Oh! these were happy days that
compensated for all the loneliness I had endured in my childhood.
After all, I had only been treasuring up my desire for companionship
and not sacrificing it, which made my sentiments only the more ardent
when an opportunity came at last to indulge them. Looking back from
that sunlit eminence upon the shadowy years of my previous life, I was
able to smile and forget everything, in the blissful consciousness
that a rare, undreamt-of happiness had overtaken me after all, and had
flooded my lot with its dazzling loveliness; and even now I see it
standing prominently above all the other varied epochs of my life I
can follow with a distinct remembrance, one day after another as they
merged into a riper period of my existence, the spot where a shadow
first came over the sunshine of our lives has never been a past to me.
I remained at Notre Dame Abbey pursuing my studies devotedly until I
was upon the threshold of my twentieth year. A letter from my father
then arrived, bidding me make whatever preparations my departure would
necessitate, that at the end of the autumn session he would come to
take me home for good. This was a sad and unexpected surprise for me.
I had just begun to be fascinated by my studies, which were now of
quite a dignified nature. I might as well add, since it cannot but
provoke a bland and suggestive smile from masculine erudition, that I
had actually taken up moral philosophy, and aspired to distinguish
myself later as a metaphysician of some repute.
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