through his school life; this beautiful virginity of the senses
naturally resulted in the richer fervor of his blood, and in increased
faculties of mind.

The Baroness de Stael, forbidden to come within forty leagues of
Paris, spent several months of her banishment on an estate near
Vendome. One day, when out walking, she met on the skirts of the park
the tanner's son, almost in rags, and absorbed in reading. The book
was a translation of _Heaven and Hell_. At that time Monsieur
Saint-Martin, Monsieur de Gence, and a few other French or half German
writers were almost the only persons in the French Empire to whom the
name of Swedenborg was known. Madame de Stael, greatly surprised, took
the book from him with the roughness she affected in her questions,
looks, and manners, and with a keen glance at Lambert,--

"Do you understand all this?" she asked.

"Do you pray to God?" said the child.

"Why? yes!"

"And do you understand Him?"

The Baroness was silent for a moment; then she sat down by Lambert,
and began to talk to him. Unfortunately, my memory, though retentive,
is far from being so trustworthy as my friend's, and I have forgotten
the whole of the dialogue excepting those first words.

Such a meeting was of a kind to strike Madame de Stael very greatly;
on her return home she said but little about it, notwithstanding an