we were distributed as by a monastic rule, will easily conceive of the
excitement that we felt at the arrival of a new boy, a passenger
suddenly embarked on the ship. No young duchess, on her first
appearance at Court, was ever more spitefully criticised than the new
boy by the youths in his division. Usually during the evening
play-hour before prayers, those sycophants who were accustomed to
ingratiate themselves with the Fathers who took it in turns two and
two for a week to keep an eye on us, would be the first to hear on
trustworthy authority: "There will be a new boy to-morrow!" and then
suddenly the shout, "A New Boy!--A New Boy!" rang through the courts.
We hurried up to crowd round the superintendent and pester him with
questions:

"Where was he coming from? What was his name? Which class would he be
in?" and so forth.

Louis Lambert's advent was the subject of a romance worthy of the
_Arabian Nights_. I was in the fourth class at the time--among the
little boys. Our housemasters were two men whom we called Fathers from
habit and tradition, though they were not priests. In my time there
were indeed but three genuine Oratorians to whom this title
legitimately belonged; in 1814 they all left the college, which had
gradually become secularized, to find occupation about the altar in
various country parishes, like the cure of Mer.

Father Haugoult, the master for the week, was not a bad man, but of
very moderate attainments, and he lacked the tact which is
indispensable for discerning the different characters of children, and
graduating their punishment to their powers of resistance. Father
Haugoult, then, began very obligingly to communicate to his pupils the