"Here, my professor took a pensive attitude: then, as if crushed by the weight of some melancholy memory, he cast slowly around him a look in which the bitterness of a deep disappointment was painted. He heaved a sigh, raised his eyes to heaven, still keeping his head bent, and began in a grave, muffled and sustained voice:
"'Nor gold nor greatness....'
"'See,' said my master, 'with what art I manage to create a pathetic situation out of those lines! That is what you should imitate!'
"'Ah! my dear master, you are right; that is the only reading worthy of that masterpiece. Heavens, how beautiful!' I said to myself; 'decidedly, my noble teacher and my natural teacher understood nothing about this work. What an effect I shall make to-morrow at my fourth professor's class!'
"Alas! a fresh disappointment awaited me at the hands of my fourth master. He was, perhaps, even more pitiless than the others to all the meanings that I strove to express.
"'Why, my poor boy,' said he, 'where the deuce did you hunt up such meanings?' What a sepulchral tone! What is the meaning of that cavernous voice? And why that mournful dumb show? Heaven forgive me! it is melodrama that you offer us! you have done no great thing. You have completely crippled poor La Fontaine.'
"'Alas! alas!' said I to myself, 'is my dramatic teacher as absurd as the other two?'"
After the three preceding imitations, just as the audience had reached the height of merriment, the story-teller stopped.
"I will excuse you, gentlemen, from the reasonings of my fourth professor, for I do not wish to prolong my discourse indefinitely."
If this retreat was an orator's artifice--which may well be,--it was a complete success.