I worked with even less zeal than usual that spring, for the beautiful
weather that tempted me out of doors turned my head and made study
almost impossible.

Assuredly one of the things for which I had the least aptitude was
French composition; I generally composed a mere rough draught without a
particle of embellishment to redeem it. In the class there was a boy who
was a very eagle, and he always read his lucubrations aloud. Oh! with
what unction he read out his pretty creations! (He is now settled in a
manufacturing town, and has become the most prosaic of petty bailiffs.)
One day the subject given out was: "A Shipwreck." To me the words had
a lyrical sound! But, nevertheless, I handed in my paper with only the
title and my name inscribed upon it. No, I could not make up my mind
to elaborate the subjects given to us by the "Great Ape"; a sort of
instinctive good taste kept me from writing trite commonplaces, and as
for putting down things of my own imagining, the knowledge that they
would be read and picked to pieces by the old bogey made it impossible
for me to compose anything.

I loved, however, even at this time, to write for myself, but I did it
with the greatest secrecy. Not in the desk in my room that was profaned
by lessons and copy-books, but in the little old-fashioned one that was
part of the furniture of my museum, there was hidden away a unique thing
that represented my first attempt at a journal. It looked like a sibyl's
conjuring book, or an Assyrian manuscript; a seeming endless strip
of paper was rolled upon a reed; at the head of this there were two
varieties of the Egyptian sphinx and a cabalistic star drawn in red
ink,--and under these mysterious signs I wrote down, upon the full
length of the paper and in a cipher of my own invention, daily events