6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND 



to-day, with more than three-quarters of a century 

 of . . . .1 cannot comprehend the mystery of the Trin- 

 ity ! Yet, I have always been able to count the money 

 that has passed through my hands. 



Excuse me this digression, and I return to my prop- 

 agation that I continued to practice until I lost my 

 father. Then I was between fifteen and sixteen years 

 old, perhaps a little more, I cannot ascertain exactly. 

 All that I am certain of is that I remained with my 

 mother and sister until the month of March, 1827, 

 when an idea many ideas got into my head that I 

 was old enough to * c think for myself " came to me, 

 and that it would be serviceable to know the sense of 

 all the words I knew by heart. One thing I knew by 

 experience the culminating one that the steeple 

 of my city (Chdlons-sur-Saone, Dept. de Saone-et- 

 Loire, France) did not afford me shade or protection 

 enough, or rather too much of it, for I foresaw that 

 ultimately it would " etiolate " my conceptions in the 

 bud ! Then I at once came to the conclusion to leave 

 my Penates, my Lares and my other household gods 

 and move to the "capital of the civilized world'' 

 according to the general idea of the French, but not 

 exactly to mine which was and still is cosmopolitan. 



Paris, then, for me was an " Eldorado " where I 

 thought, in my puerile innocence, that every one was, 



