Barty came back from his holidays full of Whitby, and its sailors and whalers, and fishermen and cobles and cliffs-all of which had evidently had an immense attraction for him. He was always fond of that class; possibly also some vague atavistic sympathy for the toilers of the sea lay dormant in his blood like an inherited memory.

And he brought back many tokens of these good people's regard-two formidable clasp-knives (for each of which he had to pay the giver one farthing in current coin of the realm); spirit-flasks, leather bottles, jet ornaments; woollen jerseys and comforters knitted for him by their wives and daughters; fossil ammonites and coprolites; a couple of young seagulls to add to his menagerie; and many old English marine ditties, which he had to sing to M. Bonzig with his now cracked voice, and then translate into French. Indeed, Bonzig and Barty became inseparable companions during the Thursday promenade, on the strength of their common interest in ships and the sea; and Barty never wearied of describing the place he loved, nor Bonzig of listening and commenting.

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Ah! mon cher! ce que je donnerais, moi, pour voir le retour d'un baleinier à Ouittebé! Quelle marine' ça ferait! hein? avec la grande falaise, et la bonne petite église en haut, près de la Vieille Abbaye et les toits rouges qui fument, et les trois jetées en pierre, et le vieux pont-levis-et toute cette grouille de mariniers avec leurs femmes et leurs enfants et ces braves filles qui attendent le retour du bien aimé! nom d'un nom! dire que vous avez vu tout ça, vous qui n'avez pas encore seize ans. . . quelle chance!... dites-qu'est-ce que ça veut bien dire, ce

'Ouïle mé sekile rô!'

Chantez-moi ça encore une fois!"

And Barty, whose voice was breaking, would raucously sing him the good old ditty for the sixth time:

"Weel may the keel row, the keel row, the keel row, Weel may the keel row

That brings my laddie home!" which he would find rather difficult to render literally into colloquial seafaring French!

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He translated it thus:

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"Vogue la carène, Vogue la carène Qui me ramène Mon bien aimé!"

'Ah! vous verrez," says Bonzigvous verrez, aux prochaines vacances de Pâques-je ferai un si joli tableau de tout ça! avec la brume du soir qui tombe, vous savez-et le soleil qui disparaît―et la marée qui monte et la lune qui se lève à l'horizon! et les mouettes et les goëlands

et les bruyères lointaines-et le vieux manoir seigneurial de votre grand-père... c'est bien ça, n'est-ce pas ?"

"Oui, oui, M'sieur Bonzig-vous y êtes, en plein!"

And the good usher in his excitement would light himself a cigarette of Caporal, and inhale the smoke as if it were a seabreeze, and exhale it like a regular sou'wester! and sing:

"Onïle-mé-sekile rô

Tat brinn my laddé ôme!"

Barty also brought back with him the complete poetical works of Byron and Thomas Moore, the gift of his noble grandfather, who adored these two bards to the exclusion of all other bards that ever wrote in English. And during that year we both got to know them, possibly as well as Lord Whitby himself. Especially

Don Juan," in which we grew to be as word-perfect as in Polyeucte, Le Misanthrope, Athalie, Philoctète, Le Lutrin, the first six books of the Æneid and the Iliad, the Ars Poetica, and the Art Poétique (Boileau).

Every line of these has gone out of my head-long ago, alas! But I could still stand a pretty severe examination in the now-all-but-forgotten English epic--from Dan to Beersheba-I mean from "I want a hero" to "The phantom of her frolic grace, Fitz-Fulke!"

Barty, however, remembered everything what he ought to, and what he ought not! He had the most astounding memory: wax to receive and marble to

retain; also a wonderful facility for writing verse, mostly comic, both in English and French. Greek and Latin verse were not taught us at Brossard's, for good French reasons, into which I will not en

ter now.

We also grew very fond of Lamartine and Victor Hugo, quite openly-and of De Musset under the rose.

"C'était dans la nuit brune
Sur le clocher jauni,
La lune,

Comme un point sur son i!"

(not for the young person).

I have a vague but pleasant impression of that year. Its weathers, its changing seasons, its severe frosts, with Sunday skatings on the dangerous canals St. Ouen and de l'Ourq; its genial spring, all convolvulus, and gobéas, and early almond blossom and later horse-chestnut spikes, and more lime and syringa than ever; its warm soft summer and the everdelightful school of natation by the Isle of Swans.

This particular temptation led us into trouble. We would rise before dawn, Barty and Jolivet and I, and let ourselves over the wall and run the two miles, and get a heavenly swim and a promise of silence for a franc apiece; and run back again and jump into bed a few minutes before the five o'clock bell rang the reveille.

But we did this once too often-for M. Dumollard had been looking at Venus with his telescope (I think it was Venus) one morning before sunrise, and spied us out en flagrant délit; perhaps with that very telescope. Anyhow, he pounced on us when we came back. And our punishment would have been extremely harsh but for Barty, who turned it all into a joke. After breakfast M. Mérovée pronounced a very severe sentence on us under the acacia. I forget what it was-but his manner was very short and dignified, and he walked away very stiffly towards the door of the étude. Barty ran after him without noise, and just touching his shoulders with the tips of his fingers, cleared him at a bound from behind, as one clears a post.

