exploits.

"Vexed to find that a place had been reserved for him near the
professor, under the certainly justified pretext that he was too much
inclined to talk," again writes Abbé Chesnais, "he was resolved to talk
all the same, whenever he pleased. With the aid of pins, pens, wires and
boxes, he soon set up a telephone which put him into communication with
the boy whose desk was farthest away. He possessed tools necessary for
any of his tricks, and his desk was a veritable bazaar: copybooks,
books, pen-holders and paper were mixed pell-mell with the most unlikely
objects, such as fragments of fencing foils, drugs, chemical products,
oil, grease, bolts, skate wheels, and tablets of chocolate. In one
corner, carefully concealed, were some glass tubes which awaited a
favorable moment for projecting against the ceiling a ball of chewed
paper. Attached to this ball, a paper personage cut out of a copybook
cover danced feverishly in space. When this grotesque figurine became
quiet, another paper ball, shot with great skill, renewed the dancing
to the great satisfaction of the young marksman. Airplanes made of paper
were also hidden in this desk, awaiting the propitious hour for
launching them; and the professor's desk sometimes served as their
landing place.... Everything, indeed, was to be found there, but in such
disorder that the owner himself could never find them. Who has not seen
him hunting for a missing exercise in a copybook full of scraps of
paper? It is time to go to class; with his head hidden in his desk, he
turns over all its contents in great haste, upsetting a badly closed
ink-bottle over his books and copybooks. The master calls him to order,
and he rushes out well behind all the rest of the boys.

"He was not one of those ill-intentioned boys whose sole idea is to
disturb the class and hinder the work of his comrades. Nor was he a