a jest upon him, amongst others a line of Victor Hugo's in Ruy Bias
about that

Affreuse compagnonne,
Dont la barbe fleurit et dont le nez trognonne.

"Fleurit" was an allusion to Cuvillier-Fleury, my brother Aumale's
tutor, and Victor Hugo thought he owed both the gentlemen a grudge. M.
Trognon, a distinguished pupil of the Ecole Normale, had begun his
teaching career as professor of rhetoric at the college at Langres,
where, coming in one day to take his class, he found his desk occupied
by a donkey, which his pupils had established in his seat "Gentlemen,"
he said as he went out, "I leave you with a professor who is worthy of
you." Soon after, he was recalled to Paris, as assistant to M. Guizot in
his courses of historical lectures at the College of France.

He was not only an accomplished university man, but something else
besides, as we learnt from a copy of the Figaro, which our eldest
brother brought back from college. In this newspaper we read, in fact, a
set of verses by Baour-Lormian, beginning thus:--

Que me veut ce Trognon, pedagogue en besicles,
Dans la fosse du Globe enterrant ses articles!

There was no doubt about it. My tutor was a journalist, and these lines
a revengeful answer to an article of his in the Globe, a newspaper
which, as we soon learnt, he had founded in concert with Pierre Leroux,
Dubois, Jouffroy, Remusat, and some others. We discovered too that our
journalist was a freethinker as well, and author of a thick octavo book