but he would be prepared there at once, ’ab ovo’, one day to receive lessons in this University of France, ’alma parens’ (instruction in foreign languages not included in the ordinary price, naturally), which by daily study, competition between scholars (accomplishments, such as dancing, music, and fencing, to be paid for separately; that goes without saying) prepare children for social life, and make men and citizens of them.

M. Violette contented himself with the day school at thirty francs, and for a good reason.  The affair was settled.  Early the next morning Amedee would enter the “ninth preparatory.”

“Give me your hand, my young friend,” said the master, as father and son arose to take their leave.

Amedee reached out his hand, and M. Batifol took it in his, which was so heavy, large, and cold that the child shivered at the contact, and fancied he was touching a leg of mutton of six or seven pounds’ weight, freshly killed, and sent from the butcher’s.

Finally they left.  Early the next morning, Amedee, provided with a little basket, in which the old snuff-taker had put a little bottle of red wine, and some sliced veal, and jam tarts, presented himself at the boarding-school, to be prepared without delay for the teaching of the ‘alma parens’.

The hippopotamus clothed in black did not take off his skullcap this time, to the child’s great regret, for he wished to assure himself if the degrees of latitude and longitude were checked off in squares on M. Batifol’s cranium as they were on the terrestrial globe.  He conducted his pupil to his class at once and presented him to the master.

“Here is a new day scholar, Monsieur Tavernier.  You will find out how far advanced he is in reading and writing, if you please.”  M. Tavernier was a tall young man with a sallow complexion, a bachelor who, had he been living like his late father, a sergeant of the gendarmes, in a pretty house surrounded by apple trees and green grass, would not, perhaps, have had that ‘papier-mache’ appearance, and would not have been dressed at eight o’clock in the morning in a black coat of the kind we see hanging in the Morgue.  M. Tavernier received the newcomer with a sickly smile, which disappeared as soon as M. Batifol left the room.

“Go and take your place in that empty seat there, in the third row,” said M. Tavernier, in an indifferent tone.

He deigned, however, to conduct Amedee to the seat which he was to occupy.  Amedee’s neighbor, one of the future citizens preparing for social life—­several with patches upon their trousers—­had been naughty enough to bring into class a handful of cockchafers.  He was punished by a quarter of an hour’s standing up, which he did soon after, sulking at the foot of the sycamore-tree in the large court.

“You will soon see what a cur he is,” whispered the pupil in disgrace; as soon as the teacher had returned to his seat.

M. Tavernier struck his ruler on the edge of his chair, and, having reestablished silence, invited pupil Godard to recite his lesson.