After enduring the shock of this torrent which rasped my soul, I was
sent back to school in charge of my brother. I lost the dinner at the
Freres Provencaux, and was deprived of seeing Talma in Britannicus.
Such was my first interview with my mother after a separation of
twelve years.

When I had finished school my father left me under the guardianship of
Monsieur Lepitre. I was to study the higher mathematics, follow a
course of law for one year, and begin philosophy. Allowed to study in
my own room and released from the classes, I expected a truce with
trouble. But, in spite of my nineteen years, perhaps because of them,
my father persisted in the system which had sent me to school without
food, to an academy without pocket-money, and had driven me into debt
to Doisy. Very little money was allowed to me, and what can you do in
Paris without money? Moreover, my freedom was carefully chained up.
Monsieur Lepitre sent me to the law school accompanied by a
man-of-all-work who handed me over to the professor and fetched me home
again. A young girl would have been treated with less precaution than
my mother's fears insisted on for me. Paris alarmed my parents, and
justly. Students are secretly engaged in the same occupation which
fills the minds of young ladies in their boarding-schools. Do what you
will, nothing can prevent the latter from talking of lovers, or the
former of women. But in Paris, and especially at this particular time,
such talk among young lads was influenced by the oriental and sultanic
atmosphere and customs of the Palais-Royal.

The Palais-Royal was an Eldorado of love where the ingots melted away
in coin; there virgin doubts were over; there curiosity was appeased.
The Palais-Royal and I were two asymptotes bearing one towards the