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BookV1 It seems to me that it was in 17322 that I arrived at Chambery as I have just said, and that I began to be employed3 on the survey in the King's service. I had passed twenty years, almost twenty-one. I was formed well enough for my age on the side of mind, but my judgment was hardly formed, and I very much needed the hands into which I was falling in order to learn how to conduct myself: for several years of experience had not yet been able to cure me radically of my romantic visions, and in spite of all the ills I had suffered, I knew the world and men as little as if I had not purchased4 this instruction. I stayed at my home, that is to say at Mamma's; but I did not find my room at Annecy again. No more garden, no more stream, no more countryside. The house she occupied was somber and sad, and my room was the most somber and sad one in the house. A wall for a view, a culde -sac for a street, little air, little light, little space, crickets, rats, rotten boards, all that did not make up a pleasant habitation. But I was in her home, near her, ceaselessly at my desk or in her room, I hardly noticed the ugliness of my own, I did not have time to dream there. It will appear bizarre that she had established herself at Chambery intentionally to live in that nasty house: this was even a skillful stroke on her part about which I should not keep silent. She went to Turin reluctantly, since she felt very much that this was not the moment for presenting herself there after the still very recent revolutions and the agitation they still were in at the Court. Nevertheless, her affairs demanded that she show herself there; she feared being forgotten or ill served. Above all she knew that the Comte de St. Laurent, the Intendant General of finances, did not favor her.5 At Chambery he had an old, poorly constructed house in such a nasty position that it always remained empty; she rented it and settled in there. That succeeded for her better than a trip; her pension was not suppressed, and from then on the Comte de St. Laurent was always one of her friends. There I found her household set up just about as before, and the faithful Claude Anet still with her. He was, as I believe I have said, a peasant from Montreux who in his childhood went botanizing in the Jura to make Swiss tea,6 and whom she had taken into her service because of her drugs, 148 Book V (PL, 1,176-178) 149 finding it convenient to have an herbalist as her lackey. He became so enthusiastic for the study of plants, and she fostered his taste so well that he became a true botanist, and if he had not died young, he would have made a name for himself in that science, just as he deserved one among decent people. Since he was serious, even grave, and since I was younger than he was, he became a sort of governor for me who saved me from many follies; for he commanded my respect, and I did not dare forget myself in front of him. He even commanded the respect of his mistress who knew his great sense, his uprightness, his inviolable attachment for her, and who very much reciprocated it. Without contradiction, Claude Anet was a rare man, and even the only one of his sort that I have ever seen. Slow, composed, reflective, circumspect in his conduct, cold in his manners, laconic and sententious in his conversation, he had in his passions an impetuosity which he never allowed to appear, but which ate him up inside, and which caused him to commit only one stupidity in his life, but a terrible one; that is to have taken poison. This tragic scene happened shortly after my arrival, and without it I would not have been informed about this boy's intimacy with his mistress; for if she had not told me herself, I would never have suspected it. Assuredly if attachment, zeal, and faithfulness can deserve such a recompense, it was very much owed to him, and what proves that he was worthy of it is that he never abused it. They rarely had quarrels, and the...

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