I spent many tranquil hours in this retreat contemplating the tropical mother-of-pearl shells, and trying to image to myself the strange coasts from which they had come. A good old great uncle of mine, who was very fond of me, encouraged me in these diversions. He was a physician, and in his youth he had lived for a long time upon the coast of Africa; he had a collection of natural history specimens almost as valuable and varied as any found in a city museum. His wonderful things captivated me: the rare and exquisite shells, amulets and wooden weapons that still retained their exotic odor, with which I became so surfeited later, and indescribably beautiful butterflies under glass enchanted me. He lived in our neighborhood and I visited him often. To get to his cabinets, it was necessary to go through his garden where thorn-apples and cacti grew abundantly, and where they kept a gray parrot, brought from Gaboon, whose vocabulary consisted of words learnt from the negroes. And when my old uncle spoke of Senegal, of Goree, and of Guinea, the music of these names intoxicated me, and conveyed to me vaguely something of the sad languor of the dark continent. My uncle predicted that I would become a great naturalist,--but he was as mistaken as were all those others who foretold my future; indeed he struck farther from the centre than any one else; he did not understand that my liking for natural history was no more than a temporary and erratic excursion of my unformed mind; he could not know that the cold glass and the formal, rigid arrangements of dead science had not power to hold me for long. CHAPTER XXVIII. In the meantime, alas! I had to spend many long and wearisome hours in going through the form of studying my lessons. Topffer, who is the only real poet of school-boys, that genus so misunderstood, divides us into three groups: first, those who are in boarding schools; second, those who do all their studying at home at a window which overlooks a gloomy courtyard containing a twisted old fig tree; third, those who also study at home in a bright little room whose window commands a view of the street. I belonged to that third class whom Topffer considers extraordinarily privileged, and as likely, in consequence, to grow up into happy men. My room was upon the first floor, and it opened into the street; it had white curtains, and its green paper was embellished with bouquets of white roses. Near the window was my work desk, and above it, upon a book-shelf, was my very much neglected library.