Let us first speak of the young ones, of whom I was one. Each of us had, or rather was supposed to have, in his hands a little penny book, the alphabet, printed on grey paper. It began, on the cover, with a pigeon or something like it. Next came a cross, followed by the letters in their order. When we turned over, our eyes encountered the terrible ba, be, bi, bo, bu, the stumbling-block of most of us. When we had mastered that formidable page we were considered to know how to read and were admitted among the big ones. But if the little book was to be of any use, the least that was required was that the master should interest himself in us to some extent and show us how to set about things. For this the worthy man, too much taken up with the big boys, had not the time. The famous alphabet with the pigeon was thrust upon us only to give us the air of scholars. We were to contemplate it on our bench, to decipher it with the help of our next neighbours, in case he might know one or two of the letters. Our contemplation came to nothing, being every moment disturbed by a visit to the potatoes in the stewpots, a quarrel among playmates about a marble, the grunting invasion of the porkers, or the arrival of the chicks. With the aid of these diversions we would wait patiently until it was time for us to go home. That was our most serious work. The big ones used to write. They had the benefit of the small amount of light in the room, by the narrow window where the Wandering Jew and ruthless Golo faced each other, and of the large and only table with its circle of seats. The school supplied nothing, not even a drop of ink; every one had to come with a full set of utensils. The ink-horn of those days, a relic of the ancient pen-case of which Rabelais speaks, was a long cardboard box divided into two stages. The upper compartment held the pens, made of goose-quill trimmed with a penknife; the lower contained, in a tiny well, ink made of soot mixed with vinegar.