176 A TOUR BOUND MX GARDEN. 



sideration. Madame Eoncin presided in the kitchen, with 

 the help of a female servant. The other cookery, the Latin, 

 was carried on by two or three poor fellows, ill fed and ill 

 paid. They must have cost the establishment much less 

 than the butter would have cost that ought to have been added 

 to the soup, if a cook of another kind had been in question. 



To tell the truth, it was the servant that was the real 

 mistress of the house. M. Eoncin was a sort of cipher; and 

 Madame Eoncin, who directed everything, never decided 

 upon anything without consulting with Marianne before the 

 stove. 



We being among the number of the smallest, were shut 

 up during six hours of the day in what was called the 

 French class. We passed the time in the best way we could ; 

 we made birds and boats with paper, — ^we played odd or 

 even with marbles. When the master caught us, he confis- 

 cated our marbles, threw away our birds and boats, and 

 placed us on our knees in a corner of the room; then he 

 made us learn and repeat by heart something which began 

 in this manner : " Grammar is the art of speaking and writing 

 correctly," (fee, of which we comprehended nothing, and he 

 very little. He was a poor, old, thin man, who went through 

 it all with the most serious countenance imaginable. 



There were nearly two hours 'of the day consecrated to 

 what was called recreation. During these two hours they 

 let us loose in a large court, in which were three or four 

 old trees that had stood out against both time and the 

 school-boys. What joy, and what cries, and what a tumult ! 

 How we used to run and jump — how happy we used to be ! 

 It happened one day that one of us, I don't know which, 

 took it into his head to make a garden : he dug up with his 

 knife, in a corner, a square about the size of a table, he 

 traced walks of four inches in width, put sand on his walks, 

 and planted some small branches torn from the large trees 

 in the flower beds, and also a stalk cut from a gillyflower, 

 which had blossomed of itself in the wall. Gardens became 

 the fashion. Those who, like us, were day boys, that is to 

 say, only came in the morning and went away at night, 

 brought every day branches of cut flowers and seeds of all 

 sorts. The flowers were faded by the end of an hour, and 



