But, ah! the poor Count--amiable, patient, and long-suffering Gaul! He was an unhappy refugee, who had sought a home, by becoming the reviled, insulted teacher of his native tongue to a mob of heartless ruffians. How well do I remember his neat but thread-bare coat and pigtail; his stooping gait, not the decrepitude of age, but as though it sprang from the abasement of his fortune; his endurance of injury to a certain point, when patience suddenly forsook him, and his, to us, irresistibly comic rage and exasperation! What would that generous seaman Pipes have thought a defenceless Frenchman fit for, but as the object of spirited and well-conducted pranks? Nothing cruel or revengeful, but only to show our own superior wit and address in concerted and premeditated annoyance. I had gained with a most surprising rapidity upon the confidence of the most conspicuous rioters in the school. There was something so noble and daring in all my designs, that they seemed to yield willingly to so superior a spirit. The sudden alteration in my manners had been noticed with secret wonder by the masters, and they, thinking to check my fatal tendencies at the outset, had inflicted on me several severe and well-merited chastisements. I converted even these into means of extending my influence. I had borne them like a hero, a very Peregrine. No groan--no sigh--no bellowing promise of amendment, had lessened my dignity. Under the torture, I was sullen and silent. The stoutest heart in the school envied my manhood and composure. The poor French teacher had been the hereditary object of annoyance for several generations of boys. The meekest and most chicken-hearted scrubs in the school tried their apprenticeship to mischief upon him, and were tutored to more noble game by beginning with the Count. They split and cut his pens into a thousand fantastic shapes during a momentary absence; they filled his snuff with the most odious pulverulents. They placed on his desk rude, but expressive designs of a guillotine, with a meagre fellow in ruffles and no shirt, running in the extremity of speed from the spot. These, and a thousand exhibitions of budding genius, and original sin, were our daily subjects of merriment and applause. I taught them nobler arts, or rather the spirit of Pickle which spake within me. It was nothing to annoy on such a petty and momentary scale; let the art and forethought of Hatchway be exhibited.