This prodigious poem gave us, cruel little wretches that we were, the greatest delight. We sang the verses perpetually, in the dormitory, out walking, in the playground, setting the last words to the classic music of "Les Lampions." But the old watch-dog has sharp teeth, and defends himself by "detentions," so none of us care to brave him to his face. The lamp hung over his head shows up his greenish-grey hair, his red forehead, and his threadbare coat, which once was blue. No doubt he is rhyming, for he is writing, and every now and then he raises that swollen brow, and his large blue eyes--which express such real kindness when we do not torment him with our tricks--search the room and observe in turn each of the thirty-five desks. I, too, take a prolonged survey of the companions of my slavery; I already know their faces. There is Rocquain, a little fellow, with a big red nose in a long white face; and Parizelle, a tall, stout boy, with an underhung jaw. He is fair-skinned, has green eyes and freckles, and for a wager ate a cockroach the other day. There is Gervais, a brown, curly-haired lad, who makes his will every week. He has communicated to me the latest of these documents, in which there is the following clause: "I leave to Leyreloup some good advice, contained in my letter to Cornélis." Leyreloup is his former friend, who played him the trick of rolling him in a heap of dead leaves last autumn, having been egged on to the deed by big Parizelle, whom the vengeful Gervais ever since regards as a rascal, and the advice contained in the posthumous letter is a warning to distrust the giant. All this small school-world is absorbed in countless interests which even at that time I held to be puerile, when compared with the thoughts that are in me. And my schoolfellows themselves seem to understand that there is something in my life which does not exist in theirs; they spare me the torments that are generally inflicted upon a new boy, but I am not the friend of any of them, except this same Gervais, who is my walking companion when we go out. Gervais is an imaginative lad, and when he is at home he devours a collection of the _Journal pour Tous_. He has found in it a series of romances called "L'Homme aux Figures de Cire," "Le Roi des Gabiers," "Le Chat du Bord," and Thursday after Thursday, when we go out walking, he relates these stories to me. The tragic strain of my own fate is the cause of my taking a grim pleasure in these narratives, in which crime plays the chief part. Unfortunately I have confided the secret of this questionable amusement to my good aunt, and the head master has separated the improvised feuilletoniste from his public. Gervais and I are forbidden to walk together. My aunt believed that the excess of sensitiveness in me, which alarmed her, would be corrected by this. Neither her solicitous tenderness, nor her pious care and foresight--she comes to Versailles from Compiègne every