After weeks of summer idleness the students of the Latin Quarter return in October to the Boul’ Mich’ more exhilarated, more extravagant, more garrulous than ever. They are delighted to be back; they are impatient to _conspuer_ certain professors; to parade the streets with lanterns and guys; to disturb the sleep of the bourgeois; to run into debt with their landlords, to embrace the policemen—to commit a hundred other follies. Clad in new corduroys, covered with astonishing hats, they call for big _bocks_—then question the waiter. But ere he can give a recital of what has taken place on the Rive Gauche during the holidays, the waiter—_ce sacré_ François—has to hear how Paul (of the Faculty of Medicine) has been bathing, Pierre (of the Law) bicycling, Gaston (of the Fine Arts) gardening; and how all three of them wore “le boating” costume (whatever that may signify), with white shoes, pale blue waistbands and green umbrellas; and how their food was of the simplest, and their drink, pure, babylike milk. Adventures? Romances? Well, for an entire month, Paul was as sad, as lovesick, as pale as a pierrot. _She_ was a blonde ... in a cottage... as sweet and fresh as a rose... as modest as the violet... as innocent as a child... who got up with the lark and retired with the sun. And Paul rose equally early, to peep over the hedge of her garden and to hear her sing, as she fed greedy, speckled poultry; and, from a lane, watched her window—then wandered sentimentally and wistfully abroad—at night. Suddenly, she vanished. And when Paul learnt that she had departed for Normandy to become the bride of a cousin, Paul of the Faculty of Medicine—Paul, the gayest character in the Latin Quarter and the hero of many an affair of the heart—Paul, lost his appetite, Paul, experienced the agonies of insomnia, Paul, aged at least a hundred years all at once. Thus Paul. No less reminiscent Pierre and Gaston. So that their lady friends, Mesdemoiselles Mimi and Musette—at once jealous and impatient—proceed to relate their own experiences; which, by the way, are but flights of imagination, conceived with the idea of infuriating the students. _He also_ was blonde—and wore an _incomparable_ suit of “le boating.” How _he_ swam—far more magnificently than Paul! How _he_ bicycled—far more swiftly than Pierre! How _he_ gardened: producing infinitely choicer flowers than Gaston’s! “Enough! You have never left Paris. All those wonderful friends of yours do not exist,” cry the students. And the _sacré_ waiter François (who has been toying all this time with his napkin) at last is permitted to relate what has been happening in the Latin Quarter during the summer holidays.