position, translation,
and Latin conversation.

Next year, the principal, a little man, as cunning as an ape, whom he
resembled in his grinning and grotesque appearance, had had printed on
his programmes, on his advertisements, and painted on the door of his
institution:

"Latin Studies a Specialty. Five first prizes carried off in the five
classes of the lycee.

"Two honor prizes at the general examinations in competition with all the
lycees and colleges of France."

For ten years the Institution Robineau triumphed in the same fashion. Now
my father, allured by these successes, sent me as a day pupil to
Robineau's--or, as we called it, Robinetto or Robinettino's--and made me
take special private lessons from Pere Piquedent at the rate of five
francs per hour, out of which the usher got two francs and the principal
three francs. I was then eighteen, and was in the philosophy class.

These private lessons were given in a little room looking out on the
street. It so happened that Pere Piquedent, instead of talking Latin to
me, as he did when teaching publicly in the institution, kept telling me
his troubles in French. Without relations, without friends, the poor man
conceived an attachment to me, and poured out his misery to me.

He had never for the last ten or fifteen years chatted confidentially
with any one.

"I am like an oak in a desert," he said--"'sicut quercus in
solitudine'."

The other ushers disgusted him. He knew nobody in the town, since he had
no time to devote to making acquaintances.

"Not even the nights, my friend, and that is the hardest thing on me. The
dream of my life is to have a room with my own furniture, my own books,
little things that belong to myself and which others may not touch. And I
have nothing of my own, nothing except my trousers and my frock-coat,
nothing, not even my mattress and my pillow! I have not four walls to
shut myself up in, except when I come to give a lesson in this room. Do
you see what this means--a man forced to spend his life without ever
having the right, without ever finding the time, to shut himself up all
alone, no matter where, to think, to reflect, to work, to dream? Ah! my
dear boy, a key, the key of a door which one can lock--this is
happiness, mark you, the only happiness!

"Here, all day long, teaching all those restless rogues, and during the
night the dormitory with the same restless rogues snoring. And I have to
sleep in the bed at the end of