.

"But to have a son is a small matter. To bring him up till he is
seven or eight years old, is nothing. The difficulty is to give him an
education which shall secure him a position in the world. This thought
now began to occupy the minds of his parents incessantly. These stupid
people, who had a business which supported them handsomely, and enabled
them, in the course of time, to amass a small fortune, did not see that
the best thing they could have done would have been to enlarge it, and
to leave it to their son. But no. They vowed they would sacrifice all
their savings, and deprive themselves even of the necessaries of life,
in order that their Justin might become a 'gentleman.'

"And what a gentleman! The mother dreamed of him as a rich broker, or,
at the very least, a notary's first clerk. The father preferred seeing
him a government official, holding one of those much-coveted places,
which give the owner, after twenty-five years' service, a title, and an
income of some six or seven hundred dollars.

"The result of all these speculations was, that, at the age of nine,
Master Justin was sent to a high school. He conducted himself there just
badly enough to be perpetually on the brink of being sent away, without
ever being really expelled. This made but little impression upon the two
Chevassats. They had become so accustomed to look upon their son as a
superior being, that it never entered their mind to think he was not the
first, the best, and the most remarkable pupil of the establishment. If
Justin's reports were bad,--and they were always bad,--they accused
the teachers of partiality. If he gained no prize at the end of the
year,--and he never got any,--they did not know what to do for him to
console him for having been victimized by such cruel injustice.

"The consequences of such a system need hardly be stated.

"When Justin was fourteen years old, he despised his parents thoroughly,
treated them like servants, and was so much ashamed of them, that he
would not allow his mother to come and see him in the parlor of the
college to which he had been admitted of late. When he was at home
during vacations, he would have cut his right arm off rather than help
his father, or pour out a glass of wine for a customer. He even stayed
away from the house on the plea that he could not endure the odors from
the kitchen.

"Thus he reached his seventeenth year. His course was not completed;
but, as he was tired of colle