With what ardour I attacked my Latin! How anxious I was to show the boys, and Marc above all, that although I might be stupid at playing Prisoner’s Base, I was not stupid at my lessons.

Marc recited the best in the class, and I felt as much pleasure at his doing so as if I had been the first in the class myself. I came out second, to my great joy. The others stammered through their lessons somehow; as for The Count he could scarcely decline a noun correctly. But after all, what could be expected, when all study time was spent by him in making paper boxes for chocolate, and writing on them his names in full, the place and date of his birth, and his present address; or else in making little scales with cotton and pieces of paper, in which he weighed flies, wafers and little bits of feather cut from the quill pens,—while the rest of us were busy humming over our lessons to ourselves, with our thumbs pressed into our ears.

When I returned home in the evening I spoke of nothing but my new friend, and the pleasure I had had in playing at Prisoner’s Base. I kept to myself the unpleasant and disparaging remarks ............