.

It was in memory of the disaster that befell Louis' book that, in the
tale which comes first in these _Etudes_, I adopted the title invented
by Lambert for a work of fiction, and gave the name of a woman who was
dear to him to a girl characterized by her self-devotion; but this is
not all I have borrowed from him: his character and occupations were of
great value to me in writing that book, and the subject arose from
some reminiscences of our youthful meditations. This present volume is
intended as a modest monument, a broken column, to commemorate the life
of the man who bequeathed to me all he had to leave--his thoughts.

In that boyish effort Lambert had enshrined the ideas of a man. Ten
years later, when I met some learned men who were devoting serious
attention to the phenomena that had struck us and that Lambert had so
marvelously analyzed, I understood the value of his work, then already
forgotten as childish. I at once spent several months in recalling the
principal theories discovered by my poor schoolmate. Having collected my
reminiscences, I can boldly state that, by 1812, he had proved, divined,
and set forth in his Treatise several important facts of which, as
he had declared, evidence was certain to come sooner or later. His
philosophical speculations ought undoubtedly to gain him recognition as
one of the great thinkers who have appeared at wide intervals among men,
to reveal to them the bare skeleton of some science to come, of which
the roots spread slowly, but which, in due time, bring forth fair fruit
in the intellectual sphere. Thus a humble artisan, Bernard Palissy,
searching the soil to find minerals for glazing pottery, proclaimed,
in the sixteenth century, with the infallible intuition of genius,
geological facts which it is now the glory of Cuvier and Buffon to have
demonstrated.

I can, I believe, give some idea of Lambert's Treatise by stating the
chief propositions on which it was based; but, in spite of myself, I
shall strip them of the ideas in which they were clothed, and which were
indeed their indispensable accompaniment. I started on a different path,
and only made use of those of his researches which answered the purpose
of my scheme. I know not, therefore, whether as his disciple I can
faithfully expound his views, having assimilated them in the first
instance so as to color them with my own.

New ideas require new words, or a new and expanded use of old words,
extended and def