And in I walk, and admire on each occasion the vast proportions of the interior, the severe decoration of the walls, traced with broad foliated pattern and wainscoted with books of reference as high as hand can reach; the dread tribunal of librarians and keepers in session down yonder, on a kind of judgment-seat, at the end of the avenue whose carpet deadens all footsteps; and behind again, that holy of holies where work the doubly privileged—­the men, I imagine, who are members of two or three academies.  To right and left of this avenue are rows of tables and armchairs, where scatters, as caprice has chosen and habit consecrated, the learned population of the library.  Men form the large majority.  Viewed from the rear, as they bend over their work, they suggest reflections on the ravages wrought by study upon hair-clad cuticles.  For every hirsute Southerner whose locks turn gray without dropping off, heavens, what a regiment of bald heads!  Visitors who look in through the glass doors see only this aspect of devastation.  It gives a wrong impression.  Here and there, at haphazard, you may find a few women among these men.  George Sand used to come here.  I don’t know the names of these successors of hers, nor their business; I have merely observed that they dress in sober colors, and that each carries a number of shawls and a thick veil.  You feel that love is far from their thoughts.  They have left it outside, perhaps—­with the porter.

Several of these learned folk lift their heads as I pass, and follow me with the dulled eye of the student, an eye still occupied with the written thought and inattentive to what it looks on.  Then, suddenly, remorse seizes them for their distraction, they are annoyed with me, a gloomy impatience kindles in their look, and each plunges anew into his open volume.  But I have had time to guess their secret ejaculations:  “I am studying the Origin of Trade Guilds!” “I, the Reign of Louis the Twelfth!” “I, the Latin Dialects!” “I, the Civil Status of Women under Tiberius!” “I am elaborating a new translation of Horace!” “I am fulminating a seventh article, for the Gazette of Atheism and Anarchy, on the Russian Serfs!” And each one seems to add, “But what is thy business here, stripling?  What canst thou write at thy age?  Why troublest thou the peace of these hallowed precincts?” My business, sirs?  Alas! it is the thesis for my doctor’s degree.  My uncle and venerated guardian, M. Brutus Mouillard, solicitor, of Bourges, is urging me to finish it, demands my return to the country, grows impatient over the slow toil of composition.  “Have done with theories,” he writes, “and get to business!  If you must strive for this degree, well and good; but what possessed you to choose such a subject?”

I must own that the subject of my thesis in Roman law has been artistically chosen with a view to prolonging my stay in Paris:  “On the ‘Latini Juniani.’” Yes, gentle reader, a new subject, almost incapable of elucidation, having no connection—­not the remotest—­with the exercise of any profession whatsoever, entirely devoid of practical utility.  The trouble it gives me is beyond conception.