Adolphe's return, then, was a great event to me; like Don Cléophas, I hung on the cloak of my fine _diable boiteux_, and he, telling me what he had seen in the theatres, made me see also. What long walks we took together! How many times did I stop him, as he passed from one artiste to another, saying, after he had exhausted all the celebrities of the Gymnase, "And Talma? And Mademoiselle Mars and Mademoiselle Duchesnois?" And he good-naturedly held forth upon the genius and talent and good-fellowship of those eminent artistes, playing upon the unknown notes of the keyboard of my imagination, causing ambitious and sonorous chords to vibrate within me that had hitherto lain dormant, the possession of which astonished me greatly when I began to realise their existence. Then poor Adolphe little by little conceived a singular idea, which was to make me share, on my own behalf, the hopes he had indulged in for himself; to rouse in me the ambition to become, if not a Scribe, an Alexandre Duval, an Ancelot, a Jouy, an Arnault or a Casimir Delavigne, at least a Fulgence, a Mazère or a Vulpian. And it must be admitted the notion was ambitious indeed; for, I repeat, I had never received any proper education, I knew nothing, and it was not until very much later, in 1833 or 1834, on the publication of the first edition of my _Impressions de Voyage_, that people began to perceive I had genius. In 1820 I must confess I had not a shadow of it. A week before Adolphe's return had brought to me the first vivifying gleam of light from the outside world 3 the hemmed-in and restricted life of a provincial town had seemed to me the limit of my ambition, a salary of say fifteen or eighteen hundred francs 3 for I never dreamt of becoming a solicitor: first because I had no vocation for it; for although I had spent three years in copying deeds of sale, bonds and marriage contracts, at Maître Mennesson's, I was no more learned in the law than I was in music, after three years of solfeggio with old Hiraux. It was evident, therefore, that the law was no more my vocation than music, and that I should never expound the Code any better than I played on the violin. This distressed my mother dreadfully, and all her kind friends said to her-- "My dear, just listen to what I say: your son is a born idler, who will never do anything." And my mother would heave a sigh, and say, as she kissed me, "Is it true, my dear boy, what they tell me?" And I would answer naïvely, "I don't know, mother!" What else could I reply? I could see nothing beyond the last houses in my natal town, and even though I might find something that responded to my heart inside the city boundary, I searched in vain therein for anything that could satisfy my mind and imagination. De Leuven made a gap in the wall which closed me in, and through that gap I began to perceive something to aim at as yet undefined on the infinite horizon beyond.