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THE COMEDY OF HUMAN LIFE 
 By H. DE BALZAC 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 
 
 LOUIS LAMBERT 
 
 WITH 
 
 FACINO CANE 
 
 AND 
 
 GAMBARA 
 
BALZAC'S NOVELS. 
 
 Translated by Miss K. P. Wormeley. 
 
 Already Published: 
 PEEE GORIOT. 
 DUCHESSE DE LAWGEAIS. 
 RISE AND FALL OF CESAR BIROT- 
 TEAU. 
 
 EUGENIE GRANDET. 
 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 
 THE COUNTRY DOCTOR. 
 
 THE TWO BROTHERS. 
 
 THE ALKAHEST. 
 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 THE MAGIC SKIN (Peau de Chagrin). 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 
 BOSTON. 
 
HONORE DE BALZAC 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY 
 
 LOUIS LAMBERT 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE FREDERIC PARSONS 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS 
 
 3 SOMERSET STREET 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 1889 
 
Copyright, 1888, 
 By Roberts Brothers. 
 
 Wtnibmitz $«ss: 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction . 
 Louis Lambert 
 Facino Cane . 
 
 GrAMBARA . 
 
 1 
 
 153 
 175 
 
 B ML xW 
 
r 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 " Louis Lambert" was written at the Chateau of 
 Sache, near Tours, in 1832. Balzac labored hard 
 upon it, and in his letters to his sister, Madame Laure 
 Surville, he repeatedly alludes to the trouble it occa- 
 sioned him. In one of these letters he says : " ' Louis 
 Lambert ' has cost me such labors ! I have been 
 obliged to read so many books to write this one. 
 Some day perhaps it will direct science into new chan- 
 nels. If I had made of it a purely scientific work it 
 would have attracted the attention of thinkers, who now 
 will not cast their eyes over it. But if chance some 
 day puts 4 Louis Lambert ' in their hands, perhaps they 
 will speak of it." And again he frankly records his 
 opinion, " I believe that 4 Louis Lambert' is a fine 
 book." In what follows it is possible to discover Bal- 
 zac's answer to some sisterly expression of disapproval, 
 derived from a suspicion that in describing the sad end 
 of Louis Lambert the author was influenced by personal 
 forebodings. " Why," he says, " harp upon the ter- 
 mination? You know why I chose that ending. You 
 are always afraid. That conclusion accords with prob- 
 ability, and but too many sad examples justify it. Has 
 
viii 
 
 Introduction, 
 
 not the doctor said that madness is always at the door 
 of great intellects which are overworked ? " Madame 
 Surville cites this letter in her memoir of her brother, 
 but offers no explanation of the allusions it contains. 
 She does indeed observe that ' 'In 'Louis Lambert,' 
 my brother, in order to obtain a hearing for certain 
 ideas which were not yet accepted by the world, be- 
 lieved it necessary to put them forward under the safe- 
 guard of (simulated) insanity." The good lady did not 
 herself understand the philosophy of " Louis Lambert/' 
 though she entertained the profoundest respect for it ; 
 and she naively reveals her preference for less exalted 
 and difficult subjects in observing, as with a sigh of 
 relief, after speaking of Louis's speculations, " Bat let 
 us return to the realities of life," — and thereupon quot- 
 ing with pride one of Balzac's political predictions. 
 
 When "Louis Lambert" was first published it was 
 received by the critics generally far more appreciatively 
 than could have been expected. Indeed it is nothing 
 less than surprising that such a book should have been 
 read at all at that time, and especially remarkable that 
 the really interesting points in it should then have been 
 even dimly perceived. Sainte-Beuve, the dry light of 
 w^hose intellect had no affinities with psychical theories 
 of any kind, sneered at Balzac's mysticism and con- 
 temned his philosophy as altogether too heterodox to 
 deserve serious consideration. It was not possible for 
 Sainte-Beuve to comprehend Balzac, however, even had 
 he been willing to make the attempt, and it would have 
 been perfectly natural in the circumstances had " Louis 
 
Introduction. 
 
 ix 
 
 Lambert " been rejected by the French critics generally, 
 as dull, stupid, or extravagant. Owing possibly to the 
 force of the conviction that Balzac was not altogether 
 I as other men, and in part to the reputation which he 
 had already established, the verdict of literary circles 
 was favorable, and the book obtained a considerable 
 circulation, though it never could have interested the 
 general reader as the same author's social studies did. 
 
 To understand u Louis Lambert " thoroughly it is. 
 necessary to bear in mind its relation to the scheme of 
 the "Comedie Humaine," regarded as a synchronous 
 work. Taine, though fundamentally as materialist as 
 Sainte-Beuve, has concluded a by no means adequate 
 or sympathetic critique of Balzac's philosophical studies 
 with an observation which is not less shrewd than 
 apposite. He says that those who object to "Louis 
 Lambert" and " Seraphita" " ought to perceive that 
 these works crown an enterprise as a flower crowns a 
 plant ; that in them the author's genius finds its com- 
 plete expression and final bloom ; that his other books 
 prepare for, explain, presuppose, and justify them." 
 This is true. Balzac undertook to describe the society 
 of his time from centre to circumference, from bottom 
 to top. His vast plan involved the photographing, the 
 analysis, the classification, of every social element. He 
 aimed at recording the complex interplay of emotions, 
 passions, master motives, conflicting interests, as set 
 forth in the life of all kinds and conditions of men. To 
 have excluded from such a plan the abnormalities of 
 modern society would have been to admit an unwar- 
 
X 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 rentable limitation to the work. In exhibiting the 
 debasing effects of sordid selfishness, Balzac hesitated 
 at no inquiry. He was equally bound by the law of 
 his own genius to carry the inquest upward, and to 
 show the results of excessive cerebral activity upon a 
 physical constitution too feeble to withstand the pres- 
 sure of thought. 
 
 In » Louis Lambert" we have this peculiar study, and 
 the interest of it is deepened by the knowledge that 
 much autobiographical matter enters into the book. The 
 episode of the confiscation of the "Treatise on the Will" 
 by a narrow-minded professor at the College of Venclome 
 is taken directly from Balzac's own experience. He was 
 the author of the treatise, and he no doubt describes his 
 own sufferings and predilections in recounting the trials 
 and punishments of " The Poet and Pythagoras." The 
 frail physique given to Louis, though evidently from the 
 beginning a fatal hindrance to the full development of 
 that rare and delicate spirit, was indispensable to the 
 accomplishment of the literary purpose involved. The 
 union of beneficent intelligence with physical robustness 
 is exhibited in M. Benassis ("The Country Doctor"). 
 The wreck of strong intellect through the pursuit of a 
 fallacy is shown in Balthazar Claes ("The Alkahest"). 
 4i Louis Lambert" is intended to display the working of 
 a pure and powerful mind in a body at once too weak 
 to pull the spirit down to earthly pursuits, and incapable 
 of sustaining the drafts made by the brain upon the gen- 
 eral vitality. Under these conditions that happens 
 which might be expected. The youth passes the thin 
 
Introduction, 
 
 xi 
 
 partition which divides the bounds between genius and 
 madness. Yet it is to be observed that Balzac main- 
 tains a certain reserve on the point of Louis's madness. 
 The biographer, who visits him when he is under the 
 care of the devoted Pauline, does not feel altogether cer- 
 tain that his friend is truly insane. He even asks him- 
 self whether the condition of chronic ecstasy in which 
 the patient seems withdrawn may not be the consequence 
 of an illumination so much higher than that vouchsafed 
 mankind at large as to transcend expression, — to sepa- 
 rate the recipient from intellectual contact with his fellows 
 by revealing to his inner sense untranslatable things. 
 Pauline herself refuses to the last to admit the madness 
 of her lover. In these two circumstances there is a dis- 
 tinct if not an obvious meaning. In writing u Louis 
 Lambert" Balzac had a dual purpose. The first has 
 been outlined alreacty. The second was the embodiment 
 in this book of certain views and speculations which 
 were the result of wide reading in little explored fields, 
 combined with the expression of that philosophy of life 
 which belonged to the character of his own genius. 
 Taine perceived this, though he was far from grasping 
 the full significance of the facts. Balzac, observes this 
 writer, was no sceptic, either by nature or profession. 
 u His nature and his calling compelled him to imagine 
 and to believe ; for the observation of the novelist is 
 nothing but divination. He did not perceive sentiments 
 as the anatomist perceives fibres ; he divined them from 
 the gesture, the physiognonvy, the habits, the abode, — 
 and so rapidly that he seemed to grasp them, and was 
 
xii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 unable to distinguish direct and certain knowledge from 
 this indirect and dubious knowledge. His instrument 
 was Intuition, that dangerous and superior faculty by 
 which man imagines or discovers in an isolated fact all 
 the possibilities of which it is capable ; a kind of second- 
 sight proper to prophets and somnambules, who some- 
 times find the true, who often find the false, and who 
 commonly attain only verisimilitude. • Balzac employed 
 it in the sciences," — which M. Taine of course thinks 
 deplorable. To the readers of this translation, however, 
 the peculiaritj 7 which M. Taine regards as unscientific 
 and disastrous to the value and usefulness of Balzac's 
 speculations may perhaps prove an additional source of 
 interest, if only because few things can be more deserv- 
 ing of careful studj r than the efforts of great men to 
 deduce from observation of their own intelligence an- 
 swers to those deep problems which have up to the pres- 
 ent time baffled Science and Philosophy equally. As 
 preliminary to a candid examination of these views, 
 moreover, it is well to recall a fact usually overlooked, 
 namely, that when objections are raised against what are 
 called unverifiable assumptions, such objections apply 
 not only to the intuitional methods of research, but to 
 many of the fundamental concepts of physical science. 
 In fact we should have no coherent cosmology were the 
 use of the scientific imagination excluded. Every theory 
 of the universe advanced by science demands the accept- 
 ance of postulates which are in most instances figments 
 of the imagination, and some of which go counter to one 
 of the primal laws of all scientific research, in positing 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xiii 
 
 conditions wholly foreign to experience. Of such is the 
 atomic theor} T , which assumes the existence, as the base 
 of matter, of a body possessing properties the like of 
 which no body known to human percipience is endowed 
 with. Thus the atom of science is absolutely solid and 
 absolutely impenetrable, yet so far as is known there 
 are no absolutely solid and absolutely impenetrable 
 bodies in nature. The theory of atomic vibrations is 
 another case in point, involving as it does conceptions 
 as to the rapidity of motion and frequenc}^ of contact 
 between molecules (each molecule containing at least 
 two atoms) which are literally unthinkable. We are 
 asked to realize, for example, that a hydrogen molecule 
 collides with its fellows some seventeen thousand million 
 times eve^ second, while the collisions of an oxygen 
 molecule are seven thousand million per second. The 
 habit of accepting whatever comes to us with the en- 
 dorsement of Science causes men to think they compre- 
 hend such statements, whereas in truth no story of a 
 miracle can possibly be harder to grasp by the reason 
 alone. . Science not only employs the imagination freely, 
 but requires from its votaries a constant exercise of 
 faith. So questionable, also, are many of the assump- 
 tions upon which elaborate physical theories have been 
 erected, that in a sharp and strongly-sustained critique 
 of "The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics," 
 Judge J. B. Stallo not long since held himself jus- 
 tified in charging Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, Tait, 
 Stewart, Maxwell, and other representative men of 
 science, with clinging to fallacies and fancies whose 
 
xiv 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 origin was to be traced to the metaphysics of the 
 Schoolmen. 
 
 Nor must it be forgotten that in some important direc- 
 tions the possibilities of physical research are bounded 
 in such a manner that it is idle to expect much further 
 advance. When investigation is stopped, not by the 
 imperfection of the mechanical instruments empkyyed, 
 but by the imperfections of the human organs, on the one 
 hand, and those of the natural forces or agencies under 
 examination, on the other, it is clear that little hope of 
 overcoming these obstacles can be entertained. Now 
 this limit has already been reached in the stud}' of Light. 
 We know that the oscillations which produce upon our 
 vision the effect of the violet ray in the spectrum are 
 the swiftest of all, the ware-motion being estimated at 
 699,000,000,000,000 per second. Beyond the violet 
 ray all is dark to us, — but not because it really is dark ; 
 the reason it appears dark is that at this point our e}'es 
 become incapable of apprehending the velocity of the 
 oscillations. If our vision were stronger we could discern 
 other rays be}'ond the violet. In fact, we can make in- 
 struments capable of better work than the imperfection 
 of the natural forces^renders it possible to accomplish. 
 The microscope has been carried to such a pitch of per- 
 fection that it could investigate things now beyond the 
 reach of science, were it not that the light is too t$ coarse " 
 as microscopists phrase it, and human eyes are too dull. 
 The light itself in these cases becomes a hindrance to 
 clear vision. Nor is it only the dulness of our sight 
 which obstructs research and limits knowledge. There 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xv 
 
 are sounds so shrill that the tympanum cannot register 
 them. The sound-waves, like the light- waves, move too 
 rapidly to be caught. There are many persons who- 
 cannot hear the piercing chirp of the cricket. To them 
 this high note is complete silence. 
 
 Thus the progress of science should not be conceived 
 as from certainty to certain tj T , but rather from complete 
 ignorance to conjecture, and thence to relative and often 
 dubious knowledge. In physics, however, one fact de- 
 serves to be noted with emphasis. Modern research 
 tends more and more toward the conclusion that the 
 universe is composed of a single substance. The unity 
 of nature has been rendered more probable by every 
 important physical discovery made during the past cen- 
 tuiy. It is a theory which cannot indeed be claimed by 
 air^ modern. To these we owe the mechanical doctrine 
 of heat, that of the conservation of energy, the kinetic 
 theory of gases, and other discoveries which afford 
 strong support to the later cosmical scheme. But the 
 vortical theory of the universe may be traced back at 
 least five centuries before the Christian era, to Anaxi- 
 mander, and strong claims are made for even an earlier 
 and perhaps an Aryan origin for the doctrine. We shall 
 see, when we come to examine Balzac's speculations, 
 the curiously close relation between the latest conclu- 
 sions of modern science and the central concepts of a 
 philosophy which has much in common with those archaic 
 and mystical views, the study of which commends itself 
 more and more to a generation educated to resent and 
 suspect dogmatism wherever encountered, and equally 
 
xvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 disinclined to accept imposed authority the credentials 
 of which are not beyond doubt. The relativity of all 
 knowledge having been taught to some purpose, and 
 the Western mind having been opened to the study of 
 those Oriental philosophies and psychologies, which chal- 
 lenge interest by the very strangeness of their processes 
 and points of view, it has become possible to deal seri- 
 ously with that introspective analysis, which for so long 
 and barren a period was condemned as delusive and 
 unprofitable, chiefly because the cultivation of psychic 
 faculties was unknown in the Western world, though 
 the work done by those faculties was recognized and 
 admired in a blind and unintelligent fashion. 
 
 We see in M. Taine's characterization of Intuition as 
 a " superior but dangerous faculty" a distinct echo 
 of the intellectual stage referred to. The superiority of 
 Intuition as shown in its instantaneous cognition of 
 truths which the reason can arrive at only by length- 
 ened and circuitous processes, M. Taine clearly consid- 
 ers incontestable. That he should think the faculty 
 dangerous — that is to say, liable to mislead those who 
 possess it — must be attributed to his own fallacious 
 dependence upon a rational infallibility which has no 
 existence. The truth is that the moment we enter upon 
 an examination of the various agencies of knowledge at 
 the disposal of humanity we discover that in the first 
 place no criterion of truth is attainable ; and in the 
 second place, that the mental processes which can be 
 traced throughout are not demonstrably more trust- 
 worthy or accurate than those conclusions which seem 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xvii 
 
 to follow upon no premises, but rather to be projected 
 into the mind from without. To these latter thoughts 
 the names Inspiration and Intuition have been given. 
 Curiously enough, a degree of confidence has usually 
 been accorded the issues grouped under the first name, 
 superior to that allowed the products classified as intui- 
 tional ; though the mode of reception and the absence 
 of definite knowledge concerning the source are the 
 same in both cases, and the processes are in fact iden- 
 tical. In u Louis Lambert," however, we are to deal 
 with more than Intuition. It is not to be supposed 
 that Balzac originated the scheme of thought here un- 
 folded. He had assimilated a mass of occult and mys- 
 tical doctrine. He had mastered the little that was 
 then known to the West of the philosophy and psy- 
 chology of India. He had absorbed Swedenborg and 
 Jacob Boehme and Saint Martin. He had studied 
 Plotinus and Paracelsus, Raymond Lully, Picus de 
 Mirandola, Cornelius Agrippa, John Reuchlin. He 
 was familiar with the great work ascribed to the Rabbi 
 Simon Ben Jochai. The philosophy of Hermes Tris- 
 megistus was not unknown to him, and he had experi- 
 mented personally in mesmerism. It was natural, it 
 was even inevitable, that the literature of mysticism 
 should appeal powerfully to him, for he lived in a world 
 which was far more spiritual than material ; and more- 
 over the reality, the objectivity, of his spiritual concep- 
 tions was so complete that his work more resembled 
 that of an art-student drawing from life, or that of a 
 reporter taking notes in a crowd, than the commonly 
 
xviii 
 
 Introduction, 
 
 received impression of an author laboriously building 
 up visions which he then proceeds to describe. To him 
 the creations of his thought were as genuine entities as 
 the men and women he saw about him ; and being thus 
 gifted with abnormal power of vivifying his ideas, it was 
 a necessary consequence that he should regard Thought 
 as a great natural force. Not that the experience of Bal- 
 zac in this regard is to be considered as extraordinary, 
 save in degree. Imagination — the faculty whereby we 
 image things — is common to all, and the reality of its 
 processes is attested b}' universal experience. To the 
 majority this faculty brings only imperfect, blurred, and 
 feeble pictures. To the poet, to the great author, to 
 the great musician, it opens new worlds. In their 
 minds the philosophic distinction between subjectivity 
 and objectivity often disappears. The creations of their 
 thoughts are at least as real as material things. In Bal- 
 zac's case thej' were sometimes more real. It might be 
 surmised by a bold thinker that such minds as the great 
 novelist's are symbols of that ultimate unity of nature 
 winch appeared to this one so natural and obvious a 
 truth ; that in the facility of transformation from subject 
 to object, and in the intense vitalizing force of such 
 mentalities, was shown forth palpabty an illustration of 
 the oneness of that primal substance modifications of 
 which include the so-called immaterialities, as well as 
 the materialities, of the universe ; which, while varying 
 in apparent properties and phenomenal appearances as 
 widely as the hydrogen molecule on the one hand, and 
 the lovely form of a beautiful woman on the other, — as 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xix 
 
 diverse as the tenuous gas of a comet's tail and the pon- 
 derous massiveness of a modern ironclad, — are all re- 
 solvable into the same ethereal substance whence in the 
 beginning the germs of everything proceeded. 
 
 Louis Lambert, Balzac tells us, was normally a spir- 
 itualist; — that is, as contra-distinguished from a materi- 
 alist. But with much subtlety he is represented as being- 
 drawn in the direction of materialism by his reason. 
 When he depends wholly upon ratiocination he loses his 
 hold on the spiritual. When he yields to intuition he 
 is almost w r holly spiritualist. " Perhaps," observes the 
 "Poet," "the words 'materialism' and 'spiritualism' 
 indicate two sides of one and the same fact." That, we 
 may safely conclude, was the view toward which Balzac 
 was most strong^ drawn, and that, it is worth while to 
 add, is the conclusion to which all modern physical re- 
 search also tends more and more strongly. According 
 to the septenary analysis of the human constitution to 
 be found in Oriental creeds, there are three perishable 
 principles which tend downward, three imperishable 
 principles which tend upward, and one (the fourth) which 
 forms the joining-point of the others, and itself may be 
 deflected either up or down. Such a conception would 
 elucidate the apparent constitutional inabilit}^ of a large 
 proportion of mankind to apprehend spiritual views of 
 things, and the corresponding incapacity of a much 
 smaller proportion to appreciate material view r s of 
 things. A tendency early established, and which in- 
 clined the mind upward or downward, would ac- 
 count for a difference which in its essence may be as 
 
XX 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 simply derived as this, yet momentous in its ultimate 
 effects. 
 
 Balzac employs the doctrine of Swedenborg to illus- 
 trate this line of speculation. Every man, according to 
 the Swedish seer, possesses in himself angelic potential- 
 ities. To fulfil his celestial vocation he must cultivate 
 the spiritual elements. If material tendencies prevail in 
 him, the forces of his nature are expended in the action 
 of the physical faculties, and the angelic part of him 
 perishes slowly through the process of materialization. 
 In the contrary case,— if, that is, he nourishes and sus- 
 tains his interior life, — the soul expands, and obtains 
 ascendency over the body, and at death, the spirit, 
 prepared and fitted for the higher life, assumes its 
 new functions easily and promptly. This doctrine 
 was peculiarly suited to the mind of Louis Lambert, 
 and he is represented as longing to accept it ; but in 
 analyzing his own mental processes, he is much struck 
 by a dream or vision, in which he saw clearly a land- 
 scape he had not at the time visited in his waking state, 
 and which he instantly recognizes when subsequently 
 taken to the spot. The subtlety of his reflections is 
 strikingly illustrated in the ideas to which this incident 
 gives rise. At first he is disposed to regard it as prov- 
 ing what occultists term the possibility of the projection 
 of the astral form, — the existence of some second ego 
 capable of leaving the body, going abroad, and taking 
 cognizance of mundane things. But presently it occurs 
 to him that there may be another explanation of the 
 phenomenon, — that it may only indicate the possession 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xxi 
 
 of latent faculties common to all, and which can be ac- 
 counted for materially. There is some crudeness and 
 not a little obvious fallacy in the earlier speculations of 
 Lambert, but it is quite clear that they were put there 
 intentionally and not ignorantly by Balzac. His object 
 was to trace the development of an exceptionally power- 
 ful mind, and he takes various and almost always skil- 
 ful methods of showing the growth of this interesting 
 intellectuality. The extreme sensibility of Louis, and 
 the energy of his imagination are, for instance, ex- 
 hibited in his remark : " If I think strongly on the sensa- 
 tion the blade of my penknife would cause if thrust into 
 my flesh, I instantly experience a sharp pain, as though 
 I had really cut myself ; nothing is lacking but the flow 
 of blood. But this feeling takes me by surprise, like a 
 sudden noise breaking into a deep silence. An idea 
 causing physical suffering! What do you think of 
 that ? " In this brief sentence is opened up one of the 
 most interesting and suggestive of studies; namely, 
 that of the influence of the mind upon the body. The 
 staple English treatise upon it is that of Dr. Daniel 
 Hack Tuke, who has treated it with breadth of view 
 and a wealth of illustration. Those who are familiar 
 with his work are aware that the example cited by 
 Louis Lambert, though impressive, is in no respect ex- 
 travagant or fanciful, — far more surprising cases of the 
 influence of mind upon body being recorded. Thus 
 Dr. Tuke observes that "The emotions powerfully ex- 
 cite, modify, or suspend organic functions, causing 
 changes in nutrition, secretion, and excretion, and 
 
xxii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 thereby affecting the development and maintenance of 
 the body." And he goes on to detail eases which prove 
 that there is absolutely no kind of change which may 
 not be caused in every part of the body save in the 
 my framework, by the emotions or the will. Indeed. 
 Lambert's assertion. "Facts are nothing: they do not 
 exist : there subsists nothing but ideas.'* appears any- 
 thing but far-fetched, when the capacities of the intangi- 
 ble something called Mind for influencing matter are 
 considered : though the study of this branch of science 
 cannot but tend to strengthen the growing doctrine of 
 the unity of nature. Perhaps the most curious fact in 
 this line of research is the power of simple belief, 
 whether right or wrong, to effect structural changes and 
 important modifications of tissue. The late Dr. W. B. 
 Carpenter brought together a large number of instances 
 of this, in his treatise on "Mental Physiology.'*' His- 
 tory, indeed, abounds with the most diverse illustrations 
 of this familiar, yet little understood, class of phenom- 
 ena, and there are well-attested cases which demonstrate 
 that even death may be caused by a persistent mental 
 impression. Belief that a disease has been contracted 
 will often produce the disease or a simulation of it, just 
 as a belief in the potency of a therapeutic agent will 
 produce all the beneficial effects the agent could have 
 roused, even when some neutral substitute, such as 
 bread pills, is actually administered. 
 
 Louis Lambert perceived the implications of this 
 mental influence over the body, and the effect of it 
 mav be traced in his later and riper conclusions. To 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xxiii 
 
 Balzac such perception was easy, but the world at 
 large has for so long a time confused itself with nom- 
 inal distinctions that it has ended by making of the 
 terms "mind" and " matter " two irreconcilable and 
 mutually destructive entities. One inevitable result of 
 so regarding them is the blocking of all paths to com- 
 plete elucidation. Philosophers have done for Mind 
 and Matter very much what theologians have done for 
 Nature and the Supernatural. In denying the existence 
 of the latter, modern science is justified, for the word 
 implies a contradiction. There can be nothing answer- 
 ing to the general conception of the supernatural. 
 Whatever is is natural, and Supernaturalism, with all 
 it implies and involves, is a delusion which has been 
 handed down to us from the Dark Ages. In the endless 
 wonders of the universe there is room for organic life 
 under far more forms and conditions than the human 
 mind is capable of conceiving. Science has discovered 
 a few of these, and in time may extend its categories. 
 It has given a lesson to the presumption which would 
 set bounds to the power of the supreme Artificer, in 
 demonstrating the habitation of air and water by 
 swarming myriads of creatures every one of which 
 is invisible to the naked eye and impalpable to the 
 touch. It has shown that only parts of even the com- 
 monest manifestations of energy, as light, heat, or 
 electricity, can be perceived by human vision or reg- 
 istered by human inventions. Of the material world 
 beneath and around us we know that we are able to 
 cognize but a small percentage of existing phenomena ; 
 
xxiv 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 our senses will not serve us to see or hear or feel or 
 taste the finer matters. A question of a few vibrations 
 of the ether, more or less, makes for us all the difference 
 between perception and non-perception. In the circum- 
 stances surely it is not less unscientific than irrational 
 to attempt to draw the lines of sentient existence an} T - 
 where, or to draft creeds — whether scientific or theo- 
 logical — so narrow as to exclude from recognition 
 whatever cannot be weighed or analyzed by the micro- 
 scope or tested by the blowpipe or retort. Yet it must 
 be admitted that the frame of mind here protested 
 against is still far too common, and that whether in- 
 herited or acquired it is an intellectual condition which 
 hinders progress, and above all which militates against 
 advance on those psychological lines which to-da} r 
 promise the most important results, and upon which 
 Balzac, half a century ago, showed his ability to pro- 
 ceed with the luminous prescience of the true Seer. 
 
 Those who follow this path, however, must adapt them- 
 selves to the conditions of the quest. The} 7 must bear in 
 mind the character of the psycholog}' to be developed. 
 The view taken by Balzac was that which great creative 
 intellects have ever held and taught, — a doctrine vener- 
 able be} T ond all systems which obtain to-day, and compre- 
 hending the principles which are found at the base of all 
 esoteric religions. Browning has put in the mouth of his 
 Paracelsus a clear definition of one of these fundamental 
 tenets : — 
 
 " Truth is within ourselves ; it takes no rise 
 From outward things, whate'er you may believe: 
 There is an inmost centre in us all, 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xxv 
 
 Where truth abides in fulness; and around, 
 Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, 
 This perfect, clear perception — which is truth; 
 A baffling and perverting carnal mesh 
 Blinds it, and makes all error; and, 4 to hwiv 1 
 Rather consists in opening out a way 
 Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, 
 Than in effecting entry for a light 
 Supposed to be without.' ' 
 
 To " set free the soul in all alike," to discover " the true 
 laws by which the flesh bars in the spirit," is the endeavor 
 of the student of this psychology. The task undertaken 
 by Balzac was far more comprehensive even than this. 
 He might have said, in the words of the poet, Aprile : 
 
 " Each passion sprung from man, conceived by man, 
 Would I express and clothe in its right form, 
 Or blend with others struggling in one form, 
 Or show repressed by an ungainly form. 
 For, if you marvelled at some mighty spirit 
 With a fit frame to execute his will — 
 Ay, even unconsciously to work his will — 
 You should be moved no less beside some strong, 
 Rare spirit, fettered to a stubborn body, 
 Endeavoring to subdue it, and inform it 
 With its own splendor! " 
 
 This latter case may be likened to that of Louis 
 Lambert, who is, however, still more clearly imaged 
 forth in these lines : — 
 
 u One man shall crawl 
 Through life, surrounded by all stirring things, 
 Unmoved — and he goes mad; and from the wreck 
 Of what he was, by his wild talk alone, 
 You first collect how great a spirit he hid." 
 
xxvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 It is not possible to classify Balzac's philosophy. 
 The curious student will find it reminiscent of many 
 systems of thought. From Plato to Proclus, from 
 Proclus to Hegel, he ranged freely, and took whatever 
 he could assimilate. As Hegel borrowed from Em- 
 pedocles and Heraclitus, as the scepticism of Hume 
 and the idealism of Spinoza overlap ; so the thoughts 
 of men upon the deep problems of existence mingle and 
 flow from one to another. Any attempt to separate 
 Balzac's ideas and to apportion them severally to their 
 primal sources would be worse than unprofitable, it 
 would be misleading. For just as Shakspeare took poor 
 and witless tales and plays, and passing them through 
 the alembic of his mind reproduced their contents 
 transformed, glorified, impressed with the power and 
 majesty of his intellect, so Balzac worked over and 
 informed with the light of genius the confused mass of 
 speculations absorbed by him in his reading. George 
 Henry Lewes, who had a Positivist's contempt for all 
 philosophies but his own, observes, in speaking of 
 Hegel's method, " Curious to consider ! In the modern 
 as in the ancient world, the inevitable results of a phil- 
 osophical Method are Idealism and Scepticism. One 
 class of minds is led to Idealism or Mysticism ; another 
 class is led to Scepticism. But as both these conclu- 
 sions are repugnant to the ordinary conclusions of 
 mankind, they are rejected, and the Method which led to 
 them is also rejected. A new one is found ; hopes beat 
 high ; truth is about to be discovered ; the search is 
 active, and the result — always the same — repugnant 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xx\ ii 
 
 Idealism or Scepticism. Thus struggling and baffled, 
 hoping and dispirited, has Humanity forever renewed 
 the conflict, without once gaining a victory/' Balzac 
 'was neither an Idealist, in the technical acceptation of 
 the term, nor a Sceptic. His bent was necessarily 
 idealistic, for the reason that in him Intuition was 
 raised to a very high power, and since because of that 
 endowment his objectification of subjects was re- 
 markably complete. But, also because of the abnor- 
 mal development of his imagination, that which to less 
 gifted minds seemed mystical was to him matter-of-fact. 
 This may be illustrated by reference to the peculiar 
 conditions under which the so-called " Seeress of Pre- 
 vorst " lived. She believed herself constantly sur- 
 rounded by disembodied spirits, and so familiar were 
 these apparitions to her that she took no more notice 
 of them than of living persons. It is easy to perceive 
 that in such a mental state no ideas of the supernatural 
 could be disturbing, or other than familiar and perhaps 
 even commonplace. There is indeed nothing, however 
 strange or unaccustomed primarily, to which use will 
 not familiarize the human mind. An exalted condition 
 of actual idealism was normal with Balzac, and there- 
 fore it is that Taine found him, as he thought " a little 
 coarse in imagination, and prone to clothe invisible 
 things with bodies." Had Taine studied modern phys- 
 ics he would not have made this remark, nor would he 
 have done so had he really comprehended the nature of 
 the writer whose tendencies he was criticising at the 
 time. 
 
xxviii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 The development of the general system in 6 4 Louis 
 Lambert" is gradual, and owing to the exigencies of 
 the story there are some repetitions and contradictions. 
 The main points are given clearly enough in the first 
 of the two lists or categories which are represented as 
 having been taken down by Pauline from the lips of 
 Louis when the latter was supposed to be insane. The 
 arrangement cannot be considered felicitous, and it is 
 apt to bewilder the reader at first. In order to appre- 
 hend the doctrine fully, the condensed statements given 
 in the numbered fragments should be studied carefully 
 before following the more detailed reasoning by which, 
 in the earlier period of college life, Louis endeavors to 
 work out the ideas which occur to him. In these earlier 
 discussions there is often a fulness and lucidity which 
 leave nothing to be desired, and they are moreover very 
 suggestive. But it is advisable that the two divisions, 
 so to speak, be examined as nearly as possible together ; 
 for by adopting this course the later aphorisms will be 
 found to throw new light upon the preceding and gener- 
 ally tentative suggestions, and vice versa. This method 
 of taking the book is perhaps the only one which will 
 enable the reader to obtain a thorough comprehension 
 of the author's theories. 
 
 The first category opens with the following: "Here 
 below everything is the ^product of an Ethereal Sub- 
 stance, which is the common base of divers phenomena 
 known under the vulgar names of Electricity, Heat, 
 Light, Galvanism, Magnetism, etc. The universality of 
 the transmutations of this Substance constitutes what 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xxix 
 
 is commonly termed Matter." When Balzac wrote this 
 -the doctrine of the Correlation of the Physical Forces 
 had not been propounded. Since the appearance of 
 Professor Grove's remarkable essay (1843) a strong and 
 steadily extending current of thought has been flowing 
 toward the conclusion that all matter is homogeneous. 
 Thus Professor Winchell, in his " World-Life, or Com- 
 parative Geology," observes : " But one system of mat- 
 ter pervades the immense spaces of the visible universe ; 
 and it is a dream of physical philosophy that all the 
 recognized chemical elements will one day be found but 
 modifications of a single material element. When this 
 dream is realized we shall behold the amazing phenom- 
 enon of a universe, with its numberless forms, conditions, 
 and aspects, built out of a single substance." The same 
 author remarks that " the late remarkable experiments 
 of Dr. Crooks on so-called ' radiant matter' would seem 
 to be best understood on the hypothesis of the homo- 
 geneity of the elements of matter, and the continuity 
 of the states of matter." But Biology furnishes abun- 
 dant analogies and suggestions all pointing toward the 
 same conclusion ; and while the demonstration of this 
 hypothesis could but deepen the mystery of existence, 
 the experiences familiar to mankind should certainly 
 cause the. apprehended discovery to be regarded rather 
 as natural than amazing. In the examination of germ- 
 life, for example, the phenomena of individualization 
 repel all conjecture and defeat all research. The iden- 
 tity of the chemical constituents of protoplasm may 
 easily be established. The likeness between two eggs 
 
XXX 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 of a common fowl may be shown to be complete ; yet 
 even in far simpler organisms the process of develop- 
 ment introduces — how and why, we cannot discover 
 — specific differences which impart to the completed 
 organism individuality and character. Between the 
 human ovum and that of lower animals no difference 
 is perceptible. Is it more wonderful that everything 
 should proceed from a single substance than that from 
 the simplest combinations of matter structures so rad- 
 ically divergent should develop ? As to Matter, dis- 
 cussions of which have loaded so many shelves and 
 created so many controversies, we are not likely to 
 know much more of it if we recognize it as the base 
 of all phenomenal existence ; nor can any school of 
 philosophy derive real support from such a demonstra- 
 tion. The chief benefit to be anticipated from a deter- 
 mination of the problem is an economy of energy in 
 scientific research. Already Heat and Light have been 
 assigned their places. We indeed know them but par- 
 tially, but we have more and more reason for believing 
 that all the so-called Forces of Nature will eventually 
 prove to be modes of Motion ; and this is only another 
 way of putting what Balzac describes as modifications of 
 the primal substance. The relation of Balzac's physical 
 theories to those of the Indian psj'chologists is also not 
 a little interesting. We must not forget that the idea 
 of a homogeneous medium is anything but a modern 
 one, notwithstanding the fact that it has received from 
 modern science its strongest confirmation. It was, how- 
 ever, taught by Anaxagoras, while the atomic theory, in 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xxxi 
 
 variously modified forms, was held by Leucippus, Demo- 
 critus, Epicurus, and the Roman Lucretius. So, too, 
 the vortical theory, which is of the essence of the mod- 
 ern nebular hypothesis, may be traced into the dim 
 past of Chaldaea and Egypt, whence the Greek philos- 
 ophers derived it. But the theory of a homogeneous 
 substance is much older than Grecian civilization, — 
 older than the science of the Chaldaean and Babylonian 
 Magi. We must look for the genesis of that theory 
 in the cradle of the Aryan race, and we shall find it 
 established there in remote ages, — prior possibly to 
 the Vedantic period. The homogeneous substance of 
 the nineteenth century was known to the Aiyan sages 
 as Akasa, and the}^ appear to have speculated upon 
 it with an acumen and a thoroughness leaving little 
 opportunity for the superposition of original views. At 
 a considerably later period, yet still far in advance of 
 all Western development, the " brooding East" formu- 
 lated ideas regarding Akasa which, being taught only 
 esoterically, escaped attention for a long time, but which 
 indicate the attainment of conclusions as to the rela- 
 tions of the so-called Natural Forces with this super- 
 sensuous medium suggestive of much deeper and clearer 
 knowledge of physics than modern science has hitherto 
 been willing to admit the possibility of in what it re- 
 gards as the childhood of the race. In fact the teach- 
 ings of the Eishis concerning the Natural Forces may 
 be said to suggest the broadest anticipations of the 
 most advanced science in the present day in some par- 
 ticulars ; and what is more, they seem to imply not only 
 
xxxii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 a theoretical familiarity with the nature of the forces 
 referred to, but a knowledge of methods of manip- 
 ulating and controlling them such as the fertility of 
 modern invention has thus far failed to equal. As we 
 proceed with the analysis of Balzac's physical theories 
 we shall see that there are other elements in his sys- 
 tem which are in singular accord with Oriental doc- 
 trines. This is not surprising when the processes by 
 which ideas have been disseminated through the world 
 are considered ; but light has so often emanated from 
 the East that the West has long ceased to give credit 
 for its benefits. 
 
 That Balzac owed much to the Kabbalists is quite 
 clear. They taught, however, that Matter, Heat, and 
 Motion were closely inter-related ; that Heat and Motion 
 were in fact conditions of Matter. But then the Kabba- 
 lists held what modern Science cannot yet bring itself 
 to ; namely, that between Spirit and Matter there is no 
 real barrier, — that Spirit informs all Matter, and that the 
 biological phenomena which so perplex and baffle our 
 clear-eyed students of Nature are explicable by the com- 
 paratively simple hypothesis of controlling Mind. The}' 
 contended that dead Matter was unthinkable, — certainly 
 altogether an unreasonable conception ; and inorganic 
 Nature did not strike them as confuting their doctrine. 
 Of course the Kabbalists were unscientific, but so also 
 is tl Louis Lambert," and yet in both there is some 
 matter for reflection ; and here and there may be dis- 
 cerned so strange a foreshadowing of views and theories 
 generally regarded as quite modern that it is not a little 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xxxiii 
 
 interesting to observe the harmonies between conclusions 
 reached by the most approved methods of inductive re- 
 search, and those come at in an altogether irregular 
 and illegitimate way, by putting confidence in the 
 " superior but dangerous faculty of Intuition," as M. 
 Taine has it, or by following the lead of Oriental mys- 
 tics, occultists, and other heterodox inquirers. 
 
 It may appear at first not quite clear whether the " uni- 
 versal substance " postulated by Balzac corresponds more 
 closely with the « substance " of Spinoza or with that of 
 Berkeley. No philosopher has been more misrepresen- 
 ted than the latter, for he was charged with propounding 
 self-evident absurdities when in fact he triumphed com- 
 pletely in his argument over both Realists and Dualists. 
 He taught that there is only one substance, and that 
 Spirit. This is the implication of the modern physical 
 philosophy ; for manifestly any rational conclusion upon 
 the homogeneity of the primal substance must involve 
 the spirituality of that substance, unless it is to be con- 
 tended that life and thought are merely properties of 
 matter ; and even that contention cannot save Scepti- 
 cism, for Matter which thinks is clearly not the matter 
 of the Dualists at all. Balzac, however, has not left his 
 opinion on this point doubtful. His second category 
 clears up whatever may seem obscure in the first, and 
 his definition of Will and Thought, together with his 
 classification of human intelligence, prove the pervading 
 spirituality of his scheme. As to the plausibility of 
 this speculation, it is certainly much greater than that 
 of the theories which require us to believe that Body or 
 
 3 
 
xxxiv 
 
 Introdiiction. 
 
 Substance can affect Spirit. Of such a mode of action 
 we have no experience ; but on the other hand the an- 
 alogies between spiritual action upon Matter and that 
 of the so-called Natural Forces are so close and strong 
 as to seem to point directly toward the Berkeleyan hy- 
 pothesis. Take in illustration all forms of Energy. It 
 is not a little significant that Energy is never found sep- 
 arate from Matter ; so that, as Professor Stewart ob- 
 serves, " we might, with perfect propriety, define Matter 
 as the seat or vehicle of Energy, — that which is essen- 
 tial to the existence of the known forms of Energy, with- 
 out which therefore there could be no transformation of 
 Energy, and therefore no physical life such as we know 
 it." Matter and Energy together, then, furnish the bases 
 of life. But what is Energy? It is a mode of Motion. 
 It is the vis viva, the vivifying, transforming force upon 
 the activity of which all the transmutations of matter 
 depend. Upon the common and all-pervading substance 
 Energy operates through the Natural Forces, and in no 
 essentially different way from the operation of that high- 
 est element of man which we call Spirit, upon the body. 
 Energy changes matter, fashions it, organizes it, builds 
 it into myriad forms, and sustains in all organic Nature 
 the condition we call Life. In like manner the human 
 mind operates, and with certainly no stronger indica- 
 tions of knowledge implying a spiritual basis. This im- 
 palpable entity, this invisible essence, can b}^ the direc- 
 tion of the Will, cause physical transformations equal in 
 extent sometimes to those continuous miracles of ger- 
 mination and cell-growth our increasing knowledge of 
 
Introduction. 
 
 XXXV 
 
 which only renders the marvel and mystery of the pro- 
 cesses greater. 
 
 When, then, we find Balzac suggesting that the human 
 Will is a fluid (an awkward term, but intelligible enough) 
 which is taken up by sentient creatures from the sur- 
 rounding universal ethereal substance, and is trans- 
 formed in the physical system into the form of the energy 
 we know, and the capabilities of which are in evidence 
 everywhere, we may not be prepared to accept the hy- 
 pothesis, but we shall not be revolted by it as by a 
 manifest absurdity. Observe that Balzac endows with 
 Will every being capable of movement, and that he 
 ascribes varieties of form and genera 'to combinations 
 of this energizing force with the general Substance. 
 There is here some obscurity ; for while the operation of 
 Will in the selection of specializations is not only en- 
 tirely thinkable, but forms the basis of the teleological 
 theory, the idea that the Will of the animal itself should 
 be in any manner represented in the differentiation of 
 forms and species is certainly not thinkable ; since it is 
 impossible to conceive of the existence of such individual 
 Will as Will prior to the completion of the organism. 
 But Balzac's remark concerning instincts, namely, that 
 they result from the necessities imposed by the habitat 
 of the animal, was a bold and far-seeing speculation, 
 and considered as pre-Darwinian deserves some credit. 
 The variation of species also is explained by the con- 
 ditions of the environment. 
 
 In Man, proceeds Louis Lambert (or Balzac, for it 
 is all the same) the Will becomes a characteristic force, 
 
xxxvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 surpassing in energy that of all other animals. So 
 much will be conceded at once, but the general appre- s 
 hension of the extent to which the human Will can be 
 developed is altogether inadequate. A modern mys- 
 tical writer declares that 44 there is no force in the 
 universe save Will-force ; and all that life needs for life 
 is possible to Will." To the uninstructed Western mind, 
 such expressions are apt to appear wild and extrava- 
 gant. It is only through the study of Oriental psychol- 
 ogy that the truth and even the sobriety of them can 
 be perceived. But, following Balzac's lines, let us as- 
 sume the Will to be in its ultimate essence a Natural 
 Force. Now we have advanced enough to know that 
 some of the forces of nature can be controlled and 
 made to work for man ; and, moreover, one very subtle 
 force, Electricity, has been so far mastered that it is 
 possible to store it in accumulators, and to carry it 
 about in this form, and to apply it whenever and where- 
 ever it is wanted. A couple of centuries ago, if some 
 student in advance of his age had invented a vehicle 
 resembling Faure's storage battery, no doubt he would 
 have been charged with the practice of Black Magic, — 
 as indeed nearly every man of science was, during the 
 Middle Ages. To-cla}' we learn of such discoveries quite 
 coolly, and do not think of questioning their possibilit}' ; 
 yet if it be said that the human Will is not less suscep- 
 tible of accumulation than the much less subtle force 
 called Electricit}", the general tendency is toward incre- 
 dulity. On the other hand there is a disposition — 
 increasing of late years — to give the imagination too 
 
Introduction, 
 
 xxxvii 
 
 free play when Oriental occultism is spoken of. It is 
 to be feared that the principle omne ignotum pro 
 mirifico is in operation here, and because most people 
 really know very little about India, they may be prone 
 to attribute to some of its residents powers and prac- 
 tices of a fabulous kind. Such as have studied the 
 subject seriously shrink from countenancing any of 
 these lawless imaginings, — being well aware that the 
 only hope of bringing Western science to any interest 
 in Eastern science lies in a restrained and cautious 
 presentation of facts. The simple truth is that the 
 men of science of India, having made an exhaustive 
 study of the intellectual part of man — or, as some may 
 prefer to term it, the spiritual part — profess to have 
 gained an insight into the operations of the Will which 
 enables them to control, regulate, discipline, and edu- 
 cate that faculty ; and in demonstration of this power 
 many of them have on various occasions given proof of 
 the possession of some form of controllable energy, 
 capable of producing phenomena in many respects an- 
 alagous to those which are caused by what are termed 
 the Natural Forces. c In the West no less than in the 
 East cultivation of the Will proceeds continually, but 
 owing to the fact that with us purely material and in 
 no sense scientific ends are sought by such education, 
 the effects pass unnoted, or are ascribed to the wTong 
 agencies. Psychology has always been the weakest 
 branch of Western science, and remains so to this day. 
 Since it has been approached from the side of physi- 
 ology some apparent progress has been made, though 
 
xxxviii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 no crucial problem has been solved ; and the present 
 strongly material bias of the majority of men of science 
 threatens to oppose an insuperable barrier to research. 
 While such works as Dr. Maudsley's on u Body and 
 Will" are possible, moreover, mental pathology will be 
 studied to no adequate purpose ; for the defect of an 
 influence which leads men to look for confirmation of 
 materialist theories instead of seeking the truth alone, 
 regardless of consequences, must be fatal to fruitful 
 investigation. Philosophers have often incurred the 
 ridicule of the crowd by denying (metaphysically) the 
 possibility of phenomena which, nevertheless, occur con- 
 tinually. Thus the impossibility of ideas without ob- 
 jects corresponding to them was maintained in face of 
 the common experience that in dreams and in delirium 
 ideas unquestionably do arise without the concurrence 
 of an} r corresponding objects. But the perversity of 
 philosophers even at the worst is mild and measured 
 when compared with that scientific arrogance and fatuity 
 which, rather than admit the least damaging inferences 
 against favorite though undemonstrable hypotheses, 
 resort to denial of facts the reality of which is as fully 
 attested as anything can possibly be. 
 
 The examples of disciplined Will-force to be found in 
 the Western world must be sought in the most active 
 pursuits of men, as a rule. It is in commerce, banking, 
 transportation, stock speculation, and similar occupa- 
 tions, that such illustrations are found. The Rebellion 
 furnished some striking examples, however, and the 
 case of Stonewall Jackson on one side, and General 
 
f 
 
 Introduction. xxxix 
 
 Grant on the other, may be specially noted. Grant 
 possessed what is called " an iron will." A more self- 
 contained, determined man is rarely encountered. He 
 husbanded his energies, and brought his Will-power to 
 bear with crushing force upon the point to which he 
 directed it. Tenacity, firmness of purpose, were among 
 his most conspicuous attributes, and these are merely 
 other names for Will- force. Nor can it be doubted 
 that the combined Will- force of the North counted for 
 much in the issue of the struggle ; and the existence and 
 operation of such an aggregated force must be admitted 
 as a logical implication of the theory of individual Will. 
 The mystical author already cited says: "Man has 
 but to will long enough, to make the world as he would 
 have it." Surely this is one of the lessons taught by 
 Balzac's " Comedie Humaine," and still more emphati- 
 cally by the experience of the world he has described 
 so powerfully. But the Will that dominates must have 
 been trained, and above all it must comprehend and 
 obey that Law of Continuity which obtains as strongly 
 in the spiritual as in the physical universe. Drilled and 
 curbed, fixed steadfastly upon an object and held reso- 
 lutely to the pursuit of that, even the natural, unculti- 
 vated Will of the West can accomplish great, or at least 
 important, and sometimes momentous things ; but it 
 can /deal only with the objects of sense. 
 
 Thought, according to Louis Lambert, is a special 
 product of the human Will. He put Will before 
 Thought because, as he observes, " To think, it is 
 necessary to will;" and he proceeds, " Many beings 
 
xl 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 exist in the state of Will, without ever arriving at the 
 state of Thought," — volition being, in this view, exter- 
 nal and material, and Thought internal and spiritual. 
 All the senses he would reduce finally to one ; that, 
 namely, of sight or perception. Touch, taste, hearing, 
 and smell, he contends, are each and all forms of vision 
 adapted to those modifications of the universal Sub- 
 stance which man is capable of cognizing in its two 
 conditions, modified and unmodified. All that thus 
 offers itself to human apprehension maybe reduced to 
 some elements whose principles are in the air or the 
 light, or in the principles of air or light. This is an 
 elaboration of the fundamental axiom concerning the 
 character and properties of the universal Substance. 
 The statements which follow, in regard to sound, color, 
 and perfume, require some remodelling to adjust them 
 to more modern theories. Both Light and Sound are 
 now known to possess more than the purely sensational 
 existence which was all that could be formerly attributed 
 to them. The} 7 are indeed, in a sense, " modifications 
 of the air," as Balzac phrases it, — that is to say, the im- 
 pressions they produce are caused by undulations prop- 
 agated through the luminiferous ether, or whatever 
 else we may choose to call the ethereal substance 
 through whose vibrations they are manifested. The 
 adjustment of our auditory and visual organs to the 
 reception and registering of the Light and Sound waves 
 of course counts for much in the process ; and, as already 
 observed in this analysis, the imperfection of our physi- 
 cal organs limits the sensations we are capable of re- 
 
Introduction. xli 
 
 ceiving both from Sound and Light. Also, our eyes and 
 ears translate the impressions they receive, representing 
 to our consciousness as continuous rays or sounds that 
 which reaches them in the form of vibrations more or 
 less rapid. Why a certain rate of molecular oscillation 
 should become a yellow color, another red, a third blue, 
 we do not, and perhaps we cannot, know. In regard to 
 perfume, said by Bakac to be a combination of air (or 
 ether) and light, the definition is somewhat confused. 
 There are few subjects more interesting than the propa- 
 gation and persistence of perfumes, and the typical 
 illustration of the grain of musk (used by Louis Lam- 
 bert) opens an exceedingly difficult and little under- 
 stood line of inquiry. The law of the dissipation of 
 energy seems in this case to be contravened ; for if odors 
 are diffused by molecular vibration, the source of the 
 transformation of energy must eventually be brought to 
 a state of equilibrium, and experiment does not show, 
 in the case of the most powerful perfumes, such as 
 musk and the Ottar of Rose, any appreciable diminu- 
 tion of mass in the centre of emanation, even after com- 
 paratively long periods of time. 
 
 In his definition of the Natural Forces, Balzac seeks 
 to establish direct filiations between them and the human 
 faculties. He allies Thought with Light, and Speech 
 with Sound, and he adds the striking statement that the 
 various transmutations of the primal Substance are regu- 
 lated and determined by Number alone. The prominent 
 part occupied in all n^stical doctrines by speculations 
 and assertions regarding the occult powers and qualities 
 
xlii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 of numbers is no doubt familiar to most, if there are 
 not many who comprehend the meaning of these the- 
 ories. It is to be presumed that Balzac had reference 
 to the Kabbalistic and Oriental hypotheses in this sen- 
 tence, but he also stated in it what is a well-attested 
 fact in physics. The character of the sensations pro- 
 duced upon the human organs by sound and light waves 
 depends upon the number of oscillations which occur in 
 the vehicle of the light or sound. We owe this knowl- 
 edge to the spectroscope, which was invented by Bunsen 
 and Kirchoff recently, — that is, since the death of Bal- 
 zac. Now the spectroscope dissects the light which 
 is passed through it, and enables us to measure the 
 oscillations which produce upon our retina the effect of 
 the several colors. The length of a light-wave varies 
 from about seven hundred and sixty millionths of a 
 millimetre at the red end of the spectrum to about three 
 hundred and ninety-three millionths of a millimetre at 
 the violet end. When these undulations (which are 
 propagated at the rate of 188,000 miles per secondare 
 of such a width that three hundred and ninety-five tril- 
 lions of them enter the eye in a second, they produce 
 in us the sensation of red light. When they are so 
 small that seven hundred and sixty-three trillions 
 strike the eye every second, they produce the sensation 
 of violet light. Omitting the ciphers, which in desig- 
 nating such great numbers are likely to be confusing, 
 it may be said that the differences between the colors are 
 represented by the following figures : red, 395 ; yellow, 
 535 ; blue, 622 ; violet, 763. So that when Balzac 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xliii 
 
 speaks of number as the main agent in differentiating 
 the manifestations of the Natural Forces, he is in full 
 accord with conclusions of science which were not 
 reached during his lifetime. Sound, as is well known, 
 travels a million times slower than Light, its progress 
 in ordinary air being only 1,100 feet per second. But 
 Thought? In Louis Lambert's own words: "From 
 thy couch to the frontiers of the world there are but 
 two steps : Will — Faith ! " 
 
 In the second category the occult significance of 
 Number is more distinctively dealt with, and it will be 
 best to examine that difficult subject separately. The 
 first category no doubt includes also some esoteric 
 references, but it has to do with what may on the 
 whole, and in contradistinction from the second, be 
 considered exoteric propositions. In the eighth axiom, 
 Balzac, however, anticipates his more abstruse specula- 
 tions somewhat. This section treats of the organiza- 
 tion of the primary Matter through the segregation and 
 grouping of molecules. Hence organic life is devel- 
 oped, and man becomes a vehicle and agent of the 
 primal Force, capable of reacting upon Nature with 
 potent effect. But there is in man, says Lambert, a 
 controlling principle which defies analysis. Science 
 may some day discover the elements of Thought and 
 Will, but it never can trace that unknown quantity 
 which he calls " the Word," and which itself " in- 
 cessantly engenders Matter." What is this "Word," 
 of which it is asserted that it "burns and devours 
 those who are not prepared to receive it " ? The answer 
 
xliv 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 is that it is the Logos, —the immanent Divine Spirit, 
 which informs and dominates all Substance, — the op- 
 erative Mind, — the Thoth and Hermes of antiquity. 
 The Logos is the Speaker, the Maker, the Manifestor, 
 the Adonai of the Kabbala, that spirit of which John 
 speaks when he writes: " In the beginning was the 
 Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
 God." This too is the "Light that shineth in dark- 
 ness ; and the darkness comprehended it not." Lam- 
 bert well says that the Word 4t burns and devours those 
 who are not prepared to receive it ; " for it is .manifested 
 only to such as have by development of the Inner Man 
 rendered themselves capable of apprehending it. Ma- 
 terialism dismisses all consideration of the Logos as 
 " mystical," and therefore, from its point of view, of 
 no significance or value ; and it is the materialists who 
 are referred to by Lambert as those devoured by the 
 communication of the Word. Their darkness cannot 
 comprehend the Light. They have elected to continue 
 in the world of phenomena ; that is, according to the 
 oldest of wisdom-religions and philosophies, to remain 
 under the spell of Maya, the spirit of Illusion. It is 
 possible so to live and not to miss much. Those who 
 are content with what the phenomenal world offers 
 escape much suffering for the moment, — but at a great 
 ultimate cost to themselves. 
 
 The Word engenders matter ; in fact, it is the centre 
 of the Cosmos, and it is only by union with it that man 
 can overcome the bonds of necessity, and raise himself 
 to the highest powers of which he is capable. This 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xlv 
 
 union again is possible only through the cultivation and 
 discipline of the Will, — that Force which dominates all 
 others in nature, and which may be developed to mar- 
 vellous extent both for good and evil. Anger, observes 
 Lambert, in the ninth axiom, like all manifestations of 
 passion, is a current of human force which operates 
 electrically. Anger, in so far as it embodies malign 
 volition, is closely akin to what the superstitious were 
 wont to denominate " black magic." To convert it into 
 the latter it is only necessary to intensify the manifes- 
 tation. The benign Will, as exhibited in the phenom- 
 ena of what is called Animal Magnetism, possesses 
 well-attested therapeutic attributes. With or without 
 the aid of the Imagination it can relieve pain, arrest 
 morbid processes, and restore health. The co-operation 
 of the Imagination with the Will facilitates its operation 
 in all cases, whether benign or malignant. The history 
 of Witchcraft, misinterpreted by materialist historians, 
 abounds with illustrations of this truth, which is to-day 
 axiomatic in physiological psychology. According to 
 the common reading of those strange phenomena, all 
 the charges of sorcery, all the myriad specifications of 
 physical and mental injuries sustained, were subjective 
 delusions. But this explanation has the fatal defect of 
 not covering the phenomena. The evidence that in 
 many cases those who accused others of witchcraft 
 really had suffered injuries is at least as strong as that 
 upon which the majority of historical events are ac- 
 cepted ; nor are we under the necessity of going to the 
 Middle Ages for proofs of phenomena which may be 
 
xlvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 paralleled in our own times. In the South Seas to-day 
 there is a tribe of savages who believe that it is prac- 
 ticable for one man to pray another to death ; or, in 
 effect, to will him to death. Taken alone this belief 
 might very well be dismissed as a delusion ; but it can- 
 not be taken alone, and for the reason that it is based 
 upon facts. In the island referred to the practice of 
 praying enemies to death is actually carried out ; and 
 the person who knows that his adversar} 7 is about to 
 resort to this practice calmly disposes of his property, 
 retires to his hut, composes himself on his bed, and in 
 the course of a few hours dies. 
 
 This may seem incredible to those who do not under- 
 stand the relation of Will-power to vitality, but it is 
 capable of a sufficiently simple physiological solution. 
 Every physician knows and acts upon the fact that the 
 cure of disease depends largely upon the will of the 
 patient. If the latter desires strongly to live, the pro- 
 cess of recovery is facilitated. If on the contrary there 
 is no desire of life present, convalescence is retarded, 
 and not seldom it is impossible to prevent a fatal ter- 
 mination of the illness. In the case of the savages 
 who die as described, without any apparent organic 
 lesion, passing in a few hours from full health to death, 
 it is clear that the prime lethal agent is paralysis of the 
 will-force. The savage fully believes that he is doomed 
 and that nothing can save him. From that moment 
 not only does he cease to evince that desire for life 
 which underlies all healthy vital action, but his vital 
 powers are depressed by the expectation of death, and 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xlvii 
 
 the unalterable conviction that it will occur. In such 
 a state it is conceivable that the imagination of the 
 subject himself might cause his death. That in the 
 absence of any external emphyyment of malign volition, 
 such a result may ensue has been demonstrated by the 
 experiment of causing prisoners to believe that they had 
 slept in beds which had been used by cholera patients. 
 In this case the men took the cholera, and some died 
 of it, though the beds had really not been exposed to 
 infection. 
 
 The fact that Fear can kill is moreover so familiar 
 that in the East it has been made the subject of a popu- 
 lar proverb in connection with the Plague ; and this 
 Fear which reacts so fatally upon the physical organism 
 is Imagination made morbid b} T the paralysis of Will, 
 as in the other cases cited above. Much has been made 
 of the remark that Superstition dies as Knowledge ad- 
 vances ; but the remark is only a half-truth, and, like all 
 half-truths, is misleading. To suppose that because the 
 common belief in Witchcraft has disappeared, therefore 
 Witchcraft was a mere hallucination, or that there- 
 fore the agencies and influences which caused Witch- 
 craft have been eliminated, would be great mistakes. 
 At the present moment those agencies and influences 
 flourish as vigorously as ever. The only changes that 
 have taken place have been in the lines of their mani- 
 festation. The people who are panic-stricken by an 
 epidemic of cholera or yellow fever or typhoid, are 
 lineal descendants of the people who two hundred years 
 ago believed that they could be bewitched by some old 
 
xlviii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 woman, and who in numberless instances were undoubt- 
 edly more or less bewitched because of that belief. 
 Anger, fanaticism, all the passions, observes Louis 
 Lambert, " are living Forces. These Forces, when ex- 
 ercised by certain beings, become rivers of Will-power 
 which embrace and sweep away everything." History 
 is full of the most striking illustrations of the truth of 
 this, and daily life presents perpetual instances in point. 
 Moreover, it is to be observed that all these Forces op- 
 erate most freely and powerfully upon the least disci- 
 plined minds, and control most easily the simple and the 
 ignorant. In those strange epidemics of the Middle 
 Ages recorded by Hecker — the dancing-mania, the 
 Flagellants, the Child Pilgrimages — sympathetic con- 
 tagion alone sufficed to establish and disseminate mor- 
 bid affections which persisted through three centuries 
 and disturbed the whole continent of Europe. At a 
 much later period the extraordinary phenomena exhib- 
 ited by the Convulsionnaires of St. Medard reproduced 
 most of the mediaeval symptoms and effects. During 
 the last century the " Jumpers ? ' in this country marked 
 a recrudescence of the old nervous diseases, and from 
 time to time during the past thousand years there have 
 been outbreaks of the same strange contagions, — the 
 negro camp-meeting being the most modern survival of 
 them. 
 
 In these cases, however, what operates is suggestive 
 of a blind and unintelligent Force. It is not really that, 
 nor is the line of demarcation between these manias and 
 the convulsive social and political movements caused by 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xlix 
 
 apparent intellectual suasion, nearly so broad as at first 
 sight it may seem to be. For while the first incitements 
 to movements of fanaticism are usually in the guise of 
 argument or dogmatic assertion professing to reveal 
 great truths, these movements always degenerate rap- 
 idly and become in the end automatic and irrepressible. 
 This has been the process followed by every great per- 
 secution, by man}- great revolutions, and by most agita- 
 tions the work of which is finally determined by numbers 
 and not by brains. Thus the fanaticism which made. 
 Islam a conquering power depended but a short time 
 upon intellectual considerations. Thus the Eeign of 
 Terror grew out of that French Revolution which was 
 begun by the peaceful philosophers of the Encyclopaedia. 
 Thus, in China, during our own time, the Tae-Ping re- 
 bellion changed from an attempt to establish free reli- 
 gious thought into a blind and general butchery. The 
 44 living Forces" spoken of by Lambert, in all these 
 and many other instances asserted themselves over the 
 feeble volition of the masses, and set the latter in paths 
 whose direction they could not perceive, and whose 
 destination they would never have striven to reach of 
 their own motion. They were carried away, as Balzac 
 puts it, by "rivers of Will," and similar effects are to 
 be recognized in all popular agitations involving what 
 is called enthusiasm. The part played by Reason on all 
 such occasions is notoriously subordinate. The crowd is 
 moved by its sympathies, not by its intellect, and its 
 sympathies usually signify neither more nor less than its 
 responsiveness to the power exerted by the superior Will. 
 
 4 
 
I 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 According to Lambert, Will and Thought are living 
 forces, and he employed the phenomena of mesmerism 
 to support his theory that Will-force could be accumu- 
 lated and emitted in such a manner as to affect not only 
 other and weaker or less developed or prepared Wills, 
 but to operate upon inorganic matter. Long after Bal- 
 zac wrote, an English physician, Dr. B. W. Richard- 
 son, published a treatise entitled " Theoiyof a Nervous 
 Ether." In this he suggested that there may be, "in 
 addition to a nervous fluid, a gas, or vapor, pervading 
 the whole nervous organism, surrounding, as an envel- 
 oping atmosphere, each molecule or nervous structure, 
 and forming the medium of the influences transmitted 
 from a nerve-centre to the periphery and from the per- 
 iphery to the nerve-centre." The resemblance of ner- 
 vous to electric force also impressed itself strongly 
 upon Sir Benjamin Brodie, who observes that "the 
 transmission of impressions from one part of the ner- 
 vous system to another, or from the nervous sj^stem to 
 the muscular and glandular structure, has a nearer re- 
 semblance to the effects produced by the imponderable 
 agents than to anything else. It seems very probable, 
 indeed, that the nervous force is some modification of 
 that force which produces the phenomena of electricity 
 and magnetism." Here we have an almost complete 
 scientific parallelism with Balzac's hypothesis. The 
 recent researches by the Salpetriere school of French 
 physiologists into the phenomena of what is called hyp- 
 notism have produced in many minds an erroneous 
 impression. From the time of Braid's experiments the 
 
Introduction. 
 
 li 
 
 line of scientific inquiry may be said to have been con- 
 trolled by a dominant idea, — the idea, namely, that 
 all the phenomena of animal magnetism could be pro- 
 duced and explained without calling in the aid or as 
 suming the existence of any external influence upon 
 the patient other than physical and material. The 
 theory of a fluid of any kind projected by the mag- 
 hetizer was repugnant to the scientific mind, which in- 
 deed could only be induced to resume an investigation 
 which had been several times abandoned, by the sug- 
 gestion that the subject might be elucidated on purely 
 materialistic lines. The hypothesis which explains 
 Mind as a function of Body, and which has been main- 
 tained by Ribot, Maudsley, Hammond, and others, 
 could not tolerate phenomena which were incapable of 
 solution upon that assumption. At first, and so long 
 as the experiments of Charcot, Richet, and their col- 
 leagues and followers were made altogether upon hysteri- 
 cal subjects, the physical theory appeared to be strongly 
 confirmed. It was found possible to do all that Braid 
 had done, and more, by material agents. The hyp- 
 notic states could be produced by fixing the patient's eyes 
 upon any bright object ; by directing the gaze upward ; 
 by simply inducing artificial strabismus ; and finally, by 
 suggestion. In the conditions thus produced it was 
 found that the patient could be made to do anything ; 
 that directions from without appeared to control the 
 hypnotized intelligence, to suspend the judgment, to 
 obscure the moral sense, in fact to transform the sub- 
 ject into a complete automaton. 
 
lii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 But as the inquiry proceeded it appeared that the 
 exceptions to the supposed laws of hypnotism were so 
 many and various as to compel pause and perhaps to 
 necessitate reclassification. The theory that the mag- 
 netizer exercised no personal influence did not hold 
 good in a number of cases. On the other hand, it did 
 appear that frequently the influence of the magnetizer 
 was profound and absorbing, — so much so that the sub- 
 ject was deaf and blind and oblivious to the presence, 
 speech, and action of any and all other persons during 
 the seance. There was, then, clearly a rapport between 
 magnetizer and magnetized, and one which could only 
 be explained upon some telepathic theory. In a recent 
 work on animal magnetism by MM. Binet and Fere, of 
 the Salpetriere, while the bias of the authors against 
 psychical interpretation is so marked as to detract from 
 the value of their statements in several instances, they 
 are constrained to admit that, u although the operator's 
 personality has not the importance which was formerly 
 ascribed to it, yet it cannot be said to be altogether 
 negative." This personal influence they wish to get 
 rid of by attributing it to an "elective affinity," but 
 they would be puzzled to define the meaning of that 
 phrase. They proceed further : " The Abbe Faria, who 
 induced sleep by intimation, has clearly shown that 
 hypnosis may be effected by psychical action. His 
 process consisted in desiring the subject, in an impe- 
 rious voice, to go to sleep ; and sometimes, without ut- 
 tering a word, a commanding gesture was enough to 
 effect his purpose." In these cases the Abbe Faria in- 
 
Introduction. 
 
 liii 
 
 duced the hypnotic sleep by the direct exertion of his 
 Will-power. MM. Binet and Fere, however, make a 
 still more significant admission in combating those the- 
 orists who seek to explain hypnotic phenomena upon 
 the ground of expectancy, attention, suggestion, or 
 some other single agency. They say: " These asser- 
 tions are too absolute. A whole series of purely phys- 
 ical agents exist which prove that sleep can be induced 
 without the aid of the subject's imagination, against his 
 will, and without his knowledge." What are these 
 " purely physical agents?" When carefully examined 
 the assumption that they are purely physical appears 
 gratuitous. " It has often been said," the same au- 
 thors observe, " that the psychical element in hyp- 
 nosis vitiates all the attempts to give a physical 
 explanation of this state." That is the truth, nor 
 have MM. Binet and Fere succeeded where all their 
 predecessors and contemporaries, from Braid to Char- 
 cot, have failed. 
 
 To study animal magnetism most profitably it is de- 
 sirable that the inquiry should be pursued in Oriental 
 countries, inasmuch as the education of the Will and its 
 exercise upon both Man and Nature have been pursued 
 in those countries from time immemorial, and with re- 
 sults which, when contrasted with the empirical studies 
 of Western scientists, cause the latter to assume an 
 almost puerile aspect. In India the application of Will- 
 power has been carried to lengths which not long ago 
 would have been thought incredible in Europe or Amer- 
 ica ; but recent investigations are opening the eyes of 
 
liv 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 the Western nations to the scope of a Natural Force pre- 
 viously ignored or misunderstood. Balzac speaks of 
 the capacity of human Will-force for evil. Hypnotic re- 
 search has revealed some surprises in this direction. 
 The phenomena of suggested action have proved that it 
 is possible, by putting a sensitive person into one of the 
 hypnotic states, to impress upon his mind as necessary 
 to be done even the most criminal act ; and that the per- 
 petration of this criminal act may be set for some dis- 
 tant date by the magnetizer who suggests it, without in 
 the least impairing the endurance of the influence or the 
 fixedness of the mental impressions which induce it. So 
 broad is the field of possibility, so startling are the ideas 
 opened up by these experiments, that already several 
 treatises have been written on the medico-legal aspects 
 of the subject, and from one of these, by Dr. Gilles de la 
 Tourette, some facts may be derived. The appearance 
 of hypnotism as a criminal agency has appeared surpris- 
 ing and alarming to the public everywhere. In Lord 
 Lytton's " Strange Story," where the murder of Sir 
 Philip Derval is ascribed to suggestion, imposed by 
 Margrave upon a man of weak mind, perhaps the first 
 use was made of the lethal possibilities of animal mag- 
 netism as a motive for fiction. No reported case of 
 alienism, however, no Salpetriere experiment, is more 
 fully in accord with morbid pathology than the processes 
 described in that romance ; and the most extraordinary 
 feature of it, namely the appearance of the scin-loeca, 
 or shining shadow, on the wall of the murderer's cell, 
 can be paralleled from the actual declarations of crimi- 
 
Introduction. 
 
 Iv 
 
 nals., whose apparently insane ravings convinced medical 
 experts of their irresponsibilitj^. 
 
 In France, however, there have been a number of cases 
 in the courts of late years, in which hypnotism has 
 played an important part. Dr. de la Tourette relates 
 several of these cases, and among others the remarkable 
 one of a criminal named Castellan. In 1865, in the 
 Commune of Sollies-Farlide (Var), there lived a farmer 
 named Hughes, who had a daughter named Josephine, 
 twenty-six years of age. One day a sort of tramp, a 
 disreputable fellow named Timothy Castellan, lounged 
 into the Hughes farmhouse, and was asked to have 
 dinner. During the meal it was noticed that he looked 
 fixedly and often at Josephine, who appeared somewhat 
 confused. The meal finished, the household separated, 
 and Josephine was left in the house alone. Castellan 
 went a short distance away, but soon returned, and what 
 followed was ascertained from the statements of the girl, 
 the confession of Castellan, and the observation of people 
 in neighboring villages. In effect, this dirty, hideous, 
 and in all ways repulsive tramp so imposed his will 
 upon the poor girl that she followed him out of her 
 father's house, accompanied him like a dog through the 
 woods and fields, slept with him in barns and stables, 
 and submitted to the most dreadful abuse at his hands. 
 During the continuance of this obsession, so to speak, 
 she appeared to those who saw her and knew nothing of 
 the facts, to be half-witted. By turns she denounced 
 and coaxed her companion. Now she was furious, anon 
 submissive. But she always ended by doing what he 
 
Ivi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 told her, and on more than one occasion he even made 
 exhibition of his power over her, by compelling her to 
 crawl across the room to him on her knees. In truth, a 
 prolonged and terrible combat between his will and hers 
 was going on all this time. When the concentration of 
 his was relaxed, hers would gain the ascendency, but the 
 moment his attention became fixed upon her she found 
 herself helpless ; and what was more, she could not then 
 even continue to loathe and revolt from the brute, but 
 was strongly and against her inclination drawn to him. 
 After several days of this fearful experience. Josephine 
 made her escape while Castellan was held in conversation 
 by some people they had met in the road, and once sepa- 
 rated from him her volition began to act independently, 
 and she was presently able, though not without difficult}', 
 to relate the facts. Castellan was arrested, admitted 
 the truth of his victim's statements, and volunteered the 
 information that he had " served many women the same 
 way," previously. According to custom the facts of the 
 case were submitted to medical experts for their opinion. 
 MM. Auban and Jules Roux were the referees, and the}', 
 following, as they declared in their report, the conclusions 
 of the doctors Tardieu, Devergie, Coste, and Broquier, 
 of the Marseilles School of Medicine, held that " by 
 the manipulations called magnetic, it is possible to 
 exert, upon the will of any person exceptionally disposed 
 by nervous temperament, such an influence that his (or 
 her) moral freedom may be perverted, or more or less 
 completely destroyed." Three other physicians, chosen 
 by the jury, endorsed this and all the other conclusions of 
 
Introduction. 
 
