ce that
hung upon the room. 'This position isn't at all easy; my wrist feels
broken. Can I move for a moment?'

Claude let him stretch himself without answering. He was now working at
the velveteen jacket, laying on the colour with thick strokes, However,
stepping backward and blinking, he suddenly burst into loud laughter at
some reminiscence.

'I say, do you recollect, when we were in the sixth form, how, one day,
Pouillaud lighted the candles in that idiot Lalubie's cupboard? And how
frightened Lalubie was when, before going to his desk, he opened the
cupboard to take his books, and found it transformed into a mortuary
chapel? Five hundred lines to every one in the form.'

Sandoz, unable to withstand the contagion of the other's gaiety, flung
himself back on the couch. As he resumed his pose, he remarked, 'Ah,
that brute of a Pouillaud. You know that in his letter this morning he
tells me of Lalubie's forthcoming marriage. The old hack is marrying
a pretty girl. But you know her, she's the daughter of Gallissard, the
haberdasher--the little fair-haired girl whom we used to serenade!'

Once on the subject of their recollections there was no stopping them,
though Claude went on painting with growing feverishness, while Pierre,
still turned towards the wall, spoke over his shoulders, shaking every
now and then with excitement.

First of all came recollections of the college, the old, dank convent,
that extended as far as the town ramparts; the two courtyards with their
huge plane trees; the slimy sedge-covered pond, where they had learned
to swim, and the class-rooms with dripping plaster walls on the ground
floor; then the refectory, with its atmosphere constantly poisoned by
the fumes of dish-water; the dormitory of the little ones, famous for
its horrors, the linen room, and the infirmary, full of gentle sisters,
nuns in black gowns who looked so sweet beneath their white coifs. What
a to-do there had been when Sister Angela, she whose Madonna-like face
had turned the heads of all the big fellows, disappeared one morning
with Hermeline, a stalwart first-form lad, who, from sheer love,
purposely cut his hands with his penknife so as to get an opportunity of
seeing and speaking to her while she dressed his self-inflicted injuries
with gold-beater's skin.

Then they passed the whole college staff in review; a pitiful,
grotesque, and terrible procession it was, with such heads as are seen
on meerschaum pipes, and