Ill 



CERCERIS BUPRESTICIDA 



Every one has met with books which, according to 

 his turn of mind, have been epoch-making, opening 

 to him horizons whose very existence he had never 

 guessed. They throw wide open the gates of a new 

 world where henceforward he will use his mental 

 powers ; they are the spark which, falling on a 

 hearth, kindles into flame materials otherwise never 

 utilised. And very often it is mere chance which 

 puts into our hands some book which makes a new 

 starting-point in the evolution of our ideas. The 

 most casual circumstance, a few lines which happen 

 to come under our eye, decide our future and impel 

 us into the path which thenceforward we shall 

 follow. One winter evening, beside a stove where 

 the ashes were yet warm, while my family slept, 

 I was forgetting, while I read, all the cares of the 

 morrow — the black cares of the professor of physics, 

 who, after having piled one university diploma on 

 another and rendered for a quarter of a century 

 services whose "merit was not denied, earns for 

 himself and family 1600 francs — less than a groom 

 in a well-to-do household. Such was the shameful 



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