The author of mine was the humble owner of a little farm, and moistened his bread in the sweat of labor.

My first sports were not those of wealth.

The many-colored pebbles which are found by the brooks, and that well-known insect which childhood holds fluttering, free and captive at the same time, at the end of a thread, stood me in stead of other playthings.
"An old minister at Devotion's altar, enfranchised from the shadowy bondage of fanaticism, and reconciled to the new institutions of France, was my Chiron and Mentor.

He nourished me with the strong lion's marrow of Rome and Athens; his lips distilled into my ears the embalmed honey of wisdom.

Honor to thee, learned and venerable man, who gavest me the first precepts of wisdom and the first examples of virtue! "But already that atmosphere of glory which the genius of one man and the valor of a nation had set floating over the country, filled all my senses, and made my young heart throb.