Our life, then, was apparently calm and peaceful, and for some time it was so in reality; but soon I disturbed it more than ever by a vice which education developed in me, and which had hitherto been hidden under coarser but less fatal vices.  This vice, the bane of my new period of life, was vanity.

In spite of their theories, the abbe and my cousin made the mistake of showing too much pleasure at my rapid progress.  They had so little expected perseverance from me that they gave all the credit to my exceptional abilities.  Perhaps, too, in the marked success of the philosophical ideas they had applied to my education they saw something of a triumph for themselves.  Certain it is, I was not loath to let myself be persuaded that I had great intellectual powers, and that I was a man very much above the average.  My dear instructors were soon to gather the sad fruit of their imprudence, and it was already too late to check the flight of my immoderate conceit.

Perhaps, too, this abominable trait in my character, kept under by the bad treatment I had endured in childhood, was now merely revealing its existence.  There is reason to believe that we carry within us from our earliest years the seeds of those virtues and vices which are in time made to bear fruit by the action of our environment.  As for myself, I had not yet found anything whereon my vanity could feed; for on what could I have prided myself at the beginning of my acquaintance with Edmee?  But no sooner was food forthcoming than suffering vanity rose up in triumph, and filled me with as much presumption as previously it had inspired me with bashfulness and boorish reserve.  I was, moreover, as delighted at being able at last to express my thoughts with ease as a young falcon fresh from the nest trying its wings for the first time.  Consequently, I became as talkative as I had been silent.  The others were too indulgent to my prattle.  I had not sense enough to see that they were merely listening to me as they would to a spoilt child.  I thought myself a man, and what is more, a remarkable man.  I grew arrogant and superlatively ridiculous.

My uncle, the chevalier, who had not taken any part in my education, and who only smiled with fatherly good-nature at the first steps I took in my new career, was the first to notice the false direction in which I was advancing.  He found it unbecoming that I should raise my voice as loudly as his own, and mentioned the matter to Edmee.  With great sweetness she warned me of this, and, lest I should feel annoyed at her speaking of it, told me that I was quite right in my argument, but that her father was now too old to be converted to new ideas, and that I ought to sacrifice my enthusiastic affirmations to his patriarchal dignity.  I promised not to repeat the offence; and I did not keep my word.