ey were virtually prisoners within the walls of the college all the
week, for in their Thursday promenades they were little more than
prisoners taking exercise under the supervision of their gaolers. They
were allowed to leave on alternate Sundays, provided they had parents,
relations, or friends in Paris, who could come themselves or send their
servants to fetch them in the morning and take them back at night. The
rule applied to all, whether they were nine or double that number of
years; it prevails even now. I only set foot in a French college of
those days twice to see a young friend of mine, and I thanked my stars
that four or five years of that existence had been spared to me. The
food and the table appointments, the bedrooms--they were more like cells
with their barred windows--would have been declined by the meanest
English servant, certainly by the meanest French one. I have never met
with a Frenchman who looks back with fond remembrance on his
school-days.

The evening was generally wound up with a supper at Dagneaux's,
Pinson's, or at the rotisseuse--that is, if the evening happened to fall
within the first ten days of the month; afterwards the entertainment
nearly always consisted of a meat-pie, bought at one of the
charcutiers', and washed down with the bottles of wine purchased at the
Hotel de l'Empereur Joseph II., at the south-eastern angle of the Rue de
Tournon, where it stands still. The legend ran that the brother of Marie
Antoinette had stayed there while on a visit to Paris, but it is
scarcely likely that he would have done so while his sister was within
a step of the throne of France; nevertheless the Count von
Falkenstein--which was the name he adopted when travelling
incognito--was somewhat of a philosopher. Did not he once pay a visit to
Jean-Jacques Rousseau without having apprised him of his call?
Jean-Jacques was copying music as the door opened to let in the visitor,
and felt flattered enough, we may be sure; not so Buffon, whom Joseph
surprised under similar circumstances, and who could never forgive
himself for having been caught in his dressing-gown--he who never sat
down to work except in lace ruffles and frill.

If I have been unwittingly betrayed into a semi-historical disquisition,
it is because almost every step in that quarter gave rise to one, even
amongst those light-hearted companions of mine, to the great
astonishment of the fairer portion of the company. They only took an
int