Jacques de La Fontaine

“ I beheld the glorious sun arise each morning to renew our joys and pleasures, and every night thousands of stars enamelled the vault our heads; I also noticed another beautiful luminary, which day by day decreased, and again returned to its first glory by the same degrees. Now I knew from the Scriptures that God inhabited a light which no man could approach unto; and that he dwelt in the third heaven, to which St. Paul had been caught up. I concluded thence that his dwelling place was above the sun, moon. ”

“ In cloudy weather I prayed earnestly to God to lift up his foot from the round hole which gave us light.
I was sent from time to time to divers schools, and at seventeen years of age I had committed to memory vast quantities of Latin, but memory was the only talent that had been cultivated, my understanding and reasoning powers had been suffered to slumber. I became perfectly disgusted with study, and forming about this time an intimacy with a druggist’s apprentice, I thought it would be a delightful thing if I could persuade my mother to let me throw aside my books and turn shop-boy. ”

“ In France, by law a man is not of age until he has completed his twenty-fifth year, but my brothers, disliking the trouble of managing my property, made me of age, or free, immediately after my mother’s decease. ”