is occasionally unjust or out
of temper. Perpetually watched by a hundred mocking eyes, and surrounded
with snares, he sometimes revenges himself for his own blunders on the
boys who are only too ready to detect them.

Unless for serious misdemeanors, for which there were other forms of
punishment, the strap was regarded at Vendome as the _ultima ratio
Patrum_. Exercises forgotten, lessons ill learned, common ill behavior
were sufficiently punished by an imposition, but offended dignity spoke
in the master through the strap. Of all the physical torments to which
we were exposed, certainly the most acute was that inflicted by this
leathern instrument, about two fingers wide, applied to our poor little
hands with all the strength and all the fury of the administrator. To
endure this classical form of correction, the victim knelt in the middle
of the room. He had to leave his form and go to kneel down near the
master's desk under the curious and generally merciless eyes of his
fellows. To sensitive natures these preliminaries were an introductory
torture, like the journey from the Palais de Justice to the Place de
Greve which the condemned used to make to the scaffold.

Some boys cried out and shed bitter tears before or after the
application of the strap; others accepted the infliction with stoic
calm; it was a question of nature; but few could control an expression
of anguish in anticipation.

Louis Lambert was constantly enduring the strap, and owed it to a
peculiarity of his physiognomy of which he was for a long time quite
unconscious. Whenever he was suddenly roused from a fit of abstraction
by the master's cry, "You are doing nothing!" it often happened that,
without knowing it, he flashed at his teacher a look full of fierce
contempt, and charged with thought, as a Leyden jar is charged with
electricity. This look, no doubt, discomfited the master, who, indignant
at this unspoken retort, wished to cure his scholar of that thunderous
flash.

The first time the Father took offence at this ray of scorn, which
struck him like a lightning-flash, he made this speech, as I well
remember:

"If you look at me again in that way, Lambert, you will get the strap."

At these words every nose was in the air, every eye looked alternately
at the master and at Louis. The observation was so utterly foolish, that
the boy again looked at the Father, overwhelming him with another
flash. From this arose a standing feud between La