The French Mathematician

– What use is geometry? mumbles a student in the front row.
– Use? snaps Vernier.
He takes out a coin and extends it to the student.
– Here! If you cannot see the value of knowledge as an end in itself, I had better pay you for learning.
The student bows without a word.
– Now for a few simple proofs, Vernier glares. Those not completed in class must be done before our next lesson.
The student beside me bites his knuckles over the first problem, but I see the proof at once, as though a long-dormant sense has suddenly been awakened. My heart beats strongly against the edge of the desk, my hand shakes, I am unable to keep my writing on a straight line. I complete the exercise in a few minutes, most of them in my head, while my neighbor sighs, scrapes the floor, and chews his pen in frustration. The bell sounds. Shuffling above Vernier’s instructions, the students bustle from the room.
There is a fire in me. I have never been in love, and what little I know has come from books, but it must be something very much like this, a flesh-consuming fire. I want to know more about geometry. I want to ask Vernier whether I might borrow Euclid and Legendre. But how can I explain my insight? Is it intuition? A kind of sixth sense? A feel for geometry? He would not understand.
At the start of the afternoon recreation hour, I hurry to the library. Locating both books, I sit at a window overlooking the courtyard and the Preparatory School, an annex of Louis-le-Grand where students train to become secondary school teachers. I pick up Euclid first, feel the textured cover with my palm, and then flick through the yellowing pages, inhaling their mustiness. I read all that Vernier covered, and continue through more propositions, theorems, and proofs. I read quickly, as though it is a biography or a work of fiction, comprehending everything at once, my mind moving as though it has finally found its element.
I make my way to Rhetoric class as though in a trance, and stare through the lesson without opening my book. The afternoon has turned gray, and grayness now clings to the dreary walls, embraces the potbelly stove bulging with fire, leans against the blackboard, gathers around the overhead lamps. After another three unbearable lessons I hurry back to the library.
– Geometry?
As though surprised in an illicit activity, I shut the book with a thud, my index finger between the pages. An elderly fellow with a fleshy smile peers over my shoulder.
– They haven’t been touched in years, says the librarian.
He leans over me, his puffy hands on the table like two spotted toads.
– It’s the language of the future, he whispers. When Greek and Latin die out, geometry will be the language of the world.
What does he want? He is depriving me of valuable reading time. He straightens up and becomes thoughtful, hairy nose wheezing at each breath. I am struck by the thought that, despite the book’s eventual decay, the ideas of geometry will remain intact for another two thousand years and that ideas are like parasites, burrowing into suitable minds, feeding on young thought, moving through time in the vehicle of the human skull. I would gladly give my mind for the sake of these ideas, sacrifice myself for a new theorem. Suddenly, as the librarian is mumbling something, as two boys are chuckling at a corner table, as the night muzzles the window, as a church bell’s toll is muffled by the thick dark, I know that I am destined to become a mathematician. Ignoring the librarian’s chatter about mildew slowly destroying the library, I spring up from the table. He grasps my forearm and offers me the books, even though they are not for loan, saying they will not be missed for a few days. I embrace them like a youth embracing his first love.