Their
lessons of goodness and morality, which impressed me as being the
literal embodiments of virtue and high feeling, were part and parcel
of the dogma which they taught. The historical education they had
given me consisted solely in reading Rollin. Of criticism, the natural
sciences, and philosophy I as yet knew nothing of course. Of all that
concerned the nineteenth century, and the new ideas as to history
and literature expounded by so many gifted thinkers, my teachers knew
nothing. It was impossible to imagine a more complete isolation from
the ambient air. A thorough-paced Legitimist would not even admit the
possibility of the Revolution or of Napoleon being mentioned except
with a shudder. My only knowledge of the Empire was derived from the
lodge-keeper of the school. He had in his room several popular prints.
"Look at Bonaparte," he said to me one day, pointing to one of these,
"he was a patriot, he was!" No allusion was ever made to contemporary
literature, and the literature of France terminated with Abbe Delille.
They had heard of Chateaubriand, but, with a truer instinct than that
of the would-be Neo-Catholics, whose heads are crammed with all
sorts of delusions, they mistrusted him. A Tertullian enlivening his
Apologeticum with _Atala_ and _Rene_ was not calculated to command
their confidence. Lamartine perplexed them more sorely still;
they guessed that his religious faith was not built on very strong
foundations, and they foresaw his subsequent falling away.
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