s a
hundredfold more unfortunate and more to be pitied than the man
whose lower nature lets him submit to the shrinkage of his
faculties.

I have made up my mind, therefore, that I would rather direct some
commercial or industrial enterprise, and live on small means while
trying to solve some of the great problems still unknown to
industry and to society, than remain at my present post.

You will tell me, perhaps, that nothing hinders me from employing
the leisure that I certainly have in using my intellectual powers
and seeking in the stillness of this commonplace life the solution
of some problem useful to humanity. Ah! monsieur, don't you know
the influence of the provinces,--the relaxing effect of a life
just busy enough to waste time on futile labor, and not enough to
use the rich resources our education has given us? Don't think me,
my dear protector, eaten up by the desire to make a fortune, nor
even by an insensate desire for fame. I am too much of a
calculator not to know the nothingness of glory. Neither do I want
to marry; seeing the fate now before me, I think my existence a
melancholy gift to offer any woman. As for money, though I regard
it as one of the most powerful means given to social man to act
with, it is, after all, but a means.

I place my whole desire and happiness on the hope of being useful
to my country. My greatest pleasure would be to work in some
situation suited to my faculties. If in your region, or in the
circle of your acquaintances, you should hear of any enterprise
that needed the capacities you know me to possess, think of me; I
will wait six months for your answer before taking any step.

What I have written here, dear sir and friend, others think. I
have seen many of my classmates or older graduates caught like me
in the toils of some specialty,--geographical engineers,
captain-professors, captains of engineers, who will remain captains
all their lives, and now bitterly regret they did not enter active
service with the army. Reflecting on these miserable results, I
ask myself the following questions, and I would like your opinion
on them, assuring you that they are the fruit of long meditation,
clarified in the fires of suffering:--

What is the real object of the State? Does it truly seek to obtain
fine capacities? The system now pursued directly defeats that end;
it has crated the most thorough m