ormal school at the age of nineteen, and commenced

ty, appear even more disproportionately small than they actually were. What is more to the point, the teachers had no pension to hope for. They could only count on a perpetuity of labour, and when sickness or infirmity arrived, when old age surprised them, after fifty or sixty years of a narrow and precarious existence, it was not merely poverty that awaited them; for many there was nothing

t: each master occupied two cells, for, in consideration of a modest payment, the ma

aching was: "Between four high walls I see the court, a sort of bear-pit where the scholars quarrelled for the space beneath the boughs of a plane-tree; all around opened the class-rooms, oozing with damp and m

and measure the progress accomplished. Evoking the memory of their humble colleague of Carpentras, may the

d: for he knew precisely what to say to them, and how, while talking lightly, to teach them the most serious things. For the joy of teaching, and of continually learning by teaching others, made everything endurable.

to entertain the hope of "making an opening" in the world of secondary schoolmasters. He accordingly began to study physics, quite alone, "with an impossible laboratory, experimenting after his own fashion"; and it was by teaching them to his pupils that

rking time behind him, was pursuing the same career. A very disappointing career, no doubt, and far from lucr

sson which he gi

e reins of it; the outer world disappears, the ear no longer hears, the eye no longer sees, the body no longer exists; the mind schools itself, recollects itself; it is finding knowledge, and its insight increases. Then the hours pass quickly, quickly; ti

y what one learns oneself; and I advise you earnestly, as far as possible, to have recourse to no aid other than reflection, above all for the sciences. A book of science is an enigma to be deciphered;

esteem which will not allow one's true character to be seen is a powerful aid to the will. Do not forget the method of Jules Janin, running from house to house in Paris for a few wretched lessons in Latin: 'Unable to get anyt

g provided the will is always alert, always active, an

n one point, explodes like a mine and shatters obstacles; try for a few days the force of

that his mind was already as mature, as earn

used his interest to such a pitch that, being no longer able to constrain his curiosity, he bought--at the cost of what privations!--Blanchard's "Natural History of the Articulata,

aracteristics by which one could not fail to recognize them: as well as all the places which they chose by preference, where he used to wander as an urchin; the Parnassia palustris, "which springs up in the damp meadows, below the beech-wood to the west of the village; which bears a superb white flower at the top of a slightly twisted stem, having an oval leaf about its middle"; the purple digitalis, "whose long spindles of great red flowers, speckled with white inside, and sha

eloquent than books," and which revealed to him the only method of learning and actually re-living history: for he saw in knowledge not merely a means of gaining his bread, but "something nobler; the means of raisi

le aptitude for mathematics with which he believed him endowed. He employed his whole strength in breathing into the other's mind "that taste for the true and the beautiful" which possessed his own nature; he wished to share with him those stores of learning "which he had for some years so painfully amassed"; he would profit by

ly patrimony on which either of us can count"; the reward would b

ice by that excellent counsel w

ledge...Work, then, when you have the opportunity...an opportunity that very few may possess, and for which you ought to be only too thankful. But I will stop,

, "with the mirror darting its intermittent beams under the rays of the morning sun amid the gener

was always sustained by the same motive: the desire to acquire fresh knowledge; to

him to enumerate, inventory, and interrogate his new compatriots, his feathered fellow-citizens

easily, under the stress of present necessities and cruel anxieties as to his uncertain

ld was born. His parents, always unlucky, met nowhere with any success. By dint of many wanderings they had finally become stranded at Pierrelatte, the chief town of

its head. Having heard that a quarrel had arisen between his brother and his mother, he wrote to Frédéric in re

very well there is some reason for sulking; but what matter? Give it up: forget everything; do your best to put an end

their adviser, their or

y, at Montpellier, he passed almost successively, at an interval of only a few months the examinations f

first-born fell suddenly ill, and in a few days died. On this occasion all his ardent spirituality asser

yet only a few days ago I was making the finest plans for you. I used to work for you only; in my studies I thought only of you. Grow up, I used to say, and I will pour into your mind all the knowledge which has cost me so dear, which I am hoarding little by little...But reflection leads me to higher thoughts. I choke back the tears in my heart, and I congratulate him that Heaven has mercifully spared him this life of trials...My poor child...you will never, like your father, have to struggle against poverty and misfortune; you will never kno

these evil days without too greatly feeling their weight, his position was h

Carpentras, "not being in funds," paid it only by instalments, and even so kept him a long time waiting. "One has to besiege the paymaster's door mer

ounter in his gallery, among so many living portraits, a picture of the university life of fifty years ago; and above all a picture of the small schoolmaster of other days, living a life so narrow, so slavish, so pain

r of the sciences. His rector was not unnaturally astonished that a young man of such unusual worth, already twice a licentiate, sh

urnon escaped him. Another position, at Avignon, also "slipped through his fingers"; why or how he never knew. He "began to see clearly wha

accursed little hole"; and when the vacations came round once more he "plainly considered the

they would give me some employment of the kind for which my studies and ideas fit me, they wo

or want of a better." All the same "the injustice was too unheard-of, and no one had ever seen or would ever see the lik