My lot being irrevocably fixed, I was left to pass an idle childhood. A few notions of drawing, English, hydrography and mathematics seemed more than sufficient for the education of a little boy destined beforehand for the rough life of a sailor. I grew up in my family without lessons. We no longer occupied the house in which I was born: my mother lived in a large house in the Place Saint-Vincent, almost facing the gate which leads to the Sillon. The ragamuffins of the town had become my dearest friends: I filled the yard and the staircases of the house with them. I resembled them in all things: I spoke their language; I had their ways and their walk; I was dressed like them, my clothes were as indecent and undone as theirs; my shirts fell to rags; I had never a pair of stockings but it was full of holes; I shuffled about in shabby shoes, down at heel, falling off my feet at every step; I often lost my hat and sometimes my coat. My face was smudged, scratched, bruised; my hands black. So strange was my appearance that my mother, in the midst of her anger, could not keep from laughing and exclaiming, "How ugly he is!" Nevertheless I loved, and I have always loved, cleanliness and elegance. At night I tried to mend my rags. Kind Villeneuve and my Lucile assisted in repairing my clothes, to save me from scoldings and punishments; but their patching only served to make my outfit the odder. I was particularly disconsolate when I appeared in tatters among children proud of their new clothes and of their finery. There was something about my fellow-townsmen that was foreign and suggested Spain. Families from Saint-Malo had settled at Cadiz; families from Cadiz lived at Saint-Malo. Saint-Malo's insular position, its embankment, its architecture, its houses, its tanks, and its granite walls give it a certain resemblance to Cadiz; when I saw the latter town it often reminded me of the former. Locked up at night in their city under the same key, the Malouins formed but one family. So primitive were the habits of the place, that young women who sent to Paris for their ribbons and muslins were looked upon as worldly creatures from whom their startled acquaintances held aloof. A frailty was a thing unknown: suspicion having fallen upon a certain Comtesse d'Abbeville, the result was a ballad in singing which people crossed themselves. Nevertheless the poet, faithful, in spite of himself, to the troubadour tradition, took sides against the husband, whom he called "a barbarous monster."