newest works, which I sent for from Paris. These
were those of Legendre, Lacroix, and Garnier. In going through these
works I often met with difficulties which exceeded my powers; happily,
strange though it be, and perhaps without example in all the rest of
France, there was a proprietor at Estagel, M. Raynal, who made the study
of the higher mathematics his recreation. It was in his kitchen, whilst
giving orders to numerous domestics for the labours of the next day,
that M. Raynal read with advantage the "Hydraulic Architecture" of
Prony, the "Mecanique Analytique," and the "Mecanique Celeste." This
excellent man often gave me useful advice; but I must say that I found
my real master in the cover of M. Garnier's "Treatise on Algebra." This
cover consisted of a printed leaf, on the outside of which blue paper
was pasted. The reading of the page not covered made me desirous to know
what the blue paper hid from me. I took off this paper carefully, having
first damped it, and was able to read underneath it the advice given by
d'Alembert to a young man who communicated to him the difficulties which
he met with in his studies: "Go on, sir, go on, and conviction will come
to you."

This gave me a gleam of light; instead of persisting in attempts to
comprehend at first sight the propositions before me, I admitted their
truth provisionally; I went on further, and was quite surprised, on the
morrow, that I comprehended perfectly what overnight appeared to me to
be encompassed with thick clouds.

I thus made myself master, in a year and a half, of all the subjects
contained in the programme for admission, and I went to Montpellier to
undergo the examination. I was then sixteen years of age. M. Monge,
junior, the examiner, was detained at Toulouse by indisposition, and
wrote to the candidates assembled at Montpellier that he would examine
them in Paris. I was myself too unwell to undertake so long a journey,
and I returned to Perpignan.

There I listened for a moment to the solicitations of my family, who
pressed me to renounce the prospects which the Polytechnic School
opened. But my taste for mathematical studies soon carried the day; I
increased my library with Euler's "Introduction a l'Analyse
Infinitesimale," with the "Resolution des Equations Numeriques," with
Lagrange's "Theorie des Fonctions Analytiques," and "Mecanique
Analytique," and finally with Laplace's "Mecanique Celeste." I gave
myself up with great ardour to th