rich and flatter the strong of my division. My heart rose against
either of these meannesses, which, however, most children readily

employ. I lived under a tree, lost in dejected thought, or reading the
books distributed to us monthly by the librarian. How many griefs were

in the shadow of that solitude; what genuineanguish filled my
neglected life! Imagine what my sore heart felt when, at the first

distribution of prizes,--of which I obtained the two most valued,
namely, for theme and for translation,--neither my father nor my

mother was present in the theatre when I came forward to receive the
awards amid general acclamations, although the building was filled

with the relatives of all my comrades. Instead of kissing the
distributor, according to custom, I burst into tears and threw myself

on his breast. That night I burned my crowns in the stove. The parents
of the other boys were in town for a whole week preceding the

distribution of the prizes, and my comrades departedjoyfully the next
day; while I, whose father and mother were only a few miles distant,

remained at the school with the "outremers,"--a name given to scholars
whose families were in the colonies or in foreign countries.

You will notice throughout how my unhappiness increased in proportion
as the social spheres on which I entered widened. God knows what

efforts I made to weaken the decree which condemned me to live within
myself! What hopes, long cherished with eagerness of soul, were doomed

to perish in a day! To persuade my parents to come and see me, I wrote
them letters full of feeling, too emphatically worded, it may be; but

surely such letters ought not to have drawn upon me my mother's
reprimand, coupled with ironical reproaches for my style. Not

discouraged even then, I implored the help of my sisters, to whom I
always wrote on their birthdays and fete-days with the persistence of

a neglected child; but it was all in vain. As the day for the
distribution of prizes approached I redoubled my entreaties, and told

of my expected triumphs. Misled by my parents' silence, I expected
them with a beating heart. I told my schoolfellows they were coming;

and then, when the old porter's step sounded in the corridors as he
called my happy comrades one by one to receive their friends, I was

sick with expectation. Never did that old man call my name!
One day, when I accused myself to my confessor of having cursed my

life, he pointed to the skies, where grew, he said, the promised palm
for the "Beati qui lugent" of the Saviour. From the period of my first

communion I flung myself into the mysterious depths of prayer,
attracted to religious ideas whose moral fairyland so fascinates young

spirits. Burning with ardent faith, I prayed to God to renew in my
behalf the miracles I had read of in martyrology. At five years of age

I fled to my star; at twelve I took refuge in the sanctuary. My
ecstasy brought dreams unspeakable, which fed my imagination, fostered

my susceptibilities, and strengthened my thinking powers. I have often
attributed those sublime visions to the guardian angel charged with

moulding my spirit to its divinedestiny; they endowed my soul with
the faculty of seeing the inner soul of things; they prepared my heart

for the magic craft which makes a man a poet when the fatal power is
his to compare what he feels within him with reality,--the great

things aimed for with the small things gained. Those visions wrote
upon my brain a book in which I read that which I must voice; they

laid upon my lips the coal of utterance.
My father having conceived some doubts as to the tendency of the

Oratorian teachings, took me from Pont-le-Voy, and sent me to Paris to
an institution in the Marais. I was then fifteen. When examined as to

my capacity, I, who was in the rhetoric class at Pont-le-Voy, was
pronounced worthy of the third class. The sufferings I had endured in

my family and in school were continued under another form during my
stay at the Lepitre Academy. My father gave me no money; I was to be

fed, clothed, and stuffed with Latin and Greek, for a sum agreed on.
During my school life I came in contact with over a thousand comrades;

but I never met with such an instance of neglect and indifference as
mine. Monsieur Lepitre, who was fanatically attached to the Bourbons,

had had relations with my father at the time when all devoted
royalists were endeavoring to bring about the escape of Marie

Antoinette from the Temple. They had lately renewed acquaintance; and
Monsieur Lepitre thought himself obliged to repair my father's

oversight, and to give me a small sum monthly. But not being
authorized to do so, the amount was small indeed.

