The Jesuit college at Amiens stood apart from the noisy streets, an austere mass of grey stone, more concerned with shaping minds than hearts. Boys entered young, and quickly lost the illusion of being singular. There, pupils were ranks, names set down in registers, bodies lined up on narrow benches.
There Louis learned his letters as one learns a discipline. To read without dreaming. To copy without embellishing. To count without cheating. Arithmetic, above all, pleased him for its cold rigour. Numbers did not judge. They demanded only that one not be wrong.
