Goethe, has pictured Faust as having first acquired the learning of the schools, philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence and theology; then as going forth with Mephisto in quest of excitement, to which comes a tragic ending. The shock of this paralyzes him for a time from further endeavor. In the Second Book of the drama, he again rises up with strong resolve to begin an active career in the busy world.

Somewhat in analogy with this is the history of every one who leaves adolescence behind and attempts without the discipline of experience, to find a place and engage in the future work of life. Too often, however, it is more the varied wanderings of a Jung-Stilling, requiring the vicissitudes of years of preparation.

Lamartine desired to enter upon a military life, but it was repugnant to the wishes of his family that he should take service, either in the army of Bonaparte, or of any country that might be opposed to France. His father retained his royalist sentiments with characteristic stubbornness, and his older uncle, the recognized head of the family, though a former friend of Mirabeau, had refused the office of Senator when offered to him by the Emperor. Young Lamartine was thus handicapped and forced to idleness.

He spent some winters in Paris, and mingled with the gaieties and dissipations which young men encountered at the metropolis. The result was self-abasement. He incurred debts at the gaming table, which his limited allowance though eked out by secret contributions from his mother, were insufficient to meet; and he formed acquaintances that were a serious drawback to him in later years.

Perhaps he, like Bunyan, depicted himself in darker colors than there was really occasion. "There was not," says he, "air enough in the sky, fire enough in the sun, or space enough on the earth for the want of breath, excitement and burning that consumed me. I was a living fever; I had the delirium and inquietude of it in every part. The sober habits of my years of study, and the tranquil piety of my mother and our teachers, have been put far away from me. My friendships were as unworthy as my feelings. I had become intimate with the most giddy and turbulent young men of my country and period."

Nevertheless while he was going forward so readily in disorderly ways he was actually repelled by them. Indeed, he was only imitating others, and not really following his own natural disposition. When he came to be alone, the solitude purified him.

In 1813 he again visited Italy. His first opportunity for activity now came.

Paris having surrendered and Napoleon having abdicated, the Allied Powers of Europe placed Louis XVIII. on the throne of France. This prince had always been liberal in his views, and he now proclaimed a constitutional government. This conciliated all parties, royalists and republicans alike. Lamartine was enrolled in the Royal Guard, and was of the force that marched against Bonaparte upon his return from Elba.

The statement has been generally accepted and believed that the reception of the Emperor on this occasion was of the nature of a triumph. Lamartine declares that this was unqualifiedly untrue. The enthusiasm, he affirms, was confined entirely to the soldiers and to the dregs of the population. France, itself, the real France, had become utterly weary of this fighting for the aggrandizement of this one man. It had welcomed Louis XVIII., but not as the king of a counter-revolution. It did not contemplate any going back to former conditions. The king was received as the king of the Liberal Constitution.

"All the movement of the Revolution of 1789 which had been interrupted was commenced anew by us after the fall of the Imperial Government. The entire France,—the France that thought and not the France that clamored—was perfectly conscious that the return of Bonaparte meant the return of the military rÉgime and tyranny. Of this it stood in dread. The Twentieth of March [1815] was a conspiracy of the army and not a movement of the nation. If there had not been an army organized in France that was ready to fly under the eagles of its Emperor, the Emperor would never have reached Paris."

Nevertheless Lamartine was confounded by what took place. In the brief space of eight days apart, he saw one France ready to rise up in mass against Bonaparte, and then another France prostrate at his feet. From that day he despaired of the omnipotence of opinion and believed even more than he ought in the power of bayonets.

Louis XVIII., the Count d'Artois and son, with Marshal Marmont and the royal forces left Paris the night before Bonaparte made his entry. As they passed the cities on their retreat, the citizens brought them food, execrating the "Pretorians" who had overturned the institutions and peace of the country. Royalists and Republicans alike participated in this denunciation of the treason of the army.

At Arras the king left the troops and went on by himself to Belgium. The Count d'Artois and Marshal Marmont, the commander of the forces, followed soon afterward, after having issued a proclamation absolving the men from their oath. Thus abandoned, the question arose, what was next to be done. After a desultory discussion, a musketeer declared that the true and safe course was to leave France and take service abroad.

