y Latin. You must understand the genius of a language. Look
here, listen to me."

Now, it came to pass that the pupils of the Institution Robineau
carried off, at the end of the year, all the prizes for composition,
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,