When Josselin came back he had wondrous things to tell too--but so preposterous that they disbelieved him quite openly, and told him so. How in London he had seen a poor woman so tipsy in the street that she had to be carried away by two policemen on a stretcher. How he had seen brewers' dray-horses nearly six feet high at the shoulder--and one or two of them with a heavy cavalry mustache drooping from its upper lip. How he had been presented to the Lord Mayor of London, and even shaken hands with him, in Leadenhall Market, and that his Lordship was quite plainly dressed; and how English Lord Mayors were not necessarily "hommes du monde," nor always hand in glove with Queen Victoria! Splendide mendax! But they forgave him all his mendacity for the sake of a new accomplishment he had brought back with him, and which beat all his others. He could actually turn a somersault backwards with all the ease and finish of a professional acrobat. How he got to do this I don't know. It must have been natural to him and he never found it out before; he was always good at gymnastics--and all things that required grace and agility more than absolute strength. Also he brought back with him (from Leadenhall Market, no doubt) a gigantic horned owl, fairly tame--and with eyes that reminded us of le grand Bonzig's. School began, and with it the long evenings with an hour's play by lamp-light in the warm salle d'études; and the cold lamp-lit ninety minutes' preparation on an empty stomach, after the short perfunctory morning prayer--which didn't differ much from the evening one. Barty was still _en cinquième_, at the top! and I at the tail of the class immediately above--so near and yet so far! so I did not have many chances of improving my acquaintance with him that term; for he still stuck to Laferté and Bussy-Rabutin--they were inseparable, those three. At mid-day play-time the weather was too cold for anything but games, which were endless in their variety and excitement; it would take a chapter to describe them. It is a mistake to think that French school-boys are (or were) worse off than ours in this. I will not say that any one French game is quite so good as cricket or football for a permanency. But I remember a great many that are very nearly so. Indeed, French rounders (la balle au camp) seems to me the best game that ever was--on account of the quick rush and struggle of the fielders to get home when an inside boy is hit between the bases, lest he should pick the ball up in time to hit one of them with it before the camp is reached; in which case there is a most exciting scrimmage for the ball, etc., etc. Barty was good at all games, especially la balle au camp. I used to envy the graceful, easy way he threw the ball--so quick and straight it seemed to have no curve at all in its trajectory: and how it bounded off the boy it nearly always hit between the shoulders!