 Ivii 
 
 MM. Auban and Roux, and Castellan received a sen- 
 tence of twelve years' imprisonment. In this case it is 
 to be observed that the state produced in the victim was 
 not what is called " profound hypnosis," but a condition 
 of semi-consciousness in which all her volitional capaci- 
 ties and tendencies were held in suspension. The paral- 
 ysis, moreover, as recognized by the medical experts, 
 was moral no less than physical. She could not offer 
 bodily resistance, nor could she even oppose a consistent 
 or sustained psychical resistance. The domination 
 while it lasted was almost complete, and it was unmis- 
 takably the domination of Will-force. 
 
 The implications of this case were so serious that it 
 caused a great sensation. In India the malignant pos- 
 sibilities of Will-pow v er have been understood for ages, 
 and evil men have systematically availed themselves of 
 this formidable aid to their undertakings. Thus the 
 Bheels and Thugs, organized bodies of thieves and as- 
 sassins who inherited the most dangerous associations 
 of criminal acts with religious motives, practised what is 
 now called hypnotism habitually. In this way the Thugs 
 anaesthetized the predestined victims of the fatal scarf, 
 and avoided all struggles and resistance. The same 
 agency was resorted to by gangs of child-stealers who 
 infested the country, and Dr. Esdaile, who introduced 
 animal magnetism as an anaesthetic to the Calcutta 
 hospitals, had a curious experience with a case of this 
 kind. One day he saw a strange Hindu leading a little 
 boy along the street, and it struck him that the child 
 did not seem to be accompanying the man willingly. 
 
Iviii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 Thereupon, suspecting abduction, he stopped and pro- 
 ceeded to question the stranger, whose answers, though 
 shrewd, were not altogether satisfactory. Next the boy 
 was examined, but he appeared to be in a dazed state. 
 At first the operation of a narcotic was suspected, but 
 by degrees the child's wits returned to him, and then 
 all he could say was that the man had beckoned to him 
 as he was standing near his father's house ; that he had 
 been drawn to the man's side, he could not tell how ; 
 and that was all he remembered or could state. It 
 turned out that the abductor had carried the boy a long 
 distance — many day's journeys — with him, but the 
 spell was not broken during this time. Dr. Esdaile sub- 
 sequently experimented upon several of his hospital 
 patients, and found that he could hypnotize the majority 
 of them with ease, and cause them to carry out his 
 suggestions. 
 
 Balzac intimates a belief that the power of the human 
 Will may under proper conditions be exercised apprecia- 
 bly upon inanimate objects. Now Arago, in a report 
 to the French Academy of Sciences, stated the con- 
 clusion that, " under peculiar conditions, the human 
 organization gives forth a physical power, which, with- 
 out visible instruments, lifts heavy bodies, attracts or 
 repels them according to a law of polarity, overturns 
 them, and produces the phenomena of sound." This is 
 in effect a definition of the u Psychic Force" postulated 
 by Sergeant Cox. In a curious essay by Francis Gerry 
 Fairfield, directed toward the explanation of the physical 
 phenomena of Spiritualism, a somewhat similar position 
 
Introduction. 
 
 lix 
 
 is taken, — the author positing a " nervo-dynamic" pro- 
 cess as the agency by which the lifting and overthrowing 
 of heavy bodies, without apparent contact, is produced. 
 This writer endeavors, however, to trace a connection 
 between the physical conditions which give rise to such 
 phenomena and the pathological state known as lar- 
 vated epilepsy, and here he becomes an unsafe guide. 
 In India the purely physical nature of a large class of 
 phenomena which in the West have been ascribed to 
 disembodied intelligences, is demonstrated by the fre- 
 quent production of identical effects through the con- 
 centration of the Will by trained experts. The Indian 
 conjurers, many of whose feats have completely baffled 
 all attempts at solution by Europeans, pretend that 
 they are helped by the Pitris or ancestral spirits. But 
 there are many Fakirs who produce quite as surprising 
 and inexplicable phenomena solely, as they affirm, by 
 the disciplined exercise of Will-power. Much informa- 
 tion on this head may be found in the works of Jacolliot, 
 and thousands of Anglo-Indians have had personal ex- 
 periences of the same kind. Among the commoner 
 feats so performed, are the imparting of motion to 
 inanimate objects ; the extinction of lamps or candles 
 at a distance ; the apparent suspension of gravitation 
 by alterations in the weight or the mobility of heavy 
 articles ; the imposition of temporary paralysis upon 
 one or more of the spectators. To these and similar 
 phenomena might be added the production of illusions 
 and hallucinations, — Maya, as the Hindus term it, — 
 by reason of which those present are caused to ascribe 
 
Ix 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 objective existence to appearances which are really sub- 
 jective. The rarity of authentic records of collective 
 hallucination in the West has led to doubts concerning 
 its possibilit}'. This rarity, however, may plausibly be 
 explained by the prevailing Western neglect of voli- 
 tional training and discipline. But it must not be 
 overlooked that in the Orient the claims of thaumaturgy 
 are wide, and that the Yogis assert their mastery over 
 natural forces the manipulation of which is as yet 
 beyond the reach of Western science. Such an agent 
 they represent to be the Akasa, which is closety allied 
 to if not identical with the Hyle of the Greeks, and the 
 " Ethereal Substance " of Louis Lambert. The Akasa is 
 a subtler force than electricity, and capable only of psy- 
 chical control. The description of Vril, in Lord Lytton's 
 " Coming Race " is in fact that of Akasa. It is " the 
 all-permeating fluid." It " is capable of being raised and 
 disciplined into the mightiest agency over all forms of 
 matter, animate or inanimate. It can destro}^ like the 
 flash of lightning ; yet, differently applied, it can re- 
 plenish or invigorate life, heal and preserve, and on it 
 they (the Vril-ya) chiefly rety for the cure of disease, or 
 rather for enabling the physical organization to re- 
 establish the due equilibrium of its natural powers, and 
 thereby to cure itself." This subtle and potent fluid 
 falls under the dominion of the cultivated and en- 
 lightened Will, and extends the potential^ of the latter 
 almost indefinitely. 
 
 There is a modern form of scepticism which is en- 
 titled to no respect, inasmuch as it is grounded in 
 
Introduction. 
 
 Ixi 
 
 ignorance, not merely of Oriental, but of Occidental 
 science. The true man of science in either hemisphere 
 rightly considers incredulity not less dangerous than 
 credulity. Dr. Abercrombie well observes that "while 
 an unbounded credulity is the part of a weak mind, which 
 never thinks or reasons at all, an unlimited scepticism 
 is the part of a contracted mind, which reasons upon 
 imperfect data, or makes its own knowledge and extent 
 of observation the standard and test of probability." 
 In the same broad spirit Dr. Lee writes : " Reasoners 
 who base their arguments upon the hitherto known laws 
 of nature do not consider how limited is our knowledge 
 of those laws ; that this knowledge is continually ex- 
 tending and opening out new prospects to our view ; 
 and that any people's or any individual's experience of 
 them depends in great measure upon the circumstances 
 under which the population or the individual is placed, 
 the degree of mental culture possessed by them, and 
 the opportunities afforded them for acquiring the requi- 
 site information ; and, moreover, that a circumscribed 
 knowledge can never be allowed to disprove positive 
 and well-authenticated facts, however improbable they 
 may appear to be." In considering the subject of Will- 
 force, however, a far too general lack of information has 
 \o be met in regard to the position of Western science. 
 In fact, the advances made in physiological psychology 
 during the past twenty years have given a marked im- 
 petus to liberalism. The extent of the influence of 
 Mind upon Body was never before so fully recognized, 
 as may be seen in the following extract from the con- 
 
Ixii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 eluding chapter of Dr. Tuke's important work, cited 
 above. " We have seen," he says, " that the influence 
 of the Mind upon the Body is no transient power ; that 
 in health it may exalt the sensory functions, or suspend 
 them altogether ; excite the nervous system so as to 
 cause the various forms of convulsive action of the 
 voluntary muscles, or depress it so as to render them 
 powerless; may stimulate or paralyze the muscles of 
 organic life, and the processes of nutrition and secre- 
 tion, causing even death ; that in disease it may restore 
 the functions which it takes away in health, re-innerva- 
 ting the sensory and motor nerves, exciting healthy 
 vascularity and nervous power, and assisting the vis 
 medicatrix Nature® to throw off diseased action or 
 absorb morbid deposits." All this is admitted to be 
 within the power of Mind and Will. Meantime a great 
 body of evidence is accumulating which must force men 
 of science more and more strongly toward those conclu- 
 sions they have been so reluctant to approach. In the 
 phenomena of hypnotic suggestion an avenue is opened 
 through which Western Science may approach the posi- 
 tions so long held by the sages of the East. In the 
 medico-legal aspects of animal magnetism, as in the 
 phenomena of telepathy, will be found the finger-posts 
 which point to the operation of Mind and Will at a 
 distance. In all the inquiries now proceeding into 
 obscure psychical and quasi-neural phenomena, the in- 
 dications point in the same general direction. Nor 
 need those who have long since satisfied themselves of 
 the superior psychological knowledge of the Orient, be 
 
Introduction. 
 
 Ixiii 
 
 impatient or intolerant of the slow and unfriendly prog- 
 ress of Western Science toward affiliation with its elder 
 sister. For no* greater triumph of Truth, no stronger 
 proof of the genuineness of the conclusions of Eastern 
 occult' science, can be had, than the confirmation of its 
 doctrines by a body of students working from contrary 
 directions, by opposed methods, and in a sceptical and 
 hostile spirit. 
 
 In the twelfth axiom Lambert treats of the world of 
 Ideas. " Facts," he asserts, " are nothing ; they do not 
 exist ; Ideas alone subsist." This affirmation, paradox- 
 ical as it appears, is at the basis of all philosophy. 
 From the Vedas to Plato, from Plato to Kant, the 
 impermanence of phenomena and the impossibility of 
 knowing the noumenal have been posited. All knowl- 
 edge of phenomena is merely a question of sensuous 
 percipiency, and all that we can attain to is Ideas. 
 Lambert divides the world of Ideas into three spheres : 
 that of Instinct, that of Abstraction, and that of Spe- 
 ciality or Specialization. This nomenclature might have 
 been more felicitous, the terms having acquired such 
 different conventional meanings that it may be difficult 
 to avoid misapprehension in speaking of them. The 
 masses of men, he goes on, occupy the sphere of In- 
 stinct, in which they continue for the most part without 
 rising to the second sphere, — that, namely, of Abstrac- 
 tion. Desbarrolles accused Balzac of a contradiction 
 because in the fifteenth axiom he says that between 
 the spheres of Instinct and Abstraction there are beings 
 who partake of both qualities. But the contradiction is 
 
7 
 
 J 
 
 lxiv Introduction. 
 
 not real, for in the fourteenth axiom lie evidently in- 
 tends merely to imply that the great majority of the 
 Instinctives remain where they are. The sphere of In- 
 stinct is that in which Thought is little exercised, Voli- 
 tion is weak, the animal tendencies are strong, and the 
 man is little more than one of the automatons of Des- 
 cartes, — an instrument to be pla}'ed upon by both the 
 Abstractives and the Specialists. The sphere of Instinct 
 in the world of Ideas is also that which connects it with 
 the grosser modifications of Matter, those manifestations 
 which are called distinctively material. The sphere of 
 Instinct is that of savagery, and largely also that of 
 barbarism ; but it may, and no doubt does, include the 
 lower phases of civilization, and it comprehends all who 
 live sordidly without the desire of growth, material or 
 spiritual ; who accept degradation as normal ; whose 
 organization is so defective that they are unfitted to be 
 the vehicles of exalted and evolutionary forces. 
 
 " Society begins at Abstraction." This is a great 
 advance upon the sphere of Instinct. Civilization is 
 engendered by Abstraction. Laws, arts, social systems, 
 spring from it. It is, in the words of Lambert, " the 
 glory and the scourge of the world, — the glory, be- 
 cause it has created Society ; the scourge, because it 
 hinders Man from entering Speciality, which is one of 
 the pathwaj's to the Infinite." That is to say, the 
 sphere of Abstraction is that of materialist civilization. 
 The qualities which shine most in this sphere are those 
 which produce the greatest material effects ; which cre- 
 ate wealth and luxury and art and architecture and 
 
Introduction. 
 
 Ixv 
 
 the lower forms of poetry ; and which contribute to the 
 gratification of all the lusts of the eyes and the " pride 
 of life." All purely intellectual life is included in this 
 classification ; for the dry light of \he Intellect can never 
 illuminate those higher spaces which are capable of 
 being reached and searched by the inner illumination 
 of the spirit alone. But the pride of Intellect neces- 
 sarily rebels against the doctrine that there can be any 
 faculty superior to itself. Concerned wholly with ap- 
 pearances, it surrenders itself more and more to im- 
 plicit belief in their realitj^, rejecting its own irrefutable 
 knowledge of their impermanence as u metaphysics," 
 and seeking physical bases for all forms of life the more 
 eagerly for that it is conscious of the limitations of its 
 research. This is why Abstraction diverts man from 
 Speciality, — even from the endeavor to attain to a com- 
 prehension of it. The distinction between the higher 
 and the lower spheres drawn by Lambert is striking 
 and suggestive. Abstractive man formulates right and 
 wrong. His formulas are his scales. His justice is 
 blind ; the justice of God sees, — that is the difference. 
 In the sphere of the Abstractive, government by arbi- 
 trary formulas is the best that can be attained ; but 
 it is in the ultimate analysis crude and imperfect, as 
 testified to. every da} 7 in all civilized societies by the 
 inequities resulting from laws based upon broad gener- 
 alizations. Were the inherent imperfection of all such 
 legislation habitually recognized the evils incident to it 
 would be less, because the recognition of a need for 
 higher and more discriminating rules of conduct would 
 
Ixvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 then tend to spiritual progress and the development of 
 -the loftier potentialities. But the ruling tendency of 
 materialist civilization is toward acceptance of the ex- 
 isting standards of judgment as the best possible, or 
 that can be hoped for ; and this disposition to rest con- 
 tent with imperfection colors and influences the whole 
 line of human progress, and confirms it in the anti- 
 spiritual attitudes it has taken through absorption in 
 phenomenal existence. 
 
 Speciality, Lambert continues, in the sixteenth axiom, 
 consists in apprehending at the same time 1 things mate- 
 rial and things spiritual, both in their origin and conse- 
 quences. The greatest human geniuses, he adds, are 
 those w r ho have left the darkness of Abstraction to at- 
 tain the illumination of Speciality. The Specialist per- 
 ceives things in their entirety, and at one glance. Jesus 
 was a Specialist. To him, past, present, and future were 
 One. The gift of Specialization is the product of the 
 perfection of the interior vision. It includes Intuition, 
 which is defined as one of the faculties of that Inner 
 Man of whom Specialization is an attribute. Taine did 
 not like these definitions. He complained that when 
 Balzac left his microscope he became a Swedenborgian ; 
 and he echoed the common protest of the Abstractive^ 
 against the incertitude and vagueness of the intuitional 
 knowledge, apparently forgetting the incertitude and lia- 
 bility to error of all knowledge within the reach of the 
 human mind through the inductive processes. More- 
 over, it is not true that Balzac is in any sense a mere 
 follower of Swedenborg. Like all men of genius, he 
 
Introduction. 
 
 lxvii 
 
 takes the good and true wherever he finds it ; but in 
 the theories propounded in "Louis Lambert" the refer- 
 ences to Swedenborg are found chiefly in the college 
 period,, and as the thinker grows he gets farther away 
 from .the doctrine of the Swedish Seer. Taine was of- 
 fended by the statement that " the Specialist is ne- 
 cessarily the most perfect expression of Humanity, 
 
 the link which connects the visible to the superior 
 worlds. He acts, sees, and feels through his Inner 
 Being. The Abstractive thinks ; the Instinctive simply 
 acts." 
 
 We have here the sempiternal protest against the 
 privileges of genius and its differentiation from ordinary 
 humanly, which is as old, and perhaps as inevitable, 
 as the stride between Materialism and Spiritualism, But 
 the truth of the doctrine which postulates a something 
 Divine in man is attested by the impotence of all 
 efforts to reason away belief in this higher endowment. 
 Just as the physiologist vainly endeavors to solve the 
 problems of psychology by seeking in the brain and 
 nerves the efficient causes of intellection, and is for- 
 ever confronted by an impassable chasm ; so the ma- 
 terialist wastes his energies in attempting to level the 
 distinctions of genius and to deny those manifestations 
 of a higher life which nevertheless continue to resist 
 the analysis aimed at their degradation. But Balzac 
 did not fall into the error of confounding genius with 
 that which is much higher. In intimating that Jesus 
 was a Specialist he indicates the scope of that phase of 
 development. It is the highest to which the spirit of 
 
lxviii Introduction. 
 
 man while incarnated can attain. In that exalted 
 sphere may be classed only the few great teachers and 
 exemplars who lived not for themselves, and who fixed 
 those standards of spiritual and ethical aspiration after 
 which humanity has toiled for ages laboriously, and at 
 a distance which has often made the pursuit appear 
 futile and unavailing. Genius, as commonly under- 
 stood, breathes a denser air than these. Intuition 
 alone can be a safe guide to those whose inner self 
 is educated to the apprehension of spiritual impressions, 
 and upon whose sensitive perceptions that most refined 
 mode of enlightenment reacts infallibly. On a lower 
 level, though still high, stands genius. As Lambert 
 says, men of genius occupy a place between the spheres 
 of Abstractivity and Specialization, and partake of the 
 attributes of both spheres. Intuition is given to them 
 that they may instruct and elevate their generation. 
 Material knowledge is necessary to them that they may 
 not speak above the heads of their audience and so 
 dissipate their powers and diminish their usefulness. 
 Thus is it that genius is so seldom allied with content- 
 ment. Its impulses are forever in contention. The 
 man of genius must often echo the passionate lament 
 of Faust : — 
 
 f< Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust, 
 Die einer will sich von der andern trennen ; 
 Die einer halt, in devber Liebeslust, 
 Sich an die Welt, mit klammernden Organen; 
 Die andre hebt gewaltsam sich von Dust 
 Zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen." 
 
Introduction. Ixix 
 
 In the end Faust is redeemed ; for, as the angels de- 
 clare who bear away his soul, — 
 
 u \\r er immer strebend sich bemiiht, 
 . , Den konnen wir erlosen." 
 
 But the " two souls" which all through his earthly 
 career have been warring in his breast cannot even after 
 death be separated save by one mighty influence. So 
 the perfected angels sing : — 
 
 "Wenn starke Geisteskraft 
 Die Elemente 
 An sich herangerafft, 
 Rein Engel trennte 
 Geeinte Zwienatur 
 Der irmigen beiden; 
 Die ewige Liebe nur 
 Vermag's zn scheiden." 
 
 Only Eternal Love can effect the separation between 
 the earthly and the divine elements which experience, 
 knowledge, and suffering have welded together, and 
 which persist in their union, even in the purified na- 
 ture, until the universal solvent, the Divine Love, 
 purges and refines away the last traces of the earthly 
 and corruptible. 
 
 If Faust furnishes an illustration of the exceptional 
 class of men who, according to Balzac, occupy a middle 
 ground between the spheres of Abstraction and Speci- 
 ality, the character of Wagner, as drawn by Goethe, 
 exemplifies the pure Abstractive. The commentators on 
 Faust have invented many interpretations to Wagner. 
 Thus Hinrichs is of opinion that he stands for Empiri- 
 
Ixx 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 cism, Faust representing Philosophy, buntzer, again, 
 holds that Wagner is 4t the representative of dead Pe- 
 dantry, of knowledge mechanically acquired." Deycks 
 thinks he is " the direct caricature of pure, rational, 
 formal knowledge, without living thought or poetry, 
 and especially without religion." Wagner is not in- 
 deed a difficult or obscure characterization. He is the 
 incarnation of Intellectuality, unenlightened by imagi- 
 nation, unstimulated by the aspirations which are to 
 bring the nobler Faust through suffering to redemp- 
 tion. Wagner is Positive Science, the materialistic 
 mind which rejects Intuition as undemonstrable, which 
 labels Religion Superstition, and which in the name of 
 intellectual freedom dogmatizes with more than theo- 
 logical narrowness upon phenomena. When he inter- 
 rupts Faust in the invocation scene, the daring Seeker 
 gauges him thoroughly in the lines : — 
 
 " Wie nur dem Kopf nicht alle Hoffnung schwindet, 
 Der immerfort an schalem Zeuge klebt, 
 Mit gier'ger Hand nach Schatzen grabt, 
 Und froh ist, wenn er Regenwiirmer findet." 
 
 Wagner, the Abstractive, has but " one impulse." 
 Nothing interferes with the completeness of his sordid 
 enjoyment consequently. No doubts trouble him, no 
 higher hopes weaken his strong hold on the material 
 side of nature, no inner glimpses of the divine disturb 
 or disillusionize him. He yearns for no wings, like 
 Faust. The solid earth satisfies him. He is the type 
 of purely material life and progress ; a necessary type 
 
Introduction, 
 
 lxxi 
 
 and a useful one within its limitations ; but a lower 
 form of being than Faust symbolizes, and one whose 
 active intellection renders him a more formidable enemy 
 to spiritual advance than is the occupant of the lower 
 Instinctive sphere. This last is dull and dense, but 
 open to higher influences, because no pride of knowl- 
 edge operates with him as a hindrance to receptivity. 
 Thus, as Lambert puts it, " There are three degrees in 
 mankind: The Instinctive, who is below the level; the 
 Abstractive, who is upon it ; the Specialist, who rises 
 above it. Specialism opens his true career to man ; 
 the Infinite dawns upon him ; he catches a glimpse of 
 his destiny." 
 
 The twentieth axiom may be said to involve a logi- 
 cal development from what has gone before. There 
 are, we are told, three worlds, or spheres, answering to 
 the three stages of humanity. Whether Balzac had in 
 mind at this point Swedenborg's doctrine of Corre- 
 spondences, is an open question, but really of little sig- 
 nificance,-inasmuch as Swedenborg in the said doctrine 
 introduced no new ideas, but followed the Kabbalas, 
 which, together with all the archaic philosophies, hold 
 to the same general view. u As above, so below," is 
 an axiom of hermetic science. The three worlds are 
 the Natural, the Spiritual, and the Divine. Humanity 
 occupies the stage of the first, " which is fixed neither 
 in its essence nor in its properties. The Spiritual world 
 is fixed in its essence and variable in its properties. 
 The Divine world is fixed both in its properties and in 
 its essence." • The meaning of this does not lie alto- 
 
Ixxii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 gether on the surface. The instability of the Natural 
 World both in essence and properties (or faculties) is 
 explained by the impermanence of Phenomena. Ac- 
 cording to the Hindu Philosophy phenomenal existence 
 is Maya, — Illusion ; and all students of Buddhism 
 are aware of the way in which through Ignorance the 
 Desire of Life (Trishna) binds men to the Wheel of 
 Existence and makes them the fools of phantasmal 
 shows, until after man}' incarnations they acquire the 
 Four Noble Truths, and so by following the Path, 
 escape from Avid^va and find rest and reward in Nir- 
 vana. The impermanence of the phenomenal world, 
 however, is not a doctrine peculiar to Hinduism or to 
 Buddhism. It is a necessary conclusion from all phil- 
 osophical meditation. The instability of the physical 
 world, moreover, is a fact of science. Physics and 
 metaphysics may be said to occupy common ground 
 here. The second denies the possibility of knowing 
 the realities of things. The first finds, in all forms of 
 matter w r hich lend themselves to chemical analysis, a 
 tendency to unification in essence which, being corre- 
 lated with a constantly increasing refinement of sub- 
 stance, at once suggests community of origin and 
 baffles physical demonstration. But the more probable 
 does the hypothesis of a single primal substance ap- 
 pear, the more impressive and marvellous must be 
 considered the countless combinations and changes 
 produced in that substance. 
 
 The Spiritual World is said to be fixed in its essence 
 aijcl mobile*. its properties. The term "Spiritual 
 
Introduction. 
 
 lxxiii 
 
 World " here embraces the sphere of the higher human 
 faculties, but not the highest. The essence of Spiritu- 
 ality is divine, and therefore immutable and fixed. But 
 the faculties by and through which this essence manifests 
 itself are, because complex, unstable. They can be re- 
 solved into their constituent elements. The}^ are, like 
 the physical forces generally, modes of motion, but of 
 spiritual, not material motion. The distinction is rather 
 one of degree than kind, from the point of view of Bal- 
 zac's philosophy ; and it is necessary to bear this in mind, 
 since materialistic science has caused great confusion 
 by inventing a terminology which perpetually takes for 
 granted the absolutely undemonstrable assumption that 
 what is called Matter is different in kind from what is 
 called Spirit. Now, it is of the essence of Louis Lam- 
 bert's system that Matter and Spirit are simply different 
 states of the same entity, and that the latter is the high- 
 est refinement of that which finds its grossest embodi- 
 ment in dimensional matter. The intelligence which 
 can perceive the ultimate identity of nature between the 
 granite rock and the most tenuous gas, which perceives 
 the materiality of both, should, it might be thought, 
 find it possible to conceive the possibility of one un- 
 broken chain of connection between ponderables and 
 imponderables, between producer and product, between 
 the source of organic life and organized existence. Here 
 again the old doctrine of Correspondences applies, sug- 
 gesting the attribution to those forces and properties 
 which elude physical analysis, of the laws which govern 
 the less subtle natural forces whose properties yield 
 
lxxiv 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 their secrets to the ingenuity of human research by lab- 
 oratory methods. 
 
 The Divine World 4t is fixed in its properties and in its 
 essence." This is the highest sphere, to attain which is 
 to pass from the phenomenal to the noumenal ; from the 
 World of Effects to the World of Causes. Here alone 
 is Reality found. Here alone are obscurities cleared 
 awa}\ Here alone, because the ultimate meaning of 
 everything is then manifested, can there be satisfaction 
 and rest. The Divine World is the highest concep- 
 tion to which the human mind can rise. Its atmos- 
 phere is far too rarefied to be breathed easily by finite 
 beings, whether men or angels. It is the Unknowable 
 of the Agnostics; the Unthinkable of all who reject 
 Spirit and immerse themselves in Materialism. For no 
 matter how intimate may be the connection between 
 Spirit and Matter, it is quite possible for such as devote 
 themselves wholly to the grosser manifestations of the 
 universal Substance to become incapable of apprehend- 
 ing or enduring its more subtle phenomena ; and this 
 is what happens in the case of the Agnostics. The 
 Divine World is that of which Krishna, discoursing with 
 Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, declares, — 
 
 " Yet hard 
 The travail is for whoso bend their minds 
 To reach th' Unmanifest. That viewless path 
 Shall scarce be trod by man bearing his flesh! " 
 
 It is the sphere which Gautama Buddha perceived as 
 the goal of all high endeavor, when, concluding his 
 
Introduction. 
 
 lxxv 
 
 vigils under the Bho tree, he summarized the teachings 
 of the Path, and described the consummation : — 
 
 " Free from Earth's cheats; 
 Released from all the Skandhas of the flesh ; 
 Broken from ties — from Upadanas — saved 
 From whirling on the Wheel ; aroused and sane 
 As is a man wakened from hateful dreams. 
 Until — greater than kings, than Gods more glad ! — 
 The aching craze to live ends, and life glides — 
 Lifeless — to nameless quiet, nameless joy, 
 Blessed Nirvana — sinless, stirless rest — 
 That change which never changes! " 
 
 The subtlety of Hindu metaphysics has constituted a 
 perpetual stumbling-block to Western scholars, of whom 
 the majority have misapprehended the idea of Nirvana 
 so completely as to cite, in proof of the atheism of 
 Buddhism, a doctrine which is really the loftiest and 
 most purely spiritual the human mind has produced. 
 Spence Hardy, who in his "Eastern Monachism " and 
 " Manual of Buddhism " has devoted considerable space 
 to this much-vexed question, translates, in the former 
 of the works cited, the conversations between the Sage 
 Nagasena and King Milinda upon the nature of Nirvana. 
 The Sage, in answer to Milinda' s questions, says : " It 
 cannot be said that it is produced, nor that it is not 
 produced ; that it is past, or future, or present ; nor 
 can it be said that it is the seeing of the eye, or the 
 hearing of the ear, or the smelling of the nose, or the 
 tasting of the tongue, or the feeling of the body." Mi- 
 linda then says : u Then you speak of a thing that is 
 not ; you merely say that Nirvana is Nirvana ; therefore 
 
lxxvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 there is no Nirvana." Nagasena replies : " Great king, 
 Nirvana is ; it is a perception of the mind ; the pure, 
 delightful Nirvana, free from ignorance (aividya) and 
 evil desire (trishnawa), is perceived by the rahats who 
 enjoy the fruition of the paths." Again he compares it 
 to the wind, whose existence is known though it cannot 
 be seen or analyzed. ''Even so," he says, " Nirvana is; 
 destroying the infinite sorrow of the world, and present- 
 ing itself as the chief happiness of the world ; but its 
 attributes and properties cannot be declared." 
 
 In the Asangkrata sutra, Gautama has sard of Nirvana 
 that "it is the end of Sangsara, or successive existence ; 
 the arriving at its opposite shore ; its completion." And 
 again: "Nirvana is dharmma bhis-amaya, the end or 
 completion of religion ; its entire accomplishment." It 
 is difficult, in reading these definitions, imperfect as they 
 necessarily are, to understand how Nirvana could have 
 been represented as annihilation. For the meaning 
 which stands out clearly from all the most authoritative 
 attempts at definition is certainly that which the Chinese 
 Buddhist Wong-Ching-Fu gave to it when he said : 
 "This condition [Nirvana] we all understand to mean 
 a final reunion with God, coincident with the perfection 
 of the human spirit by its ultimate disembarrassment of 
 matter. It is the very opposite of personal annihilation." 
 The later Buddhist metaphysicians did undoubtedly lean 
 toward the theory of absolute extinction, but it is not 
 possible to show that Buddha either taught or counte- 
 nanced that view, or that it was held at all in his time. 
 Max Muller pertinently asks (in his "Introduction to the 
 
Introduction, 
 
 lxxvii 
 
 Dhammapada"), "Would not a religion which lands 
 us at last in the Nothing cease to be a religion?" 
 Dr. Oldenberg, who has examined the subject with great 
 care, reaches the conclusioiy^that Buddha himself re- 
 fused to determine the question, taking the ground that 
 his mission was to prepare the world for the change, 
 and not to enter into explanations of the nature of the 
 change. It was a Great Deliverance. That position 
 was enough for him, and to that he adhered. But Dr. 
 Oldenberg does not appear to take into consideration 
 the fact that there has always been an esoteric as well 
 as an exoteric doctrine ; and it is in the former that the 
 actual truth of the teaching concerning Nirvana must 
 be sought by those who desire certainty of definition. 
 The esoteric view is that which harmonizes with Balzac's 
 " Divine World." In the language of "Isis Unveiled," 
 "Nirvana means the certitude of personal immortality 
 in Spirit, not in Soul" That is to say, it means the 
 state reached through entire separation from all the 
 conditions of earthly existence, and the complete and 
 final enfranchisement of the spirit. That the nature of 
 this enfranchised existence should be alike beyond hu- 
 man comprehension and expression is a necessity of 
 tlje position. It is only by anthropomorphization that 
 any form- of immaterial existence can be conceived ; 
 and it need not be said that all such conceptions are as 
 a matter of course erroneous and delusive. Therefore 
 a definition of Nirvana must ever be impossible. It is 
 that glory which passeth understanding. But however 
 transcending finite apprehension, and however idle all 
 
Ixxviii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 attempts to give form to it in our material terminology, 
 it is not merely possible but necessary to consider the 
 doctrine as the fitting culmination of a great and lofty 
 faith, the truths and beauties of which are to-day taking 
 hold upon many Western minds, if the scope and signi- 
 ficance of the system are to be grasped. 
 
 Of the three Worlds, Lambert proceeds, there are 
 three cults, which are expressed by Action, Speech, and 
 Prayer ; or, in other words, by Fact, Understanding, and 
 Love. The most material of these throe appertains to 
 the Instinctive sphere; the second, Understanding, to 
 the Abstractive ; and the third, Love, to the Specialist, 
 which is nearest to the Divine. The dominant influ- 
 ences in the least developed races and peoples find 
 expression in direct contact with external nature. The 
 stage of Savagery indeed is often marked by alterna- 
 tions of almost vegetative indolence and apathy. Thus 
 the savage marvels at the energy and restlessness of 
 the civilized man. But this indolence is not the sign 
 of a meditative habit. On the contrary it is akin to 
 the stolid unthinking placidity of the ruminants. An 
 Indian chief observed to a white man: "You do not 
 know the pleasure of doing nothing and thinking noth- 
 ing ; and yet next to sleep, that is most delicious." In 
 the stage of Barbarism the yearning for action becomes 
 stronger, and it persists into the ensuing stage called 
 Civilization, but here tempered, guided, and given new 
 efficacy by the development of Understanding. Speech, 
 as the race advances, becomes in its turn the dominant 
 influence. The mystery of the spoken word underlies 
 
Introduction. 
 
 lxxix 
 
 every step of real progress. This sj'mbolizes and in- 
 dicates the final triumph of Spirit over Matter. In 
 the beginning Force rules nakedly. Superior muscular 
 power was the basis of the first sovereignty. As men 
 improved plrysically, — as the prognathous jaw of the 
 Cave-dwellers receded, — the brow rose, and Thought 
 grew into a social influence. The general experience 
 furnished crude rules of conduct, which the few specially 
 endowed men formulated, and thenceforward Speech 
 was a moulding force. In the sphere of the Abstrac- 
 tive, Understanding as manifested by the superior 
 members of the race, and Action as supplied by the 
 less advanced, suffice to engender the whole of what 
 is termed material civilization. The sphere of Ideation 
 is, speaking broadly, the highest yet attained ; for the 
 widely separated and numerically few Specialists who 
 have appeared, to signalize momentous changes and to 
 lead great forward movements, cannot be regarded as 
 illustrating the capacities of the race at any period. 
 Their fate, and the reception given to their w T ork, on 
 the contrary, emphasize the fact that they were, so to 
 speak, born out of due time, and were therefore uncom- 
 prehended by their contemporaries. The world has 
 always crucified its saviors. It has ever preferred 
 Barabbas to Christ. Nor need this apparent cruelty be 
 imputed to the slayers for iniquity. The djing adjura- 
 tion, 4 ' Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
 they do ! " embodies a profound truth. The sluggish 
 upward impulses of mankind would fail to achieve 
 the deliverance of the race from the bonds of matter 
 
lxxx 
 
 Introduction, 
 
 were they not stimulated and invigorated from time to 
 time by Divine Incarnations. These involve deliberate 
 and predestined sacrifices, and in the nature of the 
 sacrifice no less than in the nature of the doctrine 
 taught by the Sacrificed, is presented the highest and 
 most vital Theosophy. 
 
 The ruling impulses of the undeveloped man are 
 purely egotistic. It takes him some time even to 
 discover that his own interests demand a measure of 
 regard for the interests of his fellows. The idea of 
 putting the good of another before his own does not 
 occur to him. Presently the tribal necessities compel 
 some kind of service to the community, but it is ren- 
 dered on the most practical and selfish grounds, if not 
 under compulsion. Ages pass in tedious struggles 
 before the germs of the emotion called Love become 
 recognizable. The sexual relations, first governed by 
 Instinct, then by Lust, are gradually modified and to 
 some extent elevated by the rise of a purer influence. 
 Not for mere material or intellectual gratification and 
 satisfaction was this purifying influence brought into 
 operation. The education of Humanity is laborious 
 and only to be achieved by Infinite patience. In the 
 emotion of Love men were to be taught to recognize 
 the descent of a nobler influence than either Action or 
 Reason could generate. Line upon line, precept upon 
 precept, this great lesson was to be inculcated. With 
 characteristic perversity, men began by abusing their 
 newly discovered privileges, but step by step the divine 
 revelation impressed itself upon the more advanced por- 
 
Introduction. 
 
 lxxxi 
 
 tions of the race, and opened their eyes to the beauties 
 of Altruism. When Christ said, "A new commandment 
 give I unto you, that ye love one another," he spoke 
 above the understanding of his auditors. But though 
 the doctrine of Love had been taught five centuries 
 before by Sakya Muni, it was to a new world, practi- 
 cally not reached by the teaching of the Indian Avatar, 
 that Jesus declared himself; and to that world, then 
 far behind Asia in culture and knowledge, the com- 
 mandment was in fact new. Nor, when due and neces- 
 sary allowance has been made for the effects ' upon the 
 creed of Christendom of the barbarism which prevailed 
 for more than a millennium after its nominal adoption, 
 can it be seriously denied that it has kept the sacred 
 fire burning upon the altar through all vicissitudes, and 
 has handed down to the nineteenth century, marred 
 indeed and obscured by carnal accretions, but still not 
 extinct, the central truths of the doctrine, the inner 
 meaning of the Great Sacrifice. Nay, more, for in the 
 cult of the most venerable of all the Christian churches, 
 — in that phase of its cult, moreover, which has pro- 
 voked the bitterest hostility of its opponents, — in that 
 cult of Mary which has been so often indicted as idola- 
 trous, — may be recognized a more penetrating insight, 
 not only to the needs of humanity, but into the sig- 
 nificance of the Divine scheme, than is manifested in 
 the austerest and most rigid following of the Semitic 
 Unitarian idea. 
 
 The Wisdom-Religions alone take full account, how- 
 ever, of the part played by the feminine principle in all 
 - 6 
 
lxxxii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 things and events. If the Western world has required 
 eighteen hundred years to bring it to even its present 
 dim perceptions of the rights of Woman in the social 
 and political organism, one main factor in this arrest of 
 development must be sought in the defective religious 
 vision caught from Palestine, and which by Judaizing 
 Christianity perverted the teachings of its Founder on 
 a vital point, and deprived Christendom for centuries 
 of the most powerful civilizing and ennobling influence 
 in existence. The Age of Chivalry marked the one 
 really fine and earnest effort made during this long 
 period of intellectual and religious twilight, to right the 
 established wrong. It was, however, overlaid with an 
 artificial fantasy, and it was confined to a comparatively 
 narrow range. With the advent of a more extended 
 material prosperity, with the growth of what are called 
 practical ideas, — ideas, that is to say, about wholly 
 ephemeral conditions, — that experiment closed in fail- 
 ure. The position of Woman no doubt underwent im- 
 portant changes. For ages she had been the slave and 
 chattel of Man. Then she was lifted to the higher con- 
 dition of his helper and his convenience. Finally she 
 became his toy and plaything. He could not bring him- 
 self to admit her equality, but he was too humane by 
 this time to treat her after the old brutal manner. He 
 could not countenance her aspirations ; but he was will- 
 ing to furnish her with anodynes ; and, having drugged 
 her soul to sleep, behaved to her somewhat tenderly. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding the disadvantages and restraints 
 and disabilities under which she has labored, — and 
 
Introduction. 
 
 lxxxiii 
 
 under many of which she still labors, — Woman has 
 maintained with surprising steadfastness the position to 
 which her characteristic endowments destined her from 
 the beginning. u Morally," says Lecky, " the general 
 superiority of women over men is, I think, unquestion- 
 able. . . . Self-sacrifice is the most conspicuous ele- 
 ment of a virtuous and religious character, and it is 
 certainly far less common among men than among 
 women, whose whole lives are usually spent in yield- 
 ing to the will and consulting the pleasures of another. 
 There are two great departments of virtue : the impul- 
 sive, or that which springs spontaneously from the 
 emotions, and the deliberative, or that which is per- 
 formed in obedience to the sense of duty ; and in both 
 of these, 1 imagine, women are superior to men." The 
 same acute thinker observes of that cult of the Virgin 
 already alluded to here: "Whatever may be thought 
 of its theological propriety, there is, I think, little 
 doubt that the Catholic reverence for the Virgin has 
 done much to elevate and purify the ideal of women, 
 and to soften the manners of men." It brought into 
 prominence and gave scope for the exercise of that 
 feminine influence which, no matter how dwarfed and 
 distorted, represents the highest possibilities of human 
 attainment, and symbolizes that principle of Divine 
 Love which is the key to the secrets of existence, — the 
 connecting link between Earth and Heaven. The con- 
 cluding lines of Goethe's great drama are : — 
 
 " Das Ewig Weibliche 
 Zieht uns hi nan." 
 
lxxxiv 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 The Eternal Womanly — the Woman-Soul — draws us 
 upward. The meaning of the entire closing scene of 
 Faust is clear. It is the Apotheosis of Love, which is 
 presented as the all-redeeming and all-uplifting power. 
 Here, as shown to us through the symbolism of Wo- 
 man's virtues and devotion, the sublime potentialities of 
 the Divine principle are but dimly foreshadowed. In a 
 higher sphere of existence alone can mundane anticipa- 
 tions be realized, and through the union there of the 
 mental with the Divine. This is no new doctrine. The 
 complementary necessity of the feminine principle for 
 the elucidation of all the deepest religious and moral 
 problems was recognized in remote antiquity. Plato 
 taught it, yet he did not originate it. The belief ex- 
 isted in India as far back as the pre-Vedic period, and 
 it entered into the teachings of the sages who dissemi- 
 nated the faith now known as that of Zoroaster. In 
 all the mystical scriptures the soul is symbolized by 
 Woman, — hence the Greek myth of Psyche. In the 
 religion of ancient Egypt the goddess Isis held superior 
 rank to her consort. The mystic interpretation of the 
 Edenic state represented Adam as Sense and Eve as 
 Soul ; and in the imputation to the latter of the sin 
 which caused the Fall, the esoteric version is inter- 
 preted as signifying that the Soul first offended in 
 neglecting the instruction of the creative Word, — the 
 Logos. 
 
 "Love," says Amiel, " sublime, unique, invincible, 
 conducts straight to the verge of the great abyss, for 
 it speaks directly of the Infinite and Eternal. It is 
 
Introduction. 
 
 lxxxv 
 
 essentially religious. It ma} r even become Keligion." 
 And again he says, in his meditative way : " Who 
 knows if Love and its benefactions, so evidently a 
 manifestation of a universal harmony, is not the strong- 
 est demonstration of a sovereignly intelligent and pater- 
 nal God, as it is the shortest path by which to reach 
 Him? Love is a faith, and one faith appeals to an- 
 other. This faith is a happiness, illumination, and 
 strength ; " and he speculates about himself, writing : 
 44 It is perhaps through Love that I shall regain Faith, 
 Religion, Energy, and Concentration." Amiel was too 
 thoroughly a modern to comprehend clearly the deeper 
 problems of life, but his nature was less absolutely 
 masculine^ than usual, and .b} r vhis feminine principle, 
 clouded as it was, he obtained an inkling of the truth. 
 Yet his sensibility and spiritual perception were much 
 greater and clearer than those of the men and women 
 who parrot-like repeat, u Love is the fulfilling of the 
 law," and, " God is Love," without attaching to 
 those words any special significance, without under- 
 standing or desiring to understand their true and full 
 meaning. How dark a passage to Balzac's eountiy- 
 men„ half a century ago, must have been the final 
 sentences of the first category in "Louis Lambert," — 
 " Perhaps one day the inverse sense of 4 And the Word 
 was made flesh ' will be the epitome of a new gospel, 
 which will read : 6 And the flesh shall be made the 
 Word; it shall become the Utterance of God.'" Yet 
 to those who have followed with attention the devel- 
 opment of this curious philosophy there can be little ob- 
 
lxxxvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 scurity here. If indeed Love is '-'creation's final law," 
 a time must come when it will possess its own ; not as, 
 heretofore, in visions and ecstatic vaticinations onlv, 
 but in fact. The Incarnation was a descent of Spirit 
 into Matter ; the acceptance of hampering conditions 
 by the soaring Soul. 
 
 In the culmination of human existence it is permitted 
 to those who are not natural pessimists and who have 
 studied the Wisdom-Religions to look forward to a 
 final spiritual victory, — when, however slow and pain- 
 ful the journey may have been, the original and in- 
 dispensable conditions of perfectibility shall have been 
 regained, and the long-struggling race, having restored 
 its feminine principle to that equal state which is re- 
 quisite to harmonious and effectual evolution, shall 
 have risen from the lower to the higher state of 
 existence, and thus be capable of exercising the su- 
 preme spiritual functions. When that time comes — 
 that 44 far-off, divine event, to which the whole crea- 
 tion moves " — the Flesh will indeed have become the 
 Word ; the Spirit will have obtained complete ascend- 
 ency over the Body ; and in the uplifting and purifica- 
 tion of Humanity it will have attained to Unity with the 
 Supreme, and will be, no less than the Logos, 4 4 the Utter- 
 ance of God." To the exalted and redeemed race the 
 adjuration of the Angel of the Resurrection will indeed 
 be changed, as Lambert concludes. 44 The Angel borne 
 on the wings of the wind will not say, 4 Arise, ye 
 Dead!' He will say, 'Let the Living arise!'" For 
 in that perfected world Death will have been conquered 
 
Introduction. 
 
 lxxxvii 
 
 finally', and the only physical consequence of protracted 
 existence on the earthly plane will be increasing refine- 
 ment of the organism and decreasing bondage to mate- 
 rial conditions. If we believe in the practically illimi- 
 table potentialities of life, if we hold that Spirit is as 
 real and as active as organized Matter, the intimations 
 of this bold and splendid speculation must possess for 
 us an interest and an attraction far outweighing the dif- 
 ficulty of grasping somewhat abstruse and highly con- 
 densed propositions, and we shall recognize in what 
 may at first seem the most audacious of Balzac's spirit- 
 ual flights an inspiration not less genuine and fascinat- 
 ing than that of the Poet who 
 
 " Sings of what the v world will be 
 When the years have passed away." 
 
 We now enter upon a consideration of that second 
 category of " Louis Lambert's" philosophical concepts 
 which Balzac himself evident^ doubted the ability of 
 his readers to comprehend, and which unquestionably 
 are of a nature to become " the despair of the under- 
 standing " which approaches them without some pre- 
 liminary study. Yet whoever is sufficiently interested 
 in this unique and in man}' respects profound work 
 must undertake the examination of the second cate- 
 gory ; for while it may at first sight appear to reiter- 
 ate divers propositions laid down in the first, its 
 scope, as intimated by the supposed biographer of Lam- 
 bert, is broader than that of the preceding one, and it 
 
Ixxxviii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 includes a larger synthesis. Moreover, there is an 
 " evident correlation" between the two categories, and 
 the second complements and rounds out the first, while 
 extending the general inquiry into regions not to be 
 traversed without trouble, and the exploration of which, 
 even in the most imperfect way, requires patience and 
 lucidity at once. On the very threshold of our investi- 
 gation, indeed, we encounter a difficulty which extends 
 to the very foundations of all such research, and which 
 it is the less possible to obviate because it grows out of 
 those radical differences of human character and mental 
 temperament which have divided thinking men from 
 the beginning into two irreconcilable camps. 
 
 In the second category we have to do with Number 
 and with the' Egyptian, Pythagorean, and Kabbalistic 
 doctrines respecting it. Now, the views entertained 
 regarding Number have always fallen, broadly speak- 
 ing, into two great divisions, and the boundaries of 
 these divisions have corresponded approximately with 
 those which define the positions of the Nominalists and 
 the Realists. The difference between these schools 
 may be briefly stated in the words of G. H. Lewes: 
 " The Realists maintain that every General Term (or 
 Abstract Idea) — such as Man, Virtue, etc. — has 
 a real and independent existence, quite irrespective of 
 any concrete individual determination, such as Smith, 
 Benevolence, etc. The Nominalists, on the contrary, 
 maintain that all General Terms are but the creations 
 of the mind, designating no distinct entities, being 
 merely used as marks of aggregate conceptions." This 
 
Introduction. 
 
 Ixxxix 
 
 dispute, however, is not merely a question of definitions ; 
 it is concerning irreconcilable conceptions, — the concep- 
 tions, that is to say, of opposed classes of minds. The 
 mind in which the spiritual elements predominate never 
 finds any difficulty in perceiving and apprehending that 
 which the mind controlled by the material element 
 denominates mystical or transcendental. To the ma- 
 terial mind, non-tangibility is nearly equivalent to non- 
 existence ; and every conception which attributes to 
 phenomena significances of a noumenal character is 
 set down by this order of mind as metaphysical, and 
 therefore more or less fanciful and frivolous. A very 
 high degree of ratiocinative power is quite compatible 
 with the tenure of the crassest Materialism ; and a 
 striking illustration of this may be cited in the late 
 Professor Kingdon Clifford, who quite evidently was % 
 so constituted as to be absolutely incapable of grasping 
 any spiritual conceptions. Another and still more 
 recent example is that of Judge J. B. Stallo, the author 
 of an admirably lucid and cogent but curiously one- 
 sided book, in which he convicts modern science of 
 retaining a number of what he terms metaphysical 
 theories. Evidently in his mind this is an evidence 
 of intellectual weakness reaching almost to puerility ; 
 nevertheless, it is certain that unless the growth of 
 Materialism should be so rapid and extensive as to 
 extinguish spirituality completely, the spiritual ele- 
 ment in humanity will continue to recognize that side 
 of existence in the future, not less emphatically and 
 earnestly than in the past. 
 
xc 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 The impossibility of eliminating the metaphysical 
 from human thought is indeed manifested in one of those 
 departments of science which Judge Stallo criticises. 
 He complains that in the higher mathematics, and 
 especially in transcendental geometry, abstractions are 
 objectified in a most reprehensible manner. This he 
 calls " the reification of concepts, " — a terminology in 
 itself implying either a total separation between Matter 
 and Spirit, or the attribution of all phenomena, mental 
 as well as physical, to the former, to the absolute 
 denial of the latter's existence. The significant fact, 
 however, is that Numbers to-day, no less than in the time 
 of ancient Egypt, and of Anaximander and Pythagoras, 
 appear differently to differently constituted minds ; 
 and that which Judge Stallo calls the "reification of 
 concepts " is balanced by an opposite tendency, which 
 may be termed " the spiritualization of things." As 
 regards the doctrine of Pythagoras, it must be remem- 
 bered that that philosopher wrote nothing, and that all 
 we possess of his teaching has been extracted from the 
 writings of others. It is equally important to bear in 
 mind that he taught esoterically, and that beyond a 
 certain point his pupils were forbidden to disseminate 
 the instruction they had received. This consideration 
 must cast doubt upon the version of the Pythagorean 
 doctrines given by Aristotle, and in particular must 
 cause the latter's interpretation of the numerical hypo- 
 thesis to be regarded with suspicion. Mr. G. H. Lewes, 
 who was himself an Agnostic, and who wrote a history 
 of Philosophy for the purpose of demonstrating that 
 
Introduction, 
 
 xci 
 
 Philosophy neither had done nor could do aught but 
 travel in a vicious circle, inevitably held b} T the Aris- 
 totelian view of Pythagoras, In order to fortify this 
 position, however, he was obliged to reject the tradition 
 that the sage obtained his ideas in Egypt, — a theory 
 which has no support in history. 
 
 The properties of numbers have been examined in 
 a voluminous literature. There is no ceremonial reli- 
 gion, and no body of esoteric doctrine or occult science, 
 which does not rest upon, or is not largely concerned 
 with, Number. Its symbolism is complicated, elaborate, 
 and in itself a complete study. It is therefore impossible, 
 in the, present instance, to treat the subject adequately, 
 or, indeed, to do more than glance at some salient points, 
 consideration of which may tend to the elucidation of 
 Balzac. In dealing with the first category, something- 
 was said of the relations of Number to modern scientific 
 theories, and it was shown that, even in the most purely 
 material signification, it held an important and some- 
 times a controlling position, as a means of measuring 
 and differentiating forces and of determining formal 
 variations in animal organisms. In the second cate- 
 goiy, Number is to be considered in a broader aspect, 
 and it becomes necessaiy to state in outline the ancient 
 beliefs on this head. Lambert's first axiom is to the 
 effect that u Everything exists by Motion and Number ; " 
 and the second is the corollary of this, — u Motion is 
 in one sense Number in action. ,, 1 Now, the Pytha- 
 gorean doctrine teaches that the fundamental essences 
 1 Compare Zenocrates : " The soul is Number in action." 
 
xcii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 of things rest upon numerical relations. Numbers eon- 
 tain the elements of all things. Everything in Nature 
 can be reduced to numerical conditions ; and on the 
 hermetic principle of correspondences the same general 
 law applies to the spiritual world. Numerals." says 
 one Pythagorean. are the invisible coverings of beings, 
 as the body is the visible one : that is to say. there is a 
 double characterism of things. — one visible, and one in- 
 visible. Of the former, the visible shape is Matter : of 
 the latter. Number. — and all that manifests itself is the 
 result of an inward energy, and this energy is the 
 emanation of a power. The greater or lesser quantity 
 of the powers expresses the material number, and the 
 greater or lesser quantity of the energy expresses the 
 virtual number. There are, undoubtedly, invisible cov- 
 erings, for each being has a principle and a form : but 
 principle and form are opposite extremes, which cannot 
 meet without a certain bond of union ; this bond is 
 formed by numerals." In other words. Number is the 
 vehicle through which the spiritual foundations of exist- 
 ence and phenomena are so presented as to be open to 
 human comprehension, and so also as to exhibit the 
 combinations, attractions, and repulsions, which in their 
 ultimate material manifestation are perceived as har- 
 monies and discords. To proceed with the citation : 
 " Each principle is an unity ; this becomes a real being 
 through energy, which is, however, fixed by Number. 
 As the laws and properties of things are impressed on 
 their exteriors, so are the invisible laws and properties 
 upon the invisible numerals ; or. as by the action of the 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xciii 
 
 sentient faculties through the senses we receive certain 
 impressions, our mind also receives distinct ideas of the 
 invisible positions and destinations of things, as soon as 
 it can comprehend them." According to this doctrine 
 the opposite elements of the universe, the finite and the 
 infinite, are manifested everywhere in physical opposites ; 
 namely, one and many, odd and even, right and left, up 
 and down, fixed and moved, straight and curved, square 
 and oblong, light and dark, good and bad. Unity is at 
 once the essence of Number, and it is no number, — for 
 it is the absolute, the deity. The primary numerals 
 are 1-10, but numerical progression is virtually infinite, 
 potentially. There are also compound numbers to ex- 
 press the various relations and x compositions of being, 
 their actions and influences ; there are central, mediaiy, 
 and circumference numbers ; and there are false and 
 impure numbers. 
 
 The Pythagorean Monad, proceeding from itself, gen- 
 erates the duad, which evolves the trinity ; and this, 
 with the quaternary, or mystic four, composes the num- 
 ber seven, which has been considered to possess sa- 
 cred significance from a very remote period. There is 
 ground for the belief that , the importance ascribed to 
 seven originated in Hindostan ; and one strong piece 
 of evidence in this behalf consists in the extraordinarily 
 frequent employment of the numeral by the early Aryan 
 philosophers. Thus we find mention of the Sapta-Hishi, 
 or Seven Sages ; the Sapta-Loka, or Seven Worlds ; 
 the Sapta-Kula, or Seven Castes ; the Sapta-Pura, or 
 Seven Holy Cities; the Sapta-Duipa, or Seven Holy 
 
xciv 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 Islands ; the Sapta-Samudra, or Seven Holy Seas ; and 
 so on through a long list of septenary divisions and 
 distinctions. The ascription of peculiar characters, vir- 
 tues, and properties to each number cannot be traced 
 to its origin. Pythagoras followed the Egyptians, who 
 possessed an elaborate system of mystic numbers ; the 
 Egyptians drew from the Chaldaeans and from India. 
 In the Pythagorean scheme the following definitions 
 may be found interesting. They are usually credited 
 to the sage himself, though probably upon somewhat 
 doubtful authority. " The unit, or monad," he is repre- 
 sented as saying, « is the principle and the end of all. 
 It is this sublime knot which binds together the chain 
 of causes ; it is the symbol of identity, of equality, 
 of existence, of conservation, and of general harmony. 
 Having no parts, the monad represents Divinity; it 
 announces also order, peace, and tranquillity, which 
 are founded on unity of sentiments ; consequently, One 
 is a good principle. The number Two, or the duad, 
 the origin of contrasts, is the symbol of diversity or 
 inequality, of division and of separation. Two is ac- 
 cordingly an evil principle, a number of bad augury, 
 characterizing disorder, confusion, and change. Three, 
 or the triad, is the first of unequals ; it is the number 
 containing the most sublime mysteries, for everything 
 is composed of three substances ; it represents God, 
 the soul of the world, the spirit of man. Four, or the 
 tetrad, as the first mathematical power, is also one of 
 the chief elements. It represents the generating virtue, 
 whence come all combinations ; it is the most perfect 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xcv 
 
 of numbers ; it is the root of all things. It is holy by 
 nature, since it constitutes the Divine essence by re- 
 calling His unit} 7 , His power, His goodness, and His 
 wisdom, — the four perfections which especially char- 
 acterize God." The oath of Pythagoras was by the 
 Quaternary Number, as implying the most solemn and 
 comprehensive of adjurations. u The number five, or 
 pentad, has a peculiar force in sacred expiations ; it is 
 everything." The Pythagorean pentad pla} T s an impor- 
 tant part in occult science. "The number six, or the 
 hexad, is a fortunate number. Seven, or the heptad, 
 is a number very powerful for good or evil." Its fre- 
 quent and evidently symbolic employment in the Bible 
 will occur to every one. u The number eight, or the 
 octad, is the first cube, — that is to say, squared in all 
 senses, as a die, proceeding from its base two, an even 
 number ; so is man four-square. The number nine, or 
 the ennead, being the multiple of three, should be re- 
 garded as sacred." Nine is a sacred number in Buddh- 
 ism and Brahmanism. "Finally, ten, or the decad, is 
 the measure of all, since it contains all the numeric 
 relations and harmonies. As the reunion of the first 
 four numbers it plays an eminent part, since all the 
 branches of science, all nomenclatures, emanate from 
 and retire into it." It will be necessary to speak at 
 greater length of some of the primary numbers here- 
 after. At present this general view may suffice. The 
 connection of certain numbers with Christian dogmas 
 is probably familiar to most readers, yet perhaps it is 
 worth while to recall the formula. According to this, 
 
xcvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 One is the numeral indicating the Unity of the God- 
 head ; Two points to the hypostatic union ; Three, to 
 the Trinity ; Four, to the Evangelists ; Five- to the Sa- 
 cred Wounds ; Six is the number of Sin ; Seven, that 
 of the gifts of the Spirit ; Eight, that of the Beatitudes ; 
 Ten is the number of the Commandments ; Eleven re- 
 fers to the Apostles after the withdrawal of Judas ; 
 Twelve, to the complete Apostolic College. 
 
 " Know God," says Pythagoras, "who is Number 
 and Harmony." Again, he says that the human soul is 
 "Number moving itself." Balzac asserts that Motion 
 and Number give rise to all phenomena, and that Mo- 
 tion is in a sense Number in action. The correlation 
 between these doctrines is obvious, but it is equally 
 clear that they are not identical. To elucidate Balzac 
 more thoroughly it will be necessary to supplement the 
 Pythagorean ideas with some which belong to the the- 
 osophy of India. According to that system of thought 
 there exist intimate spiritual relations between Number 
 and Speech, and through Sound the human will may be 
 exerted in the unseen universe. The whole elaborate 
 scheme of mantrams turns upon this hypothesis ; and 
 it follows from the latter that to the spoken Number, 
 as to the spoken Word, there pertain certain powers 
 the natural manifestation of which is on the spiritual 
 plane. Thus it is held that the Mantra and Brali- 
 manas of the Vedas comprise respectively a body of 
 sacred magic and its exegesis, and that the verses of 
 the Mantra can only be made to yield their concealed 
 properties by pronouncing or chanting them in an order 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xcvii 
 
 and rhythm the character of which is explained in the 
 Brahmanas. "Each metre/' says Haug, "is the in- 
 visible master of something visible in this world ; it is, 
 as it were, its exponent and ideal. This great signifi- 
 cance of the metrical speech is derived from the num- 
 ber of syllables of which it consists, for each thing has 
 (just as in the Pythagorean system) a certain numerical 
 proportion. . . . These forms, along with their contents, 
 the everlasting T^ecfe-words, are symbols expressive of 
 things of the invisible world, and in several respects 
 comparable to the Platonic ideas." Bulwer, in the 
 " Strange Story," represents Margrave as chanting in 
 some Indian tongue verses which had a strange effect 
 upon the auditor. Travellers who have witnessed the 
 more difficult feats of the Indian Fakirs know that the 
 latter chant or recite mantrams in peculiar rhythm, 
 and often with peculiar effect. In that country the 
 potency of rightly employed words or numbers for 
 thaumaturgic purposes is, it may be said, universally 
 believed. ' 
 
 It may then be assumed that in his use of Number 
 as associated so intimately with Motion in the genesis 
 of phenomena, Balzac had in mind the archaic and 
 m^ystical significance of numerals. But it is evident 
 that he intended also another and less recondite sig- 
 nification ; and this, which may for the sake of dis- 
 tinction be termed the physical meaning, is elucidated 
 as we proceed with the second categoiy. "Motion," 
 he continues, "is the product of a force engendered 
 by the Word and by a resistance which is Matter. 
 
 7 
 
xcviii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 Without this resistance Motion would have been with- 
 out result, for its action would have been infinite." 
 This scarcely requires interpretation, being little more 
 than a restatement of well-known physical laws, except 
 as regards the energizing power of the Word, which in 
 this connection stands for the Creative Will in opera- 
 tion. All the forces of Nature are now concluded to 
 be modes of Motion ; and it is by Number that these 
 forces are distinguished, their properties gauged, and 
 their differences ascertained. "Without resistance/' 
 sa} T s Herbert Spencer, u there can be merely empty 
 extension." And again, 4 ' Matter cannot be conceived 
 except as manifesting forces of attraction and repul- 
 sion." The ultimate reduction of the atheistic cosmol- 
 ogy represents the Universe as matter in motion. 
 Balzac proceeds: " The attraction of Newton is not a 
 law, but an effect of the general law of universal Mo- 
 tion." This may seem at first sight both obscure and 
 paradoxical, but it embodies keen suggestion and prob- 
 able truth. In the first place, it cannot be too con- 
 stantly remembered that Newton himself refused to 
 give to his theory of gravitation the significance as- 
 cribed to it by the majority of those who followed him. 
 His own position was quite clearly stated in his third 
 letter to Bentley, in which he said: "It is inconceiv- 
 able that inanimate brute matter should, without the 
 mediation of something else which is not material, 
 operate upon and affect other matter, without mutual 
 contact, as it must do if gravitation, in the sense of 
 Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. And this is 
 
Introduction. 
 
 xcix 
 
 the reason why I desired that you would not ascribe 
 innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, 
 inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body m&y 
 act upon another at a distance, through a vacuum, 
 without the mediation of anything else by and through 
 which their action may be convejed from one to an- 
 other, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no 
 man who has in philosophical, matters a competent 
 faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must 
 be caused by an agent acting constantly according to 
 certain laws ; but whether this agent be material or 
 immaterial I have left to the consideration of my read- 
 ers." In effect, Newton regarded gravitation not as a 
 primary but as a secondary phenomenon, and since his 
 time the progress of science has only emphasized the 
 weight and extent of the difficulties which surround 
 the whole subject ; and these difficulties have impelled 
 many men of science to seek some new hypothesis 
 capable of accounting for the phenomena without in- 
 volving the contradictions wiiich are inseparable from 
 the commonly accepted theory. Now, as Professor 
 Tait observes: " One only of the many hypotheses 
 which have been advanced to explain the cause of 
 gravitation has succeeded in passing the first prelimi- 
 nary tests. Of course, the assumption of action at a 
 distance may be made to account for anything ; but it 
 is impossible (as Newton long ago pointed out in his 
 celebrated letter to Bentley) for any one ' who has in 
 philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking' 
 for a moment to admit the possibility of such action. " 
 
0 
 
 Introduction, 
 
 There are accordingly " but two ways of accounting for 
 gravitation : either it is due to differences of pressure 
 in a substance continuously filling all space, or it is 
 due to impacts, in some respects analogous to those of 
 the particles of a gas which have been found to be ca- 
 pable of accounting for gaseous pressure. " So far all 
 attempts to connect gravity with the luminiferous ether 
 have failed. It does not follow necessarily that the 
 impact theory is the true one. On the contrary, the 
 theory as laid down by Le Sage has been met by Clark- 
 Maxwell with objections which appear fatal to it, and 
 the present state of the whole question witnesses to a 
 defeat of science at every point. Action at a distance, 
 it is asserted, is impossible, unthinkable. Yet this im- 
 possibility proves to be an ultimate fact which cannot 
 be explained satisfactorily on the principles of impact 
 and pressure of bodies in immediate contact. Science 
 holds to hypotheses which do not elucidate the phe- 
 nomena, and it adheres tenaciously to an axiom which 
 is altogether irreconcilable with observation. The field, 
 then, is still virtually unoccupied ; demonstration has 
 not been made ; and though the claim that gravity is a 
 mode of motion like light and heat and electricity may 
 be met with the objection that this force apparently has 
 no analogy with those other forces, there is ample room 
 for discoveries calculated to modify this position. The 
 chief observed difference between gravity and the other 
 natural forces consists in the fact that whereas light, 
 heat, sound, etc., require a calculable time for their 
 transmission to distant points, the action of gravity is 
 
Introduction. ci 
 
 apparently instantaneous. To employ scientific terms, 
 the other modes of motion are propagated with a finite 
 velocity. Yet gravity, though so much swifter in 
 action than most of the other forces, is comparatively 
 a weak force, dependent for its influence upon mass. 
 Another peculiarity of it is its entire independence of 
 all interfering bodies. It operates, to all appearance, 
 as if such bodies were diaphanous, nor can any trace 
 of deflection be perceived in its action. 
 
 But there may be natural forces as swift in their 
 action as gravity. There may be modes of Motion 
 with which science is as yet unacquainted. Professor 
 Crookes has posited a fourth state of matter (called 
 radiant) the properties of which are in several respects 
 new, and- acceptance of the reality of which would in- 
 volve radical revision in many directions. In the pres- 
 ent condition of uncertainty perhaps the most that 
 should be ventured is this : that since the real na- 
 ture or cause of gravitation is absolutely unknown, 
 since no theory has been proposed in explanation of the 
 phenomena which is capable of accounting for them or 
 for all of them, and since all other natural forces have 
 within the past fifty years been ascertained to be modes 
 of Motion, it is not prudent to make gratuitous assump- 
 tions either affirmatively or negatively in the present 
 case, and it certainly is not possible to disprove the 
 proposition of Balzac in the premises. Of late years 
 the scientific imagination has been so stimulated by 
 great discoveries and the continual expansion of the 
 field of possibilit} 7 , that sometimes it seems question- 
 
cii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 able whether a tendency to the invention of pure fictions 
 is not manifesting itself. Such a suspicion, however, 
 may in itself be simply a survival from the narrow 
 ancestral conservatism which affects us all more or less. 
 True science is bound to follow Truth though she lead 
 the seeker to Hades, and in the startling guesses and 
 suggestions latterly advanced, may hereafter be rec- 
 ognized adumbrations of great truths, — not indeed 
 now for the first time disclosed to human intelligences, 
 but re-discovered after being lost in a reactionary pe- 
 riod by extinct races or peoples. It is a somewhat 
 significant fact that some of the most remarkable of the 
 new suggestions appear in the domain of mathematics 
 and the department of geometry . The speculations of 
 Gauss, Riemann, Zollner, and others have probably ren- 
 dered most of these novel ideas familiar to the general 
 reader. Professor Tait in one of his lectures referred 
 to one daring speculation as follows: "The properties 
 of space, involving (we know not why) the essential 
 element of three dimensions, have recently been sub- 
 jected to a careful scrutiny by mathematicians of the 
 highest order, such as Riemann and Helmholtz ; and 
 the result of their inquiries leaves it as } 7 et undecided 
 whether space ma} T or may not have precisely the same 
 properties throughout the universe. To obtain an idea 
 of what is meant by such a statement, consider that in 
 crumpling a leaf of paper, which may be taken as rep- 
 resenting space of two dimensions, we may have some 
 portions of it plane, and other portions more or less 
 cylindrically or conically curved. But an inhabitant 
 
Introduction. 
 
 ciii 
 
 of such a sheet, though living in space of two dimen- 
 sions only, and therefore, we might say beforehand, 
 incapable of appreciating the third dimension, would 
 certainly feel some difference of sensations in passing 
 from portions of his space which were less, to other 
 portions which were more, curved. So it is possible 
 that, in the rapid march of the solar system through 
 space, we may be gradually passing to regions in which 
 space has not precisely the same properties as we find 
 here, where it may have something in three dimensions 
 analogous to curvature in two dimensions, — some- 
 thing, in fact, which will necessarily imply a fourth- 
 dimension change of form in portions of matter in 
 order that they may adapt themselves to their new 
 locality.' ■ ' 
 
 Now, the significance of the above quotation is this : 
 it shows with what eagerness, and with how free a use 
 of the scientific imagination, even great mathematicians 
 address themselves to the solution of problems arising 
 out of phenomena the reality of which cannot be dis- 
 puted, yet which have the appearance of transcending 
 known laws of Nature. It is desirable that the per- 
 plexities of Science under such conditions should be 
 recognized clearly, because those who, like Balzac, de- 
 rive their beliefs from a broader and more comprehen- 
 sive scheme of philosophy and psychology, assert the 
 error of these followers of the mechanical theory, de- 
 clare them to be groping in the dark hopelessly when 
 they fly in the face of their own most cherished princi- 
 ples in propounding such notions as Professor Tait out- 
 
civ 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 lines above, and affirm that if men of science would pay 
 as much attention to the higher conditions of Matter as 
 they do to the lower, they might discover means of ad- 
 justing their now confused and conflicting hypotheses, 
 and might even come to understand the possibility of a 
 four-dimensional space in perpetual contact with that 
 three-dimensional space in which the operations of the 
 present phases of existence are carried on. For it is 
 the crass Materialism of modern Science which interferes 
 with its advance in the most profound and momen- 
 tous problems. Even when such men as Professors 
 Tait and Stewart entered upon what seemed to them a 
 most daring venture, and wrote the " Unseen Uni- 
 verse," their main endeavor was to secure for the doc- 
 trine of a future life some slight scientific standing by 
 demonstrating that after all it was not wholly or hope- 
 lessly unscientific. Students of Occultism and the 
 Wisdom-Religion can but smile at such evidences of 
 timid and creeping conservatism masquerading as the 
 boldest speculation. Perhaps even the attempt to ob- 
 tain a foothold for psychologic truth in the territory of 
 Materialistic Science is commendable, but it is plain 
 enough that stronger measures will be required before 
 the reaction can be induced which is alone capable of 
 vitalizing physical research. 
 
 The fourth axiom declares as follows: "Motion, 
 by reason of Resistance, produces a combination which 
 is life; with the preponderance of either of these 
 agencies, life ceases." The extreme concentration of 
 thought in these propositions renders them peculiarly 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cv 
 
 liable to misinterpretation. In the present case the 
 breadth of the generalization is such that the full mean- 
 ing of the author can only be reached by following the 
 line of reasoning by which he arrives at his tersely 
 stated conclusion. At the first glance it might be 
 thought that the scientific heresy of Abiogenesis was 
 involved in Balzac's statement, but it may be hoped 
 that no reader who has carefully gone over the preced- 
 ing pages can fall into such an error. Motion and 
 Resistance, or Action and Reaction, operating upon 
 Matter, produce the phenomena of life. Such is the 
 position to be considered. Now, it is a generally ac- 
 cepted conclusion that dead Matter cannot produce a 
 living organism ; in other words, the law of Biogenesis 
 is commonly held. The Unity of Nature is also re- 
 ceived at present by scientific men, — as it was more 
 than two thousand years ago by philosophers to-day 
 almost forgotten, notwithstanding the obligations to 
 them of modern thought. But half the current contro- 
 versies turn on the interpretation given to the terms 
 Matter and Spirit, and without definitely fixing the 
 meaning to be given to these terms discussion is a waste 
 of time. There are some advocates of the atomo- 
 mechanical theory who, like Professor Tyndall, insist 
 on regarding atoms or molecules as definite and distinct 
 realities. Perhaps it is not of much consequence, and 
 perhaps this realistic view facilitates the exercise of the 
 scientific imagination. But it must be said that Balzac's 
 Matter is in its ultimate analysis more refined than that 
 of Professor Tyndall, and also a more logical and 
 
cvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 philosophical conception, since as a matter of fact the 
 Professor's solid and real atoms are pure abstractions. 
 But there ought not to be an insuperable difficulty in 
 pushing our conception of the tenuity of Matter be- 
 yond the farthest reach of chemical analysis, for within 
 our grasp and under our eyes the combinations, muta- 
 tions, and organizations of the primal substance are so 
 manifold and subtend so wide an arc that the mind of 
 man may fairly argue a practically illimitable poten- 
 tiality for these Protean variations. If it is possible 
 to accept the modern doctrine of a single physical basis 
 of life, it is scarcely possible to stop there. And how 
 much is conceded in accepting that doctrine ! As Pro- 
 fessor Huxley himself observed in propounding it, 
 twenty years ago : u What, truly, can seem to be more 
 obviously different from one another, in faculty, in form, 
 and in substance, than the various kinds of living be- 
 ings? What communit} 7 of faculty can there be between 
 the brightly colored lichen which so nearly resembles a 
 mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock on which it 
 grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with 
 beaut} r , or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowl- 
 edge?" Again he says: "Picture to yourselves the 
 great Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live or have 
 lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, mus- 
 cle, and blubber, witli easy roll, among waves in which 
 the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would founder 
 hopelessly, and contrast him with the invisible animal- 
 cules, — mere gelatinous specks, multitudes of which 
 could, in fact, dance upon the point of a needle with 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cvii 
 
 the same ease as the angels of the schoolmen could, in 
 imagination. With these images before your minds, 
 you may well ask, What community of form or struc- 
 ture is there between the animalcule and the whale ? " 
 Yet he proceeds to demonstrate that "protoplasm, 
 simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It 
 is the clay of the potter ; which, bake it and paint it as 
 he will, remains clay, separated by artifice and not b}^ 
 Nature, from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod." 
 Plasson-body or Amoeba bounds the physical analysis 
 of life, and Science has no ground for dissatisfaction 
 with the extent of the domain thus opened to her. 
 
