er of their mother's, one Gradelle,
who was in business as a pork butcher in the Rue Pirouette, near
the central markets. He was a fat, hard-hearted, miserly fellow, and
received his nephews as though they were starving paupers the first time
they paid him a visit. They seldom went to see him afterwards. On
his nameday Quenu would take him a bunch of flowers, and receive a
half-franc piece in return for it. Florent's proud and sensitive nature
suffered keenly when Gradelle scrutinised his shabby clothes with the
anxious, suspicious glance of a miser apprehending a request for a
dinner, or the loan of a five-franc piece. One day, however, it occurred
to Florent in all artlessness to ask his uncle to change a hundred-franc
note for him, and after this the pork butcher showed less alarm at sight
of the lads, as he called them. Still, their friendship got no further
than these infrequent visits.

These years were like a long, sweet, sad dream to Florent. As they
passed he tasted to the full all the bitter joys of self-sacrifice. At
home, in the big room, life was all love and tenderness; but out in the
world, amidst the humiliations inflicted on him by his pupils, and
the rough jostling of the streets, he felt himself yielding to wicked
thoughts. His slain ambitions embittered him. It was long before he
could bring himself to bow to his fate, and accept with equanimity the
painful lot of a poor, plain, commonplace man. At last, to guard against
the temptations of wickedness, he plunged into ideal goodness, and
sought refuge in a self-created sphere of absolute truth and justice. It
was then that he became a republican, entering into the republican idea
even as heart-broken girls enter a convent. And not finding a republic
where sufficient peace and kindliness prevailed to lull his troubles to
sleep, he created one for himself. He took no pleasure in books. All
the blackened paper amidst which he lived spoke of evil-smelling
class-rooms, of pellets of paper chewed by unruly schoolboys, of long,
profitless hours of torture. Besides, books only suggested to him a
spirit of mutiny and pride, whereas it was of peace and oblivion that he
felt most need. To lull and soothe himself with the ideal imaginings, to
dream that he was perfectly happy, and that all the world would likewise
become so, to erect in his brain the republican city in which he would
fain have lived, such now became his recreation, the task, again and
again renew