lly.

Jean, who was horrified at the whole project, opened his
exercise-books and buried his head in his lessons, to avoid the
necessity of hearing any more and answering questions. He did not
as a rule show such alacrity about setting to work. His father
remarked on the fact, commending him for his zeal.

"We should play," he announced, "when it is play-time, and work
when it is the time to work," and _he_ set to work flattening
a piece of shagreen.

Jean fell into a brown study. He had caught a glimpse of a world
he knew to be for ever closed against him, but towards which
all the forces of his young heart drew him irresistibly. He did
not dream Madame Ewans could ever be different from what he had
seen her. He could not imagine her otherwise dressed or amid any
other surroundings. He knew nothing whatever of women; this one
had seemed motherly to him, and it was a mother such as Madame
Ewans he would have liked to have. But how his heart beat and
his brow burned as he pictured this imaginary mother a reality!

Dating from the day at Saint-Cloud, Jean thought himself unhappy,
and unhappy he became in fact. He was wilfully, deliberately
insubordinate, proud of breaking rules and defying punishments.

He and his school-mates attended the classes of a _Lycee_ in
the _Quartier Latin_. Directly he had taken his place on the
remotest bench in the well-warmed lecture-room, he would become
absorbed in some sentimental novel concealed under piles of
Latin and Greek authors. Sometimes the master, short-sighted as
he was, would catch the culprit in the act.

Still, Jean had his hours of triumph. His translations were
remarkable, not for accuracy, but at any rate for elegance. So,
too, his compositions sometimes contained happy phrases that
earned him high praise. On the theme, "The maiden Theano defending
Alcibiades against the incensed Athenians," he wrote a Latin
oration that was warmly commended by Monsieur Duruy, the then
Inspector of Public Instruction, and gained the young author
some weeks of scholastic fame.

On holidays he would roam the boulevards and gaze with greedy
eyes at the jewels, the silks and satins, the bronzes, the
photographs of women, displayed in the shop-windows--the thousand
and one gewgaws and frivolities of fashion that seemed to him
to sum up the necessary conditions of happiness.

His entry into the philosophy class was a red-letter day; he
sported his first tall hat and smoked his first