My Schooling 



violence to my feelings. My natural-history 

 books were sentenced to oblivion, relegated 

 to the bottom of a trunk. 



And so, in the end, I am sent to teach 

 physics and chemistry at Ajaccio College. This 

 time, the temptation is too much for me. The 

 sea, with its wonders, the beach, whereon the 

 tide casts such beautiful shells, the maqiiis of 

 myrtles, arbutus and mastic-trees: all this 

 paradise of gorgeous nature has too much on 

 its side in the struggle with the sine and the 

 cosine. I succumb. My leisure-time is divided 

 into two parts. One, the larger, is allotted to 

 mathematics, the foundation of my academical 

 future, as planned by myself; the other is 

 spent, with much misgiving, in botanizing and 

 looking for the treasures of the sea. What a 

 country and what magnificent studies to be 

 made, if, unobsessed by x and y, I had devoted 

 myself whole-heartedly to my inclinations ! 



We are the wisp of straw, the plaything of 

 the winds. We think that we are making for 

 a goal deliberately chosen; destiny drives us 

 towards another. Mathematics, the exag- 

 gerated preoccupation of my youth, did me 

 hardly any service; and animals, which I 

 avoided as much as ever I could, are the con^ 

 solation of my old age. Nevertheless, I bear 



155 



