e sliced veal, and jam tarts, presented himself at the
boarding-school, to be prepared without delay for the teaching of the
'alma parens'.

The hippopotamus clothed in black did not take off his skullcap this
time, to the child's great regret, for he wished to assure himself if the
degrees of latitude and longitude were checked off in squares on M.
Batifol's cranium as they were on the terrestrial globe. He conducted his
pupil to his class at once and presented him to the master.

"Here is a new day scholar, Monsieur Tavernier. You will find out how far
advanced he is in reading and writing, if you please." M. Tavernier was a
tall young man with a sallow complexion, a bachelor who, had he been
living like his late father, a sergeant of the gendarmes, in a pretty
house surrounded by apple trees and green grass, would not, perhaps, have
had that 'papier-mache' appearance, and would not have been dressed at
eight o'clock in the morning in a black coat of the kind we see hanging
in the Morgue. M. Tavernier received the newcomer with a sickly smile,
which disappeared as soon as M. Batifol left the room.

"Go and take your place in that empty seat there, in the third row," said
M. Tavernier, in an indifferent tone.

He deigned, however, to conduct Amedee to the seat which he was to
occupy. Amedee's neighbor, one of the future citizens preparing for
social life--several with patches upon their trousers--had been naughty
enough to bring into class a handful of cockchafers. He was punished by a
quarter of an hour's standing up, which he did soon after, sulking at the
foot of the sycamore-tree in the large court.

"You will soon see what a cur he is," whispered the pupil in disgrace; as
soon as the teacher had returned to his seat.

M. Tavernier struck his ruler on the edge of his chair, and, having
reestablished silence, invited pupil Godard to recite his lesson.

Pupil Godard, who was a chubby-faced fellow with sleepy eyes, rose
automatically and in one single stream, like a running tap, recited,
without stopping to take breath, "The Wolf and the Lamb," rolling off La
Fontaine's fable like the thread from a bobbin run by steam.

"The-strongest-reason-is-always-the-best-and-we-will-prove-it-at-once-a-
lamb-was-quenching-his-thirst-in-a-stream-of-pure-running-water--"

Suddenly Godard was confused, he hesitated. The machine had been badly
oiled. Something obstructed the bobbin.

"In-a-stream-of-pure-running-water-in-a