“Makes your marrow freeze, eh?” said George, with a grin. He considered it perfectly useless to confess--especially before Ghéridanisol, that he had himself been terrified. From the dialogue here recorded, these children might be thought more depraved than they actually are. I feel convinced that it is chiefly to show off that they talk in this way. There is a good deal of bravado in their case. No matter: Ghéridanisol is listening to them. He listens and leads them on. His cousin Strouvilhou will be greatly amused when he reports the conversation to him this evening. That same evening Bernard went to see Edouard. “Well? Did the first day go off all right?” “Pretty well.” And then as he said no more: “Master Bernard, if you are not in the humour to talk of your own accord, don’t expect me to pump you. There’s nothing I dislike so much. But allow me to remind you that you offered me your services and that I have a right to expect a few stories....” “What do you want to know?” rejoined Bernard, with no very good grace. “That old Azaïs made a solemn speech and exhorted the boys ‘to press forward in a common endeavour and with the impetuous ardour of youth...’? I remember those words because they occurred three times. Armand declares the old boy regularly puts them into all his pi-jaws. He and I were sitting on the last bench at the back of the class-room, watching the boys come into school--like Noah, watching the animals come into the Ark. There were every kind and sort--ruminants, pachiderms, molluscs and other invertebrates. When they began to talk to each other after the speech, Armand and I calculated that four sentences out of ten began with: ‘I bet you won’t....’” “And the other six?” “‘As for me, _I_....’” “Not badly observed, I’m afraid. What else?” “Some of them seem to me to have a _fabricated_ personality.” “What do you mean by that?” asked Edouard. “I am thinking particularly of a boy who sat beside young Passavant. (Passavant himself just seems to me a good boy.) His neighbour, whom I watched for a long time, appears to have adopted the ‘_Ne quid nimis_’ of the ancients as his rule of life. Doesn’t that strike you as an absurd device at his age? His clothes are meagre; his neck-tie exiguous; even his bootlaces are only just long enough to tie. In the course of a few moments, energies, and to repeat, like a refrain: ‘Let’s have no useless efforts!’” “A plague upon the economical!” said Edouard. “In art they turn into the prolix.” “Why?” “Because they can’t bear to lose anything. What else? You have said nothing about Armand.”