On Saturday the third of October, Marc, and the rest of his family went to Orleans. Sunday I spent in tears, and on Monday my father took me to college.

The way to the college was through a very long street, called Pont Street. That Monday was very cold, I remember; an autumnal fog came up from the meadows near and seemed to creep into my bones, and I trembled in every limb.

At every step we met college boys of all ages, who were loitering along in the same direction we were going. They called to one another from a distance, and formed into different groups, from several of which I heard chance words escaping, in which very clear allusions were made to a new boy who had “a fine big nose of his own.”

Once within the college grounds the boys prepared to enter school, separating into their different classes. After wandering about for some time, uncertain where to go, I found myself in the middle of a group of boys which opened, with apparent good nature, to let me join them, and then closed round me. Once in the crowd I discovered that the object of each boy seemed to be to push his neighbour down; three times did I advance with the rest to the school door, and each time I was pushed away from it and knocked up against the wall. The fourth attempt was more successful, I was lifted off my legs and borne with the crowd into school, where, half crushed and quite out of breath, I managed to stumble on to one of the nearest benches.

As I took my school-books one by one out of my satchel, my neighbour jogged my elbow, and so threw them down; and the professor, looking sternly at me, begged that I would not “make so much noise.”

He asked the names of all the pupils, and made me repeat mine very carefully.

“Write an exercise!” said he at last.

Just as I plunged my pen into the inkstand and brought it out—certainly rather too full of ink—a neighbour who was watching me, gave my elbow another jog, and calculated the effect so well, that the contents of the pen were shot all over the clean white collar of one of the smaller boys, a little red-headed fellow, who turned round to me in a fury. I tried to explain how the misfortune occurred, the professor was very angry, and I made myself as small as possible.

The exercise over, the professor proceed............