The Schoolmaster: Carpentras 



courage of other students disinherited by for- 

 tune, reduced as was Fabre to shaping them- 

 selves in the " harsh school of isolation." 

 They will witness miracles of perseverance; 

 and they will realise that opportunities of ex- 

 ercising the mind and strengthening the will 

 are seldom lacking to those who understand 

 how to seize them. 



When I left the Normal School, my stock of 

 mathematics was of the scantiest (writes Fabre). 

 How to extract a square root, how to calculate and 

 prove the surface of a sphere: these represented to 

 me the culminating points of the subject. Those 

 terrible logarithms, when I happened to open a 

 table of them, made my head swim, with their 

 columns of figures; actual fright, not unmixed with 

 respect, overwhelmed me on the very threshold of 

 that arithmetical cave. Of algebra I had no knowl- 

 edge whatever. I had heard the name; and the 

 syllables represented to my poor brain the whole 

 whirling legion of the abstruse. 



Besides, I felt no inclination to decipher the 

 alarming hieroglyphics. They made one of those 

 indigestible dishes which we confidently extol with- 

 out touching them. I greatly prefer a fine line of 

 Virgil, whom I was now beginning to understand; 

 and I should have been surprised indeed had any 

 one told me that, for long years to come, I should 

 be an enthusiastic student of the formidable 

 science. Good fortune procured me my first lesson 

 lOI 



