Sarrasin, was not exactly what one would call lazy. He was neither stupid nor of superior intelligence, neither handsome nor ugly, neither tall nor short, neither brown- nor blond-haired. The latter was a kind of chestnut color, and Octave was in every way an average young man born into the middle class. In school he generally earned a second prize and two or three runners-up. At the baccalauréat, he was given a passing grade. Rejected the first time at the competitive exam for the Ecole Centrale, he was admitted on the second try with a rating of 127. His character was somewhat indecisive, one of those minds that is content with uncertainty, that seems to live perpetually in the “approximate,” and that walks through life in semi-obscurity. The destiny of such people is often what a bottle cork is to the crest of a wave. Depending on whether the wind is blowing from the north or the south, they are carried off to either the equator or the pole. Chance alone decides the course of their lives. If Dr. Sarrasin had clearly understood his son’s character, perhaps he would have hesitated in writing him the above letter. But even the most brilliant minds sometimes exhibit a little paternal blindness.1
During the early years of his education, Octave had the good fortune to come under the spell of an energetic individual whose somewhat exacting but benevolent influence had imposed itself by sheer strength upon him. In the Lycée Charlemagne where his father had sent him to do his studies,2 Octave had become best friends with one of his classmates, an Alsatian named Marcel Bruckmann, who was younger than he by a year, but much his superior in terms of physical, intellectual, and moral vigor.
Marcel and Octave
Orphaned at the age of twelve, Marcel Bruckmann had inherited a small income which was just enough to pay for his schooling.3 Without Octave, who always brought him along to his parents’ home during vacations, he would probably never have ventured outside the school walls.
As a consequence, the family of Dr. Sarrasin soon became the young Alsatian’s family as well. Warm and sensitive beneath his apparently cold exterior, he understood that he owed his life to these worthy people who became both father and mother to him. So it is no surprise that he adored Dr. Sarrasin, his wife, and their kind and already serious-minded daughter Jeanne, who had all opened their hearts to him. But it was by facts, not words, that he proved his gratitude. Indeed, he had taken on the agreeable task of helping Jeanne, who loved learning, to become an upright young woman with a firm and judicious mind, and, at the same time, of making Octave a son worthy of his father. This latter task, one must say, proved to be a bit more difficult than in regard to the sister who was, for her age, already superior to her brother. But Marcel had promised himself to reach his double goal.
Marcel Bruckmann was one of those outstanding young champions, both spirited and discerning, that Alsace sends forth every year to fight in the great battlefield of Paris. As a child he had already distinguished himself by the toughness and flexibility of his muscles as well as by the sharpness of his mind. Strong on the outside, he was all purpose and courage on the inside.
Since his early school days, he felt a driving urge to excel in everything, on the horizontal bars as on the ball field, in the gymnasium as in the laboratory. If he missed a prize in his annual harvest, he felt the year was lost. At twenty he was tall in stature, robust, filled with zest and action, an organic machine at the peak of its performance.4 His intellect had already attracted the attention of thoughtful minds. Having entered the Ecole Centrale the same year as Octave as the second-ranked student, he was determined to finish as number one.
Moreover, it was due to Marcel’s persistent and overflowing energy — which was more than enough for two men — that Octave was eventually admitted to the university. For a whole year Marcel had mentored him, pushed him to work, and ultimately forced him to succeed. He felt a kind of friendly compassion for that vacillating and feeble character, like a lion might feel for a puppy. He enjoyed strengthening with his own energy that anemic plant and having it bear fruit before his eyes.5
The war of 1870 had broken out, surprising the two friends at a time when they were taking their exams. On the day after the last exam, Marcel, full of patriotic grief at the fate that was threatening Strasbourg and Alsace, had gone to enlist in the 31st Infantry Battalion. Octave had immediately followed his example.
Side by side as outposts, they had waged the difficult campaign of the siege of Paris. At Champigny, Marcel had received a bullet in his right arm; at Buzenval, a stripe on his left arm.6 Octave had neither stripes nor wound. In truth, it was not his fault, for he had always followed his friend under fire. He had been scarcely six meters behind — but those six meters had made all the difference.
After peace was declared and normalcy returned, the two students decided to live together in two adjacent rooms of a modest hotel near the school. The misfortunes of France and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine had developed a certain maturity and manliness in Marcel.
“It is up to the French youth,” he would say, “to repair the mistakes of their fathers, and this can only be achieved by hard work.”
Rising at five o’clock, Marcel obliged Octave to do the same. He dragged him to his courses and, after class, kept a close eye on him. Returning home, they continued their studies, interrupting them periodically with a pipe and a cup of coffee. At ten o’clock, they went to bed, their hearts satisfied and their brains filled. A game of billiards from time to time, a carefully selected play, a concert at the National Conservatory every now and then, a horseback ride to Verrières, a walk in the woods, twice-a-week lessons in boxing or dueling, such were their diversions. Octave certainly showed an inclination to rebel sometimes, and he cast an envious eye on less praiseworthy distractions. He would talk about going to see Aristide Leroux, who was “reading for the bar” at the Saint-Michel tavern. But Marcel treated these fantasies with such contempt that they most often faded away.
On October 29, 1871, around seven o’clock in the evening, the two friends were seated as usual side by side at the same table under a common lamp they shared. Marcel had thrown himself body and soul into a fascinating problem of descriptive geometry as it applied to the cutting of precious stones. With similar zeal, Octave was devoting himself to an activity that, unfortunately, seemed just as important to him — the brewing of a liter of coffee. It was one of those rare skills in which he was proud to excel — perhaps because he found a daily chance to escape the dreadful necessity of balancing equations, in which, it seemed to him, Marcel spent altogether too much time. So he was pouring his boiling water drop by drop through a thick layer of powdered mocha, and this peaceful contentedness should have satisfied him. But Marcel’s industriousness was weighing upon his conscience, and he felt the irresistible need of troubling him with some small talk.
“We’d do well to buy a percolator,” he said all of a sudden. “This old, slow method of filtering is no longer in step with our modern civilization.”
“Then buy a percolator! Maybe that’ll keep you from wasting an hour every evening on your kitchen work,” Marcel responded.
And he returned to his problem.
“An arch has an ellipsoid of three unequal axes for its intrados. Let ABDE be the ellipse at its base which encloses the maximum axis oA = a, and the central axis oB = b, whereas the minimal axis (o, o'c') is vertical and equal to c, which makes the rise of the arch less than a half of its span …”
At that moment someone knocked at the door.
“A letter for Mr. Octave Sarrasin,” said the hotel employee.
One can imagine how this fortunate diversion was welcomed by the young student.
“It’s
