Louis Lambert

(1832) DEDICATION

"Et nunc et semper dilectoe dicatum."

Louis Lambert was born at Montoire, a little town in the Vendomois,
where his father owned a tannery of no great magnitude, and intended
that his son should succeed him; but his precocious bent for study
modified the paternal decision. For, indeed, the tanner and his wife
adored Louis, their only child, and never contradicted him in
anything.

At the age of five Louis had begun by reading the Old and New
Testaments; and these two Books, including so many books, had sealed
his fate. Could that childish imagination understand the mystical
depths of the Scriptures? Could it so early follow the flight of the
Holy Spirit across the worlds? Or was it merely attracted by the
romantic touches which abound in those Oriental poems! Our narrative
will answer these questions to some readers.

One thing resulted from this first reading of the Bible: Louis went
all over Montoire begging for books, and he obtained them by those
winning ways peculiar to children, which no one can resist. While
devoting himself to these studies under no sort of guidance, he
reached the age of ten.

At that period substitutes for the army were scarce; rich families
secured them long beforehand to have them ready when the lots were
drawn. The poor tanner's modest fortune did not allow of their
purchasing a substitute for their son, and they saw no means allowed
by law for evading the conscription but that of making him a priest;
so, in 1807, they sent him to his maternal uncle, the parish priest of
Mer, another small town on the Loire, not far from Blois. This
arrangement at once satisfied Louis' passion for knowledge, and his
parents' wish not to expose him to the dreadful chances of war; and,
indeed, his taste for study and precocious intelligence gave grounds
for hoping that he might rise to high fortunes in the Church.

After remaining for about three years with his uncle, an old and not
uncultured Oratorian, Louis left him early in 1811 to enter the
college at Vendome, where he was maintained at the cost of Madame de
Stael.

Lambert owed the favor and patronage of this celebrated lady to
chance, or shall we not say to Providence, who can smooth the path of
forlorn genius? To us, indeed, who do not see below the surface of
human things, such vicissitudes, of which we find many examples in the
lives of great men, appear to be merely the result of physical
phenomena; to most biographers the head of a man of genius rises above
the herd as some noble plant in the fields attracts the eye of a
botanist in its splendor. This comparison may well be applied to Louis
Lambert's adventure; he was accustomed to spend the time allowed him