I must here confess the humiliating ignorance that is the disgrace of my life. I have not the faintest idea of the mysteries concealed within these recondite and complicated operations. I did my humanities like everybody else; but, after crossing the useful and familiar frontiers of multiplication and division I found it impossible to advance any farther into the desolate regions, bristling with figures, where the square and cubic roots hold sway, together with all sorts of other monstrous powers, without shapes or faces, which inspired me with invincible terror. All the persecutions of my excellent instructors wore themselves out against a dead wall of stolidity. Successively disheartened, they left me to my dismal ignorance, prophesying a most dreary future for me, haunted with bitter regrets. I must say that, until now, I had scarcely experienced the effects of these gloomy predictions; but the hour has come for me to expiate the sins of my youth. Nevertheless, I put a good face upon it: and, taking at random the first figures that suggest themselves to my mind, I boldly write on the black-board an enormous and most daring number. Muhamed remains motionless. Krall speaks to him sharply, telling him to hurry up. Muhamed lifts his right hoof, but does not let it fall. Krall loses patience, lavishes prayers, promises and threats; the hoof remains poised, as though to bear witness to good intentions that cannot be carried out. Then my host turns round, looks at the problem and asks me: "Does it give an exact root?" Exact? What does he mean? Are there roots which. . .? But I dare not go on: my shameful ignorance suddenly flashes before my eyes. Krall smiles indulgently and, without making any attempt to supplement an education which is too much in arrears to allow of the slightest hope, laboriously works out the problem and declares that the horse was right in refusing to give an impossible solution. 12 Muhamed receives our thanks in the form of a lordly portion of carrots; and a pupil is introduced whose attainments do not tower so high above mine: Hanschen, the little pony, quick and lively as a big rat. Like me, he has never gone beyond elementary arithmetic: and so we shall understand each other better and meet on equal terms.