It took some time for an owl of my species to grow accustomed to a school cage and to measure its flight by the sound of a bell. I was not able to make those quick friends with whom fortune supplies one, for there was nothing to be made out of a poor urchin who was not even endowed with pocket-money; nor did I join any set of hangers-on, for I hated protectors. In our games, I did not claim to lead others, but neither did I wish to be led: I was fitted to be neither a tyrant nor a slave, and so I have always remained. And yet it happened that I soon became the centre of a set; later, in my regiment, I exercised the same power: plain ensign though I were, the older officers spent their evenings with me, and preferred my quarters to the coffee-house. I do not know whence this came, unless it were due to the ease with which I entered into the minds and adopted the manners of others. I was as fond of hunting and coursing as of reading and writing. To this day, it is a matter of indifference to me whether I speak of the most commonplace things or discuss the loftiest subjects. I am very little attracted by cleverness, and find it almost disagreeable, although I am not a fool. No imperfection offends me, except mockery and self-conceit, which I have great difficulty in not defying. I find that others are always my superiors in some respect, and if perchance I feel myself to have an advantage, I am quite embarrassed in consequence. [Sidenote: My power of memory.] Qualities which my early training had allowed to lie dormant were awakened at college. My aptitude for work was remarkable, my memory extraordinary. I made rapid progress in mathematics, to which I brought a clearness of apprehension that astonished the Abbé Leprince. At the same time, I displayed a decided taste for languages. The rudiments, the torture of school-boys, cost me no trouble to learn; I awaited the time of the Latin lessons with a sort of impatience, as a relief from my figures and geometrical problems. In less than a year, I was well ahead in the fifth form. In an odd manner, my Latin sentences shaped themselves so naturally into pentameters that the Abbé Égault called me the Elegist, a nickname which long clung to me among my schoolfellows. I can quote two instances of my power of memory. I learnt my tables of logarithms by heart: that is to say, a number being given in geometrical proportion, I could quote from memory its exponent in arithmetical proportion, and _vice versâ._