Page:Mauprat (Heinemann).djvu/212

 taking his first lesson in French grammar, and who, moreover, had a very exaggerated notion of the length and difficulty of the studies necessary to put him on a level with M. de la Marche, showed, you must allow, a certain moral force.

I do not know if I was happily endowed in the matter of intelligence. The abbé 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 abbé 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 a month I expressed myself with facility and wrote correctly. Edmée 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 abbé, passages from Condillac, Fénelon, 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 Edmée's mouth the authors acquired a magic clearness, and that by some miracle my mind expanded at the sound of her voice. However, Edmée was careful to disguise the