progress
in the interpretation of the Divine Word writing upon all things here
below.

These constant and secret researches into matters occult gave to
Etienne's life the apparent somnolence of meditative genius. He would
spend long days lying upon the shore, happy, a poet, all-unconscious of
the fact. The sudden irruption of a gilded insect, the shimmering of the
sun upon the ocean, the tremulous motion of the vast and limpid mirror
of the waters, a shell, a crab, all was event and pleasure to that
ingenuous young soul. And then to see his mother coming towards him,
to hear from afar the rustle of her gown, to await her, to kiss her, to
talk to her, to listen to her gave him such keen emotions that often a
slight delay, a trifling fear would throw him into a violent fever. In
him there was nought but soul, and in order that the weak, debilitated
body should not be destroyed by the keen emotions of that soul, Etienne
needed silence, caresses, peace in the landscape, and the love of
a woman. For the time being, his mother gave him the love and the
caresses; flowers and books entranced his solitude; his little kingdom
of sand and shells, algae and verdure seemed to him a universe, ever
fresh and new.

Etienne imbibed all the benefits of this physical and absolutely
innocent life, this mental and moral life so poetically extended.
A child by form, a man in mind, he was equally angelic under either
aspect. By his mother's influence his studies had removed his emotions
to the region of ideas. The action of his life took place, therefore,
in the moral world, far from the social world which would either
have killed him or made him suffer. He lived by his soul and by his
intellect. Laying hold of human thought by reading, he rose to thoughts
that stirred in matter; he felt the thoughts of the air, he read the
thoughts on the skies. Early he mounted that ethereal summit where alone
he found the delicate nourishment that his soul needed; intoxicating
food! which predestined him to sorrow whenever to these accumulated
treasures should be added the riches of a passion rising suddenly in his
heart.

If, at times, Jeanne de Saint-Savin dreaded that coming storm, he
consoled herself with a thought which the otherwise sad vocation of
her son put into her mind,--for the poor mother found no remedy for his
sorrows except some lesser sorrow.

"He will be a cardinal," she thought; "he will live in the sentiment
of Art, of which he wi