me with my cousin, I gave him proof of much more
confidence and respect than in the past. His talks were as useful to me
as my reading. I was allowed to accompany him in his walks in the park
and in his philosophical visits to Patience's snow-covered hut. This
gave me an opportunity of seeing Edmee more frequently and for longer
periods. My behaviour was such that all her mistrust vanished, and she
no longer feared to be alone with me. On such occasions, however, I
had but little scope for displaying my heroism; for the abbe, whose
vigilance nothing could lull to sleep, was always at our heels. This
supervision no longer annoyed me; on the contrary, I was pleased at it;
for, in spite of all my resolutions, the storms of passion would still
sweep my senses into a mysterious disorder; and once or twice when I
found myself alone with Edmee I left her abruptly and went away, so that
she might not perceive my agitation.

Our life, then, was apparently calm and peaceful, and for some time
it was so in reality; but soon I disturbed it more than ever by a vice
which education developed in me, and which had hitherto been hidden
under coarser but less fatal vices. This vice, the bane of my new period
of life, was vanity.

In spite of their theories, the abbe and my cousin made the mistake
of showing too much pleasure at my rapid progress. They had so little
expected perseverance from me that they gave all the credit to my
exceptional abilities. Perhaps, too, in the marked success of the
philosophical ideas they had applied to my education they saw something
of a triumph for themselves. Certain it is, I was not loath to let
myself be persuaded that I had great intellectual powers, and that I
was a man very much above the average. My dear instructors were soon to
gather the sad fruit of their imprudence, and it was already too late to
check the flight of my immoderate conceit.

Perhaps, too, this abominable trait in my character, kept under by the
bad treatment I had endured in childhood, was now merely revealing its
existence. There is reason to believe that we carry within us from our
earliest years the seeds of those virtues and vices which are in time
made to bear fruit by the action of our environment. As for myself, I
had not yet found anything whereon my vanity could feed; for on what
could I have prided myself at the beginning of my acquaintance with
Edmee? But no sooner was food forthcoming than suffering vanity rose up