 When in his Belfast address Professor Tyndall said, 
 " If you ask me whether there exists the least evidence 
 to prove that any form of life can be developed out of 
 Matter, without demonstrable antecedent life, my reply 
 is that evidence considered perfectly conclusive by many 
 has been adduced," — he was reviled as maintaining the 
 doctrine of Spontaneous Generation. That doctrine, 
 as alread}' remarked, has not been at all generally ac- 
 cepted, but for the reason, not that it is inherently ab- 
 horrent or repulsive, but that the demonstration of the 
 fact is not considered to be conclusive. Of course, 
 from the point of view of those who regard Matter as 
 separated altogether from Spirit, the demonstration of 
 Abiogenesis w r ould be disastrous ; it would seem to es- 
 tablish Materialism impregnably, and to expel Deity 
 from the universe. But to those who hold that Matter 
 and Spirit are merely terms given to different manifes- 
 tations of one and the same fundamental reality, Bio- 
 
cviii 
 
 Introduction, 
 
 genesis and Abiogenesis are alike conceivable and 
 acceptable. For if what we call Spirit truly pervades 
 what we call Matter, and is in the last analysis identical 
 with the latter, it follows that the elimination of the 
 spiritual from any form of generation, from any depart- 
 ment of Biological Science, is as impossible as the bi- 
 section of one of Professor Tyndall's real molecules. 
 Huxley has expressed the opinion that "in itself it is 
 of little moment whether we express the phenomena of 
 Matter in terms of Spirit, or the phenomena of Spirit in 
 terms of Matter." This is, however, true only in a re- 
 stricted sense. It does signify a great deal whether we 
 use terms of Matter or terms of Spirit. It commonly 
 makes all the difference between intelligibility and 
 non-intelligibility, — and that assuredly is not of little 
 moment. 
 
 Balzac does not give much help toward the explana- 
 tion of details, but in dealing with the origin of life he 
 had to do with a problem solved neither before nor 
 since his time. Following his synthesis, nevertheless, it 
 is possible to obtain a sufficiently clear idea of what he 
 meant to convey and of what underlies his generaliza- 
 tion. From the reference to and eulogies of Bichat, in 
 the description of Louis Lambert's college life, it might 
 be inferred that Balzac was indebted to that brilliant 
 but short-lived physiologist for his axiom regarding the 
 origin of life ; but while he employs some of Bichat's 
 doctrines to illustrate Lambert's intellectual reach and 
 precocity, there is no ground for the belief that in fram- 
 ing the categories which embrace the final expressions 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cix 
 
 of that powerful mind, anything more is to be found 
 of Bichat's than some fragments of his terminology. 
 ! Bichat defined life as " Fensemble des fonctions qui re- 
 sistent a la mort," — clearly an inexact and unfortunate 
 definition ; for adaptation, not resistance, is the controll- 
 ing principle of life, — adaptation of the organism to its 
 environment. Bichat imagined an inherent principle 
 of resistance to the external forces which were hostile 
 to life, and the extent of his real services to physiology 
 cannot obscure the fact that in this part of his theory 
 he was altogether astray. Balzac has used some of his 
 terms, but in such a manner as to make it evident that 
 he has not adopted the same fallacy. Action and Re- 
 action are the agencies really postulated in Louis Lam- 
 bert. Life, in fact, as described here, may be compared 
 with a somewhat parallel passage in Lotze's "Micro- 
 cosmos." He is speaking of the body, of which he 
 says : " Its life is like an eddy produced in the bed of a 
 stream b} r a peculiarly shaped obstacle. The general 
 course of Nature is the stream, the organized body, the 
 obstacle against which this breaks ; and its peculiar 
 shape converts the uniform and straight currents of the 
 water into the strange windings and crossings of the 
 whirlpool." Life, in other words, is not a stable con- 
 dition, but one of continual flux and reflux. Broadly 
 speaking, two principles or tendencies govern organic 
 life, — the tendency of that life to indefinite and rapid in- 
 crease ; the tendency of external forces to check or stop 
 such increase. But for the latter, the earth would 
 speedily be overstocked w T ith every kind of living crea- 
 
cx 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 ture ; but for the former, every living creature would 
 speedily succumb in the unequal struggle for existence. 
 The equilibrium of life is unstable. The predominance 
 of either of its dominant causes will overthrow it. This 
 is the interpretation of Balzac's proposition, which is 
 thus seen not to be discordant with the latest conclu- 
 sions of science, but rather to transcend, and in tran- 
 scending to harmonize and strengthen them. When 
 Professor Tyndall ascribes all terrestrial vitality to the 
 sun, the religious non-scientific mind revolts from what 
 it regards as a purely mechanical and atheistic doc- 
 trine. It is true that the professor himself disclaims 
 all pretence of understanding anything of final causes. 
 44 Science,"' he says, 44 knows nothing of the origin or 
 destiny of Nature. Who or what made the sun, and 
 gave his rays their alleged power ; who or what made 
 and bestowed upon the ultimate particles of matter their 
 wondrous power of varied interaction? Science does 
 not know ; the mystery, though pushed back, remains 
 unaltered." But Science is not so modest as these re- 
 marks imply. Her followers certainly have attempted 
 to answer the questions put to her, and some of them 
 from the standpoint of an alleged agnosticism indis- 
 tinguishable from atheism. Balzac's cosmology, being 
 primarily spiritual, is in no such need of provisos and 
 apologies. Granted that what is called Matter includes 
 Spirit or is Spirit under certain conditions, and it be- 
 comes not merely possible but easy to regard the sun 
 as the immediate agent of terrestrial vitality, without 
 yielding one jot or tittle of the spiritual hypothesis. 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxi 
 
 The Creative Will manifesting through Motion upon 
 Matter and engendering life is a perfectly thinkable 
 doctrine, and it possesses the advantage of representing 
 the dual nature of the human mind in a perfectly har- 
 monious synthesis. 
 
 "Nowhere," proceeds Balzac, " is Motion sterile. 
 Everywhere it engenders Number ; but it may be neu- 
 tralized by a superior resistance, as in minerals." This 
 axiom may be considered in conjunction with the 
 following one: "Number, which produces all the va- 
 rieties [of organic life], at the same time generates 
 Harmony, which, in the highest acceptation, is the rela- 
 tion between parts and Unity." The statement that 
 Motion engenders Number refers to the molecular com- 
 binations whose numerical proportions determine the 
 character of the resulting organism. Take, in illustra- 
 tion, the chemical composition of a plasson-body, which 
 is the simplest living germ, a particle of matter without 
 structure and organization, and absolute!} 7 homogene- 
 ous. It is in fact unorganized protoplasm, and there- 
 fore at the very beginnings of terrestrial vitality. Now, 
 this plasson-body is composed as follows : In one hun- 
 dred parts it has fifty-four of carbon, twenty-one of 
 oxygen, sixteen of nitrogen, seven of hydrogen, and two 
 of sulphur. Of course it is open to any one to object 
 that the chemical analysis must have been made upon a 
 plasson-bodj T which had ceased to live, and that there- 
 fore it does not really show the composition of living 
 protoplasm. Professor Huxley endeavors to meet this 
 objection with the remark that, strictly speaking, we 
 
cxii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 do not and cannot know the composition of any bodies 
 with exactness ; but the answer hardly meets the case, 
 and it is obvious that the cessation of vitality may — 
 and in the opinion of many, must — be followed by 
 changes in the organism (prior to decomposition) which 
 are liable to vitiate the conclusions founded on post- 
 mortem analysis. At present, however, we are not 
 concerned with that question. It is the relation of 
 Number to organic variation with which we are dealing. 
 Every combination of plasson-bodies is in fact a ques- 
 tion of numbers. According to the proportions in which 
 the groups of molecules which build up organisms are 
 combined, is the character of the perfected organism. 
 The same primary composition enters into all organic 
 structures. Out of this simple protoplasmic substance, 
 by numerical arrangement and combination, proceed 
 the entire and enormous series of variations which in 
 the first place determine the form and structure of the 
 interior organs, and in the second place decide the 
 species and character of the organism. With regard to 
 what Balzac calls the neutralization ' of Motion in the 
 mineral bodies, it is perhaps less complete- than he sup- 
 posed, for it is not now regarded as certain that what 
 to the imperfect vision of the human eye appears a con- 
 dition of absolute rest is really so. 
 
 The production of Harmony from the numerical ar- 
 rangement of species and varieties is inevitable, for the 
 Number spoken of is the Law which pervades all Na- 
 ture, and by virtue of which order, regularity, and se- 
 quence exist. This Harmony, too, is the connecting 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxiii 
 
 Jink, the nexus, between the Parts and Unit}*, as Balzac 
 puts it. Thus from the operation of Motion upon Mat- 
 ter — for example, the Motion of the sun's rays — pro- 
 ceeds Life; and from the operation of Number upon 
 the physical basis of Life proceeds organized vitality ; 
 and in the same way that Number which engenders 
 vital organization and variation, evolves Harmony, 
 which is the effect of Law. It is interesting to note the 
 efforts of men of science who cannot accept the mechan- 
 ical theory of the universe, to obtain a basis for a 
 scheme of thought closely allied to Balzac's. Thus we 
 find Professor Tait arguing from the biogenetical point 
 of view in this manner: "If then the matter of this 
 present visible universe be not capable of itself, that is 
 to say, in virtue of the forces and qualities with which 
 it has been, endowed, of generating life, but if we must 
 look to the unseen universe for the origin of life, this 
 would appear to show that the peculiar collocation of 
 matter which accompanies the operations of life is not a 
 mere grouping of particles of the visible universe, but 
 implies likewise some peculiarity in .the connection of 
 these with the unseen universe. May it not denote in 
 fact some peculiarity of structure extending to the un- 
 seen ? " There seems to be need for some clearer defi- 
 nition of the terms u visible " and u unseen " here ; for 
 a large proportion of the universe, with the phenomena 
 of which Science deals freely, is as a matter of fact 
 quite as much '■' unseen " as any conceivable abstraction 
 could be. Indeed the whole atomic theory, the undula- 
 tory theory of light, the theory of gravitation, not to 
 
cxiv 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 speak of other problems of the first importance, involve 
 the treatment of imponderable and invisible forces or 
 substances, the postulation of which, however neces- 
 sar}\ has been attended with difficulties the insoluble 
 character of several of which testifies to the existence 
 of an incertitude harcllj' to be exceeded by the most 
 daring speculations concerning what Professor Tait not 
 infelicitously terms the " unseen universe." 
 
 The seventh axiom derives from the preceding ones : 
 " Without Motion all would be one and the same sub- 
 stance. Its products, identical in their essence, are 
 differentiated only by the Number which determines 
 faculties (or properties)." Probably one of the first 
 speculations of the human mind had reference to the in- 
 timate connection between Motion and Life and be- 
 tween apparent absolute Pest and Death. There is no 
 cosmical theory, however ancient, which does not postu- 
 late the vitalization of matter in a state of rest by the 
 introduction to it of Motion. Five hundred years be- 
 fore the beginning of the Christian era Anaxagoras was 
 engaged in such a speculation. He imagined Space 
 to be filled with a chaotic mass of stagnant, lifeless 
 substances. Then Mind began to work upon it, com- 
 municating Motion, which in turn engendered Order. 
 Anaxagoras is entitled to the credit of initiating the 
 vortical theory also ; for according to him the operative 
 Mind communicated a revolving motion at a single 
 point. Half a century later Leucippus promulgated an 
 extension of this theory which offered a closer analogy 
 to the modern nebular hypothesis, for Leucippus filled 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxv 
 
 his space with atoms. But whatever the nature of the 
 superstructure, this has always been a fundamental pos- 
 tulate : that Motion is the force by which Matter is vivi- 
 fied and differentiated. Balzac, with Zenocrates and 
 others, gives to Number the function of differentiation ; 
 and with reason, whether we regard the attribution 
 exoterically or esoterically. Modern Science depends 
 largely upon Numbers for its activity and progress. 
 In fact it could effect nothing without them. It also 
 encounters in its research many curious and hitherto in- 
 explicable laws of Nature, which appear to assign cer- 
 tain particular numbers to certain kingdoms of animal, 
 vegetable, or other life. Thus in a recent treatise on 
 "The Origin of Floral Structures" by Rev. George 
 Henslow, five Principles of Variation in flowers are 
 specified, and of these Number is the first and most im- 
 portant. Now, Dr. Henslow has observed that certain 
 numbers appear to be preferred by Nature in the floral 
 kingdom. The numbers three and five (as applied to 
 floral whorls) appear to dominate all others ; the num- 
 bers seven and eleven are very rare ; and so on. The 
 rational inference of course is that the external agen- 
 cies which produce or assist variation operate most 
 easily in such ways as tend to development in the pre- 
 vailing numerical method, and this involves a similar 
 special facility of development in these lines for the 
 plant itself. But why it should be easiest for flowers 
 to vary in these particular numerical ways, Science is 
 quite unable to explain. Some of the ancients supposed 
 that the atoms themselves were animated and possessed 
 
cxvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 of conscious intelligence. This was only shifting, not 
 removing, a difficulty, though the old method of solving 
 hard problems has by no means lost its attraction 
 through lapse of time. It is, however, as Balzac puts it, 
 essentially upon Number that differentiation depends \ 
 specific collocations of atoms or molecules in definite 
 proportions determining the functions, properties, and 
 faculties of everv material organism* Motion acting 
 upon Matter produces Life. Number operating upon 
 animated Matter decides what kind of living thing shall 
 result from organization. Number without Motion 
 would effect nothing. Matter without Motion would be 
 homogeneous and exanimate. Motion without Number 
 could only vivify, but could not co-ordinate. But Mo- 
 tion never acts alone. As Balzac says, it everywhere 
 engenders Number, and thus it is in a way Number in 
 action. Motion originates Life, and Number utilizes 
 it by ordering its manifestations. Thus is produced 
 that Harmony which is spoken of as the relation be- 
 tween the Parts and Unity, — which is of necessity the 
 Whole. 
 
 The eighth axiom is brief, but not on that account 
 easy of comprehension : "Man is related to faculties; 
 the Angel is related to essence." Human life is the re- 
 sult of the descent of Spirit into Matter. In this phase 
 of existence the higher entity is "subdued to what it 
 works in." It cannot raise the coarser .material ele- 
 ments to its own plane. It must consequently adapt 
 itself to them, — to its environment; in short. Now, the 
 animation of matter, as has been seen, is but one of a 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxvii 
 
 number of processes, all of which are necessary to the 
 production of that complex, many-sided Whole which 
 we call Nature. Nature proceeds, in her turn, from the 
 simple to the complex, from the homogeneous to the 
 heterogeneous. Beginning with, as Science supposes, 
 an indivisible unit of absolute simplicity ; producing, 
 as the ultimate cognizable reduction of animated mat- 
 ter, the structureless plasson-body ; evolving from that 
 every form of organic life, ■ — she crowns her steadily 
 increasing complexity of organization, function, and fac- 
 ulties with Man, the highest and at the same time the 
 most elaborate of living beings. In saying that he 
 is ' i related to faculties," Balzac referred to the ever- 
 growing 'necessity which controls the laboratory work 
 of Nature, and compels her to devise more and bet- 
 ter mechanism for the manifestation of Spirit as she 
 climbs the evolutionary stairway. With each intellec- 
 tual advance the cerebral convolutions must become 
 more numerous, the afferent and efferent nerves be 
 attuned to a greater delicacy of sensation, a greater 
 rapidity of transmission. With the pressure of expand- 
 ing spiritual needs there must develop corresponding 
 physical instrumentalities. Even with the very high- 
 est attainable development on the human plane, such 
 as culminates in a Shakspeare, the direction of evolu- 
 tion is of necessity related to faculties, not to essence ; 
 for even here we have onlj- the best attainable adapta- 
 tion of the material to the spiritual ; and all that Na- 
 ture can accomplish under these conditions is, by the 
 laws of organic life, nothing but a compromise, the 
 
cxviii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 attainment of temporary equilibrium between essen- 
 tially antagonistic extremes. In this sphere of exist- 
 ence the principle of such partial and imperfect success 
 as is alone attainable is formulated by modern science 
 as adaptation to the environment. This involves the 
 strengthening of the relation to faculties, since these 
 are the means whereb} 7 adaptation is produced. The life 
 of man, and indeed of all animals, is a continual struggle, 
 and for the most part a struggle with needs and appetites 
 belonging altogether to the material and physical plane. 
 If, for instance, it were possible for mankind to live 
 without eating and drinking, — if, that is to sa} r , the 
 normal waste of tissue could be stopped, the fires of 
 life be kept burning without the consumption of fuel, — 
 it cannot be doubted that all the aims and motives 
 of the race would undergo the most radical and mo- 
 mentous change. At one stroke the fellest obstacle to 
 the higher life would be cleared away, and the hori- 
 zon of the world would be enlarged almost indefinite^. 
 But as things are, no step upward can be taken with- 
 out suffering, without direct or indirect concession and 
 tribute to the lower but implacable needs of mere or- 
 ganic life. The fate of man is like that of the 
 
 " horse with wings, that would have flown, 
 But that his heavy rider kept him down," 
 
 in the "Vision of Sin;" and however he may aspire, 
 this destiny he must as a rule undergo. He is "re- 
 lated to faculties/' because it is the order of his present 
 mode of existence. The experience and the suffering 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxix 
 
 which belong to incarnation are necessary to his per- 
 fection, and they must therefore be endured ; but such 
 is not the scheme of the superior, enfranchised, angelic 
 life. 
 
 Some may consider the introduction of angels to a 
 philosophical speculation inconsistent ; for does not 
 consideration of such hypothetical beings appertain to 
 Theology and Poetry alone ? Balzac would undoubt- 
 edly have returned an emphatic negative to such a 
 question, and would have denied the force of the objec- 
 tion ; and indeed thinkers whose claim to the title of 
 Philosopher can never be disputed have established 
 precedents in this connection which completely justify 
 Balzac. Thus Locke observes: " That there should 
 be more species of intelligent creatures above us than 
 there are of sensible and material below us, is prob- 
 able to me from hence, that in all the visible corporeal 
 world we see no chasms or gaps. . . ■ And when we 
 consider the infinite power and wisdom of the Maker, 
 we have reason to think that it is suitable to the mag- 
 nificent harmony of the universe and the great design 
 and infinite goodness of the Architect that the species 
 of creatures should also, by gentle degrees, ascend up- 
 wards from us toward his infinite perfection, as we see 
 they gradually descend from us downwards ; which if it 
 be probable, we have reason then to be persuaded that 
 there are far more species of creatures above us than 
 there are beneath ; we being, in degrees of perfection, 
 much more remote from the infinite being of God than 
 we are from the lowest state of being, and that which 
 
cxx 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 approaches next to nothing." This too is the thought 
 expressed by Tennyson in " The Two Voices," — 
 
 u This truth within thy mind rehearse, 
 That in a boundless universe 
 Is boundless better, boundless worse. 
 
 " Think you this mould of hopes and fears 
 Could find no statelier than his peers 
 In yonder hundred million spheres ? " 
 
 The late Lord Lytton pursued the same line of thought 
 in the following passage: " In the small as in the 
 vast, God is equally profuse of life. The traveller 
 looks upon the tree, and fancies its boughs were formed 
 for his shelter in the summer sun or his fuel in the 
 winter frosts. But in each leaf of these boughs the 
 Creator has made a world ; it swarms with innumera- 
 ble races. Each drop of water in yon moat is an orb 
 more populous than is a kingdom of men. Everywhere 
 in this immense design Science brings new life to 
 light. Life is the one pervading principle ; and even 
 the thing that seems to die and putrefy but engenders 
 new life, and changes to fresh forms of matter. Rea- 
 soning then by evident analogy, — if not a leaf, if not 
 a drop of w T ater, but is, no less than yonder star, a 
 habitable and breathing world, — nay, if even man 
 himself is a world to other lives, and millions and myri- 
 ads dwell in the rivers of his blood, and inhabit man's 
 frame as man inhabits earth, common sense (if your 
 schoolmen had it) would suffice to teach that the cir- 
 
Introduction, 
 
 cxxi 
 
 cumfluent infinite which you call space — the boundless 
 Impalpable which divides earth from the moon and 
 stars — is filled also with its correspondent and appro- 
 priate life." 
 
 In the dogmatic terminology of evolutionary philoso- 
 phy, the word "Anthropomorphism" has now for sev- 
 eral years done duty as a club wherewith to beat down 
 all manifestations of sympathy with true psychology. 
 Many well-meaning but feeble spirits have been so 
 coerced and overawed by the insolent arrogance of the 
 champions of the mechanical theory of life, that they 
 have not ventured to dispute the authority of dicta in 
 all respects as imaginative as, and infinitely narrower 
 and less noble than, the alleged "myths" against 
 which they are directed. There is indeed no attitude 
 which in the man of science ought to be more marked 
 than Humility ; for the history of human progress is 
 staked out with the gravestones of exploded scientific 
 fallacies, delusions, and follies. Notwithstanding these 
 constant warnings and cautionary signals, the tempta- 
 tion to ' 6 cross the boundary of experimental evidence " 
 and indulge in dogmatisms all the more positive be- 
 cause of their unstable foundation, appears too strong 
 for a large proportion of the modern scientific leaders. 
 What these men propound, no matter how derived or 
 supported-, is unfortunately accepted as infallible b} r 
 the great majority of their followers, — and by the 
 term "followers" is meant not onlj T other men of sci- 
 ence, but the crowd who take their opinions and beliefs 
 habitually at second-hand, and to-day yield to the 
 
cxxii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 pretensions of science and pseudo-science alike an 
 obedience and a confidence formerly conceded only to 
 the dogmatism of theology. Because of the material- 
 istic influence thus disseminated, it becomes necessary, 
 in dealing with any question which the canons of 
 scientific orthodoxy declare beyond the limits of ra- 
 tional research, to adjure all readers to "clear their 
 minds of cant," and prepare themselves for the candid 
 consideration of whatever is set before them by reflect- 
 ing that only fools will undertake to set bounds to the 
 possibilities of existence and the variety of phenomena 
 in the universe. 
 
 "The Angel," says Balzac, " is related to essence." 
 That this should be so is, ex hypothesis necessary and 
 inevitable. The angel, being pure spirit, or relatively 
 pure spirit, must approach essence in its constitution. 
 The course of Man is from indefinite homogeneity to 
 definite heterogeneity. But this constant increase in 
 complexity is due entirely to the necessity of refining 
 and perfecting the material mechanism through which 
 Spirit manifests. Remove the material medium whose 
 intractability and grossness necessitate so ingenious 
 and varied a series of adaptations, and the need for all 
 this planning and contriving at once ceases. The 
 spiritual, the angelic composition, being free from the 
 impediments of Matter, is simple ; and its relations and 
 tendencies are towards homogeneity, and away from 
 heterogeneity. Moreover, supposing that there are, 
 as analogy suggests, many degrees of spiritual per- 
 fection, it follows that the movement of all these beings 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxxiii 
 
 must be in the direction of Unity. The line of their 
 progress is necessarily at variance with that of Human- 
 ity. The descent of Spirit into Matter — according to 
 the Mystics, the true signification of the event exoteri- 
 cally figured as the Fall of the Angels — resulted in a 
 struggle which has at one and the same time deter- 
 mined the direction of material evolution, and fixed 
 the nature of the methods by which ultimately the en- 
 franchisement of Spirit is to be attained. But whereas 
 in the case of angelic development, the refinement of a 
 comparatively simple and homogeneous essence is re- 
 quired, in the case of incarnated spirit the vehicle itself 
 must be improved, purified, and perfected, to the end 
 that the operative soul may not be hopelessly weighed 
 down and impeded by it, in the fulfilment of that soul's 
 destiny. It follows, from this line of reasoning, that 
 the human soul, when liberated from its material en- 
 velope, must take up the evolutionary methods which, 
 prior to the change called Death, were impossible to it. 
 It does not, however, follow that such a change of 
 method is immediate. JSfatura non facit saltum is no 
 doubt the rule here, as in the visible universe. The 
 Oriental wisdom-religion teaches that the process of re- 
 storing the once incarnated spirit to its high Source 
 is a very gradual one, involving many reincarnations, 
 during which the discipline and preparation of the soul 
 consist in the difficult and painful work of subduing 
 the strong material desires and impulses, and bringing 
 the inner man into harmony with the Divine. In this 
 process the already liberated angels may be engaged as 
 
cxxiv 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 assistants to all who, like Faust, greatly struggle and 
 unwearieclly aspire. 
 
 " Wer immer strebend sich bemiiht, 
 Den konnen wir erlosen." 
 
 The ninth axiom indeed brings us to cognate con- 
 siderations : "By uniting his body to the elementary 
 movement, Man may succeed in joining himself to the 
 light interiorly (or by his Interior)." The superficial 
 obscurity of the language here veils a doctrine which 
 is fundamental in all religions, and vital to occult and 
 mystical systems. The union of the body with the 
 elementary movement signifies the preparation and pu- 
 rification of the physical organism by bringing it into 
 harmony with that natural force which is commonly 
 termed the vital principle. The method indicated in- 
 volves a reversal of the normal material evolutionary 
 process, and a substitution of the simple for the com- 
 plex. It is by eliminating the tributes paid by ad- 
 vanced humanity to cultivated appetites that the body 
 is by degrees attuned to the highest sympathies of phe- 
 nomenal Nature, and thus becomes fitted to be the 
 medium and vehicle of psychical efforts aimed at the 
 attainment of spiritual and divine illumination. The 
 preparation of the body by discipline of this kind can, 
 however, effect no more than to facilitate the subse- 
 quent ps}'chical operations, which must be carried on, 
 as Balzac saj's, b}^ the Interior, — that is to say, by In- 
 tuition. Now, modern mechanical science has labored 
 so strenuously to discredit this faculty in the interest of 
 purely materialistic philosophy, that it is in a manner 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxxv 
 
 necessary to call in the testimony of some established 
 authority on its behalf. The place of Intuition is thus 
 defined by Locke : Ci Our highest degree of Knowledge 
 is intuitive, without Reasoning ; " and this intuitive 
 knowledge, he sa}^s, " is certain, beyond all doubt, and 
 needs no probation, nor can have any, this being the 
 highest of all human certainty." And he says again : 
 u In the discovery of and assent to these truths, there is 
 no use of the discursive faculty, no need of reasoning ; 
 but they are known by a superior and higher degree of 
 evidence. And such, if I may guess at things unknown, 
 I am apt to think that angels have now, and the spirits 
 of just men made perfect shall have in a future state, of 
 thousands of things .which now either wholly escape our 
 apprehensions, or which, our short-sighted reason hav- 
 ing got some faint glimpse of, we in the dark grope 
 after." Elsewhere the same author says of Intuition : 
 " This kind of knowledge is the clearest and most 
 certain that human frailty is capable of. This part of 
 knowledge is irresistible, and, like bright sunshine, 
 forces itself immediately to be perceived, as soon as 
 ever the mind turns its view that way, and leaves no 
 room for hesitation, doubt, or examination, but the 
 mind is presently filled with the clear light of it. It 
 is on this intuition that depend all the certainty and 
 evidence of all our knowledge." Intuition, then, ac- 
 cording to Locke, comes first, and Reason second, 
 — a classification so repugnant to modern Materialism 
 that it would, were it possible, repudiate Locke alto- 
 gether, rather than accept a conclusion which in its 
 
cxxvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 final analysis involves the subordination of Matter to 
 Spirit. 
 
 ^ And now let us hear a modern Mystic on the defini- 
 tion of the faculty which has been and continues to be 
 the subject of fierce contention among rival schools of 
 thought. We quote from "The Perfect Way:" "It 
 is that mode of the mind whereby, after exercising itself 
 in an outward direction as Intellect, in order to obtain 
 cognition of phenomena, it returns towards its centre 
 as Intuition, and by ascertaining the essential idea of 
 the fact apprehended by the senses, completes the pro- 
 cess of its thought. And just as only by the combined 
 and equal operation of the modes termed centrifugal 
 and centripetal, of force, the solar system is sustained; 
 so only by the equilibrium of the modes, intellectual 
 and intuitional, of the mind, can man complete the sys- 
 tem of his thought and attain to certitude of truth. 
 And as well might we attempt to construct the solar 
 system by means of an exercise of force in one direc- 
 tion, the human system by means of one sex, or the 
 nervous system by means of the motor roots only, as 
 to attain to knowledge by means of one mode only of 
 mind. It is, however, precisely in this manner that 
 the materialistic hypothesis errs ; and by its error it 
 has forfeited all claim to be accounted a system." In- 
 tuition, in fact, is the key whereby the interior region 
 of the mind, the permanent, enduring part of human 
 nature, is unlocked ; it is the instrument by which the 
 deep, the central truths of existence, known in perpe- 
 tuity to the Soul herself, are attained to by the intelli- 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxxvii 
 
 gence. For according to the Mystics, whose teaching 
 Balzac follows here, the Soul, appointed to pass through 
 a long series of incarnations, gathers together and pre- 
 serves her experiences in Matter, and can and will 
 communicate them when the conditions are favorable ; 
 that is to say, when through the purifying discipline 
 of the body the Intellect is so clarified and refined as 
 to be capable of communion with and apprehension of 
 the central Psyche. It is thus that man may succeed 
 in joining himself to the Light by his Interior. The 
 Light is the illumination of the inner sanctuary, — that 
 sanctuary to which reference was made in the words, 
 46 The Kingdom of Heaven is within t you." 
 
 It is thus, too, that the .final redemption — the escape 
 of Spirit from Matter — is to be brought about. The 
 pursuit of a materialistic philosophy and science, by 
 stifling all elevating psychical effort, retards the only 
 form of progress which is worth achieving. For it 
 compels a one-sided development, and what is worse, 
 a development of that side of human nature which is 
 least deserving of culture. " What will it profit a man 
 if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" is 
 the problem now forced upon the race by the character 
 and tendencies of the dominant civilization. The pres- 
 ent exaltation of Eeason at the expense of Intuition is 
 directly in the line of soul perdition, or soul paralysis ; 
 for though the immortality of the soul may be predi- 
 cated, its connection with Matter may be indefinitely 
 prolonged, its return to its ineffable Source be as in- 
 definitely delayed, by such a materialization of its 
 
cxxviii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 mundane medium as will render effective psychical 
 manifestation and guidance impracticable, thus deliv- 
 ering over the Man himself to the blind leadership of 
 the Senses and the Intellect alone. Such a postpone- 
 ment of the soul's enfranchisement cannot be submitted 
 to. All the higher forces of the universe are banded 
 against the materialist conspiracy ; and the strong re- 
 action against that futile and degrading doctrine even 
 now manifesting itself wherever the English language 
 is spoken, and not only in those countries, but among 
 the Celts, Iberians, and Slavs, indicates the beginning 
 of an era during which the leading races will revolt 
 from the nullifications of the hour, and once more in- 
 terest themselves seriously in an enlightened, elevating, 
 and comprehensive psychology. 
 
 The future science of Soul must accord recognition 
 to the Intuitional without discarding the Rational. In 
 the past progress has been hindered by efforts to en- 
 throne one of these faculties at the expense of the 
 other. No error could have been more mischievous. 
 It has kept mankind oscillating between the poles of 
 Credulity and Scepticism. It has arraj^ed the strong- 
 est intelligences in opposed phalanxes, and so preju- 
 diced either faction as to render all compromise but 
 that of coercion or hypocrisy impracticable. There 
 was always a safe middle ground, but antagonisms 
 were always too fierce to permit of its being taken. 
 Nor was the situation improved by the introduction of 
 dogma on both sides, — that of theology on the side 
 of Intuition, and that of physical science on the side 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxxix 
 
 of Reason. All the smoke and dust of age-long intel- 
 lectual conflict has been bequeathed with other attri- 
 butes, prejudices, and proclivities, from generation to 
 generation. We approach the arena heavily weighted 
 in advance. Heredity has handicapped us, and we 
 need all the help we can obtain, all the encouragement 
 to be derived from conviction of the want of enlight- 
 enment, to render us fit for the task to the accom- 
 plishment of which we are called. Among the first 
 necessities of the new era will be the restoration of 
 the faculty of Intuition to its normal and legitimate 
 rank and position ; and following naturally upon this 
 restoration will come recognition of the truth that the 
 one and only way by which to effect union with the 
 higher Light, to put the race in the path which leads 
 to final emancipation and regeneration, is through the 
 cultivation of that interior psychical aptitude which has 
 been permitted almost to die out in most of us. 
 
 The tenth axiom is as follows: "Number is an in- 
 tellectual witness which belongs only to Man, and by 
 which he may arrive at the knowledge of the Word." 
 Before proceeding to consider this it seems necessary to 
 point out that in the wisdom-religion Number has two 
 distinct significations, and that the deeper of these can- 
 not be communicated, nor indeed understood save b}~ 
 those whose studies have prepared them for the assimi- 
 lation of an occult symbolog} r which in the very nature 
 of things must be " caviare to the general." Nor is 
 there any charlatanic affectation of mystery in this. No 
 man supposes himself capable of reading Sanscrit with- 
 
 9 
 
cxxx 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 out preliminary study in the language. No man thinks 
 it reasonable that he should be able to read music at 
 sight, never having learned its notation. To the unin- 
 structed the apparatus of a chemical laboratory or an 
 astronomical observatory conveys no information, and 
 is incomprehensible. In precisely the same way it is 
 necessary that the occult theory of Numbers should have 
 been studied before the meaning of references to that 
 theory can be grasped. In a popular exposition of Bal- 
 zac's profound system of philosophy it is manifestly 
 impracticable to attempt more than such an exoteric 
 outline of the subtler expressions as may serve to show 
 the possibility and the tendency of the more recondite 
 allusions. Even so the necessity of employing terms 
 which often bear quite different significations according 
 as they are used exoterically or esoterically renders it 
 impossible to guard against the liability to misconcep- 
 tion. The external interpretation of Balzac's state- 
 ment here is by no means easy, moreover, since even 
 that presupposes a familiarity with certain little-under- 
 stood matters. ■ The knowledge of the Word, which is 
 to be arrived at with the aid of Number, is knowledge of 
 the phenomena and laws of Nature, for one thing. The 
 Word referred to is the Logos manifested in the material 
 universe. The Logos in itself— the Ain-Soph of the 
 Kabbalists — is beyond the comprehension of minds 
 limited by Matter. It can only be known at all through 
 its manifestation. Number, the intellectual witness 
 which belongs only to Man, — that is to say, the instru- 
 ment by which he is enabled to follow and apprehend the 
 
Introduction, 
 
 cxxxi 
 
 organization and differentiation of Matter by Motion, — 
 brings him into relations with the material universe 
 which illuminate the structure and conditions of the 
 latter. In the lower and more restricted signification 
 of Number this is shown to be true by the character of 
 the instrumentalities to which Science is indebted for 
 its greatest advances. The physicist, the chemist, the 
 mathematician, the astronomer, the biologist, the bota- 
 nist, are all and equally dependent upon Number for 
 progress in discovery and the classification of phenom- 
 ena. This is not all that Balzac signifies in the tenth 
 axiom, but it is all that can be made intelligible to the 
 average reader, and probably all that the average reader 
 cares to know. Number, then, is the key to the mys- 
 teries of the visible (and indeed also to the unseen) 
 universe. It is the exponent of Nature's laws ; and 
 whether it shall unfold those laws completely depends 
 upon the ability of those who employ it to see not alone 
 its Material but its Spiritual aspects and attributes. 
 Recognizing only the former, they may attain to the 
 highest plane upon which purely materialistic science 
 can live ; and they will undoubtedly believe, having 
 reached that height, that there are no more practicable 
 elevations to conquer. At such a stage the temptation 
 is to postulate the futility of further exploration, to 
 label the horizon " Unknowable," and to " rest and be 
 thankful." A saner, better-balanced ambition recog- 
 nizes no impassable limits, but when the boundaries of 
 the Material are approached prepares to call in aid 
 those higher and more refined Spiritual capacities to 
 
cxxxii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 which there are no limitations short of union with the 
 Infinite. 
 
 "There is a Number which Impurity cannot tran- 
 scend, the Number wherein creation is finished." So 
 reads the eleventh axiom ; and again it has to be said 
 that the most weighty significance of this sentence is 
 esoteric. The Impure, or Impurity, refers to that com- 
 plete immersion in Matter which has the effect of para- 
 lyzing or even stifling the spiritual elements. To all 
 who have sunk so far, comprehension of the occult side 
 of existence is debarred. They occupy a position 
 towards the higher life analogous to that which a man 
 born blind and deaf occupies toward light and sound. 
 They are as incapable of rising out of Matter as a per- 
 son congenitally wanting in a limb or organ would be 
 of performing the functions of the missing parts. But 
 there is another, — a dual interpretation to this axiom. 
 The Number which symbolizes the end of creation is 
 also the Number which marks the return of all created 
 things to the bosom of Infinity. The allusion is to the 
 Hindu cosmology, according to which at stated intervals 
 (mctfivantaras) all that exists materia^ is resolved into 
 its constituent essence, in much the same way as if, re- 
 versing the processes of the nebular hypothesis, this 
 universe should be resolved into the "naked essence 
 floating free " out of which it is assumed to have been 
 gradually evolved. Not that there is any chasm be- 
 tween ancient and modern science in regard to this 
 problem. The West joins the East in the belief that 
 a time must come, however remote, for the dissolution 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxxxiii 
 
 of our universe ; and the destiny before it is, in the 
 opinion of modern science, to all practical intents iden- 
 tical with that postulated by the Hindu cosmogonists 
 many thousands of years ago. 
 
 As a rather curious and interesting illustration of this 
 similarity in conclusions reached, it need hardly be said, 
 by radically different paths, a citation from Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer may be worth giving: " Motion as well as 
 Matter being fixed in quantity, it would seem that the 
 change in the distribution of Matter which Motion 
 effects, coming to a limit in whichever direction it is 
 carried, the indestructible Motion thereupon necessi- 
 tates a reverse distribution. Apparently the universally 
 coexistent forces of attraction and repulsion which, as 
 we have seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor changes 
 throughout the universe, also necessitate rhythm in the 
 totality of its changes, — produce now an immeasurable 
 period during which the attracting forces predominating 
 cause universal concentration, and then an immeasur- 
 able period during which the repulsive forces predomi- 
 nating cause universal diffusion, — alternate eras of 
 Evolution and Dissolution." That is in the main sound 
 Hindu cosmology, whether or not Mr. Spencer studied 
 Hindu philosophers before writing it ; and few will in- 
 cline to the opinion that the likeness in speculation is 
 other than unconscious. Pralaya and Manvantara, 
 however, — Dissolution and Evolution, — come to very 
 much the same thing in the end ; and while it is perfectly 
 evident that Number must have as much to do with the 
 finish as with the beginning of creation, it is equally 
 
cxxxiv 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 clear that in the former case conditions and periods are 
 involved which can only be comprehended and per- 
 ceived by a highly developed Spiritual sense. The 
 Physics no less than the Metaphysics of the universe 
 are beyond the reach of the Impure ; of those, that is to 
 say, who have lost the instinct of sympathy with the 
 Real, and who squander their often splendid intellectual 
 energies in closing against themselves more and more 
 tightly the rifts through which, but for their suicidal 
 perversity, enough light would filter to guide their err- 
 ing feet back to firm ground. 
 
 "Unity," says Balzac, in the twelfth axiom, " has 
 been the point of departure for everything which was 
 produced ; thence have resulted composites, but the end 
 must be identical with the beginning. Hence the spir- 
 itual formula : Composite Unity, variable Unity, fixed 
 Unity." This formula applies to the entire created Uni- 
 verse, and to the whole body of phenomena, spiritual 
 and material alike. No matter what theory of secon- 
 dary causes be entertained, it will, if not nakedly atheis- 
 tic, harmonize with this succinct proposition. The most 
 ancient no less than the most modern philosophy, more- 
 over, points to the conclusion that the line of progress 
 in Nature is that of a closed curve, which, proceeding 
 from the Absolute or Supreme Cause, returns ultimately 
 to its origin. The Supreme Cause* may doubtless man- 
 ifest in conceivable and inconceivable ways ; but the 
 human mind is so constituted as to be incapable, in 
 its normal state, of apprehending other than material 
 manifestations. The limits of the human mind are of 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxxxv 
 
 course not necessarily those of incarnated spirit ; for, 
 given other material conditions, — other collocations of 
 atoms, other planetary states, — and it is quite possi- 
 ble to conceive of thinking beings widely differing in 
 form from the human race, and gifted with far other 
 faculties and functions. All we can say is that the tel- 
 luric conditions have been such as to make us what we 
 are ; for we know that the law of existence is adapta- 
 tion to the environment. The compounds into which 
 the primordial substance have been separated do not, 
 however, speak to us of a blind necessity. If forms 
 of life are largely dependent upon cosmical states and 
 phases of planetary development, the fact does not 
 argue a failure of omnipotence or omniscience. It 
 merely suggests views of the scheme of Divine mani- 
 festation so overpowering in their range and impli- 
 cations as to emphasize the narrow limitations of finite 
 intelligence. 
 
 In the study of the Microcosm, however, we may 
 gather analogies which will help us to a clearer com- 
 prehension of the Macrocosm. The relations of the 
 soul to the body resemble in many respects those of 
 the Deity to the Universe. The body is necessary to 
 the manifestation of spirit on the physical plane. But 
 what is the body? Assuredly, it is not the homo- 
 geneous structure it is commonly taken to be. It is 
 a concourse of organized atoms in strongly differen- * 
 tiated groups, combined but ephemerally, in a contin- 
 ual state of flux, undergoing substitution and renewal 
 so lono- as life continues. As Lotze puts it: " The 
 
cxxxvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 governing soul, placed at a favored point of the organ- 
 ism, collects the numberless impressions conveyed to 
 it by a host of comrades." It directs their more im- 
 portant movements, through the nervous system. The 
 automatic functions are performed unconsciously, as if 
 the duty of discharging those functions were impressed 
 upon the molecules with the act of organization which 
 determines their activities. So, too, Nature has her au- 
 tomatic functionings, — " blind forces " they are some- 
 times called, — which, however, operate with the pre- 
 cision and effectiveness of ordered mechanism, and are 
 only vague and irregular in our eyes because our field 
 of vision is so narrow and our mental capacity so small. 
 Composite Unity is clearly the first step in its mani- 
 festation, the first consequence of the descent of Spirit 
 into Matter ; variable Unity is the necessary sequence 
 of Composition. For Nature is never at rest. Organic 
 life is a process of combustion resulting in the con- 
 stant transformation of Matter into Energy, and the 
 equally constant reactionary change. Hence the neces- 
 sity for ceaseless adjustments, which are always effected, 
 though often not without violent local perturbations. 
 Life is Mutation, in one sense ; and the whole creation 
 is incessantly moving toward new combinations of Mat- 
 ter and new lines of Spiritual experience and develop- 
 ment. As the Earth Spirit chants in Goethe's immortal 
 poem : — 
 
 " Jn Lebensfluthen, in Thatensturm 
 Wall' ich auf und ab, 
 Webe hin und her ! 
 Geburt und Grab, 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxxxvii 
 
 Ein ewiges Meer, 
 
 Ein wechselnd Weben, 
 
 Ein gliihend Leben, 
 So scliafF ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit, 
 Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid." 
 
 Yet Nature is more than the garment of Deity ; it is 
 the body through which the Supreme manifests. As it 
 flows into composition and variation, proceeding from 
 the simple to the complex, raising and refining its com- 
 binations in the organic kingdoms, so it takes on a gen- 
 eral direction which, through the steady operation of 
 cosmic laws, must eventually — after what elevation of 
 the higher organisms embraced within the system is 
 beyond the conception of the present race — reach a 
 point at which the same tendencies and laws which 
 have completed this phase of Evolution must resolve 
 the universe into its constituent elements. Mr. Her- 
 bert Spencer was cited recently in support of a view 
 which modern science may be said to have generally 
 adopted. It is fitting that a philosopher who does not 
 take refuge in the Unknowable should also be heard 
 on this point. Lotze, it will be observed, goes further 
 than Mr. Spencer, and the difference is significant : 
 "There may," he says, "be protracted periods during 
 which the' frame of the universe, unaltered in its main 
 outlines and in the nature of its elements, goes through 
 a long course of internal movements, by which it grad- 
 ually realizes all the potentialities of manifold develop- 
 ment conceivable within the limits of the fundamental 
 adjustment. But after these have been gone through, 
 
cxxxviii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 the One, which did not in a thousand moments appear 
 a thousand times, but brought together the thousand 
 forms of its existence into the unity of a single devel- 
 opment, in which each stage is a condition of the next, 
 — the One, we repeat, thus quickened and in the full 
 tide of advance, will not go back to its former begin- 
 ning. This age of the world will be brought to a close, 
 and the velocity and direction of the formative motion 
 with which the cause of the universe reaches that ter- 
 mination will compel it to give in a fresh creation a 
 remodelled form to the immutable, but by dint of con- 
 stant development deepened and ennobled, meaning of 
 its being. A new adjustment of conditions will hold 
 good in this age. Other substances, newly distributed 
 functions, forces, and affinities, another kingdom of 
 generic forms, and hitherto unknown types of life un- 
 der new external conditions of existence, will repeat 
 the imperishable theme as in a characteristically con- 
 nected variation." It will be perceived that this is a 
 far broader view than that of Mr. Spencer, and it may 
 be pointed out that it closely resembles the Hindu the- 
 ory of the Days and Nights of Brahma. That which 
 the German psychologist prefigures is the Night of 
 Brahma, in which, one phase of Evolution having been 
 brought to a close, Pralaya, or Dissolution, ensues, and 
 a pause in phenomenal existence precedes the dawn of 
 a new creation on a higher plane of development. 
 
 "The universe" — so runs the thirteenth axiom — 
 44 is, then, variety in Unity. Motion is the means, 
 Number is the result. The end is the return of all 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxxxix 
 
 things to Unity, which is God." This is the logical 
 conclusion of the whole line of reasoning, as herein set 
 forth. The analogies between Balzac's doctrine and 
 both the oldest and the newest cosmic hypotheses have 
 been exhibited as clearly as possible. Many illustra- 
 tions might have been added, no doubt, but only at the 
 risk of wearying the reader, who will probably be sat- 
 isfied with an exposition which removes the most per- 
 plexing obscurities from the text. The steady and 
 ordered development of the author's philosophy has, it 
 may be hoped, been sufficiently kept in view. The 
 two remaining axioms treat of Number in its broader 
 spiritual relations and significations. They may be 
 taken together: ''Three and Seven are the two great 
 spiritual numbers. Three is the formula of the cre- 
 ated worlds. It is the spiritual symbol of creation, as 
 it is the material symbol of circumference. In effect, 
 God has proceeded only by circular [curved?] lines. 
 The straight line is an attribute of Infinity ; therefore 
 man, who adumbrates the Infinite, employs it in his 
 works. Two is the number of generation. Three is 
 the number of existence, which includes generation and 
 its product. Add the Quaternary, and you have Seven, 
 which is the formula of Heaven. God is above all. 
 He is Unity." In considering Number as treated in 
 the earlier part of Louis Lambert's categories, some- 
 thing was said concerning the symbolic use of figures ; 
 but it may be advisable to extend the explanations 
 already given a little at this point. It cannot have 
 been overlooked that the number Three plays an im- 
 
cxl 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 portant part in Balzac's whole system of thought. He 
 postulates three worlds, three great divisions of hu- 
 manity, three grades of spiritual development, three 
 cults, three principal vehicles or agencies of the Divine 
 manifestation. In all this he but follows the teachings 
 of the wisdom-religion and of all who have, whether 
 intelligently or mistakenly, sought to found special 
 schools and departments of knowledge upon its mysti- 
 cal scriptures and their commentaries. No doubt an 
 exoteric interpretation of what are called the Sacred 
 Numbers can be derived from the phenomena of the 
 visible world. But if we go back to the earliest ages 
 of which any authoritative record remains, we shall still 
 find the number Three invested with peculiar symbolic 
 significance. Thus the Accadians divided the universe 
 into three zones, presided over by three gods ; and 
 throughout the historical period the same number has 
 been employed in the highest religious symbology. It 
 is unnecessary to refer to the position it occupies in 
 Christianity, but it was no less indispensable to the 
 faith of the ancient Egyptians, and the systems of the 
 Greek geometrical philosophers. According to Balzac 
 it is the spiritual symbol of Creation, which is the joint 
 product of Motion, the Logos, and Number, speaking 
 esoterically. It is also the symbol of Existence ; for it 
 embraces the ideas of the Supreme Cause, who is Life 
 and Substance, or duality in unity, and the product of 
 these, which is the Word or Logos, the creative prin- 
 ciple. Also it represents the complementary masculine 
 and feminine principles, with their offspring ; and the 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxli 
 
 triple category of evolution, Material, Spiritual, and 
 Divine. Of the manifold occult meanings of the triad, 
 it is perhaps inopportune to speak at greater length. 
 The quaternary or tetrad is accorded a high value in 
 all esoteric teachings, and for some reasons which are 
 obvious enough to form the basis of one of those fal- 
 lacies with which the super-subtlety of the Greeks 
 sometimes confused them. Seven has always been a 
 sacred number. Its spiritual significance is recognized 
 both in the Old and New Testaments. It is the chief 
 among symbols, in fact, and enters largely into all 
 theogonies, and all systems of magic. In employing 
 it as the formula of Heaven, Balzac has only followed 
 all esoteric writers and teachers ; and it must suffice to 
 add that those who have more than a superficial ac- 
 quaintance with these studies know that the position 
 is justified. 
 
 This is the conclusion of the categories. It is not 
 asserted that the whole meaning of all of them has been 
 given in these pages. In the nature of the case that 
 could not have been done ; for, as previously intimated, 
 there are certain symbolisms employed by Balzac the 
 understanding of which demands just as much educa- 
 tion in an abstruse department of knowledge as does 
 that of the higher mathematics. There is no mystery 
 about the matter. Where mystery really exists all 
 external expression is debarred, in fact. Whoever will 
 take the trouble to study the subjects can by some 
 painstaking learn all that Balzac intended to convey. 
 The most generally interesting part of his doctrine, 
 
cxlii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 however, is explained here, and with a fulness suffi- 
 cient to direct such readers as are enough interested 
 in the topics discussed to follow up the curious specu- 
 lations of the author. Perhaps it may be worth while 
 to add a few words on the general significance of 
 "Louis Lambert." An attempt has been made to 
 show that Balzac had thought out for himself a phi- 
 losophy which, when carefully and dispassionately ex- 
 amined, appears to unite in a very striking way many 
 of the tenets of the old wisdom-religion with many 
 of the most firmly held working hypotheses of modern 
 Science. Beyond this, Balzac had formulated a theory 
 of the Will which resumed the fundamental principles 
 of all the schools of occultism and all the esoteric 
 teachings of Oriental schools, and which, moreover, 
 anticipated the most important recent advances in 
 the domain of animal magnetism. Now, what lends 
 particular interest to this Will theory of Balzac's is 
 the fact that he was not compelled to seek his evi- 
 dence at second-hand when dealing with the problems 
 of Volition and Intuition. He obtained the phenomena 
 upon which he based his conclusions from his own ex- 
 perience ; and this is a circumstance of the first con- 
 sequence, for the reason that he was a man in whom 
 the faculty of Intuition and the Will-power were ab- 
 normally developed. Other great writers have been 
 endowed with, large Intuition, but no other united 
 Intuition and Volition in anything like the same pro- 
 portions. To him, when he was making literature, 
 the relations of the Subjective and Objective were 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxliii 
 
 very literally and completely reversed. The ease of 
 William Blake, the painter, is the only one on record 
 which can be compared with this one. Blake could 
 so objectify his subjective impressions as to be able 
 at will to evoke the image of a sitter and paint a por- 
 trait from that image. Balzac went further even than 
 that. He so vitalized and materialized his subjective 
 creations that they became to him absolutely indistin- 
 guishable from living men and women. More than 
 this : he possessed the peculiar power of fitting his 
 subjectively produced people with exactly the charac- 
 ters adapted to their external appearance ; and having 
 once endowed his air-drawn bodies with equally air- 
 drawn minds, they proceeded to act, speak, and reason 
 precisely as actual human beings might have done, 
 not only without prompting from, but often very much 
 to the astonishment of, their creator. This last pe- 
 culiarity Balzac shared with Dickens, Thackeray, and 
 doubtless other men of genius ; and to it the world 
 owes, in great part, that singularly impressive vital- 
 ism which characterizes nearly all his fiction. It is in 
 fact the crowning effect of the true creative gift; and 
 what is far more important, it is a psychical phenom- 
 enon which is calculated to illuminate some of the 
 most deep and difficult of psychological problems. 
 The experience and testimony of a man gifted as 
 Balzac was must be of the strongest interest to all 
 who are open-mincled enough to hold their Materialism 
 provisionally, and who are candid enough to welcome 
 even a possibility of demonstrating the independent 
 
cxliv 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 entity of Mind and Spirit, and the predominance (con- 
 sequent upon this) of the Spiritual in the realm of 
 Realities. Nor should it be forgotten that while Balzac 
 is an indubitably strong witness on behalf of the genu- 
 ineness, independence, and trustworthiness of Volition 
 and Intuition, his evidence by no means stands alone, 
 but simply supplements and reinforces a great body 
 of doctrine supported on a great body of phenomena, 
 which has been handed down through the ages in an 
 unbroken succession, and has never failed to receive 
 the indorsement and approval of many strong intelli- 
 gences in each generation. 
 
 It would be inexcusable to close this examination of 
 " Louis Lambert " without referring to a work which, 
 when any speculations on the Will are under discussion, 
 must inevitably be considered. There is no direct evi- 
 dence that Balzac was acquainted with the writings of 
 Schopenhauer, and the indirect evidence is against the 
 probability of such knowledge. It is true that Schopen- 
 hauer's great work was published in 1818 ; but that signi- 
 fies little, since it was hardly at all known twenty years 
 later, and certainly had not been translated into French 
 when 4 'Louis Lambert" was written. There are un- 
 doubted analogies between Balzac and Schopenhauer, 
 but they are explicable by the fact that both writers 
 drew inspiration from the same source ; namely, the phi- 
 losophies and sacred books of the East. Schopenhauer's 
 indebtedness to the Upanishads is frankly and fre- 
 quently declared by him. Indeed his entire scheme of 
 thought rests upon Hindu foundations; only parts of 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxlv 
 
 the superstructure are Western, and where he has de- 
 parted most widely from Oriental philosophy he has 
 reasoned the least cogently. The fundamental princi- 
 ples of "The World as Will and Idea" are purely 
 Indian ; for though the doctrine of the world as Idea 
 may be found in Heraclitus and other Greek philoso- 
 phers, there can be no doubt that it was derived from 
 India in the first place. Schopenhauer holds it as an 
 a priori trx\t\\ for he says: "It is the expression of 
 the most general form of all possible and thinkable ex- 
 perience, — a form which is more general than time, or 
 space, or causality, for they all presuppose it ; and each 
 of these is valid only for a particular class of ideas ; 
 whereas the antithesis of object and subject is the com- 
 mon form of all these classes, is that form under which 
 alone any idea of whatever kind it may be, abstract or 
 intuitive, pure or empirical, is possible and thinkable. 
 No truth therefore is more certain, more independent of 
 all others, and less in need of proof than this, — that 
 all that exists for knowledge, and therefore this whole 
 world, is only object in relation to subject, perception 
 of a perceiver, in a word, idea." Kant analyzed phe- 
 nomena, and showed their illusiveness. He penetrated 
 below phenomenal existence and recognized as the im- 
 manent reality what he termed the ding an sich, — the 
 " thing-in-itself." What the thing in itself was, how- 
 ever, he did not attempt to determine ; in effect it was 
 the Unknowable for him. Schopenhauer went further, 
 and boldly postulated Will as the thing-in-itself, as the 
 essence of all things, as the cause and the maintainer of 
 
 10 
 
cxlvi 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 life. Thus he says: " Will is the thing-in-itself, the 
 inner content, the essence of the world. Life, the visi- 
 ble world, the phenomenon, is only the mirror of the 
 will. Therefore life accompanies the will as insepara- 
 bly as the shadow accompanies the body ; and if will 
 exists, so will life, the world, exist. Life is therefore 
 assured to the will to live ; and so long as we are filled 
 with the will to live we need have no fear for our exist- 
 ence, even in the presence of death." Of course what 
 is here referred to is Life in general, the life of the race, 
 not that of the individual. It must also be pointed out 
 that when Schopenhauer speaks of the Will he means 
 much more than the individual will. It is not only 
 conscious volition ; it is also that which has been termed 
 blind force. In his essay on " Will in Nature," he thus 
 speaks of it : " This will, far from being inseparable 
 from, and even a mere result of, knowledge, differs rad- 
 ically and entirely from, and is quite independent of, 
 knowledge, which is secondary and of later origin, and 
 can consequently subsist and manifest itself without 
 knowledge — a thing which actually takes place through- 
 out the whole of Nature, from the animal kingdom 
 downwards;" and, he proceeds, 4 ' this will being the 
 one and only tiling in itself, the sole truly real, 
 primary, metaphysical thing in a world in which every- 
 thing else is only phenomenon, — i. e. mere representa- 
 tion, — gives all things, whatever they may be, the 
 power to exist and to act ; " and he concludes this defi- 
 nition by affirming that " we are never able to infer ab- 
 sence of will from absence of knowledge ; for the will 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxlvii 
 
 may be pointed out even in all phenomena of uncon- 
 scious Nature, whether in plants or inorganic bodies : 
 in short, the will is not conditioned by knowledge, as 
 has hitherto been universally assumed, although knowl- 
 edge is conditioned by the will." It is to be hoped 
 that Schopenhauer knew what he meant himself by 
 " unconscious will," though he does not undertake to 
 expound the paradox ; but it is scarcely to be hoped 
 that in the absence of exposition any one else will un- 
 derstand it, and if it be objected to as simply unthink- 
 able the objection will be hard to meet. 
 
 He however follows the Indian doctrine in holding 
 that the will to live is the cause of the sorrow and suf- 
 fering apparently inseparable from existence. What he 
 calls the will to live may readily be identified with the 
 upadanas, the trishna, the tanha, of the East ; and 
 while there is a broad divergence between his conclu- 
 sions and those of his Oriental teachers, there is a curi- 
 ously close resemblance between his language and 
 theirs when speaking of the peace and consolation to be 
 derived, — in the one case from the fruition of the 
 Fourfold Path, in the other from the denial of the will 
 to live. Buddhism may claim Schopenhauer as its own 
 up to a certain point. Listen to one of the discourses 
 of Sakya-Muni in evidence of this: " This, O monks, 
 is the sacred truth of the origin of suffering : it is the 
 thirst for being, which leads from birth to birth, to- 
 gether with lust and desire, which finds gratification 
 here and there ; the thirst for being, the thirst for pleas- 
 ure, the thirst for power. This, O monks, is the sacred 
 
cxlviii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 truth of the extinction of suffering : the extinction of 
 this thirst by complete annihilation of desire, letting it 
 go, expelling it, separating one's self from it, giving it 
 no room." Here we have clearly the will (or desire) to 
 live postulated as the ground of suffering, and the denial 
 of the will to live postulated as the sole effectual remedy 
 for and relief from suffering, — which is life. This was 
 the great discovery made by Sakya-Muni during his 
 vigil beneath the sacred tree. This is what he declared 
 when, in Sir Edwin Arnold's beautiful paraphrase, he 
 announced : — 
 
 " Many a House of Life 
 Hath held me, — seeking ever him who wrought 
 These prisons of the senses, sorrow fraught ; 
 
 Sore was my ceaseless strife 1 
 
 But now, 
 
 Thou Builder of this Tabernacle, — Thou! 
 I know Thee ! Never shalt thou build again 
 
 These walls of pain, 
 Xor raise the roof-tree of deceits, nor lay 
 
 Fresh rafters on the clay ; 
 Broken thy House is, and the ridge-pole split! 
 
 Delusion fashioned it! 
 Safe pass I thence, — Deliverance to obtain.' ' 
 
 The extinction of the thirst of life by the annihilation 
 of desire, the denial of the will to live, — these are the 
 Eastern and the Western presentations of the same 
 system of thought. 
 
 The place given by Balzac to the Will in " Louis 
 Lambert" is apparently less important than the one 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cxlix 
 
 assigned to it by Schopenhauer. But it must be re- 
 membered that Balzac really neither rewrote nor repro- 
 duced his Treatise on the Will, and that all he has 
 given in " Louis Lambert " is a fragment which, while 
 it suggests much, leaves much unaccounted for. Here 
 and there are indications — especially in the categories 
 — which may be regarded as adumbrating a larger sig- 
 nificance than is expressly warranted ; as, for example, 
 when he says that all varieties of animal form are de- 
 rived from the combination of Will with Substance. 
 Here, too, as was pointed out in dealing with the pas- 
 sage referred to, Balzac appears to be in accord with 
 Schopenhauer in postulating unconscious will-power; 
 and it may possibly be thought by some that this oth- 
 erwise singular point of agreement indicates a knowl- 
 edge of the German by the French author. But it is 
 far more probable that Balzac, here as elsewhere, de- 
 rived his doctrine from some of those Indian phi- 
 losophies which with less boldness, but in the final 
 analysis not less illogically than Schopenhauer, posit 
 at some (however remote) point in their systems an 
 exercise of will which can only be conceived of (if it 
 can be conceived of at all) as unconscious. In any 
 search for final causes the Unknowable must at last 
 stop the inquest, simply because the conditioned and 
 finite can by no possibility apprehend the unconditioned 
 and Infinite. It is as well, however, to call a halt to 
 futile speculation on the hither side of unthinkable 
 propositions ; and this truth Schopenhauer might have 
 perceived more clearly, or acted upon with more satisfac- 
 
cl 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 tory results. Yet it must be said that no philosopher 
 has been more strangely misunderstood than the mis- 
 called Apostle of Pessimism. Because he held that this 
 form of life was not worth living; because, in plainer 
 terms, he took the ground which underlies Hinduism, 
 Buddhism, and Christianity alike ; because he asserted 
 the impermanence and futility of phenomenal existence 
 in common with the deepest thinkers the world has ever 
 known, — he has been branded Pessimist. The charac- 
 terization is emphatically Philistine, Materialist, shal- 
 low, and misleading ; and the proof of this will not be 
 difficult. 
 
 What is the state to which the discipline called by 
 him " denial of the will to live " is represented as bring- 
 ing those who successfully undertake the enterprise? 
 This is Schopenhauer's answer to that question: "He 
 who has attained to the denial of the will to live, how- 
 ever poor, joyless, and full of privation his condition 
 may appear when looked at externally, is yet filled with 
 inward joy and the true peace of heaven. It is not the 
 restless strain of life, the jubilant delight which has 
 keen suffering as its preceding or succeeding condition, 
 in the experience of the man who loves life ; but it is a 
 peace that cannot be shaken, a deep rest and inward 
 serenity, a state which we cannot behold without the 
 greatest longing when it is brought before our eyes or 
 our imagination, because we at once recognize it as 
 that which alone is right, infinitely surpassing every- 
 thing else, upon which our better self cries within us 
 the great sapere aucle. Then we feel that every grati- 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cli 
 
 fication of our wishes won from the world is merely 
 like the alms which the beggar receives from life to-day 
 that he may hunger again to-morrow ; resignation, on 
 the contraiy, is like an inherited estate, it frees the 
 owner forever from all care. ,, If this is pessimism, it is 
 curious that the doctrine is illustrated by Schopenhauer 
 from the lives of the Christian saints, from Saint Fran- 
 cis of Assisi, from Madame Guyon, no less than from 
 Buddhism and Brahmanism. And in the conclusion of 
 his Fourth Book, on 44 The Assertion and Denial of the 
 Will," he clearly intimates that nihilism is abhorrent to 
 him, and that he believes in the reality and superiority 
 of the condition which supervenes upon the denial of 
 the will to live. "If," he says, "it should be abso- 
 lutely insisted upon that in some way or other a posi- 
 tive knowledge should be attained of that which 
 philosophy can only express negatively as the denial 
 of the will, there would be nothing for it but to refer 
 to that state which all those who have attained to 
 complete denial of the will have experienced, and 
 which has been variously denoted by the names ec- 
 stasj r , rapture, illumination, union with God, and so 
 forth ; a state, however, which cannot properly be 
 called knowledge, because it has not the form of sub- 
 ject and object, and is, moreover, only attainable in 
 one's own experience and cannot be further communi- 
 cated." That is to sa}% it is not knowledge, because 
 it transcends knowledge, which latter is but one of the 
 manifestations of the "will to live." Schopenhauer's 
 real belief is, however, so clearly shown in the last 
 sentences of the Fourth Book of 4 4 The World as 
 
clii 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 Will and Idea," that only the crassest materialism 
 could ever have represented him as holding to annihi- 
 lation. He has previously warned his readers against 
 the very misconception most of them have fallen into, 
 in pointing out that "the conception of nothing is 
 essentially relative, and always refers to a definite 
 something which it negatives/' And again: " Every 
 nothing is thought, as such, only in relation to some- 
 thing, and presupposes this relation, and thus also this 
 something." He uses these words in concluding: 
 "Thus, in this way, by contemplation of the life and 
 conduct of saints, whom it is certainly rarely granted 
 us to meet with in our own experience, but who are 
 brought before our eyes by their written history, and, 
 with the stamp of inner truth, by art, we must banish 
 the dark impressions of that nothingness which we 
 discern behind all virtue and holiness as their final 
 goal, and which we fear as children fear the dark ; we 
 must not even evade it like the Indians, through myths 
 and meaningless words, such as reabsorption in Brahma 
 or the Nirvana of the Buddhists. Rather do we freely 
 acknowledge that what remains after the entire aboli- 
 tion of will is for all those ivho are still full of icill 
 certainly nothing; but, conversely, to those in whom 
 the will has turned and has denied itself this our 
 world, which is so reed, vnth all its suns and milky- 
 ways, is nothing." The words here emphasized by 
 italics prove in the most conclusive manner the spiritu- 
 ality and the subtlety of Schopenhauer's philosophy. 
 Those only can regard him as a true pessimist and as a 
 believer in annihilation, who expose their own narrow 
 
Introduction. 
 
 cliii 
 
 limitations by declaring that Buddhism is a pessimist 
 religion, and that Nirvana means annihilation. And a 
 single verse from the Dhammapada ought to settle that 
 question : " He whose appetites are at rest, like steeds 
 thoroughly broken in by the trainer, he who has put 
 away pride, who is free from impurity, him thus perfect 
 the gods themselves envy." As Oldenburg observes, in 
 his Life of Buddha, the pious Buddhist " see4s Nirvana 
 w r ith the same joyous sense of victoiy in prospect with 
 which the Christian looks forward to his goal, — ever- 
 lasting life." 
 
 Thus we have seen that religion and philosophy con- 
 cur in supporting certain definite conclusions which are 
 doubtless repugnant to that hard Materialism whose 
 manifestation characterizes the present course of the 
 world, which are rebelled against by our lower elements 
 instinctively and of necessity, yet which derive from 
 their antiquity, universality, and acceptance by great 
 minds (to adduce no other reasons) a certain weight 
 and solemnity, a certain masterful solidity, appealing 
 in no vague or doubtful way to what is highest and 
 best in humanity. The doctrines we have followed in 
 Balzac's story do not owe their main significance to the 
 fact that they were advanced by that powerful mind. 
 That fact indeed enhances their importance, for the 
 reason that Balzac was strongly endowed with the lofty 
 faculty of Intuition, and was thereby enabled to testify 
 from his own experience to the truth and reality of 
 many deep things demonstration of which is denied 
 less gifted souls. But the chief consequence attach- 
 ing to the philosophy here unfolded consists in its 
 
cliv 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 unity with and relations to those venerable systems of 
 thought which the Western world is now slowly learn- 
 ing to regard with something of the respect and atten- 
 tion they deserve. An endeavor has been made in this 
 introduction to indicate some of the points of agree- 
 ment between these hoary doctrines and the best-sup- 
 ported theories of modern physical science. In regard 
 to the exponents of that science it may indeed be well 
 to recall Schopenhauer's energetic and not uncalled-for 
 protest: " Men," said the philosopher, " set themselves 
 up for enlighteners of mankind, who have studied chem- 
 istry, or physics, or mineralogy, and nothing else under 
 the sun ; to this they add their only knowledge of any 
 other kind, — that is to say, the little they may remem- 
 ber of the doctrines of the school catechism ; and when 
 they find that these two elements will not harmonize 
 they straightway turn scoffers at religion, and soon be- 
 come shallow and absurd Materialists." The criticism 
 has not altogether ceased to be applicable, though it 
 was written many .years ago. It is of the more im- 
 portance to bear in mind the fallibility, and often the 
 incapacity, of men of science in regard to subjects 
 outside the lines of their research, since for some time 
 public opinion has reposed a dangerous confidence in 
 this peculiarly modern form of dogmatism* The phrase 
 4 c emancipated Reason" has no doubt an agreeable 
 sound, and seems to suggest advance and at the same 
 time liberation from error. But if Reason happens to 
 be only one side of the human character, and if, more- 
 over, it is the lower of two sides, of which the first 
 and higher has been a good deal contemned during the 
 
Introduction. 
 
 civ 
 
 nineteenth century, it may very well prove in the end 
 that the so-called emancipation of Reason is, strictly 
 speaking, no more conducive to real progress than 
 the amputation of one of a man's legs would be to 
 locomotion. 
 
 In 44 Louis Lambert" Balzac outlined a philosophy 
 which cannot be denied breadth and height/which gives 
 full play to the most intrepid imagination, and which 
 synthesizes the oldest and the newest of thoughts, both 
 intuitional and scientific. It is indeed little more than 
 the scaffolding of an edifice which the architect was 
 unable to complete ; but the design can be traced, and 
 we are permitted to realize, by the help of inference, the 
 appearance it would have presented when finished. It 
 is perhaps of more value than man} T fragmentary cre- 
 ations, for we may be said to possess the whole of it 
 in outline ; and if we cannot hope to clothe this skel- 
 eton as the genius that planned it would have done, 
 we are at least competent to follow the inspiration back 
 to its source, and thus to substitute our own feebler, 
 3^et not perhaps less intelligible, representations of the 
 principles involved and the truths conveyed, for the 
 lucid and penetrating exposition of the Master. It is, 
 too, a protest against Materialism, — a protest which 
 the author carries even further in " Seraphita," the final 
 volume of his philosophical trilogy, but which is en- 
 forced here with a power and a scope hardly to be 
 surpassed. 
 
 George Frederic Parsons. 
 
I 
 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 
 Et nunc et semper dilectce dicatum. 
 
 Louis Lambert was born in 1797, at Montoire, a 
 little town in the Vendomois, where his father carried 
 on a tannery of no great importance, expecting to make 
 him his successor. But the boy's inclinations for study, 
 which early showed themselves, changed in a measure 
 the father's plans. Moreover, the tanner and his wife 
 cherished Louis as parents cherish an only son, and 
 never thwarted him.' The Old and New Testament fell 
 into the child's hands before he was five years old, and 
 that book, which contains so many books, decided his 
 destiny. Did his infantine imagination comprehend 
 the deep mysteries of Scripture ? could it already follow 
 the Holy Spirit in its path through the universe? or, 
 was it merely fascinated by the romantic charms which 
 abound in those poems of the Orient? did the child's 
 soul in its first innocence sympathize with the sublime 
 piet}^ which hands divine have shed within the book? 
 To some readers the following narrative will answer 
 these questions. 
 
 '-TV 1 - 
 
2 
 
 Louis Lambert, 
 
 One circumstance resulted from the boy's first study 
 of the Bible : Louis begged and borrowed books through- 
 out the little town ; obtaining them by that persuasive 
 charm whose secret belongs to childhood and which no 
 one is able to resist. Spending his whole time in read- 
 ing, which was neither directed nor interfered with, he 
 reached his tenth year. In those clays substitutes for 
 the conscription were difficult to obtain, and wealthy 
 parents were in the habit of engaging them in advance, 
 so as not to be without them when the draft was made. 
 The poor tanners were unable, through poverty, to buy 
 a substitute for their son, and to put him in the Church 
 was the only other means the law allowed them by which 
 to save him from the draft. They therefore sent him, 
 in 1807, to his maternal uncle, the curate of Mer, an- 
 other little town on the Loire, near Blois. This course 
 satisfied both Louis's passion for knowledge and his 
 parents' desire to save him from the frightful uncertain- 
 ties of a soldier's life ; moreover, his studious tastes and 
 his precocious intellect gave promise of future high dis- 
 tinction in the Church. After remaining three years 
 with his uncle, an old and somewhat learned Oratorian, 
 Louis left Mer early in 1811 to enter the college of Yen- 
 dome where he was maintained and educated at the ex- 
 pense of Madame de Stael. 
 
