But where I triumphed how many others fail!  Do you know that from year to year the State increases the scientific requirements of the Ecole? the studies are more severe, more exacting yearly.  The preparatory studies which tried me so much were nothing to the intense work of the school itself, which has for its object to put the whole of physical science, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and all their nomenclatures into the minds of young men of nineteen to twenty-one years of age.  The State, which seems in France to wish to substitute itself in many ways for the paternal authority, has neither bowels of compassion nor fatherhood; it makes its experiments in anima vili.  Never does it inquire into the horrible statistics of the suffering it causes.  Does it know the number of brain fevers among its pupils during the last thirty-six years; or the despair and the moral destruction which decimate its youth?  I am pointing out to you this painful side of the State education, for it is one of the anterior contingents of the actual result.

You know that scholars whose conceptions are slow, or who are temporarily disabled from excess of mental work, are allowed to remain at the Ecole three years instead of two; they then become the object of suspicions little favorable to their capacity.  This often compels young men, who might later show superior capacity, to leave the school without being employed, simply because they could not meet the final examination with the full scientific knowledge required.  They are called “dried fruits”; Napoleon made sub-lieutenants of them.  To-day the “dried fruits” constitute an enormous loss of capital to families and of time to individuals.

However, as I say, I triumphed.  At twenty-one years of age I knew the mathematical sciences up to the point to which so many men of genius have brought them, and I was impatient to distinguish myself by carrying them further.  This desire is so natural that almost every pupil leaving the Ecole fixes his eyes on that moral sun called Fame.  The first thought of all is to become another Newton, or Laplace, or Vauban.  Such are the efforts that France demands of the young men who leave her celebrated school.

Now let us see the fate of these men culled with so much care from each generation.  At one-and-twenty we dream of life, and expect marvels of it.  I entered the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees; I was a pupil-engineer.  I studied the science of construction, and how ardently!  I am sure you remember that.  I left the school in 1827, being then twenty-four years of age, still only a candidate as engineer, and the government paid me one hundred and fifty francs a month; the commonest book-keeper in Paris earns that by the time he is eighteen, giving little more than four hours a day to his work.

By a most unusual piece of luck, perhaps because of the distinction my devoted studies won