My vocation! Just what I expected! Vocations were often talked about at our house, and how every one ought faithfully to fulfil his own. During my illness, and in the early days of my convalescence, before my walks with grandfather, I had often thought, and even announced, that when I was grown up I would be a doctor, too. I could not imagine a finer career. I had talked in the kitchen with the peasants who came for the doctor, their faces all drawn with pain, and on the staircase I had met the train of patients who came for consultation with dolorous faces, and went away cheered. Though I had ceased to talk about it it was understood at our house that I was to be my father’s successor.
“I don’t know,” I replied, turning away.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, in a surprised and disappointed tone. “I thought you wanted to be a doctor.”
“Oh, no!” I replied, suddenly making up my mind in a spirit of opposition.
He said nothing more of this hope which had been dear to him, but went on:
“Oh, well, you have plenty of time to choose. Lawyer, perhaps? There are noble causes to defend. Or architect? Building houses, restoring old ones, constructing schools and churches—we have no good architects about here; there is a vacancy for one.”
Thus by turns he extolled the various professions which might keep me in my native town. As he spoke the dastardly thought came to me of separating myself entirely from the house, of achieving the conquest of my own liberty. I sought about in my mind for a calling which would oblige me to leave home. In our part of the country there were no mines nor any metallurgical establishments.
“I want to be an engineer,” I said.
I had but just made the discovery, and knew but vaguely the nature of the profession. There had been some talk about it in the family for Stephen.
“Really?” said my father, without pursuing the subject. “We will talk about it another time.”