rpet deadens all
footsteps; and behind again, that holy of holies where work the doubly
privileged--the men, I imagine, who are members of two or three
academies. To right and left of this avenue are rows of tables and
armchairs, where scatters, as caprice has chosen and habit consecrated,
the learned population of the library. Men form the large majority.
Viewed from the rear, as they bend over their work, they suggest
reflections on the ravages wrought by study upon hair-clad cuticles. For
every hirsute Southerner whose locks turn gray without dropping off,
heavens, what a regiment of bald heads! Visitors who look in through the
glass doors see only this aspect of devastation. It gives a wrong
impression. Here and there, at haphazard, you may find a few women among
these men. George Sand used to come here. I don't know the names of these
successors of hers, nor their business; I have merely observed that they
dress in sober colors, and that each carries a number of shawls and a
thick veil. You feel that love is far from their thoughts. They have left
it outside, perhaps--with the porter.

Several of these learned folk lift their heads as I pass, and follow me
with the dulled eye of the student, an eye still occupied with the
written thought and inattentive to what it looks on. Then, suddenly,
remorse seizes them for their distraction, they are annoyed with me, a
gloomy impatience kindles in their look, and each plunges anew into his
open volume. But I have had time to guess their secret ejaculations: "I
am studying the Origin of Trade Guilds!" "I, the Reign of Louis the
Twelfth!" "I, the Latin Dialects!" "I, the Civil Status of Women under
Tiberius!" "I am elaborating a new translation of Horace!" "I am
fulminating a seventh article, for the Gazette of Atheism and Anarchy, on
the Russian Serfs!" And each one seems to add, "But what is thy business
here, stripling? What canst thou write at thy age? Why troublest thou the
peace of these hallowed precincts?" My business, sirs? Alas! it is the
thesis for my doctor's degree. My uncle and venerated guardian, M. Brutus
Mouillard, solicitor, of Bourges, is urging me to finish it, demands my
return to the country, grows impatient over the slow toil of composition.
"Have done with theories," he writes, "and get to business! If you must
strive for this degree, well and good; but what possessed you to choose
such a subject?"

I must own that the subject of my thesis in Roman law