Must I cry off? Rather not! One resource suggests itself: a highly
improper one, I admit, not far removed indeed from larceny. O quiet
paths of algebra, you are my excuse for this venial sin! Let me confess
the temporary embezzlement.

Life at my college is more or less cloistered. In return for a modest
payment, most of us masters are lodged in the building; and we take our
meals at the principal's table. The science master, who is the big gun
of the staff and lives in the town, has nevertheless, like ourselves,
his own two cells, in addition to a balcony, or leads, where the
chemical preparations give forth their suffocating gases in the open
air. For this reason, he finds it more convenient to hold his class here
during the greater part of the year. The boys come to these rooms in
winter, in front of a grate stuffed full of coke, like mine, and there
find a blackboard, a pneumatic trough, a mantelpiece covered with glass
receivers, panoplies of bent tubes on the walls, and, lastly, a
certain cupboard in which I remember seeing a row of books, the oracles
consulted by the master in the course of his lessons.

'Among those books,' said I to myself, 'there is sure to be one on
algebra. To ask the owner for the loan of it does not appeal to me.
My amiable colleague would receive me superciliously and laugh at my
ambitious aims. I am sure he would refuse my request.'

The future was to show that my distrust was justified. Narrow mindedness
and petty jealousy prevail everywhere alike.

I decide to help myself to this book, which I should never get by
asking. This is the half-holiday. The science master will not put in an
appearance today; and the key of my room is practically the same as his.
I go, with eyes and ears on the alert. My key does not quite fit; it
sticks a little, then goes in; and an extra effort makes it turn in
the lock. The door opens. I inspect the cupboard and find that it does
contain an algebra book, one of the big, fat books which men used to
write in those days, a book nearly half a foot thick. My legs give way
beneath me. You poor specimen of a housebreaker, suppose you were caught
at it! However, all goes well. Quick, let's lock the door again and go
back to our own quarters with the pilfered volume.

And now we are together, O mysterious tome, whose Arab name breathes a
strange mustiness of occult lore and claims kindred with the sciences of
almagest and alchemy. What will you show me? Let us