impression. Here and there, at haphazard, you may find a few women among
these men. George Sand used to come here. I don't know the names of
these successors of hers, nor their business; I have merely observed that
they dress in sober colors, and that each carries a number of shawls and
a thick veil. You feel that love is far from their thoughts. They have
left it outside, perhaps--with the porter.

Several of these learned folk lift their heads as I pass, and follow me
with the dulled eye of the student, an eye still occupied with the
written thought and inattentive to what it looks on. Then, suddenly,
remorse seizes them for their distraction, they are annoyed with me, a
gloomy impatience kindles in their look, and each plunges anew into his
open volume. But I have had time to guess their secret ejaculations:
"I am studying the Origin of Trade Guilds!" "I, the Reign of Louis the
Twelfth!" "I, the Latin Dialects!" "I, the Civil Status of Women under
Tiberius!" "I am elaborating a new translation of Horace!" "I am
fulminating a seventh article, for the Gazette of Atheism and Anarchy, on
the Russian Serfs!" And each one seems to add, "But what is thy business
here, stripling? What canst thou write at thy age? Why troublest thou
the peace of these hallowed precincts?" My business, sirs? Alas! it is
the thesis for my doctor's degree. My uncle and venerated guardian, M.
Brutus Mouillard, solicitor, of Bourges, is urging me to finish it,
demands my return to the country, grows impatient over the slow toil of
composition. "Have done with theories," he writes, "and get to business!
If you must strive for this degree, well and good; but what possessed you
to choose such a subject?"

I must own that the subject of my thesis in Roman law has been
artistically chosen with a view to prolonging my stay in Paris: "On the
'Latini Juniani.'" Yes, gentle reader, a new subject, almost incapable