Of what is called the world, and the world's ways;
The moments when we gather from a glance
More joy than from all future pride or praise
Which kindle manhood, but can ne'er entrance
The heart in an existence of its own”?
Young Montalembert, with wealth and noble birth, which gave him the entrée of the highest circles, found no charm in what is called society. His mind was too serious, his ambition too lofty, to permit him to throw away the precious time of youth in frivolous amusements.
“People usually say,” he writes to his friend during the summer vacations of 1827, “that in youth we ought to give ourselves up to the pleasures of society. In my opinion, this amounts to downright absurdity. I should think that in youth we ought to plunge into study or into the profession we wish to embrace. When a man has done his duty towards his country; when he can come before the world with laurels won in the senate or on the field of battle, or at least when he enjoys universal esteem; when, again, he is sure of commanding universal esteem and respect, then I can understand that he has a right to enjoy himself in society, and to mix in it with assurance.”
Montalembert had a passion for labor, which is the only sure road to excellence and power, and which is also the greatest evidence of ability.
We find him, when not yet ten years old, shut up in his grandfather's library, acting as his secretary, helping him in the designs of his geographical maps, and absorbed in the study of the great English orators; and later, at college, giving up his recreations, and devoting fifteen hours a day to the severest mental discipline. By saving five minutes every morning in his cell at Sainte-Barbe out of the time allowed to the pupils for rising and dressing, he managed in one year to translate a whole volume of Epictetus. He spent a portion of the summer vacation of 1827 at La Roche-Guyon, the country-seat of the Duc de Rohan; and though the castle was filled with guests, for whom the duke provided every kind of amusement, this intrepid young worker is able to write the following lines to his friend:
“While you are idling your time away, pray just hear what I shall have read during my month's residence at La Roche: in the first place, all Byron, which is no trifling job; Delolme, on the British Constitution—a capital and highly important work; the whole of the Odyssey, twenty-four cantos, at the rate of one a day; Thomson, Cowper, Pliny's Letters; the Lettres Provinciales; the Life of S. Francis Xavier, by Bouhours, which the duke obliged me to read; three volumes of the Mercure newspaper; and, lastly, the poetical part of the Greek Excerpta.”