Chapter II.
I was seventeen years of age, and was completing my studies in philosophy at Amiens, where I had been sent by my parents, who belonged to one of the best families in P———. The life I led was so blameless and correct that my masters held me up as an example to the whole college; not that I made any extraordinary efforts to merit this commendation, but I was naturally of a sedate and gentle temperament. I applied myself to study as a matter of inclination; and the evidences which I gave of an instinctive aversion from vice were put to my credit as positive virtues. My rank, my rapid progress in my studies, and a certain comeliness of person, had secured me the acquaintance and esteem of all the leading people of the town.
I acquitted myself so much to the general approbation at my final public examinations, that his lordship, the Bishop of the Diocese, who was present on the occasion in question, proposed that I should enter upon an ecclesiastical career, in which I could not fail, he told me, to attain greater distinction than in the Order of Malta, for which my parents had destined me. By their wish I was already wearing the cross of that Order, with the title of the Chevalier des Grieux.
