Chapter i 



THE BUPRESTIS-HUNTING CERCERIS 



There are for each one of us, according to his 

 turn of mind, certain books that open up 

 horizons hitherto undreamed of and mark an 

 epoch in our mental hfe. They fling wide the 

 gates of a new world wherein our intellectual 

 powers are henceforth to be employed ; they 

 are the spark which lights the fuel on a hearth 

 doomed, without its aid, to remain indefinitely 

 bleak and cold. And it is often chance that 

 places in our hands those books which mark 

 the beginning of a new era in the evolution of 

 our ideas. The most casual circumstances, a 

 few lines that happen somehow to come before 

 our eyes, decide our future and plant us in the 

 appointed groove. 



One winter evening, when the rest of the 

 household was asleep, as I sat reading beside 

 a stove whose ashes were still warm, my book 

 made me forget for a while the cares of the 

 morrow : those heavy cares of a poor pro- 

 fessor of physics who, after piling up diplomas 



A 



