My Schooling 



sion : tongue-tied with shyness, I used to leave 

 it to the others. 



Nevertheless, I was well thought of, for, in 

 the school, I cut a good figure in composition 

 and translation. In that classical atmosphere, 

 there was talk of Procas, King of Alba, and of 

 his two sons, Numitor and Amulius. We 

 heard of Cynoegirus, the strong-jawed man, 

 who, having lost his two hands in battle, seized 

 and held a Persian galley with his teeth, and 

 of Cadmus the Phoenician, who sowed a dra- 

 gon's teeth as though they were beans and 

 gathered his harvest in the shape of a host of 

 armed men, who killed one another as they 

 rose up from the ground. The only one who 

 survived the slaughter was one as tough as 

 leather, presumably the son of the big back 

 grinder. 



Had they talked to me about the man in 

 the moon, I could not have been more startled. 

 I made up for it with my animals, which I was 

 far from forgetting amid this phantasmagoria 

 of heroes and demigods. While honouring 

 the exploits of Cadmus and Cynoegirus, I 

 hardly ever failed, on Sundays and Thurs- 

 days, 1 to go and see if the cowslip or the yellow 



'The weekly half-holiday in French schools. — Trans- 

 lator's Note. 



151 



