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My old companion of the Polytechnique was, indeed, little altered by time, careless, inconsiderate, and good-hearted as ever. He told me that he had only gained the command of the regiment a few weeks before; "and," added he, "if matters mend not soon, I am scarcely like to hold it much longer.
Then, with the remaining two thousand francs, I will go to Brest, and go to sea as an apprentice. While Marie is at school, I will rise to be a lieutenant on board a man-of-war. There, after all, die in peace, my mother; I shall come back again a rich man, and our little one shall go to the Ecole polytechnique, and I will find a career to suit his bent."
Division General Mensier, Chairman; Division General Delambre, Inspector General of the Permanent Works of Coast Defence, Member of the Technical Committee of the Engineering Corps; Colonel Laussedat, Director of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers; Sarrau, Member of the Institute, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Polytechnic School; Leaute, Member of the Institute, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Polytechnique School.
But for my own part I'm well pleased at it, for it often enables me to go to Montmartre and work at my old little table. It's only there that I feel any real strength and clearness of mind." His preliminary examinations had entitled him to admission at either the Ecole Polytechnique or the Ecole Normale,* and he had chosen the latter, entering its scientific section with No. l against his name.
So there the matter dropped. Adams's communication was pigeonholed, and remained in seclusion eight or nine months. Meanwhile, and quite independently, something of the same sort was going on in France. A brilliant young mathematician, Urban Jean Joseph Leverrier, born in Normandy in 1811, held the post of astronomical professor at the École Polytechnique, founded by Napoleon.
"It would tear down the tricolor, and set up the red flag of destruction; it would make penny-pieces out of the Column of the Place Vendôme; it would hurl down the statue of Napoleon, and set up that of Marat in its place; it would suppress the Académie, the École Polytechnique, and the Legion of Honor.
Do you think that an engineer from the Ecole Polytechnique could ever create one of those miracles of architecture such as Leonardo da Vinci knew how to build, mechanician, architect, painter, inventor of hydraulics, indefatigable constructor of canals that he was?
Voices issued from every narrow doorway, crying up the merits of Cosmoramas, views of Constantinople, marionettes, automatic chess-players, and performing dogs who would pick you out the prettiest woman in the company. The ventriloquist Fritz-James flourished here in the Cafe Borel before he went to fight and fall at Montmartre with the young lads from the Ecole polytechnique.
"Well, mademoiselle," replied Merle, nettled at being always interrupted, "he is so like citizen du Gua, that if your friend did not wear the uniform of the Ecole Polytechnique I could swear it was he." Mademoiselle de Verneuil looked fixedly at the cold, impassible young man who had scorned her, but she saw nothing in him that betrayed the slightest feeling of alarm.
Hide nothing from me; tell me the truth. Who are you? for you are no more a pupil of the Ecole Polytechnique than you are eighteen years old." "I am a sailor, ready to leave the ocean and follow you wherever your imagination may lead you. If I have been so lucky as to rouse your curiosity in any particular I shall be very careful not to lessen it.
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