Having passed the ninth preparatory grade, under the direction of the indolent M. Tavernier, always busy polishing his nails, like a Chinese mandarin, the child had for a professor in the eighth grade Pere Montandeuil, a poor fellow stupefied by thirty years of teaching, who secretly employed all his spare hours in composing five-act tragedies, and who, by dint of carrying to and going for his manuscripts at the Odeon, ended by marrying the stagedoor-keeper’s daughter.  In the seventh grade Amedee groaned under the tyranny of M. Prudhommod, a man from the country, with a smattering of Latin and a terribly violent temper, throwing at the pupils the insults of a plowboy.  Now he had entered the sixth grade, under M. Bance, an unfortunate fellow about twenty years old, ugly, lame, and foolishly timid, whom M. Batifol reproached severely with not having made himself respected, and whose eyes filled with tears every morning when, upon entering the schoolroom, he was obliged to efface with a cloth a caricature of himself made by some of his pupils.

Everything in M. Batifol’s school—­the grotesque and miserable teachers, the ferocious and cynical pupils, the dingy, dusty, and ink-stained rooms—­saddened and displeased Amedee.  Although very intelligent, he was disgusted with the sort of instruction there, which was served out in portions, like soldier’s rations, and would have lost courage but for his little friend, Louise Gerard, who out of sheer kindness constituted herself his school-mistress, guiding and inspiriting him, and working hard at the rudiments of L’homond’s Grammar and Alexandre’s Dictionary, to help the child struggle with his ‘De Viris’.  Unfortunate indeed is he who has not had, during his infancy, a petticoat near him—­the sweet influence of a woman.  He will always have something coarse in his mind and hard in his heart.  Without this excellent and kind Louise, Amedee would have been exposed to this danger.  His mother was dead, and M. Violette, alas! was always overwhelmed with his grief, and, it must be admitted, somewhat neglected his little son.

The widower could not be consoled.  Since his wife’s death he had grown ten years older, and his refractory lock of hair had become perfectly white.  His Lucie had been the sole joy in his commonplace and obscure life.  She was so pretty, so sweet! such a good manager, dressing upon nothing, and making things seem luxurious with only one flower!  M. Violette existed only on this dear and cruel souvenir, living his humble idyll over again in his mind.

He had had six years of this happiness.  One of his comrades took him to pass an evening with an old friend who was captain in the Invalides.  The worthy man had lost an arm at Waterloo; he was a relative of Lucie, a good-natured old fellow, amiable and lively, delighting in arranging his apartments into a sort of Bonapartist chapel and giving little entertainments with cake and punch, while Lucie’s mother, a