Lamartine opposed this proposition. Though but twenty-four years of age, he had won the respect of his comrades. Stepping on the wheel of a wagon he addressed them. It was his first attempt to speak in public. He referred to the significant fact that his family had been loyal to the monarchy, but had not emigrated during the Revolution. He had been nurtured in such sentiments. Louis XVIII. had now given France a representative government. The cause of Republican Liberty and the cause of the Bourbons had thus become united. If now the two parties should continue to act together, the reign of Bonaparte would be short and his fall complete. But if the royalists should now emigrate, they would, by so doing abandon the Republicans to the army. The blood of the Republicans would smother all resistance to the Empire. The duty, therefore, of those now present, both to their country and to their families, forbade that they should follow the king out of the French territory.

Most of the men voted to remain; a few rode away. Being now without officers, a temporary organization was effected, posts established around Bethune and a patrol provided. Four days later a capitulation took place, by which they were permitted to go to their families, but excluded from Paris.

Lamartine, however, put on the dress of a citizen and went in a cabriolet to Paris. A few days later he was present at a review of the troops.

The Emperor, he observed, exhibited none of that ideal of intellectual beauty and innate royalty, which writers had so often depicted. He seemed to be conscious that the ground was not solid under his feet. His movements indicated distrust and hesitation. As the troops defiled before him they cheered with "a concentrated accent of hopelessness."

Lamartine went home with renewed confidence.

The Imperial conscription filled the Chevalier, his father, with dismay. Lamartine declared to him that he would in no case enter the ranks himself or procure a substitute. He would sooner be shot to death. Leaving home, he put on the dress of a peasant laborer, and eluding the videttes on the frontier, crossed into Switzerland.

For some weeks he was the guest of the Baron de Vincy, an emigrant nobleman whose property had been confiscated. Himself almost without money and his entertainers impoverished, he could not bring himself to burden them longer. Leaving them abruptly, he made his way to Geneva. He was actually considering the project of applying to be a tutor in a Russian family and travelling to the Crimea, Circassia and Persia, when the final overthrow of Bonaparte called him back to France.

He became again a member of the military household of the king. Here he found his oldest and most beloved of friends, the Count Aymon de Virieu. They had been in college together, had travelled in Italy, their fathers had shared danger together in the Royal Guard on the fatal Tenth of August. They were ever after as two brothers, one in thought, one in soul, one in purse. They continued members of the Guard till it was disbanded.

Some years afterward Virieu made Lamartine acquainted with several persons of distinction whose good offices indirectly facilitated Lamartine's entry into public life.

Virieu was boisterous, full of jest, and a skeptic in religion. He was through his mother, descended from Montaigne, and he had inherited that author's disposition. He quoted him incessantly.

Lamartine, on the contrary, had inherited from his mother, a melancholic temperament, quiet, serious and religious. He could not bear Montaigne's skepticism, nor his salacious utterances. "Man is born to believe," he declared. "To believe in nothing is the way to accomplish nothing, and impurity in speech is a soiling of the soul."

He spent a summer with Virieu and his family in DauphinÉ. Their way of living was a reflection of his boyhood life at home, and brought calm and repose to his mind.

Virieu afterward became serious like his mother and withdrawing from public life on account of his health, died some years later. "In him," says Lamartine, "I lost the living witness of the first half of my own life. I felt that death had torn out the dearest page of my history, and that it was enshrouded with him."

Another fellow-student whom Lamartine repeatedly mentions, was the baron Louis de Vignet, of Chambery, in Savoy. They were often competitors for the prizes. Vignet gave up the profession of law and accepted a life of poverty for the sake of his mother and sister. He had been a skeptic and scoffer in religion and repulsive in temper, but watching with his dying mother, he became changed and was modest, pensive, gentle and melancholy.

