I do not know if I was happily endowed in the matter of intelligence.  The abbe assured me that I was; but, for my own part, I think that my rapid progress was due to nothing but my courage.  This was such as to make me presume too much on my physical powers.  The abbe had told me that, with a strong will, any one of my age could master all the rules of the language within a month.  At the end of the month I expressed myself with facility and wrote correctly.  Edmee had a sort of occult influence over my studies; at her wish I was not taught Latin; for she declared that I was too old to devote several years to a fancy branch of learning, and that the essential thing was to shape my heart and understanding with ideas, rather than to adorn my mind with words.

Of an evening, under pretext of wishing to read some favourite book again, she read aloud, alternately with the abbe, passages from Condillac, Fenelon, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Jean Jacques, and even from Montaigne and Montesquieu.  These passages, it is true, were chosen beforehand and adapted to my powers.  I understood them fairly well, and I secretly wondered at this; for if during the day I opened these same books at random, I found myself brought to a standstill at every line.  With the superstition natural to young lovers, I willingly imagined that in passing through Edmee’s mouth the authors acquired a magic clearness, and that by some miracle my mind expanded at the sound of her voice.  However, Edmee was careful to disguise the interest she took in teaching me herself.  There is no doubt that she was mistaken in thinking that she ought not to betray her solicitude:  it would only have roused me to still greater efforts in my work.  But in this, imbued as she was with the teachings of Emile, she was merely putting into practice the theories of her favourite philosopher.

As it was, I spared myself but little; for my courage would not admit of any forethought.  Consequently I was soon obliged to stop.  The change of air, of diet, and of habits, my lucubrations, the want of vigorous exercise, my intense application, in a word, the terrible revolution which my nature had to stir up against itself in order to pass from the state of a man of the woods to that of an intelligent being, brought on a kind of brain fever which made me almost mad for some weeks, then an idiot for some days, and finally disappeared, leaving me a mere wreck physically, with a mind completely severed from the past, but sternly braced to meet the future.

One night, when I was at the most critical stage of my illness, during a lucid interval, I caught sight of Edmee in my room.  At first I thought I was dreaming.  The night-light was casting an unsteady glimmer over the room.  Near me was a pale form lying motionless on an easy chair.  I could distinguish some long black tresses falling loosely over a white dress.  I sat up, weak though I was and scarcely able to move, and tried to get out of bed.  Patience,