 Louis Lambert owed the protection of this celebrated 
 woman to chance, a means by which Providence often 
 smooths the way for neglected genius. To us, whose 
 eyes seldom look below the surface of human events, 
 such vicissitudes, so frequent in the lives of great men, 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 3 
 
 seem the result of mere material phenomena ; to most 
 biographers the head of a man of genius shows above 
 the masses as a fine flower attracts by its brilliancy the 
 eye of a naturalist. The comparison applies to this 
 event in the life of Louis Lambert, who, as a usual thing, 
 spent the time his uncle allowed him for his holidays 
 with his parents at Montoire. Instead of enjoying, as 
 most school-boys do, the sweets of the far niente, so en- 
 ticing at any age, he carried his books and a slice of 
 bread into the woods where he could read and meditate, 
 free from the remonstrances of his mother, to whom 
 such persevering study was beginning to seem dangerous. 
 True mother's instinct ! From this time reading became 
 a species of hunger in Louis's soul which nothing ap- 
 peased ; he devoured books of all sorts, — feeding indis- 
 criminately on history, philosophy, physics, and religious 
 works. He once told me that he had found unspeakable 
 delight in reading dictionaries in default of other books, 
 and I readily believed it. What scholar has not again 
 and again found pleasure in searching out the meaning 
 of some obscure substantive? The analysis of a word, 
 its conformation, its history, were to Lambert a text for 
 revery, — but not the instinctive revery with which a child 
 accustoms itself to the phenomena of life and strengthens 
 its perceptions both moral and physical (an involuntary 
 culture which, later on, bears fruit in the understanding 
 and in the character) ; no, Louis seized upon facts and 
 explained them to himself, after searching out their 
 cause and their effect with the perspicacity of a savage. 
 By one of those startling gifts which Nature sometimes 
 
4 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 delights in bestowing, and which proved the idiosyncracy 
 of his own being, Louis, at the age of fourteen, was able 
 to give fluent expression to ideas whose real depth and 
 meaning were revealed to me only in after years : — 
 
 " Often," he once said to me in speaking of his read- 
 ing, U I have made delightful journeys embarked on a 
 single word which bore me through the abysses of the 
 past as an insect alighting on a blade of grass floats 
 at the will of a current. Starting from Greece I have 
 reached Rome, and traversed the extent of modern 
 eras. What a glorious book might be written on the 
 life and adventures of a word ! No doubt it receives 
 many impressions from the events in whose service it is 
 used ; it awakens different ideas, according to its sur- 
 roundings ; but its real greatness appears when we con- 
 sider it under the triple aspect of soul, body, and 
 motion. The mere consideration of a word, even if we 
 abstract its functions, its effects, its performances, is 
 sufficient to launch us on a wide expanse of meditation. 
 Are not most words dyed with the ideas they externally 
 represent? To what originating genius do we owe 
 them? If a vast intellect was needed for the creation 
 of a single word, how old is human speech? The as- 
 sembling of letters, their form, the countenance, as it 
 were, which the} T give to a w r ord, present an accurate 
 image (according to the character of each nation) of 
 the unknown beings whose memory survives in us. 
 Who shall explain to us philosophically the transition 
 from sensation to thought, from thought to word, from 
 the word to its hieroglyphieal expression; from hiero- 
 
Louis Lambert, 
 
 5 
 
 glyphs to alphabet^ from the alphabet to written elo- 
 quence, whose beauty lies in a train of images classed 
 by rhetoricians, which are, as it were, the hieroglyphs of 
 thought? May not the ancient picturing of human 
 ideas configured by zoological forms have determined 
 the earliest signs used in the East for the writing of 
 language? May it not also have left, traditionally, 
 certain vestiges |to our modern tongues, all of which 
 have caught up fragments of the primitive language of 
 departed nations, — majestic and solemn language, 
 whose majesty and solemnity decrease as societies 
 grow older; whose sonorous echoes in the Hebrew 
 Bible, still so beautiful in Greece, grow feebler through 
 the progress of our successive civilizations. Is it to 
 that first essence that we owe the mysterious spirit hid- 
 den in human speech? Is there not a species of visible 
 rectitude in the word Truth ? The terse sound of the 
 word calls up an image of chaste nudity, of the simplic- 
 ity of the True in all things. The very syllable breathes 
 freshness. I take the formula of an abstract idea for 
 my example, not wishing to express the problem by a 
 word which might make it too easy to comprehend, — 
 such for instance as the word floaty which speaks clearly 
 of the senses. So it is with other words ; all are in- 
 stinct with a living power derived from the soul which 
 they send back to its jsource by the mysterious force of 
 a marvellous action and reaction between word and 
 thought, — like, as it were, a lover drawing from the 
 lips of his mistress as much love as he presses into 
 them. Words, by their mere aspect to the eye, vivify 
 
6 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 in our brain the creations to which they serve as gar- 
 ments. Like other beings, they have their own place 
 where alone their qualities can fully work and develop. 
 But the subject is a science in itself." He paused and 
 shrugged his shoulders as if to say, " We are too great, 
 and yet too little." 
 
 Louis's passion for reading had been well nourished. 
 His uncle owned from two to three thousand volumes. 
 These treasures came from the pillage of abbeys and 
 castles during the Revolution. The worthy man had been 
 able as pretre assermente to cull the choicest works from 
 the precious collections which were sold in those days by 
 the weight. In three years Louis Lambert had assimi- 
 lated the substance of all the books in his uncle's library 
 that deserved study. The absorption of ideas through 
 reading became in him a curious phenomenon ; his eye 
 took in seven or eight lines at a glance; his mind 
 caught and appreciated their meaning with a swiftness 
 equal to the action of the eye ; often one word in a sen- 
 tence was enough to give him the meaning of the whole. 
 His memory was amazing, retaining with equal fidelity 
 the thoughts acquired by reading and those which re- 
 flection or conversation suggested to him. In fact, he 
 possessed all forms of memory, — for names, words, 
 places, things, and faces. Not only could he recall 
 objects at will, but he could see them again in his own 
 mind, precisely the same in situation, vividness, and 
 coloring as they were when he first beheld them. This 
 power he applied equally to the intangible acts of the 
 understanding. He recollected, to use his own saying, 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 7 
 
 not only the position of thoughts on the page of the 
 book from which he took them, but also the workings 
 of his own mind at distant periods. By an almost un- 
 heard-of privilege his memory was able to retrace the 
 entire life and progress of his mind, from the earliest 
 idea that dawned upon it to the last fruition of his 
 thought ; through dimness to lucidity. His brain, early 
 subjected to the difficult mechanism of the concentration 
 of human powers, drew from its own rich stores a crowd 
 of images, wonderful for their reality and their vigor, 
 with which he fed his mind during the process of his 
 limpid contemplations. 
 
 " When it pleases me to do so," he said in his pecu- 
 liar language, to which the treasures of memory im- 
 parted a precocious originality, "I draw a veil before 
 my eyes. I retire within myself and find a darkened 
 chamber, where the events of nature reproduce them- 
 selves in purer forms than those under which they first 
 appeared to my exterior senses." 
 
 At twelve years of age his. imagination, stimulated by 
 the perpetual exercise of his faculties, was developed to 
 a degree which enabled him to obtain such exact no- 
 tions of things which he knew through reading only 
 that the image imprinted on his mind could not have 
 been more vivid had he seen them in reality, — whether 
 he reached the result by analogy, or whether he were 
 gifted with a species of second-sight by which he was 
 enabled to embrace all nature. 
 
 " When I read of the battle of Austerlitz," he one 
 day said to me,'" I saw all the incidents. The volleys 
 
8 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 of cannon, the shouts of the combatants sounded in my 
 ears and stirred my very entrails. I smelt the powder ; 
 I heard the tramp of horses and the cries of men ; I saw 
 the plain where the armed nations clashed together as 
 though I stood on the heights of the Santon. The 
 sight was awful to me. like a page of the Apocalypse." 
 
 When he thus put all his forces into reading he lost, 
 to a certain extent, the consciousness of physical life ; 
 existing only through the all-powerful action of his in- 
 ward organs, the compass of which was then immeasur- 
 ably extended, — to use his own expression, he " left 
 space behind him." But I will not anticipate the his- 
 tory of the intellectual phases of his life. I have been 
 led, in spite of myself, to invert the order in which I 
 ought to unfold the history of a man who carried all his 
 action into thought, just as others put all their being 
 into action. 
 
 A strong inclination led him toward the study of 
 mysticism. "Abyssus abyssum" he said to me, 64 our 
 mind is an abyss which delights in depths profound. 
 As children, men, and dotards, we love mystery, under 
 whatever form it comes." The predilection was fatal 
 to him, — if indeed we may judge his life by ordinary 
 standards, and measure his joys by our own or by the 
 theories of social prejudice. This taste for " the things 
 of heaven " (another of his phrases), this mens divinior, 
 w r as due perhaps to the influence of the first books which 
 he read in his uncle's library. Saint Theresa and Ma- 
 dame Guyon were to him a continuation of the Bible, 
 the first food of his adult intelligence, and they accus- 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 9 
 
 tomed him to those ardent reactions of the soul in which 
 ecstasy is both a means and a result. This study, this 
 taste, uplifted his heart, ennobled and purified it, gave 
 him a thirst for the Divine nature, inspired him with del- 
 icate emotions that were almost feminine and which are 
 instinctive in the souls of great men ; possibly the sub- 
 limity of such min comes from the need of self-devotion 
 which distinguishes womanhood, — carried by them into 
 higher things. Thanks to his early impressions, Louis 
 continued pure through his college life. This noble 
 virginity of the senses had the effect, necessarily, of 
 enriching the warmth of his blood and increasing the 
 faculties of his mind. 
 
 Madame de Stael, banished to forty leagues from 
 Paris, spent several months of her exile in a country- 
 house near Vendome. Walking one day near the boun- 
 daries of the park, she encountered the tanner's son, 
 dressed almost in rags and absorbed in a book. The 
 book happened to be a translation of ' ' Heaven and 
 Hell." In those days MM. Saint-Martin, de Gence, 
 and a few other French writers, partly German, were 
 the only men in the whole French empire who knew the 
 name of Swedenborg. Madame de Stael, much aston- 
 ished, took the book with the bluntness she affected in 
 her questions, looks, and gestures ; then, with a sudden 
 glance at Lambert, she said : — 
 
 " Do you understand that?" 
 
 " Do you pray to God? " asked the child. 
 
 " Why — yes," she answered. 
 
 " Do you comprehend him ? " 
 
10 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 Madame de Stael was silent for a moment ; then she 
 sat down beside Lambert and began to talk to him. 
 Unfortunately my memory, though extensive, is far from 
 being as faithful as that of my friend, and I have for- 
 gotten the conversation beyond the opening words. 
 The meeting was of a nature to keenly interest such a 
 woman as Madame de Stael. When she reached home 
 she said little about it, despite the natural need of 
 expression which, with her, often degenerated into 
 loquacity ; but she was thoughtful and preoccupied. I 
 have questioned the only person still living who remem- 
 bers the incident, hoping to recover some of Madame 
 de StaeTs remarks, but he could only recall one sen- 
 tence : " He is a Seer," she said, speaking of Lambert. 
 
 Louis never justified to the eyes of men the noble 
 hopes he inspired in his protectress. The passing inter- 
 est which she felt for him was thought to be a womanly 
 caprice, a fancy peculiar to the artistic nature. Ma- 
 dame de Stael desired to save Louis Lambert from the 
 Emperor and from the Church, and give him, she said, 
 to the noble destiny that awaited him ; she believed 
 that she had rescued a modern Moses from the flood. 
 Before leaving the neighborhood she employed a friend, 
 M. de Corbigny, then prefect of Blois, to put her Moses 
 in due time into the college of Vendome ; then, in all 
 probability, she forgot him. 
 
 Entering college at the beginning of 1811, when he 
 was fourteen, Lambert must have left it at the close of 
 1814, after finishing his course of philosophy. I doubt 
 if he ever received any reminder of his benefactress dur- 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 11 
 
 ing those years ; unless it be considered a benefit to pay 
 the board and tuition of a lad without considering his 
 future, after taking him from a career where he might 
 perhaps have found happiness. The circumstances 
 of the period, and Louis Lambert's own nature, may 
 sufficiently absolve Madame de Stael both for her care- 
 lessness and her generosity. The person selected by 
 her to act as intermediary in her relations to the boy 
 - quitted Blois at the time the latter left college. Politi- 
 cal events then happening explained and perhaps justi- 
 fied the indifference of this person to Madame de StaeTs 
 proUgL The author of " Corinne " heard no more of 
 her little Moses. The hundred louis which she gave M. 
 de Corbign}^ (who, I think, died in 1812) were not a 
 sum to be remembered when her lofty soul found its 
 element, and her interests were keenly excited and in- 
 volved in the changing events of 1814 and 1815. Louis 
 Lambert was at that time too poor, and also too proud 
 to seek his benefactress, who was travelling in Europe. 
 Nevertheless, he did go on foot from Blois to Paris, in- 
 tending to see her on her return, and reached her house, 
 unfortunately, on the very day she died. Two letters 
 which he had written to her remained unopened. The 
 recollection of her kind intentions toward Louis Lam- 
 bert now survives only in the memory of a few of his 
 early comrades who, like myself, were struck from the 
 first with the extraordinary facts of his history. 
 
 One must needs have been a collegian at Vendome to 
 understand the effect produced upon our minds by the 
 announcement of a " New-comer," and the special 
 
12 
 
 Louis Lambert, 
 
 impression which y under the circumstances, Louis Lam- 
 bert's arrival made upon us. 
 
 A few words upon the primitive rules of our institu- 
 tion, which was partly religious and partly military, 
 are necessary to explain the life which Louis Lambert 
 was about to lead. The order of the Oratorians, vowed 
 like that of the Jesuits to the education of youth, owned 
 before the Revolution various provincial establishments, 
 of which the most important were the colleges of Ven- 
 dome, Tournon, La Fleehe, Pont-le-Voy, Soreze, and 
 Juilly. That of Vendome, as well as others, raised, I 
 think, a certain number of cadets for the arnry. The 
 abolition of the teaching fraternities decreed by the 
 Convention had very little effect upon the Institution 
 at Venclome. When the first excitement was over, the 
 college recovered its buildings ; the Oratorians who had 
 dispersed through the environs returned, and re-estab- 
 lished their school under the old rules, — preserving the 
 habits and manners and customs which gave the college 
 a character such as I did not find in any of the lyceums 
 which I entered after leaving Vendome. 
 
 Standing in the centre of the town, on the little river 
 Loir which bathes the outer walls, the college presents 
 a vast inclosure carefully shut in, containing all the ap- 
 purtenances necessary to an institution of its kind, — 
 a chapel, theatre, infirmary, bakehouse, gardens, and a 
 water-course. This college, the most important educa- 
 tional seminary in the middle provinces, derives its 
 pupils from those provinces and from the colonies. 
 Distance, therefore, prevents the parents from visiting 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 13 
 
 their children frequently, and the rules forbid vacations 
 beyond the walls. Once entered, the pupils never leave 
 the college until their education is completed. With 
 the exception of regular walks made beyond the gates 
 under the guidance of the Fathers, everything is so 
 conducted as to gfive the institution the advantages of 
 conventual discipline. In my day, the " corrector" 
 was still a living memory, and the classic brass ferule 
 played its terrible part with distinction. The punish- 
 ments formerly invented by the Company of Jesus — 
 which were as terrifying to the moral as to the physi- 
 cal being — remained in all the integrity of their 
 early promulgation. Letters to parents were obligatory 
 on certain da} T s, so was confession. Our sins and our 
 affections were thus under strict rule. All things bore 
 the stamp of monastic uniformity. I remember, among 
 other relics of the old institution, the Sunday morning 
 inspection to which we were subjected. We were in 
 full dress, drawn up in line like soldiers, awaiting the 
 two directors who, followed by the masters and the 
 the purveyors, examined us under the triple head of 
 clothes, health, and morality. 
 
 The two or three hundred pupils which the college 
 was capable of containing were divided, according to 
 the old custom, into four sections, named the Minimes, 
 the Petits, the Moyens, and the Grands. The Min- 
 imes division contained the eighth and seventh classes ; 
 that of the Petits the sixth, fifth, and fourth ; that of 
 Moyens the third and second ; and head of all, the 
 Grands, the first class of rhetoric, philosophy, special 
 
14 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Each of these 
 divisions had a building of its own, with classrooms 
 and courtyard opening on a wide common ground 
 which led to the refectory. This refectoiy, worthy 
 of an ancient religious order, held all the scholars. 
 Contrary to the custom of other educational bodies, 
 we were allowed to talk during meals, — an Oratorian 
 indulgence which enabled us to exchange dishes ac- 
 cording to our taste. This gastronomic barter never 
 ceased to be one of the liveliest pleasures of our college 
 life. If some Moyen sitting at the head of his table 
 preferred a plate of red peas to his dessert (we were 
 allowed a dessert) , the proposal passed from mouth to 
 mouth, U A dessert for peas," — until some gourmand 
 accepted it ; the latter then sent up his plate of peas 
 from hand to hand until it reached the proposer, who 
 returned his dessert in the same way. No mistake 
 ever occurred. If several proposals of the same kind 
 were set going, each bore its own number, and the cry 
 went round, " First peas for first dessert." The tables 
 were long ; the perpetual traffic kept every one in mo- 
 tion ; we talked and ate and passed the plates with sur- 
 prising activity. The chatter of two or three hundred 
 lads, the coming and going of the servants as thej^ 
 changed the plates, served the dishes, and dispensed 
 the bread, and the supervision of the directors, all 
 combined to make the refectoiy of Vendome an un- 
 paralleled sight of its kind, and one which always 
 astonished visitors. 
 
 To ameliorate our lives, deprived as they were of 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 15 
 
 communication with the. outward world and severed 
 from all family pleasures, the Fathers allowed us to 
 keep pigeons and cultivate gardens. Our two or three 
 hundred little cotes, and a thousand or more pigeons 
 perched on the outer walls which surrounded our thirty 
 gardens, made a sight even more singular than our 
 dinners in the refectoiy. But it would take too long to 
 relate the many peculiarities which made the college of 
 Vendome a place apart, rich in recollections for those 
 whose youth was spent there. Which of us does not 
 remember with delight, notwithstanding our painful 
 pursuit of knowledge, the occasional pranks of that 
 cloistral life ? — the dainties surreptitiously bought in our 
 walks abroad ; the permission to play cards and act 
 plays during the holidays, amusements necessitated b}^ 
 our solitude ; then the military music, a relic of the 
 cadets, our museum, our chaplain, our father-profess- 
 ors ; the particular games forbidden or allowed ; the 
 long slides made in winter, the clacking of our old- 
 fashioned wooden clogs, and above all, the barter con- 
 tinually going on at the little shop set up on the common 
 ground near the refectory. This shop was kept by a 
 sort of Maitre Jacques ; from it the Grands and the 
 Petits were allowed to purchase at tariff prices, tools, 
 boxes, stilts, ruffed and pouter pigeons, prayer-books 
 (not often in demand), pen-knives, letter-paper, pens, 
 pencils, ink of all colors, balls, marbles, — in short, the 
 entire collection of boyish fancies and fascinations, be- 
 side other things, from the sauce of the pigeons we were 
 forced to kill, to the earthernware jars in which we kept 
 
16 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 the boiled rice of our supper for the next day's break- 
 fast. Can any of us have forgotten the beating of his 
 heart at the opening of this shop during our Sunday 
 recreations? how he went to it, in his turn, to spend the 
 sum allotted to him, — the slender sum granted by our 
 parents, which compelled us to make frugal choice among 
 the many objects which excited the liveliest desires in 
 our souls. The bride in her honej^moon, on whom the 
 husband bestows twelve times in the year a purse of 
 gold, the welcome pin-money for her caprices, never 
 dreamed of her various purchases, each one of which 
 would absorb the whole sum, as we did of ours on the 
 eve of the first Sunday in the month. For six francs 
 we possessed, during that one night, the whole universe 
 of good things in that inexhaustible shop. During the 
 church services none of us sang a response that w r as 
 not blended with hopes and calculations. Few indeed 
 can remember possessing a sou or two for the second 
 Sunday. And then, how precociously we bowed to 
 social laws by pitying, succoring, and despising those 
 pariahs whom paternal avarice or poverty deprived of 
 money ! Whoever will picture to himself the isolation 
 of this great seminary and its monastic buildings in the 
 centre of a little town, and the four sections or parks 
 in w T hich we were hierarchically sequestered, can form 
 an idea of the interest excited in our minds by the 
 arrival of a u New-comer," — a passenger, as it were, 
 from distant shores. No young duchess presented at 
 court for the first time was ever more maliciously crit- 
 icised than the New-comer by all the scholars of his 
 
Louis Lambert, 
 
 17 
 
 division. Usually, during the evening recreation and 
 before prayers, the toadies, who were in the habit of 
 ^ talking with whichever of the two Fathers it was whose 
 duty required him to superintend us for a week, were 
 the first to hear the news, — u To-morrow you are to 
 have a Newcomer." Immediately the cry arose and 
 echoed through the classrooms, "A New-comer! a 
 New-comer ! " We all ran in and clustered round the 
 regent, who was eagerly questioned. " Where does he 
 come from?" "What is his name?" "What class 
 will you put him in ? " 
 
 The arrival of Louis Lambert was a theme for a tale 
 worthy of the Arabian Nights. I was then in the 
 fourth class among the JPetits. We had two masters 
 as regents to whom we gave the traditional name of 
 " Fathers," though both were laymen. In my day there 
 were only three real Oratorians remaining at Vendome 
 to whom the title legitimately belonged. In 1813 they 
 left the college, which had then become gradually secu- 
 larized, and retired to the altars of parish churches and 
 country cures, like Lambert's uncle, the curate of Mer. 
 Father Haugoult, the regent of the week, was a good 
 enough man, without any of the higher forms of knowl- 
 edge ; he had none of the tact which is so necessary to 
 discover the different characters of boys and to appor- 
 tion their discipline accordingly. 
 
 Father Haugoult was induced very willingly to relate 
 the singular circumstances which, on the morrow, were 
 to bring us the most extraordinary of all New comers. 
 Games stopped at once. All the Petits crowded about 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 him silently to hear the tale of Louis Lambert, found by 
 Madame de Stael, like an aerolite, at the corner of a 
 wood. Monsieur Haugoult explained to us about Ma- 
 dame de Stael. During that evening I imagined her 
 ten feet high ; since then I have seen the picture of 
 Corinne in which Gerard represents her tall and beau- 
 tiful. Alas, the ideal woman portrayed by my imagi- 
 nation so far surpassed it that Madame de Stael fell 
 forever in my mind, even after reading that vigorous 
 and virile book entitled u Germany." But Lambert was 
 a marvel of another kind. After examining him, Mon- 
 sieur Mareschal, the director of studies, hesitated, so 
 said Father Haugoult, to put him among the Grands. 
 Louis's weakness in Latin had decided the director to 
 put him in the fourth class, but he would doubtless rise 
 at the rate of a class a year ; and even now, as an ex- 
 ceptional case, he was to be in the academy. Proh 
 pudor ! we were to have the honor of counting among 
 the JPetits a coat decorated with the red ribbon of an 
 academician of Vendome. Brilliant privileges were 
 reserved to academicians ; they often dined at the di- 
 rector's table ; twice a year they held literary meetings, 
 at which we were present to hear their dissertations. 
 An academician was a miniature great man. If every 
 Vendomian would tell the truth, he would admit that in 
 later years an academician of the veritable French 
 Academy seemed to him a far less astounding person- 
 age than the colossal child decorated with the cross and 
 the magic ribbon of our own academy. It was very 
 difficult to belong to that august body without reaching 
 
Louis Lambert, 
 
 19 
 
 it through the second section ; for the academicians 
 held weekly public sessions every Thursday during the 
 holida}'s, at which they read to us tales in prose and 
 verse, epistles, treatises, tragedies, and comedies ; com- 
 positions that were above the minds of the second- 
 ary classes. I long remembered a certain tale entitled 
 i^The Green Ass," which was, I believe, the most 
 noted production of this seat of learning. But a scholar 
 of the fourth class in the academy, think of it ! Among 
 us we were to have a child of fourteen, a poet, beloved 
 of Madame de Stael, a future genius, — so said Father 
 Haugoult, — a wizard in knowledge, a fellow capable of 
 writing a theme or making a version while the bell was 
 calling us to recitation ; a lad who learned his les- 
 sons by reading them once. Louis Lambert upset all 
 our ideas. Moreover, Father Haugoult's own curiosity 
 and the eagerness which he showed to see the New- 
 comer still further whetted our excited imaginations. 
 
 " If he has pigeons there's no cote for him; what a 
 pity ! " said one of us, who afterwards became a cele- 
 brated agriculturist. 
 
 " Who will sit next him? " asked another. 
 
 "Oh, I wish I could be his faisant/" 1 cried an 
 enthusiast. 
 
 In our college vocabulary the word faisant (in other 
 colleges called copin) presents an idiom which is diffi- 
 cult of translation. It expressed a fraternal sharing of 
 the good and evil of our youthful lives, a community of 
 interests fruitful of quarrels and reconciliations, the 
 
 1 Faisant and copin (or copain) are college slang for " comrade.'* 
 
20 
 
 Louis Lambert 
 
 bond of an alliance offensive and defensive. And yet, 
 strange to say, I never knew two brothers who were 
 faisants. If man lives only by sentiment, perhaps he 
 thinks he impoverishes existence by mingling an affec- 
 tion he has won with his natural affections. 
 
 The impression which Father Haugoult's remarks 
 made upon me that evening is among the most vivid 
 of my youth ; I can only compare it with the reading of 
 Robinson Crusoe. Later on, I owed to the memory of 
 these strong impressions a reflection, new perhaps, on 
 the different effects produced by words in their several 
 meanings. There is nothing absolute in a word ; we 
 act upon it more than it can act on us ; its force depends 
 on the images we have acquired and which we group 
 about it. However, the study of this phenomenon re- 
 quires wide elaboration, which would be out of place 
 here. 
 
 That night, being unable to sleep, I had a long discus- 
 sion with my neighbor in the dormitory on the extraor- 
 dinary being we were to have among us on the morrow. 
 This neighbor, subsequently an officer, now a writer on 
 the higher questions of philosophy, named Barchou de 
 Penhoen, has not failed to fulfil his own good promise, 
 and to justify the chance that united in the same class, 
 on the same bench, under the same roof, the only two 
 pupils of Venddme who are publicly known at the present 
 day ; for up to the date at which this book is published 
 our comrade Dufaure has not entered parliamentary life. 
 But at the period of which I write the recent translator 
 of Fichte, the interpreter and friend of Ballanche, was 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 21 
 
 already concerned as I was with metaphysical questions ; 
 often we rhapsodized about God, Nature, and our own 
 being. He leaned towards scepticism. Desirous of 
 maintaining such views he denied the possibility of 
 Lambert's great faculties ; whereas I, having lately read 
 y"Les Enfants celebres," crushed him with such proofs 
 as Montcalm, Pic de la Mirandola, Pascal, and other 
 precocious brains, — anomalies forever celebrated in the 
 history of the human mind, the precursors of Louis 
 Lambert. I was myself passionately devoted to reading. 
 Thanks to my father's desire to see me in the Ecole 
 Polytechnique, I took private lessons in mathematics. 
 My tutor, the college librarian, allowed me to take such 
 books as I pleased, paying little attention to those I 
 carried out of the library; a tranquil retreat where, 
 during the hours of recreation, he made me go for my 
 lessons. 1 think he was either unfitted to be a tutor, 
 or much preoccupied by some serious undertaking, for 
 he very willingly allowed me to read instead of reciting 
 while he busied himself in other ways. So, in virtue of 
 a tacit compact which grew up between us, I made no 
 complaint because I learned nothing, and he took no 
 notice of the books I borrowed from the library. Car- 
 ried away by this ill-timed passion, I neglected my 
 studies and composed poems which certainly gave little 
 promise of future greatness, if I may judge by this un- 
 wieldy line, famous among my comrades, which began 
 an epic on " The Incas : " — 
 
 4 4 Oh, Inca ! O king unfortunate and miserable ! " 
 I was nicknamed "the Poet" in derision of this per- 
 
22 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 formance, but ridicule did not repress me. I continued 
 to scribble sorry verses in spite of Monsieur Mareschal 
 our director's good advice ; he tried to cure my inveter- 
 ate propensity by telling me the fable of the fledgling 
 which fell out its nest into many troubles because it 
 tried to fly before its wings had grown. I persisted in 
 my desultory reading and became the least assiduous, 
 the laziest, dreamiest pupil in the whole division of the 
 Petits, and of course the oftenest punished. This 
 autobiographic digression will show the reader the nature 
 of the thoughts that took possession of me on the arrival 
 of Lambert. I was then twelve years old. From the 
 first, I felt a keen sympathy for a child with whom I 
 had a certain likeness of temperament. I was about to 
 obtain a companion in revery and meditation. Without 
 knowing as yet what glory was, I thought it glorious to 
 be the comrade of a youth whose immortality w T as fore- 
 told by Madame de Stael. To my eyes Louis Lambert 
 was a giant. 
 
 The looked-for morrow came. Just before break- 
 fast we heard the double tread of Monsieur Mareschal 
 and the New-comer sounding in the silent courtyard. 
 All heads turned to the door of the classroom. Father 
 Haugoult, who shared our agony of expectation, did 
 not utter the usual u hush" with which he silenced our 
 whisperings and recalled us to work. We beheld the 
 New-comer, whom Monsieur Mareschal led in by the 
 hand. The regent stepped down from his seat, and 
 the director said to him with solemnity, according to 
 the formal custom: " Monsieur, I bring you Mon- 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 23 
 
 sieur Louis Lambert ; you will put him in the fourth 
 class ; he will begin his duties to-morrow." Then, 
 after a few words in a low voice to the regent, he 
 said aloud, "Where will you seat him?" It would 
 have been unjust to move any of us for a New-comer, 
 and there being but one vacant desk, next to mine, I 
 being the last pupil who had entered college, Louis 
 Lambert was sent to occupy it. Although the lessons 
 were not over, we all rose to look at him. Monsieur 
 Mareschal heard our whisperings, noticed the insubor- 
 dination, and said, with the kindness that made him 
 particularly dear to us : " At any rate be good, and 
 don't disturb the other classes." 
 
 The words virtually gave us a holiday until break- 
 fast time ; and we all clustered round Lambert, while 
 the director took a turn in the yard with Father Hau- 
 goult. We were eighty young devils as bold as birds 
 of prey. Though we had all passed the same cruel 
 ordeal, we never dreamed of sparing a New-comer the 
 satirical jokes, the questions, the insolence, which are 
 brought into play on such occasions, to the great con- 
 fusion of the neophyte, whose nature, manners, and 
 force of character are thus tested. Lambert, who was 
 either calm or dumbfounded, made no reply. One of 
 us then remarked that he no doubt came from the 
 School of Pythagoras. This excited a general laugh. 
 The New-comer was thenceforth nicknamed Pythagoras 
 for the rest of his college life. Nevertheless, Lambert's 
 piercing glance, the indifference expressed on his face 
 for our boyish nonsense, so out of keeping with the 
 
24 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 nature of his own mind, the easy attitude he main- 
 tained, and his obvious physical strength, which was 
 fully that of his years, impressed the most audacious of 
 the young scamps among us with a feeling of respect. 
 As for me, I w T as close beside him, busy in silently 
 examining him. 
 
 Louis was a thin, slight lad about four feet six 
 inches in height ; his tanned face and sunburnt hands 
 gave the idea of a muscular vigor which did not nat- 
 urally belong to him ; and it therefore happened that 
 two months after his entrance at college, life in the 
 classrooms had made him lose his healthy color and, 
 little by little, he grew pale and white as a woman. 
 His head was of remarkable size. His hair, black and 
 curling in heavy masses, gave an inexpressible charm 
 to his brow, the dimensions of which were extraordi- 
 nary even to our boyish minds, unobservant, as may 
 well be supposed, of phrenological signs, the science of 
 phrenology being then in its infancy. The beauty of that 
 prophetic forehead came chiefly from the pure lines of 
 the double arch of the brows, beneath which the dark 
 eyes shone as if from a setting of alabaster ; these brows 
 had the rare attraction of being perfectly parallel, start- 
 ing on a line with each other at the spring of the nose. 
 It was, however, difficult to think of his face, which was 
 otherwise very irregular, in presence of eyes whose glance 
 possessed a magnificent variety of expression, seeming, 
 as it were, lined with the spirit. Sometimes clear and 
 wonderfully penetrating, at other times of heavenly 
 sweetness, the eyes grew dull, deadened, colorless, 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 25 
 
 when he yielded himself up to contemplation. At 
 such times they were like window-panes from which 
 the sun is suddenly withdrawn after illuminating them. 
 It was the same with his physical vigor and organism 
 / as with his glance, — the same immobility, the same 
 capricious changes. His voice was sweet as a woman's 
 when she owns her love ; then again it could be harsh, 
 strained, untrue, if it be allowable to use these terms to 
 express unusual effects. As to his physical strength, 
 he was habitually unable to bear the fatigue of our boy- 
 ish games, and seemed weak, at times almost infirm. 
 But, during the days of his novitiate as a New-comer, 
 one of our bullies having laughed at the sickly delicacy 
 which made him unfit for the violent exercises in vogue 
 among us, Lambert seized with both hands the end of 
 one of the tables to which were fastened twelve heavy 
 desks ranged opposite to each other; then leaning 
 against the regent's rostrum he placed his feet on the 
 transversal lower bar of the table and said: " Ten of 
 you may try to move it." It was impossible to tear 
 the table from him. I was present; and I can testify 
 to this extraordinary display of strength. Lambert 
 possessed the gift of calling up, at certain moments, 
 extraordinary powers, and of concentrating them on a 
 given point. But the college lads, accustomed like 
 men to judge everything according to first impressions, 
 studied Louis Lambert only during the first few days 
 that succeeded his arrival, and then he certainly belied 
 all Madame de StaeTs predictions, and performed none 
 of the prodigies we expected of him. 
 
26 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 After a three months' trial, Louis Lambert was pro- 
 nounced a very ordinary scholar. I alone was allowed 
 to penetrate that sublime — why should I not say it? — 
 that divine soul. Can there be anything nearer to God 
 than genius in the heart of a child? The agreement of 
 our tastes and of our thoughts made us friends and 
 faisants. Our intimacy grew so close that the other 
 lads coupled our names ; one was never mentioned 
 without the other, and if either of us had to be called, 
 the cry was always " Poet-and-Pythagoras ! " There 
 were other names among us thus joined in wedlock. 
 
 So it happened that I was for two years the college 
 friend and brother of poor Louis Lambert, and my life 
 duriug that period was so closely welded to his that 
 I am to-day able to write the history of his mind. 
 Yet I was long ignorant of the poetry and the intellec- 
 tual wealth hidden in the heart and beneath the brow 
 of my companion. I was thirty years old before my ob- 
 servations of him ripened and, as it were, crystallized, — 
 before a stream of steady light illumined them afresh in 
 my mind, and enabled me to understand the full mean- 
 ing of phenomena to which I had been an immature 
 witness. I had followed them without explaining to 
 myself their grandeur nor yet their mechanism ; I had 
 even forgotten some and remembered only the most 
 striking. But to-day my memory is able to reassemble 
 and bring them into order; I am initiated into the 
 secrets of that fruitful brain as I now look back to the 
 happy days of our young friendship. Time alone has 
 enabled me to penetrate the meaning of the facts and 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 27 
 
 events which filled that hidden life, as they fill that 
 of so many other men who are lost to science and hu- 
 man knowledge. This history will therefore be, both in 
 the representation and in the estimate of things, full 
 of anachronisms, which are, however, purely moral, and 
 will not injure the tale in its own point of interest. 
 
 During the first months of his life at Vendome, Louis 
 was the victim of a malady, the symptoms of which 
 were imperceptible to our superiors, which necessarily 
 hindered the exercise of his higher faculties. Accus- 
 tomed to the open air, to the independence of his 
 hitherto chance education ; tenderly cared for by the 
 old uncle who loved him ; thinking and dreaming in 
 the sunshine, — it was very hard for him to bow to col- 
 lege rules, to walk in the ranks, to live within the four 
 walls of a room where eighty lads were forced to sit 
 silently on wooden stools, erect before their desks. His 
 senses were endowed with a perfection which gave 
 them exquisite delicacy, and everything within him 
 suffered from this community of life. The exhalations 
 which poisoned the air and mingled with the odors of a 
 classroom which was always dirty and littered with 
 fragments of breakfast or luncheon, affected his sens-e 
 of smell, — a sense in closer relation than any other to 
 the cerebral system, and which if vitiated must cause 
 invisible disturbance to the organs of thought. 
 
 Besides these sources of atmospheric corruption, there 
 were closets in the classrooms where we kept the pi- 
 geons which were killed for feast-days, or hid provisions 
 filched from the refectory. Moreover, each hall con- 
 
28 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 tainecl an immense stone on which stood, at all hours, 
 two pails full of water, — a species of watering-trough 
 where every morning we were made to wash our faces 
 and hands in presence of a master. From there we 
 went to a table where the women-servants combed our 
 hair and powdered it. The classrooms were cleaned 
 only once a day, in the mornings before we were 
 up ; consequently they were always dirty ; and in spite 
 of the many windows and the height of the doors, the 
 air was constantly poisoned by the emanations from the 
 wash-pails, the smells from the closets, the thousand 
 and one pursuits of the scholars, not to speak of their 
 eighty bodies crowded together. This sort of collegial 
 humus, mingling with mud which our feet brought in 
 from the courtyards, made an atmosphere of intolerable 
 fetor. 
 
 The loss of the pure country air which he had hitherto 
 breathed, the change in his habits, the discipline of the 
 college, all combined to depress Lambert's vitality. 
 With his head leaning on his left hand, the elbow rest- 
 ing on the desk, he passed hours gazing into the court- 
 yard, at the foliage of the trees, or the clouds of the sky ; 
 he seemed to be studying his lessons, but the regent, 
 seeing the motionless pen and the blank page, would 
 frequently cry out, "You are doing nothing, Lambert ! " 
 That fatal 44 You are doing nothing;" was like a pin 
 pricking into Louis's heart. He had no leisure for recre- 
 ation because of the " pensums " he was forced to write. 
 The pensum, a punishment whose nature varies accord- 
 ing to the customs of different colleges, consisted at 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 29 
 
 Vendome of a number of lines to be copied during 
 recess. Lambert and I were so overloaded with pen- 
 sums that we did not have six free days during our two 
 years' intimacy. Without the books which we got from 
 the library, which kept life in our brains, these condi- 
 tions of existence would have driven us both into dull 
 brutishness. The loss of wholesome exercise is fatal 
 to children. The habit of always acting a part, when 
 acquired in early life, is said to injure the constitution 
 of royal personages, if that vice of their destiny is not 
 corrected by the manners and customs of a campaign 
 or the freedom of the hunting-field. If the rules of eti- 
 quette and of courts can affect the spinal marrow to 
 the point of feminizing the pelvis of kings, softening 
 cerebral fibres, and thus debasing the race, what deep 
 lesions, both physical and moral, must a continual 
 deprivation of fresh air, motion, and gayety produce 
 among the pupils of a public institution? The cloistral 
 regime of colleges and seminaries demands the atten- 
 tion of the authorities charged with the management of 
 public instruction, if any such be found who do not 
 think exclusively of themselves. 
 
 Louis and I brought pensums upon us in a hundred 
 ways. Our memories were so good that we never 
 studied onr lessons. It sufficed to hear our comrades 
 reciting portions of French, Latin, or even grammar ; 
 we could always repeat them when our turn came ; but 
 if, by ill-luck, the master reversed the order and ques- 
 tioned us first, we often did not even know what the 
 lesson was; then followed a pensum, in spite of our 
 
30 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 ingenious excuses. We always waited till the last mo- 
 ment to write our themes. If we had a book to finish, 
 or a re very to pursue, the theme was neglected ; fruitful 
 source of pensums ! Many a time our versions were 
 written during the time when the head of the class, 
 charged with the duty of collecting them, was receiving 
 the papers from the various scholars. 
 
 To the moral difficulties which Lambert encountered 
 before he was acclimated to the college, was added 
 another apprenticeship not less harsh, and through 
 which we all had to pass, — that of plrysical suffering, 
 which assailed us in various ways. The delicate skin 
 of childhood requires extreme care, especially in winter, 
 when schoolbo3's exchange at all hours the hot tempera- 
 ture of classrooms for the icy or muddy atmosphere of 
 the courtyards. For want of motherly home-care the 
 Petits and the Minimes were covered with chilblains 
 and painful chapped skins, which they were forced to 
 have dressed during the breakfast-hour, though it was 
 very imperfectly done by reason of the great number of 
 suffering fingers, toes, and heels that needed curing. In 
 fact, many of the lads preferred the evil to the remedy ; 
 they had to choose between finishing their themes, los- 
 ing the delights of sliding on the ice, and the necessit} r 
 of taking off parts of their clothing carelessly put on and 
 still more carelessly worn. Besides, it was the college 
 custom to laugh at those who went to have their wounds 
 dressed, and it was an object to get rid of the rags 
 which the hospital nurse wound round the suffering ex- 
 tremities ; consequently, in winter, man}' of us, whose 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 31 
 
 hands and feet were half-dead or burning with pain, were 
 little disposed to work, and were punished because they 
 did not work. The Fathers, too often taken in by sham 
 illness, paid little attention to these real sufferings. 
 Except for the costs of their board, the pupils were 
 maintained at the expense of the college. The authori- 
 ties were careful in the matter of shoes and clothing : 
 hence the weekly inspection which I have already men- 
 tioned, — excellent for the administration, sad in its 
 results (as such customs always are) for the governed. 
 Woe to the Petit who acquired the evil habit of treading 
 his shoes down at heel, splitting the leather, or wearing 
 out the soles prematurely, either by clumsy walking or 
 by kicking his feet about in school to satisfy that need 
 of action which besets all children. 
 
 During the winter Lambert never went to walk with- 
 out enduring the keenest suffering. In the first place, 
 the pain of his chilblains was like a bad attack of gout ; 
 then the hooks and strings which held his shoes together 
 would break, or the slip-shod heels prevented those 
 tormenting articles from staying firmly on his feet, and 
 he was obliged to drag them along the icy paths, for- 
 tunate if the clay soil of the Vendomois left them on 
 his feet. Worse still, the water or the snow would get 
 to his toes through some unseen rip, and the foot would 
 begin to swell. Out of sixty boys scarcely ten went to 
 walk without enduring some such torture. Yet we 
 all followed our leaders, carried along by the general 
 movement, just as men are driven in life by life itself. 
 Many a time some gallant child has wept with fury 
 
32 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 while summoning his courage, first to go forward, and 
 then to get back to the fold in spite of his pains ; so 
 keenly does the young soul dread both laughter and 
 compassion, — equally forms of ridicule. In college, as 
 in social life, the strong despise the weak without know- 
 ing in what true strength consists. 
 
 But this was not all. No gloves were allowed. If 
 by chance our parents, the hospital nurse, or the di- 
 rector ordered us to wear them, the practical jokers 
 and the upper-class fellows seized and put them on 
 the stoves, pretending to dry them, and thus shrivelled 
 them up. If the gloves escaped this seizure, they 
 remained wet, and shrank in the drying for want of 
 proper care. Gloves were therefore an impossibility. 
 Besides, they presupposed a privilege, and lads choose 
 to be equals. 
 
 These various forms of suffering assailed Louis Lam- 
 bert. Like contemplative men, who in the stillness of 
 their re very contract a. habit of mechanical movement, 
 he had a mania for scuffling with his shoes, which were 
 soon worn out. His feminine skin and his delicate lips 
 and ears were chapped at the first frost. His soft 
 white hands became numb and red. He was constantly 
 taking cold. In short, he was enveloped in suffering 
 until he grew somewhat accustomed to Vendome hab- 
 its and learned by cruel experience to "look out for 
 himself," — if I may use that collegiate expression. 
 He was forced to take care of his closet, his desk, 
 his clothes, his shoes ; he had to see that his ink was 
 not stolen, nor his books, copy-books, or pens; in 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 33 
 
 short, to think of all the details of our boyish lives 
 which the selfish and commonplace lads, who inva- 
 riably carried off the prizes for excellence and good 
 conduct, attended to with conscientious care, while he, 
 the boy of promise, neglected them and abandoned 
 himself with passion to the stream of his thoughts, be- 
 neath the spell of an imagination that was almost 
 divine. 
 
 But this was not all. A ceaseless struggle goes on be- 
 tween masters and scholars, to which nothing in social 
 life can be compared, unless it be the warfare of the op- 
 position against the ministry of a representative govern- 
 ment. But the journalists and orators of an opposition 
 are less prompt to profit by an advantage, less stern in 
 resenting a wrong, less bitter in their ridicule, than the 
 lads of a seminary against the masters appointed to 
 rule them. Angels would lose patience in such a call- 
 ing. We must not be too severe to a poor school- 
 master, ill-paid and not over wise, if he is sometimes 
 unjust and angry. Watched perpetually by mocking 
 eyes, surrounded by pitfalls, he does sometimes avenge 
 himself on the boys b} T a harshness they are only too 
 ready to proclaim. Except in the case of great wrong- 
 doing, for -which there were special punishments, the 
 ferule was the ultima ratio Patrum at Vendome. For 
 neglected themes, lessons ill-learned, and vulgar pranks, 
 the pensum sufficed ; but a wound to the master's self- 
 love was visited with the ferule. Among the physical 
 sufferings which we endured the keenest was certainly 
 that inflicted by the strip of leather, two fingers thick, 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 applied to our shrinking hands with all the strength of 
 an angry master. The culprit was compelled to kneel 
 in the middle of the room to receive this classic punish- 
 ment. He was forced to rise from his seat, walk to the 
 master's desk and kneel down, exposed to the inquisi- 
 tive, often jeering, glances of his comrades. To a 
 sensitive spirit these preparations were an additional 
 torture, like the transit from the Palais to the Greve 
 which prisoners condemned to death were formerly 
 compelled to make. According to their natures some 
 lads wept, before or after the punishment ; others ac- 
 cepted their pain stoically ; and yet, while awaiting it, 
 the bravest could scarcely repress the quivering of their 
 features. 
 
 Louis Lambert was frequently subjected to this pun- 
 ishment, and he owed it to a faculty of his nature of 
 which he was long unconscious. When suddenly awak- 
 ened from meditation by the regent's stern " You are 
 doing nothing, Lambert ! " it often happened that with- 
 out his own knowledge he would give the master a look 
 of irrepressible disdain, charged with thought as a 
 Leyden jar is charged with electricity. Such a glance 
 naturally angered the regent ; provoked by the silent 
 epigram, he proceeded to teach a lesson to that fulmi- 
 nating eye. The first time he was aware of the dis- 
 dainful gleam, which struck him like a flash of lightning, 
 he made the following speech which I have always 
 remembered: "If you look at me again in that way, 
 Lambert, I shall give you the ferule." At these words 
 every head went up, and all eyes watched the master 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 35 
 
 and Louis. The speech was so absurd that again the 
 boy's glance struck the Father like lightning. From 
 tl^at time forth there was a feud between the regent 
 and Lambert which resulted in many applications of 
 the ferule. Louis thus became aware of the oppressive 
 power of his eye. 
 
 This poor poet, so nervously constituted, often as 
 languishing as a woman, the victim of chronic melan- 
 choly, sick with his own genius as a young girl with 
 the love she seeks and yet knows nothing of; this 
 child, so strong and yet so feeble, transplanted by 
 Corinne from his native meadows, and forced into the 
 soil of a college where every mind and every body, no 
 matter what its natural bent ^ncl temperament, must 
 adapt itself to a common rule, as gold is shaped into 
 the circumference of a coin by machinery, — Louis 
 Lambert suffered at every point where pain could seize 
 upon flesh or spirit. Chained to a bench and a desk, 
 beaten with that leathern thong, smitten with an illness 
 that affected all his senses, crushed by a procession of 
 evils, what could he do but passively yield his outer 
 being to the various tyrannies of his college life. Like 
 martyrs who smile at the stake, he escaped to the heaven 
 which thought opened to him. Perhaps this inward life 
 helped him to foreknow the mysteries in which he had 
 so much faith. 
 
 Our private independence, our illicit occupations, the 
 apparent indolence and torpidity in which we both lived, 
 our repeated punishments, our repugnance to themes 
 and pensnms, gave us the unchallenged reputation of 
 
36 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 being shameless and incorrigible. Our masters despised 
 us, and we fell equally under the ban of our school- 
 mates, from whom we hid our contraband studies in 
 dread of ridicule. This double disapproval, unjust as 
 it was from the masters, was . natural in our comrades. 
 Louis and I could neither play at ball, nor run, nor walk 
 on stilts. On the " amnesty days," or when, by chance, 
 we were free of pensums, we shared none of the prevail- 
 ing amusements. We sat apart under a tree in the 
 courtyard, aloof from the games which went on about us. 
 The Poet-ancl-P3 T thagoras were exceptional beings, — 
 they lived outside of the common life. The keen instinct 
 and sensitive self-love of youth made the other scholars 
 aware that our minds were in some way either higher 
 or lower than their own. Out of this perception grew 
 hatred on the part of some to our silent aristocracy, con- 
 tempt for our perfect uselessness on the part of others. 
 These feelings, however, were unknown to us at the 
 time ; perhaps I have 011I3- divined them as I now write. 
 We lived like a pair of rats lurking in the corner of the 
 classroom which held our desks, through the recreation- 
 hours as well as the study-hours. This eccentric pro- 
 ceeding was calculated to put us, and did put us, at war 
 with the other lads of our division. Forgotten, as a 
 general thing, we lived quietly and half-happily in our 
 retreat, like two forms of vegetation or two bits of orna- 
 ment which would otherwise have been missing to the 
 classroom. But occasionally the more provoking of our 
 comrades insulted us for the mere love of exhibiting 
 their power ; to which we responded with a bitter con- 
 
Louis Lambert, 
 
 37 
 
 tempt which brought a rain of blows on the Poet-and- 
 Py^thagoras. 
 
 Lambert's nostalgia lasted several months. I am un- 
 able to picture the melancholy to which he fell a prey. 
 Many an attempt has proved a failure. Having each 
 of us played the part of the " Leper of Aosta" we both 
 knew the emotions Monsieur de Maistre has described in 
 that book before they were written by his eloquent pen. 
 Now a book may recall the memories of childhood, but 
 it never surpasses nor equals them. Lambert's sorrows 
 taught me hymns of grief that were more impressive far 
 than Werther's finest pages. But perhaps there is no 
 comparison possible between the suffering inflicted by 
 the repression of a passion under social laws and the 
 sorrows of a child longing for the glory of the sun, for 
 the dew of the valleys, and for freedom. Werther was 
 the slave of a desire ; but Lambert was a soul enslaved. 
 Where gifts are equal, the feelings based upon the 
 simpler and truer desires, truer because purer, must sur- 
 pass the lamentations of genius. After gazing for hours 
 at the foliage of the trees in the courtyard Louis would 
 turn to me and utter some thought ; but that thought 
 revealed a far-reaching revery. 
 
 u Happily for me," he said one day, " there come joy- 
 ful moments when the walls of the classroom disappear, 
 and I am away — in the meadows. What delight to 
 float upon thought as a bird upon its wing." 
 
 u Why is nature so prodigal of the color green?" he 
 asked me at another time. " How is it she allows so 
 few straight lines? Why does man, in his creations, 
 
38 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 seldom use curves? Why should he alone have the 
 sentiment of straight lines ? " 
 
 Sayings like these revealed the soaring of his mind 
 through space. Surely, he had scanned the scenery of 
 many regions or breathed the perfume of the woods and 
 forests. Sublime and living elegy that he was, he was 
 ever silent and resigned, — always suffering, yet unable 
 to say, "I suffer!" An eagle, hovering above the 
 worlds in search of food, he was hemmed in by narrow, 
 dirty walls ; and thus it was that his life became, in the 
 fullest acceptation of the term, an ideal life. Filled with 
 contempt for the almost useless studies to which we were 
 condemned, Louis went his aerial way, utterly detached 
 from the things about us. Obeying the need of imita- 
 tion which possesses children, I endeavored to conform 
 my existence to his. Louis inspired me all the more 
 readily with his passion for the sort of sleep into which 
 the body falls when the mind is plunged in meditation, 
 because I was younger and more impressible. We ac- 
 customed ourselves, like lovers, to think as one and to 
 share our reveries. Already his intuitive sensations 
 had the acuteness which belongs to the intellectual per- 
 ceptions of great poets, leading often to the verge of 
 madness. 
 
 " Do you feel as I do," he one day asked me, " that 
 strange, fantastic sufferings are going on within you in 
 spite of your own self ? For example, if I think strongly 
 on the sensation the blade of my pen-knife would cause 
 if thrust into my flesh, I instantly experience a sharp 
 pain, as though I had really cut myself; nothing is 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 39 
 
 lacking but the flow of blood. But this feeling takes 
 me by surprise, like a sudden noise breaking into a deep 
 silence. An idea causing physical suffering ! What do 
 you think of that ? " 
 
 When he gave expression to such vague thoughts we 
 both fell back into naive revery ; we tried to decipher 
 within ourselves the indescribable phenomena relating 
 to the generation of thought, which Lambert hoped to 
 catch in all its developments, so as to reveal the mys- 
 terious process at some future day. After such discus- 
 sions, mingled as they often were with childish play, a 
 look would flame in Lambert's blazing eyes ; he pressed 
 my hands, and from his soul some saying issued by which 
 he strove to gather and emit the thoughts within him. 
 
 " To think is to see," he said one day, roused by one 
 of our discussions on the principle of human organiza- 
 tion. "All science rests on deduction, — a chink of 
 vision by which we descend from cause to effect return- 
 ing upward from effect to cause ; or, in a broader sense, 
 poetry, like every work of art, springs from a swift 
 perception of things." 
 
 He was all spiritual; but I ventured to oppose him, 
 using his own observations to show that intellect was 
 an altogether physical product. We were both right. 
 Possibly the words materialism and spiritualism express 
 two sides of one and the same thing. His studies on 
 the substance of thought made him accept with a sort 
 of pride the life of privation to which our indolence and 
 our neglect of school duty condemned us. He had a 
 certain consciousness of his own value which sustained 
 
40 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 him in his mental efforts. With what gentleness did his 
 soul react on mine ! How often have we sat together 
 on our bench, absorbed in our books, mutually forget- 
 ting each other, yet knowing that each was there, 
 plunged in the ocean of ideas like two fishes swimming 
 in the same current. Our life was seemingly nothing 
 else than vegetation ; we existed in our brains and in 
 our hearts. Feelings and thoughts were the sole events 
 of our college years. 
 
 Lambert exercised an influence over my imagination 
 which I feel to this day. I listened eagerly to his talk 
 in which the marvellous, so dear to youth and age in 
 tales where truth assumes a grotesque form, prevailed. 
 His passion for mysteiy and the credulity natural to 
 youth led us often to talk of heaven and of hell. Louis 
 tried, in explaining Swedenborg, to make me share his 
 beliefs as to angels. Even when he reasoned falsely 
 his observations of the power of man were amazing, 
 and gave to his words an impress of truth without 
 which nothing is really possible in any art. The ro- 
 mantic end which he awarded to human destiny was of 
 a nature to foster the longing of virgin imaginations to 
 yield themselves to belief. The dogmas and idols of a 
 people are conceived and born in the days of its youth. 
 The supernatural beings before whom it trembles are 
 the embodiment of its own feelings, of its expanding 
 needs. All that my memory retains of our conver- 
 sations, full of poetry, on the Swedish prophet, whose 
 works I have since read from curiosity, may be summed 
 up in the following statement. 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 41 
 
 taiere are within us two distinct beings. According 
 to Swedenborg, the angel is the individual in whom the 
 inward being has triumphed over the outward being. 
 If a man desires to obey his calling as angel (when 
 thought has shown him the fact of his double existence) 
 he must seek to nourish the exquisite angelic nature 
 which is within him. If, failing to possess this translu- 
 cent vision of his destin\ r , he lets the corporeal tenden- 
 cies predominate, instead of merely strengthening and 
 supporting the intellectual life, his powers pass into the 
 service of his external senses, and the angel slowly per- 
 ishes through the materialization of both natures. On 
 the other hand, if he nourishes the inward being with 
 the essences that accord with it, the soul rises above 
 matter and endeavors to get free of it. When the sep- 
 aration takes place under the form which we call death, 
 the angel, powerful enough to break loose from its en- 
 velope, continues to exist, and its true life begins. The 
 infinite individualities which differentiate men can only 
 be explained by this double existence ; they make it com- 
 prehensible, and they demonstrate it. In fact, the dis- 
 tance that exists between a man whose inert intellect con- 
 demns him to apparent stupidity and another man whose 
 exercise of his inward faculties has given him some 
 force, of whatever kind, must lead us to suppose that 
 between men of genius and other beings there lies the 
 same distance as between a blind man and a seer. This 
 thought, which infinitely extends creation, gives in a 
 measure the key of heaven. Apparently blended in 
 one nature here below, created beings are in fact di- 
 
42 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 vided, according to the perfection of their inward being, 
 into separate spheres whose language and ethics are 
 alien to each other. In the world invisible, as in the 
 real world, when some inhabitant of the lower region 
 enters the higher circle without being worthy of so do- 
 ing, not only is he unable to comprehend the customs 
 or the subjects of discourse, but his presence paralyzes 
 the hearts and lips of others. Dante, in his Divine 
 Comedy, seems to have had some slight intuition of 
 these spheres, which begin in the world of sorrows and 
 rise in spiral circles up to heaven. The doctrine of 
 Swedenborg is the work of a lucid mind which has 
 gathered and recorded the innumerable phenomena by 
 which angels reveal themselves among men. 
 
 This doctrine, which I thus endeavor to sum up and 
 show in its logical meaning, was first presented to me 
 by Lambert with all the allurements of mystery, wrapped 
 in the phraseological swaddling-clothes peculiar to mys- 
 tics, — an obscure diction filled with abstractions, so 
 stimulating to the brain that there are certain books 
 by Jacob Bcehm, Swedenborg, and Madame Guyon 
 whose thrilling power calls up as mairv and as multi- 
 form imaginations as opium can produce. Lambert 
 told me such astounding mystical facts, he excited my 
 imagination so vividly that my head was dazed. Yet I 
 loved to plunge into that world of mystery, invisible to 
 the senses, where each soul longs to penetrate, whether 
 we conceive it under the shadowy form of Futurfty* 
 or the stalwart shapes of Fable. These violent re- 
 actions of the soul upon itself taught me, unawares, 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 43 
 
 know its strength, and accustomed me to the toils 
 of thought. 
 
 As for Lambert, he explained everything by his the- 
 ory of angels. To him pure love, the love of which we 
 dream in youth, was the coming together of two angelic 
 natures. Nothing could equal the ardor with which he 
 longed to meet a woman-angel. Ah ! who more truly 
 than he was fitted to inspire and to feel love ? If any- 
 thing could give an idea of exquisite sensibility it was 
 the kind and loving nature revealed by his sentiments, 
 his words, his actions, his merest gesture, — in short, the 
 conjugality which bound us to each other and found 
 expression in the college name of faisant. There 
 was no distinction between the things that were his and 
 the things that were mine. We imitated each other's 
 writing, so that one could do the tasks of both. If 
 either of us had a book to finish which must be returned, 
 he could read in peace while the other did his theme or 
 his pensum. We regarded these lessons as a tax levied 
 on our tranquillity. If my memory serves me right, 
 they showed remarkable superiority when Lambert 
 wrote them. But the regent, taking us for two dullards, 
 judged our papers by foregone prejudice, and even pro- 
 duced them for the amusement of our comrades. I 
 remember one evening, as the session, which lasted from 
 two to four o'clock, was ending, the master caught 
 up a version of Lambert's. The text began with 
 the words Caius Gracchus, vir nobilis. Louis had 
 translated them into, " Caius Gracchus was noble- 
 hearted." 
 
44 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 " Where do you find anything about 'heart' in no- 
 bilisf" asked the professor, sternly. 
 
 Every one laughed, and Louis looked at the master 
 with a bewildered air. 
 
 ' 4 What would Madame la Baronne de Stael say if 
 she knew you gave a wrong construction to a word 
 which signifies a noble race of patrician origin ! " 
 
 " She would say you were a fool," I remarked in a 
 low voice. 
 
 " Monsieur le Poete, you will go to prison for eight 
 days," said the professor, who unfortunately overheard 
 me. 
 
 Lambert gently said, with a look of inexpressible 
 tenderness at me, " Vir nobilis ! " 
 
 Madame de Stael was in a measure the cause of 
 Lambert's troubles. Masters and scholars threw her 
 name at his head on the least provocation, either as a 
 reproach or in irony. Louis was not long in getting 
 himself sent to prison to keep me company. There, 
 more truly at liberty than elsewhere, we could talk the 
 livelong clay in the quiet of the dormitories, where each 
 pupil had a niche or cell six feet square, the partitions 
 of which had iron gratings along the top, — the barred 
 door being locked every night and opened every morn- 
 ing under the eye of the Father whose business it was 
 to superintend our getting up and our going to bed. 
 The creaking of those doors, handled with remarkable 
 celerity by the dormitory servants, was one of the 
 peculiarities of the college. These alcoves served as 
 prisons ; sometimes we were shut up in them for over a 
 
Louis Lambert, 
 
 45 
 
 month. The scholars in these cages were under the 
 stern eye of the prefect, a sort of proctor, who entered 
 the dormitories with a light foot, unexpectedly, to learn 
 if we were talking instead of doing our pensums. But 
 a series of nut-shells spread on the stairwa}', or the 
 trained quickness of our ears nearly always enabled us 
 to be ready for him ; so we gave ourselves up to our 
 cherished studies without anxiety. Reading was of 
 course impossible, and we spent the time in meta- 
 physical discussions or in recalling curious facts con- 
 nected with the phenomena of thought. 
 
 One of the most curious of these facts I will here 
 relate, not only because it concerns Louis, but also be- 
 cause it ma} T have determined his scientific destiny. 
 According to the rule of colleges, Sunday and Thursday 
 were holidays ; but the church services, which we at- 
 tended punctually, took up so much of Sunday that we 
 regarded Thursday as our only real holiday. After 
 mass, we had time enough to take long walks into the 
 country around Vendome. The manor of Rochambeau 
 was the goal of our best excursions, perhaps because it 
 was the farthest off. The Petits were seldom allowed 
 to encounter the fatigue, but once or twice a year the 
 regents' offered them a day at Rochambeau as a re- 
 ward. Toward the close of the spring of 1812 we were 
 to go there for the first time. Our desire to see the 
 famous chateau, whose proprietor sometimes gave milk 
 to the pupils, kept us all good for a long time. Noth- 
 ing hindered the excursion. Neither I nor Lambert 
 had ever seen the pretty valley of the Loir, in which the 
 
46 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 place is situated. His imagination and mine were there- 
 fore much preoccupied the evening before the walk, 
 which was regarded among the scholars with traditional 
 delight. We talked of it the whole evening, resolving 
 to spend some money, which we possessed against the 
 college rules, in fruit and milk. 
 
 We started at half-past twelve o'clock the next day, 
 directly after dinner, each armed with a cubic piece of 
 bread for his supper. Nimble as swallows, we walked 
 in a group toward the famous castle, with an eagerness 
 which left us no consciousness of fatigue. When we 
 reached the hilltop, from which we could see the build- 
 ings on the descending slope and the tortuous valley 
 where the river shone as it wound through dimpling 
 meadow-lands, — a delightful landscape, one of those 
 to which the keen emotions of early youth or love 
 give such charm that they ought never to be revisited 
 in after days, — Louis suddenly turned to me and said, 
 64 But I saw this last night in a dream ! " He recog- 
 nized the clump of trees under which we were then 
 passing, the forms of the foliage, the color of the 
 water, the towers of the castle, the foreground, the 
 distance, — in short, all the details of the scene, which 
 he now saw for the first time. We were thorough child- 
 ren (at least, I was at thirteen, but Louis at fifteen had 
 the depth of a man of genius), and at this period of 
 our lives we were incapable of deception in any word 
 or act of our friendship. Though Lambert was con- 
 scious, through his omnipotence of thought, of the im- 
 portance of such facts, he was far from even guessing 
 
Louis Lambert. 47 
 
 their fall bearing; he was therefore much astonished 
 at this one. I asked him if he had never been at Ro- 
 chambeau in his infancy. My question struck him ; 
 but after ransacking his memory, he answered in the 
 negative. This circumstance, whose counterpart may 
 be found in the phenomena of sleep, will give an idea 
 of Louis Lambert's earlier powers ; from it he was able 
 to deduce a system by taking, as did Cuvier in another 
 order of things, a fragment of thought on which to re- 
 construct a whole creation. 
 
 We were sitting at the moment under the branches 
 of an old oak. After a few moments' reflection Louis 
 said : — 
 
 " If that landscape did not come to me, and it is 
 absurd to suppose it did, then I must have come to it. 
 If I was here when I was asleep in my bed, does not 
 that fact constitute a separation between my body and 
 my inward being? Does it not prove some unexplained 
 faculty of locomotion in the mind, with results equiva- 
 lent to those of the locomotion of the body? Now, if 
 my mind and my body leave each other during sleep, 
 why can I not also divorce them when awake ? I see 
 no middle ground between the two propositions. But 
 to go further, let us look into details. Either these 
 facts are accomplished by the power of some faculty 
 which puts in operation a second being to which my 
 body serves as a garment, — because I was in my bed 
 and I saw the landscape (and this upsets many sys- 
 tems), — or these facts occurred either in some nervous 
 centre whose name is still to be discovered, where feel- 
 
48 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 ings take their rise, or in the cerebral centre where 
 ideas are born. This last hypothesis raises many 
 strange questions. I walked. I saw, I heard. Motion 
 cannot be conceived of without space : sound acts only 
 in angles or upon surfaces ; color cannot exist without 
 light. If I saw within myself during the night, my 
 eyes being closed, certain colored objects, if I heard 
 sounds in total silence and without the conditions 
 required for sound to form. if. while absolutely motion- 
 less. I have crossed space. I must have internal facul- 
 ties which are independent of external physical law. 
 How is it that men have reflected so little about the 
 events of sleep which show them that they have a 
 double life? Is there not a dawning science in that 
 phenomenon?" he added, striking his forehead. "If it 
 is not the germ of a science it certainly reveals extraor- 
 dinary powers in man ; it shows, at least, a frequent 
 disunion of our two natures. — a fact round which 
 my mind is constantly revolving. At last I have ob- 
 tained an evidence of the superiority of our latent 
 
 senses over our manifest senses! homo duplex! 
 
 4i But." he continued after a pause, with a gesture of 
 hesitation. " perhaps there are not two natures in us; 
 perhaps we are only gifted with inward perfectible 
 qualities, the exercise and development of which pro- 
 duce within us dual phenomena of activity and penetra- 
 tion of vision hitherto unstudied. In our love for the 
 marvellous, a passion bred of pride, we have perhaps 
 transformed such effects into poetic creations because 
 we cannot comprehend them. It is so convenient to 
 
Louis Lambert. 49 
 
 4 
 
 defy the incomprehensible ! Ah ! I own I should weep 
 for the loss of my illusions, I need to believe in a dual 
 nature and in the angels of Swedenborg ! Must the 
 new science kill them? Yes, a search into our un- 
 known attributes and faculties implies a science appar- 
 ently materialistic ; for Spirit uses, divides, and vivifies 
 substance, but never destroys it." 
 
 He remained thoughtful and half- melancholy. Per- 
 haps he saw that the dreams of his youth were swad- 
 dling-clothes he was called upon to lay aside. 
 
 4k Sight and hearing," he said, with a laugh at his 
 own saying, " are no doubt the sheath of some mar- 
 vellous tool." 
 
 At all times when he talked to me of heaven and 
 hell, he would gaze at nature with the eye of a mas- 
 ter ; but as he said these last words, big with science, 
 he hovered more commanclingly than ever above the 
 landscape, and his brow seemed to me about to burst 
 with the efforts of his genius ; his forces, which we 
 must call moral until the new order dawns, appeared 
 to gush from the organs appointed to propel them ; his 
 eyes shot forth his thought, his lifted hand, his mute 
 and trembling lips gave utterance to it, his eye shone 
 radiant ; and then his head, as if too heavy, or wearied 
 by the violent impulsion of his spirit, dropped upon his 
 breast. The child, the giant, bowed himself down, took 
 my hand, pressed it in his own moist palm fevered 
 with the quest for truth, and then, after a pause, he 
 said : — 
 
 "I shall be famous — and you too," he added 
 4 
 
50 
 
 Louis Lambert, 
 
 quickly. "We shall both be the chemists of the 
 Will." 
 
 Exquisite heart ! I recognized his superiority, but he 
 was ever careful not to let me feel it. He shared with 
 me the treasures of his thought, counted me for some- 
 thing in all his discoveries, and gave me in my own 
 right the value of my immature reflections. Gracious 
 and winning as a loving woman, he had all those chasti- 
 ties of feeling, those delicacies of soul ; which make life 
 sweet and easy to bear. 
 
 The next day he began a work which he entitled a 
 " Treatise on the Will." His reflections often changed 
 both plan and method, but the event which I have just 
 recorded of this solemn clay was assuredly the germ of 
 the work, just as the electric sensation felt by Mesmer 
 at the approach of a certain valet was the origin of 
 his discoveries in magnetism, — a science hidden in 
 the mysteries of Isis and Delphos and the cave of 
 Trophonius, and rediscovered by that wonderful man, 
 the equal of Lavater and the precursor of Gall. Lighted 
 by this sudden illumination, Lambert's ideas took a 
 wider sweep ; he disentangled from his mental acquisi- 
 tions certain scattered truths and gathered them to- 
 gether ; then, like a worker in bronze, he moulded his 
 group. After six months of steady application, Louis's 
 toil excited the curiosity of our comrades, and was made 
 the butt of cruel jokes which led finally to a disastrous 
 issue. 
 
 One day our chief persecutor, determined to read 
 our manuscripts, instigated some of our other tyrants 
 
Louis Lambert. 51 
 
 / 
 
 to seize the box which contained the treasure, which 
 Louis and I defended with unexampled courage. The 
 box was locked, and our aggressors were unable to 
 open it ; but they tried to break it in the struggle, — a 
 dastardly wrong which made us shout with anger. A 
 few of our schoolmates, moved to justice or struck with 
 our heroic resistance, advised the others, in a spirit of 
 contemptuous pity, to let us alone. Suddenly, however, 
 attracted by the fray, Father Haugoult came upon the 
 scene, and inquired into the cause of it. Our adver- 
 saries had stopped us while doing our pensums, and 
 the master at first defended us. The assailants, to ex- 
 cuse themselves, betrayed the existence of our secret 
 writings. The terrible Haugoult ordered us to give 
 him the box. If we had resisted he would certainly 
 have broken it open ; Lambert therefore gave him the 
 key ; the regent took the papers, turned them over for 
 a few moments, and then said, as he confiscated them : 
 " So this is the stuff for which you neglect your 
 themes ! " 
 
 Big tears rolled from Lambert's eyes, forced out as 
 much by a sense of insulted mental superiority as by 
 the gratuitous injury and treachery which overwhelmed 
 us. We darted a look of reproach at our betrayers ; 
 they had sold us to the common enemy ! Our oppo- 
 nents had a right to fight us under the schoolboy 
 code, but they were bound to keep silence as to our 
 college faults. They themselves felt a momentary 
 shame. In all probability Father Haugoult sold the 
 4 'Treatise on the Will" as so much waste-paper to 
 
52 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 some grocer in Vendome, never imagining the value of 
 the scientific treasures whose still-born germs were thus 
 scattered by the hands of ignorance. Six months later 
 I left college. I do not know whether Louis Lambert, 
 who was plunged into deep despondency by our separa- 
 tion, ever renewed the work. 
 
 In memory of the catastrophe that befel Louis's trea- 
 tise I used, in the volume which begins these Philo- 
 sophical Studies, the heading really chosen by Lambert 
 as the title of a fictitious work ; and I also gave the 
 name of a woman who was dear to him to a }'oung girl 
 in that book whose life was self-devotion. 1 But these 
 loans are not all I owe him. His character, his employ- 
 ments, were most useful to me in composing that book, 
 the subject of which is an outcome of our youthful medi- 
 tations. The present History is intended as a humble 
 monument to the life of one who bequeathed to me all 
 his wealth — his thought. 
 
 In that first child-work Lambert laid down his ideas 
 on Man. Ten } T ears later, meeting scientific men en- 
 gaged in studying the phenomena which had struck our 
 youthful minds, and which Lambert so miraculously 
 analyzed, I comprehended the importance of his labors, 
 then almost forgotten as a childish feat. I resolved to 
 spend several months in recalling the chief discoveries 
 of my poor comrade. After gathering my recollections 
 together, I can affirm that in 1812 he had foreseen, dis- 
 cussed, and established in his treatise several impor- 
 1 La Peau de Chagrin (The Magic Skin). 
 
y ' Louis Lambert. 53 
 
 tant facts, the proofs of which, as he then said to me, 
 would come sooner or later. His philosophical specu- 
 lations ought certainly to place him among the great 
 thinkers who appear at intervals among their fellow-men 
 to make known the bare elements of a coming science, 
 whose roots, slow in developing growth, bear noble 
 fruits at last in the domain of intellect. Thus, in the 
 sixteenth century, a poor artisan named Bernard, 
 searching the soil for the secret of enamel, asserted, 
 with the infallible authority of genius, the very geo- 
 logical facts whose demonstration is now the glory of 
 Buffon and of Cuvier. I believe I can present an idea 
 of Louis Lambert's treatise by stating the main propo- 
 sitions on which it was based ; but, in spite of all my 
 efforts to the contrary, I fear I shall denude them of the 
 ideas with which he clothed them, and which are indeed 
 their indispensable accompaniment. Pursuing a path 
 of thought other than his, I selected from among his 
 researches those results which best suited the needs of 
 my own system. I am therefore doubtful — I, his dis- 
 ciple — if I can faithfully reproduce his thoughts after 
 having assimilated them in a manner which may have 
 colored them with mine. 
 
 New ideas need new words, or old words in wider 
 and better defined acceptations. To express the bases 
 of his system, Louis Lambert had therefore chosen cer- 
 tain words in common use which responded already, 
 though vaguely, to his thought. The word Will served 
 to express the medium in which thought is evolved ; or, 
 to use a less abstract form of expression, the volume of 
 
54 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 force by which man reproduces outside of himself the 
 actions which make up his external existence. Volition 
 (a word we owe to the reflections of Locke) expressed 
 the act by which a man makes use of Will. The word 
 Thought, to Louis the quintessential product of the 
 Will, designated also the medium in w T hich are born 
 Ideas, to which the Will serves as substance. The 
 Idea, not common to all creations of the brain, consti- 
 tutes the act by which man makes use of Thought. 
 
