I had hitherto been a remarkably quiet and inoffensive boy; Telemachus I considered never took delight in robbing orchards.  I had the confidence of my teachers from my uniform rejection of any participation in the rude affrays, the catastrophe of which dramas was in general an almost universal flogging match.  My admiration naturally led to its probable result, a desire to imitate—­I firmly resolved to become a Peregrine.  I soon promoted myself to be the leader of every mad prank that the wit of a spirit suddenly excited to activity could devise.  In the first fortnight I got flogged for tying a huge mass of brown paper to the tail of the favourite cat of the master’s lady, with which she rushed with an insane and terrifying distraction into the drawing-room.  We owed a spite to a neighbouring milkman for tale-bearing, and we rendered his pump, the great source of profit, useless, by filling it with soot and mire.  The old woman who served the school with tarts, and who, in her endeavours to please all palates, brought some varieties heated over a charcoal fire, had her apparatus blown to atoms by an ounce of gunpowder, insinuated with so much art, that although done before her face, she could attach no one with the offence.  All became riot, waste, and destruction under the guidance of my beloved Peregrine.

But, ah! the poor Count—­amiable, patient, and long-suffering Gaul!  He was an unhappy refugee, who had sought a home, by becoming the reviled, insulted teacher of his native tongue to a mob of heartless ruffians.  How well do I remember his neat but thread-bare coat and pigtail; his stooping gait, not the decrepitude of age, but as though it sprang from the abasement of his fortune; his endurance of injury to a certain point, when patience suddenly forsook him, and his, to us, irresistibly comic rage and exasperation!  What would that generous seaman Pipes have thought a defenceless Frenchman fit for, but as the object of spirited and well-conducted pranks?  Nothing cruel or revengeful, but only to show our own superior wit and address in concerted and premeditated annoyance.

I had gained with a most surprising rapidity upon the confidence of the most conspicuous rioters in the school.  There was something so noble and daring in all my designs, that they seemed to yield willingly to so superior a spirit.  The sudden alteration in my manners had been noticed with secret wonder by the masters, and they, thinking to check my fatal tendencies at the outset, had inflicted on me several severe and well-merited chastisements.  I converted even these into means of extending my influence.  I had borne them like a hero, a very Peregrine.  No groan—­no sigh—­no bellowing promise of amendment, had lessened my dignity.  Under the torture, I was sullen and silent.  The stoutest heart in the school envied my manhood and composure.