knew. There is nothing invidious in my saying this, and in this
way. I merely speak of the Brossards, father and son, as Frenchmen
in this connection, because their admirable qualities of heart and
mind were so essentially French; they would have done equal honor to
any country in the world.

I corresponded with him regularly for a few years, and so did Barty;
and then our letters grew fewer and farther between, and finally
left off altogether--as nearly always happens in such cases, I
think. And I never saw him again; for when he broke up the school he
went to his own province in the southeast, and lived there till
twenty years ago, when he died--unmarried, I believe.

Then there was Monsieur Bonzig, and Mlle. Marceline, and others--and
three or four boys with whom both Barty and I were on terms of warm
and intimate friendship. None of these boys that I know of have
risen to any world-wide fame; and, oddly enough, none of them have
ever given sign of life to Barty Josselin, who is just as famous in
France for his French literary work as on this side of the Channel
for all he has done in English. He towers just as much there as
here; and this double eminence now dominates the entire globe, and
we are beginning at last to realize everywhere that this bright
luminary in our firmament is no planet, like Mars or Jupiter, but,
like Sirius, a sun.

Yet never a line from an old comrade in that school where he lived
for four years and was so strangely popular--and which he so filled
with his extraordinary personality!

* * * * *

So much for Barty Josselin's school life and mine. I fear I may have
dwelt on them at too great a length. No period of time has ever been
for me so bright and happy as those seven years I spent at the
Institution F. Brossard--especially the four years I spent there
with Barty Josselin. The older I get, the more I love to recall the
trivial little incidents that made for us both the sum of existence
in those happy days.

La chasse aux souvenirs d'enfance! what better sport can there be,
or more bloodless, at my time of life?

And all the lonely pathetic pains and pleasures of it, now that _he_
is gone!

The winter twilight has just set in--"betwixt dog and wolf." I
wander alone (but for Barty's old mastiff, who follows me
willy-nilly) in the woods and lanes that surround Marsfield on the
Thames, the picturesque abode of the Josselins.

Darker and darker it gr