defenceless as when the fearful light
of reflection comes to analyze and demolish them. Gifted
as I am with the melancholy faculty of seeing obstacles and
success with equal clearness, according to the mood of the
moment, I am happy or miserable by turns.

"Thus, when first I met you, I felt the presence of an
angelic nature, I breathed an air that was sweet to my burn-
ing breast, I heard in my soul the voice that never can be
false, telling me that here was happiness; but perceiving
all the barriers that divided us, I understood for the first time
what worldly prejudices were; I understood the vastness of
their pettiness, and these difficuUies terrified me more than
the prospect of happiness could delight me. At once I felt
the awful reaction which casts my expansive soul back on
itself ; the smile you had brought to my lips suddenly turned
to a bitter grimace, and I could only strive to keep calm,
while my soul was boiling with the turmoil of contradictory
emotions. In short, I experienced that gnawing pang to
which twenty-three years of suppressed sighs and betrayed
affections have not inured me.

"Well, Pauline, the look by which you promised that I
should be happy suddenly warmed my vitality, and turned
all my sorrows into joy. ISTow, I could wish that I had suf-
fered more. My love is suddenly full-grown. My soul was
a wide territory that lacked the blessing of sunshine, and



LOUIS LAMBERT 227

your eyes have shed light on it. Beloved providence ! you
will be all in all to me, orphan as I am, without a relation
but my uncle. You will be my whole family, as you are my
whole wealth, nay, the whole world to me. Have you not
bestowed on me every gladness man can desire in that chaste
— lavish — timid glance?

"You have given me incredible self-confidence and audacity.
I can dare all things now. I came back to Blois in deep
dejection. Five years of study in the heart of Paris had
made me look on the world as a prison. I had conceived of
vast schemes, and dared not speak of them. Fame seemed
to me a prize for charlatans, to which a really noble spirit
should not stoop. Thus, my ideas could only make their way
by the assistance of a man bold enough to mount the platform
of the press, and to harangue loudly the simpletons he scorns.
This kind of courage I have not. I ploughed my way on,
crushed by the verdict of the crowd, in despair at never
making it hear me. I was at once too humble and too lofty !
I swallowed m}^ thoughts as other men swallow humiliations.
I had even come to despise knowledge, blaming it for yield-
ing no real happiness.

"But since yesterday I am wholly changed. For your sake
I now covet every palm of glory, every triumph of success.
When I lay my head on your knees, I could wish to attract
to you the eyes of the whole world, just as I long to concen-
trate in my love every idea, every power that is in me. The
most splendid celebrity is a possession that genius alone can
create. Well, I can, at my will, make for you a bed of laurels.
And if the silent ovation paid to science is not all you desire,
I have within me the sword of the Word; I could run in the
path of honor and ambition whore others only crawl.

"Command me, Pauline ; I will be whatever you will. My
iron will can do anything — I am loved ! Armed with that
thought, ought not a man to sweep everything before him?
The man who wants all can do all. If you are the prize of
success, I enter the lists to-morrow. To win such a look as
that you bestowed on me, I would leap the deepest abyss.



228 LOUIS LAMBERT

Through you I understand the fabulous achievements of chiv-
alry and the most fantastic tales of the Arabian Nights. I
can believe now in the most fantastic excesses of love, and in
the success of a prisoner's wildest attempt to recover his lib-
erty. You have aroused the thousand virtues that lay dor-
mant within me — patience, resignation, all the powers of my
heart, all the strength, of my soul. I live by you and —
heavenly thought ! — for you. Everything now has a meaning
for me in life. I understand everything, even the vanities
of wealth.

"I find myself shedding all the pearls of the Indies at your
feet ; I fancy you reclining either on the rarest flowers, or
on the softest tissues, and all the splendor of the world seems
hardly worthy of you, for whom I would I could command
the harmony and the light that are given out by the harps of
seraphs and the stars of heaven ! Alas ! a poor, studious
poet, I offer you in words treasures I cannot bestow; I can
only give you my heart, in which you reign for ever. I have
nothing else. But are there no treasures in eternal gratitude,
in a smile whose expression will perpetually vary with peren-
nial happiness, under the constant eagerness of my devotion
to guess the wishes of your loving soul ? Has not one celestial
glance given us assurance of always understanding each
other ?

"I have a prayer now to be said to God every night — a
prayer full of you: 'Let my Pauline be happy !^ And will
you fill all my days as you now fill my heart ?

"Farewell, I can but trust you to God alone !" :

III

"Pauline ! tell me if I can in any way have displeased you
yesterday? Throw off the pride of heart which inflicts on me
the secret tortures that can be caused by one we love. Scold
me if you will ! Since yesterday, a vague, unutterable dread
of having offended you pours grief on the life of feeling
which you had made so sweet and so rich. The lightest veil



LOUIS LAMBERT 229

that comes between two souls sometimes grows to be a brazen
wall. There are no venial crimes in love ! If you have the
very spirit of that noble sentiment, you must feel all its pangs,
and we must be unceasingly careful not to fret . each other
by some heedless word.

"No doubt, my beloved treasure, if there is any fault, it is
in me. I cannot pride myself in the belief that I understand
a woman's heart in all the expansion of its tenderness, all thej
grace of its devotedness; but I will always endeavor to ap-
preciate the value of what you vouchsafe to show me of the
secrets of yours.

"Speak to me ! Answer me soon ! The melancholy into
which we are thrown by the idea of a wrong done is frightful ;
it casts a shroud over life, and doubts on everything.

"I spent this morning sitting on the bank by the sunken
road, gazing at the turrets of Villenoix, not daring to go to
our hedge. If you could imagine all I saw in my soul ! What
gloomy visions passed before me under the gray sky. whose
cold sheen added to my dreary mood ! I had dark presenti-
ments ! I was terrified lest I should fail to make 3^ou happy.

"I must tell you everything, my dear Pauline. There are
moments when the spirit of vitality seems to abandon me.
I feel bereft of all strength. Everj^thing is a burden to me;
every fibre of my body is inert, every sense is flaccid, my sight
grows dim, my tongue is paralyzed, my imagination is ex-
tinct, desire is dead — nothing survives but my mere human
vitality. At such times, though you were in all the splendor
of your beauty, though you should lavish on me yoMT subtlest
smiles and tenderest words, an evil influence would blind me,
and distort the most ravishing melody into discordant sounds.
At those times — as I believe — some argumentative demon
stands before me, showing me the void beneath the most real
possessions. This pitiless demon mows down every flower,
and mocks at the sweetest feelings, saying: 'Well — and then?'
He mars the fairest -work by showing me its skeleton, and
reveals the mechanism of things while hiding the beautiful
results.



230 LOUIS LAMBERT

"At those terrible moments, when the evil spirit takes pos-
session of me, when the divine light is darkened in my soul
without my knowing the cause, I sit in grief and anguish, I
wish myself deaf and dumb, I long for death to give me rest.