f your "woodnotes
wild," you know, and thrown them, by way of pass-money, into the mouth
of _Crocodilus_.'

This nickname 'Crocodilus,' turning up at the bottom of Vedrine's
schoolboy recollections, amused them for a moment. They pictured once
more Astier-Rehu at his desk, with streaming brow, his cap well on the
back of his head, and a yard of red ribbon relieved against the black of
his gown, emphasising with the solemn movements of his wide sleeves the
well-worn joke from Racine or Moliere, or his own rounded periods in the
style of Vic't-d'Azir, whose seat in the Academie he eventually filled.
Then Freydet, vexed with himself for laughing at his old master, began
to praise his work as an historian. What a mass of original documents he
had brought out of their dust!

'There's nothing in that,' retorted Vedrine with unqualified contempt.
In his view, the most interesting documents in hands of a fool had no
more meaning than has the great book of humanity itself, when consulted
by a stupid novelist. The gold all turns into dead leaves. 'Look
here,' he went on with rising animation, 'a man is not to be called an
historian because he has expanded unpublished material into great octavo
volumes, which are shelved unread among the books of information, and
should be labelled, "For external application only. Shake the
bottle." It is only French frivolity that attaches a serious value
to compilations like those. The English and Germans despise us.
"Ineptissimus vir Astier-Rehu," says Mommsen somewhere or other in a
note.'

'Yes, and it was you, you heartless fellow, who made the poor man read
out the note before the whole class.'

'And a terrible jaw he gave me. It was nearly as bad as when one day I
got so tired of hearing him tell us that the will was a lever, a lever
with which you might lift anything anywhere, that I answered him from my
place in his own voice: "Could you fly with it, sir--could you fly with
it?"'

Freydet, laughing, abandoned his defence of the historian, and began to
plead for Astier-Rehu as a teacher. But Vedrine went off again.

'A teacher! What is he? A poor creature who has spent his life in
"weeding" hundreds of brains, or, in plain terms, destroying whatever
in them was original and natural, all the living germs which it is the
first duty of an educator to nourish and protect. To think how the
lot of us were hoed, and stubbed, and grubbed! One or two did not take
kindly to the process, but