The Lepitre establishment was in the old Joyeuse mansion where, as in
all seignorial houses, there was a porter's lodge. During a recess,

which preceded the hour when the man-of-all-work took us to the
Charlemagne Lyceum, the well-to-do pupils used to breakfast with the

porter, named Doisy. Monsieur Lepitre was either ignorant of the fact
or he connived at this arrangement with Doisy, a regular smuggler whom

it was the pupils' interest to protect,--he being the secret guardian
of their pranks, the safe confidant of their late returns and their

intermediary for obtaining forbidden books. Breakfast on a cup of
"cafe-au-lait" is an aristocratic habit, explained by the high prices

to which colonial products rose under Napoleon. If the use of sugar
and coffee was a luxury to our parents, with us it was the sign of

self-conscious superiority. Doisy gave credit, for he reckoned on the
sisters and aunts of the pupils, who made it a point of honor to pay

their debts. I resisted the blandishments of his place for a long
time. If my judges knew the strength of its seduction, the heroic

efforts I made after stoicism, the repressed desires of my long
resistance, they would pardon my final overthrow. But, child as I was,

could I have the grandeur of soul that scorns the scorn of others?
Moreover, I may have felt the promptings of several social vices whose

power was increased by my longings.
About the end of the second year my father and mother came to Paris.

My brother had written me the day of their arrival. He lived in Paris,
but had never been to see me. My sisters, he said, were of the party;

we were all to see Paris together. The first day we were to dine in
the Palais-Royal, so as to be near the Theatre-Francais. In spite of

the intoxication such a programme of unhoped-for delights excited, my
joy was dampened by the wind of a coming storm, which those who are

used to unhappiness apprehendinstinctively. I was forced to own a
debt of a hundred francs to the Sieur Doisy, who threatened to ask my

parents himself for the money. I bethought me of making my brother the
emissary of Doisy, the mouth-piece of my repentance and the mediator

of pardon. My father inclined to forgiveness, but my mother was
pitiless; her dark blue eye froze me; she fulminated cruel prophecies:

"What should I be later if at seventeen years of age I committed such
follies? Was I really a son of hers? Did I mean to ruin my family? Did

I think myself the only child of the house? My brother Charles's
career, already begun, required large outlay, amply deserved by his

conduct which did honor to the family, while mine would always
disgrace it. Did I know nothing of the value of money, and what I cost

them? Of what use were coffee and sugar to my education? Such conduct
was the first step into all the vices."

After enduring the shock of this torrent which rasped my soul, I was
sent back to school in charge of my brother. I lost the dinner at the

Freres Provencaux, and was deprived of seeing Talma in Britannicus.
Such was my first interview with my mother after a separation of

twelve years.
When I had finished school my father left me under the guardianship of

Monsieur Lepitre. I was to study the higher mathematics, follow a
course of law for one year, and begin philosophy. Allowed to study in

my own room and released from the classes, I expected a truce with
trouble. But, in spite of my nineteen years, perhaps because of them,

my father persisted in the system which had sent me to school without
food, to an academy without pocket-money, and had driven me into debt

to Doisy. Very little money was allowed to me, and what can you do in
Paris without money? Moreover, my freedom was carefully chained up.

Monsieur Lepitre sent me to the law school accompanied by a man-of-
all-work who handed me over to the professor and fetched me home

again. A young girl would have been treated with less precaution than
my mother's fears insisted on for me. Paris alarmed my parents, and

justly. Students are secretly engaged in the same occupation which
fills the minds of young ladies in their boarding-schools. Do what you

will, nothing can prevent the latter from talking of lovers, or the
former of women. But in Paris, and especially at this particular time,

such talk among young lads was influenced by the oriental and sultanic
atmosphere and customs of the Palais-Royal.

The Palais-Royal was an Eldorado of love where the ingots melted away
in coin; there virgin doubts were over; there curiosity was appeased.

The Palais-Royal and I were two asymptotes bearing one towards the
other, yet unable to meet. Fate miscarried all my attempts. My father

had presented me to one of my aunts who lived in the Ile St. Louis.
With her I was to dine on Sundays and Thursdays, escorted to the house