PO IN CARE AND THE FRENCH ACADEMY 269 



cited as the most precocious of infant prodigies. You were nine months 

 old when you first saw the sky at night. You saw a star come out. You 

 obstinately pointed out the shining spot to your mother, who was also 

 your nurse. You discovered a second, with the same astonishment. 

 You greeted the third, the fourth, with the same cry of joy and the 

 same enthusiasm; it was necessary to put you to bed, you were so ex- 

 cited by your new occupation of star-finding. That evening brought 

 your first contact with infinity and your first lesson in astronomy ; you 

 were the youngest professor known. 



I have been told that you were a delicate, alert, charming child, 

 spoiled and adored by your parents; a terrible illness suffered at the 

 age of five years, as a result of which it was feared that you would 

 never be able to speak again, left you more delicate, timid and some- 

 what awkward, so that you were afraid of the noisy games of the boys 

 and preferred the society of your little sister. I do not imagine that 

 violent sports ever tempted you, or that you ever became skilful in 

 them. Nevertheless, you learned to hunt very large game. As soon as 

 you learned to read, your curiosity was excited by those books of popu- 

 lar science which have replaced fairy stories in realistic schemes of edu- 

 cation. You found extreme pleasure in them, and you experienced a 

 grandiose horror in witnessing cosmic upheavals and battling with 

 antediluvian animals. It was formerly the fashion to run after Prince 

 Charming and awaken Sleeping Beauties. Now the child is no longer 

 expected to make the acquaintance of those trivial personages ; he must 

 content himself with those whose skeletons have been discovered. Let 

 me ask you: Between creatures which have really lived and of which 

 we know nothing and never shall know anything, except that they 

 lived, and beings which have lived only in the dreams of humanity, 

 but which in the course of the ages have gratified us with so much 

 beauty, grace and poetry, which are the more real, which bring more 

 of light, of consolation, of joy? But you were not made to sit in the 

 arm-chair of Charles Perrault. 



It was in your father's house that you received from a retired 

 teacher, a friend of your family, your first notions of things; he did 

 not require written exercises from you; he conversed with you, talking 

 of everything at haphazard; this encyclopedic instruction was so ap- 

 propriate to your nature that when you entered the college you at once 

 took the first place; but this sort of work would be injurious to chil- 

 dren of different endowment. Your memory was and still is more 

 auditory than visual. Pronounced words engrave themselves on it. 

 When you come back from a journey, no matter how long, you can 

 recite the names of all the stations you have passed, if you heard them 

 cried before your car. More than this — a character presents itself to 

 your mind like a sound. In the evening, you can recite the numbers of 