M. Mérovée, in a real rage this time, for got his dignity and pursued him all over the school-through open windows and back again-into his own garden (Tusculum)-over trellis railings-all along the

top of a wall-and finally, quite blown out, sat down on the edge of the tank: the whole school was in fits by this time, even M. Dumollard-and at last Mérovée began to laugh too. So the thing had to be forgiven-but only that once!

Once also, that year, but in the winter, a great compliment was paid to la perfide Albion in the persons of MM. Josselin et Maurice, which I cannot help recording with a little complacency.

On a Thursday walk in the Bois de Boulogne a boy called out "À bas Dumollard," in a falsetto squeak. Dumollard, who was on duty that walk, was furious, of course-but he couldn't identify the boy by the sound of his voice. He made his complaint to M. Mérovéeand next morning, after prayers, Mérovée came into the school-room and told us he should go the round of the boys there and then, and ask each boy separately to own up if it were he who had uttered the seditious cry.

"And mind you!" he said—" you are all and each of you on your 'word of honor '-l'étude entière!"

So round he went, from boy to boy, deliberately fixing each boy with his eye, and severely asking-Est-ce toi ?” “Estce toi?" "Est-ce toi?" etc., and waiting very deliberately indeed for the answer, and even asking for it again if it were not given in a firm and audible voice. And the answer was always, "Non, m'sieur, ce n'est pas moi!"

But when he came to each of us (Josselin and me) he just mumbled his "Est-ce toi?" in a quite perfunctory voice, and didn't even wait for the answer!

When he got to the last boy of all, who said Non, m'sieur,” like all the rest, he left the room, saying, tragically (and, as I thought, rather theatrically, for him),

Je m'en vais le cœur navré-il y a un lâche parmi vous!" (My heart is harrowed-there's a coward among you.)

There was an awkward silence for a few moments.

Presently Rapaud got up and went out. We all knew that Rapaud was the delinquent-he had bragged about it so-overnight in the dormitory. He went straight to M. Mérovée and confessed, stating that he did not like to be put on his word of honor before the whole school. I forget whether he was punished or not, or how. He had to make his apologies to M. Dumollard, of course.

By-the-way, also, M. Dumollard took it into his head to persecute me because once I refused to fetch and carry for him and be his "moricaud," or black slave (as du Tertre-Jouan called it): a mean and petty persecution which lasted two years, and somewhat embitters my memory of those happy days. It was always Maurice au piquet pour une heure!" .. "Maurice à la retenue!".. "Maurice privé de bain!".. "Maurice consigné dimanche prochain!"... for the slightest possible offence. But I forgive him freely.

First, because he is probably dead, and "de mortibus nil desperandum!" as Rapaud once said-and for saying which he received a "twisted pinch" from Mérovée Brossard himself.

Secondly, because he made chemistry, cosmography, and physics so pleasant-and even reconciled me at last to the differential and integral calculus (but never Barty!).

He could be rather snobbish at times -which was not a common French fault in the forties-we didn't even know what to call it.

For instance, he was fond of bragging to us boys about the golden splendors of his Sunday dissipation, and his grand acquaintances, even in class. He would even interrupt himself in the middle of an equation at the blackboard to do so.

"You mustn't imagine to yourselves, messieurs, that because I teach you boys science at the Pension Brossard, and take you out walking on Thursday afternoons, and all that, that I do not associate avec des gens du monde! Last night, for example, I was dining at the Café de Paris

with a very intimate friend of minehe's a marquis-and when the bill was brought, what do you think it came to? you give it up?" (vous donnez votre langue aux chats?). "Well, it came to fifty-seven francs, fifty centimes! We tossed up who should pay-et, ma foi, le sort a favorisé M. le Marquis!"

To this there was nothing to say; so none of us said anything, except du Tertre-Jouan, our marquis (No. 2), who said, in his sulky, insolent, peasantlike manner,

"Et comment q'ça s'appelle, vot' marquis?" (What does it call itself, your marquis?)

Upon which M. Dumollard turns very red (pique un soleil"), and says:

Monsieur le Marquis Paul-François -Victor du Tertre-Jouan de Haultcastel de St.-Paterne, vous êtes un paltoquet et un rustre!. . .”

And goes back to his equation.

Du Tertre - Jouan was nearly six feet high, and afraid of nobody- a kind of clodhopping young rustic Hercules, and had proved his mettle quite recentlywhen a brutal usher, whom I will call Monsieur Boulot (though his real name was Patachou), a Méridional with a horrible divergent squint, made poor Rapaud go down on his knees in the classe de géographie ancienne, and slapped him violently on the face twice running a way he had with Rapaud.

It happened like this. It was a kind of penitential class for dunces during play-time. M. Boulot drew in chalk an outline of ancient Greece on the blackboard, and under it he wrote

"Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes!" "Rapaud, translate me that line of Virgil!" says Boulot.

"J'estime les Danois et leurs dents de fer!" says poor Rapaud (I esteem the Danish and their iron teeth). And we all laughed. For which he underwent the brutal slapping.

The window was ajar, and outside I saw du Tertre-Jouan, Jolivet, and Berquin, listening and peeping through. Suddenly the window bursts wide open, and du Tertre-Jouan vaults the sill, gets between Boulot and his victim, and says:

"Le troisième coup fait feu, vous savez! touchez-y encore, à ce moutard, et j'vous assomme sur place" (touch him again, that kid, and I'll break your head where you stand).