JUVENILE CAREER. 5 



of some heedless young fellow. Thence came the custom 

 of starting the competitors in the arena accompanied by 

 a Mentor, who came to the assistance of their treacherous 

 memories, and who, by a word put in at the proper mo- 

 ment, brought them back into the right path as soon as 

 they began to wander from it ; and the Mentor was often 

 himself drawn into the discussion on his own account. 

 According to this custom, the teachers of the Seminary of 

 Autun were proceeding towards the salle des exercises, 

 where a large concourse of people was assembled, when 

 the young Carnot signified his intention ..to ascend to the 

 rostrum alone, that he would not be accompanied by a 

 prompter, that he would not keep at all to the routine 

 they had assigned him, and that he would speak alone or 

 not at all. This resolution was combated by alternate en- 

 treaties and threats, but in vain : they were obliged to 

 submit, whether they liked it or not, to this unprecedented 

 caprice of the pupil. However, the most brilliant success 

 soon justified it, even in the eyes of the irritated profes- 

 sors. A curious incident rendered the meeting remark- 

 able : a lady, the wife of a doctor of medicine, became the 

 most formidable adversary of the young rhetorician : she 

 argued against him, in Latin, with a force of logic, with 

 an ease, a grace, and an elegance of expression, which 

 the more astonished Carnot and the audience, inasmuch 

 as no indiscreet display had hitherto made them even 

 suspect that Madame 1'Homme had carried her studies 

 farther than the Cuisiniere bourgeoise, the Almanack de 

 Liege, or the Petit Paroissien. 



Carnot had so thoroughly taken, not only to the prin- 

 ciple of religion, but, moreover (and they are not the 

 same things), to the minute practices of devotion scrupu- 

 lously followed at the little seminary of Autun, that some 



