The Lycée, for all its admirable scheme of studies, had lately been abandoned in favour of a quaint old British scholar, very poor, very learned, who lived on the heights of Montmartre, in the oddest little house—so filled with books that almost everywhere one had to move literally edge-ways. The very stairs, for lack of shelves, were piled on both sides with volumes, old and modern, tattered or nobly bound, stored regardless of subjects, merely in sizes for the sake of room.
Long could I talk about you, O my dear Mr. Gilchrist—you with the keen eyes and the vigorous hook nose ‹always half-filled with snuff›; with the flowing beard of venerable threescore and ten, who taught me to read “the classics” after the English manner, i.e. with a regard to quantities; who, for the modest and evidently much wanted fee agreed upon, gave me daily at least five hours tuition ‹sometimes more› instead of the stipulated three! Hours, be it said, that went by lightly enough in that queer, snuffy room, where we sat facing each other on two straight-backed chairs—eager boy and no less eager old man. For, the Latin and Greek tasks over, there always followed excursions, one more fascinating than the other, into the deep and still unknown forest of English letters. And such was the variety and the happy choice of excerpts that, incredible as it may seem, the scholar of fourteen was oftener sorry than elated to leave the garrulous and enthusiastic mentor on his hill-top and return to the paternal house in the lower planes of the Champs Elysées.
An odd way of life for a youth, during those last few months of spring and early summer in Paris! It was full of glad aspirations towards the future, it is true, but at the same time not without an almost regretful enjoyment of the present. The distribution of time was peculiar. There was in it a kind of unconscious anticipation of that light-saving Bill of Mr. Willet ‹which has so little chance of being embodied in an Act›. The queer boy, in his transition stage, had taken a cranky turn on the subject of hours. Having made up his mind, on the one hand, that he had an enormous amount of new things to read and assimilate before his fresh start in England; and, on the other, having heard that one hour of morning study was worth ‹on what authority it matters little now› two after noon, he had invested in a specially ferocious alarum clock. The merciless clamour of this machine drove him out of dreamland daily at a quarter to five ante meridiem; and, strange as it undoubtedly was, it is not on record that he ever failed during that period to obey the summons.
A SEDULOUS SCHOLAR
There must have been somewhere at the back of so unnatural a submission, of such a persistency in a purely self-imposed and unnecessary discipline, a sort of romantic smack of mediævalism.... The “sedulous escholier” ‹so warmly commended by Saint Louis› was found awake and already absorbed in his search for lore as returning day began to whiten his window.
The net result was a couple of hours of really earnest work before it was time to dispatch the morning bowl of café au lait and the pain de gruau and hasten to the ascent of Mons Martis, where impatient Mr. Gilchrist looked for his scholar’s appearance at eight sharp. It was very special reading—English History—a subject with which the cours d’histoire at the Lycée could only deal in a sketchy manner; but the early-rising escholier, greedy of new knowledge, was fortunately helped by the appearance in that year of Green’s “Short History of the English People,” and fell under the charm of the captivating work.
XIV
PLAYING TRUANT