“Vexed to find that a place had been reserved for him near the professor, under the certainly justified pretext that he was too much inclined to talk,” again writes Abbe Chesnais, “he was resolved to talk all the same, whenever he pleased.  With the aid of pins, pens, wires and boxes, he soon set up a telephone which put him into communication with the boy whose desk was farthest away.  He possessed tools necessary for any of his tricks, and his desk was a veritable bazaar:  copybooks, books, pen-holders and paper were mixed pell-mell with the most unlikely objects, such as fragments of fencing foils, drugs, chemical products, oil, grease, bolts, skate wheels, and tablets of chocolate.  In one corner, carefully concealed, were some glass tubes which awaited a favorable moment for projecting against the ceiling a ball of chewed paper.  Attached to this ball, a paper personage cut out of a copybook cover danced feverishly in space.  When this grotesque figurine became quiet, another paper ball, shot with great skill, renewed the dancing to the great satisfaction of the young marksman.  Airplanes made of paper were also hidden in this desk, awaiting the propitious hour for launching them; and the professor’s desk sometimes served as their landing place....  Everything, indeed, was to be found there, but in such disorder that the owner himself could never find them.  Who has not seen him hunting for a missing exercise in a copybook full of scraps of paper?  It is time to go to class; with his head hidden in his desk, he turns over all its contents in great haste, upsetting a badly closed ink-bottle over his books and copybooks.  The master calls him to order, and he rushes out well behind all the rest of the boys.

“He was not one of those ill-intentioned boys whose sole idea is to disturb the class and hinder the work of his comrades.  Nor was he a ringleader.  He acted entirely on his own account, and for his own satisfaction.  His practical jokes never lasted long, and did not interrupt the work of others.  His upright, frank and honest nature always led him to acknowledge his own acts when the master attributed them by mistake to the wrong boys.  He never allowed any comrade to take his punishment for him, but he knew very well how to extricate himself from the greatest difficulties.  His candor often won him some indulgence.  If he happened to be punished by a timorous master, he assumed a terrible facial expression and tried to frighten him.  But when, on the contrary, he found himself in the presence of a man of energy, he pleaded extenuating circumstances, and persevered until he obtained the least possible punishment.  He never resented the infliction of just punishment, but suffered very much when punished in public.  On the day when the class marks were read aloud, if he suspected that his own were to be bad, he took refuge in the infirmary to avoid the shame of public exposure.  Honor, for him, was not a vain word.