He had hesitated to renew his acquaintance with Lamartine during the latter's wild career in Paris, but now, meeting accidentally, the two were drawn together at once. Vignet greeted Lamartine more as a father than as a comrade, and they quickly formed a compact of friendship. As if to seal it they went together to Charmettes to visit the house where Rousseau had lived, and afterward went to Servolex together. Vignet was a nephew of the Counts de Maistre, two of whom were distinguished in the political arena and world of letters. Lamartine was received by the elders as a son, and the younger members of the family as a brother. He remained with them during the summer. The wholesome influence took his mind away from the philosophy of the guardhouse and the effeminate literature then current in France. It was indeed an important epoch in his history. Time, death, difference of country and opinion afterward separated them, but he always vividly remembered that summer at the house of Colonel de Maistre and Louis de Vignet.

A diversion of the household consisted of recitations of verse. Vignet had collected a large number of effusions which were current among the Savoyards. Lamartine also ventured to recite his own verses before Colonel de Maistre and his daughters. The old man admired his pure French diction and predicted to his nephew that Lamartine would become distinguished.

Another summer found Lamartine at home in Milly. The family had gone away; the father and uncles to a hunting party in Burgundy, the mother on a journey, and the sisters on visits to friends, or to the convent. He was left alone with no companionship but an old servant-woman, his horse and his dog. The silence, the loneliness of the garden, and the empty rooms reminded him of the tomb. It was in keeping with his state of mind. He felt himself, or rather he desired to feel himself dead.

In this mood he again resumed familiar relations with the AbbÉ Dumont, his former schoolmaster at BussiÈres. The abbÉ had himself become the parish priest. There had been a tragedy in his life before he gave up his place in the world to take orders. He was the original of Jocelyn in Lamartine's little poem.

Lamartine rode daily to the parsonage. The two discoursed on topics more or less abstruse, such as the state of man on the earth, the vanity of ambition, the religions, philosophies and literature of different peoples, the esteem bestowed on one great man over another, the superiority of certain authors to their rivals, the greatness of spirit in some and littleness in others. To set forth their views they quoted authors of every age, like Plato, Cicero, Seneca, FÉnÉlon, Bossuet, Voltaire, Rousseau.

Poetry was more severely handled. Dumont appreciated only the sense of language, and did not care for the musicalness of what was uttered. They both agreed that in the study of rhythm and the mechanic consonance of rhyme there was a puerile attempt to associate a sensual delight of sound to some grand thought or manly sentiment. Versifying pertains to the speech of a people's infancy, prose to that of its maturity.

Lamartine conceived that poetry does not consist in the mere sensuousness of verse, but in the ideas, the sentiment, the image. "To change an utterance into music does not perfect it, but materializes it. The simple sentence justly and forcibly expressing the pure thought or naked sentiment without a dream as to the sound or form of phrase, is the genuine style, the expression, the WORD."

These conversations naturally drifted to the supreme questions of the time—to politics, philosophy and religion. Dumont was that contradictory character, found so often in many countries—a royalist although a democrat, and opposed to the Revolution, although he detested the ancient rÉgime and actually accepted the very aims and doctrines which the Revolution contemplated. Both he and Lamartine had been "fed with the marrow of Greek and Roman literature." They adored Liberty as a well-sounding term before they came to consider it as a holy thing and as the moral quality in every free man.

Dumont was philosophic, like the century in which he was born. In his house there was no token to show that he was a priest—neither breviary, nor crucifix, nor image of a saint, nor priestly garment. All these he relegated to the sacristy. He considered the mystic rites of Christianity which he performed as belonging to the routine of his profession, to be little else than a ritual of no importance, a code of morals illustrated by symbolic dogmas and traditional practices, that did not encroach on his mental independence and reason. He spoke of God to an infantile people, using the dialect of the sanctuary. But when he returned home he discoursed in the language of Plato, Cicero and Rousseau. His mind was incredulous, but his soul, softened by his sad fortune, was religious. His great goodness of heart enabled him to give to this vague piety the form and reality of a precise faith. He constrained his intelligence to bow under the yoke of Catholicism and the dogmas of religion. He read and admired the writings of Chateaubriand and others of the time, but he was not convinced; he did not believe what they taught.

