e strength of my child-nature, with a love
disinterested, simple, sincere.

It was Georgette whom I loved, but, alas! Georgette did not love me.

How much I suffered in consequence! I used to hide myself in corners,
shedding many tears, and racking my brains to find some means of
pleasing the obdurate fair one. Labour in vain, a thankless task, at
eight years of age or at thirty!

To distinguish myself in my studies, to win by my exemplary conduct the
encomiums of the sisters Dulorre--all this made no impression upon cruel
Georgette. She made no secret of her preference for a dull, idle,
blustering fellow of nine years old, who won all the races, who could
fling a ball farther than anyone else, carry two huge dictionaries under
his arm, and administer terrible thumps.

This hero was rightly nicknamed _Met-a-Mort_.

I knew what his blows were like, having been the involuntary recipient
of some of them. Some, do I say? I had received more than a dilatory
donkey on the road to the fair!

And Georgette had only laughed!

[Illustration: "MY REDOUBTABLE RIVAL."]

Obviously, it was absurd to think of employing physical force against my
redoubtable rival, and intellectual superiority in this case availed me
nothing. I determined, therefore, to annihilate _Met-a-Mort_ by my
overpowering magnificence.

Naturally, our parents did not send us to school attired in our best
clothes. On the contrary, most of us wore there our oldest and shabbiest
garments. Consequently, I opined that it would be no difficult
achievement to outshine all my schoolfellows.

I should have to coax my parents into loosening their purse-strings, and
get them to buy me a beautiful new jacket.

It took me a very long time to decide what colour this jacket should be.
I mentally reviewed all the colours of the rainbow. Red tempted me; but
I doubted whether a jacket of that colour would be attainable. Should it
be blue, green, indigo, violet? No! Not one of these colours was
sufficiently striking.

I paused at yellow. That might do. It is a rich colour; there is
something sumptuous and royal about it. Summer was approaching. I
decided finally upon a jacket of nankeen.

Without delay, I set to work on my school garments. It was a work of
destruction, for I wanted to make them appear as disreputable as
possible. I slyly enlarged the holes, wrenched off the buttons, and
decorated my person lavishly with spots and stains of all kinds. Day by
day I wa