MATHEMATICAL STUDIES. 8 
weapon the brigadier placed at the head of the party. 
The wound was not dangerous ; a cut of the sabre, how- 
ever, was descending to punish my hardihood, when some 
countrymen came to my aid, and, armed with forks, over- 
turned the five cavaliers from their saddles, and made 
them prisoners. I was then seven years old.* 
My father having gone to reside at Perpignan, as treas- 
urer of the mint, all the family quitted Estagel to follow 
him there. I was then placed as an out-door pupil at the 
municipal college of the town, where I occupied myself 
almost exclusively with my literary studies. Our classic 
authors had become the objects of my favourite reading. 
But the direction of my ideas became changed all at 
once by a singular circumstance which I will relate. 
Walking one day on the ramparts of the town, I saw 
an officer of engineers who was directing the execution 
of the repairs. This officer, M. Cressac, was very 
young; I had the hardihood to approach him, and to ask 
him how he had succeeded in so soon wearing an epau- 
lette. “I come from the Polytechnic School,” he an- 
swered. “What school is that?” “It is a school which 
one enters by an examination.” “Is much expected of 
the candidates?” ‘You will see it in the programme 
which the Government sends every year to the depart- 
mental administration ; you will find it moreover in the 
numbers of the journal of the school, which are in the © 
library of the central school.” 
I ran at once to the library, and there, for the first 
time, I read the programme of the knowledge required 
in the candidates. 
* With such precocious heroism it is by no means so clear that the 
author might not have had a hand in the revolution, from which he 
endeavours above to exculpate himself. 
