ground with its dead leaves at the first frost, in the playground of
the Batifol institution, which was a place without any distractions.

This solitary tree, which was like any other sycamore, middle-aged and
without any singularities, ought to have had the painful feeling that it
served in a measure to deceive the public. In fact, upon the
advertisement of the Batifol institution (Cours du lycee Henri IV.
Preparation au baccalaureat et aux ecoles de l'Etat), one read these
fallacious words, "There is a garden;" when in reality it was only a
vulgar court graveled with stones from the river, with a paved gutter in
which one could gather half a dozen of lost marbles, a broken top, and a
certain number of shoe-nails, and after recreation hours still more. This
solitary sycamore was supposed to justify the illusion and fiction of the
garden promised in the advertisement; but as trees certainly have common
sense, this one should have been conscious that it was not a garden of
itself.

It was a very unjust fate for an inoffensive tree which never had harmed
anybody; only expanding, at one side of the gymnasium portico, in a
perfect rectangle formed by a prison wall, bristling with the glass of
broken bottles, and by three buildings of distressing similarity,
showing, above the numerous doors on the ground floor, inscriptions which
merely to read induced a yawn: Hall 1, Hall 2, Hall 3, Hall 4, Stairway
A, Stairway B, Entrance to the Dormitories, Dining-room, Laboratory.

The poor sycamore was dying of ennui in this dismal place. Its only happy
seasons--the recreation hours, when the court echoed with the shouts and
the laughter of the boys--were spoiled for it by the sight of two or
three pupils who were punished by being made to stand at the foot of its
trunk. Parisian birds, who are not fastidious, rarely lighted upon the
tree, and never built their nests there. It might even be imagined that
this disenchanted tree, when the wind agitated its foliage, would
charitably say, "Believe me! the place is good for nothing. Go and make
love elsewhere!"

In the shade of this sycamore, planted under an unlucky star, the greater
part of Amedee's infancy was passed.

M. Violette was an employe of the Ministry, and was obliged to work seven
hours a day, one or two hours of which were devoted to going wearily
through a bundle of probably superfluous papers and documents. The rest
of the time was given to other occupations as varied a