heard the news?
Flamaran is going to bring out the second volume of his great work. He
means to publish his lectures. He has in the press a treatise which will
revolutionize the law of mortgages; he has been working twenty years at
it; a masterpiece, I assure you." Day follows day; no book appears, no
treatise is published, and all the while M. Flamaran grows in reputation.
Strange phenomenon! like the aloe in the Botanical Gardens. The
blossoming of the aloe is an event. "Only think!" says the gaping public,
"a flower which has taken twenty springs, twenty summers, twenty autumns,
and twenty winters to make up its mind to open!" And meanwhile the roses
bloom unnoticed by the town. But M. Flamaran's case is still more
strange. Every year it is whispered that he is about to bloom afresh; he
never does bloom; and his reputation flourishes none the less. People
make lists of the books he might have written. Lucky author!

M. Flamaran is a professor of the old school, stern, and at examination a
terror to the candidates. Clad in cap and gown, he would reject his own
son. Nothing will serve. Recommendations defeat their object. An
unquestioned Roumanian ancestry, an extraction indisputably Japanese,
find no more favor in his eyes than an assumed stammer, a sham deafness,
or a convalescent pallor put on for the occasion. East and west are alike
in his sight. The retired registrar, the pensioned usher aspiring late in
life to some petty magistrature, are powerless to touch his heart. For
him in vain does the youthful volunteer allow his uniform to peep out
beneath his student's gown: he will not profit by the patriotic
indulgence he counted on inspiring. His sayings in the examination-room
are famous, and among them are some ghastly pleasantries. Here is one,
addressed to a victim: "And you, sir, are a law student, while our
farmers are in want of hands!"

For my own part I won his favor under circumstances that I never shall
forget. I was in for my first examination. We were discussing, or rather
I was allowing him to lecture on, the law of wardship, and nodding my
assent to his learned elucidations. Suddenly he broke off and asked, "How
many opinions have been formulated upon this subject?"

"Two, sir."

"One is absurd. Which? Beware how you give the wrong answer!"

I considered for three agonizing seconds, and hazarded a guess. "The
first, sir." I had guessed right. We were friends. At bottom the
professor is a capital