On the occasion when he so concisely formulated this idea, he had been trying to link mental phenomena together by a series of results, following the processes of the intellect step by step, from their beginnings as those simple, purely animal impulses of instinct, which are all-sufficient to many human beings, particularly to those men whose energies are wholly spent in mere mechanical labor; then, going on to the aggregation of ideas and rising to comparison, reflection, meditation, and finally ecstasy and catalepsy.  Lambert, of course, in the artlessness of youth, imagined that he had laid down the lines of a great work when he thus built up a scale of the various degrees of man’s mental powers.

I remember that, by one of those chances which seems like predestination, we got hold of a great Martyrology, in which the most curious narratives are given of the total abeyance of physical life which a man can attain to under the paroxysms of the inner life.  By reflecting on the effects of fanaticism, Lambert was led to believe that the collected ideas to which we give the name of feelings may very possibly be the material outcome of some fluid which is generated in all men, more or less abundantly, according to the way in which their organs absorb, from the medium in which they live, the elementary atoms that produce it.  We went crazy over catalepsy; and with the eagerness that boys throw into every pursuit, we endeavored to endure pain by thinking of something else.  We exhausted ourselves by making experiments not unlike those of the epileptic fanatics of the last century, a religious mania which will some day be of service to the science of humanity.  I would stand on Lambert’s chest, remaining there for several minutes without giving him the slightest pain; but notwithstanding these crazy attempts, we did not achieve an attack of catalepsy.

This digression seemed necessary to account for my first doubts, which were, however, completely dispelled by Monsieur Lefebvre.

“When this attack had passed off,” said he, “my nephew sank into a state of extreme terror, a dejection that nothing could overcome.  He thought himself unfit for marriage.  I watched him with the care of a mother for her child, and found him preparing to perform on himself the operation to which Origen believed he owed his talents.  I at once carried him off to Paris, and placed him under the care of Monsieur Esquirol.  All through our journey Louis sat sunk in almost unbroken torpor, and did not recognize me.  The Paris physicians pronounced him incurable, and unanimously advised his being left in perfect solitude, with nothing to break the silence that was needful for his very improbable recovery, and that he should live always in a cool room with a subdued light.—­Mademoiselle de Villenoix, whom I had been careful not to apprise of Louis’ state,” he went on, blinking his eyes, “but who was supposed to have broken off the match, went to Paris and heard what the doctors had pronounced.  She immediately begged to see my nephew, who hardly recognized her; then, like the noble soul she is, she insisted on devoting herself to giving him such care as might tend to his recovery.  She would have been obliged to do so if he had been her husband, she said, and could she do less for him as her lover?