 Thus Will and Thought are two generating agents. 
 Volition and Idea are the two products. Will seemed 
 to him the Idea advanced from its abstract condition to 
 a concrete condition, from its fluid generation to a 
 quasi-solid expression, if indeed these words can formu- 
 late perceptions so difiicult to discriminate. Accord- 
 ing to Lambert, Thought and Ideas are the motion and 
 the action of our inward organism, just as Volition and 
 Will are those of our exterior being. He placed Will 
 above Thought. u To think, we must needs will," he 
 said. u Many persons live in a condition of Willing 
 who never reach the condition of Thought. In the 
 North we find longevity, in the South brevity of life ; 
 but also in the former a torpidity, in the latter an ex- 
 citation of the Will, up to the point where, either from 
 extreme heat or extreme cold, the organs become 
 almost nugatory. 
 
 His expression 66 medium" was suggested to him by 
 an observation made in early childhood, — the impor- 
 tance of which he certainly did not then suspect, 
 though its curious singularity must have greatly struck 
 
7 Louis Lambert. 55 
 
 his impressible imagination. His mother, a slender, 
 high-strung creature, all delicacy and all love, was one 
 of those beings predestined to represent Woman in the 
 perfection of her attributes whom a blind fate leaves 
 in the lower strata of the social state. All-loving, 
 consequently all-suffering, she died young, after turn- 
 ing every faculty into motherly devotion. Lambert, a 
 child of six, lying awake in a cot by his mother's bed, 
 saw electric sparks escaping from her hair as she 
 combed it. The man of fifteen seized upon this fact so 
 amusing to his childhood, and put it to the uses of 
 science, — an undeniable fact, to be observed in almost 
 every woman whom a certain fatality of destiny burdens 
 with feelings misunderstood which need a vent, or with 
 a superabundance of vigor which she needs to lose. 
 
 In support of his definitions, Lambert brought for- 
 ward several problems for solution, splendid challenges 
 offered to science, through which he hoped to reach con- 
 clusions. He was constantly asking himself, "Does 
 the constituent principle of electricity enter as a basis 
 into the particular fluid from which Ideas and Volitions 
 spring? Does the hair which discolors, brightens, 
 falls, and disappears from the head, according to vary- 
 ing degrees of waste or of crystallization of° thought, 
 constitute a capillary system either absorbent or °ex- 
 halant, and wholly electrical? Are the fluid phenomena 
 of our Will (a substance procreated within us and spon- 
 taneously reactive at the bidding of conditions still 
 unobserved) more extraordinary than those of the invis- 
 ible and intangible fluid produced by a voltaic battery 
 
53 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 on the nervous system of a dead man ? Is the forma- 
 tion of our ideas, and their constant emission any less 
 incomprehensible than the evaporation of those cor- 
 puscles, imperceptible to the eye yet violent in action, 
 to which a grain of musk is subjected without losing its 
 weight ? If w T e leave to the cutaneous system of our 
 outward man only those functions that are defensive, 
 absorbent, exudant, and tactile, does not the circula- 
 tion of the blood and its apparatus answer to the 
 transubstantiation of Will, just as the circulation of 
 the nervous fluid answers to that of Thought? Final^, 
 does the influence, more or less powerful, of these two 
 substances result from a certain perfection or imper- 
 fection of organs, the conditions of which ought to be 
 studied in all their manifestation? 
 
 These principles once established, he desired to class 
 the phenomena of human life in two series of distinct 
 effects, — demanding for each of them, with the insis- 
 tent ardor of conviction, a separate and special anaty- 
 sis. In fact, after distinguishing in nearly all created 
 things two separate movements, he presented the fact 
 and admitted it among those of human nature, naming 
 this vital antagonism Action and Reaction. 
 
 4i A desire," he said, " is a fact wholly accomplished 
 within our Will before it reaches external accomplish- 
 ment. Thus the conjunction of our Volitions and our 
 Ideas constitutes Action, and the conjunction of our 
 exterior acts Reaction." 
 
 When, at a later clay, I read the observations made 
 by Bichat on the dualism of our external senses, I was 
 
Louis Lambert. 57 
 
 bewildered by recollections as I perceived the startling 
 identity between the ideas of the great physiologist and 
 those of Louis Lambert. Dying before their allotted 
 time, the two had walked with even steps, side by 
 side, towards unknown truths. Nature finds pleasure 
 in giving duplicate destinies to diverse constitutional 
 arrangements in her creatures, and the double action of 
 our organism, a fact no longer contestable, supports, 
 with a volume of daily proof, Lambert's deductions as 
 to Action and Reaction. The acting or interior being 
 (a term which Louis used to name the unknown spe- 
 cies, the mysterious assemblage of fibrils from which 
 proceed the different powers incompletely observed as 
 Thought and Will, — in short, that unnamed, seeing, 
 acting, producing being, who accomplishes all without 
 corporeal demonstration) must, in order to conform to 
 his own nature, be subjected to none of the physical 
 conditions by which the reacting, or exterior, being, 
 the visible man, is checked in his manifestations. 
 
 From this flowed a multitude of logical explanations 
 on the apparently fantastic effects of our double nature, 
 and the rectification of various theories which are 
 equally false and true. Certain minds having per- 
 ceived the phenomena of natural fire in the acting 
 being are, like Swedenborg, carried beyond the world 
 of actual things by their ardent souls, amorous of 
 poesy, drunk with the essence of the divine. They 
 delight, ignorant as they are of causes while admiring 
 results, to deify this inward being and its works, and to 
 build up a mystic universe. Hence the angels, — ex- 
 
58 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 quisite illusions which Lambert would not renounce. 
 While the blade of his analysis cut off their dazzling 
 wings, he still clasped them to his heart. 
 
 "Heaven," he said to me, "must be the survival of 
 our perfected faculties, and hell the nothingness into 
 which unperfected faculties return." 
 
 But how, during the ages when human understanding 
 still retained the religious and spiritual impressions 
 which ruled the world between the times of Christ and 
 of Descartes, between Faith and Doubt, how could 
 the mind avoid explaining the mysteries of our inward 
 nature otherwise than by Divine intervention? Of 
 whom, if not of God himself, could learned men ask 
 an explanation of the invisible creature, so actively and 
 so reactively sensitive ; endowed with faculties so wide- 
 reaching, so perfectible through use, so powerful under 
 the control of certain occult conditions, that at times 
 t\\ey saw it, by a phenomenon of sight or of locomotion, 
 abolish space in its two aspects of Time and Distance, 
 — the former being intellectual space, the latter physical 
 space. Or again, they saw this being reconstruct the 
 past, either by the power of a retrospective glance, or 
 by the mystery of a palingenesis, like that which ena- 
 bles a man to trace a flower from the germ, or the 
 teguments of a seed through all the innumerable modi- 
 fications of color, fragrance, and form of its anterior 
 bloom. And still again, and finally, they saw it divin- 
 ing imperfectly the future, either through a glimpse 
 of the earlier faiths, or by a phenomenon of physical 
 presentiments. 
 
Louis Lambert. 59 
 
 Other men, less poetically religious, cold reasoners, 
 charlatans perhaps, enthusiasts, if at all, by the brain 
 rather than by the heart, observing from time to time 
 these isolated phenomena, have held them to be true 
 without considering them as radiations from a common 
 centre. Each man sought to convert a simple fact into 
 a science. Hence, demonology, judicial astrology, sor- 
 cery, — in short, all the divining arts based on incidents 
 that were essentially transitory because they varied 
 according to temperaments and in accordance with 
 circumstances still wholly unexplained. But through 
 these errors of the learned, and from ecclesiastical 
 trials in which so many martyrs were the victims of 
 their own faculties, there came at last effulgent proof 
 of the prodigious power of the acting inward being 
 who, according to Lambert, is able to isolate, himself 
 so completely from the reacting external being that he 
 can burst the shell and force the walls of flesh to open 
 before his omnipotent mind's eye (a phenomenon called 
 among the Hindoos the Tokeiad), and then, by virtue 
 of another faculty, seize within the brain, in spite of 
 its thick convolutions, ideas which are formed or form- 
 ing, and all the past experience of consciousness. 
 
 "If apparitions are not impossible," said Lambert, 
 "they must take place through some faculty of appre- 
 hending the ideas that represent man in his pure es- 
 sence; the existence of which, imperishable perhaps, 
 eludes our exterior senses, but may become perceptible 
 to the inward being when he attains to a high degree 
 of ecstasy, or to a rare perfection of sight." 
 
60 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 I recall, though now somewhat vaguely, that Lam- 
 bert, following step by step the effects of Thought 
 and Will in all their manifestations, after first deter- 
 mining their laws, was able to account for a crowd of 
 phenomena which till then were justly thought to be 
 incomprehensible. Necromancers, witches, those pos- 
 sessed of second-sight, and demoniacs of all kinds, 
 victims of the Middle Ages, were the objects of natural 
 explanation whose very simplicity seemed to me to 
 bear the stamp of truth. The marvellous gifts which 
 the Church of Rome, jealous of mysteries, punished 
 with the stake were, according to Louis, the result of 
 certain affinities between the constituent principles of 
 Matter and those of Thought, which proceed from the 
 same source. The man with the hazel wand who found 
 the water-springs obeyed the impulse of some sympathy, 
 or some antipathy, to himself unknown. Such phenom- 
 ena needed a certain fantasticality to give them historical 
 preservation. Sympathies are seldom verified. They 
 bestow pleasures which persons fortunately endowed 
 with them seldom make known, unless through some 
 special necessity ; they are lost in the seclusion of pri- 
 vacy where so much is forgotten. On the other hand, 
 antipathies, which result from reversed affinities, have 
 been noted with great distinctness when they appear 
 among celebrated men. Bajle was thrown into con- 
 vulsions by the sound of falling water. Scaliger turned 
 pale at the sight of cress. Erasmus took a fever from 
 the smell of fish. These three antipathies emanated 
 from aquatic substances. The Due d'Epernon fainted 
 
Louis Lambert. 61 
 
 y 
 
 at the sight of a hare ; Tycho-Brahe at that of a fox ; 
 Henri HI. at that of a eat ; Marechal d'Albret at that of 
 a wild boar, — antipathies produced by animal emana- 
 tions and perceived often at long distances. The Cheva- 
 lier de Guise, Marie de Medici, and many other historic 
 personages were made ill by roses, even painted ones. 
 Whether Francis Bacon knew or did not know of an 
 approaching eclipse of the moon, he fell into a state of 
 coma when it took place ; life was arrested during the 
 whole time the obscuration lasted, but recovered vigor 
 when it was over, without any uncomfortable results. 
 These effects of authentic antipathies, taken at random 
 from those which history has noted, will suffice to give 
 an idea of the effects of hidden sympathies, 
 
 This fragment of Lambert's investigations which my 
 memory still retains will serve to show his methods in 
 pursuing his work. I think I need not call attention to 
 the correlation which links this theory to the collateral 
 sciences invented by Gall and Lavater ; they are its 
 natural corollaries ; and minds of even slender scientific 
 attainments will perceive the ramifications by which the 
 phrenological observations of the one and the physiog- 
 nomical data of the other are necessarily attached to it. 
 Mesmer's discovery, so important and so ill- understood 
 even at the present day, would have been found entire 
 in Lambert's treatise, though Louis knew nothing of the 
 somewhat laconic works of the celebrated Swiss doctor. 
 A logical and simple deduction of the principles he had 
 observed showed him that Will could, by a movement 
 set going solely by the inward being, accumulate itself 
 
62 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 and, b} T another movement, be impelled outward, and 
 even be imparted to material objects. Thus a man's 
 whole force had potency to react upon others and to 
 infuse into them an essence foreign to their own, if they 
 did not defend themselves from the aggression. The 
 evidences of this theorem of the science of humanity 
 are multitudinous, but nothing has yet converted them 
 into authentic proof. The impressive disaster of Marius 
 and his speech to the Cimbrian who was appointed to 
 kill him, or the august command of a mother to the Lion 
 of Florence were needed to make known historically a 
 few of these thunderbolts of thought. 
 
 To Lambert, therefore, Will and Thought were living 
 forces ; and he spoke of them in a way to make me 
 share his beliefs. To him these powers were, in a sense, 
 visible and tangible. To him Thought was slow or 
 quick, heav} T or nimble, obscure or clear ; he gave it 
 all the qualities of active being ; made it spring forth, 
 become quiescent, re-awake, increase, grow old, shrink, 
 wither, revive ; he caught its life as he thus specified its 
 acts through the capricious medium of language ; he 
 apprehended its spontaneity, its vigor, its capacit}', by 
 a sort of intuition which enabled him to recognize all 
 the phenomena of the substance. 
 
 " Often," he once said to me, " in calm and silent 
 hours, when our inward faculties are asleep, when we 
 yield ourselves up to the sweetness of rest, when a spe- 
 cies of shadow steals through us, and we fall into con- 
 templation of external things, an idea suddenly springs 
 forth and darts with the rapidity of lightning across 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 63 
 
 vast spaces, a sight of which is granted to our interior 
 perceptions. This shining thought, up-springing like a 
 will-o'-the-wisp, goes out like a flash and returns no 
 more, — ephemeral existence, like that of infants whose 
 coming and whose going give boundless joy and grief to 
 parents, — a flower still-born, as it were, in the fields of 
 Mind. Sometimes, instead of gushing forth and dying 
 without substance, this Idea begins to form ; it stirs 
 on the unknown confines of the organs in which it was 
 generated ; it consumes us with a long gestation ; it 
 quickens, fructifies, and develops outwardly with the 
 grace of youth and the attributes of old age ; it attracts 
 and detains the inquiring eye, and never wearies it ; the 
 investigation it provokes commands the admiring won- 
 der given to long-elaborated works. Sometimes ideas 
 come to birth in swarms, — one brings forth another ; 
 they link together ; they are stimulating, affluent, head- 
 long. Or again, they rise up pallid, confused, perishing 
 for want of nourishment or vigor ; the generating sub- 
 stance was lacking. Then, too, on certain days, they 
 fling themselves into the depths of the abyss, seeking 
 to cast light into its immensity ; they terrify us, they 
 leave our souls exhausted. Ideas are a system com- 
 plete within us, like any of the kingdoms of Nature, — 
 a sort of flora whose iconography will one day be traced 
 out by a man of genius whom the w T orld will call a luna- 
 tic. Yes, all things, within us and without us, bear evi- 
 dence to the life of Ideas, — those ravishing creations 
 which, obeying some mysterious revelation of their na- 
 ture, I compare to flowers. Their production, as the 
 
G4 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 end and aim of man, is not more amazing than the em- 
 anation of perfume and color from a plant. Possibly, 
 perfumes have ideas. When we think that the line where 
 our flesh ends and the finger-nails begin contains the in- 
 visible and inexplicable mystery of the ceaseless trans- 
 formation of our fluids into horn, we must admit that 
 nothing is impossible in the marvellous mutations of 
 human substance. Surely we find in the moral nature 
 phenomena of motion and gravity similar to those of 
 the physical nature. The emotion of expectant atten- 
 tion, to choose an example which everybody has felt, 
 is painful through the effect of a law in virtue of w^hich 
 the weight of a bocty is multiplied by its swiftness. Does 
 not the weight of sentiment, the moral gravity, which 
 waiting produces increase by the constant addition of 
 the past pains to present pain ? To what, if not to 
 some electric substance, can we attribute that magic 
 by force of which the Will sits majestically enthroned 
 in the eye to blast all obstacles at the command of 
 genius, or breaks forth in the voice, or filters visibly, in 
 defiance of In^pocris} 7 , through the human cuticle ? The 
 current of this king of fluids, which, under the high 
 pressure of Thought or Sentiment, flows forth in waves, 
 lessens to a thread, or gathers to a volume and gushes 
 forth in lightning jets, is the occult minister to whom 
 we owe the efforts (be they fatal or beneficent) of the 
 arts and the passions, — the intonations of the voice, 
 rough, sweet, terrifying, lascivious, .horrible, seductive, 
 which vibrate in the heart, in the bowels, in the brain, 
 at the will of our wishes ; the spell of touch from which 
 
Louis Lambert. 65 
 
 proceed the mental transfusions of artists whose cre- 
 ative hands, made perfect through passionate study, can 
 evoke nature ; the endless gradations of the eye, pass- 
 ing from sluggish atony to the discharge of lightning- 
 flashes full of menace. God loses none of his rights 
 in this system. Thought, material thought, tells me of 
 new and undiscovered grandeurs in the Divine." 
 
 When he spoke thus — when his glance penetrated 
 my soul like light itself— it was difficult not to be daz- 
 zled by his conviction and carried away by his argu- 
 ments. Thus Thought seemed to my mind a purely 
 physical power attended by its incommensurable pro- 
 geny. It was a new Humanity under another form. 
 This rapid sketch of the laws which Lambert declared 
 to be the formulae of the human intellect must suffice 
 to show the prodigious activity with which his mind fed 
 upon itself. He sought for evidence of his theories in 
 the history of great men, whose lives, laid bare in biog- 
 raphies, furnish many curious particulars as to the work- 
 ing of their understandings. His memory enabled him 
 to recall facts which helped to develop his assertions, 
 and he annexed them to the several chapters which they 
 demonstrated, so that many of his axioms acquired a 
 certainty that was well-nigh mathematical. The works 
 of Cardan, a man gifted with remarkable powers of 
 vision,- afforded him precious material. He forgot 
 neither Apollonius of Tyana, announcing to Asia the 
 tyrant's death and describing his execution at the very 
 hour when it took place in Rome ; nor Plotinus, sepa- 
 rated from Porphyrius yet conscious of the latter's 
 
66 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 intention to kill himself, and rushing to dissuade him ; 
 nor a fact clearly proved in the last century, in spite of 
 a sneering incredulity such as truth had never before 
 encountered, — a surprising fact to those accustomed 
 to use doubt as a weapon against itself only, yet sim- 
 ple enough to a believer : Alphonse-Maria de Liguori, 
 Bishop of Saint Agatha, gave the consolations of re- 
 ligion to Pope Ganganelli, who saw, heard, and an- 
 swered him ; yet at that very moment the bishop was 
 far from Home, seated, absorbed in ecstasy, in the arm- 
 chair which he always occupied on his return from mass. 
 When he came to himself he saw the servants kneeling 
 around him, and thinking he was dead. " My friends," 
 he said to them, "the Holy Father has just expired. " 
 Two days later, a courier confirmed the news. The mo- 
 ment of the pope's death coincided with that at which 
 the bishop recovered from his trance. 
 
 Neither did Lambert overlook a more recent affair 
 which happened in the last century to a young English- 
 woman, who, being passionately in love with a sailor, 
 started from London to search for him, and alone, with- 
 out a guide, found him in the wilds of North America, 
 where she arrived in time to save his life. Louis laid 
 under contribution the mysteries of antiquit} T , the acts 
 of the martyrs (noblest claims to glory of the human 
 will), the demonologists of the Middle Ages, criminal 
 trials, medical researches, — discerning the essential fact, 
 the probable phenomenon, with admirable sagacity. 
 
 This rich collection of scientific anecdotes, gathered 
 from a multitude of books for the most part trust- 
 
/ 
 
 Louis Lambert. 67 
 
 worthy, went, no doubt, to wrap groceries ; and a work, 
 curious to say the least, conceived and brought forth 
 by the most extraordinary of human memories, prob- 
 ably perished. Among the many proofs which enriched 
 it was the history of an event which happened in Lam- 
 bert's family, and which he had related to me before 
 undertaking his treatise. This circumstance, concern- 
 ing the post-existence of the inward being (if I may 
 allow myself to coin a word to express a yet unnamed 
 condition), struck me so forcibly that I have always 
 remembered it. 
 
 His father and mother were threatened with a suit 
 the loss of which would cast a stain upon their integ- 
 rity, the sole property they possessed. Consequently, 
 their anxiety was great in deciding the question as 
 to whether they should yield at once to the unjust de- 
 mands of their opponent, or whether they should risk 
 all and defend themselves. The discussion took place 
 one autumn evening, before a peat fire, in the chamber 
 of the tanner and his wife. A few of the family rela- 
 tions were called in to the consultation ; among them 
 Louis's maternal great-grandfather, an old laborer com- 
 pletely broken-down, of a noble and majestic counte- 
 nance, a clear eye, and an ample brow yellowed with 
 age, on which a few white hairs were sparsely straggling. 
 Like the Obi of the negroes, or the Sagamore of the 
 Indians, he was a kind of oracular spirit, consulted on 
 all great occasions. His lands were cultivated by his 
 grandchildren, who fed and cared for him. He foretold 
 rains and fair weather, told them when to gather the 
 
63 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 harvest, and when to mow the meadows. The barom- 
 etric accuracy of his counsel grew famous, and con- 
 stantly increased the faith and reverence which were 
 shown to him. He sometimes sat motionless on his 
 chair for days together. This trance condition was 
 customary with the old man since the death of his wife, 
 for whom he had felt the deepest and most constant 
 affection. The discussion now went on before him with- 
 out his apparently paying much attention to it. " My 
 children," he said, when asked to give his advice, " this 
 matter is too serious for me to decide alone, I must 
 consult my wife." He then rose, took his stick and 
 w^ent out, to the great surprise of all present, who 
 thought, for a moment, that he had become childish. 
 Presently he returned and said: 4k I was not obliged 
 to go so far as the cemetery, your mother met me ; I 
 found her beside the brook. She tells me that you will 
 find receipts in the hands of a notary at Blois which 
 will enable you to win your suit." The words w r ere 
 uttered in a firm voice. The attitude and expression 
 of the old man were such as to make the spectators 
 conclude that the apparition was customary with him. 
 As a matter of fact, the disputed receipts were found, 
 and the suit was not even brought. 
 
 This circumstance, happening under the paternal roof 
 and under Louis's own eye, he being then nine years old, 
 contributed not a little to his belief in the miraculous 
 visions of Swedenborg, who afforded during his extraor- 
 dinary life many proofs of the power of vision acquired 
 by his inward being. As Lambert grew in years, and 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 69 
 
 in proportion to the development of his intellect, he was 
 led to search the laws of human nature for the causes 
 of the miracle he had witnessed in his childhood. By 
 what name must we call the accident which brought 
 about him the facts and the books relating to such 
 phenomena, and made the youth himself the theatre and 
 the actor of the greatest miracles of thought ? If Louis 
 had no other claim to glory than that of having, at the 
 age of fifteen, given forth the following psychological 
 axiom, we must still, I think, have mourned in him the 
 loss of a genius equal to that of Pascal, Lavoisier, or 
 Laplace, " The events, " he said, " which evidence the 
 action of Humanity, and are the product of its intellect, 
 have causes within which they are preconceived, —just 
 as our actions are accomplished in our thought before 
 they are reproduced outside of us ; presentiments or 
 prophecies are precognitions of these causes." 
 
 Perhaps his phantasy about angels may have too long 
 influenced his labors ; but let us remember it was in 
 searching how to make gold that learned men uncon- 
 sciously created chemistry; nevertheless, later, when 
 Lambert studied comparative anatomy, physics, geome- 
 try, and the sciences connected with his discoveries, he 
 necessarily intended to assemble facts and proceed by 
 analysis, —the sole torch which to-day can guide us 
 through the obscurities of the least comprehensible of 
 phenomena. He had certainly too much sense to re- 
 main forever in the clouds of theories which could all 
 be formulated in a few words. To-day the simplest 
 demonstration which rests on facts is far more valuable 
 
70 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 than the finest systems supported by inductions more 
 or less ingenious. But as I was not with him dur- 
 ing the period of his life when he must have thought 
 and reflected to most profit, I can only conjecture the 
 course of his labors from what I knew of his earlier 
 meditations. 
 
 It is easy to see in what respect his " Treatise on 
 the Will" was defective. Already gifted with the 
 qualities which distinguish remarkable men, he was 
 nevertheless still a child. Though skilful and affluent 
 in abstract thought, his brain was still influenced by 
 the fascinating beliefs that float around all youthful 
 spirits. Consequently his conception attained to the 
 ripe fruits of genius at certain points, while at a multi- 
 tude of others it remained in the undeveloped state of 
 germs. To minds amorous of poetry his greatest de- 
 fect would have seemed the lack of a certain unction. 
 His work bore marks of the struggle that went on in 
 his glorious soul between the two great principles of 
 Spiritualism and Materialism ; round which the noblest 
 minds have hovered, without daring to blend them into 
 one. Purely spiritualistic at first, Louis was irre- 
 sistibly led to recognize the materialism of thought. 
 Beaten back by the facts of analysis at the moment 
 when his heart made him gaze with love at the scat- 
 tered clouds in the heaven of Swedenborg, he had not 
 yet the ability to produce a compact, homogeneous 
 system, run at one casting. From this incapacity came 
 several contradictions, which appear even in the sketch 
 I have made of his earliest efforts. Yet, however in- 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 71 
 
 complete his work, it was surety the rough draft of a 
 science of which, later, he would have fathomed the 
 mysteries, settled the foundations, searched out, de- 
 duced, and connected the developments. 
 
 Six months after the confiscation of the "Treatise on 
 the Will," I left college. Our separation was abrupt. 
 My mother, alarmed by a feverish condition which per- 
 sistently clung to me and to which my bodily inaction 
 gave symptoms of coma, took me away from Vendome 
 at four or five hours' notice. When Lambert heard of 
 my departure he fell into a state of alarming depression. 
 We hid ourselves to weep together. 
 
 u I shall never see } T ou again," he said to me in his 
 gentle voice as he pressed me in his arms. " You will 
 live," he added, 46 but I shall die. I will appear to }^ou 
 if I can." 
 
 We must be young indeed to utter such words in a 
 tone of conviction which compels their acceptance as a 
 prophecy, as a promise, whose fulfilment is ever to be 
 expected with awe. For a long subsequent time I 
 thought vaguely of this pledged apparition; I still 
 have days of spleen, doubt, terror, or solitude, when I 
 am forced to drive away the recollection of that melan- 
 choly farewell ; which, however, was destined not to 
 be our last. When I crossed the courtyard on my way 
 out, Lambert's face was pressed to a barred window in 
 the refectory that he might see me pass. At my re- 
 quest my mother asked permission for him to dine 
 with us at the inn. That evening I took him back to 
 
72 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 the fatal threshold of the college. Lover and. mistress 
 never shed more tears at parting than we did. 
 
 " Farewell ; I shall be alone in this desert," he said, 
 pointing to the courtyard where scores of lads were 
 shouting and playing. " When I come back wearied, 
 half-dead, from my long journeys through the fields of 
 thought, on whose heart shall I rest? A glance sufficed 
 to tell thee all. Who now will comprehend me ? Adieu ; 
 would I had never met thee ! I should not then know 
 all that I am now to lose." 
 
 " And I," I said, " what will become of me? My 
 condition will be dreadful ; I have nothing here to 
 console me," I added, striking my forehead. 
 
 He shook his head with a movement full of grace 
 and sadness, and we parted. 
 
 At this period of his life Louis Lambert was five feet 
 two inches in height, and he grew no taller. His face, 
 becoming more and more expressive, gave evidence to 
 the sweetness of his nature. A divine patience, born of 
 harsh treatment, the perpetual concentration of mind 
 required by his contemplative habits, had taken from 
 his glance the daring pride with which he formerly an- 
 nihilated the regent. His features shone with peaceful 
 feeling,.with a sweet serenity which no ridicule, no irony 
 could ever change ; for his natural kindliness tempered 
 his consciousness of his powers and his superiority. 
 He had handsome hands with tapering fingers, nearly 
 always moist. His body was a marvel of beauty worthy 
 of sculpture ; though, alas, our iron-gray uniforms with 
 their short breeches gave us so awkward an appearance 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 73 
 
 that the perfection of Lambert's proportions and the 
 soft suppleness of his attitudes were seen only while 
 he bathed. When swimming in our cove of the Loir, 
 Louis was distinguished from the rest of us by the 
 whiteness of his skin, which contrasted with the various 
 flesh- tints of his comrades, often mottled by the cold 
 air, or purpled by the water. Delicate in shape, grace- 
 ful in attitude, softly colored, never shivering as he left 
 the water (perhaps because he avoided shade and ran 
 about in the sun), Louis was like those provident flowers 
 which close their petals to the north-wind and only 
 bloom when the sky is clear. He ate very little, and 
 drank water only. Either by instinct or from choice, he 
 was chary of all movement which required an expendi- 
 ture of strength ; his gestures were few and simple, like 
 those of the Orientals or the Indian nations, in whom 
 gravity appears to be a second nature. As a general 
 thing he did not like whatever savored of particular care 
 for his own person. He leaned his head so habitually on 
 his left hand, the elbow resting on a table, that the 
 sleeves of a new coat were speedily in holes. To this 
 faint portrait of the outward man I ought to add a 
 sketch of his moral nature, for I believe myself capable 
 to-day of judging it impartially. 
 
 Though naturally religious, Louis did not share in 
 the minute observances of the Roman Church; his 
 ideas were more particularly in sympathy with those 
 of Saint Theresa, Fenelon, several of the Fathers, and 
 a few saints who would be treated in our day as here- 
 tics or atheists. He was unmoved during the church 
 
74 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 services. Prayer, with him, proceeded from an impulse, 
 a movement and elevation of the spirit which followed 
 no regular course ; in all things he gave himself up 
 to nature, and would neither pray nor think at settled 
 periods. It is likely that in chapel he thought of God 
 as often as he pondered some philosophical difficulty. 
 Jesus Christ was to him the type of his system. Et 
 verbum caro factum est was to him a sublime utter- 
 ance intended to express the traditional formula of 
 Will, Word, and Action made visible. Christ not dis- 
 cerning his own death ; having so perfected his in- 
 ward being through divine works that its invisible form 
 became, one day, manifest to his disciples ; the mys- 
 teries of the Gospel, the magnetic cures performed by 
 Christ, and the gift of tongues, — all served to confirm 
 his doctrine. I remember to have heard him say, in 
 this connection, that the noblest work to be done in 
 the present day would be a history of the Primitive 
 Church. He was never, to my knowledge, so far up- 
 lifted towards poesy as in a conversation which led him 
 one evening to examine the miracles performed by the 
 power of Will during that grand epoch of Faith. He 
 found the strongest proofs of his theory in the martyr- 
 doms of the first century, which he called the 4 ' great 
 era of thought." 
 
 " The phenomena which happened during many of 
 the tortures so heroically borne by the Christians to 
 establish their faith, go to prove," he said, " that ma- 
 terial force will never prevail against the power of 
 ideas nor against the will of man. Each one of us 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 75 
 
 may accept this effect produced by the will of all as 
 evidence in favor of our own." 
 
 I think I ought not to speak of Louis Lambert's ideas 
 on poetry and on histoiy, nor of his judgments as to 
 the masterpieces of our language. It is scarcely worth 
 while to record here opinions which have now become 
 common property, but which in the mouth of a child at 
 the time he uttered them would have seemed extraor- 
 dinary. Louis w r as abreast of all. To express his gifts 
 in one sentence, I will say that he could have written 
 Zadig as brilliantly as Voltaire, and thought out the 
 dialogue between Sylla and Eucrates as vigorously as 
 Montesquieu. The extreme rectitude of his ideas made 
 him desire usefulness above all else in a work, just as 
 the delicac}' of his mind craved novelty of thought as 
 much as novelty of form. Whatever did not fulfil 
 these conditions caused him actual disgust. One of 
 his most remarkable literary estimates — and one 
 which may perhaps serve to show the character as well 
 as the lucidity of his judgments — was the following* 
 which has always remained fastened in my memory : 
 u The Apocalypse is ecstasy written down." He con- 
 sidered the Bible as a part of the traditional history of 
 antediluvian peoples, which w T as shared with the new 
 Humanity. To him, the mytholog} T of the Greeks was 
 linked with the Hebrew Bible and with the sacred books 
 of India, all of which the Hellenes, worshippers of grace, 
 had translated after their fashion. 
 
 "It is impossible," he said, " to question the priority 
 of the Asiatic Scriptures to our Holy Scriptures. To 
 
76 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 all who admit this historical fact in good faith the 
 world enlarges wonderfully. It was on the table-lands 
 of Asia that the few men who may have survived the 
 great catastrophe of our globe took refuge, — if indeed 
 humanity existed after the shock of that cataclysm ; a 
 serious question, whose answer lies in. the depths of 
 ocean. The anthropology of the Bible is but the gen- 
 ealogy of a swarm of human bees, issuing from their 
 hive and clinging to the mountainous flanks of Thibet, 
 between the summits of the Himalaya and those of the 
 Caucasus. The character of the first ideas of the horde 
 named by its law-giver the People of God (doubtless to 
 give it unity, and possibly to force it to preserve his 
 own laws and system of government, — for the books of 
 Moses are a code, religious, civil, and political) is 
 stamped with fear ; the convulsion of the globe is held 
 to be a vengeance from on high, working through gigan- 
 tic thoughts. Deprived of the peaceful joys of a peo- 
 ple inhabiting a patriarchal land, the sorrows of the 
 wandering nation taught them a sombre, majestic, and 
 blood-thirsty poetry. On the other hand, the sight of 
 earth's quick reparations, the marvellous effects of the 
 sun, first witnessed by the Hindus, inspired the Orient 
 peoples, with their smiling conceptions of happy love, 
 fire-worship, and the endless personifications of repro- 
 duction. Those magnificent images are lacking to the 
 Hebrews. A constant necessity for preservation amid 
 the dangers and distances to be traversed to the land 
 of promise begot the feeling of exclusiveness among 
 the peculiar people, and their hatred to other nations. 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 77 
 
 These three Scriptures are the archives of an ingulfed 
 world. In them lies the secret of the untold grandeur 
 of their languages and their myths. A vast human his- 
 tory is buried beneath these names of men and places, 
 beneath these fictions, which we cling to irresistibly, 
 yet without knowing why. Perhaps in their presence 
 we breathe the native air of our new humanity." 
 
 To Louis this triple literature contained all the 
 thoughts of man. "No book," he said, 44 was ever 
 written whose germ does not lie there." This opinion 
 shows how learned and how profound were his first 
 studies of the Bible, and the distance to which they led 
 him. Ever soaring above social existence, of which 
 he knew nothing except through books, he judged it 
 coolly. 44 Laws," he said, 44 never interfere with the 
 enterprises of the rich and great ; they strike the feeble, 
 who ought, on the contrary, to be protected." 
 
 Thus his natural kindliness kept him from sympathy 
 with political ideas ; yet his system led to that passive 
 obedience whose exemplar was Jesus Christ. During 
 the latter period of my stay at Vendome, Louis no 
 longer felt a spur to fame ; he had, in a certain way, 
 abstractly experienced it, and after cutting it open, 
 like the -priests of ancient sacrifice seeking portents in 
 the hearts of human victims, he had found nothing 
 in the womb of that chimera. Despising, therefore, 
 a sentiment so wholly personal, he once said to 
 me, 44 Fame is deified egoism." 
 
 Before leaving this period of an exceptional child- 
 hood I ought perhaps to offer a judgment upon it. 
 
78 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 Some time before our separation Louis said to me : 
 " Apart from those general laws, the formulation of 
 which may one day bring me fame, and which must 
 necessarily be those of our organism, man's life is a 
 movement determined in each individual at the bidding 
 of some hidden influence or impulse, either of the 
 Brain, the Heart, or the Nerves. From those three 
 systems, represented by three common words, the end- 
 less types of Humanity are derived, all of which result 
 from the proportion in which the three generating prin- 
 ciples are more or less thoroughly combined with the 
 substances which they assimilate in the centres where 
 they exist." He stopped short, struck his forehead 
 and exclaimed, 64 Strange fact! all the great men 
 whose portraits I have seen are short-necked. Per- 
 haps Nature decreed that in them the heart should be 
 nearer the brain." Presently he resumed, "From this 
 comes a certain uniformity of action which makes up 
 social existence. To the man of Nerve, Action, — that 
 is, force ; to the man of Brain, Genius ; to the man of 
 Heart, Faith. But," he added, sadly, " to Faith, the 
 Clouds of the Sanctuary; to the Angel alone comes 
 Light." Taking his own definitions, Lambert was all 
 heart and all brain. 
 
 To me, the life of his mind is divided into three 
 phases. 
 
 Urged from his infanc} 7 to precocious activity, caused 
 no doubt b} T some malady or some perfection of his 
 organs, his forces concentrated themselves on the 
 working of his inward faculties and on the superabun- 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 79 
 
 dant production of the nervous fluid. A creature of 
 ideas, he sought to quench the thirst of a brain which 
 longed to assimilate all ideas. Hence, his reading, 
 and from his reading his reflections, which gave him 
 power to reduce things to their simplest expression, 
 to absorb them within himself that he might study 
 them in their essence. The benefits of this magnifi- 
 cent period of his mind's training, which come to other 
 men only as the result of long study, fell to Louis 
 during his bodily childhood, — a happy childhood, col- 
 ored with the studious felicities of a poem. The limit 
 which most brains attain was the point of departure 
 from which his was one day to start in search of new 
 regions of intelligence. He thus created for himself, 
 without as yet knowing what he did, the most exacting 
 of lives, and the most insatiable. Merely to exist, he 
 was forced to throw incessant nourishment into the gulf 
 he had opened within him. Like certain beings of the 
 mundane regions, he was liable to perish for want of 
 nutriment to intemperate and balked appetites. Was 
 it not, in fact, a debauchery of the soul, which might 
 bring it, like certain bodies saturated with alcohol, to 
 spontaneous combustion ? 
 
 This earliest mental phase I knew nothing of. Not 
 until the present day have I explained to myself its 
 amazing fructifications and results. Lambert was then 
 thirteen 3-ears old. 
 
 I was fortunate enough to be with him in the first 
 years of the second stage, during which Lambert (and 
 it may have been this that saved him) endured all the 
 
80 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 wretchedness of school life and expended the super- 
 abundance of his thought. After passing from things 
 to their simplest terms, from words to their ideal sub- 
 stance, from that substance to principles, —in short, 
 after abstracting all, he still aspired, as a necessity of 
 life, to other intellectual creations. Subdued by his 
 college sufferings and by the crises of his physical life, 
 he continued meditative, divined feelings, foresaw new 
 sciences and vast masses of ideas. Checked in his 
 course, and too feeble as yet to contemplate the upper 
 . spheres, his eyes turned inward in self-contemplation. 
 He showed me then the struggle of thought reacting 
 against itself, and seeking to discover the secrets of its 
 own nature, as a doctor studies the progress of his 
 own malady. In this state of strength and weak- 
 ness, childlike grace and superhuman power, Louis 
 Lambert gave me the most poetic and the truest idea 
 of the being whom we call angel, — excepting always 
 one woman whose name, person, and life it is my wish 
 to withhold from the world, so that I alone may know 
 the secret of her existence and bury it forever in my 
 heart. 
 
 The third phase of Lambert's mental life escaped me. 
 It must have begun after I parted from him ; perhaps 
 when he left college in 1815, -being then eighteen 
 years old. He had lost his father and mother during 
 the preceding six months. Finding no one in his fam- 
 ily with whom his soul — naturally expansive, but since 
 our separation always repressed — could sympathize, 
 he took refuge with his uncle, now his guardian, who, 
 
Louis Lambert 
 
 81 
 
 deposed from his parish for having taken the oath, now 
 lived in obscurity at Blois. There Louis stayed for 
 some time, until, driven by the desire to pursue his 
 studies, which he felt were incomplete, he went to Paris 
 to seek Madame de Stael, and to drink in science at 
 the fountain-head. The old priest, having a great affec- 
 tion for his nephew, allowed Louis to spend his patri- 
 mony on a three years' sojourn in Paris, — though even 
 so the young man lived in the utmost poverty, for his 
 inheritance was small. Lambert returned to Blois at 
 the beginning of the year 1820, driven from Paris by 
 sufferings which all persons without means are com- 
 pelled to endure there. During his stay, he must often 
 have been a prey to inward storms, to those horrible 
 tempests of thought which shake the artistic soul, if 
 we may judge by the only fact his uncle could remem- 
 ber, and the only letter the good man had preserved of 
 the many Louis wrote him at that period, — a letter 
 which probably owed its preservation to the fact that 
 it-was^the last and longest of all. 
 
 Here, in the first place, is the fact. Louis was sit- 
 ting one evening on a bench in the second gallery of 
 the Theatre-Frangais, near one of the columns between 
 which in those days were the third tier of boxes. Ris- 
 ing during the first intermission, he saw a young lady 
 who had just entered the adjoining box. The sight of 
 this woman, }'Oung, beautiful, and well-dressed, possi- 
 bly with bare neck and arms, accompanied by a lover 
 on whom she smiled with all the grace of happy love, 
 produced so cruel an effect upon the soul and senses of 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 Louis Lambert that lie was obliged to leave the theatre. 
 If he had not used the last gleams of his reason, which, 
 in the first moment of this fiery passion, did not en- 
 tirely desert him, he might have succumbed to an 
 almost unconquerable desire to kill the young man at 
 whom the woman looked. It was, in the midst of our 
 world of Paris, a flash of the love of a savage darting 
 on woman as on a prey, the effect of a bestial instinct 
 joined to the rapid and ever luminous outburst of a 
 soul hitherto held down under the weight of thought. 
 Was it not, in fact, the imaginary cut of a penknife, 
 once felt by the child, now becoming to the man the 
 thunderbolt of his most imperious need, that of 
 love ? 
 
 Here follows the letter, in which is portrayed the state 
 of his soul when struck by the spectacle of Parisian civ- 
 ilization. His heart, constantly wounded in that gulf 
 of egoism, must have suffered continually; probably he 
 found neither friends to console nor enemies to give 
 vigor to his life. Constrained to live incessantly within 
 himself and to share with none his exquisite inward joys, 
 perhaps he may have wished to solve the work of his 
 life through ecstasy, to lead an almost vegetable exist- 
 ence, like an anchorite of the early Church, abdicating 
 thus his empire in the world of intellect. At any rate 
 the letter seems to indicate some such project, to which 
 great souls have been prone at all epochs of social re- 
 generation. But is not such a resolution taken by cer- 
 tain minds the result of natural vocation ? Are they not 
 instinctively seeking to concentrate their forces in a long 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 83 
 
 silence that they may issue from it fit to govern the world 
 by Word or Action ? Louis must, assuredly, have reaped 
 bitterness among men, or have attacked society with 
 some terrible irony, and resultlessly, before he uttered 
 so vigorous a cry , before he came, — he, poor and help- 
 less, — to a desire which weariness of power and of all 
 things under heaven has inspired in certain sovereigns. 
 Perhaps, too, he hoped to achieve in solitude the great 
 w r ork which ever floated unfinished in his mind. Who 
 will not readily believe this as they read the following 
 fragment of his thoughts, which betrays the struggles 
 of his soul at the moment when, for him, youth was 
 passing away and the awful faculty of production — to 
 which the works of the matured man would have been 
 due — was about to be born ? 
 
 This letter bears relation to the incident at the thea- 
 tre. The Fact and the Written Word throw light upon 
 each other ; the soul and the bod}' were tuned to the 
 same key. This tempest of doubt and affirmation, of 
 clouds and vivid flashes through which the thunder 
 bursts, and w T hich ends in ardent aspiration flaming up- 
 ward to celestial Light, reveals enough of the third 
 phase of his mental training to afford a comprehension 
 of the whole. Eeading these pages written at random, 
 continued and discontinued according to the caprices of 
 the moment, may we not fancy that we see an oak at 
 the period when its inward expansion bursts the green 
 sheath of its stem, gnarls it, covers it with fissures, and 
 so prepares for the majestic tree, if the thunder of 
 heaven and the axe of man respect it? 
 
84 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 The letter ends, for the thinker as well as for the 
 poet, this august childhood, this uncomprehended youth. 
 The seed has swelled and germinated. Philosophers 
 may regret the foliage, struck with frost ere it bur- 
 geoned, but they shall one clay see the perfect flower 
 blooming in regions higher far than the highest places 
 of the earth. 
 
 Paris, September-November, 1819. 
 Dear Uncle, — I am about to leave this place, where 
 I cannot exist. I find no man who loves what I love ; 
 who concerns himself with what I am concerned with ; 
 who wonders at the things I wonder at. Forced back 
 upon myself, I sound my own being, and I suffer. The 
 long and patient study I have given to this Society has 
 brought me to sad conclusions where doubt predom- 
 inates. Here, in Paris, money is the pivot of all things. 
 Men must have money even to do without money. And 
 yet, though gold is essential to whoever desires to 
 think tranquilly, I have not the courage to make it 
 the prime mover of my thoughts. To amass a fortune 
 one must choose a calling; in a word, purchase by 
 some licensed position or custom, by legal or other 
 privilege cleverly created, the right of taking from an- 
 other man's purse a trifling sum which, yearly, produces 
 a little capital, which in twenty years will barely give 
 an income of four or five thousand francs, — if a man 
 conducts himself honorably. In fifteen or sixteen years 
 from their apprenticeship, lawyers, notaries, and mer- 
 chants, — in fact, all licensed workers, — have earned 
 a support for their old age. 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 I am not fit for anything of the kind. I pre fer 
 thought to action, ideas to business, meditation to 
 movement. I am essentially Jacking in the close atten- 
 tion necessary to whoever desires to make Ins fortune 
 
 moLvTo Cant H e ent6rPriSe ' ° bligati0n t0 
 
 nd I s Pei ' SOnS ' W ° Uld l6ad me int ° double 
 
 and I should soon be ruined. If I own notw 
 
 leas owe nothing. The man who lives to accon^ i& h 
 great th lng s in the moral sphere needs but little mate 
 m y ; and yet though twenty sous a day suffices me 
 
 Idsur tl tT P ° S r SS StipeUd f ° r ^' Morions 
 
 frl L rT meditat6 ' WMt drives ^mind 
 
 ftom the peaceful sanctuary where thought revolves. 
 What wdl become of me ? I have no dread of povertv 
 If m^nsonment, disgrace, and contempt did not follow 
 menchcancy, I would beg, to be enabled to solve in 
 peace the problems which fill my mind 
 
 ■ But such an abnegation, through which I might eman- 
 cipate my thought by liberating my body of I car s 
 would avaxl me nothing; I should stm J e(J ^ 
 ce. am experiences. Were it not for this, I would wilT 
 nglj accept the apparent indigence of the thinker, who 
 
 eit> it suffices never to abase ourselves. The man who 
 juggles and who suffers as he advances fowl * a 
 
 these Z IS h nd :f a8Plendid SP6CtaCle; **» * 
 lee ff ! A' 116 Stl " ength t0 Straggk? ^ may 
 e chff ; but to tramp forever in the mud is another 
 ttnng. Here, m Paris, all things discourage the direct 
 and. upward flight of a mind tending towels fofo^ 
 
86 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 I should not fear myself in a desert grotto ; I do fear 
 myself here. In the desert I should be mine own, with- 
 out distraction ; here, man is conscious of many wants 
 which belittle him. When he walks out, dreamy and 
 preoccupied, a pauper's voice recalls him to this world 
 of hunger and of thirst. He needs money even to walk 
 the streets. His organs, incessantly on the strain about 
 mere nothings, know no rest. The nervous fibres of a 
 poet are perpetually shaken, and that which should be 
 his glory is Here his torment •, his imagination becomes 
 his cruellest enemy. In Paris, the wounded laborer, or 
 his lying-in wife, the sick prostitute, the abandoned 
 child, the infirm old man, vices, even crimes, find suc- 
 cor and an asylum ; yet society is pitiless to the in- 
 ventor and to every man who lives in meditation. 
 Here, all things must have an immediate and actual 
 result. Men laugh at the first ineffectual attempts 
 which may lead to vast discoveries ; they set no value 
 on that deep and constant study which needs a pro- 
 longed concentration of our powers. The State could 
 pay for talent as it pays for bayonets ; but no, it dreads 
 being cheated bv the man of intellect, — as if genius 
 could long be counterfeited ! 
 
 Ah! my uncle, when they swept away conventual 
 solitudes, nestling in the valleys, clinging to the hill- 
 sides in green umbrageous silence, they should have 
 built hospitals for suffering souls who, by a single 
 thought, beget the progress of the nations, or discover* 
 new and fruitful developments of a science. 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 87 
 
 September. 
 
 Pursuit of knowledge brought me here, as you know. 
 I have found men who are truly learned ; most of them 
 surprisingly so ; but an absence of unity among scien- 
 tific workers neutralizes nearly all their efforts. Neither 
 instruction nor science has a Head. You will hear a 
 professor at the Museum proving that what another 
 professor teaches you in the rue Saint-Jacques is arrant 
 nonsense. The man at the College of France laughs at 
 him of the School of Medicine. Soon after my arrival, 
 I went to hear an old academician who told five hun- 
 dred young men that Corneille was a bold and vigorous 
 genius, Racine elegiac and tender, Moliere inimitable, 
 Voltaire eminently witty, Bossuet and Pascal unconquer- 
 ably strong. A professor of philosophy attains celeb- 
 rity by explaining how Plato is — Plato. Another 
 lectures on the history of words and never mentions 
 ideas. This one elucidates JEschylus ; that other proves 
 with eminent success that the Communes were Com- 
 munes and nothing else. Such novel and luminous 
 disquisitions, amplified for hours, constitute the higher 
 education which purposes to lead human knowledge 
 onward by giant strides. If government could think, 
 I should suspect it of fearing superior intellects, which, 
 when awakened, would put society under the yoke of a 
 mind-power. Nations would then advance too far, too 
 fast; professors are therefore ordered to bring up 
 fools. 
 
 How else can you explain educational bodies without 
 system, without one idea on futurity? The Institute 
 
88 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 might be the great governor of the moral and intellectual 
 world, but it has recently, by its constitution, broken 
 itself up into separate academies. Human knowledge 
 is advancing without a guide, without a system; it 
 floats at the mercy of chance ; no appointed way is 
 traced out for it. 
 
 The same easy indifference, the same instability, is 
 seen in politics as in science. In the order of nature 
 the means are simple, the end is great and marvel- 
 lous ; with us, in science or in government, the means 
 are vast, the end is petty. That force which in nature 
 moves with equal step, ever adding its total to itself, 
 that a-\-a which produces all, is destructive in Societ}\ 
 Statecraft pits human forces against one another for 
 the purpose of neutralizing them, instead of forcing 
 them to combine and act to common ends. Taking 
 Europe, and considering it from Caesar to Constantine, 
 from the little Constantine to the great Attila, from the 
 Huns to Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Leo X., 
 from Leo X. to Philip II., from Philip II. to Louis XIV., 
 from Venice to England, from England to Napoleon, 
 from Napoleon to England, I see no fixedness in public 
 policy ; its constant disturbance has brought it no pro- 
 gress. Nations testify to their grandeur by monuments, 
 and to their happiness by individual welfare. Are mod- 
 ern monuments equal to those of antiquity? I doubt 
 it. The arts which proceed direct from the individual, 
 the productions of genius or of the human hand, have 
 advanced but little. The enjoyments of Lucullus were 
 fully equal to those of Samuel Bernard, de Beaujon, or 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 89 
 
 the King of Bavaria. Even human longevity has les- 
 sened. To those who judge honestly, nothing has really 
 changed ; man continues the same ; might is the sole 
 law ; success the sole virtue. Jesus Christ, Mohammed, 
 Luther, have merely given different hues to the spheres 
 in which the youthful nations made their evolutions. 
 No statecraft has hindered Civilization, with its wealth, 
 its manners and customs, its banding of the strong 
 against the weak, its ideas and its pleasures, from 
 spreading from Memphis to Tyre, from Tyre to Balbek, 
 from Tadmor to Carthage, from Carthage to Rome, from 
 Rome to Constantinople, from Constantinople to Venice, 
 from Venice to Spain, from Spain to England, without 
 one vestige remaining of Memphis, Tyre, Carthage, 
 Rome, Venice, or Madrid. The spirit of those great 
 bodies, has fled. Not one saved itself from the wreck ; 
 none divined this truth : when the effect produced is no 
 longer in relation to its cause, disorganization has 
 begun. 
 
 The subtlest genius cannot discover any connection 
 between those great social facts. No political theory 
 has survived. Governments passed away like men, 
 without transmitting instruction ; no system gave birth 
 to a. more perfect system than the preceding one. What 
 shall we think of human politics when a government 
 leaning upon God perished in India and in Egypt ; when 
 the governments of the sabre and the tiara have passed 
 away ; when the government of the One dies, and the 
 government of the All has never been able to live ; when 
 no conception of intelligent force applied to material 
 
90 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 interests has lasted, and all things have to be done anew 
 to-day as throughout the ages during which man has 
 cried aloud, " I suffer ! " The Code, which people call 
 Napoleon's greatest work, is the most Draconian set of 
 laws I know. Territorial division pushed to an extreme 
 (and the Code sanctions the principle by its equal dis- 
 tribution of property) must result in the degeneracy 
 of the nation, and the death of the arts and sciences. 
 Divide the soil too closely, and cereals or vegetables 
 will alone be cultivated ; the forests, and consequently 
 the water-courses, will disappear ; neither cattle nor 
 horses will be raised. Means of attack and defence 
 will alike be wanting. Let an invader come, and the 
 nation is crushed ; it has lost its mainspring ; it has no 
 head. That is the history of deserts ! 
 
 Human politics are therefore a science without settled 
 principles, without any possible fixity. They spring 
 from the genius of the moment, and are the constant 
 application of power following the daily necessity as it 
 arises. The man who sees two centuries ahead of him 
 dies on a scaffold, loaded with the imprecations of a 
 people ; or (which seems to me worse) is lashed by the 
 whips of ridicule. Nations are individuals who are nei- 
 ther wiser nor stronger than man himself, and their des- 
 tiny is the same as his. If you reflect upon one you 
 are reflecting on the other. From the spectacle of this 
 society, perpetually shaken and harassed at its founda- 
 tions as in its results, in its causes as in its action, — 
 a society within which philanthropy is a magnificent 
 error, and progress a meaningless cry, — I gained 
 
Louis Lambert. 91 
 
 confirmation of this truth, — namely, that life is within 
 us and not without us ; that to rise above our fellows 
 for the purpose of commanding them is only to magnify 
 the career of a schoolmaster ; and that men who are 
 strong enough to lift themselves to the level at which 
 they can enjoy the sight of worlds ought not to turn their 
 gaze upon their feet. 
 
 November 4:th. 
 
 I am filled with significant thoughts; I advance 
 toward certain discoveries; some invincible force is 
 drawing me to a star which has long glimmered in the 
 twilight of my moral being : but what name must I give 
 to the power which ties my hands, shuts my mouth, and 
 drags me away from my vocation ? I am forced to leave 
 Paris ; I must bid farewell to books, to libraries, to those 
 glorious centres of light, to learned men, so kind and so 
 accessible, to youths of genius with whom I sympathized. 
 What is it drives me hence? Is it Chance? is it Provi- 
 dence ? The two ideas represented by those words are 
 irreconcilable. If there is no such thing as Chance then 
 we must admit Fatalism, or the enforced co-ordination 
 of things under a general plan. Why, then, should we 
 resist? If man is not a free agent, what becomes of 
 the scaffolding of his morality ? But if he can make his 
 own destiny, if he can, by his own free-will, arrest the 
 accomplishment of the general plan, what becomes of 
 God ? Why am I here ? If I examine myself I think I 
 know why, — I find within me themes to be developed ; 
 but if so, why do I possess enormous faculties without 
 being able to use them? If my torture could serve as 
 
92 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 an example, I could understand it, but no, I suffer in 
 obscurity. This condition is perhaps as providential as 
 the fate of a hidden flower withering in the depths of a 
 virgin forest, with none to inhale its fragrance or admire 
 its lustre. Like that flower, shedding perfume in the 
 solitary places, I give birth here, in a garret, to ideas 
 which are never grasped. 
 
 Yesterday, I was eating my bread and grapes in the 
 evening, sitting before my window with a young physi- 
 cian, named Meyraux. We were talking as men talk 
 who are made brothers by misfortune, and I said to 
 him : " I go, but you remain ; take my conceptions and 
 develop them." " I cannot," he answered, with mourn- 
 ful bitterness ; "my health is too feeble to sustain my 
 present labors ; I shall die young, struggling with pov- 
 erty." We looked at the sky and pressed each other's 
 hands. Meyraux and I had met at the Comparative 
 Anatomy lectures and in the galleries of the Museum, 
 both following the same study; namely, the unity of 
 geological composition. In him, it was inspired by the 
 presentiment of genius seeking to open a way through 
 the uncultivated regions of the intellect ; I sought, on 
 the other hand, the deduction of a general system. My 
 thought has always been to determine the actual rela- 
 tions which exist between man and God. Is not that a 
 necessity of our epoch ? Without high convictions and 
 certainties it is impossible to curb the societies which 
 the spirit of criticism and discussion have set free, and 
 which cry aloud in these days, "Lead us in a path 
 where there are no abysses." 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 93 
 
 You will ask me what comparative anatomy lias to 
 clo with a question so important to the future of soci- 
 ety. Must we not be convinced that man is the end 
 and object of all terrestrial means and methods be- 
 fore we can ask whether he may not himself be the 
 means to some end? If man is linked to all around 
 him, is there nothing above him to which he links him- 
 self ? If he be the end-all of the inexplicable trans- 
 mutations which ascend as far as he, must he not also 
 be the nexus that attaches visible nature to an invis- 
 ible nature? The action of the universe is not mere 
 folly, — it must attain some end; and that end cannot 
 be a society constituted like ours. A frightful void lies 
 between us and heaven. In our present state we can 
 neither always enjoy nor always surfer ; must there not 
 come some mighty change before we can enter heaven 
 or hell, — two conceptions without which God does not 
 exist to the mass of men? 
 
 I know this point has been evaded by inventing the 
 soul ; but I have a certain repugnance to making God 
 conjointly responsible for human baseness, for our dis- 
 illusions, our loathings, our degeneracy. Besides, can 
 we admit that we hold within us a divine essence which 
 a 'few 'drams of alcohol may overthrow? Can we im- 
 agine immaterial faculties which matter subjugates, and 
 whose exercise is controlled by a grain of opium ? Can 
 we conceive that we shall still feel when the conditions 
 of sensation are withdrawn from us ? Why should God 
 perish because substance is a thinking quantity! Is 
 the animation of substance and its innumerable vari- 
 
Q4 Louis Lambert. 
 
 the etfecte of thought? I» the mono 
 
 completer insUnct? H he- P by 
 which may no ^ » of 
 evidence, is it not lug* tin^ t g 1 ^ ^ 
 
 written in the ^f^i We take very little 
 return to philosophical «aence. u but 
 
 der « account of the push Yet rt .« 
 
 if we are welded to the future , 
 
 Was the world created. ^ 
 „ et wcea the two IWJ^. ^ W Mchever he your 
 
 t°it,cc itc ; aod that la equivalent to hts nega- 
 T , !v to ftc world is eternal, »" «* *» SU °° ' S 
 tl0 °- Sa \!" „i_ G od has undergone it. Suppose 
 no longer doubtful, c no J 
 
 tte world .0 have b«. «*» • ^° cteraitJ . alld 
 
 P °:f:w t^h« -to confe to hi. * create 
 :S !«ia. — «« .0 foreauow it. 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 95 
 
 results ? Whence did he derive its essence ? From him- 
 self necessarily. If the world issued from God, how 
 can we admit evil ? If evil issues from good, we plunge 
 into absurdity. If there is no such thing as evil, what 
 are the laws of society? Precipices on all sides, abysses 
 for human reason everywhere ! No, social science must 
 be rebuilt from its foundations. 
 
 Listen to me, uncle. Till some great genius explains 
 the manifest inequality of intellects, the common under- 
 standing of humanity, the word God will ever be im- 
 peached, and society- will rest on shifting sands. The 
 secret of the different moral zones through which man 
 passes will be found in the analysis of Animality in all 
 its parts. Up to the present time Animality has been 
 considered in relation to its differences only, and not 
 in its similitudes ; in its organic appearances, but not 
 in its faculties. The animal faculties are coming nearer 
 and nearer to perfection, according to laws we have still 
 to find. These faculties correspond to the forces which 
 bring them into pla}', and those forces are essentially 
 material and divisible. Material faculties ! Reflect 
 upon those two words. Do they not offer a question 
 as insoluble as that of the communication of movement 
 to matter? — a depth still unexplored, the difficulties of 
 which were displaced rather than removed by Newton. 
 
 Again, the constant combination of light with all that 
 lives upon this earth demands a new examination of the 
 globe. The same animal differs from itself in torrid 
 regions, in the Indies, or at the North. Between 
 the zones of the vertical and the oblique sun-rays it 
 
96 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 develops a dissimilar yet parallel nature, which, being 
 the same in its essence, does not resemble itself, one way 
 or the other way, in its results./ The phenomenon which 
 blinds our eyes in the zoological world when we com- 
 pare the butterflies of Bengal with the butterflies of 
 Europe is more remarkable still in the moral world. A 
 certain facial angle and a given number of brain-folds 
 were required to attain to Columbus, Raphael, Napoleon, 
 Laplace, or Beethoven ; the sunless valley produces the 
 cretin. Draw your own conclusions. /How do you ac- 
 count for these differences, clue to the greater or the 
 lesser distillation of light into man ? /The vast suffering 
 masses of humanity, more or less active, more or less 
 nourished, more or less illumined, constitute difficulties 
 which must be solved, and which cry aloud against God. 
 Why, in moments of extreme joy, do we long to leave 
 this earth? Why that desire to rise, which seizes and 
 will forever seize upon created man ? Motion is a great 
 soul, whose alliance with Matter is fully as difficult to 
 explain as the production of Thought in man. Science 
 is a unit ; it is impossible to touch politics without 
 touching morals, and morals are correlated with all 
 scientific questions. It seems to me we are on the eve 
 of a great human battle ; the forces are gathering, but 
 — I see no general. 
 
 November 25ih. 
 Believe me, dear uncle, it is difficult to renounce 
 without suffering the life that is suited to us. I re- 
 turn to Blois with terrible sinkings of the heart. There 
 I shall die, — carrying away with me useful truths. 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 97 
 
 No personal interest degrades my regret. What is 
 ^ fame to one who believes he is going to a higher 
 sphere ? I have no love for those two syllables of my 
 name, Lam-bert ; spoken with respect or with indiffer- 
 ence above my grave, they cannot change my destiny. 
 I am conscious of strength, of energy ; I could become 
 a power. I feel within me a life so luminous that it 
 might quicken worlds ; I am held, as it were, in a min- 
 eral, like those colors you admire so much on the breast 
 of tropic birds. Ah ! we must needs embrace the whole 
 world and clasp it to our bosoms before we can remake 
 it ; but those who have thus clasped and thus refashioned 
 it, did they npt begin as a wheel of the machine ? As for 
 me, those wheels would crush me. No, to Mohammed 
 the sabre, to Christ the cross, to me death in obscurity ; 
 to-morrow at Blois, erelong in my coffin. 
 
 Know you why? I have returned to Swedenborg 
 after vast studies of all religions ; after convincing 
 myself, by reading all books which patient Germany, 
 England, and France have published during the last 
 sixty years, of the profound truth of my youthful per- 
 ceptions of the Bible. Beyond a doubt, Swedenborg 
 gathers, to him all religions, or rather the one religion 
 of Humanity. Though worship has taken an infinitude 
 of forms, neither its meaning nor its metaphysical con- 
 struction have ever varied. Man has never had but 
 one religion. Sivaism, Vishnuism, and Brahmanism, 
 the first three religions, born in Thibet, in the valley of 
 the Indus, and along the vast plains of the Ganges, 
 ended their warfare Several thousand years before 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 Christ hy adopting the Hindu Trimoarti. The Tri- 
 mourti is our Trinity. From this dogma sprang, in 
 Persia, Magianism ; in Egypt, the African religions 
 and Mosaism ; after them the Greco-Roman Polythe- 
 ism. While these rays of the Trimourti adapted the 
 myths of Asia to the imagination of every land to which 
 they reached, guided by sages whom men transmuted 
 into demi-gods, — Mithra, Dionysus, Hermes, Heracles, 
 — Buddha, the celebrated reformer of the three primi- 
 tive religions, arose in India and founded his Faith 
 (numbering at the present day two hundred million 
 more worshippers than Christianity), a fount in which 
 the all-powerful wills of Christ and of Confucius came 
 to steep themselves. There Christianity raised its ban- 
 ner. Later, Mohammed blended Mosaism, Christianity, 
 the Bible, and the Gospel into one book, the Koran, 
 adapting them to the genius of the Arabs. Finally, 
 Swedenborg gathered from Magianism, Brahmanism, 
 Buddhism, and Christian Mysticism that which those 
 four great religions have in common, — namely, the 
 real, the divine within them, — and gave to this 
 united doctrine a synthesis which may well be called 
 mathematical. 
 
 He who casts himself upon those streams of faith 
 (the founders of which are not all known) will find 
 that Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Christ, and 
 Swedenborg held the first divine principles and looked 
 to the same end. But the last of them, Swedenborg, 
 may prove the Buddha of the North. Though his 
 books are diffuse and obscure, they hold the elements 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 99 
 
 of a vast social conception. His theocracy is sublime ; 
 and his religion is the only one a superior mind can 
 accept. He alone enables man to touch God ; he 
 creates a thirst for Him ; he rescues the majesty of 
 God from the swaddling-clothes in which other human 
 faiths hare muffled it ; he has left Him where He is, 
 making his innumerable creatures and creations gravi- 
 tate around Him by successive transformations which 
 lead to a nearer and more natural future than the Cath- 
 olic Eternity. He has cleansed God of the reproach 
 which tender souls have cast upon Him for the lasting 
 vengeance with which He visits a passing sin, — a theory 
 of a God without justice and without mercy. 
 
 Each man may learn for himself whether it is re- 
 served for him to enter another life, and whether this 
 world has any meaning. I am about to test this ex- 
 perience. My attempt may help to save the world, like 
 the cross of Jerusalem and the sabre of Mecca, — both 
 were the product of solitude and the desert. Of the 
 thirty-three years of Jesus' life only nine are known ; 
 his silent years prepared his glorious struggle. I, too, 
 I need the desert. 
 
 Notwithstanding the difficulties of the undertaking, 
 I have felt it my duty to endeavor to portray Louis 
 Lambert's youth, — that hidden life to which I owe the 
 only happy hours, the only pleasant memories, of my 
 childhood. Except during those two college years, my 
 life was full of trouble and annoyance ; if happiness 
 came later, it was ever incomplete. I have been, no 
 
100 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 doubt, very diffuse ; but unless we penetrate the depth 
 and the extent of Lambert's heart and brain, — two 
 words which imperfectly represent the infinite outlooks 
 of his inward being, — it w r ould be almost impossible to 
 understand the second part of his intellectual history, 
 unknown in its course both to the world and to me, but 
 the occult ending of which was made manifest to me 
 during a period of several hours. Those who have not 
 already thrown aside this book will comprehend, I hope, 
 the events I have still to relate, which form, as it were, 
 the second existence of this creature destined to be 
 exceptional in all things, even in his end. 
 
 When Louis returned to Blois his uncle endeavored 
 to procure him some amusement. But the poor curate 
 was treated in that pious town like a pariah, a leper. 
 No one in good society would receive a revolutionist, a 
 sworn-in priest. His social circle was therefore limited 
 to a few persons whose opinions were then called liberal, 
 patriotic, or constitutional ; among whom he spent his 
 evenings playing whist or boston. In the first house to 
 which he took his nephew, Louis met a young lady whose 
 peculiar position relegated her to this society thus con- 
 demned b}^ the great world, although her fortune was 
 large enough to have enabled her to marry into the 
 ranks of the aristocracy. Mademoiselle Pauline de 
 Villenoix was the sole heiress of the wealth amassed by 
 her grandfather, a Jew named Salomon, who, contrary 
 to the customs of his nation, had married in his old age 
 a woman of the Catholic faith. He had a son who was 
 brought up in the religion of the mother. At the death 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 101 
 
 of his father young Salomon bought, to use a saying of 
 that clay, a savonnette a vilain, — in other words, lands 
 - for a title, — and made the estate of Villenoix into a 
 I barony, taking the name for his familj\ He died un- 
 married, leaving a natural daughter to whom he be- 
 queathed the greater part of his fortune and more 
 especially the estate of Villenoix. One of his uncles, 
 Monsieur Joseph Salomon, was appointed by Monsieur 
 de Villenoix guardian of the orphan child. This old 
 Jew had so strong an affection for his ward that he 
 seemed read}' to make any sacrifices to many her well. 
 But Mademoiselle de Viilenoix's origin and the preju- 
 dice against Jews still existing in the provinces, 
 prevented her, in spite of her wealth and that of her 
 guardian, from being admitted to that exclusive social 
 circle which calls itself, with or without reason, the 
 nobility. However, Monsieur Joseph Salomon made 
 known that instead of taking some country squire his 
 ward should go to Paris, and select a husband among 
 the liberal or monarchical peers ; as to her personal 
 happiness, the worthy guardian was persuaded he could 
 secure that by the terms of the marriage contract. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Villenoix was just twenty years old. 
 Her remarkable beauty and the graces of her mind 
 were less doubtful security for her happiness than that 
 bestowed on her by wealth. Her features bore the 
 impress of Jewish beauty in its utmost purity, — the 
 oval lines, so broad and so virginal, unspeakably ideal 
 and suggestive of the delights of the Orient, the unalter- 
 able azure of its skies, the splendors of its earth, the 
 
102 
 
 Louis Lambert, 
 
 fabulous riches of its existence. She had fine eyes, 
 veiled by long lids fringed with thick and curving lashes. 
 A Scriptural innocence shone from her brow. Her skin 
 had the smooth and even whiteness of a Levite's robes. 
 She was habitually silent and collected ; but her ges- 
 tures, her motions betrayed an inward grace, just as 
 her words gave evidence of the gentle and caressing 
 nature of the woman. Still, she had not the dewy 
 freshness, the rosy tints which adorn the cheek of girl- 
 hood in its careless prime. Brown shadows, mingled 
 with a few russet threads, took the place of color in her 
 face and betrayed an energy of character and a nervous 
 excitability which many men dislike to find in a woman, 
 but which to certain others is an indication of lofty pas- 
 sions and the chastity of a sensitive soul. 
 
 No sooner had Lambert caught sight of Mademoiselle 
 de Villenoix than he divined the angel within her form. 
 The rich faculties of his mind, his leaning towards ec- 
 stasy, in short, all within him merged into boundless 
 love, the first love of a young man, a passion (in others 
 of his age already so vigorous) which the vernal ardor 
 of his senses, the nature of his ideas and his modes of 
 life now lifted into incalculable power. This passion 
 was a fathomless depth into which the hapless man 
 flung all ; a depth to which our thoughts dare not fol- 
 low him, since his thought, strong and flexible as it was, 
 perished there. All is mystery ; for all occurred within 
 the boundaries of that moral w T orld shut from the knowl- 
 edge of most men, whose laws may have been revealed 
 to Lambert for his destruction. 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 103 
 
 When accident brought me, as I have said, into rela- 
 tions with his uncle, that worthy man took me into the 
 room which Louis occupied at the period of which I now 
 write. I looked for traces of his work, if any such had 
 been left there. Among the papers, the careless disor- 
 der of which his uncle had respected with that exquisite 
 sensibility to suffering characteristic of old people, I 
 found many letters to Mademoiselle de Villenoix, evi- 
 dently too illegible to have been sent to her. My 
 intimate acquaintance with Lambert's writing enabled 
 me, in time, to decipher the hieroglyphics of a stenog- 
 raphy invented by the impatience and the frenzy of his 
 passion. Carried away by his feelings, he wrote with- 
 out perceiving the imperfection of a writing too slow 
 to express his thought. He had evidently been obliged 
 to recopy his first attempts, the lines of which in 
 many instances mingled confusedly; perhaps, also, he 
 may have feared that his feelings were scarcely enough 
 disguised, and therefore, at the outset of his love, he 
 wrote each letter over again. However this may be, 
 it needed all the ardor of my worship for his memory, 
 and the sort of fanaticism derived from an effort of 
 this kind, to divine and restore the meaning of the 
 five following letters. These papers, which I religiously 
 preserve, are the sole material evidence of his ardent 
 passion. Mademoiselle de Villenoix has doubtless 
 destroyed the letters themselves (those that were sent 
 to her), eloquent records of the delirium which she 
 caused. 
 
 The first of these letters, evidently what is termed 
 
104 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 a rough copy, shows in its style and amplifications the 
 doubts, the troubles of mind, the innumerable fears 
 awakened by the desire to please, the changes of ex- 
 pression, and the fluctuations of thought, which assail 
 a young man when he writes of his love for the first 
 time, — a letter never forgotten, each phrase of which 
 is the fruit of a reveiy, while eveiy word excites con- 
 templation ; a letter in which the most ungovernable- of 
 all feelings comprehends the necessity of reserved ex- 
 pression, and like a giant who stoops to enter a cottage 
 door, makes itself small and humble that it may not 
 shock or frighten the soul of a young girl. Never an- 
 tiquary handled his palimpsests with more reverence 
 than I felt when studying and reconstructing these mu- 
 tilated monuments of a suffering and a joy so sacred to 
 those who have known the same suffering and the same 
 joy. 
 
 I. 
 
 Mademoiselle, when you shall have read this letter, 
 if indeed }'ou deign to read it, my life will be in your 
 hands, for I love you ; and for me the hope of being 
 loved is life itself. I know not if other men, speaking 
 to you of themselves, have misused the words I here 
 employ to picture to you the state of my soul ; believe, 
 nevertheless, in the truth of m} T expressions, — they are 
 feeble, but sincere. 
 
 Perhaps it is a mistake thus to avow my love. Yes, 
 my heart counsels me to wait in silence till my passion 
 ma}' have touched you ; so that I may crush it if its 
 mute evidence displease you, or express it more chastely 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 105 
 
 than by words if I find favor in your eyes. I have lis- 
 tened long to the scruples which daunt a young man's 
 heart, and now, in writing to you, I obey the instinct 
 that wrings useless cries from the dying. I summon 
 all my courage to silence the pride of poverty and leap 
 the barriers which prejudice has placed between you 
 and me. Many are the thoughts I must needs repress 
 to love you in spite of your wealth. In this mere act 
 of writing to you, I must risk the contempt that women 
 often feel for a love whose confession is to them but 
 one flattery the more. Yes, it is best to spring with all 
 our strength toward happiness ; to be drawn to the life 
 of love as a plant to the light ; best to have known uh- 
 happiness to know also how to conquer the torture of 
 these inward deliberations, in which reason proves to us 
 in a thousand ways the inefficacy of wishes hidden in 
 the depths of the heart, while hope persuades us to 
 dare all. 
 
