“Yes, I was so quick at learning that my mother rather neglected it; it was not till I was sixteen that she seemed suddenly to become aware of the fact, and after a marvellous journey in Algeria, which I took with Uncle Faby (I think it was the best time of my life), I was sent to Paris and put in charge of a thick-skinned brute of a jailer, who looked after my schooling.” “After such excessive liberty, I readily understand that constraint of that kind must have seemed rather hard to you.” “I should never have borne it without Protos. He was a boarder at the same school as I--in order to learn French, it was said; but he spoke it to perfection and I could never make out the point of his being there--nor of my being there either. I was sick of the whole thing--pining away. I hadn’t exactly any feeling of friendship for Protos, but I turned towards him as though I expected him to save me. He was a good deal older than I was and looked even older than he was, without a trace of childhood left in his bearing or tastes. His features were extraordinarily illuminating when he chose, and could express anything and everything; but when he was at rest he used to look like an idiot. One day when I chaffed him about it, he replied that the important thing in this world was never to look like what one was. He was not content merely with being thought humble--he wanted to be thought stupid. It amused him to say that what is fatal to most people is that they prefer parade to drill and won’t hide their talents; but he didn’t say it to anybody but me. He kept himself aloof from everyone--even from me, though I was the only person in the school he didn’t despise. When once I succeeded in getting him to talk he became extraordinarily eloquent, but most of the time he was taciturn and seemed to be brooding over some dark design, which I should have liked to know about. When I asked him--politely, for no one ever treated him with familiarity--what he was doing in such a place, he answered: ‘I am getting under way.’ He had a theory that in life one could get out of the worst holes by saying to oneself: ‘What’s the odds!’ That’s what I repeated to myself so often that I ran away. “I started with eighteen francs in my pocket and reached Baden by short stages, eating anything, sleeping anywhere. I was rather done up when I arrived, but, on the whole, pleased with myself, for I still had three francs left; it is true that I picked up five or six by the way. I found my mother there with my uncle de Gesvres, who was delighted with my escapade, and made up his mind to take me back to Paris; he was inconsolable, he said, that I should have unpleasant recollections of Paris. And it’s a fact that when I went back there with him, Paris made a much more favourable impression on me.