ooms were frequent. We would come to
consult one another about a difficulty, or simply to pass the time
of day. I had as a neighbor, in the next cell to mine, a retired
quartermaster who, weary of barrack life, had taken refuge in education.
When in charge of the books of his company he had become more or less
familiar with figures; and it became his ambition to take a mathematical
degree. His cerebrum appears to have hardened while he was with his
regiment. According to my dear colleagues, those amiable retailers
of the misfortunes of others, he had already twice been plucked.
Stubbornly, he returned to his books and exercises, refusing to be
daunted by two reverses.

It was not that he was allured by the beauties of mathematics, far from
it; but the step to which he aspired favored his plans. He hoped to
have his own boarders and dispense butter and vegetables to lucrative
purpose. The lover of study for its own sake and the persistent trapper
hunting a diploma as he would something to put in his mouth were not
made to understand or to see much of each other. Chance, however,
brought us together.

I had often surprised our friend sitting in the evening, by the light of
a candle, with his elbows on the table and his head between his hands,
meditating at great length in front of a big exercise book crammed with
cabalistic signs. From time to time, when an idea came to him, he would
take his pen and hastily put down a line of writing wherein letters,
large and small, were grouped without any grammatical sense. The letters
x and y often recurred, intermingled with figures. Every row ended
with the sign of equality and a nought. Next came more reflection, with
closed eyes, and a fresh row of letters arranged in a different order
and likewise followed by a nought. Page after page was filled in this
queer fashion, each line winding up with 0.

'What are you doing with all those rows of figures amounting to zero?' I
asked him one day.

The mathematician gave me a leery look, picked up in barracks. A
sarcastic droop in the corner of his eye showed how he pitied my
ignorance. My colleague of the many noughts did not, however, take an
unfair advantage of his superiority. He told me that he was working at
analytical geometry.

The phrase had a strange effect upon me. I ruminated silently to this
purpose: there was a higher geometry, which you learnt more particularly
with combinations of letters in which x and y played a pr