er, that tart voice! What a Cassandra-like tone! You disgrace those
beautiful lines, miserable fellow!'

'"But, sir....'

"'But, but, but. I will drop you from the list of my pupils, if you dare
to utter a remark! You can do very well when you wish! But every now and
then you are subject to certain eccentric flights. You sometimes imitate
X---- well enough to be mistaken for him; then you are detestable, for you
change your nature, and I will not permit it. Besides, it is a vulgar
type. Stay, you looked like him just then, and it was hideous.

"'Now, listen, and bear my lesson well in mind: _there is but one proper
way of reciting those lines_, do you hear? _There is but one way_, and
this is it.'

"Here, my professor took a pensive attitude: then, as if crushed by the
weight of some melancholy memory, he cast slowly around him a look in
which the bitterness of a deep disappointment was painted. He heaved a
sigh, raised his eyes to heaven, still keeping his head bent, and began
in a grave, muffled and sustained voice:

"'Nor gold nor greatness....'

"'See,' said my master, 'with what art I manage to create a pathetic
situation out of those lines! That is what you should imitate!'

"'Ah! my dear master, you are right; that is the only reading worthy of
that masterpiece. Heavens, how beautiful!' I said to myself; 'decidedly,
my _noble_ teacher and my _natural_ teacher understood nothing about
this work. What an effect I shall make to-morrow at my fourth
professor's class!'

"Alas! a fresh disappointment awaited me at the hands of my fourth
master. He was, perhaps, even more pitiless than the others to all the
meanings that I strove to express.

"'Why, my poor boy,' said he, 'where the deuce did you hunt up such
meanings?' What a sepulchral tone! What is the meaning of that cavernous
voice? And why that mournful dumb show? Heaven forgive me! it is
melodrama that you offer us! you have done no great thing. You have
completely crippled poor La Fontaine.'

"'Alas! alas!' said I to myself, 'is my dramatic teacher as absurd as
the other two?'"

After the three preceding imitations, just as the audience had reached
the height of merriment, the story-teller stopped.

"I will excuse you, gentlemen, from the reasonings of my fourth
professor, for I do not wish to prolong my discourse indefinitely."

If this retreat was an orator's artifice--which may well be,--it was a
complete success.

There was a shout: "_T