Yet all about him "everywhere and for every one, all was black indeed": his family had increased and therewith his expenses; there were now seven at table every day. Very shortly his modest salary would no longer suffice; he was obliged to supplement it by all sorts of hack-work--classes, "repetitions," private lessons; tasks which repelled him, for they absorbed all his available time; they prevented him from giving himself up to his favourite studies, to his silent and solitary observations. Nevertheless, he acquitted himself of these duties patiently and conscientiously, for at heart he loved his profession, and was rather a fellow-disciple than a master to his pupils. For this reason all those about him worked with praiseworthy assiduity; even the worst elements, the black sheep, the "bad eggs" of other classes, with him were suddenly transformed and as attentive as the rest. Although he knew how to keep order, how to make himself respected, and could on occasion deal severely and speak sternly, so that very few dared to forget themselves before him, he knew also how to be merry with his pupils, chatting with them familiarly, putting himself in their place, entering into their ideas, and making himself their rival. If life was laborious under his ferula, it was also merry. The best proof of this is the fact that of all his colleagues at the lycée he was the only one who had no nickname, a rarity in scholastic annals. He did not therefore object to these lessons; but while at Carpentras he was made much of and praised by the principal, was a general favourite, and had perfect liberty to follow his inspiration during his partly gratuitous classes, here the hours and the programme tied him down, which was precisely what he found insupportable. Everything made things difficult for him here: his external self; his character, ever so little shy and unsocial; his temperament, which was made for solitude. In the thick of this hierarchical society of university professors he remained independent; he knew nothing of what was said or what was happening in the college, and his colleagues were always better informed than he. (4/6.) As he was not a fellow, he was made to feel the fact and was treated as a subordinate; the others, who prided themselves on the title, and who were incapable of recognizing his merit, which was a little beyond them, were jealous of him, all the more inasmuch as his name was momentarily noised abroad, and they revenged themselves by calling him "the fly" among themselves, by way of allusion to his favourite subject. (4/7.) Indifferent to distinctions, as well as to those who bore them, contemptuous of etiquette, and incapable of putting constraint upon his nature, he remained an "outsider," and refused to comply with a host of factitious or worldly obligations which he regarded as useless or disgusting. Thus even at Ajaccio he managed to escape the customary ceremonies of New Year's Day.