L'ARCHEVÊQUE. Et ce preux chevalier qui sur l'écu d'airain Porte au milieu des lis la croix du pélerin, Et dont l'œil, rayonnant de gloire et de génie, Contemple du passé la pompe rajeunie?
LE ROI. _Chateaubriand!_ Ce nom à tous les temps répond; L'avenir au passé dans son cœur se confond: Et la France des preux et la France nouvelle Unissent sur son front leur gloire fraternelle.
Tasso was another poet whom Alphonse read with enthusiastic admiration. Ossian taught him that it is possible for true poetry to be vague and misty. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, with his sweetness and his harmony, was Lamartine's, as well as Madame de Krüdener's, favourite model.
Some of the entertaining and immoral books of the eighteenth century which fell into the boy's hands delighted him, and excited his youthful imagination for a short time, but these impressions were effaced by those of the Jesuit school. A combination of religious enthusiasm and delight in the freshness and beauty of nature purified his mind and inspired it with activity.
"Were I to live a thousand years," he writes in his Memoirs, "I should never forget those days of study, those hours of prayer, those nights spent in meditation, and the raptures of joy with which I fulfilled my duties, thinking all the time of God." And almost in the same breath he tells of the bliss of skimming in winter on his skates across the frozen marshes, as if borne on spirit wings, or of sitting under the hornbeams in the mild, still spring air, lost in devotional feeling, and happy in perfect peace of conscience.
The return of the Bourbons was hailed with rejoicing by the Lamartine family, including Alphonse, now a young man. The father (who had been wounded on the 10th of August 1792) conducted his son to Paris, and had him enrolled in the King's Guard. It fell one day to the young officer's lot to walk by the King's bath-chair, when he was being wheeled through the galleries of the Louvre to inspect the art treasures brought back by Napoleon from his various campaigns. The profound reverence of the youth's own mind made him imagine Louis's voice to be melodious, his person majestic and distinguished, his glance commanding, his speech brilliant, his silence eloquent. Several times after this the King addressed a few words to him when he was riding by the side of the royal carriage.