in that large, old noiseless, gloomy house, I felt
that I became more and more isolated from the affections
and the freedom of the world. My time was divided
between mutilated studies, without connection and without
object, and long hours of minute devotional exercises.
I ask you, father, did they ever seek to warm our
young souls by words of tenderness or evangelic love?
Alas, no! For the words of the divine Saviour—Love
ye one another, they had substituted the command:
Suspect ye one another. Did they ever, father,
speak to us of our country or of liberty?—No!
ah, no! for those words make the heart beat high;
and with them, the heart must not beat at all.
To our long hours of study and devotion, there only
succeeded a few walks, three by three—never
two and two—because by threes, the spy-system
is more practicable, and because intimacies are more
easily formed by two alone; and thus might have arisen
some of those generous friendships, which also make
the heart beat more than it should.15 And so, by the
habitual repression of every feeling, there came a
time when I could not feel at all. For six months,
I had not seen my adopted mother and brother; they
came to visit me at the college; a few years before,
I should have received them with transports and tears;
this time my eyes were dry, my heart was cold.
My mother and brother quitted me weeping. The
sight of this grief struck me and I became conscious
of the icy insensibility which had been creeping upon
me since I inhabited this tomb. Frightened at
myself, I wished to leave it, while I had still strength
to do so. Then, father, I spoke to you of the
choice of a profession; for sometimes, in waking moments,
I seemed to catch from afar the sound of an active
and useful life, laborious and free, surrounded by
family affections. Oh! then I felt the want of
movement and liberty, of noble and warm emotions—of
that life of the soul, which fled before me.
I told it you, father on my knees, bathing your hands
with my tears. The life of a workman or a soldier—anything
would have suited me. It was then you informed
me, that my adopted mother, to whom I owed my life—for
she had taken me in, dying of want, and, poor herself,
had shared with me the scanty bread of her child—admirable
sacrifice for a mother!—that she,”
continued Gabriel, hesitating and casting down his
eyes, for noble natures blush for the guilt of others,
and are ashamed of the infamies of which they are
themselves victims, “that she, that my adopted
mother, had but one wish, one desire—”
“That of seeing you takes orders, my dear son,” replied Father d’Aigrigny; “for this pious and perfect creature hoped, that, in securing your salvation, she would provide for her own: but she did not venture to inform you of this thought, for fear you might ascribe it to an interested motive.”
“Enough, father!” said Gabriel, interrupting the Abbe d’Aigrigny, with a movement of involuntary indignation; “it is painful for me to hear you assert an error. Frances Baudoin never had such a thought.”