I was sent to the academy at Pressburg. My health was not very good; nervous ailments had manifested themselves; and all that had delayed my departure. But the education I received at home did not seem adequate, and it was thought that my taste for music was hindering my studies. It is true they were not brilliant. They were no better at school; I was a very mediocre student. My stay at the academy was in any case very brief. I spent little more than two years at Pressburg. Presently, I shall explain why. But do not imagine any exciting adventures: nothing took place, or at least nothing happened to me.

I was sixteen years old. I had always lived withdrawn into myself; the long months at Pressburg taught me life, that is to say, the life of other people. It was, accordingly, a very painful time. When I think back on it, I see a great gray wall, the bleak rows of beds, the morning bell in the chill dawn when the flesh feels miserable and existence orderly, dull, and disheartening, like food that one eats without interest. Most of my fellow students belonged to the world from which I had come, and I was acquainted with several of them. But communal life develops brutality. I was shocked by the brutality of their games, of their habits, of their language. Nothing is more cynical than the talk of adolescents, even and above all when it is chaste. Many of my fellow students lived in a sort of perpetual obsession with women, probably less reprehensible than I thought, but which found its expression in crude vulgarity. Sad creatures seen on outings infatuated the oldest of my companions, but they caused me an extreme revulsion. I had been accustomed to bestow on women all the standard concepts of respect. I hated them when they were not worthy of it. My strict education partly explains it, but I fear there was something more in this repulsion than a simple indication of innocence. I had the illusion of purity. I smile when I think how often it is like that: we believe we are pure insofar as we despise what we do not desire.