 I was happy when admiring you in silence ; so com- 
 pletely was I sunken in contemplation of your glorious 
 soul that I imagined no other happiness than to look 
 at you. I should not dare to speak to you even now 
 were it not for the news of your possible departure. To 
 what agon} T a single word has condemned me ! But 
 my grief has taught me to measure the extent of my 
 attachment, — it is boundless. Mademoiselle, you will 
 never know, at least I pray that you may never know, 
 the suffering caused by the fear of losing the only hap- 
 piness that has ever dawned for me on earth ; the 
 sole joy that has cast a gleam into the darkness of my 
 
106 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 misery. Yesterday I felt that my life was no longer 
 in me, but in 3*011. For me there is henceforth but one 
 woman in the world, just as there is but one thought in 
 my soul. I dare not tell you to what alternative my 
 love for you reduces me. Unwilling to win you except 
 through the impulsion of your own wishes, I must avoid 
 appealing to you by signs of grief, — more moving far 
 to noble hearts than those of fortune. I am forced, 
 therefore, to withhold from you many things. Yes, I 
 have too lofty an idea of love to degrade it by thoughts 
 which are foreign to its nature. If my soul is worthy 
 of yours, if my life is pure, your heart will have gener- 
 ous intuitions of it, — you will comprehend me. It is 
 in the destiny of man to offer himself to her who makes 
 his dream of happiness ; but it is also 3*our woman's 
 right to refuse the truest of all feelings if they do not 
 harmonize with the confused voices of 3 r our heart ; this 
 I know. 
 
 If the fate to which 3*011 consign me, Mademoiselle, is 
 contraiy to my hopes, I invoke the delicac3* °f jom virgin 
 soul, the ingenuous pity T of 3*our womanhood, and I en- 
 treat 3*ou, burn my letter, forget all. Do not lightly 
 smile at a feeling profoundly respectful and too deeply 
 graven in my soul ever to be effaced. Break m3* heart, 
 but do not rend it ! Should the utterance of m3 r only 
 love, a 3'oung, pure love, find no echo in a pure 3'oung 
 heart, should it die there as a pra3*er is lost in the bosom 
 of the Divine, still, I owe 3*011 gratitude ; I have spent 
 delightful hours watching you as I yielded to the sweet- 
 est reveries of all my life ; do not end this long yet 
 
Louis Lambert. * 107 
 
 fleeting gladness with the laughing jest of a young girl. 
 Do not answer me at all. I shall understand your 
 silence, and you will see me no more. If it be my 
 fate to comprehend felicity and ever lose it ; if, like the 
 .banished angel, I bear within me knowledge of celestial 
 joys and yet am linked inclissolubly to a world of pain, 
 I will keep the secret of my love as of my misery. 
 
 Adieu ! Yes, I confide you to God ; I implore him 
 on your behalf ; I ask him to give you a happy life, if 
 so be that I am driven from your heart, where I have 
 entered furtively without your knowledge, — but even 
 then, I shall never leave you. If it were otherwise, 
 what value would there be, what truth, in the words, 
 the sacred words of this letter, my first and perhaps 
 my last prayer? If I ceased hereafter to think of you, 
 to love you, whether I were happy or unhappy, should I 
 not deserve my anguish? 
 
 II. 
 
 You stay ! you do not leave me ! Then I am loved ! 
 I, poor and obscure ! My dear Pauline, you do not 
 know the power of that glance in which I trust, and 
 which you gave me to reveal that I am chosen by 
 you, by you ! young and beautiful, with the world at 
 3'our feet. 
 
 To make you understand my happiness I must needs 
 relate to you my life. If you had rejected my prayer 
 all was over with me. I had suffered too much. Yes, 
 my love, this beneficent, this glorious love, was the 
 last effort toward happiness of a soul that is bruised 
 
108 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 and broken by useless labors, wasted by fears which 
 make me doubt myself, gnawed by despair which tells 
 me often to find rest in death. No one living can 
 know the terror my fatal imagination causes me. It 
 lifts me often to the skies, then suddenly replunges me 
 to earth from awful heights. Inward impulses of vigor, 
 certain rare and secret proofs of mental clearness, as- 
 sure me at times that I am capable of much. At such 
 times I grasp the universe of thought, I knead it, I 
 mould it, I pierce it, I comprehend, or think I compre- 
 hend, it. Then suddenly I wake, I am in darkness, 
 puny and pitiable; I forget the gleams that I have 
 seen ; no succor comes to me ; above all, no heart in 
 which I might take refuge. 
 
 This evil of my moral life reacts upon my physical 
 existence. The nature of my mind leaves me as de- 
 fenceless before the joys of happiness as against the 
 dreadful lights of reflection which destroy those joys by 
 analyzing them. Gifted with the dismal faculty of 
 seeing both obstacles and attainment with equal clear- 
 ness, I am happy or unhappy according to the convic- 
 tion of the moment. Thus when I first met you the 
 perception of an angel filled my soul ; I breathed an 
 air that healed my fevered breast ; I heard within me 
 the voice that never deceives, offering me a happy 
 life ; but, perceiving at the same moment the barriers 
 that separate us, I understood the prejudices of the 
 world for the first time, I saw them in all their pettiness, 
 and the sense of these obstacles depressed me more 
 than the glimpse of happiness had uplifted me. At 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 109 
 
 once, the terrible reaction by which my expanding 
 soul returns upon itself set in ; the smile you had 
 brought to my lips changed suddenly to bitter con- 
 traction ; I tried to remain calm while my blood, 
 driven hither and thither by conflicting feelings, boiled 
 in my veins. I felt once more that cutting sensation to 
 which twenty-three years of repressed sighs and be- 
 trayed aspiration have accustomed me. 
 
 Pauline ! the glance with which you told me of my 
 happiness rekindled m} T life and changed my wretched- 
 ness to felicity. I now wish that I had suffered more. 
 My love rose to greatness. My soul was a vast tract, 
 barren for want of sun ; your glance has cast the sun's 
 rays on it. Dear Providence ! you will be all to me, — 
 to me, poor orphan with no kindred but an uncle. You 
 wiil be my familv, as you now are my wealth, nay, the 
 whole world to me ! Did you not bestow upon me all 
 the treasures of a man, in that chaste, that prodigal, 
 that timid glance? You have given me courage, yes, 
 unspeakable boldness. I dare all now. I returned to 
 Blois cast clown. Five } T ears in Paris taught me to re- 
 gard the world as a prison. There I conceived whole 
 sciences and dared not speak of them. Fame seemed 
 to me an imposture, from which a truly noble soul should 
 keep itself aloof. My ideas could gain a hearing on\y 
 from the lips of one bold enough to mount the platform 
 of the Press and speak with a loud voice to fools whom 
 he despised. I had not that boldness. I went my way ; 
 crushed by the judgments of the crowd, despairing of 
 being heard, — I was too low, and yet too high ! I swal- 
 
110 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 lowed my thoughts as others swallow their humiliations. 
 I even came to despise science, blaming it for adding 
 nothing to human happiness. 
 
 But, since yesterda}', all is changed within me. For 
 your sake I crave the laurels of fame and the triumphs 
 of genius. I desire as I lay my head upon your knees 
 to draw thither the eyes of men, just as I desire to 
 put my love into all ideas, into all my powers. Fame 
 is a possession which no potentate but genius can cre- 
 ate. Well ! I can, if I will, make you a couch of laurels. 
 But should the peaceful ovations of science not suffice 
 you, I bear within me the Sword and the Word ; I can 
 speed my way along the path of honors and ambitions 
 where others slowly drag themselves. Speak, Pauline ; 
 I will be all you wish me to be. My iron will is capable 
 of all. I am loved ! Armed with that thought a man 
 can make all things bend before him. All is possible to 
 him who wills all. Be the guerdon of success, and to- 
 morrow I enter the lists. To obtain another look like 
 that you gave me I would plunge into unfathomable 
 gulfs. You explain to me the emprises of Chivalry, 
 the fabulous tales of the Arabian Nights ; I now believe 
 in all fanciful exaggerations of love, and the success of 
 prisoners in their bold attempts to conquer liberty. You 
 have wakened a thousand virtues slumbering within my 
 being, — patience, resignation, all the powers of the heart, 
 all the forces of the soul. I live through you, and, oh 
 blissful thought ! for you. Now all things have a mean- 
 ing to me in life ; I understand all — even the vanity 
 of riches. I behold myself pouring the pearls of India 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 Ill 
 
 at your feet ; I fancy I see you lying amid the brightest 
 flowers, on the softest tissues, and the splendors of 
 earth seem to me scarce worthy of you — of you, for 
 whom I would fain draw down all harmonies, all light, 
 which the harps of Seraphim and the stars of heaven 
 lavish ! — 
 
 Poor student poet! my words offer you treasures 
 which I have not. I have nought to give you but my 
 heart, where you will reign eternally. In that is my 
 wealth. But are there no treasures in gratitude? in 
 smiles whose expression is ever varied by happiness 
 immutable? in the ceaseless study of my love to divine 
 the wishes of your loving soul? A celestial glance has 
 told us that we shall forever understand each other. I 
 have now a prayer to offer each night to God, a prayer 
 that is all for you : " Make my Pauline happy ! " Ah ! 
 will you not one day fill my life as now you fill my 
 heart ! 
 
 Adieu — I can commit you to none but God. 
 III. 
 
 Pauline ! tell me if it is possible that I displeased you 
 yesterday? Lay aside the pride of heart which leads 
 us to bear secretly the suffering caused by one we love. 
 Blame me. A vague fear that I offended you sheds 
 gloom upon that life of the heart which you have made 
 so sweet and affluent. Often the lightest veil that falls 
 between two spirits becomes a wall of adamant. There 
 are no slight crimes in love ! If the genius of that glo- 
 rious sentiment is in you, you must feel all its sufferings, 
 
112 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 and I ought to watch unceasingly lest I wound you by 
 some heedless word. Dear treasure ! no doubt the 
 fault was mine — if fault there were. I make no boast 
 of understanding woman's heart in all the plenitude of 
 her tenderness and the graces of her devotion, but I will 
 ever try to value justly whatever you are pleased to re- 
 veal to me of yours. Speak, tell me; answer quickly. 
 The sadness produced by the sense of a wrong done is 
 terrible ; it wraps about us and makes us doubt of every- 
 thing. To-day I sat an hour on the lower road watch- 
 ing the towers of Villenoix, not daring to go to our 
 trysting-place. 
 
 Ah, if you only knew what I then saw within my 
 soul ! — what gloom}- phantoms passed before me, as I 
 sat beneath that leaden sk}- whose chilling aspect made 
 me gloomier still ! Dark presentiments assailed me. 
 I feared I could not make yo\\ happy — My Pauline, 
 I must tell you all. Moments come when the spirit that 
 quickens me withdraws itself. I am, as it were, aban- 
 doned by my forces. All things become a burden ; each 
 fibre of my body is inert, each sense relaxes, my vision 
 dulls, m} r tongue stiffens, imagination fades, desires die, 
 and nought remains but creative force. At such times 
 hereafter you will be present in all the glory of yom 
 beauty ; your winning smiles, your tenderest w r ords will 
 be lavished upon nie ! What if some evil power arise to 
 blind me, and turn to jangling discords this most rav- 
 ishing of melodies ? At such moments there rises before 
 me (at least I think so) a reasoning spirit, who bids me 
 see the nothingness that lies below our surest treasures. 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 113 
 
 Pitiless demon ! who mows the flowers, sneers at the 
 sweetest feelings, and asks me, " Well, what follows? " 
 He blights the beauteous work by showing me its prin- 
 ciple ; he reveals the mechanism and blinds me to its 
 harmonious results. In those awful moments, when the 
 evil angel grasps my being, when the light divine is 
 darkened in my soul (though I know not why or where- 
 fore), I am sad, I suffer, I long to be deaf and dumb, I 
 wish for death in hopes of rest. 
 
 Perhaps these hours of doubt and anxiety are neces- 
 sary ; at least, they teach me to take no pride in the 
 stimulus that bears me to the heavens, where with eager 
 hands I garner in the harvest of ideas ; for it is always 
 after I have wandered long through the vast regions of 
 the mind, after luminous meditation, that 1 fall, weary 
 and spent, into this purgatory. At such moments, dear 
 angel, a woman would doubt my love, — at least, she 
 well might do so. Sometimes capricious, often ailing 
 or sad herself, she would need the caressing treasures 
 of a man's tenderness, and I should have none to give 
 her. Pauline, it shames me to tell you that I might 
 weep with you at such times, but support you with a 
 smile, — never ! Yet a woman would find strength in 
 love to hide her pains. For her child, as for him she 
 loves, she smiles and suffers. Can it be, my Pauline, 
 that even for your sake I am unable to imitate a woman 
 in her supremest delicacj' ? 
 
 I doubt myself since yesterday. I have hurt }'Ou ; I 
 have failed to comprehend you. I tremble lest I be 
 dragged ag;ain and yet again, by my fatal demon, be- 
 
114 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 yond the boundaries of our good sphere. Were I to 
 have many such fearful moments, were my boundless 
 love unable to redeem the evil hours of my life, were I 
 destined to continue such as I am now — ah, torturing 
 thoughts ! power is a fatal gift, if that which I feel 
 within me is power indeed. Pauline, leave me, go from 
 me, abandon me ! I would rather suffer all the woes 
 of life than bear the agony of knowing that you suffer 
 through me. 
 
 But perhaps the demon gains empire over my soul 
 because, as yet, no white and gentle hands have been 
 beside me to repulse him. Never has woman shed 
 her balm of consolation upon my wounds, and I know 
 not whether in such moments of lassitude love may not 
 spread her wings above my head, and pour into my 
 heart some superhuman force. Perhaps this cruel mel- 
 ancholy is the fruit of my solitude, the sufferings of an 
 abandoned soul which moans and pays for joy with 
 untold sufferings. To easy pleasures, easy pains ; to 
 infinite joys, unheard-of anguish. What a sentence on 
 mankind ! If it be so, ought we not to tremble, my 
 Pauline, we who are now superhu manly happy? If 
 Nature sells all things according to their value, into 
 what depths are we about to fall? Ah, the happy-fated 
 lovers are those who die together in their love and 
 youth. What gloomy thoughts ! Does my soul foresee 
 an evil future ? I examine myself, I ask myself if there 
 be anything in me that must bring you grief. Perhaps 
 I love you selfishly. Perhaps I lay on that dear head 
 a burden greater than the sweetness my love can shed 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 115 
 
 within your heart. If there be in me some inexorable 
 power which I must needs obey, if I must curse while 
 you must pray, if some sad thought controls me when 
 I fain would lie at your feet, and play with you as with 
 an infant, will you never be jealous of this capricious 
 and exacting spirit? 
 
 Do you comprehend, heart of mine, that I fear lest I 
 be not wholly yours? Know, Pauline, that I would 
 gladly abdicate all sceptres, all earthly crowns, to make 
 you my eternal thought ; to find in our delightful love 
 a noble life, a glorious poem where I might fling my 
 soul, engulf my powers, and ask of every hour the joys 
 it owes us. Ah ! the memories of love return to me ; 
 the clouds of sadness are rolling from my brain. Adieu, 
 I leave you to be nearer to you. My cherished soul, 
 give me a word, — T await a word, a single word, to shed 
 peace into, my heart. Let me know if I have grieved 
 you ; or whether some chance expression of your face 
 misled me. May I never, at the close of our happy life, 
 reproach myself for greeting you without a smile of love, 
 without the honey of a tender w T ord. To grieve the 
 woman we love! that, my Pauline, is a crime in my 
 eyes. Tell me the truth ; send me no generous false- 
 hood, but disarm your pardon of all cruelty. 
 
 Fragment. 
 
 Is so complete an attachment happiness? Yes, be- 
 cause years of suffering cannot outweigh one hour of 
 love. Yesterday your apparent sadness passed athwart 
 my life with the rapidity of a falling shadow. Were 
 
116 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 you sad? Did you suffer? I suffered. Whence came 
 that pain? tell me quickly. Why did I not divine it? 
 We are not yet absolutely one in thought ; if we were, 
 I should be conscious of your pains and griefs at five 
 miles or a thousand from you. I shall not think I love 
 you until my life becomes so intimately bound to yours 
 that between us there will be but one life, one heart, 
 one mind. I must be where you are, see what you see, 
 feel what you feel, and follow you in thought. Did I 
 not know, instantly, when your carriage was overturned 
 and you were hurt? That day I never left you ; I saw 
 you. When my uncle asked me why I turned pale I 
 answered, 4 1 Mademoiselle de Villenoix has just been 
 hurt." Why, then, did I not read your soul yesterday? 
 Were you trying to hide the cause of your grief ? I 
 fancied you had made some ineffectual efforts on my 
 behalf with your uncle Salomon, who chills and stiffens 
 me. That man does not belong to our heaven. Why 
 do you wish that our happiness, which resembles no 
 other upon earth, should conform to the laws of earth? 
 But I love your virgin purity, your creed, your super- 
 stitions too well not to obey your least desire. What 
 you wish must be right; nothing is so pure as your 
 thought, just as nothing is so beautiful as your face, 
 which reflects the Divine within you. 
 
 I will await your letter before I take my way to the 
 sweet meeting which you grant me. Did you but know 
 how the sight of those towers makes me palpitate when 
 I see them touched by the moon, — our friend, , our 
 confidant ! 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 117 
 
 IV. 
 
 Farewell Fame! farewell, my future! farewell, O 
 life of which I dreamed! Now, dear loved one, it is 
 my glory. to be thine, worthy of thee. My future is the 
 hope of seeing thee ; and my life, what is it? to lie at 
 thy feet, to win thy glance, to breathe with open lungs 
 the air of heaven which thou hast brought me. All my 
 forces, all my thoughts must needs be thine, — hast 
 thou not said to nle the entrancing words, u Thy griefs 
 are mine ! " 
 
 Do I not rob love of jo}', happiness of precious mo- 
 ments, thy saintly soul of feelings, when I give hours 
 to study, ideas to earth, poetry to poets? Dear life 
 of mine, I desire to give thee all ; to lay at thy feet 
 each flower of my soul. What is there beautiful enough, 
 splendid enough, in the treasures of earth or mind, to do 
 honor to a heart so rich, so pure ? — a heart with which 
 I dare ally my own sometimes. Yes, sometimes I 
 proudly feel that I can love even as thou lovest. But 
 no, thou art an angel- woman ; there will ever be 
 greater charm in the utterance of thy feelings, more 
 harmony in thy voice, more grace in thy smiles, more 
 purity in thy glance than in mine. Yes, let me think 
 thee a creation of a higher sphere than that I live in. 
 Take thou the pride of descending from it ; I shall have 
 that of meriting thy descent. It may be no forfeiture 
 of thy heaven to come to me, a poor, unhappy man. 
 If the truest home of a woman is a heart all hers, thou 
 shalt ever be the sovereign of mine. No thought, no 
 
118 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 act can stain that heart, rich sanctnaiy, so long as thou 
 deignest to inhabit it, — but that will be forever, will it 
 not? Hast thou not said to me, " Now and ever ! " "et 
 nunc et semper? " I have carved those words of the 
 ritual beneath thy portrait, words worthy of thee as they 
 are of God. He is noio and ever, like my love. 
 
 No, no, never can I exhaust that which is limitless, 
 infinite. So powerful is the sentiment I feel for thee 
 that I am able to divine its immeasurable extent as we 
 divine space by measuring a fraction of it. Thus I 
 have found ineffable enjoyment, hours rilled with med- 
 itations of delight, in recalling a single gesture, a tone, 
 an accent of thy voice. Hereafter, memories w r ill arise 
 beneath whose weight I must succumb, since even now 
 the recollection of some sweet familiar moment makes 
 me weep with joy, softens and penetrates my heart, 
 and is to me a quenchless stream of happiness. To 
 love is the life of angels ! Methinks I never can ex- 
 haust the pleasure I obtain in seeing thee. That pleas- 
 ure, the humblest of all, for which Time is insufficient, 
 has taught me to know the contemplations of the Sera- 
 phim and of the souls made perfect before God. Noth- 
 ing is more comprehensible, if from His essence emanates 
 a light as fruitful of new emotions as that from thine 
 eyes, thy stately brow, tfry noble face, celestial image 
 of tlry soul, — the soul, that other self of ourselves, 
 whose pure, undying shape renders our love immortal. 
 
 I would there existed a language other than that I 
 use to express the ever-springing delights of my love ! 
 If there be one that we ourselves have created, if our 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 119 
 
 looks are living words, must we not stay in each 
 other's sight to hear by the eyes those questions and 
 answers of the heart that are so ardent, so penetrating, 
 that once my Pauline said to me, " Hush, be silent ! " 
 when I was saying nothing, — dost thou remember, 
 sweetest life ? From afar, when lost in the dusk of ab- 
 sence, I am forced to use human w r ords too feeble to 
 render these divine sensations ; and yet such words 
 mark the furrows those feelings trace upon my heart, 
 just as the word God imperfectly sums up the ideas we 
 form of that mysterious essence. Again, though lan- 
 guage may have a science and an infinity of its own, I 
 have never yet found anything within it which could 
 paint to thy soul the blissful clasp by which my life 
 mingles with thine when I think of thee. And still 
 again, what word shall I choose to end these words when 
 I cease to write and yet do not leave thee? What 
 means adieu — unless we die ? But is death ever an 
 adieu? Will not my soul be united then to thine, far 
 closer than before? 
 
 Oh, my eternal thought ! lately I offered thee, upon 
 my knees, my life, my heart ; and now, what flowers of 
 feeling can I find within my soul that I have not already 
 given thee ? It is as though I were to send thee frag- 
 ments of a possession already thine. Art thou not my 
 future ? I regret the past, those years that belong to 
 us no more ; would I could make thee sovereign over 
 them, as now thou art over my present life ! What 
 was the period of my existence when I knew thee not ? 
 a void, — except for wretchedness. 
 
120 
 
 Louis Lambert, 
 
 Fragment. 
 
 Angel of love, how sweet a meeting was that of yes- 
 terday ! What wealth in thy dear heart! Thy love is 
 inexhaustible, like mine. Each word brought me fresh 
 joys, each look deepened them. The calm expression 
 of thy face gave a limitless horizon to our thoughts. 
 Yes, all was infinite like the skies, and soft as their 
 azure. The delicacy of those adored features was re- 
 produced, I know not how, in thy graceful movements, 
 thy pretty gestures. I knew thou wert all grace, all 
 love ; but I did not know the variations of thy charm. 
 All things combined last night to counsel those de- 
 licious solicitations, those pikers for the first favors 
 which a woman ever denies, doubtless to let us capture 
 them. But no, thou dear soul of my life, thou couldst 
 never know beforehand what thou mightest grant to 
 love; perhaps thou mayest give thyself at last without 
 willing it. Thou art true ; thy own heart alone con- 
 trols thee. 
 
 How the sweetness of thy voice blended with the 
 harmonies of that pure sk3 T , those tranquil heavens ! 
 Not a bird-note, not a breeze — ourselves and solitude! 
 Even the foliage did not stir in those rich colors of the 
 couchant sun which are both light and shadow. The 
 celestial poem moved thee — thee in whom so many 
 feelings gather ; often thine eyes were raised to heaven 
 lest they should answer mine ! Ah, Pauline, stately and 
 smiling, humble and despotic, giving thyself without re- 
 serve in soul, in thought, yet withdrawing from each 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 121 
 
 timid caress! Dear coyness of the heart! how it 
 vibrates in my ear, murmuring still those precious 
 words, half-stammered as in childhood, — words that 
 were neither promises nor avowals, and yet they left 
 to love its dearest hopes without fears and without tor- 
 ture ! Chaste memory through life ! Blossoming of all 
 the flowers born in the depths of the soul, which a 
 breath may wither, but which in those dear moments 
 lived and fructified ! It will be ever thus, my loved 
 one, will it not? Recalling, this morning, the fresh and 
 living sweetness that played about us at that moment, 
 1 feel a happiness within my soul which teaches me to 
 conceive Love as an ocean of eternal and ever-new 
 sensations, where we may plunge forever with increas- 
 ing j°J s - Each day, each word, each dear caress, each 
 glance, must add the flowing tribute of its bliss. Yes, 
 hearts so great that t\\ey remember all must feel at 
 each pulsation their past delights as well as those the 
 future offers them. This is what I dreamed of in old 
 ckays ; to-day it is no more a dream. An angel has 
 come to me on earth and made me know all joys, 
 — perhaps to compensate me for having known all 
 sorrows. Angel of heaven, I salute thee with a 
 kiss. 
 
 1 send thee this hymn as it springs from my heart. 
 I owe it to Thee, who art the spirit of my life ; but it 
 tells Thee little of my gratitude or of the matin prayers 
 which nry heart daily offers to her who taught me the 
 heart's gospel in one blessed word, " Believe." 
 
122 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 V. 
 
 Dear cherished heart ! what, no more hindrances ? 
 Free to belong to each other each day, each hour, for- 
 ever ! Happy all the days of our life as we now are 
 furtively at rare moments ! Can it be that our pure, 
 deep sentiments will take the form of those exquisite 
 caresses of which I dreamsd? Thy little foot will bare 
 itself to me ; thou wilt be all mine ! Such joy kills me, 
 annihilates me ! My head is too weak ; it bursts under 
 the violence of my thoughts. I weep, I laugh, I rave. 
 Each pleasure is like a flaming arrow ; it pierces me, it 
 burns me. My imagination brings thee before my rav- 
 ished, dazzled eyes in all the innumerable capricious 
 shapes of blissful enjoyment. Our life lies there, be- 
 fore me, with its flowing tides, its pauses, rests, and 
 joys ; it foams, it broadens into peace, it sleeps ; then 
 it awakes, young and vernal. I see us united, stepping 
 with one step, living in one thought, ever at the core 
 of each other's heart, comprehending ourselves, hearing 
 ourselves, as an echo receives and returns sound across 
 the intervales. Can we live long if life is thus intense 
 at every moment? Shall we not die in a first embrace? 
 What if our souls already mingled in that soft kiss of 
 evening, in which our strength abandoned us, — that 
 fleeting kiss, first fruit of my desires, impotent inter- 
 preter of prayers ascending in my soul when absent 
 from thee, yet hidden with compunction in my heart? 
 
 Ah ! can it be that I, who lay so often beneath the 
 hedge to hear the sound of thy feet as they went toward 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 123 
 
 the chateau, that I am to love thee at 1113* ease, to see 
 thee coming, going, laughing, playing, talking, doing ! 
 One must be a man to know the depth and meaning of 
 such feelings ! Each of thy movements gives me more 
 pleasure than a mother feels in watching her babe at 
 play or sleeping. I love thee with all loves. The grace 
 of tlry slightest gesture is ever new to me. I dream 
 that I could pass whole nights in breathing thy breath. 
 Would that I might enter every action of tlry life, be 
 the substance itself of tlry thoughts, — nay, more, I 
 would be thyself ! Never again am I to leave thee ! 
 No human pride or sentiment can henceforth trouble 
 our love, — our love vast as the sea, vast as the sky, 
 infinite in its transformations, and pure as all else that 
 is One. Thou art mine ! all mine ! I may gaze into 
 the depths of those eyes to find the dear soul that hides 
 there and divine its wishes. My loved one, listen to 
 something I have not dared to say to thee, but w T hich 
 I dare avow to-day. I have felt within me a nameless 
 modesty of soul which would not let me give expression 
 to all my feelings ; I tried to clothe them with the 
 forms of thought. But now I long to bare my heart, 
 to tell thee all the ardor of my dreams, to unveil the 
 throbbing ambition of my senses, irritated by the soli- 
 tude in which I have lived, stimulated by long waiting 
 for happiness, and awakened by thee — by thee, so soft 
 in form, so winning in manner ! 
 
 But it is not possible to explain this thirst for those 
 mysterious joys which the possession of the woman we 
 love bestows upon us, and to which two souls closely 
 
124 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 bound in love must bring a force of union unparalleled. 
 My Pauline, I have stood entranced for hours in a 
 stupor caused by the violence of my passionate desires ; 
 lost in the consciousness of a caress, as in a depth un- 
 fathomable. I dare tell thee now that on the day when 
 I refused to take thy hand, held out to me with such 
 sweet grace (a melancholy virtue which made thee 
 doubt my love !), I was seized by the momentary mad- 
 ness which makes a man imagine murder to possess a 
 woman. Yes, had I felt the pressure of that hand as 
 keenly as thy voice echoed within my heart I know not 
 where the violence of my feelings might have led me. 
 But I can suffer much and be silent. 
 
 Ah, why speak of such pains when my visions are 
 to become realities? Permission is mine to make our 
 life a long caress ! My cherished loved one, a light 
 rests on thine ebon hair with such effects that I could 
 stand absorbed for hours in contemplating thy dear 
 person if thou didst not say to me, turning quickly, 
 " Cease, cease, you shame me ! " To-morrow our love 
 will know itself! Ah, Pauline, the eyes, the looks of 
 others, that public curiosity — I cannot bear them ! 
 Let us go to Villenoix ; let us stay there, far from every 
 one. I desire that no creature of human kind should 
 enter the sanctuary where thou art mine ; I would that 
 after us no life existed, that all things were destroyed. 
 Yes, I would tear from nature herself a happiness we 
 alone can comprehend, we alone can feel, — a happiness 
 so vast, so illimitable, that I fling myself into it to die ; 
 it is an abyss. 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 125 
 
 Do not be terrified by the tears which moisten this 
 letler ; they are tears of joy. Sole joy of mine ! We 
 are about to meet to part no more. 
 
 In 1823 I was travelling from Paris to Touraine in 
 the diligence. When we reached Mer the conductor 
 took a passenger for Blois. As he opened the door 
 of the division of the coach in which I was he said to 
 this person, laughing, " You will not be squeezed, Mon- 
 sieur Lefebre." I was, in fact, alone. Hearing the 
 name, and seeing an old gentleman with white hair who 
 appeared to be an octogenarian, I naturally thought of 
 Lambert's uncle. After a few indirect questions, I 
 found I was not mistaken. The old priest had sold 
 his vintages at Mer and was returning to Blois. I at 
 once asked for news of my school friend. At the first 
 mention of Lambert's name, the face of the old Orato- 
 rian, already grave and severe as that of a soldier who 
 has suffered, grew darker and sadder ; the lines of his 
 forehead contracted, he pressed his lips together, gave 
 me a doubtful look, and said : — 
 
 u You have not seen him since your schooldays?" 
 
 " No," I answered. " But we are equally guilty of ne- 
 glect, if neglect it be. You know the eager and adven- 
 turous life that young men lead after they leave college ; 
 they must meet again before they know if their attachment 
 continues. However, a youthful sentiment sometimes 
 survives, and then it is impossible to forget altogether, es- 
 pecially in the case of such friends as Lambert and I. In 
 college the}: used to call us the 6 Poet-and-Pythagoras.' " 
 
126 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 I tolcl him my name ; but when he heard it his face 
 grew darker still. 
 
 4 4 Then you do not know his history?" he said. 
 44 My poor nephew was to have married the richest 
 heiress in Blois, but he went mad the evening before 
 his marriage." 
 
 " Lambert mad ! " I exclaimed, bewildered. "From 
 what cause ? His was the richest memory, the best or- 
 ganized mind, the most sagacious judgment I have ever 
 met. Glorious genius ! too much inclined, perhaps, to 
 mysticism, but the noblest heart in the world ! Some 
 most extraordinary thing must have happened to him." 
 
 44 1 see that you knew him well/' said the old man. 
 
 From Mer to Blois we talked of my poor comrade 
 with man} T digressions, through which I learned the 
 particulars of his story which I have alread}' related, in 
 order to give sequence to these facts and render them 
 interesting. I told his uncle of our secret studies and 
 the nature of his nephew's cherished occupations ; in 
 return he related to me the chief events of Lambert's 
 life after our separation. According to Monsieur Le- 
 febre's account Lambert must have shown signs of 
 madness before his marriage. But as these symptoms 
 were like those of other men passionately in love, 
 I thought them less characteristic of insanity after I 
 knew Mademoiselle de Villenoix and the ardor of his 
 feeling for her. In the provinces, where ideas have a 
 tendency to rarefy, a man full of novel thoughts and 
 possessed by theories, like Louis, would naturally be 
 considered an original. His very language was sur- 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 127 
 
 prising, — all the more because he seldom talked. He 
 would say of this or that man, u He does not belong 
 to my heaven," just as others might say, 44 We are not 
 on visiting terms." Every man of genius has his semi- 
 insane points. The greater his genius, the more salient 
 are the peculiarities which constitute the different de- 
 grees of his originality. In the provinces an original 
 man is rated as half-insane. 
 
 The first words Monsieur Lefebre said made me 
 doubt my comrade's madness ; while I listened to the 
 old man I mentally criticised his statements. The 
 most important symptom showed itself several days 
 before the marriage was to take place. Louis had a 
 well-defined attack of catalepsy. He remained stand- 
 ing for fifty-nine hours, motionless, his eyes fixed, with- 
 out speaking or eating, — a purely nervous state into 
 which persons are liable to fall when a prey to violent 
 passions, a phenomenon rare to be sure but whose 
 etfects are perfectly well known to physicians. If there 
 were am T thing extraordinary about this seizure it was 
 that Louis had not already had several attacks of the 
 same malady, to which his habit of ecstasy and the 
 nature of his ideas predisposed him. But his consti- 
 tution, both external and internal, was so perfect that 
 it had hitherto resisted this strain on his powers. The 
 exaltation to which he was brought by the expectation 
 of his marriage, increased, in him, by the chastity of his 
 body and the power of his soul, might very likely have 
 brought on this nervous crisis, whose results are no 
 better understood than their cause. The foregoing 
 
128 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 letters, accidentally preserved, show plainly enough his 
 transition from the pure idealism in which he lived to 
 the most acute plrysical emotions. In our college days 
 we were filled with admiration for that human phenom- 
 enon in which Lambert was able to see the temporary 
 separation of our two natures, and the symptoms of a 
 total absence of the inward being using its nrysterious 
 faculties under the rule of some cause as yet undiscov- 
 ered. Catalepsy, a mystery as deep as sleep itself, 
 formed part of the collection of proof which Louis had 
 annexed to his u Treatise on the Will." While Mon- 
 sieur Lefebre w r as telling me of Lambert's first attack, 
 I suddenly remembered a conversation we had had on 
 this subject after reading a medical book. 
 
 "Deep meditation or glorious ecstasy," he said, 
 " ma} T be catalepsy in the bud." 
 
 The day when he expressed this thought thus con- 
 cisely he had been trjing to link all moral phenomena 
 together by a chain of effects, — following step by 
 step all actions of the intellect, beginning with the 
 simple stirrings of purely animal instinct, which suffice 
 for so many human beings, especially for certain men 
 whose strength excels in purely mechanical labor ; and 
 then passing to the aggregation of thoughts, until he 
 reached comparison, meditation, and finally ecstas3 T , 
 and thus catalepsy. Undoubtedly Lambert believed, 
 with the artless consciousness of early youth, that he had 
 planned a noble book in thus marshalling the different 
 degrees of mental power in man. I remember that by 
 one of those fatalities which force us to believe in 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 129 
 
 predestination, we happened upon the 4 4 Book of the 
 Martyrs," which relates very curious facts as to the 
 complete abolition of corporeal life to which man can 
 attain during the paroxysms of his inward faculties. 
 Reflecting on the effects of fanaticism, Lambert was led 
 to think that the collection of ideas to which we give 
 the name of sentiments might be the material effluence 
 of some fluid which men produce in more or less abun- 
 dance according to the manner in which their organs 
 absorb the generating substances in the centres where 
 they live. We grew eager in the study of catalepsy, 
 and, with the ardor which lads put into their under- 
 takings, we tried to endure pain by thinking of other 
 things. We fatigued ourselves terribly by trying cer- 
 tain experiments analogous to those of the Spasmodics 
 of the last century, — a religious fanaticism which will 
 some day be of use to human science. I stood on Lam- 
 bert's stomach for several minutes without causing him 
 the least pain ; but in spite of such foolish experiments, 
 neither of us were attacked with cataleps}\ 
 
 I have felt it necessary to give the foregoing expla- 
 nation of my doubts as to Louis's madness, which Mon- 
 sieur Lefebre's further statement fully confirmed. 
 
 44 When the attack was over," he said, 44 nry nephew 
 was seized with terror and fell into a state of the pro- 
 foundest melancholy. He believed himself impotent. 
 I watched him with the solicitude of a mother for her 
 child, and prevented him one day from performing on 
 himself the operation to which Origen supposed he 
 owed his gifts. I took him at once to Paris and 
 
 9 
 
130 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 placed him under the care of Monsieur Esquirol. Dur- 
 ing the journey Louis remained in a state of almost 
 continual somnolence, and did not recognize me. The 
 physicians in Paris thought him incurable, and unani- 
 mously advised his being left in complete solitude, care 
 being taken that nothing should disturb the quiet neces- 
 sary for his very improbable recovery ; they also advised 
 my keeping him in a cool room, somewhat darkened. 
 Mademosielle de Villenoix, from whom I concealed his 
 actual condition, followed us to Paris and there learned 
 the decision of the doctors. She asked to see my 
 nephew, who scarcely recognized her ; she then deter- 
 mined, after the fashion of noble souls, to consecrate 
 her life to his service and give him the care that was 
 necessary for his recovery. < I should have been 
 obliged to do so/ she said, ' were he my husband ; why 
 should I do less for my lover?' She took Louis to 
 Villenoix, where they have been living for the last two 
 years." 
 
 Instead of continuing my journey I stopped at Blois, 
 intending to go and see Louis. The worthy old priest 
 would not let me stay at an inn, but took me to his own 
 house, where he showed me his nephew's room, with 
 the books and articles that belonged to him. As he 
 glanced round it a sad exclamation rose to the old 
 man's lips, reveahng the hopes which Lambert's pre- 
 cocious genius had excited in his mind, and the dreary 
 desolation of his irreparable loss. 
 
 " That young man knew all things," he said, taking 
 down a volume which contained the writings of Spinoza. 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 131 
 
 " How could a mind so well organized become un- 
 hinged? " 
 
 "But, Monsieur," I replied, " may it not have been 
 an effect of his vigorous organization ? If he is really 
 the victim of that crisis, so insufficiently observed in its 
 manifestations, which we call insanity, I am tempted 
 to ascribe the cause to his passion. His studies, his 
 ways of life, had brought his faculties to a degree of 
 power at which the slightest over-excitement of them 
 compelled nature to give way. Love either destroyed 
 them or raised them to some other mode of expression, 
 which, perhaps, we calumniate as madness, without 
 comprehending its true quality. In short, may he not 
 have foreseen in the pleasures of his marriage an obsta- 
 cle to the perfectibility of his interior senses and to . his 
 flight through the spiritual worlds ? " 
 
 " My dear sir," said the old priest, after listening to 
 me very attentively, " your reasoning is no doubt logical ; 
 but even if I agreed with it, the melancholy knowledge it 
 imparts would not comfort me for the loss of my nephew." 
 
 Lambert's uncle was one of the men who live only 
 through the heart. 
 
 The next day I started for Villenoix. Monsieur Le- 
 febre accompanied me to the gate of Blois. When he 
 had put me into the road which leads to Villenoix he 
 stopped, and said : — 
 
 " You can easily understand that I never go there. 
 Do not forget what I have said to you. In presence of 
 Mademoiselle de Villenoix be careful not to appear to 
 see that Louis is mad." 
 
132 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 The old priest remained where I left him, looking 
 after me until I was out of sight. It was not without 
 deep emotion that I continued my way to Villenoix. 
 Reflections crowded upon me at every step of the way 
 which Louis had so often traversed with a heart full of 
 hope and a soul elated by the promptings of love. The 
 shrubs, the trees, the caprices of the winding way whose 
 borders were rent here and there by tiny ravines, all had 
 the deepest interest for me ; I tried to revive from and 
 through them the thoughts and impressions of my poor 
 comrade. No doubt the evening conversations of which 
 his letters tell, beside the hedge where his mistress met 
 him, had initiated Mademoiselle de Villenoix into the 
 secrets of that vast and noble soul, as in my own case a 
 few years earlier. But the fact which most preoccupied 
 me, and which gave to my pilgrimage a deep interest of 
 curiosity in addition to the half-religious emotions which 
 guided me, was that splendid belief of Mademoiselle de 
 Villenoix in her lover's sanity, of which the old priest 
 had warned me. Had she, as time went on, contracted 
 his madness ; or was she able to enter the portals of that 
 soul and comprehend its thoughts, even the most per- 
 plexing? I lost myself in meditation over this problem 
 of a sentiment higher than the highest inspirations of 
 love and its noblest devotions. To die for another is a 
 common sacrifice. To live faithful to a single love is a 
 heroism that made Mademoiselle Dupuis immortal. If 
 Napoleon the Great and Lord Byron had successors in 
 the hearts that once loved them, we may be allowed to 
 reverence this widow of Bolingbroke ; but Mademoiselle 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 133 
 
 Dupuis possessed the memory of many } T ears of hap- 
 piness on which to live, while Mademoiselle de Villenoix, 
 knowing nothing of love but its earliest sentiments, 
 seemed to my eyes the type of self-devotion in its 
 broadest expression. If she had become half-mad, she 
 was sublime ; but if, on the other hand, she compre- 
 hended and interpreted the madness of him she loved, 
 she added to the beauty of a great heart a master-gift 
 of passion worthy of being studied. 
 
 When I saw the high towers of the chateau, a sight 
 that so often had made poor Lambert quiver, my heart 
 beat violently. I had associated myself, so to speak, 
 with his present life and situation by recalling to mind 
 the events of our boyhood. Before long, I entered a 
 deserted courtyard and even entered the vestibule of 
 the chateau without meeting any one. The noise of my 
 steps brought out an old woman, to whom I gave a letter 
 which Monsieur Lefebre had written to Mademoiselle 
 de Villenoix. Presently the same woman returned to 
 fetch me, and showed me into a lower room, paved with 
 black and white marble and darkened by closed blinds, 
 at the further end of which I saw, very indistinctly, 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 " WuTyou take this chair, Monsieur?" said a sweet 
 voice which went to my heart. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Villenoix was beside me, though I 
 had not perceived her, and now offered me a chair 
 which at first I did not take. The obscurity of the 
 room was so great that until I grew accustomed to it 
 Mademoiselle de Villenoix and Louis seemed two black 
 
134 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 masses projected from the depths of the murky atmos- 
 phere. I sat down, a prey to the feelings "which over- 
 come us, almost in spite of ourselves, under the sombre 
 arches of a church. My eyes, still influenced by the 
 sunlight, only gradually grew accustomed to the artifi- 
 cial night. 
 
 u This gentleman," she said to him, " is your college 
 friend." 
 
 Louis made no reply. I could now see him, and the 
 sight was one that stamped itself upon my memory 
 everlasting!}'. He stood, both elbows resting on a pro- 
 jection of the wood-work, so that his chest seemed to 
 bend under the weight of his bowed head. His hair, 
 which was long like that of a woman, fell over his 
 shoulders and round his face in a manner that gave 
 him some resemblance to the busts of great men of the 
 time of Louis XIV. His face was perfectly white. 
 Pie rubbed one leg against the other habitually, with a 
 mechanical movement that nothing could check, and the 
 continual friction of the two bones produced a distress- 
 ing noise. Near him was a mattress made of moss, 
 lying on a plank. 
 
 " He seldom lies down," Mademoiselle de Villenoix 
 said to me; "when he does, he sleeps for several 
 days." 
 
 Louis stood, just as I now saw him, clay and night, 
 with fixed eyes, never raising or lowering the lids, as 
 others do. Having asked Mademoiselle de Villenoix 
 whether a little more light would pain him, I slightly 
 opened one blind, and could then see the expression 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 105 
 
 of my friend's countenance. Alas ! already wrinkled, 
 already blanched ! no longer any light in the eyes, 
 which were glassy like those of the blind. All his 
 i features seemed drawn b} T some convulsion toward the 
 top of his head. I tried to speak to him from time to 
 time $ but he did not hear me. He was a corpse 
 snatched from a tomb, a sort of conquest won by life 
 over death, or by death over life. I was there nearly 
 an hour, lost in undefinable revery, harrowed b} T afflict- 
 ing thoughts. I listened to Mademoiselle de Villenoix 
 who told me all the details of this, as it were, infant 
 life. Suddenly Louis ceased to rub his legs one against 
 the other, and said slowly, " The angels are white" 
 
 I cannot explain the effect produced upon me by 
 these words, by the sound of that loved voice, by the 
 tones I was painfully awaiting, which now seemed to 
 take him forever away from me. In spite of myself, 
 tears filled my e}'es. An involuntary consciousness 
 passed rapidly through my soul, and made me doubt 
 more strongly than ever if Louis's reason had left him. 
 I was very certain that he neither saw nor heard me, 
 but the harmonies of that voice, which seemed to speak 
 a joy divine, communicated to the words he had uttered 
 an irresistible power. Incomplete revelation of an un- 
 known world, that saying echoed in our souls like some 
 glorious chime of bells heard in the silence of a dark- 
 some night. I no longer wondered why Mademoiselle 
 de Villenoix thought him sane. Perhaps the life of the 
 soul had annihilated the life of the bod} r . Perhaps his 
 companion iiad had, as I had then, vague intuitions of 
 
136 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 that melodious and flowering Nature which we call, in 
 its highest development, heaven. This woman, this 
 angel, was ever there, sitting at her tapestry frame, and 
 \ looking up to him with a sad and tender expression as 
 she drew the needle through her work. Unable to bear 
 the dreadful sight, for I could not, like Mademoiselle de 
 Villenoix, divine its secrets, I left the room ; she fol- 
 lowed me and we walked up and down for some time 
 while she spoke of herself and of Lambert. 
 
 "No doubt Louis appears to be insane," she said, 
 " but he is not so, if the word insanity is applied only 
 to those whose brain, from unknown causes, becomes 
 vitiated, and who are, therefore, unable to give a reason 
 for their acts. The equilibrium of my husband's mind 
 is perfect. If he does not recognize you corporeal^, 
 do not think that he has not seen you. He is able to 
 disengage his body and to see us under another form, I 
 know not of what nature. When he speaks, he says 
 marvellous things. Only, in fact often, he completes in 
 speech an idea begun in the silence of his mind, or else 
 he begins a proposition in words and finishes it men- 
 tally. To other men he must appear insane ; to me, 
 who live in his thought, all his ideas are lucid. I follow 
 the path of his mind ; and though I cannot understand 
 many of its turnings and digressions, I, nevertheless, 
 reach the end with him. Does it not often happen that 
 while thinking of some trifling matter, we are drawn 
 into serious thought by the gradual unfolding of ideas 
 and recollections ? Often, after speaking of some frivo- 
 lous thing, the accidental point of departure for rapid 
 
Louis Lambert. 137 
 
 meditation, a thinker forgets, or neglects to mention 
 the abstract links which have led him to his conclusions; 
 and takes up in speech only the last rings in the chain 
 of reflections. Common minds to whom this quickness 
 of mental vision is unknown, and who are ignorant of 
 the inward travail of the soul, laugh at dreamers and 
 call them madmen if they are given to such forgetful- 
 ness of connecting thoughts. Louis is always so ; he 
 wings his wa} T through the spaces of thought with the 
 agility of a swallow ; yet I can follow him in all his 
 circlings. That is the histor} T of his so-called madness. 
 Perhaps he will one day return to this world in which 
 we vegetate ; but if now he breathes the air of heaven 
 before the time appointed for us to live there, why 
 should we wish him back among us ? I am content to 
 hear the beating of his heart ; it is happiness enough 
 for me to live beside him. Is he not all mine ? Twice 
 in the last two years and at separate times, I have re- 
 gained him for several days, — once in Switzerland, and 
 again in Brittany, where I took him for sea-bathing. I 
 can live on those memories." 
 
 u But," I said, " do you not write down the thoughts 
 he sometimes utters ? " 
 
 64 Why should I? " she answered. 
 
 I kept silence ; human science was petty indeed 
 beside this woman. 
 
 "At first, when he began to speak," she added, 
 "I gathered together a few sentences, but I soon 
 ceased to do so. I was unable then to understand 
 him." 
 
138 Louis Lambert. 
 
 I asked her for that record, mutely, by a glance. 
 She understood me ; the following thoughts are those 
 that I thus rescued from oblivion. 
 
 L 
 
 Here below, all is the product of an Ethereal Sub- 
 stance, the common base of several phenomena known 
 under the vulgar names of Electricity, Heat, Light, Gal- 
 vanic and Magnetic Fluid, etc. The universality of 
 the transmutations of this Substance constitutes what 
 is commonly called Matter. 
 
 II. 
 
 The brain is a retort, where the Animal carries, ac- 
 cording to the strength of the apparatus, all that each 
 one of its constituent parts is able to absorb of that 
 Substance ; and out of which it issues in the form of 
 Will. 
 
 Will is a fluid, the attribute of every being endowed 
 with motion. Hence the innumerable forms which the 
 Animal takes on ; which are the effects of its combina- 
 tion with Substance. Its instincts are the product of 
 the necessities forced upon it b}^ the conditions in which 
 it develops. Hence its varieties. 
 
 III. 
 
 In man, Will becomes a force characteristic of the 
 human species ; surpassing in intensity that of all 
 other species. 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 139 
 
 IV. 
 
 By constant nutrition Will is related to Substance ; 
 finding it in all transmutations when penetrated by 
 Thought, — which is a product peculiar to the human 
 Will combined with modifications of Substance. 
 
 V. 
 
 From the greater or the lesser perfection of the hu- 
 man apparatus come the innumerable forms which 
 Thought assumes. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Will is exerted by organs vulgarly called the five 
 senses ; which are in fact but one, namely, the faculty 
 of seeing. Touch and taste, hearing and smell, are 
 sight, adapted to those transformations of Substance 
 which a man can grasp in its two conditions, modified 
 and unmodified. 
 
 VII. 
 
 All things pertaining, through Form, to the domain 
 of a single sense, namely, the faculty of sight, reduce 
 themselves to a few elementary bodies whose principles 
 are in the air, in the light, or in the principles of air 
 and light. Sound is a modification of air ; all colors 
 are modifications of light ; all perfumes are a combina- 
 tion of air and light ; consequently, the four manifesta- 
 tions of matter in its relation to man, namely, sound, 
 color, perfume, and form, have one and the same origin ; 
 
140 
 
 Louis Lambert, 
 
 the day is not far off when the affiliation of the principles 
 of light with those of air will be recognized. Thought, 
 allied to light, expresses itself by words, allied to sound! 
 For it, therefore, all is derived from Substance, the 
 transformations of which differ only by NUMBER, by 
 a given quantity, the proportions of which produce' the 
 individuals or the things constituting the divisions of 
 nature called Kingdoms. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 When Substance is absorbed in a sufficing Number 
 it converts man into an apparatus of enormous power, 
 which communicates with the essence itself of Sub- 
 stance, and acts upon organized nature after the man- 
 ner of great currents which absorb little ones. Volition 
 sets to work this force, which is independent of thought, 
 and, by its concentration, acquires some of the proper- 
 ties of Substance, such as the rapidity of light, the 
 interpenetrating quality of electricity, the faculty of 
 saturating bodies ; to which must be added intelligent 
 knowledge of what it does. But there is in man a 
 primal and controlling phenomenon which admits of no 
 analysis. Decompose man to the utmost, and we may 
 perhaps discover the elements of Thought and of Will, " 
 but we shall also find, without being able to solve it,' 
 the unknown quantity, that X against which I vainly 
 flung myself in earlier days. This X is the Logos, 
 whose touch burns and destroys all such as are not 
 prepared to receive it. It ceaselessly engenders 
 Substance. 
 
Louis Lambert, 
 
 141 
 
 IX. 
 
 Anger, like all our passionate expressions, is a cur- 
 rent of human force acting electrically ; its agitation, 
 when it is disengaged, acts upon persons present even 
 if they are neither the object nor the cause of it. Do 
 we not meet with men who, by a discharge of their voli- 
 tion, reduce and refine the sentiments of the masses ? 
 
 X. 
 
 Fanaticism, and all other sentiments, are Living 
 Forces. These forces become in certain beings rivers 
 of Will, which gather up and carry away everything. 
 
 XI. 
 
 If space exists, certain faculties bestow the power of 
 traversing it with such rapidity that their effects are 
 equivalent to its abolition. From thy couch to the 
 frontiers of the world there are but two steps : Will 
 
 — Faith. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Facts are nought; they do not exist; Ideas alone 
 subsist. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The world of Ideas divides itself into three spheres, 
 
 — that of Instinct ; that of Abstractions ; that of 
 Specialism.^ 
 
142 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The greater part of visible Humanity, that is, the 
 weaker part, inhabits the sphere of Instinctivity. The 
 Ins ti natives are born, work, and die without rising to 
 the second degree of human intelligence, namely, Ab- 
 straction. 
 
 XV. 
 
 At Abstraction Society begins. Though Abstraction 
 as compared with Instinct is an almost divine power, 
 it is infinitely feeble compared with the endowment of 
 Specialism, which alone can explain God. Abstraction 
 comprises within it a whole nature in germ, as poten- 
 tially as the seed contains the system of a plant and all 
 its products. From Abstraction are derived laws, arts, 
 interests, social ideas. It is the glory and scourge of 
 the world. Glorious, it creates societies ; baneful, it 
 exempts man from entering the path of Specialism 
 which leads to the Infinite. Man judges all things by 
 his abstractions, — good, evil, virtue, crime. His formu- 
 las of right are his scales, and his justice is blind ; the 
 justice of God sees, — in that is everything. There are, 
 necessarily, intermediate beings who separate the King- 
 dom of the Instinctives from the Kingdom of the 
 Abstractives, in whom Instinctivity mixes with Ab- 
 stractivity in endless variety of proportion. Some have 
 more of the former than of the latter, and vice versa. 
 Also, there are beings in whom the action of each is 
 neutralized because both are moved by an equal force. 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 143 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Specialism consists in seeing the things of the ma- 
 terial world as well as those of the spiritual world in 
 their original- and consequential ramifications. The 
 highest human genius is that which starts from the 
 shadows of Abstraction to advance into the light of 
 Specialism. (Specialism, species, sight, speculation, 
 seeing all, and that at one glance : Speculum, the mir- 
 ror or means of estimating a thing by seeing it in its 
 entirety.) Jesus was a Specialist. He saw the deed 
 in its roots and in its products ; in the past which begot 
 it, in the present where it is manifested, in the future 
 where it develops ; his sight penetrated the under- 
 standing of others. The perfection of the inward sight 
 gives birth to the gift of Specialism. Specialism carries 
 with it Intuition. Intuition is a faculty of the Inner 
 Man, of whom Specialism is an attribute. It acts by 
 an imperceptible sensation, of which he who obeys it is 
 ignorant — witness Napoleon instinctively changing his 
 position before the bullet came which would have struck 
 him. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Between the sphere of Specialism and the sphere of 
 Abstraction, and likewise between those spheres and 
 that of Instinctivity, we find beings in whom the diverse 
 attributes of the two kingdoms are mingled, producing 
 a mixed nature, — the man of genius. 
 
144 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The Specialist is necessarily the loftiest expression 
 of Man, — the link which connects the visible to the 
 superior worlds. He acts, he sees, he feels through his 
 Inner Being. The Abstractive thinks. The Instinc- 
 tive simply acts. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Hence three degrees for Man. As an Instinctive he 
 is below the level ; as an Abstractive he attains to it ; 
 as a Specialist he rises above it. Specialism opens to 
 man his true career ; the Infinite dawns upon him, he 
 catches a glimpse of his destiny. 
 
 XX. 
 
 There exist three worlds — the Natural World, 
 the Spiritual World, the Divine World. Humanity 
 moves hither and thither in the Natural World, which is 
 fixed neither in its essence nor in its properties. The 
 Spiritual World is fixed in its essence and variable in 
 its properties. The Divine World is fixed in its prop- 
 erties and in its essence. Consequently, there is a ma- 
 terial worship, a spiritual worship, a divine worship ; 
 which three are manifested by Action, Word, and 
 Prayer, or (to express it otherwise) Deed, Understand- 
 ing, Love. The Instinctive desires deeds ; the Ab- 
 stractive turns to ideas ; the Specialist sees the End, 
 he aspires to God, whom he inwardly perceives or 
 contemplates. 
 
Louis Lambert, 
 
 145 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Therefore, perhaps one day the inverse sense of Et 
 Verbo caro Factum will be the epitome of a new Gos- 
 pel which will read : " And the Flesh shall be made 
 the Word ; it shall become the Utterance of God." 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The resurrection is brought about by the winds of 
 heaven which sweep the worlds. The Angel borne upon 
 the blast saith not: " Ye Dead, arise!" he saith, 
 u Arise, ye living ! " 
 
 Such are the thoughts to which I have been able, not 
 without great difficulty, to give expression within the 
 limits of our understanding. There were other thoughts 
 which Pauline more particularly recollected — for what 
 reason I know not. These I have also transcribed ; 
 but, remembering the intellect from which they eman- 
 ated, the mind that seeks to comprehend them is led 
 almost to despair. I shall, however, cite a few, partly 
 to complete my sketch of this being, partly because in 
 these, his last ideas, Lambert's formula takes firmer 
 hold upon the worlds than the first here given, which 
 seems to apply only to the zoologic movement. But 
 between the two fragments there is evident correlation 
 to the eyes of those persons, few indeed ! who care to 
 plunge into the gulfs of intellect. 
 
 10 
 
146 
 
 Louis Lambert, 
 
 ^ All things here below exist only by Motion and by 
 Number. 
 
 II. 
 
 Motion is in one sense Number in action. 
 
 nr. 
 
 Motion is the product of a force engendered by the 
 Word and by a resistance which is Matter. Without 
 resistance, motion would have been resultless ; its action 
 would have been infinite. Newton's attraction of gravi- 
 tation is not a law, but an effect of the general law of 
 universal Motion. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Motion, by reason of resistance, produces a combina- 
 tion which is life ; so soon as the one or the other be- 
 comes the stronger, life ceases. 
 
 Nowhere is motion sterile ; everywhere it engenders 
 Number ; but it may be neutralized by a superior re- 
 sistance, as in minerals. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Number, which produces all varieties, at the same 
 time generates Harmony, which, in its highest accepta- 
 tion, is the relation between Parts and Unity. 
 
Louis Lambert, 
 
 147 
 
 VII. 
 
 Without Motion all would be one and the same sub- 
 stance. Its products, identical in their essence, are 
 differentiated only by the Number which determines 
 faculties. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Man is related to faculties; the angel is related to 
 essence. 
 
 IX. 
 
 By uniting his body to elementary action, man ma}^ 
 succeed in joining himself to the light by his Interior. 
 
 X. 
 
 Number is an intellectual witness which belongs only 
 to man, and by which he may arrive at the knowledge 
 of the Word. 
 
 XI. 
 
 There is a number which Impurity cannot transcend ; 
 the Number wherein creation is finished. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Unity has been the point of departure for everything 
 which has been produced ; thence have resulted Com- 
 posites ; but the end must be identical with the begin- 
 ning. Hence the spiritual formula : Composite Unity, 
 variable Unity, fixed Unity. 
 
148 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The Universe is, then, variety in Unity. Motion is 
 the means, Number is the result. The end is the return 
 of all things to Unity, which is God. 
 
 XIY. 
 
 Three and Seven are the two great spiritual 
 numbers. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Three is the formula of the created worlds. It is the 
 spiritual symbol of creation, as it is the material sym- 
 bol of circumference. In effect, God proceeded only by 
 circular lines. The straight line is an attribute of In- 
 finity ; therefore man, who adumbrates the Infinite, 
 employs it in his works. Two is the Number of gen- 
 eration. Three is the Number of existence, which 
 includes generation and its product. Add the Quater- 
 nary and you have Seven, which is the formula of 
 heaven. God is above all ; he is Unity. 
 
 I went to see Lambert once again. On that occasion, 
 after taking leave of his wife, I came back a prey to 
 ideas so antagonistic to social existence that I re- 
 nounced, in spite of my promises, another visit to 
 Villenoix. The sight of Louis exercised a mysterious 
 and dangerous influence over me. I feared to put my- 
 self again in that intoxicating atmosphere, where ecstasy 
 
Louis Lambert. 
 
 149 
 
 was contagious. Eveiy man would have felt, as I did, 
 a desire to plunge into the infinite, — like those soldiers 
 who killed themselves in a sentry-box where one of their 
 number had committed suicide while the regiment was 
 in camp at Boulogne. Napoleon was obliged to burn 
 Xhat box of wood, a depository, as it were, of ideas 
 which had reached a condition of deadly miasma. 
 Louis's chamber was to me analogous to that sentry- 
 box. These two facts may be cited as additional proofs 
 in support of his theory on the transmission of Will. 
 In his presence I felt extraordinary emotions, which 
 surpassed the most fantastic effects produced by tea, 
 coffee, opium, sleep, and fever, — mysterious agents 
 whose strange power so often affects the mind. Per- 
 haps I might have made a complete book out of these 
 fragments of thoughts, which will ever be incomprehen- 
 sible to all but certain minds who are trained to bend 
 over the brink of abysses in hopes of discovering the 
 bottom. The life of that immense brain, which gave 
 way doubtless on all sides, like too vast an empire, 
 would, it is true, have been developed in a recital of 
 the visions of this being, so incomplete either through 
 excess of force or through weakness ; but I have pre- 
 ferred to render a faithful account of my impressions 
 rather than compose a work that might be more or less 
 poetic. 
 
 Lambert died aged twenty-eight, on the 25th of Sep- 
 tember, 1824, in the arms of his beloved. She buried 
 him on one of the islands of the park of Villenoix. His 
 grave is covered b} r a simple stone cross, without name 
 
150 
 
 Louis Lambert. 
 
 or date. Flower born on the borders of the abyss, he 
 dropped unknown, with all his mysterious colors and 
 perfumes, into its depths. Like many other uncompre- 
 hended persons, he had often proudly longed to plunge 
 into the void and abandon there the secrets of his 
 life. Still, Pauline de Villenoix had every right to in- 
 scribe that cross with Lambert's name, together with an 
 indication of her own. Since the loss of her husband, 
 reunion is the hope of every hour of her life. The van- 
 ities of grief are foreign to a soul like hers. Villenoix 
 is falling to ruin. Lambert's wife has abandoned it, 
 doubtless that she may remember it better as it was. 
 Lately she was heard to say : — 
 
 " To me, his heart — to God, his genius.'' 
 
FACINO CANE. 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY. 
 
FACINO CANE. 
 
 TO LOUISE. 
 
 AS A MARK OF MY AFFECTIONATE GRATITUDE. 
 
 I was then living in a little street which you probably 
 do not know, the rue cle Lesdiguieres, which begins at 
 the rue Saint- Antoine opposite to the fountain near the 
 place de la Bastille, and opens into the rue de la Ceri- 
 saie. Love of science had driven me to a garret, where 
 I worked during the night, passing my days in the 
 library of Monsieur, which was near by. I lived fru- 
 gally, taking upon me the conditions of monastic life, 
 so essential to workers. I seldom walked for pleasure 
 as far as the boulevard Bourdon, even when the weather 
 was fine. One sole passion drew me away from my 
 studious habits ; but even that was a form of study. 
 I walked the streets to observe the manners and ways 
 of the faubourg, to study its inhabitants and learn their 
 characters. Ill-dressed as the workmen themselves, and 
 quite as indifferent to the proprieties, there was nothing 
 about me to put them on their guard. I mingled in 
 their groups, watched their bargains, heard their dis- 
 putes, at the hour when their day's work ended. The 
 faculty of observation had become intuitive with me ; I 
 
154 
 
 Facino Cane. 
 
 could enter the souls of others, while still conscious of 
 their bodies, — or rather, I grasped external details so 
 thoroughly that my mind instantly passed beyond them ; 
 I possessed, in short, the faculty of living the life of the 
 individual on whom I exercised my observation, and of 
 substituting n^self for him, like the dervish in the Ara- 
 bian Nights who assumed the body and soul of those 
 over whom he pronounced certain words. 
 
 Often, between eleven o'clock and midnight, when I 
 met some workman and his wife returning home from 
 the Ambigu-Comique, I amused myself by following 
 them from the boulevard du Pont-aux-Choux to the 
 boulevard Beaumarchais. These worthy folks usually 
 talked first of the piece they had just seen ; then, from 
 one thing to another, they came to their own affairs ; 
 the mother dragged her child along by the hand without 
 paying attention to his complaints or inquiries ; hus- 
 band and wife counted up their gains ; told what they 
 expected to make on the morrow, and spent that sum in 
 fancy in a dozen different ways. Then they dropped 
 into household details, groaned over the excessive cost 
 of potatoes, or the coldness of the winter, the increased 
 price of fuel, and the energetic remonstrances they were 
 forced to make to the baker. Their discussions often 
 grew heated, and each side betrayed his and her char- 
 acter in picturesque language. As I listened to these 
 persons, I imbibed their life, I felt their ragged clothing 
 on my back, my feet walked in their broken shoes ; 
 their desires, their wants, passed into my soul, or my 
 soul passed into theirs. It was the dream of a waking 
 
Facino Cane. 
 
 155 
 
 man. I grew angry, with them, against some foreman 
 who ill-used them ; against annoying customers who 
 obliged them to call many times before they could get 
 their money. To quit my own life, to become some 
 other individual through the exaltation of a moral fac- 
 ulty, and to play this game at will, was the relaxation 
 of my studious hours. 
 
 To what have I owed this gift? Was it second- 
 sight? Is it one of those qualities the abuse of which 
 leads to insanity ? I have never sought to discover the 
 causes of this power. I only know that I possess it, 
 and use it ; that is enough for me. You must know that 
 ever since I became aware of this faculty, I have de- 
 composed the elements of those heterogeneous masses 
 called the People, and I have analyzed 'them in a man- 
 ner that enables me to appraise both their good and evil 
 qualities. I knew, before the time came to prove it, 
 what use " the faubourg " would be put to, — that sem- 
 inary of revolution from which have emerged heroes, 
 inventors, practically learned men, knaves, scoundrels, 
 virtues, vices ; all repressed by poverty, stifled by want, 
 drowned in wine, worn-out by the use of strong liquors. 
 You cannot imagine how many lost epics, how many 
 forgotten dramas there are in this city of sorrows ! 
 how many horrible things, how many glorious things ! 
 Imagination cannot reach to a full conception of what 
 is hidden here, in quest of which no man can go ; he 
 would be forced to descend too low to find these start- 
 ling scenes of tragedy or of comedy, masterpieces to 
 which, often, mere accident gives birth. I hardly know 
 
156 
 
 Facino Cane. 
 
 why I have so long refrained from telling 3-011 the fol- 
 lowing story ; it is one of the many curious tales put 
 away in a bag from which memory pulls them forth ca- 
 priciously, like numbers in a lottery. I have others 
 quite as singular buried in my mind, but, you may de- 
 pend upon it, they shall see the light some day. 
 
 One morning my charwoman, the wife of a laboring 
 man, asked me to honor the wedding of her sister with 
 my presence. To make you understand the sort of 
 wedding it was likely to be, I must tell you that I paid 
 forty sous a month to this poor creature, who came 
 every morning to make my bed, clean nry shoes, brush 
 my clothes, sweep the room, and prepare m} r breakfast ; 
 the rest of her time was spent in turning the crank of an 
 engine, — a form of hard labor which brought her in ten 
 sous a day. Her husband, a cabinet-maker, earned four 
 francs ; but as these parents had three children, their 
 wages were barely enough for a decent living. I have 
 never seen more solid honesty than that of this man and 
 woman. For five years after I left the neighborhood, 
 mere Vaillant always came to wish me happy returns on 
 my birthday, bringing with her a bunch of flowers and 
 some oranges, — poor soul, who never In her life could 
 lay by ten sous. Poverty brought us near together. I 
 was never able to give her more than ten francs, often 
 borrowed for the occasion. This may explain my prom- 
 ise to go to the wedding ; I expected to revel in the 
 happiness of these poor creatures. 
 
 The feast and the. ball took place at the house of a 
 wiae-merchant in the rue de Charenton, in a large room, 
 
Facino G y a?ie.* 
 
 157 
 
 lighted by lamps with tin reflectors and hung with a 
 paper that was greasy behind the wooden seats which 
 ran round the walls. In this room were assembled 
 eighty persons in their Sunday clothes, bedizened with 
 ribbons and nosegays, dancing with flushed faces as if 
 the world were coming to an end. The bride and bride- 
 groom kissed each other to the general satisfaction, 
 with a chorus of " He}^, hey's," and " Ha, ha's," which 
 were significant but really less indecent than the timid 
 glances of well-educated young girls. The whole com- 
 pany gave evidence of a coarse enjoyment which had 
 something contagious in it. 
 
 However, neither the characteristics of this assembly, 
 nor the wedding, nor anything concerning it, has to do 
 with my story. Eemember only the oddness of the 
 setting ; see the shabby room, painted red, smell the 
 fumes of wine, hear the roars of delight, imagine your- 
 self in the faubourg, among these workmen, these old 
 men, these poor women, giving themselves up to enjoy- 
 ment for one night. 
 
 The orchestra consisted of three blind men from the 
 Quinze-Vingts ; 1 the first a violin, the second a clar- 
 ionet, the third a flute. The three were paid, in a 
 lump, seven francs for the evening. At that price they 
 were not likely to give Rossini nor Beethoven ; they 
 played what they would and as they could ; and no one 
 found fault with them, out of delicacy. Their music as- 
 
 1 The Quinze-Vingts is a hospital in Paris, founded by Louis 
 IX. (Saint-Louis) for three hundred knights whose eyes were put 
 out by the Saracens. 
 
158 
 
 •Facino Cane. 
 
 saulted my tympanum so violently that after one glance 
 at the assembled company I looked at the blind trio and 
 was instantly moved to forgiveness when I saw their 
 uniform. The musicians were seated in the recess of a 
 window, and it was necessaiy to stand quite near them 
 to distinguish their faces ; I did not go up to them at 
 once, but when I did so the wedding and the music be- 
 came as nought, my curiosity was excited to the highest 
 pitch, for my soul passed into the body of the player of 
 the clarionet. The violin and the flute both had com- 
 mon faces, the well-known face of the blind, full of a 
 contentious spirit, attentive and serious ; but that of the 
 clarionet presented one of those phenomena which in- 
 stantly arrest the attention of artists and philosophers. 
 
 Imagine to yourself a plaster mask of Dante lighted 
 by the ruddy glare of an oil lamp, and surmounted by a 
 forest of silvery-white hair. The bitter and distressful 
 expression of that magnificent head was increased by the 
 man's blindness, for the dead eyes lived anew through 
 thought ; burning gleams were emitted from the sight- 
 less balls, produced by one incessant, solitary desire, 
 vigorously stamped on that projecting brow, which was 
 furrowed by wrinkles like the courses of a stone wall. 
 The old man blew his instrument as he pleased, pay- 
 ing no attention to time or tune ; his fingers went up 
 or clown, pressing the old stops by a mere mechani- 
 cal habit ; he took no pains to avoid couacs (to use an 
 orchestral term for the quacking of false notes) , but the 
 dancers paid no attention to them, neither did the two 
 acolytes of my Italian, — for I felt sure he was an Ital- 
 
Facino Cane. 
 
 159 
 
 ian, and so he proved. There was something grand and 
 despotic in this old Homer who bore a forgotten or un- 
 known Odyssey within him ; a grandeur so real that it 
 still triumphed even in its overthrow ; a despotism so 
 undying that it mastered poverty. None of the violent 
 passions which lead men to good as well as to evil, 
 making one a hero and another a galley-slave, were 
 lacking in that face so nobly modelled, so lividly Ital- 
 ian ; shaded by gray eyebrows which threw their shadow 
 over those blind cavities, where the apparition of the 
 light of thought made the spectator shudder, as one who 
 sees a band of brigands armed with daggers issuing 
 from a cavern's mouth. There was a lion in that cage 
 of flesh, a lion who spent his useless rage against the 
 iron bars of his prison. The conflagration of despair 
 had died_to ashes, the lava had stiffened and was cold ; 
 but furrows, convulsions, a little smoke bore witness to 
 the violence of the eruption and the ravages of the 
 flames. These ideas, suggested by the sight of that 
 man, were as hot in his soul as they were cold and dead 
 upon his face. 
 
 Between each quadrille the violin and the flute, sol- 
 emnly concerned for glass and bottle, hung their instru- 
 ments to a button of each shabby coat and moved their 
 hands cautiously to a little table on which their refresh- 
 ments stood ; always offering a full glass to the Italian, 
 who was unable to reach it for himself, the table being; 
 placed behind his chair. Each time that his compan- 
 ions paid him this attention the clarionet thanked them 
 with a friendly nod. Their movements were all per- 
 
160 
 
 Facino Cane. 
 
 formed with the precision which is so noticeable among 
 the pensioners of the Quinze-Vingts, and leads one al- 
 most to imagine that those blind men see. I ap- 
 proached the musicians to hear them talk, but when I 
 was near them they evidently studied me and seemed 
 aware that I was not a working-man ; they grew re- 
 served at once. 
 
 "What countryman are you, — you who play the 
 clarionet? " I said. 
 
 " I come from Venice," answered the blind man with 
 a slight Italian accent. 
 
 " Were you born blind or did you become so? " 
 
 " I became so," he answered, quickly, " a cursed pa- 
 ralysis of the retina." 
 
 " Venice is a beautiful city ; I have always longed to 
 go there." 
 
 The old man's face lighted up, his wrinkles quivered, 
 and he showed signs of strong emotion. 
 
 "If I went with you you would not lose your time," 
 he said, significantly. 
 
