She was very glad to see me, she took the opportunity to wish me all possible success in the career I had chosen and she promised that, as soon as I was ordained, she would ask me to become her spiritual director.
I cannot say whether it was that her sarcasm galled me past bearing, or whether the responsibility of the suggested office seemed too heavy, but I flung the inkpot in the grocer's face. I pocketed my twelve sous, and I rushed out of the shop crying—"Very well; I don't care. I will not go to the Seminary!"
Like Cæsar I had crossed my Rubicon: but the next step was to try and escape my mother's urgent entreaties, which I might not perhaps have been able to withstand.
I ventured on my first wilful act. I bought a loaf and a sausage with my twelve sous, food to last me two or three days, in fact, and then I went to find Boudoux.
I must explain who he was.
Boudoux was a character. Had not the disease termed bulimia already received its name at that epoch it would certainly have been christened after him.
I have never seen such a voracious eater as was Boudoux.
One day he came to our house, and a calf had just been killed; he gazed at it with longing eyes, and my father said to him—
"Do you want to eat the whole of it? You can have it."
"Oh! general, you are joking!" was Boudoux's reply.