s _de service_ as _maitre
d'etudes_, although there was no attempt to do anything but sadly
read improving books.

If I remember aright, Rene, a very sentimental young Frenchman, who
had loved the wrong person not wisely, but too well (a very wrong
person indeed, in his case), emigrated to North America, and there
he met a beautiful Indian maiden, one Atala, of the Natchez tribe,
who had rosy heels and was charming, and whose entire skin was
probably a warm dark red, although this is not insisted upon. She
also had a brother, whose name was Outogamiz.

Well, Rene loved Atala, Atala loved Rene, and they were married; and
Outogamiz went through some ceremony besides, which made him blood
brother and bosom friend to Rene--a bond which involved certain
obligatory rites and duties and self-sacrifices.

Atala died and was buried. Rene died and was buried also; and every
day, as in duty bound, poor Outogamiz went and pricked a vein and
bled over Rene's tomb, till he died himself of exhaustion before he
was many weeks older. I quote entirely from memory.

This simple story was told in very touching and beautiful language,
by no means telegraphese, and Barty and I were deeply affected by
it.

"I say, Bob!" Barty whispered to me, with a break in his voice,
"some day I'll marry your sister, and we'll all go off to America
together, and she'll die, and _I_'ll die, and you shall bleed
yourself to death on my tomb!"

"No," said I, after a moment's thought. "No--look here! _I_'ll marry
_your_ sister, and _I_'ll die, and _you_ shall bleed over _my_
tomb!"

Then, after a pause:

"I haven't got a sister, as you know quite well--and if I had she
wouldn't be for _you_!" says Barty.

"Why not?"

"Because you're not good-looking enough!" says Barty.

At this, just for fun, I gave him a nudge in the wind with my
elbow--and he gave me a "twisted pinch" on the arm--and I kicked him
on the ankle, but so much harder than I intended that it hurt him,
and he gave me a tremendous box on the ear, and we set to fighting
like a couple of wild-cats, without even getting up, to the scandal
of the whole study and the indignant disgust of M. Dumollard, who
separated us, and read us a pretty lecture:

"Voila bien les Anglais!--rien n'est sacre pour eux, pas meme la
mort! rien que les chiens et les chevaux." (Nothing, not even death,
is sacred to Englishmen--nothing but dogs and horses.)

When we went up to bed the head-boy of the school--