Ferdinand was a hard student, serious beyond his years, but not
conspicuous except for his earnestness and diligence.

When he was twelve years old, his fervor for Napoleon led him to read
Thiers' "History of the Consulate and the Empire." And about this time
his professor of mathematics remarked of him that "he has the stuff of
a polytechnician."

The vacations of the Foch children were passed at the home of their
paternal grandparents in Valentine, a large village about two miles
from the town of St. Gaudens in the foothills of the Pyrénées. There
they had the country pleasures of children of good circumstances, in a
big, substantial house and a vicinity rich in tranquil beauty and
outdoor opportunities. And there, as in the children's own home at
Tarbes, one was ashamed not to be a very excellent child, and, so,
worthy to be descended from a chevalier of the great Napoleon.

In the mid-sixties the family moved from Tarbes to Rodez--almost two
hundred miles northeast of their old locality in which both parents had
been born and where their ancestors had long lived.

It was quite an uprooting--due to the father's appointment as paymaster
of the treasury at Rodez--and took the Foch family into an atmosphere
very different from that of their old Gascon home, but one which also
helped to vivify that history which was Ferdinand's passion.

There Ferdinand continued his studies, as also at Saint-Étienne, near
Lyons, whither the family moved in 1867 when the father was appointed
tax collector there.