And they both loved good music--Mozart, Bach, Beethoven--and were almost priggish in their contempt for anything of a lighter kind; especially with a lightness English or French! It was only the musical lightness of Germany they could endure at all! But whether in Paris or London, enter Barty Josselin, idle school-boy, or dandy dissipated guardsman, and fashionable man about town, or bohemian art student; and Bach, lebewohl! good-bye, Beethoven! bonsoir le bon Mozart! all was changed: and welcome, instead, the last comic song from the Château des Fleurs, or Evans's in Covent Garden; the latest patriotic or sentimental ditty by Loïsa Puget, or Frédéric Bérat, or Eliza Cook, or Mr. Henry Russell. And then, what would Barty like for breakfast, dinner, supper after the play, and which of all those burgundies would do Barty good without giving him a headache next morning? and where was Barty to have his smoke?--in the library, of course. "Light the fire in the library, Mary; and Mr. Bob [that was me] can smoke there, too, instead of going outside," etc., etc., etc. It is small wonder that he grew a bit selfish at times. Though I was a little joyous now and then, it is quite without a shadow of bitterness or envy that I write all this. I have lived for fifty years under the charm of that genial, unconscious, irresistible tyranny; and, unlike my dear parents, I have lived to read and know Barty Josselin, nor merely to see and hear and love him for himself alone. Indeed, it was quite impossible to know Barty at all intimately and not do whatever he wanted you to do. Whatever he wanted, he wanted so intensely, and at once; and he had such a droll and engaging way of expressing that hurry and intensity, and especially of expressing his gratitude and delight when what he wanted was what he got--that you could not for the life of you hold your own! Tout vient à qui ne sait pas attendre! Besides which, every now and then, if things didn't go quite as he wished, he would fly into comic rages, and become quite violent and intractable for at least five minutes, and for quite five minutes more he would silently sulk. And then, just as suddenly, he would forget all about it, and become once more the genial, affectionate, and caressing creature he always was. But this is going ahead too fast! revenons. At the examinations this year Barty was almost brilliant, and I was hopeless as usual; my only consolation being that after the holidays we should at last be in the same class together, _en quatrième_, and all through this hopelessness of mine! Laferté was told by his father that he might invite two of his school-fellows to their country-house for the vacation, so he asked Josselin and Bussy-Rabutin. But Bussy couldn't go--and, to my delight, I went instead.