perfunctory morning prayer--which didn't differ much from the
evening one.

Barty was still _en cinquieme_, at the top! and I at the tail of the
class immediately above--so near and yet so far! so I did not have
many chances of improving my acquaintance with him that term; for he
still stuck to Laferte and Bussy-Rabutin--they were inseparable,
those three.

At mid-day play-time the weather was too cold for anything but
games, which were endless in their variety and excitement; it would
take a chapter to describe them.

It is a mistake to think that French school-boys are (or were) worse
off than ours in this. I will not say that any one French game is
quite so good as cricket or football for a permanency. But I
remember a great many that are very nearly so.

Indeed, French rounders (la balle au camp) seems to me the best game
that ever was--on account of the quick rush and struggle of the
fielders to get home when an inside boy is hit between the bases,
lest he should pick the ball up in time to hit one of them with it
before the camp is reached; in which case there is a most exciting
scrimmage for the ball, etc., etc.

Barty was good at all games, especially la balle au camp. I used to
envy the graceful, easy way he threw the ball--so quick and straight
it seemed to have no curve at all in its trajectory: and how it
bounded off the boy it nearly always hit between the shoulders!

At evening, play in the school-room, besides draughts and chess and
backgammon; M. Bonzig, when _de service_, would tell us thrilling
stories, with "la suite au prochain numero" when the bell rang at 7.30;
a long series that lasted through the winter of '47-'48. _Le Tueur de
Daims_, _Le Lac Ontario_, _Le Dernier des Mohicans_, _Les Pionniers_,
_La Prairie_--by one Fenimore Coupere; all of which he had read in M.
Defauconpret's admirable translations. I have read some of them in their
native American since then, myself. I loved them always--but they seemed
to lack some of the terror, the freshness, and the charm his fluent
utterance and solemn nasal voice put into them as he sat and smoked his
endless cigarettes with his back against the big stone stove, and his
eyes dancing sideways through his glasses. Never did that
"ding-dang-dong" sound more hateful than when le grand Bonzig was
telling the tale of Bas-de-cuir's doings, from his innocent youth to his
noble and Pathetic death by sunset, with his ever-faithful and
still-serviceable