The other ushers disgusted him.  He knew nobody in the town, since he had no time to devote to making acquaintances.

“Not even the nights, my friend, and that is the hardest thing on me.  The dream of my life is to have a room with my own furniture, my own books, little things that belong to myself and which others may not touch.  And I have nothing of my own, nothing except my trousers and my frock-coat, nothing, not even my mattress and my pillow!  I have not four walls to shut myself up in, except when I come to give a lesson in this room.  Do you see what this means—­a man forced to spend his life without ever having the right, without ever finding the time, to shut himself up all alone, no matter where, to think, to reflect, to work, to dream?  Ah! my dear boy, a key, the key of a door which one can lock—­this is happiness, mark you, the only happiness!

“Here, all day long, teaching all those restless rogues, and during the night the dormitory with the same restless rogues snoring.  And I have to sleep in the bed at the end of two rows of beds occupied by these youngsters whom I must look after.  I can never be alone, never!  If I go out I find the streets full of people, and, when I am tired of walking, I go into some cafe crowded with smokers and billiard players.  I tell you what, it is the life of a galley slave.”

I said: 

“Why did you not take up some other line, Monsieur Piquedent?”

He exclaimed: 

“What, my little friend?  I am not a shoemaker, or a joiner, or a hatter, or a baker, or a hairdresser.  I only know Latin, and I have no diploma which would enable me to sell my knowledge at a high price.  If I were a doctor I would sell for a hundred francs what I now sell for a hundred sous; and I would supply it probably of an inferior quality, for my title would be enough to sustain my reputation.”

Sometimes he would say to me: 

“I have no rest in life except in the hours spent with you.  Don’t be afraid! you’ll lose nothing by that.  I’ll make it up to you in the class-room by making you speak twice as much Latin as the others.”

One day, I grew bolder, and offered him a cigarette.  He stared at me in astonishment at first, then he gave a glance toward the door.

“If any one were to come in, my dear boy?”

“Well, let us smoke at the window,” said I.

And we went and leaned our elbows on the windowsill looking on the street, holding concealed in our hands the little rolls of tobacco.  Just opposite to us was a laundry.  Four women in loose white waists were passing hot, heavy irons over the linen spread out before them, from which a warm steam arose.

Suddenly, another, a fifth, carrying on her arm a large basket which made her stoop, came out to take the customers their shirts, their handkerchiefs, and their sheets.  She stopped on the threshold as if she were already fatigued; then, she raised her eyes, smiled as she saw us smoking, flung at us, with her left hand, which was free, the sly kiss characteristic of a free-and-easy working-woman, and went away at a slow place, dragging her feet as she went.