~ 
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. 
Accarding 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 Homme had carried her studies 
farther than the Cuisiniére bourgeoise, the Almanach de 
Liége, 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 
