So much so that he left the College more in love than ever with insects and flowers, and thoroughly determined to fill what he considered to be one of the most serious deficiencies of official instruction. Alas! there were many deficiencies in the education received by his masters which would have to be made good in order to complete the literary education which the professors of the Rodez lycée had begun to give him, and the scientific training which he had hardly commenced at the Normal College. We must listen to his reminiscences of his career as pupil teacher, to the inventory of the scientific equipment of a schoolboy of 1840, to the story of his first and last lesson in chemistry, to see how poor he was in acquired knowledge and how rich in the desire for knowledge, before we can estimate the length of the road which he had to travel when he had passed through the classes of the College. In my normal school, the scientific teaching was on an exceedingly modest scale, consisting mainly of arithmetic and odds and ends of geometry. Physics was hardly touched. We were taught a little meteorology, in a summary fashion: a word or two about a red moon, a white frost, dew, snow and wind; and, with this smattering of rustic physics, we were considered to know enough of the subject to discuss the weather with the farmer and the ploughman. Of natural history, absolutely nothing. No one thought of telling us anything about flowers and trees, which give such zest to one’s aimless rambles, nor about insects, with their curious habits, nor about stones, so instructive with their fossil records. That entrancing glance through the windows of the world was refused us. Grammar was allowed to strangle life. Chemistry was never mentioned either: that goes without saying. I knew the word, however. My casual reading, only half-understood for want of practical demonstration, had taught me that chemistry is concerned with the shuffle of matter, uniting or separating the various elements. But what a strange idea I formed of this branch of study! To me it smacked of sorcery, of alchemy and its search for the philosopher’s stone. To my mind, every chemist, when at work, should have had a magic wand in his hand and the wizard’s pointed, star-spangled cap on his head. An important personage who sometimes visited the school, in his capacity as an honorary lecturer, was not the man to rid me of those foolish notions. He taught physics and chemistry at the grammar-school. Twice a week, from eight to nine o’clock in the evening, he held a free public class in an enormous building adjacent to our schoolhouse. This was the former Church of Saint-Martial, which has to-day become a Protestant meeting-house.