Lamartine, on the other hand, was influenced by the religion of his infancy. Piety always came back to him when he was alone; it made him better, as though the thought of man when he is isolated from others was his best counsellor. It was not so much a matter of conviction, as a wish that it should be true. The poetry and affectionateness of religion swayed his will. He could contemplate the mystery of the Incarnation as filling, or at least bridging over, the unmeasurable space between humanity and God. If he did not quite admit this as actual fact, he revered it as a wonderful poem of the soul. He embellished it with the charms of his imagination, he embalmed it with his desires, he colored it with the tints of his thought and enthusiasm; in short,—he subordinated his rebellious reason to this earnest desire to believe, so that he might be able to love and pray. He put away from him, as by force, every shadow of doubt and repugnance, and almost succeeded in producing the illusions for which he was so eager, and in conforming the habit of his soul to the current sentiment of the epoch. If he did not really worship his mother's God as his own God, he at least carried him in his heart as an idol.

The cordial relations of the two friends were maintained for years. The priest continued to minister in his little church and gave much assistance to the mother of Lamartine in her charities. Above his grave in the cemetery is a stone with a brief epitaph, and beneath it the words: "Alphonse de Lamartine À son ami."

The mental depression under which Lamartine labored, seriously affected his health. The family physician was alarmed. Plainly enough it was from causes outside of the province of medicine and so instead of prescribing medicines he ordered the young man to go to Aix in Savoy, to the hot sulphur springs. He borrowed money from a friend of the family and went. Vignet procured a room for him, and paid him several visits during his sojourn. It was early Autumn. October had just begun, and the leaves on the trees had put on their colors. The bathing season was over, and the usual guests had gone away, leaving the place solitary.

There was another patient in the house. This was a lady from Paris. She was in a decline and had been at Aix several months. Lamartine, however, had no inclination to see her.

An accident on the lake brought them together in which he rescued her from imminent peril of life. The acquaintance thus begun became at once an ardent attachment. Lamartine describes it as "repose of the heart, after having met with the long-sought and till then unfound object of its restless adoration; the long-desired idol of that vague, unquiet adoration of supreme beauty which agitates the soul till the divinity has been discovered." This lady, the "Julie" of his story, was the wife of an old man, a friend of the Emperor Napoleon. He had first seen her at the convent where she was receiving her education. She was a native of the island where the Virginia of the romance was said to have been born, and had been brought to France. She was without friends to protect her or the necessary dowry to attract proposals of marriage. The old gentleman in pity for her friendless condition, had married her, receiving her as a daughter and not as a wife. Her health had given way, and he sent her to Aix in hope that the mountain air and bathing might restore her.

She had no liking for gallantry. Yet she did not affect prudery or reserve. She declared her understanding of their peculiar relations in terms the most forceful: "Eternity in one instant and the Infinite in one sensation." Then she said further: "I do not know whether this is what is called love; nor do I wish to know; but it is the most supreme and entire happiness that the soul of one created being can draw from the soul, eyes and voice of another being like herself—a being who, till now, was wanting to her happiness, and whose existence she completes."

She had lived among philosophers of the French school, and did not have views like those of the women of Europe who bowed before another criterion than their conscience. "I believe," said she, "in the God who has engraved his symbol in Nature, his law in our hearts, his morality in our reason. Reason, feeling and conscience are the only revelation in which I believe." She then asked that this their mutual affection should remain "like a pure thought" and so be in no way blended with any other relations.

In this way six weeks passed by. They adhered strictly to their line of action, yet she fretted jealously at the thought that Lamartine would love another after her death, and even attempted suicide; but presently yielded the point, and even predicted that he would yet find another like and as dear as herself.

Winter drew near and they left Savoy for their respective homes. Unknown to her, Lamartine followed her travelling coach to Paris, and then went to Milly where Vignet was awaiting him.

He remained at home till January. He had exhausted his allowance of money. His mother observed his restlessness and attributed it to want of diversion. She presented him with a diamond, the last jewel which she had retained from her young girlhood, and bade him go to Paris. "It is the last token of my love," said she,—"and I stake it in the lottery of Providence."

This gift had a wholesome influence. He became thenceforth more prudent in the expending of money, and never parted with the gem till his other resources were exhausted. He no more affected to be engaged in study while actually spending his time in dissipation. He directed his days to reading in history, science, political economy and diplomacy. The Count de Virieu was in Paris and received him to share his modest lodgings.

