ng a huge mass of brown paper to the tail of the favourite
cat of the master's lady, with which she rushed with an insane and
terrifying distraction into the drawing-room. We owed a spite to a
neighbouring milkman for tale-bearing, and we rendered his pump, the great
source of profit, useless, by filling it with soot and mire. The old woman
who served the school with tarts, and who, in her endeavours to please all
palates, brought some varieties heated over a charcoal fire, had her
apparatus blown to atoms by an ounce of gunpowder, insinuated with so much
art, that although done before her face, she could attach no one with the
offence. All became riot, waste, and destruction under the guidance of my
beloved Peregrine.

But, ah! the poor Count--amiable, patient, and long-suffering Gaul! He was
an unhappy refugee, who had sought a home, by becoming the reviled,
insulted teacher of his native tongue to a mob of heartless ruffians. How
well do I remember his neat but thread-bare coat and pigtail; his stooping
gait, not the decrepitude of age, but as though it sprang from the
abasement of his fortune; his endurance of injury to a certain point, when
patience suddenly forsook him, and his, to us, irresistibly comic rage and
exasperation! What would that generous seaman Pipes have thought a
defenceless Frenchman fit for, but as the object of spirited and
well-conducted pranks? Nothing cruel or revengeful, but only to show our
own superior wit and address in concerted and premeditated annoyance.

I had gained with a most surprising rapidity upon the confidence of the
most conspicuous rioters in the school. There was something so noble and
daring in all my designs, that they seemed to yield willingly to so
superior a spirit. The sudden alteration in my manners had been noticed
with secret wonder by the masters, and they, thinking to check my fatal
tendencies at the outset, had inflicted on me several severe and
well-merited chastisements. I converted even these into means of extending
my influence. I had borne them like a hero, a very Peregrine. No groan--no
sigh--no bellowing promise of amendment, had lessened my dignity. Under the
torture, I was sullen and silent. The stoutest heart in the school envied
my manhood and composure.

The poor French teacher had been the hereditary object of annoyance for
several generations of boys. The meekest and most chicken-hearted scrubs in
the school tried their apprenticeship to mischief