Apart from the fact that he had an extraordinary liking for wine and never could quite distinguish the forenoon from the afternoon, Mr. Michael Kordé was a man of refinement to the very tips of his toes. In his time he had worn out a great many stout hazel switches, it being the custom of his establishment to make each pupil provide his own rod. This was no doubt an extra item in the curriculum, but, on the other hand, there was something to show for it; all those who passed through his hands when they subsequently fell into the clutches of the Law could endure as many as five-and-twenty strokes from the hardest bludgeon without so much as wincing. They had been case hardened by their previous education. The schoolhouse was the _vis-à-vis_ of Mr. Kordé's own private dwelling. It had never once been whitewashed since it was first built; but, on the other hand, it was richly adorned outside with the Christian names and the nicknames of all the urchins who had ever been inside its walls, names to which later generations of scholars had taken good care to add such distinguishing epithets as ass, swine, &c., &c. Those, moreover, who possessed a taste for art did not omit to paint on the wall, with red chalk, hussars, two-legged heads with six noses and one eye, large meerschaum pipes, &c., &c. Here and there, too, the remains of big black ink blots and red splodges, like hideous bunches of cherries, pointed to past combats in which inkpots had been hurled and fists used freely; these pictorial devices, however, were but fragmentary, as the various generations of students had from time to time dug large bits of mortar out of the walls with their nails to serve as sand for blotting their themes. Inside the schoolroom the shapeless battered benches were also carved all over with names and emblems. The window panes had for the most part been broken to bits, and the gaps stuffed with closely written MS. torn out of old exercise books. Layers of dust met the eye everywhere, and there was a perfect network of dangling spiders' webs in all the corners. Such, in all its beauty, was the academical emporium where Mr. Michael Kordé for thirty years had been in the habit of regularly dispensing science and slaps--with what result we shall see later on. Worthy Mr. Kordé used regularly to return to his own honourable dwelling from the pot-house just when the night-watchmen were going home to sleep and the cocks were crowing in the morn, and at such times he would bellow forth ditties the whole way at the top of his voice to the accompaniment of the howling of all the watch-dogs in the village. The object of this singing bout was to warn the honest tutor's better half that her lord was approaching, and give her time to open the street door for him.