not of much consequence now.

Probably they have changed all that in France by this time, and made
school life a little easier there, especially for nice little
English boys--and nice little French boys too. I hope so, very much;
for French boys can be as nice as any, especially at such
institutions as F. Brossard's, if there are any left.

Most of my comrades, aged from seven to nineteen or twenty, were the
sons of well-to-do fathers--soldiers, sailors, rentiers, owners of
land, public officials, in professions or business or trade. A dozen
or so were of aristocratic descent--three or four very great swells
indeed; for instance, two marquises (one of whom spoke English,
having an English mother); a count bearing a string of beautiful
names a thousand years old, and even more--for they were constantly
turning up in the Classe d'Histoire de France au moyen age; a
Belgian viscount of immense wealth and immense good-nature; and
several very rich Jews, who were neither very clever nor very
stupid, but, as a rule, rather popular.

Then we had a few of humble station--the son of the woman who washed
for us; Jules, the natural son of a brave old caporal in the
trente-septieme legere (a countryman of M. Brossard's), who was not
well off--so I suspect his son was taught and fed for nothing--the
Brossards were very liberal; Filosel, the only child of a small
retail hosier in the Rue St.-Denis (who thought no sacrifice too
great to keep his son at such a first-rate private school), and
others.

During the seven years I spent at Brossard's I never once heard
paternal wealth (or the want of it) or paternal rank or position
alluded to by master, pupil, or servant--especially never a word or
an allusion that could have given a moment's umbrage to the most
sensitive little only son of a well-to-do West End cheese-monger
that ever got smuggled into a private suburban boarding-school kept
"for the sons of gentlemen only," and was so chaffed and bullied
there that his father had to take him away, and send him to Eton
instead, where the "sons of gentlemen" have better manners, it
seems; or even to France, where "the sons of gentlemen" have the
best manners of all--or used to have before a certain 2d of
December--as distinctly I remember; nous avons change tout cela!

The head master was a famous republican, and after February, '48,
was elected a "representant du peuple" for the Dauphine, and sat in
the Chamber of Deputies--for a ve