“Yes, _professeur_,” said Martin, conscious for the first time in his life of the absurd dignity of the French title. It appealed to a latent sense of humour and he smiled wryly. Yes. He was a Professor—had been for the last ten years, at Margett’s Universal College, Hickney Heath; a professor engaged in cramming large classes of tradesmen’s children, both youths and maidens, with such tricksters’ command of French grammar and vocabulary as would enable them to obtain high marks in the stereotyped examinations for humble positions in the Public and semi-public services. He had reduced the necessary instruction to an exact science. He had carried hundreds of pupils through their examinations with flying colours; but he had never taught a single human being to speak thirty consecutive coherent words of French or to read and enjoy a French book. When he was very young and foolish he had tried to teach them the French speech as a living, organic mode of communication between human beings, with the result that his pupils soul-strung for examinations had revolted and the great Cyrus Margett, founder of the colossal and horrible Strasbourg goose factory known as Margett’s Universal College, threatened to sack him if he persisted in such damnable and unprofitable imbecility. So, being poor and unenterprising and having no reason to care whether a Mr. James Bagshawe or a Miss Susan Tulliver profited for more than the examination moment by his teaching, he had taught the dry examination-bones of the French language for ten years. And—“_Monsieur est professeur_,” from Monsieur Bocardon! Then, as he turned away and began to mount the dingy stairs that led to his bedroom, it struck him that he was now only a professor _in partibus_. He was no longer a member of the professorial staff of Margett’s Universal College. The vast, original Margett had retired with fortune, liver and head deservedly swollen to county magnateship, leaving, for pecuniary considerations, the tremendous educational institution to a young successor, who having adopted as his watchword the comforting shibboleth, “efficiency,” had dismissed all those professors who did not attain his standard of slickness. Martin Overshaw was not slick. The young apostle of efficiency had dismissed Martin Overshaw at a month’s notice, after ten years service. It was as though a practised _gougeur_ or hand gorger of geese had been judged obsolescent and made to give place to one who gorged them by Hertzian rays. The new Olympian had flashed a glance, a couple of lightning questions at Martin and that was the end.