ch attached to
her cure, and used to say of him: "He has a kind heart!"

He came every Thursday to spend the evening at the chateau, and they
were close friends, with the open and honest friendship of old people.

She persisted:

"Look here M. le Cure! 'tis your turn now to make a confession!"

He repeated: "I was not made for a life like everybody else. I saw it
myself fortunately in time, and I have had many proofs since that I
had made no mistake on the point.

"My parents, who were mercers in Verdiers, and rather rich, had much
ambition on my account. They sent me to a boarding-school while I was
very young. You cannot conceive what a boy may suffer at college, by
the mere fact of separation, of isolation. This monotonous life
without affection is good for some, and detestable for others. Young
people have often hearts more sensitive than one supposes, and by
shutting them up thus too soon, far from those they love, we may
develop to an excessive extent a sensibility which is of an overstrung
kind, and which becomes sickly and dangerous.

"I scarcely ever played; I never had companions; I passed my hours in
looking back to my home with regret; I spent the whole night weeping
in my bed. I sought to bring up before my mind recollections of my own
home, trifling recollections of little things, little events. I
thought incessantly of all I had left behind there. I became almost
imperceptibly an over sensitive youth to whom the slightest annoyances
were dreadful griefs.

"Together with this I remained taciturn, self-absorbed without
expansion, without confidants. This work of mental exaltation was
brought about obscurely but surely. The nerves of children are quickly
excited; one ought to have regard to the fact that they live in a
state of deep quiescence up to the time of their almost complete
development. But does anyone reflect that, for certain students, an
unjust imposition can be as great a pang as the death of a friend
afterwards? Does anyone render an exact account to himself of the fact
that certain young souls have with very little cause, terrible
emotions, and are in a very short time diseased and incurable souls?

"This was my case. This faculty of regret developed itself in me in
such a fashion that my existence became a martyrdom.

"I did not speak about it; I said nothing about it; but gradually I
acquired a sensibility, or rather a sensitivity so lively that my soul
resembled a living wound. E