s a Sunday
afternoon, on the terrace by the lingerie.

He kicked as hard as he could, so I had to kick too. Mlle. Marceline
ran out with Constance and Felicite and tried to separate us, and
got kicked by both (unintentionally, of course). Then up came Pere
Jaurion and kicked _me_! And they all took Jolivet's part, and said
I was in the wrong, because I was English! What did _they_ know
about AEsop! So we made it up, and went in Jaurion's loge and stood
each other a blomboudingue on tick--and called Jaurion bad names.

"Comme c'est bete, de s'battre, hein?" said Jolivet, and I agreed
with him. I don't know which of us really got the worst of it, for
we hadn't disfigured each other in the least--and that's the best of
kicking. Anyhow he was two years older than I, and three or four
inches taller; so I'm glad, on the whole, that that small battle was
interrupted.

It is really not for brag that I have lugged in this story--at
least, I hope not. One never quite knows.

To go back to Barty: he was the most generous boy in the school. If
I may paraphrase an old saying, he really didn't seem to know the
difference betwixt tuum et meum. Everything he had, books, clothes,
pocket-money--even agate marbles, those priceless possessions to a
French school-boy--seemed to be also everybody else's who chose. I
came across a very characteristic letter of his the other day,
written from the Pension Brossard to his favorite aunt, Lady
Caroline Grey (one of the Rohans), who adored him. It begins:

"My Dear Aunt Caroline,--Thank you so much for the
magnifying-glass, which is not only magnifying, but magnifique.
Don't trouble to send any more gingerbread-nuts, as the boys are
getting rather tired of them, especially Laferte and
Bussy-Rabutin. I think we should all like some Scotch
marmalade," etc., etc.

And though fond of romancing a little now and then, and embellishing
a good story, he was absolutely truthful in important matters, and
to be relied upon implicitly.

He seemed also to be quite without the sense of physical fear--a
kind of callousness.

Such, roughly, was the boy who lived to write the _Motes in a
Moonbeam_ and _La quatrieme Dimension_ before he was thirty; and
such, roughly, he remained through life, except for one thing: he
grew to be the very soul of passionate and compassionate sympathy,
as who doesn't feel who has ever read a page of his work, or even
had speech with him for half an ho