MATHEMATICAL STUDIES. 6 



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. 