Nevertheless, his money though now carefully managed, was finally exhausted. He was called upon by old creditors to pay the "debts of honor" that he had incurred in former years. He had renewed his intimacy with Julie, and her husband gave him the warmest of welcomes. Her health was failing fast, and he took frequent excursions with her about Paris in the hope of benefit. At the end of the winter the alternative was presented to support himself or go back to Milly.

When in college he had written verses which his friends there greatly admired. He continued to do so at different times, and had brought a collection of them to Paris. He now offered them to publishers but without success. He was obliged to submit. He made a farewell excursion with Julie to St. Cloud, and left Paris the next morning.

That summer was for him more terrible than ever. He saw no hope of emerging from poverty and obscurity. Crops failed that year and the resources of the family were straitened to actual penury. His health suffered and serious results were apprehended. He was again ordered to go to Aix. His mother procured the money for him by surreptitiously selling trees that were growing on their little farm.

A note from Julie informed him that her husband was ill, but told him to go to Aix and wait for her. When he arrived there, there came a package forwarded from Chambery enclosing letters from Paris. One of these was from Julie[1] containing a lock of hair and bidding him farewell. It had been herself and not her husband, that was ill and dying. She had given up her former disbelief. "God will send you another sister," she wrote, "and she will be the pious helpmate of your life. I will ask it of him."

A letter from the husband asked Lamartine to continue to him as a son.

The shock almost bereft him of reason. He wandered for months over the mountains of Savoy and Switzerland, as he describes, "like a darkened soul that had lost the light of heaven and had no mind for that of earth." His mother secretly procured money for him in the hope that travel would alleviate his condition, the cause of which she did not imagine. Autumn was passing, however, and she could no longer frame excuses for his absence. He must return home.

As he was returning in the boat from Lyons, he contemplated the prospects before him. He had chafed for an active life, and destiny was compelling him to fold his wings in the nest from which he had been eager to escape. Now, in his exhaustion, he was willing to give up, hoping soon to die. "I was convinced," says he, "that in those months of love, of delirium and of grief, my heart had exhausted all the delights and bitternesses of a long life; that I had nothing more than for some months more to bury the memory of Julie under the ashes of my heart; and that the angel whose steps I had followed in thought into another life would soon call me to shorten my absence and begin the eternal love. The feeling that this was sure, now gave me comfort and enabled me to accept with patience the interval which I believed would be a short one between the parting and the reunion."

When the boat arrived at MÂcon, Lamartine saw nobody at the landing to welcome him. But as he picked up his valise he found himself suddenly embraced and almost smothered by the caresses of a dog. It was Azor, the same that had so abruptly broken up his Ossianic interview, seven years before, with Lucy, on the terrace. It was necessary to give him a strap of the valise to hold to keep him from getting under the feet of other travellers.

The Chevalier, his father, however, was only a little way off. He was watching with an opera-glass to see whether the dog had found his son. He now conducted him home by the most frequented streets, as if to show him to those whom he met. The dog had already gone to announce him, and Lamartine found his mother and sisters at the door.

The house had been recently purchased for a winter residence. The mother had besought this outlay for the sake of her five daughters, to be able to provide them with tutors and governesses and to introduce them advantageously into society. The Chevalier lost no time in showing his son the various rooms and conveniences and bringing him to the apartment for himself. Lamartine had retired for the evening when his mother came into the room. She had noted his profound depression and now silently caressed him.

"Who would have told me," said she, "that in twenty-two years I would see my child blighted in the vigor of his soul and heart, and his countenance enshrouded in a secret grief?"

Then, forbearing to enquire further, she explained the embarrassed condition of the family. Their property, always small, had been greatly reduced by the expenses of his education, travels, and wayward adventures. "I do not mention this to reproach you," said she; "you know that if my tears could have been changed into gold for you, I would have put it into your hands."

The purchase of the house, the saving of money to furnish dowries for his sisters, and bad harvests had narrowed their circumstances. His father had worried at the thought of leaving his children without a patrimony; and though he had taken great delight in them in their tender years, he reproached himself now for their existence.

