The spider's web is a glorious mathematical problem. I should enjoy working it out in all its details, were I not afraid of wearying the reader's attention. Perhaps I have even gone too far in the little that I have said, in which case I owe him some compensation: 'Would you like me,' I will ask him, 'would you like me to tell you how I acquired sufficient algebra to master the logarithmic systems and how I became a surveyor of Spiders' webs?
Would you? It will give us a rest from natural history.'
I seem to catch a sign of acquiescence. The story of my village school, visited by the chicks and the porkers, has been received with some indulgence; why should not my harsh school of solitude possess its interest as well? Let us try to describe it. And who knows? Perhaps, in doing so, I shall revive the courage of some other poor derelict hungering after knowledge.
I was denied the privilege of learning with a master. I should be wrong to complain. Solitary study has its advantages: it does not cast you in the official mould; it leaves you all your originality.
Wild fruit, when it ripens, has a different taste from hothouse produce: it leaves on a discriminating palate a bittersweet flavor whose virtue is all the greater for the contrast. Yes, if it were in my power, I would start afresh, face to face with my only counselor, the book itself, not always a very lucid one; I would gladly resume my lonely watches, my struggles with the darkness whence, at last, a glimmer appears as I continue to explore it; Ishould retraverse the irksome stages of yore, stimulated by the one desire that has never failed me, the desire of learning and of afterwards bestowing my mite of knowledge on others.
When I left the normal school, my stock of mathematics was of the scantiest. How to extract a square root, how to calculate and prove the surface of a sphere: these represented to me the culminating points of the subject. Those terrible logarithms, when I happened to open a table of them, made my head swim, with their columns of figures; actual fright, not unmixed with respect, overwhelmed me on the very threshold of that arithmetical cave. Of algebra I had no knowledge whatever. I had heard the name; and the syllables represented to my poor brain the whole whirling legion of the abstruse.
Besides, I felt no inclination to decipher the alarming hieroglyphics. They made one of those indigestible dishes which we confidently extol without touching them. I greatly preferred a fine line of Virgil, whom I was now beginning to understand; and Ishould have been surprised indeed had any one told me that, for long years to come, I should be an enthusiastic student of the formidable science. Good fortune procured me my first lesson in algebra, a lesson given and not received, of course.
A young man of about my own age came to me and asked me to teach him algebra. He was preparing for his examination as a civil engineer; and he came to me because, ingenuous youth that he was, he took me for a well of learning. The guileless applicant was very far out in his reckoning.
His request gave me a shock of surprise, which was forthwith repressed on reflection: 'I give algebra lessons? ' said I to myself. 'It would be madness: I don't know anything about the subject!'
And I left it at that for a moment or two, thinking hard, drawn now this way, now that with indecision: 'Shall I accept? Shall Irefuse? ' continued the inner voice.
Pooh, let's accept! An heroic method of learning to swim is to leap boldly into the sea. Let us hurl ourselves head first into the algebraical gulf; and perhaps the imminent danger of drowning will call forth efforts capable of bringing me to land. I know nothing of what he wants. It makes no difference: let's go ahead and plunge into the mystery. I shall learn by teaching.
It was a fine courage that drove me full tilt into a province which I had not yet thought of entering. My twenty-year-old confidence was an incomparable lever.
'Very well,' I replied. 'Come the day after tomorrow, at five, and we'll begin.'
This twenty-four hours' delay concealed a plan. It secured me the respite of a day, the blessed Thursday, which would give me time to collect my forces.
Thursday comes. The sky is gray and cold. In this horrid weather, a grate well filled with coke has its charms. Let's warm ourselves and think.
Well, my boy, you've landed yourself in a nice predicament! How will you manage tomorrow? With a book, plodding all through the night, if necessary, you might scrape up something resembling a lesson, just enough to fill the dread hour more or less. Then you could see about the next: sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. But you haven't the book. And it's no use running out to the bookshop. Algebraical treatises are not current wares. You'll have to send for one, which will take a fortnight at least. And I've promised for tomorrow, for tomorrow certain! Another argument and one that admits of no reply: funds are low; my last pecuniary resources lie in the corner of a drawer. I count the money: it amounts to twelve sous, which is not enough.
Must I cry off? Rather not! One resource suggests itself: a highly improper one, I admit, not far removed indeed from larceny. Oquiet paths of algebra, you are my excuse for this venial sin! Let me confess the temporary embezzlement.
