“Has anyone hurt you?” anxiously inquired my mother.

I shook my head.

“What has happened, then, my poor boy?” asked she.

Then I burst out, in a voice of despair, with the history of all my wrongs. I declared that I would never, never, go inside the college doors again! I must be sent back to Miss Porquet. That if I was not sent back there——

Here my father’s voice cut my passionate words short, and put a stop to my rage. I began to cry. My father looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.

When I told him of all my troubles, he replied, “Oh, is that all? When I was a boy, things were much worse than that. You must return laugh for laugh; and when anyone touches you, fall upon them and give it to them well. It should be a case of, ‘You pinch me, I pinch you back; you throw a pen full of ink at me, I throw my inkstand at you; you pull my nose, I pull your ears; you call me Azor, I call you Médor; and there we are quits! You run after me to frighten me, I throw my leg out, and you tumble over it into the mud.’ That’s the way to manage, my little Paul, with schoolboys; you do that, and you need no longer be afraid; and you can then laugh at them in your turn. Ah! if it had been me!”

Then he took my hand, and doubled it to feel my fist, and said: “Now, look at that; that is a fist like any other boy’s; even stronger and harder than many of your age and size have. Now I have told you before how easy it is to use it: you raise your arm lik............