What she could do to help, she had done. In their various exigencies she had been generously helped by Madame Paradis, their neighbor. This lady had done this from affection, only stipulating that their father should not know. She had furnished the money for Lamartine's expenses.

"I had hoped," she continued, "that your father's family would perceive the craving for activity which is wasting your youth, and be prompted to the outlay necessary to enable you to enter and go through with the preparatory course for an administrative or diplomatic career. I have reasoned with them, prayed, conjured, wept, humbled myself before them as it is glorious and agreeable for a mother to humiliate herself for her son. It is in vain."

As he was to be the heir to their estates, they saw no necessity for him to desire or be ambitious for an active career beyond their sphere of life. Hence her pleading had only brought harsh words and unkind feeling toward herself without doing him any service.

If Providence had granted her wish she would have made use of every opportunity to open for him a larger horizon, and a career worthy of him. But he must wait. She also asked him to make her his only confidant. A complaint to his father would drive him to despair, because he could not help. "Accept this obscure and unoccupied life for a few years," she pleaded. "I will pray God to move the hearts of your uncles and aunts, and to open for my son that field of activity, extent, glory and happy fortune, which he has permitted a mother to desire for such a son as you."

To such an appeal Lamartine could only acquiesce. The life upon which he thus entered has had many counterparts. The older uncle gave law to the whole family as its recognized head. He and his nephew had many angry encounters. The mother would endeavor anxiously to reconcile them. The Chevalier, bearing in mind the interest of all his children, remained neutral.

The uncle, regarding Alphonse as his prospective successor, desired him to remain quietly at home, cultivate science, apply himself to agriculture and domestic economy, and in time become the head of a family in the province. Lamartine acknowledged that such a career would have been the most natural and happy. "But," he adds, "everyone when coming into the world has his allotment marked out in his nature. This career was not for me, and my uncle had not been able to read the fact in my eyes."

His life at MÂcon that winter was as monotonous as that of monks in a cloister. He spent the forenoons in his room with his books and dog. Dinner was at noon; and after that all assembled at the mansion of the uncle. This was a season to be dreaded. His mother was then subjected to reproaches and remonstrances from every one for every trifling fault of her children. The aunts seemed to regard them as their own, and actually loved their brother's wife; but they desired to exercise the rights of motherhood without the burdens. Sometimes she would repel their attacks, but oftener she only wept. Then would follow explanations, excuses and caresses; and so it would go, only to be resumed the next day.

She was a woman superior to them all, high-spirited and dignified; but the future interest of her children depended on their good-will, and for this reason she was submissive. "We called this the Hour of Martyrdom," says Lamartine, "and we sought to make it up to her by redoubling our tenderness after we came out."

In the afternoon, she helped the tutors with her daughters, or herself received visitors. Her house and discourse were to her neighbors an attraction far exceeding that of the majestic austerity at the great house, the Hotel de Lamartine. The Chevalier would go out to visit some former comrade, or one of the older inhabitants, when they would amuse themselves with playing at checkers, backgammon or "Boston."

Lamartine himself would repair to his room, or walk out with his dog in the paths that intersected the fields behind the Alms House. There were grand views in the distance, but he only gazed on the Alps as the prisoner looks on the wall beyond which he has tasted of sunshine, love and freedom.

He also visited a comrade of his father's at the place. The man was unable to use his limbs, and kept himself cheerful by working as a jeweler and repairer of watches. Lamartine helped him and became daily a welcome visitor.

The leading families of MÂcon cultivated social relations, and there was a drawing-room party somewhere every night. Lamartine accompanied his mother and sisters, but made his escape before diversions began.

At his uncle's, however, it was different. The visitors included the most eminent men of the district, diplomats, scholars and others of distinction. Ten of these, with his uncle, organized the Academy of MÂcon. It held meetings in the library which were usually attended by thirty or forty members. Papers were presented on subjects of importance, social, industrial or scientific.

Lamartine was admitted to membership despite his youth at the proposition of his uncle. He delivered his first discourse upon the Advantages Derived from Interchange of Ideas between Peoples by Means of Literature. Years after he burned this paper in disgust at its commonplace character.

