These two buildings were symmetrical; one held the boys over fourteen, from the third class up to the first; the other (into the "salle d'études" of which the reader has already been admitted), the boys from the fourth down to the eighth, or lowest, form of all--just the reverse of an English school. On either side of the play-ground were narrow strips of garden cultivated by boys whose tastes lay that way, and small arbors overgrown with convolvulus and other creepers--snug little verdant retreats, where one fed the mind on literature not sanctioned by the authorities, and smoked cigarettes of caporal, and even colored pipes, and was sick without fear of detection (_piquait son renard sans crainte d'être collé_). Finally, behind Père Brossard's Ciceronian Villa, on the south, was a handsome garden (we called it Tusculum); a green flowery pleasaunce reserved for the head master's married daughter (Madame Germain) and her family--good people with whom we had nothing to do. Would I could subjoin a ground-plan of the Institution F. Brossard, where Barty Josselin spent four such happy years, and was so universally and singularly popular! Why should I take such pains about all this, and dwell so laboriously on all these minute details? Firstly, because it all concerns Josselin and the story of his life--and I am so proud and happy to be the biographer of such a man, at his own often expressed desire, that I hardly know where to leave off and what to leave out. Also, this is quite a new trade for me, who have only dealt hitherto in foreign wines, and British party politics, and bimetallism--and can only write in telegraphese! Secondly, because I find it such a keen personal joy to evoke and follow out, and realize to myself by means of pen and pencil, all these personal reminiscences; and with such a capital excuse for prolixity! At the top of every page I have to pull myself together to remind myself that it is not of the Right Honorable Sir Robert Maurice, Bart., M.P., that I am telling the tale--any one can do that--but of a certain Englishman who wrote _Sardonyx_, to the everlasting joy and pride of the land of his _fathers_--and of a certain Frenchman who wrote _Berthe aux grands pieds_, and moved his _mother_-country to such delight of tears and tender laughter as it had never known before.