d have wished, the clouds, almost the only objects to be seen
from his windows, interested him by their ever-changing shapes, and
inspired in him his first ideas of meteorology. There were not wanting
other objects to excite interest in a mind which had always been
remarkably active and original. He then realized, to quote from his
biographer, Cuvier, what Voltaire said of Condorcet, that solid enduring
discoveries can shed a lustre quite different from that of a commander
of a company of infantry. He resolved to study some profession. This
last resolution was but little less courageous than the first. Reduced
to a pension (_pension alimentaire_) of only 400 francs a year, he
attempted to study medicine, and while waiting until he had the time to
give to the necessary studies, he worked in the dreary office of a
bank.

The meditations, the thoughts and aspirations of a contemplative nature
like his, in his hours of work or leisure, in some degree consoled the
budding philosopher during this period of uncongenial labor, and when he
did have an opportunity of communicating his ideas to his friends, of
discussing them, of defending them against objection, the hardships of
his workaday life were for the time forgotten. In his ardor for science
all the uncongenial experiences of his life as a bank clerk vanished.
Like many another rising genius in art, literature, or science, his zeal
for knowledge and investigation in those days of grinding poverty fed
the fires of his genius, and this was the light which throughout his
long poverty-stricken life shed a golden lustre on his toilsome
existence. He did not then know that the great Linne, the father of the
science he was to illuminate and so greatly to expand, also began life
in extreme poverty, and eked out his scanty livelihood by mending over
again for his own use the cast-off shoes of his fellow-students.
(Cuvier.)

Bourguin[10] tells us that Lamarck's medical course lasted four years,
and this period of severe study--for he must have made it
such--evidently laid the best possible foundation that Paris could then
afford for his after studies. He seems, however, to have wavered in his
intentions of making medicine his life work, for he possessed a decided
taste for music. His eldest brother, the Chevalier de Bazentin, strongly
opposed, and induced him to abandon this project, though not without
difficulty.

At about this time the two brothers lived in a quiet village[11]