equations.

Du Tertre-Jouan was nearly six feet high, and afraid of nobody--a
kind of clodhopping young rustic Hercules, and had proved his mettle
quite recently--when a brutal usher, whom I will call Monsieur
Boulot (though his real name was Patachou), a Meridional with a
Horrible divergent squint, made poor Rapaud go down on his knees in
the classe de geographie ancienne, and slapped him violently on the
face twice running--a way he had with Rapaud.

It happened like this. It was a kind of penitential class for dunces
during play-time. M. Boulot drew in chalk an outline of ancient
Greece on the blackboard, and under it he wrote--

"Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes!"

"Rapaud, translate me that line of Virgil!" says Boulot.

"J'estime les Danois et leurs dents de fer!" says poor Rapaud (I
esteem the Danish and their iron teeth). And we all laughed. For
which he underwent the brutal slapping.

[Illustration: A TERTRE-JOUAN TO THE RESCUE!]

The window was ajar, and outside I saw du Tertre-Jouan, Jolivet, and
Berquin, listening and peeping through. Suddenly the window bursts wide
open, and du Tertre-Jouan vaults the sill, gets between Boulot and his
victim, and says:

"Le troisieme coup fait feu, vous savez! touchez-y encore, a ce
moutard, et j'vous assomme sur place!" (Touch him again, that kid,
and I'll break your head where you stand!).

There was an awful row, of course--and du Tertre-Jouan had to make a
public apology to M. Boulot, who disappeared from the school the
very same day; and Tertre-Jouan would have been canonized by us all,
but that he was so deplorably dull and narrow-minded, and suspected
of being a royalist in disguise. He was an orphan and very rich, and
didn't fash himself about examinations. He left school that year
without taking any degree--and I don't know what became of him.

This year also Barty conceived a tender passion for Mlle. Marceline.

It was after the mumps, which we both had together in a
double-bedded infirmerie next to the lingerie--a place where it was
a pleasure to be ill; for she was in and out all day, and told us
all that was going on, and gave us nice drinks and tisanes of her
own making--and laughed at all Barty's jokes, and some of mine! And
wore the most coquettish caps ever seen.

Besides, she was an uncommonly good-looking woman--a tall blonde
with beautiful teeth, and wonderfully genial, good-humored, and
lively--an ideal nurse, but a terrible postponer o