We have learned what we may of the schoolboy of Saint-Léons. Let us follow him to the Lycée of Rodez, which he entered as a day-boy at the age of ten: I come to the time when I was ten years old and at Rodez College. My functions as a serving-boy in the chapel entitled me to free instruction as a day-boarder. There were four of us in white surplices and red skull-caps and cassocks. I was the youngest of the party, and did little more than walk on. I counted as a unit; and that was about all, for I was never certain when to ring the bell or when to move the missal from one side of the altar to the other. I was all of a tremble when we gathered, two on this side, two on that, with genuflexions, in the middle of the sanctuary, to intone the Domine, salvum fac regem at the end of mass. Let me make a confession: tongue-tied with shyness, I used to leave it to the others. Nevertheless, I was well thought of, for, in the school, I cut a good figure in composition and translation. In that classical atmosphere there was talk of Procas, King of Alba, and of his two sons, Numitor and Amulius. We heard of Cynægirus, the strong-jawed man, who, having lost his two hands in battle, seized and held a Persian galley with his teeth, and of Cadmus the Phœnician, who sowed a dragon’s teeth as though they were beans, and gathered his harvest in the shape of a host of armed men, who killed one another as they rose up from the ground. The only one who survived the slaughter was one as tough as leather, presumably the son of the big back grinder. Had they talked to me about the man in the moon, I could not have been more startled. I made up for it with my animals, which I was far from forgetting amid this phantasmagoria of heroes and demigods. While honouring the exploits of Cadmus and Cynægirus, I hardly ever failed, on Sundays and Thursdays, to go and see if the cowslip or the yellow daffodil was making its appearance in the meadows, if the Linnet was hatching on the juniper-bushes, if the Cockchafers were plopping down from the wind-shaken poplars. Thus was the sacred spark kept aglow, ever brighter than before. [24] At Rodez, as at Saint-Léons, natural objects provided him with the chief material of his recreations: The thrice-blessed Thursday had come; our bit of translation was done, our dozen Greek roots had been learnt by heart; and we trooped down to the far end of the valley, so many bands of madcaps. With our trousers turned up to our knees, we exploited, artless fishermen that we were, the peaceful waters of the river, the Aveyron. What we hoped to catch was the Loach, no bigger than our little finger, but tempting, thanks to his immobility on the sand amid the water-weeds. We fully expected to transfix him with our trident, a fork.