their road. I was in the square of the
village before daybreak; I saw a brigadier and five troopers come up,
who, at the sight of the tree of liberty, called out, "_Somos
perdidos!_" I ran immediately to the house to arm myself with a lance
which had been left there by a soldier of the _levee en masse_, and
placing myself in ambush at the corner of a street, I struck with a blow
of this weapon the brigadier placed at the head of the party. The wound
was not dangerous; a cut of the sabre, however, was descending to punish
my hardihood, when some countrymen came to my aid, and, armed with
forks, overturned the five cavaliers from their saddles, and made them
prisoners. I was then seven years old.[1]

My father having gone to reside at Perpignan, as treasurer of the mint,
all the family quitted Estagel to follow him there. I was then placed as
an out-door pupil at the municipal college of the town, where I occupied
myself almost exclusively with my literary studies. Our classic authors
had become the objects of my favourite reading. But the direction of my
ideas became changed all at once by a singular circumstance which I will
relate.

Walking one day on the ramparts of the town, I saw an officer of
engineers who was directing the execution of the repairs. This officer,
M. Cressac, was very young; I had the hardihood to approach him, and to
ask him how he had succeeded in so soon wearing an epaulette. "I come
from the Polytechnic School," he answered. "What school is that?" "It is
a school which one enters by an examination." "Is much expected of the
candidates?" "You will see it in the programme which the Government
sends every year to the departmental administration; you will find it
moreover in the numbers of the journal of the school, which are in the
library of the central school."

I ran at once to the library, and there, for the first time, I read the
programme of the knowledge required in the candidates.

From this moment I abandoned the classes of the central school, where I
was taught to admire Corneille, Racine, La Fontaine, Moliere, and
attended only the mathematical course. This course was entrusted to a
retired ecclesiastic, the Abbe Verdier, a very respectable man, but
whose knowledge went no further than the elementary course of La Caille.
I saw at a glance that M. Verdier's lessons would not be sufficient to
secure my admission to the Polytechnic School; I therefore decided on
studying by myself the