“He was very sensitive to reproaches.  He was an admirer of courage, audacity, anything generous.  Who at Stanislas does not remember his proud and haughty attitude when a master vexed him in presence of his classmates, or interfered to end a quarrel in which his own self-respect was at stake?  All his nerves were stretched; his body stiffened, and he stood as straight as a steel rod, his arms pressed against his legs, his fists tightly closed, his head held high and rigid, and his face as yellow as ivory, with its smooth forehead, and his compressed lips cutting two deep lines around his mouth; his eyes, fixed like two black balls, seemed to start from the sockets, shooting fire.  He looked as if he were about to destroy his adversary with lightning, but in reality he retained the most imperturbable sang-froid.  He stood like a marble statue, but it was easy to divine the storm raging within...."[10]

[Footnote 10:  Unpublished notes by Abbe Chesnais.]

His tendency, after taking his bachelor’s degree, was towards science; he was ambitious to enter the Ecole polytechnique, and joined the special mathematics class.  Even when very young he had shown particular aptitude for mechanics, and a gift for invention which we have seen exercised in his practical jokes as a student.  When he was only four or five years old he constructed a bed out of paper, which he raised by means of cords and pulleys.

“He passed whole hours,” says his Stanislas classmate, Lieutenant Constantin, “in trying to solve a mathematical problem, or studying some question which had interested him, without knowing what went on around him; but as soon as he had solved his problem, or learned something new, he was satisfied and returned to the present.  He was particularly interested in everything connected with the sciences.  His greatest pleasure was to make experiments in physics or chemistry:  he tried everything which his imagination suggested.  Once he happened to produce a detonating mixture which made a formidable explosion, but nothing was broken except a few windows.”

His choice of reading revealed the same tendency.  He was not fond of reading, and only liked books of adventure which were food for his warlike sentiments and his ideas of honor and honesty.  He preferred the works of Major Driant, and re-read them even during his mathematical year.  Returning from a walk one Thursday evening, he knocked on the prefect’s door to ask for a book.  He wanted La Guerre fatale, La Guerre de Demain, L’Aviateur du Pacifique, etc.  “But you have already read them.”  “That does not matter.”  Did he really re-read them?  His dreams were always the same, and his eyes looked into the future.