on credit the wherewithal to fill my pipe and thus
to celebrate on the eve the joys of the morrow, that blessed Thursday
[the weekly half-holiday in French schools] which I considered so well
employed in solving hard equations, experimenting with new chemical
reagents, collecting and identifying my plants. I would make my timid
request, pretending to have come out without my money, for it is hard
for a self-respecting man to admit that he is penniless. My candor
appears to have inspired some little confidence; and I obtained credit,
an unprecedented thing, with the representative of the revenue. [The
government in France has the sole control of the tobacco trade, which
forms an important branch of the inland revenue.] Ah, why did not I open
a shop and expose for sale some packets of candles, a dozen dried cod,
a barrel of sardines and a few cakes of soap! I am no more of a fool nor
any less industrious than another; and I should have made my way. But,
as it was, what could I expect? As an accoucheur of brains, a molder of
intellects, I had no claim even to bread and cheese.

Here is my former habitation, occupied since by droning monks. In the
embrasure of that window, sheltered from profane hands, between the
closed outer shutters and the panes, I used to keep my chemicals, bought
for a few sous cheated out of the weekly budget in the early days of our
housekeeping. The bowl of a pipe was my crucible, a sweet jar my retort,
mustard pots my receptacles for oxides and sulfides. My experiments,
harmless or dangerous, were made on a corner of the fire beside the
simmering broth.

How I should love to see that room again where I pored over
differentials and integrals, where I calmed my poor burning head
by gazing at Mont Ventoux, whose summit held in store for my coming
expedition' those denizens of arctic climes, the saxifrage and the
poppy! And to see my familiar friend, the blackboard which I hired at
five francs a year from a crusty joiner, that board whose value I paid
many times over, though I. could never buy it outright, for want of the
necessary cash! The conic sections which I described on that blackboard,
the learned hieroglyphics!

Though all my efforts, which were the more deserving because I had to
work alone, led to almost nothing in that congenial calling, I would
begin it all over again if I could. I should love to be conversing for
the first time with Leibnitz and Newton, with Laplace and Lagrange, with