"You mustn't imagine to yourselves, messieurs, that because I teach you boys science at the Pension Brossard, and take you out walking on Thursday afternoons, and all that, that I do not associate _avec des gens du monde_! Last night, for example, I was dining at the Café de Paris with a very intimate friend of mine--he's a marquis--and when the bill was brought, what do you think it came to? you give it up?" (vous donnez votre langue aux chats?). "Well, it came to fifty-seven francs, fifty centimes! We tossed up who should pay--et, ma foi, le sort a favorisé M. le Marquis!" To this there was nothing to say; so none of us said anything, except du Tertre-Jouan, _our_ marquis (No. 2), who said, in his sulky, insolent, peasantlike manner: "Et comment q'ça s'appelle, vot' marquis?" (What does it call itself, your marquis?) Upon which M. Dumollard turns very red ("pique un soleil"), and says: "Monsieur le Marquis Paul--François--Victor du Tertre-Jouan de Haultcastel de St.-Paterne, vous êtes un paltoquet et un rustre!..." And goes back to his equations. Du Tertre-Jouan was nearly six feet high, and afraid of nobody--a kind of clodhopping young rustic Hercules, and had proved his mettle quite recently--when a brutal usher, whom I will call Monsieur Boulot (though his real name was Patachou), a Méridional with a Horrible divergent squint, made poor Rapaud go down on his knees in the classe de géographie ancienne, and slapped him violently on the face twice running--a way he had with Rapaud. It happened like this. It was a kind of penitential class for dunces during play-time. M. Boulot drew in chalk an outline of ancient Greece on the blackboard, and under it he wrote-- "Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes!" "Rapaud, translate me that line of Virgil!" says Boulot. "J'estime les Danois et leurs dents de fer!" says poor Rapaud (I esteem the Danish and their iron teeth). And we all laughed. For which he underwent the brutal slapping. [Illustration: A TERTRE-JOUAN TO THE RESCUE!] The window was ajar, and outside I saw du Tertre-Jouan, Jolivet, and Berquin, listening and peeping through. Suddenly the window bursts wide open, and du Tertre-Jouan vaults the sill, gets between Boulot and his victim, and says: "Le troisième coup fait feu, vous savez! touchez-y encore, à ce moutard, et j'vous assomme sur place!" (Touch him again, that kid, and I'll break your head where you stand!). There was an awful row, of course--and du Tertre-Jouan had to make a public apology to M. Boulot, who disappeared from the school the very same day; and Tertre-Jouan would have been canonized by us all, but that he was so deplorably dull and narrow-minded, and suspected of being a royalist in disguise. He was an orphan and very rich, and didn't fash himself about examinations. He left school that year without taking any degree--and I don't know what became of him. This year also Barty conceived a tender passion for Mlle. Marceline.