d exactly like
two rats, huddled into the corner of the room where our desks were,
sitting there alike during lesson time and play hours. This strange
state of affairs inevitably and in fact placed us on a footing of war
with all the other boys in our division. Forgotten for the most part, we
sat there very contentedly; half happy, like two plants, two images
who would have been missed from the furniture of the room. But the most
aggressive of our schoolfellows would sometimes torment us, just to
show their malignant power, and we responded with stolid contempt, which
brought many a thrashing down on the Poet-and-Pythagoras.

Lambert's home-sickness lasted for many months. I know no words to
describe the dejection to which he was a prey. Louis has taken the glory
off many a masterpiece for me. We had both played the part of the "Leper
of Aosta," and had both experienced the feelings described in Monsieur
de Maistre's story, before we read them as expressed by his eloquent
pen. A book may, indeed, revive the memories of our childhood, but it
can never compete with them successfully. Lambert's woes had taught me
many a chant of sorrow far more appealing than the finest passages in
"Werther." And, indeed, there is no possible comparison between the
pangs of a passion condemned, whether rightly or wrongly, by every law,
and the grief of a poor child pining for the glorious sunshine, the
dews of the valley, and liberty. Werther is the slave of desire; Louis
Lambert was an enslaved soul. Given equal talent, the more pathetic
sorrow, founded on desires which, being purer, are the more genuine,
must transcend the wail even of genius.

After sitting for a long time with his eyes fixed on a lime-tree in the
playground, Louis would say just a word; but that word would reveal an
infinite speculation.

"Happily for me," he exclaimed one day, "there are hours of comfort when
I feel as though the walls of the room had fallen and I were away--away
in the fields! What a pleasure it is to let oneself go on the stream of
one's thoughts as a bird is borne up on its wings!"

"Why is green a color so largely diffused throughout creation?" he would
ask me. "Why are there so few straight lines in nature? Why is it that
man, in his structures, rarely introduces curves? Why is it that he
alone, of all creatures, has a sense of straightness?"

These queries revealed long excursions in space. He had, I am sure, seen
vast landscapes, fragrant