vegetate.  Taking my chances at their best, the future seems to me a poor thing.  I have just taken advantage of a furlough to come to Paris; I mean to change my profession and find some other way to put my energy, my knowledge, and my activity to use.  I shall send in my resignation and go to some other country, where men of my special capacity are wanted.

If I find I cannot do this, then I shall throw myself into the struggle of the new doctrines, which certainly seem calculated to produce great changes in the present social order by judiciously guiding the working-classes.  What are we now but workers without work, tools on the shelves of a shop?  We are trained and organized as if to move the world, and nothing is given us to do.  I feel within me some great thing, which is decreasing daily, and will soon vanish; I tell you so with mathematical frankness.  Before making the change I want your advice; I look upon myself as your child, and I will never take any important step without consulting you, for your experience is equal to your kindness.

I know very well that the State, after obtaining a class of trained men, cannot undertake for them alone great public works; there are not three hundred bridges needed a year in all France; the State can no more build great buildings for the fame of its engineers than it can declare war merely to win battles and bring to the front great generals; but, then, as men of genius have never failed to present themselves when the occasion called for them, springing from the crowd like Vauban, can there be any greater proof of the uselessness of the present institution?  Can’t they see that when they have stimulated a man of talent by all those preparations he will make a fierce struggle before he allows himself to become a nonentity?  Is this good policy on the part of the State?  On the contrary, is not the State lighting the fire of ardent ambitions, which must find fuel somewhere.

Among the six hundred young men whom they put forth every year there are exceptions,—­men who resist what may be called their demonetization.  I know some myself, and if I could tell you their struggles with men and things when armed with useful projects and conceptions which might bring life and prosperity to the half-dead provinces where the State has sent them, you would feel that a man of power, a man of talent, a man whose nature is a miracle, is a hundredfold more unfortunate and more to be pitied than the man whose lower nature lets him submit to the shrinkage of his faculties.

I have made up my mind, therefore, that I would rather direct some commercial or industrial enterprise, and live on small means while trying to solve some of the great problems still unknown to industry and to society, than remain at my present post.

You will tell me, perhaps, that nothing hinders me from employing the leisure that I certainly