Among the most distinguished in these conflicts was a tall, fair lad, who always got chosen General. Louis, who belonged to an old Breton family that had come to live in the South, assumed victorious airs. I can see him yet, with a handkerchief tied on his forehead by way of plume, a leather belt girded round him, leading on his soldiers with a wave of the hand as if it were the great wave of a sword. He filled us with admiration; we even felt a sort of respect for him. Strangely enough he had a twin-brother, Julien, who was much smaller, frail and delicate, and who greatly disliked these violent games. When we divided into two camps, he would go apart, sit down on a stone bench, and thence watch us with his sad and rather frightened eyes. One day, Louis, hustled and attacked by a whole band, fell under their blows, and Julien gave a cry, pallid, trembling, half-fainting like a woman. The two brothers adored each other, and none of us would have dared to laugh at the little one about his want of courage, for fear of the big one. The memory of these twins is closely involved for me in the memory of that time. Towards the spring, I became a day-boarder, and no longer slept at the college, but came in the morning for the seven o’clock lessons. The two brothers, also, were day-boarders. The three of us were inseparable. As we lived in the same street we used to wait to go in to college together. Louis, who was very precocious and dreamed of adventures, seduced us. We agreed to leave home at six, so as to have a whole hour of freedom in which we could be men. For us “to be men” meant to smoke cigars and to go and have drinks at a shabby wine-shop, which Louis had discovered in an out-of-the-way street. The cigars and the drinks made us frightfully ill; but, then, what an emotion it was to step into the wine-shop, casting glances to right and left, and in terror of being observed. These fine doings occurred towards the close of the winter. I remember there were mornings when the rain fell in torrents. We waded through, and arrived drenched. After that, the mornings became mild and fair, and then a mania took hold of us--that of going to see off the soldiers. Aix is on the road to Marseilles. Regiments came into the town by the road from Avignon, slept one night, and started off on the morrow by the road to Marseilles. At that time, fresh troops, especially cavalry and artillery, were being sent to the Crimea. Not a week elapsed without troops passing. A local paper even announced these movements beforehand, for the benefit of the inhabitants with whom the men lodged. Only we did not read the paper, and we were much concerned to know overnight whether there would be soldiers leaving in the morning. As the departure occurred at five in the morning, we were obliged to get up very early, often to no purpose.