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Louis Lambert

Creator: Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850
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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 effusiveness which in her became mere loquacity; but it evidently occupied her thoughts.
History of California

Contents Chapter I. The Land and the Name II. The Story of the Indians III. "The Secret of the Strait" IV. The Cross of Santa Fe V. Pastoral Days VI. The Footsteps of the Stranger VII. At the Touch of King Midas VIII. The Great Stampede IX. The Birth of the Golden Baby X. The Signal Gun and the Steel Trail XI. That Which Followed After XII. "The Groves Were God's First Temples" XIII. To All that Sow the Time of Harvest Should be Given XIV. The Golden Apples of the Hesperides XV. California's Other Contributions to the World's Bill of Fare
The only person now living who preserves any recollection of the incident, and whom I catechised to be informed of what few words Madame de Stael had let drop, could with difficulty recall these words spoken by the Baroness as describing Lambert, "He is a real seer." Louis failed to justify in the eyes of the world the high hopes he had inspired in his protectress. The transient favor she showed him was regarded as a feminine caprice, one of the fancies characteristic of artist souls. Madame de Stael determined to save Louis Lambert alike from serving the Emperor or the Church, and to preserve him for the glorious destiny which, she thought, awaited him; for she made him out to be a second Moses snatched from the waters. Before her departure she instructed a friend of hers, Monsieur de Corbigny, to send her Moses in due course to the High School at Vendome; then she probably forgot him. Having entered this college at the age of fourteen, early in 1811, Lambert would leave it at the end of 1814, when he had finished the course of Philosophy. I doubt whether during the whole time he ever heard a word of his benefactress--if indeed it was the act of a benefactress to pay for a lad's schooling for three years without a thought of his future prospects, after diverting him from a career in which he might have found happiness. The circumstances of the time, and Louis Lambert's character, may to a great extent absolve Madame de