For a month the newspapers were full of anecdotes of Mâdou; an attaché of a London paper was sent to interview him, and they had a long and serious talk as to the course the young prince should pursue when called to the throne of his ancestors. The English journal published an account of the curious dialogue, and the vague replies certainly left much to be desired. At first all the expenses of the academy were discharged by this solitary pupil, Monsieur Bonfils paying the bill that was presented to him without a word of dispute. Mâdou’s education, however, made but little progress. He still continued among the A B C’s, and Madame Moronval’s charming method made no impression upon him. His defective pronunciation was still retained, and his half-childish way of speaking was not changed. But he was gay and happy. All the other children were compelled to yield to him a certain deference. At first this was a difficult matter, as his intense blackness seemed to indicate to these other children of the sun that he was a slave. And how amiable the professors were to this bullet-headed boy, who, in spite of his natural amiability, so sturdily refused to profit by their instructions! Every one of the teachers had his own private idea of what could be done in the future under the patronage of this embryo king. It was the refrain of all their conversations. As soon as Mâdou was crowned, they would all go to Dahomey. Labassandre intended to develop the musical taste of Dahomey, and saw himself the director of a conservatory, and at the head of the Royal Chapel. Madame Moronval meant to apply her method to class upon class of crisp black heads. But Dr. Hirsch saw innumerable beds in a hospital, upon the inmates of which he could experiment without fear of any interference from the police. The first few weeks, therefore, of his sojourn at Paris seemed to Mâdou very sweet. If only the sun would shine out brightly, if the fine rain would cease to fall, or the thick fog clear away; if, in short, the boy could once have been thoroughly warm, he would have been content; and if Kérika, with her gun and her bow, her arms covered with clanking bracelets, could occasionally have appeared in the _Passage des Douze Maison_, he would have been very happy.