Camille having grown up, rescued from death, had contracted a shiver from the torture of the repeated shocks he had undergone.

Arrested in his growth, he remained short and delicate.

His long, thin limbs moved slowly and wearily.

But his mother loved him all the more on account of this weakness that arched his back.
She observed his thin, pale face with triumphant tenderness when she thought of how she had brought him back to life more than ten times over.
During the brief spaces of repose that his sufferings allowed him, the child attended a commercial school at Vernon.

There he learned orthography and arithmetic.