e reason why, one fine spring day, M. Violette was ushered
into M. Batifol's office, who, the servant said, would be there directly.

M. Batifol's office was hideous. In the three bookcases which the master
of the house--a snob and a greedy schoolmaster--never opened, were some
of those books that one can buy upon the quays by the running yard; for
example, Laharpe's Cours de Litterature, and an endless edition of
Rollin, whose tediousness seems to ooze out through their bindings. The
cylindrical office-table, one of those masterpieces of veneered mahogany
which the Faubourg St. Antoine still keeps the secret of making, was
surmounted by a globe of the world.

Suddenly, through the open window, little Amedee saw the sycamore in the
yard. A young blackbird, who did not know the place, came and perched for
an instant only upon one of its branches.

We may fancy the tree saying to it:

"What are you doing here? The Luxembourg is only a short distance from
here, and is charming. Children are there, making mud-pies, nurses upon
the seats chattering with the military, lovers promenading, holding
hands. Go there, you simpleton!"

The blackbird flew away, and the university tree, once more solitary and
alone, drooped its dispirited leaves. Amedee, in his confused childish
desire for information, was just ready to ask why this sycamore looked so
morose, when the door opened and M. Batifol appeared. The master of the
school had a severe aspect, in spite of his almost indecorous name. He
resembled a hippopotamus clothed in an ample black coat. He entered
slowly and bowed in a dignified way to M. Violette, then seated himself
in a leather armchair before his papers, and, taking off his velvet
skull-cap, revealed such a voluminous round, yellow baldness that little
Amedee compared it with terror to the globe on the top of his desk.

It was just the same thing! These two round balls were twins! There was
even upon M. Batifol's cranium an eruption of little red pimples, grouped
almost exactly like an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean.

"Whom have I the honor--?" asked the schoolmaster, in an unctuous voice,
an excellent voice for proclaiming names at the distribution of prizes.

M. Violette was not a brave man. It was very foolish, but when the senior
clerk called him into his office to do some work, he was always seized
with a sort of stammering and shaking of the limbs. A person so imposing
as M. Batifol was not calculated to