The attachment I felt for him was all the more genuine from its being my first friendship with a man of my own age.  The pleasure which I derived from this intimacy gave me a new insight into life, and revealed capacities and needs of the soul of which I had hitherto been ignorant.  As I could never wholly break away from that love of chivalry which had been implanted in me in early childhood, it pleased me to look upon him as my “brother in arms,” and I expressed a wish that he would give me this special title too, to the exclusion of every other intimate friend.  He caught at the idea with a gladness of heart that showed me how lively was the sympathy between us.  He declared that I was a born naturalist, because I was so fitted for a roving life and rough expeditions.  Sometimes he would reproach me with absent-mindedness, and scold me seriously for carelessly stepping upon interesting plants, but he would assert that I was endowed with a sense of method, and that some day I might invent, not a theory of nature, but an excellent system of classification.  His prophecy was never fulfilled, but his encouragement aroused a taste for study in me, and prevented my mind from being wholly paralyzed by camp life.  To me he was as a messenger from heaven; without him I should perhaps have become, if not the Hamstringer of Roche-Mauprat, at all events the savage of Varenne again.  His teachings revived in me the consciousness of intellectual life.  He enlarged my ideas and also ennobled my instincts; for, though his marvellous integrity and his modest disposition prevented him from throwing himself into philosophical discussions, he had an innate love of justice, and he judged all questions of sentiment and morality with unerring wisdom.  He acquired an ascendency over me which the abbe had never been able to acquire, owing to the attitude of mutual distrust in which we had been placed from the beginning.  He revealed to me the wonders of a large part of the physical world, but what he taught me of chiefest value was to learn to know myself, and to ponder over my own impressions.  I succeeded in controlling my impulses up to a certain point.  I could never subdue my pride and violent temper.  A man cannot change the essence of his nature, but he can guide his divers faculties towards a right path; he can almost succeed in turning his faults to account—­and this, indeed, is the great secret and the great problem of education.

The conversations with my friend Arthur led me into such a train of thought that from my recollections of Edmee’s conduct I came to deduce logically the motives which must have inspired it.  I found her noble and generous, especially in those matters which, owing to my distorted vision and false judgment, had caused me most pain.  I did not love her the more for this—­that would have been impossible—­but I succeeded in understanding why I loved her with an unconquerable love in spite of all she had made me suffer.  This sacred fire burned in my soul