His father and his aunt, with whom he passed his days, had grown
to be only vague, meaningless shapes to him. Their broadest
pleasantries failed to raise a smile, and the coarse realities of
a narrow, penurious existence had no power to disturb his happy
serenity. All day long, in the back-shop where the penetrating
smell of paste mingled with the fumes of the cabbage-soup, he
lived a life of his own, a life of incomparable splendours. His
little Corneille, scored thickly with thumb-nail marks at every
couplet of Émilie's, was all he needed to foster the fairest
of illusions. A face and the tones of a voice were his world.

In a few days he knew the whole tragedy by heart. He would declaim
the lines in a slow, pompous voice, and his aunt would remark
after each speech, as she shredded the vegetables for dinner:

"So you're for being a _curé_, are you, that you preach like they
do in church?"

But in the main she approved of these exercises, and when Monsieur
Servien scratched his head doubtfully and complained that his
son would not make up his mind to any way of earning a living,
she always took up the cudgels for the "little lad" and silenced
the bookbinder by telling him roundly he knew nothing about it--or
about anything else.

So the worthy man went back to his calf-skins. All the same,
albeit he could form no very clear idea of what was in his son's
head, for the latter having become a "gentleman" was beyond his
purview, he felt some disquietude to see a holiday, legitimate
enough no doubt after a successful examination, dragging out to