“Oh! it was because of a bet he made. Before that, though he was among the elder boys, he had always been one of the last of the class--whilst I was one of the youngest--not that I worked any the better for that. Protos showed the greatest contempt for everything the masters taught us; but one day, when one of the fellows who was good at book-learning and whom he detested, said to him: ‘It’s all very fine to despise what you can’t do’ (or something to that effect), Protos got his back up, worked hard for a fortnight and to such purpose that at the next Greek composition class he went up over the other fellows’ heads and took the first place to the utter amazement of us all--of _them_ all, I should say. As for me, I had too high an opinion of Protos to be much astonished. When he said to me: ‘I’ll show them it’s not so difficult as all that,’ I believed him.” “If I understand you rightly, Protos influenced you not a little?” “Perhaps. At any rate he rather overawed me. As a matter of fact, however, I never had but one single intimate conversation with him--but that seemed to me so cogent that the very next day I ran away from school, where I was beginning to droop like a plant in a cellar, and made my way on foot to Baden, where my mother was living at that time with my uncle, the Marquis de Gesvres.... But we are beginning by the end. You would certainly question me very badly. Just let me tell you my own story as it comes. You will learn more in that way than you would ever dream of asking me--more, very likely, than you will care to learn.... No, thank you, I prefer my own,” said he, taking out his case and throwing away the cigarette which Julius had offered him when he first came in and which he had allowed to go out while he was talking. VII