ng and intoxicating himself with
deductions. No one was right or wrong. We were reasoning about chimeras,
he radiant, I cool, before his gently tickled colleagues. I never
realized till then what imagination a jurist's head could contain.

Perspiring freely, he set down a white mark, having exceeded by ten
minutes the recognized time for examination.

The second examiner was less enthusiastic. He made very few
suppositions, and devoted all his art to convicting me of a
contradiction between page seventeen and page seventy-nine. He
kept repeating, "It's a serious matter, sir, very serious." But,
nevertheless, he bestowed a second white mark on me. I only got half
white from the third. The rest of the examination was taken up in
matters extraneous to the subject of my essay, a commonplace trial
of strength, in which I replied with threadbare arguments to outworn
objections.

And then it ended. Two hours had passed.

I left the room while the examiners made up their minds.

A few friends came up to me.

"Congratulations, old man, I bet on six whites."

"Hallo, Larive! I never noticed you."

"I quite believe you; you didn't notice anybody, you still look
bewildered. Is it the emotion inseparable from--"

"I dare say."

"The candidate is requested to return to the examination room!" said the
usher.

And old Michu added, in a whisper, "You have passed. I told you so. You
won't forget old Michu, sir."

M. Flamaran conferred my degree with a paternal smile, and a few kind
words for "this conscientious study, full of fresh ideas on a difficult
subject."

I bowed to the examiners. Larive was waiting for me in the courtyard,
and seized me by the arm.

"Uncle Mouillard will be pleased."

"I suppose so."

"Better pleased than you."

"That's very likely."

"He might easily be that. Upon my word I can't understand you. These two
years you have been working like a gang of niggers for your degree, and
now you have got it you don't seem to care a bit. You have won a smile
from Flamaran and do not consider yourself a spoiled child of Fortune!
What more did you want? Did you expect that Mademoiselle Charnot would
come in person--"

"Look here, Larive--"

"To look on at your examination, and applaud your answers with her
neatly gloved hands? Surely you know, my dear fellow, that that is no
longer possible, and that she is going to be married."

"Going to be married?"

"Don't pretend you didn't know it."

"I