Finally, one fine day when she had used every inducement she could think of to make me go, promising solemnly, on her word of honour, that I should always be free to come home if I did not like the rules of the Seminary, I let fall the fatal _yes_, and I consented to all her wishes. There was a week granted me to make my preparations for departure. It was a great separation, and it cost my mother as much as it did me; but she tried to hide her tears, till I unjustly imagined she was quite pleased to get rid of me. The day before that on which I was to travel in the coach which plied twice a week between Villers-Cotterets and Soissons, as I was collecting all my little wants for my school life, I discovered I hadn't an inkstand. I told my mother of this, and she, recognising the justice of my request, asked me what sort I would like. I had luxurious ideas concerning that inkstand. I wished a horn inkstand with a place for pens. But, as my mother did not clearly understand my explanations, she gave me twelve sous, and told me to go and buy the inkstand myself. Please pay great attention to this little matter; for, puerile though it may seem, it changed the whole course of my life. I hurried off to a grocer named Devaux. I took good care not to go to Lebègue's: the reader knows why. The grocer had not the kind of inkpot I wanted; but he promised to get me one by evening. When evening came, I returned, and he had the inkpot ready for me; but as luck would have it I found my cousin Cécile in the shop. She was very glad to see me, she took the opportunity to wish me all possible success in the career I had chosen and she promised that, as soon as I was ordained, she would ask me to become her spiritual director. I cannot say whether it was that her sarcasm galled me past bearing, or whether the responsibility of the suggested office seemed too heavy, but I flung the inkpot in the grocer's face. I pocketed my twelve sous, and I rushed out of the shop crying--"Very well; I don't care. I will not go to the Seminary!" Like Cæsar I had crossed my Rubicon: but the next step was to try and escape my mother's urgent entreaties, which I might not perhaps have been able to withstand. I ventured on my first wilful act. I bought a loaf and a sausage with my twelve sous, food to last me two or three days, in fact, and then I went to find Boudoux. I must explain who he was. Boudoux was a character. Had not the disease termed _bulimia_ already received its name at that epoch it would certainly have been christened after him. I have never seen such a voracious eater as was Boudoux. One day he came to our house, and a calf had just been killed; he gazed at it with longing eyes, and my father said to him-- "Do you want to eat the whole of it? You can have it." "Oh! general, you are joking!" was Boudoux's reply. "Upon my word I am not." "Indeed I should love it, general."