r half a dozen of lost marbles, a broken top, and
a certain number of shoe-nails, and after recreation hours still more.
This solitary sycamore was supposed to justify the illusion and fiction
of the garden promised in the advertisement; but as trees certainly
have common sense, this one should have been conscious that it was not a
garden of itself.

It was a very unjust fate for an inoffensive tree which never had harmed
anybody; only expanding, at one side of the gymnasium portico, in a
perfect rectangle formed by a prison wall, bristling with the glass
of broken bottles, and by three buildings of distressing similarity,
showing, above the numerous doors on the ground floor, inscriptions
which merely to read induced a yawn: Hall 1, Hall 2, Hall 3, Hall
4, Stairway A, Stairway B, Entrance to the Dormitories, Dining-room,
Laboratory.

The poor sycamore was dying of ennui in this dismal place. Its only
happy seasons--the recreation hours, when the court echoed with the
shouts and the laughter of the boys--were spoiled for it by the sight of
two or three pupils who were punished by being made to stand at the foot
of its trunk. Parisian birds, who are not fastidious, rarely lighted
upon the tree, and never built their nests there. It might even be
imagined that this disenchanted tree, when the wind agitated its
foliage, would charitably say, "Believe me! the place is good for
nothing. Go and make love elsewhere!"

In the shade of this sycamore, planted under an unlucky star, the
greater part of Amedee's infancy was passed.

M. Violette was an employe of the Ministry, and was obliged to work
seven hours a day, one or two hours of which were devoted to going
wearily through a bundle of probably superfluous papers and documents.
The rest of the time was given to other occupations as varied as they
were intellectual; such as yawning, filing his nails, talking about his
chiefs, groaning over the slowness of promotion, cooking a potato or a
sausage in the stove for his luncheon, reading the newspaper down to
the editor's signature, and advertisements in which some country cure
expresses his artless gratitude at being cured at last of an obstinate
disease. In recompense for this daily captivity, M. Violette received,
at the end of the month, a sum exactly sufficient to secure his
household soup and beef, with a few vegetables.

In order that his son might attain such a distinguished position, M.
Violette's father, a watch-m