page or setting out our rows of figures.

We, the smaller ones, in addition to the comfort of studying with
our mouths full, had every now and then two other delights, which
were quite as good as cracking nuts. The back door communicated
with the yard where the hen, surrounded by her brood of chicks,
scratched at the dung hill, while the little porkers, of whom there
were a dozen, wallowed in their stone trough. This door would open
sometimes to let one of us out, a privilege which we abused, for
the sly ones among us were careful not to close it on returning.
Forthwith, the porkers would come running in, one after the other,
attracted by the smell of the boiled potatoes. My bench, the one
where the youngsters sat, stood against the wall, under the copper
pail to which we used to go for water when the nuts had made us
thirsty, and was right in the way of the pigs. Up they came
trotting and grunting, curling their little tails; they rubbed
against our legs; they poked their cold pink snouts into our hands
in search of a scrap of crust; they questioned us with their sharp
little eyes to learn if we happened to have a dry chestnut for them
in our pockets. When they had gone the round, some this way and
some that, they went back to the farmyard, driven away by a
friendly flick of the master's handkerchief. Next came the visit
of the hen, bringing her velvet-coated chicks to see us. All of us
eagerly crumbled a little bread for our pretty visitors. We vied
with one another in calling them to us and tickling with our
fingers their soft and downy backs. No, there was certainly no
lack of distractions.

What could we learn in such a school as that! Let us first speak of
the young ones, of whom I was one. Each of us had, or rather was