The family name of Foch does not sound French, and as pronounced in Gascony with a hard guttural sound it is more like German. It would seem to indicate that in an earlier day the ancestors had lived on the Rhine. Up in northern France they have softened the name to sound like "Fush." The meaning of the name is said to be "Fire"--and certainly the Germans kindled a greater fire than they could quench, when their invasion produced the quiet leader with this flaming name. Napoleon Foch did not rise very high in his official positions. His work was chiefly clerical and caused him to remove from one town to another. He did not want to lose sight of his boys, by placing them in an academy, but kept them with him, placing them in first one public school and then another, as he was compelled to move. The first school that Ferdinand attended was the old college at Tarbes, where he remained until ten or eleven years old. The family home at Valentine, in the country, was always visited in the summer and other holiday seasons, and here the youngsters had many a romp. Their father on his infrequent visits home would enter into the sport like one of them. A favorite excursion was up one of the neighboring hills to a cliff known as the Bout du Puig, which commanded a wonderful view up and down the valley. Here they would take their lunch and feel like true mountaineers. From Tarbes, the family moved to Polignac, where Napoleon Foch was Public Treasurer. After Ferdinand and his brothers had attended the school at this place for a time, they removed to the town of Rodez--and another school. In these early days Foch was on a par with the average schoolboy, neither better nor worse, if local records are to be believed. He did, however, win an honorable mention at Tarbes for good work in the general course, consisting of geography, history, Latin, and theology. At twelve he began to show a decided bent for mathematics, that _sine qua non_ of the successful soldier. He had also developed into a great reader, but preferred history to works of fiction. One of his chief military heroes was, quite naturally, Napoleon, and he must have taken part in imagination with the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo, or thrilled at the tale of Austerlitz. But never in the wildest flights of his imagination could he have dreamed of commanding a far greater army than was ever assembled under the eagles of Napoleon.