One of the most interesting members of this Academy, M. de Larnaud, he describes as "a Universal Dictionary in a human form, all the ashes of the Alexandrian Library contained in the skull of a living man." M. de Larnaud, he declares, "knew everything and impassioned everything." He had engaged in the Revolution in 1789 with the ardor of a delirium, but after the massacre of the Tenth of August, he turned his sympathies to the victims. He was intimate with the Girondins,—above all with Madame Roland and Vergniaud—and he accepted heartily their doctrine of a free Republic which should be wise and pure. He did not mourn their fate on the scaffold which was their pedestal for history, but he mourned that vote which they gave "for the death of the king to save the people." Although a nation is often saved by a martyrdom, he knew that it is never saved by a crime.

M. de Larnaud had no less enthusiasm for poetry and literature than for politics. He was a comrade of Rouget de Lisle, the author of the Marsellaise Hymn; he had taken part at sittings of the Academies; he was a member of all the Cercles; he followed all the Courts, visited all the SalÔns, attended all the theatres, absorbing all that was knowable, all that pertained to the two orders of things. He remembered everything and would tell it with a manner and gesture that made the hearer understand and behold it all. Everything—antiquity, past history and present—was to be learned from him.

He was quick to perceive the bent of Lamartine. He visited the young man in his chamber and discoursed familiarly with him, as though both were of the same age and plane of intelligence. He did not venture, however, to speak with like freedom in the drawing-room in presence of the uncle, the pious aunts, and the various classes of visitors. But in young Lamartine's chamber he would display his old-time enthusiasm for the great men and great achievements at the beginning of the Revolution before the period of the ascendancy of the populace, the Commune of Paris, and the Terror. The philosopher was again manifest in him under the simulacrum of the man of the world, and he denounced the Imperial rÉgime of Bonaparte with fierceness.

From him Lamartine derived the conception of the scenes, the men and characters which he set forth so admirably in the History of the Girondists. His friendship remained constant till his death.

One day as Lamartine was walking in the street his dog made the acquaintance of another dog belonging to a physician of the place. The owner was M. de Ronot, who had been a fellow-student at College. Warm friendship now sprang up between them. Lamartine pays him this tribute: "I was often absent from the land of my birth, especially after death had blighted all the roots of my family; but I knew that there was one who watched for my return, who followed with his eye my adverse fortunes, who fought against the envies, hatreds and calumnies that grovelled on the soil of our homestead—alas, about our gravestones, and who received with delight everything in my life that was good fortune, and with grief everything that was sad."

He died many years afterward with the name of Lamartine on his lips. It was at the period when Lamartine was in deepest adversity, and abandoned by the many who in brighter times had ardently professed their friendship.

When the time came in spring for the family to go back to Milly, the whole family welcomed this modest abode as an asylum. The mother resumed the instructing of her daughters, and her visits to the sick and poor. Lamartine often went with her. He always found living in a city to be intolerable, but he brought his melancholy with him. He renewed his intimacy with the AbbÉ Dumont at the garden of the parsonage, and gradually recovered health and spirits.

Translations of Byron's poems appeared that season in French journals. Lamartine was prompted to endeavors of similar character. That autumn he wrote several of his Meditations, and read portions of them to his father. The old Chevalier, who knew nothing of the new school of poetry, was deeply affected, but feared to utter praise, lest it should be from parental partiality.

The second winter at the new house in MÂcon was passed like the first. Lamartine had no liking for the social entertainments. When Lent came, he left home and spent the spring and summer with his other uncle, the AbbÉ Lamartine, at D'Urcy in Upper Burgundy.

This uncle had been compelled, by the accident of having been a second son, to take priest's orders. Thus interdicted from having a family of his own he bestowed his affection richly upon his younger brother and children. He considered them as his own, and Lamartine was recognized as his heir. They spent the summer and autumn in their younger years, at his patriarchal mansion, and he took an actual part in their education. It was here that Lamartine acquired his passion for life in the country.

