But he had made too good a start to stop midway. He was burning with eagerness to attack geometry, which was not so unfamiliar to him, but of which he had yet a great deal to learn: “At my normal school,” writes Fabre, “I had learnt a little elementary geometry under a master. From the first few lessons onwards, I rather enjoyed the subject. I divined in it a guide for one’s reasoning faculties through the thickets of the imagination; I caught a glimpse of a search after truth that did not involve too much stumbling on the way, because each step forward is well braced by the step already taken. We start from a brilliantly-lighted spot and gradually travel farther and farther into the darkness, which kindles into radiance as it sheds fresh beams of light for a higher ascent. It is an excellent thing to regard geometry as what it really is, before all things: a superb intellectual gymnastic. By forcing the mind to proceed from the known to the unknown, always explaining what follows in the light of what has gone before, it exercises it and familiarises it with the logical laws of thought. To be sure, “it does not give us ideas, those delicate flowers which unfold one knows not how, and are not able to flourish in every soil,” but it teaches us to present them in a lucid and orderly manner. Fabre tells us: At that time, the College in which, two years before, I had made my first appearance as a teacher had just halved the size of its classes and largely increased its staff. The newcomers all lived in the building, like myself, and we had our meals in common at the principal’s table. I had as a neighbour, in the next cell to mine, a retired quartermaster who, weary of barrack-life, had taken refuge in education. When in charge of the books of his company, he had become more or less familiar with figures; and it was now his ambition to take a mathematical degree. His cerebrum appears to have hardened while he was with his regiment. According to my dear colleagues, those amiable retailers of the misfortunes of others, he had already twice been plucked. Stubbornly, he returned to his books and exercises, refusing to be daunted by two reverses. It was not that he was allured by the beauties of mathematics: far from it; but the step to which he aspired favoured his plans. He hoped to have his own boarders and dispense butter and vegetables to lucrative purpose.