uptions--penetrated by door and window; Paris with its
pettiness and its grandeur, its revolutionary force and its lapses
into flabby indifference. My old Brittany priests knew much more Latin
and mathematics than my new masters; but they lived in the catacombs,
bereft of light and air. Here, the atmosphere of the age had free
course. In our walks to Gentilly of an evening we engaged in endless
discussions. I could never sleep of a night after that; my head was
full of Hugo and Lamartine. I understood what glory was after having
vaguely expected to find it in the roof of the chapel at Treguier. In
the course of a short time a very great revelation was borne in upon
me. The words talent, brilliancy, and reputation, conveyed a meaning
to me. The modest, ideal which my earliest teachers had inculcated
faded away; I had embarked upon a sea agitated by all the storms and
currents of the age. These currents and gales were bound to drive my
vessel towards a coast whither my former friends would tremble to see
me land.

My performances in class were very irregular. Upon one occasion I
wrote an _Alexander_, which must be in the prize exercise book,
and which I would reprint if I had it by me. But purely rhetorical
compositions were very distasteful to me; I could never make a decent
speech. Upon one prize-day we got up a representation of the Council
of Clermont, and the various speeches suitable to the occasion were
allotted by competition. I was a miserable failure as Peter the Hermit
and Urban II.; my Godefroy de Bouillon was pronounced to be utterly
devoid of military ardour. A warlike song in Sapphic and Adonic
stanzas created a more favourable impression. My refrain _Sternite
Turcas_, a short and sharp solution of the Eastern Question, was
selected for recital in public. I was too staid for these childish
proceedings. We were often set to write a Middle Age tale, terminating
with some striking miracle, and I was far too fond of selecting the
cure of lepers. I often thought of my early studies in mathematics,
in which I was pretty well advanced, and I spoke of it to my fellow
students, who were much amused at the idea, for mathematics stood very
low in their estimation, compared to the literary studies which
they looked upon as the highest expression of human intelligence.
My reasoning powers only revealed themselves later, while studying
philosophy at Issy. The first time that my fellow pupils heard me
argue in Latin they