 " Don't talk to him of Venice," said the violin. " If 
 you do ; the doge will be unmanageable ; and he has got 
 two bottles already under his waistcoat, the prince ! " 
 
 " Come, play away, pere Canet ! " cried the flute. 
 
 All three began to play ; but all the time they were 
 executing four quadrilles the Venetian seemed to be 
 scenting me, as though he guessed the sudden and ex- 
 treme interest I felt in him. His countenance lost its 
 chilling aspect of distress ; something like hope enliv- 
 ened his features and slid like a blue flame amonof their 
 
Facino Cane. 
 
 161 
 
 wrinkles ; he smiled and wiped his brow, that bold and 
 awful brow, and even assumed the gayety of a man 
 who mounts a hobby. 
 
 " How old are you?" I asked him. 
 
 "Eighty-two." 
 
 " When did you become blind? " 
 
 "Nearly fifty years ago," he replied, in a tone that 
 showed me his grief was not caused by the loss of sight 
 only, but by the loss of some great power of which he 
 had been robbed. 
 
 " Why do they call you doge?" I asked. 
 
 " Oh ! that is a joke," he replied. "lama patrician 
 of Venice, and plight have been a doge like any other." 
 
 " What is your name ? " 
 
 "Here," he said, "they call me pere Canet. My 
 name is alwa} T s written thus on the registers; but in 
 Italy I am Marco Facino Cane, Principe di Varese." 
 
 " What ! }^ou are descended from the famous captain, 
 Facino Cane, whose conquests passed to the Duke of 
 Milan?" 
 
 "Evero" he replied. "At that time Cane's son 
 took refuge in Venice to escape being killed by the 
 Visconti, and had himself inscribed on the Libro d'oro. 
 But now neither Cane nor Golden Book remain of all 
 that past ! " and he made a dreadful gesture of extinct 
 patriotism and of hatred for all things human. 
 
 " But if you were senator of Venice you ought to be 
 rich ; how is it } T ou have lost your wealth ? " 
 
 At this question he raised his head, with a tragic 
 movement, as if to gaze fixedly at me, and replied, — 
 
 11 
 
162 
 
 Facino Cane. 
 
 " Through misfortune." 
 
 He no longer thought of drinking, and refused with 
 his hand a glass which the old flute was offering him at 
 this moment; then he bowed his head. 
 
 These details were not of a nature to extinguish my 
 curiosity. During the quadrille which the three ma- 
 chines now played, I gazed at the old Venetian noble 
 with the excited feelings natural to a young man of 
 twenty. I saw Venice and the Adriatic ; I beheld the 
 ruined city in that ruined face ; I floated amid those 
 palaces so dear to their inhabitants ; I passed from the 
 Eialto to the Salute, from the riva degli Schiavoni to 
 the Lido ; then back to the marvellous San Marco, so 
 original and so sublime ; I looked at the windows of 
 the Casa d'Oro, each with its different tracery ; I con- 
 templated, as I glided past, those old palazzi so rich in 
 marbles, and all those many wonders with which the 
 scholar sympathizes, the more because he colors them 
 with knowledge, and is conscious that their present re- 
 ality is powerless to depoetize his dream. In fancy I 
 reviewed the life of this descendant of the famous con- 
 dottiere; I looked for traces of his misfortunes and for 
 the causes of the physical and moral degradation which 
 rendered his sudden gleam of greatness and revived 
 nobility more striking still. Our thoughts were no 
 doubt in common, his and mine; for I believe that 
 blindness renders mental communication far more rapid 
 by preventing the attention from frittering itself away 
 on outside objects. The proof of our sympathetic 
 thought was not long in coming. Facino Cane ceased 
 
Facino Cane. 
 
 163 
 
 playing, rose, came up to me and said, "Let us go!" 
 in a tone and manner which struck me like an electric 
 shock. I gave him m} T arm, and we went out. 
 
 When we reached the street he said : ' ' Take me to 
 Venice ! will you take me there ? will 3-011 have faith in 
 me? If you will, you shall be richer than the ten rich- 
 est merchants in Amsterdam or London ; richer than 
 the Rothschilds ; rich with all the riches of the Arabian 
 Nights. 
 
 I thought him mad ; but there was a power in his 
 voice that compelled my obedience. I allowed hirn to 
 guide me, and he proceeded toward the fosses of Belle- 
 ville as if he had eyes to see. He seated himself on a 
 stone in a very solitar}^ spot where the bridge by which 
 the canal Saint-Martin now communicates with the 
 Seine was subsequently built. I sat upon another stone 
 directly facing the old man, whose white hairs glittered 
 like silver threads in the effulgence of the moon. The 
 silence about us, scarcely broken by the rumbling noises 
 of the distant boulevard, the clearness of the night, all 
 contributed to the weird aspect of the scene. 
 
 u You talk of millions to a young man," I said, " and 
 you think he would hesitate to face a thousand evils to 
 obtain them ! Are you not jesting with me?" 
 
 " May I die without confession," he said vehemently, 
 "if what I tell you is not true. I was twenty years 
 old, as you are now ; I was rich, I was handsome, I 
 was noble. I began with the first madness, love. I 
 loved as men do not love in these days, — enough to 
 hide in a coffer and risk a poignard without receiving 
 
164 
 
 Facino Cane. 
 
 anything more than the promise of a kiss. To die for 
 her seemed to me to live a lifetime. In 1760 I loved a 
 Yendramini, a girl of eighteen, married to a Sagredo, 
 one of the richest senators, a man of thirty, frantically 
 in love with his wife. M} T mistress and I were as in- 
 nocent as two cherubim when the sjioso surprised us 
 talking of love ; I was unarmed, his sword missed me ; 
 I sprang at his throat and strangled him with both 
 hands as you wring the neck of a chicken. I wanted 
 to fly with Bianca, but she would not go with me. 
 Such are women ! I went alone ; I was condemned ; 
 my property confiscated to my heirs ; but I carried off 
 my diamonds, five Titians rolled up, and all my gold. 
 I went to Milan, wmere I was not molested ; my affair 
 w r as of no interest' to the State. 
 
 "Allow me a little remark before continuing my 
 story," he said, after a pause. "Whether a woman's 
 fancies affect the child she conceives and bears I know 
 not, but it is certain that my mother had a passion for 
 gold during her pregnancy. I have a monomania for 
 it, the gratification of which is so essential to my life 
 that all through nry vicissitudes I am never without 
 gold in my possession ; I handle it, finger it, inces- 
 santly ; when I was young I wore jewelry, and I always 
 carried two or three hundred ducats about me." 
 
 So saying, he drew two ducats from his pocket and 
 showed them to me. 
 
 "I feel the presence of gold. Though blind, I can 
 always stop before a jew r eller's window. That passion 
 was nry ruin ; I became a gambler for the sake of gold. 
 
Facino Cane. 
 
 165 
 
 I was not a swindler, but I was swindled, and was 
 ruined. When I had no longer any money I was seized 
 with a desperate desire to see Bianca. I returned se- 
 cretly to Venice ; I found her. I was happy for six 
 months, hidden in her house and fed by her. I thought 
 with delight that I should end my days in that wa}\ 
 But Bianca was sought in marriage by the Proveditore. 
 He suspected a rival (in Italy they scent rivals) ; he 
 watched us, and surprised us, the scoundrel ! Fanc} r 
 what a struggle it was ! But I did not kill him ; I only 
 wounded him severel}'. That affair destroyed my hap- 
 piness. From that day forth I never found a second 
 Bianca. I have enjoyed great pleasures ; I lived at the 
 court of Louis XV. among the most celebrated women ; 
 but nowhere have I found the noble qualities, the grace, 
 the love of my dear Venetian lady. The Proveditore 
 had his people within call ; the palace was surrounded, 
 invaded. I defended myself, that I might die before 
 Bianca' s eyes. Formerly she w r ould not fly with me ; 
 now, after six months' happiness, she desired to die 
 my death, and received several wounds. A huge man- 
 tle was thrown over me, and I w r as rolled in it, carried 
 to a gondola, and thrown into a dungeon in the vaults 
 of the ducal palace. I was twent}M;wo } T ears old, and 
 I held the hilt of my broken sword so firmly that to get 
 it from me they w 7 ould have had to cut off my wrist. 
 B}^ remarkable luck, — or rather, inspired by a sense 
 of precaution, I hid that bit of iron in a corner of the 
 vault, thinking it -might some day help me. I was 
 nursed and cared for. My w T ouncls were not mortal. 
 
166 
 
 Facino Cane. 
 
 At twenty-two we can live through everything. Doubt- 
 less I was to die decapitated. I pretended continued 
 illness to gain time. I felt sure I was in a dungeon 
 adjoining the canal. My plan was to escape by tun- 
 nelling the wall and swimming across the canal, at 
 the risk of being drowned. Here is the reasoning 
 on which I rested my hopes : each time the jailer 
 opened the door to bring my food I read the indica- 
 tions written on the walls, such as, 4 Palace side,' 
 ' Canal side,' 4 Subterranean side,' and I came at last 
 to conceive a plan of escape connected with the exist- 
 ing state of the Ducal palace, which has never been 
 finished. With the genius that the hope of freedom in- 
 spires, and by feeling with my fingers along the face of 
 a stone, I contrived to decipher an Arabic inscription 
 by which the inscriber informed his successors that he 
 had loosened two stones in the lower course and had 
 tunnelled eleven feet under ground. To continue his 
 work it was necessary to spread the fragments of stone 
 and mortar over the floor of the dungeon itself. Even 
 if the jailers or the inquisitors had not been, as they 
 were, so satisfied with the construction of the massive 
 building that no watch was kept on the interior, it 
 would always have been easy to raise the level of the 
 soil gradually because of the position of the cells, which 
 were at the bottom of a flight of steps. This immense 
 toil had all been wasted, at least for the man who had 
 undertaken it, for its unfinished condition w r as a proof 
 of his death. His devoted labor would be lost forever 
 unless some succeeding prisoner should have a knowl- 
 
Facino Cane, 
 
 167 
 
 edge of Arabic. Fortunately, I had studied the orien- 
 tal languages in the Armenian convent. A sentence 
 inscribed on the back of the stone told the fate of the 
 unfortunate man, who died a victim to his enormous 
 wealth, which Venetian greed had coveted and seized. 
 
 66 It took me a month," continued the old man, who 
 had paused to consider his words, "before I came to 
 any result. While I worked, and during the moments 
 when overcome by fatigue I rested, I could hear the 
 sound of gold, I saw gold glittering before me, I was 
 dazzled by the light of diamonds. Wait, wait ! I have 
 more to tell. One night my blunted steel struck wood. 
 I sharpened that fragment of a sword and cut a hole 
 in the wood. To do this work I wriggled like a snake 
 on my belly ; I even went naked to work, as the moles 
 do, with my hands in front of me, propelling my body by 
 the stones. The night but one before I was to be taken 
 up for judgment I resolved on a final effort. My broken 
 blade made a hole in the wood and touched nothing 
 beyond it. Imagine my astonishment at what I saw 
 when I applied an eye to the hole. I found myself at 
 the roof of a vault where the feeble glimmer of a light 
 showed me heaps of gold. The doge and one of the 
 Ten were in this vault ; I heard their voices, and what 
 they said informed me that here was the secret treasure 
 of the republic, the offerings of the doges, the reserva- 
 tion of spoils, called the ' perquisite of Venice/ which 
 was levied on the proceeds of the expeditions. I was 
 saved! When the jailer came I proposed to him to 
 assist my escape and to fly with me, carrying all that 
 
168 
 
 Facino Cane. 
 
 we could possibly take with us. He agreed ; he did not 
 even hesitate. A vessel was just sailing for the Levant ; 
 all precautions were taken. Bianca, to whom in}' ac- 
 complice went, approved my plans. Not to excite 
 suspicion, she was to follow and rejoin me in Smyrna. 
 The next night we enlarged the hole and climbed down 
 upon the treasure." 
 
 44 What a night ! what a night ! " cried the old man, 
 quivering at the recollection. 44 I saw four huge tuns 
 overflowing with gold. In the adjoining vault silver 
 was amassed in two great heaps, leaving a path be- 
 tween them to cross the room, which they filled to the 
 height of six feet. I thought the gaoler would have 
 gone mad ; he sang, he danced, he laughed, he jumped 
 upon the gold. I threatened to strangle him if he 
 wasted time, or continued to make a noise. In his 
 delirium he did not see a table on which the precious 
 stones were piled. I sprang to them and filled my 
 sailor jacket and the pockets of my trousers. Good 
 God ! I could not take a third of the dazzling heap. 
 Under that table were bars of gold. I persuaded my 
 companion to fill as many sacks with gold as we were 
 able to carry ; pointing out to him that gold could not 
 lead to our discovery in a foreign land ; 4 whereas,' I 
 said, 4 jewels and precious stones would certainly 
 be recognized.' But however great our longing, we 
 could take only two thousand pounds of gold, and even 
 the}' necessitated six trips across the prison to the 
 gondola. The sentinel at the water-gate was in our 
 pay, bought by ten pounds of gold. As for the gon- 
 
Facino Cane. 
 
 169 
 
 doliers, they thought they were employed for the Re- 
 public. At break of day we started. When fairly at 
 sea and I could think of what had happened, — when I 
 recalled my sensations and saw again in my mind's eye 
 that vast treasury where, according to my valuation, I 
 had been forced to leave behind me thirty millions of 
 silver, twenty millions of gold, and many millions in 
 diamonds, pearls, and rubies, — I became, as it were, 
 insane. The lever of gold was upon me. 
 
 " Well," he continued, after a moment's silence, " we 
 landed at Smyrna, and immediately re-embarked for 
 France. As we boarded the French vessel God was so 
 good as to relieve me of my accomplice. At the mo- 
 ment, I did not reflect on the consequences of this acci- 
 dent, in which I then rejoiced heartily. We were so 
 completely enervated with toil and emotion that we sat 
 partly stupefied, without a word to each other, waiting 
 for perfect safet} T before we dared to enjoy our good 
 fortune at our ease. It is not surprising that the fel- 
 low's head turned giddy — You will see how God 
 punished me. I thought I was safe and happy after 
 selling two-thirds of my diamonds in London and Ams- 
 terdam, and putting my gold into commercial property. 
 I lived hidden in Madrid for five years ; then, in 1770, 
 I came to Paris under a Spanish name, and led a bril- 
 liant life. Bianca was dead. In the midst of my 
 pleasures, in the full enjoyment of millions, I was 
 struck blind. No doubt this affliction was originally 
 caused by living in a dungeon and working through the 
 stone wall, — unless indeed my faculty for seeing gold 
 
170 
 
 Facino Cane. 
 
 entailed an abuse of visual power which predestined me 
 to lose my sight. At this particular time I was in love 
 with a woman whom I thought of marrying. I had told 
 her the 'secret of my name : she herself belonged to a 
 powerful family, and I hoped much from the favor 
 shown to me by Louis XV. I placed great confidence 
 in this woman, who was a friend of Madame du Barry ; 
 she advised me to consult an oculist in London. After 
 a stay of some months in that city, she one day aban- 
 doned me in Hyde Park, robbing me of all my prop- 
 erty and leaving me helpless : for, compelled as I was 
 to hide my name in dread of Venetian vengeance. I 
 could ask succor from no one. I feared Venice. My 
 infirmity was worked upon to my ruin by spies whom 
 that woman placed about me. I will spare you a series 
 of adventures worthy of Gil Bias. Your Revolution 
 took place. I was forced to enter the Quinze-Vingts, 
 where the woman placed me after keeping me two years 
 in a mad-house, declaring that I was insane. I have 
 never been able to kill her. for I could not see her. and 
 I was too poor to buy another man's arm. If, before 
 losing Benedetto Carpi, the jailer. I had inquired from 
 him the exact position of my dungeon. I might have 
 gone to Venice when the Eepublic was abolished by 
 Xapoleon and rediscovered the treasure vault — But 
 now, hear me ! in spite of my blindness, let us go to 
 Venice ! I can find the door of my dungeon ; I can see 
 gold through the thickest wall ; I can feel it in the 
 water under which it is sunk ! The events which have 
 overthrown the power of Venice are such that the secret 
 
Facino Cane. 
 
 171 
 
 of this treasure must have died with Vendramino, Bi- 
 anca's brother, a doge who, I always hoped, would 
 have made my peace with the Ten. I wrote letters to 
 the First Consul, I proposed a bargain to the Emperor 
 of Austria, — they both treated me as a lunatic. Come ! 
 let us go to Venice ! We shall start beggars and come 
 back with millions ; I will recover my estates, and you 
 shall be my heir ; you shall be Principe di Varese ! " 
 
 Bewildered by this tale, which had all the magnitude 
 of a poem to my imagination, and by the aspect of 
 that white head against the black waters that surrounded 
 the Bastille, — still waters like those of the canals of 
 Venice, — I could not answer. Facino Cane thought, 
 no doubt, that I judged him, as others did, with con- 
 temptuous pity ; he made a gesture eloquent with the 
 whole philosophy of despair. His narrative had re- 
 called to his mind the happy days of Venice ; he seized 
 his clarionet and sadly played a Venetian air, a barca- 
 role which revived his early gift, the musical gift of a 
 patrician in love. It was, as it were, the Super flumina 
 Babylonis. Tears filled my eyes. If some belated 
 pedestrian had passed along the boulevard Bourdon he 
 would have stopped to listen to this exile's prayer, this 
 last regret for a lost name, with which was mingled the 
 memory of Bianca. But gold recovered its ascend- 
 ency ; the fatal passion stamped out the gleam of youth 
 and love. 
 
 " I see that treasure everywhere, " he cried, " at all 
 times, waking or asleep ; I walk in the midst of it ; the 
 diamonds sparkle. I am not so blind as you fancy ; 
 
172 
 
 Facino Cane. 
 
 gold and diamonds illumine my night, — the night of 
 the last Facino Cane, for my title passes to the Memmj. 
 My God ! the murderer's punishment began too soon ! 
 Ave Maria — " 
 
 He recited a few prayers which I could not hear. 
 
 ct We will go to Venice/' I said, as he rose. 
 
 " 1 have f ound my helper at last ! " he cried, his face 
 flaming. I led him back on my arm ; he pressed my 
 hand at the gates of the Quinze-Vingts as some of the 
 wedding-party passed noisily by us. 
 
 " Shall we start to-morrow? " he said. 
 
 44 As soon as we get money enough." 
 
 " BlTt we can go on foot ; we will beg our way, — I 
 am robust, and gold, the sight of gold before me makes 
 me young." 
 
 Facino Cane died during that winter after a lingering 
 illness of two months. The poor old man had taken 
 cold. 
 
GAMBARA. 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
G A M B A K A. 
 
 The first day of the year 1831 was drawing to a 
 close ; four o'clock was striking ; crowds were in the 
 Palais-Royal, and the restaurants were beginning to 
 fill up. Just- then a coupe stopped before the en- 
 trance, and a young man of distinguished bearing got 
 out of it, — a foreigner, of course, or he would not 
 have been attended by a chasseur with aristocratic 
 plumes, nor would his panels have shown the quarter- 
 ings which the heroes of July were still seeking. The 
 stranger entered the Palais-Royal and followed the 
 crowd under the arcades without seeming surprised at 
 the slow progression to which the sauntering mass of 
 people condemned him ; he seemed to the manner born 
 of the noble gait called ironically the "ambassador's 
 pace," yet his air of dignity had something theatrical 
 about it. Although his face was grave and handsome, 
 his hat, beneath which a curling mass of black hair ap- 
 peared, tipped a little too much to the right ear, bely- 
 ing his gravity by a slightly rakish air. His careless 
 half-closed eyes let fall occasional contemptuous glances 
 among the crowd. 
 
176 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 " There 's a handsome young man," said one grisette 
 to another, as the}' drew aside to let him pass. 
 
 44 And he knows it well," said her companion, who 
 was ugly, aloud. 
 
 Having made one turn round the arcades, the young 
 man looked alternately at his watch and at the sky, 
 seemed to grow impatient, entered a tobacconist's, lit 
 a cigar, and stood for a moment before the glass to 
 look at his apparel, which was rather more elaborate 
 than the French laws of good taste allow. He arranged 
 his collar and a black velvet waistcoat, over which one 
 of those heavy gold chains made in Genoa was crossed 
 and recrossed ; then with a single motion he flung his 
 velvet-lined cloak over his left shoulder, where it fell 
 with perfect elegance, and resumed his walk, paying no 
 attention to the inquisitive bourgeois glances which fol- 
 lowed him. When the shop- windows began to light up 
 and the evening grew really dark, he walked toward 
 the open space of the Palais-Royal with the air of a 
 man who fears recognition, keeping close to the side 
 of the square as far as the fountain, so as to reach, 
 under cover of the line of hackney-coaches, the en- 
 trance to the rue Froidmanteau, a dirty, dark, and 
 disreputable street which the police tolerate near the 
 healthful Palais-Royal, just as some Italian major-domo 
 allows a negligent footman to leave the sweepings of 
 an apartment in a corner of the staircase. 
 
 The young man hesitated. He had somewhat the 
 air of a bourgeoise in her Sunday clothes who fears to 
 cross a gutter when swollen by the rain ; yet the hour 
 
Gambara. 
 
 177 
 
 was well chosen to satisf} T some questionable fanc}\ 
 Earlier in the day he could have been detected ; later, 
 he might have been forestalled. To have allowed him- 
 self to be invited by a glance that encouraged though 
 it did not allure ; to have followed a }~oung and hand- 
 some woman for an hour, perhaps for a daj T ; to set her 
 on a pinnacle in his mind and give a thousand flattering 
 interpretations to her thoughtless act ; to find himself 
 believing in sudden irresistible sj'mpathies ; to imagine, 
 under the flame of a passing excitement, the advent 
 of an adventure in an age when romances are written 
 because there exists no longer the slightest romance ; 
 to have dreamed of balconies, guitars, stratagems and 
 bolts, and the mantle of Almaviva ; to have written a 
 poem in honor of the divinity, and, after all, to end be- 
 fore the door of an evil resort ; to find in the decorum 
 of his Rosina a police precaution, — is surely a histoiy? 
 a delusion, through which many men have passed who 
 nevertheless would never admit it. The most natural 
 feelings of all are those we are reluctant to acknowl- 
 edge ; chief among their number is personal conceit. 
 When the lesson goes no further, a Parisian profits by 
 it or forgets it, and the harm clone is not great ; but it 
 is not so with a foreigner, who begins to think he may 
 pa} T too dear for his Parisian education. 
 
 The lounger was a noble Milanese, banished from his 
 country, where a few freaks of liberalism had led the 
 Austrian government to suspect him. The Conte An- 
 drea Marcosini had been received in Paris with that 
 French social eagerness always shown to an amiable 
 
 12 
 
178 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 nature and a high-sounding name, if accompanied by an 
 income of two hundred thousand francs and a charming 
 person. To such a man exile was nothing more than 
 travelling for pleasure ; his propert}- was merely seques- 
 trated, and his friends informed him that after a year 
 or two he could return to his own country without risk. 
 After rhyming crudelli affami with i miei tiranni in a 
 dozen or more sonnets, after assisting with his money a 
 number of the poorer Italian refugees, Conte Andrea, 
 who for his misfortune was a poet, thought himself re- 
 leased from patriotic ideas. Since his arrival he had 
 given himself up without reservation to the pleasures 
 of all kinds which Paris offers gratis to whoever is rich 
 enough to buy them. His talents and his beauty won 
 him many a success with women, whom he loved collec- 
 tively, as was natural to his age, but among whom he 
 had as yet selected none. Moreover, in him the taste 
 for such pleasures was subordinate to the love of music 
 and of poetiy, — gifts which he had cultivated from 
 childhood, and in wmich success seemed to him more 
 difficult and glorious than the triumphs of gallantry, 
 since nature had spared him the difficulties which other 
 men were expected to vanquish. 
 
 A complex nature, like so many others, he let himself 
 be influenced by the charms of luxury (without which, 
 in fact, he could not have lived), just as he held tena- 
 ciously to social distinctions which his political opin- 
 ions rejected. Thus his theories as an artist, a thinker, 
 and a poet were often in contradiction to his tastes, to 
 his feelings, and to his habits as an opulent man of 
 
Gamhara. 
 
 179 
 
 leisure ; but he consoled himself for this inconsistency 
 by observing it in many Parisians who are liberals from 
 self-interest and aristocrats by nature. 
 
 He was therefore surprised and not a little uneasy to 
 find himself on foot on the 31st of December/ in the 
 midst of a thaw, following the steps of a woman whose 
 dress denoted extreme poverty, — a radical, long-stand- 
 ing, inveterate poverty, — though her beauty was no 
 greater than that which he could see any night at the 
 Bouffons, the opera, or in society, and she was certainly 
 not as young as Madame de Manerville, with whom he 
 had an appointment that very day, and who, in all 
 probability, was then awaiting him. But there was 
 something in the glance, half-tender, half-wild, rapid 
 yet intense, which the woman's black eyes furtively 
 darted upon him ; so many griefs, so many stifled 
 delights ; she blushed with such fire when, coming out 
 of a shop where she had stayed for some minutes, her 
 eyes met those of Marcosini, who awaited her return ; 
 there were, in short, so many instigations to curiosity 
 that the count, seized by one of those furious tempta- 
 tions for which there is no word in any language, not 
 even in that of license, followed in pursuit of the woman 
 exactly as an old Parisian runs down a grisette. As 
 he walked along, sometimes before and sometimes be- 
 hind her, he examined the details of her person and 
 dress, trying to dislodge the absurd and frenzied desire 
 that had taken possession of his brain ; but he found 
 in so doing a more delightful pleasure still. Some- 
 times, lowering her head, the woman threw him an 
 
180 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 oblique glance like that of a goat tethered to the 
 ground ; then, finding him still in pursuit, she hastened 
 her steps as though to escape him. Nevertheless, when 
 a crowd of carriages or persons brought Andrea beside 
 her, the young noble saw her shrink from his look, but 
 without showing any annoyance. These sure signs of 
 repressed emotion spurred the unruly dreams which 
 were running away with him, and he hastened after her 
 to the rue Froidmanteau, where, after many windings, 
 she abruptly disappeared, trusting that her pursuer, 
 who was much astonished at the proceeding, had lost 
 all trace of her. It was dark. Two women, highly 
 rouged, who were drinking liqueurs in a grocery, saw 
 the young woman and called to her. She stopped at 
 the sill of the door, replied to their civility in a few 
 gentle words, and continued . her way. Andrea, who 
 was close behind, saw her disappear in one of the dark 
 alleys of the street, the name of which he did not know. 
 The repulsive appearance of the house which the hero- 
 ine of his romance now entered turned his stomach. 
 Stepping back a few paces to examine its surroundings, 
 he encountered a man with a villanous face, and asked 
 him its character. The man rested one hand on a 
 knotty stick, stuck the other on his thigh, and replied 
 sarcastically in two words, " Droll dog ! " But catch- 
 ing full sight of the Italian under the street lamp, his 
 face immediately assumed a wheedling expression. 
 
 66 Ah, excuse me, monsieur," he said, changing his 
 tone; ''there's a restaurant in that house, a sort of 
 table-d'hote, where the cooking is horribly bad and 
 
Crambara. 
 
 181 
 
 they put cheese in the soup. Perhaps that's what 
 monsieur is looking for ; it is easy to see by his clothes 
 that he is an Italian. If monsieur would like me to 
 show him a better restaurant, my aunt lives close by, 
 and she is very fond of foreigners — " 
 
 Andrea drew his cloak up to his nose and rushed out 
 of the street, driven by the disgust that overcame him 
 for this filthy individual, whose clothing and gestures 
 were in keeping with the wretched house which the 
 unknown woman had entered. He returned with a 
 sense of delight to the comforts and elegancies of his 
 own apartment, and passed the evening with the Mar- 
 quise d'Espard, endeavoring to wash out the pollution 
 of the fancy that had taken such strong hold upon him. 
 Nevertheless, after he went to bed, in the stillness of 
 the night, the vision of the evening returned to him, 
 clearer and more vivid than reality. -His divinity 
 walked before him ; as she crossed the street gutters 
 she lifted her dress and showed a shapely leg; her 
 nervous hips quivered at every step. Andrea fancied 
 that he tried to speak to her and dared not, — he, Mar- 
 cosini, the Milanese noble ! Then, seeing her again as 
 she entered the dark alley and the dilapidated "house, 
 he blamed himself for not following her farther. " For " 
 he said to himself, " if she avoided me and was trying 
 to put me off the scent, she must love me. With 
 women of her kind resistance is a proof of love. If 
 I had pushed the adventure farther, I might have been 
 disgusted, and able to sleep in peace." 
 
 The count was in the habit of analyzing his keenest 
 
182 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 sensations, as all men gifted with heads as well as 
 hearts are involuntarily apt to do ; and he was greatly 
 surprised to find himself thinking of the unknown 
 woman not with the ideal glamour of a vision, but in 
 all the nakedness of her miserable reality. And yet, 
 could his fancy have stripped her of the lively of 
 wretchedness, the woman herself would have been 
 spoiled for him ; for he wanted her, he desired her ; 
 he loved her with those mudd}' stockings, those broken 
 shoes, and the battered straw bonnet ; he w r anted her 
 in that very house which he had seen her enter. 
 
 "Ami in love with vice?" he asked himself, with 
 horror. 44 No, I have not come to that ; I am twentj-- 
 three years old ; I have nothing of the satiated old man 
 about me." 
 
 The very strength of the caprice of which he seemed to 
 be the to} r reassured him a little. This curious struggle, 
 reflection on the one hand and love at a run on the other, 
 may reasonably surprise those who are accustomed to 
 the w r ays of Paris ; but they must bear in mind that the 
 *Conte Andrea Marcosini was not a Frenchman. 
 
 Brought up by tw r o abbes who, by order of a pious 
 father, rarely left him to himself, Andrea had not loved 
 a cousin at eleven nor seduced his mother's maid at 
 twelve ; he had never frequented those colleges where 
 the most consummate teaching is not that furnished by 
 the State ; moreover, he had only been a short time in 
 Paris, and was therefore open to those sudden and 
 deep impressions against w r hich the education and 
 customs of Frenchmen are so powerful an aegis. In 
 
Grambara. 
 
 183 
 
 Southern lands, great passions are bora of a glance. 
 A Gascon gentleman, who tempered his sensibility 
 by much reflection, and possessed an array of little 
 recipes against the sudden apoplexies of his head and 
 heart, advised Marcosini one day to indulge in an 
 orgy a month, so as to avert those storms of the soul 
 which without such precautions were apt to burst forth 
 inconveniently. Andrea recollected this advice, and 
 said to himself, as he went to sleep, "Well, I'll begin 
 to-morrow, January the 1st." 
 
 This explains why the Conte Andrea Marcosini was 
 skirting so furtively the line of hackney-coaches to get 
 to the entrance of the rue Froidmanteau. The man of 
 elegance hampered the lover; he hesitated for some 
 time, but after a last appeal to his courage the lover 
 advanced with a tolerably firm step to the house which 
 he had easily recognized. There he stopped again. 
 Was that woman what he imagined her to be? Might 
 he not be taking a false step? He recollected the 
 Italian table-d'hote, and eagerly seized a middle course 
 which seemed to serve both his desires and his repug- 
 nance. He entered the premises intending to dine 
 there, and slid along a dark passage, at the end of 
 which he found, after feeling about for some time, the 
 damp and greasy steps of a stairway which to an Italian 
 nobleman must have seemed a sort of ladder. At- 
 tracted to the second floor by a small lighted lamp 
 placed on the ground, and by a strong smell of cooking, 
 he pushed the half-open door and saw a large room 
 dingy with smoke and grease, where a woman of all 
 
184 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 work was hying the table for about twenty guests. 
 None had arrived as vet. Glancing round the ill- 
 lighted room, where the paper hung in strips from the 
 walls, the nobleman sat down near a stove which 
 smoked and rumbled in a corner. The master of the 
 premises, attracted by the noise which the count made 
 on entering, now came abruptly into the room. Imag- 
 ine a thin, lank cook, very tali, endowed with an im- 
 measurable nose, casting about him from time to time 
 with feverish excitement a glance that was intended to 
 seem cautious. At sight of Marcosini, whose dress 
 and appearance denoted wealth, Signor Giardini bowed 
 respectfully. The count expressed a desire to dine 
 there habitually with his compatriots, and to buy a cer- 
 tain number of dinner- tickets in advance, giving a 
 friendly tone to the conversation so as to lead the 
 more readily to his real object. Xo sooner had he 
 alluded to his unknown attraction, than Signor Giar- 
 dini made a grotesque gesture, looked at his customer 
 with a roguish eye, and let a smile curl his Hp. 
 
 44 Basta ! '" he cried; ii capisco/ Vossignoria is 
 brought here by two appetites. The Signora Gambara 
 has n't wasted her time if she has managed to interest 
 so generous a nobleman as you appear to be. I '11 tell 
 you in a word all that we know here about the poor 
 woman, who is truly to be pitied. The husband was 
 born. I think, at Cremona, but he is lately come from 
 Germany ; he tried to introduce a new kind of music 
 and new instruments among those Tedeschi. Pitiable !" 
 exclaimed Giardini, shrugging his shoulders. "Signor 
 
Gambara. 
 
 185 
 
 Gambara, who fancies he is a great composer, does n't 
 seem to me particularly great in anything else. A fine 
 fellow, though, full of good sense and witty, sometimes 
 good-natured, especially when he has drunk a glass or 
 two of good wine, — rare event, by reason of his horrid 
 poverty. He busies himself day and night in compos- 
 ing imaginary operas and symphonies instead of work- 
 ing for a living as he ought to do. His poor wife is 
 reduced to sewing for all sorts of people, riff-raff! 
 Well, it can't be helped ; she loves her husband like a 
 father, and cares for him like a baby. A great many 
 young men come and dine here in hopes of courting 
 madame, but not one has ever succeeded," he con- 
 tinued, with an emphasis on the last word. "The 
 Signora Marianna is virtuous, my dear sir, too virtuous 
 for her own good. The poor woman will die in poverty. 
 You 'd suppose her husband would reward her for such 
 devotion, would n't you? Bah ! he doesn't even give 
 her a smile. Their cooking is done at the bakery, for 
 that devil of a man not only does n't earn a penny, but 
 he spends all his wife's earnings in making instruments, 
 which he, cuts and fits and lengthens and shortens and 
 sets up and takes to pieces till they give out squeaks 
 that make the cats run away ; then he is happy. Yet 
 you '11 find him the gentlest and kindest of men, and not 
 a bit lazy ; no, he is always at work. To tell you the 
 truth, he 's mad and does n't know it. I 've seen him 
 filing and forging those instruments of his, and eating 
 black bread with an appetite I actually envied, — yes, I, 
 monsieur, who keep the best table in Paris. Eccellenza, 
 
186 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 before an hour passes over your head you shall know 
 the man I am. I have introduced into Italian cookery 
 refinements and delicacies that will astonish } t ou. Ec- 
 cellenza, I am Neapolitan, that is to sa} T , a born cook. 
 But wiiat good is instinct without science? Science! 
 have I not spent thirty years in acquiring it? and see 
 to what it has brought me I M}' history is that of all 
 men of genius. My experiments, m}- inventions, have 
 ruined three restaurants, — one at Naples, the others at 
 Rome and Parma. Now that I am again reduced, here 
 in this city, to make a trade of my art, I indulge my 
 dominant passion more than ever. I serve the ragouts 
 of my fancy to these poor refugees. I ruin myself. 
 Folly ! do you say folly? I know it, but how can I help 
 it? Genius is stronger than I; can I restrain myself 
 from the concoction of a dish that woos me? They 
 know it at once, the fine fellows ! I swear to you they 
 can tell at once whether it was my wife or I who 
 handled the saucepans. Well, what 's the result? Out 
 of the sixty and more guests I had around this table 
 at the time when I first opened this miserable restau- 
 rant, barely twenty remain, and most of those I take on 
 credit. The Piedmontese and the Savoyards have all 
 disappeared ; onfy persons of real taste, the true Ital- 
 ians, remain. And for them what sacrifices would I 
 not make? I often give them a dinner for twenty-five 
 sous a head which costs me double." 
 
 Signor Giardini's little speech was so redolent of art- 
 less Neapolitan knavery that the count was delighted, 
 and fancied himself back at Gerolamo. 
 
Gambara. 
 
 187 
 
 " If that is the case, my dear host," he said familiarly, 
 - " and since accident and your good-will have let me 
 into the secret of your daily sacrifices, permit me to 
 double the sum I pay you." 
 
 So saying, Andrea threw down a forty-franc piece, 
 out of which Signor Giardini scrupulously returned him 
 two francs fifty centimes, with various discreet becks 
 aud winks which enchanted the young man. 
 
 " In a few minutes," resumed Giardini, "you shall 
 see your donnina. I '11 place you at table next to the 
 husband ; and if you wish -to get into his good graces, 
 talk music : I have invited them both, poor souls ! In 
 honor of New Tear's day I have prepared a dish for my 
 guests in which, I may say, I have surpassed myself." 
 
 His words were drowned by the noisy greetings of 
 the said guests, who came in one by one, or two and two, 
 irregularly, after the fashion of table-d'hotes. Giar 
 dini remained ostentatiously beside the count, point- 
 ing out to him the regular customers. He expended 
 himself in quips and quirks, trying to bring a smile 
 to the lips of a man whom his Neapolitan instinct 
 pointed put to him as a rich patron to be plucked. 
 
 " That man," he said, u is a poor composer who 
 would like to get out of ballads and into opera ; but he 
 can't. He complains of managers, and music-dealers, 
 and everybody else except himself, though certainly 
 he 's his own worst enemy. Don't you see what a florid 
 skin he has, what beaming satisfaction in himself, how 
 little strain or effort in his features ? He 's cut out for a 
 ballad-maker and nothing else. And that other man 
 
188 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 with him, who looks like a match-seller, he is one of 
 the greatest musical celebrities, Gigelmi, — the finest 
 known leader of Italian orchestra. But he ? s deaf, and 
 his life is ending unhappily, deprived of all that was 
 attractive to him. Oh, here comes our great Ottoboni, 
 the most artless old fellow this earth ever produced ; 
 bat he is suspected of conspiring for the regeneration 
 of Italy. I should like to know why they ever banished 
 such a mild old gentleman — " 
 
 Here Giardini glanced at the count, who, aware that 
 he was being sounded politically, maintained an immov- 
 able aspect that was truly Italian. 
 
 " A man who has to cook for the world at large must 
 deny himself political opinions, Eccellenza," continued 
 the culinary genius. " But everybody who sees that 
 worthy man, who looks, you observe, more like a sheep 
 than a lion, would say just what I think about him to 
 the Austrian ambassador himself. Besides, these are 
 days when liberty is no longer hunted down ; her turn 
 has come ! The worthy folks here present think so, 
 at any rate," he whispered in the count's ear, "and 
 why should I contradict their hopes, though I, myself, 
 don't hate absolutism? All great talent is arbitrary. 
 Well, though Ottoboni has genius, he spends his time 
 and pains on teaching Italy ; he writes little books to 
 enlighten the minds of children and the laboring classes, 
 and he is very clever in getting them smuggled into 
 Italy ; he takes every means to awaken a moral sense 
 in our poor native land, where they prefer enjoyment to 
 liberty, — and maybe they are right." 
 
Gambara. 
 
 189 
 
 The count maintained bis impassible manner, and the 
 cook discovered none of his political opinions. 
 
 44 Ottoboni," resumed Giardini, " is a saintly man; 
 he is very benevolent and helpful ; all the refugees love 
 him, for you know, Eccellenza, that a liberal may have 
 virtues. Ah ! here 's a journalist ! " he exclaimed, inter- 
 rupting himself, and pointing to a man who wore the 
 clothes conventionally attributed to a poet in a garret, 
 for his coat was threadbare, his boots cracked, his hat 
 greasy, and his overcoat in a condition of melancholy 
 decay. "Eccellenza, that poor man is full of talent and 
 incorruptible ! He mistakes the age ; he tells truth to 
 everybody ; people can't endure him. He is the dra- 
 matic critic of two paltry newspapers, though he knows 
 enough to write for the great journals. Poor man ! 
 The others are hardly worth your notice ; Vossignoria 
 will readily understand them without my help," he added 
 hastily, perceiving that the count no longer listened to 
 him, as the wife of the composer entered the room. 
 
 Seeing Andrea, Signora Marianna trembled, and 
 blushed a rosy red. 
 
 44 Here he is," said Giardini in a low voice, pressing 
 the count's arm as he showed him a man of tall stature. 
 t4 See how pale and grave he is, poor man ! Evidently 
 the hobby has n't trotted to his liking to-day." 
 
 Andrea's love-dream was suddenly invaded by the 
 overpowering charm which Gambara's presence exer- 
 cised over every true art-lover. The composer had 
 reached his fortieth year ; but although his broad fore- 
 head, from which the hair had disappeared, was furrowed 
 
190 
 
 G ami or a. 
 
 with a few parallel lines, and in spite of the hollow 
 temples where blue veins threaded the transparent tex- 
 ture of the smooth skin, in spite, too, of the sunken 
 orbits of the dark eyes surmounted by heav}< lids and 
 light-colored lashes, the lower part of his face with its 
 tranquil lips and soft outline gave him all 1 the appear- 
 ance of continuous youth. At a first glance an observer 
 would have known that here was a man in whom intel- 
 lect had smothered passion, and who would grow old 
 from the effects of mental struggle only. Andrea cast 
 a rapid glance at Marian na, who was watching him. 
 The sight of her glorious Italian head with its true pro- 
 portions and splendid coloring, bespeaking an organi- 
 zation where all the human forces were symmetrically 
 balanced, made him aware of the depths which separated 
 these two beings, conjoined by accident. Pleased with 
 this evidence of unlikeness in the pair, he no longer 
 combated the feeling which drew him to Marianna. 
 But for the man whose sole blessing she was be already 
 felt a sort of respectful pity, perceiving, as he did, the 
 calm and honorable grief which Gambara's melancholy 
 eyes made known to him. Expecting, from Giardini's 
 description, to meet one of those grotesque beings so 
 often put forward by German tale-tellers and libretto 
 poets, he found to his amazement a simple, reserved 
 man, whose manners and conduct, free from all eccen- 
 tricity, were not without a nobleness of their own. The 
 musician's dress, though it bore no trace of luxury, was 
 more seemly than his extreme poverty appeared to 
 warrant, and his linen witnessed to the tender care 
 
Gambara. 
 
 191 
 
 that watched over even the minor details of his life. 
 Andrea lifted his moist eyes to Marianna, who did not 
 blush, though a half-smile flickered on her lips, called 
 forth, perhaps, by the pride she felt in the young man's 
 mute homage. Too seriously charmed not to watch for 
 the slightest indication of return feeling, the count fan- 
 cied himself beloved on seeing that she comprehended 
 him. From that moment he devoted himself to the con- 
 quest of the husband rather than that of the wife, direct- 
 ing all his batteries against poor Gambara, who, sus- 
 pecting nothing, ate the bocconi of Signor Giardini 
 without even tasting them. The count opened the con- 
 versation with some general remark ; but from the first 
 he was conscious that the man's intellect, blind possibly 
 on one point, was extraordinarily clear-sighted on all 
 others, and he saw plainly that instead of merely flat- 
 tering the notions of this remarkable man, he would 
 do well to try to understand his ideas. The guests, a 
 hungry crew, whose wit was sharpened at the prospect 
 of a dinner, were it good or bad, betrayed a positive 
 hostility to poor Gambara, and only waited the end of 
 the first course to make him the butt of their ridicule. 
 One of the refugees, whose glances in Marianna's direc- 
 tion revealed certain ambitious projects and a conviction 
 that he stood well in the graces of the beautiful Italian, 
 opened fire by attempting to explain to Marcosini the 
 manners and customs of the table-d'hote, and thus indi- 
 rectly throw ridicule on the husband. 
 
 M It is some time now since we heard anything about 
 the opera of 4 Mohammed, ' " he exclaimed, smiling at 
 
192 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 Marianna. "Can it be that Paolo Gambara is given 
 over to domestic cares, and the charms of the pot-au- 
 feu, and neglects his superhuman talent, allowing his 
 genius to get cold and his imagination chilly?" 
 
 Gambara knew all the guests; he felt that he lived 
 in a sphere above them, and he no longer took the 
 trouble to repel their attacks : he did not answer. 
 
 "It is not the privilege of the world at large," put in 
 the journalist, " to have sufficient intellect to under- 
 stand the musical lucubrations of Monsieur Gambara ; 
 and that is doubtless the reason why our divine maes- 
 tro does not produce his works for the benefit of these 
 excellent Parisians." 
 
 " And yet," remarked the composer of ballads, who 
 so far had only opened his mouth to put into it all the 
 food that was offered to him, " I know men of talent 
 who think a good deal of the judgment of Parisians. 
 I have some reputation as a musician," he added mod- 
 estly; "I owe it merely to my little vaudeville melo- 
 dies and to the great success of my quadrille music 
 at evening parties ; but I fully expect soon to present 
 to the world a mass composed for the anniversary of 
 the death of Beethoven, and I believe I shall be better 
 understood in Paris than elsewhere. Will monsieur do 
 me the honor to come and hear it?" he said, address- 
 ing Andrea. 
 
 " Thank you " replied the count, " I am not endowed 
 with the organs necessary for the appreciation of French 
 songs ; but if you were dead, monsieur, and Beethoven had 
 written your mass, I should certainly not miss hearing it." 
 
Gambara. 
 
 193 
 
 This reply put an end to the skirmishing of the enemy, 
 who were trying to start Gambara on the track of his 
 crotchets, for the purpose of amusing the new-comer. 
 Already it was repugnant to Andrea's feelings to see 
 so noble and gentle a madness, if madness it were, at 
 the mercy of all these commonplace reasoners. He 
 carried on, therefore, by fits and starts, a conversa- 
 tion with the artist, in the course of which Giardini's 
 nose was several times interposed between two replies. 
 When Gambara gave expression to paradoxical ideas, 
 or uttered some social witticism, the cook would thrust 
 forward his head, throw a look of pity on the musician, 
 and a knowing look at the count, in whose ear he 
 whispered : — 
 
 "Ematto!" 
 
 Presently, however, the exigencies of the second 
 course, to which he attached extreme importance, inter- 
 rupted the sapient observations of the cook. During 
 his absence, which lasted only a short time, Gambara 
 leaned towards Andrea and said in his ear : 
 
 "That worthy Giardini threatens us to-day with a 
 dish of his own concoction, which I advise you to avoid, 
 though his wife has overlooked its preparation. The 
 honest fellow has a mania for innovations in cookery. 
 He has ruined himself in experiments; the last of 
 which forced him to leave Rome without a passport, — a 
 circumstance he never tells. After buying the good- 
 will of a famous restaurant, he was engaged to supply 
 a supper given by a newly-appointed cardinal who had 
 not yet set up his own establishment. Giardini thought 
 
 13 
 
194: 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 the occasion had come to distinguish himself; he suc- 
 ceeded ! That very night he was accused of poisoning 
 the whole conclave, and he was forced to leave Rome 
 and Italy without packing his trunks. That misfortune 
 upset his remaining wits, and now — " 
 
 Gambara laid his forefinger on the middle of his fore- 
 head and shook his head. 
 
 44 In other respects," he added, 4t he is a worthy man. 
 My wife can tell you that we are under many obliga- 
 tions to him." 
 
 Giardini reappeared, carrying with much precaution 
 a dish which he deposited in the middle of the table; 
 then he modestly came and seated himself beside An- 
 drea, who was helped first. No sooner had the count 
 tasted the famous viand than he felt there was an insur- 
 mountable barrier between the first and second mouth- 
 ful. His embarrassment was great ; for he was anxious 
 not to displease the cook, who had his eye upon him. 
 Though a French restaurateur may care little whether 
 his customers despise the dishes they are sure to pay 
 for, it is quite otherwise with the Italian trattore, who 
 is hardly satisfied with mere praise. To gain time, 
 Andrea complimented Giardini warmly, and as he did 
 so slipped a gold piece into his hand under the table, 
 and whispered to him to go and buy some champagne, 
 allowing him to take the credit of the liberality. 
 
 When the cook reappeared, all the plates were empty, 
 and the room resounded with praises for the provider of 
 the feast. The champagne soon enlivened the Italian 
 tongues, and the conversation; till then restrained by the 
 
Gam ha ?' a 
 
 195 
 
 presence of a stranger, now jumped the barriers of sus- 
 picious reserve and spread itself here and there over 
 the broad fields of artistic and political theory. An- 
 drea, who was given to no intoxications but those of 
 love and poetry, soon made himself master of the atten- 
 tion of those present, and led the discussion cleverly to 
 musical matters. 
 
 44 Will you kindly tell me," he said to the maker of 
 dance-music, " how it is that the Napoleon of petty 
 tunes can lower himself to a struggle with such people 
 as Palestrina, Pergolese, Mozart, — poor fellows who 
 will have to depart bag and baggage on the advent of 
 this stupendous requiem ? " 
 
 4 4 Monsieur," replied the composer, " a musician finds 
 it difficult to reply when his reply needs the co-opera- 
 tion of a hundred able performers. Mozart, Haydn, and 
 Beethoven, without an orchestra, would have been no 
 great things." 
 
 44 JN T o great things ! " exclaimed the count. " Why, 
 the whole world knows that the immortal composer of 
 4 Don Giovanni' and the 4 Requiem ' was named Mozart; 
 but I am, unfortunately, ignorant of what the fertile 
 inventor of fashionable country-dances calls himself." 
 
 44 Music exists independently of its execution, 3 ' said 
 the orchestra leader, who, in spite of his deafness, had 
 caught a few words of the discussion. 44 Take the c 
 minor symphony of Beethoven, — a musical mind is 
 borne into the world of Fancy on the golden wings of 
 that theme in g, repeated in e by the cornets ; it sees 
 a whole nature in turn illuminated by dazzling jets of 
 
196 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 light, darkened by clouds of melancholy, inspirited by 
 divine songs." 
 
 "Beethoven is surpassed by the new school," said 
 the song-composer, disdainfully. 
 
 44 He is not yet understood," said the count ; 44 how 
 then can he be surpassed ? " 
 
 Here Gambara drank a full glass of champagne, and 
 accompanied the libation with an approving smile. 
 
 44 Beethoven," continued the count, 4 4 has set forward 
 the limits of instrumental music, and no one has yet fol- 
 lowed him along the way." 
 
 Gambara denied this by a shake of his head. 
 
 44 His works are especially remarkable for the simpli- 
 city of their plan, and for the manner in which that plan 
 is followed," said the count. 44 In the works of most com- 
 posers the orchestral parts are random and disorderly ; 
 they blend only to produce a momentary effect ; they do 
 not carry forward the harmony of the whole by the regu- 
 larity of their own movement. Now, in Beethoven the 
 effects are, if I may say so, distributed in advance. Just 
 as various regiments assist by regular movements in 
 gaining a battle, so the different orchestral scores in the 
 symphonies of Beethoven obey orders given for the gen- 
 eral interest, and are subordinated to plans judiciously 
 conceived. In this respect there is a marked likeness 
 between Beethoven and a genius of another order. We 
 often find in. the noble historical romances of Walter 
 Scott that the personage who stands most aloof from the 
 action of the tale is brought at a given moment, by threads 
 woven into the plot, to take part in its catastrophe." 
 
Q-ambara. 297 
 
 veto!" said Gambara, whose common-sense 
 seemed to return inversely to his sobriety. 
 
 Wishing to test the musician still further, Andrea 
 abandoned for the time being his own sympathies and 
 predilections, and began to attack the European repu- 
 tation of Rossini. He brought those charges against 
 the Italian school which for the last thirty years it has 
 refuted nightly in a hundred theatres. He soon found 
 he had his hands full. At the first words he uttered 
 a low murmur of disapprobation rose about him ; but 
 neither interruptions, nor exclamations, nor frowns', nor 
 pitying looks, were able now to stop the fanatical ad- 
 mirer of Beethoven. 
 
 " Compare," he said, « the productions of the great 
 composer with what it is the fashion to call Italian 
 music; what crudity of thought, what viciousness of 
 style ! Hear those uniform measures, the triteness of 
 the cadences, the never-ending ftorituri flung out hap- 
 hazard no matter what the occasion, that monotonous 
 crescendo which Rossini brought into vogue and which 
 to-day is an essential part of musical composition and 
 last not least those bird-like trills, - all signs of a 'chat- 
 tering, pattering, scented music which has no merit 
 other than the fluency of the singer and the agility of 
 the vocalization may give it ! The Italian school has 
 lost sight of the highest mission of art. Instead of 
 lifting the world to itself, it has lowered itself to the 
 world; it has won its fame by seeking the suffrages of 
 the many, appealing to common tastes which are ever in 
 the majority. Its fame is that of the street corners The 
 
198 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 compositions of Rossini, in which this sort of music is 
 embodied, as well as those of the masters who derive 
 more or less from him, seem to me only worthy of 
 gathering a crowd in the streets round a Barbary 
 organ, or keeping time to the skips of Pulcineila. I 
 prefer French music to that ; I could n't say more ! 
 No, all hail to German music — whenever it learns to 
 sing," he added in a low voice. 
 
 This sally was only the summing up of a long argu- 
 ment in which Andrea soared for a quarter of an hour 
 in the higher regions of metaphysics with the ease of a 
 somnabulist on the ridge of a roof. Keenly interested 
 in such subtleties, Gambara did not lose a single word 
 of the discussion ; he took it up the moment Andrea 
 ceased to speak, and the attention of the guests was 
 arrested at once ; even those who were in the act of 
 leaving the room, remained to listen. 
 
 "You attack the Italian school very vehemently," 
 said Gambara, enlivened by the champagne; u but 
 that's a matter of indifference to me. Thank God, 
 I am beyond all those frivolities that are more or less 
 melodious. But for a man of the world you show little 
 gratitude for the classic land from which Germany and 
 France derived their first lessons. While the composi- 
 tions of Carissimi, Cavalli, Scarlatti, Rossi, were listened 
 to throughout the length and breadth of Italy, the vio- 
 linists of the French opera had the singular privilege of 
 playing their instruments with gloved hands. Lulli, 
 who did so much to extend the domain of harmony, 
 and was the first to give law to discords, could only 
 
Gambara. 
 
 199 
 
 find, on his arrival in France, a cook and a mason who 
 had voice and perception enough to execute his music. 
 He made a tenor of the first and turned the other into 
 a bass. In those days, Germans, excepting always 
 Sebastian Bach, were ignorant of music. But, mon- 
 sieur," added Gambara in the humble tone of a man 
 who fears that his remarks will be received with con- 
 tempt and perhaps ill-will, "though young, you must 
 have studied the higher questions of musical art for a 
 long time, or you could not state them so clearly." 
 
 These words brought a smile to the faces of that 
 part of the audience who had not understood Andrea's 
 definitions. Giardini, convinced that the count was 
 only talking at random for a purpose, poked him 
 warily, laughing in his sleeve at a hoax of which he 
 was proud to fancy himself an accomplice. 
 
 " In all that you have said," resumed Gambara, 
 " there is much that seems to me very sensible; but 
 take care. Your argument, while it brands Italian sen- 
 sualism, seems to incline toward German idealism, 
 which is a not less fatal heresy. If men of imagina- 
 tion and good sense, like yourself, desert one camp 
 merely to pass into the other, if they cannot remain 
 neutral between the two extremes, we must submit 
 forever to the sarcasm of those sophists who deny pro- 
 gress and compare human genius to — to this table- 
 cloth, which, being too short to fully cover Signor 
 Giardini's table, tangs down at one end at the ex- 
 pense of the other." 
 
 Giardini bounded in his chair as if a hornet had 
 
200 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 stung him ; but hast}' reflection recalled hirn to the 
 dignity of an amphitryon ; he raised his eyes to heaven 
 and again poked the count, who began to think his host 
 more crazj- than Gambara. The serious and even re- 
 ligious manner in which the latter spoke of art inter- 
 ested Marcosini beyond measure. Sitting between 
 these two crazes, one so noble the other so vulgar, 
 each deriding the other to the vast entertainment of 
 the herd about them, the count felt for a moment as 
 though he were tossed about from the sublime to the 
 ridiculous, — the two extravaganzas of the comedy of 
 human life. Suddenly breaking the chain of the ex- 
 traordinary transitions which had led him into this 
 smoky den, he fancied himself the victim of some 
 strange hallucination, and began to consider Gambara 
 and Giarclini as two abstractions. 
 
 Presently, after a final buffoonery on the part of the 
 leader of the orchestra directed at Gambara, the guests 
 retired amid roars of laughter ; Giardini went off to 
 make the coffee he wished to offer to his distinguished 
 patron ; and his wufe cleared the table. The count, 
 sitting next to the stove between Marianna and Gam- 
 bara, was precisely in the situation that the latter had 
 declared to be so desirable, — midway between sen- 
 sualism on the one hand and idealism on the other. 
 Gambara, meeting for the first time a man who did 
 not laugh in his face, abandoned generalities and be- 
 gan to talk of himself, his life, his toils, his hopes of 
 musical redemption, of which he thought himself the 
 Messiah. 
 
Gamlara. 
 
 201 
 
 "Hear me," he said, U you who have, so far, not 
 scoffed at me ; let me tell you my life, — not that I may 
 parade a constancy which does not proceed from my 
 own self, but for the glory of One who has put his force 
 within me. You seem to be good and reverential ; if 
 you cannot believe in me, at least 3-011 will pity me : 
 pity is of man, faith comes from God." 
 
 Andrea, coloring high, drew back a foot which was 
 nearing that of Marianna, and fixed his attention upon 
 her while he listened to her husband. 
 
 44 1 was born at Cremona," resumed Gambara, " the 
 son of a musical instrument maker ; a rather good per- 
 former, but a far better composer. I therefore learned 
 in my childhood the laws of musical construction in its 
 dual aspect, spiritual and material, and, with the curi- 
 osity of my years, I made observations which later 
 were put to use in the mind of my matured manhood. 
 The French invasion drove us, my father and me, from 
 our home. We were ruined by the war. From the 
 time I was ten years of age I began that wandering life 
 to which all men who revolve in their heads reforms in 
 art, science, or politics are subjected. Fate, or the natu- 
 ral disposition of their minds (which never square with 
 the lines of ordinary minds), leads them forward provi- 
 dentially to points where they receive illumination. Led 
 by my passion for music I w^ent from theatre to theatre 
 throughout Italy, living on little, as one can live there. 
 Sometimes I played the cello in orchestras ; often I 
 went upon the boards in choruses, or to the wings with 
 the mechanics. Thus I studied music in all its aspects ; 
 
202 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 I followed instruments and the human voice and asked 
 myself wherein they differed and in what they har- 
 monized ; listening carefully to the scores and apply- 
 ing the laws my father taught me. Often I travelled 
 through the country mending instruments. It was a 
 life without food in a land where the sun ever shone, 
 where art is everywhere and money nowhere — at least 
 for the artist, since Rome is no longer, except in name, 
 the sovereign of the Christian world. Sometimes I was 
 well received, sometimes I was driven away because of 
 my poverty ; yet I never lost heart ; I listened to inward 
 voices which foretold fame. Music seemed to me in its 
 infancy. That opinion I still retain. All that remains 
 to us of the musical world anterior to the seventeenth 
 century goes to prove that ancient composers knew 
 melody only, they were ignorant of harmony and its 
 vast resources. Music is both a science and an art. 
 The roots which it sends into physics and mathematics 
 make it a science; it becomes an art by inspiration, 
 which employs, unknown to itself, the propositions of 
 science. It derives from the physical by the very 
 essence of the substance it employs. Sound is air modi- 
 fied ; air is made up of elements, which no doubt find 
 within us analogous elements which respond to them, 
 which sympathize with and augment them, by the 
 power of thought. Thus air must certainly contain as 
 many particles of varying elasticity, capable of as many 
 vibrations of different length, as there are tones in re- 
 verberating bodies ; and these particles, perceived by 
 our ear and put into operation by the musician, answer 
 
Crambara. 
 
 203 
 
 to ideas according to our several organizations. In my 
 opinion the nature of sound is identical with that of 
 light. Sound is light under another form ; both act by 
 vibrations which end in man, and which he then trans- 
 forms in his nerve-centres into thoughts. Music is like 
 painting, which employs bodies that have the faculty of 
 disengaging this or that property of the mother-sub- 
 stance for the composition of a picture. So in music, 
 instruments fulfil the function of a painter's color. In- 
 asmuch as all sound produced by a reverberating bod} r 
 is invariably accompanied by its major third and fifth, 
 and influences grains of dust spread upon a flat parch- 
 ment so as to trace geometrical figures of uniform 
 shapes upon it, according to the varying volumes of 
 the sound, regular when harmony is given forth, and 
 without exact form when discords are produced, I say 
 that music is an art woven from the veiy bowels of 
 Nature." 
 
 Gambara's calm eyes rested on Marcosini, who lis- 
 tened to him with rapt attention. 
 
 " Yes," he continued, "music obeys both plrysical 
 and mathematical laws. The physical laws are little 
 known, the mathematical laws are better known and 
 understood ; the study of their action and influence led 
 to the creation of harmony, to which we owe Mozart, 
 Haydn, Beethoven, and Rossini, men of glorious genius 
 w T ho have certainly produced a music that is nearer 
 perfection than their predecessors, — though the genius 
 of the latter is incontestable. The old masters sang 
 their music instead of modelling it on art and science, 
 
204 
 
 Gamlara. 
 
 — a glorious alliance which blends into one whole the 
 beauties of melody and the powers of harmony. Now 
 if the discovery of the mathematical laws of music gave 
 these four great musicians to humanity, to what height 
 may we not attain when we succeed in discovering the 
 physical laws in virtue of which (I beg you to observe 
 this) we store up in great or lesser quantity, according 
 to proportions yet to be discovered, a certain ethereal 
 substance diffused upon the air, which gives us music 
 as it gives us light, and the phenomena of vegetation 
 as well as those of zoology . Do you understand me ? 
 These new laws provide the composer with new powers ; 
 offering him instruments superior to all present instru- 
 ments and, possibly, a finer harmony than that which 
 rules the realm of music at the present day. If each 
 modulated tone obeys a power, we must know what 
 that power is in order that we may couple these forces 
 according to their appropriate laws. Composers are 
 now working on substances that are unknown to them. 
 Why should an instrument of metal and an instrument 
 of wood, the bassoon and the cornet, resemble each 
 other so little in their effects, though they are worked 
 by the same substances, that is to say, by the constitu- 
 ent gases of the atmosphere. Their dissimilarities come 
 either from some decomposition of those gases, or from 
 the assimilation of principles w r hich are suited to them 
 and which they send back modified by the power of 
 faculties yet unknown to us. If we could discover 
 what those faculties are, science and art would gain 
 immensely. Whatever extends science extends art. 
 
G ambara. 
 
 205 
 
 " Well ! " he cried, after a momentary pause, 44 those 
 discoveries ! I have tracked them, I have made them ! 
 Yes" he continued, growing more and more animated, 
 64 until now man has noted effects rather than causes. 
 If he could penetrate causes music would become the 
 greatest of all the arts. In painting you see only 
 what pictures show you ; you hear only what the poet 
 tells you ; music goes far beyond that, — it forms your 
 thought, it awakens your torpid memory. Behold a 
 thousand souls present in one assembly; notes issue 
 from Pasta's throat (rendering so well the thoughts 
 that shone in Rossini's soul when he wrote the melody) 
 and that single phrase of the master transmitted into 
 those diverse souls develops in them as many diverse 
 poems. To one it shows a woman long desired ; to an- 
 other some shore where once he paced, whose droop- 
 ing willows and transparent water reappear to him with 
 the hopes that danced beneath the bosky coverts ; this 
 woman recalls the throng of feelings that tortured her 
 in an hour of jealousy ; another, the unsatisfied long- 
 ings of her heart, painting to her mind with the rich 
 colors of a dream the ideal being whom she would fain 
 embrace with the ardor of her who caresses her chimera 
 in the Roman mosaic ; another thinks of desires about 
 to be realized, and plunges by anticipation into a tor- 
 rent of delights whose waves bound up and break upon 
 her burning breast. Music alone has power to make 
 us live within ourselves : all other arts give limited 
 pleasures only — Rut I am wandering too far. Such, 
 then, were my first ideas, — vague indeed, for an inventor 
 
206 
 
 Grambara. 
 
 sees at first only a faint aurora. But I carried these 
 glorious ideas at the bottom of my wallet wherever I 
 went ; they helped me to eat the dry crusts gayly as 
 I soaked them in the water of the wayside fountains. 
 I worked, I composed melodies, and when I had played 
 them on some instrument, no matter what, I resumed 
 my travels through Italy. At last, when I was twenty- 
 two, I went to live in Venice, where for the first time 
 I found tranquillity and gained a tolerable position. I 
 made the acquaintance of an old Venetian noble, who 
 was pleased w r ith my ideas, encouraged me in my re- 
 searches, and found me employment at the Fenice thea- 
 tre. Life in Venice is very cheap ; and lodgings cost 
 but little. I occupied an apartment in that Palazzo 
 Capello whence the beauteous Bianca issued one night 
 to become Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Queen of 
 Cyprus. I dreamed that my hidden fame would issue 
 thence and crown me, like her, in coming days. I 
 spent my evenings at the theatre and my days in 
 work. A disaster overtook me. The representation 
 of an opera, ' The Mart}Ts/ in which I had embodied 
 my ideas, was a failure. No one understood my music. 
 Give Beethoven to Italians and they know not where 
 the}' are. No one had the patience to await an effect 
 which all the different themes of each instrument were 
 preparing, until they gathered into one grand harmony. 
 I had founded hopes on that opera of 'The Martyrs,' — 
 for we always discount success, we lovers of the azure 
 goddess Hope ! When a man believes he is destined 
 to produce great things, it is difficult not to have pre- 
 
Grambara. 
 
 207 
 
 sentiments of success ; the cask has chinks through 
 which the light will enter. In the same palazzo lived 
 my wife's family ; and the hope of winning Marianna's 
 hand, when she smiled upon me from her window, had 
 greatly contributed to my efforts. I fell into a state of 
 dark melancholy as I measured the depth of the abyss 
 into which I had fallen ; I saw there was nothing be- 
 fore me but a life of poverty, — a ceaseless struggle in 
 which love must perish. Marianna did as genius does ; 
 she sprang with joined feet over and beyond all difficul- 
 ties. I will not speak of the slender happiness that 
 brightened the early days of my misfortunes. Terri- 
 fied at my downfall, I believed that Italy, dull of com- 
 prehension and slumbering to the chorus of routine, 
 was not prepared to receive the innovations I was med- 
 itating ; my thoughts turned to Germany. As I trav- 
 elled towards that country, taking my way through 
 Hungary, I listened to the manifold voices of nature ; 
 I endeavored to reproduce their sublime harmonies by 
 the help of instruments which I made or modified for 
 the purpose. These experiments required enormous 
 outlays which soon absorbed our slender savings. And 
 yet this was the happiest period of our lives ; I was 
 appreciated in German}^. Nothing finer has come into 
 my life. I know of nothing to compare with the tu- 
 multuous sensations that filled my being in presence 
 of Marianna, whose beauty was then in all its glory 
 and celestial power. Must I admit it ? — I was happy. 
 More than once during those hours of weakness my 
 passion made me speak the language of terrestrial har- 
 
208 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 monies. I composed at times a few of those melodies 
 which resemble geometrical figures, and are so much 
 prized in the world you live in. But as soon as I at- 
 tained success, invincible obstacles were put in my way 
 by my co-musicians, all faithless or incapable. I had 
 heard of France as a country where innovations were 
 welcomed, and I resolved to go there ; my wife col- 
 lected the means and we came to Paris. Up to that 
 time no one had ever laughed in my face ; but in this 
 dreadful city I was forced to bear that cruel torture 
 added to the sharp anguish of our miserable poverty. 
 Compelled to lodge in this polluted quarter of the 
 town, we have lived for the last few months on Ma- 
 rianna's toil ; she sews for the unhappy prostitutes 
 who tramp this neighborhood. Marianna tells me she 
 is treated with deference and generosity by these poor 
 women, which I attribute to the ascendency of a virtue 
 so pure that vice is compelled to respect it." 
 
 u Hope on," said Andrea. u Perhaps you have 
 reached the end of your trials. My efforts shall be 
 united to yours to bring } T our labors into the light of 
 day ; meantime allow a compatriot, an artist like your- 
 self, to offer 3'ou in advance a part at least of your 
 inevitable future gains." 
 
 "All that belongs to my material life is my wife's 
 affair," answered Gambara; u she will decide whether 
 we can accept without humiliation the assistance of an 
 honorable man, such as you appear to be. For myself, 
 who have been led to make }^ou this over-long confi- 
 dence, I must ask your permission to withdraw. A 
 
Crambara. 
 
 209 
 
 melody beckons me ; it dances and darts before me, 
 naked and shivering, like a beautiful girl without her 
 garments. Adieu, I must go and clothe my mistress ; 
 I leave my wife with you." 
 
 He hurried away like a man who blamed himself for 
 wasting precious time; Marianna, half-embarrassed, 
 tried to follow him. Andrea dared not retain her, 
 but Giarclini came to the rescue. 
 
 " Signorina," he said, " did you not hear your hus- 
 band tell you to settle matters with the signor count? " 
 
 Marianna sat down again, but without looking at 
 Andrea, who hesitated to address her. 
 
 ■'"The confidence Signor Gambara has placed in me," 
 he said at last, in a tone of emotion, "may perhaps 
 win me that of his wife. Will la bella Marianna con- 
 sent to tell me 'the - history of her own life? " 
 
 " My life? " answered Marianna, " my life is that of 
 an ivy. As to the history of my heart, you must think 
 me exempt from pride as well as devoid of modesty 
 if you can ask me to tell it to you after what you have 
 just heard." 
 
 u Of whom shall I ask it?" cried the count, whose 
 passion was beginning to extinguish his wits. 
 
 u Of yourself," replied Marianna. " Either you have 
 already comprehended me, or you never will. Ask 
 yourself." 
 
 "I will; but. you must listen to me. I take your 
 hand ; leave it in mine so long as I tell your story 
 truthfully." 
 
 " Go on," said Marianna. 
 
 14 
 
210 
 
 Grambara. 
 
 " The life of a woman begins with her first passion," 
 said Andrea. " My clear Marianna began to live on the 
 day when she first saw Paolo Gauibara ; her nature 
 needed a deep passion to give it joy; above all she 
 needed some pathetic weakness to protect and sustain. 
 The splendid female organization with which she is en- 
 dowed is, perhaps, less drawn to love than to mater- 
 nity. You sigh, Marianna ; have I laid my finger on 
 an open wound ? You took upon yourself a noble part, 
 protecting, as you do, a fine, distraught intellect. You 
 said to yourself : ' Paolo shall be my genius and I will 
 be his reason ; between us we shall become that being, 
 well-nigh divine, that men call angel, — that sublime 
 creature which enjoys and comprehends, while neither 
 virtue nor wisdom stifles love.' In the first trans- 
 ports of youth you heard the myriad voices of nature 
 which your poet longed to reproduce. Enthusiasm 
 filled your soul when Paolo spread before you those 
 treasures of poetry as he vainly sought their equivalent 
 in the sublime but limited language of his own art; 
 you admired him as an ecstatic elation carried him far 
 above you, for you liked to think that all that errant 
 energy would sooner or later return to love. You knew 
 nothing of the tyrannous and jealous empire which 
 thought maintains over the brains that fall in love with 
 it. Gambara was the slave, before he knew you, of 
 that proud and vindictive mistress, against whom you 
 have vainly struggled for him to this day. For one 
 sole moment happiness opened before you. When 
 Paolo fell from the heights where his mind continually 
 
Gcambara. 
 
 211 
 
 soared, he found reality (the reality of your love) so 
 sweet that you may well have thought his madness 
 would slumber forever in your arms. But music re- 
 gained her prey. The dazzling illusion which carried 
 you suddenly into the delights of mutual passion made 
 the solitary path to which you then found yourself con- 
 demned only the more arid and darksome. From the 
 story your husband has just told me, as from the 
 striking contrast between your person and his, I di- 
 vine the secret anguish of your life, the painful mys- 
 teries of this ill-assorted union in which you take the 
 lot of suffering upon yourself. Marianna, though your 
 conduct is ever heroic and your fortitude never deserts 
 you in the performance of your cruel duties, perhaps in 
 the silence of your solitary nights the heart w T hich now 
 is beating hard within your bosom may rise and mur- 
 mur. Your w^orst torture is the worthiness of your 
 husband ; were he less noble, less pure, you might 
 abandon him ; but his virtues support yours ; between 
 your heroism and his you may well ask yourself which 
 should be the last to give way. You are pursuing the 
 real grandeur of your task while Paolo is pursuing his 
 chimera. If the love of duty alone sustained and 
 guided you, perhaps victory might seem easier to you ; 
 to kill your heart and carry your life into the region of 
 abstractions might even suffice you ; religion would 
 absorb the rest ; you would live by an idea, like those 
 saintly women who extinguish at the foot of the altar 
 all the instincts of their nature. But the charm of 
 Paolo's person, the elevation of his soul, the rare and 
 
212 
 
 Gcambara. 
 
 affecting proofs which he gave you of his tenderness, 
 have perpetually driven you from the ideal world where 
 virtue tried to keep you ; they have excited forces 
 within you which are exhausted incessantly in your 
 unequal struggle against the phantom of love. But 
 the time has come wmen you deceive yourself no longer. 
 Years of disillusion have stripped your patience from 
 you ; an angel w 7 ould have lost it long ago. To-day 
 your hope so long pursued is a shadow, not a sub- 
 stance. Madness so near allied to genius must ever be 
 incurable on earth. Aware, at last, of this truth, you 
 have thought of your youth — lost, or at least sacri- 
 ficed ; you have bitterly perceived the wrong done 
 you by nature which gave you a father only where you 
 sought a husband. You ask yourself whether you 
 have not gone far beyond the duties of a wife in 
 keeping yourself faithfully to a man who knows no 
 wife but science. Marianna, leave me your hand ; all 
 that I have told you is true. You have cast your eyes 
 about you but — you were in Paris, not in Italy where 
 they know how to love — " 
 
 " Oh ! let me end the tale," cried Marianna, " I would 
 rather say these things myself. I will be frank. I know 
 I speak to my best friend. Yes, I was in Paris when 
 all that you explain so clearly took place within me ; 
 but when I met you I was saved, for I had nowhere 
 met the love I had dreamed of from my infancy. My 
 dress and my abode withdrew me from the notice of 
 men like you. The few young men I meet here are 
 odious to me ; they treat me with disrespect ; the} 7 scoff 
 
Cramlara. 
 
