the owner sometimes treated the boys to milk, made us all very good,
and nothing hindered the outing. Neither Lambert nor I had ever seen the
pretty valley of the Loire where the house stood. So his imagination and
mine were much excited by the prospect of this excursion, which filled
the school with traditional glee. We talked of it all the evening,
planning to spend in fruit or milk such money as we had saved, against
all the habits of school-life.

After dinner next day, we set out at half-past twelve, each provided
with a square hunch of bread, given to us for our afternoon snack.
And off we went, as gay as swallows, marching in a body on the famous
chateau with an eagerness which would at first allow of no fatigue.
When we reached the hill, whence we looked down on the house standing
half-way down the slope, on the devious valley through which the river
winds and sparkles between meadows in graceful curves--a beautiful
landscape, one of those scenes to which the keen emotions of early youth
or of love lend such a charm, that it is wise never to see them again in
later years--Louis Lambert said to me, "Why, I saw this last night in a
dream."

He recognized the clump of trees under which we were standing, the
grouping of the woods, the color of the water, the turrets of the
chateau, the details, the distance, in fact every part of the prospect
which we looked on for the first time. We were mere children; I, at any
rate, who was but thirteen; Louis, at fifteen, might have the precocity
of genius, but at that time we were incapable of falsehood in the most
trivial matters of our life as friends. Indeed, if Lambert's powerful
mind had any presentiment of the importance of such facts, he was far
from appreciating their whole bearing; and he was quite astonished
by this incident. I asked him if he had not perhaps been brought
to Rochambeau in his infancy, and my question struck him; but after
thinking it over, he answered in the negative. This incident, analogous
to what may be known of the phenomena of sleep in several persons, will
illustrate the beginnings of Lambert's line of talent; he took it, in
fact, as the basis of a whole system, using a fragment--as Cuvier did in
another branch of inquiry--as a clue to the reconstruction of a complete
system.

At this moment we were sitting together on an old oak-stump, and after a
few minutes' reflection, Louis said to me:

"If the landscape did not come to me--which it is