of bread and preserves, and placed them in a basket of which she
slipped the handle over my arm, and then led me, thus prepared, to
the school kept by Monsieur Douloir, at a corner of the Passage du
Commerce well known to the sparrows, between a court and a garden.
The enormous Monsieur Douloir smiled upon us genially, and patted
my cheek to show, no doubt, the affectionate interest which my first
appearance had inspired. But when my mother had passed out of the
court, startling the sparrows as she went, Monsieur Douloir ceased
to smile--he showed no more affectionate interest; he appeared, on
the contrary, to consider me as a very troublesome little fellow.
I discovered, later on, that he entertained the same feelings
towards all his pupils. He distributed whacks of his ferule with
an agility no one could have expected on the part of so corpulent
a person. But his first aspect of tender interest invariably
reappeared when he spoke to any of our mothers in our presence; and
always at such times, while warmly praising our remarkable aptitudes,
he would cast down upon us a look of intense affection. Still,
those were happy days which I passed on the benches of the Monsieur
Couloir with my little playfellows, who, like myself, cried and
laughed by turns with all their might, from morning till evening.

After a whole half-century these souvenirs float up again, fresh and
bright as ever, to the surface of memory, under this starry sky,
whose face has in no wise changed since then, and whose serene and
immutable lights will doubtless see many other schoolboys such as
I was slowly turn into grey-headed servants, afflicted with catarrh.

Stars, who have shown down upon each wise or foolish head among all
my forgotten ancestors, it is under your soft light that I now feel
stir within me a certain poignant regret! I would that I could have