not soar beyond his little bazaar and grocery store, was
displeased with the boy, who was then only ten years old. He could
not understand how one so young dared to think his own thoughts
and hold his own opinions. The neighbors held up their hands in
dismay, and prophesied, "He will end his days in the Bastile." His
mother wept and blamed herself and the National as the cause of
all the trouble.

How little the fond mother, the disappointed father, or the
gloomily foreboding neighbors dreamt to what heights those early
lessons they now so bitterly deplored were to lead!

When at sixteen Leon Gambetta returned from the Lyceum to which he
had been sent on his return from the Monfaucon seminary, his wide
reading and deep study had but intensified and broadened the
radicalism of his childhood. He longed to go to Paris to study
law, but his father insisted that he must now confine his thoughts
to selling groceries and yards of ribbon and lace, as he expected
his son to succeed him in the business.

Poor, foolish Joseph Gambetta! he would confine the young eagle in
a barnyard. But the eagle pined and drooped in his cage, and then
the loving mother--ah, those loving mothers, will their boys ever
realize how much they owe them!--threw open the doors and gave him
freedom, an opportunity to win fame and fortune in the great city
of Paris.

And now what mattered it that his clothes were poor, that his food
was scant, and that it was often bitterly cold in his little
garret. If not for his own sake, he MUST for hers "come home a