Then, after having arranged about my future hours with my kind preceptor, I returned home, one step further up the ladder of progress. That very evening, we were apprised of a visit of the Count de Dampierre, the Viscount de Malmy, and some other young nobles. Hitherto, I had been in the habit of accompanying them, dressed in regular keeper’s costume; but now I stuck steadily to my carpentry work. “Holloa, Réné!” said M. de Dampierre; “don’t you go with us to-day?” “No, Monsieur le Comte,” I replied; “I have a lesson in mathematics to-day.” “What?” he exclaimed, with surprise. “Do you study mathematics?” “Yes, and history and Latin, also.” “And is all this necessary in our days for a game-keeper?” “I am not going to be one.” “What then?” “I mean to be a carpenter, like ‘Emile.’” “I don’t know him.” “No? It is the ‘Emile’ of Monsieur Jean Jacques Rousseau that I mean; but if the nation wants me, I shall be a soldier.” “What do you mean by nation?” “I mean our country—France.” “We call that the kingdom, do we not?” “Yes, Monsieur le Comte; but some think it high time that we should call it a nation.” “Then the mathematics are to teach you military engineering?” “Yes; every officer should know how to draw a plan.” “Officer! But before you can be an officer, you must be an aristocrat.” “At present, yes; but by the time I am ready, there may be changes in the system.” “You heard that, Malmy,” said M. de Dampierre, turning to the Viscount. “Yes!” replied the other, shrugging his shoulders. “And what do you think of it all?” asked M. de Dampierre. “I think that the class to which he belongs are losing their heads altogether.” I planed away vigorously, and affected not to hear. By-and-bye they strolled off to the forest, laughing, whilst I got ready to go to M. Mathieu, for my first lesson in engineering. CHAPTER VI. THE NATION AND THE BASTILLE.—VERDICT FOR THE FORMER. At the end of the fifteenth day the Abbé Fortin had his furniture retouched, and when three months had expired I had finished the carpentry work for M. Drouet. The work was estimated at five hundred francs, the materials alone costing a hundred and twenty; so that I received three hundred and eighty, with the compliments of my two masters on the excellency of my workmanship. Whilst I was still engaged on the completion of the order, M. Drouet advanced me five hundred francs, to enable me to buy the wood, and at the same time, to take my lessons in the use of implements of warfare, and purchase useful books. The warrant expected from M. Necker, for the convocation of the Etats Généraux, had appeared. For the first time, a great nation, or a great kingdom, as M. Dampierre said, admitted all its members to political rights.