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.
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