He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that
the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony.
His very paternity was obscure, although the village
of Gavrillac had long since dispelled the cloud of
mystery that hung about it. Those simple Brittany
folk were not so simple as to be deceived by a pretended
relationship which did not even possess the virtue
of originality. When a nobleman, for no apparent
reason, announces himself the godfather of an infant
fetched no man knew whence, and thereafter cares for
the lad’s rearing and education, the most unsophisticated
of country folk perfectly understand the situation.
And so the good people of Gavrillac permitted themselves
no illusions on the score of the real relationship
between Andre-Louis Moreau — as the lad had been
named — and Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac,
who dwelt in the big grey house that dominated from
its eminence the village clustering below.
Andre-Louis had learnt his letters at the village
school, lodged the while with old Rabouillet, the
attorney, who in the capacity of fiscal intendant,
looked after the affairs of M. de Kercadiou.
Thereafter, at the age of fifteen, he had been packed
off to Paris, to the Lycee of Louis Le Grand, to study
the law which he was now returned to practise in conjunction
with Rabouillet. All this at the charges of
his godfather, M. de Kercadiou, who by placing him
once more under the tutelage of Rabouillet would seem
thereby quite clearly to be making provision for his
future.
Andre-Louis, on his side, had made the most of his
opportunities. You behold him at the age of four-and-twenty
stuffed with learning enough to produce an intellectual
indigestion in an ordinary mind. Out of his zestful
study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists,
from Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an
unassailable conviction his earliest conscious impressions
of the general insanity of his own species.
Nor can I discover that anything in his eventful life
ever afterwards caused him to waver in that opinion.
In body he was a slight wisp of a fellow, scarcely
above middle height, with a lean, astute countenance,
prominent of nose and cheek-bones, and with lank,
black hair that reached almost to his shoulders.
His mouth was long, thin-lipped, and humorous.
He was only just redeemed from ugliness by the splendour
of a pair of ever-questing, luminous eyes, so dark
as to be almost black. Of the whimsical quality
of his mind and his rare gift of graceful expression,
his writings — unfortunately but too scanty —
and particularly his Confessions, afford us very ample
evidence. Of his gift of oratory he was hardly
conscious yet, although he had already achieved a
certain fame for it in the Literary Chamber of Rennes
— one of those clubs by now ubiquitous in the
land, in which the intellectual youth of France foregathered
