what the blue paper hid from me. I took off this paper carefully, having
first damped it, and was able to read underneath it the advice given by
d'Alembert to a young man who communicated to him the difficulties which
he met with in his studies: "Go on, sir, go on, and conviction will come
to you."

This gave me a gleam of light; instead of persisting in attempts to
comprehend at first sight the propositions before me, I admitted their
truth provisionally; I went on further, and was quite surprised, on the
morrow, that I comprehended perfectly what overnight appeared to me to
be encompassed with thick clouds.

I thus made myself master, in a year and a half, of all the subjects
contained in the programme for admission, and I went to Montpellier to
undergo the examination. I was then sixteen years of age. M. Monge,
junior, the examiner, was detained at Toulouse by indisposition, and
wrote to the candidates assembled at Montpellier that he would examine
them in Paris. I was myself too unwell to undertake so long a journey,
and I returned to Perpignan.

There I listened for a moment to the solicitations of my family, who
pressed me to renounce the prospects which the Polytechnic School
opened. But my taste for mathematical studies soon carried the day; I
increased my library with Euler's "Introduction à l'Analyse
Infinitésimale," with the "Résolution des Equations Numériques," with
Lagrange's "Théorie des Fonctions Analytiques," and "Mécanique
Analytique," and finally with Laplace's "Mécanique Céleste." I gave
myself up with great ardour to the study of these books. From the
journal of the Polytechnic School containing such investigations as
those of M. Poisson on Elimination, I imagined that all the pupils were