n. 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.

It is true that I intersperse my researches with some more attractive
studies, and one or two visits to the picture-galleries, and more than
an occasional evening at the theatre. My uncle knows nothing of this.
To keep him soothed I am careful to get my reader's ticket renewed every
month, and every month to send him the ticket just out of date, signed
by M. Leopold Delisle. He has a box full of them; and in the simplicity
of his heart Mon