m, not even the littlest ones, who worked
right on tracing their fish-hooks, as if that was French, too. On the roof
the pigeons cooed very low, and I thought to myself:

"Will they make them sing in German, even the pigeons?"

Whenever I looked up from my writing I saw M. Hamel sitting motionless in
his chair and gazing first at one thing, then at another, as if he wanted
to fix in his mind just how everything looked in that little school-room.
Fancy! For forty years he had been there in the same place, with his
garden outside the window and his class in front of him, just like that.
Only the desks and benches had been worn smooth; the walnut-trees in the
garden were taller, and the hop-vine, that he had planted himself twined
about the windows to the roof. How it must have broken his heart to leave
it all, poor man; to hear his sister moving about in the room above,
packing their trunks! For they must leave the country next day.

But he had the courage to hear every lesson to the very last. After the
writing, we had a lesson in history, and then the babies chanted their ba,
be, bi, bo, bu. Down there at the back of the room old Hauser had put on
his spectacles and, holding his primer in both hands, spelled the letters
with them. You could see that he, too, was crying; his voice trembled with
emotion, and it was so funny to hear him that we all wanted to laugh and
cry. Ah, how well I remember it, that last lesson!

All at once the church-clock struck twelve. Then the Angelus. At the same
moment the trumpets of the Prussians, returning from drill, sounded under
our windows. M. Hamel stood up, very pale, in his chair. I never saw him
look so tall.

"My friends," said he, "I--I--" But something choked him. He could not go
on.

Then he turned to the blackboard, took a piece of chalk, and, bearing on
with all his might, he wrote as large as he could:

"Vive La France!"

Then he stopped and leaned his head against the wall, and, without a word,
he made a gesture to us with his hand; "School is dismissed--you may go."

CROISILLES

BY ALFRED DE MUSSET

I

At the beginning of the reign of Louis XV., a young man named Croisilles,
son of a goldsmith, was returning from Paris to Havre, his native town. He
had been intrusted by his father with the transaction of some business,
and his trip to the great city having turned out satisfactorily, the joy
of bringing good news caused him to walk the sixty leagues more