I was thus three years old in 1789, four years old in 1790, five years in 1791, six years in 1792, and seven years old in 1793, &c.

The reader has now himself the means of judging whether, as has been said, and even stated in print, I had a hand in the excesses of our first revolution.

My parents sent me to the primary school in Estagel, where I learnt the rudiments of reading and writing.  I received, besides, in my father’s house, some private lessons in vocal music.  I was not otherwise either more or less advanced than other children of my age.  I enter into these details merely to show how much mistaken are those who have printed that at the age of fourteen or fifteen years I had not yet learnt to read.

Estagel was a halting-place for a portion of the troops who, coming from the interior, either went on to Perpignan, or repaired direct to the army of the Pyrenees.  My parents’ house was therefore constantly full of officers and soldiers.  This, joined to the lively excitement which the Spanish invasion had produced within me, inspired me with such decided military tastes, that my family was obliged to have me narrowly watched to prevent my joining by stealth the soldiers who left Estagel.  It often happened that they caught me at a league’s distance from the village, already on my way with the troops.

On one occasion these warlike tastes had nearly cost me dear.  It was the night of the battle of Peires-Tortes.  The Spanish troops in their retreat had partly mistaken their road.  I was in the square of the village before daybreak; I saw a brigadier and five troopers come up, who, at the sight of the tree of liberty, called out, “Somos perdidos!” I ran immediately to the house to arm myself with a lance which had been left there by a soldier of the levee en masse, and placing myself in ambush at the corner of a street, I struck with a blow of this weapon the brigadier placed at the head of the party.  The wound was not dangerous; a cut of the sabre, however, was descending to punish my hardihood, when some countrymen came to my aid, and, armed with forks, overturned the five cavaliers from their saddles, and made them prisoners.  I was then seven years old.[1]

My father having gone to reside at Perpignan, as treasurer of the mint, all the family quitted Estagel to follow him there.  I was then placed as an out-door pupil at the municipal college of the town, where I occupied myself almost exclusively with my literary studies.  Our classic authors had become the objects of my favourite reading.  But the direction of my ideas became changed all at once by a singular circumstance which I will relate.

Walking one day on the ramparts of the town, I saw an officer of engineers who was directing the execution of the repairs.  This officer, M. Cressac, was very young; I had the hardihood to approach him, and to ask him how he had succeeded in so soon wearing an epaulette.  “I come from the Polytechnic School,” he answered.  “What school is that?” “It is a school which one enters by an examination.”  “Is much expected of the candidates?” “You will see it in the programme which the Government sends every year to the departmental administration; you will find it moreover in the numbers of the journal of the school, which are in the library of the central school.”