closed. I myself secured tables on which my pupils were able to write
instead of scribbling on their knees; and, as my class was daily
increasing in numbers, it ended by being divided into two. As soon as
I had an assistant to look after the younger boys, things assumed a
different aspect.

Among the subjects taught, one in particular appealed to both masters
and pupils. This was open-air geometry, practical surveying. The
college had none of the necessary outfit; but, with my fat pay--seven
hundred francs a year, if you please!--I could not hesitate over the
expense. A surveyor's chain and stakes, arrows, level, square and
compass were bought with my money. A microscopic graphometer, not much
larger than the palm of one's hand and costing perhaps five francs,
was provided by the establishment. There was no tripod to it; and I
had one made. In short, my equipment was complete.

And so, when May came, once every week we left the gloomy school-room
for the fields. It was a regular holiday. The boys disputed for the
honour of carrying the stakes, divided into bundles of three; and more
than one shoulder, as we walked through the town, felt the reflected
glory of those erudite rods. I myself--why conceal the fact?--was not
without a certain satisfaction as I piously carried that most delicate
and precious apparatus, the historic five-franc graphometer. The scene
of operations was an untilled, flinty plain, a harmas, as we call it
in the district. (Cf. "The Life of the Fly", by J. Henri Fabre,
translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 1.--Translator's
Note.) Here, no curtain of green hedges or shrubs prevented me from
keeping an eye upon my staff; here--an indispensable condition--I had
not the irresistible temptation of the unripe apricots to fear for my
scholars. The plain stretched far and wide, covered with nothing but