 213 
 
 at my husband as a foolish dotard ; some basely court 
 him only to betray him ; they all seek to separate me 
 from him ; none of them understand the worship I have 
 vowed to that soul which is so far away from us only 
 because it is so near heaven, nor the love I feel for that 
 friend, that brother whom I desire to serve — forever. 
 You alone have understood the tie that binds me to him. 
 Tell me that your interest in my Paolo is sincere, and 
 without an object — " 
 
 " I accept your praise," interrupted Andrea ; "but do 
 not go too far ; do not oblige me to contradict you. I 
 love you, Marianna, as we love the glorious land where 
 you and I were born ; I love you with all my soul and 
 with all my strength ; but, before I offer you this love 
 I desire to make myself worthy of obtaining yours. I 
 will make a last effort to give you back the" man you 
 have loved from childhood and whom, perhaps, you will 
 never cease to love. While awaiting success or defeat, 
 accept, without a blush, the comforts of life which I 
 desire to give to both of you. To-morrow let us seek a 
 suitable lodging for him. Do you esteem me enough 
 to allow me to share your guardianship ? " 
 
 Marianna, astonished at his generosity, held out her 
 hand ; the count took it, and then left the room, endeavor- 
 ing to avoid the civilities of Signor Giardini and his wife. 
 
 The next day Andrea was ushered by Giardini into 
 the apartment occupied by the husband and wife. 
 Though Marianna well knew the superior nature of her 
 lover (for there are souls that can be quickly read), she 
 
214 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 was too good a housekeeper not to show some embar- 
 rassment on receiving a great lord in so poor a chamber. 
 But it was very clean. She had passed the morning in 
 dusting her extraordinary furniture, the handiwork of 
 Giardini, who had spent his leisure hours in construct- 
 ing it from the woodwork of instruments discarded by 
 Gambara. Andrea had never seen anything so amaz- 
 ing in his life. To maintain the semblance of gravity, 
 he was forced to turn his eyes away from the composer's 
 bed, grotesquely fabricated by the cook out of the case 
 of an old spinet, and look at Marianna's narrow couch, 
 whose single mattress was covered with a piece of white 
 muslin, a sight which filled him with thoughts both sad 
 and tender. He wished to speak of his plans and to 
 arrange for the employment of the morning ; but the en- 
 thusiastic Gambara, believing that he had met with a 
 willing auditor at last, seized upon the count and com- 
 pelled him to listen to an opera which he had written 
 for the Parisians. 
 
 ■" In the first place, monsieur/' said Gambara, " allow 
 me to tell you the subject in half a dozen words. Here, 
 in Paris, persons who receive musical impressions never 
 develop them within their own souls, as religion teaches 
 us to develop sacred texts, by prayer and meditation; 
 consequently, it is difficult to make them understand 
 that there exists in nature an eternal music, a melody 
 infinitely sweet, a perfect harmony, troubled only by 
 fluctuations independent of the divine will, as passions 
 are independent of the will of men. It was therefore 
 necessary that I should find some vast canvas or frame 
 
Grambara. 
 
 215 
 
 able to contain and to show effects and causes — for my 
 music aims to present a picture of the life of nations 
 taken at its highest point of view. My opera (of which 
 I wrote the libretto, for a poet could never have devel- 
 oped the subject) gives the life of Mohammed, a per- 
 sonage in whom the magic of ancient Sabaeanism and 
 the oriental poetry of the Jewish religion were brought 
 together to produce one of the greatest of human 
 poems, — the dominion of the Arabs. Undoubtedly, 
 Mohammed borrowed the idea of absolute government 
 from the Jews, and the progressive movement which 
 created the brilliant empire of the caliphs from the pas- 
 toral or Sabsean religions. The prophet's destiny was 
 imprinted on his very birth. His father was a Pagan 
 and his mother a Jewess. Ah! my dear count, to be 
 a great musician one must needs be very learned. 
 Without education there is no such thing as local color, 
 in fact, no ideas in music. The composer who sings 
 to sing is an artisan, not an artist. This magnificent 
 opera is the continuation of the great work I had 
 already begun. My first opera was called 6 The Mar- 
 tyrs ; ' I intend to write a third on ' Jerusalem Deliv- 
 ered.' You see, of course, the beauty of this triple 
 composition and its manifold resources. The Martyrs, 
 Mohammed, Jerusalem ! The God of the Occident, 
 the God of the Orient, and the struggle of their reli- 
 gions around a tomb. But let me not speak of my lost 
 greatness ! Listen to a summary of my opera. 
 
 "The first act," he continued, after a pause, " shows 
 Mohammed an agent, living in the house of Khadijah, 
 
216 
 
 Grambara. 
 
 a rich widow with whom his uncle placed him. He is 
 amorous and ambitious. Driven from Mecca, he flies 
 to Medina, and dates his era from the period of his 
 flight (the Hegira). The second act presents Moham- 
 med the prophet founding a religion militant. The 
 third shows him satiated with all things ; having ex- 
 hausted life, he seeks to conceal his death that he may 
 seem a god, — last effort of human pride! You shall 
 now judge of my method of expressing by sounds a 
 great fact which poetry can only render imperfectly 
 by words." 
 
 Gambara seated himself at the piano with a calm, 
 collected air ; his wife brought the voluminous sheets 
 of the score, which, however, he did not open. 
 
 u The whole opera," he said, " rests on a bass, as on 
 a rich territory. Mohammed must therefore have a ma- 
 jestic bass voice, and his first wife, necessarily, a con- 
 tralto. Khadijah was past youth ; she was twenty years 
 of age. Attention ! the overture begins (c minor) with 
 an andante (three-four time). Do you hear the sad- 
 ness of the ambitious man whom love cannot satisfy ? 
 Through his plaints, by a transition to related time 
 (e flat allegro, common-time), are heard the cries of the 
 epileptic lover, his ravings, mingled with a few warlike 
 sounds ; for the all-powerful sabre of the caliphs is 
 beginning to gleam before his eyes. The manifold 
 beauties of the single wife give him the idea of that 
 plurality of love which strikes us so forcibly in Don 
 Giovanni. Hearing this theme do you not already 
 foresee the paradise of Mohammed? But here (a flat, 
 
Gramhara. 217 
 
 major key, six-eight) is a cantahile fit to delight a soul 
 rebellious to all musieal emotions ; Khadijah lias com- 
 prehended Mohammed! Khadijah announces to the 
 multitude the conferences of the prophet with the angel 
 Gabriel (maestoso sostenuto in f minor). The magis- 
 trates and priests, power and religion, feeling them- 
 selves attacked by the reformer, as Socrates and Christ 
 attacked the worn-out, expiring religions and powers, 
 turn upon the prophet and drive him from Mecca (strette 
 in c major). But now, listen ! comes my glorious domi- 
 nant O common-time). Arabia hears her prophet, 
 the horsemen gather (g major, e flat, n flat, g minor, 
 still common-time). The avalanche of men augments. 
 The false prophet practises on a tribe the deceptions he 
 is soon to impose upon a world (g, g). He promises 
 universal dominion to the Arabs ; they believe him be- 
 cause he is inspired. The crescendo" begins (with the 
 same dominant). Listen to the flourish of trumpets (c 
 major) ; brass instruments woven into the harmony, but 
 detaching themselves from it to express the first' tri- 
 umphs of victory. Medina is conquered for the prophet 
 and they march to Mecca (burst of martial music, still c 
 major). The powers of the orchestra roll forth like a 
 conflagration, the instruments all speak ; do you hear 
 those torrents of harmony? Suddenly the tutti is in- 
 terrupted by a graceful theme (minor third). Hear 
 the last melody of devoted love ! The woman who 
 sustains the great man dies, concealing her despair ; 
 she dies at the triumph of him in whom love had be- 
 come too mighty to conflne itself to one woman ; she 
 
218 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 adores him enough to sacrifice herself to the greatness 
 which destroys her. Soul of fire! But now behold! 
 the desert invades the world (c major again). The 
 orchestral parts take up the score in a terrible fifth of 
 the fundamental bass, which dies away, — Mohammed 
 is satiated ; he has tasted and exhausted all ! But he 
 chooses to die a God ! Arabia adores him with prayer ; 
 here we fall back into my first sad strain, after the 
 curtain rose (c minor). Do you not find in this mu- 
 sic," said Gambara, ceasing to play, and turning round 
 to the count, "fn this vivid, jostling, melancholy, fan- 
 tastic, and ever grand music, the expression of the life 
 of an epileptic frantic after pleasure, unable to read or 
 write, making his very defects the stepping-stones of 
 his grandeur, transforming his faults and his misfor- 
 tunes into triumphs ? Have you not obtained from this 
 overture — a mere sample of the opera — an idea of his 
 seductive power over an eager and amorous people?" 
 
 The face of the maestro, from which Andrea endeav- 
 ored to divine the meaning of the ideas he was uttering 
 with an inspired voice, and which a chaotic medley of 
 notes hindered his hearer from comprehending, at first 
 austere and calm, grew more and more animated until 
 at last it took a passionate expression which reacted 
 upon Marianna and Giardini. Marianna, keenly affected 
 by the passages in which she recognized her own posi- 
 tion, could not hide the agitation of her face from 
 Andrea. Gambara wiped his forehead and threw his 
 glance with such force to the ceiling that his eyes 
 seemed to pierce it and rise upward to the skies. 
 
Gambara. 
 
 219 
 
 " You have seen the peristyle," he said, " let us now 
 enter the temple. The opera begins. First Act: 
 Mohammed, alone, on the front of the scene, sings an 
 air (f natural, common time), interrupted by a chorus 
 of camel-drivers, who surround a well at the back of 
 the stage (they break into the rhythm, six-eight). 
 What majestic grief! it touches the hearts of the 
 most frivolous of beings. Is it not the melody of re- 
 pressed genius?" 
 
 To Andrea's great astonishment (Marianna was ac- 
 customed to it) Gambara contracted his throat so vio- 
 lently that choking sounds broke forth, something like 
 those of a growling watch-dog. A light froth whitened 
 the composer's lips and made Andrea shudder. 
 
 "His wife appears (a minor). Magnificent duet! 
 In this piece I show that Mohammed possessed will, 
 and his wife intellect. Khadijah announces that she is 
 about to undertake a work which will bereave her of 
 the love of her young husband. Mohammed desires to 
 conquer the world ; his wife divines his purpose ; she 
 seconds it by persuading the people of Mecca that her 
 husband's attacks of epilepsy are the result of his com- 
 merce with angels. Chorus of Mohammed's first dis- 
 ciples, who throng to promise him their help (c sharp 
 minor, sotto voce). Mohammed retires to speak with 
 the Angel Gabriel (recitative in f major). His wife 
 encourages the chorus (air, accompanied by chorus ; 
 gusts of voices sustain Khadijah's grand and majestic 
 song, a major). Abdallah, the father of Ayeshah, 
 the only maiden whom Mohammed has found a virgin, 
 
220 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 and whose name the prophet changed to Abu-Bekr 
 (father of the virgin) comes forward with his daughter ; 
 their voices detach themselves from the chorus, taking 
 up Khadijah's air and sustaining it (in counterpoint) . 
 Omar, father of Hafsah, another maiden whom Moham- 
 med is to possess, follows the example of Abu-Bekr and 
 approaches with his daughter to form a quintette. The 
 virgin Ayesbah is first soprano ; Hafsah second soprano ; 
 Abu-Bekr bass, and Omar barytone. Mohammed re- 
 enters, inspired. He sings his first bravura air, which 
 begins the finale (e major) ; he promises the empire of 
 the world to his first Believers. The prophet beholds 
 the maidens, and by a soft transition (from b major to 
 g major) he turns to amorous phrases. Ali, Mohammed's 
 cousin, and Khaled, his greatest general, both tenors, 
 appear and announce the persecution ; the magistrates, 
 soldiers, and magnates have banished the prophet (reci- 
 tative). Mohammed invokes the Angel Gabriel (in c), 
 declares that the angel is with him, and points to a 
 pigeon circling above his head. The chorus of Believ- 
 ers answer in tones of devotion on a modulation in b 
 major. The soldiers, magistrates, and magnates arrive 
 (tempo di marcia, b major). Struggle between the 
 two choruses (strette in e major). Mohammed (by a 
 succession of diminished and descending sevenths) yields 
 to the storm and takes to flight. The sombre and sav- 
 age color of this finale is flecked by the themes of the 
 three women, who predict Mohammed's triumph ; these 
 phrases will be found developed in the third act, where 
 Mohammed is seen to enjoy the delights of grandeur." 
 
Grambara. 
 
 221 
 
 Tears came into Gambara's eyes, then, recovering 
 from his momentary emotion, he cried out : — 
 
 " Second Act: Behold religion instituted! Arabs 
 guard the tent of their prophet, who confers with God 
 (chorus in a minor). Mohammed shows himself (prayer 
 in f). What brilliant and majestic harmony underlies 
 this chant, in which, methinks, I have pushed back the 
 limits of melody ! Surely I was bound to express the 
 marvels of that great uprising and outpouring of men 
 who created a music, an architecture, a poetry, with 
 customs, manners, and morals of their own. As you 
 listen, are you not pacing beneath the arches of the 
 Generalife and through the gateways of the Alhambra? 
 The fiorituri of the melody paint the exquisite Moorish 
 arabesques of the architecture, and the poesy of that 
 warlike and gallant religion which was soon to meet in 
 arms the gallant and warlike chivalry of the Christians. 
 A few brass instruments sound the first notes of tri- 
 umph (in broken cadence). The Arabs fall down and 
 worship the prophet (e flat major). Khaled, Amrou, 
 and Ali enter (tempo di marcia). The armies of the 
 Faithful have taken the cities and conquered the three 
 Arabias ! Hear that sonorous recitative ! Moham- 
 med rewards his generals by giving them his women. — 
 Here comes in," remarked Gambara, in a rueful tone, 
 "one of those ignoble ballets which cut the thread of 
 the noblest musical tragedies. But Mohammed (b mi- 
 nor) redeems it by his grand prophecy, which that poor 
 Monsieur de Voltaire describes in lines beginning : — 
 ' Arabia's day has come at last.' 
 
222 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 The Arab chorus breaks forth triumphant (allegretto 
 six-eight). The clarions and the other wind instru- 
 ments reappear with the tribes who flock to the stand- 
 ard. General gala, in which all voices take up the 
 strain, one after the other, and Mohammed proclaims 
 Polygamy. In the midst of these rejoicings the woman 
 who has done so much for Mohammed stands forth 
 alone in a glorious melody (b major). 4 And I,' she 
 asks, 'I, ami no longer loved? ' 'We must part, 5 he 
 answers. ' Thou art a woman, I am a prophet ; I may 
 have slaves, I can no longer have an equal.' Listen to 
 this duet (g sharp minor). What conflicts of soul! 
 The woman comprehends the grandeur to which her 
 hands have raised him ; she loves him enough to sacri- 
 fice herself for his glory, she adores him as a God, 
 without judging him, without murmuring. Poor woman, 
 the first dupe and the first victim ! What a theme for 
 the finale (b major) ! Behold the darkness of that 
 grief standing out upon the background of the accla- 
 mations of the Faithful and wedded to the tones of 
 Mohammed, who flings away his wife as a useless in- 
 strument, and yet makes us see that he can never forget 
 her. What triumphant rockets, what red lights of rip- 
 pling joyous songs spring from the throats (first and 
 second soprano) of Ayeshah and Hafsah, sustained by 
 Ali and his wife and Omar and Abu-Bekr. Weep, weep, 
 rejoice ! Triumphs and tears ! for such is life." 
 
 Marianna could not restrain her sobs. Andrea was 
 so moved that his eyes grew moist. The Neapolitan, 
 shaken by the magnetic current of ideas expressed in 
 
Grambara. 
 
 223 
 
 the spasmodic tones of the composer's voice, was over- 
 come with emotion like the others. Gambara turned, 
 saw the group, and smiled. 
 
 " You understand me at last ! " he cried. 
 
 No general led in triumph to the Capitol, amid the 
 purple of his glory and the acclamations of a people, 
 ever looked when the crown was placed upon his head 
 as Gambara now looked. His face shone like that of a 
 sainted martyr. They did not undeceive him. A 
 dreadful smile flickered on Marian na's lips. The count 
 was horror-stricken at such blind and artless insanity. 
 
 kfc Third act," said the happy composer, seating him- 
 self again at the piano: " (andantino solo) Mohammed 
 unhappy in his harem, surrounded by women. Quar- 
 tette of houris (in a major). What splendor ! hear the 
 songs of happy nightingales! Modulations (f sharp 
 minor). The air is given on the dominant e and is 
 then taken up in a major. Delights cluster visibly to 
 the senses to produce a contrast to the gloomy finale of 
 .the first act. After the dances Mohammed rises and 
 sings a grand bravura (f minor), regretting the single 
 and devoted love of his first wife and avowing himself 
 a victim to polygamy. Never did musician have such 
 a theme. The orchestra and the chorus of women ex- 
 press the joys of houris, while Mohammed reverts to 
 the melancholy in which the opera begins. Where is 
 Beethoven?" cried Gambara ; " where is that soul that 
 could understand me in this mighty return of the opera 
 upon itself. See how everything rests upon the bass ; 
 that is how Beethoven constructed his symphony in c. 
 
224 Gambara. 
 
 But his heroic movement is purely instrumental, while 
 mine is supported by a sextet of glorious human voices 
 and by a chorus of Believers who guard the gate of the 
 sacred dwelling. I have here gathered all the treasures 
 of melody and harmony, vocal and orchestral. Listen 
 to the utterance of all human existence, be it rich or be 
 it poor: struggle, triumph, and satiety. Ali enters; 
 the Koran is everywhere triumphant (duet in d minor). 
 Mohammed places himself in the hands of his two 
 fathers-in-law ; he is weary of everything ; he desires to 
 abdicate and die secretly to consolidate his work into a 
 religion. Magnificent sextet (b flat major) ! He bids 
 farewell (solo in f natural). The two fathers, appointed 
 vicars (caliphs) , call the people together. Grand trium- 
 phal march. Prayer of the Arabs kneeling before the 
 sacred mansion {Kasha), whence a pigeon takes its 
 flight (same key) . This prayer, uttered by sixty voices 
 and dominated by women (in b flat), crowns my stupen- 
 dous work, in which the life of nations and of man has 
 found expression. You have heard all emotions, human 
 and divine." 
 
 Andrea gazed at Gambara in stupid amazement. If 
 he had not been shocked by the horrible irony which 
 the man presented as he pictured the feelings of the 
 wife of Mohammed without perceiving the same feelings 
 in Marianna, the madness of the husband might have 
 seemed to him eclipsed by the madness of the composer. 
 There was no semblance of musical or poetical ideas 
 in the deafening cacophony which afflicted his ears ; the 
 principles of harmony, the first rules of composition, 
 
Gambara. 
 
 225 
 
 were absolutely wanting in this formless creation. In- 
 stead of a music scientifically wrought out, such as 
 Gambara described, his fingers produced a succession 
 of fifths, sevenths, and octaves, major thirds and pro- 
 cessions of fourths without sixths in the bass, — a 
 jumble of discordant sounds flung out at random as 
 though combined to rend the ears of the least sensitive 
 of hearers. It is difficult to express this extravagant 
 piece of execution ; new words must be coined to give 
 an idea of this impossible music. 
 
 Painfully affected by the madness of so fine a mind, 
 Andrea colored and glanced furtively at Marianna, who 
 sat with lowered eyes and pallid cheeks, unable to keep 
 back her tears. In the midst of the hurly-burly of notes 
 Gambara gave vent, now and then, to exclamations 
 that revealed the rapture of his soul ; he grew faint with 
 gladness, he smiled at his piano, then he frowned at 
 it in anger and " dragged its tongue out" (to use an 
 expression of the inspired) ; in short, he seemed intox- 
 icated with the poetry that filled his heart and which he 
 vainly sought to utter in his music. The harrowing 
 discords which jangled beneath his fingers evidently 
 resounded in his own ears like celestial harmonies. Be- 
 yond a doubt, the vision of his inspired blue eyes opened 
 on another world ; the rosy glow that warmed his cheeks, 
 above all, the divine serenity which inspiration cast 
 upon his lofty features would have led a deaf man to 
 suppose he was present at the improvisation of some 
 great master. And the illusion would have been all the 
 more perfect because the execution of this insensate 
 
 15 
 
226 Gambara. 
 
 music required a marvellous facility in fingering, which 
 Gambara must have practised for many years. His 
 hands were not the only part of him employed ; the 
 intricacies of the pedals put his whole body in con- 
 stant motion ; perspiration streamed from his face as he 
 labored to swell a crescendo by all the feeble means 
 which a graceless piano lent him ; he stamped, he 
 snorted, he roared ; his fingers darted with the rapidity 
 of the forked tongue of a snake ; finally, as the piano 
 gave out its last howl, he threw himself backward and 
 let fall his head on the back of the chair. 
 
 ''Per Bacco! I am stunned, dizzy," cried Andrea,, 
 escaping from the room. 44 A child jumping on the 
 key-board would have made better music." 
 
 " Of course ! " said Giardini, following. 44 Chance 
 could n't manage to avoid the harmony of two notes 
 as that devil of a fellow has done for the last hour." 
 
 "How can Marianna's features remain so regular?" 
 muttered the count; "they must change under the 
 perpetual hearing of those hideous discords. Marianna 
 will grow "ugly." 
 
 44 Signor conte, we must rescue her from such a 
 danger ! " cried Giardini. 
 
 44 Yes," said Andrea, 44 1 am thinking of it. But, to 
 make sure that my plans are not built on sand, I must 
 test my ideas by an experiment. I shall return here 
 to-morrow to examine the musical instruments he has 
 invented, and at night we will have a little supper, — a 
 medianoche. I s \\ send the wine and the good things." 
 
 The cook bowed low. The count spent the next day 
 
Gambara. 
 
 227 
 
 in arranging an apartment for the poor household. At 
 night he went back to the rue Froidmanteau and found 
 the cakes and wine set out by Marianna and Giardini 
 with a certain daintiness. Gambara showed him tri- 
 umphantly a number of little drums, on which lay grains 
 of powder, by the help of which he made observations 
 on the different natures of the sounds emitted by his 
 instruments. 
 
 Do you see/' he said, " by what simple means I am 
 able to prove a great proposition? In this way acous- 
 tics reveal actions analogous to sound on all the objects 
 which sound affects. All harmonies start from a com- 
 mon centre and retain an intimate relation to each other ; 
 or rather, harmony, which is One, like light, is decom- 
 posed by our art as a ray is by a prism." 
 
 Gambara proceeded to show Andrea the instruments 
 constructed according to his laws, explaining the changes 
 he had made in their form and fabric. He finally an- 
 nounced, not without solemnit^v, that he should crown 
 this preliminary evening, which so far had only satis- 
 fied the curiosity of the eye, by letting all present hear 
 an instrument which was able to fill the place of an 
 entire orchestra, to which he had given the name of 
 panharmonicon. 
 
 " If it is that thing in this cage which makes all the 
 neighbors grumble," said Giardini, u you won't play 
 long, for the police will be after you." 
 
 4t If that poor crazy creature stays here," whispered 
 Gambara in the count's ear, " it will be impossible for 
 me to play." 
 
228 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 The count got rid of the cook by promising him a 
 reward if he would stay downstairs and prevent the 
 neighbors and the patrol from interfering. Giardini, 
 who had not spared the wine in his own behalf while 
 pouring it out for Gambara, consented. The composer, 
 though not intoxicated, was in that state where all the 
 intellectual forces are highly excited, — where the walls 
 of the room are luminous, the garret has no roof, and 
 the soul flutters out into a world of spirits. Marianna 
 uncovered, not without some trouble, an instrument 
 about as large as a grand piano, with an additional 
 upper key-board. This singular machine was also fur- 
 nished with stops for various wind-instruments, and the 
 sharp elbows of several tubes. 
 
 " Will you play to me, if you please, the prayer 
 that you said was so fine, and which concludes your 
 opera?" said the count. 
 
 To Andrea's great astonishment, and also to Mari- 
 anna's, Gambara began with several chords of perfect 
 harmony ; and their astonishment was succeeded first 
 by admiration mingled with surprise, then by a com- 
 plete ecstasy in which they lost sense of the place and 
 man. The effects of an orchestra could not have been 
 finer than the tones of the wind instruments, which 
 swelled like an organ and blended marvellously with 
 the harmonious richness of the stringed instruments. 
 But the imperfect state of this singular machine hin- 
 dered the full development of the composer's thought, 
 which was felt to be still grander. It is to be remarked 
 that a certain perfection in works of art often prevents 
 
Gambara. 
 
 229 
 
 the soul from lifting them to greater heights. The 
 sketch wins the clay against the finished picture in the 
 judgment of those who are able to fill out the sketch 
 by thought instead of seeing it completed. The purest 
 and sweetest music that the count had ever heard rose 
 beneath the fingers of Gambara like incense from an 
 altar. The voice of the composer became youthful 
 once more ; far from injuring the rich melody, it ex- 
 plained, supported, directed it, as the quivering, yearn- 
 ing voice of a reader like Andrieux enlarges the meaning 
 of some fine scene of Corneille or Racine by adding its 
 own sympathetic poetry. This music, worthy of angels, 
 revealed treasures in the vast opera which could never 
 be comprehended so long as this man persisted in try- 
 ing to explain them with his normal reason. Marianna 
 and the count, divided between delight in the music 
 and surprise at the strange instrument with a hun- 
 dred voices, in which a stranger might fancy a choir of 
 young girls were lying concealed, so like were its tones 
 to those of the human voice, dared not interchange 
 their thoughts either by word or look. Marianna's 
 face was lighted by a glorious gleam of hope, which 
 restored the splendor of her youth. This new birth of 
 beauty, allied to the luminous apparition of her hus- 
 band's genius, shaded with a tinge of sadness the 
 delight that this mysterious hour gave the count. 
 
 "You are our good angel," Marianna said to him. 
 " I am tempted to believe that you inspire him, for I, 
 who never leave him, have never heard him express 
 himself like that." 
 
230 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 " Listen to Khadijah's parting song/' cried Gambara, 
 singing the cavatina which the night before he had 
 calied sublime, and which now made the lovers weep, 
 so perfectly did it give expression to the highest self- 
 devotion of love. 
 
 4i Who inspired you with such music ? " cried the count. 
 
 "The Spirit," answered Gambara. "When he ap- 
 pears, all is flame about me. I see melodies face to 
 face, beautiful and fresh, colored like the flowers. They 
 sparkle, they echo, and I listen ; but it needs an infin- 
 itude of time to reproduce them." 
 
 4 4 Play on," said Marianna. 
 
 Gambara, who felt no fatigue, played without effort 
 or extravagance. He executed the overture with such 
 talent, and showed such new and undiscovered wealth 
 in music, that the count, dazzled by what he heard, 
 began to believe in a magic like that of Listz and Paga- 
 u [ n l — the magic of an execution which can change the 
 conditions of music and make it into a poetry which 
 transcends all musical creations. 
 
 "TVett, Excellenza, can you cure him?" asked the 
 cook, when Andrea at last came down. 
 
 " I shall soon know," replied the count. " The man's 
 intellect has two windows : one, toward the world, is 
 closed ; the other opens into heaven. The first is mu- 
 sic, the second is poetry. Until to-day he has stood 
 obstinately before the closed window; we must lead him 
 to the other. You were the first, Giardini, to put me 
 on the track of this truth, when you told me that his 
 mind was clearer after he had drunk a little wine." 
 
Gambara. 
 
 231 
 
 "Yes," said the cook; " and I guess your plan, 
 Excellenza." 
 
 "If it is not too late to make poetry ring in his 
 ears to the harmonies of a glorious music, he must be 
 put in a state to hear it and judge of it. Now it seems 
 that to intoxicate him is the only way to bring this 
 about. Will you help me to manage it, my dear fellow ? 
 — but won't it injure you?" 
 
 " What does Vossignoria mean by that? " 
 
 Andrea made no reply, but went off laughing at the 
 perspicacity of the Neapolitan's crazy brain. 
 
 The next day Marcosini came to fetch Marianna and 
 show her the apartment he had provided. She had 
 spent the morning in preparing a simple but suitable 
 dress, into which she put all her savings. The change 
 might have dissipated the illusions of a sated man of 
 the world, but the count's fancy had now become a pas- 
 sion. Stripped of her poetic poverty and transformed 
 outwardly into an ordinary bourgeoise, Marianna now 
 made him dream of marriage ; he gave her his hand 
 as he placed her in a hackney-coach and imparted his 
 projects. She smiled and approved, happy in finding 
 him more generous, more disinterested, nobler than she 
 had hoped. They reached the new apartment, where 
 Andrea had sought to keep himself present to her mind 
 by adding a few of those elegancies which beguile the 
 hearts of the most virtuous women. 
 
 " I will not speak to you of my love until you de- 
 spair of Paolo's sanity," he said to her as they returned 
 to the rue Froidmanteau. " You shall be witness to the 
 
232 
 
 Grcimhara. 
 
 sincerity of m}< efforts. If they succeed, perhaps I ma}- 
 not be able to endure the part of friend. If so, I shall 
 flee from you, Marianna. I am conscious of sufficient 
 courage to work for your happiness, but I may not have 
 enough to look upon it." 
 
 u Do not say such things," said Marianna, hardly 
 able to restrain her tears. u Has generosity its dan- 
 gers also? What, must you leave me so soon?" 
 
 " Yes," said Andrea. " Seek your happiness with- 
 out interruption from me." 
 
 If G iarclini was to be believed, the healthful change of 
 air and living w r as favorable to both husband and wife. 
 Every evening, after drinking wine, Gambara seemed 
 less absent-minded, talked more, and with more sedate- 
 ness. He even proposed to read the newspapers. An- 
 drea could not restrain a shudder every time he saw 
 some unhoped-for evidence of his success ; but although 
 these pangs revealed to him the strength of his love, 
 they did not lead him to waver in his virtuous resolu- 
 tion. He came every evening to watch the progress of 
 the singular cure, and to take part in conversations, 
 grave or ga} T , in which he opposed Gambara's singular 
 theories with clearness and moderation. He put to use 
 the marvellous lucidity of the latter's mind, on all points 
 that did not touch upon his madness, to make him per- 
 ceive and admit principles in other branches of art 
 which he meant to show him, later, were equally appli- 
 cable to music. All went well so long as the fumes of 
 w T ine excited the patient's brain ; but so soon as he was 
 
Gambara. 
 
 233 
 
 perfectly sober his reason disappeared and his mania 
 revived. Nevertheless, in the main, Paolo allowed him- 
 self to be more easily roused by impressions from the 
 outside, and his mind began to employ itself on a greater 
 number of things about him. Andrea, who t^ok an ar- 
 tist's interest in his semi-medical work, thought at last 
 that it was time to attempt a master-stroke. He re- 
 solved to give a dinner at his own house, to which Giar- 
 dini should be admitted (according to his fancy for not 
 separating the sublime from the ridiculous), and he 
 selected the day when " Robert le Diable," an opera he 
 had already heard rehearsed, was given for the first time 
 in public. After the second course, Gambara, semi- 
 intoxicated, was laughing at his theories with ready 
 grace, while Giardini declared that his culinary inno- 
 vations were of the devil. Andrea had neglected no 
 means to bring about this double miracle. Flasks of 
 Orvieto and Moritefiascone, precious wines brought 
 with all the care that is needed for their safe transport, 
 Lachrymse Christi, and Giro, and other hot wines of la 
 cava patria, soon brought these excitable brains to 
 the double intoxication of the grape and memory. At 
 desert, the cook and the composer mutually and gayly 
 abjured their errors ; one hummed a melody of Rossini, 
 the other piled confectionery on his plate and drenched 
 it with maraschino, in honor of French cookery. The 
 count took advantage of Gambara's happy frame of 
 mind and carried him to the opera, whither he allowed 
 himself to be taken with the gentleness of a lamb. 
 At the first notes of the introduction Gambara's ine- 
 
234 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 briety seemed to vanish, giving place to the exalta- 
 tion which brought at times into harmony his judgment 
 and his imagination ; the habitual discord of which was, 
 no doubt, the cause of his insanity. The dominant 
 thought of the great musical drama appeared to him in 
 all its dazzling simplicity, like a lightning flash break- 
 ing through the clouds of darkness in which he lived. 
 To his now unsealed eyes the music seemed to mark 
 the immense horizons of a world w r here he found him- 
 self for the first time ; though he recognized conditions 
 already seen by him in dreams, He fancied he was 
 transported to those slopes of his own dear country 
 where la bella Italia begins, and which Napoleon so 
 appropriately named the 4 ; glacis of the Alps." As 
 memory took him back to the days when his young and 
 vigorous reason was not yet disturbed by the ecstasy of 
 his too rich imagination, he listened in a reverential 
 attitude, unwilling to utter a single word. The count 
 refrained from interfering with the inward workings of 
 that soul. Till past midnight Gambara sat so motion- 
 less that the audience might have taken him for w T hat 
 he was, — a drunken man. On the w T ay home the 
 count began to attack Meyerbeer's masterpiece, for the 
 purpose of rousing Gambara, who was now plunged in 
 the torpid half-sleep of inebriation. 
 
 " What is there so magnetic in that incoherent com- 
 position that it can make a somnambulist of you? " said 
 Andrea, when they reached the house. 4 4 The subject 
 of 4 Robert le Diable ' is not without interest, I admit ; 
 Holtei has developed it very happily in a well -written 
 
Grambara. 
 
 235 
 
 drama full of strong and moving situations ; but the 
 French authors have contrived to make it the most 
 ridiculous fable in existence. No libretto absurdity of 
 Vesari or Schikaneder ever equalled that of the opera of 
 < Robert le Diable,' — a dramatic nightmare, which op- 
 presses the spectator without rousing him to, any deep 
 emotions. Meyerbeer's clevil plays too good a part. 
 Bertram and Alice represent the struggle between light 
 and darkness, — the good and evil principle. That an- 
 tagonism presents the finest of all contrasts to a com- 
 poser. The sweetest melodies placed side by side with 
 harsh and cruel songs were the natural consequence of 
 the libretto form ; unfortunately, in the German com- 
 poser's score the devils sing better than the saints, 
 The celestial inspirations frequently fall short of their 
 origin, and if the composer leaves the infernal lines for a 
 moment, he hastens to return, weary with the effort he 
 has made to abandon them. Melody, the golden thread 
 that should never be broken in so vast a composition, 
 is often lacking in Meyerbeer's work. Sentiment there 
 is none ; the heart plays no part at all ; and we find 
 few of those delightful themes, those artless songs 
 which touch all sympathies and leave a tender impres- 
 sion on the soul. Harmony reigns supreme, instead of 
 being a basis or background from which the groups of 
 the musical picture should detach themselves. Those 
 discordant chords, far from touching the spectator, 
 only excite his soul to a sentiment analogous to that 
 which he feels at the sight of a tight-rope walker sus- 
 pended between life and death. The charming songs 
 
236 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 never come at the right moment to soothe these ner- 
 vous sensations. One would really believe that the 
 composer had no other object than to appear fantastic : 
 he seizes upon ever}^ excuse to produce an eccentric 
 effect without troubling himself about truth, or musi- 
 cal unity, or the inefficiency of the voices, which are 
 drowned in the instrumental hurly-burly.' V 
 
 "Hush, hush, my friend," said Gambara ; "I am 
 still under the enchantment of that wonderful song of 
 hell, which the trumpets render still more terrible, — 
 a new instrumentation ! The broken cadences which 
 give such vigor to Robert's song, the cavatina in the 
 fourth act, the finale of the first, still hold me under the 
 spell of some superhuman power. No, the composi- 
 tion of Gliick himself never produced such a powerful 
 effect ; I am amazed at so much science." 
 
 " Signor maestro" said Andrea, smiling, "permit 
 me to contradict you. Before Gliick wrote he reflected 
 long. He calculated all chances, and selected plans 
 which could be modified later under his inspirations of 
 detail ; but he never allowed himself to stray from his 
 self-appointed path. There lies the secret of his vigo- 
 rous accentuation, that musical elocution which throbs 
 with truth. I agree with you that the science of Mey- 
 erbeer's opera is very great ; but science becomes a 
 defect when it isolates itself from inspiration ; and I 
 think I perceive in that work the weary toil of an 
 ingenious mind which culled its music from many an 
 opera rejected or forgotten, — appropriating their themes, 
 enlarging, remodelling, concentrating them. But there 
 
Gambara. 
 
 237 
 
 happened to him, as to all imitators, the misfortune of 
 abusing good things. This clever gleaner in musical 
 harvest-fields is prodigal of discords, which, becoming 
 too frequent, end by annoying the ear, and habituating 
 it to startling effects which a composer should be chary 
 of giving, so as to bring out their full value when the 
 situation demands it. These enharmonic transitions 
 are repeated to satiety, and the abuse of the plagal 
 cadence takes a great deal from the religious solemnity 
 of the piece. I know very well that every composer 
 has his own particular forms, to which he returns again 
 and again in spite of himself; but he ought to watch 
 himself and guard against this defect. A picture that 
 had none but blues and reds in it would be very far 
 from truth, and fatiguing to the eye. Thus the almost 
 uniform rhythm of the different parts of ' Robert ' gives 
 monotony to the whole score. As to the effect of 
 the trumpets, of which you speak, it has long been 
 known in Germany, and what Meyerbeer gives us for 
 new was employed by Mozart, who made his chorus of 
 devils in 4 Don Giovanni ' sing in that way." 
 
 Andrea tried to make Gambara refute him and so re- 
 turn to his true musical sentiments ; all the while lead- 
 ing him to further libations, and endeavoring to show 
 him that his inspired mission in this world was not to 
 regenerate an art that was beyond his faculties, but to 
 seek expression for his thought under another form, 
 which was in fact poetry. 
 
 " You don't understand that great musical drama, my 
 dear count," said Gambara, carelessly. He stood a mo- 
 
238 
 
 Grambara. 
 
 ment before Andrea's piano, tried the notes, listened to 
 their tone, seated himself, and appeared to be thinking 
 for some minutes as if to collect his own ideas. 
 
 " In the first place you must know," he said, tf that a 
 trained ear like mine perceives at once the adaptations 
 of which you speak. Yes, this music is selected with 
 love from the treasures of a rich and fruitful imagination 
 into which science has pressed ideas which issue from it 
 in pure musical essence. I'll explain it to you." 
 
 He rose to move the wax-lights into the adjoining 
 room and before returning to his seat drank a large 
 glass of Giro, that Sardinian wine which contains as 
 much fire as any old Toka}' ever lighted. 
 
 " The truth is," said Gambara, 4 4 this music was not 
 written for sceptics nor for those who cannot love. If 
 you never in your life experienced the vigorous assaults 
 of an evil spirit who obscures the purpose for which 
 you are aiming, who brings a painful end to the noblest 
 hopes, — in a word, if you have never seen the devil's tail 
 whisking about this world, — the opera of ' Robert le 
 Diable ' is to you what the Apocalypse is to those who 
 think that everything ends when they do. But if, per- 
 secuted and unhappy, you comprehend the Spirit of 
 Evil, that great ape which hourly destroys the works of 
 God ; if you imagine him as not having loved but 
 violated an almost divine woman, gaining from that 
 deed the joys of paternity to the extent of preferring to 
 have his son eternally miserable with him rather than 
 see him eternally happy with God ; if you imagine the 
 soul of the mother hovering around her son to draw him 
 
Gambara. 
 
 239 
 
 from the horrible temptations of his father, 3-011 will 
 even then have but a faint idea of that vast poem to 
 which little is wanting to make it the rival of Mozart's 
 'Don Giovanni.' 4 Don Giovanni' is superior, I ad- 
 mit, through the perfection of its form. ' Robert le 
 Diable* represents ideas; 4 Don Giovanni' excites 
 sensations. 4 Don Giovanni' is still the only musical 
 work in which harmony and melody are in exactly equal 
 proportions. In that alone lies the secret of its supe- 
 riority to 4 Robert/ for 4 Robert ' is more teeming. 
 But what is the good of these comparisons, since both 
 works are beautiful with their own beauty? To me, 
 who have groaned under the reiterated assaults of the 
 Evil One, 4 Robert' speaks more vigorously than to 
 you ; I find it both vast and concentrated. Truly, 
 thanks to you, I have just inhabited the world of 
 dreams where our senses are magnified, where the 
 universe unfolds in gigantic proportions in comparison 
 with man." He was silent for a moment. 4t I still 
 quiver," continued the unhappy artist, 44 at the sound of 
 those four bars with the timbals which shook my very 
 being when they opened the short, abrupt introduction 
 where the trombone solo, the flutes, the hautboys, and 
 the clarionet cast a fantastic color into the soul. That 
 andante in c minor foreshadows the theme of the invo- 
 cation of souls in the abbey ; magnifying that scene 
 by its announcement of a purely spiritual struggle. I 
 shuddered ! " 
 
 Gambara struck the notes with a firm hand and de- 
 veloped Meyerbeer's passage in a masterly manner with 
 
240 
 
 Gramhara. 
 
 a sort of explosion of soul characteristic of Liszt. The 
 instrument was no longer a piano, it was an orchestra 
 — the genius of music was evoked. 
 
 That is Mozart's style/' he cried. " Hear how this 
 German handles chords, by what learned modulations 
 he leads through terror to the dominant of c. I hear 
 Hell ! The curtain rises. What do I behold? the only 
 spectacle to which we can give the epithet infernal ; an 
 org}' of knights in Sicily. The chorus in f contains all 
 human passions let loose in that Bacchic allegro. Every 
 thread b}' which the devil leads us is shaken. That is 
 the sort of joy which seizes men when they dance on the 
 brink of an abyss ; they whirl themselves into vertigo. 
 What movement in the chorus ! From it the reality of 
 life, an artless bourgeois life, stands out (g minor) in 
 Raimbaud's song, which is full of simplicity. That 
 worthy man, expressing the green plenteousness of 
 NormaiKry, refreshes my soul as he recalls it to the 
 drunken Robert. The sweetness of that loved land 
 shines like a golden thread through the darkness of the 
 scene. Now comes the marvellous ballad in c major, 
 accompanied by the chorus in c minor which tells the 
 stor\- admirably. Then bursts forth 6 Robert am I ! ' 
 The fuiy of the prince offended by his vassal is no 
 longer a natural fury ; but soon it calms down, for 
 memories of childhood return with Alice in the allegro 
 (a major) so full of movement and grace. Do you hear 
 the cries of innocence persecuted alreacry as it enters 
 the infernal drama? 4 No, no !' " sang Gambara, mak- 
 ing the piano echo him. 4 4 His native land and all its 
 
Gambara, 
 
 241 
 
 memories bloom once more in Robert's heart, — the 
 shade of his mother rises, attended by soothing relig- 
 ious thoughts. Religion inspires that beautiful ballad in 
 e major where we find a miraculous progression of har- 
 mony and melody on the words : — , 
 
 , " For in the skies as on the earth 
 His mother prayeth f or him." 
 
 The struggle begins between the mysterious Powers 
 and the sole man who has in his veins the fire of hell to 
 resist them. And, that you may fully understand it, 
 listen to the entrance of Bertram, which the great musi- 
 cian covers with an orchestral ritornello recalling Raim- 
 baut's ballad. What art ! what linking of all the parts ! 
 what powers of construction ! The devil is beneath all ; 
 he hides, he wriggles. With the terror of Alice, who 
 recognizes the devil of the Saint Michel in her own 
 Norman village, the combat of the two principles be- 
 gins. The musical theme develops — with what varied 
 phases ! Here comes in the antagonism of parts, so ne- 
 cessary to every opera, shown in a noble recitative (such 
 as Gliick composed) between Bertram and Robert : — 
 
 " Thou wilt never know to what excess I love thee." 
 That diabolical c minor, that terrible bass of Bertram 
 which countermines and destroys every effort of the 
 man of violent temperament, — to me it is all startling, 
 terrifying. Must crime have its criminal, the execu- 
 tioner his prey? Must misfortune swallow up an art- 
 ist's genius? Must disease kill its victim? Can the 
 guardian angel protect and preserve the Christian? 
 
 16 
 
242 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 Here is the finale. — the gambling scene where Bertram 
 torments his son and drives him to terrible emotions. 
 Robert, despoiled, angry, destroying everything about 
 him. desirous of killing, of breathing fire and slaughter, 
 seems to him indeed his son ; the father sees the like- 
 ness. What atrocious gayety in Bertram's words, : I 
 laugh at thy blows ' ! How the Venetian barcarole tints 
 this finale ! By what bold transitions thai infamous pa- 
 ternity returns upon the scene to drag Robert to the 
 gambling-table ! This opening of the opera is over- 
 whelming to those who follow out such themes in the 
 depths of their hearts, giving them the full meaning 
 which the composer intended to convey. Love alone 
 could oppose that grand symphony of voices in which 
 you will find no monotony nor the employment of the 
 same means : it is a unit and yet varied, — the charac- 
 ter of all that is grand and natural. I breathe freer ; 
 I reach the higher sphere of a chivalrous court ; I hear 
 the fresh and sweet, yet slightly melancholy phrases of 
 Isabelle and the chorus of women in two sections echoing 
 each other, reminding us. it may be. of the Moorish in- 
 fluence on Spain. Here the terrible music is softened by 
 mellow tones, like a tempest calming down, till it comes 
 to this dainty flowery duet, so well modulated and not 
 in the least like the preceding music. After the uproar 
 of the camp of martial heroes and adventurers, comes a 
 picture of love. I thank thee, poet ! My heart could 
 have borne no more. If those daisies of light opera 
 did not blossom for my gathering, if I had not listened 
 to the sweet gayety of the woman who loves and who 
 
Gambara. 
 
 243 
 
 consoles, I could not have borne the awful note with 
 which Bertram reappears, warning his son (as he hears 
 him promise the adored princess that he will conquer 
 with the arms she gives him), « If I permit it ! ' To 
 the hope of the gambler reforming through love, the 
 love of that exquisite Sicilian (do you not see her, 
 with her falcon eye?), to the hope of the man, Hell 
 answers in that awful cry: 'Robert of Normandy, 
 beware ! 3 Do you not admire the sombre horror of 
 those long, splendid notes, 'In the nigh forest'? All 
 the fascination of ' Jerusalem Delivered 3 is in them, 
 just as Chivalry appears in that chorus with the Span- 
 ish movement, and in the tempo di marcict. What 
 originality in that allegro ; in the modulations of the 
 four attuned timbals (c d, c g). What grace in the 
 call to the tournament! The movement, the impulse 
 of the heroic life of the period is there ; the soul unites 
 with it ; I read a romance of chivalry and a poem. 
 The exposition ends ; the resources of the art of music 
 seem exhausted ; you have heard nothing like it ; and 
 yet all was homogeneous. You have seen human life 
 in its one and only real aspect : ' Shall I be happy or 
 unhappy?' ask the philosophers; 'Shall I be saved 
 or damned?' say the Christians." 
 
 Here Gambara paused on the last notes of the chorus, 
 which he drew forth in a lingering, melancholy way ; 
 then he rose to pour out and drink another large glass of 
 Giro. That semi-African wine lit up once more the in- 
 candescence of his face which the passionate and marvel- 
 lous execution of Meyerbeer's opera had slightly paled. 
 
244 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 u That nothing be lacking to the composition, " he 
 resumed, " the great artist has freety given us the only 
 burlesque song which a devil could allow himself to 
 sing, that of the temptation of a poor troubadour. He 
 puts horror and a jest side by side, a jest which swal- 
 lows up the only reality that appears in the weird 
 opera ; namel}^ the pure and tranquil loves of Alice 
 and of Raimbaut ; their life is to be troubled by an- 
 ticipated vengeance. Great souls alone can feel the 
 nobility that animates these comic airs. They have 
 neither the gaudiness of our Italian music nor the vul- 
 garity of Parisian street favorites. The majesty of 
 Olympus lingers near them. The bitter laugh of a 
 divinity contrasts with the surprise of a troubadour 
 Don-Juanized. Without this touch of grandeur the 
 return to the general tone of the opera would be too 
 abrupt, full as it is of dreadful rage, in diminished 
 sevenths ending in that infernal waltz which brings us, 
 finally, face to face with devils. With what vigor 
 Bertram's couplet detaches itself (b minor) from the 
 Devil's chorus, depicting paternal despair mingling 
 with demoniac voices ! What an exquisite transition 
 is the arrival of Alice with the ritornello in b fiat ! I 
 still hear those angelic songs of heavenly freshness, 
 the warble of the nightingale after a tempest. The 
 great thought of the whole thus permeates details ; 
 for what better could be contrasted with this writhing 
 of devils in their den than the marvellous air of 
 Alice, — 
 
 ' When I forsook my Normandy! ' 
 
Gambara. 
 
 245 
 
 The golden thread of that melody runs through the 
 whole length of the powerful harmony like a celestial 
 hope, embroidering it, — and with what wonderful abil- 
 ity ! Never does genius lose its hold on the science that 
 guides it. The song of Alice in b flat is caught up 
 and linked with f sharp, the dominant of the infernal 
 chorus. Do you hear the tremolo of the orchestra? 
 Robert is bidden to the symposium of devils. Bertram 
 re-enters, and here is the culminating point of musical 
 interest, a recitative comparable only to the grandest 
 compositions of the greatest masters ; the struggle in 
 e flat between the two athletes, Heaven and Hell, — 
 the one in 4 Yes, thou knowest me ! ' (on a diminished 
 seventh) , the other in that f sublime : ' Heaven is with 
 me ! * Hell and the Cross stand face to face. Then 
 follow Bertram's threats to Alice, the most awful pa- 
 thos in existence ; the Genius of Evil revealing itself 
 complacently, and tempting, as ever, through self- 
 interest. The entrance of Robert, and the magnifi- 
 cent trio in a flat without accompaniment, opens the 
 struggle between the two opposing forces for posses- 
 sion of the man. See how clearly this is produced,"- 
 cried Gambara, reproducing the scene with a passion- 
 ate execution which thrilled Andrea. "All this ava- 
 lanche of music from the four-time of the timbals has 
 rolled onward to this struggle of the three voices. 
 The spell of Evil triumphs. Alice flees away. You 
 hear the duet in d between Bertram and Robert ; the 
 devil drives his claws into Robert's heart ; he rends it, 
 the better to make it his ; he summons all things to 
 
246 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 his aid ; honor, hope, eternal happiness, all are made 
 to shine in Kobert's eyes ; he carries him, like Jesus, 
 to the pinnacle of the Temple and shows him all the 
 treasures of the earth, that jewel-case of Evil : finally, 
 he piques his courage, and the noble feelings of the 
 man answer forth in the cry : — 
 
 " To the knights of mine own land, 
 Honor was ever their main-stay." 
 
 Then, to crown all, comes the theme that so fatally 
 opened the opera ; here it is, the leading song in that 
 magnificent evocation of souls : — 
 
 " Nuns who sleep beneath that frigid stone, 
 Hear you me? " 
 
 Gloriously carried through, the music ends gloriously 
 by the allegro vivace of the bacchanal in d minor. 
 Hell triumphs ! Roll on, music ! swathe us in thy many 
 folds; roll on, beguiling! The infernal Powers have 
 seized their prey, they hold him, they dance about him 
 That noble genius, born to vanquish and to reign, — 
 behold him lost ! the devils are joyful ; poverty stifles 
 genius, passion destroys the knight." 
 
 Here Gambara expanded the baechanale himself, 
 improvising clever variations and accompanying the 
 instrument in a melodious voice, as if he needed to give 
 utterance to sufferings he had felt, 
 
 "Do you hear the celestial plaints of neglected 
 love?" he continued. " Isabelle calls Robert from 
 the midst of that great chorus of knights on their way 
 to the tournament, where the themes of the second act 
 
Gambara. 
 
 247 
 
 reappear to mark distinctly that the events of the third 
 act happen in the sphere of nature. Real life is felt. 
 The chorus subsides as the witcheries of Hell approach, 
 brought by Robert with the talisman ; the wonders of 
 the third act are now developed. First the tenor-violin 
 duet, where the rhythm shows plainly the brutal de- 
 sires of a man who is capable of all, while the princess, 
 with plaintive moans, endeavors to recall her lover to 
 reason. There, the musician put himself in a position 
 that was difficult to carry through ; yet he mastered it 
 by the loveliest thing in the whole work. What exqui- 
 site melody in the cavatina, ' Mercy for thee ! ' That 
 piece alone would make the fame of the opera, for 
 every woman fancies herself contending with a knight. 
 Never was music so passionate nor so dramatic. The 
 whole world now turns against the reprobate, It may 
 be objected that this finale is like that of ' Don Gio- 
 vanni ; ' but there is this enormous difference : a noble 
 faith inspires Isabelle, a perfect love able to rescue 
 Robert, who disdainfully casts back the devilish talis- 
 man confided to him, while Don Giovanni, on the other 
 hand, persists in his unbelief. Besides, this accusation 
 has been made against all composers who have written 
 finales since the days of Mozart. The finale of < Don 
 Giovanni' is one of those classic forms which are writ- 
 ten for all time. At last we hear Religion, rising om- 
 nipotent with a voice that rules the universe, calling all 
 sorrows to console them, all repentances to give them 
 peace. The whole audience is stirred by the accents 
 of that chorus : — 
 
248 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 " Wretched or guilty men, 
 Hasten, approach ! '* 
 
 Hitherto, in the awful tumult of unchained passions, 
 the sacred voice has not been heard ; but at this criti- 
 cal moment it sounds, the divine Church rises efful- 
 gent. I am astonished to find here at the close of 
 such harmonic treasures a new vein of wealth in that 
 fine masterpiece, 4 Glory to Providence ! ' written in 
 Handel's manner. Robert enters, distracted, rending 
 our souls with his, ' Would I could pray ! ' Constrained 
 by the edict of hell, Bertram pursues his son and makes 
 a last effort. Alice reveals the mother ; and you hear 
 the glorious trio to which the whole opera has advanced, 
 the triumph of the soul over matter, the victory of the 
 spirit of Good over the spirit of Evil. The songs of 
 faith silence the songs of hell ; joy reappears in splen- 
 dor. But here the music weakens ; I see a cathedral 
 only ; I do not hear the choir of happy angels, the 
 divine voices of souls delivered, giving thanks for the 
 union of Robert and Alice. We ought not to be left 
 under the gloom of the Satanic spell ; w r e should leave 
 the scene with hope at heart. I, a Catholic musician, 
 I needed, my soul demanded, another prayer of Moses. 
 Also, I would fain have seen Germany in the lists 
 against Italy ; and know what Meyerbeer would have 
 done to rival Rossini. However, the author may say, in 
 justification of this defect, that after five hours of such 
 solid, substantial music Parisians prefer a decorative 
 end to a musical masterpiece. You heard the accla-- 
 mations that followed the piece ; it will run for 
 
Gambara. 
 
 249 
 
 five hundred nights. If Frenchmen understand this 
 music — " 
 
 44 They understand it because it has ideas," said the 
 count. 
 
 i 
 
 " No; only because it powerfully presents an image 
 of struggles in which so many souls are worsted ; and 
 because all individual existences are fastened to it, as 
 it were, by memory. Therefore it is that I, an unhappy 
 man, grieve that I do not hear at its close the songs of 
 those celestial voices I have long heard in dreams." 
 
 Here Gambara fell into ecstasy, improvising the most 
 melodious and harmonious cavatina that Andrea had 
 ever heard ; a song divine divinely sung ; a theme of 
 grace qomparable only to that of the 0 filii et JUics, 
 and full of charm which none but musical genius of the 
 highest order could haye given. The count was filled 
 with admiration : the clouds were breaking ; heaven's 
 blue shone forth ; angelic forms appeared and raised 
 the veils that hid the sanctuary ; the light of heaven 
 streamed down in torrents. Silence soon reigned. The 
 count, surprised to hear no more, looked up at Gam- 
 bara, who, with fixed eyes and rigid body, stammered 
 the word "God!" The count awaited the moment 
 when the composer came back from the celestial re- 
 gions where the prismatic wings of inspiration bore 
 him, resolved to illumine his mind with the light which 
 he himself brought down. 
 
 66 Well," he said, offering more wine, and touching 
 glasses, " you see that this German has written, as you 
 say, a sublime opera without troubling himself about 
 
250 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 theory ; whereas musicians who study the grammar of 
 their art are frequently, like literary critics, intolerable 
 composers." 
 
 44 Then you do not like my music?" 
 
 u I do not say that; but if, instead of perpetually 
 dissecting how to express ideas, — instead of driving 
 musical principles to an extreme, which only makes 
 you lose your way, — }'ou would simply awaken our 
 sensations, I am sure you would be better understood, 
 unless, indeed, you have not mistaken your vocation. 
 You are a great poet." 
 
 " What ! " exclaimed Gambara, 44 are twenty-five years 
 of toilsome study wasted? Must I learn the imperfect 
 language of men, — I, who hold the key to the Celestial 
 Word ? Ah ! if you are right, let me die ! " 
 
 " You? no, no! You are great and you are strong. 
 You shall begin another life, and I, your friend, will sus- 
 tain you. Let us show to the world the rare and noble 
 union of an artist and a rich man who understand each 
 other." 
 
 44 Are you telling me the truth? " said Gambara, rigid 
 with sudden stupor. 
 
 " I have told you already, }T>u are more a poet than 
 a musician." 
 
 44 Poet! poet! That is better than nothing. Tell 
 me the truth, — whom do you value most, Mozart or 
 Homer? " 
 
 44 1 admire them equally." 
 
 44 On your honor? " 
 
 44 On my honor." 
 
Gambara. 
 
 251 
 
 " Hum ! One word more. What think 3-011 of Meyer- 
 beer and B3T011? " 
 
 " By naming them together you yourself have judged 
 them/* 
 
 The count's carriage was at the door ; the composer 
 and his titled physician were driven to Gambara's resi- 
 dence. Running quickly upstairs, they were soon in 
 Marianna's presence. Gambara threw himself into the 
 arms of his wife, who drew back a step and averted 
 her head. The husband stepped back himself, bent 
 toward the count, and said in a hollow voice, "You 
 might, at least, have left me my madness." Then he 
 drooped his head and fell. 
 
 " What have you done? " cried Marianna, casting at 
 the body a look in which pity struggled with disgust. 
 " He is dead-drunk ! " 
 
 The count, with the help of his valet, raised Gam- 
 bara and put him to bed ; then Andrea left the house, 
 his heart full of horrid joy. 
 
 The next day he purposely let the hour of his daily 
 visit go by ; he was beginning to fear that he had duped 
 himself, and had paid too dear for the comfort and virtue 
 of that humble household whose peace he had forever 
 troubled. 
 
 Giardini presently appeared, bringing a note from 
 Marianna. 
 
 " Come," she wrote, " the harm done is not as great 
 as you desired, cruel man." 
 
 " Eccellenza," said the cook, while Andrea dressed 
 himself, "you entertained us magnificently last night. 
 
252 
 
 Qambara. 
 
 But yon must allow that, apart from the wines, which 
 were excellent, your maitre-d'hotel did not serve a single 
 dish worth}' of the table of an epicure. You won't deny, 
 I suppose, that the viands placed before you on the day 
 when you did me the honor to sit at my table were super- 
 latively better than those that sullied your magnificent 
 silver service last night. Consequently, when I awoke 
 this morning I bethought me of your promise to make 
 me chef. I look upon myself now as attached to your 
 household." 
 
 u The same thought has been in my mind for the last 
 few days," replied Andrea. " 1 have mentioned you to 
 the secretary of the Austrian embassy, and you will be 
 allowed to cross the Alps without danger whenever you 
 like. I have a castle in Croatia which I seldom visit ; 
 there you may combine the functions of porter, butler, 
 cook, and steward on a salary of six hundred francs a 
 year. This emolument will be that of your wife also, 
 who will do the rest of the work. You can try 3-our 
 experiments in anima vili, — that is to say, on the 
 stomachs of my vassals. Here 's a cheque for the costs 
 of the journey." 
 
 Giardini kissed the count's hand in his Neapolitan 
 wa} T . 
 
 " Eccellenza," he said, " I accept the cheque without 
 accepting the situation. It would be dishonorable in 
 me to abandon my art and lose the good opinion of the 
 finest epicures, who are undoubtedly those of Paris." 
 
 When Andrea reached Gambara's apartment the com- 
 poser rose and came forward to meet him. 
 
Gambara. 253 
 
 " My generous friend," he said frankly, « either you 
 took advantage of the weakness of my head to play a 
 joke on me last night, or your brain is no stronger than 
 mire when tested by the native fumes of our good wines 
 of Latium. I choose the latter supposition ; I prefer to 
 doubt your stomach rather than your heart. But how- 
 ever that may be, I renounce forever the use of wine ; 
 for its abuse led me into culpable folly last evening 
 When I think that I degraded - " (He cast a look of 
 terror at Marianna.) » As for the wretched opera winch 
 you took me to hear, I have thought it over: it is noth- 
 ing more than music made by ordinary methods ; heaps 
 of notes piled together, verba et voces, — the dregs of 
 that nectar which I quaff in deep draughts as I utter 
 the celestial music which it is given to me to hear ! I 
 know the origin of those patched up phrases. That 
 'Glory to Providence' is too like Handel; the chorus 
 of knights on their way to the tournament is cousin- 
 german to the Scotch air given in the ' Dame Blanche.' 
 In short, if the opera pleases, it is only because the 
 music derives from everywhere and is therefore popu- 
 lar. Now I must leave you, my dear friend. I have 
 had, since morning, an idea in my head which bids me 
 rise to God on the wings of music ; but I wanted to 
 see you, and say this much to you. Adieu ! I go to 
 ask pardon of my guardian muse. We will dine to- 
 gether this evening; but no more wine, - at least, not 
 for me. Oh ! I am quite resolved." 
 
 " I despair of him," said Andrea, coloring high. 
 
 " You enlighten my conscience," cried Marianna, " I 
 
254 
 
 Gambara. 
 
 dared not question it. My friend, my friend, the fault 
 is not ours ; he will not let us cure him." 
 
 Six years later, in January, 1837, many musical 
 artists who were unlucky enough to injure their wind 
 or stringed instruments were in the habit of bringing 
 them to a dilapidated and disreputable house in the rue 
 Froidmanteau, where the said instruments were mended 
 by an old Italian, named Gambara, living on the fifth 
 floor. For the last five years this man had lived alone, 
 his wife having abandoned him. An instrument, called 
 by him a panharmonicon and from which he expected 
 fame, had been sold by the sheriff at public auction, to- 
 gether with a mass of music-paper thickly blotted over. 
 The day after the sale, this paper appeared in the mar- 
 kets, around pats of butter, and fish and fruit. In this 
 way three operas — of which the poor man talked a 
 great deal, though a former Neapolitan cook, now a 
 seller of broken victuals, declared they were a heap of 
 rubbish — were disseminated through Paris in the 
 wicker baskets of the hucksters. But what matter for 
 that? the owner of the house got his rent and the 
 sheriff's men their pay. The Neapolitan victual-dealer, 
 who sold to the prostitutes of the rue Froidmanteau the 
 scraps remaining from the fine dinner-parties given in 
 society the night before, was always ready to tell how 
 the Signora Gambara had followed a Milanese noble- 
 man to Italy, and no one now knew what had become of 
 her. Weary of poverty and wretchedness she was 
 probably ruining that count by her extravagance, for 
 
Gambara. 255 
 
 they adored each other with a passion that in all his 
 Neapolitan experience he had never beheld. 
 
 One evening, towards the end of this'same month of 
 January, as Giardini, the victual-seller, was talking 
 with a girl wbo came to buy her supper, about this glo- 
 rious Marianna, so pure, so beautiful, so nobly self- 
 devoted, but who, nevertheless, had ended like "all the 
 rest, the girl and Giardini's wife noticed in the street 
 a tall thin woman, with a dusty, blackened face, — a 
 perambulating, galvanized skeleton, who was looking 
 at the numbers and trying to find a house. 
 " Ecco la Marianna!" cried Giardini. 
 Marianna recognized the poor fellow, without giving 
 heed to the misfortunes which had brought him clown to 
 his present miserable trade. She entered the shop and 
 sat down, wearied with a walk from Fontainebleau ; the 
 poor woman had come forty miles that day and had 
 begged her bread from Turin to Paris. The sight of 
 her horrified that miserable trio. Nothing remained of 
 her marvellous beauty but a pair of fading, anguished 
 eyes. The sole thing she had found faithful to her was 
 misfortune. She was heartily welcomed by the old 
 mender of instruments, who saw her enter his room 
 with inexpressible pleasure. 
 
 " Here you are, my poor Marianna," he said, kindly. 
 " During your absence they sold my instrument and my 
 operas." 
 
 It was difficult to kill the fatted calf for the return of 
 the wanderer ; but Giardini contributed some scraps of 
 salmon, the street-girl paid for the wine, Gambara gave 
 
256 
 
 Gambard. 
 
 his bread, Signora Giardini laid the cloth, and these 
 rnany and diverse sorrows supped together in the musi- 
 cian's garret. When questioned about her history Ma- 
 rianna refused to answer, but she raised her fine eyes to 
 heaven, and said in a low voice to Giardini : — 
 " Married to a danseuse" 
 
 " How are you going to live," asked the girl ; " your 
 tramp from Milan has killed you and — " 
 
 " — made me an old woman," said Marianna. "No, 
 it is not fatigue, not poverty, that has done it, but 
 grief." 
 
 " Bah ! " said the girl, " why did n't you send money 
 to your man here? " 
 
 Marianna answered only with a look, but it stabbed 
 the girl to the heart. 
 
 "Proud indeed!" she exclaimed, "excuse me — 
 What good will that do her?" she whispered to 
 Giardini. 
 
 That year all musicians took extraordinary care of 
 their instruments and the business of repairing them did 
 not suffice for the daily bread of that poor home ; the 
 wife earned little by her needle, and the pair were re- 
 duced to use their talents in the lowest of all spheres. 
 Both went at dusk to the Champs Elysees and sang 
 duets, w^hich Gambara, poor soul, accompanied on a 
 wretched guitar. On their way thither, the wife, who 
 on these occasions covered her head with a miserable 
 muslin veil, took her husband to a grocery in the fau- 
 , bourg Saint-Honore and gave him enough brandy to in- 
 toxicate him, without which his music would, have been 
 
Gambara. 
 
 257 
 
 intolerable. Then they took their stand before the gay 
 world seated on chairs along the promenade, and the 
 greatest genius of the day, the unknown Orpheus of 
 modern music, played fragments of his operas to the 
 sitting crowd, and these samples were so remarkable 
 that they won a few pennies from Parisian indolence. 
 One day, a dilettante of the BoufTons, not recognizing 
 the opera from which these pieces were taken, ques- 
 tioned the woman with the Grecian head-dress when she 
 held out the round metallic plate in which she gathered 
 alms. 
 
 " My dear, where did you get that music?" 
 " From the opera of < Mohammed,' " answered Mari- 
 anna. 
 
 As Rossini had composed an opera called " Moham- 
 med II." the gentleman remarked to the lady who was 
 with him, "What a pity that they will not give us at 
 the opera-house those works of Rossini that are least 
 known. Certainly, this is glorious music." 
 
 Gambara smiled. 
 
 A few days ago it was necessary for the poor couple 
 to pay the paltry sum of thirty-six francs, the rent of 
 their miserable garret. The grocer would give no credit 
 for the brandy with which the wife intoxicated her 
 husband to make him play his best. Gambara's music 
 then became insufferable ; the ears of the rich populace 
 were offended and the metallic plate returned empty. It 
 was nine in the evening when a beautiful Italian, the 
 Principessa Massimilla di Varese, took pity on the suf- 
 fering pair. She gave Marianna forty francs, and ques- 
 
 17 
 
258 Gambara. 
 
 tioned both when she discovered from the wife's thanks 
 that she was a Venetian. Prince Emilio, who accom- 
 panied his wife, asked the history of their misfortunes, 
 which Marianna related without complaint of man or 
 of heaven. 
 
 " Madame," said Gambara, who was not drunk, " we 
 are the victims of our own superiority. My music is 
 beautiful ; but when music rises from sensation to idea, 
 none but persons of genius can listen to it ; for they 
 alone have the power to draw forth its meaning. My 
 misfortune has been that I listened to the songs of 
 angels and thought that men could understand them. 
 It is so with women when their love assumes a form di- 
 vine, — men no longer comprehend them." 
 
 Those words were worth the forty francs Massimilla 
 had just bestowed, and she drew another gold piece 
 from her purse, saying as she gave it to Marianna, that 
 she should write to Andrea Marcosini. 
 
 "Do not write to him, madame," said Marianna, 
 " and ma}' God preserve your beauty." 
 
 44 Let us take care of them," said the princess to her 
 husband ; u this man has remained faithful to the Ideal 
 which we have killed." 
 
 When Gambara saw the gold he wept ; then there 
 came to him a reminiscence of his former scientific 
 labors, and, as he wiped away his tears, a saying which 
 the attendant circumstances rendered piteous : — 
 
 " Water is a burned substance." 
 
BALZAC IN ENGLISH. 
 
 The Magic Skin. 
 
 (LA PEAU DE CHAGRIN.) 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY. 
 
 execution ^T* S ?- n li/ 8 - * grea - no y el >-§ re at in its conception, great in its 
 t u^ } \u f^ at ln the im P ressj on it leaves upon the reader's mind Those 
 powe^Xl Worv "I 0 , X \ ^ ^ retra <? ^ afte" reading 
 
 m ™ife w hill I' , f Picturesque representation of the great moral truth that 
 "Ma^ic Skfn » w. P Y Si Gyery - eX , C f S ? WG t uj ° y - In the § radual drinking of the 
 or mfnd w ^ ^ me T ltab]e law that b Y uncontrolled dissipation of body 
 
 Z " f - Q P CU \ P h y s] cal strength and exhaust our vitality. In that beanti- 
 
 know ot no more awful allegory in literature. -BosTonTra^rift. ""'^ " ' 
 satire and sarcasm whth 8 • f hado ?'. and Wlth continual flashes of wit, 
 
 grin » Miss Wormelev Cm 8 i f 8 • ry * ln trans]atin S " ^a Peau de Cha- 
 
 ful of'ilf rT 9 ? thou S htful P T refa ce is a fitting introduction to the most wonder- 
 thei? nafu« ^ and scone ' thin P i '' to T f £eir significance, and to define 
 
 Peau °de Chasrri ' r'nmi K 7-^ y ears before the fuller appreciation of " La 
 fa U s>e^r m e.3j >U ^V^ d y «»£ which will Ee studied in cen- 
 
 ^1.50. 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 
 
 Boston. 
 
BALZAC IN ENGLISH. 
 
 MODESTE MlGNON. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY. 
 
 In " Modeste Mignon " we still have that masterly power of analysis, keen, 
 incisive, piercing superficiality and pretence, as a rapier pierces a doublet, but we 
 have in addition the puritv and sweetness of a genuine light comedy, — a comedy 
 which has for its central object the delineation of the mysteries of a young girl's 
 mind. 
 
 As a whole, " Modeste Mignon " is not only a masterpiece of French art, but 
 a masterpiece of that master before whom later novelists must pale their ineffec- 
 tual fires. As the different examples of Balzac's skill are brought before the pub- 
 lic through the excellent translations by Miss Wormeley, none competent to judge 
 can fail to perceive the power of that gigantic intellect which projected and carried 
 out the scheme of the Comedie Humaine,nor fail to understand the improvement 
 in literature that would result if Balzac's methods and aims were carefully studied 
 by all who aspire to the name of novelist. — New York Home Journal. 
 
 The public owes a debt of gratitude to the industrious translator of Balzac's 
 masterpieces. They follow one another with sufficient rapidity to stand in striking 
 contrast with each other. The conscientious reader of them cannot but lay down one 
 after another with an increasing admiration for their author's marvellous grasp upon 
 the great social forces which govern the thought and actions of men. In " Modeste 
 Mignon," as in " Eugenie Grandet," we find that the tremulous vibrations of first 
 love in the heart of a young and pure-minded girl are not deemed unworthy of this 
 great artist's study. The delicate growth of a sentiment which gradually expanded 
 into a passion, and which was absolutely free from any taint of sensuality, is 
 analyzed in " Modeste Mignon" with consummate skill. The plot of this book 
 is far from extraordinary. It is even commonplace. But where in these days 
 shall we find another author who can out of such a simple plot make a story like 
 the one before us? The many-sidedness of Balzac's genius is widely acknowl- 
 edged ; but there are probably few people among those whose acquaintance with 
 his" 5 writings has been necessarily limited to translations who could conceive of him 
 producing such a bright and sparkling story, thoroughly realistic, full of vitalizing 
 power, keen analysis, and depth of study and reflection, brilliantly imaginative, 
 and showing an elasticity in its creative process which cannot fail to attract every 
 lover of a higher and better art in fiction. 
 
 But light and delicate as Balzac's touch generally is throughout this volume, 
 there is also shown a slumbering force which occasionally awakens and delivers a 
 blow that seems as if it had been struck by the hammer of Thor. He ranges over 
 the whole scale of human passion and emotion, penetrates into the very inmost 
 chambers of the heart, apprehends its movements, and lays bare its weakness 
 with a firm and yet delicate touch of his scalpel. The book has been excellently 
 translated by Miss Wormeley. She is fully in sympathy with the author, and has 
 caught his spirit, and the result is a translation which preserves the full flavor, 
 vigor, and delicacy of the original. 
 
 One handsome \2mo volwne, uniform with " P ere Goriot," " The 
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