The abbÉ had spent his noviciate at Paris, and mingled in society in the time of Louis XV. He was a man of the world rather than of the Church. Relinquishing the priestly functions at the Revolution, he now lived by himself on his share of the paternal estate, a Homeric life, hermit-like, as a philosopher and cultivator of the soil.

His housekeeper, herself formerly a nun, persuaded him to purchase dogs and a horse for his nephew. Lamartine had always been beloved by all the domestics, and his uncle, who was the most affectionate of men, treated him as a personal friend rather than as a kinsman.

One afternoon in the latter part of July, he was riding back from a jaunt in the neighboring forest when a letter-carrier delivered him a note from two Roman ladies at an inn at Pont-de-Pany. His uncle, in whom humor was a prominent quality, demanded at once to know the mystery.

"There must be no mystery with me," said he. "The heroes of a romance always need a confidant, and I have known both parts in my time."

He continued his badinage, promising to be discreet as well as faithful; but Lamartine, unable to endure it, protested that he could not form any new attachment.

"That linden-tree is older than you," the uncle replied. "I have cut it five times in twenty years, and it has more sap and branches now than when I came here."

"Burn it at the root," Lamartine retorted in desperation, "and then see whether it will spring up again."

It was an adventure of a new character. The two ladies, the princess Regina di —— and her aunt, had been commended to his good offices by the Count Saluce de ——, a Breton nobleman belonging to an emigrant family, then living at Rome. He had come temporarily to France and took service in the Royal Guard, there forming an intimate friendship with Lamartine. The princess was a maiden wife of sixteen who had been forced against her will into a marriage ceremony with an elderly kinsman, and had fled with her aunt to France. The count was her lover, and had been arrested as he was about to accompany her. Lamartine had been apprised of all this before by letters from his friend, and now complied faithfully with his wishes by finding the two fugitives a residence at Noyon near Geneva. Meanwhile a suit was in progress for an annulment of the marriage.

Some days afterward a letter came from the count apprising Lamartine that this would not take place. The princess was liable, therefore, to forfeit her property, and upon her return to Italy, to be imprisoned in a convent. The prince, her husband, who was old and infirm, had desired the marriage only for the purpose of assuring her estate to his heirs. He now offered, if Count Saluce would not press the suit, that he would cast a veil over what had passed, and let her live with her grandmother in future. This would spare her reputation and social position. But Saluce must go far away.

He decided to comply with the conditions, and had already left Italy for Spain to join his uncle's regiment and embark for the Philippine Islands.

Lamartine deplored the fatal necessity but felt himself obliged to approve the course taken by his friend. Yet Regina had not been consulted, and perhaps she would have chosen exile with him before freedom and fortune elsewhere. Certainly, the count had constituted himself judge and sacrificing priest without consulting the victim, but the sacrifice was commended by delicacy of sentiment, by honor, virtue, even by love itself.

When Lamartine met Regina she read all in his face. As she perused the letter she was seized with fury. She denounced her lover as savage and cowardly, not worthy of the least token of regard. Hurrying to her room, she threw his letters and keepsakes out of the window and commanded her nurse to go and sink them in the lake; that thus six months of love and delirium might be swallowed up. The nurse fully reciprocated the sentiments of her mistress. She saw no merit in such generosity as Saluce had exhibited. A Roman would have gone to every extreme, knowing love and nothing else.

Three days passed before the young princess made her appearance. She had become more calm. She told Lamartine that she was now undeceived; what she had thought she loved was a phantom that had vanished.

She was turning her regard upon him. His unflagging kindness and assiduity had affected her. But susceptible as he might be, the memory of his own lost one, and his friendship for Saluce, were intervening. Finally, however, upon learning that Lamartine would be in Paris the coming winter, she declared her purpose to be there likewise.

Her uncles had come for her, and she returned with them to Rome. One of them afterward accompanied her and her grandmother to Paris, and Lamartine met them there the coming winter.

He had now resolved to try his fortune once more. It was declared by Charles Fourier, that when God implanted a desire in a human soul it was his promise of its fruition. Lamartine was now to realize its verity.

[1] In the Meditations, Lamartine names an Elvire who has been conjectured to have been the same person.