I was at the time passionately addicted to reading. My father, who was
ambitious to see me in the Ecole Polytechnique, paid for me to have a
special course of private lessons in mathematics. My mathematical
master was the librarian of the college, and allowed me to help myself
to books without much caring what I chose to take from the library, a
quiet spot where I went to him during play-hours to have my lesson.
Either he was no great mathematician, or he was absorbed in some grand
scheme, for he very willingly left me to read when I ought to have
been learning, while he worked at I knew not what. So, by a tacit
understanding between us, I made no complaints of being taught
nothing, and he said nothing of the books I borrowed.

Carried away by this ill-timed mania, I neglected my studies to
compose poems, which certainly can have shown no great promise, to
judge by a line of too many feet which became famous among my
companions--the beginning of an epic on the Incas:

"O Inca! O roi infortune et malheureux!"

In derision of such attempts, I was nicknamed the Poet, but mockery
did not cure me. I was always rhyming, in spite of good advice from
Monsieur Mareschal, the headmaster, who tried to cure me of an
unfortunately inveterate passion by telling me the fable of a linnet
that fell out of the nest because it tried to fly before its wings
were grown. I persisted in my reading; I became the least emulous, the
idlest, the most dreamy of all the division of "little boys," and
consequently the most frequently punished.

This autobiographical digression may give some idea of the reflections
I was led to make in anticipation of Lambert's arrival. I was then