The Life of Jean Henri Fabre 



order. When we turned over, our eyes encoun- 

 tered the terrible ba, be, bi, bo, bu, the stumbling- 

 block of most of us. When we had mastered that 

 formidable page we were considered to know how 

 to read and were admitted among the big ones. 

 But if the little book was to be of any use, the least 

 that was required was that the master should in- 

 terest himself in us to some extent and show us 

 how to set about things. For this the worthy 

 man, too much taken up with the big boys, had 

 not the time. The famous alphabet with the pigeon 

 was thrust upon us only to give us the air of 

 scholars. We were to contemplate it on our bench, 

 to decipher it with the help of our next neigh- 

 bours, in case he might know one or two of the 

 letters. Our contemplation came to nothing, being 

 every moment disturbed by a visit to the potatoes 

 in the stewpots, a quarrel among playmates about 

 a marble, the grunting invasion of the porkers, or 

 the arrival of the chicks. With the aid of these 

 diversions we would wait patiently until it was 

 time for us to go home. That was our most 

 serious work. 



The big ones used to write. They had the benefit 

 of the small amount of light in the room, by the 

 narrow window where the Wandering Jew and 

 ruthless Golo faced each other, and of the large 

 and only table with its circle of seats. The school 

 supplied nothing, not even a drop of ink; every 

 one had to come with a full set of utensils. The 

 ink-horn of those days, a relic of the ancient pen- 

 case of which Rabelais speaks, was a long card- 



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