We left the mountains at the beginning of October, but my home-coming was marked by a very painful circumstance—I was sent to school! I went, of course, only as a day scholar; and it goes without saying that I was never allowed to go and come alone lest I should get into bad company. The four years that I spent at the university, as a day scholar, were as strange and as full of odd experiences as any of my life. But, notwithstanding, from that fatal day my history becomes much less interesting as a narrative¹.  
I was taken to school for the first time, at two o'clock in the afternoon, upon one of those glorious October days, so sunny and peaceful, that is like a reluctant and sad leave-taking of the summer-time. Ah! how beautiful it had been in the mountains, in the leafless forests and among the autumn-tinted vines!
 
With a crowd of children, all talking at the same time, I entered the torture chamber². My first impression was one of astonished disgust because of the hideousness³ of the ink-stained walls, and of the old benches of shiny wood defaced by the penknife carvings⁴ of countless⁵ school-boys who had been so inexpressibly miserable⁶ in this place. Although I was a stranger to my new companions they treated me with the greatest familiarity (they used thee and thou in addressing me) and gave themselves patronizing airs that were almost impertinent. Although I observed my school-mates timidly and furtively⁷ I thought them, for the most part, exceedingly ill-mannered and untidy.
 
As I was twelve and a half I entered the third class; my tutor considered me advanced enough to keep up with it if I chose to do so, although I myself felt that I was scarcely equal to the task. The first day, for the purpose of qualifying, we had to write Latin exercises, and I remember that my father awaited, with some anxiety, the outcome of the examination. When I told him I was second among fifteen I was surprised that he attached so much importance to a matter of so little interest to me. It was all one to me! Broken hearted as I felt, how could I be affected⁸ by such a trifle?
 
Later, indeed, at no time, did I feel the impetus⁹ that the desire to excel brings with it. To be at the foot of the class always seemed to me the least of the ills that a school-boy is called upon to endure.
 
The weeks following my entrance were extremely painful to me. I felt my intellect cramping¹⁰ rather than expanding under the multiplicity of the lessons and the tasks imposed; even the realm of my young dreams seemed closing against me little by little. The first dismal¹¹, foggy weather, and the first gray days added a greater desolation and sadness to my already overwrought feelings. The uncouth¹² chimney-sweeps had returned, and their yearly autumn cry was again heard in the streets. Theirs was a cry that in my earlier years wrung¹³ my heart and caused my tears to flow. When one is a child the approach of winter, with its killing¹⁴ gloom and cold, seems to awake in him

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