I began, but naturally I became confused or I had forgotten.
“I am going to tell it to you once more,” he would finally say.
Then I would approach and sit facing him on a long chair or upon the divan. I listened with a palpitating interest to the recitals that he made so amusing to me.
It was thus I learned all my ancient history, coming to the facts one after another, making reflections within my power, but remaining truly and profoundly observant; mature minds would have been able to listen without finding anything puerile in his teaching.
Sometimes I would stop him and ask: “Was he good?” And this question, applied to such men as Cambyses, Alexander or Alcibiades, was somewhat embarrassing for him to answer.
“Good?” he would say, “Yes ... these were not very proper gentlemen, but ... that is not the point.”
But I was not satisfied, and I found that “my old boy,” as I called him, knew even the smallest details of the people we were studying about.
The history lesson finished, we passed on to geography. He never wished me to study from a book. “Images, as many as possible,” he said, “are the best means of learning in childhood.” We had charts, spheres, games of patience which we could make and unmake together; then, to explain the difference between islands, peninsulas, bays, gulfs and promontories he would take a shovel and a pail of water and, in a little walk in the garden, make models of these in nature.
As I grew older, the lessons became longer and more serious. He continued them up to my seventeenth year, until my marriage. When I was ten years old, he obliged me to take notes while he was speaking, and when my mind was capable of comprehending it, he began to make me notice the artistic side of things, especially in my reading.
He considered no book dangerous that was well written; he held this opinion because of his intimate union of foundation and form: anything well written could not be badly thought out or basely conceived. It was not the crude detail, the raw fact that was pernicious or harmful, or likely to soil the intelligence; all that is in nature. There is nothing moral or immoral but the soul of him who represents nature, rendering it grand, beautiful, serene, small, ignoble, or tormenting. Such a thing as an obscene book well written could not exist, according to him.