In spite of blows, however, the boy did not yield. His mother, when she tried to intervene, was also abused. Finally, the captain planted the boy in his office, and all day long kept him bent over his desk copying documents, with the result that his right shoulder was noticeably higher than his left.

In 1833, on the invitation of the president, the captain sold his post. His wife died of cancer. He then went to live in Dijon. After that he established himself as an army recruiter at Troyes;5 and, having obtained a small scholarship for Charles, placed him at the college of Sens, where he crossed paths with Frédéric. But one was twelve years old, while the other was fifteen; besides which a thousand differences in character and background separated them.

Frédéric had in his chest of drawers all sorts of useful things—luxurious objects, such as a dressing-case. He liked to lounge in bed all morning, looking at the swallows, and reading plays; and, missing the comforts of home, he thought college life rough.

To the process-server’s son it seemed a pleasant life. He worked so hard that, at the end of the second year, he had gotten into the third form. However, due to his poverty or to his quarrelsome disposition, he was disliked intensely. But when on one occasion, in the middle-school yard, a servant openly called him a beggar’s child, he sprang at the fellow’s throat, and would have killed him if three of the school monitors had not intervened. Frédéric, filled with admiration, threw his arms around him and hugged him. From that day forward they became fast friends. The affection of an older boy no doubt flattered the vanity of the younger one, and the other accepted the good fortune of this devotion freely offered to him.

During the holidays Charles’s father allowed him to remain in the college. A translation of Plato which he opened by chance filled him with enthusiasm. Then he became smitten with metaphysical studies; and he made rapid progress, for he approached the subject with all the energy of youth and the self-confidence of a now independent intellect. Jouffroy, Cousin, Laromiguière, Malebranche, and the Scotch metaphysicians6—everything that could be found in the library dealing with this branch of knowledge passed through his hands. He found it necessary to steal the key in order to get the books.

Frédéric’s intellectual interests were of a less serious nature. He made sketches of the genealogy of Christ carved on a post in the Rue des Trois Rois, then of the gateway of a cathedral. After a mediæval drama course, he took up memoirs—Froissart, Comines, Pierre de lEstoile, and Brantôme.b

The impressions made on his mind by this kind of reading took such a hold of it that he felt a need within him of reproducing those pictures of bygone days. His ambition was to be, one day, the Walter Scott of France.7 Deslauriers dreamed of formulating a vast system of philosophy, which might have the most far-reaching applications.

They chatted over all these matters during recess, in the playground, in front of the moral inscription painted under the clock. They kept whispering to each other about them in the chapel, even with St. Louis staring down at them. They dreamed about them in the dormitory, which looked out on a cemetery. On school walks they lagged behind the others, and talked non-stop.

They spoke of what they would do later, when they had finished college. First of all, they would set out on a long voyage with the money which Frédéric would take out of his own fortune upon reaching adulthood. Then they would come back to Paris; they would work together, and would never part; and, as a relaxation from their labours, they would have love-affairs with princesses in boudoirs lined with satin, or dazzling orgies with famous courtesans. Their rapturous expectations were followed by doubts. After a spell of verbose gaiety, they would often lapse into profound silence.

On summer evenings, when they had been walking for a long time over stony paths which bordered on vineyards, or on the high-road in the open country, and when they saw the wheat waving in the sunlight, while the air was filled with the fragrance of angelica, a sort of suffocating sensation took possession of them, and they stretched themselves on their backs, dizzy, intoxicated. Meanwhile the other lads, in their shirt-sleeves, were playing tag or flying kites.