Unacquainted with the world, and inexperienced, I hoped for the sympathy of men, but in vain.

No one would relieve or assist me! Days and weeks long I have wandered around in the forest adjoining our little village, and lived like the animals, upon roots and herbs.

Yet I was happy! I had taken with me in my flight two books which I had received as prizes, in the happy days that my father permitted me to go to the Latin school.

The decision of the teacher that I was created for a scholar, so terrified my father, that he took me from the school, to turn the embryo savant, who would be good for nothing, into a shoemaker, who might earn his bread.

My two darling books remained to me.