At evening, play in the school-room, besides draughts and chess and backgammon; M. Bonzig, when _de service_, would tell us thrilling stories, with "la suite au prochain numéro" when the bell rang at 7.30; a long series that lasted through the winter of '47-'48. _Le Tueur de Daims_, _Le Lac Ontario_, _Le Dernier des Mohicans_, _Les Pionniers_, _La Prairie_--by one Fénimore Coupère; all of which he had read in M. Defauconpret's admirable translations. I have read some of them in their native American since then, myself. I loved them always--but they seemed to lack some of the terror, the freshness, and the charm his fluent utterance and solemn nasal voice put into them as he sat and smoked his endless cigarettes with his back against the big stone stove, and his eyes dancing sideways through his glasses. Never did that "ding-dang-dong" sound more hateful than when le grand Bonzig was telling the tale of Bas-de-cuir's doings, from his innocent youth to his noble and Pathetic death by sunset, with his ever-faithful and still-serviceable but no longer deadly rifle (the friend of sixty years) lying across his knees. I quote from memory; what a gun that was! Then on Thursdays, long walks, two by two, in Paris, with Bonzig or Dumollard; or else in the Bois to play rounders or prisoners' base in a clearing, or skate on the Mare aux Biches, which was always so hard to find in the dense thicket ... poor Lord Runswick! _He_ found it once too often! La Mare d'Auteuil was too deep, and too popular with "la flotte de Passy," as we called the Passy voyous, big and small, who came there in their hundreds--to slide and pick up quarrels with well-dressed and respectable school-boys. Liberté--égalité--fraternité! ou la mort! Vive la république! (This, by-the-way, applies to the winter that came _next_.) So time wore on with us gently; through the short vacation at New-year's day till the 23d or 24th of February, when the Revolution broke out, and Louis Philippe premier had to fly for his life. It was a very troublous time, and the school for a whole week was in a state of quite heavenly demoralization! Ten times a day, or in the dead of night, the drum would beat _le rappel_ or _la générale_. A warm wet wind was blowing--the most violent wind I can remember that was not an absolute gale. It didn't rain, but the clouds hurried across the sky all day long, and the tops of the trees tried to bend themselves in two; and their leafless boughs and black broken twigs littered the deserted playground--for we all sat on the parapet of the terrace by the lingerie; boys and servants, le père et la mere Jaurion, Mlle. Marceline and the rest, looking towards Paris--all feeling bound to each other by a common danger, like wild beasts in a flood. Dear me! I'm out of breath from sheer pleasure in the remembrance.