Instantly his memory flew back to the court-yard and class-rooms of the school in the Rue d’Assas, and he saw a heavily built lad, for ever under punishment, standing out face to the wall during playtime, getting and giving mighty fisticuffs, a terrible fellow for plain speaking and hard hitting, industrious, yet a thorn in the side of masters, always in ill-luck, yet ever and anon electrifying the class with some stroke of genius.

He was glad enough to see his old school-fellow again, who struck him as looking almost old with his puckered lids and heavy features.  They set off arm in arm along the deserted Quai, and to the accompaniment of the faint lapping of the water against the retaining walls, told each other the history of their past—­which was succinct enough, their present ideas, and their hopes for the future—­which were boundless.

The same ill-luck still pursued Garneret; from morn to eve he was engaged on prodigiously laborious hack-work for a map-maker, who paid him the wages of one of his office boys; but his big head was crammed with projects.  He was working at philosophy and getting up before the sun to make experiments on the susceptibility to light of the invertebrates; by way of studying English and politics at the same time, he was translating Mr. Disraeli’s speeches; then every Sunday he accompanied Monsieur Hebert’s pupils on their geological excursions in the environs of Paris, while at night he gave lectures to working men on Italian painting and political economy.  There was never a week passed but he was bowled over for twenty-four or forty-eight hours with an agonizing sick-headache.  He spent long hours too with his fiancee, a girl with no dowry and no looks, but of a loving, sensitive temper, whom he adored and fully intended to marry the moment he had five hundred francs to call his own.

Servien could make nothing of the other’s temperament, one that looks upon the world as an immense factory where the good workman labours, coat off and sleeves rolled up, the sweat pouring from his brow and a song on his lips.  He found it harder still to conceive a love with which the glamour of the stage or the splendours of luxurious living had nothing to do.  Yet he felt there was something strong and sensible and true about it all, and craving sympathy he made Garneret the confidant of his passion, telling the tale in accents of despair and bitterness, though secretly proud to be the tortured victim of such fine emotions.

But Garneret expressed no admiration.

“My dear fellow,” said he, “you have got all these romantic notions out of trashy novels.  How can you love the woman when you don’t know her?”

How, indeed?  Jean Servien did not know; but his nights and days, the throbbings of his heart, the thoughts that possessed his mind to the exclusion of all else, everything convinced him that it was so.  He defended himself, talking of mystic influences, natural affinities, emanations, a divine unity of essence.