GAULLE Charles de. L. A. S., Antoing 30 November 1907, to his father Henri de Gaulle; 6 pages pet. in-8. Very first known letter to his father. [Young Charles, aged 17, was a pupil at the Jesuit College of the Sacred Heart in Antoing, Belgium]. He thanked his "dear Papa" for his wishes "for my seventeenth birthday. [The two francs you enclosed with your letter were most welcome". His brother Jacques has "recovered from his recent illness. According to the doctor, the cause was not excessive work, but a prosaic stomach complaint. Besides, I've always been convinced that even the most conscientious work of a student of rhetoric, as intelligent as Jacques, has nothing to do with overwork. You also know very well that he's not exactly inclined to force himself when he feels tired. Nor should you exaggerate the grief he feels at his present lack of success in Mathematics. He's still absolutely a child, and as soon as you talk to him about something else or he plays ball, he doesn't think about it at all. What's more, he's starting to do better in maths. This week, he recited his lesson twice in writing and got a 5 and a 6. For this last lesson, they had been asked about the volume of a spherical segment: he knew it well but didn't really have time to finish, because he's not very quick at all. Nevertheless, with the way his teacher rates him, 6 is not a bad mark. Only 2 students got more than Jacques, one got 10, the other 8. Several got less than 6 [...] However, there has been some progress since last time. But he only got 9 in Latin and 9 in French. This is because he does not know his lessons well enough. [...] As for me, I had a great misfortune this week. In the mathematics composition we did on Wednesday 20th, I came twelfth. The composition was on algebra, which I knew very well, but Father Vitterant asked for, among other things, a certain theorem relating to the solution of a system of equations of the first degree with two unknowns, under a very ambiguous title. And I, clumsily, demonstrated another one. It was all the more vexing because I knew perfectly well the theorem he had asked for. Out of five questions I'd managed four, so instead of a 16 I got a 12, and as the first 15 are always extremely close I immediately got a very bad place. And then, as Fortune was decidedly not with me this month, I just came second in Physics and Chemistry, and naturally with the same mark as the first. [...] The same cannot be said for Mathematics. [...] We finished Algebra last Thursday, except for derivatives and variations of functions which we won't see until next term. I was especially pleased to be able to learn in depth the progressions, the theorems on logarithms, compound interest and annuities. Our homework this week consisted exclusively of annuities, debts, rates, capital, etc., to be calculated using logarithms. [...] We are currently immersed in the third book of Geometry. This will be our swan song before the New Year's Day grading"... During a "good maths group", he spent half an hour at the blackboard doing "a whole host of exercises on the second degree, on progressions", but got "only a 13, which was the best mark, by the way [...] I give this mark enough credit for it. [...] I attribute this rather lacklustre mark to the fact that it's much less convenient to find problems on the blackboard than to give a lesson question". He still did "a lot of History and Natural History, and especially a lot of German". As the end of term approaches, he will be seeing "the whole family again soon". They have been read "an account of the latest fighting on the Algerian border", where Lieutenant de Saint-Hilaire, a cousin of one of his comrades, was killed... He signed: "Your respectful and affectionate son Charles de Gaulle". LNC, I, p. 15.