Recollections of My Youth

I now bring to a conclusion these _Recollections_ by asking the reader to forgive the irritating fault into which writing of this kind leads one in every sentence. Vanity is so...

"We are all, as a matter of fact, at the mercy of our illusions, and the proof of this is that in many cases nothing is easier than to take in Nature by devices which she is una...

As I have already explained, the two years of philosophy which serve as an introduction to the study of theology are spent, not in Paris, but at the country house of Issy, situa...

No Buddhist Lama or Mussulman Fakir, suddenly translated from Asia to the Boulevards of Paris, could have been more taken aback than I was upon being suddenly landed in a place...

The Petty Seminary of Saint-Nicholas du Chardonnet had no philosophical course, philosophy being, in accordance with the division of ecclesiastical studies, reserved for the gre...

The moral teaching inculcated by the pious masters who watched over me so tenderly up to the age of three-and-twenty may be summed up in the four virtues of disinterestedness or...

One of the most popular legends in Brittany is that relating to an imaginary town called Is, which is supposed to have been swallowed up by the sea at some unknown time. There a...

I thus reached the vacation of 1845, which I spent, as I had the preceding ones, in Brittany. There I had much more time for reflection. The grains of sand of my doubts accumula...

now reached the fifty-fifth day of his illness and still he does not make much progress towards his recovery. He is pretty well in the day time, but his nights are very bad. Fro...

The theological struggle defined itself more particularly in my case upon the ground of the so-called revealed texts. Catholic teaching, with full confidence as to the issue, ac...

"Do you remember the little village of Trédarzec, the steeple of which was visible from the turret of our house? About half a mile from the village, which consisted of little mo...

Tréguier, my native place, has grown into a town out of an ancient monastery founded at the close of the fifth century by St. Tudwal (or Tual), one of the religious leaders of t...

About the month of April, 1838, M. de Talleyrand, feeling his end draw near, thought it necessary to act a last lie in accordance with human prejudices, and he resolved to be re...

Many persons who allow that I have a perspicuous mind wonder how I came during my boyhood and youth to put faith in creeds, the impossibility of which has since been so clearly...

The house built by M. Olier in 1645 was not the large quadrangular barrack-like building which now occupies one side of the square of St. Sulpice. The old seminary of the sevent...

Constituted as I am to find my own company quite sufficient, the humble dwelling in the Rue des Deux Eglises (now the Rue de l'Abbé de l'Épée) would have been a paradise for me...

The world in its progress cares little more how many it crushes than the car of the idol of Juggernaut. The whole of the ancient society which I have endeavoured to portray has...

Such were these two years of inward labour, which I cannot compare to anything better than a violent attack of encephalitis, during which all my other functions of life were sus...

St. Sulpice, in short, when I went through it forty years ago, provided, despite its shortcomings, a fairly high education. My ardour for study had plenty to feed upon. Two unkn...

The education which these worthy priests gave me was not a very literary one. We turned out a good deal of Latin verse, but they would not recognize any French poetry later than...

Among those whom I have to thank for being more a son of the Revolution than of the Crusaders was a singular character who was long a puzzle to us. He was an elderly man, whose...

I was related on my maternal grandmother's side to a much more prim class of people. My grandmother was a very good specimen of the middle-classes of former days. She had been e...

The friendship of M. Berthelot, and the approbation of my sister, were my two chief consolations during this painful period, when the sentiment of an abstract duty towards truth...

Although the religious and too premature sacerdotal education which I had received prevented me from being on any intimate terms with young people of the other sex, I had severa...

The name of this hotel I do not remember; it was always spoken of as "Mademoiselle Céleste's," this being the name of the worthy person who managed or owned it.