hold public meetings every Thursday during the holidays, and to read
tales in verse or prose, epistles, essays, tragedies, dramas
--compositions far above the intelligence of the lower classes. I long
treasured the memory of a story called the "Green Ass," which was, I
think, the masterpiece of this unknown Society. In the fourth, and an
Academician! This boy of fourteen, a poet already, the protege of
Madame de Stael, a coming genius, said Father Haugoult, was to be one
of us! a wizard, a youth capable of writing a composition or a
translation while we were being called into lessons, and of learning
his lessons by reading them through but once. Louis Lambert bewildered
all our ideas. And Father Haugoult's curiosity and impatience to see
this new boy added fuel to our excited fancy.

"If he has pigeons, he can have no pigeon-house; there is not room for
another. Well, it cannot be helped," said one boy, since famous as an
agriculturist.

"Who will sit next to him?" said another.

"Oh, I wish I might be his chum!" cried an enthusiast.

In school language, the word here rendered chum--_faisant_, or in some
schools, _copin_--expressed a fraternal sharing of the joys and evils
of your childish existence, a community of interests that was fruitful
of squabbling and making friends again, a treaty of alliance offensive
and defensive. It is strange, but never in my time did I know brothers
who were chums. If man lives by his feelings, he thinks perhaps that
he will make his life the poorer if he merges an affection of his own
choosing in a natural tie.