And what a flock it was! The majority had pale complexions, hollow eyes, an enervated exhaustion of the whole being that spoke of secret excesses. How much ignominy and baseness was there in that community, the eldest in which were nineteen years of age and the youngest eight! Within the walls of their prison, as within the walls of the great Lycée to which they repaired twice a day, nothing was thought of but the infamous amours existing between the elder boys and their juniors. Of these unnatural loves, some were partly sensual, and had for their theatre all the deserted corners in the house, from the dormitories to the infirmary. And of the French youth confined within similar colleges, how many were participators in this lewdness, while the rest defiled their imaginations, although they repelled it! Among these college boys there were also elevated and chaste connexions. The perusal of a certain eclogue of Virgil's, a dialogue of Plato's, and a few of Shakespeare's sonnets had excited the more literary of them, and Alfred Chazel, being then in the third class, had one day received a piece of poetry written by a sixth-form boy, beginning with the following astonishing line, which had made them laugh like mad creatures: "Alfred, my pale Alfred, my love, my sweet." "Ah! what a horrible, horrible, place!" thought the young man, as he recalled this blending of turpitude and puerility. Alfred and he had belonged to the small number of those who had remained untouched by the infection. But to him at least, all the advantage due to this disgust was that it had led him when quite young to the pursuit of women, and his initiation into natural pleasure had been effected in the most degraded prostitution. "And these are the youthful recollections that I should respect," said Armand to himself. "What duty do I owe him because we were galley slaves together?" No, a hundred times no, it was not on Alfred's account that he felt so melancholy as he hastened his steps and, this time with semi-brutality, repulsed the love-beggars who accosted him with their unvarying phrases. Ah! he knew this unconquerable melancholy only too well. Only too often had it visited him, gnawing him in the diseased portion of his heart, from the time that the income of thirty thousand francs coming to him at his majority had permitted him to live according to his fancy; and this fancy had immediately taken the direction of sentimental experiences. Such melancholy, sharp and severe, he had experienced, even when quite a youth, every time that he had found himself on the eve of a first love-meeting with a new mistress, even though she had been the most coveted. It was like an anguish-stricken apprehension--a dull, dim agony of soul.