The life of a soldier was scarcely of a
nature likely to give an impulse to my intelligence
—SHE slept always; only I had within
me a vague feeling of some unknown thing
for which I searched.  What, I would then
have been much embarrassed to say.  But
already at Wissembourg I had had something
like a forerunner—like a slight indication of
the awakening of my ideas.

When walking in the country, if I saw the
terrace-makers occupied in hollowing the
earth, a feeling of curiosity—or, to say it
better, an instinct of which I took no heed—
pushed, me to examine the heaps of earth of
different kinds and aspects; I took morsels
in my hand, I picked out grains, I crumbled
them in my fingers.  I would then have given
two months' pay to any man who would have
explained to me the nature and properties of
these different sorts of earth and clay; but
the terrace-makers never have been members
of the Academy of Sciences.

After the revolution of July, the Eighth
light regiment quitted Wissembourg, and
went into garrison in Paris.  It was the first
time I saw the capital.  One day, my longings
brought me before the windows of a
marine store—un marchand de bric-à-brac.
In the midst of the curiosities, of the strange
objects displayed in that shop, I saw only, I
remarked but one thing—a superb enamelled
dish with figures of animals and plants in
relief.  Something like a dazzling seized at
once my eyes and my intelligence.  Twenty
times I was tempted to enter the shop to be
near, to touch, to handle, that marvellous
work, to question the dealer respecting the
price, the value of the thing, the name of the
man who had made it.  But I did not dare.
They would have laughed at the amateur in
red pantaloons and a police cap.  That never
was the costume of the antiquary.  During
eight days I returned and stationed myself
before the shop of this dealer, absorbed in
my reflections.  I did not stop there; I went
in search of all the bric-à-brac or 'odds and
ends' shops in Paris.  What was then my joy
when I succeeded in discovering—here an
ewer with its basin, there a baptistery; with
this one a plate, with that one a salt-cellar, a
candlestick, or any other utensil of the table
—all objects elegant in form, brilliant in tone,
and rich in tasteful ornaments.  Unable to
resist any longer the desire of instructing
myself, I finally decided upon questioning the
dealers, and learned that all these marvels
were called Bernard Palissy's.  To see them,
to admire them, was the thought of all my
days, the dream of all my nights.  Isolating
myself from my comrades, I passed all my
time in contemplation before my dear enamels.
Thus time passed until my regiment quitted
Paris to make the campaigns of eighteen
hundred and thirty-one and eighteen hundred
and thirty-two.  After the capitulation of the
citadel of Anvers, I went to Lille; thence
from garrison to garrison, and from cantonment
to cantonment; but, always thinking of
my dear enamels, I reached the time when,
my engagement having expired, I quitted the
service.  We were in the year eighteen
hundred and thirty-six.

I returned to my native town, but ennui
seized me, and the desire to see again the
Bernard Palissy specimens soon brought me
to Paris.  As I have already said, I had not
learned any trade, and yet I must work to
live.  I sought for a place, for any employment
whatever, and I did not find it.  Want
forced me to go to Havre, where I received
an offer of employment in the wine trade.
My stay in that town was of short duration.
As at Wissembourg, ennui seized me, and I
returned to Paris, resolved never to quit it.
I then entered as errand-boy the office of M.
Guerin, proprietor and director of the Gazette
Médicale.  That place leaving me some leisure
time, I took the firm resolution to make it
useful.

Nevertheless, prior to beginning anything,
I set myself to reflect seriously, and to
interrogate myself.  I now felt that a small
degree of fixity had succeeded to the vagueness
of the ideas in rny mind.  For a long
time had I searched without knowing very
well what I sought; already some morsels of
clay crumbled in my fingers had given me a
forewarning, and then the blossoming of my
intelligence at the sight of the works of
Bernard Palissy had given me a presentiment
of the unknown which perplexed my thoughts.
At least, I thus began to comprehend it, but
all that was only a feeble germ.  To produce
itself, it must first ferment still longer in my
head. An idea then occurred to me, without
doubt as a step towards the great work which
I should afterwards have the temerity to
undertake; I recollected that my intelligence
was never more alert than when SHE went
and placed herself at the tips of my ten
fingers, and I took measures to cut out work
for her.

I bought a few dead birds and I stuffed
them; my attempts succeeded.  I took a
taste for it. I studied anatomy and a little
natural history, and at the end of a certain
time I had made a varied collection of nearly
four hundred birds.  They advised me to
take a shop and establish myself; this was
in eighteen hundred and forty-one.  I met, by
chance, an old comrade who had a booth in
the Place du Carousel, where he was not
thriving in his business.  He let it to me,
and I left M. Jules Guerin and opened shop.
My collection of birds was sold in a twinkling,
and promptly replaced.  My trade prospered,
and I began to acquire a certain reputation
for ability.  Every Monday fifteen or twenty
specimens were brought to me from the
country to be stuffed.  High personages
visited more than once my little cabinet of
natural history.  The Prince de Joinville
came often incognito, into my shop, inquired
the prices without bargaining, and immediately