In conversations which I accidentally overheard, the names of Parisian schools or lycées would recur, those especially that prepared boys for the great schools, Stanislas on Post-office Street, Louis-le-grand or Saint-Louis. My parents would have preferred a religious institution, and in this Aunt Deen emphatically acquiesced. “No godless school,” she would exclaim. “All the rascals come out of the lycées.” “Oho!” grandfather would protest, greatly amused at her vehemence. “I was educated in a lycée.” He received his bouquet without a moment’s delay. “And you are not worth so very much!” It is true that to soften the severity of her retort, she went on, “I must confess that you have become good for something, now that you take the boy out walking.” Father, who seemed always to be glad of anything which might bring him and grandfather together, heightened the reluctant admission into praise. “Yes, François owes his health to you. And all these lovely walks that you are giving him will attach him the more firmly to the region in which he is to live, and which he will know the better because of them.” As a matter of fact I felt myself entirely aloof from the region and even from our house. What I loved was the earth, the vast unnamed earth, and not this place or that; most of all I loved the uncultivated places, the wild places in the woods, the copses, the secret nooks, and in less degree the pasture lands, any untilled, unsowed: bit of earth. In the matter of people, I had accepted grandfather’s new gospel which catalogued them as peasants and towns people. The nice people were in the country, whereas towns were inhabited by wicked individuals and notably by _bourgeois_, who persecute men of genius like my friends of the café. And in the towns were the schools where you were reduced to a state of slavery. While I was giving myself up to these reflections my mother’s gaze had fallen upon me; it seemed to me that she was reading my thoughts, and I blushed--a proof that I was not unaware of my inward insubordination. “He has grown quite robust,” she said. “Could he not begin gradually to take up his lessons? We could arrange him a place in the garden, where he would be in the out-door air, and yet not be entirely idle. Idleness is never good.” I was astounded to hear my mother uttering so direful a proposition--my mother, so careful to spare me all fatigue, so expert in nursing me, so minute in her watchfulness! Decidedly, they had changed parts; father had appeared suspicious of my walks with grandfather, and now he was not only authorising, he was encouraging them. “No, no,” he exclaimed, “pleurisy is too grave a matter. He would still risk losing strength and colour. See how well he looks now!” adding aside to mother, “Father is so happy in his little companion! Since he has had charge of him he has quite changed and grown younger. Haven’t you noticed it?”