phenomena which I witnessed at that early time. I benefited by them
without understanding their greatness or their processes; indeed, I
have forgotten some, or remember only the most conspicuous facts;
still, my memory is now able to co-ordinate them, and I have mastered
the secrets of that fertile brain by looking back to the delightful
days of our boyish affection. So it was time alone that initiated me
into the meaning of the events and facts that were crowded into that
obscure life, as into that of many another man who is lost to science.
Indeed, this narrative, so far as the expression and appreciation of
many things is concerned, will be found full of what may be termed
moral anachronisms, which perhaps will not detract from its peculiar
interest.

In the course of the first few months after coming to Vendome, Louis
became the victim of a malady which, though the symptoms were
invisible to the eye of our superiors, considerably interfered with
the exercise of his remarkable gifts. Accustomed to live in the open
air, and to the freedom of a purely haphazard education, happy in the
tender care of an old man who was devoted to him, used to meditating
in the sunshine, he found it very hard to submit to college rules, to
walk in the ranks, to live within the four walls of a room where
eighty boys were sitting in silence on wooden forms each in front of
his desk. His senses were developed to such perfection as gave them
the most sensitive keenness, and every part of him suffered from this
life in common.

The effluvia that vitiated the air, mingled with the odors of a
classroom that was never clean, nor free from the fragments of our
breakfasts or snacks, affected his sense of smell, the sense which,
being more immediately connected than the others with the