expressible affection,
"_Vir nobilis_!"

Madame de Stael was, in fact, partly the cause of Lambert's troubles. On
every pretext masters and pupils threw the name in his teeth, either in
irony or in reproof.

Louis lost no time in getting himself "kept in" to share my
imprisonment. Freer thus than in any other circumstances, we could talk
the whole day long in the silence of the dormitories, where each boy had
a cubicle six feet square, the partitions consisting at the top of open
bars. The doors, fitted with gratings, were locked at night and
opened in the morning under the eye of the Father whose duty it was to
superintend our rising and going to bed. The creak of these gates, which
the college servants unlocked with remarkable expedition, was a sound
peculiar to that college. These little cells were our prison, and boys
were sometimes shut up there for a month at a time. The boys in these
coops were under the stern eye of the prefect, a sort of censor who
stole up at certain hours, or at unexpected moments, with a silent step,
to hear if we were talking instead of writing our impositions. But a few
walnut shells dropped on the stairs, or the sharpness of our hearing,
almost always enabled us to beware of his coming, so we could give
ourselves up without anxiety to our favorite studies. However, as
books were prohibited, our prison hours were chiefly filled up with
metaphysical discussions, or with relating singular facts connected with
the phenomena of mind.

One of the most extraordinary of these incidents beyond question is
this, which I will here record, not only because it concerns Lambert,
but because it perhaps was the turning-point of his scientific career.
By the law of custom in all schools, Thursday and Sunday were holidays;
but the services, which we were made to attend very regularly, so
completely filled up Sunday, that we considered Thursday our only real
day of freedom. After once attending Mass, we had a long day before us
to spend in walks in the country round the town of Vendome. The manor of
Rochambeau was the most interesting object of our excursions, perhaps
by reason of its distance; the smaller boys were very seldom taken on so
fatiguing an expedition. However, once or twice a year the class-masters
would hold out Rochambeau as a reward for diligence.

In 1812, towards the end of the spring, we were to go there for the
first time. Our anxiety to see this famous chateau of Rochambeau, where