out, as we used to do, "Hell and malediction!" They were quite
properly dressed, and neither their costume nor their language had
anything suggestive of the Middle Ages. I must also add that they paid
considerable attention to the women passing on the terrace, and
expressed their admiration of some of them in very animated language.
But their reflections, even on this subject, were not of a character
to oblige me to flee from my seat. Besides, so long as youth is
studious, I think it has a right to its gayeties.

One of them having made some gallant pleasantry which I forget, the
smallest and darkest of the three exclaimed, with a slight Gascon
accent:--

"What a thing to say! Only physiologists like us have any right to
occupy ourselves about living matter. As for you, Gelis, who only live
in the past,--like all your fellow archivists and paleographers,--you
will do better to confine yourself to those stone women over there,
who are your contemporaries."

And he pointed to the statues of the Ladies of Ancient France which
towered up, all white, in a half-circle under the trees of the
terrace. This joke, though in itself trifling, enabled me to know that
the young man called Gelis was a student at the Ecole des Chartes.
From the conversation which followed I was able to learn that his
neighbor, blond and wan almost to diaphaneity, taciturn and sarcastic,
was Boulmier, a fellow-student. Gelis and the future doctor (I hope he
will become one some day) discoursed together with much fantasy and
spirit. In the midst of the loftiest speculations they would play upon
words, and make jokes after the peculiar fashion of really witty
persons--that is to say, in a style of enormous absurdity. I need
hardly say, I suppose, that they only deigned to maintain the most
monstrous kind of paradoxes. They employed all their powers of
imagination to make themselves as ludicrous as possible, and all their
powers of reasoning to assert the contrary of common-sense. All the
better for them! I do not like to see young folks too rational.

The student of medicine, after glancing at the title of the book that
Boulmier held in his hand, exclaimed:--

"What!--you read Michelet--you?"

"Yes," replied Boulmier very gravely. "I like novels."

Gelis, who dominated both by his fine stature, imperious gestures, and
ready wit, took the book, turned over a few pages rapidly, and said:--

"Michelet always had a great propensity to emotional ten